The Screengrab : diva

DVD Digest for June 3, 2008

Paul Clark — Tue, 03 Jun 2008 14:00:00 GMT

With Father’s Day coming in less than two weeks, the studios begin to unveil their snazzy new editions of what TNT used to call “movies for guys who like movies.” We’ve got all the manly movies you need to keep dad happy while mom and her friends are out seeing the Sex and the City movie (seriously, how did we not see that coming?).

Before Clint Eastwood became known as an Academy Award-winning filmmaker (or a guy who co-starred with an orangutan) he was first and foremost a grimacing badass. And while some- including yours truly- have a soft spot for his Man With No Name trilogy- the most enduring character from this period would also certainly be “Dirty” Harry Callahan. This week, Warner unveils new DVD and Blu-Ray editions of all five of Eastwood’s Dirty Harry films, featuring all of the features from previous DVD editions plus a number of new ones. Most notably, Warner Brothers’ box set (the films are also sold separately) includes a new feature-length documentary, Clint Eastwood: Out of the Shadows. In addition, the memorabilia included in the box set includes a 40-page hardcover book and a map of San Francisco detailing Harry’s hunt for Scorpio.

But if dad’s looking for wartime heroism (Blu-Ray only), MGM and Fox both have something that’ll fit the bill. MGM will unveil Blu-Ray editions of A Bridge Too Far and Battle of Britain this week, although these new discs will contain no special features. So if it’s tricked out Blu-Rays (and better movies) you want, go with Fox’s war DVDs. The studio will be releasing three of its classics- Patton, The Longest Day and The Sand Pebbles- exclusively on Blu-Ray, packed with special features and all the bells and whistles he could ever hope for.

But that’s not all, folks. If dad wants some laughs with his testosterone, buy him the new City Slickers: Collector’s Edition (MGM), which gives him some Western action, male bonding humor courtesy of Crystal, Kirby and Stern, and of course Jack Palance, who even in death can still crap bigger than you. Other, more recent dudely comedies releasing this week include Semi-Pro (New Line, also Blu-Ray), Vince Vaughn’s Wild West Comedy Show (Lionsgate), and for the father whose enjoyment of movies far outweighs his taste, Meet the Spartans (Fox, also Blu-Ray). And what’s a list of guy movies with James Bond? Sony will release a new three-disc edition of Casino Royale, Bond’s best big-screen adventure since the sixties (there, I said it).

Other new releases this week include: Anton Corbijn’s Ian Curtis biopic Control (Weinstein Company); the Jessica Alba remake of The Eye (Lionsgate, also Blu-Ray); Michael Caine and Demi Moore in Flawless (Magnolia); the long-delayed The Onion Movie (Fox); and Asia Argento just the way we like her (i.e. mostly naked and toting a gun) in Olivier Assayas’ Boarding Gate (Magnolia). The week’s most notable non-guy-movie old-school release is Jean-Jacques Beineix’s seminal Cinema du look classic Diva (Lionsgate). Finally, releasing on Blu-Ray only: Cloverfield (Paramount), Signs (Buena Vista), The Recruit (Buena Vista), There Will Be Blood (Paramount).

Revisiting Diva

Peter Smith — Wed, 07 Nov 2007 18:00:00 GMT

Diva may have been the first foreign-language film I ever saw. I don't remember well enough to say for sure, but I do recall that it shared space with The Tin Drum and Mephisto on my hometown video store's shelf of foreign films. (When I say shelf, I mean that literally — the entire collection amounted to less than a dozen videotapes.) When I was sixteen, Diva's vision of a Parisian mailman who rides around the city on a motorbike, chased by thugs and hanging out with a waif who shoplifts jazz records, seemed impossibly hip. Just re-released in a new print by Rialto Pictures, it now seems slow and sedate compared to Paul Greengrass and Tony Scott's recent films.

In the '80s, Jean-Jacques Beineix was lumped in with Luc Besson and Leos Carax as one of the creators of the 'cinéma du look.' Diva had the misfortune of being ahead of its time for about six months, until MTV went on the air. Coincidentally, Blade Runner, made around the same time, is also being re-released now. The two films share several points of contact, especially a nostalgia for film noir and an indulgence in style that manifests itself in blue-tinged cinematography and impossibly detailed production design.

After initial failure, Blade Runner has gone down as a classic; Diva is largely a footnote in French cinema history. Yet Ridley Scott was essentially an Anglo proponent of the 'cinéma du look'; he just happened to be working from better source material and with more talented collaborators. Diva's 'exercise in style' sensibility still has its merits — the motorbike subway chase scene is exhilarating, and the characters' lofts are spaces to luxuriate in — but as a narrative, its crime story seems unwieldy and out of place. (With Collateral and Miami Vice, Michael Mann has finally accomplished what Beineix and Besson had often set out to do.) I'd rather see a film about the same people and places in which they sat around smoking cigarettes, taking nude photos and talking about opera rather than throwing awls at each other and tossing thugs down elevator shafts.

