30 Years Of Annie Hall

Annie Hall isn't my favorite Woody Allen film, although I don't think it is a bad choice as one. I would probably take Hannah and Her Sisters or Manhattan over it but Annie Hall is the one film Woody Allen has made in his career that everyone seems to agree on. It is also the film that introduced me to the wonderful, and sometimes frustrating, world of Woody Allen.
This ode to a failed but ultimately memorable relationship won 4 1977 Academy awards including Picture, Screenplay, Director and Diane Keaton won for Best Actress. Woody Allen was even nominated for Best Actor but lost to Richard Dreyfuss.
It is fitting that some of my finest, and most vivid, memories of Annie Hall involve girls in my life. I have found that inevitably my love for Woody Allen will always come up in a relationship and Annie Hall is always the film I show as an introduction and explanation. I have yet to have shown the film to someone that didn't love it as it almost plays like a virtual greatest hits movie. Annie Hall is a film with so many memorable moments that I am always struck upon each new viewing by a moment where I will think, "wow, that scene is from this film too". Everything from the Marshall McLuhan cameo to the lobster scene to the subtitled thoughts moment to the Christopher Walken and Shelly Duval sections are here. The film almost feels like part of my DNA and has come to play a major part in my life, it is almost like pulling out an old family photo album to show someone where I came from.
I think one thing that makes Annie Hall so special is that it is the film where Woody Allen perfectly melds together his more 'serious' cinema with his earlier 'funny' films. It is a more grown up work than Bananas but it isn't as bitter as Stardust Memories. It marks a perfect moment for not only Woody Allen but for many of its fans.
Putting all of its most famous moments aside the film fittingly belongs to the enigmatic Diane Keaton. It is often forgotten just how wonderful an actress Keaton is, consider the fact that she made Annie Hall the same year as the viciously disturbing Looking For Mr. Goodbar. Annie Hall is also the character that she has never quite recovered from, for many of us and perhaps for Ms. Keaton herself she will never be more sublime and perfect as she was in this film. The moment towards the end where she sings Seems Like Old Times is one of the most moving and cemented images in film history, and it still tears me up every time I see it.
Many film fans think that Star Wars should have won best picture for 1977 and I have had several arguments with some of them over the years. I still love Star Wars but for all that film meant to me as a youth Annie Hall has meant even more to me as an adult.
Woody Allen has made many films since Annie Hall, some great and some not. Annie Hall remains, if not his great work, his most endearing. For her 30th birthday I send her good wishes and thanks for a dream she continues to whisper.

Jess Franco: Here's to Another Year of Going Your Own Way

Today, cinema's most maverick director is celebrating his birthday. Jess Franco has for more than four decades provided audiences with some of the most original and startling images ever committed to film. More often than not the greatest artists are usually criticised or overlooked completely in their lifetime and this has unfortunately sometimes been the case with Jess. Since the early 90s though more and more film fans have been discovering the wonderful, surreal and always unforgettable world of Franco and his films.
I discovered Franco probably in the same way many pepole my age did, by stumbling across a photograph of Soledad Miranda in the early part of the 90s. I'm still not sure if I have ever seen a face as lovely, haunting or pure as Soledad and I soon had in my possession a horribly blurry, cropped and un-subtitled VHS pirated copy of her in Franco's VAMPYROS LESBOS. Even though I was seeing it in the worst possible condition I still knew that I was witnessing a film, actress and director unlike any other.
Solidifying my love for Franco over a decade ago was the groundbreaking coverage in Video Watchdog and book IMMORAL TALES. The mid 90's were a blur of seeking out and ordering different Franco films, some in good quality prints and others in the worst imaginable. Soon people like Soledad, Lina Romay, Maria Rohm and Jess himself started coming up in conversations with other film fanatic friends on a regular basis. It was an extremely exciting time of discovery for a new cinema and a completely fresh way of looking at art.
DVD has been a miracle for Jess Franco fans, I have been able to replace many of my blurry tapes with fine, and sometimes even special editions, discs of my favorite Franco films. Being able to watch the Soledad Miranda films, FEMALE VAMPIRE, VIRGIN AMONG THE LIVING DEAD or any number of his best films from the sixties and seventies in such high quality still blows my mind. I have only seen fifty or so of his near 200 films and the anticipation of continuing to discover his works still feels like discovering cinema itself. A recent re-watching of MACUMBA SEXUAL on dvd left me as speechless as any film has in a very long time.
I met Jess and Lina once and wrote about it in the early days of this blog. He remains, well into his seventies, one of the most important and unique of all directors.
When thinking about Jess I always remember a line that Montgomery Clift said in FROM HERE TO ETERNITY, "A man don't go his own way...he's nothing."
Jess Franco has always gone his own way...Cinema has been the better for it...God bless him.

No Favors: Paul Simon's One Trick Pony

Lately more and more lists have been popping up centering on the very best 'Rock' films in cinema. The usual suspects are typically listed but I rarely see any love or respect given to one of the most honest films ever made on the subject, Paul Simon's brutally penetrating and subtle ONE TRICK PONY.
ONE TRICK PONY was released in late 1980 to poor box office and very mixed reviews. The incredible soundtrack album was released at the same time and remains one of the most under appreciated and poorest selling of all of Simon's works. Despite Roger Ebert's rave review the film quickly sank into oblivion. Very much ahead of its time, I think if the film had been released just five years later it would have fared much better. Paul Simon, who hadn't made an album since 1975's STILL CRAZY AFTER ALL THESE YEARS, could definitely see something was happening to many of his peers from the 1960's. Simon had the foresight and vision to see and understand just exactly what the dark promise that the eighties held for many of the sixties most promising voices was.

"You always wanted to be Elvis Presley...and he didn't do a very good job with it either."

Elvis Presley's death in 1977 is a subject that is frequently brought up throughout ONE TRICK PONY. It's like a gigantic reminder that Simon's character Jonah Levin's dreams and life haven't worked out the way that he thought they would.
Jonah Levin is well into his thirties as ONE TRICK PONY begins and it's been a good ten years since he had his last hit, the anti-war epic SOFT PARACHUTES. He has recently lost his wife and son in a messy divorce and he spends nearly all of his time travelling with his band from club to club attempting to get across a series of new songs he has written. The band, and Jonah himself, are incredibly talented but they are out of step with the times and ae either opening up for new wave bands like The B-52's or playing to half empty rooms filled with people who only want to relive the past.
A freak oldies gig gets Levin a meeting with a slimy record company exec, played brilliantly by Rip Torn and he suddenly gets the chance to record a new album again. Matched up with a conniving commercial record producer, Lou Reed in an astonishingly knowing performance, Jonah and his band watch as his music is taken away and changed into something nearly unrecognizable. Jonah then has to make a simple choice...sell out or risk fading away entirely.

