Cineaste articles from March 2003

Cineaste archives from March 2003

Editorial.
March 22, 2003... Will the winner of this year's Academy Award for "Best Foreign Language Film" truly live up to that claim? Like the questions raised in recent years about the nominating procedures of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences for the...

The spirit of resistance: an interview with bertrand tavernier.(Interview)
March 22, 2003... Most films that ponder the agony and ecstasy of making films are either nostalgic evocations of the past (Singin' in the Rain), sardonic commentaries on crass commercialism (Sunset Boulevard, Contempt), or faux-autobiographical explorations of...

Sex, half-truths and videotape: auto focus and confessions of a dangerous mind.(reviews of 2 films)(Movie Review)
March 22, 2003... Ever since the late l940s, when the light of the cathode ray first dimmed the glow of the projection bulb, television has bedeviled and inspired Hollywood. Playing defense, Addison De Witt, the aloof theater critic in All About Eve (1950),...

Filming the story of a spy for god: an interview with Costa-Gavras.(Interview)
March 22, 2003... Costa-Gavras has never been afraid to take on controversial political topics. American covert actions abroad, Soviet purge trials, military dictatorships, right-wing militias, the Palestinian/Israeli conflict, and Nazi fugitives are among the...

Cautionary tales: documentaries on the un sanctions and war with Iraq.
March 22, 2003... For more than twelve years, the people of Iraq have been subjected to the most comprehensive embargo in modern history. Despite claims from successive administrations in Washington and London, the main powers behind the United Nations...

Who dat man? Shaft and the blaxploitation genre.
March 22, 2003... Shaft is famous for many things--the boom in "blaxploitation" films, the invention of badass black attitude, the ultimate wah-wah rhythm-and-blues score, the depiction of New York as a Darwinian cesspool--but there's one I've never seen...

White man's burden Eminem's movie debut in 8 mile.
March 22, 2003... Virtually unknown twenty-five years ago, rap music today is a multimillion dollar business and a global cultural force. Originally appearing in the mid-Seventies in New York's South Bronx as part of hip hop, a larger spectrum of newly emerging...

Bowling for Columbine. (Film Reviews).(Movie Review)
March 22, 2003... Produced by Michael Moore, Kathleen Glynn, Charles Bishop, Jim Czarnecki. and Michael Donovan; written and directed by Michael Moore; cinematography by Brian Danitz and Michael McDonough; edited by Kurt Engfehr; original music by Jeff Gibbs;...

Far from Heaven. (Film Reviews).(Movie Review)
March 22, 2003... Produced by Christine Vachon and Jody Patton; written and directed by Todd Haynes; cinematography by Edward Lachman; edited by James Lyons; production design by Mark Friedberg; costume design by Sandy Powell; original music by Elmer Bernstein;...

Frida. (Film Reviews).(Movie Review)
March 22, 2003... Joan M. West. Dennis West Produced by Lindsay Flickinger, Sarah Green, Nancy Hardin, Salma Hayek, Jay Poistein, Roberto Sneider and Lizz Speed; directed by Julie Taymor; screenplay by Clancy Sigal, Diane Lake, Gregory Nava and Anna...

Talk to Her. (Film Reviews).(Movie Review)
March 22, 2003... Produced by Augustin Almodovar; written and directed by Pedro Almodovar; cinematography by Javier Aguirresarobe; edited by Jose Salcedo; production design by Antxon Gomez; costume design by Sonia Grande; music by Alberto Iglesias; starring...

Hell House. (Film Reviews).(Movie Review)
March 22, 2003... Produced by Selina Lewis Davidson, Zachary Mortensen and George Ratliff; directed by George Ratliff; cinematography by Jawad Metni; edited by Michael LaHaie; sound editing by Peter Levin and Barbara Parks; music by Bubba Kadane. Color, 80 mins....

The melodramatic neorealism of Luchino Visconti. (Home Video).(Movie Review)
March 22, 2003... There is nothing elaborate about the DVDs recently released by Image Entertainment of three of Luchino Visconti's greatest films--Ossessione, La Terra Trema, and Rocco and His Brothers. The same can be said for a DVD release of a documentary...

Two silent Shakespeares: Richard III and Othello. (Home Video).(Movie Review)
March 22, 2003... These DVDs add considerably to the range and quality of the Shakespeare films available from the silent era. James Keane's 1912 Richard III is presented in a restored print from the American Film Institute with a score (effectively a Richard...

Contempt. (Homevideo).(Movie Review)
March 22, 2003... Directed by Jean-Luc Godard; screenplay by Jean-Luc Godard; cinematography by Raoul Coutard; edited by Agnes Guillemot; music by Georges Delerue; starring Brigitte Bardot, Michel Piccoli, Jack Palance, Giorgia Moll and Fritz Lang. Color, 104...

Lost Illusions: American Cinema in the Shadow of Watergate and Vietnam, 1970-1979. (Book Reviews).(Book Review)
March 22, 2003... by David A. Cook (History of the American Cinema, Volume 9, Charles Harpole, General Editor). Berkeley, CA: University of California Press, 2000. Hardcover: $112.50 and Paperback: $29.95. There is a tendency in scholarly (and...

Positif 50 years. (Book Reviews).(Book Review)
March 22, 2003... Edited by Michel Ciment and Laurence Kardish. New York: The Museum of Modern Art (Distributed by D.A.P.), 2002. 288 pp., illus. Paperback: $21.95. Fifty years of publication is truly a significant achievement for any film magazine,...

Generation Multiplex: The Image of Youth in Contemporary American Cinema. (Book Reviews).(Book Review)
March 22, 2003... by Timothy Shary. Austin, TX: University of Texas Press, 2002. 330pp., illus. Hardcover: $60.00 and Paperback: $24.95. Though seldom deemed the most discerning cadre of motion-picture aficionados, teenagers are surely the most faithful seat...

An Argentine Passion: Maria Luisa Bemberg and Her Films. (Book Reviews).(Book Review)
March 22, 2003... Edited by John King, Sheila Whitaker, Rosa Bosch. London and New York, NY: Verso, 2000. 234 pp., illus. Hardcover: $60.00 and Paperback: $20.00. Argentine filmmaker Maria Luisa Bemberg (1922-1995) was a remarkable figure. She directed her...

Screened Out: Playing Gay in Hollywood from Edison to Stonewall. (Book Reviews).(Book Review)
March 22, 2003... by Richard Barrios. New York and London: Routledge, 2003. 320 pp., illus. Hardcover: $29.95. Masculine Interests: Homoerotics in Hollywood Films by Robert Lang. New York: Columbia University Press, 2002. 384 pp., illus....

Black & White & Noir: America's Pulp Modernism. (Book Reviews).(Book Review)
March 22, 2003... by Paula Rabinowitz. New York: Columbia University Press, 2002. 308pp., illus. Hardcover: $49.95 and Paperback: $18.50. It's official: film noir is now more or less what anyone says it is, regardless of whether the thing in question...

Driving Visions: Exploring the Road Movie. (Book Reviews).(Book Review)
March 22, 2003... David Laderman. Austin, TX: University of Texas Press, 2002. 322 pp., illus. Hardcover: $65.00 and Paperback: $24.95. Driving Visions is a work of genre criticism that focuses on the road-movie cycle that, author David Laderman...

Blackboards. (Short Takes).(Movie Review)
March 22, 2003... Blackboards opens with a dozen male teachers trudging through jagged mountain passes carrying large blackboards on their backs, A hand-held camera records their jarring progress as they speak about finding students in remote villages. The sound...

Cul de sac: a suburban war story. (Short Takes).(Movie Review)
March 22, 2003... Garrett Scott's short documentary chronicles the bizarre moment, exploited by national media in 1995, when Shawn Nelson, a resident of a San Diego suburb, stole a sixty-ton tank from a local armory and went on a twenty-three minute demolition...

Massoud, The Afghan. (Short Takes).(Movie Review)
March 22, 2003... "Afghanistan, a country far away, at war, which no one gives a damn about. In the modern world's tumult of pictures and sounds, does pointing a camera still mean anything?" So begins Christophe de Ponfilly's poignant documentary on Ahmed Shah...

Testimony: the Maria Guardado story. (Short Takes).(Movie Review)
March 22, 2003... Director Randy Vasquez's documentary follows Maria Guardado back to El Salvador after eighteen years of exile in Los Angeles. Maria returns to San Miguel to observe the twentieth anniversary of the assassination of Bishop Oscar Romero on March...