Karina on SpoutBlog

Juno is honored as a work of “Cinema For Peace” on the same night a Czech party runs out of beer. Mike Jones enumerates those, and other signs of the apocalypse.
Brit Withey isn’t feeling the doomsday vibe??????he’s just bored. “So, halfway into the festival and so far, at least the competition screenings have been met with a general ho-hum-ness.”
Unfortunately, it looks like Brit is not alone. With half the competition slate already screened, There Will Be Blood is apparently the clear front-runner for the Golden Bear, but no one wants to give an award that’s supposed to be about discovery to an Oscar-nominated Hollywood film.
Variety offers a pre-screening feature on Errol Morris’ Abu Ghraib doc Standard Operating Procedure. Says Michael Barker of the film’s distributor, Sony Classics: “One of the things that I love about the film is that you watch it and you are in the shoes of the common soldier who committed all these acts, and you tell yourself, ???That could be me.???” We doubt such testimony will win over skeptics, but early word from the choir (ie: my super-liberal Facebook friend) is positive.