Cineaste articles from March 2008

Cineaste archives from March 2008

Pregnancy test: the politics of the personal.(how abortion is portrayed in the movies Juno and Knocked Up)(Editorial)
March 22, 2008... The critical controversy sparked last year by two box-office hits about pregnancy, Juno and Knocked Up, centers on how the films represent--or fail to represent--abortion as a considered option for their unexpectedly expectant female...

The outsider: themes from the work of Daniel Day-Lewis.
March 22, 2008... [ILLUSTRATION OMITTED] In the final scene of There Will Be Blood, Daniel Day-Lewis drools. Just once for a moment. He doesn't drool like a child, or like an old man--though the scene finds his character at the end of a long life. Day-Lewis...

Don't make your dreams too small: an interview with John Sayles.(Interview)
March 22, 2008... John Sayles holds a unique place in American cinema. Although he has been a highly regarded writer/director of independent films for nearly thirty years, he has a niche in Hollywood as well. Mainstream producers frequently employ him as--to use...

Working with John Sayles: an interview with David Strathairn and Chris Cooper.(Interview)
March 22, 2008... Chris Cooper (2003 Oscar winner as John Laroche in Adaptation), and David Strathairn (2005 Oscar nominee as Edward R. Murrow in Good Night, and Good Luck) made their film debuts with John Sayles. Cooper has appeared in four Sayles films and...

From The Celluloid Closet to Brokeback Mountain: the changing nature of Queer Film Criticism.(Book review)
March 22, 2008... [ILLUSTRATION OMITTED] It has been just over two years since the release of Ang Lee's Brokeback Mountain and the intense media coverage that ensued: endless Brokeback jokes on the late-night talk shows, a New Yorker cover parody featuring...

Surviving a futile war: an interview with Joseph Cedar.(Interview)
March 22, 2008... Joseph Cedar is a talented, young Israeli director who had directed two films--a thriller, Time of Favor (2000) and a film about the world of religious Zionist settlers, Campfire (2004)--before he made Beaufort. Both were box-office hits in...

Good moments in a tough world: the films of Charles Burnett: dreams, disorder, and hard-won hope are revealed in the universe of a filmmaker showcased on a new two-disc special-edition DVD from Milestone Film & Video.
March 22, 2008... [ILLUSTRATION OMITTED] For decades, Charles Burnett's film Killer of Sheep was nearly as short on luck as one of the African-American Watts residents it portrays. Made for less than ten thousand dollars, shot over a number of years...

Not just an abortion film: an interview with Cristian Mungiu.(Interview)
March 22, 2008... While most of Eastern Europe's postwar Communist countries were ruled by bland, if frequently corrupt, figureheads, Romania proved a spectacularly ghoulish exception. Soon after becoming head of the party in 1965, Nicolae Ceausescu took...

Status and morality in Cassandra's Dream: an interview with Woody Allen.(Interview)
March 22, 2008... In his latest film, Cassandra's Dream, Woody Allen contemplates the nature of status--how it is gained, lost, and internalized with consequences that cut to the very core of identity and self-esteem. This is not a new theme for Mien--in fact it...

Still lives in times of change: an interview with Jia Zhangke.(Interview)
March 22, 2008... In only a decade of activity as a feature filmmaker, and at the relatively tender age of thirty-seven, Jia Zhangke has rapidly distinguished himself as one of contemporary cinema's most indispensable voices. He has done so not only by...

Charlie Wilson's War.(Movie review)
March 22, 2008... Charlie Wilson's War Produced by Gary Goetzman and Tom Hanks; directed by Mike Nichols; screenplay by Aaron Sorkin, based on the book by George Crile; cinematography by Stephen Goldblatt; production design by Victor Kempster; costumes by...

Terror's Advocate.(Movie review)
March 22, 2008... Terror's Advocate Produced by Rita Dagher; directed by Barbet Schroeder; cinematography by Caroline Champetier and Jean-Luc Perreard; edited by Nelly Quettier; original music by Jorge Arriagada; narrated by Barbet Schroeder; with Jacques...

Alexandra.(Movie review)
March 22, 2008... Alexandra Produced by Laurent Danielou and Andrei Sigle; written and directed by Alexander Sokurov; cinematography by Alexander Burov; production design by Dmitri Malach-Konkov; edited by Sergei Ivanov; original music by Andre Sigle;...

The Year My Parents Went on Vacation.(Movie review)
March 22, 2008... The Year My Parents Went on Vacation Produced by Cao Hamburger, Caio Gullane and Fabiano Gullane; directed by Cao Hamburger; screenplay by Claudio Galperin, Cao Hamburger, Braulio Mantovan, Anna Muylaert and Adriana Falcao; cinematography...

