Newsletter - FOR THE WEEK

OF July 30th, 2018

Matcaci! The Criterion 50% OFF sale is ALMOST OVER (Tomorrow is the LAST DAY!) HERE. Stock up for the Winter! Another very strong week with Blu-ray reviews of packages by Indicator, Criterion, Masters of Cinema, Arrow, Second Sight, Twilight Time, 88 Films, Plan B Entertainment, of films directed by Rainer Werner Fassbinder, John Frankenheimer, Terence Fisher, Val Guest, Arthur Lubin, Roger Spottiswoode, Kinji Fukasaku, Pil-sung Yim, Robert M. Young, Richard Friedman, Mark L. Lester and others, and a new Listing Page; Blaxploitation. Our Calendar has updates of films-to-Blu-ray, including works by Raoul Walsh, Richard Brooks, Terence Davies, Jean-Jacques Beineix, Lewis Allen, Lucio Fulci, Umberto Lenzi, Peter R. Hunt, Norman Z. McLeod, Wim Wenders, Michael Bay, John Landis, Ron Howard, Henry Kings and we have our Feature Blu-ray is posted for JULY Enjoy!!

LISTING PAGES:

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)

Feature Blu-ray chosen for the Month of JULY!

Barnes and Noble's 50% Criterion SALE is ON! FINAL DAY TOMORROW!

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Gary at 2ze dot com

ONE VOICE (not Ellsworth Monkton Toohey): Berlin Alexanderplatz is on Blu-ray from Second Sight in the UK. Rainer Werner Fassbinder's mammoth portrait of a common man struggling to survive in a viciously uncommon time gets an super Blu-ray package for the lauded director's Magnum Opus and the package includes the Christian Braad Thomsen documentary, Bird's enlightening visual essay, 3/4 of an hour of Tony Rayns and the extensive 60-page book making it one of the most desirable packages of the year. Fans of the British studio don't need our endorsement for Indicator's Hammer Vol 3 - Blood And Terror, Region FREE, Blu-ray Box with Yesterday's Enemy, The Camp on Blood Island, The Terror of the Tongs and The Stranglers of Bombay in stellar 1080P editions. Bravo! Criterion bring us the underappreciated western The Ballad of Gregorio Cortez on Blu-ray - a trailblazing independent film that demands a larger audience. It shouldn't be surprising that The Masters of Cinema group give us the very best Blu-ray edition of John Frankenheimer's The Birdman of Alcatraz - a brilliant biography. Arthur Lubin's Footsteps in the Fog has Stewart Granger and Jean Simmons in an intriguing Victorian Noir - now on excellent, Region FREE, Blu-ray from Indicator. I liked Pil-sung Yim's mysterious Hansel and Gretel in a stacked Blu-ray package from 88 Films that accentuates the film's amazing color scheme. Kinji Fukasaku's Street Mobster, a pivotal work in the yakuza movie genre, is on Region FREE Blu-ray from Arrow. Plan B Entertainment give us an outstanding Blu-ray package of Firestarter - an adaptation of the Stephen King novel that stars a 9-year old Drew Barrymore with a dangerous telekinetic ability. Roger Spottiswoode's The Children of Hunag Shi is an impacting war story and Twilight Time have brought it to Blu-ray. Doom Asylum is an 80's comedy-horror brought to Blu-ray by Arrow. No DVDs this week - maybe next (didn't I say that last week?)!

'I didn't know what to expect from a famous movie star; maybe that he'd be sort of stuck-up, you know. But not Gary Cooper. He horsed around so much... that I had a hard time painting him.' - Norman Rockwell

Have a vacation-planning week!

