mondomark

Bye-Bye Blogger - Enough is Enough.

2012-04-22T16:52:00.000-04:00

Folks, this is the final post on this version of KQEK.com's Editor's Blog at Blogger because I've had it with the serious issues programmers create when they do an upgrade at Blogger. This time their bungling's created so much extra work for me, there's simply no point in posting things via Blogger anymore.

Here's the process I go through to place hyperlinked words on this page:

- text written in MS Word (or Notepad) is placed into Dreamweaver. Links are adjusted, and the *code* is pasted into a Word Press post

- further edits are finished, the intro image is added, and that version of the Editor's Blog goes live. Within Word Press, the only tweaks I have to do because of code issues is created double-line spaces with white-coloured dots, and delete within the code an unnecessary double-space Word Press adds between by byline.

- once the HTML code is pasted into a new template in Blogger, I have to backspace the byline to the last sentence in the blog, and add three fresh lines to create a similar-formatted gap as it appears in the Word Press version. Blogger will also not recognize any italicized text done in Word or Dreamweaver.

- the top image, as part of the imported code, is a mess, so I have to delete it, upload it to the Blogger archive, and then place it in the blog. Blogger allows me to centre at the top of the page, but it doesn't permit text-wrapping unless you manually add it into the code. If I want to use a prior image within the Blogger image archive - like a CD image, related to soundtrack reviews - I have to wait until ALL IMAGES are displayed before I can pick the one I need. They appear in no particular order, so it's a waiting game until I find what I need, and can place it in the blog. This is called "inefficient" and it's baffling why this system of archiving images was never fixed.

- I can create teaser text by adding a page break so the first few lines in a blog appear under the image when the main blog page opens. Problem: once you place that "jump break" icon, you have to flip once to HTML view and back to Compose view because Blogger will add an extra blank line that appears in the full body of the new blog - which I don't want.

They may have fixed some of these grating bugs (all CMS setups have their share), but as it stands, if I paste a hyperlinked blog from MS Word, there are no links; if I past a hyperlinked blog from Dreamweaver, there are no lines between paragraphs; and if I paste a blog in HTML code into Blogger in HTML view, it appears as one solid stream of text.

I have neither the time to deal with fixarounds, nor the patience anymore. Congrats, guys, you've lost me - unless you read this and fix the fuck-ups that currently reside in 'the new look.' The visual continuity with Google + makes sense, but your new coding is a disaster.

Why didn't you test it before forcing this change? Do you know how much time I spent finding a new blogger mobile-friendly template and making specific modifications so it would display properly?

Lastly, the entire publishing layout for bloggers is too lean & clean. Take the page where I can write a post: I see an orange Publish tab and several tabs for previewing, etc. the blog... but how can I see the damned thing? Where the View Post or View Blog tab? Why do I have to navigate through 2 unrelated pages? Who hired you guys? Or perhaps I should ask Who's your supervisor who signed off on the interface modifications? because I don't think he uses Blogger to blog.

Those who've enjoyed the Editor's Blog can still read further blather at www.mondomark.com, where it resides in a Word Press format that's mobile & main friendly. The Blogger version will remain for a while, because it contains a batch of older posts that I wasn't able to import into Word Press.

Because of a bug.

Sigh,

Mark R. Hasan, Editor
KQEK.com ( Main Site / Mobile Site )

Bouchet-Tolo Double-Bill = Quadruple-Trouble!

2012-04-19T02:06:00.000-04:00

Mademoiselles Bouchet et Tolo - très fierent de leurs cheveux magnifiques.

Yeah, the header's a cheap shot, but given the focus is two B-movies made between 1968-1969 - Stoney / Surabaya Conspiracy [M] (1969), and The Killer Likes Candy / Un killer per sua maestà [M] (1968) - which co-starred (respectively) Euro babes Barbara Bouchet and Marilu Tolo, why not highlight each film's most important actress?

The double-bills are part of a series released by Code Red, who've chosen to self-distribute their titles - a move that's created minor panic among the label's fans who fear the roster of rare horror, thriller, action, and Canuxploitation fare is wholly out of print, leaving just avaricious speculators, eBay flippers, and Amazon sellers.

Back February, the company's official blog site alerted fans of their decision to handle current and future product themselves, but as some have easily found out, in place of collector prices the alternative is to just contact the label directly (they also have a Twitter account) and ask what's still in stock, plus specific titles that are on sale.

A friend's ordered a batch, so for Canadians wary of collector prices, the answers are simple: yes, they ship to Canada, and yes there may be stock of titles listed as OOP on the company website. Just ask, is all that's required.

Anyhow, getting back to the double-bill, I've uploaded reviews, and will have a few more up in the coming weeks. Both Code Red and related company Scorpion Films have rescued a lot of Canadian exploitation films - horror, thrillers, action flicks - from oblivion, and Code Red certainly gets a hearty hat's off for releasing a special edition of Rituals (1977).

Thanks to their loaded DVD, I was able to write an essay on the forest slasher genre (which will appear in the University of Toronto textbook "Terror of the Soul: Essays on the Canadian Horror Film" in 2013), and in a classic Canadian conundrum, our native films are being released by American labels because a) no one cares to follow through as extensively up here; and b) major Canuckle studios see no interest in licensing rights to indie labels, preferring to let their back catalogue idle.

I'll have a longer Editor's Blog tomorrow, with some soundtrack reviews, hopefully a composer interview up & running, that promised Titanic (1943) review, and some thoughts on the two festivals I'll be covering at KQEK.com - HotDocs, and the Toronto Jewish Film Festival [TJFF] May 3-13 , plus some special screenings at the TIFF Bell Lightbox.

I'm also helping out with TJFF's sidebar series - "The Sound of Movies: Masters of the Film Score" - and will be introducing two free screenings, and will conduct a post-screening Q&A which ought to be fun and thoroughly nerve-racking. Luckily, I like schnapps.

Both HotDocs and TJFF's schedules are up, and I'll soon detail some of the film's I'm covering here, and what kind of unique extras and related reviews will run on the site and Editor's Blog.

I love this spring!

Mark R. Hasan, Editor
KQEK.com ( Main Site / Mobile Site )

The Titanic Legacy, Part I

2012-04-13T17:04:00.001-04:00

Well, it’s Friday the 13th (boo!) and tomorrow marks the 100th anniversary the Titanic struck an iceberg and went down, marking the beginning of an eternal fascination with the tragedy, the people, the ship, and human hubris.

I’ve no intention of revisiting James Cameron’s film anytime soon – it, er, hasn’t aged that well since I last watched the monster hit – and there’s frankly other more fascinating documentaries and dramatizations out there to see.

Just uploaded are two related soundtrack reviews – Sony Classical’s Titanic: Collector’s Anniversary Edition [M] (2012), spanning 4 CDs, and BSX Records’ Titanic: An Epic Musical Voyage [M] (2012) tribute CD, plus a pair of teleplays that recently aired on the CBC.

The most intriguing is the docu-drama Saving the Titanic [M] (2011), a German (but English language) docu-drama about the boiler stokers who stayed to the end to keep power going and save lives; and Titanic: The Canadian Story [M] (2012), a CBC doc focusing on several Canadian passengers, via archival materials and interviews from the descendants of some survivors.

There’s actually plenty of alternatives to Cameron’s film (and being slammed with Celine Dion’s voice), much of it on TV, so courtesy of Zap2it, here are some new & old shows worth catching:

- Building the Titanic (2005), History Channel

- National Geographic's Save the Titanic with Bob Ballard and Titanic: The Final World with James Cameron, National Geographic Channel

- Real Titanic, The (2010), History Channel

- Saving the Titanic (2011), CBC Newsworld

- Titanic (2012 mini-series), History Channel & PBS

- Titanic Belfast: Birthplace of a Legend, PBS
- Titanic at 100: Mystery Solved, History Channel

- Titanic’s Nuclear Secret (2008), TVOntario

- Titanic: The Aftermath, Discovery Channel

- Titanic: The Canadian Story, CBC Newsworld

- Waking the Titanic, CBC Newsworld

Lastly, there’s also Nazi Titanic, a new doc on the making of the 1943 German version, made by the Nazis, and an historical abomination that’s fascinating and exceptionally ridiculous. A DVD was released in Germany and the U.S. (here via KINO), and I should have a film review up by Saturday, but those curious to catch it on the big screen can see it at The Projection Booth, Saturday at 7pm!

It’s really a fascinating warping of historical facts, painting the British & Americans as greedy bastards willing to sacrifice lives for cash. Plus: had they just listened to the impertinent German officer on board (!), 2000+ lives would’ve safely arrived in New York City. It’s history filtered through bizarrolandt. Catch it, and then watch the documentary on the History Channel Sunday / Monday.

Mark R. Hasan, Editor
KQEK.com ( Main Site / Mobile Site )

The Erotic Shades of Zalman King, Part I

2012-04-11T16:23:00.000-04:00

I’ll always contend that somewhere during the run of Red Shoe Diaries, the 1992-1996 erotic series conceived by Zalman King for Showtime, King realized he was a brand name, and spent much of his remaining years exploiting that brand in lesser creative venues.

Prior to his passing at the age of 69 in February, King seemed to be prepping an extension of his brand via a new website, zalmanking.com, which espoused “It’s not just a website. It’s a lifestyle.”

It’s a tagline that’s catchy, cheeky, but also saddening because it represents the final shift for a filmmaker who had creatively downsized from theatrical feature films to an interactive internet venture that’s plainly undistinguished. Whatever the site may have ultimately matured into, at least from the wan promo tease, it’s as indistinct as generic softcore fodder, with cheap reality-based, interactive extras ranging from ‘never before behind-the-scenes’ materials to “Amateur video submissions from the girls next door hoping to be discovered by Zalman.”

The promised site is neither interesting nor particularly creative, and it makes you wonder how the former TV actor, who successfully journeyed into writing and directing, lost his mojo as a brand supervisor.

There are some filmmakers who have a mere handful of stories to tell, but I doubt that fully applied to King, because even if one can see a recurrent story in his work – often it’s a woman (usually an ingénue type) who becomes wiser, stronger, and emancipated after an intense sexual journey – there were character nuances which distinguished his films from the banal fodder designed to fill cable TV slots during the eighties and nineties.

King’s writing – solo, or as collaborative works – was often unintentionally amusing; it’s not hard to pinpoint specific scenes or dialogue in his breakthrough script, 9 ½ Weeks [M] (just released on Blu-ray by Warner Home Video) because there’s a pretense for erotic poetry and deep thought. It’s a style that remained constant in most of his work, including In God’s Hands (1998), the surfing film he co-wrote with the film’s co-star, Matt George. The movie is about surfers, but it’s also filled with a pretense of Deep Drama that in the finished film comes off as silly and tin-eared, but what makes the film kind of work is King’s innately sleek visual style, which he arguably gleaned from Weeks director Adrian Lyne but refined into his own commercial style: rich, saturated pastel colours, ever-moving camera, kinetic editing, and the use of music to either propel montages or slow down seductive sequences so characters had a detailed arc towards their points of emotional or sexual high.

Debauchery may have gotten similarly nuanced treatment, but sexual violence in King’s oeuvre happened fast: his handling of Blue’s indoctrination into a chicken house versus her near-assault by a smooth talking client in Wild Orchid 2: Two Shades of Blue is respectively epic and compact because King’s sensibilities weren’t into violence, but the path of a character’s self-fulfillment, which sounds like an utterly pretentious claim except for the fact there are plenty of examples within King’s film and TV work. Even in Weeks, the film’s strongest scenes deal with the seductive, power-struggling dance between John and Elizabeth; that film has more psychological depth than King’s own efforts - Wild Orchid 2 excepted – but it’s a signal of where King’s keen interest lay.

