Burning Questions: The Best of Bonus Features

Hey everybody. Michael C here to rifle through your video collections like a guy at a garage sale.

All of us probably have enough material residing in the bonus features of our DVD collections to fill a respectable film studies course for a semester or two.

The first time I was introduced to a bonus feature was a double VHS box set of Scream with a second cassette featuring a Wes Craven commentary. Since then, like most cinephiles, I’ve spent countless hours wading through commentaries, behind the scenes featurettes, deleted scenes, and other supplemental material, much of it interesting, some of it entertaining, a good chunk of it filler.

Since so many of us have amassed movies collections over the years to rival the Library of Congress, it stands to reasons there should be some gems buried in there. So it is with genuine curiosity that I put this question to the floor: Which Bluray/DVD extra features do you treasure for their own sake, apart from the films to which they are attached?

The bonus feature I most often return to is Magnolia Diary: the documentary chronicling the creation of PT Anderson’s ’99 opus of dysfunctional parents, children and frogs.

Behind the scenes cinematic chronicles are a sub-genre of documentaries that have produced masterpieces such as Heart of Darkness: A Filmmaker’s Apocalypse and Burden of Dreams. Magnolia Diary doesn’t quite belong in that distinguished company but I would easily rank it the equal of Lost in La Mancha, the doc recording the painful death of Terry Gilliam’s long-in-the-works Don Quixote movie.

What sets it apart from the thousands of other making of docs is the stunning amount of access, going so far as to wander through the orchestra during the recording of the score. There are numerous moments where we eavesdrop on the most sensitive moments in the process, as when Anderson runs lines with Melinda Dillon and Philip Baker Hall for their dramatic confrontation.

It plays like a documentary companion to Making Movies, Sidney Lumet’s essential book on the filmmaking process. It's packed with goodies like Julianne Moore explaining how she pitched her performance to the operatic tone of the script, or the director and Philip Seymour Hoffman having a friendly argument about just how much actorly "business" he adds to the simplest of actions. There is much ado about transforming the climactic plague of frogs from a screenwriter's flight of fancy to a filmable reality.

So that is my favorite bonus feature. What’s yours? Is there a commentary you return to often? Let's hear about it in the comments.

You can follow Michael C. on Twitter at @SeriousFilm or read his blog Serious Film.

It's Over! Hot Docs '12 Finale Edition

The Hot Docs Festival wrapped late last week and a jury handed out awards on Friday.

Call Me Kuchu

I saw Call Me Kuchu after it won Best International Feature (each year they play three award winners during the festival's last evening). I had tried to avoid the movie because depression and anger aren't emotions I like feeling, especially with something that affects me on such a personal level. The anger is rooted in denial.  I'd like to think that the struggle is over for LGBT people but it isn't in so many communities and countries. 

"Kuchu" is a pejorative umbrella term referring to homosexuals, male or female, for Uganda's homophobic government and majority opinion. Directors Malika Zouhali-Worrall and Katherine Fairfax Wright follow a small group of gay activists in this hostile environment and focus on David Kato in particular. His violent death took place during this documentary's production. His murder sparked outrage in the Western world but Uganda's government and majority resent the Western interference in their policies.

One of the other movies given an additional screening was Nisha Pahuja's The World Before Her, which also  made a splash at Tribeca. It won the top prize of Best Canadian Feature and $10,000. This documentary compares contestants of the Miss India pageant with young women of the same age toting guns in Hindu fundamentalist camps, exposing the lack of options for social and economic mobility of young woman in India. According to the CBC, Pahuja's previous credits include TV doc Diamond Road and it took her two years to gain access to the fundamentalist camps. More award winners after the jump.

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Hot Docs: Paolo's Opening Reactions

Paolo here. All world class cities have a lot going on in arts and cultures and this is especially true of Toronto for film lovers. So here I am apologizing that I missed the Kathleen Turner Mini-Film Festival because it happened during Hot Docs, the largest documentary film festival in North America. Taking us northern movie lovers from our post-Oscar hibernation, this festival also begins our new movie year.

I first started going to the festival in 2010, a year full of political films, although not as preachy as the word implies. 2011 had creatively-filmed spotlights on the bittersweet lives of its subjects. But this year's docs are more difficult to enjoy, if that's even an option. Let me explain. An example is The Invisible War, which had its international premiere last Friday.

It's...

the latest groundbreaking investigative documentary by award-winning director Kirby Dick, is about one of America’s most shameful and best kept secrets: the epidemic of rape -

No! Although it has 'prestige doc' potential.

Then there's Outing, also having its international premiere last Friday, its synopsis reading

Since turning 15, a shy, sensitive youth has struggled with a growing awareness of his own unimaginable desire: his sexual attraction to children.

"Jeff"Oh come on now, really? (UPDATE: the screenings for this movie have sold out, leaving its availability status for those who dare join the rush lines). These movies are just the tip of a creepy ass iceberg. There's a selection called Sexy Baby for Christ's sakes, adding another title to the trend of Docs That Make Me Uncomfortable. Then again why am I avoiding these movies but have no qualms on signing up for 'Nightvision,' a package of midnight screenings, that include passes for the Jeffrey Dahmer doc called...Jeff (I blame Jeremy Renner).

[Slushy thoughts, less depressing stuff and James fucking Franco after the jump.]

