May Criterions and Paramount Catalogues in 2010!

Criterion announced their May titles earlier today, which includes a second volume of films by Stan Brakhage, and both collections on Blu-ray. In addition to that excitement, the Eclipse box set for May is Nagisa Oshima's Outlaw Sixties, including the films Japanese Summer: Double Suicide, Pleasures of the Flesh, Violence at Noon, Sing a Song of Sex and Three Resurrected Drunkards. With the Akerman and now Oshima sets this year, I'm more excited for the Eclipse box sets than the mainline releases it seems. Also in store for May are a remastered edition of Nicolas Roeg's great Walkabout (DVD and Blu-ray), John Ford's Stagecoach (DVD and Blu-ray) and Fritz Lang's M (on Blu-ray).

I also was doing some browsing on the IMDb and saw that on the page for Joseph Strick's maligned adaptation of Henry Miller's Tropic of Cancer that Olive Films Opus is listed as the DVD publisher for 2010. So I did a little more investigating, and it seems Olive Films have snatched up a number of Paramount's catalogue titles (kind of like Legend Films did in summer of '08. Aside from Tropic of Cancer, the other titles listed as upcoming DVD releases from Olive Films include Ingmar Bergman's Face to Face [Ansikte mot ansikte] with Liv Ullmann; Guy Green's adaptation of Jacqueline Susann's Once Is Not Enough with Kirk Douglas, Melina Mercouri and George Hamilton; the Raquel Welch western Hannie Caulder; Stuart Rosenberg's WUSA with Paul Newman, Joanne Woodward and Anthony Perkins; Otto Preminger's Skidoo, Hurry Sundown and Such Good Friends; William Dieterle's Dark City with Charlton Heston and Rope of Sand with Burt Lancaster; the Jean Harlow biopic Harlow with Carroll Baker; Nicholas Ray's The Savage Innocents; Edward Dmytryk's Where Love Has Gone with Susan Hayward and Bette Davis and The Mountain with Spencer Tracy.

In addition to those Paramount titles, it looks like they've also got the rights to some recent films from Scandinavia, including the gay neo-Nazi film Brotherhood [Broderskab], which won the Best Film prize at last year's Rome Film Festival, and Letters to Father Jacob [Postia pappi Jaakobille], Finland's Oscar submission from 2009. Way to go, Olive Films.

Colossal Month for Criterion, har har

It's going to be hard for Criterion to deliver a more exciting month in 2010 following their March releases. Firstly, we have a Pedro Costa box-set, entitled Letters from Fontainhas: Three Films by Pedro Costa, which includes the features Ossos, In Vanda's Room [No Quarto da Vanda] and Colossal Youth [Juventude Em Marcha], set for the 30th. The fourth disc contains a feature-length doc, All Blossoms Again [Tout refleurit: Pedro Costa, cinéaste] by Aurélien Gerbault, as well as two shorts from Costa, Tarrafal and The Rabbit Hunters, both taken from the omnibus features O Estado do Mundo and Memories, respectively. Then we have Nicholas Ray's classic Bigger Than Life, on DVD and Blu-ray, on the 23rd. Then, Marco Ferreri's Dillinger Is Dead [Dillinger è morto], with Michel Piccoli and Anita Pallenberg, on DVD on the 16th.

And... perfectly timed to celebrate Akira Kurosawa's 100th birthday on the 23rd (and, coincidentally, my 26th), Sanjuro and Yojimbo will debut on Blu-ray, available either together in a cheaper set or separately. And, perhaps best of all (depending on who you ask), Terrence Malick's Days of Heaven will get the Blu-ray treatment on the same date. If June was Criterion's exemplary month in 2009, March is certainly it for 2010.

Nicholas Ray's Final Film to Be Restored; Plus More Awards, UPDATED with Gotham Winners

Via Variety, Nicholas Ray's final (solo-directed, feature) film We Can't Go Home Again, a little-seen "experimental" film he made with his wife Susan and a group of his film students at the time, will undergo a $500,000 restoration funded by the Nicholas Ray Foundation with the Venice Film Festival. The restoration will be supervised by Susan and will bow at the 2011 Venice Film Festival, "to mark the centennial of Ray's birth." Variety also says: "The Ray celebration will include a series of DVDs, an installation, an educational film titled "Nicholas Ray Master Class" and an interactive website." What that means, I have no clue, especially as it relates to the number of Ray films still MIA on DVD in the US: 55 Days at Peking, Johnny Guitar, Bigger Than Life (which is coming from Criterion, reportedly), Born to Be Bad, Hot Blood, Knock on Any Door, The Lusty Men, Run for Cover, The Savage Innocents, Wind Across the Everglades, A Woman's Secret, et al. For those curious, there are a number of clips from We Can't Go Home Again in Wim Wenders' Lightning Over Water, aka Nick's Movie.

Now for some awards from around the world, both national and festival related. Warwick Thornton's Samson and Delilah, which was awarded the Caméra d'Or at this year's Cannes Film Festival, took the top prize at the Asia Pacific Screen Awards, held on 26 November. It's also Australia's official submission in the Foreign Oscar competition. Sergei Dvortsevoy's Tulpan from Kazakhstan was the Best Picture winner last year. The rest of the awards are below:

Best Feature Film: Samson and Delilah, d. Warwick Thornton, Australia
Jury Grand Prize (tie): The Time That Remains, d. Elia Suleiman, Palestine/France/Italy/Belgium/UK; About Elly, d. Asghar Farhadi, Iran
Best Actor: Masahiro Motoki - Departures
Best Actress: Kim Hye-ja - Mother
Best Director: Lu Chuan - City of Life and Death
Best Cinematography: Cao Yu - City of Life and Death
Best Screenplay: Asghar Farhadi - About Elly
Best Documentary: Defamation, d. Yoav Shamir, Israel/Denmark/USA/Austria
Best Animated Feature: Mary and Max, d. Adam Elliot, Australia
Best Children's Feature: A Brand New Life, d. Ounie Lecomte, South Korea/France

Taiwan's Oscar submission, Leon Dai's No puedo vivir sin ti [Not Without You], was the big winner at the Golden Horse Awards, Taiwan's biggest annual award ceremony. Any film, whether from Taiwan, Hong Kong or China, primarily in Chinese is eligible. As the Film Experience Blog reported, Maggie Cheung made a rare appearance to deliver the ceremony's top award. Last year's Best Picture was awarded to Peter Chan's The Warlords (which Magnolia should be releasing soon in the US). The Awards are below:

Best Film: No puedo vivir sin ti, d. Leon Dai, Taiwan
Best Director: Leon Dai - No puedo vivir sin ti
Best Actor: (tie) Nick Cheung - The Beast Stalker; Huang Bo - Cow
Best Actress: Li Bingbing - The Message
Best Supporting Actor: Wang Xueqi - Forever Enthralled
Best Supporting Actress: Kara Hui - At the End of Daybreak
Best Documentary: KJ: Music and Life, d. Cheung King-wai, Hong Kong
Best Cinematography: Cao Yu - City of Life and Death
Best Action Choreography: Sammo Hung - Ip Man
Best Art Direction: Lee Tian-jue, Patrick Dechesne, Alain-Pascal Housiaux - Visage [Face]
Best Original Screenplay: Chen Wen-pin, Leon Dai - No puedo vivir sin ti
Best Adapted Screenplay: Guan Hu - Cow
Best Original Score: Dou Wei, Bi Xiaodi - The Equation of Love and Death

The 20th Annual Stockholm Film Festival finished up today, awarding Yorgos Lanthimos' Dogtooth its top prize; Courteney Hunt's Frozen River claimed that title last year. On a side note, I originally reported that Dogtooth would be representing Greece for the Foreign Oscar category, but that apparently was (not surprising considering its subject matter) false. Instead, Adonis Lykouresis' Slaves in their Bonds was named Greece's official selection. About the prizes below, the Telia Film Award is a newly created award for films without local distribution. Read more about it here. Awards below:

Best Film: Dogtooth, d. Yorgos Lanthimos, Greece
Best First Film: Sin Nombre, d. Cary Fukunaga, Mexico/USA
Best Actress: Mo'Nique - Precious: Based on the Novel Push by Sapphire
Best Actor: Edgar Flores - Sin Nombre
Best Screenplay: Eran Creevy - Shifty
Best Cinematography: Christophe Beaucarne - Mr. Nobody
Jameson Film Music Award: Krister Linder - Metropia
Telia Film Award: Miss Kicki, d. Håkon Liu, Sweden/Taiwan
FIPRESCI Prize: Sin Nombre
FIPRESCI Honorable Mention: Precious: Based on the Novel Push by Sapphire, d. Lee Daniels, USA

I was so busy with the film festival, I didn't even get around to posting the Documentary Short-list for the 2010 Academy Awards. It's now down to 15, with a number of glaring snubs from Michael Moore's Capitalism: A Love Story (though I've heard its omission is justified), James Toback's Tyson, Ondi Timoner's We Live in Public, R.J. Cutler's The September Issue and Kimberly Reed's Prodigal Sons. Someone on another site mentioned Terence Davies' Of Time and the City, but I'm never really sure which films are eligible in terms of year with the Documentary category. The 15 are below:

- The Beaches of Agnès [Les plages d'Agnès], d. Agnès Varda, France
- Burma VJ, d. Anders Ostergaard, Denmark
- The Cove, d. Louie Psihoyos, USA
- Every Little Step, d. Adam del Deo, James D. Stern, USA
- Facing Ali, d. Pete McCormack, USA/Canada
- Food, Inc., d. Robert Kenner, USA
- Garbage Dreams, d. Mai Iskander, USA
- Living in Emergency: Stories of Doctors Without Borders, d. Mark N. Hopkins, USA
- The Most Dangerous Man in America: Daniel Ellsberg and the Pentagon Papers, d. Judith Ehrlich, Rick Goldsmith, USA
- Mugabe and the White African, d. Lucy Bailey, Andrew Thompson, UK
- Sergio, d. Greg Barker, USA
- Soundtrack for a Revolution, d. Bill Guttentag, Dan Sturman, USA/France/UK
- Under Our Skin, d. Andy Abrahams Wilson, USA
- Valentino: The Last Emperor, d. Matt Tyrnauer, USA
- Which Way Home, d. Rebecca Cammisa, USA

Cinema Eye also announced their nominees for achievements in non-fiction cinema. The complete list of nominees can be found on their website (last year, Man on Wire took the top honors), but here are the 5 listed for Outstanding Achievement in Non-Fiction Feature Filmmaking:

- Burma VJ, d. Anders Ostergaard, Denmark
- The Cove, d. Louie Psihoyos, USA
- Food, Inc., d. Robert Kenner, USA
- Loot, d. Darius Marder, USA
- October Country, d. Michael Palmieri, Donal Mosher, USA

And, finally, the Gotham Awards will have their ceremony tomorrow in New York City. The Gotham Awards, an extension of the Independent Film Project, recognize the achievements in "independent cinema." I remember a lot of confused reactions to some of their omissions and inclusions when the nominees were announced in October. Courteney Hunt's Frozen River won the Best Picture last year. So, since I didn't post it previously, here are the nominees in the big categories: [UPDATED: The winners are in red; I didn't think a separate blog post was necessary to name them]

Best Feature Film

Amreeka, d. Cherein Dabis, USA/Canada
Big Fan, d. Robert Siegel, USA
The Hurt Locker, d. Kathryn Bigelow, USA
The Maid [La nana], d. Sebastián Silva, Chile/Mexico
A Serious Man, d. Joel Coen, Ethan Coen, USA

Best Documentary

Food, Inc., d. Robert Kenner, USA
Good Hair, d. Jeff Stilson, USA
My Neighbor My Killer [Mon voisin, mon tueur], d. Anne Aghion, France/USA
Paradise, d. Michael Almereyda, USA
Tyson, d. James Toback, USA

Breakthrough Director

Cruz Angeles - Don't Let Me Drown
Frazer Bradshaw - Everything Strange and New
Noah Buschel - The Missing Person
Derick Martini - Lymelife
Robert Siegel - Big Fan

Breakthrough Actor

Ben Foster - The Messenger
Patton Oswalt - Big Fan
Jeremy Renner - The Hurt Locker
Catalina Saavedra - The Maid
Souleymane Sy Savane - Goodbye Solo

Best Ensemble Performance

Adventureland - Jesse Eisenberg, Kristen Stewart, Martin Starr, Kristin Wiig, Bill Hader, Ryan Reynolds
Cold Souls - Paul Giamatti, Dina Korzun, Emily Watson, Katheryn Winnick, David Strathairn
The Hurt Locker - Jeremy Renner, Anthony Mackie, Brian Geraghty, Ralph Fiennes, Guy Pearce, David Morse, Evangeline Lilly
A Serious Man - Michael Stuhlbarg, Richard Kind, Fred Melamed
Sugar - Algenis Perez Soto, Rayniel Rufino, Michael Gaston, Andre Holland, Ann Whitney, Richard Bull, Ellary Porterfield, Jaime Tirelli

Best Film Not Playing at a Theater Near You

Everything Strange and New, d. Frazer Bradshaw, USA
Guy and Madeline on a Park Bench, d. Damien Chazelle, USA
October Country, d. Michael Palmieri, Donal Mosher, USA
You Wont Miss Me, d. Ry Russo-Young, USA
Zero Bridge, d. Tariq Tapa, India/USA

Party Girls

Thanks Eric. Nicholas Ray's Party Girl, not to be confused with the Parker Posey vehicle from the mid-'90s (Hello, Chanel!), is now part of the Warner Archive series, which is a bit of great/disappointing news. Great as in it's finally available; disappointing as in 'doesn't Nicholas Ray deserve better than this?' Considering two of his most famous films, Johnny Guitar and Bigger Than Life, are still MIA on DVD in the US, I suppose something is better than nothing. Maybe.

On an unrelated subject, I ran across an article by Jonah Weiner on 30 Rock and its (?) conservative leanings (thanks, Lex). It's a fantastic read, but I think Weiner overlooks the fact that Liz Lemon (Tina Fey) and her (wo)manchild-ness and walking-on-thin-ice liberal-ness are treated in the same vain as Jack Donaghy and his artless corporate-ness are. I did, however, forget how funny it was when Carrie Fisher referred to her neighborhood as "Little Chechnya."

Pushed, Crashed, Kicked

How many words are in the English language? A lot. Which is why I can't for the life of me understand why filmmakers choose to throw a title on their movie that's already been used. As I'm pretty useless at detecting sarcasm via the Internet, I actually thought Aaron Hillis at GreenCine Daily mistook that upcoming Dakota Fanning sci-fi flick Push with the Push that won the top prize at Sundance a few weeks ago on his Facebook page. The latter has been retitled Push: Based on the Novel by Sapphire, in order to distinguish itself from that other flick, but this is a trend that needs to stop. Because of this duplicity, I have to add "the David Cronenberg one" whenever I feel the need to bring up Crash, though it's a lot easier to just say "the good one." The same can be said for Kicking & Screaming, though I have no real preference between the Noah Baumbach one or the Will Ferrell one, so "the good one" doesn't really work there. On a side note, very little problems have arose in distinguishing between the two Party Girls (Nicholas Ray or Parker Posey) or The Rivers (you've got at least three notable films there: the Jean Renoir, the Tsai Ming-liang and the Sissy Spacek/Mel Gibson one). I guess the only solution for one of my greatest pet peeves is to just think of the same-name titles as one film. For Push, you've got Dakota Fanning as an illerate pregnant teen with telekinetic powers and Mariah Carey as her caseworker. And for Crash, Sandra Bullock is a racist who gets turned on by car crashes. Fine by me.

Now I Know How Joan of Arc Felt

I forgot a few films when listing off my bronchitis-inspired film marathon, and here they are:

The Good:

Johnny Guitar - dir. Nicholas Ray - 1954 - USA - with Joan Crawford, Sterling Hayden, Mercedes McCambridge, Scott Brady, Ernest Borgnine

...Somewhere in Between:

The Untouchable [L'intouchable] - dir. Benoît Jacquot - 2006 - France - with Isild Le Besco

La chinoise - dir. Jean-Luc Godard - 1967 - France - with Anne Wiazemsky, Jean-Pierre Léaud, Juliet Berto, Michel Semeniako, Lex De Bruijn (Yeah, I know...)