Electric Shadow

Foxing Around

The Fantastic Mr. Fox Blu-ray is how the movie will really gain a following, just as so many wonderful animated features have had a much bigger audience on video than in theaters. The HD transfer is absolutely flawless from the digital still source, with no obvious evidence of DNR. Audio is cleanly divided between channels and mixed beautifully. This is one of the most flawless releases of the year thus far (on a basic AV/technical level).

The 6 or 7 featurettes are collected on the Blu as Making Mr. Fox Fantastic, a play-all that includes a bit about the "how" they did the stop-motion, a piece on the adaptation, some time with the cast, and a few minutes dedicated to just Bill Murray. In all, they run around 45 minutes. Separately available from the menu is a 3-minute bit called Fantastic Mr. Fox: The World of Roald Dahl, which is narrated by Dahl's widow Felicity. DVD buyers only get three of these, excluding the Murray one most notably. My position on buying DVDs when a Blu-ray edition exists is quite definitively on the record, so in my recommendation keep in mind I'm acting as if the DVD doesn't exist. This is one of the select number of movies of last year that I'd rather own than occasionally rent or catch on cable. The under-an-hour of supplements don't faze me either, as they're a nice thing to have, but I'm more partial to the presentation of the feature here. I'd prefer a price closer to $20 than the $24.99 Amazon is listing it for, but the movie is worth that to me. The accompanying feast I'll cook myself will cost more, but I'll try to keep myself down to a couple of cookies and some cider each time.
Read More

Samir at FFF

I've asked my friend and former colleague Samir Mathur, Britain's greatest export of the last ten years, to cover this year's Florida Film Festival. Below you'll find his self-introduction, which includes some constructive criticism regarding the annual festival calendar. ------------------------------------------------------- Hi, everyone! My name is Samir and I'll be writing about the Florida Film Festival, which is taking place in northern Orlando starting next Friday. OK, so it's not as big and established as SXSW or Sundance, but it's one of the biggest in this area. Here's some of the things I'm looking forward to, and hopefully I'll make at least some, and at most a few, of these titles. The opening night feature is Paper Man, with hey-I've-heard-of-them actors Jeff Daniels, Lisa Kudrow, Ryan Reynolds (as "Captain Excellent"), Emma Stone and Keiran Culkin. There's a couple of exciting-sounding music documentaries playing: there's The Sun Came Out, about Neil Finn from Crowded House, who gathered a bunch of indie A-listers to his house in New Zealand to make a record; and Strange Powers, which follows Stephen Merritt, the main guy behind The Magnetic Fields, who make music that is ideally suited for getting drunk and moping around your apartment to. Is that an endorsement? It's supposed to be. Disney World is only half an hour away, so we're getting Waking Sleeping Beauty, which you may have caught at some other festivals earlier this year. Likewise, Best Worst Movie, except that one is about the making of Troll 2 (also playing at FFF, as a midnight selection) and not, like, Aladdin 2: The Return of Jafar. As a comedy nerd, I'm excited about Drones, starring at least two people that were on Freaks and Geeks, as well as James Urbaniak and Paul F. Tompkins. I expect a chuckle every six minutes, or else I'll be mad. But not that mad. As far as documentaries go, I like the sound of Cleanflix, which concerns a guy in Utah who takes new release movies and makes them more appropriate for the family audience. Anyone that's ever chuckled at that Youtube clip of John Goodman saying "This is what happens when you find a stranger in the Alps, Donnie!" should keep an eye out for this one. Among the cool special events to look out for, there's a program in honour of John Cassavetes, which'll feature a conversation with Gena Rowlands and Seymour Cassel, and a screening of Faces. I'll confess: I don't know much about Cassavetes, but I do know all about the Hold Steady song 'Slapped Actress', which is all about his film Opening Night, so that sort of counts, right? Now a brief rant. As I said before, and as you probably know, we don't get many film festivals down here in Florida. That's okay. I've sort of resigned myself to that. So when one comes along, like FFF is, that's very exciting for us. If only there were more festivals like this, right? Ooh! Sarasota Film Festival, you say? That's only, like three hours away from here! I can't wait! When is it? What?! The EXACT same days as Florida Film Festival? So nobody can attend both festivals? And the two festivals are competing to screen the same titles and competing for celebrity attendees? Why, that just seems ridiculous. Whose idea was this? The people running each festival didn't talk to each other? Lame. In the words of a greater man than I, it makes me madder than a rattlesnake at a Thai wedding. Oh, and young upstart Tallahassee Film Festival is also running during the same period. Three film festivals within a six-hour radius of each other? We're spoiled! Three film festivals within a six-hour radius of each other all at the same time? Never mind. I'm not letting that get me down too much, though. I'll be checking in with some posts during the festival, and you can keep an eye out on my twitter page (@samirmathur) for more instant updates.
Read More

