Some comments about the past year’s DVD and Blu-ray releases.
Year End 2017
Category: Commentary
Preliminary Notes on Twin Peaks 2017
By turns funny and frightening, gripping and frustrating, David Lynch’s revival of Twin Peaks is a prodigiously inventive television epic.
Ghosts Good and Bad
Two Italian classics – Mario Bava’s Kill, Baby … Kill! (1966) and Pupi Avati’s Zeder (1983) – and an imaginative new movie – David Lowery’s A Ghost Story (2017) – offer differing thematic takes on survival after death.
You can’t go home again
Denis Villeneuve’s Blade Runner 2049 attempts to be a respectful follow-up to Ridley Scott’s ground-breaking original, but it ends up long, drab and ultimately unmemorable.
Further down Memory Lane
Digging into the detritus of a lifetime unearths some interesting memories of a movie career which didn’t quite happen.
Down Memory Lane
Digging into the detritus of a lifetime unearths some interesting memories.
A mixed bag from Screen Archives
The discovery of a previously unknown documentary, Robert Kaylor’s Derby (1971), plus a Blu-ray edition of Stephanie Rothman’s Terminal Island (1973), a rough-and-ready exploitation B-movie, are of much greater interest than Jack Cardiff’s Holiday in Spain (1960), a bloated mainstream Cinerama showcase which dresses its travelogue in a tissue-thin “mystery” plot.
Twilight Time goes West
Recent Twilight Time releases trace the western from the frontier myth to post-’60s cynicism, with a side trip to post-war racial tension in Los Angeles.
Pulp Epics
Big budgets don’t necessarily guarantee success in genre filmmaking; in fact, the bigger the budget the more likely a genre movie will be met with derision which is often undeserved.
Orson Welles’ Othello (1952/55): Criterion Blu-ray review
Criterion’s exemplary release of Orson Welles’ Othello on Blu-ray presents both versions of one of the filmmaker’s most important films with an impressive collection of supplements which delve into the production and meaning of one of the most original cinematic adaptations of Shakespeare’s work.
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