“Was that a gun?”

“Probably. This is America.”

Jim Jarmusch’s ‘Mystery Train’ and I have had a tumultuous relationship with one another since it came out in 1989. I saw the film three times and each time I just disliked it to the point of hatred, because I didn’t feel connected with the characters, the film or the [...]]]>

“Was that a gun?”

“Probably. This is America.”

Jim Jarmusch’s ‘Mystery Train’ and I have had a tumultuous relationship with one another since it came out in 1989. I saw the film three times and each time I just disliked it to the point of hatred, because I didn’t feel connected with the characters, the film or the director’s vision at all. Fast forward to 2010 and ‘Mystery Train’ has been released onto Blu-ray by The Criterion Collection. And watching this film for the first time in about 7 years, it was as if I was watching this film for the first time in brand new eyes.

‘Mystery Train’ is a wonderful love letter to the city of Memphis, its people and the musical legacy it has given the world. It’s filled with characters that could easily carry one feature length film, but Jarmusch gives us a trilogy of stories within this film, showcasing some odd ball people and focuses on one night in Memphis and what happens to each one and how they are all connected in the ultimate scheme of things.

The first story, named “Far From Yokohama”, deals with Mitsuko and Jun (Youki Kudoh and Masatoshi Nagase), who are traveling through Memphis to see the sights, such as Sun Records and Graceland and disagree who the real king of rock and roll is (Carl Perkins or Elvis Presley). They ultimately stay the night at The Arcade Hotel, which is run by the night clerk (Screamin’ Jay Hawkins) and a bell hop (Cinqué Lee). Through the night, they talk more about Elvis and the comparison of the king to past kings, Buddha, the Statue of Liberty and Madonna herself. The scene ends with what sounds like a gunshot as the couple is getting ready to leave.

The second story, “A Ghost”, is about an Italian widow named Luisa (Nicoletta Braschi) who is stranded in Memphis and awaiting to go to her flight to get home to escort her husband’s coffin back to Italy. Through the night she’s hustled twice, first into buying an armful of magazines and then by a random guy at a diner (Tom Noonan). She is scared by the guy from the diner and his associate and runs into the nearby Arcade Hotel, where she bumps into Dee Dee(Elisabeth Bracco) who is leaving her husband in the morning and they decide to room together for the night to not be alone. She is kept awake all night, first by Dee Dee’s constant talking and then by the ghost of Elvis Presely himself. The scene ends with a gunshot and the two ladies parting ways from the hotel.

The third story, “Lost in Space”, deals with Johnny (Joe Strummer), who has just lost his job and his wife Dee Dee and has gotten drunk to dull the pain. He starts some trouble in the neighborhood bar with a gun that he has, so his friend Will Robinson (Rick Aviles) and his brother-in-law Charlie (Steve Buscemi) come to his aide and they drive around town all night. They go to a liquor store to get some more liquor and Johnny wounds the clerk in the store when he calls his friend Will a racist term. They run off, driving around and drinking more until finally settling into the Arcade Hotel. They all get more drunk, where Charlie realizes why the bell hop said ‘Danger Will Robinson’ to Will, piecing the reference to the sci-fi series ‘Lost in Space’. Johnny also tells Charlie that he and Dee Dee never did get married, so he isn’t his brother-in-law after all, which angers Charlie, considering he’s been running around town with someone who doesn’t even have that connection with him. The night ends with Johnny trying to kill himself and Charlie fighting him from doing it, shooting Charlie in the leg from the struggle.

The film is the first to be shot in color for Jim Jarmusch, but you’d be surprised to find that out, considering the palette of colors he uses to accentuate certain scenes and to paint the story along seems to come from an artist at the top of his game. From Screamin’ Jay Hawkins’ sharp red suit to the neon lights pulsating in the night from both the diner and the hotel, he uses them to give the viewer a little piece of that Memphis beauty. Even though the city of Memphis seems to be a ghost town, decrepit and rundown, he still shows the city such love and compassion, inviting us into a world that we might not be familiar with but ultimately want to become a part of.

