RIP Jill Clayburgh

A consideration of a personal favorite on Popdose.

Cineaste: Previewing History, Part 2

My preview of the second part of TCM's Moguls & Movie Stars, "The Birth of Hollywood", is up now on the site. Chaplin, Griffith, and Theda Bara, too.

Popdose: Toy Story 3 on DVD

Cheer up, voters: Buzz and Woody and the gang are back in the super-successful sequel. Return to your childhood; God knows Tea Party candidates and their constituents have already reverted to theirs.

Popdose: Thrillers That Play With Fire

This time: The Girl Who Played with Fire is a proven commodity, Red Hill a good western, The Eclipse worth exhuming on DVD...but how I can resist spotlighting this wonderful poster from the giallo-themed Amer? I couldn't, and didn't.

Cineaste: Previewing History

Week by week through Dec. 13 I'll be writing Cineaste's first serial post, a review of each episode of TCM's Moguls and Movie Stars: A History of Hollywood. Tonight at 8pm EST: Episode 1, "Peepshow Pioneers."

Popdose: Top Ten scary movies

Breaking radio silence (not that I'm inactive on Facebook or Twitter, both linked here, and where I'm humming along)--what's scaring us over at Popdose. I have issues with this list (no original Texas Chain Saw Massacre? Really? The Amityville Horror, huh?) but I did write up the justly honored Phantasm and Hellraiser. You can take those to the blood bank.

Live Design: Brits on and Off Broadway

Four shows reviewed this time, the Broadway ones higher profile than the Classic Stage Company's take on Orlando--but how could I not spotlight this photo of David Greenspan all dolled up as Elizabeth I?

Popdose: Social butterflies

A status update on The Social Network (pictured) tags the Wall Street sequel and Inside Job. But the sensitive may want to defriend the horrific Red White & Blue.

Retrieving the Mask

I'm fascinated by movies that fail to merit any external reviews on the Internet Movie Database. What did they do to earn such obscurity? Such a one was Jules Dassin's Uptight (1968). I drew from Roger Ebert's review of it, but it wasn't until I posted my own, in 2008, that his review was linked to the section, along with another. It's not the first time I'd done this; I'm a do-gooder, and I like to do good by these orphaned productions.

Today I came across something I'd never seen before: A movie that lacked not just external reviews, but user reviews. Someone, somewhere, posts something on every movie out there, no matter how obscure. It's as if Behind the Mask (1958) never existed, as I discovered as TCM broadcast a tatty old print of it early Saturday morning and I looked it up. "That's not right," I thought. "An injustice."

Time to set things straight and go...behind the mask. Who ya gonna call?

For the record, this is a British hospital drama, an undistinguished British hospital drama--but there are plenty of undistinguished British hospital dramas that have some adherents on the IMDb. And this one does have one point of distinction, not a small one, either. It was the first feature film appearance of a 21-year-old Vanessa Redgrave (besides some sort of fashion model short two years earlier) and I think her only film alongside her father, Michael Redgrave. (I'd clarify this but the new and not-so-improved IMDb has removed the old version's most useful feature, the ability to look up collaborations.) Playing the concerned daughter of Michael's chief of surgery--he's ailing from the stress and strain of dealing with a new and uncooperative administration, and is watchfully grooming her fiance for a top surgical slot--she's appealing even in the decayed color of the print viewed and completely unformed, a hatchling, with a twee and girlish voice. She wouldn't make another film for eight years; by Morgan! (1966), she was more herself. (Maggie Smith had a similar trajectory, dipping her toes into movies at the same time then leaving them behind for about as long, both going back to win Oscars.)

Behind the Mask was also the debut film of veteran character actress Margaret Tyzack. Redgrave pere is his usual self. There are subplots involving the death of a patient and a doctor hopped up on drugs, which grays his hair and leaves him wild-eyed. Brian Desmond Hurst, who helmed the definitive version of A Christmas Carol in 1951, directed, less memorably this time.

That should do it. Stand up and be counted, Behind the Mask.

UPDATE: Done! Vanessa Redgrave should seriously thank me for this.

FURTHER UPDATE: The director's great-great nephew wrote me on Facebook to thank me for my review. Since it was posted a user review has appeared, too. The Mask is uncloaked.

