DVDBeaver Newsletter - June 23rd, 2008

Otiquihiyohuih! - After our hiatus last week - we have our biggest ever newsletter with a whopping 31 new DVD reviews - 6 Blu-rays, 3 Criterions, multi-film boxsets, comparisons etc. Some new calendar updates, new contest and more...

An Autumn Afternoon (Yasujiro Ozu, 1962) Criterion Collection, The Earrings of Madame de . . . (Max Ophuls, 1953) Criterion Collection, Le Plaisir (Max Ophuls, 1952) Criterion Collection, La Ronde (Max Ophuls, 1950) Criterion Collection
Eclipse Series 12: Aki Kaurismäki's Proletariat Trilogy (Shadows in Paradise, Ariel, and The Match Factory Girl)

LATEST Additions to the Release Calendar (PRE-ORDER!):

Eclipse Series 12: Aki Kaurismäki's Proletariat Trilogy (Shadows in Paradise, Ariel, and The Match Factory Girl) Criterion Collection

An Autumn Afternoon (Yasujiro Ozu, 1962) Criterion Collection

The Earrings of Madame de . . . (Max Ophuls, 1953) Criterion Collection

Le Plaisir (Max Ophuls, 1952) Criterion Collection

La Ronde (Max Ophuls, 1950) Criterion Collection

Perhaps Love [Blu-ray] (Peter Chan, 2005) Tai Seng

Pingpong (Matthias Luthardt, 2006) Laguna Films

Water Lilies (Celine Sciamma , 2007) Koch Lorber Films

The Search for John Gissing (Mike Binder, 2001) Starz / Anchor Bay

Icons of Horror: Hammer Films (2 X Double Feature) - (The Two Faces Of Dr. Jekyll, The Curse Of The Mummy's Tomb, The Gorgon and Scream of Fear) – Sony

Tai-Chi Master (Yuen Woo Ping, 1993) - Dragon Dynasty

Cj7 (Stephen Chow, 2008) – Sony

Cj7 [Blu-ray] (Stephen Chow, 2008) – Sony

Three Stooges Collection 3: 1940-1942 – Sony

Perils Of The New Land: Films of the Immigrant Experience - Traffic in Souls (1913) and The Italian (1915) - Flicker Alley

The Pleasures of the Flesh (Nagisa Oshima, 1965) R2 UK Yume

Violence at High Noon (Nagisa Oshima, 1966) R2 UK Yume

Night and Fog in Japan (Nagisa Oshima, 1960) R2 Yume

Jean-Luc Godard - The Ultimate Collection (Le Mepris, Alphaville, Passion, A Bout De Souffle, Made In Usa, Pierrot Le Fou, Une Femme Est Une Femme, La Chinoise, Le Petit Soldat, Detective, Notre Musique, Helas Pour Moi and Eloge De L'amour) - R2 UK Optimum

Help Me Eros (Lee Kang-Sheng, 2007) Strand

The Black House (Yoshimitsu Morita, 2000) Tokyo Shock

Valerie and Her Week of Wonders (Jaromil Jires, 1970) - R2 UK Second Run

Tropical Malady (Apichatpong Weerasethakul, 2004) - R2 UK Second Run

Judex -1963/Nuits Rouges -1974 - R2 UK Masters of Cinema

One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest [Blu-ray] (Milos Forman, 1975) – Warner

Boats Out of Watermelon Rinds (Ahmet Ulucay, 2004) Facets

Popeye the Sailor-1941-43 Volume 3 – Warner

The Picture of Dorian Gray (Albert Lewin, 1945) Warner

Fox Horror Classics Collection 2 (Dragonwyck, Chandu the Magician, Dr.Renault's Secret) - 20th Century Fox

Charlie Chan Collection 5 (Charlie Chan At The Wax Museum, Murder Over New York, Dead Men Tell, Charlie Chan In Rio, Charlie Chan In Panama, Charlie Chan's Murder Cruise, Castle In The Desert, Charlie Chan: The Fox Years) - 20th Century Fox

Omen Collection (4pc) [Blu-ray] - 20th Century Fox

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BLU-RAY STORE  HIGH DEFINITION DVD STORE   ALL OUR NEW FORMAT DVD REVIEWS

Easiest way to catch up is simply read the new Newsletter Archive HERE.

