Too late! The editors of The Believer are already pointing at you and laughing.

The March/April edition is dedicated to The Believer’s annual film issue. Printed in full-color and with a glossy cover and expensive-smelling pages, the 2009 Film Issue will cost you $10… money well spent if you’re interested in well-written, albeit mightily spirit-sapping, prose and a unique intellectual approach to the discussion of the cinematic arts.

One of the high points of this issue is an intelligent dissection of the works of Guillermo del Toro by Victoria Nelson in which she brings to bear a keen understanding of fantastic works within their historical and psychological contexts. She manages to preserve her enthusiasm for his work through an in-depth discussion of each of his films as well as the Gothic/Gothick arts movement which she sees them belonging to.

Michael Atkinson gives us a beautifully written, although at times frustratingly intellectual, story on Polish film posters. Atkinson concentrates on the unique place Polish film posters have resided in for some time — artworks that serve not only to advertise the films they represent but are striking works in their own right. A two-page, full color section is provided displaying some very haunting and original works for everything from Raiders of the Lost Ark to the Ackroyd/Murphy comedy Trading Places.

Natasha Boas’s interview with Julie Delpy is enjoyable. The author managed to conduct a trans-continental phone interview with a very pregnant Delpy in which the actress intelligently discusses both her past work and planned works. Although my inner schoolgirl threw a fit that there was no mention made of the possibility of a third installment in the Sunrise/Sunset franchise, I was placated to find out that Delpy (along with being an actress, writer, director, and astonishingly beautiful) likes science fiction. Delpy’s current project is the The Countess, a film about Elizabeth Bathory.

What kept me from enjoying their film issue is the snarky attitude that seemed to be boiling away just beneath the surface of everything that was written. I didn’t manage to trudge through the entire magazine, because I was struck with the unswervable feeling that the people behind The Believer are the sort of people who had lots of allergies as children. To be sure, it is very immature and cheap of me to sneeze at an entire magazine just because it made me feel like the bone-heaving chimp from 2001 because I only read The Atlantic, but who said Video Funhouse couldn’t be immature and cheap?

The magazine has an annoying habit of providing a shopping list of all of the interesting things that are supposedly discussed in each article, right beneath the author’s byline under the heading “Discussed.” For example, at the beginning of Nelson’s otherwise terrific piece on the works of del Toro, the reader is lead to believe that H.P. Lovecraft is going to be “discussed.” However, he is mentioned only because del Toro plans on making a film version of his story At the Mountains of Madness. Merely mentioning something isn’t discussing it.

The issue comes packaged with a DVD containing short films and remembrances of a visit to the USA by Jean-Luc Godard. I love Godard — add Week End to your queue immediately — but even I couldn’t be coaxed to take the DVD out of its glossy wrapper and invest any time in it. The DVD includes two episodes of The Dick Cavett Show in which “profundities hurtle past at an astonishing clip” (as they put it) along with “a slideshow of Jeffrey Blankfort’s photographs of Godard’s visit to the Bay Area at the time of Huey Newton’s trial in Oakland.” I am unashamed to admit that I lack the chutzpah or fortitude or what-have-you to slog through that. The DVD description alone had me dashing to my computer in hopes of finding a Criterion Collection edition of Watching Paint Dry to add to my queue.

Surely The Believer, along with iphones and segways, will be among the artifacts left for archaeologists to dust off once the nerd rapture occurs. However, I still think you’re better off spending the $10 (zoinks!) they want you to pay for their magazine on actually checking out some of the films they seem hell-bent on intellectualizing to death.

Allow me for a moment, if you will, to wax rhapsodic about one of my favorite literary organizations, that being McSweeney’s. Every quarter McSweeney’s publishes their Quarterly Concerns, which is not only one of the coolest literary magazines imaginable, and the design of the magazine is often as amazing and fascinating as the works contained within it. McSweeney’s also publishes books from obscure and long forgotten authors, as well as works from widely read and respected modern authors, often times selling these works for ridiculously cheap prices (it is not uncommon that once a month a book be reduced to $.01) and often times donating much or all of the proceeds to various charities. McSweeney’s is an organization devoted to the advancement of art and literature and I am proud to give my money to such an esteemed organization.

Several years ago Nick Hornby (of High Fidelity fame) teamed up with several other writers to produce a new semi-monthly magazine from McSweeney’s entitled The Believer. It was filled with reviews and stories and original works and Amy Sedaris giving sex advice by proxy, everything one would want from a literary magazine. The Believer also accomplished two very important things, at least in my little corner of the world. The April ‘06 issue contained an interview with Paul Giamatti that was so fascinating and enjoyable I can safely call it the best interview I have ever had the pleasure of reading. The Etgar Keret interview in the same issue isn’t half bad either. But that was just the beginning, as later I would read their September ‘06 issue, simply referred to as the games issue. The issue was so captivating I have no qualms in naming it the best issue of any magazine I have ever read. Thus knocking off the July of ‘84 issue of Ranger Rick, a feat I previously deemed impossible. (more…)