Newsletter - FOR THE WEEK

OF May 31st, 2010

This Week's Highlights

Eou! A fabulous week with Egoyan, Imamura, Jarmusch, Scorsese and The Hughes brothers making it to Blu-ray while DVD has Jacques Feyder and a diner full of Noir. Criterion - Masters of Cinema, a potent Warner Archive sale, a plethora of calendar updates, a new contest with another GREAT Criterion DVD prize! Too much - I'm going to have a cup of tea now.

CHECK OUT OUR WBShop Archive Link SALE - less than $14/disc HERE

FOLLOW US on TWITTER! (where we post all important reviews, contests - prizes, calendar updates - plus much more...)

May 31st CONTEST - identify the clip on the CONTEST PAGE to win a sealed Criterion DVD of Stagecoach Best of luck!

FEATURE DVD and Blu-ray chosen for June 2010 HERE

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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Johnny Eager - So beginning with A Yank At Oxford (1938) in which Taylor showed off the hair on his chest, MGM began putting him in more he-man roles. Johnny Eager was another attempt by the studio to toughen up Taylor's image and rid him of the "pretty-boy" label once and for all. Sporting a new, manly moustache, Taylor plays a cold-blooded gangster who succumbs to the charms of Turner, the district attorney's daughter. DVD Release Date: May 5th, 2009

Life (Attenborough) BD - Discover the glorious variety of life on Earth and the innovative, intelligent and sometimes bizarre tactics animals and plants employ in order to survive. More than four years in the making, taking full advantage of the latest advances in filming technology, this breathtaking ten-part blockbuster reveals the natural world’s most remarkable behavior in unprecedented depth and detail. Blu-ray Release date: June 1st, 2010

Shutter Island BD - Expert, screw-turning narrative filmmaking put at the service of old-dark-madhouse claptrap, "Shutter Island" arguably occupies a similar place in Martin Scorsese's filmography as "The Shining" does in Stanley Kubrick's. In his first dramatic feature since "The Departed," Scorsese applies his protean skill and unsurpassed knowledge of Hollywood genres to create a dark, intense thriller involving insanity, ghastly memories, mind-alteration and violence, all wrapped in a story about the search for a missing patient at an island asylum. A topnotch cast headed by Leonardo DiCaprio looks to lead this Paramount release, postponed from its original opening date last fall to Feb. 19, to muscular returns in all markets. Blu-ray Release date: June 8th, 2010

Juke Girl - Times are tough in Cat-Tail, Florida. The Depression has hit folks hard and migrant pickers, desperate for work, are caught in a battle between a greedy packing-plant baron and a farmer who dares to demand a fair price for his crops. The people need a hero and one steps up: itinerant farmhand Steve Talbot. He has principle on his side. But the baron has power. Ronald Reagan fights for workers’ rights as Talbot. He is joined by his Kings Row co-star Ann Sheridan, who portrays a wised-up, dirt-poor juke joint dancer who comes to love Steve. Together they risk their lives to defy the tyranny of big money and defend the dignity of honest work. DVD Release Date: July 6th, 2009

This Woman is Dangerous - This woman is tough. This woman is smart. This woman is Joan Crawford. This Woman Is Dangerous. Who else but Crawford could portray a criminal mastermind and a glamour gal? In this gritty melodrama, the silver-screen legend stars as Beth Austin, the brains behind a skilled robbery crew. She’s also the inamorata of callous killer and fellow gang member Matt (David Brian) – until a medical emergency sends Beth to a hospital and into the arms of a handsome, compassionate doctor (Dennis Morgan). Can Beth leave the past behind? Not if Matt – armed and crazed with jealousy – can help it. He wants Beth back. And he wants the doctor dead. DVD Release Date: March 23rd, 2009

The Book of Eli BD - Thirty years after an apocalyptic event, Eli (Denzel Washington) travels on foot toward the west coast of the United States. Along the way he demonstrates atypical but effective survival and fighting skills, hunting strange wildlife and swiftly defeating a group of highway bandits who try to ambush him. Searching for a source of water he arrives in a ramshackle town which was built by and is overseen by Carnegie (Gary Oldman). Carnegie dreams of building more towns and hinges these hopes on finding a certain book. His henchmen scour the desolate landscape daily in search of it... Blu-ray Release date: June 15th, 2010