ONE VOICE (not Ellsworth Monkton Toohey): At the suggestion of a loyal member - we are considering a DVD of the Week Feature and if it was inaugurated week it would be Bill Douglas Trilogy., but with so much covered the past 2 weeks there is a plethora of stuff we recommend. Classe Tous Risques is wonderful, Rat-Trap a revelation, Mishima: A Life in Four Chapters is an intensely thorough package from Criterion complimented by their Patriotism release. Our new captures only exemplify the essentialness of The Searchers BR. And speaking of Blu-rays' - Monty Python's Life of Brian BR and Gangs of New York BR look impressive. John Sayles' Honeydripper is possibly his best work to date. Wong Kar-wai's My Blueberry Nights is definitely worth a visit. If you are a fan of Men in Black - you'll want to own the Blu-ray. Per-Olaf is very high on Kaos and my tastes usually coincide. Ballad of Narayama gets better each time I see it. I suspect the same will be true of Koreeda's Hana. Axiom Films in the UK are the real deal and we endorse there DVD editions of Wender's Alice in the Cities, and the Tsai films - I Don't Want To Sleep Alone and The Wayward Cloud. An imperfect DVD but Image Entertainment's Fanny is worth at least a mention. Cluny Brown is a great film but the DVD is fair-to-midland. Without listing all the titles, Gregory an Eric continue to supply us with the absolute best information for the horror genre (and beyond) on DVD (many thanks buys!).

New Reviews:

Gangs of New York BR - It cannot be doubted that America was born out of a penchant for unneighborly violence, and this is likely what Scorsese and screenwriter Jay Cocks are trying to underscore; but I found that the idea gets strangled in the morass of political and social plot points and the contrapuntal romance between DiCaprio and Diaz. Then there's that ending – both the knifeout between Bill and Amsterdam, which is anticlimactic, and the final 15 seconds. At least this time I knew it was coming, and so was prepared. Blu-ray Release date: July 1, 2008
 

The Forest - Two couples decide to get away from the congestion of L.A. and go camping (not having been privy to the opening sequence in which another hiking couple are knifed by an unseen killer). Having had a battle-of-the-sexes argument about women in the wilderness, the wives drive up first with the expectation that there bickering husbands will join them in a few days (they are actually following close behind). Taking shelter from the rain, the women first encounter a ghostly apparition of a woman looking for her equally ghostly children (allegedly cute child actors who have been secretly observing the pair who first alert their knife-wielding, flesh-craving father to the presence of campers and then decide to warn the soon-to-be-victims).

Men in Black BR - A central image in Men in Black is the goo that issues from squashed, pulverized, or drooling insects--splattering a windshield in the opening gag and periodically drenching various characters thereafter, especially the heroes. (A typical exchange between agents: "Humanoid?" "You wish--bring a sponge.") The working-class and ethnic sites associated with the aliens--a truck transporting illegal Mexicans, an exterminator's van, and, in New York, a pawnbroker's, a ghetto jewelry store, and an eastern European soup kitchen--reinforce the overall impression of funkiness. Blu-ray Release Date: June 17th, 2008

Honeydripper - The movie’s uncommon pleasures derive not from any comprehensively created world but from its cast—mostly African-American veterans of the Broadway stage, of productions of August Wilson plays in particular—and Sayles’s graceful way of handling them. The plot is inspired by (rather than adapted from) “Keeping Time,” a Sayles story about a drummer published 15 years ago in Rolling Stone and collected in Dillinger in Hollywood. The story has more atmospherics than plot, but part of the movie’s narrative thread is derived from it. And not surprisingly, Sayles’s prose owes most of its energy to verbal riffs on black slang rather than to any abiding sense of lived experience. DVD Release Date: June 24th, 2008

Journey to the Far Side of the Sun - When scientists a hundred years into the future discover a "duplicate" Earth on the other side of the sun, the stage is set for tense science fiction adventure and suspense. Determined to find out what this new world is like, the Western nations of Earth set up an expedition headed by former astronauts Roy Thinnes and Ian Hendry to reach the new planet. All goes according to plan until the spaceship makes a crash landing on a planet some three weeks earlier than expected. Have the space travelers actually returned to Earth or are they on some strange mirror-image world where they must prove who they really are or die trying? This imaginative space adventure offers a journey few will ever forget. DVD Release Date: June 24th, 2008

Mishima: A Life in Four Chapters - Paul Schrader's visually stunning, collagelike portrait of acclaimed Japanese author and playwright Yukio Mishima (played by Ken Ogata) investigates the inner turmoil and contradictions of a man who attempted an impossible harmony between self, art, and society. Taking place on Mishima's last day, when he famously committed public seppuku, the film is punctuated by extended flashbacks to the writer's life as well as by gloriously stylized evocations of his fictional works. With its rich cinematography by John Bailey, exquisite sets and costumes by Eiko Ishioka, and unforgettable, highly influential score by Philip Glass, Mishima: A Life in Four Chapters is a tribute to its subject and a bold, investigative work of art in its own right. DVD Release Date: July 1st, 2008

