The Screengrab : criterion collection

DVD Digest for May 19, 2009

Paul Clark — Tue, 19 May 2009 14:00:00 GMT

This week, the same old stuff you always get from DVD Digest. Also, a new Steven Seagal movie!

For some people reading this column, the news that the recent releases Valkyrie (MGM, also Blu-Ray), Paul Blart: Mall Cop (Sony, also Blu-Ray), and My Bloody Valentine 3D (Lionsgate, also Blu-Ray) will be more important than anything else. But we’re looking out for the rest of you as well. And if none of these titles quicken your pulse- and I perfectly understand if they don’t- there’s always the latest from movie-star-turned-musician-turned-energy-drink-magnate (take that, Billy Bob Thornton!) Steven Seagal, Driven to Kill (Fox, also Blu-Ray). On the other side of things, the artsy and fartsy out there should be salivating over the release of John Gianvito’s excellent Profit Motive and the Whispering Wind (E1 Entertainment). In other words, something for everybody!

And what would a DVD Digest be without the classics section, for those of you who aren’t all uptight about black-and-white, subtitles, Academy ratio, and long-dead movie stars. Devotees of the Criterion Collection no doubt already know about the dynamic duo of DVDs hitting streets today. First, Peter Yates' great Boston crime drama The Friends of Eddie Coyle (Criterion) makes its long-awaited DVD debut. Or if you’re in the mood for something more, uh, Eastern, check out Pigs, Pimps & Prostitutes: 3 Films by Shohei Imamura (Criterion)- includes The Insect Woman, Pigs and Battleships, Intentions of Murder. Fans of old Hollywood would be advised to pick up two John Wayne favorites, El Dorado Centennial Edition (Paramount) and The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance Centennial Edition (Paramount). And by some happy coincidence, today’s release of Fritz Lang’s Nazi-hunting thriller Man Hunt (Fox) is timed perfectly with the release of the aforementioned Valkyrie. Funny how that worked out, dontcha find?

Fans of TV on DVD should find something to enjoy among this week’s releases, which include the ever-popular 24 Season 7 (Fox, also Blu-Ray), Alan Ball’s vampire saga True Blood (HBO, also Blu-Ray), and the no-longer-surprising-in-its-awesomeness Friday Night Lights Season 3 (Universal).

Finally, if you’ve a Blu-Ray player, you’re in luck! Today’s a big one for Blu-Ray only releases, highlighted by the Batman 20th Anniversary Blu-Ray Book (Warner), which includes a Batmobile full of extras, documentaries, and other cool stuff. For the kids, A Bug’s Life (Disney) hits stores to capitalize on the upcoming Pixar release Up, while those who are looking forward to the latest Terminator blockbuster will no doubt pick up Terminator 2 Skynet Edition (Lionsgate). The political drama Lions for Lambs (Fox) is coming out for fans of political speechifying. Finally, Paramount’s got a whole slew of new Blu-Ray only releases hitting stores today, including Three Days of the Condor, Changing Lanes, Enemy at the Gates, Paycheck, and The Machinist.

DVD Digest for April 28, 2009

Paul Clark — Tue, 28 Apr 2009 14:00:00 GMT

This week, Hollywood January-doldrums releases start finding their way to DVD, while the studios continue to flood the market with tie-ins to their upcoming summer blockbusters.

Hey, remember three months ago when Bride Wars (Fox, also Blu-Ray), Hotel for Dogs (Disney, also Blu-Ray), and The Uninvited (Paramount, also Blu-Ray) all got released in theatres? If not, they’ll all be hitting DVD today to remind you of their existence. Other recent releases hitting stores this week: Mark Ruffalo and Ethan Hawke in What Doesn’t Kill You (Sony, also Blu-Ray); Van Damme goes arthouse in JCVD (Peace Arch); Rod Lurie’s Valerie Plame-inspired drama Nothing But the Truth (Sony); and the documentary Stranded: I’ve come from a plane that crashed in the mountains (Zeitgeist), about the same plane crash that inspired the book and movie Alive.

This week’s biggest classics release is a pair of films from the great, controversial Japanese director Nagisa Oshima, In the Realm of the Senses (Criterion, also Blu-Ray) and Empire of Passion (Criterion). Both films, originally released during Oshima’s fertile mid-1970s period, will be released with plenty of extras, including documentaries, interviews, and even cut (sorry) scenes on the Realm disc. Also today, Criterion will be releasing a new edition of Stephen Frears’ British gangster drama The Hit, and Jim McBride’s semi-forgotten cult classic Glen and Randa (VCI) will hit stores as well.

New TV on DVD releases hitting stores today include: Seth McFarlane’s American Dad vol. 4 (Fox), and the animated series Marvel X-Men vol. 1 and vol. 2 (both Disney).

And just in time for their new big-screen counterparts to arrive in theatres, Star Trek: The Original Series vol. 1 (Paramount) and The Da Vinci Code (Sony) will arrive today in Blu-Ray only releases.

Finally, with this week’s Plot Synopsis of the Week, I’ve decided to spotlight something other than a Japanimation title this time. There are plenty of movies like Fox’s new direct-to-DVD feature Legally Blondes dumped into the market every week, but this one caught my attention mostly because it hits all the expected marks for a movie of this kind. It almost sounds like a parody. Don’t believe me? Check it out:

Elle Woods may have moved upward and onward through law school, but her pink and frilly spirit lives on in her young, adorable cousins Annabelle and Isabelle (Camilla and Rebecca Rosso). Fresh from England, the blond twosome assume their fashion savviness will help them make friends at their new California prep academy in no time flat. One can imagine their frizz-inducing horror, then, when they discover that their new place of learning is run by uniform-loving, junior-capitalist snobs! After the most influential students at school frame Anna and Izzy for a crime they didn’t commit, it’s up to the girls to prove not only their innocence but their capabilities. Reese Witherspoon presents this spin-off of the beloved franchise that helped make her a superstar. LEGALLY BLONDES is helmed by Savage Steve Holland, the quirky director of BETTER OFF DEAD and ONE CRAZY SUMMER.

Translation: Reese Witherspoon got sick of playing Elle Woods after installment #2, but she was still contracted for one more movie. So instead of shelling out to make her happy, we’ll have her “present” a cheapo version to polish off the trilogy, thereby allowing us to plaster her name in big letters above the title in order to fool those who don’t look too hard at the DVD boxes. No mention of siblings in the original films, but we can always do the “cousin” connection, since it worked for the American Pie spinoffs, right? The twist this time is that there are two of them- twins, even! No name twins, but what can you do? From there, the plot practically writes itself. Fish-out-of-water comedy, snobbish baddies, little dogs, and blonde jokes out the derriere! How could it miss? Oh, and why not get a comedy director from the eighties who needs the work?

See what I mean?

Videos of the Day: The Undersea World of Jean Painlevé

Phil Nugent — Wed, 22 Apr 2009 14:30:00 GMT

Happy Earth Day! There are a few ways that you can celebrate while expanding your cinematic vocabulary. One might be to immerse yourself in the work of Jean Painlevé, a member of the Surrealist movement whose fascination with nature, combined with his aesthetic interests, led him to compose a Surrealist "zoological" tract and to serve as "chief ant wranger" on Luis Bunuel and Salvador Dali's short film manifesto, Un Chien andalou. Painlevé made hundreds of what might be called nature documentaries, driven by an eye for beauty and a committed search for the unusual. Yesterday, the Criterion Collection released Science Is Fiction, a three-disc collection that brings together 23 of Jean Painlevé's films, along with more than two hours of interviews that he did for TV not long before his death, in 1989, at the age of 96, as well as new soundtrack music recorded by Yo La Tengo. For a taste, check out Painlevé's 1945 short Le Vampire (above), which combines his own film of sealife and vampire bats with footage from F. W. Murnau's great Dracula adaptation Nosferatu, intending an anti-Nazi political message. Below, we see what happens when somebody mates his hypnotically lyrical 1934 sea horse ballet L'Hippocampe with a soundtrack derived from the experimental British band Current 93. Feel free to switch the sound off when the guy starts babbling about spit:

DVD Digest for April 21, 2009

Paul Clark — Tue, 21 Apr 2009 14:00:00 GMT

As the summer movie season approaches, the studios unleash their first wave of DVDs that tie in with the upcoming blockbusters. However, this week also sees the release of one of the most intriguing DVDs so far this year.

Heading this week’s slate of recent releases is Darren Aronofsky’s working-class sports saga The Wrestler (Fox, also Blu-Ray), featuring the towering performance of Oscar-nominated comeback kid Mickey Rourke, as well as the Best Picture nominee Frost/Nixon (Universal, also Blu-Ray), with its televised tête-à-tête between Michael Sheen’s celebrity reporter and Frank Langella’s Tricky Dick. Also this week: the Biggie Smalls biopic Notorious (Fox, also Blu-Ray), and the acclaimed documentary A Jihad for Love (First Run).

As far as I can see there’s only one major classics release this week, but it’s a doozy- Criterion’s Science Is Fiction: 23 Films by Jean Painlevé. Featuring nearly two dozen works from the famed French scientist/filmmaker, this box set also features an original score by Yo La Tengo that accompanies eight of the films, as well as extensive interview footage with Painlevé from the French TV series Jean Painlevé Through His Films. Much has been made in the past of Criterion’s ongoing efforts to release the canonical classics of world cinema in worthy DVD editions, but no less noble is their commitment to honoring more esoteric fare like this, which might not otherwise have gotten released on DVD. I only hope that enough people will pick up this DVD that Criterion will be encouraged to release more like it in the future.

