Cineaste articles from September 2008

Cineaste archives from September 2008

Film criticism in the age of the Internet.(Editorial)
September 22, 2008... Like every technological innovation, the World Wide Web has inspired starry-eyed optimists to uncritically sing its praises, as diehard curmudgeons and technophobes conclude that the barbarians are once again at the gates. Within the incestuous...

Chris Marker: notes in the margin of his time.
September 22, 2008... [ILLUSTRATION OMITTED] In the spirit of montage, I will begin this piece with the juxtaposition of two recent commentaries on the filmmaker Chris Marker--commentaries that are so different that they seem to inhabit two incommensurable...

The last Bolshevik: reminiscences of Alexander Ivanovich.(Essay)
September 22, 2008... It all began in Brussels' Film Library ("Cinematheque Royale") when my friend Jacques Ledoux, the flamboyant conservator, received a package of brand new prints from Moscow. In it, classics like Eisenstein, connoisseurs' choices like Barnet,...

Sexual politics and awakenings in Towelhead: an interview with Alan Ball.(Interview)
September 22, 2008... [ILLUSTRATION OMITTED] Sexual abuse in adolescence, the received wisdom has it, will permanently scar, or destroy, the victim. While the psychologically damaging effects are undeniable, not every instance of abuse results in the permanent...

The delirious fictions of William Klein.
September 22, 2008... [ILLUSTRATION OMITTED] There are many conceivable reasons why William Klein's work as a filmmaker is not better known--his uncompromising political stance, his status as a Paris-based American expatriate, his relative indifference to...

Mister freedom: an interview with William Klein.(Interview)
September 22, 2008... [ILLUSTRATION OMITTED] Though he made films with great regularity for a full four decades, characterizing William Klein's position in the cinematic firmament is a tricky endeavor, thanks partly to the unusual paths his life has taken, and...

Film criticism in the age of the internet: a critical symposium: caught in the Web, print and new media writers debate the pros and cons of online, where everyone's a critic.
September 22, 2008... In introducing the Critical Symposium on "International Film Criticism Today" in our Winter 2005 issue, we maintained, with a certain resigned pride, that "critics at independent film magazines have virtually complete freedom, and a generous...

Obsessions into light: an interview with Guy Maddin.(Interview)
September 22, 2008... [ILLUSTRATION OMITTED] Guy Maddin may be the least-known filmmaker ever to earn the term "legendary." Born in Winnipeg, Canada, Maddin worked as a banker and a house painter and had turned thirty before ever picking up a movie camera. He...

Elegy.(Movie review)
September 22, 2008... Elegy Produced by Tom Rosenberg, Gary Lucchesi, and Andre Lamal; directed by Isabel Coixet; screenplay by Nicholas Meyer, from the novel, The Dying Animal, by Philip Roth; cinematography by Jean-Claude Larrieu; production design by Claude Pard;...

Happy-Go-Lucky.(Movie review)
September 22, 2008... Happy-Go-Lucky Produced by Simon Channing-Williams; directed and written by Mike Leigh; cinematography by Dick Pope; production design by Mark Tildesley; edited by Jim Clark; original music by Gary Yershon; costumes by David Crossman; starring...

Being positive: an interview with Mike Leigh.(Interview)
September 22, 2008... [ILLUSTRATION OMITTED] What makes Mike Leigh's films unique is his gift for constructing an often humorously bleak and desperate world filled with characters whose comic behavior springs from their essence as human beings. The comedy...

Elite Squad.(Movie review)
September 22, 2008... Elite Squad Produced by Jose Padilha and Marcos Prado; directed by Jose Padilha; screenplay by Braulio Mantovani, Jose Padilha, and Rodrigo Pimentel, based on the book Tropa de Elite by Andre Batista, Rodrigo Pimentel, and Luiz Eduardo Soares;...

Harold and Kumar Escape from Guantanamo Bay.(Movie review)
September 22, 2008... Harold and Kumar Escape from Guantanamo Bay Produced by Nathan Kahane and Greg Shapiro; directed and written by Jon Hurwitz and Hayden Schlossberg; cinematography by Daryn Okada; production design by Tony Fanning; edited by Jeff Freeman;...

