Online Viewing @ TheAuteurs

If Polanski: Unauthorized wasn't all you'd hoped and dreamed it'd be, you can go ahead and check out the director's first feature film (Polanski, not Damian Chapa, ha!), Knife in the Water [Nóż w wodzie], for free at The Auteurs, courtesy of Criterion's free monthly series on the site. Currently, the focus is on directors' first films. Check out one of my very favorite films, Lynne Ramsay's Ratcatcher, if you haven't already. The other films in this series: Jane Campion's wonderful Sweetie, Agnès Varda's La pointe-courte, Sam Fuller's I Shot Jesse James and Marco Bellocchio's Fists in the Pocket [I pugni in tasca] (the latter not being one of my favorites by any means, but hey, if you've already seen the other five...)

Some Re-Releases in July, Bad News for Ran, Plus 2 of the Best Music Videos You'll See All Year

Ryko's release schedule for July features two exciting re-issues and a new-to-DVD title from Italy. Elio Petri's The 10th Victim [La decima vittima], with Marcello Mastroianni and Ursula Andress, and Marco Bellocchio's Devil in the Flesh [Il diavolo in corpo], with Maruschka Detmers, are returning to circulation from Blue Underground and MYA respectively, while Cult Epics brings us Tinto Brass' experimental The Howl [L'Urlo], with Tina Aumont, makes its DVD debut in the US. For Aumont fans, Blue Underground is also re-issuing Sergio Matino's giallo Torso [I corpi presentano tracce di violenza carnale]. Rounding out the rest of Ryko's July DVD titles are:

Sergio Bizzio's Animalada from Synapse
Sergio Matino's spaghetti western Arizona Colt Returns from MYA
Robert Hatford-Davis' Black Torment [aka Estate of Insanity] from Redemption
Buddy Giovinazzo's Combat Shock [aka American Nightmare] from Troma
Enzo G. Castellari's Eagles over London [La battaglia d'Inghilterra] on DVD and Blu-ray from Severin
Frank: Diary of an Assassin from S'more
In Search of the Great Beast 666 from Disinformation
Anna Terean's Kevorkian: Right to Exit from Indie-Pictures
Fred Burnley's Neither the Sea Nor the Sand [aka The Exorcism of Hugh] from Redemption
Roger A. Scheck's Nobody Loves Alice from Indie-Pictures
Naoki Kudo and Terry Ito's Oh! My Zombie Mermaid from Eastern Star
Rodrigo Grande's Rosarigasinos from Synapse
Milan Cieslar's Spring of Life [Pramen zivota] from Redemption

Also look for Rolf de Heer's Bad Boy Bubby and Enzo G. Castellari's Inglorious Bastards [Quel maledetto treno blindato], just in time for Quentin Tarantino's remake, on Blu-ray from Blue Underground and Severin. All discs street on 28 July.

Magnolia has three titles lined up for June: Sean McGinley's The Great Buck Howard, with Tom Hanks, John Malkovich, Emily Blunt, Colin Hanks, Steve Zahn and Adam Scott, on 21 July; Hitoshi Matsumoto's Big Man Japan on 28 July; and Tony Stone's Severed Ways: The Norse Discovery of America on 28 July.

Lionsgate will release Alison Maclean's Jesus' Son, based on the work of Denis Johnson, on 23 June. Universal previously released the film on DVD in 2001; it stars Samantha Morton, Billy Crudup, Holly Hunter, Dennis Hopper, Denis Leary, Jack Black, Michael Shannon, Mark Webber, Ben Shenkman and Will Patton, as well as author Johnson and Miranda July in small roles. Oscilloscope has Stephen Kijak's Scott Walker: 30 Century Man for 16 June, and ThinkFilm/Image has John Maybury's The Edge of Love, with Keira Knightley and Sienna Miller, on 14 July.

