Krzysztof Kieslowski placed it on his Top Ten list for a Sight & Sound magazine poll. Dave Kehr, formerly of the Chicago Reader, called it “one of the finest works of the short-lived Czech New Wave.” The New York Times noted that INTIMATE LIGHTING (1965) was one of those movies that “loses none of its charm, to age or to repeated viewing” and countless other critics who have seen it have championed this small-scale but beautifully observed character study about the brief reunion of two musician friends and their realization of how their lives have changed since their school days.       READ MORE

I grew up singing and listening to my family sing.  We weren’t show folk or carnies.  My parents were ex-military (they had in fact met and married in the Air Force) and worked for the better part of my formative years as school teachers.  I was the only actor in the family tree but I came from a long line of playful, funsy folk… and we liked our music.  Not one of us could play an instrument or even read music but our home was swimming in long playing records.  My parents even had their Las Vegas wedding ceremony on an LP, and my Mom and her parents both had song booth recordings made years and years earlier.  Even today, the combined familial unit of my folks and my wife’s family will break into spontaneous harmonizing around the table.  (It doesn’t even have to be a dinner table.  Could be an end table.  Could be an occasional table.)  I’m glad my own children get to be around that vibe and there’s lots of singing in our own home, even if fidelity to original lyrics isn’t necessarily a top priority.  All this to say it should come as no surprise that I love movie scenes in which characters sing in the glorious imperfection of their untrained voices. READ MORE

Following the tendentious example of the Warner Archive, Universal and MGM have quietly started their own DVD burn-on-demand services. With seemingly no publicity, a dozen MGM titles became available through Amazon‘s CreateSpace in December (press release here), with DVD-Rs including Sidney Lumet’s The Group (listed at $19.98, discounted to $17.99). Twenty-five Universal titles became available this month, with the same lack of advertising, and also made available through Amazon’s CreateSpace (press release here). Their titles include Paul Schrader’s Blue Collar, Mitchell Leisen’s Death Takes a Holiday, Abraham Polonsky’s Tell Them Willie Boy Is Here, and Leo McCarey’s Ruggles of Red Gap, which I purchased at $20, only to have it fall to $15.99 a few days later. The whole MOD (movies on demand) process is highly controversial in the cinephile community, as it uses inferior media (burned DVD-Rs instead of pressed DVDs), generally charge a higher price, and take little care with the transfers (many are interlaced and non-anamorphic). The quality varies widely depending on the sources that are used, but the price point remains the same (I consult the Home Theater Forum and the Criterion Forum for reports on individual transfers).

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Douglas Sirk directed a series of melodramas during the 1950s in which a lavish visual style and careful mise-en-scene telegraphed a subtle criticism of middle-class social conventions beneath the emotion-driven storylines.  With their rich Technicolor surfaces and highly charged performances, Sirk’s melodramas are distinctive and easily recognizable as the work of this respected director. Much of the scholarship and critical commentary on Sirk centers on these films, which include Magnificent Obsession, All That Heaven Allows, The Tarnished Angels, Written on the Wind, and Imitation of Life. Recently, I had the opportunity to view Sirk’s little-known The First Legion at the wonderful Bank of America Cinema in Chicago, which is devoted to showing classic films every Saturday night.  Not available on DVD, The First Legion represents an early work by Sirk that reflects his trademark style yet also differs from it.

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It’s been a whirlwind of activity, starting with the second annual Art House Convergence – topped off with a closing speech by Michael Moore – then promptly followed by, of course, a slew of films, meetings, shmoozers, and late nights fueled by donut-holes and beer (my poison of choice, anyway). Park City also saw the sudden apparition of graffiti along its moneyed corridors that was attributed to Banksy – which would make sense since he was premiering his feature debut, Exit Through the Gift Shop, at the festival. Still being in the thick of it, I shall limit my observations on today’s post to three things.

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A little known and ingenious B-movie delight, GIRLS ON THE LOOSE (1958) stands out from the pack of teenage bad girl movies that became so prevalent in the late fifties. For one thing, these aren’t gum-chewing high school delinquents but a quartet of hardened professionals and damaged goods. Equally surprising is the tough, no nonsense story arc which makes the most of its low budget sets and noir lighting schemes in a compact 77-minute programmer directed by Paul Henreid. Yes, THAT Paul Henreid, the former Warner Bros. heartthrobe from Austria-Hungary who performed that romantic cigarette seduction of Bette Davis in Now, Voyager (1942). Here is he, directing his incognito cast of GIRLS ON THE LOOSE.       READ MORE

While watching Universal’s hopelessly misconceived (but still enjoyable) THE STRANGE CASE OF DR. RX (1942) the other night, I was struck by how valuable an asset was Mantan Moreland.  READ MORE

My dictionary gives the definition of a cri de coeur (krēt kër′) as “a cry from the heart, an impassioned protest, complaint, etc.” If you really want to see that term translated onto film, the Warner Brothers movie, Two Seconds (1932) could fill the bill.

Crude, raw and disturbing, Two Seconds (1932) is being broadcast on TCM on Thursday, Jan. 21st, at 11:45am. First released in the middle of 1932, audiences flocked to see this financially successful but dramatically grim tale about the thoughts and memories that flash through the mind of a man just as he is about to die in the electric chair. Perhaps some of them felt as though they were walking the last mile too. After Americans had witnessed 13 million jobs evaporating into thin air since 1929, watching nationwide unemployment rise to 23.6 %, wouldn’t logic tell us that most people might want to go to the movies to escape a reality they could not control? Apparently not, especially when Warner Brothers had the good fortune to have several talented individuals involved in this film. READ MORE