What is Movie News After Dark? This is a question that I am almost never asked, but I will answer it for you anyway. Movie News After Dark is FSR’s newest late-night secretion, a column dedicated to all of the news stories that slip past our daytime editorial staff and make it into my curiously chubby RSS ‘flagged’ box. It will (but is not guaranteed to) include relevant movie news, links to insightful commentary and other film-related shenanigans. I may also throw in a link to something TV-related here or there. It will also serve as my place of record for being both charming and sharp-witted, but most likely I will be neither of the two. I write this stuff late at night, what do you expect?
The upcoming season of Doctor Who (which can’t come soon enough, by the way) will include a bit of swashbuckling action for Amy Pond (Karen Gillan), as seen in the image below. This is something of which I approve.
The Writers Guild of America has handed out a bunch of awards, handing its two big ones (best original screenplay and best adapted screenplay) to Inception and The Social Network, respectively. No surprises there.Comic-Con tickets went on sale this weekend. The process frustrated fans, took much more pain and agony than was necessary and ultimately resulted in an expected result: Comic-Con four-day badges are sold out.A few weeks ago, Robert Downey Jr. said goodbye to starring in Oz, the Great and Powerfulfor director Sam Raimi thanks to scheduling conflicts. Not long after, Disney contract boy Johnny Depp was in the mix. The word on the streets today is that Depp has passed and Oscar host and nominee James Franco is the new leader of the pack.There will be plenty of coverage of the commercials and trailers from tonight’s Super Bowl. I know that we are working up our own round-up of all the movie-related goodies. But lets not forget what really drew us all to the broadcast this evening: watching Christina Aguilera forget the words to the National Anthem. Priceless.A nasty rumor has emerged online (thanks to Ain’t It Cool) about Robin possibly appearing inThe Dark Knight Rises. Since then, cooler heads appear to have prevailed and diced up the rumor — because leave it to the internet to find every possible way to resist the notion that Chris Nolan may include the Dick Grayson character. Although in fairness, this is one time when the whole of the web has the right idea. And it’s highly unlikely that Nolan would do anything like that. If it did happen, it would have to be done in a way that works. What I’m really getting at is this: we know nothing new, save for the fact that the production is scouting locations in Michigan.J.J. Abrams and Steven Spielberg went on a tear, divulging all kinds of secrets about their Amblin-like supernatural thriller Super 8. I love this part of the piece:
While contemporary peers such as “Iron Man” director Jon Favreau reach out to fans, bloggers and journalists throughout the filmmaking process for a thoroughly transparent view, Abrams longs for the muscle-car days of 1979 when movies had far more mystique.
“‘I’ve never done Twitter,” said Abrams, a man who has a tape cassette player in his car and is releasing a movie called “Super 8″ in the age of iPhones. All of that and the summer of blockbuster competition add up to worries about time and timing.
”We have such a challenge on this movie,” Abrams said. ”Yes we’ve got Steven’s name on it and my name on it — for what that’s worth — but we’ve got no famous super-hero, we’ve got no pre-existing franchise or sequel, it’s not starring anyone you’ve heard of before. There’s no book, there’s no toy, there’s no comic book. There’s nothing. I don’t have anything; I don’t even have a board game, that’s how bad it is. But I think we have a very good movie.”
