Venerable French magazine Cahiers du cinema (yup, it's still in existence) today launched its first English language edition, which will be available both in print and online for an annual fee. For $45, English-language readers will now be able to subscribe to a year's worth of the magazine (11 regular issues + 1 special issue).

Cahiers will also offer free online supplements. Currently featured on the publication's Web site is a diary about the making of Pascale Ferran's film, Lady Chatterley, based on the licentious 1928 novel by D.H. Lawrence.

The English-language electronic version of Cahiers will be a translated version of the French print version. "Our project is not to edit a different journal… It is to be able to share the Cahiers' love of the cinema and its work with the cinema throughout the whole world," writes editor Jean-Michel Frodon in his introduction.

"To create e-Cahiers today means taking account of contemporary realities, attempting to mobilize the best of them for the work the journal does and for the cinema itself. At the same time, it means opposing the standarization of thought by bringing into existence at the international level… approaches and questions that have been increasingly marginalized," Frodon continues.

The March 2007 issue includes a slew of articles on the work of filmmaker Jacques Rivette, a round-up of recent documentaries, a French take on American TV (The Wire, Six Feet Under, The West Wing and The Sopranos) and thoughts about the Sundance film festival in the wake of Little Miss Sunshine.

So if you're seeking unapologetically poncy and contrarian film criticism that makes assertions like Friends With Money and The Devil Wears Prada are all about convincing people that materialism is good, then Cahiers du cinema is the magazine for you.