DVDBeaver Newsletter - March 24th, 2008

Dad'atay ! - 12 new reviews this week - Shyamalan, Kiarostami, Lynch, Darabont, Miike ... some multi-film packages. We've come across a decent sale at Amazon.UK (excellent titles available for as much as 70% off!) There are some interesting additions to this week's Calendar, (more Imamura, PTA, Powell+Pressburger, boxsets of Losey, Jimmy Stewart and The Duke etc.) More contests (and easy one and more detailed Korean one). Facebook-er?: join DVDBeaver-ite's Facebook group HERE. We can communicate video clips, film news etc.

CONTEST ACTIVITY:

WEEK OF MARCH 17th, 2008 CONTEST is LISTED ON OUR NEW CONTEST PAGE HERE

THIS WEEK's PRIZES (2): a brand new 2-disc of I AM LEGEND and a brand new 2-disc SE of BONNIE and CLYDE.

Plus NEW Korean Drama contest in Leonard's Super Rookie review HERE

Some GOOD Sales of DECENT Titles at Amazon.UK…

The David Lean Collection - 9 Disc Box Set (64% OFF!)

The Jean Vigo Collection (2 disc Collector's Edition) (73% OFF!)

The Red And The White (39% OFF!)

Sátántangó [1994] (55% OFF!)

The Devil, Probably (PRE-ORDER - 40% OFF!)

The Andrei Tarkovsky Companion (64% OFF!)

Satyajit Ray Collection Vol.1 (PRE-ORDER SAVE 40% OFF!)

The Life Of Oharu (65% OFF!)

The Eric Rohmer Collection (with Le Signe du Lion etc.) (56% OFF!)

Stalker (67% OFF!)

It's Winter (60% OFF!)

Michael (50% OFF!)

Twenty-four Eyes (50% OFF!)

The Naked Island (50% OFF!)

Funeral Parade of Roses (50% OFF!)

Humanity & Paper Balloons (50% OFF!)

Assassination (50% OFF!)

Kwaidan (50% OFF!)

Toni (50% OFF!)

Worth repeating:

US Blu-ray's up to 50% OFF HERE!

- Individuals have started selling Cinéart 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

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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!

BLU-RAY STORE  HIGH DEFINITION DVD STORE   ALL OUR NEW FORMAT DVD REVIEWS

Easiest way to catch up is simply read the new Newsletter Archive HERE.

LATEST Additions to the Release Calendar (PRE-ORDER!).

John Wayne: The Fox Westerns Collection (The Big Trail, North to Alaska, The Comancheros, The Undefeated) - 20th Century Fox

Summer '04 (Stefan Krohmer, 2006)

The Sword in the Stone (Wolfgang Reitherman, 1963) Disney

James Stewart: Columbia Screen Legends Collection – Sony

The Three Stooges Collection, Vol. 2: 1937-1939 – Sony

The Joseph Losey Collection (The Go Between, The Servant, Accident, The Criminal, Eva, and Mr. Klein) R2 UK Optimum Home Entertainment

The Boys from Brazil [Blu-ray] (Franklin J. Schaffner, 1978) RB UK ITV DVD

Black Narcissus [Blu-ray] (Powell/Pressburger, 1947) RB UK ITV DVD

Signs [Blu-ray] (M. Night Shyamalan, 2002) RB FR

There Will Be Blood [Blu-ray] (Paul Thomas Anderson, 2007) RB DE Touchstone

Dirty Harry (Ultimate Collector's Edition) (Dirty Harry Special Edition, Magnum Force Deluxe Edition, The Enforcer Deluxe Edition, Sudden Impact Deluxe Edition, The Dead Pool Deluxe Edition) Warner Home Video

Dirty Harry (Ultimate Collector's Edition) [Blu-ray] (Dirty Harry Special Edition, Magnum Force Deluxe Edition, The Enforcer Deluxe Edition, Sudden Impact Deluxe Edition, The Dead Pool Deluxe Edition) Warner Home Video

