It’s good but could be a lot better … it just needed a machine gun battle to go with the title.

Hello!

After the webpage format stumble of the weekend, I haven’t had time to snoop for more Column Items, here in my Sydney Falco file.

But my want list has accrued a number of notably desirable upcoming discs.

Let’s try this in what I hope is chronological order. On April 27, in 4K Ultra HD, Joe Dante’s comedic winner Innerspace is due from Arrow Films. The dazzling ILM visual effects are pre-CGI, I believe, but the real appeal comes from Dante’s cast — Martin Short, Meg Ryan, Dennis Quaid, Kevin McCarthy, Fiona Lewis — and Robert Picardo, William Schallert, Henry Gibson, Kathleen Freeman and Dick Miller.

 

Innerspace  at Arrow Video 

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Kino Lorber is promising us a remastered encoding of a 1934 Universal picture that nobody seems to remember, despite the fact that it stars Claude Rains, right after making The Invisible Man. It also features Lionel Atwill and Joan Bennett. It also may be the finest hour for Edward Ludwig, the director of The Black Scorpion.

Although not technically a horror film, a bare synopsis brings to mind the Sam Peckinpah film Bring Me the Head of Alfredo Garcia. It’s due on April 28.

 

The Man Who Reclaimed His Head  at Kino Lorber 

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Two pictures due in July from Radiance Films caught our eye. The first on June 22 is by Shohei Imamura, the director of Black Rain and Vengeance is Mine: his lauded 1966 drama The Pornographers. The subject is corruption of all kinds in 1960s Japan; we’ve never seen a more relentlessly honest director than Imamura. It’s a Region B disc in 4K Ultra HD.

 

The Pornographers  at Radiance Films 

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Of special interest is Radiance’s June 23 release of Georges Franju’s first feature film La Tête contre les murs, which translates as ‘Head against the Wall’. It takes place in an asylum and features the stars of Franju’s Eyes without a Face, Pierre Brasseur and Edith Scob, plus Anouk Aimée and Paul Meurisse. It also has the first credited feature film score by Maurice Jarre, whose melody is quite striking. There aren’t that many films directed by Franju — we want them all.

 

La tête contre les murs  at Radiance Films 

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And here’s a favorite we’re willing to go far out of our way to get — we’ve reviewed it twice on DVD, in fact.

It takes a bit of foreknowledge to appreciate what was originally a musical by Joan Littlewood,  that uses music to express the cosmic futility of warfare in World War One. It sank like a stone in the box office of 1969 — in the middle of the Vietnam war. The brilliant novelty is to show the reality of the war through songs sung by the troops — with mordant replacement lyrics. It has a long cast list of English stars doing their bit for pacifism, including a young Maggie Smith as a music hall entertainer. The director is Richard Attenborough, and it’s his first film.

England’s Eureka! has the disc slated for June 29. At the moment their sales page doesn’t say what Region coding it might have.

 

Oh What a Lovely War  at Eureka! Masters of Cinema 

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A Criterion ‘Eclipse’ DVD we loved for years is getting a very welcome HD redo for June 30: Spaniard Carlos Saura’s ‘Flamenco Trilogy’  starring top flamenco artist Antonio Gades: Bodas de Sangre plus the international hit Carmen with Laura Del Sol and Cristina Hoyos, and El Amor Brujo, Manuel de Falla’s full-on flamenco ballet musical. The three movies do for flamenco what The Red Shoes does for toe-shoe ballet. All three films were restored in 4K.

 

Carlos Saura’s Flamenco Trilogy  at Criterion Eclipse Series 6 

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I don’t have a sales link for the next item, but I couldn’t resist because it’s science fiction. George Pal’s Destination Moon hasn’t fared well on disc because its rights got sidetracked by the Wade Williams Collection, and all that we’ve seen in a long time is a pretty sad DVD from 26 years ago. UA has the Technicolor elements but nobody’s coming forward to digitally restore the picture.

