The Screengrab : roberto rossellini

DVD Digest for March 31, 2009

Paul Clark — Tue, 31 Mar 2009 14:00:00 GMT

This week, the 2008 winner of the Oscar for Best Picture finds its way to DVD and Blu-Ray. But don’t worry- some good movies are coming out too.

For most media outlets, the big DVD news this week is the release of Danny Boyle’s Oscar-winner Slumdog Millionaire (Fox, also Blu-Ray). And considering the amount of expensive PR and hype that has gone into making the movie the year’s “biggest indie success story” (and the Oscar for Best Media Push goes to…), it’s understandable that they’d want to play up the DVD release as much as possible in order to milk its Academy Awards for the most money possible. Meanwhile, those of us who didn’t care much for movie- and I can’t be the only one, can I?- will just have to hold out hope that maybe the folks who catch up with it at home will be as underwhelmed as we were. Maybe it’s that we were just spoiled by the last two years, in which we thought the Academy was turning over a new leaf by honoring honest-to-goodness awesome movies, but while Slumdog isn’t as awful as Crash, it certainly isn’t movie enough to withstand the massive hype that’s surrounded it ever since Toronto audiences wet their pants over it last fall. The Slumdog love’s got to end sometime, right? RIGHT???

Sorry about that, folks. I just get a little… annoyed when I think about Slumdog. Anyway, this week’s other releases coming to DVD include: Owen Wilson, Jennifer Aniston and a troublemaking, lesson-teaching dog in Marley & Me (Fox, also Blu-Ray); Dustin Hoffman and Emma Thompson in Last Chance Harvey (Anchor Bay); and the Spanish mindbender Timecrimes (Magnolia). Also, this week sees the release of the After Dark Horrorfest III (Lionsgate), which includes The Broken, Slaughter, Perkins 14, The Butterfly Effect: Revelation, From Within, Dying Breed, Voices, and the unrated version of Autopsy, with each film also available separately.

Meanwhile, this week’s lineup of classics is headed up by two new releases from the good folks at Criterion, Roberto Rossellini’s Il Generale della Rovere, and Andrzej Wajda’s Danton. Also this week: the Bollywood Horror Collection vol. 2 (Mondo Macabro), which includes Veerana- Vengeance of the Vampire and Purani Haveli- Mansion of Evil.

This week’s TV on DVD include In Plain Sight Season 1 (Universal) and Voyage to the Bottom of the Sea Season 4, Vol. 1 (Fox).

In Blu-Ray only news, this week brings three classic big-screen musicals: An American in Paris (Warner), Gigi (Warner), and South Pacific 50th Anniversary Edition (Fox). Also this week: the Vin Diesel double feature Pitch Black and The Chronicles of Riddick (both Universal), plus Ghosts of Mars (Sony) and The One (Sony).

Finally, we come to the Synopsis of the Week, coming once again from the folks at FUNimation Entertainment. Sorry if it seems like I’m picking on Japanese animation with this feature, but you’ve got to admit that some of their premises are pretty unbelievable, and the folks who write the copy at FUNimation don’t exactly hide this fact. Anyway, this week’s selection comes from the DVD One Piece, Season 1: The Fourth Voyage:

“In one of Japan's most wildly successful manga, movie, and television series, Monkey D. Luffy is a cheery, optimistic young fellow with a grandiose dream of becoming the king of the pirates. Luffy has two other odd qualities: he can stretch his rubbery body, and he cannot swim. After using his Gum Gum Axe to bring down the house on Arlong's reign of terror, Luffy and his crew get some big news. A brawl with the marines has officially landed Monkey and Zoro on the wanted list! News travels fast, and it's not long before Red Haired Shanks is celebrating his old friend's new status as a genuine pirate. But not everyone shares his fondness for the Straw Hats. There is an armada of angry adversaries in hot pursuit as Luffy and his crew set sail for Logue Town - the final resting place of the legendary Gold Roger.”

Sorry, but I’m having trouble getting past the hero’s name- to say nothing of the ominous inclusion of the dubious “quality” involving his inability to swim. That it gets even stranger from there is really saying something, methinks.

