This is my best impression of a lamb.

Last Saturday, Cinelation was submitted as the #922 website in the Large Association of Movie Blogs (LAMB). Special thanks to Rachel, one of the site’s leading authors, who took my website into consideration and posted it.

The next day I was encouraged by Max Covill of Impassioned Cinema who found Cinelation through the LAMB. Judging from his output, the name for his website is very appropriate.

Of the livestock available, thank goodness the LAMB’s mascot is an adorable, fluffy one instead of grotesquely characterized variant.

Like this one:

“Must… drink… less… milk…”

Going back to lambs: While I was illustrating the picture above, I remembered a scene from Lindsay Anderson’s epic satire O Lucky Man! (1973) where the hero Michael Travis (Malcolm McDowell) makes a shocking discovery in a hospital ward.

Yes, that was the same name used by McDowell in his first starring role and collaboration with Mr. Anderson in If…. (1968). The character in If…. was rebooted from a revolution-minded student who goes postal in a strict English boarding school to an earnest coffee salesman who becomes disillusioned by the ways of the corporate world. If that wasn’t enough of a metamorphosis, Martin Scorsese got the name Travis from the McDowell character for his 1976 masterpiece Taxi Driver. Credited for Original Idea, McDowell very loosely based O Lucky Man! on his past experiences before becoming an actor as a springboard for the script written by David Sherwin.

Here is the scene where Travis nervously lifts off the sheet from a twitching patient hidden underneath.

From “O Lucky Man” (1973):

For those of you who haven’t seen O Lucky Man! (1973), I urge you to find out what happens while watching the 183-minute film properly. If you decide to watch it anyway, the worse that will happen is you might be even more inclined to watch the whole thing.

And just what does Malcolm McDowell have against windows?

URL: http://www.cinelation.com/
Site Name: Cinelation
Categories: Reviews, News, Editorials, Humor, Horror, Classic Film, Lists, (other) Filmmakers, Film Critics
Rating: PG-13 (I should have written R in case one of my articles has more than one F-word)

What is the main focus of your site?
Filmmaking and my observations on the subject.

What are your blogging goals, personally and/or professionally? In other words, what, if anything, are you trying to get out your blog?
This blog is to reach a larger audience as a critic and a filmmaker in training. Hopefully this will give me more opportunities to share the love of my craft with others.

Do you prefer an interactive community for your blog or are you the teacher and your readers the students?
An interactive community.

How long have you been movie blogging for, and how frequent do you post updates to your site?
This blog has been active for over three years. I am currently getting back to updating my blog on a regular basis (3-4 postings a week) after extensive study on the subject.

Name up to three of your favorite movies (and no more).
Monsieur Hire (1989)
Days of Heaven (1979)
Le Fils (2003)

I could have easily made these lists:

There Will Be Blood (2007)
2001: A Space Odyssey (1968)
Gremlins (1984)

Man with a Movie Camera (Preferably with the Michael Nyman Score, 1929)
The Conversation (1974)
Lovely and Amazing (2002)

Talk Radio (1988)
The Red Shoes (1948)
Mischima (1985)

You get the idea.

How did you hear about the LAMB?
The Flick Filosopher (http://www.flickfilosopher.com/)
Thanks, Flick!

Any additional comments, or give yourself an interview question that’s not listed above.
My review for Synecdoche, New York (2008) got me selected to participate in a recorded discussion for the film’s DVD. I was fortunate to speak with Glenn Kenny and Karina Longworth.

I also have my LAMB button up and it’s there to stay.

It’s time to get to the bottom of this. Every time I play one of my DVDs for Krzysztof Kieslowski’s Decalogue (1988) series, I see the Facets Video logo: Six seconds that quickly fade in and out with fourteen movie clips a half-second each. Over the past seven years I have been able to identify four of them, which means I should be watching more films released by Facets prior to August 19, 2003.

I thought about getting in contact with Facets and asking them what these titles are, but what fun would that be for you cinephiles out there?

If you know which movies belong to any of these still images, write it in the comments and I’ll credit you along with the answer in this article.

1.

2.

3.

4.

This one baffles me most of all. Are these two film clips fading in and out simultaneously? OR are we looking at a clip from a single movie that has a static dissolve between the two shots? Is the Facets editor working on this montage really that sadistic? My mind is cluttered with thoughts like these.

5.

6.

7.

8.

9.

10.

11.

12.

13.

14.

At last I am pleased with the look of the site. Being a bloody perfectionist is a torture for me. Nothing ever feels truly done. My head whispers incessantly, “It is never enough.” What’s worse about internal complaints are the echoes. With a blast of relief, I can look at Cinelation and not squint over a detail too inane for most to notice. Actually, I am more than pleased with the result. It really does look wonderful now. The joy of being a bloody perfectionist!

In the Spring of 2008, I began writing for a modest movie blog with only promises of being paid for all my work – once it became profitable. One year later, those promises turned more transparent as fewer e-mails about compensation were returned. This was after I went up and beyond to get their website promoted on the Synecdoche, New York DVD without so much as two nickles to rub together. I am a genuinely faithful man, but my patience went from creaking to dilapidation. This couldn’t be avoided any further. I would have to build my own website to house my reviews.

After a month of being saturated with HTML setups , CSS codes and WordPress, a rough version of Cinelation saw some light.

At the time, I felt some measure of pride between this versus no Cinelation at all. Soon enough, the dust from the battle of building something as foreign as WordPress began to settle. More and more, my artistic eye noticed the flaws. A variety of improvements were necessary for Cinelation to look genuinely unique and professional.

Then I experienced a terrible setback when I upgraded to WordPress 2.9. There was no turning back. My content had to be transported into a new version of MySQL5 on my server. All because MySQL4 could never love after WordPress 2.8. My server of choice (Cough! 1&1 Cough!) gave me a Catch-22: I could move only 10MB of files when I had 20 times more than that to input. They could do that themselves – easy(!), but they figured I could do it myself despite that I couldn’t. After a dozen lengthy calls to technical support, one had enough pity on me to do it with their computer in less than ten minutes. All good? That was child’s play!

Once my text and images were converted into the new MySQL database, my heart sank into my intestines. All of the glyphs and punctuation symbols in my written work had turned into unintelligible computer code. Every quote (“) was “. Every François Truffaut was François Truffaut. Every comma. Every dash. Every article. It was a dismal few weeks replacing replicating the text to its original form. I can’t emphasize the dull agony of alone inspecting the end of every sentence to make sure it was either a period or an ellipse.

The hurdle was behind me and it was back to tweaking Cinelation’s looks. I experimented on widgets, graphics and their placement on an exacting pixel by pixel regiment until the design agreed with me.

The most fun I had on here was making the new header image, a collage of faces from some of my most treasured films. A great deal of thought was put into the who following the whys. Each character carries more than just a few associations to encompass just a glimmer of the past century’s worth of film history. Much of which is very personal as it should be. There are 24 characters in total. Why 24? Because like the number 3, 24 is a magic number.

I keep beaming every time I look at this. In a word by Carrie White’s English instructor (Sydney Lassick), “Beeeauuuutifuul!” – minus the condescension.

Who is everyone up top? I will answer that in just a few days.

For now, here is the still from Patrice Leconte’s Monsieur Hire (1989/1990) that I had used for my first header. The beautiful Sandrine Bonnaire who plays Alice, the object of Monsieur Hire’s helpless and yearning voyeurism who has great deal going on in her own mind here. We go to the movies to watch characters who are usually oblivious to us. The best ones are usually lost in thought

Rest assured that Monsieur Hire is among the new header’s faces.

Two weeks ago, Chicago-based film reviewer codenamed Quint (real name: Jim Fyfe) from Ain’t It Cool News challenged graphic designers and film fanatics alike to participate in a contest: Make An Insane Movie Poster of Bad Lieutenant: Port of Call New Orleans. Quint being a great admirer of the new Werner Herzog film from this year’s Toronto International Film Festival (TIFF) – not to mention Jaws (1975)! – has had mixed feelings toward what its distributors First Look Studios and Polsky Films have done in the way of movie posters. First, they made an edgy poster that the MPAA threw its gavel down hard on for showing its title character pointing a gun at someone. Harvey Keitel, the original 1992 Bad Lieutenant from the 1992 Abel Ferrara film, amongst thousands of other trigger-itchy characters can point their gun at us gazers, but according to the MPAA we can’t handle anyone inside the poster being promised some bullets. Finally, First Look settled on a poster that looks like your generic rogue cop-seeks-killer thriller complete with two famous giant heads suspended over a landscape of dread and action.

Just like these ones!

The Official Poster from First Look Studios:

Nneyyeh! It’s not baaaad… This poster just doesn’t convey the baadasssss quality of a movie made by Herzog and Cage, those lovable madcaps. What we need is an advertisement that looks gritty and dangerous with a dirty 70s vibe to it.

Like this!

The Naughty Poster! Never to be seen again!

CAAAGGGE! NOOOooooooo! What are you DOING? Are you crazy? Point that gun at me! Not at someone you’re actually with! I can’t cope seeing this unless I’m in a movie theatre and you THREE are actually MOVING! What did Irma P. Hall ever do to you! Point the gun at ME! Just don’t shoot–

With the blessings of First Look Studios along with the original source art, I jumped at the chance to make my own dark and crazed movie poster for a very bad lieutenant. Before starting I would have loved to have seen the entire film, but the Vancouver theatrical release is on November 20th and the poster is due on the 9th. So my only point of reference now is the film’s trailer.

