DVDBeaver Newsletter - December 3rd, 2007

Hatsway puay? - a scattered 27 new reviews this newsletter covering films-on-DVD from directors John Ford, Kenneth Anger, Rossellini, Monte Hellman, Jacques Demy ... Criterion, hi-def stuff, Korean drama, even Harry Potter - 2 new contests, 13 calendar updates, recommendations... holidays are creeping closer.

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FEATURE DVD OF THE MONTH (DECEMBER) - John Ford is noted as the most influential film director of the sound era. His legacy is best noted for a long string of successful westerns that revolutionized that genre to new heights. Idolized by great directors who list him as their most influential include Scorsese, Welles, Bertolucci and the great Kurosawa. Ford perfected his film-making 'modus operandi' using a detailed (but often intangible) style of cohesive simplicity. 20th Century Fox have produced an exquisitely beautiful packaged collection of 24 Ford films (from 1920-1952) on 21 discs with extensive accoutrements including a new documentary and an exclusive hard-cover book which features rare, unpublished photographs... and much more. ONGOING LINKED REVIEW HERE - PURCHASE HERE

We are in possession of the Ford at Fox Boxset - it is very large- to give you an idea we have posted some pictures of the package HERE. In many ways this is the biggest boxset of the year! NOTE: Young Mr. Lincoln in the Ford Collection IS THE CRITERION DISC. It is even labeled as such. Just the feature disc, not the second supplement one, is included. Other discs in the package are reviewed/compared and linked below.

Making sense of the upcoming Blade Runner's coming out December 17th, 2007:

CONTEST ACTIVITY:

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

LAST WEEK's Winner identifying the clip from the week from Nov 26th (Eye of the Beholder) was J. Layton of Norwich (wins a sealed copy of Eureka MoC's Shoeshine) Congrats James!

KOREAN DRAMA WINNERS POSTED -  HERE - NEW CONTEST HERE

Interested in Kindle? I'm curious about Amazon's new wireless reading device. SEE HERE

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

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

Personally, I'm dying to see Sean Penn's Into the Wild film and I always liked Newhart as a comforting distraction ("This is my brother Daryl and this is my other brother Daryl".

New Reviews:.

RECOMMENDED: Two-Lane Blacktop, Lady Chatterley, The Films of Kenneth Anger Vol. 1, Shoah, Voyage to Italy, New Rose Hotel, and The Young Girls of Rochefort. I'd also say The Grapes of Wrath, Prisoner of Shark Island, Drums Along the Mohawk, My Darling Clementine and The Iron Horse etc. etc. but you should just get Ford at Fox Boxset. You will never regret it. 

HAVE FUN IN THE APOCALYPSE: The Omega Man HD + BR, The Last Man on Earth... and 20 Million Miles to Earth BR

Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix HD (Combo) - For a long time, I’ve felt that Good Night, and Good Luck. offered the best video out of all my HD DVDs.  However, this 2.40:1 1080p VC-1 transfer bests that disc’s despite the mix of live-action and computer-generated footage.  Although the movie still has that shot-on-film feel, it doesn’t have excessive grain or noise.  Detail is outstanding. HD DVD Released: December 11th, 2007

Die Hard Collection BR - This is what makes the first and third installments in the series so satisfying: Alan Rickman's Hans Gruber and Jeremy Irons' Simon simply ooze intelligence and wit. Even his various henchmen are quickly and neatly drawn as people (e.g. the nearly wordless bet that Karl & Theo make that Takagi would give up the security codes.) It is the absence of these layers of interest, in great part, that sinks Die Harder: Col. Stuart is a Neanderthal strategist without a shred of humor. Blu-ray DVD Release Date: November 20, 2007

Shoah - The enormity of Claude Lanzmann’s mission and the devastating nature of his subject matter have tended to overshadow Shoah’s greatness as documentary filmmaking. Not simply the most ambitious movie ever made about the extermination of the Jews, Shoah is a work that treats the issue of representation so scrupulously it might have been inspired by the Old Testament injunction against graven images—it’s a movie you watch in your mind's eye.