I hypothesize that during Red Shoe Diaries he had pair of epiphanies: he realized his fixation on Seduction was unique, and could be re-exploited time and again in familiar variations (hence the show’s 4-year run, cranking out 50+ episodes); and he realized the show signaled an opportunity to brand himself.

‘Zalman King’ became synonymous with sophisticated erotica – at least that’s what the brand espoused and pretended to sell in spite of some truly nutty film scenarios. During the Red Shoe Diaries period, King produced several TV movies which served as vehicles for some of the production members of his TV series, and they propagated the formula, or at least ensured it remained in line with the commercial qualities inherent to the King brand.

1998 was the year where King peaked, but the brand had creatively run its course due to the dramatic banality of the TV movie stories, the sameness of the look and sound of each teleplay, and networks that didn’t seem to care anymore about his work.

This is pure theory, but one need only look at Steven Spielberg for some contrast: after the massive success of E.T. (1982), Spielberg executive produced films designed to exploit his commercial view of fantastical events in middle class suburbia in films – Poltergeist [M] (1984), Harry and the Hendersons (1987), *batteries not included (1987) – and TV – Amazing Stories (1985-1987) - with very mixed results, but being a greater visionary (and more business savvy), Spielberg alternated between family fantasies and adult-styled dramas to maintain a creative edge while ensuring his brand name still offered variations on suburban misadventures for nuclear families in cinemas and TV.

Like Spielberg, King also produced films prior to his own directorial efforts, working with directors like Alan Rudolph – Roadie (1980), Endangered Species (1982) – but on a much smaller scale, and with indie filmmakers sharing similarly rich visual styles. King’s early directorial efforts were significant (and admittedly dramatically goofy, if not slickly trashy) - Two Moon Junction (1988), Wild Orchid (1989), and Wild Orchid 2: Two Shades of Blue (1991) – because they contained the key stages where his style advanced from rough to refined, and by the time he’d made Wild Orchid 2, King had found the look and sound that defined himself as a filmmaker, and perhaps his creative biggest gamble was the film adaption of Anais Nin’s Delta of Venus (1995), starring Red Shoe Diaries alumnus Audie England.

In 1998, however, whatever material bore his imprimatur was decidedly less earnest, and it presaged his creative downslide. His NBC TV series Wind on Water, starring Bo Derek, was axed after 2 episodes had aired, and pieces of music from his company’s stock library – songs and score cuts from Wild Orchid in particular – were repurposed in episodes of Red Shoe Diaries, and in the films Boca (1994) and In God’s Hands. It sounds trivial, but the re-use of images, tired themes, and music showed a producer trying to stick with a brand instead of venturing into new territory, and showing less interest in testing his creative drive. Most of his TV fodder degenerated into tales of strippers, sultry radio DJs, a repurposed tanker packed with naughty buffed models, or revisiting the Red Shoe Diary brand.

By the mid-nineties, King was no longer working with name actors or up-and coming talent, the music in his films was banal, and it was rare when a feature film enjoyed a theatrical release. (A colleague who said he’d attended In God’s Hands at TIFF said the screening was peppered with laughter from the fickle audience.)

Perhaps more grating to fans, there was no interest in exploiting the brand name on home video. Early theatrical films were released on DVD as part of studio commitments, and prior TV movies appeared on VHS during their initial release and the odd Region 2 DVD, but Red Shoe Diaries – perhaps his perfect cash cow – was never given a full series release on DVD. Soundtrack albums regurgitated songs he owned and had re-used in other films and TV, and the lush scores by George S. Clinton, who scored 5 films & teleplays for King, were never commercially released.

There were also no special editions of his best films – either because the labels didn’t care, or King himself showed no interest. Perhaps he felt the past should stay in the past, or the past reminded him of better days. Perhaps he felt there hadn’t been a project about which he felt sufficiently passionate enough to discuss, or maybe he was a private person who just didn’t like discussing his career. Not everyone can sit through their work and provide a compelling narrative, and King’s passion seemed to be to press on with the next project; home video special editions just weren’t that important.

In their tribute blog post to King by home video label Code Red, they mention an audio commentary he recorded for their planned DVD of the 1975 exploitation film Trip with the Teacher, in which he played a psycho taunting leggy teachers in the desert, and after recording 75 mins. worth of reminiscences, King seemed to realize there was some personal reward in revisiting older works and recording one’s own history for posterity.

With his passing in February, so disappeared an important pioneer of American erotica, and while his best work was far behind him, fans never doubted there was a passion behind the man – it just got a little misdirected, or perhaps overwhelmed by the demands of brand management.

The only significant interview King gave that comes to mind was for Premiere magazine, during the making of Wild Orchid 2, which was likely around 1990, when the film was known as “Blue Movie Blue” before it was slapped with a franchise name and number that bore no relation to the original Wild Orchid. At least, that’s the tone I recall from the piece because Premiere is long gone, and my hardcopy is probably buried in deep storage, far away from my hands.

I would’ve liked to have added a second and more detailed Q&A from my end, but that never happened – most likely because the project slipped my mind far too many times, and whenever his name appeared on a new project, it sounded so remote from his best (and more earnest) work that there seemed no point. Maybe he would’ve been surprised and annoyed by the interest and dissection of his themes and peculiar fixations, but the conclusion of the proposed piece would’ve been simple: the man deserved his due. It’s not hard to find his influence, in terms of style, within commercial TV erotica because he figured out a formula that sold well, but it only works if there’s a heart behind the filmmaker, and it’s there in his best work, which I’ll revisit in the coming months, perhaps trying to write the retrospective that never came to fruition.

Why Zalman King, you ask?

Why not?

Mark R. Hasan, Editor
KQEK.com ( Main Site / Mobile Site )

Twisted Metal's Michael Wandmacher + Grant Kirkhope's Reckoning

2012-04-09T19:33:00.000-04:00

This one's a quickie, due to a backlog of good stuff on the way.

Just uploaded are sound track reviews for two videogames: Grant Kirkhope's Kingdoms of Amalur: Reckoning [M] (Sumthing Else), featuring the City of Prague Philharmonic Orchestra under the baton of Nic Raine, and Michael Wandmacher's guitar-heavy Twisted Metal [M] (Sony, digital album).

Also uploaded: an interview [M] with Wandmacher discussing the minutia of scoring videogames, and some teaser details regarding his next horror score, The Haunting in Georgia.

Yes, I really am that busy today.

Coming shortly: review of Warner Home Video's new Blu-ray for 9 1/2 Weeks + a tribute to Zalman King, the film's co-writer & co-producer (yes, really); and music from Titanic films (plus reviews of some recent documentaries, because it's that time of year).

Mark R. Hasan, Editor
KQEK.com ( Main Site / Mobile Site )

Darrell Wasyk's The Girl in the White Coat

2012-04-05T15:29:00.001-04:00

A colleague wandered into the old Ammo Video store on College last fall and came across a VHS copy of something called H, and found the basic premise – two heroine-addicted characters attempt to kick the ugly habit – intriguing, but didn’t know much else about the film, hence the hesitation to purchase the tape. When he returned a few months ago, the store was locked, and most likely so went an easy chance to snap up some vintage Canadiana because H doesn’t exist on home video.

A lot of Canadian films – good, bad, and fromage-scented canuxploitation – were released on tape, and then vanished, as far as further home video appearances went. There are the odd TV airings, but I often suspect their play comes not from a smart programmer, but the needs of stations to abide by CanCon rules and fill the time slots with native fodder.

Fair enough, but H is not unlike countless praised and award-winning films that have vanished from distribution. H was shot for virtually nothing, and because of the urgency to put his intense vision on film, writer / director Darrell Wasyk made a personal film which did the film festival circuit, won awards, and was picked up for distribution by Alliance Releasing.

Wasyk made another feature, then did some TV work, and stepped away from filmmaking until 2011 when he returned with The Girl in the White Coat, liberally adapted from Nikolai Gogol’s short story “The Overcoat.” It’s a surreal, dreamy character piece, psychological study, and effective transposition of the chilly Russian setting to chilly Montreal during a brisk winter season. For some, at virtually 2 hours, it’ll be tough going, but I argue that like a dreamy & sometimes meandering Andrei Tarkovsky film, it’s more the mood and the weird aura that’s worth investigating.

The film opens tomorrow at the TIFF Bell Lightbox, and in addition to a film review [M], I’ve posted an interview [M] with Wasyk on the film’s scriptorial and performances nuances. We also discuss H a bit, including the foreign DVD release Wasyk is aiming for, given Alliance has shown any interest in releasing on home video.

In an upcoming Editor’s Blog, I’ll post some thoughts on the strange conundrums Canadian filmmakers face in getting their films to viewers when rights issues are complex, and large monopolistic companies sitting on vast back catalogues have no clue on how to exploit their worth, leaving you and me with little chance of seeing a notable film outside of rare TV airings of old transfers, and cinematheque screenings with prints loaned from the Canadian Archives.

If you’re peeved that our cinematic culture is only accessible via archival loan-outs, beat-up VHS tapes, and Betamax copies from First Choice stay tuned, because I’ll address the issue with related reviews of Dancing in the Dark (1986) and The Grey Fox (1982).

Mark R. Hasan, Editor
KQEK.com ( Main Site / Mobile Site )

The Films of Frankie-Boy, Part I

2012-04-04T22:00:00.000-04:00

'Pardon me: I'm lookin' for Vanessa the Undressa. Have you seen her?'

Whether or not Frank Sinatra knew it early into his acting career, he was a good dramatic actor, and while the studios recognized his name on the marquee sold tickets and soundtrack albums, Sinatra could carry a picture in almost any genre.

During the forties he was naturally cast in musicals, and that’s where he honed his affable persona, but in the early fifties he need to prove he could in fact tackle other roles besides being the A-side of a happy-go-lucky couple, or as a member of a bunch of good guys.

From Here to Eternity (1953) won him a Best Supporting Actor Oscar, Suddenly (1954) showed off his tough side in a tight little film noir, and then came a string of musicals, which seemed to go in tandem with his luxurious jazz and conceptual albums. The musicals may also have been part of perfect timing: the teenage girls who adored him in the forties were now adults, and Sinatra was a constant vocal force who also got better. With a mature singing style, he was more hypnotic, taking on classic ballads and giving them bolder interpretations without changing a single lyric, and there was that natural screen presence – confident, suave, yet never arrogant; Sinatra was just a regular guy making a living with a great gift for song.

It’s a lucky screen persona because it meant even without trying, Sinatra was still fun to watch, but after a string of musicals, comedy musicals, urbane comedy musicals, urbane comedies, and the periodic hard drama to auger all that lightness, he started to settle into a pattern and maybe got a bit lazy. He took on too many projects and either made them pre-formatted to his persona of a good guy / lovable drunk / war hero in the making, or rewarded himself by tackling at least one film with a director that would force out a good performance, if not a good film.

Amid the light fodder of the fifties, Sinatra made The Man with the Golden Arm (1955), a potent and compelling tale of a talent going to waste because heroine. He was a victim, but one who beat the odds and gambled he could stay clean and start a new life, and the character of Frankie Machine was markedly different from the sly, wry, wise-cracking heel persona that followed in High Society (1956), and more so in Pal Joey (1957), where he played a philandering heel who moved to a new town because of a copper’s big boot.

Twilight Time’s latest selection from Sony’s HD transfers is a Blu-ray of Pal Joey [M], with an isolated score track, and a bonus featurette from Columbia’s 2010 Kim Novak Collection. This perfect blend of romance, song, and risqué humour is the perfect Sinatra vehicle, and it just looks and sounds so good. No wonder it was never remade on film (and shouldn’t), even though it drifts from the original stage musical and makes use of songs from three prior musicals rather than sticking exclusively with Pal Joey’s custom numbers.

The late fifties introduced Sinatra the Good Soldier in war films like Never So Few (1959), but if one looks at his career, each year is part of a revolving blend of genre wherein he was well-suited. War, westerns, comedies, musicals, and dramas were his chief genres, but the sixties were more like an excess of each that didn’t offer fans bad movies, but ones of variable quality even though the core ideas may have been catchy, or sound.

