Up against the man

Just Rep this go-around in the Weekly. Slim pickins again, folks, but with stand-outs being a screening of Jules Dassin's boffo prison break pic Brute Force inside the Eastern State Penitentiary, the cap-off to a month of Douglas Sirk, and a relatively puny version of this year's Human Rights Watch International Film Festival.

Other things have happened recently, too:
* Ismail Merchant has died, and along with him one of the more ubiquitous cinematic brand names.
* Cannes ended with Kustirica et al. feting les Dardennes. I called that shit.
* Richard Schickel and Richard Corliss joined heads to inundate the world with yet another 100 Best Ever list, characteristically a clumsy marriage of Moves We'd Be Hanged For Not Mentioning and Self-Consciously Eccentric Choices. Salon retaliates by regurgitating Andrew O'Hehir's equally ho-hum list from 2002.
* I haven't seen a single movie since Sunday.