DVDs, 12/16.

Michael Atkinson for IFC on White Dog: "[B]eing put off by [Sam] Fuller's smacked-face style means missing the brute power of his metaphors and the audacity of his dialogue with society." Also reviewed is the Herzog Shorts Collection: Volume 2: "What's interesting... is how consistently throughout Herzog's career as a documentarian he has sought out people who almost by definition have no knowledge or interest in who he is, or, often, why he's filming them. Is that why he chooses them as his subjects? Is it an anti-narcissism, or a utopian desire for savage innocence? When is someone going to write a good biography of this myth-heavy man?" Amen.

Speaking of Fuller, though, Glenn Kenny's "Tuesday Morning Foreign Region DVD Report" for the Auteurs' Notebook this week is on Verboten!, Fuller's "statement on Nazis, their war crimes, and the post World-War-II occupation of Germany."

Dave Kehr in the New York Times on Criterion's new Blu-ray releases, in particular, Bottle Rocket: Wes Anderson, "in this early film, does something he can't bring himself to do later: he shows us the realization, in Dignan's eyes, that he has been living in a dream world, and reality has belatedly arrived to claim its price (with interest)." More from Matt Noller in Slant.

Online viewing tip. The NYT's AO Scott on the 1951 version of Dickens's A Christmas Carol, "also a horror movie, and a pretty scary one."

DVD roundups: Sean Axmaker, Paul Clark (Screengrab), DVD Talk, Ambrose Heron, Peter Martin (Cinematical) and Noel Murray (Los Angeles Times).

And, as always, the Guru.

Posted by dwhudson at December 16, 2008 2:17 PM