Newsletter - FOR THE WEEK

OF March 25th, 2019

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The 10th Anniversary Warner Archive SALE ends Monday - today (midnight) - 4 for $44 (you see the discount when you add four to your cart and go to 'Checkout'!) MANY NEW TITLES ADDED! (see bottom of newsletter)

Have you seen our Silent Auction?

A quality-filled week and we have a new Silent Auction page for our generous Patreon contributors. We have reviews of Blu-rays by Criterion, Universal, Shout! Factory, Paramount, Eureka, Kino... of films directed by Elia Kazan, Jim Jarmusch, Jan Nemec, Gillian Armstrong, Steven Spielberg, Samo Hung, Nathan Juran, Cyril Frankel, Mary Lambert, Férid Boughedir and others. Our Calendar has NEW updates of Criterion films-to-Blu-ray, including work by George Stevens, Sergey Bondarchuk, John Cameron Mitchell, Bruno Dumont, Ingmar Bergman and more. We also have our Feature Blu-ray posted for MARCH Enjoy!!

LISTING PAGES:

Cinema of Japan, Discs of the Year for 2018, The TOP 100 DISCS, Ingmar Bergman's Cinema, HAGSPloitation, BLAXPloitation, OZPloitation, 'WOMEN IN PRISON' CINEMA, 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)

Feature Blu-ray chosen for the Month of MARCH!

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NOTE: 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): There were many memorable films this past week. So much impressive cinema. My viewing of Elia Kazan's A Face in the Crowd via Criterion's Blu-ray was extremely impacting - far more than when I had seen it on DVD - isn't that frequently the way? Jan Nemec's Diamonds of the Night is a masterpiece - and it deservedly gets the Criterion Blu-ray treatment. 'Brilliant' seems an understatement. Spielberg's Schindler's List 4K UHD has made it into the Top 100 Desert Island Discs - a touching semi-biographical film with iconic performances from Neeson, Kingsley and Fiennes - the UHD format makes it breathtaking. Two Jim Jarmusch films make it to Criterion Blu-ray this week - minimalist genius apparent in Stranger Than Paradise and another warm look at humanity in the ingratiating Night on Earth - unique storytelling with emotional vision. The Deadly Mantis is one of the 'so bad it's good' variety of innocent 50's creature-features that has made it to Blu-ray thanks to Shout! Factory. This Was the Day That Engulfed the World in Terror! Yep. Gillian Armstrong's My Brilliant Career is a beautiful, lyrical biographical romance and the Criterion Blu-ray gives it the justice it deserves. Sammo Hung's Wheels on Meals ranks as one of Jackie Chan's most enjoyable action-larks. The Eureka Blu-ray leaves no stone unturned. Hammer Studio's The Witches may not be top-tier but has Joan Fontaine and an idyllic village setting - even underwhelming it has the studio's undeniable charisma and the Shout! Factory Blu-ray proves to be the better viewing experience to date with the inclusion of a new commentary. A Summer in La Goulette is a bittersweet cultural comedy - a worthwhile viewing on Kino's new Blu-ray. 1989's Pet Sematary received the upgrade to 4K UHD - an underdeveloped Stephen King-penned horror that improves in the new dynamic presentation.

"Every fighter has one fight that makes or breaks him." Elia Kazan

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Stranger Than Paradise BD - Rootless Hungarian emigre Willie (John Lurie), his pal Eddie (Richard Edson), and visiting sixteen-year-old cousin Eva (Eszter Balint) always manage to make the least of any situation, whether aimlessly traversing the drab interiors and environs of New York City, Cleveland, or an anonymous Florida suburb. With its delicate humor and dramatic nonchalance, Jim Jarmusch's one-of-a-kind minimalist masterpiece, Stranger Than Paradise, forever transformed the landscape of American independent cinema. Blu-ray Release Date: April 9th, 2019

My Brilliant Career BD - For her award-winning breakthrough film, director Gillian Armstrong drew on teenage author Miles Franklin’s novel, a celebrated turn-of-the-twentieth-century Australian coming-of-age story, to brashly upend the conventions of period romance. Headstrong young Sybylla Melvyn (Judy Davis, in a star-making performance), bemoans her stifling life in the backcountry, where her writerly ambitions receive little encouragement, and craves independence above all else. When a handsome landowner (Sam Neill), disarmed by her unruly charms, begins to court her, Sybylla must decide whether she can reconcile the prospect of marriage with the illustrious life’s work she has imagined for herself. Suffused with generous humor and a youthful appetite for experience, My Brilliant Career is a luminous portrait of an ardently free spirit. Criterion Blu-ray Release date: April 30th, 2019

Night on Earth BD - Five cities. Five taxicabs. A multitude of strangers in the night. Jim Jarmusch assembled an extraordinary international cast of actors (including Gena Rowlands, Winona Ryder, Armin Mueller-Stahl, Beatrice Dalle, and Roberto Benigni) for this hilarious quintet of tales of urban displacement and existential angst, spanning time zones, continents, and languages. Jarmusch's lovingly askew view of humanity from the passenger seat makes for one of his most charming and beloved films. Blu-ray Release Date: April 9th, 2019

