Some people seem to think "L'Avventura" is Antonioni's first 'Great' film. No Way! Antonioni was already up there with the all-time greats with his first two Fifties masterpieces "Chronicle of a Love Affair" and "Le Amiche," (Glad to say "Le Amiche" is now available in a very good transfer on IMAGE DVD with removeable subtitles in all its rapid-fire Italian dialogue glory which you can freeze and study at your own pace) although he didn't become quite the Revolutionary of Cinema until about the time of "Il Grido (The Cry)" which hinted at everything that soon crystalized on the magnificent trilogy of "L'Avventura," "La Notte," and "The Eclipse," & later even expanded into an almost romantic and transcendent view of the future (through individuation & discarding of outdated myths and customs) in the vastly underrated artistic coup-d'etat of American cinema & all of American commercial culture: the awesome post-Hippie tour-de-force "Zabriskie Point" (a multi-million dollar commercial disaster that severely crippled Antonioni's later ability to raise financing).

The superb ultra-dense and illuminating commentary on the first disc of Criterion's "L'Avvenura" by Gene Youngblood (author of the late '60s cinematic theory classic "Expanded Cinema"; for a different take on Antonioni, that goes even deeper than what Youngblood has to say on this disc without becoming didactic or pretentious in any 'film-or-art-school gibberish' way, you cannot do much better than William Arrowsmith's long essay in "Antonioni: Poet of Images";), that alone, along with the pristine transfer of the film itself (only one negligable line in the final party scene which they've reduced to an absolute minimum) would easily be worth the price of 4 movie tickets.
But you also get a second disc which doesn't have too much on it, but what it does have is fantastic: a rare 1 hour mid-'60s French documentary on Antonioni & Jack Nicholson's passionate reading of 3 of Antonioni's most insightful essays (and later a recalling of a hilarious incident on the set of "The Passenger").

Now, for a superstar like Nicholson (who has never embarrassed himself as an artist or sold-out to the Hollywood mainstream despite a thousand and one opportunities & made the producers of "Batman" pay points through the nose for agreeing to appear in that fluff piece) to take the time to pay his respects to a director he truly admires, and promote the sale of this DVD, should teach some of the younger generation of actors something (or even Robert De Niro, who has for many years now, it's pretty friggin' obvious, gone completely mainstream, and is busy doing DVD commentaries for awful pieces of unfunny, brain-dead commerical putritude like "Meet the Parents," that didn't need his commentary to sell a zillion copies!)! The documentary is in Black and White and among other things which are of supreme interest for cineastes, are the rare interviews with Cesare Zavattini (one of the founders of Neo-Realism), Ennio Flaiano (Fellini's and Antonioni's co-writer), Giovanni Fusco (the Rolls Royce to Ennio Morricone's Ford Mustang in the Paisano hierarchy of film composers), Monica Vitti (at home, in the early '60s with Antonioni himself, who doesn't talk to the interviewer & only throws in an occasional comment!), and Fellini (taking a break from filming "Juliet of the Spirits" to talk to the enquiring interviewer about his friend & co-writer on "The White Sheik"). There are some rare, very revealing shots of Antonioni directing films which give you a rough idea of his style of interaction with cast and crew (in one scene, he is shown directing Princess Soraya, the former wife of the Shah of Iran, whom the Shah had divorced for not having borne him a son!). Last but not least, we also get to see the ridiculously vulgar American trailer for "L'Avventura" that tries to sell it to 'high-class' American audiences as some kind of 'sophisticated' European sex-exploitation film by showing every 'provocative' little snippet in the entire film!

