Newsletter - FOR THE WEEK

OF February 26th, 2018

Terve! A strong week with Blu-ray and DVD reviews of packages by Criterion, Master of Cinema, Warner Archive, Second Run, Indicator, Vinegar Syndrome, Artificial Eye, Classicflix, Vestron and others of films directed by Stanley Kramer, Miklós Jancsó, Volker Schlöndorff, Ken Russell, John Murray Anderson, Irving Pichel, Yorgos Lanthimos, Cyril Frankel, Stuart Rosenberg, Jamaa Fanaka, Nobuhiko Obayashi, Jim Wynorski!. Our Calendar has updates of films-to-Blu-ray, including works by Fritz Lang Aki Kaurismäki, Karel Reisz, Tony Richardson, Richard Lester, John Schlesinger, James Whale, Sean Baker, John Sturges, Herschell Gordon Lewis, Brian De Palma, Takashi Miike, Cristian Mungiu, Whit Stillman, Claire Denis, Wim Wenders and we have our Feature Blu-ray is posted for FEBRUARY plus a new CONTEST with a BRAND NEW CRITERION Blu-ray prize. Enjoy!!

LISTING PAGES:

CREATURE-FEATURES (on Blu-ray!), PRE-CODE FILMs (on Blu-ray!), SILENT ERA FILMs (on Blu-ray!), HAMMER Studios (on Blu-ray!) The 100 BEST Neo-Noirs (on Blu-ray!), The GREATEST 100 Westerns (on Blu-ray!), Giallo on Blu-ray!, ESSENTIAL NOIR on Blu-ray!, Shopping Guide for Blu-rays at Amazon.FR (France), Shopping Guide for Blu-rays at Amazon.DE (Germany) and our LATEST ARTICLES: Movies From... the End of the World,  The Beauties of Star Trek (TOS)

DVDBeaver has their own store at Movie Zyng - check it out! Many have $1 shipping - even overseas!

Feature Blu-ray chosen for the Month of FEBRUARY!

FOLLOW US on TWITTER! (where we post important reviews, contests - prizes, polls, calendar updates - plus much more...)

(Week of) February 26th, CONTEST  identify the film HERE to win a prize of a BRAND NEW Criterion Blu-ray of Kon Ichikawa's An Actor's Revenge Best of luck!

If there are DVD or Blu-ray titles you'd like us to cover - please feel free to recommend!

Gary at 2ze dot com

ONE VOICE (not Ellsworth Monkton Toohey): Criterion give us a 4K digital restoration, of two-strip Technicolor, on Blu-ray of John Murray Anderson's King of Jazz - an incredible piece of historical entertainment in the guise of a lavish 1930's musical revue. Must own. Second Run bring Miklós Jancsó's Silence and Cry to Region FREE Blu-ray - an elliptical, claustrophobic Hungarian masterpiece shot in breathtaking long takes. A disturbingly creepy divergence from Hammer Studios - yet still dealing with an unspeakable horror, Never Take Candy From a Stranger gets a stellar Region FREE Blu-ray release from Indicator. Harper is a neo-noir gem with Paul Newman as the titular detective supported by Lauren Bacall, Robert Wagner, Shelley Winters, Julie Harris, and Janet Leigh in a hardboiled plot of kidnapping and murder. Now delciously on Blu-ray with commentary from Warner Archive. Criterion do their Blu-ray release of Ken Russell's Women in Love who draws upon the psychosexual radicalism of D. H. Lawrence’s classic novel. Naughty. Stanley Kramer's Ship of Fools get the Indicator Blu-ray treatment including commentary with Nick Redman, Lem Dobbs and Julie Kirgo. What a cast... Nobuhiko Obayashi's Hausu (House) is freeform mixture of bubblegum teen melodrama and grisly phantasmagoria - now on Masters of Cinema Blu-ray. The melodrama Tomorrow is Forever stars Orson Welles, Claudette Colbert and a seven-year-old Natalie Wood. Classicflix has brought it to Blu-ray. Paul Newman resturns as Harper in The Drowning Pool - an adequate Warner Archive Blu-ray pairing with the first film. This week, Colin covered Blu-rays of the cult favorite Chopping Mall, the creepy, sexual, sci-fi horror Prey, more prison/boxing Blaxsploitation in Penitentiary II, the odd, modern horror The Killing of a Sacred Deer and Criterion's Blu-ray of Volker Schlöndorff's Baal starring Rainer Werner Fassbinder in a tale of misogyny, murder and misery.

