Shorts, 4/23.

"The timing of [Michael] Moore's film is propitious," writes Alternet's Don Hazen. Sicko "targets drug companies and the HMOs in the richest country in the world - where the most money is spent on health care, but where the US ranks 21st in life expectancy among the 30 most developed nations, obviously in part due to the fact that 47 million people are without health insurance."

Ed Gonzalez on The Short Life of José Antonio Gutiérrez in Slant: "[Filmmaker Heidi] Specogna evinces scant outrage for the gangsters running our government because her commentary on the complicated role Latino immigrants play in this country is largely implicit." Also, Nick Schager pans The Last Time.

Carol Kino talks with the sons of Alice Neel and her grandson, Andrew Neel, who's made a documentary on the painter. "To position Alice Neel in 20th-century art history, he interviews contemporary artists and scholars, including the painters Marlene Dumas, Alex Katz and Chuck Close; the art historians Richard Brilliant and Linda Nochlin; and the curator Robert Storr. Yet the film's emotional core lies in Mr Neel's intimate conversations with the family and friends who knew his grandmother best, most particularly his father and uncle."

Also in the New York Times: A "troupe of seasoned filmmakers and impassioned amateurs struggle to capture [Buddy] Bolden and his world in not one but two, related, movies." Michael Cieply.

"Thailand's ministry of culture has drafted a new Thai Film Act to be submitted to national legislators in an effort to update the kingdom's currently archaic censorship system," reports the Bangkok Post, passing along an item from the DPA. "The debate over film censorship became a news items last week when the award-winning Thai film Saeng Sattawat (Syndromes and a Century) missed its local debut in Thai theatres on Thursday because Thailand's board of censors insisted on cutting several 'sensitive' scenes." Thanks, David! Related online viewing tips. At Big Screen Little Screen, Ted Z points to trailer for Syndromes and Tsai Ming-liang's I Don't Want to Sleep Alone. Earlier: "petition" and "Syndromes."

David Austin talks with Johnnie To about Triad Election for Cinema Strikes Back.

"Centered on the lives of the oiran, elite prostitutes working in official red light districts of the Edo era, Sakuran has been a surprise hit with Japan's style-conscious young women," writes Bruce Wallace. "[Mika] Ninagawa took her story from a 1990s manga and, on a budget of just $2.5 million, turned it into a mash-up of flamboyant colors, exuberant music and over-the-top fashion."

Also in the Los Angeles Times: "[Darryl] Roberts says he came up with the idea for America the Beautiful after seeing a news report about a photographer who murdered a beautiful model because "if he couldn't have her, nobody could,'" writes Elizabeth Kaye McCall. "The question he's ultimately getting at is whether the preponderance of Americans have become so swayed by appearances that the old adage that true beauty comes from within no longer rings true."

And: "Green is now officially big business in Hollywood," reports Meg James.

"Claire Denis supporters are warned upon approaching Jacques Rivette, le veilleur: the imagery for which we have come to love her is only here in embryonic form," warns Travis Mackenzie Hoover at the House Next Door. "Still, Denis's tactile, environmental approach is clearly in evidence here; of a piece with her early work, it suggests both the location specificity and the unmoored personalities that dot films from Chocolat to I Can't Sleep."

Ignatius Vishnevetsky: "The Quiet Man is the sequel to an imaginary film noir: the movie that details John Wayne's life as a boxer in America prior to his return to Ireland."

Some jobs are tough, but someone's got to do them. Matt Riviera's in Morocco.

"The best readings of Inland Empire have rightly stressed the film's labyrinthine, rabbet-warren anarchitecture," writes k-punk. "Yet the space involved is ontological, rather than merely physical."

Robert Altman wasn't playing "the cynic's card" with The Long Goodbye, argues Nathan Kosub in Stop Smiling.

Books:

• "Sarah Bernhardt won't go away. She was born in 1844 and died in 1923, long past her glory days and well out of our reach. Her few silent films are awkward and off-putting. Yet she remains the most famous actress the world has ever known." Robert Gottlieb takes over 60 books into consideration for his piece in the New York Review of Books.

• Jürgen Fauth reads Leni Riefenstahl: A Memoir: "Leni's extreme unreliability (I had the uncanny sense that she started lying around page 5, about a playground incident) adds a layer of uncertainty that makes the book even more intriguing, down to the heartbreaking (or calculated?) last sentence."

• "In Same Time, Same Station: Creating American Television, 1948 - 1961, James L Baughman performs the basic historian's function of taking a story whose conclusion we all know and showing that it didn't necessarily have to turn out that way," writes Nicholas Lemann in a piece for the New Yorker that also touches on NBC: America's Network, Harry Reasoner: A Life in the News and Fighting for Air: The Battle to Control America's Media.

"Offside, for all its humor, has something quite serious in mind: the pain of being an outsider in one's own country," writes Amaya Rivera for Mother Jones. More from G Allen Johnson in the San Francisco Chronicle.

For Entertainment Weekly, Joshua Rich looks forward to "15 Summer Movies We Can't Wait to See." Nathaniel R, who can barely make it past the cover of the new issue. Related: At Cinematical, Erik Davis asks: What'll be the summer's most disappointing blockbuster?

Also, a list from Jeffrey M Anderson: 7 overrrated actors, "all currently working, and each could use a serious career adjustment."

ScreenGrab lists 10 great British directors the Telegraph looked over.

Online browsing and reading tip. Alan Sondheim remembers his lost films with shots of the Canyon Cinema catalog - back when Canyon still handled them: 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6 and 7.

Online listening tip. Karina Longworth lounges on Spout's FilmCouch. Plus, Gregg Araki talks about Smiley Face.

Posted by dwhudson at April 23, 2007 9:28 AM