DVDBeaver Newsletter - January 29th, 2007
Hello! - Please excuse the delay - I think Monday will be the 'new day' for the newsletter. 10 reviews this weeks. Plus our recommendations and many new additions to the Release Calendar.
BLU-RAY STORE HD-DVD STORE HIGH DEFINITION DVD STORE
THE PLUNGE: I've purchased a HD DVD player and have been experimenting with doing reviews and comparisons. I've viewed both HD versions of Casablanca and Spartacus - and made extensive notes - reviews (and a review of the player) should be ready fairly soon. Stay tuned!
STAY AWAY: - Unfortunately, there appears to be a dispute over the rights for The Savage Innocents and MoC have withdrawn their wonderful DVD edition from all stores - it being replaced by a shoddy ITV edition (see comparison capture in review HERE). The ITV (cover pictured LEFT) is 4:3 pan and scan (of a 2.35:1 film!), and it's cut. Terrible print, and they've spelt Anthony Quinn's name wrong on the front sleeve "Antohny".
DVD of the Year - 2006 still remains a popular place to peruse.
Easiest way to catch up is simply read the new Newsletter Archive HERE.
STRATEGIES: The best way to take full advantage of Amazon is to use PRE-ORDERs - lock in at the discount price by ORDERING - if perchance you decide against the purchase you have until the release date to cancel - at no charge.
AND if you will purchase more than 35 DVDs (or anything) in a 365 day period (and live in the Continental US) it makes excellent financial sense to subscribe to Amazon Prime! You will get Free 2-day shipping on your purchases!
LATEST Additions to the Release Calendar (PRE-ORDER!):
Columbo: Mystery Movie Collection 1989 - Universal Studios
Documentaries of Louis Malle (6-disc) - Criterion's Eclipse label
Flesh and Fantasy aka Obsession (Julien Duvivier, 1943) FR PAL - Universal
Lonely Are the Brave (David Miller, 1962) FR PAL - Gaumont/Columbia
Man Without a Star (King Vidor, 1955) FR PAL - Gaumont/Columbia
The Hill (Sidney Lumet, 1965) FR PAL - Warner Home Vidéo
Riding Alone for Thousands of Miles (Yimou Zhang, 2005) Sony Pictures
The Wooden Horse (Jack Lee, 1950) R2 UK - Optimum Home Entertainment
I Was Monty's Double (John Guillermin, 1958) R2 UK - Optimum Home Entertainment
Quiet Flows the Don (Sergei Bondarchuk, 2004) Kino Video
Casino Royale (Widescreen Two-Disc Special Edition) (Martin Campbell, 2006) Sony Pictures
The Odd Couple - The First Season (Alan Rafkin, 1970) Paramount Home Video
Tempest (Paul Mazursky, 1982) Sony Pictures
Man in the Middle (Guy Hamilton, 1964) 20th Century Fox
Sailor of the King (Roy Boulting, 1953) 20th Century Fox
Doris Day Collection 2 (Romance on the High Seas/My Dream Is Yours/On Moonlight Bay/ I'll See You in My Dreams/By the Light of the Silvery Moon/Lucky Me) - Warner Home Video
S*P*Y*S (Irvin Kershner, 1974) 20th Century Fox
Royal Flash (Richard Lester, 1975) 20th Century Fox
Bedazzled (Stanley Donen, 1967) 20th Century Fox
Un chant d'amour - 2-disc - (Jean Genet, 1950) Cult Epics
RECOMMENDATIONS: Even already owning a few of the titles - I was quite smitten with Viva Pedro - Pedro Almodovar Classics Collection. It's hard not to adore his work - a true original.
Citizen Dog is a uniquely humorous film. Really very special.
Jarman's The Angelic Conversation is quite reaching if you open up to it. Fascinating work for those keen on the avant-garde.
As far as 'popcorn flicks' go - Looker fits right in.
Zhang Yimou fans will want to pick-up Red Sorghum. The DVD is lower tier but its a chance to see the film with English subs.
After Kurtis' review I think I'll pick up Flags of Our Fathers.
