Robin Wood, one of the most respected English writers on film for many years (his book-length studies of Howard Hawks and Alfred Hitchcock were required reading at my university) publishes one of the best film magazines widely available in the US (it’s sold at Borders, at least), CineAction, a thrice-annual publication by Wood’s nonprofit collective “for the advancement of film studies.”

This is simply a plug for the latest issue of CineAction (number 62), which is chock full of the sort of lengthy and thoughtful articles Film Comment, in its ongoing quest to be hip with a broad appeal, forgot how to publish years ago: “Vision and Experience in Terrence Malick’s The Thin Red Line, “The Purpose of Plot and the Place of Joan Bennett in Fritz Lang’s The Woman in the Window,” “Music and Modernity in A Brighter Summer Day,” a fascinating in-depth look at Michael Haneke’s Code Inconnu written by Wood himself (developed from a course he taught at York University), and much more.

Wood throws down the gauntlet in his editorial remarks on page one:

“Over the last few decades we have witnessed, in the university, theory and scholarship usurping the place of criticism: a major setback for the development of our culture. Aside from the loss within academia, the result has been the degrading of criticism to the level of ‘reviewing’. This is not of course to denigrate the importance of scholarship and theory, upon which criticism depends. The three should form a triangle of which criticism is the apex.

Theory supplies the critic with maps, scholarship with facts; the critic needs both, as reference points when relevant to his/her needs. But it is the critic who is primarily concerned with questions of value: the value of the individual work of art, its potential value within a (so-called) civilization that at present appears bent on self-destruction. The question of value has never been so urgent.”

If you’re not near a Borders store, you can purchase a subscription to CineAction from Amazon.com, or send $21/year, $36/bi-annually to:

CineAction
40 Alexander Street, #705
Toronto, Ontario
Canada, M4Y 1B5

I’ll be offline for a few days…I wish everyone a joyous and relaxing Christmas season!

Following my previous blog on the unavailability of many classic films on DVD, my cohorts at Masters of Cinema and I have added a new article written by Nick Wrigley that discusses the industry’s distribution practices and problems. As a bonus, we’ve contacted some of our favorite critics and historians and asked them for their list of “most wanted films on DVD.” The results make a fascinating read.

Check it out…

Online cinephiles have known for years that one of best writers on international cinema is Acquarello, whose Strictly Film School site continues to be a goldmine of information and inspiration. The National Gallery of Art in Washington, DC has been lucky enough to enlist him to write the programming notes for their new Yasujiro Ozu retrospective, and it’s a good read even for those who won’t be attending.

In other news, it has been many years since I bothered to watch the Oscar broadcast, partly because as a reflection of the year in film, it couldn’t be more restricted, inflated, and downright gaudy. One of its perpetual screw-ups, for example, is the Best Foreign Language Film category, which offers a completely unpredictable and random collection of nominees year after year. (The fact that this category exists in the first place is further evidence that the Academy, for all of its “recognizing excellence in cinema” rhetoric, is more interested in providing a three-hour advertisement for Hollywood than a reasonable overview of the year’s best movies.)

Part of the problem is the notoriously goofy rules applied to the Foreign category, which include:

ïThe film must have played in a commerical theater for least a week in its country of origin between September 1, 2002 and November 30, 2003.

ïEach country around the world can only submit one film for consideration.

ïThe print must be the version in general release in each country.

ïEnglish-subtitled prints must be provided, and voting is restricted to whichever Academy members attend each of the 50-plus screenings. (DVD or video screeners are not allowed.)

ïFrom the screening votes, the Academy selects five films for its official nominees.

ïTo qualify in any other Oscar categories, a foreign entry must have played as a 35 or 70mm print for seven consecutive days in a commercial theater in Los Angeles in 2003.

Even a brief glance at these rules suggests numerous problems: films must be exhibited commerically, thus preferencing, well, commerical films; films are restrictively chosen by their country of origin, thus preferencing officially-sanctioned productions; the necessary screenings would be limited in attendance and voting; and because foreign films are so poorly distributed commerically in the US, their inclusion in other categories is a long shot.