Enter Film Masters, which has been doing very good remasters of films from various sources; we hope Pal’s film will look as good as some clips we’ve seen on TV. The show is lauded as the first of the 1950s Sci-Fi boom, although a Lippert space movie beat it to screens by a month or so. The space ship ‘Luna One’ is slated to launch on July 14, with a number of extras, including the entire feature Flight to Mars … which until  2021 was also ‘tied up’ with collector Wade Williams.

 

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I’m breaking form here to tout a pair of Kino Lorber discs from the previous month, March, that I’m still hoping to receive. They’re in 4K Ultra HD and each has a strong following.

Guillermo del Toro’s Mimic might really shine on 4K, with all of those shiny subterranean settings for a human cockroach monster to hang out. We’ve always liked the picture and admired its nicely-chosen cast — Mira Sorvino, Josh Brolin, Giancarlo Giannini and F. Murray Abraham. The release has two 4K discs with two cuts of the picture, and one Blu-ray. It’s due March 17.

 Mimic  at Kino Lorber 

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And finally there’s Jeannot Szwarc’s 1980 Somewhere in Time, which I’ve never seen … I just remember some pan-scanned clips on TV, plus waiting to see a horror film one afternoon at the Cinematheque, while a horde of enraptured Somewhere in Time fans emerged from their screening. They seemed transformed, which only made me feel more cynical. Not very nice, true.

Anyway, I figure a 4K Ultra HD presentation may erase my doubts — who doesn’t like Christopher Reeve, Jane Seymour and Christopher Plummer?  Plus, the title did great things for favorite author Richard Matheson.

 

Somewhere in Time  at Kino Lorber 

That’s for the moment … a couple more desirable announcements have surfaced, but I don’t have links or art images for them yet.

Thanks for reading! — Glenn Erickson

It’s a brave movie … but we understand why why audiences would reject its acid, hyper-cynical worldview.

 

Hello!

We’re a day late due to some website issues — but Charlie Largent says it’s safe to publish … reviews, anyway

Mark Throop of the indispensable Movies ala Mark found this site, which has been around long enough to be familiar to lots of film fans (except uninformed me). It’s called Reel History and is run by Dr. Jared Frederick. He does a good job of analyzing movies about ‘true’ historical events, and comparing them to known historical reality.

It looks like most of the films discussed are about war or battles, at least the ones at the top of Reel History’s menu. We watched part of an illustrated video on John Wayne’s 1960  The Alamo and were impressed … the good doctor managed to relate the discrepancy between Wayne’s film and the historical record, without calling the picture an outright fraud.

I’m interested in a second video article because it’s about the Spielberg / Milius / Gale & Zemeckis  “1941”. Dr. Frederick rightly calls the epic comedy a mess, yet he has many interesting observations regarding its re-creation of / exaggeration of the real event of 1941, in which some Angelenos seem even more stupid than the characters in the movie.

Actually, it’s hard to find an article with four consecutive words that discuss “1941” in any context other that its box office success or lack thereof. I liked it. Maybe I should write an unexpurgated ‘Making of 1941’ sometime. Maybe not. From witnessing much of the filming, I have a wonderful recall of second-hand gossip, and scores of skewed subjective personal observations.

 

Dr. Jared Frederick’s  Reel History 

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Being reported from all sides is TCM’s schedule for April, which will set aside its Friday nights for a month-long tribute to producer-director  Roger Corman. They’ll be showing numerous Corman films, the films of some of the famed directors he helped get started, and a biographical documentary or two.

The news can be glommed at leisure, at the pages for  Warner Bros. Discovery,  All Hallows Geek and  Conskipper,

Thanks for reading! — Glenn Erickson

We didn’t post reviews yesterday because Trailers from Hell has  a formatting glitch that needs to be fixed up … we assume it will be straightened out shortly.  So … nothing is wrong with CineSavant or the rest of us here in Los Angeles!

We’ll hopefully be posting again shortly.

I wish the government had properly preserved these. They’re egregiously non-PC … in a good way!

 

Hello!