Ghost in the Shell - Solid State Society - Where Oshii's films were philosophical ruminations wrapped in action-movie skins, SAC director Kenji Kamiyama's film is a police procedural with overtones of Byzantine politics and a whiff of cyberpunk mindgames. To allow an extremely nerdy analogy, SAC is Manhunter to Oshii's Silence of the Lambs.

Winter Sonata (Korean Drama) - Winter Sonata is the series that started the Korean Wave, ensured stardom for its two leading actors, and instigated a fashion in scarves and turtle necks. While it was successful in Korea in its initial run (averaging a 20% share) the show became so popular in Japan the following year that it was aired once again in both Japan and in Korea – an exceedingly rare occurrence. With the release of the original DVD and soundtrack CD, the show's place in legend was assured. By this time, Winter Sonata began to take hold in Hawaii and eventually swept across the U.S.

What Price Glory - For all this, What Price Glory still has some redeeming features. Cagney is at his energetic best and almost single-handedly keeps the thing moving. And though Ford didn't like her, Calvet is very charming as the barmaid. Ford's breezy pacing makes up for his heavy-handed handling of the comedy.

The Grapes of Wrath - This classic Ford film eclipses much of the action of John Steinbeck's well-known novel of the Oklahoma farmers' migration from the dustbowl to the California Eden during the Depression years. The Okies were unwelcome in California, of course; they threatened the jobs of the locals. The brutal police hassled and harassed them unmercifully. The migrants formed unions in self-defence and struck for decent fruit-picking wages. This inevitably multiplied the official violence. Ford's film, shot by Gregg Toland with magnificent, lyrical simplicity, captures the stark plainness of the migrants, stripped to a few possessions, left with innumerable relations and little hope. Fox at Ford DVD Release Date: December 4th, 2007

Prisoner of Shark Island - Based on the true-life case of the incarceration of Dr. Samuel Mudd (Oscar-winning Warner Baxter), The Prisoner of Shark Island is a stirring account of the victimization of a simple man. This fast-moving and gripping drama — rarely seen and remarkably timeless — follows Mudd through a calamitous series of brutal encounters. Driven by selfless integrity and his honourable commitment to duty, Mudd exemplifies the quintessential Ford hero who has become, unwittingly, an enemy of the people. Regarded as a personal favourite by the director, it was also the film he was said to be most happy with. Fox at Ford DVD Release Date: December 4th, 2007

Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix - As much as I prefer character moments to spectacle, I have to admit that the final third of this movie is a stunning tour de force of special effects, even when compared to the previous entries and the Matrix or LOTR trilogies. The aggression and violence is palpable and powerful. The forging of children into adult warriors is stirring. The loss is real. DVD Release Date: December 11th, 2007

Stardust - Everything but the enchanted kitchen sink shows up in the sprawling fairy tale Stardust, including evil witches, airborne pirate ships, double-parked unicorns, and Robert De Niro as a cross-dressing sea captain. Sprinkled with tongue-in-cheek humor, fairly adult jokes, and some well-known faces acting very silly, this adventure story should have particular appeal to fans of The Princess Bride, but in any event will never be mistaken for a strictly-for-kids movie. DVD Release Date: December 18th, 2007

The Films of Kenneth Anger Vol. 1 - For all his emphasis on magic, myth, symbol, and rite, Anger is as material a filmmaker as Brakhage. Puce Moment (1949) opens with a voluptuous shuffle of evening gowns in close-up, a rainbow shimmy of silk, chiffon, sequins, and beads. Emerging from the dazzle is Yvonne Marquis, styled like a Warholian Elizabeth Taylor, who proceeds to dress, primp, and prepare for the day, finally exiting her Hollywood Hills abode leading a pack of wolfhounds on leash. Afragment of an abandoned feature about Hollywood women of the 1920s, Puce Moment crystallizes Anger's feverish obsession with the dream factory and his genius for wresting master pieces from aborted projects.

Voyage to Italy - Roberto Rossellini's finest fiction film (1953, 84 min.), and unmistakably one of the great achievements of the art. Ingrid Bergman and George Sanders play a long-married British couple grown restless and uncommunicative. On a trip to Italy to dispose of a piece of property, they find their boredom thrown into relief by the Mediterranean landscape--its vitality (Naples) and its desolation (Pompeii). But suddenly, in one of the moments that only Rossellini can film, something lights inside them, and their love is renewed as a bond of the spirit. A crucial work, truthful and mysterious.

