Cineaste articles from December 2005

Cineaste archives from December 2005

Globalization and film criticism.(EDITORIAL)(Editorial)
December 22, 2005... When Cineaste pondered the possibility of a sequel to our 2000 Critical Symposium on American Film Criticism, we wondered if our international colleagues shared some of the anguish concerning the possible endangerment of intelligent criticism...

I vass dere, Charlie!(Letter to the editor)
December 22, 2005... While Montell, and coproducer Ron Aronson, want Cineaste readers to believe that Werbe's account of Saul Wellman's shouting, "I killed more anarchists and Trotskyites in Spain than fascists" is "dubious," I was there when it happened. It...

History vs. hagiography.(Letter to the editor)
December 22, 2005... I have known Peter for forty years and his credibility and integrity are impeccable. In all his years in the public forum I know of no one who has questioned his veracity. That includes those who oppose his anarchist politics or those, like me,...

No working class hero.(Letter to the editor)
December 22, 2005... I clearly recall Peter's public comments in 1975 and thereafter concerning Saul Wellman's admission that he "killed more anarchists and Trostskyites (sic) in Spain than fascists."... I don't know why Judith Montell and Ron Aronson find it so...

Printing the legend.(Letter to the editor)
December 22, 2005... In his rather academic discussion of the Western in your Book Reviews section (Horizons West by Jim Kitses, Cineaste, Vol. XXX, No. 4), Jared Rapfogel has the good sense to question the notion of John Ford being "America's greatest director."...

Federico Fellini and the making of La Dolce Vita: in La Dolce Vita, set amidst the wild nightlife of Rome's Via Veneto, Fellini put characters drawn from his own world of entertainment and journalism in the spotlight. His scandalous film characterized a new sense of liberation that emerged in the Sixties and marked a radical new creative phase in Fellini's career.
December 22, 2005... Via Veneto, originally named in the last decade of the nineteenth century for the destroyed villa of Cardinal Ludovisi, nephew of Pope Gregory XV, was renamed Via Vittorio Veneto after the Italian victory in World War I. The neighbor hood that...

This is a film you should see twice: an interview with Hany Abu-Assad.(Interview)
December 22, 2005... Paradise Now is the first feature film about the Palestinian-Israeli conflict that focuses on suicide bombers. Mostly shot in Nablus on the West Bank, the film focuses on two young Palestinian men, Said (Kais Nashef) and Khaled (Ali Suliman),...

Big Bosoms and Square Jaws: Russ Meyer, King of the Sex Film.(Book review)
December 22, 2005... On the one hand Russ Meyer was the purest auteur in the history of American film. He not only wrote, directed, edited, and photographed the vast majority of his two dozen genre-defying movies, but he usually owned them, distributed them,...

Divorce Brooklyn style: an interview with Noah Baumbach.(Interview)
December 22, 2005... Writer-director Noah Baumbach's first two films, Kicking and Screaming (1995) and Mr. Jealousy (1998), were comic, and perceptive, evocations of male-female relationships. But in their treatment of the behavior between men and women the...

International Film Criticism today: A Critical Symposium.
December 22, 2005... In introducing our Critical Symposium on "Film Criticism in America Today," published in December 2000 (Cineaste, Vol. XXVI, No. 1), we bemoaned the fact that "(M)any film critics... --especially those writing for mainstream newspapers and...

Marivaux in the 'Hood: an interview with Abdellatif Kechiche.(Interview)
December 22, 2005... The Cesars are the French equivalent of the Oscars, a rather frothy annual event in which awards are distributed to films that are both crowd-pleasing and possess at least a middlebrow approximation of artistic merit. Before the 2005 ceremony,...

Collective guilt and individual responsibility: an interview with Michael Haneke.(Interview)
December 22, 2005... Two years ago, in conjunction with the U.S. release of The Piano Teacher, Cineaste published an interview with Michael Haneke (Vol. XXVIII, No. 3) by Christopher Sharrett, in which Haneke discussed a wide range of political and esthetic issues....

Grizzly Man.(Movie review)
December 22, 2005... Produced by Erik Nelson; directed and written by Werner Herzog; edited by Joe Bini; cinematography by Peter Zeitlinger, original music by Richard Thompson; featuring Timothy Treadwell, Werner Herzog, Franc G. Fallico, Jewel Pavolak and Amie...

