Elizabeth McGovern in a Depression-era picture these days reads as Lady Cora from Downton Abbey having died and been reincarnated as a lady who is more…liberated. The King of the Hill Blu-ray from Criterion (which brings the movie back into print) checks all the boxes.
A review and big re-edit/re-posting of a Soderberghopolis article are forthcoming.
Susan Arosteguy (center) at the Wexner Center with colleague Kim Hendrickson (right)
Screen Time #55 begins a long-in-the-planning series of interviews with the people behind The Criterion Collection. Susan Arosteguy and her colleagues do amazing preservation, restoration, and appreciation work, and it shows in their beautiful special edition releases. In particular, Susan's eye as a designer results in a widely-varied array of striking aesthetics in her releases.
Her latest Wes Anderson special edition, for Fantastic Mr. Fox, arrives in a Criterion Blu-ray/DVD Dual Format Edition tomorrow (18 February 2014).
Subscribe to the Electric Shadow Channel (iTunes/RSS)
Subscribe to the ESN Master Feed (iTunes/RSS).
I'm still in awe of this movie's level of craftsmanship. We recorded the second episode of Electric Shadow (focusing on it and Anderson in general) this morning. Expect it later in the week.
Often, essayed recollections of what one did "back in college" has to do with an accountant revealing they were the percussive bass in an acapella group, or that they were "a militant [insert political belief group here]". I apologize for having been considerably less audacious and extreme. Very early in my freshman year at Florida State, I got involved in promoting, running, and building the campus screening series into a behemoth. One of my earliest firebrand crusades was programming Jules Dassin's Rififi as part of a week-long "French Film Festival". Nevermind that blacklisted director Jules Dassin was an American. The movie was in French and made in France, so it counted.
Oh, what a rebel I was. What a renegade.
Criterion's fully remastered and restored Blu-ray edition hit the street today in the US. In the first of a small series of bits reflecting on said lovely blu-grade, I offer a short story of success, failure, and ultimately...success with a side of crème brûlée.
By some stroke of luck, I was attending FSU on a scholarship that covered the majority of my undergraduate education as laid out on paper, plus a little more. The reality of higher education in this country is such that "on paper" and "in reality" are different by a quantum stretch of the imagination.
I chose to leverage the "plus a little", bit by bit, into providing myself with a film school worth of education to be found in special edition DVDs. I stretched my funds a bit more thanks to a discount card sold by the FSU Lacrosse team that offered a 10% discount at the Tallahassee Best Buy, even on reduced and sale items. Buying the then-new Criterion DVD of Rififi felt like an entirely legitimate (much smaller scale) diamond heist. I wasn't committing a crime, but I worked the system so hard in my own straitlaced way that I felt positively felonious.
Twelve years ago, watching a movie on a 27" Sony Trinitron TV was the closest thing to an absurd luxury that I had, and it's how I discovered hundreds of movies. For a 2001-vintage DVD, Rififi looked spectacular, particularly as compared to other five-decade-old black & white movies I'd seen. VHS copies of Chaplin classics and loads of others were dropping in price like crazy. Prior to the explosion of DVD, those tapes and Turner Classic Movies on cable were the only way I saw pre-color movies, and none were in another language that I recall.
Out of sheer serendipity, the week after I bought Rififi on DVD, we learned in our weekly programming meeting that we needed to program a French Film Fest. Amelie was available, and unanimously chosen as our centerpiece weekend movie over two nights. A new, goofy-looking Depardieu movie called The Closet was out (double entendre certainement intended). I thought it was a waste of an evening, but conceded and supported it for a one night only slot in exchange for getting Rififi booked as the first movie of the week, also for one night.
Rampant online piracy didn't exist at that point, nor did massive streaming network libraries. It was a microcosmic golden age in 35mm film exhibition. FSU had spent a ton of money the year before to build the 400-seat, stadium-format digital surround sound-enabled cinema. Previously, movies had screened in creaky, moldy old Moore Auditorium over in the Student Union. This was the most ambitious week of programming yet since the move to "SLB".
The big night for Rififi was sparsely attended relative to the size of the house, with maybe 70 or 80 people per show. Small an audience as each was, I sat in with them both. Their vocal reactions indicated the old movie still had it, from gasps in the still brilliant heist section to laughter and chuckling throughout. For those 150 or so people that night, they had discovered something. Qualitatively, it was a raging success, but attendance was king, and attendance had no clothes. I got bonus points from the boss because he really loved the film once he saw it, but the way he justified our budget to the university was butts in seats. Depardieu did a bit better than my "the hell is Ri-foo-foo?" movie, but not stellar. We expected they wouldn't fill the house, but a 20-25% full 400-seat cinema really feels underwhelming.
