Film Journey – Page 26 – world cinema in Los Angeles and beyond

Take Out

September 24, 2008 Doug Cummings Film review

Co-directors Shih-Ching Tsou and Sean Baker (whose Prince of Broadway earned him best narrative feature at the Los Angeles Film Festival earlier this year) are in town this week for the theatrical release of their 2004 DV production, Take Out. It’s a powerful example of guerilla filmmaking with a commitment to the rhythms and social fluxes of urban life, as well as to the quiet human costs and virtues teeming at its core. Tsou and Baker effectively formed a two-person crew, and they camped out for a month at a busy Chinese take out restaurant in the Upper West …

The Rime of the Ancient Mariner x 3

September 18, 2008 Doug Cummings DVD review

Proteus, one of my favorite documentaries from 2004, is being released on DVD this week by First Run Features. It’s a fascinating look at the work of 19th century artist-naturalist Ernst Haeckel (1834-1919) that is experimental film, historical summary, and philosophical meditation all rolled into one. Laboriously assembled by David Lebrun over the course of 22 years, it’s a montage of etchings, sketches, and paintings (rephotographed and animated with narration, music, and sound effects) that positions Haeckel as the meeting point between the dominant worldviews of his day: scientific rationalism and Romanticism.

To represent the latter, Lebrun makes extended …

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, …

AFI FEST in November

September 8, 2008 Doug Cummings Film festival, Site news

Lake Tahoe

This is the first year in five that I’m not attending the Toronto International Film Festival–the falling US dollar, rising fuel costs, and necessary baby duties have conspired to keep me here in Los Angeles this year, which means I’m missing at least a dozen friends (most of them listed at right) but avidly reading their blogs.

Removing some of the sting, however, is last week’s AFI FEST announcement of a few of the films that will be playing here, October 30 through November 9. Once a ho-hum festival mostly comprised of Hollywood premieres and quirky American indies, …

Of Time and the City

August 26, 2008 Doug Cummings Film review

2008 has turned out to be something of a watershed for longtime Terence Davies fans like myself; not only has the BFI finally released his visually and aurally astonishing British works on region-2 DVDs with commentaries and interviews, but Davies has also completed his first film in eight years: Of Time and the City. Fortunately, it’s showing all week in Los Angeles as part of DocuWeek, a program of films the International Documentary Association is screening in commercial theaters to qualify them for Academy Award nominations.

Of Time and the City is Davies’ first documentary, and it’s a …

Negative Space (1999)

August 19, 2008 Doug Cummings Film review

The news that one of America’s greatest film critics, Manny Farber, has passed away is triggering deserved tributes (well-documented by David Hudson at GreenCine Daily), so I feel it’s a good a time as any to remember Christopher Petit’s 1999 essay film/meditation on Farber, itself titled Negative Space (the title of Farber’s reissued and expanded compendium).

Petit has a history of biographical tributes to filmmakers, and given the dearth of films about the critical process or its practitioners, Negative Space is a welcome 39-minute tribute. For the same reason, it’s also a bit frustrating–given the privileged occasion, does Petit …