Cut Dead

John Huston's final film The Dead, based on a story by James Joyce, will be making its overdue DVD premiere in the US from Lionsgate on 3 November. It's one of the very few notable releases the studio has made all year. They'll also be re-releasing Fred Zinnemann's The Men with Marlon Brando on the same day.

Get it?

Art School Confidential - dir. Terry Zwigoff - 2006 - USA

On a scale of epic misfires, Art School Confidential may not rank very high, but in a year that has given us only one sole blockbuster (something about pirates, and whether it's good or not, people appeared to have liked it) and a string of mediocre snoozes, Art School Confidential would be refreshingly bad if it weren't so... bad. Now this is coming from someone who fucking hated Ghost World and was mildly amused by Bad Santa, mainly just for Billy Bob Thornton. On a scale of 2006 badness, Art School Confidential frighteningly makes The Black Dahlia look like a good time. In all honesty, it's hard to put your finger on where the film goes wrong; it's just puzzlingly bad. Surely, one can point out that it's a cluttered mess of silly side-stories, unnecessary characters, and boring familiarity. One could also make note of the fact that it's a satire that lacks any sort of bite or, counterly, subtlety. I could almost see real art students being enraged by the film, but the only picture I get is of those students tearing apart the film like the one-dimensional characters in the film do to others' paintings. Instead of dissecting the film's badness point by point, I'll let this post operate as an open letter to Anjelica Huston, begging her to quit trying to choose such "hip" film parts, even if she is the best thing in 'em.