THE MOVIE:

Buster Keaton’s College is a note-perfect send-up of university comedies, and in a funny way, an early critique of how motion pictures so regularly hire older adults to play young ones. Old Stone Face as a new high school graduate It’s a great sight gag, that’s to be sure, and only the beginning of what is a very funny silent film.

College was released in 1927 at a time when higher education stories were trendy. Keaton, who is believed to have done most of the directing on this picture in addition to starring, plays an uber-smart student who finds himself in hot water for his intellectually pompous anti-sports philosophy. His high school sweetheart (Anne Cornwall) rejects her suitor until he can learn to stop being so stuck-up. Devastated, the newly jilted scholar decides if he can’t beat ’em, he’s gonna join ’em. He follows the girl, as well as the athlete who is his rival for her affections (Harold Goodwin), to the fictional Clayton College. There, he hopes to get on one of the school’s teams. It doesn’t matter which sport, because he doesn’t know how to play any of them.

In College, plot is secondary to comedy. What exists here exists merely to set up Keaton for another pratfall. There are two basic scenarios: either Buster screwing up on one of the jobs he gets to pay for tuition, or him making a jerk of himself on the field. He tries out for baseball and track before ultimately ending up on the rowing team. He works as a soda jerk and also a waiter–the latter in ill-advised blackface. And not ill advised from a modern PC standpoint, but his ruse gets him into trouble in the film itself when his co-workers find out that he’s faking. It’s the essential Buster Keaton m.o.: bad choices lead to hilarious consequences.

All of College‘s scenarios are very funny, and the laughs make up for the lack of a more complicated story and characterization. Each new locale or task gives the great performer something fresh to play with. He is endlessly inventive, working every possible angle of the situation, be it the showy acrobatics of making an ice cream soda or the literal acrobatics on the track course. The funniest jokes come early, however, at Buster’s high school graduation. A heavy downpour has caused his new suit to shrink–while he’s wearing it and while he’s delivering his doomed valedictorian speech. Keaton plays it perfectly, employing his usual deadpan distress to earn big laughs.

THE DVD

Video:
In the last couple of years, Kino has undertaken a massive restoration project and re-released the Buster Keaton catalogue as remastered editions, both as standard-definition DVDs and high-definition Blu-Rays. College comes on the heels of a huge boxed set released just before Christmas, and just like its siblings in that set, it has been scrubbed from top to bottom. While there is still some unavoidable print damage at times, the overall look of the College: Ultimate Edition DVD is fantastic. The resolution is sharp and even when there are scratches evident on screen, the image is always visible and clear. The black-and-white photography is nicely balanced, never too dark and also never washed out.

College is shown in its original full frame 1.33:1 aspect ratio.

Sound:
John Muri provides musical accompaniment for this silent comedy, and he does a nice job working with the movie. Working with a multi-faceted orchestra, Muri keeps the merriment going without ever overdoing it. The music is there to move the action along, but Muri holds back so that he’s never telegraphing the joke or somehow selling the slapstick instead of Keaton.

The audio is in 2.0 stereo. The film contains the original title cards from the 1927 release.

Extras:
Film scholar and slapstick expert Rob Farr provides an audio commentary to go alongside College, informing us of the history of the production, explaining its significance as both a Buster Keaton film and as a record of athletics of late 1920s. As it turns out, many of the featured actors were actually well-known athletes. Adding to this is John Bengston’s visual essay highlighting College‘s shooting locations.

The main bonus feature is the inclusion of a 1966 short film, The Scribe. This movie is Buster Keaton’s last performance on film. The half-hour program is an industrial short made for the Construction Safety Associations of Ontario and is in color. The actor plays a reporter sent to a building site to do a story on construction safety. Once there, he bumbles his way into demonstrations of different rules and regulations. Keaton was still capable of giving a solid performance, albeit a more self-conscious one–he never speaks, despite The Scribe being a talkie. It’s also kind of sad seeing him reduced to being a mere functionary in this kind of production.

FINAL THOUGHTS:
Highly Recommended. Another fine entry for Buster Keaton is also another fine release in Kino’s Keaton library. The College: Ultimate Edition upgrade dusts off the 1927 silent, remastering the whole thing in HD from original 35mm archives, to showcase this sports-based comedy for the 21st Century. Since College starred Keaton at his peak, it’s no surprise that it’s incredibly funny. College is a slapstick classic and a worthy addition to any home video library.

