Fests and events, 4/17.

"The Official Selection of the 60th edition of the Cannes Film Festival will be announced on Thursday, but some information has already been made public, including the selection of the Bruno Merle thriller Héros (Hero) as the opening film of Cannes' Critics' Week." Boyd van Hoeij has more at european-films.net.

"Only in 1970: America was falling apart, but a manic, overgrown 31-year-old kid from Brooklyn was having the greatest year of his professional life," writes J Hoberman in this week's cover story for the Voice. In a box office ranking that year, Elliot Gould "ranked just behind John Wayne - and ahead of the previous year's neophyte Dustin Hoffman, Lee Marvin, Jack Lemmon, and his new ex-wife Barbra Streisand. It was only a matter of time before this manic who's-he elbowed his way to the forefront of American popular mythology, assuming Humphrey Bogart's signature role of private eye Philip Marlowe in The Long Goodbye - Robert Altman's New Wave anti-noir, which opens Friday in a fresh 35mm print for a week-long run at Film Forum." Also, the week ahead for New Yorkers.

City of God, Carandiru and Lower City. "The guilty secret of these testosterone-fuelled films is that, with just a little imagination, they are really quite queer," writes Paul Julian Smith. But: "Brazil has a patchy record on gay rights. So this month's season of gay films being shown by London's Brazilian Contemporary Arts is all the more welcome."

Jerry Lentz attended Sunday's screening of Jon Jost's La Lunga Ombra in LA and notes that, though a "heated debate broke out in the Q&A after the film," Jost also managed to say "things that hurt me. Not the political stuff, but things like, 'There is absolutely no market for my films' and 'I've barely made a living as a filmmaker' and 'When I submit a film to a festival, one that liked me in the past, they go, 'Ehh, sorry."'" But then he sold some DVDs. A lot of DVDs. Jerry: "If he can sell $3000 worth of DVDs at every screening, that sounds to me like some kind of demand."

For Hollywood Bitchslap, Dan Lybarger previews the Robert Altman Film Festival in Kansas City, April 27 through 29.

At indieWIRE, Hugo Perez has a fine overview of the just-wrapped Full Frame Documentary Film Festival.

Posted by dwhudson at April 17, 2007 2:49 PM