1. "Crowded House": Anthony Kaufman's Village Voice article on the indie-film distribution scene; his blog follow-up to the piece; and Reeler editor S.T. VanAirsdale's response.

["Gotham may be famous for its indie films, but the exhibition landscape is an increasingly contentious and competitive space, with too many movies struggling to stay alive on too few screens."]

["There's been a small flood of documentaries about the Iraq war in the last two years, and movie-industry pundits have ruminated over why they've largely failed to click at the box office. Besieged with depressing war news at every turn, American filmgoers, it is said, would rather see something else. That may be, but Charles Ferguson's superlative No End in Sight begs to be considered the electrifying exception—the Iraq movie everyone should see, and surely the one to see if you're only going to see one."]

["Germany, 1929—a period of relative calm and prosperity in the Weimar Republic. That brief period between the wars, when the market had not yet crashed, and the Nazis had captured less than 3% of the votes in the last election. Five young filmmakers, unknowns at the time, but who would go on to have illustrious careers in Hollywood, collaborate on an experimental feature—part documentary, part narrative, and starring a cast of five Berliners playing themselves. Dubbed "A film without actors", People On Sunday (Menschen am Sonntag) is a surprisingly modern work that is a major document in the history of German avant-garde cinema. "]

[""At first, it was so white it looked like fairyland," said Donna Garde, superintendent of the park about 45 miles east of Dallas. "Now it's filled with so many mosquitoes that it's turned a little brown. There are times you can literally hear the screech of millions of mosquitoes caught in those webs.""]

["Both on a conceptual level and in practice, Cruising buys into and advances some of the most dangerous myths about homosexuality and the homosexual lifestyle—and you don't need Vito Russo's The Celluloid Closet to tell you that. Before today, I only knew William Friedkin's film, an adaptation of New York Times editor Gerald Walker's 1970 novel of the same name, as That Film We Don't Speak Of, and my first exposure to its skuzzy, admittedly transfixing audio-visual atmosphere was through the two featurettes (from the upcoming Warner Home Video DVD release) we were told we should preview prior to press screenings for the film here in New York City. Walking out at the end of yesterday's screening, still suffering from a rather nasty cold, I felt as if I had been fisted—without the Crisco!"]

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"Links for the Day": Each morning, the House editors post a series of weblinks that we think will spark discussion. Comments encouraged.