February, marking both Black History Month and Valentine’s Day, is the kind of stretch from which a programmer can mine plenty. Accordingly the Criterion Channel have oriented their next slate around both. The former is mostly noted in a series comprising numerous features and shorts: Shirley Clarke and William Greaves up to Ephraim Asili and Garrett Bradley, among them gems such as Varda’s Black Panthers and Kathleen Collins’ Losing Ground; a six-film series on James Baldwin; and 10 works by Oscar Micheaux.
Meanwhile, the 23-film “All You Need Is Love” will cover the blinding romance of L’Atalante, the heartbreak of Happy Together, and youthful whimsy of Stolen Kisses; four Douglas Sirk rarities should leave their mark, but I’m perhaps most excited about three starring Rock Hudson and Doris Day. Perhaps more bracing are 12 movies by Derek Jarman and four by noir maestro Robert Siodmak. Also a major...
Meanwhile, the 23-film “All You Need Is Love” will cover the blinding romance of L’Atalante, the heartbreak of Happy Together, and youthful whimsy of Stolen Kisses; four Douglas Sirk rarities should leave their mark, but I’m perhaps most excited about three starring Rock Hudson and Doris Day. Perhaps more bracing are 12 movies by Derek Jarman and four by noir maestro Robert Siodmak. Also a major...
- 1/26/2023
- by Nick Newman
- The Film Stage
Each month, the fine folks at FilmStruck and the Criterion Collection spend countless hours crafting their channels to highlight the many different types of films that they have in their streaming library. This March will feature an exciting assortment of films, as noted below.
To sign up for a free two-week trial here.
Friday, March 2
Friday Night Double Feature: The Ladykillers and La poison
Criminal schemes take unlikely targets in these two pitch-dark comedies from the 1950s. In Alexander Mackendrick’s Ealing Studio farce The Ladykillers (1955), a team of thieves (led by Alec Guinness) descends on a boardinghouse run by an elderly widow, who becomes the victim of their misdeeds. In Sacha Guitry’s brisk, witty, and savage La poison (1951), a gardener (Michel Simon) and his wife, fed up after thirty years of marriage, find themselves plotting each other’s murder.
Tuesday, March 6
Tuesday’s Short + Feature: Art* and In...
To sign up for a free two-week trial here.
Friday, March 2
Friday Night Double Feature: The Ladykillers and La poison
Criminal schemes take unlikely targets in these two pitch-dark comedies from the 1950s. In Alexander Mackendrick’s Ealing Studio farce The Ladykillers (1955), a team of thieves (led by Alec Guinness) descends on a boardinghouse run by an elderly widow, who becomes the victim of their misdeeds. In Sacha Guitry’s brisk, witty, and savage La poison (1951), a gardener (Michel Simon) and his wife, fed up after thirty years of marriage, find themselves plotting each other’s murder.
Tuesday, March 6
Tuesday’s Short + Feature: Art* and In...
- 3/1/2018
- by Ryan Gallagher
- CriterionCast
Last night, at the end of a busy week at work when I was just in the mood to hang out at home and unwind a little, I decided that it was a good time for me to wrap up my viewing of Criterion ’68 by ingesting an assortment of short films that had accumulated, like the last crumbs of cereal at the bottom of the bag, in my chronological checklist of films that I’ve been blogging about over the years. It was a suitable occasion for me to fully immerse myself into what turned out to be a festival of random weirdness. My wife, recovering from a bout with illness, was feeling a bit better but wanted to find a productive use of her time with the resurgence of energy, so she kept herself busy by working on a new quilting project. That left me free to indulge without...
- 2/25/2017
- by David Blakeslee
- CriterionCast
World Without Sun, Jacques Cousteau’s classic portrait of life in a submarine lab with half a dozen paperback-reading, chain-smoking Frenchmen, ends with a scene in which Cousteau’s saucer-shaped submersible briefly surfaces in an air pocket in an undersea cavern. It’s a strange and inspiring coda, but also blatantly staged (though so is almost everything in World Without Sun) and could never pass muster in our age of interchangeable educational nature documentaries. But lest one think that Cousteau’s light-on-facts approach was easier (“As soon as you are specific, the poetry disappears,” he said at that film’s premiere), there are bad imitations to prove otherwise. If nothing else, Jean-Christophe Jeauffre’s insipid Passage To Mars instills a greater appreciation for the classic movies that clearly inspired it.
