Dusty Somers

Blu-ray Review: Three Outlaw Samurai from the Criterion Collection

2012-02-14T18:13:00.000-08:00

The Film
Hideo Gosha's film debut, Three Outlaw Samurai (based on an earlier TV show of the same name that Gosha worked on), is a lean, thrilling genre picture. Gosha draws his details sparely, working with archetypal characters and familiar samurai notions of honor and bravery to deliver a brisk 93-minute entertainment, unfettered by extraneous particulars. But though its setting and character types are common, Three Outlaw Samurai's chief pleasures come not from the comfort of the familiar but from Gosha's bracing visuals and inventive direction.

Weaving an abundance of technically superb swordfighting scenes with a tale of class warfare and bureaucratic inertia, Three Outlaw Samurai opens with wandering ronin Sakon Shiba (Tetsuro Tamba) happening upon a kidnapping. Three peasants have captured the local magistrate's daughter (Miyuki Kuwano) in an attempt to secure better living conditions for themselves, and Shiba comes around to their plan, acting as the lone wise warrior in a sea of desperate incompetence.

The corrupt magistrate (Tatsuya Ishiguro) sends out bands of his own samurai to overtake the peasants and reclaim his daughter, but there are some defections — the jovial Kyojuro Sakura (Isamu Nagato) and the skeptical Einosuke Kikyo (Mikijiro Hira) join Shiba to defend the peasants' cause. But their own personal honor proves to be an uneven match for the magistrate's underhanded ways, leading to a series of violent confrontations.

The unexpected actions of the three titular samurai set them up in direct opposition to the rigidly defined feudal roles that are deeply entrenched here. The rich live in luxury while the working class suffers, and Gosha is constantly reminding us of this status quo with his richly detailed compositions, frequently framed by doorways, crossbeams and constricting right angles. His action sequences have a tendency to disrupt this visual order — canted frames tilt the proceedings into a frenetic, violent attempt at correcting the injustice. Some of Gosha's most interesting shots in the film see him zeroing in on a specific face and holding the image there while something violent occurs — often to that shot's subject — just outside of the frame. There's an unpredictable energy to the film's violent encounters that makes the film seethe.

Three Outlaw Samurai was an auspicious debut for Gosha, proving that he could transition into the world of TV to film with a flair for expertly constructed action and compelling composition.

The Blu-ray Disc
Criterion's 1080p, 2.35:1 transfer of Three Outlaw Samurai is simply gorgeous, displaying breathtaking amounts of fine detail in everything from clothing fibers to foliage. The image is consistently sharp, with healthy amounts of film-like grain and excellent grayscale separation. The transfer's very few stray marks are almost totally negligible, leaving us with a clean, beautiful black-and-white presentation.

Audio is presented in an uncompressed monaural track that gets the job, with adequate clarity for voices and effects.

Special Features
A release even sparer than the film itself, the disc only includes the film's theatrical trailer as an extra. The package also contains a booklet with an essay by the very fine critic Bilge Ebiri, and his overview of Gosha's career, the transition from TV to film and themes of disloyalty in Three Outlaw Samurai is a great read.

The Bottom Line
Very thin extras for Criterion these days, but the lower price point releases are still meticulously produced, as the beautiful transfer here can attest to.

Seattle Theater: Oklahoma! and I Am My Own Wife

2012-02-11T13:46:00.000-08:00

Kyle Scatliffe as a menacing, wounded Jud Fry in the 5th Avenue's production of Oklahoma! Photo provided.

Two excellent shows are running in Seattle through the month of February: the 5th Avenue's stunning, ambitious production of Oklahoma!, with choreography by the Spectrum Dance Theater's Donald Byrd, and Seattle Rep's staging of Tony- and Pulitzer-winning I Am My Own Wife. I review both shows over at Blogcritics:
Oklahoma!
I Am My Own Wife

Wilco with White Denim at the Paramount Theatre, 2/7/12

2012-02-09T14:09:00.000-08:00

Jeff Tweedy of Wilco at Seattle's Paramount Theatre
Photo by Dusty Somers

Wilco and White Denim treated a sold-out Seattle crowd right Tuesday night at the Paramount. Check out my review of the show over at Blogcritics, and see more of my photos of both bands after the jump.

James Petralli of White Denim.


Austin Jenkins of White Denim

Steven Terebecki of White Denim.


Jeff Tweedy of Wilco.


John Stirratt of Wilco.


Nels Cline of Wilco

Traffic on Criterion Collection Blu-ray

2012-01-16T10:13:00.000-08:00

Steven Soderbergh's finely tuned sprawl Traffic gets the high-def upgrade from Criterion, and believe me, those super-grainy, high-contrast Mexico scenes sure look great. The film also nicely anticipates Contagion, which might actually best Traffic in some respects, but the crisscross storytelling here is hard to beat. I review the disc over at Cinema Sentries.

Top Ten Films of 2011

2011-12-31T18:17:00.000-08:00

Certified Copy

1.     Certified Copy dir. Abbas Kiarostami
Enchanting from the first frame on, with the inexperienced William Shimell astonishingly keeping up with Juliette Binoche doing the best work of her career. Kiarostami imbues the margins of the couple’s (or not) tête-à-tête with remarkable emotional weight, and the mystery — wonderfully beguiling as it is — fades in importance.

2.     We Need to Talk About Kevin dir. Lynne Ramsay
As formally audacious as Ramsay’s earlier masterworks (its elliptically edited flashes of memory surpass even those of The Tree of Life), Kevin manages at turns to be both deeply unsettling and blackly funny. By putting us firmly inside the fractured memory and psyche of Tilda Swinton’s reeling Eva Khatchadourian, Ramsay allows herself even more freedom to revel in stylistic excess in the face of narrative improbability.

3.     Margaret dir. Kenneth Lonergan

Margaret

As messy as its tortured production history would lead you to believe, but the chaos isn’t entirely unintentional, and the post 9-11 moral morass provides an acutely realized backdrop for the impetuous, maddeningly selfish and idealistic Lisa Cohen (Anna Paquin, superb). Even if a proper director’s cut never sees the light of day, what we have here is an American classic. Looking forward to double-featuring it with 25th Hour someday.

4. Take Shelter dir. Jeff Nichols
Michael Shannon internalizes almost all of the physicality and blistering emotion that can make him such a fun scenery-chewing actor to watch, and the resulting slow-burn dread is matched by Nichols’ direction in this unnerving Midwestern apocalyptic meltdown.

5. Le Quattro Volte dir. Michelangelo Frammartino
A peek at the mystifying metaphysics behind the sometimes cruel, sometimes comic connections in life, Le Quattro Volte features sublimely designed long takes — one featuring a brick, a mischievous dog, an Easter procession and a pen of goats is easily the greatest one-shot scene of the year.

Meek's Cutoff

6.     Meek’s Cutoff dir. Kelly Reichardt
Yep, the Academy ratio absolutely works to great constricting effect for the poor pioneer souls in Reichardt’s totally assured western. In fact, every detail of the sparse, evocative photography seems to turn your throat dry and perpetually make your heart sink. A cop-out ending? Hardly.

7.     Uncle Boonmee Who Can Recall His Past Lives dir. Apichatpong Weerasethakul
Explicating the distinctly alien pleasures of an Apichatpong Weerasethakul movie can be futile. Suffice it to say, allowing myself to become immersed in this world — where the membrane between past and present, reality and fantasy is nearly invisible — was one of my most satisfying cinema experiences of the year.

8.     The Tree of Life dir. Terrence Malick
Neither viewing of Malick’s latest was an entirely satisfactory experience for me, and I can’t shake the feeling this might be his weakest, least realized film. But ambition counts, and when the film is firing on all cylinders (its evocations of deeply personal familial memories and experiences are glorious), it’s truly a wonder.

9.     The Interrupters dir. Steve James
For every single “issue” doc out there, I wish there was a filmmaker with the intelligence and humanity of Steve James behind the camera. Eschewing the tendency to squeeze real life into a narrative arc and turn human beings into character types, James creates an absorbing and sobering study of endemic violence and the people trying to stem the tide in Chicago. When the Oscars can’t even find room for The Interrupters on a 15-film shortlist, you know the system is broken.

A Dangerous Method

10. A Dangerous Method dir. David Cronenberg
Another blow against the “mainstream-ifying” of Cronenberg meme, A Dangerous Method sees the filmmaker sharpening his technique — the blocking and camera work in the therapy scenes is masterfully economical — and finding ways to more obliquely examine themes of body horror and sexual displacement. Michael Fassbender bests his Shame work, but the real story is the riveting physicality of Keira Knightley, who I was not prepared to be impressed with.

And check out a bonus 10 after the jump.

11. Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy dir. Tomas Alfredson
12. Contagion dir. Steven Soderbergh
13. Poetry dir. Lee Chang-dong
14. Hugo dir. Martin Scorsese
15. Melancholia dir. Lars von Trier
16. Terri dir. Azazel Jacobs
17. The Skin I Live In dir. Pedro Almodóvar
18. Le Havre dir. Aki Kaurismäki
19. Margin Call dir. J.C. Chandor
20. Shame dir. Steve McQueen

Films I haven’t caught up with yet that would likely be strong contenders for this list: A Separation, House of Pleasures, Mysteries of Lisbon, The Arbor, Carnage

Kino's Sherlock Holmes Blu-ray

2011-12-31T17:47:00.000-08:00

Courtesy of Kino International

Over at Blogcritics, I review Kino's Blu-ray release of the 1922 silent version of Sherlock Holmes, featuring a game John Barrymore as the titular detective. It's a somewhat stodgy affair with barrages of inter-title exposition, but the George Eastman House restoration of the once-thought-lost film looks pretty solid on Blu-ray. And it's not directed by Guy Ritchie either, so another plus.

Tokyo Drifter and Branded to Kill Criterion Collection Blu-ray Review

2011-12-22T18:57:00.000-08:00

Tokyo Drifter

The Films

Criterion closes out an exceptional 2011 by upgrading twoearly titles that sorely needed it — Seijun Suzuki’s deconstructive, gloriouslydisorienting crime films Tokyo Drifterand Branded to Kill. Replacing thelackluster 1999 DVD editions are two beautiful Blu-rays, and in a year whereCriterion has given impressive high-def makeovers to lots of early titles (The Naked Kiss, Shock Corridor, Diaboliqueand Orpheus among them) these twomight just be the best.

The composition and cutting in both Tokyo Drifter and Branded toKill is perpetually astonishing and can be kind of dumbfounding — and notbecause their respective plots are mostly rendered as mere afterthoughts.Rather, it’s difficult not to be in constant thrall to the imagery and in wondermentof Suzuki’s bald-faced audacity. Every shot is in the moment, often with littleconcern for what came before or what is to come. It’s pure cinema at its mostassaultive.

The eye-popping TokyoDrifter features the efforts of former hit man Tetsu (TetsuyaWatari) to go straight with his retired boss. Naturally, it isn’t long beforethe underhanded schemes of a rival gang force him back into a life of violence,but Tetsu is no reluctant hero. Repeatedly singing his self-appointed themesong about his new life as a drifter, he evades numerous attempts on his lifewhile leaving a trail of bodies behind him.

Amid the pop-art garishness of thecolor scheme, even the film’s black-and-white prologue pops with blown-outwhites and oversaturated blacks. Suzuki often casts a room’s color in onepredominant shade in a method that seems an even more excessive anticipation ofPeter Greenaway’s work in The Cook, theThief, His Wife & Her Lover. But whereas Greenaway’s formalism isaccompanied by symbolic corollaries, Suzuki just seems to be going nuts. And ohhow delightfully cockeyed is the result.

The jagged editing gets even moreextreme in the following year’s Brandedto Kill, the film that put the final nail in the coffin of Suzuki’sstrained relationship with studio Nikkatsu. Shot in expressive black-and-white,the film stars Joe Shishido as Goro Hanada, the third-ranked assassin in theJapanese underworld. He has no shortage of employment, but his professionbelies his inherent impotence. He needs to sniff the aroma of boiling rice toget it up, and his fragile mental state is shattered when an errant butterflycauses him to botch an important job.

The film kicks into a gear even moredelirious from this point on, as Hanada must deal with a dreamy femme fatale(Annu Mari) who initiated the hit and the mysterious presence of the number onekiller (Koji Nanbara), who shows himself unafraid to engage in a series ofescalating mind games.

The extreme aesthetic of both Tokyo Drifter and Branded to Kill — concretely realized despite the films’ apparentchaos — make for a pair of utterly engrossing crime films.

TheBlu-ray Discs

Both films are presented in 1080p highdefinition in their original 2.35:1 aspect ratios. Comparing these gorgeouswidescreen frames to the non-anamorphic, severely muddled images of theoriginal DVDs shows one just how far Criterion has come in the past decade. Tokyo Drifter features bold colors thatpop off the screen in nearly every instance. While the image is never razorsharp, the slight softness seems inherent to the source and is likelyintentional. Branded to Kill offersup an incredibly film-like image, with healthy, detail-rich grain levels. Bothtransfers are free of any major damage.

The uncompressed monaural audio tracksare adequate and clean, with certain effects coming off a little harsh.

SpecialFeatures

Both releases are a little thin in theextras department, although both discs feature new interviews with Suzuki, now88, and assistant director Masami Kuzuu. Both discs also port over previouslyavailable interview excerpts with Suzuki from 1997. The Branded to Kill disc also gets a new interview with Shishido.Trailers are included with both, as are booklets with an essay by HowardHampton for Tokyo Drifter and theinimitable Tony Rayns for Branded to Kill.

TheBottom Line

Essential upgrades. Even if thesupplements are a little slight, the image quality is superb.

Buster Keaton and Marriage: Seven Chances on Blu-ray

2011-12-13T09:39:00.000-08:00

The impeccably structured and paced Seven Chances is the latest Keaton Blu-ray from the folks at Kino, who I continue to be impressed by for their commitment to silents in high-def. As usual, the disc is pretty stunning, and the film is pretty much perfect. I review it at Blogcritics.

The Lady Vanishes on Criterion Blu-ray

2011-12-13T09:33:00.000-08:00

Frankly, I'm surprised by the paucity of Hitchcock on Blu-ray (although the discs that are out there — Psycho and North By Northwest — are superb). Fortunately, Criterion has stepped up with a Blu-ray upgrade of one of their earliest spines, Hitchcock's delightful penultimate British film, The Lady Vanishes. My review of the disc is up at Blogcritics.

The Three Colors Trilogy Blu-ray — The Criterion Collection

2011-12-05T11:23:00.001-08:00

Irène Jacob in Three Colors: Red.

Criterion's latest box set release is gorgeous from top to bottom. Krzysztof Kieslowski's final films that make up The Three Colors Trilogy have simply never looked better, and Criterion even improves upon the extras in the old Miramax box, which were substantial themselves. I review the set at Blogcritics.

Warner Archive roundup

2011-12-05T11:09:00.001-08:00

Lupe Velez and Laurel and Hardy in Hollywood Party.

I've taken a look at several recent Warner Archive releases over at Blogcritics:

Night Watch — Elizabeth Taylor chows down on the scenery in a mostly satisfying grand guignol.

Hollywood Party — Eight directors and eight writers create a movie that's exactly as incoherent as you would expect, but some discrete scenes are great. And, it's a rare Archive disc with actual bonus material.

Housewife — This early pairing of Bette Davis and George Brent is pervasively dull and casually sexist to its core.

The Music Lovers - RIP Ken Russell

2011-11-30T15:00:00.000-08:00

The day before the sad news of British filmmaker Ken Russell's death, I posted this review of his thrillingly over-the-top Tchaikovsky biopic The Music Lovers over at Cinema Sentries. Like much of Russell's work, this film hasn't got the respect it deserves and was dumped onto MGM's Limited Edition burn-on-demand line. One hopes he receives more recognition in the wake of his death.

Rushmore — the Criterion Collection Blu-ray

2011-11-21T18:10:00.001-08:00

One of Criterion's early releases — and the Wes Anderson film that opened the Anderson-Criterion floodgates — finally gets the bump to Blu-ray, and the results are glorious. My review of the disc is up at Cinema Sentries.

Sylvia at Seattle Repertory Theatre

2011-11-21T18:01:00.001-08:00

Alban Dennis and Linda K. Morris in Sylvia. Photo courtesy of Seattle Repertory Theatre.

The prospect of a woman playing a lab-poodle mix who interacts in plain English with her owners sounds a little hokey, but A.R. Gurney's humorous and philosophical Sylvia, now on stage at Seattle Repertory Theatre through Dec. 11, delighted both the dog-lover and theater-goer in me. My review is up at Blogcritics.

Blitzen Trapper and Dawes at the Neptune Theatre

2011-11-14T09:25:00.001-08:00

Blitzen Trapper at the Neptune Theatre in Seattle, 11/11/11.
Photo by Dusty Somers.

I finally made it to the newly repurposed Neptune Theatre for Friday's co-headlining Blitzen Trapper and Dawes show, where opener The Belle Brigade surpassed one of the main acts. Which one? Head on over to Blogcritics to check out my review of the show and see photos of all three acts after the jump.

Brother and sister duo Ethan and Barbara Gruska at the Neptune Theatre
in Seattle, 11/11/11. Photo by Dusty Somers.

Taylor Goldsmith of Dawes at the Neptune Theatre in Seattle, 11/11/11.
Photo by Dusty Somers.

Marty Marquis and Michael VanPelt of Blitzen Trapper at the Neptune Theatre
in Seattle, 11/11/11. Photo by Dusty Somers.

Annie Get Your Gun at Village Theatre

2011-11-14T09:16:00.001-08:00

Photo by Jay Koh. Courtesy of Village Theatre.

After an underwhelming season opener in new musical Take Me America (review here), Village Theatre returned with a bona fide classic, Irving Berlin's enduring Annie Get Your Gun. Performing the 1999 revival version of the show, Village's staging is immensely charming. I review the show at Blogcritics.

Expressionistic Horror and Romantic Futility from Criterion

2011-11-13T20:43:00.001-08:00

I take a look at two of Criterion's October releases over at Cinema Sentries: Kaneto Shindo's spooky, feudal-era horror Kuroneko and Michelangelo Antonioni's unsung late-period film Identification of a Woman.

An extra-large dose of Aki Kaurismäki

2011-10-31T09:29:00.000-07:00

It was a Kaurismäki weekend for me. I checked out Criterion's latest Eclipse offering Aki Kaurismäki's Leningrad Cowboys, which includes two feature films, a concert documentary and five music videos featuring the outrageously pompadoured band. (Reviewed at Blogcritics)

I also caught up with his latest, the charming Le Havre. (Reviewed at Cinema Sentries)

Online Film Critics Society

2011-10-30T17:53:00.000-07:00

I was recently invited to become a member in the Online Film Critics Society, the largest organization for film critics whose work is primarily published on the Web. You can check out links to my Blu-ray, DVD and film reviews each week, along with plenty of other reviews from the organization's talented roster, on OFCS's website.

3 Women — The Criterion Collection

2011-09-17T22:35:00.000-07:00

Article first published as Blu-ray Review: 3 Women — The Criterion Collection on Blogcritics.

The Film
One of Robert Altman’s best — and most atypical — films, 3 Women is one of the best examples of a dreamlike aesthetic achieved on celluloid. And like many dreams, this one elicits a wide panoply of emotions, all at the same time. Like the bizarre half-human, half-reptilian murals that Janice Rule’s character paints in the film, 3 Women is unsettling but also mesmerizing. It’s a pleasantly hazy and bewitching dream and a skin-crawlingly weird nightmare at the same time.

Altman regular Shelley Duvall stars as Millie Lammoreaux, an attendant at a day spa for the elderly in the middle of the California desert. Millie fancies herself a highly desirable modern woman, with the fashion sense and recipe book to back it up. Too bad her perspective isn’t shared by any of her coworkers or peers, who can barely muster the disdain to make fun of her.

But there is one person absolutely enthralled with Millie — Pinky Rose (Sissy Spacek), a wide-eyed girl just off the bus from Texas — who loves Millie’s personality so much, she might just take it for her own. She gets a job at Millie’s spa and soon becomes her new roommate. Millie takes it upon herself to educate Pinky in the ways of the world and introduces her to her social circle, including Willie and Edgar Hart (Rule and Robert Fortier), a couple who own Millie’s apartment building and a dilapidated amusement center named Dodge City.

The power hierarchy is clearly established initially, and one gets the sense that Millie is grateful to finally have someone in her life she’s socially superior to, but a dramatic mid-film decision by Pinky starts to turn the world upside down. What seemed like plainly defined relational roles are soon anything but, and it isn’t long before the third woman of the title — Rule’s Willie — becomes part of the other two’s lives in a horrifying way.

Many of Altman’s films have an affably shaggy sensibility, but 3 Women is a much more controlled work with a carefully sustained aesthetic. One never is quite at ease during the film, unsure of what Altman’s trademark roving camera will spy next.

Both Duvall and Spacek are brilliant. In her sixth straight Altman film, Duvall possesses an immense awareness of her character’s personality (she crafted much of it on her own) while maintaining Millie’s central obliviousness. She was one of Altman’s finest players, and it’s a shame her career has essentially fizzled post-1980. Here, Spacek is even creepier than she was in Carrie a year earlier, with a harmless-seeming veneer of naïveté that gives way to a seditious, seductive underbelly.

The ’70s were a great decade for Altman — he made masterpieces McCabe & Mrs. Miller, The Long Goodbye, Thieves Like Us and Nashville all within a five-year stretch — but even among that company and indeed, across his varied and fascinating career, 3 Women stands tall as a singular work.

The Blu-ray Disc
3 Women is presented in 1080p high definition with an aspect ratio of 2.35:1. The film looks absolutely gorgeous, with the dusty desert colors and the film’s symbols of ’70s kitsch showing extraordinary color range and depth. Film grain is prominent but never looks like noise, and lends to a pleasingly detailed transfer that looks equally good in long shot and close-up. A few stray specks remain, but damage has mostly been completely eradicated, and we’re left with a very film-like, splendidly detailed picture.

Audio is presented in an uncompressed monaural soundtrack that shows excellent range despite being limited to a mono mix. Dialogue is clean and clear, with Gerald Busby’s atonal score exhibiting excellent fidelity.

Special Features
I wish we got more for the film, which is admittedly baffling in spots, but Criterion simply ports over the small amount of extras from its 2004 DVD release. Fortunately, the one big extra — an Altman commentary track — is quite a good one. Altman recorded commentaries for many of his films, and listening to the 3 Women track, it’s clear why — he obviously enjoys it and excels at keeping things engaging and lively. Here, he mixes production anecdotes with discussions of theme and mood and filmmaking theory. He discusses the film’s dream-initiated genesis, the relative ease with which he got financing and the casting of Duvall and Spacek, who were both in the dream that inspired the film. While he of course never gives anything so explicit as an explanation, there are some good bits about identity and female dominance that may help guide the utterly confused to some understanding.

Also on the disc is a large gallery of production photos and publicity stills, which is well worth going through for the behind-the-scenes looks, and a collection of trailers and TV spots. The package also includes an insert with an essay by critic David Sterritt.

The Bottom Line
Top-tier Altman looking stunning on Blu-ray? This one’s easy to recommend.

Bill Cunningham New York

2011-09-17T22:29:00.000-07:00

Article first published as DVD Review: Bill Cunningham New York on Blogcritics.

Making a documentary about an irresistibly interesting subject seems like it might be tough to screw up. After all, how could a film about an 80-year-old man who cruises the streets of New York City on a Schwinn bicycle, dodges taxis and takes photographs of the fashion he sees not be utterly fascinating?

Bill Cunningham New York is nothing if not utterly fascinating, but getting there wasn’t quite so easy, as director Richard Press explains in a statement included with Zeitgeist’s DVD release of the film. It took eight years to convince Cunningham, who photographs and writes the “On the Street” and “Evening Hours” columns in The New York Times, to agree to be filmed, and even after he agreed, no consistent shooting schedule could be established. Rather, Press and his tiny crew would hang around Cunningham’s workplace with small, consumer-grade cameras, and wait for opportunities to shoot.

The small-scale nature of the production lends the film an undeniably intimate feel, as if we’re just hanging out with Cunningham, who might just be the sweetest, most delightful and most singularly focused man on the planet. Since the late ’70s, Cunningham has photographed fashion for the Times, and his commitment to pounding the pavement, keeping a sharp eye out and getting the shot no matter what it takes proves him to be a journalist of the highest order.

Press’s film captures Cunningham’s intense photographic concentration on busy Manhattan sidewalks, his playful relationship with co-workers at the Times and his quiet personal life, which almost no one has any details about, and Cunningham only talks about briefly. His life is one utterly devoted to fashion, but the intimidating, snooty and high-pressure connotations of that industry are the diametric opposite of Cunningham. Bill Cunningham New York shows him to be a large-hearted egalitarian, capturing the fashion impulses of anonymous pedestrians with as much interest and delight as those of renowned tastemakers.

Talking heads with fashion fixtures like Anna Wintour and Iris Apfel dot the film’s landscape, but Press wisely keeps the film’s gaze mostly fixed on Cunningham’s day-to-day routine — living amid rows of file cabinets in a Carnegie Hall studio apartment, attending high-class fashion events in New York and Paris and readily whipping out his Nikon film camera to capture a compelling outfit. The resulting portrait of this dedicated, generous and talented octogenarian is absorbing and immensely gratifying.

Zeitgeist’s DVD of the film includes 20 minutes of additional scenes and the film’s U.S. theatrical trailer. A booklet with Press’s director’s statement and reprints of two “On the Street” layouts is also included.

If.... — The Criterion Collection

2011-09-13T09:15:00.000-07:00

Article first published as Blu-ray Review: If.... — The Criterion Collection on Blogcritics.

The Film
Audacious doesn’t even begin to describe Lindsay Anderson’s If…., a brutal satire that pulls no punches in its attack on British society while simultaneously achieving daring acts of formal anarchy. Don’t be deceived — while If…. takes place inside a well-mannered public boarding school and features chapter-like section headings, this is no prim and proper picture of academia. Anderson casually flouts any cinematic notion of reality, with a nearly invisible membrane between real events and fantasy.

Malcolm McDowell, in a pre-Clockwork turn, stars as Mick Travis, a senior at a British boarding school that at first blush appears to have all the trappings of a strict, conservative institution. But the power structure there is perverse, and the sadism of the faculty pales in comparison to that of the Whips, a small group of fellow students who enact swift justice on any square pegs while indulging in their own decadent pleasures.

Travis, along with buddies Wallace (Richard Warwick) and Johnny (David Wood), rebels in his own small ways, but isn’t ever behind any grand mischievous schemes. Indeed, the most brutal punishment the group receives — a series of lashings inside the gymnasium — is given as a result of their “general attitude.”

And yet, If…. features a strikingly violent denouement, with Mick’s rage front and center. By this point, it seems clear we’ve drifted into the metaphorical territory of the imaginary, but what else up to that point also qualifies? Is the presence of a dark-haired, slyly seductive girl (Christine Noonan) also completely imagined? How much is Mick only a revolutionary in his own mind?

Anderson keeps viewers on their toes throughout, mixing color and black-and-white footage seemingly at random (originally employed for practical purposes) and playfully messing with structure without ever tipping his hand. But although If…. is no ordinary school film, its precise observations about group dynamics and carefully realized moments between characters (like an exquisite scene that codes blossoming romance through a gymnastics routine) make it one of the best of that genre.

The Blu-ray Disc
If…. is presented in 1080p high definition with an aspect ratio of 1.66:1. Footage both in color and black-and-white looks outstanding here, with strong sharpness, clarity and depth of detail. Fans of heavy, unadulterated grain structure will be very pleased with this transfer, which showcases lots of film-like grain, particularly during the color sequences. The colors themselves are fairly bold and always bright, and black-and-white scenes show excellent contrast and grayscale separation. All in all, this is a nice step-up from Criterion’s previous DVD release of the film.

Audio is presented in an uncompressed monaural soundtrack that features solid depth for a mono presentation. Voices are almost always clean and clear, with occasional moments that are harder to decipher, although accents are more to blame than anything.

Special Features
Criterion ports everything over from the DVD release, including an audio commentary by critic David Robinson and McDowell and Thursday’s Children, an Oscar-winning short documentary that Anderson co-directed about a school for deaf children.

Also on the disc is a 2003 episode of Scottish TV series Cast and Crew, which brought together cinematographer Miroslav Ondrícek, editor Ian Rakoff, director’s assistant Stephen Frears, producer Michael Medwin and screenwriter David Sherwin as well as pre-taped footage of McDowell to discuss the film. The interviewer asks a lot of unfocused questions, but the group provides lots of interesting bits of information.

