December, New Titles, 'The Campaign' 'Dark Knight Rises'

CAMPAIGN, THE (2012)
The timing of this political comedy couldn’t be better. Ferrell is Cam Brady, a politician whose mane of commanding, election-winning hair is suspiciously Romney-like. And, like Romney, he’s busted saying something he shouldn’t on tape – here, it’s a filthy, X-rated sex message. That’s a goof-up too far for his shady billionaire backers, who pick a rival to challenge his re-election campaign. And they pick a doozy: oddball lovable loser Marty Huggins.

More New Titles
DARK KNIGHT RISES, THE (2012) DVD/BLU-RAY
SHE MONKEYS (2011)
SLEEPING BEAUTY, THE (2010) R1
GIRLS (2012) SEASON 1
HERE (2011)
PAUL KELLY: STORIES OF ME (2012)
REDFERN NOW (2012)
THIS IS ENGLAND '88 (2011)
LOOK AROUND YOU (2003) SEASON 1 R2/4
FEAR OF A BLACK HAT (2003) R1
HOLLOW CROWN, THE: RICHARD II (2012) R2/4
HOLLOW CROWN, THE: HENRY IV PARTS 1&2 (2012) R2/4
HOLLOW CROWN, THE: HENRY V (2012) R2/4
A NEW LEAF (1971) R1
JACK IRISH: BLACK TIDE (2012) R4
KILLING TIME (2010) COMPLETE SERIES R4
PAGE ONE: INSIDE THE NEW YORK TIMES (2011) R4
SAPPHIRES, THE (2012) R4
VAMPS (2012) R4
FORGIVENESS OF BLOOD, THE (2011) CRITERION
REVENGE OF THE ELECTRIC CAR (2011)
LE CIEL EST A VOUS (1944)
BLACK PANTHER, THE (1977)
LIFE AND DEATH OF COLONEL BLIMP, THE (1943)
LIFE AND DEATH OF COLONEL BLIMP (1943) BLU-RAY
CHERNOBYL DIARIES (2012)
ICE AGE 4: CONTINENTAL DRIFT (2012)
MAGIC MIKE (2012)

November, New Titles, '2 Days In Paris', 'Prometheus'

No, you’ve not got déjà vu. The title might look familiar. But this is French actress and filmmaker  Julie Delpy taking to heart the line that directors make the same film over and over. In 2007, Delpy wrote and directed the spiky romcom ‘2 Days in Paris’, starring as a photographer, Marion, who takes her uptight New Yorker boyfriend back to Paris to meet the parents. Five years later, and Delpy has reversed the roles: la famille is in New York to meet the boyfriend (a new one, Mingus, played by Chris Rock). And it’s more of the same, with diminishing returns: less bite and more screwballish, madcap farce.

Other New Titles

2 DAYS IN NEW YORK (2012)
DARK HORSE (2011)
SNOW WHITE AND THE HUNTSMAN (2012)
UNDERGROUND: THE JULIAN ASSANGE STORY (2012)
A ROYAL AFFAIR (2012)
ELENA (2011)
INTO THE ABYSS (2011) | ON DEATH ROW (2012)
A FANTASTIC FEAR OF EVERYTHING (2012)
REMORQUES (1941)
MAYOR OF THE SUNSET STRIP (2003)
LONESOME (1928)
CIRCUMSTANCE (2011)
INTRUDERS (2011)
TAKE THIS WALTZ (2011)
THREE STOOGES, THE (2012)
WHERE DO WE GO NOW? (2011)
A HAPPY EVENT (2011)
LES VISITEURS DU SOIR (1942) CRITERION
QUADROPHENIA (1979) CRITERION
LUMIERE D'ETE (1943)
CIRCUMSTANCE (2011)
INTRUDERS (2011)
TAKE THIS WALTZ (2011)
THREE STOOGES, THE (2012)
WHERE DO WE GO NOW? (2011)
FOOTNOTE (2011)
TOMBOY (2011)
KABOOM (2010)
CABIN IN THE WOODS, THE (2011)
CHAINED (2012)
JACK IRISH: BAD DEBTS (2012)
MARLEY (2012)
DOLLHOUSE (2009) SEASON 1 DISCS 1-2
DOLLHOUSE (2009) SEASON 1 DISCS 3-4
KEYHOLE (2011)
BLACK PANTHER, THE (1977) BLU-RAY
PROMETHEUS (2012)
PROMETHEUS (2012) BLU-RAY
ROCK OF AGES (2012)
WE WERE HERE (2011)
OBSCURE JAPANESE PORN
DAUGHTERS OF DARKNESS (1971)
ONCE UPON A TIME IN ANATOLIA (2011) REGION 4
SEPARATION (1968)
GET THE GRINGO (2012)
MOONRISE KINGDOM (2012)
NOSTALGIA FOR THE LIGHT (2010)
PRIVATE ROMEO (2011)
REC: GENESIS (2012)
TURIN HORSE, THE (2011)
WHITE VENGEANCE (2011)
WOMAN IN THE FIFTH, THE (2011)
CALL THE MIDWIFE (2012)
PUBERTY BLUES (2012)
INNOCENT SORCERERS (1960)
PRIMROSE PATH (1940)
TAKING FATHER HOME (2006)
STORY OF A CHEAT, THE (1936)
QUADRILLE (1938)
PEARLS OF THE CROWN, THE (1937)
DESIRE (1937)

