Editor’s note: This week, your tireless Criterion Warrior (oh, idea for a new column!) requested a week off to pursue something literary and intelligent and, well, big-wordy. With Mr. Palmer out, our own J.L. Sosa stepped up to the plate to file his very own Criterion, um, File. Be nice, bloodsuckers! When I first saw Paul Morrissey‘s Blood for Dracula, I definitely felt like I was partaking of an illicit pleasure. A friend of mine with an encyclopedic knowledge (and equally impressive collection) of B-movies was moving to new digs and bequeathed to me, along with many other obscure relics, his VHS dub of the Criterion Collection’s unedited laserdisc edition of the film (LD spine #287, for the digit-obsessed). Based on the rumors I’d long heard, I was expecting copious over-the-top gore. The film delivered on that promise, but also unexpectedly unfolded with the langorous pace of a high-falutin’ costume drama. You know, just like Sense and Sensibility, except with more extended scenes of softcore grinding and vomiting of blood. I later caught a midnight showing of the film at the beloved St. Anthony Main theater, just across the Mississippi from downtown Minneapolis. This time, the salacious tale of Count Dracula (Udo Kier) and his quest for the blood of a “wirgin” was screened from an authentically scratchy print, and curiously retitled Young Dracula. Although the R-rated Young Dracula had most of its eroticism trimmed, there was still enough suggestive content and bloodletting to draw whoops of approval (and sometimes [Due to Content Scraping and Theft, we have been forced to try abbreviated feeds. We apologize for any inconvenience this may cause and woud very much appreciate you clicking through to view the full article on FilmSchoolRejects.com]

What is Movie News After Dark? It’s not the nightly news column you want right now, but it’s the one you need. Because you need a nightly news column that will be strong in the face of adversity, cover the things you care about, and publish videos of Ryan Gosling being sexy without words. We begin tonight with a shot from the set of The Dark Knight Rises, something we’ve refrained from covering too much. However, I found this particular photo — one of a batch from Mail Online – that shows a tender moment between our hero, as played by Christian Bale, and his new foe Bane, as played by Tom Hardy. Just a little hug as Chris Nolan’s production occupies Occupy Wall Street in New York.

According to an article in the LA Times from January 2011 movie ticket prices reached an all time high. Here in New York, the average ticket price is $11 with higher prices for movies in 3D or IMAX. This is a reality that’s constantly on our minds, but it was brought even more into focus by a simple, 8-word question delivered on the official Criterion Collection Twitter Feed: Have you ever walked out of a movie? It got us thinking, in a time when a movie ticket is no small expense what would it take to get you out of your seat and out of the theater? Is boredom enough? Do you have a sliding scale of one to ten, one being slight ennui and ten being excruciating mind numbing boredom? Can a movie be too terrifyingly bad or just plain terrifying? Will terrible dialogue send you running for the exits? And who among you not only leave but demand a refund? Have you gotten a refund simply because you hated a movie? Have you been videotaped railing against the movie you left? We want to know what would make you walk out of a movie. Do you have stories to share about that movie you wanted to see and just couldn’t sit through? What movie made you decide your time was worth more than toughing it out?

What is Movie News After Dark? It’s not messing about. Just doin’ the news. We begin tonight with one of many new images from The Adventures of Tintin. For one of those motion capture, lost in the shadow of the uncanny valley movies, this looks pretty slick. Finally we get to see Andy Serkis act in a movie. Or not.

To this point in our subjection of the films of BBS Productions we’ve been privy to a handful of boundary-pushing films that we now recognize today as landmark pictures in the furthering progress of New Hollywood from the late 1960′s onward. They were films dealing with contemporary cultural changes and a youthful revolutionary attitude to not necessarily show things as we dream them to be, but more as they are. Life isn’t like the movies, so maybe make some movies that are a reflection of life. Life is imperfect, rough around the edges and occasionally a little disorienting. Thus far, the films in the BBS library discussed these past four weeks have shown us just how the mindset of the transitioning American lifestyle and interest was during that time period with timely and current stories.

As a relatively young person, far too young to speak meaningfully about an important era of American culture, it’s difficult for me to ascribe any sense of value even unto my own words about a picture that encapsulates and represents an alternate ideology of real American freedom than what we consider as being truly “free.” When we think of freedom we think of rights and when we think of American we think of the dream. We have the right to be happy and we have the freedoms to pursue it.

