My DVD collection

See my DVD collection @ Chasing the Frog

Leonard Schrader

I was saddened yesterday to learn of the passing of Leonard Schrader at the age of 62. Schrader was the brother of writer/director Paul Schrader, with whom he co-wrote The Yakuza and Mishima: A Life in Four Chapters, Blue Collar, and Old Boyfriends. Schrader also received an 1986 Academy Award nomination for his adaptation of Kiss of the Spider Woman. He also taught at USC, Chapman University, and the American Film Institute, where he was the Senior Filmmaker-in-Residence and chairman of the Screenwriting Department.

Oscar Contenders, Coffee Table Movies, and Prestige Pictures

After an appalling barren spring and summer, we’ve finally reached the season of milk and honey for Hollywood releases. We’ll now have the chance to see the best (according to them, anyway) the studios have to offer, including Scorsese’s The Departed, Christopher Nolan’s The Prestige, Clint Eastwood’s Flags of Our Fathers, Sophia Coppola’s Marie Antoinette, and Todd Fields’ Little Children.

'The Departed': Choppy craftsmanship?

Check out the discussion on Jim Emerson's blog I'm involved in surrounding remarks that the outstanding film scholar David Bordwell made on his own blog regarding Martin Scorsese's The Departed. What makes a well-edited film anyway?

Schrader's canon

In the September/October 2006 issue of Film Comment, writer-director/critic Paul Schrader offers an interesting contribution the recent discussion regarding the necessity of film canons, defining and defending his own personal vision of the canon and the aesthetic tradition that supports it. Schrader posits seven aesthetic criteria on which to base the canon: beauty, strangeness, unity of form and subject matter, tradition, repeatability, viewer engagement, and morality. You can read the preface and introduction to Schrader’s article at the magazine’s website. Below is a list of the 60 films that comprise the author’s version of the canon, which Schrader has arranged hierarchically into tiers of twenty films each, each with a “medal” level of gold, silver, and bronze, respectively (I've bolded the films on the list that I have seen, in case you're interested):


Gold
The Rules of the Game – Jean Renoir (1939)
Tokyo Story – Yasujiro Ozu (1953)
City Lights – Charlie Chaplin (1931)
Pickpocket – Robert Bresson (1959)
Metropolis – Fritz Lang (1927)
Citizen Kane – Orson Welles (1941)
Orphee – Jean Cocteau (1950)
Masculin-Feminin – Jean-Luc Godard (1966)
Persona – Ingmar Bergman (1966)
Vertigo – Alfred Hitchcock (1958)
Sunrise – F.W. Murnau (1927)
The Searchers – John Ford (1956)
The Lady Eve – Preston Sturges (1941)
The Conformist – Bernardo Bertolucci (1970)
8 1/2 – Federico Fellini (1963)
The Godfather – Francis Ford Coppola (1972)
In the Mood for Love – Wong Kar Wai (2000)
The Third Man – Carol Reed (1949)
Performance – Donald Cammell/Nicholas Roeg
La Notte – Michelangelo Antonioni (1961)

Silver
Mother and Son – Alexander Sokurov (1997)
The Leopard – Luchino Visconti (1963)
The Dead – John Huston (1987)
2001: A Space Odyssey – Stanley Kubrick (1968)
Last Year at Marienbad – Alain Renais (1961)
The Passion of Joan of Arc – Carl Dreyer (1928)
Jules and Jim – Francois Truffaut (1962)
The Wild Bunch – Sam Peckinpah (1969)
All That Jazz – Bob Fosse (1979)
The Life of Oharu – Kenji Mizoguchi (1952)
High and Low – Akira Kurosawa (1963)
Sweet Smell of Success – Alexander Mackendrick (1957)
That Obscure Object of Desire – Luis Bunuel (1977)
An American in Paris – Vincente Minnelli (1951)
The Battle of Algiers – Gillo Pontecarvo (1966)
Taxi Driver – Martin Scorsese (1976)
Ali: Fear Eats at the Soul – Rainer Werner Fassbinder (1974)
Blue Velvet – David Lynch (1986)
Crimes and Misdemeanors – Woody Allen (1989)
The Big Lebowski – Joel Coen (1998)

