The Screengrab : the kite runner

DVD Digest for March 24, 2009

Paul Clark — Tue, 24 Mar 2009 14:00:00 GMT

This week brings plenty of good news for both 007 fans and lovers of classic Hollywood, and plenty of other goodies besides.

This week’s DVD of the Week is Criterion’s much-awaited release of Francois Truffaut’s The Last Metro. In this 1980 film, Truffaut for the first time addressed explicitly the subject of the French Occupation during World War II, seen here through the prism of a struggling theatre whose Jewish owner is hiding in the basement, leaving his leading-lady wife (played by Catherine Deneuve) to run the day-to-day business. There’s a great deal of intrigue in the film, not only involving a cocky young actor played by Gerard Depardieu, but with any number of Nazi sympathizers, informers, double-crossers, and sneaky Occupation types. But what comes through most clearly on this DVD release (and even more so on the Blu-Ray version) is how gorgeous the film is- how handsomely Truffaut re-created the period without letting the aesthetic concerns overwhelm the narrative ones. Likewise, this may be the most gorgeous Catherine Deneuve was on film- no mean feat, that.

The week’s other major classics release is the third volume of Warner’s Forbidden Hollywood Collection, this one featuring six films from director William Wellman- Other Men’s Women, The Purchase Price, Frisco Jenny, Midnight Mary, Heroes for Sale, and Wild Boys of the Road. Other classics releases this week include: Lemmon and Matthau (but not Randall and Klugman) The Odd Couple Centennial Edition (Paramount); Alfred Hitchcock’s To Catch a Thief Centennial Edition (Paramount); Lilo & Stitch 2-Disc Big Wave Edition (Disney); the unofficial 007 adventure Never Say Never Again Collector’s Edition (Fox/MGM); and the Fast and the Furious trilogy (Universal, also Blu-Ray), with standard DVDs of the films available separately.

The recent releases for this week are highlighted by: Daniel Craig’s second James Bond opus, Quantum of Solace (Fox/MGM, also Blu-Ray); the animated adjunct to the Watchmen universe, Watchmen: Tales of the Black Freighter (Warner, also Blu-Ray); John Travolta as a talking dog in Bolt (Disney); and Anne Hathaway in Passengers (Sony, also Blu-Ray).

In TV on DVD news, this week brings: The Venture Bros. Season 3 (Warner, also Blu-Ray); Star Wars: The Clone Wars- A Galaxy Divided (Warner); The Riches Season 2 (Fox); The Life and Times of Tim (Warner); and Big Stan (HBO, also Blu-Ray).

This week’s biggest Blu-Ray only release is James Bond Blu-Ray vol. 3 (Fox/MGM), which includes Goldfinger, Moonraker, and The World Is Not Enough, also available separately. If you’re still looking for more action, you can always pick up The Matrix (Warner). And on the more dramatic side of things, this week finds Paramount release three of its artier films of recent years, A Mighty Heart, The Kite Runner, and Things We Lost in the Fire. I admit I would be more enthusiastic about these releases if they were films I actually liked, but I do like the idea that studios are actually attempting to spotlight more than just loud action movies on Blu-Ray. Hey, it’s a start.

Finally, I leave you with the Synopsis of the Week, this week courtesy of the FUNimation Entertainment release Fruits Basket Box Set. Here it is:

“The Sohma family is cursed; however, this is no ordinary family curse. When a member of the family is embraced by a person of the opposite gender, they transform into an animal of the Chinese Zodiac! The Sohmas have managed to keep the curse private for generations, but when a young girl stumbles upon their secret, life in the Sohma household changes forever. Conflict erupts as zodiac rivals clash in this most unusual household. Young Tohru Honda must promise the secret will remain her own - or face the consequences!”

"Slumdog Millionaire": Are the Kids Alright?

