1,299 words
The Girl Who Played with Fire (2009) is the second novel/movie in the dismayingly popular Millennium Trilogy by the late Swedish communist and feminist Stieg Larsson. It is the sequel to The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo, which was recently remade in English directed by David Fincher. Assuming that Hollywood will remake all three Swedish films, we might as well get a sneak preview by taking a look at the Swedish sequels. Read more …
1,095 words
Lars von Trier’s Melancholia might be a uniquely bleak film. Even for a director who is well known for offering dark and disturbing pictures of humanity, Melancholia expresses a special sort of hopelessness. The film begins with a series of strange, surreal tableaux shot in extreme slow motion. The musical accompaniment is the Tristan und Isolde Prelude. Read more …
5,694 words
“Our bodies come and go, but this blood stays forever” — Otis B. Driftwood
I am not a great fan of the horror film, at least in its current, Judaicly inspired “torture porn” incarnation. I did occasionally enjoy exposure to the “horror core” or “psycho-billy” music that started showing up here and there in New York in the early 90s. Read more …
11,660 words
1. I am Jack’s Most Devoted Space Monkey
I have hesitated to write an essay on Fight Club
702 words
David Fincher’s big-star, big-budget, English-language remake of the 2009 Swedish film The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo was certainly not necessary from an artistic point of view. The original film, directed by Dane Niels Arden Oplev, was extremely well-acted and well-made. For fans of the novel, it is iconic.
The obvious motive for the remake, of course, was money. Read more …
1,442 words
Jingle All the Way is a typical feel-good, family-oriented Hollywood Christmas film, loosely falling in the same category as the Home Alone film series (which producer Chris Columbus was also involved with). It is driven by a simple premise and plot, which unfolds against a scenery of prosperous suburbia and mid-Western shopping centres, all postcard beautiful among snow and a superabundance of joyous decorations. Read more …
Kristina Söderbaum in "Opfergang"
6,105 words
1. Introduction
I learned about Opfergang from an unlikely source: a documentary on the Slovenian philosopher Slavoj Žižek. In one segment he is shown browsing in Kim’s Video in Manhattan (at its old location on St. Mark’s Place). As he does throughout the documentary, Žižek engages in a kind of frantic monologue, and at one point he names his three favorite films: King Vidor’s The Fountainhead (this really surprised me), Sergei Eisenstein’s Ivan the Terrible, and Veit Harlan’s Opfergang. Read more …
2,075 words
Popular culture does not matter, and people who read political messages into children’s television programs and movies are guilty of bad faith at best and willful malevolence at worst. Art is independent of politics and has a meaning all its own. Read more …
1,850 words
Twilight: Breaking Dawn, Part 1, is the fourth and penultimate movie of The Twilight Saga, based on Stephenie Meyer’s phenomenally popular series of novels. Worldwide, the Twilight novels have now sold more than 100 million copies; they have been translated into 37 languages; The Twilight Saga movies have grossed more than $2 billion. Read more …
2,763 words
Excerpts from Jewish film critic Jonathan Foreman’s “The Nazis, er, the Redcoats are coming!,” a review of The Patriot:
The Patriot presents a deeply sentimental cult of the family, casts unusually Aryan-looking heroes. . . .
If the Nazis had won the war in Europe, and their propaganda ministry had decided to make a film about the American Revolution, The Patriot is exactly the movie you could expect to see. . . . Read more …
897 words
Übersetzt von Deep Roots
English original here
The Singing Revolution ist ein Dokumentarfilm über den Kampf der winzigen Ostseenation Estland um Souveränität, einer Nation, die das halbe zwanzigste Jahrhundert im Griff des Sowjetimperiums verbrachte. Read more …
Lassie
1,182 words
Recently Counter-Currents contributor Jef Costello published a light-hearted piece entitled “Aryan Cows?,” in which he discussed contemporary hysteria over “Aryan” and “Nazi” cattle.
He also wondered, tongue-in-cheek, “Was Blondie, Hitler’s shepherd, an Aryan dog?” Read more …
4,353 words
Übersetzt von Deep Roots
English original here
Ich möchte den Fußspuren von Jonathan Bowden folgen und Rasse und Ethnizität im Kontext der Marvel-Comics diskutieren. Read more …
2,445 words
It claims to be a black comedy but Big Fan
3,200 words
Yoav Shamir’s Defamation (2009) is a must-see movie. Shamir is an Israeli Jewish documentary film-maker. His other works include Checkpoint (2003), 5 Days (2005), and Flipping Out (2008).
Born in Tel Aviv in 1970, Shamir professes never to have experienced anti-Semitism, although he has heard about it all his life. He has decided, therefore, to go abroad in search of anti-Semitism, traveling to the United States, Russia, Ukraine, and Poland. Read more …
10,030 words
Editor’s Note:
This is the fourth and final part (for now) of Derek Hawthorne’s series on the German “mountain films” of the 1920s and 30s. See the author’s review of North Face for an overview of this genre, its principal characteristics, and why it should interest readers of Counter-Currents.
1. Introduction: From Vertical to Horizontal
S.O.S. Iceberg
2,903 words
English original here
Collin Cleary – l’énigmatique sage de Sandpoint, dans l’Idaho – surgit sur la scène intellectuelle il y a presque dix ans, avec la publication du premier volume du journal TYR: Myth—Culture—Tradition. Read more …
2,930 words
The 2009 French film A Prophet, directed by Jacques Audiard, is one of the best prison/crime films (it contains elements of both) I have seen in a long time. In its gritty realism, it is a throwback to the greatest prison films of bygone eras. Read more …
1,157 words
Rise of the Planet of the Apes is a triumph of intelligent film making. The plot is interesting and well executed, the direction is fast paced and engaging without being too heavy handed, and the apes are brought to life with astonishing realism. In fact, the brilliance of the apes’ characterization, largely due to the presence of the “performance capture” actor Andy Serkis, is so compelling that the best parts of the film center on the apes’ captivity and the way in which they interact with each other. Read more …
2,965 words
“He Writes! You Read!”
Jonathan Lethem
They Live
Soft Skull Press, 2010
Constant readers will know that I not infrequently make use of images or lines from John Carpenter’s schlock-cult classic They Live. Read more …
