dvd pick of the month: red desert

"Red Desert"
directed by Michaelangelo Antonioni
1964
And the best part of this release besides the obvious (the tetralogy is almost completely on Criterion!) is this clip on the site. I love how the trailer looks like a cheeky, farcical 60's couple romp of a movie when in fact it perfectly fits in the cannon of provocative, confrontational, and quietly sexy that Michaelangelo Antonioni does so well. The quail egg scene in the red room is unforgettable. When, oh, when will Criterion put "La Notte" out and make me a truly happy man? "Red Desert" is out on DVD and Blu-Ray on June, 22nd.

wanted: gomorrah

Gomarrah
directed by Matteo Garrone, 2009
Available November 24, 2009
Criterion Collection
"Gomorrah" is a great film on many levels, if not solely for its perfect opening and closing scenes. Everything else in between is pretty good too, but the violent opening and closing moments are some of the most beautifully cinematic and chilling scenes I've seen all year. This is high on my list of gifts I'd like to find under the tree this year.

"cinegasm"

"Zabriskie Point"
1970
directed by Michelangelo Antonioni
Available at Amazon.com, $14.99
Why did no one tell me this finally got released on DVD???????

ssshhh!

A friend of a friend of a friend of a friend confirmed to me that a certain unsung classic will finally gets its due with a release on the Criterion Collection later this year. I'm not at liberty to discuss how I know this or what film will get this prestigious honor, but let's just say it's a masterpiece of epic proportions that's wildly sardonic and captures the cultural zeitgeist in the most nuanced and profoundest of ways. You can start guessing now.

empty salons. corridors. salons. doors.

"Last Year at Marienbad"
directed by Alain Resnais
1962
The package design for the Crtierion release of Alain Resnais'"Last Year at Marienbad" is so simple, one might expect the same from the film. A dizzying wave of choppy editing, poetic dialogue, and neatly controlled imagery, "Last Year at Marienbad" is far from simple. It's a movie that takes a while to simmer to a point of engagement, but once you become a part of its rhythm, it's hard to resist its daring and poignant beauty. To celebrate the DVD release I give you this:

Blur
"To The End"
directed by David Mould

dvd pick of the week: the dark knight

Today's the day!

the emotionality

DVD Picks of the Week: "Wall-E" and "Tropic Thunder"

I thought this summer was a really solid smorgasbord of studio-financed anti-blockbusters. I meant to write about both of these films in depth, but I think one is so touching and profound in its minimalistic beauty and the other so subversive and profanely perfect that perhaps whatever words I might be able to gather wouldn't do either film justice. They were both released today on DVD and I highly recommend you see both. Caution: Don't attempt as a double feature. The roller coaster of tears and laughter will leave your eyes dried out and your belly aching.

gasp!

"I control 'Metropolitan.' I don't really control 'Last Days of Disco' and what happens with it. I think Criterion is supposed to bring it out, but those negotiations seem to be taking forever -- not with me, it's with one of the studios."--Whit Stillman on the DVD future of his 1998 masterpiece "The Last Days of Disco", IFC Interviews

performance: a woman under the influence

No one does bored bourgeois like Jeanne Moreau. Monica Vitti comes close, but it was Vitti as the seductress and Moreau as the wife with the empty marriage when they were paired together in Michelangelo Antonioni's ode to the beautiful and the damned, "La Notte." Moreau's steely reserve is held so intensely in those eyes that are always in search of something, someone, or some place other than her current state of ennui and frustration. That restless quest for something to take her away from the meaningless appearances of the thoroughbred set comes alive in moments that are as hot as the spark of a firework explosion in Louis Malle's "The Lovers" (1958). Moreau crafts another unforgettable performance as the unhappily married wife of a newspaper editor (Alain Cuny) who departs for Paris at any chance she can get to carry on her unfulfilling affair with her polo-playing lover (José Luis de Villalonga) and gab abut the details with her best friend (Judith Magre). It's not until the third act when the film really gets into surprising and complex territory when Moreau finds herself attracted to a new, random stranger (Jean-Marc Bory) she meets on the highway when her car unexpectedly breaks down. He gives her a ride to her palatial country estate where she's hosting the lover and friend for the weekend, per the encouragement of her not-so ignorant husband. A house full of lovers, friends, husbands, and wives sets the stage for the perfectly executed and Brahms-infused melodrama.