Phil Nugent — Thu, 19 Feb 2009 18:00:00 GMT

The big knock on Slumdog Millionaire --which I think is still supposed to be the official front-runner to win the Academy Award for Best Picture this weekend, but you might want to double-check with somebody who cares--is that, as a spangly, ostentatiously confected romance with a plot built on coincidences and luck, it's too lightweight an entertainment to deserve the great prize that has previously gone to such thoughtful works of art as Gladiator, Kramer vs. Kramer, and The Great Ziegfeld. But for a piece of fluff, particularly a piece of fluff in the same category as films about such weighty subjects as gay rights activists, lying crooked presidents, and hot Nazi bibliophiles, it sure has pissed off a lot of people. A month ago, a story in the Los Angeles Times laid out the case being made against it in the country where it was made and which it purports to depict: it's "yet another stereotypical foreign depiction of their nation, accentuating squalor, corruption and impoverished-if-resilient natives." It's "a poverty tour." It even added insult to injury by introducing to the world a brand-new ethnic slur for poor Indians, as if the world had been having trouble coming up with its own. (The term "slumdog" was the invention of screenwriter Simon Beaufoy.) Now, in just to time to mess with the film's Oscar hopes, come accusations that the film exploited its eight-year-old child stars by underpaying them.

The degree to which this charge has legs basically comes down to how much responsibility you have to young, poor kids to whom you've given an opportunity (and who you've used to spark up your movie) after it's time for the parade to move on. It's been reported that Rubina Ali, who plays the hero's love interest as a child, and Azharuddin Ismail, who plays the hero's brother, were paid the equivalent of $730 and $2,475, respectively, for their performances. The filmmakers say they were paid more than that, and have said that they were paid many times the average adult salary for the area, though it's possible that they could have been paid a hell of a lot more than most people make in the region and still not have been paid not much more than the reported figures. Rubina Ali's father, "Rafiq Ali Kureshi, a carpenter who said he was a set builder for the film, broke his leg during filming and has been unemployed since." As for Ismail, "His family's illegal shanty was recently demolished, and his father is suffering from tuberculosis. They live under a tarp. Much of his salary from the film has been spent on his father's treatment and feeding his family, he said." At the same time, Slumdog director Danny Boyle has seen to it that both children have been admitted to school for the first time in their lives and has also set up a trust fund that they will receive after completing their educations.

The situation may recall that of 2007's The Kite Runner, in which the moviemakers were first accused of underpaying their Afghani child actors and then charged with having endangered their lives by putting them in a movie that, some prophesied, would set off protests that might make the cast members targets. (In the end, Paramount paid to relocate four of the children and their relatives to the United Arab Emirates, and according to some reports has continued to help pay for their upkeep.) There may be no easy way to know just how thoroughly you're exploiting or not exploiting nonprofessional actors, especially children, in situations like this; if your movie is a box office smash, as Slumdog turned out to be (and as The Kite Runner did not) then it may seem obvious to those on the outside that you have a great responsibility to see to it that those who helped you are richly rewarded, but when you're trying to get a movie made under difficult circumstances--and Slumdog was not an easy shoot--it may not seem especially obvious that you ought to reimburse an unknown nonprofessional child as if he were Tom Cruise, or even that paying him more money than his father will receive in his life is inadequate. And even if there were some perfect figure that everyone could agree on as payment, the fact remains that, especially for children who have known Third World poverty, the experience of being in a big English-language movie is bound to set up expectations about how it's going to automatically change one's life. (One of the Kite Runner boys said that he wanted to be relocated to America because the kidnapping industry in his country made it too dangerous to be rich and famous.) About the only way to make sure that even the appearance of exploitation in such cases never happens again would probably be to never give another kid the chance to be in a movie. The kids would love that.

DVD Digest for March 25, 2008

Paul Clark — Tue, 25 Mar 2008 14:00:00 GMT

D'oh! While I was at work today avoiding doing anything of importance, I discovered that I'd completely forgotten the release of David Lynch's Lost Highway. Then arrived home only to find that Eclipse's William Klein box set has been pushed back to May. Some days, I wonder if I'm not better off staying in bed.

