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Criterion Corner: Reviews Of Criterion's Six March Releases

By David Ehrlich (Subscribe to David Ehrlich's posts), Posted Apr 1st 2011 6:00PM
Filed under: Columns, Cinematical


Criterion Corner is a Cinematical column dedicated to the wonderful world of the Criterion Collection, running twice at the end of each month -- once for new reviews and once for Criterion commentary.

Criterion spent March doing some much-needed spring cleaning. After years of waiting, Mike Leigh's smashing 'Topsy-Turvy' was finally outfitted with a spine number to call its own, Criterion claimed another pivotal documentary with Rob Epstein's moving portrait 'The Times of Harvey Milk,' and under-appreciated Japanese auteur Mikio Naruse enjoyed a valuable (if not particularly exciting) Eclipse box set of his most illuminating silent works. On top of all that gooey goodness -- releases as inevitable as they are essential -- Criterion also served up glorious Blu-ray reissues for one of the greatest films ever made about childhood, and one of the greatest films ever made to so much as include childhood.

So let's dig a little deeper, shall we?
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Criterion Corner #6: The 10 Best Criterion Covers

By David Ehrlich (Subscribe to David Ehrlich's posts), Posted Mar 30th 2011 10:30PM
Filed under: Columns, Cinematical


Criterion Corner is a Cinematical column dedicated to the wonderful world of the Criterion Collection, running twice at the end of each month -- once for new reviews and once for Criterion commentary.

I couldn't contrive a way to effectively combine the Criterion Collection with my rabid contempt for all things Zack Snyder. Believe me, I tried. With no other topical points of interest, I realized that it's a perfect time for me to go on the record about my favorite Criterion cover art.

Not to sound dramatic, but so far as difficult decisions go, this process is going to make 'Sophie's Choice' look like 'Executive Decision.' You see, Criterion covers are why we're all here in the first place (whether I mean "we" as readers of Cinematical or "we" as a civilization is up to you). It was my abiding love for these sublime and deeply considered examples of mass-produced graphic design that spawned this column.

Criterion Corner is a direct extension of a piece I published last August about the glorious community of fake Criterion covers, in which I wrote that "Criterion's [artwork] can make even the most digitally-oriented among us once again fetishize physical media... most DVDs and Blu-rays are packaged to be purchased, Criterion's are packaged to be treasured." It's the immaculately curated and restored roster of films that's made Criterion so instrumental to my relationship with cinema, but it's the art with which those films have been adorned that has so maniacally spurred me to collect them all.
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Is The Criterion Collection Too Cool?

By David Ehrlich (Subscribe to David Ehrlich's posts), Posted Mar 29th 2011 12:20PM
Filed under: Features, Cinematical



How cool is the Criterion Collection? That's not a rhetorical question, nor is it a question of the company's value, which I've probed from several angles in my Criterion Corner columns and have essentially concluded is profound and inestimable. The matter of worth is settled; I'm asking about cool. I'm asking if the Criterion Collection is stylish, hip and trendy, and I'm asking because a reasonably accomplished filmmaker just took to the Internet and accused it of being all of those terrible things. And it kinda pissed me off.

On March 24, HammertoNail published an editorial by a guy named Noah Buschel. Buschel is the writer and director of four feature films, the most recently released of which was called 'The Missing Person,' starred Michael Shannon and was accepted to Sundance in advance of its limited theatrical run. Buschel's essay, entitled "OBLITERATE THE NEW HIPSTER WITH LOVE," is ostensibly about how today's hipsters are too infatuated with kitsch to get in touch with their true selves and live up to their potential. It's the kind of essay that rails against Tom McCarthy movies for being too tidy (amen), ends with an Allen Ginsberg poem, and includes sentences like "Wildness that can absorb all dull shrillness and help take off the steel of skeleton costumes."

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SXSW 2011: Spike Jonze & Romain Gavras Turn Music Videos Into Masterpieces

By David Ehrlich (Subscribe to David Ehrlich's posts), Posted Mar 21st 2011 1:35PM
Filed under: SXSW Film Festival, Cinematical


Filmmaker Romain Gavras (son of legendary political filmmaker Costa-Gavras) hopped up on the stage of the Ritz theater to introduce his debut feature 'Our Day Will Come,' and informed us that his movie is "a romantic comedy that goes nowhere and means nothing." Fortunately for the audience, Gavras was lying. He may not know exactly what it is that his demented, unpredictable, and palpably furious film taps into, but he knows full well that he's touched a nerve of some kind. He's touched it before, after all, and he's perfectly aware of just how much it hurt.

