The Screengrab : chicago 10

DVD Roundup for August 26, 2008

Paul Clark — Tue, 26 Aug 2008 14:00:00 GMT

This week’s bumper crop of Westerns necessitates a temporary name change for this column.

DVD of the Week: 1962’s How the West Was Won may not have been the greatest classic Western ever made, but it was almost certainly the biggest, boasting three directors (Henry Hathaway, John Ford, and George Marshall) and an all-star cast (led by John Wayne, Henry Fonda, James Stewart, Gregory Peck, Debbie Reynolds, and Richard Widmark) to tell a Western family saga spanning half a century. In addition, the film boasting some stunning Western vistas designed to fully exploit the three-screen Cinerama process- this was one of only two narrative features to be exhibited using honest-to-goodness Cinerama. The biggest advantage of this week’s new Ultimate Collector’s Edition (Warner, also Blu-Ray) of the film is that it comes closer than any DVD edition to date to replicating the look of Cinerama in digital form. Instead of the “join lines” and standard 2.35:1 ‘Scope framing of previous editions, this new edition of the film features a new technology that effectively unifies the three Cinerama frames into the original aspect ratio of 2.89:1. There are also a number of special features, notably the 2002 documentary Cinerama Adventure that explores the famed camera process, as well as a trailer, archival featurette, audio commentary, and plenty of collectible memorabilia about the film and its stars. Nothing will be quite like watching How the West Was Won in Cinerama, but this new edition makes the home viewing experience better than ever.

In other oater news, this week also brings the Warner Home Video Western Classics Collection, which includes the 1960 remake Cimarron, Escape From Fort Bravo, Many Rivers to Cross, Saddle the Wind, The Law and Jake Wade, and The Stalking Moon, with each film also sold individually. In addition, Warner is also releasing the Errol Flynn Westerns Box Set (Warner), which contains Montana, Rocky Mountain, San Antonio, and Virginia City. And don’t overlook the Blu-Ray only release of Clint Eastwood’s Pale Rider (Warner).

Meanwhile, this week’s recent releases coming to DVD include: Cameron Diaz and Ashton Kutcher in What Happens in Vegas (Fox, also Blu-Ray); David Mamet MMA drama Redbelt (Sony, also Blu-Ray); the acclaimed documentary Chicago 10 (Paramount), Lynch (Ryko Entertainment), a documentary about the ever-popular David Lynch; Uwe Boll’s must-see Postal (Universal Music & Video Distribution), costarring former DVD Digest contributor David Huddleston; and the latest release from our pals at Benten Films, Team Picture.

Other classics coming to DVD this week include: a new pressing of Pier Paolo Pasolini’s notorious final film Salo, or the 120 Days of Sodom (Criterion); the Henry Selick-directed The Nightmare Before Christmas Collector’s Edition (Disney); Jeunet and Caro’s Delicatessen Special Edition (First Look); and Monica Bellucci’s nude body transforming into a rolling landscape for your enjoyment in Brotherhood of the Wolf: Director’s Cut (Universal).

In TV on DVD, there’s Entourage Season 4 (HBO), Everybody Hates Chris Season 3 (Warner), Heroes Season 2 (Universal, also Blu-Ray), NCIS Season 5 (Paramount), and The Shield Season 6 (Sony).

Finally, this week’s action-packed lineup of Blu-Ray only releases includes: Errol Flynn (again) in The Adventures of Robin Hood (Warner); Gov. Schwarzenegger fighting Satan in End of Days (Universal); the first season of NBC’s Heroes (Universal); Crockett and Tubbs hitting the big screen in Michael Mann’s Miami Vice (Universal), and the submarine thriller U-571 (Universal).

Indie Box-Office Roundup: Weekend of February 29-March 2

Paul Clark — Wed, 05 Mar 2008 15:00:00 GMT

As I predicted in last week's column, arthouse audiences turned out in droves to catch The Counterfeiters (Sony Pictures Classics), Stefan Ruzowitzky's recent Oscar-winner for Best Foreign-Language Film. Currently in its second week of release, The Counterfeiters tops this week's Indie Box-Office Roundup with in an average of $10,295 per screen in 18 venues, following a strong second-place finish in its opening weekend.

The weekend's top new release was Ramin Bahrani's Chop Shop (Koch Lorber), bringing in $8,745 on a single screen, followed by last week's champ, Jacques Rivette's The Duchess of Langeais, which kept on rockin' at $7,059 per screen after expanding its release to three locations. Rounding out the top five were (stop me if you've heard this before) Sony Pictures Classics' The Band's Visit and Focus Features' In Bruges, the latter expanding to 232 screens nationwide.

