Can I Eternal Sunshine 2009, or Do I have to like the movie for that to work?

As 2009 slips away, sadly it has been chosen that I will be spending the evening at home, reliving the few moments worth salvaging before I Eternal Sunshine the year completely. It is just about that time for me to post something really maudlin that I'll regret later (and never end up taking down). But before I do so, I'll post some (hopefully) fascinating miscellany.

My entry to The Auteurs' Notebook's year-end writers' poll went up yesterday, alongside Andrew Grant, Glenn Kenny, Ignatiy Vishnevetsky, Evan Davis, Gabe Klinger, Dave McDougall, David Cairns and Ben Simington's choices for our 2009 fantasy double features (of a first-run theatrical release and an older film we happened to have seen in the past 12 months). Mine covers 2 Olivier Assayas films (though I guess technically, I saw L'heure d'été in 2008, it was in the final two weeks of the year...). Glenn's beautiful screencap of Sheryl Lee as the Good Witch in Wild at Heart has become my current desktop pattern.

Cahiers du Cinéma posted their annual 10 Best of the year and continued to prove to us Yankees how much the French love Clint Eastwood (no, not for Invictus but Gran Torino; Invictus will surely make the 2010 list). Alain Resnais' Wild Grass [Les herbes folles] was their #1 (Sony Pictures Classics' website still doesn't have an official date for its release in the States), and the pleasant surprise of the list was seeing Alain Guiraudie's Le roi de l'évasion [The King of Escape] make it. One of the (many) regrets I have in regard to the final Decade List posting was that I didn't get around to rewatching Guiraudie's Ce vieux rêve qui bouge or Pas de repos pour les braves and left them off the 100 (though I'm pretty sure they should have been there).

So the Decade List posting... thanks to everyone for the nice comments. Aside from a clerical error in posting the two Abel Ferrara films in the wrong positions (Go Go Tales should be at 55, Mary at 76), I'm happy (enough) with the way things lined up, and I will be working on a "defense" if you will for my #1 within the next couple weeks. Anyway, to those of you who sent me your list, they will be posted by the end of next week, and if you're still working on yours, don't take the posting of my list as the curtain drop for the 00's nonsense...

...and though there's a purposeful hesitancy in the way I've spoken of the project in the more recent posts, I'm still possibly considering trying the previous decade on for size for 2010... but that depends on a number of factors, not least of which coming up with a (clever) name for it and determining the amount of time I will have to dedicate to it (it would really be better if I didn't have all the time, actually, as being gainfully employed and/or leaving the Midwest sound much more appealing).

2010 looks to be your year if you happen to be a Blu-ray player owning, French-speaking cinephile, as a number of really exciting releases have already been announced by Gaumont on high-definition format:

- Danton, 1983, d. Andrzej Wajda, 9 February
- La nuit de Varennes, 1982, d. Ettore Scola, 9 February, w. Marcello Mastroianni, Hanna Schygulla, Harvey Keitel
- Le silence de la mer, 1949, d. Jean-Pierre Melville, 25 March
- Un condamné à mort s'est échappé [A Man Escaped], 1956, d. Robert Bresson, 25 March
- Les maudits [The Damned], 1947, d. René Clément, 20 May
- Le général della Rovere, 1959, d. Roberto Rossellini, 20 May
- La peau [La pelle / The Skin], 1981, d. Liliana Cavani, 15 June, w. Mastroianni, Claudia Cardinale, Burt Lancaster
- Le rouge et le noir [The Red and the White], 1954, d. Claude Autant-Lara, 15 June, w. Danielle Darrieux

All of the films will also be released on DVD on the same date, some for the first time in France, as far as I can tell. Also in France, though not exactly exciting, the film I've been blabbing about all year, Sébastien Lifshitz's Plein sud, opens today, to almost exclusively damning reviews... Though I will reserve judgment for when I do see it, I was hoping the weariness I felt after watching the blasé trailer and noticing it wasn't announced for any of the autumn film festivals was unwarranted...

And finally, I never got around to posting a 2009 music list for the Decade List, which is fine as I generally only made those for my own benefit, and while I had planned on doing some sort of "the 25 '00 albums that did the most to shape me into the cynic I am today" list... it's looking less likely. I have, however, collected 50 of my favorite singles from 2009. I looked past the disappointment I felt in (a lot of) the particular albums and selected the tracks that left their mark on me in some way. I had planned the list to only include one song per artist, but the thing ran out of steam around 43, so instead of nixing three, I tossed a couple alternate choices from the albums I did happen to like a lot this year (Fever Ray, A Woman A Man Walked By, Logos). So if my plan to Eternal Sunshine all of 2009 actually works, I guess I won't have to look far to play catch up in the music world (though my ability to discern which of the 50 aren't really good songs and don't belong has vanished today). I could post an mp3 link at some point, but I haven't the energy at the moment. It looks like I'm finished rambling, and it doesn't look as dejected as I thought I might. That's good, right? Bonne année à tous.

01. Annie - My Love Is Better [Don't Stop]
02. Fever Ray - Keep the Streets Empty for Me [Fever Ray]
03. The xx - Crystalised [xx]
04. PJ Harvey & John Parish - Pig Will Not [A Woman A Man Walked By]
05. The Hidden Cameras - Walk On [Origin: Orphan]
06. Japandroids - Sovereignty [Post-Nothing]
07. Bat for Lashes - Sleep Alone [Two Suns] (yes, the album version is much better)
08. Röyksopp (featuring Karin Dreijer Andersson) - This Must Be It [Junior]
09. Dizzee Rascal featuring Calvin Harris and Chrome - Dance wiv Me [Tongue 'N Cheek]
10. No Age - You're a Target [Losing Feeling EP]
11. Junior Boys - Parallel Lines [Begone Dull Care]
12. St. Vincent - The Party [Actor]
13. Atlas Sound featuring Laetitia Sadier - Quick Canal [Logos]
14. Vivian Girls - Before I Start to Cry [Everything Goes Wrong]
15. Whitney Houston - Million Dollar Bill [I Look to You]
16. Phoenix - Fences [Wolfgang Amadeus Phoenix]
17. Sally Shapiro - Dying in Africa [My Guilty Pleasure]
18. Jay-Z - D.O.A. (Death of Auto-tune) [The Blueprint 3]
19. The Radio Dept. - David [David EP]
20. Peaches - Talk to Me [I Feel Cream]
21. The Legends - You Won [Over and Over]
22. Little Boots - Stuck on Repeat [Hands]
23. Passion Pit - The Reeling [Manners]
24. The Juan Maclean - Happy House [The Future Will Come] (the 12-minute version is much better)
25. Alcoholic Faith Mission - Gently [421 Wythe Avenue] (The song I would have chosen from this album doesn't seem to be available streaming anywhere)
26. Charlotte Gainsbourg - IRM [IRM]
27. Dirty Projectors - Stillness Is the Move [Bitte Orca]
28. Animal Collective - Bluish [Merriweather Post Pavilion]
29. Depeche Mode - Wrong [Sounds of the Universe]
30. Girls - Lust for Life [Album]
31. Deerhunter - Disappearing Ink [Rainwater Cassette Exchange EP]
32. Ciara featuring Justin Timberlake - Love Sex Magic [Fantasy Ride]
33. Bon Iver - Blood Bank [Blood Bank EP]
34. Beirut - The Concubine [March of the Zapotec / Rainpeople Holland EP]
35. Bill Callahan - Jim Cain [Sometimes I Wish We Were an Eagle]
36. Peter Bjorn and John - I'm Losing My Mind [Living Things]
37. Miike Snow - Animal [Miike Snow]
38. Antony Hegarty and Bryce Dessner - I Was Young When I Left Home [Dark Was the Night]
39. Grizzly Bear - Foreground [Veckatimest]
40. ...And You Will Know Us by the Trail of Dead - The Far Pavilions [The Century of Self]
41. The Decemberists - Sleepless [Dark Was the Night] (The only song I've ever liked by them, well at least 70% liked)
42. Fuck Buttons - Surf Sport [Tarot Sport] (The album version... exceedingly better)
43. Matt & Kim - Daylight [Grand]
44. Piano Magic - The Nightmare Goes On [Ovation]
45. Yeasayer - Tightrope [Dark Was the Night]
46. Atlas Sound - Shelia [Logos]
47. Annie - Anthonio [All Night]
48. Fever Ray - If I Had a Heart [Fever Ray] (my favorite music video of 2009)
49. Serge Gainsbourg featuring Jane Birkin - L'hôtel particulier [Histoire de Melody Nelson] (Obviously, this isn't new, but as the album was released for the first time in the US this year, and I needed to fill the 50)
50. PJ Harvey and John Parish - Cracks in the Canvas [A Woman A Man Walked By] (this isn't the 2nd best song off the album, but it's the perfect close and part of what keeps me wanting more)

New York Film Festival line-up, 2009

Yesterday the New York Film Festival announced their prestigious line-up, all of which only serves to give the high profile international releases of the year their premiere in the States. This year is heavily populated by European auteurs, and only three American films will screen (Life During Wartime, Don Argott's doc The Art of the Steal, Ilisa Barish and Lucien Castaing-Taylor's Sweetgrass and Lee Daniels' Precious, which will have played at nearly every single major festival in 2009 before Lionsgate throws it onto theatres with a giant Oscar push in November). The line-up is listed below:

- 36 Views of Saint-Loup Peak [36 vues du Pic Saint-Loup] - d. Jacques Rivette
- Antichrist - d. Lars von Trier
- The Art of the Steal - d. Don Argott
- Bluebeard [La barbe bleue] - d. Catherine Breillat
- Broken Embraces [Los abrazos rotos] - d. Pedro Almodóvar
- Crossroads of Youth - d. An Jong-hwa (the oldest surviving Korean film)
- Eccentricites of a Blonde [Singularidades de uma Rapariga Loira] - d. Manoel de Oliviera
- Everyone Else [Alle Anderen] - d. Maren Ade
- Ghost Town - d. Zhao Dayong
- Hadewijch - d. Bruno Dumont
- Independencia - d. Raya Martin
- Inferno [L'enfer d'Henri-Georges Clouzot] - d. Serge Bromberg, Ruxandra Medrea
- Kanikosen - d. Sabu
- Lebanon - d. Samuel Maoz
- Life During Wartime - d. Todd Solondz
- Min Yé - d. Souleymane Cissé
- Mother - d. Bong Joon-ho
- Ne change rien - d. Pedro Costa
- Police, Adjective [Politist, adjectiv] - d. Corneliu Porumboiu
- Precious - d. Lee Daniels
- Room and a Half - d. Andrey Khrzhanovsky
- Sweetgrass - d. Ilisa Barish, Lucien Castaing-Taylor
- Sweet Rush [Tatarak] - d. Andrzej Wajda
- To Die Like a Man [Morrer Como Um Homem] - d. João Pedro Rodrigues
- Vincere - d. Marco Bellocchio
- White Material - d. Claire Denis
- The White Ribbon [Das weiße Band] - d. Michael Haneke
- Wild Grass [Les herbes folles] - d. Alain Resnais
- The Wizard of Oz - d. Victor Fleming, 70th Anniversary

8 of the films above are going in with US distribution (I'm not counting The Wizard of Oz, which will receive a special anniversary DVD and Blu-ray release in November): 3 from Sony (Broken Embraces, Wild Grass, The White Ribbon), 3 from IFC (Vincere, Police, Adjective, Antichrist), 1 from Lionsgate (Precious) and 1 from Seagull Films (Room and a Half).

Sony Picks Up Les herbes folles

I was worried we wouldn't be seeing Alain Resnais' latest (in English, Wild Grass) for a while in the US, but Sony Pictures Classics has extinguished that fear... no word yet on when they'll unleash it.

Le mépris, Ran and Others on Blu-ray in the UK This Fall

Despite the bad news that Criterion's planned Blu-rays of Jean-Luc Godard' Contempt [Le mépris] and Akira Kurosawa's Ran were scrapped due to the loss of rights, Optimum Releasing in the UK has both, plus a bunch of other exciting titles, set for a Blu-ray release in September. The other titles include: David Lynch's The Elephant Man, Alain Resnais' Last Year at Marienbad [L'année dernière à Marienbad], Luis Buñuel's Belle de jour, Joseph Losey's The Go-Between (which isn't even out on DVD in the US), Michael Cimino's The Deer Hunter, Volker Schlöndorff and Margarethe von Trotta's The Lost Honor of Katharina Blum [Die verlorene Ehre der Katharina Blum oder: Wie Gewalt entstehen und wohin sie führen kann], Luc Besson's Le dernier combat, Angel-A, Léon: The Professional, Le grand bleu [The Big Blue], Atlantis, Subway and Nikita [La femme Nikita].

In August, Optimum will be releasing Blu-rays of Mathieu Kassovitz's La haine, Alan Parker's Angel Heart and Kathryn Bigelow's Near Dark; in July, Alexandre Aja's Haute tension (which is called Switchblade Romance in the UK), Roman Polanski's The Pianist, Michael Winterbottom's 9 Songs, Rian Johnson's Brick, Gus Van Sant's Elephant and Stephen Frears' The Grifters. Apparently, the UK is the place for great international cinema in high def.

Also, thanks to Eric for the heads up, Artificial Eye in the UK is releasing a Jacques Rivette box-set, which includes La belle noiseuse, Secret défense and Jeanne la Pucelle I and II. This may be the first official release of the uncut version of Jeanne, but that has yet to be confirmed.

The Decade List: (Some of) The Worst Films (2003)

I figure that the further along I go on the Decade List, the more populated the Worst Films list will be. Some annotations to the list: I didn't place Gigli on the list out of some obligation; I think it's really tedious, though not the complete Thanksgiving dinner everyone else did, most of which I think came from wanting the film to fail because of the media's tiresome coverage of Ben Affleck and Jennifer Lopez (or Bennifer, as they were once called). But I'd probably watch that junk again over the three turds respected filmmakers Alain Resnais, Jim Jarmusch and André Téchiné threw out that year (I refuse to include Tim Burton and his strangely admired, schmaltz fest Big Fish on the 'respected' list).

In terms of the international films on the list, most fell into three deplorable categories. The first rocked the Paul Haggis structure before he even got a chance to (Liberated Zone, Free Radicals and, to a lesser extent, Slim Sussie). The second includes start-to-finish embarassments from people who should have never been handed a camera in the first place (Insatiability, Testosterone). And the third, which may be the most criminal, concerned showboat directors and their artistic garbage, which fully earns the dismissive label "pretentious," though I typically try avoiding that word (Reconstruction, A Thousand Clouds of Peace).

Teensploitation was also a recurring trend, from 15: The Movie, Thirteen, The Real Cancun, Party Monster and Young Gods dishing out as much young flesh and salaciousness it could handle (and, for four of them, while pretending to disapprove of it and, for the other, disguising itself as something else). A special mention should be given to Tommy Wiseau's The Room, which made it's Los Angeles premiere in 2003, which is so terrible I couldn't leave it off the list, but unlike all the other films below, transforms its awfulness into something of beauty.

I've included links to what I wrote about Coffee and Cigarettes and Love Actually below. As I neglected to mention it when writing about Love Actually, I think the entire film can be summed up in the opening scene, when the aging rock star, played by Bill Nighy, who is "selling out" to record a Christmas rendition of one of his old songs, says to his producer, "This is shit, isn't it?" The producer responds, just as I imagine the producers of the film did, "Yep, solid gold shit."

