DVD Spotlight

(As first seen on GreenCine Daily.) 

"Like Luis Buñuel, and in particular, like Buñuel's main heir, Manoel de Oliveira, Resnais's career trajectory seems to have been to quickly abandon evocations of a subjective consciousness in favor of a blatantly theatrical, questionably objective style that dryly notes the precise behavior of delusional people acting only on the logic of their own emotions, which isn't very logical at all," writes David Pratt-Robson in the Auteurs's Notebook, reviewing Mélo. "But only for Resnais has the move been frequently disastrous, with his hypocrites way too systematically hypocritical, and with his occasional attempts to sympathize with these idiots via cute camera tricks and sound effects coming off as feeble nods to avant-garde roots by a man who is himself mired in outdated Vaudeville gimmickry."

» continue reading "DVD Spotlight: Week of 5/13."

(reposted from GreenCine Daily.)

"Xavier Gens may pledge allegiance to 70s grindhousers, but like the garbage hauled out at least once a year from Michael Bay's Platinum Dunes production house, or the two-headed, razor-studded dildo formed by Hostel and Hostel II, the style of the French director's career-making torture porn is very much a sign of our times: a capitulation to base pop appetites," writes Ed Gonzalez in Slant.

» continue reading "Frontier(s)."

In the New York Times, Dave Kehr reviews Abel Gance's 1922 film La Roue, which "still fascinates as a grab bag of experimental techniques, which do not all belong in the same movie, but which clearly dazzled audiences of the time with the formal possibilities of this still relatively new medium."

» continue reading "DVD Spotlight: 5/6."

New DVDs, and old, from around the globe, are reported on in this week's installment of DVD Spotlight. Including this bit:

"Ozu made a lot of films in the 30s, many of which are silent, some of which are lost, and these early films are seldom screened, so the new Eclipse series release, Silent Ozu: Three Family Comedies, is valuable in that it lets us see the genesis of his refined late style," writes Dan Callahan at the House Next Door.

Read more, much more, by clicking below: 

» continue reading "DVD Spotlight: 4/29."

(Cross-posted with GreenCine Daily.)

"As with pre-codes, a lot of smaller musicals along the lines of Born to Dance had to wait until the emergence of TCM before fans could really enjoy them again," writes John McElwee at Greenbriar Picture Shows. "DVD release has done the rest. Warner's Classic Musicals From The Dream Factory series has been the fulfillment of dreams for fans who've waited lifetimes to see these favorites truly showcased as they deserve."

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» continue reading "DVD Spotlight: 4/22."

David Pratt-Robson in the Auteurs' Notebook: "By the time of Blast of Silence, Walter Benjamin, if not Edgar Allan Poe himself, had long ago laid the connection between detective fiction and flâneurs, and a new type of consciousness (emblematized specially by the modern phenomenon of movie-going), in which the crux of identity lies in nothing innate and little lasting, but in the act of perceiving, and, perceiving, in particular, the city: detective's work. Yet neorealism would seem to be a necessary condition for flâneur movies, which, despite Night and the City's influence, may be why relatively few major noirs followed in Benjamin's tradition, devoted entirely to cutting through swaths of city spaces and social milieus, to exploring parties and restaurants and businesses around town in an ostensible search for clues, and to depicting a man as he finds or loses himself - perhaps the same thing - in urban phantasmagoria.... But, if long post-Poe, Allen Baron's Blast of Silence still did it all years ago."

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» continue reading "Criterion's Blast of Silence."

"Grand Guignol does not get much grander than in Inside, one of the latest in a new wave of extremely violent horror films coming from France," writes Dave Kehr in the New York Times. More from Steve Erickson in the City Paper: "Directors Julien Maury and Alexandre Bustillo may have made it as a résumé padder - their next project is a remake of Clive Barker's Hellraiser - but they don't lack ambition or talent."

"Forget what anyone else says, Night and the City (1950) is Jules Dassin's finest film," insists Anthony Frewin. "It's a noir masterpiece, no ifs or buts."

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» continue reading "DVD Spotlight: 4/15."

From GreenCine Daily...

"Warner's new nine-film box set Classic Musicals From the Dream Factory Volume 3 features four Eleanor Powell films, and they are a reminder of just what audiences attended musicals for," writes Sean Axmaker.

Wishing King Kong a happy 75th: Robert Cashill and Ted Pigeon.

» continue reading "DVDs, 4/8."

"Watching Animal Crackers we not only are in the presence of the Marx Brothers we know and love, we are even perhaps in a slightly edgier Marxian universe that belonged more to their Broadway personas than to their later film personalities," writes Raymond De Felitta. "Indeed Animal Crackers is a transition film - bridging the gap between the 'toast of Broadway' Marxes and the newly film-savvy Beverly Hills bound Brothers."

» continue reading "DVD Spotlight: 4/1. (Updated)"

Reviewer: Jeffrey M. Anderson
Rating (out of 5): ****½

The pre-code era reigned in Hollywood roughly from the end of the silent era to the middle of 1934 when the Hays Code began cracking down on certain aberrant behavior in movies. In 2006, Warner Home Video released the tantalizing Volume One of its Forbidden Hollywood Collection, featuring two different cuts of the ultimate pre-code movie Baby Face (1933). That was a keeper, but pre-code fans know that there are dozens more films out there, and many not yet available on video or DVD. Forbidden Hollywood: Volume 2 has finally surfaced with -- count 'em -- five new films. Each one is more seductive than the last, though I'm afraid none of them quite rank with the astonishing Baby Face.

The new set begins elegantly with two Oscar-winning Norma Shearer films, The Divorcee (1930) and A Free Soul (1931).

» continue reading "Forbidden Hollywood Collection Vol. 2: More pre-code delights"