The Criterion Collection

[Rich Pure Doom]

Originally Posted by belcherman

I find Kiss Me Stupid vastly under-rated, even by Wilder himself. One can only imagine what it could have been had Jack Lemmon or even Peter Sellers starred instead of My Favorite Martian's Ray Walston. Walston's performance is too shrill and throws everything off-kilter. Dean Martin, Kim Novak and Felicia Farr acquit themselves admirably, but it is Cliff Osmond who is the moral compass of the film. The cinematography by Joseph LaShelle is great and gives a real feel for pre-sprawl Las Vegas.

I do think that The Fortune Cookie was quite good, though.

This is what I wrote on Letterboxd:

It's amazing how successful this is despite the lead performance being a total failure. Ray Walston tries his damndest to sink this picture, with his overselling of every joke and facial expressions that destroy any chance at a decent punchline. Luckily, Wilder's script is good, and the rest of the cast is up to the task. The script goes to places you wouldn't expect in 1964, but oddly ends up being decidedly warm and sentimental by the conclusion. A lot of this is due to the performances of Felicia Farr and Kim Novak. I don't usually like Novak, but she makes Polly The Pistol a memorable and sympathetic character, completely believable in her longing for steady domesticity. Farr likewise, sells the idea that she would do anything (even prostitute herself) to help her husband. How the film manages to legitimize the moral dysfunction on display is a small miracle, but Wilder pulls it off. Like much of his later period, this is underrated and a good time.

Pretty much exactly what you said as well.

[hoytereden]

Originally Posted by SeanJoyce

Have you seen him in the Most Dangerous Game-inspired tv thriller The Savages? He's a real nasty piece of work in that one too as he pursues Timothy Bottoms through the desert.

I did see that back in the day. There were some really good MFTV movies back then. My favorite one is still Goodnight, My Love, a great homage to Noir, followed by A Cold Nights Death, a genuinely creepy horror set in cold isolation ala The Thing.

[StarDestroyer52]

Originally Posted by theater dreamer

Some upcoming Criterion films playing on TV. All times listed are Central.

TCM:

Charade (1963)-Cary Grant, Audrey Hepburn, Walter Matthau. Dir. Stanley Donen. Thursday 7 PM
12 Angry Men (1957)-Henry Fonda, Lee Cobb, Jack Klugman. Dir. Sidney Lumet. Thursday 9:15 PM
Z (1969)-Yves Montand, Irene Papas. Dir. Costa-Gavras. Friday 3 AM.
Jeanne Dielman, 23 Quai du Commerce, 1080 Bruxelles (1975)-Delphine Seyrig. Dir. Chantal Akerman. Monday 1:30 AM
The Naked City (1948)-Barry Fitzgerald, Howard Duff. Dir. Jules Dassin. Wednesday 3:45 PM
The Graduate (1967)-Dustin Hoffman, Anne Bancroft. Dir. Mike Nichols. Friday 7 PM


HBO:
Being John Malkovich (1999)-John Cusack, Cameron Diaz, Catherine Keener, John Malkovich. Dir. Spike Jonze. Wednesday 6:05 PM HBO Signature East
The Princess Bride (1987)-Cary Elews, Robin Wright. Dir. Rob Reiner. Thursday 9:15 PM HBO-e

Showtime/The Movie Channel:
Personal Shopper (2016)-Kristen Stewart, Sigrid Bouaziz. Dir. Olivier Assayas. Today 8:35 AM TMC-w
Traffic (2000)-Michael Douglas Benecio del Torro, Don Cheadle. Dir. Steven Soderbergh. Today 11:15 AM Showtime-e
Bowling for Columbine (2002)-Dir. Mochael Moore. Today 11:30 AM Showtime Extreme
Frances Ha (2012)-Greta Gerwig, Adam Driver. Dir. Noah Baumbach. Today 3:45 PM Showtime-e

Pandora's Box is airing before Jeanne Dielman as part of TCM's Silent Sunday night, so we'll find out I guess if Criterion is going to be releasing it too. With all the noise about the BFI restoration this year, hopefully 2019 is the year.

[senseabove]

A new restoration of Cukor's Holiday is premiering at the 2019 TCM Festival! http://filmfestival.tcm.com/programs/films/holiday/

Here's hoping this gets released by Criterion ASAP. One of my most anticipated movies. You could consider it my Tree of Life. As far as I'm concerned, the entire New Years Drawing will be a variety of clues for Holiday.

