I'm pleased and flattered by the warm critical reception that my visual essay, "What the Devil Hath Joined Together", from Arrow Video's Blu-Ray of Brian De Palma's SISTERS, has been receiving. Here are some of the notices:
I was delighted to be name-checked and to get some praise from my favorite British paper, The Guardian:
http://www.theguardian.com/film/2014/jun/22/sisters-review-philip-french-brian-de-palma-hitchcock
“Arrow stack the disc with plenty of new extras. 'What the Devil Hath Joined Together: Brian De Palma's Sisters' is a magnificent 47-minute visual essay by author Justin Humphreys (Names You Never Remember, With Faces You Never Forget.) It covers a lot and is almost as complete as a full commentary.”
- DVDBeaver.com
“Next up are a pair of video essays by film critics Justin Humphreys (on the production, references, and influence of Sisters) and Mike Sutton (on De Palma's career as a whole). Running 50 minutes and 30 minutes respectively, that sounds like it might be a slog, but both are incredibly informed, detailed, and entertaining pieces that fill in plenty of gaps about the making of the film and De Palma's career.”
- Fangoria.com
“Arrow has also provided a nice collection of extras that include an excellent documentary `What the Devil Hath Joined Together: Brian De Palma's Sisters' - A visual essay by author Justin Humphreys.”
- Cinemaretro.com
“Content wise, `What the Devil Hath Joined Together: Brian De Palma's Sisters' is a detailed account of the `making of' Sisters and an insightful analysis of the film.”
- 10KBullets.com
“Two thumping great video essays (voice-over plus stills and some movie clips) make up the meat of the extras. Justin Humphreys's What the Devil Hath Joined Together is an exhaustive 46-minute look at Sisters, exploring its themes, leitmotifs, casting and Hitchcockian ingredients.”
- TheLeastPictureShow.wordpress.com (Julian White)
“As always, Arrow contextualise the film exceedingly well, although compared to previous releases some of the wonderful interviews feel cut short, for whatever reason that might be. We get two excellent video essays voiced by critics Justin Humphreys on Sisters and Mike Sutton on DePalma's career, five interviews with actress Jennifer Salt, writer Louisa Rose, editor Paul Hirsch, unit manager Jeffrey Hayes, and actor William Finley (via an audio-only interview), a trailer and promotional material gallery. . . The visual essays prove to be almost as good as a commentary. . . with excellent points made by both Humphreys and Sutton.”
- TheDarkSideMagazine.com
“Another improvement over the Criterion DVD is the special features, which were only text based in the former edition. Arrow has actually put together some great new material here, starting with a rather lengthy visual essay by Justin Humpheys entitled What the Devil Has Joined Together. This 47-minute piece covers the film's production history in rather extensive detail while also going over the various influences that made their way into the film. He also covers the development of De Palma's visual language, as displayed throughout the film, focusing on the editing and various visual tricks, including the use of the split screen. He examines some of De Palma's work from around that time, including Greetings and Hi, Mom , and talks at length about the performers he worked with during this period. He also of course examines the film's music, and then even points out the many technical mistakes (most of which are related to the film's low budget.) Taking the place of a commentary I found it a rather thorough and illuminating examination of the film and De Palma's early career.”
- CriterionForum.org
"This Arrow release gives Sisters the respect it deserves, with strong supplemental features – a lengthy video essay the clear highlight."
- Totalfilm.com
"A fantastic watch. Very well-done by Justin Humphreys."
- Razorwire Reviews
“The extras, listed in full below are excellent, with Justin Humphreys’s efficiently comprehensive 47-minute visual essay being the standout.”
- Frightfest.co.uk
Tuesday, May 20, 2014
Friday, April 4, 2014
Shut The Fuck Up and Stay Home: An Open Letter From All the Intelligent Moviegoers of the World to the Cackling Morons That Ruin Screenings in Hollywood
Over the last fifteen years, there has been a steadily rising tide of complete and utter twits who come to pre-1980 movies just to mock, laugh at, and otherwise deride them. This is the equivalent of paying to see something to bully it, and bullying it is--low, juvenile, and ass-backwards behavior from alleged human beings.