This is a fun thing to see. I met the great Nathaniel Thompson almost 25 years ago, when I think he was wrangling publicity for Image Entertainment DVDs. His  Mondo Digital page is a solid source for the wide range of fantasy and horror; Nathaniel has a knack for covering extreme horror cinema with an intelligence not seen too many other places. I worked with him off and on at TCM with people like Richard Harland Smith. It was also fun to follow his adventures working for the Academy.

This is a ‘Shelf Space’ web interview produced by Kino Lorber and starring Kino’s Frank Tarzi and Alicia Lu. The talk covers Nathaniel’s career but mostly about his audio commentary work. This is very interesting for someone who has tried a few commentaries — Nathaniel has an enviable ability to let his knowledge and ideas flow, creating coherent, entertaining tracks even on the fly.

Part of the fun is hearing the three discuss audio commentators we all know by name. Nathaniel also explains how he keeps track of his personal archive of over 30,000 discs. I was just happy to enjoy spending some more time with Mr. Thompson.

 

Nathaniel Thompson  interviewed on  Shelf Space! 

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CineSavant is an independent review site but the discs have to come from somewhere. One distributor has been ‘berry berry good to me,’ so I have no compunction about helping them promote a sale. It’s for The Warner Archive Collection discs at the MovieZyng page. It reads like a good deal to me — the basic come-on is 4 titles for $54 dollars.

I hope I’m communicating the details correctly. One browses eligible Warner Archive titles at the MovieZyng page, and when your cart has 4 titles, you enter code ARCHIVE17 at the checkout.

MovieZyng has an inducement program for its reviewers, but CineSavant isn’t participating. I just don’t want to be an influencer, I guess. But we’re big fans of the WAC and want it to do well. The  Warner Archive 17th Anniversary Sale  is right up top at the

 

MovieZyng Main Page 

Thanks for reading! — Glenn Erickson

Melville is a good actor. The issue in this all-night ordeal is French national honor, neatly addressed.

 

Hello!

Good friend Malcolm Alcala sends along a nifty little link to nine minutes of fine B&W cinematography.

12 years ago the Los Angeles County Museum of Art put on an exhibition called Under the Mexican Sky: Gabriel Figueroa — Art and Film. The most celebrated Mexican cinematographer shot scores of top Mexican classics and some of the best films by Luis Buñuel, not to mention a number of classy Hollywood pictures.

This is the exhibition’s video sampler of fine Figueroa movie images. Several appear to be from John Ford’s  The Fugitive. We’re big fans, so it certainly works for us. And nobody photographed classic ‘Spanish Eyes’ with quite the same finesse.

 

Image montage:  Under the Mexican Sky: Gabriel Figueroa 

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Noir City 2026 is coming back to Hollywood’s Egyptian Theater for two weekends in April. The exhibition has become practically a vacation destination over the years, what with the fine show put on by The American Cinematheque and the Film Noir Foundation, and hosted in-person by Eddie Muller and Alan K. Rode.

The lineup this time guarantees extra entertainment — the theme is Face the Music!,  in twenty films that carry musical performances. Ida Lupino and Ann Sheridan sing in  The Man I Love  and  Nora Prentiss, while Jazz performers and compositions feature big in  Anatomy of a Murder  (Duke Ellington),  All Night Long  (Dave Brubeck, Johnny Dankworth, Tubby Hayes & Charlie Mingus),  The Sweet Smell of Success  (The Chico Hamilton Quartet),  Odds Against Tomorrow  (John Lewis), and  Pete Kelly’s Blues  (Ella Fitzgerald, Peggy Lee).

Some of these pictures really take off on the big screen — the talent roster has some of the best directing work of Otto Preminger, Raoul Walsh and even Jack Webb.

Noir City screenings are always ideal, like an old-time communal theater experience. They will be having live music at every show, often with vocal accompaniment — 20 movies in two weekends!  I might try to attend this year!  Full information is through the American Cinematheque link:

 

Noir City Hollywood  April 3-5  and  April 10-12 

Thanks for reading! — Glenn Erickson

My vote for the best actress of 1950.