Brooklyn Rail. October 07.

"Although she's made just two feature films, director Miwa Nishikawa has proved a singular voice in contemporary Japanese cinema," writes David Wilentz, introducing his interview. "Nishikawa broke into film as an assistant director under the tutelage of acclaimed auteur Hirokazu Kore-eda (Afterlife, Nobody Knows)." Her "second feature, Sway, is a stunning, modern meditation on repressed emotions, also examined through a story of a troubled family."

"Since his 1995 movie Kids, Larry Clark has slid around the photographic line between document and exploitation, and to this reviewer there is something greasy and repugnant about this artist's gaze," writes Cassandra Neyenesch, who caught his recent exhibition at Luhring Augustine.

"An intuitive grasp of the blues sensibility may be what allows Charles Burnett to portray his characters so lovingly, whether they sin or not," writes . "He applauds the morally righteous, while reserving a tenderness for men who laze around, steal TVs, or even plot murders." And he talks with Burnett about Killer of Sheep, Senbene Ousmane, blaxploitation and more.

Brother Cleve draws a line from France through Italy to Turkey: Fantômas, Danger: Diabolik, Kilink in Istanbul.

Mala Noche "takes its simple narrative from the 1977 book of the same name by Oregonian poet Walt Curtis," writes Sarah Kessler. Gus Van Sant's "adaptation marries the Beat of Curtis' writing to rich, rough-and-tumble, black-and-white imagery.... No mere 'first feature,' Mala Noche has a low-budget visual decadence that alone makes it worth seeing." Speaking of Beat, Benjamin Tripp reviews Christopher Felver's Beat, an "assemblage of images and text" that "evokes the ephemeral sense of a photo-album or personal scrapbook."

Tessa DeCarlo: "In the Valley of Elah isn't about vast conspiracies; it recognizes that incompetence, laziness, and reflexive cover-your-ass dishonesty can achieve what a conspiracy never could."

"In the morning she gave me her phone number when she left. That was the start of a two year romance. It turned out Patty was the wife of Claes Oldenburg, the famous Pop artist, known for his giant sculptures, soft and otherwise, of food and appliances." Richard Hell's working on his autobiography.

"Like many people - at least, that's what I tell myself these days - I wrote Naomi Klein off when she first appeared on the scene in the late 90s," writes Nicholas Jahr. And now? "The Shock Doctrine is required reading for anyone concerned about the struggle for a better world."

Posted by dwhudson at October 20, 2007 5:00 AM