Daily Grab 68: Scorpion Balancing

Roger Deakins recently won the ASC award for Cinematography, and the popular (and righteous) hope is that he'll finally win a long-deserved Oscar for Skyfall. What he does is one of the many under-recognized, delicate, and important jobs in cinema.

If you don't follow cinematographers or Deakins and need reference, here are nine movies that he's lit/shot/improved by touching: The Shawshank Redemption, Fargo, Kundun, O Brother Where Art Thou, The Man Who Wasn't There, No Country for Old Men, The Assassination of Jesse James By the Coward Robert Ford, The Reader, and True Grit.

These are also the nine movies for which he was nominated (and didn't win) the Academy Award for Best Cinematography. There are loads of other great examples of his work listed on his IMDb page.

Daily Grab 67: Agent of Change

Skyfall is very, very good, and is also the perfect Bond feature to roll out in commemorating the film franchise's Diamond Jubilee. It is not a perfect movie, nor one without weird flaws (also a Bond trademark), but following Quantum of Solace, I get why people act like it's the greatest thing in the history of action cinema.

Criterion Adds 7 Ozu, 2 Soderbergh, and Loads More to Hulu Plus

My pal Ryan at CriterionCast compiled a complete list of all 42 titles just added to the Criterion channel on Hulu Plus today. Go check them all out. Since there's some direct relevance to the completist series I've been running, here's a look at why nine of them are a big deal to me:

Coincidentally, the two Soderbergh movies were featured in the most recent installment of Soderberghopolis (Schizopolis and Gray's Anatomy).

None of the seven Ozu movies added were previously available in the US in any form.

Among them, two are not available on disc even in the UK as part of the nearly-comprehensive BFI Ozu Collection (An Inn in Tokyo, Record of a Tenement Gentleman), one is set for release in March as part of their Gangster set (That Night's Wife), two are in the UK Student Comedies set (The Lady and The Beard, Where Now Are the Dreams of Youth?), and the other two are included as extras on the Late Autumn and Early Summer Blu-rays (A Mother Should Be Loved, What Did the Lady Forget?).

This is great news, and makes it even easier to get into the work of Ozu without tracking down loads of expensive discs. As always, info bricks for each film will be updated to reflect this news.

Daily Grab 66: The Con

Another Asian home video release from this week that I recommend highly is Hur Jin-ho's adaptation of Dangerous Liaisons, which sets the story in 1930s Shanghai. It's a Chinese production with a Korean director and male lead opposite two major Chinese actresses.

An historical aside: China is just on the verge of war with Japan over the The Manchurian Incident, an event that is examined briefly at the beginning of the sixth installment of Discovering Ozu.

The production design and cinematography are gorgeous, and the performances are stellar all around. The Blu-ray runs $20 and it's also rentable on iTunes at the standard $3/$5 SD/HD rate.

 

Daily Grab 65: The Plan

I went nuts for The Thieves when I saw it last year, to the point that I promoted and hosted a Tugg On-Demand screening of it here in Austin. The trailer makes it look like an Ocean's Eleven (2001) ripoff, but it isn't, setting aside the fact that they borrow some music and style cues for the heist portion of the movie. About 80 minutes in, it spins into a Hong Kong action caper.

The Thieves was the biggest box office hit in South Korea's history, it has a Korean/Hong Kong hybrid cast to die for, and it's probably not on the radar of most. It's one of my go-to blind recommendations at the moment.

It's now on Blu-ray for a mere $13 (the cost of a single ticket to the movies in many areas), and you can rent it in iTunes now as well ($3/$5 for SD/HD).

Daily Grab 64: Trials and Tribulations

I hosted a pair of Q&A's today at the Dallas SciFi Expo.

Avery Brooks and the pair of Cindy Morgan and Bruce Boxleitner could not have been more generous, unique, and fun. Those discussions will appear in consecutive episodes of Screen Time as soon as I have the audio.

Daily Grab 63: Thimblebell

This is yet another clean, crisp, and vibrant HD mastering of a Disney classic. Mulan is on Blu this spring, Little Mermaid in the fall, and Jungle Book is quietly announced in the Pan booklet as coming in Spring 2014.

Daily Grab 62: Askance

Fox has been one of the unsung heroes of Blu-ray, in that they make them look appropriately grainy, but clean. The right mix has come easier of late, it seems, but it's all too easy to scrub too much detail out of an image.

It's impossible for us to get too much Preminger on Blu-ray too quickly.

BFI's Ozu Gangster Collection: full specs announced

I've had this preordered from Amazon UK for a while, but they've finally released the full specs on it, as seen on the Amazon page.

