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.

A sublime little Italian place on rue Lepic, mainly frequented by the Montmartre locals and almost directly across from the apartment building where Vincent Van Gogh lived with his brother Theo (54 rue Lepic) from 1886 to 1887 — 5.29.06, 5:55 pm.

And (a) there aren’t enough blue doors on the front of apartment buildings in the U.S. — Monday, 5.29.06, 4:45 pm; (b) rue Lepic facing west in the late evening — Monday, 5.29.06, 11:25 pm; (c) menu at another Italian place in Montmartre — Monday, 5.30.06, 5:45 pm; (d) remnant of Monday evening’s dinner at an African place — Monday, 5.29.06, 10:45 pm; (e) Amelie cafe on rue Lepic, south of rue d’Abesses; (f) electricite — Tuesday, 5.30.06, 5:50 pm; (g) Corner of rue Damremont and rue Tourlaque, facing north — Tuesday, 5.30.06, 6:05 pm.

L.A. Times writer Deborah Netburn delivers a sum-up of Marie-Antoinette reactions, including one from yours truly.

Director Clint Eastwood has promised that Flags Of Our Fathers and Red Sun, Black Sand, which will both hit screens later this year, “will attempt to show for the first time the suffering of both sides during 36 days of fighting in early 1945 that turned Iwo Jima into a flattened wasteland. He describes Red Sun, shot in Japanese and with a largely Japanese cast, as his attempt to understand the country’s soldiers. ‘I think those soldiers deserve a certain amount of respect,’ he said. ‘I feel terrible for both sides in that war and in all wars. A lot of innocent people get sacrificed. It’s not about winning or losing, but mostly about the interrupted lives of young people. These men deserve to be seen, and heard from.'” — Justin McCurry in Tokyo, writing for the Guardian in a piece than ran two days ago.

You can now scroll down through the entire present-month’s output (in this instance, May’s) by clicking on “Choose Month” in the search engine just above “Discland”. I’m mentioning this only because you couldn’t access all of May in one fell swoop until yesterday. Thanks again to the tireless Jon Rahoi of San Francisco for putting this function in.