Admittedly, Cousteau and other nature documentary pioneers like Jean Painlevé and Hans Hass had it a little easier, because they...
Admittedly, Cousteau and other nature documentary pioneers like Jean Painlevé and Hans Hass had it a little easier, because they...
- 9/29/2016
- by Ignatiy Vishnevetsky
- avclub.com
Cloaked in a mystifying atmosphere and possessed by a transfixing, amorphous mood, Lucile Hadzihalilovic's "Evolution" is a beautifully strange hybrid of innocence and disturbance. "Unique" is the immediate descriptor that springs to mind once it ends, but the film's singularity has traces of David Cronenberg's early body horrors, fragments of Carl Theodor Dreyer's spiritual contours, and a dash of Jean Painlevé for its fascination with the sea. Famed underwater-explorer Jacques Cousteau famously proclaimed that "the sea, once it casts its spell, holds one in its net of wonder forever." Painlevé's short films on oceanic fauna contain the same effects of this spell, and the quote applies remarkably well to the feelings evoked in "Evolution," which spreads its net wide. Hadzihalilovic creates a nightmarish lullaby that nestles itself into the unsuspecting viewer like some alien organism,...
- 9/16/2015
- by Nikola Grozdanovic
- The Playlist
The 15th annual Antimatter Film Festival is grinding out, as it always does, an incredible program of avant-garde and experimental short films and features from all over the world. The visual smorgasbord is assaulting Victoria, British Columbia on Oct. 12-20.
Some of the features include Matt McCormick‘s lyrical travelogue road trip The Great Northwest, Sabine Gruffat‘s Detroit & Dubai contrast and comparison I Have Always Been a Dreamer and Ben Rivers‘ acclaimed pastoral odyssey Two Years at Sea.
On the short film front, there’s Salise Hughes‘ vanishing Erasable Cities, Deborah Stratman‘s reworked silent film Village, silenced, Matt McCormick‘s meditation on abandoned spaces Future So Bright, Jem Cohen‘s portrait doc Crossing Paths With Luce Vigo, Lyn Elliot‘s stop-motion Another Dress, Another Button, Alyssa Timon‘s A Dog Wearing Glasses; and tons more.
Plus, there’s the special “Home Movie Day” tribute to Victoria, BC on Oct.
Some of the features include Matt McCormick‘s lyrical travelogue road trip The Great Northwest, Sabine Gruffat‘s Detroit & Dubai contrast and comparison I Have Always Been a Dreamer and Ben Rivers‘ acclaimed pastoral odyssey Two Years at Sea.
On the short film front, there’s Salise Hughes‘ vanishing Erasable Cities, Deborah Stratman‘s reworked silent film Village, silenced, Matt McCormick‘s meditation on abandoned spaces Future So Bright, Jem Cohen‘s portrait doc Crossing Paths With Luce Vigo, Lyn Elliot‘s stop-motion Another Dress, Another Button, Alyssa Timon‘s A Dog Wearing Glasses; and tons more.
Plus, there’s the special “Home Movie Day” tribute to Victoria, BC on Oct.
- 10/15/2012
- by Mike Everleth
- Underground Film Journal
The 7th annual Wndx Festival of Moving Image, in addition to the fest’s usually fantastic lineup of new experimental film and video, is presenting a virtual smorgasbord of special events. So, be on the look out for them as they completely take over the city of Winnipeg on Sept. 26-30.
The fun kicks off on Sept. 26 with the debut of “Situated Cinema,” a roving microcinema created by Thomas Evans and Craig Rodmore that will screen at different venues throughout the entire festival. The opening night will take place at Raw Gallery and feature five films curated by Solomon Nagler that will connect viewers with their environment. The filmmakers presenting work at this unique screening experience are Heidi Phillips, Alexandre Larose, Caroline Monnet, Izabella Pruska-Oldenhof and Alex MacKenzie.
Another fantastic multi-part special event at Wndx will be hosted by underground film historian Jack Sargeant, the world’s foremost authority on Beat Cinema.
The fun kicks off on Sept. 26 with the debut of “Situated Cinema,” a roving microcinema created by Thomas Evans and Craig Rodmore that will screen at different venues throughout the entire festival. The opening night will take place at Raw Gallery and feature five films curated by Solomon Nagler that will connect viewers with their environment. The filmmakers presenting work at this unique screening experience are Heidi Phillips, Alexandre Larose, Caroline Monnet, Izabella Pruska-Oldenhof and Alex MacKenzie.
