“BLUE VELVET” 25TH ANNIVERSARY BLU-RAY EDITION

Blue Velvet remains a masterpiece of American cinema – one of the defining films of the 1980s, and arguably still director David Lynch’s best work (personally, I actually slightly prefer Lost Highway, but I’ve become gradually fatigued over the years with people looking at me like I’m insane when I divulge that) – and it still retains every bit of its power today. But to have seen it upon its original 1986 release was like experiencing a bomb going off inside the theater.  American films during the conservative Reagan decade were going through an awkward transitional period (and, outside of the interestingly thriving horror genre, one would be hard pressed to cite many great American movies from that era, although there were occasional exceptions such as William Friedkin’s riveting To Live and Die in L.A.). The Young Hollywood “golden age” of the 1970s was clearly experiencing its death throes, yet the alternative distribution patterns of the independent film explosion wouldn’t truly arrive until the end of the ’80s with sex, lies, and videotape and the ascension of Miramax. There were truly independent filmmakers experiencing varying degrees of success then – early Jim Jarmusch and Spike Lee, to name the obvious examples – but unless you were content to be a real outsider maverick (i.e. Jon Jost or Eagle Pennell), and you were making personal, medium-budgeted films, you were often thrown into the general release marketplace, and it was a case of sink or swim. Today, a film like Blue Velvet would do the typical film fest tour of duty, and then be gently placed into the Landmark-styled specialized theater circuit by a distributor like IFC, Magnolia, or Fox Searchlight. In 1986, producer Dino De Laurentiis had to release the film through his own newly established distribution company because no studio would touch the film, and Lynch’s disturbing psycho-sexual fever-dream melodrama went into a generally semi-wide release. At the age of sixteen, I saw the film on its opening Friday night at a small town suburban multiplex, and the largely middle-aged (and definitely middle-of-the-road) crowd was expecting just another … Read the rest

“A SERBIAN FILM”

By Jason Guerrasio

With Halloween around the corner I thought it would be fitting to write about a movie that has kept me up nights (and I’m certain that’s the same for many who’ve seen the film since its premiere at SXSW last year), A Serbian Film.

The debut film of Serbian filmmaker Srdjan Spasojevic, who co-wrote the screenplay with the country’s well-known horror critic, Aleksandar Radivojevic, A Serbian Film (which is available on DVD and Blu-ray today) is one of the most despicable movies I’ve seen in a long time and the images shown will likely stay embedded in my mind for a while, exactly what Spasojevic wants, I’m assuming.

The film focuses on Miloš (Srdan Todorovic), an over-the-hill porn star who has settled down with his wife and young son, though money is hard to come by and he has to deal with visits from his sleazy brother, Marko (Slobodan Beštic). He’s approached by an old porn colleague about an opportunity to make an “art film” that will pay handsomely. He decides to take a meeting with the film’s director, Vukmir (Sergej Trifunovic), who is extremely anxious to work with the “Balkin sex god.” Miloš has his reservations about working on the project, specifically that he will not be told what the film is about, only show up and perform, but the money Vukmir is offering (an amount we are never told) is too good to pass up. So Miloš dives in for one final film.

On the first day of shooting Miloš is driven to an abandoned orphanage where he is immediately being filmed by a security guard with a hand held camera. Miloš is given a small receiver to put in his ear that Vukmir uses to give his directions and Miloš enters the orphanage.

What follows is disturbing, infuriating, at times comical, grotesque, vulgar… the bottom line, you can understand why the film got an NC-17 when it was released here in the States and has been banned in other countries along with being under investigation for crimes against sexual morals in Serbia.

That being said, the story … Read the rest

“THE KILLING”

By Jason Guerrasio

It’s extremely difficult to type the words “my favorite Kubrick film” because I honestly feel I could put that down while writing about any of them. But what I can say about Stanley Kubrick’s Hollywood calling card The Killing is it’s the one film of his that I’m most nostalgic about.

Film noir. Jim Thompson’s words. Sterling Hayden’s “when men were men” bravado. The contract studio picture was on the way out and the New Hollywood of Bogdanovich, Ashby and Nichols were breaking down the doors.

But before that (and likely escalating the emergence of New Hollywood) there was Kubrick. Then 28 and coming from New York’s beatnik era having just made a twisted romance drama Killer’s Kiss (which he shot with no sound and dubbed the dialogue in post) in 1955, one year later he would team with indie producer James B. Harris and Thompson writing a screenplay for the first time to adapt the Lionel White novel, Clean Break.

