I haven't seen Albert Brooks' 1996 comedy Mother in decades and yet that joke about "the protective ice" over Debbie Reynolds' ice cream has stuck with me all this time -- that's comedy. And that's leading the Criterion release announcements for August 2024 -- in 4K no less! Somehow that seems extravagent, but I look forward to seeing it. Mother comes out on August 24th, alongside another Albert Brooks joint...
... his 1979 mockumentary Real Life. Which I have never seen. Have you? It sounds from the description that it satirized reality shows before reality shows were really a thing -- I mean An American Family had happened a few years earlier and this sounds like it was riffing on that phenomenon. In Real Life, Brooks plays a documentarian who embeds himself with a family (led by Charles Grodin and Frances Lee McCain) trying to capture the "truth" of their day-to-day existence.
And from a funny mockumentary to a not funny at all true-story documentary -- next up is Martha Coolidge's 1975 doc Not a Pretty Picture, which has the filmmaker examining her own rape by casting an actress to play her younger self in a reenactment of the experience for her. Goddamn this one sounds rough. Rough but probably essential. Has anyone seen it?
The August schedule is actually pretty full of new-to-me films -- I also haven't seen either Brief Encounters or The Long Farewell, the pair of films included in this double-feature set of Ukranian filmmaker Kira Muratova's work. These are her first two movies from 1967 and 1971 respectively, and they're both about women laboring under Soviet rule. Thanks goodness for those two Albert Brooks' movies because otherwise August is feeling like a heavy load! Oh and also on the docket is a 4K upgrade of Bernardo Bertolucci's masterpiece The Last Emperor, which hits on the 13th. And make sure to click the links to check out all of the many many special features on these discs. And to pre-order them of course. Criterion has a 30% off sale going on right now that includes pre-orders! Never a better moment to snatch 'em up than right now!
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3 comments:
Debbie was positively inimitable in "Mother"! It's a shame she didn't score a nomination for it, I can't see her winning but a nod would have been deserved.
"Real Life" was okay the one time I watched it but I've never been the least inclined to see it again.
I'll allow that "The Last Emperor" is a magnificent looking film but it holds bad memories for me. It was playing (endlessly) when I was managing a movie theatre for a chain that had hit hard times (mostly because the son of the original owner-who had inherited the company upon his father's death-was more interested in snorting the profits up his nose than taking care of business) and the projectors (and the theatres) were in terrible shape. Constantly breaking down, leaking oil which ruined the film, making it very brittle so it would break frequently etc. During a matinee one day the print of this film started splitting but not breaking, bunching up in the projector which caused it to ignite. Fortunately I discovered it in time (with flames shooting out of the projector as the film feed into it!), no one was hurt but the whole joint was full of smoke and about a half hour of the film was destroyed. It gives me the heebie jeebies just thinking about it!
Reynolds is funny and touching in Mother and agreed she would have been a deserving nominee more than likely over Keaton,Brooks is also great,a nice way to spend 100 minutes.
I enjoyed Mother, and I also have been using the protective ice term ever since seeing it back in the day. I do feel like Albert Brooks is a little overrated with Criterion though. Just a tad. Of all he's done, I think his performance in Drive was the most memorable.
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