Shorts, 7/18.

Noah Baumbach has written an adaptation Claire Messud's novel The Emperor's Children; Ron Howard will direct; Diane Garrett reports for Variety. Also, Michael Fleming: "Fox 2000 has set John Carney to direct Town House, a Doug Wright-scripted comedy that begins production in January. Pic marks the studio debut for the director of the Sundance prize-winning film Once."

"Satoshi Kon's Paprika is the finest, most exhilarating animated feature film that I have seen in quite some time," writes Steven Shaviro. "Paprika's style is something that I am a total sucker for: it's wildly, floridly psychedelic, but at the same time somehow harsh and astringent."

"I know of few recent films that have proved as polarizing as Funny Ha Ha (2005), but somehow I've managed to find myself in a place suspended between what seems to be the typical 'love it' or 'loathe it' reactions," writes Jesse Ataide. "It seems many of my peers have had no problems in enthusiastically proclaiming [Andrew] Bujalski 'the voice of our generation,' but like Jonathan Rosenbaum finally admits in his review of Regular Lovers (another film about young people coming to grips with the banalities of everyday living), I can recognize what it is that may give the impression that this film is capturing the essence of my particular generation at this particular moment in time, but when it comes down to it, as much as I like the film itself, I just don't really recognize the portrait."

At the House Next Door, what a double bill: Apichatpong Weerasethakul's Syndromes and a Century and Tsai Ming-liang's I Don't Want To Sleep Alone. Ryland Walker Knight caught it last Friday and was evidently not alone as he found it easy to fall in love with the first while the second turned out to be pretty rough going.

"Is [Bruno] Dumont repeating himself in Flandres?" wonders Gerald Peary in the Boston Phoenix.

George Ratliff's "sense of characterization is extraordinary, and he creates a satisfying psychological model of family life that can be picked up and looked at from any angle," writes Dan Sallitt. "Joshua is not just a character drama, however: it is a suspense film. After a strong first hour, the suspense format becomes dominant in the last forty-five minutes; and, though the characters remain more or less coherent, the movie's back somehow breaks anyway." Also: "I'm still baffled at how a filmmaker as assured and expressive as [Claire] Devers could have vanished from our collective consciousness."

"I expect a lot of things when I delve into Bonus Features on a DVD, but discovering an obscure, forgotten game show pilot that is the only known collaboration of William Castle, Robert Bloch, and Groucho Marx is not one of them." Tim Lucas elaborates.

The Guardian's Peter Bradshaw responds to Nick Cohen's piece in Sunday's Observer: "Why is Hollywood so keen to create terrorists who are not al-Qaida, not Islamist, not Muslim? Why not name the elephant in the living room?... I think The Case of the All-American Terrorist is at once more simple and more complex than Nick Cohen implies. It's more a psychological symptom of denial - a distant cousin to the denial suffered by pro-war parties in politics and the media."

Now, this is a subject line: "CNN Throws in Towel, Admits to Two Errors, and States That All 'Sicko' Facts Are True to Their Source (or something like that)... Moore Realizes All This is Huge Distraction and Then Spends More Precious Time Thanking Paris Hilton for Seeing 'Sicko'... Meanwhile, More than 300 Americans Die Because They Had No Health Insurance During the 8-Day Gupta-Moore War..."

In the Voice:

• Ed Gonzalez on Linas Phillips's Walking to Werner: "His quest for truth is spiritual, an example of striving through suffering, and it inspires the type of euphoria that may lead someone to one day walk to Linas."

• Ella Taylor on In Search of Mozart: "The music is divine, but the film sags beneath several tons of expert talking heads."

• Julia Wallace: "Although it's hard to be too churlish about such a good-hearted film, Summercamp! manages to make watching kids have fun surprisingly tedious." More from Jeannette Catsoulis in the New York Times.

Vince Keenan reads Bruce Dern's Things I've Said But Probably Shouldn't Have in which, among other things, he "expounds at length about what excites him to this day about acting, namely capturing actual human behavior onscreen. He cites several of these living moments, called 'Dernsers,' with many coming from my favorite Dern movies, Smile and Diggstown. His comparison of Matt Damon's performance in Good Will Hunting and Ryan O'Neal's in Love Story has me ready to watch both movies again....This warts-and-all book goes on the (very) short list of acting memoirs worth reading."

Cineuropa runs an interview with screenwriter Louis Gardel (Indochine).

Dennis Cozzalio has 26 questions for you. It's "Mr Shoop's Surfin' Summer School Midterm."

Ted Pigeon runs through a list of some of his favorite documentaries and asks after yours.

There comes a point in a lifetime... Michael Atkinson: "I no longer record off of cable (my area only recently got TCM in any case), I no longer buy DVDs, and am very stingy about buying books (whereas I used to be a slut). I don't think I'll live long enough to see and read everything I already have."

In the Guardian, Ronald Bergan remembers Edward Yang.

Sheila Variations wishes Clifford Odets, who would have turned 101 today, a happy birthday. Via Keith Uhlich at the House Next Door.

Online browsing tip #1. Slow Dancing. Via Alex Ross.

Online browsing tip #2. Nathaniel R presents: "Ten (semi-randomly selected) reasons why the cinematography of The Fabulous Baker Boys (one of the best films of its decade) should've won Michael Ballhaus the Oscar."

Online viewing tip #1. In a fresh episode, Reeler TV goes man-on-the-street.

Online viewing tip #2. Michael Caine and Britt Ekland steam up your monitor in a scene from Get Carter. Probably NSFW. Go via Joe Leydon, who's got the trailer, too.

Posted by dwhudson at July 18, 2007 9:54 AM