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The Man — and the brother man who risks his neck: Isaac Hayes and his “Truck Turner” stunt double (via HistoiresExtraordinaires)
A new medium makes classic movies come alive more vividly than ever before.
View full sizeAn image from "8 1/2" that changed one critic's view of an entire technology.I’m often asked if I ever watch movies for fun.
It’s kind of an odd question, implying that the movies that I watch for my working life are somehow inherently toilsome. But I get it: most of the world thinks of watching a film as a leisure activity, whereas for critics moviegoing is, in fact, work.
Anyhow, whenever I’m asked, I always say ‘yes,’ but with two conditions. The first is that I almost always go to the movies at least once when I’m traveling abroad; the experience of watching a film in another culture is always enlighteningly and excitingly odd. And the second is that when I do watch movies for fun, it’s almost always at home, and it’s almost always classic films -- either the things that I grew up watching and that turned me onto cinema in the first place, or things that I’ve been meaning to see my whole life and am only catching up with now.
And as it turns out, that activity -- digging into the past for old favorites or new (to me) discoveries -- can be almost as expensive as traveling to another country to take in a movie.
You see, to put it bluntly, I have a problem saying no to Blu-ray releases of classic films, particularly black-and-white classics. My name is Shawn, and I am addicted to black-and-white on Blu.
Blu-ray, as you ought to know, is a digital disc format with approximately five times the capacity of standard DVD. That extra storage space means that there is more visual and audio information on a Blu-ray than on a DVD, which, in turn, means that they look and sound better on any TV and they look and sound really good on an HD-TV.
Blu-rays have been on the market for about six years, starting out in a two-horse race with a format called HD-DVD. In 2008, that format was dropped by all hardware manufacturers and film distributors, leaving the field to Blu-ray as the newest -- and, truly, best-ever -- format for home viewing. At first, Blu-ray players and titles were rare and pricey. But that, inevitably, changed, and now Blu-ray is almost certain to pass DVD as the standard for home viewing, and soon.
Naturally, most of the action in the Blu-ray world has been in the release of blockbusters: the “Star Wars” and “Lord of the Rings” films, “Avatar,” “The Dark Knight,” some Pixar titles, and so on. There’s also a very strong market for Blu-ray editions of TV series, if for no other reason then that the storage capacity of Blu-ray means you buy fewer discs than in a DVD version.
But for a certain breed of cinephile, the most stirring innovation that Blu-ray brings is the enhancement of classic films to a clarity that they’ve never had since they first premiered in cinemas. A well-mastered Blu-ray of an older film -- particularly a black-and-white film -- reveals depths of imagery that may never have been seen by any audience ever, given the vagaries of print projection in movie theaters and the relatively degraded quality of VHS and DVD versions.
View full sizeThe cast of "Stagecoach" (1939): the flies are in there somewhere....Consider: Last year, I watched a newly-released Blu-ray of John Ford’s 1939 Western “Stagecoach,” a film that I’ve seen perhaps a dozen times over the years. One of its most famous sequences is set in a cantina and involves an intricate dance of manners, with a gambler finding a polite way to escort the wife of an army officer away from a seat next to a prostitute at the dining table.
Watching the scene, which I know by heart, I was startled to see something I’d never noticed before: flies! Buzzing around the cantina, above the tortillas and frijoles and John Wayne and Claire Trevor and Andy Devine were a couple of ordinary houseflies. I was giddy: flies, decades dead, whirling about Ford’s nonchalantly but perfectly composed frames. I felt like I’d figured out the plot twists in “The Big Sleep” that baffled even the film’s director, Howard Hawks. It was a new world inside a world I felt I already knew inside-out.
Now, it’s possible that I’d been inattentive on previous viewings and not noticed those pesky flies. But I’m convinced that it was the enhanced contrast of the Blu-ray -- the deeper and sharper blacks and whites -- that made them stand out. “Stagecoach” had always had a slightly dusty cast to it in my mind, as, I’d imagined, Ford and his Oscar-nominated cinematographer Bert Glennon had intended. This Blu-ray version, though, looked as clear and bright as any contemporary black-and-white photography I’ve ever seen. Like all Westerns, “Stagecoach” is, in part, a fantasy. But it seemed more realistic to me on Blu-ray than it ever had before.
