Category Archive for: ‘Issue 15 – Reviews’

Scott MacDonald, The Garden in the Machine: A Field Guide to Independent Films about Place. Berkeley and Los Angeles: University California Press, 2001. ISBN 0 520 22738 7 (pb) 461pp. (Review copy supplied by University of California Press) Scott MacDonald has some claim to being the leading contemporary authority on American avant-garde cinema. His dedication to this expansive if loosely …

Adrian Martin, The Mad Max Movies. Sydney: Currency Press. 2003. ISBN: 0 86819 670 3 Au$14.95 (pb) (Review copy supplied by Currency Press) There is nothing more admirable than intellect sprinkled with sensibility, except perhaps for sensibility guided by intellect. There is nothing rarer than a mind smitten in equal measure with rigor and fancy except for a temperament that …

‘Proof positive’ Michel Ciment and Laurence Kardish (eds.), Positif 50 years: Selections from the French film journal New York: The Museum of Modern Art, 2002. ISBN: 0870706888. 288 pp US$21.00 (pb) (Review copy supplied by The Museum of Modern Art department of publications) Stéphane Goudet (ed.), L’amour du cinema, 50 ans de la revue Positif. Paris: Folio, 2002. ISBN : 2070421856. 580 pp …

Daniel Bernardi, (ed.) Classic Hollywood, Classic Whiteness. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 2001. ISBN: 08166 3239 1. 516pp. US$24.95 (Review copy supplied by Minnesota University Press) Linda Williams, Playing the Race Card: Melodramas of Black and White from Uncle Tom to O.J. Simpson. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2001. ISBN: 0 691 10283 X. 401pp. US$16.95 (Review copy supplied by Princeton University Press) …

“Strange, I’ve Seen That Interface Before” Martin Rieser & Andrea Zapp, (eds.) New Screen Media: Cinema/Art/Narrative London: British Film Institute, 2002. ISBN 0 85170 864 1 335 pp DVD-ROM. UK£4.99 (pb) (Review copy supplied by BFI publishing) As with discussions of “new” media, there is a certain repetitive quality about the assessment of the impact of digital technologies on cinema. At …

Barrett Hodsdon, Straight Roads and Crossed Lines: The Quest for Film Culture in Australia? Shenton Park, WA: Bernt Porridge Group, 2001 ISBN: 0 95792100 4 (pb) 205pp Au$45 plus $8 postage from 35 Doris Street, North Sydney, 2060. (Review copy supplied by the publishers) I like the question mark at the end of Barrett Hodsdon’s book title. It seems to …

Rainer Rother, Leni Riefenstahl: The Seduction of Genius. trans. Martin H. Bott. London: Continuum, 2002. ISBN: 0 8264 6101 8 262pp US $27.95 (hb) (Review copy supplied by Continuum Publishing Group) Rainer Rother’s biography of 100 year-old German dancer, actress, filmmaker and photographer Leni Riefenstahl, is an enlightening account of the life and work of a controversial figure who made …

Bill Nichols (ed.), Maya Deren and the American Avant-Garde. Berkeley: University of California Press, 2001. ISBN 0 520 22732 8 331pp US$19.95 (pb) (Review copy supplied by University of California Press) [Bolded page numbers refer to the original page numbers of the reproduced version of Deren’s essay, “An anagram of ideas on art, form and film”, included in this book.] …

Jeffrey Richards, A Night to Remember: The Definitive Titanic Film. London, I.B. Tauris, 2003. ISBN: 1 86064 849 5 136pp £2.95 (pb) (Review copy supplied by I.B. Tauris) Jeffrey Richards loves Roy Baker’s A Night to Remember. Of all the films which have used the historical events and characters involved in that fateful night of April 14/15, 1912, when the largest ship in …

Angelo Restivo, The Cinema of Economic Miracles: Visuality and Modernization in the Italian Art Film. Duke University Press, Durham and London, 2002 ISBN 0 8223 2799 6 212 pp US$18.95 (pb) (Review copy supplied by Duke University Press) Given all that has already been written about postwar Italian cinema, the question that inevitably arises in picking up yet another book …

Roger Horrocks, Len Lye: A Biography. Auckland University Press, 2001 (reprinted 2002) 436pp (Review copy obtained from author) Referring to Len Lye’s “singularity”, this book opens with a quote from painter Julian Trevelyan: “He was like a man from mars who saw everything from a different viewpoint, and it was this that made him original”. The rest of the book …

Arthur Knight, Disintegrating the Musical: Black Performance and American Musical Film. Durham and London: Duke University Press, 2002. ISBN 0 8223 2963 8 338 pp US$21.95 (Review copy supplied by Duke University Press) Arthur Knight’s Disintegrating the Musical examines the place of African American performance in the film musical, tracing both its histories in, and impact on, the genre. Knight has set …