Red Cliff: Naturalized At Last

I've been covering John Woo's Red Cliff for almost two years now. It's a major achievement in the history of Chinese cinema and a thrilling epic war film. Cliff was released a few months apart in China, with the first installment hitting timed to the 2008 Beijing Olympics. Instead of Red Cliff, we filthy Americans got The Mummy: Tomb of the Dragon Emperor. Does anyone remember that Mummy 3 existed at this point?

Red Cliff tells the story of one of (if not the most) famous and notable battle in Chinese history. It takes place early in the third century CE, and supports a full load of main characters and subplots without coming remotely close to turning into Finnegan's Wake. The movie touches on love, jealousy, feminism, philosophy...a little of everything is folded into an epic battle narrative. Tony Leung (In the Mood for Love) and Takeshi Kaneshiro (House of Flying Daggers, The Warlords) headline the epic more than capably. In many ways, Red Cliff was a coming together for many of the big names in the Chinese industry as well as a catalyst for career explosion in a few cases (thus far). Vicki Zhao (Shaolin Soccer, the upcoming 14 Blades), one of the female leads, would go on to star in a big-budget production of Mulan (available for import as we speak). The only possible hurdle still out there for getting this in front of actual eyes is the fact that there are eight different retail SKUs of Red Cliff between DVD & Blu-ray as of this Tuesday (23 March). They break down thusly: (1) the full original cut including both Part I and Part II, (2) Part I only, (3) Part II only, and finally (4) the condensed "international" cut. It really baffles me why they issued single SKUs for Part I and Part II individually. These aren't Batman Begins and The Dark Knight, this is Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows A and B. Anyone who wants Part I will want Part II. There's less and less shelf space out there by the day due to declining home video sales, so why offer four redundant options? Clearly, the choice for the discerning consumer is the Original Cut. Unfortunately, the "international" chop-down has the more sexed-up, action movie cover and may result in a pile of "I got the wrong one, and I know it's opened, but there's like eight of these things and it was an honest mistake" trips to Best Buy. I'm assuming most mass-market retailers are only carrying the "international" version, DVD-only. My only other sticking point on this release is that the same English language dub track is the default audio track just as on other foreign language releases from Magnolia. On the upside, that means the only negative notes I have are on packaging (materialistic and meaningless) and a menu option that takes all of 20 seconds to change. In the transfer department, I've only seen three of the eight different options (Blu-ray Original Cut and DVD International), so I have less than comprehensive knowledge of how it all looks. My comparative knowledge comes from an relatively long-ago viewing of parts I & II on Hong Kong Blu-ray and current R3 DVD copies I have of the same. The US DVD of the international version does suffer from compression artifacting in areas one would expect from a 2.5-hour movie on a dual-layer DVD: any dark scenes, the "tortoise" battle scene with all the dust blowing around, and so on. I imagine that's much less a problem on the Blu-ray, but not having seen it, I can't be certain. The US Blu-ray Original Cut movies look just as I remember the Hong Kong discs looking, and are probably from the same HD mastering. It's utterly resplendent and receives my highest recommendation with the only qualifier being that I'm not all the way through both parts yet. If my opinion changes, you'll see an update in the following week. Extras include The Making of an Epic: Red Cliff and an interview with John Woo. There's the Magnolia/Magnet standard HDNet promo for the movie and some storyboards, but the two featurettes are the actual meat here. Amazon has the only edition you should consider at the "best price I can find" of $25.49.
Read More

