Now I’m a Believer

April 12, 2008

I’m so digging on The Believer Magazine’s 2008 Film Issue.

This is the first time i’ve ever bought a copy. I’ve read it at friends’ houses, i’ve been to the website– i’ve long been a fan of Heidi Julavitz (In grad-school I studied for a couple of semester’s under her hubby Ben Marcus). But for some reason i’ve never bought one of my own. I think I was a little afraid of it– you know, like it was one of the cool kids and I was one of the geeks?

Well who’s a cool kid now, huh?

Now i’m thinking of getting a subscription.

Boo rah.

It doesn’t hurt that there is a cool drawing on the cover (one that includes Tippi Hedren–a definite plus) by Charles Burns.

In addition, there are interviews with Todd Haynes and Errol Morris (with Werner Herzog); Chuck Klosterman’s take on Road Pictures; an awesome article on Hitchcock’s mistake in not casting Henry Fonda as the lead in Vertigo (the role went to Jimmy Stewart); a great article by Jim Shepard called The Vanishing and American Sociopathy; and killer drawings of cameras by Paul McCreery (my new favorite artist).

Oh, and did I mention there is a DVD– part 1 of the film Pervert’s Guide To Cinema by documentarian Sophie Fiennes– which is “designed to lure you into Slavoj Zizek’s web of psychoanalytic theories on the nature of movies, desire, and fantasy.” It’s an illustrated lecture where Zizek inserts himself into the film clips he discusses (the locations and sets real and simulated)– including “Tippi Hedren’s boat on Bodega Bay” from The Birds.

Fabulous!