The truly amazing thing about working and and running that theatre in one aspect or another is overhearing what people say in the lobby. What I never expected, going into that week, was what I would overhear over the two nights of Amelie.
Everyone cooed and repeated lines upon exiting, or did bad jobs misremembering what a friend's friend told them about it while waiting to be let in for their screenings. This is what college kids did when trying to appear smart, attractive, or sophisticated (or all three) to their friends in the age before smartphones. What I didn't expect was that I would recognize so many people.
These undergrads weren't friends of mine or in my classes, but rather, repeat customers from the night we'd shown Rififi. Snippets of conversation I heard that weekend are still with me today:
"They had this really great movie on Wednesday, it was like, this Ocean's Eleven movie but like, way better and with less bullshit."
"This one was good, but I saw it already. I mean, it's ok, but the jewel thief one with the weird name wasn't all 'look at me, I'm so fuckin cute' and shit."
wearing a beret, red lipstick, and Audrey Hepburn pants: "Did you see [massive overpronounciation for effect] Rififi the other day? I love allll of [forced French accenting of an American's name] Jules Dass-enn's films, he's my favorite director"
I miss those days: evenings of screenings, sprockets, and loose conversation. Amelie's massive numbers made the whole week a screaming success in retrospect, and paved the way for crazy ideas I had with co-conspirators like counter-programming Iron Monkey on Valentine's Day.
On the latest Screen Time, I'm joined by superstar Blu-ray/DVD producers Charles de Lauzirika, Robert Meyer Burnett, and Brian Ward to discuss the world of special editions and supplements, the inevitable decline of physical media, and the future of home video presentation. We take a moment to touch on 4K/UHD and what it means for the next few years.
We also get a couple of exclusive tidbits: The X-Files is being remastered for both 4:3 and 16:9 aspect ratios, and Shout! Factory's Pee-Wee's Playhouse set will not only be done before the holidays in 2014, but in all likelihood, much sooner.
In a bit of a new development, much of this WatchList is comprised of supplemental documentaries available on various Blu-rays, DVDs, and iTunes Extras packages.
Wreckage and Rage: The Making of Alien 3
As recounted by Charlie on the show, this doc has had more than one life, and took years to see the light of day in its original cut, resulting in Charlie initially having himself credited as Frederick Garvin, as in Fred Garvin, Male Prostitute. The complete and final version of this is included on the Alien Anthology Blu-ray box set.
Dangerous Days: Making Blade Runner
Another great piece by Charlie, this truly completes the Final Cut version of the movie, and is thankfully included as part of the iTunes Extras download for those who've moved away from discs already.
Gladiator (3-disc Extended Edition DVD)
Charlie related how they hid an easter egg in this specific release teasing a Gladiator sequel that has still yet to come to fruition.
Brazil (Criterion Collection) - Docs and "Love Conquers All" version
The Last Temptation of Christ (Criterion Collection) - Martin Scorsese's Video Journal
Charlie cited these two as among his favorite Criterion releases, due to the incredible insight into the struggle to make both of these masterpieces.
Time Bandits (Criterion Collection)
The Seven Samurai (Criterion Collection)
The Rock (Criterion Collection)
Brian is particularly fond of these: the first for its infinite re-watchability, the second for the outstanding docs included, and the last in particular for the memorable Ed Harris outtakes that give a look behind the curtain.
Investigation of a Citizen Above Suspicion (Criterion Collection)
Rob really loved being blindsided by the feature-length doc on the director, whom he was completely unaware of until watching this set.
"Missing Discs" longed for by the panel include Tuff Turf, Quick Change, Liquid Sky, Batman (1966 series), and did I mention Tuff Turf?
I try to not flood this feed with "DEALS EXTRA! LOWEST PRICE EVER (UNTIL NEXT WEEK)!" sorts of posts, but this case is an important exception. This week sees the release of Criterion's other big end-of-year boxed set release: the six-film Martin Scorsese's World Cinema Project.
Amazon is selling it for $65 at the moment, and there's no way of knowing when the price will suddenly skyrocket. I hope that a sales success with this installment means that we see subsequent editions down the line.
For just over $10 per movie, you get new digital restorations, introductions to all the films by Scorsese himself, interviews with filmmakers, a visual essay, and more, including booklet essays by some of the sharpest critics in the world, including my friendly electronic acquaintance Bilge Ebiri among other experts in the cinema of different regions.
A rundown of the included films, from Criterion's site:
Touki bouki (Senegal, 1973)
With a stunning mix of the surreal and the naturalistic, Djibril Diop Mambéty paints a vivid, fractured portrait of Senegal in the early 1970s.
