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Author Archives: James Steffen
The Color of Pomegranates: four DVD editions compared
Last night I was finally able to see the new subtitled Russian Cinema Council DVD of Sergei Parajanov’s The Color of Pomegranates (1969) and can now do a comparison of all the existing DVD editions. Ruscico’s subtitled edition of the … Continue reading
Posted in Film, Parajanov, Reviews
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Elia Kazan at the Plaza
The Plaza Theater in Atlanta, in cooperation with 20th Century Fox Home Entertainment and Emory University, is running a film series devoted to Elia Kazan. Monday night’s double bill included A Letter to Elia (2010), Martin Scorsese’s new hour-long documentary (co-directed by Kent Jones) and … Continue reading
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Liszt’s Transcendental Etudes: a survey
I’ve been going through a Franz Liszt phase again since around Christmas, when I brought his Piano Sonata in B minor (Claudio Arrau) and his Années de pèlerinage (Lazar Berman) along with me to California. Above all, I’ve been fascinated by … Continue reading
Posted in Music
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Avatar: Going Native
I just returned from an advance screening of James Cameron’s new film Avatar. Initially I was skeptical after seeing a trailer, but I’ve become an enthusiastic convert. In order to appreciate what Cameron and his vest technical crew have accomplished, … Continue reading
Posted in Film, Reviews
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Speaking to Las Vegas…
Laurenn McCubbin, a professional graphic artist and MFA student at the University of Nevada at Las Vegas, is developing an ambitious performance and gallery show entitled Speaking to Las Vegas in the Language of Las Vegas. The gallery show is … Continue reading
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Surviving the Antichrist
I managed to catch Lars von Trier’s Antichrist on its last night at the Landmark Midtown in Atlanta. Long before the dedication to Andrei Tarkovsky appeared in the film’s closing credits, I spotted any number of visual echoes of Tarkovsky’s … Continue reading
Posted in Film, Reviews
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Comments on Jeanne Dielman
Friday night’s screening of Jeanne Dielman did not disappoint. As a film about psychological breakdown, I find it more subtle and more strikingly conceived than Polanski’s Repulsion, which relies a bit too heavily on obvious visual effects, brilliant as it otherwise is. … Continue reading
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More potatoes, more men…
A new 35mm print of Chantal Akerman’s Jeanne Dielman, 23 Quai du Commerce, 1080 Bruxelles (1975)–an avant-garde cult hit about a housewife keeping a very tight schedule–is showing this Friday, October 23, 7:00 p.m. at Emory University, in White … Continue reading
Posted in Film, News
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Brief update
I’m going to be away from my blog for a couple weeks while I finish working on a chapter of my book on Sergei Parajanov. It’s the chapter on The Color of Pomegranates, most likely the longest section of the … Continue reading
Posted in Site Announcements
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New in theaters: Bliss
I just came across Stephen Holden’s review of Abdullah Oguz’s Bliss (2007) in the New York Times today. Holden writes: “[…] this consistently gripping, visually intoxicating film stands as a landmark of contemporary Turkish cinema.” It’s based on an acclaimed novel by Zülfü … Continue reading
Posted in Film, News
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