I'm not going to bother with a complete list of Oscar nominations because by this time, you've probably already seen them. (In case you haven't, here you go). Instead, I figured I'd just take one category at a time, starting with Best Supporting Actress, since that's the only one for which I've seen every nominee.
Here are the nominees, followed by the number of awards each has won already this year, from various critics' societies (a breakdown of who won what from whom can be found here).
Adriana Barraza for Babel: 1
Cate Blanchett for Notes on a Scandal: 6
Abigail Breslin for Little Miss Sunshine: 5 (2 for Supporting Actress, 3 for Performance by a Youth)
Jennifer Hudson for Dreamgirls: 18 (11 for Supporting Actress, 7 for Breakthrough Performance)
Rinko Kikuchi for Babel: 4 (3 for Supporting Actress, 1 for Breakthrough Performance)
Hudson is clearly the favorite to win, though her fellow nominees all delivered strong work. Effie is really a leading role in Dreamgirls, and Hudson gets as much screen time as Beyonce Knowles. But Knowles is a Big Star, so she got the above-the-title billing and the right to a (non-existent) Leading Actress nomination. And to be fair, she did make The Pink Panther and Goldmember.
Of all the nominees, Kikuchi impressed me most. Her character was the most heartbreaking in Babel and her story the most compelling, both because of her extraordinary performance. Barraza was just as good, but I didn't believe for one second that her son would dump her in the desert with two children in the middle of the night.
Cate Blanchett is one of my favorite actresses of our generation. In 2006, she turned in equally strong work in Babel, the little-seen (and even littler-appreciated) The Good German and Notes on a Scandal, for which she is nominated. Her versatility is reminiscent of Meryl Streep's. But, like Streep, Blanchett is so consistently good that she may never get another Oscar. We expect her to be great, and aren't surprised when she is. She'd have to have another perfect vehicle like Elizabeth to really wow the Academy.
Breslin is the heart and soul of Little Miss Sunshine and her performance showed remarkable range. Consider her reaction to the news that she qualified for the pageant, the silent way she comforts her brother along the side of the highway, and her joyfully oblivious striptease. This is a cute little girl who can also act - which is always a nice surprise. (As a totally random side note, I saw LMS at a preview screening that was followed by a Q&A with the film's directors. One guy raised his hand and compared Breslin with a "young Dakota Fanning." Please.)
Front-runner: Jennifer Hudson
Upset-that-wouldn't-surprise-me: Abigail Breslin
I would vote for: Rinko Kikuchi
The Overlooked:
Catherine O'Hara, For Your Consideration
Sharon Stone, Bobby
Anyone I've left out?
Showing posts with label Best of 2006. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Best of 2006. Show all posts
Saturday, January 27, 2007
Monday, January 22, 2007
2006 Awards Season Round-Up: Golden Globes, Producers Guild and 8 other Film Critics Circle Awards
2006 Award Season Round-Up
Your one stop shop for winning the office Oscar pool
Below is a list of award-winners from those award-giving institutions that I feel merit mention. I'll update throughout the award-season.
(Not every film society gives every award, so some categories may seem a little thin.)
Critics' Societies Included:
- African-American Film Critics Association (A-A)
- Austin Film Critics Association (Au)
- Boston Society of Film Critics (Bo)
- Broadcast Film Critic Association (BFCA)
- Central Ohio Film Critics Association (OH)
- Chicago Film Critics Association (Chi)
- Dallas-Ft. Worth Film Critics Association (DFW)
- Florida Film Critics Circle (FL)
- Hollywood Foreign Press Association Golden Globe Awards (GG)
