killer of sheep Tagged Articles at Cinematical

My pick of the week is Charles Burnett's Killer of Sheep. Our own Jeffrey M. Anderson declared: "There's no question that it belongs in the canon of greatest American movies." As he pointed out, though, the film "has perhaps been more written about and appreciated than actually seen." Now we can all see it. The two-disk special edition DVD from New Yorker Video includes an audio commentary by Burnett and Richard Peña, two versions of Burnett's feature film My Brother's Wedding, four shorts (three rediscovered and one new) and cast reunion video.

Hearts of Darkness: A Filmmaker's Apocalypse , directed by Fax Bahr and George Hickenlooper, stirred up controversy when Hickenlooper said that neither he nor Bahr were consulted on the DVD version of their documentary about the making of Francis Ford Coppola's Apocalypse Now. Jeffrey Wells of Hollywood Elsewhere calls it "one of the best making-of-a-famous-movie docs ever made," but also says that the new DVD from Paramount Home Video "looks like a VHS tape. ... No remastering, tweaking or upgrading ... brilliant!" Sounds like a rental to me. The DVD includes Eleanor Coppola's doc Coda: Thirty Years Later, which will also be screening on cable next month -- see Monika Bartyzel's story for more on that.

Cinematical's James Rocchi saw Gary Hustwit's Helvetica at SXSW and described it as "one of the most intellectually exciting, stimulating, warm-hearted and best-made independent documentaries I've seen in a long time." The DVD includes 95 additional minutes of interviews. Another festival favorite, So Yong Kim's In Between Days (pictured), about a teenage girl dealing with first-time romantic feelings for her "best and only" friend, hits DVD with a stills gallery and a conversation with the director and co-writer/producer Bradley Rust.

In her review Jette Kernion said she was "not a rabid [Werner] Herzog fan, which may actually be the reason why I liked his latest film, Rescue Dawn, as much as I did." The DVD includes commentary by Herzog, deleted scenes, and a "making of" featurette. Luc Besson's Angel-A did not cause much stir when it was released theatrically earlier this year, but I've always been fascinated by the director. The DVD has a "making of" feature.

Does the end-of-the-year overload of prestige pictures and big festivals hurt more movies than it helps? What are a few smaller movies that, while wonderful, might get overlooked in the Oscar rush? And what's coming up for the end of October to chill and haunt moviegoers around Halloween time? Joining James on The Rocchi Review this week to talk about those questions and much more is Time Out New York film critic David Fear. You can download the entire podcast right here -- and we hope you enjoy.

Charles Burnett's Killer of Sheep (1977) has perhaps been more written about and appreciated than actually seen. By now there's no question that it belongs in the canon of greatest American movies. And now that the problem of song rights has been resolved, people can finally see it. Burnett had included a selection of music in the film ranging from Dinah Washington to Paul Robeson, without securing the rights. Thirty years later, all of these issues have been cleared up and UCLA has struck a new, 35mm print to be officially released in U.S. theaters for the first time. (The distributor, Milestone, will follow with a DVD release of this and other rare Burnett films.)

Seeing the film on the big screen in 2007, I can report that, yes Virginia, it's that good. If this film had been more widely available, it would have a secure place not only as the greatest achievement in African-American cinema but also as one of the great achievements in cinema, period. Burnett made the film for a reported $10,000 (mostly grant money) for his master's thesis at UCLA. It received an award at the Berlin Film Festival and was selected in 1990 for the second batch of 25 films in the Library of Congress' National Film Registry. I once heard a story about how a UCLA film professor grabbed a print of the film from the school's archive and showed it to his classroom full of cocky, know-it-all students -- effectively silencing them.

