There are several new releases this week, but only one that I can for sure get behind. The trailers for The Conspirator and Priest didn’t really impress me, nor did the reviews, but those might be worth a look as well if they’re your thing. But Criterion’s back in force this week, with two crime films, early works by their directors, in Stanley Kubrick’s The Killing and Roman Polanski’s Cul-de-Sac. Plus the very difficult to find David Holzman’s Diary is now not so difficult to find, coming out on DVD, Blu-ray, and Instant Watch all at once. Also, you can snag The Big Lebowski on Blu-ray along with a bunch of Sylvester Stallone films and a couple of Muppet movies. Not too much happening on the Instant Watch front, but look out for some front-runners of the Romanian New Wave to expire on the 18th, and also Andrea Arnold’s solid thriller Red Road on the same day.

New Release Pick of the Week

Jane Eyre
A very strong adaptation, that captures the gothic elements quite nicely. Add in more-than-solid performances from the cast, and the answer is yes – yet another version of Jane Eyre is quite welcome.
2011 USA. Director: Cary Fukunaga. Starring: Mia Wasikowska, Michael Fassbender, Jamie Bell, Judi Dench, Sally Hawkins.
Amazon DVD | Amazon Blu-ray | Netflix

OTHER NEW RELEASES
The Conspirator (2011 USA, dir Robert Redford, stars James McAvoy, Robin Wright; Blu-ray/Netflix)
Hoodwinked Too! Hood vs. Evil (2011 USA, dir Mike Disa, stars Hayden Panettiere; Blu-ray/Netflix)
Priest (2011 USA, dir Scott Stewart, stars Paul Bettany, Cam Gigandet; Blu-ray/Netflix)
Queen to Play (2011 France, dir Caroline Bottaro, stars Sandrine Bonnaire, Kevin Kline; Netflix)
Something Borrowed (2011 USA, dir Luke Greenfield, stars Kate Hudson, John Krasinski; Blu-ray/Netflix)
The Ward (2010 USA, dir John Carpenter, stars Amber Heard, Lyndsy Fonseca; Blu-ray/Netflix)
The Bang Bang Club (2011 USA, dir Steven Silver, stars Ryan Phillippe, Malin Akerman; Blu-ray/Netflix)
The Best and the Brightest (2010 USA, dir Josh Shelov, stars Neil Patrick Harris; Netflix)
The Grace Card (2010 USA, dir David G. Evans, stars Michael Joiner, Mike Higgenbottom; Netflix)
The Gruffalo (2009 USA, dir Max Lang, Jakob Schuh, stars Helena Bonham Carter; Netflix)
Medium Raw (2010 USA, dir Andrew Cymek, stars John Rhys-Davies, William B. Davis; Netflix)
Meet Monica Velour (2010 USA, dir Keith Bearden, stars Kim Cattrall, Dustin Ingram; Blu-ray/Netflix)
That’s What I Am (2011 USA, dir Michael Pavone, stars Ed Harris, Chase Ellison; Blu-ray/Netflix)

Classic / Older Picks of the Week

The Killing Criterion
This early Kubrick film fits squarely into the crime/noir genre, but already Kubrick is experimenting with the form, stretching narrative structure to show different viewpoints on the same heist. Really well-done.
1956 USA. Director: Stanley Kubrick. Starring: Sterling Hayden, Vince Edwards.
Amazon DVD | Amazon Blu-ray | Netflix (not Criterion)

Cul-de-sac Criterion
I feel like I’ve seen this, but I certainly don’t remember much based on the description – wounded criminals take refuge in a British castle, shaking up the residents and eventually, their relationships. But Polanski is always good, and this early thriller looks dark and claustrophobic.
1966 UK. Director: Roman Polanski. Starring: Donald Pleasance, Françoise Dorléac.
Amazon DVD | Amazon Blu-ray | Netflix

David Holzman’s Diary
I’ve been hearing about this late ’60s pseudo-documentary since delving into New Hollywood last year, and found that it was basically totally unavailable, having had only a slight theatrical release in 1967 in Paris and otherwise existing wholly underground. But the reaction wasn’t underground, as it remains one of the most highly regarded self-reflexive pieces of cinema in existence. Also on Instant.
1967 USA. Director: Jim McBride. Starring: L.M. Kit Carson, Eileen Dietz.
Amazon DVD | Amazon Blu-ray | Netflix