Free Willy Goes Fourth

This week saw the release of Free Willy: Escape from Pirate's Cove, starring Bindi Irwin and Beau Bridges. It's not great, but not altogether terrible. I sincerely like that it's very very preachy about species conservation and locking up wild animals in "habitats" roughly the size of what they'd consider a bathtub. This is not unexpected, with the daughter of "Crocodile Hunter" Steve Irwin headlining the thing. Bindi plays the daughter of an American veterinarian living in Australia. Her dad injures himself and in a quantum leap of logic, she is sent off to Cape Town, South Africa to stay with her grandfather (Bridges), who owns a run-down amusement park. The only other notable actor in the show is a tiny South African penguin (not kidding, he's very funny). I found it curious that nowhere in the extras did they mention that they only used CG and mechanical Orcas in the movie. I would figure they'd tout this fact, but it's left completely untouched. The extras include a pop-up fact track, three featurettes focusing on Bindi's life on-set, some deleted scenes and outtakes.
Read More

The World Around Us

In Magnolia's Wonderful World, Matthew Broderick plays Ben Singer, a would-be professional children's folk singer in his forties with a dead-end job and no prospects. He has a profoundly cynical view of the world and alleges that The Man is always out to get everyone down. The Man is played by Phillip Baker Hall (not a joke).

Ben is a divorcee and has his daughter on occasional weekends, wherein he continues to poison her optimistic view of the world. He has a Senegalese roommate named Ibou who challenges him at every negative thought, but Ben bats him away every time. Ibou's sister Khadi (Sanaa Lathan) appears after Ibou takes ill and takes his place in trying to turn Ben around on the world. In a way, Wonderful World plays like an alternate universe spin on what Greenberg is trying to do: take a disillusioned 40ish man and question his cynical, aimless lifestyle by throwing an attractive younger woman at him. The thing that kept coming into my head while watching was that I felt like I was seeing a decade-later, more downtrodden look at Broderick's character from Election, but without any of the comedy. There a very satisfying courtroom speech Broderick gives that manages to work in talk about box office grosses that speaks to how everything revolves around big huge financial numbers and nothing else seems to matter. I was surprised to find out that director Goldin was a credited writer on Darkman, which certainly features a lot of trademark Raimi flourishes, but I could sense some spiritual connection between the more grounded dialogue there and the same type of writing here. Extras on the Blu-ray include a Behind the Scenes Montage as well as featurettes As Soon As Fish Fall From the Sky: Character & Story and Behind the Scenes: Working with Writer/Director Josh Goldin and Actor Matthew Broderick. Give it a look, since it really isn't on the radar of most.
Read More

Me and Richard Schickel

I read Richard Schickel's work at Time a little bit here and there over the years. When the opportunity arose to interview him in relation to the release of the Clint Eastwood 35 Years 35 Films box set, I said yes without thinking twice. Little did I know this giant time commitment was about to drop into my lap.

