DVDs, 10/30.

"A seven-hour-long film about Hitler caused quite a stir when it was shown in New York in January, 1980," writes Richard Brody in the New Yorker. "Hans-Jürgen Syberberg's Our Hitler (a two-disk set from Facets) is anything but a bio-pic. Its original German title, which translates as Hitler, A Film from Germany, makes clear the scope of the director's ambition: to investigate Hitler as a psychic and aesthetic phenomenon, or, as is said in the film, as 'fantasies of the mind and their blood realization.'"

"An unlikely, perhaps unrepeatable phenomenon, Twin Peaks went from national sensation to ratings pariah in just over a year," writes Dennis Lim. David Lynch's "singular sensibility made the show an object of instant fan ardor, but for the general public - and certainly for the network, ABC - it soon proved alienating. Twin Peaks, in other words, was a cult item that somehow found a mass audience and almost immediately suffered the consequences." More on the Definitive Gold Box Edition from Keith Uhlich and Ed Gonzalez in Slant, who agree that it's just that: definitive.

Somewhat related is Bill Gibron's piece in PopMatters on ABC's followup to Twin Peaks with Lynch and Mark Frost, On the Air: "As filtered through their revisionist mindset, and with the critical acclaim they’d accumulated, they were being rewarded with a half hour of primetime real estate to, essentially, do anything they wanted. The plan was to have something that resembled a 30-minute laugh-a-thon, the normal situational contrivances leading the perfectly timed punchlines and acerbic pop culture critiques. What they got, instead, was anarchy posing as programming." Not on legit DVD, unfortunately.

Back in the Los Angeles Times, Kate Arthur talks with My So-Called Life creator Winnie Holzman and exec producer Marshall Herskovitz. More from Ginia Bellafonte in the New York Times.

"Criterion's Eclipse label debuted early this year," writes Doug Cummings, and Raymond Bernard's Les Misérables "is my favorite discovery of the series so far, a richly conceived and fully-formed adaptation that does admirable service to the novel's timeless moral and social themes. A forgotten masterpiece not to be missed."

"Criterion released [Lindsay] Anderson's brilliant If... (1968) on DVD earlier this year and they recently announced their plans to release This Sporting Life (1963) in early 2008," notes Kimberly Lindbergs. "Now Warner has entered into the Anderson DVD arena with their impressive Deluxe 2 Disc release of O Lucky Man! which as I mentioned over at Cinedelica earlier this week, promises to be one of the best DVD releases of the year."

"There's a fascinating tension in [Into Great Silence] between what [Philip] Gröning wants to show us and exactly how little he can - that is the point, after all, of the monastic life, that what happens in the material world is irrelevant. Yet it's all you can film," writes Michael Atkinson at IFC News. "The technology of cinema is, therefore, standing in for spiritual struggle itself, the desire for the atheists and agnostics and wannabe devotees among us to genuinely commune with the heavens, and our straining failure to accomplish the task." Also reviewed is Adanggaman, "an Ivory Coast historical micro-epic that claims to have been the continent's first movie about the slave trade, as it was experienced on African soil, where the victims and enslavers were both native peoples."

"No one would be more surprised than the shy, self-denigrating Mario Bava, who died in 1980, to learn that he had become one of the best-known Italian filmmakers in America." Dave Kehr reviews the second volume of Anchor Bay's collection.

The Shamus enjoys "the jumpy, gun-popping nature" of Godard's Masculin Feminin, "But more than the nostalgia, the film seemed to resonate with who we are as a modern species: Self-absorbed. Nothing's changed."

"Even if you're used to the edgy sleaze of precode movies like 1933's Baby Face, it's stunning to see how the activist films of the early 20th century engaged head on with social issues that today's films go to comical lengths to avoid." The Stranger's Annie Wagner reviews Treasures III: Social Issues in American Film, 1900 - 1934.

DVD roundups: DVD Talk and the DVD Savant; Bryant Frazer; JA at the Film Experience; the Lumière Reader; and Peter Martin at Cinematical.

Posted by dwhudson at October 30, 2007 11:56 AM