Category: Film Page 87 of 101

DVD Pick of the Week – The Office Season 3

On September 4, 2007

Another week of TV-on-DVD to catch up before the new seasons starts the end of this month. And the standout this week has to be The Office Season 3. The Office has consistently been one of the best shows on television for at least the last two years, and it’s one of very, very few sitcoms I can even stand (possibly because, like Arrested Development, it has much more of a season/series arc than most comedies). And last year’s season finale won my award for best season finale of the year–and I watched, like, twenty shows last year. This year promises to be similarly excellent, so catch up now!

Other recommended TV releases:

30 Rock: Season One (one of the other very few sitcoms I really like; it ended up being one of my top two or three new shows last season)
Desperate Housewives: Season Three (guilty pleasure show remains guilty, but there are a lot of good moments in S3–probably more than there were in S2)
Prison Break: Season Two (I’m recommending this to myself, too–I stopped watching halfway through the season, but I’ve heard it got a lot more interesting after I stopped, so I’m contemplating Netflixing the second half)

Movie DVD of the Week…I haven’t seen any of the movies being released. The big mainstream releases are Jane Fonda’s Southern family drama Georgia Rule and Larry the Cable Guy’s Delta Farce (gag me now), and on the indie side, we have Stephanie Daley, which at the very least promises great performances from Tilda Swinton and Amber Tamblyn in a suspense/drama about a teenage girl who may or may not have killed her newborn child.

Other releases:

Stranger Than Paradise (Criterion release of Jim Jarmusch’s 1984 film)
The Black Donnellys: Complete Series
Nip/Tuck: Season Four
I Dream of Jeannie: Season Four

DVD of the Week – Heroes Season One

By Jandy

On August 27, 2007

In Film, Television

With less than a month before the fall TV season starts, most of the studios are releasing the DVD sets of last year’s seasons–just in time for people to catch up. Of all the releases this week, I’d recommend Heroes Season 1. It was one of the best new shows last year, following a disparate group of individuals who discover they have superhuman powers. Heroes may have had a plot hole or two, but it more than made up for it with its intricate storytelling and impressive ensemble cast.

This is the first week I’ve done a DVD Pick of the Week, so I’ll also point out that Ugly Betty Season 1 came out last week; Ugly Betty was my favorite new show last year, hands down. Heroes was a close second, but Ugly Betty is pure and delicious fun every second.

Other new releases this week, none of which I’ve seen, so I’m ordering them based on how much I’d like to see them:

Friday Night Lights Season One (people I respect keep saying how good this is, but I’ve never tried it)
Red Road
Year of the Dog
Blades of Glory
Offside
Kickin’ It Old Skool

June 2007 Reading/Watching Recap

By Jandy

On August 21, 2007

In Books and Reading, Film, Reviews

I did not watch or read a lot of great stuff in June. I think I gravitated toward somewhat mindless fare on the movie side due to the effort of reading (skimming?) two novels a week for class, and the reading was dictated completely by the class–which was on Joseph Conrad, D.H. Lawrence, and Virginia Woolf. I’m glad I read the Conrad and the Lawrence for the experience of it, but I didn’t really enjoy either of them. Woolf, of course, I’m in love with. Her writing. That is. After the jump, reactions to Babel, Pretty in Pink, Dogville, Anchorman, Zoolander, Ocean’s Thirteen, Borat, A Woman is a Woman, Paris, je t’aime, Ratatouille, Nostromo, Sons and Lovers, Women in Love, To the Lighthouse and others.

(There are a lot of links in the post…let me know if you try one and it’s broken, okay?)

R.I.P. Michelangelo Antonioni

By Jandy

On August 1, 2007

In Film

And the groundbreaking Italian director Antonioni dies on the same day as the groundbreaking Swedish director Bergman. Wow. If deaths really come in threes, as the old wives’ tale dictates, who’s next?

I have really only seen one Antonioni film, 1966’s Blow-Up (also, I believe, his first English-language film), but it was pretty incredible. It’s been many years since I saw it, though–it was one of the first really arty films I ever saw. I’ve also seen most of L’Avventura, but still need to finish it. I can’t explain why I stopped watching it–it wasn’t that I didn’t like it, or I was bored or anything. It was more like, it was too late at night to finish it, and I intended to finish it the next day, but I own it and since I own it I put it off to watch the films from Netflix that came in the mail the next day. Something like that. Anyway. He’s pretty cerebral. As if I weren’t already totally entrenched in French art films, these two deaths have renewed my interest in Swedish and Italian films, too. (Actually, they were all making films around the same time, so there are connections between them–certainly Godard got a lot out of Antonioni. Now I want to rewatch Contempt, which I’ve heard owes a good bit to the Italian director, but it would probably be more helpful to wait until I’ve seen more Antonioni first.)

Karina Longworth has a set of four clips and commentary from Antonioni’s work (they’re all closing scenes from films I haven’t seen, so I didn’t watch them, but I bookmarked the post to come back to later); Coffee Coffee and More Coffee has some thoughts on him, and GreenCine has a roundup of posts and articles.

R.I.P. Ingmar Bergman

By Jandy

On July 30, 2007

In Film

Ingmar Bergman, one of the greatest and most influential filmmakers ever, died yesterday. I haven’t seen a lot of Bergman films, and those I have tend to strand me between a sense that I may be watching something incredible and my realization that I’m not understanding half of it. Reading around the film blogosphere a little this morning, though, is increasing my desire to try to become better acquainted with Bergman.

I think Persona was the first film of his I saw, and the only thing I remember was how fascinating it was when the two women, isolated on an island, started merging or even exchanging personalities almost, and how much I liked the way he juxtaposed their faces onto each other to depict that merging visually. Those shots have been imitated to the point of cliche now, but then I hadn’t seen them before. My favorite Bergman film right now is probably the lighthearted romantic romp Smiles of a Summer Night, largely, I think, because it remains one of his more accessible ones. ;) I recently saw the second part of his “Faith” trilogy, Winter Light (I gave my reaction to the first of the trilogy, Through a Glass Darkly, here), and was suitably impressed by it, especially as compared to Bresson‘s Diary of a Country Priest, which I should have liked but didn’t. I have also seen The Seventh Seal, probably Bergman’s most famous film (featuring a chess game between a medieval knight and Death), but need a rewatch on it, because I don’t remember much except liking the visuals and being sort of bored by the slow, philosophic pacing (hey, I was young).

The Guardian has links to several Bergman clips, and the New York Times has reprinted part of a review/essay on Bergman by Woody Allen, who was very influenced by him as a filmmaker. (I watched a bit of Manhattan the other day, and it wasn’t ten minutes before Allen and Keaton were arguing over whether Bergman was the greatest of all filmmakers or overrated.)