Leave it to the beautiful folks at Cinematical to compile such an interesting list of fake b-movie trailers. A lovely diversion, to say the least.Details are emerging around Darren Aronofsky’s Noah’s Ark project. There’s a comic book, some concept art and plenty of story details. Sounds like an interesting ride, a dark portrayal of what the Biblical character of Noah was like when the flood was over. Hint: he’s got a nasty case of survivor’s guilt.MORE SUPERMAN RUMORS! The guys at Latino Review have clarified that a trio of actresses, including Alice Eve and Diane Kruger, are not vying for the role of Lois Lane. They are trying to get into character as URSA, one of the three Kryptonioan villains banished by Jor-El to the Phantom Zone (based on the character’s history in previous films and some comics). Could Superman’s nemesis in this reboot be a tough lady? If so, that could be fun.As I mentioned, we are studiously putting together our own recap of the Super Bowl trailers and previews, and will bring that to you soon enough. But for now, I’d like to close this evening with my own favorite. Ah yes, a little bit of Bayhem. Say what you will about that secondTransformers film, but it had its moments — big, big action and plenty of ‘splosions. Bay has promised that Transformers: Dark of the Moon will bring all of that as well as a tighter story, and less Megan Fox. Sounds good to me. Also, this Super Bowl spot kicks all kinds of ass:
The great 1960s American International Pictures (AIP) bounty on Netflix Streaming is to die… or kill… and then keep your dead wife in your bed in case she comes back to life for… with many of the stream titles not available on DVD, like Sugar Hill and Cult of the Damned (which I discussed a few weeks back). Sure they’re cheap, made on a shoestring for the drive-in circuit, but the AIP golden boy was Roger Corman, and for a few years he was knocking out homer after homer by spending twice as much as his usual pittance budget to make widescreen color adaptations of Edgar Allen Poe stories.
With the help of slightly larger budgets Corman was able to hire Vincent Price and sometimes Boris Karloff and Peter Lorre, as well as a young Jack Nicholson and copious hotties in busty necklines. Boris and Lorre are great but kind of too old to be scary while Price is juuust right and carries the films like a champ. He’s to Corman as Dietrich was to Von Sternberg or De Niro to Scorsese. Price’s florid hamminess fills in the sparse patches of Corman’s sometimes spare mise en scene, and the sparseness conversely gives Price lots of room to floridly ham. Add Les Baxter’s crazy scores, some good freaky psychedelic California painters to make the portraits of dead and evil uncles and incestuous sisters and flowing red paint credits, and sharp scripts by Richard Matheson and pre-CHINATOWN Robert Towne, and viola!
They’re not all on the stream, but there’s enough you can have a whole little Poe-fest on a rainy or cold Friday or Saturday night… so I’ve created this delightful marathon for you, dearBright Lights Reader! I covered all the Corman films for the old Muze search engine canon back in the day, so where prudent I’ve added some blurbs to give my descriptions here their own ‘back from the dead’ frisson:
1. TALES OF TERROR (1962) – Part One – “Morella”
If you want to dip your toes into the Poes, start with this trilogy’s opening tale, “Morella” – it’s got everything: a drunk, haunted mustache-less Price; a creepy house exterior matte, one of the hottest girls of all the series (Maggie Pierce), a great crazy look, and a slam bang gran nag of typical Poe/Corman film traits.
With this series you’ll always see a literally fiery finish and Price will always be obsessed with a dead wife, or being buried alive, or Satanism. Here it’s the dead wife, but Poe was no kibbitzer of dead wives like Leo DiCaprio has been lately.
Poe actually had a dead wife, and a dead mom when he was barely a year old, and an adopted mom after her, and they all died of consumption. So he understood the suffering and madness that only absinthe and opium could alleviate even as it twisted the soul into something dark and monstrous. At any rate, it’s short, Morella is, so feel free to stop there and get back to the other two stories later.
Poe actually had a dead wife, and a dead mom when he was barely a year old, and an adopted mom after her, and they all died of consumption. So he understood the suffering and madness that only absinthe and opium could alleviate even as it twisted the soul into something dark and monstrous. At any rate, it’s short, Morella is, so feel free to stop there and get back to the other two stories later.
2 : PIT AND THE PENDULUM (1961) -
I generally steer away from all the crazy period Spanish Inquisition buxom torture films out there is sleazeville–too many sweaty Spaniards leering sadistically behind the religious hypocrisy and terrible regional theater tattered costumes, etc., but because this is so creepy and fun the frilly white paper lantern collars and slick black jackets are actually a selling point – plus I like Luana Anders as Price’s demure but mature sister; that said, after awhile Price’s raving gets a little much and there’s not nearly enough Barbara Steele.