In TV on DVD news, this week sees the release of Caprica (Universal), the prequel to the acclaimed Sci-Fi Network series Battlestar Galactica, and the pilot episode for an upcoming series of the same name.

This week’s most in-demand Blu-Ray only release is the X-Men Trilogy (Fox), which is hitting shelves in advance of the big-screen spinoff entry X-Men Origins: Wolverine. Each of the films is also available separately, if you’d prefer. A comic book movie of a somewhat different stripe is also arriving on Blu-Ray today- Frank Miller and Robert Rodriguez’s Sin City (Disney), which includes both theatrical and “extended” versions, along with plenty of special features. Other Blu-Ray only releases include Charlie Sheen in The Arrival (Lionsgate), and, just in time for Earth Day, the nature doc Arctic Tale (Disney).

Finally, our Synopsis of the Week- a feature which, by rights, ought to be re-titled Anime Synopsis of the Week- is actually a twofer this week, coming as it does from the ADV Films two-pack of Puni Puni Poemi and Kekko Kamen. Here’s the synopsis:

”Aliens annihilate Poemi Watanabe's parents in PUNI PUNI POEMI, so she goes on a revenge program that includes S&M, humongous robots, and the mysterious properties of dead fish. Poemi becomes a superhero in the process, but all she wanted was to be a professional voice actress!”

OK, I guess I get the ways S&M and humongous robots must be related to a plot like this, but the whole “dead fish” plot point sounds so bizarre that it’s one of those things that can only seems to turn up in Japanese animation. Also, I sure do hope that Poemi becomes the superhero voice actress she’s always dreamed of being! Moving on:

”In KEKKO KAMEN, a busty supervixen puts up a losing battle against stripping down to her bare essentials as a parade of creeps-- ranging from a principal to a camera-wielding samurai-- successfully remove her wardrobe.”

Compared to its companion in the DVD set, it doesn’t sound like this one has much of a plot. In fact, if not for the synopsis revealing that the creeps “successfully remove” the heroine’s wardrobe, there would be almost no story to speak of. I do, however, like that the protagonist is a “busty supervixen”, since as any Russ Meyer fan can tell you, that’s the best kind of supervixen.

DVD Digest Special: Unearthed "Treasures"

Paul Clark — Tue, 03 Mar 2009 15:30:00 GMT

In the decade-plus since the introduction of DVD, many cinematic classics have been released in the format. However, the work of avant-garde and experimental filmmakers has been woefully underrepresented thusfar. Admittedly, avant-garde cinema has something of a niche audience, and a collection of experimental works on DVD would never make the splash of a classic narrative film’s debut in the DVD format. Still, despite some notable exceptions like Criterion’s impressive By Brakhage: An Anthology, most of the classics of the various avant-garde cinema movements remain “underground” to this day, available only in battered copies (many of these works exist in a single print) to be seen at museums, festivals, and educational institutions. Because of this, the new DVD set Treasures IV: American Avant Garde Film 1947-1986 is a cause for celebration.

Treasures IV, available on DVD today, is the latest in the National Film Preservation Foundation’s “Treasures” series, spotlighting little-seen works in the cinematic medium. But while the first three sets spotlight mostly silent-era and early sound-era works, this one moves forward in time to four key decades in American avant-garde cinema. Pulling from their own archives and those of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences, the Anthology Film Archives, the Museum of Modern Art, the Pacific Film Archive, and even the New York Public Library’s Donnell Media Center, the NFPF selected 26 key films for this collection, most of which were previously unavailable on DVD. In addition, they’ve painstaking cleaned up and restored the films, and commissioned resident composer John Zorn to write new scores for three of the works. Topping it all off is a book that includes information on each of the films, plus a new foreword by Martin Scorsese.

The results are first-rate. The filmmakers included in the set represent a Murderer’s Row of avant-garde greats: Stan Brakhage, Ken Jacobs, Joseph Cornell, Jonas Mekas, George Kuchar, Shirley Clarke, Hollis Frampton, Owen Land, Bruce Baillie, Robert Breer, Paul Sharits, Ron Rice, Marie Menken, Harry Smith, and even Andy Warhol. Most of these filmmakers are making their DVD debuts, and that in itself is a reason to pick up Treasures IV. But beyond that, it’s simply an invaluable one-stop overview of this important era in avant-garde cinema. While no single DVD set could possibly encompass the entire spectrum of American experimental film, the films here are a surprisingly diverse lot, ranging from seminal works like Frampton’s (nostalgia) to long-unseen classics like Cornell’s By Night With Torch and Spear, and from the haunting style of Baillie’s expressionistic newsreel about a school for emotionally disturbed children Here I Am to the pomposity-deflating humor of Robert Nelson and William T. Wiley’s The Off-Handed Jape… & How to Pull It Off. Here are three of my favorite works in the set:

Go! Go! Go! (Marie Menken, 1962)- my first exposure to Menken’s work, this film takes newly-shot footage of early-1960s New York City and speeds it up to a frantic pace. The film encompasses a broad spectrum of activity, from a wedding and a graduation to boats sailing up and down the Hudson. But most memorable of all are the shots of people simply going about their business. One wouldn’t think that footage of cars moving and people crossing the roads would make for vivid cinema, but Menken shoots them from high above the streets to emphasize the waves of activity, and by speeding up the footage, she takes it out of the realm of the everyday. One can’t help but marvel at the delicate balance that allows society to run smoothly every day, with everyone presumably acting independently yet seemingly guided by some greater force. Go! Go! Go! accomplishes one of the oldest and most noble goals of art- it allows us to see the familiar through fresh eyes.

Necrology (Standish Lawder, 1969-1970)- one of the more obscure filmmakers in this box, Lawder was a film scholar who made Necrology while studying experimental film. The film consists primarily of dozens or even hundreds of people moving in front of the camera lens- people who, as it turns out, were covertly shot by Lawder as they were riding down an escalator while leaving work one day. Lawder then ran the footage the footage backwards through a projector, to eerie effect. But Lawder saved his most brilliant conceit for the end credits. Shifting his musical score from the funereal strains of Sibelius to an upbeat march, Lawder then proceeds to “Credit” every “Cast member” in the film- apocryphally, as it turns out. Listing such characters as “Pederast” and “Embezzler (at-large)”, Lawder cheekily subverts the audience’s desire to give these people exciting back stories, while simultaneously commenting on the way cinematic representation can turn ordinary people into characters and, in doing so, grant them a measure of immortality.

New Improved Institutional Quality: In the Environment of Liquids and Nasals and Parasitic Vowel Sometimes Develops (Owen Land, 1976)- as with Menken, this was my first exposure to the work of Land (born George Landow), and I hope it won’t be my last. This film, a revised version of his early film Institutional Quality- hence the title- takes as its starting point a test being administered to a middle-aged, stern-looking subject played by Art Gower. As the test progresses, the subject imagines himself in the world of the test, brandishing a giant pencil and writing numbers on random objects in keeping with the questioner’s request. Finally, the subject’s mind begins to wander, and the images become ever more surreal- an enormous woman’s shoe, an approximation of a “China Doll” (right) cribbed from a previous Land film, and an alien carrying a sign reading “This Is a Film About You.” New Improved Institutional Quality, like most of Land’s films, deals with language, but it does so in a way that’s visually inspired and often hilarious. A self-important “Art film” this isn’t.

Treasures IV: American Avant Garde Film 1947-1986 would not have been possible without the ongoing efforts of the National Film Preservation Foundation. Click here to visit their official site.

DVD Digest for February 10, 2009

Paul Clark — Tue, 10 Feb 2009 15:00:00 GMT

With St. Valentine’s Day less than a week away, you’d think studios would start rolling out some of their romantic classics on DVD. But I’m seeing very little of that this week, unless of course your idea of romance is vastly different than mine…

DVDs of the Week: But then, for me, nothing says romance like a pair of movies from surrealist master Luis Bunuel. This week brings two of his favorites, The Exterminating Angel and Simon of the Desert, courtesy of the folks at Criterion. The Exterminating Angel is the known quantity for me, a wicked satire of bourgeois manners, in which a group of upper-crusters finds itself unable to leave following a dinner party, which brings them no end of trouble. Simon, Bunuel’s telling of the story of an ascetic who stood atop a remote pillar to prove his love for God, is one I’ve yet to see (do I smell a future Reviews By Request?), but its DVD release is no less noteworthy. The films, made during Bunuel’s sojourn in Mexico, have been given the deluxe Criterion treatment, with new transfers, documentaries, new interviews with actress Sylvia Pinal and others, and more.

Other noteworthy this week is Janus’ Essential Art House: Volume 2, which includes The 400 Blows, Black Orpheus, Pygmalion, La Strada, Ikiru, and The Life and Death of Colonel Blimp in single-disc editions, also available separately. In addition, Lionsgate is releasing new editions of the Wallace and Gromit short films, A Close Shave, A Grand Day Out and The Wrong Trousers. Finally- and I can’t in good conscience call this a classic, though it’s not new- Universal’s got the “Extreme Edition” of the final film from the great Raul Julia, Street Fighter (also Blu-Ray). So if you enjoy things that suck, set aside money for that one.

