Berlinale, 2/13.

Eugene Hernandez reports on Errol Morris's lively press conference that followed the premiere of Standard Operating Procedure, the first documentary ever to screen in the Competition. AJ Schnack rounds up reviews.

Also at indieWIRE, Shane Danielsen on Hong Sang-soo's Night and Day, Salvatore Mereu's Sonetaula, Johnnie To's Sparrow, Dennis Lee's Fireflies in the Garden and Götz Spielmann's Revanche.

Jürgen Fauth whisks us through two days of viewing and offers observations on Suroosh Alvi and Eddy Moretti's Heavy Metal in Baghdad, Isabel Coixet's Elegy, José Padilha's Elite Squad, Doris Dörrie's Cherry Blossoms, Johnnie To's Sparrow and Koji Wakamatsu's United Red Army.

For the Guardian, Mark Brown listens to Mike Leigh talk about Happy-Go-Lucky, "for many, a favourite to win the main Golden Bear prize at the weekend. If it does win, Leigh will become the only living director to take the hat-trick of Europe's main film prizes - he won the Palme D'Or in Cannes with his 1996 film Secrets & Lies and Venice's Golden Lion with his last film four years ago, Vera Drake. The only other directors to have achieved it are Robert Altman, Michelangelo Antonioni and Henri-Georges Clouzot." More from Eugene Hernandez at indieWIRE.

Daniel Kasman in the Auteurs' Notebook on Isabella Rossellini's Green Porno: "The actress/director clearly relishes the strangeness and humor of the subject, and her enthusiasm and preference for the weird - but the boldly, almost childishly simple weird - is infectious."

"Berlin has been buzzing since Madonna's private jet landed at the city's Tegel Airport on Tuesday evening," reports Spiegel Online. "The Material Girl's first effort as a movie director is Filth and Wisdom, the story of three young residents of a London apartment who take a series of odd jobs to make ends meet while pursuing bigger dreams.... She said in an interview this week that she asked [husband Guy] Ritchie for his expert advice before she stepped on the set." More on Madonna's press conference today from Brian Brooks at indieWIRE.

And from me, well, the F2F chats were a whole lot better than the films today:

• Musunde-hiraite (Takahashi Izumi's follow-up to The Soup, One Morning): D-.

• Quiet Chaos (Antonello Grimaldi directs an actually pretty damn wonderful Nanni Moretti): B.

• Lady Jane (Robert Guédiguian, whose Mitterand film I really liked): C.

Posted by dwhudson at February 13, 2008 3:59 PM