3Feb10
In the wake of J. D. Salinger’s death last week, at age ninety-one, appreciations of the reclusive Catcher in the Rye author will undoubtedly be sprouting up for quite some time. A new remembrance from Lillian Ross, in the New Yorker’s “Talk of the Town,” is a particularly personal take, full of small, rich details only a friend would be able to relate. One point that caught our eye was this: “Salinger loved movies, and he was more fun than anyone to discuss them with.” Not a surprise, perhaps, but we were tickled by the fact that he had fondnesses for Anne Bancroft, Brigitte Bardot (“a cute, talented, lost enfante”), and Grand Illusion, which he said he had seen ten times. Another highlight in Ross’s lovely little piece: a quote from a letter in which Salinger tells her that he took his kids to a showing of Robinson Crusoe at London’s Palladium theater, mainly because “that’s where the last scene of The 39 Steps was set.”
21Jan10
To coincide with the release of the new Eclipse set Chantal Akerman in the Seventies, which features five extraordinary works made by the groundbreaking Belgian filmmaker in the first full decade of her career, critic Melissa Anderson has interviewed Akerman for Moving Image Source. It’s an entertaining, insightful read, touching on Akerman’s relationship with her mother, her experiences in New York City (inspiration for the transformative cinematic works of art to come), her approach to directing such actresses as Delphine Seyrig and Aurore Clément in roles modeled on herself, and her plans for her next films. Conducted in SoHo, just a few blocks, as Anderson points out, from the location of La chambre, Akerman’s first U.S. film, this conversation bespeaks an artist who still has much to offer.
19Jan10
Tributes to Eric Rohmer have been springing up all over following his death last week at age eighty-nine. Among our favorites thus far is the one by Geoffrey O’Brien, who has written stirringly and lyrically about the French auteur on the New York Review of Books blog. The Library of America editor in chief (and occasional Criterion Collection contributor) clearly has a deep appreciation and profound understanding of Eric Rohmer’s work—he asserts, “Few filmmakers have been able to develop a body of utterly personal work so deliberately and methodically, and he managed it only with the most extreme budgetary discipline.” It’s a short but rich and deeply felt piece, which goes on to praise the simple pleasures, as well as the mysteries, of Rohmer’s movie universe, and its constant push-pull between realism and artifice. “I think it will become clear that Rohmer was one of a handful of really great filmmakers of the last half century,” O’Brien writes. “I can’t think of a greater.”
2Jan10
End-of-year list-making has been merrily under way in the movie world for the past few weeks, and now Sight and Sound magazine has jumped into the mix with its lineup of the best DVDs of 2009. We couldn’t be more pleased to have gotten so many mentions from so many terrific critics and programmers. Downhill Racer and The Friends of Eddie Coyle were both named by Geoff Andrew and James Bell, with the latter writing “Criterion’s resurrection of two long since neglected but nonetheless key films of the ‘New Hollywood’ were two personal highlights of the year for me.” Bell calls Eddie Coyle “brilliantly acted all round” and says Downhill Racer “could be the most insightful film ever made about the ruthless, competitive world of sports.” Meanwhile, Brad Stevens and Amy Taubin have both selected Jeanne Dielman, 23 quai du Commerce, 1080 Bruxelles as one of their DVDs of the year; Taubin calls the film “mesmerizing on the small screen.”
Some Eclipse titles are getting a lot of love as well: Michael Atkinson and Jonathan Rosenbaum recommend Travels with Hiroshi Shimizu; Adrian Martin is particularly taken with Dušan Makavejev: Free Radical; and Rossellini’s History Films—Renaissance and Enlightenment was cited as cream of the crop by Tom Charity, Kieron Corless, and the team of Christoph Huber and Olaf Moller.
27Dec09
London’s BFI Southbank will be celebrating Viennese-born visionary Josef von Sternberg in a five-film program, running December 27–30 and featuring some rarities from the director’s body of work, including his elusive final film, The Saga of Anatahan (1953). For the occasion, critic David Thompson has written a captivating career retrospective for the new issue of Sight and Sound, in which he argues that, whether working in Hollywood or Germany, Sternberg, “a man who always saw the medium as a vehicle for self-expression,” was a true auteur avant la lettre. Thompson looks at the filmmaker’s output, from Underworld and The Last Command (“subsequently credited as the first ‘gangster’ picture”) to his iconic works with Marlene Dietrich, including The Blue Angel, Morocco, and The Scarlet Empress, the last of which he calls “a censor-baiting cocktail of sensual excess and riotous design.”
