Mindjack Film

Happy Anniversay Star Trek

2006-09-09T03:22:00.000-04:00

It's hard to believe that it's been 40 years (almost to the day) that Star Trek premiered. There's a wonderful interview with Leonard Nimoy and William Shatner posted on CNN that demonstrates the vim and vigor these 70-somethings still have.

Star Trek is an enormously important cultural phenomenon, whether we want to admit it or not, but it was based on the most essential things that make good TV. Like Six Feet Under, the original Star Trek (at least for the first two seasons) had characters you cared about, whose relationships were complex, and who worked together to solve complex problems. Yes, it was sold as "wagon train to the stars", but when my girlfriend and I watched "The Man Trap" again tonight on it's 40th anniversary, we were most impressed by the complexity of the world it presented. Something tells me that if Star Trek were premiering today, it would be on HBO.

Glenn Ford Signs Off

2006-08-31T00:43:00.000-04:00

Just read on the BBC News that Canadian-born actor Glenn Ford has been found dead at the age of 90.

I don't want this to become an obit column, but it does seem like we're losing an awful lot of great character actors lately. Ford was one of the few survivors of classic Hollywood: great professionals who arrived on a set prepared and cheerful, ready to go through the motions and give the director what they were hired to give. We're losing a whole generation without realizing it... but I guess they're all getting on in years.

Like many young people, I'll always remember Ford for his role as Pa Kent in Richard Donner's original Superman (his photo can be spied on Eva Marie Saint's mantle in this summer's Superman Returns). He only has two scenes, but he made an impression. Particularly the scene in which he imparts his last piece of advice to his son (soon to become Superman), Ford's simple honesty shines. It's the kind of scene that you don't understand at 10, that you fast-forward through at 15, that you forget at 20 and by 30 you're lingering over it.

"You are here for a reason," he says in his easy, wise way, "I don't know whose reason, or what the reason is. Maybe it's.... well, I'll tell you one thing, it isn't to score touchdowns." It's not Polonius, but it's close.

I know that Ford had a long and distinguished career, but you could do a lot worse than being remembered as a good father.

Farewell Bruno Kirby

2006-08-16T13:48:00.000-04:00

Today we lost one of the great character actors of the last 30 years, Bruno Kirby, after a long illness. Kirby's work in The Godfather, Part II, Good Morning Vietnam ("Oh, Lt. Steve!"), City Slickers, and This is Spinal Tap ("This is a fad!") will earn him a special place in the memories of many film fans. Without good character actors, the screen would be filled with stars and wannabe stars, which is why I have such affection for them. They bring colour and life to what could be a screen full of egos. We don't seem to appreciate them until they're gone.

Via don Dios, Bruno.

Danny Boyle's Sunshine

2006-08-13T13:14:00.000-04:00

Danny Boyle's new science fiction film Sunshine sure looks promising, although it appears to tread on some familiar territory. Hopefully it turns out to be more Solaris than Supernova.

Oh, God...

2006-08-03T15:06:00.000-04:00

I recently watched the trailer for the upcoming film cleverly titled The Nativity Story and was suddenly overcome with the now-familiar fear that North American culture is drifting towards becoming a medieval theocratic nation/state. Another story about Jesus, told complete with Middle-eastern music and majestic cinematography making claims to be "historically accurate". If things keep going this way, pretty soon that's all we'll be allowed to see. Yes, I'm aware that the Director, Catherine Hardwicke, has a track record that does not necessarily oblige this film to be the next Passion, but come on. Aren't we as a society capable of producing more than gussied-up Sunday school stories? Heck - even Superman Returns had pretty seriously Christian overtones, on a different scale entirely from Donner's original film.

God help us all.

50 Films to See Before You Die - the UK Version

2006-07-29T13:33:00.000-04:00

A UK newspaper has published one of those ubiquitous lists of the "50 greatest films" ever made, or at least 50 you must see in this lifetime. Movie lists are funny things for us writers about film. We're always reading them thinking "what's NOT on the list", or criticizing their choices. There are things to criticize on this list for sure (like putting Sexy Beast ABOVE 2001?!) but it's always interesting to see a top 50 list from a non-American (or Canadian) perspective. There certainly are some pretty bold choices, such as Heavenly Creatures, The King of Comedy (Scorsese's only entry!) and Brazil, which the AFI wouldn't touch with a ten foot pole.

