Cineaste articles from September 2007

Cineaste archives from September 2007

Editorial.(Cineaste film magazine's fortieth year of publication)(Editorial)
September 22, 2007... "It was forty years ago today..." This year, Cineaste completes forty years of publication. Anniversaries like this don't occur very often, so please humor us throughout this issue as we indulge in a bit of nostalgic reminiscence, boast...

Making friends the hard way: an interview with Patrice Leconte.(Interview)
September 22, 2007... Happily for American film audiences, the more recent work of French filmmaker Patrice Leconte has appeared with regularity in U.S. movie theaters. While deceptively simple in the stories they tell, Leconte's films always take on a greater...

Question time: the Iraq war revisited.(No End in Sight; Ghosts of Abu Ghraib; Taxi to the Dark Side; Jerabek; The Short Life of Jose Antonio Gutierrez)(Video recording review)
September 22, 2007... It's time for the interrogations to begin. Impatient with the Bush Administration's evasions and prevarications, filmmakers have stepped into the juridical breach. In the absence of any other bottom-up review, they're determined to hold the...

No end in sight: an interview with Charles Ferguson.(Interview)
September 22, 2007... With a background as a computer software designer, author, visiting scholar in the Political Science Department at M.I.T., and member of the Council on Foreign Relations, Charles Ferguson has now debuted as a documentary filmmaker, writing and...

Bon Cop, Bad Cop and Canada's two solitudes: what a blockbuster buddy movie says about the great divide in the nation ... and its cinema.
September 22, 2007... When the Canadian bilingual film Bon Cop, Bad Cop became a success at the box office in 2006, it was seen as a landmark in Canadian cultural history. Here was a feature film, after all, that had been made in both official Canadian languages,...

Documentary as political activism: an interview with Robert Greenwald: he provides the documentaries. You provide the activism. How a successful grass-roots strategy in political filmmaking was born.(Interview)
September 22, 2007... After directing and producing numerous television documentaries and a handful of feature films, including Steal This Movie (2000)--a biopic of the colorful 1960s countercultural hero Abbie Hoffman--Robert Greenwald has risen to prominence over...

Righting a wrong: Paul Jarrico and the correction of blacklist-era screen credits: demanding credit where credit is due: an excerpt from Larry Ceplairs' new biography shows how producer and screenwriter Paul Jarrico continued to fight the blacklist decades after the fact.(Excerpt)
September 22, 2007... The late Paul Jarrico (1915-97) was fond of saying: "Not my country right or wrong, but my country right the wrong." Blacklisted in Hollywood, in 1951, he never ceased fighting, via his role as chairman of the film division of the Arts,...

Cineaste's early years: the quest for a radical. readable film criticism: on mimeographs, movies, and Marxism: a long-time Cineaste Editor ponders the cultural an political origins of the magazine, prior to his own arrival on staff, from the Johnson to the Reagan era.
September 22, 2007... When histories of Cineaste come to be written--after the first one, there are sure to be rebuttals--the magazine's interviews are likely to be of primary importance. Already collected in two capacious volumes published in 1983 and 2002, these...

Looking back at our beginnings: a personal history of Cineaste: straight from the source: the inside story of a movie-loving kid's political radicalization and the birth and growth of this magazine over the last forty year.
September 22, 2007... To commemorate our fortieth anniversary, my coeditors have prevailed on me to provide a personal account of this magazine's murky prehistory, of how and why Cineaste first came about. After all, many of our current readers--and even some...

Sicko.(Movie review)
September 22, 2007... Sicko Produced by Meghan O'Hara, Jennifer Latham, Rehya Young, Bob Weinstein, Harvey Weinstein and Michael Moore; written and directed by Michael Moore; cinematography by Christoph Vitt; edited by Christopher Seward, Dan Sweitlik and Geoffrey...

Lady Chatterley.(Movie review)
September 22, 2007... Lady Chatterley Produced by Kristina Larsen and Gilles Sandoz; directed by Pascale Ferran; written by Roger Bohbot, Pascale Ferran and Pierre Trividic, based on the novel John Thomas and Lady Jane by D. H. Lawrence; cinematography by Julien...

Rescue Dawn.(Movie review)
September 22, 2007... Rescue Dawn Produced by Elton Brand, Steve Marlton and Harry Knapp; directed and written by Werner Herzog; cinematography by Peter Zetlinger; art direction by Arin "Aoi" Pinijvararak; edited by Joe Bini; costumes by Annie Dunn; original music...

State Legislature.(Movie review)
September 22, 2007... State Legislature Produced, directed and edited by Frederick Wiseman; cinematography by John Davey. Color, 217 mins. A Zipporah Films release, www.zipporah.com At this point in his career, having now released thirty-four feature-length...