Also included is an interview with the late actor Graham Crowden, who plays an eccentric history teacher in the film. Crowden is a really charming personality, and although he has some trouble organizing his thoughts, his recollections of working on the film and with Anderson are quite enjoyable.

The package also includes a booklet with an essay by critic David Ehrenstein, a piece by Sherwin about the script’s radical changes and a publicity piece in which Anderson interviews himself.

The Bottom Line
A brilliant movie that certainly rewards multiple viewings, If…. comes highly recommended.

Fleet Foxes with The Walkmen at the Paramount Theatre

2011-09-09T10:08:00.000-07:00

Fleet Foxes at the Paramount Theatre 9/6/11. Photo by Dusty Somers

Article first published as Concert Review: Fleet Foxes with The Walkmen, Paramount Theatre, Seattle, WA, 9/6/11 on Blogcritics.

Talk about a murderer’s row of indie rock — it doesn’t get much better than the combination of The Walkmen and Fleet Foxes, who came together for a pair of shows at Seattle’s Paramount Theatre Tuesday and Wednesday. One of Seattle’s best current success stories, Fleet Foxes is Exhibit A of the city’s continued relevance in producing quality, widely popular acts. I mean, around for barely five years and you’ve already got The Walkmen opening for you? You’re obviously doing something right.

The dapper New York City five-piece got things started Tuesday with a tantalizingly short set — these guys certainly had no problem playing the part of gracious opening act — that made stops all across the discography. Surprisingly, with the gorgeous Lisbon not even a year old, that record didn’t get the spotlight. In fact, a healthy handful of new songs from Hamilton Leithauser and company may have gotten that honor. Elegant, focused rock songs like those The Walkmen dish out with seeming ease, each of the new numbers bodes well for the next record. At the pace they’ve kept their entire career, it would seem this next one should be out within a year or so.

Like fellow New York band The National, The Walkmen makes music that consistently reveals new facets — deceptively simple songs and instrumentation soon become anything but. Seeing the band live only reinforces this notion, as Tuesday’s extended version of “Blue as Your Blood” stretched to new emotional heights. Leithauser’s expressive performance ensured this was the case for pretty much every song on the setlist.

Fleet Foxes took the stage soon after for an immensely enjoyable set, anchored by the indelible harmonies and musical intricacies of the band’s sophomore record, Helplessness Blues. A cursory glance at Fleet Foxes might reveal a band that looks like just another set of bearded folkies playing sorta country, sorta old-timey, sorta over-earnest tunes. In a lot of ways, this is the Northwest’s new band du jour, but Fleet Foxes is in another league altogether.

For one, Robin Pecknold’s songwriting is frequently astonishing, both in its lyrical intricacy and its restless creativity. He writes songs that have an emotional immediacy, but they’re hardly simple guitar-driven singer-songwriter numbers that all blend together. The folk elements — thanks mostly to the pretty, pretty sun-dappled sound the harmonies create — are prominent, but psychedelic freak-outs like the saxophone solo on the tail end of “The Shrine/An Argument” and time signature shifts like on “Helplessness Blues” make for music that feels both of another era and excitingly modern at the same time.

The Walkmen at the Paramount Theare 9/6/11. Photo by Dusty Somers.

Tuesday’s show saw a chatty, relaxed Pecknold talk about his self-mythologizing mood amid a near-constant stream of song requests and proclamations of love from the vocal audience. He wryly proclaimed he was glad no one had to sit in the very back seats, but it might as well have been a sold-out show for all the noise the crowd made. Content to ignore much of the inane audience chatter, Pecknold did respond to a request to introduce the band — “When it’s Robin Pecknold and the Gryffindor All-Stars playing the Emerald Queen Casino, then I’ll introduce the band.”

But for all of his sardonic observations, Pecknold possesses an emotional incisiveness and vulnerability that he distills down into his searching, exquisite songs. Tuesday’s encore saw him perform a solo song he’d never performed before, about a lost love of his youth, and the bare honesty of it helped one understand just how he can craft the intricate, immediate music of Fleet Foxes.

The Complete Jean Vigo — The Criterion Collection

2011-09-06T09:59:00.000-07:00

L'Atalante

Article first published as Blu-ray Review: The Complete Jean Vigo — The Criterion Collection on Blogcritics.

The Films
With only four films to his name, running under three hours combined, Jean Vigo has one of the easiest filmographies to get through if you’re working through the oeuvres of great filmmakers. But even though Vigo died at 29 from tuberculosis and surely never fully realized his potential, he left behind a body of work that features quality inversely proportional to its quantity.

Criterion has put together a superb package of all four of Vigo’s films, titled The Complete Jean Vigo. The films included are:

À propos de Nice (1930)
A silent semi-documentary about the coastal town of Nice, À propos de Nice stands alongside similar films Man with a Movie Camera and People on Sunday as an energetic, effervescent portrait of a city in motion. Vigo’s film has a satiric edge about societal decadence that requires more contextual information to really grasp, but even without it, its straddling of surrealism and realism points toward the precise balance Vigo would strike in each of his films.

Taris (1931)
A delightful 9-minute short about Olympic swimmer Jean Taris, the film begins as a sort of crash course in proper swimming technique and veers off into a magical underwater world. The images Vigo captures of Taris submerged in the pool, swimming and twirling in the water, have a bewitching quality that’s hard to explain. The film reminds me of the work of Jean Painlevé, a friend of Vigo’s whose underwater films of sea life created similarly surreal images from totally natural happenings.

Zéro de conduite (1933)
A brash, fragmented tale of youths rebelling at a boarding school, Zéro de conduite is Vigo’s first strictly fiction film, and he packs an immense amount of content into its 44 minutes. The film understands the essence of childhood, down to its very structure, with is fitful starts and stops and wide-eyed lack of focus. Loosely, the film is about a group of boys’ plans to ruin their school’s commemoration day, but Vigo clearly isn’t interested in presenting a strong narrative through-line. Rather, it’s the film’s anarchic spirit that comes through loudest and clearest — it’s a tightly wound sucker punch of disorderly behavior that was banned by French censors for more than a decade.

L’Atalante (1934)
Vigo’s final film, L’Atalante, is also considered one of the finest ever made, and one can see the culmination of his various approaches in his previous films applied here to a more conventional narrative. The film concerns itself with Jean and Juliette (Jean Dasté and Dita Parlo), a pair of newlyweds embarking on their new life on a barge where Jean is captain. They go from wedded bliss to disillusionment fast, with neither adjusting particularly well to the new situation.

She’s dismayed by the living conditions on the barge; he’s convinced she’s flirting with every man she runs across, even the crusty second-in-command (the ever-charming Michel Simon). The two separate, leading them on their own increasingly dreamlike paths back to one another. Vigo’s film loops from gritty naturalism to woozy, otherworldly moments like an underwater ballet of longing that harks back to Taris. L’Atalante doesn’t seem like the work of a director making his first film that runs over an hour. It’s fascinating to wonder what might have been if Vigo had had the time to develop an entire career, but what he accomplished remains remarkable.

The Blu-ray Disc
The four films are presented in 1080p high definition, with Taris and Zéro de conduite in 1.19:1 and À propos de Nice and L’Atalante in 1.33:1. All four films have their fair share of damage in the form of persistent scratches, but unrestored footage of the films seen in the bonus material makes it clear they’ve undergone significant cleanup. Each possesses solid amounts of fine detail, with strong contrast and grayscale separation. Close-ups are especially lovely in L’Atalante and Taris.

Audio is presented in uncompressed monaural tracks that show their age, but present dialogue adequately and clearly. The score for À propos de Nice is from 2001 and by Marc Perrone.

Special Features
A feature-length episode of Cinéastes de notre temps from 1964 offers a comprehensive look at Vigo’s life and career. A 1968 interview of François Truffaut by Eric Rohmer features the two filmmakers discussing L’Atalante, with Truffaut expressing great admiration for the film and Vigo.

A 2001 documentary by Bernard Eisenschitz discusses the various cuts made to L’Atalante after its release. It was butchered several times and released in at least four different versions over the years. A 2001 interview with French-Georgian filmmaker Otar Iosseliani features him discussing his thoughts on Vigo.

A brief, minute-long animated tribute to Vigo by Michel Gondry is also included on the disc, along with an alternate edit of À propos de Nice and audio commentaries for all four films by Michael Temple.

The package also includes a booklet with essays by Michael Almereyda, Robert Polito, B. Kite and Luc Sante.

The Bottom Line
It’s not often a filmmaker’s entire body of work fits on one disc, nor is it common for a filmmaker's early works to show such virtuosity. The Complete Jean Vigo represents an extremely impressive collection.

Two by Lee Chang-dong: Secret Sunshine and Poetry

2011-08-23T20:03:00.000-07:00

Secret Sunshine

Article first published as Blu-ray Review: Lee Chang-dong's Secret Sunshine and Poetry on Blogcritics.

The Films
With his two latest films, Korean filmmaker Lee Chang-dong has established himself as one of the premiere figures in contemporary art house cinema. Now, American audiences have an excellent opportunity to catch up with both, which are making their U.S. Blu-ray debuts this week.

Criterion is releasing Lee’s 2007 film, Secret Sunshine, which tells the story of Shin-ae (Jeon Do-yeon), a grieving woman dealing with the recent death of her husband. She moves from Seoul to her husband’s hometown of Miryang (which translates as secret sunshine) with her young son Jun (Seon Jung-Yeob). She’s in a daze, but she proves quite adept at putting on a happy face as she establishes a piano school, makes plans to buy a piece of development property and gently rebuffs the advances of genial mechanic Jong-chan (Song Kang-ho).

But just when it appears she may have a handle on her own grief, another tragedy strikes, and waves of pain are dredged up all over again. Shin-ae eventually finds comfort in religion and asserts another level of control over her emotions, but that is fleeting too in its own way.

Secret Sunshine has the potential to emotionally wreck anyone who sees it, and that makes it all the more remarkable how controlled the film plays. Lee has a firm handle on the proceedings, not allowing for any moments that feel extraneous, even though it runs for nearly two and a half hours and has a very measured pace. It’s a film that’s both narratively and emotionally complex without making a big deal of either — Lee’s matter-of-factness is backed up by his penetrating characterizations and simple, yet evocative photography.

At the center of the film is Cannes best actress winner Jeon, who is a wonder. The physicality of the role is incredible — again, not in big, showy moments; just enormously moving quieter ones — and even as her character undergoes massive emotional transformations before our eyes, she never strays into histrionics. She’s impossible to take your eyes off of; so much so that it could escape you just how impressive Lee’s subtle narrative shifts are.

Kino presents a release of Lee’s latest feature, 2010’s Poetry, and this one also features a nearly all-encompassing female performance at its center. Hugely popular Korean actress Yun Jung-hee stars as Mija, a woman beginning to slip into the throes of Alzheimer’s. To combat the deterioration of her mind, she joins a poetry class while maintaining a part-time cleaning job for an elderly invalid and taking care of her sullen high schooler grandson.

Poetry

Like in Secret Sunshine, a heinous tragedy invades Mija’s life, although in a more indirect way. She must deal with the repercussions of that incident as she attempts to see the world in a different way in order to write a poem.

Poetry again showcases Lee’s extraordinary ability to craft quietly moving scenes populated with distinct, lifelike characters. Yun’s performance embraces the childlike wonder of her character, and by plunging her into a truly horrible situation, Lee creates a fascinating portrait of the human spirit. The sublime and the wretched exist side-by-side in Lee’s universes, and it makes for unforgettable filmmaking.

The Blu-ray Discs
Criterion presents Secret Sunshine in 1080p high definition with an aspect ratio of 2.35:1. Simply put, this is a flawless transfer, with impeccable color detail, unwavering clarity and a rich, deep film-like image. Lee’s palette is generally bright and fresh, and the piercing blue sky and the sun-kissed colors of nearly every frame look outstanding. Audio is presented in a 5.1 DTS-HD Master Audio track that’s fairly active in the surrounds, presenting a gentle sense of place amid the dialogue-heavy mix.

Kino presents Poetry in 1080p high definition with an aspect ratio of 1.85:1. Also an excellent presentation, colors are slightly more subdued here, but fine detail, sharpness and clarity are just as strong. The film’s outdoor on-location settings are filled with natural beauty, and this transfer replicates that beauty very nicely. Audio is also presented in a 5.1 DTS-HD Master Audio track that features clean, clear front channel dialogue with subtle use of the surrounds.

Special Features
The Secret Sunshine disc features a new video interview with Lee that’s the best of any of the extras on these two releases. He talks of his desire to make films that illuminate the mundane details of life and also speaks of the film’s religious elements, although he doesn’t consider it a religious film. Also on the disc is a short behind-the-scenes featurette that shows production taking place along with brief interviews with lead actors Jeon and Song. The U.S. theatrical trailer rounds out the disc, with the package also including a booklet with an excellent essay by critic Dennis Lim.

On the Poetry disc, we get a brief making-of, which includes interview segments with Yun. There’s also a very short interview with Ahn Nae-sang, who plays a rather small role in the film. Trailers for Poetry and other Kino releases are included, as is a gallery of stills from the film.

The Bottom Line
Don’t make yourself choose between the two. Once you see one Lee film, you’ll be ready for more. Both releases come highly recommended.

Cul-de-sac — The Criterion Collection

2011-08-15T23:32:00.000-07:00

Article first published as Blu-ray Review: Cul-de-sac - The Criterion Collection on Blogcritics.

The Film
Like the two films that preceded it, Roman Polanski’s third feature, Cul-de-sac, thrives on mood and tone in a claustrophobic setting. In some ways, it plays out similarly to Polanski’s debut — Knife in the Water — with a couple’s emotional balance upset by the appearance of a stranger inside a confined space. But this time, Polanski throws in an undercurrent of black humor to the mix, ratcheting up the absurdity just as much as he cranks up the tension.

Donald Pleasence and Françoise Dorléac star as George and Teresa, newlyweds living in an English castle on an isolated island — cut off from the rest of the world for hours every day by the tides. He’s an effeminate Englishman; she’s a lusty Frenchwoman with a penchant for screwing the neighbor boy. Their distinctly odd relationship is lent an added wrinkle with the appearance of Richard (Lionel Stander) and Albie (Jack MacGowran), a pair of gangsters on the run after a botched job. Albie soon dies from the gunshot wound he’s sustained, leaving the married couple to contend with a dead body and a bombastic, unwanted houseguest.

Initially, the power hierarchy seems obvious, with the brash American gangster running roughshod over his unwilling hosts and basically camping out while waiting for the arrival of his boss, Mr. Katelbach. Richard is almost unbelievably boisterous, but for all of his buffoonery, there’s a real sense of menace underneath.

And yet, a power struggle begins to play out in bizarre ways, and the dynamics of the trio begin to shift. Some of this is brought about by external factors, like a surprise visit from a group of George’s obnoxious bourgeois friends. Some of it seems to arise from cabin fever madness overtaking the castle’s occupants.

Cul-de-sac is a strange little film through and through. It feels slighter than its Polanski predecessors Knife in the Water and Repulsion, but it’s certainly the most idiosyncratic of the three. Its morbid humor and absurd theatrics show Polanski eminently capable of evoking a specific mood with his imagery, and for that reason alone, it’s a weird highlight of his filmography.

The Blu-ray Disc
Cul-de-sac is presented in 1080p high definition with an aspect ratio of 1.66:1. Especially for the first half of the film, this is a very dark transfer, with heavy shadows overtaking large sections of the frame often. As this transfer was approved by Polanski, we can assume this is the intended look. It’s a testament to the quality of Criterion’s work that despite the darkness, blacks are never crushed and detail remains strong. The image is pleasingly film-like throughout, with a subtle layer of grain visible and rich, detail-heavy close-ups. Occasional long shots are a bit soft, but this is likely a condition of the photography. As far as I know, the film has never seen a U.S. home video release up until now, so this Blu-ray represents an excellent debut.

Audio is presented in an uncompressed monaural track that faithfully handles the dialogue-heavy film. Some portions of dialogue are a bit muffled, but it’s clearly an issue from the source. Stander’s blustering, which can get quite loud at points, never sounds harsh from the track.

Special Features
Sort of a light collection of extras here, with the best being a 2003 making-of documentary originally produced by Blue Underground that runs about 25 minutes. Interviews with Polanski, producer Gene Gutowski and cinematographer Gilbert Taylor are featured in this retrospective about the film’s genesis. There’s also a 1967 TV interview with Polanski of similar length on the disc, along with several theatrical trailers.

The package also includes a booklet with an essay by critic David Thompson, who dwells more on production history than analysis of the film.

The Bottom Line
Somewhere between oddity and essential part of Polanski’s career, Cul-de-sac is memorably bizarre and looks great in this Blu-ray release.

Life During Wartime — The Criterion Collection

2011-08-01T01:47:00.000-07:00

Article first published as Blu-ray Review: Life During Wartime — The Criterion Collection on Blogcritics.

The Film
Todd Solondz doesn’t pull any punches when it comes to his depictions of the idiosyncrasies and shameful secrets of middle-class Americans. He steps way beyond the line that most filmmakers would consider on the border of taboo territory, matter-of-factly portraying uncomfortable topics like pedophilia and child sexuality not just with boldness, but with humor. Solondz has a masterful grasp of black comedy, precisely targeting the rotten core of human foibles while overturning comic possibilities most people wouldn’t dare even to think about.

With his latest, Life During Wartime, a sequel of sorts to 1998 masterpiece Happiness, Solondz displays a more overt compassion for his characters than we’ve seen before. The film’s dominant theme is forgiveness, and nearly every scene gives us new perspective on the characters introduced to us over a decade ago in Happiness.

That new perspective largely comes from the fact that each of these characters is played by a different actor. The trio of disparate sisters Joy, Trish and Helen, first incarnated by Jane Adams, Cynthia Stevenson and Lara Flynn Boyle, are now played by Shirley Henderson, Allison Janney and Ally Sheedy. Trish’s pedophiliac husband Bill has transformed from Dylan Baker into Ciarán Hinds, and Joy’s phone sex pervert husband is now played by Michael Kenneth Williams instead of Philip Seymour Hoffman. Even the dead-by-his-own-hand Andy shows up, now as Paul Reubens rather than Jon Lovitz.

Everyone’s trying to forget their past that we saw in the last film. Joy insists that her husband, Allen, has gotten over his problem, or is getting over his problem, or it doesn’t really matter. Trish is trying to move on with the schlubby but kind Harvey Wiener (Michael Lerner), and proceed with the fiction that her ex-husband is dead. That doesn’t stop youngest son Timmy (Dylan Riley Snyder) from discovering his father’s crime, nor does it prevent Bill from leaving prison and forcing himself back into his family’s life.

The film’s sunny, artificially cheery Florida setting replaces the dismal New Jersey surroundings of Happiness, but despair is nowhere near vanquished. One might wonder why we’d want to spend more time with this group of misfits, and ultimately, the film does feel less revealing and incisive than Happiness — more an interesting exercise than an essential epilogue.

And yet, there’s no denying the brilliance of Solondz’s dialogue. Here, nearly every scene simply features two characters speaking to each other, but the film never feels stagnant. He gets remarkable performances out of Reubens, Williams and Hinds in particular. A scene near the end of the film where Bill tracks down his now-college-aged son (Chris Marquette) in his dorm room to soothe his own conscience is absolutely gripping.

Whether the film as a whole feels entirely necessary or not, individual scenes like that one sure make a strong argument for Solondz’s immense talent. Here, he’s empathetic but uncompromising, wickedly funny but full of understanding.

The Blu-ray Disc
Life During Wartime is presented in 1080p high definition with an aspect ratio of 1.78:1. The film was shot digitally on the RED One, and the pristine image we get here presents the format perhaps the best I’ve ever seen it. Ed Lachman’s photography features super-saturated colors, with yellows, greens and blues possessing an otherworldly brightness that accurately captures the look of the film. Fine detail is strong throughout, only getting lost slightly in shadows or darker scenes, but overall, sharpness, clarity and image stability are pretty much perfect.

Audio is presented in a 5.1 DTS-HD Master Audio track that doesn’t do a lot of heavy lifting, considering the talky nature of the film. Still, it features excellent directionality when needed, with voices coming out of the fronts perfectly clean and clear.

Special Features
The must-see extra (or more accurately, must-listen) here is a 45-minute audio-only segment where Solondz answers questions sent in by viewers. He speaks forthrightly and smartly about all aspects of production of the film and his own personal aesthetics, and it’s a unique look at a truly idiosyncratic filmmaker.

Also excellent is a 30-minute piece that features new interviews with almost every lead actor (Henderson, Hinds, Janney, Lerner, Reubens, Sheedy and Williams are all represented), each talking about what it’s like to work with Solondz, as this was the first time for each of them. Williams hadn’t even heard of him before joining the film. Snippets of on-set footage are mixed in with the interviews.

The disc also features a short interview with DP Lachman about his visual choices, another interview section with him broken down into specific questions and a selected-scene commentary where he gives his thoughts on a handful of scenes.

The original theatrical trailer rounds out the disc. A booklet with an essay by critic David Sterritt is also included.

The Bottom Line
While not as bracing a film as Happiness, Life During Wartime feels more than superfluous thanks to Solondz’s gifts for writing dialogue and directing actors. It’s presented in an exceptional package here from Criterion.

The Music Room — The Criterion Collection

2011-07-17T17:22:00.000-07:00

Article first published as Blu-ray Review: The Music Room — The Criterion Collection on Blogcritics.

The Film
Of all the remarkable things about Satyajit Ray’s The Music Room, perhaps the most striking is its sense of interior space. Almost the entire film takes place inside the palace of a feudal lord whose star has all but burned out. Ray captures the diametrically opposed opulence and decay of the place — it’s simultaneously a refuge and a prison for Biswambhar Roy (Chhabi Biswas), a zamindar whose cultural and political importance has been reduced to nil.

Ray shoots the palace and its contents (a grand chandelier, portraits of ancestors) in ways that make them seem both beautiful and terrifying at different moments. In a film that almost exclusively belongs to Roy, it’s the palace that emerges as the primary supporting character. And inside that palace — the crown jewel of Roy’s existence, a lavish music room where the lord holds concerts and indulges his love of classical Indian music.

As the film begins, we learn that Roy’s once enormous fortune is on the brink of completely evaporating. He also has a new neighbor to deal with — the wealthy and brash moneylender Mahim Ganguli (Gangapada Bose) — who has taken to throwing extravagant music-centered parties of his own.

In a quest to outdo him, Roy organizes events of his own, depleting his last few resources to the dismay of his wife Mahamaya (Padma Devi) and steward Taraprasanna (Tulsi Lahiri). There’s a madness and a selfishness to Roy’s actions, but he’s a subdued, defeated character, more giving in to the inevitability of his decline than actively seeking to destroy himself. Even after he inadvertently causes the death of several characters, he continues to dive headlong into the abyss, accompanied by the music he loves.

The film features a number of lengthy musical interludes, incorporated in a way that was quite unusual for Indian film at the time. Dance and music numbers were common, but generally weren’t integrated into the plot. Here, they’re essential to understanding the person of Biswambhar Roy.

Ray’s film is a subtle, illuminating character study that displays empathy for its main character while remaining ambivalent about his behavior and cultural status. The Music Room is a thoroughly Indian film, with cultural touchstones that Ray apparently thought might make it a tough sell outside of the country. And yet, while those culture-specific elements are prominent, the film has an undeniable universality.

Ray’s gift for making perceptive, sensitive and artifice-free films is clearly seen here. There’s artifice all around Roy in the ornate palace and the fleeting sense of security its music room gives him, but The Music Room penetrates right through all of it to reveal a broken, obsolete, beaten man.

The Blu-ray Disc
The Music Room is presented in 1080p high definition with an aspect ratio of 1.33:1. Anyone who’s seen a DVD of any of Ray’s films from this era, all of which have had preservation issues, should be blown away by this transfer, which is astonishing in its level of clarity, sharpness, fine detail and grayscale contrast. The film does retain a not insignificant amount of damage, mostly seen in image pulsation and flicker and fairly constant light scratches throughout, but the film-like look of the transfer and its impressive range of pure whites to deep blacks are far more noticeable. There are some soft shots, but the majority of them are pleasingly sharp. Given the condition of the source materials, this is an impressive restoration and a gorgeous transfer. It should bode very well for the expected Criterion release of Ray’s Apu Trilogy.

Audio is presented in an uncompressed monaural track that is quite limited by its source. Dialogue often has a hollow quality and some of the intermittent English dialogue is quite difficult to understand. Music doesn’t sound too bad, with a little more heft behind it.

Special Features
We get two new interviews, produced exclusively by Criterion: one with filmmaker Mira Nair, who discusses her admiration of the film and briefly, her friendship with Ray, and one with biographer Andrew Robinson, who fills in some of the production history and contrasts the film with the more obviously naturalistic Apu Trilogy, which The Music Room was made in the middle of.
There’s also an excerpt from a 1981 French TV show, where Ray talks about the film with critic Michael Ciment and filmmaker Claude Sautet. The film had recently been released in France, more than 20 years after its original release in India.

The big extra included here is Satyajit Ray, a 1984 documentary made by Shyam Benegal. It begins with Ray directing on the set of his 1984 film The Home and the World, and soon transitions into a long interview with Ray, punctuated by clips from a number of his films. It’s an excellent biographical introduction to the director as well as a chance to get exposed to pieces of his work.
The package also includes a booklet with an essay by critic Philip Kemp, a brief essay by Ray on finding the palace to shoot the film in and a 1986 interview with Ray about the film’s musical elements. A note on the preservation of Ray’s films by the Academy Film Archive is also included.

The Bottom Line
A breathtaking new transfer ensures that even those familiar with this Ray masterwork will likely come to appreciate it in a whole new way.

Buster Keaton Short Films Collection 1920-1923

2011-07-17T16:31:00.000-07:00

Cops (1922)

Article first published as Blu-ray Review: Buster Keaton Short Films Collection: 1920-1923 on Blogcritics.

The Films
After a stint as second fiddle to Roscoe “Fatty” Arbuckle and before going on to make some of the greatest comedic feature films ever, Buster Keaton made 19 two-reeler short films for Metro Pictures under the production of Joseph M. Schenck between 1920 and 1923. In addition to starring, Keaton co-directed all of them (except for one, where’s he credited as the sole director), most of the time with Eddie Cline, but occasionally with Malcolm St. Clair.

Kino has collected all 19 shorts in one three-disc Blu-ray collection, and the set is a monument to Keaton’s inexhaustible inventiveness. Early in his career, he was already brimming with ideas, and the astonishing practical effects, daring stunts and breathless energy seen in these films matches those qualities in the features.

It also displays Keaton’s fully realized comic persona — a quick, mischievous wit hiding behind stone-faced stoicism and assaulted by the forces of modernity and other people. Keaton’s characters rarely get the girl (Generally Sybil Seely or Virginia Fox), are physically outmatched (burly Joe Roberts usually acts as Keaton’s foil) and often end up worse off than where they started (Keaton certainly wasn’t shy of unhappy endings).

The set provides an illuminating look at Keaton’s career path as he honed his physical comedy and progressively pushed toward more surreal and experimental inclusions. And as standalone works, almost every one of these films is a master class in short comedy, not to mention endlessly entertaining.

The 19 films are:

The ‘High Sign’
Keaton gets a job at a shooting gallery, where his faked skills cause both a group of local mobsters and their wanted man to hire him. The release was delayed because Keaton felt the film too closely resembled an Arbuckle comedy.

One Week
A wedding present arrives for Keaton and his new bride — a pre-fab house, which causes him endless trouble as he tries to assemble it.

Convict 13
Keaton discovers clothes really do make the man as he gets mistaken for a convict, but works his way up the ranks to prison warden by virtue of stolen outfits.

The Scarecrow
Roommates Joe Roberts and Keaton fight for the affection of a farmer’s daughter, while living in their house filled with Rube Goldberg conveniences.

Neighbors
Keaton loves his next-door neighbor (Virginia Fox), but their families are intent on keeping them apart.

The Haunted House
A bank robbery goes wrong, and Keaton ends up trapped in the thieves’ hideout, which appears to be haunted. The film features Keaton veering into the surreal like never before.

Hard Luck
Keaton plays a man who wants to kill himself, but gets sidetracked by a series of bold exploits. Not all of the film survives, with the final scene only seen in a still photograph.

The Goat
Keaton must evade the police when he is mistaken for a dangerous escaped killer named Dead Shot Dan.

The Play House
Keaton plays every part in a surreal opening scene, where he’s the staff, audience and performers at a minstrel show. The amazing trick photography can’t be matched by the second half’s romantic plot.

The Boat
After inadvertently destroying his house and car, Keaton and his family are forced to live on their boat, the Damfino, which gets caught in a terrible storm.

The Paleface
Keaton gets mixed up in a dispute between an Indian tribe and greedy oil tycoons, but eventually becomes an honorary Indian himself.

