Catching up.

With summer about to skid into fall, you might find this roundup of longish reads and hours of online viewing as a way to pass the last leisurely hours of the year; or maybe it's brain training, a back-to-school workout. Up to you. Either way, the June issues of two film journals have appeared online relatively recently, and we can start with Scope, where Martin Barker asks, "[W]hat senses of identity and community are summoned up in the process of watching and then discussing [Being John Malkovich]? And what light might this throw on how we think about the concept of 'art-house' audiences?"

Dave Mann "analyses the crime series Colonel March of Scotland Yard (1954) which, though it has attracted considerable internet interest, has not yet achieved academic respectability."

Andrew Hageman examines "the prospects of reading Mulholland Drive ecologically as well as the prospects for uncanny cinema to reveal the ideological limits of our ability to think about and represent ecology."

Eric Dewberry argues that "Grizzly Man elicits the 'powers of the false,' blurring perceptions of reality and fiction and presenting multiple possibilities and channels for truth in its exclusive temporal form."

Then there's the bulk of the issue, the section that sets Scope apart: 20 book reviews. Five relatively recent films are reviewed, followed by five conference reports. Scope has also expanded its archive.

"After a long run of thematic issues Offscreen returns with a summer issue consisting of five essays covering an eclectic range of subjects spanning many National cinemas," announces editor Donato Totaro, whose own contribution puts forth the argument that The Happening, "while certainly flawed, is a return to form for Shyamalan, who uses an old horror/science-fiction theme - nature gone amok - to spin an entertaining double allegory: on the environment (which every critic has picked up on) and (less obviously) on the state of human communication in a society that is increasingly dependent on technologically mediated forms of communication."

Daniel Garrett offers a brief history of Turkish cinema before turning to several recent films from the country; he also has a piece on The Visitor.

The titles of Robert Robertson and Lindsey Rock's essay say it all; respectively, "Audiovisual Glass: Eisenstein and Frank Lloyd Wright on Light, Space and Music" and "From Cop Killer to Killer Cop: Black Masculinities in Jamaican Cinema."

I've fallen behind on Offscreen in general. The May issue is devoted to Legend Films, "a company known for its cutting edge developments in digital film restoration, digital colorization, and theatrical color effects, and has recently ventured into the area of DVD production," while April is given to westerns and March to the 2007 edition of Fantasia, Montreal's famed genre film festival.

New site on the block: Cult Media Studies, an "online community for the academic study of cult media."

Online viewing tips. I can't believe I'm only just now looking into the collection of interviews at FilmCatcher. Just watch and listen to all these people talking on camera: Stephen Frears, Isabel Coixet, Brad Anderson, Joachim Trier, Louis Garrel, Jeanne Balibar and on and on and on.

Posted by dwhudson at August 25, 2008 12:19 AM