Newsletter - FOR THE WEEK

OF January 22nd, 2018

Moni onse Getting back into the swing of things with Blu-ray and DVD reviews of packages by Criterion, Classicflix, Twilight Time, Kino Lorber, Blue Underground, and others of films directed by Anthony Mann, George A. Romero, Kon Ichikawa, Otto Preminger, Bob Clark, Jonathan Demme, Claude Autant-Lara, Jess Franco!. Our Calendar has updates of films-to-Blu-ray, including April Criterions and works by Leo McCarey, Sergei Parajanov, Jim Jarmusch, Sofia Coppola, Georg Wilhelm Pabst, Jean-Luc Godard, Roger Donaldson, and we have our Feature Blu-ray is posted for JANUARY 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 JANUARY!

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

(Week of) January 22nd, CONTEST  identify the film HERE to win a prize of a BRAND NEW Criterion Blu-ray of Ken Loach's I, Daniel Blake 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): The much anticipated Criterion 4K Blu-ray restoration of George A. Romero's The Night of the Living Dead gets top spot this week. It includes the 11-minute shorter Night of Anubis, a never-before-presented work-print edit of the film, also in 1080P. The most desirable release of the year. Criterion also bring us a 4K Blu-ray restoration of Jonathan Demme's psychological thriller masterwork The Silence of the Lambs loaded with a commentary and over 3-hours of supplements. I was thrilled to see Anthony Mann's Raw Deal, with stellar John Alton cinematography, now on Blu-ray thanks to Classicflix who continue to please Noir lovers with their 1080P output. Kon Ichikawa's An Actor's Revenge, 'an eye-popping examination of how the illusions of art intersect with life', has had a new restoration and Criterion have brought it to Blu-ray. Brilliant cinema. Bob Clark's directorial skill is never in doubt with the mid 70's horror Deathdream, available on Blu-ray, with 2 commentaries and many extras, from Blue Underground. One of Jess Franco's most polished films, the dark, surrealistic horror, The Diabolical Dr. Z gets a Blu-ray release from Redemption (Kino) and it includes another essential commentary by Tim Lucas. Otto Preminger’s lush, 1947 film Forever Amber with Linda Darnell as an opportunistic wench comes to Blu-ray from Twilight Time. On DVD, this week, Colin reviewed Eclipse Series 45: Claude Autant-Lara Four Romantic Escapes from Occupied France with four romances, produced during the dark days of the German occupation.

"The length of a film should be directly related to the endurance of the human bladder.." - Alfred Hitchcock

Enjoy your friends this week!

The Diabolical Dr. Z BD - This dark, surrealistic horror film from cult filmmaker Jesus Franco is perhaps best-remembered for its images of the lethal Miss Muerte (Estella Blain) luring victims with razor-sharp fingernails while clad in a skull-mask and a revealing bodysuit. The real star of the film is Mabel Karr, portraying Irma von Zimmer, daughter of a mad scientist whose public humiliation led to his fatal heart attack. Vowing revenge, Irma uses her father's mind-control techniques to possess Miss Muerte, a nightclub performer. The hypnotized dancer murders the doctors whom Irma blames for her father's death, slicing their throats with her poisoned nails, until police Inspector Tanner (Franco) and Miss Muerte's boyfriend (Fernando Montes) track her down. One of Franco's most entertaining films, Miss Muerte is a great improvement over the similar El Secreto del Dr. Orloff, released the previous year. Blu-ray Release Date: February 6th, 2018

Deathdream BD - In this shattering variation on The Monkey's Paw, grief-stricken suburban parents (Academy Award nominees John Marley of THE GODFATHER and Lynn Carlin of FACES) refuse to accept the news that their son Andy (Richard Backus) has been killed in Vietnam. But when Andy returns home soon after, something may be horribly wrong: Andy is alive and well... or is he? Produced and directed by Bob Clark (BLACK CHRISTMAS) and written by Alan Ormsby (DERANGED), DEATHDREAM became one of the very first films to confront the domestic ravages of the Vietnam War. More than thirty years later, it remains one of the most chilling horror films of all time. Blu-ray Release Date: November 28th, 2017

An Actor's Revenge BD - A uniquely prolific and chameleonic figure of world cinema, Kon Ichikawa delivered a burst of stylistic bravado with this intricate tale of betrayal and retribution. Set in the cloistered world of nineteenth-century kabuki theater, the film charts a female impersonator’s attempts to avenge the deaths of his parents, who were driven to insanity and suicide by a trio of corrupt men. Ichikawa takes the conventions of melodrama and turns them on their head, bringing the hero’s fractured psyche to life in boldly experimental widescreen compositions infused with kaleidoscopic color, pop-art influences, and meticulous choreography. Anchored by a magnificently androgynous performance by Kazuo Hasegawa, reprising a role he had played on-screen three decades earlier, An Actor’s Revenge is an eye-popping examination of how the illusions of art intersect with life. Blu-ray Release Date: February 13th, 2018

The Silence of the Lambs BD - A psychopath nicknamed Buffalo Bill is murdering young women across the Midwest. Believing it takes one to know one, the FBI sends Agent Clarice Starling (Jodie Foster) to interview a demented prisoner who may provide clues to the killer's actions. That prisoner is psychiatrist Dr. Hannibal Lecter (Anthony Hopkins), a brilliant, diabolical cannibal who agrees to help Starling only if she'll feed his morbid curiosity with details about her own complicated life. This twisted relationship forces Starling not only to face her own inner demons, but leads her face– to–face with a demented killer, an incarnation of evil so overwhelming, she may not have the courage or strength to stop him. Horrific, disturbing, spellbinding. This thriller set the standard by which all others are measured. Criterion Blu-ray Release Date: February 13th, 2018

The Night of the Living Dead BD - Shot outside Pittsburgh on a shoestring budget, by a band of filmmakers determined to make their mark, Night of the Living Dead, directed by horror master George A. Romero, is a great story of independent cinema: a midnight hit turned box-office smash that became one of the most influential films of all time. A deceptively simple tale of a group of strangers trapped in a farmhouse who find themselves fending off a horde of recently dead, flesh-eating ghouls, Romero’s claustrophobic vision of a late-1960s America literally tearing itself apart rewrote the rules of the horror genre, combined gruesome gore with acute social commentary, and quietly broke ground by casting a black actor (Duane Jones) in its lead role. Stark, haunting, and more relevant than ever, Night of the Living Dead is back. Criterion Blu-ray Release Date: February 6th / Feb 26th, 2018

Forever Amber BD - Otto Preminger’s lush adaptation of Kathleen Winsor’s controversial best-selling novel, Forever Amber (1947) tells the notorious tale of Amber St. Clare (Linda Darnell), an opportunistic wench who, hopping from bed to bed, rises to become the mistress of the roguish King Charles II (George Sanders). Meanwhile, she can only briefly hold on to her true love, the cavalier Bruce Carlton (Cornel Wilde), although she tries her best, through the traumas of bubonic plague and the Great Fire of London. Juicy melodrama, beautifully shot by Leon Shamroy and featuring a stunning score by the one and only David Raksin. Blu-ray Release Date: January, 2018

Raw Deal BD - Raw Deal presents the moviemaking team of director Anthony Mann and cinematographer John Alton at the peak of their success (fresh off their box office smash T-Men), offering dark, moody atmosphere filled with fog-shrouded landscapes and characters who are no strangers to the "left-handed endeavor" of crime. Scenarist John C. Higgins (He Walked By Night ) and co-writer Leopold Atlas offer a taut, suspenseful tale of one man s desperate bid for freedom and the two women who love him. Blu-ray Release Date: January 16th, 2018

Eclipse Series 45: Claude Autant-Lara Four Romantic Escapes from Occupied France - Too often overlooked after his work was spurned by the New Wave iconoclasts as belonging to the “tradition of quality,” Claude Autant-Lara was one of France’s leading directors of the 1940s and ’50s. He began as a set and costume designer and went on to direct French-language versions of American comedies in Hollywood, but it was back in his home country that Autant-Lara came into his own as a filmmaker. He found his sophisticated and slyly subversive voice with these four romances, produced during the dark days of the German occupation. Sumptuously appointed even while being critical of class hierarchy, these films—all made with the same corps of collaborators, including the charmingly impetuous star Odette Joyeux—endure as a testament to the quick wit and exquisite visual sense of the director whose name they established. DVD Release Date: January 23, 2018

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