Shorts, 8/24.

Tom Tykwer's Perfume, the Bernd Eichinger-produced adaptation of Patrick Süskind's novel, doesn't open in the States until December 27 and doesn't even open in Germany until September 14, but Die Zeit's Katja Nicodemus has seen it. I honestly wish I could report that she likes what she's seen. But:

Perfume is the work of an assiduous illustrator who doesn't know how to use the novel as a gateway to a world of his own imagination.... Tom Tykwer may be a fount of invention and enthusiasm, ideas and visions, but his problem is that the images for all this completely escape him. He's the painter who, equipped with all the paints and brushes, stands in front of his easel, the scene before his eyes, and dreams of transcendence but ends up painting by numbers after all.

Anthony Kaufman on Michael Haneke's forthcoming remake of his own Funny Games with Tim Roth and Naomi Watts: "I can't imagine the English language version will be as cold-hearted and subversive as the original version, but then again, with popular, mainstream films such as Hostel and Saw and the US government making torture an accepted aspect of everyday life, maybe Haneke has an even greater licence to upset than he did in 1997."

Charlotte Higgins talks with Charlize Theron about the doc she's produced, East of Havana: "You have to ask: would I take the free healthcare and education and accept being a prisoner in my soul?"

Also in the Guardian, Paul Arendt reminds us that two Philip K Dick biopics are in the works. Plus news of two forthcoming features from Trey Parker and Matt Stone and news that Chiwetel Ejiofor has been cast in Ridley Scott's American Gangster.

Edukators director Hans Weingartner is shooting Free Rainer with Moritz Bleibtreu, reports Bénédicte Prot at Cineuropa, where the new "film focus" is The Wind That Shakes the Barley.

"Taken together, Culloden and The War Game, the film that followed it, represent an important first strike in a career of film and television work that radically challenges conventional modes of historical representation in the mass media," writes Leo Goldsmith at Not Coming to a Theater Near You. Related: "The Radical Histories of Peter Watkins."

"Apocalypse Now? Child's play - everything Coppola tried to do in his film on violence and imperialism and cinema, Hopper has already done - better - by 1971." Zach Campbell on The Last Movie.

Film by film, Aaron Aradillas argues the case for Oliver Stone at the House Next Door.

The Quays' The Piano Tuner of Earthquakes is "a tragic fairy tale drenched in otherworldly visual splendor," writes Nick Schager. The film's "pulse-pounding passion is derived not from narrative plotting - which, though more linear than [Institute Benjamenta], is obscure and lethargic by design - but from stunning close-ups of their cast's expressive countenances." All in all, it's an "unsettling descent into dreamlike imaginativeness." Also, well, Beerfest, "gorging at the trough of raunch resulting in moments alternately insipid and inspired." And the "poignant and often humorous" So Much So Fast.

And also in Slant:

• Ed Gonzalez on Daniel Burman's Family Law.

• Fernando F Croce on Invincible.

• DVDs: Croce on Hunger, Jeremiah Kipp on Satan's Playground and Dan Callahan on State of the Union.

"Two Drifters is clever moviemaking," writes Jason Shamai. "Its story is too over-the-top to be sincere, its imagery too giddy to be dismissed as simply ironic." Also in the San Francisco Bay Guardian, Cheryl Eddy on Our Brand is Crisis and Half Nelson, "a film with no wasted space, and that goes double for its acting." More from Andrew Sarris in the New York Observer and Andrew O'Hehir in Salon ("If a smarter, more heartfelt or more challenging American film comes out between now and Christmas, I'll be shocked") and Scott Foundas in the LA Weekly: "It may be the least overtly rousing motivational-schoolteacher drama in movie history, and also the most profound." Related: Susan King talks with director Ryan Fleck for the Los Angeles Times.

Also in the LAT, Nancy Ramsey on a new project: "10 young Lebanese artists will each make a nine-minute film over a two year period."

