DVD Digest for June 24, 2008

Paul Clark — Tue, 24 Jun 2008 14:00:00 GMT

This week brings the release of several new Criterions, the latest DVD from a blogosphere favorite, and a box-set tribute to a late, great British director.

For many DVD fans, this is the week that Criterion releases Anthony Mann’s The Furies and Milcho Manchevski’s Before the Rain in stories. But while both of these titles are certainly worthy, the new DVD that most interests me this week is actually Zeitgeist’s Derek Jarman Glitterbox, containing four of the maverick filmmaker’s works. The best-known title in the box is his 1986 film Caravaggio, which features early performances from Sean Bean and Jarman friend/frequent collaborator Tilda Swinton. But also justifying the price are 1993’s Wittgenstein and 1985’s The Angelic Conversation, the latter of which is only available in the box set. Finally, there’s the strange case of Blue, Jarman’s final film, also included here. While watching a film that consists entirely of a blue background accompanied by various voiceovers and sound effects, it’s nonetheless a must for Jarman fans, or even those who are curious about his life. Made as he was losing his eyesight due to AIDS-related illness, Blue is almost certainly the closest Jarman came to making a cinematic confession. You may not watch it again and again, but it demands to be seen at least once, and thanks to DVD, now everyone has that opportunity. Of course, if you’re looking for a more upbeat gay-friendly DVD, there’s always Xanadu: Magical Music Edition (Universal).

This week’s most noteworthy new release comes to us from our friends at Benten Films, Matthias Gleisner’s The Free Will. A prizewinner at the 2007 Berlinale, The Free Will tells the story of a convicted sex offender who finds himself struggling with life following his release from prison. The first foreign-language release from Benten, the DVD also includes a commentary by Gleisner and star/co-writer Jürgen Vogel, along with the film’s original theatrical trailer and a new essay on the film by critic David Fear. As always, it’s good to see what the Benten boys (Andrew Grant and Aaron Hillis) have in store for us, and The Free Will should be no exception.

Other notable recent releases coming to DVD this week include Marjane Satrapi’s Persepolis (Sony, also Blu-Ray), which features both French- and English-dubbed versions; Martin McDonagh’s agreeably salty In Bruges (Universal); Ryan Reynolds romancing a trio of hotties in Definitely, Maybe (Universal); Roland Emmerich’s latest assault on storytelling coherence and subtlety 10,000 B.C. (Warner, also Blu-Ray); The Spiderwick Chronicles (Paramount, also Blu-Ray), Hollywood’s latest failed attempt to create a new Potter-like franchise; John Sayles’ barely-released Honeydripper (Universal); and the strident Ferris Bueller wannabe Charlie Bartlett (MGM).

Finally… like surfing? Own a Blu-Ray player? Then we’ve got good news for you, as Step Into Liquid (Lionsgate) receives a Blu-Ray only release this week. Otherwise, if you’re looking for non-recent releases on Blu-Ray this week, I’m afraid you’re rather stuck.

Sayles Speaks

Peter Smith — Fri, 07 Dec 2007 18:00:00 GMT

The contemporary American independent filmmaking scene as we know it was born some thirty-five to forty years ago, and John Sayles has as much right as anybody to claim midwife status. Any aspiring filmmaker whose films aren't designed for mainstream success would do well to consider the Sayles business model, whereby the director saved the funds he got from writing TV-movies and Roger Corman genre flicks and plowed them into his own low-budget productions. Now, as John Anderson reports in The New York Times, Sayles and other indie directors of his generation are facing a new problem: moving towards their sixties while continuing to work outside the industry and courting an audience that thinks of "indie film" as a young person's game. (In the new documentary Lynch, the sixty-one-year-old director of Blue Velvet can be seen courting an Internet audience, renouncing film for digital video and, with respect to getting funding, declaring his eternal gratitude to the French.)

Independent filmmaking is a much more crowded field than it was when Sayles and his longtime co-producer and life-partner Maggie Renzi made The Return of the Secaucus Seven, and while distributors and the entertainment media pay lip service to the aging established names, what they really want is a piece of the hot young newcomer whose debut inspired some buzz at Sundance. Reflecting on the difference between then and now, Sayles told Anderson, "The good thing, is it's a lot easier to make a movie than it is used to be. When we started, there was no high-def video, for instance. We made our movie and nobody had ever heard of that: 'You just made a movie? How can anyone just make a movie?' If your film simply had sprocket holes, the four companies that were not studios — there were four at the time — would come and look. . . Now, Sundance gets 5,000 feature films every year, and there are 5,000 filmmakers from the last year who are still trying to make films. Every distributor in America could show a different movie every day for a year, and there are only so many screens that show non-Hollywood stuff, and only fifty-two weeks a year, so. . . there's a huge amount of competition." Sayles's new film, Honeydripper, is set in a blues bar circa 1950 and features a predominately African-American cast — which is to say that it won't make Harvey Weinstein's mouth water. But Sayles and Renzi remain adamantly grass-roots in their approach; their plan is to attract word-of-mouth business by pitching to blues fans and black churchgoers. Renzi believes that the audience for their picture is out there: "They just need to be invited back into the theaters. . . My challenge to . . . [the distributors] is, 'Can you come up to the new mark?' Because the old mark isn’t working anymore." — Phil Nugent

The Screengrab : honeydripper

DVD Digest for June 24, 2008

Sayles Speaks