My Fantasy Criterion Collection: Volumes 1-3

Recently one of my favorite spots, the essential Twin Peaks Archive, posted an imaginary Criterion Collection Cover (seen above) for Twin Peaks: Fire Walk With Me. It came from this thread over at The Auteur's Forum and I thought it was an absolutely terrific idea and it has inspired me to create some of my own. Here are my first three imaginary discs with my ideal specs listed as well. Excuse how primitive they look as I am still learning how to create them. Hopefully, my abilities will improve and future covers will be more creative and look more professional.
I know these are just pipe dreams but just thinking about these discs puts a huge smile on my face:

Fantasy Criterion #1: Arthur Penn's Night Moves (1975)



Ideal Specs for a Three-Disc Set:
Widescreen Transfer Supervised by Arthur Penn
Feature Length Commentary from Arthur Penn and screenwriter Alan Sharp
Feature Length Commentary from Gene Hackman, Melanie Griffith and James Woods
Original 1975 Promotional Featurette
The Lost Score: A Tribute to Late Composer Michael Small
Neo Noir: A Featurette on Noir in the Seventies
The Damaged Detective: A Conversation with Gene Hackman
Career Starter: Conversations with James Woods and Melanie Griffith
Feature Length Documentary on the Making of Night Moves
Outtakes and Deleted Scenes
Photo Gallery
Bonus Book Featuring Original Screenplay, Novelization and Production Materials

Fantasy Criterion #2: Roman Polanski's Frantic (1988)



Ideal Specs for a Three-Disc Set:
Widescreen Transfer Supervised by Roman Polanski
Feature Length Commentary from Roman Polanski and Screenwriter Gérard Brach
Feature Length Commentary from Harrison Ford and Emmanuelle Seigner
The Maestro: A Conversation with Composer Ennio Morricone
Quite a Find: A Conversation with Emmanuelle Seigner
Creating a Look: A Conversation with Cinematographer Witold Sobocinski
Original 1988 Featurette
A Lesser Work?: A Look Back at Frantic
Outtakes and Deleted Scenes
Remastered CD Soundtrack
Photo Gallery

Fantasy Criterion #3: Richard Loncraine's Full Circle (1977)



Ideal Specs for a Three-Disc Set:
Widescreen Transfer Supervised by Richard Loncraine
Feature Length Commentary from Richard Loncraine
Feature Length Commentary from Mia Farrow
Creating Julia: A Conversation with Novelist Peter Straub
The Haunting: A Conversation with Composer Colin Towns
Recreating The Score: Colin Towns Performing the Score Live
Finding Olivia: A Conversation with Samantha Gates
Lets Scare the Audience to Death: A Featurette on Seventies Horror
Everything's Right Now: A Feature Length Documentary on Full Circle
Deleted Scenes and Outtakes
Remastered Soundtrack CD
Photo Gallery
Bonus Book Featuring Screenplay and Original Peter Straub Novel

Berlin Finally Gets Its Due

Oh how I wish I was in New York right now.
In 1973 Lou Reed stepped into a studio with producer Bob Ezrin to cut the follow up to his surprising smash album Transformer. RCA had been pleased, and perhaps stunned, enough by Transformers success to give Lou and Ezrin complete control in make the album they wanted to make. Lou Reed not content with making Transformer Two recorded a song cycle set in the divided city of Berlin chronicling the lives of a Caroline and Jim. It would take the earlier ideas of divorce and separation from Sinatra's Watertown and plunge as deep as possible into the depths of abuse, addiction and finally a strange sort of redemption.
Upon hearing part of an early mix Rolling Stone proclaimed it to be 'The Sgt.Pepper of the 70's' and a perplexed RCA gave it a royal red carpet arrival with ads and a beautiful fold out sleeve and full lyric sheet. This was beyond Rock and Roll, this was Lou Reed's Brechtian masterpiece that would shove him so far ahead that a new genre was created, 'Lou Reed music'.
The album was lambasted upon first release. Rolling Stone retracted it's initial praise in a scathing review. Lester Bangs famously called it 'The most depressing album ever made.' and it was a commercial bomb.
Swiftly though the album became something of a legend and it's influence starting reaching. David Bowie and Iggy Pop would relocate to Berlin just a few years later to record a mind bending genius set of albums including The Idiot and Low that would reshape rock as we knew it. Berlin as a divided city became a constant reference point for the punk and post-punk movement and it seemed as though Lou Reed's overly ambitious failure had had more influence than anyone could have imagined.
Then the 80's and it was gone again.
I first heard Berlin on it's first cd release in the late 80's. It was the second cd I ever bought, right behind Deborah Harry's Def Dumb and Blonde, and I got it before I even had a player. I remember very clearly taking it to a friends house, who had a player, and the first spinning of that dark and intense tale had a major effect on me.
It would slip in and out of print through the 90's until RCA finally saw fit to remaster it properly at the turn of the decade. Seemingly the story would end there as it's always been an album that divided people but Lou Reed always seemed to know what he had made was something special.
Lou Reed's Berlin lives again at St Ann's Warehouse in New York where it's being performed in it's entirety by Lou for the first time. Directed by artist Julian Schnabel and featuring film scenes projected behind the band by Lola Schnabel of the lovely and talented Emmanuelle Seigner the album is getting performed straight through followed by a short encore.
The reviews have been nothing short of ecstatic, everyone from the New York Times to Rolling Stone is pouring out praise to a piece of art that has deserved it for a very long time.
While I am not in New York to see it I have been fortunate enough to hear an audio recording of the first night and it is majestic. The band featuring Steve Hunter is playing like their lives depend on it and Lou himself seems energized by it. From the first line of 'In Berlin by the wall' to the very end of Sad Song he hits that perfect passionate monotone tone that he became so legendary for. Along with jaw dropping stabs of lead guitar it is to quote culturebot.org, 'One of the greatest performances in the history of live music.'
I hope the praise keeps coming because as legendary as he is Lou Reed the solo artist is still underrated. Dylan, Cohen, Waits....love em but ultimately keep em as I have a date with a tall strung out Germanic Queen and it's been a long time coming.

