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.

DVD Release Update, 29 July: Buñuel, Jarmusch, Egoyan, Claudette Colbert

Luis Buñuel's Death in the Garden will make its DVD premiere on 27 October from Tranflux Films; dates have also been set for Atom Egoyan's Adoration, on DVD and Blu-ray, and Jim Jarmusch's The Limits of Control, only on DVD it seems. Universal also announced a box-set entitled The Claudette Colbert Legacy Collection, with six films new to DVD, including Mitchell Leisen's No Time for Love and Ernst Lubitsch's Bluebeard's Eighth Wife.

- OMG/HaHaHa, 2007, d. Morgan Jon Fox, Water Bearer Films, 29 September
- Adoration, 2008, d. Atom Egoyan, Sony Pictures, also on Blu-ray, 13 October
- Every Little Step, 2008, d. Adam Del Deo, James D. Stern, Sony Pictures, 13 October
- Jack Brown Genius, 1994, d. Tony Hiles, Lionsgate, 13 October, w. Martin Csokas
- Death in the Garden [La mort en ce jardin], 1956, d. Luis Buñuel, Transflux Films, 27 October, w. Simone Signoret, Michel Piccoli
- Five Element Ninjas, 1982, d. Chang Cheh, Tokyo Shock, 27 October
- The Narrows, 2008, d. François Velle, Image Entertainment, also on Blu-ray, 3 November, w. Vincent D'Onofrio, Kevin Zegers
- Say Anything..., 1989, d. Cameron Crowe, 20th Century Fox, 20th Anniversary Edition, also on Blu-ray, 3 November
- Franklyn, 2008, d. Gerald McMorrow, Image Entertainment, also on Blu-ray, 17 November, w. Eva Green, Sam Riley, Ryan Phillippe
- The Limits of Control, 2009, d. Jim Jarmusch, Focus Features, 17 November

The Claudette Colbert Legacy Collection, Universal, 3 November

- Three-Cornered Moon, 1933, d. Elliott Nugent
- Maid of Salem, 1937, d. Frank Lloyd
- I Met Him in Paris, 1937, d. Wesley Ruggles
- Bluebeard's Eighth Wife, 1938, d. Ernst Lubitsch
- No Time for Love, 1943, d. Mitchell Leisen
- The Egg and I, 1947, d. Chester Erskine

CriterionForum's Poll of the Best Films of the 1990s

Every so often on the message boards at CriterionForum (no affiliation with Criterion itself), there's a user poll which catalogs the best films of a given time period. It looks like we're on our second time around for each of the decades, and for the first time, I participated in the poll for the Best Films of the 1990s. When the poll was conducted in 2005 for the 90s, Wes Anderson's Rushmore was on top; it's been replaced by Jim Jarmusch's Dead Man this time around. I won't post my own personal list, as I didn't put a whole lot of thought into my choices, and there's probably quite a few films I'd be ashamed to say I haven't seen, but here were the results when compiled earlier this month.

01. Dead Man - d. Jim Jarmusch
02. Chungking Express - d. Wong Kar-wai
03. The Thin Red Line - d. Terrence Malick
04. Eyes Wide Shut - d. Stanley Kubrick
05. Sátántangó - d. Béla Tarr
06. Happy Together - d. Wong Kar-wai
07. A Brighter Summer Day - d. Edward Yang
08. Goodfellas - d. Martin Scorsese
09. The Double Life of Véronique [La double-vie de Véronique] - d. Krzysztof Kieslowski
10. Three Colours: Red [Trois couleurs: Rouge] - d. Krzysztof Kieslowski

11. Rushmore - d. Wes Anderson
12. Three Colours: Blue [Trois couleurs: Bleu] - d. Krzysztof Kieslowski
13. The Wind Will Carry Us - d. Abbas Kiarostami
14. Safe - d. Todd Haynes
15. Miller's Crossing - d. Joel Coen, Ethan Coen
16. Magnolia - d. Paul Thomas Anderson
17. The Big Lebowski - d. Joel Coen
18. Fucking Åmål [Show Me Love] - d. Lukas Moodysson
19. Irma Vep - d. Olivier Assayas
20. Close Up - d. Abbas Kiarostami

21. Rosetta - d. Jean-Pierre Dardenne, Luc Dardenne
22. Van Gogh - d. Maurice Pialat
23. Boogie Nights - d. Paul Thomas Anderson
24. To Sleep with Anger - d. Charles Burnett
25. Short Cuts - d. Robert Altman
26. Life and Nothing But [La vie et rien d'autre] - d. Bertrand Tavernier
27. Ratcatcher - d. Lynne Ramsay
28. Twin Peaks: Fire Walk with Me - d. David Lynch
29. Pulp Fiction - d. Quentin Tarantino
30. Lost Highway - d. David Lynch

31. All About My Mother [Todo sobre mi madre] - d. Pedro Almodóvar
32. Fallen Angels - d. Wong Kar-wai
33. Husbands and Wives - d. Woody Allen
34. Exotica - d. Atom Egoyan
35. Groundhog Day - d. Harold Ramis
36. Raise the Red Lantern - d. Zhang Yimou
37. Jackie Brown - d. Quentin Tarantino
38. Unforgiven - d. Clint Eastwood
39. Naked - d. Mike Leigh
40. La promesse - d. Jean-Pierre Dardenne, Luc Dardenne

41. Fargo - d. Joel Coen, Ethan Coen
42. Naked Lunch - d. David Cronenberg
43. Goodbye South Goodbye - d. Hou Hsiao-hsien
44. Buffalo '66 - d. Vincent Gallo
45. The Taste of Cherry - d. Abbas Kiarostami
46. The Hole - d. Tsai Ming-liang
47. Underground - d. Emir Kusturica
48. Lessons of Darkness [Lektionen in Finsternis] - d. Werner Herzog
49. Wallace & Gromit: The Wrong Trousers - d. Nick Park
50. La belle noiseuse - d. Jacques Rivette

51. Crash - d. David Cronenberg
52. Barton Fink - d. Joel Coen, Ethan Coen
53. The Silence of the Lambs - d. Jonathan Demme
54. Time Regained [Le temps retrouvé] - d. Raoul Ruiz
55. La cérémonie - d. Claude Chabrol
55. The Power of Kangwon Province - d. Hong Sang-soo
57. L.A. Confidential - d. Curtis Hanson
58. Ed Wood - d. Tim Burton
59. Sink or Swim - d. Su Friedrich
60. Princess Mononoke - d. Hayao Miyazaki

61. Days of Being Wild - d. Wong Kar-wai
62. Only Yesterday - d. Isao Takahata
63. Beau travail - d. Claire Denis
63. Heat - d. Michael Mann
65. Mother and Son - d. Aleksandr Sokurov
66. Fight Club - d. David Fincher
67. Lovers on the Bridge [Les amants du Pont-Neuf] - d. Leos Carax
67. Being John Malkovich - d. Spike Jonze
69. After Life - d. Hirokazu Koreeda
70. L'humanité - d. Bruno Dumont

71. El sol del membrillo [The Dream of Life] - d. Víctor Erice
72. Flowers of Shanghai - d. Hou Hsiao-hsien
72. My Own Private Idaho - d. Gus Van Sant
74. Nénette & Boni - d. Claire Denis
74. Trust - d. Hal Hartley
76. Funny Games - d. Michael Haneke
77. The Long Day Closes - d. Terence Davies
78. Breaking the Waves - d. Lars von Trier
79. The Kingdom [Riget] - d. Morten Arnfred, Lars von Trier
80. La haine - d. Mathieu Kassovitz
80. Hana-bi [Fireworks] - d. Takeshi Kitano

82. Hoop Dreams - d. Steve James
83. The Match Factory Girl [Tulitikkutehtaan tyttö] - d. Aki Kaurismäki
84. The Straight Story - d. David Lynch
85. JFK - d. Oliver Stone
85. Whisper of the Heart - d. Yoshifumi Kondo
87. Election - d. Alexander Payne
87. The Sweet Hereafter - d. Atom Egoyan
89. Bullets Over Broadway - d. Woody Allen
89. Drifting Clouds [Kauas pilvet karkaavat] - d. Aki Kaurismäki

91. Sonatine - d. Takashi Kitano
92. The Celebration [Festen] - d. Thomas Vinterberg
92. A Moment of Innocence - d. Mohsen Makhmalbaf
94. Waiting for Guffman - d. Christopher Guest
95. Seven - d. David Fincher
96. Before Sunrise - d. Richard Linklater
97. The Player - d. Robert Altman
98. The Age of Innocence - d. Martin Scorsese
99. Rebels of the Neon God - d. Tsai Ming-liang
99. Slacker - d. Richard Linklater

Of the list, 6 have never been released on DVD in the US: A Brighter Summer Day, The Power of Kangwon Province, Only Yesterday, El sol del membrillo, Trust, The Long Day Closes, Whisper of the Heart and Drifting Clouds.

Without a Paddle

The Limits of Control - dir. Jim Jarmusch - 2009 - USA/Spain/Japan - Focus Features

Written for Gone Cinema Poaching.

Though also structured around a series of vignettes, Jim Jarmusch's latest, The Limits of Control, is a welcome departure from his last two films, Broken Flowers and Coffee and Cigarettes. Bearing a much closer resemblance to Dead Man and, perhaps, Ghost Dog: The Way of the Samurai, The Limits of Control is Jarmusch at his most coded and narratively "avant garde." Setting aside his usual influences (Yasujiro Ozu and Seijun Suzuki, for example), Jarmusch opts for a strange fusion of Jean-Pierre Melville, Alejandro Jodorowsky and, even, Jacques Rivette. Using these comparisons might suggest a dismissive act of deduction, but, like so many of his other films, The Limits of Control owes everything to the familiar and mysterious world of the cinema.

Though I suspect this is how I feel about most films that would qualify, it isn't until Tilda Swinton appears onscreen that the film begins to work. With a white-blonde wig and cowboy hat, Swinton delivers the film's best line, "Movies are like dreams you're never really sure you've had." The line was taken directly from a speech Swinton gave at the San Francisco Film Festival in 2006 and ultimately serves as both the guiding light of The Limits of Control as well as the point of surrender. As the third visitor for Isaach De Bankolé, the hero of the film simply credited as 'Lone Man,' her arrival onscreen is when the viewer is forced into deciding whether or not they wish to accompany Jarmusch and De Bankolé on their strange, covert journey through Spain.

In a series of arcane, frequently misleading codes, the viewer follows De Bankolé on this cryptic quest, adorned with mostly familiar faces (De Bankolé, Swinton, Bill Murray, Alex Descas, John Hurt and Youki Kudoh have all starred in at least one other film by the director). While the partnerships with cinematographer Christopher Doyle and musicians Boris and Sunn O))) are firsts for their director, they certainly recall the directors' best visual and musical collaborations. In the end, what one takes from The Limits of Control is a matter of decision and acceptance. The film never reaches the unbeatable heights of the films it aspires to (Céline and Julie Go Boating and The Holy Mountain, to name a few), but I'd be ridiculous to slight any film that. For the patient viewer though, The Limits of Control has a lot to offer and is the most assured film the director has made in a decade.

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

Adventures In Awesome: Want! Now! (5)

A bunch of fun things happened to me tonight. Seeing a really really good episode of Party Down (essential viewing for all Veronica Mars fans), playing Mario Kart Wii with Canyon (ruined only by the utterly useless driving from Funky Kong. Stupid fucking funky monkey!), seeing this incredible trailer for Werner Herzog's Bad Lieutenant: Port of Call New Orleans...



Essential viewing for fans of Nicolas Cage (surely everyone with any sense), Ghost Rider (that would be Canyon), and post-Knight Rider Val Kilmer (probably no one). Even better than that (even though that is pretty damn good), I found out about a TV show I must see immediately. Even though I'm in the UK, I try my best to keep up with whatever interesting shows have come out of the US, but that's a relatively new thing. Back in 1991, there would have been no way to stumble across the obscure experimental non-comedy Fishing With John, a thoroughly bizarre and lovable idea from the mind of musician and actor John Lurie, who made such an impression on me in a run of 80s independent movies.



This article on the Criterion Collection website will tell you all you need to know about it, and more. Of course, with money being as tight as it is, I shouldn't be coveting it, as it is readily available on YouTube, but this really is the kind of thing I would love to have in my collection, just so it's not totally full of Jerry Bruckheimer and Joel Silver movies. Plus, who would want Criterion to go out of business before they get to do a special version of The Island to go with their Armageddon and The Rock DVDs? (Yeah, Ozu, when did you last crash a space rock into Paris? Huh?)

Pick Flick

While scoping the Amazon page for this movie's Blu-ray release, I noticed a promotion from The Criterion Collection in which users can vote for which, out of five choices, film you'd like to see Criterion release in high-def format. The films are all solid, deserving choices: Louis Malle's Au revoir les enfants, Jim Jarmusch's Down by Law, James Ivory's Howards End, Masaki Kobayashi's Kwaidan and Peter Weir's Picnic and Hanging Rock. It was strange to see Kwaidan among the picks, as its DVD release is one of the more notorious in the collection (the DVD is not the complete version of the film). So, happy voting to you.

Off to Cannes We Go!

In just a matter of hours, the line-up for this year's Cannes Film Festival will be announced. It's already been announced that Pixar's latest Up! will open the fest, but the rest of the films are less certain. With new films from Michael Haneke, Tsai Ming-liang, Lars von Trier, Jacques Rivette, Claire Denis, Abbas Kiarostami, Jane Campion, Alain Resnais, Gaspar Noé, Patrice Chéreau, Jacques Audiard, Werner Herzog, Fatih Akin, the Coen Brothers and Andrea Arnold all finished (or at least close to), the line-up could be an exciting one. Expect Pedro Almodóvar's Broken Embraces [Los abrazos rotos], Quentin Tarantino's Inglorious Basterds and Jim Jarmusch's The Limits of Control to screen, either in or out of competition.