I Just Bought...

[godardian]

That's actually really encouraging that having a DVD player has broadened and intensified your love of film... video was a step back for cinephilia, but DVD is shaping up to be a huge step forward. Doesn't seem to be keeping people out of the cinemas any more than video did (or TV before it), either.

[cron]

yes. i think it was talked before  over here but i really hope that the DVD format will shape a new kind of filmmakers, if used correctly.  the potential is there. and Criterion is a blessing.

[Myxo]

my dream is to one day be rich enuff to blind buy 12 dvds.

Mine is to use "dope ass" in a sentence.

Oh, I just did.

<zSnap>

[NEON MERCURY]

...FYI.....Alien and Aliens is a 2 for $30  @ Best Buy

[analogzombie]

That's actually really encouraging that having a DVD player has broadened and intensified your love of film... video was a step back for cinephilia, but DVD is shaping up to be a huge step forward. Doesn't seem to be keeping people out of the cinemas any more than video did (or TV before it), either.

Also, DVD is revolutionizing what films get made. There is no longer a sole dependence on box office revenue to determine if a film is successful. This opens up a whole new platform for films like City of God or Lost in Translation. Films that make the limited release circuit for about a year gaining momentum, and the release on dvd. It's like using the box office as a marketing tool for its home release. by building word of mouth for such a long time, you end up with a whole bunch of people clamoring to see your film. A film that may not have played in their area.

[You Never Got Me Down Ray]

Mine is to use "dope ass" in a sentence. Oh, I just did.

"I can sense your sarcasm."
"Well I would hope so, I'm laying it on pretty thick."

Sorry, I'll try again:

Rules of the Game (magnificently alluring cover)

You know ya envy me! Ya heard may!? Don't hate!

[You Never Got Me Down Ray]

That's actually really encouraging that having a DVD player has broadened and intensified your love of film... video was a step back for cinephilia, but DVD is shaping up to be a huge step forward. Doesn't seem to be keeping people out of the cinemas any more than video did (or TV before it), either.

Definitely. It's great for my my newfound love of film, but it's devastating to my bank account. Gotta take the good with the bad, I suppose.
If it weren't for dvds, I wouldn't have encountered the classics that Criterion has put out, and those have led to other film discoveries, most of which I had never even heard of. I kinda worked backwards from Pulp Fiction/Dogs/Boogie Nights/Goodfellas, etc. and now I'm learning to appreciate older cinema much more than I used to. It has definitely broadened my horizons.
And it hasn't kept me out of the theater either. I saw 21 Grams 3 goddamn times. Going to see Cidade de Deus tomorrow again. I just hope they haven't cut it from the original release.

"Ok, ok. I didn't ask for your life story."

[cron]

oh man, another reason why i love the guardian...

Famous last words

The popularity of directors' commentaries on DVDs inspires Rob Brydon's latest comedy, in which, as Peter De Lane, he immodestly describes his work. But judging by the competition, it's no work of fiction, says Phelim O'Neill

Saturday February 7, 2004


Conan The Barbarian To hear a commentary track by one of the world's biggest stars on one of their key, breakthrough films sounds like a surefire winner. How could listening to such insight fail to be fascinating? Simple. When that star is Arnold Schwarzenegger. Despite allegedly charging a considerable fee for recording his musings, he seems to have done no research or preparation, choosing instead to merely describe what's occurring on screen in the most basic, Austrian-accented terms. "This is where I steal the sword," Arnie informs us when Conan steals a sword. "Now I clean off the dirt," as Conan cleans the sword. "Here I am running." Etc, etc.

Planet Of The Apes Tim Burton's "re-imagining" of the old classic raised many questions, most of which concerned the baffling ending where Marky Mark Wahlberg escapes the monkey bunch only to crash-land back on an Earth inexplicably overrun by apes. No critic or audience member has ever managed to decipher this denouement, which seems to be the random work of apes with typewriters, halted long before they arrived at Macbeth. Perhaps the director has the answer? Out of a sea of "ums" and "ahs" comes this fractured piece of grammar: "There's less logic to exactly know what he's going back to." If you don't know, just say so.

Bats As the title strongly suggests, this is a film about, yes, bats. Not a good film, mind, but a cheap and cheerful horror about genetically modified bats. If you watch it at all, you do so for the bat attacks. Simple. If you listen to the commentary, you'd expect it to be about bats too. But it's not. The star of the film, Lou Diamond Phillips, is convinced the audience is there solely to witness the intense and nuanced performances only a Lou Diamond can deliver. So Lou prattles on at length about how he turned his role as a small-town sheriff into a living, breathing, fully-dimensional entity. How? By choosing a big hat and demanding he gets to continually smoke cigars. "The more you got to know him there was this fascinating character, you know, the love of opera and his sense of humour. He's not just a superhero chasing the bats." That precious attitude is why you're still in films with names like Bats, Lou.

Dog Soldiers To prevent actors getting too far up themselves on a commentary, it seems a good idea to get a bunch of them together and ply them with booze. Plenty of booze. No way any of them are going to start banging on about "motivation" and "character arcs" when surrounded by a half-cut selection of their peers. OK, so it's not particularly informative, and as it progresses the accents become thicker and more slurred ("We finished early and they said, 'Is there anything else you'd like to do?' Why not pack a werewolf head with blood and explosives and blow the shit out of it at high speed?"). But it's certainly fun and one of the few commentaries that sounds like it could spill out into a pub car park after the film has ended.

