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September-October 2004

I Heart Huckabees plus an online-only interview with David O. Russell, Peter Kubelka, Ingmar Bergman’s Saraband, the Shaw Brothers, David Gordon Green and Undertow, Mike Leigh’s Vera Drake, Marlon Brando, Gregory Markopoulos, The Flaherty Seminar, Catherine Breillat’s Anatomy of Hell, Hong Kong cinema scene, Paul Giamatti interviewed

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Featured Articles

Issue Details

FEATURES

I ♥ HUCKABEES
By Gavin Smith
The director of Three Kings is back with his most unconventional film to date—a playful philosophical comedy about the meaning of life and the interconnection of everything. David O. Russell talks about Zen and the art of moviemaking. Plus: an interview with the director.

PETER KUBELKA
By Alexander Horwath
An Austrian avant-garde pioneer returns after a 26-year break with a new film, Poetry and Truth, an excursion into the anthropology of consumerism and the magic of “perfectly found” footage is his first piece of “metaphysical cinema.”

DAVID GORDON GREEN
By Kent Jones
With the exciting Undertow, this young director sticks to the strategy of the self-defined filmmaker.

VERA DRAKE
By Amy Taubin
Mike Leigh’s powerful new film takes a fresh look at a highly charged subject.

CAMERON JAMIE
By Gary Indiana
An expat artist brings us ritualized spectacles of the grotesque and the ridiculous, dredged up from the subcultural depths.

DOCU-ANGST
By Paul Arthur
First-person nonfiction filmmaking as therapeutic psychodrama.

SHAW BROTHERS STUDIOS
By Chuck Stephens
After a long wait, the vaults of the legendary Hong Kong studio have been pried open, and wondrous treasures are pouring out. Plus: a list of their finest titles.

MARLON BRANDO
By Amy Taubin
A reminder that our greatest and most influential actor belongs with Miles Davis and Jackson Pollock in the pantheon of 20th-century American artists.

TEMENOS PART II
By Jeffrey Stout and Noah Stout
The open-air premiere of Gregory Markopoulos’s Eniaios.

THE FLAHERTY SEMINAR
By Paul Arthur
The 50th anniversary of the nonfiction film conclave.

DEPARTMENTS

EDITOR’S LETER

OPENING SHOTS
News, Distributor Wanted: Doppelganger by Chuck Stephens, Guy Maddin’s Jolly Corner: Guy Maddin on The Lusty Men

JOURNAL
Li Cheuk-to on Hong Kong

FIRST LOOK
Ingmar Bergman’s Saraband by Phillip Lopate

SOUND & VISION
DJ Spooky by Joe Milutis & the paintings of Maurice Pialat by Chris Chang

OLAF’S WORLD
Olaf Möller on Hong Kong’s Modern Films

MOVIE OF THE MOMENT
Alexander Payne’s Sideways, plus an interview with Paul Giamatti, by Harlan Jacobson

FESITVALS
Los Angeles by Robert Koehler and Mark Olsen

REVIEW
Anatomy of Hell by Nathan Lee, Vanity Fair by Michael Agger, and Bright Future by Chuck Stephens

BOOKS
Kim Jong Il’s On the Art of Cinema by Brian L. Frye

VIDI VIDI VIDI
Star Wars Trilogy by Gavin Smith, Robinson Crusoe by Phillip Lopate, THX-1138 by Chris Chang, Wattstax by Nicole Armour, Alan Clarke Collection by Gavin Smith

FSLC SEEN
Who’s who at recent Film Society events