If you're a fan of Red Road, and were itching for the next part of the trilogy, I'm sorry to say that this isn't it. (Is the trilogy plan even continuing?!) It is, however, the second feature for the film's director, Andrea Arnold. Variety reports that Artificial Eye has pre-bought the UK rights to her next film, Fish Tank.

Unfortunately, the piece then goes on to talk about Eye's other projects and executive info, rather than the film. So, we've got this mysterious second picture. However, thanks to the Internet, I can fill in a tiny hole at least. According to MoveThat.com, Arnold was/is looking for her female lead for the film. "We're looking for young looking, white 16-19 year old girls who speak with strong London/South East accents who have attitude and who can street dance. Female breakers, poppers, lockers, and krumpers all very welcome."

UK readers out there, you'll have to fill us North American folk in on the slang, but I think it's safe to say that this is going to be some girl-headed film about dancing. Unfortunately, because of the language request, it'll probably also have really annoying English subtitles that don't match up with the words like Red Road.

That's all Google is allowing me to find right now, but please comment below if you've heard anything else about this feature.

For a few years now, Cinema 16 has been packaging great short films on Region 2 DVDs for European release, but as far as I can tell, this new "European Short Films" collection, with 16 short films on two discs, is the first to get the Region 1 treatment. This new set culls shorts from various previous collections; I'm not sure why they just didn't re-transfer the European DVDs for American release, but no matter. What we have here is a wide selection of shorts from many decades, by filmmakers both famous and unknown. Probably not too surprisingly, the best shorts come from folks you've never heard of. Most of these folks provide commentary tracks for their work (almost all of it in English).

Like many authors, filmmakers sometimes try the short form in order to "practice," which ultimately shows a kind of lack of respect for the medium; it's seen as a stepping stone to features rather than a form in itself. But it also sorts those filmmakers that are good at the short form from those that aren't. Ridley Scott's first film, Boy and Bicycle (1965), starring his little brother Tony as a young boy, is a particular example of a failed attempt. Scott admits a fascination with John Schlesinger (Billy Liar) at the time, and his endless attempts at arty realism are painfully dull. This film was also released on Paramount's The Duellists DVD, and both times I sat down to watch it, I couldn't make it through. It's a pretty long 27 minutes.

A glance at DVD Journal's release calendar reveals a jam-packed week. My personal pick is Jafar Panahi's superb Offside, which manages to pack drama, humor, tension, sports, feminism and social commentary into an Iranian girl's burning desire to watch an important soccer match in person. It's entertaining too! Cinematical's Erik Davis was positive in his review and so was Jeffrey M. Anderson.

If your cinematic diet includes thrillers, check out Antibodies (from Germany) or Red Road (from the UK). Antibodies borrows an idea from Silence of the Lambs by featuring a serial killer who will only talk to a local bumpkin cop. The cop has become obsessed with catching the killer of a local girl, to the point that his family is falling apart and he's suffering from nightmares. As a whole, the film doesn't completely work, the narrative crumbling as it dives deeper into madness, but director Christian Alvart has a terrific visual sense. Andrea Arnold's Red Road is a quieter work that relies more on the slow building of tension. Jeffrey M. Anderson's positive review has all the plot details you'll need.

In the indie comedy/drama aisle, we have Year of the Dog, written and directed by Mike White, which received nods of approval from both Scott Weinberg and Kim Voynar; when those two agree, it's an automatic "must rent." Molly Shannon stars as a lonely women dealing with the loss of her beloved canine companion. Joe Swanberg's second feature, LOL, gets the deluxe treatment from new distributor Benten Films. Karina Longworth quite liked it when she saw it at SXSW last year -- and Mr. James Rocchi offers a brand-new review right here.

Though I haven't seen either The Beautiful Washing Machine (from Malaysia) or The Blossoming of Maximo Oliveros (from the Philippines), both received good reviews. For example, David Ng of the Village Voice said Washing Machine "demands at least two viewings" and Dennis Lim wrote that Maximo was "further evidence of a mini renaissance in the country's long dormant cinema."

Jackie (Kate Dickie) looks a bit like Chrissie Hynde in a kind of homely/sexy way. She sits gazing into a bank of video monitors. For her job, she watches, godlike, all the people who pass by the myriad of video cameras planted all about Glasgow. If trouble arises, she makes a call and someone (hopefully) shows up on the scene. It seems like the perfect job for her, hovering over other people's lives without the slightest interest in her own. She appears lost, or hollow, and the director Andrea Arnold pulls off the admirable task of making her interesting without immediately giving away her secrets. When those secrets finally come out, they do so in such a way that avoids the obvious "Shyamalan twist." Refreshingly, Red Road is a movie about a person and not a gimmick.

The catalyst comes when Jackie thinks she sees a familiar face in the monitors. We get a flicker of recognition and nothing more. We don't know if the man is a lover, a killer or even whether the man would recognize Jackie if he saw her. After work, Jackie begins to haunt the dingy neighborhood in which the man was sighted. Graffiti sprayed onto crumbling walls is more prevalent than actual intact, livable structures, and the inhabitants seem to be in a perpetual bad mood. After hanging out in a couple of sleazy cafes and bars, she manages to slip into a party at the man's apartment. He notices her and asks her to dance. He begins seducing her and she allows herself to be seduced. Or does she? It would be a disservice to continue any further with the plot, even though only part of the movie's pleasures lies in its discovery.

Late in Red Road, a man and a woman are alone, late at night on the 24th floor of the council flat buildings found on the street that gives the film its name. All you can see from the window is the bruise-yellow glare of the streetlights and the grey of concrete and urban sprawl. You don't see nature, but you hear it -- the high, shrieking barks of the local fox population eking out survival in the hollows between the concrete. It's a keening, sad sound -- the instincts of wild beings constrained by the structure of the modern world -- and it's hard to tell if the foxes are crying out in defiance or in agony. The same could be asked of the man and woman listening.

In Glasgow, Jackie (Kate Dickie) works at the city's central CCTV station -- watching and monitoring the streets of the city and the lives of its citizens. She watches dispassionately; if anything of interest happens, she calls it in to the appropriate city service, dispatching an ambulance or summoning police as needed. It's a data-processing job, and she seems to do it well. But one day one of her many screens shows someone familiar, and that spurs her to a different kind of reaction: not professional, but personal. In time, Jackie's relationship to the man, Clyde (Tony Curran), becomes understood, but it hardly becomes clear.