Come Blow Your Horn [M] (1963) was Neil Simon’s first play, and the film version is a weird, dated version where its chief problem is star Sinatra being way too old for the role of a swinging thirtysomething. Then came Assault on a Queen [M] (1966), which folded in a war background for the characters, worked in a caper plot, romance and jealousy, and an action payoff – none of which really worked. (Viewers can see for themselves, now that the two films are available on DVD and Blu-ray from Olive Films.)

If Sinatra’s post 1966 films reveal anything within his canon, it’s that he was getting a little lazy in selecting good projects, and not unlike John Wayne, finding it tough to repeat his handful of screen personas – soldier, heel, crooner, and western hero – in increasingly flawed films.

After 1966, Sinatra made a few more films - mostly crime films – before taking time off in 1968. Two years later he made Dirty Dingus Magee (1970); ten years later came The First Deadly Sin (1980), and besides a few rare TV appearances and a cameo of sorts in Cannonball Run II (1984), he was finished with acting. TV’s Entertainment Tonight make a fuss over his guest appearance on Magnum P.I. (1987), and that was the last acting gig for an icon who’d essentially done it all in films.

His sung, he danced, he produced, and he directed, so there was not much left to prove. The industry and audiences had changed, and Sinatra had maybe spent too much time having fun in the sixties instead of focusing exclusively on singing, even though critics seem to regard the mid-sixties as the proper demarcation point where his voice was past its prime.

Uploaded are the three aforementioned reviews, and there’ll be another set a little later.

Mark R. Hasan, Editor
KQEK.com ( Main Site / Mobile Site )

Genre Variations, & System Adjustments

2012-04-04T01:36:00.000-04:00

"Mmm... the other white meat..."

Sorry about the conk-out – the websites & blog are back online, but it might be a day or three before the domains are propagated by search engines. (In Inglaisio: main index page urls may not load, but if you Google the site or load from an existing hyperlink, the site should pop up.)

Now then.

Now live are a quartet of horror-ish reviews for specific genre splinters, each done fairly recently:

Contagion [M] (Warner Home Video) had Steven Soderbergh taking a crack at the virus thriller, and it almost works. Great cast, plenty of globe-trotting, and some inventive montages that compress clichés we’d normally see dragged out in traditional super-bug thrillers, but with so much more room to play, what’s left isn’t so interesting.

The Dead [M] (Anchor Bay) has the Brothers Howard and Jon Ford transposing a zombie outbreak to Africa, with some striking results. Not a new twist, but a good one that nevertheless upset fans wanting more gore, more action, more of a traditional zombie storyline. Everything’s been pared down to the essentials, and the first half is absolutely riveting.

Frat House Massacre [M] (Synapse Films) is the second collaboration between director Alex Pucci and writer Draven Gonzalez, and the DVD offers 20 more minutes of gore, rabid nudity, sadism, and whatever else was shorn due to its offensive nature (like maybe the villain micturating on a corpse). Sometimes it’s a tongue-in-cheek poke at the classic seventies slasher film (the primary story takes place in 1979), and other times its Grand Guignol, combining sex, violence, and blood in various combos.

Gurozuka [M] (Synapse Films) is a J-horror from 2005 and has a lot of earnest skill in crafting some very creepy situations for a pack of film club babes heading into the woods for some fun celluloid antics until a masked killer from the past emerges with a Big Knife. Yôichi Nishiyama’s shock is flawed, but genuinely creepy.

There. That’s four, with three more reviews of a Sinatrian nature to follow.

Mark R. Hasan, Editor
KQEK.com ( Main Site / Mobile Site )

We interrupt programming due to technical difficulties...

2012-04-02T18:38:00.000-04:00

Whoops! At the present time, neither KQEK.com's main & mobile sites, nor the Editor's Blog at mondomark.com are working due to technical difficulties. Hopefully the problem(s) will be fixed for Tuesday. Stay tuned for further updates.

What to expect when regular programming is restored?

In the genre update department, reviews of Contagion, The Dead, Frat House Massacre, and Gurozuka. In the Frank Sinatra department, reviews of Assault on a Queen, Come Blow Your Horn, and Pal Joey.

More info to follow Tuesday. Hopefully a Shaman won't be necessary.

- MRH

Festivals-a-Go-Go!

2012-03-31T15:05:00.000-04:00

Swining' like you wouldn't ba-lieve!

Spring brings birds, colours, and warmth, and the un-merry, midnight clamor of raccoon sex (which sort of sounds like a cat being beaten to death with a baseball bat), but we also get the phenomenon known as ‘overlapping film festivals’ and special screenings. This isn’t to say there’s less to see & do in the winter, but certainly in the coming months, there will be no shortage of films from every culture in every genre in and around Toronto.

Before I get into the current & upcoming crop, this past Wednesday yielded a screening at the Gendai Station of Carl Michael von Hausswold and Thomas Nordanstad’s short film Hashima, Japan 2002.

Between 1887-1974, this small Japanese island was expanded with infill to handle undersea coal mining, and house families of the miners. At its peak, about 5000 were packed on the rock which spanned about 15 acres. From afar, it’s weird structure resembling a battleship, hence its nickname ‘Battleship Island,’ although it’s also been called Gunkanjima, and Ghost Island for very obvious reasons: abandoned in 1974 when the coal supply ended, the place has been left to the elements, and during the past 30 years its been disintegrating, exposed to typhoons, winds, and the effects of saltwater.

The 2002 audio-visual art montage is available online, so for those who missed the screening and discussion, they can view the full film at Vimeo in its original form with the droning music score. (Some astute listeners may hear bits of Abigail Mead’s ‘Uhnnnn…. Uhnnnn… Wah-wah-wee-wah’ cue from Full Metal Jacket in the mix).

The half-hour version is comprised of video footage set up largely in still positions to capture the approach, a walk-through, and departure from the eerie rock, and there are several related docs on YouTube worth checking out, including the filmmakers’ related piece, Hashima, in which former resident Dotokou revisits the isle and gives us a tour of where his family lived, and the treacherous alleys and stairwells he had to navigate, sometimes waiting until brutal wind and waves had subsided.

Another doc features a segment on the isle (watch19:09 minutes into the absurdly titled Life After People: The Bodies Left Behind) where there’s deeper discussion about how the elements have rapidly eroded the apartments that were built choc-a-block. It’s an amazing location, and I’d suggest watching the aforementioned docs in the described order to move from its mysterious allure to more factual material.

Also screened this past week is Nightbreed: The Cabal Cut, a restoration of Clive Barker’s troubled production, via Mad Monster Party in North Carolina. Rue Morgue’s Ron McKenzie interviewed Mark Miller, a key figure in Barker’s Seraphim Films and the film’s restoration. It’s an engrossing piece for fans wanting to know what was found, the quality of the surviving source materials, and what was assembled and edited for the MMP screening this past March 24th.

Now then, prior to more local news, New York’s Museum of the Moving Image is screening Stanley Kaufman’s Invasion of the Body Snatchers (1978), a film that succeeds in its creepiness because of a) Denny Zeitlin’s superb (and only) film score; the alien pig squeal; and c) the finale that scared the crap out of me. Note to a Toronto programmer: bring this film here. For more info on Zeitlin's score, check out the archived interview I did with CD producer / Perseverance Records bigwig Robin Esterhammer, regarding the score's CD release, and interviewing the humble composer & practicing shrink.

And in Seattle, as part of the First Annual Science Fiction Film Festival there will be a slate of 35mm and 70mm prints of Barbarella, Brazil, Clockwork Orange, Close Encounters Of The Third Kind, Dune, E.T., Flash Gordon, Forbidden Planet, Ghostbusters (70mm), Mad Max, Matrix, Omega Man, Planet Of The Apes, Road Warrior, Silent Running, Solaris, Soylent Green, Star Trek 2 (70mm), Terminator, Terminator 2 (70mm), Tron (70mm). A hefty chunk represent the sci-fi films I saw as a kid and would love to revisit – some for the first time on the big screen. Sadly, I have no clone to take my place at work, so I’ll mist the lot. Sigh. (Thanks to Shade Rupe for posting alerts of the above two festivities.)

Back to things local:

The Toronto Silent Film Festival runs March 29 – April 3, and features a mix of comedy, drama, and foreign classics. More details and additional links are at Torontoist.

TCM’s Road to Hollywood crosses the border and treats us with The Last Picture Show, which will screen at the TIFF Bell Lightbox tonight, with director Peter Bogdanovich, and NOW’s Norm Wilner has an interview with the director. (Note: the TBL website has no mention of the screening, so check out Wilner's blog for further info.)

Still ongoing at the Lightbox are The Poetry of Precision: The Films of Robert Bresson (ending April 4); John Greyson: Impatient (ending April 5); Hollywood Classics: The Cinema Is Nicholas Ray, Part Two (ending April 3); Attack the Bloc: Cold War Science Fiction from Behind the Iron Curtain (ending April 6), and Spirited Away: The Films of Studio Ghibli (to April 13).

The Canadian Film Festival finishes today at the Royal Cinema, Cinefranco ends its run at the Lightbox tomorrow, and the Lightbox’s Bangkok Dangerous: The Cinema of Nicholas Cage has two more films before the Saturday night cult theme is replaced with the rumoured Crispin Glover salute. The remaining Cage flicks are Wener Herzog’s The Bad Lieutenant: Port of Call New Orleans March 31), and the totally bonkers / bug-eating classique Vampire’s Kiss (April 7).

Lastly, this is the last week to catch Win Wenders’ Pina in 3D, and the Oscar-nominated Monsieur Lazhar at the Lightbox. Those wanting other equally good fodder can find further fodder in NOW’s weekly tally of screenings & festivals.

Spend your money and use / abuse your time accordingly.

Mark R. Hasan, Editor
KQEK.com ( Main Site / Mobile Site )

Critical Thoughts: Gerald Peary on American Film Criticism

2012-03-29T17:00:00.001-04:00

This past Sunday For the Love of Movies: The Story of American Film Criticism (2009) screened at the Bloor Cinema, and writer / director Gerald Peary was on hand to introduce the film and take part in an audience Q&A, followed by a panel discussion with several Toronto film critics.

I’ve uploaded a review [M] of the film, which also includes details on the 40 mins. of bonus interviews on the DVD, available exclusively from the film’s website. Additionally, I’ve uploaded edited excerpts from both Peary’s pre-screening intro and post-screening audience Q&A, archived at my YouTube Channel Big Head Amusements.

Not to be confused with Danny Peary, author of the Cult Film series, Gerald Peary has written for numerous print publications, including The Boston Phoenix, and Story is very much his perspective on the evolution of his profession, from its early years, pioneering film critics, and key movements before the digital realm rocked and eroded print media’s domination as the main source for news and critical thought.

That means there are some periods which are compacted within the doc’s six main chapters, but it’s still an accessible intro outside of print collections featuring key works by players such as James Agee, Andrew Sarris, and Pauline Kael.

Peary isn’t the first critic to make the jump to film directing, but Story is a labour of love, and its mandate is to educate and certainly preserve the views of its auteur. Other critics who’ve ventured into documentaries include Charles Champlin via his ‘On Film’ series, and Richard Schickel, whose most recent work was the meh documentary The Eastwood Factor (2010). whereas in the dramatic realm (and critics who never went back to the printed page), there’s the Cahier du cinema clan (Francois Truffaut, Jean-Luc Godard, etc.), Rod Lurie (auteur of the meh The Contender), and Paul Mayersberg (writer of The Man Who Fell to Earth).

In my review, I address the shortcomings in Peary’s doc, but certain one question not raised in the film nor in the Q&A is what exactly happens to each new wave of fresh journalists, freshly minted from university, hungry to write about movies in an era where the professional has been cheapened by several factors.

