The end of the year has come and while my home video capacities have changed slightly in the past year with the addition of a Playstation 3 and thus Blu-Ray technology, this list is still universal to both formats. I have noted Blu-Ray when it was the format that I own and have viewed. So, on to the top ten, in alphabetical order:
Dark City: Director’s Cut [Blu-Ray] Alex Proyas's hybrid of noir and science fiction has become a cult classic since its home video release in the late 90s. As the film's following gained momentum, fans discovered that Proyas was forced to include Kiefer Sutherland's voice over narration and would often mute the audio for the opening segment. Now, with New Line's release of Proyas's Director's Cut, avid fans no longer have to keep their fingers on the mute button. Featuring the exclusion of Sutherland's narration and the addition of 11 minutes of footage, the Dark City: Director's Cut release follows the example of Blade Runner by providing both the cuts of the film along with the original and expanded commentaries by Proyas, writers David S. Goyer and Lem Dobbs, film critic Roger Ebert, and others involved with the production. The disc also features an array of featurettes covering topics from the film's similarities to Fritz Lang's Metropolis to the film's production design (featuring UCLA's own Vivian Sobchack) to the original text features found on the 1999 DVD release. To sweeten the package, New Line has also provided the viewer with a re-mastered video and audio transfer that towers above the original transfer.
The Dark Knight: Two-Disc Special Edition [Blu-Ray] Christopher Nolan's revolutionary approach to the superhero genre was the biggest film of 2008. From enthusiastic critical response to a staggering box office draw of nearly one billion dollars, The Dark Knight, needless to say, set the bar high for its home video release. Unfortunately, the release, even on Blu-Ray format, is far from perfect. In lieu of a commentary by Nolan and company, Warner Brothers has given us "Focus Points," which are small featurettes that highlight key aspects of the film's production (the film's score and Nolan's use of IMAX are some such topics). While the "Points" are not particularly bad, they focus mainly on the film's action segments, leaving those interested in Health Ledger's penultimate performance or the film's approach to the superhero genre disappointed. The second disc features two fluffy documentaries, "Batman Tech" and "Batman Unmasked," which disappoint. The disc also features the "Gotham Tonight" spots that played a key part in the film's viral marketing along with a still gallery and a collection of trailers and TV spots. While the supplemental package here is disappointing, the transfer is what makes this release (particularly in its Blu-Ray incarnation) noteworthy. Simply put, the IMAX footage, particularly the truck chase, stands alongside Baraka as the best HD material I have seen all year.
The Godfather Trilogy: Coppola Restoration [Blu-Ray] Francis Ford Coppola's crime saga classic was given a rather mediocre treatment when released to DVD nearly ten years ago. Paramount's fault did not lie in putting together a poor assortment of supplementary features (although Coppola's commentaries were a bit dull) but in the fact that the original DVD released looked....well, a lot like the VHS releases did. Armed with a restoration grant, Paramount set about restoring the first two films (the third film's transfer was not particularly bad but, then again, since when do viewers care about the third one anyways?) with the guidance of Coppola, cinematographer Gordon Willis, and restoration expert Robert Harris, for a new DVD edition and for its debut on Blu-Ray. The end results? Controversial. Many fans of the films felt that they had been unnecessarily brightened by the restoration team while home theater aficionados felt betrayed by the HD package's grainy image. My judgment? The film's murkiness is still in tact, it is just more legible. While I can see where fans of the 35mm prints may feel betrayed by a "brightening," as the "Emulsional Rescue" documentary goes to prove, those prints were in a state of disrepair and looked nothing like Coppola and Willis had intended. As for the critique regarding the grain of the transfers, all I can say is that film is shot on film, which has the aesthetic characteristic of being grainy. If you want a transfer to showcase crystal clear HD, the source needs to have been shot on HD. Personally, I find the grain quite beautiful and, having seen both the 35mm and the Blu-Ray projected on a large screen, the Blu-Ray does capture the aesthetic of a film print. Transfers aside, the package features all of the original supplementary features of the 2001 package alongside an hour of new featurettes covering everything from the restoration of the films to the legacy of The Godfather throughout our culture.
