backroad bohemia.

THINGS GO BITTER WITH MILK  Magic Alex (Malcom McDowell), third from the left, and his droogies prep for a night of the old ultraviolence while sipping laced leche at the local
Moloko milk bar.

'orange' juice

Director Stanley Kubrick's futuristic 1971 film A Clockwork Orange has finally gotten a cutting-edge look and sound now that Warner Bros. has re-released the DVD on Oct. 23. The new two-DVD version offers superior 1080p high-def video transfers and remixed Dolby TrueHD 5.1 audio tracks on both the Blu-ray and HD DVD editions. The film is featured on Disc One; Disc Two delivers three documentaries detailing the making of the film, its social impact, and the career of its star Malcolm McDowell.

This controversial adaptation of Anthony Burgess' 1962 satire
on violence and authoritarian rule (and efforts to reform the main
character through harsh mind-control methods), stars Malcolm McDowell
as the leader of a gang of psychopathic juvenile delinquents.

It ranks among the American Film Institute's Top 100 list of the best films
of all time.

At the time of its release, film critic Roger Ebert dismissed A Clockwork
Orange as "an ideological mess" and "a right-wing paranoid fantasy." Vincent Canby of the New York Times hailed the film as "a brilliant and dangerous work." Shortly after its release in the UK, Kubrick withdrew the film after charges that the film had been responsible for a series of copycat crimes.

"The central idea of the film has to do with the question of free-will,"
Kubrick once told interviewer Michel Ciment. "Do we lose our humanity
if we are deprived of the choice between good and evil? Do we become,
as the title suggests, A Clockwork Orange? Recent experiments in conditioning and mind control on volunteer prisoners in America have taken this question
out of the realm of science-fiction.

"At the same time," he added, "I think the dramatic impact of the film
has principally to do with the extraordinary character of Alex, as conceived
by Anthony Burgess in his brilliant and original novel. Aaron Stern, the former head of the MPAA rating board in America, who is also a practicing psychiatrist,
has suggested that Alex represents the unconscious: man in his natural state. After he is given the Ludovico 'cure' he has been 'civilized', and the sickness
that follows may be viewed as the neurosis imposed by society." 

Previous DVD versions have had inferior audio that failed to showcase synth-pioneer Wendy Carlos' seminal soundtrack.

For a detailed synopsis, visit www.filmsite.org/cloc.html.

Insightful essays on the film can be found at www.kubrick.com/.

 review

'Joe Strummer:
The Future is Unwritten' 

Five years after the death of punk rocker Joe Strummer, at age 50 from an undiagnosed heart condition, filmmaker
Julien Temple's documentary portrait
Joe Strummer: The Future is Unwritten is making
the rounds on the film festival circuit and heading for DVD release.

And what a tale: The son of a diplomat pines away in a
British boarding school, dreams of becoming a rock star and graduates at the top of the class of '77, that rag-tag collection of punk and New Wave bands
that challenged the burgeoning corporate rock world.

That's just part of the mythical life of this iconic singer,songwriter and guitarist, whose politico-rock band the Clash became one of the most influential rock outits of the modern era.

Temple (The Great Rock 'n' Roll Swindle) has crafted here perhaps the best-filmed account of the British punk scene. The film is structured as a fireside wake, featuring reminiscences by Jim Jarmusch, Johnny Depp,
Pearl Harbour, Bono, John Cusack, and others. It includes rare film footage of home movies of Strummer and his nascent band and onscreen interviews,
old and new.

The Future is Unwritten rekindles the fiery cauldron that spawned some of the most vital music of the Reagan years.

Also well worth seeking out is the film's eclectic soundtrack, which features the music of the Clash, Bob Dylan, Eddie Cochran, and Elvis Presley, and others.       

               —Greg Cahill