DVDBeaver Newsletter - May 5th, 2008
Malembe mpolo! - Hey it's Cinco de Mayo! 16 reviews this week - New Antonioni, Bresson, Kurosawa and Malle plus two strong films from 2007 - Criterions beside Warner and Lionsgate boxsets. Some timely Blu-ray reviews round out the strong week. There is another contest and some new and exciting Calendar additions. Facebook-er?: join DVDBeaver-ite's Facebook group HERE. We can communicate video clips, film news etc.
FEATURE DVD OF THE MONTH chosen for May...
Amazon's amazing Kindle is back in stock - Read about the future of 'reading' HERE
NEW MAY 5th CONTEST - identify this clip on our CONTEST PAGE to win a sealed MGM's Solomon and Sheba
Korean Drama (Truth) completed - winners and answers HERE.
LATEST Additions to the
Release Calendar
(PRE-ORDER!):
The Long Day Closes
(Terence Davies, 1992) R2 UK BFI
The Terence Davies Trilogy
- Children (1976), Madonna and Child (1980) and Death and Transfiguration (1983)
- R2 UK BFI
Cassandra's Dream
(Woody Allen, 2007) Weinstein Company
Jet Li's Fearless - Director's Cut
(Ronny Yu, 2006) – Universal
Miss Pettigrew Lives for a Day
(Bharat Nalluri, 2008) – Universal
The Other Boleyn Girl
(Justin Chadwick, 2008) - Sony Pictures
The Other Boleyn Girl
[Blu-ray]
(Justin Chadwick, 2008) - Sony Pictures
Master and Commander: The Far Side of the World
[Blu-ray]
(Peter Weir, 2003) – Fox
Bella
(Alejandro Gomez Monteverde, 2006) Lions Gate
How the West Was Won : Special Edition
(John Ford, Henry Hathaway and George Marshall, 1962) Warner Home Video
How the West Was Won: Special Edition
[Blu-ray]
(John Ford, Henry Hathaway and George Marshall, 1962) Warner Home Video
Warner Home Video Western Classics Collection
(Escape from Fort Bravo / Many Rivers to Cross / Cimarron 1960 / The Law and
Jake Wade / Saddle the Wind / The Stalking Moon) – Warner
Dark City
[Blu-ray]
(Alex Proyas, 1998) – Warner
Vantage Point
(Pete Travis, 2008) - Sony Pictures
Vantage Point
[Blu-ray]
(Pete Travis, 2008) - Sony Pictures
In the Line of Fire
[Blu-ray]
(Wolfgang Petersen, 1993) – Sony
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Easiest way to catch up is simply read the new Newsletter Archive HERE.
ONE VOICE (not Ellsworth Monkton Toohey): I Vinti may be the big and most positive surprise of the week, and expectantly the AE A Man Escaped shows its superiority over the NY'er with a great extra supplement documentary. Criterion's Malle features we covered, The Fire Within and The Lovers both have enticing positives. From last year's theatrical I'm Not There and The Diving Bell and the Butterfly are very much worth viewing IMHO. Much better than I thought was the entire Angelique Collection and I can see why Miss Mercier deserved all that attention back in the 60's (hubba, hubba). We thank Gregory for covering Kurosawa's The Quiet Duel. For fans of Trainspotting, this new BR is the definitive way to go. If you are prone to enjoying 'bad cinema' now-and-again then you'll like The Car.
I wasn't too keen on Warner's rehash of the sterling musicals in The Frank Sinatra and Gene Kelly Collection. They (Warner) could have done much better. Not striking any cords with me was Macon County Line (blechhh) and Leonard gives a big thumbs down to P.S. I Love You BR.
