Cineaste articles from December 2004

Cineaste archives from December 2004

Revenge of the middle-aged woman.(Editorial)
December 22, 2004... Hollywood has long perpetuated the notion that men can age with dignity, charm, and virility before the camera, whereas women somehow cannot. This certainly is not news. The fact that actors well into their sixties or even seventies are often...

Pedro Almodovar and the new politics of Spain.(Movie Review)
December 22, 2004... When spectators lined up in Madrid for the Spanish premiere of Pedro Almodovar's new film, Bad Education, they were met by an angry crowd that pelted them with tomatoes and eggs. The outrage stemmed not from the movie's potentially volatile...

I want my films to explode with life: an interview with Mira Nair.(Interview)
December 22, 2004... "I want every shot to brim with life," says Mira Nair, describing what she considers her strongest feature as a director. Indeed, her first fiction film, Salaam Bombay! (1988), stunned spectators with its exuberant, lingering shots of Bombay...

The legacy of Frank Capra.(Excerpt)
December 22, 2004... This article is an excerpt from Regarding Frank Capra: Audience, Celebrity, and American Film Studies, 1930-1960, by Eric Smoodin, to be published in January 2005 by Duke University Press. In this innovative historical examination of the...

The power of female solidarity: an interview with Ousmane Sembene.(Interview)
December 22, 2004... In a career stretching from 1966's Black Girl to his most recent film, Moolaade, the eighty-one-year-old Senegalese director Ousmane Sembene has established himself not only as one of the giants of African cinema but as one of the world's great...

A second look: touchez pas au grisbi.(Movie Review)
December 22, 2004... Touchez pas au grisbi (Hands Off the Loot!, 1954), based on a popular French novel of the same name by Albert Simonin, has been credited for resuscitating the then semicomatose career of Jean Gabin, who stars in the film as Max Le Menteur,...

The life and times of the corporation: an interview with Jennifer Abbott.(Interview)
December 22, 2004... The history of documentary film is studded with penetrating critical examinations of individual corporations. Michael Moore's Roger & Me (1989) puts a human face on the economic devastation inflicted on Flint, Michigan by the drastic,...

Matters of race: an interview with Orlando Bagwell.( cinematographer )(Interview)
December 22, 2004... Orlando Bagwell was a well-established cinematographer moving toward dramatic filmmaking when, in 1984, he was tapped by Henry Hampton, legendary founder of Blackside Productions, to produce two documentaries on the early years of the Civil...

Vera Drake.(Movie Review)
December 22, 2004... Produced by Simon Channing Williams; directed and written by Mike Leigh; cinematography by Dick Pope; edited by Jim Clark; music by Andrew Dickson; production design by Eve Stewart; costumes by Jacqueline Durrans; starring Imelda Staunton, Phil...

Social realist poetry: an interview with Mike Leigh.(Interview)
December 22, 2004... Mike Leigh is the noted British director of such award-winning films as High Hopes, Life is Sweet, Naked, Secrets & Lies, and Topsy-Turvy. His most recent film, Vera Drake, won the Golden Lion for Best Film at the Venice International Film...

Tarnation.(Movie Review)
December 22, 2004... Produced by Jonathan Caouette and Stephen Winter; written and directed by Jonathan Caouette; cinematography by Jonathan Caouette; edited by Jonathan Caouette and Brian A. Kates; original music by Jonathan Caouette; with Jonathan Caouette, Renee...

Hero.(Movie Review)
December 22, 2004... Produced by Bill Kong and Zhang Yimou; directed by Zhang Yimou; screenplay by Li Feng, Zhang Yimou, and Wang Bin; cinematography by Christopher Doyle; edited by Zhai Ru and Angie Lain; music composed and conducted by Tan Dun; production design...

The Manchurian Candidate.(Movie Review)
December 22, 2004... Produced by Tina Sinatra, Scott Rudin, Jonathan Demme, Ilona Herzberg, and Scott Aversano; directed by Jonathan Demme; screenplay by Daniel Pyne and Dean Georgaris, based upon the film screenplay by George Axelrod, based upon a novel by Richard...