Redes (Mexico, 1936)
In this vivid, documentary-like dramatization of the daily grind of men struggling to make a living by fishing on the Gulf of Mexico (mostly played by real- life fishermen), one worker’s terrible loss instigates a political awakening among him and his fellow laborers.
A River Called Titas (India & Bangladesh, 1973)
The Bengali filmmaker Ritwik Ghatak’s stunningly beautiful, elegiac saga concerns the tumultuous lives of people in fishing villages along the banks of the Titas River in pre-Partition East Bengal.
Dry Summer (Turkey, 1964)
Metin Erksan’s wallop of a melodrama follows the machinations of an unrepentantly selfish tobacco farmer who builds a dam to prevent water from flowing downhill to his neighbors’ crops.
Trances (Morocco, 1981)
The beloved Moroccan band Nass El Ghiwane is the dynamic subject of this captivating musical documentary.
The Housemaid (South Korea, 1960)
A torrent of sexual obsession, revenge, and betrayal is unleashed under one roof in this venomous melodrama from South Korean master Kim Ki-young.
The 2009 Criterion DVD is suddenly out of stock on Criterion's site, at Amazon, and Barnes & Noble ahead of the 3 December 2013 release of separate Raro Video DVD and Blu-ray editions. For true Criterion collectors, it's wise to snag this as soon as possible in the next couple days before the price skyrockets. Here's a quick look at extras that have been retained, lost, or added in the new edition as compared to the old:
Retained: Adriano Aprà & Renzo Rosselini interviews, theatrical trailer
Lost: Isabella and Ingrid Rosselini interviews, The Choice visual essay by Tag Gallagher, booklet content
Added: a three-minute interview with Aldo Strappini and 45-minute video essay Truth of Fiction
From the Criterion synopsis:
In a magnetic performance, Vittorio De Sica is Emanuele Bardone, an opportunistic rascal in wartime Genoa, conning his fellow Italians and exploiting their tragedies by promising to help find their missing loved ones in exchange for money. But when the Nazis force him to impersonate a dead partisan general in prison to extract information from fellow inmates, Bardone finds himself wrestling with his conscience for the first time. Roberto Rossellini’s gripping drama, a rare box-office breakthrough for the legendary neorealist, is further evidence of the compassionate artistry of one of cinema’s most important voices.
I prefer Chaplin to Lloyd and Keaton, and I think at least part of it is due to my not thinking much of the latter two's use of black people in stereotyped or buffoonish caricatures, where Chaplin never did. White people will look at me funny when I say something like that, usually responding with "not like you're black", though it turns out I am, in part. I'm also part Chinese and part Latino on top of being half-white. I don't hold the racial mores people grew up with against them, but I do award extra credit for being ahead of one's time.
Whatever Chaplin's other indiscretions or flaws were in life, at least he was beyond progressive on race, and that's something. I like very much that biographer Jeffrey Vance makes a particular point of talking about this on the Criterion commentary for City Lights. I may be teetering back toward calling it my favorite Chaplin, over Modern Times.
Criterion is not only returning Soderbergh's King of the Hill to print on home video in February 2014, but they're also including his The Underneath in the same package. I knew it was only a matter of time before we got KOTH, but I'm more grateful to see them having convinced Soderbergh to do an interview about his film that he (allegedly) dislikes the most.
Regarding The Underneath as I wrote about it in the third numbered installment of Soderberghopolis:
"I don’t see the complete clusterfuck he apparently does. I’ve had personal artistic catastrophes others have seen as successes, so I get it. I just don’t agree that it sucks. Imperfect work from a great director is better than what hacks can do on their best days with a papal blessing. I’ll concede that it isn't drenched in Soderbergh's cinematic DNA, but it couldn't have been directed by just anyone. The cinematographic flourishes and this first pass at a non-linear narrative are distinctly Soderbergh."
My "Soderberghopolis" series stalled out once I hit the point I needed to re-watch his two TV series from the early/mid-aughts. Booking time to not just scrub through (as I have with some of the movies) ground it to a halt.
It's finally restarting soon, and I may push that forward even sooner with this tremendously happy news.
I hope this means that not only we'll see the Kafka "Midnight Cut" next year, but maybe a Blu-ray of Schizopolis and at long, long last…The Limey.
I wonder if Extension765 will do a "Perennial Security" t-shirt...
• Just announced: Universal is releasing a 30th Anniversary Edition of Monty Python's Meaning of Life on 8 October. It retains all previous extras and adds a new hour-long reunion special with all surviving Pythons, plus a new Sing-Along mode.
