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Title	Director	Publisher	Price
Encyclopdedia Destructica: Volume Bumba, Issue the Fourth	Gordon Nelson	Encyclopedia Destructica	$15.00 ($15.00 list)
Read more and comment...	This, the final installment of "Volume Bumba," is the film and video issue. It comes with its own DVD containing a whopping 38 original film and video works running a mind-bending three and a half hours ensconced in a 118-page illustrated catalogue that is hand bound in a hand-silk-screened hardcover. Produced in a limited edition of only 500 copies, this is an excellent survey of the great variety of talent working in film and video in Pittsburgh, and an amazing value that you won't want to miss. While, yes, some of the works here are amateurish and some are obviously student films, others are totally amazing. We are still reeling from the experience of watching Gordon Nelson's 15-minute and 48-second "Sixties Teen Dance Party," which contains what is quite possibly The Greatest Found Footage of All Time, footage which has, in turn, been artfully optically printed by Mr. Nelson, who has also added an original soundtrack which itself was recorded live (although, you might find yourself unable to resist the temptation to turn down the volume on your TV and put some classic '60s dance music on the hi-fi and crank it up while you watch this amazing film). "Sixties Teen Dance Party" alone is, in our humble opinion, easily worth the price of the entire package. But there's so much more. Other highlights include Suzie Silver's "Peggy Love 101," in which the lyric "love" has been excised from the catalogue of Peggy Lee songs and rhythmically edited along with found footage (yes, we seem to have a predilection for this...) of her performances to create an abstraction of pop love. "Sports and Diversions" by Bum Lee, a series of black and white animations inspired by Eric Satie's Sports et Diveritissements, a series of short piano pieces that are performed (and quite well, too!) here by Pei Wei Lin, is quite a marvel and might very well be the single most original piece you'll see this year. Watching Jessica Fenlon's "Crossroads" provides a meditative three and a half minutes that will lower your blood pressure. And, we can't leave off without mentioning John Allen Gibel's "Pleromadromadhatu (trailer)" which is either a parody of or an homage to -- or both -- the films of Dusan Makavejev and Alejandro Jodorowsky. We could go on and on here as there are still over thirty pieces we haven't even mentioned yet, many of which we'd like to tell you about. Suffice it to say that this is something that you'll kick yourself (hard) if you miss out on it. So don't!
By Brakhage	Stan Brakhage	Criterion Collection	$35.00 ($39.95 list)
Read more and comment...	This is it! The definitive Brakhage DVD collection. Two DVD set includes the films: The Act of Seeing with One’s Own Eyes Black Ice Cat’s Cradle Commingled Containers Crack Glass Eulogy The Dante Quartet The Dark Tower Delicacies of Molten Horror Synapse Desistfilm Dog Star Man Eye Myth For Marilyn The Garden of Earthly Delights I…Dreaming Kindering Love Song Mothlight The Stars are Beautiful Stellar Study in color and Black and White Three hand-painted films: •Nightmusic •Rage Net •Glaze of Cathexis Wedlock House: An Intercourse Window Water Baby Moving The Wold Shadow New high-definition digital transfers of all films, approved by Stan Brakhage Interview with the filmmaker Essay by Brakhage expert Fred Camper Film Info 243 minutes Color/Black and white 1.33:1 Dolby Digital Mono 1.0 Optimal image quality: RSDL dual-layer edition To learn more about Stan Brakhage, the films that he has made, and his writings on film and other topics, the best web resource is Fred Camper's Stan Brakhage on the Web.
Last Year at Marienbad	Alain Resnais	Criterion Collection	$34.95 ($39.98 list)
Read more and comment...	directed by Alain Resnais from a screenplay by Alain Robbe-Grillet w/ Delphine Seyrig and Giorgio Albertazzi <<<•>>> There are few truly one-of-a-kind films. By any measure, Last Year at Marienbad is clearly one of them. A film that is successful like none other in recreating a mental landscape, that shows the inner workings of a restless mind and haunted memory, that employs the language of cinema to probe the interior twists and turns of consciousness, that demonstrates how thought is action in a manner that, while tempermentally quite different from, may yet be considered the most successful translation of the Proustian approach to narrative in any film yet realized. Here, in L'année dernière à Marienbad, like in Á la recherche du temps perdue, we are confronted with a life turned inside out. Robbe-Grillet, Resnais & Co. managed a feat that has yet to be repeated, and now we are presented with the – for now – definitive DVD edition, courtesy of The Criterion Collection (who else?). This is a two-disc edition with some interesting and worthwhile extras – including two short Resnais documentaries from 1956 & 1958 – but all pale next to the glory of the restored high-definition transfer of the film itself. Your film education is incomplete until you've seen this film. And this is also one film that can quite decidedly stand up to repeated viewings, as its aesthetic pleasures and intellectual challenges are not easily exhausted.
