Posts tagged Blu-Ray

It goes without saying that few studios would have the courage to produce a blu-ray and dvd boxed set featuring seven films representing the full creative output of a single production company. But the Criterion Collection is committed to film scholarship and preservation, so we have the ambitious release of America Lost and Found: The BBS Story, a seven-film collection featuring some well-remembered classics (Easy Rider, Five Easy Pieces and The Last Picture Show), some forgotten films of the New Hollywood period (Drive, He Said, A Safe Place and The King of Marvin Gardens), and The Monkees sole big-screen outing (Head), all produced by the team behind BBS Productions. Yet as America Lost and Found makes the case, the creative explosion in American cinema that occurred in the late 1960′s and early 1970′s would not have happened if not for the contributions of Bob Rafelson and Bert Schneider, who parlayed their financial success with The Monkees television show into seminal film production company BBS. And as disparate as some of the films in this set are, they are all critical in understanding the success and ultimate demise of BBS.

First, it’s worth noting that nearly every film in this collection gets the full Criterion treatment — supplemental extras, commentary tracks and a first-class transfer to HD. Although Drive, He Said and A Safe Place are put together on a single disk, they are treated better than some of more bare bones titles Criterion has released over the past twenty years. The packaging is flawless, with each volume in the set receiving a cover based on the film’s original movie poster. In addition, a thick book provides essays on BBS and the films included in the collection. If you are at all interested in graphic design, this set is a real showpiece, especially when compared with so many dull studio blu-ray and dvd releases. At $70 (on Amazon), you’re getting each film for $10 — as most Criterion releases retail for $25- 30, this is an incredible bargain. Even with the weaker films in the set, it’s hard not to feel like you’re getting more than your money’s worth.

The set opens up with Head, which is overly indulgent and almost unwatchable. Suffice it to say, Criterion gives it a richer treatment than it deserves, including a stellar HD transfer and a full suite of supplements. Although Head is interesting in terms of its style and cinematography, it is presented as sort of an acid trip version of The Monkees television show, with the band members leaping from disconnected episode to disconnected episode. Except each episode is something akin to a nightmare someone had about the tv series. This description probably sounds cooler than the movie really is. However, the extras are very illuminating, particularly the documentary featuring director Bob Rafelson, who is unapologetic about his less than promising debut film. Of course, he has a right to be unapologetic, because he would go on to make Five Easy Pieces, one of the most important American films of the 1970′s.

Dennis Hopper’s Easy Rider is a film I grew up very aware of, but never actually sat through in its entirety. My father was a fan and even taped it off of HBO in the 1980′s, which I always took as a reason to stay away. This was a mistake, as Easy Rider is a phenomenal film, worthy of the “classic” status it has held since its release. The plot is simple enough — two hippies, Wyatt (Peter Fonda) and Billy (Hopper), make a huge amount of money on a cocaine deal, stow the cash and head across the country to retire in Florida. This brings the two across the southwest and the south, where they stay at a commune, pick up a Texan ACLU attorney played by Jack Nicholson, go to Mardi Gras in New Orleans and meet two groups of hippie-hating hillbillies. What could have been a glorious celebration of sixties era counterculture is instead a more somber examination of the counterculture’s failure to achieve the immediate cultural transformation they longed for. The supplemental materials do an excellent job of illuminating the creation of the film, and also allow us to see the creative and personal strains between Dennis Hopper, Peter Fonda and co-writer Terry Southern.  Laszlo Kovacs’ cinematography (arguably the first film to intentionally use lens flairs and other “dirty” camera techniques four decades before J.J. Abrams made them a cliche) looks especially amazing in the HD transfer.

The third film in the set is another I hadn’t seen before — Bob Rafelson’s Five Easy Pieces.  In it, Jack Nicholson stars as Bobby Dupea, a childhood piano prodigy disillusioned with his life and his family.  The film opens with Dupea working in a Texas oil field and living with his girlfriend, waitress Rayette, played by Karen Black. Bobby is incredibly unhappy with his life and holds Rayette in great contempt, but when he learns about his father’s recent illness, he and Rayette head to the Dupea’s family homestead on an island in Washington State.  The film is stark and bleak, really investigating Bobby’s disillusionment and inability to find happiness.  In many ways, Five Easy Pieces sets the tone for almost all American independent cinema to come, featuring an alienated loner trying to make sense of it all. The supplements offer a look at the many collaborations between Jack Nicholson and Bob Rafelson, and really put Rafelson into context as one of the seminal filmmakers in the American New Wave.

The fourth disc includes both Drive, He Said and A Safe Place. The pair are probably the weakest in the package and the least notable, mostly because they stand as artifacts of their era. Serving as Jack Nicholson’s directorial debut, Drive, He Said focuses primarily on the campus counterculture and a star basketball player, while A Safe Place is a largely incomprehensible and overambitious film about the psyche of Tuesday Weld. Neither are worth watching, although it should be noted that both transfers are as exceptional as the rest in the set.

Peter Bogdanovich’s classic The Last Picture Show fills the fourth disc in the set. As interesting as many of the included films are, this one is easily the best, surpassing both Five Easy Pieces and Easy Rider. Bogdanovich would go on to make many films after, but his career would never again see a film like The Last Picture Show. Following a group of kids stuck in a dusty west Texas town, The Last Picture Show applies a European cinematic aesthetic to a classic American coming of age story. The transfer is phenomenal — the black and white cinematography has made the leap to 1080p with nary a blemish to report. It appears that most of the extras are from previous editions, but if you want this film on Blu-Ray, this is probably the best way to get it.

The final disc is dedicated to Robert Rafelson’s The King of Marvin Gardens, a character piece focused on two brothers played by Jack Nicholson and Bruce Dern. Despite some stunning cinematography from Lazlo Kovacs, King of Marvin Gardens is not a particularly successful film. David (Nicholson), a Philadelphia-based late-night radio host finds himself pulled back into the orbit of his charismatic huckster older brother Jason (Dern). Jason has set himself up in Atlantic City and is working a Hawaiian land deal, where he hopes to open a resort. With him are two women — one middle aged, the other in her twenties — who both appear to be Jason’s girlfriends. He tries to entice David into joining his scam, but ultimately finds himself careening towards a tragedy of his own invention. The King of Marvin Gardens is definitely in the same mold as Drive, He Said and A Safe Place — two films that, while visually interesting, are not exactly comprehensible or engaging from a story perspective. Like the other discs in the set, The King of Marvin Gardens features a phenomenal transfer, though the extras are somewhat light — two brief featurettes about the making of the film, and a scene-specific commentary from Rafelson.

All and all, one could easily call America Lost and Found: The BBS Story “70′s Film School in a Box.” Not all the films included in the set are particularly compelling or worth owning on their own, but together they comprise an important archive that gives the viewer a much clearer picture of a critical turning point in American cinema, making a strong case  for the influence of Robert Rafelson on the creation of New Hollywood cinema. Unlike Copolla’s failed American Zoetrope project (yes, I know all of his films were produced under that moniker — but the original idea of a San Francisco-based studio failed after THX1138), Rafelson and his associates actually succeeded in producing seven films and one documentary outside of the American studio system. Though not always successful, they were incredibly influential and would provide the template for the independent cinema revival of the 1990′s. Anyone interested in the fertile 1970′s should take a look at this excellent collection.