The film comes with a great selection of supplements. Jarmusch never does commentary on his films because he leaves his film alone once it comes out, never watching it again. Instead he does a Q&A with Jim session for over an hour, giving answers to random fans that had emailed him about the film. There’s also a 17 minute excerpt of the Screamin’ Jay Hawkins documentary ‘I Put a Spell On Me’, which makes one want to own that film right away. Then there’s a 17 minute tour video of Memphis today, with some of the extras from the film, who are still living and working in Memphis today and showing why ‘Mystery Train’ did wonders for their city. And finally we have over 60 polaroids from the filming and a photo gallery that were from a making of book that came out with the film.

Buy the Mystery Train DVD from Amazon

Buy the Mystery Train Blu-ray from Amazon

The story of the wandering ronin is back once again with the Akira Kurosawa’s underrated 1962 gem “Sanjuro“, a sequel to the wonderful film “Yojimbo”. Toshiro Mifune reprises his role of Sanjuro, just appearing on the screen when the nine samurai are discussing their struggle with the ‘bad’ elders in their clan. Sanjuro just pops up [...]]]>

The story of the wandering ronin is back once again with the Akira Kurosawa’s underrated 1962 gem “Sanjuro“, a sequel to the wonderful film “Yojimbo”. Toshiro Mifune reprises his role of Sanjuro, just appearing on the screen when the nine samurai are discussing their struggle with the ‘bad’ elders in their clan. Sanjuro just pops up from another room and of course, with his amazing wit, is already involved in the scheme of things. As with the previous film, he somehow finds a way to play the role of ‘anti-hero’ with a wonderful bravado only Mifune knows how to exude on screen. This time around he takes the name Tsubaki Sanjūrō, which translates to “Thirty year-old Camellia Tree”, a little nod to the joke in the first one where he took the name of a nearby plant. And he also adds, like in the first film, that he ‘is almost forty though.’

The movie starts fiercely and ends as fast, with a brief running time of 98 minutes that seriously goes by before you know it. Sanjuro poses again as a bad ronin, trying to get to the bottom of the scheme of Hanbei Moroto, which actor Tatsuya Nakadai steals the movie in this villainous role. A great little confrontation between the two ends with Hanbei challenging Sanjuro because he has been made a fool, and Sanjuro is reluctant to agree, due to the fact that one of them would surely die and there is no gain in that at all. But he insists and Sanjuro agrees and ultimately the showdown is had. Not giving anything away from the ending except the farewell “Abayo” which means “See ya later”, it’s a great indicator of the overall tone of the film.

As per usual, Criterion has done a bang up job with this release, especially in the Blu-ray format. Exclusive to the Blu-ray is a DTS-HD Master Audio, which makes the rich, deep sounds of the swords even more powerful, which also gives the film a whole different feel from past releases, especially from the older print from 1999. Also included on this release is a great 35 minute making of documentary, which was created as part of the Toho Masterworks series Akira Kurosawa: It Is Wonderful To Create, which features Kurosawa himself speaking about the making of the film. It also features Tatsuya Nakadai (who plays villain Hanbei Moroto), production designer Yoshiro Muraki and longtime Kurosawa collaborator Teruyo Nogami. As with their release of “Yojimbo”, they brought out a new and improved English subtitle translation, but suffers slightly from being too bright on the screen.

At times light hearted and comedic and at others a somber tale of a lost samurai who truly has nobody he can relate to except for his sworn enemy, “Sanjuro” is a film that makes perfect sense in the Criterion Collection. It has Akira Kurosawa, for one, who is the most prolific director in the collection. You then have a masterful performance by Toshiro Mifune, another regular in the collection. And that it is a beautiful and stylized samurai film makes this trifecta a perfect fit and is as wonderful today as it was almost 40 years ago in Japan.

