Shorts, 9/7.

Two alt-weeklies, two new issues, two anniversaries observed. Austin Chronicle editor Louis Black looks back on 25 years, and the truly indie weekly, a rapidly dying breed, celebrates with a photo album. Also: Joe O'Connell rounds up news from the local film scene and Kimberley Jones reviews Kicking and Screaming.

The Independent Weekly marks a far grimmer date. Though we know him as a film critic, Godfrey Cheshire writes the cover story, "Five years later: We're defeating ourselves." A must-read. Related: David Fellerath on American Shadows an online multimedia piece by Rodrigo Dorfman in which his father, Ariel Dorfman, reflects on two September 11s: 1973 and 2001.

Jim Ridley in the Nashville Scene on Broken Bridges: "As cornball and CMT-contrived as the movie is, it may be the only mainstream American movie since the Iraq War started (unless you count Joe Dante's horror comic Homecoming) to depict the conflict purely in terms of coffins, folded flags and grieving families."

"Pan's Labyrinth is a fancy retooling of The Devil's Backbone," writes Ed Gonzalez: "the political context is the same, except a girl replaces a boy, a forest subs for a vast desert plain, fantasy usurps horror, and escape is a more prominent obsession than revenge." Also in Slant, Nick Schager: "The Protector isn't a sequel to Ong-Bak: The Thai Warrior but it is a thinly disguised retread, allowing Thai martial artist Tony Jaa to ass-kick his way through yet another slight story."

Today's fall previews: Steven Rosen for indieWIRE; and at Cinematical, Matt Bradshaw and Ryan Stewart picks three films each that they're looking forward to this season.

Adrian Tomine has been let down by Wong Kar-wai, albeit indirectly. "It was a weird, exhausting experience." Blank Screen has details.

"Alongside Ryan Gosling's equally strong performance as a coked-out junior-high teacher in Half Nelson (another Oscar possible), [Maggie] Gyllenhaal's turn in Sherrybaby makes this look like the season of the Downwardly Mobile White Folks," writes Salon's Andrew O'Hehir. "These are very different films, with different strengths. Don't miss either one."

Also: "Rolling Family has been a favorite around the world at film festivals, but it's just too eccentric and hard to classify, I guess, for anyone to gamble on theatrical distribution. It'll be on DVD shortly; invite your mom, your best friends and the neighbors you want to impress. This family's secrets deserve to become yours." And Le Petit Lieutenant is "an impressive film, but don't expect any warm fuzzies." Plus quick takes on Paper Dolls and Saint of 9/11 and a recommendation to New Yorkers: Catch the Kenji Mizoguchi series at Film Forum.

"[A]t a time when everyone is saying (and has been saying) that there are too many movies being made, fewer people going to see them and ever-more-ridiculous costs involved in producing them, [Disney's Dick] Cook is the one guy who actually seems to be doing something about it," writes Scott Foundas. "And his reasoning is sound: If you make only 10 pictures a year, and every one of them is either a Pirates- or Narnia-size behemoth, or a profitable sleeper like Eight Below and the teen dance drama Step Up, who's really going to miss all those Ice Princesses and Hidalgos and Stay Alives and Stick Its that you're not making instead?"

Also in the LA Weekly, Ella Taylor profiles Anthony Mackie, Paul Malcolm reviews Murnau's Phantom and Foundas appreciates Mutual Appreciation and talks with Andrew Bujalski.

Which leads us to Armond White's opener this week: "Two movies couldn't be more alike than Preston A Whitmore II's Crossover and Andrew Bujalski's Mutual Appreciation.... Guess which one received virtually unanimous cultural cachet.... Let's hope the two directors' different racial identities are not the issue and realize this media acclaim merely - confoundingly - signifies class approval." Next page: "No one involved with This Film Is Not Yet Rated thinks intelligently."

Elsewhere in the New York Press, Eric Kohn finds in Red Doors "the sort of balanced sentimentalism the world wanted so badly from Little Miss Sunshine" (related: indieWIRE's interview with Doors director Georgia Lee) and Jennifer Merin talks with Sherrybaby director Laurie Collyer and takes a quick look at Looking for Kitty.

"If you want to put a name to the 'demons' [Jon] Krampner constantly refers to, why not call a spade a spade and say that [Kim] Stanley's chief demon was named Lee Strasberg?" asks Dan Callahan in a very review of Female Brando at the House Next Door.

In Vue Weekly, Josef Braun offers a brief history of sex in the movies and Susan King offers a quick guide to Claude Chabrol in the Los Angeles Times.

Vince Keenan on The Big Combo: "Now this is the B-movie in all its wild, unfettered glory. Crazed energy, raw emotion, and plot twists that make you question what you just saw."

Nathaniel R comments on the results so far in his best high school movie poll; look at those candidates. You knew high school was a rich mining field, but this is a mighty tough choice.

With Perfume set to open in Germany next week, Jochen Kürten notes the "ambivalent" critical reaction so far for Deutsche Welle.

The Guardian reports that Oliver Stone may make a second film about 9/11.

That Little Round-Headed Boy reopens John Gregory Dunne's True Confessions, "one of the best modern novels ever written about the Dahlia case. This is no knock on James Ellroy's book, which the De Palma film is based upon.... In fact, it's odd that nobody is talking about the Dunne book anymore, since Ellroy's later novel clearly owes it more than just a passing debt."

"Coming soon to your multiplex in the mall: bel canto fireworks and bass-baritone rumbles, love duets and orchestral colors, divas, tenors and trills," announces Daniel J Wakin in the New York Times. "The Metropolitan Opera announced yesterday that it would begin broadcasting live performances into movie theaters across the United States, Canada and Europe, rubbing shoulders with professional wrestling and rock concerts." Related: Charles T Downey's fall opera preview for ionarts, via Alex Ross.

The BBC is anticipating Kenneth Branagh's Magic Flute and the Los Angeles Opera's Ring Cycle.

While Playlist's Christopher Breen ponders the directions Apple might take its iTunes movie store, David Byrne ponders the near future of music downloads.

Online browsing tip. Toei Yakuza Movie Posters. Via Coudal Partners.

Online listening (and viewing) tip. Charles Solomon on Oskar Fishinger on NPR.

Online viewing tip #1. Cory Doctorow at Boing Boing: "ZeroTV has re-enacted a series of Mary Worth daily newspaper comics in black-and-white video, recreating the exact poses and adding an eerie whistling wind soundtrack that turns the whole affair into something like a Bergman film."

Online viewing tip #2. Like the 60s. But without hope. The uncensored trailer for Shortbus, via David Poland. NSFW, etc.

Online viewing tips. The Guardian's Kate Stables has seven of them.

Posted by dwhudson at September 7, 2006 3:59 PM