Rene Clair's The Italian Straw Hat to R1 DVD!!

THANK YOU FLICKER ALLEY!

Also to feature Clair's The Eiffel Tower (1928) and Ferdinand Zecca’s Fun After The Wedding (1907)!!!

E1 & Visconti

As predicted, E1 (former Koch Lorber) has snapped up the U.S. rights to Luchino Visconti's first three features: Ossessione, La Terra Trema, and Bellissima.

Also in store for E1 are De Sica's Shoe-Shine and a 50th Anniversary Blu-ray of Fellini's La Dolce Vita.

Eric Rohmer Dies

Heaven is a fresh cup of coffee on a Sunday morning while watching a film by Eric Rohmer.

Heaven exists; Rohmer is there right now. Drink your coffee, it's getting cold!

Another Top 10

Occasional FCM contributor Eric Dienstfrey has sent us his top ten list of the decade, and like most lists from Eric it comes with certain rules: There can be no two films by the same director and there must be at least one sequel. In addition, if a film saw a world premiere in 1999 but did not get an official release until 2000 it was not included in the pool of films.

Eric writes:

Torrenting, Kino/Criterion/MoC/BFI/etc DVD labels, Netflix, college, five years of free time after college, and online cinephile communities all contributed to my growing interest in cinema during the 00s. I assume others my age were impacted by these events the same way, specifically in terms of which new films we chose to watch and whether or not we saw their merit. However, while the new found abilities to understand film history first hand might have been a boon on appreciating contemporary cinema, the above list also forces you to write any top ten list with humility as there are still hundreds of films from the decade I still need to see, or perhaps even re-evaluate.

With that in mind...

Before Sunset (2004, Richard Linklater)


Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind (2004, Michel Gondry)


The Five Obstructions (2003, Lars von Trier)


In the City of Sylvia (2007, José Luis Guerín)


Millennium Mambo (2000, Hou Hsiao-hsien)


Mulholland Drive (2001, David Lynch)


The Piano Teacher (2001, Michael Haneke)


Regular Lovers (2005, Philippe Garrel)


Werckmeister Harmonies (2000, Béla Tarr)


Yi yi (2000, Edward Yang)

I could have just as easily swapped out Millennium Mambo for Flight of the Red Balloon or The Boss of it All for The Five Obstructions, or even School of Rock for Before Sunset, and perhaps on another rainy day I would have done so.

And because a list of only ten films is boring (and in this case perhaps a bit pretentious) I'm including 40 more, most of which appear to come from the later half of the decade.

24 Hour Party People (2002, Michael Winterbottom)
25th Hour (2002, Spike Lee)
The 40 Year Old Virgin (2005, Judd Apatow)
Adventureland (2009, Greg Mottola)
A.I. (2001, Steven Spielberg)
Anchorman (2004, Adam McKay)
Bad Santa (2003, Terry Zwigoff)
Before the Devil Knows You're Dead (2007, Sidney Lumet)
Bug (2006, William Friedkin)
Cloverfield (2008, Matt Reeves)
Dan in Real Life (2007, Peter Hedges)
District 9 (2009, Neill Blomkamp)
The Diving Bell and the Butterfly (2007, Julian Schnabel)
Fat Girl (2001, Catherine Breillat)
The Fountain (2006, Darren Aronofsky)
Gerry (2002, Gus Van Sant)
Grizzly Man (2005, Werner Herzog)
Happy-Go-Lucky (2008, Mike Leigh)
The Hurt Locker (2008, Kathryn Bigelow)
I'm Not There (2007, Todd Haynes)
The Incredibles (2004, Pixar / Brad Bird)
Inglourious Basterds (2009, Quentin Tarantino)
Kiss Kiss, Bang Bang (2005, Shane Black)
Let the Right One In (2008, Tomas Alfredson)
Marie Antoinette (2006, Sofia Coppola)
Mutual Appreciation (2005, Andrew Bujalski)
The Namesake (2006, Mira Nair)
Notre Musique (2004, Jean-Luc Godard)
Once (2006, John Carney)
Rachel Getting Married (2008, Jonathan Demme)
Redacted (2007, Brian De Palma)
Role Models (2008, David Wain)
The Shape of Things (2003, Neil LaBute)
Snow Angels (2007, David Gordon Green)
The Squid and the Whale (2005, Noah Baumbach)
The Story of Marie and Julien (2003, Jacques Rivette)
Summer Hours (2008, Olivier Assayas)
There Will Be Blood (2007, Paul Thomas Anderson)
United 93 (2006, Paul Greengrass)
Vicki Cristina Barcelona (2008, Woody Allen)

Thanks, Eric!

QUICK DVD News

Red Desert and My Life to Live will both see DVD and BD releases in 2010 from Criterion.

We are very much still alive here at FCM but some massive internal workings are keeping things slow for the time being.

Rialto's Upcoming Releases

Recent updates include Melville's Un Flic, Godard's Breathless and his Les Petit soldat and Les Carabiniers.

What to make of this in terms of DVD releases?
Un Flic already has a DVD from Lionsgate, and I doubt it would get a new Criterion release after the Rialto run. Breathless on the other hand is tricky. It's a StudioCanal title, and those in Criterion's library have slowly become out of print (look at Contempt, Ran, and The Third Man). It's unclear what StudioCanal titles are now owned by Lionsgate (perhaps Criterion keeps them until given expiration dates) but it is very possible that the Criterion Breathless will go out of print at some point... leaving Lionsgate to NOT release it.

As for the two lesser Godard titles? Hopefully this means a restored DVD release from either studio is near, but don't get your hopes up.

A Culture of Record or a Record of Culture

I knew there was a reason I never cared for Obama...