Jamie S. Rich is a novelist and comic book writer. He is best known for his collaborations with Joëlle Jones, including the hardboiled crime comic book You Have Killed Me, the challenging romance 12 Reasons Why I Love Her, and the 2007 prose novel Have You Seen the Horizon Lately, for which Jones did the cover. All three were published by Oni Press. His most recent project is the comedy series Spell Checkers, again with Jones and artist Nicolas Hitori de. Follow Rich’s blog at Confessions123.com.

THE MOVIE:

“He had the life expectancy of a match…” – ad slogan for The Key

Carol Reed’s 1958 movie The Key turns the British director’s lens on an otherwise unheralded aspect of WWII combat: tug boat crews. Set prior to the bombing of Pearl Harbor, The Key stars William Holden as David Ross, a Canadian sailor assigned to a vessel in the British Navy. (Holden’s all-American image is acknowledged jokingly: few accept him as a citizen from North of the U.S. border.) Ross isn’t entirely prepared for his forthcoming duties. It’s the tugboat’s job to head out into dangerous waters and haul back ships crippled by German U-Boats. They do so by facing the same danger as their quarry, but with barely a gun on their decks.

At his new base, Ross is reunited with Chris (Trevor Howard, Brief Encounter), his shipmate from days past. Chris is an old hand at the tug business, and he shows his buddy the ropes. This includes the cushy apartment, located at the top of winding stairs in a towering building, that has housed more than one condemned tugboat commander. Each is invited to take over the place by his predecessor. The invitation is the extra door key, handed over to the next worthy candidate when the new occupant takes over. The war may be young, but it’s practically a tradition.

Here’s the catch: with the apartment you also get the beautiful woman who lives there. Stella (Sophia Loren, Two Women) spends all her waking hours inside the flat, worrying over her seafaring lovers. Superstitious Navy men think she’s bad luck; indeed, she has a certain clairvoyance. Ross can see that she knows darkness is waiting for Chris before his final voyage. He tries to do the right thing when his friend is lost to the sea, but he soon finds himself using the key and slipping into the expected role.

Reed’s movie is written by Carl Foreman (High Noon), adapted from a novel by Jan De Hartog. The Key is a dark film, more existential treatise than war picture. The words “sober” and “morose” come to mind. The story is burdened by a romantic fatalism: these men are all doomed, and this apartment, and its hostess, merely the waiting room and its steward. This is purgatory. Ironically, the men who captain these tugs are charged with leading their fellow warriors away from death, to push against the current on the River Styx. The price they pay for this heroism is to eventually die themselves.

Unsurprisingly, Ross makes a life with Stella. He gives her the agency to make her own choice at the start, and they come to each other gradually. The longer he survives, the more comfortable Stella becomes with him. She even begins to leave the house and do her own shopping. In a movie full of bad omens (Chris spills wine all over himself, and jokes that he is bleeding), Stella ignores one of the worst: the labor office believes she died in a bombing and is reluctant to bring her on for volunteer work. Is it possible she really is dead and the idea of the apartment as a way station before the afterlife not so far-fetched

William Holden’s best quality is often misconstrued as his happy-go-lucky demeanor. He is a likable lout and a convincing boozer, for sure, but in his most memorable roles (Sunset Boulevard, Stalag 17), his devil-may-care attitude is undercut by a pronounced darkness. The truth is, he does care, he just knows that all these human concerns are a sucker’s bet. (His worst performances are in movies like Paris When It Sizzles, when he’s just playing for laughs.) Reed uses the actor’s natural pessimism to his best advantage, eventually pushing Holden through the cynic’s facade: there is a true romantic lurking deep down. This allows the actor to play David Ross as a fighter with a legitimate emotional arc. He is caught between what he feels and what he fears. Thematically, this carries through to a conclusion that is both emotionally devastating and, yet, charged with hope. Ross is Orpheus, ready to pursue his love anywhere. Some might argue that Loren’s role is just to provide an object of beauty for these men to fight over, but in truth, there is far more to her than that. Yes, she is limited by her time and circumstance, but this is shown as a tragic product of her situation rather than something she is content with. She is just as afraid of letting herself feel as the men are of her premonitions.

