DVDBeaver Newsletter - October 22nd, 2007

Yai Sou! - Entering a colossal DVD release week we have 22 new reviews this newsletter - 2 multi-film boxsets, six of which are important comparisons including four from the Warner Home Video Director's Series: Stanley Kubrick Collection, 10 hi-def, 18 calendar updates, upcoming Criterions, our recommendations, a contest winner and a new contest! You are here.

CONTEST ACTIVITY:

and you must be subscribed to our Free Weekly Newsletter and email all answer to contest@DVDBeaver.com

Winner of the clip from the week of Oct 15th (Pickup on South Street) was S. Bollinger of El Monte (wins a sealed DVD of the Poltergeist Anniversary DVD Congrats Steve!

Just subscribe to our Free Weekly Newsletter (for hints and the winner announcement) and email all answers to contest@DVDBeaver.com

SECOND CONTEST STILL RUNNING:

HERE are five pairs of screenshots from as many Korean movies on Leonard's review of Alone in Love.
Name the five titles (in English, please) and email to KoreanDrama@DVDBeaver.com
Include name, shipping address, telephone number and e-mail address with your entry.
The winner will be chosen randomly from those with the most correct answers.
First prize is a free copy of the complete set of Alone in Love, the Korean TV drama (value over $80).
Six Runners-Up will get complimentary discs from the show containing the first three one-hour episodes.

Beaver citing: We are quoted in November edition of The DVD Stack - a monthly periodical.

NEW Criterions announced - Miss Julie, The Naked Prey, 4 x Varda (Cleo from 5 to 7, Le Bonhuer, Vagabond and, La Pointe Courte), and This Sporting Life.

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BLU-RAY STORE           HD-DVD STORE

 HIGH DEFINITION DVD STORE        ALL OUR NEW FORMAT DVD REVIEWS

Easiest way to catch up is simply read the new Newsletter Archive HERE.

LATEST Additions to the Release Calendar (PRE-ORDER!)

Lost and Found: The Harry Langdon Collection (4-disc/ 23 films) - Facets

Twenty Thousand Streets Under The Sky [Blu-ray] (Simon Curtis, 2005) - R2 UK - 2 Entertain Video

Sunshine [Blu-ray] (Danny Boyle, 2007) - R2 UK - 20th Century Fox Home Entertainment

Capricorn One [Blu-ray] (Peter Hyams, 1978) R2 UK - ITV

The Killers - (46 + 64' versions) R2 UK - Universal Pictures UK

Alastair Sim - The Comic Icons Collection (The Green Man, Folly To Be Wise, Geordie, Left Right And Centre and Laughter In Paradise) - R2 UK - Optimum Home Entertainment

Jane Russell Collection - (The Paleface/Fox Fire/Son Of Paleface / Road To Bali) - R2 UK -UCA

War (Philip G. Atwell, 2007) Lions Gate

Heimat, Vol. 3: A Chronicle of Endings and Beginnings (2004) - Facets

Drums Along the Mohawk (The Ford at Fox Collection) (John Ford, 1939) - 20th Century Fox

Pilgrimage / Born Reckless (The Ford at Fox Collection Double Feature) - John Ford - 20th Century Fox

The Killer (John Woo, 1989) Weinstein - Dragon Dynasty

Help! (DELUXE) (Richard Lester, 1965) - Capitol

Help! (2-disc SE) (Richard Lester, 1965) - Capitol

Latitude Zero (Ishirô Honda, 1969) - Tokyo Shock

The Last Man on Earth (Ubaldo Ragona, 1964) - MGM

Stardust (Matthew Vaughn, 2007) Paramount

Pretty Things (Gilles Paquet-Brenner, 2001) Synkronized

New Reviews:.