Another fantastic multi-part special event at Wndx will be hosted by underground film historian Jack Sargeant, the world’s foremost authority on Beat Cinema.
- 9/24/2012
- by Mike Everleth
- Underground Film Journal
Who knew that some septuagenarian films in a non-English language about class conflicts, prisoners of war, and cancan dancing could still be the hottest tickets in town? The Tiff Cinematheque did, evidently, as they’ve watched their seats fill up without fail during many a French-filled summer in their twenty-odd year history. In 1997-99 – way back when they were still Cinematheque Ontario and Tiff was just a neighboring, momentary event – James Quandt and co. slathered their summer line-ups with exclusively French productions and practically nothing else. The Ago’s 200-seat Jackman Hall could hardly contain the swarms of cinephiles salivating for the opportunity to catch rare (even rarer now) 35mm prints of the medium’s staple masterpieces: The Poetic Realists, The French Impressionists, The New Wave, The Left Bank, and Pialat (who’s earned his own category).
While this year’s incarnation already kicked off with the aforementioned Jean Renoir...
While this year’s incarnation already kicked off with the aforementioned Jean Renoir...
- 7/23/2012
- by Blake Williams
- IONCINEMA.com
Toronto’s Images Festival celebrates it’s 25th anniversary on April 12-21 at theaters, galleries and other venues all over the city. They are celebrating with a massive event with films and videos, live performances, installations, artist talks and other events.
Below is the lineup for Images’ specific film screening events and some live performances. The fest’s Opening Night film is John Akomfrah’s The Nine Muses, which takes a poetic look at the immigrant experience, particularly through using images of Caribbean and African migrants in the 1950s and ’60s.
The fest will close with a live score by alt-rock band Yo La Tengo accompanying the avant-garde scientific underwater films by French documentary filmmaker Jean Painlevé. Yo La Tengo has been performing “Sounds of Science” since they were commissioned for the project by the San Francisco Film Festival in 2001.
In between these two events is a lineup of feature-length experimental works,...
Below is the lineup for Images’ specific film screening events and some live performances. The fest’s Opening Night film is John Akomfrah’s The Nine Muses, which takes a poetic look at the immigrant experience, particularly through using images of Caribbean and African migrants in the 1950s and ’60s.
The fest will close with a live score by alt-rock band Yo La Tengo accompanying the avant-garde scientific underwater films by French documentary filmmaker Jean Painlevé. Yo La Tengo has been performing “Sounds of Science” since they were commissioned for the project by the San Francisco Film Festival in 2001.
In between these two events is a lineup of feature-length experimental works,...
- 4/9/2012
- by Mike Everleth
- Underground Film Journal
It appears that I should re-title this semi-regular column on the blog “this month in criterion blogs,” rather than “this week,” given that I haven’t written one of these since the end of March. If you’ve been following along with the various news items in my life, you’ll know that I have a lot on my plate these days, and it won’t be cleared for another 18 years or so. That being said, there have been a lot of great Criterion-related blog posts going up on my favorite sites in April, and I thought it was about time to share them all with you fine readers.
This month I’d like to highlight all of the amazing stuff going on at Film School Rejects. As you know from the past few entries in this series, they have their own weekly Criterion column, the Criterion Files. For April,...
This month I’d like to highlight all of the amazing stuff going on at Film School Rejects. As you know from the past few entries in this series, they have their own weekly Criterion column, the Criterion Files. For April,...
- 4/22/2011
- by Ryan Gallagher
- CriterionCast
Welcome to Guest Author month at Criterion Files: a month devoted to important classic and contemporary bloggers. Each Wednesday for the month of April, a writer and fellow Criterion aficionado from another site will be giving their own take one one of the collection’s beloved titles. This week, David Blakeslee, writer for CriterionCast and Criterion Reflections, takes on Jean Painleve’s Science is Fiction set. Tune in every week this month for an analysis of a different title from a new author. With the attendant buzz and ephemeral fanfare that accompanies a new Criterion release now faded after nearly two years and 100 additional spine numbers, I think it’s safe to say that Science is Fiction: 23 Films by Jean Painlevé is one of the most easily overlooked DVD sets in the Criterion Collection. Lacking anything in the way of sexy celebrity star power, built around the career of a director unfamiliar to most contemporary movie fans...
