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June 27, 2003

It finally turned hot this week, and Los Angeles is soaking it up ... and as we turn the corner into July, there's a bumper crop of art films grabbing our attention:

MGM's Wings of Desire is the catch of the week, a beautiful DVD of a fantasy favorite that still dazzles. Bruno Ganz falls in love with aerialist Solveig Dommartin, with the small problem that he's an angel and she's mortal. With Otto Sander and Peter Falk.

Criterion takes on a benchmark French-Japanese co-production, Alain Resnais' Hiroshima mon amour. Two lovers try to sort out the meanings of memory and forgetfulness. Emmanuele Riva and Eiji Okada star as a couple haunted by grief and guilt.

Criterion also does a fine job with Ermanno Olmi's I fidanzati, a mature study of people uprooted in the 'new industrial Italy' of the early 60s. For Giovanni, taking advantage of a job opportunity in Sicily means leaving his fiancee behind, and putting their futures at risk. A precise and meditative social/character study.

Anchor Bay does a splendid special edition job with Roadgames, a suspense thriller that's too good to be lumped in with other early 80s slasher pix. A spiffy script and bright performances highlight a combo of Rear Window and Duel on the narrow Australian roads. Stacy Keach and Jamie Lee Curtis are a great duo. With a special guest wallaby and a dingo for a co-star.

Just spent half a week soaking up A&E's The Singing Detective miniseries and will be sorting it out in due time; it's also time for those Billy Wilder films to show up, if they show up. Thanks for all the corrections and discussions. I hope my take on these art films isn't too insulting - the Resnais picture probably has enough written on it to fill a library. Thanks, Glenn Erickson



June 23, 2003

It's Monday, and the sun is finally out for real here ... Savant has a mixed bag tonight. One kiddie puppet television series, a terrific Robert De Niro comedy from before he became a cinema clown, and two European Art films with pedigrees so daunting, I'm afraid to post my layman's POV remarks...

Criterion's Il Posto is a charming and rewarding bit of neorealism about a shy young man's entry into the Milan workforce ... a puppy about to be ground up in the gears. His one hope for life is a fetching young coworker who raises his spirits to the sky. From acclaimed filmmaker Ermanno Olmi.

From Fox Lorber comes a really good version of Jean-Luc Godard's My Life to Live. It's the one with Anna Karina playing a streetwalker with a good attitude but rotten luck. Godard's difficult to write about, but Savant's done his best.

Universal's Midnight Run is Savant's favorite mainstream action-buddy film of the modern era (post Sly and Ah-nold). Robert De Niro and Charles Grodin make a delightful odd couple, and the script is as clever as a 30s screwball comedy.

And A&E tantalizes fantasy nostalgics with a 5 disc, 39-episode box of Supercar: The Complete Series. The original Gerry & Sylvia Anderson Sci Fi marionette series is slick and sharp, with production values that dwarfed the competition in 1960.

Looking forward to those Billy Wilders, and am hoping a couple of late arrivals like THE LONG SHIPS come into port. Adios, Glenn Erickson



June 20, 2003

Savant has two times art, one Hollywood bomb that's a guilty pleasure, and a unique Broadway musical ....

Image's Stephen Sondheim's Passion is yet another rare pleasure to put beside Into the Woods and Sweeney Todd. An Italian soldier learns the meaning of true love, from the unwanted attentions of a woman thought to be insane.

Home Vision has a hit with the truly strange Warm Water Under a Red Bridge, a fanciful drama that combines a fairy story with sex, and lots and lots of water imagery. From master filmmaker Shohei Imamura.

My Night at Maud's is a favorite art film about romance, temptation and the endless complications of love. Eric Rohmer puts hero Jean-Louis Trintignant into a touchy situation ... and we watch him slowly prevail.

Paramount's Popeye has such a lousy reputation, I'm surprised it's out. A big, mismanaged mess from Robert Altman, it still has the pleasures of a perfectly cast Popeye and Olive Oyl - Robin Williams and Shelley Duvall.

The Extended English Language Version of The Good, the Bad & the Ugly makes its LA screen debut tonight at the Nuart in Santa Monica. Savant should be there trying to film the marquee, if the weather's not too bad ... Thanks for reading, Glenn Erickson



June 18, 2003

More overcast LA weather. Savant has three more reviews to slip in before deadline:

Criterion's Night and Fog presents the full 1955 Holocaust essay-film, with additional text essays and an interview with its director Alain Resnais.

Home Vision Entertainment's Black and White in Color is director Jean-Jacques Annaud's hilariously dark look at real events in colonial Africa in WW1. Foolish Frenchmen attack their German neighbors, using native troops to do the fighting, of course. Comes with a complete second feature, the 1962 Oscar-winning The Sky Above, the Mud Below.

Image has come out with a watchable disc of Fritz Lang's You Only Live Once, a tale of injustice, romance and cruel fate for a pair of Bonnie & Clyde-like fugitive lovers. Henry Fonda and Sylvia Sidney are the unforgettable Taylors, hounded, framed and pursued by society.

Last night Savant attended a Cinematheque screening of Edgar Ulmer's Natalka Poltavka , a Russian-language Ukranian operetta he filmed in New Jersey in 1937. The film was rediscovered only in the past couple of years, so this was something of a party for Arianné Ulmer Cipes, the director's daugher and archivist. Also in the audience was the legendary Ann Savage, star of Ulmer's Detour - quite a treat for us Noir fans. More later, Glenn Erickson



June 14, 2003

Saturday night - Savant is recovering from a cold and looking foward to Father's Day (which means breakfast out). I've got 3 FORQ's tonight (Films of Reasonable Quality) and one fall-down major discovery.

All Day's David Kalat has had this disc up his sleeve for a long time, and has given it the proper gestation. Edward Dmytryk's Christ in Concrete (aka Give Us This Day) is a very complex movie to explain, and All Day's special edition does it justice with commentaries and other extras. The film itself is a real head-scratcher, a lost English effort made by expatriate American blacklistees, that not only fell through the cracks, as Kalat's company motto goes, but had cement poured in on top of it. The amazing thing is that it's a really good movie, an expressive and lusty portrait of life and love that should be up there with the Wyler, Stevens and Capra classics.

Roman Polanski gives us the tense terror play Death and the Maiden, starring Sigourney Weaver, Ben Kingsley and Stuart Wilson. It's three people in a single room for 90 minutes, but the suspense builds and the dramatic quotient is high.

Robert Redford and George Segal are klutzy criminals who can't seem to pull off the perfect crime, even thought they get four or five chances to do it, in the cleverly plotted The Hot Rock. Zero Mostel is only one of numerous obstacles for the larcenous pair.

And the genuine sparks between Paul Newman and Joanne Woodward ignite Martin Ritt's The Long Hot Summer, a steamy soap opera with Anthony Franciosa, Lee Remick, Angela Lansbury and Orson Welles, who wears the most ridiculous makeup of his career. It's William Faulkner, by way of Peyton Place.

More goodies on the horizon, including a passel 'o art pix courtesy of Criterion and Home Vision, that Savant is eager to bite into. Thanks for hanging round, and hope summer is shaping up for all of us. Glenn Erickson



June 12, 2003

Savant has been listening to fans wanting more Sergio Leone for years, and maybe the ball is finally rolling ...

Warners will make a lot of movie collectors happy with Once Upon a Time in America, Sergio Leone's almost four-hour gangster epic. The labyrinth of flashbacks and Ennio Morricone's superb music are both intact, along with every R-rated outrage perpetrated by Leone's 'lovable' hoods. Starring Robert De Niro, James Woods, Tuesday Weld and Elizabeth McGovern.

Paramount unearths William Wyler gold in the suspense favorite The Desperate Hours. Humphrey Bogart hijacks Fredric March's happy household, an act he lives to regret. With little Richard Eyer as every criminal's nemesis.

John Wayne bursts onscreen for the first time in Raoul Walsh's ancient The Big Trail. It's a good movie, but not the original roadshow 65mm version we were expecting.

And Peter Yates misses the classic mark but hits with a solid action film in Murphy's War. Peter O'Toole retools a wrecked seaplane and uses it to blast a Nazi sub out of a Venezuelan river in WW2. With spectacular scenery and action.

More reviews on Saturday ... thanks for tuning in. With sentimental thoughts for David Brinkley and Gregory Peck ... Glenn Erickson



June 08, 2003

Happy to be back again with a bundle of absorbing discs, including what I think was last year's best picture (2nd best: Talk to Her). Summer is coming and I'll be back to editing soon. Hope you're having fun ....

Universal's The Pianist is nothing short of a masterpiece. Roman Polanski carefully tempers his signature style, and produces the best dramatic document of the Holocaust yet seen. Adrien Brody is superb as the wistful, delicate musician forced to live an underground existence - for three years - in a Warsaw converted into a Nazi hell.

