Electric Shadow

A Star Reborn


This stunning 8k scan of the fullest surviving version of A Star is Born (1954) is really gorgeous, and unlike titles like The Wizard of Oz, Gone With the Wind, North by Northwest, and Doctor Zhivago, it isn't generally considered one of the still-shining crown jewels in the WB library. This treatment makes a compelling case to remember it exists and give it a look.
Read More

Green for Lime, Get It?

 


I can't pass judgment on the video transfer's quality until I get it in my hands, but I'll say right off that this "artwork" is hideous. If they picked green as the key color because Harry's last name is Lime, then they should also pack in a recipe for a Vodka Gimlet and a bag of limes. That's how little sense this makes. Ran subtitles were shit, the Ladykillers transfer was drenched in pink, and Contempt had some glaring soft spots. If there were something stellar to point to as an act of good faith, boy would I.

 

520: Everlasting Outlet for Creativity

I've never seen The Emigrants or The New Land, but I am interested in tracking them down now that I've seen director Jan Troell's Everlasting Moments (29 June, Criterion). The original Swedish title adds Maria Larsson's (referring to the real-life protagonist) at the front, which was presumably dropped due to international unfamiliarity with the best-selling book upon which the movie is based.

Read More

Analysis and Metrics

I really dislike the modern form of critical discourse about movies. Based on the hive mind on the internet, it seems that to some, if you love this film, you're a lowly, materialistic child in an adult's body. Hating it means you're an incorrigible, heartless idiot. No one is allowed to come to a moderate conclusion that eschews overflowing hyperbole geysers in this age of metric-based critical opinion. The masses demonstrably lean toward the "love it" end of things, as do I. I feel that the best compliment I can give is that a movie is among my favorites of a given year, but by no means does that require me to name every movie I "liked" as one of the best I've seen that year.

I hate that there are people whose standards of film criticism seem to enforce some sort of Vulcan, emotionless, and impersonal tone to reviews. I think that's utter bullshit. It's also bullshit that using a word like "bullshit" is considered "unbecoming".

Brewster McCloud Lands At Long Last

Warner Archive has finally shone the light of day on a long-requested Robert Altman cult classic. Brewster McCloud (next Tuesday, 13 July) is part of the new Remastered Edition series, which cost a little more than other Archive titles, but which feature better quality than whatever video master they'd had kicking around since forever ago. There's hiss in the soundtrack, and minor blemishes on the picture throughout, but this is a case where I'm comfortable saying that it looks pretty damn good and we should be thankful they finally made it available.

Read More

Disc Roundup (Movies & TV) 22 June


Release of the Week - New Green Zone I feel it's safe to say that Paul Greengrass and Matt Damon's latest collaboration is one of the most unfortunate victims of "project coding" thus far this year. Calling it "Jason Bourne Goes to Iraq" is lazy, ignorant, and above all, inaccurate. Alleged "critics" who used this language should be brought up in front of a Film Critics' Society Tribunal and stripped of their titles and advertisers. If you've actually seen the movie and stick to that line, then you're just as accurate in saying that State of Play was "Daredevil Goes to Washington".
Read More

519: Unassuming, Unpretentious Close-Up


There are those who would disagree with my use of "unpretentious" in the title of this article in reference to the film Close-Up. Either you believe in and go with the spontaneous spirit in this film, or you're actively working against your own enjoyment of many things. Yet others (or those same) would argue against "unassuming", claiming that to "get" the movie, you have to be into films from the Middle East, or just a pretentious prick. Such people are said pretentious pricks.
Read More

Disc Roundup (Movies & TV) 15 June


Release of the Week - New Youth in Revolt After watching Sony's new Blu-ray, I'm really very sorry that I missed this theatrically. This regret is augmented by the early references to both Yasujiro Ozu and Jean-Luc Godard's Breathless, one of my Very Favorite Films. Michael Cera does not unleash his "inner badass" as the cover quote advertises, but rather, his inner anarchistic jerk. There's great work all-around in the movie, and the Blu-ray includes audition tapes, cut footage, and a commentary by director Miguel Arteta & star Michael Cera.
Read More

A Tale of Two Fan Favorites

Flash Gordon is alive and full of Digital Noise Reduction Botoxification. The colors are bright, and the resolution boosted, but the new Flash Gordon Blu-ray lacks that celluloid look even more so than the recent Spartacus burn job. I really wish that things weren't so hot and cold when it comes to Universal's Blu transfers of late.