A Place in the Sun, playing on TCM on Saturday

If there were ever a good week to just tune your TV to TCM and leave it there, it may be this week. Actually, that’s usually a good thing to do, but I digress. This week the Summer Under the Stars includes heavy hitters like Humphrey Bogart on Wednesday and Cary Grant on Sunday, with plenty of crime, adventure, romance, and comedy to go around. Plus silent monsters on Monday with Lon Chaney, dramas on Tuesday with Joanne Woodward, a taste of classic French cinema with Jean Gabin (including two Jean Renoir films) on Thursday, musicals and comedies on Friday with Debbie Reynolds, and more drama on Saturday with Montgomery Clift. The other channels have their usual repeats.

Monday, August 15

11:00am – TCM – He Who Gets Slapped
Lon Chaney in a non-horror role, but still a quite dark one, playing an inventor whose public humiliation drives him to become a circus clown, reliving that humiliation night after night. An early film for Norma Shearer.
1924 USA. Director: Victor Sj&ocuml;strom. Starring: Lon Chaney, Norma Shearer, John Gilbert, Ruth King.
Newly Featured!

12:15pm – MGM – Radio Days
This essentially plotless Woody Allen film consists of a series of nostalgic vignettes about a 1940s working class New York family. The title comes from their love for the radio, the center of pop culture at the time; the radio also provides the subplot following Mia Farrow as a wanna-be radio singer who gets mixed up with gangsters. It’s not particularly deep, but it’s also pretty enjoyable.
1987 USA. Director: Woody Allen. Starring: Julie Kavner, Mia Farrow, Seth Green, Dianne Wiest.

1:50pm – MGM – The Purple Rose of Cairo
A love letter to cinema, The Purple Rose of Cairo has Woody Allen at his most romantic. Unhappy housewife Cecilia (Mia Farrow) escapes to the cinema to see The Purple Rose of Cairo again and again, where she fantasizes over hunky character Tom Baxter (Jeff Daniels). Much to her surprise (and the other characters’ consternation), Baxter steps off the screen to join her. It makes it even more complicated when Gil, the actor who played Baxter, turns up as well.
1985 USA. Director: Woody Allen. Starring: Mia Farrow, Jeff Daniels, Danny Aiello.
(repeats at 4:20am on the 18th)

2:30pm – Fox Movie – I Wake Up Screaming
Better known for bright and sunny musicals, Betty Grable took a turn for the noir in this crime film, playing the sister of a recently-murdered model with a rising career. It’s a slight noir, but fun nonetheless, especially for the chance to see Grable in a role unusual for her.
1942 USA. Director: H. Bruce Humberstone. Starring: Betty Grable, Victor Mature, Carole Landis.
(repeats at 6:00am on the 16th)

6:00pm – Fox Movie – Call Northside 777
One of Jimmy Stewart’s first films after spending the war as a fighter pilot; he plays a reporter compelled to reopen an eleven-year-old murder case, coming to believe the wrong man was sentenced to life in prison. A good combo of film noir and mystery.
1948 USA. Director: Henry Hathaway. Starring: James Stewart, Richard Conte, Lee J. Cobb.
(repeats at 9:30am on the 16th)

8:00pm – TCM – The Hunchback of Notre Dame
There have been a bunch of adaptations of Victor Hugo’s novel about the outcast Parisian hunchback, but this is one of the earliest and continues to be highly regarded, thanks in no small part to Lon “Man of a Thousand Faces” Chaney’s portrayal of Quasimodo.
1923 USA. Director: Wallace Worsley. Starring: Lon Chaney, Patsy Ruth Miller, Norman Kerry, Nigel De Bruller.

10:00pm – TCM – The Phantom of the Opera
Celebrated silent horror star Lon Chaney plays the titular phantom in this possibly best version of the oft-filmed story.
1924 USA. Director: Rupert Julian. Starring: Lon Chaney, Mary Philbin, Norman Kerry.