Fox's The Flight of the Phoenix is another great picture, a male adventure tale of survival that requires a dozen uncooperative types to work together on an insane plan. One of James Stewart's best, this Robert Aldrich film also stars Hardy Kruger and Peter Finch.

Paramount's awesome Is Paris Burning? tells a complicated historical story without cutting corners, as Frenchmen take back Paris from its German occupiers, who have orders to destroy every major landmark upon their retreat. With a stirring Maurice Jarre score to celebrate the survival of France's beloved capital.

Blue Underground gives the royal treatment to Baba Yaga, a weird attempt to convert an erotic Guido Crepax comic strip into an erotic comic book-like film. Carroll Baker and the hypnotizing Isabelle de Funès star as a sensuous witch and the fashion photographer she stalks.

Savant is sort of keeping up with the titles. There's at least one more war and Western film each to cover, a few strange caper and crime films, another Fritz Lang classic, and a long-awaited Sergio Leone epic. Thanks for sticking with me. Glenn Erickson



June 05, 2003

It's only a few hours to the 59th anniversary of D-Day, and the same few hours to the High School graduation of Savant's youngest offspring .... time flies, that's for sure. Some top-notch discs to review tonight:

Warner's Giant is a good special edition of the epic Texas saga, James Dean's third and last film. Director George Stevens Jr.'s son's control is all over this presentation, from the format of the transfer, to 'introducing' the film in person. With Rock Hudson and Elizabeth Taylor.

Lee Broughton offers up a pair of separate Region 2 PAL releases in one review: The Nude Princess & Mystics in Bali. They read like very strange fantasy horror movies, from Mondo Macabro.

Fox has a quality offering in The Song of Bernadette, a religious film that's consistently intelligent and insightful, even as it walks the tightrope of bad & good taste. It's Hollywood-ized, certainly, but has some good ideas to convey about faith. With the radiant debut of Jennifer Jones.

Artisan's Cloak and Dagger is a Fritz Lang spy film about Atomic secrets that must have ruffled some fur somewhere between Hollywood and Washington, because its entire last scene was censored. Savant has the full story. With Gary Cooper and Lilli Palmer.

And Universal's least classic Western is the Audie Murphy programmer The Duel at Silver Creek, a rootin' tootin' shoot 'em up that Yosemite Sam would love. Stephen McNally, Faith Domergue and a young Susan Cabot star.

Former Savant contributor Stuart Galbraith probably won't be returning to these pages, as he's been tapped to become the new DVD reviewer at The Home Theater Forum. He's an excellent choice - and now I'll have a new reviewer to read in addition to Mark Bourne and others at The DVD Journal. Good luck, Stuart! Glenn Erickson



June 01, 2003

It's variety time, on the first day of the middle month of 2003. A pleasant surprise of a horror film, a fun John Wayne romp, a rather pompous soap opera, and a really crummy war film - something for everyone.

Elite Entertainment hasn't received the attention it deserves at this site, and I'd like to point out their excellent DVD of the notable horror film, Strange Behavior. It's a quirky chiller that's not entirely successful but stands out immediately from the slasher pix of its time - due to an intelligent script and sensitive direction. It's quirky, as in Blue Velvet - odd but not perverse. A top cast creates people we care about - Michael Murphy, Louise Fletcher, Dan Shor, Fiona Lewis, & Dey Young. With an entertaining and informative commentary track.

Fox's North to Alaska is a sturdy DVD of the John Wayne vehicle, the one that begins with the radio hit song. Adventure in the Gold Country is mostly a series of farcical reverses, with Capucine playing a French callgirl enlisted as a consolation prize for a heartsick miner. With Stewart Granger and Fabian.

Fox's From the Terrace is a perfectly adequate soap opera, but its slippery values and pious glee for commercially-exploitable sin rubbed Savant the wrong way. Paul Newman and Joanne Woodward lend their considerable talents to this glossy, entertaining mess.

But hey, it's better than Mosquito Squadron, a very lame air combat film that crams lots of unbelievable action into a script that nobody seems to have faith in. It's with David McCallum, and tons of stock footage from earlier films - including a scene lifted intact from Operation Crossbow.

Savant's ready for another wave of exciting vintage titles, plus Roman Polanski's newest masterpiece. Thanks for the letters, and of course, especially all of the corrections. Glenn Erickson


Don't forget to write Savant at [email protected].

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