DVDs, 8/8.

"If Americans know [Brigitte] Bardot chiefly for Contempt, Jean-Luc Godard's modernist masterpiece of 1963, the sad truth is that few of her other films are worth a second look," writes Dave Kehr. "But [Roger] Vadim, a man who knew women, abstracted some of her wilder characteristics for the 1956 film ...And God Created Woman, the tale of a sexually uninhibited young vamp of St-Tropez who dallies with Jean-Louis Trintignant while keeping an eye on his wealthy older brother (Curd Jürgens). This was something new: a woman who made her own choices about sex, and seemed to enjoy the process."

Also in the New York Times: "Batfink is back as a four-disc DVD set, lovingly packaged by Shout! Factory," writes Frank DeCaro. "Intended for the under-8 set, it is more likely to find interest among nostalgic 40-somethings, the same cult audience that found the recent superhero parody The Tick both the animated and live-action versions, such a genuine stitch."

"There were many memorable screen teams during Hollywood's dream factory era - Fred Astaire and Ginger Rogers, Spencer Tracy and Katharine Hepburn, Judy Garland and Mickey Rooney, Errol Flynn and Olivia de Havilland. But none made as many features together as MGM's William Powell and Myrna Loy - 13 films over a 14-year period," writes Susan King in the Los Angeles Times. "The two were best known for playing the wealthy - and often inebriated - detectives Nick and Nora Charles in 1934's Oscar-nominated mystery comedy The Thin Man, based on the Dashiell Hammett tale, and five sequels. But they also appeared in seven other films together, and five of these features are included on the new DVD set TCM Spotlight: Myrna Loy and William Powell Collection." More from the New York Post's Lou Lumenick.

With Inland Empire coming out on DVD next week, Nathan Lee calls up David Lynch for the Voice and notes that there are two discs here: "The first simply contains the film as shown in the theaters, without a commentary track. The other disc is made up of nearly three hours of extras and features, including a 70-minute collection called 'More Things That Happened.' Incorporated into the body of Inland Empire, this additional material would push the total running time to over four and half hours, but Lynch insists that they be considered apart from the main attraction."

At long last, Tim Lucas's DVD review up at the Sight & Sound site: "Against all odds... Bret Wood has not only succeeded with his Psychopathia Sexualis, but triumphed."

In an entry entitled "The genius of the Fleischers," Premiere's Glenn Kenny recommends the new 4-disc set Popeye the Sailor: 1933 - 1938: "This Warner set is, among other things, an object lesson in how it should be done."

More from Michael Atkinson at IFC News, where he also reviews Raymond Bernard's Wooden Crosses and Les Misérables, which "seem to form a kind of bridge between the gargantuan expressionism of Abel Gance and the more intimate verities of Renoir, displaying virtues from both camps. Of course, today the categories are more or less meaningless, and Bernard emerges like Lazarus from the cave."

"What director Joe Swanberg's LOL lacks in ambition it makes up for in nuance," writes Ed Gonzalez at Slant. "Swanberg rewrites do-it-yourself as do-it-for-us, deepening the scope of the film's otherwise basic message about the emotional harm our addiction to technology perpetuates. It's how a little film thinks bigger."

"[I]t's difficult to think of a more perfect pairing of director and project than Zodiac, which attaches Fincher's legendarily painstaking methods to a story about procedure and obsession," writes Christopher Orr, a senior editor at the New Republic. David Fincher captures "persuasively that feeling, familiar to anyone who's worked long enough in journalism (or, I imagine, law enforcement), that the truth might be just around the corner, that one more scrap of evidence, one more phone call, could make all the pieces of the puzzle fit together at last. Like [Robert] Graysmith, Fincher has madness in his method; unlike him, he has found what he was looking for." Also at TNR, Jane Espenson, who's written for Buffy the Vampire Slayer and other Joss Whedon TV shows, decides she knows what makes Harry Potter work.

Andrew Bemis on Barry Lyndon: "It's a maddening, unforgettable cinematic experience; of all my favorite films, I hate this one most." Jonathan Lapper loves it a moment more.

"In a sense, a big question mark hangs over Vengeance Is Mine," writes Ian Johnston at Not Coming to a Theater Near You. "It's the question of what, in the end, [Shohei] Imamura means, what lessons (sociological, cultural) he is trying draw from the case of Iwao Enokizu."

Billy Stevenson on Epstein's The Fall of the House of Usher: "Some of the most evocative scenes are simply careful montages of wind-blown trees, which nevertheless create a sense of generalised foreboding equal to anything I have seen to date, recalling Usher's admission that what he fears most is abstracted fear."

"The real life of Eugene Francois Vidocq appears have been more exciting than the version of Vidocq in A Scandal in Paris," writes Peter Nellhaus. "Setting aside the fanciful presentation of 19th Century France, what A Scandal in Paris is really about is the differences between people as they are, and how they are imagined to be." Also: "In both The Last Wagon and 3:10 to Yuma, Delmer Daves often uses long shots of his characters dwarfed by their environment. Both films can be read as being about people living with nature."

"The Cowboys gave [John] Wayne one of his very best late-era roles, in my opinion," writes Moriarty at AICN. "Mark Rydell and his cinematographer the great Robert Surtees (who shot classics like The Graduate, The Last Picture Show, The Sting and Ben-Hur) use every inch of their full scope screen to great effect here, and the new Warner Bros. release of the film is gorgeous."

"One of my absolute favorite films of the year so far is the brilliant (yes, brilliant) Hot Fuzz," writes Ted Pigeon.

"Despite its family friendly rating, Hairspray is still a John Waters movie. It may be a kinder John Waters, but it's certainly not a gentler one." Odienator revisits the original at Edward Copeland on Film.

Adam Ross sings the praises of Universal's fantastic Legacy Collection.

"The Melancholy of Haruhi Suzumiya is high caliber pop entertainment," writes Scott Green at AICN.

Roundups: Cinema Strikes Back, DVD Talk and Susan King in the LAT.

Posted by dwhudson at August 8, 2007 1:17 PM