Cineaste articles from March 2006

Cineaste archives from March 2006

Debating politics at the movies.(EDITORIAL)
March 22, 2006... Press coverage of Hollywood's recent spate of socially-conscious films has appeared as often in the more polemical precincts of the op-ed writers and political columnists as it has in the entertainment pages. Filmmakers are generally happy when...

Still "Making Movies": an interview with Sidney Lumet.(Interview)
March 22, 2006... Sidney Lumet has been making memorable motion pictures for fifty years. His forty-three feature films have won over fifty Academy Award nominations, including four nominations for Best Director and another for Best Screenplay. The Directors...

Reinventing realism: the art and politics of the Dardenne brothers.(Jean-Pierre Dardenne and Luc Dardenne)
March 22, 2006... He has sold his newborn son. Knees hugging his chest, Bruno sits in an empty concrete alcove on the bare banks of the Meuse River. Hollow traffic noises fill the air. The young mother, Sonia, returns. Jimmy? Where is Jimmy? We watch as Bruno...

The terrible lightness of social marginality: an interview with Jean-Pierre and Luc Dardenne.(Jean-Pierre Dardenne)(Interview)
March 22, 2006... In the decade since their third fiction feature, La Promesse (The Promise, 1996), became an international success, the unassuming but highly determined Belgian brothers Jean-Pierre and Luc Dardenne have ascended to the forefront of a newly...

Fire and ice: the films of Robert Bresson.(A Man Escaped)(Diary of a Country Priest)(L'Argent)(Les Dames du bois de Boulogne)(Pickpocket)(Video recording review)
March 22, 2006... Though one of the greatest narrative filmmakers, Robert Bresson remains little known or appreciated beyond the most discerning of filmgoers. While the retrospective of his work that traveled throughout the U.S. in 1998 and elsewhere--organized...

In praise of folly: an interview with Michael Winterbottom.(Interview)
March 22, 2006... During his whirlwind career as a director, Michael Winterbottom has emerged as something of a chameleon. Befuddling auteurists who reduce directors' careers to a constricting set of themes and stylistic choices, Winterbottom's films include...

Why We Fight: an interview with Eugene Jarecki.(Interview)
March 22, 2006... After studying Political Drama at Princeton University and technical film crafts at New York University, Eugene Jarecki worked for several years as a theater director, but soon shifted his creative efforts to the cinema. In 1992 he produced a...

All things Kong-sidered: King Kong. Born 1933. Died 2005. An epitaph for that most captivating of movie monsters.(Peter Jackson)(Biography)
March 22, 2006... Peter Jackson's King Kong is the movie as megachurch, where the faithful can gather to pay homage to the great ape. I was ready to enter Jackson's house of worship, as his take is very much a shrine to the 1933 Kong, the one I loved as a kid,...

Violence and redemption: an interview with Gavin Hood: a fifties-era novel by Athol Fugard is the basis of Tsotsi, which advances the timeframe to South Africa's present, troubled by crime, poverty, and AIDS. The film's writer-director, however, finds cause for optimism in the vibrant culture's struggles.(Interview)
March 22, 2006... There is a strong spirit of optimism at the heart of Tsotsi, directed by South African filmmaker, Gavin Hood. Based on the only novel by the acclaimed South African playwright, Athol Fugard, Tsotsi is set amidst the widespread poverty and...

Lost and found: Symbiopsychotaxiplasm: Take One and Take 2 1/2.
March 22, 2006... In a behind-the-scenes sequence included in the 1967 film Symbiopsychotaxiplasm: Take One, director William Greaves is shown telling a group of curious schoolchildren gathered on set that the project underway will be "coming out next year...

Brokeback Mountain.(Movie review)
March 22, 2006... Brokeback Mountain Produced by James Schamus; directed by Ang Lee; screenplay by Larry McMurtry and Diana Ossana, based upon the short story by Annie Proulx; cinematography by Rodrigo Prieto; production design by Judy Becker; edited by...

Lord of War.(Syriana)(Movie review)
March 22, 2006... Lord of War Produced by Phillippe Rousselet, Andrew Niccol, Nicolas Cage, Andy Groesch, Chris Roberts, and Norm Golightly; written and directed by Andrew Niccol; cinematography by Amir Mokr; edited by Zach Staenberg; music by Antonio Pinto;...

