Screening Gotham: All-Positive Friday!

As per tradition, some of the week's more upbeat movie news of note from around New York:

--Don't let your holiday weekend start before reading a pair of the NYT critics' love letters to the Cannes Film Festival -- quite literally in one case (actual headline: "Dear France, Thanks for Being You. With Gratitude and Affection, the Rest of Us.") and today even warmer and more diffuse: "This has been a week in which it has been blissfully easy to confirm your love for cinema, not your pessimism about the state of a beloved art," writes Manohla Dargis. Awww! Looks like someone wasn't at the Pirates of the Caribbean press screening Monday night.

--A tipster writes that congrats are in order for Luke Y. Thompson (right), the "writer/critic/actor/director/pundit" who recently noted this "LYT awards news!" on his Web site: "Luke Y. Thompson was recently inducted into the Los Angeles Film Critics Association. He is also the ONLY film critic nominated for a Los Angeles Press Club Award. Humorless New York bloggers are hereby invited to kiss his ass." That's bound to be a short list; after reading the nominated piece, I think everybody here gets the joke. And speaking of asses, Luke, take yours to the barber and tell him you're tired of looking like an asshole.

--For all the shit I give Caryn James, it's important to attribute good work when it's there. And despite her dateline malapropism from "Grand Central Station," her video dispatch from the terminal's New York cinema exhibition (opening today) is quite good, even enjoyable. The corresponding piece doesn't break any new ground, but hey, it's Friday. We'll let it slide.

--The crew at The L Magazine skipped a comprehensive summer movie review this year, eschewing web-slinging, seafaring piles of franchise dogshit in favor of something a little more selective -- what they actually, you know, recommend. There's some funk-faking going on (The Invasion, Harry Potter and Whatever the Hell It Is), but the courageous contrarian thwacking of The Simpsons touches my heart.

Posted at May 25, 2007 9:18 AM