DVD Coming Attractions, Part 1

Like Warner and Universal before them, MGM has jumped onto the DVD-R bandwagon, with over thirty titles to be available by the end of the month. They started rolling out films in December, with titles such as Carol Reed's Trapeze (which received a proper DVD release from MGM in the UK), Bruce Beresford's Rich in Love with Albert Finney, Jill Clayburgh, Kyle Maclachlan, Piper Laurie and Alfre Woodard, Robert Wise's Two for the Seesaw with Robert Mitchum and Shirley MacLaine and Sidney Lumet's The Group with Candice Bergen. Since then, Gavin Millar's Dreamchild with Ian Holm, Lumt's Garbo Talks with Anne Bancroft, Morgan J. Freeman's Hurricane Streets, Hal Ashby's The Landlord with Beau Bridges and Lee Grant, Lumet's The Offence with Sean Connery and Ken Russell's Valentino with Rudolf Nureyev as Rudolf Valentino have been added. Andrzej Wajda's Man of Iron [Człowiek z żelaza], the sequel to his Man of Marble [Człowiek z marmuru] which both star Jerzy Radziwiłowicz and Kystyna Janda, will be available on the 20th. Other titles available for pre-order, though without a date, include François Truffaut's La chambre verte, re-titled The Vanishing Fiancée, which like Man of Iron (which won the Palme d'Or in 1981) and Valentino (mid-range Russell), is more deserving of a proper DVD release.

After a big month in March, the Warner Archive hasn't added anything terribly noteworthy to their collection. However, browsing through Netflix's Instant Watching titles, I noticed a handful of films still unavailable on DVD in the US: Raoul Walsh's Saskatchewan, Richard Brooks' Looking for Mr. Goodbar, Joseph Losey's The Go-Between, Bigas Luna's Chambermaid on the Titanic [La femme de chambre du Titanic] and Margarethe von Trotta's The Promise [Versprechen].

Calling All Ken Russell Fans!

Apparently voting is the way to go these days, for both the Warner Archive Collection and Criterion Blu-ray, and now MGM. Check their page to vote for a DVD release of Ken Russell's The Music Lovers, his take on the life of Tchaikovsky starring Glenda Jackson and Richard Chamberlain, and any of the others you want to come out. Ken Loach's Ladybird Ladybird, Nick Broomfield's Diamond Skulls, Mark Romanek's Static with Amanda Plummer and Sergei Bodrov's The Prisoner of the Mountains (which is actually already on DVD and still in print as part of MGM's 'World Films' series) are other options. I'm pretty sure Russell's woefully underrated The Boyfriend belongs to Warner now (though I could be wrong). Make it count! Us Russell fans have been suffering too long. Thanks, Eric.

Lisztomania on DVD, Pasolini and Anger on Blu-ray in the UK

Kino has pushed the date for Amos Gitai's One Day You'll Understand until 11 August, though they've announced Amat Escalante's Los bastardos for 16 June. It looks like Criterion's release of Bergman Island will not be the full-length Swedish version, but the US edit instead. I don't know what's missing from the US cut. And finally, The Weinstein Company announced Wayne Kramer's Crossing Over, with Harrison Ford, Ashley Judd, Ray Liotta and Jim Sturgess, for 3 June.

Here's the semi-annual update of upcoming DVDs/Blu-rays in the UK. The titles in red indicate films not on DVD in the US.

16 March

Black Snake - dir. Russ Meyer - Arrow Films

30 March

Celia - dir. Ann Turner - Secondrun

6 April

The Béla Tarr Collection (which includes Werckmeister Harmonies, Damnation and The Man from London) - Artificial Eye [also available separately]
The Silence of Lorna [Le silence de Lorna] - dir. the Dardenne Brothers - Drakes Avenue

27 April

Cold Prey 2 [Fritt vilt 2] - dir. Mats Stenberg - Momentum
Daisies [Sedmikrasky] - dir. Vera Chytilová - Secondrun
Gardens in Autumn [Jardins en automne] - dir. Otar Iosseliani - Artificial Eye
Julia - dir. Erick Zonca - Artificial Eye
Last of the Crazy People [Le dernier des fous] - dir. Laurent Achard - Peccadillo
Lemon Tree [Etz Limon] - dir. Eran Riklis - Unanimous Pictures
Paris Is Burning - dir. Jennie Livingston - Second Sight
Pier Paolo Pasolini's Trilogy of Life (The Decameron, The Canterbury Tales, Arabian Nights) - BFI - DVD and Blu-ray
Sometimes a Great Notion - dir. Paul Newman - Optimum Releasing

4 May

He Ran All the Way - dir. John Berry - Optimum Releasing
Lisztomania - dir. Ken Russell - Digital Classics
Spring and Port Wine - dir. Peter Hammond - Optimum Releasing
The Young Savages - dir. John Frankenheimer - Optimum Releasing

11 May

6 Films by Takeshi Kitano (Sontaine, Kids Return, Violent Cop, Getting Any?, Boiling Point, A Scene at the Sea) - Second Sight [all are available separately, not in a box]
Life Is a Long Quiet River [La vie est un long fleuve tranquille] - dir. Étienne Chatiliez - Artificial Eye

18 May

Caro Diario - dir. Nanni Moretti - Arrow Films
Lemon Popsicle [Eskimo Limon, aka Going All the Way] - dir. Boaz Davidson - Arrow Films
The Magick Lantern Cycle (Fireworks, Puce Moment, Rabbit's Moon, Eaux d'artifice, The Inauguration of the Pleasure Dome, Scorpio Rising, Kustom Kar Kommandos, Invocation of My Demon Brother, Lucifer Rising) - dir. Kenneth Anger - BFI - DVD and Blu-ray
Parade - dir. Jacques Tati - BFI

25 May

Beautiful Losers - dir. Aaron Rose, Joshua Leonard - Revolver
The Bed Sitting Room - dir. Richard Lester - BFI - DVD and Blu-ray
The Michael Haneke Trilogy (The Seventh Continent, Benny's Video, 71 Fragments of a Chronlogy of Chance) - Artificial Eye
Ordeal by Innocence - dir. Desmond Davis - Optimum Releasing
Pumping Iron - dir. George Butler, Roger Fiore - Lionsgate

1 June

A Christmas Tale [Un conte de Noël] - dir. Arnaud Desplechin - Drakes Avenue

8 June

Before I Forget [Avant que j'oublie] - dir. Jacques Nolot - Peccadillo
The Class [Entre les murs] - dir. Laurent Cantet - Artificial Eye
Milk - dir. Gus Van Sant - Momentum - DVD and Blu-ray
Odette - dir. Herbert Wilcox - Optimum Releasing
Partner - dir. Bernardo Bertolucci - BFI
La vallée - dir. Barbet Schroeder - BFI

22 June

Vicky Cristina Barcelona - dir. Woody Allen - Optimum Releasing - DVD and Blu-ray

29 June

Che [Parts 1 and 2] - dir. Steven Soderbergh - Optimum
Wendy and Lucy - dir. Kelly Reichardt - Soda Pictures

2009 Notebook: Vol 5

Expect an expanded version of the 2009 Notebook later this week! Who'd have guessed... three films with Rose McGowan and two with Traci Lords?

The New Favorites

Salomè - dir. Carmelo Bene - 1972 - Italy - N/A - with Carmelo Bene, Donyale Luna, Lydia Mancinelli, Alfiero Vincenti, Veruschka

The Good

Frozen River - dir. Courtney Hunt - 2008 - USA - Sony Pictures Classics - with Melissa Leo, Misty Upham, Charlie McDermott, Michael O'Keefe, Mark Boone Junior

Middle of the Road (though perhaps better than expected)

Nick & Norah's Infinite Playlist - dir. Peter Sollett - 2008 - USA - Sony Pictures - with Michael Cera, Kat Dennings, Ari Graynor, Aaron Yoo, Rafi Gavron, Alexis Dziena, Jonathan B. Wright, Jay Baruchel, John Cho, Zahcary Booth, Bishop Allen

Shitfests

The Reader - dir. Stephen Daldry - 2008 - USA/Germany - Weinstein Company - with Kate Winslett, David Kross, Ralph Fiennes, Bruno Ganz, Lena Olin, Susanne Lothar, Alexandra Maria Lara

