(Untitled)

[psyched_out]

rest in peace derek bailey, the world is a sadder place without your presence but your albums (and your wonderful book on improvisation) will remind us of your wit & your trailblazing approach to playing the guitar - i can hear him now: "i'm just what heaven needs...another fucking guitarist

Comments

[ikahana]

Derek Bailey died? I had no idea. How sad.

Criterion has spoiled me. If they are a 10, then the next closest DVD folks would rank no more than a 4. Kino puts out some great stuff - stuff I want to own rather than rent, but they don't put half as much, not even a fourth as much attention to transfers and commentaries and packaging as Criterion.

Yesterday, after we had finished watching a few rentals including one with a commentary by one of my favorite directors (Greg Araki), I decided that we would send them back without having to pay a late fee rather than keep them longer and listen to the special features, and then I decided right there on the spot that I'm probably not going to listen to director commentaries anymore. I'm sure there are some good ones, and maybe Araki does a good one, but after suffering through so many that actually take away from the experience of the film rather than add to it, I think I'm going to stop watching/listening to them. I much prefer the ones that Criterion adds, using film critics and scholars and folks who add so much to the experience. I figure that if the director hasn't told us all he needs to tell us during the film, he blew it. After that it is up to other people to dissect and discuss and enhance, and Criterion leads the pack.

I've rented that Bergman series - and while they are great, great films - compare any of those to the treatment that Criterion has done with his films. And if memory serves me correctly the non-Criterion ones aren't even widescreen. Shame.

Ah yes, the story of Liv & Ingmar - it weaves through the majority of his best known films, and continued after he stopped (until last year) making films when she filmed a story that he wrote based on their relationship. Many of the Criterion films have interviews with him where he discusses his relationships with women, and I believe one has her talking about him as well.

You know I love me some Bergman!

Pauline Kael - you must read her, because everyone must. But I disagree with her take on 85% of all films and find her to be a nasty ol' grouch. But a great read - and she was fascinating to watch back in the day when she would show up on TV. Also, she was married to James Broughton - the very one who has a biography that made it to my list of Essential Reads last night in my Epic Post. Her books are pretty easy to find in used bookstores and cheap on line (used, most of them are out of print). Generally speaking, she hates the arty stuff. I always thought it was because she was bitter her husband was Queer - since his films are nothing but experimental art films. She does make you think - and that is a good thing.

[psyched_out]

yeah, derek died on christmas day from motor neuron disease, according to what i've read - he'd been going back and forth between barcelona and london for treatments over the past few months...

you're right, i forgot to mention that "the passion of anna" wasn't even in widescreen - or at least, not at the proper ratio...

bergman is someone who has fascinated me, but up until now i've only seen a few of his films ("the seventh seal", "wild strawberries", "smiles of a summer night", and "persona"), and i know virtually nothing about him - so i hope to get a good education with this films - i read up on "fanny and alexander" and realize that the TV version is considered to be infinitely superior to the film version, but at a price that cheap i thought it was worth a shot...

this is part of why i'm interested in film books - i base almost all of my knowledge on a guide to 4 star movies that i bought in a bargain bin, and to a book about midnight movies written by village voice critic j. hoberman (oh, i like his writing too) - the interview i read with kael (by kristine mckenna, who i'm assuming you know) was really lively and that's what made her stick out with me - i can't actually remember her feelings about movies, other than she loved "my dinner with andre" and hated "last tango in paris" (of which i've seen neither)...i thought she loved bergman, but maybe that's because some of her writings were in the criterion package for "smiles..."

so who do you favor for film criticism?

oh, and i didn't comment in your post but thanks for the book recommendations - i've neither read nor heard of any of them, but i feel i should rectify that soon...

[ikahana]

"so who do you favor for film criticism?"

Jonathan Rosenbaum. NO question. All others are no-nothing crayon scribblers compared to him. You can read his stuff on the Chicago Weekly website, but he has several books out there as well, which sometimes can be a bit harder to find. I think I'm finally going to order his latest - which is now about a year old.

Bergman pretty much put it all in his films, so if you keep up with watching them you will get a fairly decent take on his life. It goes something like this - God/bad, Women/good - both create torment and angst. Death = The End.