DVD of the Week Two Months From Now: In a week with no truly noteworthy new films or world-beating classics arriving on DVD for the first time, I'd like to throw some light on Eclipse's awesome-looking box set, The Delirious Fictions of William Klein. I say "awesome-looking" because I haven't been able to catch up with any of his fiction films before now, and I only know his work by his 1969 film Muhammad Ali, The Greatest. Klein was an acclaimed photographer before making the leap to cinema — and to France — and his fiction films were biting social satires that starred a number of leading French actors of the day, including Delphine Seyrig, Sami Frey, and Andre Dussolier. All due respect to Eclipse's treatments of lesser-known works by Ozu, Lubitsch, and Kurosawa, but I believe that box sets like this one and last year's Raymond Bernard box are even more valuable to lovers of film, spotlighting unique works by fascinating filmmakers that wouldn't see the light of day otherwise. Sadly, now that I've whetted your appetite for William Klein, now you'll have to wait until May 20 to purchase this box, due to a last-minute schedule change by Eclipse. Oh well- at least now you know.

Also of note this week is Warner's Two-Disc Special Edition of Bonnie and Clyde (also Blu-Ray), which is available by itself or as part of a, "Ultimate Colector's Edition" containing plenty of memorabilia. Also of note is The Warner Bros. Pictures Gangsters Collection Vol. 3, featuring six films including Black Legion (1937), Brother Orchid (1940), Lady Killer (1933), Mayor of Hell (1933), Picture Snatcher (1933), and Smart Money (1931). In addition, MGM releases three DVD editions of the Yul Brynner vehicles Kings of the Sun, Solomon and Sheba, and Taras Bulba. And let's not forget the extended cut of Walk the Line (Fox).

By comparison, the pickings for new films on DVD is pretty meager, with only The Kite Runner (Paramount) and Jimmy Carter Man From Plains (Sony) arriving in stores. But collectors of TV on DVD have a bigger selection to choose from, with Universal releasing Battlestar Galactica: Season Three, Sliders Season 4, and The Invisible Man Season 1, and Sony countering with Party of Five Season 3 and all new editions of all five seasons of The Shield.

Finally, the beloved Mr. Huddleston is taking a week's vacation from this column, with no HD releases hitting the shelves today. How long this well-deserved rest will be remains to be seen.

James Bond and the Five Stages of Grief

Phil Nugent — Tue, 08 Jan 2008 15:59:00 GMT

The British news services really stay on top of developments in the James Bond series, which figures, since it's probably the best contemporary evidence that they used to have an empire. (I expect that within a couple of decades, American news services will show the same obsessive interest in who gets cast to play Bruce Willis's two-fisted grandson in Die Hard VIII: Live Free, Die Hard, and Leave a Good-Looking Corpse.) The latest casting news is that Ukrainian model Olga Kurylenko, who recently starred with a shaven-headed, baffled-looking Timothy Olyphant in Hitman, will play the "sidekick" to Daniel Craig's Bond in what will be the twenty-second installment of the time-honored, recently re-booted franchise. The movie also stars Mathieu Amalric of The Diving Bell and the Butterfly as the villain and features returning performers Judi Dench (as M), Jeffrey Wright (continuing to serve as the most overqualified actor ever to play Felix Leiter), and international man of mystery Giancarlo Giannini, who was last seen in Casino Royale being dragged offscreen after being tasered at Bond's request, but who apparently holds no hard feelings, being one of those adaptable European sophisticates.

It all sounds pretty good, except for a couple of things. First, the director this time in Marc Forster, the almost talent-free auteur of Monster's Ball and The Kite Runner, a man who has proven himself capable of practically anything, so long as it blows. But with Craig and the others in place, how badly can he screw it up, you ask? Well, it's reported that the new movie "is expected to follow on from the events of Casino Royale, with Bond picking up the pieces after being double-crossed by Treasury agent Vesper Lynd. Producers Michael G. Wilson and Barbara Broccoli said Camille 'challenges Bond and helps him come to terms with the emotional consequences of Vesper's betrayal'." This has a creepy touchy-feely aspect to it that might as well be calculated to set veteran Bond fans' teeth on edge. Not that we have any problem with James Bond touching and feeling, but in his own preferred style. For instance, in the opening of Diamonds Are Forever, Sean Connery's Bond came to terms with the emotional consequences of the murder of his wife in the previous film, On Her Majesty's Secret Service, by touching the villain responsible for the foul deed, strapping him to a surgical table, and rolling it into a handy flaming pit, after which he looked as if he felt just fine. And Connery hadn't even been in On Her Majesty, which just goes to show how he was willing to go that extra mile to come to terms with something that hadn't happened on his watch. The new Bond movie is due to be released this fall, at which point all will become clear, or at least as clear as a James Bond plot ever is. But here's hoping that, even as we speak, Forster isn't shooting a scene with Daniel Craig waking up in his bed in a psychiatric hospital to discover that Dr. Phil is barging through the door. Or if he is, that there's a flaming pit somewhere in the room.