"It's not often that I come away from a movie feeling mesmerized solely because of the way it evokes a bygone period of history, but Patrice Chéreau's Gabrielle had that mysteriously exhilarating effect," writes Godfrey Cheshire. Also in the Independent Weekly, David Fellerath: "Darwin's Nightmare may be the most horrifying film you'll see this year. While we may understand that there are millions of people in the world who are 'less fortunate,' we don't really understand what that means until [Hubert] Sauper shows us Tanzanians eat the rotting, maggot-infested fish carcasses that remain after the choice fillets have been airlifted north."

Sheila Johnston files the latest in the Telegraph's "Filmmakers on Film" series: "[Christopher] Smith realises that the 'gore-bores' raving about Severance on the internet might be a bit perplexed by his chosen film. Described by JG Ballard as the greatest war movie ever made, Come and See is a harrowing, monumental epic set during the Nazi invasion of Belarus. 'It's a horror movie, too, in a certain way,' Smith says. 'It leaves you shell-shocked.'"

Kim Ki-duk vs The Host? Or all of South Korea? Grady Hendrix has details.

Dave Kehr watches The Thirteenth Chair, "[Tod] Browning's first pairing with Bela Lugosi, two years before Dracula," and Inner Sanctum, " dark, almost nasty stuff, and typical of the tone of Lew Landers, a prolific B-movie director whose career stretched from Universal serials in the early 30s to TV westerns in the late 50s."

"People who have no understanding of the role of movie critics in 'the industry' tend to believe that studios are afraid of bad reviews because they might hurt their big pictures. That's flattering to critics, but it has never, ever been the case." Not only does Jim Emerson explain why much of the recent discussion of how much or how little weight critics throw around is hot air, he follows up: "A movie audience that has no use for film criticism, doesn't understand it or realize that it has nothing to do with predicting box-office success or failure, and even less with predicting what you will think of a movie (most critics don't know you), can hardly be expected to understand that movie reviewing is only incidentally a consumer guide - or that the vast majority of film critics I know never even think about influencing audience behavior. They're critics because they like to write about movies."

Time Out's Dave Calhoun talks with director Stephen Frears and writer Peter Morgan about The Queen.

Takashi Shimizu's Reincarnation "is genre cinema and it is tradition, and it certainly is fresh, original, intelligent, and extremely well-crafted," writes logboy at Twitch.

Cinematical's Martha Fischer approves of Queens, "quite proudly a piece of fluff."

Joe Leydon recommends that you catch I Trust You to Kill Me if you can. And don't go just for Kiefer Sutherland. The band, Rocco DeLuca and the Burden, whose first tour the film documents, is evidently terrific, too.

Samuel Shimon "seems to have been content to live a film instead of making one," writes Youssef Rakha in a fascinating profile for Al-Ahram Weekly. "Ironically, in a way, Shimon's experience is potent testimony to Arab and pan-Arab failure - an implicit aspect of hankering after 'English times.' But [his autobiographical novel] An Iraqi in Paris is more than a long-in-the-coming vindication." Via Perlentaucher's "Magazinrundschau."

The Reeler's latest pinch hitters: Evan Shapiro (IFC), Martin De Leon and Lauren Kinsler (Blank Screen), Brian Newman (National Video Resources; Springboard Media), Bennett Marcus (Open All Night), Bill Plympton (filmmaker), Lewis Beale (writer), Joe Swanberg (filmmaker), Jamie Stuart (filmmaker), Lawrence Levi (Looker) and Karen Wilson (Cinecultist).

In the Age, Penelope Debelle, Alexa Moses and Garry Maddox don't really break new ground, but their Tuesday piece on the controversy sparked by Murali Thalluri and his 2:37 did mark another note of it in the mainstream media. But by Monday anyway, reports Penelope Debelle, Thalluri'd decided it's time to move on. "Thalluri dismisses a News Ltd report claiming he would never work in Australia again, saying he had no problem with the industry other than film director Daniel Krige, who was the source of the allegations against him. 'I was a bit pissed off because the work speaks for itself and the next film will show everyone up, I know that,' Thalluri says."