If newer movies are more your speed, this week’s recent releases coming to DVD include: Courtney Hunt’s double Oscar nominee Frozen River (Sony, also Blu-Ray); Kevin Smith’s Zack and Miri Make a Porno (Genius Products; Samuel L. Jackson and the late Bernie Mac in Soul Men (Genius Products); Richard Gere and Diane Lane in Nights in Rodanthe (Warner, also Blu-Ray); and a pair of very different showbiz satires, Barry Levinson’s What Just Happened? (Magnolia), and Bruce Campbell directing Bruce Campbell in My Name Is Bruce (Image, also Blu-Ray). Also this week, a quartet of curious films from fascinating filmmakers: Oliver Stone’s W. (Lionsgate, also Blu-Ray); Spike Lee’s WW2 drama Miracle at St. Anna (Buena Vista, also Blu-Ray); Fernando Meirelles’ Blindness (Buena Vista); and Eric Rohmer’s The Romance of Astrea and Celadon (E1 Entertainment Distribution), allegedly the master’s final film. Oddly enough, the Rohmer looks to be the most romantic movie in this week’s column. Don’t know if your Dirty Dancing-loving special lady would go for it though…

Finally, a pretty action-packed and bloody lineup of Blu-Ray only releases this week: Martin Scorsese’s classic Raging Bull (MGM); David Cronenberg’s A History of Violence (Warner); a pair of John Grisham adaptations, A Time to Kill and The Pelican Brief (both Warner); a double feature starring The Rock, Doom (Universal) and The Rundown (Universal); and two of Onion AV Club critic Scott Tobias’ New Cult Canon picks, Donnie Darko (Fox) and The Boondock Saints (Fox). Also, Milos Forman’s Amadeus: The Director’s Cut (Warner) and the table-tennis comedy Ping Pong Playa (Image).

Oh, and Pretty Woman (Disney).

Monte Hellman's Desert Island DVDs

Scott Von Doviak — Wed, 28 Jan 2009 16:00:00 GMT

What are Monte Hellman’s 10 favorite Criterion DVDs? The answers may surprise you! “Picking ten is worse than trying to choose between my wives, my dog, and my kids,” says Hellman, and…his wives? I hope he means his spouses served their terms consecutively, not concurrently. And if he has a current wife, I hope she doesn’t see this and learn that he’s having a hard time deciding between her and his past wives…or even his dog.

But I digress. The fact is that Mr. Hellman did manage to pick 10 Criterion DVDs, among them 8 ½ (“I had the pleasure of watching Fellini shoot a scene from City of Women at Cinecittá. I was flattered when he said, ‘Ah, you’re the young director I’ve heard so much about,’ although I was barely younger than he.”), Scenes from a Marriage (“At the time the film first played theatrically in the U.S., I was invited to a private screening of the five-hour television version. As one who’s addicted to marriage, it was a devastating experience.”) and Grand Illusion (“I had the privilege of being a member of a festival jury led by Jean Renoir, and subsequently replaced him as a cameo actor in a film.”) Hellman! What’s with all the name-dropping? Did Peter Bogdanovich ghost-write this list?

Other choices include Notorious and The Lady Eve, but Hellman’s top pick is a bit out of left field: Victor Erice’s The Spirit of the Beehive from 1972. “I’ve probably seen this film more than any other. Nestor Almendros turned me on to it when I was looking for a DP to shoot Iguana. He recommended Luis Cuadrados, but I soon discovered he’d died of a brain tumor, having shot Spirit while 95 percent blind.” You can check out the full list here.

Related:
Vanishing Act: Monte Hellman
Video of the Day: It's Monte Hellman Time!

DVD Digest for January 13, 2008

Paul Clark — Tue, 13 Jan 2009 15:00:00 GMT

This week, Criterion and Eclipse’s salute to the late films of an Italian master takes the top spot, opposite a handful of notable classics and a bunch of recent junk.

DVD of the Week: Having finished yet another holiday season, most of Hollywood’s high-profile recent releases aren’t due on DVD for another few months yet. In other words, it’s the perfect opportunity for Criterion to roll out some of their most interesting work yet. Case in point is this week’s release of several of Roberto Rossellini’s historical films. The most noteworthy of the bunch is his film The Taking of Power by Louis XIV (Criterion), which invests the “historical drama” genre with Rossellini’s trademark realism, turning the genre on its ear by refusing to succumb to its usual picturesque tendencies. In conjunction with this release, Criterion’s sister company has created the box set Eclipse Series 14: Rossellini’s History Films- Renaissance and Enlightenment, which contains three more of Rossellini’s historical films, including The Age of the Medici, Cartesius, and Blaise Pascal, which our own Vadim Rizov praised here a few months ago. In the middle of an Oscar season dominated by biopics and period films, the Rossellini DVD should provide a reprieve from the usual bloated reverence.

The most notable recent release coming to DVD this week is the Ed Harris-directed oater Appaloosa (Warner, also Blu-Ray). Also this week: Kevin Costner in Swing Vote (Disney, also Blu-Ray); Dane Cook and Kate Hudson in My Best Friend’s Girl (Lionsgate, also Blu-Ray); Keifer Sutherland in Mirrors (Fox, also Blu-Ray); Tyler Perry’s The Family That Preys (Lionsgate); the India-set drama Brick Lane (Sony); and the Evelyn Waugh adaptation Brideshead Revisited (Disney).

In the classics department, this week sees the release of Eagle Pennell’s seminal proto-indie The Whole Shootin’ Match (Koch Entertainment Distribution). Also this week are two more Paramount Centennial Collection DVDs both starring Audrey Hepburn, Breakfast at Tiffany’s and Funny Face.

Finally this week’s TV on DVD releases include: Reba Season 5 (Fox) and ’Til Death Complete Second Season (Sony).

Breaking News: Famous Last Words to Return!

Paul Clark — Thu, 01 Jan 2009 20:00:00 GMT

Happy New Year, everybody! While you folks are still nursing your champagne hangovers, I’d like to ring in 2009 in style by announcing that precisely one week from today, everyone’s favorite Screengrab game will be triumphantly returning to this site. That’s right, Famous Last Words is back! And because we know better than to mess with a good thing, Round 3 (i.e. Famous Last Words Beyond Thunderdome) will be adhering to all of the old rules and regulations you know and love! For all you newcomers, here’s a rundown of those rules:

1. Every Thursday at 3 PM Eastern Time, we will post a line or a short dialogue exchange from a movie. You, in turn, will e-Mail us your guesses as to what movie we took the dialogue from. Guesses must be submitted to me in e-Mail form, to the following e-Mail address: famouslastwords@nerve.com.

2. All quotes will be the final spoken lines of the film, delivered by an onscreen character or narrator. Likewise, the words must be audible. In other words, no silent films, and no onscreen text that isn't read aloud.

3. All quotes will be the final lines of the film proper. Any lines spoken in "credit cookies" or post-credits scenes won't be used. For example, the final lines of Ferris Bueller's Day Off would be "Life goes by pretty fast. If you don't stop and look around once in a while, you could miss it," rather than "You're still here? It's over. Go home."

4. The films selected may be in any language, but we will post the quotations translated into English whenever applicable.

5. Participants may only submit one guess per week of the game. If more than one guess is submitted, no points will be given for the week even if one of the guesses is correct.

6. Submissions must be made to the e-Mail address famouslastwords@nerve.com. We will be turning off comments to each week's quiz to avoid confusion.

7. All entries must be received by the following Wednesday night at 11:59 PM Eastern Time. Entries received after this time will be considered ineligible.

8. Each correct submission will be worth one point, each incorrect submission worth zero points. At the end of twelve weeks, each of the three competitors with the highest number points will each win a $25 gift certificate from The Criterion Store. If there is a tie for first place between more than three contestants, we will run tie-breaker rounds until the winners have been whittled down to three.

9. Employees of Nerve.com or The Screengrab are ineligible for prizes. Sorry buds.

10. Have fun!

Will our returning champions Alex E., Ben Herrera and Victor Morton defend their Famous Last Words title? Tune in one week from today for the first installment of Famous Last Words With a Vengeance. See you next week!

DVD Digest for December 16, 2008

Paul Clark — Tue, 16 Dec 2008 15:00:00 GMT

One of this holiday season’s most in-demand gifts is sure to be a shiny new Blu-Ray player to go along with the mess of HDTVs that have flooded the market (what economic crisis?). Consequently, this week’s DVD Digest is heavy on Blu-Ray DVDs in titles both old and new, to serve as last-minute impulse buys for movie lovers of all stripes.

