Festivals-a-Go-Go + Robert Bresson, Part I

This past Thursday the TIFF Bell Lightbox began their latest series, the much-touted The Poetry of Precision: The Films of Robert Bresson, the first retrospective of France’s idiosyncratic director in 15 years, and the offering is every one of his films. (Only his debut, the 1934 comedic short Public Affairs / Les affaires publiques, was unavailable).

The series of 13 films begins with A Man Escaped [M] (1956), his best-known work, and perhaps the prototypical prison escape  drama. Naturally, it's not available on DVD in North America; alongside L’Argent (1983) and Lancelot of the Lake (1974), Escaped was released by New Yorker, but perhaps it may reappear, now that the once-dead label has been resuscitated by new owners.

Mysterious Island (1961), Twilight Time’s Nick Redman, and readjusting the concept of MODs

PART I:  Mysterious Island on Blu, and Twilight Time Turns One

In less than a month, indie home video label Twilight Time will celebrate its 1 year anniversary, and I’m pretty sure its founders, employees and contributors will look back with pride at what was accomplished.

This could apply to any label that aspires to essentially fill a void that’s kept niche fans hungry for ages. I use the term niche deliberately, and with some regret, because that’s what seems to happen as a generation of film fans (or film music fans) age, and titles that were once cherished just doesn’t impact people the way they used to.

Return of Intruder (1989)

Yup, you get to see the before, the during, and the after of this poor chum.

Scott Spiegel’s Intruder [M] (1989) is more notorious for its gore sequences and the casting of brothers Sam and Ted Raimi (both of whom die violently as night shift workers in a soon-to-be-shuttered grocery store), but shorn of these key elements, Spiegel’s directorial debut is pretty much a ‘meh’ effort; not awful, but not brilliant, even though there are several strong aspects to the film (notably the location).

For Raimi fans, Synapse’s new Blu-ray is a welcome addition to the collection, given the film’s first VHS release was snipped of its nastiness, and the prior uncut DVD edition from Wizard was a bare bones release. This is the definitive release, and it helps fill in those little gaps that make up the early efforts by members of Sam Raimi’s filmmaking clan.

Festivals-a-Go-Go: Feb. 3-5 + R.I.P. The Cinesphere?

Before I roll off a quick tally of interesting things screening at interesting venues this weekend (bobby-pins, please), here’s a video released by NASA this week showing the dark side of the moon, proving Pink Floyd does not have a secret base in crater XB-14.

Yilmaz Güney, Part II: The Poor Ones (1975)

Not a happy dude. At all.

The screening of The Poor Ones / Zavallilar [M] (1975) marks the approximate midpoint in the TIFF Bell Lightbox’s current retrospective of Turkish actor, writer, director Yilmaz Guney, and although not as powerful as his Cannes-winning Yol [M] (1982), Poor Ones has its moments of sharp social commentary. It’s also one  mother of a bleak film, yet Guney clearly took a popular genre from one country and created his own hybrid, infusing it with the so-called mirror images of Turkish society as filtered through his sensibilities.

A production affected by a major incident – Guney’s arrest and incarceration – the film features one of his last major roles in front of the camera before he switched to writing and directing, most of those efforts done from behind bars.