Film Comment. Sept / Oct 05.

While the print edition of the new issue of Film Comment is shaped by the New York Film Festival, online it appears (via a spiffy new site) dominated by Japanese cinema.

Chuck Stephens recounts the history of the Shochiko Studios, the subject of a special NYFF series, and explains why, "In so many ways, Ozu and Shochiku - which celebrates its 110th anniversary this year - were made for each other." But that doesn't stop the arrival of "Castle Shochiku's home-grown Anti-Ozu!" In an online-only sidebar, Stephens points to the highlights of that series.

There's virtual space enough, too, to run Chris Fujiwara's piece on Mikio Naruse in full: "If women and their problems predominate in Naruse's films, as in Mizoguchi's, the unique mixture of anguish and calm that characterizes the work of the less famous (but no less great) director arises from the fact that his female figures are always doubled."

"What's happened to [Thomas] Vinterberg?" asks Wesley Morris in his review of Dear Wendy.

Amy Taubin has a new "Art and Industry" column up: "If nothing else, Stranded in Canton makes us aware of the chaos outside the frame of every [William] Eggleston photograph. One might venture, on the evidence of this swerving, lurching, ghostly video diary that, for Eggleston, time is chaos, against which still images and the rhythms of music are two forms of defense."

And there's one more online exclusive: Harlan Jacobson interviews Good Night, and Good Luck screenwriter Grant Heslov.

Posted by dwhudson at September 16, 2005 12:44 PM