Author: Doug Cummings

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DVD review


The Adventures of Prince Achmed (1926)

Okay, summer break is over and the blogging shall resume.

My friend John Torvi from Canada is visiting this week while he attends SIGGRAPH, the international conference for “researchers, artists, developers, filmmakers, scientists, and other professionals who share an interest in computer graphics and interactive techniques.” During the day, John immerses himself in conferences and screenings. At night, he recommends his latest finds, like La DerniËre Minute (2004), which won the Palme d’Or for short films at Cannes last year and which also has a premise that reminds me of Harlan Ellison’s wonderful …

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Updates

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I’ve taken a longer blogging break than I anticipated, partly because I was out of town and partly because I was immersed in finishing my liner notes for two upcoming Masters of Cinema DVDs in the UK, Kaneto Shindo’s Onibaba (1964) and Kuroneko (1968). (Strictly Film School’s Acquarello contributed the essay for our first Shindo release, The Naked Island.) Now that I’m wrapping this up, expect regular updates to resume.

In addition, Cinemarati (“a professional guild for film writers whose work appears primarily online”) relaunched with a new design and structure last week, and it includes a group blog …

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Response to a Meme

Commentary

Darren Hughes has issued a blog meme, so here is my response:

1. Total number of films I own on DVD and video.

I’d estimate around 250, which I consider somewhat spartan compared to a lot of DVD aficionados I know. (By contrast, I own less than a dozen VHS tapes.) Most of these titles are imports or films I wouldn’t otherwise easily rent, although I realize online DVD providers are making such a criterion obsolete these days. Fortunately I have the luxury of living in a city with several independent, well-stocked video stores, and pretty much only purchase …

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Lewton and Ulmer

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I Walked with a Zombie

Great DVD news has arrived this week for fans of elegant horror: Universal have announced a Bela Lugosi collection for September that will finally offer Edgar G. Ulmer’s expressionist/art deco masterpiece, The Black Cat (1934), and Warner have solidified an October street date for their long-awaited Val Lewton collection. The Lewton set will contain five discs and nine films, including the three classics Jacques Tourneur directed (1942’s Cat People and 1943’s I Walked with a Zombie and The Leopard Man) as well as Mark Robson’s masterpiece, The Seventh Victim (1943), which critic Jonathan Rosenbaum …

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Au hasard Balthazar

DVD review

The Criterion Collection has released Bresson’s masterpiece, Au hasard Balthazar on DVD today; this review is for robert-bresson.com, which will publish our full review of the DVD shortly. –Doug

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The scholar C.H. Dodd once defined a parable as a “a metaphor or simile drawn from nature or common life, arresting the hearer by its vividness or strangeness, and leaving the mind in sufficient doubt about its precise application as to tease it into active thought.” Parables are thus distinguished from fables (which involve fantasy or myth) or allegories (which are highly symbolic with emblematic …

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Howl’s Moving Castle

Film review

Last night, I attended the Los Angeles debut of the subtitled Howl’s Moving Castle, which is screening along with the dubbed version exclusively at Disney’s movie palace, the El Capitan, in Hollywood. The theater was built in the ’20s with an East Indian design and sits across the street from the Grauman’s Chinese Theater but has much less the quantity and quality of seating; general admission, I discovered, is relegated to the far edges of the theater.

Not that it mattered, Hayao Miyazaki’s film would probably prove to be a delight seen from any angle. Its combination of elaborate …

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