“Bad Lieutenant: Port of Call New Orleans” Trailer

My approach to the poster sans movie reminds me a little of what Ken Hartford chose to do according to Roger Ebert in his 1987 book Two Weeks in the Midday Sun: A Cannes Notebook. Mr. Hartford, a cheerfully corrupt salesman of cheap exploitation movies like Assault of the Killer Bimbos (1988), made his business by producing eye-catching promotional posters and video covers without ever seeing the actual movies. He’d boast, “I sell movies by the pound!” Ebert described finding him in “…the Marché du Film, the marketplace… down at the very bottommost level, there are the nameless videos that are retailed from small booths in the basement of the Palais…” Like a vampire hiding from daylight, that is where you’ll find the most prosperous of Grindhouse movie-pushers.

Having watched the trailer, I had some ideas of what makes the Bad Lieutenant tick. What are the three things on this man’s mind? His back pain. Oh, that searing wear up and down his spin has got to be KILLING him! Which brings us to drugs. Hard drugs! Anything to stop the pain! Finally, those goddamn iguanas! Nobody but him can see them… But they’re there! They’re crawling all over the place! Just look! Where’s the gun!

The back pain is key. I decided on a X-ray layout. The spine was my focus. In fact, I often thought of the human spine as resembling the bone-makings of a snake — a reptilian tail. Well, we did descend from reptiles! Our bone structure has just evolved to cage itself with ribs. They must have been very insecure primordial descendants to want to imprison themselves safely. And by placing the skull of one of those friggin’ iguana heads on top of the spine, it looks like the creepy crawlie is slithering out of what was once human.

Two down, one to go. Cocaine! This wreck of a man needs it and more of it. He’ll die without it. He’ll die anyway. Quicker in fact! But it’s the only way to keep this killer and rapist functioning. Like feeding a fish, only by the nostrils. I had to turn this mad experiment of bone into a structure of white powder.

You didn’t ask, but here are some songs on the substance:

Cocaine by JJ Cale
Cocaine by Jackson Browne
Draggin’ The Line by Tommy James & The Shondells
Junkhead by Alice in Chains
Snowblind by Black Sabbath
White Lines by Grandmaster Flash
Powder by Yellowcard
What a Waster by The Libertines
Feel Good Hit of the Summer by Queens of the Stone Age
Morning Glory by Oasis
Gold Dust Woman by Fleetwood Mac
This Cocaine Makes Me Feel Like I’m on This Song
by System of a Down
Twist of Cain by Danzig
Night of the Living Baseheads by Public Enemy
Master of Puppets by Metallica
Save Me by Shinedown

None of the images supplied by the good folks at First Look Studio are of much use to me. I need me a particular face – a look on Nicolas Cage. Luckily I found just the right one at the celebrity entertainment site AceShowbiz.com. Just had to superimpose Cage’s anguished, exhausted face over the x-ray slide and make some of that delicious cocaine whiff up his nose. Now there’s a happy Bad Lieutenant!

Now my poster has been sent over to Quint with the header “His Soul’s Still Dancing” and my fingers are crossed! The contest and its prizes are not open to those living outside the US. Oh, well! It was fun designing the poster. It has kept my white-knuckled anticipation for Werner Herzog’s latest film to reach my movie theaters at bay. Seeing it next week will be reward enough.

Still, I would have loved to have won a Lena Herzog photography book signed by the man Werner Herzog.

No matter what anybody else does, this foreign import poster of director Abel Ferrara’s original Bad Lieutenant (1992) is one that is hard to beat. So is the movie – it’s a brutal masterpiece. I wonder if Nicolas Cage will be in a scene similar to what Keitel did. I know Cage and Herzog are crazy enough to do it.

“Bad Lieutenant” (1992) Trailer

“Assault of the Killer Bimbos” (1988) Trailer

How could I resist?

UPDATE: November 21, 2009

The time has come. The contestants have been tallied, fondled, and judged. And the winners are… I wasn’t amongst them. Check them out for yourselves.

Here is a collection of my favourites from the finalists:

Congratulations to those who were selected!

Why didn’t anybody else think of using the tagline “Don’t Forget Your Lucky Crack Pipe!”? It’s much better than “The Only Criminal He Can’t Catch Is Himself.” Technically, it looks like the corrupt cop already has. He just can’t let himself go.

The main font used on the poster is appropriately called Dirty Ego. The color is that of dried blood – something a Bad Lieutenant has to live with on a daily basis.

UPDATE: November 22, 2009

I just saw the film and thought it was awesome. I noticed over the main title sequence that the title of the movie was indeed “The Bad Lieutenant: Port of Call New Orleans”. I’m glad to feel so validated for using the “the” when it wasn’t required. Works much better as an introduction.

I don’t care what anyone else says, I love that whole “Port of Call New Orleans” bit.

One of the many upsides to living in a beautiful city like Vancouver (besides the freshest tap water this side of the Pacific Ocean) is that it holds one of the five biggest film festivals in North America. The Vancouver International Film Festival opens today. About 640 screenings of the 360 films to come from eighty countries will be shown over the next sixteen days (October 1 – October 16). That means we Vancouverites and visiting film buffs can see movies as far as award-winners at Cannes, Telluride (TIFF), et al. to those that will never get distribution here. Without the interference of a ratings board, anything goes. Along Granville Street, and from Seymore to Howe, the cinemas are our roller coasters, our bumper cars, our Tilt-A-Whirls. It’s a good comparison seeing as how the line-ups won’t be any different.

I am still disheartened that Todd Solondz’s Life During Wartime (2009), a semi-sequel to his wonderful Happiness (1998), is not playing in the festival. After it played last month at Telluride to a very warm reception, Life During Wartime didn’t get distribution like so many others. Unless Solondz distributes it himself or keeps selling to those willing to take a risk (Hello Lions Gate Films!), it might be a long while to view. On the bright side, the Coen Brothers’ new film A Serious Man will have a Sunday morning sneak preview at the Park Theatre on October 11 before opening nationwide on October 16. The Coen film, unlike Telluride, will not be part of the VIFF. I am catching the Sunday screening so for me, it is part of the festival.

What I also find interesting is that Peter Greenaway’s lecture piece Rembrandt’s J’accuse (2008) is playing at VIFF, whereas its dramatic companion feature Nightwatching (2007), also by Greenaway, had a limited theatrical run in Vancouver last April. I am confident that Nightwatching will be among the very best films of my 2009 list. I initially thought that this release of Rembrandt’s J’accuse was flawed considering that both Nightwatching and Rembrandt’s J’accuse were available for purchase as a two-disc special edition two weeks prior. It just so happens that I had to send for the DVD set on Amazon because there were no copies available for purchase at HMV or Videomatica despite the original release date. No biggie. I just hope there is a bigger turn out for Rembrandt’s J’accuse than I saw for Nightwatching.

While scanning the film schedules for more screenings I could squeeze in between those I’ve ordered in advance, I noticed a number of film titles that are being recycled from past ones — even classics. Here are some trivial findings:

• Jean Luc Goddard’s Breathless (2009) | Yang Ik-Joon’s Breathless (2009)
• Luis César Amadori’s The Headless Woman (1947) | Lucrecia Martel’s The Headless Woman (2008)
• Anne Fontaine’s How I Killed My Father (2001) | Xavier Dolan’s I Killed My Mother (2009) — Close enough.
• Albert Brooks’ Mother (1996) | Joon-ho Bong’s Mother (2009)
• Alain Resnais’ Night and Fog (1955) | Ann Hui’s Night and Fog (2009)
• Rob Reiner’s North (1994) (Awful movie…) | Rune Denstad Langlo’s North (2009)
• Georg Wilhelm Pabst’s Pandora’s Box (1929) | Yesim Ustaoglu’s Pandora’s Box (2009)

I’m kicking off the VIFF tonight with Lars von Trier’s controversial and ultra-violent new film Antichrist. Hopefully, the intensity of the experience will border on the likes of Catherine Breillat’s Fat Girl (2001) and Cristian Mungiu’s 4 Months, 3 Weeks and 2 Days (2007). Not only do I anticipate massive walkouts, but sprints for the exit! I find it somewhat ironic considering that the first film I ever saw at a VIFF was The Five Obstructions (2003), which was directed by both Jørgen Leth and, yes, Lars von Trier. For an hour, I waited in line with my fellow film buffs. Feelings ran high, from eager anticipation to confusion – what would the latest Von Trier film be like?

The light rainfall eventually took mercy on my trusty newsboy hat, which I bought that very night — the rain poured hard an hour ago. I am amused by how easy it is to get into a conversation with a ticket holder either behind or ahead of you. We’re all here for the same reason. Suddenly a cute brunette got in line behind me and before I could get drunk on endorphins, she asked if this was the rush line. It wasn’t. I told her so, then watched her cross the street and that was that. As Pepe Le Pew would say, Le sigh.

The night sky slowly turned from black to a greenish gray and my mind began to play a David Shire score as radio listeners were calling in about the Zodiac killer. Occasionally, a homeless person would offer to sing for loose change. One man played the spoons, slapping them on his knee – now there’s a lost art. The time passed quickly as I read chapters four and five of Our Cancer Year by Harvey “American Splendor” Pekar and his wife Joyce Brabner.