- The International Press Academy Satellite Awards (IPA)
- Iowa Film Critics (IA)
- Kansas City Film Critics Circle (KC)
- Las Vegas Film Critics Society (LV)
- Los Angeles Film Critics Association (LA)
- National Board of Review (NBR)
- National Society of Film Critics (NSFC)
- New York Film Critics Circle (NY)
- New York Film Critics Online (ny.com)
- Oklahoma Film Critics Circle (OK)
- Online Film Critics Society (OFCS)
- Phoenix Film Critics Society (Ph)
- Producers Guild of America (PGA)
- St. Louis Gateway Film Critics Association (St.L)
- San Diego Film Critics Society (SD)
- San Francisco Film Critics Circle (SF)
- Southeastern Film Critics Association (SE)
- Toronto Film Critics Association (Tor)
- Utah Film Critics Society (UT)
- Vancouver Film Critics Circle
- Washington, DC Area Film Critics (DC)
Best Film
United 93: 9 (Au, DC, DFW, KC, NY, OFCS, OK, Ph, UT)
The Departed: 8 (Bo, BFCA, Chi, FL, IPA: dr, LV, SE, St.L: dr) *
Dreamgirls: 3 (A-A, GG: com/mus, IPA: comedy)**
Letters From Iwo Jima: 3 (LA, NBR, SD)
Children of Men: 2 (OH, Van)
Little Children: 2 (IA, SF)
Little Miss Sunshine: 2 (PGA, St. L: com/mus)
The Queen: 2 (ny.com, Tor)
Babel: 1 (GG: drama)
Borat: Cultural Learnings of America for Make Benefit Glorious Nation of Kazakhstan: 1 (BFCA: mus/com)
El Laberinto del Fauno (Pan's Labyrinth): 1 (NSFC)
*dr = drama
**com/mus = comedy/musical
Best Director
Martin Scorsese, The Departed: 17 (Bo, BFCA, Chi, DC, DFW, FL, GG, IA, LV, NBR, NY, OFCS, OH, OK, Ph, SE, St. L)
Paul Greengrass, United 93: 4 (KC, LA, NSFC, SF)
Alfonso Cuaron, Children of Men: 3 (Au, UT, Van)
Bill Condon, Dreamgirls: 2 (A-A, IPA (tie))
Stephen Frears, The Queen: 2 (ny.com, Tor (tie))
Jean-Pierre Dardenne & Luc Dardenne, L'Enfant: 1 (Tor (tie))
Clint Eastwood, Flags of Our Fathers: 1 (IPA (tie))
Clint Eastwood, Letters from Iwo Jima: 1 (SD)
Best First Film
Jonathan Dayton & Valerie Faris, Little Miss Sunshine: 3 (OK, ny.com, OSFC)
Ryan Fleck, Half Nelson: 2 (Bo, NY)
Rian Johnson, Brick: 2 (Au, Chi (Most Promising Director))
Jason Reitman, Thank You For Smoking: 2 (NBR, Tor)
Emilio Estevez, Bobby: 1 (Ph (Breakout Performance of the Year, Behind the Camera))
Best Original Screenplay
Peter Morgan, The Queen: 9 (Chi, GG, LA, IPA, NSFC, NY, ny.com, St. L, Tor)
Michael Arndt, Little Miss Sunshine, 6 (BFCA, DC, DFW, KC, Ph, SE)
Rian Johnson, Brick: 3 (OH, SF, UT)
Guillermo del Toro, El Laberinto del Fauno (Pan's Labyrinth): 2 (Au, OFCS)
Zach Helm, Stranger Than Fiction: 1 (NBR)
Karen Moncrieff, The Dead Girl: 1 (SD)
Best Adapted Screenplay
William Monahan, The Departed: 8 (Bo. Chi, FL, IPA, KC, OH, Ph, SE)
Jason Reitman, Thank You for Smoking: 3 (DC, LV, SD)
Alfonso Cuaron, Children of Men: 2 (Au, OFCS)
Todd Field & Tom Perrotta, Little Children: 1 (SF)
Ron Nyswaner: The Painted Veil: 1 (NBR)
Best Animated Feature
Cars: 11 (Au, BFCA, GG, IA, NBR, OH, OK, PGA, SD, SE, St. L)
Happy Feet: 6 (DC, DFW, LA, NY, ny.com, Tor)
Monster House: 2 (FL, LV)
Flushed Away: 1 (Ph)
El Laberinto del Fauno (Pan's Labyrinth): 1 (IPA (Animated or Mixed Media))
Over the Hedge: 1 (KC)
A Scanner Darkly: 1(OFCS)
Best Documentary
An Inconvenient Truth: 19 (Chi, DC, DFW, FL, KC, LA, LV, NBR, NSFC, ny.com, OFCS, OH, OK, Ph, SE, SF, St. L, UT)
Deliver Us from Evil: 3 (Bo (tie), IPA, NY )
Shut Up & Sing: 2 (Bo (tie), SD)
This Film Is Not Yet Rated: 1 (Au)
Manufactured Landscapes: 1 (Tor)
Best Foreign (Language) Film
El Laberinto del Fauno (Pan's Labyrinth): 12 (Au, Bo, DC, FL, IA, ny.com, OFCS, OH, OK, SE, SF, St. L)
Letters From Iwo Jima: 7 (BFCA, Chi, DFW, GG, KC, Ph, UT)
Volver: 3 (IPA, NBR, Van)
L'armee des obres (Army of Shadows): 1 (NY)*
L'Enfant: 1 (Tor)
Das Leben der Anderen (The Lives of Others): 1 (LA)
Qian li zou qi (Riding Alone for Thousands of Miles): 1 (SD)
*Though it was made in 1969, L'armee des obres did not receive its US premiere until 2006.
