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I’ve been meaning to post an alert for a few days now, but following my previous blog on public radio donations, it’s only appropriate that I go ahead and mention the DVDBeaver donations drive that’s currently underway.

If you refer to DVDBeaver‘s screengrabbed visual reviews and region comparisons even half as often as I do, you should be aware of the fact that it’s a labor of love for Gary Tooze in Toronto, whose site’s increasing popularity and bandwidth continually demands more of his finances. DVDBeaver provides the best practical information for those of us wading through the multi-region …

I saw several screenings the past few days, so expect assorted updates this week…

Last week, I discovered a wonderful opportunity. Since I don’t own a television, I get a lot of my news from US public radio (and its incorporation of CBC and BBC programs) and, of course, the Internet. And for a while now, my local Pacifica radio station in Los Angeles has offered a Film Club to subscribers, which I finally took advantage of and can highly recommend. For a $150 annual membership, KPFK in Los Angeles offers tickets to over 80 movies a year, predominantly those …

The British Film Institute will release Robert Bresson’s second feature, Les Dames du Bois de Boulogne (1945) on DVD at the end of the month, and MovieMail, a UK seller that specializes in world cinema and commentary asked me to contribute a few words on the film for their latest catalogue. You can read the piece, here.

The film has already been releassed on DVD in region 1 by the Criterion Collection, but the elements are not very good…here’s hoping the BFI can improve.…

I’ve been complaining about Film Comment for the past few years, its silly sarcastic newsbriefs and short fiction, its efforts to sacrifice meaningful coverage for “hip” mainstream criticism, etc. But I chanced across the latest issue, and it’s actually got me sitting down and reading:

ï Joan Rivers’ Guilty Pleasures (just kidding!)

ïAn article on early Iranian cinema (pre-Kiarostami, who the author, Sohrab Shahid Saless, suggests is “Bazin-compatible” and therefore more popular in the
West; incidentally, Kent Jones makes a similar argument in defense of Olivier Assayas’ “non-Bazinian” work in the latest Cinema Scope)

ï An analysis by Godfrey …

The new issue of the redesigned Senses of Cinema is online, and noteworthy contributions by Filmjourney discussion participants include Acquarello’s article on “A Divine Tragedy: Kim Ki-duk Searches for Redemption in The Samaritan Girl,” Darren Hughes’ piece on “The New American Old West: Bruno Dumontís Twentynine Palms,” and Michael Kerpan on Ozu’s Passing Fancy (Dekigokoro). Enjoy……

Multi-region DVD players (allowing you to watch DVDs purchased from around the world) are becoming cheaper all the time. One of the latest units is the Cyber Home CH-DVD 300, a player that can be purchased from Best Buy in the US for $32.99. Ted Mills writes his review at DVDBeaver.com.

I’ve also recently had good results on my OS X Mac computer with the freeware player, VideoLAN, which can be downloaded from Apple’s site or www.videolan.org.…