Shorts, 5/31.

"An A-list of German actresses including the recent Berlinale Best Actress winners Sandra Hüller (for 2006's Requiem) and Nina Hoss (for this year's Yella) and the Lola-nominated Jördis Triebel (Emma from Emmas Glück/Emma's Bliss) have started filming on the WWII drama Anonyma: Eine Frau in Berlin," reports Boyd van Hoeij at european-films.net. "Directed by Max Färberböck (who also directed Aimée & Jaguar, another story of women in WWII), the film is based on the anonymous diaries of a German woman who had been in hiding with other women in a half-destroyed house when the Red Army invaded Berlin."

"After more than a decade of trying, Diane English has a solid cast and an Aug 6 start date for The Women, the remake of the 1939 classic that she adapted and will direct," reports Michael Fleming. "Meg Ryan, Annette Bening, Eva Mendes, Jada Pinkett Smith, Debra Messing and Candice Bergen have either signed or are near committing to star in a contemporized version of the George Cukor-directed film, which Picturehouse will distribute domestically next year."

Also in Variety, Anne Thompson reports that the Weinstein Co has picked up Woody Allen's Cassandra's Dream, which stars Ewan McGregor, Colin Farrell and Tom Wilkinson.

Who is Cristian Mungiu and what's the story behind his Palme d'Or-winning 4 Months, 3 Weeks & 2 Days? Nick Roddick fills in a bit of background for the Guardian.

Time Out's Chris Tilly talks with Darren Aronofsky about The Fountain and its critical reception - and a bit about his big next project (there'll be "something small first"), Noah's Ark: "[I]t's the first apocalypse story, and as we as a race look at our own apocalypse in front of us, especially by flooding, I think it's part of the zeitgeist. People are thinking about what London six feet under is going to be so that's why I'm going to do it." Related: Cinematical's Ryan Stewart points to Aronofsky's blog, where he expresses his displeasure with the bare-bones DVD for The Fountain, and to Empire's brief bit on Noah.

Jay A Fernandez has a bit of background in the Los Angeles Times on Righteous Kill, the movie that'll bring Al Pacino and Robert De Niro back together again.

"Helen Mirren is being lined up to star in a film set in the Gaza Strip, as a woman whose journalist daughter falls in love with a Palestinian and is killed." Reuters reports.

"The Iron Wall, a 2006 documentary by Jordanian-born Palestinian filmmaker Mohammed Alatar, is clear in its assertions," writes Mary Wilson in the Philadelphia City Paper. "The director traces the development of Jewish settlements on the West Bank and outlines the policies that led to their establishment. All the while, the film alleges that their formation was designed to render the creation of a unified Palestinian state geographically impossible — a strategic step toward permanent Israeli occupation.... Objectivity here may be near-impossible to achieve, but some attempt at it would lend the film more clout with skeptics."

"Tonight I was among the first audience to see the world premiere of Eli Roth's anticipated sequel Hostel 2, with Roth in attendance to introduce the film and to field questions afterwards," writes a giddy Michael Guillén. "Was the torturous wait worth it? Absolutely!!"

"There have been so many books about the film, and there was an academic festival in Glasgow, for which I gave the keynote speech. And to tell you the absolute truth, it's very difficult not to howl with laughter most of the time. I mean, we had essays on The Wicker Man and Wittgenstein, The Wicker Man and feminism, and all sorts of things like that. It went on for days, and it took itself very seriously. It's peer pressure, I suppose. But it's so tiresome." For the Guardian, Zoe Williams meets director Robin Hardy to find out what he's been up to since 1973.

Sonia Harford looks back to Cinecitta's heyday for the Age. Via Movie City News.

"Timothy Spall makes a wonderfully meticulous Pierrepoint, perfecting his timing and technique with every hanging and returning home to the missus, a thanklessly colorless role nicely inflected with a touch of the sinister by Juliet Stevenson," writes Ella Taylor in the LA Weekly, but otherwise, Pierrepoint: The Last Hangman is a "softly revisionist take on this stickler's life and work."