Add to this the fact that the Academy only recognizes specific countries as being eligible for submissions. Last year, it confusingly denied an official entry by Palestine even though it accepted entries from disputed territories like Taiwan and Hong Kong. Strangely enough, it has reversed this decision for 2003 and now accepts last year’s Divine Intervention as a contender for this year.

Given its bevy of restrictions, it’s no wonder that the five nominees typically comprise one of the most random and mediocre categories on Oscar night.

With some digging, however, we can at least appreciate the complete list of submissions for this year:

Afghanistan, Osama, Siddiq Barmak
Argentina, Valentine, Alejandro Agresti
Armenia, Vodka Lemon, Hiner Saleem
Austria, Free Radicals, Barbara Albert
Belgium, Sea of Silence, Stijn Coninx
Bolivia, Sexual Dependency, Rodrigo Bellott
Bosnia and Herzegovina, Fuse, Pjer Zalica
Brazil, Carandiru, Hector Babenco
Bulgaria, Journey to Jerusalem, Ivan Nichev
Canada, The Barbarian Invasions, Denys Arcand
Chile, Los Debutantes, Andres Waissbluth
China, Warriors of Heaven and Earth, He Ping
Colombia, The First Night, Luis Alberto Restrepo
Croatia, Witnesses, Vinko Bresan
Cuba, Suite Habana, Fernando Perez
Czech Republic, Zelary, Ondrej Trojan
Denmark, Reconstruction, Christoffer Boe
Egypt, Sleepless Nights, Hany Khalifa
Finland, Elina, Klaus Haro
France, Bon Voyage, Jean-Paul Rappeneau
Germany, Good Bye, Lenin!, Wolfgang Becker
Greece, Think It Over, Katerina Evangelakou
Hong Kong, Infernal Affairs, Andrew Lau & Alan Mak
Hungary, Forest, Benedek Fliegauf
Iceland, Noi the Albino, Dagur Kari Petursson
Indonesia, The Stringless Violin, Sekar Ayu Asmara
Iran, Deep Breath, Parviz Shahbazi
Israel, Nina’s Tragedies, Savi Gavison
Italy, I’m Not Scared, Gabriele Salvatores
Japan, The Twilight Samurai, Yoji Yamada
South Korea, Spring, Summer, Fall, Winter … and Spring, Kim Ki-duk
Lebanon, The Kite, Randa Chahal Sabbag
Luxembourg, I Always Wanted to Be a Saint, Genevieve Mersch
Mexico, Aro Tolbukhin (In the Mind of a Killer), AgustÌn Villaronga, Lydia Zimmermann, Isaac P. Racine
Mongolia, The Story of the Weeping Camel, Byambasuren Davaa and Luigi Falorni
Nepal, Muna Madan, Gyanendra Bahadur Deuja
Netherlands, Twin Sisters, Ben Sombogaart
Norway, Kitchen Stories, Bent Hamer
Palestine, Divine Intervention, Elia Suleiman
Peru, Paper Dove, Fabrizio Aguilar
Philippines, Dekada ë70, Chito S. Rono
Poland, Pornografia, Jan Jakub Kolski
Portugal, Um Filme Falado, Manoel De Oliveira
Russia, The Return, Andrei Zvyagintsev
Serbia and Montenegro, The Professional, Dusan Kovacevic
Slovakia, King of Thieves, Ivan FÌla
Slovenia, Spare Parts, Damjan Kozole
Spain, Soldados de Salamina, David Trueba
Sri Lanka, Mansion by the Lake, Lester James Peries
Sweden, Evil, Mikael Hafstrom
Taiwan, Goodbye, Dragon Inn, Tsai Ming-Liang
Thailand, Last Life in the Universe, Pen-ek Ratanaruang
Turkey, Distant, Nuri Bilge Ceylan
Ukraine, Mamay, Oles Sanin
Uruguay, Seawards Journey, Guillermo Casanova
Venezuela, Sangrador, Leonardo Henriquez

LA Weekly film critic Chuck Wilson in today’s issue:

Return of the Kid, or Mr. Critic Takes a Holiday

by Chuck Wilson

I think it was somewhere in the second hour of The Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King that I sank down in my seat, pulled my jacket up under my chin and let myself be 12 years old again. Blessedly, I wasnít there as a movie critic. One of the few benefits of being the second- or third-string guy in the film section is that you donít always have to take notes; you can go and slouch down in your seat and just be yourself, or, rather, your truest movie self, which isnít necessarily the exact same person who plays at being an adult in the sunlit world, or the self who takes half-legible notes at other movies, like a beauty-contest judge giving poise and elocution marks. Tonight, I was just a guy who sat down in the fifth row with one of his best pals (Iím lucky to have more than one) at his side, stared hopefully up at the screen and was granted the one thing he needed most in the world ó a sense of wonder. And right after that, wonderís adjunct ó joy. Tears too, for balance, and because Frodo and Sam broke my heart (if they donít nominate Sean Astin, I will lose my mind) and because, for those three hours and 20 minutes, my friend Jordan and I became those two hobbits, linked for all time by hardship and loyalty. Sure enough, afterward, saying goodnight at the car, we swore to each other (quite unnecessarily) that we would always carry one another up Mount Doom. And I drove home happy, because heís got my back, and because this epic, aching film reminded me that I havenít seen everything after all; that movies are miraculous; and that within me, still, is the kid who used to pull his legs up under him, to be taller, to see more of the screen, who wondered, ìHow do they do that?î and at the same time didnít care, being grateful, simply, that there were shadow makers who knew the trick for taking him out of his body, out of his world. Which felt, then and now, like an act of salvation.

One of my offshooting interests in film is its thematic interplay with religious traditions and “spirituality”–which not only happens more often than is generally recognized, but also typifies a great many of the most highly esteemed films and filmmakers of the medium.

However, it’s the sort of thematic context that is difficult to discuss in intelligent ways without forcing theological paradigms or destroying some of the mystery and affect of many of these films.

Accordingly, the Museum of Modern Art in New York has come up with a solution: it will examine the “hidden” or “absent” spirituality in its new film series, entitled “The Hidden God: Film and Faith” to be screened from December 4, 2003ñFebruary 27, 2004. It will include 30 films, but so far it only lists eleven–six or seven of which are among my favorite films (Ordet, La Rayon vert (Summer), Andrei Rublev, The Night of the Hunter, Winter Light, and The Flowers of St. Francis).

From their website:

A recurring subject in modernist art, the idea of a hidden God has acquired a particular resonance in the language of cinema. Movies with spiritual themes have been made throughout the film-producing world since the emergence of the medium in the 1890s, but it is with the advent of the sound period in the late 1920s that the theme of a hidden spirituality, or, alternatively, of spiritualityís absence, appeared. Since then, many movies have simultaneously insinuated and disguised the mystery that believers call God. This exhibition presents thirty feature films that explore this theme, by filmmakers such as Robert Bresson, Roberto Rossellini, Luis BuÒuel, Ingmar Bergman, Clint Eastwood, and Harold Ramis.

Accompanying the series is the publication The Hidden God: Film and Faith, comprising fifty essays by scholars, critics, and curators, now available through the Museum.

According to artbook.com, some of the publication’s contributors include Dave Kehr, Michael Wood, Kent Jones, Phillip Lopate, Andrew Sarris, and Martin Scorsese.

The New York Times ran an article today entitled Greatest DVD’s Never Made: A Most Wanted List that’s worth a peek to remind us how many films we’re still missing in prime video quality. But between the article’s type-o’s (the films of “Uzo”) and no mention of non-region 1 options (like the region 2 The African Queen), the article leaves a bit to be desired. On the other hand, it levels some good criticisms at the way commerical policies continue to restrict our viewing:

The confusion brought on by media mergers and acquisitions has been a common cause of DVD delays.

For example, MGM Home Entertainment, oddly, owns no MGM films made before 1986 (they were bought by Turner), but over the years it has bought the film vaults of United Artists, Orion, Embassy and Polygram. One year before it was purchased, Polygram acquired the holdings of Epic, which owned the films of several studios that had gone bankrupt.

