Cineaste articles from June 2002

Cineaste archives from June 2002

Editorial.
June 22, 2002... Given the cataclysmic events of September 11th, it is unlikely that many Americans were troubled by the news that, last October, Army Brigadier General Kenneth Bergquist invited prominent Hollywood directors, producers, and screenwriters to...

The new war movies as moral rearmament: Black Hawk Down & We Were Soldiers.
June 22, 2002... As Plato sort of said: 'Only the dead have seen the end of war movies.' The latest cycle of star-spangled and combat-ready motion pictures--Behind Enemy Lines, Collateral Damage, Hart's War, Black Hawk Down, and We Were Soldiers--was born of...

Women making porno: feminism's final frontier? An interview with Marielle Nitoslawska.(Interview)
June 22, 2002... The controversy swirling around director Marielle Nitoslawska's documentary Bad Girl arose in large part because of her relentlessly provocative use of explicit clips: in Three Daughters, directed by Candida Royalle, a beautiful nude actress...

Dude, where's my gender? Contemporary teen comedies and new forms of American masculinity.
June 22, 2002... Gleefully vulgar celebrations of the sexual antics of youth and other raucous rites of puberty, contemporary American teen comedies--such as American Pie (1999), Dude, Where's My Car? (2000), Loser (2000), American Pie 2 (2001), and Saving...

The importance of historical memory: an interview with Patricio Guzman.(Interview)
June 22, 2002... The Pinochet Case, Chilean documentary director Patricio Guzman's latest feature film, is a modern classic among documentaries, and at sixty Guzman has become a leading international figure--not only a filmmaker but also a steadying moral voice...

Sexual awakenings and stark social realities: an interview with Alfonso Cuaron.(Interview)
June 22, 2002... The irony of Alfonso Cuaron's runaway hit Y tu mama tambien is that, while being touted by critics alternatively as the sexiest road movie or the hottest teen comedy of the year, according to its director the film is not about sex at all (see...

Gosford Park. (Film Reviews).
June 22, 2002... Produced and directed by Robert Altman; screenplay by Julian Fellowes, from an idea by Bob Balaban and Robert Altman; cinematography by Andrew Dunn; production design by Stephen Altman; edited by Tim Squyres; costume design by Jenny Beavan;...

Monster's Ball. (Film Reviews).
June 22, 2002... Produced by Lee Daniels; directed by Marc Forster: screenplay by Milo Addica and Will Rokos; cinematography by Roberto Schaefer; production design by Monroe Kelly; edited by Matt Chesse; costume design by Frank Fleming; starring Billy Bob...

Storytelling. (Film Reviews).
June 22, 2002... Produced by Ted Hope and Christine Vachon; directed by Todd Solondz; written by Todd Solondz; cinematography by Frederick Elmes; production design by James Chinlund; edited by Alan Oxman; music by Belle & Sebastian, and Nathan Larson; starring...

Murderous Maids. (Film Reviews).
June 22, 2002... Produced by Michele Halberstadt and Laurent Petin; directed by Jean-Pierre Denis; screenplay by Jean-Pierre Denis and Michele Halberstadt, based on the book L'affaire Papin by Paulette Houdyer; cinematography by Jean-Marc Fabre; production...

A Beautiful Mind. (Film Reviews).
June 22, 2002... Produced by Brian Grazer and Ron Howard; directed by Ron Howard; screenplay by Akiva Goldsman, based on the Sylvia Nasar book; production design by Wynn Thomas; edited by Daniel P. Hanley and Mike Hill; costume design by Rita Ryack; music by...

The Dirty Harry series. (Home Video).
June 22, 2002... Conceived during the social upheaval of the early Seventies, the Dirty Harry series has been reborn on home video, in widescreen transfers that gleam like polished gun metal, each entry with reupholstered soundtracks that will have Harry...

The Lady Eve and Sullivan's Travels. (Home Video).
June 22, 2002... In 1941, Preston Sturges, though a consummately American storyteller, was well on his way to placing himself esthetically in the company of the likes of Jean Renoir and, in hindsight, the filmmakers of the French New Wave, whom he anticipated...

Paradjanov's films on Soviet folklore.(Sergei Paradjanov)(Critical Essay)
June 22, 2002... It's astonishing how little we still know about Soviet cinema in general and Sergei Paradjanov (1924-1990) in particular, and it's possible that Soviet history has something to do with this--a desire among many not to remember pointing to an...

Medium Cool. (Home Video).
June 22, 2002... Directed, written, and photographed by Haskell Wexler; produced by Tully Friedman and Haskell Wexler; music by Mike Bloomfield; starring Robert Forster, Verna Bloom, Peter Bonerz, Marianna Hill, and Harold Blankenship. Color, 110 mins, DVD....

