“I have never seen Star Wars. Most people haven’t. Unless you were alive and aware in 1977, the movie we call Star Wars is not, in fact, the same Star Wars that crowds lined up around city blocks got to see when the lights finally dimmed and the 20th Century Fox fanfare subsided. When the film was re-released into theatres in 1981, the “original” version was already gone. No longer just Star Wars, the film was now Star Wars, Episode IV: A New Hope. A title change was only the beginning. First in 1997 with the Special Edition, and then in 2004 with the DVD release, all the way up to the most recent Blu-ray and digital releases of the film, there have been a nearly endless number of changes, everything from dialogue replacement to fully computer animated effects sequences. And, of course, Han doesn’t shoot first. That original version, the one released to cinemas in 1977, has been practically unavailable for decades. Until now.”
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“With its dim blues, browns, and greens, it would be easy to mistake Inside Llewyn Davis for a chilly film. In fact, it is a cold film, at least by its snow-laden setting. Llewyn Davis trudges through the wintry streets of New York and Chicago in a weathered jacket. His shoes are soaked with water and his scarf barely provides relief from the palpably crisp air. Bruno Delbonnel, the film’s Oscar-nominated director of photography, applies his typically hazy gaze to painterly effect. The environment Llewyn inhabits is unforgiving, but the soft glow of Delbonnel’s images makes the world a touch more hospitable and cozy for the audience, if not Llewyn himself.”
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“On December 30, 2015, right at the tail-end of a great year of cinema, Terrence Malick’s new film, Knight of Cups, appeared for purchase on iTunes in Europe. The film, not yet released in much of the world, including America, was let loose and the damage was done. Pirates had in short order downloaded the film, stripped it of all copy protection, and put it online in multiple formats and in pristine quality. By the next day, “Film Twitter” was abuzz with news of a newly available Malick movie.”
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“Two children stand on a stage, sweetly fumbling their lines. “Don’t you know what a kiss is?” says one of the children. “I shall, if you give one to me,” says the other, before being handed a thimble. So begins Steven Spielberg’s 1991 film, Hook, adapting the opening act of J.M. Barrie’s play, Peter Pan, for an audience of proud parents. Sure, opening the film with children performing the play is a bit of meta-fictional cleverness. But it also serves as a mission statement for a film that prizes above all the wild logic of a child’s imagination. In Peter Pan’s world, a thimble is a kiss, clapping brings fairies back to life, and a magical world can be reached by flying to the “second star on the right, and straight on till morning.” Barrie’s gift to children was to fully indulge their playtime escapism. In Hook, Spielberg does the same, while also daring parents to indulge in the same way.”
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“Theater is a feeling, more than anything, and performativity defines the act of living. The world is a stage and we the players, as Shakespeare’s Jaques said. In the vision of Modern Theater, stemming from the likes of Henrik Ibsen and Anton Chekhov, and which saw the advent of the director, the theatrical stage was meant to reflect the situation of the audience. Realism became the name of the game, and has remained the most influential force in contemporary theatrical production, which outside of (though sometimes including) musicals has sought immediacy in setting and performance as witnessed in the middle-class foibles of George Bernard Shaw’s plays and the acting method developed by Constantin Stanislavski. It’s within the context of extending the bounds of Modern Theater as an area indistinguishable from living, and into the world of cinema, that the collaboration between Andre Gregory and Wallace Shawn has existed lo these decades. The Criterion Collection have now brought together Gregory and Shawn’s three “theatrical” films, My Dinner with Andre, Vanya on 42nd Street, and A Master Builder in a new and essential Blu-ray box set.”
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