Jean Martin, 1922 - 2009

Phil Nugent — Tue, 17 Feb 2009 16:00:00 GMT

The French actor Jean Martin, who died on February 2 at the age of 86, had a distinguished career in the theater, where he appeared in the original productions of two of Samuel Beckett's plays, Waiting for Godot (as Lucky) and Endgame (as Clov). He also served with the French Resistance during World War II. In movies, though, he was one of those people who achieved immortality largely through his performance in a single role, that of Colonel Mathieu in Gillo Pontecorvo's great political film The Battle of Algiers (1966). Martin was the only professional actor in that movie's cast. Compared to the actors playing Algerian revolutionaries, his role was stylized and trickily conceived: he represented the face of the oppressive French colonial government, yet he was also the director's mouthpiece, explaining the film's view of guerrilla insurrection to the audience in speeches that made it clear that, however the action of the film migh turn out, he knew that he was playing a losing game. Eventually "the people" would emerge victorious; all he could do was postpone the inevitable. Martin delivered a remarkable performance, supplying a theatrical, instructional element to the movie without violating its documentary-style texture. (He might have been hired as much for his politics as for his talent; the actor was a commmitted leftist who, despite his heroic military background with the Resistance as an paratrooper in Indochina, was blackballed as punishment for having signed a petition protesting the French presence in Algeria.)

Martin would remain better known for his stage work than his movies, but The Battle of Algiers assured him of continued employment in European TV and films, often typecast as a villain. His most notable credits include Jacques Rivette's The Nun (1966), Jules Dassin's Promise at Dawn (1970), Fred Zinnemann's The Day of the Jackal (1973), the Sergio Leone-produced Western My Name Is Nobody (1974), Otto Preminger's Rosebud, and Roberto Rossellini's Jesus movie Il Messia (1975), in which he played Pontius Pilate. Legend has it that when he and Pontecorvo argued on the set of Algiers, the director was known to complain, "Just because he was in Godot doesn't mean he's a good actor." He was, though.

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).

Screengrab Salutes: The Top Biopics of All Time! (Part Five)

Andrew Osborne — Thu, 04 Dec 2008 23:00:00 GMT

BLAISE PASCAL (1972)

Part of Rossellini's massive trove of biopics done for Italian TV in the last part of his career (and considered the best by J. Hoberman), Blaise Pascal respects the form but not spirit of biopics. Rossellini dutifully covers the 17th-century philosopher's life from infancy to death. There's no hint of a personal life though: it's 130 straight minutes of argumentation and disputation, with Pascal's greatest philosophical hits recited — conversationally, but barely — almost non-stop. Tension comes from an ominous, decidedly anachronistic synth score, whose constant hum reminds the viewer that death is coming for Pascal, and it does. Like Zodiac (albeit at a much lower intensity), Blaise Pascal gains power from tunneling deep into work and pointedly ignoring the outside world. Rossellini only stops to observe the uninflected past in non-dramatic moments: a silent sequence of a nobleman waking up, soaking his feet in water and being dressed by his servants tells us more about 17th-century class behavior than any dialogue could. No stories of how Pascal fell in love with a girl or had problems with his parents; the man's legacy, the film makes it quite clear, is solely an intellectual one, and that's all anyone should care about. It's oddly exhilarating: you're asked to simply step up and think hard for a while, without gratifying your emotions. In this (unsubtitled) clip, Pascal schools Descartes. Coming to DVD in January.

PATTON (1970)

The rare movie equally beloved by hardcore cineastes and testosterone-addled football-loving guys who could care less about movies, Patton is best remembered for the surreal opening monologue (above), a real Patton speech delivered straight to the audience in front of a giant American flag. (Vincent Canby called the effect "almost Rauschenberg.") But Patton is the rare movie whose central ambivalence never seemed to bother the public. He's presented straight-up in the middle of combat scenes presented with elaborately gorgeous clarity; it's a question of perspective whether he's a loon or whether he has a point. It's also frequently hilarious, as in the scene where Patton arrives to take charge of a camp that's in a total state of disarray. He finds a man slumped over in a hallway. "What are you doing?" he barks. "Sleeping, sir" the man answers. "Well keep sleeping! You're the only one who knows what he's doing around here!"