As I sat in one of the stiff yet cushy seats courtesy of Empire Granville 7 Cinemas, I noticed the bumps and winkles of my winter jacket laid inside-out against my back. I had only two consolations. One: I was pushed forward from my seat, sitting at complete attention and my spine was so vertically straight that a Ghostbuster could slide down it. Two: Depending on how good the movie is, I would be oblivious to any discomfort.

Not that I need my jacket to tell me whether a movie is bad or not.

Every year, the VIFF and the agency TBWA\VANCOUVER have prepared a few new shorts to promote their sponsors and open each film. These spots have a weird and comical vibe to get the audience more relaxed for the (presumably radical) feature presentation. Here are 2009 editions:

Vancouver International Film Festival | “Disturbing”

Vancouver International Film Festival | “Subtitles”

My personal favourite.

Vancouver International Film Festival | “Sexuality”

I wished that this video was extended to show the obligatory sponsor logos (Visa, Rogers, etc.) to the sound of bedsprings and *YEE-ONN!*s.

Take a look at the “27th VIFF Openers” from last year.

I wonder out of the selected films I will see which ones will be my favourites from last year’s VIFF: Let the Right One In (2008), Wendy and Lucy (2008), Sita Sings the Blues (2008), and Happy-Go-Lucky (2008). I also shudder at the thought of enduring another Paruthiveeran (2008) — one of these days I’m going to write a review on Ameer Sultan’s mess of a movie and risk boiling my blood pressure. On my agenda, I’m looking forward to Michael Haneke’s The White Ribbon, Lucrecia Martel’s The Headless Woman, and Lee Daniel’s Precious: Based on the Novel Push by Sapphire amongst others.

Viva VIFF!

Film Still from “It’s a Wonderful Life (1946)

“Keep Ted Turner and his goddamned Crayolas away from my movies.”
— Orson Welles

Vandalized Black-and-White Films (141)

20 Million Miles to Earth (1957)
30 Seconds over Tokyo (1944) (Turner Colorized Classic)
36 Hours (1965) (Turner Colorized Classic)
The Absent-Minded Professor (1961)
An Ache in Every Stake (1941)
Across the Pacific (1942) (Turner Colorized Classic)
Action in the North Atlantic (1943) (Turner Colorized Classic)
Africa Screams (1949)
Air Force (1943) (Turner Colorized Classic)
Angels with Dirty Faces (1938)
Arsenic and Old Lace (1944)
The Asphalt Jungle (1950)
Babes in Toyland (1934)
Baby Burlesks (1931)
The Bachelor and the Bobby-Soxer (1947)
Back to Bataan (1945)
Bataan (1943) (Turner Colorized Classic)
Beer Barrel Polecats (1946)
Beyond Tomorrow (1940)
The Big Steal (1949)
Blue Steel (1934)
Bride of the Monster (1956)
Brideless Groom (1947)
Bright Eyes (1934)
Bringing Up Baby (1938)
Calling All Curs (1939)
Captain January (1936)
Captain Blood (1935)
Carnival of Souls (1962) (Legend Films)
Casablanca (1942) (Turner Colorized Classic)
The Chimp (1932)
A Christmas Carol (AKA Scrooge) (1951)
A Chump at Oxford (1940)
Creature from the Haunted Sea (1961)
County Hospital (1932)
Dementia 13 (1963)
The Devil-Doll (1936)
Disorder in the Court (1936)
Dopey Dicks (1950)
Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde (1941)
Earth vs. the Flying Saucers (1956)
The Fighting 69th (1940) (Turner Colorized Classic)
Fort Apache (1948)
Flying Tigers (1942)
Gaslight (1944)
The Giant Gila Monster (1959)
The Gospel According to St. Matthew (1964)
The Great Rupert (1950)
Gunga Din (1939)
Helpmates (1932)
High Noon (1952)
High Sierra (1941)
Holiday Inn (1942) (Legend Films)
House on Haunted Hill (1959) (Legend Films)
I’ll Never Heil Again (1941)
Invasion of the Body Snatchers (1956)
It’s a Wonderful Life (1946)
3 Versions:
1986 (Hal Roach Studios)
1989 (Republic Pictures)
2007 (Legend Films)
The Jackie Robinson Story (1950)
Jailhouse Rock (1957)
How I Unleashed World War II(1970)
The Killer Shrews (1959)
King Kong (1933)
The Last Man on Earth (1964)
The Last of the Mohicans (1936)
The Little Colonel (1935)
The Little Shop of Horrors (1960)
The Longest Day (1962)
The Lucky Texan (1934)
Malice in the Palace (1949)
The Maltese Falcon (1941)
The Mark of Zorro (1940)
The Mask of Fu Manchu (1932)
Men in Black (1934)
Mighty Joe Young (1949)
Miracle on 34th Street (1947)
Missile to the Moon (1958)
The Most Dangerous Game (1932)
Movie Movie (1978)
Mughal-E-Azam (The Greatest of the Mughals) (1960)
Mutiny on the Bounty (1935) (Turner Colorized Classic)
The Music Box (1932)
My Man Godfrey (1936)
Naya Daur (1957)
A Night at the Opera (1935)
Night of the Living Dead (1968)
3 Versions:
1986 (Hal Roach Studios)
1997 (Anchor Bay Entertainment)
2004 (Legend Films and Off Color Films)
Ninotchka (1939)
No Census, No Feeling (1940)
Objective Burma (1945)
Only “Old Men” Are Going to Battle (1973)
(Grading Dimension Pictures)
The Outlaw (1943)
Phantom from Space (1953)
The Phantom of the Opera (1925)
The Phantom Planet (1961)
The Philadelphia Story (1940)
Plan 9 from Outer Space (1959) (Legend Films)
Playing the Ponies (1937)
Pop Goes the Easel (1935)
Porky’s Railroad (1937)
Pride of the Yankees (1942)
Punch Drunks (1934)
Rebecca of Sunnybrook Farm (1932)
Reefer Madness (1936) (Legend Films)
Rio Grande (1950)
Room Service (1938)
Sagebrush Trail (1933)
Sands of Iwo Jima (1950)
San Francisco (1936)
Santa Fe Trail (1940)
Sami Swoi (1967)
The Sea Hawk (1940)
Sergeant York (1941) (Turner Colorized Classic)
Seventeen Moments of Spring (1973)
She (1935)
Sherlock Holmes and the Secret Weapon (1935)
Sing a Song of Six Pants (1947)
The Sitter Downers (1937)
Some Like It Hot (1959)
The Son of Kong (1933)
Stand Up and Cheer! (1934)
Susannah of the Mounties (1939)
Suspicion (1941)
Swing Parade of (1946 (1946)
Swiss Miss (1938)
Terror by Night (1946)
The Roaring Twenties (1939)
They Were Expendable (1945)
The Thing from Another World (AKA The Thing) (1951)
Things to Come (1936)
Topper (1937) (Hal Roach Studios)
Topper Returns (1938) (Hal Roach Studios)
The Treasure of Sierra Madre (1948) (Turner Colorized Classic)
Treasure Island (1934)
Violent is the Word for Curly (1938)
Waterloo Bridge (1940)
Way Out West (1937)
White Heat (1949)
White Zombie (1932)
Yankee Doodle Dandy (1942)
You Nazty Spy! (1940)
Your Cheatin’ Heart (1964)

Pinocchio (2-Disc 70th Anniversary Platinum Edition) (1940)

Pinocchio is arguably the best animated feature film that Walt Disney Studios initially released. This beautifully rendered animation directed by Ben Sharpsteen and Hamilton S. Luske makes my heart go out to the immortal two-dimensional format. It’s true that Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs (1937) directed by David Hand was a revolutionary pioneer of animated features, but Pinocchio easily trumps Snow White as a compelling narrative.

About the video quality on Blu-Ray, David Boulet from dvdfile.com writes:

With Pinocchio, every brush-stroke, the rich texture conveyed by the surface of the canvas or paper, the consistency of the watercolor wash, or the density of the pastel chalk, is all displayed with dazzling purity. The effect is like being absorbed into a moving picture full of life and infused with the spirit of the artisans that crafted it together. Such nuance, which was obscured by the added artifacts of multi-generation film-print production for its original audience now breathes a new life of clarity for high definition viewers today. I can’t complain. I don’t think that Walt or his artists would either.

The DVD has a number of extras including documentaries, deleted scenes, and an indispensable audio commentary by Leonard Maltin, Eric Goldberg and J.B. Kaufman.

What do I think is the best animated feature to come out of Disney? It is the only one to be nominated for the Academy Awards’ Best Picture: Beauty and the Beast (1990) Back when I was too young to attend more mature fare and movie tickets were sold at $4.75, my wonderful sister Michelle took me to see it fifteen times. I have never seen a single movie in a theater more than that since.

Synecdoche, New York (2008)

In all of its glory, Synecdoche, New York was my favorite film of 2008. In the DVD included featurette Infectious Diseases in Cattle: Bloggers’ Round Table, I participated in a discussion about the merits of Charlie Kaufman’s directorial debut with Karina Longworth  (SpoutBlog), Walter Chaw (Film Freak Central), Andrew Grant (Like Anna Karina’s Sweater), and Glenn Kenney (Some Came Running). I was very fortunate to be in this company. If you want to engage with some of the best in professional film criticism, look to these four class acts.

A special thank you to producer Caddie Hastings (The Grossmyth Company).

