| |
Wings
BD - Forever granted a place in cinematic history
by winning the first ever Academy Award for Best Picture in 1927
and the only silent film to do so, William Wellman's silent epic
Wings is more than an Oscar winner, but an epic story of
friendship with the type of thrilling action only practical
effects can imagine... Hometown best friends Jack (Charles
"Buddy" Rogers) and David (Richard Arlen) compete for the
affection of a gorgeous dame (Jobyna Ralston), though Jack
doesn't realise that girl next door Mary Preston (Clara Bow) has
eyes for him as well. But World War I is soon upon them, so the
boys are off to France to fight against the Germans. Meanwhile,
Mary follows Jack into enemy lines as a nurse. Wellman's epic
drama combines the most spectacular of stunts with the most
classical of melodrama, along with one of Bow's greatest
performances and the screen debut of Gary Cooper. Masters of
Cinema Blu-ray Release Date:
January 27th, 2014
Museum Hours
BD - With the aid of helmer
Jem Cohen's focused eye, auds as well as protags learn to view
art and the world around them through complementary lenses in
the warmly intellectualized "Museum Hours." At once
intimate and expansive, the pic uses the chance encounter
between a Canadian visitor and a museum guard at Vienna's
Kunsthistorisches Museum to explore how it's possible to see
transcendence even in the mundane.
Blu-ray Release date: December 17th, 2013
Hail Mary
BD - Denounced by the Pope
and banned and boycotted worldwide, this surprisingly serene and
lyrical work translates the Virgin Birth into tangible
contemporary terms, with Mary as a teenage basketball-playing
gas-station attendant who receives the Annunciation by jetliner.
Mary is a beautiful yet ordinary teenager who vows to maintain
her chastity. Following a warning from an angel, a confused and
innocent Mary unexpectedly falls pregnant and is forced to wed
her taxi-driving boyfriend Joseph. He, in turn, must love his
virgin bride from a distance, revering her without touching her.
Forced to face a shocking reality, Mary and Joseph along with
their family and friends must struggle to cope as the
provocative theme unfolds. HAIL MARY is a sensational and
bold work from French master director Jean-Luc Godard which
touched off an uproar of protest heard around the world.
Blu-ray Release Date: January 7th,
2014
Rififi
BD - After making such
American noir classics as
The Naked City and
Brute Force,
blacklisted director Jules Dassin went to Paris and embarked on
his masterpiece: a twisting, turning tale of four ex-cons who
hatch one last glorious heist in the City of Lights. At once
naturalistic and expressionistic, this mélange of suspense,
brutality, and dark humor was an international hit and earned
Dassin the Best Director prize at the Cannes Film Festival.
Blu-ray Release Date: January 14th,
2014
La Vie de Boheme
BD - This deadpan
tragicomedy about a group of impoverished, outcast artists
living the bohemian life in Paris is among the most beguiling
films by Finnish director Aki Kaurismäki. Based on stories from
Henri Murger’s influential mid-nineteenth-century book Scènes de
la vie de bohème (the basis for the opera La bohème), the
film features a marvelous trio of Kaurismäki regulars—André
Wilms, Matti Pellonpää, and Karl Väänänen—as a writer, painter,
and composer who scrape by together, sharing in life’s daily
absurdities. Gorgeously shot in black and white, La vie de
bohème is a vibrantly scrappy rendition of a beloved tale.
Blu-ray Release date: January 21st,
2014
Thief
BD - The contemporary American auteur Michael Mann
burst out of the gate, his bold artistic sensibility fully
formed, with Thief, his debut feature. James Caan stars,
in one of his most riveting performances, as a no-nonsense
ex-con safecracker planning to leave the criminal world behind
after one final diamond heist, but discovering that escape is
not as simple as he hoped. Finding hypnotic beauty in neon and
rain-slick streets, sparks and steel, Thief effortlessly
established the moody stylishness and tactile approach to action
that would also define such later iconic entertainments from
Mann as
Miami Vice,
Manhunter, and
Heat.
Blu-ray Release date: January 14th,
2014
Full Moon in Paris
BD - This 1984 Eric Rohmer
Comedies & Proverbs feature is about a young woman who
doesn’t realize that she doesn’t know what she wants. While plot
turns are guessable, you never really know what is going to
happen to the characters. The heroine lives with her boyfriend
in a suburb outside of Paris, but she also maintains an
apartment by herself in the city and spends a lot of time there
alone. As the film advances, she and her boyfriend become more
and more distant from one another, but neither is ready to
acknowledge it until something happens that forces their hands.
