Best known for his bleak and violent previous films, This is England and Dead Man's Shoes, filmmaker Shane Meadows makes an uncharacteristically charming departure. In Somers Town, two teenage boys become friends. Shy Polish emigre Marek (Piotr Jagiello) and brutish, homeless Tomo (Thomas Turgoose) seem like unlikely companions, but after their paths cross in a small coffee shop in London, they can't seem to shake one another.

Somers Town screens for two weeks at the Film Forum in New York City from July 15 - July 28 before a DVD release by art house distributor Film Movement. Read Marcy's review.

Fernando Eimbcke's follow-up to Duck Season is a wry comedy laid out in steady shots that seem to be more interested in location (nowhere near Lake Tahoe) than in the characters that traverse them on foot, car, or bicycle. Slowly, something like a story develops as the film's hero Juan (Diego Catano) tries to repair a car he wrecked off screen. Jurgen first caught Lake Tahoe at the Berlin Film Festival in 2008. Here's the trailer.

Eimbcke will do a Q&A following the film's July 10 Anthology Film Archives premiere in New York at the 7pm screening and will also introduce the 9pm screening on Friday and Saturday evenings. He will speak with Gavin Smith, editor of Film Comment, about his work the following day at the New Museum in New York as part of the ongoing TropiChat series.

Over the years, independent filmmaker Michael Almereyda has acquired a cult following. He directed Twister, an adaptation of Mary Robison's novel Oh!, featuring Crispin Glover as Howdy, the dysfunctional brother in a dysfunctional family. Almedreyda also helmed a modern-day interpretation of Hamlet with a cast that included Ethan Hawke, Bill Murray, and Julia Stiles.

But in today's marketplace, his newest film New Orleans, Mon Amour never saw the light of theatrical release. Instead, Almereyda's post-Katrina recovery story will go the route of video on demand (VOD). New Orleans, Mon Amour will make its debut on July 15 on Cable VOD via Cinetic, followed by portals iTunes and Amazon VOD. Variety's Anne Thompson has an exclusive clip from the film.

Meanwhile, Mean Magazine is beginning a new series called Cinemash which re-creates scenes from well-known movies in short online films. Zooey Deschanel and Joseph Gordon-Levitt, who will next be seen together in (500) Days of Summer, kick off the series this Tuesday, with Marc Weber's Summer. The two actors will interpret a scene from the cult classic Sid and Nancy. Microsoft's Zune will make the Cinemash films available for download; the shorts will also stream on MSN this summer.

Destino, a lovely and appropriately surreal collaboration by Salvador Dali and Walt Disney, is available in its entirety on YouTube -- -- at least for now. Watch it while you can!

You might have heard that legendary choreographer Pina Bausch has died. She was 68 years old. Now Wim Wenders has stopped production on his 3D dance film Pina. YouTube has a clip from Pedro Almodovar's Talk to Her, featuring Bausch.

Speaking of Almodovar: here's the English-language trailer for his new film Broken Embraces, starring -- once again -- Penelope Cruz.

The Film Society of Lincoln Center in New York will be Revisiting Tarkovsky from July 7 - 14. We're especially excited about the chance to see Andrei Rublev on the big screen and curious about the documentary Meeting Andrei Tarkovsky, billed as "touching, highly personal and provocative record of the lingering effects of Tarkovsky on an extraordinary range of individuals."

Myna Joseph's Man, a short about two sisters' coming-of-age, was one of the most memorable films at last year's New Directors/New Films. We just found out that you can watch it online.

New York isn't wrong to call Man "unsettling," but if you want really unsettling (in a good way), you should take a look at the trailer for RoboGeisha, from Machine Girl director Noboru Iguchi.

Finally: "Great Moments in Cinema Ruined by Cookies."

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