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January '13 Digital Week II

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Parent Category: Film and the Arts
Category: Reviews
Published on Friday, 18 January 2013 05:00
Written by Kevin Filipski
Blu-rays of the Week
Anger Management—Complete 1st Season
(Lionsgate)
After being dumped from Two and a Half Men when he went publically postal, Charlie Sheen returned to TV with this slick sitcom that cast him as a man with anger issues—if that sounds like an unfunny joke based on his unhinged persona, the show itself is even less funny.
Sheen garners a few laughs with in-jokes that trade off on his meltdown, but the show quickly goes downhill, and there’s little left but just another bland comedy. The hi-def image is adequate; extras include on-set interviews and a gag reel.
Farewell My Queen
(Cohen Media)
This distaff costume drama has few insights into a familiar subject: the last days of Marie Antoinette as French queen. Its teenage heroine, a quietly dutiful handmaiden who becomes Marie’s favorite, is so colorless as to be a blank slate, severely hampering director Benoit Jacquot’s attempt to chronicle the chaos surrounding the storming of the Bastille and its aftermath.

On familiar ground, at least Jacquot doesn’t approach Sofia Coppola’s insipid Marie Antoinette. Diane Kruger’s Marie and Virginie Ledoyen as her BFF are fine, but Léa Seydoux is hampered by a dull part. The film is certainly pleasing to the eye—it was partly filmed at Versailles—and the Blu-ray image is luminous; extras include interviews.
The Lost Films of Herschell Gordon Lewis
(Syndrome)
On the basis of the trio on display, these films—the inept and unappealing Ecstasies of Women, Linda and Abilene and Black Love—should have remained “lost.” For the era (1969-72), they may have been a breakthrough, thanks to plentiful nudity and unabashed sexuality, but even the hardcore sequences of Black Love are not particularly arousing.
The acting is amateurish, the writing and directing even more so—unless you’re interested in film history, don’t bother. The hi-def transfers are decent if unexceptional
The Man Who Knew Too Much
(Criterion)
Alfred Hitchcock’s 1934 drama—at 75 minutes, his tightest thriller—is superior to his own 1956 remake with James Stewart and Doris Day. Here, Peter Lorre’s slimy villain stalks innocent couple Leslie Banks and Edna Best after they stumble into a murder plot.
Hitchcock’s pinpoint direction stuns throughout, and the B&W image—thanks to the Criterion Collection’s hi-def transfer—looks superlative. Extras include a Guillermo del Toro appreciation, archival Francois Truffaut audio interview, archival Pia Lindstrom and William K. Everson video interviews, and historian Philip Kemp’s commentary.
Mrs. Miniver and Grand Hotel
(Warners)
Two ancient Best Picture Oscar winners finally arrive on hi-def: 1932’s Grand Hotel and 1942’s Mrs. Miniver. Hotel, which was the first multi-storyline hit, is most notable for the presence of Greta Garbo, while Miniver triumphs by Greer Garson’s sensitive portrayal of a stoic Londoner who fights back in her own way against the German blitz.
Both melodramas, while flawed, are historically interesting. The Blu-ray images look wonderful for such old films; extras include featurettes, shorts and a Hotel commentary.
Sleep Tight
(Dark Sky)
Jaume Balaguero’s dark drama strains to make plausible crazed concierge Cesar’s one-man band of nastiness and outright evil against an innocent young woman who lives in his apartment building. Unfortunately, the movie falls off the cliff early—when Cesar is caught hiding under her bed as she returns with her boyfriend—and the last half is spent ratcheting up ham-handedn implausibility.
Luis Tosar makes Cesar’s lunacy captivating—almost. The Blu-ray image is excellent; extras include deleted scenes and a making-of documentary that’s longer than the movie itself.
To Rome with Love
(Sony)
Woody Allen’s episodic comedy is as scattershot as anything he’s made since What’s Up Tiger Lily?: at least Midnight in Paris had the cleverness of his best short stories, while Rome is tired and familiar. Hamstrung by hammy Judy Davis, Roberto Benigni and Penelope Cruz, the movie scores as a travelogue and a witty subplot about a man who can only sing in the shower—the one time the movie approaches the surrealistic banter of Woody at his literary best.
