Newsletter - FOR THE WEEK

OF May 24th, 2010

This Week's Highlights

Rimaykullayki! Some debatable purchases this week with Stanley Kubrick, Sergio Leone, Tim Burton, Patrice Leconte, John Hillcoat and Clint Eastwood directed films put to Blu-ray. We have Noir leaning DVDs, there are Sales, mucho calendar updates, a new contest with a GREAT Criterion DVD prize! Enjoy!

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May 24th CONTEST - identify the clip on the CONTEST PAGE to win a sealed Criterion DVD (new) of Walkabout  Best of luck!

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

Gary at 2ze dot com

Amazon Blu-ray Blowout HERE

• The Movies & TV Boxed Set Sale (up to 60% OFF!)

• WORLD CINEMA SALE STILL ON - UP To 70% OFF HERE

• SALES: US Blu-ray up to 53% OFF        

•  Amazon France Blu-ray SALE (BUY 1 get 1 FREE!)

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

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Absolute Power BD - Most thrillers depend on chase scenes and shoot-outs. Some of best scenes in ``Absolute Power'' involve dialogue. The cop immediately fingers Luther Whitney as a possible suspect (he's one of ``only six guys alive'' who could have gotten into the mansion), and interviews him in a museum dining room. Eastwood, wearing half-glasses and a cloth cap that accentuate his age, smiles laconically and says, ``Go down a rope in the middle of the night? If I could do that, I'd be the star of my AARP meetings.'' Blu-ray Release date: June 1st, 2010

The Sun Sets at Dawn - If there's an object lesson in the gap between expectation and reality, The Sun Sets At Dawn may be it. A product of the Holiday Pictures division of Eagle-Lion Films (which is sort of like saying Starvation Alley off Poverty Row), and the work of a director, Paul Sloane, whose career began in the First World War and who hadn't worked for 11 years (and who had one more – Japanese – movie left in him), it doesn't inspire much confidence. But it has an imaginative narrative structure and a mood and, so much as its pitiful resources would allow, even something of a look. DVD Release Date: January 26th, 2010

The Man With No Name Trilogy BD - The box set includes the iconic Leone westerns 'A Fistful of Dollars,' 'For A Few Dollars More,' and 'The Good, The Bad, and The Ugly' - all in 1080P resolution. The Man With No Name (Italian: Uomo senza nome) as played by American actor Clint Eastwood in what is often called "The Dollars Trilogy". Blu-ray Release date: June 1st, 2010

The Shadow Within - Marie Dumont (Hayley J. Williams) has never gotten over the death of her son Maurice's (Laurence Belcher) twin Jacques at birth. Their lonely rural French village has been hit by an outbreak of diphtheria that has claimed several of the town's children (while many of the husbands have been recruited by the army). Maurice has always had a special relationship with his dead twin that frustrates mother who behaves coldly towards him; wishing that Jacques had been the one to survive. DVD Release Date: May 25th, 2010

Mega Shark vs. Giant Octopus BD - In the melting Arctic, two prehistoric sea creatures have been unleashed from their tombs of ice. Bigger, stronger, and faster than any animal our modern world has seen, they terrorize the ocean with an appetite for destruction that engulfs anything in their path. When Mega Shark and Giant Octopus turn on each other however, a spectacular battle for supremacy of the sea unfolds. Blu-ray Release date: May 18th, 2010

35 Shots of Rum - Widely hailed as one of the best films of 2009, the latest from the renowned director of Beau Travail, Claire Denis' sublime 35 Shots of Rum is the moving story of a father and daughter whose close-knit, tender relationship is disrupted by a handsome young suitor. Sumptuously filmed and featuring an evocative score by the Tindersticks, 35 Shots of Rum casts a lovely spell unlike any other movie you've seen. DVD Release Date: April 20, 2010

No Orchids for Miss Blandish - 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. Despite her terrifying ordeal, Miss Blandish finds herself falling in love with the gang leader, Slim Grisson (Jack LaRue). They plan to run off together, but the rest of the gang can t see parting with a potential million dollar ransom, or leaving a witness alive -- even if it means killing Slim Grisson to get to her. The book itself was ferociously condemned, provoking George Orwell and praised the sets, the acting, the smoothly effective direction are all good. Chase s novel was alleged to be the most popular book amongst serving British troops during WWII. DVD Release Date: May 25th, 2010