Firestarter BD - Firestarter, based on the unforgettable best-seller by esteemed horror author Stephen King, chronicles the extraordinary life of Charlene "Charlie" McGee. Eight-year-old Drew Barrymore stars as the child who has the amazing ability to start fires with just a glance. Can her psychic power and the love of her father save her from the threatening government agency, "The Shop," which wants to control her… or destroy her? Filled with blazing special effects and featuring an all-star cast including Martin Sheen, Heather Locklear, Art Carney, Louise Fletcher and George C. Scott, Firestarter is directed by Mark L. Lester and driven by a pulsating, thrilling score from Tangerine Dream. Blu-ray Release Date: June 25th, 2018

Berlin Alexanderplatz BD - This shattering adaptation of Alfred Döblin's masterpiece - made for TV in 13 episodes with a two-hour epilogue - offers a level-headed account of protagonist Biberkopf's key weakness: his quasi-sexual infatuation with the psychotic pimp Reinhold. Aided by great design, cinematography, and, not least, performances, Fassbinder tells the story surprisingly naturalistically. Then in the epilogue, he offers a disturbing meditation on his own fantasies about Biberkopf. This phantasmagoria is Fassbinder's most daring act of self-exposure: a movie time-bomb that forces you to rethink the series as a whole. The work of a genuine master with nothing left to lose or hide. Blu-ray Release Date: July 23rd, 2018

The Birdman of Alcatraz BD - In 1909, Robert Stroud kills a man in Alaska and is sentenced to 12 years imprisonment. He forfeits his chance for parole when he knifes another prisoner. While serving time at Leavenworth, he murders a prison guard who refuses to let his mother visit him, and he is condemned to death. Before his execution can be carried out, however, his mother visits Mrs. Woodrow Wilson, who persuades the president to commute Stroud's sentence to life imprisonment. The prison warden, Harvey Shoemaker, informs Stroud that he will spend the rest of his life in solitary confinement. Masters of Cinema Blu-ray Release Date: August 6th, 2018

Yesterday's Enemy BD - The British World War II drama Yesterday's Enemy (1959) was tagged in its home country as "the most controversial...ever filmed," largely because it took the unprecedented step of suggesting the British were not always honorable in combat. A brigade, cut off from its main division in the Burmese jungle in 1942, comes upon a small force of Japanese holed up in a remote village. The British troops defeat their enemy, discovering an important top-secret map on the body of a slain Japanese commander. Suspecting one of the villagers secretly knows more about the map than he will tell, the brigade commander begins to execute innocent villagers to force a confession from the person in question, an act that draws horrified condemnation from the brigade's chaplain and a war correspondent embedded with the British troops. Hammer Vol 3 - Blood And Terror Blu-ray Release Date: July 30th, 2018

The Camp on Blood Island BD - It is 1945 and a prisoner-of-war camp in Malaysia is ruled in brutal fashion by Colonel Yamamitsu and his henchman Captain Sakamura. Aware that his war crimes will condemn him, Yamamitsu vows to kill all his prisoners if Japan surrenders. Inmate Colonel Lambert, desperately trying to keep order amongst his men, discovers that the war is over and tries to keep the fact secret from his captors in the hope that the camp will be liberated. However, his acts of sabotage bring about reprisals from the Japanese… Hammer Vol 3 - Blood And Terror Blu-ray Release Date: July 30th, 2018

The Terror of the Tongs BD - Treading similar territory to Hammer’s The Stranglers of Bombay (1960), Terror of the Tongs is a colourful and rather silly Hong Kong melodrama embellished with ceremonial hatchet murders and 'bone-scraping' tortures. Directed with gusto by Anthony Bushell and scripted by Jimmy Sangster, the film is hampered by some tight production values and a procession of English actors masquerading as Chinese in make-up is far from convincing and not at all respectful. Set around the harbour of Hong Kong in 1910, a ruthless gang called the Red Dragon Tong have thrived off the proceeds of slavery, drugs, vice, corruption and protection rackets. Hammer Vol 3 - Blood And Terror Blu-ray Release Date: July 30th, 2018

