CineAction articles from January 2007

CineAction archives from January 2007

This issue is centred on the idea of sexuality.(Editorial)
January 1, 2007... This issue is centred on the idea of sexuality, which is so intrinsic to the cinema. We received a diverse range of responses, covering both contemporary and classical cinema, mainstream and avant-garde. In addition, it contains 2006...

The silent, black centre in the early features of Claire Denis.
January 1, 2007... French films, like French culture, have a reputation on the international circuit for being talky, exhibiting the cleverness of exchange, a love of debate. Within this tendency towards elegantly wordy, intellectually demanding work (1), the...

Fellini's forgotten masterpiece: Toby Dammit.
January 1, 2007... Fellini's Toby Dammit, a forty minute film made in 1968, is one of three short films adapted from stories by Edgar Allan Poe that were distributed together in Italy as Tre Passi Nel Delirio, in France as Histories Extraordinaires, and in...

The strange pleasure of The Leopard Man: gender, genre and authorship in a Val Lewton thriller.
January 1, 2007... The recent release by Turner Home Entertainment of the entire Val Lewton horror collection on DVD is both a cause for celebration and an incentive to reevaluation. As one film (The Ghost Ship, 1943) has long been unavailable, this is the first...

A tribute to Robin Wood.
January 1, 2007... Robin Wood has been with CineAction since the beginning--a crucial part of the founding editorial collective in 1985. Robin has retired as one of our editors but will continue as a regular contributor. As a tribute to Robin and his...

Some tentative responses to directors I value.(TORONTO INTERNATIONAL FILM FESTIVAL)
January 1, 2007... I am not the ideal festivalgoer. So many of my friends and fellow critics seem able to cope, quite happily, with three or four films a day. Two is generally my limit. I can't come out of one movie and walk straight into the next. I need time to...

Master classes: de Oliveira's Belle Toujours and von Trotta's I Am the Other Woman.(TORONTO INTERNATIONAL FILM FESTIVAL)
January 1, 2007... Each year the Toronto International Film Festival screens several hundred films, features and shorts, within the space of a week. While I like the fact that so much is available, it becomes very difficult to select which films to attend. In the...

Nue Propriete with Isabelle Huppert.(TORONTO INTERNATIONAL FILM FESTIVAL)(Movie review)
January 1, 2007... TIFF offers a daunting number of films and it can be overwhelming trying to choose which films to attend. Most often I rely on the name and reputation of a director; I always look forward to the latest work by Claude Chabrol, Claire Denis,...

Golden Door/Nuovomondo.(TORONTO INTERNATIONAL FILM FESTIVAL)(Movie review)
January 1, 2007... The third film from Italian-born but American-trained Emanuele Crialese, Golden Door/Nuovomondo documents the journey of a poor Sicilian family's emigration from the old world to the new. The film is divided into three parts of approximately...

Cinema-cinema.(evaluation of various 2006 film festivals)
January 1, 2007... 2006 LOS ANGELES FILM FESTIVAL AFI FEST 2006 AMERICAN FILM MARKET 2006 55th INTERNATIONAL FILM FESTIVAL MANNHEIM-HEIDELBERG The L.A. Fest to catch up on Sundance, the AFI Fest for Oscar sneaks, and the AFM for the gamble... a...

Of human bonding: an interview with Tsai Ming-Liang.(Interview)
January 1, 2007... I interviewed Tsai towards the end of the festival, accompanied by Robin Wood, in a shopping mall that doubled for the festival press office. Quite appropriately so because the 'festival canvas bag' distributed to members of media was filled...

After this director's seventeen years of exile: an interview with Patrick Tam.(Interview)
January 1, 2007... Patrick Tam, the retrospective subject of this year's Udine Far East Film Festival, is an interesting member of the Hong Kong New Wave filmmakers of the early eighties. His works might have been mistakenly marketed as genre films, but with...

In Dreams and the gothic: the moment of collapse.
January 1, 2007... "In [Irish] gothic realism..., a familiar narrative pattern is redeployed as in Melmoth the Wanderer, Carmilla, and Dracula, the isolated individual who traffics with extra communal forces is destined to be consumed by them." --M.G....

Carolee Schneemann's Fuses as erotic self-portraiture.
January 1, 2007... The birth of the women's movement across Europe, the UK and North America during the 1960s had an impact on the New York art scene in which Carolee Schneemann played a major part. Alongside her contemporaries Meredith Monk, Rachel Rosenthal,...

Alida Valli.(In Memoriam)(Obituary)(Brief article)
January 1, 2007... Alida Valli (1921-2006) gave a strong performance in Hitchcock's The Paradine Case but it is with Carol Reed's The Third Man, oppsite Joseph Cotten, that she achieved her greatest success. [ILLUSTRATION OMITTED]

Teresa Wright.(In Memoriam)(Obituary)(Brief article)
January 1, 2007... Teresa Wright (1918-2006) gained acclaim working for William Wyler in The Little Foxes, Mrs. Miniver and The Best Years of Our Lives. Her most memorable performance is in Hitchcock's Shadow of a Doubt, opposite Joseph Cotten. [ILLUSTRATION...