LAST DAYS (2005)

In my experience, people who are die-hard Kurt Cobain/Nirvana fans tend to hate Gus Van Sant's impressionistic take on Cobain's mentally deranged final hours. On the one hand, Van Sant gets some major iconographic images right (Cobain's body in the gardener's shed); on the other hand, there's no Nirvana music and zero attempt to convey anything about Nirvana. If you find Van Sant's long-tracking-shots-and-lighting-experiments aesthetic annoying (and you love Cobain), it looks like total disrespect. It's just Michael Pitt (in a career playing largely the psychotic and the damaged, a stand-out still) stumbling around, mumbling, ineptly preparing Kraft Mac 'n Cheese and — only twice — making music. I love it because it's a gorgeous formal exercise, but there's also plenty of comic scenes in the opening (see above, where a real Yellow Pages salesman steadfastly attempts to sell "Blake" a spot in the book and Blake's too out of it to figure out what he's talking about or tell him he's got the wrong guy). As a biography, the most intriguing bits are hypothetical glosses on impossible but intriguing music geeks what-ifs: what if Rivers Cuomo (Lukas Haas, writing his own dialogue just like everyone else) whined about touring in Japan to Cobain and inadvertently began working out Pinkerton that way? (Does this make Weezer the heir apparent to Nirvana? Discuss.) What if Kim Gordon came to give him a stern talking to? In its own odd way, Last Days finally gets around to nailing some of the most frustrating aspects of how '90s indie-rock spiraled into a mini-parody of mainstream rock, with its very own drugged-out casualties and insular, petty rivalries.

SECRET HONOR (1984)

Some people think this is the best movie about Nixon ever made; pending further evidence, I'll concur. It's mostly a master class in direction: given an impossible source (a one-man stage play), Robert Altman somehow makes the whole thing non-stagy. Finding as many different angles and set-ups as Lumet did for 12 Angry Men, Secret Honor is as much a pleasure for its resourcefulness as for Philip Baker Hall's career high: short on impersonation, long on paranoia. Filmed before Nixon's '80s rehabilitation as an acceptable and even valued foreign policy commenter, Secret Honor is a fuck you to the man (just as the clip above is a fuck you from Nixon to everyone else; be warned, the multiple monitors do not mean this was directed by Altman in De Palma mode). As such, even though its climax is kind of disappointing — Nixon was paranoid, but not enough for the nightmarish caricature the film has him explaining himself through — it's as much a great performance as an index to early-'80s feelings about Nixon.

LAURENCE OF ARABIA (1962)

My most conventional pic for great biopic doesn't follow the rules as we've come to know them. The title's quite literal: this is everything to do with T.E. Lawrence in and around Arabia, and nothing more. No childhood, no steady decline (though Ralph Fiennes gave filling it out a shot with a TV movie, A Dangerous Man: Lawrence After Arabia). David Lean comes closer to making a '00s art film than anyone (including he, probably) would like to admit: with its long, contemplative shots of desert and tiny human specks against the sky, Lawrence unsubtly but effectively makes the exterior landscape a reflection of Lawrence's internal turmoil at all times.

Click Here For Part One, Part Two, Part Three, Part Four & Part Six

Contributor: Vadim Rizov

DVD Digest for November 11, 2008

Paul Clark — Tue, 11 Nov 2008 15:00:00 GMT

You can always tell when it’s the holiday season, because the studios begin to clear out their coffers to release titles both new and classic, no matter whether they’ve already been released on DVD.

DVD of the Week: With thousands of titles (both theirs, MGM’s, and other studios’) in their library, no studio has more classic movies to draw from than Warner Bros. This week brings a goldmine of classic WB titles, but none of these is more appealing than the new box set Warner Bros. and the Homefront. Just in time for Veteran’s Day, the box set contains three of the studio’s best-known flag-waving entertainments, all of which are new to DVD. The most notable of the bunch was the 1943 hit Irving Berlin’s This Is The Army, starring future president Ronald Reagan along with the titular composer. The other films in the set are a pair of star-studded patriotic musicals, Thank Your Lucky Stars and Hollywood Canteen. In addition, Warner Bros. has dug into their massive collection of archival material in order to pair vintage short films, newsreels, trailers and cartoons with each of the films, including the semi-notorious Herr Meets Hare. So while some might claim that the films in the Homefront collection are disposable, the box set is anything but.