You’ve paid X years worth of tuition and now have a paper that says ‘I can write critical thoughts on movies,’ and although there are plenty of movies coming out on a studio level, indie, level, digitally, and (still) on home video, exactly where a new voice goes is a mystery. As Peary stated in his audience Q&A, there are less major critics employed by print and print / digital hybrids; the job description includes blogging and social media activities; and the era of a paper writing six 2000-word film reviews per week survives maybe in journals.

Pay scales are low (if not reduced), senior & more pricey writers are junked in favour of disposable younger writers, and the internship concept seems to have become the norm, offering exposure while doing real work for little pay, an honorarium, or nada.

What I’d like to see, more than a follow-up to Story, is a related doc by an insider or indie filmmaker keen on covering where the careers and pathways to critical writing ran afoul, or simply turned from solid paved asphalt to some dusty circuitous road that ends in the middle of nowhere.

What exists for writing graduates when they hit the pavement, in terms of ins, leads, abuse, runarounds, and mettle-tests before a large contingent move on to other writing streams, and a small minority of writers manage to succeed, either from working the system, finding advantageous flaws, or a genuine mentor.

There are publications that began in print, went digital, and lack the identity which distinguished them from studio-friendly pap mags. There are sites which had heady hopes of making money from cheaply paid / unpaid content and now exist as cached ephemera because, quite frankly, they were crap. And there are former print journalists who’ve managed to move into the digital realm and still pound out provocative, beautifully written prose, but earn a fraction of what once could provide a comfortable living without having to do any tangential, freelance, or teaching chores.

Only a few have ever gotten rich from writing, which begs the question: What happens to all the journalism grads wanting to write passionately about film?

Dumb question? Maybe, but I’d love to see a doc covering a 3-5 year period of one class, and see where the successes, disappointments, bitterness, and train wrecks lie.

That is all.

Mark R. Hasan, Editor
KQEK.com ( Main Site / Mobile Site )

Jean Renoir in America, Part 1

2012-03-25T13:51:00.001-04:00

J'approve le Ray-de-Bleu, mes petites mignons cineastes!

As the basic details go, esteemed French director Jean Renoir hopped over to Italy to make the film Tosca when his latest, Rules of the Game (1939) was met with distate by critics and the establishment. Then Mussolini sided with Hitler, and Renoir decided to abandon his stake in Tosca (a film eventually completed by Carl Koch, and released in 1941) and return to France, only to flee to American when the Nazis invaded his homeland.

Renoir would eventually return to more personal fare in 1951 (some filmed in English, most in French), and his American films (1941-1947) are more interesting for the way in which Renoir's own themes and interests transcended straight Hollywood genres, insofar as the studios under which he was contracted tried to render his films more palatable to average audiences.

Renoir purists may regard his U.S. period as less than stellar, but I think time's been rather kind to most of his works - each somewhat compromised, but still quite distinct from the generic southern dramas, anti-Nazi thrillers, and melodramas in production during that period.

In addition to a review of Twilight Time's new Blu-ray release of Renoir's first American film, Swamp Water [M] (1941), I've added reviews of Fox's 1952 colour remake, Lure of the Wilderness [M], directed by Jean Negulesco.

Staying within the theme of Renoir's unofficial 'land' films, I've also added reviews of his above-average anti-Nazi propaganda drama This land is Mind [M] (1943), available (where else?) in Spain as a Region 2 DVD; and The Southerner [M] (1945), from VCI.

In Part 2, I'll take a look at Renoir's remaining American feature films: Diary of a Chambermaid (1946), and The Woman on the Beach (1947), a film fraught with so much studio retooling that it's unsurprising Renoir took a few years to find his mojo before making the technicolor classic The River (1951).

Two quick news bits:

Both DVD Savant (see March 17 post) and the Digital Bits (see March 22) have mentioned Screen Archives Entertainment's recent announcement of distributing Zorba the Greek (1964) and The Grapes of Wrath (1940) on Blu-ray - titles currently available on DVD as part of Fox's old classic film series.

SAE will have exclusve distribution of these titles until June 5th, when they go "national" and are available at regular retail outlets. While Fox distributes MGM/UA's classic catalogue titles on Blu-ray, both Zorba and Grapes shouldn't be regarded as a sign the studio's starting to release their own classics on Blu after a long dead period.

Call it a test, in terms of seeing how big the classic film fan base is today, and whether it's large enough to warrant the select release of catalogue films via a staggard release schedule.

It'll be interesting to see if Fox is planning to test more titles on Blu - I'd be giddy over Captain from Castile (1947) and Leave Her to Heaven [M] (1945) in HD - and whether the strategy proves to be more successful than locking niche titles under exclusive deals with major chains whose clientele is too general for what are increasingly being rebranded as specialty titles, given the real push is on current & ongoing franchises like Harry Potter, 007, Batman, Pirates of the Caribbean; and lumping blockbuster titles in multi-format boxed sets (BD + BD 3D + DVD + Digital Copy + Turquoise Fandango Disc + Hyper-Density floppy disks + colour-themed cat food tin).

That said, the Digital Bits also reports Fox's release of The Poseidon Adventure (1972) will be given an exclusive release, via Walmart. Perhaps the best way to read the Fox-cultivated tea leaves is that post-1970 titles are more recent than 1940 titles, hence they warrant distribution through a broader based merchant. I guess as long as people know who's got what when and where, they know where to go, but I suspect there will be some interesting surprises in the fall. There's no way Fox can sit on their substantive CinemaScope catalogue.

Lastly, Blu-ray.com reported Gaumont has gathered funding for 2K transfers of 270 (!) classic French titles, including Jean Renoir's Toni (1935), Henri-Georges Clouzot's The Murderer Lives at Number 21 (1942), and Carl Theodor Dreyer's The Passion of Joan of Arc (1928).

I recommend reading the news brief and more specifically the reader's comments, where a lengthy post addresses the sticky issue of "moral rights" under French law. If such an equivalent ever existed in the U.S., one can imagine the paucity of classic films that would never see the light of day. The way it seems to read, if a family member from, say, Orson Welles' clan feels something's not right, a film could remain unavailable until the affected party is in a state of bliss.

Not that anything of the kind has ever happened.

Mark R. Hasan, Editor
KQEK.com ( Main Site / Mobile Site )

‘Swell Welles’ Part II – Orson Welles’ Citizen Kane, The Battle Over Citizen Kane, and RKO 281

2012-03-18T21:29:00.000-04:00

Citizen Gulliver stands proudly above the small farming community he led prior to beginning his quest for global media domination.

Flipping back to the beginning of Orson Welles’ film career (minus Hearts of Age, his 1934 sophomoric short film effort), Citizen Kane [M] which as been called the greatest most awesome untouchably perfect supremely brilliant most genius creation ever-ever.

I say this in jest, but it is a conundrum for anyone presenting this at a screening, in class, in a documentary, on home video, or even discussing it in writing: how do you not bring up that ‘greatest ever’ branding?

The alternative is ‘Here’s a little known film made by the guy who used to advise us that Paul Masson’s wines are never sold prior to their time’ on TV, or got very angry during the taping of a frozen peas advert.

That Welles had to whore himself during the latter part of his career to fund his film ventures is a complete opposite of his debut: he got to make whatever he wanted (with studio approval), however he wanted (according to an approved budget), with whomever he wanted, and with director’s cut. It was the envy of every director, and RKO clearly used it to lure radio and stage’s hottest boy wonder to Hollywood, hoping he would work his magic for the silver screen.

Welles did, but as dramatized in the 1999 HBO TV movie, RKO 281 [M], he also sewed his downfall in Hollywood by taking on media tycoon William Randolph Hearst in satirizing key parts of his life without naming Hearst directly. The 1996 documentary The Battle Over Citizen Kane [M] nicely traces the links between facts and fiction, and one quickly realizes Welles, along with co-writer Herman J. Mankiewicz, was a bit of shit-kicker for poking fun at a living icon, going as far as tying the mystical element in the film to Hearst’s pet name for his lover’s hoo-ha.

Perhaps the best present-day correlation to such audacity is Oliver Stone’s W. (2008), or Gabriel Range’s Death of a President (2006) – two films that dealt with the same sitting U.S. President; the former movie chronicled his struggle to achieve ersatz greatness under the shadow of his more Presidential father, George, Sr., and the latter dealt with the fictional assassination of George, Jr.

Outrageous, yes, and coincidental for targeting a figure as controversial as power-monger, ruthless businessman, and pompous tabloid journalist pioneer Hearst, but 1941 was different from 2012 insofar that the contract system was well in place, and the concept of directorial autonomy was anathema to the business ethos of the ruling movie moguls. Even director Alfred Hitchcock had to endure the incessant meddling of producer David O. Selznick on films like Rebecca (1940) and Spellbound, (1945) before his contract was up, and his name in America was an assured commodity, permitting him to go independent (well, for a blip) and make his own films.

The reason Kane is still very relevant to modern times goes beyond the film itself: it was made by a gifted artist who proved far ahead of his time that one could make good pictures without studio interference in script, editing, and casting. Welles’ proof may not have yielded any further carte blanche contracts with studios - The Magnificent Ambersons [M] (1942) saw to that - but he did show it what was possible, allowing other creative forces to gamble with their own talents, be it Hitchcock, Otto Preminger, Ida Lupino, or Stanley Kramer within the next 10-15 years, particularly with major distributors like United Artists, which became a haven and funnel for indie-minded directors and producer-stars.

Kane was made in an era when total vertical integration (studios controlling the production, distribution, and ownership of films and talent) and media outlets were held by a few – a monopoly that was shaken up during the next 10-15 years, but has ironically, reverted back to itself, with the exception of talent no longer indentured to 7-year studio contracts. The studios own the cinemas, and the studios themselves are owned by hardware manufacturers and media conglomerates.

History may not repeat itself, but chunks recur because power and control are mandatory to corporate success, which is why the saga of an egotistical newspaper baron is no different than an egotistical media mogul.

It’s not hard to find parallels between Hearst and Rupert Murdoch, in terms of one man’s ideology attracting like-minded to man his news feeds in print and digital, but Hearst is more classical in the sense he behaved like a Lord, lost touch with changes in business, and blew his personal fortune on art treasures, homes, and the constant additions to his personal kingdom, San Simeon.

Murdoch is savvy, a street fighter, and smartly recognized the value of his media ventures; Hearst’s name is perhaps known – if at all today – for the media publications and his private castle that’s been a tourist attraction for decades, whereas Murdoch will live on as the man who transformed Fox from an aging studio to a media giant. He may be the closest we have to a classic media mogul, since he’s remained at the top of his corporate empire from the beginning.

Did I like Citizen Kane the first time I saw it? Sort of. I found it slow, and perhaps being an impressionable snot, figured it had to be a great film because everyone kept saying so.

In truth, Kane is superb, but like many of Welles’ films – or those of any auteur director – the personality of its maker is in the writing, the look, the sound, and in particular the pacing of his / her work, and Welles can be slow. He’s not an action or suspense director; his works are the cinematic expansions of the reconfigured radio dramas of his youth, with an experimental edge that buckled convention right to his final completed work, F for Fake (1973).

In seeing Kane, you’ll experience the work of a unique picture maker, but to understand his impact on the medium and the results of a vagabond life, popping up in derivative fodder to fund films he’d rarely complete, you have to see much more of his work, and luckily he did indeed direct more films than the woe-is-he line we reviewers are leading you to believe.

Mark R. Hasan, Editor
KQEK.com ( Main Site / Mobile Site )

Soundtrack Reviews + News

2012-03-14T10:56:00.000-04:00

Just uploaded is a quartet of reviews for ongoing (and likely eternal) franchises:

Doctor Who continues to steam through new seasons, and Silva Screen’s latest release features 2+ hours of Murray Gold’s music from Season 6 [M]. Also from Silva is music from Sherlock: Season 1 [M], composed by David Arnold and Michael Price, who do a pretty good job aurally linking the series with the current feature film franchise, scored by Hans Zimmer.