Also of note was the release of Chicago 10 (Roadside Attractions), the highest-ranking documentary of the weekend at #6. And let's not overlook the Oscar bump for Best Picture winner No Country for Old Men, which found its way back into the top 10 after a nearly three-month absence following an expansion to more than 2,000 screens. Take that, Juno! ¿Quien es mas macho?

Top 10, Weekend of February 29-March 2:
1. The Counterfeiters [Sony Pictures Classics] ($10,295 per screen)
2. Chop Shop [Koch Lorber Films] ($8,745)
3. The Duchess Of Langeais [IFC Films] ($7,059)
4. The Band's Visit [Sony Pictures Classics] ($4,553)
5. In Bruges [Focus Features] ($3,342)
6. Chicago 10 [Roadside Attractions] ($3,052)
7. The Unforeseen [Cinema Guild] ($2,496)
8. Caramel [Roadside Attractions] ($2,300)
9. The Year My Parents Went On Vacation [City Lights Pictures Releasing] ($2,121)
10. No Country For Old Men [Miramax] ($2,020)

Source: IndieWire.

Take Five: 1968

Leonard Pierce — Fri, 29 Feb 2008 21:30:00 GMT

Brett Morgen's highly praised documentary Chicago 10, about the fallout of the Democratic National Convention in Chicago forty years ago opens in limited release this weekend. Morgen has claimed since it first debuted last year at Sundance that the film isn't really about 1968, but about 2008, and indeed, it seems to have fresh, albeit grim, resonance today, with the recent death of arch-conservative William F. Buckley, who had a memorable confrontation on the air while covering the convention. Steven Spielberg is himself crafting a fictionalized version of the same events for The Trial of the Chicago 7, and America gears up for one of the most electrifying presidential races in recent memory as an unpopular war rages overseas and tumult grips some of our closest allies. But as relevant as it might seem from a moviemaking perspective, in other ways, 1968 couldn't be further away; the revolutionary consciousness of that bloody year and the infinite possibilites that came with the Paris revolts seem like they happened on another planet. Still, in many ways, it was a magical year that casts a very long shadow over the lives of a number of people, many of whom are filmmakers. Here's a look at some of the better films about or influenced by that impossible year.

MEDIUM COOL (1969)

In many ways, the definitive film about the events of 1968, at least from an American perspective, will always be Haskell Wexler's Medium Cool. The first nondocumentary feature film directed by the legendary cinematographer was meant to be a highly fictionalized treatment of chaos and mayhem breaking out at the Democratic National Convention in Chicago; but it quickly transmogrified into something altogether stranger, blurring the line between truth and fiction, as reality quickly began to outstrip Wexler's fictionalized vision. Eventually, while filming, he found himself caught up in the (unstaged) action of the riots and police brutality that wracked the city and altered the political landscape of America, and one of his crew uttered the immortal warning: "Look out, Haskell! It's real!" (This later became the title of a very worthwhile 2001 documentary about the movie.)

PUNISHMENT PARK (1971)

Though it was neither filmed in nor set in 1968, one of the most famous — or infamous — of Peter Watkins' inventive pseudo-documentaries is completely suffused with the spirit of the times. The director himself has admitted to being highly galvanized by the events of that year, both in the United States and in Europe, and some of the nonprofessional actors he recruited to play roles in the film were participants in the Chicago riots. The film itself concerns a grueling trek through the desert by a handful of dissidents, escorted by a grim-faced group of soldiers in some sort of vicious game. It quickly degenerates into a terrifying realistic showdown between the forces of law and order and the voices of revolution and dissent; its creepy verisimilitude serves to remind us that maybe those days aren't as long past as we'd like to think.

IN GIRUM IMUS NOCTE ET CONSUMIMUR IGNI (1978)

Guy Debord, provocateur, poet, philosopher and filmmaker, was one of the key members of the Situationist International, and as such, one of the hidden architects of the bizarre, almost miraculous events of Paris, May 1968. Made in the decade following those events, this experimental film (the title means "In the night, we turn and are consumed by the fire") puts to work his theories of detournement — of taking cultural images and repackaging them with subversive intent — in service of both celebrating and eulogizing the near-revolution. Intriguing, frustrating, brilliant and flawed, much like the man himself, In Girum Imus Nocte Et Consumimur Igni is a movie worth seeking out. If nothing else, you have to love the audacity of a film that features a hand-typed note from God, claiming that if he'd known that it would eventually have produced a film so offensive, he would never have created the world.

THE UNBEARABLE LIGHTNESS OF BEING (1988)

Paris and Chicago weren't the only places deeply embroiled in chaotic upheaval in the year 1968. All over the world, from Italy to Japan, protest movements, government misconduct, and a seemingly unstoppable youth movement put nations in turmoil. One of the biggest hotspots was Czechoslovakia, where Milan Kundera sets his famously erotic, tragic and beautiful novel. It sets a promiscuous young doctor at odds with his own desires and emotions on the eve of the Soviet invasion, which is used as both political and personal backdrop against a timeless human story. Ably directed by Philip Kaufman and beautifully acted by Juliet Binoche, Lena Olin, and in one of his first major roles, Daniel Day-Lewis, The Unbearable Lightness of Being perfectly captures the tone of the days, twenty years later on.