New Reviews:
Red Sorghum - The stuff of legend, Zhang
Yimou's film satisfies both as straight folk tale and as a subversive tribute to
the vitality and endurance of Chinese peasant culture. Set in a remote Northern
province in the '20s and '30s, the story is narrated by a man who remembers the
lives and times of his grandparents.
Citizen Dog - A rare Thai cult film,
Citizen Dog criticizes various aspects of the modern society with
surrealistically colored visuals and a daring plot that can only originate from
the most imaginative brain. Director Wisit Sasanatieng, after his creative Tears
of the Black Tiger, adapts a story written by his wife into an acclaimed movie,
officially selected for the Toronto Film Festival and the Pusan Film Festival.
Citizen Dog was awarded the Bronze Prize for the Best Asian Film at the Fantasia
Film, Montreal. DVD Release Date: January 11th, 2007
The Bridge on the River Kwai - is a
towering triumph of a motion picture. It has the definite stamp of class about
it and stands out as one of the greatest war pictures ever made. The first of
David Lean's epics, it is primarily set in a Japanese World War II POW camp. It
is at the same time a definitive character study of an obsessive British Army
Officer and a savage indictment of the futility of war acutely symbolised by the
fate of the eponymous bridge.
Viva Pedro - Pedro Almodovar Classics Collection
- The 8 films in this box set (Talk to Her, Bad Education, All About My Mother,
Women on the Verge of a Nervous Breakdown, Live Flesh, Flower of My Secret,
Matador and Law of Desire) are all by Spain's high priest of hip, Pedro
Almodóvar. That country's most celebrated filmmaker since Luis Bunuel. Included
are Matador (1985), a fable about sex, death and bull-fighting which Almodóvar
proclaimed the ‘weirdest’ film of his career, The Flower of My Secret (1995),
which signaled a new maturity and emotional depth which would continue to
distinguish in films such as All About My Mother. Also included here are Law of
Desire (1987) - a classic tale of romantic obsession starring a young Antonio
Banderas. Visually assured, the films from Law of Desire onwards established the
director’s working relationship with brother Augustin, with whom he formed
production company El Deseo. Talk to Her, Bad Education, All About My Mother,
Women on the Verge of a Nervous Breakdown and Live Flesh rank as quintessential
Almodóvar, and validate his status as one of the most consistently exciting
filmmakers in the world. DVD Release Date: January 30th, 2007
Silence of the Lambs - The new MGM (2-disc
Collector's Edition) is compared - From Thomas Harris’ novel, director
Jonathan Demme explodes and reconstructs a classic genre, laying a foundation of
emotional and political commitment beneath a perfectly constructed psychological
thriller. Fourteen years after her controversial role in Taxi Driver, Jodie
Foster finally makes the transformation from helpless victim to rescuing hero in
this dark, gender-bending fairy tale of an American obsession: serial murder. As
Hannibal “the Cannibal” Lecter, Anthony Hopkins is the archetypal
antihero—cultured, quick-witted, uncontainable—a portrait of all the sharpest
human faculties gone diabolically wrong. DVD Release Date: January 30th, 2007
Looker - A plastic surgeon (Albert Finney)
gets suspicious when models he has operated on begin to die in mysterious ways.