Reed and his cinematographer Oswald Morris (Kubrick’s Lolita) collaborate to create a movie every bit as stylish as the director’s signature picture, The Third Man. Yet, where that Orson Welles vehicle made great use of confined, unnatural spaces, here Reed places his doomed heroes in natural locales that are wide open. Nothing so emphasizes the smallness of mortal man than the limitless ocean. This doesn’t mean Reed doesn’t indulge in more stylized, artificial locales. Supporting my underworld theories, the nightclubs the Navy men frequent are debauched way stations where the damned dance in time in order to pretend they are beating it. Late in the picture, when Stella leaves by train, the steam in the station has an eerie noirish quality. Her train more disappears than it departs, the exit tunnel really going nowhere.

The Key makes for a unique, confounding, soulful wartime tale. It is dark and brooding, yet it’s also romantic and, in its way, triumphant. It deals with uncommon subject matter, particularly when it comes to male and female relations, but it does so in a smart, challenging way. I kept expecting Carol Reed to pull a punch or two, but he never does. In fact, he continually builds emotional tension by confounding our expectations and refusing to do what other filmmakers would do. The Key is a hidden treasure in the sea of cinema, rewarding all who sail on her.

THE DVD

Video:
Sony has issued The Key as part of their manufacture-on-demand Choice Collection, and its widescreen black-and-white transfer is one of the better I’ve seen in the line. The print has few marks, and the image is clear throughout. There is good balance between light and dark and a consistent line quality start to finish.

Sound:
The original soundtrack has been mixed in mono and is crisp and clear for the most part. Tones are warm, and there is no hiss; however, there are a couple of glitches, including one noticeable pop followed by a brief dropout. These hiccups are minor, though, and pass quickly.

Extras:
Zero.

FINAL THOUGHTS:
Highly Recommended. This unconventional 1958 war picture is a pleasant surprise–albeit darkly pleasant, like bitter chocolate. William Holden stars in The Key as a haunted tugboat captain–haunted by his past, haunted by the loss of combat, and haunted by the beautiful woman in the empty apartment that many a captain before him has passed through on their way to the next world. Sophia Loren plays the woman, Stella, and so one can see why sailors are drawn to this particular siren. Third Man-director Carol Reed helms this black cruiser, and he does so with ponderous panache. The Key is definitely a movie worth unlocking.

Jamie S. Rich is a novelist and comic book writer. He is best known for his collaborations with Jo�lle Jones, including the hardboiled crime comic book You Have Killed Me, the challenging romance 12 Reasons Why I Love Her, and the 2007 prose novel Have You Seen the Horizon Lately, for which Jones did the cover. All three were published by Oni Press. His most recent project is the comedy series Spell Checkers, again with Jones and artist Nicolas Hitori de. Follow Rich’s blog at Confessions123.com.

Director: Dustin Mills
Starring: Brandon Salkil, Josh Eal, Ethan Holey
Year: 2013

As far as I knew, bath salts were something I bought for my mom for Christmas. They smell nice, they look like rock candy, and they are a cheap & easy present. I heard about “bath salts” about a month ago from a friend who works on a college campus. Apparently this new drug is making the rounds and is causing quite a stir. It is a substituted cathinone, with effects similar to amphetamine or cocaine. The interesting thing about “bath salts” is that they are small white crystals, look like epsom salts, and are often packaged and labeled “not for human consumption”, which inhibits their legal prosecution. Anyway, as Joe Friday would say, those are “just the facts”. Bath Salt Zombies is less about science and more about drugs making people want to eat other people.

The Movie

The story begins with two plot points that set the scene: 1) after a “salts” crackdown in the south the movement has traveled north and has found a new home in New York City, and 2) a government strain of top secret super drug has been compromised and has found its way to the streets. The top dealer in the Salts Market is a group called the Dragons. Highly organized and professional, they have created a monopoly on the drug and stand to make a huge profit. However, independent dealer Bubbles hopes to get in on the action, as he and his partner have created a brand new strain of “salts” that is both highly profitable and highly addictive.