RFK Must Die: The Assassination of Bobby Kennedy.(Movie review)
September 22, 2008... RFK Must Die: The Assassination of Bobby Kennedy Produced, directed, and edited by Shane O'Sullivan; cinematography by George Dougherty; archive research by Maxim Koslov; original music by Pyratek. Color and B&W, 102 mins. A Dokument Films...

Battleship Potemkin.(Video recording review)
September 22, 2008... Battleship Potemkin Directed by Sergei Eisenstein; screenplay by Nina F. Agadzhanova-Shutko; cinematography by Edouard Tisse; music by Edmund Meisel (adaptation and instrumentation by Helmut Imig). DVD, B&W and color, 69 mins., 1926....

Bonnie and Clyde.(Video recording review)
September 22, 2008... Bonnie and Clyde Produced by Warren Beatty; directed by Arthur Penn; screenplay by David Newman and Robert Benton; cinematography by Burnett Guffey; edited by Dede Allen; art direction by Dean Tavoularis; costume design by Theadora van Runkle;...

The Unknown Soldier.(Video recording review)
September 22, 2008... The Unknown Soldier Written and directed by Michael Verhoeven; cinematography by Britta Becker, Charles Borniger, Knut Muhsik, Stefan Schindler and Sergey Yemerov; edited by Gabriele Krober; original music by Martin Grubinger and Mike Herring....

Georges Melies: First Wizard of Cinema (1896-1913).(The Magic of Melies Fifteen Films)(Video recording review)
September 22, 2008... Georges Melies: First Wizard of Cinema (1896-1913) A five-disc DVD set, B&W, tinted, silent and sound, total running time of 782 mins. A Flicker Alley release, ww.flickeralley.com The Magic of Melies Fifteen films directed by Georges...

The Furies.(Brief article)(Video recording review)
September 22, 2008... Only a handful of filmmakers are qualified to deliver on the promise of a film entitled The Furies, but Anthony Mann was unquestionably one of them. From his stripped-down noirs to the psychologically unflinching Westerns that secured his place...

The Good Fight.(Brief article)(Video recording review)
September 22, 2008... One of the very best feature documentaries on neglected chapters of American history--including Union Maids (1976), The Wobblies (1979), and Seeing Red (1983)--The Good Fight (1983), on the Abraham Lincoln Brigade in the Spanish Civil War, is...

Interrogation.(Brief article)(Video recording review)
September 22, 2008... The final banned film to be publicly screened in postcommunist Poland, Ryszard Bugajski's 1982 Interrogation is one of the most harrowing depictions of the Stalinist era ever committed to film. Clandestinely edited during the last gasp of...

Mandingo.(Brief article)(Video recording review)
September 22, 2008... The colorization outfit Legend Films has licensed an eclectic chunk of Paramount's library, including rarities (Jacques Demy's The Pied Piper), horror films (Hammer's The Man Who Could Cheat Death), and clinkers (the 1979 Hurricane remake). The...

The Thief of Baghdad.(Brief article)(Video recording review)
September 22, 2008... Save for Pixar's marvelous productions, the state of children's entertainment is depressingly bleak. Spectacularly profitable due to product and television tie-ins, and blitz ad campaigns, kid's fare increasingly lacks inspiration and is often...

Defining Moments in Movies: The Greatest Films, Stars, Scenes, and Events That Made Movie Magic.(The Horse Who Drank the Sky: Film Experience Beyond Narrative and Theory)(Book review)
September 22, 2008... Defining Moments in Movies: The Greatest Films, Stars, Scenes, and Events That Made Movie Magic General Editor Chris Fujiwara. London: Cassell Illustrated Books, 2007. 800 pp., illus. Paperback: $26.95. The Horse Who Drank the Sky: Film...

Pictures at a Revolution: Five Movies and the Birth of the New Hollywood.(Book review)
September 22, 2008... Pictures at a Revolution: Five Movies and the Birth of the New Hollywood by Mark Harris. New York: The Penguin Press, 2008. 490 pp., illus. Hardcover: $27.95. [ILLUSTRATION OMITTED] At the callow age of forty-three, Entertainment...

Russians in Hollywood. Hollywood's Russians: Biography of an Image.(Book review)
September 22, 2008... Russians in Hollywood. Hollywood's Russians: Biography of an Image by Harlow Robinson. Boston, MA: Northeastern University Press, 2007. Published by University Press of New England. 314 pp., illus. Hardcover: $29.95. [ILLUSTRATION OMITTED]...

Claude Lanzmann's Shoah: Key Essays.(Book review)
September 22, 2008... Claude Lanzmann's Shoah: Key Essays Edited by Stuart Liebman. New York: Oxford University Press. 2007, 288pp. Hardcover: $24.95. [ILLUSTRATION OMITTED] Shoah, Claude Lanzmann's documentary, is nine and a half hours long. In order to...

Orson Welles at Work.(Book review)
September 22, 2008... Orson Welles at Work by Jean-Pierre Berthome and Francois Thomas. London: Phaidon Press Limited, 2008. 320 pp., illus. Hardcover: $75.00. [ILLUSTRATION OMITTED] Attempting to explain why Orson Welles created a multitude of versions of...

Dying Swans and Madmen: Ballet, The Body, and Narrative Cinema.(Book review)
September 22, 2008... Dying Swans and Madmen: Ballet, The Body, and Narrative Cinema By Adrienne L. McLean. New Brunswick: Rutgers University Press, 2008. 304 pages, illus. Hardcover: $70.00 and Paperback: $26.95. British ballerina Margot Fonteyn once remarked...

The Istanbul International Film Festival.(COMMUNIQUES)
September 22, 2008... Try telling the Istanbullus that "film is dead," as they pack five theaters five times a day during the fortnight of the International Istanbul Film Festival, this year from April 5th-20th. Or even that some of what they are watching are...

The Cannes International Film Festival.(COMMUNIQUES)
September 22, 2008... As every cinephile knows, in May 1968 the Cannes Film Festival was brought to a halt by a group of activist filmmakers who interrupted the usual blithe spectacle and expressed solidarity with the rumblings from students that had begun to...

The Jeonju International Film Festival.(COMMUNIQUES)
September 22, 2008... Jeonju is a difficult city to fathom for a Westerner new to South Korea, especially one visiting only during the internanal film festival that's been taking place there each spring for eight years now. Boning up on its history and attractions...

Bra Boys.(SHORT TAKES)(Movie review)(Brief article)
September 22, 2008... From the sea of contemporary ethnographic self-portraits, few have more resoundingly crashed ashore in America than the Australian Bra Boys, Sunny Abberton's film about a group of surfers and urban warriors led by the filmmaker and his two...

Constantine's Sword.(SHORT TAKES)(Movie review)(Brief article)
September 22, 2008... "Christian faith can seem to triumph over every evil except Christian triumphalism," journalist James Carroll wrote in his colossal indictment of Catholic anti-Semitism, 2001's Constantine's Sword. Director Oren Jacoby's recent adaptation of...

Dust.(SHORT TAKES)(Movie review)(Brief article)
September 22, 2008... Dust is everywhere. Each and every day it helps form clouds, colors the sky, dirties our countertops and destroys precious film negatives (as well as allows us to view the images reflected in light.) In Hartmut Bitomsky's film, Staub (Dust),...

Killer's Paradise.(SHORT TAKES)(Movie review)(Brief article)
September 22, 2008... The words "arresting" and "unflinching" are used so often to describe documentaries that most moviegoers have become desensitized to their meaning, but in Killer's Paradise, these words find their former resonance. The film documents violence...

Surfwise.(SHORT TAKES)(Movie review)(Brief article)
September 22, 2008... Inherent in "surfing" films is the dialectic between man and nature--either as an antagonistic interaction where man conquers the ocean or a transcendent union between man and the waves. Filmmaker Doug Pray's fascinating documentary Surfwise...