August 2010
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Features
Britain’s secret Brazilian
More than any other director bar Hitchcock, the Brazilian Alberto Cavalcanti had a profound influence on British film-making in the 1930s and 40s. But he remains an unjustly overlooked figure, says Nick James
Lost and found: The Ballad of Tam Lin
Sam Dunn remembers how his mind was expanded by the daring of Roddy McDowall’s little-seen directorial work The Ballad of Tam Lin
Cover feature: The pattern under the plough
The rhythms and rituals of rural life have seldom been conspicious in British cinema. But in feature films of the 1960s and 70s and documentaries across the decades, tantalising traces of the ‘old, weird Britain’ can still be unearthed. By Rob Young
PLUS:
Absent authors: Folk in artist film
William Fowler maps the enduring links between British folk culture and artists' film-making
The last maverick
Dennis Hopper, who died on 29 May 2010, is best remembered as a no-holds-barred movie actor and offscreen personality. But in one of his last in-depth interviews, he reminisced to Nick Roddick about his extraordinary parallel careers as director, painter and photographer
PLUS Michael Atkinson surveys Hopper’s boundary-pushing life and work in movies
Behind the door
With her new film Bluebeard, director Catherine Breillat returns to the realm of female adolescent sexuality she has made her own – but this time through the prism of fairytale. Catherine Wheatley talks to her, and charts cinema’s long preoccupation with the Bluebeard myth
Selected reviews
Film of the month: Gainsbourg
French ‘bande dessinée’ artist Joann Sfar injects a bold poetic dimension into the musical biopic with his inspired account of the life of singer, songwriter and hellraiser Serge Gainsbourg. By Ginette Vincendeau
DVD review: Antônio das Mortes
Michael Chanan on the extraordinary films of Glauber Rocha, shooting star of the Latin American new wave
DVD review: Girly + Goodbye Gemini
Tim Lucas finds more than a touch of Tennessee Williams’ southern gothic in two tales of familial decadence
Film review: Ivul
Andrew Gallivant Kötting takes to the trees in his first film from Swiss exile. Nick Bradshaw admires a tone poem of landscape, bodies and madness
Film review: Toy Story 3
Pixar’s latest mixes valedictory and renewal. Jonathan Romney agrees that it’s better to reuse than to throw away old material, old toys, old ideas
Reviews in this issue:
- The A-Team
- The Ballroom
- Beautiful Kate
- Bluebeard
- City Island
- The Concert
- Down Terrace
- Frontier Blues
- Film of the month: Gainsbourg
- Gangster’s Paradise Jerusalema
- Get Him to the Greek
- Goemon
- H2Oil
- Heartbreaker
- Hierro
- Film review: Ivul
- The Karate Kid
- Killers
- Kites
- Leaving
- London River
- MacGruber
- Mega Piranha
- The Rebound
- Separado!
- Sex and the City 2
- Shrek Forever After
- Skeletons
- Space Chimps 2
- Splice
- The Tournament
- Film review: Toy Story 3
- Villa Amalia
- Whatever Works
- Wild Target (2009)
- Zartog Strikes Back
- DVD review: Antônio das Mortes
- DVD review: Girly + Goodbye Gemini