Cineaste articles from September 2005

Cineaste archives from September 2005

Taking artistic risks in the global market.(EDITORIAL)(Editorial)
September 22, 2005... At a time when profit-margin pressures in the global film industry have resulted in a cookie-cutter/genre approach to filmmaking, it is encouraging to note that there are still those filmmakers willing to take genuine risks in producing films...

Philosophy in the bedroom: Wong Kar-wai's 2046.(A Special Focus on Wong Kar-wai)
September 22, 2005... Four years ago in these pages, I attempted to write what I called a "love letter" to Wong Kar-wai's In the Mood for Love. In my inflamed imagination, it was to be a lustrous epistle adorned with unaccustomed critical language, devoid of balance...

Beautiful resistance: the early films of Wong Kar-wai.(Critical Essay)
September 22, 2005... Behind the majority of great Hong Kong films made within the last twenty years looms an angry resistance to the growing power of money as the cultural definition of value. Frequently, the commodification and depersonalization of Hong Kong life...

Tracking the elusive Wong Kar-wai.(Wong Kar-wai: Auteur of Time)(Wong Kar-wai)(Book Review)
September 22, 2005... The cinema of Wong Kar-wai is as elusive as it is seductive. His eight features to date offer abundant pleasure, mark out a distinctive visual style, command worldwide influence, and remain relatively accessible, at least in major North...

Lies and loneliness: an interview with Tony Leung Chiu Wai.(Interview)
September 22, 2005... Tony Leung Chiu Wai is part of a generation of extraordinarily versatile Hong Kong actors that includes Chow Yun-Fat, Andy Lau, and Anthony Wong Chau-Sang. Leung, who made his film debut in 1983, has worked with all of the important Hong Kong...

Chapayev and company: films of the Russian Civil War.
September 22, 2005... "Beware of terrible times," wrote Anna Akhmatova in her July 1914, "the earth opening up for a crowd of corpses. Expect famine, earthquakes, plagues, and heavens darkened by eclipses." World War I is the immediate reference, but her chilling...

Saying 'Yes' to taking risks: an interview with Sally Potter.(Interview)
September 22, 2005... As the cost of film production soars, bringing countless pressures to bear on those filmmakers struggling for artistic autonomy, Sally Potter has managed, consistently, to produce highly original, often risk-taking, films. From her landmark...

John Cassavetes: a filmmaker under the influence.
September 22, 2005... My most memorable conversation with John Cassavetes took place in 1980. He and Gena Rowlands, his wife and favorite star, were in New York to launch Gloria, their quirky (and not very good) crime movie about a woman who dislikes children but...

Facts, fairytales and the politics of storytelling: an interview with Gaylene Preston.(Interview)
September 22, 2005... New Zealand director Gaylene Preston has been acclaimed as one of the country's finest filmmakers since her first film, the fantasy/comedy/thriller, Mr. Wrong, in 1984. Since then she has made the feature film Ruby and Rata (1990), the...

Creating his own cinematic language: an interview with Apichatpong Weerasethakul.(Interview)
September 22, 2005... On the closing night of the 2002 Cannes International Film Festival, where Apichatpong Weerasethakul's second feature, Blissfully Yours, had just been awarded the "Un Certain Regard" prize, jury member Emmanuelle Beart reportedly remarked that...

Sex, violence, and power in the family: an interview with Francois Ozon.(Interview)
September 22, 2005... At age thirty-eight, after seven features in seven years, French filmmaker Francois Ozon was feted last June with an early-career retrospective at the Museum of the Moving Image, in Queens, New York, to coincide with the release in North...

Crash.(Movie Review)
September 22, 2005... Crash Produced by Don Cheadle, Paul Haggis, Mark R. Harris, Robert Moresco and Cathy Schulman; directed and written by Paul Haggis; cinematography by James Muro; edited by Hughes Winborne; production design by Laurence Bennett; costume design...

Palindromes.(Movie Review)
September 22, 2005... Palindromes Produced by Mike S. Ryan and Derrick Tseng; directed by Todd Solondz; screenplay by Todd Solondz; cinematography by Tom Richmond; edited by Mollie Goldstein and Kevin Messman; production design by Dave Doernberg; music by Nathan...

The Holy Girl.(Movie Review)
September 22, 2005... The Holy Girl Produced by Lita Stantic; directed and written by Lucrecia Martel; cinematography by Felix Monti; edited by Santiago Ricci; production design by Graciela Oderigo; costumes by Julio Suarez; original music by Andres Gerszenzon;...

The World.(Movie Review)
September 22, 2005... The World Produced by Chow Keung, Shozo Ichiyama, Hengameh Panahi; written and directed by Jia Zhangke; cinematography by Yu Likwai; production design by Wu Li-zhong; edited by Kong Jinglei; music by Lim Giong; starring Zhao Tao, Chen Taisheng,...

Illusory worlds: an interview with Jia Zhangke.(Interview)
September 22, 2005... Jia Zhangke's trilogy of feature films Platform (2000), Unknown Pleasures (2002), and The World (2004) document the changes that have occurred in Chinese society from 1979 to the present. Taken as a whole, the works provide a critical and...

The Alan Clarke Collection.(Video Recording Review)
September 22, 2005... The Alan Clarke Collection A 5-disc Limited Edition box set, including Scum (1977 BBC version and 1979 theatrical version), Made in Britain (1982), The Firm (1988) and Elephant (1988), plus Director: Alan Clarke (1991). DVD, color, 412 mins....

Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead.(Video Recording Review)
September 22, 2005... Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead Directed and written by Tom Stoppard; starring Tim Roth, Gary Oldman, Richard Dreyfuss, lain Glen, Joanna Miles, Donald Sumpter and Ian Richardson. DVD, two discs, color, 118 mins. An Image Entertainment...

Un chien andalou.(L'Age d'or )(Video Recording Review)
September 22, 2005... Un chien andalou Produced and directed by Luis Bunuel; written by Bunuel and Salvador Dali; featuring Pierre Batcheff and Simone Mareuil. 1929, B&W, 17 mins., with music soundtrack. DVD, 55 mins. Released by Transflux Films; distributed by...

Edison: The Invention of the Movies.(Video Recording Review)
September 22, 2005... Edison: The Invention of the Movies Curated by Steven Higgins and Charles Musser. Music composed and performed by Philip Carli, John C. Mirsalis, Ben Model, Donald Sosin, and Clark Wilson. 140 Films preserved by The Library of Congress and The...

Horizons West: Directing the Western from John Ford to Clint Eastwood.(Book Review)
September 22, 2005... Horizons West: Directing the Western from John Ford to Clint Eastwood by Jim Kitses. London: British Film Institute (Distributed in the U.S. by University of California Press), 2004. 324 pp., illus. Hardcover: $70.00 and Paperback: $24.95. ...

Red Star Over Hollywood: The Film Colony's Long Romance with the Left.(Book Review)
September 22, 2005... Red Star Over Hollywood: The Film Colony's Long Romance with the Left by Ronald Radosh and Allis Radosh. San Francisco: Encounter Books, 2005. 292 pp. Hardcover: $25.95. The authors of Reel Star Over Hollywood believe world communism was a...

Nixon at the Movies: A Book About Belief.(Book Review)
September 22, 2005... Nixon at the Movies: A Book About Belief by Mark Feeney. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2004. 333 pp., illus. Hardcover: $27.50. About 4:00 a.m. on May 9, 1970, a few hours before over 100,000 demonstrators in Washington, D.C....

Becoming Something: The Story of Canada Lee.(Bright Boulevards, Bold Dreams: The Story of Black Hollywood)(Book Review)
September 22, 2005... Becoming Something: The Story of Canada Lee by Mona Z. Smith. New York: Faber and Faber, 2004. 430 pp., illus. Hardcover: $27.00 and Paperback: $15.00. Bright Boulevards, Bold Dreams: The Story of Black Hollywood by Donald Bogle. New York:...

Dmitri Shostakovich: A Life in Film.(Book Review)
September 22, 2005... Dmitri Shostakovich: A Life in Film by John Riley. London and New York: I. B. Tauris (Distributed in the U.S. by Palgrave Macmillan), 2005. 150 pp., illus. Paperback: $24.95. As author John Riley notes throughout this brief study, little...

The Tribeca Film Festival.
September 22, 2005... Since its beginnings as a quickly organized ad hoc effort to revitalize lower Manhattan in the wake of 9/11, the Tribeca Film Festival has evolved into one of the most ambitious American film festivals. It's undeniable, to be sure, that, as an...

The Buenos Aires film festival.(COMMUNIQUES)
September 22, 2005... The Buenos Aires International Festival of Independent Cinema (BAFICI) is a survivor--first, of the sudden collapse of the Argentine currency in December 2001 and the ensuing economic crisis, and, second, of the abrupt and unceremonious firing...

Revolutionary or counterrevolutionary?(LETTERS)(Letter to the Editor)
September 22, 2005... I was disappointed that Dan Georgakas wrote a relatively shallow review of the documentary Professional Revolutionary: The Life of Saul Wellman in your summer issue. If hagiography is the most banal form of literature, why shouldn't we judge...

The Beat That My Heart Skipped.(Movie Review)
September 22, 2005... Thanks to a young and convincingly thuggish Harvey Keitel, James Toback's 1978 thriller, Fingers, throbbed with brute animal fury. Keitel's Jimmy Fingers made violence and sex look equally ugly, and his mercurial manner imbued the film with an...

Hiding and seeking: faith and tolerance after the holocaust.(Hiding and Seeking: Faith and Tolerance After the Holocaust)(Movie Review)
September 22, 2005... Menachem Daum, this film's codirector and lead character is son and son-in law to Polish Jewish Holocaust survivors. Growing up Daum was taught never to trust the goyim, most particularly Poles. He married into a family that, while similarly...

Hijacking Catastrophe: 9/11, Fear and The selling of American Empire.(Movie Review)
September 22, 2005... One of numerous political documentaries released during the 2004 presidential campaign, this Media Education Foundation film is hardly alone in accusing the Bush Administration of willfully misleading the U.S. and its allies into invading Iraq....

McLibel.(SHORT TAKES)(Movie Review)
September 22, 2005... Helen Steel and Dave Morris, devout vegans and lowkey, London-based grass-roots activists, are the unlikely heroes of McLibel, Franny Armstrong's stir ring documentary. Morris, an unemployed postman, and Steel, a former part-time bartender,...

The 3 Rooms of Melancholia.(SHORT TAKES)(Movie Review)
September 22, 2005... This powerful, poetically titled triptych offers an unusual window on the savage Chechen war, currently in uneasy remission. The Russians have violated Chechnya and its inhabitants with all the delicacy of a brutal occupying army, while the...