El Cantante.(Movie review)
September 22, 2007... El Cantante Produced by Julio Caro, Simon Fields, Jennifer Lopez and David Maldonado; directed by Leon Ichaso; screenplay by Leon Ichaso, David Darmstaedter, and Todd Antony Bello; cinematography by Claudio Chea; edited by David Tedeschi,...

Early Bergman.(Early Bergman Eclipse Series 1)(Video recording review)
September 22, 2007... Early Bergman Eclipse Series 1, a box set of five DVDs, including Torment (B&W, 101 mins., 1944), Crisis (B&W, 93 mins., 1946), Port of Call (B&W, 97 mins., 1948), Thirst(B&W, 84 mins., 1949) and To Joy (B&W, 99 mins., 1949). A Criterion...

Verdict on Auschwitz.(Video recording review)
September 22, 2007... Verdict on Auschwitz Directed by Rolf Bickel and Dietrich Wagner; scenario editor Wolfgang Vogel; cinematography by Armin Walker and Katja Brinkmann, among others. DVD, B&W and color, 180 mins., in German with English subtitles, 1993. A DEFA...

Cine Manifest.(Video recording review)
September 22, 2007... Cine Manifest Directed by Judy Irola. DVD, color, 75 mins, 2006. Released by Neska Euskaldunaren Pelikula, www.cinemanifest.com. Most of the Seventies avant-garde collectives never managed to satisfy themselves in combining their political...

The Burmese Harp.(Fires on the Plain)(Video recording review)
September 22, 2007... The Burmese Harp Directed by Kon Ichikawa. DVD, B&W, 116 mins., 1956, Japanese dialog with English subtitles. Fires on the Plain Directed by Kon Ichikawa. DVD, B&W, 104 mins., 1959, Japanese dialog with English subtitles. Criterion...

Blissfully Yours.(Brief article)(Video recording review)
September 22, 2007... When Apichatpong Weerasethakul's Blissfully Yours appeared in 2002, it came as a revelation-a deeply confounding, yet sublime film, with a sensibility and structure all its own. While his subsequent work has confirmed the depth and originality...

Bye Bye Brazil.(Brief article)(Video recording review)
September 22, 2007... The filmmakers of Brazil's famous Cinema Novo movement, which arose in the late 1950s and early 1960s, examined the great themes of underdevelopment--such as poverty, hunger, underemployment, and the concentration of land in the hands of a...

Extreme Private Eros: Love Song 1974.(Brief article)(Video recording review)
September 22, 2007... Facets Multimedia has performed yet another public service by issuing four mind-blowing films by gonzo documentarian Kazuo Hara. For American viewers, an important body of postwar Japanese nonfiction is terra incognita. Hara was a longtime...

Idiocracy.(Brief article)(Video recording review)
September 22, 2007... Barely released theatrically last fall, Mike Judge's satire is the flip side of the dystopian Children of Men and V for Vendetta. Five hundred years from now, America is one big monster-truck rally, where the top-rated TV show is "Oww! My...

Science is Fiction: The Films of Jean Painleve.(Brief article)(Video recording review)
September 22, 2007... Jean Painleve is among the mysterious, singular, scarcely known figures hidden in the deep pockets of film history. But, once upon a time, he was famous in Europe--to the extent of hosting a U.K. television program--for independently-made...

Woman with a Movie Camera: My Life as a Russian Filmmaker.(Book review)
September 22, 2007... Woman with a Movie Camera: My Life as a Russian Filmmaker by Marina Goldovskaya. Translated from the Russian by Antonina W. Bouis. Austin, Texas: University of Texas Press, 2006. 263pp., illus. Hardcover: $55.00 and Paperback: $24.95. I...

Born in Flames: Termite Dreams, Dialectical Fairy Tales and Pop Apocalypses.(Book review)
September 22, 2007... Born in Flames: Termite Dreams, Dialectical Fairy Tales and Pop Apocalypses by Howard Hampton. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2007.496pp. Hardcover: $28.95. Former Village Voice and Artforum critic Howard Hampton's film writing...

Postcards from the Cinema.(Book review)
September 22, 2007... Postcards from the Cinema by Serge Daney. Translated by Paul Grant. London and New York: Berg, 2007. 160 pp. Hardcover: $84.95 and Paperback: $24.95. Serge Daney, perhaps the most distinguished French film critic in the years following the...

Cinema and Northern Ireland: Film, Culture, and Politics.(Book review)
September 22, 2007... Cinema and Northern Ireland: Film, Culture, and Politics by John Hill. London, BFi Publishing (Distributed in the U.S. by the University of California Press), 2006. 262 pp., illus. Hardcover: $80.00 and Paperback: $27.95. In recent months...

