The Music Room — The Criterion Collection

Article first published as Blu-ray Review: The Music Room — The Criterion Collection on Blogcritics.

The Film
Of all the remarkable things about Satyajit Ray’s The Music Room, perhaps the most striking is its sense of interior space. Almost the entire film takes place inside the palace of a feudal lord whose star has all but burned out. Ray captures the diametrically opposed opulence and decay of the place — it’s simultaneously a refuge and a prison for Biswambhar Roy (Chhabi Biswas), a zamindar whose cultural and political importance has been reduced to nil.

Ray shoots the palace and its contents (a grand chandelier, portraits of ancestors) in ways that make them seem both beautiful and terrifying at different moments. In a film that almost exclusively belongs to Roy, it’s the palace that emerges as the primary supporting character. And inside that palace — the crown jewel of Roy’s existence, a lavish music room where the lord holds concerts and indulges his love of classical Indian music.

As the film begins, we learn that Roy’s once enormous fortune is on the brink of completely evaporating. He also has a new neighbor to deal with — the wealthy and brash moneylender Mahim Ganguli (Gangapada Bose) — who has taken to throwing extravagant music-centered parties of his own.

In a quest to outdo him, Roy organizes events of his own, depleting his last few resources to the dismay of his wife Mahamaya (Padma Devi) and steward Taraprasanna (Tulsi Lahiri). There’s a madness and a selfishness to Roy’s actions, but he’s a subdued, defeated character, more giving in to the inevitability of his decline than actively seeking to destroy himself. Even after he inadvertently causes the death of several characters, he continues to dive headlong into the abyss, accompanied by the music he loves.

The film features a number of lengthy musical interludes, incorporated in a way that was quite unusual for Indian film at the time. Dance and music numbers were common, but generally weren’t integrated into the plot. Here, they’re essential to understanding the person of Biswambhar Roy.

Ray’s film is a subtle, illuminating character study that displays empathy for its main character while remaining ambivalent about his behavior and cultural status. The Music Room is a thoroughly Indian film, with cultural touchstones that Ray apparently thought might make it a tough sell outside of the country. And yet, while those culture-specific elements are prominent, the film has an undeniable universality.

Ray’s gift for making perceptive, sensitive and artifice-free films is clearly seen here. There’s artifice all around Roy in the ornate palace and the fleeting sense of security its music room gives him, but The Music Room penetrates right through all of it to reveal a broken, obsolete, beaten man.

The Blu-ray Disc
The Music Room is presented in 1080p high definition with an aspect ratio of 1.33:1. Anyone who’s seen a DVD of any of Ray’s films from this era, all of which have had preservation issues, should be blown away by this transfer, which is astonishing in its level of clarity, sharpness, fine detail and grayscale contrast. The film does retain a not insignificant amount of damage, mostly seen in image pulsation and flicker and fairly constant light scratches throughout, but the film-like look of the transfer and its impressive range of pure whites to deep blacks are far more noticeable. There are some soft shots, but the majority of them are pleasingly sharp. Given the condition of the source materials, this is an impressive restoration and a gorgeous transfer. It should bode very well for the expected Criterion release of Ray’s Apu Trilogy.

Audio is presented in an uncompressed monaural track that is quite limited by its source. Dialogue often has a hollow quality and some of the intermittent English dialogue is quite difficult to understand. Music doesn’t sound too bad, with a little more heft behind it.

Special Features
We get two new interviews, produced exclusively by Criterion: one with filmmaker Mira Nair, who discusses her admiration of the film and briefly, her friendship with Ray, and one with biographer Andrew Robinson, who fills in some of the production history and contrasts the film with the more obviously naturalistic Apu Trilogy, which The Music Room was made in the middle of.
There’s also an excerpt from a 1981 French TV show, where Ray talks about the film with critic Michael Ciment and filmmaker Claude Sautet. The film had recently been released in France, more than 20 years after its original release in India.

The big extra included here is Satyajit Ray, a 1984 documentary made by Shyam Benegal. It begins with Ray directing on the set of his 1984 film The Home and the World, and soon transitions into a long interview with Ray, punctuated by clips from a number of his films. It’s an excellent biographical introduction to the director as well as a chance to get exposed to pieces of his work.
The package also includes a booklet with an essay by critic Philip Kemp, a brief essay by Ray on finding the palace to shoot the film in and a 1986 interview with Ray about the film’s musical elements. A note on the preservation of Ray’s films by the Academy Film Archive is also included.