Maria Full of Grace.(Movie Review)
December 22, 2004... Produced by Becky Glupczynski; written and directed by Joshua Marston; original music by Leonardo Heiblum and Jacobo Lieberman; cinematography by Jim Denault; editing by Anne McCabe and Lee Percy; production design by Debbie DeVilla; starring...

Being Julia.(Movie Review)
December 22, 2004... Produced by Robert Lantos; directed by Istvan Szabo; screenplay by Ronald Harwood, based on the novel Theatre by W. Somerset Maugham; cinematography by Lajos Koltai; edited by Susan Shipton; music by Mychael Danna; production design by Luciana...

The Unapologetic Life of Margaret Randall.(Movie Review)
December 22, 2004... Directed by Lu Lippold. Color, 60 mins. Distributed by The Cinema Guild, 130 Madison Avenue, New York, NY 10016, www.cinemaguild.com. I have known Margaret Randall for some forty years. She has been my editor and I have published two of her...

The Leopard.(Video Recording Review)
December 22, 2004... Directed by Luchino Visconti; written by Luchino Visconti, Suso Cecchi d'Amico, Pasquale Festa Campanile, Enrico Medioli, and Massimo Franciosa; starring Burt Lancaster, Alain Delon, Claudia Cardinale and Paolo Stoppa. DVD, three discs, color,...

The Grapes of Wrath.(Video Recording Review)
December 22, 2004... Directed by John Ford; screenplay by Nunnally Johnson based on the novel by John Steinbeck; starring Henry Fonda, Jane Darwell and John Carradine. DVD, B&W, 129 mins. A 20th Century Fox Studio Classics release. The Grapes of Wrath is one...

Shoah.(Video Recording Review)
December 22, 2004... Directed by Claude Lanzmann; DVD, four discs, color, nine hours and twenty-six mins. English, French, German, Greek, Hebrew, Italian, Polish and Yiddish with English subtitles. A New Yorker Films Video release, www.newyorkerfilms.com. An...

Alice in Wonderland.(Video Recording Review)
December 22, 2004... Alice in Wonderland Directed and produced by Jonathan Miller; starring Anne-Marie Mallik, Wilfrid Brambell, Alan Bennett, John Bird, Peter Cook, John Gielgud, Leo McKern, Michael Redgrave and Peter Sellers. DVD, B&W, 72 mins. A Home Vision...

A Story of Floating Weeds and Floating Weeds.(Video Recording Review)
December 22, 2004... A Story of Floating Weeds and Floating Weeds Directed by Yasujiro Ozu; DVD, two discs: A Story of Floating Weeds, B&W, 86 mins., and Floating Weeds, color, 119 mins. A Criterion Collection release distributed by Home Vision Entertainment,...

The Tree of Wooden Clogs.(Movie Review)
December 22, 2004... The Tree of Wooden Clogs Directed by Ermanno Olmi; DVD, color, 177 mins., Italian dialog with English subtitles. Distributed by Koch Lorber Films. In the spring of 1977 I finally sat down with my great uncle Pasquale ('Uncle Pat') to...

Sontag & Kael: Opposites Attract Me.(Book Review)
December 22, 2004... Sontag & Kael: Opposites Attract Me by Craig Seligman. New York, NY: Counterpoint Books (Distributed by Perseus Book Group), 2004. 244 pp. Hardcover: $23.00. As I toted around my review copy of Craig Seligman's Sontag & Kael during a...

Movie Mutations: the Changing Face of World Cinephilia.(Book Review)
December 22, 2004... Movie Mutations: The Changing Face of World Cinephilia Edited by Jonathan Rosenbaum and Adrian Martin. London: British Film Institute. (Distributed in the U.S. by University of California Press), 2003. 196 pp. Hardcover: $65.00 and...