From my 1999 Muze canon entry:
2. MASQUE OF THE RED DEATH (1964) -
Now you’re in the zone! You’re ready for the shining jewel in the crown. From Muze:
“Jane Asher costars as Francesca, a beautiful peasant girl whom Prospero saves from the dreaded Red Death so that he can seduce her into becoming a bride of Satan. Meanwhile, his already-converted wife (Hazel Court) is making her final, fatal pact with Lucifer, and Prospero himself has a date with destiny when a mysterious, uninvited figure appears at the
masque… Benefiting from great cinematography by Nicolas Roeg, lavish sets, and some delirious dancing, this engaging, macabre little tale lands in a nice spot between high art and high camp and is considered by many fans and critics to be the pinnacle of Corman’s prolific career.
“Jane Asher costars as Francesca, a beautiful peasant girl whom Prospero saves from the dreaded Red Death so that he can seduce her into becoming a bride of Satan. Meanwhile, his already-converted wife (Hazel Court) is making her final, fatal pact with Lucifer, and Prospero himself has a date with destiny when a mysterious, uninvited figure appears at the
masque… Benefiting from great cinematography by Nicolas Roeg, lavish sets, and some delirious dancing, this engaging, macabre little tale lands in a nice spot between high art and high camp and is considered by many fans and critics to be the pinnacle of Corman’s prolific career.
TOMB OF LIGEIA (1965)
Cl0se out with this, which finds the modern age overtaking things, to add closure with Morella, Price is once again ‘stacheless and haunted by a long dead REBECCA of a wife… until the game and gorgeous Shepherd comes fox hunting through his ruined abbey…
From Muze:
Cl0se out with this, which finds the modern age overtaking things, to add closure with Morella, Price is once again ‘stacheless and haunted by a long dead REBECCA of a wife… until the game and gorgeous Shepherd comes fox hunting through his ruined abbey…
From Muze:
Oscar-winning scribe Robert Towne (CHINATOWN) wrote the screenplay–based on Edgar Allan Poe’s story “Ligeia”–for this moody, macabre romance starring Vincent Price. A fox-hunting accident introduces vivacious Lady Rowena
(Elizabeth Shepherd) to brooding neighbor Verden Fell (Price). They fall in love despite his penchant for sitting around his gloomy, cobwebbed abbey, obsessing over Ligeia, his dead wife. After they return from the honeymoon, Rowena finds life at the abbey pretty distressing, as the spirit of Ligeia keeps appearing in, among other guises, the form of a malicious black cat… It all leads to a kinky, ghoulish climax, with plenty of shocks, mesmerism, implied drug addiction, and necrophilia along the way… Films veteran Arthur Grant gives it a more realistic look than most of Corman’s pictures, and Shepherd
is a great heroine, delivering a mature and sexy performance.
(Elizabeth Shepherd) to brooding neighbor Verden Fell (Price). They fall in love despite his penchant for sitting around his gloomy, cobwebbed abbey, obsessing over Ligeia, his dead wife. After they return from the honeymoon, Rowena finds life at the abbey pretty distressing, as the spirit of Ligeia keeps appearing in, among other guises, the form of a malicious black cat… It all leads to a kinky, ghoulish climax, with plenty of shocks, mesmerism, implied drug addiction, and necrophilia along the way… Films veteran Arthur Grant gives it a more realistic look than most of Corman’s pictures, and Shepherd
is a great heroine, delivering a mature and sexy performance.
——–
Interestingly both the Corman’s hilarious The Raven and the first in the series, Fall of the House of Usher (both also with Price) seems to be missing from Netflix, though I wouldn’t be surprised if they were mislabeled somewhere in there. At any
rate if you still need more after that, the other two Tales of Terror can now be safely endured. Avoid The Terror on Netflix streaming, as it’s an old Public Domanin washout – Doesn’t it matter to Netflix that there are upgraded awesome versions of old movies? They just keep whatever dreckly old copy they have of some things… oh well, time once again to close the creaking door on the Inner Sanctum. Til next time, keep watching the shadows wrought by dying embers on the floor!
rate if you still need more after that, the other two Tales of Terror can now be safely endured. Avoid The Terror on Netflix streaming, as it’s an old Public Domanin washout – Doesn’t it matter to Netflix that there are upgraded awesome versions of old movies? They just keep whatever dreckly old copy they have of some things… oh well, time once again to close the creaking door on the Inner Sanctum. Til next time, keep watching the shadows wrought by dying embers on the floor!