Cops
Perhaps Keaton’s greatest short, here he plays a (mostly) well-intentioned man who manages to get the entire city’s police force on his tail.

My Wife’s Relations
A language mixup results in Keaton’s marriage to a brawny woman, and her family doesn’t take kindly to his presence.

The Blacksmith
Keaton does almost everything wrong as a blacksmith’s assistant, while feuding with head blacksmith Joe Roberts.

The Frozen North
Keaton tires of his own wife in the frozen tundra and attempts to win the affections of a married neighbor.

Day Dreams
Looking to prove himself in the big city to the father of his girlfriend, Keaton attempts several professions with poor results, while his girlfriend dreams of him making it big. Originally a three-reeler, much of the film has been lost, cutting it down to two-reeler size.

The Electric House
Mistaken for an electrical engineer, Keaton is tasked with modernizing a millionaire’s house.

The Balloonatic
Accidentally ending up on a hot-air balloon destined for a world explorer, Keaton gets stranded in the wilderness, where he and a woman engage in a series of one-upmanship.

The Love Nest
Determined to leave his former life behind, Keaton sets out a rickety boat and is soon picked up by a whaling vessel, where he clashes with imperious Captain Joe Roberts.

The Blu-ray Disc
All of the films are presented in 1080p high definition — save for One Week, which comes in at 1080i — and are in a 1.33:1 aspect ratio. Several of the films are color tinted. Overall, the films have definitely benefited from the high-def upgrade, with increased clarity, depth and detail apparent in all but the most damaged. Now, each one has its share of constant marks and scratches, but that’s to be expected. Still, there’s no ignoring the more film-like image these Blu-ray presentations provide. For those bothered by the scratches, Kino has included “digitally enhanced” versions of four films — The ‘High Sign’, The Boat, Cops and The Balloonatic — where DNR has been applied to reduce some of the noise. Obviously, a loss of detail comes with these, but it’s nice to have the option.

Audio consists of a single score provided for each film, with Ben Model and Robert Israel responsible for the bulk of the scores, which all appear to be single-performer.

Special Features
There are lots of great extras included with this set, the best of which are short visual essays for 15 of the films, written by folks like David Kalat, Bruce Lawton, Bret Wood and Patricia Eliot Tobias. Most run for around six minutes and cover production history and visual analysis for the most part. There’s a fair amount of overlap, with most essays covering more than one film, but altogether, it’s an excellent selection of bite-sized bits of information. The essays appear on the same discs as their respective films.
Also on disc one, we get alternate and deleted shots from five films and four clips that demonstrate the way with which Keaton’s contemporaries copied him: Lupino Lane’s Only Me and excerpts from Billy Bevan’s Be Reasonable, Charley Chase’s Hello Baby! and Stan Laurel’s White Wings.

Disc two has no extras aside from visual essays, but disc three features two 1922 promo films with Keaton, Charlie Chaplin and Harold Lloyd all making appearances. There’s also a four-part look at the locations of Keaton’s shorts by John Bengtson. A brief promo for Kino's Lost Keaton set is also included.

The package includes a booklet with an essay and brief notes on all the films by Jeffrey Vance.

The Bottom Line
An outstanding set from top to bottom, this collection is a master class in short film comedy.

Gillian Welch at the Moore Theatre, 7/13/11

2011-07-15T18:20:00.000-07:00


Gillian Welch and Dave Rawlings at the Moore Theatre 7/13/11. Photo by Dusty Somers.

Article first published as Concert Review: Gillian Welch, Moore Theatre, Seattle, WA, 7/13/11 on Blogcritics.

It’s going to be really hard for any concert I see the rest of this year to top Gillian Welch’s jaw-droppingly good two-set show at Seattle's Moore Theatre July 13, 2011. Anyone only familiar with studio-recorded Welch might have a hard time understanding this. Sure, her records are gorgeous, elegiac modern country/bluegrass masterpieces, but often the songs are deliberately paced with hushed vocals — not exactly a common one-two punch for a rousing live show.

Welch, along with longtime musical partner Dave Rawlings, poked fun at her own slow style Wednesday. While the songs often took their time, meandering around Rawlings’ expert guitar work and Welch’s deceptively powerful voice, they were anything but boring. Armed with only a pair of acoustic guitars, a banjo, some harmonicas and some of the loveliest harmonies you can imagine, Welch and Rawlings found the sweet spot of 22 songs, much to the delight of a roaring packed house at the Moore.

Welch’s long-awaited new record, The Harrow & The Harvest, was released in late June 2011, and with all the new songs, she and Rawlings were still “figuring out which songs like to be next to each other,” Welch said. I’m going to go out on a limb and say they’ve got it pretty well figured. The upbeat and the somber mingled without a hint of incongruity — both elements essential to Welch’s musical sensibility.
The one structural hiccup prompted Welch to mutter, “What are we doing here?” which was met with an enthusiastic response: “Awesomeness.”

Gillian Welch and Dave Rawlings
at the Moore Theatre 7/13/11.
Photo by Dusty Somers.

“That’s what it says on the setlist,” Rawlings replied, a sly grin underneath his cowboy hat. The pair had the audience enthralled throughout, and they more than earned the adoration.

It’s clear Welch and Rawlings have been making music together for a long time — intuitively playing off one another to create some truly memorable moments, like Rawlings’ extended guitar coda on “Revelator” and Welch’s downright adorable knee slapping and dancing accompaniment to “Six White Horses.” When they launched into a rendition of “I’ll Fly Away” during the first of two encores, the entire venue echoed with audience voices in an impromptu sing-along.

And then there’s Welch’s voice, which has to be heard in person to be fully appreciated. Her laconic drawl can crescendo and become a piercing, perfectly pitched powerhouse at a moment’s notice. Combine that with the virtuoso picking abilities of Rawlings, and you have a dream team.

And after Wednesday’s final song — a reverb-laden cover of Jefferson Airplane’s “White Rabbit” in which Welch wailed like Grace Slick and Rawlings brought the psychedelia on just an acoustic guitar — I’m convinced these two could play pretty much anything.

I’ve appreciated Welch’s talent for a long time, but her live show makes it all the more apparent and has put her at the top of my must-see-again-ASAP list.

Complete Setlist After Jump

Set 1:
“Hard Times”
“Silver Dagger”
“Elvis Presley Blues”
“The Way It Will Be”
“Annabelle”
“I Want to Sing That Rock and Roll”
“One Morning”
“Back in Time”
“Dark Turn of the Mind”
“The Way It Goes”

Set 2:
“Down Along the Dixie Line”
“No One Knows My Name”
“By the Mark”
“Revelator”
“Six White Horses”
“Ruby” (Dave Rawlings Machine)
“Look at Miss Ohio”
“Red Clay Halo”

Encore:
“Tennessee”
“I’ll Fly Away”

Second Encore:
“The Way the Whole Thing Ends”
“White Rabbit” (Jefferson Airplane)

Neko Case at the Paramount Theatre, 7/10/11

2011-07-11T20:48:00.000-07:00

Neko Case at the Paramount Theatre in Seattle 7/10/11
Photo by Dusty Somers

Article first published as Concert Review: Neko Case at Paramount Theatre, Seattle, WA, 7/10/11 on Blogcritics.

If not quite a hometown show, Sunday’s Neko Case concert at the Paramount Theatre was at least a home-state show for the Tacoma-raised artist, and according to her Twitter account, a tears-inducing (in a good way, we hope) experience.

Celebrity Twitter feeds have a way of creating a false sense of familiarity, but Case’s razor-sharp wit and total lack of pretension in her frequent posts really do seem to allow a certain sense of accessibility. That carries over into her live performances, where Case’s relaxed, unrehearsed interludes punctuate her songs and their chill-inducing vocals.

I’m not stumbling into hyperbole when I say that, for me, Case’s voice easily outpaces any other female voice in music. Keep that in mind when reading this review. Actually, she could probably do a whole set of Journey covers, and I’d still be right there.

It’s been about two and a half years since Case’s last album, Middle Cyclone, but the inclusion of three new songs in Sunday’s setlist hopefully means we won’t have to wait too much longer for a new record. Otherwise, she mostly stuck to Middle Cyclone and 2006’s Fox Confessor Brings the Flood, while sprinkling in a few older numbers including “Porchlight” from Furnace Room Lullaby and “I Wish I Was the Moon” from Blacklisted, a song she wrote for her dad that would, she noted, soon serve as the background to vampires doing it on True Blood.


Neko Case and Jon Rauhouse at the Paramount Theatre. Photo by Dusty Somers

Backed by a capable band and flanked by expert banterer Kelly Hogan, whose constant in-between-song quips (dealing with everything from KISS’s live-album chatter to Tacoma’s Frisko Freeze) grew more absurd as the show progressed, Case only had to belt out one of her melancholy, longing songs to center the attention directly back on herself.

Led by superb pedal steel/guitarist Jon Rauhouse, the band didn’t venture into any particularly adventurous interpretations of the studio sound, but hearing Case unassumingly launch into the soaring, on-point refrains of “I’m an Animal” or “That Teenage Feeling” brought the music alive in a way that would've made fancy arrangements pretty unnecessary.

When the instruments cut out on “Fox Confessor” and Case sung, “Will there be no one above me to put my faith in?” the stunned mood was downright reverent. One guy raised his hands in what looked like a kind of worshipful awe, and I knew how he felt.

It’s a testament to the power of her voice — and Case’s genial, likable stage presence — that such transitions between goofy, casual guitar tuning and the gorgeous vocals not only felt natural, but essential to who Case is.

The Sacrifice

2011-07-11T17:55:00.000-07:00

Article first published as Blu-ray Review: The Sacrifice (1986) on Blogcritics.

The Film
Andrei Tarkovksy’s final film, The Sacrifice, is a work of immense power and arresting imagery. Made as he was dying from cancer, the film wrestles with questions of spiritual commitment and the efficacy of man’s actions. Like any Tarkovksy film, the ruminations are often impenetrable, but no film that sets it sights this high should have easy answers forthcoming.

The film’s photography by Sven Nykvist and its starring turn from Erland Josephson aren’t its only connections to Ingmar Bergman. Like a good number of Bergman’s films, The Sacrifice exposes blisteringly raw human emotions in the wake of spiritual anguish. But the film remains unmistakably Tarkovskian, with his contemplative, steady pacing and slow tracking shots anchoring a story that grows increasingly mystical.

Josephson stars as Alexander, the patriarch of a Swedish family living on a remote Baltic island. The film opens on his birthday as he plants a withered tree with his beloved son, whom he simply calls Little Man (Tommy Kjellqvist). He relates a story about a dead tree unerringly tended to that came to life and asserts his belief that a single action performed with conviction can have far-reaching consequences.

Later, the family gathers in their home to celebrate, and Alexander is surrounded by his wife Adelaide (Susan Fleetwood), his older daughter Marta (Filippa Franzén), and mercurial mailman Otto (Allan Edwall), among others. The celebration is cut short by a TV news report declaring nuclear war to be imminent, sending everyone, particularly Adelaide, into an emotional tailspin.

Here, the film shifts from colorful, natural tones to an increasingly desaturated palette, until it’s almost become a black-and-white film. Alexander cries out to God, offering himself as a sacrifice to end the madness, and Otto provides a method, telling him their maid, Maria (Guðrún Gísladóttir), is a witch. Otto claims that if Alexander sleeps with her, the crisis will be averted.

Operating under this pretense, Alexander travels to her house just down the road and launches into a series of actions he believes will act as a counterbalance to the impending devastation. Tarkovksy detaches the film from reason just as subtly as he drains the color from the film itself, until Alexander has fully committed to what looks like madness as his ultimate sacrifice.

The Sacrifice is sometimes baffling, often moving and always engrossing. Tarkovsky would die of cancer just months after the film was released, but this isn’t a film that signals a career petering out. Rather, it’s a forceful and impassioned artistic statement, leavened with a great deal of worry about the state of the world, but ultimately embracing the catharsis of a redemptive action.

The Blu-ray Disc
The Sacrifice is presented in 1080p high definition with an aspect ratio of 1.66:1. The film has never looked all that great on Region 1 DVD, making Kino’s superb Blu-ray release all the more of a revelation. The transfer, working from restored and remastered film elements, looks impressively film-like throughout, with an astonishing clarity of image and detail. The film’s color scheme is rather flat, even in the opening and closing scenes that aren’t desaturated, but the transfer represents them faithfully. Softness is never a problem and contrast is perfectly attenuated, with the near-black-and-white scenes showing excellent grayscale separation and superb shadow detail. Print damage is very minimal. The film looks just fantastic — easily the best you’ll see it outside of a repertory 35mm screening.

Audio is presented in an uncompressed two-channel mono track that presents the mostly Swedish dialogue cleanly and clearly, with the film’s louder moments (a character crying in anguish might be the most ear-rattling) retaining fidelity and not coming off too sharp. I did notice some light crackle during a few moments, but it’s hardly even worth mentioning.

Special Features
The release here is a two-disc set, but it’s not overflowing with extras like that designation might have you believe. The film gets a Blu-ray disc all to itself, while a DVD disc contains Directed By Andrei Tarkovsky, a feature-length documentary by Michal Leszczylowski, who co-edited The Sacrifice with Tarkovsky. It’s a more fluid and free-form film than most making-ofs, and it presents a fascinating look at Tarkovksy’s work behind the camera and his filmmaking philosophy.

The DVD also includes trailers for other Kino releases and two small photo galleries, with stills from The Sacrifice and the documentary.

The Bottom Line
The film looks marvelous, and a transfer like this is essential to fully appreciating the sheer visual beauty of a Tarkovsky work.

New York, New York

2011-07-11T17:49:00.000-07:00

Article first published as Blu-ray Review: New York, New York on Blogcritics.

The Film
Conventional thinking states that Martin Scorsese’s New York, New York belongs in his sparsely populated “miss” column — a rare blunder sandwiched between masterpieces Taxi Driver and Raging Bull. That’s not an unfair assessment. At nearly three hours long, the film feels occasionally repetitive and self-indulgent (imagine what the original 4 ½ hour cut must have been like), and its mash-up of ’40s musical artifice and ’70s gritty improvisation isn’t fully realized aesthetically.

But New York, New York remains a fascinating film, not least because of the performances of Robert De Niro and Liza Minnelli as a match made in hell with musical talent that survives the emotional carnage. De Niro is flagrantly unlikable as jazz saxophonist Jimmy Doyle, a domineering, mercurial louse with no heart of gold hiding underneath. Minnelli is occasionally overmatched by De Niro’s adept improvisation and intense physicality, but she mostly holds her own as Francine Evans, a longsuffering woman with big dreams of her own.

The two meet on V-J Day, with the indomitable Jimmy determined to get some celebratory action. Francine rejects his advances over and over, but eventually falls in with him out of what might be pure exhaustion. Over the ensuing year, the two’s star profiles are on the rise as they perform together in an orchestra that Jimmy eventually leads, but their every interaction is fraught with the promise of some kind of explosion from Jimmy, who can manufacture a problem with ease.

Francine’s pregnancy brings Jimmy’s emotional flare-ups to an unbearable level, and much of the middle section of the film consists of overwrought screaming matches and interpersonal chaos. Interspersed throughout are a series of wonderful original songs by John Kander and Fred Ebb, but by about the two-hour mark, the film seems to have reached a breaking point.

Fortunately, it’s here where Scorsese flips the switch to something truly inspired — a flat-out homage to the MGM and Warner Bros. musicals of the ’40s with an extended film-within-a-film sequence. Francine, achieving great success, is cast as the star of a film called Happy Endings, and we see Minnelli preternaturally embody the spirit of her mother, Judy Garland. It’s a brilliantly realized sequence — less ambitious than the stylistic confluence Scorsese goes for in the early parts of the film, but far more satisfying.

New York, New York isn’t quite a work of genius, but it’s also more than a noble failure. While Scorsese would go on to synthesize the styles of his filmmaking idols with his own personal vision with greater success in later works, the sheer daring seen here made it clear a singular talent was on the rise.

The Blu-ray Disc
New York, New York is presented in 1080p high definition with an aspect ratio of 1.66:1. This is a film that really cries out for a fantastic high-def upgrade, with bold color-coding that would really benefit. Unfortunately, this is not it. Much of the transfer has a slightly dingy look, with an abundance of grain that looks like digital noise as opposed to film-like texture. The majority of shots are afflicted with a pervasive softness, with some that look even sub-DVD level. Overall, it is an improvement over the DVD, with the occasional scene (mostly those in bright light) exhibiting pleasing clarity and sharpness, but the elements used here were certainly in need of some restoration.

Audio is presented in a 5.1 DTS-HD track that fares better, presenting solid fidelity for the musical numbers and mostly clean dialogue, although there are moments where De Niro’s speech is a little muddled.

Special Features
All the extras are carried over from 2007’s 30th Anniversary DVD set, and it’s a nice collection of bonus material. Scorsese intros the film with a five-minute piece talking about his inspiration of Golden Age musicals. He even wanted to go so far as to shoot the film in Academy ratio (1.33:1) to emulate the look, but he couldn’t quite get it right. A two-part making-of features interviews from the cast and crew, with a stand-alone 25-minute interview dedicated to Liza Minnelli, who is rather delightful as she recounts growing up with famous parents and the making of the film.

About 20 minutes of deleted scenes and alternate takes are included, as well as a full-length audio commentary by Scorsese and critic Carrie Rickey. DP Laszlo Kovacs also contributes a commentary to about 10 minutes worth of scenes. The theatrical trailer and the teaser trailer round out the disc.

The Bottom Line
A better high-def transfer might’ve helped the film grow in some viewers’ estimation, but New York, New York is certainly worth taking a look at, and not just for Scorsese completists.

Zazie dans le métro — The Criterion Collection

2011-06-29T20:41:00.000-07:00

Article first published as Blu-ray Review: Zazie dans le métro — The Criterion Collection on Blogcritics.

The Film
Louis Malle’s Zazie dans le métro is an exuberant blast of irreverence. Despite its proximity to the French New Wave, it bears almost no resemblance to the movement’s initial films, even if it consciously flouts classical cinematic convention in some related ways. Rather, Zazie most looks like a Tex Avery cartoon come to life, with a nonstop barrage of gags, camera tricks and odd editing that turn 1960s Paris into a colorful and chaotic fantasy world.

Based on the novel by Raymond Queneau, which subverted language in satiric ways and was considered unadaptable for film, Malle’s film translates the wordplay into a kind of visual anarchy while still fiddling with language. (The English subtitles do a good job of communicating the quirks, with translations like “Damgoddit” and “Hormosessual.”)

At the center of the chaos is Zazie (Catherine Demongeot), a sardonic and mischievous 10-year-old who gets left with her uncle Gabriel (Philippe Noiret) while her mother goes off on a romantic weekend with her latest squeeze. Uncle has plans to show her the sights, but Zazie is only interested in going underground to ride the metro — an impossibility as the metro workers are on strike.

As traffic piles up due to the strike, so do the absurdities. Zazie discovers her uncle is a dancer in a drag show, and she gets chased all over town by him and a disguise-wearing policeman (Vittorio Caprioli). Her misadventures take her all across the city, up the Eiffel Tower and into a flea market where she lusts after a pair of blue jeans.

A tomboy with an uneven haircut and a foul mouth, Zazie does little to hide her casual contempt for the adult world surrounding her, and she doesn’t hesitate to falsely accuse adults of unspeakable acts or berate them for what she perceives as stupidity. She makes for the reliably disdainful center of a film that is unreservedly manic and has Malle seemingly throwing stuff up on screen just to see if it’ll work.

Much of the time it does, but Zazie’s pace is so frenetic, the comedy almost doesn’t register as such much of the time. It seems like it should be a laugh riot, but its breakneck speed and underlying cynical tone make for a film that’s more admirably nuts than outright funny.

There’s certainly no second-guessing Malle’s commitment to outright preposterousness, with the film’s final big set piece — the destruction of a restaurant — embracing its illogicality with fervor. Zazie dans le métro doesn’t ever slow down, wrapping its subversive tendencies in a charming live action cartoon.

The Blu-ray Disc
Zazie dans le métro is presented in 1080p high definition with an aspect ratio of 1.33:1. The film’s bright and cheery color palette is represented strongly, although the film has a slightly yellowish hue. It seems likely this is the intended look, as it remains consistent throughout. Fine detail is pleasingly rendered, particularly in close-ups of faces — often distorted because of the short focus lenses Malle often employed here. Picture sharpness and clarity is strong, while damage remains confined to a few stray marks here and there, with the final reel bearing a sizeable mark at the top of the frame in a few shots.

Audio is presented in an uncompressed monaural track that doesn’t suffer from any background hissing or crackling. Voices are clear and consistent, while musical cues possess reasonable fidelity.

Special Features
Lots of archival video interviews are included, and all are a worth a look, even if they’re a bit short. Malle talks about adapting the novel and Charlie Chaplin’s reaction after he screened the film for him. Queneau is featured in two separate interviews, where he’s fairly evasive about his own work, but expresses some admiration for the film. Probably the most entertaining extra is an interview with Demongeot and her parents, where the interviewer seems to be trying to get them to admit Zazie’s bad behavior has negatively affected Demongeot in real life.

A newer interview features screenwriter Jean-Paul Rappeneau talking about his involvement, while a Criterion-exclusive audio interview has William Klein talking about being brought on as co-director. He admits that being a co-director is pretty much impossible, and he’s actually credited as artistic consultant. You can certainly see some of Zazie in Klein’s outrageous features, three of which are collected in one of Criterion’s Eclipse sets.

A 2005 featurette has assistant director Philippe Collin looking at some of the locations where the film was shot and talking about his involvement in the production. The disc also includes the original theatrical trailer.

The package includes a booklet with an essay by scholar Ginette Vincendeau.

The Bottom Line
An all-out-wacky film that should be witnessed at least once, Zazie dans le métro is given excellent treatment here.

People on Sunday — The Criterion Collection

2011-06-28T12:35:00.000-07:00

Article first published as Blu-ray Review: People on Sunday - The Criterion Collection on Blogcritics.

The Film
When a cadre of youthful Germans — almost all of them under 30 — made a modest silent film in 1930, probably no one could have anticipated their eventual success in Hollywood. Directors Robert Siodmak and Edgar G. Ulmer would make striking film noirs like The Killers and Detour, camera assistant Fred Zinnemann would win four Oscars, cinematographer Eugen Schüfftan would photograph numerous classics, including The Hustler, and screenwriter Billy Wilder (then known as Billie) would become one of the most acclaimed comedic and dramatic filmmakers in all of American film history.

But even if its creators didn’t go on to fame, People on Sunday would still be a remarkable, utterly delightful film. Blending Vertov-style documentary, naturalistic fiction, and sensibilities that presage both Italian Neorealism and the French New Wave, the film tells the tale of five young Berlin urbanites extracting every bit of pleasure they can out of their day off.

The filmmakers cast only non-professionals, and the five leads retain their names and actual occupations. Erwin Splettstösser is a taxi driver, Wolfgang von Waltershausen is a wine salesman (and erstwhile gigolo), Christl Ehlers is a film extra, Annie Schreyer is a model and Brigitte Borchert works in a record shop. The film’s prologue on Saturday shows Wolfgang and Christl meeting by chance on a busy street, and the two plan a Sunday outing with Erwin and Annie, who live together.

When Sunday comes, Annie oversleeps, but Christl brings her friend Brigitte along, keeping the numbers even. Wolfgang shamelessly flirts with both, turning his attention more directly to Brigitte after Christl rejects his advances. The four enjoy a day of lounging at the Wannsee beach, eat a picnic lunch, take a ride in a pedal boat and try not to think about the impending Monday. Interspersed with the fiction is documentary footage that allows us a fascinating glance at pre-war Germany and the hordes of city-dwellers relishing the same kinds of leisure that our protagonists are.

The film couldn’t be simpler on a narrative level, but its construction is lively and elegant, transitioning smoothly between its fiction and non-fiction elements and employing a structural playfulness that looks back at Soviet montage and forward to the French New Wave. One of the best such moments features a beach photographer taking photos — the film revels in the glorious close-ups of its subjects and then cuts them together with a fast-paced energy.

It really can’t be emphasized enough how much of a delight it is to watch People on Sunday. The mood is buoyant, but laced with a hint of underlying cynicism, the camerawork graceful and accomplished, the performances unassuming. It’s an auspicious, if ultimately atypical, work from a collaborative group of future filmmaking stars.

The Blu-ray Disc
People on Sunday is presented in 1080i high definition with an aspect ratio of 1.33:1. This marks the first time Criterion has opted for an interlaced high definition transfer, and the decision seems to stem from the film’s frame rate of 22 frames per second, which is optimally presented in 1080i. Whatever the case, viewers are going to have a hard time finding a reason to complain about this transfer, which is just fantastic. The film’s original print was lost (and the surviving 73-minute cut is missing about eight minutes) and what is presented here had to be assembled from more than five different sources of varying quality. You’d never know it, as the transfer is strikingly consistent with superb sharpness and clarity in nearly every shot. Many of the close-ups are astonishing in their fine detail and clarity. Grayscale separation is excellent, with inky blacks and bright whites on both ends of the spectrum. There’s some print damage, but it’s mostly relegated to speckling and a few scratches here and there. The restoration of the film is quite remarkable, and its transfer here is just about perfect.

Audio options include a silent-era-style score by the Mont Alto Orchestra recorded this year and a 2000 track from the Czech Film Orchestra that takes a more modern approach. Both are presented in lossless stereo tracks.

Special Features
A 30-minute documentary about the making of the film, directed by Gerald Koll in 2000, is an information-packed and highly engaging roundup of the film’s production history and the eventual fates of its cast and crew. Interviews with star Brigitte Borchert, writer Curt Siodmak and film restoration supervisor Martin Koerber are included in the piece.

Also on the disc is Ins Blaue hinein, a 36-minute short film directed by cinematographer Eugen Schüfftan, who, it should be noted, also designed the stunning special effects in Metropolis. The film features a similarly simple narrative and visual style to People on Sunday, but it’s a sound film rather than a silent.

Also included in the package is a booklet with an essay by scholar Noah Isenberg and reprints from Billy Wilder and Robert Siodmak, who recall the production history in different ways.

The Bottom Line
People on Sunday certainly sounds interesting from an academic standpoint, but it’s also a totally enchanting film experience — a quality that will likely catch a number of viewers by surprise.

My Morning Jacket at the Paramount Theatre

2011-06-28T12:18:00.000-07:00


Jim James of My Morning Jacket, Paramount Theatre in Seattle, 6/26/11 Photo by Dusty Somers

Article first published as Concert Review: My Morning Jacket at Paramount Theatre, Seattle, WA, 6/26/11 on Blogcritics.

If there’s one thing that My Morning Jacket has shown us over the course of six albums, it’s that it’s a band unafraid of change. Vibrant guitar freakouts, countrified Americana, spacey electronic-tinged songs, funky jams — you’ll find all of ’em in the band’s repertoire. If there’s one thing you’ll take away from a live My Morning Jacket show, it’s that Jim James and company can tear the cover off of any of these types of songs.

My Morning Jacket’s legendary 2008 set at Bonnaroo — a four-hour affair — is hardly atypical behavior for these guys. Sunday’s show at Seattle’s Paramount Theatre stretched to nearly three hours as the band tore through 26 songs, only briefly coming up for air. Almost all of the band’s May release, Circuital, was represented, with the rest of the songs split between It Still Moves, Z and Evil Urges, with a song each from early albums The Tennessee Fire and At Dawn.

Taking the stage like a madman with a bomb strapped to his chest — actually a sampler hanging from his neck — James and the band launched into the first three songs from Circuital with supreme ferocity. One might have expected the pace to ebb and flow from there, but there was little slowing down to be seen, with only brief interludes for folksier songs like “Golden” punctuating extended barrages of heavy, psychedelic guitar rock.

Jim James of My Morning Jacket
Paramount Theatre in Seattle, 6/26/11
Photo by Dusty Somers

My Morning Jacket’s jam band tendencies can be cause for fatigue (a condition most apparent in its slightly overextended encore), but with the virtuoso guitar work of Carl Broemel and the manic presence of James, who makes every square inch of the stage his personal playground, the band is never less than engaging.

At their most assured and dynamic — set closer “One Big Holiday” and encore finale “Mahgeetah,” for two — James and My Morning Jacket are nothing less than rock gods. It’s hardly hyperbole to liken these guys to Led Zeppelin — a comparison perhaps not apparent when listening to the albums, but suddenly much more plausible in the wake of a three-hour run of eardrum-shattering, breathlessly vigorous rock ‘n’ roll.

Complete set list after jump.

