We like to think of the Cohen Film Collection as competition to the Criterion Collection; Cohen 2K and/or 4K restorations are stunning; they usually add fascinating bonus tracks and keeps their prices at amounts the average person can afford.
This year, the marvels we considered Cohen’s Best of the Year . . .
At the very top of the list moves that silence remains golden. Buster Keaton, one of the most important and highly-regarded comedians of Hollywood history, is celebrated in three volumes. Comedian? Also film director, producer, screenwriter and stunt performer.
The Great Stoneface’s brilliance is seen in three essential restored Blu-ray volumes.
The Buster Keaton Collection: Volume 1 features The General and Steamboat Bill, Jr.)
The General is considered to be the last great comedy of the silent era, and it consistently ranks as one of the greatest films of all time on international critics’ polls. Orson Welles called the film the greatest comedy, the greatest Civil War movie, even the greatest film of all time.
Set during the Civil War and based on a true incident, the film is an authentic-looking period piece that brings the scope and realism of Matthew Brady-like images to brilliant life.
Keaton portrays engineer Johnnie Gray, rejected by the Confederate Army and thought a coward by his girlfriend (the so-underrated silent icon Marion Mack). When a band of Union soldiers penetrate Confederate lines to steal his locomotive, Johnnie Gray sets off in pursuit. In Steamboat Bill, Jr., as the son of a steamboat captain, Buster falls in love with the daughter of a rival steamboat owner. When a cyclone rages, Buster proves himself a hero by rescuing his love and her father from a watery grave.
The Buster Keaton Collection: Volume 2 features Sherlock Jr. and The Navigator. In Sherlock Jr., Buster plays a movie projectionist who daydreams himself into the movies he is showing and merges with the figures and the backgrounds on the screen. While dreaming he is Conan Doyle’s master detective, he snoops out brilliant discoveries.
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And in another hilarious comedy, Keaton and his sweetheart are cast adrift on a deserted ocean liner. The ship finally runs aground on a desert island where the two unfortunates are chased by cannibals. A box office success, The Navigator is also one of Keaton’s most revered films.
The Buster Keaton Collection: Volume 3 features Seven Chances and Battling Butler. In Seven Chances, Buster gets word that if he can be married by seven o’clock that evening he will inherit $7,000,000. When his sweetheart refuses, he proposes to everyone in skirts, including a Scotsman.
Hopeful still, he advertises for a bride and is horrified to discover 500 would-be-brides hot on his trail in a hilarious chase to the finish. Keaton remarked on occasion that Battling Butler was his favorite of all his films. Based on a Broadway play, the story revolves around a case of mistaken identity between two Alfred Butlers, one an effete millionaire (Keaton), the other the heavyweight champion of the world (the marvelous Francis McDonald).
Coincidence brings them to the same backwoods Kentucky neighborhood, where Butler-the-flop finds love with a mountain girl, but not before antagonizing Butler-the-brute into a Madison Square Garden grudge match.
A classic of French cinema, Joan of Maid is Jaques Rivette’s ambitious two-part historical epic starring Sandrine Bonnaire. For Joan the Maid: The Battles, the first installment of his powerful yet restrained two-part study, director and co-screenwriter Rivette surveys the revelatory period where Joan met with royalty, joined the army and led the French into battle against the English.
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As Joan, Bonnaire gets at the reality behind the legend, showing the matter-of-fact courage of a teenage girl. Joan the Maid: The Prisons, the second part of Rivette’s diptych, brought leading lady Bonnaire a César Award nomination for her powerful performance, as she plays out windows in the final two years of Joan’s life, from the battlefield victory, to prison life, to the stake.
The Return of Martin Guerre is one of the most stunning, beautifully filmed atmospheric movies of all time. One critic said “it literally looks like it was painted by Camille Pissarro”.
A thought-provoking story, indeed: In medieval France, some villagers challenge a man’s claim of identity when he (as he says) returns home from some time in the army.
So how do you prove that you are who you say you are, hundreds of years before fingerprinting and DNA? The village dentist is dragged out, as is the midwife who delivered him and the shoemaker who brings a wooden last he made of the husband’s foot before he went off to war.
Gérard Depardieu and Nathalie Baye, who has the difficult job of playing either his wife or his co-conspirator, depending on what’s actually going on, offer solid, riveting performances.
Gérard Depardieu also stars in the lovely Get Out Your Hankerchiefs, a complex, funny, sad, uncomfortaable and very French look at love and sexual dynamics. Depardieu plays a man who truly loves his wife, but is so bothered by his wife ‘s depression that he decides to ask a stranger to be her lover.