Sethe — Margaret Garner
Toni Morrison has said that she based the story of Beloved, and particularly the character of Sethe, on two articles she read about Margaret Garner, a slave who escaped captivity in 1856 by running away to Ohio, where it had been abolished. When slave catchers found her and her family, she killed her youngest child, publicly stating that she would rather have her child dead than experience life in slavery. In the novel, Sethe makes similar choices, to both her pride and torment
Ebenezer Scrooge – John Elwes
Evidence suggests that Charles Dickens based legendary miser Ebenezer Scrooge on the 18th century politician John Elwes, who had inherited a fortune but was loath to spend a single penny, preferring to live as if in poverty, squatting in empty apartments. Whether he went around muttering ‘bah humbug,’ we really can’t say.
etween films about phantom carriages, angry jurors, beasts and beauties, stranded astronauts, international revolutionaries, and great dictators, Adam Charles and Landon Palmer found their wallets empty and their cinephilic obsessions sated.
Here are their eleven favorite releases and upgrades of the year…
#591: 12 ANGRY MEN (1957)
Of all of the types of releases one could find in the Criterion collection, it’s tough to find a significant release from popular/prominent American filmmakers who sprang up during the highs of the 1950s and 1970s. Why’s that? Most of the studios held on to the rights of those films and have released, more often than not, their own fully-loaded discs with pristine transfers. One of the few missing from that group was 12 Angry Men.
It was Sidney Lumet‘s first picture, and while Lumet is criminally not considered amongst the higher ranks of the Scorseses and Kubricks, you’d have a difficult time finding an American filmmaker with a more varied filmography with multiple masterpieces (one could even argue his 1970s releases were the more impressive of any other filmmaker in the United States) and who remained consistently productive for almost six full decades until his passing just this year. With this release, one of America’s finest film treasures finally sees the kind of release it’s been in need of since the advent of DVD. -AC
#6: BEAUTY AND THE BEAST (BLU-RAY) (1946)
Like Hara-Kiri, this film already existed in two releases in the Criterion Collection DVD library, but this is one of the films that demands to be revisited whenever an advancement in picture quality is made. It’s amongst the most premiere fantasy films on the planet, its story is timeless, but more important to film, it’s one of the most exquisitely produced and directed pictures ever.
The costumes, set pieces and art direction are second-to-none and it remains one of the most visually influential, hypnotic, dream-like and surreal features ever made. Nothing much more can be said about it that already hasn’t been, other than now it looks about as good as we ever dreamed it would. –AC
#582: CARLOS (2010)
If any film can be described as a Molotov cocktail, it’s Olivier Assayas’s Carlos. Released temporally alongside a barrage of multi-part true-life European crime/international espionage/revolution films (Che and Mesrinedistributed cinematically in two parts, Carlos and The Red Riding Trilogy as sprawling television narratives),Carlos shows that a biopic need not necessarily be restricted to the time limits of cinematic convention.
Through its ever-engaging five-plus-hour duration, Carlos follows the ebbs and flows of an extraordinary life (as Carlos’s life slows down, so does the film). Its inclusion in the same collection as films like Fanny and Alexanderand Berlin Alexanderplatz serve as a reminder that some of the best cinematic work throughout the history of Western Europe has been made for television. But most importantly, Carlos is a damn good movie with an incredible performance as its crown centerpiece, and one of the Collection’s contemporary entries that sits comfortably beside its classics. -LP
#578: THE COMPLETE JEAN VIGO (1930-1934)
Rarely can sets encompass an entire career, but the Criterion Collection has accomplished exactly this two years in a row. Last year, Criterion released The BBS Set, which encompassed the brief history of one of the most daring production companies in Hollywood history. This year, the Collection released the complete work of hugely influential French filmmaker Jean Vigo. Both of these box sets are not without a sense of tragedy (BBS with the dissolution of a risk-taking production company (and the later end of New Hollywood by association), and the Vigo Collection with the untimely death of the filmmaker at age 29), but this only makes their pristine availability feel all the more valuable.
