Sight & Sound. May 07.

The May issue of Sight & Sound simply has to have a piece on This Is England, so the editors have made a smart move: Get Jon Savage, author of England's Dreaming: Anarchy, Sex Pistols, Punk Rock and Beyond, to write it. (He has a new one out, too: Teenage: The Creation of Youth Culture.) So read about The Clash, the general milieu of England in the 80s, and of course, the movie - "Made with tenderness and humor, it is a film about not just national identity and manhood, but also early adolescence, that key moment in identity formation" - and then catch up with the just-updated entry, "Weekend Brits."

To the Italians, with Guido Bonsaver: "Roberto Rossellini's Francis, God's Jester (1950) is one of those rare films that help define not only a director's philosophy, but a national trait and a cultural climate too.... [A]fter the elections of 1948, Italy was fast becoming a more hedonistic, Americanized society. It might have been a cry for help. And it was one that struck a chord in subsequent generations."

Reviews:

• Tim Lucas considers "a compelling artefact," Schoolgirl Report #1: What Parents Don't Think Is Possible. "Nakedly exploitative on one hand, educationally minded and idealistic on the other, it also has the ring of a revolutionary act, lending its voice to the tensions that had developed by the end of the 1960s between the post-war youth of West Germany and their overly strict, beer-chugging, Hitlerjugend parents."

• To Germany again, but the other one, with Geoffrey Macnab: "Is it plausible that he could change so fundamentally? Whatever these quibbles, The Lives of Others has a maturity and breadth of vision rarely found in a debut feature."

• Nick James on Scott Walker 30 Century Man: "[T]he film catches various commentators - Jarvis Cocker, Damon Albarn, Alison Goldfrapp et al - as they listen to, and are often visibly shaken by, Walker's music. The emotions here are so exposed you would have to be allergic to every aspect of Walker's singing not to experience at least a wobble of empathy. Remembering that existential symphony of the melancholy modern self that is a Scott Walker song gives us pause, as if all other rock music should somehow be ashamed of itself for being so unambitious."

• "Critics and viewers may be split over the merits of the historical epic 300, but its technical achievement is beyond question," argues Andrew Osmond.

Posted by dwhudson at April 22, 2007 9:04 AM