Why do these people pay to see old movies at all? If you don't respect or like them, why see them? If you don't like ballet, do you go see one and holler out "Your arabesques suck!" with a bunch of your spoiled, emaciated, bearded pals and guffaw like a complete yahoo? If you hate football, do you go to the Super Bowl and shriek "That pass was so-o-o-o shitty!" during the odd quiet moment? The difference is that movies have always been considered "entertainment" and not art by Americans and therefore unworthy of serious consideration. Francois Truffaut pointed that everyone has two jobs: their regular job and movie critic. This has never been truer than now, and never have people had less right to consider themselves worthy of the title.Going to old movies just to ridicule them is like booing your own team.
What specifically got me riled about this horrible trend was two recent screenings in Hollywood: Jacques Tourneur's CAT PEOPLE and the Film Noir TENSION. These are not MY FRIENDS NEED KILLING or AMERICAN NINJA movies--these are real movies, well worth the appreciation and polite attention of adults. This isn't MST3K territory. It goes without saying that CAT PEOPLE is phenomenal--a masterful example of how far a low budget and enormous amounts of talent and imagination can go. TENSION was a decent Film Noir--not a masterpiece, but a solid film. Yet the audiences laughed. And laughed. And laughed. And then laughed some more. This is the kind of behavior that makes Easterners look down their nose at L.A.--these audiences reflect badly on their town, behaving like a bunch of hick philistines.What made this all the more disturbing and insulting was that it was obviously a REVIVAL screening, and therefore any audience member with a grain of sense would have realized that the fashions, speech, social mores, etc. of the periods in which the films took place would be different than those of their own benighted time. But, no: they couldn't stifle their horrible, selfish desire to be undeservedly seen and noticed at all times or their flagrant stupidity for the 80- or 90-minutes that the films each ran. Instead, they make going to the movies feel like riding the subway.
What astounded me even more was hearing an audience laugh at the Boris Karloff version of THE MUMMY at a recent screening. One particular moment was astonishing--a bunch of drips in the audience cracked up when Karloff's Ardath Bey entreats a character not to touch him, explaining that it's "An Eastern prejudice." It's a fact that certain very, very strict Muslims and Jews at the time the film was made felt that being touched by someone outside of their faith makes them unclean, forcing them go through a complex purification ritual. (In the film, it's a cover for the fact that Karloff's character is partially disintegrating.) In a town that prides itself on multiculturalism, this sort of audience response seems acutely embarrassing.
What utter lack of comprehension makes the rubes who behave like this think it's OK--that that's how you should comport yourself in public? And what makes them superior to these films? What have they actually accomplished that can BEGIN to equal those movies? What works of art have they brought into the world that could come close to even Jacques Tourneur's least film (which CAT PEOPLE sure as hell isn't) or the lowliest film noir? And these aren't isolated incidents. These jabbering trolls are everywhere. They are just another symptom of America's lack of interest in its own history--and its lack of effort at understanding or contextualizing our history--and, worse still, the breakdown of any kind of common courtesy or consideration for other people.
Speaking for the moviegoers of the world to the people who laugh incessantly through old movies in public, WE HATE YOU, you boorish morons. You are incapable of an adult thought. You are a pack of inbreds. You spoil what should be a joyous experience and a treat. Your affected jadedness conceals a deep insecurity--if you had any self-respect, you would gladly show enthusiasm for something publicly that didn't involve having a mob of cretins like yourself behind you. I can't heap enough contempt on you. How hard is it to laugh WITH a movie and not AT it?
Go home. Stay there. Play in traffic. Do ANYTHING but come to great old movies.You don't deserve them.
Why do these people pay to see old movies at all? If you don't respect or like them, why see them? If you don't like ballet, do you go see one and holler out "Your arabesques suck!" with a bunch of your spoiled, emaciated, bearded pals and guffaw like a complete yahoo? If you hate football, do you go to the Super Bowl and shriek "That pass was so-o-o-o shitty!" during the odd quiet moment? The difference is that movies have always been considered "entertainment" and not art by Americans and therefore unworthy of serious consideration. Francois Truffaut pointed that everyone has two jobs: their regular job and movie critic. This has never been truer than now, and never have people had less right to consider themselves worthy of the title.Going to old movies just to ridicule them is like booing your own team.