I love watching him being interviewed because he laughs and smiles so much.

[psyched_out]

oh, now that you mention it rosenblaum is the co-author of that hoberman book i mentioned (now i feel guilty for not giving him credit) -

[daniel_1980]

Criterion: expensive but you always know you'll get a quality transfer and the most complete bonuses (there are exceptions, for example every other version of Wong Kar-Wai's 'In the Mood for Love' is better than Criterion, and 'Picnic at Hanging Rock' is much better in the 2DVD Australian edition). I tend not to buy them because they're easy available at university libraries and don't go out of print. I really like Facets Video and New Yorker Films from the US too... also Criterion titles (oddly?) are cheaper through Amazon than buying direct or through stores (sometimes up to $13 cheaper for multi-dsic sets like the 5DVD Fanny and Alexander). Criterion is really really weak on contemporary European cinema as well as world cinema generally (it really only covers a very narrow period during the 1960's of very particular new wave directors from France, Sweden, the Czech Republic, and Japan). No Iranian films ('Taste of Cherry' aside), nothing at all from Africa or Latin America, no Egyptian, Israeli, Indian, Turkish, or South East Asian films (Taiwan, Hong Kong, and Japan aside). Compare this to the selection of labels such as Artifical Eye (www.artificialeye.co.uk, which I would consider to be the best DVD label in the world, or mk2 from France which is especially strong on Iranian and Turkish cinema).

Fanny och Alexander: Definitely see the TV version first. I'm sure your local university library will have the Criterion 5DVD version.

Jonathan Rosenbaum: I generally don't read film criticism because there are too many wonderful things to do in life than to worry about what a bunch of overpaid masturbating monkeys think. But I must say my experiences with Rosenbaum have been good, possibly because of my fondness for the Iranian and Turkish new waves combined with the fact that Rosenbaum is the leading champion of Iranian cinema in the English speaking world, and the only major Anglophone critic that bothered to learn Farsi. I recently read his book with Mehmaz Saeed-Vafa on Abbas Kiarostami which I can highly recommend (the first book length discussion of Kiarostami in English, even though there are already ten such works in French). He's also just done the subtitling on the rerelease on what some consider to be the greatest Iranian film of all time (Rosenbaum considers it to be the start of the new wave), Forugh Farrokhzad's 1962 short 'The House is Black', which I just ordered on Amazon yesterday.

Entree: (continuing on from before)... go to http://www.takeourword.com/TOW114/page2.html and read the bottom paragraph

ps:

[daniel_1980]

Part of the thing with Criterion and other US DVD labels is that they are really limited to a market generated by the arthouse cinemas there, which are often more conservative in film choices than Continental Europe, the UK or Australia/NZ. For example one of my favourite films from the last few years is Bahman Ghobadi's (a Kurdish student of both Kiarostami and Makhmalbaf) 'A Time for Drunken Horses' which has been released in the UK (Tartan), France (mk2) and Australia (Madman) but never got a DVD release in the US (if you end up buying it, the mk2 version is far far superior, with bonus short films. Similarly with films like Godard's 'La Chinoise' and Tony Gatlif's 'Exils', both have been locally released in a tiny backward country like Australia, but not at all in the US yet (although the Australian versions are available through the US Amazon). The one thing I do love about Amazon US is that it does generally have the best selection of Latin American films though, although Spain sometimes gets them first (an obvious example at the moment is 'Machuca' which has been released in Spain but nowhere in Latin America, despite being a Chilean film). On a Criterion note, you MUST see Tokyo Olympiad (even if you absolutely hate sport), best DVD commentary EVER, and something I think you would like (I borrowed it from uni thinking I probably wouldn't like it, and loved it).

