Weekend shorts.

"Conventional wisdom would paint Wong Kar-wai as a stylist and Hong Sang-soo as a naturalistic filmmaker," writes Chris Stults. "However, despite their matter-of-fact cinematography Hong's films are as far removed from realism as Wong's are, and his style is as every bit as distinct and definable. In all likelihood, no one working today thinks as consistently and complexly about form in narrative film as Hong does. As he has said, 'People tell me I make films about reality. They're wrong. I make films based on structures that I have thought up.'"

Also at Koreanfilm.org, Kyu Hyun Kim on Yim Dae-woong's debut, To Sir With Love, "an unapologetically gory throwback to the 80s slasher formula."

Half a century after Giant was filmed there, coincidence brings two productions - Joel and Ethan Coen's No Country for Old Men, with Javier Bardem, Josh Brolin and Tommy Lee Jones, and Paul Thomas Anderson's There Will Be Blood, with Daniel Day-Lewis - to Marfa, Texas, population 2400. Whitney Joiner checks the scene and finds Marfans taking it in stride.

Also in the New York Times:

• John Anderson's one state north: "Four Sheets to the Wind, the debut feature by the writer and director Sterlin Harjo, is a coming-of-age story, set in Tulsa and nearby Holdenville. Almost the entire cast and many of the crew members are American Indians."

• Kristin Hohenadel has a backgrounder on Paris je t'aime: 20 directors, 18 stories, five minutes each. Well-received in Cannes, and now, co-producer Emmanuel Benbihy "is currently developing a film brand he's calling Cities of Love. Up next: New York, je t'aime."

• Ira Cohen's 1968 psychedelic head trip The Invasion of Thunderbolt Pagoda hits DVD; James Gaddy reports.

• Jeannette Catsoulis: "Invincible counters its predictably inspirational trajectory with close attention to historical detail and blue-collar hardship." Also: "In Beerfest, a gaseous celebration of binge drinking and family honor, the five comedians known collectively as Broken Lizard have created a frat-house staple for the ages." (Related: Mike Russell interviews Broken Lizard.) And: "Ostensibly a comedy about the pending nuptials of three gay couples, Queens is far more interested in their overbearing mothers."

• Nathan Lee: "Suicide Killers reminds us that the following things are bad: murder, revenge, fundamentalism, extremism, anti-Semitism, conditions in Gaza, despair, poverty, nihilism, chauvinism, the oppression of women and cruddy documentaries that replace analysis with a litany of bummers."

• Manohla Dargis on How to Eat Fried Worms: "Nicely directed, the film version proves refreshingly free of the customary blights that affect most modern children's movies, notably adult condescension. But, man, is it mean."

• Stephen Holden: "Although the early scenes hold out some promise that Greg Pritikin's Surviving Eden, a parody of Survivor in which contestants compete for a million-dollar payday by playing Adam and Eve in a jungle setting, could amount to something, the movie quickly runs out of ideas."

Brian Brooks introduces indieWIRE's interview with Joe Swanberg.

With Battle in Heaven, "[Carlos] Reygadas proves that rare filmmaker interested in tackling both the personal and the political through expressly confrontational means," writes Nick Schager. Also: "Volver proves to be one of Pedro Almodóvar's most temperamentally restrained efforts, though such a muted tone doesn't detract from its emotional power."

Related: Ryan Gilbey in the New Statesman, Peter Bradshaw in the Guardian, Sukhdev Sandhu in the Telegraph and James Christopher in the London Times on Volver and Chris Wisniewski at Reverse Shot on All About My Mother.

Odd Man Out, Some Mother's Son, The Crying Game, In the Name of the Father, The Devil's Own, Hidden Agenda, The Wind that Shakes the Barley, The Boxer... What do members of the IRA think about these films set in Northern Ireland? Malachi O'Doherty asks a few.

Also in the Guardian:

• John Patterson preps for the Congressional election season and "the battle of the anniversaries," 9/11 and Katrina, each marked by two films, World Trade Center and When the Levees Broke: A Requiem in Four Acts. "If these movies were running for election instead of the politicians, the hot money says Spike Lee and Katrina would win hands down." More on WTC, by the way, from Stuart Klawans in the Nation. Also, with Hollywood remaking so many British classics, "it's time we took our revenge and savoured the possibility of debasing some of the great works of American cinema by subjecting them to the lamest kind of British makeover." First up: The Searchers.

• As it happens, Alex Cox has seen The Searchers in Monument Valley: "Very few American films deal with race, and race hatred, in such unsentimental terms.... No such complex film could be made by Hollywood today." Related: At Bright Lights After Dark, Gordon Thomas revels in the Dell comic included in Warners' recent special edition.

• Oliver Burkeman interviews Julianne Moore.

• Bernardine Evaristo reviews Terry McMillan's The Interruption of Everything, mentioned here because: "Oprah is making the film of the novel."

Susan Gerhard: "This week, SF360 checks in with a few of the Bay Area's festival insiders to see what they're most excited about in the coming film festival season."

David Poland on Todd Phillips's School for Scoundrels: "the duet between [Billy Bob] Thornton and [Jon] Heder is well worth the ticket price in and of itself."

The Reeler's most recent pinch hitters: Eric Kohn (Screen Rush), David Schwartz (Museum of the Moving Image), Lauren Wissot (writer), James Ponsoldt (filmmaker) and Andrew Wagner (filmmaker).

"No British film producer in the past 30 years has had a more varied or interesting career than Jeremy Thomas [who] has worked with a dazzling array of world-class directors, travelled the globe and shot films in extraordinary locations, while amassing a body of work that is consistently subversive in tone." The Telegraph's David Gritten meets him.

For SuicideGirls, Daniel Robert Epstein talks with "(mostly) cult film actor" Norman Reedus - and photographer Stephen Berkman.

In the Independent, Kaleem Aftab talks with model Helena Christensen about her acting debut in Christoffer Boe's Allegro.

Atom Egoyan will direct a Canadian Opera Company production of Wagner's Die Walkure. Julie Mollins reports for Reuters.

"[Rourke's Chinaski was more about Bukowski the mythic beast; [Matt] Dillon's is about Bukowski the listless human," writes Josh Tyson for Stop Smiling. "Put stupidly, Dillon is more the waltzing grizzly to Rourke's panda on a unicycle." Related: "This movie may think it's about a man who boozes and works fitfully while pursuing his muse as a writer, but that's not the way it plays," writes Jim Emerson at RogerEbert.com. "Factotum is about a man who rarely works and occasionally writes, but only as fleeting distractions from his boozing."

WSWS's Joanne Laurier finds Little Miss Sunshine to be "a compassionate and sometimes humorous work that attempts to address the increasing insecurity and anxiety of layers of the US population forced to survive in a cut-throat environment." More from Chuck Tryon.

Nathaniel R presents "the first in a four-part obsessively detailed look at one of my favorite films Moulin Rouge!," setting off quite a string of comments.

Ted Cogswell: "Clean is simple, unpretentious, tasteful sentimentality with enough rock 'n' roll grime under its nails to appeal to one's earthier instincts as well."

David Austin presents Cinema Strikes Back's picks from among current DVD releases.

After scrolling through 700 entries, Dana Stevens introduces the winners of Slate's Snakes on a Plane-inspired catchy movie titles contest.

Online viewing tip #1. Daily Dolores's Dear Julia, based on the comic by Brian Biggs.

Online viewing tip #2. OK Go: "Here It Goes Again."

Posted by dwhudson at August 26, 2006 9:33 AM