WOW! - what a week - the Stanley Kubrick Collection entries we've compared (2001: A Space Odyssey, A Clockwork Orange, The Shining, and Eyes Wide Shut ) make that package pretty much essential. Fabulous extras - important films. I also liked Inside Man HD, Galapagos - HD + BR (HUGELY RECOMMENDED!), Tell No One, Why Has Bodhi-Dharma Left for the East?, Universal Horror Classic Movie Archive, The Burt Lancaster Collection (I particularly loved Flame and the Arrow -Tourneur! -, Jim Thorpe - All American and Executive Action). I didn't review but am sold on the new upcoming Chinatown, The Hypothesis of the Stolen Painting, and Meet the Robinsons BR. I'll try to get the Hi-def reviews from the Kubrick collection up as soon as possible. 

Meet the Robinsons BR - I believe this is the first movie that Disney Animation produced since Pixar's John Lasseter took over the helm; however, it was in production some while before he came on board. I really like the look of this movie: the art direction, the choices about how human to make humans, the overall color and contrast scheme. And while we would never confuse Meet the Robinsons with The Incredibles or any other of Pixar's densely textured, adult pleasing movies, Meet the Robinsons does have heart, like any Pixar film. It takes a while to find it through the jumble of zigs and zags, but the sentiment and the final plot twist is definitely worth the price of admission. Blu-ray Release Date: October 23rd, 2007

From Hell BR - In From Hell, we have a film based on the series of comic books of the same name by writer Alan Moore and artist Eddie Campbell, published throughout the early 1990s. They develop a theory put forth in the 1970s in a book by Stephen Knight titled Jack the Ripper: The Final Solution in which it is posited that the murders were the result of a conspiracy between the Royal Family and the Brotherhood of Freemasons to cover up an illegitimate offspring via Prince Albert Victor. The film, which features Johnny Depp and Robbie Coltrane as detectives on the trail, adopts the same premise. Blu-ray Release Date: October 9th, 2007

Evan Almighty HD - In Evan Almighty, God (Morgan Freeman) tells Evan Baxter (Steve Carell) to build an ark to save the animals of the Earth. There is a flood this time, though it’s caused by people harming the environment. This movie preaches a green message by wasting an astronomical budget (at least $170 million), much water, tons of trees, and other precious resources. This waste is not funny, and this movie is a shameful rebuke of the very message that it wants viewers to learn. HD-DVD Released: October 9th, 2007

Scary Movie BR - Few things separate one person from another than their sense of humor – perhaps even more than their position on abortion. And few comedies test the question as keenly as the Wayans Brothers' 2000 Scary Movie, the knock down, drag out parody of just about every horror movie - and a few others thrown in for smiles - you've ever screamed at, or wanted to hide in the closet from, or felt guilty about what you really did last summer, or run desperately and foolishly into the arms of a stalker, killer or random psychopath. Blu-ray Release Date: October 23rd, 2007

Galapagos - HD + BR - 2.5 hours of some of the best nature cinematography I have ever seen... EVER. Stunning visuals help document a realistic visage of 13, volcanically formed, islands approx. 1000 kilometers off the west coast of Ecuador. The islands have unique adjusting environmental circumstances and this BBC/National Geographic co-production identifies this, as one of the world's great wonders, depicting a microcosm of the evolution of our entire planet. Here four major ocean currents unite and seething undersea volcanic activity dominate the constant alterations of the landscape. The documentary, expertly narrated by Tilda Swinton, is divided into 3 sections of 50 minutes each. HD-DVD and Blu-ray Released: October 2nd, 2007

The Burt Lancaster Collection - Initially dismissed as hunky without substance in the late 1950s Lancaster would take on challenging roles and abandon his "Mr Muscles and Teeth" image to be regarded as one of the best actors of his generation. In most of his roles, whether in drama, circus, crime, comedy, western or other genres, the self-taught actor was a box-office success and he evolved into a solid and versatile performer. Warner brings his collection together with five films featuring the legendary star - seeing their debut on DVD. Flame and the Arrow (1950), Jim Thorpe - All American (1951), South Sea Woman (1953), His Majesty O'Keefe (1954) and Executive Action (1973)

