Shorts, 7/12.

"Charles Ferguson's new film No End in Sight exemplifies what's missing from the public equation: a sense of justice, a conviction that men who lie and thereby kill, maim and destroy on a federal, governmental level should be held accountable in, at minimum, the same manner in which such a criminal would on a personal, social level," writes Michael Atkinson. "Kings and czars have had their heads on pikes for as much, and rightly so. The Hague operates on this dictum, and every nation in the world respects its process except us."

"As someone who despised Crash so much that I was almost moved to a physical fight on the night it won all its Oscars... I have to say I was pretty surprised by writer/director Paul Haggis's new picture, In the Valley of Elah," writes Premiere's Glenn Kenny. "[G]iven the near-brain-numbing chorus of blogosphere voices screeching about how this entity they call 'Hollywood' isn't doing enough to get the populace properly agitated about the Islamist threat, it's interesting to see what a 'Hollywood' filmmaker who takes on the subject of the Iraq war actually does."

"[Pascale] Ferran's Lady Chatterley isn't remotely bawdy, but it is candidly, tenderly carnal in a way rarely seen in contemporary cinema, where sexuality crouches, trapped like a frightened deer, between prissiness and prurience," writes Ella Taylor. "Coming from a director who hangs out with pomo ironists like Arnaud Desplechin, this is surprisingly naturalistic filmmaking that refuses to engage with the feminist theories that have sent Lawrence's posthumous reputation careening from literary god to chauvinist devil. In fact, Lady Chatterley is a resolutely unintellectual movie whose primary language is its earthy physicality."

"The French film industry has been enjoying a box office resurgence of late, both at home and aboard," reports Anthony Kaufman, who's got the numbers and the quotes at indieWIRE.

"The unreconciled ghosts of colonialism and its legacy of economic stagnation, currency devaluation, and underdevelopment among emerging contemporary African nations lies at the core of Djibril Diop Mambéty's whimsical, yet incisive (and sadly, unfinished) series of envisioned fables, Tales of Little People," writes acquarello.

A brisk and bracing read: Henry Woolf looks back over six decades of friendship among six friends, led, you might say, by Harold Pinter: "If you want a glimpse of what we were like then, how particular, how different from each other, yet sharing a common language, a common stance, read The Dwarfs. It brilliantly captures young men in all their pride and peacock before society closes in and squeezes the life out of them."

Also in the Guardian:

• "The adventures of Tintin in the Congo will be moved from the children's shelves in Borders bookstores across the country and placed in the adult graphic novels section after the book was criticised for having allegedly racist content," reports Lee Glendinning.

• Graeme Allister: "Leonardo DiCaprio is in talks to star as Hugh Hefner in a big screen biopic of the notorious Playboy founder." However that turns out, as you'll have heard, Brett Ratner will direct and Brian Grazer will produce.

• Xan Brooks: "[I]t remains to be seen whether Harry Kirkpatrick will go on to become the new Alan Smithee... But why Smithee and why Kirkpatrick? Why pick these names in particular?"

"For director Dusan Makavejev, the failure of revolution is no reason not to cling to revolutionary ideals. Yet ideals cannot obscure inevitable horror, and none of it should stop you from laughing," writes Spencer Parsons. "A specter of failure hangs over the aesthetic, political, and sexual revolutions of Sweet Movie and WR: Mysteries of the Organism and lurks about in Criterion's fine packages of extras for good measure." Also in the Austin Chronicle: Marjorie Baumgarten talks with George Ratliff about Joshua.

Michael Cieply reports from Encino for the New York Times: "In an unusually blunt session here on Wednesday, several of Hollywood's highest-ranking executives called for the end of the entertainment industry's decades-old system of paying so-called residuals for the reuse of movie and television programs after their initial showings." The explanation: "'There are no ancillary markets anymore; it's all one market,' said Barry M Meyer, chief executive of Warner Brothers."

Angela Watercutter delves into the world of Cloverfield for Wired. Via Fimoculous.

Dave McDougall at Chained to the Cinémathèque chooses his all-time top 100: "I will certainly change my mind on half of these films by the time I hit the publish button."

Online browsing and viewing tip. SiouxWIRE on the work of Saskia Olde Wolbers.

Posted by dwhudson at July 12, 2007 10:33 AM