V for Voice.

"It might have taken a while, but the dystopian movie our political miasma has been demanding for six years has arrived: V for Vendetta," announces Michael Atkinson as part of this week's cover package.

J Hoberman takes it from there: "If The Matrix betrayed the Wachowskis' acquaintance with Jean Baudrillard, V for Vendetta suggests they've been perusing political philosopher Antonio Negri - both the old ultra-left Negri of Domination and Sabotage and the new Michael Hardt-collaborating Negri of Empire and Multitude. (The latter book even name-dropped The Matrix as an example of how Empire feeds on the creative 'social productivity' of the ruled.)" Related: Screenwriter John August reads a programmer's guide to the Matrix series and decides that "narratively speaking, those movies are a clusterfuck."

Matt Singer maps V's rocky road from comic to the screen. Related: The Reeler at the NYC premiere.

Elliott Stein previews the Don Siegel retrospective at the Film Forum (March 17 through April 13): "It's an oeuvre that would be unthinkable in today's Hollywood, consisting as it does of stylish but unpretentious mainstream films made with intelligence and vitality."

A Tribute to Alexander Kluge runs at the Anthology Film Archives from tomorrow through March 21 and Ed Halter has found a terrific way to introduce it: "Ever read TW Adorno's Minima Moralia and think, 'Hey, this would make a great movie'? Alexander Kluge might be your man." Related: Reverse Shot's mjr.

Atkinson sums up all that's deeply frustrating about the oeuvre of Wim Wenders in his review of Don't Come Knocking. Also, Thank You For Smoking, "a gleeful topical farce about capitalist mendacity."

Greg Tate:

Because [Gordon] Parks transitioned into filmmaking just as TV was destroying photojournalism, the post-1970 generation knows him primarily as the aristocratic white-haired eminence who directed Shaft. And while Parks's autobiographical cinematic debut, The Learning Tree, is in the National Film Registry, his most critically acclaimed films, The Super Cops and Leadbelly, have languished unavailable for far too long. One online pundit thinks the mostly white Super Cops has aged far better than The French Connection and The Taking of Pelham 1-2-3, while Roger Ebert calls Leadbelly hands down the best movie about a musician ever. I'd go further and say Leadbelly is the most lyrical work save August Wilson's about the roustabout world of violence, bloodhounds, swamps, railcars, bordellos, juke joints, cotton fields, and chain gangs that spawned the blues and its alchemical admixture of sardonic joy and short-lived sensual pleasure.

Hoberman reviews Ira Cohen's 1968 film, The Invasion of the Thunderbolt Pagoda, "so High 60s that you emerge from its 20-minute vision perched full-lotus on a cloud of incense, chatting with a white rabbit and smoking a banana."

Joshua Land describes what must be one of the oddest behind-the-scenes docs made yet, The Big Question, comprised of interviews with the cast and crew of Mel Gibson's The Passion of the Christ.

"Tracking Shots": Ben Kenigsberg on Find Me Guilty, Land on Beautiful City, Pete L'Official on Mirage, Jorge Morales on Take My Eyes and Hate Crime, Atkinson on The Devil's Miner and Don't Tell, Jordan Harper on She's the Man and Jim Ridley on Don't Trip... He Ain't Through With Me Yet.

Posted by dwhudson at March 14, 2006 8:18 PM