Newsletter - FOR THE WEEK

OF March 29th, 2010

This Week's Highlights

Way' xast sxelx'ált! - 21 new reviews this newsletter with Tarantino, Woo, Michael Mann, Guy Ritchie, Barry Levinson, Johnnie To and more obtaining Blu-ray treatment for their films... DVDs cover the gamut from Warner Archive Noirs and westerns to Argento, period royalty, Kitano and even Pinky Violence. Include 36 enticing calendar updates - from June Criterions (Antonioni, Visconti, Kiarostami, Jarmusch and Carol Reed) to vintage Chaplin in 1080P, sales and much more including a new contest (too easy for the initiated)!

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If there are DVD titles you'd like us to cover - please feel free to recommend!

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LATEST ADDITIONS to the Calendar: (PRE-ORDER & save!):

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Dumbo BD - Dumbo is Disney's fourth movie in the Pentatuch that includes Snow White (1937), Pinocchio (1940), Fantasia (1940) and Bambi (1942). Dumbo is credited for having saved the studio, for despite the popularity and critical acclaim heaped upon Snow White and Fantasia, these films were not moneymakers and Disney needed to reconsider his product. Would it be possible to make a less expensive movie that honored the direction he wanted to go in the medium? Just ask any of the dozen or so contributors to the extra features on this set. Blu-ray Release date: March 22nd, 2010

The Fastest Gun Alive - Gunman gone good George and his wife Dora are trying to live a peaceful life. But George's gunslinging ways are legendary - and attract the attention of other gunmen who feel up for a challenge. The couple moves to a new town in the hopes of finally finding a normal life. When George gets drunk and spills the beans, can he and Dora trust the townfolk to keep their secret? A Western with a message the whole family can enjoy. DVD Release Date: October 20th, 2009

Sherlock Holmes BD - I rather liked the "re-imagining" of Holmes by Guy Ritchie and Lionel Wigram (who doubles as one of the movie's more important producers.) As performed – I think that might be the right word – by Downey, I can see Holmes as a man of action, not just theory and deduction. Holmes isn't Nero Wolfe, after all. I like, too, that as smart as Holmes is here, he doesn't know everything about everything, and is perfectly willing to be surprised and delighted by some newfangled invention whose purpose and machinery escapes him. Blu-ray Release date: March 30th, 2010

Collateral BD - Director Michael Mann’s “Collateral” has an intoxicating vibe, which is reinforced by ambiance, a somber score by James Newton Howard and the use of high definition cameras by Dion Beebe and Paul Cameron. And not unlike “Lost in Translation,” “Collateral” succeeds because of its keen attention to the intricate nuances of its characters and the incoherent world they inhabit. Blu-ray Release date: March 30th, 2010

Bodysong - Drawing from 100 years of images, and from sources as diverse as Dziga Vertov's "Man With a Movie Camera" and Saudi TV, Pummell and editor Daniel Goddard splice images together with machine-gun editing that challenges the viewer to pay attention and make associations. In the place of dialogue or commentary, Radiohead's Jonny Greenwood offers a mysteries-of-the-universe musical comment that sometimes soothes and sometimes stimulates. DVD Release Date: March 22nd, 2010

Ecoute Le Temps - When her spiritualist mother is mysteriously murdered, sound engineer Charlotte (Emilie Dequenne) travels to her mother's country home where she had been giving tarot card readings. Charlotte discovers that some of the townspeople thought her mother was a witch. While recording sounds of the house settling, Charlotte's recorder starts picking up sounds and voices from the past - including her own - and she discovers that people who claimed not to know her mother were in fact her clients... DVD Release Date: May 5, 2009

Slogan - Commercial director Serge Faberge (Serge Gainsbourg) is having an affair with Evelyne (Jane Birkin, mother of Lou Doillon and Charlotte Gainsbourg), the 18 year old fiancée of friend Hugh (James Mitchell). His own pregnant wife Francoise (Andréa Parisy) usually does not mind his dalliances until he actually walks out on her and their newborn to move in with Evelyne but the lovers' relationship but the shoe is on the other foot when dashing stuntman Dado (Gilles Millinaire) catches Evelyne's eye. DVD Release Date: September 30, 2008

The Joy of Sex Education - From the impenetrably euphemistic to the breathtakingly explicit, this intriguing anthology takes us through 60 years of sex education in Britain from the 1910s to the 1970s. All 'unmentionable matters' pertaining to sex are dealt with, from the WW1 warning to soldiers about the dangers of cavorting with loose women in London's West End, 'Whatsoever a Man Soweth' (1917), to puberty pep-talks for girls on how to avoid pregnancy in 'Don't be Like Brenda' (1973). DVD Release Date: February 9th, 2009

Election BD - With Election, I dare say, that Johnnie To finally has matured. While he still is a director, who, from a western narrative point of view, leaps rather quickly from scene to scene, his earlier films often seeming to be missing scenes, Election shows a To, who allows authenticity and calm to enter his sphere, and while violence still is present, its not show boat slow-mo violence, but a sudden and more realistic display. From this alone, I welcome Election. If one then considers the politics concerning showing triad activity in HK films, not only is Election then To’s most mature, but also his most daring film to date. Blu-ray Release date: May 27th, 2009

Terrifying Girls' High School: Lynch Law Classroom - Not believing that her friend committed suicide Noriko (Miki Sugimoto) gets herself sent to the School of Hope to expose the murder. Also new to the school are Razorblade Remi (Misuzu Ota) - arrested for slashing her way through a gang of would-be rapists with a razorblade - and Kyoko (Seiko Saburi) who caused a delivery truck to crash when the driver made it clear he wasn't giving her a free ride. All three discover that lecherous Vice Principal Ishihara (Kenji Imai) rules the school through a "disciplinary committee" of girls who make sure their fellow classmates do not step out of line while enjoying their own kicks. DVD Release Date: October 31st, 2006

20,000 Years in Sing Sing - During the early sound era, the subject of prison reform was rarely addressed in Hollywood movies until the release of I Am a Fugitive From a Chain Gang (1932) which generated a storm of controversy and sparked public interest. After that, the topic became a subgenre of the crime melodramas so popular at the time and, not surprisingly, most of the best entries were from Warner Bros. who specialized in contemporary films with urban settings, often based on true events. DVD Release Date: July 4th, 2009

Conspirator - Making a move into more adult roles, 17-year-old Elizabeth Taylor plays the giddy young wife of a British Army officer (Robert Taylor). Their whirlwind romance and storybook marriage take a sudden, alarming turn when she discovers her handsome husband is a Communist agent under orders to perform acts of espionage. Torn between allegiance to her heart and to her country, she harbors her terrible secret, hoping her spouse will change his traitorous ways. But when her knowledge is secret no longer, she soon becomes a target. DVD Release Date: July 20th, 2009

The Natural BD - This upbeat adaptation of Bernard Malamud's gritty allegory of the world of baseball is one of those test cases for the mood or generosity of the spectator: give yourself over completely to its wide-eyed brand of mythologising, and it will reward you with a tidal wave of emotion, hero-worship and strange medieval morality tale; a flicker of disbelief, however, and you'll see nothing but its faults. The Arthurian basis to Redford's rise to baseball stardom means that the narrative can include very un-Hollywoodlike devices such as an unexplained 16-year gap when he is out in the cold, expiating his fall from grace with a murderous femme fatale. Blu-ray Release Date: April 6th, 2010

Vampyres BD - Motorist Ted (Murray Brown) picks up cloaked hitchhiker Fran (Marianne Morris) who takes him back to her decaying mansion - Hammer's Oakley Court - for some wine, some sex, and a little blood drinking. Little does he know that Fran and fellow blood-drinker Miriam (Anulka) have a habit of luring men back to the mansion and tear them to pieces with knives and teeth (their mutilated bodies are subsequently discovered at car crash sites with empty bottles of Carpathian wine; though no one seems to question why the drunken drivers are naked). Blu-ray Release Date: March 30th, 2010

The Stendhal Syndrome - While investigating a series of sexual assaults that have evolved into brutal murders, detective Anna Manni (Asia Argento) follows up on an anonymous tip that takes her to the Uffizi Gallery where she is overcome by the works of art and passes out (in reference to "The Stendhal Syndrome" so named because the experience was first described as happening to novelist Stendhal while he was visiting Florence in the nineteenth century). When she comes to, she does not remember her identity but finds understanding in stranger Alfredo (Thomas Kretschmann) who explains that great works of art have great power. Arrow DVD Release Date: March 22nd, 2010

The Card Player - One day, Detective Anna Mari (Stefania Rocca) receives an email challenging her to a video poker game. The stakes: the life of a British tourist who disappeared the day before. If she doesn't play or if she loses, her opponent will kill the victim. Her superiors order her not to play and soon they're fishing the tourist's body out of a lake. Just as Anna and British detective John Brennan (Liam Cunningham) start investigating on their own, the killer challenges Anna to another game with another victim and soon there's another body. Arrow DVD Release Date: March 22nd, 2010

Shamo BD - Cheang Pou-Soi's 2007 movie adaptation of the Japanese manga by Izo Hashimoto was, to put it mildly, not well-received by critics, even though it garnered nominations for Taiwan's Golden Horse for Adapted Screenplay, Cinematography and Action Choreography. The film's structure ignores traditional arcs and instead settles on a series of tableaux that feel more like punches to the gut than development of either character or plot. Many argue that the film's final reveal is not properly set up and our having to re-interpret our impressions of the first hour and a half is more of a betrayal than a flash of insight. Blu-ray Release date: May 26th, 2009

Anne of the Thousand Days / Mary, Queen of Scots - By the time Richard Burton had been signed by producer Hal B. Wallis to star in Anne of the Thousand Days (1969), the story of Henry VIII's marriage to his second wife, Anne Boleyn, the 44-year old star had already spent several years starring in period films with great success. Mary Queen of Scots was quite a character. Through three miserable marriages, religious battles, the loss of her son, imprisonment, and finally beheading, the ill-fated monarch was a melodrama waiting for a huge costume movie to bring her back to life. Mary Queen of Scots fulfills that need admirably, primarily due to the excellent performance of Vanessa Redgrave. DVD Release Date: September 18th, 2007

Blood and Bones - Pretty much a one-note film, centred on Kitano’s forceful central turn as the Korean who, having immigrated to Osaka and found it tough, takes out his frustration and machismo on his family. There are, certainly, some themes to this relentlessly grim, brutal movie – the infectious legacy of violence, the relationship between social inequality and private behaviour – and Kitano inflects his character with whatever subtle nuance is allowed (notably in the perverse tenderness sometimes extended towards his afflicted mistress), but it’s so insistent in its miserabilism that it’s hard to remain caught up in the repetitive proceedings. DVD Release Date: November 11th, 2008

Opera - When diva Mara Cecova (a role originally intended for Vanessa Redgrave then rewritten to be shot largely from a Steadicam POV) literally breaks a leg, understudy Betty (Cristina Marsillach) is thrust onto the stage for the opening night's performance of Verdi's MACBETH (in any form, a play rumored to bring bad luck). Betty is a smash hit but she has also gained the attention of a psychotic fan who starts gorily murdering members of the production while forcing Betty to watch (he tapes needles under her eyes to keep her from closing them). Arrow DVD Release Date: March 22nd, 2010

Pulp Fiction BD - Quentin Tarantino's second feature, Pulp Fiction, is at once immensely entertaining and remarkably weightless. The film's quintessential scene takes place outside the Jack Rabbit Slim's restaurant when Mia Wallace (Uma Thurman) tells Vincent Vega (John Travolta) not to be a "square." Forget the irony (after a ten year acting rut that included three Look Who's Talking films, Pulp Fiction's success made Travolta reputable again), Mia's line could be the film's mantra. Blu-ray Release Date: February 12th, 2010

The Killer BD - Hong Kong's preeminent director, John Woo, transforms genres from both the East and the West to create this explosive and masterful action film. Featuring Hong Kong's greatest star, Chow Yun-fat, as a killer with a conscience, the film is an exquisite dissection of morals in a corrupt society, highlighted with slow-motion sequences of brilliantly choreographed gun battles on the streets of Hong Kong. Blu-ray Release Date: March 30th, 2010
 

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