Best Actor
Forest Whitaker, The Last King Of Scotland: 23 (A-A, Bo, BFCA, Chi, DC, DFW, FL, GG: dr, IA, IPA: dr, KC, LA (tie), LV, NBR, NSFC, NY, ny.com, OFCS, OK, Ph, SE, St. L, Van)
Sacha Baron Cohen, Borat: Cultural Learnings of America for Make Benefit Glorious Nation of Kazakhstan: 5 (GG: com/mus, LA (tie), SF, Tor, UT)
Leonardo DiCaprio, The Departed: 2 (Au, OH)
Joseph Cross: Running with Scissors: 1 (IPA: com/mus)
Ken Takakura, Qian li zou qi (Riding Alone for Thousands of Miles): 1 (SD)
Best Actress
Helen Mirren, The Queen: 28 (A-A, Bo, BFCA, Chi, DC, DFW, FL, GG: dr, IA, IPA: dr, KC, LA, LV, NBR, NSFC, NY, ny.com, OFCS, OH, OK, Ph, SD, SE, SF, St. L, Tor, UT, Van)
Meryl Streep, The Devil Wears Prada: 2 (GG: com/mus, IPA: com/mus)
Ellen Page, Hard Candy: 1 (Au)
Best Supporting Actor
Jackie Earle Haley, Little Children: 8 (Chi, DFW, IA, NY, OFCS, OK, SE, SF)
Michael Sheen, The Queen: 5 (KC, LA, ny.com, Tor, UT)
Djimon Hounsou, Blood Diamond: 4 (DC, LV, NBR, St. L)
Eddie Murphy, Dreamgirls: 4 (A-A, BFCA, GG, OH)
Jack Nicholson, The Departed: 3 (Au, FL, Ph)
Mark Wahlberg, The Departed: 2 (Bo, NSFC)
Alan Arkin, Little Miss Sunshine: 1 (Van)
Leonardo DiCaprio, The Departed: 1 (IPA)
Ray Winstone, The Proposition: 1 (SD)
Best Supporting Actress
Jennifer Hudson, Dreamgirls: 11 (A-A, BFCA, DC, GG, IPA, LV, NY, ny.com (tie), OH, SE, St. L)
Cate Blanchett, Notes on a Scandal: 6 (DFW, FL, OK, Ph, Tor, Van)
Rinko Kikuchi, Babel: 3 (Au, Chi, UT)
Catherine O'Hara, For Your Consideration: 3 (KC, NBR, ny.com (tie))
Abigail Breslin, Little Miss Sunshine: 2 (IA, OSFC)
Adriana Barraza, Babel: 1 (SF)
Shareeka Epps, Half Nelson: 1 (Bo)
Luminita Gheorghiu, Moartea domnului Lazarescu (The Death of Mr. Lazarescu): 1 (LA)
Meryl Streep, The Devil Wears Prada: 1 (NSFC)
Meryl Streep, A Prairie Home Companion: 1 (NSFC)
Lili Taylor, Factotum: 1 (SD)
Breakthrough Performance: Male
Sacha Baron Cohen, Borat... and Talladega Nights: The Ballad of Ricky Bobby: 2 (Chi, OSFC)
Ryan Gosling, Half Nelson: 1 (NBR)
Breakthrough Performance: Female
Jennifer Hudson, Dreamgirls: 7 (Au, FL, NBR (tie), ny.com, OH, OK, Ph)
Rinko Kikuchi, Babel: 1 (NBR (tie))
Best Performance by a Youth, Male
Paul Dano, Little Miss Sunshine: 1 (BFCA)
Jaden Smith, The Pursuit of Happyness: 1 (Ph)
Best Performance by a Youth, Female
Abigail Breslin, Little Miss Sunshine: 3 (BFCA, LV, Ph)
Best Acting By An Ensemble
Little Miss Sunshine: 4 (BFCA, DC, ny.com, Ph)
The Departed: 3 (IPA, NBR, OH)
Babel: 1 (SD)
United 93: 1 (Bo)
Best Art Direction and Production Design
K.K. Barrett (PD) & Anne Seibel (AD), Marie Antionette: 3 (DC, LV, Ph)
Henry Bumstead (PD), Jack G. Taylor Jr. & Richard Goddard (AD), Flags of Our Fathers: 1 (IPA)
Eugenio Caballero (PD/AD), El Laberinto del Fauno (Pan's Labyrinth): 1 (LA )