The Bottom Line
A breathtaking new transfer ensures that even those familiar with this Ray masterwork will likely come to appreciate it in a whole new way.

Buster Keaton Short Films Collection 1920-1923

Cops (1922)

Article first published as Blu-ray Review: Buster Keaton Short Films Collection: 1920-1923 on Blogcritics.

The Films
After a stint as second fiddle to Roscoe “Fatty” Arbuckle and before going on to make some of the greatest comedic feature films ever, Buster Keaton made 19 two-reeler short films for Metro Pictures under the production of Joseph M. Schenck between 1920 and 1923. In addition to starring, Keaton co-directed all of them (except for one, where’s he credited as the sole director), most of the time with Eddie Cline, but occasionally with Malcolm St. Clair.

Kino has collected all 19 shorts in one three-disc Blu-ray collection, and the set is a monument to Keaton’s inexhaustible inventiveness. Early in his career, he was already brimming with ideas, and the astonishing practical effects, daring stunts and breathless energy seen in these films matches those qualities in the features.

It also displays Keaton’s fully realized comic persona — a quick, mischievous wit hiding behind stone-faced stoicism and assaulted by the forces of modernity and other people. Keaton’s characters rarely get the girl (Generally Sybil Seely or Virginia Fox), are physically outmatched (burly Joe Roberts usually acts as Keaton’s foil) and often end up worse off than where they started (Keaton certainly wasn’t shy of unhappy endings).

The set provides an illuminating look at Keaton’s career path as he honed his physical comedy and progressively pushed toward more surreal and experimental inclusions. And as standalone works, almost every one of these films is a master class in short comedy, not to mention endlessly entertaining.

The 19 films are:

The ‘High Sign’
Keaton gets a job at a shooting gallery, where his faked skills cause both a group of local mobsters and their wanted man to hire him. The release was delayed because Keaton felt the film too closely resembled an Arbuckle comedy.

One Week
A wedding present arrives for Keaton and his new bride — a pre-fab house, which causes him endless trouble as he tries to assemble it.

Convict 13
Keaton discovers clothes really do make the man as he gets mistaken for a convict, but works his way up the ranks to prison warden by virtue of stolen outfits.

The Scarecrow
Roommates Joe Roberts and Keaton fight for the affection of a farmer’s daughter, while living in their house filled with Rube Goldberg conveniences.

Neighbors
Keaton loves his next-door neighbor (Virginia Fox), but their families are intent on keeping them apart.

The Haunted House
A bank robbery goes wrong, and Keaton ends up trapped in the thieves’ hideout, which appears to be haunted. The film features Keaton veering into the surreal like never before.

Hard Luck
Keaton plays a man who wants to kill himself, but gets sidetracked by a series of bold exploits. Not all of the film survives, with the final scene only seen in a still photograph.

The Goat
Keaton must evade the police when he is mistaken for a dangerous escaped killer named Dead Shot Dan.

The Play House
Keaton plays every part in a surreal opening scene, where he’s the staff, audience and performers at a minstrel show. The amazing trick photography can’t be matched by the second half’s romantic plot.

The Boat
After inadvertently destroying his house and car, Keaton and his family are forced to live on their boat, the Damfino, which gets caught in a terrible storm.

The Paleface
Keaton gets mixed up in a dispute between an Indian tribe and greedy oil tycoons, but eventually becomes an honorary Indian himself.

Cops
Perhaps Keaton’s greatest short, here he plays a (mostly) well-intentioned man who manages to get the entire city’s police force on his tail.

My Wife’s Relations
A language mixup results in Keaton’s marriage to a brawny woman, and her family doesn’t take kindly to his presence.

The Blacksmith
Keaton does almost everything wrong as a blacksmith’s assistant, while feuding with head blacksmith Joe Roberts.

The Frozen North
Keaton tires of his own wife in the frozen tundra and attempts to win the affections of a married neighbor.

