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The Brothers Quay Collection: Ten Astonishing Short Films 1984-1993 by Stephen Quay, Timothy Quay, Keith Griffiths
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DVD detailsActor: Feliks Stawinski, Joy Constaninides, Witold Scheybal Director: Keith Griffiths, Stephen Quay, Timothy Quay Cinematographer: Stephen Quay Editor: Stephen Quay Writer: Stephen Quay Cinematographer: Timothy Collinson Cinematographer: Timothy Quay Editor: Timothy Quay Writer: Timothy Quay Editor: Keith Griffiths Producer: Keith Griffiths Writer: Keith Griffiths Producer: G. Gianca Producer: S. Williams Writer: Bruno Schulz DVD: Region Code 0 Audio: English (Unknown); English (Original Language) Format: Animated, Black & White, Color, DVD, Full Screen, NTSC Picture Format: 1.33:1 Running Time: 120 minutes DVD Release Date: 2000-08-01 Audience Rating: NR (Not Rated) Studio: Kino Video
DVD Reviews of The Brothers Quay Collection: Ten Astonishing Short Films 1984-1993DVD Review: Technical Alert On An Otherwise GREAT DVD Summary: 5 Stars
Technical matters: The reviewer here who said this DVD has some technical problems was right on. I am surprised more people haven't commented on this. The disk's menu, even when accessed with a remote, never fully materializes visually. Instead, there is a jittery pixelated shadow of the menu that, if you are lucky and patient, may allow you to navigate to the bonuses and special features. (This may take some work; the highlighter did not want to move off of selections 3 and 5 once on them.) Some people may not ever get this far, and might assume it is a disk that goes straight to the feature without any menu. But, believe me, there IS one; it is glitchy and you will be probably be lucky to see it at all. But bear in mind you NEED to see it in order to get to the disks bonuses.Artistic matters: I can understand some people being off-put by the artiness of these shorts. But part of the value of this disk, to me, is that it backs you off from the threshold of instant gratification and easy/glib comprehension that modern media sets for you. It is something like a trip through an ancient back country to the rooms of an old house that has been abandoned in place. The ravages of time are in themselves something awesome to behold, and there is something happening -- an odd dynamism-- even in this stillest of places. The magic here is simply achieved in a way that may remind you of Cocteau's Beauty and The Beast. In one scene a stuffed toy rabbit pitches an egg up, and is instantaneously there, standing upside down on the grassy, forrested ceiling, to catch it before it lands. This appears to have been done with a simple flopping of the image, or a mirror. But you believe it, and it doesn't seem at all forced or affected, but rather, like part of a dream you want to follow to its irresistable conclusion. It is as unexplained and repetitious as a dream too, which may trouble some. The fact that these films stretch from 1979 tells me that either the Quays have been extremely influential on graphic design and media in the following 2 decades, or that they had their fingers on the pulse of a lot that was coming down the pipeline starting in the late 70s. (It is hard to grasp that this stuff-- with such a high level of layering and degradation and "treatment"-- was done before the Macintosh or Photoshop.) Most of the images in these films are photographed in duotone-rich monochrome and extreme selective focus, denoting a wide open aperture shooting in the near-dark. The Quays may have coined the concept of "art damage" as we know it today. Anyone interested in graphic and media design will want this disk. If I harp on the Quays connection to graphic design, it is at least partly because typography plays so important a role in their films. Their film titles and credits, and their general handling of type, 15 years old and older, is still edgy stuff. Any designer could study it to deepen their own work. Get this disk. Problems and all, it is a must have.
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Description of The Brothers Quay Collection: Ten Astonishing Short Films 1984-1993The surreal visions of the Brothers Quay, identical-twin animators from Minnesota who have since made London their home, are an offbeat mix of clockwork mechanics, wire, thread, and 19th-century curios, all set to life in a series of beautiful but elusive set pieces. Directed in a highly stylized manner, with a shallow plane of focus that intentionally keeps certain objects blurred and a camera that moves with conspicuous mechanical precision, their works have a dreamlike quality about them. This is directly alluded to in the subtitle of one of their most handsome films, "The Comb (From the Museum of Sleep)," where scenes of a latticework of ladders shooting through an angular construction are intercut with shots of a sleeping woman. "Street of Crocodiles," their most famous short work, references turn-of-the-century cinema as a man peers through a Kinetoscope to watch the nightmare-tinged fantasy of a figure overwhelmed by mysterious forces on the deserted streets of a city after dark. These are the longest and most accomplished short films in The Brothers Quay Collection, a compendium of ten works from 1984 to 1993, but the tape contains other spellbinding works, from the early "The Cabinet of Jan Svankmajer," a tribute to the great Czech animator and the Quay's spiritual godfather, to the inventive art history documentary "De Artificiali Perspectiva, or Anamorphosis," to the four short works in the "Stille Nacht" series. These films, along with "The Epic of Gilgamesh" and "Rehearsals For Extinct Anatomies," showcase a vision of quivering objects and surreal narratives in a shadowy, self-contained dream world. --Sean Axmaker
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