Features
Friday Night
By Amy Taubin
Call it Claire Denis’s “Strangers in the Night.” Her latest movie’s dreamy but clear-eyed take on a chance close encounter probes the realm where desire transcends romance—not to mention traffic jams
Down with Love
By Alice Lovejoy
Renée and Ewan do Doris and Rock in Peyton Reed’s effervescent pastiche. The decor may be to die for in this delightful tribute to the bachelor-pad romantic comedies of the JFK era, but amor vincit omnia.
The Pianist
By Richard Combs
The Academy Award-winning drama of one man’s survival in the Warsaw Ghetto brought Roman Polanski back to his creative primal scene. A closer look at the underlying aesthetic and thematic principles of the Polish director’s oeuvre and how they resurface in his vision of the Holocaust
Central Asian Cinema
By Kent Jones
Scattered across the remote hinterlands between Afghanistan and China, a unique and vital cinema has been quietly growing for 40 years: some notes on this “cinema of collective solitude” from Kazakhstan, Uzbekistan, Kyrgyzstan, and beyond.
Commandante
By Harlan Jacobson
Oliver Stone spent three days interviewing Fidel Castro, but the resulting documentary is a missed opportunity
Special Midsection: Chris Marker (Part 1 of 2)
Intro by Chris Darke
The Last Bolshevik by Howard Hampton
Remembrance of Things to Come by Michael Almereyda
Chris Marker interviewed by Samuel Douhaire & Annick Rivoire
Level Five: Marker and digital technology by Catherine Lupton
Le Joli mai by Sam Di Iorio
Early & “lost” Marker films by Chris Darke
DEPARTMENTS
EDITOR’S LETTER
OPENING SHOTS
Guilty Pleasures by Armond White, Distributor Wanted: Ripley’s Game by Kent Jones, Hot Set: Ingmar Bergman’s Saraband by Jan Lumholdt
Obituary
Stan Brakhage by Steve Anker
Sound & Vision
The 5,000 Fingers of Dr. T by Irwin Chusid & John Waters’ gallery installation “Hair in the Gate” by Chris Chang
Frameup
Anna Kendrick by Mark Olsen
Movie of the Moment
Friday Night by Amy Taubin
Festivals
Berlin by Chris Darke, New Directors/New Films by Chris Chang
StoryboardRosa Blanca by Barry Gifford
Screenings
11’09”01 by Michael Koresky, The Shape of Things by Erik M. Syngle, The Politics of Fur by Nathan Lee, Spellbound by Alissa Quart
Home Movies
Blue Sunshine by Gavin Smith
