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Re: Cohen Film Collection
Posted: Tue Oct 21, 2014 1:39 am
by knives
Though there's been no word yet on the shorts keeping the MOC discs still important.
Re: Cohen Film Collection
Posted: Tue Oct 21, 2014 6:39 pm
by Zot!
I also see no Police or A Nos Amours. Not to mention, I think the french bds might be more cost effective.
Re: Cohen Film Collection
Posted: Tue Oct 21, 2014 6:41 pm
by domino harvey
That's because Police is with Olive and A Nos Amours is with Criterion
Re: Cohen Film Collection
Posted: Tue Oct 21, 2014 6:53 pm
by EddieLarkin
Zot! wrote:Not to mention, I think the french bds might be more cost effective.
Maybe, but there are no French discs of
La Gueule ouverte and
Passe ton bac d'abord. And the French discs of the other films have unsubtitled supplements.
Re: Cohen Film Collection
Posted: Thu Oct 23, 2014 11:33 am
by JabbaTheSlut
Maurice Pialat, l'amour existe (2007)
Great news!
Re: Cohen Film Collection
Posted: Thu Oct 23, 2014 1:02 pm
by Zot!
EddieLarkin wrote:Zot! wrote:Not to mention, I think the french bds might be more cost effective.
Maybe, but there are no French discs of
La Gueule ouverte and
Passe ton bac d'abord. And the French discs of the other films have unsubtitled supplements.
Oh, overlooked by me then, especially the two features. Thanks!
Re: Cohen Film Collection
Posted: Sun Nov 16, 2014 11:00 am
by rockysds
William Dieterle's Syncopation February 10th.
Re: Cohen Film Collection
Posted: Mon Nov 17, 2014 8:06 pm
by captveg
Interesting. Anyone know how this RKO film ended up not being owned by Warner? Is it PD?
Re: Cohen Film Collection
Posted: Tue Nov 18, 2014 7:39 pm
by Michael Kerpan
rockysds wrote:William Dieterle's Syncopation February 10th.
Bosley Crowther provided a withering review of this at thetime of its initial release:
http://www.nytimes.com/movie/review?res ... 8389659EDE" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;
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Re: Cohen Film Collection
Posted: Tue Nov 18, 2014 10:20 pm
by The Fanciful Norwegian
captveg wrote:Interesting. Anyone know how this RKO film ended up not being owned by Warner? Is it PD?
It's not PD, but RKO didn't actually own the copyright—William Dieterle Productions did. Same as
The Devil and Daniel Webster, which isn't with WB either. The copyright on
Syncopation was renewed in 1969 by some outfit called "Film Archive Trading Co.", then shows up in a 1990 copyright assignment from the executor of the Raymond Rohauer estate to "Rohauer Collection Foundation, Inc." So that explains how Cohen has it, though I don't know how or when Rohauer got it. ("Film Archive Trading Co." doesn't seem to be a Rohauer company, since he was renewing copyrights in his own name at the same time.)
Re: Cohen Film Collection
Posted: Tue Nov 18, 2014 10:22 pm
by captveg
Makes sense. Thanks!
Re: Cohen Film Collection
Posted: Tue Nov 18, 2014 11:10 pm
by Gregory
One of his criticisms of Dieterle is that "his comprehension of its spirit is obviously nil," but I would never think of Crowther as someone with a keen sense of the spirit of the music who can necessarily judge what's true to it and what isn't. He always seemed pretty priggish, narrow-minded, and too eager to cut something down that he didn't seem to understand. For example, in
his review of Shirley Clarke's The Connection, I can almost see his proverbial monocle popping out as he watches a bunch of sleazy junkies sitting around, who only occasionally redeem themselves momentarily when they entertained him by performing some "generally respectable jazz." He spends most of the review coming up with as many ways as he can to express his disapproval of these people and the apartment they're holed up in, and wondering where the plot is.
Re: Cohen Film Collection
Posted: Thu Nov 20, 2014 8:05 am
by Numero Trois
Gregory wrote:He always seemed pretty priggish, narrow-minded, and too eager to cut something down that he didn't seem to understand.
And he tended to have a "Hollywood-first" mentality when it came to discussing foreign films that at least sometimes crossed into condescension. A recent reviewer (don't remember his name) who commented on something he wrote called that mindset "imperialistic" which seems about right to me.
The worst thing is to this day the New York Times quotes him from time to time when certain classic films are revived. Always makes me cringe.
Re: Cohen Film Collection
Posted: Thu Nov 20, 2014 8:21 am
by ellipsis7
Cavani from Cohen on BR.... Following closely on the heels of Criterion's THE NIGHT PORTER upcoming in December and I CANNIBALI/THE YEAR OF THE CANNIBALS from Raro USA which debuted January last...
THE SKIN/LA PELLE on January 13th 2015...
Re: Cohen Film Collection
Posted: Thu Nov 20, 2014 11:24 am
by Aunt Peg
I'm hoping it is region free and will hold buying until I find out.
Re: Cohen Film Collection
Posted: Thu Nov 20, 2014 11:50 am
by Cold Bishop
If I'm not mixing up my articles and authors, Olivier Assayas wrote about this when he was covering Cannes for Cahiers and singled it out as surprisingly a film from Caviani that was actually good. So for all the Night Porter haters...
(It probably helps that Malaparte was a hell of an author.)
EDIT: As it turned out, I already translated that whole article...
