News

Bob Rafelson, the director, producer and writer who brought a European sensibility to American filmmaking with “Five Easy Pieces” in 1970, died Saturday evening at his home in Aspen, Colo. He was 89 years old.

Rafelson’s death was confirmed by his former personal assistant of 38 years, Jolene Wolff, who worked under Rafelson’s production banner Marmont Productions. Wolff stated that Rafelson died peacefully, surrounded by his family.

The Monkees vocalist and drummer Micky Dolenz, the final surviving member of the music group, offered a statement on Rafelson’s death Sunday afternoon.

“One day in the spring of 1966, I cut my classes in architecture at L.A. Trade Tech to take an audition for a new TV show called ‘The Monkees.’ The co-creator/producer of the show was Bob Rafelson,” Dolenz said. “At first, I mistook him for another actor there for the audition. Needless-to-say, I got the part and it completely altered my life.

Five Easy Pieces

Written by Adrien Joyce (Carole Eastman)

Directed by Bob Rafelson

USA, 1970

Five Easy Pieces follows along an existential strain of American cinema that began with films like The Graduate (1967) and Easy Rider (1969), where, in the latter example, two men went looking for America and, as its tagline states, couldn’t find it anywhere, and continued through the vehement introspection that emerged from the tormented minds of Martin Scorsese’s anti-heroes, like Travis Bickle (Taxi Driver [1976]) and Jake La Motta (Raging Bull [1980]). Somewhere in between these two manifestations of anguish is Jack Nicholson’s Robert Eroica Dupea, the main character of Bob Rafelson’s 1970 feature. Disenchanted with life and the people who surround him, and utterly aimless in his restless, insatiable quest for self-contentment, Bobby is continually disheartened by the realization that his ideals of happiness and unhappiness don’t apply to everyone else, and may not even be applicable to himself.

Production designer J. Michael Riva, whose most recent work includes Quentin Tarantino’s currently filming Django Unchained and Sony’s franchise reboot The Amazing Spider-Man, has died. Riva was 63, and the circumstances and cause of death were not known but Deadline was able to confirm his passing. Very highly regarded in the industry, he was the son of actress-author Maria Riva and art director William Riva and the grandson of Marlene Dietrich and film editor Rudolph Sieber. Raised in New York City, he eventually found his way to Los Angeles. Dropping out of UCLA to pursue a career in production design, Riva apprenticed with Jackson DeGoiva and his first major movie was uncredited work with Toby Rafelson on I Never Promised You a Rose Garden (1977). That led to Brubaker (1980) with Robert Redford and subsequently Redford hired him for Ordinary People (1980). Other work included the 1984 cult fave The Adventures of Buckaroo Banzai Across the 8th Dimension...

Chicago – Bbs Productions changed cinema. As the sixties were coming to a close, they jumped on the revolutionary bandwagon and took the cultural zeitgeist to the cinema. With a few other visionaries, they ushered in the most important era of film history and several of their best works have been collected in the amazing Criterion box “America Lost and Found: The Bbs Story.”

Blu-Ray Rating: 5.0/5.0

Believe it or not, the creative freedom that exploded across movie screens in the ’70s might not have been possible without The Monkees. Bob Rafelson, Bert Schneider, and Steve Blauner (their first initials being Bbs) had created the pop band The Monkees and used that money to found Bbs Productions, a company that thrived on community and creativity. Like any production company, they weren’t all gems but a few definitely were, including some of the most influential works of the era. All seven films...

Here we are with the last Criterion Collection new release announcement for 2010, and there are a couple amazing releases to talk about.

Last week we uncovered that Criterion was in fact prepared to finally release David Cronenberg’s Videodrome on Blu-ray on December 7th. This is the last of the Amazon pre-order announced titles that forced Criterion to reveal their cards a little early. I still haven’t seen the film, and I’m pretty glad that I waited, so that I can see this film in all of it’s high def insanity. While I’m sure there is something charming about watching the film on VHS, given the material, watching a recent fan edit trailer in HD, makes me really excited for the Blu-ray. The cover doesn’t necessarily change up the design much, aside from the color bars on the spine logo.

Now to the main course.

There is a trend these days amongst some film goers, in which they actively avoid trailers, as well as any kind of plot spoilers regarding upcoming films. I won’t go so far as to say that this is a recent trend, but it has certainly appeared on my radar a lot over the past few years. People want to keep that magic of the surprise, when it comes to upcoming media. At the same time, there is an abundance of information about everything media related thanks to the internet.

One aspect of the Criterion Collection that we all have come to accept, and learn to love in a holiday package opening sense, is their secrecy regarding upcoming releases. We have joked about how they are almost at Apple-like levels of secrecy, and when something gets out, Criterion fans jump on it.

I think we all want to know what...