f i l m j o u r n e y . o r g

Famed ethnographic documentarian Jean Rouch died yesterday in an automobile accident. His trailblazing career helped coin the term “cinema veritÈ” and has been largely unavailable on video in the US. (First Run rereleased his landmark 1961 film, Chronicle of a Summer, in select theatres last year.)
Rouch’s work comprises another set of films badly [...]

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I’ve got a special love for genre classics, particularly those in the realms of science fiction or horror because they’re so rarely mounted with genuine ambition. One example of a landmark title was recently released as a beautifully restored DVD last month, Rouben Mamoulian’s Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde (1931). Mamoulian (City Streets, [...]

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Some recent viewing…

Crimson Gold
Iranian filmmaker Jafar Panahi’s follow-up to The Circle (2000) is equally impressive in its empathy for social undesirables (in this case, a lower class pizza deliveryman played by a schizophrenic actor). Like its predecessor, Crimson has a circular narrative structure beginning with a long take and a frame within a frame [...]

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The new issue of the Australian journal, Senses of Cinema, is now online.
Some highlights:
ïMy friend Darren Hughes’ long-anticipated overview of the career of director Hal Ashby (Being There, The Last Detail, Harold and Maude). (Our thoughts are with Darren these days.)
ïA 2003 World Poll, including top tens by myself and Filmjourney participant Acquarello.
ïA [...]

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Gojira: 50th anniversary

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Last week, the Criterion Collection released the first DVD of a key Bresson film in North America, Diary of a Country Priest (Journal d’un curÈ de campagne, 1951). This is my review of the DVD, which has also been posted at the site I co-admin, www.Robert-Bresson.com.
* * * *
The Film
Diary of a Country Priest [...]

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Well, well, well.
The Home Theater Forum has just announced this:

INGMAR BERGMAN COLLECTION
MGM Home Entertainment will not be releasing the Ingmar Bergman DVD Collection on Tuesday, February 10 due to transfer problems on two of the discs.
If possible, please hold your reviews until we announce the new street date which we expect to be sometime in [...]

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The above screengrab is from MGM’s new DVD of Shame, part of their heavily-touted Ingmar Bergman boxset (Hour of the Wolf, The Passion of Anna, Persona, The Serpent’s Egg, and Shame, along with extensive bonuses)–and it showcases the studio’s shamefully incorrect cropping of several of these titles. As Gary Tooze of DVDBeaver put it, [...]

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Can you name the films above?
This weekend, I had the rare opportunity to view these posters (and many like them) as part of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences new exhibition of Czech film posters. Unlike Western movie posters, which typically feature simple facial collages meant to serve and [...]

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