Shorts, 6/17.

Raoul Walsh, eight of whose films will be featured on TCM throughout the summer, is "without doubt, the most neglected major figure in American movies," argues Allen Barra in the New York Sun.

"Sometimes when I'm grooving with cartoons, I'll say to myself, Why not just move into these and leave the rest alone?" Another fine entry from John McElwee at Greenbriar Picture Shows.

"J Todd Anderson modestly describes himself as 'a guy who draws for the movies,' but because the movies include almost all of the Coen Brothers' renowned films - including No Country for Old Men, which won the 2008 Academy Award for Best Picture - his job as storyboard artist is considerably more prestigious than that." A profile from Linda S Price in American Artist, via Ted Zee.

"Throughout the course of the past twenty years, [Rakhshan] Bani-Etemad has achieved the kind of artistic success and popular appeal (at least domestically) that is not only unrivalled by any other Iranian female filmmaker but almost unparalleled by a contemporary female director working in any country," writes Stephen Snart at Not Coming to a Theater Near You. "The Blue-veiled, her fifth feature-length film, is a beautiful tale of a suppressed love between a wealthy widower and a young factory worker."

"Years after the cycle of self-important, sentmimental 'hood' movies (anyone catch Straight Out of Brooklyn recently? Yikes. Matty Rich, wherever you are, please, keep it real) thankfully disappeared from American commercial movie screens, Pop Foul is the first to visit these themes with such unadorned pain, insidious intelligence and aesthetic grace," writes Brandon Harris at Hammer to Nail.

To mark the 50th anniversary of Sweet Smell of Success, FilmInFocus runs an extract from On Film-Making: An Introduction to the Craft of the Director in which Alexander Mackendrick recalls asking Clifford Odets to take a look at Ernest Lehman's first draft of the screenplay and do what "seemed a relatively simple job of story doctoring: polishing the dialogue and making some minor adjustments to the scene structure. We could not have been more wrong..."

Also, a new feature in the works: "Five travel writers on their favorite city films."

"P.O.V. is one of those occasional reminders that public broadcasting matters. Every year, like its complementary series Independent Lens, P.O.V. brings before national audiences the artists, perspectives and films that otherwise would find no home on television." In These Times senior editor Pat Aufderheide previews the series that begins on June 24.

Online scrolling tip. The Big Picture is the "best new blog of the year so far, hands down," says Jason Kottke, who, of course, would know.

Online viewing tip. "For a century, amateurs, collectors and archives have gathered films existing today only by miracle: bits of film eaten into by humidity or heat, decomposed or even in ashes, discovered right on time or just too late... These surviving images have withstood time..." Europa Film Treasures, via Dave Kehr.

Posted by dwhudson at June 17, 2008 2:46 PM