The thing to understand about JADE WARRIOR is that they SOUND LIKE NO ONE ELSE, PERIOD (And they are definitely NOT 'New-Age' music, although in some instances they are close to cerrtain meditative moods familiar to Eno or Vangelis listeners). They used to be a King Crimsonish rock group before but at this mid-period in their career they came up with their own completely non-comformist, semi-minimalist philosophy of all-instrumental progressive rock music and they stuck by it, in the face of record company indifference and poor record sales. But now, twenty-five years later, the band has acquired cult status, and though it is a little too late for reunions (founding member and main guitarist Tony Duhig died from a heart attack a few years ago), these old records, and especially this 4 record set deserve a much wider audience. After just the first couple of tracks on "Floating World," 'Clouds' and 'Mountain of Fruit and Flowers,' blast like the Devil out of your speakers and blow you away, you'll know what I'm talkin' about! But wait! That's just 5 minutes, you've still got some 2 and a half more hours to go, and each album is different than the previous one, but almost as uniquely bizarre and meditatively captivating (as an added bonus for Traffic fans, Steve Winwood, one of JW's strongest supporters, who was instrumental in getting them their contract on Island, plays keyboards on the entire second record "Waves").

That's right! One of the 30 greatest and I've got hundereds of them in my collection! And I'll bet you, you never even heard of it! Yusef Lateef is all over the place on this classic record. He composed 6 of the 9 brilliant compositions himself and rendered timeless versions of the 3 tracks that he covered.

I defy any jazz fan to find a more beautiful improvisation than Lateef's oboe flights on "Love Theme from Spartacus." He takes a well-known tune here and refines it about 10 levels higher than anyone else ever could.

Or for that matter, I defy anyone to find more beautiful tenor playing on a ballad than on "Blame Me."

Lateef also plays that instrument, mind you. He plays flute, oboe, and tenor sax, all better than most 'great' players ever learn to play one instrument. The arrangments are all top-notch and progressive (tunes in unusual meters such as 5/4 and 6/8), the rhythm is often tabla rather than drums, bringing even more of an 'eastern' feel to the proceedings.

If you're a jazz fan and you don't have this record, you surely must've been sleeping for the past 40 years! BUY IT NOW or suffer a permanent lack!

This is the first truly great Wong Kar-Wai film, in that he doesn't need a gun or martial arts or even sex to express himself magnificently. This is his stab into Antonioni territory by way of Scorsese-Taxi-Driver era slow-mo editing. The Romanticism isn't some bizarre subjective comic-book romanticism like in Chung-King Express or Fallen Angels, but something deeply painful and alienated and constratined by tradition, directly from the real world, again harking back to classic Antonioni films like "Red Desert." Wong doesn't really take us into the individuation of his characters too much, but then Wong has some way to go before he can say as much with his 'restraint' as Antonioni did with his.

The Soundtrack is 40 minutes of the most incredibly varied, sublimely beautiful music, MOST OF WHICH IS BARELY HEARD IN THE FILM. That's why If you think that by buying the DVD you'll get the soundtrack too, you're wrong. There's plenty more here. The 3 legendary Nat King Cole (in Spanish) tracks (many more unbelievable tracks are available on the original 16 Exitos on Capitol), the beautiful East-meets-West classical "Yumeji's Theme" by Umebayashi Shigeru (originally used in a Seijun Suzuki film called "Yumeji" barely see in the West), and the other magnificent east-meets-west classical pieces by Micheal Galasso are just the beginning; in between are sandwiced sublimely bizarre and beautiful rare Chinese pop & ethnic tracks that no one in the west has ever heard! This is the best soundtrack I've heard since "Apocalypse Now," and "Rumble Fish." Get it today!

Finally! Jacques Becker, one of the most underrated GREAT filmmakers ever, on Criterion DVD. "Le Trou" (the Hole) is a highly unconventional prison drama, a different variation on the 'honor among thieves' theme Becker used so effectively in his Rififi-Bob-le-Flambeur-inspiring-archetype gangster classic "Touchez Pas Au Grisbi."