Now titled The Killing, Hayden plays Johnny Clay, an ex-con who masterminds the heist of a racetrack with a group of men who aren’t “criminals in the usual sense,” as he puts it. All with jobs and different lives, like Clay, they converge in the hopes of a score in the millions that will make them for life. Of course there are problems: women, booze, and other unavoidable wrenches (or should I say horseshoes) in the “masterplan” that leads to one of the most memorable endings in the noir genre.

But unlike the majority of noirs, the combination of Kubrick and Thompson creates an elevated, hard-boiled story that makes the movie standout. Thompson’s razor-sharp dialogue (“smack that face into hamburger meat”) and Hayden’s delivery is filet mignon to the skirt steak of most noirs. Then there’s also Kubrick’s vision and the execution by d.p. Lucien Ballard (though they didn’t get along well), particularly the tracking shots. However, the biggest standout is the structure of the story. Told from the perspective of each player involved, the story moves back and forth from Clay, the track window teller (Elisha … Read the rest

“BLOW OUT”

By Travis Crawford

The ending of Brian De Palma’s Blow Out hits you in the chest like a hammer. It’s not supposed to be this way; American studio movies don’t end like that. But of course it’s the heartbreaking denouement that has partially helped to make the film endure in the 30 intervening years since its commercially disastrous release, though one can certainly fathom how it alienated audiences at the time (for the record, some critics were passionate defenders; it’s just that most viewers don’t savor being implicated in the spectacle of violence as it is quickly transformed into tragedy). As De Palma himself has wryly observed, the studio likely just expected another erotic romp like Dressed to Kill (De Palma’s previous surprise hit for the Filmways outfit) and were unprepared for a downbeat but cinematically exhilarating last gasp of bravura filmmaking, political critique, and social cynicism that made its ’70s predecessors like The Conversation and The Parallax View seem like Oliver! by contrast. But as the greatest film ever made by one of the two or three most important filmmakers to emerge from the “New Hollywood” movement of the ’60s and ’70s, Blow Out is among the most significant films of the past three decades, and the film has been thankfully reappraised in subsequent years. Hopefully its new Criterion Collection Blu-ray and DVD special-edition release will also help to introduce it to a younger generation of film enthusiasts.

Of course, during the ’70s (clearly, a loosely defined era in American filmmaking), challenging audience expectations — whether socio-political or purely filmic — had become rather expected, so perhaps De Palma (much like his old friend Scorsese who artistically triumphed with the similarly commercially underappreciated Raging Bull the previous year — trivia note: it was actually De Palma who first introduced Scorsese to De Niro at a party) was unaware of the post-Jaws/Star Wars shift in the new Reagan-era American cinema. But De Palma had just come off a hit with Dressed to Kill, and had also enjoyed a pop culture phenomenon with Carrie only a few years earlier; even … Read the rest

“EXIT THROUGH THE GIFT SHOP”

By Mike Plante

A year after legendary street artist Banksy’s film Exit Through the Gift Shop premiered at Sundance 2010, it still feels vital and fun upon its DVD release, a great roller coaster ride that is not only an entertaining mystery but a pinpoint observation on today’s art world. The film explores the underground street art scene and its anonymity, then segways into the notions of art vs. vandalism, appreciation vs. random collection, and spontaneity vs. calculated hype. When its screening was announced right before the festival, people either thought, “holy shit, Banksy made a film?!?!” or “what’s street art?” As the festival started, at least four Bansky stencils showed up on walls around town – he was there.

The excitement kept up through the film’s screenings – while most audiences were big fans or became instant fans, the film also gave folks a lot of questions and endless discussions started up. Was that really Banksy in the film? Was Mr Brainwash all made up? Why is it bashing the art world but selling art? Questions to the point of “I heard he had a ton of lookouts when he tagged the West Bank wall.” (OK – what did YOU do when you tagged it?)

Banksy?

The documentary is made by a talented street artist that goes by the name Banksy. No one knows who he is, successfully staying anonymous for years now. People care about who he is because his art has the great combination of being both beautiful and something that makes a statement. The fact he is still unknown after being successful at putting art up around the world and also selling it on occasion at the luxurious Sotheby’s, just pumps up the mystique.

