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Well, that's weird. I don't know why it would do that.

MichaelB wrote:

oh yeah wrote:this is an excellent film, one of the finest debut features.

Not as far as the UK and other European countries were concerned - The Jericho Mile got a theatrical release on my side of the Atlantic, so we've always regarded Thief as his second feature.

Ah, that one always slips my mind. I'd really like to see it, but I haven't been able to find a copy.

zedz wrote:This prompted me to look at Mann's IMDB listings, and weirdly enough, Thief appears there under the sobriquet Violent Streets. It dutifully notes that "Thief" was its original title (in which case, why isn't that what they call it?) I've never even heard of this alternate (and terrible) title - does anybody know its provenance?

It's the UK release title - I remember seeing the posters on the Tube.

124 minutes according to the Criterion page, making it the director's cut from the DVD, or a new variation on it. Mann used that horrible "speed up" editing in the DVD cut, like he did with his director's cut of Manhunter.

Great cover.

On another note, I was reading recently that Mann deliberately avoided using certain colors such as red and yellow, opting instead for green, brown, magenta, turquoise, etc. Interesting... I believe he said something similar about his film of Miami Vice having virtually no red in it. On inspection, this seems to be true, which is some kind of strange achievement.

I actually saw this at Film Forum a couple of years ago, during a film program on heist films. (I believe Rififi was part of it too.) A surreal experience for me because when I was a kid, I spent some time in Chicago and even though it was some years after they shot this film, what you see in the film is pretty much the Chicago I remember, especially the parts shot around Uptown, like the Green Mill. (Still there, still the best place to hear jazz in Chicago.)

It's kind of an odd selection for the Criterion Collection - it feels like a pretty crude film to me, with some pretty questionable choices on Mann's part. This is especially true for elements that are ridiculously time-stamped to that era. (Tangerine Dream? A dubious choice even then as the score was nominated for a Razzie.) Still, there are plenty of critics who will go to the mat for Mann, and regardless of his other achievements, he's at his best with heist films, so anyone who absolutely loves his work should probably see this.

This is one of those movies where I guess I can imagine why people don't care for it, but it works wonderfully for me- it's core Mann, a stripped down story a guy with relationship troubles getting shit done and then dealing with it. The Tangerine Dream soundtrack is a brilliant touch, lending a distance and an otherworldly quality to a movie that might easily otherwise feel minor. The photography is perfect, too, that slightly smeary late 70s-early 80s look that reminds me of Taxi Driver (though the most recent restoration seems to have lost that quality) and makes the city look like a dreamscape.

Actually, I wonder if that also is a quality lent by the low PQ of the dvd- if so, I might hang on to it, just to keep an idea of how I remember it looking around.

(Plus: we finally got James Belushi into the collection!)

hearthesilence wrote:Tangerine Dream? A dubious choice even then as the score was nominated for a Razzie.

I thought it's agreed at this point that the Razzies are a joke, nominating directors like Brian de Palma (multiple times), William Friedkin, Stanley Kubrick, and having the gall to give one to Elaine May. And really, Tangerine Dream is fantastic and seems to hold a soft spot for so many music obsessed fans. They're an important krautrock band from a certain era and there influence is still heard in albums today. The Tangerine Dream soundtrack is fantastic and often something I play separate from the movie.

It's also a great film! Why shouldn't it be in the collection? It's the first of Mann's films of ultra-professional men who make their careers their personal life. It's a masterpiece of lonely crime cinema. And more importantly, we finally get the late Dennis Farina in the collection.

God, while we know Mann is going to tweak with the film, I sincerely hope he gets rid of that silly speeding-up nonsense during the ending. I still have no idea what he was thinking with that, it adds nothing and sticks out clearly as a tacked-on post-effect

And we finally got Willie Nelson into the collection.

But no Refn?

Agreed on Tangerine Dream. Another film of this era they took to another level was Risky Business

Moe Dickstein wrote:Agreed on Tangerine Dream. Another film of this era they took to another level was Risky Business

For which score they ought to be paying hefty royalties to Steve Reich.

