Top 10 Film Restorations / Reissues Of The Aughts
29 November 2009
It’s that time of decade again! All lists themselves start off with a list (of criteria). I’ve expanded the sense of a restoration / reissue to included films that were restored whether major or minor, re-released to theatres with a restored or new print, or reissued on home video after being inaccessible or accessible only in poorer versions for an extended period. The dates refer to the year of re-release. Almost all should be available on DVD (or will be soon)… unless, of course, they’ve gone out of print again. Check them out and enjoy them while you can!
10. Metropolis (2009)
I suppose this has to be included because of the cultural importance of the discovery of new footage (and the corresponding obsession about finding the “complete” film), but I have to rank it last because Metropolis has just had too many most-complete-restorations. This position also represents many of the honorable mentions below which, for the most part, while important films or impressive restorations that were a long time coming, are ones that have not lacked critical acclaim/demand or previous restorations/reissues over the years.
9. The Monster Squad (2009)
It’s about time. My 20 year old VHS copy ain’t doing too good.
8. The Leopard (2004)
First, a display of the powerful toolset that home video can embody. The DVD release includes the original Italian version of the film and the dubbed, edited American version for comparison’s sake, as well as a whole bevy of information/education materials. Second, a fascinating quiet reworking of the idea of an epic film in the story of a man who participates in great historical events but ultimately shrugs at his role while acknowledging that history is much larger than one person. For all the films that pretend to a bottom up view of events by telling the story of an individual within an epic event, The Leopard does it more truly by avoidance of raising the individual’s importance to a level on par with that of those events.
7. King Kong (2005) / Baby Face (2006)
Mark these under Know Your Film History, Know Your Cultural History. The restored pre-censor versions of these films help defray the myth that the past was a more innocent, less savvy time. Conversely, they are also a lesson in the use of restraint and suggestion in story-telling that very well could have created a more engaged, better “reading” audience even at the level of B movies. On top of this are all the pretty faces: Barbara Stanwyck, Fay Wray, and a beautifully expressive King Kong. Outside of what Peter Jackson and Andy Serkis have done together, I really haven’t seen any digital f/x that create the same emotion and attachment as Willis O’Brien was able to instill in his stop motion work. What was a surprise revelation in the 16mm print I first saw this as captured the emotional core of my monkey brain in the restoration.
6. 36th Chamber of Shaolin (2007)
Not the first kung fu movie, but could be considered the ultimate expression of the genre that has spawned so many more and influenced countless other genres… and one of the ur texts for the Wu Tang Clan to boot! There’s something to the social connection made through the collective memory of poorly dubbed/translated kung fu movies – something that can run through Zucker-Abrahams-Zucker to RZA-ODB-GZA is pretty powerful – but being able to see a clean print in the original language takes the film out of the realm of grindhouse sensibility and easy parody and into its proper place as a well made studio film that engages a long cultural history in new ways.
5. The Girl Can’t Help It (2006)
Frank Tashlin has had a long delayed, well deserved renaissance of late with the restoration or reissue of much of his oeuvre. He has always been one of those people who created images that everyone knows, but no one knows where they came from or who made them. Like a Gene Krupa album, a Raymond Chandler novel, or EC Comics, Tashlin belies the belief that the 50s was a boring, culturally monolithic period without anything odd or dark or inventive being produced in the mainstream. Despite the comedy and the early rock music, I watched it with a tinge of sadness, knowing that the quality/style of color captured on film then will probably never be reached again.
4. Yakuza Papers (2004 American release)
I could have chosen any number of Japanese genre crime flicks that have finally been released stateside the past few years, but there’s something about the extent and cultural signifiers in this series that struck a chord in me. The way the crime syndicates were born out of the postwar upheaval. The old world meets new world (in the same world) with the mix of gangster cool and more traditional tattooing and Japanese garb. The way guns are used or thought of in a very different way than in American movies, re-imbuing them with the dangerous power that they hold, but also the reality that a single bullet (or even more poorly placed ones) will not kill someone immediately. And finally unmasking the engrained conception that the Japanese are all unfailingly polite businesspeople who don’t have any violence or upheaval in their society. It maybe doesn’t match up to The Godfather in our minds because it doesn’t feed our love of high melodrama, but the series certainly equally creates a full world of events and characters that reflect the wider aspects of society.
3. I Am Cuba (2005 restoration)
I still feel my jaw drop open in awe when I think about the stunning tracking shot through a rooftop cigar rolling workshop, out a window, floating several stories above the street and then gliding down amidst a crowd at street level. More so in the pre-digital days, there is a daring confrontation to keeping the camera rolling through a long take. Someone like Cassavetes uses these shots to expose a dramatic/emotional realism, forcing the viewer to watch as conversations play out through tension and mundanity. Kalatozov uses it to capture a social/temporal realism – this is happening here while this other thing is happening here – while also displaying a technical virtuosity/inventiveness that amazes.
2. WR: Mysteries of the Organism (2007)
Wow. I dragged a friend along to this in the theatre without giving much explanation of the film, just that it was some odd Yugoslavian movie from the 70s that was partly a documentary about a new agey / cultish doctor. That was pretty much all I knew about it too because I tend to only skim reviews so I keep a film a little fresh for first viewing. We arrived a little late to the theatre and walked in during the opening minutes… to the image of three naked people cracking open eggs and letting the raw egg run through their hands in an orgyish fashion. It just keeps going from there. An audacious mix of genres peppered with a dry black humor, it’s like an Eastern Bloc version of a Russ Myer movie. Also captures a cultural moment and ideology that is quickly succumbing to nostalgia and lingering mis-perceptions.
1. Killer of Sheep (2007)
Far and away the best of this decade and would have been stiff competition for many others. Simply one of the all-time greats. Precious is a pale derivative of Burnett’s unpacking of the ups and downs of everyday life that accompany the numbing pressures and failures of poverty. Even the heavy-handed flights of fancy in Precious are bettered by the almost surreal set pieces (the road trip that goes nowhere) and images (just try to get the image of the dog-masked girl or of the slaughterhouse out of your head) that are both original but also fit into the long history of film. I was so shaken after seeing the restored print that I had to walk home from Manhattan to Brooklyn just to soothe my emotions.
Honorable Mention: Sweet Sweetback’s Baadasssss Song; The Red Shoes; The Exiles; A Woman Under the Influence; The King and I; Once Upon a Time in America; The Sorrow and The Pity
— Joshua Ranger
Thanks For The Memories
23 November 2009
Like the person who always wants to order last at a restaurant because they haven’t made up their mind yet, I always get stuck at the dinner table on Thanksgiving trying to think up something that’s the right blend of witty and sweet for the “I’m thankful for…” round robin. It never quite comes out right (but then again, neither does the turkey), so I thought I might give it a little forethought this year by considering what I’m thankful for this past year in the archiving & preservation world.
I had a few thoughts running through my mind on this one (which I suppose is a virtual tidal wave of action compared to normal). I could go culturally significant and choose something like The Red Shoes restoration or the discovery of missing footage from Metropolis. Or I could go nostalgic route and choose the release of Nirvana Live at Reading (can you guess my age?). Or I could go the mind-blowingly amazing route: There have been some advancement on the Leon-Scott front, but nothing will beat experiencing the premiere of the earliest known sound recordings at the ARSC conference in 2008.
But, no, it’s Thanksgiving; the sentimental always wins out on holidays. So I’ll have to go with the transfers my wife and I had made of some of her dad’s family’s 8mm home movies through the Standby Program here in New York. I’m thankful there are still companies doing quality work in this area, and I’m thankful for having the ability to make these films and memories accessible again. I don’t think the family had even watched the films when they were first developed, but they watched the transfers over and over and over again when we gave them to her dad. To be able to see old friends, old family members who have passed, and to share the stories behind the images was a special moment.
More special than seeing Kurt Cobain wheeled out on stage in a hospital gown? We’ll have to let history decide that one, but at least now the home movies corner has more of a fighting chance.
— Joshua Ranger
Everything, Everywhere
18 November 2009
“Do we really need to save everything from everybody?”
In the first part of November 12th’s episode of Soundcheck broadcast on WNYC in New York (“Vintage Soul Gets a Second Wind”), host John Schaefer spoke with Ben Greenman of The New Yorker and soul singer/producer Syl Johnson about the current (micro) trend in reissuing obscure soul-music albums from the 1950s-70s. Many of these mildly popular, regionally popular, or not at all popular performers have begun to tour again or play one-off shows nationally and internationally based on the new found interest in their work.
As discussed in the segment from the show below , and as I have personally witnessed at some concerts in Brooklyn, these reissues and concerts are most popular among a younger, primarily white crowd. The concerts might be at a predominantly African-American supper club, or maybe at a venue where The Mountain Goats sold out the night before. Whichever the case, it’s the same crowd trekking around the city to check out the latest soul revival, a group of 20 and 30 somethings grooving to the live beat of 60 or 70 somethings who haven’t performed in perhaps 30 years.
Just like the music itself, the interested people are regionally isolated and esoteric. Schaefer and Greenman put forth that this seems to be the province mostly of the audiophile or the culturally astute youth who is looking for more and more obscure things to satisfy that need for something “new.” More generously, Syl Johnson posits that the desire comes from a curious mind seeking further education. This esoteric soul music has been widely used for samples and riffs and inspiration in more contemporary or more popular music. Johnson feels that modern listeners are going back to discover the original source of the bass line or vocal sample in a rap song because they want to better know the history or culture of the music.
As critics, Schaefer and Greenman worry over this issue because their work is concerned with analysis, cultural distinction, and trying to balance their assessment of what is considered a quality work now versus what will be considered a quality work for generations to come. This side of their work has to stand outside of fads, momentary revivals, and the purely emotional. As a musician, Johnson un-worries the issue because, hey, people are listening to the music, and that’s great. His work is being acknowledged and valued again (or finally).
