One of the most beloved films in the history of Hollywood, The African Queen is finally making its long overdue debut on DVD. For years, fans have been begging for a release of this scrappy comic adventure featuring what may be the finest performances of Humpherey Bogart and Katherine Hepburn's storied careers. It's also one of John Huston's most charmingly laid back, yet utterly enthralling pictures. A cursory glance at the transfer on this disc -- I'll take a closer look when I get my hands on the Blu-ray -- suggests that it was worth the wait. Paramount has not only cleaned-up the film, they've also dared to remove distracting distortion from the original rear projection shots, giving the film a visual clarity it never quite achieved, but always desperately wanted.
One of the greatest film directors, Max Ophuls created at least two masterpieces: Letter from an Unknown Woman and The Earrings of Madame de. Legend has it his final film, Lola Montès, is also a masterpiece, but it has been difficult to verify that claim. After a disastrous Paris premiere in 1955, the film’s producers attempted to increase its commercial viability by cutting scenes and remixing the sound. At the end of 1956, it was further re-edited, which some argue may have hastened the director’s death in 1957. In 1968, producer Pierre Braunberger bought the rights and re-edited Lola Montès into something approximating the original version... but with washed-out visuals. Using digital technology, the Cinémathèque française created a completely restored version, now released on Blu-ray by The Criterion Collection. Was the 55-year wait worth it? Certainly. Is Lola Montès another Ophuls masterpiece? Probably not.
Small-scale horror productions typically yield iffy results. Then again, many of the genre’s standouts were made cheaply and, for that reason, effectively. On that note, how The House of the Devil got stuck with an infinitesimal theatrical run to coincide with a hopeless video-on-demand run is anyone’s guess. The latest indie-horror offering from Ti West (The Roost, Trigger Man) -- discounting that god-awful Cabin Fever sequel he tried to remove his name from -- even managed to receive raves from non-horror critics and boasted some of the coolest retro promo art ever.
by Jonathan Doyle and Neil Karassik
(with special guests Sarah Duda and Ken Stuebing)
At the conclusion of our recent Blaxploitation Marathon, we jokingly hinted at Vol. 2. Well, it looks like it's happening. The first marathon was a spontaneous reaction to a) Black Dynamite and b) a cold winter weekend in Toronto with not much going on. This time, a lot more thought went into the game plan.
I managed to round-up blaxploitation classics and obscurities alike and, as a result of this hefty blaxploitation windfall, we're tacking-on an extra day. We're also shooting for a surprisingly lofty goal: twenty consecutive blaxploitation movies! I don't know if we're gonna make it, but we're all fuelled up with forties and ready to go. -- JD
After making an incredibly visceral, politically-charged directorial debut with the strangely forgotten Blue Collar, Paul Schrader wrote and directed this absorbing, but bizarrely square companion piece to Taxi Driver. Standing-in for Schrader's own Calvinist father (a fact Schrader has acknowledged in print), George C. Scott plays a staunchly religious widower from Grand Rapids, Michigan, whose teenaged daughter abandons him -- for a life in porn.
Even more Grindhouse than Grindhouse, Scott Sanders’ super sly sophomore feature satirizes, deconstructs and duly honors seventies-era blaxploitation cinema with intelligent affection. In roughly the same tradition as the Wayans’ I’m Gonna Git You Sucka and the craptastic Eddie Griffin vehicle Undercover Brother, Black Dynamite re-establishes the black counter-culture genre’s trademark clichés: pimps, ho's, nun chucks, a general porno ambiance, insane conspiracy curveballs... and all that jive.
by Jonathan Doyle and Neil Karassik
(with special guest Sarah Duda)
It's been almost three years since our last DVD Marathon, but this weekend we're bringing the tradition back! In honor of recent blaxploitation gem Black Dynamite and its impending DVD/Blu-ray release (expect a review from Neil Karassik in a few days), we're watching/re-watching some blaxploitation classics this weekend. It's Black Film History Month, suckas!
So keep checking this space. We just opened some forties (seriously) and we're kicking-things-off with Melvin Van Peebles' Sweet Sweetback's Baadasssss Song -- on Criterion laserdisc!
Six full years after completing his first fiction feature (Dog Days), acclaimed documentary filmmaker Ulrich Seidl returned in 2007 with Import/Export, a bleak but rewarding look at the rock-bottom struggles of a young man and woman in the industrial wastelands of Eastern Europe. Paul is a struggling Austrian who lives with his mother and stepfather, while unsuccessfully seeking steady employment and attempting to avoid his seedy, underworld creditors. Meanwhile, in Ukraine, a nurse and single mother named Olga similarly struggles to make ends meet. While their lives are unrelated, Paul and Olga eventually switch countries in a futile effort to find better lives for themselves.
File under long-rumored, but we’ve just received word that Quentin Tarantino’s years-in-gestation new project is going to be an in-name-only remake of Enzo G. Castellari’s giddy WWII-set macaroni combat flick (legit subgenre, honest), The Inglorious Bastards. If this review were written when Castellari's film was initially released on DVD, it would begin somewhat like that. A year and a half later, Tarantino’s bizarrely-spelled Inglourious Basterds is the certified recipient of conflicted critical acclaim, Tarantino's best box office performance to date, a swift home video release and eight Oscar nominations. But Tarantino and Castellari's films have little in common -- other than their title(s) and their totally goofball takes on World War 2.
Somewhere between the age when kids learn to speak and the age when they stop being cute, they develop a lethal, extremely offputting habit: manipulating people with their cuteness. There's that knowing glint in their eyes. They know they're cute and they know they can use it to get stuff. That's Zooey Deschanel in a nutshell. For a while, the strong-willed, opinionated awkwardness of her screen persona (in movies like Mumford, Almost Famous and All the Real Girls) was a breath of fresh air, but then she got comfortable and settled into the relaxed, carefree cuteness of Audrey Hepburn, but with the crucial lack of Hepburn's foreign discomfort. Deschanel always seems comfortable onscreen, casually cueing the responses of the audience and her fellow characters. This cuteness is lethal and in (500) Days of Summer it's supposed to be.
A couple years back, Milestone Films re-released Charles Burnett's little-known, would-be seventies classic Killer of Sheep. Partly financed by Steven Soderbergh, that re-release brought the film considerable acclaim, landing it on many best-of lists at the end of the year (including sixth place on Film Comment's prestigious critics' poll). Burnett has followed in Soderbergh's footsteps, offering his name (and possibly some money) to Milestone's re-release of Kent Mackenzie's similarly hard-to-see ethnographic gem, The Exiles. While this film didn't make quite the same impact as Killer of Sheep, it still cracked FC's top twenty.
Assembled entirely from archival footage shot in 1974, this strikingly grainy and energetic concert film recalls the good vibes of Dave Chappelle's Block Party and the film that inspired it, Wattstax, but with even better music and much more provocative political content. Most of the latter comes from Muhammad Ali, who mixes good humour with unapologetically confrontational -- and generally accurate, if a bit sweeping -- anti-white rhetoric.
Whether you love this time of year or can't wait for the hoopla to end, this mix of cheerful and chilly movies should help get you through the holi-daze. To read any of these reviews from DiscLand circa 2006, click on the corresponding thumb nails.
Of particular note is The Junky's Christmas, which has become a surprising holiday staple for me since reviewing this disc three years ago (it's depressing, yet oddly touching... uplifting even). While you should definitely get your hands on this DVD, there isn't much time left before Christmas -- so I've included the complete short (in four brief chapters) below. -- JD
Quentin Tarantino’s madcap blend of world history, film history and faux history sparked one of this year’s most divisive debates amongst cineastes -- it seemed as though critics and audiences were either dubbing it his best or his worst. For me, QT’s latest genre riff falls somewhere in between, and considering that all of his films are essential viewing, no matter how off-balance or over-indulgent they tend to get, that’s nothing to moan about.
Opening night films at festivals can be a dicey proposition. More often than not, classy, inoffensive, sponsor-friendly films are dragged out to make a good impression -- and then they're promptly forgotten by everyone in the room. Thankfully, the 2008 Hot Docs documentary film festival got underway with precisely the opposite breed of film: Anvil: The Story of Anvil, a skillfully-crafted and unexpectedly affecting doc that may be the most crowd-pleasing non-fiction film of the decade (take that, March of the Penguins). It also turned out to be one of the highlights of the festival and, with the exception of Man on Wire, the entry that reached the widest post-festival audience. Good work, Hot Docs.
Call it overrated, but in 1998 Lock, Stock and Two Smoking Barrels established a confident new talent with all kinds of post-Tarantino promise. Sadly, Guy Ritchie’s now better known for his failed marriage to Madonna than his past triumphs as a filmmaker (this Christmas’ pretty awful-looking Sherlock Holmes revamp might change that... stay tuned). I’ll be the first to admit that Lock, Stock once made for very impressive viewing for my then-slightly uninformed cineaste eyes and Ritchie’s follow-up, Snatch, initially played like a crowd-pleasing gimmick with higher-concept thrills and tacked-on Brad Pittsploitation. It felt like a watered-down rehash and, as a major fan of Ritchie’s debut effort, a bit of a gyp.
Why have I in no way heard of this campy cross between H.G. Lewis, softcore smut and creepy old people (wait, aren’t those all one and the same)? The answer: Raphaël Delpard’s 1980 French rarity was never home video'd on North American soil. The film came out in France under the name La nuit de la mort, but didn’t make it to our neck until the cult film-friendly Synapse Films decided to take charge.
Looking for some good spooky fun this weekend? If you need horror movie guidance -- or even just some amusing thoughts on forgotten and/or classic fright films -- look no further than the DiscLand Archive. Below you'll find a selected list of DiscLand horror reviews, but be careful: just reading these could give you the creeps!
Or you could just check out the post before this for one of the year's best new horror films, Trick 'r Treat. -- JD
Trick 'r Treat (Blu-ray)
(Warner Home Video, 10.6.2009)
The directorial debut of X2 and Superman Returns co-writer Michael Dougherty is undisciplined, inconsistent and derivative. It's also an incredibly well-crafted, adventurous and rowdy good time. Applying some of the E.C. Comics affectations of George A. Romero's Creepshow to half-hearted, not especially memorable effect, Trick 'r Treat fails in its primary orientation as horror anthology. When Quentin Tarantino directed Pulp Fiction, he took inspiration from Mario Bava's omnibus classic Black Sabbath, adding his own taste for non-linear ensemble interconnectedness. Dougherty has attempted something similar, while also retaining the horror emphasis of Bava's film. However, this is where he does most of his stumbling. The film's structure is extremely sloppy, connecting stories, abandoning threads and zipping-through-time in a manner that seems arbitrary, rather than dramatically motivated. The good news? Dougherty does just about everything else right.
There's so little mystery in stand-up comedy these days. Most comedians are content to engage their audience in a passive, reality-based experience with room for one pre-planned response. However, every so often, a comedian like Andy Kaufman comes along and challenges his audience by concealing the elements that are normally transparent in a stand-up comedy routine (ie. the comedian's intent, the punchline, etc.). This can be frustrating, but once you get the hang of it, there's a thrill in feeling like an active participant for a change. You're not being cued to laugh, you're being cued to ponder strange, absurd thoughts... which ultimately lead to laughter. You don't hear the punchline, you think it. While nowhere near as experimental or challenging as Kaufman, Demetri Martin continues in this tradition, delivering a surprisingly stimulating and elliptical brand of semi-cerebral comedy.
This is not Harry and the Hendersons. This is not The Legend of Boggy Creek. This is not... Return to Boggy Creek. That's right, this is Not Your Typical Bigfoot Movie (though let's face it, the cover kinda suggests otherwise; irony alert?). Strange title since I suspect that pretty much no one has any idea what "your typical Bigfoot movie" is. I guess the "not" part comes into play in this documentary's surprisingly reverential portrait of two aging Bigfoot obsessives (Dallas and Wayne). You expect a silly, playful score and all kinds of amusingly mean-spirited, condescending touches, but instead you get a surprisingly serious look at two men whose only purpose in life is searching for something that probably doesn't exist. In other words, it's a metaphor buff's dream come true.
Harlan Ellison is fascinating in all the right ways: he's a brilliant writer, who has fought -- sometimes at great cost to himself -- for historic, generation-defining ideals, refusing to pander to popular tastes of fiction or behavior. Actually, it goes a bit further than that. Some might even call him an asshole. Ellison subscribes to the school of, if you can't say anything nasty (or at least passionate), don't say anything at all. He spent so much of his youth being bullied and subsequently learning to outsmart bullies that he's almost physically incapable of kissing ass. He conquered the need-to-be-liked demon decades ago... but he still needs to be admired.
Billy is fifteen years old and he loves KISS, slasher flicks and the soundtrack to Cats. He wears short shorts, sports a ponytailed rattail and holds a purple belt in karate. He’s the living amalgam of every socially agonizing moment you’ve ever experienced. The kid’s got problems: his abusive father split long ago, he doesn’t appear to have any legit friends, his failed crushes are starting to take their heart-wrenching toll -- and yet he sustains an awareness that most adults lack. Billy has no desire to fit in or be anything he isn’t, which in many ways makes him more emotionally mature than his classmates, who refer to him as "dumb" and, even worse, "uncool."
If there’s one genre everyone loves, it’s a good, clean sports drama, one that never strays from the well-traveled rags-to-riches road (bonus points if there’s a discernible hero and villain, who go head-to-head on the playing field during the final act). Fortunate for anyone who’s not "everyone," Half Nelson collaborators Ryan Fleck and Anna Boden have put another unique spin on a deceptively conventional narrative blueprint, bucking sports drama convention with the baseball-themed Sugar.
Seeing this globe-spanning 70mm feature by Ron Fricke (DP and co-editor of Godfrey Reggio’s similarly non-verbal/non-narrative doc Koyaanisqatsi) in high-def yields new appreciation for its montage of moving images. Baraka goes way beyond the limits of mere travelogue, offering a reflection on nature, culture and spirituality unlike any other. This disc also highlights Fricke’s distinctive voice as a director, cinematographer and editor, each more remarkable here than in Reggio’s superb, yet preachier, Qatsi trilogy. The only thing lacking is an iconic Philip Glass score (in his place, we have fantastic -- if slightly dated -- work by Michael Stearns).