Django BD - Originally banned in Britain for its comic-strip iconoclasm and graphic violence, this rates alongside Leone's 'Dollars' trilogy as one of the daddies of the spaghetti/paella Western. It's a clean- up-and-paint-the-town-blood-red revenge drama with a difference. Nero's mud-spattered ex-Yankee soldier, first seen squelching towards a US-Mexican border ghost town, a coffin forever in tow, has every Western hero's quality in extremis. His speed-of-light gunslinger outlaw has a romantic heart - his wife was killed by one of Major Jackson's KKK-like henchmen - and an enigmatic morality. He solves the war between Jackson's men and General Rodríguez' bandidos by dispensing death to all, but his sympathies are shown when he later teams up with Rodríguez for a gold heist. Corbucci's style is a mix of social realism, highly decorative visuals, and finely mounted action sequences. For the rest, there are enough mud-wrestling prostitutes, whippings, ear-loppings, explosions and scenes of wholesale slaughter to keep any muchacho happy. Blu-ray Release Date: May 25th, 2010

Alice in Wonderland BD - It all seemed like such a natural fit -- Burton and Lewis Carroll, Depp as the key component in fiction's most eccentric tea party, and 3D put at the service of a story offering unlimited visual possibilities. Not that it's gone all wrong; not entirely. But for all its clever design, beguiling creatures and witty actors, the picture feels far more conventional than it should; it's a Disney film illustrated by Burton, rather than a Burton film that happens to be released by Disney. Blu-ray Release date: June 1st, 2010

The Fernando Arrabal Collection 2 - The 3-Disc set includes- (1)Car Cemetery (1983): Combining punk rock and post-apocalyptic mayhem, Arrabal's outrageous adaptation of his infamous 1958 stage play is a gallows-humor romp in a wretched dystopia. One of Arrabal's most rare and wanted films. (2)The Emperor of Peru (1982): A charming and phantasmagoric children's film that stars Mickey Rooney. Rarely seen outside of a brief theatrical run and a long out-of-print videocassette release. (3)And three bonus films as part of the exclusive box set: Farewell, Babylon! (1992), Borges, Life of a Poet (1998) Arrabal, Panik Cineast (2007). DVD Release Date: February 23rd, 2010

Black Dahlia - A psychotic, Satan-worshipping schoolgirl (Elissa Dowling) and two hulking psychopaths dupe bimbos into auditioning at an abandoned prison for the role of the Black Dahlia in order to disembowel them and leave the parts strewn across modern-day Los Angeles. As more experienced detectives mill around the crime scene talking about "bangers and mash" rookie cop Kevin (Sutton Christopher) approaches a 92 year old film producer - whose caregiver is the psychotic schoolgirl - who knew the Dahlia pretending to be an obsessed fan but Kevin himself might be getting a little too obsessed as the Dahlia haunts his dreams. DVD Release Date: October 10th, 2006

Dogora BD - Dogora was born of two vying forces that created an emotional explosion in Oscar nominated writer/director Patrice Leconte (THE HAIRDRESSER'S HUSBAND): A musical urge written in an imaginary language, "The Dogorian" and a visual urge, inspired by images, faces, landscapes magnified with the vital force of Cambodia. The marriage of these two emotions, delivers a a film without a narrative, actors or plot. DOGORA follows in the footsteps of the hugely-popular, visually-splendid BARAKA and is now re-mastered in stunning High Definition and presented on Blu-ray for the first time ever in North America. Blu-ray Release date: May 18th, 2010

The Road BD - From Cormac McCarthy, author of No Country For Old Men, comes the highly anticipated big screen adaptation of the beloved, best-selling and Pulitzer Prize-winning novel, The Road. An all-star cast are featured in this epic post-apocalyptic tale of the survival of a father and his young son as they journey across a barren America that was destroyed by a mysterious cataclysm. A masterpiece adventure, The Road boldly imagines a future in which men are pushed to the worst and the best that they are capable of - a future in which a father and his son are sustained by love. Blu-ray Release Date: May 25th, 2010

Spartacus BD - Stanley Kubrick directed a cast of screen legends – including Kirk Douglas as the indomitable gladiator that led a Roman slave revolt – in the sweeping epic that defined a genre and ushered in a new Holywood era. The assured acting, lush Technicolor cinematography, bold costumes and visceral fight sequences won Spartacus four Oscars; the blend of politics and sexual suggestion scandalized audiences. Today Kubrick’s controversial classic, the first film to openly defy Hollywood’s blacklist, remains a landmark of cinematic artistry and history. Blu-ray Release Date: May 25th, 2010
 

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