The Blu-ray image magnificently shows off Darius Khondji’s photography—and the glories of Rome itself; lone extra is a making-of featurette.
War of the Dead
(MPI)
Most zombie movies, despite their ridiculousness—which is there by definition—have a minimal amount of energy that allows indiscriminate viewers to enjoy the crazy ride.
However, this World War II action flick never rises to the giddiness of something like Osombie, instead wallowing in boring talk that’s rarely transcended by the bloody violence these movies are supposed to provide in spades. The Blu-ray image looks OK.
DVDs of the Week
Battle for Brooklyn
(Virgil)
This impassioned piece of cinematic advocacy follows one of a group of Brooklyn residents fighting city hall—and New York State and billionaire developers—in their attempt to prevent the building of new sports arena.
The case spans several years, and although the outcome is never in doubt—I’ve been to Barclays Arena, so I know it’s been built—the near-impossibility of dealing with the Goliaths of Big Business and Government together is painstakingly shown. Extras include actress Annabeth Gish’s intro and filmmaker interviews.
King…a Filmed Record—Montgomery to Memphis
(Kino Lorber)
One of the most important documentaries ever made—and the only reason it lost the 1970 Best Documentary Oscar is because of a juggernaut called Woodstock—has been restored to its original three-hour running time, which still feels short considering the amount of historical import in every frame.
Showing Martin Luther King’s very public life from 1955 to his 1968 assassination, King is essential viewing for anyone interested in our country’s checkered past, but also as a bracing reminder that racism is no ancient, shopworn concept.
Lillie
(Acorn)
Francesca Annis is breathtaking as Lillie Langtry, a celebrated Englishwoman of the late 19th-early 20th centuries, an independent, worldly who rubbed shoulders (and much more) with many artists, businessmen, politicians and royals of her time.
This 10-hour mini-series (made in 1978) is about as thorough an account of her life as we’re going to get. Annis, from teenage to old age, is persuasive throughout; the leading men—from Oscar Wilde to James Whistler—are not up to her standard, but that’s a minor quibble.
30 Nights of Paranormal Activity with the Devil Inside the Girl with the Dragon Tattoo  
(Fox)
As the title implies, this is the latest in a long line of kitchen-sink movie parodies, with several recent hit thrillers being lampooned mercilessly—and, for the most part, unfunnily.
The one-note jokes and infantile send-ups fly by fast and furiously, but the basic premise of found-footage movies is silly to begin with, so this comedy has little bite. The lone extra is a brief-making-of featurette.
The Turn of the Screw
(Fra Musica)
Benjamin Britten’s tense chamber opera, from Henry James’ classic ghost story, is one of the most chilling stage dramas ever composed, and Jonathan Kent’s 2011 Glyndebourne, England staging treats the material as the eerie tragedy it is.
Statuesque Swedish soprano Miah Persson makes a formidable governess who battles over her two charges with the spirit of Peter Quint (a properly scary Toby Spence). Jakub Hrusa conducts the London Philharmonic Orchestra with tact; extras comprise two behind-the-scenes featurettes.
CDs of the Week
Lisa Batiashvili—Brahms and Schumann
(Decca)
Georgian violinist Lisa Batiashvili plays one of the most well-worn warhorses in the repertoire: her take on the Johannes Brahms’ concerto sounds lovely but adds little to the numerous recordings already out there.
Instead of performing such safe works, it would be nice to hear something different—like the nine-minute tease we do get, a Clara Schumann chamber piece that’s played with enthusiasm by Batiashvili and pianist Alice Sara Ott. More would be welcome, especially on a disc with another half-hour to fill.
Zodiac Trio
(Blue Griffin)
This trio—clarinetist Kliment Krylovskiy, pianist Riko Higuma and violinist Vanessa Mollard—plays repertoire, both familiar and unfamiliar, that sounds resonant in their hands.
Bookended by animated readings of Igor Stravinsky’s charming La Histoire de Soldat suite and Bela Bartok’s magnificent Contrasts (originally written for Benny Goodman), the trio also performs Nicolas Bacri’s A Smiling Suite, a lighthearted foray through various styles, and Galina Ustvolskaya’s Trio, a serious piece that never becomes oppressive.

