Author: Doug Cummings

After a brief break, the filmjourney blog is up and rolling again…stay tuned for several planned entries this week…

Last night as I was browsing at Borders, I came across a new book entitled 1001 Movies You Must See Before You Die, and although I initially had my doubts (there are plenty of ho-hum coffee table books that attempt to repackage movies even the most casual filmgoer is already familiar with), I was impressed with its breadth and quality of writing (by such notable commentators as Geoff Andrew, Jean-Michel Frodon, Chris Fujiwara, Adrian Martin, Richard PeÒa, Jonathan Romney, Jonathan …

Famed ethnographic documentarian Jean Rouch died yesterday in an automobile accident. His trailblazing career helped coin the term “cinema veritÈ” and has been largely unavailable on video in the US. (First Run rereleased his landmark 1961 film, Chronicle of a Summer, in select theatres last year.)

Rouch’s work comprises another set of films badly needed on DVD……

I’ve got a special love for genre classics, particularly those in the realms of science fiction or horror because they’re so rarely mounted with genuine ambition. One example of a landmark title was recently released as a beautifully restored DVD last month, Rouben Mamoulian’s Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde (1931). Mamoulian (City Streets, Love Me Tonight, Becky Sharp) was a consummate Hollywood craftsman who pushed the stylistic and technological envelopes in ways that intensified the themes of his films. “In his early films,” critic Tom Milne once wrote, “Mamoulian was a persistent iconoclast, insisting that none …

Some recent viewing…

Crimson Gold

Iranian filmmaker Jafar Panahi’s follow-up to The Circle (2000) is equally impressive in its empathy for social undesirables (in this case, a lower class pizza deliveryman played by a schizophrenic actor). Like its predecessor, Crimson has a circular narrative structure beginning with a long take and a frame within a frame composition: the deliveryman robs a store while a crowd of onlookers gathers outside an open door. But the rest of the film adopts its own visual language emphasizing vertical space, stairways, elevators, and Tehran at various elevations befitting its focus on the tensions between …

The new issue of the Australian journal, Senses of Cinema, is now online.

Some highlights:

ïMy friend Darren Hughes’ long-anticipated overview of the career of director Hal Ashby (Being There, The Last Detail, Harold and Maude). (Our thoughts are with Darren these days.)

ïA 2003 World Poll, including top tens by myself and Filmjourney participant Acquarello.

ïA review of the book, Japanese Documentary Film: The Meiji Era Through Hiroshima, by Abe Mark Nomes.

ïA review of last November’s AFI Fest, which I never got around to writing about. My favorite of the festival, Wang …

Gojira: 50th anniversary…