Newsletter - FOR THE WEEK OF August 17th, 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

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

Sunrise: A Song of Two Humans [Blu-ray] (F.W. Murnau, 1927) - Masters of Cinema CONFIRMED REGION FREE

El Cid (Deluxe Edition, 3 Discs) [Blu-ray] (Anthony Mann, 1961) R'B DE Koch Media GmbH – DVD

Model Shop (Jacques Demy, 1969) Sony Pictures

The Hurt Locker [Blu-ray]  (Kathryn Bigelow, 2008) R'B' UK Lions Gate Home Entertainment

Death in the Garden - La mort en ce jardin (Luis Bunuel, 1956) - Microcinema DVD

The Leopard [Blu-ray] (Luchino Visconti, 1963) R'B UK BFI

Avant-Garde 3: Experimental Cinema 1922-1954 – Kino

Up (Bob Peterson, Pete Docter -2009) - Walt Disney Pictures

Up (4 Disc) [Blu-ray] (Bob Peterson, Pete Docter -2009) - Walt Disney Pictures

Tinto Brass Collection, Vol.3 - Cult Epics

Pierrepoint [Blu-ray] (Adrian Shergold, 2005) R'B' UK LionsGate

Lake Tahoe (Fernando Eimbcke, 2008) Film Movement

Forrest Gump [Blu-ray] (Robert Zemeckis, 1994) Paramount

Il Divo [Blu-ray] (Paolo Sorrentino, 2008) Mpi Home Video

Wolf [Blu-ray] (Mike Nichols, 1994) Sony Pictures

Mary Shelley's Frankenstein [Blu-ray] (Kenneth Branagh, 1994) Sony Pictures

Away We Go [Blu-ray] (Sam Mendes, 2009) Focus Features

Star Trek: The Next Generation Motion Picture Collection [Blu-ray] – Paramount

Easy Virtue [Blu-ray] (Stephan Elliott, 2008) Sony Pictures

Mission Impossible: The Complete TV Series Pack – Paramount

The Sam Fuller Film Collection (It Happened in Hollywood (1937),Adventure in Sahara (1938), Power of the Press (1943), Shockproof (1949), Scandal Sheet (1952), The Crimson Kimono (1959)and Underworld U.S.A. (1961) - Sony

The William Castle Film Collection (Homicidal (1961), Mr. Sardonicus (1961), Zotz! (1962), The Old Dark House (1963), 13 Ghosts (1960), 13 Frightened Girls! (1963) and Strait-Jacket (1964) - Sony Pictures

O'Horten (Bent Hamer, 2007) Sony Pictures

The Elephant King (Seth Grossman, 2006) E1 Entertainment

Traffik (1989) Acorn Media

It's Garry Shandling's Show: The Complete Series - Shout! Factory

The Fugitive: Season Three Vol 1 – Paramount

London Story (Sally Potter, 1980) R2 UK BFI

Institute Benjamenta [Blu-ray] (Quay Brothers, 1995) R'B' UK BFI

Family Guy Presents: Something Something Something Dark Side [Blu-ray] - R'B' UK 20th Century Fox Home Entertainment

Sunshine Cleaning BR - Amy Adams is a hugely likeable actress and she's on typically superb form as Rose, lacing her usual adorable sweetness with a slightly tougher edge that's constantly surprising. She's equally matched by Emily Blunt (delivering another note-perfect American accent), who somehow manages to be both frustrating and sympathetic as Norah; she also has an intriguing streak of unpredictability, so you're never quite sure what she's going to do or say next.  Blu-ray Release date: August 25th, 2009

Detective Bureau 2-3: Go To Hell Bastards - Assigned a standard Yakuza film in the hardboiled vein pioneered at Japan s famed Nikkatsu Studios, director Seijun Suzuki (Branded to Kill) and his frequent leading man Jo Shishido used 1963 s Detective Bureau 2-3: Go to Hell Bastards! to flip the Japanese gangster film genre on its ear. A rapid fire gun heist, credits with an infectious jazz pop score, and a wide-screen close-up of a burning car announce Detective Bureau 2-3 as the film that would both lampoon and redefine Asian crime films for an irreverent new decade of garish panache and ultra-violent cool. The story follows police detective Tajima (Shishido), who, tasked with tracking down stolen firearms, turns an underworld grudge into a bloodbath -- while Suzuki transforms a colorful potboiler into an on-target send-up of cultural colonialism and post-war greed. DVD Release Date: May 19th, 2009

Go BR - Within one 24 hour period, three sets of friends in three dysfuctional situations will collide in the raucous Los Angeles underground party scene. It's Christmas Eve and Ronna and Claire are supermarket checkout girls desperate to score some quick rent money. It's a simple plan -- all they need to do is acquire 20 hits of ecstasy from Simon and his drug dealing pal Todd and turn around and sell them for a small profit to Adam and Zack, two soap opera stars looking to hit the night club scene in style. But alas, nothing is so simple. Ronna will soon find herself at the center of a police sting, Claire will be taken hostage, Simon will be shot which will make Todd quite upset, and Zack and Adam will find themselves not only in hot water, but at one bizarre Christmas party.  Blu-ray Release date: August 18th, 2009