Let the Right One In (2008)

Let the Right One In should be the set standard for all filmmakers wanting to make a horror film. So many first timers think horror equals easy. The result — shelves beyond shelves of junk. If only the quality of the genre were as intimidating and enriching as this. My only qualm is outside of Tomas Alfredson’s excellent production: the proposed American remark by Matt Reeves, which could never match the original here. Again, nothing could.

The DVD includes fascinating scenes on the cutting room floor — I wish that the Eli & Oskar Interior Scene was kept in the feature — and an informative featurette that is over much too soon. However, if you don’t wish to be exposed to the technicalities that made the swimming pool scene possible, avoid that feature. Those with a healthy appetite for the filmmaking process are going to eat this up. I also love the holographic cover here. Subtle and creepy. The designer who labeled the disc with only Eli’s silhouette deserves a cigar.

The only drawback on the DVD is on Magnet’s and Magnolia Picture’s part: The subtitles on the DVD are different from those originally from the theatrical cut by Ingrid Eng. Worse, the changes have dumbed down the dialogue. For those of you who haven’t bought this movie yet, wait until a new line has put the correct “Theatrical” version on the market. Unfortunately, I am displeased that Magnet has no plans to set up an exchange system for those who bought the initially flawed DVD without warning. It shows a lack of respect for their customers.

Editor and DVD commentator Bill Hunt of The Digital Bits reports:

In other news today, you might recall that we recently reviewed Magnet’s Let the Right One In on Blu-ray Disc. Well, it’s just come to our attention that the DVD and Blu-ray versions have English subtitles that differ substantially from those of the theatrical art house presentation, in that much of the subtle nuance has been lost and many original lines of dialogue are untranslated entirely. Unfortunately, having only seen the film once in theaters, I wasn’t familiar enough with the translation to spot the differences. But Icons of Fright has posted some examples of just how different the subtitles are. We contacted Magnet directly on this issue this afternoon, and they were quick to respond as follows:

“We’ve been made aware that there are several fans that don’t like the version of the subtitles on the DVD/BR. We had an alternate translation that we went with. Obviously a lot of fans thought we should have stuck with the original theatrical version. We are listening to the fans feedback, and going forward we will be manufacturing the discs with the subtitles from the theatrical version.”

We asked Magnet some follow-up questions, specifically how people will be able to identify the new discs, when they’ll be available in stores and if there will be an exchange program for those who have the existing version. Here’s what they said:

“There are no exchanges. We are going to make an alternate version available however. For those that wish to purchase a version with the theatrical subtitles, it will be called out in the tech specs box at the back/bottom of the package where it will list SUBTITLES: ENGLISH (Theatrical), SPANISH.”

The no exchange thing is going to upset many that have already purchased the disc, and understandably so. We’re at least encouraged to see that the title is being corrected. We’ll let you know when the discs are available, and rest assured we’re letting Magnet know that an exchange program might be a wise idea…

Milk (2008)

Of the selected nominees for the Academy Award Best Picture, Milk is the strongest film that resonates after repeat viewing. Watching it again today, I was moved as much as I was on my first viewing. If Mickey Rourke’s work in Darren Aronofsky’s The Wrestler (2008) had to be passed up, I’m glad Sean Penn got it for his amazing transformation into Harvey Milk. That’s exactly what it was — a transformation. In regards to Gus Van Sant, Milk is a close second to my favorite of the director’s filmography, To Die For (1995).

Happy-Go-Lucky (2008)

This picture is just wrong. Now people are going to think Happy-Go-Lucky is a romance. Happy-Go-Lucky is more than that, as is any film by Mike Leigh. From the perspective of schoolteacher Poppy Cross, finding love would be wonderful. But if there isn’t any love to find today, then surely there’s something else to be happy about. Not many films are that truthful.

For the DVD cover, this is a variation I whipped up of the illustrated poster of Happy-Go-Lucky would have been much better.

Alas, we live a world where ContentFilm took one of the best poster designs I’ve seen and did THAT to the DVD cover art of James Marsh’s The King (2006):

On the director’s commentary, Marsh complained that one of ContentFilm’s producers thought the good poster “belonged in an art museum, not in a video store.” This is the mentality that marginalizes the worth of cinema.

And don’t get me started about how the last two minutes of Bob Dylan’s song Cold Irons Bound over the end credits were cut out of the DVD. My two viewings of The King in theatres continued the haunting Dylan song after the credits had ended and the last two minutes of it played over a black screen. It was chilling and wonderful. Then some pipsqueak decided to fade out the song and stop The King as the end credits finished. Now you know why the theatrical cut on the IMDB is listed at 105 minutes whereas the DVD’s running time is 103 minutes. Oddly enough, the Tartan Video DVD release in the UK clocks in at 105 minutes supposedly.

Rachel Getting Married (2008)

What sold me here was how Kym, played by Anne Hathaway, blends in with a room full of recovering drug users. What makes Johnathan Demme’s demanding film Rachel Getting Married so rewarding is that Kym and her sister Rachel both have compelling reasons to be tended to by their loved ones these few days together. Kym has been to hell and back fighting her addiction and guilt. Rachel has been the “good one” and dammit this is her day! Rosemary DeWitt deserves as much credit as Anne Hathaway. They both complement one another as the most realized sisters I’ve seen since Nicole Holofcener’s Lovely and Amazing (2001). The dishwasher scene remains one of my favorites of 2008 because it is at once so exciting and then… I don’t want to ruin it for you.

Before becoming the next best thing to the likes of film composer Danny Elfman, Shirley Walker made her mark as a conductor for a few renowned films such as Randa Haine’s Children of a Lesser God (1986) and Jonathan Kaplan’s The Accused (1988). Her greatness was matched by the production of Francis Ford Coppola’s Apocalypse Now (1979) as her first gig in Hollywood. On the Internet Movie Database, Walker is listed as a synthesizer musician in the film’s music department. The original music credit goes to its director (listed as Francis Coppola) and his father Carmine Coppola. Coppola’s wife, Eleanor, was too busy documenting its production with stunning material that would later become Hearts of Darkness: A Filmmaker’s Apocalypse (1991), written and directed by Fax Bahr and George Hickenlooper who also made the wonderful film, The Man From Elysian Fields (2001). Like Werner Herzog’s Fitzcarraldo (1982) and its accompanying documentary Burden of Dreams (1982), Hearts of Darkness presents the production as harrowing an experience as Apocalypse Now.

2008 was a year to be a fan of Batman; not only did The Dark Knight raise the bar of action pictures involving anti-heroes, but after over a dozen years of waiting, some of the exemplary score from Batman: The Animated Series (1992-1995) was finally released on commercially sold CDs. This first volume is an accumulation of music by head composer Shirley Walker and collaborations by the equally good musicians Lolita Aitmanis and Michael McCuistion. Yes, I bought one of the three-thousand limited releases and it has a place of honor in my office. I investigated Shirley Walker’s 1979 case after reading this excerpt from the collectible booklet included with the soundtrack:

In the 1970′s, Walker began scoring industrial films and jingles while continuing to play as apianist with a variety of orchestras. With one of the Bay’s hotbeds of creativity being Francis Ford Coppola’s American Zoetrope Studios, Walker’s notoriety would see her join the musical team of the writer-director’s Apocalypse Now in 1979. Her synth playing was a major factor in helping Coppola’s father Carmine realize Apocalypse Now‘s acid rock groove, and Walker would re-team with Carmine that same year for The Black Stallion, charging to the rescue with additional music for the Coppola-produced family classic.

-Daniel Schweiger, a soundtrack editor for iFmagazine.com and Venice Magazine.

Exhibit A:

“You’re in the asshole of the world, Captain!”

My favorite twenty seconds of Apocalypse Now‘s entirety is comprised from 2:59 to 3:19 in the following Do Long Bridge sequence. Captain Benjamin L. Willard (Martin Sheen) and his acid-tripping soldier Lance B. Johnson (Sam Bottoms) march across the wire-protruding, burnt-black terrain erupting with explosions of hellfire. From the center of a shooting post, descending lines of light bulbs stretch beyond the inky background and toward the frame panning horizontally to the right. Accompanying the commands, screams and growls on the soundtrack, the surrealistic music kicks in and drowns out the noise, effectively smothering it. The best way to describe the music would be like a carnival pavilion vomiting bile and severed elephant parts. If I died and heard this music, then I will know that I am really in Heaven. I love this music!

Exhibit B:

At this point of The Clock King episode, Batman is locked in a bank vault rigged to suck all of the oxygen from the room. Nearly unconscious, Batman’s point-of-view reveals a digital read-out box from a distance going in and out of focus as opposed to the steel door of the vault. Starting at 4:21 of episode track (not included on the CD…the next one, maybe?), listen for blaring synthesizers from 4:26 to 4:31. Sound familiar? The achieved effect of those nauseous sounds is identical to those used for the Apocalypse Now track. My conclusion is that Shirley Walker is directly responsible for why I regard that scene of Coppola’s film so highly.

