Cineaste articles from June 2004

Cineaste archives from June 2004

Editorial.(Editorial)
June 22, 2004... More than eighty years ago, filmmaking pioneer John Grierson hailed documentaries as "the creative treatment of actuality," but 'docs' have generally been treated as poor stepchildren to fiction films, which have traditionally received the...

Aileen Wuornos superstar.(Critical Essay)(Cover Story)
June 22, 2004... Outlaws we love, gangsters we admire, monsters we respect, but serial killers--well, serial killers creep us out. This is not to say that we are not fascinated by them, that we are not hypnotized by their true-crime exploits in books, motion...

Errata for Cineaste Vol. XXIX, Nos. 1 and 2.(Correction Notice)
June 22, 2004... In Richard James Havis's interview with Chen Kaige ("Changing the Face of Chinese Cinema") in Vol. XXIX, No. 1 we mistakenly prefaced each of the filmmaker's replies with "Kaige," when we should have used "Chen." In the same issue we...

Home movies and personal documentaries: an interview with Ross McElwee.(Interview)
June 22, 2004... Ross McElwee's new film, Bright Leaves, takes a successful Hollywood picture, Bright Leaf (1950; dir. Michael Curtiz), as its point of departure. Thus, like other McElwee movies, it stands in clear relation to the kind of film it is not, or not...

Sacred savagery: The Passion of the Christ.(Critical Essay)
June 22, 2004... Mel Gibson's The Passion of the Christ is an almost relentless two-hour depiction of agony and torture. Jesus (Jim Caviezel) is first seen suffering in the garden of Gethsemane as he anticipates his ordeal; he is then arrested, interrogated,...

The pleasures of melancholy: an interview with Guy Maddin.(Interview)
June 22, 2004... Azany confection that combines Expressionist Weltschmerz, musical-comedy uplift, and melodramatic twists that might make Douglas Sirk blush, The Saddest Music in the World is instantly identifiable as an archetypal Guy Maddin film. Like his...

Patriotic gauze, patriotic gore Russians at war.(The Cranes are Flying, Ballad of a Soldier, Father of a Soldier, Come and See)(Video Recording Review)
June 22, 2004... In an earlier age, before thermonuclear-tipped ICBMs altered military planning, Field Marshal Bernard Montgomery cautioned battlefield strategists against marching on Moscow. "Invading Russia," he said, "is always a bad idea." Just consider...

Terrorism and torture in The Battle of Algiers: an interview with Saadi Yacef.(Interview)
June 22, 2004... Over the years, Cineaste has interviewed many film directors, screenwriters, actors, cinematographers, and others involved in film production. An interview with Saadi Yacef, however, promised to be much more than just another discussion about...

Emerging from the Taliban's grim legacy: an interview with Siddiq Barmak.(Interview)
June 22, 2004... Siddiq Barnulk is a soft-spoken, self-effacing, roundish man in his early forties, with scruffy eyebrows and white strands in his jet-black hair. Much of what he has done in the past two and a half years is brand new to him--especially shooting...

Baadasssss!(Movie Review)
June 22, 2004... Baadasssss! Produced by Michael Mann and Jerry Offsay; directed by Mario Van Peebles; screenplay by Mario Van Peebles and Dennis Haggerty; cinematography by Robert Primes; production design by Alan E. Muraoka; edited by Nneka Goforth and...

Since Otar Left.(Movie Review)
June 22, 2004... Since Otar Left Produced by Yael Fogiel; directed by Julie Bertuccelli; screenplay by Julie Bertuccelli and Bernard Renucci; cinematography by Christophe Pollock; edited by Emmanuelle Castro; production design by Emmanuel de Chauvigny;...

Good Bye, Lenin!(Movie Review)
June 22, 2004... Good Bye, Lenin! Produced by Stefan Arndt; directed by Wolfgang Becker; screenplay by Wolfgang Becker and Bernd Lichtenberg; cinematography by Martin Kukula; edited by Peter R. Adam; production design by Daniele Drobny; music by Yann...

Dogville.(Movie Review)
June 22, 2004... Dogville Produced by Gilliam Berrie, Bettina Brokemper, Anja Grafers, and Els Vandevorst; written and directed by Lars von Trier; cinematography by Anthony Dod Mantle; edited by Molly Marlene Stensgard; production design by Peter Grant;...

Crimson Gold.(Movie Review)
June 22, 2004... Crimson Gold Directed, produced and edited by Jafar Panahi; written by Abbas Kiarostami; cinematography by Hossain Jafarian; production managed by Jahangir Kosari; art direction by Iraj Raminfar; music by Peyman Yazdanian; starring Hussein...

Tokyo Story.(Video Recording Review)
June 22, 2004... Tokyo Story Directed by Yasujiro Ozu; screenplay by Yasujiro Ozu and Kogo Nada; cinematography by Yuhara Atsuta; starring Chishu Ryu, Chieko Higashiyama, So Yamamura and Setsuko Hara. DVD, B&W, 136 mins. A Criterion Collection release...

