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A few notes…

ïI’ve come down with a cold this week, so permit me a moment of persnickety cinephile bitchiness. Most of the folks I know consider Jonathan Rosenbaum’s critique of the first Top 100 Movies list by the American Film Institute to be one of the most inspiring critical essays of the last few years, so it’s sad to say that with each successive list the AFI releases, their excuses for promoting pretty much the same Hollywood videos over and over again become even more suspect and absurd. Their latest in a long line of TV-special mediocrities posing as …

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Art by Film Directors

Texts


Preparatory drawing for The 39 Steps (1935) by Alfred Hitchcock

I’m always fascinated by the double artistic lives of established directors, people with a significant skill in an art form that requires the assistance of sometimes hundreds of technicians, artists, and actors. But what about their private, personal pursuits? A new book published in the UK, Art by Film Directors, is a glossy coffee table book that offers a taste of the non-film artwork by several notable filmmakers.

At 200 pages with large photos and plentiful use of white space, it’s not even remotely a comprehensive summary of the …

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Triple Agent

DVD review

84-year-old Eric Rohmer’s latest film, Triple Agent (2004), has recently been released as a handsome DVD in France. It’s partly a continuation of his fortÈ–verbose adults parcing the emotional and ethical twists and turns of their lives–and partly (like his previous The Lady and the Duke) a thoughtful period piece. Rohmer’s oeuvre is famous for its contemporary settings and long (but thoroughly charming) pontifications on love, romance, and philosophy that often seem more concerned for timeless ideals than social problems or specific political moments in time. If anything, his last two films (who knows, perhaps his last two films …

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3RFF

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I’ve known Russell for several years now and I’m always trying to get him to write more often; he’s full of great insights. Here are his first reviews from the Three Rivers Film Festival currently in progress in Pittsburgh. The festival is surprisingly low-profile given its exemplary line-up. -Doug

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By Russell Lucas

Guy Maddin’s Cowards Bend the Knee (2003) started life as an installation exhibit at a Toronto art gallery. The film, which is comprised of ten six-minute episodes, was originally shown through ten individual knotholes so that a viewer could watch the chapters individually …

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Election review

Commentary

Given the result of the election this week, I’ve been feeling sporadically nauseous, hopeless, and angry. (I concur with Filmjourney discussion participant Michael Kerpan, who writes, “not even an Ozu film could possibly cheer me up.” But in a twist of irony, the Ozu retrospective in Los Angeles began this week.) The idea of four more years of neoconservative extremism both here and abroad fills me with despair, yet the most aggravating aspect of the election has undoubtedly been the mainstream media response to it–a desperate effort to squelch the last four years of dissent and deny that the country …

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We Wuz Robbed and Election Day

Commentary, Film review

I recently reviewed the short film compilation Ten Minutes Older (2002) and fear that I didn’t emphasize Spike Lee’s contribution, We Wuz Robbed, and its timely relevance enough; although it’s a straightforward collection of talking heads, its subject–the illegal purging of thousands of voters (including a large number of black people) from Florida’s 2000 voting rolls–couldn’t be more relevant four years later.

Although I don’t think voting in general is the most powerful political tool in our personal arsenal of resources, it should go without saying that this particular election deserves every American’s participation. If you’re reading this and …

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