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Near the end of my drive up to Maine today, I stopped off at Videoport in downtown Portland, one of the best videostores I've ever encountered, and I used to work at a pretty good one (I'd probably say Videoport is THE best, but unfortunately a few years ago when they were running out of space, they did a bit of a shelf purge, and a lot of rare classic titles vanished, including a lot of out-of-print film noir tapes -- anyone out there have a copy of Cry Danger?).
I was hoping they might have a film/video version of Hamlet I haven't been able to get from Netflix or the Brooklyn Public Library. No dice (the Branagh, the Gibson, the Hawke, the Olivier). So instead I got a bootleg DVD of Otto Preminger's Skidoo, which I hope looks better than the bootleg tape I have (it's a magnificent, underrated, insane piece of work, lemme tell ya -- I saw a lovely print once at Film Forum, and I SO want a DVD release, but I ain't holding my breath) and the new Criterion Collection DVD of one of my favorite noirs, Brute Force.
I haven't watched this film as much as a lot of noirs I like as much (or less) because I've never had a good print of it and (more importantly) it's a damned nasty little film that doesn't encourage rewatching.
So I'll probably watch it tonight, but I'm tempted to wait and try a little something with the film that some practical joker once supposedly did to the film when it aired on some late-late show many years ago.
The story is here, and worth reading, from Glenn Kenny's excellent blog, In the Company of Glenn.
I am mostly of the opinion that it is indeed an urban legend, but I so want to believe it is not that I will simply decide that it did indeed happen. Because it should have.
I was hoping they might have a film/video version of Hamlet I haven't been able to get from Netflix or the Brooklyn Public Library. No dice (the Branagh, the Gibson, the Hawke, the Olivier). So instead I got a bootleg DVD of Otto Preminger's Skidoo, which I hope looks better than the bootleg tape I have (it's a magnificent, underrated, insane piece of work, lemme tell ya -- I saw a lovely print once at Film Forum, and I SO want a DVD release, but I ain't holding my breath) and the new Criterion Collection DVD of one of my favorite noirs, Brute Force.
I haven't watched this film as much as a lot of noirs I like as much (or less) because I've never had a good print of it and (more importantly) it's a damned nasty little film that doesn't encourage rewatching.
So I'll probably watch it tonight, but I'm tempted to wait and try a little something with the film that some practical joker once supposedly did to the film when it aired on some late-late show many years ago.
The story is here, and worth reading, from Glenn Kenny's excellent blog, In the Company of Glenn.
I am mostly of the opinion that it is indeed an urban legend, but I so want to believe it is not that I will simply decide that it did indeed happen. Because it should have.
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Date: 2007-04-25 03:11 pm (UTC)From:no subject
Date: 2007-04-25 04:19 pm (UTC)From:Yeah, I don't know why, but this one slipped through the cracks in the noir "canon" for years. I don't know if it was due to bad distribution and prints or if that was the result of the disinterest. Considering it was made by a number of major noir creators in the midst of a run of better-known films, it's been oddly forgotten.
I'm glad Criterion has brought some more attention to it, along with the other great Jules Dassin films they put out -- Naked City was a favorite of mine from early noir viewing (like Brute Force, in a bad, bootleg videotape copy), but I didn't know how great Thieves Highway and Night and the City were until I finally got to them in the Criterion editions.