Vice President Cheney, in defense of his tenure at Halliburton, referred viewers to the Web site www.FactCheck.com in last night’s televised debate with John Edwards. That URL actually redirects to www.georgesoros.com, which today leads with a personal message from George Soros that reads: “President Bush is endangering our safety, hurting our vital interests, and undermining American values.” A visit to the Annenberg Political FactCheck site, www.FactCheck.org — the site we assume Cheney intended to refer viewers to — today leads with the following summary of the debate: “Cheney wrongly implied that FactCheck had defended his tenure as CEO of Halliburton …

You thought The Passion of the Christ was controversial. Fine Media Group has announced the nationwide theatrical release of a feature-length animated film that chronicles the early life and teachings of the Prophet Muhammad. The release of Muhammad: The Last Prophet, directed by former Disney animator Richard Rich, is scheduled to coincide with Eid ul-Fitr, the holiday marking the end of the Islamic fast of Ramadan. The 90-minute film, produced by the creators of animated films as The King and I and The Fox and the Hound for Badr International will be shown in theaters in 37 U.S. and Canadian …

Via Eyebeam’s reBlog, check out Michel and Olivier Gondry’s video for “Behind”, the first single by the new French recording artist Lacquer, whose debut album Overloaded was released this summer.

In case you haven’t already heard: “Val Kilmer is Moses!” Starring in The Ten Commandments at the Kodak Theater in Hollywood, “Kilmer’s passive Moses appears to be following the commandment, ‘Thou shall not express passion,’ since he responds with somnabulistic detachment to every situation, even underplaying in the face of killer plagues and the parting of the Red Sea,” writes Variety. “This bland, static, overproduced and underdirected musical,” adds the New York Times “all but submerges the famous episodes from Moses’ life in an oily sea of pleasant but unremarkable pop music. The lengendary journey unfolds like a long, lumbering …

From a press release received today: “Geraldine Chaplin, Udo Kier and Michael Pare are the latest actors to join the ever-increasing cast of BloodRayne, the new film adaptation based on the popular video game of the same name. The trio join the previously announced cast that includes Sir Ben Kingsley, Terminator 3 star Kristanna Loken, Michelle Rodriguez, Matt Davis and Michael Madsen. “Now in production in Romania, where the film is set in the 18th century, BloodRayne is written by Guinevere Turner (American Psycho) and is produced and directed by Uwe Boll. Shawn Williamson of Vancouver-based Brightlight Pictures and Dan …

“New urban challenges, such as the shrinking of cities in Eastern Germany, call for new reflections. In a time of tight budgets the question of how to revive cities and regions with little means is becoming increasingly relevant.” Stuggart-based Media-Space 04, which runs October 22-24, will address these and other issues while atempting to bridge the gap between “great architectural and urban concepts… and micro-utopia[s]… arising out of accidentally developing free space.” In conjunction with the program, the non-profit organization Ward 5 will screen works by the alternative media pioneer Stan VanDerBeek. VanDerBeek started his career in the mid-’50s with …

The Independent Feature Project kicks off its 26th IFP Market, Conference & Expo in New York on Monday with a screening of Brad Anderson’s The Machinist, starring Christian Bale and Jennifer Jason Leigh; the director, actors and screenwriter Scott Kosar will participate in a panel discussion about the making of the film on Tuesday. Paramount Classics will release the film, in which Bale plays a man who has not slept in a year and who is slowly becoming delusional, later this fall. The Market will close on September 24 with a screening of Rodney Evan’s Brother to Brother, which will …

Nine short films will be presented with the twenty-five feature films and several special events in the 42nd New York Film Festival, which runs from October 1 to 17, 2004. Three of the nine shorts are from the United States and the other entries are from Argentina, France, Germany, Hungary, New Zealand, and the United Kingdom. Highway 403, Mile 39 (USA, 2004, 8 minutes) Mitch McCabe’s fractured, highly personal account of an accident, in which memory competes with fear in trying to establish what really happened. Shows before Triple Agent. The Patio (El Patio) (Switzerland/Argentina, 2003, 15 minutes) In Milagros …

Film festival favorites Whisky (from Uruguay; with multiple awards at Cannes, soon to screen at the Toronto Film Festival), Uniform (China, award winner at Rotterdam and Vancouver festivals), Buffalo Boy (Vietnam, to be screened at Toronto) and What’s A Human Anyway (Turkey, award at Istanbul Film Festival) are among the titles to be distributed in the U.S. in 2005 by The Global Film Initiative, it was announced today by Susan Weeks Coulter, Chairperson of the Initiative, and Holly Ornstein Carter, the Initiative’s Executive Director. All are part of the slate of developing-world films that comprise the Initiative’s 2005 Global Lens …

According to Variety, “Vincent Gallo will star in indie helmer Abel Ferrara’s Mary, an eclectic Bible-themed drama that Ferrara described [at the Venice Film Festival] as ‘a search for the heart of my religious upbringing.’” Gallo will reportedly play two roles in the film, including the star-director of a controversial film-within-the film about the life of Christ. The actress who plays Mary Magdalene in that film, and who later develops an obsession with her, is the central focus of Mary. “I had been thinking about this project since way before The Passion [of the Christ],” said Ferarra.