DVD of the Week: With all the new Blu-Rays that have hit stores lately, it seems only fitting that this week’s DVD of the Week be the first wave of Blu-Ray releases from everyone’s favorite DVD company, The Criterion Collection. Earlier this year, Criterion announced just over a dozen upcoming Blu-Ray titles, and today will bring four of them. Two are will be Blu-Ray editions of titles that were recently released by Criterion on standard DVD- Wong Kar-wai’s Chungking Express and Wes Anderson’s debut feature Bottle Rocket. But no less notable are the Blu-Ray releases of two old favorites from the Criterion vault, Carol Reed’s immortal The Third Man and Nicolas Roeg’s SF classic The Man Who Fell to Earth. As is the case with virtually all Criterion releases, the new Blu-Rays contain many special features, and the increased definition and sharpness that’s possible with Blu-Ray will undoubtedly make the films themselves look better than ever (Third Man and Chungking should be particularly eye-popping). If you own a Blu-Ray player and you don’t plan to buy at least a couple of these, you don’t have much business calling yourself a movie lover…

… In which case, you’ll probably be more inclined to purchase one of the other Blu-Rays that are hitting stores today. Paramount is releasing a quartet of their comedies- Hot Rod, Old School, The Heartbreak Kid, and the ever popular “Holy Schnike!” edition of Tommy Boy- along with the strange double feature of Coach Carter and Into the Wild, all in Blu-Ray only. And Fox is answering Paramount’s challenge rather feebly, releasing only Uwe Boll’s In the Name of the King: A Dungeon Siege Tale in response. Gonna have to try harder than that, guys.

This week’s recent releases on DVD are highlighted by two late-summer hits that scratch some very different itches. On the one hand, you could watch the Golden Globe-nominated ABBA musical Mamma Mia! (Universal, also Blu-Ray). On the other, you could take a gander at The Mummy: Tomb of the Dragon Emperor (Universal, also Blu-Ray), the latest in Universal’s effects-heavy franchise.

Heck, practically the only new DVD release not to be coming out in Blu-Ray this week is the acclaimed series Generation Kill (HBO). And while I won’t hold the lack of a Blu-Ray edition against the show, it nonetheless feels like the DVD-release version of bringing a knife to a gunfight. Unless, of course, you don’t have a Blu-Ray player in the first place, in which case the point is moot.

Site of the Day: A John Waters Christmas

Leonard Pierce — Fri, 05 Dec 2008 15:30:00 GMT

With the holiday season in full swing, we're about to be inundated with enough Christmas-related cinematic claptrap to make you want to go after Frosty the Snowman with a jumbo bag of Halite. Not only will we see dozens of Christmas films in theaters, but TV will be spilling forth its endless tankful of Yuletide cheer, and we'll get to hear a bunch of rookie entertainment reporters ask the likes of Todd Haynes and Jason Statham about the true meaning of Christmas. There's even a rumor that one of the schmucks who writes for this blog is going to start a Christmas-themed feature to run the rest of the month.

But don't despair, indie kids! There's still plenty of misanthropic dark-side-of-Christmas stuff out there for you even if you can't afford that Criterion Collection DVD box set of all the Silent Night, Deadly Night movies. For example, the good people over at Dreamland News have brought us this delightful Noel gift: Season's Greetings from John Waters!

It seems that every year, the Lowbrow Bard of Baltimore sends out a set of Christmas cards to his nearest and dearest that would be considered, well, slightly inappropriate for the general public. A few of Waters' friends have allowed these specially made cards to find their way onto the internet, and Dreamland News has done us the favor of collecting them -- from the cockroach tree ornament seen above to a post-surgery Elizabeth Taylor to a shot of Steve Buscemi impersonating Waters himself. As if all that's not enough, there's also a link to Waters' holly jolly essay, "Why I Love Christmas". Just the thing to pass the time while you're waiting for Annual Gift Man to arrive!

Related Posts:

John Waters Smokes Crack

Location, Location, Location: Baltimore

DVD Digest for November 25, 2008

Paul Clark — Tue, 25 Nov 2008 15:00:00 GMT

This week, a surprisingly small selection leading into the so-called “biggest shopping day of the year.”

Recent releases coming to DVD include Will Smith and Charlize Theron in Hancock (Sony, also Blu-Ray), Vince Vaughn making a grab for your Christmas cash in Fred Claus (Warner, also Blu-Ray), Eddie Murphy inside Eddie Murphy in Meet Dave (Fox, also Blu-Ray), and Andy Samberg going from talking to animals as Mark Wahlberg to playing a talking animal himself in Space Chimps (Warner, also Blu-Ray).

In classics this week, Criterion releases two seminal nineties films, Wes Anderson’s debut effort Bottle Rocket and Wong Kar-wai’s awesome and Tarantino-approved Chungking Express. But don’t fret, Blu-Ray fans- they’ll be coming out in that format in December, so don’t cross them off the Christmas list.

In TV on DVD, this week brings the season-bridging special 24: Redemption (Fox), plus everyone’s fake wingnut in A Colbert Christmas: The Greatest Gift of All (Paramount).

Finally, this week’s Blu-Ray only releases are a Jamie Foxx double feature, Jarhead and The Kingdom (both Universal).

DVD Digest for October 7, 2008

Paul Clark — Tue, 07 Oct 2008 14:00:00 GMT

It’s a massive week for classic films, and a surprisingly good one for new releases too, once you get past the big Hollywood titles…

DVD of the Week: There was no small amount of competition for this spot, not merely because of the jaw-dropping number of classic titles being release but also due to one of TV’s best sitcoms seeing its most recent season bow on DVD store shelves. But with all the great stuff that’s hitting stores this week, to my eyes there was only one logical choice- Universal’s Touch of Evil 50th Anniversary Edition. It would be one thing if this DVD was simply a cash-in, a new pressing of the previously released 1998 cut of the film. But joining the “restored” version of the film are both the original theatrical cut and an additional “preview version”, both of which are being released on DVD for the first time. In addition, there are plenty of extras both old and new, including commentary tracks to correspond with each of the three available versions of the movie. What more could a Touch of Evil fan ask for? How about a reproduction of the legendary Orson Welles memo that led to the 1998 restoration? Yep, that’s in here too. I don’t normally double-dip my DVDs, but I’m definitely going to make the upgrade this time.

But wait, there’s more! Disney is releasing a 2-disc “Platinum Edition” of their 1959 classic Sleeping Beauty, packed with plenty of extras for both family audiences and animation buffs. Criterion is releasing two more films from the French master of crime dramas, Jean-Pierre Melville- Le Doulos (starring Jean-Paul Belmondo) and Le Deuxieme Souffle (with Lino Ventura). There are new 2-disc special editions of three of Hitchcock’s most iconic classics- Psycho, Rear Window, and Vertigo (all Universal). And Ray Harryhausen is representin’ here too, with a new DVD of The 7th Voyage of Sinbad 50th Anniversary Edition (Sony, also Blu-Ray), plus the Ray Harryhausen Giftset (Sony, also Blu-Ray), which includes previously-released editions of 20 Million Miles to Earth, It Came From Beneath the Sea, and Earth vs. the Flying Saucers, plus collectible Ymir figurine.

Also, like musicals? Then pick up Fox’s The Alice Faye Collection Volume 2, which contains Hollywood Cavalcade, The Great American Broadcast, Four Jills in a Jeep, Rose of Washington Square, and Hello, Frisco, Hello (also available separately). And with the winter months coming sooner than you’d think, you can start traveling in the comfort of your own home with The Michael Palin Collection (Warner), which collects the amiable Python’s adventures Around the World in 80 Days, Pole to Pole, Full Circle, Hemingway Adventure, Great Railways Journeys, Sahara and Himalaya into one handy box set. Finally, Warner is releasing two very different classic titles, The Picture of Dorian Gray and the Watership Down Deluxe Edition. So yeah, something for everyone.

But wait, there’s more! Two of my favorite films from the first half of 2008 are hitting the streets today- Gus Van Sant’s Paranoid Park (Genius Productions) and Stuart Gordon’s Stuck (Image Entertainment). And two other acclaimed indies are getting released as well, The Visitor (Anchor Bay, also Blu-Ray) starring Screengrab fave Richard Jenkins, and Boy A (Genius Productions). And, oh yeah… The Happening (Fox, also Blu-Ray) and You Don’t Mess With the Zohan (Sony, also Blu-Ray). Although I’m not sure I want to know anybody who’d buy these instead of any of the aforementioned classics.

This week’s TV on DVD release is 30 Rock Season 2 (Universal), which finds Liz, Jack, Tracy, Kenneth the Page, and the rest of the TGS gang taking a trip to MILF Island, among other misadventures. Also this week: Brotherhood Season 2 (Paramount), How I Met Your Mother Season 3 (Fox), and The Simpsons Season 11 (Fox).

Finally, this week’s Halloween-heavy Blu-Ray only releases include: The Amityville Horror (MGM), Beetlejuice 20th Anniversary Deluxe Edition (Warner), Body Heat (Warner), Young Frankenstein (Fox), Carrie (MGM), and Otis (Warner). No word on whether Carré Otis is somehow involved.

DVD Digest for August 19, 2008

Paul Clark — Tue, 19 Aug 2008 14:00:00 GMT

The seemingly endless run of crappy spring releases continues unabated this week, as I reach into last week to select a noteworthy release I somehow overlooked.

