Cineaste. Spring 08.

Putting together a syllabus for a course at Dartmouth - Queers, Queens, and Questionable Women: How Hollywood Shaped Post-War GLBT Politics and Vice Versa - Michael Bronski was amazed "at not only how brief, and fast moving, the history of specifically queer criticism has been, but also how protean it has been." His brief history begins with "the brilliant, and now largely forgotten by younger queer writers and academics, Parker Tyler," and takes Richard Dyer, B Ruby Rich and Vito Russo into consideration on his way to the present: "Academic queer film studies now finds itself in the sometimes awkward position of responding both to a need to continue to professionalize its work as well as to wrestle with the changing state of the market, which is now utterly different than it was a decade ago, never mind three decades. This cultural shift is, to varying degrees, apparent in the three volumes of recent queer film writing under review." And they are: The View from Here: Conversations with Gay and Lesbian Filmmakers, The Cinema of Todd Haynes: All That Heaven Allows and Reading Brokeback Mountain: Essays on the Story and the Film.

Also in the new issue of Cineaste, the Editors appreciate "the humor, clever dialogue and engaging performances" in Juno and Knocked Up, but they "also worry not only about critical arguments that seem either willfully blind or shockingly naive about the mediating role of cinema in our culture, but also about the aversion to abortion as an important issue."

Which leads us to the interviews, though Richard Porton's with Cristian Mungiu is headlined, "Not Just an Abortion Film." And of course, 4 Months, 3 Weeks and 2 Days isn't.

As noted earlier, Cynthia Lucia talks with Woody Allen about Cassandra's Dream; and David Archibald talks with Stefan Ruzowitzky about The Counterfeiters. Also available as a PDF: Gary Crowdus's December 1987 conversation with Oliver Stone.

Recently in theaters:

• Rahul Hamid on Persepolis: "Through the caricature of her countrymen, [Marjane] Satrapi sends the subconscious message that she and other moderate Iranians are Westerners at heart. Although for some this may be a pleasant-to-watch liberal salve for strained Western sensibilities, I would recommend buying the books."

• Robert Koehler on Funny Games US: "The arguably courageous attempt by [Michael] Haneke to effectively smuggle his polemical work of antigenre into the commercial mainstream of American movies is almost certain to be undone by the very forces he has openly despised, and perhaps no amount of critical explication will reverse it since the movie - by its position inside a genre that it nevertheless wants to subvert - is being sold as something that it's not."

• Herb Boyd finds "a few troubling things about The Great Debaters that go beyond its predictability," but approves overall.

DVDs:

• David Sterritt celebrates British distributor Cinema 16 and its first foray into the US market, European Short Films: Special US Edition.

• Rahul Hamid on I Am Cuba, "one long passionate plea in favor of form over content and an affirmation of the transcendence of film style."

• "[A]lthough [Sam] Fuller's first three films - I Shot Jesse James, The Baron of Arizona and The Steel Helmet - contain some flashes of brilliance, what may be most interesting about them is the contrast they make with Fuller's 1944 novel, The Dark Page," writes Martha P Nochimson.

• Phillip Lopate on Raymond Bernard's Wooden Crosses and Les Misérables: "[T]ogether they make a compelling case for admission into the canon."

• "Lost and Found: The Harry Langdon Collection offers a strong case in support of Langdon as deserving a firm and lofty position among the silent screen's finest comedians," argues James L Neibaur.

Posted by dwhudson at February 26, 2008 4:59 AM