DVDBeaver Newsletter - March 17th, 2008
Mysh bzi! - 19 new reviews this week - 7 of which are comparisons! Some tidbits, four Blu-ray, films by Sembene, Wiseman, Shyamalan, Preminger, Antonioni, Jancsó, Siodmak, Sam Fuller, Kusturica, Jarman, the Coens... wow indeed. There are some interesting additions to this week's Calendar, (more Satyajit Ray, Mizoguchi, Majidi, Eisenstein etc.) Another difficult contest and more. Facebook-er?: join DVDBeaver-ite's Facebook group HERE. We can communicate video clips, film news etc.
• Powell and Pressburger's Black Narcissus to come to Blu-ray and many other announced/rumored on our New Format page HERE.
US Blu-ray's
up to 50% OFF HERE!• CONTEST ACTIVITY:
WEEK OF MARCH 17th, 2008 CONTEST is LISTED ON OUR NEW CONTEST PAGE HERE
THIS WEEK's PRIZE: a brand new Criterion DVD of Gus Van Sant's Mala Noche.
• Individuals have started selling Cinéart's wonderful The Chantal Akerman Collection (Hôtel Monterey,Je, tu, il, elle,Jeanne Dielman, 23 Quai du Commerce, 1080 Bruxelles,Briefe von zu Haus,Les Rendez-vous d'Anna) at Amazon.com HERE
• Criterion's June releases announced: Mishima: A Life in Four Chapters (Paul Schrader, 1985), Patriotism (Domoto Masaki & Yukio Mishima, 1966), Classe tous risques (Claude Sautet, 1960), The Furies (Anthony Mann, 1950) and Before the Rain (Milcho Manchevski, 1994)
• On Criterion’s unofficial slate are the quintessential Noir Cry Of The City (1948), Wes Anderson’s first effort, Bottle Rocket, Dillinger Is Dead (Marco Ferreri), Stephen Frears’ The Hit, Nicolas Roeg’s fun Insignificance, David Bowie in Merry Christmas, Mr. Lawrence, Louis Malle’s My Dinner With Andre, Antonioni’s La Notte, John Huston’s Wise Blood, Lars Von Trier’s Zentropa, and Sam Fuller’s much anticipated White Dog.
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Easiest way to catch up is simply read the new Newsletter Archive HERE.
LATEST Additions to the Release Calendar (PRE-ORDER!).
The Satyajit Ray Collection Vol.2
(3 Discs - Kapurush / Mahapurush / Joi Baba Felunath) R2
Edge Of Heaven (Fatih Akin, 2007) R2 UK Artificial Eye
Morning Departure
(Roy Ward Baker, 1950) United Artists
The List
(Gary Wheeler, 2007) Fox Home Entertainment
Noriko's Dinner Table
(Sion Sono, 2005) Facets
Shallow Grave
[Blu-ray]
(Danny Boyle, 1994) [Special Edition] - RB UK MGM
Man with the Gun
(Richard Wilson, 1955) United Artists
The Secret Invasion
(Roger Corman, 1964) United Artists
The Horse Thief
(Zhuangzhuang Tian, 1986)
The Air I Breathe
(Jieho Lee, 2007) Velocity / Thinkfilm
The Air I Breathe
[Blu-ray]
(Jieho Lee, 2007) Velocity / Thinkfilm
Shinobi: Heart Under Blade - Special Edition [Blu-ray] (Ten Shimoyama, 2005) Funimation
Ugetsu Monogatari / Oyu-Sama
(2 films by Keni Mizoguchi) - R2 UK - Eureka Masters of Cinema
Akasen Chitai/Yokihi
(2 films by Keni Mizoguchi) - R2 UK - Eureka Masters of Cinema
Lost in Beijing
(Yu Li, 2007) New Yorker
Carve Her Name with Pride
(Lewis Gilbert, 1958) United Artists
Macon County Line
(Richard Compton, 1974) Warner Home Video
Lars and the Real Girl
(Craig Gillespie, 2007) MGM
Charlie Wilson's War
(Mike Nichols, 2007) Universal
"Holocaust"
(Marvin J. Chomsky, 1978) (3-disc mini-series) Paramount
Orphanage
(Juan Antonio Bayona, 2007) New Line Home Video
Orphanage
[Blu-ray]
(Juan Antonio Bayona, 2007) New Line Home Video
The Dario Argento Box Set
(Tenebre: Special Edition, Phenomena: Special Edition, Trauma, The Card Player,
Do You Like Hitchcock?) - Starz / Anchor Bay
The Lather Effect
(Sarah Kelly, 2006) Anchor Bay
The Willow Tree
(Majid Majidi, 2005) New Yorker
Eisenstein Collection Vol.2
(Bezhin Meadow / Alexander Nevsky / Ivan, The Terrible / Ivan, The Terrible Part
2: The Boyars Plot) - R2 UK – Tartan
Inglorious Bastards (Enzo G. Castellari,1978),
Inglorious Bastards Special Edition (Enzo G. Castellari,1978)
To give you my take - I give my strongest recommendation to Joe Wright's Atonement. A undeniable and brilliant masterpiece. I wasn't as high on No Country For Old Men, but suppose it should be seen. Cry of the City is one of my favorite film noirs but it may be prudent to wait for the rumored Criterion. Films you may want to see - Moolaadé, Blue, The Round-Up, A Royal Scandal, Bamako, It's Winter, Titicut Follies, and Summer Palace all have high 'Beaver appeal'.
New Reviews:
The Rookie BR - "Based on the true story of Jim Morris", we follow his life from boyhood in small Texas town, through a shoulder injury, his marriage and coaching years for a local high school and that team's own interdependent aspirations, to Morris' eventual tryouts for the majors. John Lee Hancock skillfully blends the fixtures, rituals and rhythms of the game into a family drama about dreams lost and recaptured. Blu-ray DVD Release Date: March 4th, 2008
Eugenie de Sade - Jess Franco's EUGENIE
is his more personal follow-up to the long-unavailable (until Blue Underground's
2002 release) of his scope PHILOSOPHY IN THE BOUDOIR adaptation
EUGENIE... THE STORY OF HER JOURNEY INTO PERVERSION. Soledad Miranda (billed
as Susan Korday - a variation on her Susan Korda pseudonym used in roles
requiring nudity) plays Eugenie who begins an incestuous and sadistic affair
with her stepfather Paul Radeck, a writer whose work has not met with the
success it deserved. DVD Release Date: January 29th, 2008
Initial D BR
- The "D" of the title refers to the art of Drifting which is an auto racing
technique permitting high speeds through turns. The idea was neatly demonstrated
by veteran racer, Doc Hudson, to disbelieving rookie, Lightning McQueen, in
Pixar's Cars. You'll remember how Doc turns the wheel counterintuitively in the
opposite direction so to glide through in a controlled skid. The maneuver not
only takes nerve, it takes communication between brain, muscle, engine, wheel
and road. Correctly executed, it's a joy to behold. And that's exactly what
directors Andre Lau and Alan Mak do for a good deal of their movie.
I Am Legend BR
- I Am Legend has loftier goals than to merely scare you into never
leaving your home or from taking another antibiotic. The screenplay by Akiva
Goldsman and Mark Protosevich is a study of loneliness and what it means to be
human – at least in its first hour or so. It also takes a moment, less
successfully I thought, to consider God’s Plan. Lofty or no, I Am Legend cannot
escape the shortcomings of it own logic. Blu-ray
DVD Release Date: March 18th, 2008
Titicut Follies - Trained as a lawyer,
Wiseman has chosen as his ever-evolving cinematic subject the American social
contract, and how the machinery of the state upholds or shreds it. His first
film is a hellish descent into a Massachusetts institution for the criminally
insane where, it would seem, the lunatics have taken over the asylum. The
editing often purposefully blurs the distinction between patient (some
irretrievably deranged, some desperately lucid) and doctor. Wiseman fixes his
steady, steely gaze on abuse, neglect, medical ineptitude, and appalling
conditions; one horrifyingly expressionist segment, rare in Wiseman's work,
cross-cuts between the force feeding of a patient and the later preparation of
the same man's corpse. The film is often extremely difficult to watch and was,
for a long time, nearly impossible to see. The Massachusetts authorities
suppressed Titicut for a quarter century, arguing that it violated the
privacy of the inmates - a risible claim, as it's painfully clear that these men
had no rights at all.
Lady in the Water
BR - I've always been befuddled by the tides that shift public
opinion - the ones that herd the collective mentality around with such invisible
purpose. Regardless of the mass critical disdain and limited perspicacity
regarding anything Shyamalan has created since his breakthrough film, The
Sixth Sense - Lady in the Water is another truly marvelous piece of
work. Yes, it is heavy fantasy... but with so many veins and threads of
interpretation that it encompasses you, forces you to think, yet still uses the
purest power of the medium to enrich and spread the old-fashioned celluloid
warmth that is so absent in today's bitterly cold and sour entertainment. I
don't know... I loved it and can't wait to watch it again. Such is my puny
world.
