DVDs, 10/9.

The Center for Visual Music is rolling out what sound like two amazing collections, Oscar Fischinger: Ten Films and Jordan Belson: 5 Essential Films. "Oskar Fischinger (1900-1967) was one of the earliest pioneers of abstract animation, placing him in the company of filmmakers like Walter Ruttmann and Hans Richter, who were working only a few years after Kandinsky's first entirely nonrepresentational painting in 1910," Doug Cummings reminds us, while Belson "began his career as a painter, moved into animation and experimental film, and later joined electronic composer Henry Jacobs to create psychedelic Vortex Concerts at a planetarium in San Francisco in the late-50s. Like many Beats, Belson was highly influenced by Eastern mysticism and he began formulating abstract, audiovisual presentations that often utilized circular motifs, solar imagery, lasers, star fields, and billowing, ethereal vapors."

At Filmmaker, Mike Plante recommends Apart From That: "One of our favorite films from CineVegas 2006 is being self-released on DVD in a beautiful special edition with a photo book. Variety critic Robert Koehler told me it was his favorite American film made last year."

"One of the sobering lessons of the new anthology from the National Film Preservation Foundation, Treasures III: Social Issues in American Film 1900-1934, is that the pictures of the early 20th century were in many ways more open to the social and political world: people struggle to make a living, fight against disadvantages and prejudices and are confronted with confounding moral choices on a daily basis," writes Dave Kehr in the New York Times.

"[U]nlike The Death of Mr Lazarescu, also shopped by Tartan in this country as a comedy, 12:08 East of Bucharest is authentically funny, in a boozy-Renoirian kind of way," writes Michael Atkinson at IFC News. "[T]he laughs drip organically from the characters." Also: "Fantoma's new Vol II of [Kenneth] Anger's collected films, following up the juvenilia and precious early films of Vol I, includes the opuses that made him famous."

Sean Axmaker has a fun feature at MSN: "What's in Your DVD Player?" Among those he's asked: Viggo Mortensen, Michael Douglas and David Lynch.

"What Stage Door does, that so few films have ever done as successfully, is address the doubts and anxieties experienced by struggling performers trying to keep their hopes and spirits intact in the face of an uncertain future," writes Josh R at Edward Copeland on Film. "While the film is very much an ensemble piece, the most interesting aspect of the film has always been the relationship between the two central characters." Katharine Hepburn and Ginger Rogers "play off of each other brilliantly."

Jeffrey M Anderson at Cinematical on Cinema16's collection of European Short Films: "What we have here is a wide selection of shorts from many decades, by filmmakers both famous and unknown. Probably not too surprisingly, the best shorts come from folks you've never heard of." More from Rob Humanick at the House Next Door: "Even assuming the vast diversity of taste and viewing experience of potential viewers, the wealth of material here makes it unlikely that one won’t find something of value, whether in one or more of the individual films themselves, or in the bulk of material overall with its many fascinating comparisons and contrasts."

PopMatters launches a week-long series: "The Best of TV on DVD."

DVD roundups: Bryant Fraser, Movie City News.

Posted by dwhudson at October 9, 2007 1:10 AM