Each camp sets Holmes and Watson in different time periods (films = past; TV = NOW!), but there are stylistic links among the scores, so I’ve added reviews of Zimmer’s Sherlock Holmes [M] (2009) and Sherlock Homes: A Game of Shadows [M] (2011), released on CD by Water Towne music (aka Warner Music).

In terms of new release info, I posted some horror-related material at my Rue Morgue blog.

Coming shortly: Citizen Kane & related doc material on Blu from Warner Home Video, and a few horror film reviews.

Mark R. Hasan, Editor
KQEK.com ( Main Site / Mobile Site )

'Swell Welles' Part I: Orson Welles' Magnificent Ambersons (1939, 1942, and 2002) & More!

2012-03-06T03:15:00.000-05:00

The standard approach to tackling Orson Welles on home video is to start from scratch and begin with his first film, Citizen Kane (1941), but I’ve decided to begin this review wave of Wellesian material on DVD and Blu-ray with his 1942 adaptation of Booth Tarkington’s The Magnificent Ambersons, partly because it’s so imperfect.

Let’s step aside for a moment.

To claim Ambersons is one of the greatest films ever made is a bit rich, given it was recut, reshot, and released in a much shorter version than Welles had ever intended. It was perhaps the most significant act of studio butchery ever committed on a sound film without a director’s approval, and a rather vindictive attempt by the studio’s newest top-level production executives to get rid of a prima donna they feared would either bring them to ruin via esoteric depressing million dollar productions, or establish a new standard in directorial freedom; but Ambersons in its current state is a deeply problematic picture that begs more than a simple set of 500 words punctuated with ‘it’s a flawed masterpiece’ or ‘a hint of greatness that resonates even deeper with each viewing.’

When he began at RKO, Welles was the wonder boy of radio, gifted with a marvelous voice, genuine acting talent, a superb writer and dramatist, and a director with a kind of special arrogance that pushed him to break rules because his unusual choices, when compared to conventional studio hacks, were amazing and outlandish.

I’ll get into the stylistic issues he codified in Kane – a film that remains amazingly contemporary in spite of being minted in 1941 – later, but right now, Part I is about Ambersons, which has been available on DVD overseas for a few years now (not to mention prior releases on VHS and laserdisc), but until late January, remained an Amazon.com exclusive deal if one bought Kane from the retailer.

Now widely available as a standalone DVD, Warner Home Video’s release features a bare bones transfer, but that’s okay; the lack of extras ignited a search for related review materials. What’s been uploaded is a lengthy comparative essay of sorts in which Welles’ 1942 film is examined in its 88 mins. release version and augmented by observations from Robert Carringer’s commentary track from Criterion’s 1986 laserdisc; then contrasted with A&E 2002 filming of Welles’ original shooting script; and finally closing notes on the 1939 Mercury Theatre radio broadcast. That’s the first review [M].

To contextualize Welles’ dilemma in 1942 – writing, directing, producing Ambersons, and starring & producing Journey into Fear – is a review of It’s All True: Based on an Unfinished Film by Orson Welles [M] (1993), the documentary about the documentary Welles was working on in Brazil while Ambersons was being hacked up.

Paramount released the film as a bare bones DVD in 2004, and the doc contains plenty of rare footage and interviews, plus the lone surviving (and most complete) segment of three tales that were supposed to make up “It’s All True.”

Part II of 'Swell Welles 'will include a review of Citizen Kane and a handful of related films, and later parts will include Journey into Fear, and Touch of Evil (1958), the latter available only in England on Blu-ray because Universal in North America perhaps believes Welles' noir classic is undeserving of a definitive Blu-ray release during their 100 year anniversary.

Really? But Waterworld is?

Mark R. Hasan, Editor
KQEK.com ( Main Site / Mobile Site )

The Oscars, and the quiet emergence of the Standard International Edition

2012-02-28T12:32:00.000-05:00

Due to a lack of contextual images, we're using the Random Actress Heliometer (RAH). Illustrated: Senta Berger. Happy, isn't she?

Well, Sunday’s show was pure Meh: familiar, bland, safe, non-threatening, blah, and as many viewers seemed to predict, er, predictable. Having seen none of the films so far (I have more matter to see, but I’ll get there in bits & pieces), I still had an inkling The Artist would win the major prizes, making Harvey Weinstein very, very happy. Not bad for a guy who started out in the business with The Burning in 1980 (and a film, quite frankly, that’s more fun that it deserves to be).

Billy Crystal was literally vintage Billy Crystal, but enough with older men wearing jet-solid hair helmets; when skin texture reaches a certain vintage, a solid matter of type B hair colouring looks absurd.

Still not sure why there were only 2 nominated songs (unless only two listenable tunes were actually all they Academy could find), but the fact traditional interludes were reduced to a Cirque de Soleil vignette (with bizarre Danny Elfman music) and a strangely truncated Dead Celebrity Montage clearly indicated the show’s producers were determined to bring that show to a close at 11:30pm, and they came pretty close in the end, leaving those hungry for more to watch E! terrible post-Oscar coverage were talk more or less hovered around clothes, colours, legs, hair, social oopsies, and other superficialities. (Note: Crystal’s black helmet head isn’t superficial – it’s disturbing, hence socially relevant.)

My wishes were for John Williams (War Horse [M]) to take home the Oscar trophy, though I was happy with the nominated scores because they were all frankly good. Alberto Iglesias’ Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy [M] is definitely a solid Cold War score deserving multiple replays, and Ludovic Bource’s The Artist [M] was fun, and the win gave a newcomer a career boost; one can expect Bource to snap a few high-profile U.S. scoring assignments very soon, as often happens. As long as he stays away from comedies named after hit pop songs, he’s safe.

As NOW’s Norman Wilner points out in his MSN column, the window between a nominated film’s theatrical release and home video debut is getting shorter. Martin Scorsese’s Hugo, which won several technical awards, is out today. While Hugo did enjoy a theatrical run, Jean-Pierre and Luc Dardenne’s Cannes-winning The Kid with a Bike went straight to DVD in Canada by E1, but no Blu-ray edition.

This isn’t wholly unique – the lack of a BR edition – because there are strange cases where the Blu is available only as a U.S. import. Either it’s a case where the domestic distributor felt a Blu wasn’t necessary, they wanted to stagger the release for potential double-dipping, an HD master perhaps wasn’t ready, the rights were highly complicated, or things just got a little fubared when someone wasn’t paying attention.

Who knows, but there are many strange aspects to the wonderful wacky world of home video.

Case in point: rental and sell-through editions. Drive was offered to rental shops as a Blu-only edition for a lower price for rental purposes, whereas for the general consumer, the sell-through edition (the one you’re supposed to buy) comes in a higher-priced Blu-DVD combo edition. When the original Girl with the Dragon Tattoo debuted, the domestic edition from Alliance was a BR/DVD combo, but those wanting just the DVD had to buy the U.S. import.

The theatrical cut of Raoul Ruiz’ Mysteries of Lisbon [M] is available from Music Box Films on DVD, but the Blu was a U.S.-only edition that technically went OOP in a matter of weeks (but is still available, at a discounted price, from Amazon.ca & .com). Meanwhile, the longer TV mini-series version is out in France on DVD (French-only dub track), and in Portugal on DVD (original Portuguese dub track with multiple subtitle options), but a Blu-ray edition - even in Portugal – beholds the theatrical cut.

None of this makes sense, and it’s either a sign a few people just weren’t thinking straight, things were rushed into production, or maybe there’s sense of standardizing releases, particularly when it comes to foreign films.

Why shouldn’t consumers / fans be offered the choice of different edits on Blu? Why not market both versions as standalone, shrink-wrapped specials, or deluxe megasets? One could voice similar concerns of the BFI’s imminent DVD edition of Ken Russell’s The Devils, although that one seems to be a peculiar compromise between the BFI and Warner Home Video U.K.: the film’s still a hot moral potato, so a Blu edition is taboo – unless WHV is quietly planning its own special edition later this year.

For that matter, why wouldn’t Fox release Cleopatra (1963) simultaneously on Blu in North America and Europe? Why issue a region-free edition in Britain (which sells for under $20) and hold off in North America, prior to its likely / inevitable release at a higher price point? Why did the Weinsteins license El Cid and Fall of the Roman Empire on Blu in the U.K. and Germany, but not in North America where they’re based?

For new films, distributor rights, delayed theatrical releases and differing video standards (PAL & the old SECAM vs. NTSC were largely responsible for what you got to see on video in your home country 10-15 years ago, whereas today it seems it’s a kind of free-for all: there’s a lack of consistency which now extends to the actual format.

The crazy thing is buyers are becoming increasing accustomed to buying titles from other countries because the democratization of film is arguably widening, from indie labels and majors issuing region-free BRs packed with all the subtitles and / or language tracks needed. From finding better pricing, in terms of cost + shipping from England versus buying it off the shelf from Region 1 / A labels who’ve paid heavy third-party licensing.

Quite frankly, the only thing stopping the broad buying public from embracing this loosely created Standard International Edition is fear of internet commerce, and identity theft.

It’s all so very, very strange.

Coming shortly: soundtrack reviews, Fernand Melgar’s Special Flight, and whether Orson Welles’ The Magnificent Ambersons is an over-rated bore or brilliant vision in its hacked up state.

Mark R. Hasan, Editor
KQEK.com ( Main Site / Mobile Site )

Picnic (1955), The Roots of Heaven (1958), and Twilight Time’s Julie Kirgo

2012-02-27T00:52:00.002-05:00

"My... What big wet biceps you have... but how did you get all those wrinkles?"

Once upon a time during the peak years of DVD, studio and indie labels were packaging their DVDs with booklets bearing liner notes, mini posters, and stills, and the catalogue titles sometimes included commentary tracks, featurettes, and documentaries.

No this isn’t the beginning of another rant - I made the point tenfold in the Editor’s Blog for Part 1 of our Twilight Time label profile - but I raise the issue here a little differently. While Universal’s first DVDS – Waterworld, The Paper – were released full screen and in jewel cases, other labels like Criterion and Warner Home Video figured there was more than enough room to not only present a film widescreen (technically speaking, anamorphic transfers take up less space than full screen & non-anamorphic widescreen), but create new / port over laserdisc extras, and for a while this was the norm for many new and older films.

MGM in fact produced some wonderful special editions – The Howling, Bubba Ho-Tep, Escape from New York, The Good the Bad and the Ugly – and then, while its European division was moving to SE’s of the remaining Sergio Leone dollar spaghetti westerns, not to mention Battle of Britain and A Bridge Too Far, bare bones editions remained in print in Region 1 land.

Why? Because the bare bones editions were selling far too well as budget titles in Walmarts and the like.

Why change a good thing?

This isn’t to say MGM was evil, but the obvious hesitation, if not cessation to issue new transfers of catalogue titles with special features marked an early notch in the scaling back of well-produced extras. It is a craft, because as a producer, you’re trying to cover all bases so fans and consumers are happy with the final product, and that it remains the definitive edition in an industry that thrives on reissues and repackaging.

Lionsgate did the same thing: there were sublime special editions of The Monster Squad and Cujo, but then the company sort of stepped back and decided it was enough to release bare bones editions of titles from the Canal Plus catalogue, either as standalone or boxed set editions. Apparently the virtue of having a film, of bringing it back into print, was more than enough.

The same, quite frankly, applies to Image recently picking up a whackload of titles formerly released as special editions by Anchor Bay. Yes AB produced their own set of extras, but is it really that expensive to port over the commentary tracks on House and Bill Condon's Sister Sister?

There's also Criterion having produced a number of fine commentary tracks for their laserdiscs, but few being retained for the DVD editions released by films’ original owners (like the all-star track for The Great Escape MGM ignored for their multple DVD Se's).