Dance on Camera Festival Screens Two Classic Documentaries

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Parent Category: Film and the Arts
Category: Reviews
Published on Friday, 18 January 2013 00:03
Written by Jack Angstreich

shirelyclarkeBusby Berkeley proved to be a genial and modest interviewee in his enjoyable entry in the excellent Cinéastes of Our Time series, being screened in this year's Dance on Camera Festival (February 1 - 5, 2013) hosted by the Film Society of Lincoln Center (70 Lincoln Square #4, New York, NY).  The first half of this documentary — an extended interview with this great innovator of film musicals, interspersed with delightful clips of some of the choreographic numbers he directed — is devoted to Berkeley's life before his major achievements in Hollywood. He discusses his military schooling and time in the army during World War I, his success as a Broadway actor and as a director of plays in Northeastern stock companies, before securing renown for his original approach to directing stage musicals.

Invited to Hollywood, Berkeley revolutionized the musical genre by conceiving numbers for the camera and orchestrating them with a montage style that seems almost High Modernist — and was viewed as such by some perspicacious, contemporary commentators — an effect which he carefully prepared by precise storyboarding before shooting; he broke with standard practice by employing only one camera, so meticulously worked out were his visual ideas. If Berkeley never quite attained the status of a full-fledged auteur — like Vincente Minnelli, his eminent successor — his brilliantly crafted work was thoroughly cinematic and his dance sequences endure as some of the most remarkable on film.

Shirley Clarke's beginnings as a dancer and later as a dance-filmmaker are not readily detectable in her three major features of the 1960s, The Connection, The Cool World, and Portrait of Jason; nor is this history more than briefly alluded to in Rome Is Burning (Portrait of Shirley Clarke), co-directed by Noël Burch and André S. Labarthe and one of the most interesting episodes in Cinéastes of Our Time, also screening in this series. Burch, whose career trajectory has been unusual and who was a major critic and film theorist, represents, in his person, a locus linking the American avant-garde, the modernism of, for example, Jean-Luc Godard, and Marxist analysis, conferring upon him a peculiar appropriateness to superintend a documentary on as protean a figure as the politically and aesthetically radical Clarke. Clarke's early short films were, at least in their surface appearance, in something akin to the visionary mode of American independent filmmaking of the 1950s, if closer in resemblance to the work of minor artists of that time, such as Mary Ellen Bute, rather than to titanic figures like Stan Brakhage. Rome Is Burning is notable for resembling a film that Clarke might have directed herself in the 1960s, with some other subject as the center of an experimental portrait. Jacques Rivette and Yoko Ono, whose own directorial efforts bear some affinities with Clarke's major work, are minor participants in the bohemian atmosphere here, where the distinguished filmmaker holds court entertainingly, in a film punctuated by arresting clips from her key features.

For more information, go to: http://www.filmlinc.com/films/series/dance-on-camera-2013

