Cineaste articles from March 2005

Cineaste archives from March 2005

Bringing Asian cinema into focus.(Editorial)
March 22, 2005... However crass it may seem, the critical reputations of national cinemas fluctuate as wildly as the vicissitudes of the stock market. While the stock of Italian and French cinema soared in the Sixties and critics and audiences were bullish on...

Too darn hot: Kinsey and the culture wars.(Critical Essay)
March 22, 2005... If vitriolic viewer response is any measure of a film's political import, Kinsey, the new biopic about the mid-century American sex researcher, is not to be dismissed as just another hollow hagiography. Its release last fall galvanized such...

Sex, science, and the biopic: an interview with Bill Condon.(Interview)
March 22, 2005... After directing made-for-television movies for a decade, writer-director Bill Condon received critical acclaim for Gods and Monsters (1998), his nuanced and moving account of gay Hollywood director James Whale that garnered Condon an Academy...

Dramatizing issues that historians don't address: an interview with Oliver Stone.(Interview)
March 22, 2005... "I'm quite nervous and anxious about this film," Oliver Stone commented before the start of principal photography on his latest film, Alexander, his first big-budget historical epic. "It's probably the greatest challenge of my life." Stone...

From Stella to Iphigenia: the woman-centered films of Michael Cacoyannis.(Critical Essay)
March 22, 2005... The most prolific period in Greek cinema got into high gear in the 1950s and managed to produce more than thirteen hundred films before collapsing in the 1970s. Although comedies, musicals, and melodramas comprised the bulk of the cinema...

Corrections for Cineaste.(Correction Notice)
March 22, 2005... Vol. XXIX, No. 4 & Vol. XXXX, No. 1 In the article "Straight from the Heart: Re-Viewing the Films of Rainer Werner Fassbinder" by Tony Pipoto, in Vol. XX1X, No. 4, a typo rendered the Italian actor Lou Castel as "Lou Cassel." In...

One idea every fifteen seconds: an interview with Arnaud Desplechin.(Interview)
March 22, 2005... Arnaud Desplechin, the forty-five-year-old director whose Kings and Queen has been making the festival circuit, has made only five films, but each one has exuded a remarkable sense of generosity and joie de cinema. His delight in giving life to...

The Testaments of Fritz Lang.(Das Testament des Dr. Mabuse)(Video Recording Review)
March 22, 2005... Fritz Lang's Das Testament des Dr. Mabuse (The Testament of Dr. Mabuse) has led a troubled life. Banned in its native Germany right after its completion in early 1933, the film circulated for many years mainly in an inferior French-language...

The Aviator.(Movie Review)
March 22, 2005... Produced by Michael Mann, Sandy Climan, Graham King, and Charles Evans, Jr.; directed by Martin Scorsese; screenplay by John Logan; cinematography by Robert Richardson; production design by Dante Ferretti; edited by Thelma Schoonmaker; costumes...

Rwanda, Hotel.(Hotel Rwanda)(Movie Review)
March 22, 2005... Produced by Terry George and A. Kitman Ho; directed by Terry George; written by Keir Pearson and Terry George with Paul Rusesabagina; cinematography by Robert Fraisse; edited by Naomi Geraghty; production design by Tony Burrough and Johnny...

The Merchant of Venice.(Movie Review)
March 22, 2005... Produced by Nigel Goldsack; directed by Michael Radford; screenplay by Michael Radford; cinematography by Benoit Delhomme; production design by Bruno Rubeo; edited by Lucia Zucchetti; costume design by Sammy Sheldon; music by Jodelyn Pook;...

Unforgivable Blackness: the Rise and Fall of Jack Johnson.(Movie Review)
March 22, 2005... Produced by Paul Barnes, Ken Burns and David Schaye; directed by Ken Burns; written by Geoffrey C. Ward; cinematography by Stephen McCarthy and Buddy Squires; original music by Wynton Marsalis; edited by Paul Barnes and Erik Ewers; sound by...

The Sea Inside.(Movie Review)
March 22, 2005... Produced by Fernando Bovaira and Alejandro Amenabar; directed by Alejandro Amenabar; screenplay by Alejandro Amenabar and Mateo Gil; cinematography by Javier Aguirresarobe; production design by Benjamin Fernandez; edited by Alejandro Amenabar;...

Notre Musique.(Movie Review)
March 22, 2005... Produced by Alain Sarde and Ruth Waldburger; directed by Jean-Luc Godard; writing credits, Jean-Luc Godard; cinematography by Julien Hirsch; art direction by Anne-Marie Mieville; edited by Jean-Luc Godard; starring Sarah Adler, Nade Dieu, Rony...