The Hypothesis of the Stolen Painting - Raul Ruiz's The Hypothesis of the Stolen Painting is not so much a loose adaptation of Pierre Klossowski's novel The Baphomet so much as creatively inspired by it. The novel depicts the "breaths" of executed Knights Templar gathering every year on the anniversary of the execution of their Grand Master to commit the perverse sexual and "pagan" acts (it is conjectured that the word "Baphomet" was not a reference to the Egyptian god but a corruption of the name Muhammad) which they were tortured into falsely confessing. Ruiz's film details a series of six paintings through the camera POV of a narrator as The Collector (Jean Rougeul, Fellini's 8 1/2) suggests that a missing seventh painting holds the key to a scandal that caused the painter to flee the country after their exhibition.

A Mighty Heart HD - A Mighty Heart is yet another message movie from a clearly socially-conscious activist. (Paramount’s box-office experience with Oliver Stone’s World Trade Center should’ve warned studio execs away from another post-9/11 on financial grounds, but with Jolie’s boyfriend Brad Pitt producing, I guess studio head Brad Grey just wanted to make his former production-company partner happy.) Unfortunately, Jolie doesn’t seem to understand that her approach to social activism is too in-your-face to be effective. HD-DVD Released: October 16th, 2007

Eyes Wide Shut - "Most reviews of every Kubrick picture since 2001 have been mired in misapprehensions and underestimations—many of which are corrected years later without apology, one reason he apparently gave up on critics about 30 years ago. This doesn't necessarily mean he was always ahead of his time: one of the best things about Eyes Wide Shut—evident in such artisanal qualities as the old-fashioned sound track, the grainy photography, and the exquisite color balances ...—is that it isn't a film of the 90s in most respects but something closer to what movies at their best used to be. ... This is personal filmmaking as well as dream poetry of the kind most movie commerce has ground underfoot, and if a better studio release comes along this year I'll be flabbergasted. A Masterpiece." The new 2-disc Special edition release date is October 23rd, 2007

Chinatown - There are a lot of reasons why "Chinatown", Roman Polanski's classic from 1974, is often described as the first neo-noir. On one side, we have all the traditional ingredients of a film noir in the sense of Billy Wilder and John Huston: a mysterious femme fatale, a tough guy who - confronted with beauty - becomes tender, a suspenseful plot full of ambiguities, a highly sensual atmosphere and very stylish lighting and camerawork. We can find that all in the beautiful noir films from the 1940s. But then, in the midst of the 1970s New Hollywood movement, Polanski and screenwriter Robert Towne have broken the rules, if there's such a thing as rules. While the opening credits have a nice old-fashioned look, the first shots of the film introduce us to a new kind of noir. A noir shot in cinemascope and composed in earthly Technicolor photography. A film full of sadness, grief and despair, with an ending as unexpected as any other twist in the film. The new Special Collector's Edition comes out November 6th, 2007

Lights in the Dusk (NOTE: Now compared to R2 Artificial Eye!) - Lights in the Dusk is the third chapter in what Kaurismäki, no doubt seeking to lend the illusion of shape and substance to his repetitive tendencies, is now calling his Loser Trilogy, following Drifting Clouds (1996) and The Man Without a Past (2002). I mustered a fair bit of affection for both of those, but the new film, though leavened with Kaurismäki's usual deadpan humor, takes a dispiriting turn into miserabilism — Koistinen is used and abused so relentlessly that he might as well be in a Fassbinder flick. At a mere seventy-eight minutes, Lights doesn't wear out its welcome, but those waiting patiently for some culminating act of self-determination will do so in vain. The message: life sucks, and then you forbear. If you don't believe that — or if, like me, you wouldn't want to have such a sentiment reinforced by your entertainment choices even if you did — you may leave the theater feeling recalcitrant. DVD Release Date: October 15th, 2007