I feel terrible for only just getting this transcribed and up when the set came out weeks ago. In something of a blessing, the recent inside-baseball controversy around Schickel's comments about having never really loved movies at a screening of Gerald Peary's For Love of the Movies happened after I'd originally intended to post this, so now there's some additional context for what follows. On top of that, Kevin Smith went on a Twitter tear about critics himself, so the critic-talent relationship has once again gotten hot as a topic. Schickel is involved with the box set inasmuch as a 20-minute clip of his forthcoming The Eastwood Factor documentary is included as "#35". The box set is the largest authorized and official set compiling one artist's work. I've inserted a few thoughts and impressions throughout our conversation as transcribed below. I started by asking, "What surprised you the most when putting together The Eastwood Factor? Did you discover anything new about your friend Clint?" Richard's breathing was heavy, and he had a bit of a 30's gangster snarl in his voice, which was unintentionally charming to me. He was ready and willing to go full on crank with this nobody kid he's never heard of, but generally gave me the benefit of the doubt and stayed away from completely programmed answers. Schickel: "Not really. What's nice about the long version that'll go out on TV in the fall is that he's in such good humor for a lot of it. It's not a typical TV interview, where everyone is a stranger. He's loose and relaxed. Nobody has filmed him like that." Me: "Do you the first film you saw Clint in?" Schickel: "I really can't remember the first one I saw him in, but the first one that really impressed me was The Beguiled. It questioned all the conventional presentations of masculinity in the movies. It's this young actor and these previously unquestioned values in conflict before anyone was really doing that. Dirty Harry is another great example. There's this wistfulness and sadness, a lonely guy detached from the mainstream. People initially saw it as just this guy running around with a big gun." Me: "Do you get an impression there are aspects of character personalities he specifically likes to return to consciously? Are there titles you think he wishes had been more broadly-seen?" Schickel: "There is this theme you see running through a lot of his work: a family under pressure, a family being torn apart. Honky Tonk Man and A Perfect World weren't well-received and have some distance yet to travel. He always had more ambition than most ad would do more than just the bare minimum so that the movies would just speak for themselves. Letters From Iwo Jima is a great example where he went much further than he had to in terms of effort." Me: "Is there any ground you feel he wants to cover that he hasn't been able to?" Schickel: "There's not a lot of self-consciousness. He reads something he likes, he does it. He leaves himself open to do something interesting that wasn't on his radar the day before." Me: "Do you think there's some really under-appreciated Clint work out there that needs more exposure or championing?" This is where things get kind of weird. His answer sounds like I asked a completely different question. Schickel: "You've gotta recognize his first success was on Rawhide. Not many people come out of TV and have movie careers. Steve McQueen is probably another guy like that. Pauline Kael and others were convinced he was just this dumb hunk. Getting past that takes a lot of persistence and ambition." Maybe he thought I asked "how has Clint been under-appreciated"? The next bit almost exactly quotes V.O. narration he does in The Eastwood Factor. Schickel (con't): "The studio was a little dim on Million Dollar Baby. 'We see a boxing movie.' He said, 'well, I see a father-daughter love story.' Same thing on Mystic River. Clint, for all of his casual nature, is a very shrewd judge of material. If he wants to do something, then he's gonna do it, and not many stars are like that." He seemed to really hammer "Clint does his own thing" firmly into ever answer he gave me. Me: "Anything in particular he was offered and outright passed on?" Schickel: "Not really something he talks about. Once or twice in the course of our relationship, he's sent a couple of scripts over to me, and I say this not as some sort of boast, but...that's what our rapport is like. I'd give some general notes, or say 'you might think twice on this', and I wasn't the only person he ran things by, you know. The funny thing was, any notes I had for him he'd already thought of. It was as if he'd already basically decided to pass and wanted a second opinion before putting it away." Me: "So you've got a retrospective book coming?" Schickel: "Yeah, it should be out in late March, I think. There's a 20-page excerpt in the box set. It includes one essay on each film. The doc will go on Turner Classic Movies in late May, from what I'm told." Me: "Just one last thing: is you were to grab one movie out of the 34 in the box set out of all the others, which would you go for?" Schickel: "You know, I...hm. Unforgiven is such a great film, an interesting Western. It's still a really impressive Western. I was on that location for several weeks, so I have this natural prejudice in favor of it. Clint optioned the script by Peebles 10 years before actually doing it, because he needed to be 10 years older. It was a talisman for him. It was like having this nice little gold watch sitting in his pocket. He waited for the right moment, felt like it was the right time, and made it happen. The movie is wonderful and the story behind it happening is just as good." After a ton of time to reflect, I don't think it's that Schickel hates movies, he's just not remotely of the ravenous movie-lover breed that so many younger people are now. More interesting, though, is the fact that people perceived Schickel as a critic's critic in the first place. He's a journalist and filmmaker, but he has more in common with online writers who have no qualms fraternizing with the talent involved. I'm not going to make a judgment definitively on those relationships, because they are widely varied. Schickel was never going to defend the Kael's of the world because he never ran with that crowd of monks. I will say that he tells some good stories, a couple of which I took off the record. That snarly, jaded gangster voice never really subsided, however. The box set is currently $127.49 at Amazon, which averages out to $3.75 per movie plus the 20-page booklet, some letters, and photos. All the movies are now available on various digital download services as well, but the per-film cost is a lot lower in the box. Titles included in the box: Where Eagles Dare, 1968 Kelly's Heroes, 1970 Dirty Harry, 1971 Magnum Force, 1973 The Enforcer, 1975 The Outlaw Josey Wales, 1976 The Gauntlet, 1977 Every Which Way but Loose, 1978 Bronco Billy, 1980 Any Which Way You Can, 1980 Honkytonk Man, 1982 Firefox, 1982 Sudden Impact, 1983 City Heat, 1984 Tightrope, 1984 Pale Rider, 1985 Heartbreak Ridge, 1986 Bird, 1988 The Dead Pool, 1988 Pink Cadillac, 1989 White Hunter, Black Heart, 1990 The Rookie, 1990 Unforgiven, 1992 A Perfect World, 1993 The Bridges of Madison County, 1995 Absolute Power, 1997 Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil, 1997 True Crime, 1999 Space Cowboys, 2000 Blood Work, 2002 Mystic River, 2003 Million Dollar Baby, 2004 Letters from Iwo Jima, 2006 Gran Torino, 2008 The Eastwood Factor, Short Film, 2009
Read More

