Shorts, fests, "also in theaters," 5/15.

By David Hudson on 05/15/2009

Stephen Marche, who interviews Judd Apatow for Esquire, has seen about an hour of "Funny People," and it did make him laugh. "But it is also the story of a comedian who confronts death and becomes a more selfish person from the experience. The lord and master of fart jokes wants to make you cry, and what's more, he wants to make you cry about fart jokes. Fart jokes, it turns out, can be unbelievably sad."

Also, Matthew Belloni, briefly, on "(500) Days of Summer."

Nick Davis recommends "Fifty Key American Films," a "new book from Routledge Press that gathers together short essays by a variety of scholars on an unusual mélange of movies that proved pivotal, in one way or another, to film history in the USA. The twist for these essays was that contributors were asked to sketch some of the broad strokes about what makes these films important and compelling, but also suggest some new directions that scholarship and thought about these movies might pursue."

One of Catherine Grant's favorite films is Kamal Amrohi's "Pakeezah" ("Pure Heart," 1971), "a magnificent Hindi melodrama and one of the most accomplished and beautiful films in the transnational 'courtesan with a heart of gold' film genre." Hence, her extensive guide.

"Horror can be a confrontation, as in Haneke," writes Ignatiy Vishnevetsky in the Tisch Film Review:

It can be a liberation, as Kiyoshi Kurosawa's recently demonstrated with the little, personal horrors of 'Tokyo Sonata.' It can be the description of a struggle, like in Carpenter. It can be a violation of taboo, like in a Coffin Joe movie, or the reinforcing of a social code, like in Nakagawa or Craven. But "The Happening" isn't any of these. We attack it, we're disgusted by it, because it doesn't seem to be horror at all - and then again, what's it supposed to be? "The Happening" is made in a language entirely its own. It begs to be decoded. It ignores every convention of contemporary American cinema. There's no naturalism here, little handheld camera. The characters are banal, not fashionably quirky. It's asking, "What kind of movie am I?"

Dario Argento looks back on working on "Once Upon a Time in the West: "Sergio [Leone] could judge a script in two minutes: he would flip through it and if he saw lots of dialogue it was no good; if it had lot of descriptions then it was interesting. That is something I learned from him."

Also in the Guardian: James Mason would be 100 today and, as David Thomson looks back over the career, he remembers that "it's vital to consider the unique and languid but impassioned voice of this man." More from Edward Copeland: "Mason never managed to nab the golden guy, but he sure knew how to put on a good show."

Tom Shone talks with Anna Boden and Ryan Fleck about "Sugar" and: "In the coming months, several big-screen offerings celebrate the elite world of fashion." Why? Simon Chilvers asks around.

Kevin Lee on "Le Deuxième souffle": "Jean-Pierre Melville's last feature in black and white is an extended study of a gray terrain: a criminal underworld that's less dark than cloudy, where truth, loyalty and honor stumble through a mist of greed, distrust and hubris."

"'Being Hal Ashby: The Life of a Hollywood Rebel,' Nick Dawson's account of the still under-recognized titular American director, hit shelves this month courtesy of the University of Kentucky Press, and checks in as one of the most astonishing film biographies of the past decade," writes Nathan Southern in the Allmovie Blog. "What strikes one most - an aspect apparent early on - is the unholy amount of research that obviously went into Dawson's work."

Glenn Kenny: "I profile my 'Girlfriend Experience,' erm, co-star, Sasha Grey over at The Daily Beast, here. As almost every writer I've ever met likes to say, the headline's not mine."

Gill Pringle talks with Dustin Hoffman for the Independent.

Michael Guillén talks with David Gregory about "Plague Town."

Dennis Cozzalio sorts out what may and what may not be worth looking forward to this summer.

Rob Nelson takes the "Vertigo" tour.

With so many films opening this week warranting their own entries - "Being Jewish in France," "Sergei Loznitsa @ Anthology," "Angels & Demons," "Summer Hours," "The Brothers Bloom," "Anaglyph Tom (Tom with Puffy Cheeks" and "Jerichow" - I'm tossing this "also in theaters" roundup right here.

"Big Man Japan"

"The revisionist superhero trend takes a quizzical turn in 'Big Man Japan,' a deadpan mockumentary with a lively sense of the perverse," writes Nathan Lee in the New York Times. "Hitoshi Matsumoto, a popular and eccentric Japanese comedian who is the co-writer of the film, also directed and stars in it, playing Daisato, the latest - and least - in a line of metamorphic heroes who grapple with Japan's persistent monster problem."

More from Steve Erickson (Gay City News), Ben Kenigsberg (Time Out), Nick Pinkerton (Voice), Michael Ordoña (Los Angeles Times and Sara Schieron (Slant).

"Management"

"Don't be fooled by the star wattage: 'Management' is a small, underwhelming indie comedy about the cuteness of the long-distance stalker," writes Ty Burr in the Boston Globe. "What playwright-turned-screenwriter/director Stephen Belber finds adorable, a reasonable person might consider actionable. Steve Zahn plays the noodge, Mike, a night manager at an Arizona highway motel run by his parents (Fred Ward and Margo Martindale). Jennifer Aniston is the dream girl, Sue, a neatly pressed business traveler who sells office-place artwork and has vague dreams of making the world a better place."

More from Alonso Duralde (MSNBC), Roger Ebert (Chicago Sun-Times), Stephen Holden (NYT), Shawn Levy (Oregonian), Nathan Rabin (AV Club), Joshua Rothkopf (Time Out New York), Andrew Sarris (New York Observer), Betsy Sharkey (Los Angeles Times), James van Maanen, Bill Weber (Slant) and Stephanie Zacharek (Salon).

Here at IFC, Aaron Hillis talks with Zahn "about his favorite forms of meditation, strange ways to pick up girls, and why he doesn't feel like a creepy stalker." Capone talks with Zahn, too, for AICN.

And...

"Oh, 'O'Horten,' how wincingly affected you are," writes Nick Schager in Slant. "Norwegian Bent Hammer's film tells the tale of 67-year-old Odd Horten (Baard Owe), who retires from his lifetime job as a train engineer and, through a series of strange circumstances, learns for the first time how to truly live." More from Nicolas Rapold (L). Earlier: Reviews from Cannes 08.

Aaron Hillis in the Voice on "The Big Shot-Caller": "You have to wonder about a debut this self-involved: What's left for the second film?" More from Stephen Holden (NYT) and Joseph Jon Lanthier (Slant).

"Bollywood loves a hybrid," writes Rachel Saltz in the NYT, "so there's nothing necessarily unusual about a comedy-adventure-romance-musical. But '99,' with bits of all those elements, mixes them up in a way that has more in common with American indies (division: hipster) than with standard Hindi-movie fare."

Australia's Spanish Film Festival is in Melbourne through May 24; Mary Colbert has an overview in the Age.

[Photo: "Funny People," Universal Pictures, 2009]

Tags: Anna Boden, Dario Argento, Dustin Hoffman, Hal Ashby, James Mason, Jean-Pierre Melville, Judd Apatow, Kamal Amrohi, Ryan Fleck, Sasha Grey, Sergio Leone