Owen Paterson, V for Vendetta: 1 (SD)
Costume Design
Milena Canonero, Marie Antionette: 1 (Ph)
Patricia Field, The Devil Wears Prada: 1 (IPA)
Best Cinematography
Emmanuel Lubezki, Children of Men: 6 (Au, Chi, LA, LV, NSFC, OSFC)
Guillermo Navarro, El Laberinto del Fauno (Pan's Labyrinth): 3 (Bo, FL, NY)
Dean Semler, Apocalypto: 3 (DFW, OH, Ph)
Dick Pope, The Illusionist: 2 (ny.com, SD)
Tom Stern, Flags of Our Fathers: 1 (IPA)
Best Editing
Christopher Rouse, Richard Pearson and Clare Douglas, United 93: 2 (OSFC, SD)
Thelma Schoonmaker, The Departed: 2 (LV, Ph) Mark Helfrich, Mark Goldblatt, Julia Wong: X-Men: The Last Stand: 1 (IPA)
Best Music Score
Gustavo Santolalla, Babel: 3 (IPA, OH, SD)
Alexandre Desplat, The Painted Veil: 2 (GG, LA)
Philip Glass, The Illusionist: 2 (BFCA, ny.com)
Clint Mansell, The Fountain: 2 (Chi, OSFC)
Alexandre Desplat, The Queen: 1 (LA)
Thomas Newman, The Good German: 1 (LV)
Best Original Song
"Listen,"Henry Krieger, Scott Cutler, Beyoncé Knowles, and Anne Preven, Dreamgirls: 1 (BFCA)
"Ordinary Miracle," David Stewart & Glen Ballard, Charlotte's Web: 1 (LV)
"The Song of My Heart," Prince Rogers Nelson, Happy Feet: 1 (GG)
"You Know My Name," Chris Cornell, David Arnold, Casino Royale: 1 (IPA)
Sound (Editing & Mixing)
Willie Burton, Michael Minkler, Bob Beemer, Richard E. Yawn, Dreamgirls: 1 (IPA)
Best Visual Effects
Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Man's Chest: 2 (IPA, St. L)
Superman Returns: 1 (Ph)
X-Men: The Last Stand: 1 (LV)
Saturday, December 23, 2006
NY Times Highlights Top DVD Releases of 06
From Film to Fetish Object: The Year’s Noteworthy DVDs
By Dave Kehr, New York Times, December 22, 2006
DVDs are more than just plastic discs with movies tucked inside. At their best these strangely compelling objects owe their appeal to a combination of elements, one that might begin with a movie but also includes the extras: the packaging, the program notes, the menu design, the commentary tracks and a wide range of supplementary material, from deleted scenes to entire features. Aligning all these things requires genuine editorial skill, just as getting what are often dirty, faded old prints to look and sound sharp and new again demands technical ability and artistic judgment.
This list of 10 of the year’s most notable DVD releases is meant to acknowledge the contributions of those frequently anonymous technicians and designers who create these alluring fetish objects. And rather than simply concede the field to the Criterion Collection and Warner Home Video, which lead the pack in presentation and breadth of selection, I’ve tried to spread things out among several companies striving for quality, whether linked to major studios or operated as labors of love out of basements and back rooms.