- 4/6/2011
- by Guest Author
- FilmSchoolRejects.com
Douglas Sirk meets Jean Painlevé in Lisa Barcy‘s fishy melodramatic love story Mermaid, in which a married marine biologist begins a torrid affair with one of the sea’s most monstrous creations: The giant squid! But, can man and mollusca live in romantic bliss, especially under the suspicious eye of a spurned human female?
The dramatic opening music perfectly sets the tone for a film that’s at turns heartbreaking and hilarious. And the gags all come from a very well-thought out, logical place, which serves to highlight the absurdity of the situation. For example, the old “lipstick on the collar” gag from the time period this film evokes is updated to “Uh oh, I hope my wife doesn’t notice these giant sucker welts all over my body,” which truly would be a legitimate concern if this were a true story.
Using a logical approach to the humor...
The dramatic opening music perfectly sets the tone for a film that’s at turns heartbreaking and hilarious. And the gags all come from a very well-thought out, logical place, which serves to highlight the absurdity of the situation. For example, the old “lipstick on the collar” gag from the time period this film evokes is updated to “Uh oh, I hope my wife doesn’t notice these giant sucker welts all over my body,” which truly would be a legitimate concern if this were a true story.
Using a logical approach to the humor...
- 3/20/2011
- by Mike Everleth
- Underground Film Journal
The 8th annual Big Sky Documentary Film Festival is all set to run for ten days this Feb. 11-20 in Missoula, Montana. This year, the fest will have a whopping 140 film programs, a growth that necessitates an expansion from its regular home at the Historic Wilma Theatre — where it will occupy two screens — to also feature screenings at the former Pipestone Mountaineering store.
Special events at the fest include a free opening night screening of How to Die in Oregon sponsored by HBO Documentary Films. The film, directed by Peter D. Richardson, examines the impact the legalization of physician-assisted suicide has had on the state. (In 1994, Oregon was the first state to legalize the practice.)
Also, indie rock band Yo La Tengo will perform their acclaimed live score of the films of pioneering French underwater documentary film director Jean Painlevé, something they have done for other film festivals all over the world.
Special events at the fest include a free opening night screening of How to Die in Oregon sponsored by HBO Documentary Films. The film, directed by Peter D. Richardson, examines the impact the legalization of physician-assisted suicide has had on the state. (In 1994, Oregon was the first state to legalize the practice.)
Also, indie rock band Yo La Tengo will perform their acclaimed live score of the films of pioneering French underwater documentary film director Jean Painlevé, something they have done for other film festivals all over the world.
- 1/15/2011
- by Mike Everleth
- Underground Film Journal
There are many things one could say about the Criterion Collection.
One could say that they are the single most important home entertainment distributors working today. That same person could also say that no one does cinematic restoration better than them. However, I think the Collection is a mass of film that is far more important and influential than on just a simple technical level.
To me, the collection is all about discovery; true, blue cinematic discovery.
Science Is Fiction, the collection’s release of 23 films from the famous filmmaker Jean Painleve is the epitome of this feeling.
At the start of the just completed Barnes And Nobles 50% off Criterion sale, I had a few films on my list to pick up. First, there was of course my favorite film of all time, Jean-Luc Godard’s Breathless, a film that for some reason, always ended up out of my hands.
One could say that they are the single most important home entertainment distributors working today. That same person could also say that no one does cinematic restoration better than them. However, I think the Collection is a mass of film that is far more important and influential than on just a simple technical level.
To me, the collection is all about discovery; true, blue cinematic discovery.
Science Is Fiction, the collection’s release of 23 films from the famous filmmaker Jean Painleve is the epitome of this feeling.
At the start of the just completed Barnes And Nobles 50% off Criterion sale, I had a few films on my list to pick up. First, there was of course my favorite film of all time, Jean-Luc Godard’s Breathless, a film that for some reason, always ended up out of my hands.
- 8/4/2010
- by Joshua Brunsting
- CriterionCast
Twitch is proud to present the fourth entry in our current ongoing interview series. Titled The Programmers we'll be spending the next several weeks putting a series of questions to the people who decide what films make it - and what films don't - into the film festival world. From regional, highly specialized festivals up to the biggest of the big, we're putting the same batch of questions to everyone in the hopes that it'll give you something of a picture of how the festival world works as well as a portrait of the people who drive it. Over the coming weeks programmers from Fantastic Fest, The Toronto International Film Festival, The Los Angeles Film Festival, Sundance, The New York Asian Film Festival, Fantasia, and Cannes will all be chiming in. Today it's time for Doug Jones, head programmer at the La Film Festival.