Here you get maybe the most Zen-like of all commercial cinema films, a radical departure from what Becker had done before in its restrained rather than extravagant style: 4 guys in a cell trying to dig a hole to freedom through a wall of rock, and THAT'S IT! But wait! This is REAL CINEMA, not the friggin' 'Great Escape'! Psychological complexity revealed through the camera that doesn't lie, as in EVERYTHING that goes on in their heads, not through any over-written dialogue, but by letting the cinema do the work: realistic reactions and gestures CAPTURED IN MAXIMUM REALNESS (of the slightly ramshakle French Prison variety, of course) from actors who have fully internalized these characters into an almost Robert De Niro level of Method Acting, without, I'm sure, being trained in any 'method nonsense' that would probably have confused the hell out of them unnecessarily (not surprisingly, one of them was a former inmate himself).

Becker died tragically young right after the film was completed and was at the time married to the beautiful Algerian born French actress Francoise Fabian who later appeared most memorably in Eric Rohmer's classic "My Night At Maude's" as Maude. Truffaut and Godard and the rest of the French New-Wave directors who had just begun making their own films, inspired directly from the great, early, mostly anti-studio-system films of Becker (Goupi Mains Rouges, Antoine et Antoinette, Edward et Caroline, Rendez-vous in July) hailed "Le Trou" as an instant masterpiece and it has stood the test of time through the 40 years since, although very few Americans are familiar with it. "Le Trou" isn't my own personal favorite Becker film (I prefer Antoine et Antoinette & Rendez-vous in July), but it can justifiably be called his most accomplished: in fact, it can almost be called an avant-garde film in the way it klangs mercilessly on huge pieces of rock for long periods of time, as if a sublime meditation was in progress, and before you know it, you, the viewer are pulled into it: a laboratory experiment of the soul.

Just stop and think: for the 7-mil price-tag of the gorgeous looking but artistically inferior "Desperado," Rodriguez could've shot 1,000 "El Mariachis"!

First off, the commentaries by Robert Rodriguez on these two films are the ABSOLUTE BEST EVER by anyone on any disc as far as explaining the details of the actual craft of making the film goes (Roger Ebert on "Citizen Kane" comes close, but puts a little bit too much already well-known trivia in there, and Gene Youngblood on "L'Avventura," of course, is the best one yet for film theory). They are JAM-PACKED with information on how he made the films and have very little annoying trivia. Rodriguez is very funny at times but he never lets his sense of humor get in the way of making informative commentary. Along with his famous book "Rebel Without A Crew," these two commentaries are ABSOLUTELY ESSENTIAL items in any film-buff's or aspiring filmmaker's library. They truly DE-MYSTIFY the entire process of filmmaking. And the funniest thing is this: in his 10 minute film school segment, Rodriguez actually shows you parts of the original 7000 dollar video, before it was blown up to 35 mm by the studios at great cost, and the picture quality is much better and less degraded! I mean, beyond this, anyone who wants to make a film and doesn't, can only blame it on his lack of inspiration or talent, not means (especially more so since the advent of DV cameras)..

"El Mariachi" is as paradoxically effective as it is because it turns into a Mexican cultural-artifact: it is, in fact, one of the best films ever made about Mexican border towns and Mexican culture itself disguised as a Sergio-Leone-John-Woo action flick. Rodriguez may have just stumbled upon the sum-of-all-its-faults synergy that produces cinematic magic, but his decisions and artistic sense are what made it into the most popular Mexican-direct-to-video film ever made. It's just pure hilarious comic-book poetry from beginning to end, with mean-looking bad-guys with thick mustaches, aviator glasses, and grape-crushing tight jeans running around the same block chasing the 'guitar man.'