Gavras' visual accompaniment to M.I.A.'s "Born Free" was less a music video than it was a full-fledged short film, a violent 9-minute narrative in which all the redheads of a dusty dystopian city were rounded up and brutally murdered in a style so sadistic it sooner recalls 'Rambo' than Orwell. Incidentally, 'Our Day Will Come' is one of two SXSW movies that slowed and elucidated the worlds they compliment, exploding their music videos into something different entirely, and in the process illustrating how some stories are simply too stirring to leave alone.
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SXSW 2011: Even Local Films Are Bigger In Texas

By David Ehrlich (Subscribe to David Ehrlich's posts), Posted Mar 20th 2011 2:00PM
Filed under: SXSW Film Festival, Cinematical


Clay Liford is a genius. Clay Liford is also the friendliest guy in Texas (perhaps a bit too friendly when he drinks). He's one of the five best directors in the state, he's a perennial festival favorite, and he's about to save filmmaking and maybe also the universe. I knew all of these things about Clay Liford before I even got to the screening of his latest feature, 'Wuss,' because everyone on the SXSW shuttle to the Rollins Theater piped up to tell me how much they love that guy. From the moment I told the lady sitting next to me what movie I was on my way to see, that bus erupted into a fit of hyper excitement as if 'Wuss' were Pee-Wee Herman's secret word.

Thanks to the Lone Star State sidebar here at SXSW, one of the fastest-growing film festivals in the world is able to host the world premiere of a movie like 'Source Code,' stick a fork in the zeitgeist with stuff like 'Sound of My Voice,' and yet still retain a local flavor (think brisket). Mixed about (but not lost) in this cataclysmic mess of movies, music, and brisket are nine films intended to represent the state which provides SXSW its home, and it's refreshing to see that the festival doesn't ghettoize these smaller films because of their comparatively humble origins.

Instead, the Lone Star State selections are tossed right in with the Sundance hits and genre riots, enjoying prime time screenings at some of the festival's largest venues, including the enormous (and enormously uncomfortable) Paramount Theater. It's a rare and rewarding opportunity for both filmmakers and adventurous festival-goers alike, and the four selections I caught seem to suggest that the brightest stars in Texas are only just starting to shine.
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'A Bag of Hammers' SXSW Review: A Cute Bunch of Tools With Nothing to Build

By David Ehrlich (Subscribe to David Ehrlich's posts), Posted Mar 17th 2011 4:30PM
Filed under: Reviews, SXSW Film Festival, Cinematical


There aren't all that many great movies about scoundrels. Rapscallions, ruffians and reprobates have been the basis of some of the cinema's most enduring films, but not scoundrels. Scoundrels are lazy and unfocused and impishly full of potential -- they're the characters who are one pivotal moment away from blossoming into stand-up gentlemen, and that transition is usually so forced and obvious that the movies they inhabit tend to fall apart as soon as they try to get serious.

'A Bag of Hammers' is more charming than most of these flicks, and surprisingly affecting when it turns on the waterworks, but the joy of watching Brian Crano's eager and delightfully quick-witted debut feature is almost fatally dissipated by his film's inability (or unwillingness) to stick to its guns. The movie crackles with its own good-natured energy, but it can't figure out how to navigate around the conventional stuff that nails this kind of story down. The whole thing works, but for a film about slackers, it sure works a lot harder than it has to.
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24 Hours At SXSW: A Personal Tour Through The World's Most Fun Film Fest

By David Ehrlich (Subscribe to David Ehrlich's posts), Posted Mar 16th 2011 8:00PM
Filed under: SXSW Film Festival, Cinematical


Despite what it might look like in downtown Austin right now, I would have to imagine that not every living human on the planet is actually at SXSW. Logistically, I mean, you'd think that one or two of the world's several billion people didn't make it down here this year. So for those of you who aren't in Texas for your own experience, I invite you to join along with mine.

Sunday, March 13, 2011

12:01 A.M. Edgar Wright is completely oblivious to the giant spider behind him. I'm packed into the world famous Alamo Drafthouse for the world premiere of Joe Cornish's 'Attack the Block,' and the film's executive producer is introducing the flick up on stage. A rogue arachnid has crawled over the projector, and the huge eight-legged shadow projected behind Wright is making the audience giggle. This will be the last time that Wright looks like a fool, tonight.

12:03 A.M. I have no clue what 'Attack the Block' is about, but I know I just waited in line for two hours to find out. I suspect a beer will help me make sense of things, so I ask one of the concession ninjas to bring me a pint of the local lager. I hope this doesn't suck.

12:10 A.M. It is abundantly clear that this doesn't suck.
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