Bronze
The Red Shoes – Michael Powell & Emeric Pressburger (1948)
Singin’ in the Rain – Stanley Donen and Gene Kelly (1952)
Chinatown – Roman Polanski (1974)
The Crowd – King Vidor (1928)
Sunset Boulevard – Billy Wilder (1950)
Talk to Her – Pedro Almodovar (2002)
Shanghai Express – Josef von Sternberg (1932)
Letter from a Unknown Woman – Max Ophuls (1948)
Once Upon a Time in the West – Sergio Leone (1968)
Salvatore Giuliano – Francesco Rosi (1962)
Nostalghia – Andrei Tarkovsky (1983)
Seven Men from Now – Budd Boetticher (1956)
Claire’s Knee – Eric Rohmer (1970)
Earth – Alexander Dovzhenko (1930)
Gun Crazy – Joseph H. Lewis (1949)
Out of the Past – Jacques Tourneur (1947)
Children of Paradise – Marcel Carne (1945)
The Naked Spur – Anthony Mann (1953)
A Place in the Sun – George Stevens (1950)
The General – Buster Keaton (1927)

Major Shakeup at Village Voice Leaves Only J Hoberman Standing - Cinematical

In what (for me anyway) is a major blow to film criticism, the new management at the Village Voice (a publication that's been in a downward spiral for quite some time now) has fired film editor and critic Michael Atkinson, leaving J. Hoberman as the only critic left to make the Voice's Film section worth reading:

Major Shakeup at Village Voice Leaves Only J Hoberman Standing - Cinematical

Incidentally, the Voice also purged longtime music critic Robert Christgau, one of the most important pop music critics of the last half-century.

With Roger Ebert still on the mend, that leaves frightening few outstanding critics current writing reviews accessible on the 'net. There's Jonathan Rosenbaum at the Chicago Reader and Manohla Dargis at the New York Times. Anyone have any other suggestions?

While I'm away . . . film festivals

Due to some major league procrastination, I’m unbelievably busy this weekend, but  here are a couple of interesting pieces written by two of my favorite critics about two recent film festivals:

• Manohla Dargis on the New York Film Festival

• Jonathan Rosenbaum on the 42nd Chicago International Film Festival

Viva Pedro

If you're in the neighborhood, and haven't experienced the films of the unique Spanish filmmaker Pedro Almodovar, this month the Galaxy Cinema in Cary, North Carolina is having "Viva Pedro," a retrospective of the eight of Almodovar's films. Included are Matador and Law of Desire, neither of which has ever been released on DVD in the U.S.

http://www.mygalaxycinema.com/viva.asp

village voice > film > The Varied Provocations of a Mainstream Auteur by Elliott Stein

Here's a nifty introduction to the films of Otto Preminger (occasioned by a retrospective of the director's work at New York's Museum of Modern Art) by Elliot Stein from this week's Village Voice:

village voice > film > The Varied Provocations of a Mainstream Auteur by Elliott Stein

Gabrielle

This afternoon I went to see Patrice Chéreau’s Gabrielle.

Support you local film society!

It’s almost time for the new 2006-2007 season of The Cinema, Inc. to start.

Here’s the film schedule:

September 10, 2006 - Buena Vista Social Club *
October 8, 2006 - Fellini's Roma *
November 12, 2006 - Belle de Jour
December 10, 2006 - O Brother, Where Art Thou?
January 14, 2007 - State of the Union *
February 11, 2007 – Holiday *
March 11, 2007 - Tie Me Up! Tie Me Down!
April 8, 2007 - The Tragedy of a Ridiculous Man *
May 13, 2007 - Sex, Lies and Videotape
June 10, 2007 - The Wedding Banquet *
July 8, 2007 - Do the Right Thing
August 12, 2007 - Bullets Over Broadway

(* indicates films that I have not yet seen)

My Favorite Films of 2006 (updated 5/13/06)

               My Favorite Films of 2006

(updated 7/30/06)

1. Three Times


2. Cache


3. The Three Burials of Melquides Estrada


4. Keane


5. A Scanner Darkly


6. L’Enfant


7. The Proposition


8. Match Point


9. Thank You For Smoking


10. Brick


11. Tsotsi


12. The Inside Man


13. Lucky Number Slevin


14. V for Vendetta


15. Lady in the Water


16. Freedomland


17. X-Men 3


18. Superman Returns


19. Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Man’s Chest


20. Poseidon


21. Mission: Impossible 3

Blade Runner: The Final Cut

Warner Home Video has announced plans to release a new special edition DVD of Blade Runner, the landmark adaptation of Philip K. Dick’s classic sci-fi novel Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? To be titled Blade Runner: The Final Cut, the multi-disc set will include a remastered version of the 1992 director’s cut, as well as the original 1983 U.S. theatrical release and an expanded international theatrical cut, both of which will be available on DVD in the U.S. for the first time.

