Shorts, 4/2.

Ladd Ehlinger Jr, producer and director of the animated Flatland (DVD), launches a bloggish series at the main site. Topics will range from here to there and back, but his first piece is an appreciation of Orson Welles.

"As of this writing, Dear Zachary: A Letter to a Son About His Father has been a cause célèbre on the festival circuit, sending audiences through the emotional wringer while reducing several critics to tears," writes Ray Young at Flickhead. "Equal parts horror and epiphany, it is a masterpiece that draws its power from the best and worst within us."

"The sharply argued documentary Roman Polanski: Wanted and Desired isn't about the innocence or guilt of its title subject," writes Manohla Dargis in the New York Times. "Neither is it about Mr Polanski's likability, his tragic past, morals, short stature, brilliant and bad films, the sleaze factor or your personal feelings on whether there's anything wrong with a 43-year-old man's having sex with a 13-year-old girl. All these elements come teasingly into view here, but really this is a movie about a very different kind of perversion.... Mr Polanski survived the Holocaust and the murder of his wife, Sharon Tate, in 1969 by followers of Charles Manson. It was the American legal system that almost did him in." And AJ Schnack comments on the sneak screening - and on the review, that is, its very publication.

Also, David M Halbfinger reports on the challenge of marketing The Lucky Ones, "a new film directed by Neil Burger (The Illusionist) in which Rachel McAdams, Michael Peña and Tim Robbins play soldiers back from Iraq who go on a road trip that is both comical and poignant." Glenn Kenny comments: "[W]hichever ideological camp this movie does or does not please, it has more than enough wit and insight to please 'regular' movie lovers of all persuasions."

"Dith Pran, a photojournalist for the New York Times whose gruesome ordeal in the killing fields of Cambodia was re-created in a 1984 movie that gave him an eminence he tenaciously used to press for his people's rights, died in New Brunswick, NJ, on Sunday," reports Douglas Martin. Excellent related online viewing: The Last Word: Dith Pran.

And David Carr talks with producers, writers and publishers about the recent slew of firings, layoffs and buyouts of film critics. A couple of clips:

• "'For those of us who are making work that requires a kind of intellectual conversation, we rely on that talk to do the work of getting people interested,' said [Scott] Rudin, who produced No Country for Old Men and There Will Be Blood, two Oscar-nominated and critically championed films last year. 'All of the talk about No Country, all of the argument about the ending, kept that film in the forefront of the conversation' and helped it win the best picture Oscar.

• "'Criticism is treated as a kind of product, and that is inevitably going to favor bigger national releases,' said Owen Gleiberman, a critic at Entertainment Weekly. 'That the Village Voice doesn't want to pay for two staff movie critics is a joke,' he added. 'There is so much to cover.'"

• Michael Lacey, executive editor of Village Voice Media, notes in an email to Carr "that the chain still has five full-time film critics and that worrying about whether each city had its own critic seemed silly at a time when major metropolitan dailies can't afford to cover the presidential race."

Robert Cashill comments and adds as an aside: "One thing's for sure: J Hoberman has a job for life at the Village Voice."

"The subject of Adrian [Martin]'s new column at Filmkrant is the screenwriter/auteur debate," notes Girish. "In my view, auteurism is not an account of how films are made. It is instead one among many ways we, as viewers, choose to read a film."

"So... where was Pauline Kael this week?" All over, discovers Ray Pride.

Michael Atkinson and Laurel Shifrin's Flickipedia: Perfect Movies for Every Occasion, Holiday, Season, Mood, Ordeal and Whim now has a blog.

"In the nearly unnavigable post-revolutionary Russia, under the pressure to be 'Soviet filmmakers,' the theories of Eisenstein and Vertov were necessarily denatured, and for better or worse, pitted against each other antithetically," writes Logan Joseph in Film International.

Bob Fisher and Beverly Wood talk with Roger Deakins for the International Cinematographers Guild. Via M Swiezynski in the Auteurs' Notebook.

The Film Panel Notetaker interviews We Are Wizards director Josh Koury.

David Mamet, "who so often writes about cons and conmen, has fallen for one of the greatest hoaxes of our time." David Walsh explains at the WSWS.

A euro|topics dossier: "Last week's Internet publication of the film Fitna by the Dutch populist legislator Geert Wilders provoked many reactions in the European press. This short film intersperses violent images of terrorism and executions carried out in Muslim countries with verses from the Koran. Is this kind of provocation defensible in the name of the freedom of expression?"

Time Out notes that Pedro Almodóvar will be tracking the progress of his new film, Broken Embraces, starring Penélope Cruz, right here. Via Movie City News. Related: Douglas Messerli in nthposition on Volver.

"Costa-Gavras Eden is West has a very European cast with young Italian star Riccardo Scamarcio (My Brother Is an Only Child) playing the lead role alongside German director Fatih Akin, his compatriot Ulrich Tukur (who appeared in Costa-Gavras's The Axe and Amen) and French actors Michel Bouquet, Eric Caravaca and Anny Duperey." Fabien Lemercier reports for Cineuropa.

"Compiling a '5 for the Day' for Peter Weir was as difficult as it was enjoyable," writes Craig Simpson at the House Next Door. "Avoiding a mere list of what I think is his 'best' work, I looked instead for thematic staples and visual trademarks, crowd-pleasers and cult oddities, a handful of motion pictures that reflect the arc of his career. Rugged yet metaphysical, academic yet erotic, antiquated yet timeless, Weir's films speak to me like no other."

Philippa Hawker talks with Catherine Deneuve for the Age.

"Hasn't Haneke become everything he despises?" Stuart Jeffries asks the director himself.

Also in the Guardian, David Thomson talks with Jonathan Demme - and Ronald Bergan remembers Frank Capra Jr, who died at the age of 73 in December: "Although he established himself as a well-respected producer, president of a film company and teacher of film studies, he would inevitably always be seen as 'the son of...' This was something he happily recognised by participating in documentaries and seminars about his father, and screening, every Christmas, his family's own 35mm print of It's a Wonderful Life (1946) at the University of North Carolina, where he taught."

"It Wasn't Harvey Weinstein: On Anthony Minghella's Legacy, Again." David Edelstein backs away from his earlier entry.

"The second part of our Greatest Film Noir of All Time poll is complete!" announces Steve-O at Noir of the Week.

Online viewing tip. Björk's "Wanderlust" is here. Via Fimoculous.

Online viewing tips, round 1. "Five Videos on Movie Rights" at Stream.

Online viewing tips, round 2. The Twitch Video Player Top Ten.

Posted by dwhudson at April 2, 2008 9:49 AM