Is Criterion greedy and asking $1 million per track? I kinda doubt it, because Anchor Bay UK, who had the rights to Polanski’s Repulsion, ported over the Criterion commentary. It’s called licensing, that’s all, and it’s just a mono track featuring old people talking.

Julie Kirgo, Twilight Time's resident film historian, knows the value of a good DVD and Blu-ray release because she’s been involved with several, and in our Q&A [M] (aka Part 2 of our label profile), we discuss her entry into the wacky world of home video, the shifts in the business of edifying YOU, and trying to answer a number of questions that often begin with the word “Why.”

And also uploaded are reviews of two more Twilight Time releases: Picnic [M] (1955), which has aged extremely well, and proves Josh Logan was right about the humour that lies within the interconnection and ironic contrast placement of spit bubbles; and John Huston’s film version of Romain Gary’s The Roots of Heaven [M] (1958), a surprisingly prescient drama about animal conservation. This film’s been a personal favourite since I caught on TVOntario in an orange panned & scanned grainy print. I’ve waited maybe 25-30 years to see this picture clean, in stereo, and wide, and it’s one of Huston’s best. Flawed, but in an intriguing way.

Other goodies newly announced / coming real soon from Twilight Time are:

Swamp Water (1941) BLU-RAY - Feb 14th

Pal Joey (1957) BLU-RAY - Feb 14th

Demetrious and the Gladiators (1954) BLU-RAY - March 13th

Bite the Bullet (1975) BLU-RAY - March 13th

Desiree [M] (1954) BLU-RAY - April 10th

Bell, Book & Candle (1958) BLU-RAY - April 10th

Journey to the Center of the Earth (1959) BLU-RAY - May 8th

The Big Heat (1953) BLU-RAY - May 8th

John Steinbeck's The Wayward Bus (1957) BLU-RAY - June 12th

As Good As It Gets (1997) BLU-RAY - June 1

Lastly, I mentioned The Paper early in this blatherthon. It’s still in full frame, and Universal’s completely abandoned this gem. Before Ron Howard went schmaltzy and worked one too many times with James Horner to create treackly, gooey muck, he made this great little black comedy in 1994 that feels like a tribute to rapid 1940s newspaper thrillers. It’s wry, it has an amazing cast (LOOK AT THE CAST), and features a great Randy Newman score (yes, he croons the End Credit song).

Won’t someone care enough to release this on Blu? Anyone? We’ve got Waterworld, and that made less money and garnered less critical acclaim, and yet Waterworld exists on Blu and as an expanded sea monster / director’s cut edition.

Mark R. Hasan, Editor
KQEK.com ( Main Site / Mobile Site )

Festivals-a-Go-Go + Battle Royale

2012-02-27T00:26:00.000-05:00

Although the Shinsedai Cinema Festival runs July 12-15, the organization alerted fans on their website of a special screening next week of Kinji Fukasaku’s Battle Royale (2000), presented in conjunction with Fangoria’s Fright Nights at the Projection Booth, and to help launch Anchor Bay’s long, LONG awaited North American home video release.

Years ago the label had tried to get distribution rights, but the fees were reportedly too high, leaving a weird array if U.K., South Korean, and Japanese releases for fans to snap up, each offering a different cut, different extras, and subtitle options with qualitative differences in each English translation. It was inevitable the film’s owners would come down from their high horse and license the film for something reasonable, and in a set that assembles every damn thing so fans can finally be happy in whatever Region they live.

No details on whether Friday March 2nd’s screening is from a film print or HD source, but this film should’ve been in regular circulation YEARS AGO. Let this be the first round of local screenings on a yearly basis for what is the most messed up film about teens ever made.

Also screening that evening is the world premiere of Familiar, the latest short film by Richard Powell and Zach Green. Here’s a funny case of six degrees of separation: star Robert Nolan appeared in a number of short films at my old alma mater (whose name I shan’t say, but it rhymes with “dork”), as did co-star, Astrida Auza. Funnier factoid: she was also in my short film, The Bare Bones (1992), appearing in a brief flashback scene as the hero's pregnant wife prior to her 'accidental' death in a peach peeling machine; and in an accounting video I co-made with a pal at Chamberlain Productions a few years after.

Toronto has 4+ million people, but it’s really not so big. Glad the pair is still active in their favourite profession. As for the accounting video, it convinced me never to make another industrial video again (very, very bad contract that yielded no profit), and The Bare Bones will only appear on video when I replace an antiquated, pre-internet era transfer with a proper HD version. If I can get a 'decent' transfer of the trailer, I'll plop it onto YouTube for amusement, since it's actually better than the final product. (This isn't a slight towards the actors, but the twentysomething snot whose dialogue quite frankly stinks.)

The Poetry of Precision: Robert Bresson, Hollywood Classics: The Cinema is Nicholas Ray, and Attack the Bloc: Cold War Science Fiction from Behind the Iron Curtain continue at the TIFF Bell Lightbox, and The Human Rights Watch Film Festival begins this Wed. Feb. 29 thru Thurs. March 8. I’ll have a review of Fernand Melgar’s Special Flight, which kick starts the festival on the 29th.

Mark R. Hasan, Editor
KQEK.com ( Main Site / Mobile Site )

Suburban Tales IV: Durham County, Season 3

2012-02-24T12:20:00.000-05:00

"For God's Sake, someone love me"

Out this week is Canada’s Durham County: Season 3 (Anchor Bay Entertainment Canada / Muse International), probably the final time we’ll see how worse things can get for the Sweeney family unless the series creators go for a fourth season, or a possible feature-length film (which, quite frankly, is possible, since there’s only one really big loose end left).

Year 3 might be a bit too complicated for its own good, but the buildup towards the final episode is wonderful – gorier, crazier, and two leading characters pushed to extremes that should, under normal circumstances, push the average human into a state of total bonkers. Then again, we’re dealing with experts in pain management, which is why so many fans accept the outrageous behaviour than never manages to shatter the Sweeney household into smithereens.

The DVD review [M] is up, and there’s also a set of interviews I conducted back in 2010 prior to the broadcast of Season 3, so feel free to read a Q&A with series producers Adrienne Mitchell and Janice Lundman [M], and composer Peter Chapman [M].

And apropos of nothing in particular (unless you want to tie this towards another strange Canadian endeavor), there’s a series of videos chronicling one man’s 7 year ‘hobby’ in excavating his basement using remote controlled scale models. Just watch one video and tell me this isn’t crazy. It takes soooooo long… Wouldn’t he want the basement done by now?

In the 7 years since he began, VHS and VCR production ceased; Blu-and HD-DVD duked it out and we have a new standard HD format for film fans; TV signals have gone digital; and besides odd manufacturers probably using reconstituted glass, no one’s making TV tubes for consumer home theatres anymore.

Just saying....

Mark R. Hasan, Editor
KQEK.com ( Main Site / Mobile Site )

Festivals-a-Go-Go + Francis lets Napoleon return to the Big Screen

2012-02-19T01:25:00.000-05:00

A swingin' week if there ever was one!

Running Wed. February 22 thru Sun. Feb. 26 is the Reel Artists Film Festival, with documentaries and assorted shorts practitioners in painting, photography, and other visuals arts. From a quick gleaning of the roster, most of the docs are about the artists, and several films come from Germany. A full listing of the intriguing programme is at the organization’s website, and the films are being screened at the TIFF Bell Lightbox.

Speaking of the TBL, the Cinematheque, still ongoing is The Poetry of Precision: The Films of Robert Bresson, Hollywood Classics: The Cinema is Nicholas Ray Part II, and Late Night – Bangkok Dangerous: The Cinema of Nicolas Cage, of which the last is apparently bringing in ‘ebulliant’ and emotionally intoxicated crowds hungry for things Cagey, big and loud.

Saturday's 10pm presentation is Con Air (1997), a big dumb stupid violent loud action film that really should be seen on the big screen to appreciate the insanity of this obscenely well-cast action monster from Jerry Bruckheimer, and director Simon West (auteur of the never-to-be-appreciated When a Stranger Calls remake. Blacch!).

At the NFB Mediatheque Toronto is a 60 year display tribute to the National Ballet of Canada, which runs Feb. 21 – 29, with film screenings and Q&A sessions, including Victoria Tennant’s Celia Franca: Tour de Force & Ballet Adagio & Pas de Deux.

Cineplex's Front Row Centre Events, which seems to regularly offer HD screenings of classic films and HD feeds of opera and Shakespearean plays is presenting Cinema Kabuki at selected Toronto & Vancouver venues - in T.O. it's the Scotiabank Theatre. Screenings are Wed. Feb. 22 and Thurs. Feb. 23.

Lastly, The Bloor Cinema is slated to (finally!) reopen in March, starting with free screenings of Waste Land March 12 & 13. Being Elmo: A Puppeteer’s Journey and Corman’s World: The Exploits of a Hollywood Rebel (also due on DVD via Anchor Bay March 27) begin March 16, the day scheduled programming is to begin since the theatre was closed & renovated by its new owners, the HotDocs organization / Blue Ice Group. A National Post piece has some additional info.

Oh, and if you happen to be in L.A. this weekend, the Los Angeles Italia Film Festival runs from Feb. 19 – 25, featuring movies directed by Sergio Corbucci, Dario Argento (including a 25 mins. preview of Dracula 3D), and more. Wouldn't it be great if the festival was transplanted to Hogtown?

And in San Francisco, Abel Gance’s Napoleon (1927) will have a limited engagement (March 24, 25, 31, and April 1) at the Paramount Theatre, Oakland. Tickets range from $53 – 135 smackaroons, and Carl Davis will conduct the score Francis Ford Coppola has forbidden the rest of the world to hear for the 5.5 hour restoration Kevin Brownlow undertook years ago and was also unable to show in North America.

Turns out this is the only U.S. venue of this rare screening, largely due to technical and grating rights issues [namely Coppola preferring his dad’s music score]. No Canadian dates yet, but we do have the TBL, and Roy Thompson Hall. The last time the film was shown in Toronto was 1981. I was 13, and didn’t see it. I don’t wish to wait another THIRTY-ONE YEARS because by then I’ll be really, really old.

Mark R. Hasan, Editor
KQEK.com ( Main Site / Mobile Site )

Interview with composer Andrew Lockington + Soundtrack News & Reviews

2012-02-17T13:44:00.000-05:00

Because of time, I must restrict all editorial blather to bare minimums, so this one’s going to be quick!

New stuff:

Just uploaded an interview [M] with Andrew Lockington, were he discusses travelling to Papua, New Guinea, for research prior to writing the full score for Journey 2: The Mysterious Island, the sequel to 2008’s Journey to the Center of the Earth. Both were filmed in 3D, and feature standout, full-blooded orchestral scores by Lockington.

Most unexpected surprise: Lockington used a trio Zoom H4n digital recorders to capture ancient percussion sounds, which performed well under jungle duress. I bought a unit a year ago for voice work & sound effects recording, and it frankly rocks.

The album’s available from Amazon.com as a downloadable digital and reportedly CDR (which I’d go for, given the score exceptionally engineered).

Most unnecessary fact that is still impressive: The Rock can indeed sing!

Latest CD reviews:

Andrew Lockington’s Journey 2: The Mysterious Island [M] (Water Tower / Warner); John Williams’ The Adventures of Tintin [M] (Sony Classical); Alberto Iglesias’s mysteriously soothing Tinker Tailer Soldier Spy [M] (Silva Screen); Jerry Goldsmith’s Tora! Tora! Tora! [M] (La-La Land remaster); and Shirley Walker’s Space: Above and Beyond [M] (La-La Land set, packing about 4 hours of music onto 3 CDs).

Lastest Soundtrack News:

FSM just announced their latest release: a 5-CD set featuring Miklos Rozsa’s Ben-Hur. The set includes the film soundtrack, alternates & unused cues, and the re-recorded cues conducted by Carlo Savina. Yes, forget about paying off the Xmas VISA bill. You’re screwed again. Read the liner notes here.