'Film is, to me, just unimportant. But people are very important..' -John Cassavetes

Have a refreshingly unconventional week!

Never Take Candy From a Stranger BD - This relevant thriller from Hammer Films tells the story of Peter Carter (Patrick Allen) and his family, who have moved to a small Canadian town where Peter’s been hired as the new school principal. But the Carters are unaware there’s a sexual predator on the loose in the community. Blu-ray Release date: February 19th, 2017

The Drowning Pool BD - Private eye Lew Harper is in deep this time. Hired by an old flame to unravel a seemingly routine blackmail case, he’s so far down he may never come up for air. Paul Newman returns as the quick-witted detective he first played nine years before in Harper. A cast to reckon with joins him in this mystery based on Ross MacDonald’s novel and directed by Stuart Rosenberg. Joanne Woodward plays the New Orleans oil heiress who turns to Harper for help. Young Melanie Griffith is her kittenish daughter. Blu-ray Release date: February 27th, 2017

Harper BD - The first detective film in Newman’s then 23-film career, Harper revitalized the genre. Newman’s sleuth chews gum fast…and slips out of jams ever faster as he unravels a twisted case of kidnapping and murder. William Goldman’s clever script throws quips and a parade of LA-LA-Land characters Harper’s way. There’s a woman of means (Lauren Bacall), a gun-toting attorney (Arthur Hill), a poolside gigolo (Robert Wagner), a boozy ex-starlet (Shelley Winters), a jazz junkie (Julie Harris), Harper’s estranged wife (Janet Leigh) and the unholy order of the Temple of the Clouds (led by Strother Martin). Each may possess a clue. Or a bullet for Harper. Blu-ray Release date: February 27th, 2017

Prey BD - While ostensibly a science fiction film, Norman J. Warren's PREY is a brooding study in sexual desire and loneliness, punctuated by shocking violence and suspense. Equal parts bloody and erotic, Vinegar Syndrome presents this masterpiece of British horror on Blu-ray, in a brand new, director approved restoration from its 35mm negative, and fully uncut for the first time since its 80s VHS release. Blu-ray Release Date: February 27th, 2018

Ship of Fools BD - When an eclectic group of passengers boards a cruise ship bound for prewar Germany, they form a microcosm of 1930s society. One passenger, a mysterious countess (Simone Signoret), is headed for a German prison camp. The charming Dr. Schumann (Oskar Werner) harbors a debilitating heart condition. Then there's American divorcée Mary Treadwell (Vivien Leigh), who vainly attempts to outrun time itself. During their weeks at sea, the group forges bonds and rivalries, and unearths secrets. Blu-ray Release Date: February 26th, 2018

Silence and Cry BD - An elliptical, claustrophobic drama shot in the brilliant, breathtaking long takes that are Jancsó s trademark, Silence and Cry is set after the fall of the short-lived Hungarian Soviet Republic of 1919. A young Red soldier, fleeing the anti-Communist manhunt, takes refuge at the isolated farm of a peasant family, who are already under police scrutiny for being politically suspect... Blu-ray Release Date: February 26th, 2018

Penitentiary II BD - Martel "Too Sweet" Gordone (Leon Isaac Kennedy) has just been paroled. Trying diligently to stay out of trouble, he rekindles an old fling with his former girlfriend Clarisse and begins a job as a delivery roller-skater. But when his prison arch nemesis, Half Dead, breaks out of jail and murders Clarisse, Too Sweet is forced to return to his old life and seek vengeance the only way he knows how... Blu-ray Release Date: February 27th, 2018

Baal BD - Volker Schlöndorff transported Bertolt Brecht’s 1918 debut play to contemporary West Germany for this vicious experiment in adaptation, seldom seen for nearly half a century. Oozing with brutish charisma, Rainer Werner Fassbinder embodies the eponymous anarchist poet, who feels that bourgeois society has rejected him and sets off on a schnapps-soaked rampage. Hewing faithfully to Brecht’s text, Schlöndorff juxtaposes the theatricality of the prose with bare-bones, handheld 16 mm camera work, which gives immediacy to this savage story of rebellion. Blu-ray Release Date: March 20th, 2018

Women in Love BD - Audiences flocked to see its famous, erotically-charged naked wrestling scene, and critics celebrated the film's opulent design, handsome cinematography and the compelling ensemble performances of Alan Bates, Jennie Linden, Oliver Reed and Glenda Jackson. Often regarded as Russell's masterpiece, Women in Love endures as one of British cinema's finest achievements. Criterion Blu-ray Release Date: March 27th, 2018

The Killing of a Sacred Deer BD - Colin Farrell and Nicole Kidman star in this horror drama written and directed by Yorgos Lanthimos. Steven Murphy (Farrell) is a successful cardiac surgeon who lives a happy life with his ophthalmologist wife Anna (Kidman) and their two children Kim (Raffey Cassidy) and Bob (Sunny Suljic). However, his perfect life starts coming apart at the seams after he befriends 16-year-old Martin (Barry Keoghan). Steven spends much of his time hanging out alone with the teenager and also invites him round to his upper-class home to socialise with his kids. However, when Steven visits Martin and his mother (Alicia Silverstone) for dinner, the teenager's motives for their unusual friendship become clear and it transpires he's willing to go to great lengths to get what he wants, to the detriment of Steven and his family. Blu-ray Release Date: March 8th, 2018

King of Jazz BD - Made during the early years of the movie musical, this exuberant revue was one of the most extravagant, eclectic, and technically ambitious Hollywood productions of its day. Starring the bandleader Paul Whiteman, then widely celebrated as the King of Jazz, the film drew from Broadway variety shows to present a spectacular array of sketches, performances by such acts as the Rhythm Boys (featuring a young Bing Crosby), and orchestral numbers—all lavishly staged by veteran theatre director John Murray Anderson. Presented here in the most complete form possible and restored to its original early-Technicolor glory, King of Jazz offers a fascinating snapshot of the way mainstream American popular culture viewed itself at the dawn of the 1930s. Blu-ray Release Date: March 27th, 2018

Hausu (House) BD - How to describe Nobuhiko Obayashi’s indescribable 1977 movie House (Hausu)? As a psychedelic ghost tale? A stream-of-consciousness bedtime story? An episode of Scooby-Doo as directed by Mario Bava? Any of the above will do for this hallucinatory head trip about a schoolgirl who travels with six classmates to her ailing aunt’s creaky country home and comes face-to-face with evil spirits, a demonic house cat, a bloodthirsty piano, and other ghoulish visions, all realized by Obayashi via mattes, animation, and collage effects. Equally absurd and nightmarish, House might have been beamed to Earth from some other planet. Blu-ray Release Date: February 12th, 2018

Chopping Mall BD - High tech robots equipped with state-of-the-art security devices have been recruited as the new mechanical night watchmen for the Park Plaza Mall. When a jolting bolt of lightning short circuits the main computer control, the robots turn into killbots...on the loose after unsuspecting shoppers! Four couples are trying to make it after-house in a mattress store. They make it all right...in the morgue! Blu-ray Release Date: September 27th, 2016

Tomorrow is Forever BD - Tomorrow is Forever provided an incredible acting showcase for "Renaissance man" Orson Welles as the enigmatic Kessler and Claudette Colbert as Elizabeth, a woman determined not to let another war tear her family apart. The drama also boasts fine support from George Brent, Lucille Watson, Richard Long (in his film debut), and a seven-year-old Natalie Wood. Blu-ray Release Date: December 19th, 2017

 Next 4 weeks on the Calendar