The Cannes Film Festival.(COMMUNIQUES)
September 22, 2007... For a film journalist, there is nothing quite as simultaneously dispiriting and hilarious than a visit to the Cannes Film Festival's bustling pressroom. Since there are approximately 2,000 journalists in attendance from all corners of the...

The Istanbul Film Festival.(COMMUNIQUES)
September 22, 2007... It takes either a profound devotion to the art of film, a stout sense of professional duty, an enormous exercise of willpower, or some combination of all three, for a visitor to the Istanbul International Film Festival, finding himself in one...

The Jeonju Film Festival.(COMMUNIQUES)
September 22, 2007... My only image of Korea comes from the movies. All I knew was the soaring towers and urban sprawl of the megacity, Seoul, or the rugged countryside and beautiful scenery of the films of Im Kwon-Taek. Jeonju is actually more reminiscent of Ozu's...

The Karlovy Vary Film Festival.(COMMUNIQUES)
September 22, 2007... A river runs through the Karlovy Vary International Film Festival; and the dozens of huge movie posters rising on scaffolding out of the Tepla strikingly remind passersby of this annual summer cultural event, which has now become almost as...

The Good Shepherd.(LETTERS)(Letter to the editor)
September 22, 2007... At the beginning of your Eric Roth interview (Vol. XXXII, No. 3), you describe The Good Shepherd as one of those love it or hate it movies. I'm one of those love it people. This dark, brutal, extremely political film was easily one of the best...

A Night at the Movies.(LETTERS)(Letter to the editor)
September 22, 2007... "A Night at the Movies" by Rebecca M. Alvin was a wonderful article. Smart, well-written, educational and--most of all--reassuring. Maybe there's still hope for those of us who look for a little adventure at "the Movies." Nick Falcone ...

Balkan delight.(LETTERS)(Letter to the editor)
September 22, 2007... Congratulations on this issue. The Balkan supplement is amazing! Such a vast array of issues and styles worth looking into in Southeastern Europe. Your issue pointed the way. Greg Decuir, Jr. Via e-mail

Balkan identity?(LETTERS)(Letter to the editor)
September 22, 2007... Congratulations on the splendid Balkan supplement. You have brought serious discussion to a region producing very interesting film and your open-minded view of whether we can speak of a Balkan cinema was fascinating. I am curious, however,...

The two Macedonias.(LETTERS)(dispute over Macedonia's name which at present is provisionally called Former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia )
September 22, 2007... I note that in the paragraph describing the tour of the Balkans in the summer issue of Cineaste the Former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia (FYROM) is referred to as simply "Macedonia"! Presumably the editors of Cineaste are unaware that the...

Malaysian auteur.(LETTERS)(Letter to the editor)
September 22, 2007... I was very pleased to read Roderick Coover's article on--and interview with--the important Malaysian director Amir Muhammad in your summer issue. This sort of coverage exemplifies what Cineaste does best--exposing readers to seminal films they...

Atheism.(SHORT TAKES)(Video recording review)
September 22, 2007... Is God purely a projection of human hopes? Have the demands of Newtonian thinking and the Enlightenment severed our access to wonder? Or is the widespread acceptance of a simplified Big Bang theory a symptom of "nostalgia for divine creation,"...

Hacking democracy.(SHORT TAKES)(Brief article)(Video recording review)
September 22, 2007... Prompted by the spectre of manipulated vote tabulation in the 2000 and 2004 presidential elections, directors Simon Ardizzone and Russell Michaels's documentary Hacking Democracy ask how Americans can make sure that election results are truly...

How to Eat Your watermelon in White Company (and enjoy it).(SHORT TAKES)(Brief article)(Video recording review)
September 22, 2007... Mevlin Van Peebles is probably best-known as the director and tight-lipped star of Sweet Sweetback's Baadasssss Song, the 1971 independent movie whose "bastard child," as a commentator puts it in Joe Angio's documentary, was the blaxploitation...

In Memoriam: Alexander Litvinenko.(SHORT TAKES)(In memoriam)
September 22, 2007... Sensational political assassinations of Moscow's enemies living abroad are nothing new. Soviet security teams routinely targeted "White" emigres in Europe in the 1920s and '30s. Trotsky was murdered by an agent wielding an ice-axe in Mexico in...

Workingman's death.(SHORT TAKES)(Brief article)(Video recording review)
September 22, 2007... Michael Glawogger's prole travelogue rides a wavelet of Germanic, work-oriented, formally adventurous docs that includes Hubert Sauper's award-winning Darwin's Nightmare. Its prologue invokes a much older tradition of working-class paeans by...