The Mumpsimus

Yesterday was the 70th birthday of my favorite filmmaker, Rainer Werner Fassbinder . He wasn't around to see it, having died at age 37, but I celebrated for him by watching Querelle again. (I was tempted to do a Berlin Alexanderplatz marathon today, but I do actually have to get some work done...) I've written various things about Fassbinder over the years, so here's a roundup and then some 70th birthday thoughts: In commemoration of the 30th anniversary of Fassbinder's death, I wrote "30 Years After Fassbinder: Where to Begin" , which attempts to offer some entry points into his vast, sometimes bewildering oeuvre. (And proposed that I'd be writing a series of posts about Fassbinder. I didn't get around to it at the time, alas...) The most extensive work I've done on Fassbinder was for Press Play : the text essay "Early Fassbinder: A Romantic Anarchist from the First" and accompanying video essay "First Fassbinder" . ...

First Fassbinder from Matthew Cheney on Vimeo Over at Press Play, I have a video essay and accompanying text essay on the first films of Rainer Werner Fassbinder [dead link: see video above, text below], the best of which were recently released in the US by Criterion as part of the Eclipse series . EARLY FASSBINDER: A ROMANTIC ANARCHIST FROM THE FIRST by Matthew Cheney The German actor and filmmaker Frank Ripploh interviewed Rainer Werner Fassbinder in March 1982, only a few months before Fassbinder's death at age 37. Ripploh's last question was: "How do you describe yourself?" "I'm a romantic anarchist," Fassbinder said. And so he had been from the beginning. It can be difficult to know what to make of Fassbinder, how to enter his extraordinary body of work, how to assess and appreciate his achievement. Romantic anarchists don't sum up well. First, there is the simple problem of scale. Though his career was relatively short, ...

Consumer-citizens of the United States, rejoice! Criterion has announced that they will be releasing Rainer Werner Fassbinder's wonderful science fiction epic World on a Wire in February. Diligent and obsessive readers of this here blog may remember that I swooned over World on a Wire both here and at Strange Horizons back in September, and I remain as swoonful toward it as before. The DVD/Blu-ray will include a 50-minute documentary about the film by Juliane Lorenz, one of Fassbinder's most frequent collaborators and the head of the Fassbinder Foundation . Lorenz has created documentaries for some of the other DVD releases of Fassbinder's films in the U.S. and elsewhere, and I've enjoyed all of the ones I've seen, so am looking forward to this one quite a bit. And in equally magnificent — indeed, perhaps even more  magnificent — news, Criterion will also be releasing Louis Malle's final film, Vanya on 42nd Street . It's one of my favorites, a ...

My old DVD of Paris, Texas had been loaned out to friends and acquaintances many times, because it's the sort of movie I just want to make people sit down and watch.  DVDs are sensitive things, though, and somewhere along the line this one got scratched, making it skip and stall during one of the most important scenes at the end.  Sometime this summer, I decided to replace it, and went searching for a cheap copy on Amazon.  When I saw a Criterion edition would be coming out, I gave up on the idea of getting a cheap replacement for my wounded disc and instead pre-ordered the new one.  There are a few films that, if you're going to own them and watch them a few times a year (as I've done with Paris, Texas ever since first getting it on a $5 videotape during a sale at a local video store), you should get them on the best edition possible.  And the fact that it's now on Blu-Ray is nearly enough to make me run out and get a Blu-Ray player. I ordered the disc s...