L.A. Confidential: Special Edition [Blu-Ray] Lovingly appraised by my classmate and chief New York Times film critic Manohla Dargis in the BFI's Modern Classic Series, L.A. Confidential has become a modern classic of Hollywood cinema since its theatrical release nearly a decade ago. Despite its presence with critics and at the Academy Awards, L.A. Confidential was a film, like Dark City, that cemented its audience and standing on home video and DVD. After a mediocre release with the advent of the DVD format, Warner Brothers has re-visited the film with a new collection of supplementary features and a glorious new transfer. The first highlight of the supplements is the rather cluttered commentary featuring novelist James Ellroy, cinematographer Dante Spinotti, cast members Russell Crowe, Kevin Spacey, Guy Pearce, James Cromwell, David Strathairn, Kim Basinger, Danny DeVito, various other crew members (including producers, the editor, and screenwriter amongst others), and film critic and historian Andrew Sarris. As you might guess, this commentary is crowded and I would have preferred to see it separated into a few separate tracks. Moreover, the absence of director Curtis Hanson and Manohla Dargis is disappointing. Rounding out the disc are a collection of featurettes ranging from the differences between the novel and the film to the film's production. The set also features the infamously terrible television pilot from 2003 which starred Keifer Sutherland as Jack Vincennes. The Blu-Ray edition also comes with a CD featuring music from the film.
The Last Emperor: Criterion Collection 2008 was a big year for the folks at Criterion. They've launched a wonderful new website and Blu-Ray line (Bottle Rocket, Chungking Express, and The Third Man are glorious in HD) and have continued providing cinephiles everywhere with superb films that are given the royal treatment (some of my favorites of 2008 included Pierrot Le Fou, Cleo from 5 to 7, and their newest run of Jean-Pierre Melville titles). However, perhaps their biggest achievement of 2008 was their four-disc set of Bernardo Betolucci's The Last Emperor. Also available on a single-disc edition and coming soon to Blu-Ray, The Last Emperor features a pristine transfer of Vitto Storaro's compositions along with two versions of the film: the theatrical and television (which will be excluded from the Blu-Ray) cuts. Also included in the set are a commentary by Bertolucci, producer Jeremy Thomas, screenwriter Mark Peploe, and composer Ryuichi Sakamoto along with four substantial documentaries (ranging from geography to Bertolucci's creative process) and a collection of interviews. The abundance of special features offered here will probably take the viewer longer to work through than the epic film itself!
Mad Men: The Complete First Season [Blu-Ray] While the clothes, the men, the women, and the cigarette smoke of Mad Men look absolutely stunning on Blu-Ray, the real reason to jump onto the home video treatment of Mad Men are the show itself and the massive amount of supplementary features offered up by Lion's Gate. Highlighting the supplements of the thirteen episode season are the 23 (yes, that's twenty three!) commentary tracks including everyone from actors Jon Hamm, January Jones, Christina Hendricks to creator Matt Weiner and directors Alan Taylor and Tim Hunter. The commentaries range from costume design to story arcs, so there is much to be offered here and, from a personal standpoint, I have barely scratched the surface on the intimidating amount of bonus material. Also included is an hour-long documentary covering the production of the first episode and a number of smaller featurettes.
Sleeping Beauty: Platinum Edition [Blu-Ray] Sleeping Beauty is far from my favorite Disney movie (Dumbo takes that honors) but the Blu-Ray transfer showcased here is marvelous. The crispness of the cels makes each hit of the pause button an amazing experience. I was wary of what Blu-Ray could offer hand-drawn animation and Disney's treatment is flawless. On the Blu-Ray set, Disney offers up "Cine-Explore Mode" which is essentially a picture-in-picture video commentary with filmmaker John Lasseter, critic and historian Leonard Maltin, and animation Andreas Deja. Also included in the set are a restoration demo, documentaries and featurettes on the making of the film, and deleted scenes and musical numbers.
