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An early sound film shot with a distinctive and evocative silent
film aesthetic, Carl Th. Dreyer's "Vampyr" is a horror movie as tone poem -- an
eerie, ethereal fever dream of a traveler, Allan Grey (Julian West), whose
"wanderings" bring him to a cursed village. A villager with a scythe rings a
bell on a misty lake as he arrives, already conjuring a feeling of death and
portents of supernatural things to come. Grey discovers shadows without bodies
and a tormented young woman with vague wounds treated by an unnerving doctor who
only visits at night, and embarks on a spirit journey to watch his own funeral
(from both within and without his casket simultaneously). West (the pseudonym of
Baron Nicholas de Gunzberg, who also financed the film) is a blank, inexpressive
actor, more convincing as a creepy corpse than a living hero, but his languid
expression makes his passive protagonist just another part of the dreamy world.
The ethereal imagery is exaggerated by the worn and faded quality of the print.
None of the original materials exist, and this German language restoration,
reconstructed from German, French and English prints, is the best it has ever
looked, but it still has the scuffed texture of an ancient resurrected text.
Criterion offers an alternate English language version featuring excellent
recreations of the look and feel of the German intertitles and book pages (the
dialogue is in German in both versions) in this new two-disc special
edition.
The film is accompanied by optional commentary by film scholar
Tony Rayns, who discusses the film in detail -- from Dreyer's style to
production details to observations and interpretations -- with
intelligence. He has an engaging manner even while in the scholarly mode. The
second disc features Jörgen Roos' half-hour career retrospective "Carl Th.
Dreyer" from 1966 (which features interviews with Dreyer); a 36-minute visual
essay on Dreyer's influences by scholar Casper Tybjerg; an audio-only recording
of a 1958 radio broadcast of Dreyer reading an essay about filmmaking; and a
booklet with new essays, notes on the restoration, and a print interview with
Baron Nicholas de Gunzberg. The box set also features a paperback volume
featuring the screenplay and the Sheridan Le Fanu short story that inspired
it.
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| Bird |
Clint Eastwood's 1988 portrait of the turbulent life and
visionary art of jazz legend Charlie "Bird" Parker is arguably the best
cinematic jazz biography ever made. Forest Whitaker took home the Best Actor
Award at the Cannes Film Festival for his performance as the driven musician who
changed the sound of jazz with his volcanic saxophone solos. Off-stage he's
gentle and modest, with Whitaker bringing a lazy charisma and a shambling grace
to his performance. But when he plays it's like he's transported, his mind on
another plane and his fingers dancing across the keys in a fevered rush to keep
up with his imagination. Diane Venora co-stars as Chan, the jazz aficionado who
became Parker's wife. Eastwood directs from a jumpy, fragmented script that
leaps around Parker's life, and he delivers a darkly textured cinematic flight
that almost approaches the uninhibited passion of Parker's solos. The only
supplements are a music-only audio track and a bonus six-track CD soundtrack.
Three more jazz-oriented DVDs are also released by Warner this week: Bertrand
Tavernier's " Round Midnight" with Dexter Gordon, Jack Webb's " Pete Kelly's Blues" and " Blues in the Night." |
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| André Téchiné 4-Film Collector's Edition |
The work of the great French director is celebrated in this
three-disc collection of four films. Andre Techine's 1994 coming-of-age drama
" Wild Reeds," winner of the Cesar awards (France's equivalent of
the Oscar) for Best Screenplay, Best Director and Best Film, is considered by
many to be his masterpiece. Set in the France of the early 1960s (where the
Algerian war creates tensions much like Vietnam in the United States), two boys
strike up a friendship and share their thoughts and feelings as they reach
toward maturity. Techine shows great sensitivity toward the difficult ages of
adolescence and creates a subdued, elegiac portrait of both the pleasures and
the pains of growing up. Catherine Deneuve and Daniel Auteuil star in his deft
1993 drama " My Favorite Season" as estranged siblings forced to come to
terms with one another when their mother becomes infirm and they are brought
back together to care for her. Also features " Hotel America" (1981), with Deneuve and Patrick Dewaere, and
" I Don't Kiss" (1991) with Manuel Blanc, Philippe Noiret and
Emmanuelle Beart. |
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| High and Low |
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Akira Kurosawa's contemporary thriller stars Toshiro Mifune as
an industrialist kingpin whose ambition collides with his morality when
kidnappers target his son but inadvertently grab the son of his chauffeur and
make the same ransom demands of him anyway. Kurosawa uses the detective thriller
and police procedural (the story is adapted from Ed McBain s detective novel
"King s Ransom") to create a social drama and a portrait of contemporary
Japanese culture. Criterion previously released this film early on in its DVD
offerings. This two-disc version features a new transfer and all-new
supplements, including commentary by Kurosawa scholar Stephen Prince, a
37-minute documentary on the making of "High and Low" from the Toho Masterworks
series "Akira Kurosawa: It Is Wonderful to Create," an archival TV interview
with Mifune, and a new video interview with actor Tsutomu Yamazaki. Also
features a booklet with a new essay by critic Geoffrey O Brien and a reprinted
essay by scholar Donald Richie.
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| Satantango |
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Bela Tarr's acclaimed 1994 epic takes the audience into the
culture of lost souls in an abandoned agricultural collective in the declining
years of Hungarian communism in the '80s. Shot in long takes in black and
white, it has been called Tarr's masterpiece, and the seven-hour feature makes
its long-anticipated DVD debut on three discs. The set features a bonus disc
with three films by Tarr: the hour-long 1982 adaptation of "Macbeth" (filmed
entirely in two shots), the 1995 half-hour short "Journey on the Plain," and the
five-minute "Prologue," originally filmed for the 2004 anthology "Visions of
Europe." Also features a booklet with the text of an onstage symposium with Tarr
and critics Jonathan Rosenbaum, Scott Foundas and David Bordwell.
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In addition to his regular contributions to MSN Movies, Sean Axmaker is a
film critic for the Seattle Post-Intelligencer and a DVD columnist for MSN
Entertainment. He is also a contributing writer for GreenCine.com, Turner
Classic Movies Online and Asian Cult Cinema, among other publications.
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Get Smart! Please!In honor of bumbling Maxwell
Smart, a brief history of our favorite clueless detectives On the RocksWith 'Iron Man' and 'Hancock' featuring
heavy-drinking protagonists, we reflect on the most memorable drunks in movie
history UnclassicsThough they may be listed among the
greatest films of all time, these 10 movies deserve to be
downgraded | |
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