Tuesday, August 16

6:00pm – Sundance – The Piano
I often find Jane Campion films overly pretentious, but this one strikes the right chord, with Holly Hunter as a mute woman in an arranged marriage who finds love with one of her husbands’ hired hands – but stealing the show is her young daughter, an Oscar-winning performance by Anna Paquin.
1993 New Zealand. Director: Jane Campion. Starring: Holly Hunter, Harvey Keitel, Anna Paquin.

7:55pm – MGM – Blow Out
Sound man John Travolta is recording sound samples one night, and may have accidentally recorded a murder occurring. As he tries to investigate, he’s drawn into a dangerous conspiracy. Inspired to some degree by Antonioni’s photography-based Blow-Up, but this is definitely DePalma’s film all the way.
1981 USA. Director: Brian DePalma. Starring: John Travolta, Nancy Allen, John Lithgow, Dennis Franz.
(repeats at 9:55am on the 21st)

Wednesday, August 17

6:00am – IFC – Away from Her
A very strong directing debut film from actress Sarah Polley, about an older woman (Julie Christie) suffering from Alzheimer’s and her husband’s difficulty in dealing with essentially the loss of his wife as she has more and more difficulty remembering their life together. It’s a lovely, heartbreaking film, bolstered by great understated performances.
2006 Canada. Director: Sarah Polley. Starring: Julie Christie, Gordon Pinsent, Olympia Dukakis, Stacey LaBerge.

10:45am – IFC – The Diving Bell and the Butterfly
Julian Schnabel’s intensely moving retelling of the true story of Jean-Dominique Bauby, who was almost completely paralyzed in a car accident, able only to move his left eye. The impressionist storytelling lends an otherworldly beauty to the film, already solid due to the script and acting.
2007 France. Director: Julian Schnabel. Starring: Mathieu Amalric, Emmanuelle Seigner, Marie-Josee Croze.
Must See
(repeats at 3:30pm)

11:00am – TCM – To Have and Have Not
It’s said that this film came about because Howard Hawks bet Earnest Hemingway that he (Hawks) could make a good film out of Hemingway’s worst book. Of course, to do that, Hawks ended up basically changing the story entirely, but hey. It’s the thought that counts. Mostly notable for being Lauren Bacall’s first film, the one where she met Humphrey Bogart, and the one that spawned the immortal “you know how to whistle, don’t you, Steve” bit of dialogue. That one scene? Worth the whole film.
1944 USA. Director: Howard Hawks. Starring: Humphrey Bogart, Lauren Bacall, Walter Brennan.

12:45pm – TCM – The Big Sleep
One of the greatest detective/mysteries/films noir ever made. Humphrey Bogart is the definite hard-boiled detective, Lauren Bacall is the potential love interest/femme fatale. Don’t try to follow the story; whodunit is far less important than crackling dialogue and dry humor. Watch out for future Oscar-winner Dorothy Malone (Written on the Wind) in the small but extremely memorable part of the bookshop girl.
1946 USA. Director: Howard Hawks. Starring: Humphrey Bogart, Lauren Bacall, Martha Vickers, Elisha Cook Jr., Dorothy Malone.
Must See

2:45pm – TCM – High Sierra
Bogart’s breakout role as an on-the-run con man who gets involved with the lame Joan Leslie. (No, I mean actually crippled.) He’d been bumming around for a few years as a Warner second lead or villain, but with 1941’s double punch of High Sierra and The Maltese Falcon, he unequivocally arrived.
1941 USA. Director: Raoul Walsh. Starring: Humphrey Bogart, Joan Leslie, Ida Lupino.

4:30pm – TCM – They Drive By Night
Humphrey Bogart and George Raft play truck driver brothers, trying to get ahead before they get killed (who knew truck driving was so dangerous?), or, you know, framed into murder plots by Ida Lupino – their boss’s wife who has amorous designs on Raft, despite his much healthier relationship with a young Ann Sheridan. Not a great movie, but a solid example of Warner’s pre-noirish studio style.
1940 USA. Director: Raoul Walsh. Starring: Humphrey Bogart, George Raft, Ida Lupino, Ann Sheridan.

4:30pm – MGM – Fiddler on the Roof
A Tzarist-era Russian Jewish village doesn’t seem a particularly likely place to set a musical, but Fiddler on the Roof does a good job of it, exploring the clashing cultures as patriarch Tevye tries to marry his daughters off to good Jewish husbands with decreasing success.
1971 USA. Director: Norman Jewison. Starring: Topol, Norma Crane, Leonard Frey, Rosalind Harris, Michele Marsh, Neva Small, Michael Glaser.

