In The Company Of Glenn

Flash bulbs in Scorsese.

So I was dipping into Raging Bull for some screen grabs for a completely unrelated post (which I'm still working on—can you guess what yet-to-be-released film it's mainly about?) and I...well, I won't say noticed, but I will say I was struck anew by the flashbulb horror, and its most blatant re-emergence. Here goes...

Then and Now #3: Special Animation Fallacy Edition

Peter Sallis, The Third Secret, Charles Crichton, 1964

Peter Sallis, Wallace and Gromit: The Curse of the Were-Rabbit, Nick Park and Steve Box, 2005

Originals and homages #1

Killer of Sheep, Charles Burnett, 1977

George Washington, David Gordon Green, 2000

This coming Tuesday sees special DVD releases of two of the more significant films of 1977, one being, of course, Burnett's remarkable Killer of Sheep, which, among other things, immediately established the Los Angeles filmmaker as the natural inheritor of the legacy of Jean Vigo. The other release is of three versions of, yes, Stephen Spielberg's Close Encounters of the Third Kind. I hope to explore both in a bit more detail over the course of the week.

Go ahead, call me crazy...

Since I first saw Joel and Ethan Coen's epochally great No Country For Old Men at Cannes, I've been remarking about the extraordinary resemblance Javier Bardem's Anton Chigurh character sometimes bears to Lon Chaney's Professor Edward C. Burke character in Tod Browning's lost 1927 film London After Midnight. I mentioned it to Bardem at a roundtable interview at Cannes, and he and Josh Brolin had a good, but not overly unkind, laugh over it. I brought it up to a Coen brother at the afterparty of Wednesday night's New York premiere and he politely pled ignorance. But I'm hanging on to the theory, damn it, and offering the following two images—not the best anologies possible, but the best I could get under the present circumstances—as evidence. What say you, gentle readers—accident, or design?

Eternal Returns #9

Scorpio Rising, Kenneth Anger, 1964

2001: A Space Odyssey, Stanley Kubrick, 1968

Eternal Returns #8

The Doll, Ernst Lubitsch, 1916

Lars and the Real Girl, Craig Gillespie, 2007

Eternal Returns #7

Luis Bunuel and night sky, Un Chien Andalou, Bunuel, 1929

Eternal Returns #6

Detective Lieutenant Sims (Sterling Hayden) gives up trying to quit smoking in Crime Wave (De Toth, 1954).

Inspector Le Goff (Lino Ventura) gives up trying to quite smoking in The Sicilian Clan (Verneuil, 1970).

Have you seen Crime Wave yet? I hadn't since, jeez, the '60s. It's pretty amazing, and it's part of a pretty amazing Warner Home Video box of film noirs that I review here. I also put together a nice (if I say so myself) gallery of screen grabs from the films, which you can access at the end of the review.

Okay, it's early Wednesday morning and no news of any venerable European directors dying yet. Keep your fingers crossed.

Eternal Returns #5

The Big Shave, Martin Scorsese, 1967

Gangs of New York, Martin Scorsese, 2002

Hat tip: Mr. Joseph Failla

Eternal Returns #4

Rich and Strange, Alfred Hitchcock, 1931

Zodiac, David Fincher, 2007

Although Fincher's picture is in fact a very satisfying cinematic experience on its own, I have to admit to being a trifle disappointed that its upcoming DVD release is entirely extras-free. Yes, I know that I can probably learn more about the Zodiac killer case by TiVoing as much Court TV, A&E, History Channel and Bravo as possible. That's not what I'm talking about. My understanding is that Robert Downey Jr. was the lamb sacrificed on the altar of an under-three-hour running time, and I would have liked to see more of him. Would have liked to see, in fact, whatever lengthier cut of the film Fincher had in mind.