Intrada’s new 2 releases are Robert Folk’s Troll in Central Park, and Gil Melle’s Borderline – making the latter the third Melle CD the label’s released, after Andromeda Strain and The Organization [M]. For fans of this underrated, under-represented composer, this is awesome news!

Collectors note: Bruce Broughton’s The First Olympics Athens 1896 and John Barry’s The Last Valley will no longer be available from Intrada after Feb. 27.

Spain’s Quartet Records will release James William Guercio’s Electra Glide in Blue (original LP configuration) with new liner notes by Randall D. Larson.

Perseverance will release Jerry Fielding’s The Gauntlet (original LP configuration).

La-La Land’s latest mega-restoration is a 3-CD set of Danny Elfman’s Planet of the Apes. Tim Burton’s movie? A mess, and a stupid twist finale that makes zero sense. The music? Wonderful, specifically the Main Title that ranks as one of Elfman’s best.

Lastly, it’s worth checking out Message Boards because there are often nuggets of info people post that I’d never have known existed. The proof? Jim Doherty’s link to a plethora of music by Ronald Stein on Amazon.com.

Stein composed fun music for many Roger Corman films – his best may be The Last Woman on Earth – as well as the cult classic Dinosaurus! which I happily reviewed – the film, and the soundtrack album from now-dead Percepto Records. That label featured several hours of Stein’s music in a 5-CD set back in 2007, and some of the scores have been expanded for digital albums, like A Man Called Dagger.

For fans of B-movie music, this is amazing, and for fans of Stein’s similarly skilled colleagues, there’s hope maybe their music from assorted major, middle, and minor films will get some commercial time online.

Also available from Amazon – Quincy Jones LPs from Mercury and long-dead Bell Records, like Bob & Carol & Ted & Alice, and For Love of Ivy.

Next: Italy’s Cometa has the second edition of its’ Virtual Vinyl series on DVD, which bears some explanation. In a nutshell, it’s film music remastered in Dolby Digital 5.1 on DVD, with video of (presumably) a turntable playing a record and / or glimpses of the notation from written staphs. The sales pitch is a bit fuzzy, but Vol. 1, Opposte Esperienze, featured library music by Ennio Morricone, and Vol. 2 (available for pre-order) offers Morricone’s Who Saw Her Die? with 6 previously unreleased alternates.

If you click on each link, a looped Italian video plays (with English subtitles) explaining to some degree what it all about. One point of objection: the statement “vinyl LP’s almost don’t exist any longer” is incorrect; if that were the case, Matt Rowe wouldn’t have so much material to report & cover at Musictap.net.

Speaking of which: label Real Gone Records will release a Frankie Avalon set, Muscle Beach Party: The United Artists Sessions, and Rawhide’s Clint Eastwood Sings Cowboy Favorites. From a quick track glimpse, it seems the former doesn’t offer Avalon’s Beach Party songs La-La Land weren’t able to include on the CD of Beach Blanket Bingo, due to high license feels.

Lastly, Austin Wintory [M], composer of Grace [M, appears in Us and the Game Industry, a video “about the new thinkers at the new frontier of experimental computer game development.,” of which the trailer is archived at Vimeo.

That is all.

Mark R. Hasan, Editor
KQEK.com ( Main Site / Mobile Site )

Festivals-a-Go-Go + Robert Bresson, Part I

2012-02-12T13:43:00.000-05:00

This past Thursday the TIFF Bell Lightbox began their latest series, the much-touted The Poetry of Precision: The Films of Robert Bresson, the first retrospective of France’s idiosyncratic director in 15 years, and the offering is every one of his films. (Only his debut, the 1934 comedic short Public Affairs / Les affaires publiques, was unavailable).

The series of 13 films begins with A Man Escaped [M] (1956), his best-known work, and perhaps the prototypical prison escape drama. Naturally, it's not available on DVD in North America; alongside L’Argent (1983) and Lancelot of the Lake (1974), Escaped was released by New Yorker, but perhaps it may reappear, now that the once-dead label has been resuscitated by new owners.

The bulk of his key work - Pickpocket (1959), Mouchette (1967), Diary of a Country Priest (1959), Les Dames du Bois de Boulogne (1945), and Au hazard Balthazar (1966) - is out on Criterion, but hefty chunks from his later period remain unavailable on DVD, except in Europe.

These rarities (all part of the retrospective) include Les Anges du peche (1943), Trial of Joan of Arc (1962), Le Diable probablement (1977), Une femme douce (1969), and Four Nights of a Dreamer (1971), so there’s plenty of material to choose from.

Those who missed 3D screenings of Steven Spielberg’s The Adventures of Tintin can find it at the Fox Theatre this week, whereas folks wanting some documentary substance can find Black History Month selections at the NFB’s Mediatheque, and a mix of subjects at The Projection Booth, including Nostalgia for the Light, My Perestroika, and The Ponzi Scheme.

The Toronto Underground Cinema’s website’s been rather blank for a while, but in addition to NOW listings, the cinema’s Twitter feed does provide screening updates, such as this weekend’s I Hate Toronto: A Love Story, which a number of critics seem to really hate.

Adam Neremberg made a mediocre documentary of the country’s alleged (confirmed?) hate-on for the city, but apparently there’s no venal tirade within Daniel Wilson’s film about why a character loathes T.O. Not that it isn’t possible to hate T.O., aka Hogtown, aka The Big Smoke, given we have the country’s dumbest mayor who doesn’t believe when council votes, he has to abide by its wishes.

His pre-vote plea to council is filled with repeated keywords and irony (listen for the broad chuckles when he mentions the word "politics" around the midpoint), but I've never understood why anyone believed his TTC plan was viable. The same inarticulate demeanor, repeated keywords, and vaguely sketched funding plan was evident in his 2010 pre-election YouTube video, so we shouldn't be surprised by his moronic claim about an 'irrelevant' council vote this past week.

'Nuff said.

Finally, George Lucas has re-released The Phantom Menace in 3D, as promised years ago when he felt his one-franchise legacy needed another retooling for the masses.

Does anyone care? Will anyone care when it debuts on Blu-ray in a BR-3D, BR, DVD, Digital Copy package at Xmas? Will anyone go see the second dull entry in 2013 when he repeats the release scheme? Will the world finally acknowledge the prequels are terribly boring films made by a merchandising licensor who was never a good director in the first place?

Here’s some irony: whereas Disney uses their 'vault' as an excuse to re-release moratorium-shackled films every few years, Lucas just rolls them out in differently treated media formats. The difference: Disney makes new movies once in a while and restores them (minus insensitive ethnic minutia), whereas George indulges in the ongoing practice of Lucasification, changing things because he can.

The prequels are still the same terrible films with bad dialogue, bulbous hairstyles & rattails, and wonky casting. Here’s a posit: if everyone who wanted the films on Blu bought them in 2011, and George has no intention of releasing the original 70s / 80s entries in their non-Lucasified versions, what in the hell is he going to sell at Xmas 2012 and 2013?

Even the Bond franchise needed a reboot (Casino Royale) after a gradual downward spiral, but the promise of a new entry every few years at least offers whatever creative team in charge of Bond film “X” an opportunity to overhaul and improve things now and then (badly needed this time, after the ineptly edited & paced Quantum of Solace).

George just has the same 6 films, and way too much time to fiddle when he could try a new franchise. How about The Adventures of Space Potato: Paprika Mash-Up 2045? There’s no way he can Lucasify potatoes 10 years down the line.

So far, the reviews seem to chime the same tune: even in 3D, the flaws that upset critics and sensible fans alike are still very much present (except this very odd one). What is it the ING barker says on TV? Save your money?

Mark R. Hasan, Editor
KQEK.com ( Main Site / Mobile Site )

Mysterious Island (1961), Twilight Time’s Nick Redman, and readjusting the concept of MODs

2012-02-06T01:20:00.000-05:00

PART I: Mysterious Island on Blu, and Twilight Time Turns One

In less than a month, indie home video label Twilight Time will celebrate its 1 year anniversary, and I’m pretty sure its founders, employees and contributors will look back with pride at what was accomplished.

This could apply to any label that aspires to essentially fill a void that’s kept niche fans hungry for ages. I use the term niche deliberately, and with some regret, because that’s what seems to happen as a generation of film fans (or film music fans) age, and titles that were once cherished just doesn’t impact people the way they used to.

I also bring up film music because Nick Redman’s been involved in both camps for more than two decades, which is why fans from both film and film music camps know his name is a sign of quality. This isn’t fawning adulation; I’ve been collecting soundtracks since I was 14 (great, thirty Goddamn years just wooshed through my chest), and there are certain names that have remained constant with the running of certain pioneering companies, the restoration of certain soundtracks, the engineering of certain recordings, and doing good work that literally ensures studio assets that have remained dusty and ignored not only see the light of day, but are given a small nudge into the commercial realm – sometimes for the very first time.

He was a key member of the Bay Cities team before that memorable soundtrack label passed away; and has maintained an ongoing relationship with Fox’s music and home video departments, which is why rare soundtracks emerged on the ephemeral Fox Music label during the 1990s, and more recently we’ve started to see certain Fox films either premiere on DVD, or finally make their way to Region 1 land after being widely available in Europe.

Now, at this stage I’d suggest jumping to the interview [M] with Nick Redman, and then check out the review of Twilight Time’s Mysterious Island [M] (yes, the 1961 Ray Harryhausen classic!) Blu-ray, and a review of the original Bernard Herrmann soundtrack recording [M] from Cloud Nine Records, because what follows next could be misconstrued as a bit of a rant; it’s still tied to the above paragraphs, but it (er, I) digress(es), and it may contain some spoilers.

So, after you've read the above interview & reviews, 1) grab a coffee and (preferably) something loaded with sugar; 2) read the last two paragraphs again; and 3) move to:

PART II: MOD - Selling an Illusion

Now then. Welcome back!

In our lengthy Q&A, we discussed these issues because they’re affected the kind of films you like to watch but aren’t seeing very much of on physical media, and what’s striking are similarities between what happened to the soundtrack market that was at one time almost exclusively dominated by major labels prior to indies such as Varese Sarabande and Citadel reissuing Decca titles and acetate recordings of music long forgotten.

There is a constant battle with fans to maintain a work’s relevance, and it seems to become more urgent as one ages, but I wonder if Tony Thomas’ efforts to rescue acetate recordings by Max Steiner and Hans J. Salter on LP 40 years ago are any different than La-La Land rescuing 1980s orchestral / electronic fusion scores by Jerry Goldsmith that were released in truncated 35-40 mins. albums (such as First Night [M], or Sleeping with the Enemy [M]).

I think they are, and it’s because of the radical changes in the way media – the physical delivery unit of music and films – has lost a chunk of its relevancy. If several generations have mitigated the shift towards digital media, then it’s logical older generations will do the same because it’s simple the way things are going; no one wants to have boxes of heavy videotapes (I still have a locker of them), painfully heavy laserdiscs (I curbed those I couldn’t sell), or racks of CDs hogging valuable wall and floor space. The fact so much can fit onto something so small digitally makes the need to hold onto anything chunky and heavy absurd.

And yet four of the colleagues at work – all twentysomethings – own record players. One’s rabidly buying old and new vinyl, while the other’s plugged her turntable into her TV until she gets a pre-amp. Yes, they are a minority, but they’re not stubborn holdouts or fad followers. I’m still buying a select amount of CDs, because after spinning MP3 and FLAC files, there are specific albums I want in their highest quality format, which I then pipe through a 40 year old Marantz (which by the way, looks and sounds Holy).

The digression here is deliberate: I’m a minority as much as the aging classic film fans wanting favourite movies on DVD and Blu, because there are simply less people buying these titles on disc. The slide has been ongoing for several years, and the question is whether it’ll bottom out and settle into a niche market like vinyl, or die out.

