Other DVDs, 11/13.

"Today marks, at long last, the release of Bryan Poyser's Dear Pillow on DVD." And David Lowery's celebrating: "Made in 2004, beloved by festival audiences around the world, nominated for an Independent Spirit award and cited by John Pierson as the best film to come out of Austin since Slacker, this smart, dirty debut feature somehow managed to slip through the distribution cracks and into that substrata of unreleased festival gems - until Heretic Films came to the rescue."

For Film International, Jordan Summerlin listens to Children of Men.

Updated through 11/15.

For the Telegraph, Marc Lee talks with Terry Jones about The Life of Brian and the scene written by Eric Idle that didn't make the final cut at the time: "A new DVD edition of the film includes the deleted 'Otto' scene, which features a radical, first-century Jewish revolutionary who has the same dreams as the young Adolf Hitler. Otto sports a toothbrush moustache, and, in case we still haven't got the message, his disciples all wear a symbol that combines the Star of David with a swastika. These are 'Nazi Jews.'" Via Movie City News.

Glenn Kenny's "Monday Morning Foreign-Region DVD Report: The Blue Lamp, "a tight little number that goes for suspense, poignancy and Social Relevance."

In PopMatters, Bill Gibron revisits the films of Brigitte Bardot: "Like Marilyn Monroe before her and Raquel Welch after, Bardot gave physical beauty a larger than life sense of wonder. She was a cupie doll coquette, a pert pixie whose sensual suggestiveness offered sin without the skin (or much of it), erotica without the odious undercurrent of exploitation, hype, or a sense of shamelessness."

Also: "Typically, a surrealist tackles the real world from a ridiculous yet recognizable avenue. But [Alejandro] Jodorowsky isn't content to simply shock and confuse. His is an aesthetic of contradiction, the juxtaposing of the sacred with the profane, the beautiful with the grotesque, the simple along with the complex."

"Birth is the most misunderstood movie of the past five or 10 years," argues JJ.

"If Chinatown is considered the last 'studio' picture, in the old sense, then the mutual hosannas passed between Robert Towne, Robert Evans, Roman Polanski and Jack Nicholson in each interview since are perhaps the gentlest of refutations to the predominant academic theories concerning auteurs," writes Nathan Kosub in Stop Smiling. "But still there is John Huston, who as a director was both auteur and studio man. Central to Chinatown is Huston, the man as much as his character, Noah Cross." More from Rick Klaw in the Austin Chronicle.

"Robinson Crusoe on Mars still holds up incredibly well, not simply as a time capsule but also for its ability to tap into our cultural intrigue with the Martian landscape," writes Robert Humanick at the House Next Door.

For Kimberly Lindbergs, Tattooed Flower Vase is "a beautiful piece of erotica with a dark sadistic edge." Also: "When I was a kid The Russians Are Coming, the Russians Are Coming was one of my favorite comedies for reasons I can't really explain, except it seemed to portray adults as I saw them then - easily frightened big kids who projected their fears onto their children and conformed to every bad idea that society and the government tossed their way. I was afraid the film wouldn't hold up after such a long period of time between my last viewing so my expectations were extremely low going into the movie, but once it ended my appreciation for it remained."

"A wryly funny, surreal take on an epochal event, 12:08 East of Bucharest reminds us that revolutions aren't always grand, ideal affairs to be nostalgic about, but can involve the mundane and the trivial, moments argued or regretted," writes Brian Gibson in Vue Weekly.

"Prozac Nation isn't a bad film at all... in fact, it's quite good in spots," writes Flickhead. How'd he end up watching it? Jessica Lange. "[N]ot only does the woman Do It For Me - she's stunning and crazy, just look into her eyes - but she's one of the finest actors to come along in the last thirty years, and no matter how dire the material, she's always worth watching."

DVD roundups: Bryant Frazer; Peter Martin at Cinematical.

Update, 11/15: "An 85-minute tribute to erotic confusion, Dear Pillow is both fascinated by and hostile to the absurdities of our culture's Puritanism and takes obvious joy in poking holes in them," writes Josh Rosenblatt in the Austin Chronicle. "[A]long with several deleted scenes, audition footage, and commentary from Dear Pillow's cast and crew, it offers a glimpse inside the mind of an artist fascinated by the thrills and consequences of desire."

Dear Pillow screens at the Yerba Buena Center for the Arts in San Francisco on November 21.

Posted by dwhudson at November 13, 2007 1:55 PM