"It's better to burn out than to fade away"
-Neil Young, HEY HEY, MY MY-

Neil Young was, of course, along with Simon another sixties pioneer who throughout the eighties was subjected to the same sort of changing musical and cultural climate; his audacious THIS NOTES FOR YOU seems almost like some sort of weird continuation to the themes of ONE TRICK PONY. Sell out or fade away...

The most incredible thing about ONE TRICK PONY is just how honest it is. There isn't a moment in this film that doesn't seem real. Critics have pointed out Simon's inexperience as an actor and I suppose that might be a valid complaint but I quite like his low keyed performance. He looks like someone always just on the edge of exploding and I doubt that any trained or experienced actor could have managed to play ONE TRICK PONY'S unforgettable last moment better than Simon did.
To balance out Simon's inexperience director Robert M. Young surrounded him with two of the best younger actors of the period, Blair Brown and Mare Winningham. Both of these two fine actresses really shine in this film and it is a credit to Simon's script that he is able to allow so much complexity in these supporting characters.
The key performances though, along with Simon, rest with Torn and Reed as the representation of everything that had gone wrong in the music industry by the mid eighties. Torn is one of the great actors at projecting an undercurrent of evil. Behind that charming smile always seems to be lurking something slightly sinister. Simon's personal casting of Lou Reed was genius. Simon was aware that there were few artists around as uncompromising as Reed and he also realized that to be that uncompromising Reed had gone through as many obstacles as anyone in the business. Reed portrays the sanitizing producer Steve Kunelian as almost retitle like, he looks like he could shed his skin at any second for a quick buck. The interaction between Reed and Simon during the un-making of Jonah's track ACE IN THE HOLE provides the film with some of its most dynamic scenes.

ONE TRICK PONY'S most moving moments come when Jonah is interacting with his son and band. Unable to ever completely relate or give himself fully to the women in his life, Jonah only really comes out emotionally with the men in his world. One particularly notable scene with his band comes when they are playing 'name a dead rock star'...they go through what seems to be an endless list until finally someone regretfully says, "Elvis", to which Jonah just sighs sadly and says "Yea...he's dead."
The scenes with Jonah and his son are particularly inspired. Any kid who grew up in the eighties with a divorced family will be able to relate heavily to the scene where Jonah takes his son to see THE EMPIRE STRIKES BACK or attempts to teach him how to play baseball. These moments have a rare intimate quality that raise the film much higher than most 'rock' films have ever strived for.

"He's got one trick that'll last a lifetime, but that's all a pony needs"

The main thing that sells the film though is Simon's remarkable music. He was entering a very different phase of his career after his incedibly successful chart run of the sixties and seventies. The album ONE TRICK PONY and it's follow up HEARTS AND BONES would find Simon performing the most introspective and at times heartbreaking music of his career. The title track, ACE IN THE HOLE and LATE IN THE EVENING are all rock classics and the band including the great bassist Tony Levin absolutely smoke.

Along with the album's harder songs are a series of slower mournful tracks that are among the best Simon ever wrote and they are all practically unknown. JONAH, LONG LONG DAY, HOW THE HEART APPROACHES WHEN IT YEARNS, GOD BLESS THE ABSENTEE and THAT'S WHY GOD MADE THE MOVIES all feature uncommonly good lyrics as well as some of the most insightful commentary imaginable on failure, separation and loneliness. When Simon asks, "Do you wonder where those boys have gone?" he seems to sum up a very complex question that an entire generation was asking themselves as the eighties were quickly burying everything the sixties had stood for.

"Halfway through, we begin to realize that it's about a lot more things than an aging folk hero. It is also about the generation that was young and politically active in the 1960s and now has been overtaken by the narcissism of the most brutally selfish and consumer-oriented period in American history. Many children of the sixties have been, of course, willing converts to the new culture of the Cuisinart. Others stick to what they used to believe in. In Jonah's case, it's folk music. Everybody's case is different."
-Roger Ebert closing his original 3.5 star review of ONE TRICK PONY-

ONE TRICK PONY remains unavailable on dvd. It was recently included in a list of possible Warner releases Amazon featured that could be voted on for release, but it failed to get enough. It is one of those films that seemed to immediately fall through the cracks, as did it's creator for awhile. After the incredible, but ignored, HEARTS AND BONES, Simon released GRACELAND...a work that lyrically was among the best of his life but seemed to confirm musically that Simon along with a lot of other people from his generation had lost the passion for the rock music that had previously meant so much to them. The last twenty years have seen Simon slowly getting that fire back in his music and his most recent album is his best in years.
Paul Simon rarely revisits many of ONE TRICK PONY'S songs live and the film is mentioned among movie fans even less, but it remains one of my favorites. The film's final images of a man who chooses to perhaps fade away rather than sell out are still as influential to me as they were when I first saw this as a teenager on home video in the late eighties.
Paul Simon is rightfully known as one of the most influential and important figures in rock history, I would say that the unjustly forgotten ONE TRICK PONY is him at his purest, and most challenging.

Jean-Claude Brialy (The Director)

Throughout the next day or so I will be paying tribute to the late Jean-Claude Brialy with a series of posts consisting of both pictures and text. I want to celebrate this man's incredible career which consisted of almost 200 films and spanned over fifty years.
A true icon and and a shining light in the films of the French New Wave, the man appeared in so many of my favorite films it is hard to know where to begin. So I thought I would start with a nod to Brialy behind the camera. Starting with 1971's EGLANTINE Brialy directed six feature films as well as an additional 6 television productions. I haven't seen the majority of these so the following details are sketchy at best. I was always blown away by the fact that Brialy, who was so prolific with his acting career, had time for anything else.
Here are some brief notes and images for some of Brialy's work as a director.

EGLANTINE won the Silver Seashell Award at the San Sebastian International Film Festival and starred the aging French actress Valentine Tessier as a Grandmother who is being visited by her two young grandchildren. This period film garnered some acclaim upon release and signaled Brialy has a talent to watch behind the camera. It was unfortunately never released in Britain or the United States and appears to be out of circulation even in France.

His next film as director, LES VOLETS CLOS (CLOSED SHUTTERS) did apparently receive a brief US theatrical release. The only information that I could find on this film comes from the all movie guide and it states, "Thomas (Jacques Charrier) is a sailor who has deserted from the Navy in this gentle French drama. He has found refuge in a seaside bordello. Romantic difficulties blossom as he and Flora (Catherine Rouvert), one of the house's prostitutes, fall in love with each other. When he hurts her, however, the denizens of the house agree that he must leave."

Brialy was the writer as well as an actor in his next film, the comedy L'OISEAU RARE (A RARE BIRD). This film also featured a young Anny Duperey and focuses on a chauffeur attempting to find suitable employment. The film was well received in Europe upon initial release but has since, unfortunately, follow under the radar.

His next film as director would be his most famous and the one I have seen, although it has been awhile. UN AMOUR DE PLUIE (LOVING IN THE RAIN), which he would also help write and act in is mostly remembered for the great performannce of the lovely Romy Schneider. Brialy and Romy had worked together before and had of course known each other for years. This striking film features Romy at her most stunning and remains the best film Brialy directed as well as the easiest to find. I hope to revisit it soon and will hopefully have more thoughts on it in the future.

After a 1979 television film Brialy the director returned with LES MALHEURS DE SOPHIE, a film that like EGLANTINE would focus on children. This 1981 feature was adapted from a classic French tale and received mixed reviews upon opening but a home video release in France is apparently not hard to find.

A handful of television films would follow but Brialy would return to the big screen just one more time with 1983's UN BON PETIT DIABLE which reunited him with the talented Bernadette Lafont. Lafont and Brialy had both came to fame starring together in Chabrol's classic 1958 film LE BEAU SERGE so this film must have been a nice reunion for them. Brialy again co-wrote the screen adaption of a classic French tale of children and again the film received mixed notices.

While not as awe inspiring as his work in front of the camera, I thought paying a small tribute to Jean-Claude Brialy's work behind the camera would be a different but worthwhile place to start. I would like to have the opportunity to see these someday and hopefully they will eventually become more available. Highly recommended is the Romy Schneider film LOVING IN THE RAIN which showed Brialy as a talented director with a great eye for beauty and composition.

My tribute to the late Jean-Claude Brialy will continue tomorrow.

Film Music Blog-a-Thon (Francis Lai, Emmanuelle 2)

Damian over at the Windmills Of My Mind blog is hosting a Film Music Blog-A-Thon and I thought it would be fun to join in. Many of my all time favorite albums are soundtracks so the idea of selecting just one to write about was extremely difficult. My mind immediately started to flip through my internal database of favorite albums and lp's ranging from Colin Town's FULL CIRCLE to Air's THE VIRGIN SUICIDES. Then I started thinking about individual moments in films that use certain pieces of music to remarkable effect like Bobby Womack's ACROSS 110th STREET in JACKIE BROWN or Moby's GOD MOVING OVER THE FACE OF THE WATER in HEAT. I decided finally though that I wanted to post on an album and film that typically induce disdain and snickers rather than respect. So the following is my tribute to one of my favorite lps, composers, actresses and yes, films.

Francis Lai will forever be linked to two particular themes that he wrote; The first for Claude Lelouch's masterful A MAN AND A WOMAN and the second for the piano based piece for Arthur Hiller's LOVE STORY. While those two themes are incredibly powerful they have often overshadowed just how prolific and consistently brilliant Lai has been. Scoring well over 100 films since the mid sixties, Lai has contributed solid work to pretty much every imaginable genre for directors ranging from Michael Winner to Rene Clement. Excelling in everything from violent crime films to romantic comedies, Lai is most masterful at composing themes representing desire, seduction and erotic love. He was never more successful at this than he was in in 1975 when he was asked to deliver the score for the follow up to the most financially successful French film of the seventies.

It is hard to overestimate just how popular and important Just Jaeckin's EMMANUELLE was in 1974 and how big of a star it made Sylvia Kristel. With the flood of hardcore films films filling French and American theaters by the mid seventies, Jaeckin's film played as a barnstorming reminder of the power of suggestion and true eroticism in film, with Sylvia Kristel becoming the face and body of a movement that seemed steeped in tradition as well as being totally progressive.
First time director and famed photographer Francis Giacobetti had his work cut out for him when he got the assignment to direct the sequel to Jaeckin's film. With the obvious thought that the follow up and had to top the first film in nearly every respect, Giacobetti began shooting what would turn out to be one of the most audaciously erotic films ever lensed, as well as a film that would push the limits to what was acceptable in a mainstream release.
Along with the jaw dropping images and incredibly lush photography that Giacobetti delivered for EMMANUELLE 2, a film which Alex Cox called one of the greatest ever made, there are two things that make the film not only better than the first but also one of the best films of the mid seventies.
Sylvia Kristel and Francis Lai were both in their absolute primes in 1975. Kristel was getting a landslide of offers from directors all over the world and would soon be appearing in films helmed by everyone from Claude Chabrol to Alain Robbe-Grillet. Francis Lai was just a couple of years past winning the Oscar for LOVE STORY and was one of the most in demand film composers in the world. Lai's soundtrack for EMMANUELLE 2 would be the perfect compliment to Giacobett's erotic imagry as well as a tribute to the beautiful and talented Kristel, an actress of considerable skill and a culturaly important figure that history typically tries to look over.

Lai's music for EMMANUELLE 2 is an intriguing and always beguiling mix of classical orchestration and surprising electronic textures. Paired up with the talented Christian Gaubert (with reported help from Catherine Desage) as arranger and working with some of France's top session musicians, Francis Lai's EMMANUELLE 2 has the clear distinction of sounding very much of its time but it still progressive sounding. The album is filled with Lai's typically spare piano pieces mixed in with Gaubert's innovative arrangements, but it becomes among Lai's finest works in the moments where he matches the eastern locations of Giacobetti's film with a series of still astonishing synthesizer pieces.
One of the highlights to the film and album is the acupuncture sequence. Here Lai's music seems to become a character in the film and the track is nearly overwhelmingly hypnotice with it's cross cutting of LOVE STORY like piano parts, sweeping orchestrations and irresistible drugged-out electronic sections. Listening to this track, with or without the film's striking imagery, has an incredibly strong dreamlike pull that few pieces of music in my collection can match.
Along with the above section, the key track to the album and film itself is the unbelievably cool and seductive title track sung by Sylvia Kristel. L'AMOUR D'AIMER is one of my all time favorite songs and every time I hear Sylvia Kristel's breathy and inspired rendition of it I am transported back in time to some hot and exotic locale with her. I posted previously on this track and how wonderful I think it is and the shots I have of Kristel in the studio with Lai are among my favorite photographs. The two clearly appear to be having fun in creating one of the greatest and most undervalued movie theme songs of the seventies.

The title track is available in two versions, both sung by Kristel, with one being in French and the other in English. While it is hard to match the original French version, Kristel's more hesitant English vocal is a real favorite and it is unfortunate that it isn't available on the soundtrack lp or cd.
The single was a minor hit in France and Japan and the great 45 of it often pops up on ebay and is highly recommended. The soundtrack lp is one of the great near lost treasures of the seventies. It was released to coincide with the film but quickly slipped out of print. It briefly resurfaced in Japan on a highly collectible cd in the 90s but that too is currently out of print. It occasionally pops up used on ebay or amazon but expect to pay a high price. A google blog search for it might provide a pleasant surprise if you choose to look though.
My favorite shot from EMMANUELLE 2, and one of my favorite closing shots in screen history, is the final freeze frame. After the final love scene Giacobetti pans away from the explicit action and cuts to a triumphantly powerful looking Kristel, and as Lai's remarkable title theme begins Giacobetti freezes the frame on one of France's great faces and then the credits role. It remains for me a chilling, exhirlirating moment and a bold reminder that the human face can be among the most erotic things in the world.

Obviously Francis Lai, Sylvia Kristel and Francis Giacobetti didn't win awards or much respect for EMMANUELLE 2. The film opened, got savaged by most critics and didn't do as well as the first one financially. I suspect too that the above rhapsodizing post on it will no doubt draw a few snickers also but that's okay, I am unapologetic about my love for this film, actress and music. It remains one of the great marriages between image and music in screen history. As the film's slightly notorious ad campaign stated back in 1975, "Nothing is wrong if it feels good" and all of these years later Francis Lai's music in this film still makes me feel very, very good.

Soundtrack #3: Tess (Phillipe Sarde)

Upon hearing Phillipe Sarde's final score for TESS, Roman Polanski was said to have broken down in tears. Sarde's score for TESS is as lovely and wondrous as the film itself and remains a high point in one of the most prolific of all modern film composers.
Born in France in 1945, Sarde scored his first film in 1970, the Claude Sautet film THE THINGS OF LIFE. Sarde quickly became one of the most in demand composers in the world and is known for his stirring and quite majestic themes. He would work with the talented Sautet several times and would supply the lovely Romy Schneider with some of her most memorable themes.
1973 would find Sarde scoring Marco Ferreri's LA GRANDE BOUFFE and this would start a collaboration between the two cinema mavericks that would result in Sarde scoring several of Ferreri's most intense works. It is also rumored that Ferreri based some of his most extreme characters on the lively Sarde.
In 1976 Sarde was hired by Polanski to score his masterful film, THE TENANT. Fans of Polanski know that scoring one of his films is a big task as the scores of Komeda for his most famous films in the sixties are pretty untoppable. Sarde quickly proved himself as one of Polanski's greatest composers as his work with THE TENANT was as unnerving and brilliant as the film itself.
After the success of Sarde's work on THE TENANT, Polanski asked him to score his upcoming TESS and Sarde delivered a score that still is possibly his finest. Sarde's Oscar nominated score is a moving and at times sweeping work that stands very much apart from a typical period piece movie. There is something remarkably fresh and modern sounding about Sarde's work but it never feels out of place with Polanski's images from the past.
The undoubtedly highlight of the score and the accompanying soundtrack album is the stunning main theme. The moving theme replays throughout the entire film and sections of it play well into other tracks on the album. The lp is a resounding success with each short piece playing off the other very nicely. Other highlights of the album include the lovely just over a minute long TESS AT GRAVESIDE and the lengthiest piece on the album, FINALE.
Sarde's TESS has had a slightly frustrating history on vinyl as well as cd. Originally available as a just under thirty minute lp with a number of musical cues from the film left off, the soundtrack finally appeared on an import French cd in a further abbreviated version matched up with THE TENANT. That cd is now out of print and the score is getting harder and harder to track down which is unfortunate and very frustrating.
Sarde would work with Polanski one more time on the doomed PIRATES in 1985. He continues to be one of the busiest and most in demand composers in the world with his most recent score being for the great Andre Techine's latest film.
TESS is my favorite work by Sarde and one of the best soundtracks to any of Nastassja's films. One hopes that one day it will get re-released with the complete score as it is a very valuable work that should be easily available.

My Appointment With The Tyrell Corporation

There are many great dvds coming out this Fall, including everything from obscure cult films, exciting mainstream releases and rare TV shows. I must admit though there is only one collection that has me so excited with anticipation that I can hardly stand it.
While I won't believe it until it is actually in my hands, it appears that Ridley Scott's landmark 1982 feature, BLADE RUNNER, is going to finally get its due on December 18th in a massive five disc set that will include no less than five versions of the film including Scott's new Final Cut as well as the mythical Workprint version.
Fans of the film will already be aware of the legal troubles that have kept this project just a rumor for many years now so actually having a release date, full specs and artwork are major things themselves.
BLADE RUNNER, a film that recently appeared on AFI's otherwise questionable 100 best American films list, is a major work and is, along with Sergio Leone's ONCE UPON A TIME IN AMERICA and Wim Wender's PARIS TEXAS, my favorite film of the eighties.
I first saw the film as a teenager in the eighties on the old theatrical release VHS and I was frankly underwhelmed by it. There were elements of it I liked but, like many, Harrison Ford's narration struck a false chord with me and anyone could see that the ending had been tampered with. I caught up with the film again in the early nineties on the laserdisc version of Scott's 'Directors Cut' and this is where the film began to quickly become one of my all time favorites.
Like a lot of fans I have eagerly eaten up as much information as possible, ranging from Video Watchdog's great early look at the films different versions to the exhaustive FUTURE NOIR by Paul Sammon. Sammon's book remains one of the great film books and it is absolutely essential for fans of the film or modern cinema in general.

I will be looking at the film, and the new box set, in detail when it arrives in December. I will say for now that one thing I have always loved about this haunting film is just how much disagreement it causes. Many of my favorite film conversations from the past have centered on this film (Is Deckard a replicant? The theatrical cut vs. the International version etc. etc.) Scott's film has given me many, many hours of interesting but friendly arguing and disagreeing...and to show which side I am on, yes he is a replicant.
So below are the full specs to the upcoming box set and a photograph of it. This monster is available for pre order on Amazon and Deep Discount for under sixty dollars! I would be willing to visit a clinic and sell blood on a weekly basis if I had to to get this. It will also be available in a two disc and four disc set but this box is the way to go and it is the only way to get the legendary workprint.
Here are the final specs and proof positive that at least this year, Christmas arrives almost a week early.


Disc One
RIDLEY SCOTT'S ALL-NEW "FINAL CUT" VERSION OF THE FILM
Restored and remastered with added & extended scenes, added lines, new and cleaner special effects and all new 5.1 Dolby Digital Audio. Also includes:

Commentary by Ridley Scott
Commentary by executive producer/co-screenwriter Hampton Fancher and co-screenwriter David Peoples; producer Michael Deely and production executive Katherine Haber
Commentary by visual futurist Syd Mead; production designer Lawrence G. Paull, art director David L. Snyder and special photographic effects supervisors Douglas Trumbull, Richard Yuricich and David Dryer

Disc Two
DOCUMENTARY DANGEROUS DAYS: MAKING BLADE RUNNER
A feature-length authoritative documentary revealing all the elements that shaped this hugely influential cinema landmark. Cast, crew, critics and colleagues give a behind-the-scenes, in-depth look at the film -- from its literary roots and inception through casting, production, visuals and special effects to its controversial legacy and place in Hollywood history.

Disc Three
1982 THEATRICAL VERSION
This is the version that introduced U.S. movie-going audiences to a revolutionary film with a new and excitingly provocative vision of the near-future. It contains Deckard/Harrison Ford's character narration and has Deckard and Rachel's (Sean Young) "happy ending" escape scene.

1982 INTERNATIONAL VERSION
Also used on U.S. home video, laserdisc and cable releases up to 1992. This version is not rated, and contains some extended action scenes in contrast to the Theatrical Version.

1992 DIRECTOR'S CUT
The Director's Cut omits Deckard's voiceover narration and removes the "happy ending" finale. It adds the famously-controversial "unicorn" sequence, a vision that Deckard has which suggests that he, too, may be a replicant.

Disc Four
BONUS DISC - "Enhancement Archive": 90 minutes of deleted footage and rare or never-before-seen items in featurettes and galleries that cover the film's amazing history, production teams, special effects, impact on society, promotional trailers, TV spots, and much more.

Featurette "The Electric Dreamer: Remembering Philip K. Dick"
Featurette "Sacrificial Sheep: The Novel vs. The Film"
Philip K. Dick: The Blade Runner Interviews (audio)
Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep Cover Gallery (images)
The Art of Blade Runner (image galleries)
Featurette "Signs of the Times: Graphic Design"
Featurette "Fashion Forward: Wardrobe & Styling"
Screen Tests: Rachel & Pris
Featurette "The Light That Burns: Remembering Jordan Cronenweth"
Unit photography gallery
Deleted and alternate scenes
1982 promotional featurettes
Trailers and TV spots
Featurette "Promoting Dystopia: Rendering the Poster Art"
Marketing and merchandise gallery (images)
Featurette "Deck-A-Rep: The True Nature of Rick Deckard"
Featurette "--Nexus Generation: Fans & Filmmakers"

Disc Five
WORKPRINT VERSION
This rare version of the film is considered by some to be the most radically different of all the Blade Runner cuts. It includes an altered opening scene, no Deckard narration until the final scenes, no "unicorn" sequence, no Deckard/Rachel "happy ending," altered lines between Batty (Rutger Hauer) and his creator Tyrell (Joe Turkell), alternate music and much more. Also includes:

Commentary by Paul M. Sammon, author of Future Noir: The Making of Blade Runner
Featurette "All Our Variant Futures: From Workprint to Final Cut"

I Am In Paris

To wrap up my tribute to Michelangelo I am going to be posting some personal thoughts on some of my favorite films of his in the next couple of days. These won't be reviews or intellectual musings on them as those are in no short supply when it comes to Antonioni's works. Instead these will just be some random personal thoughts on some works that have really moved me in a way that few other films or works of art have in my life.

I first saw BLOW-UP when I was fourteen or so. I was living in Newburgh, Indiana which is just outside Evansville. It was a lonely time in my life as I had moved around constantly as a child so I never really had time to develop any substantial friendships. I had just started high school and a couple of major discoveries greatly influenced and helped me through this difficult period. One had been while in Junior High finding a picture of Brigitte Bardot in a book called, I think, THE LOVE GODDESSES. This picture started my love affair with European cinema and would lead to me finding BLOW-UP just before High School. The other major discovery in this period was pulling out a hardly played copy of Lou Reed's GROWING UP IN PUBLIC album from my dad's record collection and suddenly finding a voice that echoed much of the frustration and loneliness I was feeling. Ironically Lou would play a small part in BLOW-UP's story as it was The Velvet Underground and not The Yardbirds that Michelangelo had originally wanted for the famous club scene.
BLOW-UP, if you'll forgive the pun, blew my young mind. I had never seen anything like it and its ambiguity and questioning of what is real and what isn't had a huge impact on me. I fell in love with London in the Sixties through this film and suddenly my mom's old Beatles and Bee-Gees records sounded more alive than they ever had before. I began sifting through old magazines hoping to find images and stories of this period and soon names like Twiggy, Oliver Reed and David Bailey began to occupy my young mind.
More than anything else though, I fell in love with the film BLOW-UP itself and especially Antonioni's incredible style and certain scenes from the film seemed to become part of my DNA. The long takes and stretches of silence, the way he photographed Vanessa Redgrave, the minimal use of Herbie Hancock's fantastic score, the way the wind sounded in the park, how David Hemmings is looking in a different direction in the first scene than everyone else, Veruschka, that final image and so much more. The film affected me in a profound way and I would frankly give anything to have another film make me feel the way that I did the first time I saw BLOW-UP.
As I had no one to really talk to about the film, I immersed myself in old articles and two books I managed to find in downtown Evansville's famously haunted Willard Library, FOCUS ON BLOW-UP and the film's screenplay, which contained some fabulous stills as well as interviews with Michelangelo.

I was so impressed to find how much the film had affected people on its release and just how much it had been discussed. I certainly didn't agree with many of the views on it and much of it frankly seemed like overly intellectual garbage but I did admire how many different opinions the film caused.
I have heard people describe BLOW-UP as dated or not relevant anymore. This frankly baffles me, if anything the film is as fresh as it was the day it was released and in our increasingly spiritually disconnected world, even more important. I finally got to see the film at a theater in the mid nineties at a revival at the grand old Kentucky Theater in Lexington. On the big screen, the film still felt like it could cause a revolution and it was one of the most exhilarating times I have ever had in a theater.
My favorite moment in the film comes towards the end when David Hemmings runs into Veruschka at a party. Earlier in the film she had told him she was travelling to Paris so he is surprised to see her. He asks her why she isn't in Paris to which she matter of factly responds, "I am in Paris." It's an astounding moment and to me it has always summed up the way that I feel about Antonioni's films. When I watch these films it doesn't matter that they are very much in a past that I yearn for but will never be able to experience. Michelangelo's films have the unique ability to carry me to another world and to make me feel not so alone in this one. Every time I watch BLOW-UP I can honestly say that I am in Paris too (or wherever else I want to be) and no one can ever take that away from me.

A Personal Look At Kieslowski's Decalogue Part One

It has been twenty years since Krzysztof Piesiewicz and Krzysztof Kieslowski began seriously putting together their ambitious and monumental 10 part DECALOGUE series for Polish television in late 1988. Each episode, directed by the late Kieslowski, was based loosely on one of the Ten Commandments and they all represent cinema at its finest and most complex. To celebrate its upcoming twentieth anniversary, I am revisiting every episode and will be posting some personal thoughts on each as I re-watch them. For more scholarly, well written and thought out approaches to the great Kieslowski's work may I recommend both KIESLOWSKI ON KIESLOWSI from Faber and Faber, and Annette Insdorf's magnificent DOUBLE LIVES, SECOND CHANCES from Hyperion.

All of these personal posts are dedicated to Krzysztof Kieslowski and Irene Jacob.

***Spoilers Follow***

DECALOGUE 1 is one of my personal favorites of all of Kieslowski's works. It tells the relatively simple story of a son and a father and their reliance on a home computer. It is in the dead of a harsh Polish winter and the father, who has renounced God, believes the computer to carry all of life's answers, including measuring the density of the ice where his son skates. After assuring his son one day that the ice is safe to navigate, an odd unexplainable thaw happens and the boy drowns.
I'm not sure what it is that I respond to so much with this first part of DECALOGUE. I suppose it could be a lot of things: my own personal faith and beliefs, my distrust of technology, or perhaps I just connect to the sense of paternal betrayal that is inherent in it. While we most certainly feel for the father in this episode, we also recognize him as a bit of a fool who places all of his faith in the wrong place and it literally causes his son to lose his life.
I have often wondered what first time viewers thought of this opening for DECALOGUE. Sparked by the beautiful and sad score by Zbigniew Preisner and the icy cinematography by Wieslaw Zdort (which is so cold it feels like it could crack your TV screen down the middle), Kieslowski's DECALOGUE 1 is one of the most heartbreaking things he ever committed to celluloid. Despite its brilliance, it is harder to think of a more ominous and demanding opening for a ten part series.
Anyone who has ever questioned Kieslowski's artistry should watch DECALOGUE 1, as his mastery of the medium is resoundingly apparent. From the opening shot of a barren frozen lake and the image of a lonely stranger (who pops up in several episodes never explained), Kieslowski's images freeze themselves onto the viewers brain and he never lets up. His cinema is literally the way many of the early creators probably envisioned it but could never quite get to. Stanley Kubrick himself called DECALOGUE the great masterpiece of our time, and I am not sure how far off the great master was when he said that.
Perhaps the first DECALOGUE's most startling moment comes when a simple ink blot seems to strangely foreshadow the young sons death. It is a virtuoso moment for Kieslowski as a filmmaker and the only reference point I can think of for it is a similarly striking moment in Nicolas Roeg's DON'T LOOK NOW, a film that also included the tragic drowning of a child.
Outside of immediately announcing Kieslowski at the top of his game after two decades of projects that grew more interesting with each new work, DECALOGUE 1 also set the tone of the series with a group of phenomenally gifted Polish actors doing some of the best work of their lives. Heartbreaking in his conviction that technology has all of life's answers is Henryk Baranowski as the father Krzysztof (one has to take note of his name here). This was astonishingly enough one of the first and only roles for the obviously talented Baranowski, who plays this part with an undercurrent of raw emotion and finally a heartbreaking doubt. Equally compelling is young Wojciech Klata as the son Pawel, who is questioning everything but not getting any clear answers, because finally there aren't any.

As I already mentioned, the behind the scenes work is also top of the line with special note going again to the photography of Zdort and the music of Preisner. Presiner especially would continue to play a massively important role right through the rest of the great director's career. His work on DOUBLE LIFE OF VERONIQUE and the THREE COLORS films is already legendary among many film fans and it will only grow in stature.
DECALOGUE was a ghost to me for quite a while. Like many Americans I fell in love with Kieslowski's cinema when I saw THREE COLORS: BLUE in 1993 during its initial American theatrical showing. The Chicago screening I saw was packed and everyone in the room seemed to have the same slightly dazed,awed and completely blown away look as they were leaving the theater. I then started to backtrack, first with a VHS copy of DOUBLE LIFE OF VERONIQUE and finally some of his earlier films. DECALOGUE was near impossible to find in this period here in the States and my first viewing came in the mid nineties courtesy of a blurry grey market VHS that was probably the worst way to see it, but Kieslowski's artistry and intelligence made even the worst VHS copy glisten.

It was a joyous thing to finally get Facets first DVD release of it in the late nineties and even a bigger one when the remastered special edition of it came out several years ago. Whatever version you can track down, THE DECALOGUE is a must see for film fans everywhere. I have watched the whole thing through at least half a dozen times over and am still discovering new moments in each viewing that cement Kieslowski as perhaps the major filmmaker of the past thirty years.

I will be sharing more thoughts on the remaining nine episodes of DECALOGUE through the rest of the year. If you haven't experienced it before, give it a look...or if it has been a while, maybe a re-visit is in order to celebrate its upcoming twentieth.

Overlooked Classics: Death Smiled At Murder (1973)

The career of Aristide Massaccesi (a.k.a Joe D'Amato) is in some ways one of the most disappointing in Italian film history. D'Amato was arguably one of the best cinematographers that came out of the golden age of Italian cinema in the fifties and sixties, so his eventual decision to finally just start churning out adult films in the mid eighties made him near a tragic character. Still, despite where his career ended up, D'Amato was clearly gifted and a handful of his films as a director show these gifts clearly. One of his best is his first foray into the horror genre, 1973's LA MORTE HA SORRISO ALL'ASSASSINO, or as it is more commonly known, DEATH SMILED AT MURDER.

DEATH SMILED AT MURDER is, in many ways, a total mess. Taken from a, nonsensical at best, script credited to D'Amato, Claudio Bernabei and Romano Scandariato, DEATH SMILED AT MURDER makes little to no sense, and D'Amato as a director seems at times downright confused about exactly what kind of film he is making. Still, despite its problems, DEATH SMILED AT MURDER is a totally captivating and haunting work. It is the kind of film that could have only come out of Italy in this period, and the problems with the story and tone of the film finally help give it a weird dislocated feel that becomes one of its saving graces.

D'Amato was already in his mid thirties when he directed his first horror film on a shoestring budget and tight schedule back in 1973. Tim Lucas points out in his recent Mario Bava book, ALL THE COLORS OF THE DARK, that D'Amato had started out as an assistant camera man with not only Mario but also his father Eugenio Bava and that DEATH SMILED AT MURDER was in many ways a tip of the hat to both of them.
D'Amato began getting regular work as a cinematographer after working as a cameraman throughout the late fifties and early sixties. Most of his early photography credits appear to be Spaghetti Westerns, but it was 1972's WHAT HAVE THEY DONE TO SOLANGE that would truly mark him as a man with unique and striking eye (especially for horror). D'Amato would start shooting DEATH SMILED AT MURDER shortly after completing work on WHAT HAVE THEY DONE TO SOLANGE. Dallamano's great giallo must have been fresh in D'Amato's mind when he wrote the story for his film, as they both center on the murder of a young girl.
Shooting on location on a beautiful old Italian estate, D'Amato and his crew assembled with one of the best casts he ever got on one of his films. Starring in the film is the lovely Ewa Aulin, a former Miss Sweden who is best known for her work in 1968's Terry Southern adaptation CANDY. Aulin is an interesting actress and despite appearing in only a handful of films she remains a genre favorite. She does fine work for D'Amato here, giving the most eerie and captivating performance of her career.
Joining Aulin is the striking Angela Bo, who only appeared in a handful of films herself, and Sergio Doria who had just appeared in Riccardo Freda's fierce IGUANA WITH THE TONGUE OF FIRE (1971). Appearing in smaller roles are three genre favorites; Luciano Rossi, Giacomo Rossi-Stuart and a reasonably calm Klaus Kinski as a doctor who makes house calls and then some.
D'Amato himself provides the film with its dreamlike photography, and pushing the film even further into the near surreal is the beautiful hypnotic score credited to Berto Pisano. The score is quite remarkable and it is, along with Aulin's performance and D'Amato's photography, the thing that is consistently great throughout the films brief running time. The three are so good in fact, that they make it seem easy to forgive the films numerous problems.

DEATH SMILED AT MURDER is a hugely important film in D'Amato's canon. Many of its main themes would pop up on later films of his including most notably his masterpiece, 1979's BUIO OMEGA, but perhaps more importantly it would introduce D'Amato as a director who liked to mix multiple genres together, like he was creating some sort of exotic stew with something in it to please everybody. D'Amato would improve on this kitchen sink technique and whereas DEATH SMILED AT MURDER just feels confused at times, later works like his BLACK EMANUELLE films and EROTIC NIGHTS OF THE LIVING DEAD would shift genres with much more ease. Perhaps those films aren't as ambitious as DEATH SMILED AT MURDER but D'Amato became, if at least until the early eighties, a smarter director than he was in 1973.
D'Amato himself seemed a bit confused as to what to make of the film. Tim Lucas points to a quote from that D'Amato gave to Peter Blumenstock where he calls the film his most personal, but he would be quoted in the book SPAGHETTI NIGHTMARES as saying it was 'pandering and mechanical'. Whatever his final thoughts were on the film, it remains one of the most frustratingly great works he ever committed to celluloid. It's a unfocused but poetic work, and its best moments show that Aristide Massaccesi was much more than just the 'businessman' he later referred to himself as.
The film would play briefly in the United States under the title DEATH SMILES ON A MURDERER (which has a very different meaning than its better known title) and to my knowledge it has never been released legitimately on the home video market. My copy is an import on the Italian Shock label and it features a nice widescreen presentation of the film, along with its trailer. Berto Pisano's achingly beautiful score is available on a cd with two of his other works, and it can be found through some of the better online vendors.

Aristide Massaccesi, or Joe D'Amato if you like, wouldn't direct another notable film until he met Laura Gemser in 1975 and they began their very memorable collaboration together. He would rack up well over 200 features before passing away in the early part of 1999. Despite a slightly notorious reputation, D'Amato seemed to be a very well spoken and nice gentleman whose biggest mistake seemed to be undervaluing himself. DEATH SMILED AT MURDER is one of the most memorably films he ever shot, and one worth seeking out. Despite its flaws, or in a way thanks to them, it is one of the most oddly poetic horror films to come out of Italy in the seventies.

For more of DEATH SMILED AT MURDER please visit here for a good article on D'Amato's gothic horror films.

For more Ewa Aulin, take a look at this lovely photo gallery here.

For the best selection of worldwide Joe D'Amato DVD's, including DEATH SMILED AT MURDER, please visit here.

Overlooked Classics: Tell Me Do You Miss Me (2006)

As much as I admire Martin Scorsese’s THE LAST WALTZ there is something a bit false and self congratulatory about it. The Band, especially Robbie Robertson, in Scorsese’s film seem set on presenting themselves as not just a group calling it quits, but as the end of an entire period. Because of this, and despite the fact that it is filled with wonderful performances, the film suffers under its own false sense of importance.
Of course the truth of the matter is that most bands don’t have the send off The Band did (actually neither did The Band as a series of reunions without Robertson would show). The great endings are typically hidden and sad, or at times both. Whether it is a beaten and disappointed Lou Reed playing “After Hours” one final time at Max’s Kansas City, or Tom Verlaine and Richard Lloyd splintering apart to half empty arenas as a support act, most of rock’s great final acts are as far removed from THE LAST WALTZ as possible.
Matthew Buzzell’s moving account of the last days of Luna, TELL ME DO YOU MISS ME, is one of the great rock documentaries. It is also one of the most intimate, from the opening shots of Dean Wareham and Britta Phillips embracing in their apartment just before their final show to the touching final moment of Wareham’s young son strumming a guitar, TELL ME DO YOU MISS ME is one of the warmest and most honest accounts of a band’s final days ever committed to the screen.
Luna, despite being one of the most critically acclaimed bands of the last couple of decades, never broke into the mainstream. Of course that can be viewed as a good thing artistically, but financially it was obviously very hard on them. TELL ME DO YOU MISS ME makes clear that being an acclaimed rock musician doesn’t automatically spell out big bucks, and the numerous moments in the film where we are reminded of this are particularly poignant..
What makes Buzzell’s TELL ME DO YOU MISS ME work so well is just how genuine it is. Without ever throwing it in your face, Buzzell manages to get across the fact that Luna were an important band who not only meant a lot to their fans, but also the members themselves. From the striking moment where we see Luna playing their last song together in front of an adoring New York crowd, to the many images of them on the road in their little van traveling from city to city, TELL ME DO YOU MISS ME works as both a rock documentary and a striking character study of four very talented and down to earth people.
Luna, for those who don’t know, started out after the legendary Dean Wareham left Galaxie 500 in the early part of the nineties. The band was originally a trio with Wareham on guitar and vocals, joined by Stanley Demeskie on drums and Justin Harwood on bass. The band really came together when Wareham brought in a phenomenal guitar player named Sean Eden to record their second full the length album, the masterful BEWITCHED. The twin guitar attack of Wareham and Eden quickly became the most notable since probably Verlaine and Lloyd in Television, and the music they made throughout the nineties and the early part of this decade is some of most intelligent and powerful of the modern rock era.

TELL ME DO YOU MISS ME captures the band’s final lineup (Wareham, Eden, drummer Lee Wall and Bassist Britta Phillips) on their last tour in 2004. We follow the band as they travel to Japan, Europe and finally through a series of shows throughout the States. Buzzell’s fly on the wall direction is superb and it’s his visual sense and intelligence that separates the film from any other rock documentary since the seventies.
The film is incredibly moving, although remarkably it is never overly sentimental. Buzzell’s work captures for artists simultaneously at their most powerful and vulnerable, and it never veers into the nostalgic puff piece it could have been. The members of the band are all remarkable in just how sober and realistic they are towards their circumstances, and not even the fact that the only way they will make any money is by selling t-shirts seems to derail them. TELL ME DO YOU MISS ME is one of the most triumphant films about the importance of art over commerce ever released, and finally it almost seems fitting that a band as pure and brilliant as Luna didn’t ‘make it’ commercially.
TELL ME DO YOU MISS ME slyly points out the tragedy of the modern record industry as well. At one point Wareham laments over the fact that if a writer sells 100,000 copies of a book he is a success, but a band doing the same on a major label is considered a failure. Again, Buzzell doesn’t slap you across the face to make a point; he just allows the image to point out the ridiculousness that a band like Luna could be considered a failure by anyone.

Outside of the fantastic concert clips that run through the film, my favorite moments are the relatively quiet ones. I love the way Buzzell will often focus on the striking face of Dean Wareham as he is just listening. This happens throughout the film. One such instance is towards the beginning when Britta Phillips is reading the band’s break up press release (which by the way works brilliantly as a scene, as it introduces the band very quickly to newcomers) and we see Wareham in the background listening intently, and smiling sweetly when she mentions Rolling Stone voted PENTHOUSE one of the best albums of the nineties. Another instance comes later in the film when it seems that Wareham and Eden are on the verge of having a fight and Buzzell focuses on each of their frustrated faces, giving the film an almost Cassavetes like intensity.

Most striking are the many shots of the band traveling. Whether they are walking through the busy streets of Tokyo, or driving their small van in Blizzard like conditions in the Midwest, there is never a moment where the film isn’t visually interesting. Even shots that could be mundane, like the band setting up their equipment or counting out their t-shirts, are kept interesting by Buzzell’s shooting style. These shots also say a million things about Luna as a group…it’s hard to imagine a shot of Robbie Robertson setting up his own equipment or worrying about t-shirt sales in THE LAST WALTZ. TELL ME DO YOU MISS ME shows Luna as a D.U.I. band till the end in the truest sense of the term.

And then there is the music…how wonderful that Luna stopped when they did, as they were in their absolute prime here. All four members are playing wonderfully and they are locked down in a perfect cohesive force together. From Eden’s astonishing guitar leads to Phillip’s fluid and inventive bass lines, Luna show themselves clearly as one of the best bands of the last thirty years. We hear tracks off most of their albums, and some covers. A particularly haunting EVERYBODY’S TALKING towards the end seems to sum up the band as much as any song could. It is hard to imagine a dry eye among fans of the band as Wareham sings, “I won’t let you leave my love behind” with some of the most powerful conviction of his entire career. I have heard some complaints about the songs not being presented in complete clips, but the main point of the film to me is Luna off the stage, so while I would have loved more performances…I finally don’t miss them.
The film is also very funny and heartfelt. The four of them aren’t afraid to show emotion, and Buzzell isn’t afraid to show the humorous monotony of a rock band on the road. The film at times plays like a group of friends remembering and telling stories to each other. I really get the feeling from watching this film, that regardless of certain personality clashes, these four people really care about each other. There is a moment towards the end when we see Wareham embrace Eden, and it is incredibly moving and it resonates long after the closing credits.
Buzzell’s decision to begin the film essentially at the end with real life couple Wareham and Phillips embracing in their apartment is a brilliant one. It tells us immediately that while Luna is ending, the characters in the film aren’t. These are very real people and it is comforting to have these very personal opening shots to remind us of it. Most rock films are content to present its subjects as mythic supermen…TELL ME DO YOU MISS ME joins the ranks of a film like ELVIS ON TOUR as a work that isn’t afraid to point out the even in a world class rock band, groups are still made up of very fragile human beings in need of the same universal things we all are...love, respect, friendship and compassion.
Matthew Buzzell’s film is available from Rhino in a great special edition that includes an entertaining commentary track, some complete performances, deleted scenes and the trailer. The disc is widescreen and captures this beautifully shot and sounding film very well.
Luna was a special band made up of four very distinctive figures in popular music. TELL ME DO YOU MISS ME is a wonderful final chapter for their career. Music and film fans in general should seek it out immediately.


For more on Luna, please visit A Head Full Of Wishes and Fuzzy Wuzzy.

Also check out Matthew's Myspace and his IMDB listing for more.

ON A PERSONAL NOTE: I was fortunate enough to meet the legendary Velvet Underground guitar player Sterling Morrison less than a year before his untimely death, when my friend Ryan and I witnessed a gig he did with Moe Tucker. One thing I asked him about was Luna, as not only had the Wareham and company been asked to open for the Velvets when they reunited in the early nineties, but Morrison had actually appeared on the BEWITCHED album playing guitar. The guitar icon mentioned to me how much the Velvets admired Wareham and Luna, and he also pointed out that "We didn't really want any other band opening for us". If anyone ever needed reminding of how great Luna was, then let that stand as one...