CineSavant Column
Hello!
I couldn’t believe it — with rain and high winds both before and after, the Pasadena Rose Bowl Parade still had its picture-perfect weather for the morning of the first. I have yet to see that parade rained out or blown away. Is that some kind of secret, perverted wish in my subconscious? No, it’s right up front.
On to new business: Here’s something altogether strange and very special, from a link just circulated by Joe Dante. Fast Film is a cinema-intense short subject art film that’s difficult to describe. A team of talented animators had an unlimited supply of photocopies of frame grabs, paper, and scissors — the work we see is a Super-Collage in motion, a bizarre 3-D Origami free-for-all.
The plastic play with film scenes and stars has been likened to a ‘History of Film,’ but it’s more like a tour through our movie unconsciousness. Since when have we seen Cary Grant, exiting a train compartment, being observed by aliens from a Japanese Godzilla movie?
The filmmaker is Virgil Widrich — he made this back in 2003. You’ll be riveted for the full 14 minutes. Almost as astonishing is the follow-up ‘how did they do it?’ short The Making of Virgil Widrich’s ‘Fast Film’
How do we choose what to review next? Let’s try an upcoming disc round-up for this very chilly start-up for ’24. Some of the discs ‘in hand’ have been around a couple of weeks — I can sometimes be persuaded to review something on request.
The Warner Archive — just arrived are Madame Bovary (Minnelli), Anna Christie (Garbo), The Great Ziegfeld and Tarzan The Ape Man; we’re expecting Gentleman Jim (Errol Flynn) in the door soon.
KL Studio Classics keeps tempting us with a wide swath of product. In hand are Odds Against Tomorrow, The Ballad of Little Jo, Hardcore, Thunderbolt and Lightfoot 4K and , The Man Who Wasn’t There 3D.
ClassicFlix sent a pair of new discs — the domestic noir Cause for Alarm (Loretta Young, Barry Sullivan) and The Abbott and Costello Show, Season 2.
We’re curious about The Mysterious Castle in the Carpathians, Deaf Crocodile’s latest excusion into vintage Czech fantasy-comedy.
There’s also the 4-tile Savage Guns Four Classic Westerns set from Arrow Video.
Powerhouse Indicator just tapped us with screeners of The Man Who Had Power Over Women (Rod Taylor, Carol White), Impossible Object (Alan Bates, Dominique Sanda) and Jinnah (Christopher Lee).
High in the queue are Film Masters’ The Devil’s Partner / Creature from the Haunted Sea combo.
An outfit called Mawu Films sent a fancy disc of the Brazilian Black Gold, White Devil, a Cinema Novo classic that we ought to look into.
For the Future, we just learned of KL Studio Classics February lineup:
New Blu-rays of Witness for the Prosecution (Billy Wilder), The Big Country (William Wyler), The Thomas Crown Affair (Norman Jewison), Burnt Offerings (Dan Curtis), Blood on the Sun (James Cagney), Man-Eater of Kumaon (Sabu), Let’s Dance (Fred Astaire), Alaska Seas (Robert Ryan), Film Noir the Dark Side of Cinema XVII with Vice Squad, Black Tuesday and Nightmare, and Monk The Complete Fourth Season.
and special Ultra HD discs of Leviathan 4K, The Last Castle 4K, Gunfight at the OK Corral 4K (John Sturges), and Fear and Desire 4K (Stanley Kubrick).
And, as we were reminded last week, some of the following were promised for January, and the dates of others have not yet been pinned down:
Severin’s Danza Macabra Volume 2 with Castle of Blood in 4K
Vinegar Syndrome’s promised The Horrible Dr. Hichcock 4K release
We will also be on a keen lookout for The Milestone Cinematheque’s forthcoming Household Saints, a special delight we’ve been wanting to catch up with for almost 30 years. Lili Taylor !
Criterion’s The Roaring Twenties and All That Money Can Buy plus McCabe and Mrs. Miller 4K and Lone Star 4K.
Bluebeard and a Region A of The Whip and the Body (Kino Lorber), a Region B of Devil Girl from Mars (UK Cult Classics), Red Planet Mars (MGM),
Not to mention a possible Alphaville disc, if a release is derived from the new remaster.
And of course, we’re going to welcome Godzilla Minus One the moment it is announced . . .
. . . which makes us ask, where is a disc of The Primevals, the decades-in-the-making stop-motion thriller premiered last year at various festivals?
Thanks for reading! — Glenn Erickson