I didn’t even watch the Indiana Jones DVD box set that came out in October 2003, so you can bet your ass I never would’ve paid for a limited deluxe “Indiana Jones Trilogy” DVD~set inside a “leather-bound box with additional deleted scenes, making-of docs, two large trade paperbacks and several CDs worth of John Williams’ scoring”…no effin’ way. But had this package been released I would have probably tried to score a freebie from Paramount Home Video or, failing that, tried to convince my homies at West L.A.’s Laser Blazer to let me rent one for a weekend. In any case, this is a good rant by Cinematical’s Mark Beall because…well, in his own words: “You are now looking at your piddly little boxed set with scorn and contempt, once again hating George Lucas and his fan-destroying DVD marketing. I wouldn’t fret if I were you, though, this [October 2003] set has double-dipping all OVER it, which means you’ll probably be able to pay another large chunk of cash for what you should have been able to buy the first time around.”

Phillip Noyce‘s Hotstuff, a stirring South African political drama based on the true story of Patrick Chamusso, an Average Joe laborer who became radicalized under the boot of apartheid in the early 1980s, is now being called Catch-a-Fire, according to a press release sent out by Noyce’s office about a filmmaking workshop that Noyce will hold for budding East African filmmakers in mid-August. One presumes that Hotstuff, a term used by an anti-terrorist Afrikaner policeman (Tim Robbins ) to describe Chamusso (Derek Luke), was dumped because of the sexual connotation. Catch-a-Fire will be released via Focus Features in October, and will most likely debut at the Toronto Film Festival.

U.S. journalist to native Parisian journalist: “I’m in Paris for the next three or four days. Any screenings happening tonight, Thursday and Friday? I need to see something new…running out of stuff to write about.” Native Parisian journalist to U.S. journalist: “I’ll be at the office in one hour and will check if there is something worth seeing. This is traditionally a slow week in terms of screenings, but there may be something.”

The full line-up for the Los Angeles Film Festival (6.22 through 7.2) won’t be announced until 5.31, but I’m trusting that John Scheinfeld‘s Who Is Harry Nillson (and Why Is Everybody Talkin’ About Him)?, which I saw at the Santa Barbara Film Festival earlier this year, will be included. (It’s been announced as an offering at next month’s Seattle Film Festival, with showings scheduled at Seattle’s Egyptian on 6.15 and 6.17). The LAFF roster so far includes The Devil Wears Prada , Little Miss Sunshine, Quinceanera and Leonard Cohen: I’m Your Man.

“Driven largely by smaller markets, RV” — the laugh-free, critically-dismissed Barry Sonnenfeld family comedy starring Robin Williams — “turned out to have the best legs of any major studio release this year, especially stronger than those of Mission: Impossible 3” — from Ben Fritz and Dave McNary‘s 5.30 Variety story, which isn’t so much about M:I:3‘s inability to crack $140 million domestic as the age-old axiom that there’s no accounting for taste.

Another pothole and a tough journey for director Baz Luhrman , who’s lost the services of leading man Russell Crowe in a forthcoming Australian period epic that reportedly still has Nicole Kidman on-board in the female lead role. I was intrigued when I first read about Luhrman’s stated intention to shoot the film’s big scenes in the organic, old-fashioned Lawrence of Arabia way, with a minimal use of CGI. Variety‘s Michael Fleming is reporting that Heath Ledger has “passed” as Crowe’s replacement, despite a recent N.Y. Post report saying he’s in.

French butchers and their customers are more fully acquainted with their gastronomical savorings — Wednesday, 5.31.06, 8:05 am.

(a) French apartment-building doors outweigh American ones by, I would guess, a scale or 5 or 6 to 1, and they’re a helluva lot taller — Tuesday, 5.30.06, 4:45 pm; (b) I’m presuming that I missed the news and/or reviews of a U.S. staging of Woody Allen’s Adulterers or I’m forgetting what the U.S. title was, but the play was published in France in early ’05 and a presentation is happening in Paris in late June — Wednesday, 5.31.06, 9:20 am; (c) backside of the old Paris Opera house — Wednesday, 5.30.06, 5:45 pm; (d) What do you do with chicken feet exactly? Boil them in a pot and make consomme? — Wednesday, 5.31.06, 8:07 am; (e) Malediction ; (f) legs — Wednesday, 5.31.06, 8:50 am.

“I have always had a voice and always known I could sing, but I was too shy to let it come out. I think that is the hardest thing you can do, to sing in front of people. When I finally let go and did it, I realized it is what I am most talented at and what I love to do the most” — Paris Hilton

There are more to movies than just form — content counts for a lot. I could list 100 well-regarded movies off the top of my head, docs and features alike, that you could arguably call boring or so-whatty in the way they’re shaped and/or paced, and yet they’re compelling as hell because of the current inside them. And yet here’s a columnist saying Al Gore and Davis Guggenheim‘s An Inconvenient Truth is “boring” and “not a movie“, “feels like it was pretty much assembled, not directed“, “Castor Oil is good for you…but that doesn’t make it taste any better” and so on. Sam Fuller often said the essence of a good movie is emotion, and it stuns me to consider that some can see Truth and just not feel it. As the Guardian‘s Jonathan Freedland put it in today’s edition, this film is “extraordinarily gripping…those who have known the arguments [about global warming] for years, intellectually, suddenly find themselves moved emotionally by Gore and stirred into action.” An emotional response to a portrait of a world being climactically suffocated and only ten or fifteen years shy of total devastation is not required of anyone — by all means, fly your blase flag, it’s a free country — but honestly…

Two witnesses have told me that Pan’s Labyrinth received the longest standing ovation of any film that played at Cannes when it showed last Saturday night. And now Salon‘s Andrew O’Heir is calling it “hands down the most exciting and original film I’ve seen here, and the one that had me in tears during its final scenes. Mexican director Guillermo del Toro is best known as the director of such fanboy classics as Hellboy, Mimic and Blade 2, which are cool enough in their way. Pan’s Labyrinth is something else again, and something far more powerful and original. Combining a fully convincing fantasy universe (drawn from a lifelong obsession with classic fairy tales) with a completely realistic story about the endgame of the Spanish Civil War, this film features a heart-rending performance from young Ivana Baquero as Ofelia, the teenage stepdaughter of a vicious Fascist officer (Sergi Lopez), who’s fighting a ragtag band of Republican guerrillas in a remote mountainous area. Ofelia’s ailing mother tells her that she’s too old for fairy tales, but the array of friendly and terrifying creatures she meets in the woods don’t seem to agree. If she can face a series of trials against the various monsters and demons of the region, she can prove herself as the King of the Underworld’s long-lost daughter. But neither the giant evil toad nor the eyeless child-eating gargoyle is as frightening as her stepdad, with his spit-shined shoes, his cracked watch and his revolver.”

For me, the Shohei Imamura film that seeped in deeper than the others was The Ballad of Narayama. The 1983 film is concisely summed up in this IMDB sentence: “In a small village in a valley everyone who reaches the age of 70 must leave the village and go to a certain mountain top to die.” Not what I’d call an enjoyable or soothing film, but an unforgettably strong one. I’m mentioning this because of the news of Mr. Imamura’s death from cancer, at age 79.