Warner will also be releasing two box sets for the holidays, Warner Bros. Holiday Collection Volume 1 and Volume 2. Volume 1 includes previously-released DVDs of Boys Town, A Christmas Carol, and Christmas in Connecticut, plus a bonus DVD of The Singing Nun. Volume 2 contains the new-to-DVD titles All Mine to Give, Holiday Affair, and It Happened on 5th Avenue (each sold separately), plus Blossoms in the Dust, available only in the box set. Paramount will be rereleasing three of their most beloved classics- Roman Holiday, Sabrina, and Sunset Blvd- in special “Centennial Editions” just in time for the studio’s 100th anniversary. Other classics coming to DVD this week include: JFK 3-Disc Ultimate Collector’s Edition (Warner, also Blu-Ray), Quo Vadis (Warner), and The Director’s Series: Roberto Rossellini (Lionsgate), which includes Escape By Night and Where Is Freedom?.

The highest-profile recent releases coming to DVD this week are Guillermo Del Toro’s Hellboy II: The Golden Army (Universal, also Blu-Ray) and Star Wars: The Clone Wars (Warner, also Blu-Ray). Also this week: Takashi Miike’s Sukiyaki Western Django (First Look, also Blu-Ray); the holiday-themed This Christmas (Sony, also Blu-Ray); Christophe Honore’s Love Songs (Genius Productions); the breakdancing doc Planet B-Boy (Arts Alliance America); and two titles who will have almost no audience members in common, Toby Keith in Beer For My Horses (Lionsgate) and the Flaming Lips in Christmas on Mars (WEA).

This week’s big TV on DVD news is the release of the massive The Sopranos: The Complete Series (HBO) box set. In addition, there’s also The Cosby Show: The Complete Series (First Look), as well as Scrubs Season 7 (Disney). And finally, the Blu-Ray only titles for this week are exclusively TV shows: Band of Brothers (Warner), Chuck Season 1 (Warner), Firefly: The Complete Series (Warner), and Supernatural Season 3 (Warner). So that’s cool, I guess.

"Green Porno": Isabella Rossellini's Dirty Bug Show

Phil Nugent — Mon, 21 Apr 2008 20:00:00 GMT

Isabella Rossellini, once thought of as a bit of a muse figure, is turning into the quite the one-woman show. In My Dad Is 100 Years Old, th short film tribute to her father, Roberto Rossellini, that Guy Maddin directed from her own screenplay, she played herself, Alfred Hitchcock, Federico Fellini, David O. Selznick, and Charlie Chaplin, one or two of which must have constituted a stretch for her. Now she's on the festival circuit, the Sundance Channel, and maybe your cell phone with a series of really short (one-minute) films, collectively known as Green Porno, that she wrote and co-directed with Jody Shapiro, and which star Rossellini as various insects explaining their mating rituals. Rossellini talked about the series with Deborah Solomons, who hit her straight up with the most obvious question about all this: why did she choose to play the male insects? Rossllini: "I am a ham. It makes people laugh when I play the male. So I played the male, when I am not playing a hermaphrodite." Solomon: "But aren’t the females more interesting, if only because they rule the bug world?" Rossellini:: "Can I say something? I am sorry. I didn’t want to make a feminist statement by saying the female praying mantis eats the male, so, Watch out, husbands." Solomon:: "Maybe your interest in bugs was spawned by David Lynch, who cast you in your first major film, Blue Velvet, and presented a view of the world in which red ants are teeming beneath every beautiful surface." Rossellini: "Oh, David must have chosen red ants because they are known to bite; they have a painful bite." For some reason, this reminds the reader of the story that Lynch broke up with her over the telephone. Maybe he really is a Martian.

Yesterday's Hits: The Bells of St. Mary's (1945, Leo McCarey)

Paul Clark — Mon, 24 Mar 2008 19:00:00 GMT

After last week’s review of Robert Bresson’s Les Anges du Péché, I briefly toyed with the idea of writing a nun-themed post every week. I’ve since reconsidered, but the truth is that there are quite a few memorable nun movies. Just think- a When Good Directors Go Bad on Neil Jordan’s We’re No Angels, a Movie Moment column on the rose-scourging scene in the Japanese nunsploitation classic School of the Holy Beast, a comparison piece on the wimple-worthiness of Anna Karina and Audrey Hepburn- the list goes on, even before the nuns go on the run. It’s hard to talk about nun movies without The Bells of St. Mary’s quickly coming up, so with the Easter season upon us I decided to revisit Leo McCarey’s 1945 film.

