CRITERION CORNER GIVEAWAY!!!!
hey there. it’s been a while since i’ve randomly given stuff away, and that doesn’t jive well with my philosophy that love and / or readership should be shamelessly bought. so in honor of the holiday season - and to make up for lost time / clear my shelf of some extra stuff i’ve got lying around - i thought i’d throw the biggest Criterion Corner giveaway yet.
The Prize:
- DVD of Sidney Lumet’s 12 ANGRY MEN!
- Blu-ray of Claude Chabrol’s LES COUSINS!
- 1 DVD box set of Krzysztof Kieslowski’s THREE COLORS! (opened but never watched and in mint condition… long story)
- 1 MYSTERY DVD!!!! (maybe a Criterion film, maybe just something I want to share with a stranger. definitely previously loved).
TO ENTER: just “like” and / or Re-blog this post. each note will count as a separate entry, so every fellow blogger can therefore submit a maximum total of 2 entries.
giveaway will be closed at 12 P.M. EST on Friday, 12/3/2011. 1 winner will be randomly selected from the notes. so the odds should be okay if not super awesome, but someone’s gonna get some great stuff for nothing.
good luck, and thanks so, so much for reading the blog and my Criterion Corner column on movies.com!
CRITERION GIVEAWAY!!!
KURONEKO (dir. Kaneto Shindo) 1968.
hey there, party people, it’s the first friday of the month and you know what that means… absolutely nothing, because i stick to a schedule about as well as Terrence Malick sticks to, um, a schedule, but enough with the totally forced comparisons, let’s give some free stuff away, shall we?
this month’s giveaway is… wait for it… or just look at the picture above that you’ve obviously already seen… Kaneto Shindo’s giddy / spooky / cat-tastic ghost story, KURONEKO! i added the exclamation point, but this is a movie in which classical filmmaking, wire-fu, and animatronic cat paws co-exist, often within the same shot… so, yeah, i’ll drop some exclamation points wherever i damn well please, thank you ve!!ry m!uch.
TO ENTER, RE-BLOG AND / OR “LIKE” THIS POST (you get entered once for each action, so feel free to go nuts).
as usual i’ll pick a winner at random from the notes on Monday morning, and the dvd or blu-ray (your choice) will be sent to you directly from amazon on the day of the disc’s release, 10/18. good luck!
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President Barack Obama • tugging on some low-hanging fruit from the GOP debates. Good timing, bro. (via zainyk) Reasons I love Obama number 394. |
CRITERION CORNER GIVEAWAY: SEPTEMBER EDITION
this month’s prize: a dvd or blu-ray (winner’s choice) of CARLOS!!!!
to enter, all you have to do is re-blog this post. that’s it. on monday, i’ll randomly declare a winner from the re-bloggers / re-tweeters, and you’ll receive your dvd or blu-ray at the end of the month directly from Amazon when it’s released.
the same deal is going with RTs of a similar Criterion Corner Tweet, so RT that if you want to double your already not too-shabby odds of winning.
fun? fun. totally shameless… sure, but everybody wins, and - most of all - it helps to ensure that a bunch of people are aggressively spreading the word about how one of the best films of 2010 is due for an imminent Criterion release and that everyone should be getting jaaazzzzzzeeed! so get… doing whatever it is that you feel like you want do in this situation. awesome? awesome.
okay, toodles.
“Film-making encompasses everything, from tricking people into investing in it, to putting on the show, to trying to distill down to moments in time, and ape reality but send this other message. It’s got everything. When I was a kid I loved to draw, and I loved my electric football sets, and I painted little things and made sculptures and did matte painting and comic books and illustrated stuff, and took pictures, had a darkroom, loved to tape-record stuff. It’s all of that. It’s not having to grow up. It’s four-dimensional chess, it’s strategy, and it’s being painfully honest, and unbelievably deceitful, and everything in between.”
David Fincher, celebrating his 49th birthday today.
Books I Read in 2011
25. Franny and Zooey by J.D. Salinger
It’s been quite a while since I’ve read The Catcher in the Rye, a book that didn’t grab me as an impressionable teen the way it did others, but before I give that novel a much-needed reassessment I opted to read this diptych of short stories. Man, now I can’t wait to give Salinger another shot. A philosophical treatise presented in completely human terms that examines the notions of family, social maladjustment and the way that knowledge only ever seems to make people feel less in touch with the rest of the world. A blithely funny work, yet it imperceptibly transitions into such poignant warmth that the tendency for these prodigies to speak to each other in prepared sermons feels completely human. Grade: A
Books Read in 2011:
24. Dubliners by James Joyce
A bit odd that I tackled Ulysses before this, but even having read the complete portrait of Dublin’s listlessness and cultural stagnation, these sketches are no less revealing or affecting. The sense of irony in these stories is subtle but builds until it overwhelms, and that, combined with the downbeat and quietly macabre epiphanies (for either the characters or readers) that end the stories made me think of a more gentle and holistic version of Flannery O’Connor. I don’t know what to say about “The Dead” that hasn’t already been said, but my word what a powerful piece of work. As profound and epic as a full-length novel.
Happiest of birthdays to Satchmo himself, Mr. Louis Armstrong, who would have been 110 today. Armstrong himself lived his whole life believing, or at least convincing others, that he was born July 4, 1900, but it’s somehow fitting that the man who took the nation’s birthday for his own would really be born at the start of August, just like America. And his decision to place himself at the start of a new century is indicative of how his chosen profession can be demarcated into the periods Before Louis and Anno Satch.
To commemorate the event, I wrote a brief rundown of essential albums and recordings by the late maestro for Deep South Magazine. That post is here. I also reviewed Ricky Riccardi’s superlative overview of Armstrong’s later years, “What a Wonderful World” here. Happy birthday Pops. There ain’t nobody like you.
CONTEST!!!
Prize: A DVD or Blu-Ray of Lee Chang-dong’s SECRET SUNSHINE (the choice is yours)
so the Criterion Corner blog is on the precipice of hitting a neat milestone of some kind, and i want to express my gratitude to all the folks out there who’ve taken the time to share in the site (and possibly read the cinematical / movies.com columns, for which this site serves as a supplement). the blog has quickly become a reliably fun and rewarding experience for me, and that certainly wouldn’t be the case if i felt as though i were launching all this stuff into the void. so as my way of saying thanks and continuing a proud tradition of shameless self-promoting (and also drawing attention to a life-altering masterpiece i fear could be lost in the Criterion shuffle), i’m giving out a copy of Lee Chang-dong’s SECRET SUNSHINE!
trust me, you want this.
TO ENTER: JUST RE-BLOG THIS POST. i’ll pick a random re-blogger at midnight on the morning of Friday, 8/5/2011 and message them for details. Secret Sunshine will be released on 8/23/2011, and the disc will be mailed off shortly thereafter.
and once more, with feeling: THANK YOU. - David
Simply one of the best movies of modern years. If I win I will hug everyone.
Books Read in 2011:
23. The Age of Innocence — Edith Wharton
I remember the film being an exercise in utter heartbreak (it makes the best, most devastating double-bill with Wong Kar-Wai’s In the Mood For Love), but the book struck me with its Austen-esque humor of finely observed social absurdity. I must say, though, that I wasn’t as affected by Wharton’s prose as I was by Scorsese’s lens, but there were still times when her excellent writing brought out the agony of Newland Archer as he struggles with the lie that is his existence. I greatly enjoyed the book, though not for the reasons I expected, and I shall have to sample more of Wharton’s writing in the near future.
Books Read in 2011:
22. What a Wonderful World — Ricky Riccardi
Has all the passion and conviction of Paul Tingen’s book on late-period Miles without the dubious tangents. Riccardi moves chronologically but separates issues of Louis’ music from his racial perception, and Riccardi never talks about any one period in Armstrong’s life without tying it to the rest. Wonderfully descriptive language brings Armstrong’s music off the pages, while his strongly argued consideration of Satch as a racial pioneer is convincing despite a few questionable leaps. I was already an Armstrong fan, but this sent me scurrying to get more Satch. Thank heavens UMG is about to put out a 10-CD behemoth that is LONG overdue to give this man his proper respect.
Books Read in 2011:
21. The Lost World — Michael Crichton
Subtract the tension, wonder and cinematic quality of its predecessor, stretch the endless pseudo-scientific, half-assed philosophy into book length, serve tepid for maximum tedium. Reading Crichton expound upon evolutionary and doomsday theory is like listening to weathermen discuss global warming: their tangential relation to the issue at hand is irrelevant, specious and easily discarded. What a miserable slog this book is; I should have known, given what little fondness I had for it even as a kid, but I wasn’t expecting anything this bad. In comparison, Spielberg’s film of it, his worst by a fair margin, almost seems a masterpiece.
2011 Films Seen:
31. Captain America: The First Avenger — Joe Johnston
My biggest surprise at the multiplex since Rango. Johnston finally puts that education he got as an art director under George Lucas and Steven Spielberg to good use, using CGI artfully to make a grandiose world with a straight face. Chris Evans emerges, 10 years belatedly, a star, and Hayley Atwell is SUPERB as Peggy Carter, the first totally independent woman in a male-centric superhero film that I can recall. Even her romance with the Cap does not undermine her strength. Granted, Red Skull makes for an unimpressive villain despite his super strength/über-Nazi cred, but finally, FINALLY, we get an origin story that digs not merely into how a hero comes into being but who that person really is. Also, it’s camp done right. Full review here. Grade: B+