I'm more excited that Michael finally has a spot in the CC more than the film itself. It's a fine work (most notable for being more than just his feature directing debut, quite a bit of talent in front of and behind the camera made their first mark here as well) but I am still hoping more and more that Manhunter and The Insider receive spines at some point too. The real high marks of it are the opening 11-12 minutes, the diner scene and the finale.

zedz wrote:Isn't it actually a matter of principle for him that every successive generation of a film's release be a slightly different cut?

He's ever touched The Insider, though it's never gotten an SE release, so maybe he's never been given the chance. I don't think Collateral was changed for any of its video releases either.

I can't agree on Tangerine Dream, I'm just not a fan. I don't mean the genre, I mean specifically them. Granted, they put out some "key" Krautrock albums in the '70s, but their work on Thief is terribly boring to me. It's not my idea of a good electronic soundtrack, much less good electronic music. Mann's taste in electronic music is really hit-or-miss with his films - I think it worked in most, if not all, of Heat, but I don't think it worked here.

I think Mann's best films are probably Manhunter, Heat and The Insider, they have things that I really like about them (usually a performance, like DeNiro in Heat or Russell Crowe in The Insider, but they haven't aged well to me. The dialogue has always been problematic but the overblown machismo can be ridiculous and even The Insider (once my favorite film about broadcast journalism) now feels to blustery and self-important. (Lowell Bergman's role in that story is too implausibly blown up as well.)

The Fanciful Norwegian wrote:

zedz wrote:Isn't it actually a matter of principle for him that every successive generation of a film's release be a slightly different cut?

He's ever touched The Insider, though it's never gotten an SE release, so maybe he's never been given the chance. I don't think Collateral was changed for any of its video releases either.

Public Enemies, neither. And certainly not The Keep, but that's never gotten a DVD release anyway, and I'm sure Mann would like to keep it that way.

But yeah, 6 out of 10 films he's tweaked later on for some reason or another. To my mind, the only really interesting one is the Miami Vice Director's Cut; although I very much prefer the leaner, meaner Theatrical Cut of that film, the DC does add some great scenes and overall changes the pace and mood of the picture to something a little less brutally alienating. (Of course, it's precisely this alienating quality -- personified in the smash-cut straight into the nightclub, no credits, no context -- that makes the TC so powerful).

I thought Mann had actually come out and said somewhere that he re-edits his films for each release (assuming, of course, that he's involved with said release). Not always in the sense of a new and different 'director's cut', but sometimes only tiny, invisible trims of a few scenes, the idea being that he wanted to keep each release identifiably unique (if you know where to look).

This quote isn't what I was looking for, but it's in the same ballpark (from an interview about Luck):

Mann: But then, I’ve never made any film that I wouldn’t go back and re-edit.
Q: And in fact, you have!
Mann: I have. Every time I've had an opportunity.

I really hope they improve the sped-up shots Mann introduced in the DVD version. The changes he made to both Thief and Manhunter for their DVD releases were done on the cheap, and it shows. If I'm not mistaken, there are a few effects shots in the re-edit of Manhunter that were processed on Betamax or another SD video format. For a director who has (or had, if the dreadful Public Enemies is the sort of film he'll be making from here on out) such an exacting visual style, he doesn't seem to exert a lot of quality control over his "director's cuts."

As for Tangerine Dream, their soundtracks are an axiom of ambitious American genre cinema of the 1980s: stylish, dark (literally and figuratively), self-conscious. They are an integral part of the poetry of Thief, Risky Business, Near Dark, even Legend and the forgotten Shy People. It's hard to reconstruct a moment where they could be awarded a Razzie.

Hell, I even like the rocktastic Craig Safan score used in Thief's climax.

jonah.77 wrote:the forgotten Shy People.

This "forgotten" film is the only Tangerine Dream-scored film (apart from Thief) that I could have named off the top of my head. Is it really that unknown nowadays?

Public Enemies, neither.

Actually, Public Enemies probably was changed.



Underneath the "Directed by Michael Mann. A Universal Picture" section of the credit block it says "Scenes may differ from original Theatrical release."