[Al_The_Strange]

Originally Posted by The Great Owl

Every week on Facebook, I introduce a different “movie of the week” by showcasing a screenshot from the film as my cover photo. A lot of the time when I do this, I am compelled to go back and polish up old reviews that I wrote years ago. Here is the latest...

[Show spoiler]

In a small South Dakota town during the late 1950s, Holly, a teenage girl played by Sissy Spacek (Carrie), is twirling her baton in her front yard when she meets Kit, an aimless young man played by Martin Sheen (Apocalypse Now). Despite her father's disapproval, she is drawn to this stranger's James Dean hairstyle, his vacant eyes, and his persona that, while unhinged, represents the promise of a world far beyond the routine confines of her existence. One night, after Kit shows up at Holly's home and shoots her father, the two of them set her house on fire and then embark on a murder spree across state lines to the badlands of Montana.

The visually stunning 1973 crime drama, Badlands, which was written and directed by Terrence Malick, and inspired by the real-life crimes of Charles Starkweather and Caril Ann Fugate in 1958, is one of the least claustrophobic movies in existence, and it launches its two main characters, cannon-style, into the vastness of a world where they can become anything that they want. The 1950s pulp-romance aesthetic of this film works wonders in the open landscapes of a country that is depicted as young and fresh with endless possibilities, a setting that seems a universe away from today's America of chain shopping centers, boxy department stores, and structured lives.

The disturbing subject matter reverberates in these expansive spaces, because there is not a single moment in the story when we are not reminded that our two antiheroes are free to make their own choices every step of the way. Kit and Holly can go anywhere they choose, and part of the movie's unnerving charm is that Malick's story does not dwell too closely on why these two characters take the literal and moral directions that they do. An early scene where Spacek's Holly casually throws a pet catfish into her yard because it is sick establishes her as an emotionally detached soul whose reactions to the psychopathic behavior of Sheen's Kit are outwardly indifferent. The “badlands” of the outside world and the “badlands” of the human psyche are beautifully conveyed in this cinematic world as places where everything, human lives and random possessions alike, can be thoughtlessly discarded like artifacts abandoned in a container in the middle of nowhere.

The main thematic point that I take home from Terrence Malick's work is that nature maintains its splendid majesty regardless of the struggles of the human characters who dwell in it, and that our often-flawed endeavors are simply facets of nature itself. The murderous rampage of the two leads in Badlands, the relationship complexities on a Texas farm in Days of Heaven, the horrifying World War II violence in The Thin Red Line, the colonial struggles in The New World, the trials of boyhood in a small town in The Tree of Life, the initial elation and subsequent dissolution of a marriage in To the Wonder, and even the distractions of sex in Knight of Cups are presided over by blissfully idyllic images of trees, deserts, beaches, and wilderness. I disagree, for example, with the popular opinion of critics that the battle sequences on Guadalcanal in Malick's most popular film, The Thin Red Line, are shown as an affront to the beauty of nature, because I believe, instead, that the movie portrays war as just another part of the natural world.

Although Badlands was the director's first feature film, his meditations on the place of human drama in the midst of the environment that would outline all of his subsequent works are present in full. Despite the shootings, car chases, and pointless deaths that unfold on the screen, the wondrous dry terrain of the location and the picturesque sight of a sunlit horizon remain unchanged.

This is fantastic insight, thanks for the review. I blind-bought this movie a few years ago (jeez, has it been that long already?) thinking it would be something like Bonnie and Clyde all Terrence Mallick style. And it is, but not quite the way I expected. I think part of it is the photography--expected more of the slick and beautiful scenery that Emmanuel Lubezki captured for Tree of Life and such, but Badlands is way gritter (not just in actual film stock, but in composition as well imo) and I found it a little less endearing that way.

But I do want to revisit the film to see if it clicks better on a rewatch. Keeping these themes in mind will probably make it a more engaging viewing.

[theater dreamer]

Originally Posted by StarDestroyer52

Pandora's Box is airing before Jeanne Dielman as part of TCM's Silent Sunday night, so we'll find out I guess if Criterion is going to be releasing it too. With all the noise about the BFI restoration this year, hopefully 2019 is the year.

Yes, I saw that was playing, and have it set to record. I own the other collaboration between G.W. Pabst and Louise Brooks, Diary of a Lost Girl, and have been wanting Pandora’s Box to get a release for some time, even if it means importing it. I’d much prefer that Criterion release both, and with Westfront 1918 and Kameradschaft both receiving recent Criterion releases, I have hope that we’ll see Miss Brooks get a page on Criterion’s site soon.

[KJones77]

Finally went to B&N today and picked up the following for my first and only haul of the sale:



Ambersons and King of the Hill are blind buys.