Funky Forest the First Contact	Hajime Ishimine, Katsuhito Ishii	Viz	$25.00 ($29.98 list)
Read more and comment...	This film is SO far out that we are not yet ready to do it justice. Suffice it to say that fans of cinema that strays from the beaten path should consider checking this out – as long as they are prepared for the possibility that they might get lost deep in the woods. Those true believers that are already there and consider it home should consider this an absolute must see. THIS is a one of a kind film. Here's its homepage. Or just go straight to its trailer on YouTube. This is a film that you will want to watch more than once and will enjoy turning your friends on to and watching their jaws drop (presuming, of course, that your friends' cinematic tastes – as well as your own, we hasten to add – can handle the intensely bizarre flavors contained in this big bento box of a film).
By Brakhage, Volume 2	Stan Brakhage	Criterion Collection	$34.95 ($39.98 list)
Read more and comment...	By Brakhage, Volume 2 << • >> Here we have it: a whopping seven and a half hours of work by the undisputed master of independent American experimental cinema, selected by his widow, Marilyn Brakhage, and expertly transferred to digital media by the Criterion Collection Crew. While most movie-goers have never even heard of him, it's hard to over-estimate Brakhage's impact on the history of film. Beginning in the 1950s, he opened up a whole new way of thinking about and working with film. It could be said (and so, we will) that what Einstein was to Newton in the realm of physics, Brakhage was to Eisenstein in the realm of film. Learn quite a bit about what's on this 3-disc set by reading this in-depth essay by Ms. Brakhage.
Paprika	Satoshi Kan	Sony Classics	$17.77 ($19.98 list)
Read more and comment...	Paprika is a truly trippy, one-of-a-kind animé classic that we can guarantee you will want to watch more than once, both in order to fully appreciate what it is trying to say and simply to revel in its tour de force animation. Paprika seamlessly splices hand-painted cel animation with CGI to create a world of the not too distant future in which dreams and technology merge – with frightening and intellectually intriguing consequences. Taking Raymond Chandler's classic hard-boiled detective novel, The Big Sleep as his point of departure, director Kan adapts Yasutaka Tsutsui's original novel and weaves its intriguing tale of the merging of dreams and reality through the vehicle of a computer technology into a film the making of which employs technology that is not all that disimilar, and by so doing creates a fascinating and probing movie about movies and their relationship to dreams, and how computer technology is bringing the two ever closer. An admitted influence on Christopher Nolan's film, Inception, Paprika is a thought-provoking film. Click on image at left to read our in-depth review of Paprika by guest reviewer, Brendan Renne.
Gasland	Josh Fox	Docurama	$18.88 ($29.98 list)
Read more and comment...	Marcellus Shale is here and there's no turning back, but an informed populace is the best defense against rapacity and greed, and that's where Josh Fox's Gasland comes in. It's more the first word than the last word on the subject, but this is a subject that is worthy of plenty of attention and this is a good place to start. Here's the official description: "The largest domestic natural gas drilling boom in history has swept across the United States. The Halliburton-developed drilling technology of "fracking" or hydraulic fracturing (Copacetic Note: hydraulic fracturing was actually developed by George Mitchell of Mitchell Energy; not sure why the makers of this film think it was Halliburton...) has unlocked a "Saudia Arabia of natural gas" just beneath us. But is fracking safe? When filmmaker Josh Fox is asked to lease his land for drilling, he embarks on a cross-country odyssey uncovering a trail of secrets, lies and contamination. A recently drilled nearby Pennsylvania town reports that residents are able to light their drinking water on fire. This is just one of the many absurd and astonishing revelations of a new country called GASLAND. Part verite travelogue, part expose, part mystery, part bluegrass banjo meltdown, part showdown." Here's the trailer. Bonus features? Yes: this DVD contains 45 minutes of "never-seen-before" bonus footage.
Something Wild	Jonathan Demme	Criterion Collection	$27.50 ($29.98 list)
Read more and comment...	<<•>> w/ Melanie Griffith, Jeff Daniels and Ray Liotta <<•>> Demme's masterpiece, and one of the undisputed classics of '80s American cinema, Something Wild is also the film that put Ray Liotta on the map and remains his most affecting performance. Beautifully shot by the one and only Tak Fujimoto, and featuring The Feelies as a high school cover band performing Bowie's "Fame" at a reunion dance, this one of a kind work, which is perhaps the only film to successfully combine screwball comedy and violent thriller, is now available in a Criterion edition offering a new, restored digital transfer supervised by Tak Fujimoto and that features new interviews with Demme and screenwriter E Max Frye and a booklet that includes an essay by David Thompson.

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