Shorts, 5/30.

"The Old Vic in London is to stage the first theatrical version of Pedro Almodóvar's 1999 film All About My Mother this autumn," reports Francesca Martin in the Guardian. "Kevin Spacey will produce the play, due to open in September, while Almodóvar will have final approval on the script and casting."

AICN's Moriarty visits the set of David Gordon Green's Pineapple Express.

At Twitch, Mack notes that Bourne series producer Andrew R Tennenbaum plans to oversee a remake of Stephen Fung's Enter the Phoenix. Also, Todd takes a first look at Albert Pyun's horror-western Left For Dead.

Spring in a Small Town "is the kind of romantic melodrama not uncommon in Chinese entertainment, and any political sentiments it might express beneath the surface don’t fall along immediately apparent party lines," writes Andrew Chan at the House Next Door. "In the West, the story draws comparisons to paradigms not of protest but of delicate social observation and heartache: Chekhov, Edith Wharton, David Lean's Brief Encounter." Even so, it's only just now that Fei Mu's 1948 classic, "ranked by the Hong Kong Film Awards in 2005 as the greatest Chinese movie ever made," and remade by Tian Zhuangzhuang in 2002 as Springtime in a Small Town, has become readily available on DVD.

"Blending documentary elements and some dramatic material (you don't realize which is which until the movie springs its best surprise), Radiant City is an acerbic position paper on the cultural damage done by postwar architectural fads," writes Matt Zoller Seitz in the New York Times. "The directors, Gary Burns (who has plumbed this territory many times, most notably in the comedy Waydowntown) and Jim Brown, depict sprawling, antiseptic housing developments and the culture of long commutes as a recipe for alienation and an impediment toward building a real sense of community and, especially, consensus." More from Aaron Hillis in the Voice, where Nathan Lee reviews Manoel de Oliveira's The Fifth Empire.

"After watching Richard Elfman's black-and-white, semianimated, vaudevillian, blackface, sadomasochistic, surrealist musical masterpiece Forbidden Zone, my dosed-up high school friends and I were convinced that Elfman and the entire cast must have been on copious amounts of mind-altering substances," writes Duncan Scott Davidson. Turns out, not so, of course, but still. Also in the San Francisco Bay Guardian, Cheryl Eddy talks with Elfman.

"Haibane Renmei remains one of the most unique, thought-provoking, and affecting anime series I've seen." Jason Morehead elaborates.

"Gripping but insignificant, The Method suggests Glengarry Glenn Ross with its teeth knocked out by Tony Soprano and nursed back to health by Mark Burnett," writes Ed Gonzalez. Also at Slant, Rob Humanick: "Ghost Train's opening shot recalls the roaring spirits of Sam Raimi's Evil Dead films, but it is, unfortunately, the sole example of what might have otherwise been a favorable comparison."

Matt Bartley inducts Madeline Kahn into the Hollywood Bitchslap / eFilmCritic Hall of Fame.

Posted by dwhudson at May 30, 2007 7:17 AM