"Criterion has so much Ozu. Ten to fifteen years ago, I hunted through Japanese markets in L.A. and San Francisco for DVDs of otherwise unavailable Ozu. Because Ozu movies settle my mind. At one point in the late 1980s I was in Los Angeles for an extended period of time. I got in the habit of renting movies from Tower Video on Sunset. The two gold mines I remember best were the Humphrey Bogart Santana productions and the Wim Wenders movies, including Tokyo-ga. I watched Tokyo-ga through a filter of loving Wenders; otherwise, its content was pretty mystifying. A year or two later someone showed me Tokyo Story, and I wished Ozu was my mother. So generous and gentle. Patiently ignoring the 180-degree line (which bugs the fuck out of me in production). Of course, I don’t know Yasujiro Ozu; still, I love the man who gave these movies to us. And what lessons! The pairing of I Was Born, But . . . and Good Morning. He didn’t know he was doing it, because at the time he made Good Morning, I imagine that I Was Born, But . . . was ancient history. Now the two movies are equally present, and they stand alone and together. I choose the Floating Weeds movies, as among the genre of movies about us performing artists those movies reign."

"Alexander Mackendrick is probably the least well-known genius director to ever live. Nowhere is his brilliance more evident than in the down-and-dirty depiction of high-class gossip columnist J. J. Hunsecker and lowlife press agent Sidney Falco in Sweet Smell of Success. The great James Wong Howe films the gritty streets of New York in the style of the tabloid newspaper photographs that the protagonists traffic in. The movie was shot entirely on location, a rarity in 1957 but probably allowed due to the triumph of Kazan’s On the Waterfront just a few years prior. Burt Lancaster and Tony Curtis give career-best performances in this noir that depicts the fall of the mighty Hunsecker (Lancaster) and the sniveling, conniving Falco (Curtis) as the former tries to retain his crown and the latter tries to make it to the top of the heap of garbage he so aspires to reign over. The screenplay, by giants of the trade Clifford Odets and Ernest Lehman, crackles with what is commonly considered some of the best dialogue in the history of cinema. I just love every single thing about this gem of sleaze. Also featured on the disc is a great documentary, Mackendrick: The Man Who Walked Away, about how the director, fed up with Hollywood, took a job teaching film at the then nascent CalArts and became a great influence on his students—among them James Mangold, who is featured in an interview here"