Thanks for hanging in there while I’ve been busy with a family situation. Next week I’ll return with some new reviews.
We live in an increasingly digital world, but one of my enduring traditions is to set aside a little cash each month so I can splurge on physical media, particularly DVDs and Blu-rays, during holiday sales. Here’s my 2022 haul, which was split between Kino Lorber Classics and Vinegar Syndrome.
From Kino Lorber I purchased Blu-ray editions of Andrei Tarkovsky’s The Sacrifice; Marcel Carné’s Port of Shadows; James Ivory’s adaptation of E.M. Forster’s gay classic Maurice (which currently streams on Tubi); Bertrand Tavernier’s The Clockmaker of St. Paul; and The Films of Maurice Pialat: Volume 1, which collects the French auteur’s Loulou, The Mouth Agape and Graduate First.
My selections from the catalogs of Vinegar Syndrome and its partner labels included Paul Schrader’s Patty Hearst (also on Tubi) and a slew of LGBTQ+ titles: the Canadian documentary Forbidden Love: The Unashamed Stories of Lesbian Lives; Saturday Night at the Baths; What Really Happened to Baby Jane? And the Films of the Gay Girls Riding Club; Two Films by Arthur J. Bressan, Jr. (Passing Strangers and Forbidden Letters); Equation to an Unknown; and L.A. Plays Itself: The Fred Halsted Collection.
With the exception of Patty Hearst, the Vinegar Syndrome titles generally aren’t the sort I’ll rewatch, unlike the Kino Lorber releases. But I’m pleased to help support the preservation of forgotten and overlooked gay and lesbian cinema in some small way. And I was particularly tickled to find Halsted represented. An iconoclastic gay pornographer and enthusiastic sadist, his pioneering early works were acquired by the Museum of Modern Art. After viewing one of his films, Salvador Dalí allegedly muttered “new information for me,” a commentary I hope to one day echo in a review of a Lifetime movie.
I have no connection to Kino Lorber or Vinegar Syndrome and earn no commissions from purchases made at either site. Prices are higher now, post-sale, but if you monitor Kino Lorber’s website you can periodically score great films for $10 (or less) apiece.
Cranky Lesbian is a disgruntled homosexual with too much time on her hands. Click for film reviews or to follow on Instagram.
