January 2009 – Film Journey

Woodcut Novels and Berthold Bartosch

January 29, 2009 Doug Cummings Film review, Texts

I’ve recently enjoyed reading David Beronä’s book, Wordless Books: The Original Graphic Novels (2008), which describes (with select examples) the work of early-20th century woodcut storytellers such as Frans Masereel and Lynd Ward. Beronä makes glancing suggestions that these initially small publications (descended from block-books and playing cards) are the missing link between the cinema and modern day graphic novels. “When Thomas Mann,” he writes, “winner of the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1929, was asked what movie had made the greatest impression on him, Mann replied, ‘Passionate Journey.’ Although Mann’s reply sounds like the title of a …

Visual Music

January 27, 2009 Doug Cummings Film review, Texts

We’re lucky here in Los Angeles to have a major organization for the promotion of abstract animation–the Center for Visual Music, which restores and exhibits classic titles from an elusive genre, and releases excellent DVDs showcasing the work of filmmakers like Oskar Fischinger and Jordan Belson.

Last week, CVM and UCLA screened over a dozen films representing a half-century of animation and “visual music” from the 1920s to the ’70s, many of them recent preservations. Visual music is a genre that’s hard to define, but the best single book I know that summarizes its history (with hundreds of …

Stalking Roadside Picnic

January 22, 2009 Doug Cummings Texts

Over the holidays, I spent some time indulging in a periodic hobby of mine–science fiction literature. After poking around, I discovered that Orion Books in the UK has been printing a series entitled SF Masterworks for a number of years (with decreasing frequency), putting out major works by authors from Bester to Stapledon to Wells that have been long out-of-print in the UK (and in many cases the US). What grabbed my attention was one of their last additions, Roadside Picnic, the 1972 novel by the Russian brothers Arkady and Boris Strugatsky that inspired Stalker (1979), Andrei Tarkovsky’s haunting …

Robert Koehler’s Best of 2008

January 15, 2009 Robert Koehler Commentary, DVD review, Film review

The Golden Age Continued: The Films That Matter in 2008

By ROBERT KOEHLER

It’s always dangerous to assume anything, but I figured that by now I would have been teased—somewhere, by someone—for having argued more than once over the past couple of years that we are living in a new golden age of film. This position runs so counter to the prevailing mood and sentiment (dour may be one word to describe it) that I know more than ever that I’m right, just as I know that such a contrarian position opens one up for attack. Hasn’t happened. Yet. Maybe …

Tops Tens of 2008

January 8, 2009 Doug Cummings Commentary, DVD review, Film review

Birdsong

This past year was a difficult one for me, schedule-wise, but I still managed to squeeze in a good number of films at the Palm Springs, COLCOA, Los Angeles, DocuWeek, and AFI festivals, UCLA, the American Cinematheques, AMPAS, Cinefamily, LACMA (check out Bernardo Rondeau’s top ten list here), REDCAT, and the Filmforum, not to mention the commercial Landmark and Laemmle theatres. Los Angeles remains a vibrant setting for cinephiles even if its dispersion and middling public transport often require a tolerance for long commutes and a commitment to keeping a close eye on screening calendars, limited runs, and …