Grab your dictionaries! It's time for the third installment of our magazine week and today, we're going to dive into the heady world of the film mag. Are we looking at Hollywood Online or Premiere? No way. Besides, they're not even homegrown Canuck.

Today I'm going to give you a feel for CineAction, a great magazine if you're a serious cinephile with a good understanding of Marxism, French philosophy and semiotics. Oh dear, I imagine you're either frothing at the bit with anticipation, or clicking the mouse to make me go away.

Don't do it! Hear me out. This is actually a great mag with a viable mission. CineAction is not solely about making money (which is good enough reason for me to consistently snap it up), nor is it about pandering to the dumbing down the general populace (another good reason to buy a copy.) Rather CineAction was created by a group of film intelligentsia, anxious for the Canadian populace to have an arena for thoughtful cinematic discourse. Former York University film professor Robin Wood and a collective of other movie theorists huddle around the projector, decide on a general thematic, assemble a series of pertinent essays and produce a thoughtful collection of cinematic ruminations.

The latest copy is called "What Happened" and its primary intent is to "consider the direction that the cinema has taken over the past decade or so with regards to an assessment of the major trends that have come to dominate the industry." There is a great essay by Geoff King that discusses the mirroring of the Hollywood thrill ride movie and its theme park counterpart. (Think Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom and the Disneyland ride.) King begins his article by reminding us how the movies began as an arcade attraction and now seem to be fulfilling the same function.

Diane Wiener provides a disturbing look at the current misogynistic representations of women in the science fiction genre. Initially they appear to be heroic, but Wiener effectively deconstructs several movies that's got me curious to study the Alien series again. And Robin Wood discusses Splendour, the latest cinematic offering from one of Wood's favourite contemporary filmmakers, Gregg Araki. If you haven't seen an Araki film, you should rent one. Araki is a queer filmmaker and his movies are definitely of the "in your face" variety, but they're marvelous reflections on disaffected youth with nothing to lose and nowhere to go.

This distinctly post-modern edition is augmented by several essays on world cinema (Ireland & New Zealand), plus a piece on "How Film Exhibition Has Changed in the Past 50 Years."

CineAction is published three times yearly, so get it while you can.

This week's earlier columns: