Letters to the Editor
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name?
Is the film called "It Always Rains on Sunday," or "It Never Rains on Sunday?" It is called both here.
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Netflix and Criterion Collection
Netflix is a phenomena for arthouse film lovers. I highly recommend it ($9.00 / month unlimited movies) for people who want to see really obscure films. It's really a goldmine.
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Raising your Film IQ?
As someone who went through film school in the early 80's these new issues are more than nostalgic, they provide material that simply wasn't available. Scorcese's documentary on the Neorealists is worth at least one semester. $25 bucks?! The criterion version of Hiroshima Mon Amor will boost your grade on the final, assuming you bother to look at the directors notes. Let's not stop with the films themselves, what about the anthologies of articles in Cahiers Du Cinema by Harvard Press? I still have the xerox copies of the handouts my profs gave me.
I can hardly contain my delight watching the Pasolini collection. Certainly some things are going to be less interesting than others, and your point about the oversaturation of current films, when taken against the lack of exposure many earlier pictures received, implies a period of adjustment, or how many times have you seen Fargo? Once things attain some balance, we might want to revisit the overviewed pictures, with new ideas.
My only hope is that film viewers don't simply take cinema for granted, like a packaged consumer product. There is a lot more to say about this, because film is a corporate art form, which disdains the same critical elitism that bothers literature. We should remain hopeful that the void will be filled, to the benefit of everyone.
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Don't forget Kino
THE source for obscure films, from the silents to the most avant garde. Of the hundred or so films I own at home, 90% were made pre-1970. So much junk has been made since then that it's a rare critic indeed who can write a quality review today, most of them simply being ignorant of what makes a quality film.
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DVD vs Film
The problem here is many many good films have not been transferred yet, (Magnificent Obsession), and others are transferred so poorly I returned them after fifteen minutes (Ran). DVD, even with full screen capability is not going to replace the theatre. Access to these films is better than no access, but Netflix sucks. I would not bother with them, you will quickly run out of material.
The only real solution is to part with some cash, (still much cheaper than a semester at Film U.), and tape whenever TCM runs something you can't otherwise get your hands on. Bob Osborne runs their movie channel, and his insights and guests are the best. They also run interesting documentaries, recently a piece on Budd Boetticher.
TCm does an excellent job of retrospecting forgotten films. I can't say enough about them.
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Yann Martel?
Like, the author?
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It <b>Always</b> Rains on Sunday
It's set in London, after all. I'll fix the mistake. (This comes from blogging in the middle of the night.)
To the reader who mentioned Kino -- absolutely! They've got an awesome catalogue of great old stuff, as do New Yorker and Facets. For video-by-mail, if you're the sort of person likely to read this, I would personally recommend Facets and/or GreenCine. (facets.org and greencine.com, respectively.) That's not a dis against Netflix, which has transformed the home-video marketplace and exposed a lot of viewers to a lot of great films. But browse those other two sites and you'll see what I mean: Much tougher to run out of options, or start believing you've seen everything. Side note: Facets offers a kids' membership, with unlimited rentals, for $35/year, and as the parent of two younguns just starting to figure out what movies are, I think that's an utterly brilliant idea. (The last thing I need in my life is more videos, but still.)
'Preciate the feedback.
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yeesh, no, not Yann Martel
The character in "J'entends plus" is played by Yann Collette, a distinctive one-eyed actor from the south of France born in 1956, not by the author of "Life of Pi." I have corrected. I really shouldn't try to write after 2 a.m.
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Oh no not again
Yeah i will watch No country for old men in 2017. What I won't be watching is Juno which was aged even before it was released. Your bashing of the Coens film is obvious your infantile obsession with box office numbers to bash it even more says alot about your hackery.
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Indie and Foreign films
On a related topic, I have noticed that in the last year or so far fewer foreign films are making their way to Southern California. Where it used to be that these films would show only in New York and in Los Angeles, now they are not making it to Los Angeles. A real shame. Most of the art house theatres in Southern California are closed, and those that used to carry the movies I loved have mostly switched to main stream American films.
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"Battle for Algiers" is a must-see movie
I watched it on Netflix shortly after it became available. It's an amazing document, all the moreso because of the remarkable similarities -- right down to key phrases and arguments -- between Algiers/France and Iraq/U.S.
The movie offers a historical insight into the problems of occupation and insurgency, and should be seen by every American.
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@ aveutter
There's a DVD release of Ran that's pretty good. An obscure company name--Fox Lorber?
It doesn't have the most pristine image quality, but it captures the film very well.
I recall once having seen a version which was pan & scanned so that Saburo was cut out of crucial scenes. That was horrible.
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misanthropes
Hey, I resent being called a misanthrope for living in a small market (Salt Lake City, Utah). In fact, come to think of it, I hate you for saying that.