Also, Rodriguez really knows how to shoot beautiful women subtly and erotically, as he was to prove beyond a shadow of a doubt later with the jaw-dropping shots of Salma Hayek in "Desperado." In Mariachi he only needs a couple of shots with Domino & Moco's Manicurist to drive home the 'entire erotic essence of a woman,' as it were. I've watched this film many times and I truly enjoy it every time, it plays much more 'mythically' in its blundering idiosyncracies than the infinitely more polished "Desperado." Rodriguez's main trick for making his film look like at least a 250,000 dollar film? Lot of Cuts, a cut every two seconds, necessity turned into an asset. Yet, his film doesn't feel like a dang-blasted MTV video, he maintains a beautiful flow, pacing, and rhythm throughout. Also, the Music of El Mariachi, as cheap as it sounds, is ABSOLUTELY FANTASTIC, much better than most of the music in "Desperado," and Rodriguez's clever use of it is pure virtuosity. The use of the sub-mediocre rock music in some of the scenes of "Desperado" really hurts that film as it does also "Dusk Till Dawn," which would've benefited had the more fastidious Tarantino picked the soundtrack. Still Rodriguez's taste in Music was back in Mariachi-mode DEAD-ON in the recent "Spy Kids."

"Desperado" is much less a Mexican Cultural Artifact than a study of the iconic good looks and sensibilities of Antonio Banderas and Salma Hayek, and what these imply in society, in general, as archetypes. It is much more successful as the Sergio-Leone-John-Woo type action-parody it wants to be, and a little too enamored of its own macho nonsense to be as effective a parody as "The Matrix," for example, and, is therefore, a lesser film, overall, than the thousand times less expensive "Mariachi." And what heterosexual male can ask for anything more than Salma Hayek at her most beautiful shot the way Rodriguez shoots her here?! And as light-weight as the film is, it still contains one of the best performances of Banderas' long career.

Last but not least, there is the Quentin Tarantino appearance in the bar, and later in the truly disgusting toilet that turns into the door to the hide-out, one of the funniest scenes of nineties commerical cinema.

This is an absolutely brilliant, super-romantic film made way back in 1946, mostly shot on Parisian streets and rooftops. It directly inspired the later directors of the French New-Wave (who were about to become critics at the time) to do the same some 12 years later. It is everything that the traditional French Cinema of its time wasn't, not afraid to be a little sloppy in its search for fleeting moments of cinematic magic, and it has plenty of these moments to spare, an almost endless supply of them!

What's absolutely unique about the film is the wistful romanticism it maintains and the gentle sense of humor it does it with. It is not a cynical or existential film, but neither does it have any illusions about its romantic outlook: what it shows is the possibility of romance even in dire circumstances when people's personalities are allowed to remain unchanged by money concerns. Antoinette loves Antoine in a way that has little to do with financial concerns & even when he loses the lottery ticket this changes things very little, though Antoine thinks he's no longer 'deserving' for a while.

One of the greatest scenes is that of the fight between Antoine & the grocer who's been chasing after his wife (Antoinette) right under his nose! After many scenes, where he has maintained his temper and good-humoredly let the matter slide, he finally realizes that he has to beat some sense into the guy's head by force! Well, the guy turns out to be a tougher opponent than he thought and the fight lasts a long time, with all the neighbors watching! What's great about it is, suddenly the grocer reveals himself to be capable of going as far as murder to protect his petty 'honor' or his last shred of 'pride' when he pulls out a knife to try to stab Antoine! Here the former semi-comic take on the situation suddenly takes an ugly turn toward tragedy showing beautifully Becker's mastery of the precarious balance between tragedy and comedy that creates a realistic film world.

The video copy they're selling here doesn't have the sound problems the same company's version of "Rendez-vous in July" has, not until the last 10 seconds of the film anyway, when the music suddenly cuts off! Still, even at the high price, it's worth buying if you can't find a copy to rent in some well-stocked film-buffs' video store, since it's definitely one of the greatest French films ever made.

Do these guys really think they can co-opt Jimi Hendrix's name so easily for their absurd new 'holy war' of 'infinite justice' (a little too bold it was, so they quickly changed the 'catch-phrase' to 'Enduring Freedom," as a security measure, to avoid some of the ironic remarks that were sure to snowball into an avalanche on the still-free press of the Internet if the hypocrisies of the U.S. Government in curtailing 'freedom' all over the world, were ever exposed enough to people used to getting their news from the controlled mainstream-press during their big 'crusade against terror')?

