Classic Movie Round-up, 8/2

Talos, from "Jason and the Argonauts."

By Jason Apuzzo. • If you’ve been looking for reasons to move to Blu-ray, you now have them: both Ray Harryhausen’s Jason and the Argonauts and Francis Coppola’s Apocalypse Now Redux (see here and here) are coming to Blu-ray.  For what it’s worth, Jason and the Argonauts was the first movie I ever owned on DVD – it’s what sold me on the format, actually, and this is the first digital upgrade of that film since the 1990s.  [Footnote: check out Greenbriar Picture show’s fine recent post on the great Ray Harryhausen here.]

Nancy Kovack as Medea in "Argonauts."

On the Apocalypse front, Lionsgate will be releasing the film along with a variety of other American Zoetrope classics in a new deal struck by the two companies.  The best news here is that Hearts of Darkness, the behind-the-scenes documentary by Eleanor Coppola on the making of Apocalypse, will also be included in one of the new Blu-ray sets.

Govindini and I had the pleasure years ago of sitting in on the editing and remixing by Walter Murch of Apocalypse Now Redux – and what an education that was!  I’ve never learned so much about sound mixing in such a brief, concentrated period of time.  As a sound and picture experience, Apocalypse is easily one of the greatest films ever.  So whatever hesitations you’ve had about Blu-ray, jettison them now.  The classics are truly now arriving on this format.

• A new DVD box set, The Kim Novak Collection, is coming out … and the lovely Ms. Novak has a long interview up today over at The New York Post.  What a star!  We’re so glad she’s still around and looking so lovely.

• Some of the very best Errol Flynn action pictures from the World War II period are finally coming to DVD in a new box set.  What took so long?  I’ve owned most of these for years – recorded off Turner Classic Movies – but it’s a shame it’s taken so long to get Desperate Journey, Edge of Darkness, Northern Pursuit, and Uncertain Glory to DVD (another film in this set, Raoul Walsh’s Objective Burma, has already been out for a while).  I’m a lifelong, confirmed Flynn fanatic, for those of you who don’t know.  [Side note: we showed a pristine print of Desperate Journey, featuring Flynn and Ronald Reagan, at the 2004 Liberty Film Festival.]  This box features some neglected Flynn classics – Desperate Journey and Northern Pursuit in particular are really crackling pictures, while Objective Burma is already widely regarded as one of the great World War II action spectacles.  Most of Flynn’s greatest films finally now have decent DVD releases … although there are still a few left that should get better treatment (such as Against All Flags with Maureen O’Hara).

• A handsome new coffee table book about Duke Wayne is being released, called John Wayne: True Grit American.  Click on over and check that one out.

• Several of director Clarence Brown’s movies are just coming to DVD, including Conquest with Greta Garbo, and The Gorgeous Hussy with Joan Crawford.

• Chuck Heston’s early noir thriller Dark City is finally getting a DVD release – it was his first major starring role – along with the underrated Warner Brothers World War II thriller Background to Danger, starring Peter Lorre and Sydney Greenstreet in an adaptation of the Eric Ambler novel.  The film was directed by a favorite of mine, Raoul Walsh, and otherwise stars the lovely Brenda Marshall from The Sea Hawk (who was also at that time Mrs. William Holden).

• Kimberly Lindberg’s has a great piece over at TCM’s Movie Morlocks on photographer Julius Shulman, who was so influential in defining the ‘L.A. modern look.’  Check that out.  I really love Lindberg’s writing.

• On the book front, a new biography is coming out on Josef von Sternberg, the LA Times has a review of the new book Furious Love about the Burton-Taylor romance, and a great-looking new book called Confessions of a Scream Queen is coming out, featuring interviews with (among others) Carla Laemmle, Coleen Gray, Kathleen Hughes, Karen Black, Ingrid Pitt, and Adrienne Barbeau!  Fabulous.  Govindini and I met Carla and Coleen a few years back, and I would love to meet the others – especially Ingrid Pitt!  She played Heidi the Barmaid in Where Eagles Dare.  Yowza.

• New York Times film critic and Libertas reader A.O. Scott takes a look back at the Jean-Luc Godard classic, Contempt this week. It’s one of my favorites from Godard – possibly my all-time favorite.  Or is this simply my overreaction to Bardot?  Tough to say.  One thing’s for sure: Palance is quite a crack-up in that film.  Makes me laugh every time.  I also love how the limp, pitiful husband is a Communist.

