Cineaste articles from June 2000

Cineaste archives from June 2000

EDITORIAL.(Brief Article)
June 22, 2000... The Eighties, when the burgeoning homevideo industry released scores of titles monthly, and the deregulation of the cable television industry spawned many new channels showing movies, was an exciting decade for film buffs. Vintage Hollywood...

Truth Is Not Subjective: An Interview with Errol Morris.(Interview)
June 22, 2000... Filmmakers like Errol Morris are the reason the definition of the term 'documentary' is so contentious. Morris is generally lumped into the catch-all category of 'nonfiction film,' though even the broader term seems a bit of a stretch. Morris's...

Reviving Orson: or Rosebud, Dead or Alive.
June 22, 2000... At the end of Casanova's Big Night (1954), a lame burlesque of romantic swashbucklers, a freeze frame halts an executioner's ax as it swings toward the hero's lowered head. A voice-over narrator intervenes informing the audience of a...

The Making of Sergio Leone's A Fistful of Dollars.
June 22, 2000... Late in 1963 the lighting cameraman Enzo Barboni was coming out of the Arlecchino cinema in Rome when he happened to bump into Sergio Leone. Barboni had just seen and enjoyed Akira Kurosawa's Yojimbo, and thought the film would appeal to...

A Child of the New Wave: An Interview with Benoit Jacquot.(Interview)
June 22, 2000... Benoit Jacquot, born in 1947, worked as an assistant director for Marguerite Duras and others before turning filmmaker himself in the mid-Seventies. Quietly, throughout the last three decades, he has directed a series of subtle, serious feature...

Mayhem, Madness, Method: An Interview with Julie Taymor.(Interview)
June 22, 2000... Shakespeare's Titus Andronicus "is not meant to be read," says Julie Taymor, "but to be performed." This bloody revenge tragedy is rarely performed, however, because of its controversial and disturbing nature. Its infamy stems largely from...

Ida Lupino: Doing It Her Way.
June 22, 2000... Ida Lupino (1918-1995) was virtually the only woman filmmaker working in Hollywood during the Fifties. This successful actress founded her own independent production company, for which she wrote and directed a series of low-budget films...

Passage to the Balkans at the Thessaloniki Film Festival.
June 22, 2000... Full disclosure: Both my parents were born in Thessaloniki, and their tales of the charms of the city predisposed me in its favor even before my first visit there two years ago. I was prepared to enjoy it, and it did not disappoint. Much has...

The Fort Lauderdale Film Festival.
June 22, 2000... The Fort Lauderdale International Film Festival has rapidly become one of the leading venues for foreign and independent films in the southern United States. Although the festival still cannot attract the range of films that appear at glossier...

Erin Brockovich.
June 22, 2000... Produced by Danny DeVito, Michael Shamberg, and Stacey Sher; directed by Steven Soderbergh; screenplay by Susannah Grant; cinematography by Ed Lachman; production design by Phil Messina; edited by Anne V. Coates; costume design by Jeffrey...

The Talented Mr. Ripley.(Review)
June 22, 2000... Produced by William Horberg and Tom Sternberg; directed by Anthony Minghella; screenplay by Anthony Minghella, based on the novel by Patricia Highsmith; cinematography by John Seale; production design by Roy Walker; edited by Walter Murch;...

American Psycho.(Review)
June 22, 2000... Produced by Edward R. Pressman, Chris Hanley, and Christian Halsey Solomon; directed by Mary Harron; screenplay by Mary Harron and Guinevere Turner, based on the novel by Bret Easton Ellis; cinematography by Andrzej Sekula; production design by...

Beautiful People.(Review)
June 22, 2000... Produced by Ben Woolford; directed and written by Jasmin Dizdar; cinematography by Barry Ackroyd; production design by Jon Henson; edited by Justin Krish; music by Garry Bell; starring Danny Nussbaum, Charlotte Coleman, Charles Kay, Rosalind...

Not One Less.(Review)
June 22, 2000... Produced by Zhao Yu; directed by Zhang Yimou; screenplay by Shi Xiangsheng; cinematography by Hou Yong; production design by Cao Jiuping; sound by Wu Lala; edited by Zhai Ru; music by San Bao; starring Wei Minzhi, Tian Zhenda, Gao Enman, Sun...

