Newsletter - FOR THE WEEK OF July 6th, 2009

This Week's Highlights

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

Gary at 2ze dot com

• Use Amazon code SONYPIC5 for $5 off Dr. Strangelove on Blu-ray

• Use Amazon code GHOSTBLU for $5 off Ghostbusters on Blu-ray

• Blu-rays from only £8.98 at Amazon UK HERE

• 36% OFF CRITERION FAVORITES HERE

• SALE STILL ON FOR SOME CRITERIONs at AMAZON (Blu, Pre-order and others): • El Norte [Blu-ray] (37% OFF!), The 400 Blows [Blu-ray] (45% OFF!), The Last Emperor [Blu-ray] (37% OFF!), The Man Who Fell to Earth [Blu-ray] (37% OFF!), Ace in the Hole (37% OFF!), Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas (35% OFF!), Last Year at Marienbad [Blu-ray] (32% OFF!), Wages of Fear [Blu-ray] (32% OFF!), The Seventh Seal [Blu-ray] (32% OFF!), Drunken Angel (32% OFF!), Alexander Korda's Private Lives (25% OFF!), The Third Man [Blu-ray] (37% OFF!), Chungking Express [Blu-ray] (37% OFF!), The Last Metro [Blu-ray] (32% OFF!), Bottle Rocket [Blu-ray] (35% OFF!), Empire of Passion (27% OFF!)

• WORLD CINEMA SALE STILL ON - UP To 70% OFF HERE

• SALES: US Blu-ray up to 53% OFF        UK Blu-ray 2 for 3 SALE       Amazon France Blu-ray SALE (BUY 1 get 1 FREE!)

LATEST ADDITIONS to the Calendar: (PRE-ORDER & save!):

The Red Shoes: Restoration Edition [Blu-ray] (Michael Powell+Emeric Pressburger, 1948) R'B UK - ITV DVD

A Christmas Carol [Blu-ray] (Brian Desmond Hurst, 1951) VCI Entertainment

Tulpan (Sergey Dvortsevoy, 2008) Zeitgeist Films

Le jour se lève (Marcel Carné, 1939) Criterion - Essential Arthouse

Mayerling (Anatole Litvak, 1936) Criterion - Essential Arthouse

Gervaise (René Clément, 1956) Criterion - Essential Arthouse

Henry: Portrait of a Serial Killer [Blu-ray] (John McNaughton, 1986) Mpi Home Video

Sin Nombre (Cary Fukunaga , 2009) Universal

Munyurangabo (Lee Isaac Chung, 2007) Film Movement

TCM Spotlight: Esther Williams, Vol. 2 (Thrill of a Romance / Fiesta / This Time for Keeps / Pagan Love Song / Million Dollar Mermaid / Easy to Love) – Warner

Lymelife [Blu-ray] (Derick Martini, 2008) Screen Media

X-Men Origins: Wolverine [Blu-ray] (Gavin Hood, 2009) - 20th Century Fox

State of Play [Blu-ray] (Kevin Macdonald, 2009) Universal Studios

Chaplin Keystone Collection - R2 'UK' BFI

The Big Switch [Blu-ray] (Pete Walker, 1969) - RB 'UK' BFI

All the Right Noises [Blu-ray] (Gerry O'Hara, 1969) - RB 'UK' BFI

Ali Baba and the Forty Thieves - Prepare to be dazzled as all the wonder, excitement, triumph, and treachery of the Arabian Nights come vibrantly to life in Ali Baba and the Forty Thieves! Orphaned as a young child and adopted by a band of notorious thieves, now-grown Ali Baba (Jon Hall) sets out to avenge his father’s murder, reclaim the royal throne, and rescue his beloved Amara (Maria Montez) from the iron fist of his treacherous enemy. Lushly shot in glorious Technicolor® and featuring a cast of thousands, Ali Baba and the Forty Thieves is a cinematic feast for the senses to be enjoyed time and again. DVD Release Date: July 7th, 2009

Match Point BR - Match Point is sexy, mysterious, suspense-driven, eventful and essentially quite unforgettable. The performances are basically one dimensional - aside from the moral slippage of the protagonist - conveniently reading Crime and Punishment in the beginning of the film. Scarlett Johansson has never looked better (as good as any female has a right to look) and her character generously gives to Rhys Meyers - an extremely important cog in the brilliant evolution of this story. Obvious comparisons are made to Allen's Crimes and Misdemeanors - the sterility of murder and the cold blanket of its cumulative effect. For me this is a favorite film of the past few years and one I should have added to this article had I seen it first. Nothing short of perfection and we should be enormously grateful to have Allen as a working filmmaker. Don't miss out on this masterpiece! Blu-ray Release Date: November 27th, 2008

