May, 2009

Hello Auteur House customers,

In the interests of clarity and getting this out I will be briefer than in the past.  Let us in this, the May wrap up, try and make the end of the month.

New Releases

“Man on Wire” opened last year’s International Film Festival, playing to a far too small crowd.  Since then it has won the Oscar for Best Documentary, finding a name and broader audience in the process.  In telling the amazing story of Frenchman Philippe Petit’s illegal 1974 tightrope walk between New York’s Twin Towers “Man on Wire” mixes incredibly authentic feeling recreations with interviews and surviving footage, detailing the advance planning and subterfuge that was necessary as well as Petit’s elation in achieving something that no one else in history can replicate.

“Revolutionary Road” also attracted some Academy Award attention, though no where near as much as its makers intended.  An adaptation of the much respected novel by Richard Yates, it is set in the 1950s and is a drama of marital disharmony and the souring of the American dream.  Kate Winslet, Leonardo Di Caprio and Kathy Bates combine forces to make something like the anti-”Titanic” under the not always steady direction of Winslet’s husband Sam Mendes.  It looks beautiful, and the performances of the supporting cast go a ways to compensate for the overwrought leading players but “Revolutionary Road” falls well short of its intentions.

Much more subtle and controlled is the latest from the cult director who sadly is still best known for writing “Taxi Driver”: Paul Schrader.  “The Walker” has been compared to his “American Gigolo”, perhaps because its protagonist, played by a surprisingly credible Woody Harrelson, is a man who spends much of his time entertaining rich, older and married women.  More a character study and drama than a fully fledged political thriller “The Walker” nevertheless milks its Washington backdrops and film noir premise for all they are worth.  A strong, acerbic cast includes Kristin Scott Thomas, Lauren Bacall and Lily Tomlin.

“Stop-Loss” is a slightly delayed acquisition that I don’t know much about.  It is directed by Kimberley Peirce, maker of “Boys Don’t Cry”, which bodes well.  Another attempt by Hollywood to explore the Iraq war on the home front it met the same dismal box office fate as all the others.  At least Ryan Phillipe had a good time making it, trading Reese Witherspoon in for his co-star, stunning Aussie beauty Abbie Cornish.

Less earnest and quite possibly a whole lot more entertaining is “Tokyo Gore Police”.  A Nipponese variation on “Robocop”, its plot has something to do with samurai wielding law enforcement dispatching homicidal mutants.  By all accounts it delivers on the blood and guts front.

Higher brow, if pop art, is “The Universe of Keith Haring”, a documentary about (according to the cover) “the most celebrated personality in the decade of personalities”, the painter, designer, graffiti proponent and 1980s AIDS casualty Keith Haring. 

My own favourite amongst our May New Releases is “To Each His Own Cinema”.  To quote Mammouth Gig guide’s brilliant reviewer:

“In “To Each His Own Cinema” 33 directors celebrate the 60th anniversary of the Cannes Film Festival, each contributing 3 minutes on the theme of film going and reception.

Given the universality of the idea there is more similarity between each segment than is often the case in portmanteaus.  Many directors chose to recreate a treasured or otherwise remembered childhood experience at the movies.  Inevitably some works stand-out and others are either slight or negligible but on balance “To Each His Own Cinema” is moving and heartfelt and filled with genuine love for the medium.  My favourite is Roman Polanski’s sly masturbatory joke, but David Lynch’s contribution is a little horror masterpiece and Claude Lelouch’s a tear inducing valentine to a parental courtship inspired by Astaire and Rogers.”

New to DVD

Rainer Werner Fassbinder was perhaps the most prolific art house director of all time, making over 40 films in 16 years before burning out in 1982 at the age of 37.  There has been an unreasonable delay in the scheduled release of much of his work with the New Zealand censorship system seemingly not up to the task.  Progress has been been made in May though with a boxset comprised of three late titles: “The Marriage of Maria Braun” (1978), “Lola” (1981) and “Veronica Voss” (1982), all dealing with post-war German recovery.  Also released as a stand alone disk is “Lili Marleen” (1980), Fassbinder’s deliberately stylised depiction of the Nazi era.

Fassbinder’s countryman Otto Preminger came from an earlier generation and made most of his films in Hollywood.  He established his reputation initially as a director of film noirs and two of his best have just been released: “Fallen Angel” (1945) and “Whirlpool” (1949).  Auteur House has also just acquired his 1960 adaptation of Leon Uris novel about the foundation of Israel, “Exodus”.

Less prestigious is the work of the low budget exploitation producer Roger Corman.  Corman’s adaptations of Edgar Allen Poe are highly thought of in some quarters.  We now have “The Premature Burial” (1961), starring Ray Milland as well as another Milland/Corman collaboration, the cult sci fi cheapie “X - The Man With the X-Ray Eyes” (1963).

Equally a guilty pleasure is “The Vampire Lovers” (1970), from Britain’s notorious Hammer studio.  The combination of blood sucking and lesbianism is an intoxicating one, and Ingrid Pitt makes a fetching and worthy adversary for the stalwart Peter Cushing.

In the same vein (ha, ha!) is the cult Nicolas Cage vehicle “Vampire’s Kiss” (1988).  Less a horror film than a social and political satire it takes the, eh, blood out of yuppie culture, casting Cage as a superficial literary agent who becomes convinced that his new girl friend is a relative of Nosferatu.

“Go Tell the Spartans”, made a decade earlier, could not be more different.  One of a number of films in the late 1970s to deal with the Vietnam war it sets its story prior to full scale American involvement.  Burt Lancaster leads a strong cast in a quiet, modest and contemplative drama that was overshadowed by splashier productions on first release.

More sophisticated still in its politics is the Vietnam allegory “Burn!” (aka “Queimada”) (1969), director Gillo Pontecorvo’s follow up to his classic “The Battle of Algiers”.  Marlon Brando stars as Sir William Walker, a 19th century British agent who incites black slaves to rise against their Portuguese masters, but then brutally suppresses them a decade later.  Visually and ideologically interesting, and sporting a memorable Ennio Morricone score, it was Brando’s career favourite film, despite its troubled production history.

The Gore Vidal scripted “The Best Man” (1963) fashions a drama out of a fictitious presidential primary race.  It is excellently cast, to type in terms of Henry Fonda’s archetypal liberal intellectual candidate, but the work of Cliff Robertson as his McCarthyesque opponent and an Oscar nominated Lee Tracey as the incumbent President is likewise impressive.  Vidal manages to be smart and insightful without completely giving in to cynicism.

John Cassavetes sensitively directs Judy Garland in her penultimate role, “A Child is Waiting” (1963).  Garland plays an assistant to Burt Lancaster in a tale about a school for intellectually handicapped children.  Necessarily more conventional than Cassavetes’ later, self-financed narrative experiments it demonstrates that a mainstream directorial career was always an option for the godfather of American independent cinema.

Two last titles should instill excitement in fans and the uninitiated alike.  “The Beales of Grey Gardens” (2006) is a sequel to the legendary “Grey Gardens” which uses surplus material from the first movie to generate another.  The Maysles brothers revisit their most celebrated work and also acknowledge its on going influence, showcasing the bizarre and wonderful Beale mother daughter act once more.

“Pickpocket” (1959) is one of French minimalist Robert Bresson’s masterpieces, the deceptively simple story of a man who attempts to find meaning and spiritual significance in theft.  The clarity of Bresson’s vision rings piercingly true throughout: sequences which detail the specifics of the pickpocketing arts are awe inspiring in their framing and montage and the protagonist’s profound isolation from bourgeois society is powerful, often frighteningly so.