Shorts, 6/28.

"For those entranced by the essay-films of, say, Chris Marker, the documentaries of Adam Curtis may seem rather vulgar," begins Brian Holmes in a post to Nettime. "[D]espite the intellectual depth and visual complexity of Curtis's work, there is no comparison with the aesthetic subtlety of the essay-film, and cinephiles can go back to their darkened theaters. This is TV, made for the anxious postmoderns with their zapper and their 36-inch screen. But what great TV!... Curtis, like Foucault, consistently asks: 'Do you want to be governed like that?'... These are alarm-clock films, wake-up calls for passive populations whose only recourse would be to think sociologically: but not as their masters do."

"It is impossible to exaggerate the critical importance of the role that political bloggers have cut out for themselves in Egypt," writes Sarah Carr in the Al-Ahram Weekly. "[T]he French Resistance of the information age, they exploit the speed and anonymity of the Internet to bear witness to, and publicise, transgressions which the mainstream media - emasculated by draconian laws and self-imposed red lines - can or will not touch." The Goethe Institute in Cairo has "sought to build alliances between bloggers and another marginalised group, independent filmmakers." Four short films were screened a few days ago for a modestly sized audience of bloggers; Carr wishes more had been there to see them.

The Self-Styled Siren, Flickhead and Thom at Film of the Year all list five bloggers who make them think.

Karina Longworth launches a "Micro Five" feature at the SpoutBlog with "Improbably Werner Herzog Anecdotes." Related: "Werner Herzog's Rescue Dawn is the kind of feel-good film that makes audiences want to stand up and cheer," writes Lewis Beale. "It's also seriously racist." Well, also at the Reeler: Christopher Campbell listens in as Danny Boyle talks about Sunshine and Christopher Campbell reports on the NYC premiere of Ethan Hawke's The Hottest State.

Michael Guillén has a long talk with Richard Schickel about his newest doc, Spielberg on Spielberg, scheduled for broadcast on TCM on Monday, July 9.

"Over the GW is a disturbing look at reprogramming that masquerades as rehabilitation," writes Jeannette Catsoulis. "Having been forced to drink the Kool-Aid, [director Nick] Gaglia has produced a work that's as much an act of emesis as of filmmaking." More from Rob Humanick at Slant.

Also in the New York Times:

• "The first revival of Stalag 17, the 1951 comedy-drama about American prisoners of war written by two former POWs, Donald Bevan and Edmund Trzcinski, is scheduled to arrive on Broadway in late spring next year," reports Campbell Robertson. "And in one of the more surprising combinations in recent Broadway history, the director of the new production will be Spike Lee. Yes, that Spike Lee."

• Alan Riding sees Le Temps des Gitans (Time of the Gypsies), Emir Kusturica's adaptation of his film for the Bastille Opera in Paris: "Closer to riotous spectacle than lyric opera, the 100-minute one-act show is held together as much by imaginative staging as by a score alternating between folksy Gypsy music and hard rock. The voices blasting out of banks of loudspeakers in turn seem closer to those of musical comedy than in Mozart or Verdi."

• Michael Cieply: "Though it's unclear whether the forthcoming contract expirations of the entertainment industry's writers, actors and directors will lead to a work stoppage over the next year, Hollywood is nonetheless frantically hedging its bets."

Acquarello on The Ties That Bind: "Eschewing the interview format by replacing oral questions and observations with scratch film, the prominence of her mother's lone voice ironically reflects [Su] Friedrich's own process of personalization, introducing a physical self-imprint - the figurative ties that bind - that connects her mother's life experience with the formation of her own identity."

"British animation powerhouse Aardman have announced a slew of stop frame and CG animation projects, following on from its new feature film deal with Sony Pictures," reports Naman Ramachandran for Cineuropa.

Michael Fleming reports that Richard Kelly (Donnie Darko) has written a screenplay, The Box, based on a Richard Matheson short story, that he'll direct. The "PG-13 horror film" will star Cameron Diaz. No mention in the piece of Southland Tales.