The silent A Propos de Nice (1930) (as seen above) is a subversively critical parody of tour films, and Taris(1931) is another interesting early work, but it’s Zero de conduite (1933) – a school-based enfant terriblenarrative which provided essential influence for French New Wave filmmakers, specifically Truffaut’s The 400 Blows – and L’Atalante (1934), Vigo’s sole feature film about an increasingly distant newlywed couple onboard a barge with an enigmatic first mate, which are the heart of this disc. While Vigo’s brief life history makes one inevitably wonder what films we may have missed out on had history turned out differently, his existing body of work is not without an aura of incredible accomplishment. -LP
#565: THE GREAT DICTATOR (1940)
Charlie Chaplin’s first “talkie” is definitive proof of why we should take comedy – or, at least, great comedy – seriously. An uncanny meeting of historical context with star persona (how can the same mustache be so iconic for such vastly different public figures?) made for a comedic opportunity of upmost relevance, the type of which American cinema wouldn’t see again until Dr. Strangelove.
Chaplin once famously said that if he knew the extent of Hitler’s awful crimes, he would not have made a comedy of the man. I’m glad he did, for Chaplin’s absurd humor seems the only logical and human way to react to such absurd power through cinema, and the humanist message at the film’s end still remains one of the most powerful speeches ever captured on film. Also, the color behind-the-scenes footage is a historical treasure, and probably the best special feature of any Criterion release this year. -LP
#302: HARA-KIRI (BLU-RAY) (1962)
Though already released in the Criterion Collection on DVD a few years ago, this release on Blu-Ray is significant specifically to me. Frankly, I think the film is perfect. Its concept is intriguing, the subtext very subversive, the script structure (scripted by Rashomon co-scribe Shinobu Hashimoto) is elegantly formed with its reveals, the story is expertly told, the photography is impeccable, the lead performance is unforgettably controlled and sinister in its vengeance, and the final action sequence caps it all off in a way that it had to.
And, now, I can finally say that there is a release and transfer about as perfect as one could hope for a film one considers relatively perfect. -AC
#586: ISLAND OF LOST SOULS (1932)
If there is one thing the folks at Criterion have never shied away from it’s finding those little-known treasures of the B-movie variety and giving them the treatment and care that they would give to any of the most highly important pictures in the world. Some of the films themselves may not all be winners, but the employees at Criterion sure do take pride in making sure that you’ll at least be interested in seeing what a flick has to offer. Little did I know about this early 1930s adaptation of The Island of Dr. Moreau starring one of American cinema’s greatest actors as the demented scientist (Charles Laughton), and one of the most recognizable figures in early American horror pictures (Bela Lugosi).
To say that I was shocked I didn’t even know about this film until Criterion decided to release it is shameful on my part. Especially considering that the picture itself is in no way one of the films I would consider a “non-winner,” and is without a doubt the best Moreau film I’ve seen brought to screen. In a year of Criterion releases of such important magnitude it’s always refreshing to see them continue to retain their stance that just because the film isn’t important to most in the film-admiring community, it’s still important to them and it deserves their best. -AC
#579: THE PHANTOM CARRIAGE (1921)
Knowing little about this silent film from Sweden during the early 1920s I was intrigued by the acknowledged influence the picture had on famed Swedish filmmaker Ingmar Bergman. Adapted from a novel, the story shares much in common with Dickens’s A Christmas Carol about a broken man given the opportunity to revisit all of the times in his life where he was led astray and what kind of an effect his wrongdoings had on people; only now, he is forced to see them as he is the last person to die just before the New Year and is therefore tasked with taking over the responsibility of reaping the souls of the dead until New Year’s Day the following year.
