News

In a scene worthy of one of his animated works, Terry Gillam took to a stage covered in crashed paper planes at the Annecy International Animation Film Festival on Sunday to receive its honorary Cristal award and give a masterclass about his animated works.

Gilliam was last in Annecy, where its audience has a tradition of bombarding the stage with paper planes, in 1975 with Miracle of Flight. The anarchic comedy about mankind’s different attempts to fly debuted in the shorts competition but did not win a prize.

“Do you know how long it’s taken me to get this f**king award… They’ve finally let me in… I think they know I might not be around next year,” joked the director as he received the trophy.

The French lakeside animation festival, running from June 9 to 15, is set to welcome close to 16,000 animation professionals this year, many of them...

Based on Chris Marker's 1962 short film "La Jetée," Terry Gilliam's 1995 film "12 Monkeys" begins in a futuristic, post-apocalyptic wasteland ravaged by a deadly virus. Cities are already being reclaimed by plants and animals, and humans have moved into cage-like, nightmarish structures underground. Despite the dire circumstances, humans still adhere to a frustrating bureaucracy, forcing mentally detached people to attend meetings and make plans. Luckily, humans also have access to a time machine, and they have selected James Cole (Bruce Willis) to go back in time to 1990 -- and then again to 1996 -- to find out more about the virus and help find a cure. Because it's a Terry Gilliam film, the picture doesn't exactly end on a note of hope. 

Terry Gilliam's films tend to be fraught affairs, usually wracked with production problems, delays, and other things that are out of the filmmaker's control; he seems to be very unlucky.

VFX icon and “Mad God” director Phil Tippett is working on a new stop-motion feature titled “Sentinel,” which will be pitched for the first time at this year’s Frontières section of Cannes’ Marché du Film.

Variety has been given exclusive access to the first plot details and set images from “Sentinel,” which shares a visual fidelity with “Mad God.” However, in terms of production, things will be very different this time around.

“Mad God” was a project that Tippett worked on off and on for thirty years. A similar timetable isn’t realistic for “Sentinel,” as the director would be over 100 at the film’s premiere. So, Tippett and producer Colin Geddes (Ultra 8 Pictures) say they’re pursuing a more conventional development and production plan with their new project, including a clearer narrative focus. Tippett has already begun filming bits of the film, and his team will be...

Late in Ari Aster’s subversive Oedipal odyssey, “Beau Is Afraid,” Joaquin Phoenix’s neurotic man-child enters a play in the woods as a momentary escape from his nightmarish existence. The 12-minute, predominantly stop-motion sequence — aptly titled “Hero Beau” — joyfully conjures an alternate reality of what might have been for Beau, free of his castrating mother (Zoe Lister-Jones and Patti LuPone), raising three boys on a farm, surviving a disaster, and living a full life.

Directed by Chilean animators Cristóbal León and Joaquín Cociña (“La Casa Lobo”), this movie-within-the-movie is exquisitely hand-crafted with the aid of some set design by production designer Fiona Crombie (“The Favourite”), evoking an unnatural world that’s as symbolically dreamlike as the rest of the film. It serves as Beau’s emotional high point and provides the impetus for the rest of his actions thereafter.

“The original plan was not for it to be animated...

In 2023, many of Terry Gilliam's old fans have been forced to face some of the director's questionable behavior, dark opinions, and irresponsible filming style. Briefly: in 2020, Gilliam said in public that the #MeToo movement was a witch hunt, downplaying the widespread sexual abuse the movement sought to highlight. Gilliam followed those statements with a defense of Harvey Weinstein, a defense that fell in line with a notorious petition he signed a decade previous seeking to exonerate Roman Polanski. Woody Allen, Martin Scorsese, Michael Mann, Pedro Almodóvar, Alejandro González Iñárritu, Wong Kar-Wai, and David Lynch also signed the petition. So did Harvey Weinstein, who asked many for support.

Famously, Gilliam's films have almost all had troubled shoots, and each one comes prepackaged with a chaotic story about its making. "Brazil" was infamously recut several times, "Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas" briefly didn't know which script it was supposed to use,...

We're back with another Blu-ray round-up! As always, I gather up the latest releases for you in one handy spot. You're welcome. This latest round-up includes Criterion's release of Terry Gilliam's "The Adventures of Baron Munchausen," Taylor Russell and Timothée Chalamet playing a pair of fine young cannibals in "Bones and All," Ralph Fiennes serving up "The Menu," and a tooth-drilling double feature of "The Dentist" movies.

Bones And All

Luca Guadagnino's "Bones and All" is a beautiful road trip movie that just happens to be about cannibals. It's the 1980s, and Maren (Taylor Russell) has a big secret: she's a cannibal who can't resist eating human flesh. After an unfortunate incident involving a classmate, Maren hits the road. She eventually encounters Lee (Timothée Chalamet), another cannibal. It turns out there are cannibals all over the country, and they can sense each other. Lee and Maren fall...

Terry Gilliam’s grandest, most joyful fantasy is still a marvel, a fully adult adventure that will equally spark younger imaginations. Creative tricks and eye-popping Italo designs bring us a magical, satirical world of absurd wars, sultan’s hareems and a flight of fancy to the moon. John Neville’s ideal Baron is abetted by spunky Sarah Polley and a gallery of winning characterizations, from Eric Idle, Oliver Reed, Jonathan Pryce, Uma Thurman, Jack Purvis, Robin Williams, Valentina Cortese, Sting. So what if the Baron is history’s most notorious liar: we understand his complaint when performing a technically preposterous trip through outer space: “This is Precisely the sort of thing nobody Ever believes.”

The Adventures of Baron Munchausen 4K

4K Ultra HD + Blu-ray

The Criterion Collection 1166

1988 / Color / 1:85 widescreen / 126 min. / available through The Criterion Collection / Street Date January 3, 2023 / 49.95

Starring: John Neville, Eric Idle, Sarah Polley, Oliver Reed, Charles McKeown,...

Filmmakers Albert Birney and Kentucker Audley discuss the movies that inspired their latest film, Strawberry Mansion.

Show Notes: Movies Referenced In This Episode

Strawberry Mansion (2022)

The Fabulous Baron Munchausen (1962) – Glenn Erickson’s trailer commentary

The Adventures of Baron Munchausen (1988) – Josh Olson’s trailer commentary

The Neverending Story (1984)

A Nightmare On Elm Street (1984) – Dan Ireland’s trailer commentary

Pretty Woman (1990) – Allan Arkush’s trailer commentary

Barton Fink (1991)

Being There (1979) – Alan Spencer’s trailer commentary, Charlie Largent’s Blu-ray review

Salesman (1969)

The Hudsucker Proxy (1994)

Eraserhead (1977) – Karyn Kusama’s trailer commentary

The Shining (1980) – Adam Rifkin’s trailer commentary

The Tragedy of Macbeth (2021)

Inside Llewyn Davis (2013) – Glenn Erickson’s Criterion Blu-ray review

Bottle Rocket (1996)

Rushmore (1998)

The Grand Budapest Hotel (2014)

Beetlejuice (1988) – Alex Kirschenbaum’s review

Pee Wee’s Big Adventure (1985)

The Nightmare Before Christmas (1993) – Axelle Carolyn’s trailer commentary, Randy Fuller’s trailer commentary

Honey I Shrunk The Kids (1989)

Re-Animator (1985) – Charlie Largent’s Blu-ray review...

Each week we highlight the noteworthy titles that have recently hit streaming platforms in the United States. Check out this week’s selections below and past round-ups here.

Art-House Animation

If your eyes are tired of the latest cookie-cutter animation from the Hollywood mill, Criterion is featuring quite a line-up of inventive arthouse offerings in the field. With works by Marcell Jankovics, Satoshi Kon, Ari Folman, Don Hertzfeldt, Karel Zeman, and more, the series includes The Fabulous Baron Munchausen (1962), Belladonna of Sadness (1973), Fantastic Planet (1973), Watership Down (1978), Son of the White Mare (1981), Alice (1988), Millennium Actress (2001), Mind Game (2004), Paprika (2006), Persepolis (2007), Waltz with Bashir (2008), Mary and Max (2009), It’s Such a Beautiful Day (2012), Tower (2016), The Wolf House (2018), No. 7 Cherry Lane (2019), and more.

Where to Stream: The Criterion Channel

Neo-Noir

One of the greatest series to arrive on the Criterion Channel thus far is this selection of neo-noir offerings, including Brian De Palma’s masterpieces Blow Out and Body Double,...

As the 1980s got underway, Johnny Cash’s recording career was foundering. Since his 1976 Number One hit “One Piece at a Time,” only his 1979 single “Ghost Riders in the Sky” managed to reach the Top Ten. Celebrating his 25th anniversary as an artist, Cash was still a significant concert draw and made regular appearances on network television, but the specter of prescription drug abuse hung over him and would play a pivotal role in ending his personal and professional relationship with longtime bass player Marshall Grant in March 1980. As that year ended,...

“Not so much a suspension of disbelief, as a suspension of dreary naturalism.” Criterion acknowledges a great filmmaker with this wonderful trio of Karel Zeman spectaculars, truly original fantasies that showcase a blend of animation and theatrical effects concocted, confected, perfected half a century before CGI. The Czech filmmakers take us on a prehistoric safari, a cruise to an island of Jules Verne sci-fi marvels, and into a brightly imagined, magical storybook fantasy. Even the presentation is whimsical — the three features are packaged in a functioning pop-up book.

Three Fantastic Journeys by Karel Zeman

Journey to the Beginning of Time

Invention for Destruction

The Fabulous Baron Munchausen

Blu-ray

The Criterion Collection 1015, 1016, 1017

1955, 1958, 1962 / Color + B&w / 1:37 flat Academy / 84, 81, 83 min. (248 in toto) / Cesta do praveku, Vynález zkázy, Baron Prášil / available through The Criterion Collection / Street Date February 25, 2020 / 99.95

Designed and Directed by Karel Zeman

At first it seemed too good to be true,...

It feels a little bit like Christmas morning around the house this morning, even though we’ve still got a week and change to go before the actual day, and that’s undoubtedly because all the women here are rousing themselves a bit early to get ready for what amounts to Christmas 2017, Hollywood style. (The cats have been up for some time already, and they too are very excited, but you know, that’s just their way.) You see, in a couple hours we’re all piling into the car and making the pilgrimage up the hill to Universal City to see Star Wars: The Last Jedi. When it comes to buying advance tickets for a big movie for the whole family to see together my dear wife knows no restraints, and if the movie is prefixed with the words “Star Wars,” then all bets are most assuredly off.

Trembles is taking us on a trip back to the 1960's today with his Motion Picture Purgatory review of The Fabulous Baron Munchausen (aka Baron Prásil), a Czechoslovakian film directed by Karel Zeman and starring Milos Kopecky as the Baron.

Synopsis:

The outrageous Baron Munchausen tells of his many adventures, from meeting the Man in the Moon to defeating a Turkish army all by himself.

A feast for fabulation fanatics!

Discuss Motion Picture Purgatory in the comments section below!