Dance on Camera 2013
February 1 - 5, 2013

Film Society of Lincoln Center
70 Lincoln Square #4
New York, NY

January '13 Digital Week I

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Parent Category: Film and the Arts
Category: Reviews
Published on Friday, 11 January 2013 05:00
Written by Kevin Filipski
Blu-rays of the Week
The Blue Angel
(Kino Lorber)
In Josef von Sternberg’s classic tragedy, Emil Jannings plays a professor who falls in love with Lola-Lola, a popular cabaret performer, played by none other than Marlene Dietrich.
Their bizarre relationship—which ends in death, natch—is recounted by Sternberg with his usual expressionistic touches, and his two stars give powerful performances. For an 83-year-old film, the Blu-ray image is superbly detailed.
Driving Miss Daisy
(Warner Bros)
The Best Picture that directed itself (Bruce Beresford was shamefully not nominated), this genteel but touching 1990 adaptation of Alfred Uhry’s play also won a Best Actress Oscar for Jessica Tandy’s feisty portrayal of the Southern lady unable to drive any more.
That Morgan Freeman (her chauffeur) and Dan Aykroyd (her loving son) are also good is a tribute to Beresford’s rapport with actors; his low-key style, while perfect for the material, was too subtle for the Academy. The Blu-ray image is first-rate; extras are Beresford, Uhry and producer Lili Zanuck’s commentary; new and vintage featurettes.
Frankenweenie
(Disney)
Tim Burton’s original 1984 half-hour live-action short was perfectly macabre. Now that he’s busying doing lazy remakes of Alice in Wonderland and Dark Shadows, Burton returns to this youthful short for an 85-minute stop-motion animated feature, a pleasant time-waster that strains to fill its extra running time with material that doesn’t feel padded. Burton’s arresting visual sense helps to an extent.
The hi-def image looks good in both 3D and 2D; extras include the original shorts and making-of featurettes.
Inventing David Geffen—American Masters
(PBS)
The remarkable life and career of the movie-music-theater mogul is recounted in two immensely entertaining hours, as Geffen gives a blow-by-blow description of his rise from Jewish kid in Brooklyn to head of major record labels, producer of Broadway smash hits and one-third (alongside Steven Spielberg and Jeffrey Katzenberg) of DreamWorks movie studio.
There are many talking heads from the Eagles’ Don Henley and Glenn Frey to Jackson Browne and Yoko Ono, who figures in the show’s most poignant moment: John Lennon’s 1980 murder. The hi-def transfer is fine; extras include bonus interviews.
Die Meistersinger von Nurnberg
(Opus Arte)
Richard Wagner’s mammoth opera—only he could compose a five-hour “comedy”—has complex characters (mastersinger Hans Sachs, upcoming singer Walther, his love Eva), despite the anti-Semitism of comic foil Beckmesser.
David McVicar’s Glyndebourne staging smartly avoids obvious nastiness by taking these characters at face value: the portrayals by Gerald Finley (Sachs), Marco Jentzsch (Walther), Johannes Martin Kranzle (Beckmesser) and Anna Gabler (Eva) let us enter Wagner’s world sans baggage. The Blu-ray image is excellent, the music—by the London Philharmonic and Glyndebourne Chorus under conductor Vladimir Jurowski—sounds splendid, and extras are featurettes about the opera’s problematic legacy.
Nova—Mystery of Easter Island
(PBS)
The eternal riddle of 900 moai statues populating Easter Island have taxed historians, scientists and everyone else for centuries, and in this Nova special—which shows how difficult it was moving the large carved stones to their current positions—a team of volunteers recreates how they think the stones were moved.
The eye-opening result gives credence to one of many theories that explain how those massive objects sit there today. The Blu-ray image is first-rate.
Purple Noon
(Criterion)
In Rene Clément’s superior 1960 adaptation of Patricia Highsmith’s thriller The Talented Mr. Ripley—later made into an overwrought 1999 epic by Anthony Minghella—Alain Delon was at the height of his star power as the amoral protagonist who casually destroys lives while on an Italian holiday.
The beautiful vistas of Italy and of the performers (lookers Maurice Ronet and Marie Laforet costar) are ravishingly recreated in the Criterion Collection’s terrific hi-def transfer; extras are vintage Delon and Highsmith interviews and a dry overview of Clément’s career by Denitza Bantcheva.
Samsara
(MPI)
In this stunningly photographed, non-narrative documentary, natural and man-made wonders like Versailles and the Taj Mahal are shown in all their glory.
Director Ron Fricke demonstrates mankind's spirituality through the awesomeness of nature and our shared humanity. Shot in 70mm, the best way to watch this is on Blu-ray, where the details of Saint Chappelle’s stained-glass windows are luminosity perfected. Extras include interviews and a making-of featurette.
Seal Team Six—The Raid on Osama bin Laden
(Weinstein Co/Anchor Bay)
Unlike Zero Dark Thirty—which reenacts the raid on the Pakistan hideaway that got bin Laden in its final half-hour—Sea Team Six is a gritty reenactment whose 90 minutes drum up the necessary patriotism and jingoism.
It’s done proficiently, and the raid itself looks accurate; simply dramatizing these brave men’s heroism is enough for most viewers. The Blu-ray image is tremendous; the lone extra is a making-of featurette.
DVDs of the Week
Arts and the Mind
(PBS)
In a culture where defunding arts education keeps growing, this two-hour PBS documentary documents, without falling into the usual partisan trap, how the arts are needed more than ever.
Lisa Kudrow narrates this elucidating look at how music, poetry, dance, painting and theater are godsends to sick young children, veterans with post-traumatic stress disorder, and even Alzheimer’s patients.
Bloody Flesh
(one 7)
Carlos Mayolo’s eerie 1983 horror entry concerns a family in Colombia whose disintegration leads to incest and murder. Although the scenes between teenage cousins are unsettling (Adriana Herran is especially persuasive as the girl), Mayolo overplays his hand when he turns the insane goings-on into an allegory about his country’s dictatorial government.
Still, with a truly horrifying ending, the movie is memorable, even in the crappy-looking transfer on this DVD.
Brooke Burke—Body
(Sony)
As any Dancing with the Stars fan knows, its winner-turned-cohost Brooke Burke is a star because of her physical endowments, not any obvious talent.
Her newest exercise workout DVDs, Sexy Abs and 30-Day Slimdown, present Brooke in all her glory showing how this 40-something mother of four got her incredible shape. As an added bonus, included are Brooke’s favorite smoothie recipes!

