Shorts, 6/11.

What a great opening from Adam Balz at Not Coming to a Theater Near You: "For what it's worth, the best review of Frederick Wiseman's Meat comes not from Bill Nichols or Dan Armstrong of Film Quarterly, Barry Keith Grant's Voyages of Discovery, or even Wiseman himself, but from the pages of a 1977 issue of the American Journal of Agricultural Economics."

Also at Not Coming to a Theater Near You, Andrew Schenker revisits Viva L'Amour: "What I read on a first viewing as a final assertion of self, an attempt at a humanizing gesture that's been denied by the film's emotionally repressive program, I had to conclude on a second viewing was a mere continuation of that anesthetization of feeling that marks the state of humanity across Tsai [Ming-Liang]'s work."

Plus, Leo Goldsmith on Wiseman's Sinai Field Mission and Timothy Sun on Mandingo, "not only one of the most subversively exploitative films America has ever produced, [but] also one of the quintessential masterpieces of American filmmaking."

Errol Morris responds to his readers' comments on reenactments in documentaries.

John McElwee looks back on the career of a Stewart who could be either James or Jimmy.

Michael Guillén talks with Hye Seung Chung about her book, Hollywood Asian: Philip Ahn and the Politics of Cross-Ethnic Performance.

"After a long and muddled pre-production history with several changes of director and lead actress, a start date has finally been set for Die Päpstin (Pope Joan), the big-screen adaptation of the bestselling Donna Cross novel of the same name," reports Boyd van Hoeij at european-films.net. "German director and former professional football player Sönke Wortmann (Das Wunder von Bern / The Miracle of Bern) is now at the helm of medieval epic, with rising German star Johanna Wokalek (Barfuss / Barefoot) taking on the title role."

"This week, Broadway celebrates itself with the Tony Awards being held on June 15," notes FilmInFocus. "In recognition, we wanted to celebrate the bond between Broadway and Hollywood by asking five Tony nominees to name their own favorite Hollywood musicals."

"As much an elegy to film as it is a dissolution of romantic myth, Jon Jost's Paris-set digital feature, Oui non hews closely to the spirit of Jean-Luc Godard's late period, mixed media essay films - a reflection on the city and the cinema through conventional images of the present as preconceived, idealized evocations of the past," writes Acquarello in the Auteurs' Notebook.

"The wide lens has two converse effects: it captures the weight of heaven indoors; outdoors, it reveals heavens' entire expanse," writes David Lowery, reviewing Silent Light at Hammer to Nail. Battle in Heaven, he notes, "took a more sensational approach to finding God in the mundane. There, [Carlos] Reygadas entangled spirituality with sexuality, fusing the two into a fascinating, troubling, and not altogether successful amalgamation of the sacred and the profane. Here, he begins with sexuality, but quickly moves past it, past what's corruptible and resolute. He's after something far more elusive and difficult to define, and by the time he arrives at the final shot of the film–a mirror of the first, a slow push towards the horizon as the sun sinks behind it–he has, at the very least, caught a glimpse of it."

"The center of Beauty in Trouble, Czech director Jan Hrebejk's trying foray into soapy realism, is the kind of provincial, hard-luck lass who shows boob at a funeral and sweetens sauvignon blanc with a dousing of soda pop," writes Michelle Orange. "Unfortunately, Hrebejk settles for unsatisfying allusions to the Czech experience that never break through the thick haze of melodrama to make his case with any conviction."

Also in the Voice:

• Aaron Hillis on Kicking It: "It's hard to imagine how [Susan] Koch could have made her film any more heavy-handed: perhaps by adding U2's 'Where the Streets Have No Name' to the soundtrack or having the narration delivered by Colin Farrell - both of which, inevitably enough, the director does."

• "The Western world can be divided between those who are predisposed to dig anime and those who split at the first sight of spiky orange hair. I am not among the former," confesses Nick Pinkerton. Still, The Girl Who Leapt Through Time is "basically the equivalent of a sensitively wrought read from the Young Adult shelf, and there's naught wrong with that."

