Newsletter - FOR THE WEEK

OF April 29th, 2019

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Servus! An excellent week of reviewed Blu-rays this week by Criterion, Indicator, Kino, Eureka Classics, Arrow, Vinegar Syndrome... of films directed by David Lynch, Anthony Mann, Billy Wilder, Nicolas Roeg, David Mamet, Michael Haneke, Basil Dearden, Henry King, Richard Loncraine, Jack Gold, St. John Legh Clowes, Nico Mastorakis, Richard Friedman  and others. Our Calendar has last week's updates of films-to-Blu-ray, including July Criterions and work by Alan J. Pakula, Spike Lee, Marcel Pagnol, Agnieszka Holland, Josef von Sternberg, Buster Keaton, Claude Lanzmann, Blake Edwards, Jack Arnold, John Woo, Jean-Luc Godard, Sam Peckinpah, Joseph Losey, Chan-wook Park, Delbert Mann, Daniel Mann, Philip Kaufman, Mitchell Leisen, Nathan Juran and more. We also have our Feature Blu-ray posted for MAY 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 MAY!

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ONE VOICE (not Ellsworth Monkton Toohey): A full week to say the least with Michael Haneke’s notorious Funny Games getting the Criterion Blu-ray treatment. An impacting treatise on violence and entertainment by a master provocateur. David Lynch fans are very pleased to have the subversive Blue Velvet released on Blu-ray by Criterion via a director-approved 4K-restored image with extensive supplements. I now have one of my all-time favorite westerns on Blu-ray with Anthony Mann's Winchester 73' on the WVG (German) release. Classic cinema. A totally 're-watchable' film, David Mamet's twisty con-expose House of Games come to Blu-ray from Criterion. It includes the previous commentary and more. It whets my whistle for The Spanish Prisoner coming out next week. Henry King's The Song of Bernadette - one of the rare Hollywood studio films to address spiritual belief and religious conviction in a serious and complex fashion - has been transferred to Blu-ray by Eureka Classic in the UK in a desirable package. No Orchids for Miss Blandish is a mixture of sex, violence and immorality, and tells the brutal story of a kidnapped heiress who falls for one of her crazed captors. It gets the Indicator Blu-ray treatment including the US cut "Black Dice" and a plethora of extras. Billy Wilder's delightful One, Two, Three is brought to Region 'B' Blu-ray by Masters of Cinema. Cujo is one of the better Stephen King adaptations and it gets a positively stacked 2-disc Blu-ray release from Eureka in the UK with new Lee Gambin commentary and 8 interviews. Horror fans delight. Nicolas Roeg's Track 29 bets a Blu-ray from Indicator - ambitious, ambiguous and surreal... those who love the enigmatic director's work have something new to indulge in. Roger Moore is The Man Who Haunted Himself in an unusual psychological thriller that Kino have transferred to Region 'A' Blu-ray. Bellman and True is Richard Loncraine's tense Brit heist thriller on Blu-ray from Indicator with two alternate presentations of the film. Who? is a fascinating cold-war thriller/sci-fi hybrid starring Elliott Gould and on Blu-ray from Kino. Sacred Stiff is an overripe 80s horror that Arrow has brought to loaded Blu-ray and Nico Mastorakis' sexploitation In the Cold of the Night is, debatably, described as a 'ultra-stylized, DePalma-esque, neo-noir erotic thriller'. Hmmm......

"Sex is a doorway to something so powerful and mystical, but movies usually depict it in a completely flat way." David Lynch

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Funny Games BD - Michael Haneke’s most notorious provocation, Funny Games spares no detail in its depiction of the agony of a bourgeois family held captive at their vacation home by a pair of white-gloved young men. In a series of escalating “games,” the sadistic duo subject their victims to unspeakable physical and psychological torture over the course of a night. A home-invasion thriller in which the genre’s threat of bloodshed is made stomach-churningly real, the film ratchets up shocks even as its executioners interrupt the action to address the audience, drawing queasy attention to the way that cinema milks pleasure from pain and stokes our appetite for atrocity. With this controversial treatise on violence and entertainment, Haneke issued a summation of his cinematic philosophy, implicating his audience in a spectacle of unbearable cruelty. Blu-ray Release Date: May 14th, 2019

Winchester 73' BD - A 187, 44-40 caliber Winchester rifle is the star of the this motion picture. Every so often a rifle comes along that is just perfect - "1 in 1000" they call it. 'Winchester 73' was a revolutionary film in the development of Hollywood westerns. It almost single-handedly rescued the western genre and its box-office success acknowledged Anthony Mann for his key role in attaining its allure and stature. This was one of many westerns collaborating with Jimmy Stewart, helping to revive his post war acting image. Blu-ray Release Date: February 22nd, 2019

Blue Velvet (Criterion) BD - Home from college, Jeffrey Beaumont (Kyle MacLachlan) makes an unsettling discovery: a severed human ear, lying in a field. In the mystery that follows, by turns terrifying and darkly funny, writer-director David Lynch burrows deep beneath the picturesque surfaces of small-town life. Driven to investigate, Jeffrey finds himself drawing closer to his fellow amateur sleuth, Sandy Williams (Laura Dern), as well as their person of interest, lounge singer Dorothy Vallens (Isabella Rossellini)—and facing the fury of Frank Booth (Dennis Hopper), a psychopath who will stop at nothing to keep Dorothy in his grasp. With intense performances and hauntingly powerful scenes and images, Blue Velvet is an unforgettable vision of innocence lost, and one of the most influential American films of the past few decades. Criterion Blu-ray Release Date: May 28th, 2019

