Film Comment. May/June 08.

Of the four selections from the new issue of Film Comment up at the site, plus the four online exclusives, three pieces have a little or a lot to do with Germany. Reviewing Yella, "a modest, haunting, highly economical work that rewards repeated viewings, Chris Darke argues that Christian Petzold, "a leading light of the current generation of young German filmmakers, succeeds in making the modern world strange again."

Thomas Elsaesser, author of several books on German and European cinema, including one on Fassbinder, draws parallels to Fatih Akin's The Edge of Heaven:

None other than Hanna Schygulla, Fassbinder's 70s muse, plays a leading role, as one of two mothers central to the story. The narrative, too, makes more than casual reference to Fassbinder's films: the narrative setup incorporates echoes of Ali: Fear Eats the Soul, Berlin Alexanderplatz and The Bitter Tears of Petra von Kant. Just to remove any doubt, in Germany The Edge of Heaven was billed (retroactively) as the second film of a trilogy meant to respond, according to the director, to Fassbinder's BRD Trilogy (The Marriage of Maria Braun, Lola, Veronika Voss). What the troubled relationship between West Germany and its Nazi past was to Fassbinder, Akin seems to imply, is to him the no less troubled negotiation between "assimilated" Turks in Germany and their homeland.

Elsaesser also profiles Alexander Kluge in this issue, but that piece is not online; instead, FC offers Jan Dawson's 1974 interview, conducted just after Kluge had completed Part-Time Work of a Domestic Slave.

The series Saint and Sinner: The Tempestuous Career of Jennifer Jones will run at the Walter Reade from May 16 through 24. Miriam Bale: "Her gender role is formless, pure floating femininity - ungraspable, sometimes inadvertently smothering, but also prone to reverie, and teasing us with the possibility of transcendence."

"Marcos Jorge's Estômago ('stomach' in Portuguese), in which one man's culinary skills serve to embellish his ill-fated existence, is one of the most arresting foodie films to come along in some time," and Laura Kern hopes a distributor will pick it up. She also has an overview of the recently wrapped 10th Thessaloniki Documentary Festival.

Jason Gross talks with RZA: "A common thread running throughout his career has been the influence of martial arts cinema, to which he constantly pays homage to with dialogue and soundtrack samples and lyrical references."

A final treat: The full text of Molly Haskell's cover story on Meryl Streep in the March/April issue.

Posted by dwhudson at May 9, 2008 1:24 AM