FEATURES
GUILTY PLEASURES
By Guy Maddin
Canada’s leading film fetishist confesses all
GANGS OF NEW YORK
By Amy Taubin
God Bless America: corruption, violence, and ethnic tensions come to a boil in Martin Scorsese’s vision of 19th-century NYC
ELIA SULEIMAN
By Gary Indiana
A unique and provocative cocktail of deadpan comic minimalism, surreal set pieces, and ironic metaphor, Divine Intervention is a Palestinian “art” film about the unsettling absurdities of everyday life on the borderline between Israel and the Occupied Territories. The director chats about life during wartime.
DAVID THOMSON & CINEPHILIA
By Kent Jones
Playing the role of film culture’s worldly moral arbiter and myth debunker, David Thomson casts a long shadow indeed. So why has the author of the influential Biographical Dictionary of Film given up on movies?
ANDRZEJ ZULAWSKI
By Michael Atkinson
Madman or genius? The auteur behind “the most frightening art film you will ever see” is a Paris-based Polish exile, unknown in the U.S. Discover his delirious cinema of excess, mass slaughter, and supreme psychodrama.
DELMER DAVES
By Bertrand Tavernier
Regardless of genre, his remarkably complex films are imbued with a progressive vision of man, nature, and society
2002 WRAP-UP
The year in a cinematic nutshell
2002 End of Year Critics’ Poll
Inessential Cinema: 2002’s Guilty Pleasures
Movies That Mattered
ESSAY FILMS
By Paul Arthur
What do Sans Soleil, The Gleaners and I, and Bowling for Columbine have in common? They’re all examples of an innovative but hard-to-define strain of nonfiction filmmaking in which the conventions of traditional documentary do not hold. So just what is an essay film?
IMPORT DVDS
By Alex Leeds
A user’s guide to a brave new world
DEPARTMENTS
EDITOR’S LETTER
OPENING SHOTS
News, Discovery: Travis Wilkerson by Alice Lonejoy, Journal: Bombay by Maithili Rao, Distributor Wanted: Mishka by Frédéric Bonnaud
OBIT
Rainbeaux Smith by Maitland McDonagh
SOUND & VISION
Lalo Schifrin by Chris Norris & William Kentridge by Chris Chang
FIRST LOOK
David Gordon Green’s All the Real Girls
By Nathan Lee
Far away places in the heart from the director of George Washington
CRITICS CHOICE
Eight critics rate 25 new releases
STORYBOARD
“Chanson d’Amour” (Scenario for an Unproduced Musical Film): New Fiction by Geoffrey O’Brien
FESTIVALS
Vancouver by Chuck Stephens
REVIEW
Spider by Richard Combs, Chicago by Michael Koresky, Lord of the Rings: The Two Towers by Kent Jones, The Quiet American by Harlan Jacobson, and Underwater Impressions by Olaf Möller
VIDI VIDI VIDI
Best of Bowie by Gavin Smith, Mickey Mouse in Black and White by Kent Jones, The Garden of Eden by Guy Maddin About a Boy by Nicole Armour
FSLC SEEN
Who’s who at recent Film Society events
