Filmbo's Chick Magnet

Another Top 10

2010-01-08T15:14:00.011-06:00

Occasional FCM contributor Eric Dienstfrey has sent us his top ten films of the decade.

Top 10 for now:

Before Sunset (2004, Richard Linklater)
Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind (2004, Michel Gondry)
The Five Obstructions (2003, Lars von Trier)
In the City of Sylvia (2007, José Luis Guerín)
Millennium Mambo (2000, Hou Hsiao-hsien)
Mulholland Drive (2001, David Lynch)
The Piano Teacher (2001, Michael Haneke)
Regular Lovers (2005, Philippe Garrel)
Werckmeister Harmonies (2000, Béla Tarr)
Yi yi (2000, Edward Yang)

And 34 more:

24 Hour Party People (2002, Michael Winterbottom)
25th Hour (2002, Spike Lee)
The 40 Year Old Virgin (2005, Judd Apatow)
Adventureland (2009, Greg Mottola)
A.I. (2001, Steven Spielberg)
Bad Santa (2003, Terry Zwigoff)
Before the Devil Knows You're Dead (2007, Sidney Lumet)
Bug (2006, William Friedkin)
Cloverfield (2008, Matt Reeves)
Dan in Real Life (2007, Peter Hedges)
The Diving Bell and the Butterfly (2007, Julian Schnabel)
Fat Girl (2001, Catherine Breillat)
The Fountain (2006, Darren Aronofsky)
Grizzly Man (2005, Werner Herzog)
Happy-Go-Lucky (2008, Mike Leigh)
I'm Not There (2007, Todd Haynes)
The Incredibles (2004, Brad Bird)
Inglourious Basterds (2009, Quentin Tarantino)
Kiss Kiss, Bang Bang (2005, Shane Black)
Let the Right One In (2008, Tomas Alfredson)
Madagascar (2005, Eric Darnell and Tom McGrath)
Marie Antoinette (2006, Sofia Coppola)
Mutual Appreciation (2005, Andrew Bujalski)
Once (2006, John Carney)
Rachel Getting Married (2008, Jonathan Demme)
Role Models (2008, David Wain)
The Shape of Things (2003, Neil LaBute)
Snow Angels (2007, David Gordon Green)
The Squid and the Whale (2005, Noah Baumbach)
The Story of Marie and Julien (2003, Jacques Rivette)
Summer Hours (2008, Olivier Assayas)
There Will Be Blood (2007, Paul Thomas Anderson)
United 93 (2006, Paul Greengrass)
Vicki Cristina Barcelona (2008, Woody Allen)

Thanks, Eric!

It's Judy-Lurkey Time!

2009-11-26T01:08:00.002-06:00

Humor.

Joe's 2009 DVD Premiere Summary

2009-11-07T12:16:00.000-06:00

We highly suggest you all take a look at Joe Bowman's complete overview of the North American cinephilic DVD premieres in 2009.

Outstanding job, Joe!

It's Bow Wow Wow!

2009-11-05T18:14:00.001-06:00

Earlier this year Eric and I asked you where we heard this song before (Flickhead confirmed it was "No Hay Problema" by Art Blakey).

The answer? Bow Wow Wow's Aphrodisiac!

Ten points to me for getting the answer on my own!

Criterion Responds to 2009 Criticism

2009-10-03T23:25:00.004-05:00

In an unprecedented manner, Peter Becker of Criterion responds to criticism via an email (via .org):

My name is Peter Becker. I'm the president of Criterion. Thanks for taking the time to write in.

You're right to call the Criterion schedule a juggling act, and juggling this year's schedule has been more challenging than any since laserdisc days. I understand some of the frustration you're feeling about the balance of new and classic titles, especially in the later 2009 Blu-ray schedule. Making the Criterion schedule is always a series of impossible compromises, and in the end, some people, some years, are going to end up unhappy. Clearly this was not a good year for you. I'm sorry about that. I know it may not solve anything, but I thought you might appreciate a quick look at some of the factors that came into play with this year's schedule.