In the background is Agent Forster, a DEA officer who has made it his personal goal to stop the flow of “salts” into the city and to take down the Dragons, with or without a SWAT team. As he pits himself against this elite crime syndicate, a surprise emerges; Bubbles and his partner have unknowingly created a mutated version of this hip drug that has killer side effects. Ritchie, a local junkie, becomes an unwitting participant in this deadly game, and must learn to control his new urge before he becomes something that no one ever saw coming; a Bath Salt Zombie!

First of all, lets lay it all out there. This is a movie about drugs that turn people into zombies that desire human flesh. It has numerous bloody decapitation scenes, faces are frequently torn off, two different women get naked and then get violently murdered, and various body parts are constantly being ripped off, eaten, and/or flung about. It is not a film for the faint of heart, it is not for children, and it is in very poor taste. That said, it’s a B-movie, what did you expect You either are or are not a fan of independent horror films that rely heavily on the gross-out factor in order to be even remotely successful. Bath Salt Zombies is not World War Z or 28 Days Later. It’s more The Toxic Avenger or Halloween Night. You’ve got to know what you’re getting into if you want to have any chance of enjoying this very strange movie.

Now that we understand what we’re dealing with, let’s pick it apart. The acting, for instance; it was not as awful as it could have been, but it wasn’t Oscar-worthy either. Salkil was appropriately disturbing and whacked-out as a mile high zombie flesh-eater. Eal played the part of a karate-chopping cop well enough to be entertaining. And the amateur drug dealers stole the show as two nerdy wannabees in over their heads. The set and effects were passable, but obviously low budget; fake blood sprays, silly mutant drug addicts, and what I can only guess were rooms in the director’s actual house. But, again, it’s hard to judge the film too harshly because it never aspired to be Brokeback Mountain. It was what it was, and what else can you expect when you probably asked your friends to be in your movie and you probably all got stoned right before shooting.

All that said, it wasn’t horrible. I’m not saying it was great, but I watched the whole thing, I laughed a little, and I moderately enjoyed myself. But then again, I like zombie movies, I like campy horror flicks, and I don’t mind a little gratuitous sex & violence. This actually wasn’t Mills’ first project, and you could tell; it was as professional as a trippy slasher movie can be. It was well made for it’s budget and was fun while it lasted. I mean, it was short, which was probably a great idea, because I’m not sure how much more face-eating I could have watched, but it was good enough to not turn off. And I actually liked the fact that they referenced “salts” correctly, up to a certain point. It added a small amount of relevancy to what otherwise was a ridiculous plot. I’m not saying that the majority of people will fall in love with Bath Salt Zombies, but it wasn’t as awful as it appears at first glance.

The DVD

Video: Shot in 16:9 HD, the picture wasn’t a distraction, but it wasn’t amazing either. Like I said, it was decidedly low budget, but did fairly well within those restrictions. There’s no need to watch this on Hi-Def equipment; you won’t see anything special.
Audio: There are zero sound options with this DVD. No language selection, no stereo choices, and no subtitles. And the mixing during the film was quite bad; the voices were turned too far down and the music was turned way too far up. That said, there was an interesting soundtrack of punk/rock songs, if you’re a fan.
Extras: Again, almost no options here. You do get an extremely odd cartoon at the beginning of the movie featuring a slacker kid who makes a deal with the devil and then attempts to eat his own mother. So there’s that. Otherwise, your extras are a trailer for the film and a commentary version with Mills and Salkil, where they explain their reasoning behind various parts of the film.

Final Thoughts

Rent it. Bath Salt Zombies is like a B-movie from hell, but one that somehow comes across as funny and watchable, if barely. Don’t expect too much and you won’t be disappointed, but check it out if you’re a fan of zombies/slashers/horror. The video is fine but not wonderful, the audio is poor, and the extras are almost nonexistent, so don’t spend top dollar on this DVD, as it’s nothing to write home about. Just watch, enjoy, try to accept it, and you might have a good time.

