Ken Russell on DVD

[justeleblanc]

Wait. When did Annie become Myra?

[godardslave]

about 4 days ago.

[justeleblanc]

Why?

[Lino]

Why?

For the fun of it!

http://www.criterionforum.org/forum/vie ... php?t=4551

[Michael]

Maybe I should change my name to Baby Doll.

[godardslave]

so what happened to the devils on June 6th?

[Jean-Luc Garbo]

The music magazine Filter has an interview with Roger Daltrey about Lisztomania.

[Lino]

so what happened to the devils on June 6th?

Try 2007.

http://www.criterionforum.org/forum/vie ... c&start=50

The music magazine Filter has an interview with Roger Daltrey about Lisztomania.

Would it be asking too much for you to roughly tell us what the interview is like?

[toiletduck!]

The music magazine Filter has an interview with Roger Daltrey about Lisztomania.

Would it be asking too much for you to roughly tell us what the interview is like?

I've got it sitting at home, but it's been a while. I'll reread it tonight and get back to you tomorrow, unless someone else gets to it first.

-Toilet Dcuk

[Jean-Luc Garbo]

Unfortunately, he doesn't say anything about a DVD release. He basically talks about working with Ken Russell, though. Of the scene with the metronome, Daltrey comments facetiously that it was a difficult scene. He also says that Russell was rather intoxicated the whole time, but that it didn't seem to slow him down. It was a funny interview. The journalist started the whole thing because in all of the Daltrey interviews he'd read there was no mention of Lisztomania. So the first thing he did was ask Daltrey about the film - who said, "Oh god no! Not that!" I loved it. There's also a sidebar from Rick Wakeman about the music in the film. There's a still of Daltrey swinging from a chandelier en deshabille and one of him with His Holiness Pope Ringo. It was an interesting article. (The Scott Walker interview in the same issue wasn't too bad either btw.)

[BrianInAtlanta]

Put me down as another calling for a Lisztomania DVD.

1) It should be out there for whenever anyone says, "I wish they'd just pulled out all the stops," you can pop in the DVD and show him exactly what it looks like when someone does.

2) The humor: Liszt (with thick London accent) "Bollocks!" Countess: "I'm sorry, I don't speak Hungarian."

3) The outrage: Not only the entire "Dante's Infeno" scene but Wagner/Hitler/Frankenstein gunning down Hasidic Jews with a machine-gun guitar. How Un-PC would you like? Russell's there already.

4) The musical-biography parodies: Liszt: "So what'll you do now?" Countess: "I plan to write an 11-volume attack on The Pope...and you?"

5) Ringo's performance as The Pope, a remarkably droll performance better than any of his others: "So, raped at gunpoint! Well, we've all been there, haven't we?"

6) The movie parodies: Not only the X-rated re-working of The Scarlet Empress in the Dante's Inferno scene but who else would not only copy the baby carriage down the stairs scene from Potemkin, but have it on fire!

[Cold Bishop]

^^^You've just convinced me this is the greatest thing I've never seen.

[sevenarts]

^^^You've just convinced me this is the greatest thing I've never seen.

Seriously, now I wanna see it for Ringo as Pope alone.

[justeleblanc]

^^^You've just convinced me this is the greatest thing I've never seen.

Seriously, now I wanna see it for Ringo as Pope alone.

I bought the VHS off ebay a few years ago for 10 bucks. It's been one of my favorite Russell films ever since.

I think it was around January of 2005 when someone heard on this forum that Warner was going to release their Ken Russell films in 06. Then that never happened. I'm curious as to which films Warner was talking about and if they plan on releasing them as a box set, or individually among other boxes like an OFF BEAT MUSICALS box or a more contemporary CONTOVERSIAL CLASSICS box. Or were the rumors of an 06 box a bunch of BS at the time.

[Lino]

Seriously, now I wanna see it for Ringo as Pope alone.

Any film with Ringo Starr in it, it's always worth checking out. Someday, someone should really write a book or do a documentary on his acting career alone. I mean, just look at some of the movies he was in (I'd love to know who his agent was!) -- Candy, The Magic Christian, 200 Motels, Son of Dracula, Lisztomania, Sextette, Caveman, it's a veritable list of train-wrecks one after the other! And I'm not even counting The Beatles' ones!

Ringo rules!

[Andre Jurieu]

Any film with Ringo Starr in it, it's always worth checking out... it's a veritable list of train-wrecks one after the other!

I'm hoping that was slightly tongue-in-cheek considering his finest work might be as the dude who narrated that trippy Thomas the Tank Engine children's TV show.

[colinr0380]

The Hell On Earth documentary about The Devils has been put up on YouTube in six parts.

EDIT: Now removed

[Lino]

Interesting thread about a different cut of Altered States over at the Home Theater Forum.

Great film, by the way. Watched if for the first time when I was an impressionable teenager and recently re-watched it with the same enthusiasm.

[Solaris]

While watching the rock music video I also thought of how inspired Dario Argento could have been by the musical version of Phantom, or of that music video in particular, because moving from the music video to the use of rock in Opera doesn't seem such a leap (athough of course he had been using rock interludes in his films like Tenebrae and Phenomena long before that as well)

That music video along with another directed by Russell "Wishing You Were Somehow Here Again" set in a graveyard has just been released on a new Sarah Brightman DVD.

[Lino]

I do hope that the recently announced Warner DVD for Performance is somewhat of an indication of even better things to come (yes, I'm refering to The Devils).

Meanwhile, take a minute to sign this petition.

You know, the fact that they're sitting on a potential gold mine of Russell titles and so far have done nothing about it but tease us to the point of despair, has led me to order a bootleg for The Boy Friend just last month. It was taken from a Laserdisc source and it's in its correct aspect ratio of 2.35 and it even has a trailer with it. Not bad. But definitely not the real thing, of course.

The film is hugely enjoyable in a sort of early 20th century british stage operetta, filled with hommages to Busby Berkeley musicals and sprinkled with Russellian madness here and there. Really wonderful stuff. And Twiggy's tops!

Well, what could you expect. Yes, again tired of waiting for MGM of Fox to release The Music Lovers on DVD, I went and bought a bootleg that was taken from a LD source. It came with a trailer and in its correct 2.35 aspect ratio. That will tide me over until an official release is out.

By the way, seldom have I seen a composer biopic (in this case, Tchaikovsky) that are this much in love with the music of its creator! There are long stretches of wordless scenes where all you can hear is the wonderfully romantic music of the russian artist. As a result, you come out feeling that you've experienced something very sensual and impassioned. Russell is one of the very few directors in the world whose works really felt ALIVE in the whole sense of the word. Brilliant and contagious feeling!

I especially like the scene at the beginning when Tchaikovsky premieres his Piano Concerto Nº 1. Go here for a listen.

[MichaelB]

By the way, seldom have I seen a composer biopic (in this case, Tchaikovsky) that are this much in love with the music of its creator! There are long stretches of wordless scenes where all you can hear is the wonderfully romantic music of the russian artist.

When Russell was making classical music documentaries at the BBC a decade earlier, his boss Huw Wheldon initially banned him from using actors altogether, then allowed him to use them, but only from a distance and in strictly non-speaking roles (Prokofiev, Elgar and Béla Bartók all came under these restrictions).

Which may have been a blessing in disguise, as it effectively gave Russell carte blanche to feature lengthy scenes with nothing but the relevant music on the soundtrack - and even when he was given far more creative freedom, he still noticeably preferred music to dialogue (just as well, given how clunkingly awful much Russell-penned dialogue is!)

[Lino]

That's interesting to hear. Hopefully more of his earlier TV works will soon be available on DVD (apart from the two BFI ones) which I'm sure will change many people's opinions on his talents.

Anyway, The Music Lovers is still swimming through my head and senses and I hope it stays for a few more days. In any case, I think it's curious to note that Richard Chamberlain was the perfect choice for Tchaikovsky, both being closeted gays at odds with the world and women that surrounded them (Chamberlain only recently came out publicly).

[MichaelB]

That's interesting to hear. Hopefully more of his earlier TV works will soon be available on DVD (apart from the two BFI ones) which I'm sure will change many people's opinions on his talents.

I think there are rights complications with a lot of them - not just still-in-copyright music, but also a great deal of third-party footage (this is particularly true of Prokofiev and Bela Bartok, which draw extensively on Soviet and Hungarian film sources).

And of course there's no chance whatsoever of a legal release of Dance of the Seven Veils before 2019 (or until copyright laws are changed to reduce the 70-year limit, whichever's sooner) - as the Richard Strauss estate maintains an absolute veto. And since the film consists of wall-to-wall Strauss - even the dialogue was lifted straight from his writings, since Russell wanted him to condemn himself out of his own mouth - this effectively makes it unreleasable.

[Anonymous]

Today I asked Luminous Film and Video Wurks again whether they'll get new copies of THE DEVILS and just got an answer that they were able to get a few copies. So with very limited supply, here it is again! I was told to order as soon as possible and did that a few minutes ago. So hurry up fellow Russell-fans!

[Lino]

The imdb page for Lisztomania has a DVD link to an Amazon page which in the past has meant that a release might be forthcoming. Let's hope so.