Don’t they know MMC! has been retired! Why do they keep pulling me back in! And especially without spinenumbered contribution to their releases!?! Nevertheless, it’s the end of the month and that means new Arrow Video announcements and another case of spine number wish fufillment. This time it’s Toru Murakawa’s Game Trilogy, a trio of films MMC! stumped for way back on October 5, 2015. This looks like a great package and June 2023 can’t arrive fast enough! As always, you’re welcome!
(Also, when did WordPress start installing so many ads? Yikes.)
While MMC! is still officially retired, I just wanted to take a moment to shamelessly take a lap for having called Joseph Losey’s The Servant for a wacky “C” a mere seven years ago! Not much cross-over on the extras though, which is a bit of a loss. Still (and once again, film nerds), you’re welcome!
In his final theatrical film, celebrated director Gordon Parks cast Roger E. Mosley as the iconic blues and folk singer Huddie Ledbetter, better known to music history as Lead Belly, the King of the 12-String Guitar. Dramatizing the musician’s turbulent life from his early 20s to his mid-40s, Leadbelly follows Huddie as he performs at bars and sukey jumps, learns the blues from “Blind Lemon” Jefferson, faces violent racism and its deadly consequences, and twice finds himself incarcerated, labouring on back-breaking chain gangs and performing at the behest of white authorities. Combining pastoral simplicity with the resilient and rebellious spirit of the 1970s, all to the sounds of Lead Belly’s iconic songs, Leadbelly offers a vibrant and harrowing portrait of the segregated Jim Crow South and stood as the film Parks most admired amongst his own filmography.
Although it is entirely by accident, 1961 is exceptionally well represented among these last ten films I’ve watched. Hailed as arguably the greatest Korean film ever made, Aimless Bullet is a stylishly shot drama that remarkably recalls the stripped down aesthetics and emotional intensity of Italian neorealism, then cranks its despairing bleakness up even farther. Criterion release Blast of Silence is a yuletide city symphony posing as a low-rent, noirish hit job dressed up in some exceptionally cynical, hardboiled narration, and it’s cheaply wonderful. Quentin Lawrence’s Hammer Films heist flick sees Peter Cushing play a bank manager who is visited by one bank-robber whose meticulously planned heist inspires a Scrooge-like challenge to Cushing’s miserly, tight-assed personality. Certainly the latter two films are perfect for anyone interested in an alternative Christmas canon for this season’s screenings.
When Jared Auner of Mondo Macabro posts about a new label devoted to Asian Cult cinema, MMC! takes gleeful notice!
Cauldron Films’ Jesse Nelson and Brian Izzi, in collaboration with Mondo Macabro’s Jared Auner are proud to announce the formation of a new home video boutique imprint, Neon Eagle Video (NEV),that will focus on the trashier side of Asian cinema, highlighting exploitation, action, horror, and other ‘cult’ films that have been neglected in the High Definition era.
Make Mine Criterion! 