Recently added articles from CineAction:
The bones of Reagan or the ruins of art cinema in contemporary American film.(Critical essay)
Jan 01, 2008; ... A Democratic victory would not change the world, but it would at least slow the momentum of the bombs-and-Jesus crowd. Those people have had their way long enough. Not even the Book of Revelation threatens a plague of vengeful yahoos. We all need a rest from this pogrom. Ronald Reagan is ...
Analogical thinking; Organizational strategies within the work of Jean-Luc Godard.(Critical essay)
Jan 01, 2008; ... Throughout the Western world, the 1960s were a time of immense cinematic innovation. In France, the person who most epitomized this phenomenon was, unquestionably, Jean-Luc Godard and he is still active today. Indeed, if from A bout de souffle (1960) to Notre Musique (2004) Godard has ...
The high solitude of a rare bird.(Essay)
Jan 01, 2008; ... During all the years I have lived in daily contact with Jean Seberg, I have regained from her some of that brave candor you need to win by losing. -Romain Gary Once upon a time, there was an actress called Jean Seberg who lived her life. You might have heard of her. Despite her ...
Fellini goes to the beach.(Federico Fellini)(Critical essay)
Jan 01, 2008; ... Characters in Fellini's films often end up at the beach where they seem to arrive at some sort of self-realization that is intuitive and physical; the relationship between them and the sea seems to act as a catalyst for a certain kind of knowledge. The ocean--after so much art photography ...
The romance of certain old clothes or they don't make 'em like that anymore; Honor de Cavalleria and art cinema's last stand.(Critical essay)
Jan 01, 2008; ... Nostalgia for a bygone era of filmmaking is something one usually associates with the paradigm of classical Hollywood: of a particular generation (or a particular breed of cinephile) fondly recalling the kind of stars, films, even genres that once proliferated in a mythically idealised ...
On and around I don't want to sleep alone; Tsai goes back to his roots, and forges ahead ...(Tsai Ming-Liang)(Critical essay)
Jan 01, 2008; ... ... where angels fear to tread ... (I'm no angel ...) It is clear that Tsai Ming-Liang's latest film is highly personal, and as such it invites the kind of probing that may appear impertinent and may also be wide of the mark. Fools like myself, however, rush in ... It marks his ...
"I heart Hedwig".(Hedwig and the Angry Inch)(Movie review)
Jan 01, 2008; ... Hedwig and the Angry Inch is an internationally acclaimed motion picture adapted from a musical by John Cameron Mitchell. Mitchell wrote, directed, and starred in the film as Hedwig, a tall task for anyone, but for a first time writer/director/actor? I hardly had high expectations. That ...
The voice of Marianne faithfull; On Sofia Coppola's Marie Antoinette.(Critical essay)
Jan 01, 2008; ... <Pre> Walking around the halls of Versailles, and passing from her grand public bedroom into her small private apartments, surrounded by her fabrics and trinkets, I could imagine the girl ... Being there you can feel how lost they must have been, so isolated from any kind of ...
A polite way of being desperate; An interview with Marjane Satrapi.(Interview)
Jan 01, 2008; ... Persepolis is the darkly humorous adaptation of Paris-based Marjane Satrapi's candid graphic novels about her coming of age in Iran and in Austria. Directed by Satrapi and fellow comics artist Vincent Paronnaud, the film is one of the most ambitious and successful attempts at conveying ...
The Brave One; 'There's plenty of ways to die'.(Critical essay)
Jan 01, 2008; ... <Pre> " ... precisely because the universe in which we live is somehow a universe of dead conventions and artificiality, the only authentic real experience must be some extremely violent, shattering experience. And this we experience as a sense that now we are back in real life." ...
Movements and rhythms; On Sam Raimi's Spider-Man 3.(Critical essay)
Jan 01, 2008; ... Whereas the identity of Spider-Man was still a secret and Peter Parker's unrequited love for Mary Jane was the central theme in Spider-Man 2 (2004)--a love where the other is unaware she is being loved--this theme of secrecy is unceremoniously discarded in its sequel, Spider-Man 3 (2007) ....
Mini-cinema: a digital diary for iPod.
Jun 22, 2007; ... Midi Onodera's "movie-a-day" project is a series of 365 short videos, each less than a minute long and many less than 40 seconds. Like a diary, the entries are intimate and they feature a first-person-singular enunciation along with personal details about the author's life: her travels and ...
New media resistance: machinima and the avant-garde.
Jun 22, 2007; ... <Pre> "Somewhere between the video game and the CD-ROM there could be another way of making films ...." --Jean-Luc Godard (1) </Pre> It was Jean Cocteau who suggested that the cinema as a pluralistic and egalitarian medium could never come into fruition "until the materials are as ...
The reality of dreams: a presentation of L'Ange et la femme (1977).
Jun 22, 2007; ... On Saturday February 10, 2007, Montreal's La Presse published a survey of the 50 best quebecois films of all time. Compiled from shorter lists prepared by local film personnel, both filmmakers and commentators, this project offered few surprises. At the top there was still Claude Jutra's ...
The imagined city: toward a theory of urbanity in Canadian cinema.
Jun 22, 2007; ... Canadian cinema, like most national cinemas, has a strong sense of place. Place often carries geographic connotations--oceans, grasslands, tundra, boreal forests and mountains and the flora and fauna associated with them. Geography in turn carries seasonal identities such as snowy winters ....
I'm just a simple filmmaker: an interview with Michel Brault.(Interview)
Jun 22, 2007; ... In close-up, his head is tilted towards her. Hers is slightly tilted, too. He is looking at her. She is looking down. This frame, extracted from the rest of the twenty-three that make up a cinematic instance, is on the cover of a book in my hands, featuring the delicate beauty of Genevieve ...
From big snow to big sadness: the repatriation of Canadian cultural identity in the films of Guy Maddin.
Jun 22, 2007; ... Much has been made of the dwarfing of Canadian cultural heritage and identity by the neighbouring behemoth that is the United States. This anxiety proves especially true when one considers the canon of Canadian cinema, where early Yankee-produced Yukon adventure films and ...
Being at Home with Roy Dupuis and Pascale Bussieres: or, star-gazing in and out of Quebec.
Jun 22, 2007; ... Let me state at the outset that I see this essay participating, very modestly, in a (queer) film studies tradition that takes seriously fan culture and the notion that star images circulate among and are productively engaged with by audiences as ideological texts of self-stylization and ...
Michael Haneke: beyond compromise.
Jun 22, 2007; ... Prior to his masterpiece, Code Inconnu, Michael Haneke made five films as writer/director, one adaptation, and wrote one screenplay realized by another filmmaker. The Castle, though a thoroughly accomplished film in its own right, is the least interesting: an intelligent and faithful film ...
Voice and body: ahead of the Curve and Scouts Are Cancelled.
Jun 22, 2007; ... Over images of the rehearsal of a modern dance performance, acclaimed choreographer Christopher House says: "There is a physical suit of armor that men are forced to wear. There's a kind of anti-sensual physicality, so that men don't want to own their own bodies and consequently it's much ...