DVDs, 1/8.

"With their Region 1 DVD release of The District!, new DVD company on the block Atopia have hit their first home run," writes David Austin at Cinema Strikes Back. "The District, a raunchy animated satire of Romeo and Juliet mixed with a healthy helping of geopolitics, is witty, entertaining and presented in a unique style."

"Call it a smash-up between faux 3-D digital fluidity and cutout cartooning and rotoscoped realism and Ralph Steadman-esque satiric caricature — the upshot is hypnotizing, even when the film's wigger material tends toward the idiotic," writes Michael Atkinson at IFC News. "The District! began as an Adult Swim-style series-within-a-series and might represent the most inventive use of digital animation anywhere, and certainly rules the hard drive work being done elsewhere in Europe." Also, Chameleon Street "remains a troubling and pioneering piece of work, if somewhat less forgivable today for its grandstanding, its clumsy amateurish filmmaking and its fuzzy thematic hustle."

"That [Cary Grant] took the opportunity to re-examine and reinvent his screen persona is one of several reasons that An Affair to Remember, which Fox Home Video has reissued in a beautifully remastered two-disc 50th-anniversary edition, is one of the best and best-loved films of classical Hollywood," writes Dave Kehr in the New York Times.

"[T]he great thing about watching a bunch of noncanonical works is that you feel free to take them on their own merits." The latest viewing in Chris Cagle's 1947 Project: The Paradine Case.

First, the films at hand: "The Sheik presents an external otherness and portrays Muslims through the myopic lens of Orientalism. Songcatcher portrays an internal otherness that similarly characterizes Appalachians as uncivilized, primitive savages." The argument: "Despite technological advances in film production, there is near-stasis in storytelling technique. As a result, certain cultural misconceptions and stereotypes continue to thrive in narrative films when the represented cultures are not speaking for themselves. From 1921 to 2001 and beyond, this is business as usual." Usame Tunagar and Thomas R Britt in Americana: The Journal of American Popular Culture, 1900 to Present, via Bookforum.

Stop Smiling offers an excerpt from Nicolas Rapold's interview with Charles Burnett (Killer of Sheep).

At sixmartinis and the seventh art, shahn snaps some terrific screenshots from Asphalt.

DVD roundups: Cinema Strikes Back; DVD Talk; Susan King in the Los Angeles Times; Peter Martin at Cinematical.

Posted by dwhudson at January 8, 2008 3:06 PM