RATINGS: THE BIG CHILL
Backward, march! 1984 is here, a year or two late, as popular culture finds itself in the realm of the censors. Sing naughty things on records and get your album slapped with a poison sticker. Smoke pot in a movie and get an automatic PG-13 rating or worse. Lois P. Sheinfeld will raise consciousness and (we hope) the rabble with her provocative survey
WOODY AND HIS OLD MARSHALL
The critics groups could have ended their movie year back in February: Hannah and Her Sisters was already deemed 1986’s untoppable artistic achievement. To which Richard Zoglin responds with a thoughtful “Oh, yeah?” He prefers Woody Allen’s early films (the funny ones) to the heaviosity of Allen’s mature work
Plus: Meanwhile, Allen’s erstwhile collaborator, Marshall Brickman, has his own new comedy, The Manhattan Project, and discusses it with Dan Yakir
MIDSECTION: HUMPHREY BOGART
“A couple of drinks,” said sports writer Jim Murray of an old pal, “and Bogart thinks he’s Bogart.” But the contentioius toper was also Hollywood’s only Golden Ager to leave an indelible mark on the current generation of filmgoers. Fifty years ago he made his first cinema splash in The Petrified Forest; thirty years ago he made his last picture. In between, as Richard Schickel argues, Bogart made more essential movies, from Casablanca to In a Lonely Place, than any major star
THREE VOICES, SPANISH ACCENTS
Claudia Dreifus talks with Mexican litterateur Carlos Fuentes. Elliott Stein visits festivals in Miami and Guadalajara and discovers a filmmaker, Jaime Humberto Hermosillo, worth your attention. And George De Stefano focuses on “the Spanish Fassbinder,” Eloy de la Iglesia
JOURNALS
Stephen King is putting his megaphone where his complaining mouth is; the novelist who has often criticized adaptations of his work, is directing his first film, and Stephen Schaefer was there. Harlan Kennedy dodged stink bombs and stinky films in Berlin
ELIZABETH TAYLOR
The definitive Hollywood actress is this year’s honored star at the Film Society of Lincoln Center. Director Austin Pendleton pays fond tribute
DISTRIBS IN DISTRESS
William Hurt won the Best Actor Oscar for Kiss of the Spider Woman; Geraldine Page won Best Actress for The Trip to Bountiful. The films’ independent distributors won moe: an important round in their battle for survival. Beverly Walker and Leonard Klady report on the hard times of the “classics” companies
BACK TO BASICS IN BUDAPEST
By J. Hoberman
After a flirtation with multinational moviemaking, Hungarian cinema returns to its roots, while discovering that economic recession can hurt as much as political repression
BOOKS
The ocean liners, the penthouses, the table lamps! Russell Merritt reviews Screen Deco, a pictorial essay on the most glamorous era of Hollywood design. Enrique Fernandez considers the Cuban and Spanish cinemas as refracted in two historical surveys
LETTERS
BACK PAGE: Quiz #19
