DVDs, 12/9.

"[I]f you make the leap to consider The Dark Knight on its own terms - that is, as essentially an innovation, an unprecedented, aesthetically bizarre and revolutionary interpretation of the superhero tale - then these elements are not so much flaws as factors contributing to a fresh re-telling of the story of Batman and Gotham City." Simon Augustine at FilmCatcher: "That is, the film is a purposely impressionistic telling of a classic pop-culture myth. It takes big risks, but they are calculated, and not at all arbitrary. The jumbled, catch-as-can form of The Dark Knight's narrative, in which fights, characters, and themes pass by too quickly to grasp completely - serves a crucial thematic purpose: it is meant to lend itself to the moral turpitude at the story's philosophic heart."

"Great caper movies, of which James Marsh's Man on Wire is one, are ultimately movies about stolen moments of ecstasy, in which the stars temporarily align to make the impossible possible, all the while rendering pedestrian notions of property and moral judgments about crime inapplicable," writes Karina Longworth at the SpoutBlog.

Mike Everleth on Brave New York/Sway: "While the structure [Richard] Sandler imposed on the clips is not easy to discern, the real narrative drive of each film is the excitement of wondering what wild shit you're going to see next."

Michael Atkinson at IFC on Flow: For the Love of Water: "There's nowhere to hide: [Irena] Salina visits every continent but Antarctica, and finds one devastated crisis after another, indigenous peoples in South Africa or India or Michigan whose natural sources for potable water are being quickly wrecked. And why? It's not a global warming issue, for once; the red-handed varmints are the same silk-suited, prevaricating corporate bastards we see burned in cinematic effigy in film after film, or any discourse that seeks to explain why the poor starve, why the environment is toxic, why the economy is bleeding, and why war machines bomb civilian cities.... Make them pay. Make them pay."

Criterion runs the manifesto Lars von Trier sent out with Europa.

"Lindsay Anderson's first feature film, This Sporting Life, remains a defining achievement of the British New Wave," writes Brian Wilson. "It aptly exemplifies that movement's preoccupation with social realism, as well as the ideological concerns shared with the Angry Young Man movement in British literature and theater. Although ostensibly centered upon the story of a struggling rugby player, the film actually reveals itself as a complex cinematic portrait of failed relationships and human despair." Also in Film International, Anton Bitel on the Masters of Cinema releases of Georges Franju's Judex and Nuits rouges, Deirdre Devers on the original Wicker Man and Mike Leader on Gus Van Sant's Paranoid Park.

When, in 1959 and 1960, "the Big Three of the Western film world - AMPAS, the Golden Globes, and the Cannes Film Festival - named Black Orpheus Best Foreign-Language Film, Best Foreign Film, and Palme d'Or winner, respectively, they most certainly got it right," argues Marilyn Ferdinand.

"The Mystery of the Leaping Fish is an absurd, utterly bizarre farce, an unlikely silent film whose hero is the drug-addicted and wildly incompetent detective Coke Ennyday (Douglas Fairbanks)," writes Ed Howard. "This weird little short has an impressive pedigree, featuring the writing talents of none other than Tod Browning (!), an uncredited DW Griffith (!!), and prolific intertitle scribe Anita Loos, whose soon-to-be husband John Emerson directs. It's hard to know why all this talent needed to be concentrated in one place, though, since the film is basically a really silly, hilarious one-man show with a succession of physical gags designed to suit its star's strengths."

James Rocchi's latest "Retro Rental":

Looking back at the last few weeks of this column, I noticed a slight trend going on: Richard Nixon, the Great Depression, inequality in the 50s and the here-and-now, ruined romances, the heartbreak of monsters - as the kids might say (or, actually, as the kids would have said 10 years ago), all downers, man. All downers. Part of that is environmental as the days get shorter and the nights get longer, part of that is second-hand disgruntlement over our modern age, and part of it is just soaking up the bleak, brutal "importance" of Oscar season like milk picks up strong flavors in the fridge. But, really, I need a laugh. You probably need a laugh. And so I give you one of my favorite forgotten comedies, a brilliant piece of stupid-smart literary revisionism called Without a Clue.

"Chungking Express is my favorite of Wong [Kar-wai]'s work, but that's not the main reason I devoted a chapter to it in Planet Hong Kong. I think it's an important film historically. In the context of Hong Kong cinema, it was as much a breakthrough as was Days of Being Wild, but its offhandedness made it seem more innocuous." David Bordwell elaborates.

"These days, the only thing hipper than liking Wes Anderson is hating Wes Anderson," writes Lena Dunham at Hammer to Nail, reviewing Criterion's release of Bottle Rocket, which includes "the short film that gave birth to Bottle Rocket. This black-and-white seedling reminds the viewer that everybody, even the slickest stylists, had to start somewhere. In fact, the less formally rigorous Anderson is nothing short of endearing. But I don't have a problem with what he's evolved into either."

"One of the most provocative, problematic, and eye-popping films in Antonioni's oeuvre, 1970's Zabriskie Point is a film that grows riper for reassessment the further it gets, temporally, from the counter-culture milieu in which it was set and made and which it seemed to utterly fail to 'get' at the time," writes Glenn Kenny in the Auteurs' Notebook. "Freed from the demands for verisimilitude that seemed built into the project at the time, it's mutated into something less awkward, more enigmatic.... So the Region 2 DVD of the film from French Warner, the first official DVD release of the film, ought to be a cause for celebration and some of the above-mentioned reassessment. No freaking dice, alas."

"Shintaro Kago is probably one of the most, um... disturbing? Talented? Bizarre? Vomit-inducing? Best? manga creators in Japan." And, as Grady Hendrix notes, he's been making movies you can buy here.

Out now: Volume 13 of the Journal of Short Film.

Online viewing tip. AO Scott in the New York Times on It's a Wonderful Life.

DVD roundsups: Sean Axmaker, Paul Clark (Screengrab), DVD Talk, Grady Hendrix, Ambrose Heron, Noel Murray (Los Angeles Times) and Slant.

Posted by dwhudson at December 9, 2008 3:23 PM