Eric Rohmer’s Six Moral Tales
Criterion, the company that introduced directors’ commentaries and supplementary material in the laser disc days, is still on top of the heap. And its commitment to the highest standards in visual quality, value-added supplements and scholarship has seldom been more strongly represented than by this boxed-set edition of six Rohmer films (including My Night at Maud’s and Claire’s Knee), which represent one of the signal accomplishments of the French New Wave. Mr. Rohmer supervised the transfers, which for the two early, short films came from delicate 16-millimeter prints, and also subjected himself to a rare on-camera interview with his former star and producer Barbet Schroeder. A handful of other early Rohmer shorts, including the sublime Nadja in Paris, are included, as well as On Pascal, a sample of the educational films he has never stopped making for French television. One stand-alone book includes the short stories, written by Mr. Rohmer long before they were filmed, on which the Moral Tales are based; another contains essays by prominent critics, including Kent Jones and Molly Haskell. Fully the equivalent of an academic edition of a great author’s work, with some of the cinema’s most deliciously erotic moments thrown in at no extra charge. (Criterion, $99.95)
John Wayne-John Ford Film Collection
Bringing together eight of the Ford-Wayne films now controlled by Time Warner, this terrific set chronicles one of the most fruitful (and neurotically complex) director-star collaborations in American film. The big dog is The Searchers, the 1956 film publicly dismissed by Ford (along with many critics of the time) as “a potboiler” that has slowly assumed its rightful position as a legitimate contender for the Great American Movie, plunging straight to the heart of this country’s great crimes and great glories. The collection includes a remastered edition of Stagecoach, the 1939 film that put Wayne on the road to stardom after a decade in B westerns, and the DVD premieres of The Long Voyage Home (1940), The Wings of Eagles (1957) [ed. note: The Wings of Eagles is strictly for completionists.] and Fort Apache (1948), the first of Ford’s “cavalry trilogy.” They Were Expendable, the hauntingly muffled, melancholic film that Ford made upon his return from his service in World War II, speaks directly to Clint Eastwood’s Letters From Iwo Jima. (Warner Home Video, $79.98)
Phantom
The independent company Flicker Alley has released only three DVDs in its short history, each a dedicated attempt to recapture the exquisite visual quality of silent cinema. Most scholars would place Phantom (1922) — the tale of a failed poet (Alfred Abel) obsessed with an unattainable upper-class woman — among the secondary works of its director, F. W. Murnau. But the Flicker Alley presentation, based on one of the restorations of German silents sponsored by the F. W. Murnau Foundation, which have produced mixed results, is glowingly alive. Care was taken with the transfer to video, and the tasteful color tinting for once does not overpower the tonal range of the black-and-white images. (Flicker Alley, $29.98)
Wanda
It isn’t only silent films that need restoration and revival. Barbara Loden’s groundbreaking independent film was made in 1970 and has been practically impossible to see since; the fledgling distributor Parlour Pictures has discovered an excellent copy of this astonishing work, about a desperate woman from the Appalachian coal country (played by Ms. Loden) who gets mixed up with a petty crook, and reassembled it into the great achievement in American neorealism that it is. Ms. Loden, who died of cancer in 1980, never made another film, but Wanda secures her place in the pantheon. (Parlour Pictures, $24.95)
The Valerio Zurlini Box Set: The Early Masterpieces
What you always hope for when you slip in an unknown DVD: the revelation of a major filmmaker you have barely heard of. This two-feature set from the Italian-American company NoShame includes two films by Mr. Zurlini: Violent Summer, a 1959 romantic drama set during the last days of Fascism that clearly influenced Bernardo Bertolucci’s Conformist, and the glowing Girl With a Suitcase (1961), starring the 23-year-old Claudia Cardinale as a failed cabaret singer who reluctantly falls under the protection of a naïve teenage boy from a wealthy family. Copious supplementary material helps to fill in the portrait of this unjustly neglected filmmaker, as does NoShame’s other Zurlini release this year, the mournful epic Desert of the Tartars (1976). (NoShame, $29.95)
Lubitsch in Berlin
More restorations from Germany’s busy Murnau Foundation, these early features — The Oyster Princess and I Don’t Want to Be a Man (on one disc); Sumurun, Anna Boleyn and The Wildcat — by the future master of sophisticated Hollywood comedy aren’t in quite as good shape as Phantom, but they offer an engaging portrait of an artist in development. From the broadly satirical comedy of The Oyster Princess (1919) to the historical drama of Anna Boleyn (1920), Ernst Lubitsch can be seen refining his technique, continually paring away the inessential and overstated, moving toward the mastery of saying so much with so little that characterized his American-made masterpieces like Trouble in Paradise (1932). (Kino, $29.95 each disc)
Reds
