The Triplets of Belleville (Sylvain Chomet, 2003)

The Criterion Collection, a continuing series of important classic and contemporary films presents The Triplets of Belleville.

French whimsy goes through the looking glass in this imaginatively offbeat animated wonder by animator Sylvain Chomet. A boy named Champion trains relentlessly for the Tour de France with the help of his diminutive and club-footed grandmother, Madame Souza, and their overweight dog, Bruno. When race day arrives, Champion and a few of his fellow racers are kidnapped by a pair of square-shouldered henchmen and taken across the ocean to thronging Belleville where they are forced to pedal as part of an illicit gambling operation. Bruno and Mme Souza follow to save their boy and find unlikely help from the renowned Triplets of Belleville, a trio of eccentric music hall stars turned elderly experimental musicians. Filled with twisted imagery and proceeding with the measured pace of a dream, The Triplets of Belleville is a strange, loving, and very French tribute to silent comedy and to bygone eras of traditional animation.

SPECIAL FEATURES:

• New 4K digital master, approved by director Sylvain Chomet, with 5.1 surround DTS-HD Master Audio Soundtrack on the Blu-ray
• New audio commentary with Sylvain Chomet
• New conversation between Chomet and animator Bill Plympton
• The Making of The Triplets of Belleville, a 36-minute documentary discussing the film’s production
• The Cartoon According to Sylvain Chomet, a brief discussion with the director on designing his characters
• Music Video by -M- for “Les Triplettes de Belleville” featuring animation from the film and a short piece on its making
• Le temps d’un tournage, an interview with Chomet for French television on his earlier work
• The Triplets As Seen By…, a selection of impressions on the film by animators Bill Plympton and Michel Ocelot, singer -M-, and comedian and cyclist Antoine de Caunes
• The Old Lady and the Pigeons, Chomet’s 1997 short film about a starving policeman who dresses up like a pigeon to trick an old woman into feeding him
• Carmen; Chomet’s music video collaboration with Belgian pop star Stromae
• Chomet’s 2014 “couch gag” for The Simpsons
• Trailers
• New English subtitle translation
• PLUS: A new essay by film critic Michael Sragow and flipbooks with art by Chomet

The Old Lady and the Pigeons (Sylvain Chomet, 1997)

Before The Triplets of Belleville (2003) and The Illusionist (2010), Sylvain Chomet made the award-winning The Old Lady and the Pigeons (La Vieille Dame et les pigeons, 1997). The animated short features an impoverished and starving gendarme who dresses up like a giant pigeon in order to be fed by an old woman (and that barely scratches the surface of how hilariously bizarre the short gets). Chomet was inspired to make a film of his own after seeing Nick Park’s Creature Comforts (1989) and set upon his production after pitching the concept to Didier Brunner of the French animation studio Les Armateurs. Backgrounds were designed by Chomet’s comic book collaborator Nicolas de Crécy, although the two would later fall out over Crécy’s view that Chomet improperly copped his style for the designs of The Triplets of Belleville. The Old Lady and the Pigeons is silently comic and strangely surreal and establishes many of Chomet’s characteristic styles and themes, making it an easy access point to Chomet’s limited filmography. It is also a quick 24-minute scratch for those of us still itching to see his next film, The Thousand Miles, a Fellini-inspired story about the world’s most beautiful road race, Italy’s Mille Miglia.

Bait (Mark Jenkin, 2019)

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

Martin (Edward Rowe) is a cove fisherman without a boat. His brother has repurposed their father’s vessel as a tourist tripper catering to vacationers and stag parties. Their childhood home has been sold for London money and transformed into a summer getaway, displacing Martin to public housing above the harbor. As Martin resists the erosion of local traditions and industries, the summer season brings increasing tensions between the locals and newcomers to a boiling point, leading to tragic consequences. Stunningly shot on a vintage 16mm camera using monochrome Kodak stock, Mark Jenkin’s Bait is a timely and funny, yet poignant film that gets to the heart of a community facing up to unwelcome change.