As for box-sets, Sony has packaged five previously unavailable Jack Lemmon films together for 9 June. The set includes Mark Robson's Phffft!, with Judy Holliday and Kim Novak; Richard Quine's Operation Mad Ball, with Ernie Kovacs, Mickey Rooney and Kathryn Grant; Quine's The Notorious Landlady, with Novak, Fred Astaire and Lionel Jeffries; David Swift's Under the Yum Yum Tree; and Swift's Good Neighbor Sam, with Romy Schneider. Kino also has a box coming of John Barrymore films from the 20s on 7 July. The box includes Albert Parker's Sherlock Holmes; Alan Crosland's The Beloved Rogue, with Conrad Veidt; Sam Taylor, Lewis Milestone and Viktor Tourjansky's Tempest; John S. Robertson's Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde; and the shorts Vagabonding on the Pacific and Dr. Pyckle and Mr. Pride, as well as an except from an earlier version of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde, directed by J. Charles Haydon. As far as I know, Sherlock Holmes will be the only title available separately.

And bad news for Blu-ray collectors: Criterion's release of Ran has been "withdrawn from the schedule due to a rights issue." The 2-disc DVD set of the film has also gone out-of-print now. And, I'm sure you know who's responsible for the rights issue. Yes, it's the Weinsteins, who hold the rights to a number of Fox Lorber/Wellspring's catalogue, though of course they haven't done much with it.

And finally, might I direct your attention to two amazing music videos from Fever Ray, the solo project of The Knife's Karin Dreijer Andersson. "If I Had a Heart," directed by Andreas Nilsson who did many of The Knife's videos, is the opening track off the self-titled album, and the video manages to out-creep even Chris Cunningham's Aphex Twin videos. "When I Grow Up," directed by Martin de Thurrah, is the album's second track, and focuses its attention on a girl who looks like the lovechild of Carrie White and the scary disfigured girl in the basement from Martyrs. Both represent the best music videos of 2009 so far, and if you haven't picked up the album, it comes highly recommended.

Previous 10: 16 November

This crop contains the rest of my pre-Saint Louis International Film Festival screenings, including a few others. I will be seeing at least four films this year, so they'll show up next round. Two brief observations: Sally Hawkins is incredible; The Unknown Woman is absolute shit.

La Crème

Blind Mountain - dir. Li Yang - China - Kino - with Huang Lu

Happy-Go-Lucky - dir. Mike Leigh - UK - Miramax - with Sally Hawkins, Eddie Marsan, Alexis Zegerman, Samuel Roukin

Les Autres

A Complete History of My Sexual Failures - dir. Chris Watt - UK - No US Distributor - with Chris Watt

The Grocer's Son [Le fils de l'épicier] - dir. Eric Guirado - France - Film Movement - with Nicolas Cazalé, Clotilde Hesme, Daniel Duval, Stéphan Guérin-Tillié, Jeanne Goupil, Liliane Rovère, Paul Crauchet, Chad Chenouga

Timecrimes [Los cronocrímenes] - dir. Nacho Vigalondo - Spain - Magnet Releasing - with Karra Elejalde, Candela Fernández, Bárbara Geonaga, Nacho Vigalondo, Juan Inciarte

Tropic Thunder - dir. Ben Stiller - USA/Germany - DreamWorks - with Ben Stiller, Robert Downey Jr., Jack Black, Jay Baruchel, Brandon T. Jackson, Tom Cruise, Matthew McConaughey, Nick Nolte, Steve Coogan, Bill Hader

The Wedding Director [Il regista di matrimoni] - dir. Marco Bellocchio - Italy/France - New Yorker - with Sergio Castellitto, Donatella Finocchiaro, Sami Frey, Gianni Cavina, Maurizio Donadoni, Bruno Cariello, Simona Nobili

Wonderful Town - dir. Aditya Assarat - Thailand - Kino - with Supphasit Kansen, Anchalee Saisoontorn

The Bad

The Good Boy [Segundo asalto] - dir. Daniel Cebrián - Spain - Picture This! - with Darío Grandinetti, Álex González, Eva Marciel, Laura Aparicio, Alberto Ferreiro

