The Screengrab : dvd

William Friedkin Has No Sense of Social Obligation

Vadim Rizov — Wed, 26 Nov 2008 21:50:00 GMT

On the occasion of the DVD release of 1970's The Boys In The Band, Andrew O'Hehir has interviewed William Friedkin. Friedkin is best known to the general public as the man who engineered the back-to-back successes of The French Connection and The Exorcist, then flopped forever more. For hardcore film nerds and auteurists, he's either a constant failure or an underrated master.

Aside from small cult affairs like 2003's The Hunted — a fairly brilliant pared-down continuous chase film derided for its deliberate lack of characterization — the reason Friedkin annoys a lot of people are a twin pair of gay-themed films viewed fairly continuously as homophobic. The Boys In The Band annoyed post-Stonewall gays for its ostensibly stereotypical portrait of self-loathing queens going at it for condescending straight viewers having their worst fears confirmed. 1980's Cruising — cop Al Pacino vs. gay murderers in New York's S&M scene — was reviled even before it was filmed; as Trenton Straube wrote when the film was re-issued on DVD last year, the Village Voice's Arthur Bell predicted it would be "the most oppressive, ugly, bigoted look at homosexuality ever presented on the screen." When it was released, the National Gay Task Force compared it to The Birth Of A Nation.

Whether or not the films are inadvertently homophobic is beside the point. What O'Hehir's interview shows is something I've suspected for a long time: Friedkin is a director so sociopathically honed in on exploring environments, he's completely indifferent when it comes to any sense of social responsibility.

Even in his two biggest hits, plot takes a back story to location shooting: The French Connection is far more memorable for its locales (and the way they ground the famously intense car chase) than the plot. The Exorcist qualifies as an odd horror film, one which spends at least as much time showing you the mechanics of hospital surgical proceedings as the symptoms of Regan's possession. The pattern continues to the present day: in his last film (the underseen Bug), Friedkin gave the actors room to stretch out, but he was equally concerned with capturing, with impressive pungency, what it feels like to live your life in small, cheap motel rooms, or what America's worst rural roadside bars look like.

In the interview, Friedkin says "I never remember talking even once to Mart Crowley [who both wrote and produced the film] about trying to make a statement about gay people. The story wasn't about gay people." In other words, he was oblivious to any sense of alleged social responsibility he might have. (Friedkin also seems to be equally oblivious to the idea that having gay people represented on-screen in any context isn't necessarily desirable in and of itself. "We paved the way for 'Will and Grace,' he says. "I really believe that." Some of us might think that's not such a good thing.) This kind of obliviousness is mildly sociopathic in its disregard for consequences, but it's also the stamp of a true if myopic artist: Friedkin sees the world in terms of atmospheres and sub-cultures. How they play to the outside world is no concern of his. Whether or not the films deserve their current re-evaluation and (sort of) welcome back into the fold is one question, but whatever you think of them, whatever message is there isn't Friedkin's doing; he just doesn't care.

Format Wars: It’s Over! For Real!

John Constantine — Wed, 20 Feb 2008 20:41:00 GMT

We’re going to miss bringing you word from the Format War frontline here at the Screengrab. But all things must pass and so it is with the high definition format war. In a statement released yesterday, Toshiba announced that they will no longer be developing or manufacturing HD-DVD players. Toshiba president and CEO Atsutoshi Nishida said, “We carefully assessed the long-term impact of continuing the so-called 'next-generation format war' and concluded that a swift decision will best help the market develop. While we are disappointed for the company and more importantly, for the consumer, the real mass market opportunity for high definition content remains untapped and Toshiba is both able and determined to use our talent, technology and intellectual property to make digital convergence a reality." As for Toshiba’s HD-DVD partner Microsoft, who have aggressively backed the format with an HD-DVD player add-on for their Xbox 360 games console, defection might be in the cards. While the big MS hasn’t committed yet, they have hinted that a Blu-ray player add-on for the Xbox 360 might be happening quite soon.

That’s your cue to head to Best Buy and start buying Blu-ray copies of all your favorite pictures, ‘Grabbers.