Here's the list.

Scorsese's Departed Debuts Online

2006-07-28T21:36:00.000-04:00

The trailer for Martin Scorsese's latest film The Departed has hit the web, apparently exclusive to Yahoo. From the looks of it, the movie could well be Scorsese's most commerically appealing outing in years but, as the shot above shows, it's still got Scorsese's trademarks all over it.

My Favourite Dumb Summer Movies

2006-07-27T23:12:00.000-04:00

We may as well admit it: summer blockbusters are here to stay. Since at least Jaws (1975) and probably before, the big, action-packed special effects driven film has been a staple of the industry and why not? They do what Hollywood movies are designed to do: make money. Summer and Christmas, it seems, are the only times the American film industry thinks we go to the movies, and make no mistake, these films are meant to be seen in a theatre eating overpriced popcorn. That's the point, really. They're the cinematic equivalent of a burger and fries. Nothing wrong with that every now and then.

Maybe it's because it's too hot to think, maybe we're in a better mood, who knows, but I for one am a lot more forgiving of Hollywood conventions in the summer. That's where this list comes from. They're my favourite guilty pleasures, my comic books in the closet, my Iron Maiden albums in the attic. Maybe on this list you'll find one of your own.

1. The Rock (1996). Why is it that we give Sean Connery so much rope? The man was already older than God when he made this film, and yet there he is, hustling it around with Nic Cage pretending to be a 66-year-old action star. The plot is pure summer movie foolishness. A rogue Army General (Ed Harris, giving WAY more than necessary to the role) kidnaps tourists on Alcatraz and winds up holding the entire city of San Francisco for ransom using an experimental poison. The biochemist who knows how to diffuse the poison bomb happens to be Nic Cage (for the record, no biochemists drive beige Volvos), and Connery is a former prisoner who knows how to get a special strike force, including Cage, into the island. This is, of course, complete nonsense, concocted only to facilitate action sequences and witty exchanges. That's sort of the point of big summer movies, though there are two things that make The Rock stand out. Nic Cage is especially good at the witty exchanges, and some of his vulgarity is funny in its originality ("How in name of Zeus's butthole!?"). The other is Connery - as I said before, we're so forgiving of the old man that even when he limps through his action sequences, he comes off as being "all man". He's our generation's John Wayne, without so much of the far-right politics. The fact that he said it's okay to hit one's wife just adds to his outdated, priggish charm. I like The Rock because it refuses to apologize for what it is. In the environment of intellectual cowardice that permeates the corporate film world, that's something to really admire.

2. The Goonies (1985). Leave to Spielberg and Richard Donner to make geeky boys feel good about themselves. This film is a great example of how clever filmmakers know that children are far less fearful and need far less protection than those dull adults think. The plot is the very definition of needless complexity - a group of outcast misfit kids goes on a treasure hunt for a lost pirate's loot. They are pursued by a trio of cartoonish villains bent on getting the loot for themselves. Adventure ensues. In lesser hands, this film could have been palpable foolishness, but director Richard Donner (best known for the original Superman (1978) and the Lethal Weapon films) puts the emphasis on the relationship between the kids and honours their perspective of the world. That world, by the way, is best described as "respectfully cartoonish". The pirate lair and ship is a masterwork of set design, as is the loveable deformed henchman and many other touches. Like so many Terry Gilliam films, this one is smart enough for kids but exciting enough for adults. I loved the film as a kid (I was a Goonie in a very real way), but I still admire it as an adult.

3. Tombstone (1993). Oh, what a delightfully silly mess this film is. An amalgam of every western cliche ever concocted pretending to be a serious re-invention of the medium by Italian director George Cosmatos (of Rambo fame). Based about as loosely as a Mumu on the real-life story of Wyatt Earp (Kurt Russell, steely-eyed and somehow perfect), who left a life of law enforcement behind to settle in the town of Tombstone with his brothers Morgan (Bill Paxton) and Virgil (Sam Elliott, effortlessly embodying a 19th century man). Along the way, they meet up with Doc Holliday (Val Kilmer), a gambler and crook dying of TB and get mixed up with the local organized crime folks called simply "the Cowboys", led by Powers Boothe, with Michael Biehn effectively lending menace to the film as Johnny Ringo. This all eventually leads to a gunfight at the OK Corral (you may have heard of it) and finally an all-out white hats vs black hats war. The movie is having too good a time to stop for any length of time and seriously examine the verisimilitude of the wild west or dwell on complex character relationships. It's so enjoyable mainly for its consistent series of great moments, like when Earp stands down a local Pharoah dealer (played by Billy Bob Thornton, of all people) or just about every scene featuring Val Kilmer. Without Kilmer's wit and presence, the movie may have been a complete wash, but he gives the whole affair just enough sly, knowing humour to keep you smiling instead of laughing.