Today in the Nerve Film Lounge: I Am Legend, Youth Without Youth, Look, The Kite Runner, Funny Face

Peter Smith — Fri, 14 Dec 2007 17:00:00 GMT

I Am Legend: "Smith is excellent as a man at the very brink of sanity, but Manhattan is the other star of I Am Legend."

Youth Without Youth: "Abandon hope, all ye who enter this picture seeking narrative coherence. But if you're in the mood for a visually stunning, batshit-loco jaunt into Eastern European mysticism, you could do considerably worse."

The Kite Runner: "It's hard not to be moved by Hosseini's epic, devastating tale of ruined friendships and a destroyed country."

Look: "Generally, one feels less a sympathy for the spied-upon than a sense that these people should be watched carefully at all times. This actually makes for a pretty entertaining hundred minutes, but as far as thematic resonance, it's a bust."

Funny Face: "There's never been a more appropriate movie to co-opt for a fashion ad than Funny Face — it's the cinematic equivalent of flipping through Vogue."

007: Oscar Bait?

Peter Smith — Tue, 11 Dec 2007 21:00:00 GMT

The next James Bond film (which is being called Bond 22 until someone comes up with an even more meaningless title to stick on it) certainly doesn’t read like a James Bond film. In fact, it reads like a movie designed to make the Academy sit up and take notice: its director, Marc Forster, helmed two films (Monster’s Ball and Finding Neverland) that won Oscars and just completed a third, The Kite Runner, that may receive similar acclaim. Its screenwriter, Paul Haggis, has been nominated for five Oscars, has won two, and is generating huge amounts of Academy Award talk for In the Valley of Elah. And no less a source than Max von Sydow claims that the role of perennial Bond nemesis Ernst Stavro Blofeld will be played by Mathieu Amalric, who’s currently wowing the critics in The Diving Bell and the Butterfly. With Forster telling the New York Times that his vision of the character is dark and tormented, and pontificating that "the most interesting place for a James Bond movie to go is inward — deeper into Bond himself," will Bond 22 be the first 007 film to court critical respectability? Or is Forster just vaporing to defend the giant paycheck he’s going to get? — Leonard Pierce

Filming in Byzantium

Peter Smith — Tue, 27 Nov 2007 20:00:00 GMT

It’s not often than the best foreign film of the year wins the Oscar for Best Foreign Film of the year. Part of this is attributable to the Motion Picture Academy’s usual lack of standards, but a lot of it can be credited to the Byzantine rules governing what films can even be considered for the Foreign Film Oscar. As this article in the Hollywood Reporter notes, this year is typical insofar as many of 2007’s best-regarded foreign films are ineligible for nomination: Ang Lee’s Lust, Caution is out of the running because the Academy does not consider that Taiwanese talent had enough to do with its filming (a situation James Schamus regards as "absolutely unfair and ridiculous," pointing out that Lee’s Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon, which won a Best Foreign Film Oscar, was made under precisely the same circumstances); Julian Schnabel’s The Diving Bell and the Butterfly is disqualified because countries are only allowed to submit one film for consideration, and this year France went with Persepolis; the Israeli film The Band’s Visit is a no-go because it contains too much English dialogue; and The Kite Runner won’t be considered because of its international crew — particularly absurd, because in its absence, Afghanistan has no other entry in the category. — Leonard Pierce