Shorts, 4/24.

"Yasukuni, the new documentary on the controversial Tokyo shrine that stands as the symbolic heart of Japanese right wingers has been making headlines for the fact that it is not being shown," notes Hot Splice. "All of the Tokyo cinemas that had originally booked the film for an April 12 opening have cancelled screenings, bowing to right wing pressure and threats.... Director Li Ying knew his film would be controversial, but perhaps he never expected it get to this point." More from Rica Naylor in the Auteurs' Notebook.

"'You may think I am crazy,' Jonas Mekas wrote in one of his 1963 'Movie Journal' columns in the Village Voice, '[but] the day is close when the 8 mm home-movie footage will be collected and appreciated as folk art, like songs and the lyric poetry that was created by the people,'" recalls Ed Halter at Rhizome. "In the future, he predicted, we will come to appreciate 'travelogue footage, awkward footage that will suddenly sing with an unexpected rapture' since 'time is laying a veil of poetry over them.' History has borne out Mekas's prophecy."

Pacze Moj posts a piece by British filmmaker John Grierson on the documentary film from a 1946 issue of Hollywood Quarterly.

"In The Idea of Nature in Disney Animation, David Whitley, a lecturer at Cambridge University, argues, in the overstuffed prose that launched a thousand academic careers, that the finely wrought imagery and emotional power of Disney movies like Bambi and Finding Nemo helped inspire generations of environmentalists." Patricia Cohen. Related: Brooks Barnes on Disneynature, a new production banner charged with releasing two nature docs a year.

Also in the New York Times, Michael Cieply asks United Artists' Paula Wagner about the latest flurry of predictions that Valkyrie, having had its release date bumped a couple times, will not fly. David Poland comments.

Spike Lee "is teaming up with Nokia, the cellphone maker, to direct a short film comprising YouTube-style videos created by teenagers and adults using their mobile phones," reports Laura M Holson.

"To date, BLDGBLOG has spoken with novelists, film editors, musicians, architects, photographers, historians, and urban theorists, among others, to see how architecture and the built environment has been used, understood, or completely reimagined from within those disciplines - but coverage of game design is something in which this site has fallen woefully short," writes . "So when I first saw Daniel Dociu's work I decided to get in touch with him, and to ask him some questions about architecture, landscape design, and the creation of detailed online environments for games."

Jürgen Fauth points to a few questions being raised at idrinkyourmilkshake.com:

• Who else could have played Daniel Plainview? Kinski?
• H.W.? H.M. Tilford? J. J. Carter? Where do all those initals come from?
• Graphological analysis of Daniel Plainview's handwriting
• What's with the hammers during the blowout?
• How evil is Plainview? Did you see his tear?

"While Tsai Ming-Liang's 2002 short The Skywalk is Gone provides a succinct narrative bridge between his previous feature What Time Is It There? and his most radical work, 2005's The Wayward Cloud, it also represents somewhat of a thematic and aesthetic holding pattern," writes Andrew Schenker at Not Coming to a Theater Near You. "But if Tsai seems chiefly concerned with moving his characters into proper position for his next feature while deferring any further artistic explorations, he nonetheless presents his signature concerns with a compelling economy, reproducing earlier triumphs - both through repetitions of established aesthetic strategies and direct allusion - and neatly summing up his cinematic achievement to date."

"A cut above the average Quad-bound video agit-prop doc, Michael Skolnik's Without the King succeeds mostly through negative virtues." Vadim Rizov explains in the Voice.

Also, Brian Miller: "Though street satirists like Robbie Conal and Blek le Rat appear briefly to argue their case, along with guerrilla designers Marc Ecko and Shepard Fairey, Bomb It doesn't have the patience or the smarts for real analysis."

"It is depressingly easy to imagine the brainstorming process behind the film Three and Out," writes Patrick Barkham. "This week train drivers took the unusual step of protesting outside the movie's premiere and challenging its star, Mackenzie Crook, about the comic potential of suicide." Also in the Guardian, Chrissy Iley talks with Andrew Garfield.

"I guess you could call it retired. I haven't worked for four years now." So says Gene Hackman; Geoffrey Macnab comments in the Independent.

Matt Waller at the WSWS on Body of War: "Cinema does us all a service when it portrays the personal costs of war, especially in a climate where the vast numbers of US wounded from Iraq (currently at least 23,000) are willfully brushed under the rug by the media.... Unfortunately, this is only half the movie. Intercut with [Tomas] Young's story is a potted retelling of the Senate vote for the Iraq War Resolution in October of 2002. This section is a shameless glorification of the Democratic Party, or a section of it, that succeeds in torpedoing much of the anti-war potential the work might have had."

Also, Joanne Laurier on Under the Same Moon.

"Girls Rock!, a documentary about the weeklong Rock 'n' Roll Camp for Girls in Oregon, explores what happens when you arm young girls with the kind of encouragement, confidence and free-spirited aplomb usually reserved for their brothers," writes Tracy Moore in the Nashville Scene.

Mike Everleth enjoys the underground musical Bad Dog and Superhero.

From Seoul, Marc Raymond on Hong Sang-soo's The Power of Kangwon Province and The Virgin Stripped Bare by Her Bachelors.

"Now that I've outed myself as a cinema advocate, I'd better get around to promoting a couple of DVDs representing the best of the perpetually underappreciated cinema of Africa." Kevin Lee on Moolaadé and Bamako.

The latest addition to Scott Tobias's "New Cult Canon" at the AV Club: The Blair Witch Project.

At Twitch, Blake Ethridge talks with Sydney Tamila Poitier, mostly about Death Proof.

For Facets Features, Phil Morehart compiles a list of films in which the Earth strikes back - at us.

Cinematical: "Our Ten Most Anticipated Films of the Summer."

Kristin Thompson revisits the issue of fair use.

At indieWIRE, Jeremy Walker reflects on a career as an independent film publicist.

At VF Daily, Elizabeth Hurlbut and David Poland exchange a bit of light-hearted email, "Re: NOT Forgetting the Full Monty."

Online viewing tip. Via Alison Willmore, vodcasts on iTunes from Baz Luhrmann, talking about Australia.

Online viewing tip #2. Vulture presents "Five Hilarious Moments From W."

Online viewing tips. Jerry's found an amusing Vincent D'Onofrio talking at the Nashville Film Festival about working with Robert Altman and Stanley Kubrick; and this has set him off on string of Kubrick clips: an autobiographical monologue; the story of impersonator Alan Conway and a bit on the FX and conceptual art of 2001: A Space Odyssey.

Posted by dwhudson at April 24, 2008 2:49 PM