Jim James of My Morning Jacket, Paramount Theatre in Seattle, 6/26/11
Photo by Dusty Somers

Complete set list:
“Victory Dance”
“Circuital”
“The Day is Coming”
“Off the Record”
“Anytime”
“I’m Amazed”
“Golden”
“Heartbreakin Man”
“Outta My System”
“Lay Low”
“Slow Slow Tune”
“Steam Engine”
“Movin’ Away”
“Gideon”
“Wordless Chorus”
“Touch Me I’m Going to Scream Pt. 1”
“First Light”
“Honest Man”
“Holdin’ On to Black Metal”
“One Big Holiday”

Encore:
“Butch Cassidy”
“Dondante”
“Smokin from Shootin”
“Run Thru”
“Touch Me I’m Going to Scream Pt. 2”
“Mahgeetah"

Insignificance — The Criterion Collection

2011-06-16T19:37:00.000-07:00

Article first published as Blu-ray Review: Insignificance — The Criterion Collection on Blogcritics.

The Film
Nicolas Roeg had quite a stretch from 1970 to 1980, directing five brilliantly fractured films that feature radical editing and virtuoso camerawork. I think I’ve heard all five — Performance (co-directed with Donald Cammell), Walkabout, Don’t Look Now, The Man Who Fell To Earth and Bad Timing — described as his masterpiece. None of these claims are far-fetched. Each film is a singular work that’s as accomplished as it is bold.

Things haven’t been the same for Roeg since, with most of his post-1980 projects being met with derision or obscurity. Criterion brings one of those films to the forefront with its release of Insignificance, Roeg’s 1985 adaptation of the play by Terry Johnson. It’s a film that’s not as steadily executed as any of the aforementioned films and Roeg’s signature fragmentary flourishes aren’t as integrated as well, but it remains a fascinating work on some levels.

Probably the most obvious is the film’s “what if?” conceit — one night in 1954, people who look, sound and act just like Albert Einstein, Marilyn Monroe, Joe McCarthy and Joe DiMaggio cross paths in a New York City hotel. They’re never named, but always referred to as the Professor, the Actress, the Senator and the Ballplayer.

It’s the night of the shoot of the iconic skirt-blowing scene in Billy Wilder’s The Seven-Year Itch. The Actress (Theresa Russell) performs the scene in front of a massive crowd of onlookers and quickly thereafter escapes in a cab from the screaming throng and her enraged husband, the Ballplayer (Gary Busey).

Meanwhile, in a hotel room, the Professor (Michael Emil) is furiously working. He’s in town to speak at a peace conference, but also because of a Congressional subpoena. The Senator (Tony Curtis) shows up to encourage him to denounce communism and name names at his hearing. The Professor insists he’s not testifying at any hearing.

The crux of the film comes when the Actress visits the Professor’s hotel room, looking to have a brush with greatness. He’s blissfully unaware of who she is — which delights her — and the two spend an evening discussing his theories and tentatively flirting.

During this section, we get the film’s best scene, where the Actress giddily demonstrates the Theory of Relativity to the Professor using toy trains, balloons and flashlights, only to admit that she doesn’t really understand it; she just knows the words.

In some ways, that’s what Insignificance is like — dabbling in lots of themes (sex, the nature of celebrity, guilt, identity, death and destruction) without settling on a cohesive idea about any of them. Stylistically, the film seems more like a Roeg imitation on its surface, with the plot fragmented by flashbacks for each character, but mostly playing like a straightforward theater adaptation elsewhere.

The performances certainly help to keep things interesting — Russell teeters on the edge of parody with her version of Monroe, but mostly keeps the character grounded, while the little-seen Emil is immensely winning with his genial, slightly oblivious Einstein. Busey and Curtis meanwhile deftly balance their characters’ blustering personas with their inward impotence.

Insignificance hardly seems like essential Roeg, especially when stacked up against the previous decade’s masterpieces. Still, it’s an intriguing concept, and Roeg retains his ability to deliver scenes with punch, even if they’re more intermittent here.

The Blu-ray Disc
Insignificance is presented in 1080p high definition with an aspect ratio of 1.78:1. Considering the era in which the film was made, I was expecting an image that had problems with softness, but that’s not the case at all here. Criterion’s transfer presents an image with superb sharpness and clarity in nearly every scene. Fine details are impeccably rendered, colors are consistent if a little muted and the image possesses an intact grain structure. This isn’t one of Roeg’s more visually striking films, and the hotel room’s interiors can come across as pretty drab, but that’s certainly not the fault of this transfer, which presents every aspect of the sometimes lackluster production design flawlessly. Damage is pretty much nowhere to be found on the print.

Audio is presented in an uncompressed monaural soundtrack that’s mostly adequate. Dialogue levels are a little inconsistent, although some of the more muffled moments seem to be inherent to the film. The film’s godawful opening song (“When Your Heart Runs Out of Time” by Will Jennings) and its questionable electronic-tinged score by Stanley Myers and Hans Zimmer have impressive fidelity and sound better than they ought to.

Special Features
It’s kind of a light collection of supplements here. A new interview with Roeg and producer Jeremy Thomas covers a lot of ground, but at around only 13 minutes, the discussions of the production, the film’s themes and the theatrical roots, it all feels pretty superficial. A new interview with editor Tony Lawson runs a little longer and is more satisfying. He talks about his experiences working with Sam Peckinpah and Stanley Kubrick (his career began editing Straw Dogs and Barry Lyndon — what a one-two punch) and previous work with Roeg. The high-def clips from Bad Timing included here look great, and I hope it’s on Criterion’s radar for a Blu-ray upgrade.

Also on the disc is a 14-minute archival making-of, shot during production. Snippets of interviews with all of the principal cast are included, but it’s a little too frenetically paced for my liking. The theatrical trailer rounds out the disc.

The package includes a booklet with an essay by critic Chuck Stephens and reprinted discussion between Roeg and Johnson that originally appeared in an issue of Monthly Film Bulletin.

The Bottom Line
While the extras didn’t bring me around to a full appreciation of the film, it’s worth a curious look and its transfer here is top-notch.

Kiss Me Deadly — The Criterion Collection

2011-06-14T19:37:00.000-07:00

Article first published as Blu-ray Review: Kiss Me Deadly - The Criterion Collection on Blogcritics.

The Film
Some film noirs hint at the nastiness bubbling up underneath their surfaces; Kiss Me Deadly positively wallows in it. Robert Aldrich and A.I. Bezzerides’ 1955 adaptation of the Mickey Spillane novel checks the noir boxes—private eye protagonist, mysterious femme fatale, shadowy plot-advancing devices—but steps over and then obliterates the line with its brutal depictions of violence and an unwavering amoral (at best) streak from its supposed good guy.

Mike Hammer (Ralph Meeker) is a divorce PI cruising on the highway just outside Los Angeles when he’s confronted by a desperate woman (Cloris Leachman) who he nearly hits with his fancy sports car. He picks her up, only to discover she’s on the run from a dangerous group of characters. Fast forward a bit — she’s dead, and Hammer himself is about to be visited by a host of forces out for his demise.

Naturally, Hammer attempts to discover the conspiracy at the heart of the hitchhiking woman’s murder and his own sudden popularity with the bad guys, but he bungles the investigation at every turn. Aldrich’s Hammer is a blunt force, blindly stumbling through his every encounter like a drunken man. He’s not benignly stupid either—rather, we get a cruel, violent, womanizing sleazebag.

Consider his relationship with Velda (Maxine Cooper), his sort-of girlfriend he exploits to catch men in the act for his divorce business. Their relationship isn’t exactly a committed one, but his leering eye finds something it likes around every bend.

His dubious intentions in picking up the hitchhiker at the beginning of the film become truly evident as he lecherously approaches a woman at a party (Marian Carr) during his investigation as well as the roommate (Gaby Rodgers) of the murdered woman. His violence crops up casually as well — perhaps most shockingly when he breaks a rare vinyl LP and slams a drawer on a man’s fingers in attempts to extract information.

Like many a noir, Kiss Me Deadly relies on the presence of a MacGuffin to propel the story along — here, a mysterious object referred to as the Great Whatsit — but Aldrich doesn’t build toward a conclusion where the object becomes irrelevant, as with most MacGuffins. Instead, the object settles in front and center, where its terrifying properties push the film’s surreal colorings into a fully-fledged gonzo ending that plays like an explosive brew of science-fiction implausibility and Cold War paranoia.

That ending — one of the greatest of all noirs and even all cinema — caps off a blistering 106 minutes of vicious unpleasantness. Wallowing in the sleazy film noir muck is rarely this fun.

The Blu-ray Disc
Kiss Me Deadly is presented in 1080p high definition with an aspect ratio of 1.66:1. The transfer here, sourced from a 35mm fine-grain master positive, doesn’t have the same black-and-white luminescence seen in recent Criterion Blu-rays of Pale Flower or Sweet Smell of Success, but that likely has more to do with the production of the film than the transfer. The film has a slightly rough-edged, down-and-dirty look to it that’s appropriate to the subject matter, so the images are rarely tack sharp. Edge enhancement has clearly not been misused here.

Otherwise, the image is quite film-like with a persistent, but not troublesome grain structure and impressive amounts of fine detail, often seen in facial features. Grayscale separation is solid, although blacks rarely look inky and often register as more of a dark gray. Damage is minimal, with only very slight scratches running through some sections. All in all, the film makes a worthwhile jump to high def.

Audio is presented in an uncompressed monaural track that doesn’t suffer any major hissing or crackling problems. Voices can sound a little harsh in spots, but intelligibility is never an issue.

Special Features
Criterion has assembled a nicely varied collection of extras for the film, which was previously available only in a barebones edition from MGM. First up is a short tribute from director Alex Cox, who discusses the film’s style and themes in his own idiosyncratic and entertaining way. A new video piece discusses the film’s iconic Los Angeles shooting locations and then includes a now-and-then comparison for a handful of scenes.

Excerpts from two documentaries are included — one on Bezzerides, who recalls his disdain for the source novel and the myriad changes he made, and one on Spillane, who wrote a number of massively popular crime novels over his career. (J. Hoberman mentions in his included essay that, at one point, Spillane had written seven of the 10 bestselling titles in American fiction ever.)

Also included on the disc is the film’s very brief alternate ending, which was often the screened ending in theaters, contrary to Aldrich’s wishes. This truncated conclusion implies a very different fate for several characters. A new commentary by film noir experts Alain Silver and James Ursini was also recorded for this release. The theatrical trailer rounds out the disc.

The package includes a booklet with the aforementioned Hoberman essay and a reprint of Aldrich’s pre-release defense of the film, published in the New York Herald-Tribune with the evocative title “You Can’t Hang Up the Meat Hook.”

The Bottom Line
A film noir to end all film noirs, Kiss Me Deadly is a blistering, bizarre and essential film that has to be experienced, and this is the edition with which to experience it.

Dale Earnhardt Jr. Jr. at Tractor Tavern

2011-06-08T17:34:00.000-07:00

Dale Earnhardt Jr. Jr. at the Tractor Tavern.
Photo by Dusty Somers

Article first published as Concert Review: Dale Earnhardt Jr. Jr., Tractor Tavern, Seattle, WA, 6/7/11 on Blogcritics.

The veneer of kitsch seems thick on Detroit duo Dale Earnhardt Jr. Jr. — there’s that name first of all, not to mention the pair’s NASCAR apparel they take the stage in — but as Tuesday’s show at Seattle's Tractor made clear, the buzz surrounding these guys has far more to do with their infectiously agreeable electro-pop tunes and stage persona. Beyond the surface elements, there’s little dependence on artificially constructed displays of irony, which I think we can all be grateful for.

After only seconds on stage, Josh Epstein and Daniel Zott shed the racecar jumpsuits to reveal dapper suits underneath. With only Zott’s Citgo baseball cap as a reminder of the NASCAR connection, the two launched into a set populated with covers and most of the songs from their debut, It’s a Corporate World, released just that day.

It’s a Corporate World is full of melodic pleasures, from the alternately soaring and shambling single “Morning Thought” to the whistle-backed, jangly “Simple Girl.” Live, the songs’ electronic elements are cleanly reproduced, but the guitars are rougher and the voices more exuberant, adding a pleasingly ragged charm to the silky smooth album renditions.

The duo expertly maneuvered around a number of covers, tagging a humorous coda of “I Will Always Love You” onto the end of another song and reveling in the harmonies of the Beach Boys’ “God Only Knows,” a track present on the band’s first EP. Their cover of Gil Scott-Heron’s “We Almost Lost Detroit,” present on Corporate World, recreates the song’s urgency, but it was Tuesday’s barn-burning performance of Steve Winwood’s “Higher Love” (with a guest appearance from opener EMA and a saxophone solo from Epstein) that really set the stage ablaze.

Dale Earnhardt Jr. Jr. at the Tractor Tavern. Photo by Dusty Somers

It’s hard not to think a band named Dale Earnhardt Jr. Jr. is trying a little too hard, but that’d be just about the last way I’d describe Epstein and Zott, whose charismatic, friendly and straightforward stage presence just added to the show’s delightful atmosphere.

Yes, there are giant wooden Js and Rs lined with flashbulbs, and yes, they outfit audience volunteers with skeleton masks when they come on stage for a song. Yes, there are even bubble machines. The elements of kitsch are there, but they do little to obfuscate the simple truth — Epstein and Zott have written some tightly constructed pop songs, and they can play the hell out of them live.

When Dale Earnhardt Jr. Jr. makes it big — with songs like these, the odds are good — it’ll be because of more than hip indie posturing.

The Stunt Man

2011-06-05T15:51:00.000-07:00

Article first published as Blu-ray Review: The Stunt Man (1980) on Blogcritics.

The Film
It was at a midnight screening of the admirably demented buddy cop movie Freebie and the Bean where I first became acquainted with Richard Rush, and a midnight screening seems the perfect home for his next and arguably greatest film, The Stunt Man. Looking back on it now, it’s kind of hard to believe the film was actually nominated for three Oscars (actor, director, and adapted screenplay), alongside a much more typical Academy choice, Ordinary People, which was the big winner that year. Rush is no Robert Redford — he possesses an outsider persona and subversive streak that makes The Stunt Man such a wonderfully strange film.

The film’s self-reflexivity and critical nature of moviemaking aren’t unique, and neither is its strategy of blurring the line between reality and fiction, but The Stunt Man has plenty to offer to the movies about movies subgenre. It’s as much a critique of excess conflated with art as it is a wildly entertaining genre piece in its own right. And let’s not forget it’s got one of the great Peter O’Toole performances.

Steve Railsback (both wooden and manic in equal measure) stars as Cameron, a Vietnam vet on the run from the law. During an escape from justice, he inadvertently causes the death of a stunt man working on a movie, and the film’s madman director Eli Cross (O’Toole) taps Cameron to be the new stunt man, where he can hide out from the police.

It’s not long before Cross has Cameron performing a litany of dangerous stunts, and Cameron himself is falling in love with the film’s leading lady, Nina Franklin (Barbara Hershey). Meanwhile, O’Toole’s production of the overstuffed WWI thriller is spiraling out of control and a suspicious police chief (Alex Rocco) is hanging around the set, trying to uncover the mystery surrounding the original stunt man’s disappearance.

The Stunt Man is not a polished film, wildly careening from scene to scene with an energy that occasionally seems misplaced, but the off-balance structure works to the film’s advantage more often than not. Here, emotions are heightened so often, nearly everything could be the product of an artificial Hollywood construct. O’Toole’s maestro of madness just adds to the sensation of imbalance, and as he piles undue expectations on Cameron, the film reaches its boiling point.

The Stunt Man is the kind of movie the term “cult film” was invented to describe, and this fantastic Blu-ray version will likely be a frequent guest at home midnight movie screenings.

The Blu-ray Disc
The Stunt Man is presented in 1080p high definition with an aspect ratio of 1.78:1. The film looks about as good as it was ever going to here, with a film-like grain structure that hasn’t been tampered with and strong color separation. The film was certainly a low-budget affair, and it shows here, with many of the shots possessing a distinctly dated feel. Image sharpness and clarity is never all that great, with a number of shots featuring decent foregrounds, but fuzzed-out backgrounds that are really soft. Still, damage is kept to a minimum, with just minor scratches and flecks here and there, and the transfer seems appropriate to the film’s theatrical look.

Audio is presented in a 5.1 DTS-HD Master Audio track that gets the job done, replicating the film’s explosive effects suitably across all channels and keeping the dialogue clean and clear in the fronts. There’s not a ton of surround activity going on here, but the mix is dynamic enough and doesn’t suffer clarity issues.

Special Features
Severin Films really hits it out of the park with the collection of extras they’ve assembled for this release, producing lots of new material in addition to the wealth previously available. Carried over from the original DVD release of the film are an audio commentary with Rush, O’Toole, Railsback, Hershey, Rocco and several others, as well as a feature-length documentary directed by Rush about the making of the film.

For their edition, Severin has recorded substantial new interviews with O’Toole, Hershey, Railsback, and Rocco together, each talking about their involvement with the film, which they all clearly have a deep admiration for. There’s also a new documentary on Rush’s unconventional career that features new interview footage with him. Another featurette showcases a post-screening Q&A with Rush, Hershey, and Railsback after a double feature of Freebie and the Bean and The Stunt Man at the New Beverly in Los Angeles.

The disc also features several trailers for the film as well as trailers for other Severin releases.

The Bottom Line
Picture quality leaves a little to be desired, but there’s no question that this release of The Stunt Man does the film proud.

Laila

2011-06-03T23:31:00.000-07:00

Article first published as DVD Review: Laila (1929) on Blogcritics.

Technically stunning if not narratively so, 1929’s Laila — proclaimed as the crowning achievement of Norwegian silent cinema — is now available in a superb DVD edition from Flicker Alley. Beautifully restored by the Norwegian Film Institute in conjunction with Turner Classic Movies, Laila is an adaptation of the novel by J.A. Friis and is directed by George Schnéevoigt, the cinematographer for some of Carl Theodor Dreyer’s early films.

Although the film seems a little too bound to novelistic convention (particularly in what essentially amounts to an hour-long prologue where time could’ve been more significantly elided), the on-location photography is nothing short of amazing, with wolf attacks, sled chases and waterfall rescues taking place against expansive mountaintop vistas.

The film also features the captivating presence of Mona Mårtenson, who plays the titular character with a fresh-faced enthusiasm. She’s not around for the first hour though, as we see the baby Laila get packed up by her Norwegian parents to get baptized, lost in the travel due to a marauding band of wolves and subsequently discovered by nomadic reindeer herders. Some plot machinations ensure that Laila is returned to her parents a year later, but the outbreak of the plague necessitates her return to her nomadic foster family, where she’s especially beloved by Jåmpa (Tryggve Larssen), who first discovered her in the snow.

The film moves forward 20 years, and Laila is expected to marry Mellet (Henry Gleditsch), her foster brother who she’s grown up with, but a trip to town ignites her interest in Anders (Harald Schwenzen), actually her cousin in real life. There’s an undercurrent of racial tension between the Norwegian people (referred to here as “daro”) and the lapps, an indigenous people, and the prospect of a pairing between Laila and Anders is all but unthinkable, due to her perceived status as a lapp.

This element of prejudice doesn’t add much to the star-crossed lovers plotline of the film, but the plot does allow for moments of daring excitement like a near-fatal boat ride and elemental heartbreak as when Laila assumes she is being shunned by Anders at their mountaintop rendezvous.

Laila owes a lot to its visually striking locations, but there’s certainly something to be said for Schnéevoigt’s dynamic staging of action sequences. At nearly two and a half hours, the film does have its moments of epic fatigue, but its rousingly adventurous more often than not.

The DVD of the film features a new, Grieg-inspired piano score by Robert Israel, and compiles a gallery of publicity materials and cast and crew information on the disc. The package also includes a booklet with a comprehensive essay by Casper Tybjerg, diary entries by Larssen from during production and a note by Israel on his score.

Solaris — The Criterion Collection

2011-05-25T22:27:00.000-07:00

Article first published as Blu-ray Review: Solaris (1972) — The Criterion Collection on Blogcritics.

The Film
Andrei Tarkovsky’s Solaris doesn’t shy away from paradox. It is both intensely cerebral and mysteriously spiritual; unsentimental and yet pervaded with emotion. At nearly three hours long, the film might appear to be a kind of sci-fi epic, but Solaris is more interested in human consciousness than the intricacies of the future-world in which it takes place.

Tarkovksy’s languid pacing makes for a film that you kind of just sink into. One can attempt to intellectually process everything on screen (and that approach will keep you busy enough), but I find it’s more satisfying to let the images wash over you, like the roiling ocean at the center of the film’s mystery.

In a lengthy prologue, the film introduces us to Kris Kelvin (Donatas Banionis), a psychologist preparing to be sent into space the next day. Kelvin spends these final moments on Earth among the trees and water that surround his house, and later, briefing for his mission by watching footage from a conference discussing the project’s troubles. He’s to be sent to the space station near the planet Solaris, where inhabitants have been experiencing unexplainable phenomena.

When he arrives, he discovers that one of the three cosmonauts on board the station has committed suicide and the two others (Jüri Järvet, Anatoli Solonitsyn) are behaving erratically. It is not long before Kelvin falls under the same bewitchment, as the figure of his dead wife, Hari (Natalya Bondarchuk), appears to him repeatedly. The hazy explanation the other scientists offer is that the ocean of the planet Solaris has the ability to mine conscious and unconscious thoughts and produce perfect facsimiles.

Kelvin experiences the spectrum of emotions toward the ghost, as profound waves of latent grief seem to flow over him. Tarkovsky uses the complicated relationship Kelvin develops with Hari to explore the nature of love and loss, but also the very fiber of humanity. Inside the sterile, intellectual world of space, there are experiences unexplained by science.

Solaris is often considered one of Tarkovsky’s more accessible works, but the semi-backhanded nature of that label doesn’t adequately convey the thematic richness or the variety of interpretive paths one can take. On a plot level, the film is straightforward and relatively easy to follow, but the meditative nature of Solaris ensures that everyone is going to take away something different, depending on what they brought to the viewing experience.

Tarkovsky’s lovely long takes and poetic imagery (a shot where the station temporarily undergoes weightlessness is absolutely breathtaking, and it’s hardly the only shot that’s such) are well represented here. The marrying of seemingly opposite ideals make Solaris one of the greatest science fiction films ever made.

The Blu-ray Disc
Solaris is presented in 1080p high definition with an aspect ratio of 2.35:1. Immediately as the film began, I was taken aback by the richness of the greenery that opens the film, with the gently swaying reeds underwater looking incredibly vibrant. The transfer goes on to impress, although not quite at the same level throughout as the image can occasionally seem a little soft or poorly defined around the edges. But there was hardly a time when I felt like the image didn’t seem texturally film-like. Fine detail is apparent in the vast majority of the shots, with the film’s monochromatic sequences exhibiting an extra level of detail and sharpness. Scenes which were formerly black-and-white on Criterion’s original DVD release of the film have now been tinted blue to be in accordance with Tarkovsky’s intent. (A new DVD release of the film correcting these scenes is also now available.) Damage is very minimal, and by-and-large, the transfer represents an exceptional upgrade over the previous edition.

Audio is presented in an uncompressed monaural track that’s quite robust for its single channel, exhibiting clear and dynamic sound during the film’s several explosive moments. Dialogue sounds natural and clean, without a problematic tinny undertone. Pops, hiss, and crackle are unnoticeable.

Special Features
In terms of supplements, this disc is identical to the previous two-disc DVD edition, and it’s a solid, if a little dry, selection. Nine deleted and alternate scenes run about 25 minutes and mostly expand on existing scenes in the film. An alternate text opening is included among them. There are also four substantial interviews with members of cast and crew, all presented in Russian with subtitles. Interviews with Bondarchuk and cinematographer Vadim Yusov run past the 30 minutes mark each, while segments with art director Mikhail Romadin and composer Eduard Artemyev run closer to 20 minutes.

A short excerpt from a documentary on Stanislaw Lem, author of the novel the film is based on, explores briefly his dislike for the film, much of which stemmed from Tarkovsky’s valuing of Earth (and the human feelings associated with it) over the complexities of space. Lem reportedly didn’t like Steven Soderbergh’s 2002 crack at adapting his novel either.

An audio commentary from Vida Johnson and Graham Petrie, author of The Films of Andrei Tarkovsky, is included, along with a booklet featuring an essay by critic Phillip Lopate and an appreciation by Akira Kurosawa, who has a couple great anecdotes from during the film’s production.

The Bottom Line
With a sold visual upgrade (and the corrected scenes to go along with it) over Criterion’s original edition, this Solaris Blu-ray is an easy recommendation.

The Great Dictator — The Criterion Collection

2011-05-22T23:08:00.000-07:00

Article first published as Blu-ray Review: The Great Dictator - The Criterion Collection on Blogcritics.

The Film
Charlie Chaplin took his time coming around to the world of talking pictures, not directing his first all-talkie until almost a decade-and-a-half after the era began. But with that film, 1940’s The Great Dictator, Chaplin sure had something to say. A direct attack on the person of Adolf Hitler made at a time when the United States was still firmly isolationist and a number of European countries were in appeasement mode, the film is bold, if a little clumsy, and in hindsight, more than a little problematic.

Chaplin himself declared he would’ve never made the film if he had known the true atrocities of the Holocaust being perpetrated when he made it. That puts him in a better position than Roberto Benigni, whose comic stylings of the Holocaust in Life is Beautiful come with no such caveat. Still, The Great Dictator treads some uncomfortable territory with its juxtaposition of slapstick and references to concentration camps and ghettos.

It’s also not a very effective satire. The film’s portrayal of Hitler stand-in Adenoid Hynkel, the dictator of Tomania, mostly relies on scenes of blustering speeches, given in a ridiculous faux-German dialect, peppered with “sauerkrauts” and “wienerschnitzels.” Is a snickering depiction of how silly German sounds really the most withering attack you can mount?

That’s not to say The Great Dictator is without value. Chaplin is adept at playing both the vain, preening Hynkel and the poor Jewish barber living in the ghetto who bears a strong resemblance to him. While the scenes don’t reach the emotional heights of Modern Times, the barber’s romance with Hannah (Chaplin’s wife Paulette Goddard) is still quite charming, and there are a number of sequences that are downright delightful.

It’s somewhat telling though that the film’s best set pieces — a dud shell from a cannon, an upside-down plane ride, Hynkel’s iconic globe dance, the one-upmanship antics between Hynkel and Mussolini cypher Napaloni (Jack Oakie) — would have been perfectly at home in a silent film, or are essentially silent here. Much of Chaplin’s artistry stands on its own without words. Of course, the element of sound makes possible the film’s famous ending — with Chaplin as barber decrying (though not explicitly) the values of Nazism. I’m of two minds about this approach, which lacks elegance, but is so clearly heartfelt, it almost makes up for it.

The Great Dictator is not one of Chaplin’s finest efforts, but it is a fascinating historical document, with a massively popular film star taking head-on the leader of a country and political movement. Perhaps Chaplin wasn’t totally suited to the kind of vicious satire needed to make a film like this work, but the film is still kind of astonishing for what it does attempt.

The Blu-ray Disc
The Great Dictator is presented in 1080p high definition with an aspect ratio of 1.33:1. With its second Chaplin Blu-ray, Criterion has again produced a knockout, although this one’s maybe a shade less impressive than the Modern Times release. Still, the film looks fantastic, with excellent grayscale separation, image clarity and sharpness and lack of damage. Fine detail is present in every frame and the image possesses a subtle and intact grain structure. There is a little bit of flickering apparent in some shots, and an image instability that looks like noise in a few moments near the end of the film, but overall, this is a fantastic transfer.

The uncompressed monaural audio track is fine, with a lack of any hissing, crackling or other distractions. Voices are clean and clear, but music can sound alternately tinny and harsh at points, which is certainly related to limitations of the source material.

Special Features
Criterion has assembled a great slate of extras here, combining some of those available on the previous DVD release with a host of new supplements. Kevin Brownlow and Michael Kloft’s excellent 2001 hour-long piece The Tramp and the Dictator explores the similarities between Chaplin and Hitler, who were born with days of each other and bore obvious physical likenesses. The documentary features interviews with a number of historians and filmmakers, and is a great inclusion.

The disc features two new visual essays, one by Cecilia Cenciarelli on Chaplin’s planned Napoleon project, which he brought some ideas to The Great Dictator from, and one by Jeffrey Vance, which recounts the production history of the film. A new audio commentary by Dan Kamin and Hooman Mehran relates some of the same information.

A really fascinating extra is 26 minutes of behind-the-scenes color footage shot by Chaplin’s half-brother Sydney. Some of this is seen in The Tramp and the Dictator, but there’s a lot more here, with different perspectives of a number of scenes. The footage is silent.