[Ray Jackson]

I took off the wrapping of my Yi Yi copy tonight and just put it into my machine and when it loaded the “resume playback?” thing came up on the screen.

When I selected “yes” out of curiosity, it stated playing the closing credits of the film.

What does this mean?

...this is supposed to be a brand new copy.

[demonknight]

Originally Posted by Ray Jackson

I took off the wrapping of my Yi Yi copy tonight and just put it into my machine and when it loaded the “resume playback?” thing came up on the screen.

When I selected “yes” out of curiosity, it stated playing the closing credits of the film.

What does this mean?

...this is supposed to be a brand new copy.

Did you ever watch a different copy of the same film on that player?

[Rzzzz]

Originally Posted by Ray Jackson

I took off the wrapping of my Yi Yi copy tonight and just put it into my machine and when it loaded the “resume playback?” thing came up on the screen.

When I selected “yes” out of curiosity, it stated playing the closing credits of the film.

What does this mean?

...this is supposed to be a brand new copy.

Same thing happened to me when I re-bought Eraserhead. I gave the old defective one to my son-in-law and bought the new corrected one. When I put it in it was at the "white out" part. I figured they were testing it before sending it out?

[jakdstew]

Have you rented it before? If so it will resume wherever you left off regardless of whether it’s the same disc. It’s happened to me too.

[Dailyan]

Originally Posted by Ray Jackson

I took off the wrapping of my Yi Yi copy tonight and just put it into my machine and when it loaded the “resume playback?” thing came up on the screen.

When I selected “yes” out of curiosity, it stated playing the closing credits of the film.

What does this mean?

...this is supposed to be a brand new copy.

I guess the tester didn’t rewind it.

[Ray Jackson]

Originally Posted by demonknight

Did you ever watch a different copy of the same film on that player?

Originally Posted by Rzzzz

Same thing happened to me when I re-bought Eraserhead. I gave the old defective one to my son-in-law and bought the new corrected one. When I put it in it was at the "white out" part. I figured they were testing it before sending it out?

Originally Posted by jakdstew

Have you rented it before? If so it will resume wherever you left off regardless of whether it’s the same disc. It’s happened to me too.

I used to own it and then traded it to someone after watching it a couple times.

Decide to buy it again and give it another shot.

So that must be it.

...but it’s weird.

[koberulz]

Originally Posted by Rzzzz

Same thing happened to me when I re-bought Eraserhead. I gave the old defective one to my son-in-law and bought the new corrected one. When I put it in it was at the "white out" part. I figured they were testing it before sending it out?

That assumes the player they were testing it on is capable of burning discs, and that pressed discs are capable of being written to.

The 'resume' information is stored in the player, not on the disc.

[Rzzzz]

Originally Posted by koberulz

That assumes the player they were testing it on is capable of burning discs, and that pressed discs are capable of being written to.

The 'resume' information is stored in the player, not on the disc.

Ahhh, that makes sense. It probably started at the defective part because I was the one looking for it the last time I put the old disc in....

[scottpcusa]

Originally Posted by Ray Jackson

I’ve always been more of a Bosom Buddies fan myself.

I do not apologize for this.

...arguably the best work of Tom Hanks’ career.

[Show spoiler]

I mentioned this show in a conversation the other day with a few friends and nobody knew what I was talking about. It’s nice to see another kindred spirit.

[Ray Jackson]

Originally Posted by scottpcusa

I mentioned this show in a conversation the other day with a few friends and nobody knew what I was talking about. It’s nice to see another kindred spirit.

I don’t care what you say anymore, this is my life.

...go ahead with your own life and leave me alone

[mande2013]

Assuming Criterion and Studio Canal have reconciled, would you re-buy Criterion blu-rays of Pierrot Le Fou, Army of Shadows, and so on, assuming they were to be released at some point? I probably would only if they release newer transfers but was just wondering about others. The problem with Pierrot Le Fou is the recent 4K restoration didn't have the Samuel Fuller scene tinted green.

[RockyIII]

Who here believes that Criterion Collection will soon embrace 4K HDR?

[Doctor Jack]

Originally Posted by mande2013

Assuming Criterion and Studio Canal have reconciled, would you re-buy Criterion blu-rays of Pierrot Le Fou, Army of Shadows, and so on, assuming they were to be released at some point? I probably would only if they release newer transfers but was just wondering about others. The problem with Pierrot Le Fou is the recent 4K restoration didn't have the Samuel Fuller scene tinted green.

I have the non tinted release and it is a great release. I wouldn’t rebuy just for the one tinted scene.