Good Night, and Good Luck.(Movie review)
December 22, 2005... Good Night, and Good Luck Produced by Grant Heslov; directed by George Clooney; written by George Clooney and Grant Heslov; cinematography by Robert Elswit; production design by Jim Bissell; edited by Stephen Mirrione; original music by Jim...

The Weeping Meadow.(Movie review)
December 22, 2005... The Weeping Meadow Produced by Phoebe Economopoulos; directed by Theo Angelopoulos; written by Theo Angelopoulos, Tonino Guerra, Petros Markaris and Giorgio Silvagni; cinematography by Andreas Sinanos; edited by Yorgos Triantafylou; music by...

Capote.(Movie review)
December 22, 2005... Capote Produced by Caroline Baron, William Vince and Michael Ohoven; directed by Bennett Miller; screenplay by Dan Futterman, based upon the book Capote by Gerald Clarke; cinematography by Adam Kimmel; production design by Jess Gonchor; edited...

Breakfast on Pluto.(Movie review)
December 22, 2005... Breakfast on Pluto Produced by Neil Jordan, Alan Moloney and Stephen Woolley; directed by Neil Jordan; screenplay by Neil Jordan and Patrick McCabe, based on the novel by Patrick McCabe; cinematography by Declan Quinn; edited by Tony Lawson;...

Cache (Hidden).(Movie review)
December 22, 2005... Cache (Hidden) Produced by Veit Heiduschka and Michael Weber; written and directed by Michael Haneke; cinematography by Christian Berger; edited by Michael Hudecek and Nadine Muse; production design by Emmanuel de Chauvigny and Christoph...

Gay-themed Films of the German Silent Era.
December 22, 2005... In Europe, it doesn't matter if you're a man or a woman--we make love with anyone we find attractive." If this scintillating bon mot from Marlene Dietrich aptly captures the diva's enduring image as sexually ambiguous erotic flaneuse (first...

Divorce Italian Style.(Video recording review)
December 22, 2005... Divorce Italian Style Directed and cowritten by Pietro Germi; starring Marcello Mastroianni, Stefania Sandrelli, Daniela Rocca and Leopoldo Trieste. DVD, two discs, B&W, 104 rains., italian dialog with optional English subtitles. A...

Burden of Dreams.(Video recording review)
December 22, 2005... Burden of Dreams A film by Les Blank and Maureen Gosling; directed, photographed and produced by Les Blank; featuring Werner Herzog, Klaus Kinski, Claudia Cardinale. 1982. DVD, color, 95 mins. A Criterion Collection release, distributed by...

Hamlet.(Video recording review)
December 22, 2005... Hamlet Written and directed by Grigori Kozintsev after the play by William Shakespeare, translated by Boris Pasternak; cinematography by Jonas Gritsius; music by Dmitri Shostakovich; starring Innokenti Smoktunovsky, Mikhail Nazvanov, Elze...

He Who Hits First. Hits Twice: The Urgent Cinema of Santiago Alvarez.(Video recording review)
December 22, 2005... He Who Hits First. Hits Twice: The Urgent Cinema of Santiago Alvarez Eight films by Santiago Alvarez, including Now, Cerro pelado, Hanoi martes 13, Hasta la victoria siempre, L.B.J., 79 primaveras, El Sueno del Pongo, and El tigre salto y...

Living Dangerously: The Adventures of Merian C. Cooper.(Book review)
December 22, 2005... Living Dangerously: The Adventures of Merian C. Cooper by Mark Cotta Vaz. New York: Villard Books, 2005.478pp., illus. Hardcover: $26.95. Clambering up the side of the Empire State Building, clutching a squealing blonde and swatting back...

High Comedy in American Movies: Class and Humor From the 1920s to the Present.(Movie review)
December 22, 2005... High Comedy in American Movies: Class and Humor From the 1920s to the Present by Steve Vineberg. Lanham, Md.: Rowman & Littlefield, 2005. 207 pp., illus. Hardcover: $65.00 and Paperback: $22.95. Comedy is not an equal opportunity genre....