Funny Games.(Movie review)
March 22, 2008... Funny Games Produced by Christian Baute, Chris Coen, Hamish McAlpine, and Andro Steinborn; directed by Michael Haneke, based on his 1997 film Funny Games; screenplay by Michael Haneke; cinematography by Darius Khondji; production design by...

The Witnesses.(Movie review)
March 22, 2008... The Witnesses Produced by Said Ben Said; directed by Andre Techine; screenplay by Laurent Guyot, Andre Techine Viviane Zingg; cinematography by Julien Hirsch; production design by Michele Abbe; costumes by Radija Zeggai; edited by Martine...

Les Enfants terribles.(Video recording review)
March 22, 2008... Les Enfants terribles Produced and directed by Jean-Pierre Melville; written by Jean Cocteau; cinematography by Henri Decae; edited by Monique Bonnot; starring Nicole Stephane, Edouard Dermithe, Renee Cosima, Melvyn Martin, Maria Cyliakus,...

American Silent Horror Collection.(Video recording review)
March 22, 2008... American Silent Horror Collection A box set of 5 DVDs, including The Penalty (directed by Wallace Woosley, color tinted, 93 mins., 1920); Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde (directed by John S. Robertson, color tinted, 73 mins., 1920); The Cat and...

I Am Cuba: The Ultimate Edition.(Video recording review)
March 22, 2008... I Am Cuba: The Ultimate Edition Directed by Mikhail Kalatozov; a three-DVD box set, including I Am Cuba, B&W, 141 min., 1964; The Siberian Mammoth, directed by Vicente Ferraz, color, 91 min., 2005; and A Film about Mikhail Kalatozov,...

The Milky Way.(Video recording review)
March 22, 2008... The Milky Way Directed by Luis Bunuel; screenplay by Luis Bunuel and Jean Claude-Carriere; produced by Serge Silberman; photography by Christian Matras; music by Luis Bunuel; starring Laurent Terzieff, Paul Frankeur and Delphine Seyrig....

Ace in the Hole.(Video recording review)
March 22, 2008... Ace in the Hole Directed by Billy Wilder; screenplay by Billy Wilder, Lesser Samuels, and Walter Newman; cinematography by Charles Lang, Jr.; starring Kirk Douglas and Jan Sterling. DVD, B&W, 111 min., 1951. A Criterion Collection release,...

Saoirse?(Video recording review)
March 22, 2008... Saoirse? Directed by George Morrison; music by Sean O Riada; commentary by Sean Mac Reamoinn; Gaelic with English subtitles; B&W, 92 mins. Distributed by Gael Linn, www.gael-linn.ie. Following the release by Gael Linn of George...

A Cottage on Dartmoor.(Brief article)(Video recording review)
March 22, 2008... Fortunately, the thunderclap jabbering from the The Jazz Singer (1927) took a while to register with the electronically impaired British motion-picture industry. Like the recently rediscovered Piccadilly, A Cottage on Dartmoor (1929), a moody...

Cria cuervos.(Brief article)(Video recording review)
March 22, 2008... Cria cuervos (Spain, 1975) is an exceptional film in the growing-up subgenre in part because of the inspired casting of the strikingly wide-eyed and impish Ana Torrent, who plays a now cute, now dangerous eight-year-old girl, Ana, attempting to...

The Ear.(Brief article)(Video recording review)
March 22, 2008... It's good to see one of the most overtly politically critical of the Czech films, Karyl Kachyna's The Ear (1970), surface on DVD. Shot right after the post-1968 Warsaw Pact invasion by the Soviets, it was withheld for two decades from...

Eyes Wide Shut.(Brief article)(Video recording review)
March 22, 2008... Released shortly after his death, Stanley Kubrick's Eyes Wide Shut sparked some disappointed critics to accuse more positive critics of auteurist myopia, intensified by the loss of the admittedly masterful filmmaker. In the former camp, I'm...

Hearts of Darkness: A Filmmaker's Apocalypse.(Brief article)(Video recording review)
March 22, 2008... Weird as it seems to imagine a canon of "making-of" documentaries, Fax Bahr and George Hickenlooper's feature-length dissection of the production of Apocalypse Now is a prime candidate for inclusion. Released in 1991, it was AWOL from the 2005...

It's All True: Orson Welles's Pan-American Odyssey.(Discovering Orson Welles)(Book review)
March 22, 2008... It's All True: Orson Welles's Pan-American Odyssey by Catherine Benamou. Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press, 2007. 416 pp., illus. Hardcover: $60.00 and paperback: $24.95. Discovering Orson Welles by Jonathan...