Belated DVD of the Week: With Criterion still digging into film history to bring cinephiles the best of classic cinema, it’s easy to overlook what’s going on at their kid-sister company, Eclipse. To wit: I was so caught up last week’s in Criterion’s impressive DVD of Guy Maddin’s Brand Upon the Brain that I completely forgot to mention the release of Eclipse Series 11: Larisa Shepitko. As with Eclipse’s previous box sets devoted to William Klein and Raymond Bernard, Eclipse has rescued a worthy if unsung filmmaker from semi-obscurity, this time by releasing two of her greatest achievements on DVD. This Shepitko set includes the war films Wings and The Ascent, two key films in her all-too-brief filmography, and which gives some insight of what a major director she might have become had she not died in a car accident at the age of forty. As with Shepitko’s husband Elem Klimov’s masterpiece Come and See, both films in this Eclipse set are hardly cheerful entertainment, but like Come and See they’re indispensible viewing, and I’m glad Eclipse has taken the care of releasing them.

Meanwhile, Criterion this week has new DVDs of Powell and Pressburger’s The Small Back Room and Keisuke Kinoshita’s Twenty-Four Eyes. Also in classics coming to DVD: Oliver Stone’s Nixon: Election Year Edition (Disney, also Blu-Ray).

New releases coming to DVD this week include: Frances McDormand and Amy Adams in Miss Pettigrew Lives For a Day (Universal); tween-bait Hannah Montana & Miley Cyrus: Best of Both Worlds 3-D Concert (Disney, also Blu-Ray); Jay Roach’s funny/depressing HBO film Recount (Warner); yet another horror remake in Prom Night (Sony, also Blu-Ray); Keanu Reeves as a crooked cop in Street Kings (Fox, also Blu-Ray); and the grief-porny The Life Before Her Eyes (Magnolia). Also, two notable direct-to-DVD releases: My Sassy Girl (Fox), a remake of the Korean cult hit starring thespian extraordinaire Elisha Cuthbert; and mixed martial arts champ Randy Couture taking over for The Rock in The Scorpion King 2: Rise of a Warrior (Universal, also Blu-Ray).

This week’s TV on DVD releases include: Dexter Season 2 (Paramount); Gossip Girl Season 1 (Warner); House Season 4 (MGM); Terminator: The Sarah Connor Chronicles Season 1 (Warner). And in Blu-Ray only news, this week brings the release of Justice League Season 1 (Warner).

DVD Digest for July 22, 2008

Paul Clark — Tue, 22 Jul 2008 14:00:00 GMT

This week, Criterion gives DVD buyers a re-pressing of an old favorite and a new version of a classic. Also, plenty of Blu-Ray for your enjoyment, provided you’re not in the market for good movies.

DVD of the Week: Years ago, Criterion released four of Carl Th. Dreyer’s greatest films in deluxe versions, but his 1932 classic Vampyr has only been available in a subpar transfer from Image. Until now, that is. This week, Vampyr finally gets the treatment it richly deserves in a new two-disc set from the folks at Criterion. Along with both German- and English-credited versions of the film, the DVD contains a commentary from film scholar Tony Rayns, a 1966 documentary about Dreyer’s work, a radio broadcast of Dreyer speaking about filmmaking, and much more. Even the insert is indispensible, containing not only essays on the film, but a book featuring the film’s original screenplay as well as the story on which it was based. Naturally, any DVD version of a Dreyer film is a must for any serious film lover, but to see one of his most significant works given the top-shelf treatment like this is magnificent news.

Also this week, Criterion is re-releasing Akira Kurosawa’s High and Low in a new version featuring several new features, plus a new high-definition transfer. So if you didn’t pick up the film last time around, now’s your chance.

In a slow week for new movies coming to DVD, today brings the release of the college-students-taking-on-Vegas thriller 21 (Sony, also Blu-Ray), Famke Janssen in Turn the River (Universal), and the John C. Reilly/Seann William Scott comedy The Promotion (Weinstein).

On the TV-on-DVD front, the big news this week is the long-awaited Region 1 release of Spaced: The Complete Series (Warner). Fans of Shaun of the Dead and Hot Fuzz will finally be able to get a taste of the series that introduced to the world the stars (Simon Pegg, Nick Frost) and director (Edgar Wright) of those films, along with the witty, pop-culture-savvy brand of humor that made those movies fanboy favorites. Also this week: Las Vegas Season 5 (Universal).

Finally, coming this week to Blu-Ray only: the Sony horror trifecta of I Know What You Did Last Summer, The Exorcism of Emily Rose, and Urban Legend; Universal’s Mummy trilogy of The Mummy, The Mummy Returns, and The Scorpion King; and The Perfect Storm (Warner). And if you’re actually waiting for good movies to come out on Blu-Ray, take heart- October is only three months away.

"Watchmen": More Than Just Buying Dave Gibbons a New Boat

Leonard Pierce — Tue, 15 Jul 2008 18:15:00 GMT

Now that Dark Knight is finally going to be opening nationwide, we can finally return to the natural occupation of the comic book fan: deranged obsession over Zack Snyder's upcoming movie adaptation of Watchmen.

As we've discussed before, one of the problems with the recent wave of successful motion picture adaptations of comic book properties is that while they've made tons of money for the producers of the movies, it hasn't worked the other way around. Comic book companies have slavered to get their properties on screen in recent years, in the hopes that audiences turned on by the big-screen adventures of Batman or the X-Men will follow those characters into their local comic book shop. This is especially important in these days of direct sales, when comic book sales are at a historical low, and people speak in non-hysterical terms about the demise of the industry. So it's worth noting that the millions in profit made my comic book movies hasn't generally been matched by a notable increase in comic book sales, one comic is bucking that trend: Watchmen.

One of the earliest comic book mini-series to take advantage of the 'graphic novel collection' format in the 1980s, Watchmen was already one of the most successful titles in DC's history, despite its indie sensibilities, adult storytelling, and complex, morally difficult story. But with the movie adaptation getting ever closer, its sales have shot way up -- and DC plans to capitalize on the interest in spades. They'll be promoting an aggressive three-pronged marketing attack to ensure that anyone sucked in by the movie to the degree that they absolutely must have the comic will be able to get one with not trouble. The triple attack includes a retailer discount for any shops that wish to carry the original softcover graphic novel; a new hardbound edition for collectors; and a deluxe edition featuring making-of material, rare artwork, and other bonus materials, the comic book equivalent of a fancy Criterion Collection disc.

Of course, to a hardcore Watchmen fan, this marketing push has an added benefit: unlike the film, with which he has disassociated himself, leaving all the profits to go to artist Dave Gibbons, writer Alan Moore still gets a share of the money from sales of the comic. So when the movie is released, those of you who still have a raggedy old copy of the softback might want to consider purchasing a movie tie-in edition...

More Goddamn Watchmen

Criterion Gets Comical

Leonard Pierce — Wed, 18 Jun 2008 16:45:00 GMT

"Cozy Lummox" is the name of a blog owned and operated by one Eric Skillman, who happens to be a rather good graphic designer whose work, if you are a big film buff, you've probably seen before. He's one of the primary designers for the Criterion Collection, and has been responsible for some of their finest package design (we're big fans of his work on Jules Dassin's Night and the City in particular). In addition to the gorgeous work routinely featured there, his blog is also highly enjoyable, giving an insider's perspective on the sometimes amusing, sometimes agonizing work that goes into designing for the world's most prestigious home cinema collection. His accounts of putting together the package for Fassbinder's Berlin Alexanderplatz are particularly enjoyable.

Recently, Skillman has been discussing a different collision of comic books and movies than we usually talk about around here: for a few recent Criterion releases, he's enlisted the services of a number of high-profile comics artists to do the cover art. Of particular interest: Jaime Hernandez (of Love and Rockets fame) designed the cover of Pietro Germi's Divorce Italian Style; Mad Man's Mike Allred was brought in to do Germi's Seduced and Abandoned; Sean Phillips of Criminal contributed the cover to Allen Baron's Blast of Silence; and the legendary Bill Sienkiewicz on Byron Haskin's Robinson Crusoe on Mars. It's a fascinating combination of great artists from one field applying their talents to the work of great artists in another -- and there's still more to come: Darwyn Cooke (best known for his terrific retro art on DC's Justice League: New Frontier) will be handing the package art for an upcoming collection of Boris Karloff films entitled Monsters and Madmen.

Code Blu For Criterion

Leonard Pierce — Wed, 14 May 2008 15:30:00 GMT

Well, now we know the format wars are over: the kingpin of art-film imprints, the Criterion Collection -- who we believe only abandoned the VHS format in late 2006 -- has announced the roll-out of a whole batch of prestige titles in the Blu-Ray high-definition DVD format.

According to Slash/Film, Criterion will be debuting a raft full of Blu-Ray discs starting in October, ranging from Hollywood classics (The Third Man) to esteemed modern productions (Chungking Express) to New Wave ground-breakers (The 400 Blows) to concert films (The Complete Monterey Pop). A number of the film will feature new bonus material not even available on other Criterion DVDs, brand-new transfers, and an enticing initial price point of $39.95 USD.

Now, if only they could negotiate getting rid of the garish blue plastic packaging; it's not all that distracting with regular DVD movies, but with Criterion, where the gorgeous packaging is often part of the appeal, it's just gross.

DVD Digest for April 29, 2008

Paul Clark — Tue, 29 Apr 2008 14:00:00 GMT

This week: Criterion caters to the kids, Anthony Mann's final historical epic gets the deluxe treatment, and a pair of critics-turned-DVD-distributors unveil their latest hidden treasure.