What specifically got me riled about this horrible trend was two recent screenings in Hollywood: Jacques Tourneur's CAT PEOPLE and the Film Noir TENSION. These are not MY FRIENDS NEED KILLING or AMERICAN NINJA movies--these are real movies, well worth the appreciation and polite attention of adults. This isn't MST3K territory. It goes without saying that CAT PEOPLE is phenomenal--a masterful example of how far a low budget and enormous amounts of talent and imagination can go. TENSION was a decent Film Noir--not a masterpiece, but a solid film. Yet the audiences laughed. And laughed. And laughed. And then laughed some more. This is the kind of behavior that makes Easterners look down their nose at L.A.--these audiences reflect badly on their town, behaving like a bunch of hick philistines.What made this all the more disturbing and insulting was that it was obviously a REVIVAL screening, and therefore any audience member with a grain of sense would have realized that the fashions, speech, social mores, etc. of the periods in which the films took place would be different than those of their own benighted time. But, no: they couldn't stifle their horrible, selfish desire to be undeservedly seen and noticed at all times or their flagrant stupidity for the 80- or 90-minutes that the films each ran. Instead, they make going to the movies feel like riding the subway.
What astounded me even more was hearing an audience laugh at the Boris Karloff version of THE MUMMY at a recent screening. One particular moment was astonishing--a bunch of drips in the audience cracked up when Karloff's Ardath Bey entreats a character not to touch him, explaining that it's "An Eastern prejudice." It's a fact that certain very, very strict Muslims and Jews at the time the film was made felt that being touched by someone outside of their faith makes them unclean, forcing them go through a complex purification ritual. (In the film, it's a cover for the fact that Karloff's character is partially disintegrating.) In a town that prides itself on multiculturalism, this sort of audience response seems acutely embarrassing.
What utter lack of comprehension makes the rubes who behave like this think it's OK--that that's how you should comport yourself in public? And what makes them superior to these films? What have they actually accomplished that can BEGIN to equal those movies? What works of art have they brought into the world that could come close to even Jacques Tourneur's least film (which CAT PEOPLE sure as hell isn't) or the lowliest film noir? And these aren't isolated incidents. These jabbering trolls are everywhere. They are just another symptom of America's lack of interest in its own history--and its lack of effort at understanding or contextualizing our history--and, worse still, the breakdown of any kind of common courtesy or consideration for other people.
Speaking for the moviegoers of the world to the people who laugh incessantly through old movies in public, WE HATE YOU, you boorish morons. You are incapable of an adult thought. You are a pack of inbreds. You spoil what should be a joyous experience and a treat. Your affected jadedness conceals a deep insecurity--if you had any self-respect, you would gladly show enthusiasm for something publicly that didn't involve having a mob of cretins like yourself behind you. I can't heap enough contempt on you. How hard is it to laugh WITH a movie and not AT it?
Go home. Stay there. Play in traffic. Do ANYTHING but come to great old movies.You don't deserve them.
Tuesday, February 18, 2014
RIP Mary Grace Canfield
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Up7KHbJTmoo&list=PLAfexIpGwftG6aeLXI2aPzTRRGw3gDlVl
I was saddened tonight to hear that actress Mary Grace Canfield has died. Though those who remember her generally do for her ongoing role on "Green Acres," I will always venerate Ms. Canfield for her poignant and ego-less performance as Miss Foley in "Something Wicked This Way Comes" (1983). It is a thankless part: Miss Foley's homeliness is built into it, and rubbed-in in, but in an ultimately humanizing and touching way.
"Our teacher was Miss Foley," the film's narrator, the adult Will Halloway (Arthur Hill), says. "We couldn't believe it, but folks said, once, before we were born, she had been the most beautiful woman in town." Vanity and pipe dreams are the heart of the tale of hellish trickery that is "Something Wicked. . ." and nowhere are they embodied more painfully than in Miss Foley. Once gorgeous, she is reduced to aged spinsterhood, yearning for her lost charms. There is a scene where Foley discovers a crude, incredibly nasty, and devilishly accurate caricature of herself that one of her students has drawn. Every time I see the film, I think of how it must have pained Mary Grace Canfield to look at that drawing, and, every time, I respect her more deeply as an actress.
I was saddened tonight to hear that actress Mary Grace Canfield has died. Though those who remember her generally do for her ongoing role on "Green Acres," I will always venerate Ms. Canfield for her poignant and ego-less performance as Miss Foley in "Something Wicked This Way Comes" (1983). It is a thankless part: Miss Foley's homeliness is built into it, and rubbed-in in, but in an ultimately humanizing and touching way.
