Now I know I mention British film publication Sight & Sound quite often (I don’t work for them, honest), but they keep printing such good stuff. The September issue, just out, has an extensive career profile, with accompanying interview, on Clint Eastwood – a happy coincidence in the week that our friend Mr Foote’s book on the man has emerged.
The piece, by the venerable Geoff Andrew, echoes the oft-stated view – one I understand, but still don’t share – that Eastwood is America’s finest living filmmaker, one who “believes in the old-fashioned art of drawing us into a film rather than in displays of virtuosity.”
There’s also an evaluation of “Changeling” in which Andrew disagrees with S&S’s editor, and matches the breathless trade paper reviews at Cannes, making lofty comparisons to “Chinatown” and “LA Confidential” to boot:
J. Michael Straczynski’s deft script and Eastwood’s measured, quietly meticulous mise en scene manage to fashion (many) disparate elements into a complex, multi-stranded but entirely coherent drama … What’s possibly most impressive is the way Eastwood makes it all look so easy; as the story steadily grows broader and deeper in its import, it still feels like a damned good yarn.
With each review I read, I change my mind regarding the contender status of this oddly-scheduled film – Andrew’s take certainly suggests it has the gravitas to the distance, though there’s nothing on Angelina Jolie’s much-hyped performance. (Neither the profile nor the interview, however, feature any reference to “Gran Torino,” which is still something of a mystery package sitting in prime awards-season territory.)
Some of you may know that our own John Foote, in addition to toiling away in the life of a film critic and educating the next generation of Canadian filmmaking talent at the Toronto Film School, is also an author.