Touch of Evil: 50th Anniversary Edition What a disappointment the restored Touch of Evil disc was when it was released nearly a decade ago! Like several other offerings on this list (Dark City, The Godfather, and L.A. Confidential), Universal took the opportunity to rectify a wrong in the supplementary treatment of a classic film on DVD. Featuring an extraordinary new video transfer that sheds the slightly soft focus of the original, Universal provides lovers of Welles's classic noir with all three versions of the film (the original theatrical cut, the restored cut, and a new preview version). Not only are we given all three versions, but Universal has provided some excellent commentaries here as well. On the preview version, we have Welles scholars James Naremore and Jonathan Rosenbaum, who were also featured on Criterion's lovely treatment of Mr. Arkadin a few years back, providing yet another stunning analysis full of anecdotes and extensive scholarship. On the restored version, Universal provides two commentaries: one by actors Janet Leigh, Charlton Heston, and restoration producer Rick Schmidlin, and a second one featuring Schmidlin alone. Finally, on the theatrical version, we are offered a loving admiration by film journalist F.X. Feeney, who attempts to make the case that there is much to be found in the often despised theatrical cut. Rounding out the two-disc set are two featurettes which discuss the film's influence ("Bringing Evil to Life") and the film's restoration ("Evil Lost and Found"). "Evil Lost and Found" also ends with a visit to the original filming locations in Venice, CA, which I loved watching as it provided me with an excuse to drive down the street and go see them for myself. Finally, Universal provides a printed version of Welles's infamous 50-page memo, documenting his own editorial preferences that served as a guide to the restoration team.
Wall-E: Three-Disc Special Edition [Blu-Ray] Like The Dark Knight, Wall-E stood amongst the greatest films of the year and its home video treatment (particularly its Blu-Ray release) was hotly awaited. Unlike The Dark Knight however, the deluxe treatment of Wall-E left nothing to be desired. Not only have Pixar and Disney provided viewers with a flawless audio and video transfer but also with two discs of bonus material ranging from the short films "Presto" and "Burn-E" to the feature length documentary The Pixar Story. Also included in the set are an audio commentary with director Andrew Stanton, a second commentary (on the Blu-Ray) with the creative team, deleted scenes, and more. Owners of Blu-Ray players and HD setups would do both themselves and their children well to make this voyage.
Zodiac: Two-Disc Director's Cut As a "Director's Cut," this package may leave much to be desired. There are only a few minutes of added footage here and the film still climaxes, much to the displeasure of horror and thriller lovers everywhere, with a stare down between Robert Graysmith and Robert Leigh Allen. Regardless of "Director's Cut" subheading, Zodiac stands as one of director David Fincher's greatest accomplishments and the package that Paramount has put together here is incredibly generous. First off, the film features two commentaries: one by Fincher, and another by Jake Gyllenhaal, Robert Downey Jr., screenwriter James Vanderbilt, and, as an added bonus, novelist James Ellroy. While the Fincher commentary features anecdotes and some chatter about shooting digitally, his delivery is love it or hate it due to his focus on the nuts and bolts of filmmaking (I love it). The second track, particularly the interactions between Vanderbilt and Ellroy, are incredibly lighthearted and for the more casual viewer. The package also features a wide range of featurettes covering the visual effects and pre-visualization stages of the filmmaking process to the real Zodiac investigations. While the latter documentaries and featurettes are a little oddly put together with regard to editing, they are quite enlightening and, like the package as a whole, highly recommended.
It has been pointed out to me that I haven't updated for a month on my non-apocalyptic future script idea.
Umm...
Yeah. The truth is, work on this has completely stopped. Checking the dates on my files, I can see that exactly one day after I last mentioned this project was the last time I worked on it. I haven't come up with any excuses for not blogging about it because I just flat out stopped thinking about it at all. My total effort on the project is 9 pages of script and several pages of notes. Hopefully I'll get back to it at some point because I do like the idea.
Work stopped because something else came up. I should probably write about this at some length but for now, the short version is that I've hooked up with someone locally who very much wants to make a low budget movie. Together we are slowly hashing out a movie that we can shoot for peanuts. So right now I'm doing a lot of research, assessing what we can use and slowly writing a script. I have about seven pages of heavily disjointed scenes at this point. But I'm seriously working on scavenging an earlier incomplete script for parts to use in this one.