Who do these guys think Hendrix was, John Wayne, Ronald Reagan? Hendrix was the exact opposite of what those guys stood for, or what the traditional power-structure of America stood for. Everything in his art railed against it! His version of Star Spangled Banner was as feedback frenzied and crazy as it was because it was meant to be ironic and only respectful of America's best traditions, the America of the Slave-Owning-At-time-but-foresighted-and-freedom-loving Founding Fathers of the Constitution, that could've been, should've been, and tragically wasn't, and due to a disastrous foreign policy instigated by a criminal government running amok, still isn't 30 years after Jimi's death; he certainly wasn't applauding its jingoistic worst, and to pretend that he was, is an insult to the values of complete dissent and freedom his art stood for. He sure as hell wasn't celebrating America's napalming of Vietnam or the Military; it's laughable to even suggest that he was! You want direct proof? Just go and listen to "Machine Gun" or "If 6 was 9" (Hendrix didn't give one hoot if "All the Hippies cut off all their hair" either, as the famous lyric goes; he was an individualist, who saw through his own eyes, first & foremost!). In fact, you'd probably have a hard time finding ONE person in the entire Woodstock crowd that was in favor of the Vietnam War! And at the time, it was just as 'Holy' a war, from the government's perspective & that of most of the soldiers fighting it, as this new one W. Bush is embarking on.

Having deep sympathy with the victims of the tragic events of Sept. 11 is one thing; being blind to powerful people taking advantage of easily given trust to use this tragedy as an excuse to curtail all our freedoms forever and kill huge numbers of innocent civilians in far-away countries as "collateral damage," is another. And I'm sure as Sherlock, my man Jimi would agree, whole-heartedly, if only he had survived his hectic times to see the absurdities of the present.

A film that Jean Renoir called "Magnificent" and Orson Welles said he couldn't stand, "La Notte" is arguably Antonioni's most flawless, concentrated and deeply layered masterpiece (the late great critic William Arrowsmith has put forth the most masterful argument in favor of this high opinion in his fantastically unconventional and myth-debunking, chapter-long review of it in "Antonioni: Poet of Images"), and it certainly deserved better than the amateurish & just plain awful transfer it has gotten from the philistine cheapskates at Fox-Lorber. The film's influence on other filmmakers & especially the most famous of American directors such as Scorsese, Coppola, and De Palma is IMMENSE: for direct proof check out Scorsese's homage to the famous silent-conversation-in-the-parked-car-in-the-rain scene in "Alice Doesn't Live Here Anymore," where Ellen Burstyn is seen grieving silently in the closed capsule of her car in the pouring rain for her son who has run away. Some people also mention Kubrick's final pretentious mediocrity "Eyes Wide Shut" as being similar to this film. Well, it figures, and no real film fans are too surpried since "Barry Lyndon" and "2001" were also both practically Antonioni films in their deliberate, super-concentrated compositions and slow pacing, and also because back when he was still a great director (in 1963) Kubrick listed "La Notte" as his 7th favorite film of all-time.

The picture quality of this DVD version Fox-Lorber-Winstar has thrown on the market is maybe SLIGHTLY better than a mediocre VHS copy, but that's about it! The ONLY reason to buy the DVD is to be able to get to your favorite parts quicker. The picture is undermatted, has annoying lines and moving dots through it throughout, and the sound sometimes has weird pops and crackles in it as if it was recorded off a scratched LP! Not only that, but the English Subtitles are NOT REMOVABLE and their text in this version is BADLY TRANSLATED, making the non-Italian-speaking viewer miss quite a few conversational points that I, for one, know by heart, through having watched my old Video copy of the well-translated JANUS Collection Print (perfectly matted by the way) recorded off a TV Showing on BRAVO many years ago, many times (I truly LOVE this film and unlike some other Antonioni films which I had to 'grow into,' was instantly hypnotized by its poetry the FIRST time I saw it in a visceral way I haven't experienced with any other film except maybe Godard's "Breathless," Truffaut's "Shoot the Piano Player" and Scorsese's "Taxi Driver").

