The February 2009 issue of Sight & Sound is out now, complete with the following contributions by me:
- cinema review of Boogie (d. Radu Muntean, Romania)
- short Blu-ray review of Baraka (d. Ron Fricke, 1992, US)
plus short DVD reviews of:
- I Was A Soldier (d. Michael Grigsby, 1970, UK)
- Of Love and Eggs (d. Garin Nugroho, 2004, Indonesia)
- Yesterday, Today and Tomorrow (d. Vittorio de Sica, 1963, Italy)
- The Ruling Class (d. Peter Medak, 1972, UK)
- Winter Soldier (d. Fred Aronow et al, 1972, US)
- Legend of the Surami Fortress (d. Sergo Paradjanov, 1984, USSR)
- Ashik Kerib (d. Sergo Paradjanov, 1988, USSR)
The Paradjanov reviews are a follow-up to a full-page feature that I wrote exactly two years earlier, which looked at all DVD releases of his films to date. Happily, both these new Artificial Eye discs turned out to be a clear first choice for those titles (the one for Legend of the Surami Fortress restores most of the original Georgian soundtrack, missing from the Russian-dubbed Ruscico edition), even if an ideal version of The Colour of Pomegranates still remains a pipe dream.