Newsletter - FOR THE WEEK

OF June 6th, 2011

Öng'öngô!  - What a week! 4 Criterion Blu-rays covered includng discs of films by Peckinpah, Kon Ichikawa, Rainer Werner Fassbinder, Clint Eastwood, Norman Jewison, Robert Aldrich, Nicolas Roeg, Tsai Ming Liang, John Huston, Robert Wise, Walter Hill, William Castle and a combo of Robert Siodmak, Edgar G. Ulmer, Billy Wilder and Fred Zinnemann. The Blue Underground sale (see HERE) continues. Our calendar updates have upcoming releases of Blake Edwards, Monte Hellman, Peter Jackson, the Coen bros. Fritz Lang, Eisenstein, Woody Allen, Ingmar Bergman another new Criterion Blu-ray prize for this week's contest clip! Au Ag!

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Feature DVD and Blu-ray chosen for June 2011 HERE

Leonard has reviewed the new Oppo BDP-95 Universal audiophile Blu-ray player HERE!

TOOLBAR THE 'DVDBeaver Toolbar'! Give it a test drive! I've created a very simple toolbar for Film-Fans/DVD-o-philes/cinephiles. It embeds effortlessly within Internet Explorer 5.0+ (Windows Vista/XP/2000) and Firefox 1.0.1+ (Windows, Mac, Linux). It offers quick links to Searching both the Net (via Google) and DVDBeaver directly, Amazons, Asian etailors, Forums (Criterion, Home Theater, AVS, Rotten Tomatoes, Film Noir), IMDb, DVDBasen, Beaver links, Blu-ray information, Cinephile Blogs/Journals (Rosenbaum, Kehr, Acquarello etc.). What do you think? FOR MORE INFORMATION / AVAILABLE HERE *** (We can adjust this to suit popular opinion - on-the-fly - no re-install required!)

June 6th CONTEST - identify the clip on the CONTEST PAGE to win a Sealed NEW Criterion Blu-ray of Pale Flower

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

Gary at 2ze dot com

Heavy Metal BD - Based on the fantastical illustrated magazine Heavy Metal, producer Ivan Reitman enlists the help of some of Hollywood's animation masters to create the otherworldly tale of a glowing green orb from outer space that spreads destruction throughout the galaxy. Only when encountered by its one true enemy, to whom it is inexplicably drawn, will goodness prevail throughout the universe. Blu-ray Release date: June 14th, 2011

The Long Riders BD - Hill's film holds its head high in a distinguished company of movies about the Jesse James/Cole Younger gang, refusing to bother too much about historical facts or psychological motivation, instead serving up a potted commentary on the conventions of the genre itself. Concentrating on familiar rituals - the funeral, the hoe-down, the robbery (a stunning tour de force in slow motion) - Hill pays tribute to such directors as Ford, Hawks and Ray, emphasises the mythic aspects of the Western, and focuses on the subjects of kinship and the land (probably suggested by Scotsman Bill Bryden's screenplay). This last theme is emphasised by Hill's coup of casting real-life brothers as the members of the gang. A beautiful, laconic and unsentimental film. Blu-ray Release date: June 7th, 2011

Johnny Mnemonic BD - Johnny Mnemonic is a 1995 cyberpunk film, loosely based on the short story of the same name by William Gibson, in which Keanu Reeves plays the title character, a man with a cybernetic brain implant designed to store information. It portrays Gibson's standard dystopian view of the future with the world dominated by large corporations and with strong East Asian influences. Blu-ray Release date: June 14th, 2011

Cross of Iron BD - Cross of Iron is an anti-war film in that it focuses on the average foot soldier, the harshness of his daily existence, and the horrors inflicted on him by war. These men dream about survival, peace, sex and home. Yet Steiner, like many of Peckinpah's male protagonists, is unwilling or incapable of being open to other ways of existing. He no longer knows where home is or where his children are; he hates the war but is fearful of what he will be without it. Dead to a world of other possibilities, what he chooses is to feel alive in the ecstatic moment of freedom achieved through the confrontation with violence and death. Blu-ray Release Date: June 6th, 201