On the other hand, Darkman looks pretty good...in places. It honestly looks like each reel is from a different print. One reel is super-dirty and grainy, while another is soft. Honestly, it's more likely due to the quality of the original elements than scrubbing. I say this because the grain is still there, and am assuming therefore that the blatant DNR of Flash Gordon is not at fault. I wouldn't shell out for either one. Two for $10 maybe, but full price? No way.

Get Her to the Gugg

I didn't expect When in Rome to be particularly good, but it ended up being a perfect example of how Hollywood has lost its capacity for glamourous gloss. You look at movies like Three Coins in the Fountain or Roman Holiday, and you wonder how hard it really is to at least put a little spunk into this kind of story. A romantic comedy generally works best if you leave out most of the forced "comedy" and just let the romance flow.
Read More

Back to Back to the Future

It's coming on 26th October this year, and it's touted as a "newly restored" 25th Anniversary release. Hopefully, this means that the various issues people had with the DVD trilogy release from a few years ago have been fixed. I cringe at the thought of the kind of digital over-scrubbing that we saw on Flash Gordon and other titles recently. It's worth mentioning that the guys at BTTF.net have Robert Zemeckis on the record promising that they've done a ton of dirt cleanup but preserved the original film grain "so they still look like movies should look".

Read More

Showgirls Quinceanera

Last week's Showgirls 15th Anniversary Blu-ray features one of the most ingeniously smutty disc art concepts I've ever seen. I gave the opening fifteen minutes or so a quick spin, and the transfer looks like it's up to par, for all of you Nomi Malone fans. I love that this movie has such a dedicated following while at the same time featuring a sex scene that looks more like the female lead is having a seizure than a good time.

 


Have disc spindles ever doubled as nipples before? Dare I rate this a "game-changer"?

 

The only added extra compared to previous releases is a bit on the pole-dancing exercise craze that's sweeping trendy gyms.

522: Desert of Crowded Isolation


Il deserto rosso (Red Desert) was Antonioni's first film made in color. Desert is a forceful (if at times melodramatic) audiovisual treatise on loneliness and alienation in the post-industrial world. Antonioni seems to argue that all of the automation in daily life only serves to drive us further from our humanity. I took the film to imply that technology does not merely refer to the machines we build, but the routines that we construct mentally.
Read More

Appropriate Headline Unavailable

So, I've been MIA for a few days.

I've never been more uneasy and terrified in my entire life. In taking a quick inventory of times when I've felt doomed and helpless, including when my father had a stroke 18 months ago, I realize that I've also never felt this bleak.

They found a growth that measures 3-4" in diameter inside my younger brother's chest, in addition to some other complications. He goes in for examination and (it's expected) a biopsy later this week. He's 24, autistic, and lives with my parents. He's overweight thanks to a lifetime of medications that do all sorts of bizarre things to your glands and hormones. He's one of the most genuinely nice and funny people you'll ever meet. I lost a very dear friend to brain cancer in early 2009. I'd like to think that the only benefit from that is I have acquired some sort of superhuman emotional stamina, but I know that isn't the case.

I already put this info out on Twitter, and even though I'm not begging for it or anything, the sympathy has helped. For those who wonder aloud to me "how can you associate yourself with Jeffrey Wells?", you probably wouldn't believe that he's actually provided some of the best comfort out of any of my friends who know.

I've spent most of the last week figuring out how to financially miss as many days of work as I will soon, regardless of diagnosis. For those who don't already know, I don't make my living by writing for Hollywood Elsewhere.

That said, I don't plan on altogether dropping off the map, but posting will be erratic at best. The Ozu series will get caught up, I'm going to be on The CriterionCast as a guest this week, and I'm not going anywhere. I'm just asking for a little understanding. Thanks in advance.

Cry for the Owls

The Cry of the Owl is a good example of where the DTV stigma comes from. A lousy, progressively worsening "thriller" based on a novel by a writing legend (Patricia Highsmith). Paddy Considine and Julia Stiles are plenty entertaining, just not in this movie.

 

 

A soon-to-be-divorced guy (Considine) moves to a new area, where he stumbles into stalking/peeking in on a woman who lives out in the woods (Stiles). He doesn't watch her get naked or anything, just preparing food and so on. The story doesn't so much twist regarding who is hunting and being hunted, but swerves a few times. I dug the angle of questioning who was being stalked (and consequently, who was doing the stalking), but it all just came out uneven and unnatural.

521: Connecting Train


Mystery Train lives in a whole different universe from movies like Crash and Babel. Those movies' use of intersecting narratives as a device is so calculated as to deflate any true suspense or engagement. Mystery Train preceded them both, and did it right all those years before. Dennis Lim's essay in the booklet agrees with me and the rest of the sane world on this point.

The Japanese rock tourists, the widow, the sister, the ex-girlfriend, the brother, the ex-boyfriend, the barber, the accomplice, and the hotel clerks all behave like human beings in something closely resembling the real world. To name all the actors would be tremendously boring, but I'll note a couple of things: Youki Kudoh has since done a lot of work, where she was basically unknown here, and many musician friends know this movie because Joe Strummer from The Clash is in it. The city of Memphis is the slow-moving, decomposing beast covered in kudzu that these various organisms inhabit, for whatever length of time. The final product of this layover between various points of departure stands as one of the prime examples of what "independent cinema" really means, or rather, what it meant.

We've spent all the hard cash and borrowed debt that words like "indie" once had. Five years ago, when I started this column, I declared war on the word "quirky", which, until today, I wasn't aware that Jarmusch held in similar contempt. When you find yourself using that meme, ask "what am I really trying to say?" before cursing yourself with the connotations of one who calls the eclectic "quirky", or the emotionally complex "dark". Today's Criterion Blu-ray/DVD release of Mystery Train filled a notable hole in my Jim Jarmusch viewing history. I was first introduced to him by Ghost Dog, which I found to be at once both beautifully spare and fresh. In my teens, it represented a freedom from convention that I yearned for in homogenized suburban Texas. Throughout the rest of high school, college, and the years since, I've made my way through as much of his earlier stuff as I've been able. I'm going to hit the last two that I haven't seen (Permanent Vacation and Stranger Than Paradise) once I've finished off my series on Ozu (sometime in July). It's convenient that they're both bundled in Criterion's Paradise DVD release. Since receiving my review copy, I've both watched the feature and listened to the Q&A With Jim (over an hour in length, he answers written-in questions) twice. I borrowed a friend's MGM DVD of Train to compare the transfers, and the previous edition is a joke. I couldn't disagree more with anyone who decries the few number of extra portions included. Anyone who thinks that a Criterion edition has to have a commentary track is either new to this game, doesn't know much, or both. The mini-doc crash course on Memphis and retrospective look at the locations in the present day runs under 20 minutes, but is dense with critical detailing. An excerpt of I Put a Spell on Me, the 2001 doc on Screamin' Jay Hawkins. The reason they specifically pulled that bit was twofold: to contextualize the info that was relevant to this movie, but also (I'm speculating here) because the full license cost would have been more prohibitive. Behind-the-scenes snaps of unspecified origin (I may be misremembering that) and photos taken by on-set photographer Masayoshi Sukita complete our journey. This release is another sterling example of how in the age of multiple studio bankruptcies and fire sales, Criterion knows how to make a feast out of simple, spare ingredients. Not too much, not too little, but just right.

The hotel that serves as the intersection point for the three narrative threads no longer exists. It was demolished a year after the movie was made. In its place is now an outdoor music stage. Most (if not all) of the other locations have survived in almost identical condition, as if Memphis itself lives on an island outside of time. I realize that Criterion now has all of Jarmusch's pre-1995 feature output, which is a goddamned great thing. On that note, I know there are more people than just me who would buy a box set of Dead Man, Year of the Horse, Ghost Dog: Way of the Samurai, Coffee & Cigarettes, Broken Flowers, and The Limits of Control. It would go on my top shelf, next to Ozu. Mystery Train sets you back $30 on Blu-ray, but as a bonus, you might just see Elvis' ghost.
Read More