A similar epiphany hit me while watching a Blu-ray of “Sweet Smell of Success,” another film I’d seen multiple times. It’s set in the nighttime jungle of New York’s Times Square and thereabouts, circa 1957, and James Wong Howe’s photography is filled with gleaming cars, flashing neon signs, storefront plate glass, barroom mirrors, and so on. The reflections and distortions these cause become overwhelming in Blu-ray; you almost feel at times like you’re underwater. And the tiny details of newsprint -- so crucial to the story’s milieu of showbiz and gossip -- have a billboard-sized impact in the enhanced format.
In the last two years or so, I have acquired more than 25 black-and-white feature films on Blu-ray, ranging from “M” and “Modern Times” to “The Treasure of the Sierra Madre” and “Buck Privates” (gorgeous, I swear) to “Breathless” and “To Kill a Mockingbird” to “On the Bowery” and “Wings of Desire.” I’ve bought a collection of Buster Keaton short films, the complete works of the French master Jean Vigo, and a four-film box of David Lean directing Noel Coward. And I have watched virtually all of them the very day they arrived in the mail, some more than once, all with immense pleasure.
View full sizeGlistening: Ray Salyer (l.) and Gorman Hendricks in "On the Bowery"Most of these Blu-rays are, as those of similar affliction will have noted, released by the Criterion Collection, the home-viewing distributor that specializes in restored and remastered films with copious special features, such as scholarly audio commentary, attached. That’s partly because Criterion happens to put things out that I particularly enjoy and, perhaps even more, because Criterion happens to hold half-price-off sales throughout the year, which is just about like offering half-off the cost of a bag of crack to a hopeless drug fiend.
In fact, it was a Criterion Blu-ray that started me on this costly slide. A couple years back, I complained to a film critic friend that one of my favorite films, Federico Fellini’s “8 1/2,” was being released on a Criterion Blu-ray and that I felt that I was being tricked by a technological scam into buying yet another copy of a film that I already owned on VHS and DVD. He suggested to me that Blu-ray would, in fact, be the last physical medium on which I would own the film, and that assurance -- desperate fool that I am -- was enough to convince me to go ahead.
Came the Blu-ray in the mail, and I put it in the player and...oh my: the dense and gleaming and smoky and cluttered frames Fellini and his crew devised looked vibrant and bold and screamed out at me as they never had before. The black areas were deep and immersive; the whites shone strong against them; the lines between the two were definitive. The film, which I truly adore, had never seemed lovelier.
In one very famous shot, a performing illusionist is seen, head and shoulders only, facing the camera in stark silhouette -- a mere outline of black against black, barely defined by gleams of white against his top hat, ears and collar. It was always a striking image, but in this Blu-ray version, it was overwhelming. I think I literally gasped to see it. And I knew instantly that I would never watch my VHS or DVD copies of “8 1/2” again.
Now, to be clear, I own and continue to purchase contemporary and, especially, classic color films on Blu-ray; in the latter category, I can strongly recommend “The Adventures of Robin Hood,” “The Red Shoes,” and “Singin’ in the Rain,” and I’m positively panting for the expected November release of “Lawrence of Arabia” on Blu-ray.
But I am far more eager to get my hands on high-quality transfers of certain silent films and films noir and the early works of foreign masters and see them in the best possible fashion. Because, as far as I’m concerned, I have seen the future of cinephilia, and it is black-and-white on Blu.
Reviews of this week's new releases in Portland-area theaters.
Matthew McConaughey in "Killer Joe"The five films playing in Portland-area theaters that I'd soonest see again.
