DVDs, 7/8.

A "subgenre has emerged" in recent Chinese cinema, notes Michael Atkinson (IFC): "the traditional family saga/bildungsfilm-as-haunted-by-the-Cultural-Revolution film, à la Zhang Yimou's To Live, Gu Changwei's Peacock, Xiao Jiang's Electric Shadows, etc. Zhang Yang's Sunflower (2005) is a paradigmatic example, with its 30-year span, its timeless father-son battle of wills, and its intersections between family life and the dragon-writhe of Chinese history as it tried to poison the peoples' lives for decades and did not quite succeed.... Sunflower isn't particularly daring or inventive, but it takes a slice from a universal pie, and I'm glad I saw it." Also reviewed is Ettore Giannini's Carosello Napoletano, "a kind of Neapolitan answer to An American in Paris and The Red Shoes" and "an expressionist, ambitious scramble of commedia dell'arte, opera and interpretive ballet."

This week, Dave Kehr pretty much even divides his DVD column for the New York Times between three releases from, seemingly, three different worlds: Thorold Dickinson's Hill 24 Doesn't Answer,"[a]mong the first features produced in the State of Israel," The Stan Laurel Collection, Volume 2, showcasing the early work before the comedian became "the Stanley we know and love," and Chris Marker's Remembrance of Things to Come, which also features, as an extra, Yannick Bellon's Colette: "Toward the end the poet and filmmaker Jean Cocteau drops by for a late-night visit, and the banter between the two, though possibly scripted, conjures up an entire century of French life and literature."

With Joe Strummer: The Future Is Unwritten out today, PopMatters revisits its special feature, "Joe Strummer, 1952 - 2002."

Gary Giddins in the New York Sun: "The idea that Trafic is critically regarded as minor Tati is so widespread that even the insightful essay by Jonathan Romney accompanying the [Criterion release] retails its presumed failings: 'a hovering tone of despair,' the absence of 'a clearly defined goal,' 'humor drawn out or diffuse to the point of near abstraction' - '[Tati] himself saw it as a step back after the accomplished vision of Playtime.' Putting aside the probability that anything would have been anticlimactic after Playtime, the outsized 1967 comic marathon that bankrupted Tati and garnered little of the adulation heaped upon his three earlier films (1949's Jour de fête, 1953's Mr Hulot's Holiday and 1958's Mon Oncle), this is an example of critics paying more attention to what the director said than to what he put on the screen."

Michael Tully at Hammer to Nail on The Free Will: "This is European cinema at its most intellectually stimulating and emotionally depleting, which ventures into territory even the most demanding American indie would never dare go. But that's what makes it such an exciting addition to the Benten Films catalogue, as well as a must-see for aspiring filmmakers and viewers in this country (or anywhere, for that matter). [Matthias] Glasner and co-writer/star Jürgen Vogel have chosen this excruciating subject matter not to shock-and-stun their audience, but to bravely examine the human condition at its most knotty and conflicted."

"The Furies is one odd duck of a movie," writes Vince Keenan. "It's a western that takes place largely indoors. It has little action, but several startling acts of violence. It's the sort of film praised for its 'complex characterizations,' which is a critic's way of saying that people exhibit wildly contradictory behaviors that get a pass because they're entertaining. But The Furies is also my favorite type of movie, the kind in which shit keeps happening." Related online listening: Nina Mann discusses her father's film on the Leonard Lopate Show. And Criterion producer Curtis Tsui recalls what surprised him about meeting Nina Mann - and posts a clip of an interview.

"Director Anthony Mann's 1947 breakout film T-Men duped me, but that's what he had in mind," writes Tim at Noir of the Week. "Deception is the theme that resonates throughout the story of Mann's film and he cleverly delivers that premise of duplicity right into the lap of the audience."

"I Walked with a Zombie is a horror film for grownups, which presents a complex picture of human relations and offers multiple explanations for events portrayed without definitively endorsing any of them," writes Sarah Boslaugh at Not Coming to a Theater Near You. "Frequently it is not even clear whether something is real or imaginary, or whose version of events should be accepted. Even the film's conclusion, although satisfying, leaves room for interpretation about what really happened and why."

"[I]t is in animated form that the Batman mythos has become legendary." At the House Next Door, John Lichman takes a good hard look at Batman: Gotham Knight.

At Cinematical, Monika Bartyzel talks with Kimberly Peirce about Stop-Loss and reviews Flakes.

Glenn Kenny's Monday Morning Foreign-Region DVD Report: Make Way for Tomorrow, "one of the most underseen classics of golden age American cinema, a movie that is as unusual today as it was on its 1937 debut, arguably the most perfect jewel in the auteur crown of the great Leo McCarey."

DVD roundups. Sean Axmaker, Monika Bartyzel (Cinematical) and Peter Martin (Cinematical).

And, as always, follow the Guru.

Posted by dwhudson at July 8, 2008 4:31 PM