Images and Trailer courtesy of The Criterion Collection

When one letter could mean so much to film aficionados everywhere, you know you have something special in your midst. The film I’m alluding to is Fritz Lang’s 1931 masterpiece M. A masterpiece that, luckily for the Criterion Collection, has gained a high watermark in the hearts of film fans everywhere. What [...]]]>

When one letter could mean so much to film aficionados everywhere, you know you have something special in your midst. The film I’m alluding to is Fritz Lang’s 1931 masterpiece M. A masterpiece that, luckily for the Criterion Collection, has gained a high watermark in the hearts of film fans everywhere. What more could a fan say about this wonderful and haunting film?

Peter Lorre stars as serial killer and alluded pedophile Hans Beckert, which was his first starring role in a film. Remember, this was made in Germany while thee Nazis were in power, so you had German Expressionism on the rise and German film was chugging along with one brilliant film after another, and M is no exception to that statement. Lorre was known for comedic roles before this film, but once you see him as Hans Beckert, you won’t think of him in the same way again. The way he commands the camera and the attention of the audience in M is still an amazing feat and it’s sad that most people know Lorre from his caricature from Looney Tunes cartoons and as stereotypical villains in Hollywood films (even though he is quite brilliant in Arsenic and Old Lace).

What’s brilliant about this film is that at the heart of it, we have a killer who is preying on children and then we have the two groups of people trying to find this killer, the cops and the criminals. While his reign of terror is going on in Berlin, we have these two groups reaching a fever pitch of the highest magnitude, and we are sitting, watching as this all unfolds, wondering who will get to Beckert first to end his criminal ways. And we have a lot of foreshadowing within the film, most importantly right in the beginning of the film while a group of school children are singing a song about a child murderer and then we have Lorre’s entrance onto the screen, which still strikes a chill down anybody’s  spine who watches it for the first time.

You will never hear a creepier version of “In the Hall of the Mountain King”, hummed by Beckert, especially while he strolls along, buying a balloon from a blind man and giving it to a little girl named  Elsie, who of course takes the nice gesture. And Lang uses that moment to cut right away to her mother frantically looking for Elsie and panning up to the same balloon Beckert gave to her, tangled up in phone wires and then flying away, representing not only her youth and innocence, but her life now slipping away to the heavens.

One can’t forget the brilliant performance by Otto Wernicke who plays Inspector Karl Lohmann, who is using state of the art criminal apprehension methods, such as looking and comparing handwriting techniques and fingerprinting. He even gets the force to do surprise raids and questioning known criminals as suspects, trying to find a common thread. This upsets the criminal underworld, who decide to take the matter into their own hands, searching for the killer themselves so business can resume as usual, employing the city’s beggers to watch over the children and keeping a lookout in general for anyone suspicious.

And what makes the film so tense and exciting is that Beckert is unaware that both of these groups are searching for him, while he nonchalantly whistles the same tune he was earlier while going by the blind balloon salesman, who of course alerts one of the criminals about this bit of news. In order to track the killer down easier, the criminal writes a big letter M onto his own hand with chalk, which stands for “Mörder”, and slaps him on his shoulder, transferring the M and making it easier for the beggars to let the head criminals know where he is going to next.

“Who knows what it’s like to be me?” What a line of dialogue, which Beckert utters in an impassioned monologue in a makeshift trial the criminals have set up to give him a sense of justice. They even give him a lawyer as well, but we know this is all leading to their own murdering ways. Even the judge is wanted on 3 counts of manslaughter, which is pointed out by Beckert’s lawyer. Right when they ‘convict’ him and are about to execute, the cops come busting through and take Becker away. Which then leads to one of the most amazing final shots in film history, where we see Beckert about to hear his sentence and it cuts to three of the victim’s mothers crying while we see Elsie’s mother telling us that neither sentence will ever bring back the children and for all of us, as parents and future parents, to watch over our children.

Watch for the way Lang uses windows, mirrors and the art of reflection for expressive purposes, which has been repeatedly borrowed and used in film, even to this day. Lang has said this was his masterpiece and one can argue with that sentiment but can’t deny that this film deserves a place not only in the Criterion Collection, but in the pantheon of film itself.

And with Criterion’s third release, which is their beautiful print on Blu-Ray which yet again, like their prints Yojimbo and Sanjuro, make the film look as if it came out a decade ago and not 80 years ago. And as usual with The Criterion Collection, the extras are packed to the brim. From an amazing documentary about the path M took to be restored to an insightful and fun interview with Fritz Lang, conducted by The Exorcist director William Friedkin. A top notch commentary track with German scholars Anton Kaes and Eric Rentschler, which gives a academic look at the history of M and all its players, which is a Criterion standard. And for the Blu-Ray edition only, we get an uncompressed monaural soundtrack, which really packs a punch when there’s complete silence on the screen. As opposed to before when you’d still hear some grain in the soundtrack, this time there is silence and that makes the film even more dynamic. Rounding out the Blu-Ray edition is the long lost English version of M as well, which is from a nitrate print, preserved by none other than the British Film Institute.

If you haven’t bought it before, then what are you waiting for? Packed to the brim with extras, the only complaint one might have with the film is that the subtitles aren’t necessarily the best quality. But that’s one minor gripe from an overall classic film.

Images and video courtesy of The Criterion Collection.

Buy the M Blu-ray from Amazon

Buy the M DVD from Amazon

“You idiot, I’m not giving up yet. Theres a bunch of guys I have to kill first!”

So says Toshiro Mifune as the traveling ronin Sanjuro in Akira Kurosawa’s 1961 jidaigeki film Yojimbo. Mifune stars as Kuwabatake Sanjuro (which means Mulberry Field thirty-year-old, but he tends to take the surname from whatever plant is near him at [...]]]>

“You idiot, I’m not giving up yet. Theres a bunch of guys I have to kill first!”

So says Toshiro Mifune as the traveling ronin Sanjuro in Akira Kurosawa’s 1961 jidaigeki film Yojimbo. Mifune stars as Kuwabatake Sanjuro (which means Mulberry Field thirty-year-old, but he tends to take the surname from whatever plant is near him at the time of giving his name). Even though this is a period film with a master less samurai who travels from town to town, looking for food and drink, it feels as if it’s from a time that never was.

Sanjuro finds out the town is overrun by two warring factions, one led by Seibei who is the town brothel owner and the other led by Ushitora, the sake brewer. They’ve been at odds for many years and there seems to be no end in sight from the endless killing and mayhem that continues in the town. Sanjuro is told he should be a paid bodyguard by the town’s constable but instead wanders into the restaurant, run by Gonji, who relays the horrible story of the battle that rages on between both men who are trying to control the town. So what does this ronin think of doing? Try to pit both of the groups against each other to a boiling point by making them both want his service.

He does this the old fashioned way, which is showcasing his skills in front of the town and he kills three of Ushitora’s men without breaking a sweat. There is nobody his equal when it comes to cutting down enemies with his sword, and of course this has both leaders vying for his attention.

Many people have written about Yojimbo and Kurosawa in general. There’s not many filmmakers like him then and now even. He tends to be in a class all his own, considering his filmography reads like a best of Japanese cinema. And when you pair an icon like Kurosawa with the brilliance of Toshiro Mifune, you’ve definitely struck paydirt.

The film has a western feel to it, which many of Kurosawa’s colleagues say he was influenced by, especially John Ford’s sweeping epic westerns of the 1940′s and 1950′s. And even though this samurai has a name, so to speak, many believe this is where the whole ‘Man with No Name’ idea comes from, which then was brought to the forefront with another duo that always struck gold, Sergio Leone and Clint Eastwood.

But let’s take some scenes from Yojimbo and without ruining it for the audience who hasn’t seen this iconic film yet, give you some sort of idea of the influence Kurosawa had on filmmakers from around the world.

There’s a Dali-esque scene right in the first 10 minutes while Sanjuro is walking around the town, trying to shake off the fleas that he’s infested with (watch Toshiro’s performance to understand where this comes from) and he sees how deadly this town is when a friendly looking dog is just trotting along with someone’s hand in his mouth. Sanjuro almost does a double take but keeps walking through because, as you can see by his demeanor, he’s definitely seen worse than that in his life. And even though he’s tough as nails, as everyone who meets him calls him when they see him slice up anybody in his way, we also see the kindness in his heart to a family he runs into on his mission in the town and even to the tavern owner, Gonji, who he jokingly keeps referring to as ‘old man’.

Kurosawa borrows both from Dashiell Hammett’s novels The Glass Key and Red Harvest and his very own Seven Samurai from seven years prior in this story of helpless townsfolk and the reclusive loner who just wants to do right with the people who matter. Kurosawa even brilliantly copies a scene from the film adaptation of The Glass Key (1942) where the main character is captured by the villains and tortured to an inch of his life before he finally escapes in a tense scene of the ‘proverbial cats looking for their mouse which has gotten free’ we’ve all taken for granted in film today.

Seeing Sanjuro from behind in most scenes is also very telling, hiding his face and expressions from the viewer, so the audience is never too sure how hopeless he might be feeling at any given moment, instead giving us wide shots of the hero while he decides on his plan of action. And those wide shots have never looked as crisp and clear with Criterion’s new Blu-Ray transfer. The soundtrack sounds as good as new, which helps put to the forefront one Masaru Sato’s score for the film, which adds to the comedy, the suspense and the action without missing a beat.

“I know I’m quite a sight, but can you do your staring later.” Watching this film again and again, you can’t help but always notice the little things in the film, such as the leaf rusting on the ground while Sanjuro is attempting to bring himself back to health. A beautifully shot scene that sometimes you can’t help but overlook in initial viewings. Yojimbo, being one of the most influential Japanese films of its time, we can understand why Hollywood has remade it twice since its 1961 debut.

Disc Features

• Restored high-definition digital transfer (with uncompressed monaural soundtrack on the Blu-ray edition)
• Optional Dolby Digital 3.0 soundtrack, preserving the original Perspecta simulated-stereo effects (DTS-HD Master Audio on the Blu-ray edition)
• Audio commentary by film historian and Kurosawa scholar Stephen Prince
• A 45-minute documentary on the making of Yojimbo, created as part of the Toho Masterworks series Akira Kurosawa: It Is Wonderful to Create, featuring Kurosawa, actor Tatsuya Nakadai, production designer Yoshiro Muraki, and longtime Kurosawa collaborator Teruyo Nogami
• Theatrical teaser and trailer
• Stills gallery of behind-the-scenes photos
• New and improved English subtitle translation
• PLUS: A booklet featuring an essay by film scholar Alexander Sesonske and comments from Kurosawa and his cast and crew

Captain Nemo. Humbert Humbert. Brutus. Eduard Seibert.  Richard Straker. Phillip Vandamm. All are classic and iconic characters played by none other than one of the great actors of the 20th century, James Mason. But it’s his role as Ed Avery in the film Bigger Than Life that sent shock waves in the film industry, broke down [...]]]>

Captain Nemo. Humbert Humbert. Brutus. Eduard Seibert.  Richard Straker. Phillip Vandamm. All are classic and iconic characters played by none other than one of the great actors of the 20th century, James Mason. But it’s his role as Ed Avery in the film Bigger Than Life that sent shock waves in the film industry, broke down the idealistic nature of the nuclear family and has been highly praised by critics and filmmakers alike for the last 50 years.

Ed Avery is the ideal father, husband and friend. He’s a schoolteacher and also does a few nights a week as a cabbie dispatcher, but he doesn’t tell his wife Lou (Barbara Rush) about the job, instead lying that he has school meetings to go to. She becomes suspicious and after a fight, Ed passes out from severe pain, which he’s been having periodically for the last 6 months. He comes clean about his other job with Lou and this is when the doctor tells him the bad news. Ed has a rare inflammation of his arteries and he probably has about 6 months to a year to live. The only way to possibly survive is a new ‘miracle drug’, the hormone cortisone, which has done wonders in initial tests with other patients. So of course he chooses the drug because he can’t leave his wife and child all alone in the world.

