Cineaste. Winter 07.

Another winter update. There are four pieces from the new issue of Cineaste online but six "Web Exclusives."

To start with "Hollywood Takes on the Iraq War," the editors argue that Todd McCarthy's "blithe assertion" in Variety "that 'nothing new' can be learned" from this season's batch "seems myopic and misguided.... Although filmmakers taking on the morass in Iraq may not yet have produced anything comparable to Jean Renoir's Grand Illusion or Stanley Kubrick's Paths of Glory, [Brian] De Palma and [Nick] Broomfield's recent efforts [Redacted and Battle for Haditha] are certainly steps in the right direction."

The interviews:

• John Esther talks with James Mangold about 3:10 to Yuma and country music.

• Rahul Hamid talks with Marc Forster about The Kite Runner and casting Homayoun Ershadi, best known for his role in Abbas Kiarostami's Taste of Cherry.

• Pablo Goldbarg with Tata Amaral about Antônia, about why "poverty sells" and about her decision to not buy into that formula.

A slew of DVD reviews:

• David Sterrit on Eclipse's Late Ozu collection: "Each of [the films] is emotionally rich, psychologically true, intellectually exact, stylistically nimble, and as entertaining as can be, drawing on finely tuned strategies whose narrative punch - comic, tragic, dramatic, romantic, and every stop in between - is all the stronger for their bold refusal of standard movie conventions."

• When Dusan Makavejev's WR: Mysteries of the Organism appeared in 1971, it was well-received by the New York Times, Time and Newsweek. "It was a remarkable response to what was essentially a feature-length experimental film based on the theories of psychologist and political philosopher Wilhelm Reich and promoting a critique of both capitalist and communist erotophobia using the theatrical antics of Andy Warhol diva Jackie Curtis and Fugs founder Tuli Kupferberg juxtaposed with a series of interconnecting, vaguely anagogical, fictional plots," writes Michael Bronski. "The praise continued, albeit somewhat moderated, with the release of Sweet Movie four years later."

• "[I]n Inland Empire, as he has in the past, [David] Lynch uses the experience of women, who are, quite realistically, both sources of creativity and objects of repression in patriarchal cultures, to reveal how creative energies can be trapped within rigid social systems," writes Martha P Nochimson.

• "[T]he once-novel jump cut, the hand-held camera, on-location shooting, and natural lighting have now become routine and meaningless parts of visual media vocabulary," writes Armond White. "But what never ceased to be compelling about Breathless is the tragic love story between Parisian bum Michel Poiccard (Jean-Paul Belmondo) and American adventuress Patricia Franchini (Jean Seberg). Their mismatch might be the most revolutionary aspect of Breathless, revealing that Godard's technical experimentation was integral to modernizing a timeless romantic archetype."

• "Was Valentino's popularity a mere fluke of the times? Is his unprecedented level of stardom and subsequent legendary status the only interesting thing about him?" asks James L Neibaur. "Hardly. Rudolph Valentino was actually a gifted performer with a tremendous screen presence."

And Barton Byg reviews the dueling Leni Riefenstahl biographies. "The salutary effect of having Riefenstahl around, denying to the end any connection between her art and violence, is that she reminded us of the bad conscience of mass art in the 20th century." At any rate, Jürgen Trimborn's Leni Riefenstahl: A Life "is a far more cautious and circumspect work" than Steven Bach's Leni: The Life and Work of Leni Riefenstahl, "which limits its originality and readability."

Posted by dwhudson at December 2, 2007 11:30 AM