Shorts, 6/4.

Kristin Thompson congratulates Kieron Corless and Chris Darke "on presenting substantive historical material in such a clear and readable fashion" in Cannes: Inside the World's Premier Film Festival."

"Killer of Sheep is quietly, heartbreakingly beautiful, even from its first few frames," writes John Adair, who has notes from a Q&A with Charles Burnett as well: "As an introduction to the film, Burnett spoke about a question he hoped viewers would ask themselves after seeing it. He wanted people to ask 'How can we help these people?'"

David Lowery has more, a one-on-one with Burnett: "Did David Gordon Green call you when he made George Washington?" Answer: "Yes, everyone brings that up! He sent me a tape of it. He's doing very well now."

Yes, and as it happens: "It took me a little while to find my groove with Snow Angels," writes Michael Tully. "While I was on board with everything that I was seeing from the very first shot, I had that weird hyper-sensitive inability to suspend my disbelief that happens when you watch a friend's film for the first time, rough cut or otherwise. But there's a nine-minute sequence that happens towards the middle that officially pushed me over the edge and had me frozen in shock and awe, which is where I stayed for the rest of the film."

And the Film Panel Notetaker has notes from that Q&A.

More Q's, more A's: Annaliese Griffin listens to Paul Auster talk about The Inner Life of Martin Frost. Also at the Reeler, Jana Prikryl's overview of Magnum in Motion: Photographers and the Moving Image. Related: Magnum Festival: Celebrating the Art of Documentary and Wallpaper's Magnum gallery, both via Jason Kottke.

Sunday was all about the music in the New York Times movies section:

• Among the musician biopics opening in the relatively near future are La Vie en Rose (Marion Cotillard as Édith Piaf), El Cantante (Marc Anthony as Hector Lavoe), and somewhat later, Todd Haynes's I'm Not There (Bob Dylan, as portrayed by a cast of thousands) and Anton Corbijn's Control (Sam Riley as Ian Curtis). Steve Chagollan: "And then there are the films in development, including a Janis Joplin biopic starring Zooey Deschanel, Don Cheadle's portrait of Miles Davis and a project about Keith Moon, the Who's drummer, starring Mike Myers." Related: Mark Olsen talks with Cotillard for the Los Angeles Times and Dan Callahan reviews Rose for Slant: "[T]his is bravura popular filmmaking, marked by both precision and gusto."

• Four - four! - Sammy Davis Jr projects are in the works, two biopics, a love story and a doc, reports Pat H Broeske: "Davis's life holds obvious attractions for filmmakers. Beyond the drug problems and his love affairs, he offers a vehicle to consider an American obsession: race. But Hollywood history does not bode well for multiple movies about the same subject coming out around the same time, especially when biopics are involved."

• Terrence Rafferty on Let's Get Lost: "Film Forum, which gave the movie its New York premiere 18 years ago, is reviving it for a three-week run (beginning Friday) in a restored 35-millimeter print, and [Bruce] Weber's black-and-white hipster fantasia is as beautiful, and as nutty, as ever. Now, as in 1989, the filmmaker seems bent on stopping time in its tracks, preserving the illusion that nothing important has changed since the early 1950s, when [Chet] Baker was a handsome young man with a sweet-toned horn, the great white hope of West Coast jazz."

"More than most of its contemporaries, the 1966 scifi thriller Fantastic Voyage has stayed on the right side of the line separating vintage kitsch from risible camp," writes Dennis Lim in the Los Angeles Times. "It's a movie that potently evokes bygone attitudes and aesthetics — a relic of the age of pre-digital effects, a product of both Cold War paranoia and midcentury techno-utopianism."

"Jack Black is starring in Year One, a comedy Judd Apatow is producing for Columbia," reports Diane Garrett for Variety. "Harold Ramis, who appears in a small role in Apatow's Knocked Up, will direct and co-produce, and Michael Cera, who stars in Superbad, another Apatow production for Col, is also attached to star."

"Due to the sheer amount of cultural diversity in Hong Kong, the island has been described by some as being a 'borderless' region between the East and the West," writes Drew Morton at Dr Mabuse's Kaleido-Scope. Wong Kar-wai's "utilization of Hong Kong as central character in his films and its linkage to his eclectic use of music only broadens this cultural spectrum." Part 2.

Just up at Koreanfilm.org:

• Kyu Hyun Kim on Jo Eui-suk's A World of Silence: "Despite more than a few serious flaws, the most glaring of which are its pointlessly overlong expositions and almost fatal lack of suspense, the film nonetheless has its moments."

• Adam Hartzell on Kwak Kyung-taek's Mutt Boy: " It's not a great movie, lacking the energy and right-film-right-time zeitgeist exploitation of the dialectical Friends."

• Tom Giammarco on My Name is Dokgotak, the second and "arguably the best" film in a trilogy based on a popular comic book series.

Nicholas Barber talks with Simon Pegg for the Independent.

For the Los Angeles Times, Geoff Boucher profiles Eli Roth, who "has long modeled his career on Sam Raimi, who made The Evil Dead and other horror classics before putting the knife down and going into the crowd-pleasing Spider-Man franchise. Roth may do the same, but his next project, an adaptation of Stephen King's bloody novel Cell, is certainly staying in his old familiar red zone."

Malcolm Jones suggest in Newsweek that Tony Soprano and Harry Potter have a lot more in common than you might think.

Susan King's got an overview in the Los Angeles Times of The Spirit of Adventure, a series at the Egyptian Theatre through July 5 and arriving June 28 at the Aero Theatre.

The BBC reports on the MTV Movie Awards winners.

Offline viewing tip. Tomorrow is Michael Moore's day on Oprah.

Online viewing tips. Rooftop Film Festival shorts, one a day, evidently viewable to anyone in the US. Ahem. Via Michael Tully.

Posted by dwhudson at June 4, 2007 6:00 AM