Long weekend fests and events.

Anne Thompson's blogging from Telluride, offering quick notes on Werner Herzog, Peter Bogdanovich and others. Days 1 and 2. Also dispatching: indieWIRE's Eugene Hernandez and Cinematical's Kim Voynar.

Brooklyn Independent Film Series, this Monday at 7 pm: Michael Tully's Cocaine Angel. Update: Sujewa Ekanayake talks with Michael.

Richard Gibson notes that the Mexican Cinema Now season at the National Film Theatre runs from Wednesday through October 18. Also for Londoners: just two weeks left to catch Antonioni's Blow-Up at the Photographer's Gallery.

Destricted opens at the Tate Modern on Wednesday; there'll be a panel discussion on Saturday.

Eric Kohn previews Wednesday's night of Frank Tashlin Looney Tunes at Film Forum for the New York Press.

Then, on Friday, Film Forum launches a two-week series of films by Kenji Mizoguchi. Terrence Rafferty in the New York Times: "[T]here's more experience, more beauty and more elegant craftsmanship in these half-dozen pictures than most directors manage to get onto a movie screen in a lifetime. [Jean-luc] Godard placed Mizoguchi 'on equal terms with Eisenstein, Griffith and Renoir,' and that might even qualify as a fact."

Slant's Ed Gonzalez previews LatinBeat 2006: Recent Films from Latin America (September 8 through 24).

Drawn! is looking forward to the Ottawa International Film Festival (September 20 through 24).

In the Los Angeles Times, Lisa Rosen on the boom in shorts and festivals devoted to them and Patrick Day spotlights six "Off-the-Map" fests.

At Cinematical, Jette Kernion rounds up Austin-area goings on.

The Reeler picks a few NYC events.

The New York Taiwan Women's Film Festival opens Thursday and runs through September 29 on Thursday and Friday evenings.

Starting on Friday, the Arab Film Festival begins its trek through the San Francisco Bay Area.

For SF360, Max Goldberg previews the Pacific Film Archive's A Theater Near You series. And on September 27, the SF Film Society and Ironweed will present SF360 San Francisco Movie Night. The idea: as many households in the city as possible, all watching American Blackout on the same evening.

SF360's Susan Gerhard: "Bernal Heights Outdoor Cinema's organizers Leslie Lombre and Anne Batmale are braving hell and high winds to give local filmmakers a chance to entertain audiences in a four-part outdoor series of free screenings featuring artists living in the 'hood whose 'local filmmaker' shelf at the corner videostore has, at times, included Terry Zwigoff and Sarah Jacobson." Saturdays in September, Fridays in October.

50 Years of Janus Films, the series running September 30 through October 26 in New York, is one thing; the box is something else. The cinetrix's already got it on her Christmas list.

"Director Lee Jang-ho (born in 1945) was one of the key personalities in Korean cinema of the 70s and 80s.... Now inactive as a filmmaker for more than a decade, Lee has nevertheless continued working in the film world, in particular by being one of the initiators of PiFan, i.e., the Puchon International Fantastic Film Festival." Paolo Bertolin interviews him for Koreanfilm.org.

Long weekend Venice notes:

• Deutsche Welle takes a look at the German entries in the Venice lineup - and at the one that didn't make it.

• Oliver Stone's in Venice and the BBC takes note of a few of his critical remarks: "He singled out Pearl Harbor and Black Hawk Down as films that 'worshipped the machinery of war.'"

• Meanwhile, Spike Lee carries on blasting away at Bush, reports the AFP. Via Sheigh at the Risky Biz Blog. Related: "Festivalgoers at Venice, or anywhere else, are unused to having their attention-span tested by a four-hour documentary," writes Peter Bradshaw in the Guardian. "But Spike Lee's history of the Katrina disaster in New Orleans, sonorously-named When The Levees Broke: A Requiem in Four Acts, commanded everyone's attention - and even opened a few tear ducts."

• Grady Hendrix: "The one-celebrity protests against the reduction of the screen quota system continue. After Korean celebs and mega-directors fought the power in Berlin and Cannes, Ryu Seung-Wan and the cast of City of Violence continue the tradition in Venice."

More on individual films at Venice soon.

Posted by dwhudson at September 2, 2006 1:55 PM