Lou Reed's Berlin: The DVD, The Live CD and The Book

Here's the cover art for the upcoming release of Julian Schnabel's film of Lou Reed's Berlin, which streets on September 30th. The disc, featuring a filmed live recording of Lou doing his legendary album, as well as footage of Emmanuelle Seigner playing the doomed Caroline, will feature a new interview with Lou as an extra. Also streeting is a CD recording of the show courtesy of Matador Records. That's not all, as apparently a literary companion is on the way as well in April 2009 courtesy of Rizzoli entitled Berlin: A Performance by Lou Reed Directed by Julian Schnabel.

Operation Screenshot (Films of the Nineties) Roman Polanski's Bitter Moon (1992)

Happy 78th Birthday to a director who easily places in my top five filmmakers of all time, Roman Polanski.

Brody and Seigner to Star in Argento's Giallo

This news is a few days old, but it looks like Oscar winning actor Adrien Brody (seen above with Asia Argento) and acclaimed French actress Emmanuelle Seigner have signed on to Dario Argento's newest film, Giallo, replacing Vincent Gallo and Asia Argento. I'm a really big fan of both Brody and Seigner so I will be curious to see what they will bring to the production. The film starts shooting in May and Brody is reportedly sharing a producing credit as well.

Brody and Seigner on the Set of Argento's Giallo

Lots of pics have been popping up online from the set of the upcoming Giallo. This one, that I found at Dario Argento Fans, is my favorite so far and I thought I would share it here. I know everyone is excited about the prospect of Adrien Brody in an Argento film but I must admit I more eager to see what Emmanuelle Seigner, a striking and wonderful actress who has finally begun to get her due in the past couple of years, brings to the film.

Dario Argento's Giallo Trailer Link

Here is a link to the first trailer for Dario Argento's upcoming Giallo starring Adrien Brody and Emmanuelle Seigner. Honestly I'm not too fond of how the trailer is cut, and it basically comes out looking like a hodgepodge between The Bone Collector and any other number of serial killer films from the past decade. Still, I'm glad they are promoting the fact that it is an Argento film and, to me at least, it looks like a step up from Mother of Tears. The link is slow to load and I found that it worked best to pause it at the beginning, wait a few minutes and then play it through.

In Name Only: Dario Argento's Giallo

After spending the last year or so dreading it, I finally got a chance last night to sit down and watch Dario Argento’s tampered-with and much-maligned Giallo. I must admit it felt very strange to not go into an Argento film with some level of major excitement but Giallo’s troubled history, coupled with the fact that Argento didn't have final-cut, helped me go into the film with my lowest expectations ever for a work credited to one of my favorite directors. I must say though that, while this is clearly among Argento’s weakest films, I didn’t think Giallo was a total disaster and I found it better than the three films that I think represent Argento’s career nadir: The Phantom of the Opera, Do You Like Hitchcock and The Mother of Tears.

Argento’s newest starts out well enough, with an opening fifteen minutes or so that are marked by fluid camera work, nice pacing and several touches that are clearly 'Argentoesque'. The film starts to stumble though as soon as Adrien Brody’s character is introduced and it never recovers. Choppy, confused and, by the closing credits, an Argento film in name only, Giallo has inspired moments that are scattered throughout but it never catches fire or ever even comes close to really even sparking. Giallo’s biggest problem is its blandness. This just isn’t that exciting of a film and it’s really hard to ever truly engage with it.

