Shorts, 7/20.

The Economist sketches an evolution of Iraq documentaries: "Last year two American-produced films, Gunner Palace and the excellent Occupation Dreamland, treated the bewildering experience of American soldiers stumbling into the difficulties of the war's first year." From the crop currently making the rounds, the weekly singles out Iraq in Fragments, My Country, My Country and The Blood of My Brother, whose aim is "to shed light on Iraqis' experience of life after the fall of Saddam Hussein... Each of these films is influenced by the vérité style to the extent that the film-makers seek to disappear from the stories they tell." And the Economist explains why "this season's films may not only be the first but also the last of their particular kind to appear for some time."

"[T]he Iraq conflict [is] emerging as the first YouTube war," writes Ana Marie Cox in Time. "Critics of the mainstream media's war coverage might hope that the soldier's unmediated view would be a more positive one.... By that logic, putting cameras in the hands of those soldiers on the ground should provide enough celebration for an 'Up with Iraq' musical. There's music in a lot of the soldiers' videos, but precious little uplift." Via Jon Lebkowsky.

"The great abiding tradition in American entertainment is enemies. They gotta have them." Bruce Robinson, who'll be adapting Hunter S Thompson's novel The Rum Diary, starring Johnny Depp, chats with Stop Smiling's JC Gabel.

"As in the films of Andrew Bujalski..." There's an opener we'll probably be seeing frequently in the coming years. At any rate, Nick Schager, please continue: "...The Puffy Chair's characters inhabit a self-contained universe of solipsism, their every conversation and undertaking an act of juvenile egomania in which maturely confronting the world is avoided."

Also in Slant, Keith Uhlich: "As played by Rudolf Klein-Rogge in Fritz Lang and Thea von Harbou's two-part adaptation of the Norbert Jacques novel, Mabuse is a true bogeyman, a hollow shell of surface tics with a terrifying dead-eyed stare.... This Mabuse has only pretensions to myth." Related: Susan King in the Los Angeles Times and, at the main site, I posted a piece on Dr Mabuse, the Gambler the other day.

Anyone who's ever needed the quick, and I mean, quick lowdown, the straight-up need-to-know on a movie of, let's say, a certain age, knows to go to the Movie Review Query Engine and hope that a search turns up another gem of a blurb from Dave Kehr from his days at the Chicago Reader. At his blog, he's recently been giving himself a tad more breathing room and doing something similar with predictably wonderful results. The latest viewings: Kiss Tomorrow Goodbye and Old Mother Riley Meets the Vampire.

In an appreciation of Rebecca in the London Review of Books, and particularly of the new print that's been struck, Michael Wood singles out a single sequence: "It is a kind of visual fairytale and one very much of Hitchcock's making. It is the story of the ogre and the little girl, where she loves him because he may kill her, and he accepts her (and doesn't kill her) because he loves her fear. That's why they can live happily ever after - as long as she doesn't recognise the Gothic mansion of his appetite for what it is."

At Flickhead, Ray Young recommends The Committee, "an original and often fascinating parable about independence, conformity, free thinking, and orthodoxy at war within the individual and his place in society. Given some time and enough exposure, it could eventually be acknowledged as one of the key films of the Sixties."

David Poland is profoundly moved by World Trade Center.

Jeffrey Wells points to reviews of Woody Allen's Scoop: Todd McCarthy in Variety and Kirk Honeycutt in the Hollywood Reporter. So far, not so good, but you probably guessed that when you saw the trailer. Commentary: That Little Round-Headed Boy. Update: Keith Uhlich, rather scathingly, in Slant.

Reminder: Jim Emerson's outstanding "Open Shots Project" rolls on.

"[T]he discrepancy between what critics think and how the public behaves is of perennial interest because it throws into relief some basic questions about taste, economics and the nature of popular entertainment, as well as the more vexing issue of what, exactly, critics are for," writes AO Scott. Commentary: Jim Emerson, Chuck Tryon and Peet Gelderblom. Update: And Richard von Busack in the Metro Silicon Valley.

Also in the New York Times: Sarah Lyall talks with Alex Pettyfer about his role in Stormbreaker, the first adaptation of a book from Anthony Horowitz's popular adventure series (more from Aida Edemariam in the Guardian).

And Nathan Lee: "A demented jag of blasphemy, multicultural weirdness, splatter-movie tropes and inchoate meat metaphors, Mad Cowgirl is an underground movie with little sense of grounding; the point is an aggressive pointlessness." More from Matt Singer in the Voice.

"Thirty years of living and breathing the wondrous, horrifying, inspiring, and transcendent images that Steven Spielberg has given us all came to a pinnacle for me as I was introduced to Mr Spielberg as Steven from SpielbergFilms.com." A fun conversation follows. Via Mark Beall at Cinematical.

Christopher Orr for the New Republic: "[W]atching The Matador it's hard to escape the sense that what has been missing from 007 all these years is not just masculinity, but a whiff of masculine sleaze, a hint that under all those immaculate suits there lies a truly dirty mind."

"NBC has signed Spike Lee to develop a new drama series," reports Ben Grossman for Broadcasting & Cable. Via Fimoculous.