Paramount, which sold most of its rich pre-1948 holdings to MCA-Universal for a mess of pottage, probably has the thinnest library of the major studios. And to judge from the no-frills DVDs it has been publishing, the video division does not have the backing of Paramount’s corporate masters. But when the opportunity is there, as it was with Warren Beatty’s tragicomic epic of early-20th-century radical politics, Paramount can rise to the occasion: this two-disc set offers magnificent color and an immaculate image, as well as a lengthy documentary directed by Laurent Bouzereau that covers every aspect of the film’s making. With this release, 1900, The Conformist and the first volume of the Martin and Lewis Collection, Paramount is finally stepping up to the plate; here’s hoping it finds marketers who are better able to exploit its still quite compelling library of 1950s and ’60s features, which includes long unseen work by Frank Tashlin, Leo McCarey, Anthony Mann, Phil Karlson, Blake Edwards, Otto Preminger and Howard Hawks. (Paramount Home Video, $19.99)
Mr. Moto Collection, Vol. 1
Fox’s DVD division has been moving up fast in the last few years, and when it puts time and money into a project, as it did with this set and its excellent film noir series, the results are spectacular. Unlike the movies in Fox’s Charlie Chan series, now in its second volume of superlative restorations, the Moto films were not whodunits but highly entertaining exotic espionage adventures set in a studio-constructed Far East, starring Peter Lorre (with fake eyelids and buck teeth) as a mysterious international operator of Japanese origin. Fox is to be thanked for sinking so much effort into the digital restoration of these relatively obscure films, and helping to revive both the reputation of the series and the standing of its principal director, Norman Foster. (Twentieth Century Fox Home Entertainment, $59.98)
Cary Grant: Screen Legend Collection
With the Universal library and the pre-1948 Paramount titles, Universal Home Video has the richest unexploited film holdings in Hollywood. It’s unfortunate that so many of its movies have fallen out of distribution, making it impossible to see (legally at least) masterpieces like Frank Borzage’s Little Man, What Now? and Josef von Sternberg’s An American Tragedy, not to mention hundreds of unknown, unexplored films, among which would certainly be items of tremendous interest if anyone were allowed to get to them. But with the “Franchise Collection” series, Universal has found an economic and appealing way of slipping some of its lesser-known titles into the marketplace. I pick the Cary Grant collection just as an example. Here, spread out on three discs, are five films, including the pre-Code comedies Thirty Day Princess and Kiss and Make-Up (both 1934), that could never have stood on their own, but together make a must-have set. [Ed. note: The collection also includes Wings in the Dark (1935), Big Brown Eyes (1936) and Wedding Present (1936)] Other collections have been devoted to John Wayne, Rock Hudson, Bing Crosby, Mae West, Carole Lombard and Cecil B. DeMille (as well as, inexplicably, Ma and Pa Kettle and Francis the Talking Mule); I hope they keep it up forever. (Universal Home Video, $29.98)
Beyond the Rocks
Sheer altruism on the part of Milestone Film and Video, one of the finest of the boutique labels. This 1922 feature, the only film to pair two of the silent era’s biggest stars, Gloria Swanson and Rudolph Valentino, was rescued from the chaos of a private collection by the Nederlands Filmmuseum and restored to excellent shape. Milestone has packaged it with a second feature, the 1919 Delicious Little Devil; an 85-minute radio interview with Swanson recorded in 1955; documentaries about the rediscovery and reconstruction of Beyond the Rocks; and your choice of two orchestral scores. It hardly matters that the movie, the work of the perennially dull Sam Wood, isn’t a masterpiece. [This is true. I saw the Beyond the Rocks at the Music Box Theatre here in Chicago earlier this year and I...um...fell asleep.] This significant bit of film history, which otherwise would have been seen by only a handful of academics and museumgoers [yo!], is now available to an audience far beyond the big cities where such things usually play. And that may be the ultimate justification for the DVD format: spreading the word beyond the happy few who live within subway [or walking] distance of the Museum of Modern Art [or the Music Box]. (Milestone, $29.95)
Milestone isn’t the only boutique doing terrific work: I wish I had room to more thoroughly plug Koch Lorber Films, Synapse Films, Mondo Macabro, IFC Films, First Run Features, Facets, VCI Entertainment, Other Cinema, Palm Pictures, Alpha Video and Dark Sky Films, among others. How will video on demand alter this idyllic landscape? By the end of next year we should start to know.
By Dave Kehr, New York Times, December 22, 2006
DVDs are more than just plastic discs with movies tucked inside. At their best these strangely compelling objects owe their appeal to a combination of elements, one that might begin with a movie but also includes the extras: the packaging, the program notes, the menu design, the commentary tracks and a wide range of supplementary material, from deleted scenes to entire features. Aligning all these things requires genuine editorial skill, just as getting what are often dirty, faded old prints to look and sound sharp and new again demands technical ability and artistic judgment.
This list of 10 of the year’s most notable DVD releases is meant to acknowledge the contributions of those frequently anonymous technicians and designers who create these alluring fetish objects. And rather than simply concede the field to the Criterion Collection and Warner Home Video, which lead the pack in presentation and breadth of selection, I’ve tried to spread things out among several companies striving for quality, whether linked to major studios or operated as labors of love out of basements and back rooms.
