Last week Rob and Graham received a mystery phone call asking them to review Hideo Nakata’s “Ring”. They’re not dead yet, and although the news that this is a twentieth anniversary reissue is making them feel incredibly old they still have to find out if the film still holds up. […]
walerian borowczyk
Story of Sin (1975) the standard by which all other Blu-Ray and DVD releases should now be judged (Review)
Story of Sin begins with a quintessentially Walerian Borowczyk image; the doors of a church confessional booth being opened. Already, we can see so many things that fascinate this director, from what’s on-screen (the frame-within-a-frame, the old-fashioned handmade props and sets) to the implicit (the unlocking of secrets, the critical attitude towards […]
The Beast (1975) Boro’s eye-wateringly animalistic Beauty & the Beast (Review)
Before we turn our attention to the last disc of Arrow’s Blu-Ray Borowczyk restorations, let us take stock of the man’s career up to this point. A shoestring genius of experimental animation, “Boro” had proved his versatility with four massively different features; the crackpot animated comedy of Theatre of Mr. […]
Inside Out – Cinema Eclectica Podcast 30
Immoral Tales (1973) Art, History and Sex Cinema in the hands of Borowczyk (Review)
Since one of the stated aims of Arrow’s Walerian Borowczyk collection has been to rescue his reputation from an association with pornography, it seems strange to say that including two of the late-period erotic films is a masterstroke. And yet it is. Viewed in context, Immoral Tales and its supporting […]
Dear White People – Cinema Eclectica Podcast 28
Blanche (1971) More Jacobean Tragedy than Euro-Kink Nightmare (Review)
The third film in Arrow’s acclaimed series of Walerian Borowczyk restorations, Blanche is an entry into the late 1960s and early 1970s cycle of Medieval films that produced notable work by Jacques Demy and Pier Paolo Pasolini, before Borowczyk’s disciple Terry Gilliam helped to lovingly spoof it to death with […]
Goto, Isle of Love (1968) Boro thriving on artifice and precision (Review)
The second feature in Arrow’s extensive restoration of Walerian Borowczyk’s work, Goto, Isle of Love is a live-action French film that cannot be anything other than the work of a Polish animator. Its venomous contempt for authority and its poker-faced sense of humour are both unmistakably Eastern European, and its […]
Walerian Borowczyk Short Films and Animation (1959 to 1984)(Review)
The story of Michael Brooke’s [EDIT – actually Daniel Bird; see comments section] restoration of the films of Walerian Borowczyk deserves to be film-restorer’s folklore by now, a Cinderella story about one of cinema’s least Disney-esque animators. After facing plenty of indifference, Brooke turned to Kickstarter to try and raise […]