Tara Brabazon, Digital Hemlock: Digital Education and the Poisoning of Teaching. UNSW Press, Sydney, 2002. ISBN 0 86840 781 X 222 pp. $A 34.95 (Review copy supplied by UNSW Press) Technology is not neutral, it is always an intentional and human creation, but it is invoked and applied as if it is a force from “out there”, a god. With …

Robert T. Self, Robert Altman’s Subliminal Reality. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 2002. ISBN 0 8166 3790 332pp US$19.95 (pb) (Review copy supplied by University of Minnesota Press) Robert Self examines in detail twenty-one of Robert Altman’s thirty-four films in terms of “subliminal reality”: it is a term taken from Altman’s assertions about his work, about what he attempts to …

Stuart Cunningham & Graeme Turner (eds), The Media & Communications in Australia. New South Wales, Australia: Allen & Unwin. 2002. ISBN: 1 86508 674 6 383pp Au$ (pb) (Review copy supplied by Allen & Unwin) The media and communications industries are growing at a rapid pace in Australia. With this arrives the necessity to document the advances in technology, issues …

Poshek Fu and David Desser (ed), The Cinema of Hong Kong: History, Arts, Identity Cambridge University Press, 2000. ISBN 0 521 77235 4 (hb) 0 521 77602 3 (pb) 352pp $Au59.95 (pb) (Review copy supplied by Cambridge University Press) This is the second anthology on Hong Kong cinema to appear recently, alongside Esther Yau’s At Full Speed (University of Minnesota Press, 2001). …

Leonie Naughton, That was the Wild East: Film Culture, Unification and the “New” Germany. Ann Arbor: The University of Michigan Press, 2002. ISBN: 0 4720888 2 267 pp US$29.95 (pb) (Review copy supplied by University of Michigan Press) It has become quiet around cinema in Germany. Long gone are the days of the New German Cinema: Fassbinder has been dead …

Raffaele Caputo & Geoff Burton, Third Take: Australian Film-makers Talk. Crows Nest: Allen & Unwin, 2002. ISBN: 1 86508 507 3. 224pp Au$27.95 (pb) (Review copy supplied by Allen & Unwin) Third Take is a valuable historical resource and an insight into contemporary filmmaking both in Australia and overseas. This is the second instalment in Raffaele Caputo and Geoff Burton’s series …

Mimi Colligan, Canvas Documentaries: Panoramic Entertainments in Nineteenth-Century Australia and New Zealand Melbourne: Melbourne University Press 2002. ISBN: 0522850197 250 pp Au$59.95 (hb) (Review copy supplied by Melbourne University Press) The first thing that impresses about this book is its presentation: hard covers, glossy paper, clear type, lavish illustrations (some in colour) – the sort of book that is as …

Vijay Mishra, Bollywood Cinema: Temples of Desire. Routledge, New York and London, 2002. ISBN: 0415930146 320pp Au$55 (pb) (Review copy supplied by Routledge) Indian cinema is becoming incorporated into the global culture of the West. Not only is there an arthouse following for the occasional Indian film like Monsoon Wedding (India/USA/France/Italy 2001) or films of the Indian diaspora such as East is …

Yuri Tsivian, Ivan the Terrible. London: British Film Institute, 2002, (BFI Film Classics series) ISBN: 0 85170834 X 87 pp £8.99 (pb) (Review copy supplied by BFI publishing). Yuri Tsivian’s book on Ivan the Terrible is a strange and wonderful project dealing with a film that is already widely familiar. As Tsivian says, “The more we know the more we can see” …

Ray Carney and Leonard Quart. The Films of Mike Leigh: Embracing the World. Cambridge Film Classics Series. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2000. ISBN: 0 521 48518 5 (pb) 292pp Au$34.95 (Review copy supplied by Cambridge University Press) Ray Carney likes Mike Leigh’s films. The blurb on the back cover claims that Leigh’s major works will be “shown to be among …

Jonathan Rosenbaum, Movie Wars: How Hollywood and the media limit what films we can see. London: Wallflower Press, 2002. ISBN 1 903364 60 4 234 pp. £12. 99. (Review copy supplied by Wallflower Press) “If Vincent Canby got fired from the Times today, and he went to a bar and started talking about a movie he has just seen, nobody …

Charles Barr, Vertigo. London: BFI publishing, 2002. ISBN: 0 85170 918 4 87pp UK£8.99 (pb) (Review copy supplied by BFI publishing) If ever a film deserved its own monograph, it would appear to be Vertigo (USA 1958). It has become a cinematic icon, revered by cinephiles, reworked, quoted or plagiarised by other filmmakers, and even canonised by its critics, as Virginia Wright …