Listening to those inspired, sinister tracks from Batman: The Animated Series always brings me back to my childhood. Where else has a theme for Batgirl (4:22 – 5:11) sounded so celebratory, bouncy, rousing and yet threatening? Okay, that is the music I want to hear before those illusory golden gates open before me. What other music makes the Joker (1:43 – 2:35) sound like a balance between lunacy and satanic hedonism? I refer to this soundtrack release as Volume One because there is a big demand for the rest out of the sixty-five episodes of the series. I want to listen to a pure orchestrate of virginal tracks from episodes ranging from Read My Lips, Mudslide, and Shadow of the Bat to House of Garden, Harlequinade, and BabyDoll. Oh, and I haven’t forgotten about the music from The New Batman Adventures (1997-1999), like Over The Edge, Growing Pains, and Mad Love. Surely, about a dozen more volumes isn’t out of the question. So far the first release is an excellent start on part of its producers to do justice to the late, great Shirley Walker.

UPDATE: April 2, 2009

Turns out it was Carlos Rodriguez who did The Clock King score. He was one of the invaluable composers along with Michael McCuistion and Lolita Ritmanis who worked with Shirley Walker as their mentor on the series. All three composers have each contributed music for a few whole episodes of their own. In Rodriguez’s case, they include Day of the Samurai, Avatar, The Clock King, Robin’s Rechoning Part I, and If You’re So Smart, Why Aren’t You Rich? featuring the Riddler. You can listen to all of his isolated tracks, which Rodriguez was kind enough to load on his MySpace page. The four seconds of music that compelled me to write this article can be heard in between 4:26 – 4:30.

FYI: The minute-and-half of Batmobile music is from I’ve Got Batman in My Basement, which has a bad rep being the one time Batman needs saving from the Penguin by a couple of kids! For me, the episode is redeemable. The Penguin at one point drives a whirling slicer towards Batman’s face… when he’s comatose. “Ah! A treat with my egg! Sliced ham!” Yikes! And in front of the children no less.

When was the last time you saw a cartoon where the kids are in more danger and sky was a dark gray? We’ve seen countless shows like Johnny Quest where the kids play war and the sky is always a bright blue. At best, I’ve Got Batman in My Basement has a dark atmosphere aided by another fine Shirley Walker score. Walker was so good she could make a light premise sound much more menacing.

Memories: The Batman Promo for “The Clock King” (1992)

If I chose the nominees, none of that would have happened. Permit me to unlock this web page with the key of film obsession. Beyond it is another dimension- a dimension of sound, a dimension of sight, a dimension of liberties. You’re moving into a space of both shadow and substance, of crimes and misdemeanors. You’ve just crossed over into . . . the Beaubien Zone. In here, I am the sole voter of the 81st Annual Academy Awards. To make it more interesting, I will not recognize any of the existing nominees from that thing we’ll call reality, as much as it pains me to see the Best Supporting Actor category without the Michael Shannon nomination. Not only is the challenge more enticing, but it also works as a collection of those deserving – some even more – who were snubbed. Now this would have been a far more entertaining Oscar Night!

Best Picture

Synecdoche, New York (2008): Spike Jonze, Charlie Kaufman, Sidney Kimmel
In Bruges (2008): Graham Broadbent, Peter Czernin
The Dark Knight (2008): Christopher Nolan, Charles Roven, Emma Thomas
Revolutionary Road (2008): Bobby Cohen, Sam Mendes, Scott Rudin
Let the Right One In (2008): Carl Molinder, John Nordling
Special Mention: Wendy and Lucy (2008): Larry Fessenden, Neil Kopp, Anish Savjani

Best Performance by an Actor in a Leading Role

Philip Seymour Hoffman for Synecdoche, New York (2008)
Brendon Gleeson for In Bruges (2008)
François Cluzet for Ne Le Dis à Personne (Tell No One) (2008)
Lee Pace for The Fall (2008)
Michael Shannon for Shotgun Stories (2008)

I was very tempted to also nominate Philippe Petit from Man on Wire for Best Actor. True, he is just playing himself, then again, he is always performing. Plus he does his own stunts!

Best Performance by an Actress in a Leading Role

Kristen Scott Thomas for Il y a Longtemps Que Je T’Aime (I’ve Loved You So Long) (2008)
Kate Winslet for Revolutionary Road (2008)
Inés Efron for XXY (2008)
Lina Leandersson for Let the Right One In (2008)
Sally Hawkins for Happy-Go-Lucky (2008)
Special Mention: Michelle Williams for Wendy and Lucy (2008)

Best Performance by an Actor in a Supporting Role

Eddie Marsen for Happy-Go-Lucky (2008)
Bill Irwin for Rachel Getting Married (2008)
Aaron Eckhart for The Dark Knight (2008)
Wally Dalton for Wendy and Lucy (2008)
Ralph Finnes for In Bruges (2008)

June 23, 2009: This article works best when regarded as a contingent whole from a distance rather than one meant for scrutinizing. By recognizing the existence and length of “Woe, Originality, Woe!”, the point is made as sharp as a slashing celluloid projector — fingers and palms are cautioned.

Have you recently felt waist-deep in the remakes that Hollywood is churning out at us? Those suits are approving them faster than a greasy teenager can wrap up and deliver an equally greasy feces-spotted burger. Now you have to understand, the execs are timid and frightened of green-lighting anything new and original. After all, anything untried could fail and cost them their job.

So far this year we’ve seen Peter Segal helmed Get Smart, The Eye, Shutter, Prom Night, One Missed Call, Funny Games, etc. With the exception of the Steve Carell flick, they all sucked, but that didn’t stop future Idiocracy members from making them profitable, which ensure more and more remakes…

Get ready to duck and cover because here they come!

TRAIN (2008) by Gideon Raff < Terror Train (1980) by Roger Spottiswoode.

The Echo (2008) by Yam Laranas < Sigaw (2004) by, you guessed it, Yam Laranas. It will be like George Sluizer remaking his chilling masterpiece Spoorloos (1988) into the Americanized (re: shitty) The Vanishing (1993).

The Valet (2008) by Bobby and Peter Farrelly < La Doublure (2006) by Francis Veber.

Star Blazers (2008) by producer Josh C. Kline < The Japanese anime series Star Blazers (1979). The upcoming movie will be live-action; just think Thunderbirds (2004) — question: did that hurt?

Race with the Devil (2008) by Chris Moore < Race with the Devil (1975) by Jack Starrett.

It’s Alive (2008) by Josef Rusnak (The Thirteenth Floor, 1999) < It’s Alive (1974) by Larry Cohen.

Anguish (2008) < Angustia (1987) by J.J. Bigas Luna. It involves a serial killer who collects eyeballs by force for his mother’s keepsake. For some odd reason, this reminds me of the surreal Alejandro Jodorowsky masterpiece Santa Sangre (1989).

Possession (2008) by Joel Bergvall and Simon Sandquist < Jungdok (2002) by Young-hoon Park.

The Host (2008) < Gwoemul (2006) by Bong Joon-ho

It’s a Ferrara twofer: The Driller Killer (2008) by Andrew Jones < The Driller Killer (1979) by Abel Ferrara.

Bad Lieutenant (1992) by Abel Ferrara > Bad Lieutenant: Port of Call New Orleans (2009) by Werner Herzog. Nicolas Cage takes on the infamous Harvey Kietel role. This is the only one I’m looking forward to.

Battle Royale (2008) by Kinji Fukasaku < Batoru rowaiaru (2000) by Kinji Fukasaku

Oh Gawd! They’re even remaking Oh, God! (2008) from the 1977 George Burns semi-classic by Carl Reiner.

Sharky’s Machine (2008) by Phil Joanou < Sharky’s Machine (1981) by Burt Reynolds.

Crossing Over (2008) by Wayne Kramer < Crossing Over (1996) by Wayne Kramer. The 1996 version is a 35-minute short that’s being adapted to feature-length and is starring Harrison Ford, Sean Penn, Ray Liotta, and Ashley Judd.

Coffee break time! | INTERMISSION | I’m back.

Flirt (2008) < Flirt (2005) by Jaap van Eyck. Not the 1996 Hal Hartley one.

Bangkok Dangerous (2008) by Oxide Pang Chun and Danny Pang < Bangkok Dangerous (1999) by the same Thailand directors.

Revenant (2008) by Randy Robinson < Le Revenant (1903!) by Georges Méliès. This is officially the oldest remake of all time by 105 years. “Florence, get Guinness on the phone!” “Right away. Genghis Khan Capone.”

My Sassy Girl (2008) by Yann Samuell < Yeopgijeogin Geunyeo (2001) by Jae-young Kwak.

The Day the Earth Stood Still (2008) by Scott Derrickson < The 1951 Robert Wise classic.

Brothers (2008) by Jim Sheridan < Brødre (2004) — an excellent drama by Susanne Bier.

Harry and the Butler (2008) by Steve Bing < Harry and the Butler (1961) by Bent Christensen.

Strangers on a Train by Noam Murro < The 1951 Hitchcock classic. I remember how well received Gus Van Sant’s Psycho (1998) was.

Even India is doing a remake with Kurbani (2008) by Feroz Khan < Qurbani (1980) by the same director. But we can forgive India just this one.

And here’s what to be remade in 2009: The Evil Dead, The Seven Samurai (NO!), The Wolf Man, The Birds, Friday the 13th (what do the suits do after ten sequels, they just renew it!), Death Wish, Hellraiser, Rififi (NO!), Mute Witness, Kiki’s Delivery Service (!?!), Piranha 3-D ,yes you just read Piranha 3-D, Attack of the Killer Tomatoes (by the guys who brought us the Ask A Ninja webisodes – might be fun.), The Last House on the Left, Fame, Magnum P.I., The Tingler (I wonder if they’ll bring back the electric seats!), and The Secret Life of Walter Mitty, which is based on the James Thurber short story.