Cortisone does the trick, giving Ed a new lease on life and the pain is the last thing on his mind. But we slowly see the cracks that are starting to become wider and more jagged throughout the film. He starts to take too many pills and starts to say irrational things to his own wife and son. He denounces the school system at a parent/teacher conference, saying that we are all raising ‘mental midgets’ in this world and if he had it his way, we’d go back to the old ways of teaching.

He’s unraveling at the seems, minute by minute, in this present day Jekyll and Hyde story. There’s even a shot of Ed, trying to look like a playboy, Hugh Hefner himself even, and becomes a bit too cocky at his wife, who slams the mirror and it shatters, showing Ed in a multitude of angles and a distorted visage. It’s partly thanks to the directing style of Nicholas Ray (who only a year before this, in 1955, unleashed to the world one James Dean and his iconic role of Jim Stark in Rebel Without a Cause).

Ultimately he becomes completely Hyde like, his wild mood swings becoming steadily more intense and in one of the more tense scenes ever put to film, has a psychotic episode which threatens the safety of his family, his friend Wally Gibbs (played wonderfully by Walter Matthau) and even himself.

The Criterion Collection is releasing this under-seen gem on DVD and Blu-ray. The Blu-ray has a newly restored high-definition print of the film, where the colors are as vibrant as ever. Bigger Than Life was shot in the always amazing Cinemascope, and its cinematography by Joe MacDonald, is nothing short of perfect.

This film was widely ignored in its theatrical run back in 1956 but now is highly regarded as one of the finest achievements in film from the 1950′s. Think of it as a distant cousin to Leave It To Beaver and Father Knows Best, showing what problems and obstacles middle class families of suburbia had in that era. It wasn’t always about apple pie on the windowsill in every household.

Photo courtesy of  The Criterion Collection

[Note from the Editor: you can find our initial announcment of this and all of the March 2010 Criterion Collection releases here.]

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Whether you know his story or not, you know the face. Whether on a t-shirt, dorm room poster, coffee mug, or button, Ernesto “Che” Guevara has become an inter-generational pop symbol for rebellion, to the dismay of true revolutionaries around the world. While there have been films, both documentaries and dramatizations, and books written [...]]]>

Whether you know his story or not, you know the face. Whether on a t-shirt, dorm room poster, coffee mug, or button, Ernesto “Che” Guevara has become an inter-generational pop symbol for rebellion, to the dismay of true revolutionaries around the world. While there have been films, both documentaries and dramatizations, and books written about Guevara, Steven Soderbergh has finally presented the world with a heart breakingly honest portrayal of the man behind the icon. This film does not “cuddle up” to you, it presents Guevara and the surrounding events often at a distance.

I am no historian, but after watching both parts of the film, along with the commentaries and documentaries included in the Criterion Collection release, I feel like I just took an entire semester’s worth of information and crammed it into two Blu-ray discs. While there are no commentary tracks by Soderbergh, we do hear from Jon Lee Anderson, author of Che Guevara: A Revolutionary Life. Anderson has spent years traveling around the world studying Guevara, speaking to those who knew him, who fought alongside him. What I found especially compelling about the commentary, was Anderson’s contextualization of Che, in today’s world. Anderson has also traveled through Iraq and Afganistan, and makes subtle comparisons to Osama Bin Laden, in how both figures are viewed, by the international population.

This film does not glorify Guevara, or the violence he inflicted. It does not show him as an unstoppable force, as he is often brought to his knees by his asthma. The film does not demonize Guevara either. It shows him at both his most sympathetic, and his most repulsive. We see the poet, the physician, the warrior, ultimately showing the “ultimate hipster of the hippie age.”

What I love about the home entertainment format, be it DVD or Blu-ray are the bonus features. That is initially what drew me into buying DVDs, eventually falling into the gravitational orbit of Criterion. Since beginning my collection, I have found that not all DVDs, or Blu-rays for that matter, are treated equally in the eyes of their parents. Even Criterion has managed to put out a few bare bones releases, keeping in mind that while you may not be getting much in the way of bonus materials, you are getting a gorgeous transfer of the film to keep you entertained each time you load the disc. This release stands up against the greatest of releases put out by the Collection, be it the 3 Disc Brazil Box set, or the recent 3 Disc Remastered Edition of Seven Samurai.