DVD of the week: Winning awards at both Cannes and the Oscars in 1956, Albert Lamorisse's The Red Balloon has, in the last fifty years become a short-form classic. It's long been a classroom staple throughout the world, and the film it inspired, Hou Hsiao-hsien's Flight of the Red Balloon is currently playing in limited release to enthusiastic reviews. The Red Balloon makes its DVD premiere this week as the centerpiece of the latest Criterion box set, Three Children's Classics. The set also includes Lamorisse's 1953 short White Mane and William Mason's 1966 film Paddle to the Sea, both of which are also making their DVD debut. At a time when most entertainment geared to kids seems concerned primarily with feeling current, these three films are in the tradition of classic family entertainments that stimulate their imaginations without pandering or condescending. Even if you don't have children of your own, they're well worth buying for yourself.

The week's other classic coming to DVD is the Weinstein Company's release of Anthony Mann's Roman epic The Fall of the Roman Empire, as part of their "Miriam Collection." Produced by super-producer Samuel Bronston, the film was one of the last mega-budgeted historical epics (and box-office flop), and one of the most interesting aspects of the seeing the film is simply to marvel at its sheer largesse. The Weinsteins include a commentary and a number of documentaries on both the "Two Disc Special Edition" and the "Limited Collector's Edition Gift Set," but of primary interest is the film itself. If nothing else, it should be interesting to compare Mann's film to the Oscar-winning Gladiator, which tells much the same story using CGI effects.

On the new-release front, this week brings the DVD debut of Julian Schnabel's acclaimed The Diving Bell and the Butterfly (Buena Vista), which garnered nominations for best director, best adapted screenplay, and best cinematography at last year's Academy Awards. Also of note this week: The Golden Compass (New Line, also Blu-Ray), which is being released in both single- and double-disc editions; Katherine Heigl in 27 Dresses (Fox, also Blu-Ray); and the Denzel Washington-directed and -starring The Great Debaters (The Weinstein Company).

Finally, a shout out to our friends Andrew Grant and Aaron Hillis, critics-turned-proprietors of the upstart distribution shingle Benten Films. For their third release, Grant and Hillis have selected Todd Rohal's Slamdance-winning indie The Guatemalan Handshake. Not content to shine a light into overlooked corners of American independent cinema, Benten seeks to give its releases the first-class treatement, and Guatemalan Handshake arrives this week in a two-disc edition that includes commentary, a music video, behind-the scenes footage, short films, and an essay by filmmaker David Gordon Green. I'm looking forward to checking out the film and all subsequent Benten releases.

DVD Digest for April 15, 2008

Paul Clark — Tue, 15 Apr 2008 16:00:00 GMT

For those of you looking to spend this year's tax refund check on DVDs, this won't be a particularly good week for you. But there is at least one exception...

Had you going there, didn't I? My well-documented soft spot for Dr. Uwe Boll notwithstanding, the real gem this week is The Criterion Collection's release of Blast of Silence. Criterion has long been beloved for its top-notch DVD editions of canonical favorites, but just as important in my mind is their tendency to unearth forgotten treasures. Allen Baron's Blast of Silence definitely qualifies, a grim, gritty noir about a hitman carrying out an assignment during the Christmas season. In many ways, the film feels ahead of its time, with Lionel Stander's narration- delivered in the second person- translating wonderfully to our post-Tarantino age. Blast of Silence is ripe for rediscovery by a new generation, and this Criterion release should ensure it reaches the audience it deserves.

Of course, if it's something new you're looking for, there are a couple of those this week. For people looking for indie quirk, there's two different versions of the Oscar-nominated juggernaut Juno (Fox, also Blu-Ray), the two-disc special edition of which includes featurettes called Diablo Cody Is Totally Boss, Jason Reitman for Shizz, and Honest to Blog! Creating Juno. But if you've already gotten all the Juno you can handle, or you simply craving characters who don't talk in grating sound bites, there's also MGM's Lars and the Real Girl, which isn't perfect but which I preferred to its better-hyped counterpart.

In addition, this week also sees the release of Sidney Lumet's "comeback" vehicle Before the Devil Knows You're Dead. I wasn't nearly as big a fan of the film as Scott von Doviak was, but it's good to see Lumet still making films that are worth getting excited about.

And I would be remiss if I didn't at least mention the release of Dr. Boll's In the Name of the King: A Dungeon Siege Tale (Fox). After catching this in theatres, I remarked to my friends that it was "not good, but kind of awesome," exactly the kind of movie that I would have enjoyed when I was ten years old and fantasy movies weren't as popular as they are now. If nothing else, it's more entertaining than this week's other think-at-your-own-peril new release, Aliens vs. Predator- Requiem (Fox, also Blu-Ray).

As for classics, there's not much outside of our DVD of the week. Fans of late, logy Lean films can get their fix with the release of the A Passage to India Collector's Edition (Sony, also Blu-Ray). Also of note is MGM's two-pack of Mannequin and Mannequin 2: On the Move, for those who are so inclined. And for TV fans, there's The Woody Woodpecker and Friends Classic Cartoon Collection: Volume 2 (Universal), MGM's Alien Nation: Ultimate Movie Collection (which is missing the original theatrical feature), and American Dad, Volume 3.

Finally, we arrive at the moment where I turn over the column to my friend and yours, Mr. David Huddleston. Not too many condolences this week, only Warner Brothers' HD-DVD release of Bonnie and Clyde. Still, Mr. Huddleston wishes that his condolences weren't necessary, and that the DVD companies would take the hint and get on the Blu-Ray bandwagon so he could make other, more enjoyable plans for his Tuesday mornings.

DVD Digest for February 26, 2008

Paul Clark — Tue, 26 Feb 2008 15:00:00 GMT

As the dust begins to settle on this year's Oscar winners, this week's DVD Digest looks back at, among other releases, a super-deluxe special edition of the Best Picture winner of two decades ago.

DVD of the Week: What else could it be but Criterion's new edition of Bernardo Bertolucci's 1987 Oscar winner The Last Emperor? The fact that the film is back in print on DVD is cause enough for celebration, but that Criterion is issuing the film in a FOUR-DISC special edition is particularly wonderful. Chock full of interviews, documentaries, essays, and multiple cuts of the film, Bertolucci's majestic Best Picture winner is finally getting the DVD it deserves. The only drawback is that the transfer, supervised by Emperor cinematographer Vittorio Storaro, is in Storaro's favored aspect ratio of 2:1. As with the latest release of Apocalypse Now, Storaro has insisted on this new "compromise" aspect ratio for his films, which satisfies his own concerns but sacrifices a noticeable amount from the periphery of the image. I can understand Criterion giving in to Storaro's demands in this respect, but I do wish they could have found a way to release the film as originally photographed, so we can better appreciate the exquisite framing of the film. But I suppose this is quibbling — Criterion's The Last Emperor is surely the year's first must-buy DVD.

New releases coming to DVD include: Robert Zemeckis' Beowulf (Paramount), also being released in a "Director's Cut" that no doubt has more blood and nudity; David Slade's vampire thriller 30 Days of Night (Sony, also Blu-Ray); Wes Anderson's somewhat disappointing The Darjeeling Limited (Fox), the first of his films since Bottle Rocket not released by Criterion; and forgotten arthouse offerings Goya's Ghosts (Sony), Silk (New Line), and Slipstream (Sony).

In addition, this week sees the release of Warner's The Smurfs Season 1, Volume 1, Paramount's The Fugitive Season 1, Volume 2, and the direct-to-DVD animated feature Justice League: The New Frontier (Warner, also Blu-Ray).

Finally, the doomed HD-DVD format angrily but impotently shakes its fist at the marketplace with three new releases: Paramount's Beowulf and Warner's The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford and The Brave One. Now, I don't own an HD player or a Blu-Ray player so I don't have an opinion on their relative merits. However, despite not having a horse in the race, I can't help but think of David Huddleston behind a desk, screaming at the rapidly-disappearing HD-DVD format. Perhaps he'd yell out, "Condolences!", although I reckon "the goddamn plane has crashed into the mountain!" would be just as appropriate. Or maybe that's just the White Russian talking...

Akira Kurosawa Drops the Bomb

Phil Nugent — Wed, 30 Jan 2008 19:00:00 GMT

Everyone knows that Godzilla was, in its original context, a metaphor for the atomic bombs dropped on Japan, and by now a number of commentators have made the leap of seeing Cloverfield, whose advance publicity cited the veteran thunder lizard as some kind of role model, as either addressing or exploiting the memory of 9/11. Actually, American filmmakers have been trying, in one way or another, to deal with 9/11 in movies ranging from Oliver Stone's World Trade Center to Spielberg's The War of the Worlds to such indies as The Great New Wonderful. And Japanese filmmakers, including some of the greatest, took their best shot at dealing with the bomb and its aftermath, often in movies without rubber monster suits. Writing in Slate, Fred Kaplan argues that "If someone should feel compelled to make a film about 9/11 — specifically, about the social and psychic toll that the attacks have and haven't taken — a good model would be Akira Kurosawa's I Live in Fear, a relatively little-known film by perhaps the most revered of all Japanese filmmakers that's just been issued on DVD as part of the Criterion Collection's Eclipse series. The movie stars Toshiro Mifune as an industrialist who becomes obsessed with protecting himself from the bomb and from radioactive fallout. His solution is to sell his company and move himself and his entire family to Brazil — a plan that inspires his three sons to try to get him declared nuts so that they won't lose their share of the family business. (Kurosawa often openly ransacked Shakespeare for his movies, and this thread of the plot suggests King Lear turned inside out for the nuclear age.)