The Makioka Sisters BD - This lyrical adaptation of the beloved Japanese novel by Junichiro Tanizaki was a late-career triumph for world-class director Kon Ichikawa (The Burmese Harp, Fires on the Plain). Revolving around the changing of the seasons, The Makioka Sisters (Sasame-yuki) follows the lives of four sisters who have taken on their family’s kimono manufacturing business, over the course of a number of years leading up to the Pacific War. The two oldest have been married for some time, but according to tradition, the rebellious youngest sister cannot wed until the third, conservative and terribly shy, finds a husband. This graceful study of a family at a turning point in history is a poignant evocation of changing times and fading customs, shot in rich, vivid colors. Blu-ray Release date: June 14th, 2011

I Only Want You To Love Me - In one of his most personal films, Rainer Werner Fassbinder (The Marriage of Maria Braun) wrote and directed this true-crime story, which he adapted from the book “Life Sentence”. Having grown up in a small town with a domineering mother and a father who never believed in his worth, a young newlywed moves to the big city with his bride and starts anew. The pressures of work, family and finances become too much for him and he experiences a nervous breakdown. Cinematography by legendary DP, Michael Ballhaus (The Departed). DVD Release Date: June 7th, 2011

The Outlaw Josey Wales BD - As The Outlaw Josey Wales, five-time Academy Award winner* Clint Eastwood is ideally cast as a hard-hitting, fast-drawing loner, recalling his “Man with No Name” from his European Westerns. But unlike that other mythic outlaw, Josey Wales has a name – and a heart. After avenging his family’s brutal murder, Wales is on the lam, pursued by a pack of killers. He travels alone, but a ragtag group of outcasts (including Sondra Locke and Chief Dan George) is drawn to him – and Wales can’t leave his motley surrogate family unprotected. Eastwood’s skills behind and in front of the camera connected with audiences for its humor and tenderness as well as its hair-trigger action. Blu-ray Release date: June 7th, 2011

The Cincinnati Kid BD - Steve McQueen brings his cool fire to the role of The Cincinnati Kid, a small-timer eager to take his chances in high-stakes poker. He gets his chance. Regal, ruthless Lancey Howard (Edward G. Robinson), the elite gambler called the Man, accepts the Kid's challenge. Norman Jewison (In the Heat of the Night, Moonstruck) directs this taut exploration of back-room gaming, building suspense with each turn of a card. And Ann-Margret, Karl Malden, Rip Torn, National Board of Review Best Supporting Actress Award winner Joan Blondell and many more comprise a full house of talent. Grab a chair and ante up. Blu-ray Release date: June 14th, 2011

The Company Men BD - Bobby Walker (Ben Affleck) is living the proverbial American dream: great job, beautiful family, shiny Porsche in the garage. When corporate downsizing leaves him and co-workers Phil Woodward (Chris Cooper) and Gene McClary (Tommy Lee Jones) jobless, the three men are forced to re-define their lives as men, husbands and fathers. Blu-ray Release date: June 7th, 2011

People on Sunday BD - Years before they became major players in Hollywood, a group of young German filmmakers—including eventual noir masters Robert Siodmak and Edgar G. Ulmer and future Oscar winners Billy Wilder and Fred Zinnemann—worked together on the once-in-a-lifetime collaboration People on Sunday (Menschen am Sonntag). This effervescent, sunlit silent, about a handful of city dwellers (a charming cast of nonprofessionals) enjoying a weekend outing, offers a rare glimpse of Weimar-era Berlin. A unique hybrid of documentary and fictional storytelling, People on Sunday was both an experiment and a mainstream hit that would influence generations of film artists around the world. Blu-ray Release Date: June 28th, 2011

Kiss Me Deadly BD - Kiss Me Deadly (1955), Robert Aldrich's hard-edged, stylistically innovative adaptation of the Mickey Spillane novel, features what may be the most violent and unsympathetic private eye in the history of cinema. As Mike Hammer, Ralph Meeker is like a bull in a china shop, lurching haphazardly from one deadly encounter to the next, often employing the same brutal tactics of the criminals he's pursuing. But as the plot of Kiss Me Deadly unfolds, Hammer goes from being just a cheap hood who specializes in divorce cases to serving as an unwitting accomplice in the retrieval of a mysterious box that holds "the great whatsit." Blu-ray Release Date: June 21st, 2011