First!

The Online Film Critics Society has released its list of 100 Best First Films. If Citizen Kane hadn't topped it I would have resigned in protest.

My 25 picks, some of which failed to place (i.e. my beloved Honeymoon Killers):

CITIZEN KANE
BREATHLESS
NIGHT OF THE LIVING DEAD
ON THE TOWN
THE MALTESE FALCON
KNIFE IN THE WATER
THE HONEYMOON KILLERS
CABIN IN THE SKY
KILLER OF SHEEP
TOY STORY
SHE’S GOTTA HAVE IT
THEY LIVE BY NIGHT
WHO’S AFRAID OF VIRGINIA WOOLF?
AGE D’OR, L’
ATLANTE, L’
MY LEFT FOOT
SWEETIE
SEX, LIES, AND VIDEOTAPE
BLACK SUNDAY
ROGER & ME
THE PRODUCERS
REAL LIFE
PEE-WEE’S BIG ADVENTURE
ONE-EYED JACKS
NIGHT OF THE HUNTER

Cineaste in Brooklyn

The magazine is collaborating with Brooklyn-based UnionDocs on a special series of documentary programs this fall. Kicking things off on Saturday, Oct. 16 at 7pm is a screening of Bastards of Utopia, followed by a filmmaker Q&A. Hang out with Cineaste in Williamsburg.

Popdose: Let Me In

When Chloe Grace Moretz asks, you better listen, in this fine remake of the Swedish thriller Let the Right One In. Plus: Arthur-to-be Russell Brand doesn't want to be caught in Get Him to the Greek, now on DVD.

RIP Tony Curtis

I can only hope that the passing of a genuine star will halt the distressing series of deaths this week. That stardom, and all the notoriety that entailed, tended to eclipse the career, but if we lop off the peripheral final decades (save for scene-stealing parts in 1976's The Last Tycoon, besting an array of old and new Hollywood talent, and Nicolas Roeg's Insignificance in 1985) we find a strong and varied core of work: comedies (Some Like It Hot), hard-hitting dramas (The Defiant Ones, his Oscar nominee), fun popcorn pictures (The Vikings, which my movie group adored when I showed it a few years back), epics (Spartacus), true crime films (The Boston Strangler)...and those are just one of each. A word, too, for his standout performance in the Ira Hayes biopic The Outsider (1960). And no one forgets the relentless Sidney Falco, in Sweet Smell of Success. "Match me, Sidney"...at his best Curtis was matchless.

RIP Arthur Penn

Penn directed four of my favorite films: The Miracle Worker (1962), adapting his Tony-winning direction of the play so sensitively it may be the best stage-to-screen translation ever, the groundbreaking Bonnie and Clyde (1967), the great American story of Little Big Man (1970), and a touchstone film of its decade, Night Moves (1975). Two others, The Chase (1966) and Alice's Restaurant (1969), are as compelling as they are confounding. Cases have been made for other films I find far more problematic, like Mickey One (1965) and The Missouri Breaks (1976). He should have received an honorary Oscar. Oh, and I laughed all the way through the Broadway show Fortune's Fool (2002), an unlikely adaptation of Turgenev adaptation, with its crackerjack, Tony- and Drama Desk-winning performances by Alan Bates and Frank Langella. A keen loss for stage, screen, and television.

Home Movie Day

Show 'em if you got 'em; all we had growing up were some "Polarvision" things that never worked. Flip Video, though, is great and an absolute must for parents.

HOME MOVIE DAY 2010

Light Industry
177 Livingston Street, Brooklyn

Saturday, October 16
1pm - 7pm
FREE

A celebration of amateur filmmaking held annually at venues worldwide, Home
Movie Day is an opportunity for individuals and families to dig out their
home movies and share them with an audience. It's also a chance to have your
prints and tapes inspected by archivists and learn about their long-term
care and preservation. Stop by for half an hour or hang out the whole day!