Basically, we have a basic idea but no story or characters. The idea? Zombies. The rest? I don't know yet. I'm working on it. Ever since I saw Shaun of the Dead, I've been pretty passionate about wanting to make my own zombie movie. Which is weird because I'm just not much of a horror guy. But I do have a great affection for zombie flicks. And so here we are. I'll write more later but right now I need to go to bed before my wife gets pissed off at me.
Today was chainsaw day. We had a bad ice storm a couple weeks ago that flattened a lot of the county. Some people were without power for over a week. Luckily, I live near the center of town and power was restored here after just a day. The day after the storm I went out, looked around the yard and was pleasantly surprised to discover that the damage was pretty minimal. So I decided to go across the street and help out my neighbors, who had a lot of damage, mostly in the area they keep their horses. After a few hours of that I came back home and went to get a nap. I laid down, closed my eyes and heard a big crack. I sat up fast and looked out the window in time to see an enormous section of the big tree in my front yard peel off and crash to the ground. Amazingly, it hit nothing except my crab apple tree. That would be the same crab apple tree that lost about a third of its branches in the summer when a different tree lost a big chunk in a thunderstorm and landed on the crab apple tree.
Anyway, because of the weather and holiday stuff, I've only been able to spend a couple hours cutting up the big chunk of tree in my front yard. My wife took the kids to see her family for the weekend. So without them underfoot and a surprising appearance by the sun in the sky, I finally got out there and started cutting. And it was really slow going. And then out of nowhere, one of my neighbors appeared, told me it sounded like my chain was dull and offered to sharpen it for me. Which he did on the spot. He even lent me a helmet with ear protection so I wouldn't go deaf. And after that my chainsaw went through that tree like butter. The difference was astounding. Before that I thought I might get through a third of the debris. After he sharpened it the rest of it came apart with next to no resistance. That said, using a chainsaw is hard work and my back is now squawking in protest. So I will spend the rest of the day in bed, watching movies.
And if anyone out there needs some firewood free, shoot me an email and I'll tell you where to pick it up. I don't deliver.
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I've previously reviewed Burn After Reading, so I'm not going to spend much time on that. It's a slow burn comedy that starts fairly serious and ends just shy of slapstick. Critics were generally underwhelmed with it but I found it entertaining. Often my reviews say that a movie falls apart the more you think about it. Burn After Reading is the reverse. The more thought I give it, the more I like it. A second viewing actually improves things as little details pop up that weren't noticeable the first time around. The performances are revealed to be considerably more nuanced than you might think them the first time though. I suspect this will be a lot like The Big Lebowski, which many people just didn't get at first but came to love over time. So, in my opinion, it's definitely worth checking out. This movie grows on you like a fungus, but in a less creepy, actually good manner.
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Today, for a complete change of pace, I will write about movies. Okay, not movies exactly, more like movie. One in particular. Zack & Miri Make a Porno to be exact.
Che: Let me preface by acknowledging three things: I am a scholar of Steven Soderbergh, I realize not all of his films are successes, and I realize that many, many people will despise "Che." When I screened Soderbergh's latest, it was on a digital print that had a running length of roughly four hours (this version has been dubbed the "roadshow version" due to the fact that credits have been replaced with a printed program and that there is an overture and intermission) and for a film that focuses on what are probably considered mundane aspects of the subject of a biopic's life, this film will probably play as extremely boring and tedious. At the same time, Che Guevara has become such an icon (literally), that this film goes a long way in de-mystifying the life of a revolutionary. Basically, it's a lot of walking and meetings. The first half of the film depicts Che reminiscing about the Cuban Revolution on the eve of his address to the United Nations. Soderbergh, however, skirts bio-pic conventions by focusing more on Che's theory and method than his personal life and even goes so far to deny the audience the ability to take satisfaction in the Cuban Revolution, as the first half ends on Che's march to Havana and the second half picks up on his entrance into what will become the failure of his attempt at a revolution in Bolivia, minus the flashback structure of the first half. The film will strike some as bloated and cerebral, but this is where I found a great deal of satisfaction to be taken from it. I normally detest bio-pics (more on that below), but Soderbergh's revision of a stale genre and his gorgeous Malick-esque cinematography make for incredibly fruitful viewing.