Needless to say, I'm a big dupe, and I bought this DVD the day it came out and was totally disappointed, and what I could only hope for, and it doesn't seem likely because, apparently, Fox-Lorber own the DVD rights to this classic film, is for a CRITERION transfer of "La Notte," "The Eclipse," and every other Antonioni film to go along with their pristine version of "L'Avventura," and maybe even with commentary as great as Gene Youngblood's on all of them! When will Fox-Lorber learn to give classic works of cinematic art the respect they deserve?

After the unfairly bashed & hilariously satirical "Mission to Mars" (a satire almost everyone who saw the film seemed to miss) and the incredible virtuosity of "Snake Eyes" I will never underrate De Palma again as long as I live. The guy's a cinematic genius who hasn't lost his powers, just an understanding audience. And yet his peak years remain between "Phantom of the Paradise" & "Scarface." And the peak of that peak period is "Blow Out," De Palma's most fully realized & poetically resonating elaboration of his favorite theme: the glossed-over & willfully ignored post-Orwellian horrors of modern America & the hypocrisies & power struggles & conspiracies that constantly churn its engine; the immense tragedy of this for its innocent victims & romantic heroes. In "Snake Eyes" you had Cage & Gugino; the updated versions of Travolta & Allen in "Blow Out."

"Blow-Out" keeps you fascinated & riveted through its thriller elements while implying numerous things on the way until the last 6 or 7 minutes and then bursts out on multiple levels of metaphor with one of the greatest, most poetic endings in cinematic history which brings everything full-circle from the beginning and ties all the loose ends up in one magnificent fell swoop. The many levels and essences of corruption in American society, the constant rape of the innocent and naive by the cynical and powerful, the exploitation constantly going on represented by the cheap film company Travolta works for using a real scream of a girl about to die to finally get it right, etc., not to mention the ever-relevant post-Chappaquidick-at-the-time, post-Clinton-Lewinsky-Condit-now comments on political corruption, political conspiracies and cover-ups, the Antonioni-Blow-Up-like foray into the nature of reality and experience and cinematic illusion itself, all of this comes together in the final two scenes with a cathartic, understated bang! And, of course, the key to all this is John Travolta's amazing, subtle performance, maybe his best ever, and Nancy Allen's equally effective one as the ultimate poster-girl for youth, vigor and innocence, confused, unwittingly corrupted by the dark side of America, always two steps away from being saved and two steps away from being too far gone. John Lithgow also must be mentioned, since he plays such amazingly realistic villians, so much like a regular guy, almost everyone's suburban neighbor, and yet because of this very fact so evil it's positively creepy! Also, Dennis Franz of NYPD Blue makes a memorable appearance as a low-rent sleaze-bag manipulator whose very weaknesses as an aspiring sleazebag make him harder to hate, making you understand why Allen would trust him! Excellent turn by Frantz. De Palma's films of this period also use an intentional, slightly artifical style of acting, not quite 'over-the-top' but just twisted enough to suggest a level of self-parody. In "Blow Out," Travolta's character is the only one played mostly straight, with everyone else seeming almost surreal, hallucinations of themselves.

The DVD has an perfectly matted, not-pristine-but-relatively-decent-looking-to-my-eyes (although some DVD review places have complained about the color separation, I only noticed a slight swarming of black backgrounds during the night-scenes, and they still gave the transfer a C grade, not an F like the Scarface DVD) wide-screen transfer and the super-cool original trailer but not much more if 'extras' like a commentary are what you're looking for. It also has one of the cheesiest looking Main-Menu screens ever designed, but fortunately this is not reflective of the fair quality of the transfer itself offered in the DVD, just the result of some page-designer's nightmare. Oh yeah, the DVD also has a 'standard' full-screen version, on the other side, in case you're one of those geniuses who like watching your movies with only half the original motion picture on the screen, thinking you're getting more bang for your buck because your entire TV screen is filled! The studios have not forsaken your bizarrely logical preferences!