The Movie Orgy (Joe Dante, 1968)

The Criterion Collection, a continuing series of important classic and contemporary films presents The Movie Orgy.

A send-up and a celebration of mid-century American kitsch, Joe Dante’s epic pop culture mash-up, The Movie Orgy, entertained college campuses through the late 1960s and 1970s, drawing upon an ever-changing library of ’50s drive-in movies, vintage commercials, TV westerns, and political speeches. Re-discovered and re-cut by Dante for a revival screening in 2008 into its 280 minute “Ultimate Version,” this legendary cinematic event is now available outside of theatres for the first time. SEE a colossal collage of nostalgia! SEE an experience of mind-rotting celluloid hysteria! SEE thousands of performers in roles that earned them obscurity!  SEE bosomy starlets, juvenile delinquency, Christian puppetry, Elvis Presley, Groucho Marx, and Richard Nixon!

SPECIAL FEATURES

• High-definition digital transfer, supervised and approved by director Joe Dante, with uncompressed monaural soundtrack on the Blu-ray
• New interview with Dante
• Rated Z, archivist David Neary on the history and significance of The Movie Orgy
• Posters and promotional materials
• PLUS: An essay by director John Sayles

Trailer Tuesday

The 2019 Fantastic Fest in Austin, Texas, announced its first wave of titles late last month and a second wave of titles earlier today. The Festival is shaping up nicely with an exciting line-up of expectedly peculiar movies. MMC! is stoked for some of these films, so let’s take a look at a dozen bonkers trailers (and read some brief Fantastic Fest summaries) before this Tuesday runs out!

(MMC! doesn’t have any plans to be around Austin during September 19 to 26, but if anyone wants to throw some press credentials at our lowly corner of the blogosphere, MMC! wouldn’t stop you!)

Opening night of Fantastic Fest kicks off with the premiere of Taika Waititi’s JoJo Rabbit (2019). This anti-hate satire apparently made Disney execs less than comfortable during a screening last week and reports state that the studio is more than a bit nervous about this inherited Fox project. That alone make JoJo Rabbit sound worth its ticket price!

“Writer-director Taika Waititi (THOR: RAGNAROK, HUNT FOR THE WILDERPEOPLE), brings his signature style of humor and pathos to his latest film, JOJO RABBIT, a World War II satire that follows a lonely German boy (Roman Griffin Davis as JoJo) whose world view is turned upside down when he discovers his single mother (Scarlett Johansson) is hiding a young Jewish girl (Thomasin McKenzie) in their attic. Aided only by his idiotic imaginary friend, Adolf Hitler (Taika Waititi), Jojo must confront his blind nationalism.”

Trailer Tuesday

For every MMC! proposal that turns into an actual spine numbered release, there are numerous other films that get swanky editions before this blog ever gets to imagine one. These films are unfortunately struck from MMC!‘s list of potential titles with no fanfare, never achieving the glory of stepping into our fantasized spotlight. Today’s “Trailer Tuesday” post celebrates a few of these films recently denied the chance to shine MMC!, but first we’ll celebrate an overdue title proposed for a spine number 6½ years ago!

As a longstanding favourite of MMC!, we’re naturally overjoyed with news that Severin Films is debuting a new 4K restoration of Álex de la Iglesia’s Perdita Durango (1997) at the 2019 Fantasia Film Festival and that a Blu-ray release is expected to be announced later this year! Personally, I can’t wait to decommission my two bootleg copies of the film and finally get to discuss with others the genius that is Rosie Pérez and the further proof that the quality of a film is directly proportional to the craziness of Javier Bardem’s hair. Thank you Severin! Better late than never!

Trailer Tuesday

In all my shout-out excitement this weekend, I neglected my main purpose: thanking everyone who voted in our year-end poll! Two films stood atop all others – Hirokazu Kore-eda’s Shoplifters and Paul Schrader’s First Reformed. Naturally, you can expect to see one of those two films as the subject of MMC!‘s next imagined Criterion title. (No spoilers, but it’ll be Shoplifters!)

Now, on to some trailers!

The Criterion Channel is set to launch on April 8 and the Collection has cut together a rousing trailer promoting it. MMC! already has its charter membership, but there’s plenty here that pricks up our ears: The Safdies! Susan Pitt’s Asparagus! The Devils! Local Hero! The Holy Mountain! Hype! “Godzilla and Beyond!” The Channel’s initial line-up has been announced and there’s even more MMC! fan-bait there too: 11 films noir from Columbia, David Lynch’s The Elephant Man, John Woo’s Last Hurrah for Chivalry, Bi Gan’s Kaili Blues, a profile on Charles Burnett, seven films featuring Simone Signoret, AND Alan Parker’s Bugsy Malone! (If the Collection ever released a hard media edition of Bugsy Malone, I swear my face will melt right off!)

Trailer Tuesday

Let’s kick off this “Trailer Tuesday” with the Janus Films trailer for Jackie Chan’s two Police Story films. This sizzle reel for every wild stunt and action sequence in the two movies is as thrilling as they come. I had never really imagined that a future Criterion release would boast “NEW ASS-KICKING 4K RESTORATIONS” but here we are and I’m grateful for it. These films arrive to the Collection on April 30 so start hydrating now!

Trailer Tuesday

The Criterion Collection’s announcements for January 2019 look great, but it’s the contrast between the trailers of two forthcoming films that I find particularly intriguing this month. On the one hand, we have the simple, elegant, unadorned trailer for Abbas Kiarostami’s 24 Frames (2017). Painterly and quietly compositional in its attention, the trailer ably expresses Kiarostami’s focus on “movement, perception, and time.” More non-narrative films go Criterion please!