Leopards, Deserts and Trains: Criterion in June

Criterion announced their June titles yesterday, with a DVD and Blu-ray of Michelangelo Antonioni's first color feature Red Desert [Il deserto rosso], starring a brunette Monica Vitti, among the releases. Red Desert, easily one of my favorite films, will hit shelves on the 22nd. Luchino Visconti's lavish historical epic The Leopard [Il gattopardo], which stars Burt Lancaster, Claudia Cardinale, Alain Delon and Pierre Clémenti among others, will hit Blu-ray on the same date. Jim Jarmusch's Mystery Train, one of the two "episodic" Jarmusch films I like, is bowing on DVD and Blu-ray on the 15th. Abbas Kiarostami's Close-Up is set for the 8th; the DVD only release includes Kiarostami's The Traveler from 1974. Strangely the release doesn't include Nanni Moretti's short doc Il giorno della prima di Close Up, which was featured on both the UK and French editions. It is however available on Cinema 16's European Shorts collection. The other two DVD releases are Jan Troell's Everlasting Moments [Maria Larssons eviga ögonblick] on the 15th and Carol Reed's 1940 thriller Night Train to Munich on the 22nd. Correction: (Thanks Blake) Everlasting Moments and Close-Up will also be Blu-ray releases (they weren't listed yesterday).

On the horizon from Criterion, I've been told two more Ozu films are coming. Also, they mentioned in the February newsletter that Andrea Arnold would soon be included in the Collection later this year, which must be in reference to Fish Tank through their partnership with IFC Films. It'd be great to see the two shorts Arnold made before her Oscar-winning Wasp (Dog and Milk) on their release.

It's About Fuckin' Time!

Just a day after I e-mailed Eric over at Filmbo's Chick Magnet about my utter disappointment in 2009's slate of announced DVD titles in the US, Warner goes and throws out five titles that were in dire need of release for 26 May. Those titles would be Michelangelo Antonioni's hot mess Zabriskie Point, David Cronenberg's M. Butterfly with Jeremy Irons, Barbara Sukowa and John Lone, John Boorman's Beyond Rangoon with Patricia Arquette, Frances McDormand and Spalding Gray, Hal Ashby's Lookin' to Get Out with Jon Voight and Ann-Margaret and Hugh Hudson's Revolution with Al Pacino, Donald Sutherland, Nastassja Kinski and Annie Lennox. 'bout fuckin' time is right!

Tuesday Weld, Where Have You Gone?

Play It As It Lays – dir. Frank Perry – 1972 – USA

When Sony Pictures Classics re-released Michelangelo Antonioni’s The Passenger in theatres back in October of 2005, Los Angeles Times writer Carina Chocano remarked that its release was “a stark indictment of what film culture has become.” Stating that The Passenger was “a night at the movies, in 1975,” the film stood as a sad reminder of the last great period of Hollywood cinema. Technically, The Passenger wasn’t a Hollywood movie (it was co-produced by Italy, France and Spain), but for all intensive purposes, it at least recalled the period when Hollywood made challenging films for adults. Frank Perry’s adaptation of Joan Didion’s Play It As It Lays wasn’t a rousing success for audiences or critics when it came out in 1972, but watching it now, it wasn’t just a case of missed connections but of a sad elegy of what used to be.

It would seem fitting that Play It As It Lays was, on the surface, an exposé of glamorous disillusionment through the story of Maria Wyeth (the wonderful Tuesday Weld), an actress with an existential crisis. My friend Bradford described the certain shock of going into a film like Play It As It Lays with contemporary Hollywood on the mind. “’They expect me to discern?!’ you catch yourself thinking, and then chide yourself for doing so.” Perry never allows for easiness in his vision just as Didion never allows for it in her material. The elliptical editing, reminiscent of some of Nicolas Roeg’s finer work, feels so alarming and so fresh, transporting the viewer into situations in medias res.

Universal, notorious for either holding onto films or unaware of their holding of rights, has yet to release Play It As It Lays on DVD, and I wouldn’t expect it any time soon. If it’s hard to imagine a film like this being financed and released by Hollywood today, it’s probably harder for the studios to understand why a film like this is so important and so tragically missed in the hearts of true film lovers.

Girlfriend Is Better

With BFI's Region 2 release of Michelangelo Antonioni's The Red Desert set for 20 October, could this mean that a US release is on its way? It's been an eternity since the Image disc went out of print, and it's not like that disc was pristine by any means. And while we're speaking Antonioni, why not throw Zabriskie Point, Identification of a Woman (which was released by Mr. Bongo Films in the UK this summer) and a re-release of Beyond the Clouds and La notte in the mix? I'll be happy with just Red Desert though. Does Criterion own the rights?