Doctor Zhivago
(Acorn)
This isn’t the gargantuan 1965 David Lean adaptation with Omar Sharif and Julie Christie in one of the big screen’s all-time romances: instead, it’s the 2002 British TV version with a then-unknown Keira Knightley in the pivotal role as the beautiful Lara.
Knightley acquits herself well, suggesting more worldliness than the lovely Christie did; her co-stars, Sam Neill as Komarovsky and Hans Matheson as Zhivago are good enough, but Knightley and the expansiveness of the setting are the true stars, even on the small screen. Extras include 70 minutes of on-set interviews and featurettes.
Found Memories
(Film Movement)
Director Julia Murat impressively—and unself-consciously—takes the inhabitants of a remote Brazilian village at face value, recording their lives straightforwardly and giving a valuable sense of life’s unhurried pace.
Artfully mixing magic realism with documentary realism by grounding her story’s fanciful aspects in natural goings-on, Murat’s beautiful balance is greatly assistance by her superb editor Marina Meliande and equally fine cinematographer Lucio Bonelli, whose painterly Cinemascope compositions blend reality and magic effortlessly. This assured feature debut, dealing with life, death, and eternity, makes us anxious to see Murat’s next move. The bonus short film, by debut director Sahim Omar Kalifa, is Land of the Heroes.
CD of the Week
Karlheinz Stockhausen—Michael’s Journey Around the World
(Wergo)
When he died in 2007 at age 79, German composer Karlheinz Stockhausen had just begun a new project: Sound—The 24 Hours of the Day, following a massive, seven-opera cycle Light, each segment named after a day of the week.
One of the biggest of that insanely overambitious series, Thursday, had this 50-minute piece as Act II. This clarinet/horn concerto in all but name dazzlingly pits soloists Marco Blaauw (trumpet) and Nicola Jurgensen (basset horn) against members of Ensemble musikFabrick—led by conductor Peter Rundel—all of whom play this fiendishly difficult music brilliantly.

