I’ve not made it a secret that it would please me no end to place my Blu-ray Consumer Guide in an online venue that would give the thing more exposure and also pay for the work. And as of today, I have. The November Guide went up today at RogerEbert.com. I hope it entertains a new audience but also that it pleases the readers of this blog, who have been so supportive of it and its sporadic scheduling and all that.
I hope to keep the feature pretty much as it has been here: freewheeling, reliable, idiosyncratic, and, hopefully, trustworthy. There won’t be any swearing though, as that’s against the house style there. Also I won’t be reviewing any porn, ’70s or not. At least I don’t think so. Please check it out here, and let me know what you think, either there or below. Thanks.
“There won’t be any swearing though, as that’s against the house style there.”
Follows link to that site, sees this:
“Can you imagine working your ass off for a f**king year, and you get a B+ from some a*****e in the Village Voice?”
I can’t f–cking believe it.
Wait…Robert Silverberg? The science fiction writer (and close friend of Harlan Ellison?)
Also literally on my way to pick up AUTUMN SONATA, which I’ve never seen, after that write-up.
Nice to see the Guide back, and at a good home, and – hopefully – with appropriate recompense for its author.
I am puzzled, however, how THE BROOD, which opened in the spring of 1979, could be Cronenberg’s “answer film” to KRAMER VS. KRAMER, which didn’t open until mid-December of ’79. Perhaps the extras on the disc explain this?
Also, Bruce Surtees shot HIGH PLAINS DRIFTER, not his dad, Robert.
I loved your delirious description of the way FANTASTIC VOYAGE looks – this movie has fascinated me since I was young, mostly for the reasons you cite. Trippy, indeed.
Great work, Glenn. Happy Thanksgiving.
The Surtees and Silverberg snafus are fixed.
In “Cronenberg on Cronenberg:” “I’ve said this ad nauseam, but ‘The Brood’ was my version of ‘Kramer Vs. Kramer’…And he goes on. I always said Cronenberg was prescient…
Great to see the CG back and in a new home.
As always, this column is a pleasure to read and – economically speaking – a shade discouraging to regard in its hefty totality. 🙂
So long as we’re fact-checking, I could have sworn that Entertainment Weekly began in 1990. (This is admittedly less interesting than the question of how much longer it can continue in its now substance-starved form. Speaking as a weary subscriber, of course.)
Excellent, Glenn! Although I will miss your frequent use of the “Goddam”. 100 bucks on the way to your Tip Jar, as promised. Have yourself a scotch on me.
Delighted with the news you have found a perch at the Ebert site. Somewhat jealous, as a fellow journalist in his 50s, that after your professional purgatory, you seem to be making a go of it. Long may you run.
Two more things I would bring up with Criterion’s “Autumn Sonata” reissue:
1) The color on Criterion’s old DVD was *really* off, and the new transfer and mastering done for their new Blu-Ray edition fixes that.
2) The documentary alone is worth the purchase. After seeing it at the director’s home in Fårö, Ingrid Bergman called it “the best documentary on the making of a movie I’ve ever seen.” To my understanding, until this reissue, it was rarely, if ever, shown publicly, but someone should consult the liner notes for more information.
Glenn’s assessment of Dean’s films is interesting. I would call “Rebel without a Cause” the masterpiece, “Giant” the worst of them by a wide margin, and “East of Eden” the most problematic. (There’s so much I like about that film and so much that I don’t. I actually go back and forth on that one: Kazan’s choices can seem overcooked, but on some viewings those same choices can feel pretty right.)
“Kramer vs. Kramer” was based on a novel published a couple of years before the film was released, so I suppose Cronenberg could have been responding to the book, though one then has to ask why he would bother…
Guys, Cronenberg’s quote doesn’t involve causality. “My version of…” means that he’s aware of the similarities years later, and considering the age of baby-boomers in 1979 it’s not surprising that there would be a boomlet of divorce movies, just as there was a boomlet of “oh my god babies” movies 5–10 years later.