Long National Nightmares

by Michael du Plessis

[24.8.10] - As the truism derived from F. Scott Fitzgerald goes, there are no second acts in American lives—but there’s still no accounting, then, for remakes: the counterinsurgency strategy currently pursued by the Obama administration in Afghanistan is a remake or redo of Vietnam, the so-called “War on Terror” reiterates the same blurring of war and peace that marked the Cold War, many of the so-called “architects” of the US’s current domestic and foreign policies entered politics in the era of Vietnam and Watergate and pursue, single-mindedly, aims established under Nixon and Reagan.

[en] Long National Nightmares

Reviews » Inglourious Basterds, Tarantino, 2009

The Good, the Bad and the Basterds

Problematizing Tarantino’s Revenge Plot through Paradox

by Alison Reed

[24.8.10] - Quentin Tarantino's highest-grossing film to date, "Inglourious Basterds," literally capitalizes on the escapist desire for a revenge plot predicated on a war in which notions of good and evil were less ambiguous, at the same time as it problematizes the revisionist pre-text with a more complex exploration of ethno-racialized violence as played out on the current world stage.

[en] The Good, the Bad and the Basterds

Reviews » Mr. Klein, Losey, 1976

It's Only a Job

The Social Organization of Indifference in Losey's "Mr. Klein"

by Michael Lang

[7.8.10] - What is "indifference"? Neither the separateness of difference, nor the synthesis of the same. Mr. Klein portrays this psychological and conceptual vertigo both as a critique of modern state capitalism, and, reflexively, as the negative dialectic possibility of historical portrayal itself.

[en] It's Only a Job

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[en] A Serious Man - Theodicy, Uncertainty, and God’s Wrath in A Serious Man by Jonathan Friedman

[en] A Nightmare on Elm Street - Beneath the American Dream by Roland Finger

[en] Inglourious Basterds - The Revelation to Tarantino as it is given in Inglourious Basterds by Allen H. Redmon

[en] The Ghost Writer - The Trouble with the Ghosts of History by Lelaine Bonine

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[en] Australian Jews and Film - by Don Perlgut

[it] Per un cinema maieutico - Incontro con Paolo Benvenuti e Paola Baroni by Andrea Inzerillo

[en] To get what we have lost - A discussion with Michael J. Shapiro on cinema and politics by Lorenzo Rinelli

[en] The Ghosted Other - Ethno-Racial Violence in ‘No Country for Old Men’ by Alison Reed

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Dossier

Our Animated World

edited by Steven Rybin

[1.8.10] - Animated films create ambiguous relationships between cinema and the social world. At times they gesture towards new worlds; at other times, they remain frustratingly conservative, reinforcing cultural formations rather than intervening in them. The dossier is appreciative of the interventions of animated films into the way we think, but at the same time its authors recognize the perilous impact this familiar - and frequently familial - genre can have on us.

[en] Introduction by Steven Rybin

[en] “We Act Normal, Mom! I Want to Be Normal!” by Lisa Cunningham

[en] From Ogre to Beloved Husband by E. Guillermo Inglesias Díaz

[en] Celebrating Magic’s Primordial Ooze by Elizabeth Birmingham

[en] Wall-E and the Environmental Apocalypse by Amarjeet Nayak

[en] The Animated Auteur by Steven Rybin