No luck, and now the two men are bewitched and
befuddled.
What does work is her love affair with a precocious 13-year-old boy who, in many ways, is the most mature character in the film. And she wants his baby!
This is an unconventional comedy that charmed and shocked the Oscars and went on to become one of the most talked-about French films of the decade.
Starting in 1999, Claude Lanzmann made several films that could be considered satellites of Shoah, the 9 1/2 hour documentary of the Holocaust he made without using a single frame of archival footage. Shoah: Four Sisters is a continuation of Shoah, comprised of interviews conducted in the ’70s that didn’t make it into his completed monumental work. In the last years of the late director’s life, he decided to devote a film to four women from four different areas of Eastern Europe with four different destinies, each finding herself improbably alive after war’s end: Ruth Elias from Ostravia, Czechoslovakia; Paula Biren from Lodz, Poland; Ada Lichtman from further south in Krakow; and Hannah Marton from Cluj, or Kolozsva’r, in Transylvania.
Survivors of unimaginable Nazi horrors during the Holocaust, they tell their individual stories and become crucial witnesses to the barbarism they experienced. Each possesses a vivid intelligence and a commitment to candor that make their accounts of what they suffered through both searing and unforgettable. The frankness of their words, their intensely scrutinized faces, and their bravery as they revisit unimaginable experiences will make them lasting presences in the moral universe of younger generations. Lanzmann’s films remarkably stay within the immediate present tense, where the absolute horror of the Shoah is always happening.
Between the Lines, the sophomore 1977 film by trailblazing writer/director Joan Micklin Silver, marked her second independent production and theatrical follow up to the acclaimed Hester Street. Some consider this an adult version of The Front Page. At the offices of a Boston alternative newspaper, the staff members enjoy a positive and open-minded work environment.
Music critic Max (the brilliant Jeff Goldblum) uses his influence to score dates, while news reporter Harry (the brilliant John Heard) is dating the lovely Abbie (the brilliant Lindsay Crouse), the publication’s lead photographer. However, it seems as though their relatively carefree days are numbered when the owner of a major publishing company buys the paper, leading to more money, but even more changes.
Keep your eyes peeled for Michael J. Pollard, Marilu Henner, Lewis J. Stadlen, Joe Morton, Lane Smith, Jill Eikenberry and a slew of mother big and small-screen faves.
A double-sided foldout timeline showcases important moments in Barbie history. Explore how the doll came to be, what it takes to create one of her many look, and how her legacy continues to influence the world. Today, Barbie continues to spark imaginations and influence conversations around the world.
Coinciding with a major exhibition at London’s Barbican Art Gallery, Lee Krasner (Thames & Hudson, $50) features an outstanding selection of her most important paintings, collages, and works on paper, contextualized by photography from the postwar period, an illustrated chronology, and an unpublished interview with her biographer Gail Levin. Paint this a masterpiece!
Cliff Eisen and Dominic McHugh complement these letters with lively commentaries that draw together the loose threads of Porter’s life and highlight the distinctions between Porter’s public and private existence. This book reveals surprising insights into his attitudes toward Hollywood and Broadway, and toward money, love, and dazzling success.
Playing among the pride, out hunting its prey, or eyeing us directly from the page, Baheux’s lion photography is as much a tribute to the lion’s character, power, and feeling as it is a haunting reminder that this most impressive of animals is also among the most endangered wildlife on earth.
From simple animal photos, self-styled cat whisperer and graphic Tein Lucasson creates high-quality digital images that capture our feline friends in different outfits: whether an elegant Siamese cat in a cashmere sweater, a proud Persian in an aristocratic uniform, or the characterful house cat in a top hat.
Each prestigious golf resort is presented with an expert review, covering its benefits on and off the fairways and greens. The sections on resorts are interspersed with background information and amusing anecdotes, capturing the history and contemporary world of golfing. And the color photos! Up to par and then some.
A longtime assistant to Peter Lindbergh and a renowned portrait photographer, Rappo has found his own nude pictorial language that focuses on the female form—at times drawing on the studio tradition and at others reveling in the body in motion. Nude ($55), Rappo’s first publication, brings together some of his favorite nude photographs, indispensable for those who love nude photography.
An impeccably researched and insightful look into the evolution of jewelry through the ages, Jewels and Jewelry is a treasured resource for students, professionals, collectors, and lovers of jewelry alike.
Some of the items packed (and unpacked) by the famaous folk include Roald Amundsen who, on his race to the Pol, took snowshoes, a Primus stove, a piano, a violin and a gramophone; Tim Slessor, on the first overland from London to Singapore, took machetes, a crowbar, z typewriter, a Remington dry shaver and tea); Nellie Bly, who, on her historic trip around the world in 72 days, packed Mumm champagne, an accordion, a silk waterproof wrap and dark gloves).
