Newsletter - FOR THE WEEK

OF January 17th, 2011

Ia ora na!  - Criterion Blu-ray, Lisbeth Salander's last hurrah, Bertrand Blier, Philip Seymour Hoffman directs, Corman, French and Aussie crime, Anthony Mann and a stack of Warner Archive discs... We have a few calendar updates (Keaton, Scorsese, DeMille, Schlesinger etc.) a new contest with a Blu-ray prize!

DVD and Blu-ray of the Year 2010 Poll Results completed HERE!

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

TOOLBAR THE 'DVDBeaver Toolbar'! Give it a test drive! I've created a very simple toolbar for Film-Fans/DVD-o-philes/cinephiles. It embeds effortlessly within Internet Explorer 5.0+ (Windows Vista/XP/2000) and Firefox 1.0.1+ (Windows, Mac, Linux). It offers quick links to Searching both the Net (via Google) and DVDBeaver directly, Amazons, Asian etailors, Forums (Criterion, Home Theater, AVS, Rotten Tomatoes, Film Noir), IMDb, DVDBasen, Beaver links, Blu-ray information, Cinephile Blogs/Journals (Rosenbaum, Kehr, Acquarello etc.). What do you think? FOR MORE INFORMATION / AVAILABLE HERE *** (We can adjust this to suit popular opinion - on-the-fly - no re-install required!)

January 17th CONTEST - identify the clip on the CONTEST PAGE to win a Brand NEW Criterion Blu-ray of Shock Corridor!

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

Gary at 2ze dot com

Once You Kiss a Stranger - Pretty Diana snuggles up to married golf pro Jerry Marshall and suggests they play a more intimate game. Quick as you can say videotape, Diana has blackmail evidence and a chilling demand: I’ll kill your golf rival and you kill my psychiatrist. Carol Lynley (The Poseidon Adventure) headlines a ’60s Malibu Beach version of Strangers on a Train, the classic Alfred Hitchcock thriller based on Patricia Highsmith’s novel about swapped murders. Turning a golf cart and a putter into lethal weapons, Diana upholds her end of their bargain. Now it’s Jerry’s (Paul Burke) turn – or else. Diana really wants her shrink offed. Why? Seems he’s the only one who’s figured out she’s one dangerous psycho. At least, he’s the only one until Jerry hears Diana’s crazy-scary scheme. DVD Release Date: October 19th, 2010

Devil's Doorway - Shoshone tribesman and Civil War hero Lance Poole (Robert Taylor) returns home with a Congressional Medal of Honor on his chest and a saddlebag full of dreams about prospering as a cattleman on his family’s land. But American Indians have no citizenship, no property rights. The courts, despite the efforts of Lance’s attorney (Paula Raymond), offer no remedy. Lance and his people must fight to keep their land. Devil’s Doorway, the first of the dozen or so groundbreaking Westerns by filmmaker Anthony Mann (Winchester ’73), is one of the earliest films sympathetic to Native Americans, standing alongside the same year’s Broken Arrow. Perhaps not coincidentally, Lance Poole’s tribal name is Broken Lance. DVD Release Date: July 20th, 2010

Deliver Us From Evil - Six buddies, $600,000 and unforgiving mountain terrain add up to a harrowing saga of man against nature …and man against man. A group of weekend warriors are on the scene when a skyjacker parachutes into a remote Western range with a bag full of ransom money. Soon, the skyjacker is dead of gunshot wounds and the loot is divided into six shares. Now all the conspirators have to do is get out before perilous trails, a blizzard, and their own mounting greed turn a get-rich-quick scheme into a get-dead-quicker disaster. Mistrust and murder, moves and countermoves, psychological suspense and rugged outdoor action: Deliver Us from Evil delivers the thrills! DVD Release Date: August 31st, 2010

Hot News - Sportswriter Mark Miller (Stanley Clements) sent plenty of opponents crashing to the canvas in his former career as a boxer. But now he’s in the greatest fight of his life, tangling with gangland heavyweights in a bid to clean up the fight game. Taking on one of the hottest sports-world issues of the ’50s, Hot News has everything a fan of hard-boiled B’s wants: gambling kingpins, punch-drunk pugilists, good-girl brunettes and good-time blondes in a taut, pared-to-the-bone tale of corruption and its consequences. The cast of familiar faces includes Veda Ann Borg (The Bachelor and the Bobby Soxer), Ted de Corsia (The Enforcer), Gloria Henry (Alice Mitchell on TV’s Dennis the Menace) and former child star Scotty Beckett. DVD Release Date: September 7th, 2010

