Reviews of 'Apocalypto'

Mel Gibson's new film, Apocalypto, looks to be one of the biggest movie events of the year. It opened today, and the reviews are all over the map, but generally positive (with warnings about its graphic violence).

The movie is set during the last years of the Maya dynasty in Central America. I've always been fascinated by Mayan culture, and Gibson's movie won't help me there, but I'll probably try to see it. Here are photos of the Mayan temples of Tikal I shot some years back.

• San Jose Mercury News: Mayan Melodrama (review) and Today's Mayas are wary of movie

• A.O. Scott in the NY Times: The Passion of the Maya

• Kurt Loder at MTV News: 'Apocalypto': Action Central

and more.

What if Halliburton's CEO came clean about Iraq?

Halliburton attacks Robert Greenwald's new documentary about war profiteering, "Iraq for Sale," after acknowledging that they haven't seen the film. Here's the Iraq for Sale blog, and a silly video spoof, What if Halliburton's CEO came clean? Greenwald is en route to Washington, D.C., where he'll hold a press conference on Monday.

Early reviews of 'Iraq for Sale'

Early reviews of Robert Greenwald's new documentary, "Iraq for Sale: The War Profiteers."

$100,000 to amateur film competition winner

If you have a homemade film or documentary you would like to get visibility for, and possibly catch the eye of Hollywood, then check out FYLMZ.com. It was created by Tony Vidmer because he had a hard time finding a film distributor for his movie, High Roller: The Stu Unger Story. He decided to make it easier for aspiring filmmakers to post their productions on his site in order to get noticed.

Now he's started the Fylmz Competition, which begins Sept. 1. Submit your short movie or feature film by Nov. 1. They say they'll pay out a grand prize of $100,000.

Hollywood's nightmare: disintermediation

Sunday NY Times: Hollywood Clicks on the Work of Web Auteurs. Excerpt:

“[The Hollywood studios'] nightmare is a direct feed from moviemaker to audience,” said Walter Kirn, a frequent contributor to The New York Times who has been serializing his novel “The Unbinding” on www.slate.com and saw one of his other novels, “Thumbsucker,” adapted to the big screen. “Their only trump cards are that they are pools of capital for making expensive things. Otherwise they are cut out of the action.”

Geoffrey Gilmore, director of the Sundance Film Festival, said: “We are probably at a period of greater change than we have had in the past 50 years. The industry is scared about what they should make and how they should deliver it. What’s the next step? Where’s the development coming from?” ...

Why documentary filmmakers lean left

New York Times: An Uprising on the Right in a World That Leans Left. Or, why documentary filmmakers -- whose job is to uncover the truth -- rarely are right-wing whack jobs.

'Who Killed the Electric Car?'

New documentary: "Who Killed the Electric Car?'' A question we should all be asking. (Fortunately, there are signs of a revival, at least here in California.)

Filmmaker puts movie in hands of soldiers

San Francisco Chronicle: Soldiers in Iraq with cameras reveal themselves, the war

and: Filmmaker puts movie in hands of soldiers. Documentary gives unique angle on war.

A buzz-generating documentary opening today in the Bay Area presents a new way to approach the national conversation about the Iraq war, a debate that often gets derailed over whether the real story is being told there.

The filmmaker's solution: Give video cameras to the soldiers on the ground and let them roll tape for a year, nearly uncensored.

The result is "The War Tapes," a 94-minute film culled from 1,100 hours of footage, which is revolutionary on several levels. Not only is the film created in the same raw, user-generated manner that is powering the explosion of blogs and video-sharing sites on the Internet, it is bypassing the traditional media gatekeepers who some soldiers -- and, for different reasons, anti-war activists -- think are not telling the war's true stories. ...

A leading pioneer of citizens' journalism says the model of the "The War Tapes" -- amateur filmmakers being edited via the Internet by professional editors -- could change the face of storytelling. Not only do viewers see the bloodied faces of dead insurgent Iraqis in "The War Tapes," but they see the frustration, fear and confusion on the faces of American soldiers. Neither image is a staple of the network evening news.

"This is not a piece of traditional journalism, but it is a brilliant example of journalism with great power," said Dan Gillmor, director of the nonprofit Center for Citizen Media, affiliated with the UC Berkeley Graduate School of Journalism. "Its power is in its authenticity. You know that the guys on the ground are living with what they're (filming)." ...

Coming attraction: Movies on iTunes

NY Times: A Coming Attraction: Movies on iTunes.

Consumers have been willing to spend 99 cents to buy Shakira's "Hips Don't Lie" or $1.99 for an episode of "Desperate Housewives" from iTunes.

Now Steven P. Jobs is betting they will also pay $9.99 to download "The Godfather" to play on their iPods. ...

Um, no. Not on those little screens. (And I own a video iPod.) Things will change when there's a high-quality screen at about twice the size we have now.

'Inconvenient Truth' reviews

Some reviews of the strikingly important new documentary An Inconvenient Truth, which opened widely last night:

Blue Oregon: "It’s a remarkable, deeply powerful film."

LA Times: "Critics have labeled Al Gore and his decades-long crusade to curb global warming as 'alarmist.' But the documentary 'An Inconvenient Truth,' which captures Gore delivering a multimedia presentation he has given some 1,000 times since 1989, is highly persuasive."

Roger Ebert in the Chicago Sun-Times: 4 stars. He writes.

Global warming is real.

It is caused by human activity.

Mankind and its governments must begin immediate action to halt and reverse it.

If we do nothing, in about 10 years the planet may reach a "tipping point" and begin a slide toward destruction of our civilization and most of the other species on this planet.

After that point is reached, it would be too late for any action. ...

This is not a boring film. The director, Davis Guggenheim, uses words, images and Gore's concise litany of facts to build a film that is fascinating and relentless. In 39 years, I have never written these words in a movie review, but here they are: You owe it to yourself to see this film. If you do not, and you have grandchildren, you should explain to them why you decided not to.

Am I acting as an advocate in this review? Yes, I am. I believe that to be "impartial" and "balanced" on global warming means one must take a position like Gore's. There is no other view that can be defended.

Washington Post review: In 'Truth,' A Planetary, And Personal, Sea Change

Michael O'Sullivan in the Washington Post: Gore and Guggenheim: Speaking 'Truth' to Power

A.O. Scott in the New York Times (review behind a pay firewall): "One of the most exciting and essential movies of the year. Seriously."

Meanwhile, what does the right wing offer on the subject of global warming? A call to hit the beach and ignore the problem.