6:00pm – IFC – Thank You For Smoking
Jason Reitman’s breakout film was also one of my favorites of 2005 – sure, it’s a bit slight and isn’t perfect, but its story of a hotshot PR guy working for cigarette companies struck just the right note of cynical and absurd humor. The really high-quality cast doesn’t hurt either, with everybody, no matter how small their role, making a memorable impression.
2005 USA. Director: Jason Reitman. Starring: Aaron Eckhart, Katie Holmes, Rob Lowe, Maria Bello, David Koechner, J.K. Simmons, Adam Brody, Sam Elliott.

6:15pm – TCM – In a Lonely Place
Simply a brilliant film from director Nicholas Ray – Humphrey Bogart gives probably his best performance as washed-up screenwriter Dixon Steele, who’s trying to make a comeback with a new adaptation. When a coatcheck girl gets murdered after he was the last to see her, he naturally comes under suspicion, but his neighbor Laurel (Gloria Grahame) gives him an alibi and soon the two begin a relationship which just might save Dix from more than a murder charge – or might not. There’s a raw intensity here that few films have ever matched.
1951 USA. Director: Nicholas Ray. Starring: Humphrey Bogart, Gloria Grahame.
Must See

8:00pm – TCM – The Maltese Falcon
Humphrey Bogart inhabits the role of Dashiell Hammett’s private eye Sam Spade, creating one of the definitive on-screen hard-boiled detective (vying only with Bogart’s Philip Marlowe in The Big Sleep, really). Not mention setting the early benchmark for noir films.
1941 USA. Director: John Huston. Starring: Humphrey Bogart, Mary Astor, Peter Lorre, Sydney Greenstreet, Elisha Cook Jr, Walter Huston.
Must See

2:00am (18th) – TCM – The Caine Mutiny
Humphrey Bogart’s Captain Queeg is a piece of work, and by that I mean some of the best work Bogart has on film. He’s neurotic, paranoid, and generally mentally unstable. Or is he? That’s the question after first officer Van Johnson relieves him of duty as being unfit to serve and faces charges of mutiny.
1954 USA. Director: Edward Dmytryk. Starring: Humphrey Bogart, Van Johnson, Fred MacMurray, Jose Ferrer.

2:00am (18th) – IFC – Requiem for a Dream
Darren Aronofsky’s breakthrough film (Pi remains a cult favorite) follows a quartet of people as their lives spiral out of control due to drug addiction.
2000 USA. Director: Darren Aronofsky. Starring: Ellen Burstyn, Jared Leto, Jennifer Connelly, Marlon Wayans.

The 50 Day Movie Challenge asks one question every day, to be answered by a few paragraphs and a clip, if possible. Click here for the full list of questions.

Today’s prompt: What’s the most beautiful movie you’re ever seen?

I guess you could answer this beautiful-looking or beautiful-sounding or beautiful-spirited or any number of other interpretations of “beautiful,” but I’m a bit of a cinematography whore so I went with visual beauty. Even with that, there are so many choices, and I had a number of others in here first, like The Tree of Life and other Malick films, or Sunrise and its moody Expressionism, or The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford or The Double Life of Veronique or any number of others. But I decided to go for the black and white stunner The Night of the Hunter. I love this film for many reasons, but one of the main ones is its gorgeous painterly photography, which makes nearly every shot screencappable. It’s basically Expressionist like Sunrise, but with sharp contrasts and angles compared with Sunrise‘s softer, dreamier approach. I’ve seen the film several times, but I still gasp at many visual moments scattered throughout it.

Here’s a clip of my favorite part.

And what the heck, some favorite stills.

This week’s unintentional theme turned out to be Classic Hollywood comediennes, it appears, with posts in tribute to Lucille Ball, Myrna Loy, Marilyn Monroe, and Thelma Todd, but there are plenty of other subjects on display here as well. I’m trying to only choose one post per source per post, but some of these blog are so good it’s tough to choose. Thankfully, posts about classic film don’t really ever get stale, so I’ll probably hold some back for later weeks, because I really have been reading some awfully good stuff lately.

The Loving Lucy Blogathan – Brandie at True Classics

Last Saturday (August 6th) would have been Lucille Ball’s 100th birthday, and the internet rose to the occasion in a lot of places (including Google, whose search page logo was a 1950s TV set that played I Love Lucy clips when you clicked on it), but nowhere more than at the Loving Lucy Blogathon hosted at True Classics. A truly remarkable number of people joined in (I was not one of them, because I’m terrible at keeping up with blogathons), hitting Lucy’s life, her career in film and radio, the I Love Lucy years, and various other aspects of Lucy-dom. I’ve only read a few of the entries so far, but they were excellent – I still hope to delve into the rest at some point. She was a remarkable actress and comedienne (not just in slapstick; her early films can be very dry and sarcastic), plus a very forward-thinking businesswoman who, along with Desi Arnaz, saw the value of television and syndication long before anyone else did. Her legacy will be with us for a very long time.

No, But I Read the Book – Lawrence Block at Some Came Running

A guest post on Glenn Kenny’s blog by crime thriller author Lawrence Block, with a quite refreshing look at film adaptation from a writer’s perspective. He takes a pretty healthy view on it, not getting up in arms about changes to his books, but with a much greater understanding of what makes a good adaptation than many filmmakers even have! An enjoyable little read, and he chimes in the comment as well, which are (as always on Some Came Running) worth reading.

Marilyn on the Couch – Miriam Bale at Mubi

I’ve long defending Marilyn Monroe’s quality as an actress and comedienne, and here’s a wonderful post backing me up. Marilyn knew how to use her persona on-screen, as is abundantly clear in Gentlemen Prefer Blondes, but she also knew how to use it off-screen, in trying to get a take she liked or maintain her power in a scene against more aggressive costars. Bale uses an example of a scene from The Prince and the Showgirl, which I haven’t seen, to illustrate how she takes the upper hand from Laurence Olivier, of all people.

Happy Birthday, Myrna Loy – Self-Styled Siren

Myrna Loy is easily one of the most consistently watchable and personable stars of the 1930s and 1940s; it was her birthday back on August 2nd, and the Self-Styled Siren was right on hand to give her a lovely tribute, talking both about Loy’s pre-code “exotic” phase where she was repeatedly (and not happily) cast as Orientals or other exotic races and about one of her later comedies, Third Finger Left Hand. The Siren peppers the whole piece with quotes from Myrna’s autobiography, which I’m very anxious to read now. Not only is Loy a great actress and comedienne, livening up dozens of films with her mere presence, but judging from these quotes, she was a wonderful human being.

Puppetry and Ventriloquism – David Bordwell at Observations on Film Art

Bordwell is at his best, I think, when talking about narrative structure, and that’s what he’s largely on about here, discussing innovations in narrative in 1940s film. He brings in a few side examples in the beginning talking about flashback structures (tied into current films like Battle: LA and Limitless, as part of his ongoing thesis that Hollywood narrative technique is still basically classical) and subjective uses of the camera, but quickly focuses in on narrators themselves as a narrative technique, one which was pushed to the limit in the 1940s and 1950s. He points out a lot of the absolutely unrealistic things that films with narrators sometimes do (like show things the narrator couldn’t see, an absolute no-no in first-person fiction that we don’t really notice in films, or have dead narrators, or have characters within a story interact with a non-character narrator). The older films he discusses are all ones I’ve seen a few times (some of them more than a few), and I hadn’t really thought about the way they use their narrators before. Pretty fascinating stuff.

Thelma Goes Wild – David Kalat at Movie Morlocks

There were so many good posts on TCM’s Movie Morlocks blog this week that it was hard to pick just one. I’m sure someone else choosing would’ve chosen a different one. :) But I really enjoyed this look at early 1930s comedienne Thelma Todd’s works, especially her shorts with ZaSu Pitts. I know Todd from supporting roles in a few films, notably some early Marx Brothers comedies, but had no idea of her lead roles in these shorts (as well as several films with Charley Chase). I don’t know if these are available anywhere, but I’d love to see them. David Kalat gives some background on Todd and her career and then does a close reading of one of the Todd-Pitts shorts, along with tantalizingly brief clips.

