EL CID

Marching into history or film history? The life of El Cid has been reinterpreted by historians and so has the film version made his death a myth. Briefly, El Cid was an 11th century Spaniard considered a father figure for his country, a personage revered by Christians and Muslims. The film gets the deluxe DVD treatment, released as part of the Miriam Collection. (That means the film, which was re-released by Miramax in the 90s, has gotten a Criterion style DVD release. Miriam is the name of the Weinstein brother’s mom, thus Miramax, a combination of mom and dad, and now the Miriam Collection.)
First of all, the double-disc set comes in a limited collector’s box that contains the DVDs, and reproductions of the program booklet (thick and chock-full of pictures), the Dell comic book version of El Cid, and five lobby cards (reprinted 5 x 7-inch). Next, the special featurettes are great: especially the lengthy docu on producer Samuel Bronston and the examination of the music of the film’s composer Miklos Rozsa. There are also docs on director Anthony Mann (great interview clips from 60s television), and the actual making of the film, which wavers between gossip and technical. The commentary track joins Bronston’s son, Bill Bronston, and the producer’s biographer Neal Rosendorf.
There’s a Houston angle to this film, mainly that Bronston lived his last days in Houston on Avondale (in the Montrose) right around the corner from Free Press Houston world headquarters. With El Cid, and the Fall of the Roman Empire, Bronston not only put 60s Franco Spain on the movie making map, he became one of the world’s biggest producers. Indeed the Roman Empire set was and remains the largest ever built for a film. The story of Bronston’s rise and fall is itself the stuff of cinematic legend.
El Cid, the film we’re actually talking about, unwinds so beautifully you might only regret that you’re not kicked back at a plush movie theater. The film opens with Rozsa’s introduction music, there’s intermission music; pic was lensed along a trail of actual castles the likes of which dominate their landscape. The attention to detail hinges on obsession. So complete are the wardrobes and props and actual locations that you don’t see all there is to see, but the reality of the time never falters. At one point, during one of the many actually exciting fight sequences the commentary reminds that the two-handed broadsword on display was made at the same factory in Toledo that made one for the original character (El Cid is an Arabic title of respect for Rodrigo Diaz de Vivar) ten centuries previously.
El Cid is old fashioned epic film making with thousands of extras in costume and golden sunsets on medieval plains that originally came out in 1961. It’s hard to ask for more.

Harryhausen on DVD

Take a thrilling ride to yesteryear when movie special effects were created by hand, not by computer. Two two-disc sets featuring special effects and animation by Ray Harryhausen have such appeal that they still work today. Flying saucers and sea creatures animated frame by frame and then projected behind actors or in matte shots propel the respective plots of It Came From Beneath the Sea and Earth vs. Flying Saucers the same way CGI robots and monsters jolt Transformers and Cloverfield. Perhaps not oddly, as is always the case, while ICFBTS and EvFS were originally made in black and white and the DVDs have both that version and a color version so will the recent The Mist, which was a color film, go to disc in color and in black and white.
Personally the color versions of these old sci-fi classics are the least interesting factor among the various extras on the DVD set. For starters, Harryhausen hosts a featurette for each film, plus does a commentary track with a group of fellow special effects artists. Only these guys were acolytes of the Harryhausen School who went on to create the current generation's classics. Joining Ray on the commentary for It Came From Beneath the Sea are Arnold Kunert (produced docs on Harryhausen), Randy Cook (LOTR), and John Bruno (Titanic). On Earth vs. Flying Saucers Ray is joined by Kunert, Jeff Okum (Last Samurai, the upcoming remake of The Day the Earth Stood Still), and Ken Ralston (Polar Express, also worked on Star Wars). Are you kidding, the banter is like an advanced seminar in effects that fans of these films could only dream about. If you've never seen the films you will warm to its old school style rapidly.
A couple of the additional special features are repeated on each disc and rank highly in terms of information and even geek-factor. One explores the musical cues for the films and another has a sit down interview between Tim Burton and Harryhausen. You're going to be watching these twice.

Charles Burnett at MFA Saturday night

In 1983, ignoring director Charles Burnett's request to finish editing his film, producers rushed it to a festival screening that received mixed reviews. With distributors scared off, My Brother's Wedding was tragically never released. Film critic Armond White called the debacle "a catastrophic blow to the development of American popular culture." Restored by the Pacific Film Archive and digitally re-edited by the director, My Brother's Weddingis an eye-opening revelation-wise, funny, and heartbreaking, just like Burnett's Killer of Sheep, which met with much acclaim during its presentation at the MFAH last June.
Most of the actors in My Brother's Wedding are nonprofessionals, and native Houstonian Henry G. Sanders, star of Killer of Sheep, has a small role. Everett Silas plays Pierce Mundy, who works at his parents' South Central Los Angeles dry-cleaning shop. With most of his childhood buddies in prison or dead and his brother busy planning a wedding to an upper-middle-class woman, Pierce navigates his conflicting obligations while trying to figure out what he really wants in life.
My Brother's Wedding is preceded by Quiet as Kept, Burnett's 2007 five-minute short on Hurricane Katrina. Filmmaker Charles Burnett introduces the Saturday screening, which is followed by a reception in his honor.
- SWAMP Newsletter

Was 2007 Year of the Kinks?

Was 2007 the year of the Kinks or what? Three really cool films used Kinks songs at precise moments in the plot.



The acoustic guitar strumming of "A Well Respected Man" introduces Michael Cera's character in Juno, itself a true sleeper hit of 2007. Juno has made more money that any other previous release by Fox Searchlight. Another FS release that didn't find the love it deserved was Darjeeling Limited. Director Wes Anderson films always hit high notes on their soundtracks. For Darjeeling Anderson, in addition to mashing orchestrated music from Satyajit Ray and Merchant/Ivory films, dusted off no less than three Kinks' songs: "This Time Tomorrow" and "Strangers" and "Powerman."
Earlier last year the comic mayhem of Edgar Wright's Hot Fuzz was propelled by the Kinks' "The Village Green Preservaton Society." The lyrics fit that circumstance so snug it's as if the song had been written for the film. Hot Fuzz, released by Rouge (like Focus Films a specialty division of Universal) in the USA, also contains "Village Green" yet another case of the Kinks being thematically consistent.