As with all of Rohmer’s films, the characters are vividly drawn
and superbly performed, so to be in their company is an extreme
pleasure despite their emotional ups and downs.
Blu-ray Release Date: November
19th, 2013
Dragnet - Dragnet,
one of TV's most famous and innovative series from the 1950's,
comes to colorful life in a classic full-length feature. As Sgt.
Joe Friday, Jack Webb recreates his memorable portrayal of a Los
Angeles cop - "Just the facts, Ma'am" - in this action-packed
tale. A mysterious gangland slaying has taken place and it is up
to Joe Friday and the Los Angeles Police Department to put
together the pieces. With the help of his partner, Officer Frank
Smith (Ben Alexander), they enlist the services of a pretty and
daring police woman to trap the devious mobsters and bring them
to justice. DVD Release Date: January 11th, 2010
Paradise: Hope - The third
installment in Ulrich Seidl's PARADISE trilogy,
PARADISE: HOPE tells the story of overweight 13-year-old
Melanie and her first love. While her mother travels to Kenya (PARADISE:
LOVE) and her aunt (PARADISE:
FAITH) does missionary work, Melanie spends
her summer vacation at a strict diet camp for overweight
teenagers. Between physical education and nutrition counseling,
pillow fights and her first cigarette, Melanie falls in love
with the camp director, a doctor 40 years her senior. As the
doctor struggles with the guilty nature of his desire, Melanie
had imagined her paradise differently. DVD Release Date:
January 14th, 2014
Paradise: Love - Teresa, a
50-year-old Austrian hausfrau, travels to the beaches of Kenya
as a sex tourist or Sugar Mama . There, she moves from one Beach
Boy to the next, buying their love only to be disappointed and
quickly learning that there, love is strictly a business. With
his very unique brand of realism, socio-political critique and
warped humor, Mr. Seidl deals with the market value of
sexuality, older women and young men, the power of skin color,
Europe and Africa, and the exploited, who have no choice but to
exploit others. DVD Release Date: August 6th, 2013
Key of Life - Unemployed 35
year old Sakurai aspired to become an actor, but failed
miserably. He decides to end his own life, but first he goes to
purify himself at a public bathhouse. At the bathhouse, he meets
the very prosperous Kondo who subsequently suffers a fall,
erasing his memory. On a whim, Sakurai switches locker keys,
steals the man's belongings and decides to pass himself off as
Kondo. What Sakurai does not know is that Kondo runs an illegal
business which brings him into contact with ornery yakuza
members. Meanwhile, Kondo has been convinced that he is actually
the failed actor Sakurai and he faces the dismal reality of that
life with increasing bewilderment. Fortunately, at the hospital,
he meets the lovely Kanae who, while yearning for marriage, goes
out of her way to help Sakurai pull himself together. Eventually
Kondo regains his memory, but before he can make a new life with
Kanae, he has to solve the many problems caused by his identity
theft. DVD Release Date: January 7th, 2014
The Falls: Testament of Love
- This sequel to the beloved and bittersweet The Falls picks up
five years after the doomed romance between Mormon missionaries
RJ and Chris. Though their lives have taken radically different
paths, the death of a mutual friend unexpectedly reunites the
two men at a time when both are attempting to establish their
adult lives. As old feelings of love and regret are rekindled,
RJ and Chris must once again confront their seemingly impossible
love. Will their reunion prove that they're fated to be
together, or is it merely a temporary fantasy? DVD Release
Date: November 26th, 2013
Eclipse 40: Late Ray - The
films directed by the great Satyajit Ray (Charulata)
in the last ten years of his life have a unique dignity and
drama. Three of them are collected here: the fervent
Rabindranath Tagore adaptation The Home and the World;
the vital Henrik Ibsen-inspired An Enemy of the People;
and the filmmaker's final film, the poignant and philosophical
family story The Stranger. Each is a complex, political,
and humane portrait of a world both corrupt and indescribably
beautiful, constructed with Ray's characteristic elegance and
imbued with autumnal profundity. These late-career features are
the meditative works of a master. DVD Release Date: January
7th, 2014
|