50 Day Movie Challenge – Jonathan Hardesty at Jonathan on the Internets

I’ve been doing the 50 Day Movie Challenge, though I keep getting behind all the time. The twelve-entry head start I gave myself ran out long ago and I haven’t recovered yet. But I’m still plugging away, and my boyfriend has just started doing it himself. He’s got a few entries up already; let’s see if he manages to stay on-track better than I have! I’ll know I’m in trouble when he catches up to me. :)

Agnès Varda – Amy Taubin at Fandor

Originally printed as the liner notes for the DVD of Agnès Varda’s autobiographical film The Beaches of Agnès, this is a very nice overview of Varda’s career and recurring themes, as well as specifics about The Beaches of Agnès, a film I haven’t seen but very much want to soon. I’ve loved Varda’s 1960s films, and she’s done a lot more in her life than just make features – she was initially a photographer, and now works mostly in the documentary capacity rather than making fiction films, but even those are few and far between. Seeing her in interviews, though, reveals a very special woman; it’s a treat to get to share in the things she does.

Silent Oscars 1917, Part 3 – A Mythical Monkey Writes About the Movies

And the Mythical Monkey just doesn’t let up, putting out a third wonderful post about the films of 1917, this one focused on the films Charlie Chaplin made for Mutual Studios, some of the finest work of his career, and almost certainly his best shorts. But this post goes beyond them, talking about Chaplin’s evolution as a director moving from Essanay to Mutual, the formation of his “stock” company (Eric Campbell, Albert Austin, Edna Purviance), and the lead up to the fiilms of 1917, going into specifics about such films as The Vagabond, One A.M. (my personal favorite Chaplin short), Easy Street, The Cure, and The Immigrant. What’s more, he ties them all together with a narrative of Chaplin’s career that makes me feel like I understand Chaplin a little bit better than I did before, even though I’ve seen most of these films many times. This series really can’t be beat for a close look at Hollywood silent cinema.

Bicycle Thieves – Chris Edwards at Silent Volume

Usually Chris writes about silent film, but he’s been going to a Neorealist series at the TIFF Lightbox, so he’s got a few reviews up from that, including this one of Vittorio De Sica’s seminal film Bicycle Thieves (aka The Bicycle Thief). It’s been a long while since I saw this film, and I loved it – after reading Chris’s excellent review of it (which brings out a few points that I hadn’t really considered before, like the effect of all this on the young boy), I’m more than due to revisit it.

Blu-ray Consumer Guide July 2011 – Glenn Kenny at Some Came Running

Another blu-ray review post from Glenn Kenny, a series I’m definitely paying attention to every month. In a whole heap bunch of capsules, he reviews the films, yes, to a degree, but more importantly the quality of the blu-ray disc. This month he reviews an eclectic mix of films including, but not limited to: Kiss Me Deadly, The Lord of the Rings Trilogy, Black Moon, Inland Empire, Zazie dans le metro, True Grit, People on Sunday, The Big Country, Big Jake, Rio Lobo, Jan Svankmajer’s Alice, Bob Dylan: Don’t Look Back, Drive Angry, Hair, The Island, New York New York, They Live, and Wild at Heart.

The 50 Day Movie Challenge asks one question every day, to be answered by a few paragraphs and a clip, if possible. Click here for the full list of questions.

Today’s prompt: What’s a movie that you think is critically or commercially overrated?

This seems to be a fairly similar question to “What’s a movie that critics and fans loved that you hated,” but so be it. I’ll choose this time a film that I didn’t hate, but one that I definitely think was BOTH critically and commercially overrated, and that’s James Cameron’s Avatar. After many, many, many posts and comment threads about it back when it came out, I’m sure people (who read those threads) think I hate it, but I don’t. I just don’t think it’s all that. It’s got some really nice technology providing smoke and mirrors for an overly-earnest story that is derivative and an emotionally-shallow experience that’s fleeting.

I usually try not be part of backlashes, but that’s pretty much what happened for me with Avatar; that said, I still think it’s overrated. At the time I said I’d revisit it a year later. I haven’t, and I’m pretty apathetic about ever spending time with it again.

