CINEASTE: A World-Class Movie Magazine

Today's new MagSampler.com premiere is no B-feature: it's Cineaste, a world-class quarterly movie magazine published in New York. It bills itself as "America's leading magazine on the art and politics of the cinema." Cineaste is not for the denizen of the local multiplex, but for film aficionados who are interested in classic motion pictures and the best and most interesting films from around the world. I was startled to hear on National Public Radio the other day that while foreign films were represented by 10-15% of the movies shown in U.S. theaters only a decade or two in the past, today that figure is down to perhaps 1%. Sadly, people seeking movies from sources other than the big five studios in Hollywood have to live in a very big city or have access to some good cable television stations and video rental stores. And they'd also be well served to subscribe to Cineaste. Typical of the articles in Cineaste is the one that starts off the recent issue we've just received. By Tullio Kezich, the film critic of the Italian daily Corriere della Sera, it's a captivating account of the genesis and production of Federico Fellini's "La Dolce Vita," set in Rome's very hot Via Veneto of the early 1960s. Early in the article you find that the death of the very strait-laced Pope Pius XII in 1958 was a liberating event for hip Romans, leading to the street party that the Via Veneto became in subsequent years. This also was a formative time for the paparazzi who learned to form useful alliances: Photographer A would take an intrusive picture of, say, Anita Ekberg. When she or her escort would lash out at the offending photographer, Photographers B & C would be standing ready to take that much more interesting and lucrative shot. All this great stuff is just in the opening paragraphs of a seven-page story about the making of the movie. This is followed by a profile of Russ Meyer, king of the big-boobed movies of the 1950s and 1960s. This issue of Cineaste also features a symposium of film critics from around the world, who write of their problems with readers who, like Americans, increasingly prefer a dumbed-down "thumbs-up and thumbs-down" approach in their movie reviews. You'll also find thoughtful reviews of new releases as well as provocative features such as "Gay-Themed Films of the German Silent Era." And where else can you find reports of the Toronto Film Festival and the Karlovy Vary (Czechoslovakia) Film Festival? Not to be cinenasty, but the type in this magazine tends to be very small―after a while you feel like you're trying to read the subtitles on a French film broadcast to your cellphone screen. But that's a small flaw in an overall superior production. An annual subscription (four issues) to Cineaste is $20.00 from the publisher; you can get a sample copy from us for $2.59.