- 15: The Movie - d. Royston Tan - Singapore
- 200 American - d. Richard LeMay - USA
- Adored: Diary of a Porn Star [Poco più di un anno fa] - d. Marco Filiberti - Italy
- Alex and Emma - d. Rob Reiner - USA
- Big Fish - d. Tim Burton - USA
- Bon voyage - d. Jean-Paul Rappeneau - France
- Bringing Down the House - d. Adam Shankman - USA
- The Cat in the Hat - d. Bo Welch - USA
- Coffee and Cigarettes - d. Jim Jarmusch - USA/Japan/Italy
- Daredevil - d. Mark Steven Johnson - USA
- Die, Mommie, Die! - d. Mark Rucker - USA
- Le divorce - d. James Ivory - France/USA
- The Event - d. Thom Fitzgerald - Canada/USA
- Free Radicals [Böse Zellen] - d. Barbara Albert - Austria/Germany/Switzerland
- Gigli - d. Martin Brest - USA
- The Human Stain - d. Robert Benton - USA/Germany/France
- Insatiability [Nienasycenie] - d. Wiktor Grodecki - Poland/Lithuania
- The Last Samurai - d. Edward Zwick - USA
- Latter Days - d. C. Jay Cox - USA
- Legally Blonde 2: Red, White & Blonde - d. Charles Herman-Wurmfeld - USA
- Liberated Zone [Befreite Zone] - d. Norbert Baumgarten - Germany
- Love Actually - d. Richard Curtis - UK/USA
- Nathalie... - d. Anne Fontaine - France/Spain
- Not on the Lips [Pas sur la bouche] - d. Alain Resnais - France/Switzerland
- The Pact of Silence [Le pacte du silence] - d. Graham Guit - France
- Party Monster - d. Fenton Bailey, Randy Barbato - USA/Netherlands
- The Praying Mantis [Le festin de la mante] - d. Marc Levie - Belgium
- Prey for Rock & Roll - d. Alex Steyermark - USA
- The Real Cancun - d. Rick de Oliveira - USA
- Reconstruction - d. Christoffer Boe - Denmark
- The Room - d. Tommy Wiseau - USA*
- Shattered Glass - d. Billy Ray - USA/Canada
- Slim Susie [Smala Sussie] - d. Ulf Malmros - Sweden
- Strayed [Les égarés] - d. André Techiné - France/UK
- Testosterone - d. David Moreton - Argentina/USA
- Thirteen - d. Catherine Hardwicke - USA
- A Thousand Clouds of Peace [Mil nubes de paz cercan el cielo, amor, jamás acabarás de ser amor] - d. Julián Hernández - Mexico
- The Trouble with Men and Women - d. Tony Fisher - UK
- Wrong Turn - d. Rob Schmidt - USA/Canada/Germany
- Young Gods [Hymypoika] - d. Jukka-Pekka Siili - Finland
- Zatôichi - d. Takeshi Kitano - Japan

Some Thoughts on the Closing Ceremony of the 62nd Festival International de Cannes

I trekked through the closing ceremony yesterday morning streaming via the Cannes Official website, which really is not conducive for the few of us who are fluent in both English and French, and had a few observations.

1. The best moment wasn't the long-overdue recognition for Alain Resnais or finally bestowing Michael Haneke with the fest's top prize, but instead, it was the humble acceptance of Charlotte Gainsbourg after being named Best Actress for Lars von Trier's Antichrist. With a "bien sûr" delivery, Isabelle Huppert read off Gainsbourg's name as if there were no other choice the jury could have made, which makes natural sense considering Huppert and fellow jury member Asia Argento's history of emotionally devastating roles. With her hushed voice, Gainsbourg thanked von Trier, co-star Willem Dafoe, husband Yvan Attal, her two children, mother Jane Birkin and, naturally, her late father, whom she hoped was looking down at her both proud and shocked. This was easily the best moment of the whole ceremony.

2. Worse than Isabelle Adjani's shameless plug for her film La journée de la jupe, which Andrew Grant informed me is not only "god-awful" but worse than Bon voyage, were presenter Terry Gilliam's laughless crocodile tears when host Edouard Baer informed him that he was not the winner of the Best Director prize, which he was introducing. IndieWire commented, "Across the stage, Isabelle Huppert, not laughing, remarks simply, 'OK?'" I was sort of hoping for a bitchier "OK?" than Huppert gave, with a half-smile, but her sentiment was precisely how I felt. I was more embarrassed for Gilliam in those three minutes than I was during the entirety of The Brothers Grimm.

3. While I was partly amused by Christoph Waltz's acceptance speech for Best Actor, I think I'm beyond the point of wanting to hear someone verbally jerk Quentin Tarantino off. He does a good enough job by himself.

4. Though it seems Isabel Coixet's Map of the Sounds of Tokyo was the hands-down worst film to screen in competition this year (not surprising after the steady decrease in the director's work from My Life Without Me to Elegy), I'm wondering if the boos that accompanied Brillante Mendoza's Kinatay and Lou Ye's Spring Fever from the US critics were appropriate or if the rumored "jury craziness" had some validity. I wasn't impressed with Mendoza's The Masseur or Lou's Summer Palace, but I'm certainly willing to give both another shot.

5. While this has nothing to do with the ceremony itself, I've read conflicting reports of how IFC Films is planning on releasing Antichrist in the US. Some have said we'll be seeing the film in all its genital-mutilation glory, but others have said it will be cut. Another source said that IFC will be releasing both versions, as certain cable providers would probably shy away from showing the film OnDemand. It'll be interesting to see how this is handled when IFC rolls the film out, hopefully later this year.

