Shorts, other fests, etc, 5/13.

By David Hudson on 05/13/2009

Jahsonic wishes Harvey Keitel a happy 70th. Simon Rothöhler has a couple of minutes of related online viewing at Cargo. And in German: Congrats from Michael Althen (Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung) and Gerhard Midding (Welt).

Peter Bogdanovich "turns 70 this year," notes Jamie Portman for the Canwest News Service. "Despite 'Mask' and 'Noises Off,' the glory days never returned. But the urge to make movies is still there. He's optimistic about new projects, including a modern-day western and a screwball farce." Via Movie City News.

"Last week, Icarus Films released the latest DVD in their excellent Chris Marker series, 'A Grin Without a Cat (originally released in 1977 but shortened with an added coda in '93)," writes Doug Cummings. "Not only is this one of his most acclaimed documentaries, summarizing the decade of the New Left worldwide as well as his own globetrotting SLON collective filmmaking period, the DVD also comes amid a flurry of new Marker events." In brief: "Far From Vietnam" screens in the Cannes Classics program; "The Second Life of Chris Marker" runs at Harvard Film Archive through Saturday; and "Quelle heure est-elle?" is on view at the Peter Blum Gallery in New York through July 31.

"A teen runaway turned circus barker and vaudevillian, Tod Browning's sideshow life on the fringes of society foreshadowed the outcasts that would become the epicenter of his films," writes Cullen Gallagher, previewing Film Forum's series for the L Magazine. Mondays through June 8.

Tom Junod talks with McG about "Terminator Salvation" for Esquire.

For the Voice, Aaron Hillis talks with Jennifer Lynch about "Surveillance" and previews the summer movie season. For more previews - with clips!- turn to Sean Burns in the Philadelphia Weekly, where Matt Prigge lists "Six 'I Was Never the Same After That Summer' Movies About Adults."

There are, of course, at least two sides to every story and, in the case of Nathan Lee's review of "Outrage," NPR tells theirs to the Voice's Zach Baron.

"[I]f you'd asked me a few days ago who the most American living director was, I'd have given you a different answer from the one I have now," writes Ignatiy Vishnevetsky in The Auteurs' Notebook. "Maybe I wouldn't have even been able to name someone off the top of my head. But now I've seen 'The Limits of Control,' and I can say with certainty that it's Jim Jarmusch."

"Sometimes a filmmaker manages to slip his or her psyche into a film with an unsettling measure of insidiousness," writes Michael Tully at Hammer to Nail. "It's like a cloud that creeps into a viewer's brain and warps their perception. In American independent cinema, the finest practitioner of this brand of psycho-cinema is Lodge Kerrigan. While Kerrigan is in clear command of the technical elements at his disposal, there also exists a more underlying air of menace to his work. It's as if he is somehow staring you into a state of discomfort. After watching Alejandro Adams's 'Canary' for a second time, I'd like to place Adams in that camp."

"Politically incorrect and racially retrograde, ['Gone With the Wind'] has managed at one time or another to offend almost everyone. Its allure, though, is deeper and wider. It's a movie we loved before we learned not to like or approve of it." Molly Haskell, whose latest book, of course, is "Frankly, My Dear: 'Gone With the Wind' Revisited," also lists the "six most significant scenes" for the Guardian.

"Hugh Jackman, Rachel Weisz and Robert Pattinson will star in the period drama 'Unbound Captives,' with Madeleine Stowe making her directorial debut from a script she wrote," reports Michael Fleming. Variety also reports that "Nicole Kidman has ankled her role in Woody Allen's latest, untitled project. Pic, which co-stars Antonio Banderas, Anthony Hopkins, Josh Brolin, Naomi Watts and Freida Pinto, is set to start shooting in London in the summer."

The Hollywood Reporter's Steven Zeitchik hears that Al Pacino may star in Stephen Gaghan's adaptation of Malcolm Gladwell's "Blink."

"Less than two years ago, Dylanologists had a field day with 'I'm Not There,' Todd Haynes's smarty-pants hallucination evoking the freewheelin' singer-songwriter's iconic persona, unknowable as he perpetually reinvents himself," writes Aaron Hillis, introducing a list here at IFC. "But rock 'n' roll's poet laureate already had a history with film, both appearing onscreen and being portrayed by other actors. In honor of Dylan's tough-bird, rollicking new record 'Together Through Life,' I'm bringing it all back home with a re-evaluation of who fares better on film: Dylan himself, or his imposters?"

Blogging for the Independent, David Nicholls revels in the "luxury of writing screen adaptations."

Richard Corliss in Time on Terence Davies's "Of Time and the City": "Out on DVD this week from Strand Releasing, this film essay is a grand work, immensely funny and pained and deeply felt. Get the movie, and watch it on a double feature with Guy Maddin's 'My Winnipeg.' You'll have two unforgettable trips through municipal memory."

Vince Keenan has been watching noir again, old and new.

"[T]he original 'Star Trek' still has a passion and vitality that partly stem from its cheapness," writes Salon's Andrew O'Hehir. "[T]he threadbare sets and effects created a coherent, suggestive atmosphere, and forced your attention onto the storytelling and the characters. It stands out, even after all this time, as something unique in television history."

Nathaniel R revisits 1984.

Andy Rector votes for Pedro.

Time Out London lists "50 essential sci-fi films."

The "weirdest cinema moment," at least for Graham Harman: "Godzilla fighting Mothra, and right in the middle of the fight, Mothra dies of old age. (!) Is this unprecedented in the annals of classical mythology?"

At the SpoutBlog, Christopher Campbell lists "10 Films Ruined by Voice-Over Narration."

The New York Observer's Sara Vilkomerson talks with Steven Soderbergh about "The Girlfriend Experience." For Karina Longworth, writing at the SpoutBlog, the film's "a book of sketches of the filmmaker's recent preoccupations and fascinations translated into snapshots of the city, worked out in slick video images that are at once austere and seductive."

Online viewing tip #1. At Cargo, Ekkehard Knörer has Azazel Jacobs's ad for MoMA, "I See."

Online viewing tip #2. Robert Pattinson, here at IFC, on "How to Be."

[Photo: Harvey Keitel faces off with Steve Buscemi in "Reservoir Dogs," Miramax Films, 1992]

Tags: Alejandro Adams, Azazel Jacobs, Bob Dylan, Chris Marker, Gone With the Wind, Harvey Keitel, Jennifer Lynch, Jim Jarmusch, McG, Molly Haskell, Outrage, Peter Bogdanovich, Robert Pattinson, Star Trek, Terence Davies, Tod Browning