Irvine Welsh tells the story behind Babylon Heights, the play he's written with screenwriting partner Dean Cavanagh which "focuses on the performers in The Wizard of Oz... There is an old myth that in the film's original print, during the Tin Woodsman scene, the small shadowed figure you can see is actually a dead munchkin hanging from a tree. The official line was that it was a dead bird. Our starting point was to take this myth as a reality."

Also in the Guardian: Franco Zeffirelli issued a call to Fiorentina fans for a massive show of civil disobedience "as a protest against punishments meted out to their club by a tribunal set up to judge claims of match-fixing," reports John Hooper. Thousands responded. Plus: seven online viewing tips from Kate Stables and, good grief, three obits: Michael Chanan on Fabián Bielinsky, Ronald Bergan on Gyorgy Illes and ACH Smith on Michael Croucher.

BBC: "India's ruling Congress party has threatened legal action to stop a film being made about the life of party president, Sonia Gandhi." The project is Jagmohan Mundhra's; he's been trying to get Monica Bellucci to play the lead.

Yuhn Myikuk laughs off Arang at Koreanfilm.org. Meanwhile, nationalism is a hit at the box office in South Korea; Han Cinema runs a report by Kim Tae-jong.

Salon's Andrew O'Hehir tells you best what he's going to tell you:

Gela Babluani's 13 Tzameti is a sweaty, stylized thriller that's half machismo and half arty posturing. Keith Fulton and Louis Pepe's rock 'n' roll fantasy Brothers of the Head, on the other hand, is an unexpected delight, a fable about 70s rock that avoids the customary clichés and makes its freak-show characters seem real.

Heather Lyn MacDonald's documentary Been Rich All My Life captures the irresistible saga of the Silver Belles, a troupe of former Harlem chorus girls, now in their 80s and 90s. Inevitably this film will be called the Ballets Russes of the African-American tap-dance tradition, so let me be the first (or perhaps the second or third [more from Melissa Levine in the Voice]). Finally, we have the long-awaited rerelease of the 1952 French swashbuckler Fanfan la Tulipe, an overcaffeinated classic belonging to a school of cinema that is, perhaps mercifully, gone forever.

In a thinning Voice (Update: Anthony Kaufman), you'll find Dennis Lim on Shadowboxer, "a garish, flaming wreck of a movie" (Lola Ogunnaike profiles producer Lee Daniels in the NYT; Update: more from Jay Antani in Slant), and the "Tracking Shots": Michael Atkinson on Azumi (more from Nick Schager at Slant), Jim Ridley on Boys Briefs 4 and Drew Tillman on The Beales of Grey Gardens.

Joe Bowman: "I commended Olivier Assayas's Clean for its unsentimental intimacy, yet I'm finding myself praising Somersault for opposite reasons."

Tom Hall: "This intersection, where chaos crashes against the need for civilization, is the bull's eye on Haneke's dartboard, and in watching Benny's Video, 71 Fragments of a Chronology of Chance and Funny Games back to back to back, the Austrian director proves to be an expert marksman."

"Whereas other horror flicks scare through startle shock tactics, Feed leaves a residue of discomfort and queasy unease," writes Michael Guillen. "Give it a chance on dvd. You deserve to be disgusted and might even find a certain delight in being so."

Dawn C Chmielewski: "Hollywood studios will cross a significant technological and psychological frontier today when they offer the first downloadable movies that can be legally burned onto a DVD."

Also in the Los Angeles Times:

• Claudia Eller and Richard Verrier: "Walt Disney Co's move this week to lay off about 650 employees and revamp its Burbank studio to make fewer films only confirms what many in the entertainment industry have been stressing over for months: The movie business is shrinking."

• Patrick Goldstein's talk with Monster House director Gil Kenan. Related: Nick Schager at Slant, Luke Y Thompson, the AV Club's Keith Phipps, Michael Guillen and, in the San Francisco Bay Guardian, Laurie Koh. Update: And Cinematical's Kim Voynar.

• Alonso Duralde's "Seven Ways to Spot a Must-See Gay Film."

Jami Bernard on My Super Ex-Girlfriend: "I wouldn't go on at length about a movie like this except that the missed opportunity is profound. Fatal Attraction is in desperate need of a feminist makeover, but I'd rather see a serious one than a comic send-up (it is its own send-up, really)." Jennifer Merin talks with Ivan Reitman about his movie for the New York Press. Update: More from Nick Schager in Slant.

Also in the NYP, Armond White on what makes the "silly, lightweight" Little Man "almost deep." More from Scott Foundas. Related: Cartoon Brew lists the ways the Wayans' comedy is very, very similar to the Warners cartoon, Baby Buggy Bunny. Via Scott Weinberg at Cinematical. More from Annie Frisbie at Zoom In Online.

Up-n-coming: Guillermo Del Toro's Deadman.

Caveh Zahedi explains why Air New Zealand is his new favorite airline. I'm sold.

Online viewing tip #1. It's a Wrap. For Edgar Wright, Nick Frost and Simon Pegg's Hot Fuzz, that is. Via Chris Tilly at Time Out.

Online viewing tip #2. Ajit Anthony Prem remixes Vincent Gallo's Buffalo '66 and Barbara Loden's Wanda.

Posted by dwhudson at July 20, 2006 7:39 AM