Wes Anderson's new film is utterly absorbing and a sheer delight. With nothing to dislike about it, its only fault is that it ends at all. A flippant facile soupcon perhaps, but warm blooded, cuddly, rather pink and fluffy, a variety of canapés with no main course, and very saucy for a teenage love story. Filled with too many characters,  some that are hardly drawn, it leaves major actors with almost nothing to do, but who's quibbling.
Its diametrical opposite in contemporary cinema is surely Bela Tarr's latest and final film, the lugubrious 'The Turin Horse' in which a rural farmer is forced to confront the mortality of his faithful beast of burden, which appears to be the same animal the philosopher Nietzsche went mad over.
It was with passionate relief that cinemagoers worldwide greeted the news of Bela Tarr's retirement, and this his last film reminds us all why. One of the great bores of contemporary cinema, Mr Tarr has proved a leading light in the post-modernist movement that aims to drive audiences out of picturehouses by occupying the austere high ground with minimalist scriptless plotless one-eyed studies of inactivity.
 Unlike the cine-revolutionaries of the early Seventies, he has no interest in the erotic, the stylish, the witty or the political. In its place, we endure a morose contemplation of utter banality and non-event. This is what awards committees reward in our time, but Bela has finally wearied of wearying everybody. Perhaps he was supported like Tarkovsky, Sokorov and Tsai Ming Liang by generous state subsidy. Perhaps that support has waned. Without it, work like this could never have got made, and there will be those in the West who admire this staunch dreariness simply because it could never get funded in our ruthless free-markets.

(PS The allusion to Nietzsche's horse in the title is purely tendentious, a meretricious attempt to secure funding.)

More Titles For October
ONCE UPON A TIME IN ANATOLIA (2011) REGION 4
SEPARATION (1968)
GET THE GRINGO (2012)
MOONRISE KINGDOM (2012)
NOSTALGIA FOR THE LIGHT (2010)
PRIVATE ROMEO (2011)
REC: GENESIS (2012)
TURIN HORSE, THE (2011)
WHITE VENGEANCE (2011)
WOMAN IN THE FIFTH, THE (2011)
CALL THE MIDWIFE (2012)
PUBERTY BLUES (2012)
INNOCENT SORCERERS (1960)
PRIMROSE PATH (1940)
TAKING FATHER HOME (2006)
STORY OF A CHEAT, THE (1936)
QUADRILLE (1938)
PEARLS OF THE CROWN, THE (1937)
DESIRE (1937)

September, New Titles, 'Damsels In Distress', 'The Avengers'

'Damsels In Distress'
After directing a trio of highbrow preppy comedies in the ’90s (Metropolitan, Barcelona), Whit Stillman disappeared. Now he’s back with this delightfully deadpan, elegantly anachronistic campus movie. What took him so long? Maybe he’s been waiting for a girl like Greta Gerwig to come along.

In the 28-year-old, the director has found his soulmate: here’s an actress who delivers his hyper-literate dialogue with aplomb, who has an air of having spent her teens listening to Jacques Brel and watching ‘Annie Hall’ on repeat. She stars as Violet, the ringleader of a gang of girls at an East Coast American university whose mission is to make college life more fragrant: they’re not so much mean girls as girls who mean well.

