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Amazon now has a Criterion edition of The Thin Red Line available for pre-order on Blu-ray. No release date yet, nor official word from Criterion, but it’s been rumored for ages and a pre-order page on Amazon can only mean good things.
The first still from Malick’s Tree of Life featuring Jessica Chastain. Here’s hoping the next couple months are going to go Malickrazy.
There’s also a stupendously fascinating article over at PopMatters entitled The Calm Before The Tree of Life that pools in and reflects on all the information (previously known and unknown) on the film so far.- MK
When making a film, Terrence Malick speaks to his collaborators in poetic images. To Martin Sheen in Badlands (1973), he said: ‘Think of the gun in your hand as a magic wand.’ To the post-production team (editors and sound mixers) on The Thin Red Line (1998), he advised: ‘It’s like moving down a river, and the picture should have the same kind of flow.’ And to Jörg Widmer, his Steadicam operator for The New World (2005), he whispered: ‘You have the quail at the wing when it’s about to fly.’
Instead of offering a direct recreation of events permeated by a specific cinematic school of thought, The Thin Red Line provides an experience of textured cinematography, unique editing rhythms, distinctive narration, an intentionally confusing, shifting focus on its ensemble cast and depiction of events, and a thoughtfulness that separates the film from any contemporary trends or movements. Effectively, Terrence Malick has developed his own brand of expressionism. And The Thin Red Line stands as not only his most notable work to date, but as the finest film of the decade in which it was released.
Words of praise from the International Cinephile Society naming Terrence Malick’s The Thin Red Line as the best film of the 1990s.
By the by, this film should see a Criterion release at some point according to a picture provided by a fellow who works there.
Days of Heaven (1978) - The Criterion Collection - It’s out, folks. Truly, among the most beautiful works of visual art ever produced. To experience it is to love it forever.
…What’s that? You’re noticing a trend? Criterion movies? Yes. Yes, you’re right. Criterion is pure awesome.
If you allow it, if you lower your resistance, The New World is not a movie you simply watch – it is a movie that happens to you, overwhelms you, like the weather, or true love. Malick took his time with this, his one true masterpiece, and so should you. As everything else rots away, it will abide.
A beautiful retrospective piece on Terrence Malick’s The New World by John Patterson of The Guardian.
Count me as a disciple of The New World, too: I saw it five times in the theater, once completely alone. It’s among the tiniest class of films that I call experience films. Robert Bresson’s Au Hasard Balthazar (Wikipedia, Criterion’s DVD) is another experience film. They are films that affect you, aesthetically, emotionally. You walk out feeling different, changed; for me, I felt peaceful, enlightened. There is something pure about seeing them, where you don’t feel like you’re watching them, but that they are happening and you are witnessing it.
If you haven’t seen The New World, I suggest similar preparations to Patterson’s: wake up, have your cup of coffee and what not, then begin watching it while you’re still drowsy or just beginning to become awake. It sounds crazy, I know, but your life could change in a couple hours.
The New World: a misunderstood masterpiece? | Film | The Guardian
Alexander Desplat is composing for Malick’s new film, Tree of Life. A few words from him about Malick’s cinema:
If you know Terrence Malick’s cinema, every single shot is a pure beauty. It could be the angle, the light, the way he makes the actors move slowly, out of focus, or out of frame. It’s fantastic. And this new film will be so beautiful, so nice.
I can’t wait. Tree of Life is scheduled for release sometime in 2010.