Star Wars: Attack Of The Clones This one removes thesps from the equation altogether. Probably a good thing too, as there can't be many interesting or amusing anecdotes to regale folk with when your job entails spouting quasi-mystical nonsense in front of a blue screen. More than likely, you'd want to forget it. So George Lucas is joined by some of his technical crew. And what a lively bunch they are too. Plenty of chatter about "textural distinctions", "sound contrasts" and the already overused acronym CGI is given a right pummelling. With in-jokes revealed such as the unspottable TIE Fighters inserted into heavy spaceship traffic, you get the impression that you're listening to people who are overworked yet still seem to have far too much time on their hands. Attack Of The Drones.

The Lord Of The Rings: The Fellowship Of The Rings A pair of costumiers spent almost four years knitting chainmail for the armour for this series, resulting in their fingerprints being worn away. No one should have to do that. More importantly, no one should have to hear about it. The overstuffed DVDs drench you in facts and figures that only men who live with their mums will give a damn about. The extended director's cut gives you four commentaries, involving over 30 speakers for the entire 208-minute running time, all delivered in an adenoidal Kiwi whine. See, you can't even begin to describe it without resorting to trainspotterish statistics. Does anyone really need to know how many eggs the caterers got through each day? OK... it's 1,460.

The Shining Of course there will always be film fans bemoaning the fact that there will never be a commentary track from many of the legendary film names. You'll never hear one from Lean, Hitchcock, Ford, Kubrick... oh, hang on, there is a Kubrick commentary. Not Stanley, though, but Vivian, one of his well-mannered daughters. At an age when most of us were still being sent to our rooms, 17-year-old Vivian was given a small camera by her dad and asked to make a documentary on his multi-million dollar horror movie. As well as giving a personal, human take on a publicity-shy director deified beyond all proportion, she also provides facts on fake snow and the door-smashing prowess of trained firefighter Jack Nicholson. All done with the voice of a slightly forgetful housewife. A classic.

Basic Instinct You can, of course, have a commentary by a fan. There are sites on the internet full of these, but they're less common on released discs. This has one though, by someone who calls the film "one of my favourite works of art". Who could hold this muddled, sensationalist thriller in such high regard? Feminist firebrand Camille Paglia, of course. For highly entertaining fast-talker Camille, every frame is loaded with skewed gender dynamics and emasculated male bravado. Her verdict on the star: "As alluring as any great goddess of Hollywood cinema, but at the same time it seems like she's had a transplant of a male brain, a male tongue and, in certain ways, a male penis." Is this film the most daring and important sexual role reversal experiment in mainstream cinema or simply an opportunity to freeze-frame on Sharon Stone's penis? Why it's both, of course.

Der Golem Some films were never intended to have commentaries. Silent era movies were never intended to have any sound other than the theatre hall organist gamely trying to keep up with the projected image. But why should they be excused when there are always plummy-voiced academics willing to step into the fray to over-enunciate any foreign words in a manner that says, "Oh, yes, I can be pretentious in more than one language!" and to deliver such needlessly flowery phrases as "the doorways suggest nothing less than gaping maws and shrieking gullets". Shut your shrieking gullet, professor, nobody's listening.

Mulholland Drive Where most commentaries deliver, at great length, answers to questions no one will ever pose, this film has a surfeit of queries and conundrums with no answers or solutions in sight. Crediting the audience with intelligence? It'll never catch on.

The Director's Commentary, Wed, 11pm, ITV1

[Pubrick]

The Shining Of course there will always be film fans bemoaning the fact that there will never be a commentary track from many of the legendary film names. You'll never hear one from Lean, Hitchcock, Ford, Kubrick... oh, hang on, there is a Kubrick commentary. Not Stanley, though, but Vivian, one of his well-mannered daughters. At an age when most of us were still being sent to our rooms, 17-year-old Vivian was given a small camera by her dad and asked to make a documentary on his multi-million dollar horror movie. As well as giving a personal, human take on a publicity-shy director deified beyond all proportion, she also provides facts on fake snow and the door-smashing prowess of trained firefighter Jack Nicholson. All done with the voice of a slightly forgetful housewife. A classic.

he's not wrong there. can't get enuff of this commentary, very.. personable.

[godardian]

Basic Instinct You can, of course, have a commentary by a fan. There are sites on the internet full of these, but they're less common on released discs. This has one though, by someone who calls the film "one of my favourite works of art". Who could hold this muddled, sensationalist thriller in such high regard? Feminist firebrand Camille Paglia, of course. For highly entertaining fast-talker Camille, every frame is loaded with skewed gender dynamics and emasculated male bravado. Her verdict on the star: "As alluring as any great goddess of Hollywood cinema, but at the same time it seems like she's had a transplant of a male brain, a male tongue and, in certain ways, a male penis." Is this film the most daring and important sexual role reversal experiment in mainstream cinema or simply an opportunity to freeze-frame on Sharon Stone's penis? Why it's both, of course.

I love this one. I'm a lapsed Paglian, and she's been quite an idol of mine from time to time. However, with all her wonderful ideas and articulation and personality, she has got the worst taste in, particularly, music, but her movie-taste is terrible from time to time, too. She wrote a great book-length essay on The Birds that's pretty much more worth your time than the film itself...

[Ernie]

-Lost in Translation
-Herzog/Kinski Box Set
-Lovers on the Bridge

[mogwai]

-Lovers on the Bridge

foe mattafakkin real?

[cron]

[stalllove]

well, my lady bought it for me...

INTERSTELLA 5555,

the daft punk movie.
it's amazing.

[ᾦɐļᵲʊʂ]