Jonas Brothers 3-D Concert Experience BR - So who are these guys? The brothers are: Kevin (21), he’s the one with serious sideburns; Joe (19), the lead singer, who thinks he’s Mick Jagger on stage (another revolting bit of marketing); and Nick (16) the most talented of the trio, but who might not have gotten anywhere on his own if someone on high didn’t get the bright idea of using the three of them. They’re all moderately talented, if limited and harmless. They radiate a peculiar Mousketeerian cheeriness and godly cleanliness that makes their lyrics and their music agreeable to the point of meaninglessness. They have nothing to say, and they it say it with conviction. It must be reassuring to know who you are at that age. I didn’t. Blu-ray Release date: June 30, 2009

Bardelys The Magnificent, Monte Cristo - Today, more than 80% of silent cinema is considered lost forever. Some films were claimed by the flammable and unstable film stock of the day. Others were, once upon a time, thought to be worth less than the cost of keeping them. Yet, miraculously, unique copies of celebrated films previously thought lost are occasionally found and restored to delight a new generation. Bardelys the Magnificent joins Monte Cristo as two resurrected classics, both top-of-the-line productions starring John Gilbert, one of the most handsome, passionate and popular stars of the 1920s. DVD Release Date: July 14th, 2009

The Trail of the Lonesome Pine - Screen legends Henry Fonda and Fred MacMurray star in The Trail of the Lonesome Pine - one of the first films ever to be filmed outdoors in glorious Technicolor! Deep in the undeveloped backwoods of the Blue Ridge Mountains, two young men are caught in the midst of an ancient and bitter feud between two families and fighting for the romantic attention of a beautiful woman (Sylvia Sidney). One of the most breathtaking movies ever to hit the silver screen, The Trail of the Lonesome Pine is an exciting melodrama and a landmark cinematic achievement that continues to captivate audiences today. DVD Release Date: July 7th, 2009

Beau Geste - Academy Award winners Gary Cooper and Ray Milland star along with Robert Preston in the epic adventure Beau Geste. When three brothers join the Foreign Legion to escape a troubled past, they find themselves trapped under the command of a sadistic sergeant deep in the scorching Sahara. Now the brothers must fight for their lives as they plot mutiny against tyranny and defend a desert fortress against a brutal enemy. Nominated for 2 Academy Awards, Beau Geste has been universally acclaimed by generations of critics and audiences alike as a true motion picture classic. DVD Release Date: July 7th, 2009

Lonely Are the Brave - Dalton Trumbo wrote this elegy to the western. Kirk Douglas gives one of his finest performances as an out-of-place cowboy in the modern west--almost like a time traveller. The theme of the film is eloquently set up by the opening of the film in which we see Douglas reclining beneath a clear and spacious western sky. The peace and quiet is suddenly disrupted by the sound of a jet plane passing overhead. This brings a wry smile to the old cowboy's face. He rides his horse into Albuquerque to visit friends Kane and Rowlands. Rowlands tells him that her husband has been jailed for helping Mexicans enter the US illegally. Douglas starts a brawl in a saloon to get put into jail; there Douglas offers his friend Kane help in breaking out, but Kane tells Douglas that he wants to serve his brief time, intends to play out his hand with the law, and refuses to become a fugitive. Douglas is hurt but undaunted. He breaks out himself and heads for the hills, pursued by the compassionate technocratic sheriff Matthau and a posse. DVD Release Date: July 7th, 2009

The Deep BR - This visually stunning action-adventure film, based on the best-selling novel by 'Jaws' author Peter Benchley, stars Nick Nolte and Jaqueline Bissett as a couple on a romantic holiday in Bermuda. New Yorkers, David Sanders (Nolte) and Gail Berke (Bissett) are enjoying a much-needed vacation; while diving one day they discover the sunken wreck of a WWII freighter and unearth a gold coin as well as a mysterious glass ampule. Excited, they believe their discovery could be a long lost treasure, but they soon learn that their most valuable discovery is actually an ampule of morphine, one of thousands left behind on the medical supply ship. This discovery leads them into the hands of Henry Cloche (Louis Gossett Jr.), an extremely dangerous and powerful Haitian drug dealer who will stop at nothing to unearth the dangerous treasure. With the help of Romer Treece (Robert Shaw), an old treasure hunter, David and Gail soon realize that they have made a much more important discovery than the morphine and set out to keep their actual treasure a secret. Suspenseful death-defying dives and exquisite underwater photography. The poster of Bissett underwater in a T-shirt adorned many a dorm wall in the late 1970s. Blu-ray Release date: July 7th, 2009

