Subjects don’t come much more slippery than Jacques Vergès, the half-French, half-Vietnamese lawyer who first came to attention working for the FLN in Algeria’s war of independence and later defended such controversial figures as Klaus Barbie and Slobodan Milosevic. It’s hard to gauge exactly what Schroeder thinks of Vergès, who registers in new interviews as a charming man, driven equally by rabid anti-colonialism, a powerful belief in everyone’s right to a defence and an unshakeable desire for celebrity and success.

Paranoid Park is adapted, with reasonable fidelity, from Blake Nelson's young-adult novel. But in telling the tale of a Portland skater kid involved in the accidental death of a railroad bull, Van Sant comes close to inventing his own film language. The chronology is shuffled and the narrative dealt out as a succession of subjective impressions. Paranoid Park is both loose and structured, fluidly shot in 35mm, Super-8, and videotape by Chris Doyle and suavely jagged in its editing.

From the IMDB: 'It's remarkable that this film is not more popular. It successfully strips away the veneer of "civilisation" (false morality, good manners etc) and shows people as selfish, brutal animals, and depicts modern, asymmetrical warfare as a terrible nightmare where a group of brutish white thugs rape and murder a terrified, technologically backward society (nearly all of whom are defenceless/ poorly armed women and children) before finally being made to suffer a grim but deserved humiliation for their actions. Oh, actually, what am I saying?

An interesting (better) film from the maker of Demonlover. Highlights are a brooding performance from Asia Argento and some nice handheld camera. This from the NYT:

F for Fake (French: Vérités et Mensonges) is the last major film completed by Orson Welles. Initially released in 1974, it focuses on Elmyr de Hory's recounting of his career as a professional art forger; de Hory's story serves as the backdrop for a fast-paced, meandering investigation of the natures of authorship and authenticity, as well as the basis of the value of art.

While tweaking their current project, two young engineers accidentally discover that it has some highly unexpected capabilities--ones that could enable them to do and to have seemingly anything they want. Taking advantage of this unique opportunity is the first challenge they face. Dealing with the consequences is the next.

Beautiful Yu Hong leaves her village, her family and her fiancé to study in Peking. She discovers a world of intense sexual awakening and foolishly falls in love with another student, Zhou Wei. Their relationship turns into a dangerous game reflecting the politically unstable country they live in.

'In Summer Palace Lou nonetheless succeeds in finding a cinematic language that does more than summarize the important events of a confusing decade. He distills the inner confusion -- the swirl of moods, whims and needs -- that is the lived and living essence of history.' New York Times.

Coal miner Han Sanming comes from Fengyang in Shanxi to the Three Gorges town Fengjie to look for his ex-wife whom he has not seen for 16 years. The couple meet on the bank of the Yangtze River and vow to remarry. Nurse Shen Hong also comes to Fengjie from Taiyuan in Shanxi to look for her husband who has not been home for two years. The old township has been submerged, while a new town has to be built. Life persists in the Three Gorges - what should be taken up is taken up, what should be cast off is cast off.

Communist, anticolonialist, right-wing extremist? What convictions guide the moral mind of Jacques Vergès?

The sex is real in John Cameron Mitchell's Shortbus; only the setting—an animated New York cityscape, watched over by a fluorescent Statue of Liberty—is fake. To an extent, that describes the movie: a sexually daring, dramatically timid roundelay that employs unsimulated twosomes, threesomes, and even solos for skin flute in the service of subplots reminiscent of late-night-cable soap. Yet there's something refreshingly frisky and celebratory about Shortbus that offsets its flaws. It's a triple-X midnight movie with a heart of squarest gold.