4. Crimson Tide (1995). There's a pattern emerging here. Action movies, for me at least, are okay as long as they're written with style, creativity and wit. Crimson Tide is the perfect example of that. On the surface, this is a routine war thriller with lots of Men (not the capital "M") in uniform yelling at each other on a submarine over matters of national defense. Ordinarily, that kind of macho, pro-military posturing would drive me away in about ten seconds, but this film has Gene Hackman chomping his cigar as the Captain of a nuclear submarine and Denzel Washington as his brainy, idealistic, slightly liberal first mate. You had better believe that there is a scene where these two yell at each other nose to nose, and that there is a scene when the sub narrowly escapes a torpedo attack and that the men are marched through the corridors in a manly hurry... in other words, you would think that this movie just writes itself. The difference, given all those cliches, is the intensity of the performances by Hackman and Washington and the unexpected intelligence of the dialogue, reportedly doctored by Quentin Tarantino. When, near the end of the film, the two confront each other with dialogue about racehorses, all is coded and hinted, a perfect example of "show, don't tell". It's an object lesson for aspiring screenwriters. Besides that, every once in a while I fall for the thriller genre, if it's done well enough. It's a thrill, and isn't that what summer movies are all about?

5. Space Cowboys (2000). I remember thinking that the tagline for this movie should have been "I'm too old for this sh*t", since you watch the entire film waiting for either James Garner, Tommy Lee Jones, Donald Sutherland or director (and star) Clint Eastwood to say it. The first surprising thing in the movie is that none of them actually do say that line. The second surprising thing is that it has a third act that makes you forget about that omission. Eastwood's crew, all playing versions of themselves to a greater or lesser extent, are a bunch of old astronauts from the 1950s who were denied the opportunity to go into space when NASA took over the program from the Air Force. The key bureaucratic weasel who gets in the way of Eastwood's efforts to do the right thing (just like in every Dirty Harry movie ever made) is played by James Cromwell in the only other character to make the transition from the fifties to the "present day". When a Russian satellite needs its guidance system fixed, Eastwood's character is the only one for the job (funny, that) and he insists on being sent into space with his three compatriots. While in the real world, NONE OF THIS WOULD EVER HAPPEN, a summer movie can cheerfully go along with this preposterous scenario because, well, it's fun. All the cliched scenes of training, all the old rivalries, the banter, the jokes about their ages, all of this is more or less in line with what you'd expect from this silly little movie. But once Eastwood and the boys get up into space, the film changes gears and turns into a midly intriguing post-cold-war action/thriller, kind of like Eastwood's earlier (and in its way, much more preposterous) film Firefox (1982). The reasons I fell for this movie are easy to identify. It has great humour (if entirely predictable), some great character actors, and frankly I'm kind of a space geek, so it was easy for me to get into the world of NASA and all its shenanigans. It's not The Right Stuff - it's more like Space Camp for grownups.

Prestige trailer

2006-07-15T18:05:00.000-04:00

In case you haven't seen it yet, the trailer for Christopher Nolan's new film The Prestige, one of my most anticipated movies of the year, is now online. The film stars Christian Bale, Hugh Jackman, Michael Caine, and none other than a moustached David Bowie, who's brilliantly cast as Nikola Tesla.

DVD Review: John Ford Film Collections

2006-07-07T14:21:00.000-04:00

reviewed by Donald Melanson

For the past couple of weeks the majority of my movie watching has consisted of the works of John Ford, most of which I was seeing for the first time. And thanks to Warner Bros.'s recent release of two Ford DVD box sets, I'm guessing that countless other people have done the same, or will be soon.