Some films represent to many the indefinable expression of a dream. Often times it’s nightmarish, as that’s what we can easily discern as being particularly dream-like because those are the dreams we tend to never forget. They haunt us, indefinitely, and some filmmakers are keen to capture that sense of uncomfortable fear of the odd, or non-understandable. Filmmakers like David Lynch and David Cronenberg seem to know it and are willing to explore and share it.

Then, there are some films that don’t necessarily look a dream, but feel like a familiar one that you don’t fully remember; because it’s too grounded to feel fantastic, but too gorgeously free so as to feel slightly detached from reality. It’s dramatic, but not “dramatic.” It’s not void of human emotional expression, but not entirely engagingly emotional. It’s both wonderful and disturbed. It’s affectingly confusing to your senses. Like a dream.

“Think they pay you to drive? They pay you to be terrified.”

It’s the line that inspires the title. Four men behind the wheel of two trucks without shock absorbers or any special balancing mechanics and driving across unpaved terrain for hundreds of miles with everything in their path from two-ton boulders in the middle of the road to rotten wood acting as their road extension to pivot over a precipice…all while each truck lugs enough nitroglycerine to reduce mountains to piles of pebble. With the prevention of that much destruction contingent on such undisturbed sensitivity a boulder in the middle of the road is the least of their concern to stay alive. In a case like that a large rock is no match for an invisible pothole that need only be inches deep to separate all of you from the rest of you.

What is Movie News After Dark? It’s the ever-changing late night addiction that you just can’t seem to quit, no matter how hard you try. Tonight it features pieces that will make you think, art that will blow your mind, and a minimum amount of talking about Transformers 3 and Doctor Who. That stuff will be back tomorrow, don’t you worry. In the very near future, Stargate Universe will go off the air. And for the first time in 15-years, there are no more planned Stargate projects in the works. It will create a big whole for the fans who have made the sci-fi property one of the most popular since Star Trek. With that in mind, io9 has dispatched a list of 10 lessons about life after cancellation that Stargate can learn from the likes of Trek and Firefly.

Why?

In a sea of some of the most important pictures the world has known to date – why? In a collection spanning nearly one-hundred years of film history and inclusive of a large portion of the greatest filmmakers we’ve ever known…why? With a library containing movies which focus heavily on visual artistry and emotional complexities and probably have a combined budget *possibly* equal to that of this film…why? With another picture released the same year about pretty much the same thing made by a studio from the same country garnering stronger critical reception and sporting an [in]arguably more plausible solution and execution to the prevention of the end of the world via meteors the size of really, really big things…WHY? Why is this mammoth-sized summer blockbuster which is a masterpiece of the color orange alongside some of the most revered pictures of the last (nearly) 100 years?

The answer is simple, concrete, and indisputable:

This week, on a very special episode of Reject Radio, we celebrate April Fool’s Day by talking seriously about great movies, director’s cuts and movies about people cutting other people up. Our very own Criterion Files writer Adam Charles teams up with Criterion Cast co-host Ryan Gallagher to convince me to become a member of the Criterion Cult. Junkfood Cinema specialist Brian Salisbury gets together with Gordon and the Whale editor (and VHS enthusiast) Brian Kelley as we all rejoice in the 25th anniversary of the ridiculous teen slasher flick April Fool’s Day and bathe in the acid bath of a few others. Plus, Jordan Hoffman of UGO and Jeremy Smith from Aint it Cool go mano y mano in our Movie News Pop Quiz in an epic battle to save the world from impending destruction (and to talk about director’s cuts, when they work, and when they don’t). Loosen up your tie and stay a while. Listen Here: Download This Episode

The documentary feature has a considerably long history of a, most likely, mis-distinction in terms of what it actually is. To many, a documentary picture is something to be believed as veritable truth; or, if not wholly truthful then certainly not a depiction of blatant falsities. It’s the capturing of life, edited to entertain or to inform (if done well then it should be both). The capturing of life portion of the formula may be the most important element in terms of relaying to the audience that they are seeing some semblance of truth. It may have been cut to highlight the area the filmmaker felt most pertinent to their, or cut to remove the section most damaging, but the moment captured and shown was spontaneous and real.

When things can begin to gt interesting is when the spontaneity, or believability in the events onscreen come into question. It’s almost as if a perceived trust has been attacked. Even if that trust was jeopardized for the betterment of the experience; like telling your significant other their hair is breathtaking so you can both enjoy the party and you just hope that good/honest friend of yours doesn’t show up to tell her the truth and burst the bubble of fun.

What’s even more interesting is how the film credited as the first documentary feature was created on just such a lie. With that we present this week’s Criterion Files entry Nanook of the North.

I will forgo the usual intro after a two-week hiatus from writing this column and simply apologize. Beside last week being the week of SXSW, I don’t have a very good reason why this is the first Blu-ray column of March. Well, there was a general malaise about the titles being released in the month’s first few weeks, but we all know that’s no good reason to shirk my duties as chief high definition prognosticator. So we’re back this week with a few really great releases, including March’s best release as Pick of the Week, a spectacular entry into the Criterion Collection and a few really bad movies that I loved. Take that, common sense! Four Lions Any release calendar junkies among you may be quick to cite the fact that Four Lions streeted on March 8, two weeks prior to the writing of this column. You’d be right — it’s not one of this week’s release. But with a dearth of great titles hitting shelves this Tuesday, combined with my absence from this column’s helm for the past two weeks, I thought it to be more than appropriate to celebrate one of last year’s finest comedies. Terrorism. It’s funny when you look at it through the lens of director Chris Morris. It’s hilarious when you strap explosives to crows and dress up in Ninja Turtles costumes lined with C4. It’s enthralling and insightful when it wants to be, as well. It’s the rare kind of flick that has something [Due to Content Scraping and Theft, we have been forced to try abbreviated feeds. We apologize for any inconvenience this may cause and woud very much appreciate you clicking through to view the full article on FilmSchoolRejects.com]

What is Movie News After Dark? This is a question that I am almost never asked, but I will answer it for you anyway. Movie News After Dark is FSR’s newest late-night secretion, a column dedicated to all of the news stories that slip past our daytime editorial staff and make it into my curiously chubby RSS ‘flagged’ box. It will (but is not guaranteed to) include relevant movie news, links to insightful commentary and other film-related shenanigans. I may also throw in a link to something TV-related here or there. It will also serve as my place of record for being both charming and sharp-witted, but most likely I will be neither of the two. I write this stuff late at night, what do you expect?

Charlie Chaplin and Buster Keaton are with little argument probably the two most influential and “important” personalities from an era that was overflowing with some of the most enduring screen comics in history; and the reason being because of their contributions in the entire filmmaking process and not just memorable performances and iconic characters. They’re not just two of the most talented physical performers of their time, they’re also two of cinema’s first auteurs putting them in an incredibly elite group of individuals that wrote, directed, edited (to some extent), recorded music (to some extent), and performed the lead role in a number of pictures – and each’s most significant films are films where these accomplishments applied.

However, for as much as these two did to help progress film and screen comedy they both, without question, lost a bit of appeal once sound was introduced to motion pictures. Chaplin was much less affected by the advancement releasing a few great films in the sound era with sound (Modern Times was his final silent picture, but was made many years into the almost universally adapted using of sound), but both along with Harold Lloyd left their best for first back in the days of silence. With the introduction of sound came the need for a new kind of comic performer – one with a voice to communicate humor over sight gags.

In the transition from silent to sound a very small number of popular screen comedians were able to not only retain their popularity, but also broaden their fan base due to their newfound ability to speak – thus expanding their repertoire to include wisecracks, witty one-liners, clever observations, and more wisecracks. One of the actors who benefited largely from the technological advancement was W.C. Fields, who as a seasoned stage and vaudeville performer was finally able to unsheathe some of his sharpest cutlery.

What is Movie News After Dark? This is a question that I am almost never asked, but I will answer it for you anyway. Movie News After Dark is FSR’s newest late-night secretion, a column dedicated to all of the news stories that slip past our daytime editorial staff and make it into my curiously chubby RSS ‘flagged’ box. It will (but is not guaranteed to) include relevant movie news, links to insightful commentary and other film-related shenanigans. I may also throw in a link to something TV-related here or there. It will also serve as my place of record for being both charming and sharp-witted, but most likely I will be neither of the two. I write this stuff late at night, what do you expect?

There was a period in the early to mid-1950s where the horror genre, in hindsight, was appearing to go through somewhat of a period of transition. Not just caterpillar to butterfly in terms of the material, but also the beginnings to a passing of the torch from the Universal Pictures horror icons to the next generation of scare feature personalities.

The 1940s, arguably, began the period of movement away from the creature features of the Universal monster pictures and started to explore deeper psychological, and supernatural elements of the horror genre over the course of the decade with the output of films from the Val Lewton team of collaborators at RKO. That period could possibly mark the first time that a major studio distributed a sequence of psychological thrillers sold as horror pictures over that length of time here in the United States, and probably the most significant since the silent-era German Expressionist pictures of the 1920′s.

