DVD Afternoon Podcast #54: Coffee Stains And Winestains

Heather Noel and I try to use the DVD Afternoon podcast as a platform from which to call attention to overlooked gems, movies whose failure to earn a wide theatrical release by no means should be taken as an indication of artistic failure as well. But once in a while, our instincts fail us—or, more often, my instincts fail us—and we wind up taking a gamble on a movie like Heartless, a dark urban horror fantasy from British director Philip Ridley that promised to be an inventive, unconventional genre piece along the lines of Neil Jordan's The Company of Wolves or Ondine or In Dreams or Bernard Rose's Paperhouse. No such luck—Heartless has a good cast and some ambitious ideas, but the execution leaves a lot to be desired.

We had no such misgivings, however, about White Material, the Claire Denis film starring Isabelle Huppert as a white colonialist in Africa who refuses to let armed revolution stop her from bringing her coffee harvest in on time, and which is getting a top-shelf release from Criterion this Tuesday.

Also in this week's show: caffeinated conversation about the early Jonathan Demme women-in-prison flick Caged Heat, our favourite all-time prison pictures, and Criterion's controversial decision to bring out a DVD edition of Lena Dunham's Tiny Furniture but not Abbas Kiarostami's Certified Copy. And, as always, we share our lists of the week's other most noteworthy new DVD and Blu-Ray releases. The show proceeds as follows:

0:00: Intro/Caged Heat/Our favourite prison movies/Has Criterion gone mad?
15:34: The Vapors, "Prisoners"
16:42: White Material
28:22: Fela Kuti, "African Woman"
29:21: Heartless
42:43: Mandy Moore, "I Could Break Your Heart Any Day of the Week"
43:48: Other noteworthy new DVD releases/Outro

I make no apologies for the Mandy Moore song!

Here's the racy trailer for Caged Heat. Did you know that John Cale from the Velvet Underground did the score?



And here's the trailer for Marwencol, which both Heather and I both recommend very highly indeed.



You can subscribe to DVD Afternoon through iTunes, or you can download this week's episode directly by clicking here. Or you can stream the show with the assistance of the Wizzard Media Player below. Enjoy!