DIRECTOR-APPROVED SPECIAL EDITION:

• High-definition digital masters, supervised and approved by director Steven Soderbergh, with DTS-HD Master Audio soundtrack on the Blu-ray edition
• New audio commentaries featuring Jon Lee Anderson, author of Che Guevara: A Revolutionary Life
• Making “Che,” a new documentary featuring Soderbergh, producer Laura Bickford, actor-producer Benicio del Toro, and writers Peter Buchman and Ben van der Veen
• Interviews with participants in and historians of the Cuban Revolution and Che’s Bolivian campaign
• End of a Revolution, a short documentary made in Bolivia right after Che’s execution in 1967
• “Che” and the Digital Cinema Revolution, an original video piece looking at the RED camera and its effect on modern film production
• Deleted scenes
• Theatrical trailer
• PLUS: A booklet featuring an essay by critic Amy Taubin

I almost enjoyed the bonus materials more than the films themselves. While the films themselves are absolutely gorgeous to watch, I often enjoy the process of filmmaking more than the resulting work. On the first disc of the Blu-ray set, we are presented with “Making “Che,” a new documentary featuring Soderbergh, producer Laura Bickford, actor-producer Benicio del Toro, and writers Peter Buchman and Ben van der Veen” which is a real joy. If you love already Soderbergh’s filmmaking ethics, you will fall in love all over again. A simple choice, the fact that Guevara would never speak english, so to have a film in english would be completely dishonest to everyone involved, shows a work ethic that most directors simply cannot afford in today’s film economy. That decision would ultimately aid in the film’s financial failure (not even making $2million worldwide). It is amazing to think that this film would probably not have been able to raise enough funds had it been organized this year, instead of roughly two years ago. Soderbergh has not forgotten his indie roots, and it shows in how he uses the latest in technology, the RED Camera, to produce the highest quality image for the cheapest price. On the second disc of the Blu-ray we are treated to a short piece specifically on the camera used in the filming of Che. This small piece of filmmaking technology is quickly changing the landscape of smaller budget filmmaking. It is no longer necessary to invest hundreds of thousands of dollars in Panavision Cameras, in filmstock, in the crew required to maintain suck equipment, when everything can be purchased for under $50,000, and stored in a backpack. While revolutionary, the camera is not without its faults. Being the very first camera produced for use in the field, the unit suffers from overheating, sand making its way into the sensor area, and other hardships. Something that I love about Soderbergh, is his ability to move past any problems he is faced with, with little complaints. It is something I try to bring to all of my own projects, to not see these problems as roadblocks, but simply detours, taking us to new and exciting territories.

I whole-heartedly endorse this release. While I did not have a chance to review the DVD release, the Blu-ray was incredible. Even having watched both films, along with the commentary, I feel like I’m still not clear on the story told to me. I want to go back and re-watch these films on a regular basis. This release is something I will return to those nights when I’m feeling culturally starved, in need of real filmmaking, by an artist I respect on multiple levels. There is a point in one of the documentaries, where Soderbergh talks of how disposable films are today, and how he wanted to create something that will last. He absolutely has created something that will last.

One last note, that I couldn’t quite figure out where to place in the review: During the RED Camera documentary, we are treated to illustrations by Jason Polan, the artist Criterion occasionally uses for their online artwork. My favorite moment was when he illustrated 237 Flash Cards on the screen, to show how many were purchased to have on hand at any one time during the shoot.

You can hear me gush all over this release on our latest episode of CriterionCast, Episode 21, in which we also discuss Haxan.

If you want to read some more thoughts I had on the cover art design, check out this post. While I feel like the final, orange cover is a bit cheap, a little unrefined, it does not take away from the quality of material contained within the discs. It should be noted that each disc of the Blu-ray release is housed within their own jewel cases, each with a different image of Guevara, at this point not available for viewing on Criterion’s page.

[Photo credits: The Criterion Collection]