Eric Rohmer’s Six Moral Tales
Criterion, the company that introduced directors’ commentaries and supplementary material in the laser disc days, is still on top of the heap. And its commitment to the highest standards in visual quality, value-added supplements and scholarship has seldom been more strongly represented than by this boxed-set edition of six Rohmer films (including My Night at Maud’s and Claire’s Knee), which represent one of the signal accomplishments of the French New Wave. Mr. Rohmer supervised the transfers, which for the two early, short films came from delicate 16-millimeter prints, and also subjected himself to a rare on-camera interview with his former star and producer Barbet Schroeder. A handful of other early Rohmer shorts, including the sublime Nadja in Paris, are included, as well as On Pascal, a sample of the educational films he has never stopped making for French television. One stand-alone book includes the short stories, written by Mr. Rohmer long before they were filmed, on which the Moral Tales are based; another contains essays by prominent critics, including Kent Jones and Molly Haskell. Fully the equivalent of an academic edition of a great author’s work, with some of the cinema’s most deliciously erotic moments thrown in at no extra charge. (Criterion, $99.95)
John Wayne-John Ford Film Collection
Bringing together eight of the Ford-Wayne films now controlled by Time Warner, this terrific set chronicles one of the most fruitful (and neurotically complex) director-star collaborations in American film. The big dog is The Searchers, the 1956 film publicly dismissed by Ford (along with many critics of the time) as “a potboiler” that has slowly assumed its rightful position as a legitimate contender for the Great American Movie, plunging straight to the heart of this country’s great crimes and great glories. The collection includes a remastered edition of Stagecoach, the 1939 film that put Wayne on the road to stardom after a decade in B westerns, and the DVD premieres of The Long Voyage Home (1940), The Wings of Eagles (1957) [ed. note: The Wings of Eagles is strictly for completionists.] and Fort Apache (1948), the first of Ford’s “cavalry trilogy.” They Were Expendable, the hauntingly muffled, melancholic film that Ford made upon his return from his service in World War II, speaks directly to Clint Eastwood’s Letters From Iwo Jima. (Warner Home Video, $79.98)
Phantom
The independent company Flicker Alley has released only three DVDs in its short history, each a dedicated attempt to recapture the exquisite visual quality of silent cinema. Most scholars would place Phantom (1922) — the tale of a failed poet (Alfred Abel) obsessed with an unattainable upper-class woman — among the secondary works of its director, F. W. Murnau. But the Flicker Alley presentation, based on one of the restorations of German silents sponsored by the F. W. Murnau Foundation, which have produced mixed results, is glowingly alive. Care was taken with the transfer to video, and the tasteful color tinting for once does not overpower the tonal range of the black-and-white images. (Flicker Alley, $29.98)
Wanda
It isn’t only silent films that need restoration and revival. Barbara Loden’s groundbreaking independent film was made in 1970 and has been practically impossible to see since; the fledgling distributor Parlour Pictures has discovered an excellent copy of this astonishing work, about a desperate woman from the Appalachian coal country (played by Ms. Loden) who gets mixed up with a petty crook, and reassembled it into the great achievement in American neorealism that it is. Ms. Loden, who died of cancer in 1980, never made another film, but Wanda secures her place in the pantheon. (Parlour Pictures, $24.95)
The Valerio Zurlini Box Set: The Early Masterpieces
What you always hope for when you slip in an unknown DVD: the revelation of a major filmmaker you have barely heard of. This two-feature set from the Italian-American company NoShame includes two films by Mr. Zurlini: Violent Summer, a 1959 romantic drama set during the last days of Fascism that clearly influenced Bernardo Bertolucci’s Conformist, and the glowing Girl With a Suitcase (1961), starring the 23-year-old Claudia Cardinale as a failed cabaret singer who reluctantly falls under the protection of a naïve teenage boy from a wealthy family. Copious supplementary material helps to fill in the portrait of this unjustly neglected filmmaker, as does NoShame’s other Zurlini release this year, the mournful epic Desert of the Tartars (1976). (NoShame, $29.95)
Lubitsch in Berlin
More restorations from Germany’s busy Murnau Foundation, these early features — The Oyster Princess and I Don’t Want to Be a Man (on one disc); Sumurun, Anna Boleyn and The Wildcat — by the future master of sophisticated Hollywood comedy aren’t in quite as good shape as Phantom, but they offer an engaging portrait of an artist in development. From the broadly satirical comedy of The Oyster Princess (1919) to the historical drama of Anna Boleyn (1920), Ernst Lubitsch can be seen refining his technique, continually paring away the inessential and overstated, moving toward the mastery of saying so much with so little that characterized his American-made masterpieces like Trouble in Paradise (1932). (Kino, $29.95 each disc)