Girl, Interrupted.(Review)
June 22, 2000... Produced by Douglas Wick and Cathy Konrad; directed by James Mangold; screenplay by James Mangold and Anna Hamilton Phelan, based on the book by Susanna Kaysen; cinematography by Jack Green; production design by Richard Hoover; edited by Kevin...

Shakespeare Goes Digital.(Review)
June 22, 2000... If continued, the current proliferation of DVDs will insure a full repertory in twenty-first-century home entertainment centers of William Shakespeare's plays in state-of-the-art formats. The single spies currently heralding the battalions of...

The 47 Ronin.(Review)
June 22, 2000... Directed by Kenji Mizoguchi; DVD, black and white, 222 mins., Japanese dialog with English subtitles. Starring Yoshizaburo Arashi, Chojuro Kawarasaki, and Utaemon Ichikawa. Distributed by Image Entertainment, 9333 Oso Avenue, Chatsworth, CA...

LETTERS.
June 22, 2000... The Medieval Roots of Andy Kaufman's Comedy I was happy to read a favorable review of Man on the Moon, one of Milos Forman's better directorial efforts. However I do beg to differ on some of the review's unusual or flawed claims. Although...

Sin in Soft Focus: Pre-Code Hollywood.(Review)
June 22, 2000... by Mark A. Vieira. New York: Harry N. Abrams. 1999. 240 pp., illus. Hardcover: S39.95. Pre-Code Hollywood: Sex, Immorality, and Insurrection in American Cinema, 1930-1934 by Thomas Doherty. New York: Columbia University Press, 1999....

Artists in the Audience: Cults, Camp, and American Film Criticism.(Review)
June 22, 2000... by Greg Taylor. Princeton, NJ: Princeton Univ. Press, 1999. 198 pp. Hardcover: $29.95. For some, the only thing better than a good movie is a good movie review, preferably one that outdoes the film itself in creativity, entertainment...

The Suppression of "Salt of the Earth": How Hollywood, Big Labor, and Politicians Blacklisted a Movie in Cold War America.(Review)
June 22, 2000... by James J. Lorence. Albuquerque, NM: University of New Mexico Press, 1999. 279 pp., illus. Hardcover: $45.00 and Paperback: $19.95. In every discipline there appears at least one personality or event so basic that no student contemplating...

Film and the Anarchist Imagination.(Review)
June 22, 2000... by Richard Porton. London and New York: Verso, 1999. 314 pp., illus. Hardcover S66.00 and Paperback $22.00. Historically, Anarchism has received a bad rap. Education and the mass media provide us with a set of lenses with which to view the...

Jacques Tati.(Review)
June 22, 2000... by David Bellos. London: The Harvill Press, 1999. 382 pp., illus. Hardcover: [pouns]25. In some ways, this is a better biography of Jacques Tati than we had cause to expect from anyone--certainly a more cultivated one than the useful if...

An Affair of Love.(Review)
June 22, 2000... What's in a name? Belgian filmmaker Frederic Fonteyne's An Affair of Love was originally called A Pornographic Affair, and thereby hangs if not a tale, at least a marketing ploy. The lowkey story of "a sexual arrangement between anonymous...

East-West.(Review)
June 22, 2000... Another grim, lesser-known chapter from the Soviet past is the subject of this French-Russian coproduction directed by Regis Wargnier, whose Indochine won the best foreign language Oscar in 1993. (East-West was the official French entry for the...

Kadosh.(Brief Article)(Review)
June 22, 2000... Kadosh is the final film of Amos Gitai's trilogy, each evoking the character of one of Israel's three largest cities. This one is set in Mea Shearim, Jerusalem's ultraorthodox quarter. It's an insulated world based on strict conformity to the...

Keepers of the Frame.(Review)
June 22, 2000... For much of the past century, when the theatrical run of a film was finished, it was likely that the prints and negative were either improperly stored, or, worse, simply thrown away. The result, according to this fascinating and compelling...

Set Me Free.(Review)
June 22, 2000... "[B]ut what about the soul/that grows in darkness, embossed by silvery images," muses Frank O'Hara in "Ave Maria," his ode to the pleasures of moviegoing. In Lea Pool's rich coming-of-age tale, Set Me Free (Emporte-Moi), the seduction of...