Confirming the Chaplin brothers’ love of barbershop sequences are an excerpt from Sydney’s 1921 film King, Queen, Joker and an unused segment from Charlie’s 1919 film Sunnyside. There’s also a short piece that cuts together barbershop moments from King, Queen, Joker and The Great Dictator.

The film’s rerelease trailer and a booklet containing an essay by critic Michael Wood, Chaplin’s defense of the film that appeared in The New York Times, a note from critic Richard Brody and a reprinted piece from Jean Narboni on the film’s final speech round out the package.

The Bottom Line
Criterion continues their Chaplin releases with another top-notch entry. While the film has its share of problems in my opinion, it’s certainly worth seeing in this gorgeous presentation and with plenty of supplementary material to provide some different perspectives.

Henri-Georges Clouzot's Inferno

2011-05-21T22:34:00.000-07:00

Article first published as Blu-ray Review: Henri-Georges Clouzot's Inferno on Blogcritics.

The Film
The specter of “what if” hangs over the proceedings of Henri-Georges Clouzot’s Inferno, the bewitching semi-documentary that chronicles the downfall of a film that never was. French filmmaker Clouzot had made a number of bona fide classics (Quai des Orfèvres, The Wages of Fear, Diabolique) before setting out to make L’enfer or Inferno in 1964, but this was to be a project on another level, where money wasn’t a concern and the end result would rock the world of cinema like 8 ½ did the previous year.

But only three weeks into the shoot, beset by numerous production troubles and a lead quitting, Clouzot suffered a heart attack and production grinded to a halt. About 13 hours of footage had been shot, but for the most part, it wouldn’t see the light of day until now, more than 40 years later.

Directors Serge Bromberg and Ruxandra Medrea have constructed a film that’s half re-creation and half diagnostic, examining what went wrong with the film while simultaneously giving the images that Clouzot captured — from both screen tests and actual scenes — room to dazzle. And do they ever.

Clouzot cast 42-year-old Serge Reggiani and 26-year-old Romy Schneider to play husband and wife in a small resort town. He’s stricken with fits of jealousy brought on by her flirtations with other people, causing the film’s luminous black-and-white imagery to transition into wild, bizarrely colored fantasy/nightmare sequences. Many of these exist only in the camera test realm, where Clouzot was experimenting with different textures and colors, and the expressionistic shots of the gorgeous Schneider he captured during these moments are undeniably stunning.

The film is at its best when it simply allows the unfinished fragments of film to float across the screen. Bromberg and Medrea wisely allow this footage to stand on its own, carefully weaving in interviews from the shoot’s crewmembers and re-enacted expository dialogue from two actors, but not at the expense of the spellbinding pieces of L’enfer.

There’s no telling if the film would’ve been a masterpiece or a colossal failure — as striking as the imagery is, it’s merely imaginative wisps rather than a coherent, forceful artistic vision. There’s an underlying thread passing through many of the interviews that wonders whether the finished product could’ve ever lived up to expectations. In this form, the splinters of an unrealized dream seem like kernels of buried treasure, unearthed to great awe and wonder. Perhaps it’s best this way.

The Blu-ray Disc
Henri-Georges Clouzot’s Inferno is presented in 1080p high definition with an aspect ratio of 1.85:1. Boutique label Flicker Alley has done a tremendous job with its Blu-ray debut here, presenting an image that underscores the breathtaking beauty of Clouzot’s unfinished film. The segments of Inferno are remarkably film-like, with a perfectly resolved and intact grain structure. Colors are vibrant in their blatant artificiality, almost approaching a level that seems realer than real life. Similarly, the black-and-white scenes have excellent contrast, with superb separation across the grayscale. The developed film stock had simply been sitting in cans for 40 years, so damage isn’t even a concern. The newly shot interviews and scene reconstructions appear to be shot digitally, and feature exceptional sharpness.

Audio is presented in a Dolby 5.1 mix that handles the interviews perfectly fine and provides some nice directionality with the unusual sound design that Clouzot was experimenting with, enveloping the viewer in a fortress of anxiety and paranoia.

Special Features
An hour-long behind-the-scenes featurette offers additional footage and a more traditional approach to a making-of than the film itself, which is a more elliptical making-of. A nine-minute director introduction features a very animated Bromberg (I almost felt like he was auditioning to be an infomercial pitchman) talking about how he was able to secure the assistance of Clouzot’s widow, Inès, which was not an easy proposition. An image gallery features more than 50 behind-the-scenes photos. The package also comes with a DVD of the film, which only features the Bromberg extra on it.

The Bottom Line
Whether or not Clouzot was on his way to creating a masterpiece, the images he got on celluloid are the stuff of cinematic beauty. Flicker Alley’s Blu-ray is exceptional.

The Low Anthem at The Triple Door

2011-05-17T21:08:00.000-07:00

Jeff Prystowsky, Jocie Adams, Mat Davidson and Ben Knox Miller
of The Low Anthem. Photo by Dusty Somers.

Article first published as Concert Review: The Low Anthem - The Triple Door, Seattle, WA, 5/16/11 on Blogcritics.

Half of The Low Anthem’s music sounds like it should be performed in a dusty, creaking old church; the other half seems to belong on stage at a rowdy dive bar. Both halves sounded great Monday night at Seattle’s The Triple Door, where the band was opened for by former member Dan Lefkowitz.

The occasion also marked the first time the band played a cafeteria, according to frontman Ben Knox Miller, not too impressed with the venue’s full dinner service. The Triple Door is a beautiful club, and it’s nice to have the option of eating a meal, but the clank of forks, knives and dinnerware isn’t exactly ideal musical accompaniment, especially for the sparser Low Anthem songs.

Still, the band pushed ahead, delivering a set that showcased the majority of its February release, Smart Flesh, while leaving plenty of room for tracks from 2008’s Oh My God, Charlie Darwin and a few that go back further, like staple “This God Damn House,” written and performed by Lefkowitz.

The Low Anthem has a reputation for simple, straightforward music, with its Americana-tinged tunes hearkening back to humbler times. That’s not an inaccurate description, nor should it be considered derisive. The spare guitar and delicate harmonies on a song like “Charlie Darwin” or Monday’s cover of Leonard Cohen’s “Bird on the Wire” are absolutely sublime. But the description is also a little reductive, and misses an entire element of the band’s live performance.

The Low Anthem is capable of producing highly intricate soundscapes, especially in the interludes between songs, and the noisy confluence of instruments both common and not so common—guitars, upright bass, clarinet, musical saw, and bowed crotales—is more reminiscent of an ambient band than just a simple folk tune.

There’s also a sense of warm collaboration between members, who swap instruments between nearly every song—even during these more intricate moments, the music is anything but cold and calculated. And then there are the foot-stomping barnburners, like “Boeing 737” off Smart Flesh and the Tom Waits cover “Home I’ll Never Be” from Charlie Darwin. Stacking up the band’s varied approaches next to one another, it’s pretty clear The Low Anthem is hardly just another troupe of sensitive indie folkies.

Monday’s show came near the tail end of a three-month tour promoting the new record—the band’s last show ever in America, Miller joked—but there was no air of fatigue hanging over the set, even if the band members felt it. Impeccable musicianship, whether on spare, wispy ballads or harmonica-laden rockers, makes The Low Anthem a live act not to be missed.

Jesus Christ Superstar at Village Theatre

2011-05-16T16:52:00.000-07:00

Article first published as Theater Review (Seattle): Jesus Christ Superstar by Andrew Lloyd Webber and Tim Rice at the Village Theatre on Blogcritics.

By now, almost anyone interested in theater has an opinion about Jesus Christ Superstar, Andrew Lloyd Webber and Tim Rice’s rock opera about the final days of Jesus. My take: despite a thoroughly uneven score, Webber’s future penchant for empty bombast hadn’t quite taken over yet, and ultimately, the show is rather moving. The reframing of the story to place Jesus and Judas as opposite sides of the same coin is intriguing, but it’s a little hard to accept Webber and Rice’s Jesus — a petty, whiny, violent figure who hardly seems like the leader of a movement.

With that out of the way, let’s look at Village Theatre’s production, on stage through July 31. Directed by Tony and Pulitzer Prize-winner (and longtime Village associate artistic director) Brian Yorkey, this is a staging that brims with excitement and features unwaveringly high production values. The set pieces are impressive, the orchestra is on point and the show has the added kick of having two actors alternate in the roles of Jesus and Judas — Michael K. Lee and Aaron C. Finley.

Lee played Jesus at Thursday’s opening night performance, and his incredible vocal range electrified the stage, particularly in Act II’s “Gethsemane,” where Jesus laments his upcoming fate. Finley, while possessing strong vocals, was done no favors by the abundance of reverb his mic was afforded and his own troubles with enunciating clearly. He tended to look a little lost in the role, particularly in the big showstopper, “Superstar,” where he seemed swallowed up by sequins and the surrounding dancers. One wonders if his meek demeanor might be more suited to the role of Jesus.

Like a lot of productions of Jesus Christ Superstar, this one revels in its anachronisms, with set design by Matthew Smucker that evokes the feel of a war-torn refugee camp with its concrete barriers and a 20-foot tall barbed-wire fence.

Melanie Burgess’s costume design establishes the apostles as a cross between street urchins and gang members — except for Jesus and Judas, who look they stepped out of a hipster meme, with Jesus’s keffiyeh scarf and Judas’s thick-rimmed glasses, beanie and messenger bag.

High priests Caiphas (Eric Polani Jensen) and Annas (Timothy Glynn) are clothed in oversized white almost-zoot suits, while Pontius Pilate (Greg Stone) gets outfitted in high-powered CEO-ware. The costumes themselves are top-notch, but the merging of so many disparate influences is kind of silly — it’s just random diversity without a coherent conceptual basis.

Filling in supporting roles are Jennifer Paz as the star-struck Mary Magdalene and Michael Nicholas as Peter, who denies Christ after his arrest. Both possess lovely voices, but don’t convince as to why they’re so passionate about Jesus.

Making an impression in short periods are James Scheider as Simon and Brandon Whitehead as King Herod. Scheider is an ensemble player through much of the show, but breaks out with killer dance moves in “Simon Zealotes,” while Whitehead is a one-scene wonder in “King Herod’s Song.” As the only outright comical number in what is otherwise a mostly somber show, this song has the ability to stop the whole musical dead in its tracks. Not so with Whitehead, whose lecherous, leering Herod is a riot.

In a production the size of Jesus Christ Superstar, it’s hard to pull everything off without a hitch, but Yorkey brings a tremendous amount of energy to the proceedings. It’s certainly enough to overcome shortcomings both technical and inherent to the text.

Jesus Christ Superstar is on stage at Village’s Issaquah location through July 3, and moves to the Everett location from July 8 through July 31. Tickets are available at Village Theatre’s website.

Pale Flower — The Criterion Collection

2011-05-16T16:48:00.000-07:00

Article first published as Blu-ray Review: Pale Flower - The Criterion Collection on Blogcritics.

The Film
Yakuza gangster Muraki (Ryô Ikebe) gets sucked back in to a life of crime in Masahiro Shinoda’s Pale Flower and we get sucked in to, with the film’s unique rhythms and propulsive grace beckoning like sirens. Possessing the ultra-cool nature of a Melville gangster film, but with an added dreaminess that descends into nightmare, Pale Flower is an essential entry from the Japanese New Wave.

After completing a prison stint for killing a man, the reserved Muraki finds himself returning to a previous love — gambling to all hours of the night in hidden corners of the city. It’s at a game of hanafuda — an oblique game played with stiff, almost domino-like cards — where he first glimpses Saeko (Mariko Kaga), a beautiful, casually seductive woman who has no problem holding her own in the male-dominated gambling scene.

She drops large sums of money with ease and asks Muraki to introduce her to a game with higher stakes. When he does, the two are plunged into a whirlwind of illicit thrills. Though the rules to the game are never really apparent, the scenes featuring it are some of the greatest gambling moments in cinema. Shinoda gives us perspectives from all over, ranging from expansive overhead shots to intimate over-the-shoulders. The rhythmic editing is aided by Toru Takemitsu’s remarkable percussive score, which segues in and out of the film’s sound design with a slinking coolness.

Both Muraki and Saeko are characters who struggle to feel anything, and the risks associated with gambling ignite their pleasure centers in a way that nothing — even sex — can touch. A striking scene finds the two in bed together, posing as lovers in the hotel that police have raided, looking for evidence of gambling. After the cops leave, the moment presents itself, but instead, the cards are brought back out.

Trouble is, Saeko is even more deadened to the world than Muraki is, and as he finds himself falling for her, she goes in search of greater thrills. He responds instinctively to her impulsive, reckless behavior, and puts himself in the middle of danger in a mission for his mob boss.

Shinoda combines expressive noirish photography of the stillness of late-night Yokohama with jagged, quick-cut images of the bustling city during the day. As Muraki’s latent desires explode into a literal nightmare, Shinoda shows himself more than capable of bringing slightly crazed imagery into the mix as well. A stylistic marvel, Pale Flower is the work of a director eager to exhibit his unique flourishes and skilled enough to pull them all off.

The Blu-ray Disc
Pale Flower is presented in 1080p high definition with an aspect ratio of 2.35:1. The black-and-white photography looks superb here, with fantastic sharpness — especially in close-ups — and loads of fine detail. The print used here is in excellent shape, and you’ll have to look really hard to notice even the slightest instance of damage anywhere. Contrast is good, although black levels can be a little variable, with some scenes showcasing inkier blacks than others. Some shots have more of a hazy look than a sharp black-white contrast, but this may be the intended look of the film. Grain structure is intact and subtly present, but never looks like noise.

Audio is presented in a lossless monaural track that presents Takemitsu’s score beautifully. The track is quite clean, with dialogue sounding fairly natural for the most part.

Special Features
This disc is a little light on the extras, but Criterion has included a couple of solid supplements. First up is a new interview with Shinoda, where he amiably discusses the film’s production, casting — especially his choice of Ikebe, who was struggling with feelings of being washed-up — and the slightly negative reaction of screenwriter Masaru Baba, and the way the studio, Shochiku, subsequently shelved the film for a time.

The other major feature is a selected scene commentary by Peter Grilli, who looks at five sections of the film totaling about 30 minutes, and mostly discusses the score and sound design. The nearly four-minute theatrical trailer is also included. The package contains a booklet with an essay by critic Chuck Stephens.

The Bottom Line
Masahiro Shinoda may not be as well known as fellow Japanese New Wave filmmakers Nagisa Oshima or Shohei Imamura, but his altogether captivating Pale Flower makes it obvious he’s essential. Criterion’s release could’ve been a little more beefed up extras-wise, but the pristine image quality makes for a great release.

The New Pornographers with Thao and Mirah and Kathryn Calder — Mt. Baker Theatre

2011-05-08T20:29:00.000-07:00

Kathryn Calder and band. Photo by Dusty Somers.

Article first published as Concert Review: The New Pornographers with Thao and Mirah, and Kathryn Calder, Mt. Baker Theatre, Bellingham, WA, 5/6/11 on Blogcritics.

Though the popularity of supergroup The New Pornographers has likely eclipsed that of any one of its individual members, it’s clear there’s still plenty of discrete talent to be found. Friday night’s one-off show for The Pornos was also the kickoff for singer Kathryn Calder’s debut solo tour, where her charming indie pop opened the show.

Calder, who was introduced to the band largely as a live replacement for a sometimes-unavailable Neko Case, has become an integral member, with her sweetly sunny vocals contrasting nicely with Case’s distinctively feisty delivery.

As a solo artist, her approach is decidedly gentler. Along with her four-piece band, she performed songs from her debut album, Are You My Mother?, and the tone of the set was adorably awkward, from her self-deprecating demeanor (“I’m not Lady Gaga … I wish,” she said after explaining there would be no costume change between her set and the Pornos’) to her bassist’s grinning attempts at dead-air-filling humor.

Calder’s music isn’t going to take you by the throat and shake you into submission, but the unassuming nature of it doesn’t make it any less lovely. And while most of her songs feature subdued instrumentation, like the lilting piano backing of “Arrow,” she’s also comfortable kicking things up a notch, as seen in the jangly guitar and hand claps of “If You Only Knew.”

Following Calder were Thao and Mirah, also on their own separate tour promoting their recently released, self-titled album. Like Calder and Case, Thao and Mirah are a bit of a study in contrasting female presences, with Thao’s boot-stomping energy and slyly sardonic attitude mixing with the more matter-of-fact Mirah. Mirah has a soaring, incredibly versatile voice while Thao possesses rougher, slightly androgynous vocals buoyed by an anarchic sense of play.

Thao Nguyen. Photo by Dusty Somers.

Fresh off a border visit where an incredulous border patrol wanted to know about their “all-girl” band — Thao told him it was a cross between Joan Jett and Stevie Nicks, she said — the pair showed just how well their distinct styles coalesce. Whether in a back-and-forth number like “How Dare You,” the Mirah-centric “Hallelujah,” or a jazzed-up rendition of Thao’s “Feet Asleep,” complete with electric violin, Thao and Mirah demonstrated themselves to be a perfect musical match.

Thao and Mirah’s show has a bit of a DIY, homemade aesthetic, where hand claps and knee slaps can serve as percussion. In fact, the whole thing seems better suited to a sweaty club than to an expansive theater, but Friday saw them perform what might have been the most satisfying set of the night.

With a New Pornographers live show, you never know exactly what lineup you’ll get, as solo careers often beckon. With Friday’s Bellingham performance being a bit of an orphan, it wasn't too surprising to see the ranks thinned a bit, with neither Neko Case nor Dan Bejar in attendance. How much does that matter? Well, Carl Newman is certainly the heart and soul of the band, with his impeccable ear for pop melodies the major creative force behind most of the band’s fantastic songs. Still, as great as Calder is, Case’s forceful harmonies are certainly missed. A rendition of “Mass Romantic” or “The Bleeding Heart Show” just isn’t the same without her.

Aside from that, Friday’s show was a solid, if a little perfunctory run-through of plenty of hits. Title tracks from all five albums (expect perhaps “The Electric Version,” although I may be mistaken) were sprinkled throughout, without any album getting much more love than the others.

Carl Newman and John Collins of
The New Pornographers. Photo by Dusty Somers.

The New Pornographers are an interesting live act, because it’s essentially a power-pop band stuck in an indie-rock body. There’s a bit of a disconnect there; even though everyone’s a committed performer, no one really commands the stage. (I have a feeling this is not exactly true when Case is present, however; she’s a firebrand.)

It probably didn’t help matters that the audience was filled with pockets of behavior seemingly plucked from totally different kinds of events — bro-like high-fives (is this a Dave Matthews show?), a foam finger (what football game did you think you were attending?), and even some bumping and grinding (am I at a high school dance?).

Still, you’d be hard-pressed to produce a better example of a contemporary power-pop act than The New Pornographers. They’re at their best when operating with a full lineup, but any opportunity to see these guys shouldn’t be missed. Just leave the foam fingers at home.

The Prisoner of Second Avenue at ACT Theatre

2011-05-08T11:49:00.000-07:00

Article first published as Theater Review (Seattle): The Prisoner of Second Avenue by Neil Simon at ACT Theatre on Blogcritics.

Noisy neighbors, the stench of garbage, unbearable heat, rampant crime — the 1970s-era New York City of The Prisoner of Second Avenue isn’t exactly paradise.

Advertising executive Mel Edison (R. Hamilton Wright) bears the weight of it all in this Neil Simon comedy/drama, now on stage at Seattle’s ACT Theatre through May 29. Mel doesn’t hesitate to voice his opinions loudly and often about the things that bother him, and as the laundry list grows, his tenuous grip on mental stability loosens.

Simon’s 1971 play marries his trademark fast-paced wit with an at-times bleak view of American life. Prisoner is still primarily a comedy — no one’s going to confuse Simon with Arthur Miller — but it’s to Simon’s credit that he’s able to mount a feeling of overwhelming claustrophobia on the merits of his quick verbal barbs.

Credit also goes to longtime Seattle theater director Warner Shook, who keeps the staging lively and engaging in the play’s single location — the 14th floor apartment of Mel and his longsuffering wife, Edna (Anne Allgood). For Mel, the apartment isn’t a refuge from the perils of the city; it’s a microcosm of everything that’s wrong with it, from the smells to the noises to the crime that encroaches upon his home. Edna often floats the suggestion of moving away from the city, but the idea never gains any real traction, as if the two of them are trapped there by some kind of invisible barrier.

The play takes on added relevance for these times with the introduction of a round of layoffs that threatens the couple’s livelihood and only adds to the pressure Mel finds himself under. The trappings of city life may not be all that great, but is the prospect of losing everything any better?

The first act features just Mel and Edna, and both Wright and Allgood are so good, it’s kind of a shame that the second act introduces Mel’s four siblings for a scene or two. That’s not to disparage Julie Briskman, Kimberly King, Cynthia Lauren Tewes, and especially the great John Aylward, but I wouldn’t have minded seeing just Wright and Allgood spar for a nonstop two hours.

Wright has a canny ability to evoke Mel’s inner rage, which hovers right near the boiling point almost constantly. I swear I could feel my own blood pressure rising just watching him. And yet, he remains thoroughly likable in the midst of his despicable behavior, as Wright never loses sight of the human core that makes Mel’s frustrations completely understandable.

Allgood is similarly outstanding as the sympathetic wife — a character who could kind of turn into a doormat for all the concessions she makes for her raving husband, but instead comes across as strong, decent, and maybe a little more frustrated than she lets on.

Matthew Smucker’s scenic design creates a functional apartment space in ACT’s Allen theater in the round, complete with an admirable attention to detail. (Even the barely visible exterior of the front door has the apartment number on it.) A circle of period-specific TV cabinets that descend from the ceiling for several comical news interludes is a nice touch.

Deb Trout’s costume design seems a little muddled, with some pieces evoking the period perfectly (Mel’s sisters’ clothing in particular) while others are curiously anachronistic (Mel wears an obviously modern Kangol hat in one scene).

The Prisoner of Second Avenue ultimately favors a softer edge, but Simon’s play features enough bite to keep things interesting. Even if it didn’t, I’m pretty sure watching Wright and Allgood would’ve more than made up for it.

The show runs through May 29. Tickets start at $37.50 for adults, and are available at ACT’s website.

The Boy Friend

2011-05-04T10:53:00.000-07:00

Article first published as DVD Review: The Boy Friend (1971) on Blogcritics.

Ken Russell’s The Boy Friend is a giddy thrill ride for musical fans. This is no gateway musical film and audiences only so-so on the genre should probably stay away. But those who love the blatant artificiality and the unabashed camp that have gone hand-in-hand with large pockets of the film musical world since the genre’s heyday in the ’30s will find a lot to love here.

Like a number of Russell’s films, The Boy Friend has been hard to come by on home video, but its release on Warner Archive is a bit of a bittersweet blessing. It’s fantastic to have the film finally available in its original aspect ratio and its non-truncated running time, but this is a film that deserves a lavish Blu-ray edition. Still, the remastered Archive release looks rather great, with the film’s bright, bold colors bursting off the screen and damage reduced to minimal occurrences.

The film is an adaptation of Sandy Wilson’s 1950s musical, but rather than attempt a straightforward filmization of the material, Russell opts for a backstage tale of a theater company putting on the show without its lead star. The backstage musical conceit has often served as a way to ground a film in real life and make the numbers seem more plausible, but Russell takes the opposite approach, falling headlong into fantasy number after fantasy number, and the results are spectacular.

Twiggy stars in her film debut as Polly Browne, the stage assistant and de facto understudy who is forced to go in the place of lead actress Rita (Glenda Jackson) when she hurts her foot. The stakes aren’t exactly high — there are more people on stage than in the audience for this performance — until famed film producer De Thrill (Vladek Sheybal) shows up and everyone kicks it into high gear. Polly does her best to fake her way through it, even if a number of her fellow cast members aren’t so helpful.

Meanwhile, Polly is engaged in a tentative flirtation with leading man Tony (Christopher Gable), but she’s unsure if his romantic inclinations extend past the constraints of the stage and curtain. Twiggy’s wide-eyed and guileless performance makes her the innocent center to a world where everyone’s trying to get ahead.

Russell keeps the film moving at a brisk pace, where backstage relations play out in a whirlwind of excitement and adrenaline and onstage numbers often trip over into a fantasy world where the actors become mythic divine figures engaging in a bacchanalian feast or lovers spinning away on a massive record player or gnome-like denizens of a mushroom-capped village.

Russell pays homage to all variety of 1930s MGM musical entertainments, but it’s his Busby Berkeley recreations that astound. All corners of media have seemingly co-opted Berkeley’s signature overhead kaleidoscopic shots at one point or another, but I can’t think of a more satisfying set of nods toward the musical great than what Russell achieves here. He doesn’t just create overhead patterns using female legs; he captures the bizarre and fanciful spirit of Berkeley in scenes such as a collection of tap-dancing human dice and the aforementioned record player number.

Even the numbers that are played as straightforward, onstage set pieces are directed with verve, like an early Charleston that features the wonderful Tommy Tune.

The Boy Friend is a remarkable musical-lover’s musical, and even though it deserves better than a burn-on-demand disc, I’m just glad it’s available in this solid presentation. The DVD includes a vintage eight-minute featurette on the making of the film, and while a lot of it is film clips, it’s worth watching solely for a shot of Russell and Twiggy singing together in the studio.

The Agony and the Ecstasy of Steve Jobs at Seattle Repertory Theatre

2011-05-02T16:45:00.000-07:00

Article first published as Theater Review (Seattle): The Agony and the Ecstasy of Steve Jobs by Mike Daisey at Seattle Repertory Theatre on Blogcritics.

There’s no accusing monologist Mike Daisey of not understanding his targets in his latest piece, The Agony and the Ecstasy of Steve Jobs, now on stage at Seattle Repertory Theatre through May 22. Daisey’s precision aim locks onto the American thirst for new technology and the cult of Apple and Jobs himself, and Daisey—a self-proclaimed tech geek with a reverence for Apple products—tears down the idols in a two-hour performance that is as provocative as it is entertaining. Maybe monologist sounds too staid; how about muckraking stand-up comic?

With a chicly minimalistic stage setup—a glass-topped table in front of a simple grid of LED lights—one almost expected Jobs himself to stride onstage in a black turtleneck to announce the next iPhone. That’s not exactly what happens.

Daisey simply takes the stage, sits down in a chair behind the table, and erases any notion that oral storytelling is a lost art form. After establishing his geek credentials early on, he launches into a two-pronged story about Apple. One side traces the evolution of the company, from its humble beginnings to its current status as tech superpower, supported with plenty of well-known assertions about the mercurial Jobs. Daisey doesn’t hesitate to call him a genius; he also doesn’t hesitate to call him an asshole.

The other component of the interweaved storylines is more satisfying—it’s based on Daisey’s own gonzo journalistic discoveries rather than somewhat hidebound anecdotal information—and much more sobering. Daisey tells of his visit to Shenzhen, China’s factory district, and specifically to Foxconn, a behemoth with hundreds of thousands of factory workers making iPhones, iPods, and iPads along with products from HP, Nokia, Sony, and many other electronics companies.

Questionable Chinese labor practices are kind of common knowledge and even Foxconn itself has been subject to its share of controversy, so it’s not as if Daisey is ripping the lid off of anything.

Still, it’s likely that his vivid recounting of conversations with factory workers and their mistreatment (unpaid overtime, 70+ hour work weeks, nonexistent medical care for on-the-job injuries, rampant child labor abuse) will make most audience members confront the realities in a new, more actively uncomfortable way. As Daisey observes, how many of us have ever thought about the pairs of hands that assembled our devices before they ever made their way to us?

Daisey’s tale of pretending to be an American businessman to gain access to factories is harrowing and hilarious, and strikes the same balance that the show as a whole does. His animated, outraged bellowing sounds like a combination of John Goodman and Jeff Garlin, and just when he has you hunched over from laughter, he segues into something more thought-provoking. Friday’s audience was alternately roaring and pin-drop-silent without much room for anything in between.

The Agony and the Ecstasy of Steve Jobs is a show that demands a greater engagement with the world around us. It’s not insular in any way. Some people won’t appreciate that. Some will wonder why Daisey is picking on Apple when tons of other tech companies use the same factories (he explains it's Apple’s position as industry leader that makes it the most effective target). Some will bristle at the increasingly preachy tone the show takes in its final minutes and the handout passed out by ushers when leaving that explains options for further advocacy.

As entertaining and engaging a performer as he is, it’s pretty clear Daisey wants to be more than an impetus for a few laughs and a fun night out. He wants you to laugh at his own arcane obsessions and his blistering hate for PowerPoint. He also wants you to think about your mindset in regard to consumer culture and the costs inherent within. Like it or not, The Agony and the Ecstasy of Steve Jobs is most likely going to do both.