The director’s cut has clearly come to be considered the definitive version of the film (and rightly so), but the original theatrical release—completed with a tacked-on voice-over narration by star Harrison Ford and an altered ending—has great sentimental value to me, so I’m looking forward to finally being able to get both in the same box .

Cannes 2006 Winners

The jury at the 59th Cannes Film Festival has selected the festival’s winners:

Palme d’Or—The Wind That Shakes the Barley (directed by Ken Loach)
Grand Prix—Flandres (directed by Bruno Dumont)
Jury Prize—Red Road (directed by Andrea Arnold)

My Favorite Films of 2005

               My Favorite Films of 2005 (revised 5/13/06)

1. A History of Violence
2. Broken Flowers
3. 2046
4. Yes
5. Last Days
6. The Holy Girl
7. Pulse
8. Capote
9. Mysterious Skin
10. Millions
11. Good Night, and Good Luck
12. Brokeback Mountain
13. The Weather Man
14. The Squid and the Whale
15. The Constant Gardener
16. The Girl from Monday
17. Me and You and Everyone We Know
18. Grizzly Man
19. Palindromes
20. Melinda and Melinda
21. Batman Begins
22. Munich
23. Crash
24. Thumbsucker
25. Sin City
26. Junebug
27. Nobody Knows
28. Happy Endings
29. Oldboy
30. The Beat That My Heart Skipped
31. Lord of War
32. The New World
33. Cinderella Man
34. Bob Dylan: No Direction Home
35. Not on the Lips
36. Where the Truth Lies
37. Asylum
38. Walk the Line
39. Charlie and the Chocolate Factory
40. Downfall
41. 5 x 2
42. Dominion: Prequel to the Exorcist
43. The Assassination of Richard Nixon
44. Sympathy for Mr. Vengeance
45. 3-Iron
46. The Bad News Bears
47. Empire Falls
48. The Skeleton Key
49. Kingdom of Heaven
50. The Upside of Anger
51. The Family Stone
52. In Her Shoes
53. The Ice Harvest
54. North Country
55. The 40 Year Old Virgin
56. The Brothers Grimm
57. Four Brothers
58. Pretty Persuasion
59. Hustle & Flow
60. March of the Penguins
61. Elizabethtown
62. Tale of Two Sisters
63. Dark Water
64. The Interpreter
65. In Good Company
66. Kung Fu Hustle
67. Red Eye
68. Land of the Dead
69. Rory O’Shea Was Here
70. Off the Map
71. Winter Solstice
72. Stay
73. Star Wars Episode III: Revenge of the Sith
74. Derailed
75. Izo
76. The Island
77. Bewitched
78. Wedding Crashers
79. Sahara
80. Constantine
81. Fever Pitch
82. War of the Worlds
83. Flightplan
84. The Exorcism of Emily Rose
85. White Noise
86. Elektra
87. Fantastic Four
88. Cursed
89. Ring 2
90. The Amityville Horror

One Man Film Festival: War Movies

All Quiet on the Western Front (1930)
Alexander Nevsky (1938)
Sergent York (1941)
Henry V (1944)
Paths of Glory (1957)
Patton (1970)
Apocalypse Now (1979)
The Big Red One (1980)
Platoon (1986)
Full Metal Jacket (1987)
Saving Private Ryan (1998)
The Thin Red Line (1998)
A Very Long Engagement (2004)
Jarhead (2005)

My Own Private Awards Show

Best Picture: A History of Violence
Best Actor: tie—Jeff Daniels (The Squid and the Whale) & Bill Murray – Broken Flowers
Best Actress:   Reese Witherspoon – Walk the Line
Best Supporting Actor: George Clooney—Good Night, and Good Luck
Best Supporting Actress: tie—Amy Adams (Junebug) & Maria Bello (A History of Violence)
Best Director:  David Cronenberg (A History of Violence)
Best Original Screenplay: Noah Baumbach (The Squid and the Whale)
Best Adapted Screenplay: Josh Olsen (A History of Violence)
Best Foreign Film: 2046

