Shorts, 7/1.

"If anybody can bring the psychological nuances of that elusive 'indie sensibility' to mainstream filmmaking, James Mangold is a likely candidate," writes David Bordwell, who visits a sound-mixing session for the upcoming 3:10 to Yuma: "Jim reminded me that sound can create a sense of visual momentum too."

At Archinect, John Jourden has a terrific and terrifically long conversation with UbuWeb founding editor Kenneth Goldsmith. Via Greg Allen.

"IndieWIRE and Matt Dentler reported [Thursday] that Joe Swanberg's SXSW sensation Hannah Takes the Stairs will be coming out in August via IFC's First Take banner, which seems a great home for the film and a smart move for the nascent day-and-date arm of IFC Films," writes AJ Schnack.

While it lasted, the media had a pretty good time with the idea that Germany - the government, the entire country, whatever - had outright banned Tom Cruise and/or Valkyrie, the film in which Cruise is set to portray Colonel Claus Schenk von Stauffenberg, whose attempt to assassinate Hitler, had it succeeded, would have saved an untold number of lives. Headline writers were having a blast until the truth proved to be just a whole lot less sensational. Now that the smoke is clearing, Michael Cieply and Mark Lander do a pretty good job of outlining what's actually happened.

I've often thought that much of Josef Joffe's commentary on transatlantic relations is just plain silly, but in this case, he does fairly well explaining in the plainest of terms just what the problem is: "Stauffenberg for Germans is like Jefferson and Lincoln, motherhood, and apple pie all rolled into one. Germany is a country of established churches, and so Scientology is viewed as a cult and, worse, totalitarian and exploitative. A professing Scientologist in the role of Stauffenberg is like casting Judas as Jesus. It is secular blasphemy." Cieply and Lander: "The filmmakers are most likely only at the beginning of their adventures with German officialdom."

Also in the New York Times:

• "For the past two years Chinese films have shattered box-office records here, while outperforming Hollywood imports," reports David Barboza in Beijing. "Yet far from inspiring national pride, these films, from the well-known directors Zhang Yimou, Chen Kaige and Feng Xiaogang, have sparked a heated, sometimes vituperative domestic debate about the future of Chinese cinema and whether the country's leading filmmakers are true artists or merely politically savvy hacks."

• "At once a character study times five and something of a generational snapshot, Falling is the most recent feature from Barbara Albert, a gifted writer and director who's helping heat up the Austrian film scene," writes Manohla Dargis. "Much like her drama Free Radicals, which received a limited release here a few years ago, Falling focuses on a small cluster of characters struggling to find a sense of meaning, and perhaps even salvation, in an alienating, unwelcoming world of chaos and noise. In Free Radicals, Ms Albert's characters fumble against one another, periodically combusting, much as the five mourners do in Falling, which comes across less like a separately realized film than a continuation of an already opened theme." More from Julia Wallace at the Voice.

• Jeannette Catsoulis: "A documentary about the famously tingly soap with the famously batty label, Dr Bronner's Magic Soapbox mixes method and madness to chart the evolution of a counterculture phenomenon." More from Sara Schieron at Slant and Julia Wallace in the Voice.

• Matt Zoller Seitz: "The notion that French cinema consists mainly of pretentious soft-core pornography is an ignorant cliché, but One to Another does little to disprove it." More from Aaron Hillis in the Voice.

• Susan Stewart watches The Judi Dench Collection: "[A]fter watching Ms Dench perform Ibsen and Chekhov, after seeing her play a schizophrenic's mother and a suicide's daughter, a sex-crazed alcoholic and a kindly nurse on a cancer ward, questions remain. What makes this short, gently-rounded, pixie-faced woman so compelling?"

• Sylviane Gold profiles Sam Rockwell.

• Sheelah Kolhatkar reviews Miranda July's No One Belongs Here More Than You; so does Josh Lacey in the Guardian.

For In These Times, Cynthia Greenlee-Donnell talks with Aishah Shahidah Simmons about her documentary, NO!: "'There's this notion,' says Simmons, 'that when black women come forward [and say they've been raped], that we're a traitor to the race. I wanted to show these women, their faces, their names. I understand privacy and shame, but shame should be on the perpetrators.'"

"Scorsese's cinema is an admixture of distinct renderings of each of his respective narratives: that of hyperrealism and that of neo-realism," argues Erik Hinton at PopMatters. "Through a mosaic of simulacra, a hyperbole, a-canonical plot structure, and a salient omission of clear protagonist antagonist demarcations, Scorsese creates a 'grotesque neo-realism.' The dualistic nature of this style is precisely what has allowed Marty, as he is affectionately referred to by fans, to sit astride the division between popular and art filmmaking, and endlessly confound viewers who try to reduce his work to a singularity."

"Why are so many animated features bursting with wild imagination, coherent characters, glorious visualizing - all we should expect from film - and 'real' movies aren't?" asks Time's Richard Corliss. "[A]nimation directors don't get the respect they deserve," he argues, and quotes Brad Bird: "An animation director has never been nominated for best director. Ever. People don't understand what directors of animated films do."

In the Chicago Reader, Deanna Isaacs talks with Gabe Klinger, Christy LeMaster and Darnell Witt about why they've started up Chicago Cinema Forum, "a cinesalon hosting laid-back but serious screenings and discussions of seldom seen work, cheap or free, often in someone's living room." In short, "Chicago's existing film venues are part of the problem," but the longer answer has to do with the unique programming they've come up with so far.

