Some Came Running

The Return of Jonathan Demme, Pt. 1

(Posted by Aaron Aradillas)

One of the traps critics (including myself) sometimes find themselves in is welcoming back a filmmaker when he hasn't gone anywhere. Inevitably the phrase "...a return to form" is used to describe an offering that reminds said critic of said filmmaker's "heyday." Robert Altman's The Player, John Frankenheimer's 52 Pick-Up, Sydney Lumet's Before The Devil Knows You're Dead are a few examples of this trend.

Why do I bring this up? Because Jonathan Demme's latest is about to bow at the Toronto International Film Festival, and I get the feeling critics are dying to welcome back one of their darlings. Rachel Getting Married feels like one of Demme's great early '80s humanist comedies like Melvin and Howard, and less like one of his post-Silence of the Lambs intimate epics. The funny thing is Demme has been with us all this time. His post-Lambs output has been quite remarkable, if stylistically different from his earlier work.

I thought I'd take this opportunity to look at the evolution of one the most singularly American filmmakers of the last 40 years.

Having wonderful time, be back soon...

Flowers and butterfly, Mt. Angles, Wyoming, Aug. 21, 2008. Any lepidopterists out there?

Another homage to "Separated at Birth?"

Jean Gabin...

...and Robert Plant?

Oh, the fancies that occur to one whilst vacationing...

UPDATE: Okay, commenters, if you say so:

25 Year Ago...This Weekend

(Posted by Aaron Aradillas)

Since it is damn near impossible to remember a time when people weren't obsessed with The Numbers, I thought we might take a look back at what the Top 10 looked like 25 years ago this weekend.

TW  LW    TITLE                                                       WEEKEND GROSS       THEATERS        TOTAL GROSS                WEEK #

1   N     Easy Money                             $5,844,974     1,130       $5,844,974            1

2   3     Risky Business                        $5,252,090      891          $20,322,398          3

3   13   Mr. Mom                                 $4,279,384      734          $11,199,896          5

4   1     National Lampoon's Vacation  $4,028,780      1,252       $38,365,442          4

5   2     Cujo                                       $3,592,620      1,293       $12,693,430          2

6   4     Return of the Jedi                  $3,033,669      1,284       $222,489,243        13

7   N     Yor: Hunter from the Futore  $2,810,199      1,425       $2,810,199           1

8   N     Metalstorm                             $2,019,000      549          $2,019,000           1

9   6     Tradiong Places                      $1,877,435      785          $75,420,736         11

10  5    Staying Alive                           $1,836,786      818          $53,455,638         6

So, bring back any memories? When was the last time a movie was in tis 13th week of release and still almost being in the Top 5? Does anyone remember either Yor or Metalstorm? Follow me after the break and we'll take a more critical look at this week's offerings.

Mr. Dynamite

(Posted by Aaron Aradillas)

Tomorrow night I will be dedicating my Internet radio show Back By Midnight to highlighting the recent relase of the I Got the Feelin': James Brown in the 60's DVD Box Set. The 3-disc set contains:

Disc 1:

The NIght James Brown Saved Boston, a wonderful documentary about the events surrounding the April 5, 1968 James Brown Boston Garden concert that kept the city from going up in flames. From director David Leaf, who is also reponsible for The U.S. vs. John Lennon and Who Is Harry Nilsson (And Why Is Everybody Talkin' About Him?).

Disc 2:

James Brown: Live at the Boston Garden, 1968, the complete concert that was originally broadcast on Boston's WGBH.

Disc 3:

An episode of Man to Man: James Brown Live at the Apollo Theater 1968 that hasn't been seen in 40 years. It also contains bonus perfomances from 1967 and 1968 at the L'Olympia in Paris and the "Out of Sight" performance from The T.A.M.I. Show.

Guests will include David Leaf, T.A.M.I. Show diretor Steve Binder, and the Dean of American Rock Criticism Robert Christgau.

The show begins @ 9:00pm ET/8:00pm CT. (The show will be archived on the Back By Midnight page after the broadcast.) I do hope you will check it out.

Here's a little something to get you in the mood.

Monday Morning Foreign-Region DVD Report: "The Round-Up"

Welcome to the world of Miklos Jancso's 1966 film—a 19th-century Hungarian prison camp. Look familiar? In my report for The Auteurs' Notebook, I take a slight plus-ca-change approach. This is one of the most striking of Jancso's always striking pictures, as simple (but not as plain) as death, and brimming with dark irony. Check out my musings here.

Great Moments In Olympics History

With choice cuts by Mr. Mister, Stevie Nicks, John Parr, INXS, and Andy Taylor.

Take it easy, indeed.

(Posted by Aaron Aradillas)

27 Years Ago...

...this was what we were watching.

Posted by Guest Blogger Aaron Aradillas

The Greatest

I learned this morning, via an e-mail from a mutual friend who was very close to him, that the critic and artist Manny Farber died last night, at his home in San Diego, aged 91. If you've never read Farber, just stop here and get to it. His collected criticism, in a volume called Negative Space, is one of the touchstone texts of film writing—tough-minded, sharp-eyed, idiosyncratic, often wildly funny, and with a bedrock integrity and aesthetic acuity that even best best of contemporary film critics are hard-pressed to approach, let alone match. He is most often cited for coining the phrases "termite art" and "white-elephant art," two opposed categories. What I found, and find, most valuable in his criticism is his ability to apprehend the entirety of a film—he got it from every angle. He could appreciate a B war picture in the same sense that the guy on the street could, while fully comprehending its value as a work of modern/contemporary art. I'm away from my study, so I can't grab a copy of Space to quote from it willy-nilly. But I can say this: I doubt that Farber was particularly surprised by Godard's Breathless, because his criticism actively anticipated that film.
Farber's subsequent work as a painter casts its own wonderful spell, one as exhilarating and specific as his criticism. About Face, the catalog from the exhibit held at P.S. 1 in New York from a few years back, is a good introduction. The paintings, in one sense, are objective demonstrations of what he observed of "termite art," which, according to Farber, "goes always forward eating its own boundaries, and, like as not, leaves nothing in its path other than the signs of eager, industrious, unkempt activity." On the other hand, they are beautifully contained, cogent works.

He led a remarkable life and left us some remarkable gifts. I wish I'd known him. To those who did, my condolences.

UPDATE: Several appreciations are now online. Here are a few.

J. Hoberman's is here.

Ray Pride's is here.

James Wolcott's is here.

Jim Emerson's is here.

The House Next Door's Keith Uhlich has a pretty good round-up in the Links for the Day.

Finally, a short film by Paul Schrader on Manny Farber's painting Untitled: New Blue.

(Updated by Aaron Aradillas)

UPDATE, PART 2: A couple more appreciations.

Roger Ebert's is here.

Jonathan Rosenbaum's is here.

(Updated by Aaron Aradillas)

Monday Morning Foreign-Region DVD Report: "Lancelot du Lac"

"Even by director Robert Bresson’s exacting, idiosyncratic standards, his 1974 Lancelot du Lac is a peculiar film," I write over at The Auteurs' Notebook. The original poster for the film certainly took note of one of the film's idiosyncrasies: its fantastical bloodshed, which was parodied a couple of years later in the hilarious Black Knight scene in Monty Python and the Holy Grail. Among the non-actors Bresson assembled for this picture is one Laura Duke Condominas, daughter of one of my very favorite writers, the Oulipean Harry Mathews. Note any family resemblance?

You can read the entire report here.