Cineaste articles from March 2000

Cineaste archives from March 2000

EDITORIAL.(Brief Article)
March 22, 2000... The nature of the language most suitable for writing about the arts continues to be disputed. Recent issues of publications as varied as Lingua Franca and the newsletter of the National Writers Union have discussed the overly dense style...

"I Still Love Going to Movies".
March 22, 2000... An Interview with Pauline Kael Pauline Kael shook up the critical scene with her controversial 1963 Film Quarterly article, "Circles and Squares," which attacked auteurist critics for their attempts to promote hack Hollywood films as...

The Making of The Battle of Algiers.(Critical Essay)
March 22, 2000... "It's 1960," Gillo tells us. "A young, upper-middle-class Frenchman, good looking, intelligent, refined, just as at ease on the ski slopes in Chamonix as in the night clubs in Saint-Tropez, a reporter for Paris Match, a photographer in his...

The Dictatorship of Truth.(Interview)
March 22, 2000... An Interview with Gillo Pontecorvo In March 1999, The Film Society of Lincoln Center presented "Documented Fictions," a retrospective of the films of Gillo Pontecorvo, including The Long Blue Road (1957), Kap[grave{o}] (1959), The Battle...

Fifty Years of Casting.(Interview)
March 22, 2000... An Interview with Marion Dougherty Marion Dougherty is one of those behind-the-scenes persons who is a legend in Hollywood but relatively unknown to the general public. Dougherty is universally acknowledged as having invented modern...

The Discreet Charms of Luis Bunuel.(Critical Essay)
March 22, 2000... At the height of his popularity (if not his notoriety) in the 1970s, Luis Bu[tilde{n}]uel reminded a new generation of admirers that he "should like to make even the most ordinary spectator feel that he is not living in the best of all possible...

Entertainment and Empire.(Interview)
March 22, 2000... An Interview with Mike Leigh Topsy-Turvy (which had its American premiere at the 1999 New York Film Festival), Mike Leigh's first period film, may seem like a drastic departure from his usual preoccupation with contemporary, and often...

I Make Films about the Big Problems of Our Continent.(Interview)
March 22, 2000... An Interview with Cheick Oumar Sissoko Malian filmmaker Cheick Oumar Sissoko has a taste for excess, and no where is this more evident than in the latest film he has directed, La genese (Genesis), based on the tales of Jacob, Esau, and...

Buppy Love in an Urban World.(Critical Essay)
March 22, 2000... RACE IN CONTEMPORARY AMERICAN CINEMA: PART 11 If there's a definitive trend in contemporary African-American cinema, it's the shift away from the grit of ghettocentricity (that narrative of nihilism and urban blight typifying the...

Whites on Film.(Critical Essay)
March 22, 2000... Although filmmakers and critics have been investigating the role of race in film for the past several decades, little attention has been paid to the race which pays the most attention to itself on screen: that conglomeration of Northern...

Homecoming.(Review)
March 22, 2000... Sometimes I'm Haunted by Memories of Red Dirt and Clay Produced and directed by Charlene Gilbert; cinematography by Michelle Crenshaw; sound by Peter Redding; edited by Kim Mayhorn; music by Dwight Andrews; color, 56 mins. Distributed by...

A SECOND LOOK: The Pawnbroker.(Critical Essay)
March 22, 2000... Given that few American films before the Sixties ever touched on specifically Jewish topics, the horrors of the Holocaust were an especially forbidden subject for Hollywood. The film industry's principally Jewish moguls were continually afraid...

American Beauty.(Review)
March 22, 2000... Produced by Bruce Cohen and Dan Jinks; directed by Sam Mendes; screenplay by Alan Ball; cinematography by Conrad L. Hall; production design by Naomi Shohan; art direction by David S. Lazan; edited by Tariq Anwar and Chris Greenbury; costume...

Man on the Moon.(Review)
March 22, 2000... Produced by Danny DeVito, Michael Shamberg and Stacey Sher; directed by Milos Forman; screenplay by Scott Alexander and Larry Karaszewski; cinematography by Anastas Michos; production design by Patrizia Von Brandenstein; edited by Christopher...

The Brandon Teena Story and Boys Don't Cry.(Review)
March 22, 2000... Produced, directed, and written by Susan Muska and Greta Olafsdottir; cinematography by Muska and Olafsdottir; edited by Muska and Olafsdottir; executive producer, Jane Dekrone; music by Lorrie Morgan, Dinah Washington, April Stevens and The...

Angela's Ashes.(Review)
March 22, 2000... Produced by Scott Rudin, David Brown and Alan Parker; directed by Alan Parker; screenplay by Laura Jones and Alan Parker, based on the book by Frank McCourt; cinematography by Michael Seresin; production design by Geoffrey Kirkland; art...

Topsy-Turvy.(Review)
March 22, 2000... Produced by Simon Channing-Williams; writ-ten and directed by Mike Leigh; cinematography by Dick Pope; production design by Eve Stewart; costume design by Lindy Hemming; music by Carl Davis from the work of Arthur Sullivan; choreography by...

In Memoriam.(Brief Article)(Obituary)
March 22, 2000... Cineaste notes with sadness the death of Karen Jaehne, who died on January 21st after a long battle with cancer. Karen was a vital member of the Cineaste Editorial Board from 1985 to 1991 during which time she contributed a wide range of...

THE SOUND OF SILENTS.
March 22, 2000... With digital technologies looming to relegate 35mm celluloid to the dustbin of cinematic history, historians and spectators alike are looking backwards at the (first) century of the moving image, an impulse that has inspired more archeological...

Summer of Sam.(Review)
March 22, 2000... Produced by Jon Kilik and Spike Lee; directed by Spike Lee; screenplay by Victor Colicchio, Michael Imperioli and Spike Lee; cinematography by Ellen Kuras; production design by Therese DePrez; edited by Barry Alexander Brown; music by Terence...

The Messiah.(Review)
March 22, 2000... Directed by Roberto Rossellini; screenplay by Rossellini and Silvia D'Amico Bendic[acute{o}]; cinematography by Mario Montuori; music by Mario Nascimbene; starring Pier Maria Rossi as Jesus and Mita Ungaro as Mary; color, 145 mins., Italian...

Totally Tenderly Tragically.(Review)
March 22, 2000... Essays and Criticism from a Lifelong Love Affair with the Movies by Phillip Lopate. New York: Doubleday Anchor, 1998. 384 pp. Paperback: $12.95. In his introduction to Totally Tenderly Tragically, a collection of twenty-seven pieces...

"Bold! Daring! Shocking! True!": A History of Exploitation Films, 1919-1959.(Review)
March 22, 2000... by Eric Schaefer. Durham and London: Duke University Press, 1999. 474pp., illus. Hardcover: $29.95. Eric Schaefer has produced an outstanding work of film history in "Bold! Daring! Shocking! True!": A History of Exploitation Films,...

City on Fire: Hong Kong Cinema.(Review)
March 22, 2000... by Lisa Odham Stokes and Michael Hoover. New York and London: Versa, 1999. 372 pp., illus. Hardcover: $60.00 and Paperback: $19.00. Until recently, those looking for serious books about Hong Kong cinema in English had to cultivate a...

Cinema of Outsiders: The Rise of American Independent Film.(Review)
March 22, 2000... Emanuel Levy. New York University Press, 1999. 600 pp., illus. Hardcover: $34.95 Emmanuel Levy's Cinema of Outsiders: The Rise of American Independent Film is an exhaustively researched chronicle of the meteoric ascent of independent...

Mad To Be Saved: The Beats, the '50s and Film.(Review)
March 22, 2000... by David Sterritt. Carbondale, IL: Southern Illinois University Press, 1998. 258 pp. Hardcover: S29.95. A sign of the continued interest in the writers of the Beat Generation is that many bookstores keep the works of Jack Kerouac and...

Being John Malkovich.(Review)
March 22, 2000... The jokes in Being John Malkovich start with its title, which tricked unwary moviegoers into expecting a bio-doc until word of its wildly original story began filtering out. It quickly gained favor with the end-of-1999 awards crowd, who...

The Children of Chabannes.(Review)
March 22, 2000... Ever since the groundbreaking film Partisans of Vilna came out in 1986, filmmakers have searched for heartwarming stories about the Holocaust. The latest installment of the 'uplifting Holocaust story' is this 1999 documentary by Lisa Gossels...

Judy Berlin.(Review)
March 22, 2000... Writer-director Eric Mendelsohn has made a delicate poetic film about ordinary people living melancholy and unfulfilled lives in a Long Island suburb. Subtly played by an ensemble of New York actors like the late Madeline Kahn as a dizzy,...

Today is a Good Day: Remembering Chief Dan George.(Review)
March 22, 2000... Dan George, perhaps best remembered for his role as Old Lodge Skins in Little Big Man, began his acting career when he was nearly sixty. This documentary on the life of the late Native Canadian actor combines interviews of George's family with...

Wallowitch & Ross: This Moment.(Review)
March 22, 2000... John Wallowitch and Bertram Ross, the subjects of Richard Morris's engaging documentary, are long established figures in the New York cabaret world who also enjoy a long-running romance, both for clever and obscure songs and for each other....

Wisconsin Death Trip.(Review)
March 22, 2000... James Marsh's adaptation of Michael Lesy's 1973 book, Wisconsin Death Trip, is a foray into American Gothic that has none of the unnerving eeriness of its source material. Lesy's book--now a cult item--is a collection of archival photos and...