Magandang hapon po! - Our last letter before 2008!! I have a strange feeling it's going to be a wonderful year for us all.

It's slow again in DVD this week, the world all over, and we have a scant 7 reviews this newsletter - focusing the majority of our energies on the DVD of the Year 2007 (special thanks to all who voted and Adam who tabulated). We also have some important new Calendar Updates! plus two new contests with valuable prizes! 

Facebook-er?: join DVDBeaver-ite's Facebook group HERE. We can communicate video clips, film news etc.

We proudly present the DVD of the Year 2007 results HERE

NEW ARTICLE: "Ten Underappreciated John Ford Films" by Jonathan Rosenbaum

Criterion rumors for 2008: I Live in Fear (Kurosawa), A Woman Is a Woman Re-issue? (Jean-Luc Godard), Shanghai Express (Marlene Dietrich), Maurice Chevalier/Jeanette MacDonald Boxset (Eclipse?), Jour de Fete (Jacques Tati) and The Furies (Anthony Mann, 1950).

CONTEST ACTIVITY:

 The CLIP to identify is HERE!

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

LAST WEEK's Winner identifying this CLIP! (Tsai Ming-Liang's 1994 Vive L'Amour). was D. Collinge from Ohio. (Wins Warner Director's Series Kubrick Boxset) Congrats David!

NEW KOREAN DRAMA CONTEST in Leonard's review of Snow Queen 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!).

New Reviews:

The Tracker - Traversing the dry Australian outback in 1922, four men pursue an Aborigine accused of murdering a white woman, in Rolf de Heer's moralistic fable "The Tracker." No names are used and the film's credits identify the men only as archetypes: the Fanatic, a no-nonsense mounted policeman; the Follower, a ukulele-strumming novice; the Veteran, a laconic philosopher; the barely seen Fugitive; and the mysterious title character.

Snow Queen - We've all been there. We've known someone who died about whom we felt that if only we had done something or not done something, that person would still be alive. It seems to be an almost instinctual response to death. Call it a sympathetic reaction, survivor's guilt or divine intent - however we explain it, we can't help that initial rush of culpability. For most of us the feeling passes or is soon rationalized. For Tae Woong, the protagonist of The Snow Queen, he can't, or won't, shake the feeling. As time passes, he only enlarges the scope of his misery, taking on more guilt, demanding others share his delusion. As innocent people that he sincerely cares for are hurt by his insistence that he remain guilty, he becomes a martyr to his cause.

Ad Lib Night - With his third film, Ad Lib Night (seen at this year's Berlinale), Lee Yoon-ki has crafted a hybrid of sorts – an amazingly powerful film where the internalized suffering of one character is countered by the frequent and repeated emotional outbursts from a group of others. The film opens in Seoul, with two young men approaching a woman they see on the street (Han Hyo-ju), convinced she is Myeong-eun, who ran away from their village several years ago. Though she denies this several times, they aren't entirely convinced. Regardless of her true identity, they ask if she will accompany them to the village to say goodbye to her (or Myeong-eun's) father, who is on his deathbed. For reasons that aren't entirely clear, she agrees to join them.

Strawberry Shortcakes - Manga continues to be one of the fundamental sources of inspiration in Japanese cinema, and Strawberry Shortcakes is one of its most recent examples. Based on the eponymous manga for girls by cartoonist Kiriko Nananan, the pic follows the ups and downs of four female friends in Tokyo looking for love and trying to cope with the responsibilities in their lives.

Cat People HD - This was Schrader's erotic studio-made modern response to the 1942 RKO classic from the poetic infusions of the great Jacques Tourneur. Nastassja Kinski is the slinky-Euro mysterian filling the screen with her exceptionally photogenic sensuality. Unlike much that the horror genre produced in the 80's Schrader was able to add a touch of class and it transforms the film into the category of being surprisingly memorable. His juxtaposing violence for sex (and vice-versa) works to a, not so suble, ' T '. With music by Giorgio Moroder and David Bowie, plus exquisite art production by Ferdinando Scarfiotti - we are left with a unique, hypnotically stylistic mélange that is neither an homage to the original nor a throw-away like so many produced in the modern Hollywood era. It's a shame not all horror genre efforts are this intriguing and artistic. This is very much worth seeing in my opinion. HD-DVD Released: December 26th, 2007

Lemming - While Dominik Moll's previous film HARRY, HE'S HERE TO HELP (US title: WITH A FRIEND LIKE HARRY) has been called Hitchcockian, I think his follow-up is more Lynchian. Alain and Benedicte (HARRY's Laurent Lucas and Jane Birkin's daughter Charlotte Gainsbourg) are the model couple. He works for a home automation company and she is a stay at home wife. One night before dinner with the Alain's boss, Benedicte finds that the sink has stopped up. The boss (UN COEUR EN HIVER's Andre Dussolier) and his wife Alice (Charlotte Rampling who has been redefining her career in French films such as this and Ozon's masterpiece UNDER THE SAND and the lesser SWIMMING POOL) arrive and what follows is a tense dinner in which Alice throws a drink in her cheating husband's face and ridicules the younger couple's aloof manners and picture-perfect marriage..

Swimming Pool - English detective story writer Sarah Morton (Charlotte Rampling) has had enough of her series detective character and takes her publisher's (Charles Dance) advice to stay at his house in the French countryside and write something new. No sooner does Sarah settle into the idyllic sun-drenched surroundings when her publisher's wild and promiscuous French daughter Julie (Ludivine Sagnier) shows up. At first Julie is a distraction and an annoyance to the writer but she soon becomes a source of inspiration and answers to the writer about the private life of her publisher and his late wife. Things take a darker turn when Julie discovers Sarah's latest manuscript and Sarah soon finds herself in a real life thriller.

Next 2 weeks on the Calendar:

STAY TUNED FOR UPCOMING CLASSIC RELEASES: Forbidden Hollywood: Volume 2 (six films plus pre-Code documentary), Gangsters Collection, Vol. 2 (Bullets or Ballots / City for Conquest / Each Dawn I Die / G Men / San Quentin / A Slight Case of Murder) Warner, Gangsters Collection, Vol. 3 (Picture Snatcher, Lady Killer, Smart Money, Black Legion, Mayor of Hell and Brother Orchid.) Warner,, Joan Crawford Collection Volume 2 (Flamingo Road/Strange Cargo/Torch Song/others), The Lana Turner Collection, Lon Chaney Collection Volume 2 (The Unholy Three/The Unholy Three/Tell It to the Marines/He Who Gets Slapped/Tod Browning doc.), Night Nurse (Barbara Stanwyck), The Day the Earth Stood Still Special Edition (dir. Robert Wise, USA 1951), An Affair to Remember 50th Anniversary Edition (dir. Leo McCary, USA 1957), The Robe Special Edition (dir. Henry Koster, USA 1952), Daisy Kenyon (dir. Otto Preminger, USA 1947), Dangerous Crossing, (dir. Joseph Newman, USA 1953), Black Widow (dir. Nunnally Johnson, USA 1954), Boomerang! (dir. Elia Kazan, USA 1947), Charlie Chan Vol 4 (starring Sidney Toler), The Naked Prey (1966) Criterion. Bette Davis 100th Anniversary Set (titles TBD), Bette Davis Collections: Volume 3 (includes All This, And Heaven, Too/ Dangerous/In This Our Life/The Corn Is Green/Watch On The Rhine/more), David Lean Collection (Blithe Spirit/Brief Encounter/Great Expectations/In Which We Serve/Madeleine/Oliver Twist/Passionate Friends/This Happy Breed) and more...