Editor's Note.

By Mark Peranson

This is the annual “let’s throw things together ahead of schedule, cross our fingers, and pray we’re done in time” issue of Cinema Scope, and if you’re picking this magazine up sometime in September of 2006, it means we’ve succeeded. Hooray.

In all seriousness, we went a little wider with the last issue, and that exposure has generated a lot of reader response, in equal parts negative and positive. Thanks to all of you who have written, and I apologize if I didn’t get back to you (if you were one of the positives). Thanks to Nathan Lee from The New York Times, and also Glenn Kenny from Premiere, as there’s no such thing as bad publicity.

Where do we go from there? More of the same, on one hand: articles on directors that you might not be familiar with (Otar Iosseliani, Xavier Beauvois), directors whose names you might know, and might wonder what the hell they’re doing in here (William Friedkin, Adam McKay), and our regular crowd-pleasing columns, that continue to impress and baffle me in equal measure.

Perhaps it’s out of some unconscious will to put off new readers, but it’s not from some misguided nationalism (and certainly not to please the funders), that I present a very modest “Canadian Spotlight” in this issue (I had hoped it would be a wee bit larger, but, hey, shit happens). The films under discussion, I think, stand up very well in comparison to those around them (on that note, a belated commendation to Toronto festival programmers for integrating Canadian films alongside international fare). Even though I probably should have proceeded in the opposite direction, sometimes a point needs to be made: so the Canadian articles have been handily arranged to allow you to can skip right over them. Please don’t. And, even better, go see the films when they’re released, so we can all stop hearing filmmakers whine about the lack of support they get from audiences outside of festivals.

Speaking of festivals…Sorry people, but again this year’s it’s hard to come up with ten new films to recommend, as I think we’ve done a pretty bang-up job covering the year’s output to date. As a change of pace, let’s split the difference, looking backwards and also including a bit of hope for those of you who are put off by the downbeat nature of the writing in this space (I disagree with that assessment, but keep the hate mail coming).

So, five films that haven’t been covered in previous issues, but are more than worth your money: the terrific Belle toujours (Manoel de Oliveira, France); The Host (Bong Joon-ho, South Korea); Glue (Alexis dos Santos, Argentina); and two solid Germans, Windows on Monday (Ulrich Köhler) and Requiem (Hans-Christian Schmid). And, the added bonus for those who care, five films I’m looking forward to seeing: Black Book (Paul Verhoeven, Netherlands), of course; Coeurs (Alain Resnais, France); Rain Dogs (Ho Yuhang, Malaysia); Little Children (Todd Field, USA); and, last, but I guess not least, something called Inland Empire (David Lynch, France/USA).

Finally, for those eager readers looking for even more on Colossal Youth, keep watching these pages; part two is coming up real soon. Vote for Pedro!

—Mark Peranson