Federico Fellini's 8 1/2. (Home Video).
June 22, 2002... Produced by Angelo Rizzoli; created and directed by Federico Fellini; screenplay by Federico Fellini, Tullino Pinelli, Ennio Flaiano and Brunello Rondi; cinematography by Gianni di Venanzo; music by Nino Rota. Black and white, 138 mins, two DVD...

Billy Liar. (Home Video).
June 22, 2002... Directed by John Schlesinger; screenplay by Keith Waterhouse and Willis Hall; cinematography by Denys Coop; music by Richard Rodney Bennett; edited by Roger Cherrill; starring Tom Courtenay, Julie Christie, Wilfred Pickles, Mona Washbourne, Fin...

The Istanbul international Film Festival. (Communique).
June 22, 2002... Only slightly dampened by a controversy involving the censorship of a Turkish film originally scheduled for screening, the Twenty-First Annual Istanbul Film Festival was lively and focused, with a varied series of special programs as part of...

Movie Love In The Fifties. (Book Reviews).
June 22, 2002... by James Harvey. NY: Alfred A. Knopf, 2001. 448 pp., illus. Hardcover: $35.00. According to Demosthenes and Cicero, who ought to know, the most important thing in oratory is delivery--neither the content nor the form of a speech but its...

You're Only as Good as Your Next One: 100 Great Films, 100 Good Films, and 100 for Which I Should Be Shot. (Book Reviews).
June 22, 2002... by Mike Medavoy with Josh Young. New York: Pocket Books, 2002. 380 pp., illus. Hardcover: $27.00. Thirty years ago the corporate culture of Hollywood shifted drastically. The moguls who had built the industry were dying out; corporations...

Left in the Dark: Film Reviews and Essays, 1988-2001. (Book Reviews).
June 22, 2002... by Stuart Klawans. New York: Thunder's Mouth Press/Nation Books. 2002 344 pp. $15.95. paperback. For some months recently, film critic Stuart Klawans was on a kind of hiatus/work stoppage at The Nation, an "I can't take it any more"...

Bernard Herrmann's Vertigo: A Film Score Handbook. (Book Reviews).
June 22, 2002... by David Cooper. Westport, CT: Greenwood Press, 2001. 158 pp., illus. Hardcover: $52.00. Let it be said straight away: Bernard Herrmann's Vertigo will be of zero use to anyone who does not have a solid grounding in music, particularly...

Hearst Over Hollywood: Power, Passion, and Propaganda in the Movies. (Book Reviews).
June 22, 2002... by Louis Pizzitola. NY: Columbia University Press. 2002. 525pp., illus. Hardcover: S34.95. What are we to make of William Randolph Hearst's historical impact on American cinema? A giant of industry and chief architect, for better or worse,...

Letters.(Review)
June 22, 2002... Misinterpreting Gone With the Wind Thanks to Cineaste for Gary Gallagher's reasoned, dispassionate review of The Reel Civil War by Bruce Chadwick (Vol. XXVII, No.2). While Gallagher's points are well taken and his conclusions appropriately...

The Cherry Orchard. (Short Takes).
June 22, 2002... The dilemma in bringing any play to the screen is what to retain and what to alter. Adapters often opt to make minimal changes and just film close up. At the other extreme, a play can be so drastically reconceived that the film version barely...

Domestic Violence. (Short Takes).
June 22, 2002... Frederick Wiseman's thirty-five year, semididactic career has explored institutions as a means of documenting American life while teaching viewers about the structures of their society. Domestic Violence continues this project, following police...

A grin without a cat. (Short Takes).(Brief Article)
June 22, 2002... Chris Marker's requiem to the ideals of the Left is a work of immense scope and ambition, chronicling the dramatic confluence of events that led to a global socialist movement in the 1960s. Originally released in 1978, then "re-actualized" by...

Profit and nothing but. (Short Takes).(Raoul Peck's documentary work)(Brief Article)
June 22, 2002... Raoul Peck's fifty-six minute, made-for-European-TV essay, subtitled Impolite Thoughts on the Class Struggle, is about the global triumph of capitalism. The place from which Peck speaks--literally and metaphorically--is Haiti, a country that,...

Widow of the Revolution: the Anna Larina story. (Short Takes).
June 22, 2002... Louis Menashe Lenin once described Nikolai Bukharin as the darling of the Soviet Communist Party. That counted for little later on when Stalin, once Bukharin's close friend and political comrade, put him in the dock at the last of the...

Erratum.(Correction Notice)
June 22, 2002... In Stuart Liebman's article, Que Viva Eisenstein?: A Life for the Revolution, in Cineaste, Vol. XXVI, No. 4, the documentary director Oksana Bulgakowa was mistakenly credited as Olga Bulgakowa. We apologize for the error. Stuart Liebman,...

American Audiences on Movies and Moviegoing. (Book Reviews).
June 22, 2002... by Tom Stempel. Lexington, KY: University of Kentucky Press, 2001.245 pp. Hardcover: $27.50. Although by now a commonplace, it is still remarkable to note how little attention film critics, theorists, and scholars have traditionally paid...