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November-December 2003

Quentin Tarantino’s Kill Bill Part One, coverage of The New York, Venice and Toronto Festivals, a midsection on movie music, the Istanbul film scene, first look at Tim Burton’s Big Fish, Lars Von Trier’s Dogville, Jane Campion’s In the Cut, Errol Morris’s The Fog of War, Alejandro González Iñárritu’s 21 Grams

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Featured Articles

Issue Details

FEATURES

DOGVILLE
By Harlan Jacobson
Love it or hate it, Lars von Trier’s latest cinematic experiment pushes a lot of buttons. Churlish anti-American diatribe or courageous critique of U.S. hypocrisy and corruption? Either way, it’s the Movie of the Moment.

KILL BILL
By Geoffrey O’Brien and Chris Norris
At the halfway mark in Quentin Tarantino’s reinvention of the martial-arts movie, the body count is over 100—revenge may be sweet, but it sure is messy. Two takes on the art of the avid fan.

IN THE CUT
By Amy Taubin
In this story of murder, misogyny, and dark desire, sexual politics becomes a dance between predators and prey in which every man is a suspect and women look for love in all the wrong places. Jane Campion enters the lurid world of the psychosexual thriller.

TIME OF REVENGE
By John Magary
This year’s winner of the annual Grand Marnier Film Fellowship essay competition detects the subversive impulse hidden within Adolfo Aristarain’s tight, sardonic thriller, made during the darkest days of Argentina’s Dirty War.

MOVIE MUSIC 1933-2001 PART 1: HOLLYWOOD
By John Caps
From King Kong to Waking Life: a chronological guide to 101 essential film scores, encapsulating the history and evolution of the form, beginning in the Thirties with the rise of the European Romantic tradition and continuing through the emergence of jazz, avant-garde, and pop influences in the postwar era.

DEPARTMENTS

EDITOR’S LETTER

OPENING SHOTS
News, Guilty Pleasures: Jeff Bridges, Distributor Wanted: Ford Transit by Elizabeth Helfgott, Letters

JOURNAL
Atilla Dorsay on Istanbul

FIRST LOOK
Tim Burton’s Big Fish by Dave Kehr

SOUND & VISION
Sun Ra: Space Is the Place by Chuck Stephens & Jeremy Blake by Chris Chang

CRITICS CHOICE
Eight critics rate 25 new releases

FICTION
“The Man with the Movie Camera” by Gabriel Brownstein

FESTIVALS
New York by Phillip Lopate, Venice by Olaf Möller, and Toronto by Nicole Armour and Gavin Smith

REVIEWS
The Fog of War by Paul Arthur, 21 Grams by Alissa Quart, and Ripley’s Game by Gary Indiana

BOOKS
The Dream of Life by Elizabeth Helfgott

VIDI VIDI VIDI
To Live and Die in L.A. by Gavin Smith, Seabiscuit by Kent Jones, The Work of Director Spike Jonze by Nicole Armour

FSLC SEEN
Who’s who at recent Film Society events