Every year, American Movie Classics has a Film Preservation Festival to raise money to restore films. This year's which runs from Friday, June 16th to Monday, June 19th will be devoted to Alfred Hitchcock. There are interviews and articles about Hitchcock on their site.
They have a schedule online. They will be showing several documentaries on Saturday and Sunday and the restored Rear Window on Sunday and Monday (Reappraising Rear Window is a review of the restored film by Andy Klein). Other highlights include Mr. and Mrs. Smith, a comedy with Carol Lombard on late Friday/early saturday, Notorious (MI 2 uses the same plot), Vertigo and Psycho on Saturday, Strangers on a Train (both the US and British versions) on Sunday and Shadow of a Doubt (which is one of my favorites) and To Catch a Thief on Monday. 32 films will be shown during the festival.
This is an updated verson of an item I wrote for bud.com last year:
Alfred Hitchcock would have turned 100 on Friday, August 13th, 1999. There was an exhibit on him at MOMA in NYC. Their website includes a lecture he gave in NYC in 1939 and a lengthy interview with him by Peter Bogdonavich from 1963. Indiana University Press will release a DVD-ROM of Multimedia Hitchcock in December of 2000 (it was part of the MOMA exhibit).
Janet Leigh and Evan Hunter (screenwriter on the Birds who also goes by the pen name Ed McBain) talked about working with Hitchcock on Fresh Air. On WBUR's the Connection, Stanley Cavell, professor of philosophy at Harvard University, and Terrence Rafferty, film critic for GQ magazine, discussed Hitchcock's work. The Christian Science Monitor had an article by and audio interview with David Sterritt on Hitchcock.
A DVD box set was released with special editions of Psycho and Vertigo (the documentary on the DVD will be shown Saturday) along with four episodes he directed from Alfred Hitchcock Presents. Criterion released a special edition of The 39 Steps on DVD. A 20 minute test reel Hitchcock shot for a film which never was made was shown at the 1999 Venice Film Festival (the link is from the Hitchcock and his writers site). North By Northwestis being restored and will be re-released in theaters.
For more information, there is the Definative Alfred Hitchcock Links page and an about.com classic movies guide to Hitchcock sites. The Hitchcock Centenial Project has essays and details on various events. The site for the MacGuffin, a journal on Hitchcock, has lots of links to essays (including Why I Make Melodramas by Hitchock from 1936) and other information along with updates on the news page.
posted by steve rhodes on 6/15/2000 5:14:33 PM |
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Alfredo Jaar was named a MacArthur Fellow this week. I've seen his work in galleries and museums over the last decade, but I imagine many people have never heard of him.
He makes installations and photographs on political issues. It is hard to give a sense of his installation work without actually walking through it, but there is some information on him on the web. There is a review of his Ruwanda Project, and The Eyes of Gutete Emerita, a piece from it is online. There is an interview with him.
Eyestorm has a page on him
with links to a bio and a number of his photographs. A site
has examples of his work. There is a picture of
an installation he did in the NYC subway. One of the galleries he is currently represented by is hosfelt gallery in San Francisco.
posted by steve rhodes on 6/15/2000 1:57:38 PM |
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Independent films which are purchased with fanfare at film festivals are often never released theatrically or given a very limited release. Miramax is known for doing this. Now it has happened to Panic, a film written and directed by Henry Bromell (who was a producer for Homicide) which debuted at Sundance. It stars William H. Macy, Tracey Ullman, Donald Sutherland and Neve Campbell.
It was bought by Artisan which has sold it straight to cable. Stephen Hunter of the Washington Post tells
the tale today in Profit Picture Fills Indie Film Distributors' Screen.
posted by steve rhodes on 6/15/2000 1:12:42 PM |
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A number of people have pointed out it make a good companion
piece to The Problem With Music by Steve Albini which was originally published in
The Baffler. Another perspective comes from record exec Danny Goldberg in
The Ballad of the Mid-Level Artist (it is currently free, but inside.com says they will start charging for content).
posted by steve rhodes on 6/14/2000 3:48:34 PM |
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Tonight an episode of Felicity that paid tribute to the Twilight Zone airs again on the WB. Salon had an interview with Lamont Johnson who directed episodes of the original Twilight Zone
and tonight's episode of Felicity.
posted by steve rhodes on 6/14/2000 2:50:06 PM |
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This year's MacArthur fellows have been announced. There is coverage
in the Washington Post and New York Times. I'll post more later about, Alfredo Jaar, an artist who is one of this year's fellows.
posted by steve rhodes on 6/14/2000 12:07:57 AM |
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TNT is having a Shaft marathon tonight. The remake opnes Friday. blaxploitation.com provides background on the genre. The Original Shaft is Richard Roundtree's site.
The Institute For War & Peace Reporting continues to provide excellent coverage
of the Balkans and other regions. Recent articles include an examination
of the role of psychics in Serbia and a piece on Serbian Cinema.
posted by steve rhodes on 6/13/2000 3:16:14 PM |
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The National Coalition to Abolish the Death Penalty has created a site on the case of Gary Graham who is scheduled to be executed in Texas on June 22nd. There will be protests held on June 19th in New York, Chicago, LA and other cities. There is a page with press coverage on his case.
Rep. Jesse Jackson, Jr. has issued a statement on the case and introduced legislation that would impose a moratorium on executions. Jackson sends out regular email alerts you can sign up for.
Steve Mills talked (real audio link) about the Chicago Tribune series on the death penalty in Texas on Monday's All Things Considered.
posted by steve rhodes on 6/13/2000 3:31:58 AM |
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Drudge has linked to stories on the book at least twice since it was announced. Currently, his blaring headline is
ESZTERHAS BOOK FEATURES TALKING BILL CLINTON PENIS
The item mentions that Eszterhas will appear on the Today show to promote his book, but it doesn't mention that Drudge is also part of Knopf's promotonal campaign. And one wonders if Drudge has easier access to his "publishing source" because of this.