What made The Bells of St. Mary’s a hit?: 1944 saw the release of Going My Way, which introduced audiences to Bing Crosby’s Father O’Malley character. Audiences quickly fell in love with Father O’Malley, a young priest who kindly ministers to the poor with a smile and a song. Crosby- and O’Malley- won over both audiences and Oscar voters, with Going My Way proving to be both the biggest hit of 1944 and the year’s Academy Award winner for Best Picture, Best Actor (Crosby), and Best Supporting Actor (Barry Fitzgerald), among others. Based on this success, it was almost inevitable that a sequel would be a hit.

But what really put The Bells of St. Mary’s over the top was the presence of Ingrid Bergman. Bergman, who was already a popular and Oscar-winning leading lady, was best known at the time as a serious actress, playing dramatic roles in Casablanca, For Whom the Bell Tolls, and Gaslight. The Bells of St. Mary’s gave her the opportunity to play a somewhat more lighthearted role, as the devout Sister Benedict. Even audiences who hadn’t seen Going My Way turned out for the unlikely yet intriguing Crosby-and-Bergman matchup, and The Bells of St. Mary’s is widely believed to be the first sequel ever to outgross the original film.

What happened?: The Bells of St. Mary’s had few pretensions other than to make war-weary audiences feel good for a couple of hours. A movie this featherweight was practically fated to see a fade in its popularity, especially compared to the more lavish color musicals and spectacles of the fifties. In addition, both of the film’s stars saw their box-office heat wane. Bergman’s slide came first, following the controversy over her affair with Roberto Rossellini, hardly the best way to endear yourself to Bells’ core audience. Bing held out longer, drawing in crowds well into the fifties, but his appeal to younger audiences was shrinking as they embraced younger performers like Frank Sinatra. By the time rock’n’roll hit the scene, Bing felt like a relic to them.

Does The Bells of St. Mary’s still work?: Not really. Watching the film again, the two words that kept springing to mind were “quaint” and “cornball.” The Bells of St. Mary’s is so committed to making the audience feel good- whether it’s through gentle laughter or easy tears- that the film never has any edge to it. At the beginning of the film, O’Malley is warned about the strong-willed nuns, but aside from a few heated discussions over how the school is run, little becomes of this. Likewise, the episodic nature of the story isn’t a problem, except that all of the subplots are resolved in the easiest and most predictable way possible.

Consider the story of Horace P. Bogardus (Henry Travers), the rich man and city bigwig who is erecting an office building next to St. Mary’s. Bogardus, like so many other rich men in movies, only seems to think about money, while the nuns pray in the hope that he’ll turn over the building to them to use as their new school. So O’Malley does a little scheming, and after Bogardus falls ill, the nuns’ prayers are answered, with Bogardus requiring surprisingly little convincing to make a gift of his not-inexpensive new property. This wouldn’t be so bad except that every subplot in the film is resolved in much the same way.

In addition, the film’s characterizations are almost distractingly thin. O’Malley doesn’t play any notes that he hadn’t already played in Going My Way, and none of the supporting characters show any real depth. Most disappointing is Sister Benedict- the film sets her up as a formidable rival to O’Malley, but none of this pans out. Instead, she becomes practically saintly, as she sticks to her principles, has Job-like patience with her students, and prays for Mr. Bogardus. Even when she does something questionable, such as teaching a picked-on boy how to box, she does so for all of the right reasons. It’s a shame, since as Bergman plays the character it’s easy to imagine how, with only a few script changes, Sister Benedict might have been interesting and multi-dimensional, rather than the sanctimonious cipher we see in The Bells of St. Mary’s.

But then, when you’ve got a valuable property, why rock the boat? Even the film’s most potentially divisive element- its setting in a Roman Catholic Church and school- is portrayed in the most sanitized way imaginable. This is understandable, as in the year before Vatican II and President Kennedy there was some suspicion among non-Catholics about Catholic tradition. However, aside from a few throwaway lines (like the bit about a kid named Luther- “how’d he get in here?”) and the presence of priests and nuns, there’s little actual Catholicism on display here. Heck, many of the ads for the film didn’t even show its stars in their clerical garb, so clearly the religious issue wasn’t a very big one for the film and its studio.

In many ways, The Bells of St. Mary’s is an ideal example of a movie that is a hit in its day but hasn’t stood the test of time. While there’s nothing edgy or controversial that would have incurred the ire of 1945 audiences, it always offers nothing that’s especially interesting to moviewatchers in 2008. But then, how many of today’s hits will we be able to say the same about sixty years from now?