Olie Coen
111 Archer Avenue
111aa.blogspot.com

THE MOVIE:

The 3D, Leonardo DiCaprio-adaptation of F. Scott Fitzgerald’s The Great Gatsby, for better or worse, was the literary cinematic event of the summer. So it makes sense that the BBC would reach back into its vaults and dig up their 2000 special, The Great Gatsby: Midnight in Manhattan. A slim program, clocking not even 50 minutes, it’s an entertaining warm-up, perhaps best viewed as a refresher for lapsed fans or an introduction for new believers. The Great Gatsby: Midnight in Manhattan is far from an in-depth dissection of the famous novel and its effects on the culture at large, though both surfaces are skimmed. The film is heavier on the connections between the book and its author’s own life, as well as his relationship with Zelda Sayre, his version of Daisy.

The Great Gatsby: Midnight in Manhattan is loaded with admirers, including Jay McInerney, author of Bright Lights, Big City, and Garrison Keillor, host of Prairie Home Companion and the daily “Writer’s Almanac.” It’s worth noting that the age of the program means there are several commentators who are no longer with us: namely, Hunter S. Thompson, Christopher Hitchens, and George Plimpton. This alone makes this DVD valuable. There is also a brief interview with Fitzgerald’s last secretary, who opens the documentary by visiting the home where he died. The author’s words are read by actor Jason Priestly.

Excepting a clumsy attempt to tie the The Great Gatsby‘s themes to turn-of-the-century, pre-9/11, pre-housing bubble, pre-charitable Bill Gates greed and excess, there isn’t really much to fault in The Great Gatsby: Midnight in Manhattan‘s analysis. There’s just not enough of it. This is more of a DVD bonus feature than a stand-alone.

In fact, the actual bonus feature on this DVD is longer than the main program (if only by two minutes). It’s a full-length teleplay by Robert Muller called Private Affairs: A Dream of Living. Shot in 1975, but set in Paris in 1925, it dramatizes the first meeting between Zelda Fitzgerald (Annie Lambert) and Ernest Hemingway (Charles Keating) when the latter is visiting F. Scott Fitzgerald (David Hemmings, Blow-Up). The impetus for the event is the publication of The Great Gatsby, the narrative follows a day of partying and verbal sparring about writing, manhood, and romance. It’s nicely written and performed, though the compact timing makes some of the conversation seem overly convenient, like Muller is trying to pact the entirety of this literary triangle into one hour.

THE DVD

Video:
The Great Gatsby: Midnight in Manhattan receives a below-average widescreen presentation. Though the image is bright and colors look good, there is far too much interlacing, resulting in jagged lines and tracers, making the program look cheap.

The second feature looks similar. The source is older, and it has the look of 1970s BBC dramas; in addition to the zig-zag resolution, there are also some shimmery moments that look like instability in the original tape.

Sound:
The stereo mix on the audio is fine. It’s a fairly simple documentary in terms of sound design.

Subtitles for the Deaf and Hearing Impaired are available.

Extras:
Just the one bonus discussed above.

FINAL THOUGHTS:
Rent It. There’s not enough here to warrant a purchase, let’s be honest. Still, The Great Gatsby: Midnight in Manhattan, short as it may be, is an insightful preamble for anyone looking to get into F. Scott Fitzgerald’s oeuvre or learn more about the author.

Jamie S. Rich is a novelist and comic book writer. He is best known for his collaborations with Jo�lle Jones, including the hardboiled crime comic book You Have Killed Me, the challenging romance 12 Reasons Why I Love Her, and the 2007 prose novel Have You Seen the Horizon Lately, for which Jones did the cover. All three were published by Oni Press. His most recent project is the comedy series Spell Checkers, again with Jones and artist Nicolas Hitori de. Follow Rich’s blog at Confessions123.com.

THE MOVIE:

Sports documentaries live or die on the make-or-break moment of the chosen competitors. The film’s narrative is built around their push toward their goals and the outcome of either victory or defeat. In the most compelling cases, it’s practically a live-or-die situation for the subjects, as well. The final competition will be their defining moment, the culmination of all that has come, determining what happens next.

So it is for the boxers in China Heavyweight. Three in particular are singled out and showcased by director Yung Chang (Last Train Home), who follows them through training and divergent paths of competition. Leading the narrative is Qi Moxiang, a fighter in his mid-30s who has had past successes fighting in national competitions, but who has been out of the ring and training young boxers for half a decade following his failure to qualify for the Olympics. Qi is focused entirely on boxing, and he has a particular affection for the state-run amateur leagues that he came up in. Boxing had been banned in China for the latter half of the 20th Century for being too violent and too American. Its emergence as a national pastime and obsession is now a sign of modernity as well as a viable opportunity for those who go after it to change their fate.