My Darling Clementine.(Video Recording Review)
June 22, 2004... My Darling Clementine Directed by John Ford; written by Samuel G. Engel, Winston Miller, and Sam Hellman; produced by Samuel G. Engel; music by Alfred Newman; starring Henry Fonda, Victor Mature, Linda Darnell, Walter Brennan, and Cathy...

Pickup on South Street.(Video Recording Review)
June 22, 2004... Pickup on South Street Directed and written by Samuel Fuller; starring Richard Widmark, Jean Peters, Thelma Ritter, and Richard Kiley. DVD, B&W, 80 mins. A Criterion Collection release distributed by Home Vision Entertainment,...

The Ox-Bow Incident.(Video Recording Review)
June 22, 2004... The Ox-Bow Incident Directed by William A. Wellman; produced and written for the screen by Lamar Trotti, based on the novel by Walter Van Tilburg Clark. DVD, B&W, 75 mins. A 20th Century-Fox Studio Classics release. Like Fritz Lang's...

Once Upon a Time in the West.(Video Recording Review)
June 22, 2004... Once Upon a Time in the West Directed by Sergio Leone; screenplay by Sergio Donati and Sergio Leone, from a story by Dario Argento, Bernardo Bertolucci, and Sergio Leone. DVD, color, 165 mins. A Paramount Home Entertainment release. ...

Godard: a Portrait of the Artist at Seventy.(Book Review)
June 22, 2004... Godard: A Portrait of the Artist at Seventy by Colin MacCabe. Filmography and picture research by Sally Shafto. New York, NY: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2003. 432 pp, illus. Hardcover: $25.00. This isn't an authorized biography of Jean-Luc...

On the Waterfront.(Book Review)
June 22, 2004... On the Waterfront Edited by Joanna E. Rapf. Cambridge, U.K.: Cambridge University Press, 2003. 190 pp., illus. Hardcover: $55.00 and Paperback: $20.00. On the Waterfront, directed by Elia Kazan and scripted by Budd Schulberg, was a...

Malevich and Film.(Book Review)
June 22, 2004... Malevich and Film by Margarita Tupitsyn, with essays by Kazimir Malevich and Victor Tupitsyn. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2003. 173 pp., illus. Hardcover: $50.00. The White Rectangle: Writings on Film by Kazimir Malevich, edited...

Cinema and the Sandinistas: Filmmaking in Revolutionary Nicaragua: 1979-1990.(Book Review)
June 22, 2004... Cinema and the Sandinistas: Filmmaking in Revolutionary Nicaragua: 1979-1990 by Jonathan Buchsbaum. Austin, TX: University of Texas Press, 2003. 328 pp., illus. Hardcover: $70.00 and Paperback: $29.95. The publication of Jonathan...

Blue Collar Hollywood: Liberalism, Democracy, and Working People in American Film.(Book Review)
June 22, 2004... Blue Collar Hollywood: Liberalism, Democracy, and Working People in American Film by John Bodnar. Baltimore: The Johns Hopkins University Press, 2003. 284 pp., illus. Hardcover: $42.95. This book provides an excellent example of a...

Rotterdam International Film Festival.(Communiques)
June 22, 2004... Unlike other major film festivals that are long on hype and short on substance, the International Film Festival Rotterdam is a serious, if far from solemn, event that is custom made for cinephiles instead of publicists and press agents. At its...

Mar del Plata Film Festival.(Communiques)
June 22, 2004... The Mar del Plata International Film Festival did and did not celebrate its fiftieth anniversary at this year's edition of the event, which was held March 11th-20th in that popular Argentine seaside resort. Argentine President luau Domingo...

A litany of errors.(Letters)(Letter to the Editor)
June 22, 2004... Ron Simon, reviewing Hide in Plain Sight Paul Buhle & Dave Wagner's most recent volume on the Hollywood blacklist (Cineaste, Vol. XXIX, No. 2), claims the book proves "that there is much to learn from those divisive times." Actually, if it...

Defining historical film.(Letters)(Letter to the Editor)
June 22, 2004... Your "Film and History" supplement (Cineaste, Vol. XXIX, No. 2) contained many interesting and eloquent statements about history and film. But it would have benefitted if you had initiated the project with a more rigorous and systematic set of...

Empathy.(Short Takes)(Movie Review)
June 22, 2004... The ostensible subject of Amie Siegel's film is irresistible: What goes on in the heads of psycho analysts as they sit and listen to frustrated longings and shameful secrets, and often share the most intimate moments their patients may ever...

Human remains.(Short Takes)(Movie Review)(Brief Article)
June 22, 2004... Jay Rosenblatt's 'experimental documentary' consists of voice over, supposedly posthumous (although factually based) autobiographical recollections of five of the most egregious dictators of the twentieth century--Hitler, Mussolini, France,...

Public memory.(Short Takes)(Movie Review)
June 22, 2004... The debate over an appropriate way to memorialize victims of 9/11--what sort of public monument, to what purpose, and who gets to decide--has functioned as a litmus test of the nation's historical consciousness, even as the rising death toll in...

Rancho California (por favor).(Short Takes)(Movie Review)
June 22, 2004... John Caldwell's documentary essay explores "the racial off worlds of California's suburban plantation culture." From the opening moments, a voice over narrator suggests the ways that Mexican migrant workers and their families have claimed a...