The home video industry’s survival has depended on shared relationships between consumers, distributors, broadcasters, manufacturers, and that thing once called rental shops, of which there are fewer and fewer each year. If several of these key members steps away from the marriage within a short time span, there’s a mess of instability that ripples from one to the other, which is one reason why fewer sales of classic films has resulted in a concentration by studio labels on new and best-selling titles in physical and digital formats that appear to have sustainability.

That’s also why we have crazy single-title offerings like 3DBD + BD + DVD + Digital Copy, which frankly can’t last because the manufacturing cost on these monster sets are high, and the returns months later must be brutal. It’s literally the equivalent of issuing an album on CD, USB, cassette tape, LP, and micro-SD, plus a time-limited cloud account.

I know back when I was snapping up LPs in high school at Peter Dunn’s Vinyl Museum (do a Google search), I found many useless mono pressings no one wanted because during the late 50s through to the late-late 60s, the labels felt there was a need to cater to the mono-crowd because stereo was still regarded as upscale and faddish (or, conversely, labels knew they good make an extra buck per item by selling the soon-to-be-stereo-standard at a premium, much in the way it’s taken 4-odd years for Blu-ray prices to level towards something logical).

There are familiar patterns when one examines history, and they help in discerning what’s rational, what’s a hasty decision, and what’s stupid (er, the protracted HD-DVD vs. Blu-ray battle), but certainly one issue is whether nostalgia can exist and be fed and nurtured without blanket abandonment, and the signs, for now, seem to suggest indie video labels are not lonely keeping catalogue films alive, but rescuing many others from oblivion. They may not remain in print for a decade or be manufactured in large numbers, but as we know, things are changing and shrinking and shifting.

But here’s a new quandary which should familiar if you’ve read this far: how much longer can studios sell on-demand [MOD] titles – digitally or physically as DVD-Rs – for $20?

I doubt they understand the difficulty in explaining to a less than tech-savvy film fan (of which there are legions) how a non-returnable purple DVD-R is not only different from an off-the shelf silver disc, but why studios are adopting this weird trend.

Whether it’s Warner, Universal, Sony, Disney, or MGM, MOD is in a state of utter absurdity: it’s brilliant in terms of making niche titles available to a niche market, but absurd in the way the product is being exploited as prestige “limited” products.

MOD = on-demand. I.e.: you ask for it, they make it. There’s no vault or limited run that mandates that, after some hidden figure is reached, titles like MGM’s The Satan Bug is gone forever. (It’s not; and it was released in Italy on a nice DVD.)

Some MOD titles – like Warner Archives’ The Night Digger – were remastered. Now, if a film on a lesser format with an unknown lifespan is remastered, it means it can come out again, which in theory should make it cheaper, since the nature of reissues and remastered titles on a lesser format is sell-through.

Casablanca is poised to be reissued in a gorgeous new HD transfer on Blu from Warner Home Video, and yet those wanting a budget version of the film can still select between two prior 2-disc special editions on DVD – you know, the lesser format that has a better documented longer lifespan and history of sustaining physical abuse. If you drop a DVD-R and the edge makes contact with a hard surface, it splits, and your imported $36 CAD Warner Archive is a coaster.

While prior MOD titles have generally focused on previously unavailable films, TV series, and TV movies, we’re now seeing former catalogue titles going MOD. Case in point: Akira Kurosawa’s Dreams, which was released in 2003 on DVD in a snapper case and sold in-store for around $15, and now out of print / deleted, but has been brought back in 2011 as a MOD title for $15 + shipping via Warner Archives’ site (shipped to U.S. destinations only); $20 + shipping at Oldies.com, and at TCM Shop; and $25 on Amazon.com + shipping.

There is no premium value one can associate with a DVD-R housed in an alpha case with a soft-focus, colour laserprint of scanned DVD box art. Collectors will track down old stock of the DVD release (which still exists, albeit now at collector prices pushing past $30), or perhaps rent the DVD – which happens to be a classic foreign film by a filmmaking giant whose works are taught in schools and exhibited in cinematheques – and rip it, or download it.

At $10, a Kurosawa MOD is a bargain, but at $20-30 (when shipping & taxes are taken into account), you’re insulting your target niche audience by gouging them, and convincing a specific generation comfortable with ‘getting things for free’ to ignore a legal alternative, and partake in the illegal activities the MOD program in theory should be reducing through widespread availability, economical pricing, and easy vendor accessibility.

The indie labels that exist – and there are many of them – may not be vital to any single studio’s survival, but they keep the catalogue titles relevant; it’s a synergistic relationship (yes, that word is vintage 1992), but while indie labels treat their versions as the Citizen Kanes of silent film, blaxploitation, slashers, eighties nostalgia, or Euro-sleaze, the MOD program is playing the same old game: it’s a new format, a new system, and there’s a premium attached to it.

TCM’s Greatest [insert genre / actor / actress / franchise here] collections essentially repackage 4 movies for $20-30 – movies that if bought separately would cost $30-50.

Secondly, the moment MGM via Fox started reissuing select, best-selling catalogue titles like It’s a Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad World [M] or the new Spellbound (streeting this week) on Blu-ray for under $17, it broke the glass barrier that once mandated all Blu-rays be above $20 because it’s a ‘new’ premium format.

If Blu-ray is the norm (it is), and if HD transfers are mandatory for their success with consumers owning HD sets, and if catalogue material still has life being mass-produced for $17 by the studios, there’s no justification for the MOD program to exist if its price point is rooted the delusional tactic of making something seem special by making it pricey.

It’s a burn made by a guy named Gus who sits on an office chair and presses a few buttons to re-route a file from a hard drive to a DVD burner, or more than likely, a mass-produced run of 5,000-10,000 copies that sit in a smaller warehouse, ready to be shipped, and when stock runs low, based on pre-orders, another run is made with adjustments, taking into account noticeable increases / decreases in orders from the last two quarters.

You can make a lot by offering very little for $20, but you could make more if you charged less and made your product available internationally through the wonders of online mail order using existing replication and fulfillment houses.

As I raised near the end of the Q&A, a studio-branded release still has the stamp of quality, and even with a lower price point, it works. Remember all those bare bones, single layer DVDs MGM dumped in Walmarts and made a fortune? MOD has the potential to become a modest windfall if key barriers are dropped.

Which label is willing to take the initiative?

Mark R. Hasan, Editor
KQEK.com ( Main Site / Mobile Site )

Return of Intruder (1989)

2012-02-04T14:37:00.000-05:00

Yup, you get to see the before, the during, and the after of this poor chum.

Scott Spiegel’s Intruder [M] (1989) is more notorious for its gore sequences and the casting of brothers Sam and Ted Raimi (both of whom die violently as night shift workers in a soon-to-be-shuttered grocery store), but shorn of these key elements, Spiegel’s directorial debut is pretty much a ‘meh’ effort; not awful, but not brilliant, even though there are several strong aspects to the film (notably the location).

For Raimi fans, Synapse’s new Blu-ray is a welcome addition to the collection, given the film’s first VHS release was snipped of its nastiness, and the prior uncut DVD edition from Wizard was a bare bones release. This is the definitive release, and it helps fill in those little gaps that make up the early efforts by members of Sam Raimi’s filmmaking clan.

I’m not sure how you’d classify the group – a clique? The Michigan Gonzo Collective? – but it’s pretty amazing that a group of avid movie fans who made Super 8 shorts together as best friends managed to fulfill their goals and become filmmakers, period.

1989 was also a year where members Ted, Sam, and master thespian and chin-endowed Bruce Campbell sort of hovered between projects initialized by themselves, written by, produced, doctored, or appeared in roles either for the fun of it, as favours, or a gag. Not including the Super 8 shorts, there remain a handful of feature films still unavailable on DVD and / or Blu-ray, or at least in versions or special editions deserving of the group (if not purely for fan benefit).

With Intruder off the list, that leaves Crimewave (1985), Easy Wheels (1989), The Nutt House (1992), and from my list, a widescreen Indian Summer (1993), where Sam plays a nearly mute camp hand who’s just 'there,' doing work, and occasionally getting hit very hard where it hurts.

Spiegel isn’t as skilled as colleague Josh Becker (Running Time), and his mania for hitting audiences with bizarre camera angles is interminable, but Intruder does have a few genuine merits, and the review addresses the film’s pros & cons.

Mark R. Hasan, Editor
KQEK.com ( Main Site / Mobile Site )

Festivals-a-Go-Go: Feb. 3-5 + R.I.P. The Cinesphere?

2012-02-03T15:40:00.000-05:00

Before I roll off a quick tally of interesting things screening at interesting venues this weekend (bobby-pins, please), here’s a video released by NASA this week showing the dark side of the moon, proving Pink Floyd does not have a secret base in crater XB-14.

Why is this important? It’s just cool. The footage resembles Ridley Scott’s blazing Alien trailer of a giant egg scraping up from the base of the cinema screen. Add your own sound effects if needed, but it’s a great little video showing a side of the moon we never see because of its different rotation schedule. Of course, had we never been able to venture up to the moon via space probe imaging, a certain percentage of the populace would still believe there’s green cheese growing in the dank darkness, or maybe moon cows, as prophesized by H.G. Wells in his very silly pulp tale First Men in the Moon. (Happily Ray Harryhausen dumped that element from his film adaptation.)

Still ongoing at the TIFF Bell Lightbox is Attack the Bloc: Cold War Science Fiction from Behind the Iron Curtain, featuring an alluring smattering of sci-fi films from the former Soviet Union, East Germany, Estonia, and other neighbouring countries. I’ll have a review of the recently screened Dead Mountaineer’s Inn (1979) shortly, with a related review of its very cool soundtrack album, and reviews of other recently screened sci-fi rarities.

There’s also Bangkok Dangerous: The Cinema of Nicholas Cage that seems to celebrate the actor’s performance excess in his bawdiest work. If you haven’t seen The Rock, do so this Saturday at 10pm, because it’s a big loud stupid Michael Bay film in all its goodness. Only question: why name the series after one of Cage’s worst films?

Lastly, Part 2 of Hollywood Classics: The Cinema is Nicholas Ray continues With Johnny Guitar, and The Way Home: The Films of Yilmaz Guney concludes Sunday.

The Projection Booth is screening Werner Herzog’s Caves of Forgotten Dreams [M] (likely not in 3D, but still worth seeing on a big screen), and while the Cinesphere is still listed with a weekend schedule, apparently the whole park is locked up, except for the Molson Amphitheatre and Atlantis event complex. This doesn’t bode well for the world’s first permanent IMAX cinema, which was previously threatened with a closure and possible redevelopment (read: destruction).

The province wants to save money, but it’ll be a tragedy if the iconic dome is gutted the way the McLaughlin Planetarium was hollowed out and relegated to a circular (and impractical) storage shed. Torontoist has a new photo spread, but 2010’s historical essay by Jamie Bradburn offers a few archival images and multimedia goodies from its opening in 1971.

Does anyone remember the excitement, waiting in line, inching closer to the dark entrance, and making that steep ascent to the seating area before the lights dimmed and the massive screen was filled with an IMAX film?

If the province wants to turn the money-losing venture into a profitable year-round business, be smart, and don’t kill off the unique architecture, nor relegate its historical components into commercial banalities like a casino. Ontario Place should be filled with unique draws, and its accessibility – by car and transit – has to be improved. No one ever liked that horrible drive home through terrible traffic after a concert, or the mega-walk just to reach a transit hub. The park was built for the car culture, but traffic made that trip less agreeable years ago.

The wait begins, and so does the fear of what level of cultural negligence the province endeavor as it mulls over the park, and wonderful chunk of Canadian cinema history (albeit with bad seating, but that can be fixed).

Mark R. Hasan, Editor
KQEK.com ( Main Site / Mobile Site )