Cinefantastique Online

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Since the heady days of the laserdisc era, the Criterion branding had made cineastes everywhere breathe easier when forking out big bucks for their lauded special editions of classic films. After a shaky transition to DVD production (with more than a few non-anamorphic, recycled transfers) they regrouped rather masterfully, showing an amazing ability to come up with exhaustively detailed supplemental material (it takes about as long to sift through their 3-disc set of Mr. Arkadin as it did for Orson Welles to complete the film) to compliment a beautifully rendered feature. When Criterion announced earlier in 2008 that they would begin issuing their catalog on Bluray disc later in the year, there was much excitement – even from those of us who could host a month-long tag sale featuring double dipped DVDs. Among their first wave of HD discs appearing this week are Nicholas Roeg’s delirious, kaleidoscopic, and ultimately tragic The Man Who Fell to Earth. More than 30 years after its original release, Roeg’s film about a visitor from another planet (David Bowie, in the best and bravest performance of his career) who arrives on Earth and sets up a corporate behemoth that will allow him to build a ship to bring his people back from their dying world. Fans of the film will understand that any attempt at a plot description is folly; this is no simple Sci-Fi tale, nor was Roeg content with a Rod Serling-esque attempt to use genre elements to hold a mirror up to the human condition – the Peckinpah-influenced editing rhythms combine with the breathtaking cinematography and sound design to create a sensory experience, that, unlike other “trip” movies of the era, still holds up beautifully today. The extras replicate those found on Criterion’s standard-def DVD release, with the unfortunate exception of the handsome reprint of the Walter Tevis novel on which the film is based, otherwise they are as follows:

• New, restored high-definition digital transfer, supervised and approved by director Nicolas Roeg
• Audio commentary by Roeg and actors David Bowie and Buck Henry
• New video interview with screenwriter Paul Mayersberg
• Performance, new video interview with actors Candy Clark and Rip Torn
• Audio interviews with costume designer May Routh and production designer Brian Eatwell
• Audio interview from 1984 with author Walter Tevis, conducted by Don Swaim
• Multiple stills galleries, including Routh’s costume sketches; behind-the-scenes photos; and production and publicity stills, introduced by set photographer David James
• Gallery of posters from Roeg’s films
• Trailers

Also appearing in Criterion’s first wave of Bluray releases this week are Carol Reed’s The Third Man, Wong Kar-Wai’s Chungking Express, and Wes Anderson’s Bottle Rocket, each replicating the plentiful extras of their SD counterparts.

The Mummy Trilogy

Has it really been nearly a decade since Stephen Sommers’ The Mummy opened? We vividly remember being wowed by the picture during its initial theatrical release, enjoying the melding of cherry picked horror elements with a Raiders of the Lost Ark-like affection for the adventure serials of the 30s and 40s, and infused with an orgy of (at the time) state of the art digital effects. But most of all we enjoyed the lead performance of Brendan Fraser, who’s chiseled, leading man visage sits easily with an open, engaging sense of humor. Fraser had to work a bit harder in the sequel, The Mummy Returns, which tried hard (with some success) to hang on to the air of pure fun that the original achieved so effortlessly. And if the show leaned a bit too hard on the accelerator for fear of boring its perceived audience of young children, it also wisely retained nearly all of the engaging supporting cast of the first film, including the always stunning Rachel Weisz, and the formidable Arnold Vosloo. Unfortunately, this past summer’s The Mummy: Tomb of the Dragon Emperor jettisoned the majority of the supporting cast from the previous films and shifted the action to China. We’ll look forward to spinning the Bluray and hope that some of the original film’s goofball adventurism remains. (Note – not to be confused with 2008’s other underperforming, effects heavy, vaguely Victorian-era period film starring Brendan Fraser, Journey to the Center of the Earth).

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Universal is releasing lots ‘o Mummy this week, with 5 separate releases choking the shelves. Tomb of the Dragon Emperor arrives in single-disc widescreen and fullscreen editions (presumably to sell at supermarket checkout lines) and a 2-disc edition featuring deleted and extended scenes alongside the standard EPK-style making of documentaries and featurettes. The Bluray release has all that, plus several HD exclusives, including an interactive trivia game and a visual commentary track with director Rob Cohen (that appears to be the same track utilized in audio-only form for the SD releases). Dragon also joins its forbearers for a Bluray 3-pack featuring all three films of the franchise, excluding The Scorpion King.

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Director Uwe Boll has long been taking advantage of certain labyrinthine German tax laws that generously reward investors with a 100% write-off for their investment in a German film production. Fair enough, but there has been no such explanation for why his films, once completed, actually manage to get released. Hating Uwe Boll has turned into a cottage industry in the last few years, with his incompetently shot, incoherently edited string of video game adaptations continually enraging unknowing renters, critics, and gamers alike (according to Wikipedia, a recent video game industry award show had the category “Game Most Deserving of a Uwe Boll Adaptation”). Uwe’s latest, In the Name of the King: A Dungeon Siege Tale, hits Bluray this week in an “unrated director’s cut” and clocking in at a mind bending 162min! According to the back of the box:

When a bloodthirsty legion of half-man/half-beast Krugs rampages through his village, one man picks up a sword and undertakes a quest of vengeance… and honor. Haunted by the memory of his son’s death and the kidnapping of his wife (Forlani) by the Krugs, Farmer (Statham) ignites a duty-call for others to join his crusade to stop the campaign of terror waged by an evil sorcerer (Liotta) whose ruthless quest for the crown could spell doom for the entire Kingdom.

The show had been previously released on DVD in its PG-13 theatrical length of 127min, and while we haven’t had the chance to view the film yet, it would be impossible to say that the thought of seeing evil sorcerer Ray Liotta share the screen with Burt Reynolds and Matthew Lillard wasn’t tempting. I’d also be interested to know how top billed Jason Statham wound up in this particular gutter, as he generally finds himself in the somewhat more rarified air of a Transporter picture, or at the very least a…

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Death Race. Those of us charting the progress of the remake train were a bit surprised that it took them this long to get to the Roger Corman station. Corman, a producer who didn’t so much pinch pennies as grind them into a fine powder, has a mile-long list of exploitable titles that he’s more than likely thrilled to sell the remake rights to – terrific stories that could be enhanced by a more luxurious budget. This remake of 1975’s Death Race 2000 gives us the near ubiquitous Jason Statham in David Carradine’s former role of ‘Frankenstein’, this time forced along with other inmates to participate in the titular race by a for-profit prison authority. We haven’t had the chance to see the picture yet, but are holding out hope – particularly since Stephen King named it as one of his favorite pictures of 2008 – that the modern update can take director Paul Bartel’s bare-bones concept of a cross country race across a economically devastated American landscape (watch for hysterical background bits like a hospital-sponsored euthanasia day) where points are awarded for killing innocent people and retain its madcap spirit. Classing it up with slumming thespians Joan Allen and Ian McShane certainly helps, and we’re always hopeful that director Paul W.S. Anderson’s story telling sense will one day match his visual flair. Available in the requisite unrated versions in both SD DVD and Bluray, which features the enticing “My Movie Commentary” feature, that apparently allows the viewer to record their own race commentary.

Also debuting on Bluray are the extended editions of Quentin Tarantino’s Death Proof and Robert Rodriguez’s Planet Terror, once known as the two halves of Grindhouse. Released to lukewarm business in 2007, Grindhouse was a labor of love for the two directors; two separate films designed to show as a double feature and featuring a quartet of faux trailers for other genre offerings and vintage theatrical title cards. Tarantino and Rodriguez even went to far as to digitally scratch-up their films (which works much better for Planet Terror) so as to better represent a battered print that has been playing in seedy ‘grindhouses’ all over the country. It’s not hard to imagine why more people didn’t turn out to see the film; aside from a hardcore audience that would relish the idea of returning to the days when you could wander down to 42nd street and sit through hours of kung-fu pictures, blaxsploitation epics, and Euro-sleaze vampires, while counting how many trailers for New World Pictures contained Roger Corman’s famous exploding helicopter shot, most in the younger set could barely grasp the concept of a double feature. This led to Miramax splitting the two films up (and extending the running time for each) for foreign theatrical and domestic DVD release. Fans in the US were bitterly disappointed when they weren’t given the option of seeing the Grindhouse edit on video, particularly because the brilliant trailers by Eli Roth (Thanksgiving), Edgar Wright (Don’t) and Rob Zombie (Werewolf Women of the SS) were left off both DVD releases.

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While still massively irritating, the separation of the pictures has been kind to our favorite of the two, Planet Terror. While the directive was to make a film that embraced the grindhouse experience, only Rodriguez seems to have fully committed himself to that end. Planet Terror is a lovingly raucous ode to the Italian zombie/infection sub-genre (see Luigi Cozzi’s 1982 Contamination for a clearer example) that perfectly captures the gooey thrill ride of a film unencumbered by a moral compass. Death Proof, however, is another story. Though there are few complaints about the huge performance from Kurt Russell as the mysterious Stuntman Mike or the thrilling car chase that caps the show, the picture almost doesn’t recover from the endlessly chatty first half. As of this writing, the only place to secure the feature as shown in theaters is a pricey Japanese DVD release (available via Amazon Japan) that contains the theatrical edit along with the individual cuts. As both films were designed to look absolutely ravaged, Planet Terror and Death Proof might appear at first to be unusual candidates for HD disc. Planet Terror features all of the extras from the previous DVD edition, including a typically engaging commentary track from Rodriguez, a fun audience reaction audio track (their reaction to Rodriguez’s own fake trailer for Machete is priceless), and several featurettes including 10 Minute Film School that concentrates on the special effects, and The Friend, The Doctor, and the Real Estate Agent detailing some unorthodox casting decisions. But also present (and in HD no less) is a “newly discovered” scratch-free print of the film, which basically removes all the digital manipulation used to age the film, rendering it in spotless 1080p glory – it makes for an interesting viewing, if only to further appreciate the level of commitment Rodriguez had for the project.

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Death Proof also ports over the extras from the previous release, including Introducing Zoë Bell, a tribute to the endearingly plucky stuntwoman/actress, and Kurt Russell as Stuntman Mike, which reiterates that Kurt is the coolest guy on the planet. No scratch-free version this time around, as Tarantino apparently didn’t feel like he needed to bother scratching his half of Grindhouse up all that much to begin with. As long as there’s cash to be made, count on the Weinsteins to run the string of separate releases out to the very end before giving fans what they’ve been asking for – in line behind me, lemmings!

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Also showing up this week with a surprisingly low profile is what ought to be one of the most eagerly anticipated genre titles on Bluray, Wes Craven’s A Nightmare on Elm Street. Warner Bros (through subsidiary New Line) has been cancelling and postponing this for months now, with some copies having already leaked out through online retailers. Craven’s film has attained the status of an unquestioned masterpiece, as important to the 80s as Halloween was to the 70s and Night of the Living Dead to the 60s, and though it regrettably ushered in the era of the wisecracking, crowd pleasing serial killer, it’s also a wholly original, artistic triumph. And while the picture on the Bluray is a substantial improvement over New Line’s older Infini-Film edition, the lack of any extras for such a historically important film tells us to prepare for a deluxe Bluray somewhere down the line.