Leaving Las Vegas BR - The man's name is Ben (Nicholas Cage). The woman's name is Sera (Elisabeth Shue). You will not see two better performances this year. Midway in the film someone offers Ben the insight that his drinking is a way of killing himself. He smiles lopsidedly and offers a correction: "Killing myself is a way of drinking." At one point, after it is clear that Sera really cares for him, he tells her, "You can never, ever, ask me to stop drinking." She replies in a little voice: "I know." The movie is not really about alcoholism. It is about great sad passion, of the sort celebrated in operas like "La Boheme." It takes place in bars and dreary rented rooms and the kind of Vegas poverty that includes a parking space and the use of the pool. The practical details are not quite realistic - it would be hard to drink as much as Ben drinks and remain conscious, and it is unlikely an intelligent prostitute would allow him into her life. We brush those objections aside, because they have nothing to do with the real subject of this movie, which is that we must pity one another, and be gentle. Blu-ray Release date: June 17th, 2009

Burn Notice - Season 2 BR - Only a few minutes into this series, I get this déjà-vu feeling. Where have I seen this before? Aha! It’s not the content so much as the style, reminiscent of Stephen J. Cannell’s The Rockford Files and Wiseguy. Rockford, a show synonymous with James Garner, was character-driven in hour-long self-contained formulaic episodes. Wiseguy less so, as it added a seasonal arc about how Ken Wahl’s character, Vinnie Terranova, is groomed to be accepted into the underworld. In both cases, the writing is what set them apart from everything else on TV at the time – that and the casting of the principals. When we see Bruce Campbell, King of B-pictures, in the all-important second banana position on the present instance, we can be comfortable that Burn Notice doesn’t have Cannellian aspirations. Blu-ray Release date: June 16th, 2009

Arizona Dream BR - "Arizona Dream" is one of those movies that slips through the cracks. Hollywood bureaucracy has been established precisely to prevent films like this from being made. And yet it was made, and it is goofier than hell - you can't stop watching because nobody in the audience, and possibly nobody on the screen, has any idea what's going to happen next. The movie was directed by Emir Kusturica, a Yugoslavian (if such a place still exists), whose "Time of the Gypsies" (1989) won the best director award at Cannes. In his world, strange magic happens. People want to fly, and sometimes they can. Eccentricity is prized. That earlier film followed a gypsy family as it traveled through Yugoslavia and Italy, taking its occult knowledge with it. Blu-ray Release Date: June 17th, 2009

The Myth BR - Jackie Chan takes on dual roles in his latest action spectacular, The Myth. Chan plays Jack, a modern day archeologist who is recruited by his old friend William (Tony Leung Ka Fai) to investigate some mysterious levitation activities at an ancient Indian shrine. Meanwhile, Jack is having vivid dreams that he is General Meng Yi, a high-ranking officer during the Qing Dynasty. After saving the life of beautiful Korean Princess Ok Soo (Kim Hee Sun), Meng Yi must safely guide her through the treacherous countryside to the safety of the royal palace. Blu-ray Release Date: May 4th, 2009

For All Mankind BR - In July 1969, the space race ended when Apollo 11 fulfilled President Kennedy’s challenge of “landing a man on the Moon and returning him safely to the Earth.” No one who witnessed the lunar landing will ever forget it. Breathtaking both in the scope of its vision and the exhilaration of the human emotions it captures, For All Mankind is the story of the 24 men who traveled to the Moon—told in their words, in their voices, using the images of their experiences. Blu-ray Release Date: July 14th, 2009

Pulp Fiction BR - Quentin Tarantino's second feature, Pulp Fiction, is at once immensely entertaining and remarkably weightless. The film's quintessential scene takes place outside the Jack Rabbit Slim's restaurant when Mia Wallace (Uma Thurman) tells Vincent Vega (John Travolta) not to be a "square." Forget the irony (after a ten year acting rut that included three Look Who's Talking films, Pulp Fiction's success made Travolta reputable again), Mia's line could be the film's mantra. Samuel L. Jackson's Jules Winnfield is still Tarantino's most fascinating creation. More than a repository of disposable trivia and smart-alecky responses, Jules embodies the film's surface concern with righteousness and redemption. Blu-ray Release Date: March 19th, 2009

House of Fury BR - From the opening scenes in which veteran dramatic actor Anthony Wong shows off some moves I didn't know he had, I expected more from this spoof of classic kung-fu movies. Its high-energy action sequences are clever and amusing. They are grounded in a certain degree of realism, thanks to the master, Yuen Wo Ping, and in director Stephen Fung's hands, they are sly and silly by turns, leaps and bounds. Blu-ray Release date: May 19th, 2009

Week of July 20th, 2009