The Director's Label Vol. 4-7: The Works of Mark Romanek, Jonathan Glazer, Anton Corbijn and Stéphane Sednaoui

         Jonathan Glazer did not receive enough appreciation for his film Birth, an extremely dry take on the concept of love for which he suffered the result of literal-minded critics and audiences. Now with his best of DVD, one of the four new Director’s Label discs from Palm Pictures, he is likely to again be the victim of masses who just don’t get it. “The Work of Jonathan Glazer” features only eight music videos versus the 20-25 included on the other three, and this inadequacy will likely affect its sales comparatively.
          The coolest thing about the Director’s Label DVDs, though, is the commercials, of which Glazer’s disc has plenty. People may be familiar with his videos for Radiohead and UNKLE, but the filmmaker is rarely recognized for his amazing Guinness ads, and not just because they aren’t typically seen in America. If he had been the man behind Budweiser’s frog ads, that fact would still be under the radar of television viewers because unlike music videos, there is no direct artistic association with advertisements.
           That isn’t to believe in America’s supposed ignorance and despise of TV ads. The Super Bowl just wouldn’t be the same without the attention given toward quality commercials. The problem is that if even Steven Spielberg directs a Levi’s spot and nobody issues a press release, the public has little way of knowing, and so whether or not the ad is noteworthy, its time on the minds of viewers is likely to be short. The Internet Movie Database has been listing commercials for directors and actors in the “other works” feature, but often seeking out creative information about an ad will get you little more than the name of the song it features.
           Music videos, in contrast, have been glorified as an art form for the last 15 years thanks in part to MTV’s addition of a director credit, which labels them more as short films than CD promos in disguise, warranting screenings at museums and film societies. It is this respectful acknowledgement that made names out of Spike Jonze and Michel Gondry even before each went on to craft excitingly clever films from Charlie Kauffman scripts. Even Jonathan Glazer got some attention for his videos before releasing his debut feature Sexy Beast.
          The Director’s Label discs for these three (Jonze’s and Gondry’s were released two years ago along with one for Chris Cuningham) have the most intrigue for their showcasing of early stuff, ads included, by established feature filmmakers. Since Glazer’s DVD works best as an evolutionary display of his talent, the inclusion of clips from and discussions of his two movies is more a necessity than a seemingly redundant bit of filler more appropriately featured on their respective DVDs. Mark Romanek, who also has a new disc out through the series, has also released a feature (One Hour Photo), but he lacks a distinct style that links his work in the same way that the others’ do. Anton Corbijn’s disc, however, full of gloomy videos for Joy Division, Echo and the Bunnymen and Depeche Mode at least makes his upcoming biopic on Ian Curtis easily imagined.
       Unfortunately, few will see the significant value of Glazer’s disc, which is not as enjoyable as the ones for Jonze and Gondry nor is it filled with as many familiars as the ones for Romanek or Stéphane Sednaoui, each including a plethora of videos for some of the most popular recording artists of the last decade. None of Glazer’s three companions in the new release (all four are available as a box set) feature commercials as a big part of their collection, either, which might make them all seem more pure in their achievements.
      Many of the interesting videos have been available elsewhere, such as the unedited version of Nine Inch Nails’ “Closer”, though most have new commentary tracks or supplemental interviews with the performers, which can get pretty repetitive (Jay-Z and Flea overuse the word “art” to describe their videos and Fiona Apple keeps stressing how the video for “Criminal” is supposed to be tongue-in-cheek) when not informative (find out how they made Jamiroquai’s “Virtual Insanity” video). Romanek’s even features a senseless bit called “Romanekian” where Chris Rock and Ben Stiller discuss his ‘oeuvre’, which is only worthwhile for Rock’s honesty (“he can make you like a song that sucks”). Sednaoui’s loses many points, though, by including the clip for Alanis Morrissette’s erroneous song “Ironic” with or without an apologetic commentary from the singer.
        It is unclear how far Palm Pictures is going to go with their series considering two years ago it seemed there would be no more than the original three. Hopefully with many of today’s rising filmmakers former video directors, the Director’s Label can provide many more retrospective discs that are more than mere music video compilations. Some names for them to consider are Mark Pellington, David Fincher, Brett Rattner, Paul Thomas Anderson, Tarsem Singh, Roman Coppola, F. Gary Gray, McG, Marcos Siega, and Gore Verbinski, who like Glazer is shorter on videos but is in fact the creator of those Budweiser frog ads.

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