The Unknown Woman [La sconosciuta] - dir. Giuseppe Tornatore - Italy/France - Outsider Pictures - with Xenia Rappoport, Michele Placido, Claudia Gerini, Margherita Buy, Pierfrancesco Favino, Piera Degli Esposti, Ángela Molina

The Saint Louis International Film Festival 2008

For all of those living in the ‘Lou, the 17th Annual Saint Louis International Film Festival line-up has been announced for the dates of Nov. 13-23. Although you can check out the schedule in pdf form here, I thought I might point out some of the more exciting inclusions this year. SLIFF will be awarding writer/director Paul Schrader a Lifetime Achievement Award and will screen his latest film Adam Resurrected, starring Jeff Goldbum, Willem Dafoe, Moritz Bleibtreu and Derek Jacobi, as well as a restored print of Mishima: A Life in Four Parts. Following the screening of Adam Resurrected, LA Weekly film editor Scott Foundas will have a Q&A with the director.

A “Micro-Budget Filmmaking Seminar” will be conducted on the 15th at 11 am at the Tivoli. Mary Bronstein, who co-starred in Ronald Bronstein’s Frownland and whose directorial debut Yeast will be screened during the fest, is going to be one of the participants, as well as Missouri native Blake Eckard (Sinner Come Home) and St. Louisan Aaron Coffmann (Texas Snow). In addition to Bronstein’s Yeast, another mumblecore flick, Nights and Weekends, written, directed and starring Joe Swanberg and Greta Gerwig will also be screening at this year’s fest.

Humboldt County co-directors Darren Grodsky and Danny Jacobs, both hailing from Saint Louis, are also making an appearance this year with a Q&A and after-party which opens the festival. The film, which premiered at this year’s SXSW fest and was just recently distributed theatrically by Magnolia, stars Fairuza Balk, Peter Bogdanovich, Frances Conroy, Brad Dourif and Chris Messina.

Steven Soderbergh’s absent-on-DVD King of the Hill, which was set and shot in Saint Louis, will be featured in a panel discussion about the translation from the book to film. There’s also going to be a film noir seminar, following a screening of Joseph Losey’s The Prowler (his last film shot in the US and also unavailable on DVD in the US). The panel will include noir expert Eddie Muller and actress Marsha Hunt, who was blacklisted from Hollywood. And rounding up the special events is a Q&A with Michael Apted (the Up! series), recipient of this year’s Maysles Brothers Lifetime Achievement Award in Documentary, conducted by Cinema Saint Louis executive director Cliff Froehlich. His latest film, The Power of the Game, will also screen this year.

And onto the big gals of this year’s fest. Darren Aronofsky’s Venice and Toronto winner The Wrestler, starring Mickey Rourke, Marisa Tomei, Evan Rachel Wood and Judah Friedlander, will close the fest before the film makes its theatrical run in the middle of December. Palme d’Or winner The Class (Entre les murs), from writer/director Laurent Cantet, is also screening on the 22nd.

Philippe Claudel’s I’ve Loved You So Long (Il y a longtemps que je t’aime), starring Kristin Scott-Thomas and Elsa Zylberstein as sisters, will also screen on closing night before it hits local theatres soon. Bent Hamer’s O’ Horten is also showing, after receiving a number of praises when it played at this year’s Cannes Film Festival. Danny Boyle’s crowd-pleaser of a film, Slumdog Millionaire, will play on the 15th.

Kelly Reichardt’s much anticipated follow-up to Old Joy, Wendy and Lucy, which stars Michelle Williams, is also set for the 17th. I should mention that Wendy and Lucy is probably my most anticipated film to premiere at SLIFF this year. The new film from Rian Johnson (Brick), The Brothers Bloom, is playing on the 22nd. The film, which will make its limited theatrical run beginning 19 December from Summit Entertainment, stars Rachel Weisz, Adrien Brody, Mark Ruffalo, Robbie Coltrane and Rinko Kikuchi, whom you should remember as the jumper-lifting deaf girl from Babel.