The film's many layers are rooted on the character of Jeanne played by Moreau. It's an interesting decision because Moreau is wealthy without shame, achingly beautiful, has an envious social life, and cheats on her husband. She should be villified or punished , but the film is more interested her self-discovery, not judging or condemning her, and the audience does the same. Moreau is an emotional cocktail of resentment, curiosity, sexual fire, desperation, and desire, all of which Moreau controls very tightly until her character begins to take a fancy to the new stranger in the house. A tryst in the middle of the night with this stranger sets the action into an entirely different direction for the rest of the film and we can only be so glad with how Moreau reacts. She becomes more loose, natural, and impetuous, qualities she never knew existed. Watching her floating down a creek in a small boat with her new lover is pure poetry. They stay up all night making love while the husband and other lover are asleep in the same house. Moreau makes on-screen love in with such singularity and convincing vulnerability without being theatrical or improbable, a rare combination. She looks like she's not acting. Maybe that's great acting, but I found myself feeling like a true voyeur when she orgasms with such fury while clasping to the free hand of her lover. It's the earliest film I can think of where the image of a woman deriving honest sexual pleasure had such profound connotations. The film pre-dates "women's liberation" and offers a more in-depth filled portrait of a woman in spite of the Madonna/whore dichotomy that existed in cinema at that time and still persists today.

Where will this love affair, if that's what you want to call it, go? Malle doesn't want to spoil it for us, and neither does Moreau in that unreadable look on her face at the end. Questions of sexual power, monogamy, and class come across so clear in Moreau's provocative performance. The film as a whole is fantastic, but it's Moreau that you, or at least I, can't take your eyes off of.

"The Lovers" is available on DVD now.

"ballon! ballon!"

You know what is finally released on DVD today...

dvd of the week: bonnie and clyde

Somewhere on a dusty road on a sleepy dot on the map in Texas...
BONNIE: I'm going to work, anyway.
CLYDE: You goin' to work, huh?
BONNIE: Yeah.
CLYDE: What kinda work you do?
BONNIE: None of your business.
CLYDE: I bet you're a movie star.
BONNIE: (laughs)
CLYDE: A lady mechanic?
BONNIE: (laughs) No.
CLYDE: A maid?
BONNIE: What do you think I am?
CLYDE: A waitress.
BONNIE: (pauses) What line of work you in, when you're not stealing cars?
CLYDE: Well, I can tell you I'm looking for suitable employment right at the moment.
BONNIE: What'd you before?
CLYDE: I was, uh, I was in state prison.
BONNIE: State prison?
CLYDE: Uh huh.
BONNIE: Well, I guess, uh, some little old lady wasn't so nice.
CLYDE: It was armed robbery.
BONNIE: My, my. The things that turn up on the streets these days.

The 40th anniversary of Arthur Penn's "Bonnie and Clyde" is being commemorated with the release of a special two-disc deluxe edition DVD today. Equal parts counter culture revolutionary middle finger to the studios and sexy, violent breath of fresh air, "Bonnie and Clyde" hits as hard as those bullets penetrating the anti-heroes during the balletic and poetically bloody ending. A must-see, even forty years later.

And because I couldn't find a clip that did the film justice, this will do:

owner's manual

Five recent purchases that have just made my life a little bit better:

"Tropicalia: A Brazilian Revolution in Sound"
Fencing LA by Asics
Adidas Gazelle 2 Tex/Lea
BDG Skinny Jean in Gray
"Badlands" on DVD, dir. Terrence Malick