Brooklyn Rail. September 06.

Ken Jacobs "is one of the most lauded experimental filmmakers America has ever produced, which is quite something for a blue-collar kid from Brooklyn," writes Jim Knipfel. "Over the past 50 years, he's crafted a body of work that focuses less on storytelling than on the mechanics of film itself - 'mining,' he says, the way images on the frames interact in the hopes of revealing a hidden truth. Hoping to alter, too, the way people look at the world." Knipfel visits the "4th floor walkup in Lower Manhattan" where Jacobs, now 73, lives with his wife and partner, Flo, and talks and listens.

Also in the September issue of the Brooklyn Rail:

• David Markus on Art and Anti-Art, an exhibition of work by Hans Richter at the Maya Stendahl Gallery through September 16.

• "Linda Hamilton in Terminator II, Sigourney Weaver in the Alien films, even former model Milla Jovovich in Resident Evil were all playing drag," writes Sarahjane Blum. "By contrast, [Neil] Marshall's cast [in The Descent] is a decided step away from that characterization."

• For Tessa DeCarlo, Half Nelson is "a beautifully made film that explores the conjunction of the personal and political with unusual intelligence and compassion."

• "[I]t's hard to make movies out of plays, especially Shakespeare. Criterion Collection's new box set Olivier's Shakespeare brings together the three films with which Laurence Olivier proved it could be done," writes Sara Mayeux.

• Further down the same page, David Wilentz reviews Shogun Assassin, "an ultimate example of violent, mind-bending movie-making, a postmodern artifact that foretold the future of exploitation and world cinema."

• David N Meyer: "The Illusionist is absurdly enveloping and satisfying, rendered with beauty and originality, never dull, never full of shit, credible 90 percent of the time, in spite of its subject matter, and rigorous in maintaining a self-aware tone of high-minded craft."

• Jenny Schlenzka, who's just completed her master's thesis on Miami Vice, the TV show, indulges in the aesthetics and maps the male dynamics of Michael Mann's world.

• Ioannis Mookas looks back on From the Tsars to the Stars: A Journey Through Russian Fantastik Cinema, a series that ran a few weeks ago: "At the August 12 panel, [curator Robert] Skotak screened the trailer for his documentary Red Fantasies, pieced from sixth- or seventh-generation dubs of fantastika classics never aired in the West, gathered over decades of termite research. Karen Shakhnazarov, attending in his role as current director general of Mosfilm, took one look and, like a riddle from Zero City in reverse, threw open the vault without explanation or ceremony, pledging Skotak full access to Mosfilm's archive. With that sort of result, the Walter Reade might want to try sponsoring this kind of husbandry more often."

• Tom McLoughlin's "Begrudging Tribute" to Mickey Spillane.

Posted by dwhudson at September 6, 2006 5:17 AM