Issues.

The Lord of the Rings cover story in the Jan/Feb issue of Film Comment isn't online, and at the moment, the 2003 Wrap-up and best lists don't seem to be there, but quite a lot else is.

Secret Things

Contributors admit to their guilty pleasures of the year, Frédéric Bonnaud explains why "Jean-Claude Brisseau is the most atypical of great French filmmakers," and the mag runs Scott Eyman's 1978 interview with William Wellman.

Then Philippe Garnier introduces the late Grover Lewis's portrait of just-as-late character actor Timothy Carey, "a rough-hewn, riveting beastie who, starting in the heyday of noir, slouched his way toward some backlot Bethlehem." In the interview that follows, the one that begins with the question, "Are you generally known around the industry as a farter?," Carey tells Lewis how he lost his role in The Godfather Part II:

Francis and his pals were sitting around his office and I brought a box of cannolis and Italian pastries as gifts. I said, "I brought you this gift to pay respect to my friends," and I reached down into those dripping cannolis and pulled out a gun - boom boom! - and blew the hell out of all of them. And then I shot myself and staggered over and fell on Roos's desk - all the contracts went flying. And Coppola grabbed my blank gun and shot me back - bang bang! - like a kid.

Unfortunately, Coppola was the only one in the room to get a kick out of it. Alan Licht then takes a brief look at The World's Greatest Sinner, which Carey starred in, produced and directed, and which John Cassavetes said had "the brilliance of Einstein." If all that sparks your interest, Licht offers the following click: timothycarey.com.

Most historical overviews of Hong Kong cinema written since the handover in 1997 have ended on a pretty downbeat note. Simon Jones's, though, part of kamera.co.uk's Hong Kong Issue, suggests there may be a revival going on just now: "Successes such as the Pang Brother's 2002 Thailand/Hong Kong co-production The Eye have perhaps shown the way forward, repositioning Hong Kong as the middleman for triumphant co-production ventures within Asia." Also in the issue:

Leon Hunt on martial arts films.

Bob Carroll on the collaboration of John Woo and Chow Yun-Fat.

Colin Odell and Michelle le Blanc on Jackie Chan.

Bob Carroll again, briefly, on Infernal Affairs.

Ingo Ebeling on the long-running Young and Dangerous series.

Time Regained

The new - the second - issue of the pristine Rouge is an annotated filmography of the work of Raúl Ruiz and coincides with the series "An Eternal Wanderer at the festival in Rotterdam.

Posted by dwhudson at January 19, 2004 11:32 AM