GC article roundup.

It's been about a month since the last roundup (which also happens to have been the first), so it's time for another one. Let's start with that photo. That's the late Budd Boetticher, whose newly restored 1956 cult favorite, Seven Men From Now, is due out on DVD this week. The photo of Boetticher in his office comes from Sean Axmaker's own collection. Sean's done quite a bit of work on Boetticher and we'll be seeing more of it soon. On Friday, we ran highlights from a series of interviews Sean conducted with the underappreciated director between 1988 and 1992. At one point, you'd think Boetticher were directly addressing the current discussion of one subtext of that most American of film genres: "Never before in a motion picture western did you ever see the hero kill the villain and sit down on a rock because he wanted to throw up because he really hated to do it. And I think that's a love affair."

Also new to the main site - just up, as a matter of fact - is a conversation Jonathan Marlow had with Veit Helmer last year. Frankly, months and months ago, we thought we had a sure news hook for this one when it seemed that a slew of films by Wim Wenders was headed to DVD, one of them being The Brothers Skladanowsky (aka A Trick of the Light); Veit played a vital role in realizing that one (he explains in the interview).

So we've held the piece and held the piece but all these previously announced Wenders DVDs are still MIA. Now there's an even better news hook: Azerbaijan Dream, the project Veit's been working on for more than four years now, has just been named one of 12 finalists for the Sundance/NHK International Filmmakers Awards. Click on for more.

An odd coincidence: During the years I was translating screenplays for Veit (and others), I was emailing almost daily with Paulina Borsook, who was hard at work on a book about libertarianism in geek culture. The epically twisted fate of that book, as it turns out, would become a central chapter in my own one and only book, Rewired. Paulina's Cyberselfish did eventually appear from PublicAffairs and remains essential to any understanding of the dotcom madness (and its aftermath) that took hold in the 90s.

So all this time I've been begging and pleading Paulina to write something for GC and, a couple of weeks ago, we finally had the good fortune to run just that. "Movies for Adults" is about why so many films of the 60s and 70s really "were better."

The very next day we ran David D'Arcy's interview with Gianni Amelio, in some ways a companion piece to his fresh dispatch from Tirana. Amelio has insightful and perhaps surprising things to say not only about his own work but also... well, let him say it: "The truth is that neo-realism was an elite phenomenon in Italy."

Look for more from David D'Arcy soon, too.

Posted by dwhudson at December 18, 2005 1:40 PM