The larger of the two sets is The John Wayne/John Ford Film Collection, which collects eight of the films Ford made with Wayne, including what are undoubtedly the pair's two most well-known and highly-regarded films, Stagecoach (1939) and The Searchers (1956). Also in the set is the The Long Voyage Home (1940), They Were Expendable (1945), 3 Godfathers (1948), The Wings of the Eagles (1957), and two parts of Ford's cavalry trilogy, Fort Apache (1948) and She Wore a Yellow Ribbon (1949). The third film in the trilogy, Rio Grande, isn't owned by Warner Bros. but is available on DVD from Republic Pictures.

The second set, simply called The John Ford Film Collection, packages together three films from early in Ford's career: The Lost Patrol (1934), The Informer (1935), and Mary of Scotland (1936), with two from late in his career: Sergeant Rutledge (1960) and Cheyenne Autumn (1964).

Taken together, the two sets provide a fascinating, if not comprehensive, overview of Ford's career, and should be cause for a fresh reappraisal of his work -- some of his lesser known films in particular.

DVD Review: Valley and Beyond the Valley of the Dolls

2006-06-25T13:32:00.000-04:00

reviewed by Matt Hinrichs

Valley of the Dolls and its non-sequel, Beyond the Valley of the Dolls, serve as proof that good cheese ages well. One delivered its drama straight-faced and big-haired; the other was a jiggly in-joke blown up to gargantuan proportions. For their deluxe DVD editions, Fox Home Video has done an excellent job of packaging a pair of films that have had little more than a mid-level (but very enthusiastic) cult audience. Both remain unintentionally hilarious camp classics, for sure, but these DVDs also manage to place them within the context of the very different times they were made.

Take 1967's Valley of the Dolls, for instance. Jacqueline Susann's blockbuster dirty book lent itself well towards a deluxe screen adaption, a hoary old "three girls meet different fates" concept brought into the age of pills, booze and permissive sexual mores. What went wrong, then? Perhaps somebody should have told the screenwriters that passages which look good on paper don't necessarily translate well to the screen. Mark Robson's technically proficient but cold direction compounds the problem, resulting in a film that lacks emotional resonance. Issues of drug abuse, mental illness and abortion are dealt with on the same superficial terms as the chi chi fashions, sets and shellacked hairstyles. The resulting mishmash might appear dreadful, but really it's fascinatingly watchable. It might be Valley's biggest legacy that it stands as one of the few films that shows taboo situations while simultaneously being embalmed in a studio-shined veneer of its own outlandish datedness.

Classics Schmassics

2006-06-24T20:34:00.000-04:00

The A.V. Club staff discusses Classic Movies Its Okay To Hate. Sadly, I've never seen The Shawshank Redemption, but at least this article makes me feel better about skipping it.

DVD Review: The Quiet Earth

2006-06-07T21:06:00.000-04:00

The Quiet Earth is one of those movies I wasn't sure if I'd ever see on DVD. While it has somewhat of a cult following (especially in its home country of New Zealand), it has been relatively hard to find on VHS and Laserdisc and has gone largely unseen by anyone other than the most devoted science fiction film geeks. Thankfully, Anchor Bay got their hands on it and their new DVD release has exceeded my expectations Hopefully, it will cause people to rediscover the movie.

The film is one of the best last-man-on-earth movies (at least for the film's first act, more on that later) and stars Bruno Lawrence as the protaganist who awakes one day to find himself all alone, the result of a catastrophic science experiment that he had a part in (a not too subtle metaphor for nuclear armageddon).

The movie's first act is its strongest. In it, Lawrence begins to approach his dire situation reasonably, trying to determine what happened and broadcasting radio messages hoping to find other surviors. But he soon begins to descend into madness, culminating in perhaps the film's defining sequence, when he delivers a dictatorial speech to a group of cardboard cut-outs before storming in a chuch with a shot gun, promising to "shoot the kid" if God doesn't show himself.

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Marilyn Monroe at 80

2006-06-02T20:17:00.000-04:00

On the 80th anniversary of Marilyn Monroe's birth, the San Francisco Chronicle offers some speculations on what her life may have been like had she not died young. Pretty funny. Actually, this reminded me of when Premiere magazine made a brilliant fake filmography of what Marilyn's career might have been had she continued working through the '80s. It followed a typical ex-sexpot's course, with Marilyn challenging herself with Joanne Woodward's role in The Stripper and, later on, slumming through Elizabeth Taylor's part in the Agatha Christie all-starrer The Mirror Crack'd.