REGULAR LOVERS (2005)

A number of European filmmakers have attempted to capture the Spirit of '68, both in documentaries and in narrative film. It's a difficult task, if for no other reason than that the causes of the revolt, as well as its ultimate collapse, are still poorly understood and subject to the endless predatory claims of those who say it belongs, ideologically, to them. This little-seen film by French director Phillippe Garrel perhaps comes closest, simply by being so messy, ambling and chaotic; by not attempting to frame an overweening narrative structure over those dreamlike days in Paris, Garrel gives us a rather astonishing evocation of them in all their rambling, inchoate, erotic glory. He quietly succeeds where Bernardo Bertolucci's earlier, and similar, film The Dreamers noisily failed.

"Chicago 10": Cartooning the Sixties

Phil Nugent — Mon, 25 Feb 2008 18:00:00 GMT

When Alex Cox was trying (unsuccessfully) to make a movie version of Hunter Thompson's Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas, and later, when Terry Gilliam was (successfully) trying to make it, both of them reportedly pissed off Thompson by announcing their intention to incorporate animated sequences into their films. The good doctor is said to have objected to the idea of having his masterpiece reduced to "a goddamn cartoon." This reticence, which in Thompson's case may have been related to a feeling that Garry Trudeau owed him some royalties, may turn out to be the key failing in Dr. Gonzo's longtime mission to make sense of the sixties. Since Gilliam's movie came out, a younger generation of filmmakers seems to have taken up the idea that the period can only be captured as a goddamn cartoon. A couple of years ago, with A Scanner Darkly, Richard Linklater used rotoscope animation to capture a look and feel that he found appropriate to Philip K. Dick's surreal vision of paranoia among druggie burn-outs. Now, the documentarian Brett Morgen (best known for The Kid Stays in the Picture, the movie version of the autobiography of Robert Evans — speaking of cartoons) has employed brightly colored "motion capture" technology for Chicago 10, his film about the trial of '60s political radicals that grew out of the violent chaos of the 1968 Democratic Convention. (At the start of the trial, the defendents were collectively known af "the Chicago eight"; they became better known as "the Chicago seven" after one of them, Bobby Seale, after being bound and gagged in the courtroom at the orders of Judge Julius Hoffman, had his case severed from that of the others. The title of the movie is meant as a way of paying tribute to all of them as well as their lawyers, Leonard Weinglass and the late William Kuntsler.)

Morgen, who was born not long after the convention, sees his relative youth as an advantage here. "The world simply did not need another movie about the ’60s made by someone from the ’60s," he says. "We weren’t making a movie about 1968 per se. I don’t want to smell patchouli. I don’t want to see bell-bottoms." He says that he was driven to return to the protest culture of the sixties as a way of challenging what he sees as the political apathy of his own generation and those younger — and towards that end, instead of the usual hippy-dippy music choices, he includes newsreel footage of Chicago cops thrashing protestors to the accompaniment of Rage Against the Machine. (The movie also features voice work by Jeffrey Wright as Seale, Liev Schrieber as Kunstler, Hank Azaria as Abbie Hoffman, Mark Ruffalo as Jerry Rubin, James Urbaniak as Rennie Davis, Dylan Baker as David Dellinger, and the late Roy Scheider as the famously demented Judge Hoffman.) Towards that end, the movie concentrates on the trial as an example of (often hilarious) political theater, a kind of media prank. Though by all accounts it is scrupulously accurate in its details, some of the original participants take exception to its revolution-can-be-fun angle. "This is an Abbie Hoffman story." says Tom Hayden. "Abbie was a great rebel, but there is a danger in theatricalizing history." To which Leonard Weinglass adds, "The film is entertainment, but it is not a political education." (It should be noted that the idea that the trial could best serve its political purposes as an example of living satire also dates back to the time of the trial itself; as early as 1970, just months after the trial ended, Bantam published a paperback collection of comic highlights from the court transcripts. It was titled The Tales of Hoffman and included a chortling introduction by the radical "political critic" Dwight Macdonald.) For his part, Morgen is so high on trying to "get the story out" that he's thrilled by the news that Steven Spielberg is thinking of making his own Chicago seven/ eight/ whatever movie: "We’ve been consulting with them and providing them with our databases." In the meantime, the surviving participants will continue to learn what Hunter Thompson already knew about the dangers of becoming a cartoon. Or as Leonard Weinglass says, complaining about his animated doppelganger's costume design, "Never in my life have I had a lavender suit."