New Reviews:
Master and Commander - The Far Side of the World BR - It has been said that war is interminable boredom interrupted by moments of absolute, ferocious terror. To the extent Peter Weir wishes to honor that truism, he fills the spaces between the actual fighting with conversation – some of it philosophical and probing - and music – some of it played on the cello and violin by the ship's captain and it chief surgeon. If you know or know of the novels by Patrick O'Brian, you know these two men – friends for many years - to be opposite, yet complementary, Jungian types: the man of action vs. the man of reflection, the soldier vs. the humanist. Blu-ray DVD Release date: May 13, 2008
Hillary The Movie - uses Hillary Rodham
Clinton's own words and deeds to expose her record of cynicism, controversy, and
scandal. This new documentary illustrates that the politics of personal
destruction is Hillary's favored approach to dealing with anyone who stands in
her way. The film includes over 30 in-depth interviews with expert...
Trainspotting BR
- Former alcoholics and drug abusers often report that they don't miss the
substances nearly as much as the conditions under which they were used--the
camaraderie of the true drinkers' bar, for example, where the standing joke is
that the straight world just doesn't get it, doesn't understand that the disease
is life and the treatment is another drink. The reason there is a fierce joy in
''Trainspotting'', despite the appalling things that happen in it, is that it's
basically about friends in need. Blu-ray DVD
Release Date: April 23rd, 2008
The Frank Sinatra and Gene Kelly Collection
- rehash boxset of Anchors Aweigh (1945), On the Town (1949) and
Take Me Out to the Ball Game (1949) - "Gene Kelly and Frank Sinatra
teamed up for three musical comedies in this frothy confection of sailors on
leave in Hollywood, with gawky, shy young Sinatra tagging along with his worldly
buddy Kelly, who promises to show him the ropes... more than a little
sentimental, but full of first-rate entertainment." DVD Release Date: May
13th, 2008
P.S. I Love You BR
- The ghost of Ghost lurks within these frames – minus the mystery, the
romance, Swayze and Whoopi, a good script, the slightest hint of subtlety, and
the music of Maurice Jarre. On the other hand, what this movie does have is
Gerard Butler. If your only experience of this versatile actor is in leading an
army of 300 brave souls to certain death, you owe it to yourself to see what he
can do in civies. Blu-ray DVD Release date: May
6th, 2008
Angelique Collection - Based on the
best-selling French novels by Anne and Serge Golon that captured hearts
worldwide, the Angelique films chronicle the life of an adventurous heroine in
the Louis XIV era. Five classic film adaptations star the beautiful Michele
Mercier and the dashing Robert Hossein as her husband and true love. A
swashbuckling blend of action, intrigue and passion, the Angelique films
seamlessly capture the amazing life of a French country girl whose quest for
love and happiness leads her from the gutters of Paris to the Palaces
Versailles. DVD Release Date: April 29th, 2008
The Quiet Duel - Jumbled and jagged, Akira
Kurosawa's adolescent efforts grapple obsessively with regeneration in a society
struggling to piece itself back together, and it's no accident the idea of
healing pops up regularly -- razed-out postwar Japan is the perfect playground
for the director's grudging humanism, though the same medical interest also
makes a mid-career appearance later in the 19th-century scroll of Red Beard.
Here, however, Toshiro Mifune is the idealist half of the duo, a callow doctor
first seen at the operation table in 1944, a surgery all but thwarted by
exhaustion, leaky roofs, power shortages and assorted rudimentary resources.
Macon County Line - Alan Vint and his
brother Jesse form an agreeable duo, playing roistering brothers on a spree in
Macon County, Georgia, in the '50s. They pick up a girl, fool around some, and
run up against a redneck cop (Baer), who warns them on their way, then
mistakenly goes on the rampage after them when he finds his wife raped and
murdered. As the film moves from rompish comedy into something altogether
darker, its moral tone becomes more overbearing, and the blood-spattered ending
(the script is based on fact, but fails to prepare its ground adequately) seems
to come from a different movie altogether. DVD Release Date: May 6th, 2008
I Vinti - Commonly and to some extent
unjustly written off as a failure, in part because of alterations imposed by
censorship pressures that marred the first two episodes, Michelangelo
Antonioni's daring second feature (1952), originally released in England as
Youth and Perversion, consists of three separate sketches chronicling
senseless murders committed by young men in France, Italy, and England--a
contemporary existentialist document that could almost have been co-scripted by
Albert Camus. What's most striking in all three parts of the film is the
integration of incident with landscape without psychologizing--something of an
Antonioni staple--and the last and best segment strikingly anticipates Blowup
by offering not only a corpse found in a park but a tennis match glimpsed in the
final shot. Jean-Pierre Mocky, later a New Wave director, plays one of the
French youths in the first section, and Fay Compton plays the murder victim in
the last.
The Car - It's like a cheapo, grindhousy
version of Steven Spielberg's
Duel. None of that film's character,
inventiveness or subtleties but plenty of down-home creepiness. The direction is
surprisingly adept as is the cinematography. You really have to love 'bad'
cinema to accept this. It is really the type of film to develop a big cult niche
- Brolin is perfect. Personally, I really get in the mood for these type of
flicks - all 70's cheese... and I love it. To each his own. If you are keen then
this is the best looking edition to own. Really, let your hair down - it's a lot
of fun. DVD Release Date: May 6th, 2008
A Man Escaped - Bresson totally involves
the viewer in this compelling and thrilling tale of courage and faith, which is
all the more authentic for its use of non-professional actors and the director's
sparse style. The film's stunning denouement, to the accompaniment of Mozart's
sublime Mass in C Minor, is spiritually moving and succeeds in taking the story
onto a different plane. AE DVD Release Date: April 28th, 2008
The Lovers - In Malle's second feature, he
continued his association with new star Moreau in an (at the time) controversial
study of bourgeois emptiness and sexual yearnings. She plays a chic, high
society wife with money, a daughter, smart friends and a casual lover. Then one
night, she makes passionate love with a young student of a few hours
acquaintance, and leaves it all for a new life. If it now looks too much like an
angry young sensualist's movie, the combination of highly pleasurable body
language, Brahms on the soundtrack, and the ravishing, velvety monochrome
photography of Henri Decaë proves hard to resist. Criterion DVD Release Date:
May 13th, 2008
The Fire Within - Arguably the finest of
Malle's early films, this is a calmly objective but profoundly compassionate
account of the last 24 hours in the life of a suicide. Ronet gives a remarkable,
quietly assured performance as the alcoholic who, upon leaving a clinic, visits
old friends in the hope that they will provide him with a reason to live. They
don't, and Malle's achievement lies not only in his subtle but clear delineation
of his protagonist's emotions but in his grasp of life's compromises; his
portrait of Parisian society is astringent, never facile. Criterion DVD
Release Date: May 13th, 2008
I'm Not There - If there’s a director at
work today to trust with your musical legacy—as Dylan has—it’s Haynes, who dives
into his pop stars like the journalist from Velvet Goldmine and consistently
arrives at the tender truth of self-reinvention. (Were Richard Carpenter to
really watch Haynes’s Barbie-doll Superstar, he’d see it as empathetic toward
Karen and him both.) Much has already been made of Haynes’s casting of six
different actors to play Dylan, each providing a different shade of ego. But the
takeaway here is less slippery chameleon than tribute to an artist’s fecundity:
If you’re seeking blues credibility, why not see yourself as a wandering black
troubadour child (the amazing Marcus Carl Franklin) instead of a Minnesotan Jew?
