Film Journey

I’ve been playing catch-up this week, so there haven’t been any updates, but I did pick up the Frankenstein: Legacy Collection (a five-film DVD box set, of which I’m only interested in James Whales’ two classics, but at $20 for the whole collection, it’s impossible to pass up) as well as the Criterion Collection’s new Ozu films. A new print of Fellini’s La Dolce vita (1960) opens today in Los Angeles, and the Visual Communications FilmFest will be screening films by and about Asian Pacific Americans this weekend. On Monday, renowned choreographer and experimental filmmaker Yvonne Rainer will present Film …

I’m very pleased to announce that my cohorts and I at Masters of Cinema have entered into an agreement with the independently-owned Eureka Video in the UK to distribute a collection of DVDs, The Masters of Cinema Series, representing classics of world cinema. Future titles will include Arnold Fanck’s The Holy Mountain (1926), Carl Theodor Dreyer’s MikaÎl (1925) (undistributed on video in the US), and F.W. Murnau’s Tartuffe (1926). Eureka has a great relationship with the Friedrich Wilhelm Murnau Foundation in Germany, and we look forward to collaborating with them on future releases.

All of the titles in the …

The last few years, I’ve taken advantage of the fact that the San Francisco International Film Festival falls on my birthday in late April, and this year is no exception. I needed little convincing to attend the oldest film festival in the US, and even less reason to take a vacation in one of America’s most beautiful cities.

After arriving yesterday afternoon, I managed to see the latest works of two masters, Tsai Ming-liang (Goodbye, Dragon Inn) and Raoul Ruiz (That Day [C’est jour-l‡]).

Tsai’s film is a continuation of his themes of urban alienation, …

This weekend, I attended the Russian Nights film festival, which features a smattering of titles gleaned from the touring Russian International Film Festival (RIFF) organized by the Stas Namin Center in Moscow (an arts organization championed in the West by such musicians as Frank Zappa and the Scorpions). I wasn’t able to attend last year’s gala festival here in Los Angeles, but this weekend I was able to purchase the handsome coffee table book that commemorated the event, The Exhibition of Russian Cinema: 100 Movies & 50 Directors of 20 Century in Russia.

I say it’s a handsome book, …

After a couple of years of rumors and delays, New Yorker Video is finally scheduled to release one of my all-time favorite movies, Robert Bresson’s A Man Escaped (1956), as well as Bresson’s Lancelot du lac (Lancelot of the Lake) (1974) and potentially L’Argent (Money) (1983) on DVD on May 25th. Amazon.com is already pre-ordering the first two.

I’ll hold off extended commentary on these magnificent films until they’re released, but all I can say is that it’s about time someone finally started releasing Bresson on DVD in North America–the technology is only seven years old.…