Pointing out the fact that the Criterion Collection is releasing new DVD classics is kinda akin to noting that the sun has risen.
The achingly tasteful DVD revival company is constantly releasing fantastic masterworks for budding and longtime cinephiles, but their recent batch of announcements for February 2008 have really caught our eye.
First off is Jean-Luc Godard’s vibrantly colorful tenth feature, “Pierrot le Fou” (Peter The Madman), released between “Alphaville” and “Masculin, féminin,” in his 1965 peak, that’s a lovers on the run road story not unlike his classic, “Breathless” (albeit contemporized with technicolor splashes). Criterion calls it “a stylish mash-up of consumerist satire, politics, and comic-book aesthetics, as well as a violent, zigzag tale of, as Godard called them, ‘the last romantic couple.’
All we know is that it’s incredible and one of his last great New Wave period films before he began loosing his footing with the over-didactic late-60s politicized films, “La Chinoise” (a curious, but laborious affair) and “Weekend” (which is arguably still classic, but starts to show taxing wear and tear on the audience’s patience; no we’re not arguing the amazing tracking shots).
Next up is Bernardo Bertolucci’s classic and Oscar-dominating 1987 apex, “The Last Emperor” which won every academy award it was nominated for that year (all nine of them). The epic about the soon-to-fall Qing dynasty in China was masterfully shot by legendary cinematographer Vittorio Storaro (who we’ve gone on about at length so much you’d figure we’d want to marry him already). The CC folks call it, “an intimate character study of one man reconciling personal responsibility and political legacy” (it’s also a whopping 4 disc set; talk about comprehensive).
Lastly, and Joe Strummer fans will want to take note is the release of idiosyncratic British director, Alex Cox’s (of “Repo Man” and “Sid & Nancy” fame) 1987 hallucinatory acid-western, “Walker” that’s never been readily avaiable on DVD. As noted, the ex-Clash frontman composed the Spanish mariachi/spaghetti western flavored score to the entire film (you can preview all of it at Amazon) and had a blink and you’ll miss it cameo in the film. This one we’ve never seen and we’re psyched it’s finally going to be on DVD (the soundtrack was re-released by Astralwerks in 2005).
“Walker” was the first full score Strummer ever composed having only written two songs for “Sid & Nancy” in 1986 during his “wilderness period” where all he did was occasionally act and score in films (while the world kept waiting for him to put out some post-Clash masterpiece that would never come). Cox’s 1987 film “Straight To Hell” (which also featured Courtney Love and director Jim Jarmusch) was named after the Clash song, and Strummer starred in the film and composed another two original songs for it.
Strummer’s other notable acting roles during this period was as an Elvis composite in Jarmusch’s 1989 flick “Mystery Train” and a quick cameo as a street thug in Martin Scorsese’s underrated 1983 comedy “The King Of Comedy” (Scorsese was a vocal Clash fan and dedicated “Taxi Driver” to their energy according to his recent testimonial in the “Joe Strummer: The Future Is Unwritten” documentary by Julien Temple).