Shorts, 6/12.

"[I]n its detailing of the aftermath of a tragic hate crime in Rheims, France, Beyond Hatred so utterly avoids gratuitous horrors, exploitative grief, and moral grandstanding that those expecting a traditional cine-postmortem will be baffled," writes Michael Koresky at indieWIRE. "In reality, with Beyond Hatred, [Olivier] Meyrou adheres closely to the cinema verite tradition, recently explored by French filmmakers such as Raymond Depardon (The 10th District Court) and Nicolas Philibert (To Be and To Have), whose ethnographic dissections of people and spaces never preclude warmth or respect. Here, the murder of gay twentysomething François Chenu, recounted with melancholy clarity by his surviving parents, siblings, and lawyers, becomes both an inquisitive peek into the justice system and the slow process of healing."

"We all know that commercial constraints can limit what artists produce, but is it accurate to call this a form of censorship?" asks Julian Baggini in a blog entry for the Guardian. "Chinese polymath Xiaolu Guo thinks so, and she explained why in a fascinating talk at Bristol's Festival of Ideas last week, in which she also presented her new film, How Is Your Fish Today?"

"[A]fter the apotheosis of Tokyo Story, Ozu and his regular screenwriter, Kogo Noda, began examining the Japanese family from other angles, in particular from the perspective of a younger generation," writes Dave Kehr in a review of the new Eclipse collection, Late Ozu, for the New York Times. By the late 50s and early 60s, the "fabric of Japanese culture may be unraveling, but Ozu maintains his steady, stoic gaze, and the pervasive sense of sadness and regret is all the more poignant because of it." Also reviewed is the Sergio Leone Anthology, featuring the "often overlooked" Duck, You Sucker, which "now looks like Leone's conflicted reaction to the political violence sweeping Italy in the early 1970s."

Michael Atkinson reviews the new Cabinet of Dr Caligari, "both a respectful and insightful homage to a film history monument and a darkling nightmare all its own... [I]f greenscreening for the moment is all about appropriating the contextual imagery of the past, then you should begin with Caligari, the movie with which modern movies began, shouldn't you?" Also, Sweet Land is "a period film spending serious amounts of time with the Lutheran farm folk of 1920 Minnesota, for one thing. It's also a parable about ethnocentrism, and a magnificently crafted piece of landscape portraiture, for two others."

Also at IFC News, R Emmet Sweeney previews the highlights of this year's edition of the Human Rights Watch International Film Festival in New York and Matt Singer reviews Aki Kaurismäki's Lights in the Dusk.

euro|topics translates the bit of Tadeusz Sobolewski's interview with Malgorzata Szumowska for Gazeta Wyborcza in which the director defends her casting of Julia Jentsch as the lead in her new film, 33 Scenes From Life: "I want Poland to be seen as part of Europe and not as a strange, exotic country. We come closer to this idea with a film in which Polish actors act alongside German and Danish actors."

On Daniel Brühl's IMDb page, you can see that he'll be appearing in The Bourne Ultimatum (the franchise has been good to German actors, and for that matter, studios as well), Marco Kreuzpaintner's Krabat, Julie Delpy's The Countess, Limor Diamant's adaptation of Kafka's Metamorphosis and Jon Amiel's Angel Makers. To that lineup, Andreas Kurtz adds in today's Berliner Zeitung a Chinese historical epic (which is all that's said about that) and hopes for a role in Bryan Singer's biopic of German resistance icon Claus Schenk Graf von Stauffenberg. Brühl also plays down a rumor hounding that one: "I find it very hard to picture Tom Cruise playing Count Stauffenberg."

At european-films.net, Boyd van Hoeij has news of three upcoming roles for Italian rising star Elio Germano.

More up-n-coming news from Variety:

• Daniel Simpson will direct Jennifer Connelly and Paul Bettany in the psychological thriller Born. Simpson's written the script with exec producer Clive Barker; the real producers are Guillermo del Toro, Lawrence Gordon and Lloyd Levin. Marc Graser reports.

• William H Macy will direct Salma Hayek and Steve Buscemi in the "coming-of-age comedy" Keep Coming Back. Emiliano de Pablos reports.

• Richard Ledes will direct Frank Langella, Elliott Gould and Laura Harring in the "indie thriller" On the Hook. Steven Zeitchik reports.

Kamera's Antonio Pasolini talks with Elliott H King about his book, Dalí, Surrealism and Cinema.

"Alberto Cavallone is a virtually unknown director who created a handful of incredibly potent films between 1969 and 1983," writes Mike at Esotika Erotica Psychotica. "His work is (somewhat) notoriously political and nihilistic; he seems to approach his films as conduits for his extreme, somewhat anarchic ideas, and his films are often incredibly difficult and enigmatic. Eventually, according to one of the only English language articles on the director (which is available here), he ended up directing 'gritty underground porn.' Within the context of what I know of his filmography, La Gemella Erotica is somewhat of an anomaly."

For MSN, Jim Emerson lists 10 "Movies That Shook the World."

Responding to yesterday's LAT piece on the studios' fear of Apple TV, Scott Kirsner asks, "What's So Scary About iTunes?"

Posted by dwhudson at June 12, 2007 7:37 AM