Milk: I HATE, HATE, HATE bio-pics. This genre was practically founded on Oscar baiting and has relegated the best actor/actress categories to best impressionist. I'm actually shocked that Frank Caliendo has yet to win one. With this predisposition noted, I found "Milk," like "Che," to provide a refreshing take on the genre. This is mainly done through director Gus Van Sant's use of documentary film footage intercut with D.P. Harris Savides's superb cinematography (the pair's work with reflections is masterful). In addition, Sean Penn's performance as Harvey Milk, the first openly gay elected public official, surprised me a great deal. Penn has been performing like Al Pacino lately, taking his emotions way over the top far too quickly but he actually shows a great deal of restraint here. The film had the added impact of feeling much more bittersweet after California's passage of Proposition 8 (which is a constitutional amendment which defines marriage as being between a man and a woman), but perhaps that makes it all the more relevant.
Revolutionary Road: The suburban angst drama has become stale since the release of Sam Mendes' "American Beauty," which is why it puzzled me even more that he decided to make this stale adaptation. It's not that "Revolutionary Road" is poorly made, it's actually skillfully constructed, but the material of a married man and wife finding displeasure in the American dream (played here by Leonardo DiCaprio and Kate Winslet) has quickly become melodramatic. Moreover, Mendes uses many of same cinematic tools (characters framed within frames, red and blue define the house at times) he brought to "American Beauty" and it certainly doesn't help that Kate Winslet is playing a variation on her "Little Children" character. The best scenes involve the disjunction between verbal expression and action (like the breakfast scene that the film climaxes with) or the absurd comedy of this situation (the PhD who has been mentally broken by suburbia comes off like Heath Ledger's Joker, constantly trying to make disorder out of the facade of suburban order).
Frost/Nixon: I find Ron Howard to be a hack director most of the time. "Apollo 13" aside, I struggle to find any work by him in the last ten years that was truly memorable ("A Beautiful Mind" is one of my least favorite movies of the decade). "Frost/Nixon," on the other hand, is quite good...I'm just unsure of how much of this is Ron Howard's contribution as both the play and the two leads have been ported over from Broadway. For those of you who are unfamiliar with the story, following the resignation of President Richard Nixon (Frank Langella), British talk-show host David Frost (Michael Sheen) solicited the President for a series of interviews in which he eventually pushed Nixon into apologizing to the American public and to take personal responsibility for Watergate. Sheen and Langella are amazing in their roles and Howard makes theatrical material cinematic but the real problem with this film is its objective: what purpose does it serve? It dramatizes the interviews, but why shouldn't we just watch the interviews for ourselves? Yes, the production context behind the interviews is interesting, as are Frost and Nixon's interactions off-screen (Nixon's drink and dial is quite powerful), but why bother taking a true event that has been documented so greatly via the media into a movie while only adding maybe 25% original material?
The Curious Case of Benjamin Button:
I held extremely high expectations of David Fincher's adaptation of F. Scott Fitzgerald's short story "The Curious Case of Benjamin Button" and I walked away from the screening being only mildly disappointed. The problems with the film are mainly pacing (BB's early life takes up nearly 2/3rds of the film's two and a half-hour running length) and with the structure of the screenplay. Written by Eric Roth, I found a lot of parallels with his earlier adaptation of "Forrest Gump" (the feather has been replaced with a hummingbird) except for the fact that this film was rather amazing. The reason to see this film is obviously Brad Pitt's performance as Benjamin Button, a man who is born an 80 year old man who gradually ages into the body of an infant. I was stunned to hear director David Fincher discuss the film afterwards and disclose that Brad Pitt's actual body does not appear until the one-hour mark. Instead, Fincher performed motion capture on Pitt's face and composited it onto the body of one of four elderly gentleman and it is both seamless and an amazing blend of performance and technology. I highly recommend the film and assume Brad Pitt has an Oscar nomination ensured for his work here.
