Last week I saw 20 films in five days at Sundance. With just over 200 films listed in the index, that means I barely covered 10% of the slate. Documentaries are a Sundance forté, so it’s not surprising that almost half of the films I screened fall into this category. Similarly, as most docs these days never get transferred to film that accounts for why about half of all my screenings were digital projections. Happily, despite many rumblings by industry pundits regarding the eminent death of 35mm film, most of the narrative features were still on celluloid. Huzzah! READ MORE

In this week’s post we will meet Buster Keaton the gangster, Buster Keaton the communist, and Buster Keaton the Nazi.  I’ve got a treasure trove of rare clips you won’t see anywhere else—all you have to do is click that “more” button to expand this.  C’mon, you know you want to.  It’ll make your day…

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It’s too late to wish Spike Lee’s DO THE RIGHT THING a happy 20th birthday but you can still celebrate the milestone – and I can think of no finer way than with AMMO Books‘ weighty coffee table tome about the making, the meaning, the fallout and the legacy of the legendary and controversial 1989 film. READ MORE

Listen, Let’s Make Love (Scusi, facciamo l’amore?; 1967) begins with a series of scenic images highlighting the beauty and splendor of Milan, Italy accompanied by one of Ennio Morricone’s most sensual scores. As Edda Dell’Orso seductively moans over the opening credits we’re introduced to Italy’s “moral capital” through the eyes of a young man named Lallo (Pierre Clémenti) who has just arrived there to attend his father’s funeral. Inside one of the city’s elegant villas a group of wealthy guests gather to briefly mourn, celebrate and debate the deceased man’s life while Lallo secretly observes them all. Through subsequent conversations we learn that his father was a gigolo who died penniless and is being cremated or as one guest suggested, “Burned like a witch.” This telling introduction will come back to haunt young Lallo after he decides to follow in his father’s nefarious footsteps.

The film details Lallo’s amorous adventures as he romances his way through Milan’s wealthy jet set. Women and men are equally charmed by his dark good looks and Lallo obviously enjoys the various worldly pleasures that he experiences during his meteoric rise to notoriety. Whether you become as enchanted with this provocative European sex romp as I did depends on one thing, your response to the presence of Pierre Clémenti. The film relies on Clémenti’s unconventional beauty and androgynous sex appeal to carry it through to its weighty conclusion. If you don’t find the actor alluring you’re probably going to quickly become bored with Listen, Let’s Make Love. But if you’re easily captivated by Clémenti’s edgy eroticism you’re in for a real treat.

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“What are you?,” asks the blunt landlady when a new guest arrives unexpectedly on the doorstep of her boarding house in The Passing of the Third Floor Back (1935). Filmgoers and filmmakers had been attempting to answer that question since they first spied this tall enigma in front of a camera, starting from the moment when Cesare the somnambulist opened his extraordinary eyes in the expressionist horror classic, The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari (1919).  “I am a wanderer,” Conrad Veidt’s nameless character replies quietly, reminding the viewer of his role as The Wandering Jew in an earlier Gaumont-British film, which marked what was roughly Veidt‘s one hundredth appearance on screen. “I live so out of the world,” he explains, further unsettling the chattering woman.

In truth, the cosmopolitan, German-born actor, whose birthday falls on Saturday, January 22nd, was very much “of the world,” involved in the tumult of his era, but able to hone his gifts to such a point of transcendence, he achieved an international stardom. He could illuminate humanity’s sinister side, but made viewers recognize the human being inside the often troubling characters he brought to life with such exquisite understanding. Ultimately, as Veidt’s friend and contemporary, producer Eric Pommer, once commented, “It is hard to say what was more to be admired in him, his artistry or his humanity.”