Also in Variety: "Russell Crowe will join Leonardo DiCaprio in Body of Lies, the William Monahan-scripted adaptation of the David Ignatius novel that Ridley Scott will direct for Warner Bros," reports Fleming. And Fleming and Pamela McClintock: "Ryan Gosling is set to star opposite Rachel Weisz in Peter Jackson's feature adaptation of Alice Sebold's bestselling novel The Lovely Bones for DreamWorks."

The Guardian has a bit of news regarding Righteous Kill: "De Niro and Pacino will be onscreen together for nearly the entire film." And 50 Cent will "play a drug dealer who helps two detectives... as they try to catch a serial killer."

Also:

• "Fans of the genre have long known that quality sci-fi and its sister genre fantasy hold up a mirror to the times in which they were created, but never before have the TV shows involved seemed so resonant or indeed so influential," argues Gareth McLean. "Science fiction has never been more now, fantasy never more real." Related: Rashomon points to the SF Cover Explorer.

• Another up-n-coming item: "The Alchemist, the bestseller by Paolo Coelho, is heading for the big screen, with Laurence Fishburne at the helm."

• David Ondaatje will direct a remake of Hitchcock's The Lodger.

• Composer Victoria Borisova-Ollas and librettist Edward Kemp have written an opera based on Salmon Rushdie's The Ground Beneath Her Feet and Mike Figgis "will provide filmic allusions that echo both story and score," reports Stephen Moss.

• Peter Bradshaw comments on that weird, weird remark Tony Blair made at the Labour Party Conference last year when he first began his long, long goodbye: "Today, as Blair bids farewell to the faithful and to the faithless alike, he could be mentally starring in his own religious film, one with the most uplifting ending imaginable."

• Zoe Williams scoffs at Brett Ratner's stated reasons for making a movie about Hugh Hefner: "If you can't see that this is icky, and that your overblown self-justifying sounds a bit tinny, you're going to make a really bad film." Like it'd be his first.

• "The name of Mala Powers, who has died of leukaemia aged 75, usually rings a bell as a beautiful, dignified Roxanne in the 1950, Stanley Kramer-produced version of the Edmond Rostand verse drama [Cyrano de Bergerac, for which José Ferrer, in the title role, won the best actor Oscar," writes Ronald Bergan. "Yet, despite this achievement, for which she won a Golden Globe nomination, and having studied with Michael Chekhov (nephew of the playwright), of whose acting methods she became a passionate advocate, Powers' film career was, on the whole, a curiously undistinguished one."

• Francesca Martin has several stories, and pretty interesting ones, too: Joe Wright (Pride & Prejudice, Atonement) explains why he's given up trying to adapt Patrick Hamilton's play Gaslight and is instead "jetting off to Hollywood instead to direct a drama about schizophrenia and homelessness starring Jamie Foxx"; Benedict Cumberbatch, "nominated for a Bafta for the title role in the BBC's Hawking... will appear on the big screen alongside Scarlett Johansson and Natalie Portman in The Other Boleyn Girl, due next year"; "Bruce Willis has signed up to appear in a black comedy called Assassination of a High School President with his 18-year-old daughter, Rumer"; and "Juergen Teller has embarked on a two-year odyssey to photograph creative types living in east London."

In One to Another, Michael Koresky, writing for indieWIRE, finds "a teasing, half-formed approach to character, and the film, tiptoeing around its own narrative and ideas of sexuality, feels not fully formed." More from Armond White in the New York Press: "Youth exploitation is the rule in Hollywood, but for art filmmakers Pascal Arnold and Jean-Marc Barr, it's a convenient rationale for porn."

With his first feature, Mala Noche, one can see that Gus Van Sant "possesses a penchant for pure lyricism that puts him in league with Terrence Malick," posits Max Goldberg in the San Francisco Bay Guardian.

Via Movie City News, the AFP: "Forget Freddy Krueger and Norman Bates - here comes burqa man. The first serious Pakistani horror flick for a quarter of a century features a psychopath dressed in a blood-soaked version of the traditional garb of Islamic women." Zibahkhana, it's called, Hell's Ground.