"Our teacher was Miss Foley," the film's narrator, the adult Will Halloway (Arthur Hill), says. "We couldn't believe it, but folks said, once, before we were born, she had been the most beautiful woman in town." Vanity and pipe dreams are the heart of the tale of hellish trickery that is "Something Wicked. . ." and nowhere are they embodied more painfully than in Miss Foley. Once gorgeous, she is reduced to aged spinsterhood, yearning for her lost charms. There is a scene where Foley discovers a crude, incredibly nasty, and devilishly accurate caricature of herself that one of her students has drawn. Every time I see the film, I think of how it must have pained Mary Grace Canfield to look at that drawing, and, every time, I respect her more deeply as an actress.
Thursday, February 13, 2014
Happy Valentine's Day, Everybody!
"Romance
is dead - it was acquired in a hostile takeover by Hallmark and Disney,
homogenized, and sold off piece by piece." -Lisa Simpson.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BJ-gYx7hXZg
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BJ-gYx7hXZg
Tuesday, January 21, 2014
AMERICAN POP Q & A with Ron Thompson at the Egyptian-- Tony/Pete Speaks!
On January 7th, actor Ron Thompson, he of the "poimanently puckehed" hands, finally got to take a bow for his bravura performances as Pete and Tony in Ralph Bakshi's AMERICAN POP. In the thirty-three years since the film's release, he had never been announced at a single screening of it, until that night. I moderated the Q & A with him at the Egyptian Theatre. Here, for the delight and delectation of animation buffs out there, is a video of it, shot by Jay West:
Friday, January 3, 2014
George Pal's Puppetoons: The Long Road to High-Def
In the 1930s, animator George Pal was virtually the Walt Disney of Europe, producing a string of extraordinary stop-motion featurettes (mostly soft-sell commercials), later christened "The Puppetoons" and "Madcap Models." Filmed using "replacement animation" techniques where puppets' heads and limbs were replaced from frame-to-frame, these phenomenal little films were uniquely stylish and musical, and imbued with Pal's distinctively whimsical charm. Pal emigrated to American in 1938 where he continued producing the series for Paramount Pictures. (His American films were repeatedly nominated for Academy Awards and won once.)
The only widely-available source for them on video was the Pal compilation THE PUPPETOON MOVIE, but that only delivered a fraction of Pal's oeuvre. To see the rest, I was forced to scavenge high and low--to sweat, bleed, and dig. I watched a tattered, black and white, silent (oy!) 8mm print of Pal's Dr. Seuss adaptation "And To Think That I Saw It on Mulberry Street" on a projector with a chattering gate that I had to steady by jabbing a pencil next to it. The dilapidated, splicey 16mm print of "The Truck That Flew" was also monochrome, but at least it had sound. I practically did somersaults from unbridled joy when some animation aficionado friends loaned me their second- and third-generation VHS copies of some decent color copies of shorts like "Date With Duke" starring Duke Ellington. Then came the motherlode: a multi-disc DVD set containing every last one of Pal's American Puppetoons that some hardcore animation collectors had assembled. The prints used for it were generally beet-red and missing their original Paramount titles, but I WAS ACTUALLY ABLE TO SEE THEM. Sasquatches, Jersey Devils, and Chupacabras have nothing on the elusive North American Puppetoon.
Now, at long last, B2MP, a boutique video label, has released THE PUPPETOON MOVIE in a two-disc limited edition Blu-Ray, which I cannot recommend highly enough. With a goodly portion of its content rendered in high-def, this set is a revelation for fans of animation, Pal, the Puppetoons, and even Dr. Seuss. Splitting at the seams with extras, the highlight of the set for me is the new transfers of seven of Pal's shorts that have never before received a proper video release. Highlights include Pal's adaptations of Dr. Seuss's afore-mentioned "Mulberry Street" and "The 500 Hats of Bartholomew Cubbins." The lush color, stylish, sleek animation, and gorgeous design (one-third-European folk art, one-third Dr. Seuss, and another third Art Deco) are restored to a peak of quality that they haven't experienced in nearly seventy years. (Theodore Geisel devotees might be disconcerted by the lack of adherence to the Dr. Seuss "look," but bear in mind that his now-archetypal style was only beginning to gain widespread popularity when these shorts were filmed. The name "Dr. Seuss" didn't carry the sacredness that decades worth of readers have conferred upon it.)