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Two reviled flops from 20th Century Fox have finally made their way to DVD on the brave shoulders of the Shout! Factory label. Charles Grodin adapted and starred in the heist film 11 Harrowhouse after the  success of his turn in The Heartbreak Kid (1972), only to be met with critical and audience indifference. Lucky Lady is the more infamous failure, the product of agent-turned-producer Michael Gruskoff’s ability to game the Hollywood system (both DVDs come out next Tuesday, February 1st.). Formerly the representative for screenwriters Gloria Katz and Willard Huyck, he bought the rights to their script for $75,000, and then sold it to Fox for $450,000. An impressive profit over the 10% he previously made from their services. By investing that kind of scratch, Fox had to inflate the story into a blockbuster, signing up Liza Minnelli, Gene Hackman and Burt Reynolds to star, and Stanley Donen to direct. It received vitriolic reviews, many noting Gruskoff’s ploy, and failed to make a profit (although Jonathan Rosenbaum indignantly reported in Movie Wars that it came close, with $12,107,000 in rentals, a half-million less than its budget, due to Fox’s forcing theaters to keep it for extended runs if they wanted it at all.)

Despite all of these shady backdoor dealings, I rather enjoyed both of them, the “bumbling and stupid romp” (Pauline Kael, New Yorker) 11 Harrowhouse and the “mirthless trumpery” (John Simon, NY Mag) of Lucky Lady. Seeing them outside the torrent of negative publicity both received upon their initial release, it’s easier to judge them on their own limited but amiable merits.

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David Lynch celebrated his 65^th birthday last Thursday and Fellow Morlock RH Smith honored one of America’s most respected directors by offering a thought-provoking post comparing Lynch with Edgar Allan Poe as artists who traffic in a peculiar brand of American macabre. Elsewhere on the Internet, bloggers and cinephiles revealed their high regard for the Master of Muholland Drive by noting his special day. The attention and respect given Lynch is deserved, given his auteur status, body of work, and reputation as America’s premier surrealist of the cinema. Coincidentally, I recently caught a film at the Palm Springs International Film Festival that revealed another side to Lynch, and I wonder if his devoted fans will think of him differently should they see it.

David Wants to Fly was not the best film I saw at the festival but it may have been my favorite.  This diary-style documentary by David Sieveking, a young filmmaker from Germany, is deceptively light in tone, but it is actually a complex combination of a personal journey, an investigative expose, and a commentary on hero worship. The film opens in 2006 with a young Sieveking fresh out of film school, unemployed, and living with his independent-minded girlfriend. With no direction, job, or sense of himself, he decides to travel to Fairfield, Iowa, for a workshop conducted by his idol, David Lynch, on the sources of creativity. There, Sieveking discovers that the event is being held at the Maharishi University of Enlightenment and that much of the workshop is about Transcendental Meditation. Lynch has been a practitioner of TM for about 30 years, but he did not begin advocating it publicly until after the turn of the millennium. In addition to workshops at Maharishi U, Lynch has written a book titled Catching the Big Fish: Meditation, Consciousness and Creativity. Transcendental Meditation is the spiritual movement begun by the Maharishi Mahesh Yogi, who initiated many celebrities into TM in the 1960s, including the Beatles, Mia Farrow, and Donovan.  Through TM, the Maharishi promised creativity, good health, success, and “heaven on earth.”

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How many times have you been browsing in a video rental store or shopping for DVDs on-line and completely rejected a potential movie rental or sale based on the box art design?

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Oscar nominations, Shmoscar nominations.  I don’t get particularly worked up over movies everybody likes—they’re low-hanging fruit.  You don’t need me to tell you that INCEPTION, THE FIGHTER, or THE SOCIAL NETWORK are good movies.  It’s so much more interesting to go digging for lost treasure instead—for example:

Buried in the august accomplishments of Alfred Hitchcock is a film so bizarrely out of place that many scholars of Hitch simply jump over it, as if it didn’t even exist.  If you see it, and try to place it into some kind of context with the likes of PSYCHO and VERTIGO, you’ll probably find that old Sesame Street song shuttling around the back of your mind: which of these things does not belong?  Which of these things is not like the others? But the sad thing about all this is, while MR. AND MRS. SMITH may be a misfit in the life and work of Alfred Hitchcock, it is actually a very fine screwball comedy.  But, in a damned-if-ya-do/damned-if-ya-don’t catch, MR. AND MRS. SMITH is also overlooked by the definitive survey of screwball comedies, James Harvey’s essential ROMANTIC COMEDIES IN HOLLYWOOD.

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