Munich.(Movie review)
March 22, 2006... Produced by Kathleen Kennedy, Barry Mendel, Steven Spielberg, and Colin Wilson; directed by Steven Spielberg; screenplay by Tony Kushner and Eric Roth, based on the book Vengeance by George Jonas; cinematography by Janusz Kaminski; edited by...

The President's Last Bang.(Movie review)
March 22, 2006... Produced by Shim Jaemyung and Shin Chul; directed by Im Sangsoo; screenplay by Im Sangsoo; cinematography by Kim Woohyung; production manager Sohn Sungmoon and Kim Hyunchul; edited by Lee Eunsoo; costumes by Kim Dohee; lighting by Go Naksun;...

Innocence.(Movie review)
March 22, 2006... Produced by Geoffrey Cox, Patrick Sobelman, and Alain de la Mata; written and directed by Lucile Hadzihalilovic; cinematography by Benoit Debie; edited by Adam Finch; production design by Arnaud de Moleron; costume design by Laurence Benoit;...

Family Nest.(The Outsider)(The Prefab People)(Video recording review)
March 22, 2006... Family Nest Written and directed by Bela Tarr; cinematography by Ferenc Pap and Barna Mihok; edited by Anna Korniss. DVD, B&W, 100 mins., Hungarian dialog with English subtitles. The Outsider Written and directed by Bela Tarr;...

Point of Order.(In the Year of the Pig)(Video recording review)
March 22, 2006... Point of Order Produced by Daniel Talbot and Emile de Antonio; editorial director, Emile de Antonio; edited by Robert Duncan. DVD, B&W, 93 mins., with audio interview with Emile de Antonio. A New Yorker Video release,...

The Man in the Gray Flannel Suit.(Video recording review)
March 22, 2006... Written and directed by Nunnally Johnson; produced by Darryl F. Zanuck; music by Bernard Hermann; with Gregory Peck, Jennifer Jones, Fredric March, Lee J. Cobb, Arthur O'Connell, Keenan Wynn, Henry Daniell, and Ann Harding. 1956. DVD, Color,...

The Man Who Fell to Earth.(Bad Timing)(Video recording review)
March 22, 2006... The Man Who Fell to Earth Directed by Nicolas Roeg; written by Paul Mayersberg, from the novel by Walter Tevis; starring David Bowie, Rip Torn, Candy Clark, and Buck Henry. Two-disc DVD set, color, 139 mins. A Criterion Collection release...

Unfaithfully Yours.(Video recording review)
March 22, 2006... Directed, written and produced by Preston Sturges; starring Rex Harrison, Linda Darnell, Rudy Vallee and Barbara Lawrence. DVD, B&W, 105 mins. A Criterion Collection release, distributed by Image Entertainment, www.image-entertainment.com. ...

The Agronomist.(Video recording review)
March 22, 2006... Directed by Jonathan Demme. DVD, Color, 89 mins., in English and French dialog with English subtitles. A THINKFilm Video release. "Risky business!" Activist Jean Leopold Dominique often uses this phrase to punctuate his account of political...

Elia Kazan: A Biography.(Book review)
March 22, 2006... Elia Kazan: A Biography by Richard Schickel. New York: Harper Collins, 2005. 544 pp., Illus. Hardcover: $29.95. In the first line of Elia Kazan, Richard Schickel declares that he has written a critical biography. That statement raises the...

The Most Typical Avant-Garde: History and Geography of Minor Cinemas in Los Angeles.(Book review)
March 22, 2006... The Most Typical Avant-Garde: History and Geography of Minor Cinemas in Los Angeles by David E. James. Berkeley: University of California Press, 2005. 548 pp., illus. Hardcover: $65.00 and Paperback: $29.95. With apologies to Chris Marker,...

Captured: A Film/Video History of the Lower East Side.(Book review)
March 22, 2006... Captured: A Film/Video History of the Lower East Side Edited by Clayton Patterson. New York: Seven Stories Press, 2005. 586 pp., illus. Paperback: $26.95. By the time I'd read a few dozen pages of Captured: A Film/Video History of the...

Edward Yang.(Book review)
March 22, 2006... Edward Yang by John Anderson. Champaign, IL: University of Illinois Press, 2005. 132 pp., illus. Hardcover: $35.00 and Paperback: $16.95. Is Edward Yang the greatest filmmaker in the world? Much of the evidence would stack up against him....

