The Film Journal. 9.

Orson Welles figures prominently in the July 2004 issue of The Film Journal, the 9th. From the top, Beth Zdriluk argues that Welles's acting, often dismissed as "indulgent, hammy, or just plain bad," is actually "a central element of his artistic life and career." She also quotes from a conversation with Peter Bogdanovich and it's hard this particular week not to hear an exact reverse reading of the same observation Brando often made: "Everybody in the world is an actor... Conversation is acting… Everything we do is some sort of a performance." So acting's nothing special, shrugged Brando; no, it's just about everything, Welles would have replied.

Peter Tonguette has two conversations with people who knew Welles in this issue: Magician Mike Caveny and actor, producer and director Norman Lloyd. As the Journal's staff critic, Tonguette also reviews Kill Bill: Vol. 2, The Saddest Music in the World and The Company.

Hunter Vaughn, currently tackling French cinema and philosophy at Oxford, goes to work on Godard's 2 ou 3 choses que je sais d'elle (Two or Three Things I Know About Her) and Dogme 95.

Rich Elias, who teaches a course on Bollywood, interviews Abhijat Joshi, a screenwriter who worked on Mission Kashmir.

In "Polemical Posturing versus Feigned Naivety in Documentary," Mark Richardson starts out writing about Nick Broomfield, but of course, eventually makes his way to Michael Moore.

Product placement is a strong, ongoing trend in popular South Korean cinema, writes Adam Hartzell, but there's something interesting going on in Yong Yi's debut, Spring Bears Love, a subversion "associating the products with abandonment, disgust, gluttony, loneliness, tastelessness and obnoxiousness. And at the same time, public and local spaces are given positive associations such as intimacy and hope, further subverting the power of market culture."

What we think we're talking about when we talk about "the Rashômon effect" is not, in fact, what Kurosawa had in mind, argues Marc Yamada.

Reviews and retros: Alexander C Ives on Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind, Liliana Wendorff and Thomas Morley on Amores Perros, Richard Armstrong on Double Indemnity, Desirée Jung on Soderbergh's Solaris, Asbjørn Grønstad on Blow-Up, J Alan Speer on Truffaut's Antoine Doinel series, Avi Spivack on Rear Window and Dan Jardine on Leone's spaghetti westerns.

Posted by dwhudson at July 9, 2004 2:01 AM