A bad script (dealing here with a misogynistic serial killer who is kidnapping, mutilating and killing beautiful young women around Rome) isn’t the kiss of death for an Argento film, due to his audacious visual style, but here he doesn’t make up for the lethargic and lazy writing from American screenwriters Jim Agnew and Sean Keller. I saw someone else mention that Giallo feels like a work written by a pair that might have an idea of what a 'Giallo' is but they have no understanding of it. That’s pretty dead-on as far as a major issue behind the troubled Giallo goes, as it only occasionally approaches the classic Italian Genre that Argento is one of the unquestionable masters of. Could the film have been a success had Argento been allowed to make the movie he wanted to make? Probably, but with rumored interference from day one we will probably never know as a true director’s cut might be impossible at this point.

On top of a piss-poor script, Giallo also lacks some of the more necessary elements that typically grace an Argento picture, such as a memorable score and stylized look. The score, from Spanish born Marco Werba, is the dullest to ever grace an Argento film and it never elevates the material in the way a Morricone or Goblin soundtrack would have. Cinematographer Frederic Fasano, whose photography was one of the only saving graces for Mother of Tears, also delivers disappointing work as the look of Giallo is never that interesting. Outside of a few directorial flourishes there just isn’t much stylistically that Giallo has going for it and this, coupled with the poor scripting, makes it a long 90 minutes to get through.



Perhaps the most surprising thing about the film is the failure of what looked to be expert casting. Moon in the Gutter favorite Emmanuelle Seigner attempts valiantly to deliver a heartfelt performance as a woman obsessed with finding her kidnapped sister but the script doesn’t give her anything to work with, and her performance flounders because of this. Even worse is a stiff Adrien Brody who delivers a bizarre and lifeless performance (or performances, but I won’t go into that here) as Inspector Enzo Avolfi. Brody can be incredibly dynamic and exciting to watch (I have championed him here before) but he delivers a real self-sabotaging performance for Argento in Giallo. Compare Brody’s work here to Stefania Rocco’s bravura performance in Argento’s The Card Player a few years back for an example of how a great actor in a similar role can elevate extremely flawed material.

Giallo is a regrettable work from Dario Argento but, unlike Mother of Tears, it isn’t necessarily one to get angry about. This is absolutely a case where the blame for most of the problems on the screen rests at the foot of a group of producers who were looking to capitalize on Argento’s name, while not allowing him to make his own film. Perhaps instead of looking at Giallo as a complete failure we should celebrate the moments (particularly the opening sections of the film) where Argento’s genius shines through…they are admittedly few and far between but they make the film good for at least one viewing for devotees.

31 Performances Ripe for Rediscovery (16) Emmanuelle Seigner in BITTER MOON

"I have a perfect memory...when I feel like it."

The first time I saw Emmanuelle Seigner almost twenty-five years ago I thought she was the coolest girl I had ever seen.  The year was 1988, the film was Frantic and I was 15.  Emmanuelle was 21 when she shot Frantic and she seemed like a supernatural cool breeze in the midst of a particularly tacky time...like a post-punk vision in a Cinema du Look dream.  Seigner reminded me of a young Elvis in Frantic (I wasn't at all surprised later when I found out that Presley was indeed her biggest influence) in the way she moved and carried herself...there was a defining rawness in Seigner that she has never lost.  I still think she is the coolest girl I have ever seen.  

Seigner's greatest work on the screen can be found in her husband Roman Polanski's 1992 masterpiece Bitter Moon, one of the nineties truly great works of cinema.  As the troubled and manipulative Mimi, Seigner gives one of the most simultaneous ferocious and vulnerable performances I have ever seen.  All of that cool energy she projected for Polanski less than five years earlier in Frantic is replaced by a live electric charge that feels downright dangerous.  Seigner's work in Bitter Moon is one of the most emotionally and physically naked performances I have ever seen...she's absolutely fearless and her work is both hard to watch and impossible to look away from.  

France produced several of modern cinema's greatest actresses in the eighties and while she has perhaps never gotten the international acclaim as artists like Binoche and Bonnaire, Emmanuelle Seigner has had just as big of an effect on me artistically and personally.  Her career, which has taken her from Godard to rock-stardom, has been incredibly fascinating to watch, even though the acclaim she so often deserved has often alluded her.  The greatest artistic and life muse to one of cinema's most visionary filmmakers, Emmanuelle Seigner is one of my favorite actors and has a number of performances more than ripe for rediscovery but her work as Mimi in Bitter Moon absolutely towers...it's an astonishing performance from one of modern film's most unique icons.

-Jeremy Richey, 2012-