On hiatus

Other projects afoot. Stay tuned.

Composition 101 #8

The Outsiders [1983], photographed by Stephen H. Burum.

Bergman on Blu (and Resnais too!)

Sweet. The Seventh Seal is coming to Blu-Ray.

From blu-ray.com:

Criterion has announced that they will bring the 1957 classic film 'The Seventh Seal' to Blu-ray on June 16th, day-and-date with the DVD re-release. Additionally, they will bring Alain Resnais' 'Last Year at Marienbad' to Blu-ray a week later, on June 23rd, day-and-date with the DVD release. Both titles will be presented in 1080p video accompanied by PCM mono soundtracks.

Special features include:

The Seventh Seal

• Introduction by Ingmar Bergman, recorded in 2003
• Audio commentary by Bergman expert Peter Cowie
• A new afterword to the commentary by Cowie
• Bergman Island (2006), an 83-minute documentary on Bergman by Marie Nyreröd, featuring in-depth and revealing interviews with the director
• Archival audio interview with Max von Sydow
• A 1998 tribute to Bergman by filmmaker Woody Allen
• Theatrical trailer
• Bergman 101, a selected video filmography tracing Bergman's career, narrated by Cowie
• Optional English-dubbed soundtrack
• New and improved English subtitle translation
• A booklet featuring an essay by critic Gary Giddins

Last Year at Marienbad

• Director Approved Transfer
• New, restored high-definition digital transfer, supervised and approved by director Alain Resnais (with an uncompressed monaural soundtrack on the Blu-ray edition)
• New audio interview with Resnais
• New documentary on the making of Last Year at Marienbad, featuring interviews with many of Resnais' collaborators
• New video interview with film scholar Ginette Vincendeau on the history of the film and its many mysteries
• Two short documentaries by Resnais: Toute la mémoire du monde (1956) and Le chant du styrène (1958)
• Theatrical trailer
• Optional original, unrestored French soundtrack
• New and improved subtitle translation
• A booklet featuring essays by critic Mark Polizzotti and film scholar François Thomas, and Alain Robbe-Grillet's introduction to the published screenplay and comments on the film

Oh, my, my, oh, hell, yes.

Remakeitis strikes once more

Next in the remake grist: Stephen King's It.

Sorry, but no one will touch Tim Curry's performance in the 90s miniseries version. Evar.

Mention is made in the same AP report that writer Dave Kajganich, late of The Invasion, is also working on a remake of Pet Sematary. Okay, fine. He's also working on the remake of Escape from New York. Which is not so fine.

That Face #8

Dennis Hopper in Blue Velvet [1986]

Slowly focusing on the story

Blogger "Mystery Man" has a good one: a 125-page transcript of a Raiders of the Lost Ark story conference between George Lucas, Steven Spielberg and Lawrence Kasdan.

Man-oh-man, Spielberg and Lucas were idea machines. They could’ve sat there coming up with Indiana Smith ideas forever. There were enough ideas generated in these meetings for two films, which they actually used for two films. I must say, it’s rather unusual to have meetings with a producer and a director and be given so many ideas. Not that meetings with producers and directors wouldn’t have a lot of ideas but I’m not sure you would encounter such a volume as this. For screenwriters, it’s a goldmine. If you try to forget the finished film and put yourself into Kasdan’s shoes and you have all these ideas thrown at you, it can be a daunting task. What do you keep? What do you throw away? How do you make all this work?

In any case, there were about 10 Screenwriting Lessons I took away from this experience and thought they might be worth sharing.

Prospective film school students: Read this, buy a few other books, spend the money you would be spending on tuition on equipment, and get out there and make something. Don't waste your time sitting in classrooms. Trust me on this.

If you can't get the PDF download link to work (I couldn't), go here for an HTML version.

Biting the hand

Gary Sinise took aim at Brian DePalma in a recent interview with Chicago Tribune reporter Robert K. Elder.

Gary, sweetie, you have to see the movie you're criticizing first. Only then do your words have merit.

I think probably what happened here is that Elder caught Sinise in an unguarded moment of frustration and merely smiled as the tape rolled, thinking, "Scoop... I has it."

However, it does Sinise's cause no good whatsoever. I share Sinise's empathy with those that serve. But it sounds like he wants to make an Iraq movie that exults in the glory-n'-honor-of-service thing.

I don't need to be told by Gary Sinise or anyone else that the American military is over there trying to do good; that's perfectly obvious to anyone with half a brain.

I would much rather these people be at home trying to do good, instead of thousands of miles away, embroiled in a tribal conflict that stretches back generations and being given orders by politicians attempting to fit square pegs into round holes.

Stuck in a theatre with morons

• The A.V. Club lists their worst moviegoing experiences.

My favorite:

Sean O’Neal
...Then one week I fucked up and lobbied for "Amazing Grace And Chuck"—a PG-rated movie. I remember arguing that its message—one boy’s mission to foster peace in the Cold War by refusing to play baseball—was an important one. (I guess because how else would we learn about the importance of nuclear disarmament through sports-related pacifism? Why, for all we knew, one of our classmates would be an NBA star, and one day he’d disarm a Soviet ICBM by just taking a knee during the playoffs! etc.) Anyway, the movie itself isn’t particularly profane, but anyone who’s ever been in a room full of 5- to 10-year-olds knows that the slightest curse word can spark a near-riot. Needless to say, the first “hell” caused the entire assembly to erupt into uncontrollable hysterics, and I remember every pair of teacher eyes turned my way like I had just popped in a tape of German scat porn. I spent the rest of that movie turning crimson at every “damn,” “hell,” and “ass” (and there probably aren’t many, but at the time, it seemed like Charles Bukowski and Quentin Tarantino had collaborated on the script) until our faux-principal Ms. Ellen finally popped the tape out to a swell of anticipatory “Ooooo”s. I was absolutely mortified. Ms. Ellen quietly informed me we would be having a talk with my mother later, I guess because she was concerned I might develop a potty-mouth if I continued watching films like that. Fortunately, my mom didn’t give a damn hell ass shit, so fuck that bitch. "Amazing Grace And Chuck" for life!