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Madonna from "Truth or Dare" to "MDNA"

It's hard to believe that the be all and end all of celebrity documentaries, Truth or Dare (1991) is already over 20 years old. Actual age aside, Truth or Dare is timeless not just because it captured one of the most famous women who has ever lived at the peak of her popularity, but because of how daringly it performed that capture. I'm sure it's impossible for anyone under 25 to imagine how shocking Madonna's behavior in the early 90s was. Believe it or not there was a time when the demistification of Celebrity was anathema to Hollywood.

You can argue that some of the magic went out of the movies the more access we had to the magicians on and behind the screen, but there was no stopping the intrusiveness of the information age. Madonna's acclaimed film and --  to a lesser extent though no one wants to give it credit -- her often reviled "Sex" book predicted all of it by revealing more and More and MORE (and then some more) of herself. Madonna has never been a great actress but she has given a genius film performance and this was it. (Her performances in Evita and the short film Star! are a distant second.)

If you're interested in influential landmarks in pop culture I urge you to read Rich Juzwiak's exhilarating piece on Truth of Dare (it's out on Blu-Ray for the first time) over at Gawker 

Madonna has rarely had her finger directly on the pulse—it took her years to dabble in electronica and new jack swing and French house—but over 20 years after its release,Truth or Dare is relevant as ever. (It's out on Blu-ray for the first time today.) It's as close to a memoir as Madonna has ever gotten, and it's brilliantly fitting that the music video master stuck with the trusted audio-visual format that catapulted her to success. Why write when you can be? Madonna's life banged the dust out of vérité entertainment, suggesting the documentary didn't have to be stuffy, that it could be wildly entertaining and overwhelmingly trashy... 

 But while we're on the topic of the Queen a few notes on MDNA after the jump...

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Burtonjuice: The Disney Misfit Years

BURTONJUICE. Our Tim Burton retrospective begins now...
Every Thursday night until we can't take it  no more! 

Last week I rented the Disney documentary "Waking Sleeping Beauty" which I was curious to see again after it's strangely quiet public reception. I really enjoyed the documentary and though it ended like one big long self-aggrandizing commercial for the Magic Kingdom and all they bring to the movies, it's first hour is surprisingly frank about the downward slide of Disney animation in the 70s and 80s and the political tug of wars among the big money executives.

But let's get to the subject. Don't you always forget that Tim Burton started at Disney? I know I do. He never gets a line in this documentary but we do see him briefly twice in the behind the scenes footage while the narrator talks about the generational divide at Disney during the animation studio's near-demise in the 1980s.

Ron Miller knew that Walt's guys were retiring fast. He had to raise a new crop of animators but he was cautious about it. It was this interesting cross generational thing where you still had a few of these legendary artists who were in their 60s and approaching retirement and then a bunch of young people in their 20s who were really really exited and sort of passionate about this medium.

It was thrilling to learn from the masters but there was a feeling that somehow we could be making better films."

Burton doesn't look too happy sitting slack jawed in that tiny cubicle, but that's just his face. Surely the budding filmmaker was excited to be chasing his dreams. Even if his now ultra familiar dreams are far more Gorey lite Gothic than Disney cheerful.

Before his star ascended in the early 80s when two shorts Vincent (1982) and Frankenweenie (1984) gained him a reputation within the industry as a truly distinctive and entertaining filmmaker, he made a handful of very rarely screened shorts. I wish I'd attended the Burton exhibit recently which featured them. Have any of you seen these five?

 

The Island of Doctor Agor (1971) was his first effort at the age of 13. He played Dr Agor. Stalk of the Celery (1979) is a one punchline animated short but you can see Burtonisms especially his love for the mad scientist... though it should be said that Burton's ouevre also includes subversions of this trope, the benevolent (if still mad) scientist. Doctor of Doom (1979) has Burton crashing a party and creating a monster that he sends out to "destroy all beauty." Luau (1982) is a lengthy short that is unfortunately kind of unwatchable on YouTube but it telegraphs a bit about Burton's oddball sense of humor though it also seems a little hornier than his subsequent work. He plays a disembodied head that's the "most powerful force in the universe" and though he tries to turn people into zombies, he doesn't have much luck. At least at first... I gave up 12 minutes in but not before I understood his affinity for Ed Wood. Burton also made a version of the oft- filmed fairy tale Hansel & Gretel (1982) -- which is hard to find -- with the great production designer Rick Heinrichs as his producer. They met at Disney and kept working together.

 

Oscar winner Rick Heinrichs and Tim Burton at work on Vincent (1982)

It only took their collaboration 17 years later to win an Oscar (Heinrichs for Sleepy Hollow) though Tim Burton has famously never been nominated as Best Director. His sole personal nomination was for the animated feature Corpse Bride.

Where were we? Oscar trivia is so distracting. Oh yes, Vincent (1982). We love it. Disney, rather famously, did not. Too dark!

My favorite favorite favorite part...

He likes to experiment on his dog Abercrombie
in the hopes of creating a terrible zombie.

Vincent is just wonderful isn't it? A.

Vincent's Tim Burton's perfect woman?
Before we move on to Frankenweenie (The Original) next Thursday tell me if I'm crazy but little Vincent's hallucinated dead wife...

He knew he'd been banished to the tower of doom
where he was sentenced to spend the rest of his life.
alone with the portrait of his beautiful wife."

She looks SO familiar. A pinch of Lisa Marie? Two cups of Corpse Bride... a scoop of Helena Bonham-Carter in Alice in Wonderland? What Burton woman does this most remind you of?

What's your favorite part of Vincent? And do you think it's too easy to retroactively project meaning on to the early work of famous filmmakers?