Shorts, 4/3.

"Filmed in the wake of the staged military coup d'état on September 11, 1973 that overthrew the leftist government of elected Chilean President Salvador Allende, Chris Marker's The Embassy is something of a cross between the immersive docufiction of Peter Watkins and the reflexive diaries of Jonas Mekas in its clinical dissection of the zeitgeist of transformative history," writes Aquarello in the Auteurs' Notebook, where it's noted that "First Run/Icarus films has made the two-film DVD of The Embassy and The Sixth Side of the Pentagon available exclusively from the Wexner Center for the Arts prior to its official DVD release later this year."

Mike Everleth's been reading Visionary Film: The American Avant-Garde, 1943 - 2000: "[P Adams] Sitney approaches the avant garde genre in much the same way [Parker] Tyler did, but I found Sitney's elaboration on the evolution of the avant garde from The Cabinet of Dr Caligari to Un Chien Andalou to Maya Deren's Meshes of the Afternoon much more readable, engaging and enlightening."

"In what Francis Ford Coppola is calling a 'sex change' operation, Carmen Maura is replacing fellow Spaniard Javier Bardem in the family drama Tetro," notes the Hollywood Reporter's Gregg Goldstein. Scott Von Doviak comments at ScreenGrab. Related: Omar Mouallem in Vue Weekly on Youth Without Youth.

"Edgar Wright and Simon Pegg have confirmed plans for a third spoof comedy, following hit British movies Shaun of the Dead and Hot Fuzz," reports the BBC. Variety's Michael Fleming has more on the just-extended deal Wright's got with Working Title. Oh, and the working title of this next comedy is The World's End.

The Netzeitung is reporting that Heike Makatsch will play Hildegard Knef in a biopic entitled simply Hilde.

"Director Bob Ray and executive producer Werner Campbell have opted out - for the moment, anyway - of the Ninth Circle of Indie Filmmaking Hell, aka 'Waiting for Good Dough,'" writes Marc Savlov, "and are instead taking their Austin Roller Derby doc, Hell on Wheels, out on the road themselves, screening the spitfire-laden, ...And You Will Know Us by the Trail of Dead-soundtracked, all-guts, all-glory, all-girl festival favorite as far as Birmingham, England, and São Paulo, Brazil, and as close as the Alamo Ritz."

Also in the Austin Chronicle, Josh Rosenblatt on Palm Pictures' release of Summer Palace on DVD: "An accompanying documentary on the censoring of the film takes viewers inside [Lou] Ye's topsy-turvy world, a world where artists who take issue with the banning of subversive art by repressive governments get banned by repressive governments for being subversive. Authoritarian regimes, apparently, have no taste for irony."

"What Would It Mean to Win? was filmed on the blockades at the G8 summit in Heiligendamm, Germany in June 2007. In their first collaborative film, Zanny Begg and Oliver Ressler focus on the current state of the counter-globalisation movement in a project which grows out of both artists' preoccupation with globalisation and its discontents. The film, which combines documentary footage, interviews, and animation sequences, is structured around three questions pertinent to the movement: Who are we? What is our power? What would it mean to win?"

Towards the end of his review of Shine a Light for the Minneapolis Post, Rob Nelson nods to "Paul Arthur, an awe-inspiring film critic and teacher based in upstate New York, [who] died last week after a short illness. One of Arthur's final articles can be found in the current issue of Film Comment (a magazine to which I occasionally contribute). It's a burrowing look at Shine a Light, as dense and rewarding as any piece in the critic's canon."

Sean P Means presents a list of film critics who've been separated from their jobs, for whatever reason, over the past two years. Via Shawn Levy.

"At an industry screening Tuesday night of the forthcoming comedy Tropic Thunder from Paramount Pictures and its unit DreamWorks, Tom Cruise brought down the house with his surprise portrayal of a bald, hairy-chested, foulmouthed, dirty-dancing movie mogul of the kind who is only too happy to throw an actor to the wolves when his popularity cools." Michael Cieply in the New York Times.

The latest addition to Scott Tobias's "New Cult Canon": Clerks. Also at the AV Club, Gregg LaGambina talks with Anna Paquin.

Paul Kolsby reviews David S Cohen's Screen Plays: How 25 Scripts Made It to a Theater Near You - For Better or Worse: "Cohen had me at 'How but lost me soon after."

James Mottram talks with Zhang Ziyi for the Independent.

Craig McLean talks with Tim Roth for the Telegraph.

Online listening tip. Joseph McBride, author of books on Frank Capra, John Ford, Spielberg and Welles, and Kerry Tymchuk, State Director for Senator Gordon Smith, discuss Mr Smith Goes to Washington, State of the Union and The American President on the Leonard Lopate Show.

Online viewing tip #1. Via Tim Lucas, Intrusion, "the first film by 60s UK horror-film enfant terrible Michael Reeves," at Shadowplay.

Online viewing tip #2. At Twitch, Todd Brown presents an impressive single take from JCVD, an upcoming action comedy in which Jean-Claude Van Damme pokes a little fun at himself and his onscreen persona.

Posted by dwhudson at April 3, 2008 10:23 AM