Bring these formats and we'll do the rest:
FILM: 8mm, Super 8mm, and 16mm
VIDEO: Hi-8mm and VHS

"There's no such thing as a bad home movie. These mini-underground opuses
are revealing, scary, joyous, always flawed, filled with accidental art and
shout out from attics and closets all over the world to be seen again. Home
Movie Day is an orgy of self-discovery, a chance for family memories to
suddenly become show business. If you've got one, whip it out and show it
now." - John Waters

Presented by:
Center for Home Movies, Light Industry, and the NYU Libraries Preservation
Department

More information:
www.homemovieday.com
forsberg@nyu.edu

Popdose: Liza from A to Z

So the editor said that Liza Minnelli has a new CD out, and maybe it would be fun to take a look back at her film/TV career. And so it is written. And it was fun. Cabaret (pictured): Damn good movie, damn great performance. Rent-A-Cop? Not so much.

Bill Plympton writes...

"In just ten short days my new animated feature film Idiots and Angels opens for its U.S. premiere at the famous IFC Film Center on October 6, 2010.

Since it's a small budget film, financed out of my pocket, I need a big crowd at the cinema on 6th ave and 3rd st... I need a mob! I need a riot! I need a circus! I need a big brass band! I need chaos as everyone tries to see my new animated feature.

But don't just go see it because I put my heart and soul into it, or because its  up against Hollywood big budget animated feature, or because you want to support indie films, or even because I'll end up in debtors prison if it flops. NO! Go to see it because it is the most amazing, twisted film on the New York screens to date! That is reason enough to go see Idiots and Angels.

I see you there and we'll hang out after the film for pizza and beer."

RIP Gloria Stuart

I saluted her 100th birthday on July 4. The inevitable followup posting has come quicker than I would have liked, but the star of The Old Dark House and The Invisible Man in the 30s and Titanic in 1997 lived what was by all accounts (including her own 1999 memoir) a full and contented life, and I salute her once more on her passing. Fun fact: She was so spry at age 86 it took an hour-and-a-half per day to transform her into her 101-year-old Titanic self (pictured).

Popdose: On Disney fantasies

Return to ancient lands via the old school Black Cauldron and the newfangled Prince of Persia: The Sands of Time, with an abbed-up Jake Gyllenhaal.

Popdose: Never Let Me Go and Catfish

Tiptoeing around the plot twists of two new movies; circling The Square on DVD; and appraising the poster art of Drew Struzan in a new book. Never Let Me Go is pictured.

"Can Celluloid Break Bricks?"

FILM & THE ANARCHIST IMAGINATION & THE ANGRY BRIGADE

September 24, 7:00 pm
Unnameable Books
600 Vanderbilt Ave., Brooklyn
(Q/B to 7th ave., or 2/3 to Grand Army Plaza)
FREE

This is the second installment in a series of book parties, book parties which celebrate books that are not new, but still deserve to celebrated: books about film, together with screenings of related movies, thoughtful discussion and cheap wine.

On Friday evening the 24th, at 7pm, we present Film and the Anarchist Imagination by Cineaste editor Richard Porton (Verso Books, 1999), and The Angry Brigade by Gordon Carr (dvd, 1973, 60min).

Film and the Anarchist Imagination explores anarchism’s portrayal in film over the past 100 years, and the anarchist ideas and tendencies that have made their way into every genre and size of production. Alongside film history, Porton introduces the anarchist traditions and movements that provided a backdrop for radical and reactionary cinemas.

This event serves as a live, updated edition of the book. The author will discuss with us the films and videos that didn’t make their way into the first edition, and the changes in radical filmmaking and anarchist thinking and action since the book’s release. We’ll also tackle why a real new edition of the book is perhaps unlikely to materialize, in the current market world of left-wing publishing.

Following the discussion will be a screening of The Angry Brigade, a documentary about “Britain’s first urban military group.” This film is not mentioned in the book (so we’re inserting it tonight, in pictures), but we will discuss the film, and the issues it brings up, with Porton after the screening.

A free zine with a collection of relevant writings will be available to all attendees.

Join us for cinema, books, wine, critique, theory and rambling, outdoors while we still can, in Unnameable Books’ backyard, in the heart of Prospect Heights, Brooklyn.

Contact Rachael Rakes: 646-226-1754 or rachaelrakes@gmail.com.