All three full features (Walk Cheerfully, That Night's Wife, and Dragnet Girl) and the surviving fragment of A Straightforward Boy get newly-recorded scores, along with another 10-minute chunk of Tony Rayns' 2010 Ozu: Emotion and Poetry lecture. I wish they'd just put the whole thing on a future Ozu release. New essays are included as on other BFI Ozu Collection releases.

I've been long-brewing a Discovering Ozu article that looks at all the home video releases out there. Most of the surviving movies are out now, with a rumor that a new HD restoration of The End of Summer might be happening.

I wish there were a profitable way for Criterion to release a four or five-movie Ozu Blu-ray set. Oh well.

Daily Grab 61: Hulk Pawn in Game of Life

From the animated movie version of Planet Hulk, in honor of this week's soon-to-post Comic Shack #25, "Taste the Hulk Rainbow". In it, my friend John Gholson and I discuss the multitude of ways to get into reading the Jade Giant in all his green and purple glory.

Daily Grab 60: Color

Plucked from the fourth installment of the radically overhauled, re-edited, and re-written Soderberghopolis. Schizopolis through The Limey is a hell of a ride, including movies he produced like this one.

The series won't be done in time for the release of Side Effects in cinemas, but it should be finished in time for Behind the Candelabra's arrival on HBO.

Daily Grab 59: Ned

No point posting a Groundhog Day still on Groundhog Day, right? I just realized this is its 20th Anniversary year.

Stephen Tobolowsky has been in more movies than you may have ever seen, and he's one of my favorite actors. He's also a fellow Dallas native, and very nice to banter with on Twitter.

Commander Keen Creator Tom Hall Announces Sequel

...in a manner of speaking. Like he explained in Screen Time 22 "Pure Game Language", the Commander Keen IP is still owned my malevolent bastards who have no interest in selling (my words not his). His new platform game creation tool will include the "spiritual sequel", Secret Spaceship Club. For more, here's my post at Ain't It Cool News on the subject.

Daily Grab 58: Last Moment First

I had avoided the Blu-ray of Studio Ghibli's saddest (and arguably best) movie ever, Grave of the Fireflies, due to not trusting its unknown-to-me American home video distributor, Sentai Filmworks. What an idiot I am. Don't mind the washed-out color of the cover art: the disc is gorgeous, and features a new English dib if you care about those.

This is a great film, and one of the greatest in the history of animation, but be forewarned that it is both beautiful and profoundly depressing. It opens revealing that the two kids you're going to fall in love with are already dead, and that the movie is about their struggle to survive WWII Japan. Even with that setup, it has my highest "what do you mean you haven't seen it?" recommendation.

Daily Grab 57: A Boy on a Bike

My Tony and Ridley Scott series begins very soon. This is from Tony Scott's debut feature, Loving Memory. It's available on all-region Blu-ray from the BFI. This edition includes early short films from both Tony and Ridley, and is the focus of the first installment in "Scott Freed".

Daily Grab 56: Good Soldier. Good Soldier.

Was trying to hold this for when I had the latest Screen Time posted, which is all Batman talk with Andrea Romano. I'll update with a link once it's live.

Warner Archive Instant Begins Closed Beta Today

I dropped cable years ago, and now I finally have something like what I've wanted for a long time: a monthly subscription "instant channel" roughly equivalent to Turner Classic Movies.

Launching in closed Beta, Warner Archive Instant is a new Roku streaming channel that features a rotating selection of SD and HD content from the Warner Brothers back catalogue.

I've tried to get more info out of WB to no avail. They're clammed up tight for the moment.

Titles range from the super-obscure and cult to genre classics to amazing movies from some of the cinema's great directors. A limited quantity of TV show episodes are in the beta too, and knowing the loads of shows released by Warner Archive on DVD, there's an absurd wealth of content there on top of the thousands of movies they have.

The titles included in the Beta are not final, but, I'd assume they are at least representative of the minimum quantity of titles available for the service when it launches at what will hopefully be a sub-$10 monthly fee or the equivalent.

Warner Archive oversees over 5000 titles, including ones previously released on DVD that went out of print. The new Instant channel adds ones that I'd consider major Warner back-catalogue stuff (The Music Man, for example).

I'm thrilled this is finally a reality. Warner Archive has done an extraordinary job of breaking down the wall between a studio/content provider and their audience over the last few years, better than any other studio of their relative scale. Where others have been tepid about MoD DVD at all, preferring to sell to middleman retailers wholesale, or only just gearing up, Warner has really gone for it, and they're listening to customer feedback. I'm sure that's the case with this new iteration of the Archive Collection.

