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world cinema in Los Angeles and beyond

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Entries from June 2005

Response to a Meme

June 16th, 2005 by Doug Cummings · No Comments

Darren Hughes has issued a blog meme, so here is my response:
1. Total number of films I own on DVD and video.
I’d estimate around 250, which I consider somewhat spartan compared to a lot of DVD aficionados I know. (By contrast, I own less than a dozen VHS tapes.) Most of these titles are [...]

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Categories: Commentary

Lewton and Ulmer

June 15th, 2005 by Doug Cummings · Comments Off

I Walked with a Zombie
Great DVD news has arrived this week for fans of elegant horror: Universal have announced a Bela Lugosi collection for September that will finally offer Edgar G. Ulmer’s expressionist/art deco masterpiece, The Black Cat (1934), and Warner have solidified an October street date for their long-awaited Val Lewton collection. The [...]

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Categories: Uncategorized

Au hasard Balthazar

June 14th, 2005 by Doug Cummings · No Comments

The Criterion Collection has released Bresson’s masterpiece, Au hasard Balthazar on DVD today; this review is for robert-bresson.com, which will publish our full review of the DVD shortly. –Doug
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The scholar C.H. Dodd once defined a parable as a “a metaphor or simile drawn from nature or common life, arresting [...]

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Categories: DVD review

Howl’s Moving Castle

June 13th, 2005 by Doug Cummings · No Comments

Last night, I attended the Los Angeles debut of the subtitled Howl’s Moving Castle, which is screening along with the dubbed version exclusively at Disney’s movie palace, the El Capitan, in Hollywood. The theater was built in the ’20s with an East Indian design and sits across the street from the Grauman’s Chinese Theater [...]

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Categories: Film review

L’Argent

June 11th, 2005 by Doug Cummings · No Comments

New Yorker Video have recently released Robert Bresson’s L’Argent (1983) on DVD, and this review of the film will predicate our complete review of the DVD at www.robert-bresson.com shortly. –Doug
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For many, Robert Bresson’s final work, L’Argent (1983), is a perfect formal and thematic culmination of the filmmaker’s sporadic, but [...]

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Categories: DVD review

Funny Ha Ha

June 5th, 2005 by Doug Cummings · No Comments

Alfred Hitchcock may have preferred “slices of cake” to “slices of life,” but the cinema has excelled at both ever since its inception. If the latter is more rare in American film production, it has appeared from the works of Robert J. Flaherty to Little Fugitive (1953), a film remembered this year for the [...]

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Categories: Film review

Nang Nak

June 2nd, 2005 by Doug Cummings · No Comments

George Lucas isn’t the only filmmaker who can turn ancient myth, graphic eye candy, doomed romance, and Buddhist non-attachment into box office gold, so can Nonzee Nimibutr. What’s more, Nimitbutr did it six years ago in Thailand with Nang Nak (recently released on DVD by Kino International), where the film became a popular sensation [...]

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Categories: DVD review

The Tracker

June 1st, 2005 by Doug Cummings · No Comments

The new issue of Paste magazine (number 16) is currentlly on newsstands, and it features a number of articles I’ve written, including introductions to Australian cinema and Robert Bresson (highlighting New Yorker’s L’Argent and Criterion’s upcoming Au hasard Balthazar DVDs), and a short write-up on Welles’ F for Fake.
One of the films I [...]

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Categories: DVD review