Cannes 2009 Line-Up

Heavy competition at this year's Cannes Film Festival, which was announced earlier today in France. As stated earlier, the new Pixar 3D film Up! will open the fest, and it will be closed by that other Coco Chanel film Coco Chanel & Igor Stravinsky, from director Jan Kounen (Dobermann) with Anna Mouglalis and Mads Mikkelsen. New films from a number of previous Palme d'Or winners will screen in competition, from Lars von Trier (Dancer in the Dark), Jane Campion (The Piano), Quentin Tarantino (Inglorious Basterds) and Ken Loach (The Wind That Shakes the Barley). More films in the other various programs will be announced tomorrow. Actress Isabelle Huppert is the head of this year's jury.

In Competition

Bright Star - dir. Jane Campion - UK/Australia/France - with Paul Schneider, Kerry Fox, Abbie Cornish

Spring Fever - dir. Ye Lou - China/France

Antichrist - dir. Lars von Trier - Denmark/Sweden/France/Italy - with Willem Dafoe, Charlotte Gainsbourg

Enter the Void - dir. Gaspar Noé - France/Japan

Face [Visages] - dir. Tsai Ming-liang - France/Taiwan/Netherlands/Belgium - with Laetitia Casta, Lee Kang-sheng, Mathieu Amalric, Jeanne Moreau, Fanny Ardant, Jean-Pierre Léaud, Nathalie Baye

Les herbes folles - dir. Alain Resnais - France/Italy - with André Dussollier, Emmanuelle Devos, Sabine Azéma, Mathieu Amalric, Anne Consigny

À l'origine [In the Beginning] - dir. Xavier Giannoli - France - with Gérard Depardieu, Emmanuelle Devos, François Cluzet

Un prophète [A Prophet] - dir. Jacques Audiard - France - with Tahar Rahim, Niels Arestrup

The White Ribbon [Das weiße Band] - dir. Michael Haneke - Austria/Germany/France - with Susanne Lothar, Ulrich Tukur

Vengeance - dir. Johnnie To - France/Hong Kong/USA - with Johnny Hallyday, Simon Yam, Sylvie Testud

The Time That Remains - dir. Elia Suleiman - Israel/France/Belgium/Italy

Vincere - dir. Marco Bellocchio - Italy/France - with Giovanna Mezzogiorno

Kinatay - dir. Brillante Mendoza - Philippines

Thirst - dir. Park Chan-wook - South Korea/USA - with Eriq Ebouaney, Song Kang-ho

Los abrazos rotos [Broken Embraces] - dir. Pedro Almodóvar - Spain - with Penélope Cruz, Ángela Molina, Lola Dueñas, Rubén Ochandiano, Blanca Portillo, Rossy de Palma, Chus Lampreave

Map of the Sounds of Tokyo - dir. Isabel Coixet - Spain - with Rinko Kikuchi, Sergi López

Fish Tank - dir. Andrea Arnold - UK/Netherlands - with Michael Fassbender, Harry Treadaway

Looking for Eric - dir. Ken Loach - UK/France/Italy/Belgium

Inglourious Basterds - dir. Quentin Tarantino - USA - with Brad Pitt, Samuel L. Jackson, Diane Kruger, Mike Myers, Eli Roth, Cloris Leachman, Til Schweiger, Michael Fassbender, Maggie Cheung, Daniel Brühl

Taking Woodstock - dir. Ang Lee - USA - with Demetri Martin, Liev Schreiber, Emile Hirsch, Jeffrey Dean Morgan, Paul Dano, Eugene Levy, Kelli Garner, Imelda Staunton, Katherine Waterson

Out of Competition

Drag Me to Hell - dir. Sam Raimi - USA - with Justin Long, Alison Lohman

The Imaginarium of Doctor Parnassus - dir. Terry Gilliam - France/Canada - with Heath Ledger, Johnny Depp, Colin Farrell, Christopher Plummer, Jude Law, Tom Waits

Agora - dir. Alejandro Amenábar - USA/Spain - with Rachel Weisz

June Is the Month to Beat for R1 DVDs

Criterion, at long last, announced Alain Resnais' masterpiece Last Year at Marienbad [L'année dernière à Marienbad] on both two-disc DVD and single-disc Blu-ray (please change the cover). The disc(s) will contain Resnais' short documentaries, Toute la mémoire du monde and Le chant du Styrène (and will hopefully start the ball rolling on some other Resnais films, like Providence and Mon oncle d'Amérique, which, if Charter is your cable provider, is available free on demand from IFC until the end of the month). Ingmar Bergman's The Seventh Seal will hit both formats in a remastered transfer; the set will include the documentary Bergman Island, which can also be purchased separately on DVD for those not planning on making the upgrade. And, Louis Malle's My Dinner with Andre, which we knew was coming this month, will also hit shelves. Normally, I would gripe about three of the four Criterion titles for the month being films that have already shown up on the DVD market, but The Seventh Seal was in need of a better transfer and the lousy Fox Lorber versions of Marienbad and Andre have been out of print for a while. No Eclipse titles, unless they're announced later this week.

In other Criterion/Janus news, the third volume of Essential Art House DVDs (ie, Criterion films with the price slashed and without the special features) will be out on the 16th, and for the first time, includes a film that hasn't ever been released outside of the collection, Henry Cass' Last Holiday, which as you know was later remade into your favorite Queen Latifa/Gérard Depardieu film! The other films in Volume 3 are Ashes and Diamonds, Forbidden Games, The Hidden Fortress, Richard III and Variety Lights.

