Film is Truth 24 Times a Second

New Releases:

• August
• Chicago 10
• Democracy and Disappointment: On the Politics of Resistance, Alain Badiou and Simon Critchley in Conversation
• Gypsy Caravan: When the Road Bends…
• Lynch (One)
• On the Ecstasy of Ski-Flying: Werner Herzog in Conversation with Karen Beckman
• Postal
• Redbelt
• Son of Rambow
• Waiting for NESARA
• What Happens in Vegas
• Where in the World is Osama Bin Laden?

New Releases (TV Series):

• Heroes: Season 2
• The Shield: Season 6

New Arrivals:

• Alfresco: Series 1 & 2
• Buffy the Vampire Slayer: Complete Series
• Cimarron (Western Classics Collection)
• Dali in New York
• Escape From Fort Bravo (Western Classics Collection)
• The Law and Jake Wade (Western Classics Collection)
• Many Rivers to Cross (Western Classics Collection)
• Saddle the Wind (Western Classics Collection)
• Salo: Or the 120 Days of Sodom (Criterion)
• The Stalking Moon (Western Classics Collection)

I don’t know about you but I love good kid actors in good movies, nevermind whether they have any legitimate actor training, they can encapsulate life with a vitality that the more seasoned often cannot. Ponette, In America, and most recently, specifically to the New Release Wall at Film is Truth, Son of Rambow feature some most adorable children. Son of Rambow has nothing to do with Sylvester Stallone’s Rambo other than it inspires its characters, all of whom are small, young cinematic enthusiasts, to make a movie of their own AND it got delayed being released because of a rights scandal of some sort. Go figure. Although it has its contrivances, there are some very original, to the point of being questionable, mise en scene factors, namely a strange members-only 80’s New Wave Club harbored on the grounds of a British private school that the two main characters, Will Proudfoot and Lee Carter, attend. It also has some hilarious footage of child-catapulting and a giant cell phone, which are unfortunately for all of us, used separately. While it’s not an incredible movie, Son of Rambow has its moments, is worth watching for those moments, and in my opinion concerns a very real friendship born of and maintained by two very real little boys.

The weather lately, it’s not the best…but yesterday it seemed to be a good setting for a windswept film set somewhere in the British isles…Instead of picking up Wuthering Heights again, I watched a 1937 flick shot in the Shetlands, Edge of the World. Recently discovered, this was considered by director Michael Powell (The Red Shoes, Tales of Hoffman), to be his first notable film, and a movie in which one can already see aspects of his burgeoning style: a sense of nearly Gothic foreboding, romanticized images of rustic life, doomed and forbidden love, and plenty of people falling off of really high places.

New Releases:

• An American Crime
• Camp Rock
• Irina Palm
• John Oliver: Terrifying Times
• The Life Before Her Eyes
• Miss Pettigrew Lives for a Day
• Please Vote for Me
• Primo Levi’s Journey
• Recount
• Street Kings
• Surfwise

New Releases (TV Series):

• Dexter: Season 2
• Gossip Girl: Season 1
• House: Season 4
• Saving Grace: Season 1

New Arrivals:

• Don Quixote (1992/Welles & Franco)
• Love and a .45
• Mr. Holland’s Opus
• The Small Back Room (Criterion)
• Steal This Movie
• Summer Magic
• Twenty-Four Eyes (Criterion)
• Wild Hearts Can’t Be Broken

What were you watching last month? Here are July’s best-renting movies at Film is Truth!

1. There Will Be Blood
2. Juno
3. In Bruges
4. Into the Wild
5. Be Kind Rewind
6. The Darjeeling Limited
7. Charlie Wilson’s War
8. The Golden Compass
9. The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford
10. The Diving Bell and the Butterfly

Which ones have you seen? Which ones are your favorites?

A recently added animated gem currently graces the new arrival shelf in FIT, Princes and Princesses, a 2000 French release by animator Michel Ocelot. In the same style as one of the first full length animated films ever made, Lotte Reiniger’s The Adventures of Prince Achmed, (Germany, 1926) Princes and Princesses uses cut out black silhouette animation against saturated jewel tone backdrops to relate six stories of royalty from an array of time periods and places in the world. Although the initial idea of 70 minutes of black cutouts dancing across the screen may strike some as tedious, the movement and stylistic detail of the art direction make turning away from the film as difficult as putting down a well crafted children’s book halfway through. The vignette-style presentation of the stories, laden with delicate props ranging from magical diamonds to Egyptian figs, assists in creating an entrancing all-ages flick.

New Releases:

• Aftermath: Population Zero
• Beau Brummell: This Charming Man
• The Boys & Girls Guide to Getting Down
• Bra Boys
• Brand Upon the Brain!
• Buddha’s Lost Children
• Cashback
• CJ7
• The Garden of Earthly Delights
• Glass Lips
• Jagoda in the Supermarket
• Poisoned by Polonium: The Litvineko File
• The Search for John Gissing
• Smart People
• Still We Ride!
• 21 Up South Africa
• A Walk to Beautiful
• Wholphin No. 6
• Without the King

New Releases (TV Series):

• South Park: Season 11
• The Wire: Season 5

New Arrivals:

• The Ascent (Larisa Shepitko Collection)
• Day-Time Wife / Johnny Apollo (Tyrone Power Collection)
• Django
• Girls’ Dormitory / Cafe Metropole (Tyrone Power Collection)
• Heaven (1987)
• Love is News / That Wonderful Urge (Tyrone Power Collection)
• The Luck of the Irish / I’ll Never Forget You (Tyrone Power Collection)
• The Roe’s Room
• Silver Bullet
• This Above All / Second Honeymoon (Tyrone Power Collection)
• Wings (Larisa Shepitko Collection)

New Releases:

• Batman: Gotham Knight
• The Counterfeiters
• The Killing of John Lennon
• My Brother is an Only Child
• Nim’s Island
• Pete Seeger: The Power of Song

New Releases (TV Series):

• Anthony Bourdain: No Reservations: Collection 3
• Foyle’s War: Set 5
• Inspector Lewis: Series 1
• Life in Cold Blood
• Robin Hood: Season 2
• Sensitive Skin: Season 1
• Sensitive Skin: Season 2
• Wire in the Blood: Prayer of the Bone

New Arrivals:

• Get Smart: Season 1
• Hendrix/Band of Gypsies: Live at the Fillmore East
• Joy House
• Tales of the City