“When we deal with a film that Polygram actually produced, like ‘Fargo,’ it’s fairly easy to make a DVD,” said Scott Grossman, MGM’s vice president for technical operations. “But if a film came from Epic, which Polygram’s people didn’t have time to sort through, we have to dig through 30 or 40 or 50 years of archives to figure out where everything ended up.”

In other words, in many cases, the company that owns the film doesn’t know where the film is.

As a side note, the article offers depressing news regarding one of my personally most-wanted DVDs, the long-delayed special edition of Blade Runner:

The avidly awaited, definitive version of Ridley Scott’s science-fiction classic, “Blade Runner,” won’t be out on DVD anytime soon for stranger reasons.

When “Blade Runner” was being shot in the early 1980′s, Bud Yorkin, a veteran television comedy producer, and Jerry Perenchio, now the C.E.O. of Univision, were the film’s bond-completion guarantors. When the film went over budget, by contract they assumed ownership of the film. Paul Sammon wrote in his book “Future Noir: The Making of `Blade Runner’ ” that they hated the film, had bitter disputes with Mr. Scott and tried to take it away from him altogether.

The studio release, in 1982, contained superfluous narration and a tacked-on rosy ending. Mr. Scott removed both when he was allowed to make a “director’s cut” in 1992, but it was, by his own account, a rush job.

Three years ago, Mr. Scott announced that he was working on a three-disc box set, which would offer all the versions of the film, including a new and polished director’s cut with previously unseen footage and scads of bonus features. Then, at the end of 2001, Warner Brothers, which was planning to distribute the discs, pulled the plug. It did so, according to a producer who worked on the project, because Mr. Perenchio gave no sign that he would let them be released.

Mr. Perenchio, speaking through an assistant, had no comment on the situation. (Warner Brothers still sells the 1992 “director’s cut,” though the picture quality is mediocre.)

As long as we’re singing the praises of Rialto Pictures this week, I should note they’ve not only announced a strong New York/Los Angeles/Chicago/Washington, DC opening for The Battle of Algiers (1965) on January 9, but have also released a very good trailer for the film, which can be seen via the Film Forum’s website.

Given the fact that Rialto’s trailer for Balthazar was not exactly the most creative piece of advertising I’ve seen (in short, a few “minor” scenes cut together without any sense of the film’s importance or thematic concerns), I’m very pleased to see their Algiers piece convey much of the film’s raw power and historical weight. Check it out.

And more news on the Rialto front…2004 is, of course, the 50th anniversary of the original Gojira (1954), but if you’ve only seen it in the US, you’ve probably never seen it at all. Godzilla: King of the Monsters (the only version available on VHS and DVD in America) is a severely re-edited version of the original stomping monster classic. Whole subpolts were removed and an entire new storyline was grafted onto the film involving Raymond Burr playing a reporter commentating on “offscreen action” (the original film itself). Thankfully, Rialto has announced it will correct the situation by releasing the original film in 2004.

While Gojira (which I own on a poor VHS) is not exactly a movie of Shakespearean complexity, it does offer substantially more scenes involving Kurosawa-regular Takashi Shimura, emphasizes its nuclear concerns to a greater degree, and flows much more smoothly.

“That Robert Bresson‘s 13 features remain largely unknown and unavailable in this country (only one is available here on DVD) is a measure of our impoverished film culture and a reason why one of the heroes of the movie year is Rialto Pictures, the New York distributor reissuing Bresson’s Au hasard Balthazar. The film opens today at the Nuart and there is no more important a movie in theaters.”

Read Manohla Dargis’ full review here.

I’ve been meaning to write about my experience last Thursday of seeing Mikhail Vardanov‘s new documentary Parajanov: The Last Spring at–of all places–the Hollywood Entertainment Museum just down the street from Grauman’s Chinese Theatre and the Hollywood Walk of Fame. It was a slightly surreal experience watching the passionate, contemplative film about the life of the persecuted Georgian-born Armenian filmmaker Sergei Parajanov projected on a screen perched between Roman costumes from Ben-Hur (1959) on the left and a life-sized statue of Gort from The Day the Earth Stood Still (1951) on the right. Nevertheless, the screening room was packed with Armenian and Russian Americans and friends, and the documentary was a poetic and personal meditation on Parajanov’s last days as he was dying of cancer in 1990.