Koch Lorber (or, perhaps, Lorber Films) is releasing Jean-Luc Godard's Une femme mariée on 2 June (thanks Eric). Though I haven't gotten official confirmation on whether or not the 5 Warner titles have really been moved to 30 June or not (Amazon still has the June date), even without them June will still be the month to beat, especially as one of the cinematic landmarks of the past twenty years Anaconda will finally be out on Blu-ray on the 2nd.

Suzuki, Lang, an untalented actress' cans can't justify a theatrical release and some talking dinosaurs for good measure...

Apologies for not updating the blog sooner, but my Internet connection has been a hot mess all week. Hopefully yesterday's schizophrenic day will be the last of those woes. Also, I must have written a DVD release update blog in one of my dreams, because I seem to recall mentioning some of these releases on here before... but a quick search provided those thoughts false. So whoops... or maybe I forgot to publish that particular blog. Alas... here are some DVD updates.

Two Seijun Suzuki will make their U.S. DVD debuts in the coming months. The first, Detective Bureau 2-3: Go to Hell Bastards, will be released through Kino on 19 February. The second, A Tale of Sorrow (also translated as Story of Sorrow and Sadness or A Tale of Sorrow and Sadness), will be out from Cinema Epoch on 2 June. Also upcoming from Kino is Tan Ida's action flick 3 Seconds Before Explosion on 19 May, as well as the critically acclaimed Momma's Man from director Azazel Jacobs, on 5 May. Jacobs' previous feature The GoodTimesKid is slated to be Benten Films' next release sometime this summer.

Kimstim, who released DVDs through Kino, are boxing together their four Alain Resnais films for a 28 April release. The titles are Life Is a Bed of Roses [La vie est un roman], Love unto Death [L'amour à mort], Mélo and I Want to Go Home [Je veux rentrer à la maison]. I would doubt any new material has been added to the discs for this release. Image Entertainment are bringing Woody Allen's first directing foray What's Up Tiger Lily? out from the vaults on 16 June (helpful suggestion: sell your old copy now, as it goes for about $40 used on Amazon.com). Fritz Lang's Man Hunt will make its DVD premiere from 20th Century Fox on 19 February as well. Magnolia is putting their two recent Wayne Wang films out on 26 May. They are A Thousand Yeard of Good Prayers and The Princess of Nebraska and will be available together or separate. Magnolia also moved the date for James Gray's Two Lovers to 30 June.

MGM has announced a handful of action/western/war flicks for 12 May. The choice pick of the five titles (though I haven't seen any of them) is Frank Perry's Doc, the much-disliked western with Faye Dunaway and Stacy Keach. The other four are: Raoul Walsh's The King and Four Queens with Clark Gable, J. Lee Thompson's North West Frontier with Herbert Lom and Lauren Bacall, Karl Malden's Time Limit with Richard Widmark, Rip Torn, Richard Basehart and June Lockhart (nice cast, eh?) and Burt Kennedy's Young Billy Young with Robert Mitchum, Angie Dickinson and David Carradine. Also look for a 50th Anniversary Edition of Pillow Talk from Universal on 14 April.

There's also a good number of films you've likely never heard of starring people you have lined up. Morgan Spurlock's distribution company, formerly Arts Alliance America and now Virgil Films, set a 12 May date for M. Blash's Lying, starring Chloë Sevigny, Jena Malone, Leelee Sobieski and Meryl Streep's son Henry Grummer. Also on tap from Virgil is Richard Ledes' The Caller, with Frank Langella, Elliott Gould and Laura Harring, on 7 April. Kim Basinger and Lukas Haas star in While She Was Out, a thriller produced by Guillermo del Toro, from Anchor Bay on 28 April. Michelle Pfeiffer should pray that her performance in Stephen Frears' Chéri is as good as everyone was claiming it would be last year, because another film of hers is heading straight-to-video. Personal Effects, which also stars Kathy Bates and Ashton Kutcher, will hit shelves on 12 May from Screen Media Films (who have a tendency to release 'doomed' films with big stars like Smother with Diane Keaton and Battle in Seattle with Charlize Theron).

Brittany Murphy is an American in Tokyo in The Ramen Girl, a romantic comedy from director Robert Allan Ackerman that will be out through Image on 26 May. The film also stars Sohee Park (Big Bang Love). Daniel Barnz's directorial debut Phoebe in Wonderland, which premiered at last year's Sundance Film Festival, will be out from ThinkFilm/Image on 23 June. Felicity Huffman, Patricia Clarkson, Elle Fanning, Campbell Scott and Bill Pullman star. Image will release yet another star-studded (but apparently ill-fated) film, Powder Blue on 9 June. The film, which will be better known as the film a couple of straight dudes mentioned to me last year where Jessica Biel takes her top off, also stars Kris Kristofferson, Lisa Kudrow, Ray Liotta, Eddie Redmayne, Forest Whitaker and two Swayzes (Patrick and brother Don)! Those guys forgot to mention whether any of the other actors were doing the same.

