Cinema Scope. 30.

"Halfway through editing this issue, I thought that it might be a good idea to commission even more opinionated pieces and just change the magazine's name to Polemics, but what follows will have to generate enough arguments until Issue 31 rolls around," writes Mark Peranson, introducing another wide-ranging and provocative must-read: Cinema Scope, Issue 30, featuring right there on that same page the editorial board's top ten for 2006. #1: Apichatpong Weerasethakul's Syndromes and a Century.

Turning to the Web-only feature: Laurent Kretzschmar translates Serge Daney's 1981 piece on The Elephant Man: It's "as if [David] Lynch was saying: you are not the one that matters, it's him, the elephant man; it is not your fear that interests me but his; it is not your fear to be afraid that I want to manipulate but his fear to scare, his fear to see himself in the look of the other. The vertigo changes sides."

Two interviews are online. Robert Koehler talks with Paul Verhoeven about Black Book, first commenting: "As skillfully as any living director, he revels in cinema's powers of deception, to conceal and then reveal reality, to cover subversive ideas inside the armour of genre." And Rob Nelson talks with Robinson Devor, noting: "Disarmingly quiet and contemplative, challenging both itself and the viewer to sympathize with a rather different breed of animal lover, Zoo is the opposite of exploitation."

Christoph Huber: "What makes [Johnnie] To's work fascinating is its diversity, including aspects often overlooked in favour of his formalist bravado."

"How does one find a place for that which is more than craft competence yet significantly less than artistic personality?" asks Andrew Tracy. "[T]he striking oddities that dot [William] Wellman's diverse filmography make him a difficult object unto himself."

To the festivals. Peranson argues that "premiere-heavy festivals such as Berlin and Sundance do just as much harm as good to the world of cinema." Punctuated with propositions and drive-by pans and raves, this is a rousing collection of points well worth wrestling with. Scott Foundas devotes most of his Sundance report to his seemingly limitless loathing of Grace Is Gone, but the two final paragraphs are given to high praise for The Savages.

Jonathan Rosenbaum's "Global Discoveries on DVD" seems to grow more exhaustive with each issue; the running theme this time: you've got to buy certain DVDs and/or collections to get your hands on the accompanying texts which often make the package well worth the price - particularly in the case of a few essays he mentions that aren't available any other way.

Richard Porton: "Despite its enormous critical acclaim and popular appeal, Florian Henckel von Donnersmarck's debut The Lives of Others, recent winner of the Best Foreign Language Film Oscar, insists on sentimental narrative panaceas."

Jay Kuehner: "[J]ust what [Manoel de] Oliveira's agenda might be with Belle toujours is open to interpretation, which is both the source of its frustrating inscrutability and its strange enchantment."

Posted by dwhudson at March 21, 2007 6:55 AM