A Face in the Crowd BD - Andy Griffith makes a spectacular film debut in this searing drama as Lonesome Rhodes, a philosophical country-western singer discovered in a tanktown jail by radio talent scout Patricia Neal and her assistant Walter Matthau. They decide that Rhodes is worthy of a radio spot, but the unforeseen result is that the gangly, aw-shucks entertainer becomes an overnight sensation not simply on radio but, thereafter, on television. As he ascends to stardom, Rhodes attracts fans, sponsors and endorsements by the carload, and soon he is the most powerful and influential entertainer on the airwaves. Beloved by his audience, Rhodes reveals himself to his intimates as a scheming, power-hungry manipulator, with Machiavellian political aspirations. He uses everyone around him, coldly discarding anyone who might impede his climb to the top (one such victim is sexy baton-twirler Lee Remick, likewise making her film debut). Blu-ray Release Date: April 23rd, 2019

Diamonds of the Night (Criterion) BD - Another outstanding example of Czech New Wave cinema, DIAMONDS OF THE NIGHT was directed in 1964 by the 27-year-old Jan Nemec and based on the writings of Holocaust survivor Arnost Lustig. Running just over an hour, the film compresses four days in the lives of two Jewish boys (Ladislav Jansky and Antonin Kumbera) who, while being transferred to a concentration camp, jump from the transport and escape into the woods. Physically and mentally exhausted, hungry, lost, and desperate, they scrounge for food and shelter and are later chased and caught by a group of old men, only to be released. As their fatigue increases, the boys begin to hallucinate, imagining that the trees are falling down on them or that swarms of ants are crawling on their bodies. Criterion Blu-ray Release Date: April 16th, 2019

Pet Sematary 4K UHD - After moving to an idyllic home in the countryside, life seems perfect for the Creed family...but not for long. Louis and Rachel Creed and their two young children settle in to a house that sits next door to a pet cemetery - built on an ancient Indian burial ground. Their mysterious new neighbor, Jud Crandall (Fred Gwynne), hides the cemetery's darkest secret...until a family tragedy brings the secret to life. Now, an unthinkable evil is about to be resurrected. 4K Ultra HD Release Date: March 26th, 2019

Wheels on Meals BD - Despite its mind-bogglingly goofy title, this 1984 comedy-adventure from longtime Chan cohort Hung works to good effect, never allowing itself to become too bogged down in martial arts set pieces or the long-winded expositional scenes that have cluttered up so many otherwise fine HK offerings of late. And of the four “name” directors working in HK today -- Hung, Chan, John Woo, and Tsui Hark -- Hung is the most accessible to Western audiences in terms of being able to follow what's going on up on the screen. Blu-ray Release Date: March 18th, 2019

The Witches BD - Originally released in 1966, The Witches is an unforgettably chilling pastoral horror from the legendary Hammer Films studio. Adapted for the screen by Nigel Kneale it also stars Joan Fontaine in her last major film role. Gwen Mayfield, an English schoolteacher working in an African missionary, suddenly finds herself being victimized by a tribe of local witch doctors. Exposed to the deadly powers of the occult she's left deeply traumatized. In an effort to recover Gwen takes up a position in a rural school within the British countryside. But the idyllic village surroundings become increasingly sinister as Gwen begins to uncover a nightmarish web of dark and satanic secrets. Shout! Factory Blu-ray Release date: March 19th, 2019

The Deadly Mantis BD - This is the one in which the "villain" is a huge, carnivorous praying mantis. After the titular insect has attacked several people in a remote Arctic region, Col. Joe Parkham (Craig Stevens) swings into action. Parkham and his associates, Dr. Ned Jackson (William Hopper) and Ned's assistant Margie Blake (Alix Talton), track the predatory mantis as it heads southward to Washington DC (how did it get past customs?) The green monstrosity meets its Waterloo in "Manhattan Tunnel," where it is bombarded with poison gas (a little Raid or Black Flag might have come in handy). Blu-ray Release Date: March 19th, 2019

Schindler's List 4K UHD - Based on a true story, Steven Spielberg's Schindler's List stars Liam Neeson as Oskar Schindler, a German businessman in Poland who sees an opportunity to make money from the Nazis' rise to power. He starts a company to make cookware and utensils, using flattery and bribes to win military contracts, and brings in accountant and financier Itzhak Stern (Ben Kingsley) to help run the factory. By staffing his plant with Jews who've been herded into Krakow's ghetto by Nazi troops, Schindler has a dependable unpaid labor force. For Stern, a job in a war-related plant could mean survival for himself and the other Jews working for Schindler. 4K Ultra HD Release Date: December 18th, 2018

A Summer in La Goulette BD - Set in a Tunisian melting-pot town in 1967 and loosely based on the reminiscences of filmmaker Ferid Boughedir, this bittersweet comedy-drama tells the tale of how the secret conspiracy between three teen girls to lose their virginity before they turn seventeen wreaks havoc on the lives and friendships between their disparate families. The fathers have known each other many years, but underneath their friendship lies a silent but strong undercurrent of tension that relates to their different religions and ethnic origins. Blu-ray Release Date: April 16th, 2019

Next 2 weeks on the Calendar