Blide Side Rental/Purchase Rally

This week's DVD/Blu-ray release of The Blind Side is unfortunately buoyed by the Jesse James Is a Moron scandal. The Blu has all the extras (interviews, featurettes), with additional scenes are the only thing that the DVD has in common with it on that front. I plan on spinning it later tonight and hope to cobble together something over the weekend. Without having seen it, but on the strength of John Lee Hancock's chops and those of Bullock, I was one of the only prognosticators to call it for a Best Picture nom the day before nominations were announced over on Sasha Stone's Awards Daily. We'll call that last sentence my Pete Hammond Moment.
Read More

Behind the Brothers Warner

I learned more about the real story behind some of Hollywood's most iconic brothers in an hour and a half than I did in years of college. Directed by one of the Warner granddaughters, The Brothers Warner is worthy of a standalone purchase by cinema history enthusiasts and Warner aficionados alike. It would be lovely if it were included in forthcoming mega collector's sets like the Wizard of Oz and Gone With the Wind boxes from last year, just so that more people see it.

I love the stories of how the greatest studios almost never were, and even more than that, docs like this one that cast doubt on the legend of the "faces" of success stories like Jack Warner. I wasn't aware the Warners were the only studio in Hollywood to stand up against the Nazis, either. There are copious anecdotes littered throughout by family members and colleagues (Debbie Reynolds, poor Dennis Hopper) alike. I replayed it on repeat twice after initially finishing it, because there's a lot to absorb. Amazon has it for $16.49, which is a bit steep. Keep it on your "to get/watch" list.
Read More

The Dawn of Reality TV...Believe It!


Host and legend Robert Ripley
Warner Archive released all 24 Ripley's Believe It or Not Vitaphone theatrical shorts last week, and they're hilarious. In the first of the bunch, our socially-awkward host Robert Ripley regales us with interesting facts like how Chinese people name their children by number and don't believe in proper names. In the first five minutes he says "everyone knows how much women like to talk".

Ripley's ~10-minute Vitaphone shorts were a spiritual predecessor to both the TV Info-mentary and reality shows whose hook is "believe it or not, this is what it's like out in the real world". It's odd that the ultra-connected world we live in hasn't made people more aware of the reality around them. Instead, it's programmed them with soundbites instead of real knowledge. Ripley's intent was quite different than the path we're on today. The WALL-E/Idiocracy world is coming to life (or death?) all around us... Warner Archive is offering The 1930-32 Ripley Vitaphone Collection for $16.21 for a limited time.
Read More

