Newsletter - FOR THE WEEK

OF June 28th, 2010

Tu-cubin-noonie! Fritz Lang, Jacques Tourneur, Samuel Fuller, Yasujiro Ozu, lots of Harryhausen monsters, plenty of Noir, Warner Archive, a fabulous Swedish thriller, a Criterion 2-pack, Roger Corman and more..... We offer new calendar updates, a new contest with a fabulous Masters of Cinema DVD prize... Enjoy your week!

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June 28th CONTEST - identify the clip on the CONTEST PAGE to win a sealed Masters of Cinema DVD of "M"! Best of luck!

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

Gary at 2ze dot com

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Two on a Guillotine - Twenty years ago, a little accident with a guillotine trick left magician Duke Duquesne’s wife and on-stage assistant without a head…and their baby daughter Cassie without a mother. Now The Great Duquesne may have another trick up his sleeve. He dies, leaving Cassie a sizeable inheritance if she’ll spend seven nights in his spooky mansion. With a fearless young reporter at her side, Cassie braves terrors that could be the work of evil spirits. Or are they illusions dreamed up by Cassie’s dear, demented dad? Connie Stevens, Dean Jones (in his pre-The Love Bug days) and Cesar Romero star in a creepy horrorfest that offers fans scares, screams, a return of that guillotine and Max (Gone with the Wind) Steiner’s penultimate score. DVD Release Date: June 22, 2010

Five Star Final - Early in this brisk dramedy, a jaded newsman laments that some reporters furnish the manure while some grow the flowers. Editor Joe Randall’s newspaper is suddenly in the manure biz. To increase readership and revenues, he’s pressured against his principles to come up with a sensationalist tale or two. So Randall revisits a love-nest murder of years past. Circulation soars. But living people – real people – involved in the story are suddenly victimized. Randall could never imagine the tragedy to follow. As Randall, Edward G. Robinson finds a role to match his authoritative talents in this hot-off-the-presses Best Picture Academy Award nominee* directed for hard-hitting effect by Mervyn LeRoy. Boris Karloff, just weeks away from the release of Frankenstein, plays Randall’s shady lead reporter. DVD Release Date: June 22, 2010

Murder-Rock - The top dancers of the New York "Arts for Living Center" have more to worry about than a choreographer who seems to have wandered out of FAME and competition for a starring roll in a Broadway show when someone starts offing the competition. Everyone's a suspect. Is it driven choreographer Candice (Olga Karlatos of Fulci's ZOMBIE), womanizing school director Dick Gibson (the late Claudio Cassinelli of ISLAND OF THE FISHMEN), trainer Margie (Geretta Geretta of Lamberto Bava's DEMONS), or one of the neurotic students? Or could it be handsome George Webb (Ray Lovelock, OASIS OF FEAR) who has been stalking Candice's dreams threatening her with a hatpin) and has recently also appeared in-the-flesh to possibly menace Candice. DVD Release Date: July 11th, 2006

Pretty Bird - Based on a true story, this comic tale of three would-be entrepreneurs set out to invent a rocket belt. The venturesome partnership soon takes an unhealthy toll as their mismatched personalities clash and some unexpected success lead to retaliations and kidnapping in this parable of American dreams and delusions. DVD Release Date: June 29th, 2010

The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo BD - A discredited journalist and a mysterious computer hacker discover that even the wealthiest families have skeletons in their closets while working to solve the mystery of a 40 year old murder. Inspired by late author Stieg Larsson's successful trilogy of books, THE GIRL WITH THE DRAGON TATTOO gets underway as Mikael Blomkvist and Lisbeth Salander are briefed in the disappearance of Harriet Vanger, whose uncle suspects she may have been killed by a member of their own family. The deeper Mikael and Harriet dig for the truth, however, the greater the risk of being buried alive by members of the family who will go to great lengths to keep their secrets tightly sealed. Blu-ray Release date: July 6th, 2010

A Single Man BD - In Los Angeles 1962, at the height of the Cuban missile crisis George Falconer, a 52 year old British college professor is struggling to find meaning to his life after the death of his long time partner, Jim. George dwells on the past and cannot see his future as we follow him through a single day, where a series of events and encounters, ultimately lead him to decide if there is a meaning to life after Jim. George is consoled by his closest friend Charley, a 48 year old beauty who is wrestling with her own questions about the future. A young student of George's, Kenny, who is coming to terms with his true nature, stalks George as he feels in him a kindred spirit. A romantic tale of love interrupted the isolation that is an inherent part of the human condition and ultimately the importance of the seemingly smaller moments in life. Blu-ray Release date: July 6th, 2010

Columbia Film Noir Classics II - Sony Pictures Home Entertainment and The Film Foundation partner once again to bring five films to DVD for the first time, fully restored and remastered, in Columbia Pictures Film Noir Classics II. In this second volume, renowned directors Fritz Lang, Phil Karlson, and Irving Lerner are joined by Jacques Tourneur and Richard Quine in proving that lust, adultery, greed, and revenge all adds up to cold, calculated murder. Film Noir Classics II takes you on a dark journey among lowlifes and mobsters, cops and gun molls, and the dimwitted, hapless pawns who forever changed the landscape of cinema, and whose doomed paths are as disturbing today as when they were first committed to film. DVD Release Date: July 6th, 2010

Human Desire - Ford and Grahame had worked so well under Lang's direction in the previous year's The Big Heat that Columbia's bosses rushed to capitalize, hiring the trio to work together again in this remake of Jean Renoir's 1938 classic, La Bête Humaine. Ford plays a railroad engineer, back from the Korean War, who gets mixed up with Crawford's wife Grahame. DVD Release Date: July 6th, 2010

Jason and the Argonauts BD - Jason is the surviving son of Aristo ("Aeson" of the written legend) and has been prophesied to take the throne of Thessaly from King Pelias. Pelias murdered Jason's father and sister, Briseis, 20 years prior (other sister Phoilomela survives). Unknowingly Jason saves him from drowning one day, losing his shoe in the process. The lost shoe alerts Pelias of the prophecy of his arrival as warned by the Oracle (actually the God Hermes in disguise): "Beware a stranger who wears but a single sandal". Under a guise of friendship, Pelias persuades Jason to travel to Colchis, at the end of the world, in an attempt to abscond with the "Golden Fleece"; a golden ram’s hide with mystical powers of healing. Jason takes his heed and stages a great athletic contest, assembling a sailing crew of the best warriors in Greece. He has a ship constructed by the worthy shipwright Argus, deriving the name of the sea vessel: The Argo. Blu-ray Release date: July 6th, 2010

Verboten - "Their love was Verboten!" screamed the ads in 1959, and this sleazy masterwork by Sam Fuller is no less shrill, beginning with a sniper being tracked down to the strains of Beethoven's Fifth and continuing with the romance of an American soldier and an off-limits fraulein in occupied Germany. Sweaty, claustrophobic, occasionally frenzied, and often brilliant, in a thoroughly iconoclastic (and marginally psychotic) way. DVD Release Date: June 22, 2010

Turkish Horror Double Bill - Sometimes the dead DO talk if ONAR gives them a chance, like this God-forgotten 1970 Turkish Gothic Horror gem. A haunted house in the forest, a ghostly zombie-like bogeyman, a curse, pretty ladies meeting horrible deaths, endless macabre boo-ha-ha's, gloomy suffocating atmosphere, Aytekin Akkaya (3 DEV ADAM'S Captain America), pretty ladies, stolen music from Space Odyssey (well, Richard Strauss, that is) and giallos, exorcisms and other goodies guarantee a hair-raising experience. This is another worldwide premiere, never seen before on any kind of media. Luckily, the master was found in satisfactory condition so the picture is very good.

The Chairman - "The Chairman," for example, stars Gregory Peck, who is only a shade less noble than Henry Fonda. Gregory Peck bleeds with nobility, dignity, taste, restraint and all the things that are deadly to an action movie. I doubt if Gregory Peck could be vulgar if he tried. To give you an idea of the kind of guy he is, when he says "No, I cannot stay. I must go," he is looking over the girl's head. Looking into the distance, as it were. Looking toward the inscrutable fate that awaits him. The good old Gregory Peck Look. DVD Release Date: November 7th, 2006

Don McKay BD - In this edgy thriller, Don McKay (Thomas Haden Church, Sideways) flees his hometown after a horrendous tragedy and vows never to return. But 25 years later he comes back to find a dark menace looming over the town. As he attempts to rekindle his romance with an old high school girlfriend (Elisabeth Shue, Leaving Las Vegas), Don is pulled into a malevolent world from which he may never escape. Blu-ray Release date: June 29th, 2010

The Only Son/There Was a Father: Two Films by Yasujiro Ozu - These rare early films from Yasujiro Ozu are considered by many to be two of the Japanese director’s finest works, paving the way for a career among the most sensitive and significant in cinema. The Only Son and There Was a Father make a graceful pair, bookending a crucial period in Japanese history. In the former, Ozu’s first sound film, made during a time of intense economic crisis, a mother sacrifices her own happiness for her son’s education; the latter, released in the midst of World War II, stars Ozu stalwart Chishu Ryu as a widowed schoolteacher whose devotion to his son ends up driving them apart. DVD Release Date: July 13th, 2010

The Eclipse BD - Michael Farr (Ciarán Hinds), a teacher raising his two kids alone since his wife died two years earlier, has been seeing and hearing strange things late at night. He isn't sure if he is having nightmares, or if he's experiencing a haunting. Working as a volunteer for an international literary festival, he is assigned to Lena Morelle (Iben Hjejle), an author of books about ghosts and the supernatural. Establishing a rapport with one another, Michael opens up and shares his terrifying experiences with her. Blu-ray Release date: June 29th, 2010

Percy Jackson & the Olympians: The Lightning Thief BD - Modern and mythical worlds collide in this thunderous fantasy-adventure starring Pierce Brosnan, Kevin McKidd and Uma Thurman as you’ve never seen them before! Percy Jackson is no ordinary teenager...he’s just learned he’s the son of Poseidon and is accused of stealing Zeus’ ­lightning bolt – the most powerful weapon ever created! With storm clouds brewing, Percy embarks on an incredible cross-country journey to prove his innocence, recover the bolt and prevent a war amongst the gods that could destroy our world! Blu-ray Release date: June 29th, 2010

The Warlords BD - The time is the middle nineteenth century during what is known as the Taiping Rebellion ­ a period of catastrophic loss of life from war and famine. Three men on different paths come together as blood brothers, sworn to protect each other, even from each other, in their mission to right the wrongs presented by their government. Magnolia Blu-ray Release Date: June 29th, 2010

Green Zone BD - "Green Zone" will no doubt be under fire from those who are still defending the fabricated intelligence we used as an excuse to invade Iraq. Yes, the film is fiction, employs farfetched coincidences and improbably places one man at the center of all the action. It is a thriller, not a documentary. It's my belief that the nature of the neocon evildoing has by now become pretty clear. Others will disagree. The bottom line is: This is one hell of a thriller. Blu-ray Release date: June 22nd, 2010

Death Race 2000 BD - Welcome to the year 2000, now a place plagued by a lack of morals and political unrest. The only thing that society looks forward to is the three-day Transcontinental Death Race, a high-speed competition that is won by the driver who collects the most points by killing spectators and pedestrians. But this year the drivers have something to worry about other than getting killed by rival contestants: there is a group of anti-race activists trying to stop the race for good. The games all-time champion, Frankenstein (David Carradine), takes on such colorful characters as Machine Gun Joe Viterbo (Sylvester Stallone), Calamity Jane (Mary Woronov), Nero The Hero (Martin Kove) and Matilda The Hun (Roberta Collins) in this dark comedy-science fiction classic directed by Paul Bartel ( Eating Raoul). Blu-ray Release date: June 22nd, 2010

The Last Station BD - Having renounced his title and property, the great Russian writer Leo Tolstoy makes plans to donate his royalties to the Russian people, supported by his trusted disciple Chertkov. Tolstoy’s outraged wife wages a one-woman war to challenge her husband’s outrageous act of idealism. Blu-ray Release date: June 22nd, 2010
 

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