I once went to a midweek-evening screening of In the Bedroom. The moron projectionist had forgotten to turn the stereo on, so you had to lean forward and strain to hear the dialogue in an already-quiet movie. Of course, a middle-aged couple sitting several rows in front of me decided they needed to narrate the whole thing. I was so steamed that it took two or three DVD viewings to get the bad taste out of my mouth.

Saw a screening of Harold and Maude once in college, and two women in their 50s or 60s or so had somehow gotten in (these were supposed to be private, student-only screenings), and their obnoxious, drawn-out gasping laughter throughout was very nearly enough to put me off the flick for a while. As with In the Bedroom, the DVD saved me.

I am sure that I also contributed to someone's worst moviegoing experience. I once took a bottle of Southern Comfort into a screening of Independence Day. You can imagine how well that turned out. I remember conducting the end credits, and not much at all beyond that.

Composition 101 #7

Heat [1995], photographed by Dante Spinotti.

Because... why not?

• Next up on the remake wave: Missing in Action.

Stallone's odious Rambo let the bean-counters know there was lotsa green to be had from recharging right-leaning 80s-era supermen, and since they're also remaking Red Dawn (same writer), why miss out on a good thing?

...And it's being funded by the WWE. Lovely. Body slammin', turrist-killin', flag-wavin' horseshit ahead.

Put your favorite Chuck Norris Fact in the comments thread. We'll start with mine:

Chuck Norris does not sleep. He waits.

You gotta love Variety

They can get through an entire press release on the developing film of Never Let Me Go and not once mention that it's based on an award-winning recent novel by Kazuo Ishiguro.

Keira Knightley and Alex Garland and Mark Romanek being involved, that's what really matters. Remember that.

That Face #7

Rentaro Mikuni in Kwaidan [1964]

Someday soon you will be mine

Haven't gotten this yet, but I will. Look at that gorgeous cover art...

Seems to be a mostly comprehensive collection of the extras from both prior DVDs as well, minus, I believe, a few scraps of deleted footage found on the original theatrical-cut release.

They got it right the first time

They're remaking The NeverEnding Story.

Ugh.

The Kennedy/Marshall Co., whose credits include "The Curious Case of Benjamin Button," and Leonard DiCaprio's Appian Way are in discussions with Warners about reviving the 25-year-old franchise. The studio recently acquired rights to the property, clearing the way for a potential remake.

Based on a German-language novel by Michael Ende, the film centers on a boy named Bastian Balthazar Bux who discovers a parallel world in a book titled "The NeverEnding Story." As the boy, a loner, delves deeper into the book, he increasingly finds his life intertwined with the plot of the novel, in which a hero in the land of Fantasia must save the universe on behalf of an empress.

The new movie will put a modern spin on the material by examining the more nuanced details of the book that were glossed over in the first feature.

I know I should wait and see, but... ugh. Why can't they remake something that didn't quite work the first time? I still think they should go back and remake Titanic, this time with a script.

On second thought, there was much of Michael Ende's wonderful novel that didn't make it into the '84 version, so perhaps a second go-around could get more of that back.

And a remake could very well get the longer international cut released on these shores, which I have always wanted to track down.

In a Nutshell #9

Say Anything... [1989], directed by Cameron Crowe.

The Departed: New Yorker Films

• New Yorker Films, 1965-2009.

Founded in 1965 by Dan Talbot, New Yorker has a legendary legacy, boasting a long-standing track record in international film distribution, bringing a staggering number of international auteurs to this country’s movie theaters over more than four decades. The company’s crucial role in establishing a lasting film culture in this country cannot be underestimated. A New York Times profile in 1987, marking a 14-week salute to the company at New York’s Public Theater, listed an illustrious roster of filmmakers whose films were released by the company: Ackerman, Bertolucci, Bresson, Chabrol, Fassbinder, Fellini, Godard, Herzog, Kieslowski, Malle, Rohmer, Rossellini, Sembene, Wenders, Schlondorff, and many others.

Sayles on HBO

Variety has it that John Sayles is writing an HBO series about RHCP frontman Anthony Kiedis and his father, alleged drug-dealer-to-the-stars.

Drama, tentatively titled "Scar Tissue" (the name of Kiedis' autobiography), centers on the rocker's early years living in West Hollywood with his father. At that time, Kiedis' dad, known as Spider, sold drugs and mingled with rock stars on the Sunset Strip, all while aspiring to get into showbiz (Daily Variety, Nov. 12).

...The series will be set in 1970s West Hollywood and Los Angeles and include the rockers encountered by Kiedis and his father (who, according to legend, was a drug dealer for the Who and Led Zeppelin, among others).

Something tells me this will probably stay stuck in development but it would still be interesting to check out.

Composition 101 #6

Kagemusha [1980], photographed by Takao Saitô and Masaharu Ueda.