China Heavyweight follows Qi and his partner into schools where they audition Chinese youths for their training camp. Over the course of the film, we are privy to the development of two of their protégés, one of whom is determined to splinter off and go pro. All the Chinese pugilists look up to American champions, particularly Mike Tyson and Mohammed Ali, whom they call “boxing kings.” Their only other alternative is to stay in the provinces and work on the family farm.

Adding a further complication to China Heavyweight is Qi’s sudden decision to get back in the game. Throughout the movie, we see that there are outside pressures weighing on him. His family and friends want him to start a family and build a more conventional life for himself. All Qi knows is boxing, and so he looks to an upcoming bout as a last opportunity to prove himself. There also seems to be at least some sliver of competition with his young charges pushing him to pick up his gloves. As one student throws his opportunities away and another loses his footing in the ring, Qi’s comeback becomes increasingly important. Hull fill the hole and take the chances they won’t.

Naturally, whether Qi is victorious or not is something best left to your own discovery. Yung Chang lets the drama play itself out on its own. His style of documentary filmmaking is very much a fly-on-the-wall approach. There are no side interviews, no talking heads, just an obsession with details, no matter how small. Some of the most compelling scenes in China Heavyweight are when the participants move away from the gym. Seeing Qi interact with his mother or how the boys’ decisions weigh on their families has an emotional punch equal to any roundhouse thrown in the ring. Chang also takes time to let us know his subjects as individuals, to show the everyday concerns that make them relatable. There’s something all-too-human about seeing a 19-year-old boy who isn’t afraid to step up to an opponent and take a beating being too nervous to ask a girl for her phone number. Then again, romance rarely has a referee.

This is a crucial element of a movie like China Heavyweight. These aren’t champions we are watching, at least not yet, and so our investment in the story is how we view each fighter as an individual, and how much we come to understand their dreams and desires. Yung Chang makes sure we see how their decisions and their commitments or failures affect them and the people around them, and in that way they affect us, too. It allows us to put on the gloves, at least for a little while, and to consider our own hopes for our lives be they past, present, or future.

THE DVD

Video:
The DVD of China Heavyweight features a transfer mastered from high-definition sources, presented in widescreen at the film’s original aspect ratio. Colors are vibrant and the natural ambience of the real-life scenarios is maintained throughout. The overall resolution is good, though there is some slight haziness and pixilation at times.

Sound:
The original Chinese-language soundtrack is mixed in two-channel stereo and is actually really excellent. There is a good balance between the speakers and a real sense of immersion, maintaining the reality of the onscreen events.

The optional English subtitles are well paced and easy to read. There is also an option for traditional Chinese subtitles.

Extras:
In addition to a theatrical trailer, you get 30 minutes of deleted scenes. The best of these show us a little more about the school, including a visit to the girl’s dorm. We see a little bit of the female boxers that are recruited at the same time as the men in the main feature, but not much of their actual trajectory in the film itself. There seems like there’d be a whole other interesting documentary to be made on that side of the campus.

FINAL THOUGHTS:
Yung Chang’s China Heavyweight is an understated, carefully sculpted portrait of three boxers–one a veteran, and two trainees with different objectives–trying to make their way in China’s national sporting program. As with any good sports story, the competition is important, but not as important as the participants. The humanity of the fighters, and the consequences of their choices, is the real meat of China Heavyweight. This is a compelling story, smartly told by one of international cinema’s best emerging documentarians. Highly Recommended.

Jamie S. Rich is a novelist and comic book writer. He is best known for his collaborations with Joëlle Jones, including the hardboiled crime comic book You Have Killed Me, the challenging romance 12 Reasons Why I Love Her, and the 2007 prose novel Have You Seen the Horizon Lately, for which Jones did the cover. All three were published by Oni Press. His most recent project is the comedy series Spell Checkers, again with Jones and artist Nicolas Hitori de. Follow Rich’s blog at Confessions123.com.