I don't have any non-public details, but there's a library of 157 feature films, 2 made-for-TV movies, and episodes from 7 TV shows in the current public-facing listing. I've listed everything further down, including calling out which titles are in HD. I transcribed all of this manually, so if reposting, please link back rather than simply copy/pasting everything. I hate that I have to say that, but welcome to the world of blogging.

When Warner Archive Instant is opened up to the public, you can bet I'll let you know.

Before we get to the full list, here are a pile of highlights (among loads of great titles) with brief commentary:

A Face in the Crowd [HD]
America, America
Elia Kazan is one of the great filmmakers, and these two are criminally under-seen and under-appreciated. Face in the Crowd features a career-best performance form Andy Griffith.

The Alphabet Murders
Worth watching for the novelty of Tony Randall as Hercule Poirot, but fun and entertaining on top of that.

Auntie Mame [HD]
Mame
Both of these adaptations of the musical theatre classic were impossible to find for some time before Archive started pressing DVDs. I never felt like owning them, but occasionally wanted to be able to watch them. Mame is Lucille Ball's final film performance.

The Beast from 20,000 Fathoms [HD]
A nuclear blast awakens a giant dinosaur that wreaks all sorts of havoc in this movie that features creature effects by Ray Harryhausen and which is based on a short story by Ray Bradbury. If you even just kinda like monster movies and have never seen this, make it a top priority. Godzilla would come out in Japan the following year, and they...share some DNA. This movie's success drove Godzilla into actually getting made. I can't believe I can finally watch this monster movie classic in HD, when previous DVD releases have all been pretty much lousy in the picture department.

The Beast With Five Fingers
One among many great, sinister Peter Lorre performances is on display in this movie where a famous pianist dies...and his hand returns for revenge. This movie has never been on DVD, and only recently because available for SD streaming on Amazon. I'd buy it if Archive did a Blu-ray. I'd help them find people to interview for the extras.

Blow-Up [HD]
Michaelangelo Antonioni's classic from the 60's available in HD for the first time. Brian De Palma remade this as the equally masterful Blow-Out in the 80's. If you've never watched an Antonioi movie, this is an exceptional place to start.

Dames [HD]
Footlight Parade [HD]
These represent 2/5ths of one of my favorite Warner DVD releases, the Busby Berkeley Collection, and in HD no less.

Disorderlies
If you've never been blessed to see this "The Fat Boys" classic, it's a nice reminder of enjoyable trash from the 80's (and I mean that in the sweetest way possible).

Doc Savage: Man of Bronze
Legendary producer George Pal's last produced film find pulp hero Doc Savage and his five Amazing Adventurers team up to solve the disappearance of Doc's dad. It was supposed to be a franchise starter, and it's crying shame that it wasn't. This has always been a favorite blind recommendation to friends loading up on DVDs in a sale. It's fun and kid-friendly, too.

Finian's Rainbow [HD]
The Music Man [HD]
I'm more stunned that The Music Man is in here in HD due its broader popularity, but Finian's Rainbow, on top of some other musicals, make this pretty great just for the musical category of stuff thus far.

Freaks [HD]
Tod Browing's freakshow horror classic that stars actual sideshow performers...and in HD.

Freebie and the Bean
This movie is tremendously racist, hilarious, fun, and a perfect artifact of 70's American cinema. "The Bean" refers to co-lead Alan Arkin...who plays a Mexican-American. I've said this about a couple of others, but make this one of the first five you watch. Edgar Wright re-discovered this movie for so many during one of his Wright Stuff movie marathons in L.A. Bless you, you brilliant English bastard.

The Divorcee [HD]
A Free Soul [HD]
Night Nurse [HD]
Red Headed Woman [HD]
Four excellent pre-Production Code, pre-Ratings System movies, one of which features Clark Gable as a nasty dude. Saucy, salacious stuff previously available in SD on the Forbidden Hollywood collections.

Soylent Green [HD]
Hope that no one ruins Soylent Green for you before you find out what Soylent Green actually is in the movie.

Storm Warning
Ronald Reagan fights the Klan. 

Tarzan And The Amazons
Tarzan And The Huntress
Tarzan And The Leopard Woman
Tarzan And The Mermaids
Tarzan Triumphs
Tarzan's Desert Mystery
Six Johnny Weismuller classic Tarzan pictures, all in one place.

Time After Time
HG Wells (Malcolm McDowell) chases Jack the Ripper into the future year of...1979!

The Valley of Gwangi [HD]
A cowboy goes after glory and gold, trying to capture a Tyrannosaurus Rex so he can sell it to a Mexican circus. Another Harryhausen-powered stop motion creature movie.