DVD Release Date: May 6th, 2008
Pearl Diver - is a well-told,
well-photographed, well-acted film. There is sparse dialogue that goes with the
sparse life in this community. Houses are spotlessly clean and people readily
share to help their friends in need. It is, indeed, a community. The landscape,
with fields and sunsets, becomes part of the story, as director King uses it
almost like having a curtain drop in a play to announce the end of one act and
the beginning of another. DVD Release Date: April 29th, 2008
The Diving Bell and the Butterfly - Julian
Schnabel’s adaptation is, like ‘Before
Night Falls’, a tender and sensuously sad film, at once
empathic and expressionist in its immersion in Bauby’s bathysphere. The movie
first places us in the POV of Bauby (Mathieu Amalric) – we even watch from
within as his useless right eye is sewn shut – and then unlocks the man’s
memories and fantasies, his ecstasies and regrets. (And his dad: the scenes with
the incomparable Max Von Sydow’s as Bauby’s father are almost unbearably
moving.) DVD Release Date: April 29th, 2008
Next
2 weeks on the Calendar:
Week of May 5th, 2008
(Alejandro Gomez Monteverde, 2006) Lions Gate (Elliot Silverstein, 1977) Universal (Little Fugitive: Special Edition / Lovers and Lollipops / Weddings and Babies) - Kino (Todd Haynes, 2007) - Weinstein Company (Richard Compton, 1974) Warner Home Video (Abel Gance, 1923) Flicker Alley (Mitchell Lichtenstein, 2007) Weinstein (Two-Disc Special Edition) (Jan de Bont, 1996) Warner [Blu-ray] (Jan de Bont, 1996) Warner
Week of May 12th
(Bernard Rapp, 2000) Synkronized (Benji Garcia, 2006) Cinequest (Raoul Walsh, 1930) 20th Century FoxButch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid
[Blu-ray] (George Roy Hill,1969) 20th Century Fox (Lewis Gilbert, 1958) United Artists (Jean-Luc Godard, 1967) KOCH Lorber FilmsThe Chronicles of Narnia: The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe
[Blu-ray] (Andrew Adamson, 2005)The Classic Sci-Fi Ultimate Collection Vol 1 & 2
- The Mole People (1956), Tarantula (1955), The Incredible Shrinking Man (1957), The Monolith Monsters (1957), Monsters on Campus (1958), Cult of the Cobra (1955), Dr. Cyclops (1940), The Land Unknown (1957), The Deadly Mantis (1957), The Leech Woman (1960) - Universal (André De Toth, 1959) - United Artists (Sergio Leone, 1971) - United ArtistsFox Classic Western Collection
(Rawhide / The Gunfighter / Garden of Evil) - 20th Century FoxThe Frank Sinatra and Gene Kelly Collection
(On the Town / Anchors Aweigh / Take Me out to the Ball Game) Warner Home VideoFrank Sinatra - The Golden Years Collection
(Some Came Running / The Man with the Golden Arm / The Tender Trap / None but the Brave / Marriage on the Rocks) Warner Home VideoFrank Sinatra - The Early Years Collection
(It Happened in Brooklyn / Step Lively / The Kissing Bandit / Double Dynamite / Higher and Higher) Warner Home Video (Jean-Luc Godard, 1969) KOCH Lorber Films (Joseph M. Newman, 1959) - United Artists (Masahiro Takada, 2006) VizIndiana Jones: The Adventure Collection
(Indiana Jones And The Raiders Of The Lost Ark: Special Edition, Indiana Jones And The Temple Of Doom: Special Edition, Indiana Jones And The Last Crusade: Special Edition) ParamountIndiana Jones and the Last Crusade
(Special Collector's Edition)Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom - Special Edition
(Steven Spielberg, 1984) ParamountJohn Wayne: The Fox Westerns Collection
(The Big Trail, North to Alaska, The Comancheros, The Undefeated) - 20th Century Fox (Yu Li, 2007) New Yorker (Anthony Mann, 1958) MGM (Richard Wilson, 1955) United ArtistsMaster and Commander: The Far Side of the World
[Blu-ray] (Peter Weir, 2003) - FoxMission: Impossible The Fourth TV Season
- Paramount Home Video (Roy Ward Baker, 1950) United Artists (Sergio Corbucci, 1966) MGM (Roy Ward Baker, 1957) - United ArtistsRaiders of the Lost Ark - Special Edition
(Steven Spielberg, 1981) ParamountRat Pack Ultimate Collector's Edition
(Ocean's 11, Robin And The 7 Hoods, 4 For Texas and Sergeants 3) WarnerThe Rat Patrol: The Complete Series
(1966-68) - MGM (Roger Corman, 1964) United Artists (Stanley Kramer, 1969) - United ArtistsShinobi: Heart Under Blade - Special Edition
[Blu-ray] (Ten Shimoyama, 2005) Funimation (Andrew V. McLaglen, 1967) MGM (William Wyler, 1940) MGM
"You have enemies? Good. That means you've stood up for something, sometime in your life.''- Winston Churchill
Cheers,
Gary