With the help of Cindy (Susan Dey), the next in line to be killed, he traces the
deaths to a mysterious corporation which develops new technologies. DVD
Release Date: January 30th, 2007
The Angelic Conversation - Jarman's
painterly eye and technical ingenuity are utilized to good effect here in this
characteristically elliptical film that uses 12 Shakespeare sonnets (narrated by
Judi Dench) as its starting point. With stop-motion effects, strange tableaux of
eerie landscapes and a similar slew of Jarmanesque imagery, the black-and-white
pictures processed on video lend the film a translucent and romantic air that is
perfectly complemented by Dench's rich velvety intonations. DVD Release Date:
January 29th, 2007
Flags of Our Fathers - It seems hard to
believe there is anything left to say about World War II that has not already
been stated and restated, chewed, digested and spat out for your consideration
and that of the Oscar voters. And yet here, at age 76, is Clint Eastwood saying
something new and vital about the war in his new film, and here, too, is this
great, gray battleship of a man and a movie icon saying something new and urgent
about the uses of war and of the men who fight. Flags of Our Fathers concerns
one of the most lethal encounters on that distant battlefield, but make no
mistake: this is also a work of its own politically fraught moment. DVD
Release Date: February 6th, 2007
The Host - It's hard to write about Bong
Joon-ho's The Host (the original Korean title is "Creature") without making puns
on the word "monster." The temptation arises not only because of the subject
matter, but because everything about the film -- its scale, its budget, its
record-breaking performance at the box office, its overseas potential -- is huge
within the context of the local film industry. It is a monster movie -- about a
truck-sized mutant that crawls out of the Han River and unleashes terror upon
the citizens of Seoul -- and yet, it is not one. Part of The Host's appeal is
that its core concerns are somewhat slippery, and hard to pinpoint. DVD
Release Date: January 16th, 2007
Sheitan - Not as transgressive or brutal as
it makes itself out to be, especially when compared to the almost concurrently
released CALVAIRE, Capiron's film is still entertaining even if the director
seems to run out of ideas at the end. Cassel and the other lesser-known actors
all give good performances (Barthelemy makes the sulky and loutish Bart rather
endearing actually) and its nice to see an ethnically diverse cast without
calling attention to the element (except for some of Cassel's racist remarks).
Monica Bellucci also makes a brief cameo. DVD Release Date: 26 December 2006
Next 2 weeks on the Calendar:
Week of January 29th, 2007
The Angelic Conversation (Derek Jarman, 1985) R2 UK BFI
Angels in the Outfield (Amazon Exclusive) (Clarence Brown, 1951) Warner Home Video
Arrangement (Elia Kazan, 1969) Warner Home Video
Band of Angels (Raoul Walsh, 1957) Warner Home Video
Caprice (Frank Tashlin, 1967) 20th Century Fox
Caravaggio (Derek Jarman, 1986) R2 UK BFI
Container (Lukas Moodysson, 2006) R2 UK - Metrodome Distribution Ltd
The Films of Luc Moullet: The Smugglers and a Girl Is a Gun - Facets
The Films of Luc Moullet: Brigitte and Brigitte/Up and Down - Facets
I Was Monty's Double (John Guillermin, 1958) R2 UK - Optimum Home Entertainment
Lie with Me (Clément Virgo, 2005) R2 UK
- Metrodome Distribution Ltd
Looker (Michael Crichton, 1981) Warner
Home Video
Madame Curie (Mervyn LeRoy, 1944) Warner
Home Video
Move Over Darling (Michael Gordon, 1963) 20th Century Fox
The Silence of the Lambs (Collector's Edition) (Jonathan Demme, 1991) MGM
Viva Pedro: The Almodovar Collection (Matador, Law of Desire, Woman on the Verge of a Nervous Breakdown, All About My Mother, Bad Education, Live Flesh, The Flower of My Secret and Talk to Her) Sony Pictures
Wittgenstein (Derek Jarman, 1993) R2 UK BFI
The Wooden Horse (Jack Lee, 1950) R2 UK - Optimum Home Entertainment
Week of February 5th, 2007
A Summer Place (Delmer Daves, 1959) Warner Home Video
Arabian Nights (John Rawlins, 1942) Universal Studios
Blume in Love (Paul Mazursky, 1973) Warner Home Video
The Clock (Vincente Minnelli, 1945) Warner Home Video
Crossing Delancey (Joan Micklin Silver, 1988) Warner Home Video
The Heiress (Universal Cinema Classics) (William Wyler, 1949) Universal Studios
Here Comes Mr. Jordan (Alexander Hall, 1941) Sony Pictures
Miracle in the Rain (Rudolph Maté, 1956) Warner Home Video
Riding Alone for Thousands of Miles (Yimou Zhang, 2005) Sony Pictures
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Best,
Gary
P.S.
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