The screening inaugerates a modest, two-month-long exhibition (December 4 through February 2) entitled “Sergei: Parajanov: A Celebration of Life,” consisting of Parajanov’s personal collages and some photos borrowed directly from the Parajanov Museum in Yerevan, Armenia–it is only the second time this work has appeared in the US.

Parajanov was born in 1924 and after graduating from the Dovzhenko film studio in Kiev, made a string of conformist films from ’51-’62 that exemplified the Soviet aesthetic of “socialist realism.” According to Galia Ackerman’s introduction to Seven Visions (1992), Parajanov’s small script collection, these films were predominantly “in keeping with the spirit of then contemporary Soviet cinema, and are rife with anti-capitalist and anti-religious clichÈs.”

In 1964, Parajanov then stunned critics and audiences with Shadows of Forgotten Ancestors, a baroque and free-wheeling adaptation of Romeo and Juliet-like Carpathian folklore involving two lovers separated by quarreling families and their tragic fates amid everyday village life and religious ritual. Visually stunning (the opening sequence involves the camera riding atop a falling tree), it was condemned for its brash formalism in a time when Kruschev had attacked abstract art, bringing an end to the post-Stalinist cultural “thaw” of the late-’50s and early ’60s. The film was quickly removed from Soviet screens and precipitated Parajanov’s extended battles with Soviet authorities. Kiev Frescos was cancelled mid-shoot because of its “bourgeois subjectivism and mysticism” (Ackerman) and Sayat-Nova (The Color of Pomegranates) (1969) was immediately banned and later released in a drastically re-edited form.

Parajanov’s scripts were then rejected, one after another, until 1973, when he was arrested for dubious charges including dealing in foreign currency, speculating on art works, stealing icons, being homosexual, and inciting suicide. He was sentenced to five years of hard labor in the Dniepropetrovsk gulag, but international activists (including Louis Aragon and John Updike) petitioned and convinced the Soviet authorities to release him after four years. (Vardanov’s documentary provides moving footage of demonstrators carrying a large Sayat-Nova puppet at a late-’70s Cannes Film Festival protest.) In 1982, he was again arrested, ostensibly for attempting to bribe an official, but after serving 11 months in jail he was declared innocent.

After fifteen years of professional exile, Parajanov finally resumed his career with The Legend of Suram Fortress (1985) and Ashik-Kerib (1988). He died while filming The Confession, rare clips of which are also included in Vardanov’s documentary.

Thankfully, Parajanov’s remarkably idiosyncratic and subversive work is available on VHS and DVD in the US. Although the Kino videos lack the visual luster the films deserve, their Color of Pomegranates DVD includes the documentary Sergei Paradjanov: A Requiem (1994), which constructs a basic overview of Parajanov’s life and work through clips and interviews. From the interviews provided, Parajanov comes across as a gregarious and lively fellow, brimming with passion and creativity, quick to wax poetically or lavish adoration on those he respected–Andrei Tarkovsky being among them.

It came as a shock to me, then, to see Parajanov in Vardanov’s documentary, aged and passive and near death–his different personas in the two films are startling. But Vardanov’s film is also more personal (he was close friends with Parajanov for 30 years) and more poetic than informational. It includes shots of Parajanov sleepily taking notes at a recording session, montages of clips from Parajanov’s “tableaux-style” films with his own intricate art works, letters and sketches from prison, everyday footage of the filmmaker sitting at his home and gazing at frolicking children.

After the film, I walked through the exhibition gallery and gazed at the collages and sketches on display. Below is one such example, another can be found here at Nostalghia.com, a website devoted to Tarkovsky.

Like many of his later films, I found Parajanov’s art work to be somewhat thematically inscrutable to my Western eyes but visually very striking in its formal elements and colors. The amount of detail and quality of textures–in particular, his sketches of fellow prisoners (whom he drew and taught to draw) with their tired eyes and five-o’clock shadows–offer a mixture of keen observation and empathy.