Anamorphic Star Wars and Other Musings

2006-05-26T03:46:00.000-04:00

So, the word is officially out, and the nerd community is in full swing, that the "original trilogy" of Star Wars films will be offered in a non-anamorphic DVD release in the fall. For those to whom this is a nonsensical complaint, think of the difference between blowing up a low resolution jpeg photo to fill your whole monitor screen and having a full-resolution image for your desktop, and you have some idea of how much this irritates Star Wars (and DVD) fanatics. Once again, we will be treated to a less-than-optimal version of our favourite versions of our favourite movies. It seems like one more example of Uncle George sticking it to the buying public. What do we make of it?

There's a thin line here, I think, between an artist's vision and popular demand. Clearly, George Lucas would not be where is today without the phenomenal success of Star Wars. At the same time, he is a film artist with a taste that should be respected by the legions of fanboys who demand that their every request be heeded. The folks over at the Digital Bits have it right when they mention that Anamorphic Widescreen DVD is now the industry standard, not some high-end option, and any film as important (and as visually groundbreaking) as Star Wars should be offered in it. That would be fine, had not Lucas officialy sworn off the "original edits" of the trilogy that mad him rich and famous in favour of his controversial 1997 "Special Editions" of what are now called "Episodes IV, V and VI" of his six-film Star Wars series. He's consistently, over the past ten years, described his original trilogy as flawed and worked very energetically to replace them with his new vision.

Here's where I stand on the issue: Lucas is the filmmaker. He can do what he wants with his own movies. If he wants to issue the original drafts of his trilogy in a compromised, technologically inferior edition, so be it. I won't buy it (my laserdiscs will do nicely, thanks), but that's his right. Anyhow, at a certain point, people have to get over Star Wars. Roger Ebert said in his review of Star Trek: Nemesis that he was "all done" with Star Trek. My friend and filmmaker Bulent Hasan said the same thing about Star Wars once he saw Episode III. It's time to move on.

One thing that's very "mindjack-ian" (to egotistically coin a phrase) about the whole controversy is how the internet has allowed public discourse to rise to such levels, and how things that would have, a few years earlier, been thought of as technical trivialities, have become symbolic of a proletariat struggle against the corporate elite. Or, to use other, more potent terms, the struggle of a group of Rebels against an evil Galactic Empire...

Nerds of the World Unite

2006-05-04T11:44:00.000-04:00

News from the movie nerd department today in the form of a DVD release of the original, unaltered versions of the original Star Wars trilogy. After hundreds of thousands of fans wrote the Lucasfilm on the net, demanding such esoteric things as "Han shoots first", it's finally happening. The official link is here.

Before I go off to polish my pocket protector, I must reflect on how this demonstrates the power of the net to move certain companies to change. Things have come a long way from 1997, when I desperately searched through text-ridden websites looking for a quicktime movie of the "new" Star Wars footage. Now we just need to start our Blade Runner DVD petition.

New Movie & DVD Reviews from Jeffrey M. Anderson and Combustible Celluloid

2006-04-07T12:02:00.000-04:00

Are we entering some kind of Renaissance here? With Brick, we have the fifth really good movie of 2006, or sixth if you want to count Terrence Malick's The New World. (I'm also counting Hou Hsiao-hsien's great Three Times, which is screening at festivals and slated for a release in the fall.) It's all relative, I guess, if you juxtapose that with the 90 movies I've actually seen so far and the 15 movies that have been withheld from the press (including this week's Phat Girlz and The Benchwarmers.)

I did not get a chance to see Take the Lead or Friends with Money, either because of scheduling conflicts or because of the fact that life's too short.

Otherwise, we have Caveh Zahedi's I Am a Sex Addict, opening exclusively in San Francisco, the disappointing new film by the brothers Dardenne, L'Enfant, which won last year's Palme d'Or, and finally the latest in a 12 year-series of Tarantino knockoffs, Lucky Number Slevin, which only makes Brick look that much better.