SXSWi2010: Mark Cuban vs. The Internet

One of the more interesting chats during SXSW Interactive happened between HDNet (and other things) owner Mark Cuban and Boxee founder Avner Ronen. Aside from the fire alarm that went off during the chat that forced a momentary evacuation of the premises, there were plenty of fireworks that amounted to The Big Question floating throughout SXSWi: how do you monetize a streaming model and not go out of business? Cuban was adamant that even though the internet piecemeal strategy Ronen is embracing serves more people in a better way, that he could still make better money sticking with the Network Zombie model. I find it hilarious that what's touted as the greatest achievement in home viewing tech over the last ten years is the capability to record, pause, and fast forward content, which we could all do with a VCR (albeit at much lower quality and precision). It's no secret that I've long been a proponent of re-packaging the perception of what "On Demand" is and following the lead that so many home DVRs are advancing: let the consumer be the programmer. I hate being stuck with a cable package that I use virtually none of with the exception of major networks and a few cable channels. I want more control over what I pay for what I want, and even with a DVR, I hate having to make sure that I set a recording in advance and navigate (at best) clunky interfaces that give me fits. It's double-silly that I can't access content from anywhere in the world, like the actual BBC channels and not just the repackaged "BBC America". By the end of the chat, I think Ronen made a significant amount of progress wearing Cuban down to an "I'll consider it" point. The terrible thing is that it's all feasible and doable both from a bandwidth and tech perspective, and the public wants it, but until the content hermits come down off the mountain, we won't get anywhere.
Read More

Retreat!

I didn't so much hate Couples Retreat as much as I wasn't particularly moved hither, thither, or yon. I liked the music by AR Rahman. I liked all of Jeno Reno's stuff as well as anything involving Peter Serafinowicz or Carlos Ponce (who steals the movie by a country mile). The best part for the couple weeks old Blu-ray are the "therapist outtakes" that include some brilliant riffing by John Michael Higgins and Ken Jeong. Everything else is disposable fluff.
Read More

Exclamation!

The Informant! was and remains one of the most criminally under-seen studio releases of last year. Everyone knows that Matt Damon is in it and that Steven Soderbergh directed, but the sheer number of A-grade comedians playing the various bureaucrats and other suits will astound and delight those who missed it, guaranteed. Listing them would spoil the effect, but suffice to say they're all a hoot point five while at once reserved and realistic.

Hamlisch's score is wonderful, adding the perfect accents in just the right places to a script that meanders in a very precise manner. The Blu-ray includes a feature commentary with Steven Soderbergh and screenwriter Scott Burns, and as with every Soderbergh track, it's worth the time. The yack track isn't on the DVD, which isn't something you can't easily explain away with a "disc space" excuse, but if you're buying to own, why would any serious collector get a DVD at this point? There are a few scenes deleted from the final film on both Blu-ray and DVD editions.
Read More

Pupsploitation

Oh, Air Bud, if only you knew what you wrought. When opening my review copy of The Princess and the Frog, I found that Disney is releasing another Air Bud spinoff puppy movie: The Search for Santa Paws. The original movie, as I recall, wasn't so bad. In it, a Golden Retriever played basketball. In the followup, Air Bud: Golden Receiver, he played football. In the weeks-ago released Special Edition of the movie, you can watch with color commentary by the "Buddies" from the recent trilogy of kids' movies. They're the gang of adorable little Retriever pups that represent why so many families are now getting those dogs because they saw them in a movie, not knowing how freaking huge they're gonna get.
Read More

Dracula's Intern

At this point, I suppose the only future for the Cirque du Freak franchise is a continuation via TV series. It got bumped big-time, underperformed baed on whatever bizarre standards the studio had for it, and isn't directly Twilight-ish. The Vampire's Assistant isn't a particularly bad film, and it would have fit something of a tween genre gateway niche. It had the bad fortune of coming to market after Twilight, and thereby got glommed into the flood of Vampire-wave riders.

The Blu-ray is the only way to watch all of the deleted scenes and featurettes. Only the "out of character" featurettes are really worth looking at.
Read More

Dynamite Pop Fizz

I heard negative word of mouth on Black Dynamite out of Sundance last year, but then heard they'd done some re-cutting. I figured, "hey, I'll give it a shot on video" and was somewhat pleasantly surprised. The movie did feel like a sketch at feature length, as I'd been warned. There were a few really gut-shaking gags and sequences, but at the end, I merely thought, "well, ok. Now what?"

