Slowly, a Princess Turns Into an Urchin. Michelle Pfeiffer is an indelibly acute screen presence in this rich, turbulent screen adaptation of Janet Fitch's best-selling novel. By Stephen Holden. [New York Times: Movies]

Delicate Moral Questions Under the Nazis in France. Heavy with incident and running nearly three hours, Bertrand Tavernier's new film follows the attempts of the French film industry to stay alive during the Nazi occupation. By Elvis Mitchell. [New York Times: Movies]

• Walt Disney's Credit Rating Downgraded [ Los Angeles Times ]
• Hollywood pins the donkey [ Washington Times ]
• Radio: FCC to hear 'EVD v. Disney [ New York Daily News ]
• Women make passes at me every day. It comes with the job, being 40ft high on the movie screen. Why do you thin [ This is London ]
• Movie studios put fake fan messages on Web [ Chicago Tribune ]
• MGM tests niche licensing effort [ Miami Herald ]
• Hollywood Slams Electronic Frontier Foundation [ Electronic Frontier Foundations ]

FCC Rejects Echostar, Hughes Merger: The Federal Communications Commission rejected on Thursday a proposed merger between Echostar Communications Corp. and Hughes Electronics Corp., scuttling an $18.5 billion deal that would have created the nation's largest pay-TV service. [Chris Van Buskirk's ITV Weblog]

Too Curious to Turn Down a Job Offer From Hitler. The access the directors of this documentary gained to Adolf Hitler's secretary is remarkable, and it compensates for a lack of filmmaking flair. By Elvis Mitchell.

It probably makes sense for filmmakers not to prod an 81-year-old woman too hard, and the gentleness extended to the subject of "Blind Spot" seems to grow out of such courtesy. That 81-year-old woman, though, is Traudl Junge, and the full title of the documentary, which plays today at the New York Film Festival, is "Blind Spot: Hitler's Secretary." She served as secretary to Adolf Hitler from 1942 through the end of the war. The access the directors gained to Ms. Junge is remarkable, and it compensates for a lack of filmmaking flair; it's concrete, cold and hard, with Ms. Junge speaking about being a few feet away from arguably the worst tyrant of the 20th century.

[New York Times: Arts]

'Bloody Sunday' in Londonderry. Paul Greengrass's magnetic and impassioned melodrama re-creates the 1972 outbreak of violence during a pro-I.R.A. civil-rights march in Londonderry, Northern Ireland. By Elvis Mitchell. [New York Times: Movies]

Dr. Bott strikes EyeTV distribution deal [MacCentral]

Sleepless and Wordless, He Leaves 'Em Speechless. In this nonstop short day's journey into nightmare, James Thiérrée turns a sleepless night into a masterly display of usually wordless comedy and circus arts.

With Charlie Chaplin as his grandfather and Eugene O'Neill as his great-grandfather, it seems only natural that James Thièrrèe should be pulled hither and yon by the forces of light and darkness.

Happily for audiences fortunate enough to make their way to the New Victory Theater before Sunday, the comic side of Mr. Thiérrée's pedigree prevails, even if a bit of Freud, Kafka, Dada and MoMA pop up now and again. The result is "The Junebug Symphony," a delightful and fanciful 80-minute intermissionless excursion into physical theater intended for audiences 8 and older.

By Lawrence Van Gelder. [New York Times: Arts]