Day Dreams
Looking to prove himself in the big city to the father of his girlfriend, Keaton attempts several professions with poor results, while his girlfriend dreams of him making it big. Originally a three-reeler, much of the film has been lost, cutting it down to two-reeler size.

The Electric House
Mistaken for an electrical engineer, Keaton is tasked with modernizing a millionaire’s house.

The Balloonatic
Accidentally ending up on a hot-air balloon destined for a world explorer, Keaton gets stranded in the wilderness, where he and a woman engage in a series of one-upmanship.

The Love Nest
Determined to leave his former life behind, Keaton sets out a rickety boat and is soon picked up by a whaling vessel, where he clashes with imperious Captain Joe Roberts.

The Blu-ray Disc
All of the films are presented in 1080p high definition — save for One Week, which comes in at 1080i — and are in a 1.33:1 aspect ratio. Several of the films are color tinted. Overall, the films have definitely benefited from the high-def upgrade, with increased clarity, depth and detail apparent in all but the most damaged. Now, each one has its share of constant marks and scratches, but that’s to be expected. Still, there’s no ignoring the more film-like image these Blu-ray presentations provide. For those bothered by the scratches, Kino has included “digitally enhanced” versions of four films — The ‘High Sign’, The Boat, Cops and The Balloonatic — where DNR has been applied to reduce some of the noise. Obviously, a loss of detail comes with these, but it’s nice to have the option.

Audio consists of a single score provided for each film, with Ben Model and Robert Israel responsible for the bulk of the scores, which all appear to be single-performer.

Special Features
There are lots of great extras included with this set, the best of which are short visual essays for 15 of the films, written by folks like David Kalat, Bruce Lawton, Bret Wood and Patricia Eliot Tobias. Most run for around six minutes and cover production history and visual analysis for the most part. There’s a fair amount of overlap, with most essays covering more than one film, but altogether, it’s an excellent selection of bite-sized bits of information. The essays appear on the same discs as their respective films.
Also on disc one, we get alternate and deleted shots from five films and four clips that demonstrate the way with which Keaton’s contemporaries copied him: Lupino Lane’s Only Me and excerpts from Billy Bevan’s Be Reasonable, Charley Chase’s Hello Baby! and Stan Laurel’s White Wings.

Disc two has no extras aside from visual essays, but disc three features two 1922 promo films with Keaton, Charlie Chaplin and Harold Lloyd all making appearances. There’s also a four-part look at the locations of Keaton’s shorts by John Bengtson. A brief promo for Kino's Lost Keaton set is also included.

The package includes a booklet with an essay and brief notes on all the films by Jeffrey Vance.

The Bottom Line
An outstanding set from top to bottom, this collection is a master class in short film comedy.

Gillian Welch at the Moore Theatre, 7/13/11

Gillian Welch and Dave Rawlings at the Moore Theatre 7/13/11.
Photo by Dusty Somers.

Article first published as Concert Review: Gillian Welch, Moore Theatre, Seattle, WA, 7/13/11 on Blogcritics.

It’s going to be really hard for any concert I see the rest of this year to top Gillian Welch’s jaw-droppingly good two-set show at Seattle's Moore Theatre July 13, 2011. Anyone only familiar with studio-recorded Welch might have a hard time understanding this. Sure, her records are gorgeous, elegiac modern country/bluegrass masterpieces, but often the songs are deliberately paced with hushed vocals — not exactly a common one-two punch for a rousing live show.

Welch, along with longtime musical partner Dave Rawlings, poked fun at her own slow style Wednesday.  While the songs often took their time, meandering around Rawlings’ expert guitar work and Welch’s deceptively powerful voice, they were anything but boring. Armed with only a pair of acoustic guitars, a banjo, some harmonicas and some of the loveliest harmonies you can imagine, Welch and Rawlings found the sweet spot of 22 songs, much to the delight of a roaring packed house at the Moore.

Welch’s long-awaited new record, The Harrow & The Harvest, was released in late June 2011, and with all the new songs, she and Rawlings were still “figuring out which songs like to be next to each other,” Welch said. I’m going to go out on a limb and say they’ve got it pretty well figured. The upbeat and the somber mingled without a hint of incongruity — both elements essential to Welch’s musical sensibility.
The one structural hiccup prompted Welch to mutter, “What are we doing here?” which was met with an enthusiastic response: “Awesomeness.”

