Shorts, 6/20.

"Before he gets started on those two new Pee Wee Herman movies, Paul Reubens will have a role in a new Todd Solondz film. And no, that's not a joke," Erik Davis assures us at Cinematical.

Ted Z has news regarding Wes Anderson's The Fantastic Mr Fox.

"Woody Allen has held a secret premiere of his new film Cassandra's Dream in Spain," reports the BBC.

More up-n-coming news via Jeffrey Overstreet: "Theo Angelopoulos's Dust of Time will star Harvey Keitel, Willem Dafoe, Bruno Ganz and Valeria Golino."

"Clive Owen is to play Philip Marlowe in the first of a planned series of films about Raymond Chandler's classic private eye, to be directed by graphic novel writer turned director Frank Miller."

Also in the Guardian:

• Ginou Richer lived with Edith Piaf for 15 years - "sometimes she'd mother me, sometimes I'd mother her" - and served as a script consultant on La Vie en Rose. She tells Hannah Westley that Marion Cotillard "has it exactly, the way she walks, talks, her way of laughing."

• "British women are flocking to Bollywood right now, desperate to be the next Aishwarya Rai," writes Wersha Bharadwa. "Despite the fact that few of them are fluent in Hindi or have an acting background, many producers and directors seem keen to cast them in leading roles, often over and above the thousands of Indian women who pour into Mumbai's Film City each month."

• Mark Lawson talks with Matthew Macfadyen about, among other things, Frost/Nixon and keeping his flesh firm during the making of Pride & Prejudice: "[Y]ou don't want a flabby Darcy. But it was quite a shock. As soon as I wasn't in a scene, I'd be taken running round the park. And I was put on a low-fat diet. Every morning, this black cool-box would arrive with everything I was allowed to eat for the day. It was reassuring to find that I could get in shape quickly if I needed to, but it made you think about what women go through in this business."

Aaron Hillis on Longing: "Deceptively minimal, as if anticipated sequences were excised from the final cut, Valeska Grisebach's magnificent and moving chamber drama is a roaring mouse that offers ample room for extrapolation though its episodic editing, with Dardenne-style observations so astute that typically inexpressible passions and angst become raw and visible."

Also in the Voice, Julia Wallace on the "absorbing" The Real Dirt on Farmer John.

"The most intriguingly circumscribed romance of the year," announces Ed Gonzalez at Slant, "In Between Days is also an oddly gripping show of sexual one-upmanship, and something of a fuck-you to reprocessed cheese like When Harry Met Sally that passes for an authentic depiction of the way genders relate to one another."

"The term 'sports film' doesn't do justice to the director Szabolcs Hajdu's movie White Palms, a punishing, beautiful drama about a troubled 30-something Hungarian gymnast who gets a job as a coach training 2001 Calgary Olympic hopefuls," writes Matt Zoller Seitz in the New York Times. More from Aaron Hillis in the Voice.

Stanley Kauffmann in the New Republic on 12:08 East of Bucharest: "[Corneliu] Porumboiu's film, sadly funny though it sometimes is, is an act of daring in itself, challenging our expectations of drama in order to show us that, for most people most of the time, life is not dramatic; it is only - if they are lucky - sequential." Further down that same page, you'll find takes on Private Property and Ten Canoes.

Some of the most important things a director can do are practically invisible even to specialists," writes Dan Sallitt. "Case in point: Pretty Poison, directed by Noel Black from a script by Lorenzo Semple, Jr.... Black has a pleasing penchant for serene long shots that not only place the characters squarely in the bucolic-but-industrial small town environment, but also give full play to Anthony Perkins's unique bodily grace."

Cheryl Eddy in the San Francisco Bay Guardian: "American Cannibal the documentary proves far more fascinating than American Cannibal the failed reality show ever could have been."

Dave Misevic posts notes on The Saragossa Manuscript, Day of the Jackal, Vanishing Point and Tristana.

In the L Magazine, Jason Bogdaneris reviews Anthem: An American Road Story, which features "some compelling footage with the likes of Studs Terkel, Hunter S Thompson or George McGovern, along with more obscure activist types who thankfully have a more cynically tinged view of 'The American Dream,'" and Nixon: A Presidency Revealed. Plus, Phillippe Aghion's DVD roundup.

"If celebrity is a credit card, then I'm using it," George Clooney tells Tina Daunt who asks him about his political activities for the Los Angeles Times.

For the Scotsman, Jackie Hunter talks with Nicole Kidman about turning 40. Via Movie City News.

The Independent's Paul Taylor has caught the ferociously expensive musical The Lord of the Rings: "Is it now the one show to rule them all? I wonder what the Elvish word is for 'no'."

"What's your personal best - or worst - of food movies? And why?" Variety's The Knife asks and the answers are pouring in.

YouTube on your iPhone? You bet. Reuters reports.

Online viewing tip #1. Harry Knowles points to the trailer for The King of Kong.

Online viewing tip #2. A rerun, yes, but Michael Tully recommends watching Four Eyed Monsters. For free. "As if these kids weren't already indie film trailblazers for the 21st Century, this month they have taken things to a whole 'nother level."

Online viewing tips, round 1. Phil Hoad gathers some colorful musical numbers.

Online viewing tips, round 2. More musical numbers. In this roundup from David Chute, they're from Bollywood classics. Via Anne Thompson.

Posted by dwhudson at June 20, 2007 12:26 PM