Organized in multifaceted, thematic chapters, 1950s in Vogue features carefully curated photographs (more than 200), illustrations and page spreads from the Vogue archives (with iconic images as well as lesser-known wonders), and unpublished photographs and letters from Daves’s personal archives. Revealing a fascinating and hitherto little-explored moment in Vogue history, 1950s in Vogue is a must-have reference for lovers of fashion, photography, and style.
Kemp takes us inside the world of each masterwork: the artist’s relationship to his patrons; how and why the works were commissioned; their iconography and symbology; the experimental painting techniques he applied; stories of how the paintings survived and changed owners across the centuries; restoration and condition; and finally, the unsolved puzzles that remain to this day.
Now, in anticipation of the 100th anniversary of the 19th amendment, this bold and inspiring book mines 130 years of photography to showcase their past, their present and their future. With more than 400 stunning images from more than 50 countries, each page of this glorious book offers compelling testimony about what it means to be female, from historic suffragettes to the haunting, green-eyed “Afghan girl.” The ultimate coffee table book, this iconic collection provides definitive proof that the future is female.
There are also exclusive interviews with crew and cast members, including Seth MacFarlane (who wrote the book’s intro), Seth Green, Mila Kunis, Alex Borstein, and Mike Henry. The world of Family Guy and its memorable characters has never been revealed in such gorgeous detail before.
To reflect all the changes in the global wine scene over the past six years, the Atlas has grown in size to 416 pages and 22 new maps have been added to the wealth of superb cartography in the book. The text has been given a complete overhaul to address the topics of most vital interest to today’s wine-growers and drinkers.
This special commemorative book is lavishly illustrated with rare design drawings and prototypes from Mattel’s archives, fantastic photos of all of the great Hot Wheels vehicles from across their 50-plus year history, and a feature gatefold illustrated with rare Hot Wheels catalog art. It’s the perfect vehicle for Hot Wheels fans of all ages!
At its height in the late ’30s and early ’40s, he was regularly acknowledged by his peers as having shaped the craft of art direction in American film; his work was recognized as representing the finest in motion picture sets and settings. Gibbons championed the notion that movie decor should move beyond the commercial framework of the popular cinema. And he did, brilliantly so, over and over and over . . .
Detailed captions accompany each photograph, providing information about the design, fabric, and embellishments of each ensemble, as well as the occasion on which each was first worn. Packed with anecdotes and insights, Wilson also tells the complete story of The Supremes, both on- and off- stage. Wait! Sssh. Listen closely. I think I hear a symphony.
For much of his life, Buckley diligently kept journals recording his goals, inspirations, aspirations, and creative struggles. These diaries amount to one of the most insightful life chronicles any musical artist has left behind. Jeff Buckley: His Own Voice (Da Capo Press, $40) marks the first-ever publication of Buckley’s handwritten account of his journey from his days in Los Angeles in the late ’80s through shortly before his passing. Combined with reproductions of other memorabilia, including letters, notes and unpublished lyrics, the book takes readers and fans deep into Buckley’s mind and life.
Come From Away: Welcome to the Rock (Hachette Books , $40) is the volume to the musical, featuring the book and lyrics, backstage stories and the real history behind the show’s events, character design sketches, and songs that ended up on the cutting room floor.
You’ll also go behind the scenes of Tarantino’s latest epic, Once Upon a Time in Hollywood. As you make your way through Tarantino’s incredible career, discover what inspired him, his working methods, and the breadth of his talent.
This massive volume celebrates Jaguar’s most legendary models and dives into Jaguar’s archives for stunning photography and detailed reports of its most memorable models, including many never-before-seen images, showcasing celebrated cars such as the E-Type,
Containing rare and never-before-seen photographs, their work together includes images from the last Ziggy Stardust performance, recording sessions for Young Americans and the renowned studio portraits for Diamond Dogs, plus live shows, film shoots, backstage moments and more. With more than 200 photographs, this is the ultimate portrait of an inspiring and ever-changing artist.
Brown’s homage is the first comprehensive study of all of our nation’s Iwo Jima monuments, beginning with the little-known original 1945 monument (unveiled in front of the old Department of the Navy Building on Constitution Avenue in Washington, DC.); the 1954 Marine Corps War Memorial, those erected at Marine Corps bases and many lesser-known others from coast-to-coast. Of course, the flag raising atop Mt. Suribachi on Iwo Jima has become one of the most powerful images of the 20th century and is regarded as one of the most recognizable images in the world.