Yes, Drudge Drudge probably would have written about it anyway (how could he resist a book with a TALKING BILL CLINTON PENIS?). Still, he should add that Knopf is advertising on his site to this item and any future items on the book. I emailed him asking him to, but I don't expect him to. He is aware of the ad buy since I emailed him about it last week.
Although Drudge is often used as the boogeyman of online journalism, he is rarely held up to real scrutiny.
posted by steve rhodes on 6/12/2000 11:11:45 AM |
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Oxygen is interviewing Al Gore tonight from 9 to 10:30 pm ET. It will be simulcast on C-SPAN and online if (like most people) you don't get oxygen . You can post questions for Gore.
Farai Chideya is one of the journalists asking Gore questions.
posted by steve rhodes on 6/12/2000 4:16:48 AM |
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Gatekeeper court keeps gates shut is the second part of the Chicago Tribune investigation the death penalty in Texas under George W., The State of Execution. The stories are long, so they are worth printing out if you can.
A Broken System: Error Rates in Capital Cases, 1973-1995, the study mention in the US News article I wrote about on Saturday, is now online. There is a New York Times article on the study, Death Sentences Being Overturned in 2 of 3 Appeals. As does the Washinton Post - Most Death Sentences Reversed, Study Finds/
The Post also has a story today on Gary Graham,
81 Death Penalty Case Confronts Bush. US News and the Chicago Tribune pieces also have written about Graham.
Bush's death penalty dodge in Salon
looks at Graham's case and a number of others.
posted by steve rhodes on 6/12/2000 4:09:21 AM |
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I just got the Yahoo Picks of the Week for 6-12. It contained a rather amusing entry:
F**cked Company: The Dot Com DeadpoolWhy bother with F**ck when fuck is in the URL?A variation on the classic celebrity death pool game, F**cked Company invites savvy business watchers to bet on the demise of shaky Internet companies. Points are awarded relative to the severity of the company's downward spiral: IPO delays, staff layoffs, tanking stock prices, funding failures, etc. A clinically filtered news section offers the latest casualty reports, and confirmed kills are verified by Dotcomfailures, whose motto reads "kick 'em while they're down."
The Chicago Tribune today has the first part of a two part series, the State of Execution, investigating the death penalty in Texas. It concludes:
Of the 131 cases where a Death Row inmate has been executed in Texas under George W. Bush:
Bush responded to the charges in the article:
The Republican presidential candidate expressed confidence in his state’s system of capital punishment and has said he sees no need to institute a moratorium.It wasn't clear if he had read the article. He refused to be interviewed for it."I know there are some in the country who don’t care for the death penalty, but I’ve said once and I’ve said a lot, that in every cases, we’ve adequately answered innocence or guilt," Bush, the Texas governor, said Sunday after attending church with his father near the family retreat.
"If you’re asking me whether or not as to the innocence or guilt or if people have had adequate access to the courts in Texas, I believe they have," Bush continued.
"They’ve had full access to the courts. They’ve had full access to a fair trial."
The Tribune had earlier done a series, The Failure of
the Death Penalty in Illinois which helped lead a to moratorium on executions in Illinois.
posted by steve rhodes on 6/11/2000 10:42:22 AM |
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The June 10th Economist provides an international perspective on the death penalty in the US in Dead man walking out. Anna Quindlen has a column, The Call From the Governor, on the death penalty in the June 19th issue of Newsweek.
Today's Washington Post has a story, Texas to Review Death Sentences. An expert witness for the state, psychologist Walter Quijano, testified in a number of cases that the race of the defendent should be a factor in deciding the penalty.
US News has a story this week on a study on the death penalty.
In a study of the more than 4,500 death penalty appeals filed from 1973 to 1995, Columbia University law professor James Liebman found that a plethora of mistakes led to reversals in an astonishing 68 percent of the cases nationally. "Capital trials produce so many mistakes," he says, "leaving grave doubt about whether we do catch them all."The study, to be released this week, is the most comprehensive review ever of death penalty decisions. The number of problem cases is far higher than previously believed. The results place the blame for most of the foul-ups on prosecutors, defense attorneys, and judges. Legal observers have long been concerned about overzealous prosecutors and indifferent judges. But it is the incompetent defense attorney who's now getting attention. Liebman found the problem is no longer limited to a few good old boys coming to court drunk. Rather, there are far more lawyers who are just not very goodPor very experienced with the legal demands of capital cases.
Examples abound. There was the lawyer in California who told a jury that killing his client would free him of his mental illness. There were the defense attorneys in Georgia who failed to tell a jury their client was retardedPa fact that would have exempted him from the death penalty. Then there was the attorney in Texas who failed to call alibi witnesses. He couldn't be faulted, a judge wrote, because he was paid just $11.84 an hour. The state, the judge ruled, "got only what it paid for."...
Liebman's study also debunks a common belief that federal judges bog down the death penalty system by doing most of the reversing. State judges are far more active, finding "serious error" in 47 percent of the cases they reviewed. And retrial in state courts produced lesser sentences in 82 percent of those cases. Seven percent of the people retried were acquitted. "It's a secret the system has kept for a long time," Liebman says. State judges in Wyoming, Maryland, Mississippi, North Carolina, and South Carolina found the most mistakesPin some states more than three fourths of cases they reviewed.
Liebman says it takes time for appeals court judges to sort through the large number of mistakes made in capital cases. Under the best circumstances, the legal process takes time. But in cases where the outcome is literally a matter of life or death, reviewing the records takes years. Even then, however, there is no guarantee that some who have been wrongfully convicted aren't paying with their lives.
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