MCN DVD
Quantum of Solace

If Che Guevara and Fidel Castro had been cutthroat capitalists, instead of communist revolutionaries, they might not have been required to hide from their enemies in the Sierra Maestra. They would have sat on the board of SPECTRE, whose tacticians wouldn’t have dreamed of hiding Soviet missiles in plain sight of American spy planes. Fifty years later, QUANTUM might have conspired to bring down governments around the world by serving as advisers to the swine in charge of AIG, Bear Sterns and Lehman Brothers. Why prop up a paper tiger like Saddam Hussein or Hugo Chavez, when the real enemies of freedom are walking around freely on Wall Street?

Also ... Watchmen: Tales of a Black Freighter, The 400 Blows, Big Stan , and more ...

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Wilmington on DVDs
A Secret, Dodes’ka-den, L'Innocente and more ... Plus This Week's Box Set
by Michael Wilmington

This is an excellent, shimmering family drama -- as good as anything the old “quality“ directors like Claude Autant-Lara or Jean Dellanoy, or writers like Aurenche and Bost, made -- and almost as good as Truffaut’s own WW2-set message movie The Last Metro. Of course, the older Truffaut was far more tolerant of than the angry, feared young critic he used to be. I think he would have loved this movie, for example -- and saluted his old assistant.

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DP/30: Tony Gilroy

A 30-minute video chat with the writer-director of Duplicity.

“ We rehearsed for a week, just the three of us, which I had never done… I didn’t rehearse on Clayton at all… just the three of us, never at performance level, just to make sure… it’s a real tempo movie… everything is about tempo… and making sure that everyone could swing and that everything was there.”

The video interview is here .... or click here for a downloadable podcast...

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Frenzy on the Wall:
The Brilliance of Hunger
by Noah Forrest

I understand that for a lot of folks across the Atlantic that there are sensitive politics at play in this film and I appreciate that; but truthfully, this is not a film that is overtly concerned with reasoning, but with action. When someone is willing to forego eating in order to starve themselves to make a political point, it doesn’t matter whether or not you agree with their message; what matters is that they are willing to hurt themselves for a cause.

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Weekend Report
by Leonard Klady

The trinity of new movies lined up as anticipated though only Knowing, starring Nicolas Cage, performed close to tracking estimates. The precognitive nail biter as expected drew in young males while I Love You, Man emerged as the weekend date movie and Duplicity tilted toward older women. On paper that sounded better than it played out and while the latter duo both earned good to rhapsodic reviews, each fell short of respective b.o. projections of $20 million and $18 million.
Weekend Estimates (Full List)

Wilmington on Movies
Duplicity, I Love You, Man, Knowing, and The Great Buck Howard

The kick of the movie is that we’re never really sure, until the end, who’s playing whom and why. Roberts uses her coltish, snappish, sexiness to seduce us as well as Ray, and Owen opens up a vein of comic vulnerability and schlemielhood beneath the Bondishness. So what’s the underlying theme here? Is sex just a career tool, beauty and charm just corporate come-ons? Duplicity is about smart, highly professional but amoral people, who may be stabbing each in the back at every turn. And, given the recent exposure of corporate duplicity in our own financial world, it’s a movie that’s become as timely as it is entertaining.

Duplicity		-	-	-
Knowing	-	-	-
I Love You, Man	-			-
The Great Buck Howard	-	-	-
Hunger					-
Sin Nombre	-		-	-
Last House on the Left	-	-	-	-
Race to Witch Mountain		-	-	-
Sunshine Cleaning		-	-		-
Tokyo Sonata	-	-	-		-
Everlasting Moments	-

Voynaristic
SXSW's Janet Pierson on Stepping Up to the Plate and Out of the Shadows
by Kim Voynar

"This job... I earned it by a life of being generous and engaged and caring about something deeply, and being lucky enough to pursue those interests. And when I got this job, there was this immediate sense of, instead of having to worry about how I was defined by the world, I had this immediate answer: I run this festival."

MCN DVD
Bolt

Highly entertaining, if slightly less ambitious than most Pixar-generated features, Bolt tells the story of a top Hollywood stunt dog who’s literally begun to believe the mythology behind his superhero character. After being separated from his human co-star, Penny (voiced by Miley Cyrus), who was kidnapped by the evil Dr. Calico (Malcolm McDowell), the cocky white shepherd (John Travolta) sets off on a cross-country rescue mission. Joining Bolt are an alley cat and ball-enclosed hamster. Their adventures en route, while not particularly extraordinary, are drawn well and consistently enjoyable to watch.