Insignificance BD - Four unnamed people who look and sound a lot like Albert Einstein, Marilyn Monroe, Joe DiMaggio, and Joseph McCarthy converge in one New York City hotel room in this compelling, visually inventive adaptation of Terry Johnson’s play, from director Nicolas Roeg. With a combination of whimsy and dread, Roeg creates a fun-house-mirror image of fifties America in order to reflect on the nature of celebrity and lingering cold-war nuclear nightmares. Insignificance is a delirious, intelligent drama, featuring magnetic performances by Michael Emil as the Professor, Theresa Russell as the Actress, Gary Busey as the Ballplayer, and Tony Curtis as the Senator. Blu-ray Release Date: June 14th, 2011

The Kremlin Letter - In this star-studded, black-hearted spy thriller directed and co-written by the legendary John Huston (The Maltese Falcon, The African Queen), a potentially catastrophic diplomatic letter from the CIA must be recovered at all costs. Drafted in is Rone (Patrick O'Neal), a young agent with a photographic memory, to make his way through a treacherous maze of shadowy cities and shady characters. Based on the acclaimed novel by Noel Behn, drawn from his work within the U. S. Army Counterintelligence Corps, The Kremlin Letter is a brutal, level-headed examination of espionage, leaving behind any trace of gadgetry or glamour. Described by legendary French filmmaker Jean-Pierre Melville (Le Samouraï) as 'magisterial', and featuring an astonishing cast including Orson Welles, Max von Sydow, George Sanders, Bibi Andersson, and Richard Boone. DVD Release Date: July 25th, 2011

Vive L'amour BD - The winner of the Golden Lion at the 1994 Venice Film Festival and three Golden Horse Awards - including Best Picture - Tsai Ming Liang's second film follows three lonely strangers in modern Taipei: Suicidal salesman Hsiao Kang, real estate agent May Lin, and street vendor Ah Jung. Through the strangers' encounters with each other in an empty unsold apartment, Tsai explores tedium, isolation, and sex in the big city. Blu-ray Release Date: April 28th, 2011

Vera Cruz BD - A brash, lively, and totally appealing Western about a couple of American adventurers - Cooper, a decent but cynical Southern gentleman, and Lancaster, a supremely conniving crook - getting involved with Maximilian's imperial court and the Juarez revolutionaries in 1860s Mexico. Basically, the film is played as a game of bluff and betrayal, with the pair continually voicing their distrust of each other as they transport a countess and her crock of gold to Vera Cruz, allowing Aldrich to alternate with ease between earthy comedy and taut suspense. Beautifully shot by Ernest Laszlo, it conjures up a Mexico that in some ways looks forward to Peckinpah's The Wild Bunch, a country at once romantic and treacherous, wild and lovely, an outpost of freedom for exiles yet oppressed by a corrupt government. Blu-ray Release date: June 7th, 2011

The Man Who Would Be King BD - Based on a Rudyard Kipling story and packed with spectacle, humor, excitement and bold twists of fate, John Huston’s film of The Man Who Would Be King earns its crown as “an epic like no other. One of the screen’s great adventure yarns” (Danny Peary, Guide for the Film Fanatic). Sean Connery and Michael Caine – chins out, shoulders squared and with a sly wink – star as British sergeants Danny Dravot and Peachy Carnehan. The Empire was built by men like these two. Now they’re out to build their own empire, venturing into remote Kafiristan to become rich as kings. Blu-ray Release date: June 7th, 2011

Chicago Confidential - Brian Keith stars as Jim Fremont, an Illinois States Attorney fighting corrupt unions in Chicago. The union crooks in collaboration with a gambling syndicate try to pin a murder rap on an uncooperative union leader Blane (Dick Foran). Fremont and his co-worker fiancee Laura (Beverly Garland), work to prove Blane's innocence and to punish the true villains. DVD Release Date: April 18th, 2011

New Orleans Uncensored - William Castle directed this Sam Katzman production, a gritty crime thriller about a newly-discharged sailor who gets a job as a longshoreman in The Big Easy. He swiftly discovers mob corruption throughout the docks, and when a friend is killed by the gangsters, he convinces the police to let him go undercover and take matters into his own hands. Filmed on location on the docks and in the French Quarter; stars Arthur Franz (The Sniper), with Beverly Garland (Chicago Confidential), Michael Ansara, Ed Nelson, and Mike Mazurki. DVD Release Date: September 21st, 2010

The Captive City - Robert Wise's taut direction and masterful cinematography by Lee Garmes enhance this taut thriller about a federal investigation into the total corruption of a small town by organized crime. DVD Release Date: March 29th, 2011
 

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