February 1, 2006

Dispatch #118

"And the nominees for Best Soft Drink Product Placement are... Star Trek: The Pepsi Generation, They Call Me Mr. Pibb, and Snow White and the Seven-ups." - a quote from... [read on for more]

#118 | January 31, 2006
This week’s Dispatch is brought to you by:
"And the nominees for Best Soft Drink Product Placement are... Star Trek: The Pepsi Generation, They Call Me Mr. Pibb, and Snow White and the Seven-ups."
- Futurama.

Available to watch now via Video-on-Demand: With Wong Kar-wai's lovely 2046 garnering many year end nods (including an appearance on Craig Phillips' Top 15 list), why not vist one of his earlier masterful works? Ashes of Time, Mark Pollard wrote in his Wuxia primer, is "undoubtedly one of the most challenging and ultimately rewarding wuxia pian available... Wong combines dramatic non-linear storytelling, the sumptuous cinematography of Christopher Doyle, powerful action direction from Sammo Hung, and a first-rate cast." Watch it now via GreenCine's Video-on-Demand service.

 

Robert Connolly's The Bank is a well-made, tense little thriller from Down Under which manages to make the world of finance and math interesting, even to those of us who don't religiously follow NASDAQ. The opening credits, reminiscent of Vertigo, pull you in, the Philip Glass-like music hypnotizes you, the Wall Street-like morality debate will fascinate. While some of its elements don't feel all that fresh (and listening to the director's fairly pretentious audio commentary won't change your mind), The Bank is presented in a fresh way, the acting... read the rest here.

 

We bid January farewell (so long, auf Wiedersehen, goodbye) with these highlights from this week's new DVD releases:

One of Tim Burton's loveliest films yet, the stop-motion animated Corpse Bride is far more than The Nightmare Before Christmas revisited. It's also a nominee for a Best Animated Film Oscar. A good deal of credit evidently goes to character designer Carlos Grangel. There's much, much more than nodding to Edward Gorey and Charles Addams going on here. The film's underworld is lively, colorful and, as composer Danny Elfman told one interviewer, there's "a link to that kind of old jazz, and a little bit of a Max Fleischer, Betty Boop kind of influence."

"[René] Clément's first feature film, La Bataille du rail, is both a characteristic and anomalous work in the director's career, pointing forward to the intimate detail of many of his best films while drawing on the distanced ethnography of his pre-war work in documentary," writes Adrian Danks in Senses of Cinema. "Several critics have made connections between Clément's groundbreaking film and the work of Italian neo-realists such as Roberto Rossellini and Vittorio de Sica."

Massacre in Rome (1973). NoShame, the label that's been releasing lesser known Italian gems on DVD, scores again with this harsh tale of Nazi revenge on the citizens of Rome for an uprising in the waning days of the war. "This film greatest strength is its amazing cast which features Marcello Mastroianni playing a character that is in direct contrast to the type he normally does," writes Michael Den Boer at 10K Bullets.

Also out today:
The casting in 1937's The Good Earth, of Paul Muni and Luise Rainer (who won a second Oscar for her performance) as poor Chinese farmers, might strike us a bit odd today (though we've recently seen Chinese actresses portraying Japanese geishas), but once you get over it, this widely lauded adaptation of Pearl S. Buck's Pulitzer Prize-winning novel is pretty impressive - particularly the justifiably famous locust infestation scene and Karl Freund's Oscar-winning cinematography; Art City (1996), three outstanding docs from 1996, each focusing on a different corner of the art world; another movie about some swashbuckling masked guy; and in the anime department, oh, my goodness, it's Ah! My Goddess Volume 3: With or Without You.

A complete list of this week's New Releases | Coming Soon | New Releases Archive

With the Oscar nominations now out this morning - and we mean out - this is as good a time as any to see which of the previous Academy Award-winning Best Pictures you've seen.

Meanwhile, now might also be a good time to take a read through our own articles about some of this year's Oscar nominees, including: an interview with Bennett Miller, director of Capote; David D'Arcy's piece on Munich; an interview with actor David Strathairn, a nominee for Good Night and Good Luck.; and "From the Favelas to Nairobi: Fernando Meirelles," a talk with the assured director of The Constant Gardener (which received nominations for supporting actress, music, editing and adapted screenplay, but, remarkably, not for Meirelles' direction!)

Coming real soon: An interview with filmmaker James Longley, whose documentary Iraq in Fragments just won a bunch of awards at Sundance (and whose earlier film Gaza Strip is available on-demand, and for rent, on GreenCine).

Speaking of Oscars, our own award-winner, the GreenCine Daily blog, has a rundown on that list of happy nominees, as well as on the Sundance and Slamdance winners, while Adam Hartzell previews the batch of films submitted for consideration for the Best Foreign Language Film Oscar.

And you can also praise/vent/question the Oscar noms on GreenCine's message boards.

GreenCine Tip of the week: And while we're on the subject... If you haven't done so already, it's high time you joined the GreenCine community. Fill out your member profile, give yourself your own unique icon, and then post to the discussion boards, make lists and write reviews. It's fun, it's easy, it's a great way to connect to other cinephiles. Make yourself at home - on GreenCine.

Our contests are taking a little bit of a break, but we'll have more of 'em coming your way again soon. Keep checking back!

The member list of the week: aBonnett's list of "must see movies" are "movies you must see for the sake of your soul." What are your own must sees?

Tomorrow night! GreenCine proudly presents the criminally under-seen caper classic, Le Clan des Siciliens ( The Sicilian Clan; 1969). The film is the only motion picture to feature all three heavyweights from French tough-guy cinema -- Jean Gabin, Alain Delon and Lino Ventura.

The Sicilian Clan, by Henri Verneuil (118 min., 16mm, French with English subtitles)
At San Francisco's Yerba Buena Center for the Arts
Wednesday, February 1, 7:30pm.
$7/$5 GreenCine and YBCA Members, Students, Seniors.

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Posted by cphillips at February 1, 2006 1:41 PM