Diva has often been cited as a case of style over substance, but now that twenty-six years have passed, it's clear that Beineix had something on his mind: the conversion of art, as represented by opera singer Cynthia Hawkins' refusal to record her voice, into a commodity. The late French critic Serge Daney castigated Diva as an example of the influence of advertising upon cinema, but both media have moved on since 1981. The 'cinema du look' finally produced a masterpiece, Leos Carax's 1991 Les Amants de Pont-Neuf, but by that time, Beineix's career had entered free fall. Luc Besson figured out how to beat Hollywood at its own game; Beineix's films could never pass for American genre fare in multiplexes, as Besson's The Fifth Element did. His follow-up to Diva, The Man in the Gutter, was an interesting, ambitious failure that resembles Rainer Werner Fassbinder's Querelle and early '80s Francis Ford Coppola. I haven't seen any of Beineix's subsequent films; few Americans have.

Diva doesn't fit comfortably into the 'classic French film revival' slot that Rialto has created so successfully for itself. I don't think the middle-aged or elderly crowd that supports Jean-Pierre Melville re-releases would go for it, and I'm not sure that contemporary teenagers would find anything attractive about its quasi-punk posturing. But I'm thankful for the opportunity to test whether this vision that helped define the '80s has stood the test of time. — Steve Erickson

The Rep Report (November 2 - 20)

Peter Smith — Fri, 02 Nov 2007 17:00:00 GMT

NEW YORK: From November 2 through the 20th, Film Forum brings back Jean-Jacques Beinex's 1981 romantic comedy-thriller Diva, in a new 35 mm. print. As visually graceful as it is inventive, playfully witty, with actual if improbable characters pushing the plot forward, it remains an especially flavorful example of what used to be called "an exercise in pure style" from back before easy access to computer imagery and MTV syntax resulted in an explosion of would-be prodigies turning out movies that really are exercises in pure style. The new print is reported to also boast some new, improved subtitles. (The first time I saw the movie, on cable TV on my fifteenth birthday — I rode my brontosaurus to the house of my friend who had HBO — a single half-assed glitch in the subtitles served to completely screw up the plot.) If you haven't seen it before, nothing else you have seen can fully prepare you for it; Beinex himself has spent the last quarter century failing to follow it up.

October 30 would have been Louis Malle's seventy-fifth birthday, which makes this a good time to check out what may be his happiest masterpiece, the autobiographical 1971 comedy Murmur of the Heart. (I do not mean to suggest that there might ever be a bad time to check it out.) The Film Society of Lincoln Center will be showing it on November 1 as part of their "Young Friends of Film" program. Andre Gregory, who worked with Malle on two of his finest American films, My Dinner with Andre and Vanya on 42nd Street, will be on hand to introduce the film.

BERKELEY: Romanian cinema, believe it or not, is hot right now and getting hotter, so Pacific Film Archives is offering a handy primer in the form of Revolutions in Romanian Cinema (November 3 - December 9). The country produces fewer feature films than any other European country — half a dozen a year — but as Spencer Tracy used to say, what's there is choice. The schedule includes The Death of Mr. Lazarescu, the Cannes festival winner that really got the West paying attention, as well as the sardonic 12:08 East of Bucharest and the powerful recent New York Film Festival entry 4 Months 3 Weeks 2 Days. Plus five other feature films and a program of shorts.

The Pacific Film Archive also hosts The Passion of Pasolini (November 1 - December 7), dedicated to the work of the still-controversial Italian novelist, poet, and filmmaker Pier Paolo Pasolini. The series, which includes his adaptations of The Decameron, Arabian Nights, The Canterbury Tales and The Gospel According to St. Matthew opens with his 1961 debut feature Accattone; it closes with his scandalous last film, the 1975 Salo. Just keep telling yourself: it's only chocolate, it's only chocolate. . .

WASHINGTON, D.C.: The twentieth annual 2007 European Union Film Showcase opens November 1 and runs through November 20th at the AFI Silver Theater, showcasing a wide selection of new and recent films from across the continent. The opening night selection is Christopher Columbus: The Enigma, the latest by the startlingly prolific Portuguese director Manoel de Oliveira. The director, who will be in attendance, turns ninety-nine on December 12. I just thought I'd put that out there in case you want to show up and give him his birthday card a little early.

— Phil Nugent