Howard Hawks' El Dorado and John Ford's The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance (one of my personal faves) will be the two latest releases in Paramount's Centennial Collection. Anchor Bay will release Elie Chouraqui's almost-unwatchable O Jerusalem, which laughably chronicles the religious struggle for Israel and stars Saïd Taghmaoui, JJ Feild, Patrick Bruel and a hammy Ian Holm, on 12 May. The week prior to that, Anchor Bay will release Adam Rifkin's Look with Giuseppe Andrews. Miramax is releasing their first catalogue title in over three years with Mike Newell's Enchanted April, which stars Joan Plowright, Miranda Richardson, Polly Walker, Jim Broadbent and Alfred Molina. Let's hope they don't wait as long to get their other films out there. Menemsha Films are releasing Sam Garbarski's (Irina Palm) Rashevski's Tango [Le tango des Rashevski], starring Hippolyte Girardot and Jonathan Zaccaï on 28 April.

I was unaware (and likely unwilling to notice) that the Steven Spielberg-produced animated film We're Back! A Dinosaur's Story won't make its official DVD debut until 26 May. Funny story about that film... When I was about 10 or 11, my parents signed me up for some lame, populist cartoon animation after-school class. The teacher was a total dolt who looked like Dom DeLuise. His talents at teaching and "drawing" were limited, so he was basically an overpaid babysitter. Among the fellow "students" was the classic brown-noser, a portly mouth-breather who'd taken at least three other classes with Dom. Thanks to both of those morons' love for John Goodman, we got to spend our entire class session "drawing" while being visually "inspired" by watching We're Back! A Dinosaur's Story. It was the continuation of the John Goodman lovefest that had begun earlier with that hideous live-action Flintstones movie, which I remember Dom had rented from Blockbuster the day it was released on VHS. The fucking movie hadn't been on home video for more than twenty-four hours and that parasitic brown-noser had memorized at least three-fourths of the entire movie! I remember him being particularly amused by something about John Goodman's toes during a bowling scene. I also strangely remember a barefooted Elizabeth Taylor being a terrifying sight. Anyway, I don't plan to relive that experience by picking up We're Back when it makes its overdue(?) premiere to DVD, but hey, if John Goodman isn't enough for you, the vocal talents of Rhea Perlman, Jay Leno, Julia Child (!), Walter Cronkite, Yeardley Smith and Martin Short are also on display!

I digress... rounding up this DVD update are three titles unavailable in the US coming on Region 2. Jack Smight's action/comedy Kaleidoscope starring Susannah York and Warren Beatty comes on 20 April from Digital Classics. They're also putting out Mel Ferrer's Green Mansions, which stars Audrey Hepburn and Anthony Perkins, on 6 April. Mary Lambert's Siesta is its European DVD premiere in Germany from Concorde 16 April. I actually haven't seen it, but I remember thinking the word siesta meant something really slutty after walking past the box at Blockbuster nearly every time I rented a video. After looking at the cast, it appears to matter even less whether it's good or not. How could I say no a film with Ellen Barkin, Julian Sands, Isabella Rossellini, Gabriel Byrne, Grace Jones, Martin Sheen and Jodie Foster? That's all for now.

Coming (or Not Coming) in 2009: Part 1

This is the first part of a series of posts which will look at what films we can expect to see make their premiere during 2009. You can check some of my earlier posts about the Berlinale for news about films from Lukas Moodysson, Catherine Breillat, François Ozon, Rebecca Miller, Stephen Frears, Costa-Gavras, Andrzej Wajda, Hans-Christian Schmid (Requiem), Lucía Puenzo (XXY), Andrew Bujalski, Sally Potter, Chen Kaige and Theo Angelopoulos. This post will focus on French directors and productions. The run-down is admittedly auteur-driven, as no one can really predict when a film like Cristian Mungui's 4 Months 3 Weeks and 2 Days will sneak up and floor us. As you can imagine, many of these films won't hit the US until next year, later (or never).

UPDATED: I forgot to include Jean-Pierre Jeunet's new film when I pasted this from my word processor, so scroll down for that. I've also included some more links (nearly all of which are in French).

I've mentioned my enthusiasm for Claire Denis' latest film, White Material, several times on the blog as I was told (via Facebook) that Denis was hoping to have the film edited in time for the Berlinale. It isn't playing there, so the next likely place would have to be Cannes in May, though I'd suspect it'd play out of competition as star Isabelle Huppert is the head of this year's jury. Set in Cameroon, Christopher Lambert co-stars as Huppert's husband, along with Nicolas Duvauchelle and Isaach de Bankolé, both of which have worked with Denis in the past. The film is produced by Why Not Productions in France. Denis' 35 rhums [35 Shots of Rum], which played at last year's Toronto International Film Festival, opens in France on 18 February.

Four years after Gabrielle, Patrice Chéreau (Queen Magot, L'homme blessé) returns behind the camera for Pérsecution, which he co-wrote with Anne-Louise Trividic who also co-write Gabrielle, Son frère and Intimacy with Chéreau. The film stars Romain Duris, Charlotte Gainsbourg and Jean-Hughes Anglade, is being produced by Arte France Cinéma and should be released by mk2 before the end of the year.

Isabelle Huppert will once again team with director Benoît Jacquot (L'école de la chair [The School of Flesh]) for Villa Amalia, which opens in France on 11 March through EuropaCorp. Jean-Hughes Anglade, Xavier Beauvois and Maya Sansa (Buongiorno, notte [Good Morning Night]) also star.