Night Must Fall - Who can resist handsome Danny (Robert Montgomery)? Not the girls in an English village abuzz over the discovery of a headless corpse. Not the rich, disagreeable old woman (Best Supporting Actress Oscar nominee Dame May Whitty) he works for. No one, except the old woman’s niece (Rosalind Russell), who suspects that Danny’s charming facade hides someone cold, calculating…and possibly mad. Based on Emlyn Williams’ London and Broadway stage hit, Night Must Fall is a chilling, perfectly calibrated thriller that will have you checking the locks on the door as you ponder the contents of that hatbox Danny carries around. Montgomery, long typecast as the suave star of romantic comedies, earned a 1937 Best Actor Oscar® nomination for his harrowing, career-changing performance. DVD Release Date: December 14th, 2010

It's a Small World - Harry Musk is one in a million. That means, It’s a Small World tells us, that he’s the one out of a million children who is perfectly proportioned but will never grow larger than a typical six-year-old. Adult, pint-sized Harry (Paul Dale) longs to be part of the big world. But more often than not, that world mocks him as an oddity or exploits his eagerness to be acknowledged for what he really is: a living, breathing man with normal feelings and desires. This celluloid plea for acceptance, which features Will Geer (The Waltons) and noir icon Steve Brodie (Desperate, Out of the Past) among the supporting players, comes from a perhaps unexpected source. William Castle – known later for creating clever ways to hype his House on Haunted Hill, 13 Ghosts and other cult faves – directs and co-writes. DVD Release Date: August 17th, 2010

Up From the Depths / Demon of Paradise (Roger Corman Classics) - In Up From The Depths, staff and vacationers at a first-class resort on the island of Maui are beginning to mysteriously disappear. A biologist believes that an underwater earthquake has caused a giant, and very hungry dormant prehistoric fish to be released from his slumber. Voraciously, the fish helps himself to a tourist buffet. Now it is open season for the local fishermen to find the creature and kill it! Starring Sam Bottoms (Apocalypse Now, The Outlaw Josey Wales). The hunters become the prey when illegal dynamite-fishing prematurely ends the hibernation of a mythological carnivorous lizard-man in Demon Of Paradise. The owner of the local resort, whose patrons have become the appetizers on this predators menu, and a herpetologist join forces with the sheriff to save the tourists from succumbing to the feasting of the beast. Starring Kathryn Witt (Cocaine Wars, Star 80) and directed by cult filmmaker Cirio H. Santiago (The Big Doll House, TNT Jackson). DVD Release Date: January 18th, 2011

Five - The science fiction drama Five (1951) was produced independently on a very low budget by Arch Oboler, famous in the 1940s for his radio productions, including the popular series Lights Out. Oboler produced, wrote, and directed Five, shot it largely on his own property, and hired a small, inexpensive crew made up of recent graduates from The University of Southern California film school. His cast was also small (as the title implies), and were made up of unknowns. Consequently, Oboler was able to shoot his feature for a mere $75,000. The finished film was sold outright to Columbia Pictures for a tidy profit. It is remembered today as the first film to portray life after a nuclear holocaust; later this theme was approached by major studios in big-budget films such as The World, the Flesh and the Devil and On the Beach (both 1959). DVD Release Date: February 3rd, 2009

The Girl Who Kicked the Hornet's Nest BD - The final installment of the Stieg Larsson trilogy finds Lisbeth Salander fighting for her life in more ways than one. In an intensive care unit and charged with three murders, she will have to not only prove her innocence, but also identify and denounce the same corrupt government institutions that nearly destroyed her life. Once upon a time, she was a victim. Now Salander is fighting back. Blu-ray Release date: January 25th, 2011

Broadcast News BD - Since the 1970s, the name James L. Brooks has been synonymous with intelligent television comedy—his shows are insightful about work and love and always plugged in to the zeitgeist. He is also a master storyteller of the big screen, and none of his films was more quintessentially Brooks than Broadcast News. This caustic look inside the Washington news media stars Holly Hunter, in her breakout role, as a feisty television producer torn between an ambitious yet dim anchorman (William Hurt) and her closest confidant, a cynical veteran reporter (Albert Brooks). Brooks’s witty, gently prophetic film is a captivating transmission from an era in which ideas on relationships and the media were rapidly changing. Blu-ray Release date: January 25th, 2011

