The Screening Room

Predicatable battle lines are being drawn over Michael Moore's Sicko, and box office lines are forming for Ratatouille. But the film I can't get out of my head is La Jetee . New to DVD this week, Chris Marker's 27-minute sci-fi gem is one of the most perfectly realized sci-fi films I've seen. Made up entirely of stills (with one haunting exception), set in a post-Apocalyptic Paris, this is a time travel loop story conceived as an eternal existential crisis. Twelve Monkeys, the Terry Gilliam movie based on La Jetee, isn't bad. But do yourself a favor and check out the real deal.

Once is looking to be the sleeper hit of the summer, with a per-screen average (about $4,500) to shame lots of the big guns out there. If it keeps raking in the green, its Oscar chances grow exponentially. And yes, it helps that it's a really good movie, full of magical musical moments and the pangs of unrequited romance. See it if you haven't.

It's June, so what better time to talk Oscars, right? I finally saw Once last week, and it seems that all the hype is well deserved. But the thing that will stick with you is the music (it is a musical, afterall). Which brings us to the Oscar talk. If "Falling Slowly" doesn't score a nomination for best original song, there is no justice in this world. It's a beautiful song sung by the two leads in the film (Glen Hansard of the Frames and newcomer Marketa Irglova) and, this being a musical, the song is actually an important piece of the story -- unlike a lot of the winners of this category that just play over the closing credits. So my vote at the half-way point is "Falling Slowly" from Once. We'll see if that holds up between now and December.

The AP is reporting that Ocean's 13 stars George Clooney, Brad Pitt, Don Cheadle and Matt Damon have joined producer Jerry Weintraub in raising $9.3 million in humanitarian aid for Darfur. The war-torn area of Sudan has become a major cause for Cheadle, who starred in the Rwanda genocide film Hotel Rwanda. "There are only a few things we can do - protect them where we can, and provide food, water, health care and counseling," Clooney told the AP. "We’re just trying to get them to live long enough to get to the next step." (photo credit: Warner Bros.)

Wanna hear Bruce Willis talk about doing stunts and kicking butt at the age of 52? Check out our very first movies podcast featuring Mr. Yippie-ki-yay himself.

One film we didn't get to review last week - that's right, we can't hit 'em all - is Paprika, the mind-bending anime showing at the Dallas and Plano Angelikas. One look at the poster art tells you this is one eye-tickling ride. Directed by Satoshi Kon, the manga mastermind behind Millennium Actress and Tokyo Godfathers, Paprika uses the age-old theme of blurring dreams and reality to conjure the kinds of images - a marching band of frogs, china dolls run amok - that you find only in, well, anime. Free associative and endlessly creative, it's well worth a look.

The sixth annual Asian Film Festival of Dallas will unspool Aug. 23-30 at the Magnolia, and the main attraction looks mighty promising. Finishing the Game is a fanciful imagining of the quest to find Bruce Lee's replacement for the unfinished Game of Death (the one where Lee squares off against Kareem). Even better: it's directed by Justin Lin, the guy who flipped Asian male stereotypes upside down in Better Luck Tomorrow. Game had strong buzz out of Sundance, and it's opening night slot is a coup for one of the better programmed and organized festivals in town.