Gillian Welch and Dave Rawlings
at the Moore Theatre 7/13/11.
Photo by Dusty Somers.

“That’s what it says on the setlist,” Rawlings replied, a sly grin underneath his cowboy hat. The pair had the audience enthralled throughout, and they more than earned the adoration.

It’s clear Welch and Rawlings have been making music together for a long time — intuitively playing off one another to create some truly memorable moments, like Rawlings’ extended guitar coda on “Revelator” and Welch’s downright adorable knee slapping and dancing accompaniment to “Six White Horses.” When they launched into a rendition of “I’ll Fly Away” during the first of two encores, the entire venue echoed with audience voices in an impromptu sing-along.

And then there’s Welch’s voice, which has to be heard in person to be fully appreciated. Her laconic drawl can crescendo and become a piercing, perfectly pitched powerhouse at a moment’s notice. Combine that with the virtuoso picking abilities of Rawlings, and you have a dream team.

And after Wednesday’s final song — a reverb-laden cover of Jefferson Airplane’s “White Rabbit” in which Welch wailed like Grace Slick and Rawlings brought the psychedelia on just an acoustic guitar — I’m convinced these two could play pretty much anything.

I’ve appreciated Welch’s talent for a long time, but her live show makes it all the more apparent and has put her at the top of my must-see-again-ASAP list.

Complete Setlist After Jump

Neko Case at the Paramount Theatre, 7/10/11

Neko Case at the Paramount Theatre in Seattle 7/10/11
Photo by Dusty Somers

Article first published as Concert Review: Neko Case at Paramount Theatre, Seattle, WA, 7/10/11 on Blogcritics.

If not quite a hometown show, Sunday’s Neko Case concert at the Paramount Theatre was at least a home-state show for the Tacoma-raised artist, and according to her Twitter account, a tears-inducing (in a good way, we hope) experience.

Celebrity Twitter feeds have a way of creating a false sense of familiarity, but Case’s razor-sharp wit and total lack of pretension in her frequent posts really do seem to allow a certain sense of accessibility. That carries over into her live performances, where Case’s relaxed, unrehearsed interludes punctuate her songs and their chill-inducing vocals.

I’m not stumbling into hyperbole when I say that, for me, Case’s voice easily outpaces any other female voice in music. Keep that in mind when reading this review. Actually, she could probably do a whole set of Journey covers, and I’d still be right there.

It’s been about two and a half years since Case’s last album, Middle Cyclone, but the inclusion of three new songs in Sunday’s setlist hopefully means we won’t have to wait too much longer for a new record. Otherwise, she mostly stuck to Middle Cyclone and 2006’s Fox Confessor Brings the Flood, while sprinkling in a few older numbers including “Porchlight” from Furnace Room Lullaby and “I Wish I Was the Moon” from Blacklisted, a song she wrote for her dad that would, she noted, soon serve as the background to vampires doing it on True Blood.

Neko Case and Jon Rauhouse at the Paramount Theatre.
Photo by Dusty Somers

Backed by a capable band and flanked by expert banterer Kelly Hogan, whose constant in-between-song quips (dealing with everything from KISS’s live-album chatter to Tacoma’s Frisko Freeze) grew more absurd as the show progressed, Case only had to belt out one of her melancholy, longing songs to center the attention directly back on herself.

Led by superb pedal steel/guitarist Jon Rauhouse, the band didn’t venture into any particularly adventurous interpretations of the studio sound, but hearing Case unassumingly launch into the soaring, on-point refrains of “I’m an Animal” or “That Teenage Feeling” brought the music alive in a way that would've made fancy arrangements pretty unnecessary.

When the instruments cut out on “Fox Confessor” and Case sung, “Will there be no one above me to put my faith in?” the stunned mood was downright reverent. One guy raised his hands in what looked like a kind of worshipful awe, and I knew how he felt.

It’s a testament to the power of her voice — and Case’s genial, likable stage presence — that such transitions between goofy, casual guitar tuning and the gorgeous vocals not only felt natural, but essential to who Case is.