It’s a good release week for geeks, with both Super and Paul on DVD (among other things listed under “more” because I don’t really care that much about them), and a pretty crappy release week otherwise. There are some good Instant Watches, I’ll grant that. Relatedly, Netflix’s newest annoyance seems to be not providing good API data on upcoming Instant Watch releases to InstantWatcher (which I rely on to get the upcoming stuff), so the Instant Watches are likely to be more “this is what came out over the past week” instead of “here’s what’s coming out next week.” And that may remain true for the foreseeable future.

New Release Picks of the Week

Super
Real-people-turned-superhero stories are beginning to glut the market, but there’s room for this one, a rather extreme satire that carries the idea out to its absurd conclusion.
2011 USA. Director: James Gunn. Starring: Rainn Wilson, Ellen Page, Liv Tyler, Kevin Bacon.
Amazon DVD | Amazon Blu-ray | Netflix

Paul
I avoided this thanks to the extremely dumb-looking trailer, but it got decent reviews, and I do like Pegg and Frost a lot – though I expect better with Edgar Wright.
2011 USA. Director: Greg Mottola. Starring: Simon Pegg, Nick Frost, Seth Rogen, Jason Bateman, Kristin Wiig, Sigourney Weaver.
Amazon DVD | Amazon Blu-ray | Netflix (9/6)

Cameraman: The Life and Work of Jack Cardiff
Jack Cardiff is one of the greatest cinematographers in film history, especially known for his Technicolor work with Powell & Pressburger and later in Hollywood. I’m excited to check this out. Streaming now.
2011 USA, dir Craig McCall, stars Jack Cardiff, Martin Scorsese.
Amazon DVD | Amazon Blu-ray | Netflix

OTHER NEW RELEASES
Jumping the Broom (2011 USA, dir Salim Akil, stars Angela Bassett, Paula Patton; Blu-ray/Netflix)
Mars Needs Moms (2011 USA, dir Simon Wells, stars Joan Cusack, Seth Green; Blu-ray/Netflix)
Your Highness (2011 USA, dir David Gordon Green, stars Danny McBride, James Franco; Blu-ray/Netflix)
Tactical Force (2011 USA, dir Adamo P. Cultraro, stars Steve Austin, Michael Jai White; Blu-ray/Netflix)

Only a few new ones this week, but one of them is Peter Bogdanovich’s The Last Picture Show (late Thursday/early Friday), which is one of my favorite movies. I can’t believe I’ve never featured it here before, but I guess TCM has never played it since I’ve done these columns. Don’t miss your chance if you’ve never seen it. Also note My Winnipeg on Wednesday, by Row Three favorite Guy Maddin. Meanwhile, TCM continues its Summer Under the Stars with great-film-studded tributes to Orson Welles on Monday, Ann Dvorak on Tuesday, Shirley MacLaine on Wednesday, Ben Johnson on Thursday, Claudette Colbert on Friday, James Stewart on Saturday, and Ralph Bellamy on Sunday.

Monday, August 8

8:00pm – TCM – The Third Man
Novelist Holly Martins (Joseph Cotten) searches for his elusive, possibly murdered friend Harry Lime (Orson Welles) in post-war Vienna. A little bit of American film noir, a little bit of European ambiguity, all mixed together perfectly by screenwriter Grahame Green and director Carol Reed.
1949 UK/US. Director: Carol Reed. Starring: Joseph Cotten, Alida Valli, Orson Welles.
Must See

10:00pm – TCM – Citizen Kane
Widely considered the greatest American film ever made, I’d be very surprised if anyone reading this hasn’t seen it. The quest for what makes publisher/politician Charles Foster Kane tick takes a journalist through a fractured narrative that never seems to give any definitive answers. Personally, I respect and recommend Kane for its innovations in narrative, cinematography, and cinema language, but I find it a difficult film to love (yet even that is fitting, as the difficulty of loving or being loved by Kane himself is a central theme).
1941 USA. Director: Orson Welles. Starring: Orson Welles, Joseph Cotten, Agnes Moorehead.
Must See

10:00pm – MGM – Midnight Cowboy
Notable as the first and only X-rated film to win an Academy Award for Best Picture, Midnight Cowboy doesn’t work that well for me, but it does have moments of brilliance in its story of a young cowboy (Jon Voight) trying to make his way in New York by offering her services to wealthy ladies, mostly due to the older, wiser, and sadder character played by Dustin Hoffman.
1969 USA. Director: John Schlesinger. Starring: Jon Voight, Dustin Hoffman.
(repeats at 7:55am on the 14th)