The punchline is that Mifune's character really does go mad and winds up being institutionalized — in response to the shattering realization that even exile to Brazil wouldn't be enough to ensure his safety in the event of a nuclear war. The punchline to the punchline is that, in Kurosawa's vision of "a world in which the most dreadful dangers are shrugged off as routine", the man locked up as crazy is the only one who seems to have trouble simply adjusting to the ever-present danger of being wiped out at the touch of a button. ("Sirens wail in the background all through this film; it's not clear what kinds of sirens [police, ambulance, air-raid drills?], and nobody pays attention anyway." This is, as Kaplan points out, "a rather unsubtle message, but Kurosawa compensates with an understated visual style. According to his autobiography, he started using three cameras around this time, letting them all roll while the actors played the whole scene as if in a stage play, then choosing the best angles in the editing room. It gives the film a documentary feel — many scenes are shot from behind the characters — as if we're peeking in on a slice of life." It also captures something that Kurosawa himself must have felt to the marrow — though he may never have addressed the subject again so explicitly, he was playing with images of nuclear devastation as late as thirty-five years later, in the 1990 Dreams. As it happened, the idea of a man set apart from his society because of his inability to deal with the thought of its destruction turned out to be a pretty good metaphor for the movie itself. Made in 1955, it not only bombed in Japan but didn't play in the American until it was shown at the 1963 New York Film Festival; it received limited U.S. theatrical release in 1967. It was issued on VHS back in 2001, but at no point has it ever — you'll excuse the expression — set the world on fire.

DVD Digest for January 22, 2008

Paul Clark — Tue, 22 Jan 2008 15:00:00 GMT

This week: a triple dose of Criterion, four films by a Hollywood favorite, and some old TV pals do their best to compensate for another slow week for recent releases.

DVD of the Week: Long one of the film history's most undervalued directors, Lindsay Anderson is finally starting to get his due on DVD. Last year saw the DVD releases of his classics If... and O Lucky Man!, and this week sees the deluxe two-disc Criterion treatment of his 1963 breakthrough film This Sporting Life. The film stars the Oscar-nominated Richard Harris in a star-making role as a young man trying to make it as professional rugby player, and is one of the key examples of the British "kitchen-sink" dramas of the 1960s. The DVD also includes commentary by Anderson associate Paul Ryan and screenwriter David Storey, a documentary about Anderson's career, and most notably, several of Anderson's short films, including his autobiographical final work, 1992's Is That All There Is?

This week's Criterion releases are Alf Sjöberg's 1951 adaptation of Strindberg's Miss Julie (featuring a young Max Von Sydow in a small role), and the box set 4 by Agnes Varda, which features her new-to-DVD films Le Bonheur (1965) and Le Pointe Courte (1956), as well as new editions of the previously-released Cléo From 5 to 7 (1962) and Vagabond (1985). Also of note this week is MGM's John Frankenheimer Collection, a rather bare-bones affair that includes the new-to-DVD Burt Lancaster film The Young Savages (1961), plus existing editions of The Manchurian Candidate, The Train, and Ronin.

New TV on DVD includes: Barney Miller: The Complete Second Season (Sony); Hawaii Five-O: The Complete Third Season (Paramount); The Odd Couple: The Complete Third Season (Paramount); Torchwood: The Complete First Series (Warner); and ER: The Complete Eighth Season (Warner).

Finally, we've got the new stuff, which aside from the DVD release of one of my favorite films of 2007, Richard Shepherd's The Hunting Party, is looking pretty dire. How about Jessica Simpson in the straight-to-DVD Working Girl "remake" Blonde Ambition (Sony)? Or the Amanda Bynes "Snow White goes to college" romp Sydney White (Universal)? Of course, there's also Sony's classy period farce Molière. I mean, Molay really pumps my nads, but that hardly makes up for the gruesome twosome of Disney's The Game Plan and (three separate versions of) Lionsgate's Saw IV, both of which are also coming out on Blu-Ray. Seriously folks, if you want us to take this new format seriously, you're going to have to start releasing some good movies instead of the latest pandering crap.

Introducing "Famous Last Words"

Paul Clark — Wed, 09 Jan 2008 20:00:00 GMT

Sharpen your pencils and put on your thinking caps, because exactly 24 hours from now, The Screengrab will premiere a new game, entitled Famous Last Words. We're proud to be hosting our first weekly game, and to encourage all of you to play we'll be giving away a $25 gift certificates to The Criterion Store to each of the three lucky winners of the game.

But before we begin, here are some ground rules:

1. Every Thursday at noon Eastern Time, we will post a line or a short dialogue exchange from a movie. You, in turn, will e-Mail us your guesses as to what movie we took the dialogue from. Guesses must be submitted to me in e-Mail form, to the following e-Mail address: famouslastwords@nerve.com.

2. All quotes will be the final spoken lines of the film, delivered by an onscreen character or narrator. Likewise, the words must be audible. In other words, no silent films, and no onscreen text that isn't read aloud.

3. All quotes will be the final lines of the film proper. Any lines spoken in "credit cookies" or post-credits scenes won't be used. For example, the final lines of Ferris Bueller's Day Off would be "Life goes by pretty fast. If you don't stop and look around once in a while, you could miss it," rather than "You're still here? It's over. Go home."

4. The films selected may be in any language, but we will post the quotations translated into English whenever applicable.

5. Participants may only submit one guess per week of the game. If more than one guess is submitted, no points will be given for the week even if one of the guesses is correct.

6. Submissions must be made to the e-Mail address famouslastwords@nerve.com. We will be turning off comments to each week's quiz to avoid confusion.

7. All entries must be received by the following Wednesday night at 11:59 PM Eastern Time. Entries received after this time will be considered ineligible.

8. Each correct submission will be worth one point, each incorrect submission worth zero points. At the end of twelve weeks, each of the three competitors with the highest number points will each win a $25 gift certificate from The Criterion Store. If there is a tie for first place between more than three contestants, we will run tie-breaker rounds until the winners have been whittled down to three.

9. Employees of Nerve.com or The Screengrab are ineligible for prizes. Sorry buds.

10. Have fun!

Home Video Is Where the Heart Is

Phil Nugent — Thu, 27 Dec 2007 19:00:00 GMT

2007 was a pretty good year for moviegoing, but it may have been an even better one for DVDs. Even the acrimonious racket over the format battles couldn't obscure the almost steady flood of eye-catching product issued on shiny steel discs. For starters, a number of the most exciting new movies of the last twelve months were released in especially fine, often two-disc editions, including Pan's Labyrinth, Children of Men, The Host, and Knocked Up in its "unrated, expanded" form. But there's also been a treasure trove of oldies and oddities of every kind, sure to be of interest to anyone who was lucky enough to score a gift certificate or two over the holidays.

CAREER RETROSPECTIVES: While boxes devoted to stars have become a popular scam designed to lump together various heapings scooped from the bottom of the barrel (the "Marlon Brando Collection" is a five-disc set dominated by such least-loved Brando films Teahouse of the August Moon, The Formula, and the 1962 Mutiny on the Bounty), a number of director-themed boxes make it possible to have an affordable, one-stop film festival at home. The smartly chosen Viva Pedro--The Almodovar Collection skips past the auteur's tickling juvenelia to the full-blown operatic dementia of his most accomplished '80s work (Matador, Law of Desire, Women on the Verge of a Nervous Breakdown), then bypasses his confused mid-career slump to rejoin him at the mature pitch represented by Live Flesh and All About My Mother. The Documentaries of Louis Malle, a six-disc set released by Criterion through its Eclipse division, is an invaluable compilation of nonfiction films, including his multi-part Phantom India series, by a great director whose reputation may be imperilled by his confounding versatility. In theatrical releases, 2007 was the year that Charles Burnett's legendary Killer of Sheep finally breathed pure air, and New Yorker Video/ Milestone is to be congratulated for rising to the occasion and constructing an instant and invaluable box by combining Sheep with Burnett's short films and second feature, My Brother's Wedding, to create Killer of Sheep: The Charles Burnett Collection. The second volume of The Films of Kenneth Anger captures the cream of Anger's trend-setting experimental shorts, from the 1964 Scorpio Rising to 1981'a Lucifer Rising. For those who crave that kind of transgressive trippiness unpolluted by talent or taste, The Films of Alejandro Jodorowsky is definitely one of the archeological finds of the year, finally making El Topo and its runtier cousins safe for home viewing. Personally, I kind of think that Jodorowsky was always a con man who hogged the magic mushrooms at the buffet table, but maybe that's why nobody ever invited me to do the midnight programming at the Elgin.