I only saw the film once in the theatre & couldn't identify any changes when I watched the Blu-Ray, but I don't think they'd put that unless he did something. It's not something standard Universal puts on their releases. It's probably something subtle like the minor changes in Heat.

jonah.77 wrote:As for Tangerine Dream, their soundtracks are an axiom of ambitious American genre cinema of the 1980s: stylish, dark (literally and figuratively), self-conscious. They are an integral part of the poetry of Thief, Risky Business, Near Dark, even Legend and the forgotten Shy People. It's hard to reconstruct a moment where they could be awarded a Razzie

I can still hear the Tangerine Dream score from The Keep irritating my brain--the most recent Mann film I've seen--although putting aside my own peculiar displeasure, you're absolutely right: they occupy a unique place in coloring the mood of the early '80s films for which they composed music, particularly Mann's movies from this time. As film history, their inclusion in the collection totally makes sense. There's nothing else like their music (although the words "dark" and "self-conscious" are interesting descriptors that would never come to my mind). I admire them as one of the European pioneers of accessible electronic music, but if we're talking krautrock, I'll take Neu!, Can, Faust, and Kraftwerk. (One of these days, we'll have Can in the collection, too, once Alice in den Städten reaches us on BD!)

If for no other reason, I'll always love thinking about Tangerine Dream because of the story Lester Bangs tells of getting shit-canned on cough syrup and attending one of their performances in the '70s. "I saw a whole audience of shopping-bag ladies."

matrixschmatrix wrote:The photography is perfect, too, that slightly smeary late 70s-early 80s look that reminds me of Taxi Driver (though the most recent restoration seems to have lost that quality) and makes the city look like a dreamscape.

Actually, I wonder if that also is a quality lent by the low PQ of the dvd- if so, I might hang on to it, just to keep an idea of how I remember it looking around.

Especially in the opening of the film. The rain and city lights give it almost an other-worldly quality. I've seen the movie on MGM HD and it didn't seem to lose that quality if my eyes are to be trusted.

As for the music, some of it dates the film but mostly again it works for me. Especially in the opening and in the middle which uses an abridged version of "Thru Metamorphic Rocks" from the Force Majeure album.

Spoiler

Hell, I even like Craig Safan's contribution at the end which I suppose would turn off the electronic-music afficionados with it's more rock-stylings. For some, it probably works against the idea of Frank walking away with nothing into a world that will offer him even less, but it works well against the action of the shootout.

zedz wrote:Mann: I have. Every time I've had an opportunity.

This just sets my teeth on edge. It's like all the frustration of Mad Detective all over again. Let the cut stay the cut!

although the words "dark" and "self-conscious" are interesting descriptors that would never come to my mind

I was using those terms to describe the films rather than the soundtracks, but I can see where it was grammatically ambiguous.

"The" Can also composed much of the music for Skolimowski's Deep End—indeed, one of the film's best scenes features their classic "Mother Sky." So that's another way they could enter the Collection. They also put together an exciting score for Roland Klick's modern-dress Western Deadlock, which kind of splits the difference between the New German Cinema and European low-budget genre filmmaking.

jonah.77 wrote:They also put together an exciting score for Roland Klick's exciting modern-dress Western Deadlock

I initially read that name as Roland Kirk. Now that would be one hell of a movie!

gcgiles1dollarbin wrote:I can still hear the Tangerine Dream score from The Keep irritating my brain--the most recent Mann film I've seen--although putting aside my own peculiar displeasure, you're absolutely right: they occupy a unique place in coloring the mood of the early '80s films for which they composed music, particularly Mann's movies from this time. As film history, their inclusion in the collection totally makes sense. There's nothing else like their music (although the words "dark" and "self-conscious" are interesting descriptors that would never come to my mind). I admire them as one of the European pioneers of accessible electronic music, but if we're talking krautrock, I'll take Neu!, Can, Faust, and Kraftwerk. (One of these days, we'll have Can in the collection, too, once Alice in den Städten reaches us on BD!)

Agreed on all points. I also recently saw The Keep (it's on Netflix streaming, so I had nothing to lose) and I thought that Tangerine Dream's music completely detracted from a movie that already had plenty of other problems. I couldn't help thinking that a better score could have helped pull that movie together.