The Life and Death of Colonel Blimp/Once Upon a Time In America
There’s a challenge faced by characters in two great recently restored films – Powell & Pressburger’sThe Life and Death of Colonel Blimp (available in an exquisite Criterion edition), and Sergio Leone’sOnce Upon a Time in America (alas prematurely released, for the restoration work is incomplete, and copyright reasons mean it can only be bought on BluRay in Italy. [...]
Wreck-It Ralph
Not much was made of the rules that Disney broke last year, but if you look closely enough, it’s clear that 2012 was a ground-breaking moment for the myths it ascribes. ‘Brave’ and ‘Wreck-It Ralph‘ are two sides of a rather elegant coin: one a revisionist fairy tale in which a princess shakes off [...]
‘Weekend’ & ‘The Game’
Criterion has the difficult task of marketing two films with exactly the same title, released on BluRay a couple of months apart. The first, ‘Weekend‘, Andrew Haigh’s moving and honest depiction of love, not at first sight, but at first couple-of-days-hanging-out-together, earns its distinction of being one of the few contemporary films to get the typically [...]
Film Criticism as Spiritual Discipline, or What We Care About When We Care About Movies
Gareth here: I gave this talk a while back at the Reel Spirituality Conference, at Fuller Theological Seminary. Some folk have been asking me to explain how I engage with cinema, so here are a few thoughts: There’s a stunning moment toward the end of ‘Make Way For Tomorrow’, Leo McCarey’s unimpeachable 1937 masterpiece, and [...]
Sex/Religion/Unity/Healing/Discernment/Liberation: Three Colors on Blu-ray
Eight years ago this week, I walked into a bar in Galway, was directed to an empty chair, ordered a Guinness, and met one of the finest men, and most faithful friends I’ve ever known. Colin and I were at a wonderful little film festival devoted to the works of Krysztof Kieslowski; a film festival [...]
3 WOMEN / WARRIOR
In Which Olive Oyl and Carrie go Head to Head for the Sake of the Female Id, while an English lad and an Australian bloke re-enact the tortured soul of American masculinity, while Nick Nolte tries not to crumble, and Robert Altman smiles down from the heaven he didn’t believe in.
Criterion Collection: PATHS OF GLORY and SEVEN SAMURAI
Hearing Stanley Kubrick’s voice on the new Criterion edition of his coruscating anti-war melodrama ‘Paths of Glory’ is like listening to a ghost; not because the director has been dead for over a decade, but because he said so little in public when he was alive. It’s one of the characteristic delights of a marvelous [...]
Bowie Knife
The first scene of Nagisa Oshima’s ‘Merry Christmas, Mr Lawrence’ (new on DVD and Blu-Ray from Criterion) is occupied with the horror of a soldier being forced to cut his intestines open as a punishment for being in love with another man. The last image of the film is the smiling face of a soldier [...]
The Thin Red Line
Two films released by the Criterion Collection this week focus on men at war. We’ll discuss Terrence Malick’s ‘The Thin Red Line’ on the next episode, and below; later in the week I’ll post a piece on ‘Merry Christmas, Mr Lawrence’. These are two of the most compelling films released on DVD this year. When [...]
Slow-burning Americana Report: 'Mystery Train' from Criterion
Small town America may rightly fear that it has been overfilmed; certainly after watching Jim Jarmusch’s ‘Mystery Train’, one imagines that it would be difficult to show anything new that isn’t already telegraphed from or curled up inside this vision of Memphis. What a gorgeous, beguiling film – beginning with the incongruous image of a [...]
Our New Guest Reporter: Youngblood on Film
An Announcement: Jett and I are pleased to welcome Tony Youngblood, our mutual Nashville friend, to the site, with the first of what we hope will be regular dispatches from the front of his cinema-literate, emoto-passionate, and remarkably astute field of vision. (I may have just invented the word ‘emoto-passionate’, but it feels right…) To [...]
Summer Hours
Jeremie Renier, Juliette Binoche, and Charles Berling, looking happier than they often feel in ‘Summer Hours’ The premise that underlines Olivier Assayas’ film ‘Summer Hours’ couldn’t be more unfamiliar: elderly matriarch dies, her three adult children have to decide how to split up her estate, the Musee D’Orsay gets involved because said estate includes a [...]