12:15am (9th) – TCM – Touch of Evil
Likely the last great noir film, with Orson Welles directing and starring as the corpulent corrupt sheriff of a corrupt border town, and Charlton Heston as a cop trying to solve a case with little, no, or negative help from Welles. Throw in Marlene Dietrich in one of her last roles and a virtuoso opening tracking shot, and you’ve got one of the most memorable noirs ever.
1958 USA. Director: Orson Welles. Starring: Orson Welles, Charlton Heston, Janet Leigh, Marlene Dietrich, Joseph Calleia, Akim Tamiroff.
Must See

2:15am (9th) – TCM – The Lady from Shanghai
Most of Welles’ films, no matter the genre, feel a little noirish in mood, but The Lady from Shanghai is the real thing, complete with fatalistic hero who gets dragged into a murder plot by a femme fatale (Rita Hayworth). And noir set-pieces don’t get much better than the chase sequence set in a bewildering hall of mirrors.
1948 USA. Director: Orson Welles. Starring: Orson Welles, Rita Hayworth.

Tuesday, August 9

11:00am – Fox Movie – Carmen Jones
Oscar Hammerstein takes on Bizet’s Carmen, transposing it into a contemporary setting at a Korean War army base and writing new lyrics to go with Bizet’s operatic melodies. It’s interesting not only for the adaptation of opera to musical, but also its use of an all-African American cast – giving Dorothy Dandridge, Harry Belafonte and many others lead roles in an era when they were still all-too-often relegated to roles as servants or one-off entertainers.
1954 USA. Director: Otto Preminger. Starring: Dorothy Dandridge, Harry Belafonte, Pearl Bailey.

2:30pm – Sundance – Encounters at the End of the World
Werner Herzog has made the savage beauty of nature one of his themes throughout most of his fiction films, so perhaps it’s only natural that he has moved onto explicitly non-fiction explorations of some of nature’s most remote locales, in this case, Antarctica.2007 USA. Director: Werner Herzog.

8:00pm – TCM – Scarface
Howard Hawks’ early take on the gangster genre, with small-time hood Tony making his way up in the ranks of the mob. For me, this one really shines in its treatment of Tony’s sister and the conflict between his professional life and his care for his family.
1932 USA. Director: Howard Hawks. Starring: Paul Muni, Ann Dvorak, George Raft.

The 50 Day Movie Challenge asks one question every day, to be answered by a few paragraphs and a clip, if possible. Click here for the full list of questions.

Today’s prompt: What’s a movie that most fans and critics hated but you loved?

This is a little disingenuous, perhaps, because Speed Racer does have a good many supporters in the critical community, but it’s sitting at a squishy 38% on the Rotten Tomatoes meter, so I’m counting that as close enough to “hated” to work for this question. And there’s absolutely no doubt that I loved this film. It’s even sitting comfortably in my top ten for 2008. And the reason for that is because, quite simply, Speed Racer is the most immediately overwhelming visual experience I have ever had – I’m kicking myself that I didn’t see it in theatres, but when I got the blu-ray, I spent the full two and a quarter hours staring at the TV with my jaw dropped open.

The story itself is fairly simple and often simplistic, but it goes about even that basic kids-stuff story with a wide-eyed exuberance and joy that I rarely see from any films these days, let alone the children’s movie industry that has gotten too damn self-aware for its own good. The Wachowskis know exactly how standard this story is, but they allow it to go silly and campy and gloriously fun without ever resorting to irony or out of place juvenile humor. Because, really, the story of Speed Racer’s rise in the world of racing, his problematic relationship with his older brother, and his potential defection to a greedy racing conglomerate is all a McGuffin for the candy-colored world the characters inhabit. It’s somewhere on the cusp of live action and animation, and exactly where the line between the two is drawn is difficult to tell – and that’s precisely the point. This is the ultimate live action cartoon, and I mean that in a good way. Of all the movies I’ve seen in my life, Speed Racer is always my first thought when it comes to sheer visual overstimulation of the very best kind.

Here’s the first seven minutes, encompassing a bit of backstory and the first race. Even just watching this I get all wide-eyed and have a huge grin plastered on my face.