Recent Articles

Fish farms kill wild salmon, study finds [CBC News] (Full Story)

Infamous French Art Thief to release memoir [CBC News] (Full Story)

Author J.G.Ballard's influence on Music [CBC News] (Full Story)

STEPHEN H. BURRINGTON, A new path for state park system [Boston Globe] (Full Story)

"Investigation of a Citizen Above Suspicion" dir. Elio Petri (1970) - August 17 in Cambridge, Massachusetts

This Thursday night I strongly urge you to attend the screening of Elio Petri's film "Investigation of A Citizen Above Suspicion" at The Brattle Theatre. This is by far the highlight of the Brattle's lastest schedule. This film acts on so many levels as a pop thriller and political tract that has strangely been neglected despite winning the Grand Prix special at Cannes Festival and the Academy Award for Best Foreign Film in 1970.

These are the details:

Thursday, August 17

Italian Masters
Investigation Of A Citizen Above Suspicion at 7:30, 10:00
(1970) dir Elio Petri w/Gian Maria Volante, Florinda Bolkan, Gianni Santuccio [112 min]

I first saw this film as part of The Films of Elio Petri series that played at the Harvard Film Archive in 2003. To better explain the film- this is the description of it from the series:

"Inaugurating a cycle of cinema politico in Italy, Petri's Investigation of a Citizen Above Suspicion is a dark and satirical political thriller set during a time of internal political disturbance, where a psychopathic Roman police inspector (Volonte) cracks down with relish on the political dissidents of the day. After slashing the throat of his masochistic mistress (Bolkan), the inspector is perversely put in charge of the investigation. With sadistic pleasure, he plants clues that implicate himself and then craftily diffuses them, ostensibly to prove his invincibility. As director Petri's split-second edits rocket back and forth between flashback and detection, Investigation becomes a biting critique of Italian police methods and authoritarian repression, a psychological study of a budding crypto-fascist, and a probing why-dunnit. The iciest of film noirs, Investigation of a Citizen Above Suspicion won the Academy Award for Best Foreign-Language Film of 1970."

To the best of my knowledge, this film is still unavailable on DVD. Perhaps the good people at No Shame Films will release it in the USA.
A decent primer on his life and works can be found here.
Check the official Eilo Petri Website for another look at the film.

Cronenberg, Morentsen, Bello, Harris, Hurt...A History of Violence

Briefly: David Cronenberg's latest film "A History of Violence" is one of the best pieces of filmmaking I've seen in a while. It works well on so many levels as it deals with a social problem. The film itself is lean, there is no excess fat, everthing included is necessary to the story. Questions less of identity and more about social justice, and by extension commerce come into play. Also of note, the film was shot entirely in Canada. It is primarily set in a small town in Indiana, but it could be any middle class small town, not precisely in the U.S.A. either. Having said that, it still seems that the film is critiqing certain American ideals. Also of note is the violent inserts, during the cafe scene a man's jaw is shot off, this is to indicate the consequences of that violence, not to revel in it. The only antecedent to something of this type I can immediately think of is photographs of soliders in military hospitals during World War I (yes, its that graphic). The other point that a number of reviewers have made are the two sex scenes, one very gentle and the other quite rough, contrasting two sides of the same characters. The entire cast was very strong and the pacing just right for a film that addresses some tough social issues.

The team behind this film have been doing a number of press interviews, one with the director was recently printed in the Boston Globe, Maria Bello in the Montreal Mirror, and Viggo Morentsen was recently on Charlie Rose giving an excellent diagnosis of the current state of affairs in the U.S.A.

Articles about Hurricane Katrina

The best I've read so far:

We are on our own
by Darryl Pinckney
http://www.guardian.co.uk/katrina/story/0,16441,1561997,00.html

the latest:

Team Bush's Bad Day in Wyoming
by Peter Preston
http://www.guardian.co.uk/katrina/story/0,16441,1562733,00.html

Left to sink or swim
by Gary Younge
http://www.guardian.co.uk/comment/story/0,3604,1562649,00.html

The Guardian Unimited's Special Report on Hurricane Katrina:

http://www.guardian.co.uk/katrina/0,16441,1560620,00.html

And a prescient word from Mike Davis:
from September 24, 2004
Poor, Black and Left Behind
http://www.commondreams.org/views04/0924-02.htm