Judgment at Nuremberg.(Video Recording Review)
March 22, 2005... Produced and directed by Stanley Kramer; written by Abby Mann; starring Spencer Tracy, Maxmilian Schell, Marlene Dietrich, Burt Lancaster, Montgomery Clift, and Richard Widmark. DVD, B&W, 186 mins. An MGM Home Entertainment Release. ...

Robinson Crusoe.(Video Recording Review)
March 22, 2005... Produced by Oscar Dancigers; directed by Luis Bunuel; screenplay by Bunuel and Hugo Butler, from the novel by Daniel Defoe; starring Dan O'Herlihy and Jaime Fernandez. DVD, color, 90 mins. A VCI Entertainment release. This DVD edition of...

More Treasures From the American Film Archives, 1894-1931.(Video Recording Review)
March 22, 2005... Produced by the National Film Preservation Foundation; curator, Scott Simmon; music curated by Martin Marks. Fifty films preserved by The Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences, George Eastman House, The Library of Congress, The Museum of...

Outskirts and The Girl with the Hatbox.(Video Recording Review)
March 22, 2005... Two Russian Classics directed by Boris Barnet, 1933/1927; B&W, Russian with English subtitles, total running time 165 mins. An Image Entertainment release, www.image-entertainment.com. The perennial discovery of the perennially neglected...

La Dolce Vita.(Video Recording Review)
March 22, 2005... Directed by Federico Fellini; starring Marcello Mastroianni, Anita Ekberg, Anouk Aimee and Yvonne Furneaux. Two-Disc Collector's Edition DVD, B&W, 174 mins. A Koch Lorber Films release, www.kochlorberfilms.com. Consider this list: The 400...

The Films of Orson Welles.(Book Review)
March 22, 2005... The Films of Orson Welles by Robert Garis. New York, NY: Cambridge University Press, 2004, 184 pp., illus. Hardcover: $60.00 and Paperback: $20.99. Orson Welles: The Stories of His Life by Peter Conrad. London: Faber and Faber,...

Film Noir and the Spaces of Modernity.(Book Review)
March 22, 2005... Film Noir and the spaces of Modernity by Edward Dimendberg. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2004. 327 pp., illus. Hardcover: $59.95 and Paperback: $24.95. The quickest way to gauge the novelty of this splendid, groundbreaking...

Open Wide: How Hollywood Box Office Became a National Obsession.(Book Review)
March 22, 2005... Open Wide: How Hollywood Box Office Became a National Obsession by Dade Hayes and Jonathan Bing. New York, NY: Miramax Books, 2004. 432 pp. Hardcover: $23.95. In our era of the megaplex, the marketing process for a big-budget release...

American Racist: the Life and Films of Thomas Dixon.(Book Review)
March 22, 2005... American Racist: The Life and Films of Thomas Dixon by Anthony Slide. Lexington, KY: University Press of Kentucky, 2004. 242 pp., illus. Hardcover: $35.00 One symptom of America's cultural malaise is that intelligent film books are no...

The Montreal Festival du Nouveau Cinema.(Communiques)
March 22, 2005... Although Montreal is famous for its huge, and currently embattled, World Film Festival, the considerably more low-key (and in fact older) Festival du Nouveau Cinema deserves to be better known. While the World Film Festival serves up a bulky...

The Valladolid International Film Festival.(Communiques)
March 22, 2005... The origins of the Valladolid International Film Festival--called in Spanish the Semana Internacional de Cine de Valladolid or LA SEMINCI--are modest. Forty-nine years ago this Spanish event began in Valladolid, a city northwest of Madrid, as a...

The Thessaloniki Film Festival.(Communiques)
March 22, 2005... Since becoming an international event in 1992, the Thessaloniki Film Festival has earned a reputation as a festival fiercely dedicated to the art of the cinema. In its 2004 incarnation, Thessaloniki more than lived up to its heady reputation....

In My Country.(Short Takes)(Movie Review)
March 22, 2005... John Boorman's In My Country provides a dramatic glimpse into South Africa's Truth and Reconciliation Commission, a tribunal which sought not retribution but absolution for human-rights abuses committed during the devastating apartheid years....

Orwell rolls in his grave.(Short Takes)(Movie Review)
March 22, 2005... I normally have problems with documentaries that are almost totally built around talking heads--people who often sing the same tune, with only slight variations in the lyrics. Films that do little visually but focus on people talking, in fact,...

The Take.(Short Takes)(Movie Review)
March 22, 2005... Directed by Avi Lewis and Naomi Klein (author of the book No Logo), this documentary explores the aftermath of the recent financial collapse of Argentina, "a rich country made poor" through the economic plan known simply as "El Modelo" ("The...

Vodka Lemon.(Short Takes)(Movie Review)
March 22, 2005... "Why do you call it 'Vodka Lemon' if it tastes like almonds?," asks a character at the roadside stand that gives the film its title. "Because this is Armenia," replies the vendor in this minimalist village fable by the Kurdish filmmaker Hiner...