Richard Goldstein in the New York Times: "Joe Rosenthal, the Associated Press photographer who captured the enduring image of the American fighting man in World War II with his depiction of five Marines and a Navy corpsman raising a huge American flag over the Japanese island of Iwo Jima, died Sunday in Novato, Calif. He was 94."

Reviews in the NYT: Nathan Lee: "A maudlin melodrama about prostitutes in Madrid, Princesas is not, alas, the new film by Pedro Almodóvar, but a dilution of his manner by the writer-director Fernando León de Aranoa." More from Melissa Levine in the Voice. Also: "Authentic in texture if narrow in scope, LOL is a movie about the way we live — or rather about the way white, urban, heterosexual circuit boys are failing to live." More from Joshua Land (Voice).

A lot's being made of LOL's NYC premiere at the Pioneer, which is as it should be, but it should also be noted that Blogumentary sees its NYC premiere there, too - on August 30. Related: Steven Snyder in the Star-Ledger.

For Manohla Dargis, Fratricide is a "crude attempt at a cinematic bildungsroman." More from Ed Halter in the Voice and from Aaron Dobbs, but for Salon's Andrew O'Hehir, "Fratricide marks [Yilmaz] Arslan as one of Europe's hottest young talents, drawing simultaneously on the film traditions of America, Western Europe and the Middle East."

Marrit Ingman talks with Bob Dolman about making How to Eat Fried Worms. Also in the Austin Chronicle, Steve Uhler on the Mr Moto collection. Related: At Hollywood Bitchslap, William Goss talks with Luke Benward.

Jennifer Merin talks with Bobby Moresco about 10th & Wolf. Also: Princesas and Eric Kohn on the Pusher Trilogy and Armond White on Snakes on a Plane.

Stanley Kauffmann in the New Republic on Scoop: "This picture's very existence is an argument against Allen's power." Related: Cinematical's Martha Fischer has info on Woody's next one.

"How come James Dean seems less interesting to me now than his various co-stars and supporting players?" asks John McElwee at Greenbriar Picture Shows. "Having checked out East of Eden, I was again struck by the artful manner in which experienced character actors accommodated Jimmy’s ultra-mannered playing and very often pulled his inexperienced bacon out of the fire."

"Allan Dwan may well be the last great-undiscovered master of the silent era," writes David Jeffers at the Siffblog.

"[W]hatever the reason, the sense of disappointment that's always shrouded Tron is precisely what makes its fans so protective of it," writes Steve Palopoli in Metro. "Among geeks, it's practically a cause celèbre: screw Mumia, free Tron!"

"It is what it is, a indie style film made on a small budget, shot on video, utilizing a handful of sets and employing a small group of actors... a very good calling card movie." DK Holm sees Kisses and Caroms.

IFC's Matt Singer and Alison Willmore pick what'll likely be their favorites of the fall season.

"To commemorate his ninetieth birthday this November 24, Flickhead proposes a Forrest J Ackerman Blog-A-Thon, a/k/a ForryThon."

New lists at the AV Club: Tasha Robinson's "14 Movies From Two Ages of Theremin Music" and the full team's "Best TV-On-DVD Sets."

Online listening tip. NPR's Joel Rose talks with Keith Fulton and Louis Pepe about Brothers of the Head.

Online viewing tip #1. The trailer for William Friedkin's Bug. Via Movie City News. Related: Gwynne Watkins's review of this one and more for Screengrab.

Online viewing tip #2. "Further bizarreries from Harmony Korine" at DVblog.

Online viewing tip #3. The teaser for Eytan Fox's The Bubble.

Online viewing tip #4. Agent Cooper's dream at Modern Fabulosity.

Online viewing tips. Grady Hendrix has a few.

Posted by dwhudson at August 24, 2006 1:39 PM