18Dec09
Ron Simon, the curator of television and radio at the Paley Center for Media and the writer of the liner notes for our current best-selling DVD set The Golden Age of Television, stopped by WNYC’s The Leonard Lopate Show to chat about the live 1950s teleplays featured in the release. If you haven’t yet become acquainted with the story behind these fascinating special broadcasts, starring such actors as Paul Newman, Mickey Rooney, Rod Steiger, and Piper Laurie, this is definitely worth a listen. Simon covers a lot of ground, explaining the kinescope process used to capture these amazing artifacts, as well as the elaborate live-television camera work employed by such eventual big-screen directors as John Frankenheimer and Ralph Nelson. There’s even an audio clip featuring an exchange from Marty that’s become nothing less than iconic: “Whaddya feel like doing tonight?” “I don’t know, Marty, whaddayou feel like doing tonight?”
17Dec09
When thinking of a movie you’ve seen, what do you first recall? An actor’s face, a snatch of music, a plot twist? For artist Paul Rogers, it all seems to come down to settings and objects; his drawings of films fascinatingly illustrate how the details of a film might stand out differently for one viewer than they do for another. On his blog on Drawger.com, Rogers has sketched a series of movies, reducing each to six isolated images (often street signs, objects, and peripheral moments from the narrative) and inviting viewers to “Name That Movie.” We’re happy to have figured out a couple (The 39 Steps, The Red Shoes), but it’s harder than you might think. Thanks to Very Short List for the tip!
14Dec09
Almost sixty years ago, George Bernard Shaw died at age ninety-four, leaving behind an unfinished play. Tonight, in New York, that final work from the Pygmalion writer, Why She Would Not, will be presented in a reading by the Gingold Theatrical Group—and, in an irreverent twist a devoted Shavian might appreciate, the group’s founder, David Staller, has commissioned five possible endings to the play, from playwright Israel Horovitz and theater critics Michael Feingold, David Cote, Jeremy McCarter, and Robert Simonson. This event is the last in a long series (it’s been going on since January 2006) called Project Shaw, for which the Gingold Group has performed all of Shaw’s plays (including sketches and one-acts) at the Players club, near Manhattan’s Gramercy Park. To read more about this endeavor, and about Why She Would Not (a play about—what else?—class, money, and love), read David Belcher’s feature in the New York Times. Look out for Criterion’s Eclipse Series 20: George Bernard Shaw on Film in February.
2Dec09
It’s hard to believe, but it’s been thirty years since average joe Brian Cohen was mistaken for the Messiah in Monty Python’s Life of Brian. For the UK’s Telegraph, writer Sanjeev Bhaskar looks back fondly at the production and outraged reception of this giddily blasphemous gospel tale, which found its greatest ally (and last-minute financial savior) in George Harrison and made plenty of clerical enemies (the Catholic Film Monitoring Office declared it a sin to see the movie). And though Bhaskar writes that Life of Brian is “regularly touted as the funniest British comedy of all time,” he also argues that “current tastes and sensitivities make it highly unlikely that a comedy group would even attempt making a film like Brian today.”
19Nov09
It’s well known that Alain Resnais’ beautiful New Wave puzzle Last Year at Marienbad was as fashion-forward as it was artistically progressive. But it surprised us to learn that this high-concept masterpiece was on the cutting edge in another respect. A 1962 Life magazine article recently brought to our attention demonstrates that the hairdo worn by Delphine Seyrig in the film set its own trend. This “comfortable, easy-to-keep summer style” called, appropriately, the Marienbad, was, as the piece describes, “cut straight and short with back ends pushed forward under ears and a deep diagonal bang on the forehead.” The entire article is featured on Kimberly Lindbergs’s blog Cinebeats, in case you want to print it out and bring it with you to the salon. Thanks to Girish for the Facebook tip.