[psyched_out]

you have blown my mind for the morning, so i must say well done! a few comments on this informative comment:

its true that criterion is pretty limited in their output, both in terms of directors & the years of their focus, but then again they're to be commended for doing such a thorough job of it all - and with the exception of a few directors that i don't care about for purely subjective reasons (renoir, soderbergh, etc), they never have dealt any junk to the table (barring their unfortunate lapses at the start)...

not aware of any other international labels & i will indeed follow through on the artificial eye name, but then again i've got a region 1 NTSC dvd player so i'm pretty limited in scope as far as what i can watch - that is, unless i pick up a new dvd player - we have been able to watch japanese DVDs because one of S' workmates lends us his playstation everytime we want to watch miyazaki films or things brought over from japan...

i know that iranian films have a huge following (our museum does an iranian film festival every year, but i've never attended for some stupid reason) but i know nothing at all about it - nor do i know about any of these other countries and their output - my knowledge of international directors working currently is limited mostly to the obvious ones (almodovar, kar-wai, von trier, etc) - this is partly the reason i want a book about film - not for any academic discourse on the medium, but something that can give me a relatively comprehensive education on where we stand in 2006 with cinema - lofty, i know, but my knowledge of film (and i do have to say that i think i'm better off than 95% of american moviegoers even if i am an idiot) is mostly limited to those big names or ones thrown into association (i heard of dassin because rififi was scheduled to part of a french film festival in atlanta, which motivated me to rent it - which i absolutely loved) - and now that i live pretty far away from a decent video store, my only source of nourishment is turner classic movies, a great channel to be sure but i know i'm grounding myself in the past...

...but its just like music - there's an ENDLESS supply of mindblowing works out there and there's never going to be a way to absorb it all - so i just dig through, picking up whatever i can...and even if my arthouse theater or criterion doesn't pick up on 99% of them, there's still that 1% they do get that i still haven't completely immersed myself in...

but i'd love to be well-rounded & at least test the waters with films from around the world - might i ask how you're informed? i know your studies demand you to be well-acquainted with the world and you're a polyglot on top of that, so you probably won't have a simple answer like "oh, i subscribe to film-know-it-all magazine" - its as much of an effort as it is to wade through mailorder lists and music history books and word-of-mouth to come up with some of these quirky underground bands...but it doesn't hurt to ask...

i was actually looking for tokyo olympiad at that store but they didn't have it - never seen it but it fascinates me - they did have hoop dreams in the sports section, but as much as i've heard people praise it i don't know if its for me - hearing that it had commentary (or some bonus thing) by a writer for "sports illustrated" was enough to turn me off...

oh, i just knew that my comment would exceed the lj-limit - i'll put the break here and continue...

part 2

[psyched_out]

one grave mistake you make is your assumption that i have a university library to access, and that they'd carry good DVDs - i have to drive an hour into atlanta just to go to a library, and on top of that i'm fairly positive that i can't check anything out of there without being a student - even being an alumnus wouldn't help, not that i'd ever want to check anything out from the georgia institute of technology, which has a purely engineering-based library...as it stands my local library is my only option, and their criterions are limited to a documentary of man landing on the moon and some early wc fields shorts...there are a grand total of about 10 interesting DVDs they have (a few spike lee films, and the up series which i've already raved about enough), but that's it...

i'm hoping i didn't waste my cash by getting the theatrical version of fanny & alexander but i figured that a 3-hour version could at least let me know if i'd love a 5-hour version - if so, i can buy the box and hopefully sell the 3-hour one to recoup some of the cash - and if i don't like the 3-hour version (unlikely but possible) then i'm better off - perhaps flawed logic but the impulsive shopper i am couldn't resist...

great etymological page too - now if only i can find out why the asian countries call buffets "vikings", i'd be set...

by the way, you really want to make me see some iranian films, so you know...

Re: part 2

[lokilokust]

for iranian cinema, two good films to start with that are readily available over here:
'the bicycle' by mohsen makhmalbaf.
and 'the mirror' by jafar panahi.
.
not the best there is to offer, but a good starting point.

Re: part 2

[psyched_out]

i've heard of the latter, not the former - if i can ever make it through the films i picked up & need to rent something else, i'll start here...

[daniel_1980]

Have you checked out www.netflix.com? Ex-patriate cinephile friends of mine in the US speak highly of it. It may only have a good selection of Region 1 DVDs, but even so it's probably the next best thing if you don't have access to a university library with a Film Studies department, and sounds like it would save you a bit of money.