I suppose the biggest issue I had with it was that it felt like they were trying too hard to cram a little of everything into the story and amalgamate multiple distinct styles of blaxploitation movies. It was as if they wanted to cover all the ground possible in one movie without giving proper attention to the "so what" that all of us watching care about. The guys dug the source material and certainly understood how to translate it better than the Bitch Slap guys, but I can't say the thing lit me on fire. That said, the commentary, deleted scenes, featurette, and Comic-Con presentation on the Blu-ray are all worth watching at least once unless the movie sends you into fits. Byron Minns, who co-wrote the movie and and co-stars as Bullhorn, steals the show out from under everyone. The man channels the actors of the era with uncanny skill. I'd love to see more work from this guy. Tommy Davidson's presence reminds me of In Living Color, one of the most consistently funny, reliably wonderful sketch comedy shows ever. In the world of genre satire, Black Dynamite is more ILC than SNL. More rough around the edges and unapologetically imperfect. There's some brains and social consciousness in place rather than a heavily corporatized vibe. I have no idea where Michael Jai White plans to take the announced sequel, but it's in my "well...might watch" column for now. We'll see. I've been talking myself out of going negative on Dynamite since I watched it, and here I'm wavering again. What they went after is charming, it is. I can respect the work these guys put into it even though what they look back on now as hilarious and goofy was the beginnings of money-making filmmaking for black people by black people. If this movie means more people watch actual films from the era like Black Gestapo (starring Mac from Night Court!) and don't just laugh at "those silly black folks". In that case, we're square in the Church of the Movie Godz, even though the movie isn't all that great or memorable for me.
Read More

Ninja Vapor

There's some terrific stunt work in Ninja Assassin, but there's no "there" there. From my Fantastic Fest review: "Contrary to a lot of the opinions I overheard at Fantastic Fest and that I've read since then, I don't think the action was too fast or too dark. I do think the movie could have been an amazing 20-minute short, however. The feature film that V for Vendetta director James McTeigue ended up with is one part bloody, violent fever dream and one part nostalgia for adults who grew up on the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles live action films of the 90's."

"Korean pop star-turned actor Rain (I'm A Cyborg, But That's OK) plays Raizo, a ninja assassin who goes rogue from his clan after they commit an unforgivable act of violence. Secret clans of ninja have apparently been killing people for centuries (accepting payment in gold), and Interpol is only now on their trail. The presence of various top grade actors like Randall Duk Kim, Rick Yune, and Ben Miles (best-known for Coupling, but he's done better) can't lift this one beyond being merely a great idea for a TV show from 1993." "The action is ultra-bloody and rather intricate, but the story just isn't terribly engaging. I saw much better martial arts movies with admittedly thin plots at Fantastic Fest this year. They had a tiny fraction of the budget this one had, but delivered ten times the entertainment. Assassin will appeal to anyone looking for an adrenalized action alternative to holiday/Oscar season movies when it opens in November, but it's not destined to be terribly memorable to anyone." The Blu-ray handles the dark scenes (most of the movie) really well. Blu-exclusive bonus features include a featurette all about The Myth and Legend of Ninjas, which dispels and informs, but meanders around far too long for my taste. Much more interesting was the ~10-minute and badly-titled The Extreme Sport of a Ninja, which touches on how much they relied on parkour practitioners to nail the balletic urban brawling they wanted. Training Rain is primarily focused on covering how tremendously ripped the Korean pop star got for the movie. Also found on the DVD are 7 minutes of additional scenes that are mostly trims of existing stuff. The only silver lining I could find for people seeing this movie is that it results in their tracking down I'm a Cyborg, And That's OK, which also stars Rain and is far superior in every way (albeit entirely devoid of ninjas).
Read More

Depp, Pre-Mumblecore

Arizona Dream wouldn't fall under the garden-variety "mumblecore" label, but it's something of a studio antecedent, with weirdo main characters in a conventional setting. Johnny Depp plays Axel, a nobody dreamer kid with a dead-end job who heads from NYC to Arizona for his uncle's (Jerry Lewis) wedding.

His pal (Vincent Gallo) tags along, and while in Arizona, Axel falls for an older woman (Faye Dunaway) with a firecracker daughter his age (Lili Taylor). It's worth watching for more than just the novelty of the names in the cast. Axel's journey to becoming a man is full of weird behaviors from all involved and would never stand a chance of being funded by a studio now (19 years later). Warner Archive made it available last week.

Jerry Lewis isn't wearing pants in this scene.

Gallo is and looks much younger.

