Notable New Releases
Brand Upon the Brain + My Dinner With Jimi (Filmswelike) Local film and vid distributor Filmswelike keep on keeping on with two new releases, most notably the Canadian edition of Guy Maddin’s Brand Upon the Brain!, recently issued stateside by Criterion. Maddin Maniacs (surely that’s what fan club members would call themselves if they actually had a fan club) know that nothing will compare with the experience of seeing and hearing the Winnipeg director’s 2006 silent-movie spectacular with a live soundtrack provided by an orchestra, a narrator and three foley artists doing sound effects with an array of strange and familiar contraptions. But this tale of teen detectives, zombified orphans and one mad scientist still whips up a satisfying state of delirium without those accoutrements. The disc offers a choice of three English-language narrators — Isabella Rossellini, Louis Negin and Maddin himself — and supplements like a short doc on how the foley artists do what they do. (Who could’ve guessed they go through so much celery?)
A cine-memoir by members of ’60s pop sensations The Turtles about the pleasures and pitfalls of meeting your heroes, My Dinner With Jimi is a more modest affair but still full of goofy charm. Singer-turned-screenwriter Howard Kaylan contributes to the commentary track and to a featurette that seats him alongside fellow Turtles frontman Mark Volman. He shares no additional anecdotes about his drunken meeting with the Fab Four but he’s still awed by Mr. Hendrix.
Also This Week
Annie Leibovitz: Life Through a Lens (Mongrel) It turns out that Mikhail Baryshnikov, Arnold Schwarzenegger, Keith Richards and Hillary Clinton do have something in common: an admiration for celeb photographer Annie Leibovitz. All testify to her greatness in this inevitably flattering but often perceptive doc by Annie’s sister Barbara. EXTRAS: additional interview segments.
Woman on the Beach (New Yorker) Another wry dissection of the anxieties of the modern male, the latest by Korean filmmaker Hong Sang-soo is a great last-date movie. EXTRAS: none.
Hell Ride (Alliance) Still stumping for a grindhouse revival, Quentin Tarantino exec-produced this biker flick by Larry Bishop, which stars such QT faves as David Carradine and Michael Madsen. EXTRAS: commentary, featurettes, Madsen’s video diary.
Journey to the Centre of the Earth 3-D (Alliance) Brendan Fraser gets chased by three-dimensional digital dinosaurs in this hectic take on Jules Verne’s adventure story. EXTRAS: 2D and 3D versions, commentary, featurettes, game.
Out Nov 4
Get Smart, Futurama: Bender’s Game, the Germs biopic What We Do Is Secret and Moscow Zero, a supernatural thriller starring Vincent Gallo as a Russian priest and Val Kilmer as the gatekeeper of hell. Really, we would have been satisfied if the same roles had gone to Jamie Kennedy and Daniel Baldwin.