Synoptique. 7.

The new issue of one of the best-designed online film journals, Synoptique, is up and shot through from beginning to end with the memory of Susan Sontag. Designer Adam Rosadiuk has based the concept for this issue on the notes, underlinings and such that readers have left in library copies of her books: "[M]arginalia are the ruins of when a text made sense, before doubt and complication pushed the reader back to the text all over again."

Thirteen writers responded to Colin Burnett's call to "elaborate the importance of Susan Sontag to the study of film," among them, Adrian Martin, Jonathan Rosenbaum and Robert Sklar.

Craig Seligman's Sontag & Kael: Opposites Attract Me leaves Catherine Russell almost bitterly unimpressed: "Yes, both women took the cinema seriously and provided foundational texts for its serious study, but Seligman is no help in assessing what their contribution really was. Perhaps there is another book yet to be written about these two remarkable writers, maybe by a writer who can leave his own persona at the door and stop worrying who he likes better, and if, because he really likes Kael better, that makes him slightly stupid."

And there are three new entries in Synoptique's marvelous Style Gallery, three new clips, each introduced by a quote from one of Sontag's essays. Three editors and William Beard, professor of Film/Media Studies at the University of Alberta, conduct a wide-ranging discussion sparked by the Gallery.

Students of Martin Lefebvre's graduate seminar on the problem of interpretation at Concordia University in Montreal present what Burnett calls "a Synoptique-style tribute" to Renoir's French Cancan on its 50th anniversary.

Also:

• Jodi Ramer, who wrote about Marnie in the last issue, this time studies Tippi Hedren's bearing.

• Lysandra Woods misses geeks as she knew them before Bill Gates ruined geekhood.

• Laurel Wypkema on HBO's "terrifyingly well-written, slick shows."

• Zoe Constantinides's "personal response" to Peter Greenaway's Tulse Luper Suitcases.

• Andrea Ariano and Tanya Boulanger, ages 24 and 11 respectively, consider Lemony Snicket's A Series of Unfortunate Events.

• Randolph Jordan's second "Squalid Infidelities" column focuses on Eyes Wide Shut, which "deals with the question of whether thinking about cheating on one's partner has the same effect on a relationship as doing it."

• The many Splinters.

Posted by dwhudson at February 20, 2005 10:14 AM