Not sure if it was just my ignorance but I don’t recall hearing much about this picture before this year’s DVD and Blu-Ray release, but its significance as a primary source of influence on one of world cinema’s most important filmmakers alone makes it something to be made aware of. However, the fact that it may possibly be the most affecting and emotional telling of a kind of story commonly visited at this time of year (though not an adaptation of that story) is staggering considering it is not more well-known probably outside of its country of origin. Director Victor Sjostrom (who also starred in and wrote the script, and also later appeared as the lead in Bergman’s Wild Strawberries) put together a masterwork of despair and redemption that almost none of the adaptations of Dickens’s classic work onto film ever reach. Aside from that, the storytelling elements of flashbacks and (if I recall correctly) flashbacks within flashbacks pre-dates the most oft-considered structure pioneering of Rashomon by thirty years. -AC
#17: SALO or, THE 120 DAYS OF SODOM (BLU-RAY) (1976)
Is Salo the type of movie you should add to your collection to watch time and again, and have in the background in gorgeous HD during parties? Probably not. (Unless you’re Rebelais! Boom!) But Pasolini’s last film is perhaps one of the best examples of why we need film preservation, and why The Criterion Collection not only makes great upgrades of classic films for cinephiles, but keeps important works in circulation no matter the factors that may be working against them. Salo’s domestic home video history is almost as troubled as the original international release of this enduringly controversial film.
One of the first entries in the Collection’s move from Laserdisc to DVD, Salo went out of circulation as a result of various rights entanglements, making the original (subpar) Criterion DVD release a highly valued collector’s item. In 2008, the film was re-released in a pristine new double-disc version, and this past year was upgraded to Blu-Ray. Love it or hate it (I’m torn because of its misappropriation of De Sade, but I can’t deny its importance), Salo’s Criterion history proves that the particulars of a film’s release really does make a difference. After only being available only through bootlegs or on an inferior legit DVD release for most of the first decade of the twentieth century, an HD Salo illustrates the artistry and finesse with which Pasolini approached the grotesque. Still controversial after all these years, Salo is essential cinema. -LP
#164: SOLARIS (BLU-RAY) (1972)
Andrei Tarkovsky is one of the most visionary filmmakers to have ever existed. If you have the endurance to let his time sculptures suture you to whatever screen you may be viewing, his films provide an opportunity to experience time and space spiritually in a way that few films do, but somehow only the medium of cinema can. The mere seven feature films that he made constitute an incredible body of work, but not until this year has any of his work been available in the HD in the US.
Solaris is perhaps Tarkovsky’s best-known film, and while it wasn’t a favorite of the filmmaker’s, for many of Tarkovsky’s audiences it remains the gateway drug to the auteur’s unique and inimitable aesthetic. A beautiful and despairing rumination on trauma, memory, and the cycles of life, Solaris was Soviet cinema’s (unintentional) answer to 2001’s fantastic linear annal of scientific progress. It’s about time one of Tarkovsky’s films was released in HD. I can think of few other filmmakers whose work benefits more greatly from the format. -LP
#587: THE THREE COLORS TRILOGY (1993-1994)
Kryzstof Kieslowski made films about ideas, and his films were rarely isolated. He made films in cycles which explored overlapping themes and whose issues were engaged through connective threads (i.e., The Decalogue,A Short Film About Killing/Love). Kieslowski’s final works proved to be the masterpiece(s) that would define his international reputation after his death in the mid-1990s. Blue (1993), White (1993), and Red (1994) explore the three political ideals of France: liberty, equality, and fraternity, which serve as the thematic framework for each of these brilliant deconstructive exercises in genre (tragedy, comedy, and romance).
Like many of Criterion’s great box sets, The Three Colors Trilogy posits that, while each of these films may be strong on their own, they must be viewed in their context as components of a complete, and completely brilliant, singular work of cinema. -LP
No comments:
Post a Comment