As for the hot docs, Terence Davies’ Of Time and the City will screen on the 15th. I wish I could remember who exactly said it, but someone, via GreenCine Daily, called the film the real masterpiece of this year’s Cannes Film Festival. Ari Folman’s Waltz with Bashir, which also premiered at Cannes and will be Israel’s official submission for next year’s foreign language Oscar, will also be spotlighted on the closing day of the festival.

As for a few smaller films to pay attention to, I’ve read some wonderful things about Aditya Assarat’s Wonderful Town, from Thailand, which will play on the 18th. Marco Bellocchio’s The Wedding Director (Il regista di matrimoni), which stars Sergio Castellitto of Va savoir, The Last Kiss and Mostly Martha, screens on the 20th and 22nd. Beloved director Giuseppe Tornatore (whom, as you should know, I quite despise) has his most recent film, The Unknown Woman (La sconsciuta), set for the 14th and 15th. Reha Erdem’s Times and Winds, which is one of two films I’ve seen prior to the fest, is playing on the 15th. Nic Balthazar’s Ben X, the other film I’ve already seen, is playing on the 21st and 22nd. It should be mentioned that I much preferred Times and Winds to Ben X.

Director John Boorman’s (The General, Deliverance) The Tiger’s Tail, which stars Brendan Gleeson, Kim Cattrall, Ciarán Hinds and Sinéad Cusack, will screen on both the 19th and 20th. Nacho Vigalondo’s sci-fi/horror film Timecrimes (Los cronocrímenes) will screen on the 19th, before Magnolia’s Magnet Releasing puts it in theatres sometime in December. According to the schedule, David Cronenberg is set to return to his horror roots and remake the film. The schedule also reports that Tomas Alfredson’s Let the Right One In (Låt den rätte komma in), which screens on the 15th and is also going to be released by Magnet, is also getting a Hollywood remake (although much less exciting as it's to be directed by the asshole who made Cloverfield).

Eric Guirado’s The Grocer’s Son (Le fils de l’épicier) is going to play on the 16th and 17th. The film, which stars Nicolas Cazalé and Clotilde Hesme (Love Songs), was reported through IndieWire as being Film Movement’s highest grossing film in their existence. Also from France is Nicolas Klotz’s The Heartbeat Detector (La question humaine), which screens on the 18th and 19th, starring Mathieu Amalric. For those who can’t make it, New Yorker released the DVD back in July. Yang Li’s Blind Mountain, which hits DVD from Kino in January, will play on the 14th. And finally, Joseph Cedar’s Beaufort, which was nominated for a Best Foreign Film Academy Award for Israel this year, will show on the 21st and 23rd (although Kino released the DVD at the end of September).

I should be seeing a number of these films before the festival goes underway, so if any of the films happen to strike me, I’ll be sure to point you in their direction.

Flaubert, Huppert, Chabrol, and Friends

Koch Lorber will release a two-disc version of Claude Chabrol's adaptation of Flaubert's Madame Bovary from 1991, starring the incomparable Isabelle Huppert in the lead role, on 11 November. The MGM disc of the film has been out of print for a while and this version will feature a documentary entitled Isabelle Huppert: A Life of Acting. Additionally, Koch Lorber will release János Szás' Opium: Diary of a Madwoman, starring Ulrich Thomsen (The Celebration) on the same date.

Kimstim is releasing Yoichi Sai's 2004 crime drama Blood and Bones, which stars Takeshi Kitano, on 11 November. I'm sure you've heard about the November Criterions, but they will be Bottle Rocket (yawn), Chungking Express (yay!), Fanfan la tulipe and The Spy Who Came in from the Cold. Fanfan will be the only R1 debut for the month.