• The great Italian writer Cecchi d’Amico has died at age 96 in Rome. She wrote the screenplays for The Bicycle Thief and The Leopard, among many other classics.  Our condolences to her family, and to the Italian film community.

And that’s what’s happening today in the world of classic movies …

Posted on August 2nd, 2010 at 2:38pm.

Aint It Cool News Calls Terrorist Satire Four Lions ‘The Comedy of the Year’; Still No U.S. Release

By Jason Apuzzo. As regular LFM readers know, we loved Chris Morris’ striking new comedy about Islamic terrorism, Four Lions (see our glowing Libertas review from when the film unspooled at The LA Film Festival).

Four Lions is currently playing at the 2010 Melbourne International Film Festival (MIFF), and a reviewer for Aint It Cool News had this high praise for it:

The day ended with one of my most highly-anticipated films of MIFF, Chris Morris’s FOUR LIONS. There are so many comedians who operate under the assumption that they are “edgy” because they make lots of forced references to things they think are taboo. Chris Morris is one of the few who actually is, shining a sharp, satirical spotlight on our own hypocrisies.

FOUR LIONS, his first film as director and co-writer, is possibly the bravest skewering of cultural mores since LIFE OF BRIAN. When comedy shows or films proudly proclaim they have no political correctness, it usually means they like making fun of a politician’s obesity. FOUR LIONS genuinely discards political correctness, but in an exceptionally smart way, not allowing a single likable character, refusing to present anyone who (a) plays into our own comfortable stereotyped beliefs, or (b) allaying any white or middle-class guilt by having a “Good Muslim” or a “White Politician Who Actually Does Get It”. There are no safe havens in this film, and this — the story of four suicide bombers trying to attack a London target — is all the better for it. I probably missed about 50% of the jokes because I was laughing at the other ones, which is simply an excuse to see it again.

I don’t mind calling it early: FOUR LIONS is the comedy of the year.

We heartily agree.  Do whatever you can to see this film.  Unfortunately one of the things you won’t be able to do is see it in an American theater, because no company has picked it up for distribution here – even though it was a box office hit in the UK, won the audience award at the LA Film Festival, and was even a hit at Sundance.  And this is shameful, because this is an extraordinary film that people should be given the chance to see.

We will continue to bang the drum for this film here at LFM until it gets its American release.

Posted on August 2nd, 2010 at 12:46pm.

Classic Cinema Obsession: Cocteau’s La Belle et la bête

By Jennifer Baldwin.

“Not only can fairy-tales be enjoyed because they are moral, but morality can be enjoyed because it puts us in fairyland, in a world at once of wonder and of war.”
G.K. Chesterton, Fairy Tales

“It was in fairy stories that I first divined the potency of the words, and the wonder of the things, such as stone, and wood, and iron; tree and grass; house and fire; bread and wine.”
J.R.R. Tolkien, On Fairy Stories

“You stole a rose, so you must die.”
Jean Marais as The Beast in Jean Cocteau’s La Belle et la bête

ONCE UPON A TIME…

A frightened merchant is lost in the woods. He is trying to get back to his home and his children, but instead he stumbles into an enchanted part of the forest.

Branches part; a castle stands in the clearing. Tired and cold, the merchant enters the castle.

The castle itself is enchanted. It is a living castle, where arms come out of the walls to hold candlesticks and statues see with living eyes.

It is a castle where doors and mirrors talk and a rose holds the power of life and death.

It is the castle of a Beast. A beast with a curse.

And only by a look of true love will he find release from his curse. That look will come from a Beauty, a young woman who sacrifices her freedom to save her merchant father, who comes to be a prisoner in the Beast’s castle, and who will eventually come to love him. Continue reading Classic Cinema Obsession: Cocteau’s La Belle et la bête

Watch Disco & Atomic War Now!

Watch more free documentaries

By Jason Apuzzo. A film from the recent LA Film Festival that we loved was Disco & Atomic War.  Disco is an extraordinary new Estonian documentary about the so-called ’soft power’ influence of American and Western culture on the minds of Soviet citizens living in Estonia during the Cold War, who were able through clever means to watch Finnish television broadcasts emanating from just over the border. As Disco informs us (in amusing detail), American popular culture – especially in the form of glamorous TV shows like “Dallas,” or movies like Star Wars and even Emmanuelle – was deeply feared by Soviet authorities due to the ideas and expectations such programming planted in the minds of Soviet citizens. This led to amusing co-optings, such as the Soviets creating their own officially sanctioned disco instruction course for TV(!).

You can read the LFM review of Disco and Atomic War from the LA Film Festival, and also read LFM Contributor Joe Bendel’s recent review on Joe’s personal site.

This is documentary filmmaking at its finest, and easily one of the best – and most drily amusing – films I’ve seen this past year.  We want to thank the folks at SnagFilms for making the full-length film available for everyone to see, for free.  Also: special thanks to SnagFilms for following Libertas on Twitter!

Posted on July 30th, 2010 at 1:58pm.

Voices from the Killing Fields: Enemies of the People

By Joe Bendel. Euphemisms can be terrible instruments of evil.  For instance, when former Khmer Rouge cadres speak of “solving problems” what they really refer to is the systematic torture and execution of roughly two million Cambodians, whose only crime was to be deemed insufficiently Communist.  Thet Sambath understands this all too well.  After losing his parents and brother to the Khmer Rouge reign of terror, he spent years interviewing former cadres to understand why they killed their countrymen.  His self-funded investigation ultimately resulted in Enemies of the People (trailer above), a truly newsworthy documentary co-directed by Rob Lemkin, which opens in New York this Friday and in Los Angeles next week.

A newspaper journalist in Phnom Penh, Sambath’s quiet, unassuming demeanor is perfectly suited to winning the confidences of his interview subjects.  However, he does not advertize his tragic family history, especially not with the big fish, Nuon Chea, a.k.a. Brother Number Two, the Khmer Rouge’s chief theoretician – second only to Pol Pot (Brother Number One).  For years, the largely silent Chea has maintained his ignorance of the Killing Fields, but Sambath wore down his reticence.  With Chea facing charges of war crimes and crimes against humanity, what he says on Sambath’s tapes is extraordinarily timely.

Depicts the ideologically-driven crimes of the Khmer Rouge.

Beyond its potential relevance in the Cambodian Tribunal, Enemies is highly significant as a pioneering Cambodian documentary inquiry into the Khmer Rouge’s crimes.  Providing historical context that will likely be instructive for western audiences as well, Sambath explains that the Khmer Rouge directly looked to China as their revolutionary inspiration.  Indeed, one can argue the Killing Fields were an indirect product of the Cultural Revolution.

The former low level cadres interviewed on camera also confirm their victims were brutalized and murdered out of ideological zeal.  They were capitalist or counter-revolutionary “problems” to “fix.”  The matter-of-factness of their videotaped statements is quite chilling, lending credence to Hannah Arendt’s concept of the banality of evil.  While some express remorse, decades after the fact, for the most part, it seems like Sambath is not tapping into feelings of guilt so much as a Dostoevskian compulsion to confess.  Obviously suffering from his own survivor’s guilt, Sambath also has his own stories to tell.  However, he appears to attain a measure of closure through his ambitious undercover research project.

In Enemies, Sambath puts to shame most western journalists who simply preen in front of cameras and regurgitate talking points.  At no small risk to himself, he set out to get the truth, succeeding rather spectacularly given his modest resources.  Frankly, the ignorance and misunderstanding of the Khmer Rouge borders on the criminal in the west, but Sambath and Lemkin bring their genocidal crimes into sharp focus.  Yes, the American bombings are mentioned in Enemies, but only briefly – never suggesting they excuse or rationalize the crimes of the Khmer Rouge in any way.  Truly, Sambath understands who the killers really are, and he got them on tape.  Thoughtful and legitimately bold, it opens this Friday (7/30) in New York at the Quad and next Friday (8/6) in Los Angeles at Laemmle’s Music Hall, Beverly Hills.

Posted on July 30th, 2010 at 10:36am.

Hollywood Round-up, 7/30

DiCaprio is fed up with Mel Gibson.

By Jason Apuzzo. • The big story right now is that Leonardo DiCaprio is apparently dropping out of Mel Gibson’s forthcoming Viking epic due to Mel’s recent … do I need to tell you?  As I said when this story first broke about Gibson’s ranting and physical abuse, he wasn’t going to survive this scandal.  And now we’re seeing it.  For what it’s worth, I think DiCaprio has made the right decision.

• In the wake of the recent debate here at LFM over alien-themed projects, Ridley Scott’s Alien prequel has a new screenwriter, who also happens to be the guy working on both the new Star Trek films and also Cowboys & Aliens.  Should the same guy be doing all this?  Incidentally, Ridley Scott is also apparently circling around Gucci, which may star Angelina Jolie as Patrizia Reggiani – who was sentenced to 29 years in prison after being convicted of plotting the murder of her ex-husband Maurizio Gucci, after he’d taken control of the family’s fashion empire.  It would be an alluring femme fatale role for Jolie – and I’m sure the opportunity to be around Gucci products has absolutely nothing to do with her interest in this project.

• In other Jolie-related news, what’s with all these sexy Russian spies?  The latest is Anna Fermanova, a young Russian beautician now facing a federal felony charge in Texas for allegedly trying to smuggle night vision scopes to Moscow.  Unreal.  I’ve never seen such a bizarre run of coincidental publicity for a movie, ever.  This would be like the Russians introducing a new stealth fighter just in time for Firefox.

• Another very big alien project just got announced: Guillermo del Toro is set to direct and James Cameron produce a 3D adaptation of H.P. Lovecraft’s famous novel, At the Mountains of Madness.  I would love to see this, even given my current intense displeasure with Cameron.  At the Mountains of Madness is one of my favorite novels, and is one of the most influential science fiction novels of all time.  You could say, in a sense, that it already has been adapted by way of such films as The Thing and Alien … but it would be wonderful to see a new take on the original material, provided everybody is respectful toward Lovecraft’s novel (which I assume they would be).  Del Toro seems to have the right florid sensibility for this.

JWoww in Harpers Bazaar.

• In other sci-fi news, Len Wiseman wants to do a remake of Total Recall.  Yawn.  And there are some new set pics out from Transformers 3.  Also check out director Alex Aja’s fun interview about Piranha 3D.  I’m so ready for that film.  It’s my treat for having sat through Inception.

• Obama says he doesn’t actually know who Snooki is. But I’ll bet he knows who JWoww is, right?  Come on Barry, fess up!  Don’t go on The View and pretend you don’t know these things.

• Did you know that Paul Giamatti will be playing Nikita Krushchev, in a new HBO movie?  The title of the movie is K Blows His Top, about Krushchev’s famous visit to the United States – during which he blew his top in public after his Disneyland trip was cancelled.  Tom Hanks is producing on this one.  Hanks recently blew his top when The Pacific was released.

• Carla Bruni just started shooting Woody Allen’s next film … and she blew her first scene!  Apparently she looked into the camera.  Maybe that’ll end up on the DVD.

• In the annals of overhyped bloggers, nobody quite takes the cake like Olivia Munn.  Today she had this elegant, insightful remark to make about Wonder Woman’s new costume: “She doesn’t need to wear a f**king star to be a f**king patriot.”  Thank you, Olivia.  You and your fanboy compatriots certainly elevate everything we do on the internet.

Author/celebrity Katie Price.

• In the wake of Oliver Stone’s recent impolitic musings on the Jewish people (ahem), Haim Saban wants Stone’s 10-part series “A Secret History of America” to be pulled from Showtime.  Ari Emanuel is apparently joining him in this effort.  I actually think Les Moonves might cave here.  Saban is one the Democratic Party’s biggest donors, and heads will roll if Stone’s show airs … as they should.

• Libertas favorite Jessica Simpson may be joining American Idol as a judge. Hooray!  Can you imagine how funny that’s going to be?  [UPDATE: It’s going to be Jennifer Lopez, instead.  Won’t be as fun, but it works for me.]

• AND IN TODAY’S MOST IMPORTANT NEWS … in America we have Snooki, Kim Kardashian, Heidi Montag, etc.  In Britain all these women are more or less rolled into one as Katie Price, who has a new novel out right now called Paradise.  Price’s last novel Sapphire hit #1 in the UK, and she’s already written about 6 children’s books and 3 autobiographies – while still only in her 30s.  One thing’s for certain: the woman is building up a substantial body of work.  So to speak.

And that’s what’s happening today in the wonderful world of Hollywood.

Posted on July 30th, 2010 at 1:13am.