DVD
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How Home Video Art Direction Can Undo Stanley Kubrick’s Careful Work
It’s long bothered me that all the design work that goes in to film promotion—often deliberated over at length by industry-leading art directors and designers in conjunction with the actual filmmakers—is routinely discarded when that film hits home video. The world of home video is, for the most part, unregulated in such matters; whether it be studios’ own in-house art departments or boutique labels, they all take different approaches to art direction. Some employ actual living and breathing art directors and some leave it to a dilettantish coterie of everyone-including-the-tea-lady chipping in with their own thoughts. Many home video distributors […]
by Nick Wrigley on Oct 17, 2018 -
“Your Film Will Always Travel More Than You”: Director Sophie Goyette on Independent Distribution
In 2016, Québécois filmmaker Sophie Goyette’s debut feature, Mes nuits feront écho, won the Bright Future Award at the Rotterdam International Film Festival. A poetic rumination on morality, the fragility of relationships, and the bravery that goes into cultivating human connection, the film flows between very distinct, even seemingly disparate, locales: Québec, Mexico and Asia. Goyette, however, links these places through the journeys of a young musician, Eliane (Eliane Préfontaine), who leaves Canada for Mexico City and ends up teaching piano to the son of a middle-aged man, Romes (Gerardo Trejoluna). Romes soon leaves for Asia with his aged father, […]
by Kiva Reardon on Dec 12, 2017 -
23 Paces to Baker Street, Mildred Pierce, Linklater and Almodovar, and More: Jim Hemphill’s Home Video Recommendations
In a career-spanning interview with Polly Platt for the DGA oral history series, director Henry Hathaway dismissed his 1956 thriller 23 Paces to Baker Street as a throwaway, one of those studio assignments he took without much relish. It’s yet another example of why filmmakers cannot be trusted when it comes to their own films, for while the material is slightly shopworn (and owes an enormous and obvious debt to Hitchcock’s Rear Window), Hathaway frames it with meticulous care and artistry. The movie follows Van Johnson as a blind playwright who thinks he overhears a crime being plotted; after the […]
by Jim Hemphill on Feb 24, 2017 -
Jim Hemphill’s Best Blu-rays of 2016
To finish off 2016, I’d like to round up some of the year’s best Blu-ray releases that I didn’t get a chance to cover in my weekly column. It was an exceptional year for physical media thanks to labels like Criterion, Twilight Time, Arrow, Kino Lorber, and Olive, all of which continue to license neglected titles from studio vaults and give them the first-class treatments they deserve. While the list below barely scratches the surface of the efforts of these companies and others, it contains what I consider to be the most essential discs of the year — movies that […]
by Jim Hemphill on Dec 30, 2016 -
Movie Business Shrinking
A curious occurrence took place in the wake of the Aurora, CO, mass killing on the opening night screening of the latest Batman release, The Dark Knight Rises. Revenue from opening weekend ticket sales was $211.8 million, slightly less than the $222.2 million for The Dark Knight. This was the highest box office gross for a conventional 2D movie for 2012. While the large turnout for the movie can be linked to a response to the shootings as much as the appeal of the movie, the numbers hide a darker truth. The movie business is shrinking. Ticket sales and DVD […]
by David Rosen on Jul 30, 2012 -
Lady Vengeance: Hungering for the Release of Battle Royale
Although I’ve been recently reminded of the fact repeatedly, it always shocks me anew to hear that Battle Royale, Kinji Fukasaku’s stunning, blood-soaked film adaptation of the novel by Koushun Takami, has never officially had U.S. distribution. After a spate of festival bookings, a 3D release of the film in honor of its 10-year anniversary, and a DVD and Blu-ray release from Anchor Bay, Battle Royale, original flavor, is starting to see theatrical premieres in the U.S., like the one at the Cinefamily Theater in Los Angeles in December 2011, and the New York premiere starting at the IFC Center […]
by Farihah Zaman on May 25, 2012 -
Lady Vengeance: Last Minute Gift Guide for Genre Buffs
Still not sure what to get your comic-book-obsessed little brother? Forget to pick up something for mom that satisfies her cinematic blood lust? The following gifts are Lady Vengeance approved, and most arrive just in time for December 25th. For the Low-Brow Art Lover: Crazy4Cult: Cult Movie Art (Gallery 1988/Kevin Smith, $25) The currently out-of-fashion but undeniably hard-working Kevin Smith has teamed up with the LA-based Gallery 1988 to collect the best in good, pulpy, sometimes downright dirty artwork inspired by cult films. The aesthetic style and subject matter is fairly diverse, meaning there’s something for everyone. […]
by Farihah Zaman on Dec 19, 2011 -
“A SERBIAN FILM”
With Halloween around the corner I thought it would be fitting to write about a movie that has kept me up nights (and I’m certain that’s the same for many who’ve seen the film since its premiere at SXSW last year), A Serbian Film. The debut film of Serbian filmmaker Srdjan Spasojevic, who co-wrote the screenplay with the country’s well-known horror critic, Aleksandar Radivojevic, A Serbian Film (which is available on DVD and Blu-ray today) is one of the most despicable movies I’ve seen in a long time and the images shown will likely stay embedded in my mind for […]
by Jason Guerrasio on Oct 25, 2011 -
Joe Swanberg, Factory 25 Announce New DVD Subscription Series
Prolific independent director Joe Swanberg announced today a new distribution plan for his next four films. Partnered with Factory 25, Swanberg is offering fans a four-film, one-year subscription to his work. For $99.95 subscribers will receive a box that will fill up each quarter with not only DVDs but also bonus material, including 45rpm records, photo books and posters. “I’m in the nice position right now of having so many [completed] films I’m trying to get out into the world, so I’m taking the plunge and doing something interesting,” says Swanberg.The four films are Silver Bullets and Art History (both […]
by Scott Macaulay on Sep 20, 2011 -
TIFF: “I AM A GOOD PERSON/I AM A BAD PERSON”
Ingrid Veninger’s latest film has to be the fastest movie ever made for TIFF. The Toronto filmmaker was on her way to unspool her 2010 feature, Modra, at film fests across Europe when she seized the opportunity to shoot an entirely new film. That meant 19 days of scripting, casting and rehearsals in Toronto in March this year, 13 days shooting in north England, Paris and Berlin, then wrapping with five weeks of post in T.O. to make the TIFF deadline. That also meant Veninger presenting Modra in one cinema and then becoming “Ruby White,” who was premiering a fictitious […]
by Allan Tong on Sep 18, 2011