Imaging Russia 2000: Film and Facts.(Book review)
March 22, 2006... Imaging Russia 2000: Film and Facts by Anna Lawton. Washington, DC: New Academia Publishing, 2004. 348 pp. Hardcover: $29.00 and Paperback: $24.00. This Moscow cine-diary of Anna Lawton, the distinguished scholar of Russian film, explores...

The Story of Film: A Worldwide History of Film from the Host of the BBC's Scene by Scene.(Book review)
March 22, 2006... The Story of Film: A Worldwide History of Film from the Host of the BBC's Scene by Scene by Mark Cousins. New York: Thunder's Mouth Press, 2004. 480 pp., illus. Hardcover: $39.95. The subtitle refers to the author's most widely known...

The Golden West: Hollywood Stories.(Book review)
March 22, 2006... The Golden West: Hollywood Stories by Daniel Fuchs. Boston: Black Sparrow Books (David R. Godine Publisher), 2005. 256 pp. Hardcover: $24.95. Many years ago I read Daniel Fuchs's Brooklyn trilogy--Summer in Williamsburg, Homage to...

Avoiding the big question.(Letter to the editor)
March 22, 2006... I took Abu-Assad's suggestion ("This Is a Film You Should See Twice: An Interview with Hany Abu-Assad," Cineaste, Vol. XXXI, No. 1) that one ought to see Paradise Now twice before forming judgment. He insisted that we consider the images he had...

Selling Cukor short.(Letter to the editor)
March 22, 2006... In Maria DiBattista's otherwise illuminating review of Steve Vineberg's High Comedy in American Movies (Cineaste, Vol. XXXI, No. 1), she briefly condemns George Cukor's Holiday for its "puerility" and observes that "it is no accident that the...

Not just a historical film.(Letter to the editor)
March 22, 2006... Reading your review of Good Night, and Good Luck (Cineaste, Vol. XXXI, No. 1), I thought, 'Good grief, what is up with your reviewer? Does he not see that the film is as much about the present as the past?' The contemporary parallel of Karl...

Ford's sentimental slush.(Letter to the editor)
March 22, 2006... I couldn't agree more with Marius Labruzza's letter (Cineaste, Vol. XXXI, No. 1). The one trait he left out was that "Shall We Gather at the River" slush that marred so many Ford Westerns. Sentimentality is characteristic of ruthless S.O.B.'s,...

The Montreal World Film Festival.
March 22, 2006... Perpetually in the shadow of the Toronto International Film Festival and involved in an ongoing struggle for survival, Montreal's World Film Festival should at least be given credit for resilience. On the eve of the 2005 edition, the Canadian...

The Thessaloniki International Film Festival.
March 22, 2006... Fourteen years ago the Thessaloniki Film Festival transformed itself from a strictly national festival to an international event. In the succeeding years, under the directorship of Michel Demopoulos, the Thessaloniki International Film Festival...

Henri Langlois: Phantom of the Cinematheque.(Biography)
March 22, 2006... Henri Langlois (1914-1977) is a figure of great importance in the history and culture of film. He founded the Cinematheque Francaise before World War II and headed it for decades, providing a revelatory education in film for the French and,...

Protocols of Zion.(Movie review)
March 22, 2006... The year 2005 marked the one hundredth anniversary of the first publication of one of the most infamous texts in the history of anti-Semitism, The Protocols of the Learned Elders of Zion. Purporting to be the minutes of a secret meeting of...

Shooting Magpies.(Movie review)
March 22, 2006... For thirty years, Britain's Amber Collective has been producing documentary and fictional films that capture the everyday life of working-class miners, shipbuilders, and fishermen in Northeast England. The films have been shaped through...

La Sierra.(SHORT TAKES)(Movie review)
March 22, 2006... For decades, Colombia has been gripped by "La Violencia"--a seemingly unending plague of violence unleashed by leftist guerrilla movements, their rightist paramilitary enemies, urban gangs, the powerful narcotraficantes (drug traffickers), and...

Wal-Mart: The High Cost of Low Price.(Movie review)
March 22, 2006... While Robert Greenwald is known for making polemical documentaries with a liberal bent, his latest film is tailored to appeal to viewers in the more conservative heartlands. Wal-Mart: The High Cost of Low Price makes the now-familiar charge...