Wow! Hollywood has turned into a real ouroboros. (“I don’t know what that means?” – Donald Kaufman) Oh, if only Donald Kaufman hadn’t gotten into that lethal automobile collision than we’d be getting more original fare like The Thr3e (re: Identity (2003) by James Mangold).

We live in sad times. Have you scalded your eyes yet with the new Disaster Movie trailer? Those Hollywood anus-lickers Jason Friedberg and Aaron Seltzer have made another lame-brained parody movie. Not only does Disaster Movie make fun of such “disaster movies” as Enchanted, Juno, Sex and the City, and Hancock…Hancock!? What the hell, Friedberg and Seltzer? Hancock hasn’t even been released yet!

I yearn for the quality parody movies like Top Secret (1984) and The Naked Gun: From the Files of Police Squad (1988).

Word to anyone even considering buying a ticket to Disaster Movie: Don’t be a Idiocracy member. Do me a favor come August 29th, just spend your Friday night watching clips from Ask A Ninja. It’s better than watching a remake.

There has been a very vocal outcry against an action set piece early in the film. I thought it was one of the film’s most inspired scenes. Indiana Jones has been deserted inside a small American town populated by eerie wide-eyed dummies made up as All-American suburbanites. The houses are outfitted with furnishings and plastic goods. The purpose of this crafted life-size Pleasantville is to test an enormous atom bomb that will detonate within a minute. Indy, taking a cue from the caped crusader from the episode Riddler’s Reform uses a housed refrigerator as a safe to protect himself from the blast.

Tension rises as he rips the metallic grills out of the icebox so he can fit inside. He shuts himself inside just as the manmade inferno blows everything to kingdom come. The refrigerator blasts off into the sky and lands ferociously to the ground miles away from the blast. Indiana Jones, never cooler, escapes his mini fall-out shelter with a few bruises. He is indestructible. The camera rises up to reveal a mushroom cloud swallowing the faraway landscape. Indiana Jones, silhouetted by the explosion, has entered the cold war. It is an awesome moment that unfortunately overshadows the rest of the film. I wouldn’t do without it.

Many people didn’t voice this favourable view, whereas a collective of disheartened curmudgeons found the magnificently preposterous sequence just preposterous. Back in Raiders, Indy’s body was dragged across a rocky terrain by the back of a Nazi jeep. He climbed up the car and fought the villains like he was in rare form. Now Indy’s fans are calling out the impossibility of Indiana’s Fridge stunt.

They wanted blood for this, even going so far as to burn an imprint of the scene as the movie equivalent to the television term “Jump the Shark”, which refers to a joyfully ludicrous stunt by the Fonz in Happy Days. The phrase had entered the lexicon, otherwise known as the Urban Dictionary, as “Nuke the Fridge”. For example, “Killing off all the surviving characters from Aliens (1985) sans Ripley at the beginning of Alien3 (1992) really nuked the fridge”. Nuked the Fridge. I just want to rake my tongue with a fork every time I say that. It is a clumsy catchphrase that ridicules a film sequence that doesn’t qualify for this degree of prejudice venom.

How about this instead: “Souring the romance between Peter Parker and Mary Jane in Spiderman 3 just killed off Newt”.

“Killed off Newt” — sharp and to the point!

Besides, “Jump the Shark” has always worked as classics often do.

The Criterion Collection, the best in restoring and packaging obscure films, has postponed the release of the Paul Schrader masterpiece Mishima: A Life in Four Chapters (#432, 1985). It was originally slated for June 17th, but will now be released on July 1st. The reason for this could be so the Director-approved 2-disc special edition can coincide with another Criterion release Patriotism (#433, 1966), a 29-minute film directed by and starring Yukio Mishima.

Mishima is one of my favorite films of all time right behind Terrance Malick’s Days of Heaven (1978). It is one of the most strangest and artistically appropriate biopics about a deeply-complex and passionate man. Yukio Mishima (Ken Ogata, The Pillow Book, 1996), a quiet novelist and arguably insane radical who wrote dozens of stories about struggle, beauty, sexuality, love, suicide, and the importance of an artistic statement. He later formed a personal army in pursuit of more tradition livelihood in Tokyo.

Three of his most renowned stories The Temple of the Golden Pavilion (1956), Kyoko’s House (1959) and Runaway Horses (1968) were shot in rich, gorgeous color on eye-popping theatrical sets by Eiko Ishioka that compliment the black-and-white scenes chronicling the writer’s past. They are the best filmed expressions of the writing process matched by Spike Jonze’s Adaptation (2002). These passages of past and fiction all lead up to Mishima’s last day, shot like a documentary in color, when he committed a rehearsed act of seppuku – a form of ritualistic samurai suicide – in the headquarters of Japan Self-Defense Forces.

“Mishima” Trailer

At the 1985 Cannes Film Festival, the film’s cinematographer John Bailey (The Anniversary Party, 2001), composer Philip Glass (A Brief History of Time, 1991), and costume/set designer Eiko Ishioka (The Fall, 2008) won the well deserved Best Artistic Contribution. Director Paul Schrader, the writer of Taxi DriverAffliction (1998) has recognized Mishima as his best work. (1976) and director of Francis Ford Coppola and George Lucas co-produced it knowing that the financial venture wold not be profitable because mainstream audience would not embrace it despite critical acclaim. Luckily for those who appreciate challenging and expertly-made films, Mishima: A Life in Four Chapters can be experienced because it exists.

Warner Bros Home Video released a DVD of Mishima on August 2001 that included a director’s audio commentary. It is currently out of print.

A New Sunrise for “Mishima”

The Criterion release will sport a new, restored high-definition digital transfer of the director’s cut which was supervised and approved by director Paul Schrader and cinematographer John Bailey. The changes of the director’s cut include a deleted scene featuring Chishu Ryu, a favored actor of Yasujiro Ozu (Floating Weeds, 1959). For Ozu fanatics, you can read a Sight and Sound article by Ryu on the director here. Another change to film is a digital replacement of a blue skyline with a blood red one in the Runaway Horses segment because Schrader wanted it look artificially in sync with the rest of the story visually. Optional English and Japanese voice-over narrations will also be provided; the former by Roy Scheider (“We’re goin’ to need a bigger boat.”), the latter by Ken Ogata.

New special features include: an audio commentary featuring Schrader and producer Alan Poul – the one featured in the original Warner release will not be included.

There will be new video interviews with Bailey, producers Tom Luddy and Mata Yamamoto, composer Philip Glass, and production designer Eiko Ishioka. Mishima biographer John Nathan and friend Donald Richie will also have video interviews. A new audio interview with the co-screenwriter Chieko Schrader who wrote the Japanese dialogue was the wife of Leonard Schrader who also wrote for Mishima as well. Another video interview excerpt will feature Mishima talking about writing.

Also included is The Strange Case of Yukio Mishima, a 55-minute BBC documentary about the author, the film’s theatrical trailer, and a booklet featuring a new essay by critic Kevin Jackson, a piece on the film’s censorship in Japan, and photographs of Ishioka’s sets.

One of the Best Sequences in “Mishima”

Available separately on the same date is Yukio Mishima’s Patriotism, which foreshadowed his death playing an officer who commits seppuku. The original film was thought to be destroyed by Japanese authorities shortly after Mishima’s death, seen as a plight upon the nation. Fortunately, the original negative was saved and has resurfaced 35 years later.

The DVD will be restored in a high-definition digital transfer of both the Japanese and English versions, with optional Japanese or English subtitles. Special features include a 45-minute audio recording of Yukio Mishima speaking to the Foreign Correspondents’ Association of Japan; a 45-minute making-of documentary, featuring crew from the film’s production; interview excerpts featuring Mishima discussing war and death; new and improved English subtitle translation, and a new essay by renowned critic and historian Tony Rayns, Mishima’s original short story, and Mishima’s extensive notes on the film’s production.

I’ll be picking them both up July 1st.

Some great movies can’t be made into good trailers: Just look at the atrocious jobs done unto Ang Lee’s The Ice Storm or Martin McDonagh’s In Bruges (watch the movie first, and then ridicule the trailer — the DVD doesn’t support the trailer either.). And sometimes there is an exception to this rule: Robert Altman’s Nashville (1975).

“The damndest thing you ever saw”.

The fast-paced introductions to the two dozen characters who appear in the movie is so involving and kinetic that your head is spinning with names and connections by the end of the trailer. The actual movie amazingly accomplishes the realization of these twenty-four characters as unforgettable and compelling individuals. Most movies get hung up on a quartet.

I saw this film again last week at a revival in an upscale cinema house (VIFC) in Vancouver. It was introduced by W.P. Kinsella, the Canadian novelist of Shoeless Joe, which was adapted into Phil Alden Robinson’s Field of Dreams (1989). Kinsella revealed his love for Coen Bros. Movies so I made a point to quiz him on Barton Fink (1990) after the screening.

Watching Nashville, bursting with irony and exuberance, in its 35mm glory was a great experience as much as doing the same with Hitchcock’s Rear Window (1954) and Kubrick’s 2001: A Space Odyssey (1968). I got chills again watching the main title sequence that features a panoramic J. William Myers Jr. painting of all the characters (featured above). Even while listening to the slow, shivery rendition of the schmaltzy folk song “We Must Be Doing Something Right To Last 200 Years” sung by a leery Henry Gibson (Magnolia, 1999). I’ve been punch-drunk in love with the film having seen it a half-dozen times. If I had attempted to single out every performer and storyline here, I’d be at the IMDB all night.