Other New September Titles

ART OF LOVE, THE (2011)
BIRDSONG (2012)
ECSTASY (2011)
LADY, THE (2011)
WAY, THE (2010)
W.E. (2011)
AVENGERS, THE (2012)
AVENGERS, THE (2012) BLU-RAY
JESS + MOSS (2011)
PINA (2011)
SONS OF ANARCHY (2010) SEASON 3
WISH YOU WERE HERE (2012)
DAMSELS IN DISTRESS (2011)
GOLD RUSH, THE (1925)
TUESDAY, AFTER CHRISTMAS (2010)
LIFEBOAT (1944)
DAVID HOLZMAN'S DIARY (1967)
SUCH GOOD FRIENDS (1971)
LONDON TALES (1958 | 1966 | 1976)
WONDERFUL LONDON (1924)
GAME OF THRONES SEASON 1 (2011) DISCS 3-5
SOURCE, THE (2011)
GRAY'S ANATOMY (1996) CRITERION
BULLHEAD (2011)
39 STEPS, THE (1935) CRITERION
RETURN OF THE PRODIGAL SON (1967)
PITFALL (1948)
BREAKING POINT, THE (1950)
CONFLICT (1945)
TOMORROW IS ANOTHER DAY (1951)
INNKEEPERS, THE (2011)
WELCOME TO THE RILEYS (2010)
NOEL FIELDING'S LUXURY COMEDY (2012)
HUNGER GAMES, THE (2012)
HUNGER GAMES, THE (2012) BLU-RAY
PEARLS OF THE DEEP (1966)
AND EVERYTHING IS GOING FINE (2010) CRITERION
INTO THE ABYSS (2011)
SURVIVING LIFE (THEORY AND PRACTICE) (2010)
BEING ELMO: A PUPPETEER'S JOURNEY (2011)
GOODBYE, FIRST LOVE (2011)
HIDDEN FACE, THE (2011)
LE HAVRE (2011)
RAID, THE (2011)
DARD DIVORCE (2007)
AN AMERICAN ROMANCE (1944)

August, New Titles, 'Margaret', 'Salmon Fishing'

MARGARET (2011)

Kenneth Lonergan's long-awaited follow-up to the much-loved 'You Can Count On Me' fails to deliver that film's intelligent study of tenderness between quarrelling brother and sister, but this car-crash moral-maze melodrama has moments of insight and dramatic tension. Warner Brothers dithered over releasing the picture, then delayed the DVD, after difficulties between the studio and the maverick director threatened to shelve the movie. All of which suggests Lonergan should probably have trialled the script as a play off-Broadway, as with his earlier effort, before making a low-budget independent pic. Still, worth a look, but struggles with its portentous moral crux, over-long and for contemporary New York through eyes of morally conflicted twenty-something woman  not a patch on 'Girls'.

SALMON FISHING IN THE YEMEN (2011)
SLAP, THE (2011)
A LITTLE BIT OF HEAVEN (2011)
BATTLESHIP (2012)
LEDGE, THE (2011)
IN DARKNESS (2011)
SPUD (2010)
THIS MUST BE THE PLACE (2011)
CONFIDENCE (1979)
LARKS ON A STRING (1969)
CAPRICIOUS SUMMER (1968)
JOKE, THE (1969)
DAISIES / A REPORT ON THE PARTY AND GUESTS (1966)
RUGGLES OF RED GAP (1935)
LORAX, THE (2012)
NOTHING TO DECLARE
DOWNTON ABBEY SEASON 2 (2011)
PORTLANDIA (2011) SEASON 1
BREAKING UPWARDS (2009)
DEAR LEMON LIMA (2009)
AFRICA UNITED (2010)
BIG YEAR, THE (2011)
FORGIVENESS OF BLOOD, THE (2011)
HAYWIRE (2011)
SOLARIS (1972) BLU-RAY
BHOWANI JUNCTION (1956)
LIFEBOAT (1944) BLU-RAY
RUGGLES OF RED GAP (1935) BLU-RAY
SUMMER INTERLUDE (1951) CRITERION
SUMMER WITH MONIKA (1953) CRITERION
SANAM (2000)
A DANGEROUS METHOD (2011)
BEST EXOTIC MARIGOLD HOTEL, THE (2011)
CORIOLANUS (2011)
50/50 (2011)
HEADHUNTERS (2011)
LIKE CRAZY (2011)
SING YOUR SONG: HARRY BELAFONTE (2011)
CHINATOWN (1974) BLU-RAY

Greatest Films Of All Time, Sight & Sound poll, 2012

Once every ten years, Sight & Sound magazine publishes its critics' poll of the greatest 50 movies of all time. The big shock this year (apart from the inclusion of the wildly over-rated 'In The Mood For Love') is that the total number of critics in the world has swollen in the last decade from 150 to a massive 853. We can only hope that swingeing austerity cuts bring about a reduction in this number before the next poll in 2022.

As usual, Video Dogs is the only place in this wide brown land where you can find all of these titles on DVD, with many now on Blu-ray.
 

1. Vertigo Alfred Hitchcock, 1958 (191 votes)

 2. Citizen Kane Orson Welles, 1941 (157 votes)

 3. Tokyo Story Ozu Yasujiro, 1953 (107 votes)

 4. La Règle du jeu Jean Renoir, 1939 (100 votes)

 5. Sunrise: A Song of Two Humans FW Murnau, 1927 (93 votes)

 6. 2001: A Space Odyssey Stanley Kubrick, 1968 (90 votes)

 7. The Searchers John Ford, 1956 (78 votes)

 8. Man with a Movie Camera Dziga Vertov, 1939 (68 votes)

 9. The Passion of Joan of Arc Carl Dreyer, 1927 (65 votes)

 10. 8½, Federico Fellini, 1960 (64 votes)

