Shorts, 2/18.

Pedro Almodóvar "is to film the tender autobiography of a communist poet who spent 23 years in prison during the darkest years of the Franco dictatorship," writes Elizabeth Nash in the Independent. "Marcos Ana, now 88, was 19 when General Francisco Franco had him thrown in jail in 1939.... Yesterday, Ana told El Pais newspaper that he and the flamboyant filmmaker, 58, had formed a close friendship 'like in the finale of Casablanca.'" Related: For those who read Spanish, Almodóvar's piece accompanying the El Pais interview.

"Help a Good Filmmaker Do Some Good." Shawn Levy explains.

"For those of us who have followed Julian Schnabel's larger-than-life career as an artist for nearly thirty years, watching his new movie The Diving Bell and the Butterfly is a doubly extraordinary experience," writes Sanford Schwartz in the New York Review of Books. "It is a film that presents a nightmarish and almost unbearable medical case history that has been handled with humor, a lyrical deftness, and a remarkable absence of sentimentality; and if you have more than a passing sense of Schnabel the person and his work as a painter, your mind is running at the same time on a parallel track, one full of amazement and almost disbelief that, with no apparent training in theater arts or the directing of actors, or even a feeling for photography, he has turned himself into a sometime moviemaker - this is his third film - of such drive and sensitivity."

David Denby has a longish piece on No Country for Old Men: "Watching the movie, you feel a little like that gas-station owner - impressed, even intimidated. That's a strange way to feel at a Coen brothers movie. For almost 25 years, the Coens have been rude and funny, inventive and tiresome - in general, so prankish and unsettled that they often seemed in danger of undermining what was best in their movies. Have they gone straight at last?"

And the New Yorker's also brought out Pauline Kael's 1985 review of Blood Simple; scroll down and read on, unless you'd like to see, too, what she had to day about Peter Weir's Witness that same week.

For New York, Logan Hill profiles Chop Shop director Ramin Bahrani.

"Rife with such pungent musings, Hollywood's Hellfire Club is as morbid (and morbidly amusing) as that amazing Drew Friedman artwork on the cover," writes Ray Young.

Dennis Cozzalio highly recommends U2 3D, "probably the best movie out there right now."

Whether or not you find the very idea of Step Up 2 the Streets at all interesting, its director's story certainly is. David M Halbfinger tells it in the New York Times.

The latest list from the AV Club: "22 film remakes dramatically different from the originals."

AJ Schnack notes the "launch of Cinelan, a short film content producer and publisher, which comes on the scene with the backing of an impressive roster of filmmakers and partners, including commitments from noted filmmakers Steve James, Morgan Spurlock, Jessica Yu, Eugene Jarecki and Ross Kauffman. Each will make short films for Cinelan and serve on the company's advisory board."

Online listening tip. Jim DeRogatis and Greg Kot discuss their favorite film soundtracks on Sound Opinions.

Posted by dwhudson at February 18, 2008 2:21 PM