One Man Film Festival: Future Dystopias

Metropolis (1927)
Things to Come (1936)
Alphaville (1965)
Planet of the Apes (1968)
A Clockwork Orange (1971)
The Omega Man (1971)
THX 1138 (1971)
Soylent Green (1973)
The Road Warrior (1981)
Blade Runner (1982)
The Terminator (1984)
Robocop (1987)
12 Monkeys (1995)
Gattaca (1995)
Dark City (1998)
Code 46 (2003)

Introduction: 2006 One Man Film Festival

Now is the winter of movie lovers’ discontent. The studios, still trying to shake off their post-Oscar hangovers, dump last year’s bad decisions—Failure to Launch—into the multiplexes. Meanwhile, erstwhile distributor of indie and foreign films Wellspring Media has been swallowed whole by hype-and-cash-bloated mini-studio The Weinstein Company:

http://www.villagevoice.com/film/0609,kaufman,72356,20.html

It’s already too late to catch most of the Oscar-nominated films in theaters (how did I not see Munich?), yet still too early to see them on DVD.  

So what’s a movie fan to do? Join me here. Over the next few weeks I’ll be programming a little virtual film festival I’ve dubbed “The 2006 One Man Film Festival,” offering up a list of 10 or so exemplary films from a variety of genres, more of a sampler of the riches of cinema than a series of proverbial top 10 lists.  

One Man Film Festival: 12 Westerns

One-Man Film Festival: 12 Westerns

1. Stagecoach (1939)
2. Red River (1948)
3. The Naked Spur (1953)
4. The Searchers (1956)
5. Seven Men From Now (1956)
6. Rio Bravo (1959)
7. The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance (1962)
8. Once Upon a Time in the West (1968)
9. The Wild Bunch (1969)
10. McCabe & Mrs. Miller (1971)
11. Unforgiven (1992)
12. Dead Man (1995)

Review: The Three Burials of Melquides Estrada

Tommy Lee Jones on Westerns:

“The idea of making Westerns means nothing to me. The idea of working at home and dealing with the history and the present time of where I live and where I’m from is the only thing I’m interested in.”

Tommy Lee Jones on the desert:

“It makes people who they are. You have to tell your right name.”

I had high expectations for The Three Burials of Melquiades Estrada.  The film was the result of the combined talents of  actor/director Tommy Lee Jones, screenwriter Guillermo Arriaga (Amores perros, 21 Grams), and two-time Academy Award-winning cinematographer Chris Menges. The film had done well at last year’s Cannes festival, with Jones’ performance and Arriaga’s screenplay winning awards. So I was expecting good things. I was not disappointed.

The film’s title makes plain the dramatic arc of the movies three-act plot: following his death, the body of a man named Melquidas Estrada receives, under various circumstances, three different burials.

Melquidas Estrada (Julio Cedillo) is a Mexican vaquero hired and befriended by ranch foreman Pete Perkins (Jones) after immigrating illegally. Estrada is accidentally shot and killed by newly-assigned border patrolman Mike Norton (Barry Pepper), who then—rather than report the incident as an accidental shooting—hastily buries Estrada’s body in a shallow grave. The grave is soon discovered and the body exhumed, only to be hastily reburied by the local sheriff (Dwight Yoakam) in hopes of avoiding any trouble with Perkins.

When Perkins finally finds out what happened, he abducts Norton at gunpoint and forces him to dig up Estrada’s body. The two men then embark on a journey to Estrada’s remote Mexican village (we learn via flashback that Perkins promised Estrada that if Estrada died in the U.S., Perkins would take him “back home”).    

Like Arriaga’s previous screenplays, the film’s first two acts are presented achronologically, shifting to a more conventional chronological narrative for the journey of the final act. Brutal, darkly melancholic, and macabrely funny, Three Burials is immediately reminiscent of Arriaga’s 21 Grams and Sam Peckinpah’s Bring Me the Head of Alfredo Garcia, though ultimately it’s more nuanced  than either.

The movie was shot in Queretaro, Mexico, Big Bend National Park, Odessa, Van Horn, and Shafter, Texas, and on Jones’ own West Texas ranch. Jones and Menges handling of the landscapes is particularly impressive, capturing its grandness and sweep and somehow matching it to the grandeur of Jones’ face, and to that of human character in general.