Commentary – Page 5 – Film Journey

Tops Tens of 2008

January 8, 2009 Doug Cummings Commentary, DVD review, Film review

Birdsong

This past year was a difficult one for me, schedule-wise, but I still managed to squeeze in a good number of films at the Palm Springs, COLCOA, Los Angeles, DocuWeek, and AFI festivals, UCLA, the American Cinematheques, AMPAS, Cinefamily, LACMA (check out Bernardo Rondeau’s top ten list here), REDCAT, and the Filmforum, not to mention the commercial Landmark and Laemmle theatres. Los Angeles remains a vibrant setting for cinephiles even if its dispersion and middling public transport often require a tolerance for long commutes and a commitment to keeping a close eye on screening calendars, limited runs, and …

Chris Ware on Yasujiro Ozu

December 15, 2008 Doug Cummings Commentary, Texts

I don’t know how I missed this until now, but the wonderful Cinefamily revival group–presenting “interesting and unusual programs of exceptional, distinctive, weird and wonderful films” at the Silent Movie Theatre in Hollywood–commissioned famed comic artist Chris Ware to illustrate the cover of their current Nov/Dec calendar, a beautiful tribute to Yasujiro Ozu’s Tokyo Story (1953).

The Theatre’s co-owner, Sammy Harkham, is a comic artist who also owns the nearby Family graphic arts bookstore. Cinefamily’s calendars are always visually striking and the film descriptions are equally evocative even if, given their highly eclectic programming, I often go through extremes of …

Cats Go Barack

October 22, 2008 Doug Cummings Commentary

It’s not often that you can get t-shirts designed by major figures of world cinema, and even less often for a better cause: Chris Marker invokes his trademark character, Guillaume-en-egypte, for Barack Obama at Wexner Center for the Arts.…

The Film Desk

October 9, 2008 Doug Cummings Commentary

Count me impressed. I was just scanning the PDF of the Nuart Theatre’s fall/winter Movie Guide and was amazed to see the announcement of new 35mm prints of Charlie Chaplin’s phenomenal Monsieur Verdoux (1947) and François Truffaut’s The Wild Child (1970). Looking closer, I discovered that both are being distributed by a new company called The Film Desk. Clicking onto its website, I’ve learned that its inaugural release was none other than a Philippe Garrel movie–J’entends plus la guitare (1991)–with more on the way.

Poking around on the web, I’ve gleaned that the company is the personal project …

Lola Montès restoration

September 18, 2008 Doug Cummings Commentary

(Click to enlarge.)

In case you’ve only seen Max Ophüls’ last and only widescreen, color film on the abysmal Fox Lorber DVD that refuses to go away, you might check out this comparison I’ve made between a direct screengrab of the DVD versus a still courtesy of Rialto Pictures from the new restoration. I just saw the new print today, and I can vouch that it looks just as good–or even better–than the still provided here. Note that in addition to the fact that the DVD doesn’t include the full 2.55×1 early CinemaScope frame, it also horizontally compresses the image, …

Why the Foreign Oscars Need to be Blown Up

February 23, 2008 Robert Koehler Commentary

Garbage In Garbage Out, or Why the Foreign Oscars Need to be Blown Up

By ROBERT KOEHLER

Computer programmers have a term for the risk flawed data input poses to the goal of good data results: Garbage In, Garbage Out. No four words better sum up the profound problems that have turned the foreign-language Oscar category into a sad, pathetic joke. When the head of the executive committee overseeing the Oscarís foreign categoryóthat would be widely-respected producer Mark Johnsonólooks at you directly, as he did to me while we rode a shuttle bus during this yearís Sundance, and tells you …