Film Review: The Nature of Heroism and "Zero Dark Thirty"

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Parent Category: Film and the Arts
Category: Reviews
Published on Tuesday, 08 January 2013 09:56
Written by Matt Oakes

zero-dark-thirty-posterZero Dark Thirty
Directed by Kathryn Bigelow
Starring Jessica Chastain, Jason Clarke, Kyle Chandler, Mark Strong, Joel Edgerton, Chris Pratt

Based on the real life exploits that led to the location and assassination of Bin Laden, Zero Dark Thirty presents intelligence as a process of patience rife with moral ambiguities.

We’re introduced to our protagonist Maya, played here by Jessica Chastain, by way of a Guantanamo-esque torture sequence which happens to be her inaugural assignment after arriving fresh-faced to Pakistan. What plays out subverts our expectations of Bush/Cheney era torture tactics.

It’s less of Jack Bauer-fueled “Where is the bomb?” stylings and more a drawn-out game of carrot-and-stick lead by an outwardly bipolar interrogator, played by Jason Clarke, performing the role of both the good and bad cop but the result is equally, if not more, distressing.

This is a harsh reality where humanity is chiseled away. Like Chastain’s Maya, we know we can look away from the water-boardings taking place in front of us but that know we need to watch.

Many have pointed fingers at director Katheryn Bigelow (The Hurt Locker) and screenwriter Mark Boal (The Hurt Locker) for legitimizing the use of torture but these accusations are a little more than fuzzy.

While these factual accounts may raise an opportunity to debate American intelligence gathering techniques, to accuse Bigelow of supporting torture is analogous to accusing Coppola of aggrandizing gangster vengeance or Spielberg of reveling in dino mass murder.

A documentarian should not be held accountable for the views and mannerisms of their subjects as Bigelow should not be for hers. Her task her is to present a true story in an interesting manner- to play mediator between art and reality. In that capacity, she has exceeded herself.

But let us delve further into the film itself. Zero Dark Thirty is a slow-moving train with a foregone conclusion but the strength of the film lies in the amplification of our emotional investment which, for the most part, delivers.

The story at the center is truly miraculous and one that needed to be told. In essence, it’s the tale of a modern unsung American heroine who pursued her convictions to the point of disrepute and chastisement.

Losing nearly everything along the way, Maya is a woman on a mission- a mission to kill the most high profile terrorist to ever live. But don’t expect this mission to involve shadowy espionage and state-of-the-art gadgetry as most of it plays out in a cubicle. This is realism 101.

It’s hardly a spoiler to say that her goal is eventually executed but don’t expect a “Mission Accomplished” banner. No, it’s a deeper film than that- a film that explores the consequences of obsession and the nature of patience, the burying of grief and the pain of success. Lacking are the tattered flags, melodramatic victory speeches and hoorahs of pro-Americano filmmakers like Michael Bay, replaced by a more forward looking message of “where do we go from here?”

To think that this film was originally constructed without the eventual tagging of Osama Bin Laden is shocking. I truly cannot imagine this film without that cathartic pinnacle. It’s a testament to Bigelow’s talent that she could even conceive of this film prior to his eventual take down but also points to some of the film's flaws.

While it’s hard to pinpoint Bigelow’s intent, much of the film is a series of knitted together factoids-- little vignettes that play into the overarching mission but often do little to gain much traction towards that goal. This plodding storytelling makes some moments seem inconsequential and burden the film making it at times yawnable.

Having said that, the perceived boringness does play into the central message of intelligence and heroism as patience. So is Bigelow in effect challenging the audience to undertake this same patience to prove a point about heroism? We can only wonder.

To some, Zero Dark Thirty may overindulge in its 157 minute run time, but to call the end product unfulfilling is to misunderstand the journey. This is not a ragtag, shoot-em-up, tag ‘em and bag ‘em, round up a posse, rara America scenario. This is carefully constructed, meticulously plotted realism. It’s a procedural in both product and process and the end result is a modern history lesson that sneaks an age old adage about the notion of heroism.

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