Wednesday, February 25, 2015

CINEASTE 40:2 (Spring 2015)—TWO INTERVIEWS

I'm proud to announce the publication of the Spring 2015 issue of Cineaste (40:2) magazine, in which two of my interviews have been published. The print issue includes my conversation with Abderrahmane Sissako ("Hidden Certainties and Active Doubts") regarding his Oscar®-nominated film Timbuktu, and—as a web exclusive—"Cinema as Spiritual Literature: Andrey Zvyagintsev Discusses Leviathan", which won this year's Golden Globe® for Best Foreign Language film, and was Oscar®-nominated as well.

It's a strong issue that includes Brian Neve's feature article "Working-Class Noir in the Blacklist Era: The Making of Cy Endfield's The Sound of Fury", which should be of special interest to Noir City aficionados who were on hand for the premiere of the film's restoration print by the Film Noir Foundation two years back. Neve's article is an excerpt from his forthcoming biography, The Many Lives of Cy Endfield: Film Noir, the Blacklist, and Zulu, to be published this summer by the University of Wisconsin Press.

Steve Erickson's feature article "Voyeurs in the Hermit Kingdom: The Interview and Other Films on North Korea" enables a discussion "on the art and politics of cinema" per Cineaste's stated focus, and is contextualized in the magazine's editorial for the issue, which asserts that The Interview "doesn't earn the headlines it sowed."

A preview of Darragh O'Donoghue's feature article "Monsieur Hulot's History: Jacques Tati Pictures Modern France" will whet your appetite to read the full piece to better appreciate the Criterion Collection's recently-released box set "The Complete Jacques Tati" which includes six feature films and seven feature shorts, accompanied by a 62-page booklet.

A preview of Adam Nayman's review of Paul Thomas Anderson's Inherent Vice is available, to be paired with Pierre Sauvage's "Beware the Golden Fang!: An Interview with Paul Thomas Anderson." There's also a preview of Gary Bettinson's interview with Ethan Hawke on "Screen Acting and the New Hollywood." Further interviews in this issue include Richard Porton's "Birth of a Whistle-Blower: An Interview with Laura Poitras"—whose Citizenfour just won the Academy Award® for Best Documentary Feature—and Declan McGrath's "Moments of Transcendence: An Interview with John Boorman." As a fellow web exclusive, Cineaste offers Aaron Cutler's "Two Shots Fired: An Interview with Martín Rejtman."

Accompanying my interview with Sissako is Maria Garcia's review of Timbuktu. Further reviews include Rosewater (Karen Blackstein), Human Capital (Darragh O'Donoghue), Life of Riley (Jordan Cronk), and Clouds of Sils Maria (Graham Fuller). DVD reviews include the 1988 and 1993 versions of The Vanishing (Robert Cashill), The Conformist (Deborah Young), Man of the West (Christopher Sharrett), Level Five (David Sterritt), Tootsie (Matthew Hays), Diary of a Lost Girl, Massillon, The Promised Land, The Shooting, Ride in the Whirlwind, and Verdun: Looking at History (recommended by Cineaste Editors), and—as web exclusives—Whiplash (Travis Maiuro and Cynthia Lucia), Che! (Robert Cashill), Bloody Mama (Christopher Sharrett) and The Lusty Men (Leonard Quart).

Book reviews include Tom Cruise: Anatomy of an Actor and Robert De Niro: Anatomy of an Actor (Adam Nayman), The Cinema of Clint Eastwood: Chronicles of America and Clint Eastwood's America (Michal Oleszczyk), German Cinema—Terror and Trauma: Cultural Memory Since 1945 (Stuart Liebman), Terence Davies (Jamie Dunn), Approaching the End: Imagining Apocalypse in American Film (Joseph Yanick), and Sound, Speech, Music in Soviet and Post-Soviet Cinema (Michael Joshua Rowin).

Finally, available as a web exclusive, Jared Rapfogel reports from The 2014 Thessaloniki International Film Festival.

All available on newstands now!