New Rose Hotel - I wasn't at all surprised when some of Abel Ferrara's most eloquent defenders labeled this transgressive 1998 adaptation of a William Gibson story the collapse of a major talent. A murky and improbable tale about prostitution, industrial espionage, and manufactured viruses, it works on the very edge of coherence even before the final 20 minutes or so, during which earlier portions of the film are replayed with minor variations and additions. On the other hand, few American films in recent years have been so beautifully composed and color coordinated, shot by shot, and the overall experience of an opium dream is so intense that you might stop making demands of the narrative once you realize that none of the usual genre expectations is going to be met.

Drums Along the Mohawk - Based on the best selling novel by Walter D. Edmonds, “Drums Along the Mohawk” became Ford’s first color film. A huge commercial hit, mainly because of its two stars, Fonda and Colbert, it went on to be an overlooked, thus by many considered a minor, film by Ford in the shadow of “Young Mr. Lincoln” and especially “Stagecoach”. The story deals with a newly wed couple, who travels from “civilised” New York to the Mohawk valley and settles downs as farmers. Hardly have they arrived, before they are caught up in the revolutionary war.

The Last Man on Earth - A mysterious bacterium has swept over the world and left everyone dead except for epidemiologist Morgan (Price), who picked up an immunity to the germ years before while working in South America. Unfortunately for him, the dead rise at night to become shuffling vampire/zombies bent on eating him alive. By day, his routine involves shopping for garlic and mirrors to repel the undead and grid-searching the town block by block to exterminate them with the dependable wooden-stake method. DVD Release Date: December 4th, 2007

My Darling Clementine - The most famous and sublime treatment of the gunfight at the O.K. Corral, John Ford's My Darling Clementine is by any measure one of the most classically perfect Westerns ever made. Henry Fonda plays a hard, serious Wyatt Earp leading a cattle drive west with his brothers when a stopover in the wild town of Tombstone ends in the murder of his youngest brother. Wyatt takes up the badge he had turned down earlier and tames the wide-open town with his brothers (Ward Bond and Tim Holt), all the while waiting for the wild Clantons (led by Walter Brennan's ruthless Old Man Clanton) to make a mistake. Victor Mature delivers perhaps his finest performance as the tubercular gambler Doc Holliday, an alcoholic Eastern doctor escaping civilization in the Wild West. Fox at Ford DVD Release Date: December 4th, 2007

The Iron Horse - The epic silent Western, made as Fox's response to The Covered Wagon and effortlessly surpassing it. A paean to Lincoln and the notion of Manifest Destiny, it recounts the building of the first transcontinental railroad. Gangs start from both coasts, rebuffing Indian attacks, thwarting greedy landowners, initiating a sweeping trail drive and moving whole towns along the line. After battles against the rigours of blizzard and desert, the final spike is driven home as the hero avenges his father's murder and wins back his childhood sweetheart. Visual glories (and stirring piano accompaniment) sweep aside objections to the tedious passages, the psychological ineptitude, and the racist portrayal of Indians, Irish and 'coolies'. As in Stagecoach, each scene and each character looks fresh struck at the mint of myth, while every frame asserts that this is the making of America and of the American cinema. Fox at Ford DVD Release Date: December 4th, 2007

Titanic - The worlds most expensive film of all time. Production cost, before post production and marketing, ran over $200 million. Winner of 11 Oscars, amongst them - best film, sharing the spotlight with “Ben-Hur” (1959), it was suggested that Cameron paid for the Oscars, as the film did little to impress critics. While it looked stunning and towering, as en epic love story should, especially the poor dialogue stood out, and several critics noted, that maybe some of the films excessive budget should have went to a writer. DVD Released Date: November 20th, 2007