Street art as a subject is deceptive. It’s packed with power, but many dismiss it. It’s layered with the connotation: well that’s nice and pretty, but I could have done that. But you have to remember, you didn’t do it. And that’s a big thing. An even bigger thing is – why don’t you do it? Take a stand, mark a wall, be a pirate … Read the rest

“AMERICA, LOST AND FOUND: THE BBS STORY”

In a recent edition of his ongoing online column “Movie Answer Man,” Roger Ebert was faced with the following reader-submitted query: “Since good movies can now be cheaply made, why aren’t we seeing more of the kind of arthouse films that were so influential in the ’60s and ’70s?” Ebert’s response, while relatively curt, was two-fold. “1.) It is very expensive to release, promote, and advertise any movie,” he began. Fair enough — as any independent filmmaker knows, simply getting your movie made is just one small initial hurdle…and as any viewer who watches contemporary independent films can sadly attest, the proliferation of feature films granted by the affordability of digital video production merely means that a larger number of filmmakers have an access to equipment that is wildly disproportionate with an originality of artistic vision. But the second half of Ebert’s response was more troubling: “2.) The younger generation of moviegoers has more limited tastes than the ‘movie generation’ of the ’60s and ’70s.” Ebert’s screenwriting credit on Beyond the Valley of the Dolls – more than his Pulitzer for criticism – has allowed me to begrudgingly look past his infamous, almost-quarter-century-old pan of Blue Velvet, but on this new point, I’m afraid this might be one of those instances where a difference of opinion crosses a line into becoming an error of fact. But more on that in a moment.

“America Lost and Found: The BBS Story” is a new seven-film Blu-ray and DVD boxed-set from The Criterion Collection that compiles — with all of the Criterion imprint’s usual exhaustive supplementary bells-and-whistles (though, one suspects, not quite as exhaustive as it could have been had the project not originated as a “New Hollywood” set under the auspices of Sony Pictures Home Entertainment, who ultimately turned it over to Criterion’s control) — a series of films made between 1968 and 1972 by an independent production company named BBS Productions, an organization who would ultimately redefine the relationship between American independent cinema and the Hollywood studio system. Given creative control by Columbia Pictures (then in rather dire financial straits, … Read the rest

“THE NIGHT OF THE HUNTER” RELEASED ON CRITERION BLU-RAY

By Scott Macaulay

One of my favorite movies of all time, Charles Laughton’s The Night of the Hunter, has been released on Blu-Ray and SD by Criterion today. Here’s a piece I wrote back in 2001 on the film in the context of a review of Simon Callow’s BFI monograph.

François Truffaut queasily likened The Night of the Hunter, actor Charles Laughton’s 1955 directorial debut, to a “horrifying news item retold by small children.” Quoted in Simon Callow’s new British Film Institute monograph on the film, Truffaut goes on to offer a bit of middlebrow advice proving that the confluence of film criticism and box-office commentary is not solely a turn-of-the-century phenomenon: “Screenplays such as this are not the way to launch your career as a Hollywood director. The film runs counter to the rules of commercialism … it will probably be Laughton’s single experience as a director.”

Indeed, Laughton’s use of an Expressionist, theatrical mise en scene and flashes of burlesque humor to adapt David Grubbs’s best-selling blend of Southern Gothic and Grimms’s fairy tales resulted in newspaper attacks on the film’s “arty” direction. The reviews weren’t all bad but enough were; depressed and unfinanceable as a director, Laughton soon abandoned his planned adaptation of Norman Mailer’s The Naked and the Dead. Lack of critical support on its release coupled with Laughton’s retreat from film directing resulted in The Night of the Hunter’s peripatetic status within the Great Films canon. It’s the kind of glorious one-off that falls to the footnotes of film histories, even if it’s also the sort of masterpiece that other directors spend a career working up to.

Today the film’s influence remains scattershot. Although the LOVE/HATE tattoos on star Robert Mitchum’s hands are quoted in Do the Right Thing and Scorsese’s Cape Fear, the influence of Laughton’s Manichean children’s odyssey only occasionally pops up in films, such as Bernard Rose’s Paperhouse and, especially, the work of David Lynch in Blue Velvet and Twin Peaks. The film’s greatest influence may have been in the theater; The Night of the Hunter’s classic nighttime … Read the rest

“TONY MANERO”

By Jason Guerrasio

Set during Augusto Pinochet’s brutal dictatorship in Chile during the 1970s, director Pablo Larrain mixes social commentary and the love for cinema to create a horrific (and darkly humors) tale with a tour-de-force performance by lead actor Alfredo Castro.

We meet Raul (Castro) as he shows up to a popular talent show prepared to take the crown as the Chilean Tony Manero. Yes, John Travolta’s legendary character from Saturday Night Fever. Unfortunately for Raul he shows up on the wrong week (they’re currently finding the Chilean Chuck Norris). A small man with little to say, we almost feel sorry for Raul and his quest. Once he realizes it’s the wrong week he rushes back to the movie theater to study Travolta’s moves. Even repeating his lines in English.