Tell No One - “Tell No One” is a French variation on “The Fugitive,” but it’s a more subtle, discreet animal. Like the Andrew Davis classic, this man-on-the-run nail biter concerns a doctor smarting from the loss of his wife and framed for murder. But you won’t find Dr. Beck acrobatically leaping off dam spillways, escaping crashed prison buses, or outrunning trains. (No Parkour-style diving off buildings either, like fellow Frenchman Cyril Raffaelli of “District B-13”.) Cluzet’s understated hero isn’t superman, and during the film’s key set-piece – a foot chase through Paris streets and freeways – we’re gripping our armrests knowing that this is a mere mortal facing potential doom. DVD Release Date: August 21st, 2007

A Clockwork Orange - Everything about A Clockwork Orange from the casting to the near-future set designs suggest that Stanley Kubrick was at the height of his creative power during this time. If, in fact, you are aware of the initial reaction to the film, Kubrick's mastery of his craft may have been too effective. He wound up voluntarily withdrawing the film from circulation in the UK in 1974 after the movie was blamed on a copycat murder and he and his wife received death threats. It was not re-released in England until after his death in 2000. The new 2-disc Special edition release date is October 23rd, 2007

Why Has Bodhi-Dharma Left for the East? - In the seclusion of their mountain monastery a Zen master and his pupils seek enlightenment by losing themselves in the quiet contemplation of death - perhaps the closest the cinema has come to conveying the serenity and sense of detachment achievable in meditation. The anonymous characters are presented as mere vessels of a universal spirit, while narrative structure is considered to be irrelevant. Spiritual seekers should find fulfilment in its serene images and preoccupation with the 'beauty of the moment', but the casual viewer may find its riddles perplexing and lose patience with its lack of pace. DVD Release Date: October 15th, 2007

The Shining - 'Stanley Kubrick is said to be an obsessive perfectionist in his field. This film holds the Guinness Book of World Records for requiring Shelley Duvall to do 127 takes for one scene. On another occasion he required Jack Nicholson to do over 100 takes, stating "the longer we do it, the better he gets". The score (changed again by Kubrick) was originally supposed to have been done by John Williams. It was replaced by Kubricks own collection with music by Béla Bartók (from "Music for Strings, Percussion, and Celesta") Hector Berlioz, György Ligeti and Krzysztof Penderecki. This is how Kubrick crafts his films... he must conquer/control the idea/project/novel completely to transmogrify them into his own masterpiece. He has done so again with startling brilliance. Like almost all Kubrick works, this is a film that one appreciates more the more one sees it. It's a shame more horror films are not all this good.' The new 2-disc Special edition release date is October 23rd, 2007

Under the Volcano - Under the Volcano follows the final day in the life of self-destructive British consul Geoffrey Firmin (Albert Finney, in an Oscar-nominated tour de force) on the eve of World War II. Withering from alcoholism, Firmin stumbles through a small Mexican village amidst the 'Day of the Dead' fiesta, attempting to reconnect with his estranged wife (Jacqueline Bisset) but only further alienating himself. John Huston's ambitious tackling of Malcolm Lowry's towering "unadaptable" novel gave the incomparable Finney one of his grandest roles and was the legendary The Treasure of the Sierra Madre director's triumphant return to filmmaking in Mexico. DVD Release Date: October 23rd, 2007

The Invisible BR - My major problem with the movie, however, is with the casting: caricatured and unbelievable by turns. Given the target audience, I suppose only the latter really matters, and here I lay the blame entirely on the decision to cast the relatively inexperienced, Russian-born Margarita Levieva as the character on whom much of the moral weight of the film depends. She has one face: anger mixed with disdain. She has a little better time of it when she is expected to seem sympathetic, but for most of the film, she just doesn't cut it for me. When Leveiva tries to strong-arm her fellow high school students, I almost laughed out loud. If she weren't almost always accompanied by thugs, she would never be taken seriously as a threat. Miserable and pissed does not a bruiser make. Blu-ray Release Date: October 16th, 2007