For what it's worth, we've spent much more time on classic film this year than our announced schedule shows. The single most time consuming and expensive mastering project in the history of the company was Kobayashi's THE HUMAN CONDITION -- that is, until we started work on Rossellini's War Trilogy, which is still not finished. We had originally hoped to have the Rossellini set ready for October release, then November, then December. Ironically the easiest of the masters, the 2007 restoration of ROME, OPEN CITY, is the one that is giving us the most trouble. PAISAN, which has never been available in a watchable video version, has taken us three straight months of digital restoration, an amount of time and an expense that will probably never come back, but the film will finally, for the first time, look good -- still damaged, but with a beautiful black and white image that will be a revelation to anyone who has ever seen the old tapes and 16 mm prints that are still in circulation. Our tech director is about to make his third trip to Italy on this project, just to try to straighten out the last master, next week.

You also mention STAGECOACH. We never announced it for December, but it's true that we had hoped to release it then. Again mastering turned out to be more complicated than we anticipated. The original negative of the film is lost, and we have been evaluating a number of different elements. We are now working closely with UCLA's restoration team to evaluate all available elements and create a new HD master, starting from scratch. The bad news is that it's taking a long time. The good news is that in the time we've been working on the master, we've had the opportunity to unearth some interesting supplemental materials, so the edition will be all the better for it. That said, it's frustrating that it didn't come out -- the cover's been on the wall of our office for weeks now, and we're looking forward to making it a part of the collection.

Those two big classics that we've been hard at work on were never announced, which helped to give disporportionate weight to the contemporary releases of this fall/winter. I can understand why you would think we were stepping back from classics in favor of more contemporary films, but in fact, the opposite has been true. Our Blu-ray schedule has been heavily weighted toward international classics with THE SEVENTH SEAL, PLAYTIME, WAGES OF FEAR, THE THIRD MAN, REPULSION, 400 BLOWS, THE LAST METRO, IN THE REALM OF THE SENSES, LAST YEAR AT MARIENBAD. And when you throw in our DVD schedule with Z, JEANNE DIELMAN, 2 OR 3 THINGS..., HUMAN CONDITION, MY DINNNER WITH ANDRE, the Imamura box, Painlevé, etc., I don't think we pulled any punches or spared any expense where classics were concerned.

Integrating Blu-ray production into our workflow has been challenging in its own right. Adding an existing DVD upgrade is about equivalent to adding a new DVD production to the schedule, at least where our technical team is concerned, and that is where our capacity is most constrained. New Blu-rays released day and date with the DVD editions are marginally more efficient, and many of our customers are avidly urging us not to release DVD-only editions anymore, but each simultaneous release we do is one more DVD catalog classic we aren't revisiting that month. Right now we're struggling to bring our Blu-ray capacity up from one to two a month to three or four. As our capacity increases, it will be easier to keep a balance, but in the meantime it's an inexact science.

The other title that you say you were expecting, but which we didn't officially announce for December, is CHE. It's coming, and as you can imagine there's a wealth of great content getting developed. We wanted to be ready for December, but Steven Soderbergh needed time to reconstruct some deleted scenes, and we were also able, in what we think is going to be a controversial coup, to persuade Che biographer Jon Lee Anderson to do commentaries on both films, but he also needed more time to prepare. In short, it became clear that if we delayed the release a month we would be able to make a much better set. That's a trade we will always make, even if it means we don't get the benefit of sales in the holiday season, and we think that's the kind of decision our collectors would want us to make.

To touch briefly on some of the other things you mention: more Eclipse is a goal for us too. Again, this is a capacity issue. Each disc in a set represents multiple passes for our QC department, and when we're working on large-scale projects like Rossellini, HUMAN CONDITION, or the Imamura box, that has a tendency to cramp our capacity to handle multi-disc Eclipse sets at the same time. Still, we're proud of what we've been able to do in Eclipse this year, but we are definitely looking forward to getting more out next year. As for "two-release months," by which I assume we're referring to December, I've already mentioned that we intended to have STAGECOACH and CHE ready for December as well but we delayed them to make them better rather than sooner. That said, when one of the two releases is a 25-disc set, that also factors in. I'm sorry you don't like the Kurosawa box idea, but we felt that his centennial was an important opportunity to draw attention to his monumental body of work, and so far we've had some very positive feedback from people who have not been as diligently collecting his work as you have.

I don't expect anything I've said will change your mind about our slate, but I hope at least you'll know that we have no desire to dismiss your concerns. We do value feedback from our customers, especially longtime supporters like you, and we hope we'll earn your loyalty again in 2010.

All the best,
Peter Becker

Thoughts?

Breaking: Criterion Says They Will Release Out 1?

2009-09-15T19:28:00.005-05:00

WHAT JUST HAPPENED ON FACEBOOK?!?

UPDATE: Acting like the secret order of "The Thirteen", we've noticed that Criterion has deleted this Out 1 thread from their facebook page.

Criterion Ponders Out 1 on Facebook?

2009-09-14T21:10:00.004-05:00

Another Judd Apatow Interview

2009-07-23T15:23:00.006-05:00

Excerpts from this.

On the original script for Anchorman: The Legend of Ron Burgundy:
Basically, it was about anchormen flying to an anchorman convention. Mid-flight, they hit some sort of UPS plane and they crash into a mountain and it becomes like the movie Alive. All the anchormen start dying, they start eating each other. And occasionally, the contents of the UPS plane — which was monkeys and throwing stars — start attacking their base camp. And we sent that around, and it was SO funny, but we couldn't get anyone to make it.

[snip]

On the somewhat disturbing influence of Adam Sandler on his career and writing style:
Adam is very open about certain things. He's the first guy I knew who would talk about masturbating. [...] When I moved in with Adam, he'd be like, "Hey man, let's go to Red Lobster but first I'm gonna go whack off. I'll see you in ten minutes." And then he'd come out and be like, "Okay, let's go." And that threw me. And he had a running thing where he'd would always say, "Let me see the cock. Lemme see. Lemme see what you got." And I was like, "I'm not going to show you my penis." And he was like, "Lemme just see it, let's get it over with." And one day when I was peeing, I saw him standing behind me in the mirror. [Mimes Sandler looking at him quizzically] And then he just goes, "Alright, man, alright."

Hou Hsiao-hsien in DC!

2009-06-13T12:09:00.002-05:00

Attention DC Cinephiles:

On Friday, June 26th The Freer Gallery will host a free screening of Hou Hsiao-hsien's 1984 film, A Summer at Grandpa's. The 7 pm screening is part of Le Festival des 3 Continents, which purportedly was the very first American festival to endorse Hou's work many years ago -- for what it's worth.

"There is no Dana..."

2009-06-10T23:01:00.000-05:00

"Are you serious?"

2009-06-01T08:51:00.004-05:00

Neither Eric nor I watched the MTV Movie Awards, but this Eminem / Bruno moment actually happened.

Peter Becker Still Doesn't Care About Jacques Rivette

2009-05-22T00:24:00.002-05:00

We'll post this again because it never gets old. Maybe someone at Criterion is listening this time.

And a big thanks to Eric and Kenton for putting this video together several months ago.

Bulle Ogier Talks Rivette

2009-05-16T15:12:00.010-05:00

A telling interview with Bulle Ogier about her working relationship with Jacques Rivette:

Eric and I try to keep posting more clips from these interviews, so stay tuned.

Rivette on His Cahiers Days

2009-05-09T08:31:00.008-05:00

Here's a Saturday treat for you all! Claire Denis tapes Serge Daney interviewing Jacques Rivette on his early interest in filmmaking, his days with Cahiers du cinéma, and his first meetings with Jean-Luc Godard, François Truffaut, and Eric Rohmer. A must watch!

Bleg! What's This Song Called?