• Criterion's July slate includes:
• Well Go USA has sequel Tai Chi Hero on 2 July and powerful Korean gangster drama New World on 23 July.
• 20th Century Fox has another wave of vintage classics hitting Blu-ray throughout July, including Tyrone Power matador movie Blood and Sand (9th), The 300 Spartans (23rd), and a pair of Marilyn Monroe movies (Niagara and Bus Stop) and Elvis in Love Me Tender on 30 July.
• 2 July also brings a trio of great titles from Shout! Factory: The Producers Collectors Edition, Kentucky Fried Movie, and Tower Block, which had the unfortunate timing of being released with very close proximity to both The Raid and Dredd.
• 2 July TV titles worth noting are Portlandia Season 3, the DVD-only North & South (the BBC one, with Patrick Stewart) and the astounding box set of The UP Series, collecting the over half century of work done across eight films
• 9 July brings a couple of more obscure releases: Taika Waititi's Boy from Kino, and Shout! Factory has 1989's Roy Scheider/Adam Baldwin-starring Cohen & Tate (an adaptation of O. Henry's Ranson of Red Chief, previously on MoD DVD from MGM).
• 16 July is extremely varied, with everything from Ralph Bakshi's Heavy Traffic and another entry in the Jackie Chan Collection (Battle Creek Brawl/City Hunter double feature) from Shout! Factory, just-announced discs for Sony's new Evil Dead movie (director/writer/cast commentary & featurettes) and WB's Bullet to the Head (with just a single, lonely featurette), a pair of Mario Bava Collection discs (Black Sabbath and Kidnapped) from Kino, and finally, at long last, a US edition of Michael Bassett's genuinely pulpy Solomon Kane, starring James Purefoy.
• The week of 23 July is one of the most interesting of the month, including another batch of Olive Films titles: Harlow (1965), Tennessee Williams adaptation Summer and Smoke, Once is Not Enough starring Kirk Douglas, and WUSA starring Paul Newman and Joanne Woodward. Music Box Films has The Silence , Magnet has Xan Cassavetes' Kiss of the Damned, and Drafthouse releases both Grace Land and Piéta. One of my favorite docs of last year, The Bitter Buddha, arrives on DVD only. Shout! also has a 4-DVD, 27th edition of their long-running Mystery Science Theater 3000 sets. Rounding things out is a two-DVD SE of a Korean baseball movie I'd never heard of called Glove. I really want to track that one down.
• 30 July is packed with more Shout!: George Romero's Knightriders and a Scream Factory release of John Carpenter's The Fog, and more Olive: Angel and the Bad Man, That Touch of Mink, and Bullfighter & The Lady. New releases include DC Animated's Justice League: The Flashpoint Paradox, Filly Brown, and Francis Ford Coppola's Twixt. Kino looks to be kicking off a new auteir "collection" series for Erich von Stroheim with Foolish Wives.
• 30 July TV titles hit heavy with HBO's Banshee Season 1, and yet another sure-to-be-amazing pair from CBS: Star Trek: The Next Generation - Season 4 and Star Trek: The Next Generation - Redemption, a "telefilm" cut of the Season 4 finale plus the concluding first episode of the following season. This worked well for The Best of Both Worlds, and I bet this will be interesting as well.
• Joining Oliver & Company on 6 August are Blu-rays of Disney's Robin Hood and The Sword in the Stone, as 40th and 50th Anniversary Editions. Both retain all previous extras and add new features in the form of an alternate opening (for S&tS) and a deleted sequence (for RH).
• 13 August brings both HBO's Girls Season 2 and Shout! Factory's the Luc Besson-produced The Extraordinary Adventures of Adele Blanc-Sec.
Disc News Digest collects recent, relevant, and upcoming Blu-ray and DVD release dates in one place rather than fill your feed with a ton of individual stories for individual discs.
At the end of March, almost all of Criterion's Jean-Pierre Melville titles went OOP. Among them was the Jean-Paul Belmondo-starring Léon Morin, Priest, the Blu-ray of which Amazon has back in stock for $20 while they last. Grab it while you can. The movie is a rare opportunity to see Belmondo play reserved and pious.
My pal Sam Smith breaks down his process for the packaging and menu design of Criterion's Blu-grade of Laurence Olivier's Richard III. Clean, classical, and gorgeous work.
From an email sent an hour ago to B&N newsletter subscribers:
Now is the spring of your contentment, for the new Criterion Collection Blu-ray of Laurence Olivier's celebrated 1955 Shakespeare adaptation ''Richard III'' is available today at Barnes & Noble -- three weeks earlier than anywhere else. Criterion produced this edition using a new high-definition digital master of the Film Foundation's 2012 restoration, and the bonus material includes an interview with Olivier from a 1966 episode of ''Great Acting.''
Also in there is a Fillm Foundation intro from Martin Scorsese.
It's $35.99 on their site, and is readily available in their stores. When it's widely released, the price will probably only be five or six bucks less than that at retailers like Best Buy and Fry's, but Amazon's pre-order is currently at $27.99 if you don't mind waiting.
The duel in The Life and Death of Colonel Blimp represents one of the great choices in cinema, crossing direction, editing, cinematography, and acting.
When the audience expects to see a thrilling, climactic duel, Powell and Pressburger choose to avoid the route taken by other films, from any version of Scaramouche to the various Robin Hood(s) to even The Princess Bride. The duel itself is less important than the build up and the aftermath. The actors knew the importance of the preparation and approach, since the duel itself would barely be seen.
This scene represents one of the most perfect series of choices in cinematic composition, and Criterion's new Blu-ray shows off the whole movie in a manner befitting one of the greatest movies ever made. Scorsese does a marvelous newly-recorded introduction, and Thelma Schoonmaker offers keen insight as she always does on Powell's films. This is one of the best discs of the year, and we're just 1/4 of the way through.
I swear I'll finish a review of this one soon. I've been busy finshing off my monster 2012 Best in Blu-ray multi-list article, among other things.
From Criterion's blog "Criterion Current":
We wanted to let you know that the following titles are going out of print effective March 31:
Army of Shadows [$25.11 Blu-ray on Amazon]
Le cercle rouge [$24.59 Blu-ray on Amazon]
Le doulos [$33.30 DVD on Amazon]
Last Year at Marienbad [$23.70 Blu-ray on Amazon]
Léon Morin, Priest [$30.38 Blu-ray on Amazon]
Mafioso [$22.19 DVD on Amazon]
These announcements are always sad for collectors, but this one is especially so, since it kills off almost all of Criterion's outstanding Jean-Pierre Melville titles (minus Le Samourai, Les Enfants Terribles, and Le deuxieme souffle). On top of that, we're losing Last Year at Marienbad one of their best-ever Blu-ray releases.
I highly recommend grabbing all the above discs while you can. The Amazon prices listed and linked above look like the lowest around.
From this week's wonderful Criterion edition of Michael Powell's The Life and Death of Colonel Blimp. It includes all of the features found in the Region B disc I imported late last year, plus a half hour interview with Thelma Schonnmaker-Powell and a meaty introduction piece with Martin Scorsese, on top of the carried-over Criteiron commentary track. A full review and comparison are in the works.
From an email received from Criterion earlier:
Celebrate Akira Kurosawa’s March 23 birthday with Hulu and the Criterion Collection. Until midnight on Sunday, all twenty-four of the legendary Japanese director’s films on Hulu are free of charge to nonsubscribers (with commercial interruptions, and only in the U.S.). It’s a great opportunity to watch both the iconic classics, like Rashomon, Seven Samurai, and Yojimbo, and lesser-known but enormously moving gems such as No Regrets for Our Youth, One Wonderful Sunday, and Dodes’ka-den. Also available is Kurosawa’s beautiful final film, Madadayo, not on Criterion Blu-ray or DVD. And remember, if you sign up for Hulu Plus for just $7.99 a month, you can see them all the time, ad-free!
It's much, much better to watch these movies without commercials, but if you can only do free, it's better than nothing.
If you haven't tried Hulu Plus and its loads of Criterion movies, recent TV shows with shorter-than-broadcast commercial breaks, and so on, try it free for two weeks. I'm a very happy and at once very hard-to-please customer.
Use the code FLASHY at checkout.
Recent Blu-grade Recommendations: this week's Sansho the Bailiff, Kurosawa's Rashomon, Gilliam's Brazil, Polanski's Rosemary's Baby, Ozu's Late Spring, Wong Kar-wai's In the Mood for Love...all of which are on the pending Best of 2012 Blu-ray list.
Act very, very quickly, because they sell out fast on these.
I still have more to sift through, but On the Waterfront opens 2013 as a leading contender for one of the best collector's sets of the year, just like Criterion's Godzilla did in 2012.
This frame from the 1.66:1 version of On the Waterfront shows off the definitive one out of the three aspect ratios included in Criterion's outstanding new Blu-ray release.
Don't trust any "reviews" that lack evidence that the reviewer watched all three versions. Likewise, trust no one who declares 1.85:1, aka "fill my whole HDTV screen ratio" the definitive way to watch. All who do are charlatans, fools, and rank poseurs.