Now for the current complete listing:

TV Shows (Multiple Episodes each)

77 Sunset Strip: Years 2-6
Adventures of Superman (Eps 1-13)
Hawaiian Eye: Years 1-4
Cheyenne (Season 1)
Gilligan's Island (Eps 1-13)
Jericho (Season 1)
The Man from U.N.C.L.E. (Eps 1-29)

Made-for-TV Movies

Cosa Nostra: An Arch Enemy of the FBI
Planet Earth

Features (157, with over 70 in HD)

36 Hours [HD]
The Ace of Hearts
Across the Pacific [HD]
Action in the North Atlantic
Adventures of Don Juan
Advise and Consent
The Alphabet Murders
The Amazing Dr. Clitterhouse [HD]
America, America [HD]
The Americanization of Emily [HD]
Armored Car Robbery [HD]
Auntie Mame [HD]
Baby Doll [HD]
Baby Face [HD]
Back to Bataan [HD]
Bad Day at Black Rock
The Bad Seed (1956) [HD]
Bataan
Battle Cry
The Beast from 20,000 Fathoms [HD]
The Beast With Five Fingers
Bells Are Ringing
Best Foot Forward
The Best House in London
The Big Cube
The Big Stampede
Billy Rose's Jumbo [HD]
Black Legion [HD]
The Black Scorpion [HD]
Blonde Crazy
Blow-Up [HD]
Born Reckless
The Bride Came C.O.D.
Brother Orchid [HD]
Caged
The Cameraman
Cat People [HD]
Chamber of Horrors
The Charge at Feather River
The Charge of the Light Brigade [HD]
Clash by Night
The Clock
Colt .45
Cornered
The Courtship of Eddie's Father
The Curse Of Frankenstein [HD]
Dames [HD]
The Damned Don't Cry [HD]
Dark Passage [HD]
Day for Night [HD]
Death in Venice [HD]
Deception [HD]
Decoy [HD]
Desperate Journey [HD]
The Devil Doll
The Devil's Brother [HD]
Die Laughing
Disorderlies
The Divorcee [HD]
Doberman Gang
Doc Savage: The Man of Bronze
Doctor X
A Face in the Crowd [HD]
A Fan's Notes
The Fearless Vampire Killers [HD]
Fighting Frontier
Finian's Rainbow [HD]
Flying Leathernecks
Footlight Parade [HD]
Freaks [HD]
A Free Soul [HD]
Freebie and the Bean
Fury
George Washington Slept Here
The Great Lie [HD]
Gun Crazy [HD]
Gun Law Justice
The Hill [HD]
Horror Of Dracula [HD]
Hot Rods to Hell [HD]
In This Our Life [HD]
The Invisible Boy
Isle of the Dead
It!
It's a Great Feeling
Lady Killer [HD]
Love in the Afternoon
The Loved One [HD]
Lust for Life [HD]
Mad Love
Madame Bovary
Mame
The Man From Monterey
Mark of the Vampire [HD]
Marked Woman [HD]
The Mask Of Fu Manchu [HD]
The Mayor of Hell [HD]
Merrill's Marauders [HD]
Mexican Spitfire
Midnight Mary [HD]
Moon Zero Two
Mr. and Mrs. Smith (1941) [HD]
Mr. Skeffington [HD]
The Mummy (1959) [HD]
The Music Man [HD]
Night Nurse [HD]
Norman, Is That You?
Objective, Burma
One on One
Our Dancing Daughters
The Pirate
Planet Earth
The Prince And The Showgirl
Private Parts (1972) [HD]
The Purchase Price [HD]
Queen Of Outer Space
Razorback
Red Headed Woman [HD]
Ride Him, Cowboy
The Ritz [HD]
Run of the Arrow
San Quentin [HD]
Satellite in the Sky
The Scarlet Letter
The Sheltering Sky [HD]
Somewhere in Sonora
Soylent Green [HD]
Stage Fright [HD]
The Star [HD]
Storm Warning
Tarzan And The Amazons
Tarzan And The Huntress
Tarzan And The Leopard Woman
Tarzan And The Mermaids
Tarzan Triumphs
Tarzan's Desert Mystery
Taste the Blood of Dracula [HD]
The Telegraph Trail
The Temptress
Texas Lawmen
They Live by Night
Time After Time
To Kill a Man [HD]
Torch Song [HD]
The Ultimate Warrior [HD]
Until The End Of The World [HD]
The Valley of Gwangi [HD]
Violence [HD]
Wagon Master [HD]
West Point
Where the Boys Are
Where the Spies Are
Wild Boys Of The Road [HD]
World Without End
Zero Hour [HD]