Quvenzhané Wallis in "Beasts of the Southern Wild"1) "Beasts of the Southern Wild" A dreamy and joyous film about life, death, hope, dreams and wonder on an island in the Mississippi Delta. The miraculous young Quevezhané Wallis stars as Hushpuppy, a wee girl who experiences life in the feral community known as the Bathtub as a stream of wonder and delight, even though her dad (Dwight Henry) is gruff, her mom is absent and a killer storm is bearing down on her home. Writer-director Behn Zeitlin, in his feature debut, combines poetry and audacity in ways that recall Terrence Malick, but with a light and spry touch. Still, all his great work pales in comparison to the stupendous little Wallis, whom you'll never forget. Hollywood, Living Room
2) "Moonrise Kingdom" Wes Anderson films are such a specific taste that I'm a bit hesitant to suggest that this might be his most approachable (but surely not crowd-pleasing) work. In the wake of the delightful "The Fantastic Mr. Fox," Anderson returns to live-action and his familiar tics and habits in a tale of young (as in 'pre-teen') lovers on the run. Newcomers Jared Gilman and Kara Hayward fill the lead roles delightfully, and Anderson's muses Bill Murray and Jason Schwartzman are joined ably by Edward Norton, Bruce Willis and Frances McDormand, among others. It's a light and breezy film with a very sweet heart and old-fashioned sturdiness. Even if you were left puzzled by the likes of "Rushmore" or "The Royal Tenenbaums" (still his best non-animated films, for me), this is likely to win you over. Cine Magic, Fox Tower, St Johns
3) "The Bourne Legacy" A dense, slick and thrilling spy movie that's got as much brain power as brawn. Writer-director Tony Gilroy ("Michael Clayton") turns the trilogy of films about Jason Bourne into the story of Aaron Cross (Jeremy Renner), another souped-up intelligence operative on the run from the secretive organizations which built him. The film cleverly integrates the story of the previous three, but stands alone as a gripping story about a man trying to extend the only life that he has come to know and depending on a geneticist (Rachel Weisz) and his own abilities to stay alive. From the complex narrative to the thrilling final half-hour, it's top shelf stuff. multiple locations
4) “Searching for Sugar Man” A truly remarkable documentary that demonstrates how big and how small this world of ours can be. Rodriguez was a Detroit singer-songwriter whose poetic and soulful music deserved a much bigger career than the little blip it experienced in the early ‘70s. But, in fact, that bigger career did exist: in South Africa, where Rodriguez was a huge star and didn’t know it. So obscure was Rodriguez in his homeland, in fact, that his overseas fans long believed he had killed himself in an baroque onstage apocalypse. The Swedish filmmaker Malik Bendjelloul tracks this amazing history and then witnesses a third act that you simply have to see to believe. Mind-blowing, heartwarming and true. Fox Tower
5) “Robot & Frank” Frank Langella is a delight in a film about a curmudgeonly retiree whose children foist a robot on him to monitor his diet, activities and housework. The grumpy old fella hates the little electronic buddy (whose voice is provided by Peter Sarsgaard), then he realizes he has a use for it: he devises a means to use it to get back into his life’s work, which happens to be burglary. Debuting director Jake Schreier and screenwriter Christopher D. Ford nicely balance the mild sci-fi with human comedy, and a sharp supporting cast, which includes Susan Sarandon, James Marsden and Liv Tyler, give the great Langella all the room he needs to be wonderful. Fox Tower
Matthew McConaughey astounds and disturbs as a hit man preying on a wicked family.
Thomas Haden Church (l.) and Matthew McConaughey in "Killer Joe"The NC-17 designation was devised by the Motion Picture Association of America to distinguish films with strong and pervasive adult content (read: sex, mostly, and violence) from outright porn, the producers of which had co-opted the similarly restrictive X rating, rendering it meaningless.
In the 22-odd years of its existence, the NC-17 has been slapped on approximately 120 new releases. Most of them were recut and then resubmitted to the ratings board to obtain R ratings (major movie studios generally won’t release NC-17 titles, and lots of theaters can’t, because of lease restrictions, show them). A couple dozen, including the likes of “Y Tu Mamá También” and “Requiem for a Dream,” were released unrated, their makers deciding not to cut them but, rather, to distribute them without the scarlet stigma of a restrictive rating.
A handful of films, though, have gone into theatrical release wearing an NC-17 as a kind of badge of honor, a certification of their resolve to show and deal with themes, images and ideas that other films simply won’t touch. These include “Henry & June” (the first NC-17 title), “Tie Me Up! Tie Me Down!,” “Happiness,” “Mysterious Skin,” and, now, “Killer Joe,” an inky dark comedy from director William Friedkin -- who might’ve garnered an NC-17 for “The Exorcist” or “Cruising” if it had existed when he made them.
“Killer Joe” isn’t the most violent movie in theaters right now, nor is it the most sexually provocative or the most profanity-laced. But it is so focused on the depravity at its heart that watching it is like subjecting yourself to a nightmare that sucks the air slowly from your lungs. Art of any sort should have the power to make us feel, and while you may not like what “Killer Joe” makes you feel, there is absolutely no denying that it has an effect on you. It’s far more straightforward, but the only movie I can compare it to for immediate recognition is “Blue Velvet,” and I say that as praise.
The film is based on a play by Tracy Letts which was suggested by the true story of a Florida father and son who hired a hit man to kill their ex-wife/mother so that they could collect a small life insurance policy. In Letts’ version, the events are moved to a Texas trailer park, the hit man is a police detective, and the greed, lust, callousness and animal stupidity of the characters is plain and unguarded -- base, unfiltered, animal humanity. That, frankly, is the stuff of art: Take these people out of their jeans and pickup trucks and give them togas or horse-drawn landaus and it could be a Greek or Jacobean tragedy.
Playing the detective, in a breathtakingly chilly performance that tops a fine year on screen, is Matthew McConaughey, snaky, lascivious, casually violent, wiser by half than the people on whom he’s preying. Emile Hirsch and Thomas Haden Church are equally good as Chris and Ansel Smith, the avaricious son and father, respectively, and Gina Gershon is raw and convincing as a truly wicked stepmother who helps spark the talk of murder. In the middle, eerily still, Juno Temple is a strange and compelling blend of the innocent and the oracular as Chris’s sister, Dottie, who is given by the family -- just outright given -- to the hit man in lieu of prepayment for the murder.
Such is the fallen state of our world that reading the story, learning the details, and even imagining how it plays out makes “Killer Joe” seem no more shocking than something you might see on cable TV. But Friedkin takes two scenes -- a dinner between Joe and Dottie, and another between Joe and the three conspirators -- and turns them into horrorshow scenes of perversity and terror. There are laughs scattered throughout the film (Letts is a truly darkly funny fellow), but the two dining sequences inside that double-wide blast all the light out of the film. On the strength of that pair of scenes alone, the film can boast its NC-17 rating like a combat scar.
To talk so much of the ratings board’s classification of “Killer Joe” slights the film somewhat, because it is a tremendously capable and assured work. Friedkin, who has also directed an adaptation of Letts’s “Bug,” has never been an ostentatious director; rather, in the vein of Howard Hawks or Robert Aldrich, he’s a master craftsman of plain, solid American vernacular. He has shown some baroque tendencies in the past (off-screen, he actually directs operas, for heaven’s sake!). But here, as in “The French Connection” and “To Live and Die in L. A.,” he cedes center stage to a very strong cast and a compelling story, while getting captivating work from cinematographer Caleb Deschanel.
If “Killer Joe” is, finally, too much for certain audiences to stomach, so be it. In the hands of Letts, Friedkin and this cast, it feels, despairingly, terribly real, and you can’t blame artists for reporting what humans are actually like.
(102 min., NC-17, Fox Tower) Grade: B-plus
Frank Langella is exquisitely dry and crusty as a retiree who devises a unique use for his robotic househelp
Frank Langella and chum in "Robot & Frank"There’s a terrific balance between human comedy and just-this-side-of-science-fiction in “Robot & Frank,” the debut feature of director Jake Schreier and his writing collaborator Christopher D. Ford.
Frank Langella is splendid as the irascible Frank, a small-town retiree whose absent children have determined that he needs a household robot to manage his diet, medication and lifestyle. The little white gizmo (voiced by Peter Sarsgaard) drives Frank nuts. But then he is inspired: the obliging robot can help him keep a hand in his life’s work -- which happens to be burglary. And suddenly Frank has a spring in his step and a purpose to his days.
There are other angles to the story involving the town library (and its librarian, played by Susan Sarandon), and those are nicely handled. But the chief spectacle here -- and it’s a good one -- is Langella in gruff, curdled mode, an underappreciated master actor slipping seamlessly into a bespoke role.
Other science fiction spectacles of the summer have offered us mind-boggling technologies, but there really is no better special effect in the movies than a fine actor given a wonderful part. And for that alone (although it’s not all it offers), “Robot & Frank” is a real treat.
(90 min., PG-13, Fox Tower) Grade: B-plus
A rehabbed drug addict traverses his home town in search of a new start in a compellingly quiet film.
Anders Danielsen Lie in "Oslo, August 31"The generic quality of the title “Oslo, August 31st” couldn’t be less like the experience of watching the new film from the Norwegian writer-director Joachim Trier. Adapting “The Fire Within,” a 1931 novel by Pierre Dieu La Rochelle (which Louis Malle filmed in 1963), Trier follows his 2006 breakout film “Reprise” with another careful, painful and precise meditation on human desire and confusion.
Anders Danielsen Lie (also of “Reprise”) plays Anders, a journalist who has been given a day’s leave from a suburban drug rehab clinic to interview for a job in the city. In the span of a day, he visits old friends and colleagues, people-watches at a café, attends a party, meets a girl, reunites with his sister, and stops in at the family home, which his parents are selling.
The actual incidents sound dry, and Anders isn’t exactly an easy fellow to read. But the slowness and stillness in the film are, actually, a slow boil, and in Lie’s taciturnity there is pain and even horror. The world is goes on without him, and the things that he has done to himself and the possibilities that might rise before him are tiny compared to all that is around him.
That much we all know (or should); the challenge for Anders is to reinsert himself in the quotidian flow of life. Without a note of sensationalism, Trier makes real drama of the question of whether or not he can do it. In a single day, through a single pair of eyes, Trier and Lie give us an emblem for the world.
(95 min., unrated, probably PG-13, Living Room Theaters) Grade: B-plus
Self-reblog because he is an artist: Iniesta/Matisse (h/t to MenInBlazers for top image) (my original post)
New releases in Portland-area theaters not reviewed in this week's A&E.
Ice Cube in "Boyz N the Hood"“Charisma" 1999 drama about a Tokyo cop who migrates to a rural community and gets involved with the fight to preserve an unusual tree. (Northwest Film Center, Wednesday September 5 only)
“Do the Right Thing” The astounding 1989 Spike Lee film about racial and social tensions boiling over on a Brooklyn street one hot summer day. (Hollywood Theatre, Friday through Monday only)
“Doctor Zhivago” David Lean's lavish 1965 adaptation of Boris Pasternak's novel about love and political conscience during the Russian revolution. (Cedar Hills, Clackamas Town Center, Eastport; Thursday, September 6 only)
“Don’t Follow Me (I’m Lost): A Film about Bobby Bare Jr.” Documentary about the life of a touring musician (Northwest Film Center, Wednesday only)
“The Evil Dead” The inimitable Sam Raimi cabin-in-the-woods movie; often imitated, never equaled. (Hollywood Theatre)
“A Fierce Green Fire: The Battle for a Living Planet” Documentary about the history, impact and operations of the environmental movement, in all its faces. (Hollywood Theatre, Thursday only)
“Rear Window” Alfred Hitchcock's 1954 treatise on voyeurism, sexual repression and murder; a great cinematic achievement and ravishing entertainment. (Hollywood Theatre, Saturday and Sunday only)
“Showdown in Little Tokyo” Dolph Lundgren and Brandon Lee chase down drug dealers in a dubious 1991 entertainment. (Hollywood Theatre, Tuesday only)
“Suzaki Paradise: Red Lights” 1956 drama by Yuzo Kawashima about a couple trying to survive life in the underworld in post-war Tokyo. (Northwest Film Center, Saturday only)
“Writing Myself” Portland director Brian Lindstrom’s documentary about an immersive playwriting workshop at Portland’s night-only high school. (Hollywood Theatre, Wednesday only)
Shawn Levy's books include the best-sellers The Castle on Sunset, Rat Pack Confidential, Paul Newman: A Life, King of Comedy: The Life and Art of Jerry Lewis, and Dolce Vita Confidential.
He also wrote and narrated the podcast Glitter & Might. The former film critic of The Oregonian and KGW-TV, he has written for Sight and Sound, Film Comment, American Film, Interview, The New York Times, The Los Angeles Times, The Guardian, The Hollywood Reporter, and The Black Rock Beacon. He jumps and claps and sings for victory in Portland, Oregon.