• "While not quite great filmmaking, To the Limit is daring enough to appeal to more than just the usual extreme-sports junkies," writes Vadim Rizov. More from Henry Stewart in the L Magazine.

"[Y]ou'll have to wait around for the Polanski doc that links up the director's Grand Guignol treatment of Macbeth - the Scottish play as a horror show - with the state of his brain after the murder of his first wife, Sharon Tate, at the hands of the Manson Family," writes Troy Patterson, reviewing Roman Polanski: Wanted and Desired at Slate. "And [Marina] Zenovich is not your woman if you want to wonder whether Bitter Moon - the aggressively kinky 1994 film that's a cross among Last Tango in Paris, Sabbath's Theater and Heart of Darkness - qualifies as a confession or a mission statement. But if you are looking for a high-end procedural packed with fresh interviews and touches of easy visual poetry, then she's your woman." Related: Cathleen Rountree interviews Zenovich.

"[I]t's understandable that a medium that specialises in showing us our best fantasies and our worst nightmares - the cinema - is now going through a distinct girl-on-girl moment," writes Julie Burchill.

Also in the Guardian:

• Eva Wiseman talks with Chris Waitt about A Complete History of My Sexual Failures.

• Laura Barnett has a quick chat with Peter Kosminsky.

• "Hugh Grant is in talks to star opposite Chinese actor Zhang Ziyi in Lost For Words, the latest romantic comedy from Four Weddings and a Funeral makers Working Title." Gwladys Fouché reports.

• Gavin Gaughan remembers Austrian actor Lloyd Lamble, 1914 - 2008.

Salon's Andrew O'Hehir on that whole Clint vs Spike run-in: "This may be impossibly liberal of me, but I'm going to suggest that they're both right, and that both of them need to tone down the grump-o-meter.... [N]ow that both of these esteemed American directors have allowed themselves to be lured into a Limey-sponsored pissing match, maybe they'll hang it up and get back to what they actually do for a living." Related: artwork by William Speruzzi.

"A stuntman filming John Woo's new movie in Beijing was killed in a bizarre fire when a small boat rammed into the set of an ancient warship," reports Reuters.

"Short Cuts may have been made in the early 90s, but its aesthetic quality and style at times feels straight out of the 70s," writes Jonathan Pacheco at the House Next Door. "In an age with too many steadicam or other fancy shots, zooms seem kind of outdated, but Altman always held on to them, at times putting the slickest dolly shot to shame with his zoom lens."

Scott Hamilton watched a little over 100 movies in 100 days - and reviewed 'em all. Via Coudal Partners.

"Steven Spielberg aims to raise more than $1 billion in third-party financing to reinvent DreamWorks as a separate company that once again owns the movies it makes." Carl DiOrio reports for Reuters.

Marketing-wise, Kit Kittredge: An American Girl and Sex and the City have more in common than you might think; Michael Cieply reports for the New York Times. More on the implications from Rachel Abramowitz in the Los Angeles Times.

Ben Goldsmith comments: "Three stories from different newspapers/magazines, all dated 5 June 2008, each illustrating an aspect of the spread of film and television production around the world. Massachusetts is booming on the back of a 25% tax credit, Belfast is also on the rise as a location and hoping recent activity will lead to more work in future, while Geoffrey Macnab documents the migration of British co-productions to other parts of Europe."

For the Independent, Andrew Buncombe reports from Laos: "33 years after the communist government overthrew the king and seized power, the south-east Asian nation has just produced its first privately funded movie, Good Morning, Luang Prabang."

Online browsing tip #1. Cinerama, via Coudal Partners.

Online browsing tip #2. Stale Popcorn's "100 Greatest Movie Posters (of All Time)," via Movie Poster Addict. And here's #1.

Online listening tip. Ambrose Heron talks with Peter Biskind "about the history of Miramax, the larger than life methods of the founders, the landmark films they released and their legacy."

Online listening tips. On the Leonard Lopate Show: Robert Osborne discusses TCM's Race and Hollywood series; Debra Winger discusses her new book, Undiscovered.

Posted by dwhudson at June 11, 2008 3:23 PM