Parajanov’s Shadows of Forgotten Ancestors should not be missed (though for the record, I understand the Ruscico DVD import has a painfully remixed soundtrack), and I’d encourage more adventurous viewers to check out his later tableaux films as well. A major Soviet-era filmmaker, Parajanov (whose 80th birthday will be celebrated in 2004) and his work stand as a testimony to the indomitable artistic spirit. Parajanov.com “unites Maestro’s friends, family, fans, and colleagues around the world in preservation of the name and art of Sergei Parajanov.”

Given my eclectic approach to film appreciation, it’s funny how various events surprisingly coincide. On Friday, I travelled to the University of California in San Diego to attend a colloquium given by filmmaker and academic Babette Mangolte, who discussed her latest research project connecting the ideological dots between French avant-garde filmmakers of the ’20s and the film theories of Robert Bresson in the ’50s, whose Au hasard Balthazar opens Friday here in L.A.

Paris in the ’20s was a hotbed of artistic movements–particularly surrealism and impressionism–a myriad collection of modern aesthetics promoted by filmmaker-theorists such as Abel Gance, Marcel L’Herbier, Louis Delluc, Jean Epstein, Fernand LÈger, Luis BuÒuel, RenÈ Clair, and Germaine Dulac (the only woman of the bunch). Emphasizing abstraction and fragmentation, these filmmakers rejected the theatrical French cinema of the day and promoted movies as a unique, “Machine Age” (LÈger) art form emphasizing emotions and inner states of consciousness over plots and external narratives.

Mangolte pointed out that Bresson was a painter in Paris during the ’20s (a profession he later abandoned for filmmaking) and would no doubt have been influenced by the artistic ideas being proliferated at the time. Since her research is a work in progress, I won’t divulge the details here, but suffice it to say that she makes a compelling argument regarding Bresson’s idiosyncratic theories on “cinematography” (cryptically described in his book Notes On the Cinematographer) and how they conceivably could be linked to the non-theatrical and interior ideas of the French cinemagraphic avant-garde. (It’s remarkable to note that Bresson misrepresented his age for years–his life spanned from 1901 to 1999 and bridged numerous artistic epochs.)

Mangolte is the renowned cinematographer of Chantal Akerman’s Jeanne Dielman, 23 Quai du Commerce, 1080 Bruxelles (1975) and a director in her own right beginning with the acclaimed What Maisie Knew in 1976. Coincidentally, a superb interview with her has just been published in the latest issue of <a href="http://www.cinemadmag.com/&quot; target=_blank)Cinemad, a progressive film magazine edited by a former colleague of mine from the University of Arizona. (The articles are in pdf format.)

Coming back to L.A. from the colloquium, I was pleased to discover the UCLA Film & Television Archives was, in fact, featuring a two-day retrospective of Germaine Dulac‘s work this weekend. The films were prefaced by the series’ curator, Irina Leimbacher, who described Dulac’s feminist leanings and emphasis on psychology. In Cinemad, Mangolte suggests Dulac was virtually the only other filmmaker who had attempted to express the embodiment of a certain kind of feminist archetype previous to Jeanne Dielman…, as seen in her film The Similing Madame Beudet (1923), which was one of the films featured at the retrospective.

Madame Beudet is indeed a striking and moving film that attempts to convey the inner anxiety and disillusionment felt by a woman in an unhappy marriage. Using a hefty dose of superimpositions and metaphorical juxtapositions (prisons, driving over clouds) to depict Beudet’s psychological world, Dulac effectively communicates Beudet’s feelings of entrapment with very little use of expository intertitles or dialogue. The screening was a particular treat, as the print for the film was newly restored and a live keyboardist provided the musical accompaniment.

With the exception of Bresson, whose work I’m often obsessed with, none of the filmmakers listed in these preceding comments were in my mind as recently as half a week ago. But in true Bressonian fashion, the “accidental” vagaries of chance and fate fluidly merged them together into a provocative and fascinating weekend. And for those in the L.A. area, the UCLA programmers announced two more exciting retrospectives coming this spring: G.W. Pabst and Chantal Akerman.