Mario Bava: All the Colors of the Dark.(Book review)
March 22, 2008... Mario Bava: All the Colors of the Dark by Tim Lucas. Cincinnati, OH: Video Watchdog, 2007. 1,128 pp., illus. Hardcover: $260.00. Full disclosure: You will find my name in the "Patrons" section of this remarkable volume. I've been an avid...

Miracles and Sacrilege: Roberto Rossellini, the Church, and Film Censorship in Hollywood.(movie censorship)(Book review)
March 22, 2008... Miracles and Sacrilege: Roberto Rossellini, the Church, and Film Censorship in Hollywood by William Bruce Johnson. Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2008. 448 pp., illus. Paperback: $35.00. Hollywood's Censor: Joseph I. Breen and the...

Orwell Subverted: The CIA and the Filming of Animal Farm.(Book review)
March 22, 2008... Orwell Subverted: The CIA and the Filming of Animal Farm by Daniel Leab. University Park, Pa.: Pennsylvania State University Press, 2007. 195pp. Hardcover: $55.00. The mere mention of the Cold War can result in blank stares from...

The Thessaloniki International Film Festival.(COMMUNIQUES)
March 22, 2008... only a few film festivals serve as genuine international showcases that can catapult a film to worldwide visibility. With the number of festivals around the world multiplying rapidly, the majority, by necessity, must have narrower national or...

The Gijon International Film Festival.(COMMUNIQUES)
March 22, 2008... Establishing a film festival decades ago in Franco's Spain must have been challenging, given the authoritarian right-wing dictator's well known penchant for tightly censoring activities in the cultural sphere. Cinephiles in Spain's northern...

Screenplays & definitions.(LETTERS)(Letter to the editor)
March 22, 2008... I would like to expand on some of the comments in Brian Frye's excellent review in your last issue of J. J. Murphy's book, Me and You and Memento and Fargo, on how independent screenplays work (Cineaste, Vol. XXXIII, No. 1). First, I want to...

A film journalism must-read.(LETTERS)(Letter to the editor)
March 22, 2008... We are happy to inform you that David Archibald's article, "Correcting Historical Lies: An Interview with Ken Loach and Paul Laverty" (Cineaste, Vol. XXXII, No. 2, Spring 2007) has been selected on our list of "40 Film Journalism Must-Reads &...

Another must-read!(LETTERS)(Letter to the editor)
March 22, 2008... We are happy to inform you that Roy Grundmann's Cineaste article, "Auteur de Force: Michael Haneke's 'Cinema of Glaciation,'" has been selected on our list of "40 Film Journalism Must-Reads & Sees of 2007." Our editorial board writes, "No...

Better late than never.(LETTERS)(Letter to the editor)
March 22, 2008... I travelled extensively in the Fall and have not been keeping up with my reading. It was only recently, over the last few weeks, that I caught up with all the film magazines that had piled up here meanwhile. I was hugely impressed by the...

The Church on Dauphine Street.(SHORT TAKES)(Brief article)(Video recording review)
March 22, 2008... Ann Hedreen and Rustin Thompson have subtitled their film "One Katrina Story," presumably to reflect their modest resolve to shed light on a particular face of a national tragedy as much as to signal their eschewal of the wrenching, epic...

For the Bible tells me so.(SHORT TAKES)(Movie review)(Brief article)
March 22, 2008... To shed light on the religious right's tenuous claims that homosexuality is "an abomination in the eyes of God," filmmaker Daniel Karslake forgoes Moore/Gore-style preaching to the choir in favor of preaching a sermon of tolerance directly to...

Note by note: the making of Steinway L1037.(SHORT TAKES)(Movie review)(Brief article)
March 22, 2008... A tribute to what may become a lost art, Ben Niles's documentary traces the production process of a single Steinway piano, which takes one year and in which 450 craftsmen handle 12,000 parts. Located in Queens by the street named after it, the...

Peter Seeger: the power of song.(SHORT TAKES)(Movie review)(Brief article)
March 22, 2008... Is there an American musical artist more lovable than Pete Seeger, or more deserving of the honors heaped on him by institutions (such as the Kennedy Center) and fellow performers? Certainly, the House on Un-American Activities Committee didn't...

Plagues and Pleasures on the Salton Sea.(SHORT TAKES)(Movie review)(Brief article)
March 22, 2008... According to one local resident, the Salton Sea is "California's version of the French Riviera." A neighbor disagrees: "It's the greatest sewer the world has ever seen." No wonder Chris Metzler and Jeff Springer tapped John Waters to narrate...