Revolution!: the Explosion of World Cinema in the Sixties.(Book Review)
December 22, 2004... Revolution!: The Explosion of World Cinema in the Sixties by Peter Cowie. New York, NY: Faber and Faber, 2004. 286 pps., illus. Hardcover: $25.00. For cinephiles, the story of world cinema from the late Fifties through the...

Rites of Realism: Essays on Corporeal Cinema.(Book Review)
December 22, 2004... Rites of Realism: Essays on Corporeal Cinema Edited by Ivone Margulies. Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2003. 348 pp., illus. Hardcover: $64.95 and Paperback: $21.95. The issue of realism illustrates the gap between the popular audience...

Hollywood Italians: Dagos, Palookas, Romeos, Wise Guys, and Sopranos.(Book Review)
December 22, 2004... Hollywood Italians: Dagos, Palookas, Romeos, Wise Guys, and Sopranos by Peter Bondanella. New York, NY: Continuum, 2004. 352 pp., illus. Hardcover: $29.95. The cinematic representation of particular identity groups has long been the...

Luis Bunuel: New Readings.(Book Review)
December 22, 2004... Luis Bunuel: New Readings Edited by Peter William Evans and Isabel Santaolalla. London: British Film Institute, 2004. 224pp., illus. Hardcover: $70.00 and Paperback: $24.95. Reading between the lines of the "contributors' notes" on the...

Anna May Wong: From Laundryman's Daughter to Hollywood Legend.(Book Review)
December 22, 2004... Anna May Wong: From Laundryman's Daughter to Hollywood Legend by Graham Russell Gao Hodges. New York and Hampshire, England: Palgrave Macmillan, 2003. 284 pp., illus. Hardcover: $27.95. Perpetually Cool: The Many Lives of Anna May Wong...

The Toronto Film Festival.(Communiques)
December 22, 2004... Despite being billed as blithe escapism, film festivals, especially one with the breadth (and occasional depth) of the Toronto International Film Festival are not for the weary or faint of heart. Never has Baudelaire's ironic paean to the lure...

Motovun and Sarajevo Festivals.(Communiques)
December 22, 2004... Make movies, not wars," was a phrase I heard throughout the summer of 2004 as I attended the sixth Motovun Film Festival in a beautiful mountaintop village in Croatia and the tenth Sarajevo Film Festival in Bosnia. Both festivals left audiences...

The Istanbul Film Festival.(Communiques)
December 22, 2004... One of Europe's most beautiful and cosmopolitan cities, Istanbul is also host to a stimulating film festival that serves as both a forum for international cinema and a showcase for Turkey's leading cineastes. As a gathering place for the city's...

Starstruck in Montreal.(Communiques)
December 22, 2004... The bicultural and bilingual ambience of Montreal has served for nearly three decades now as the setting for one of North America's most important international film festivals. Indeed, an annual end-of-summer visit to this beautiful Canadian...

Another Road Home.(Short Takes)(Movie Review)
December 22, 2004... Danae Elon's Another Road Home explores what you don't know about the Other, and it has two focuses: Palestinians and the filmmaker's father, Amos Elon. Both quests end up inconclusively, but productively. And they're related. The childhood...

Baghdad In No Particular Order.(Short Takes)(Video Recording Review)
December 22, 2004... Paul Chan has reinvented verite as ambient video in an apparently aimless, artless home movie of ordinary life in Baghdad before the recent war began. His street scenes and unnarrated moments of life weave together randomly, it seems, until...

Los Angeles Plays Itself.(Short Takes)(Movie Review)
December 22, 2004... Celebrated by the modernist city symphony and exploited in countless crime plots, the relation between the city and flint has been understood as a grand and sinister symbiosis. But when the city is Los Angeles, this symbiosis is shaped less by...

Zelary.(Short Takes)(Movie Review)
December 22, 2004... A torrid lovemaking scene opens this at once powerful and sensitive film from director Ondrej Trajan, set in Nazi-occupied Czechoslovakia, 19431944. Zelary is a significant new contribution to the Eastern European war-film genre, and the war...