Jacques Rivette's Duelle (une quarantaine) "draws from classic genre films as much as it does from the canonized arthouse," writes Mike at Esotika Erotica Psychotica.

Craig Keller on CinderFella: "This 1960 film is the third work by Frank Tashlin to feature Jerry Lewis somnambulantly broadcasting the treasures of his dreams; therefore, it's Tashlin's most psychoanalytic film to date."

At Dr Mabuse's Kaleido-Scope, Scott Balcerzak finds a pleasingly "unspectacular" number featuring Eddie Cantor in the 1933 picture Roman Scandals: "Even if his suggestion to 'Build a Little Home' is intensely optimistic and trite, there is something comforting in watching a chorus of the Depression-era families encircle their populist comedic hero."

Marsha McCreadie in the New York Press on Dr Bronner's Magic Soapbox: "If you missed the whole thing first time around - the 1960s - here's a chance to catch up. For others it's a nostalgic hoot, even if they never used the all-purpose, 'all-one' soap."

"With zero dialogue and none of Daft Punk's own propulsive beats, Electroma has been met with some ire by critics and fans expecting one of the group's high-energy music videos, such as the Michel Gondry-directed 'Around the World' or Spike Jonze's 'Da Funk.'" But as Margaret Wappler reports for the Los Angeles Times, that's not what they were after.

David Lowery on A Mighty Heart: "[Angelina] Jolie was attached to the project before [Michael] Winterbottom was, which puts the entire film into perspective: it's not so much the work of an auteur as it is that of a celebrity doing her best to subjugate herself to her material."

J Robert Parks recommends The Boss of It All: "Fans of [Lars] von Trier's meta-approach will find much to appreciate." Also, Once: "Don't miss it."

"Drama/Mex is the best film Alejandro González Iñárritu never made," writes Paul Schrodt of this "lean, 93-minute picture of life's delicate dramas uncoiling before Acapulco's burnished vistas." Also at Slant, Rob Humanick: "Steadfast tradition and encroaching progress lock horns in the surprisingly cheerful Hula Girls."

Pointing to the TCM Movie Database, Dave Kehr asks, "Am I the last person in the world to notice that Turner Classic Movies has been quietly constructing a much-needed alternative to the error-plagued Internet Movie Database?"

For the Globe and Mail, Gayle Macdonald reports on the concerns of Canadian filmmakers and cinephiles as Alliance Atlantis prepares to sell its massive library to Goldman Sachs.

Online listening tip. Nobuhiro Hosoki takes part in a roundtable with Christian Bale at Hosokinema.

Online viewing tip #1. Of the many offerings at the invaluable Ubuweb, wood s lot chooses to highlight Orson Welles: The One Man Band, directed by Vassili Silovic in 1995 in cooperation with Oja Kodar. Ubu: "Granted exclusive access to Welles's heretofore unseen archives - and drawing from almost two tons of film cans containing fragments, shorts, project ideas, and sketches - the filmmakers are led by Kodar through the rich but unfulfilled Welles legacy."

Online viewing tip #2. MoMA's one-minute video of Richard Serra's Torqued Ellipse IV (1998) and Intersection II (1992) being installed in the Abby Aldrich Rockefeller Sculpture Garden, via Bryan Whitefield at ScreenGrab.

Online viewing tip #3. "New York City ate the identity of the Public Theater, in a way." Paula Scher: Type is Image, via Darren Hughes.

Online viewing tip #4. The trailer for David Cronenberg's Eastern Promises. Via MCN.

Online viewing tip #5. Anthony Kaufman introduces Incarcarex at the Daily Reel: "Created for the Drug Policy Alliance by Brooklyn-based artist Haik Hoisington, this brilliant and satirical faux ad-spot highlights the wonders of a fictitious drug."

Online viewing tips, round 1. Louis CK's got clips all over his site.

Online viewing tips, round 2. The films and videos of GJ Echternkamp, via Mark Frauenfelder at Boing Boing.

Online viewing tips, round 3. Phil Hoad's got some horror clips.

Online viewing tips, round 4. Jerry Lentz rounds up all sorts of things to spend time with.

Posted by dwhudson at June 28, 2007 4:38 PM