Patriotism - Playwright and novelist Yukio Mishima foreshadowed his own violent suicide with this ravishing short feature, his only foray into filmmaking, yet made with the expressiveness and confidence of a true cinema artist. All prints of Patriotism (Yûkoku), which depicts the seppuku of a army officer, were destroyed after Mishima's death in 1970, though the negative was saved, and the film resurfaced thirty-five years later. New viewers will be stunned at the depth and clarity of Mishima's vision, as well as his graphic depictions of sex and death. DVD Release Date: July 1st, 2008

Hana - After making four contempo-set dramas (including "After Life," and Cannes-contenders "Distance" and "Nobody Knows"), helmer Hirokazu Kore-eda goes period with "Hana," a humanistic, charmingly off-kilter samurai story of sorts. Tale of a good-hearted warrior on a reluctant mission to avenge his father features practically none of the swordplay and tragedy associated with the genre. Instead, with its teeming cast of colorful characters, domestic emphasis and baggy structure, "Hana" almost feels like a soap-opera pilot, albeit with top-notch production values. Pic opened weakly in Japan in early June, but may click offshore as a niche with Asiaphile auds. DVD Release Date: June 24th, 2008

The Searchers BR - It’s not what is said and done in John Ford’s The Searchers that makes it such an effective film. It is what is not said and done—the actions that are implied but never seen, and the dialogue that is thought but never spoken. It is about two men’s five-year search for a girl kidnapped by Comanche Indians, but it is more interested in why they are searching than who they are searching for. NOTE: We've compared Blu-ray captures ripped directly from the disc!

My Blueberry Nights - After most of its decidedly mixed Cannes audience pegged it as a misfire, it's heartening to discover that My Blueberry Nights, the first American feature from preeminent Hong Kong stylist Wong Kar-Wai, is less an overt misstep than a sidestep into shallower waters. The first moment a line of awkward dialogue is spoken, it’s easy to see how any absurdly heightened expectations at the Festival were crushed, but the film works well on its own terms. The first act’s extended meet cute between a British diner owner (Jude Law) and one of his customers (Norah Jones) immediately clues the audience in that Wong isn’t trying to conquer the world this time out, but to discount the film's obvious pleasures because of this would be foolish. From the start, it’s abundantly clear that Wong hasn’t made an art film, but there's plenty of artistry on display here nonetheless. DVD Release Date: July 1st, 2008

Monty Python's Life of Brian BR - After slaying the Arthurian legend in their now classic Holy Grail, the Pythons set their sights on the Greatest Story Ever Told. Blind faith, virgin birth, crucifixion nothing is sacred in this epic send-up of ancient times, which draws on the cornball biblical blockbusters of the 1950s to lampoon celebrity culture in any era. NOTE: We've compared Blu-ray captures ripped directly from the disc!

Bill Douglas Trilogy - Bill Douglas's award-winning films - My Childhood, My Ain Folk and My Way Home - which the BFI is releasing together in a two-disc DVD set with special features, are three of the most compelling and critically acclaimed films about childhood ever made. The narrative is largely autobiographical, following Jamie (played with heart-breaking conviction by Stephen Archibald) as he grows up in a poverty-stricken mining village in post-war Scotland. In these brutal surroundings, and subject to hardship and rejection, Jamie learns to fend for himself. We see him grow from child to adolescent - angry and bewildered, but playful, creative and affectionate. DVD Release Date: June 23rd, 2008

Kaos - Kaos is a film of a glorious naturalism previously unencountered in cinema. Giuseppe Lanci's incredible photography, along with the mythical character of the stories and Piovani's unearthly music, ascribe to the film a kind of dreamlike fluidity. Aerial views of temples and castles on top of rocks, full moons with mystical power, vast stretches of land under the sunlight, and an almost purifying Mediterranean sea contribute to a deification of nature, something which is not new in the Taviani's work. Magically euphoric cinema with uniquely conjured images. DVD Release Date: April 1, 2008

Ballad of Narayama - The Balled of Narayama is an exemplary feature of Imamura's cinematic genre. Indeterminately set in the past, it highlights the traditions and mores of an isolated mountainous village which dictate to a seventy-year old widow that she has to go up to the mountain and await her death. This does not inhibit her from concerning herself with the future of her sons. One has to find a new wife since he's widowed, another hasn't been with a woman before, and the third one needs to be taught manners. The director focuses on the processes by which she attempts to realize these tasks in juxtaposition with her obligation to the laws of her community. DVD Release Date: June 10th, 2008