Revisited: The Old Favorites

Death Proof - dir. Quentin Tarantino - 2007 - USA - Weinstein Company - with Kurt Russell, Zoë Bell, Rosario Dawson, Vanessa Ferlito, Tracie Thoms, Sydney Poitier, Jordan Ladd, Rose McGowan, Mary Elizabeth Winstead, Quentin Tarantino, Eli Roth, Marcy Harriell, Omar Doom

The Devils - dir. Ken Russell - 1971 - UK - Warner - with Vanessa Redgrave, Oliver Reed, Dudley Sutton, Max Adrian, Gemma Jones, Michael Gothard, Murray Melvin, Georgina Hale, Christopher Logue, Graham Armitage

The Doom Generation - dir. Gregg Araki - 1995 - France/USA - Lionsgate - with Rose McGowan, James Duval, Johnathon Schaech, Nicky Katt, Parker Posey, Margaret Cho, Perry Farrell, Heidi Fleiss, Dewey Weber, Amanda Bearse, Skinny Puppy, Dustin Nguyen, Lauren Tewes, Johanna Went

Nowhere - dir. Gregg Araki - 1997 - France/USA - Fine Line Features - with James Duval, Rachel True, Nathan Bexton, Kathleen Robertson, Christina Applegate, Jordan Ladd, Scott Caan, Guillermo Diaz, Jeremy Jordan, Sarah Lassez, Ryan Phillippe, Heather Graham, Joshua Gibran Mayweather, Alan Boyce, Debi Mazar, Chiara Mastroianni, Mena Suvari, Jaason Simmons, Thyme Lewis, Beverly D'Angelo, John Ritter, Charlotte Rae, Traci Lords, Rose McGowan, Shannen Doherty, Denise Richards, Teresa Hill, Kevin Light, Christopher Knight, Eve Plumb, Lauren Tewes, David Leisure, Gibby Haynes

Rosemary's Baby - dir. Roman Polanski - 1968 - USA - Paramount - with Mia Farrow, John Cassavetes, Ruth Gordon, Sidney Blackmer

Revisited: Les Autres

Serial Mom - dir. John Waters - 1994 - USA - Savoy/Focus Features - with Kathleen Turner, Sam Waterson, Ricki Lake, Matthew Lillard, Scott Morgan, Patricia Dunnock, Justin Whalin, Mink Stole, Mary Jo Catlett, Walt MacPherson, Traci Lords, Suzanne Somers

Ain't Got Time To Read! *

The limp I am currently exhibiting has nothing to do with my triumphant return to the gym after several years of very enjoyable, though enfattening lethargy. It's because I decided to walk around a town centre for about an hour yesterday morning, trying to find cheap copies of The Orange Box (note to bargain hunting gamers; even cheap copies are not that cheap yet), and then pacing around Waterstone's for ages, even though I wasn't going to buy anything. These are the things I do when I'm very very tired and my judgement is as impaired as that of a drunken businessman with haunted eyes trying with manic urgency to buy magnums of champagne for disinterested ladies even though his bank account is empty and his Ermenegildo Zegna shirt is caked in vomit.

With a new interest in health and the very likely possibility of long job searches ahead of me, my reading time is in danger of being severely cut into, with the result that my to-read list may explode in size if I'm not careful. I'm already just plodding through Naomi Novik's Empire of Ivory (which has already been definitively covered here by Canyon), not because I'm not enjoying it (I am, a lot), but just because I keep wanting to grab every other book from my shelves and read them all at the same time just to reduce the size of that list. It's like a multi-book pile-up in my head. Even before I get to the books I have at home, yesterday I strongly considered getting Peter F. Hamilton's The Dreaming Void, John Gray's Black Mass (though it would probably annoy the shit out of me, even taking into account this PWNing by populist philosopher and obviousness-stater A.C. Grayling), Matt Mason's The Pirate's Dilemma, and Barack Obama's The Audacity of Hope. Canyon pointed out that I would probably never read it and would just stick it on a shelf somewhere, and I probably would, between my unread copy of My Life by Bill Clinton and my unread copy of this bigass book on Nixon. Nevertheless, it's important to know what he's like, especially now that it seems almost certain it will be him going up against my boys.


Even without buying yet more books (as well as the ones on our Amazon.com list, including Matt Taibbi's The Great Derangement and pretty much every book linked by the Worst President Ever tag), my to-read list is already way too big. At the moment I plan to follow Empire of Ivory with Mass Effect: Revelation by Drew Karpyshyn, which could well be a total waste of my time, but I wanted to get through it before I play Bioware's Mass Effect, and by "play" I mean "become obsessive about for about a week and then stop playing due to time constraints, and never go back to, just like I did with Jade Empire". After that, another Naomi book, this time The Shock Doctrine by Naomi Klein, yet another book I got as a hardback (as a very much-appreciated Christmas present) and have yet to read even though it is now out as a paperback. The large amount of unread hardbacks on our shelves drives Canyon into fits of apoplexy, and I really can't argue with that.

So, that's two books right there, and that's not counting the dozens of others I have my eye on right now, such as George Crile's Charlie Wilson's War, James Dallesandro's 1906, Greg Bear's Quantico, Gene Wolfe's Book of the New Sun, Tim Weiner's Legacy of Ashes (another much-appreciated but unread hardback Christmas present that is about to come out in paperback), David Mitchell's Black Swan Green, Patrick O' Brian's Aubrey-Maturin series, and the Mass Effect Strategy Guide. Yes yes, this is all a lie. I'll most probably read the large amounts of comics I have filling our spare room. Even ones by Brian Michael Bendis, though hopefully they won't involve semi-naked women being humiliated by supervillains, or pissy, defensive, insulting jokes about the justified criticism just because he knows the blogosphere really are onto something.

Why am I blithering on about this here? Because while reading today's newspapers I found a couple more to add to the pile, and I've not yet bought them, though I really must. Guardian economics editor Larry Elliott, and Dan Atkinson, have written a book on the illusory magic of The Market, called The Gods That Failed. It sounds like a nice companion piece to Thomas Frank's One Market Under God, which I have talked about before, and think is essential reading for everyone, be they right-wing, left-wing, fiscal conservatives, blinkered laissez-faire obsessives, chrometophobic Socialists, Scrooge McDucks, or sentient coins of the realm. The Elliott/Atkinson could be as good. Here are two extracts from the book, if you're curious.

The other book I discovered tonight is Joseph Lanza's Phallic Frenzy: Ken Russell and His Films, partially because that's an awesome title, but mostly because it sounds very entertaining. Ken Russell discussed it in this column in The Times, and this section definitely appeals to me:

[The] chapter revealing stories behind the scenes on Altered States is nothing short of revelatory - I appreciate the eye-opening account, now that the other side has had its say. It was with the stocky New Yorker and respected novelist Paddy Chayefsky that I had my heavyweight bout. He was the impossible-to-please writer-producer of the sci-fi epic about the effect of mind-bending drugs on a Harvard scientist, Dr Jessup. We sparred from the start, over the high-falutin' hi-sci dialogue, the colour of the set, the luncheon script sessions, the meetings over Sanka (a brand of decaffeinated coffee) and pressed turkey sandwiches, camera angles, tracking shots and over Paddy taking the actors aside for private chats on how to play the scene.

We slugged it out round after round, as Lanza details with quotes from all sides. And it all came to a head when I lost it on the phone and gave Paddy a final tongue-lashing. “Why don't you take your turkey sandwiches and your Sanka and stuff it up your ass and let me get on with the f***ing film!” Now, that's literature.

Awesome. Altered States is one of my all-time favourite movies, and there isn't enough literature on the making of it, so this is automatically an essential purchase. Still, how will I fit all of this in? Life is filled with distractions, both better than reading and far far worse than reading, and they're not going away any time soon. If I was even more misanthropic than I sometimes can be when under large amounts of stress, I could wish for a similar situation to that in Time Enough At Last, but that Rod Serling would probably screw me but good.


Guess I'll just have to clear time by not watching TV instead.

* As the title suggests, this post is dedicated to the memory of Sgt. Blain Cooper, brave soldier and sexual Tyrannosaurus, regrettably killed by a Predator armed with a plasmacaster, whatever the hell that is.


He, and his chawin' tabaccy, shall be missed.