Kino Lorber — New Titles/Journal

Gerhard Richter Painting documentary film. Written and directed by Corinna Belz; edited by Stephan Krumbiegel. The main film lasts 97 minutes. It was shot while Richter was preparing for an exhibition (shown late in 2009 and early 2010) at the Marian Goodman Gallery in New York. Title also includes as extras (1) a 23 minute interview with art historian Benjamin HD Buchloh, (2) 10 minutes of "fragments of a conversation" with Hans-Ulrich Obrist, and (3) a 9 minute clip showing Richter getting ready for an exhibition in Munich. Released 2012, there is a soundtrack presented in 5.1 dts-HD Master Audio sound. Grade: D+

What's New

Here's news about high-definition video disc ("HDVD") recordings of opera, ballet, classical music, plays, fine-art documentaries, and paintings. In the journal below are independent (and hard-to-find critical) reports on hundreds of HDVDs. Pick the best titles for your excelsisphere.

Feb 25. We have just completed one of our most ambitious reviews: Einstein on the Beach opera, the surreal 4 and 1/2 hour cult legend. Kudos, encomiums, and accolades to Opus Arte for giving us this authoritative and weirdly fascinating recording, which we grade A+. Absorbing and learning Einstein is uniquely challenging. We try to help out by providing aids not included in the keepcase materials: an accurate libretto and a list of segments in the opera with correct Opus Arte time stamps. Good luck!

We have some other good grades with an A for the recent Met The Pearl Fishers (Les pêcheurs de perles) and a B- for an earlier The Pearl Fishers from Naples. Also, we recently gave an A- for the new Don Quixote from the Vienna State Ballet.