Reds
Paramount, which sold most of its rich pre-1948 holdings to MCA-Universal for a mess of pottage, probably has the thinnest library of the major studios. And to judge from the no-frills DVDs it has been publishing, the video division does not have the backing of Paramount’s corporate masters. But when the opportunity is there, as it was with Warren Beatty’s tragicomic epic of early-20th-century radical politics, Paramount can rise to the occasion: this two-disc set offers magnificent color and an immaculate image, as well as a lengthy documentary directed by Laurent Bouzereau that covers every aspect of the film’s making. With this release, 1900, The Conformist and the first volume of the Martin and Lewis Collection, Paramount is finally stepping up to the plate; here’s hoping it finds marketers who are better able to exploit its still quite compelling library of 1950s and ’60s features, which includes long unseen work by Frank Tashlin, Leo McCarey, Anthony Mann, Phil Karlson, Blake Edwards, Otto Preminger and Howard Hawks. (Paramount Home Video, $19.99)
Mr. Moto Collection, Vol. 1
Fox’s DVD division has been moving up fast in the last few years, and when it puts time and money into a project, as it did with this set and its excellent film noir series, the results are spectacular. Unlike the movies in Fox’s Charlie Chan series, now in its second volume of superlative restorations, the Moto films were not whodunits but highly entertaining exotic espionage adventures set in a studio-constructed Far East, starring Peter Lorre (with fake eyelids and buck teeth) as a mysterious international operator of Japanese origin. Fox is to be thanked for sinking so much effort into the digital restoration of these relatively obscure films, and helping to revive both the reputation of the series and the standing of its principal director, Norman Foster. (Twentieth Century Fox Home Entertainment, $59.98)
Cary Grant: Screen Legend Collection
With the Universal library and the pre-1948 Paramount titles, Universal Home Video has the richest unexploited film holdings in Hollywood. It’s unfortunate that so many of its movies have fallen out of distribution, making it impossible to see (legally at least) masterpieces like Frank Borzage’s Little Man, What Now? and Josef von Sternberg’s An American Tragedy, not to mention hundreds of unknown, unexplored films, among which would certainly be items of tremendous interest if anyone were allowed to get to them. But with the “Franchise Collection” series, Universal has found an economic and appealing way of slipping some of its lesser-known titles into the marketplace. I pick the Cary Grant collection just as an example. Here, spread out on three discs, are five films, including the pre-Code comedies Thirty Day Princess and Kiss and Make-Up (both 1934), that could never have stood on their own, but together make a must-have set. [Ed. note: The collection also includes Wings in the Dark (1935), Big Brown Eyes (1936) and Wedding Present (1936)] Other collections have been devoted to John Wayne, Rock Hudson, Bing Crosby, Mae West, Carole Lombard and Cecil B. DeMille (as well as, inexplicably, Ma and Pa Kettle and Francis the Talking Mule); I hope they keep it up forever. (Universal Home Video, $29.98)
Beyond the Rocks
Sheer altruism on the part of Milestone Film and Video, one of the finest of the boutique labels. This 1922 feature, the only film to pair two of the silent era’s biggest stars, Gloria Swanson and Rudolph Valentino, was rescued from the chaos of a private collection by the Nederlands Filmmuseum and restored to excellent shape. Milestone has packaged it with a second feature, the 1919 Delicious Little Devil; an 85-minute radio interview with Swanson recorded in 1955; documentaries about the rediscovery and reconstruction of Beyond the Rocks; and your choice of two orchestral scores. It hardly matters that the movie, the work of the perennially dull Sam Wood, isn’t a masterpiece. [This is true. I saw the Beyond the Rocks at the Music Box Theatre here in Chicago earlier this year and I...um...fell asleep.] This significant bit of film history, which otherwise would have been seen by only a handful of academics and museumgoers [yo!], is now available to an audience far beyond the big cities where such things usually play. And that may be the ultimate justification for the DVD format: spreading the word beyond the happy few who live within subway [or walking] distance of the Museum of Modern Art [or the Music Box]. (Milestone, $29.95)
Milestone isn’t the only boutique doing terrific work: I wish I had room to more thoroughly plug Koch Lorber Films, Synapse Films, Mondo Macabro, IFC Films, First Run Features, Facets, VCI Entertainment, Other Cinema, Palm Pictures, Alpha Video and Dark Sky Films, among others. How will video on demand alter this idyllic landscape? By the end of next year we should start to know.
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