The Sacrifice

Article first published as Blu-ray Review: The Sacrifice (1986) on Blogcritics.

The Film
Andrei Tarkovksy’s final film, The Sacrifice, is a work of immense power and arresting imagery. Made as he was dying from cancer, the film wrestles with questions of spiritual commitment and the efficacy of man’s actions. Like any Tarkovksy film, the ruminations are often impenetrable, but no film that sets it sights this high should have easy answers forthcoming.

The film’s photography by Sven Nykvist and its starring turn from Erland Josephson aren’t its only connections to Ingmar Bergman. Like a good number of Bergman’s films, The Sacrifice exposes blisteringly raw human emotions in the wake of spiritual anguish. But the film remains unmistakably Tarkovskian, with his contemplative, steady pacing and slow tracking shots anchoring a story that grows increasingly mystical.

Josephson stars as Alexander, the patriarch of a Swedish family living on a remote Baltic island. The film opens on his birthday as he plants a withered tree with his beloved son, whom he simply calls Little Man (Tommy Kjellqvist). He relates a story about a dead tree unerringly tended to that came to life and asserts his belief that a single action performed with conviction can have far-reaching consequences.

Later, the family gathers in their home to celebrate, and Alexander is surrounded by his wife Adelaide (Susan Fleetwood), his older daughter Marta (Filippa Franzén), and mercurial mailman Otto (Allan Edwall), among others. The celebration is cut short by a TV news report declaring nuclear war to be imminent, sending everyone, particularly Adelaide, into an emotional tailspin.

Here, the film shifts from colorful, natural tones to an increasingly desaturated palette, until it’s almost become a black-and-white film. Alexander cries out to God, offering himself as a sacrifice to end the madness, and Otto provides a method, telling him their maid, Maria (Guðrún Gísladóttir), is a witch. Otto claims that if Alexander sleeps with her, the crisis will be averted.

Operating under this pretense, Alexander travels to her house just down the road and launches into a series of actions he believes will act as a counterbalance to the impending devastation. Tarkovksy detaches the film from reason just as subtly as he drains the color from the film itself, until Alexander has fully committed to what looks like madness as his ultimate sacrifice.

The Sacrifice is sometimes baffling, often moving and always engrossing. Tarkovsky would die of cancer just months after the film was released, but this isn’t a film that signals a career petering out. Rather, it’s a forceful and impassioned artistic statement, leavened with a great deal of worry about the state of the world, but ultimately embracing the catharsis of a redemptive action.

The Blu-ray Disc
The Sacrifice is presented in 1080p high definition with an aspect ratio of 1.66:1. The film has never looked all that great on Region 1 DVD, making Kino’s superb Blu-ray release all the more of a revelation. The transfer, working from restored and remastered film elements, looks impressively film-like throughout, with an astonishing clarity of image and detail. The film’s color scheme is rather flat, even in the opening and closing scenes that aren’t desaturated, but the transfer represents them faithfully. Softness is never a problem and contrast is perfectly attenuated, with the near-black-and-white scenes showing excellent grayscale separation and superb shadow detail. Print damage is very minimal. The film looks just fantastic — easily the best you’ll see it outside of a repertory 35mm screening.

Audio is presented in an uncompressed two-channel mono track that presents the mostly Swedish dialogue cleanly and clearly, with the film’s louder moments (a character crying in anguish might be the most ear-rattling) retaining fidelity and not coming off too sharp. I did notice some light crackle during a few moments, but it’s hardly even worth mentioning.

Special Features
The release here is a two-disc set, but it’s not overflowing with extras like that designation might have you believe. The film gets a Blu-ray disc all to itself, while a DVD disc contains Directed By Andrei Tarkovsky, a feature-length documentary by Michal Leszczylowski, who co-edited The Sacrifice with Tarkovsky. It’s a more fluid and free-form film than most making-ofs, and it presents a fascinating look at Tarkovksy’s work behind the camera and his filmmaking philosophy.

The DVD also includes trailers for other Kino releases and two small photo galleries, with stills from The Sacrifice and the documentary.

The Bottom Line
The film looks marvelous, and a transfer like this is essential to fully appreciating the sheer visual beauty of a Tarkovsky work.