Koch Lorber in September + Others

I had previously announced that Koch Lorber will be releasing Céline Sciamma's Water Lilies [Naissance des pieuvres] on 2 September, but they will also be releasing Rodolphe Marconi's documentary Lagerfeld Confidential on the same day.

Additionally, Lionsgate has announced a Special Edition of Jeunet et Caro's Delicatessen for 26 August, though the shift of rights from Miramax to them is not something I'm aware of. They will also release a film called Kitchen Privileges, formally titled Housebound, starring Peter Sarsgaard, on the same day; the film is an update of Roman Polanski's Repulsion with Catherine Deneuve.

The Weinsteins have tentatively announced a special edition of Jet Li's Fist of Legend for 9 September, but I wouldn't hold my breath on this one, as the Weinsteins, particularly when under the Dragon Dynasty label, have delayed numerous releases. It should be the first time the film is available uncut and undubbed in the United States. Rhino is also set to release for the first time on DVD Ladies and Gentlemen, the Fabulous Stains starring a very young Diane Lane and Laura Dern on 30 September.

As mentioned by Eric, MGM will release their special edition of Night of the Hunter on 9 September. No additional material has been announced yet. Porchlight Entertainment will release the Canadian drama Normal, starring Carrie-Anne Moss, Callum Keith Rennie and Kevin Zegers on 7 October. Image will release the Pang brothers' Re-Cycle on 23 September, and HBO will have their original movie Recount, with Kevin Spacey, Laura Dern, Bob Balaban, Denis Leary and John Hurt, on 19 August. Miramax will have Joachim Trier's wonderful Reprise out on 2 September.

On the international front, Valeria Bruni-Tedeschi's Actrices [Actresses], which is owned by IFC in the US, will be released in France by Wild Side Vidéo on 26 June. France Télévisions will release Alexander Sokurov's Alexandra in France on 9 July. TF1 Vidéo released David Oelhoffen's Nos retrouvailles [In Your Wake] on 7 May. Lee Chang-dong's Cannes-winning Secret Sunshine was released on the same day from TF1. I cannot vouch for subtitles on any of these discs.

In the UK, Axiom Films released the unavailable-in-the-US Alice in the Cities from 1974 and directed by Wim Wenders. Arrow Films will have a special edition of Andrew Birkin's The Cement Garden, starring Charlotte Gainsbourg, on 23 June. Two months after Gaumont releases it in France, Yume Pictures brings Nagisa Oshima's Pleasures of the Flesh onto DVD on 25 August. Mr. Bongo Films has Antonioni's Identification of a Woman [Identificazione di una donna] on 30 June.

Soda Pictures will release the acclaimed La léon, from director Santiago Otheguy, on 25 August; Water Bearer Films should have the film available in the US later this year. Artificial Eye will release Catherine Breillat's The Last Mistress on the same day. Artificial Eye will also have Roy Andersson's You the Living on 14 July. BFI will also have two films from Terence Davies, whose documentary Of Time and the City was widely regarded as one of the finest films to play at this year's Cannes Film Festival, on 21 July: The Long Day Closes and The Terence Davies Trilogy.

For those without a region-free player, you can find Denys Arcand's L'âge des ténèbres [The Age of Ignorance] from Alliance Atlantis on 30 June. The film stars Diane Kruger and Rufus Wainwright, among others, concludes Arcand's trilogy which began with The Decline of the American Empire and The Barbarian Invasions, and still has no US distributor.

Who Knew?

Who knew Fellini would lend so well to gay pornography? Sure, you knew there was bound to be a not-so-clever homage to the director with a title like 8½, but that isn’t his only pornographic adaptation out there. New York-based pornographer Michael Lucas released last year, La dolce vita -- you guessed it, a hard-porn gay remake of the Fellini classic… and with high production values, too. Naturally, Anouk Aimée’s character was recast as a man, but, as seen above, they still used a woman, and not a tranny, for Anita Ekberg. With all of its decadence, can you really say you're surprised at this? Apparently the homosexual community is in high support of renowned world cinema classics, as La dolce vita isn’t the only film to get a queer update, though the only porn as far as I know. In the past year, remakes of both Antonioni’s L’avventura and Max Ophüls’ La ronde have been released on DVD, entitled Phoenix and Nine Lives, respectively. Though I don’t know for sure, I would imagine that Bergman’s Persona or even Cries and Whispers (though that would be really sleazy) would be ripe for a lesbian porn feature… and though a reworking of the classics would normally irk me to no end, I can’t say I don’t find these films, at least, inspired in their ambitious endeavors.

The Eclipse of a Man

A dark cloud appears to be hovering above the world of cinema as two of the grand artistes of the medium have passed on within twenty-four hours of one another. First, Ingmar Bergman, and now, Michelangelo Antonioni. Would it seem fitting that the two were rivals and disliked one another's work? They both questioned human existence through interpersonal relationships, yet their worlds and their visions were not the same. Antonioni isn't mimicked as much as Bergman, but his signature and effect on cinema is equally great. Then again, why would anyone think they could do Antonioni better than the man himself? His passion was intense, and his films were always controversial from the near-riot at the Cannes screening of L'avventura to the boundary-pushing sexuality of Blow-Up. When The Passenger was rereleased a few years ago, one critic lamented that at one point in history, the films of Antonioni were part of the mainstream. Now, you'll be lucky to get a pompous film student undergrad to sit through his work. The world may have changed, but Antonioni's work stayed the same... and it's still as poignant and arresting as it was over forty years ago.

Notable Filmography:
Eros (2004) - with Steven Soderbergh and Wong Kar-wai
Beyond the Clouds (1995) - with Wim Wenders
Identification of a Woman (1982)
The Passenger (1975)
Zabriskie Point (1970)
Blow-Up (1966)
The Red Desert (1964)
L'eclisse (1962)
La notte (1961)
L'avventura (1960)
Il grido (1957)

Other Assorted Filmography:
The Mystery of Oberwald (1981)
China (1972)
La amiche (1955)
Love in the City (1953)
Youth and Perversion/The Vanquished (1953)
Story of a Love Affair (1950)

Extracurricular:
Blow Out (1981) - Brian de Palma's ode to Blow-Up
Picnic at Hanging Rock (1975) - Don't tell me you don't see the influence
Z Channel: A Magnificent Obsession (2004) - Documentary about the famous Z Channel, which aired L'avventura unedited during its short run
Vive l'amour (1994) - Antonioni's influence struck a chord with Asian filmmakers, especially in Tsai Ming-liang's debut film
Performance (1970) - Though closer in relation to Bergman, the film contains plenty of characteristics of Blow-Up
Phoenix (2006) - A gay remake of L'avventura
Under the Sand (2000) - François Ozon does his best L'avventura with Charlotte Rampling as a woman whose husband disappears mysteriously
Climates (2006) - Antonioni was a big influence on Turkish director Nuri Bilge Ceylan for this film
Paris, Texas (1984) - Wim Wenders' classic, for which he took serious inspiration from Antonioni
Twentynine Palms (2003) - Hello, Zabriskie Point!

Bloated, Unstructured Wish List for DVD 2007

What this intends to be is exactly what the title suggests. A horrible flu + cold medicine + not being able to sleep = a lot of time wasted on the Internet and plenty of blog postings that don't require much eloquence or thought on my part. So, I've compiled a list of 40 (er, 41) DVDs that would make me smile if their respective studios decided to release them in this upcoming 2007. They are in no particular order, whatsoever.

Antonioni Adoration:

1. Red Desert (Il deserto rosso) - dir. Michelangelo Antonioni - 1964 - Italy/France
[NOTE: Available Region 1 from Image Entertainment, though highly out-of-print (and of mediocre quality). The disc usually goes for well over $100 on amazon.com; also available in France, Italy, and Russia without English subtitles]

2. Zabriskie Point - dir. Michelangelo Antonioni - 1970 - USA

3. Beyond the Clouds (Al di là delle nuvole) - dir. Michelangelo Antonioni, Wim Wenders - 1995 - Italy/France/Germany
[NOTE: Previously released and discontinued by Image. Available in France.]

Give Me Ken Russell:

4. The Devils - dir. Ken Russell - 1971 - UK

5. The Boyfriend - dir. Ken Russell - 1971 - UK/USA

6. Whore - dir. Ken Russell - 1991 - USA/UK

Oh, Derek Jarman:

7. The Garden - dir. Derek Jarman - 1990 - UK
[NOTE: Available in the U.K. and Japan, Region 2.]

8. Wittgenstein - dir. Derek Jarman - 1993 - UK
[NOTE: Available in Japan, Region 2.]

And, Oh, Peter Greenaway:

9. Drowning by Numbers - dir. Peter Greenaway - 1988 - UK/Netherlands
[NOTE: Available in Australia (Region 4) and Japan (Region 2), panned and scanned.]

10. Prospero's Books - dir. Peter Greenaway - 1991 - UK/Netherlands/France/Italy/Japan

Pre-Romance Breillat:

11. Sale comme un ange (Dirty Like an Angel) - dir. Catherine Breillat - 1991 - France

12. Tapage nocturne (Nocturnal Uproar) - dir. Catherine Breillat - 1979 - France

Y Buñuel:

13. The Exterminating Angel (El ángel exterminador) - dir. Luis Buñuel - 1962 - Mexico
[NOTE: Available in most countries. The U.K. version is region free.]

14. Tristana - dir. Luis Buñuel - 1970 - France/Italy/Spain
[NOTE: Available in many regions.]

¡Pedro!:

15. Labyrinth of Passion (El laberinto de pasiones) - dir. Pedro Almodóvar - 1982 - Spain

16. Pepi, Luci, Bom (Pepi, Luci, Bom y otras chicas del montón) - dir. Pedro Almodóvar - 1980 - Spain
[NOTE: Available Region 2 from the U.K. and Spain.]

Jodorowsky:

17. El topo - dir. Alejandro Jodorowsky - 1970 - Mexico
[NOTE: No existing media release of the film has ever been fully uncensored.]

18. The Holy Mountain - dir. Alejandro Jodorowsky - 1973 - Mexico/USA
[NOTE: Available in edited versions from Italy and Japan.]

And the Rest:

19. The Addiction - dir. Abel Ferrara - 1995 - USA
[NOTE: Available region 1 from Mexico, and in various European countries.]

20. À la folie (Six Days, Six Nights) - dir. Diane Kurys - 1994 - France
[NOTE: Only available in Australia.]

21. Before the Revolution (Prima della rivoluzione) - dir. Bernardo Bertolucci - 1964 - Italy
[NOTE: Available in Italy and Japan.]

22. The Castle (Das Schloß) - dir. Michael Haneke - 1997 - Austria/Germany
[NOTE: Available in Germany.]

23. Flaming Creatures - dir. Jack Smith - 1963 - USA

24. A Hole in My Heart (Ett Hål i mitt hjärta) - dir. Lukas Moodysson - 2004 - Sweden/Denmark
[NOTE: Available for rent exclusively from Netflix.]

25. Johnny Guitar - dir. Nicholas Ray - 1954 - USA

26. Last Year at Marienbad (L'année dernière à Marienbad) - dir. Alain Resnais - 1961 - France/Italy
[NOTE: Formerly available from Fox Lorber, currently available in the U.K.]

27. Love & Human Remains - dir. Denys Arcand - 1993 - Canada
[NOTE: Available in the U.K.]

28. Made in U.S.A. - dir. Jean-Luc Godard - 1966 - France
[NOTE: Available in France, Japan, and Italy.]

29. The Magician (Ansiktet) - dir. Ingmar Bergman - 1958 - Sweden
[NOTE: Available throughout Europe and Japan.]

30. Mala noche - dir. Gus Van Sant - 1985 - USA

31. Mon homme (My Man) - dir. Bertrand Blier - 1996 - France

32. Multiple Maniacs - dir. John Waters - 1970 - USA

33. Napoleon - dir. Abel Gance - 1927 - France
[NOTE: Available in many countries.]

34. No Skin Off My Ass - dir. Bruce LaBruce - 1991 - Canada
[NOTE: Available in the U.K. as a double-bill with Super 8 1/2, both edited for content.]

35. Nowhere - dir. Gregg Araki - 1997 - France/USA
[NOTE: Available in France.]


36. The Passion of Darkly Noon - dir. Philip Ridley - 1995 - UK/Germany/Belgium
[NOTE: Available Region 1 in Canada.]

37. The Reflecting Skin - dir. Philip Ridley - 1990 - UK/Canada
[NOTE: Available in Japan.]

38. Rosetta - dir. Jean-Pierre Dardenne, Luc Dardenne - 1999 - Belgium/France
[NOTE: Available in France and U.K.]

39. Shy People - dir. Andrei Konchalovsky - 1987 - USA

40. Trouble Every Day - dir. Claire Denis - 2001 - France/Germany/Japan
[NOTE: Available for rent on Netflix with a Hong Kong NTSC disc, available most everywhere else too.]

And one to grow on...

41. A Portrait of Jason - dir. Shirley Clarke - 1967 - USA
[NOTE: Available in the U.K. from Second Run.]