RIP Kevin McCarthy

One of those days, sadly...the actor would have had a perfectly respectable career, including an Oscar nomination (for the 1951 film of Death of a Salesman; he appeared onstage in its original London production), Broadway credits from the 30s to the 80s, lots of TV, and movies that included The Misfits, The Best Man, and A Big Hand for the Little Lady. But starring in Don Siegel's 1956 classic Invasion of the Body Snatchers gave him iconic status--he's ideally cast as a workaday exemplar of the human race--and filmmakers who grew up on it gave him a continual lease on creative life, notably Joe Dante, who featured him in Piranha, The Howling, Twilight Zone: The Movie, where he was funny and disturbing in equal measure, and Innerspace, among others. (He was also in the 1978 Body Snatchers remake, and his presence in the two since might have helped.) McCarthy, who died at age 96, worked right up until the end.

RIP Claude Chabrol

Marketed as "the French Hitchcock," his films must have disappointed anyone looking for action, thrills, setpieces. But the best were supremely intelligent, a mixture of classical elegance and surprising bluntness, dead-centered on the hypocrises of the bourgeois. My film group watched Le Boucher (1969) in 2006, and were held by it (so was Hitchcock, who wished he had made it, but perhaps not in the same way). I've written about Chabrol before; adhering to a Woody Allen-like film-a-year schedule for decades, often working with family members, he always gave you something to write about, unlike his contemporaries in the French New Wave, as they branched into non-commercial filmmaking or fell away.

But for all I've seen I don't feel I've seen enough, and I can't quite come to grips with it. You can do a "Chabrol/Isabelle Huppert" retrospective, which is a fantastic idea, spotlighting his excellent collaborations with the actress...but you can also do a double feature of his two late 80s duds with the unlikely Andrew McCarthy, not that anyone would show up to see how Chabrol and the international market never quite came to terms. Better too much than too little, however, and there is a place in my dark heart for La Ceremonie, Violette, This Man Must Die, Les Biches, and The Cousins. A final film, and his first with Gerard Depardieu, Bellamy, awaits.

Popdose: Bummer summer ends

As The American, George Clooney ends a bomb-filled season with a bang. With appearances by Salt, Scott Pilgrim, Mesrine and, on DVD, The Girl by the Lake.

Popdose: Corman and Gamera

"Roger Corman's Cult Classics," including Death Race 2000 and Galaxy of Terror, are roaring and rampaging on DVD and Blu-ray. Watch out for Gamera: The Giant Monster, too.

Member, Online Film Critics Society

As I tweeted not long ago I'm a newly minted member of the Online Film Critics Society. I'm honored, humbled, flattered. Does my badge guarantee free popcorn and soda? No? Well, that's OK. Happy to be part of things.

Castle creep

Was 1999 really the last time Film Forum showed the gimmicky shockers of William Castle? I'm not sure how I made it through the aughts without a tinge of Percepto or a blast of Emergo. In any case he's back, starting tomorrow, in a retrospective that takes in other facets of his career besides. While I don't subscribe to the producer-as-auteurist claims made for him by others there's no denying that the films are a lot of fun, and seeing them with their gimmicks intact makes them all the more entertaining. Take my advice at the end of my review of a box set of Castle flicks that came out last year. And, boy, does Joan Crawford mean business with that axe in Strait-Jacket, a cutting-edge start to the retrospective paired with the delightful Homicidal.

The Fall issue of Cineaste

On sale and also online, where you'll find reports on four film festivals, interviews with Patrice Leconte, Simone Bitton, and Zelimir Zelnik, and reviews of The Tillman Story and There's Always Tomorrow. Among much else. Pictured is Apichatpong Weerasethakul’s Uncle Boonmee Who Can Recall His Past Lives, winner of the Palme d'Or at Cannes this year.

Popdose: The Tillman Story

War and remembrance as the new documentary about the football player and friendly fire casualty goes into release. Plus, on DVD, the unsung Triage, with Colin Farrell and Christopher Lee.

Henry hews to Andrew

Henry Hewes Design Awards, that is. The Broadway-bound Bloody Bloody Andrew Jackson, that is, for Donyale Werle's Public-filling, Southern-fried scenic design, an excellent choice (pictured). Plus Martin Pakledinaz for Lend Me a Tenor's costumes, Kevin Adams for American Idiot's lighting, and The Orphans' Home Cycle's production team for notable effects.

Bali bye

The magnificent revival of South Pacific that so moved me back in April 2008 is closing this Sunday at the Vivian Beaumont, but Live From Lincoln Center is giving us a last (or a first) look 8pm EST tonight on PBS. Matthew Morrison, who played Cable, has decamped to Glee and TV stardom but its incomparable leads, Kelli O'Hara and Paulo Szot (pictured), have returned to see it through to the end. I'm not sure how it'll play on the small screen but Light in the Piazza, also with O'Hara, turned out well, and I'm chancing my highest recommendation on this. Watch it, DVR it, tape it--just don't miss it.

Secrets of the Trade

For Theater News Online: The great John Glover gives Noah Robbins life lessons in Jonathan Tolins' new play, at Primary Stages. Love the "Cafe des Artistes" backdrop.

Kick ass movies

In "honor," I guess, of the saggy ass Expendables, a ten-film strong list of KA movies, as selected by the men (and women) of Popdose. I wrote up Aliens.

There are two kick ass movie events in New York this week. The press yawned over the "Classic 3D" fest that Film Forum held in 2004 but what a difference an Avatar makes--lots of thumbsucking this week over the already exhausted 3D revolution and what it all means as a similar program gets underway today. What it all means in the now is that you get some nice two-for-one deals (no surcharges!) on some entertaining B-movies, with a few As like the fun Kiss Me, Kate and the dull-in-any-dimension Miss Sadie Thompson thrown at you, along with some (terrific) Three Stooges shorts and a few oddities, like a selection of Harold Lloyd's stereoscopic nudes. Comin' at ya indeed.

Meanwhile, New York filmmaker William Lustig has picked some more down-and-dirty flicks for showcasing at Anthology Film Archives, including a personal favorite, 1967's mean merc movie Dark of the Sun. Quentin Tarantino cast its star, Rod Taylor, in a small role in Inglourious Basterds, and filched the main theme from its score (pictured), too. Rest assured that it kicks major ass.

Cineaste: A slice of Splice

New Webtakes are up on the site, including my own on the recent sci-fi shocker.

RIP Patricia Neal

For my masters in journalism, which seemed so useful back in 1988, we had to come up with a saleable magazine concept. We found one, alas an unglamorous concept, caregiving. The good news was that our cover subject was the great actress and fellow Northwestern alum Patricia Neal, who with her then-husband Roald Dahl by her side battled back from debilitating strokes in the mid-60s, regaining her life and career. I didn't interview her, but the word was that she was as kind and generous as she was always said to be.

Also, in her professional life, a good judge of scripts--so flinty yet so touching in her Oscar winner, 1963's Hud. Caught up in the craziness of The Fountainhead (1949) with her lover, Gary Cooper, as Hollywood beckoned following a Tony award for Lillian Hellman's Another Part of the Forest. Anchoring The Day the Earth Stood Still (1951) with her good common sense. Managing Andy Griffith to shallow stardom in A Face in the Crowd (1957). Stylish and controlling in Breakfast at Tiffany's (1961). Wistful and unfulfilled in The Subject Was Roses, for which she received a second Oscar nomination as she returned to the screen in 1968.

Others: The fine, Burma-set play adaptation The Hasty Heart (1949), with the late Richard Todd and Ronald Reagan, Otto Preminger's In Harm's Way (1965), a good match for John Wayne; the Dahl-written The Night Digger (1971), no doubt feeling youthful opposite Fred Astaire and John Houseman in 1981's Ghost Story, Cookie in Robert Altman's Cookie's Fortune (1999). Glenda Jackson played her in the good 1981 TV movie The Patricia Neal Story, opposite Dirk Bogarde as Dahl, filmed not long before their 30-year marriage dissolved.

I always loved her (that voice!). In that I was hardly alone. A talent and an inspiration.

Popdose: Inception, Conception

Dreaming of Leo, plus a family ideal in The Kids Are All Right and all the wrong ways to to make it in Manhattan in The Extra Man, as I put a spin on it again.

Mad Men-ned

I couldn't quite get this to work out on my own, so I had my secretary do it. All very accurate, as I drink and smoke and avoid blogging. In my heart of hearts I'm a studly Don or a dapper Roger, but sad to say I'm at best a Duck.

Live Design: The Grand Manner

Two days left to see A.R. Gurney's comic rumination on an encounter with Katharine Cornell, with Kate Burton, Boyd Gaines, and Bobby Steggert, as I resume my usual semi-usual posting, mostly about posts. Just the way it is these days.

Popdose: Cyrus vs. Predators

Alien muscle against Adrien Brody and John C. Reilly in a death match with Jonah Hill--who will survive and what will be left of them?

Popdose: Columbia Noir, Hammer Suspense

A hot summer just added a few degrees as as the moody masterpieces Human Desire (Fritz Lang) and Nightfall (Jacques Tourneur) arrive in one box set and Joseph Losey's astonishing These Are the Damned in another.

Popdose: Inception, the soundtrack

A few days before Leo and his "dream thieves" can plant themselves into our minds, Hans Zimmer and Johnny Marr insinuate themselves into our ears with its soundtrack album.

Live Design: The Merchant of Venice

Al Pacino seeks his pound of flesh in Shakespeare's confounding comedy, running in repertory with The Winter's Tale through Aug. 1 at the Delacorte.

The century mark

Gloria Stuart, star of The Old Dark House (1932) and, 65 years later, an Oscar nominee for Titanic (1997), has hit it today. (James Cameron rediscovered her when he heard her commentary on the Dark House LD, which I own.) But she's not alone, as Film Experience blogger Nathaniel Rogers discovered when he researched the most senior Oscar nominees, and his commenters chimed in with a few more. A heartening read, particularly for me, as we mourn the passing of our 16-year-old cat Tom-Yum, a star in his own right.

Popdose: Phil Spector's bad hair day

There's agony and ecstasy, and a whole lot of kvetching, in the new documentary The Agony and the Ecstasy of Phil Spector, now at Film Forum. Plus: the doc It Came from Kuchar, Toy Story 3. Agora, and the proverbial much, much more.

Memo to Elena Kagan

In the vampires vs. werewolves debate that electrified the nation yesterday during your confirmation hearing, there is clear precedent for a liberal jurist to side with the lycanthropes. From 1943’s Return of the Vampire to the Underworld movies of today werewolves are a minority constantly oppressed by aristocratic vampires. How cute the vampires are is not a matter of judicial interest. Conservative justices on Team John might disagree but when the Twilight series is hauled before the Supremes for crimes against literature and cinema there is only one way to rule in this particular debate.

Popdose: An Owl and a Peacock

Birds of a feather flock together this week--two well-cast psychological thrillers, The Cry of the Owl and Peacock, that went straight to DVD. Do they deserve a chance to spread their wings?

Beat The Devils

If you've been following my Twitter feed you know The Devils, briefly available on iTunes, has been withdrawn. No explanation was given, but I'm not smelling some censorship scandal. Warner Bros, did put the 103-minute version out on VHS in 1995, so it has some history with the title, and I assume its reappearance in a form unseen since the early 70s means some sort of DVD release is in the offing. More likely, as has been suggested, WB's digital distribution team jumped the gun and placed it on ITunes unthinkingly.

This morning I got a Facebook message from a person asking if I could send the file I had purchased to him. I was leery of this, and put off altogether when he said he would then place it on one of those dubious file sharing sites for the cultural good. I'm no angel--I've purchased plenty of gray-market tapes and DVD-Rs from as-reputable-as-possible sources, sometimes in near-unwatchable form. You get what you pay for, and sometimes a lot less. My purchases include that bootleg of the UK Devils telecast I had previously mentioned.

But here we have a pristine copy that, if released, may discourage WB from ever putting it out. And that would be a tragedy. I'm upset that the studio hasn't put it out, either, particularly when there's a Russell commentary available to go with it. But I'm willing to wait for the best possible presentation, and see my file as a bridge to that. I'd gladly give it up for a disc, as I have my gray-market boots when better became legitimately available. How many others ripping it off "Pirate Bay" can say the same?

One more thing: Maybe iTunes will zap my file and I'll get issued a credit, rendering the whole thing moot. And another: Russell will be presenting what's said to be the 111-minute cut from July 31-Aug. 1 at the Film Society of Lincoln Center, part of a nine-film retrospective. Hmm, that's getting a lot of circulation these days; maybe I'm a little self-satisfied owning my 108-minute version.