La pelle surprised everyone, starting with me: it is a film not lacking in qualities. Radically foreign to everything which Liliana Cavani has filmed up until now, this adaptation of a pictaresque novel by Malaparte has qualities of humor, and of sensitivity, which nothing in this director’s career has suggested. The film is structured in vignettes which look to reconstruct, in a unanimiste manner, the climate of Naples as the first European town liberated by the Allies; some episodes are very successful, other less-so, some are failures, but if there is at least one striking success in La pelle which merits attention, it is Marcello Mastroianni. In fact, he portrays the very character of Curzio Malaparte with a complicated blend of cynicism, self-importance and the pathetic which is undoubtedly one of the screen’s most skillful portrayals of a novelist. It is also necessary to point out the technical control which emerges from the complex ensemble, and the direction of American comedians here is very precise, something which is rather rare in European cinema.
Re: Cohen Film Collection
Posted: Thu Nov 20, 2014 12:15 pm
by ellipsis7
I guess a third significant footprint for Malaparte on European cinema, along with his own distinguished directorial effort IL CRISTO PROIBITO, and the villa on Capri that he had designed & owned, which figures so prominently in Godard's LA MEPRIS/CONTEMPT that it is almost a character in itself...
This rather shocking clip from THE SKIN/LA PELLE of Italian liberation by US tanks & troops points to an unblinkered portrayal of Malaparte's stories...
Re: Cohen Film Collection
Posted: Thu Nov 20, 2014 1:35 pm
by accatone
Godard also refered to this book in Film Socialisme. Malaparte (real name Kurt Erich Suckert) describes the arrival of the US Troops as the pest. Its a very interesting book with a disputable "message" for sure - predominantly because of the author himself who is also the main character. I found this much more enjoyable than Kaputt. There is a german DVD out for some time which i held off as i really enjoyed the book…
Re: Cohen Film Collection
Posted: Tue Jan 13, 2015 11:25 pm
by rockysds
For its Cohen Film Collection Blu-ray release, syncopation has been restored in 2K from an archival 35mm fine grain master struck by the Library of Congress from the nitrate negative. In addition to a 2015 re-release trailer, special features include nine short musical films showcasing some of the most iconic performers in jazz history:
"Symphony in Black" (1935 w/Duke Ellington and Billie Holiday) (9:36)
"Rhapsody in Black and Blue" (1932, w/Louis Armstrong) (10:00)
"St. Louis Blues" (1929, w/Bessie Smith) (15:41)
"Cab Calloway's Hi De Ho" (1933) (10:00)
"Bundle of Blues" (1933, w/Duke Ellington) (9:00)
"Hoagy Carmichael" (1939, w/Carmichael and Jack Teagarden) (10:00)
"Artie Shaw's Class in Swing" (1939, w/Shaw) (10:00)
"Jazz a la Cuba" (1933, w/Don Azpiazú) (5:19)
"Black and Tan Fantasy" (1929, w/Duke Ellington and Fredi Washington) (19:00)
Re: Cohen Film Collection
Posted: Mon Jan 26, 2015 10:55 pm
by zedz
It's great to see Ioselliani's wonderful Favourites of the Moon out on BluRay, but I have to say that Philip Lopate's commentary is a total washout. The useful information he has to offer would amount to maybe a ten minute featurette, allowing for several lengthy film extracts, and the majority of the commentary is devoted to narrating what's happening on screen, interpretive damp squibs (a particular detail is "no doubt very symbolic" - END OF ANALYSIS) or 'additional information' that's useless to anybody who has actually watched the film (e.g. a couple of dozen iterations of "this character will return later on!") N.B. the commentary may turn into a fireworks display of shattering insights in its final fifteen minutes, but I guess I'll never know.
On the plus side, the commentary on Cohen's The Wind Will Carry Us is really good.
Re: Cohen Film Collection
Posted: Tue Jan 27, 2015 5:19 am
by What A Disgrace
Don't worry, zedz, it doesn't.
The film is a masterpiece, though, and I'm very glad it came out on Blu-ray.
Re: Cohen Film Collection
Posted: Tue Jan 27, 2015 6:54 am
by Kirkinson
Somehow haven't picked up the Blu-ray yet, but I feared as much about the commentary. I presume Lopate was brought in because he's one of the few critics who has written about Iosseliani in English—he interviewed him for Film Comment many years ago—but that very article reveals that his research and insight into Iosseliani was very shallow indeed, and it sounds like it hasn't improved. For example, he refers to the initial setting of the modern-day sections of Brigands, Chapter VII as taking place in an unnamed city in former Yugoslavia, and while that would be a perfectly understandable mistake for someone who knew nothing about the film, didn't know what Tbilisi looked like, and had never heard or seen Georgian before, you'd think the laziest, most cursory amount of research still would have told him what language the characters are speaking and the graffito in several background shots is written in. Iosseliani intends for his films to be universal, but the choice of Tbilisi in the midst of civil war after the dissolution of the USSR is not insignificant, and it's not the sort of detail someone in Lopate's position has any excuse for getting wrong (and it's just one of several instances in that article).
Anyway, thanks for the reminder that I still need to get Favorites of the Moon!
Re: Cohen Film Collection
Posted: Wed Feb 04, 2015 3:19 am
by Ashirg
Next release -
April 14
Jean-Paul Belmondo double feature - That Man from Rio (1964) / Up to His Ears (1965)
Re: Cohen Film Collection
Posted: Mon Feb 09, 2015 12:26 pm
by FrauBlucher
(614) Magazine interview with Cohen Film Collection’s Tim Lanza Several of Cohen's restorations will screen at Wexner at the end of the month. Part of a week long look at the state of film restoration.
Re: Cohen Film Collection
Posted: Thu Feb 12, 2015 3:49 pm
by manicsounds