The show is on stage through May 22, with performances Wednesday through Sunday. Tickets are available at Seattle Rep’s website.

Blow Out — The Criterion Collection

2011-04-26T13:12:00.000-07:00

Article first published as Blu-ray Review: Blow Out — The Criterion Collection on Blogcritics.

The Film
Brian De Palma has his share of detractors. Some say he’s too concerned with style over substance or that he’s too jokey/cynical or he’s just a poor man’s Hitchcock. What can’t be said about De Palma, unless one is just being deliberately obtuse, is that he lacks ambition. His penchant for frequently venturing into unknown territory is a double-edged quality, but when De Palma is firing on all cylinders, the result is thrilling.

Probably no film confirms that more than Blow Out, a work that functions as a political thriller, a self-reflexive examination of filmmaking, a moody character piece and an ultimately chilling horror film — all with impeccable grace and style. There are no muddled genre exercises or pale imitations here. Even though the film undoubtedly owes inspiration to Antonioni’s Blowup and Coppola’s The Conversation, De Palma is mining new territory more than constructing homages.

John Travolta, in a performance that reveals the potential his career didn’t exactly make good on, stars as Jack, a sound effects technician for a sleazy exploitation movie studio in Philadelphia. He’s outside one night, recording wind noise for an effect, when he hears a bang, sees a car careening out of control and watches it break through the railing and plunge into a lake.

He dives in and is able to save the female passenger, but the male driver is already dead. Later, at the hospital, he discovers the driver was the governor and a shoo-in for presidential candidate, and the cover-up machine is churning away, with an aide instructing him to forget about the whole incident. No one must know the governor died in the midst of having an affair.

Jack is dissatisfied with this turn of events, but begins to develop a tentative romance with the woman, Sally (Nancy Allen), a makeup artist who also participates in blackmail schemes. When he gets a hold of video footage shot that night by her collaborator (Dennis Franz), Jack merges his sounds with the images to create a film of what happened — and what he believes is no accident.

De Palma feeds the audience information with expert skill, initially allowing us to digest it at a similar pace to Jack. In the early scene where he’s out recording, De Palma uses increasingly wide shots paired with rhythmic editing that’s informed by the sound design. Later, when Jack is recreating the moment in his head, we get the sense that a virtuosic director is capturing the trancelike operation of a virtuosic character. Both scenes allow the audience to traverse Jack’s path of discovery with him.

But the film shifts near the middle, just when it may have been in danger of becoming a zeitgeist-y (political assassination + Chappaquiddick-like circumstances ensured this) but rote whodunit. De Palma lays the cards out on the table, introduces a menacing John Lithgow and essentially solves the mystery. It’s then that the film kicks into a higher gear, propelled by Jack’s increasing paranoia and the dangers his obsession pose to him and Sally.

Travolta’s gentle, thoughtful Jack is a tragically doomed character, involving himself not because of personal bravado, but of a deep-seated desire to do something meaningful — confirmed by a flashback that reveals an earlier job with law enforcement. He’s brilliant in his own way, but he also may be overreaching in a way that has drastic consequences.

De Palma’s stylistic flourishes have probably never been more assured than here. His camera weaves and bobs with intelligent grace. He’s not content to opt for purely utilitarian camerawork, and the style is married to the content, like in a scene where Jack discovers his tapes have been tampered with, and the revolving camera matches his spiraling paranoia.

When the utterly unnerving final scene turns the satiric misdirection of the film’s opening on its head, it becomes totally clear that De Palma crafted a dark, engrossing masterpiece where concerns of image and sound can be matters of life and death.

The Blu-ray Disc
Blow Out is presented in 1080p high definition with an aspect ratio of 2.40:1. Supervised by De Palma, this new transfer is a marvelous recreation of the 35mm experience with healthy, but not obtrusive grain levels and absolutely superb image clarity. Much of the film is dark and subdued, but the film does see some vibrant colors, such as reds and blues, that pop off the screen. Fine detail is apparent in every frame, with both the infrequent close-ups and more frequent medium and long shots packed with information. Black levels are outstanding and even in darker shots, grain doesn’t come across as noise. Damage is essentially nonexistent.

Audio is presented in a 2.0 DTS-HD Master Audio soundtrack that dynamically communicates the film’s intricate soundscapes. Obviously a film about a sound designer will feature interesting sound design, and Blow Out does. Even with just a 2.0 track, the effects feature great directionality, and dialogue and music is always clear and distinct.

Special Features
Criterion has assembled an excellent set of supplements, with new interviews bearing the majority of the weight. An hour-long conversation between De Palma and Noah Baumbach serves well in lieu of a commentary track, with De Palma talking about a lot of interesting technical and anecdotal information. I was especially excited to hear him talk about his split diopter technique, which he uses in this film often, and is one of his most striking stylistic choices, in my mind. As he did on Criterion’s My Dinner with Andre disc, Baumbach serves as a genial and perceptive interviewer, even if he sometimes struggles a little with framing some questions (hey, it happens).

An interview with Nancy Allen covers her role in the film, which was a departure for her in some ways, and what it was like working with Travolta. It briefly touches on her relationship with De Palma (they were married at the time), and she expresses admiration for the film.

The third interview features Garrett Brown, the inventor of the Steadicam, and it’s a great inclusion, as he talks about his development of the device and his role in the film, which had him shooting the opening film-within-a-film Coed Frenzy. He’s a great interview subject and his dismissive attitude toward the intentionally bad scenes he shot is quite amusing (he had just finished working on The Shining, which probably only made the quality disparity more apparent).

Also included is De Palma’s 1967 film Murder á la Mod, which is presented in 1080p (as are all the extras) and looks rather wonderful. The experimental, freewheeling feature is one his first films, and while not everything sticks, it’s fun to watch De Palma throw a bunch of his pet tendencies up on the screen in the story of a fashion model getting caught up in the world of pornography. The film is glanced in Blow Out as a character watches it on TV, and its inclusion here is a nice touch.

Rounding out the package are a collection of beautiful black-and-white set photos from Louis Goldman, the theatrical trailer and a booklet with a new essay by Michael Sragow and Pauline Kael’s original New Yorker rave for the film.

The Bottom Line
Blow Out is essential for De Palma fans and just about everyone else. The film is constantly inventive and has never looked better on home video.

Robert Plant and the Band of Joy, Paramount Theatre

2011-04-21T18:09:00.000-07:00

Robert Plant and Patty Griffin. Photo by Dusty Somers.

Article first published as Concert Review: Robert Plant and the Band of Joy - Paramount Theatre, Seattle, WA 4/20/11 on Blogcritics.

If one has any questions about why Robert Plant revived the Band of Joy moniker for his current tour, an evening with the new incarnation makes it abundantly clear. It turns out that the pre-Led Zeppelin project name fits the current lineup perfectly, with Plant himself acting as the grizzled, gleeful pied piper of joy.

At Wednesday night’s show at the Paramount Theatre in Seattle, Plant spoke of finding paradise as a senior artist, which his relaxed, impish demeanor between songs further confirmed. He’s having a hell of a time up there, and that joy spread through the audience unhindered.

Flanked by the enormous talents of Buddy Miller and Patty Griffin, Plant kicked off the set with a reinvented, down-home rendition of Zeppelin’s “Black Country Woman,” an appropriate opener to a night of re-imagined numbers. With 2007’s Raising Sand with Alison Krauss and 2010’s Band of Joy, he has proven eager to explore new territory, and this current tour finds him melding Zeppelin hits, covers new and old, and gospel-inflected traditionals into one delicious bluesy, folky stew.

Buddy Miller and Plant. Photo by Dusty Somers.

Much of the first portion of the show found Plant and Co. mining the new album, with performances of Los Lobos’ “Angel Dance” and Richard Thompson’s “House of Cards,” along with Plant and Miller’s arrangements of the traditional “Cindy, I’ll Marry You Someday” and “Satan Your Kingdom Must Come Down.” The haunting Low cover “Monkey” saw Plant and Griffin harmonizing under chilly blue lights to great effect.

Interspersed with these early songs were moments when Plant said he wanted to introduce some of his friends, ceding the stage and lead vocals to Miller, Griffin and multi-instrumentalist Darrell Scott. Miller belted out a rousing rendition of his wife Julie’s “Somewhere Trouble Don’t Go,” underpinned by Plant’s churning harmonica. Scott sang perpetual cover “A Satisfied Mind,” which brought his voice together with those of Miller and Griffin in gorgeous harmony. Griffin — clearly a crowd favorite — opted for Teddy McRae and Sid Wyche’s heartbreaking “Ocean of Tears.”

The latter part of the show featured Plant heading further back in time with “In the Mood” from his 1983 album, The Principle of Moments, and the 1998 Plant/Page (and later, Plant/Krauss) collaboration “Please Read the Letter.” The audience, most of which were respectfully seated for the middle part of the performance, leaped to their feet with the opening chords of “Houses of the Holy,” and stayed there for an extended cut of show-closer “Ramble On.”

Photo by Dusty Somers.

The encore featured Townes Van Zandt’s “Harm’s Swift Way” from the new album, Zep’s “Gallows Pole” and the traditional “And We Bid You Goodnight.”

Plant remains a musical giant, with a voice that’s only been enriched with age. His decision to surround himself with a brilliant musical architect in Miller, the golden-throated Griffin and the ridiculously talented Scott makes for a band that has no trouble acting as the purveyor of joy.

Kes — The Criterion Collection

2011-04-19T17:49:00.000-07:00

Article first published as Blu-ray Review: Kes - The Criterion Collection on Blogcritics.

The Film
Ken Loach’s breakthrough feature Kes is a remarkable film that is effective both as sociopolitical critique and as a naturalistic coming-of-age tale. Loach brings together the frustrations of the disenfranchised working class with a storytelling grace that is absolutely captivating, and allows the film to transcend mere polemic.

On paper, the film seems to follow a template for a number of films where a character transcends his circumstances through a connection with an animal. After all, the film is about a constantly put-upon Yorkshire boy who momentarily escapes his hardscrabble existence by training a wild kestrel.

But Kes is no heartwarming boy-and-his-pet story — based on the book A Kestrel for a Knave by Barry Hines, Loach’s film is a gritty, hard-nosed look at a class of people whose social status will not improve. That said, it’s also slyly funny and quietly moving. Loach keeps his distance from the film’s characters with a sentimentality-free and unobtrusive camera style, but it’s impossible to miss his simultaneous empathy, especially for protagonist Billy Casper (David Bradley).

Billy is on the bottom rung of a social stratus that’s at the bottom of the ladder itself. A scrawny 15-year-old, Billy is bullied by classmates, harangued by teachers, ridiculed for his lack of athletic ability and treated like dirt by his employer. Things aren’t much better at home, where his bitter coal miner brother Jud (Freddie Fletcher) has nothing but loathing for him and his indifferent mother (Lynne Perrie) couldn’t care less.

Billy’s only ambition is not to end up in the coal mines like his brother and long-gone father. It’s the best future his existence allows him to hope for. Loach doesn’t frame Billy himself as any kind of saint though — he steals, bullies those smaller than him and generally behaves in a manner forged by cycles of poverty and neglect.

Some hope comes in the form of a kestrel falcon that Billy finds nesting in nearby ruins. The discovery ignites a previously unseen drive in him, and with a stolen book about falconry, he begins to learn how to train the bird. Sequences where he flies the bird and coaxes it to his arm are beautifully realized — Loach doesn’t emotionally underline them at all, allowing the simple euphoria of Billy’s connection with another creature to speak for itself.

Loach uses mostly nonprofessional actors to help retain a naturalistic sense, and nowhere is he more successful in this than with Bradley, who gives one of the greatest performances of a child actor on screen ever. An actual student at the school where the film was shot, he was chosen from the first group of students Loach saw, and his grubby charisma and wholly un-self-conscious manner is perfect for the role. Colin Welland is the only professional actor in the film, and as the one teacher who treats Billy with respect, he slips into the realistic world of the film with ease.

Kes was selected by the British Film Institute as the seventh best British film of the century, and its reputation is more than deserved. It’s a must-see.

The Blu-ray Disc
Kes is presented in 1080p high definition with an aspect ratio of 1.66:1. This release represents a major restoration of the film, accomplished using both the original 35mm camera negative and a 35mm color reversal internegative. The film looks markedly different than any previous home video release, with deeply saturated colors and a grittier look that makes previous editions seem quite faded. The transfer is superb, leaving grain intact and clearly presenting a film that was made cheaply and fairly quickly in the late 1960s, but so cleanly, it seems that the print was almost never used. Damage is almost completely eradicated; only one early shot in almost complete darkness shows a fair amount of scratches and heavy noise. Otherwise, the image is full of richly rendered detail and looks just superb.

Audio is presented in an uncompressed monaural mix of the film’s original production soundtrack. An alternate track featuring some scenes dubbed for greater clarity has accompanied most home video releases, and is also included here. The original track is quite clean and natural sounding, with the feel of being recorded on location very much intact. Most American viewers will likely have trouble with the heavy Yorkshire accents in a number of scenes though. The alternate track helps alleviate this somewhat, but the tinny and artificial dubbing is less than ideal. Unfortunately, Criterion has not included subtitles on this release (mostly common practice for their releases in English), so prepare to strain your ears and probably just miss some of the dialogue.

Special Features
A great slate of extras accompany this release, with the most essential being Cathy Come Home, a 1966 television feature for BBC program The Wednesday Play, which Loach directed 10 films for. Like many of those films, Cathy Come Home is focused on critiquing a British social crisis, and its tale of a woman who loses her husband and children in the midst of homelessness details the housing problems of the era. It’s a film that’s intended to raise awareness, so its didactic elements are really at the forefront, but its experimental, French New Wave-inspired editing and relentless verité sensibilities make it a thrilling and heartrending document. A video afterword by Graham Fuller accompanies the film.

Also essential is a 45-minute making-of, which includes new interviews with Loach, Bradley, DP Chris Menges and longtime Loach collaborator and producer Tony Garnett. Each one has vivid memories of production, and the featurette traces the film’s humble beginnings to its eventual critical acclaim.

A 1993 profile of Loach’s career for the British program The Southbank Show traces his work up to that point, and provides a solid overview of his filmography. The theatrical trailer is also included. A booklet with an essay by Fuller sees him covering some of the same ground as in the video piece, as well as providing a comprehensive look at Loach’s work.

The Bottom Line
Kes is a landmark in British cinema, and this fantastic Criterion edition is all the more reason to visit or revisit the film.

Somewhere

2011-04-19T17:37:00.000-07:00

Article first published as Blu-ray Review: Somewhere (2010) on Blogcritics.

The Film
Sofia Coppola’s films have always been growers for me. I wasn’t particularly enamored with either The Virgin Suicides or Lost in Translation on my first viewing, but my appreciation has grown steadily for each upon subsequent revisits. With her fourth feature, Somewhere, I expect to experience a similar phenomenon. Somewhere is certainly a companion piece to Lost in Translation, but with more subdued rhythms and a less obvious emotional core, making it even easier to dismiss the first time around if you’re not expecting something so delicate.

Like Lost in Translation, Somewhere is an examination of emptiness and ennui among the privileged, although in a slightly different milieu. Johnny Marco (Stephen Dorff) is an enormously popular Hollywood star living in the Chateau Marmont hotel. His life is full of stimulation — driving fast cars, jet setting around the globe, staving off the hordes of beautiful women throwing themselves at him — but is simultaneously suffocating in its hollowness.

His life takes a bit of a detour with the arrival of his 11-year-old daughter Cleo (Elle Fanning), who begins to spend more and more time with him while her mother has a kind of emotional breakdown. The potential here for the precocious kiddo teaching dad what’s really important in life storyline is obvious, and fortunately avoided completely.

What we get instead are precisely observed moments — Johnny gets applied with old age makeup for a movie, he enjoys the company of a pair of twin pole dancers, he orders late-night gelato with his daughter.

Coppola allows almost every scene to really breathe, waiting several seconds (or more) beyond when we expect a cut. Some will call this pretentious or annoying or boring. But really, it’s an exercise in restraint, painting a portrait with fewer brushstrokes. It's a sensibility that allows the viewer to feel the emptiness in each frame. Harris Savides’ photography is frequently stunning in a relaxed, almost incidental way.

Dorff and Fanning exhibit a very sweet screen chemistry that relies on the subtlest of gestures. Older sister Dakota clearly got all of the histrionics, leaving Elle with a natural grace that lends the film its understated sense of hope.

Ultimately, it doesn’t feel like Coppola has a lot to say in Somewhere, but the film exhibits a formal maturation that might be even more obvious years or decades removed. The film sort of violates its own emotional control with an ending that’s frankly kind of silly, but there’s a lot that’s rewarding here for patient viewers.

The Blu-ray Disc
Somewhere is presented in 1080p high definition with an aspect ratio of 1.85:1. This transfer replicates the look of film admirably, untouched by any apparent digital manipulation. Savides’ desaturated and slightly hazy photography recalls the work he did for Greenberg, and like that disc, it’s marvelously represented here. Colors are more subdued than vibrant and the image is rarely tack sharp, but that’s the intended look, and it’s communicated perfectly.

Audio is presented in a 5.1 DTS-HD Master Audio track. The film is mostly very quiet with long stretches without dialogue, but when it’s there, it’s cleanly presented through the fronts. The track is unassumingly immersive, with little details sprinkled throughout the surrounds.

Special Features
Only a single extra finds its way onto this disc, but fortunately it’s head and shoulders above most featurettes of its ilk. The 17-minute making-of looks to be shot on film with a similar aesthetic to the movie itself, and features interviews with a number of the cast and crew. Elegantly constructed, it’s a pleasure to watch.

The Bottom Line
Somewhere will likely prove frustrating to many viewers, but I think Coppola is doing something interesting here, and I look forward to revisiting the film in the future.

The Submarines: Love Notes/Letter Bombs

2011-04-13T15:35:00.000-07:00

Blake Hazard of The Submarines at Tractor Tavern

Article first published as Music Review: The Submarines - Love Notes/Letter Bombs on Blogcritics.

The husband and wife duo that makes up The Submarines, John Dragonetti and Blake Hazard, famously recovered from a break-up during the recording of debut record Declare a New State!, and the album’s melancholy pop tunes told the story of a relationship in turmoil. Sophomore album, the post-marriage Honeysuckle Weeks, was a sunnier affair that basked in the glow of blooming love.

This time around, it seems they’re splitting the difference. The dichotomy is present right there in the title — Love Notes/Letter Bombs — and that titular slash pops up all over the album, with notions of true love and human fallibility duking it out for lyrical prominence.

Like the previous two albums, Hazard’s bright vocals soar over Dragonetti’s electronic-tinged pop melodies, and if the lyrics tend to vacillate, the music lands solidly on the optimistic side of the scale. But as Hazard and Dragonetti showed on Honeysuckle Weeks, cheerful doesn’t have to equal mawkish — and the lyrics bear a matter-of-fact honesty that are comforting in how straightforward they are.

John Dragonetti of The Submarines

The first two cuts on Love Notes/Letter Bombs, “Shoelaces” and “Fire,” almost feel like they could be b-sides on Honeysuckle, with churning, luminous dispositions that seem ready-made for an iPhone commercial like the one Honeysuckle’s “You, Me and the Bourgeoisie” showed up on. Despite its more languid pace, “Birds” strikes a similar note.

Fortunately, Love Notes doesn’t simply regurgitate its predecessor, and the twin pairing of “Ivaloo” and “The Sun Shines at Night” exemplify admirably the contradictions the album is exploring. “Ivaloo” features ukulele underpinned by synthesizers, with Hazard and Dragonetti trading cautiously hopeful vocals. “You’ll bring your overhead projector / to demonstrate where we go wrong,” he sings. “You’ll chart our every flaw / shown 10-times tall on the bedroom wall / but if you love me / we can erase it all,” she answers.

On the earnest “The Sun Shines at Night,” the sentiment of “The sun shines at night / we’re in love and it feels so right” runs up against the reality of “Your doubts, they hold strong / and my hope, it burns too long.”

The Submarines at Seattle's Tractor Tavern (4/12/11) Photos by Dusty Somers

Many of the album’s songs have a kind of point/counterpoint structure, with love’s successes and failings comingling side by side, but Love Notes/Letter Bombs isn’t nearly as schematic as that sounds. Hazard and Dragonetti have a knack for creating soundscapes that seem effortlessly constructed, and one is much more likely to float away on the album’s melodies than get bogged down in some kind of emotional exercise. That more substantial concerns are present is simply a bonus for fans of intelligently constructed pop songs.

White Material — The Criterion Collection

2011-04-10T16:41:00.000-07:00

Article first published as Blu-ray Review: White Material - The Criterion Collection on Blogcritics.

The Film
A brooding, roving portrait of near-madness fostered in isolation, Claire Denis’ White Material pulses with the unmistakable rhythms of a Denis film. One of the most accomplished filmmakers working today, she creates landscapes of feeling, where characters’ emotions dictate the tempo more than plot.

With the elliptically structured White Material, Denis builds her film around one woman — Maria Vial (Isabelle Huppert), the headstrong manager of a coffee plantation in an unnamed African country. Maria’s entire world is crumbling, as civil war is breaking out across the country and the family of her ex-husband (Christophe Lambert), who owns the plantation, has lost all faith in the operation. Workers have fled, the last helicopter airlifts to remove her from the country are departing and there is little tolerance for the brand of French colonialism her presence represents.

And yet, Maria remains undeterred in her determination to stay in the country and harvest her coffee. She picks up a collection of temporary workers to finish the job and ignores the signals of impending violence. Meanwhile, rebel bands of child soldiers roam the countryside and the government is especially interested in capturing a rebel leader who is simply known as “The Boxer” (Isaach de Bankolé).

The film’s flashback structure reveals some key details within the first few minutes, but soon, we’re plunged into the whirlwind that Maria finds herself in. Denis puts us squarely in Maria’s shoes for much of the film, shooting her from behind or in profile, and alternating these intimate close-ups with long shots that frame her against the land’s rugged beauty. For better or worse, Maria possesses a kind of primal identification with Africa — leaving would be like tearing herself away from a life force.

Denis’ profile shots of Huppert are frequent and surprisingly revealing. Framed this way, we see a woman with her face set like a flint, unwilling to relent to what should clearly be common sense. The Criterion cover art reproduces one of these shots, and it’s a perfect encapsulation of the film.

Huppert’s performance is magnetic and wild, but it’s hardly all unrestrained histrionics. She throws herself into the role with great physicality, her slender frame belying her strength of presence, but her expression remains that of one who has total clarity of thought. Contrasted with the rapid devolution of her son (Nicolas Duvauchelle) into a manic, self-styled warrior, Maria seems like a rational figure — but her world may have changed too much for her paradigm to remain valid.

White Material is a film that’s elegant in its roughness. It has a captured-on-the-fly feel, with choices made in the editing room more for their impressionistic than structural value. None of this is any surprise coming from Denis, who has a talent for plucking evocative moments out of thin air — or reels of footage in this case.

The Blu-ray Disc
White Material is presented in 1080p high definition with an aspect ratio of 2.35:1. This is a pleasing presentation that looks as sharp and damage-free as one would expect from a new film. Facial detail is especially excellent here and the film’s earthy tones are nicely reproduced, with browns dominating the color palette. Instances of bright color — a mural of a solider, a bloody and dismembered animal head — pop out with an attractive vibrancy. Created from a 35mm interpositive, the transfer is appropriately film-like, with an intact and very subtle grain structure.

Audio is presented in a 5.1 DTS-HD Master Audio track that is mostly front-oriented, but sprinkled with enough details to create a more dynamic listening experience. The French dialogue is crisp and clear, with the score by British band Tindersticks mingling unobtrusively alongside.

Special Features
A fairly light set of supplements accompanies the film, but fortunately we get excellent interviews with three of the film’s major players. All recorded exclusively for Criterion, separate interviews feature Denis, Huppert and Bankolé, with the first two in French and the latter in English. Denis is a marvelous interview subject, touching on areas from the film’s conception to production, as well as speaking about her personal connection to Africa and the turmoil that has been a near-constant there. Huppert and Bankolé speak more specifically to their individual roles, with Bankolé also touching on his experiences working on Denis’ debut feature, Chocolat.

The non-interview extras aren’t quite as exciting, with a single two-minute deleted scene and a short documentary about the film’s premiere in Cameroon. The theatrical trailer rounds out the disc’s features. Also included is a booklet with an essay by Amy Taubin.

The Bottom Line
Denis’ Criterion debut may not be her best work, but it’s certainly emblematic of her talent and the beautiful Blu-ray release is a great way to see the film.

9 to 5: The Musical at the 5th Avenue Theatre

2011-04-10T16:34:00.000-07:00

Article first published as Theater Review (Seattle): 9 to 5: The Musical by Dolly Parton and Patricia Resnick at the 5th Avenue Theatre on Blogcritics.

The national tour of 9 to 5: The Musical has a lot of things going for it — high energy numbers, impeccable choreography, and a trio of talented actresses each carving out a distinctive stage persona for herself. Whether that’s enough to overcome the strangely joyless tenor of the production probably requires devotion to the film that inspired it, to Dolly Parton herself, or some combination of the two.

Parton’s musical numbers are serviceably peppy, but the book by Patricia Resnick, who also co-wrote the film’s screenplay, is dispiritingly flabby. Flashes of screwball wit, workplace satire, and broad physical comedy pop up briefly, but the show never commits to a comedic style and mostly settles for corny set-ups (strait-laced office workers smoking pot, an unattractive assistant pining after her boss) with even worse punchlines.

This first tour, which began in September, is at the 5th Avenue Theatre through April 24. The musical largely follows the plotline of the film, with three underappreciated female office workers at the generic Consolidated Industries fighting back against the sexist regime that runs their company. Violet (Dee Hoty) is a capable, strong widow balancing career with raising a teenage son. Doralee (Diana DeGarmo) is a busty country girl, constantly being gazed upon by lascivious male coworkers. Judy (Mamie Parris) is newly single, and thrust into the working world without skills because of her husband leaving her for a 19-year-old.

The three are unlikely friends, but have a common enemy in their boss, Franklin Hart, Jr. (Joseph Mahowald), a bumbling, leering man who treats his female employees either like dirt or like potential sexual conquests. He has a seemingly insurmountable power over them, but a series of events just might give the women a chance to change the power structure at Consolidated.

The first act of 9 to 5 is a laborious affair, mostly filled with a series of “I am” songs that establish superficial details about the characters without propelling the musical into any interesting territory. The numbers are certainly bombastic, with the decent-sized ensemble engaging in complicated choreography, but to what end? It’s like a massive engine revving while the vehicle remains in park.

It’s only toward the end of the first act, when the three women each indulge in a revenge fantasy about Hart, that the show gains some traction. Judy imagines a ’50s-era noir, Doralee a rip-roaring western, and Violet a cracked Disney-type fairy tale. Act Two, where the imagined comeuppance has a chance to come true, should be more of an outrageous romp, but at least the book tightens up a bit.

The specter of Dolly Parton hangs over the entire affair — literally. In a framing device that’s even tackier than it sounds, a video of Parton introducing the characters is projected onto a clock that hangs above the stage. At the end of the show, she returns for a where-are-they-now epilogue. Director and choreographer Jeff Calhoun is clearly doing his best, but the Parton videos are just another indication that 9 to 5 is simply a second-rate musical, and no number of impressively staged numbers can allay the feeling.

Fortunately, this national tour is stocked with talent for its three leads. Hoty carries a formidable comic presence, displaying flawless timing as the no-nonsense Violet. Parris is a vocal powerhouse, and the jaw-dropping run she performs in the penultimate “Get Out and Stay Out” makes one wish this show utilized those pipes more. DeGarmo, who’s coming into her own as a musical theater talent, practically becomes Dolly Parton onstage, emulating her speaking and singing voice with a precision that extends beyond mere imitation. It might seem like a lazy choice to play the character just like the role’s originator, but she does it so well, there’s hardly a reason to complain.

With a set of rotating cubes that are frequently and efficiently used in Kenneth Foy’s scenic design and whimsically nostalgic costumes by original Broadway costumer William Ivey Long, 9 to 5 looks the part of a classic-to-be. Appearances can be deceiving, however.

9 to 5: The Musical is on stage at the 5th Avenue through April 24, with performances Tuesday through Sunday. Tickets are available at the 5th's website.

Our Hospitality

2011-03-30T14:46:00.000-07:00

Article first published as Blu-ray Review: Our Hospitality on Blogcritics.

The Film
With Our Hospitality, Buster Keaton made the jump into the feature narrative world, where he would go on to blend enormous stunts, ingenious sight gags and stories packed to the brim with pathos into all-time classics like The General and Sherlock Jr.