Also ... Pinocchio, Lilo and Stitch, Escape to Witch Mountain,, Elegy, and more ...
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Wilmington on DVDs
Synecdoche, NY, Faust and This Week's Box Set
by Michael Wilmington

Kaufman’s script is first rate -- ambitious and playful, funny and sad, brilliant and barmy. It was really cheated out of an original screenplay prize last Oscar-time, possibly because too many voters agreed with the shallow critical dismissals of “Synecdoche” as “pretentious.” Hah! We should have more movie pretensions as rich, audacious and imaginative as this.

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Frenzy on the Podcast:
Race to Witch Mountain Director Andy Fickman
by Noah Forrest

Noah talks to Race to Witch Mountain director Andy Fickman about action movies, the making of Anaconda and beating up The Rock.

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The Ultimate DVD Geek
The Spy Who Came in
From the Cold
by Doug Pratt

The black-and-white picture on the Criterion release is slick, smooth and spotless, and the monophonic sound is vivid. Since Martin Ritt's 1964 spy thriller is dependent upon mood and atmosphere to sustain its appeal as it lays the foundation of its narrative, Criterion's version is far more involving and far more effective. It isn't just that the movie looks and sound nicer. It's a better movie.

171 Movies Slotted For 16th Hot Docs

A First, Almost NSFW Glimpse Of Von Trier's Antichrist
And - Vatican Endorses Angels & Demons With Reported "Call To Boycott"
Plus - What's New In Christian-Themed And -Marketed Movies? A Christian-Hippy Coffeehouse Owner Who Dragged A Cross On His Back For Decades

"The biggest problem when journalists write about journalists is that there are often backstories unknown to readers."
La Finke Asserts That Triple-Blunderbuss Anti-Bloggotry Fusillade By Variety Result Of Her Turning Down February 27 Acquisition Overture
And - Poland Footnotes The "Emotional Grand Canyon"

LA Times Fishwraps 50 More Jobs, Including Pulitzered Transportation Writer

Former Wall Street Journal Managing Editor Argues Case For Charging For WSJ.Com

Sight & Sound Offers A Brief History Of Cinematography

"Caper films should feel exhilarating!"
Pope Pious V Chastises Duplicity For "All Smarts, No Fun"

Teasering The Funny Robert Byington's New Directors/New Films Entry Harmony And Me
While - Funny Or Die Sez This Is The Most Indie Movie... EVAR!

Japanese Film Renaissance Largely Financed By Nation's TV

GE Finds Increased Value In NBC Universal... But More In The Cash-Rich Cable Units Than The High Profile, Named Units

ShoWest To Give "Vanguard" Award To Michael Bay
While - "When I’ve posted this I’ll go & have a Turkish bath & stupefy my nerves in sweaty duration. My person is developing dirty habits."
Anthony Lane Trundles Through Beckett's Letters

"I didn't like it because it was so far removed from the motives of most of the people I know."
Without Specifying Those Motives, Tony Blair's Communications Advisor Tetchily Sez He's Bored, Bored, Bored With Politico Satire In The Loop

After Birthday Girl, Jez Butterworth Thought It Was Time To Become A Somerset Pig Farmer

UK's Daily Mail Group, With 113 Papers, Dishes 1,000 Jobs

The Daily Deadwood
What Killed The Ann Arbor News?
While - Three Other Mich Dailies, Flint Journal, Saginaw News, Bay City Times, Go To Thrice-Weekly
And - Lexington (Ky.) Herald Leader Sez -30- To 15% Of Staff
Plus - Star-Ledger Unpaid Furloughs Look Imminent
And - Gannett Sets Week's Furlough Before July For Most Employees

A. O. Scott Responds To Richard Brody's "Bill Of Particulars" Against His Sunday Thumbsucker On American Neo-Neorealism

Woody Allen And His Lobster Man

Soderbergh Talks About Porn And An Experience That Talks About Sex

Sylvia Plath's Son A Suicide

"Consummate industry insiders who enlisted when young and worked their way up now find themselves pushing 50 just as brutal problems are pushing back."

