Great film with Harvey Keitel. First directorial outing by James Toback, who apparently has a documentary about Mike Tyson coming out this year that I'm trying to find.. Anyway, Fingers has really stuck with me this week, in particular its soundtrack of carefully chosen 50s/60s pop songs that Keitel plays on a little boombox wherever he goes. The clip below pretty clearly illustrates how this works.

» Read More

Chris Marker's 1962 masterpiece, composed entirely of black and white still photographs...

» Read More

Quite simply, I implore you to find a way to watch this. (Made much easier by the recent Mike Leigh box set....)
It is unadulterated genius, a continuation of the stellar form Leigh achieved with the likes of Nuts In May and Abigail's Party. Say no more.

» Read More

Watched this interesting documentary the other day about the first pay cable tv channel in the states. It launched in LA in 1974 and was spearheaded by Jerry Harvey, a UCLA student and movie nerd. Harvey showed only quality films and set the format copied later by the commercial cable channels like HBO, Showtime and Cinemax who eventually hastened Z Channel's demise, despite the fact (or because of the fact) that these channels never even brushed Z Channel's standard of excellence.

The other thing we can thank Harvey for is the concept of the 'Director's Cut'. His first claim to film buff fame was his screening of Sam Peckinpah's full cut of 'The Wild Bunch' in Berkeley while he was still a student. Z Channel later famously screened the 220 min version of 'Heaven's Gate', rectifying the wrongs done to the film in the editing room that resulted in the critics' over-the-top vilification of the theatrical release.

Shame, then, that Harvey lost the plot and shot his wife and then himself in their LA home in 1988.

Anyway, the documentary has the usual array of talking heads gooing over how amazing this channel was (cue Quentin Tarantino spraying spit and gesticulating wildly). The best part, however, is the list of films that can be gleaned. These appear after the jump...

» Read More