"Set in a smoggy 1978 New Jersey landscape, Gracie tells the story of a young girl who sets out to play varsity soccer on an all-male team during a time when girls' sports rarely strayed from the arena of cheerleading, ice skating and field hockey," writes Kathy Justice in the Independent Weekly. "Fortunately, the sports movie clichés only make up half of [Davis] Guggenheim's film. The other half is an insightful drama about family, grief and coming-of-age."

"Admittedly, The Prodigy is not for everyone," notes Michael Guillén at SF360. "It's a brutal ride, which in itself will satisfy an appetite for action and mayhem; but, to its credit, the film appeals on deeper levels."

Talking Ocean's 13: "Time's Josh Tyrangiel sat down in Cannes with a very loose George Clooney, Brad Pitt, Matt Damon and series newcomer Ellen Barkin - in her first film role in quite some time and, in case you forgot, kind of a live wire - to discuss politics, Al Pacino, the Pitt-Jolie paparazzi juggernaut, and their favorite leading men. And in Barkin's case, to exploit every possible opportunity for innuendo."

Brett Michel in the Boston Phoenix on Paprika: "Rather than giving us a black-and-white chase of technological good vs evil, [Satoshi] Kon continues his meditation on identity in crisis, riding a wave of breathtakingly insane sights - not to the usual apocalyptic ending, but to the simple closing image of a man purchasing a movie ticket."

Wayne Alan Brenner presents "Seven reasons why Naruto is kicking everybody's ass." Also: How he learned those lessons first-hand. And also in the Austin Chronicle, Rick Klaw on Seraphim Falls.

Jim Ridley in the Nashville Scene on Private Fears in Public Places: "Alain Resnais is now 84 years old; perhaps it takes eight decades of living to make a movie this compassionate, this confident - and this young."

Rob Humanick: "Miriam is a paean to Jewish oppression as if commissioned by the History Channel." Also at Slant, Ed Gonzalez: "Turning its back to the feminist movement, And Then Came Love believes to the bottom of its execrable core that single mothers should go the way of the dodo bird."

"Thanks to Mumbai-based filmmaker Rakesh Sharma, documentary filmmakers shooting in New York will no longer require a film permit to shoot a slice of the Big Apple." Metroblogging NYC has more.

Reviewing two biographies of Walt Disney and Tom Sito's Drawing the Line: The Untold Story of the Animation Unions from Bosko to Bart Simpson for the London Review of Books, Mark Greif lays out three models for artists who have made great work by "inartistic means": the naive artist, the "aged, or busy, super-skilled master" and the conceptual artist. Disney, Greif proposes, "wasn't exactly like any of these types, though his methods bore some relation to each of the three."

John Rogers on Writing a Great Movie: Key Tools for Successful Screenwriting: "Jeff Kitchen manages to startle me with some nice, effective tools for breaking down common problems in screenplays, and then he quickly manages to annoy me with a super gung-ho writing style, some pretty vague explanations, confusing terms and an overall book structure that's a mess."

At Not Coming to a Theater Near You, Marlin Tyree recommends Elizabeth R. You could easily work your way through it before The Golden Age opens in October.

At indieWIRE, Agnes Varnum looks into how international financing of modest-sized movies actually works.

A new and quick way to watch YouTube on your TV: Apple TV. Connie Guglielmo reports for Bloomberg. Related online viewing. Bill Gates and Steve Jobs. The highlight reel, via Fimoculous.

Online listening tip. The Leonard Lopate Show: "Producers Robin Klein and Mick Gochanour tell us about the restoration of three films from the underground director Alejandro Jodorowsky."

Online viewing tip #1. Jay Stern talks about making The Changeling for about $25k.

Online viewing tip #2. 500 years of Women in Art in just under 3 minutes. Via Coudal Partners.

Posted by dwhudson at May 31, 2007 2:34 PM