Tomorrow, September 6, Criterion will launch its new, redesigned website, giving customers a one-stop emporium for all Criterion products, including T-shirts, hats, posters, mugs and gift
certificates. And, for the first time since the days of laserdiscs, Criterion
will be selling its library of movies directly online.
Criterion, you’ll get 20 percent off all DVDs, free
shipping on orders of $50 or more and — if you’re looking to knock out some early holiday shopping and score a reward for yourself — a $50 gift certificate for every $500
you spend.Click here for more details.
Co-directed by Tiago Guedes and Frederico Serra, Portuguese
import Bad Blood centers on the prominent
and respected Monteiro family, who inherits a beautiful home in the country,
nestled alongside a tiny village. Despite protests from his children and wife Helena
(Manuela Couto) — who have grown accustomed to the finer things that city life in
Lisbon has to offer, and believe the property should be sold for profit — stressed-out
patriarch Xavier (Adriano Luz) decides to uproot everyone and move to the new
house, hoping for a change and pleasant slowing of pace. The title tells us, of
course, that everything doesn’t turn all idyllic and carefree.
Almost immediately, the rather secular Monteiro family — eldest
daughter Sofia (Sara Carinhas) is even an unwed mother — learns that the quite
religious villagers nearby are held in the powerful and mysterious grip of
superstition and folklore. Soon, strange events begin occurring, and family is
forced to consider an alarming rumor running rampant throughout the village: that
by inheriting the house, they have also inherited a dark and menacing curse.
Praise for this sort of film will likely involve the dutiful
deployment of words like “atmospheric,” “moody” and “slow-burning,” but there
reaches a point where one has to call a spade a spade, and Bad Blood is on the other side of that line, unfortunately; it’s
merely boring. The acting is naturalistic, and across the board rather decent,
and there’s no cheating, glossy lean toward modernity within the film’s
production design; everything of is of a piece, and its locales carry the day.
Unfortunately, the film is shot, by cinematographer Vitor Estevao, in a rather
unappealing fashion, and a poor, grainy transfer and/or elements blown up from 16mm
only make matters worse. The film is being sold in the vein of recent Asian
chillers and/or something like Alejandro Amenábar’s The Others, a category in which it most certainly does not fall.
Bad Blood comes
housed in a regular Amray case, presented in anamorphic widescreen with Dolby
digital 5.1 surround sound and DTS surround sound 5.1 audio tracks. Guedes and
Frederico Serra serve as the linchpins of a comprehensive, completely
subtitled, 30-minute making-of, though writer Rodirgo Guedes de Carvalho and
most of the principal cast is also interviewed. There’s a lot of talk about
here about the legends and beliefs of rural areas, including werewolf-like
creature Carrazeda de Anciães, and how this was distilled for the movie’s
screenplay. There’s also talk about M. Night Shyamalan’s The Village — a movie whose somewhat thematically similar sleepy
rhythms of rural menace outstrip this tale by a four-to-one pace — and the
movie’s premiere presentation at the 2006 edition of the Fantasporto Festival
in its native country. The film’s 90-second theatrical trailer and a gallery of
other Tartan previews are the only other supplemental extras. To order the film
via Amazon, click here;
to purchase the film via Half, click here. D (Movie) B (Disc)
Having pulled in over $30 million, good for the top spot at the box office over Labor Day weekend, Rob Zombie’s Halloween is a bonafide success, and one that couldn’t come a moment too soon for the hit-starved, re-formulated Weinstein Company. It’s also a complete creative misfire, indicative of Hollywood’s backwards thinking with respect to how to build (or re-start) a horror franchise.
the Halloween franchise, but only in the most wan and nominal fashion imaginable. The manner in which traditional notions of development were clearly abdicated here speaks volumes about how and what Hollywood thinks of horror franchises — which is to say certainly not anything seriously, but rather only as a slick, goosing means to an end, that end being dollars. For the Weinstein Company, the notion of a Halloween movie directed by Rob Zombie — a not-untalented guy who’s made increasingly savvy use of his devil’s minion image in both music and film — clearly had more appeal than a Halloween movie directed by just about any other established filmmaker who could be coaxed to tackle such an assignment. The film’s box office results seem to bear out the fruit of this line of reasoning.
To that end, Halloween is a thrown-together mixture of Zombie’s usual company of actors (wife Sheri, Bill Moseley, Sid Haig, Danny Trejo, et al), other horror “faces” (Ken Foree, Dee Wallace, Clint Howard, Brad Dourif, Halloween veteran Danielle Harris, Udo Kier) and a few bizarre stunt cameos (Mickey Dolenz, Richmond Arquette), all then given a merrily depraved punch of gore and slashing. Casually misogynistic and at times almost comically over-the-top in its vulgarity, Halloween is essentially partially a yawning prequel exploration of the roots of a psychopath and partially a remake of the first film in the series, John Carpenter’s 1978 genre classic.
Zombie’s last film, The Devil’s Rejects, was unapologetically degenerate, but completely streamlined in its exploitative impulses. Here there’s a split focus. Halloween follows a recent trend of horror prequels, like Texas Chainsaw Massacre: The Beginning, which delve into the back stories of genre icons, attempting to answer the “hows” and “whys” of a faceless killing machine’s inner motivations. The problem, here as in there, is that the answers to these questions are so perfunctory as to lend the franchise no additional psychological weight or menace. Furthermore, Halloween additionally undercuts their set-up by spending the first 25-30 minutes of its running time explaining how Michael is to some degree a victim of circumstance — and thus loving to his little sister, the one person in his life who causes him no pain — only to then hurriedly throw that conceit under the bus when it becomes most convenient. Credulity is bent to pretzel-like extremes, and because of the film’s elongated set-up we don’t know or care about these characters. Ergo, the violence and other acts of intrusion hold absolutely no meaning. For the full review, from FilmStew, click here.
An eccentric singer of mixed Yugoslavian and British heritage, Lene Lovich was one of the vaunted new wave’s most experimental and edgy singers, projecting her strong soprano with brilliance, and exploring
the limitations of her voice in a way other contemporaries could only dream about. A new, hour-long DVD concert disc, Lene Lovich: Live from New York at Studio 54, spotlights a rare performance from the always
intriguing Lovich, with the science-blinded Thomas Dolby, of all people, on synthesizer. Of this show, recorded on December 4, 1981, Stephen Holden of the New York Times
wrote, “Miss Lovich put on a fascinating show in which she sang, played
the saxophone and danced with a lurching spontaneity that seemed half-demented.
Her favorite mode is a wild, hiccupy vocal attack that often breaks into
semi-improvisatory bird calling that soars easily to an E-flat above high C.” The title’s track listing is as follows: “Details,” “Joan,” “Rocky Road,” “Too Tender (To Touch),” “Say When,” “Lucky Number” (her biggest hit single), “New Toy,” “Bird Song,” “Angels,” “Home” and “One in a Million.” For more information, or to purchase the title via Amazon, click here.
Criterion, you’ll get 20 percent off all DVDs, free
the Halloween franchise, but only in the most wan and nominal fashion imaginable. The manner in which traditional notions of development were clearly abdicated here speaks volumes about how and what Hollywood thinks of horror franchises — which is to say certainly not anything seriously, but rather only as a slick, goosing means to an end, that end being dollars. For the Weinstein Company, the notion of a Halloween movie directed by Rob Zombie — a not-untalented guy who’s made increasingly savvy use of his devil’s minion image in both music and film — clearly had more appeal than a Halloween movie directed by just about any other established filmmaker who could be coaxed to tackle such an assignment. The film’s box office results seem to bear out the fruit of this line of reasoning.