DVDs, 5/8.

Criterion executive producer Kim Hendrickson tells the story behind Steven Soderbergh's commentary track for the upcoming re-release of The Third Man - and posts a clip as well.

How's this for a review-opener: "Like it or not, we're coming up on the 50th anniversary of the French New Wave - which, we should not be allowed to forget, will always be to film culture roughly what the Age of Enlightenment was to Western thought. Or what movable type was to public literacy. Or what The Origin of Species was to biology: a volcanic epiphany, a revolution." Well, turns out "it's only partially true," but you were ready to bury or praise Michael Atkinson, weren't you. The film at hand is Claude Chabrol's Comedy of Power, wherein Isabelle Huppert's "workaholic avenging angel, dangerously underfed and self-amused, is fabulously, pathologically invulnerable - even as the murder threats pour in. Therein lies the woman's charm, and Huppert's star power." Also: "Taken just on a political level, [How Tasty Was My Little Frenchman] is one of sharpest satires of colonial history ever made, especially since it's sourced out from the exploited culture's sensibility."

Dave Kehr opens his column in the New York Times this week by surveying a slew of Frank Borzage DVDs we don't have before turning his attention to China Doll and Alfred Hitchcock's To Catch a Thief, which "has always been close to perfection as a romantic comedy; now it approaches that same state as a DVD, thanks to the superb widescreen transfer Paramount has commissioned for the film's release in a 'special collector's edition.'" And for Time Out New York, Matt Zoller Seitz talks with Peter Bogdanovich about his commentary track.

Brendon Connelly has good news: "Kenneth Branagh's film of Hamlet - still the only movie to present the full text - has been officially announced for R1 DVD release in August." And he knows what extras'll be on that disc, too.

David Lowery on Matthew Barney: No Restraint: "He doesn't take himself quite so seriously as he takes his work, and what's great about this documentary is that it brings him down to earth while leaving his art in whatever stratosphere of phyisogenic process it exists in. [Director Alison] Chernick doesn't try to demystify what Barney makes, but she does seek to understand where he's coming from, and in doing so she reveals him not so much as a gatekeeper of his own ideas as a conduit to them."

At Cinematical, Matt Bradshaw reviews Able Edwards: "[D]irector Graham Robertson must be commended for shooting an entire feature without sets for a paltry $30,000."

DVD roundups: DVD Talk; Logan Hill in New York; the Lumière Reader; Susan King in the Los Angeles Times; MCN.

Posted by dwhudson at May 8, 2007 6:59 AM