Literature through Film: Realism, Magic, and the Art of Adaptation.(A Companion to Literature and Film)(Literature and Film: A Guide to the Theory and Practice of Film Adaptation)(Book review)
December 22, 2005... Literature through Film: Realism, Magic, and the Art of Adaptation by Robert Stam. Malden, MA: Blackwell Publishers, 2005. 388 pp. illus. Hardcover: $74.95 and Paperback: $29.95. Literature and Film: A Guide to the Theory and Practice of...

Chris Marker: Memories of the Future.(Book review)
December 22, 2005... Chris Marker: Memories of the Future by Catherine Lupton. London: Reaktion Books, 2005. (Distributed in the U.S. by the University of Chicago Press). 256 pp., illus. Paperback: $25.00. A mercurial figure if there ever was one, Chris Marker...

Nelson Pereira dos Santos.(A Companion to Latin American Film)(Book review)
December 22, 2005... Nelson Pereira dos Santos by Darlene Sadlier. Urbana and Chicago: University of Illinois Press, 2003. 180 pp., illus. Hardcover: $35.00 and Paperback: $16.95. A Companion to Latin American Film by Stephen M. Hart. Woodbridge, U.K.:...

Framing Female Lawyers: Women on Trial on Film.(Book review)
December 22, 2005... Framing Female Lawyers: Women on Trial on Film by Cynthia Lucia. Austin, TX: University of Texas Press, 2005. 269 pp., illus. Hardcover: $55.00 and Paperback: $22.95. As a number of feminist scholars have demonstrated, women who seek...

The Toronto Film Festival.
December 22, 2005... The Toronto International Film Festival continues to perform an annual high-wire act. The bulk of the press coverage devoted to the festival focuses on the wide array of film stars who fly up to Toronto to flog mediocre movies on the order of...

The Karlovy Vary Film Festival.
December 22, 2005... The Karlovy Vary International Film Festival celebrated its fortieth anniversary in July 2005 with its usual hospitality and friendliness, much inimitable style a la Czech, and big numbers: 230 films screened in official competitions, special...

Osian's-Cinefan Festival of Asian Cinema.(COMMUNIQUES)
December 22, 2005... Mr. Neville Tuli is a dynamic, go-getting visionary. In addition to being the .founder and chairman of the Indian art house, Osian's, he is the force behind large-scale educational and entrepreneurial schemes that aim to use arts and culture to...

Antonio Negri: A Revolt that Never Ends.(SHORT TAKES)(Movie review)
December 22, 2005... Given the spate of recent documentary profiles of international left-wing academic superstars--Chomsky, Bourdieu, Zinn, Derrida--it was perhaps inevitable that Antonio Negri would get his turn. Not since the tragic theater of Che and Regis...

Busting Out.(SHORT TAKES)(Movie review)
December 22, 2005... Francine Stickwerda and Laurel Spellman's documentary is a well-meaning, but not altogether successful, expose of the myriad ways American women are endangered not only by their countrymen's breast fixation, but also by their country's...

Darwin's Nightmare.(Movie review)
December 22, 2005... Beginning with the silhouette of an airplane gliding across deep blue water, Herbert Sauper's film is haunted by specters of foreign invaders. Introduced as an "experiment," in just five decades the Nile perch has virtually eliminated all other...

Shake Hands with the Devil.(SHORT TAKES)(Movie review)
December 22, 2005... Over ten years ago, Lieutenant General Romeo Dallaire was stationed in Rwanda as part of a U.N. peacekeeping mission. In spite of his repeated warnings of increasing domestic tension, world powers failed to intervene, leaving Dallaire a witness...

Wall.(SHORT TAKES)(Movie review)
December 22, 2005... Shot in a verite style both meditative and oddly matter-off-act, Simone Bitton's documentary questions the effectiveness of meeting complex, deeply ambiguous problems such as terrorism with simple, concrete solutions--in this case, quite...

Whose Is This Song?(SHORT TAKES)(Movie review)
December 22, 2005... The film opens with its filmmaker, veteran documentarian Adela Peeva, sitting in an Istanbul tavern with filmmakers from various Balkan countries. The musicians play a song, and everyone at the table starts humming the tune, each one in his own...