Home Video Is Where the Heart Is

Phil Nugent — Thu, 27 Dec 2007 19:00:00 GMT

2007 was a pretty good year for moviegoing, but it may have been an even better one for DVDs. Even the acrimonious racket over the format battles couldn't obscure the almost steady flood of eye-catching product issued on shiny steel discs. For starters, a number of the most exciting new movies of the last twelve months were released in especially fine, often two-disc editions, including Pan's Labyrinth, Children of Men, The Host, and Knocked Up in its "unrated, expanded" form. But there's also been a treasure trove of oldies and oddities of every kind, sure to be of interest to anyone who was lucky enough to score a gift certificate or two over the holidays.

CAREER RETROSPECTIVES: While boxes devoted to stars have become a popular scam designed to lump together various heapings scooped from the bottom of the barrel (the "Marlon Brando Collection" is a five-disc set dominated by such least-loved Brando films Teahouse of the August Moon, The Formula, and the 1962 Mutiny on the Bounty), a number of director-themed boxes make it possible to have an affordable, one-stop film festival at home. The smartly chosen Viva Pedro--The Almodovar Collection skips past the auteur's tickling juvenelia to the full-blown operatic dementia of his most accomplished '80s work (Matador, Law of Desire, Women on the Verge of a Nervous Breakdown), then bypasses his confused mid-career slump to rejoin him at the mature pitch represented by Live Flesh and All About My Mother. The Documentaries of Louis Malle, a six-disc set released by Criterion through its Eclipse division, is an invaluable compilation of nonfiction films, including his multi-part Phantom India series, by a great director whose reputation may be imperilled by his confounding versatility. In theatrical releases, 2007 was the year that Charles Burnett's legendary Killer of Sheep finally breathed pure air, and New Yorker Video/ Milestone is to be congratulated for rising to the occasion and constructing an instant and invaluable box by combining Sheep with Burnett's short films and second feature, My Brother's Wedding, to create Killer of Sheep: The Charles Burnett Collection. The second volume of The Films of Kenneth Anger captures the cream of Anger's trend-setting experimental shorts, from the 1964 Scorpio Rising to 1981'a Lucifer Rising. For those who crave that kind of transgressive trippiness unpolluted by talent or taste, The Films of Alejandro Jodorowsky is definitely one of the archeological finds of the year, finally making El Topo and its runtier cousins safe for home viewing. Personally, I kind of think that Jodorowsky was always a con man who hogged the magic mushrooms at the buffet table, but maybe that's why nobody ever invited me to do the midnight programming at the Elgin.

ANIMATION: Is there any pleasure more sublimely twenty-first geeky than trancing out in front of the home entertainment system watching classic 'toons? This year saw the release of a much appreciated fifth volume of Looney Tunes--Golden Collection, but the real shocker may be Popeye the Sailor, 1933-1938: Vol. 1, which rescued a trove of the Fleischer brothers' best from years of rights problems and cheapo videotapes. Then there's Tex Avery's Droopy--The Complete Theatrical Collection, which if anything may be a bit too complete; it contains seven cartoons that Avery purists will shun because they were made by other hands, but they all star the dog who, from the looks of it, spent his screen career stoically suffering for his art. Animated Soviet Propaganda: From the October Revolution to Perestroika is a four-disc set that will make a perfect May Day present for your old Socialist friend from college who still hasn't gotten over it. Last but not least, there's The Three Stooges Collection, Vol. One: 1934-1936. Technically, the Three Stooges weren't really cartoon characters, but the films are a lot easier to watch if you pretend that they were.