Ruby Gentry - Since neither of the principals is cast in a sympathetic light it is a credit to King Vidor's sensitive direction that Jennifer Jones, as a Ruby Gentry who is often more physical than delicate, gives stature to the delineation. A spirited and passionate creature, she generates voltage in tight-fitting jeans or evening gowns as the girl who could learn to hate as easily as she loves. Charlton Heston, as Boake, is a convincingly muscular and indomitable gent, whose attempts to better his lot destroy him. Karl Maiden's charactrization of the compassionate, self-made tycoon who knows he is second in his wife's affections but is willing to make the best of it, is smoothly underplayed and credible. DVD Release Date: October 19th, 2004

Mystery Train BD - Aloof teenage Japanese tourists, a frazzled Italian widow, and a disgruntled British immigrant all converge in the city of dreams—which, in Mystery Train, from Jim Jarmusch, is Memphis. Made with its director’s customary precision and wit, this triptych of stories pays playful tribute to the home of Stax Records, Sun Studio, Graceland, Carl Perkins, and, of course, the King, who presides over the film like a spirit. Mystery Train is one of Jarmusch’s very best movies, a boozy and beautiful pilgrimage to an iconic American ghost town and a paean to the music it gave the world. Blu-ray Release Date: June 15th, 2010

Chloe BD - Director Atom Egoyan finds intrigue at the edges of conventional sex. "Chloe," like his great film "Exotica" (1994), is about sexual attraction confused by financial arrangements. "Chloe" centers on a powerfully erotic young woman with personal motives that are hidden. It is not blatant but seductive, depending on the ways that our minds, more than our bodies, can be involved in a sexual relationship. It's not so much what we're doing as what I'm thinking about it -- and what you're thinking, which may be more complex than I realize. Blu-ray Release date: July 13th, 2010

The Man Who Cheated Himself - Director Felix Feist delivers a fast-paced and under-appreciated film noir gem in The Man Who Cheated Himself. Lee J. Cobb created the iconic roles of Willy Loman in Arthur Miller's Death Of A Salesman (1949), and Johnny Friendly, mob boss in the 1954 Academy Award- winning classic, On The Waterfront. Jane Wyatt gained fame playing Ronald Coleman's paramour in the 1937 masterpiece, Lost Horizon but is best known today for her role as Margaret Anderson, the mother on the 1950s TV series, "Father Knows Best," for which she won three Emmys. DVD Release Date: January 8th, 2008

Profound Desires of the Gods BD - The culmination of Shohei Imamura's extraordinary examinations of the fringes of Japanese society throughout the 1960s, Profound Desires of the Gods was an 18-month super-production which failed to make an impression at the time of its release, but has since risen in stature to become one of the most legendary albeit least seen Japanese films of recent decades. Presenting a vast chronicle of life on the remote Kurage Island, the film centres on the disgraced, superstitious, interbred Futori family and the Tokyo engineer sent to supervise the creation of a new well an encounter which leads to both conflict and complicity in strange and powerful ways. A tragic view of a passing epoch that teeters on the edge of grotesque farce, Imamura's merciless gaze combines with spectacular colour 'Scope photography to create a mythic saga convulsing with earthly impulses. Blu-ray Release date: June 21st, 2010

Le Grand Jeu - A marvelous rediscovery from the golden age of French cinema, Jacques Feyder's Le Grand jeu is a tragic doppelgänger romance, steered by the fate of the tarot card, and set against the dizzying exoticism of 1930s Morocco. When scandalous Parisian playboy Pierre Martel is forced by his family to leave France and his adored lover Florence (Marie Bell), he begins a new life in the Foreign Legion as Pierre Muller. Drowning his regrets in camaraderie, whores, and hell-raising, he is astonished at meeting Irma (also Marie Bell), a prostitute with an uncanny resemblance to his beloved, and begins a fitful scheme to allow her escape. An early benchmark of poetic realism and a fascinating precursor to both Duvivier's Pépé le Moko and Hitchcock's Vertigo, Feyder's fluid, masterful storytelling make this a unique classic of the screen: vividly forceful yet subtle, acutely observed yet fantastic, world-weary yet tender. DVD Release Date: June 21st, 2010

Tread Softly Stranger - Set in the North of England this atmospheric crime thriller stars Diana Dors as the sexy vamp Calico, who is the girlfriend of Dave (Terence Morgan). When Dave's better looking brother Johnny (George Baker) arrives from London to escape his gambling debts, the heat soon rises when Johnny and Calico are attracted to each other. She persuades the brothers to rob the wages safe where Dave works, but as they break in, a night watchman discovers them... VCI DVD Release Date: September 16th, 2008
 

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