Synkronized USA (read: expect delays) has 11 November set as the date for their release of Liria Bégéja's Change My Life (Change moi ma vie), which stars Fanny Ardant, Roschdy Zem and Sami Bouajila. Industrial Entertainment will also be releasing Fred Schepisi's The Chant of Jimmie Blacksmith on 18 November. Werner Herzog's Encounters at the End of the World will be available from ThinkFilm on 18 November. And finally, New Yorker is releasing Marco Bellocchio's The Wedding Director (Il regista di matrimoni) on 18 November.

Family Life

Fists in the Pocket (I pugni in tasca) - dir. Marco Bellocchio - 1965 - Italy

As I wasn't nearly as impressed with Fists in the Pocket as I might have hoped, I was going to dedicate this post to talking about what a twat I think Bernardo Bertolucci is. The Criterion disc features an "afterthought" by Bellocchio's contemporary Bertolucci, in which he takes any and every oppertunity to bring up his own films. "Well, Fists in the Pocket is a lot different than MY Before the Revolution..." you get the point. I understand that being a successful filmmaker like Bertolucci gives you certain bragging rights, but where does this extreme vanity come from? I imagined the interviewer saying afterwards, "Um, Bernardo, thanks for your thoughts, but this was supposed to be about Fists in the Pocket, not Before the Revolution." And plus, I think Bertolucci's bragging rights were officially revoked after The Dreamers (they should have been taken away after The Sheltering Sky, but I think we all still had hope for him then). So, in fear of doing the exact same thing that wanker Bertolucci does, I am going to save a rant about him when I'm talking about one of his films. On to, Fists in the Pocket...

Bellocchio probably ranks somewhere on the second tier of the great Italian directors. His most successful film, Devil in the Flesh (Il Diavolo in corpo), is probably only remembered because of the controversial shot of an erect penis and "unsimulated sex." So, I should have expected not to be as enthralled as I expected to with this Criterion release, even though they've more than pleasantly surprised me with their releases of forgotten classics like Kaneto Shindo's Onibaba and Georges Franju's Eyes Without a Face (Les yeux sans visage). Fists in the Pocket introduces us to a dysfunctional family, in which the successful eldest brother Augusto (Marino Masé) carries the rest of the family financially. Augusto is handsome and expressionless. He has desires to marry his girlfriend Lucia, but the responsibility of his family is too much to add on a marriage. Alessandro (Lou Castel), the second eldest, realizes the burden he, his sister, retarded brother, and blinde mother cause for Augusto and plots to kill the family to relinquish his brother's burden.

Though he's making a comparison to his own film, Bertolucci accurately describes Fists in the Pocket as a non-political film. Instead of attacking bourgeois society as many of his contemporaries do, Bellocchio attacks the family structure to a not-so-starling effect. Sandro is essentially a nut-job, but a very typically 1960s idealistic one (truly aided by the Brando-esque performance by Castel). His plans to run the entire family off the cliff sound abhorrent, but through Bellocchio's camera, Sandro is a savior of sorts, not that we're meant to sympathize with the boring Augusto. The film also plays around with, surprise, Catholicism and the destruction of religious ceremonies, but never to the point of blasphemy. While this film may have been shocking at the time, it's not sharp enough to hold up today.


Instead, perhaps it is us, standing from a distance that realizes the faults in Sandro. While bursting with energy unlike his statuesque brother, Sandro is hardly different than Augusto. There's a very Through a Glass Darkly-ish relationship between Sandro and his sister Giulia (the astoundingly beautiful Paola Pitagora). When her playful crush turns cold, she explains her disinterest in Sandro with "you don't love me." Sandro's relationship with Giulia is as loveless as the relationship Augusto has with Lucia. While Augusto is looking for sexual relief, Sandro looks for a coconspirator in Giulia. As he cannot relate to the outside world, she's a far better aid than the retarded youngest brother and blind mother. Fists in the Pocket remains, however, a solid film, but as it's never clear as to its own attack nor sharp enough in its potentially blind assault, it's instead a reminder of why Bellocchio remains in that second tier of the great Italian filmmakers.