Bare Behind Bars - Simultaneously sleazy and uninvolving, BARE BEHIND BARS is the story of the prisoners of a rat-infested, corruption-ridden Brazilian prison for women. The prisoners are hosed down and molested by the statuesque warden Sylvia (Maria Stella Splendore), who seems to have lost all of the buttons on her blouse, and the nutty fruit-loving nurse Barbara (Marta Anderson, MASSACRE IN DINOSAUR VALLEY). The prisoners are made available for use by wealthy women, and the ones that wind up dead are secretly buried so as not to provoke investigations from the government. Cynthia (Danielle Ferrite), aka Prisoner 431, and two other prisoners escape. Arrow DVD Release Date: January 31st, 2011

The 27th Day - Gene Barry (War of the Worlds) stars in this unique, intelligent sci-fi thriller. Five ordinary humans are summoned by an alien (Arnold Moss, Gambit) who gives each a box containing capsules capable of killing millions of people. If they can refrain from using the capsules for 27 days, the Earth will be spared. Will they be able to stand firm, especially when word leaks out and a panicked and furious population starts to hunt them down? William Asher (I Love Lucy) directed this seldom-seen sleeper, adapted by John Mantley (Gunsmoke) from his own novel; the cast also includes Valerie French, George Voskovec, Paul Birch, Mel Welles and legendary voice actor Paul Frees in a rare onscreen appearance as a newscaster. DVD Release Date: September 21st, 2010

Jack Goes Boating BD - Jack (Academy Award winner Philip Seymour Hoffman, making his directorial debut) and Connie (Amy Ryan) are two single people who on their own might continue to recede into the anonymous background of New York City, but in each other begin to find the courage and desire to pursue a budding relationship. As Jack and Connie cautiously circle commitment, the couple that introduced them, Clyde (John Ortiz) and Lucy (Daphne Rubin-Vega), confront their own unresolved issues, and each couple comes face to face with the inevitable path of their relationship. Based on the acclaimed Off-Broadway play of the same name, this unconventional romantic comedy is a tale of love, betrayal, friendship and grace. Blu-ray Release date: January 18th, 2011

The Google Boys - These two young men - a Russian immigrant and a public school student from Michigan - perfectly evoke the American entrepreneurial ideal. Their backgrounds are as interesting as their incredible rise up the Forbes World's Richest People list. BIOGRAPHY® chronicles the amazing careers of THE GOOGLE BOYS, while also exploring the workings of the world's most popular - and most profitable - search engine. DVD Release Date: December 19th, 2006

Not of this Earth - Low budgets give little reason for regret when the often tacky effects are surrounded by so much imagination, good humour, and sheer joy in film-making as here. Not of This Earth is a minor sci-fi gem, with an alien (Birch; you can tell he's an ET by his briefcase and dark glasses, establishing him as infinitely superior to the moronic middle Americans on view) terrorising Earth (or a small backlot) in his quest for blood for the folks back home. DVD Release Date: January 18th, 2011

Beau Pere - Receiving unwarranted attacks and criticism for its subject matter : that of a 30-year old man and his 'relationship' with his 14-year old stepdaughter, Blier's masterpiece never stoops to the topic of pedophilia. The subject narrative is continually softened with wholesome and frank dialogue and empathetic slow pans to the often torn protagonist. Ariel Besse plays Marion, an innocent, sweet, and smitten young girl whose Mother has been tragically killed in a car accident. Circumstance plays a huge part in understanding the issue at hand, and although there is consummation of the fling, it really becomes a non-issue in the entire story - which is one of love, coping and healing. Communication is an interesting tool in "Beau Pere" and Blier plays his hand with cool French apprehension. I was particularly fond of the music, elegant pauses and mise-en-scene. I also think the performances were excellent considering the difficult emotions that required expressing. DVD Release Date: October 5th, 2010

Army of Crime BD - Retraces the epic story of the Parisian Resistance fighters of the FTP-MOI (Francs-tireurs and Partisans - Immigrant... Workers). Led by Missak Manouchian, a worker and poet of Armenian origin, the group carried out around 30 operations against the Nazis between August and November 1943. Handed over to the Germans by the French police, 23 members of the Manouchian group were executed, and the Nazis tried to use their foreign roots in a propaganda campaign against immigrants in Paris in Spring 1944. But the propaganda had the opposite effect and the members of the network became martyrs of the Resistance movement. Blu-ray Release date: January 18th, 2011

