YouTubing-To-Obscure-Shameless-Self-Promotion Wednesdays: You (Not You!) Fill Me With Inertia

Among the new DVD releases for this week is Stanley Donen's Bedazzled, a Faust riff starring the great team of Peter Cook and Dudley Moore. Along with Robert Altman, '60s Donen is probably the most manhandled by pan & scan. Having traded in outsized sets and dance numbers, Donen tried to make up for the loss through filmmaking coups, most often exemplified through unexpected pans, aggressive editing, odd framing and crazy-ass zooms. (One early segment in Two For the Road features, I think, whiplash pull-outs in a row.) So there's that, and then there's the film itself, which has been hard to come by, and for no terribly good reason. In this section, Moore's sadsack Wimpy Bar cook finds one of his wishes transporting him to a '60s American Bandstand-esque show, where he's soon upstaged by the robotically purring Cook.



WEEKLY!! Back to regular, non-PFF duties this week, with a Six Pack thingie on weird sequels (2046, The Wayward Cloud, Fay Grim, etc.), plus three reviews, including Fracture, Bamako and The TV Set. Also, Rep.