Two-Lane Blacktop - Drag racing east from L.A. in a souped-up '55 Chevy are the wayward Driver and Mechanic (singer/songwriter James Taylor and the Beach Boys' Dennis Wilson, in their only acting roles), accompanied by a tagalong Girl (Laurie Bird). Along the way, they meet Warren Oates's Pontiac GTO-driving wanderer and challenge him to a cross-country race—the prize: their cars' pink slips. Yet no summary can do justice to the existential punch of Two-Lane Blacktop. Maverick director Monte Hellman’s stripped-down narrative, gorgeous widescreen compositions, and sophisticated look at American male obsession make this one of the artistic high points of 1970s cinema, and possibly the greatest road movie ever made. DVD Release Date: December 11th, 2007

Lady Chatterley - Even when the director tiptoes into the realm of ridiculous hippie behavior—does anyone put flowers on their lover’s genitals?—Lady Chatterley retains an ability to hypnotize. Tasteful yet ecstatically turned-on, Ferran’s interpretation reworks legendary highbrow “smut” into a textured story of rebirth. DVD Release Date: December 4th, 2007

20 Million Miles to Earth BR - Special-effects legend Ray Harryhausen's stop-motion talents and "Dynamation" (rear-projection) process are the highlights of the '50s-era creature feature 20 Million Miles to Earth. An American spaceship returns to Earth after a mission to Venus and crashes into the sea near Sicily. A sole survivor (William Hopper) is rescued, along with a specimen that quickly grows into a reptilian biped called the Ymir. The being eventually grows to 20 feet high and escapes its confines, whereupon it rampages through Rome before a showdown with the military. Blu-ray DVD Released: December 4th, 2007

The Omega Man HD + BR - There is something very appealing about the apocalyptic doomsday concept also used in films like The Last Man on Earth (Like Omega Man this was also adapted from, sci-fi icon, Richard Matheson's classic sci-fi novel), Panic in Year Zero! (1962) and most recently in 28 Days Later. But none match the pure cheesy 70's feel of The Omega Man. Here we have some nasty ghoulish albino mutants struck with this current version of the unknown plague of mankind. HD + Blu-ray  DVDs Released: November 27th, 2007

Arctic Tale - You can expect the usual spectacular scenery, though this documentary is a bit more kid-friendly than the others that’ve been appearing on HD DVD and Blu-ray (i.e. Planet Earth, Relentless Enemies, Galapagos). The cutesy narration and music may annoy sophisticated viewers, but parents can use this movie as a painless way to introduce children to two of the most majestic animals alive today. Let’s hope that polar bears and walruses don’t go the way of the dodo bird. DVD Release Date: December 4th, 2007

The Girl Who Leapt Through Time - The Girl Who Leapt Through Time is anime of rare pedigree. Director Mamoru Hosoda, the Ghibli refugee originally slated to helm Howl's Moving Castle, Gainax's master character designer Yoshiyuki Sadamoto and longtime Ghibli art director Nizo Yamamoto coming together at Madhouse to adapt a story by Paprika author Yasutaka Tsutsui. Sounds like it should be absolute magic… and it very nearly is. DVD Release Date: September 21st, 2007

Linda Linda Linda - What distinguishes Nobuhiro Yamashita's Linda Linda Linda from the crowd is a refreshing modesty. Rather than the usual underdog struggle against the odds culminating School of Rock style in the obligatory spectacular stage show and a fat recording contract, Linda Linda Linda's story revolves around four highschool girls for whom learning how to play a single song in time for the school festival is the ultimate challenge.

Shining Boy and Little Randy - Kawage Shunsaku makes his feature length directorial debut with Shining Boy and Little Randy, a bittersweet tale of a young boy and his pet elephant! Known in Japan as Hoshini Natta Shonen, the film stars Yagira Yuya, winner of the Best Actor prize at the Cannes Film Festival for his work in Nobody Knows, as Tetsu, a lonely teenager with an extraordinary home life. Unlike most kids, Tetsu lives on Hokkaido animal ranch run by his mother (Tokiwa Takako) and his stepfather (Takahashi Katsumi), both of whom make their living by renting out their animals for work in television and film.

The Young Girls of Rochefort - Most musicals shift back and forth between story (spoken dialogue) and song-and-dance numbers--sometimes creating queasy transitions just before or after these shifts, when we're uncertain where we are stylistically. But The Young Girls of Rochefort often daringly places story and musical numbers on the screen simultaneously, mixing them in various ways and in different proportions.

Next 2 weeks on the Calendar: