751) Rescue Dawn/DVD Review/Dan Schneider It’s been quite a few years since Werner Herzog did a major fictive film. The last couple of decades has seen an increasing veer into documentaries and more experimental cinema. However, with 2007 film, Rescue Dawn, Herzog shows that the years have not taken their all too inexorable toll on the visionary mind. While the film is not an inarguably great masterpiece along the lines of some of his classic fictive films from the 1970s, it is a terrific war film, but, more so, a terrific prison escape and action film, even as it wholly subverts many of those subgenre’s worst banalities....

Herzog in fine form.

752) All Aunt Hagar's Children/Book Review/Dan Schneider  Reading the latest book of short stories put out by Pulitzer Prize winner Edward P. Jones, All Aunt Hagar’s Children, was a profound disappointment because, unlike bad writers like Dave Eggers, T.C. Boyle, David Foster Wallace, newcomers like Donald Ray Pollock, or literary leeches like Thomas Steinbeck, Jones actually has (or had) writing talent. His 1991 book of short stories, Lost In The City, actually was a great piece of literature, with an astounding nine of its fourteen stories reaching greatness (utterly unheard of for published manuscripts). However, The Known World, his 2003 novel that actually won him the Pulitzer, was merely a mediocrity- very overwritten and dull....

Disgraceful.

753) The Rules Of The Game/DVD Review/Dan Schneider  French filmmaker Jean Renoir’s 1939 black and white classic, The Rules Of The Game (La Règle Du Jeu), routinely shows up on Top Five lists for best films ever, along with classics like Orson Welles’ Citizen Kane, Akira Kurosawa’s Seven Samurai, and Yasujiro Ozu’s Tokyo Story. But, it’s not in a league with any of that tercet. In fact, while it’s a good film, and a quite enjoyable one, it’s not even close to being a great film. There are two basic reasons why: first is that, despite some kudos given by technical experts, the film is not nearly as visually compelling nor stunning as the Welles film, and its oft-claimed camera innovations and cinematography are not anything that wows a viewer. Of course, there are some interesting moments, and some of the nature photography is first rate, but anyone expecting to see the 1930s equivalent of The Matrix....

Good, not great.

754) Shock Corridor/DVD Review/Dan Schneider  Director Sam Fuller’s Shock Corridor is one of those wildly aberrant works of art than can be called great, on some levels, and utter schlock, on other levels. And both are correct assessments of this film that can only be termed a didactic melodrama. What results, though, is that one is left with a so-so film- not the piece of pulp garbage that many reviewers first assailed the black and white film (with dream sequence snippets in color) as, upon its release in 1963, nor the masterpiece that revisionists have proffered in later auteur-based assessments. It had been almost a quarter century since I last watched the film, but recently popped in The Criterion Collection DVD of the film, and rediscovered its ‘charms.’....

OK.

755) Vampyr/DVD Review/Dan Schneider  The Criterion Collection will shortly be releasing a two disk version of the 1932 black and white classic horror film by Carl Theodor Dreyer, Vampyr. I first watched this film about twenty years ago, on a VHS release, and, unlike many others, immediately recognized it as a supernal piece of cinema. Then, I did not have the critical knowledge to discern why, but I do now, and will explicate. This film was the first sound film released by the Danish filmmaker, and perhaps the last film in the vein of silent German Expressionism. That stated, it is a very different form of vampire film from the then contemporaneous Dracula, made by Tod Browning, for Universal Studios in America, as well the earlier explicitly Expressionistic take on the film, 1922’s Nosferatu, by F.W. Murnau....

Excellent.

756) High And Low/DVD Review/Dan Schneider  While most well known for his classic Japanese period dramas, such as Seven Samurai, Rashomon, and Throne Of Blood, the fact is that director Akira Kurosawa’s lasting legacy will be sustained by his towering achievements in then contemporary Japanese drama; films such as Ikiru, The Bad Sleep Well, and 1963’s black and white crime drama High And Low. Words like masterpiece simply do not do justice to such wholly and uniquely great cinema. And it’s not the fact that Kurosawa was able to blend action, social and other genre pieces- long associated with melodrama, with high and deep pure drama, but the fact that his ability to use radical means, quickly establish characterization and suspense, and add in true ethos and philosophy is nonpareil....

Great.

757) Pather Panchali/DVD Review/Dan Schneider  Somewhere between the Oriental placidity of a great Yasujiro Ozu film and the harsh reality of a great Vittorio De Sica film lies the world of Satyajit Ray’s Pather Panchali, the first of his Apu Trilogy of films. And in case there was any doubt, that place is a very, very good one for any filmmaker to be, for the two aforementioned filmmakers were masters of their own sorts of films, and- if this one, and first, film of Ray’s is an indication, the same plaudits can be ascribed to Ray, a former advertising firm’s employee who struck out on his own to raise Indian cinema from the melodramatic doldrums it had been in since its creation....

Great.

758) Au Hasard Balthazar/DVD Review/Dan Schneider  The greatness of Robert Bresson’s 1966 black and white film, Au Hasard Balthazar (which, translated, means something like Randomly Balthazar or By Chance Balthazar), comes not from only one aspect of it, nor even just a few. Virtually every aspect of the film reeks and resonates greatness, although, despite this being the near full consensus opinion of film lovers and critics alike, it is one of the most poorly understood films I’ve ever read the criticism of. This is because so many aspects of the film are based upon its most superficial qualities, rather than those deeper and more essential, even as the film achieves this depth in only 95 minutes. This economy occurs because the film focuses not on the superfluities of living, but only those things with resonance and meaning, the important and poetic moments that distill all else. And, oftentimes, those things with meaning are not the expected architectures of the human face, but those of other parts of the human body, like hands, backs, and human postures; all of which evoke connections and depths that would likely be unthinkable to cogitate on in films by other directors....

Titanically great.

759) Borat/DVD Review/Dan Schneider  A couple of years ago, in 2006, the biggest comedy hit was a film called Borat: Cultural Learnings Of America For Make Benefit Glorious Nation Of Kazakhstan. The film grew out of a recurring character on a British television show, Da Ali G. Show, created by Jewish comedian Sacha Baron Cohen. I mention the man’s religion because the film attacks Anti-Semitism in a brutally funny way, even as many dull-witted critics accuse the film of that bias. If so, then Charlie Chaplin’s The Great Dictator was also Anti-Semitic, and his Monsieur Verdoux was a defense of mass murder. Cohen plays a Kazakh television reporter, Borat Sagdiyev, sent to America to make a documentary on American living for the benefit of his home nation. That’s the setup, which starts in Borat’s native village, and depicts his family and villagers as a bunch of creepy, incestuous morons who have an annual ‘Running Of The Jew’ festival....

Funny.

760) Aparajito/DVD Review/Dan Schneider  The first film of Satyajit Ray’s Apu Trilogy, Pather Panchali, was such a great film that, naturally, the second film in the series was bound to suffer a bit of a let down. Thus, Aparajito (The Unvanquished)- based on the novel Aparajita, by Bibhutibhushan Banerjee, is not the unadulterated great piece of art that Pather Panchali is. Like many middle films of a series, it suffers from the infamous middle filmitis; when films that are not first in a series rely too heavily upon an audience’s memories of earlier films to inform them of the traits of characters, the chronology of prior events, and a general knowledge of the world the film series is set in....

Great.

761) The Gulag Archipelago/Book Review/Jessica Schneider  This is a great historical first hand account of the Russian Gulags, written by someone who not only lived it but can also write well. Never turgid, the narrative does not suffer the outcome of many historical texts where readers are bogged down with dates and irrelevant detail. Rather, The Gulag Archipelago is presented in a series of vignettes, all of which discuss different elements on this topic. Because this work is so large, it is impossible to cover all of them in a single review. But I will say that for anyone ever curious about reading this, the Abridged is suitable. The book was originally written in a three-volume form, but then the author released an Abridged version as a means for satisfying those Westerners who need not learn the intimate detail (he mentions this in his Introduction) regarding the all of Russian history....

History, writ large.

762) Say It Like Obama/Book Review/Jessica Schneider  Even the deepest McCain supporters cannot deny the talent that Barack Obama has for oration. His articulation, mannerisms, and wording all play a role in a delivery that has placed him beside the likes of Martin Luther King and JFK. His speeches have been quoted all around the globe, even published in their very own book. He is so good, in fact, that his opposition has seized on this and tried to turn his skill into a negative. “They’re just words,” some have said. “He’s only a celebrity,” others have claimed. But there is no denying Barack Obama’s ability to captivate an audience, and in Shel Leanne’s book, titled Say It Like Obama: The Power of Speaking With Purpose and Vision, readers are given insights into just how to use these techniques for themselves....

Good stuff.