Newsgroup: it.arti.cinema
Titolo: [DVD] "Baba Yaga" e "Kaperino"

In una geniale storia scritta e disegnata da Barks, Paperino si da' un
gran da fare per diventare famoso e fare apparire il proprio nome sui
giornali. Dopo numerosi tentativi sfortunati, riesce finalmente a farsi
fotografare come "il papero seduto sul palo piu' basso del mondo" e
corre tuto contento a comprare il giornale. Ma il titolo dice "Kaperino
guarda il mondo dalla sommita' del palo piu' basso". "Hanno sbagliato il
mio nome", commenta sconfitto.
Beh, mi e' finalmente arrivato il DVD region 0 di "Baba Yaga" della Blue
Underground. E' fichissimo! :-)
Unico neo: alla fine dell'intervista col regista, che avevo condotto io,
appare scritto "Interview conducted by Alfredo Farina".
Vabbe', pazienza, lo dedico ad AP. :-) Il DVD e' davvero fico lo stesso,
coi menu' animati, dei gran extra e una copia del film veramente
spettacolosa.
Un amico mi ha anche mandato questa rece in inglese, incredibilmente
entusiastica...
http://www.fangoria.com/ghastly_review.php?id=1119
BABA YAGA (Blue Underground)
Reviewed by SCOOTER McCRAE
A woman clad in black undergarments is led at gunpoint to a bottomless
hole in the earth by uniformed Nazis; she undresses and jumps in. A
half-naked woman knocks out a man with a single punch in the boxing ring
of an empty arena. A nude, bound and blindfolded woman is walked into
the surf as a firing squad shoots her from behind. These are the
stylized dreams of Valentina, who is sometimes the victim and sometimes
the aggressor, which punctuate and comment upon the hyperstylized
reality of Corrado Farina?s supernatural erotic adaptation of the works
of Guido Crepax, BABA YAGA (1973).
Trying to synopsize the plot of a film like this is akin to capturing
smoke in a silk kerchief, and just as frustrating to attempt.
World-famous fashion photographer Valentina (Isabelle DeFunes) is
accosted by a woman, Baba Yaga (Carroll Baker), who is definitely a very
interested lesbian and may also be a witch. But Valentina is not
interested, though she is intrigued by this mysterious woman. Baba Yaga
fondles, and puts a curse on, one of Valentina?s still cameras?which,
when aimed and snapping a photo, jams a motion picture camera and
eventually causes one of her regular models to collapse during a photo
shoot. It is this last incident that compels Valentina to pay a visit to
Baba Yaga at her home, under the guise of wanting to take some pictures
there. As Valentina photographs the various antiques and curios in the
dusty attic, she discovers a strange, long-haired doll with piercing
blue eyes wearing a bondage outfit which she is given as a gift to
?protect her from harm.?
Nothing terribly innovative by the film?s halfway point, eh? Well, it?s
the execution and the accumulation of small details that make the film
compellingly watchable. It successfully blends the supernatural and
erotic in numerous moments that suffuse BABA YAGA with a miasma of
disorienting pleasures. And even the most explicit moments leave enough
to the imagination to be categorized as erotica, not pornography.
Also along for the ride is Euro-fave George Eastman as Valentina?s
boyfriend Arno, a director who vacillates between political activist
films and TV soap commercials. As a character, he seems closest to the
heart of director Farina, who stocks this film with all the elements
that make BABA YAGA an exploitable product, but also has each of his
characters at some point act as a mouthpiece for feminism, racial
equality and tolerance toward political and sexual dissidents. One gets
the impression, of course, that it?s all in good fun, and the film is
playful enough to laugh at itself occasionally without making fun of the
material. All the performers look just right, and are so well cast that
just standing there and looking off to one side conveys a world of
comic-bookish inner workings on the other side of a page waiting to be
flipped over. DeFunes resembles a much healthier version of Barbara
Steele with a Louise Brooks wig, while Baker is borderline miscast, yet
somehow manages to make the role work.
The film is also refreshingly free of the kind of tropes that alert
viewers that something ?weird? is happening; instead, the fuzzy logic of
an erotic fever is achieved via the seamless link of one moment to the
next by visual connections or incidents. BABA YAGA has all the visual
trappings of a giallo, but none of the shock-generating concerns. A
black-gloved hand rings a doorbell, a subjective point-of-view shot
prowls toward a potential ?victim,? bizarrely disorienting camera angles
interrupt an otherwise standard dialogue scene in a cafe and Valentina
even obsesses over a (possibly) half-remembered detail after scouring
over some of her photos with a magnifying glass, amongst many other
familiar elements, but these visual trappings are not (for the most
part) played for their potential to horrify. In fact, the scene that
generates the most unease comes late in the proceedings, when Valentina
develops a roll of film from the cursed camera that were taken in the
dark, apparently by the camera itself. The processed photos, when
splayed out on the table, present a comic-book tableau of what happened
in the impenetrable darkness that is at once both arousing and
frightening.
When all is said and done, BABA YAGA is a visually fascinating film that
questions whether the motivations of its protagonist are guided by a
fear of the irrational or irrational fears (as related to the fear of
being a lesbian). Like Radley Metzger?s THE IMAGE and Just Jaeckin?s THE
STORY OF ?O?, it is a tale of the control, even mastery, of a situation
a person can achieve by giving themself over to absolute submission and
emerging transformed from the experience.
If all this sounds familiar, you?re either a habitual illegal substance
abuser or perhaps the owner of the previous Diamond DVD, which, besides
sporting a hideous bootleg-quality transfer, eloquently retitled this
flick KISS ME, KILL ME. If you own that disc and have any interest in
this film whatsoever, please throw it away and give Blue Underground
your hard-earned cash for their exemplary efforts. Letting gray-market
scumbags like Diamond eat into the viewership of a legitimate release,
which has been beautifully restored and adorned with cult-loving
supplements like the ones provided here, is a sad alternative to
supporting the legitimate conservation efforts that have been displayed
on this disc.
First and foremost, BABA YAGA has been blessed with a 16x9-enhanced 1:85
transfer that is so good, it actually highlights a couple of flaws that
are inherent in the film?s original photography. There are a number of
shots that exhibit brief ?flashing,? and in his interview segment (more
on that in a moment), director Farina reveals that after his final cut
was delivered, the film was re-edited by his producers, after which he
was given a final-final cut. But since the negative had already been
trimmed, he was limited in what he was able to restore. This leads to at
least one jump-cut in the middle of a shot toward the film?s climax, and
the excision of even more nudity than was probably originally intended
(restored for the first time, one supposes, in the supplements).
The extras begin with a fairly comprehensive 22-minute video interview
with director Farina, in Italian with English subtitles. This is a
well-edited monologue that manages to sneak in the brief Baker and
DeFunes full-nude shots that were censored from all release versions
(Baker?s twice!). He talks candidly about his frustration with viewing
the previous attempts of other directors to adapt comic-book characters
to the cinema, which is what led to him tackling the labor himself in
earnest with this, his second of only two feature-length projects.
There?s a refreshing honesty on display as he evaluates his film and its
merits, while also giving very interesting insight into his casting
decisions (including, in one important case, a decision he was barely
allowed to make).
The interview is also a good primer for those unfamiliar with the 1960s
comic-book scene and Crepax in particular, who is covered in slightly
greater depth in Farina?s documentary short from that period, FREUD IN
COLOR, which Blue Underground has also graciously supplied on the disc.
While analyzing Crepax?s drawn frames and comparing them to their film
counterparts (including a storyboard-to-clip comparison from Tinto
Brass? CUL CUORE IN GOLA that predates a common DVD function by about 30
years), the short also gives a quick historical overview of how comic
art had been absorbed into the Italian zeitgeist.
One of the most eye-opening bonuses is 10 minutes of deleted and
censored footage (yes, the brief full-frontal nude shots are here yet
again) that appears to have been salvaged from a videotape transfer of a
workprint. The first four minutes are a fully deleted scene that defies
politically correct description out of context, but?if you like the
film?will be a welcome inclusion. The rest is snippets of various
lengths and substantiality from already existing scenes. There?s also
the standard photo and still gallery, which includes a comic
book-to-film comparison that?s a bit too small to appreciate on a
standard-sized monitor (this extra is also offered as a DVD-ROM feature
which, while probably more successful and substantial, I was unable to
test out). An entertaining trailer plays as a condensed version of the
film that simultaneously shows everything and gives away nothing.
In summary, with BABA YAGA, you?ve got a great, underappreciated film
with a wonderful transfer and just enough supplements to properly
illuminate the material and place it in historical and artistic
perspective. It?s highly recommended to anyone with more adventurous
tastes and ideas of what a horror film is capable of offering.
-- 
UFV:28 giorni dopo/Diabolik/Tre punto sei/Matrix Reloaded/Fausto 5.0
Paura.com/Il ronzio delle mosche/I tre volti della paura/I vinti(VHS)

 ha l'audio italiano?
Si', si trova online, no, non ha l'audio italiano, purtroppo.