 11. Battleship Potemkin Sergei Eisenstein, 1925 (63 votes)

 12. L’Atalante Jean Vigo, 1934 (58 votes)

 13. Breathless Jean-Luc Godard, 1960 (57 votes)

 14. Apocalypse Now Francis Ford Coppola, 1979 (53 votes)

 15. Late Spring, Ozu Yasujiro, 1949 (50 votes)

 16. Au hasard Balthazar Robert Bresson, 1966 (49 votes)

 17= Seven Samurai Kurosawa Akira, 1954 (48 votes)

 17= Persona Ingmar Bergman, 1966 (48 votes)

 19. Mirror Andrei Tarkovsky, 1974 (47 votes)

 20. Singin’ in the Rain Stanley Donen & Gene Kelly, 1951 (46 votes)

 21= L’avventura Michelangelo Antonioni, 1960 (43 votes)

 21= Le Mépris Jean-Luc Godard, 1963 (43 votes)

 21= The Godfather Francis Ford Coppola, 1972 (43 votes)

 24= Ordet Carl Dreyer, 1955 (42 votes)

 24= In the Mood for Love Wong Kar-Wai, 2000 (42 votes)

 26= Rashomon Kurosawa Akira, 1950 (41 votes)

 26= Andrei Rublev Andrei Tarkovsky, 1966 (41 votes)

 28. Mulholland Dr. David Lynch, 2001 (40 votes)

 29= Stalker Andrei Tarkovsky, 1979 (39 votes)

 29= Shoah Claude Lanzmann, 1985 (39 votes)

 31= The Godfather Part II Francis Ford Coppola, 1974 (38 votes)

 31= Taxi Driver Martin Scorsese, 1976 (38 votes)

 33. Bicycle Thieves Vittoria De Sica, 1948 (37 votes)

 34. The General Buster Keaton & Clyde Bruckman, 1926 (35 votes)

 35= Metropolis Fritz Lang, 1927 (34 votes)

 35= Psycho Alfred Hitchcock, 1960 (34 votes)

 35= Jeanne Dielman, 23 quai du Commerce 1080 Bruxelles Chantal Akerman, 1975 (34 votes)

 35= Sátántangó Béla Tarr, 1994 (34 votes)

 39= The 400 Blows François Truffaut, 1959 (33 votes)

 39= La dolce vita Federico Fellini, 1960 (33 votes)

 41. Journey to Italy Roberto Rossellini, 1954 (32 votes)

 42= Pather Panchali Satyajit Ray, 1955 (31 votes)

 42= Some Like It Hot Billy Wilder, 1959 (31 votes)

 42= Gertrud Carl Dreyer, 1964 (31 votes)

 42= Pierrot le fou Jean-Luc Godard, 1965 (31 votes)

 42= Play Time Jacques Tati, 1967 (31 votes)

 42= Close-Up Abbas Kiarostami, 1990 (31 votes)

 48= The Battle of Algiers Gillo Pontecorvo, 1966 (30 votes)

 48= Histoire(s) du cinéma Jean-Luc Godard, 1998 (30 votes)

 50= City Lights Charlie Chaplin, 1931 (29 votes)

 50= Ugetsu monogatari Mizoguchi Kenji, 1953 (29 votes)

 50= La Jetée Chris Marker, 1962 (29 votes)

Chris Marker, 1921-2012

Chris Marker was a French writer, photographer, documentary film director, multimedia artist and film essayist. His best known films are La jetée, A Grin Without a Cat, Sans Soleil and AK, an essay film on the Japanese filmmaker Akira Kurosawa.
An enigmatic writer, photographer, filmmaker and multimedia artist who pioneered the flexible hybrid form known as the essay film, he died on Sunday in Paris. He was 91.

Chris Marker, left, with Alain Resnais in 1954

Helene Chatelain in 'La Jetee'

Made entirely of still images, save for one brief moving sequence of a woman closing her eyes, La Jetee is Marker's best-known film: set in Paris after World War III it was to become the basis for Terry Gilliam's 'Twelve Monkeys'.

A transmedia artist long before the term was coined, Mr. Marker resisted categorization throughout his career; he once referred to “career” as “that despicable word.”

 In Sans Soleil (Sunless, 1983), a fictional cameraman (a Marker surrogate) tries to make sense of the cultural dislocation he feels in Japan, West Africa and Iceland.

More than 20 years after his first film on the subject, and after the fall of Soviet communism, Marker returned to Medvedkin in Le Tombeau d'Alexandre (The Last Bolshevik, 1992). The film is a series of video letters to Medvedkin (who died in 1989) and provides a broader, incisive meditation on the nature of reality, fiction, art, ideology and history.

At VIDEODOGS you can find all these Marke films, as well as 'A Grin Without A Cat' and  'A Day In The Life Of Arseny Arsenivitch' on Tarkovsky. See all titles here.