Gunman's Walk - Lee Hackett (Van Heflin) became a rancher the hard way, and he has two sons - different but still part of him. His youngest (Tab Hunter), more in his mold, has learned to settle things with a gun and is accused of murdering a half-breed Indian. His eldest (James Darren) is sweet on the murdered man's sister (Kathryn Grant). Phil Karlson's Gunman's Walk weaves the story of these conflicts as adeptly as he's done in the Noir style. The tension mounts as the 'bad seed' can only be dealt with in one way. The result? - an excellent 50's western. DVD Release Date: November 23rd, 2010

The Outfit - “You know how it is. You hit us. We hit you.” Career thief Earl Macklin (Robert Duvall) pays no mind to the mobster’s threat. He intends to put a big hurt on an L.A. crime outfit. He, his girlfriend (Karen Black) and his partner (Joe Don Baker) will avenge the murder of Macklin’s brother by cutting down gangland operations bit by violent bit. Based on the novel by Point Blank author Richard Stark, The Outfit has a feel and grit that makes it a throwback to film noirs of the 1940s and ’50s. The casting of noir veterans underscores the tone: Robert Ryan, Jane Greer, Marie Windsor, Timothy Carey and Elisha Cook. Hollywood buffs will also enjoy seeing longtime Variety columnist Army Archerd in a bit role. DVD Release Date: November 16th, 2010

Animal Kingdom BD - Welcome to the Melbourne underworld. It's the Wild West, played out on the city's streets. Armed robber Pope Cody is... on the run from a gang of renegade detectives who want him dead. His business partner and best friend, Barry "Baz" Brown. wants out of the game. Pope's younger brother Craig Cody is making a fortune in the illicit substances trade, whilst the youngest Cody brother, Darren, naively navigates his way through this criminal world -- the only world his family has ever known. And into this world arrives their nephew, Joshua "J" Cody, who comes to believe that he is a player in this world. But, as he soon discovers, this world is far larger and more menacing than he could ever imagine. Blu-ray Release date: January 18th, 2011

Macabre - Why is Dr. Rodney Barrett shoveling dirt in a spooky cemetery at night? He’s hunting for the coffin holding his young daughter – his still living young daughter. She’s buried alive, an anonymous caller reported. And Barrett has mere hours to find and rescue her. Events of an even more unusual bent will follow in this shocker that began William Castle’s string of fright films (including House on Haunted Hill and The Tingler) that relied on memorable promotions to grab interest and box-office dollars. The gimmick here: filmgoers were insured by Lloyds of London for $1000 should they die of fright while seeing the movie. No insurance offered with this DVD. But in a way the film’s closing credits are, well, to die for. DVD Release Date: October 12th, 2010

The Man With a Cloak - Stellar talents Barbara Stanwyck, Joseph Cotton, Leslie Caron and Louis Calhern bring shuddery believability to this literate, deliciously creepy tale set in 1848 New York. The story follows a spirited demoiselle (Caron) determined to save her fiancé’s grandfather from his malevolent – and possibly homicidal – servants. Fortified with glass after glass of on-the-cuff wine at a local tavern, an urbane, cloaked stranger comes to her aid. The gentleman displays keen detecting skills as the plot turns from suspicion to murder to the hunt for a missing will. But one thing he does not reveal: his own identity. Surrender yourself to mystery. And a cask of amontillado if you can guess who is The Man with a Cloak. DVD Release Date: November 16th, 2010

Eye of the Devil - A forbidding French chateau and its surrounding vineyards are the setting for Gothic thrills in this haunting excursion into the occult. Deborah Kerr and David Niven, costarring for the first time since Separate Tables, lead an exceptional cast (Sharon Tate, Donald Pleasence, Flora Robson, David Hemmings, Edward Mulhare, Emlyn Williams) in a chiller reminiscent of the later The Wicker Man, in which an innocent outsider to an enclosed world peels back layers of mystery to reveal a shocking truth. Kerr plays the outsider, the wife of a troubled marquis (Niven), who discovers – perhaps too late – that her husband’s ancestral chateau is home to witches, warlocks, a sinister priest, 12 hooded figures…and terror. DVD Release Date: October 26th, 2010
 

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