Friday, October 16, 2009

Artificial Eye's Agnès Varda Collection, Volume 2

Artificial Eye in the UK has already announced volume 2 of their Agnès Varda Collections. The first set hits stores on 19 October and contains La pointe-courte, Cléo from 5 to 7 [Cléo de 5 à 7], Les glaneurs et la glaneuse [The Gleaners and I] and Le bonheur. The second will include Vagabond [Sans toit ni loi] and The Beaches of Agnès [Les plages d'Agnès], as well as the harder-to-find Jacquot de Nantes, a film inspired by the childhood of her late husband Jacques Demy, and L'une chante, l'autre pas [One Sings, the Other Doesn't], both available for the first time on DVD with English subtitles. Here's hoping Volume 3 contains the works Varda did with Jane Birkin in the 1980s (Jane B. par Agnès V., Kung-fu master!), Les créatures with Catherine Deneuve, Michel Piccoli and Eva Dahlbeck and her exceptionally rare Lions Love, which features Varda along with Viva, Eddie Constantine, Shirley Clarke, Jim Morrison, Peter Bogdanovich, Gerome Ragni and James Rado.

Artificial Eye announced a few other titles for 2010 in addition to the Varda set and Antichrist, which I mentioned before: Peter Strickland's Katalin Varga (22 February), Marco Bechis' Birdwatchers (25 January) and Andrea Arnold's Fish Tank (25 January). The latter brings me to the topic of the ongoing Decade List project, which (conceivably) only has two-and-a-half months left to go. So far, Fish Tank is my favorite official 2009 release, and I plan to write about it soon, which means that all the years from 00-09 are fair game. There are some significant omissions on the list so far, but I'm still open to more suggestions as the year approaches its close. I've already got a number of entries lined up, and a stack of DVDs ready for watching... so don't hesitate to throw a suggestion or seven my way.

And, just so you know, Lars von Trier's Dogville, Apichatpong Weerasethakul's Tropical Malady, Andrew Bujalski's Mutual Appreciation, the Dardenne brothers' L'enfant, Cristi Puiu's The Death of Mr. Lăzărescu [Moartea domnului Lăzărescu], Claire Denis' L'intrus [The Intruder], Richard Linklater's Before Sunset, Michael Haneke's Caché, François Ozon's Le temps qui reste [Time to Leave], Kim Ki-duk's Spring, Summer, Fall, Winter... and Spring, Bertrand Bonello's Tiresia and Andrei Zvyagintsev's The Return are all on their way.