New York, New York

Article first published as Blu-ray Review: New York, New York on Blogcritics.

The Film
Conventional thinking states that Martin Scorsese’s New York, New York belongs in his sparsely populated “miss” column — a rare blunder sandwiched between masterpieces Taxi Driver and Raging Bull. That’s not an unfair assessment. At nearly three hours long, the film feels occasionally repetitive and self-indulgent (imagine what the original 4 ½ hour cut must have been like), and its mash-up of ’40s musical artifice and ’70s gritty improvisation isn’t fully realized aesthetically.

But New York, New York remains a fascinating film, not least because of the performances of Robert De Niro and Liza Minnelli as a match made in hell with musical talent that survives the emotional carnage. De Niro is flagrantly unlikable as jazz saxophonist Jimmy Doyle, a domineering, mercurial louse with no heart of gold hiding underneath. Minnelli is occasionally overmatched by De Niro’s adept improvisation and intense physicality, but she mostly holds her own as Francine Evans, a longsuffering woman with big dreams of her own.

The two meet on V-J Day, with the indomitable Jimmy determined to get some celebratory action. Francine rejects his advances over and over, but eventually falls in with him out of what might be pure exhaustion. Over the ensuing year, the two’s star profiles are on the rise as they perform together in an orchestra that Jimmy eventually leads, but their every interaction is fraught with the promise of some kind of explosion from Jimmy, who can manufacture a problem with ease.

Francine’s pregnancy brings Jimmy’s emotional flare-ups to an unbearable level, and much of the middle section of the film consists of overwrought screaming matches and interpersonal chaos. Interspersed throughout are a series of wonderful original songs by John Kander and Fred Ebb, but by about the two-hour mark, the film seems to have reached a breaking point.

Fortunately, it’s here where Scorsese flips the switch to something truly inspired — a flat-out homage to the MGM and Warner Bros. musicals of the ’40s with an extended film-within-a-film sequence. Francine, achieving great success, is cast as the star of a film called Happy Endings, and we see Minnelli preternaturally embody the spirit of her mother, Judy Garland. It’s a brilliantly realized sequence — less ambitious than the stylistic confluence Scorsese goes for in the early parts of the film, but far more satisfying.

New York, New York isn’t quite a work of genius, but it’s also more than a noble failure. While Scorsese would go on to synthesize the styles of his filmmaking idols with his own personal vision with greater success in later works, the sheer daring seen here made it clear a singular talent was on the rise.

The Blu-ray Disc
New York, New York is presented in 1080p high definition with an aspect ratio of 1.66:1. This is a film that really cries out for a fantastic high-def upgrade, with bold color-coding that would really benefit. Unfortunately, this is not it. Much of the transfer has a slightly dingy look, with an abundance of grain that looks like digital noise as opposed to film-like texture. The majority of shots are afflicted with a pervasive softness, with some that look even sub-DVD level. Overall, it is an improvement over the DVD, with the occasional scene (mostly those in bright light) exhibiting pleasing clarity and sharpness, but the elements used here were certainly in need of some restoration.

Audio is presented in a 5.1 DTS-HD track that fares better, presenting solid fidelity for the musical numbers and mostly clean dialogue, although there are moments where De Niro’s speech is a little muddled.

Special Features
All the extras are carried over from 2007’s 30th Anniversary DVD set, and it’s a nice collection of bonus material. Scorsese intros the film with a five-minute piece talking about his inspiration of Golden Age musicals. He even wanted to go so far as to shoot the film in Academy ratio (1.33:1) to emulate the look, but he couldn’t quite get it right. A two-part making-of features interviews from the cast and crew, with a stand-alone 25-minute interview dedicated to Liza Minnelli, who is rather delightful as she recounts growing up with famous parents and the making of the film.

About 20 minutes of deleted scenes and alternate takes are included, as well as a full-length audio commentary by Scorsese and critic Carrie Rickey. DP Laszlo Kovacs also contributes a commentary to about 10 minutes worth of scenes. The theatrical trailer and the teaser trailer round out the disc.

The Bottom Line
A better high-def transfer might’ve helped the film grow in some viewers’ estimation, but New York, New York is certainly worth taking a look at, and not just for Scorsese completists.