Released in 1923, Our Hospitality wasn’t the first feature film Keaton wrote and directed, but it’s far more of a signal of things to come than Three Ages, which was released that same year and featured three separate films connected by a loose thematic thread. Our Hospitality features Keaton embracing a mythic tale with gusto, combining unabashed Griffith-style melodrama with his unimpeachable visual wit.

Inspired by the Hatfield-McCoy feud, the film tells the story of a generation-spanning struggle between the McKay and Canfield families in the 1800s in rural Kentucky. A dramatically lit and staged prologue shows a McKay man gunned down by a Canfield during a thunderstorm, with his wife and infant son just yards away inside the house. The woman vows that her son will not get mixed up in the feud and sends him away to live with an aunt in New York City.

That infant grows up to be Willie McKay (Keaton), and when he receives a letter informing him of his right to claim his family’s estate, he decides to travel back to Kentucky. He boards a crude steam engine, and begins the long journey, where Keaton explores his fascination with train travel in a way that presages the grand action sequences of The General.

The train has its share of problems, and on the ride, Willie bonds with his seatmate, a shy girl (Keaton’s real-life wife Natalie Talmadge) who invites him to dinner when they arrive. Trouble is, she’s a Canfield, and when Willie is recognized by the Canfield patriarch (Joe Roberts) and his sons (Ralph Bushman, Craig Ward), they pledge to kill him.

But as proper Southern gentlemen, they won’t harm Willie while he’s within the confines of their four walls, setting off a series of comic mishaps as Willie tries to outmaneuver his enemies.
Our Hospitality showcases Keaton’s flair for orchestrating gags small and large. He derives laughs out of the way he pulls a gun from his sleeve just as adeptly as out of the staging of a terrifyingly raging waterfall.

There’s really no sense of Keaton trying to gradually work his way into larger stunts with this film, as an exploding dam and the climactic waterfall sequence generate huge laughs and excitement with their ambitious scale. Keaton’s willingness to throw everything into his creations is always apparent on screen. In many ways, he’s the ultimate “action comedy” director, in the very best sense of the term.

The Blu-ray Disc
Our Hospitality is presented in 1080i high definition with an aspect ratio of 1.33:1. The image quality here is certainly lacking when compared to the previous Kino Keaton Blu-rays, but it’s nothing to get too worked up about. While the image doesn’t have the clarity and sharpness of say, The General, it retains a healthy amount of fine detail and is free from any noticeable compression artifacts. Damage levels are pretty standard for a film of this age, with consistent but mostly minor scratches popping up throughout. The film’s sepia and blue (for the nighttime scenes) color tinting appears stable and consistent.

Audio options include a score composed and conducted by Carl Davis in 5.1 DTS-HD Master Audio or 2.0 stereo as well as a 2.0 score compiled by Donald Hunsberger.

Special Features
A solid selection of extras accompany the film, best of which is a 30-minute making-of featurette that doubles as a visual essay on the film, written by Patricia Eliot Tobias and David B. Pearson.

Two additional films are also included: The Iron Mule, a 1925 short that features the same train as Our Hospitality and has Keaton appear in a cameo as an Indian chief, and Hopsitality, a 49-minute alternate cut of the feature. The film includes an introduction that attempts to elucidate the mysterious existence of this version. The print has suffered a lot of nitrate decay and as it doesn’t include any additional scenes, it’s mostly just a curiosity, but a nice inclusion anyway. It’s accompanied by an organ score by Lee Erwin.

The disc also includes two photo galleries.

The Bottom Line
No mere early effort, Our Hospitality is an essential part of any Keaton or silent comedy library.

The Mikado and Topsy-Turvy — The Criterion Collection

2011-03-29T20:11:00.000-07:00

Article first published as Blu-ray Review: The Mikado and Topsy-Turvy — The Criterion Collection on Blogcritics.

The Films
Gilbert and Sullivan fans have a lot to be grateful for this month with the Blu-ray releases of The Mikado and Topsy-Turvy. The former immortalizes one of the pair’s most well-known achievements on celluloid and the latter features Mike Leigh opening up the world behind the creation of the opera. Released separately by Criterion, the films are fantastic companion pieces to each other and offer two perspectives on a partnership that left an indelible mark on musical theater.

1939’s The Mikado features director Victor Schertzinger bringing Gilbert and Sullivan’s 1885 comic opera to the screen, and although the film has been (somewhat) rightfully derided for its stage-bound aesthetic and truncated state, it would take a real cynic to dismiss it outright. The film stars a number of stage performers from the D’Oyly Carte Opera Company and gleefully conveys the inspired silliness that makes Gilbert and Sullivan so much fun.

In one of the more controversial casting choices, American singer Kenny Baker stars as Nanki-Poo, son of Japanese ruler the Mikado (John Barclay), who flees and disguises himself after his father decrees he must marry the hideous Katisha (Constance Willis). Nanki-Poo is really in love with Yum-Yum (Jean Colin), but she is betrothed to Ko-Ko (Martyn Green), a bumbling public servant who finds himself given the position of Lord High Executioner.

Nanki-Poo pines after Yum-Yum with little hope of ever being with her, but when Ko-Ko receives a command to carry out an execution lest he be killed himself, he seeks to come to an agreement with Nanki-Poo that will give them both some measure of satisfaction.

The Mikado’s confluence of forbidden love, hidden identities and comically inept characters clearly shows the foundation that Gilbert and Sullivan laid for the plot machinations in legions of musical theater comedies to come. This is a fundamentally silly show, from its fictional ancient setting where flirting is the greatest offense to the benignly ridiculous renderings of Japanese attire. It’s also unerringly delightful, from the verbal patter between characters to the musical numbers, among them the instantly recognizable “Three Little Maids from School Are We” and “A Wand’ring Minstrel I.”

Although Nanki-Poo is given a more prominent role in the film version in keeping with Baker’s star status, it’s really D’Oyly Carte performers Green and Sydney Granville as Ko-Ko’s adviser Pooh-Bah who propel the comedy, and any artificiality that this film version introduces is easily overcome by their natural magnetism.

Photographed in appropriately fantastical three-strip Technicolor, this first film version is an imperfect, but valuable translation of the comic genius of Gilbert and Sullivan.

Fitting alongside The Mikado quite comfortably is Topsy-Turvy, Mike Leigh’s sprawling but assured backstage drama about the genesis of the stage version of The Mikado in the 1880s. The film opens with the pair dealing with their unsuccessful staging of Princess Ida, and the flop threatens to drive them apart as they are unable to come up with a suitable new production they both agree on.

Leigh frames Gilbert (Jim Broadbent, in one of his finest roles) and Sullivan (Allan Corduner) as two fundamentally different people, brought together by their mutual success, but possessing divergent ideas about what success means. Gilbert strives to be a great artist, and is obsessed with creating something meaningful, often to the detriment of his personal life and his neglected wife, Kitty (a superb Lesley Manville). Sullivan is more interested in living the good life, enjoying wild parties and wild women.

Still, the two are able to come to an agreement about staging The Mikado, which Gilbert is inspired to write after attending a Japanese expo in London, and much of the film focuses on the backstage struggles that arise during its production.

Leigh, who has proven himself over and over again to be a masterful portrayer of the subtleties of human emotion and interaction, lends a deft touch to the material here. He sidesteps the overt emotional signposts and neat narrative packaging of a conventional biopic to deliver something altogether more realistic and more satisfying. That said, Topsy-Turvy may be Leigh’s warmest film — there’s an undeniable affection for the characters (more so for Gilbert than Sullivan) and for the unavoidable turmoil of a creative process.

At two hours and forty minutes, the film might appear to be a grand-scale production, but it’s more of a collection of peeks behind the curtain that coalesce into a meaningful examination of what it means to create something.

Winner of Oscars for its costume design and makeup, the film is also a handsomely mounted period piece that revels in the details of its Victorian setting just as much as Leigh delights in the details of his characters’ lives.

The Blu-ray Discs
The Mikado is presented in 1080p high definition with an aspect ratio of 1.33:1. The film is in remarkably good shape, sourced here from a 35mm interpositive. Damage is almost nonexistent. Image quality lacks the sharpness one might expect due to other three-strip Technicolor Blu-rays, but the colors themselves retain their distinction, with very little of the color separation that can plague old three-strip prints being noticeable. The entire image does have some problems with pulsating, which can give the image a temporarily odd tint, but considering the age and availability of the film, this presentation is a nice surprise.

Audio is presented in an uncompressed monaural soundtrack that is overall rather weak, with sound quality that is consistently hollow and tinny, due to the source material no doubt. It doesn’t present too many problems with understanding lyrics, but the included English subtitles will probably be welcome for some straining ears.

Topsy-Turvy is presented in 1080p high definition with an aspect ratio of 1.78:1. The film looks wonderful, with an enormous amount of fine detail visible in both long shots and close-ups and impressive image clarity and stability that doesn’t waver throughout. The presentation is quite film-like with just the slightest bit of grain visible to give the image some texture. Facial detail and skin tones are especially nice.

The film’s audio is presented in a surround DTS-HD Master Audio track that really comes to life during the film’s musical numbers and stays grounded in clear, crisp dialogue during quieter scenes.

Special Features
One could almost see The Mikado serving as an extra itself on an edition of Topsy-Turvy, but the standalone treatment Criterion has afforded the film is excellent. New video interviews with Leigh and scholars Josephine Lee and Ralph MacPhail Jr. seem to balance each interviewee’s reservations about the film with a defense of its merits, and we get solid historical and analytical perspectives from these.

A short silent promo advertises a 1926 stage version of the show, while excerpts from 1939 radio broadcasts offer glimpses of The Swing Mikado and The Hot Mikado, both of which adapted the story with jazz music and black casts. A deleted scene from the film, featuring another song from Ko-Ko (and a Hitler cameo), is also included. A booklet with an essay by Geoffrey O’Brien rounds out the package.

On the Topsy-Turvy disc, we get an audio commentary that Leigh recorded for the original DVD release of the film, as well as a new and enormously entertaining conversation between Leigh and musical director Gary Yershon. A 1999 featurette is a pretty standard making-of, but features better interview footage from the cast and crew than these things usually have.

The real treasure here might be Leigh’s 1992 short film A Sense of History, which was written by and stars Broadbent. The two first discussed making a film about Gilbert and Sullivan while shooting this potent little black comedy, which satirizes staid documentaries about British nobles. Broadbent plays an Earl taking a camera crew around on a tour of his estate, but as the day progresses, he reveals more and more unsavory details about his life that make the plot of Kind Hearts and Coronets look tame by comparison.

The package also features the film’s theatrical trailer, three TV spots and a booklet with an essay by Amy Taubin.

The Bottom Line
They may not be packaged together, but you might as well pick up both of these extraordinary releases.

The Windmill Movie

2011-03-24T14:31:00.000-07:00

Article first published as DVD Review: The Windmill Movie on Blogcritics.

In The Windmill Movie, we get a film that is totally narrow in its focus — the product of a filmmaker at his most self-absorbed — and yet the film itself is broadly thought-provoking about its medium, and the questions of authorship and authenticity that many critics and scholars have grappled with. Can images, even those in a documentary, ever be considered truth on celluloid? Who is the author who is ultimately responsible for what ends up onscreen?

In some ways, the author of The Windmill Movie is undeniably Richard P. Rogers, an experimental and documentary filmmaker who labored longest on an autobiographical film. He tried a number of methods over 25 years, including filming himself, filming actors (including Wallace Shawn) playing himself and his friends and family, and simply filming the world as he saw it, in a diary style reminiscent of the work of experimental cinema pioneer Jonas Mekas.

And yet, Rogers didn’t direct, write or edit this film. That would be Alexander Olch, who worked with Rogers near the end of his life. After Rogers died in 2001 from brain cancer, his widow, noted photographer Susan Meiselas had Olch wade through 200 hours of footage to craft the film. Whether this is what Rogers himself would’ve come up with, we’ll never know, but Olch has created a fascinating study of a frustrated artist.

Rogers isn’t the most sympathetic figure, and he complains to the camera often — about his lack of success, his inability to commit, his privileged background and the guilt it causes him. When he turns the camera on himself, the effect is an unblinking look at the raw regrets of a life. Other footage compounds the pain, including Rogers’ fur coat-entrenched mother, and her open disapproval, and Rogers’ own philandering ways despite his love for Meiselas (who he only married after he knew he was dying.)

But interspersed among all that are moments of pure cinema, shot with an undeniable artist’s eye, as Rogers’ cinematic depictions of his life in the Hamptons and vacations to Latin America fill the frame. Expressive images of late afternoon lawn parties and ruddy, sun-soaked bodies lying on the beach imbue the film with a lyrical, entrancing feel, like that of a great experimental film. In a way, these moments give the best autobiographical picture of Rogers — far more than any of the disappointments or failings we see elsewhere.

The DVD of the film includes two previously unreleased short films by Rogers, Elephants: Fragments of an Argument and 226-1690 (The Answering Machine Movie). A booklet with an essay by Scott Foundas is also included.

Iron Curtain at Village Theatre

2011-03-23T20:58:00.000-07:00

Article first published as Theater Review (Seattle): Iron Curtain by Susan DiLallo, Stephen Weiner and Peter Mills at the Village Theatre on Blogcritics.

Sometimes, it’s best to stick to the basics. The writing team behind new musical comedy Iron Curtain, a madcap romp about a pair of New York City writers smuggled to the Soviet Union to help finish a musical, clearly gets that. There are no serious attempts in Iron Curtain to satirize the Cold War or the atmosphere of redbaiting rampant during its ’50s setting, and any self-reflexivity about the theater industry is more of a love letter than a pointed jab.

Rather, Iron Curtain is an unabashedly old-fashioned musical, complete with exceptionally broad gags and meat-and-potatoes musical numbers, from the ballads to the showstoppers. It’s also riotously funny, breathing new life into pun-based humor and hidden identity antics. Susan DiLallo’s book seems a little overstuffed (the show runs close to two-and-a-half hours), but is still remarkably brisk, with a plot that shifts smoothly from scene to scene. Stephen Weiner’s score and Peter Mills’ lyrics range from cleverly playful to outright farcical.

It doesn’t hurt matters that Village Theatre’s production of Iron Curtain is top shelf in every way imaginable, with superb casting, vivacious choreography, an enormous costume repertoire and scenic design both efficient and impressive.

Matt Wolfe and Jared Michael Brown star as Howard Katz and Murray Finkel, a musical songwriting team in New York City who just can’t catch a break. Being a struggling writer trying to break into Broadway is tough, but it’s way worse in the USSR, where Nikita Khrushchev (Allan Barlow) is executing writers for the dreck they’re putting on stage.

He commissions ministry head and theater-lover Yengenyi Onanov (Nick DeSantis) to find some American writers to punch up the Oklahoma! knock-off the Soviet government is trying to produce. Onanov travels to New York and kidnaps Katz and Finkel — prefect candidates because no one has ever heard of them (Sondheim would be missed, the kidnapping team realizes).

Initially distraught by their abduction, the pair is actually able to find enormous success behind the iron curtain by repurposing one of their failed shows into a propaganda piece about Western excess, and Finkel finds another reason to stay in Masha (Danielle Barnum), the show’s lead actress, whom he falls for.

Katz isn’t so enthusiastic, with worried girlfriend Shirley (Carolyn Magoon) back in New York and dominatrix-type Hildret Heinz (Bobbi Kotula) pursuing him fervently for some of his flesh. A plot to uncover the writing team as American spies by Soviet military man Sergei Schmearnov (John Dewar) might just force all of their hands, however.

Iron Curtain invites inevitable comparisons to The Producers, with the central relationship between Katz and Finkel looking a lot like the one between Max Bialystock and Leo Bloom. The shows also share penchants for outrageous accents, cultural stereotypes and theater in-jokes, but Iron Curtain does maintain a distinguishable comic sensibility that’s more broadly silly.

Wolfe is sublimely exasperated as the put-upon Katz, and his withering cynicism laced with a healthy current of desperation hits comic pay dirt over and over. A pitch-perfect line reading about his cousin being a good dancer almost stopped the show in its tracks at Thursday’s opening night performance, with the audience unable to compose themselves from laughter for what seemed like a solid minute.

Kotula also breaks out of a role that could be a little one-note as the sadomasochistic theater director with an enthusiastic embrace of every pun found in her lines. DeSantis’ giddiness and Magoon’s aw, schucks optimism also flesh out their characters with finely tuned details.

Iron Curtain is pure musical theater enjoyment, and it doesn’t attempt to be anything more than it is. Rousingly executed by Village Theatre, this is farce firing on all cylinders.

The show runs through April 24 at the Francis J. Gaudette Theatre in Issaquah and then moves to the Village’s Everett location from April 29 to May 22. Tickets range from $19 to $60 and are available for purchase at the Village Theatre’s website.

The Two Mrs. Carrolls

2011-03-23T20:54:00.000-07:00

Article first published as DVD Review: The Two Mrs. Carrolls on Blogcritics.

Any time you get two screen legends like Humphrey Bogart and Barbara Stanwyck together, there’s almost an implicit guarantee that the project will possess at least some merit. Now available from Warner Archive, The Two Mrs. Carrolls is the only film the two starred in together, and it’s worthy of receiving that faint praise, but not much else. Without the presence of the two stars, as well as a wickedly entertaining supporting performance from Alexis Smith, the film would be little more than a batch of good ideas that never find any traction.

The film, based on a play by Martin Vale, stars Bogart as Geoffrey Carroll, an artist who romances the impressionable Sally Morton (Stanwyck) while on a fishing trip in Scotland. All is going well until she discovers that he’s married and has a child, and despite Geoffrey’s protestations that his wife is an invalid who doesn’t love him, Sally cannot bring herself to stay with him.

Nonetheless, the film shifts forward, and we find Geoffrey and Sally have quickly married after the death of his wife, who is immortalized with a painting on the wall depicting her as the angel of death. They live in a small village near London with Geoffrey’s daughter, Beatrice (Ann Carter), an inconceivably precocious little girl. The quietude gives Geoffrey the opportunity to pursue his painting, but any sense of marital bliss is cut short by the appearance of the well-to-do Cecily Latham (Smith), who shows an immediate interest in Geoffrey — and he reciprocates.

Soon, Geoffrey seems touched by madness and Sally is beginning to come down with a debilitating illness. He starts work on a new painting that no one’s allowed to see, and it seems as if he’s trying to exorcise his inner demons on the canvas.

The Two Mrs. Carrolls has a couple of old pros in front of the camera, and Bogart conveys an ever-shifting sense of mental stability without resorting to histrionics. Stanwyck isn’t given quite so plum a role, and she spends much of the film in a thankless state of naïveté as her world is clearly crumbling around her. Once the character is given a little more willpower as she approaches the horrifying truth, Stanwyck shines as a woman trying to quell oncoming paranoia.

That’s all well and fine, but up until the third act, director Peter Godfrey commands a film that’s strangely inert — we hear people talk about doing sinister things a lot more than we see them doing them, and the lackadaisical pacing renders most of the film’s noirish ambitions impotent. Fortunately, the last act tends to overcome some of the film’s sleepiness, with a horror film finale that is efficiently blocked and features Bogart at his most wonderfully unhinged.

The Warner Archive release of the film features a remastered presentation, but the image quality is pretty comparable with many unremastered Archive titles. Scratches and blotches are persistent and there are a few instances of warp and jitter, but contrast levels and image clarity are solid. Audio is quite clean, with any hissing or crackle mostly nonexistent. The disc includes the film’s theatrical trailer.

Devo with The Octopus Project, Moore Theatre

2011-03-18T16:28:00.000-07:00

Gerald Casale of Devo. Photo by Dusty Somers

Article first published as Concert Review: Devo with The Octopus Project, Moore Theatre, Seattle, Washington, 3/15/11 on Blogcritics.

It was a bit of shame that the Moore Theatre was sparsely populated Tuesday night during Austin four-piece The Octopus Project’s opening set for Devo, although that’s hardly a surprise. There’s likely very little crossover between fan bases for the indie electronica act and the cult new wave rockers, but if the diehard fans that flooded the venue just in time for Devo’s act had arrived a little earlier, they probably would have found something they liked.

After all, it’s not as if you can’t see some of Devo’s influence in The Octopus Project, whether in their shared penchant for idiosyncratic synthesized sounds, their love for kitsch or their high-energy shows. The Octopus Project first crossed paths with Devo at 2010’s Moogfest in Asheville, N.C., where it filled in as backing band after guitarist Bob Mothersbaugh injured his hand. Tuesday’s Seattle show was the first of eight shows in which it’ll open for Devo.

Despite the small audience, The Octopus Project dove in to its set with the same enthusiasm I’ve seen the band display with larger crowds. The nearly 45-minute set encapsulated its appeal — irrepressibly upbeat soundscapes fronted by hard-charging, instrument-switching energy. Toto Miranda’s furious drumming underpins the guitar and bass of Josh Lambert and Ryan Figg, while Yvonne Lambert gives the sound its edge with her array of samplers and keyboards.

The Octopus Project rarely features singing in its songs, but never falls into the same-sounding morass that some instrumental bands fail to overcome. Each song possesses a distinct identity, with those featuring Lambert’s expert manipulation of the theremin achieving a soaring sense of bliss. There may not be any humans singing, but when she takes control of the instrument, it’s as if a disembodied voice is rising above the din of crunching guitars, an otherworldly aria that’s as haunting as it is beautiful.

Devo took the stage soon after The Octopus Project finished, and delivered a nonstop blast of lively, noisy rock with tongue firmly planted in cheek. If the instruments constantly threatened to overwhelm the vocals in the mix, it hardly mattered; it was clear almost everyone knew all the lyrics anyway. The band’s unwavering commitment to showmanship is impressive, and its simultaneous embrace of social critique and outright silliness (matching shirts emblazoned with a grilled hot dog pattern were busted out for the encore — only one of many costume changes) is never uninteresting.

The ghostly presence of Yvonne Lambert. Photo by Dusty Somers

Songs from the band’s 2010 release, Something for Everybody, held their own against the parade of expected hits (“Whip It,” “Secret Agent Man,” “Freedom of Choice,” “(I Can’t Get No) Satisfaction”), with Gerald Casale’s brief interludes and costume changes punctuating a breathlessly executed run of songs. Mark Mothersbaugh closed out the show as Booji Boy with one of Devo’s most blatantly satirical numbers, “Beautiful World.”

It might be easy to dismiss Devo as pure nostalgia bait, but the band remains fascinating on its own merits, with its proclivity for the aggressively strange and its commitment to embracing that identity with gusto. The band’s current tour with The Octopus Project runs through March 27, with a performance at Austin City Limits.

Yi Yi — The Criterion Collection

2011-03-11T21:24:00.000-08:00

Article first published as Blu-ray Review: Yi Yi — The Criterion Collection on Blogcritics.

The Film
Edward Yang’s masterful final film Yi Yi (A One and a Two) transcends description in many ways. You can talk about the wonderfully realized cast of characters, the host of struggles they face, and Yang’s unimpeachable knack for making the material come alive, but even the best summary can make the film sound like just another nice “slice-of-life” feature. That severely underplays the film’s emotional resonance and its universality, which is executed ever so deftly over its nearly three-hour running time (easily one of the most effortless films of that length to watch).

Yang didn’t make a film with a distinct lesson to be learned about humanity’s common experiences, but it’s hard to imagine not being enriched by watching it. The succession of moments from a set of ordinary lives is filled with touchstones that almost every individual faces in some way — a wedding, a funeral, first love, heartbreak, regret, birth, death — and Yang approaches each with a manner both warm-hearted and clear-eyed. Like life itself, Yi Yi is familiar with the entire emotional spectrum.

The film mainly centers on the Jians, a middle-class family in Taipei, and their lives over the course of a year. Patriarch NJ (Nianzhen Wu) works for a tech firm, and is a thoughtful, if melancholy man. His wife, Min-Min (Elaine Jin), grows increasingly distant due to her mother’s (Ruyun Tang) serious illness, which has put her in a coma. 13-year-old daughter Ting-Ting (Kelly Lee) is beginning to enter womanhood and 8-year-old son Yang-Yang (Jonathan Chang) is starting to see the world in new ways.

Surrounding the family is a host of ancillary characters no less richly developed, including Min-Min’s obtuse brother A-Di (Xisheng Chen), his new wife (Shushen Xiao) and the jilted lover who keeps popping up into their lives (Xinyi Zeng).

Much of the film deals with people in transition, and the milestones (wedding, funeral, etc.) that punctuate the film act as natural turning points for each character. NJ often watches the major life decisions of the younger characters with a knowing look from afar, and he gets a chance to revisit his past when he bumps into high school sweetheart Sherry (Suyun Ke) and hesitantly pursues her again.

Yi Yi is all about maintaining perspective throughout the various stages of life and coming to terms with not being able to understand everything about the world. This is poignantly expressed by Yang-Yang, who takes to photographing the backs of people’s heads to show them what they can’t see themselves. Director Yang often frames his characters against reflective surfaces, adding another dimension to what is seen.

Yang establishes a preternaturally natural tone, and actors both experienced (Wu, giving a masterfully controlled performance, and Issey Ogata, illuminating his every scene as NJ’s Japanese business associate) and untested (Lee and Chang, both imbued with a physical grace in their first film) mesh together in a tapestry of humanity. The film’s confluence of moments is almost unspeakably beautiful. It’s one of the finest films of the ’00s.

The Blu-ray Disc
Yi Yi is presented in 1080p high definition with an aspect ratio of 1.85:1. This disc represents a subtle and pleasing improvement over Criterion’s 2006 DVD of the film, which already featured extremely impressive image quality. On the whole, the film appears slightly brighter with more natural colors and greater image clarity. There isn’t a weak spot at all in the print, and a fine layer of film grain lends the transfer a convincingly film-like image. Yang frames his characters almost exclusively in long and medium shots, and even in extreme long shots, there is an enormous amount of detail visible.

Audio is presented in a 2.0 DTS-HD Master Audio soundtrack, and the stereo mix offers nice vocal ambience throughout, with voices spread cleanly across both channels. The Mandarin (and some English) dialogue is clean and rich, and Kaili Peng’s lovely piano score fills out the mix nicely.

Special Features
Extras here are identical to those on the DVD release. Asian cinema expert Tony Rayns pairs with Yang on a commentary track, and it’s wonderful to have Yang’s thoughts on the film recorded for posterity (he died in 2007). Rayns is also featured in a breezy, but information-packed interview about the New Taiwan Cinema movement and Yang’s place within it. He considers Yi Yi to be one of the greatest accomplishments of that era.

The disc also includes the theatrical trailer (which shows just how impressive Criterion’s initial restoration was on the material) and a booklet with an essay by Kent Jones and notes by Yang from the original press kit.

The Bottom Line
Yi Yi is an essential piece of filmmaking and one of the greatest works of the 21st Century. Yang’s films are difficult to come by in this country, and the fact that his final film is easily available in such a fantastic presentation is a major blessing.

Wild Rovers

2011-03-09T01:38:00.000-08:00

Article first published as DVD Review: Wild Rovers on Blogcritics.

Director Blake Edwards is most known for ostensible classics like Breakfast at Tiffany’s and The Pink Panther series, but there’s a wide swath of banal comedies that make up a big chunk of the rest of his filmography. And if we’re really being honest, even his most recognized work doesn’t hold up extremely well, with the talents of Audrey Hepburn and Peter Sellers really propelling the aforementioned films more than anything else.

Many of his films are bathed in a sheen of safeness — technically sound, but without any real sense of invention or adventure. Still, as somewhat status quo filmmakers go, you could do a whole lot worse.

Warner Archive’s release of Wild Rovers highlights a different side of Edwards, and though some of his tendencies pop up throughout the picture, it’s a solid western that features some truly beautiful compositions. The film feels a little behind-the-times for its era, coming on the heels of game-changing westerns like The Wild Bunch and Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid, but even if Wild Rovers hews closer to a more traditional brand of western, it’s got enough of a spark to not feel too derivative.

William Holden and Ryan O’Neal star as Ross Bodine and Frank Post, cowboys on the ranch of Walter Buckman (Karl Malden). When they witness a fellow cowboy get killed in a freak accident, they begin to evaluate their lives, with the younger Post not wanting to get stuck in the profession and the older Bodine wanting to make the most out of the rest of his life.

They decide their best bet is to rob a bank and head to Mexico, and the manner in which they pull off the heist sets the pace for the rest of the film. They don’t enter the branch with guns drawn in broad daylight, but instead kidnap the bank manager at night and force him to give them the money long after the bank is closed for the day. After discovering the crime, Buckman’s two sons, John and Paul (Tom Skeritt, Joe Don Baker), head out in pursuit.

The lack of a rousing robbery and the quiet manner in which Bodine and Post leave town occasionally makes the film seem as if it lacks urgency, but in its best moments, Wild Rovers is a more thoughtful kind of western, exploring the friendship between two men at very different points in their lives. O’Neal, with his slightly urbane sensibility, seems a little miscast as a rough-riding cowboy, but Holden is magnificent in his role, exuding both gruffness and tenderness in his relation to the younger man.

