DVDs, 10/17.

"Independent filmmaker and underground music aficionado David Markey's films include 1991: The Year Punk Broke (1992) and the Los Angeles punk Super 8 cult classics The Slog Movie (1982), Desperate Teenage Lovedolls (1984), and its sequel Lovedolls Superstar (1986), all of which represent a unique record of the punk scene in Southern California throughout the 1980s and 1990s." And he's picked his top ten Criterions.

"Six years before their best known work, the film Der Lauf der Dinge (The Way Things Go, 1987), was completed, the Swiss artists Peter Fischli and David Weiss created their first equally charming and humorous films: The Point of Least Resistance (1981) and The Right Way (1983)," writes Lauren O'Neill-Butler for Artforum. "These 16-mm gems make plain the correspondence between the shared nature of their collaboration, which began in the late 1970s, and the broader teamwork necessitated by the medium." Two Films by Peter Fischli and David Weiss is now out from Icarus Films.

The latest addition to Scott Tobias's "New Cult Canon" at the AV Club: Irréversible.

Glenn Kenny "just got the first six MGM/UA Blu-rays of the James Bond series: Dr No, From Russia With Love, Thunderball, Live and Let Die, For Your Eyes Only and Die Another Day. My aesthetics (and nostalgic leanings) being what they are, I'm most concerned with the Connery Bonds, and I have to say I'm really pleased."

"There is only this; all else is unreal." Matt Zoller Seitz in Time Out New York: "The explorer John Smith (Colin Farrell) has spoken that line in all three versions of Terrence Malick's The New World: the original, 150-minute 2005 theatrical cut (not available on DVD); the 135-minute theatrical recut (New Line, $14.98), and the latest incarnation, Malick's 172-minute extended cut. Each time Smith utters the line, it resonates differently, thanks to the changes wrought by the filmmaker - the length of certain scenes and shots, the rhythm and structure that Malick and his editors impose upon the material, and the transitions between sections (this release breaks the film into titled chapters)."

"Revisiting it years later, I'm able to respect and understand the debt that Silverado owes a hundred films that have gone before - from the Sergio Leone shootouts to the John Ford vistas, the Anthony Mann morality and the Howard Hawks sense of structure - and yet it doesn't feel like a hollow pastiche." James Rocchi: "It feels like a movie made by people who love what they love and want us to love it, too."

Two films by Lino Brocka are just out on DVD and Noel Vera reviews them: Tatlo Dalawa, Isa (Three, Two, One, 1974) and Ang Tatay Kong Nanay (My Father My Mother, 1978).

Criterion's Curtis Tsui on the upcoming release of Chungking Express: "The prospect of producing 'yet another disc' of writer/director Wong Kar-wai's 1994 effervescent pop cinema classic was a little daunting.... To add to the pressure, Chungking was slated to be one of our first Blu-ray editions."

It's Mike Phillips's turn to have Nick Davis and Nathaniel R over to his place: "The 11th episode of Best Pictures from the Outside In takes us sailing through treacherous waters, filled with icebergs and taxmen, animated eyebrows and accidental explosions, and (I'm guessing) finally some serious disagreement among our panel members. In 1938, four years after It Happened One Night, Best Picture went to another Frank Capra film, You Can't Take It With You, the overly madcap tale of love in the midst of Capra's traditional battle between free spirits and hidebound plutocrats. In 1997, maritime disaster struck when Titanic, the fraught tale of love aboard the world's largest metaphor raked in a kadillion dollars and won a kadillion Oscars, including Best Picture."

Online listening tip. Aaron Aradillas talks with David Poland about the Ultimate Matrix Collection.

Posted by dwhudson at October 17, 2008 2:20 PM