Generation Exile and Full Frame Day One
Sun Come Up In reality, every reader is, while he is reading, the reader of his own self. The writer’s work is merely a kind of optical instrument which he offers to the reader to enable him to discern what, without this book, he would perhaps never have experienced in himself. And the recognition by [...]
Festival Season
Hi folks – as an opener for our month of festivals, I’m at Full Frame in Durham today – the magnificent documentary festival that last year restored Jett’s faith in cinema. It’s unfolding over the next three days – I’ll try to write brief posts about what I see, and if you’re in town please [...]
TFT DVD/Digital Media/Miscellaneous Delivery Report: Kurosawa Birthday
It’s Akira Kurosawa’s 100th birthday – and to mark the occasion our next episode will feature a discussion with your genial co-hosts about ‘Yojimbo’, what may be his most entertaining film. I took a look at the new Criterion Blu-Ray at the weekend (it’s released today, along with its companion piece ‘Sanjuro’), and was instantly [...]
TFT DVD/Digital Media and Miscellaneous Delivery Mechanism Report: 'Revanche': The Film I've Been Waiting For
I knew nothing about ‘Revanche‘, other than it was the kind of film people tell you you’re supposed to like, but they say it so often, and the acclaim is so overwhelming that it makes you wonder if it’s going to be a rehearsal of the time you didn’t get to see ‘Pan’s Labyrinth’ on [...]
TFT DVD/Digital Media/Miscellaneous Delivery Report: The End of the Line
‘I think that man is not going to change, and the sea going to be dead, because man is crazy’. – ‘The End of the Line’ (That’s not a photo of the ‘end’ – it’s actually a picture of Ira Levin, but that’ll make sense if you read on.) The first time I had a [...]
Weekend Watching
Wherever you are in the TFT universe, some recommendations for the weekend: At The Belcourt in Nashville you can see what appears to be the insanely wonderful film ‘A Town Called Panic’, which wouldn’t be a bad subtitle for ‘The White Ribbon’ also screening off 21st Ave South: Belfast’s QFT presents Robert Kenner’s provocative and [...]
TFT DVD/Digital Media and Miscellaneous Delivery Mechanism Report: Herb and Dorothy
There’s something deceptively complex about ‘Herb and Dorothy’ – a film about two elderly art collectors, who appear to have bought paintings for the subversive and radical reason that they enjoyed looking at them, and apparently became an axis for the New York art world. Hitchcock might have liked the mystery of how on earth [...]
'Shutter Island': Scorsese's Lament
Joe Biden appeared on the Sunday morning talk shows last week to defend the Obama administration from Dick Cheney’s disgraceful attacks, which appear to suggest his earlier bloodlust has not yet been satisfied, despite everything his time in the White House accomplished. The current Vice-President had the opportunity to set out a genuine alternative to [...]
The TFT Friday Roundup: Rogues with (or without) Guitars, Mavericks, and Single Men
‘Tender Mercies’: ‘Crazy Heart’s Grand-Daddy We’re rolling toward the end of another week, and to keep you, dear listener, satisfied until Jett and I can present the brand shiny and new upcoming Episode 111 – in which we plan to discuss Mel’s descent in Edge of Darkness, Jeff’s beard in Crazy Heart, and the very [...]
It’s Tuesday, So It Must Be The TFT DVD/Blu-Ray and Miscellaneous Other Digital Media Report: Rising Sun, Un Chien Andalou, A Serious Man, Peter and Vandy, and As it is in Heaven
As it is in Heaven Hey there folks – starting today, we’re going to try to post on Tuesdays about films new out on DVD, or available to stream over the coming week; so herewith the inaugural ‘It’s Tuesday, so it Must Be the TFT DVD/Blu-Ray and Miscellaneous Other Digital Media Report: We like to [...]
Downhill Racer: Winning Is Everything
Caught up with Criterion’s characteristically excellent release of ‘Downhill Racer‘, another film that reveals Michael Ritchie as an under-appreciated director (Honeslty, imdb-chatters, have you really nothing to say about the guy who made ‘The Candidate’, ‘Fletch’, and the deeply serious thriller ‘Prime Cut’?), Robert Redford as a far more nuanced actor than his reputation permits, [...]
Start the Week
An Education Hi there folks – a new week, the sun is shining (but it’s making no impact on the snow in my garden, and the car windscreen isn’t going to clear for a while), Buddy Miller is doing his thing on the – what do you call ‘em these days? hi-fi?, a sealed Netflix [...]