Mann of the West

And the Midwest, the East, the Roman Empire; wherever there was trouble in the air, his restless cameras found it. Undervalued in his own time his reputation has only grown, and beginning Friday Film Forum serves up 32 highlights from one of the coolest and most galvanizing of Hollywood filmmakers. It's hard to go wrong here; well, maybe The Heroes of Telemark (1965), his last, fully completed film, or the stodgy Cimarron (1960), or the bumpy, strenuously off-color God's Little Acre (1958). But the growing and stretching, the David Lean-ness of much of his late career, wasn't entirely misguided: El Cid (1963) and The Fall of the Roman Empire are vivid pagaentry, with flesh-and-blood centers. He never left behind the sinew of human existence, so challenged in all his great noirs and Westerns. My favorites: The Furies (Barbara Stanwyck is pictured in its great, shocking moment), Border Incident, Devil's Doorway, Raw Deal, Winchester '73, Man of the West, The Tall Target, Side Street, Reign of Terror...practically a treat a day. Fun fact: My wife and I got engaged after we saw Roman Empire.

Summer of '85

I've visited The House Next Door (now the official blog of Slant Magazine) since it opened for visitors, so I was happy to contribute to its ongoing anniversary series. A View to a Kill, a Bond bellyflop, proved a lot more fun to write about than to rewatch, that's for sure.

Downloading The Devils

Even by the anything-goes standards of the irrepressible Ken Russell, there's nothing quite like The Devils (1971), which shocked audiences in 1971, and shocks us today, both for its "not for the squeamish" content (to quote Leonard Maltin) and when we consider what the studios were up to in 1971. Today, we get so-called "torture porn"; back then, we got a film that doesn't flinch from hysterical depravity, then comes to a sharply moral point, much harder than the so-called "lessons" absorbed ad knee-jerk from Saw I-VI. With name actors, too, in Oliver Reed and Vanessa Redgrave, both fearsomely committed to this fire-and-brimstone Aldous Huxley adaptation.

I saw the movie in college, at a raucous midnight screening that ultimately silenced a bunch of jaded kids. Seeing it again has been a challenge, as Warner Bros., which at one point edited the film to play on a double bill with The Exorcist, turned its back on it. I recall a panned-and-scanned tape that was, at best, a feeble representation of its strikingly produced self. There was a UK telecast of a more complete version, never released, that was available through grey-market sources--and it had its own issues, though it was a welcome bastard, complete with a fine documentary. A few years back Russell said that he had prepared a commentary for a hotly requested and long-overdue release. The rest has been silence.

But, to paraphrase Tennessee Williams, "Sometimes there's The Devils so quickly." In late May a gorgeous, anamorphic widescreen print of the film, as seen in its initial US and UK release, turned up--not as a Warner DVD, or as part of the Warner Archive, but on iTunes, where it can be rented or purchased by anyone out there, no region codes or all that nonsense. I've rented films for online viewing before, but this was The Devils, so I paid my $9.95 (several dollars less than a DVD or Archive release) and downloaded the movie.

I was taken aback when iTunes said that that the 1.2GB file would take six hours to download. The job was finished, though, in less than an hour. I'd have paid a lot more if iTunes could add two free hours for me to watch it, but what I scanned through was in fantastic shape. Call me old school: I'd rather have a physical product in my hot little hands, an Archive release as no frills as this one or, preferably, a pressed DVD with the UK doc and Russell's commentary. (This may be the teaser for that.) For now, though, The Devils has possessed my MacBook Pro. What other hidden gems are up on iTunes, I wonder?

UPDATE: iTunes giveth, iTunes taketh away: The Devils has been exorcised from the site. Bound for DVD perhaps?

RIP Ronald Neame

Such a rich 20th century life in the movies, which he was born into and never left. He was there as Alfred Hitchcock and the British film industry entered the sound era, shot, did effects work for, and co-wrote some of David Lean's finest films, for which he received three Oscar nominations, then struck out on his own for a varied directing career. He made the best of the disaster films, 1972's The Poseidon Adventure, then unmade the genre with the disastrous Meteor seven years later. On a more human scale he directed Maggie Smith toward an Oscar in The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie, helmed the sprightly capers Gambit (1966) and Hopscotch (1980), made two of Alec Guinness' more notable credits, The Horse's Mouth (1958) and Tunes of Gloryy (1960), and gave Judy Garland a best as could be hoped for swan song in 1963's I Could Go on Singing. I have The Chalk Garden (1964) waiting to watch. Now's the time.