Criterion are releasing more and more substandard titles, I think this may increase as studios are increasingly realising the revenue raising potential of DVDs and are less likely to sell a 'Virgin Suicides' or 'Amelie' to a DVD label totally unaffiliated to any production or distribution channels (Criterion started in the laser disc days and started picking up classic films where the studios who owned the rights didn't think they could make money of issuing a laser disc themselves). Some titles which are obvious bloopers... Paul Verhoeven's 'Robocop' (releasing adult versions of Verhoeven's 'Basic Instinct' or 'Showgirls' probably would probably have made more financial sense) or Kevin Smith's 'Chasing Amy' (why didn't they release 'Clerks' instead?). Beastie Boys Anthology... what were they thinking?

Region 1: The whole Region 1 thing in the US is a bit weird. Basically what's happened in Australia, New Zealand, Asia, Europe, and Latin America is that cheap region free DVD players from China (currently the bottom of the global market) have taken over, you can get one here for about US50. Generally I would say the majority of people here have region free players. This is obviously a necessity for anyone serious about film, coz you want to be able to shop around for the version with the most bonuses. The main people still pushing region specific DVD players are the big companies like Sony and Panasonic that actually own a slice of the film industry (why anyone would pay three times what a cheap generic Chinese one costs only to have it not be able to play all regions I do not know, but many people here buy these 'brand name' players). What I've heard from fellow travellers from the States is that it's less easy to buy region free players in the States because of legal reasons (makes sense because the US economy loses when people buy for example cheap Region 4 versions of 'Terminator 2' from Brazil, while if I buy a cheap Brazilian copy of 'Terminator 2' it doesn't really affect the Australian economy at all coz the royalties go to largely US companies). At Central American borders you see lots of chicanos who are visiting their relatives down south lugging around boxed DVD players o take back up to the States... if you can't find one in the US just pick one up from Mexico next time you make a trip down south. Or check out Chinatown in Atlanta or the Latino shopping strips (not sure if these exist there, but I'm assuming so...). Also check out 'www.dvdbeaver.com' for a good basic comparison reference guide warning uses up lots and lots of bandwith).

Artifical Eye: Awesome for contemporary European cinema, but pricing is out of my range because of the strength of the British Pound. Current list price is £20 (which is like A$45 or US$33, way too much). Melbourne University library occasionally gets in orders of their stuff, so there's a few new titles I'm looking forward to seeing when I head back down for school (in particular Theo Angelopoulos' 'The Weeping Meadow' which looks fucking amazing... it has apparently been picked up by New Yorker Films for US domestic release too). Actually a number of the titles on www.artificialeye.co.uk seem to have been picked up by New Yorker...

[daniel_1980]

...Iranian Cinema: Really started to get huge interest in France about fifteen years ago after Kiarostami's 'Close Up' came out, then spread to Europe and more recently only in Australia and the US. There are still only about ten major mostly 'crossover' films that are locally released in Australia (most of which also got cinematic releases), like Makhmalbaf's 'Kandahar', Kiarostami's 'Taste of Cherry', 'Ten', and 'The Wind Will Carry Us', Pahani's 'The Circle', or Ghobadi's 'Turtles Can Fly', lots of kids out here know those films and no more. My favourite which you must must see is Bahman Ghobadi's (he's actually Kurdish but trained in Tehran) 'Time for Drunken Horses' (if you have US$25 lying around you can order it from mk2 on the net, the thing I love about mk2 is they give you two or three bonus short films with each of their 'decouvertes' range, so they're well worth buying... I have most of that series even though I don't often buy DVDs).

Resources: Two good reading resources are Senses of Cinema (www.sensesofcinema.com) and Bright Lights (www.brightlightsfilm.com). I'm in a pretty different situation coz I have access to my school library (I first heard AMM, Cardew, John Abercrombie, and lots of early American folk music in the music wing there). My local arthouse cinema in Melbourne (which was like 200 feet from my house) used to have A$5 Mondays so I used to see a film a week, also I lived in a hipster/wanker inner city area so had an amazing video rental (the best in Australia... check out www.video-dogs.com and drool at the selection... and that's just the surplus that they sell!). You should consider moving to Boston or NYC and enrolling in grad school, that way you could save lots of money on CD's and DVD's (although college there isn't free so...). :P

[psyched_out]

netflix is indeed very popular and revolutionized the way a lot of people rent movies - even blockbuster, the hated national video chain, changed their format to make them comparable - a few friends have tried to convert us, but...at this stage in the game, we're hardly watching any movies for parental reasons (when a movie barely over 90 minutes takes up the bulk of an entire afternoon and evening to watch you know better than to make it a habit) so paying whatever amount it is for netflix ($22 a month if i remember right? something like that at least) will just make it like another utility bill for us - we already have our cable bill that adds $40 a month (its a forced part of our apartment rent, so despite the fact that i've turned the tv on approximately 4 times in the past month we have to deal with it nonetheless) - its true that i just spent $300 on DVDs which could set me up on netflix for a year, but honestly that's probably how long it'll take me to watch these movies and at least i'll come out of it in the end satiating my pathetic collector self...

yeah, our DVD player is a panasonic, bought 3 years ago, and i think its time for it to go - the pal/ntsc option is apparently the standard for most US dvd players, but its still a bit tricky to find a region-free on the market from what i understand (not that i have really searched) - i read on a message board recently about a philips dvd player that sells for about $60 which you can make region-free by entering a code via the remote, but the post was about a year old so i don't know if they've tweaked that or not since - it shouldn't be a terrible hunt to find one though, i do know a few friends (including hedorah who was just talking about his) who have them...it just sucks to shell out more cash for it, but it'll be better in the long-term i suppose...

again, thanks for the great lists of films as well as the websites - my school has perhaps the best college radio station in the country, but curiously enough it isn't at all indicative of the type of studies that go on there - probably 90% are either in engineering or computer science studies (well, i guess electrical engineers can legitimately go into the music world with their abilities) - that station is where i got my grounding in sonic education, without a doubt - but film was a bit different, as i more or less went my own way in exploration - there are a couple of good video stores in atlanta (i can't compare them with stores from any other cities, but i'm usually impressed), but now that i have to drive an hour in to check anything out and then have to be back in town 2 days later to return it, i don't really use them much - the same goes with seeing films in a theater - i think i've seen a grand total of 3 movies this year: the japanese film nobody knows, whatever that documentary on klaus nomi was called, and some french film about an angst-ridden teenage girl on a vacation that i can't even remember the name of anymore...i know, i know, this is all screaming netflix...

hey, i'd live in boston or new york (i'm particularly fond of boston) in a minute, not just for movies, were it so easy - toronto seems like an even better place to live for the cineaste, all of those repertory theaters - but it looks like i'll continue to live in the subsuburbs of atlanta for awhile to come...its not too bad actually, just when it comes to entertainment...and food...and trying to find anyone who isn't willing to sacrifice their child's life for george bush's interests...

[daniel_1980]

Having just returned from Nicaragua where over the course of 9 months I probably bought no more than US20 worth of CDs and DVDs (about a dollar each pirate), I'm really trying to rationalise whether I'm in a position to really afford the luxuries of buying music and film (as opposed to downloading/hiring it) anymore. Once you get to a certain amount of music there just becomes too much you don't listen to anymore... doesn't justify either lugging across the country with you each time you move or the shelf space (which does cost money). That having been said I've just put about A$300 of purchases on my credit card, money I don't have.

Just thought I'd mention... (you probably already know), but the This Heat box set is coming out in early February.. details are on the ReR webpage...

[psyched_out]

the irony is that i had those very same feelings (the get-rid-of-everything-i-own feelings) that same day, just a few hours prior to discovering that store was going out of business...

i am in the midst of a giant music purge - for the past year or so i've been trying to objectively listen to CDs & ask "now will i ever really find myself in a position where i want to hear this?" there's a box of about 100 rejected albums, good or bad, that i plan on selling online...eventually...

i'm not a dvd collector - i've got maybe 30-40 of them - i'm feeling the tug of it but i wouldn't say i'm there...yet...

had i known about the this heat box sooner, and had i known how valuable my discs were, i could've sold deceit & made available & i probably would've had enough cash to get the whole box with some extra left over...ah well...it'll be nice if they put the b-side to "health & efficiency" on one of the cds - it drove me crazy that the 3" disc only had the title track...as it is i'll probably sit it out unless some benevolent santa-figure answers my prayers...