Additionally, I had a very good sit-down with Brick star Joseph Gordon-Levitt.

In new DVDs, the high point is probably Anchor Bay's re-release of the British gangster classic The Long Good Friday, even though the Criterion version is still in print. Otherwise we have: Action: The Complete Series, from Sony; Jiri Menzel's Capricious Summer, from Facets; Marc Forster's crap thriller Stay (what's up with Ewan McGregor's pants?); and the director's cut of Peter Bogdanovich's The Thing Called Love, from Paramount.

Gus Van Sant Talks to ReadyMade

2006-04-05T20:45:00.000-04:00

ReadyMade magazine interviews Gus Van Sant. I was hoping he'd share a favorite homemade craft or give some money saving advice, but it's a good talk nonetheless.

Combustible Celluloid's New Movie & DVD Reviews, Friday, March 31, 2006

2006-03-31T12:33:00.000-05:00

A second four-star movie turns up this week, Claire Denis' baffling, intoxicating The Intruder, playing on only a couple of screens nationwide and doing unbelievably awful box office. Could it be that Ms. Denis -- surely one of the world's most fascinating filmmakers -- has only a couple of hundred fans here in the States?

If you're not lucky enough to live near a theater showing The Intruder, there's at least an import DVD available. Meanwhile, the new Beastie Boys concert film Awesome; I Fuckin' Shot That! goes a long way toward easing the pain. And Slither and Basic Instinct 2 provide some riotous B-movie pleasures. The only real dud this week is Steve Buscemi's disappointing Lonesome Jim.

In new DVDs, The Busby Berkeley Collection (Warner Home Video) is a keeper. I also caught up with some older titles that had been cluttering up my shelves for months: The Best of the Electric Company (Shout! Factory), Death Race 2000 (Buena Vista), Europe: Live from the Dark (Music Video Distributors), Fear Chamber (Elite) and a Region 2, PAL import DVD of John Cassavetes' amazing Love Streams, courtesy Xploitedcinema.com.

In addition, the new King Kong and Memoirs of a Geisha DVDs are available this week. One is recommended and one is not...

49th San Francisco International Film Festival Lineup

2006-03-29T13:06:00.000-05:00

If you're planning on coming to San Francisco anytime soon, here's a good excuse: the 49th San Francisco International Film Festival announced its lineup yesterday, and it's a doozy. Opening the festival is Perhaps Love, the latest by Hong Kong romantic filmmaker Peter Ho-Sun Chan (Comrades, Almost a Love Story, The Love Letter). And the closer will be Robert Altman's A Prairie Home Companion. I've seen it and all I can say is that parts of it are as delightful as anything Altman has done, and parts of it resemble his 1994 disaster Pret-a-Porter.

In-between, the festival will unfurl works from such world masters as Terry Zwigoff's Art School Confidential, Seijun Suzuki's Princess Raccoon, Phillippe Garrel's Regular Lovers, Abbas Kiarostami's new short film Roads of Kiarostami, Alexander Sokurov's The Sun, Hou Hsiao-hsien's Three Times (one of the year's best films), Tsai Ming-liang's The Wayward Cloud and a series of short films by Guy Maddin.

The festival pays tribute to director Werner Herzog with the new The Wild Blue Yonder, actor Ed Harris with A Flash of Green (1984) and screenwriter Jean-Claude Carriere with Belle de Jour (1967). And the lovely Tilda Swinton provides the annual State of Cinema address.

Other interesting films include the documentary Al Franken: God Spoke, several short films programs including works by Jay Rosenblatt, Vincent D'Onofrio, Stephen King, Sam Green and Don McKellar, Masahiro Kobayashi's Bashing, the new horror film The Descent, Factotum with Matt Dillon as Charles Bukowski, Carlos Saura's Iberia, Raul Ruiz's The Lost Domain, Iron Island from Iran and Alain Tasma's drama October 17, 1961.

Finally, the festival will be screening a few great classics: Rudolph Valentino in The Eagle (1925), with a live score by the Alloy Orchestra, and a restored print of Hal Roach's comedy Turnabout (1940). In addition the Alloy Orchestra will provide music for several shorts, including Buster Keaton's great One Week (1920).

That's my checklist, but there are several dozen others. The festival runs April 20 through May 4 at various San Francisco venues.