I haven't been able to find any new information about Catherine Breillat's Bad Love, a remake of her own Parfait amour! starring Naomi Campbell and Christophe Rocancourt. Naturally, I will post more information as I come across it. Her latest, a fantasy La barbe bleu, premieres at the Berlinale. La barbe bleu was produced by Arte France and look for the possibility of a re-release of Tapage nocturne [Nocturnal Uproar] as it will screen at Berlin as well.

In their sixth collaboration, Catherine Deneuve will once again grace the screen for director André Téchiné in La fille du RER, which opens in France on 18 March from UGC Distribution. The film also stars Michel Blanc (who was in Téchiné's last film Les témoins [The Witnesses]), Mathieu Demy (Jacques Demy and Agnès Varda's son), Ronit Elkabetz (Late Marriage, The Band's Visit), Émilie Dequenne (Rosetta) and Nicholas Duvauchelle.

Alain Resnais' new film Les herbes folles stars Mathieu Amalric, Emmanuelle Devos and Anne Consigny, all three of which were last seen in Arnaud Desplechin's Un conte de Noël, as well as André Dussollier and longtime collaborator Sabine Azéma. The film is based on the novel L'incident by Christian Gailly and should be released through Studio Canal on 21 October in France. Les herbes folles was shot by Eric Gautier, who has previously worked with Olivier Assayas, Catherine Breillat, Patrice Chéreau and Desplechin.

Still working at 81, Jacques Rivette's new film (perhaps his last?) 36 vues du Pic Saint-Loup stars Jane Birkin, who also co-starred in Rivette's L'amour par terre and La belle noiseuse, Jacques Bonnaffé (Prénom Carmen, Jeanne et le garçon formidable) and Sergio Castellitto (The Wedding Director, My Mother's Smile). Les Films du Losange are releasing the film on 16 September.

Claude Chabrol, who turns 80 next year, will unveil his latest Bellamy on 25 February through TFM Distribution after it premieres in Berlin on the 8th. Gérard Depardieu, Clovis Cornillac (Faubourg 36) and Jacques Gamblin star.

In the second Coco Chanel biopic in two years (the other was made-for-television and starred Shirley Maclaine), Anne Fontaine (Nathalie...) will direct Audrey Tautou as the fashion designer. Coco avant Chanel [Coco Before Chanel], which also stars Alessandro Nivola, Emmanuelle Devos and Benoît Poelvoorde, will be out in France through Warner Brothers on 22 April. Warner will also distribute the film in the US sometime at the end of the year or 2010.

Seven years after her disturbing feature-length debut as a director Dans ma peau [In My Skin] Marina de Van's second film Ne te retourne pas stars Monica Bellucci, Sophie Marceau and Andrea Di Stefano (Before Night Falls). The film sounds a BIT like The Eyes of Laura Mars, but that's okay in my book. The film should be out sometime in May in France from Wild Bunch.

The filmmaking duo Olivier Ducastel and Jacques Martineau (Jeanne et le garçon formidable, Drôle de Félix [The Adventures of Felix], Ma vraie vie à Rouen [My Life on Ice], Crustacés et coquillages [Côte d'Azur]) should have their latest, L'arbre et la forêt, out sometime this year, though I wasn't able to find any dates or distributors for the film. L'arbre et la forêt stars Guy Marchand, Françoise Fabian, Sabrina Seyvecou (Paris), Yannick Renier and Pierre-Loup Rajot (Felix, À nos amours). Their last film Nés en 68 [Born in '68], which also stars Seyvecou, Renier, as well as Laetitia Casta and Yann Trégouët, will be released in the US later this year through Strand Releasing.

Julie Delpy's second foray as a director will make its international debut at the Berlinale on 9 February. The Countess, which Delpy also wrote and stars in, also features William Hurt, Anamaria Marinca, Daniel Brühl and Sebastian Blomberg. The poster above incorrectly lists Vincent Gallo, Ethan Hawke and Radha Mitchell as stars though all three dropped out of the film. No word yet on a French or US release.

Jacques Audiard's (Sur mes lèvres [Read My Lips], De battre mon coeur s'est arrêté [The Beat My Heart Skipped]) Un prophète will be released through UGC Distribution on 26 August in France. The film stars Niels Arestrup (Je, tu, il, elle, Stavisky....).

Bruno Dumont's fifth film Hadewijch will be distributed by Tadrat Films sometime in 2009, after making a likely showing at this year's Cannes Film Festival. All of his films except for Twentynine Palms have debuted at the fest, and his last film Flandres won the Grand Prix. The cast will, like Flandres, be comprised of unknowns.

After contributing to two omnibus films (Destricted and 8), Gaspar Noé's third feature film Enter the Void will be released in France from Wild Bunch over the summer, possibly after a showing at Cannes. Enter the Void, which was filmed in Montréal and Tokyo, will be Noé's first English-language film.

After disastrous results working in the US (he called Babylon A.D. "like a bad episode of 24"), Mathieu Kassovitz returns home to direct, star and co-write L'ordre et la morale. Not much is known about the project, but it seems unlikely to make it out by the end of the year.

And finally, Jean-Pierre Jeunet's latest film Micmacs à tire-larigot stars Dany Boon (of the regional box office sensation Bienvenue chez les Ch'tis, currently being remade in the US), Dominique Pinon, André Dussollier and Yolande Moreau (the latter three were all in Amèlie). Warner will release the film in France on 28 October and in the US sometime in 2010.

More coming soon...