Glitterbox - Jarman X 4 - Glitterbox, with its extra film, Glitterbug, compiled by Derek Jarman's friends following his death, is an especially personal tribute to this idiosyncratic director, writer, and artist. Renowned for his outspoken dedication and experimental portrayals of politically radical heroes, Jarman's films challenge the conventions of narrative filmmaking and expand narrow definitions of sexuality. This boxed set contains The Angelic Conversation (1985), Caravaggio (1986), Wittgenstein (1993), and Blue (1993), which, viewed together, clarify Jarman's preoccupation with the ways language and imagery intertwines or demand separation. DVD Release Date: June 24th, 2008

4 Months 3 Weeks & 2 Days - Mungiu’s film is set over one afternoon and evening in the late 1980s (although we have to guess the exact date). There’s no nostalgia on offer here – no wistful look over the shoulder at Romania’s past: this is a dark place – literally, when we hit the night-time streets – where ordinary people are forced to act and suffer as savages under the perverting influence of the law. Mungiu’s point is crystal clear: the past is best left behind but never forgotten. His story is intimate but everywhere in his film there are hints of a wider malaise, whether it’s the bread queue at the edge of his widescreen frame, the officious-verging-on-dictatorial attitude of a hotel receptionist or just the angry bark of a dog at night. DVD Release Date: June 17th, 2008

Cluny Brown - This late, delicious comedy of manners by Ernst Lubitsch is a notch below his best, but the character acting is so good one hardly notices. A plumber's daughter (Jennifer Jones) and a refugee (Charles Boyer) meet in England prior to World War II, and Una O'Connor, Peter Lawford, Helen Walker, Reginald Gardiner, C. Aubrey Smith, Reginald Owen, and Richard Haydn are around to take up what slack there is. This 1946 film is the last one Lubitsch completed. DVD Release Date: May 26th, 2008

Alice in the Cities - Wim Wenders's roughly styled but sensitive 1974 film about fading cultural identities. Long-faced Rüdiger Vogler, a Wenders favorite, is a German photojournalist in search of the Real America. While in New York, he reluctantly accepts responsibility for Alice, a nine-year-old German girl abandoned by her mother. Together they return to Europe in search of the girl's grandmother, remembered, dimly, as living in a small village. Which one, they don't know. Without a place to stop, the characters continue to move--restlessly, desperately, the end point always out of sight. DVD Release Date: May 26th, 2008

Fool's Gold BR - "Fool's Gold" is a romantic comedy and an adventure story, but in this case that just means it bombs in two distinct ways. It presents us with a photogenic but estranged couple and invites us to want them to get back together. And it shows the two of them collaborating in the search for ancient treasure. But from the opening credits to the unsatisfying finish, it remains a matter of profound indifference whether these people ever find love or wealth. Good for them if they do, but it would be no more pleasing than reading about strangers winning the lottery. Blu-ray Release date: June 17, 2008

Rat-Trap - Remarkable for its focus on characterization and detail, Rat-Trap is set in rural Kerala. Its story concerns Unni, the last male-heir of a feudal and decaying joint family. His inability to accept the socio-economic changes of a new society result in his gradual withdrawal into a metaphorical rat-trap sprung from his own isolation and paranoia. The decline is vividly told, with colour and music used as a striking and significant constituent of the film’s thematic development. DVD Release Date: June 23rd, 2008

I Don't Want To Sleep Alone - However true that is, ‘...Sleep Alone’ proves that there has been no fundamental change in Tsai’s unique method of cinematic enquiry: his use of elemental metaphor or motif (especially water); contextualising longshot; his downplay of often inexpressive verbal intercourse in favour of wordless gesture, glance, touch (or sexual encounter) as a way of conjuring up the magic or pain of relationships; or his ability (with his cinematographer Liao Pen Jung) to film urban landscapes so expressively as to make them almost function like characters, often as lonely as the human ones, in his compassionate social architecture. It’s a film not only about social disintegration, but also about grace under undue pressure, where the giving of a cigarette to a stranger means far more than ‘a drop of kindness in a million sorrows’. DVD Release Date: February 11th, 2008

The Wayward Cloud - Hsiao-Kang (Tsai muse Lee Kang-sheng) plays the same alienated youth who once worked as a street vendor selling watches, and whose brief encounter with Shiang-chyi (played by Chen Shiang-chyi) provided the emotional spark that fueled the earlier films. Once again these two lost clouds cross pathes--Hsiao-Kang is now working as an actor in low budget porno-films, and in the apartment below is Shiang-chyi, who spends most of her time going around hording bottles of water to cope with the severe drought that is sweeping the country. In the face of the water shortage, the government is recommending that people rely on watermelons as an alternative form of hydration. This fruit sets a profoundly symbolic tone that carries on throughout the entirety of this perverse and shocking masterpiece. The superior Axiom Films edition was released February 11th, 2008

