Weekend (short) Shorts. 8/8.

Steve Erickson reviews What We Do Is Secret, the biopic of Germs singer Darby Crash.. "Many onlookers think Crash's shame about his sexuality and his inability to come out contributed to his suicide, a prospect What We Do Is Secret never even brings up. In fact, its depiction of his relationship with Henley is almost chaste; a spectator who knows nothing of Crash's life might think that he was also sleeping with the female manager wannabes who attached themselves to him vampirically... Yet the film's conventional nature doesn't hamper its depiction of the LA scene." More, from Film Threat's Eric Campos: "The Germs movie is finally here and it is a more than worthy tribute to one of punk rock’s largest heroes."

The Village Voice's Nick Pinkerton is not as pleased: "The worst kind of bastard adaptation, Secret subtracts without adding. Characters recite Crash's lyrics with scriptural reverence, but with no other clues, we'll have to trust the readers' proclamations of his 'genius.' What's not on-screen is the covert thrill of teenage self-invention, with all its lures and traps, promised by the title (from a Germs tune). That's what kept the Germs armbands circulating on a generation of weird kids, despite media indifference and cultural amnesia—and much of the reason that Darby Crash's story bears telling."

Andrew O'Hehir goes Beyond the Multiplex to look at Beautiful Losers, "Aaron Rose's alternately winsome and irritating documentary about the art scene that grew out of his Alleged Gallery on Manhattan's Lower East Side in the 1990s."

Glenn Kenny wonders about people wondering about a rumored remake: "A couple of my esteemed colleagues have expressed slightly guarded enthusiasm over the extremely shaky prospect that Quentin Tarantino will direct [unmentionable] in a remake of Russ Meyer's 1965 exploitation classic Faster Pussycat...Kill! Kill!, but I can't say it pushes any of my buttons, personal or otherwise." I do wish QT would return to wholly original projects, but understand how much more time-consuming they can be.

In honor of Robert Downey Jr.'s role in Tropic Thunder, on SpoutBlog Christopher Campbell brings us 15 other Characters Who Unconvincingly Play Another Race, a list of roles that range from memorable to enervating.

In the new New Yorker (which isn't a Futurama reference), Richard Brody takes a look at Criterion's recently released Trafic: "The story, about a French automaker’s delegation en route to a car show in Amsterdam, evokes [Jacques] Tati’s constant themes—the confrontation of easygoing tradition and fast-paced technological modernity, and the uneasy intermingling of world cultures through travel and trade—but invests them with a new bitterness."

The Screengrab reviews an early Kieslowski film, by request. "Camera Buff lacks the ethereal quality that would distinguish most of Kieslowski’s later films, but given the oppressive regime under which he worked, perhaps that was for the best. Here, Kieslowski is largely concerned with telling one man’s story."

Useful new blog with potential; or, actually, a series of blogs, delineated by type of film gig (producer, script reader, assistant director, etc.), written by industry pros: Film Industry Bloggers.

Senses of Cinema continues its reports from the 57th Melbourne International Film Festival; Peter Hourigan files reviews on several more films.

Lastly, from MovieMaker's blog comes this intriguing bit of news: "Three of today’s most legendary moviemakers—Woody Allen, William Friedkin and David Cronenberg—are putting their own cinematic spin on the classic art of opera. Each is directing an exciting new production for the opening of the L.A. Opera’s 2008-2009 season." It is accompanied by a picture of Jeff Goldblum that is decidedly not from an opera (though it might make for a very interesting libretto).