This shot really captures the novelty aspect of the movie.
Read More

Laputa* to Totoro to Kiki to Ponyo

Disney has released DVD editions of almost the entire Studio Ghibli library over the last 10 years. Two weeks ago, they released the first Ghibli Blu-ray (last year's Ponyo) and reissued three titles with some new extras (Castle in the Sky, Kiki's Delivery Service, and My Neighbor Totoro). One would assume that catalog titles should start hitting Blu-ray later in the year, and that the DVDs were a means to an end: getting three of the other early Ghibli titles refreshed alongside a jumping-on point (Ponyo) in advance of Blu-ray mastering.

All previous DVD extras on Castle, Kiki, and Totoro are intact, with new mini-featurettes focusing on the development of each film. If you have the previous editions and want the Blu-rays, there is no logical reason to double-dip on these. Netflix them for the extras if you're a Ghibli enthusiast. Parents with kids re-buy titles multiple times (even the same edition) due to misplacement or damage, so I'm not as virulently opposed to these re-dips being put there instead of/without Blu-rays. Since John Lasseter took the reins at Disney Animation, he's settled for nothing but the best, and for animated films from the early 80's, I'm sure he wants them to look as theater-perfect as possible. That said, the Ponyo Blu-ray is a delicious taste of what's to come. Since it was done in the same hand-made style as the rest of the Ghibli catalog, one can easily assume we can expect similar clarity and color depth from upgraded versions of the Ghibli library classics. The Ponyo disc also includes World of Ghibli featurettes in the same style and application as the other titles. The prominent treatment within the Disney family that Lasseter has pushed for Ghibli is really the essential third leg to a revived animation legacy. The Disney hand-drawn classics were my childhood, Pixar carried me into adolescence and through my teenage years, and I discovered Ghibli just as I was getting ready to hit college. The Disney animation family now touches just about every niche, with upcoming stop-motion features solidifying their fourth leg. It's a great time to love animated features, now that the flagship animation studio is leading the way. With their example, others are challenged to create even more innovative, amazing worlds. *The literal translation of the Japanese title is Laputa, Castle in the Sky. Unfortunately, anyone moderately spanish-speaking would read that as "La Puta" (the whore) instead of Lap-uta, as it's actually said, so they chopped off part of the title for US release two decades ago. The reason for the chopping could be as simple as keeping the title bland and generic (US audience-friendly). Similarly, Ponyo's full title is something like Ponyo on a Cliff By the Sea.
Read More

Retelling Stories

The pedigree of Pixar Blu-rays remains flawless with yesterday's Toy Story and Toy Story 2 releases. [CORRECTION 10:45pm: I cannot, however, retire my Ultimate Toy Box set, as these two titles do not retain all previously-available extras in addition to a few new things. See reader comments below for things that were dropped which I missed. The old intros I knew about and didn't mind. The other stuff, hrm...] The most notable and memorable of the new are black and white wireframe-animated "Studio Stories" that feature various Pixarians recalling anecdotes that hadn't previously made it out of the studio doors.

The Toy Story 3 preview peeks include bits mostly found in the most recent trailer and things posted and announced online. There's a nice piece on TS2 that covers Pixar's Zoetrope (made in the style of Studio Ghibli's) that makes me want to see it in person. There's a sincerely touching tribute to the great Joe Ranft (who appears frequently in Waking Sleeping Beauty, which I caught last Saturday. In all, the new supplements very nicely complement what was already in place in a way only Pixar and Criterion are really doing. Redeeming the Disney Movie Rewards codes on each title provides you with a free movie voucher apiece for Toy Story 3, so take advantage of manufacturer coupons and week of release deals to make out like a bandit. Toy Story and its sequel are $22.99 each on Amazon, and buying them together saves $10.
Read More

Courtroom Shenanigans Revisited

As a kid, I loved few TV shows as much as Night Court. Maybe I liked The Twilight Zone and Alfred Hitchcock Presents more overall, but Night Court was my sitcom of choice. Warner Bros. put the third season out a couple of weeks ago in a no-nonsense, 3-DVD set. There are no extras at all, but all I'm after are the episodes.

I already liked 30 Rock, but their Night Court subplot from last season makes me love the show more. I miss sitcoms that were this consistent.
Read More