TELEVISION: Yes, you can still watch TV on your TV, and thanks to a few hardy corporations you can even pay for the privilege. Twin Peaks: The Definitive Gold Box Edition performs a notable feat by finally getting the first season (AKA "the good one"), including the feature-length pilot, and the second season (AKA "the not-so-much one") season of David Lynch and Mark Frost's prime time phenom in print and available at the same point in history. Clare Danes fans will be almost as grateful for My So-Called Life: The Complete Series, though some of us would trade all its extras for one bonus scene of the heroine seeing through that smarmy little nimrod Jordan Catalano and leaving him carless in the park stripped to his underwear. That wouldn't have come as any more of a shock than the timely arrival in stores of Saturday Night Live--The Second Season, AKA "Bill Murray: The Pre-Wes Anderson Years, Volume 1." Yes, Virginia, they do still make new TV shows, and of the current series now on DVD, 30 Rock--Season 1 seems particularly well shaped to reward repeat viewings. As show biz self-satire goes, it's not as great as The Larry Sanders Show, but as a DVD it may be less infuriating an artifact than Not Just the Best of the Larry Sanders Show. Here's a series that fully deserves the every-episode-plus-ephemera Twin Peaks treatment, but instead, what do we get? Four discs, consisting of 23 episodes, some of which are already available on the first-season DVD that was first issued back in 2001 and is still in print, plus eight hours of extras that are sort of interesting the first time you watch them and then automatically turn into space that could have been taken up by close to thirty additional episodes. Garry Shandling, if you're reading this, or David Duchovny, if you're reading this and you still have Garry's naumber and can give him a message: It's not right, man. It's just not right. Do you really care this much less about your career legacy than Popeye does!?

SMORGASBORD: Many companies have taken to vaccuuming up odds and ends of film history and boxing them according to genre and sub-genre and even attitude, with results that are fun to contemplate even if you'd rather not shell out something in the high two figures to have them on the shelf. Treasures III: Social Issues in American Film, 1900-1934, the latest, four-disc set in the series compiled from the American Archives, is a remarkable collection of topical studies, including Cecil B. DeMille's 1928 feature The Godless Girl. Now on its fourth box set, the Film Noir Classic Collection has gone from showcasing movies you'd seen already to movies you'd read about to movies you dimly remember not bothering to stay up to watch after you read about them in the late-night TV listings. As such, it is a veritable overstuffed closet of discoveries waiting to be made, a place to see such actors as Robert Ryan, Edward G. Robinson, Sterling Hayden, and Ricardo Montalban strut their stuff, and to listen to the commentary tracks and give such cool-headed enthusiasts as James Ellroy, Eddie Muller, and Richard Schickel a chance to convince you why you should be watching this stuff. The Cult Camp Classics series slaps together everything from early Sergio Leone (The Colossus of Rhodes) and very late Joan Crawford (Trog), complete with mostly excellent commentary tracks, across four multi-disc boxes divided into such categories as "Women in Peril" and "Terrorized Travelers." The Welcome to the Grindhouse series of double-bill single discs are the most attractive of several packaging jobs that use the supposedly magical word "grindhouse" to offer an excuse to watch movies that Trog crosses the street to avoid be seen with in public.

CRITERION: Still the bestest with the mostest. This year they graced the shelves with dreamy new editions of Breathless, Mala Noche, Two-Lane Blacktop, Days of Heaven, and Berlin Alexanderplatz.

DRAGON DYNASTY: Specialists, and the new kid on the block. For years, Harvey Weinstein stormed the festivals, greedily buying up rights to Asian action films, and then lost them in the back of the freezer. This new label, started by the Weinstein Company in association with Genius Products, looks to make amends by issuing such pictures as Jackie Chan's Police Story films, John Woo's Hard-Boiled, the Infernal Affairs trilogy, and other action classics including the beyond-canonical 36th Chamber of Shaolin on DVD in deluxe packages far superior to any treatment they've received in the West before now. Indeed, the DVDs are so beautiful that only a churl could think to point out that it's about damn time. It's about damn time.

Exclusive Clip: Twin Peaks Gold Box Edition

Peter Smith — Thu, 25 Oct 2007 20:00:00 GMT

We're pleased to have an exclusive clip from the new Twin Peaks "Gold Box Edition" DVD set, which finally supplants a couple of incomplete older releases. The old Season 1 box didn't even feature the pilot, a ridiculous omission that this set corrects with both the U.S. and European versions. It's also got a ton of bonus stuff (including, I'm delighted to report, Kyle MacLachlan's Twin Peaks sketch on SNL), assembled by DVD maestro Charles de Lauzirika, who produced the spectacular Alien Quadrilogy box and whose new Blade Runner set I am itching to get my hands on. In any case, it's good news, and you will surely relish this clip from the bonus features, of the costume contest at the "Return to Twin Peaks" fan convention. (That guy really looks like MacLachlan, no?) — Peter Smith