Film Journal 8.

Whether it's the monotony of deadlines, eyes on the bottom lines or simply everyone reading everyone else all the time, the voices of film criticism in the mainstream press, and often enough in the alternative press as well, tend to blend these days. Sure, you'll find clever trickery or phrase-turning here and there, but on the whole, it's old hat and worn out. That's what makes editor Rick Curnette's decision to devote an entire section of the new issue of Film Journal, #8, to Christopher Mulrooney such a pleasant switch. It's not that Mulrooney, a poet, sketches his brief pieces on filmmakers in a voice that's all that fresh, but the form he gives it has an airy, liberating feel.

Also in the issue:

• "One thing that always amazes me is that, even with everything that was written on people like Hawks or Ford, many self-proclaimed auteurists have so little interest in contemporary commercial filmmaking." Filipe Furtado sees posters for Charlie's Angels: Full Throttle and Kiarostami's Ten hanging next to each other on a wall and argues, Why not?

• 2003, according to Tim Applegate, Justin Remer and 50+ critics, essayists and readers.

• TR Black's big walloping piece on Mystic River.

• Peter Tonguette talks interviews Keith Baxter, who played Prince Hal to Orson Welles's Falstaff in the latter's Chimes at Midnight.

• Curnutte talks to Eric Byler, director of Charlotte Sometimes.

• Some remakes work, writes Applegate, some don't. In particular, "Point Blank remains a vibrant, and controversial, movie. Which is certainly more than can be said for its remake Payback, an inept and offensive picture that illustrates, once again, the folly of reconstructing a classic."

• Jethro Rothe-Kushel: "Fight Club exposes the void and offers three solutions: crying, violence, and movies."

• Hunter Vaughn on Eyes Wide Shut and feminist criticism.

That's about the half of it. Classics are revisited, a book, a festival and, of course, films are reviewed. Definitely a bookmark for the weekend.

Posted by dwhudson at March 16, 2004 3:26 PM