But quickly Larrain forces us to change our perspective of Raul as he goes on a string of murders and thefts to achieve his goal. Larrain channels the ruthless and brutal violence done by Pinochet’s goons around town into Raul’s psychopathic madness.

There’s the comedic, like Raul breaking glass and pasting broken pieces onto a soccer ball to create his disco ball, and the arguments over the number of buttons on Tony’s pants in the movie. Then there’s the unthinkable, like the local movie theater which suddenly stops playing Fever so Raul kills the projectionist and steals the print of Fever, and the junkman he kills so he can use his glass tiles to duplicate the floor on the Fever poster (he even defecates on a competitor’s suit).

Shot with striking handheld camerawork by DP Sergio Armstrong (The Maid), he uses the occasional out of focus shot to portray Raul’s distorted life (and our viewing of it).

But the film works because of Castro’s dedication to the Raul character, which can be compared to De Niro’s Rupert Pupkin in The King of Comedy. Playing it with a blind obsession that’s horrifying, comedic and impossible to look away from.

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“STAGECOACH”

By Jason Guerrasio

Legend has it when John Ford read the short story that would be the inspiration behind his first Western with sound, he immediately took it to his boss David O. Selznick, who, just as quickly as it was pitched to him, tossed it aside as a forgettable picture.

Lucky for us, Ford didn’t move on. He dug into his own pocket, made the film himself (and later sold it to United Artists), packed up the production and went out to Utah’s picturesque Monument Valley (which would be the site for many of his Westerns to come) — far from the prying eyes of the studio exes  — and brought along a young actor known at the time for his B-movie work to be his star, John Wayne.

Still as exciting and enjoyable to watch today as it was when it was released to high critical praise in 1939, Stagecoach combines riveting performances, a basic premise and finally wrapped up with a thrilling conclusion (two in fact: a high speed fight with Indians and a three on one draw down on a deserted street). But what Ford inevitably showed was that the Western could tackle serious issues.

Following a group of stagecoach passengers as they embark on a journey through rough Apache territory while Geronimo is on the war path, Ford has the drunk doctor Doc Boone (played brilliantly by Thomas Mitchell), aloof gambler Hatfield (John Carradine), pregnant soldier’s wife Lucy (Louise Platt) and saloon girl Dallas (Claire Trevor), among others, to play out different personalities in the coach.

Then as the journey has already begun, Ford unveils his star in one of the most memorable entrances ever filmed. With a dolly-in to close up shot and a twirl of a rifle, Ford makes John Wayne an icon. Playing the vengeful Ringo Kid, Wayne would never have to worry about getting work again.

But it’s not just the talent along with the work of Ford and screenwriter Dudley Nichols that makes the film a classic, it’s also the visuals.

One riveting shot is during the shootout with the Apaches. Hatfield, with … Read the rest

POSSIBLE FILMS, VOL. 2

By Jason Guerrasio

In 2004 Hal Hartley released a series of shorts he made from 1994-2000. Titled Possible Films, which is also the name of his web site where he sells his films and music, Hartley has compiled a second anthology that highlights his time living in Berlin, Possible Films, Volume 2. (He recently moved back to New York.)

The five shorts are similar in style (shot on DV) with many of them shot in the same apartment, vary from fiction to non, and were all made within a few years of each other. Exploring small ideas that couldn’t be fleshed out in feature form, Hartley creates intimate works that are honest and feel like they’re done by an artist doing it for the love of the craft, not looking for a quick buck. But would we think anything less from Hartley?

A/Muse (2009) -  We follow an aspiring actress (Christina Flick) as she searches for an American ex-pat director living in Berlin so she can convince him that she should be his latest starlette.

Implied Harmonies (2008) – Here Hartley films a behind-the-scenes look at his production of Louis Andriessen’s opera la Commedia in Amsterdam and intercuts it with correspondence to his assistant (Jordana Maurer) back in Berlin about his struggles completing it.

The Apologies (2009) – Having to leave town to salvage his production of The Odyessy, a playwright (Nikolai Kinski) lets a young actress (Ireen Kirsch) use his apartment to rehearse. Hartley also composes the score.

Adventure (2008) – Hartley films he and his wife, Miho Nikaido, on a trip to Japan. There they think back on their 12 years of marriage by turning the camera on each other while shooting beautiful shots of the country.

Accomplice (2009) – Jordana Maurer returns to play an assistant of an artists who wants her to pirate video of an interview of Jean-Luc Godard.

Disc is released today through Microcinema International as well as a remastered edition of Hartley’s classic, Surviving Desire. Desire Disc also includes two short story essays done by Hartley in 1991 and interviews from Hartley … Read the rest