The Round-Up - Set in a detention camp in
Hungary 1869, at a time of guerrilla campaigns against the ruling Austrians,
Jancsó deliberately avoids conventional heroics to focus on the persecution and
dehumanization manifest in a time of conflict. Filmed in Hungary’s desolate and
burning landscape, Jancsó uses his formidable technique to create a remarkable
and terrifying picture of war and the abuse of power that still speaks to
audiences today. DVD Release Date: March 17th, 2008
Margin for Error/A Royal Scandal - This two
disc set from Otto Preminger brings together two of his 1940's titles. A
Royal Scandal dwells upon a fictional incident in the life of Russia's
Catherine the Great. The story of sexual shenanigans amongst royalty was classic
Ernst Lubitsch material. Lubitsch intended to direct the film, however, after
being taken ill offered the assignment to Otto Preminger who gave his cast room
to manoeuvre and make the most of their epigrammatic dialogue. Tallulah Bankhead
takes the lead with blue-blooded bawdiness in one of her all too rare screen
appearances. Margin for Error - When Preminger was asked by William Goetz at Fox
to reprise his stage role in Clare Booth Luce's anti-Nazi comedy Margin For
Error for the screen, he also convinced Goetz to let him direct it.
Preminger, unhappy with the original script, secretly hired a young Sam Fuller
to re-work it - although he remains uncredited for it. DVD Release Date:
March 31st, 2008
Moolaadé - Then to watch Ousmane Sembene’s
“Moolaadé”, only made me realize how incredible powerful and political a
film it really was. By itself, it is pure magic, so beautifully simple
filmmaking, poetical with a strong sense of social commitment, but with the
reality in mind, I sit back in awe of Sembene as filmmaker. The NY'er DVD
came out February 19th, 2008
Cry of the City - Martin Rome (Richard
Conte) drives the law crazy - he is a beautiful loser, defying death, the great
charismatic anti-hero of Siodmak's masterpiece of law and disorder. Adapted from
a novel by Henry Edward Helseth, Cry of the City tells the tale of a charismatic
New York criminal and his nemesis, the dogged cop and one-time friend who chases
him down with a neurotic possessiveness as though in pursuit of his own evil
twin.
House of Bamboo - Manny Farber once
described a Sam Fuller movie by saying “the film is sincere about inexplicable
mush.” So it is with House of Bamboo, a crime thriller set in occupied
Japan for purposes that we mortals may never know for sure. Reworking the far
less interesting Street With No Name, it features furrow-browed Robert
Stack as the cops’ inside man infiltrating a group of ex-G.I. criminals led by
Robert Ryan. The complication this time is Shirley Yamaguchi, the Japanese
girlfriend of one of Ryan’s victims, who falls for Stack only to be shunned by
her gaijin-hating neighbours. There’s no mistaking Fuller’s sympathy for
bi-racial couplings and flair for socko compositions; there’s also no divining
what the hell it’s saying about the Japanese, Americans in Japan, or anything
else having to do with the human race.
Eros - Eros is a three-part
anthology film about eroticism by a trio of world cinema's outstanding
directors: Wong Kar Wai, Steven Soderbergh and Michelangelo Antonioni. The three
vignettes in Eros may seem totally unrelated on surface, but underneath the
different stories lies a common theme about erotic desires. Each episode
explores erotic desires at a different level, from physical to psychological to
spiritual. It also serves as an homage by two younger directors, Wong and
Soderbergh, to the Italian master Antonioni who has informed and inspired their
work.
Blue - If the 1990s was largely defined by
the mainstreaming of AIDS, Blue is a key film from that decade. Like Wim Wenders'
Lightning Over Water, about the dying of Nicholas Ray, Blue is a naked
portrait of a dying artist, although it is perhaps more intimate in that it
originates from within. Blue goes further toward demystifying AIDS than
straightforward documentary content has done, and Jarman is not nor was ever shy
about retaining his sexual identity in spite of the stigma of his disease, the
politics of which he address here with frank combativeness.
When Father Was Away On Business - Mesha,
returning by train with his mistress from one of his many business trips,
carelessly remarks on a political cartoon in the newspaper. The mistress
denounces Mesha out of jealousy to his brother, who is highly involved and
devoted to the Communist Party and also seeing the same mistress, who arranges
to have him sent to a prison where he is forced to work in a mine. His wife and
children, who believe the father is on a prolonged business trip, are forced to
cope for years with the void left by their father. When he is finally set free,
the family must move away from Sarajevo in order to be "socially reconditioned".