Warners Opens Vault For 150 (Out Of 5,000) Titles For On Demand DVDs
And - The Site
Plus - Another Perspective On The Service

Welcome To RichardCurtisLand

David Carr On One Alt-Weekly's Fiscal And Cultural Solvency: The AusChron

Art of The Title Sequence Parses Luhrmann's Romeo & Juliet

"The words of a critic talking about a film changes the footage. It is a transformative use. We did not use it in a flippant way. We are not trying to attack cinema, we are trying to expand cinema."
Does Fair Use Extend To Extensive Use Of Movie Clips In 8-Years-In-The Making Doc About Film Crickets?
While - Warner Music Disappears Thousands Of YouTube Vids In Rights Action

Ebert Still Glowing O'er Knowing, Baffled By Those Who Find It Blowing

Good Dr. Bordwell On The Simple And Precise Niceties Of Classical Filmmaking

Former Tribecan Peter Scarlet Lands At Abu Dhabi Middle East Fest

Picking 5 Best Roles From Weirdly Wonderful Ruth Gordon

Confessing An Obsession With John Willis' "Screen World," The Pre-IMDB Fact- And Pic-Filled Annual Cornucopia

A "Real-Time" Documentary On Afghanistan, Released Online In Bits As It's Made

Coens To Adapt True Grit, Hewing More To Dark Humor Of Charles Portis Novel Than John Wayne Oater

She's Still Julia Roberts

Hmmm... The Toronto Star Knew About "The Fempire" Six Months Before The NY Times...
Earlier - The "Fempire" Entourage Of Diablo Cody And Her Screenwriter Pals

Why Not Boo?

Romeo And Juliet's Verona Balcony Now Rentable For Weddings

Variety Gets Blogged Down
"For many in showbiz, reading these feuds has become a tawdry sideshow, the online equivalent of rubbernecking on the freeway at a car crash."
Industry Bloggers Vs. Bloggers, Not Yet In 3-D
And - "Playing gotcha games with toxic bloggers, as many have discovered, can have ominous consequences."
Pondering La Finke, Pope Pious Sez Industry Blogging's Rife With Subtext
And - "Like some other bloggers, Finke was in the unenviable position of debunking a rumor that she had started."
Fleming On The Perilous Rush To Post

Performers' Union Pension Fund Rocked By Market; Benefits To Be Reduced

"Who Threw The DVD From The Train?"

The Sunday LA Times
Explaining Tintin's European Success
And - Meet DreamWorks' "Captain 3-D"
With - Director Kiyoshi Kurosawa's Domestic Horror
And - Behind The Visual Art Of McQueen's Hunger

Disney Proteges On The March

Bruce McCall Explains His Future That Never Happened (video)

"Thoughtful films are lost on technology"
Sez Schenectady, NY Cricket
And - "Cinema experience needs improving"
Sez Fayetteville Cricket

The Sunday NY Times
"I'm pretty sure that no business can succeed in which it makes the customer hurl."
On Getting The Katzenberg Curveball Of Being Told You're Making Monsters Vs. Aliens In 3-D
And - Jeff Daniels And James Gandolfini Are "Gods Of Carnage"
Plus - Greg Mottola On Pop Song Savor Of Adventureland
And - Filmmaker In Pennsylvania Challenges Blasphemy Call Over His "I Choose Hell" ProdCo
With - Apple's Years With And Without Steven P. Jobs
And - The Depression According To William Wellman
With - Hollywood, Stumbling Toward Bollywood
And - Hoberman On "Rootless Cosmopolitan" Jules Dassin
Plus - Japanese Tipple Remake Of Sideways
And - Scott Goes To Well Again On American New, Nouveau, Nouvelle Neo-Neorealism
But - New Yorker's Brody Neo-Dissects Scott's Neo-Neo-Analysis

Previewing 9-Years-In-Making Rwanda Reconciliation Doc, My Neighbor, My Killer

Telugu Film Director Raj Aditya Thambi Found Dead In Secunderabad Hotel Room

The Post-It And Sharpie Construction Of 2009 Hot Docs

Vanessa Redgrave's 2007 Tribute To Her Daughter "Tash"

Comic Star Of Stage And Screen Dane Cook Allegedly Taken For Millions By Manager Half-Brother

More On The TribCo-Warren Beatty Dick Tracy Rights Case

Knowing "Killer Mimic" Rose Byrne

Spike Jonze's New Skate Vid

How H'wd Personal Shoppers Work The Downturn

Italian Bank Financing Shorts By Primo Film Registas About "Rediscovering A Civilization Of Dialogue And Not Losing Hopes"
While - Russian Directors Turn To State, Palms Upturned