Ballad of Narayama (Shohei Imamura, 1983) Animeigo

To give you my take - There are a lot of DVD packages that give excellent value this week - I thoroughly enjoyed the Alain Delon: 5-Film Collection and think the price is fabulous. Ditto for the double-disc'er of Bonnie and Clyde (it's $15!). Warner Gangsters Collection, Vol. 3 may not be as strong as the first two in the series but seeing Bogie et all in action is always a treat (and an expert commentary for each of the six films!). Some individuals disagree with me about Lynch's Lost Highway DVD - they feel the darker image is accurate - I don't like the reddish skin tones - but still it should be considered very reasonably priced for fans of the film or director (just a shame it's bare-bones). Hard-core and classic Horror genre fans should definitely indulge in Darabont's The Mist. I haven't seen it, but Sukiyaki Western Django sure looks like a lot of fun. Finally, despite Leonard's indifference to the film - I LOVE Shyamalan's Unbreakable and will definitely indulge in the stellar image of the Blu-ray. Ohh... better mention - The Kite Runner is a darn good film!

New Reviews:

Hidalgo BR - Based loosely on accounts of the life of cowboy and long-distance rider, Frank T. Hopkins, we first find our hero on his way to deliver the orders that lead to the Wounded Knee Massacre of 1890. Like Tom Cruise's character in The Last Samurai, Hopkins goes into a mournful, though quieter, drunk. And like the Cruise character, he is seduced to another country to discover his destiny, which has even more to do with owning up to his own mixed blood lines (he is half-white, half-Indian) than any laurels he and his horse may win. DVD Release Date: April 1st, 2008

Unbreakable BR - Security guard, David Dunn (Bruce Willis), is returning home from New York to Philadelphia when his train is derailed at high speed. All are killed except himself who escapes injury quite literally unscathed. When he meets his anxious and semi-estranged wife (Robin Penn Wright) and boy (Spencer Treat Clark) he walks through throngs of people in a daze of survivor's guilt and what-the-hell-just-happened. And who wouldn't? Later, he finds a note on his car windshield asking him how many days he had ever been sick. A sensible question, under the circumstances. Eventually he makes his way to Limited Edition, a graphic comic book and art gallery managed by Elijah Price (Samuel L. Jackson). Elijah suffers from a genetic condition quite the opposite of Dunne's where his bones are subject to breaking as easily as a cracker – thus the name given by teasing schoolmates, "Mr. Glass." Gradually, with Elijah's prodding, Dunn becomes aware of something that he had gone to some pains to forget: his invulnerability to certain assaults on his body that would have vanquished the ordinary mortal. DVD Release Date: April 1st, 2008

The Kite Runner - The Kite Runner’ is the film of the international bestselling book which tells the story of Amir, a well-to-do boy from the Wazir Akbar Khan district of Kabul, who is haunted by the guilt of betraying his childhood friend Hassan, the son of his father's Hazara servant. It is set against a backdrop of tumultuous events, from the fall of the monarchy in Afghanistan through the Soviet invasion, the mass exodus of refugees to Pakistan and the United States, and the Taliban regime. DVD Release Date: March 25th, 2008

Five - Five sequences : 1) A piece of driftwood on the seashore, carried about by the waves 2) People walking on the seashore. The oldest ones stop by, look at the sea, then go away 3) Blurry shapes on a winter beach. A herd of dogs. A love story 4) A group of loud ducks cross the image, in one direction then the other 5) A pond, at night. Frogs improvising a concert. A storm, then the sunrise. BFI DVD Release Date: March 31st, 2008

Taras Bulba - Among the most spectacular and problematic of large-scale Hollywood epics, Taras Bulba (1962) originated as a dream project for actor Yul Brynner, who was at the height of his popularity after the success of The King and I (1956) and The Magnificent Seven (1960). The classic novel by one of Russia's leading writers, Nikolai Gogol, fuses a story of star-crossed romance and familial conflict with epic battle sequences, a perfect formula for big budget spectacle. However, the film's rocky production history and curious casting choices resulted in an idiosyncratic, frustrating, yet strangely impressive final result. DVD Release Date: March 25th, 2008

Super Rookie (Korean Drama) - Kang Ho, the rookie of the title, has applied to LK, a major Korean corporation. It had been awhile since his graduation from a nondescript university, and Kang Ho is no longer content to be just kicking around in nondescript short-term jobs or as a nondescript boxer with some pretty good moves once he gets the opportunity. Partly as a result of having his brains scrambled during his last match, Kang Ho is too dazed and confused to realize he is so very underqualified for the job he wants. Hell, there is some doubt that he can even complete the application. All the same, starting with a computer malfunction and middle management's need to hide that fact (having just purchased the expensive machinery that was responsible for the mistake), our rookie is taken into the company with the highest possible honors. The rest of the series deals with the consequences of that action for everyone involved, up and down the food chain.

