Newsletter - FOR THE WEEK

OF July 1st, 2019

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HAPPY CANADA DAY! More impressive Blu-rays reviewed this week by Criterion, Kino, Koch Media, Studio Canal, Arrow, Olive Films... of films directed by Michael Powell, Emeric Pressburger, Jean-Pierre Melville, Joseph Losey, John Carpenter, David Lynch, Marcel Pagnol, Riccardo Freda, William Asher and others. Our Calendar has last week's updates of films-to-Blu-ray by directors Bill Forsyth, Ernst Lubitsch, Michael Powell, Emeric Pressburger, Charles Chaplin, Jean Cocteau, John Waters, Ritwik Ghatak, Marco Bellocchio, Roy Ward Baker, David Mamet, Alan Parker, Ida Lupino, Peter Collinson, Franco Zeffirelli and more. We also have our Feature Blu-ray and 4K UHD posted for JULY Enjoy!!

LISTING PAGES:

Cinema of Japan, Discs of the Year for 2018, The TOP 100 DISCS, Ingmar Bergman's Cinema, HAGSPloitation, BLAXPloitation, OZPloitation, 'WOMEN IN PRISON' CINEMA, CREATURE-FEATURES (on Blu-ray!), PRE-CODE FILMs (on Blu-ray!), SILENT ERA FILMs (on Blu-ray!), HAMMER Studios (on Blu-ray!) The 100 BEST Neo-Noirs (on Blu-ray!), The GREATEST 100 Westerns (on Blu-ray!), Giallo on Blu-ray!, ESSENTIAL NOIR on Blu-ray!, Shopping Guide for Blu-rays at Amazon.FR (France), Shopping Guide for Blu-rays at Amazon.DE (Germany) and our LATEST ARTICLES: Movies From... the End of the World,  The Beauties of Star Trek (TOS)

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ONE VOICE (not Ellsworth Monkton Toohey): What an incredible week! Let's have some fun and go 'worst to first' this newsletter. How to Stuff a Wild Bikini is so bizarre... and fun... and laughably sexist. On Blu-ray from Olive. Some tongue-in-cheek extras may have been a good idea. Arrow's Blu-ray of Riccardo Freda's Double Face gives fans a bona-fide Giallo. With Lucio Fulci, Edgar Wallace and others chipping-in on the story. While not the high-point of the genre it does offer a commentary by Tim Lucas - which makes it worth the indulgence just for that. Everything else this week was... great. Arguably Marcel Pagnol best film comes to Criterion Blu-ray with The Baker's Wife with warm characters and inherent 'French countryside' charisma. Delightful. Lost Highway is premium David Lynch and the new Kino offers the best presentation to-date - 4K UHD one day? Regardless, at present your digital library is significantly more pedestrian without it. John Carpenter's They Live gets its definitive release via a 2018 restoration and brilliant 4K UHD image - with extras galore. It's one of the feature disc of the month (July) and towers above the old Blu-rays. Hammer Studios - Joseph Losey - radioactive children - n'uff said. These are the Damned gets a Blu-ray release by Koch out of Germany and it's a film I love revisiting where its clasified a sci-fi, fantasy or horror. Kino bring some Jean-Pierre Melville to Region 'A' Blu-ray this month and we've reviewed Le Doulos and Bob le Flambeur - both total gems and looking and sounding better than ever before... ohh and both offer impressive commentaries plus other extras. You don't have to be a Noir aficionado to love these films. Must-own stuff, imo. I have a personal love for Michael Powell and Emeric Pressburger's Gone to Earth. Rich, Technicolor, Shropshire heaven... and a delightful Jen Jones. Samm Deighan commentary on the Kino Blu-ray is solid gold plus you get Selznick's butchered version as a party favor.

"It's the honest point of view of an artist: You have to please. I'd like viewers to come away from my films unsure whether they've understood them. I want to leave them wondering." Jean-Pierre Melville

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Le Doulos BD - The backstabbing criminals in the shadowy underworld of Jean-Pierre Melville's Le doulos have only one guiding principle: “Lie or die.” A stone-faced Jean-Paul Belmondo stars as enigmatic gangster Silien, who may or may not be responsible for squealing on Faugel (Serge Reggiani), just released from the slammer and already involved in what should have been a simple heist. By the end of this brutal, twisting, and multilayered policier, who will be left to trust? Shot and edited with Melville’s trademark cool and featuring masterfully stylized dialogue and performances, Le doulos (slang for "informant") is one of the filmmaker’s most gripping crime dramas. Blu-ray Release Date: July 2nd, 2019

Bob le Flambeur BD - Suffused with wry humor, Jean-Pierre Melville’s Bob le Flambeur melds the toughness of American gangster films with Gallic sophistication to lay the roadmap for the French New Wave. As the neon is extinguished for another dawn, an aging gambler navigates the treacherous world of pimps, moneymen, and naïve associates while plotting one last score—the heist of the Deauville casino. This underworld comedy of manners possesses all the formal beauty, finesse and treacherous allure of green baize. Blu-ray Release Date: July 2nd, 2019

Gone to Earth BD - Screen legend Jennifer Jones stars as the young, beguiling Hazel Woodus in 1897 Shropshire, England. More than the people around her, she loves and understands the wild animals of the countryside, especially her pet fox. Whenever she has problems, she turns to the book of spells and charms left to her by her gypsy mother. When dashing local squire Jack Reddin (David Farrar) begins to pursue Hazel—despite her marriage to Baptist minister Edward Marston (Cyril Cusack)—a struggle for her body and soul ensues. This special edition includes both the original 1950 film, Gone to Earth, and the Roadshow Edition of producer David O. Selznick’s 1952 re-edit, The Wild Heart. Produced, written and directed by Michael Powell and Emeric Pressburger and stunningly shot in color by Christopher Challis. Blu-ray Release Date: July 2nd, 2019

Lost Highway BD - The thrill of this kind of enigmatic rhyming structure, combined with Lynch's masterful and often powerful fusions of sound and image, is that it makes all sorts of splashy expressionistic effects possible--moments of "pure" filmmaking in which the ideological trappings of noir become subverted by the heady mixtures (such as the literal and figurative grafting of the Mystery Man onto the body of Arquette). The limitation is that, even if the thematic preoccupations at times appear to float and circulate independent of the inner tubes, their assumptions remain mired in the adolescent mind-set ("dirty" sex and corrupted male innocence) that informs virtually all of Lynch's features. Blu-ray Release Date: June 25th, 2019

The Baker's Wife BD - The warmth and wit of celebrated playwright turned cinema auteur Marcel Pagnol shine in this enchanting slice-of-life comedy. Returning to the Provençal countryside he knew intimately, Pagnol draws a vivid portrait of a close-knit village where the marital woes of a sweetly deluded baker (the inimitable Raimu, praised by no less than Orson Welles as “the greatest actor who ever lived”) snowball into a scandal that engulfs the town. Marrying the director’s abiding concern for the experiences of ordinary people with an understated but superbly judged visual style, The Baker’s Wife is at once wonderfully droll and piercingly perceptive in its depiction of the complexities of human relationships. Blu-ray Release Date: July 16th, 2019

These are the Damned BD - One of the best British science-fiction films and one of the most controversial, THESE ARE THE DAMNED was made in 1961, butchered by its producers, and not released in England until 1963, eventually finding its way to American shores in 1965. The story concerns a young American, Carey, who, while visiting the English seaside, meets and falls in love with Field, the sister of sadistic and lecherous motorcycle gang leader Reed. Reed despises the American, and this rivalry for his sister's affections bring his own incestuous feelings for her bubbling to the surface. Eventually the couple is driven away by Reed and they take refuge in a cave under a nearby military base. There they discover a group of children living in the cave who are cold to the touch. The children are the result of an experiment conducted by scientist Knox, who seeks to develop a race of humans capable of surviving an atomic blast. Unfortunately, the children have all become radioactive during the experiment and unwittingly kill anyone who comes into unguarded contact with them. Seeing the children as surrogates for the family they will never be allowed to have (if Reed has anything to say about it), Carey and Field free the youngsters and are unknowingly subjected to massive doses of radiation. Blu-ray Release Date: June 13th, 2019

They Live 4K UHD - John Nada (Roddy Piper) is a quiet loner, a drifter who gets work where ever he can find it. While working on a construction site in L.A. and sleeping in a vagrant community at night, John stumbles upon a secret society of alien beings who pose as wealthy and powerful people in human society. John joins a rebel group committed to exposing this conspiracy, and becomes their reluctant leader and the only hope of the human race. Wrestler Rowdy Roddy Piper is outstanding as the unassuming hero, playing the role with understated shock at what he uncovers and stubborn courage when he confronts it. Director John Carpenter laces the film with his trademark blend of humour and horror, making aliens that are hideously arrogant, greedy, and easy to hate, while the humans are confused and desperate in their struggle against them. 4K UHD Release Date: October 29th, 2018

Double Face BD - When wealthy businessman John Alexander (the legendary Klaus Kinski, giving an atypically restrained performance)’s unfaithful wife Helen (Margaret Lee) dies in a car crash, it initially looks like a freak accident. However, the plot thickens when evidence arises suggesting that the car was tampered with prior to the crash. And John’s entire perception of reality is thrown into doubt when he discovers a recently-shot pornographic movie which appears to feature Helen – suggesting that she is in fact alive and playing an elaborate mind game on him… Blu-ray Release Date: June 24th, 2019

How to Stuff a Wild Bikini BD - How to Stuff a Wild Bikini finds swinging, surfing, singer, Frankie (Frankie Avalon) serving naval reserve duty in Tahiti separated from his beach bunny, Dee Dee (Annette Funicello). Frankie, fearing that Dee Dee might be having as much fun as he is in his tropical paradise, enlists the help of the local island witch doctor, Bwana (Buster Keaton) to keep an eye on what’s going on back home. And what’s going on back home is that suave advertising executive, Ricky (Dwayne Hickman) has his sights set on Dee Dee. And Dee Dee might just be receptive to his advances. Blu-ray Release Date: June 25th, 2019
 

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