Left in the Dark: Film Reviews and Essays 1988-2001 (Nation Books) - Softcover

Klawans, Stuart

Softcover

ISBN 10: 1560253657 ISBN 13: 9781560253655

Publisher: Nation Books, 2001

Synopsis

Here is the best of funny, sharp, and revelatory film writing for The Nation, brought together with new pieces written especially for this book and a selection of reviews and essays for the New York Times, the Village Voice, Film Comment, and other journals. A friend of independent filmmaking (but not of its pretensions), an enemy of big-budget productions (except when they're entertaining), Klawans writes under his own version of the banner "From Each According to His Abilities, to Each According to His Needs." Klawans explains how to approach a masterpiece by Abbas Kiarostami as if it were a strange dog; why David Lynch would disappoint a visiting Martian; and what The Rage: Carrie 2 tells us about rage and Carrie. All this, plus insight into the quieter refinements of Moulin Rouge, the correct Talmudic interpretation of Natural Born Killers, and the reasons why they were never wrong, the Old Masters (Renoir, Dreyer, Sembene, and early 1930s Warner Brothers). At a time when too many film writers encourage cynicism and despair, Klawans finds vitality in the movies—especially those that record brute fact while aspiring toward a heaven of personal expression. Read him, and discover the fun of being Left in the Dark. "Mr. Klawans is one of the most incisive, provocative and best-informed film critics in America."—Vincent Canby "The genuine heir to James Agee and Manny Farber...dazzling to read."—Phillip Lopate

About this title

From Library Journal:

The turn of the millennium has yielded many collections of film criticism and essays, from the humor-laden (Joe Queenan's Confessions of a Cineplex Heckler) to the ultraserious (Stanley Kauffmann's Regarding Film and Ray Greene's Hollywood Migraine). Having honed his skills in such publications as Film Comment, the Nation, and the New York Times, Klawans (Film Follies: The Cinema Out of Order) brings considerable knowledge and analytical powers to bear on various foreign and domestic films. With his unabashedly left-wing perspective, he analyzes documentaries such as Hoop Dreams, 4 Little Girls, and Belfast, Maine; political films like L'America and A Moment of Innocence; and commercial features Matinee, Ed Wood, The Muse, and Gladiator. Even sequels of no immediately discernible impact can have socioeconomic significance, as Klawans demonstrates in his critique of The Rage: Carrie 2. Just as fascinating are the not entirely agreeable connections he discerns between Shakespeare in Love and She's the One. This collection of reviews and essays is appropriate for academic and larger public libraries. Kim Holston, American Inst. for Chartered Property Casualty Underwriters, Malvern, PA

Copyright 2002 Cahners Business Information, Inc.

From Booklist:

Klawans, film reviewer for the Nation, is one of the few critics--Jonathan Rosenbaum and J. Hoberman are others--who write about rarefied films and filmmakers for a general audience. When Klawans discusses such world-class but obscure directors as Abbas Kiarostami and Hou Hsiao-hsien, he is an enthusiastic, erudite advocate for contemporary cinema, arguing that today's best films are as worthy as the classics he reexamines here, such as Grand Illusion and Touch of Evil. The attention he gives deserving documentaries, such as Public Housing and 4 Little Girls, is most welcome and stems from a proclivity toward "fictions with a strong documentary impulse, or documentaries that play like fictions." When he deals with the worst that Hollywood offers, such as Gladiator and Star Wars: Episode One, he resorts to devastating ridicule, making us laugh, apparently, so that he may not weep. Championing excellence, he puts the lie to the "death of cinema" crowd by proving that a bit of digging will turn up plenty of worthwhile, engaging movies. Gordon Flagg
Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved

About this edition

• Publisher: Nation Books
• Publication date: 2001
• ISBN 10: 1560253657
• ISBN 13: 9781560253655
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 400