Books April 2019

THE MIDNIGHT CHOIR

THE DEATH OF THE COMMANDER. Book 1
Haruki Murakami · Tusquets · 2018
The Japanese writer Haruki Murakami combines the best-selling aspect – from the global boom of Tokio blues– with the seal of a prestigious writer, in fact, His name is heard every year for the Nobel Prize in Literature.. Although this circumstance is not precisely due to his most read books. The one who points to bestseller es The death of the commander, where with his usual simple prose, build a story of intrigue in which the fantastic interacts with the everyday. Very Murakami. A portrait painter who has just separated from his wife takes refuge in the old house of a famous painter and finds in the attic an enigmatic painting that contains secrets from the past.. S.M.

EASY READING
Cristina Morales Anagram · 2018
Cristina Morales invents In Easy reading various literary genres and interweaves them: the minutes of a libertarian assembly that question the system and confront its contradictions, statements in court, a novel written by Watsupp with the Easy Reading technique… This is a daring and original book like few others., in substance and form, about four women with some degree of “intellectual disability” who have spent their lives monitored and supervised by the Administration, but they have a lot to say, and very lucid. About their lives, his sexuality, feminism or heteropatriarchy oppressor. Tand shake. S.M.

WOMEN IN SPORTS
Rachel Ignotofsky · Nordic Comic & Captain Swing · 2018
Women in sports summarizes the achievements of some of the most important athletes of the history, not only for its competitive results, especially for breaking down stereotypes and tear down the barriers that have been imposed on women due to gender since the world was created. Women like the Japanese Keiko Fukuda, the first woman to reach 6th dan in judo; the british cyclist Beryl Burton, who broke a men's speed record in 1967; Wilma Rudolph, the first African American to win three gold medals in athletics at the same Olympics; the russian Nadia Comaneci, a fourteen-year-old girl who, at the Olympic Games in 1976 got a perfect score of 10 in her routine on the uneven bars; the italian fencer Valentina Vezzali, the only one to have won individual and team gold medals in three consecutive Olympics; or the American Danica Patrick, the first woman in history to win a race IndyCar. With naive illustrations and clear and simple language, Rachel Ignotofsky puts into value, for big and small, the sporting exploits of women who bit their way into a traditionally masculine world. S.M.

THE FILM PRESS IN SPAIN (1910-2010)
Jorge Nieto Ferrando and José Enrique Monterde · Shangrila · 2018
What is criticism for??, asked a reader of a general newspaper in the comments section of the film section regarding a recent commercial release.. The question, full of irony against the profession (The criticism referred to in the comment seemed to contradict the commenter's tastes.), result, however, relevant. Well that, What is film criticism for?? This is what this volume written in four hands by the professors of the University of Lleida tries to analyze., Jorge Nieto Ferrando, and the University of Barcelona, José Enrique Monterde. A ten-year effort of compiling and conscientiously reading all the printed magazines that, almost from the very birth of cinema, have existed in our country. It is important not to forget this first question that we asked ourselves..

Why, Of course, seen superficially, The book can be understood as a mere gloss for specialists from all the publications who at some point in our recent history dedicated all or part of their dissemination work to the study and analysis, whether general or current, of cinematographic art. Focusing on the pages of the second block of the work and ordered alphabetically, we will find forgotten titles like Art and cinematography, edited in Barcelona and, according to the two specialists, first publication dedicated to cinema of which there is material evidence in Spain, passing through emblematic titles such as Film ideal, Cinestudio, Our cinema, Nosferatu, Photograms, Cinemania,Directed byo Cahiers du cinema-España. Many of its pages would pass by names that are now legendary, such as Roman Gubern., Richard Muñoz Suay, Jesus Franco, Emilio Martínez Lázaro, Manuel Matji, Ivan Zulueta, Jose Luis Garci, Carlos Losada, Carlos F. Heir, Victor Erice, José Mª Latorre, Esteve Rimbau, Quim Casas, Jordi Costa, Diego Galán and many, many more.

Definitely, Valencian readers will be interested in discovering the solid presence of publications that, over the decades, they carried out the dissemination work, reflection and criticism of cinema in our community. Although it is true that Valencian production is far from, in number of headers, with respect to Madrid or Barcelona, The amount places us in a very honorable third position. Already at the beginning of the twenties of the last century, titles such as At the ad,Artistic Lifey Cinematic life, the latter directed by Juan Piqueras, They would keep the Valencian public up to date with current cinematographic news. These would be followed by titles aimed at all types of audiences, of the most specialized, as Band Apart, Film Archives, dedicated to historiography and, we forget, a reference in our country, to general magazines such as the fanzine 2000 Maniacs. More than twenty headlines that, especially since the years 80, they account for a cultural activity that is not inconsiderable, this already emerged within the university environment, as is the case of publications like Atalanta, Cinema comics o Chained, of film festivals, as Exhibition notebooks, linked to the original Mostra del Mediterrani, or private, magazine caseRosebud.

But if Nieto and Monterde's book is especially interesting, it is precisely because of what it hides and reveals after this review of the content and the debates that, one way or another, they locked (and address, still) these posts. Debates that not only concern the development and evolution of cinematographic art throughout its short history, but as a reflection of a country's own culture. film criticism, as demonstrated in these pages, It is a faithful mirror of social interests, politicians, also aesthetics of a society. Of its successes and its contradictions because, Just as it happens in any other area of ​​human experience. (and for the authors of this volume, Criticism is an activity that concerns us especially, to our emotional and intellectual development) The criticism is a reflection of the concerns that, mistakenly or, They assaulted and assault those who exercise it. An exercise that, is often forgotten, necessarily involves a confrontation. Against what? Against the world that has touched us at every moment, (from the beginning of the promising 20th century, going through the Second Republic, Post-Civil War, The Transition and the subsequent democratic stage). Against generally accepted taste, echo of the dominant thought of any era, and there we will find the eternal and, as it seems, never resolved struggle to find its own way that confronts the influence of folklorism (Spanish calls) and places us alongside other cinemas in the world. Or the irresolvable discussion between market and industry versus the artistic and cultural product (commercial cinema versus author and reflective cinema), also against the complacency of that same criticism, of their tics and dependencies, both aesthetic, as policies. It's about all these issues, when the book by Jorge Nieto Ferrando and José Enrique Monterde gains true height.

but then, What is the point of criticism??, we asked ourselves at the beginning of this chronicle. I think that, after reading this work, We can affirm that its value lies as an element (another one, but certainly not negligible given the value of cinema as a transmission of ideas and emotions) of that arduous and constant conversation that a society maintains with itself. G.LEON