2009-04-25T21:14:00.003-05:00

Please, someone tell us the name of this jazz standard that plays over the soundtrack to this hip scene from Roger Vadim's adaptation of Les Liaisons Dangereuses.

Resnais the Comic

2009-04-23T20:09:00.004-05:00

A moment from the Alain Resnais flick Stavisky... We start with a blank white canvas.

Then, like the opening to the Gershwin sequence from Fantasia 2000, Resnais draws a line down the middle.

Until we see it wasn't a canvas at all!

More on "Let the Love Come Through"

2009-04-22T21:56:00.002-05:00

For those who just can't get enough of "Let the Love Come Through", that Bacharach/David song we posted last week, here's a bit more info from Serene Dominic's indispensable Burt Bacharach: Song By Song.

"Let the Love Come Through" aka "Flying Saucer -- First Stop Berlin" (Burt Bacharach - Hal David)

First recorded by Roland Shaw
From the album World of Spy Thrillers
Decca SPA 213, released 1967

British bandleader Roland Shaw recorded some generic orchestral albums for Decca before hitting on a winning formula -- anthologizing James Bond movie music for people who didn't wish to buy each successive soundtrack. With the series updated every few years to include new music, Shaw amassed a nice collection of albums with bikini-and-bazooka babes on the covers, easily spotted in the sea of droll Mantovani-and-his-baton sleeves.

People who bought his 1967 spy maestro work probably scratched their heads wondering why they'd seen all the Bond films but never heard this song. They did: less than two minutes worth of "Let the Love Come Through" was featured without words as part of "Flying Saucer -- First Stop Berlin" from Casino Royale. Whether it's a rejected love theme or a lyrical afterthought, it provides Bacharach fans a fine excuse to seek out a Roland Shaw recording. Sung by a double-tracked coquette, it's got pretty bare-boned instrumentation, with piano, chunky rhythm guitar and, dare I say it, funky brushwork on the drums. Once again, Hal David is forced into a hip corner by pseudo-psychadelic music, but extricates himself in stylish fashion: "I know what you know where it's at tonight, let the love come through / It's right here in my arms when I hold you tight, let the love come through / There is nothing to be afraid of / Our emotions are what we are made of, darling." The groove is actually very similar to Paul Simon's psychedelic gripe "Fakin' It," which came out days before the Summer of Love officially kicked off.

Too good a song to waste, "Let the Love Come Through" was recorded again by Australian singer Janice Slater the following year (Spin EK-1984, produced by Robert Iredale).

Other Versions: Janice Slater (1968)

Along with "Fakin'It" (and my guess quite a few other songs), I'm guessing most cinephiles also hear the orchestral rendition of Serge Gainsbourg's "Sous Le Soleil Exactement" from Anna, which Filmbrain was kind enough to upload more than three years ago.

Video: "Let the Love Come Through"

2009-04-17T00:17:00.001-05:00

Apparently Ridley Scott directed the very first Burt Bacharach / Hal David music video.

Project X, Cinema Guild Ink Deal

2009-04-15T11:44:00.001-05:00

Congratulations to both!

Watch José Luis Guerín's Souvenir from 1986

2009-04-14T21:19:00.003-05:00

A rough translation of the opening title card (and the subsequent cards that follow):

White clouds pass by Notre-Dame in an old film by Jean Renoir. And I tell myself, thus, these clouds crossed over there more than 50 years ago.

If anyone recognizes the pop song in the background please let us know.

"Lies fallow in the night"

2009-04-01T12:38:00.001-05:00

Marianne Faithfull's cover of "Children of Stone" (featuring Rufus Wainwright) from her 2008 Easy Come, Easy Go:

Download the original Espers mp3 here.

Elmo Wants this Tape!

2009-03-12T15:12:00.001-05:00

Tsunami

2009-02-23T12:58:00.003-06:00

New Yorker Films has died.
(hat tip to Joe)

Turkey!

2008-11-27T10:42:00.001-06:00

Chabrol's A Girl Cut in Two Poster

2008-08-05T09:11:00.001-05:00

And if you missed the trailer, it's right here.