King Eagle - One of the defining lone swordsman films follows the adventures of King Eagle, a solitary knight who becomes entangled with a pair of warring clans in medieval China. Refusing to take sides, he only avenges the innocent people harmed by the conflict and must ultimately unleash the fury of his sword while navigating between a pair of beautiful twins leading the clans, one beautiful and the other utterly evil. Kung fu legend Ti Lung (Legend of the Drunken Master; The Magic Blade) heads up this stunning exercise in flashing steel and relentless martial arts mayhem. DVD Release Date: August 11th, 2009

The Howl - Anita (Tina Aumont, TORSO) has been involved in a student riot and was arrested. Her relating of her rape by the police to her straight-laced boyfriend Bernard (Nino Segurini of Brass' NEROSUBIANCO) to propose marriage. Seeing marriage as a trap (not surprising given the bizarre outdoor ceremony), she takes to the road along with Coso (Luigi Proietti, REVENGE OF THE MUSKETEERS). By bus, by car, and by foot, they stumble into one bizarre situation after another. They tour a sex motel, are captured by philosophical hippie cannibals, she gets raped by soldiers, he is put in front of a firing squad, they meet a midget Napoleon, free the prisoners of a hippie penitentiary, and attend an orgy in the London tube station before Anita returns to the real world (or does she) to race head on to her destiny (prompting the titular howl). DVD Release Date: July 28th. 2009

Julia - Tilda Swinton is fearless. She’ll take on any role without her ego, paycheck, vanity or career path playing a part. All that matters, apparently, is whether the movie interests her, and whether she thinks she can do something interesting with the role. She almost always can. She hasn’t often been more fascinating than in “Julia,” a nerve-wracking thriller with a twisty plot and startling realism. DVD Release Date: August 18th, 2009

Katyn - 1940. After Germany's invasion of Poland, Joseph Stalin ordered the liquidation of the Polish officer corps, slaughtering nearly 22,000 men in Katyn Forest. Based on this horrific, historical event, Katyn tells the story of four fictional officers and their families as they struggle to uncover the truth. Nominated for the Academy Award for Best Foreign Language Film and directed by Academy Award Winner Andrzej Wajda. DVD Release Date: August 11th, 2009

Tyson BR - In Tyson, James Toback’s shockingly candid documentary, one of sport’s most fascinating figures makes an unlikely comeback, and a bid for redemption. Toback offers a portrait of a thug as a noble savage. The film shows that Mike Tyson is as iconic a figure as Muhammed Ali. Of course, he lacks Ali’s elegance and nobility. But Tyson is a more profoundly tragic hero—the bigger the hubris, the harder they fall. As one critic noted after last night’s screening, he’s like Ali’s evil twin.  Blu-ray Release date: August 18th, 2009

Icons of Science Fiction - Toho Collection - Toho, the most famous of all Japanese movie studios, first made its name in the West for the extraordinary masterworks of Akira Kurosawa. But they really struck box office gold with the wildly colorful kaiju eiga (monster movies) that began in 1954 with the original Godzilla (Gojira), the creation of director Ishiro Honda and special effects wizard Eiji Tsuburaya. Now for the first time on DVD -- and in their original Tohoscope aspect ratios -- Sony Pictures presents three Honda classics that display the enormous breadth of the Toho magic during its glory years. The H-Man, Battle in Outer Space and Mothra are presented in both their Japanese and U.S. versions. So travel back to the days before CGI, when special effects were real and the results were spectacular! DVD Release Date: August 18th, 2009

Husbands - "Husbands," John Cassavetes's first film as a director since "Faces," is a personal, almost private movie that is devoted to the exploration of the mysteries of a very middle-class American friendship. Like "Faces," which was rambling and funny and accurate, and which I admired, the new film demonstrates a concern for panicky, inarticulate squares that is so unpatronizing that it comes close to being reverential in a solemnly religious sense. DVD Release Date: August 18th, 2009

Battlestar Galatica 4.5 BR - The story arc of Battlestar Galactica is set in a distant part of the galaxy, where a civilization of humans live on a series of planets known as the Twelve Colonies. In the past, the Colonies have been at war with a cybernetic race known as the Cylons. With the unwitting help of a human named Gaius Baltar, the Cylons launch a sudden ambush on the Colonies, laying waste to the planets and devastating their populations. The handful of human survivors flee into space aboard any spacecraft they can reach. Of all the Colonial Fleet, the Battlestar Galactica appears to be the only military capital ship that survived the attack.  Blu-ray Release date: July 28, 2009

The Bill Douglas Trilogy BR - Presented here in a High-Definition restoration, the Trilogy follows Jamie (played with heart-breaking conviction by Stephen Archibald) as he grows up in a poverty-stricken mining village in post-war Scotland. This is a cinematic poetry: Douglas contracted his subject matter to the barest essentials - dialogue is kept to a minimum, and field, slag heaps and cobbled streets are shot in bleak monochrome, yet with its unexpected humour and warmth, the Trilogy brims with clear-eyed humanity, and affection for an ultimately triumphant young boy. Blu-ray Release Date: July 27th, 2009