Fake Italian and French Genre Classics

2006-03-25T15:59:00.000-05:00

Moriarty of Ain't it Cool News and Moriarty's DVD Shelf is running a contest where he asked his readers to make up their own Italian crime and French horror films, complete with a title and synopsis. Some of the entries so far are great.

Seven Dolls for the Piper
A gang of seven female mobsters, in Italy of the 1960s, has been staging sucessful robberies of Italian banks for the last four years, leaving no evidence to the authorities. A rival crime syndicate, with covert assistance from the Italian government, has hired a hit man to hunt down and kill the women within twenty four hours before the women can successfully stage their greatest crime. The head mistress of the gang suspects they have an informant who has provided information to the hit man, leading to a cat and mouse game. A Mario Bava styled giallo thriller. Yes folks, the title is a nod to Bava's "Five Dolls for an August Moon".

I'd see that.

Criterion President Interviewed

2006-03-24T13:12:00.000-05:00

Reel.com has an interview with Peter Becker, president of the Criterion Collection (a.k.a. the greatest job in the world).

Reel: How do you select films that are part of the three-hundred-plus Criterion DVD library?

PB: In some way, the film has to be an exemplary film of its kind. There are some filmmakers that every film they do is exemplary. The same thing is true in literature. Almost everything Melville wrote is important. There are geniuses in film. Kurosawa is one of them. Ozu and Renoir are certainly others. There are great classic auteurs, and then there are films that open up a window into filmmaking or film culture. For example, The Battle of Algiers, which I think is a really extraordinary film that is more timely in the last three or four years than any film I can think of. It's the only film I can think of where people went out and re-lived their history in front of cameras.
The short answer is, the first thing we are thinking of is our viewers, and we are trying to give them a legendary diet. When they pick up a movie from a Criterion shelf, it will be worthy of their attention. They might not love everything we put out, but they won't feel that they wasted their time.

We'll just forgot about Armageddon for now.

New Movie & DVD Reviews from Combustible Celluloid: Inside Man, etc.

2006-03-24T11:22:00.000-05:00

Spike Lee's Inside Man is the best movie I've seen all year, not counting Terrence Malick's The New World, which was offiicially a 2005 release. Not only is Inside Man a crackerjack thriller, but one that immerses itself in a new kind of post-9/11 community, both frightening and reassuring. It's a hugely ambiguous film that trusts in the audience implicitly. It says everything that Oscar-winner Crash wanted to say, but with more grace and less preaching.

Otherwise, we have one other very good movie, a brilliant, vicious satire, Thank You for Smoking. Director Wim Wenders returns with a modest, yet sometimes lovely, failure, Don't Come Knocking. Asia Argento's powerful, punk-rock film The Heart Is Deceitful Above All Things is not for every taste, and Sorry, Haters isn't really for any taste.

I also had a very interesting chat with Wim Wenders.

In new DVDs, the wonderful Capote (Sony Pictures Classics) streets this week; it's one of only two Oscar winners that I really liked. The Criterion Collection blesses us with a new Kind Hearts and Coronets, one of the greatest comedies ever made. And I've been enjoying the heck out of The Pink Panther Classic Cartoon Collection (MGM/UA). Just in time for Easter, Paramount has spruced up The Ten Commandments: 50th Anniversary Edition, now with a third bonus disc containing DeMille's 1923 silent version. The Squid and the Whale (Sony) was one of 2005's smartest, non-messagey films, and Keane was one of its most underrated.

If anyone cares, Dear Wendy, Derailed, Get Rich or Die Tryin' and Paradise Now were also released.

Tron Then and Now

2006-03-21T20:15:00.000-05:00

A compehensive history of the pioneering computer animated film Tron, via The Disney Blog. The article goes into the film's deeply involved production, its disappointing box office in 1982, and its subsequent rebirth as a cult favorite of computer geeks everywhere. I can remember seeing this when it was originally released - and it blew my little 13-year-old mind.

Lucas Talks to Time

2006-03-21T09:19:00.000-05:00

There's an interesting interview with George Lucas over at Time Magazine that you may be interested in checking out. He talks about such things as the future of digital cinema (he's sure there is one), the future of movie downloading (he thinks it's going to make DVD obsolete) and the new Indiana Jones film.