Popdose: Seven Criterion DVDs

Count 'em, seven, including two box sets, 13 films in all. Whew! Included: Nicholas Ray's Bigger Than Life and Nicolas Roeg's extraordinary Walkabout, a personal favorite.

Psycho at 50

Norman Bates: You know what I think? I think that we're all in our private traps, clamped in them, and none of us can ever get out. We scratch and we claw, but only at the air, only at each other, and for all of it, we never budge an inch.

Marion Crane: Sometimes, we deliberately step into those traps.

Norman Bates: I was born into mine. I don't mind it anymore.

Tonys time

My Twitter feed (look to the right) shows what I was feeling in the moment, but doesn't tell the whole story. Trying to avoid the chatters, who tend to trend catty, I thought the show made what it could from a fairly dry season; the star power came in handy, and winners Catherine Zeta-Jones and Scarlett Johansson threw off some heat. Alas, the evening's best moment, Marian Seldes' delightful "speechless" reaction to winning her lifetime achievement award, was relegated to the first hour; if you don't have NY1, which telecast it, you didn't see it, nor much of the design winners, which always irritates me. The musical numbers always come off as somewhat canned, particularly when the sound system is faltering, and solo performers like Zeta-Jones are better off performing their songs rather than acting them in a vacuum. (On the other hand, non-nominee Kristin Chenoweth was much sunnier and more relaxed here than onstage in Promises, Promises.) No one has ever solved what to do with the plays, twas ever thus. So, a New York "whatever," not bad, some nice moments (Douglas Hodge's La Cage vamp of a game Matthew Morrison and a Will Smith)--and hopes for a jazzier 09-10 season that gives the show more to work with. The Tony-winning Memphis is pictured.

The Summer issue of Cineaste, online and on sale

It's out, and up, now. Some of it anyway, including an excellent editorial and Jonathan Rosenbaum feature that address some of the knottier facets of DVDs, this month's special focus. Online exclusives include an interview with Neil Jordan about his latest film, the seagoing fantasy Ondine (pictured), which has just entered release. All aboard, mates!

New York Theater News: Passion Play

So it closed three days ago. I was away until today and remember it like yesterday.

RIP William A. Fraker

Six Oscar nominations for the veteran cinematographer...but not for Bullitt? Rosemary's Baby? Did they somehow cancel each other out in 1968? That's Hollywood, which was also disinclined to acknowledge his staggering work on John Boorman's maligned Exorcist II: The Heretic. But he did get two nominations (one for visual effects) for Steven Spielberg's 1941 (1979), a movie of dense, smoky textures, notoriously hard to replicate on DVD (the one that's out doesn't even try) but absolutely stunning at the theater so long ago. And he directed one of the great autumnal Westerns, 1970's Monte Walsh, with Lee Marvin and Jack Palance. Played "The Cellist" and photographed the Seventies cult object Dusty and Sweets McGee. He was also a friend and mentor to many, which more than makes up for Oscar's whims.

I Knew It Was You

A movie fan worth his or her salt can place that title instantly. It's that devastating line that Michael Corleone delivers to his weakling elder brother, Fredo, at a turning point in The Godfather: Part II (1974). And it's what Richard Shepard's beautiful short documentary about actor John Cazale is called, too. To be in the company of this legendary figure (five movies, five Best Picture nominees) and the people who were proud to have known and worked with him during his tragically brief life (gone at age 42, 32 years ago now, from lung cancer) is 40 minutes of undiluted pleasure. HBO is airing the film several more times this month and I urge you to watch it. I did through smiles and tears, particularly when Meryl Streep discussed their relationship...and I loved the other actors (Al Pacino, Robert De Niro, Richard Dreyfuss, Sam Rockwell, etc.) trying to pinpoint exactly what made him great and how he inspired them to do better, either directly or through the legacy of his films. (That's him in Sidney Lumet's classic Dog Day Afternoon.) Proof that you're never really dead until no one remembers you, but why no mention of the little black box theater on Upper Broadway that bears his name?