ANIMATION: Is there any pleasure more sublimely twenty-first geeky than trancing out in front of the home entertainment system watching classic 'toons? This year saw the release of a much appreciated fifth volume of Looney Tunes--Golden Collection, but the real shocker may be Popeye the Sailor, 1933-1938: Vol. 1, which rescued a trove of the Fleischer brothers' best from years of rights problems and cheapo videotapes. Then there's Tex Avery's Droopy--The Complete Theatrical Collection, which if anything may be a bit too complete; it contains seven cartoons that Avery purists will shun because they were made by other hands, but they all star the dog who, from the looks of it, spent his screen career stoically suffering for his art. Animated Soviet Propaganda: From the October Revolution to Perestroika is a four-disc set that will make a perfect May Day present for your old Socialist friend from college who still hasn't gotten over it. Last but not least, there's The Three Stooges Collection, Vol. One: 1934-1936. Technically, the Three Stooges weren't really cartoon characters, but the films are a lot easier to watch if you pretend that they were.

TELEVISION: Yes, you can still watch TV on your TV, and thanks to a few hardy corporations you can even pay for the privilege. Twin Peaks: The Definitive Gold Box Edition performs a notable feat by finally getting the first season (AKA "the good one"), including the feature-length pilot, and the second season (AKA "the not-so-much one") season of David Lynch and Mark Frost's prime time phenom in print and available at the same point in history. Clare Danes fans will be almost as grateful for My So-Called Life: The Complete Series, though some of us would trade all its extras for one bonus scene of the heroine seeing through that smarmy little nimrod Jordan Catalano and leaving him carless in the park stripped to his underwear. That wouldn't have come as any more of a shock than the timely arrival in stores of Saturday Night Live--The Second Season, AKA "Bill Murray: The Pre-Wes Anderson Years, Volume 1." Yes, Virginia, they do still make new TV shows, and of the current series now on DVD, 30 Rock--Season 1 seems particularly well shaped to reward repeat viewings. As show biz self-satire goes, it's not as great as The Larry Sanders Show, but as a DVD it may be less infuriating an artifact than Not Just the Best of the Larry Sanders Show. Here's a series that fully deserves the every-episode-plus-ephemera Twin Peaks treatment, but instead, what do we get? Four discs, consisting of 23 episodes, some of which are already available on the first-season DVD that was first issued back in 2001 and is still in print, plus eight hours of extras that are sort of interesting the first time you watch them and then automatically turn into space that could have been taken up by close to thirty additional episodes. Garry Shandling, if you're reading this, or David Duchovny, if you're reading this and you still have Garry's naumber and can give him a message: It's not right, man. It's just not right. Do you really care this much less about your career legacy than Popeye does!?

SMORGASBORD: Many companies have taken to vaccuuming up odds and ends of film history and boxing them according to genre and sub-genre and even attitude, with results that are fun to contemplate even if you'd rather not shell out something in the high two figures to have them on the shelf. Treasures III: Social Issues in American Film, 1900-1934, the latest, four-disc set in the series compiled from the American Archives, is a remarkable collection of topical studies, including Cecil B. DeMille's 1928 feature The Godless Girl. Now on its fourth box set, the Film Noir Classic Collection has gone from showcasing movies you'd seen already to movies you'd read about to movies you dimly remember not bothering to stay up to watch after you read about them in the late-night TV listings. As such, it is a veritable overstuffed closet of discoveries waiting to be made, a place to see such actors as Robert Ryan, Edward G. Robinson, Sterling Hayden, and Ricardo Montalban strut their stuff, and to listen to the commentary tracks and give such cool-headed enthusiasts as James Ellroy, Eddie Muller, and Richard Schickel a chance to convince you why you should be watching this stuff. The Cult Camp Classics series slaps together everything from early Sergio Leone (The Colossus of Rhodes) and very late Joan Crawford (Trog), complete with mostly excellent commentary tracks, across four multi-disc boxes divided into such categories as "Women in Peril" and "Terrorized Travelers." The Welcome to the Grindhouse series of double-bill single discs are the most attractive of several packaging jobs that use the supposedly magical word "grindhouse" to offer an excuse to watch movies that Trog crosses the street to avoid be seen with in public.

CRITERION: Still the bestest with the mostest. This year they graced the shelves with dreamy new editions of Breathless, Mala Noche, Two-Lane Blacktop, Days of Heaven, and Berlin Alexanderplatz.

DRAGON DYNASTY: Specialists, and the new kid on the block. For years, Harvey Weinstein stormed the festivals, greedily buying up rights to Asian action films, and then lost them in the back of the freezer. This new label, started by the Weinstein Company in association with Genius Products, looks to make amends by issuing such pictures as Jackie Chan's Police Story films, John Woo's Hard-Boiled, the Infernal Affairs trilogy, and other action classics including the beyond-canonical 36th Chamber of Shaolin on DVD in deluxe packages far superior to any treatment they've received in the West before now. Indeed, the DVDs are so beautiful that only a churl could think to point out that it's about damn time. It's about damn time.

Two-Disc "Blacktop"

Phil Nugent — Thu, 20 Dec 2007 18:10:00 GMT

Monte Hellman's Two-Lane Blacktop was last released to home video in an Anchor Bay edition that came out on VHS and DVD in 1999, and it's been out of print for the better part of the twenty-first century. This past week, the movie has been released in a handsome, "director-approved", two-disc edition from the Criterion Collection, and this news will divide the public into two groups: the ones who are turning cartwheels down Main Street and the ones asking, "What's that about Diane Lane's black top?" It was always thus. When the movie was about to be released in the summer of 1971, Esquire put its female lead, Laurie Bird, on the cover of an issue that included the text of the entire shooting script, along with the claim that this readymade cult item was destined to become "the movie of the year." Six months later, that claim was included in the magazine's annual "Dubious Achievements" feature. Hellman's scheduled follow-up project, to direct Pat Garrett and Billy the Kid, from a script by novelist and Blacktop screenwriter Rudolph Wurlitzer, was quickly reassigned to Sam Peckinpah.

In retrospect, it's easy to see how the studio and the media might have gotten their hopes up that they had the next big thing on their hands. It's also easy to see why those hopes were so quickly dashed. Two-Lane Blacktop was produced by Universal as part of its short-lived "youth division", which was set up as a direct reaction to the success of such films as Easy Rider and the old studio bosses' dawning realization that they had no idea what the kids out there wanted to see. Whatever they wound up making in this case, it sure isn't Easy Rider, and it's harder now than it must have been in 1971 to see that as a failing. It is in fact a mesmerizing film, especially if you just stumble across it--as your humble correspondent did when, as a sleep-deprived adolescent, he first encountered it on TV one night around four AM--but it was probably always too abstract for mass popularity, and it doesn't flatter anyone on either side of the generation gap the way the big counterculture hits did. As Dennis Lim points out in his appeciation of the film the director Richard Linklater has described it as being both the last film the 1960s and the first film of the 1970s, and he has a point. It does feel as if it were taking place in the wake of something and that it marks the subsequent beginning of something, something uncertain and with wide-open possibilities that may or may not be acted upon. (By contrast Easy Rider looks and feels like something that Time once did a cover story on, back before you could read.)

Our heroes are the nameless driver (played by lanky-haired James Taylor--yeah, the singer), who pilots his '55 Chevy from town to town getting into drag races for money, his mechanic (Dennis Wilson, of the Beach Boys), and Laurie Bird (a non-actress with a period-specific look) as the girl they pick up hitching. This near-mute trio meet up with Warren Oates, an older man in a GTO who seems to regard their existence as some insufferable challenge to his very being, and they agree to race him to Washington, D.C., with the loser agreeing to forfeit his car to the winner. But this turns out to be not so much an actual plot as an excuse to keep the characters tearing across the back roads, taking in the scenery and interacting (or, in the case of Taylor and Wilson, not interacting) with a procession of folks who briefly drop into the movie and drop out again. (One of them is Harry Dean Stanton, who has a memorably squirmy encounter with Oates.)

Seen now, the movie has a special tension that develops between the characters and the landscape they pass through. The small roadside lunch counters and empty country roads have the attraction of an lost, unexplored, now unexplorable America, yet neither the driver nor his mechanic nor the motormouth "GTO" seem to be really interested in taking it in. They just want to keep in motion, perhaps as a distraction from the fact that they obviously aren't going anywhere. Taylor and Wilson don't seem able to focus on anything beyond their forelocks, and their antagonist is busy tailoring and re-tailoring his fantasy persona; he sees every meeting with a new person as a curtain going up, reeling off a different back story for everyone who steps into his car. Oates was in full bloom as a character star in 1971, and his funny, strangely beautiful performance here serves the movie well, even as it turns it on its head. This middle-aged fantasist, who might be the last of the Beats--the one who never got off the road long enough to write his book-- envies Taylor and Wilson for their youth and inscrutable cool and longs for their approval, but he takes the movie away from them as easily as breathing. The younger men are locked inside their affectless poses, cool in a way that looks comatose. Maybe someday, if they ever develop their imaginations, and they'll be so regretful about all the things they've passed through without noticing it that they'll be trying to fill in the blanks of their past by making up stories about it, like GTO. Maybe not; maybe the simulated immolation of the film print that ends the picture amounts to the burning out of whatever life is in them.

Now that it's once again available for home viewing, and just in time for Christmas, Two-Lane Blacktop is primed to excite and bewilder people again. Here's hoping that a lot of people whose families know that they like racing pictures and "Sweet Baby James" are going to find this beautifully packaged DVD under the tree next week, just waiting for the chance to perplex and bewilder them. The circle of life continues.