B2MP has made a quantum leap forward in rectifying the gross widespread neglect that the Puppetoons have received on video. THE PUPPETOON MOVIE itself, which contains Pal masterpieces like "John Henry and the Inky-Poo," "Tulips Shall Grow," and "Tubby the Tuba," here outclasses its previous incarnations on VHS, laserdisc, and DVD. Also included in the set is a high-def transfer of Pal's first feature film THE GREAT RUPERT, looking and sounding better than previous substandard versions. The extras on the set are plentiful, including a rare and particularly interesting filmed interview with Pal, discussing among other things his film THE POWER.
It's my profound hope that, someday, someone will release Pal's entire American run of animated films on DVD or Blu-Ray--maybe even with a gaggle of his European shorts thrown in. (Note: Pal produced many shorts in France, Holland, and elsewhere that have seldom--if ever--been seen in the United States. Photos and sometimes only titles offer clues to them, but they remain mostly buried.) For now, though, THE PUPPETOON MOVIE Blu-Ray set is the single finest presentation that this outstanding series has ever received on video. The fifty-dollar price tag might seem off-putting in this age of free content, but it is worth every last cent. To my fellow Puppetoon-seekers and enthusiasts, and to animation-lovers everywhere, this set is requisite viewing.
The set is available directly from B2MP at:
http://b2mp.net/products/the-puppetoon-movie-blu-ray/
And here is a sample of this set's visual quality:
http://www.dailymotion.com/video/x1gnri4_and-to-think-i-saw-it-on-mulberry-street_shortfilms
And here is a sample of this set's visual quality:
http://www.dailymotion.com/video/x1gnri4_and-to-think-i-saw-it-on-mulberry-street_shortfilms
Wednesday, December 18, 2013
"I'm. . . JACK." R.I.P. Peter O'Toole.
So much has been written about the estimable, irreplaceable Peter O'Toole since his passing a few days ago that I have very little of importance to add to the general mourning. However, I do want to sing the praises of my favorites among his performances.
To me, O'Toole will always be Jack, the mad 13th Earl of Gurney in Peter Medak's THE RULING CLASS. O'Toole is the film's backbone--the core of its vicious skewering of England's decadent aristocracy. His performance is theatrical in the best ways--perfectly larger-than-life, from his spirited rendition of "My Blue Heaven" while Jack is blissfully under the impression that he's Jesus Christ, to the icy Victorian puritan that Jack transforms into once he has achieved--ahem--sanity.
O'Toole's take on Errol Flynn in Richard Benjamin's MY FAVORITE YEAR is a comic highlight of '80s cinema. Once again, his expansive acting in the role of aging, boozing Hollywood swashbuckler Alan Swann works beautifully, particularly in the context of the film, where he is nearly always performing opposite his foil, a starstruck everyman (Mark Linn-Baker) who becomes Swann's caretaker. The actor's dinner with his keeper's utterly stunned family is a highlight. "What's that piquant-tasting dish?" Swann asks his hosts. "Parrot!" replies the chef. (May Routh, the costume designer on MY FAVORITE YEAR, has graciously allowed me to run two previously unpublished behind-the-scenes photos of O'Toole and Mark Linn-Baker lighting-up in costume during the shoot.)
O'Toole's impersonation of John Huston was renowned and beloved, and he memorably had the opportunity to "play" Huston in "Banshee," an episode of "The Ray Bradbury Theater." Based on Bradbury's turbulent experiences in Ireland while writing MOBY DICK with Huston, O'Toole as the Huston surrogate and Charles Martin Smith as Bradbury's stand-in are bedeviled by a banshee--in this case, a vengeful spirit representing all of the used-and-discarded lovers that O'Toole's womanizing director had gone through. It was one of the series highlights.
Though O'Toole is rightfully revered for LAWRENCE OF ARABIA, THE LION IN WINTER, ad infinitum, my favorite of his dramatic performances is in Anatole Litvak's unfairly maligned and much-neglected THE NIGHT OF THE GENERALS. O'Toole's Nazi General Tanz is as unnerving a sociopath as has ever tortured a prisoner-of-war in a World War II melodrama. Tanz is in the Goebbels and Himmler mold--a psychopath for whom the War and the Third Reich represents the ultimate opportunity to commit mass murder with impunity. . . or so he thinks. The highlight of the film finds Tanz being escorted around Paris by his driver (Tom Courtenay), where, during his tour, he has a near psychotic fit while staring at a Van Gogh. A complete OCD case, Tanz detests uncleanliness--he berates one of his troops for his filthy fingernails, shrieking "You look like you just exhumed your grandmother with your bare hands!" It is an impeccable performance, but when did O'Toole ever give less?
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