LA Weekly. 0608.

It's not a special issue, but there's so much here, it calls for its own entry. First off, the LA Weekly gives Paul Cullum the space he needs to tell in full evocative detail the disturbing story behind screenwriter Eric Red's freak-out one night a few years ago. Two died and several were injured before Red, who wrote The Hitcher and Near Dark, slashed his own throat with a glass shard. Now he hopes to stage a comeback.

"[T]he loss of liberal self-confidence extends far beyond the Beltway," writes John Powers in the LA Weekly. "Nowhere is this clearer than at the movies, where you can feel liberal filmmakers struggling to find a response to 9/11, Bushism — with its marriage of corporate money to Christian moralizing — and the left's own lack of direction." Hence, his "Official 'On' Guide to the New Liberal Cinema — 2005." A few spoilers, and you won't agree with every word, but no holds are barred. Read it.

Robert Koehler: "All seven features in the UCLA Film and Television Archive's 16th Annual Celebration of Iranian Cinema (which begins Friday, January 13), as well as the strikingly contrasting pair of new Iranian films screening at REDCAT on January 30, were made before the ultra-religious former Tehran mayor Mahmoud Ahmadinejad was elected president in 2005 — a profound political step backward that already shows signs of ensuring a kind of cultural counterreformation by conservative Islamists, with cinema the most visible and convenient target. If Ahmadinejad has already banned Kenny G, can controversial filmmaker Jafar Panahi (The Circle, Crimson Gold) be far behind?"

"Atash [Thirst] is an odd, grim film that won the FIPRESCI (International Federation of Film Critics) Award last year, was screened at Cannes, and also took first prize at the Jerusalem Film Festival. Its plot has gotten the young writer and director an enormous amount of flak." Nancy Updike meets Tawfik Abu Wael.

Margy Rochlin: "Ever since Jessica Sanders's After Innocence debuted at last year's Sundance Film Festival, her documentary about the tough, post-prison lives of seven wrongly incarcerated men has played to two kinds of audiences: film festival–goers and, in private screenings, legislators and public-policy makers, who often come away chastened by the searing message onscreen — that most U.S. states treat criminal ex-cons better than innocent ones."

Scott Foundas asks David Cronenberg, "So whose 'history' is it, anyway?" And his answer begins, "It's got three levels. There's the way that you see it in the newspapers, that a suspect had 'a history of violence,' so in that sense it's Tom's. But it's also America's. And then it's also the human species'."

Dark Places, an exhibition at the Santa Monica Museum of Art open through April 22, "features the work of 76 international media artists - ranging from LA-based Jordan Crandall, the Delhi-based RAQS Media Collective and architects Diller + Scofidio — presented in a monster-like architectural armature suspended in the museum's main gallery." Holly Willis looks into the design.

Brendan Bernhard reviews Julian Barnes's Arthur & George, "a rich historical novel riddled with contemporary resonances and tensions all the more powerful for being understated." Arthur, by the way, is Sir Arthur Conan Doyle.

The small screen: Robert Abele on the new season and on Rollergirls; Paul Malcolm recommends new DVDs.

Posted by dwhudson at January 12, 2006 6:03 AM