Every week we dive into the cream of the crop when it comes to home releases, including Blu-ray and DVDs, as well as recommended deals of the week. Check out our rundown below and return every Tuesday for the best (or most interesting) films one can take home. Note that if you’re looking to support the site, every purchase you make through the links below helps us and is greatly appreciated.
Hitchcock/Truffaut (Kent Jones)
The world of cinematic discourse was a markedly place when François Truffaut interviewed Alfred Hitchcock Nowadays, high-profile filmmakers are talking about their craft whenever someone turns on a recorder, and few people doubt the greatness of this text’s main subject. This might explain why the decidedly old-fashioned degree to which Kent Jones’ documentary honors the book seems out-of-place. What Jones (most often identified as an essayist / critic) settles upon is a chance to expand the field,...
Hitchcock/Truffaut (Kent Jones)
The world of cinematic discourse was a markedly place when François Truffaut interviewed Alfred Hitchcock Nowadays, high-profile filmmakers are talking about their craft whenever someone turns on a recorder, and few people doubt the greatness of this text’s main subject. This might explain why the decidedly old-fashioned degree to which Kent Jones’ documentary honors the book seems out-of-place. What Jones (most often identified as an essayist / critic) settles upon is a chance to expand the field,...
- 12/20/2016
- by The Film Stage
- The Film Stage
Every week we dive into the cream of the crop when it comes to home releases, including Blu-ray and DVDs, as well as recommended deals of the week. Check out our rundown below and return every Tuesday for the best (or most interesting) films one can take home. Note that if you’re looking to support the site, every purchase you make through the links below helps us and is greatly appreciated.
De Palma (Noah Baumbach and Jake Paltrow)
Earlier this year, Kent Jones’ Hitchcock /Truffaut — a documentary on the famous interview sessions between the two directors — boasted perhaps the most chaotic, dignity-threatening queue of any film screened at Cannes. There is a craving for this sort of thing among cinephiles it seems and it’s easy to see why. Directors just seem to open up much more when speaking to one of their own kind. Brian De Palma, the subject of this fine documentary,...
De Palma (Noah Baumbach and Jake Paltrow)
Earlier this year, Kent Jones’ Hitchcock /Truffaut — a documentary on the famous interview sessions between the two directors — boasted perhaps the most chaotic, dignity-threatening queue of any film screened at Cannes. There is a craving for this sort of thing among cinephiles it seems and it’s easy to see why. Directors just seem to open up much more when speaking to one of their own kind. Brian De Palma, the subject of this fine documentary,...
- 9/13/2016
- by The Film Stage
- The Film Stage
Every week we dive into the cream of the crop when it comes to home releases, including Blu-ray and DVDs, as well as recommended deals of the week. Check out our rundown below and return every Tuesday for the best (or most interesting) films one can take home. Note that if you’re looking to support the site, every purchase you make through the links below helps us and is greatly appreciated.
Belladonna of Sadness (Eiichi Yamamoto)
It all begins with Once Upon a Time. Such a simple introduction for Belladonna of Sadness, a 1973 Japanese animated feature whose newfound legacy includes a decades-long disappearance, a dramatic re-emergence, and a growing reputation as a frenzied, pornographic freakout. The final entry in anime elder statesman Osamu Tezuka‘s erotic Animerama trilogy has remained largely unknown to even the most die-hard cult cinephiles, a fate determined after its commercial failure bankrupted Tezuka’s production company,...
Belladonna of Sadness (Eiichi Yamamoto)
It all begins with Once Upon a Time. Such a simple introduction for Belladonna of Sadness, a 1973 Japanese animated feature whose newfound legacy includes a decades-long disappearance, a dramatic re-emergence, and a growing reputation as a frenzied, pornographic freakout. The final entry in anime elder statesman Osamu Tezuka‘s erotic Animerama trilogy has remained largely unknown to even the most die-hard cult cinephiles, a fate determined after its commercial failure bankrupted Tezuka’s production company,...
- 7/12/2016
- by The Film Stage
- The Film Stage
Austrian director Michael Glawogger has tragically died at the age of 54 while shooting in Africa. For more on this brilliant director and his working method read Daniel Kasman's interview from Venice about Glawogger's last film, Whores' Glory (2011). Mubi Us is in the middle of a 30-day run of the director's Workingman's Death (2005).
Above: Omar Ahmed's brief video essay on Michael Mann's Thief. For Cinema Scope Online, Kiva Reardon writes on the Images Festival:
"Offering streaming links to almost their entire programme, the festival can be consumed from a couch, in sporadic order and with no regard for curatorial intent, which beggars the question: Is a collection of Vimeo links really a film festival? Should this sound like an ontological foray into digital existence, apologies, but the issue is not going away; Hot Docs likewise offers a multitude of link-based screeners to accredited journalists. It is a less than...
Above: Omar Ahmed's brief video essay on Michael Mann's Thief. For Cinema Scope Online, Kiva Reardon writes on the Images Festival:
"Offering streaming links to almost their entire programme, the festival can be consumed from a couch, in sporadic order and with no regard for curatorial intent, which beggars the question: Is a collection of Vimeo links really a film festival? Should this sound like an ontological foray into digital existence, apologies, but the issue is not going away; Hot Docs likewise offers a multitude of link-based screeners to accredited journalists. It is a less than...
- 4/23/2014
- by Adam Cook
- MUBI
During "The Noteworthy"'s three weeks on hiatus, a triptych of essential pieces by David Bordwell have appeared on his blog. One is a piece on the bridging of theory and practice in the cultural writings of Noël Carroll and others. The other two focus on the emergence of a new type of film criticism in the mid-20th century, signaled in particular by the great James Agee, Manny Farber, and Parker Tyler. Firstly, in what is already a sequel-article of sorts, Bordwell contextualizes the critical scene of the 1940s. Secondly, he hones in closer on Agee and his work:
"It’s terribly easy to be sentimental about Agee, and almost as easy to be hard on him. (Brutality, as Stroheim and Griffith knew, has its sentimental side.) But I think that reading him can do something rare in film criticism: He calls you to your best instincts. His dithering can be frustrating,...
"It’s terribly easy to be sentimental about Agee, and almost as easy to be hard on him. (Brutality, as Stroheim and Griffith knew, has its sentimental side.) But I think that reading him can do something rare in film criticism: He calls you to your best instincts. His dithering can be frustrating,...
- 2/26/2014
- by Adam Cook
- MUBI
It's the still in a process of refinement, but Indiewire has expanded their gateway to film criticism with Criticwire 2.0, which works as a catalog of critics and criticism that offers a much needed alternative to Rotten Tomatoes. It's less about looking for consensus than it is about offering a simple way of following the critics that interest you and discovering new ones along the way.
The Vienna Film Festival is underway, and while all of us who are not attending lament not being able to check out Mike Ott's DJ set, we have only the coverage of others to turn to for consolation. Turns out there isn't much of that available either, unless you can read German, so for now check out our coverage here in the Notebook, and hopefully there will be more to share next week. Ti West is prepping his next horror film, The Sacrament,...
The Vienna Film Festival is underway, and while all of us who are not attending lament not being able to check out Mike Ott's DJ set, we have only the coverage of others to turn to for consolation. Turns out there isn't much of that available either, unless you can read German, so for now check out our coverage here in the Notebook, and hopefully there will be more to share next week. Ti West is prepping his next horror film, The Sacrament,...
- 10/31/2012
- by Adam Cook
- MUBI
DVD Playhouse—May 2009
Paramount Centennial Collection Paramount Studios releases two more classic titles from its library on special edition DVD: The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance is John Ford’s last masterpiece (although he would go on to direct two more very good films) from 1962: about an Eastern lawyer (James Stewart) who travels west only to find primal brutality in the form of sadistic bandit Liberty Valance (Lee Marvin, great as always) and pragmatic brutality in local rancher Tom Doniphon (John Wayne), each two sides of a coin that represent a way of life slowly dying out as Stewart’s modern brand of civilization tames the West. A perfect film, period. Howard Hawks’ El Dorado is essentially a remake of his earlier classic Rio Bravo, with John Wayne, Robert Mitchum and a young James Caan as lawmen joining forces against corrupt cattle barons. Great fun. Two disc sets.
Paramount Centennial Collection Paramount Studios releases two more classic titles from its library on special edition DVD: The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance is John Ford’s last masterpiece (although he would go on to direct two more very good films) from 1962: about an Eastern lawyer (James Stewart) who travels west only to find primal brutality in the form of sadistic bandit Liberty Valance (Lee Marvin, great as always) and pragmatic brutality in local rancher Tom Doniphon (John Wayne), each two sides of a coin that represent a way of life slowly dying out as Stewart’s modern brand of civilization tames the West. A perfect film, period. Howard Hawks’ El Dorado is essentially a remake of his earlier classic Rio Bravo, with John Wayne, Robert Mitchum and a young James Caan as lawmen joining forces against corrupt cattle barons. Great fun. Two disc sets.
- 5/12/2009
- by Allen Gardner
- The Hollywood Interview
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