Inside Man HD - Inside Man is a jolt, partly because it comes equipped rather incongruously with the name of Mr. Lee’s company, 40 Acres and a Mule Filmworks, but mostly because this is the kind of seamless diversion that should be a stock item in Hollywood but isn’t. Much like Richard Donner’s recent actioner 16 Blocks, another effective piece of genre showmanship, Inside Man works because it takes a familiar setup -- in this case, a Wall Street bank heist that mutates into a hostage crisis -- and twists it ever so slightly. A particularly solid screenplay helps here, as do stars who can actually act -- this film’s holy trinity being Denzel Washington, Clive Owen and Jodie Foster -- along with an excellent supporting cast and the best lineup of pusses and mugs outside The Sopranos. HD-DVD Released: October 23rd, 2007

2001: A Space Odyssey - Director Stanley Kubrick's heralded masterpiece '2001: A Space Odyssey' immediately informs the viewers of its grandeur with a realistically derived vision of human evolution. The first segment entitled "The Dawn of Man" documents our ancestors maintaining sustenance through clan support, and food foraging. The story, based on the Arthur C. Clarke novel, naturally includes a strong fictional element proposing a single event that initiated the turning point of the ascension of humankind. Somewhere in the course of our history, a single ancestor came to the realization of his ability to use a 'tool'. Initially it was effective as a weapon in hunting and reacquisition of a watering-hole from neighboring pre-hominids. This unexplainable cognitive step distinctly separates us from every known living organism in the universe that we inhabit. To see it transpire onscreen is one of the great moments of intellectually derived cinema. To simply state that visually it is awe-inspiring is to diminish its importance. What we are seeing is a recreation of the most important event in human history. The new 2-disc Special Edition release date is October 23rd, 2007

Universal Horror Classic Movie Archive - From the studio that created the horror genre comes five terrifying films that will send chills down your spine and bring terror to your heart in the "Universal Horror Classic Movie Archive"! Unearthed from the vaults and on DVD for the first time, Universal invites you to journey through fog-filled moors, into haunted mansions and through secret hallways to meet a chilling collection of mad scientists, crazed circus performers, an ape woman and maniacal killers! Prepare yourself for hours of pure terror starring some of the most iconic actors in the history of horror, including Lon Chaney, Jr. and Bela Lugosi! Includes the films The Black Cat (1941), Man Made Monster (1941), Horror Island (1941), Night Monster (1942), And Captive Wild Women (1943). DVD Release Date: October 2007

Robocop BR - I've always had a special fondness for this movie. The good guys may not be wearing white hats, and the bad ones not all dressed in black, but there is definitely a cartoon-like simplicity to the characters, the action, and the moral presumptions of RoboCop. Peter Weller's loveliness being torn apart by shrapnel and then having to spend most of the movie as more machine than man, where all we can see is his eyes gives this sci-fi techno thriller more than a little bit of humanity. For there is something about that cyborg, besides how he twirls a gun, that convinces his former partner, Annie Lewis, that he is in fact, Murphy, who was brutally gunned down on their first assignment. Indeed, there is still a conscious remnant in that titanium hull, as his disturbing dream life attests. Blu-ray Release Date: October 9th, 2007

Transformers HD - On the face of it Transformers is a story as old as the Greeks versus the Trojans, the difference being that these warriors are visitors from another planet, the 1980s-sounding Cybertron, and there isn’t a jot of poetry, tragedy, beauty, meaning or interest in this fight. The Autobots are trying to locate some all-important cube that looks like a Borg starship from Star Trek: The Next Generation before it’s found by the Autobots’ villainous alien brethren, the Decepticons. During their mission the Autobots blend into the earthly backdrop by turning into zippy cars and mondo trucks, a strategy that works particularly well in Southern California. Curiously, though the toys originated in Japan, no robot changes into a Toyota. HD-DVD Released: October 16th, 2007

Next 2 weeks on the Calendar: