Shorts, 4/4.

Nathan Lee in the Voice: "See Los Muertos with virgin eyes; this cool-headed enigma is best approached cold, ignorant of everything but the title. 'The Dead' is an ironic appellation for a movie so fiercely alive, though perfectly apt for what turns out to be a strange sort of horror film."

"The uncomfortable silence [in England] with which David Lynch's Inland Empire has been greeted is really rather telling about current expectations of cinema," writes Owen Hatherley. "The premise is basically a mutated Horror, much as Mulholland Drive riffs on Noir: though the many moments of extreme shock provide the affect without (mostly) the thing, the expected act of violence itself: the most terrifying shot is of a distorted face. The film's Lacanianism resides as much, though, in its extremely bleak view of the allegedly non-existent rapport sexuelle: it feels fundamentally... unhealthy."

"Most TV series and films show a fake version of life, devoid of the contradictory strangeness that happens all around us, all the time," writes Jeremiah Kipp in a longish consideration of Twin Peaks: The Second Season at the House Next Door. "Lynch plugs right into those aspects of reality. Some may complain that his work is too esoteric, but it's unsettling, because it's more familiar than we'd like to admit."

"When a Woman Ascends the Stairs is 'mature' [Mikio] Naruse," writes Justin Stewart at Reverse Shot. "Like so many other lumped works (Rothko's color fields, Conan Doyle's collected Holmes stories), the masterpiece is not so much about the particulars as it is the combined entirety. In these films, Naruse repeatedly found beautiful, economical, and multifaceted ways of exploring his favorite topic - the futility of hope (despite the admirability and beauty of the hopeful) - that forms his overarching pessimism."

Where's Werner Herzog's Rescue Dawn? Jeffrey Wells explains that the "stinky sulfur cloud" hanging over the film "has nothing to do with Herzog or the film itself... I've been asked not to mention this whole magilla, but any sentient person in Kabul, Osaka and/or Terre Haute can read the whole sordid saga in pieces by just searching around on the IMDB and the various pertinent company sites." For Filmmaker, Nick Dawson gathers much more Herzog news and, though you've probably seen it, video of the odd incident that occurred when Mark Kermode was interviewing him. You may remember: He was shot on camera.

Chris Tilly reports that Perfume's Ben Whishaw will play Keats in Jane Campion's biopic. Also at the Time Out Movie Blog, Geoff Andrew talks with Nanni Moretti about The Caiman.

Nathaniel R calls for an Action Heroine Blog-a-Thon. June 12.

"Kiranjit Ahluwalia has led an extraordinary life, which has inspired the new British Asian film, Provoked: A True Story," writes Julie Bindel, who meets her for Guardian profile. "The film traces her journey - from a victim of domestic violence to convicted murderer, to the woman who changed public opinion towards battered women who kill their abusers. Her case also helped change the law." Related: "Bollywood stars Aishwarya Rai and Shah Rukh Khan have been nominated for International Indian Film Academy Awards, to be held in Sheffield." The BBC reports.

Police Beat, writes Max Goldberg in the San Francisco Bay Guardian, is one of those "rare work[s] to merit the overused 'Kafkaesque' tag." Related: Kathy Fennessey's interview with Robinson Devor for the Siffblog. Also in the SFBG, Cheryl Eddy on The Wind That Shakes the Barley.

For Newcity, Ray Pride tips Chicagoans to "the kinds of movies that need to persist if 'art' is to remain in the cinematic universe alongside the commercial, but how do you make even the smallest amount of money in this jaded, over-informed, under-analyzed culture? (Besides, without these examples, where would Hollywood lift those cool camera moves and post-narrative niceties?)"

James Wolcott on Peter Morgan's new play: "Frost/Nixon is a whirling-parts documdrama recreation of the famous series of David Frost interviews with the man inevitably described as The Disgraced Former President. Frost/Nixon doesn't have the behaviorial depths and pathos of Longford; it's far more comedic, with Michael Sheen (Tony Blair in The Queen) getting maximum mileage out of Frost's foppish vowels and voodoo hands, Frank Langella slowly inhabiting Nixon's most Nixonian qualities as if squirming inside a carapace, and the period details from the Seventies (sideburns, ugly wide ties, smoking on airplanes, the whole swinger atmosphere) suggesting those old Braniff ads with Andy Warhol and Sonny Liston sharing first-class swellegance."

"In the post-Watergate era of the mid-1970s, paranoid thrillers seem to spring up with amazing regularity and recently I revisited 1976's Marathon Man and was impressed that it plays much better than I recall," writes Edward Copeland.

"I just watched Next Stop, Greenwich Village, from 1976," notes the Boston Globe's Wesley Morris. "What can I say? I've never seen it, it was on, I couldn't stop watching, and it's by Paul Mazursky, who really is one of the great unsung directors of the 1970s and 80s."

"No matter how many apologetic bells and whistles they surround it with, Song of the South still carries a disturbing disrespect that's hard to hide." Bill Gibron, writing at PopMatters, knows it'll be out on DVD some day and considers that inevitability not a good thing.

Lining up home viewing for the coming long weekend? Anthony Kaufman recommends the new release of Christopher Munch's The Hours and the Times.

At Cinema Strikes Back, David Austin reviews a new collection of films based on the work of HP Lovecraft.

The New Republic's Christopher Orr on Children of Men: "It is a frequently moving, occasionally harrowing tour de force of cinematic technique; yet it is also somehow hollow. It was simultaneously one of last year's best movies (better, I think, than any of those nominated for Best Picture) and one of its larger disappointments."

"Once again placing his gangsta credentials in serious jeopardy, the rapper Ice Cube returns to the multiplex with Are We Done Yet?, an ill-advised sequel to Are We There Yet? and a feeble fable of better parenting through home improvement," writes Jeannette Catsoulis in the New York Times. Also, Firehouse Dog: "Whatever they were paying this mutt, it wasn't enough."

"A major new sales, production and financing firm with an eye on digital distribution - dubbed Dreamachine - has been formed by the merger of HanWay Films and Celluloid Dreams," reports Eugene Hernandez at indieWIRE. "[T]he new London, Paris and Toronto based outfit will debut next month at the Marche du Film in Cannes. In an announcement on Tuesday, Dreamachine detailed a high-profile roster of projects and indicated that the combined company's library will include some 500 films." Eugene has more, too: "Buried in yesterday's Variety story... is the following insight, noting that the new company - Dreamachine - will pull back from foreign language and arthouse 'product' (as they call it)." iW working on a followup story now.

Online omigod tip. "Caption This Picture" at PinkDome, via David Pescovitz at Boing Boing.

Online browsing and viewing tip. Annie Leibovitz shoots Leonardo DiCaprio and Knut. Vanity Fair's also running excerpts from The 11th Hour, "a feature documentary on environmental ills and possible cures, a kind of state-of-the-earth address with gorgeous pictures and eloquent experts, which DiCaprio is producing, co-writing, and narrating."

Online viewing tips, round 1. Citroen DS Moviestar. Via Coudal Partners.

Online viewing tips, round 2. "The Guy with the Glasses strips your favorite films to the core, boiling them down to 5 seconds," notes Ted Z at Big Screen Little Screen.

Update: Anthony Kaufman's article, "With Creation of Dreamachine, Foreign-Language Films Face Sleepless Nights Ahead," is now online at indieWIRE.

Posted by dwhudson at April 4, 2007 12:58 PM