Two films to consider:
2046 is a fascinatingly visual film (nice collage of stills here.) with an unconventional narrative flow that is unique and yet almost soothingly familiar. Topic? Uhh, storytelling, memory, love, relationships.

Me You and Everyone We Know deals with (among many other things) the beauty (or the art) in the ordinary and the everyday – finding what is beautiful and fascinating in what is ordinary, and taking simple steps to make the ordinary beautiful and fascinating.

Both are complex and rich films which I am not trying to review or summarize here. Merely recommend. Reviews of 2046 and Reviews of MYaEWK

Collision Course is a ridiculous movie starring Jay Leno as a slick cop in a convertible. Imagine seeing him act? Yikes. About as horrible as Bill Maher as a hero-in-the-future cop.

The New York Times writes about $1 DVDs, which are not bootlegs but simply films which have lapsed into the public domain for one reason or another.

Digiview actually paid for the rights to ‘American Vampire,’ a kind of ‘Beach Blanket Beowulf’ starring Carmen Electra of ‘Baywatch.’ Whether anyone will pay for the DVD is unclear. ‘Just because it’s a dollar doesn’t mean people want it,’ said Mr. Rosenberg, of Home Media Retailing. Indeed, a nickel might be too much for a DVD of Raymond Burr in ‘Bride of the Gorilla.’

Mr. Rosenberg said the novelty of dollar DVD’s would soon fade. ‘There’s a great danger of overdistribution,’ he said. ‘This is a business without much room for profit – either in the making or the selling. A year from now, most cheap DVD’s will be gone from stores.’ One ‘Killer Shrew’ alumnus hopes to cash in while the cheapness lasts. ‘This craze could build an audience for the sequel I’m writing,’ said Mr. Best, who played the stuttering Sheriff Rosco P. Coltrane on ‘The Dukes of Hazzard.’

He has nearly finished a first draft of ‘Killer Shrews II.’ The plot is fiendishly simple. ‘I return to Shrew Island to rescue a bunch of teenagers,’ he reported. ‘A new mad scientist has turned herself into a human shrew that not only chews, but swims.'”

Rise Lord Vader has become a catchphrase for the last Star Wars film, appearing in ads, and reportedly even in the trailer. But the scene where he is commanded to RISE doesn’t use that line. Kind of a drag, since the PR machine has got us waiting for it.

Vague spoiler in terse review. It was alternately cool and cheesy. When Anakin becomes Darth Vader, with the black helmet sliding into place, and you hear the mechanized breathing, it was pretty spine-touching cool. But moments later the actor in the suit stands up (and yes, he’s just had surgery etc. so will be wobbly but still) and moves in no way that resembles the Vader we know. It just looked…wrong. Moments later he is told something that causes him to scream “Nooooooooooooooooooooo!!!” (and I’d swear the camera pulled far back and up at that time) – something that the Simpsons have rendered into an absolutely ludicrous cliche and only a moron would try to get away with that in a movie we’re supposed to take seriously.

This is pretty exciting – SFist published my thoughts about the new film Palindromes. Cool!

Watched a bunch of movies in the last week or so.

Out of five stars

Oldboy ****
The 39 Steps (Hitchcock’s version of course) ****
Picnic at Hanging Rock *
Appleseed *
Soylent Green (it’s people, did you know?) **
Infernal Affairs ***

Stockstock is a film festival consisting of short films made entirely from stock footage. We select a limited amount of stock footage and give it to you – your job is to make it into some kind of short video presentation.

Registration begins on Mar. 22!

Another winning entry from last summer’s StockStock festival is posted here, another is here, a third can be seen from here, and a fourth is here.

Someday I’ll figure out how to get ours down to a 9M file or something so we can post it somewhere. Hmm….

Pleix films are beautiful, disturbing jams of consumer culture and technology. (as seen on BoingBoing

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Appearing soon at the SF Indie Film Festival, Value-Added Cinema “a finely tuned montage of egregious product placement shots…insinuated into dialogue, thrown front and center like loss leaders, even engulfing entire features until they become little more than cross-promotions for toy manufacturers”