Film Quarterly. Winter 07/08.

"Of the films I watched this quarter, I was particularly engaged by André Téchiné's new drama, a rumination on the nonconformity of life and art whose title seems to me to be provocative." Introducing the new issue of Film Quarterly (and thanks once again to Girish for the heads-up), editor Rob White offers a quick take on The Witnesses - and announces a film review prize to coincide with next year's 50th anniversary issue.

"It is conceivable that a city in Eastern Europe today could become what LA was at the beginning of the twentieth century: a huge backlot for studios," notes screenwriter and director Greg Marcks. "As a result LA, and the studios themselves, may be on the way to becoming a financial, planning, and marketing center rather than the place where movies are physically made."

"As the video-game genre most tightly linked to a cinematic tradition, survival horror upsets some of the assumed differences between cinema and games," writes Irene Chien. "Survival horror draws on the reflex-activating power of fear rather than paralyzed gawking."

Beth Mauldin offers a quick overview of several books: The Afterlife of America's War in Vietnam: Changing Visions in Politics and Screen by Gordon Arnold; History Films, Women, and Freud's Uncanny by Susan E Linville; Screening Politics: The Politician in American Movies by Harry Keyishian; European Film Industries by Anne Jäckel; East European Cinemas, edited by Anikó Imre; and Historical Dictionary of French Cinema by Dayna Oscherwitz and Maryellen Higgins.

Posted by dwhudson at January 10, 2008 12:55 AM