The director of Scarface (1932) and His Girl Friday (1940), Howard Hawks, once answered the question “what makes a good movie?”: “Three great scenes. No bad scenes.” It’s true of Nashville, which has much more than three. Had I to choose three, I would single out a moment very late in the film where three great scenes came together in a row.

The scene is set in a tavern one night where Tom Frank, a handsome and monstrously hedonistic country singer, played by Keith Carradine (HBO’s Dexter, 2007), very gently sings, “I’m Easy” (the only won Academy Award out of five including Best Picture). Lily Tomblin (Flirting with Disaster, 1996) plays Linnea, a dissatisfied housewife and loving mother who sits in the shadows way back looking transfixed as though Tom were a siren. She thinks he’s singing to her (he is!). So does every woman in the audience who has already slept with him including Shelley Duvall, Cristina Raines, and the beautiful Geraldine Chaplin (“I’m Opal! I’m from the BBC!”). It’s such a bewitchingly vulnerable moment coated in hot tar.

“I’m Easy”

Cut to the second scene in another tavern populated by men who’ve turned up for a political fund raiser — Vote for Hal Philip Walker. Gwen Welles plays Sueleen Gay (“Let me be the… ONE!”), a waitress who dreams of becoming a major singer whose hired as the night’s entertainment. A pity she’s tone-deaf. Sueleen naively uses her sex appeal on stage, oblivious to her lack of talent, and the boorish crowd boos her performance and demands nudity. The political backhanders (Ned Beatty, Deliverance, 1972 and Michael Murphy, Tanner 88′, 1988) bribe Sueleen who is on the verge of tears that she’ll perform with superstar Barbara Jean (Ronee Blakley, A Nightmare On Elm Street, 1984) if she shows skin. What follows is one of the most searingly sad stripteases right down to the taking the socks out of her bra.

The third scene takes place in Tom’s motel room where he’s in bed with Linnea. Having had sex, she teaches him some sign language (her adorable children are deaf) and he is so engaged with her, surprising considering how he callously treats other women who fawn over him. Linnea figures its time to go (unheard by Linnea, another song “For the Sake of the Children, We Must Say Goodbye” from before could have played over it — thankfully it didn’t). Heartbroken by her leaving, Tom cruelly calls up another girlfriend by phone while Linnea gets dressed. Linnea is not affected and she kisses Tom goodbye. Having failed to hurt her, Tom hangs up the phone. Pauline Kael noted in her review that “he’ll remember her forever.”

Nashville is a masterpiece, a staple to 1970s cinema and one of the quintessential films about America. Technically, it’s also a musical. The Nashville Music Industry were appalled that the movie didn’t use any existing music of their sour grapes. The actors wrote and sung their own songs. Even those who might have gone on to become country singers were denied by the heads of Nashville because their resentment was so great.

Before the showing of the feature I attended, the audience was posed this question: Which one out of the twenty-four characters does not show up at the concert near the end of the film. The answer to who it is: kcalb nerak. Listen much earlier in the film for why this is case by Haven Hamilton to Barnett (Allen Garfield, The Majestic, 2001).

Columbia Pictures and Neal Moritz, the producer of Cruel Intentions (1999) and I am Legend (2007), have secured the rights with Scholastic Media’s Deborah Forte to make the R.L. Stine penned Goosebumps franchise into a theatrical feature. It’s like Rod Serling’s The Twilight Zone targeted to kids. Executive Producer Andrea Giannetti (Vantage Point, 2008) will oversee the production. The release date is set at 2010.

The popular Goosebumps book series, much of it written and sold throughout the 1990s, holds second place as the most financially successful in the young adults demographic. It was published in over 32 languages and has sold more than 300 million copies worldwide. It was beaten by another youth-oriented serial written by some Brit named J.K. Rowling who specialized in wizards or something (supposedly 5 out of 8 blockbuster films were also adapted).

My reservations on an adapted Goosebumps movie is that it will be based on a Horrorland revision (unread by me) that includes many characters from previous plots. Between evil ventriloquist dummies, a preordained picture-taking camera, possessed Halloween masks, plant zombies, mutating green blood, and a summer camp that enslaves children to wash down a blob with teeth; I hope the filmmakers don’t bloat the film with too many creatures.

Why the invested interest? As a kid, I had difficulty being engaged by less than compelling material outside of Beverley Cleary’s Ramona serial. Unless the characters were personable and a real sense of doom was preordained, my mind drifted to more haunted thoughts of my imagining that proved more enticing. At the age of 7, I was introduced to the Goosebumps series, the closest in horror literature I could obtain at the time, by an antique dealer who I never saw again. As an early reader, I am in debt to R.L. Stine. Throughout grades four and seven, I read front to back over seventy Goosebumps novels. My father used to bribe me with a new Goosebumps book ($5.50 each) every week I completed all of my homework.

The covers of the books were a wonder to behold. A vibrant, ominous painting visualized what was just as immediate and unnerving as when I ventured the horror shelves at the video store (Images of the grinning, red-eyed Chucky Doll had me entranced at the age of five). The Goosebumps cover illustrations were all by Tim Jacobus. You can read about his process in this short illustration tutorial.

While I’m on the subject of illustration, it has come to my attention that the U.S. House and Senate is introducing an Orphan Works Act of 2008 and the Shawn Bentley Orphan Works Act of 2008, which deprive copyright ownership from working illustrators whose livelihood depends on acquiring paid permission to use said images. I am calling out to U.S. citizens to take action and oppose this thieving atrocity by e-mailing this form to congress. As a practicing illustrator myself, you’d be doing me a favor.

Back to Goosebumps. In the mid-nineties, the Fox Kids Network in collaboration with Scholastic Publishing produced a Goosebumps television series featuring an adapted episode in a half-hour format. Another like-minded show released much earlier was Eerie, Indiana (1991) that included episodes directed by Joe Dante (Innerspace, 1987). Being a hardcore Goosebumps fan at the time, I taped almost every episode and now return to favorites as a rare guilty pleasure. Perhaps the upcoming film could be made in an episodic fashion – it’s Creepshow for kids!

The first season of the show was effective because it focused on character development (sometimes performed well by child actors – Kathryn Long as Carly Beth comes to mind – and sometimes not) and executed subtle special effects within a reasonable television production. Even future stars like Ryan Gosling (from Say Cheese and Die! to Half Nelson, 2006) and Hayden Christensen (from Night of the Living Dummy III to Shattered Glass, 2003) cut their teeth into the series. Enter seasons two and three as the faithfulness to the original stories and production quality gradually ebbed to a pitiful low. The second the show introduced CGI effects, it was all over.

Cartoon Network brought the show back for a limited time last year and produced an awesome Grindhouse-inspired tv spot for it. I wish the original episodes were shown in this rough, scratchy format.

Goosebumps “Grindhouse” TV Spot

Once in every four months, I google to see whether a Goosebumps: Season One Box Set is on the horizon. Unfortunately, Fox sold the rights to Buena Vista who have peddled out some of worse Goosebumps episodes individually on separate DVDs. Sometimes Disney is pure evil. Hopefully the upcoming film will bring the franchise back to public conscious and the damned series will be released properly. I read that Columbia is looking for a writer for their Goosebumps movie: I nominate myself.

On November 2006, the world of cinema lost a giant. Director Robert Altman (1925 – 2006) was a maverick in Hollywood, a daring artist whose films captured the messiness and wonderment of human nature. Like John Sayles, a hero to independent film, Altman’s portrayals of community were personable, vast, and generous. Altman could juggle multiple story lines populated with dozens of characters and still make each one distinct and memorable.

Altman was popular in the 1970s, churning out great movies like M*A*S*H* (1970 – Altman hated the toothless TV show), McCabe and Mrs. Miller (1971), Nashville (1975) and Three Women (1977). After the success of Jaws (1975) and Star Wars (1977), the powers in Hollywood deemed that audiences — desire for worldly-conscious character studies had staled after being dazzled by pyrotechnical melodramas. Respectively, those blockbusters were just as compelling in their function in terms of character development than what we mostly get today. Suddenly studio heads wanted to make The Most Profitable Blockbuster™ instead of The Great American Movie. The revered Golden Age of Cinema came to a close. Enter the 1980s, the “Greed Is Good” decade, and Altman the Artist became an outcast in an industry that once embraced him for nearly a decade. Altman described his situation as being a shoemaker in a company that wanted him to make gloves.

For Altman, the quality of his work never wavered, but the studios lost interest so he had to find funding through other channels. After working throughout the 80s on fledgling budgets (Secret Honor, 1984) in TV (Tanner ’88, 1988), and with foreign distribution (Vincent and Theo, 1990); Altman came back with a vengeance. In 1992, Altman took the helm of an all-star studio picture that savagely satirized the bottom line mentality of the Hollywood industry in the brilliant black comedy called The Player. If I was pressed up against a wall and interrogated over which Altman film is my overall favorite, Nashville would be intellectual one but The Player is the one I’d choose with my heart. The Player in question was a Hollywood executive, played by Tim Robbins (Mystic River, 2003), trying to weasel his way out of killing a screenwriter (Vincent D’Onofrio, Household Saints, 1994). It was my favourite movie in 1992.

