Jeez Louise. Unless you’re presently in New York or Cannes, this is a brutally slow stretch for the aspiring film blogger. Lacking anything substantial to sink my writerly teeth into, it seems a good time to roll out the miscellany:
Otto Preminger’s “Angel Face” (1953), starring Robert Mitchum and the late Jean Simmons, will be playing on TCM this afternoon at 3. “Angel Face” is, in my humble estimation, Preminger’s best (that I’ve seen, at least). It’s so perverse and attitudinal and magnetically tense, really a must-see for anyone interested in the darker side of Hollywood’s so-called Golden Age. I’ve linked to this at least once before but here’s Jacques Rivette’s wonderful essay about the film and its subtly ingenious form.
The new Eclipse box set of films by Nagisa Oshima, “Oshima’s Outlaw Sixties,” looks to be vital viewing. Three of the films included—“Pleasures of the Flesh” (1965), “Violence at Noon” (1966) and “Japanese Summer: Double Suicide” (1967)—screened in Madison last year during the Cinematheque’s excellent Oshima retrospective; all three are extremely (key word) worthwhile for anybody interested in Japanese cinema beyond jidaigeki and Ozu-style studies of ephemeral everydayness.
I’m particularly excited to see the bifurcated “Three Resurrected Drunkards” (1968), which wasn’t included in the aforementioned ‘theque retrospective. The omission of “Diary of a Shinjuku Thief” and “Boy” (1969) from the set is a slight shame, but whatever. I wonder whether a full-blown Criterion treatment of “Death By Hanging” (1968) is in the cards? Here’s Dave Kehr’s review of the box set.
That’s all I’ve got for now. Go play in the sun.
CineMadison 