Ray Pride

Facets Video's bumper crop of year-end releases includes a Chicago-produced documentary of ideas, "Axis of Evil Perforated Praetor Naturam," a feature-length consideration of the danger of the metaphor of evil. It's composed of interviews with historians and activists (including Daniel Ellsberg, Howard Zinn, James Weinstein, Floyd Webb, Peter Kuttner and Bernardine Dohrn, among them). It's set against a backdrop of stamp art from over fifty artists from eleven countries, curated by noted stamp artist Michael Hernandez de Luna. (A slideshow of the work is one of the DVD's extras.) On the Other Cinema label, Stephen Parr's collection of oddball sexploitation material through the decades, the ever-so-camp "The Subject is Sex" collects over twenty pieces, including 1970s porn trailers, Sally Rand doing her bubble dance, nudist clips, black-and-and-white cartoons and even a World War II-era US Army training film... on enemas. The first DVD edition of Luis Buñuel and Salvador Dali's notorious surrealist provocation, "Un chien Andalou" rounds out their week. While the seventeen-minute film is from a battered copy, the extras are good, including a documentary with Buñuel's son Juan-Luis tracing its history, as well as useful commentary by surrealism scholar Stephen Barber and a partial transcript of a 1943 Buñuel address, "Mystery of Cinema": "In the hands of a free spirit, the cinema is a magnificent and dangerous weapon. It is the superlative medium through which to express the world of thought, feeling and instinct... A film is like an involuntary imitation of a dream." All that and a sliced eyeball, too.

All titles are available Tuesday.

(2004-12-21)

Also by Ray Pride

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Be not afraid of greatness, but be afraid of movies made about great men by successful directors who've found creatures of industry to finance their fascinations
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Force of Hobbit
Awards-watchers and marketers and audiences had it easy the past couple of years, as one chapter of a now-vanquished Christmas epic crept up each year on fat furry feet
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Tip of the Week
The praise that was lavished upon Clint Eastwood's "Mystic River" is even more deserved for "Million Dollar Baby," a remarkable movie that drinks deeply at the well of Hollywood classicism while reflecting Eastwood's own well-worn sensibility
(2004-12-14)

Writing white
"Decency is sexy," James L. Brooks suggested as the tagline for "Spanglish," the first of his hyperarticulate "dramedies" in seven years
(2004-12-14)

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(2004-12-14)

Tip of the Week
(2004-12-07)

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Type ADD
(2004-12-07)

Tip of the Week
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Ordinary people
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Short takes
(2004-11-30)

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