"Frost/Nixon, the hot play in New York, makes for a highly enjoyable evening at the theater," writes Elizabeth Drew in the Nation. "But the play, the talented Peter Morgan's dramatization of Frost's wildly popular series of televised interviews, in 1977, with the former President, profoundly misleads as it entertains." Related: "Longford features three brilliant actors in real-life roles that should have been allowed to be more complex," writes Sean Nelson in the Stranger. "The result is an unconvincing diversion that stirs up a lot of ideas - about the limits of faith, about the cruelty of human nature, about the nature of what we call evil - it doesn't have the nerve to explore fully."

Jürgen Fauth recommends Sunshine: "So what if Kubrick already said it all? Set the controls for the heart of the sun anyway." John Horn has a long backgrounder in the Los Angeles Times.

Also in the LAT, Susan King talks with Pascale Ferran about Lady Chatterley and Paul Cullum muses on how Morgan Freeman's portrayal of God in Evan Almighty "is actually the culmination of a couple of long-standing traditions of how the Almighty has been depicted on-screen."

"Can there be beauty in devastation?" asks Anthony Kaufman in a piece on Manufactured Landscapes and The Unforeseen.

Oliver Burkeman meets the creators of The Simpsons, "the longest-running animated show in television history, the longest-running sitcom in American television history and the most internationally syndicated show in history. It is broadcast in more than 45 languages, in more than 90 countries, and has generated more than $2.5bn for Fox. It is also 'the deepest show on television' (according to Canadian philosopher Carl Matheson) and 'one of the most amazing feats, not just on TV, but in the whole entertainment world' (according to Ricky Gervais)."

Also in the Guardian:

• The Rise & Rise of Michael Rimmer, completed in 1969 but held a year too long, as William Cook explains, stars Peter Cook, "one of the funniest men who ever lived," and was written by Cook, John Cleese and Graham Chapman. William Cook: "It even boasted a cameo by Harold Pinter. So where did it all go wrong?"

• Xan Brooks meets Bruno Dumont.

• Lily Tomlin holds up pretty well through a string of silly questions.

• "British cinemas are being swamped by American movies - so should we bring back the quota system? Or would that just lead to empty seats? Peter Bradshaw and Hannah McGill take sides."

Richard Neville's memoir Hippie Hippie Shake: the Dreams, the Trips, the Trials, the Love-Ins, the Screw-Ups - the Sixties is slated for a onscreen adaptation and, as Barbara McMahon, Germaine Greer, to be portrayed by Emma Booth, is not at all happy.

Also in the Observer, Mark Kermode on Golden Door: "Evocatively filmed by gifted cinematographer Agnes Godard, [Emanuele] Crialese's most ambitious film is a timeless tale of 'metamorphosis through a journey', a fabulist voyage wrapped around the down-to-earth detail of a Sicilian family's emigration to America in the early 20th century." Also, A Guide to Recognizing Your Saints.

Sheila Johnston interviews Charlotte Gainsbourg for the Telegraph.

Alice O'Keeffe talks with Amitabh Bachchan for the New Statesman.

The latest entry in Chris Cagle's 1947 Project is Douglas Sirk's Lured: "In this period, Sirk seems most remarkable for a balanced synthesis of German and French cinematic traditions - one half expressionism, one half subtle camerawork and Balzackian use of architecture as commentary. Or perhaps it's fair to say that the German tradition is more nuanced than is widely remembered."

Kevin Lee watches Peter Kubelka's Unsere Africareise.

Dennis Cozzalio wishes Ray Harryhausen a happy 87th.

"Why don't they make movie stars like Jimmy Stewart anymore?" asks the Shamus.

"Geoffrey Wright's Macbeth imagines the Bard's tale of power, greed, and madness as an ultra-violent gangster opus," writes Nick Schager. "In the wake of Baz Luhrmann's Romeo + Juliet and Michael Almereyda's Hamlet, this modernized approach isn't unique, nor is it effectively implemented, with gaudy visuals and the cast's clunky handling of iambic pentameter rendering the film's drama superficial and vacuous." Related: Matt Sussman at SF360 on "Macbeths we have known."

Aaron Hillis in the Voice on Over the GW: "[Director Nick] Gaglia's torture re-creations become rote quickly, and his cross-processed, color-tinted, randomly inserted, over-zoomed Film School 101 indulgences need their meds adjusted."

At the Siffblog, Kathy Fennessy talks with John Scheinfeld about Who Is Harry Nilsson (and Why Is Everybody Talkin' About Him)?.

"The use of the term 'Animal House' to represent foul political behavior or historical events gone very badly has got to be stopped," argues Sean Daniel at the Huffington Post.

Adam Ross's interviewee this week: Peet Gelderblom.

"Underscoring the animation industry's globalization, a South Korean province has agreed to co-produce a slate of animated movies with Weinstein Co and Los Angeles-based Gotham Group," reports Richard Verrier in the Los Angeles Times.

Dave Micevic presents an annotated list of the "Top Ten Chase Scenes" at Stylus.

Peter Nellhaus points to five blogs that make him think.

Online listening tip. Joel Heller talks with Billy the Kid director Jennifer Venditti.

Online viewing tip #1. Matt Dentler's got video of Peter Jackson and Edgar Wright bidding farewell to the Original Alamo.

Online viewing tip #2. Cheers to MSNBC's Mika Brzezinski, and may many a newscaster dig up a smidgeon of long-discarded dignity and follow her example. Via the Guardian's Dan Glaister. Commentary: Richard Adams and Michael Tomasky. And Paul Harris interviews Brzezinski.

Online viewing tip #3. From the Chicago Reader's On Film blog, Pat Graham points to a Knocked Up abortion debate.

Posted by dwhudson at July 1, 2007 8:32 AM