Edwards’ widescreen Panavision images are often quite striking, capturing the great blue expanse of the sky, horses’ hooves beating a snow-covered ground and the glint of a nighttime fire with expressive beauty. Wild Rovers has some problems with tone, and Edwards unsuccessfully tries to inject a few jokey moments throughout, but when the film isn’t trying to be a comedy, it’s a rather impressive ode to the wide-open spaces of the West.

The Archive DVD is quite good, presenting the non-remastered image with only minor print damage and a bold, well-defined color palette. The 2.4:1 widescreen image is enhanced for widescreen TVs. The DVD also includes the film’s theatrical trailer.

A Film Unfinished

2011-03-08T23:09:00.000-08:00

Fake Jewish opulence, as seen in Nazi propaganda.

Article first published as DVD Review: A Film Unfinished on Blogcritics.

Holocaust films are numerous, and though reminding audiences of the atrocities therein is an important element to include — especially in a documentary — the best examples enlighten further. As scholar Michael Berenbaum says in an extra on this DVD, what does the film have to add to what we already know?

Yael Hersonski’s bracing A Film Unfinished enriches our understanding greatly — both in terms of facts about the Nazi-propaganda machine and a more abstract knowledge about the nature of images and what we see. It’s an appropriately uncomfortable film to sit through, but it’s more than “just another” Holocaust documentary.

The film traces the origins of a mysterious piece of Nazi propaganda — simply titled Das Ghetto — that was discovered unfinished shortly after the war ended. It wasn’t until recently that additional footage was discovered, shedding light on the methods and the intentions of the Nazis to portray the Warsaw ghetto as a fulfilling place for the Jewish people forced to live there.

The lies are audacious. Scenes are staged to show Jews enjoying fancy dinners and cultural delights, and the general sense is that the ghetto life is perfectly satisfying — luxurious even. Outtakes that were discovered later show certain scenes being filmed a number of times from different camera angles, and if the deception weren’t appalling enough already, footage of emaciated bodies being dumped into mass graves is certainly enough to shatter the illusion.

Hersonski often lets the images speak for themselves, forcing the viewer to evaluate every piece of visual information he or she takes in. The effect extends beyond the audience to a number of inhabitants of the ghetto — now in their 70s and 80s — being shown the footage in a screening room. The painful recognition on their faces makes it clear that these are more than just images, more than simply the ephemera of celluloid.

The footage itself is silent, but is often accompanied by a reading of Adam Czerniakow’s diary entries. The leader of the ghetto’s Jewish Council tells a markedly different story than what the images portray. We also hear from a German cameraman in interviews where his face is almost always obfuscated or pushed to the very edge of the frame. It adds a haunting quality to his recollections, and it’s clear he feels rather haunted himself.

A Film Unfinished pits truth against lies over and over, and its lessons have as much to do with the nature of documentary filmmaking as they do the Holocaust. The self-deception necessary to commit the atrocious crimes of the Nazis had to have been enormous, and the film confirms that duplicity was at the very heart of the operation.

The DVD includes an excellent slate of bonus features, including Billy Wilder’s 1945 short "Death Mills". The film was shot for the U.S. War Department with the intention of being shown in Germany to educate citizens on the horrors their leaders had committed. It’s an extraordinarily difficult film to watch, as shot after shot of waxy, skeletal corpses continually underline the scope of the massacre. It’s especially eye-opening in its final moments when a cadre of German civilians are taken to see the freshly liberated camps. They begin the journey as happy-go-lucky travelers, but you can practically see the blood drain from their faces as they come face-to-face with reality. It’s an excellent film, worth including in any serious consideration of Holocaust films.

Also on the disc are a 15-minute interview with film scholar Adrian Wood, who discusses the discovery of the footage, and the aforementioned three-minute interview with Berenbaum.

A PDF study guide is included on the disc for educators, and it can be accessed with a DVD-ROM drive.

Last Train Home

2011-03-05T23:14:00.000-08:00

Article first published as DVD Review: Last Train Home (2009) on Blogcritics.

Chinese-Canadian director Lixin Fan initially sets the scope for his 2009 documentary Last Train Home incredibly wide, shooting masses of impatient, crowded people all trying to get to the same place first. Almost immediately, the film tells us that 130 million Chinese workers travel home for New Year’s — the largest human migration in the world — and the images don’t contradict it. Train stations are stuffed to the breaking point with travelers and tickets are at a premium. One gets the sense that almost any one of these people would make for a compelling story.

But then, Fan goes intimate and takes us into the lives of Changhua Zhan and Suqin Chen, a married couple working in a clothing factory in the city of Guangzhou. We find the couple finishing up their work and going to the train station each day to purchase tickets, but to no avail; they’re always sold out before they get there. Eventually, with only a few days to spare, they are able to purchase a pair at enormously inflated prices. They can finally journey home to the countryside to see their children, 17-year-old Qin and younger brother Yang, who live with their grandmother.

Last Train Home serves as both an extremely personal portrait (one that grows increasingly uncomfortable as the film progresses) and an examination of a microcosm of a large portion of Chinese society, where socioeconomic factors have driven millions to move away from their families in hopes of giving them an eventual better life.

Changhua and Suqin are adamant about seeing their children succeed in school, and their love for their son and daughter is plainly apparent. But for the kids, especially Qin, it’s almost as if these people are not her parents. After all, she only sees them a few days out of the year. In an emotionally devastating scene, she cries at a shrine to her dead grandfather and expresses her hatred of her parents.

Then she makes a decision that’s perhaps the most upsetting choice she could make to her parents — she drops out of school and moves to the city to become a factory worker as well. The film makes it clear that Changhua and Suqin don’t find it to be a fulfilling life, but they do it for the good of their children. Qin’s utter rejection of that ideal leads to several difficult moments that Fan captures with an unblinking intensity.

Last Train Home shows the work of an expert filmmaker both in its production and post-production elements. Whether shooting masses of people or just a pair; the industrial emptiness of the factory or the natural beauty of the country, Fan captures images that give the viewer a distinct sense of place, and each location feels tangible. The film is also edited with a lyrical grace that builds to moments of tension without feeling contrived. It’s both naturalistic and narratively captivating.

The DVD features about 15 minutes of extra footage, divided between scenes from the Guangzhou train station and Qin’s travel from the country to Shenzhen City. The theatrical trailer is also included as well as a booklet featuring a short interview with Fan.

Last Tango in Paris

2011-03-05T14:11:00.000-08:00

Article first published as Blu-ray Review: Last Tango in Paris on Blogcritics.

The Film
Last Tango in Paris will likely forever carry the connotation of its X (now NC-17) rating, but the film is only fleetingly about sex. The weightiness of an existential crisis occupies much more running time than “Go get the butter” moments, and it’s hard to imagine the film garnering anything more than an R today (although with those wacky MPAA folks, no one can know for sure).

Bernardo Bertolucci’s fluid tale occupies a space somewhere between dreams and waking, and it flirts with both ends of the spectrum, particularly in the character of Jeanne (Maria Schneider), a young Parisian about to be married who begins an anonymous affair with the middle-aged American Paul (Marlon Brando). Much has been made about Brando’s character, and the rough-hewn performance certainly ranks among his best, but in many ways, Jeanne is the more interesting character because her motivations aren’t as clear.

Paul is dealing with the recent suicide of his wife and his depression and anger is sublimated within the confines of the bare loft where he meets Jeanne to have sex with her. He’s the one who insists on no names and no background information. One might be tempted to think that this is an obvious male sexual fantasy where the woman must necessarily be a two-dimensional character for the story to work.

But that’s not the case with Jeanne, who Schneider plays with a disposition that suggests her once wide-eyed enthusiasm has been significantly dampened. She’s starring in a documentary of sorts for filmmaker fiancé Tom (Jean-Pierre Leaud), who retains the wide-eyed nature she does not. Bertolucci’s smoothly roving camera suggests an ethereal quality in the sequences where Tom is filming her. The scenes in the apartment provide a striking contrast in their carnality and earthiness. Brando’s Paul dispenses with euphemisms and his forthright verbal advances are more graphic than anything glimpsed on screen.

The difference between these two men in Jeanne’s life couldn’t be clearer — one is a dreamer with his head in the clouds, while the other has abandoned notions of deeper meaning for pure physical pleasure. Paul’s existential torture is made moving by Brando’s performance (especially a scene where he rails against his dead wife for her failings), but it’s the crisis of a young woman unsure of her place in the world that really makes the film tick. The recently deceased Schneider is magnificent, layering a projection of confidence upon feelings of withering self-doubt.

Last Tango in Paris is a fundamentally sad film, with loneliness and isolation present in every frame. Bertolucci creates an emotional landscape where there is little escape to be found.

The Blu-ray Disc
Last Tango in Paris is presented in 1080p high definition with an aspect ratio of 1.85:1. The transfer certainly represents an improvement over the DVD, removing print damage and generally presenting a brighter, less murky image. The presentation is never astounding, likely due to print age, but fortunately, it does retain a film-like look untouched by obtrusive digital manipulation. Medium and long shots tend to look a little soft, but close-ups show impressive amounts of facial detail. Colors are naturalistic and stable, and overall, it’s a pleasing transfer.

Audio is presented in an uncompressed mono track that can sound a little harsh in moments of shouting or loud talking, but is overall just fine, with no distracting hisses or crackles.

Special Features
The lone extra on the disc is the theatrical trailer, presented in high-def. I guess we can just be glad the film made it to Blu-ray.

The Bottom Line
An intriguing film — although not for the reasons most probably expect — Last Tango in Paris is worth the upgrade.

A Time for Drunken Horses

2011-03-05T14:07:00.000-08:00

Article first published as DVD Review: A Time for Drunken Horses on Blogcritics.

Bahman Ghobadi works with the elements of neorealism in A Time for Drunken Horses, but he creates something perhaps more akin to a thriller with an engrossing race against time at the heart of the story. The film stars nonprofessional actors and the heartbreak of human existence is at the film’s core, but A Time for Drunken Horses rarely meanders, and Ghobadi uses the expressive faces of his unknown cast to communicate the urgency of the situation.

The film, which shared the Caméra d'Or award at the 2000 Cannes Film Festival, tells the story of an Iranian Kurdish family of brothers and sisters. Their parents have been stripped away from them, and 12-year-old Ayoub (Ayoub Ahmadi) engages in the only profession available — smuggling goods across the snowy hills on the Iraq-Iran border.

The quest for survival is harrowing enough, but Ayoub is also driven by the condition of his 15-year-old brother Madi (Madi Ekhtiar-dini), a perpetually ill boy with a developmental disorder. His medication is costly and he will die soon without an even more expensive operation.

Smuggling proves insufficient to raise enough money for the procedure and an attempt to secure surgery for Madi by marrying off one of the girls (Rojin Younessi) also proves unsuccessful, leading Ayoub to attempt a last-ditch effort to sell a mule in Iraq for the money.

Ghobadi’s camera captures the frigid, harsh beauty of the snowy landscapes that Ayoub must traverse — a journey so fraught that the mules are fed liquor beforehand to keep them warm enough to press through. The film’s climactic moments feature the downside of such a practice, and the chaos that results is captured in an expertly choreographed sequence.

A Time for Drunken Horses finds immediacy in the faces of Madi and Ayoub, and it’s impossible not to be moved by the plight of this family barely eking out an existence. Ghobadi’s debut feature shows perceptive direction of actors and the ability to discover small glints of beauty in the midst of mundane and difficult surroundings.

The Kino Lorber DVD release of the film marks the first time it’s been released on the format in this country, and it’s an excellent presentation, retaining a film-like image that features bold natural colors. The DVD does not include any bonus material.

Finishing School

2011-03-05T14:04:00.000-08:00

Article first published as DVD Review: Finishing School on Blogcritics.

A brisk little drama that probably would’ve been better off had it indulged its comic side more, Finishing School is nonetheless an enjoyable jaunt around the halls of an exclusive women’s boarding school. The film is now available on DVD from Warner Archive.

Frances Dee stars as Virginia Radcliff, the daughter of a well-to-do New York City couple (Billie Burke, John Halliday) and the new girl at Crockett Hall, a school seemingly designed more for upper crust preparation than educational enrichment. The school’s rules are set in stone — no smoking, no drinking, no lipstick — and are presided over by the stern Miss Van Alstyne (wonderful character actress Beulah Bondi).

The demure Virginia submits to the rules without hesitance, but finds the opposite approach taken by her roommate, Cecilia “Pony” Ferris (Ginger Rogers in delightful devil-may-care mode), who wastes no time breaking out the cigarettes and booze upon their meeting. Virginia is taken aback by the blatant rule-breaking, but falls in with Pony’s way of thinking eventually.

On an excursion to Manhattan, Pony fools Miss Van Alstyne by paying a woman to pose as her aunt, and she and Virginia escape to a hotel with some friends to live it up with some guys and some drinks. It’s there that Virginia meets Ralph McFarland (Bruce Cabot), a hotel waiter who’s also an intern at the nearby hospital, and he gives her a very convincing reason to rebel against the rigid conformity of Crockett.

The first half of Finishing School follows a path familiar to any fan of 1980s American comedy, with a group of plucky students undermining a comically overbearing educational institution. Rogers is great in the ringleader role of this operation, needling her fellow students to disregard the school’s structure with potent wit.

That element of the film largely falls away by the second half, in favor of a melodramatic lovers-kept-apart storyline where Van Alstyne secretly pushes Ralph away from Virginia, and the class issues of the school and Virginia’s mother rear their ugly head. The film almost opts for a totally bonkers finale where Virginia appears ready to mentally collapse from all the pressure to be a proper woman, but it reins any notion of that in fairly quickly.

Finishing School probably would be more memorable if Rogers didn’t disappear for nearly half the movie and the comedic elements continued (or the heightened craziness was embraced at the end), but Dee makes for a winning protagonist, and at only 73 minutes, the film is never in danger of exhausting its ideas.

This release from the Warner Archive features a decent image, with pretty strong clarity and stable black levels. There are a fair amount of print scratches, but nothing egregious. The sound can be pretty rough at times, with semi-frequent hissing noticeable, but dialogue is always understandable. As per usual, this burn-on-demand disc comes without any extras.

Senso

2011-02-27T21:17:00.000-08:00

Article first published as Blu-ray Review: Senso — The Criterion Collection on Blogcritics.

The Film
Luchino Visconti paints with bold strokes in Senso, an unashamedly adorned film where nearly every frame yanks the viewer in by the collar with its packed decadence. It’s visually arresting and visually demanding — it’s gorgeous to look at, but also requires a willingness to rove about the precise compositions and take in shots as if they were highly detailed paintings.

If the story seems a tad thin at times in the film, it’s important to remember that everything is serving the visuals in Senso, and taken on that level, the film has an intoxicating effect. This puts us in the same place as Countess Livia Serpieri (Alida Valli), a loyal Italian woman who nonetheless finds herself under the spell of Austrian Lt. Franz Mahler (Farley Granger).

The film takes place during the period of Risorgimento, in which Italy looked to free itself from foreign occupiers. The opening scene occurs in the impossibly lush opera house Teatro La Fenice, where the countess goes to Mahler to intercede on behalf of her cousin (Massimo Girotti), a fervent freedom fighter who insulted Mahler. But she is seduced quickly, with almost no apparent effort from Mahler, who Granger plays with a cool aloofness that develops into something darker as the film progresses.

Rather than simply falling in love with a man, the countess seems to be swept up in the heightened drama of the situation — a place where consequences be damned — and Visconti’s photography embraces her lust with the full force of the breathtaking three-strip Technicolor film stock.

The love affair between the two follows an expected tragic path, and as many have observed, the actual opera the film opens with leads to a film abiding by an unmistakably operatic sensibility. Valli plays the part with wide-eyed desperation, and it’s really not love we see in her eyes, but the look of a woman who’s been swept into something she can’t control. Granger allows his character to slowly reveal a sly malevolence toward the countess. His lack of genuineness is only heightened by the Italian dubbing over his spoken English lines, which here creates a distinct distancing effect.

Senso demands attention, and like the woebegone countess at the center of it, it threatens to pick one up in a whirlwind of feeling.

The Blu-ray Disc
Senso is presented in 1080p high definition with an aspect ratio of 1.33:1. The film’s three-strip Technicolor photography looks superb, and the detailed digital restoration that was applied to the warped film elements is another impressive rescue from the Film Foundation. There’s an incredible amount of detail to be found in every shot — most of which are long shots packed with visual information — and the image has excellent clarity and depth. The slightly unreal color tones are magnificent, especially noticeable in the whites and yellows of the Austrian uniforms and the red, white, and green confetti that fills the opera house in the opening sequence. There’s hardly an instance of damage to comment on here, and the bright and film-like appearance of the transfer is outstanding.

Audio is presented in an uncompressed monaural track that is clean and free from any hissing or popping. The dubbed dialogue tends to sound a little hollow and tinny at points, although that’s likely inherent in the technique. The operatic score has a little more weight to it, and comes from the fronts with full force.

Special Features
Included in this set is The Wanton Countess, the English-language version of the film that was released in U.S. markets very briefly after a long delay. This version had about 30 minutes excised, and is mostly a curiosity, but it’s a great extra, if only for the fact that we get to hear Granger and Valli’s lines spoken by them in English.

The best extra here is a 30-minute visual essay by Peter Cowie, who brings his typically insightful viewpoint to a thorough history and analysis of the film, moving from the original desire to cast Marlon Brando and Ingrid Bergman to the political problems the finished film faced, and discussing Visconti’s visual strategies.

Also excellent is a 30-minute-plus making-of, which features interviews from cinematographer Giuseppe Rotunno, assistant director Francesco Rosi, costume designer Piero Tosi and Visconti biographer Caterina D’Amico. Further exploring Visconti’s connection to opera is another featurette that pushes past 30 minutes. A nearly hour-long BBC documentary from 1966 looks at the three areas Visconti excelled in — theater, opera, and film.

The set also includes a booklet with an essay by author Mark Rappaport and an excerpt from Granger’s autobiography, in which he recounts his experiences working on the film.

The Bottom Line
The perfect complement to Criterion’s release of Visconti’s The Leopard, this release of Senso could hardly be improved upon.

next to normal at the 5th Avenue Theatre

2011-02-26T15:48:00.000-08:00

Article first published as Theater Review (Seattle): next to normal by Tom Kitt and Brian Yorkey at the 5th Avenue Theatre on Blogcritics.

Landing on the right side of the maudlin/moving scale can be difficult, especially in the realm of musical theater, where subtleties don’t always make the jump from stage to audience. But Tom Kitt and Brian Yorkey’s next to normal has its head and its heart in the right place, resulting in a rock musical with the right blend of pathos, humor and attitude. Yorkey’s book tells the fundamentally depressing tale with panache, respecting the seriousness of the situation while allowing room for moments of biting humor. Complementing it, Kitt’s score rollicks along with irrepressible energy, careening from one idea to the next, and echoing the inner torment of the bipolar character at the heart of the show.

Now on stage at the 5th Avenue Theatre through March 13, this touring production stars original Broadway cast member Alice Ripley, who won a Tony in 2009 for leading actress in a musical for her performance. next to normal also won Tonys for best original score and best orchestrations, and is in exclusive territory as one of the few musicals to win the Pulitzer Prize for drama.

Ripley stars as Diana Goodman, a woman in the throes of mental illness who is trying to retain some sense of normalcy alongside her family—husband Dan (Asa Somers), daughter Natalie (Emma Hunton), and son Gabe (Curt Hansen). She struggles with the mountain of medication she’s prescribed by doctors (Jeremy Kushnier plays several), but is urged to keep her bipolar disorder under control by Dan.

The delicate balance is upset by a shattering revelation early in the first act when Natalie brings home boyfriend Henry (Preston Sadleir), and his inquisitiveness unearths a painful family secret, sending Diana into a tailspin that she may or may not recover from.

Yorkey’s lyrics and Kitt’s music embrace classical musical theater elements and hard-charging rock riffs in equal measure. The score scarcely quits throughout the show, and the precisely tuned orchestrations make it an absolute pleasure to listen to.

The book effectively illustrates the tension between the characters that arises from a lifetime of unstable behavior from Diana, as well as the implications that accompany overmedication and the regimenting of life into a series of pill bottles.

The set design by Mark Wendland echoes themes of compartmentalization, with a three-story stack of steel boxes that can act as either domicile comfort or constricting prison. Michael Greif’s direction spreads the actors across the space, constantly shifting them from area to area with precision.

If there was one disappointment about Thursday’s opening night performance, it was provided by the enormously talented Ripley, who I only hope is dealing with sickness. Her performance was commanding and strong, but her voice clearly deteriorated throughout the night, moving from slightly off-pitch to a straining approximation of what she’s capable of achieving. It’s a testament to how good the show is (and how great her fellow castmembers are) that the significant vocal problems only registered as a minor speed bump along the way.

Hunton especially impresses as Natalie, allowing real vulnerability to appear around the edges of the character’s tough girl persona—while her set of effortlessly versatile pipes might make you think this musical theater thing is easy.

On paper, next to normal looks like yet another modern musical with a rock-oriented score that deals with ostensibly difficult subject matter. The issues it confronts aren’t approached in a terribly novel or insightful manner, but it’s supremely accomplished when it comes to tone, structure, and emotional weight. It’s never in danger of losing itself to sentimentality or snark, and that’s a razor-thin plank to walk in this day and age.

next to normal is on stage Tuesdays through Sundays through March 13. Tickets are available at 5th Avenue’s website.

Dances with Wolves

2011-02-25T20:51:00.000-08:00

Article first published as Blu-ray Review: Dances with Wolves on Blogcritics.

The Film
It’s easy to hate Dances with Wolves for its overabundant acclaim and undeserved stature within the American film landscape of the ’90s. It certainly doesn’t help matters that the film edged out Martin Scorsese’s modern masterpiece Goodfellas in nearly every category it was nominated in at the 1991 Oscars (picture, director, screenplay, editing), further confirming the Academy’s love for middlebrow, sentimental films.

But looking past all that and thinking about Dances with Wolves solely on its own terms, the film holds up as a competent, occasionally quite moving ode to friendship in the developing land of America. Any subtext the film possesses about racial conflict, frontier violence or the checkered history of America’s westward expansion (and there’s not much) is either hopelessly naïve or woefully underdeveloped, but the film does succeed on less cerebral merits.

Dances with Wolves exemplifies Hollywood oversimplification, but it’s the best kind of brainless entertainment — one with a genuine emotional core and a strong narrative pull. The film may not be thoughtful in its subject matter but it is in its visual strategy, and Dean Semler’s photography captures the essence of the American west in a number of serene, contemplative moments. Costner’s direction is somewhat marred by the added hour of the extended version that’s presented here (it’s the only option available, unfortunately), but it remains an admirable debut effort.

Costner also stars as John Dunbar, a Union lieutenant in the Civil War who unwittingly helps win a battle in a suicide attempt, and is given his choice of posts. He selects Ft. Sedgwick on the edge of the American frontier, but finds the outpost deserted when he arrives. He embraces the solitude, writing down his experiences in a journal, which we hear Costner read in a series of somnolent voiceovers that is one of the film’s most grating conventions.

But Dunbar is not alone in the territory, as he discovers in a series of encounters with a wolf and more importantly, with a nearby Sioux tribe. The tribe’s medicine man, Kicking Bird (Graham Greene), sees Dunbar’s presence as an opportunity to learn about the encroaching white man, and reaches out to him. The two cross the language barrier with the aid of Stands With A Fist (Mary McDonnell), a white woman raised by the Indian tribe.

Eventually, Dunbar becomes like a member of the tribe, earning the moniker Dances With Wolves and the love of Stands With A Fist. But the threats of the rival Pawnee tribe and the white soldiers (who are unfailingly portrayed as uncouth barbarians) ensure that the Sioux way of life will never be the same.

Dances with Wolves succeeds mostly in its interactions between Dunbar and Kicking Bird, who earn one another’s mutual respect and friendship despite their vast cultural differences. Less believable is the romance between Dunbar and Stands With A Fist, which almost feels like it comes to be because they’re the only two white people around.

Ultimately, Dances with Wolves pushes all the right emotional buttons during its sweeping Western tale. It’s overlong, especially in this extended incarnation, but even the more superfluous moments are competently executed. It’s the perfect vehicle for Costner’s talent (or one might say his lack of), but make no mistake — it’s no classic.

The Blu-ray Disc
Dances with Wolves is presented in 1080p high definition with an aspect ratio of 2.35:1. The upgrade offered here is a significant one, and the transfer here looks fresh, lacking any signs of age or damage. Considering how high of a profile title this is for MGM and Fox, that’s not too surprising, but welcome nonetheless. The brown and green tones of the frontier’s landscape have a warm, rich appearance, and the photography’s golden hues look impressive here. Blacks are generally deep and well-rendered although there is some minor softness apparent in low-light scenes. Overall, it’s an excellent high-def presentation, with a stable film grain structure and no noticeable effects of digital manipulation.

Audio is presented in an ultra-immersive 7.1 DTS-HD Master Audio track that constantly impresses with rumbling bass in scenes such as the buffalo hunt, crisp and clean dialogue in the fronts, superb clarity in John Barry’s lush, romantic score, and active use of the surrounds audible with a variety of natural sounds.

Special Features
This 20th Anniversary Edition is a two-disc set, which features mostly older extras. Disc one includes the extended cut of the film, and it’s frustrating the studio chose not to include the theatrical version via seamless branching. Also on disc one are two commentary tracks — one with Costner and producer Jim Wilson and another with Semler and editor Neil Travis. New to this edition are two in-feature extras — one that features information on military rank and another that features a quiz about what is fact and what is fiction.

Disc two features all recycled material, save for a 15-minute featurette that has historians talking about real life on the frontier. From previous editions, we get a seven-part retrospective documentary, a shorter making-of, a John Barry music video, a collection of behind-the-scenes outtakes, trailers and several photo galleries. Aside from the new featurette and the theatrical trailer, everything on here is in standard def, and some of it looks really rough.

The Bottom Line
Dances with Wolves has received a solid upgrade here, although fans of the theatrical version should probably wait for the likely eventual Blu-ray release of it.

America America

2011-02-23T20:40:00.000-08:00

Article first published as DVD Review: Elia Kazan's America America on Blogcritics.

Films don’t come much more personal than Elia Kazan’s America America, a nearly three-hour saga about the immigrant experience that’s unwavering in its intensity. Based on the life of Kazan’s uncle, the film opens with Kazan himself intoning the words: “I am a Greek by blood, a Turk by birth, and an American because my uncle made a journey.” Kazan’s script and Haskell Wexler’s photography give the compelling story a tangible sense of importance, as if every scene is a vital step on a momentous journey.

The film, which won an Oscar for its art direction and was nominated for best screenplay, best director and best picture, wasn’t available on DVD in this country for many years. A box set of 15 Kazan films that was released in November remedied the situation, and now that disc is finally available as a standalone release from Warner. America America stands alongside On the Waterfront and A Streetcar Named Desire as Kazan masterpieces.

The virtually unknown-at-the-time Stathis Giallelis stars as Stavros Topouzoglou, a Greek youth living under Turkish oppression in the 1890s. He dreams of making it to America and finding opportunity there, but the road ahead of him is a discouraging one.

Turkish violence helps convince Stavros’s father to send him to Constantinople with virtually all of the family’s treasures to establish a home for the family, who will meet him there later. His coming is supposed to inject a shot in the arm to the carpet business of his father’s cousin Issac (Harry Davis), but Stavros is taken advantage of on his journey there and arrives destitute.

It’s a condition that will plague him over many years, as he drifts between marginal employment and homelessness, with only his dream of making it to America to sustain him. He is urged repeatedly to find a wealthy, plain-looking girl to marry in order to improve his financial status, but even after acquiescing to that course of events, he stubbornly holds onto his original plan.

Giallelis is a commanding screen presence, with deep, penetrating eyes and a prominent brow that corresponds to his unrelenting tenacity. Wexler’s camera clearly loves his expressive face, and the simultaneous heartbreak and fortitude that he continuously displays gives the film enormous emotional pull in the midst of his many setbacks.

Kazan directs a film where obstacles seem to give way only to more obstacles, but creates hope rather than despair out of the circumstances. The film’s final moments — Stavros’s first glimpses of his new home — are truly inspiring cinema, and it’s about time the film received a higher profile among Kazan’s work and American film in general.

The Warner DVD presents in the film in a sharp, minimally damaged transfer that gives great texture to Wexler’s rich, high-contrast black-and-white images. The only special feature is an audio commentary by author and film historian Foster Hirsch.