Because there’s nothing like waiting until the last minute to do some holiday shopping, we’ve compiled this handy-dandy shopping guide to the best DVDs of 2008 that you can use now, or wait until the dust settles and clean up with any cash that Santa or Hanukkah Harry happened to leave you. It’s broken down by the person you’ll be shopping for to make things easier, even if that person happens to be yourself.

When noted, we’ve picked the Blu-ray version over the standard definition, because we try to be all about 1080p and other technical terms whenever possible. But, the regular versions are just fine as well. Still, it’s true what they say: once you go HD you’ll never go back.

…Read more

The fanboys are so serious about The Dark Knight being the best film of 2008 that if the Academy snubs the comic-book adaptation for a Best Picture nomination, they’re liable to storm the Kodak Theatre on February 22 in protest. But why should anyone be worried that it won’t get the nomination? It wouldn’t be much of a coup for the year’s top-grossing blockbuster to be named one of the five Best Picture candidates. In fact, since the very first Academy Awards, the top award has often been handed out to films that were #1 at the box office in their respective year. And the last time it happened was as recent as 2003, with The Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King.

Thanks to popular and talented filmmakers like D.W. Griffith, Walt Disney, David Lean and Steven Spielberg, it’s hardly uncommon for films to make money and earn critical respect. But this isn’t an opportunity to spotlight overrated top-grossing Best Pictures like Titanic, Rain Man and Rocky, which were decidedly not their year’s best films. Rather, this is a chance to ease the minds of fanboys just in case The Dark Knight doesn’t get the nod. Some of these blockbusters were indeed nominated for Best Picture, and a few even won the award, but some of them were both their year’s biggest moneymaker (in the U.S.) and best film (from the U.S.) without gaining proper Academy recognition.

…Read more

The holidays are coming, and that either means spending time with your dysfunctional family or escaping them for the movies … where you’re likely to be met by other, fictional dysfunctional families. Already this season, Rachel Getting Married introduced us to the f’ed up faux masala of the Buchman clan, and later this month we get to follow Vince Vaughn and Reese Witherspoon as they’re pulled into their separate quadrants of kin in Four Christmases. Also, for those who think dysfunction is an American tradition, this weekend sees the release of the French film A Christmas Tale (Un conte de Noël), which unites the two major premises of dysfunctional family movies by being set during the holidays and involving an ill family member.

With two more weeks left until Thanksgiving, after which we might not want to think about another family, real or cinematic, for the rest of our lives, it’s a perfect time to celebrate those dysfunctional tribes we love the best. Literally thousands of movies feature such families, though, so we’re sure to have left out some of your favorites. Definitely chime in below, and/or join the discussion currently going on over in our Top 5 group.

…Read more

Opening today, Soul Men features the final performance from Bernie Mac, who died unexpectedly on August 9. The movie also includes a cameo from Isaac Hayes, who died one day later. Both men join a long list of people whose last films were released after their deaths, a list that includes Brad Renfro, whose final performance, in The Informers, can be seen in theaters come next May.

Unlike some names on that list, Bernie Mac, whose voice can also be heard in the new animated sequel Madagascar: Escape 2 Africa, isn’t likely to receive a posthumous Oscar nomination as a tribute to his final work. But as one of the most underrated comic actors of the past few years, Mac likely gives a great performance as soul singer “Floyd Henderson,” enough to fall in with the crop of posthumously released roles we’ve showcased below:

…Read more

Ry Russo-Young, who many will remember from her role in Joe Swanberg’s Hannah Takes the Stairs, was a prize winner at two of the last three SXSWs - she won the jury award for best experimental film for her Psycho deconstruction Marion at the 2006 fest and shared a special jury prize for Orphans at the 2007 edition. Orphans hits DVD next week via David Redmon and Ashley Sabin’s brand new label Carnivalesque Films. She chatted with us this week about Why Does Herr R Run Amok?, what working with the band “The Virgins” on her new film You Won’t Miss Me was like and why concert films aren’t really for her unless Amy Winehouse or The Rolling Stones are in them. …Read more

Video games today are great for recreating scenes from old films (such as The Godfather) and plopping you into the action. But how faithful do a game’s sequences need to be? From the way Sierra Entertainment is advertising its new Ghostbusters video game, I guess you want the gaming to be as close to the direction of the original film as possible. Not only does the new trailer for the game include many scenes from the first Ghostbusters movie, it displays side-by-side comparisons of footage from the film and the game. Because what would the game be without a near-identical shot of library catalog cards shot into the air?

Interestingly enough, the game is not actually a total video game remake of Ghostbusters. Instead, it’s “an all new story you won’t see in theaters,” featuring a script by Dan Aykroyd and Harold Ramis, who also wrote both the original and the sequel, and the voices of Aykroyd, Ramis, Bill Murray, Ernie Hudson, Annie Potts, William Atherton and Brian Doyle-Murray, all reprising their roles from the films (I understand Sigourney Weaver opting out, but why no Rick Moranis?). Of course, it does require you to battle old favorites, such as Slimer, Gozer, the Stay Puft Marshmallow Man and Vigo (”master of evil”), but there will also be new villains, including the biggest paranormal problem the Ghostbusters have ever seen.

…Read more

My version of The Godfather would open with a voice in the darkness saying, “I don’t believe in America. The American Dream is a once-beguiling fairy tale; show’s over, y’all.” But The Dream is still real to many people, and the violence that powerful private interests have done to it in the last century pains them like a kidney punch.

Gonzo journalism pioneer Hunter S. Thompson was one of the wounded, and so is Alex Gibney (Enron: The Smartest Guys in the Room, Taxi to the Darkside), the far more straight-laced director of the entertaining documentary Gonzo: The Life and Work of Hunter S. Thompson. They share a proprietary sense of outrage over abuses of power they’ve witnessed in their times. For them, America’s Nixons, Enrons and Bush-Cheneys have desecrated the church, the front lawn. For all their passionate trouble-making, there’s no denying that Gibney and the late Thompson, two white males who came up through America’s hallowed institutions (Thompson through the U.S. Air Force; Gibney through Yale), are insiders.

When I went to interview Gibney about Gonzo, I remembered the film’s procession of leathery right-wingers and elites, former Thompson nemeses, who have warm, friendly things to say about “Dr. Gonzo” now that he’s dead, now that his caricature as a gun-toting drughead has endured beyond his politics. I wondered if, in the end, being inside got the hole dug any better than chucking rocks from outside.

…Read more

Sorry, no, this is not a clip from or trailer for a Latvian remake of the 1984 classic. Instead it is merely a Latvian cover of Ray Parker Jr.’s classic theme song, performed by Intars Busulis and the cello trio Melo-M. And it now accompanies my other favorite movie theme covers, which include GNR’s version of “Live and Let Die,” the ska cover of The Godfather theme (by The Mudsharks), my brother’s snail-paced cover of Kenny Loggins’ “Danger Zone” (from Top Gun) and pretty much any cover of “The Neverending Story” (including Homestar Runner’s “The Neverending Soda.”)

The reason I bring you this Ghostbusters theme cover (aside from my having just today discovered it, thanks to Fark.com) is because it (very) loosely ties in with the new movie Wanted. See, both the song and the movie involve the intersection of Hollywood and Eastern European artists (specifically of former Soviet republics). Because Wanted director Timur Bekmambetov is originally from Kazakhstan (yes, home of Borat), and he became successful in the Russian film industry before being wooed by Universal Pictures (though it’s not Bekmambetov’s English-language debut).

…Read more

Yesterday, in response to David Gordon Green’s talent being (presumably) wasted on Pineapple Express, I brought you my picks for the 5 worst directorial sellouts of all time (or, as I should have titled it, 5 Worst Attempts at Mainstream Success). And now, as promised, are my picks for the best, because occasionally a great filmmaker can take a seemingly sellout gig and deliver a masterpiece.

1. (tie) The Godfather (1972) and The Godfather Part II (1974) - Everyone should know that Francis Ford Coppola didn’t want to make the first Godfather film. He wanted to make smaller movies, such as The Conversation, which he was able to make at Paramount only because he directed The Godfather and The Godfather Part II. I prefer the film he wanted to make, but there is no denying his first two Godfather films were worth Coppola’s time and, more importantly, ours. …Read more

I just left the Telluride tribute to the master editor Walter Murch (The Godfather, The Conversation, The English Patient). So much wonderful filmmaking knowledge came from his lips. If it were not prohibited to record these sessions, I would have podcast the Q&A. But I’ll share the highlights I found most meaningful.

As an editor, the hardest thing to do is to remember the emotional resonance of a scene after viewing it day after day. To maintain that emotion, when Murch first sees the shots he’ll be working with, he writes in free association anything he thinks or feels while watching. He then keeps those notes open as he goes into the process of editing those shots over and over again into various scenes.

Murch is always looking for the visceral moment. He shared a quote about how if the novelist is smarter than the novel, they should move on to another profession. The work should always be beyond the reach of intellect. One way of identifying these visceral moments is to watch a shot and stop it at a moment he strongly reacts to. He then marks the time code and watches the shot again. If he hits stop again and it’s at the exact same spot in the time code, he knows there’s something there to be included in the film.

As any good editor, Murch’s thinking wanders back and forth between the technical and the creative. The result of one study he’s done across many films shows an average action sequence having a minimum of fourteen different camera angles, while dialogue scenes have about four. Four camera angles in an action sequence is too slow, and fourteen angles during dialogue would distract from what anybody’s saying.

In speaking about the various modes of viewing film now (from theater to video iPod), Murch defined the “cinematic experience.” At home, the viewer is king and the television is a jester coming into the room; if the king doesn’t like what he sees, off with the jester’s head. However, the cinematic experience is uncontrollable. The film starts when it starts and ends when it ends and the viewer has no control. It’s also collaborative viewing where one person’s laughter in one corner of the theater can infect the experience of everyone else. In short, the cinematic experience, Murch said, fulfills an innate human desire to open one’s mind to the uncontrollable.

A good film must also have its own unique “grammar.” It can’t feel like anything seen before. Although Murch may have opinions regarding a scene, he’s very careful not to pass judgment until he’s intimate with the work as a whole and has learned the language of that particular film.

Finally, in a serendipitous moment, Murch screened the scene in The Godfather when Woltz awakes to the severed horse head in his bed. This has always been my favorite blend of film and score, which I’ve attributed in the past to the composer, Nino Rota. However, the music in that scene was originally much too over the top and gave away the horror too early. So Murch took a solo trumpet piece Rota had written for elsewhere in the film, and blended it with the original music Rota intended for the scene. That’s the piece that’s in the film as we know it. Who knew?

It takes a village to watch a film. Maybe we’ve been conditioned by the multiplex to believe the movie experience starts when the movie starts and ends when it ends. Imagine, instead, sitting around a campfire that’s playing The Godfather. Maybe before the film gets going, someone who’s there has some interesting insight on Coppola’s style. And maybe-just maybe-the conversation that kicks off when the credits start rolling is as good as the film itself. It may even end up being the most important reason to watch it. We believe the films are best experienced with others.