What unites the two streams, however, is the love of the music. Schaefer begins to question whether we really should save everything, but steps back quickly because, even if it’s no James Brown, it’s still good music. As a critic there might be a distinction there, but as a music lover the emotional attachment can take hold. What also unties the two streams is the Archive. It is the preserved work in an archive that enables the access, the rediscovery, the education, and the reconnection with the past. We strive toward the ideal of saving everything because we want to provide that kind of access to whomever, whenever.
As archivists, what we might take from this is that our link in the cultural chain can often be overlooked. As in the case of the soul revival, the discussion of such cultural events are often framed in terms of the end result, accessible production: the documentary that uses archival footage, the digitally remastered CD, the restored print of The Godfather screening at Film Forum.
The press around these kinds of releases tends to focus on the original creators or new producer/distributor, not the source for the production. The re-issue of an album, or the release of a DVD, or the creation of a YouTube video are not the preservation of the material, they are result of archiving and preservation work and should not be confused with those efforts. As this review of the Eccentric Soul Review in the Times describes it, the record labels “[delve] into obscure archives for meticulously researched reissues.” The archives are there, holding the material that is then being exploited by others.
Access is good. Access is the goal. Reissues and such perhaps bring more awareness and financial support to the source collection, but access and use of materials is the benefit of preservation, and that effort should be recognized as integral to the cultural productions that feeds from our work.
— Joshua Ranger
Winds Of Change
13 November 2009
I caught this Tweet from Archive Alive about a new collaborative website for collecting media related to the Berlin Wall (www.wir-waren-so-frei.de). November 9th was the 20th anniversary of the fall of the Wall, a memory marker I wasn’t aware was happening until suddenly being inundated with news stories the other day. The site itself is in German, but that doesn’t take away from the great use of images, video, mapping software, and other kinds of web-based functionality that organize, track, and give a fuller sense of the history around the Berlin Wall and Germany at the time. The topic (and the forgotten significance of this date) really got me thinking about what a seminal event that was for millions of people at the time, but also how it’s really a touchstone event for my own feelings about history, memory, and the importance of archives.
It’s difficult to recall now, but growing up at the tail end of the Cold War was kind of a fearful time. I did not hate the Soviets or communists — they were just people, living their lives like everyone else — but I knew plenty of people who did, and there was a constant dread hanging in the air that some leader on either side could just lose it at any minute and utterly destroy the whole world. Maybe it was because I was young, and maybe children today feel that same way, but I have a very specific memory-feeling associated with that period that I don’t have now.
Staying out of any ideological argument over the superior politico-economic system or any kind of post-facto Ostalgie, it seems difficult to argue that the Berlin Wall was a good thing. Denying freedom of movement, communication, and open access cannot be good for a society.
I saw the ecstatic reactions on the news in Berlin and the Eastern Bloc as these shackles were left to fall open, but the magnitude of the reaction was really brought home while I was far away from home, living in Pardubice, Czech Republic in 1997-98. I listened to stories from my landlords who had lived under both Nazi occupation and Communism about the ways they learned to survive; from friends who had had educations and careers derailed because of petty party politics; from the people who looked at my passport with wonder not necessarily because they loved America, but because it represented the ability to move and live freely in the world; and finally from the people who just wanted a chance to share their story with someone. The depth of the stories and emotions really opened my provincial Oregon eyes.
What shocked me equally was the richness of eastern European history – even of recent vintage – that I had not been taught while growing up, simply because we did not deign to study the enemy. Some shackles are much less noticeable, I suppose.
So here we are now, at this anniversary of great world and personal import: Possibilities opened up to millions, a decrease in fear and turmoil, and possibilities & knowledge opened up even to we who thought we already had them all. And yet, it took a Twitter post on some online images for me to even remember any of this. The memories are there, filed away, but the context and the lines of access fade.
This makes me consider my siblings and their generation. Not much younger than I am, but just enough that it seems they have no concept of these historical events that have caused such strong feelings in me. To them it may just be the last 10 pages of a history book, some funny hairdos and clothes, or some bad pop music.
How do we maintain the intangible? The unreliable? The question then becomes not just one of the persistence of an object, but also of the associated stories and memories, the unwritten annotations that provide added context and interpretation.
But perhaps what feels like grasping at fluttering memories is not so problematic as it seems. Perhaps there is a lesson here on the symbiotic relationship between image/sound and memory. One may fret about the fading of memories, but the visual and aural prompts created by media reach deep into the brain like the way that tastes and smells do. This is not only why we need to preserve audiovisual materials, but also why we need to have ways to access and use them. It’s how wir werden frei bleiben (we will remain free).
—Joshua Ranger
Enhancements Are “Sexy” – Efficiencies Are Mundane
1 November 2009
While an underlying premise of OTR is that the resources freed by efficiencies can be redirected towards enhancements, it is tempting—as our group has done—to recommend many more enhancements than efficiencies. Enhancements are “sexy;” efficiencies are mundane.