House of Games BD - Pulitzer Prize-winning playwright and screenwriter David Mamet first sat in the director's chair for this sly, merciless thriller. Mamet's witty tale of a therapist and best-selling author (Lindsay Crouse) who must confront her own obsessions when she meets an attractive cardsharp (Joe Mantegna) is as psychologically acute as it is full of twists and turns, a rich character study told with the cold calculation of a career criminal. Blu-ray Release Date: May 14th, 2019

Sacred Stiff BD - Mary Page Keller plays Kate Christopher, a singer who moves into an old colonial mansion with her son and psychologist boyfriend David (Stevens). But when they make a strange and gruesome discovery in the boarded-up attic, it soon becomes clear that the mansion carries with it a dark and blood-stained past and one that is about to terrorize them in the present. Blu-ray Release Date: April 22nd, 2019

In the Cold of the Night BD - High profile fashion photographer Scott Bruin has been suffering from a series of increasingly disturbing and violent dreams in which he savagely attacks and murders a young woman. Fearing for his sanity, Scott begins to investigate these strange visions, but slowly starts to believe that these all-too-real seeming nightmares might not be dreams after all and that the woman in them is in imminent danger. As his investigation progresses, Scott unwittingly finds himself in the center of a sinister conspiracy much stranger than his wildest nightmares. Blu-ray Release Date: March 26th, 2019

The Man Who Haunted Himself BD - In this creepy psychological thriller, conservative executive Harold Pelham (a harrowing and atypical performance by Roger Moore) is involved in a car accident and declared momentarily dead. When he’s eventually released from the hospital, Pelham discovers that his exact double has recently been seen in places that he’s never been, taken over his family, undermined his business and even begun an extramarital affair. Is Pelham being stalked by a doppelgänger with a taste for the wild life, or is he simply a man going insane? The Man Who Haunted Himself was Roger Moore’s last movie before taking over the role of James Bond on seven 007 classics, as well as the final film by legendary director Basil Dearden. Blu-ray Release Date: May 7th, 2019

Bellman and True BD - Adapted by Desmond Lowden from his novel of the same name, Bellman & True is a tense heist thriller starring Bernard Hill as a computer programmer blackmailed by gangsters into hacking a bank security system. Directed by Richard Loncraine Bellman & True deftly balances dramatic realism with stark black comedy and nail-biting suspense. Produced by HandMade Films, Bellman & True is a fine companion piece to their successful thrillers The Long Good Friday and Mona Lisa. Blu-ray Release Date: May 27th, 2019

Track 29 BD - The explosive combination of director Nicolas Roeg (Bad Timing, Don’t Look Now, The Man Who Fell to Earth) and writer Dennis Potter (The Singing Detective) created one of British cinema’s most unique and disquieting works – the hugely underrated Track 29. Freely adapted from Potter’s BBC TV play Schmoedipus, this unsettling film stars Theresa Russell as an unhappy, possibly unstable, housewife who welcomes a young man (Gary Oldman) into her home when he claims to be her long-lost son.... Blu-ray Release Date: May 27th, 2019

Who? BD - Adapted from the novel by famed science fiction writer Algis Budrys, Who? is a fascinating cold-war thriller/sci-fi hybrid. Elliott Gould is an FBI agent trying to determine the true identity of a top US physicist who was horrifically injured in a car accident in East Berlin. The scientist is returned to the West encased in a metal mask and body-suit, reconstructed via cybernetic surgery. Is the man behind the metal mask who he claims to be, or is he a Soviet dupe trained to infiltrate US security? Blu-ray Release Date: May 27th, 2019

One, Two, Three BD - Coarse Cold War satire, structured largely as farce, with Cagney as the aggressive Coca-Cola executive in West Berlin, trying desperately to win advancement by selling the beverage to Russia, and simultaneously required to prevent his boss from discovering that the latter's bird-brained daughter has married a rabid Commie from East Berlin. Marvellous one-liners, of course, and Cagney, spitting out his lines with machine-gun rapidity in his final film until his belated appearance in 'Ragtime', is superb (and superbly backed by a fine cast). Masters of Cinema Blu-ray Release date: April 15th, 2019

No Orchids for Miss Blandish BD - Based on the shocking novel by James Hadley Chase, No Orchids for Miss Blandish is mixture of sex, violence and low morals made it one of the most controversial films of the late 1940s. The story tells of a pampered heiress (Linden Travers) who is abducted on her wedding night by a gang of small time hoods, in what starts out as a jewel robbery and turns into a kidnapping/murder when one of them kills the groom. Indicator Blu-ray Release Date: May 27th, 2019

The Song of Bernadette BD - Based on the best-selling historical novel by Franz Werfel, the film chronicles the life of 14-year-old Bernadette Soubirous, who began seeing visions of the Blessed Virgin Mary in Lourdes, France in 1858. When news of Bernadette’s vision first spreads through the town, there are those who decry her as mentally unsound, while others wholeheartedly believe – particularly when the spring that erupts near the grotto that housed the visitations contains water that seems to have miraculous healing properties. Eureka Blu-ray Release Date: April 15th, 2019

Cujo BD - A lovable St. Bernard becomes rabid and terrorizes a small community. In rural Maine, married couple (Dee Wallace, Daniel Hugh-Kelly) struggle to repair their crumbling marriage, while their young son (Danny Pintauro) befriends the hulking, but lovable St. Bernard owned by the town's mechanic (Ed Lauter). With her husband out of town, she and her son take their decrepit car for repairs at the mechanic's remote farmhouse. As the aging Pinto sputters, stops and dies, Cujo appears. The once docile dog has undergone a hideous transformation - and has become a demonic, impeccable killer possessed of an almost supernatural strength and unholy cunning. Eureka Blu-ray Release date: April 29th, 2019
 

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