In the 1950′s the drive-in crowd and genre enthusiasts began to be transfixed by the earlier period of science-fiction thrillers, which boomed all throughout the decade and into the next; thus leaving a relatively barren hole for patrons looking for either that next stage of evolution on the horror ladder, or even trying to find a decent number of pictures akin to the films of the Universal monster pictures of the 30s or Lewton inspired thrillers of the 40s.

Enter Britain’s Hammer Studios who began to re-explore the classic monster characters of Dracula, Frankenstein, The Mummy and others in the mid-to-late 1950s. Their output would be monumental over the course of the next few decades, as well as their artistry and the performance prowess of oft-used actors Peter Cushing and Christopher Lee; and the pictures would prove to be considerably popular.

So, the Universal films enthusiasts would have their reminiscence reignited; what of the fans of the Lewton form of horror?

Enter Britain’s Robert Day with his late 1950s double-punch of Corridors of Blood and today’s entry into the Criterion Files – The Haunted Strangler

In 1950 Akira Kurosawa released what many consider to be his first true masterpiece, which started two decades full of multiple masterpieces, in the pioneering and uniquely structured Rashomon. That film told the story of an unsolved murder in feudal Japan causing a series of conflicting stories and falsely witnessed accounts as told by the survivors (and even the murdered himself from beyond the grave) of the incident. Each participant had their own side of the story to tell and each had their own personal motivations for blatantly lying about what really happened.

That film paints a very pessimistic picture on the psychological side of the human condition. We will lie and we will do it, generally, for reasons as superficial as maintaining a perceived public image. We will do this willingly and with conviction to the point that the human word becomes about as reliable as a thumbtack holding up a mirror. We must either hope the mirror is small and unimportant, or get ourselves a lot of thumbtacks to support the one.

Two years following this first masterpiece (already eleven pictures into his career) Kurosawa would create a film that not only portrays us at our worst – in almost the exact same way as Rashomon no less, accompanied by other character flaws – he would also offer us the antithesis and he would do it using some of the same individuals he characterized earlier in the film as weak and/or fake.

Ikiru, while not cut of the same piece of wood as the samurai epics Kurosawa would later become most known for, may be his most dense picture and truly indicative of what it is to be human.

Upon discussion and deliberation between Landon Palmer and Adam Charles (the two primary authors of the Criterion Files column) it was decided that due to the column’s state of near infancy and a small number of articles to choose from they would not reflect upon each other’s incisive works throughout the year of what was considered, or what they felt to be, the articles each were either most impressed by from the other, or considered the most indicative of what the column represents – and instead opted to choose 10 releases of the Criterion company in 2010 they felt most noteworthy of attention.

Delving into each other’s works even if the output was extended to 26 articles each over the course of a full year to choose the favorites from would actually prove to be a much simpler task than what was done for this year’s Year in Review. Trying to narrow down a list of the most significant Criterion Collection releases of any given year to a list of 10 is like…well, trying to list the 10 best of anything of which everything deserves attention. So, take these not as a slight against any of the other releases by any means (please, see every film they include in the library because they’ve selected it for a reason), these just happen to be a consolidation of releases Landon and Adam considered either significant for the availability on home video, marked a trend of the company’s direction of material to include in the library, personal affections, or were simply just incredible works in presentation of the picture previously not able to be experienced from prior releases.

Though it isn’t typical of this column to focus an article’s actual material towards the relevance of the chosen title for the week ‘s relation to the time of year we currently find ourselves in, I’m making an exception for the spirit of the holiday in which we often tend to make many exceptions. Stores open earlier and stay open later for customer convenience (and monetary benefits), people you happen to dislike you may briefly get along with, or just dislike a little less, and even though you don’t attend any services any other days throughout the year on December 25th you may find yourself amongst fellow members of your community or neighborhood (some of which may be amongst those people you happen to dislike) at a nearby church of chosen denomination.

Considering the relative lack of pure ‘holiday’ pictures in the Criterion library due to the sub-genre finding itself as a non-point of interest to center the theme of an entire picture on for the eclectic group of filmmakers that make up the majority of the library’s shelf space, I’ve selected a film that thematically and, as it pertains to the rest of the filmmaker’s body of work, is somewhat characteristically different in terms of how we view the events of the film and is representative of what we consistently try to regain as adults throughout the weeks leading up to December 25th; and that is to experience and see the incidents of life, both tragic and blissful, as we did as children.