These Appendices are designed to be the a biographical catch-all for individual performers and collaborators, as well as provide additional context for Ozu's career. All of the individual entries related to the subject will be listed in the corresponding post. I will update the Appendix articles over time so that new information can be included and so that the links are relatively up to date.
The moment that gets me every single time.
One of the best frames of I Flunked, But..., where a pair of sweethearts have a private moment together.
Kinuyo Tanaka gets some loving close-ups. There were rumors that Ozu was very sweet on her, but she didn't return his affection.
Ty Burrell in a decidedly non-Modern Family-esque role: "Someone wanna tell me why I had to log off BangingGrannies.com for this?"
The Digital Bits notes that the Bond 50 set loses some specific extras:
The only exceptions are the Mission Control menu-based content from the previous DVDs, many items from Charles de Lauzirika's original 2003 Die Another Day: Special Edition and 5 items from the 2008 Casino Royale: Collector's Edition BD (The Art of the Freerun, Catching a Plane: From Storyboard to Screen, Storyboard Sequence: Freerun Chase, Filmmaker Profiles and Bond Girls Are Forever). So if you have those discs and want to retain all the bonus content, definitely keep them.
Ah, l'amour.
They've finally announced casting for both The Joker (Michael Emerson) and Superman (Mark Valley) for the upcoming animated adaptation of The Dark Knight Returns, which is being split into two installments. Adding these two guys to the already-announced Peter Weller as Batman is pure genius. Can't wait.
The last of Ozu's 1929 films and the first half of those he made in 1930 reveal a filmmaker in transition. He is in search of his voice in addition to how he can push that individuality out around the edges of the studio system's staid templates.
Sadly, out of the seven movies discussed in this chapter, only two survive in complete form. Fragments of three survive, and yet two more are completely, irretrievablty lost.
From 1930's I Flunked, But...
I kept telling myself that when the extras-packed, gaudy mega-set dropped under $100, that was my sweet spot. It's under $90 on Amazon today only. Call me a sucker.
On over 2000 screens, it made a hair over $400,000 this weekend.
At CinemaCon in April, there were standees and poters proclaiming it as the next big thing "from the marketing genius behind Teletubbies". They assumed they could just shove a new thing down everyone's throats, including loads of cheap toys assembled by small children in southeast Asia.
I almost forgot that it also includes Cary Elwes' highest profile recent performance:
The BBC posted the five-part "Pond Life" prequel serial all in one "Omnibus" package, and someone or another uploaded a "Prequel" piece that appears to have only been made available to iTunes Season Pass subscribers.
I posted a couple of backdated Daily Grabs. They resume tomorrow, with more backlogged ones as well as actual daily updates of it. Grabs to anticipate: Tenenbaums, more TNG, Disney animation, musicals, and much more.
A new installment of Discovering Ozu is on its way in the morning, with a couple more before the end of the week.
Regularized Manufacture-On-Demand (MOD) DVD coverage is coming this week, too. Physical media is only dead if you tell yourself that it is.
I haven't traveled so frequently in a long, long time. Combine that with what I'm assuming is a herniated disc at worst and a massive muscle spasm at worst in my back, and AC has been much less updated than I ever promised you dear, loyal readers.
They should have listened to him.
This review is finally coming soon. I've agonized over it.
It was a surprise and an honor to be asked by my friend Dan Benjamin to fill in for him on this week's episode of The Critical Path. I've been an avid follower of Horace Dediu's Asymco.com for some time. In the realm of Apple prognostication, many often engage in the sort of praise-heaping that inspires calls of fanboyism, but Horace is always utterly pragmatic in his analysis.
We discuss the Apple v. Samsung verdict, the relative success of the Kindle Fire, and jump from the Amazon connected ecosystem into a contemplation on the future of media distribution. We also question whether Apple can yet be considered an 800-pound gorilla in that world.
The third episode of my 5by5 show is up, featuring more "What to Watch" recommendations, a remembrance of Tony Scott, and my interview with the inimitable Richard Kind.
The shownotes for each show can be found on 5by5.tv, but I thought I'd add some value to these posts here on AC by embedding all the video clips linked therein. If you watch all of the clips, you eat up more time than the episode runs.
Today's Criterion newsletter "wacky drawing" contains three "caught C's". It's been rumored for some time that they would release Godfrey Reggio's three "Qatsi" movies (Koyaanisqatsi, Powwaqqatsi, and Naqoyqatsi), which have no conventional plot, and instead feature gorgeous photography centered around broad themes. Look the movies up, I'm at a loss to describe them (as I think many would be).
Just arrived in New York a few hours ago. Love this town.
Even though I state on last week's Screen Time that this disc features a revised transfer, it turns out that isn't the case. I imagined slight improvements that are apparently not there. I guess I was just irrationally hard on the original disc, which has some compression issues, but is overall pretty solid in the looks and sounds department.
This went up late on Friday. As always, please subscribe and rate the show on iTunes if you want to help support it. Believe it or not, that makes a huge difference.
New this week is a segment (called What to Watch in my head), which covers new things to watch in theaters, on demand, and on disc.
Also new compared to the first week, the format is different: I pre-recorded interviews with some famous types instead of interviewing one of my pals. The interview portion of the show will continue to fluctuate throughout the life of the show.
Notable this week: I call Virginia Madsen "the babe from Sideways" to her face (and she digs it), and Prometheus editor Pietro Scalia does the not-so-Hollywood thing and openly admits that he disagreed with Ridley Scott and the studio on how to let the third act flow.
Behind the scenes trivia: before the interview with Ms. Madsen began, she raved about how insanely cool my 11-inch MacBook Air is. After we finished, she joked, "you're gonna leave that behind for me, right?"
Wait, was she joking?
On this week's episode: Richard Kind. He's one of my favorite actors, and is a guy you probably know better by his face and voice than his name.
