DVDs, 4/19.

Benten Films relaunches its site and adds pages for upcoming releases The Guatemalan Handshake and The Free Will. Plus: Aaron Hillis's interview with musician-composer David Wingo (George Washington, Great World of Sound, and now, The Guatemalan Handshake) and Kevin Bewersdorf's soundtrack for LOL.

"On the new Flicker Alley box set, which comprises all 173 extant [Georges] Méliès films, spanning from the 'actualités' of 1896 to the mini-epics of 1912 and 1913, we're given a chance to trace the entire trajectory of an extraordinary career," writes Andrew Schenker at the House Next Door. "What we find is a world opened up to new possibilities of the fantastic by both technological advance and the transformative power of the imagination, but at the same time complicated by a marked ambivalence on the filmmaker's part. Still, if the earlier works are more likely to conceive of this world as being governed by a comic mischievousness, then many of the later efforts, even while maintaining an undercurrent of menace, look on the unknown with an open sense of wonder."

"Of all the movies considered part of the New Queer Cinema movement, The Living End most directly and angrily confronted the impact of [its] era on queer people, but it eschewed preaching and sentimentality for hot HIV-positive guys on the lam (Craig Gilmore and Mike Dytri) - with plenty of sex, anarchy, and guns, set to a dark and driving post-punk soundtrack." Alonso Duralde in the Advocate.

"Yasuharu Hasebe's 1966 film Black Tight Killers is the kind of film that puts a smile on my face," writes Bob Turnbull. "It takes what could have been a lame Z grade picture and enlivens the story by using the medium - showing lots of color, sets, shadows and angles to move the story forward instead of relying on too much exposition. Of course, having a whole whack of go-go dancers, female ninjas and guys in trenchcoats helps keep things fun as well."

In the L Magazine, Cullen Gallagher previews Eclipse's April 22 release, Silent Ozu: Three Family Chronicles.

"The plot [of Captain Fracasse] is fairly pedestrian... but [Alberto] Cavalcanti and Wulschleger invigorate the movie with an unorthodox, modernist visual sensibility," writes Cullen Gallagher. Also in Not Coming to a Theater Near You, Katherine Follett on The World According to Garp.

Cinematical's Kim Voynar talks with Jason Kohn about Manda Bala.

"Despite its flaws, Voyage en douce is an engaging look at potential blithe spirits locked away in self-constructed prisons," writes Flickhead. "It may appear to lack an intellectual edge, but [director Michel] Deville works prudently between the lines. And the countryside, [Dominique] Sanda and [Geraldine] Chaplin are simply radiant."

From Evan Davis, "Hitchcock and Authorship: Spellbound": "[T]he prime concern of this paper is Hitchcock's signature, and whether or not it still makes its presence felt despite external creative sources (i.e., Selznick)."

The AV Club's Scott Tobias finally catches up with Harold and Maude: "[T]he film is the birth of modern indie quirk, full of elements and attitudes that have become cliché: Heroes who are more whimsical conceits than real-life, flesh-and-blood creations; an offbeat and slightly twee pop soundtrack (here by Cat Stevens); authority figures painted as stiff, clueless, and completely devoid of humanity; and some vague leftist political references thrown in for good measure. It may sound like I'm being snarky and dismissive here - and I'll be the first to admit that familiarity has bred some contempt - but there's good quirk and bad quirk, and Harold and Maude still falls on the right side of the line."

And the latest addition to the "New Cult Canon" is Pi.

"She is sitting, he is standing. He reaches over and grabs her right breast, then turns his head away from the camera, walks over to the hotel-room wall and bangs his head against it." In the Independent, Roger Clarke tells the story behind the scene in The Graduate.

"I originally saw Seth Holt's terrific British thriller The Nanny (1965) when I was just a kid and it terrified me," writes Kimberly Lindbergs. "I haven't seen the film in its entirety in many years so I was afraid it wouldn't live up to my fond memories of first watching it, but The Nanny managed to exceed my expectations."

Filmmaker Jamie Stuart in Stream: "Probably the most rewarding thing about creating DVDs is when I give copies to people and they realize my work holds up in another format - that it isn't just tiny-screen web video. It's genuine filmmaking."

Posted by dwhudson at April 19, 2008 3:07 PM