Week 14 is an all-out French new-wave extravaganza! Having watched Pierrot Le Fou over the Easter weekend, my love for the nouvelle vague has been rekindled.
Masculin Féminin (1966 Dir. Jean-Luc Godard):
Jules and Jim (1962 Dir. François Truffaut):
Previously on The Criterion Collection: Click here
On a Criterion related note: The Curious Case of Benjamin Button was recently announced as being numner 476 in the collection. There was, of course, a backlash to this from some Criterion elitists who feel that it’s place isn’t warranted in such a prestigious collection alongside the “continuing series of important classic and contemporary films”. I think this argument is completely undone by this, and this.
Regardless, I quite enjoyed Benjamin Button, even if it was just a repackaged Forrest Gump. The special effects (just like as in Zodiac) where astounding in their subtly, performances were solid all round and as with any Fincher film, it looked incredible.
My only quibble with the CC version of Button is the cover. I understand that for the more commercially viable releases, Criterion need to feature artwork that is more in line with what’s featured on a cinema marquee than what would hang in an art gallery. The slipcases for both The Royal Tenenbaums and The Life Aquatic are perfect examples of this. Frankly, the poster campaign for Benjamin Button was lazy. Very lazy. Brad Pitt is an extremely bankable actor, but it’s incredibly poor and blatantly obvious if your poster is just his FACE on a black background. The filmmakers may as well be saying: “Look, we don’t have a fucking notion how to market this…but Brad Pitt is in it! You love him, don’t you?”. I would have thought that Criterion might have rectified this by featuring the one decent piece of artwork that was released for the movie. Alas, they chose the floating, giant faces. Anyways, below is the actual Criterion artwork and below that, is the mockup I madeup in Photoshop.
DVD Artwork:
What could have been the artwork:
bawpsherep.wordpress.com 