Gran Torino:
Having seen the trailer for "Gran Torino," I cracked a lot of jokes about it, fearing the worst. The footage made the film look to be "Dirty Harry: The Retirement Years" and while the film does indeed have a lot of fun with Clint Eastwood's earlier roles, his performance and the film are amongst the year's best (and far better than Eastwood's earlier effort this year, "Changeling"). The story follows Walter (Eastwood), a retired Korean War vet (who reminded me a lot of my late grandfather in a bittersweet way) who is culturally challenged. Faced with a rising Hmong population in his neighborhood, Walter greets their presence with unmasked hostility until he begins to get to know them. Now, this sounds rather conventional but Eastwood handles it in an extremely unconventional fashion as he allows Walter to retain his negative characteristics (his overt racism) while expanding his empathy for these kids and the results are incredibly refreshing. In a sense, Eastwood's role in the film reminded me of Fred Astaire in "The Band Wagon," a legend dealing with the icons of his life with contemplation, care, and with a slight smile.
My favorite films of 2008 thus far:
Che The Curious Case of Benjamin Button The Dark Knight Gran Torino Happy-Go-Lucky In Bruges Milk Slumdog Millionaire Synecdoche, NY Wall-E
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Actual progress is a wonderful feeling. I added about four pages to the new script today. The best part is getting home from work and actually being anxious to get to the computer and start working on ideas that I've come up with during the day. For a long time I've had myself working on second, third and fourth drafts of scripts and that sort of writing is a bit of a grind. It can be greatly satisfying to work out problems and smooth out awkward areas but it lacks the feeling of joy that comes with writing something entirely new. Each new idea fills in the world I'm creating, which helps direct the main character, which helps build that character. It all feeds on itself to create even more new stuff. Basically I'm enjoying myself.
I'm writing a lot about bureacracy right now. For inspiration I look to my members of my family who have served in government offices. They have provided me plenty of gruesome tales of bureacratic thinking at its worst. But then to make it entertaining, I've been watching a bit of Monty Python for taking the absurd to ridiculous heights. I'm not trying to ape Python at all. It's more like taking lessons from a master in the art of absurdity.
First off, let me apologize for the lack of updates lately. I've been working behind the scenes to move the site to a new server. So if you've sent me an email in the last month and not heard back, send it again. It's possible it was lost somewhere along the way.
The other reason I haven't been posting is that the old brain thingy kicked into gear rather suddenly on a new writing project. With my third script in the hands of some guinea pigs, I had two choices. One, fret nervously on what sort of response I would get. Fretting does not come naturally to me, even if I do admit a degree of terror in letting my work make contact with foreign eyeballs. That leaves option two, write something else. Back in August I flirted with a new script idea but it stalled when I hit the need to do actual research. The emergence of a primetime network show that treads on the same territory didn't help either. So I went and looked back at my other stalled ideas. And quickly came to the conclusion that I still didn't have any solution to their various problems. Things were looking bleak.
And then I read this article. Now, I love Scalzi but I'm not really crediting him for inspiration or as my stubbly muse. One line did the trick.
"Because happy futures are boring"
That's all it took to set me off. He's absolutely right. Utopia is dull. It's not a great topic for a movie where you might actually expect something to happen. But I'm the sort of person who loves to throw sand in the gears and muck things up. If I'm bored, I'm almost certainly about to start some trouble. So the idea was to take a utopia of sorts, toss in a character from the outside of that society and watch what happens. I love this idea because it gives me freedom to engage in two of my favorite hobbies, annoying people and slapping around busybody do-gooders.
I'm not going to get into much detail but I am going to try and write about the project frequently. Basically I want to operate under the threat of embarassment for not getting any work done. If you aren't seeing any updates on this, you have my permission to harass me about it. I'm going to try and follow the example of this gentleman, although with less fantasy football talk.
Here is a movie that begs a question of definition before even reviewing the material. Documentary? Animated film? Fictionalized version of real events? The answer is all of the above.
The title Full Battle Rattle is apparently army slang for wearing full body armor, approximately 50 pounds of it. As for the movie, it's a fascinating documentary of the army's full scale battle simulation area set up in the Mojave Desert.