Altman continued his streak of character-canvas films for fifteen years. The quality of these films ranged from the superb, which included Short Cuts (1993), Gosford Park (2001), The Company (2003, underrated), and A Prairie Home Companion (2006), to the moderate (Dr T and the Women, 2000). Paul Thomas Anderson (There Will Be Blood, 2007) has modeled a great deal of filmmaking sensibilities to Altman. Soon after, Altman took the young talent under his wing. They were such good friends that Anderson co-directed A Prairie Home Companion with Altman whose health was declining. In the film, SNL alumni and actress Maya Rudolph (Idiocracy, 2006) was pregnant with Anderson’s child at the time.

Robert Altman never made a movie just for money; he was the kind of man who relished captured surprises through collaboration and inexplicability. He was honored with the Life Time Achievement Award in 2007 by the Academy Awards. He was nominated seven times as Best Director. Actors in Hollywood loved him because Altman gave them the freedom to perform their greatest range. That night, Meryl Streep and Lily Tomlin paid tribute to Altman’s penchant for overlapping dialogue.

Altman once mused over his commentary track for Three Women that if he was in a desert island with the means of watching only his movies in an isolated movie house then he wouldn’t watch any. He’s made them and doesn’t need them again. However, had anyone ever stumbled upon his lost matinee, he would greatly enjoy showing his films to the curious spectator. Altman spent much of his life leaving us behind gems to treasure. For an artist who was fascinated with the spontaneous, he still had a plan.

“M*A*S*H” (1970) Trailer

“The Long Goodbye” (1973) Trailer

“Nashville” (1975) Trailer

“Gosford Park” (2001) Trailer

“The Company” (2003) Trailer

“A Prairie Home Companion” (2006) Trailer

]]> http://www.cinelation.com/a-retrospect-on-robert-altman/feed/ 0 http://www.cinelation.com/dissecting-the-music-of-eli-roth%e2%80%99s-%e2%80%9cthanksgiving%e2%80%9d/ http://www.cinelation.com/dissecting-the-music-of-eli-roth%e2%80%99s-%e2%80%9cthanksgiving%e2%80%9d/#comments Mon, 05 May 2008 23:17:12 +0000 Christopher Beaubien http://www.cinelation.com/?p=256 Skewer Your Funny Bone: Recommended for Strong Stomachs

The short film Thanksgiving, posing as a faux trailer, was one of the highlights of Grindhouse, the Robert Rodriguez and Quentin Tarantino collaboration. Those two-and-a-half minutes (a pound?) are the best of Eli Roth’s resume. It is both a loving homage to John Carpenter’s definitive film Halloween (1978) and an inspired parody of those awful 80s slasher-rip-off-flicks (and bad taste, in general) that is far elevated from Roth’s turgid Hostel films. A.O. Scott of The New York Times wrote, “In any case be sure not to miss the trailer for Thanksgiving — not for the squeamish or the humor impaired, and not that you’d necessarily want to see the movie, if it existed.”

I remember the first time seeing it in theaters, the last act of abomination by the Evil Pilgrim on the roasted turkey had me laughing so hard throughout the main title sequence of Quentin Tarantino’s Death Proof, the best of both feature films. In the Kurt Volk designed collectible hardcover book Grindhouse, which chronicles behind its scenes, its director Eli Roth wrote a fascinating article about making Thanksgiving in Prague after dressing it up as Small Town, America. The read is explores technical as well as the drama creating these sick scenes (God love ‘em!) to round out Roth’s gut-busting observations. It’s a mixed blessing Thanksgiving won’t be getting the Grindhouse feature treatment, we already have the best parts. Why let a lame narrative ruin that?

My only grip about this really guilty pleasure is this: What is the deal with not listing John Harrison as the composer of Thanksgiving in the end credits of the cheerfully sleazy three-hour double-feature? The majority of the music is lifted right off the soundtrack of George A. Romero’s immortal five-part Creepshow (1982), which was based on a Tales From the Crypt-like graphic novel written by Stephen King as the film’s screenplay.

In Thanksgiving, you’ll hear excerpts from Father’s Day, a Creepshow episode where Aunt Bedelia (Viveca Lindfors, A Wedding, 1978) is strangled to death by her cake-obsessed zombie-dad (John Amplas, Martin, 1977), which stands in as the Evil Pilgrim’s murderous theme song. Then the trampoline scene (Holy-NC-17-MPAA!) is accompanied by the music used for Something to Tide You Over when a jealous husband (Leslie Neilsen, The Naked Gun Series) watches, from the comfort of his living room, his wife and her lover drowning (Eat you heart out Peter Greenaway). Lastly, the sickly build-up to the near-thirty-year-old-depicting-a-teen (Eli Roth) head scene is from the They’re Creeping Up On You segment staring E.G. Marshall (Double Indemnity, 1944) as a corrupt, cockroach-phobic CEO. All are compositions by John Harrison.

The only original pieces of music by Nathan Barr, who was credited, are what follow: First, that menacing music at the beginning of trailer — following the knife-wielding maniac Halloween-style behind the buck-toothed screaming Grandma. And last, that perfectly drippy, romantic, synthesized 80s-like score playing over “Cool it, Judy! You’re safe. Bobby’s here…”

It seems strange, but this is the way credits work most of the time where original music versus licensed music is concerned. It’s not a matter of giving credit to the composer with the most music in the trailer, but rather giving credit for the most-recent music written specifically for that fake trailer.

“Creepshow” (1982) Trailer

“Grindhouse” (2007) Trailer #1

“Grindhouse” (2007) Trailer #2

]]> http://www.cinelation.com/dissecting-the-music-of-eli-roth%e2%80%99s-%e2%80%9cthanksgiving%e2%80%9d/feed/ 0 http://www.cinelation.com/ebert-speaks-again-for-dark-city/ http://www.cinelation.com/ebert-speaks-again-for-dark-city/#comments Sun, 04 May 2008 01:27:56 +0000 Christopher Beaubien http://www.cinelation.com/?p=220 One of the new special features for the upcoming Director’s Cut DVD of Alex Proyas’ Dark City (1998) due on July 29th, 2008 is a brand new audio commentary track by Roger Ebert. Whether he recorded at the same time before the first DVD was released on July 1998 or sometime again before 2005 when Ebert had surgery on his salivary gland. The operation was botched when his carotid artery burst, leaving him in intensive care for over a year, and costing him his ability to speak.

At that time, I was devastated to learn this because Ebert was one of my heroes whose prose encouraged me to broaden my horizons with his recommended films and books and occasional insights into human nature. The man also delivered some of the most informed and entertaining commentary tracks for films he has spent years championing such as Orson Welles’ Citizen Kane (1941), Terry Zwigoff’s Crumb (1995), Yasujiro Ozu’s Floating Weeds (1959), and Russ (Mammary-Fanatic) Meyer’s Beyond the Valley of the Dolls (1970), which Ebert also penned. Ebert’s easy conversational tone along with his exceptional vocabulary and wit made the commentaries a singular pleasure.

Last January, Ebert’s latest attempt to fix his voice had failed. He is resolute to continue writing film reviews at rogerebert.com for the time being. Let’s face it; however wrong I hope I am that Ebert may never get his voice back. And then, like a plum from heaven, I find out that Ebert had a new commentary track New Line has been holding back. Ebert, back in 1999, recorded his first track for the theatrically released Dark City, which he called “the best movie of 1998″ and “an important landmark in the genre of science fiction film.” Instead of rehashing the old commentary track over the fifteen-minutes extra director’s cut, I figure Ebert was commissioned to record a new one.

The film Dark City is so compulsively watchable that I must have seen it at least two dozen times by now. This gothic gem of film noir is a real triumph of visceral and cerebral entertainment. July 29th can’t come any sooner for me. I am ecstatic to finally listen to Ebert again, though I can’t help but recognize how saddened I’ll be once the track comes to an end. At least I can hear him when I read his wonderful prose a la the written word.

Ebert’s Dark City review from his Great Movies archive

Siskel and Ebert on Dark City

Roger Ebert on “Dark City” (47 sec.)

UPDATE (August 2, 2008):

Is Ebert’s new commentary on the director’s cut of Dark City different from the original DVD? Yes and no. When Ebert recorded his commentary for the July 1998 DVD release of Dark City, he did retakes and talked more specifically about other aspects of the production. He was also talked at length about the director’s cut shown to him a decade before it was made available to the public.

There are subtle changes between the two tracks. For example, Ebert notes in the scene where John Murdoch throws the K.H. suitcase over the dock into a river that the visuals reminded him of the watercolours by British architect Sir John Soane. “You can visit Sir John Soane’s museum at Lincoln’s Inn Fields in London and see models and paintings for many of his works. But what you can especially see in the art room of that museum are paintings in which he has imaginary landscapes filled with many of his buildings, both those that were built and those that were never built. And there kind of a raid above each other on hillsides like Roman Capitals of the Imagination.”

That was the first DVD. In the director’s cut, he compares the visuals to the warped sketchings of cityscapes by Robert Crumb. Both of these tracks are a great listen! I can’t help but become so infectious about filmmaking when listening to Ebert championing a great movie. I succinctly remember listening to the first commentary track when I was fifteen years old and Ebert made a great impression on me. It was like a meeting of the minds and discovering a friend who loved the movies as much as I did. I read reviews by him and other film critics more fervently after that. And here I am.

“Dark City” (1997) Trailer