The Bucket List BR - Mike LaSalle, writing for the S.F. Chronicle, felt the execution in Rob Reiner's movie false and maudlin at its core, but fascinating as an exploration of the persona of one of its stars: "The Bucket List" is about two likable old guys with terminal cancer, and the movie is about as fun as that sounds. Jack Nicholson and Morgan Freeman play fellows who get up from their sickbeds and, with their remaining time, go out to do things they always wanted to do, like skydiving and race car driving. One by one, they tick the items off a list - things to experience before they kick the bucket. The Blu-ray edition release date: June 10th, 2008

Five Dolls For An August Moon - Obviously taking its inspiration (uncredited) from Agatha Christie's mystery thriller, Ten Little Indians, Bava's film is about a group of decadent jet-setters on holiday on an virtually deserted Mediterranean island. Soon they will be picked off, one by one, by a mysterious killer. Since this is Mario Bava behind the wheel, you'd expect this film to deliver some distinctive shocks in the style of his later effort, Twitch of the Death Nerve, but FIVE DOLLS FOR AN AUGUST MOON is less a violent thriller than a black comedy.

Four Times That Night - Imagine Rashomon remade as a tame and frivolous '60s sex comedy and shot with the zoom happy, retina-challenging elan characteristic of the director. We're offered four accounts of the same evening out: she describes a farcically failed rape, he a seduction; the lewd night porter tells of another couple and a same-sex pairing off, while a psychiatrist infers chaste abstention. The audience may prefer a fifth version where the cast is massacred by one of Bava's mad axemen; though let's spare Pascale Petit, a starlet ten years earlier and about to become surplus to requirements, still spirited and good humoured in her final role.

Lips of Blood - While at a party to promote a new perfume, Frederic (co-writer Jean-Loup Philippe, Rape of the Vampire) recognizes the setting of one of the ad campaign photographs from a vague childhood memory involving a mysterious woman (Anne Brilland). His mother (Natalie Perry) tries to discourage his delving into the past but he is eventually lead by the ageless apparition of this woman to a crypt where he accidentally unleashes a quartet of vampire women from their tombs. As Frederic continues to pursue the mystery woman, his mother dispatches henchmen to deal with the vampire epidemic and goes to extraordinary lengths to keep the past a secret.

The Living Dead Girl - This alternately elegant and grisly horror film was reportedly the inspiration for Rob Zombie's song "Living Dead Girl." With the help of France's now-prominent make-up effects artist Benoit LeStang, Rollin ups the gore over the erotic content (as with Grapes of Death) though his poetic sense remains, anchored by the performances of Blanchard and Pierro with a genuinely tragic ending.

Black Emanuelle's Box Vol. 2 - Volume 2 of Severin Films Black Emmanuelle includes Black Emmanuelle, White Emmanuelle (1976), Black Emanuelle 2 (1976) and Emanuelle and the White Slave Trade (1978).

Caramel - Take sugar, water and lemon juice, mix it up and you’ve got Beirut’s favourite depilatory product, a sticky goo which removes feminine hair, though not without a certain struggle. Such is the eponymous ‘Caramel’ in actor-writer-director Nadine Labaki’s delightful first feature, an ensemble drama that explores the secret world of a Lebanese beauty parlour where the women struggle to make the best of a society which so often limits their options. DVD Release Date: June 17th, 2008

Fanny - Fanny marks the only on-screen pairing of the screen's most famous French lovers, Charles Boyer and Maurice Chevalier. Since the two lifelong friends had risen to stardom making different types of pictures -- Boyer in character-driven comedies and dramas and Chevalier in light-hearted musicals -- they were not able to work together until they started playing character roles. DVD Release Date: June 17th, 2008

Classe Tous Risques - After hiding out in Milan for nearly a decade, fugitive gangland chief Abel Davos (Lino Ventura) sneaks back to Paris with his children despite a death sentence hanging over his head. Accompanied by appointed guardian Eric Stark (Jean-Paul Belmondo, fresh off his star turn in Breathless) and beset by backstabbing former friends, Abel begins a journey through the postwar Parisian underworld that's both throat grabbing and soul searching. A character study of a career criminal at the end of his rope, this rugged noir from Claude Sautet (Un coeur en hiver) is a thrilling highlight of sixties French cinema. DVD Release Date: June 17th, 2008

Next 2 weeks on the Calendar:

Before the Rain (Milcho Manchevski, 1994) Criterion