Next week, the phenomenal Killer of Sheep opens, a 1977 movie at last hitting the theaters in the larger markets in the US. Killer of Sheep demonstrates the importance of director/writer Charles Burnett as both an independent filmmaker and an American artist. An African-American artist, to add that part of it, since well-meaning critics like to give Burnett the distinction of being the best African-American filmmaker ever. It's a new century, so let's dispense with such categorization. Burnett's qualities are more universal than parochial. True, his films are loaded with specific meanings that elude the white viewer. I still remember the gasp of shock a lady friend made when she saw a scene in To Sleep With Anger; her family was Creole from north Texas, and so she knew how tremendously disrespectful it was when a little boy let a broom touch the feet of Danny Glover's Harry.

What could be worst that to try to sweep someone away as if they were dust? And in Killer of Sheep, like To Sleep With Anger, the word "drylongso" comes up; meaning nothing has changed, probably nothing will ever change. And sometimes the word means "as if everything were normal." ("I can't just chase him out, drylongso."). Now, as Albert Brooks said in Real Life, "I'm not black, nor do I claim to be." I don't get it all, but I insist Burnett is too big to be bound by identity politics. He's a filmmaker for the world, with Ozu's ability to depict the tender side of disappointment, and--in Killer of Sheep, he has Jean Vigo's dreamy silvery imagery conveying the hopeless longing for elsewhere.

2007 is now one-third over, and four movies have broken $100 million: 300, Wild Hogs, Ghost Rider and Blades of Glory. Eddie Murphy's Norbit is creeping up on a $100 million score as well. Only Blades of Glory is interesting in the slightest. It's a poorly-directed, uneven comedy, but with plenty of laughs, all thanks to Will Ferrell. I guess I could waste time wondering why people are paying good money to see these so-called movies, but the fact remains that they all opened on more than 3000 screens, and were available for just about everyone in the country to see.

Despite these duds, the year in movies hasn't been so bad so far. I'd rather focus on some of the year's really good entries, the ones that will probably be forgotten eight months from now when the list and awards season starts all over again. I haven't been able to see it yet, but Syndromes and a Century (1 screen) from Thai director Apichatpong Weerasethakul should be enlightening. His Mysterious Object at Noon (2000), a beautiful combination of documentary and storytelling, is on my personal list of the best films of the past ten years. His amazing Blissfully Yours (2002), among other things, rolled the credits right in the middle of the movie, and his Tropical Malady (2005) had a gay romance far more tender and engrossing than the more widely celebrated Brokeback Mountain.

Made in 1969, Jean-Pierre Melville's Army of Shadows received its official United States theatrical debut in 2006, and many critics named it one of the best films of the year. Now Charles Burnett's Killer of Sheep (1977) could be poised to do the same in 2007. Milestone Films will debut the film at the 2007 Berlin Film Festival, followed by U.S. premieres in New York at the IFC Center on March 30 and in Los Angeles at the Nuart Theatre on April 6, according to a press release issued by the company.

Selected by the Library of Congress as one of the first 100 films in the National Film Registry, Killer of Sheep is arguably one of the two or three most important African-American features in history, and yet it has been little seen since its completion. The film tells the story of Stan (Henry G. Sanders), a Watts resident who works in a slaughterhouse. With little hope for the future, Stan finds beauty in the small things of everyday life.

Though critics have called him the most significant African-American filmmaker in history, Burnett's career has often fallen off the radar. Two of his biggest films, To Sleep with Anger (1990), starring Danny Glover, and The Glass Shield (1995), with Ice Cube and Lori Petty, suffered from bad distribution and advertising. In recent years, he has found slightly steadier work in television; he contributed an episode to the 2003 mini-series "The Blues," which also featured episodes by Clint Eastwood and Martin Scorsese.

Even so, Burnett is reportedly at work on a new film, Nujoma: Where Others Wavered, shooting in Africa. In addition to Killer of Sheep, Milestone is also releasing Burnett's feature My Brother's Wedding (1983) and three short films, Several Friends (1969), The Horse (1973) and When It Rains (1995), to selected theaters. A DVD box set will follow in the fall.