Bamako - Melé is a bar singer, her husband
Chaka is out of work and the couple is on the verge of breaking up… In the
courtyard of the house they share with other families, a trial court has been
set up. African civil society spokesmen have taken proceedings against the World
Bank and the IMF whom they blame for Africa's woes… midst the pleas and the
testimonies, life goes on in the courtyard. Chaka does not seem to be concerned
by Africa's novel desire to fight for its rights…
It's Winter - A man is fired from his job.
Having no more options, he decides to go find work abroad, leaving behind his
wife and daughter. Months pass and his family hear no word from him. A stranger,
a mechanic, arrives in town in search of work. His eyes wander to the beautiful
young woman whom he hears no longer has a husband.
Summer Palace - A sublime coming of age
drama from the director of Suzhou River and Purple Butterfly. Yu
Hong (Cui) leaves her rural village to attend Beijing University in 1987.
Touched by the political fallout of the Tianamen Square massacre two years
later, the latter half of the story follows Yu Hong and her friends as they come
to terms with adulthood. Brimming with sensuality, this film will resonate with
many viewers who experienced their own sexual and political awakening at
university. DVD Release Date: March 11th, 2008
No Country For Old Men - No Country for
Old Men premiered at Cannes in May and was widely heralded as the festival’s
most sensational entry. When I saw it for the first time at the Toronto film
festival in September, the only movie that gave it any competition in the
popularity contest was Lars and the Real Girl. Adapted from what is
generally considered a minor Cormac McCarthy novel, No Country for Old Men
is a very well-made genre exercise, but I can’t understand why it’s been
accorded so much importance, unless it’s because it strokes some ideological
impulse. DVD Release Date: March 11th, 2008
Atonement - The hat trick of Ian McEwan’s
2001 novel, Atonement, was spinning a typical English country-estate
melodrama while simultaneously deconstructing trad Brit lit and equating the
writing process with divine providence. Successfully translating these ideas to
the screen, however, seemed as likely as Heathcliff coming to a happy ending.
Which makes Joe Wright’s big-screen version all the more impressive: He’s
produced a gripping, romantic yarn without sacrificing the source’s
meta-examination of fiction’s power. Not even the director’s swooning take on
Pride & Prejudice (2005) could have prepared folks for this. DVD Release
Date: March 18th, 2008
Next
2 weeks on the Calendar:
Week of March 17th, 2008
(Hiroshi Teshigahara, 1984) CriterionThe Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford
[HD DVD] (Andrew Dominik, 2007) Warner (Joe Wright, 2007) - Universal Studios [HD DVD combo] (Joe Wright, 2007) - Universal Studios (Adam Marcus, 2008) Sony (William Worthington, 1919) New Yorker Films (Kevin Lima, 2007) Walt Disney Video [Blu-ray] (Kevin Lima, 2007) Walt Disney Video (Widescreen Edition) (Francis Lawrence, 2007) Warner Home Video (Two-Disc Special Edition) (Francis Lawrence, 2007) Warner Home Video [Blu-ray] (Francis Lawrence, 2007) Warner Home Video
Week of March 24th, 2008
- The Widow Couderc (1971; Pierre Granier-Deferre), Diabolically Yours (1967; Julien Duvivier), La Piscine (1969; Jacques Deray), Le Gitan (1975; Jose Giovanni) and Notre Histoire (1984; Bertrand Blier) - Lionsgate (Abderrahmane Sissako, 2006) New Yorker FilmsBattlestar Galactica - Season Three
- Universal (Two-Disc Special Edition) (Arthur Penn, 1967) WarnerBonnie and Clyde - Ultimate Collector's Edition
(Arthur Penn, 1967) WarnerMr. Wong, Detective - The Complete Collection
(Mr. Wong, Detective / The Mystery of Mr. Wong / Mr. Wong in Chinatown / The Fatal Hour / Doomed to Die / Phantom of Chinatown) - VCI Entertainment (Michelangelo Antonioni,1961) R2 UK - Eureka [Masters of Cinema] (Scott Z. Burns, 2006) HBO (Akira Kurosawa, 1950) R2 UK - Optimum Home Entertainment (King Vidor, 1959) MGM (J. Lee Thompson, 1962) MGM (Louis Feuillade, 1915) R2 UK - Artificial Eye (Nacer Khemir, 1985) Typecast Releasing (Jeremy Workman, 1995) First Run Features"All men are caught in an inescapable network of mutuality." - MLK
Cheers,
Gary