SPECIAL FEATURES:

• 4K digital master, approved by director Mark Jenkin, with 5.1 surround DTS-HD Master Audio Soundtrack on the Blu-ray
• Alternate score performed by Cornish musician Gwenno, with introduction by Jenkin and Gwenno
• Audio commentary with Jenkin and critic Mark Kermode
• Bait Q&A with director Mark Jenkin, a conversation with Jenkin and Kermode recorded at the BFI Southbank in London
• New interviews with Jenkin and star Ed Rowe
• A behind-the-scenes film shot by students of Falmouth University’s School of Film & Television
• Dear Marianne, Jenkin’s 2016 short film about a Cornishman’s travels in Ireland
• The Essential Cornishman, Jenkin’s 2016 short film set in the mythical Cornish west and paying tribute to the spontaneous prose of the Beats
• The Road to Zennor, Jenkin’s 2017 short travelogue to a small coast near St. Ives
• Two archival short films set in the Cornwall region, Scenes on the Cornish Riviera (1912) and The Saving of Bill Blewitt (1936)
• Trailers
• PLUS: Jenkin’s Silent Landscape Dancing Grain 13 Manifesto and an essay by film critic Chloe Lizotte

SFFF Day 3 – Dark Places

Short films led the charge on the Saskatoon Fantastic Film Festival’s third day with an eight film block of female focused shorts and another two short films that could have probably fit into the same section. Readers of last year’s coverage might recall my frustration with shorts that offer little more than spooky premises or creepy contexts, however you’ll find few such complaints amongst Day 3’s titles. Yfke van Berckelaer’s Lili (2019), an MMC! favourite at this year’s Buried Alive Film Festival, was screened, as did the Chattanooga Film Festival short, Sydney Clara Brafman’s gory and brief The Only Thing I Love More Than You is Ranch Dressing (2018). Adele Vuko’s The Hitchhiker (2018) was an entertaining blend of female road trip goodwill, real world violence, and well-timed supernatural intervention and was probably the easiest short to enjoy on Day 3. Valerie Barnhart’s Girl in the Hallway (2019) offered a true crime tragedy that powerfully wrestled with guilt, grief, and inaction through pained and worn stop-motion animation. Daniel DelPurgatorio returned to the SFFF with In Sound, We Live Forever (2019), a beautiful short in the agrarian horror mode that finds two young lovers beset by a monstrous killer in the rural American heartland. The short looks gorgeous, contrasting the serenity of its pastoral present against the intimacy and then terror of its past tense soundtrack, and it elegantly pivots into the full present tense to depict a desperate escape and a grim conclusion that posits the monstrous violence of the genre but also a kind of existential smallness that makes its horror seem almost meaningless.

SFFF Day 1 Report – Ghosts of SFFFs Past

The Saskatoon Fantastic Film Festival has reached its landmark tenth iteration this year and Festival Director John Allison and his team have ensured that this is the Fest’s biggest and brightest year yet by expanding it to six days, hosting a Drunken Cinema screening of A Nightmare on Elm Street, hosting another Saturday Morning All You Can Eat Cereal Cartoon Party, and bringing in as special guests director Joe Dante and actress Belinda Balaski for a three film retrospective. The SFFF kicked off with something of a soft-open with another new addition – a five film virtual reality experience held preceding the theatrical film program each weekday. Attendance was sparse on Day 1 so let this be a warning to those content to let the VR program pass them by – miss the SFFF’s Virtual Reality Experience section and you will certainly be missing out on some of the Fest’s most intriguing aspects.

10 Reasons to Get Buried Alive This Weekend – The 2019 Buried Alive Film Festival

The 2019 Buried Alive Film Festival wraps up this weekend at the 7 Stages Theatre in Atlanta, Georgia, and there’s plenty of great features and shorts to see. Over the next two days, BAFF offers five feature films and five short film blocks, plus a Troma-themed burlesque show! With a wealth of cinematic riches, MMC! is here to point the way with ten films to watch out for this Saturday and Sunday!

Check the BAFF schedule for program information to plan your burial and MMC!’s Letterboxd list for the Fest for more reviews!

1. J.R. “Bob” Dobbs and the Church of the Subgenius (Sandy K. Boon, 2019)

One of MMC!’s BAFF favourites, Sandy K. Boon’s J.R. “Bob” Dobbs and the Church of the Subgenius examines the countercultural religion of “two self-proclaimed weirdos in Ft. Worth, Texas” and their crusade against normalcy. This documentary features wonderful interview subjects, including Richard Linklater, Penn Gilette, and Nick Offerman, as well as an array of Bob followers providing thoughtful reflection on 40 years of protecting their slack against the conspiracy. Subgenius is an intriguing companion to another popular 2019 portrait of an alternative religion, Penny Lane’s Hail Satan?, as both the Subgeniuses and The Satanic Temple embrace an absurdly theatrical image, however Boon’s film offers a mature reflection on cult’s complicated history that contrasts Lane’s earnestly sanitized presentation of the Temple as it searches for legitimacy. Preserve your slack and check out J.R. “Bob” Dobbs and the Church of the Subgenius at 2:00 on Sunday!