What was the moment when you...
What was the moment when you...
- 6/24/2010
- Screen Anarchy
DVD Playhouse—May 2009
Paramount Centennial Collection Paramount Studios releases two more classic titles from its library on special edition DVD: The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance is John Ford’s last masterpiece (although he would go on to direct two more very good films) from 1962: about an Eastern lawyer (James Stewart) who travels west only to find primal brutality in the form of sadistic bandit Liberty Valance (Lee Marvin, great as always) and pragmatic brutality in local rancher Tom Doniphon (John Wayne), each two sides of a coin that represent a way of life slowly dying out as Stewart’s modern brand of civilization tames the West. A perfect film, period. Howard Hawks’ El Dorado is essentially a remake of his earlier classic Rio Bravo, with John Wayne, Robert Mitchum and a young James Caan as lawmen joining forces against corrupt cattle barons. Great fun. Two disc sets.
Paramount Centennial Collection Paramount Studios releases two more classic titles from its library on special edition DVD: The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance is John Ford’s last masterpiece (although he would go on to direct two more very good films) from 1962: about an Eastern lawyer (James Stewart) who travels west only to find primal brutality in the form of sadistic bandit Liberty Valance (Lee Marvin, great as always) and pragmatic brutality in local rancher Tom Doniphon (John Wayne), each two sides of a coin that represent a way of life slowly dying out as Stewart’s modern brand of civilization tames the West. A perfect film, period. Howard Hawks’ El Dorado is essentially a remake of his earlier classic Rio Bravo, with John Wayne, Robert Mitchum and a young James Caan as lawmen joining forces against corrupt cattle barons. Great fun. Two disc sets.
- 5/12/2009
- by Allen Gardner
- The Hollywood Interview
It makes sense that indie-rock band Yo La Tengo would write and perform its own score for the surrealistic nature films of Jean Painlevé. As musicians, the members of Yo La Tengo have always been as interested in texture and drone as they have in melody, and as a documentary filmmaker, Painlevé focused more on the alien imagery of the animal kingdom than he did on educating his viewers. Painlevé was a scientist who scandalized the academy in the ‘20s when he suggested that an artform as vulgar as cinema could be used to record and convey the wonders of ...
- 5/6/2009
- avclub.com
Finally a decent DVD release week with a few things worth checking out. At the top of the list has to be Darren Aronofsky's The Wrestler, which may not have gotten a lot of love at the Oscars but is still the best movie of last year according to Film Junk. Ron Howard's Frost/Nixon also hits stores today, along with the Notorious B.I.G. biopic, Notorious, and Battlestar Galactica prequel pilot, Caprica. If you're a fan of horror or sci-fi, you might want to look at J.T. Petty's horror-western The Burrowers, Marc Caro's sci-fi flick Dante 01, or the Hellraiser Puzzle Box, and quirky documentary lovers won't want to miss Audience of One. Also out on Blu-ray this week: Sin City and the X-Men trilogy. The Wrestler [1] (DVD, Blu-ray [2]) Frost/Nixon [3] (DVD, Blu-ray [4]) Notorious [5] (DVD, Blu-ray [6]) The Burrowers [7] Dante 01 [8] I Dismember Mama [9] Into The Blue 2: The Reef...
- 4/21/2009
- by Sean
- FilmJunk
Criterion does it again, rescuing a major filmmaker from the quicksand of neglect, happenstance and/or canonical prejudice, and shoving them into the spotlight with state-of-the-art DVD releases that virtually demand a reevaluative reckoning. As with Larisa Shepitko, Jacques Becker, Raymond Bernard, William Klein and Jean Painlevé, you won't find mention of Hiroshi Shimizu in any major English-language film history text, and in each case the elisions are criminal. An almost exact contemporary of Ozu, Mizoguchi and Naruse, from the beginnings of their careers in the mid-to-late '20s to their last films, Shimizu echoes a good deal of their field of concerns -- the plight of women in a patriarchy, the delicacy of the unsaid, the tragic spiral of romantic melodrama -- but comes at them with a subtly distinctive way of observing his characters, similar to Ozu's rigorous restraint but freer, more organic, less "perfect" and more spontaneous.
- 3/17/2009
- by Michael Atkinson
- ifc.com
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