The Stranglers of Bombay BD - One of Hammer and Terence Fisher's most notorious and Sadean horror movies, about the thuggee atrocities in India in the 1820s. Guy Rolfe battles against a fatal sect of Kali worshippers whose mascot is a sexy teenager called Karim (Devereux). As men have their tongues pulled out or are castrated, Karim drools and wriggles so much that the film became a cult sensation on the continent and was cut in England. Actually, it isn't at all bad, even on a straight adventure level, and the Karim figure remains one of the purest incarnations of evil in all of Fisher's work. Be prepared for a few laughs, though, as rural Bucks is substituted for the sweltering plains of India.." Hammer Vol 3 - Blood And Terror Blu-ray Release Date: July 30th, 2018

Footsteps in the Fog BD - Stewart Granger is the recently widowed Londoner Stephen Lowry in this lovely little Victorian Noir. His housemaid Lily (played by Jean Simmons) confronts Lowry with the knowledge that the former Mrs. Lowry was poisoned, securing herself a better position among the household staff, and eventually, in Lowry's arms. Eventually, the threat of blackmail is too much for Lowry, and both he and Lily struggle to gain the control of the situation - with fatal results. Blu-ray Release Date: July 30th, 2018

The Children of Hunag Shi BD - Inspired by true events, the film tells the story of George Hogg, a young British journalist, who rescues 60 orphaned children. He leads them on a treacherous 1000-mile journey along the Silk Road, through the Liu Pan Shan Mountains into the spectacular Gobi desert. Over the course of the journey he falls in love with a determined, self-trained nurse, and makes a friend in Chen, the leader of a Chinese partisan group. Madame Wang, a surviving aristocrat, assists in guiding them to safety in a remote village near the western end of China's Great Wall. Blu-ray Release Date: July, 2018

Hansel and Gretel BD - In fact he has just accidentally flipped his car in the middle of nowhere, in the dead of winter, and is now dazed, delirious and lost in the woods – but given that his motor trip was taking him away from his pregnant girlfriend and towards the ailing mother for whom he still harbours unresolved feelings of hostility, it seems he was already lost before his unfortunate crash. Blu-ray Release Date: July 9th, 2018

Doom Asylum BD - When a group of horny teens wind up on the grounds of a creepy abandoned asylum, they think they ve found the perfect place to party. Little do they know that inside the building s crumbling walls lurks a freakishly deformed maniac, driven to madness by the tragic loss of his fiancée in a car accident. With an array of grisly surgical tools at his disposal, it s only a matter of time before the youngsters begin meeting various splattery ends at the hands of the ghoulish Coroner. Blu-ray Release Date: July 16th-17th, 2018

Street Mobster BD - A pivotal work in the yakuza movie genre and in the career of director Kinji Fukasaku, Street Mobster presents an abrasive portrait of the rise and fall of a reckless street punk caught in the crossfire of a bloody turf war raging in the mean streets of Kawazaki. When Okita Isamu re-emerges onto the mean streets of Kawazaki after five years in prison for a string of brutal crimes, he comes face to face with prostitute Kinuyo, who immediately pinpoints him as one of the participants in her brutal sexual assault years earlier that left her shell-shocked and consigned to the life of a sex worker. Blu-ray Release Date: August 6th-7th, 2018

The Ballad of Gregorio Cortez BD - Forced to run from the Texas Rangers after a heated misunderstanding leads to the death of a lawman, Mexican American farmer Gregorio Cortez sets off in desperate flight, evading a massive manhunt on horseback for days. Producer-star Edward James Olmos, seeking to shed new light on a historical incident that had been enshrined in a corrido (folk song), enlisted director Robert M. Young, a longtime practitioner of socially engaged realism, to helm this trailblazing independent film, a landmark of Chicano cinema. Shifting its perspective between the pursuers and the pursued, The Ballad of Gregorio Cortez is a thrilling chase film and a nuanced procedural that peels away the layers of prejudice and myth surrounding Cortez, uncovering the true story of an ordinary man persecuted by the law and transfigured by legend. Blu-ray Release Date: August 14th, 2018
 

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