Alain Delon: 5-Film Collection - includes five features that capture Delon's prime where he frequently embodies a youthful, handsome man not afraid to deal on the wrong side of the tracks (sometimes compared as the French James Dean). This pragmatic collection, composed of typical French thrillers, is an excellent way to indulge in some of his extensive work. The titles available are Diaboliquement vôtre (1967) aka Diabolically Yours, La Piscine (1969) aka The Swimming Pool, La Veuve Couderc (1971) aka The Widow Couderc, Le Gitan (1975) aka The Gypsy and Notre histoire (1984) aka Separate Rooms. DVD Release Date: March 25th, 2008

Bonnie and Clyde (Two-Disc Special Edition) - Reclaiming the American gangster movie after it had been stolen by the Nouvelle Vague, Penn's film was so successful (and so imitated) that it inevitably met with some grudging devaluation. But it's still great: half comic fairytale, half brutal fact, it reflects the essential ambiguity of its heroes (faithfully copied from history and the real-life Barrow gang which terrorised the American South in the early '30s) by treading a no man's land suspended between reality and fantasy. With its weird landscape of dusty, derelict towns and verdant highways, stunningly shot by Burnett Guffey in muted tones of green and gold, it has the true quality of folk legend. DVD Release Date: March 25th, 2008

Lost Highway - David Lynch's take on multiple-personality disorder in Lost Highway is decidedly nonhumanistic and relatively pessimistic--especially in relation to character development, this being a movie fatalistically constructed like a Mobius strip. Properly speaking, this isn't a movie with characters but with figures, each of them as overblown as a plastic inner tube. (The huge close-ups of eyes and lips that periodically blip through the narrative only add to the overall sense of abstraction.) DVD Release Date: March 25th, 2008

Warner Gangsters Collection, Vol. 3 - skirting with a sometimes dubious link to Gangsters Warner's new set is still filled with classic movies starring some of biggest movie legends of Hollywood gone by including Bogie, Edward G. and Cagney. The 6 film collection includes, each with an expert commentary, Picture Snatcher (1933), Lady Killer (1933), Smart Money (1931), Black Legion (1937), The Mayor of Hell (1933) and Brother Orchid (1940). DVD Release Date: March 25th, 2008

Sukiyaki Western Django - A lone man in the middle of the street, on his left, a gang, on his right another gang. Caught in the middle, he has no allegiances. This is a typical of a western movie, but this is where the regular finishes, and the unusual takes over. How can this movie be described? I can tell you its setup. The movie takes place a 'few hundred years' after the Naval Battle of Dannoura (1185). It takes place in Nevada, but in Japan, not in the US. It's populated by Japanese people with six-shooters (and swords), dressed in full cowboy regalia. Oh, and everybody speaks English. The movie contains overtones of samurai movies, elements of spaghetti westerns, passages from Shakespeare's 'Henry V' and includes a didgeridoo in the score. This can only be a Takashi Miike movie. DVD Release Date: February 6th, 2008

The Mist - The Mist is what a horror film should be - dark, tense, and punctuated by just enough gore to keep the viewer's flinch reflex intact. In fact, that movie's ending is so uncompromising that one must assume director Frank Darabont had final cut so the studio couldn't interfere. (It's worth noting that the ending is not the same as that of Stephen King's novella, but I won't mention how it has changed.) Darabont has fashioned a tense motion pictures that's ultimately more about paranoia, religious fanaticism, and the price of hopelessness than it is about monsters. But the creatures are present and accounted for, lurking in the white-out that is the mist. Someone has finally succeeded where John Carpenter failed with The Fog. DVD Release Date: March 25th, 2008

Next 2 weeks on the Calendar: