Newsletter - FOR THE WEEK

OF August 29th, 2016

Howdy! Another strong week with Blu-ray reviews via Criterion, Masters of Cinema, Second Run, Signal One, Kino, Panamint, Elephant Films... of films by Fritz Lang, Joel & Ethan Coen, Jacques Tourneur, Robert Aldrich, Peter Yates, Joseph Newman and Jack Arnold, Ján Kadár and Elmar Klo. Our Calendar still has last week's listings including November Criterions and films by Paul Thomas Anderson, Akira Kurosawa, Kenji Misumi 1Marlon Brando, Noah Baumbach, Alfred Hitchcock, Clint Eastwood, Ang Lee, Richard Fleischer, Jean-Luc Godard, Frederick Wiseman, Woody Allen, Otto Preminger, Werner Herzog, Elia Kazan, Peter Jackson and more. Feature Blu-ray and DVD is posted for AUGUST. We have a CONTEST posted with a BRAND NEW Arrow Blu-ray prize. Have fun!

Arrow Blu-rays and DVDs are 50% OFF at Barnes and Noble HERE

DVDBeaver has their own store at Movie Zyng - check it out! Many have $1 shipping - even overseas!

Feature Blu-ray and DVD chosen for the Month of AUGUST!

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(Week of) August 29th CONTEST  identify the clip on the CONTEST PAGE to win a Brand New Arrow Blu-ray prize of The Bloodstained Butterfly Best of luck!

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

Gary at 2ze dot com

Eyewitness BD - Manhattan janitor Daryll Deever is fixated on hard-charging TV commentator, Tony Sokolow; he tapes her commentary daily to watch after work. When a wealthy Vietnamese man, with many shady connections, is murdered in the office building where Daryll works, Tony shows up to cover the story and Daryll introduce himself. She thinks he may know something, so she pursues him; he pretends he might to keep her interested. This romantic cat and mouse game goes on under the watchful eyes of the killers, who think that Daryll and Tony do know something. The killers start their own game of cat and mouse. Blu-ray Release date: August 29th, 2016

Destiny BD - A dizzying blend of German Romanticism, Orientalism, and Expressionism, Fritz Lang's DESTINY (Der made Tod) marked a bold step for Lang, away from the conventional melodrama and into the kind of high-concept filmmaking that would culminate in such über-stylized works as Die Nibelungen and Metropolis. DESTINY is a visually ambitious, cinematic allegory in which a young woman (Lil Dagover) confronts the personification of Death (Bernhard Goetzke), in an effort to save the life of her fiancé (Walter Janssen). She is transported to a Gothic cathedral, where lives are represented as burning candles of varying length. Death weaves three romantic tragedies, and offers to unite the girl with her lover, if she can prevent the death of the lovers in at least one of the episodes. Blu-ray Release date: August 30th, 2016

The Flight of the Phoenix BD - Based on Elleston Trevor's novel, The Flight of the Phoenix opens with a well-staged plane crash in the middle of the Sahara desert. The pilot (James Stewart) and the navigator (Richard Attenborough) do their best to maintain order among the survivors, a group of oil men not well-suited for survival in the desert wastes. Some of those who appear to be the most resourceful reveal themselves to be inept or cowardly, while other less prepossessing types -- notably bespectacled Standish (Dan Duryea) -- demonstrate surprising inner reserves of strength. The ultimate fate of the survivors rests in the hands of Heinrich Dorfmann (Hardy Kruger), who uses the wreckage of the old plane to design a new one. The Flight of the Phoenix was dedicated to the memory of veteran stunt pilot Paul Mantz, who was killed while filming the take-off scene of the new plane. Blu-ray Release Date: September 12th, 2016

This Island Earth BD - Let us start with a plot that rarely gets more appealing for a young adventure-seeking lad of any era: Dr. Cal Meacham (played by tall, dark and absurdly deep-voiced actor Rex Reason) is a handsome scientist, able to dabble in nuclear energy and expertly pilot jet planes. Cal and his Jimmy Olson-like sidekick Joe, played by Robert Nichols, have received a strange metal-paged instruction manual on how to build an "interocitor". This reviewer looks skyward rubbing his jaw as an eerie sequence of single organ notes plays in the background "hmmmm... interocitor you say". Elephant Films Blu-ray Release Date: July 6th, 2016

Blood Simple BD - Joel and Ethan Coen’s career-long darkly comic road trip through misfit America began with this razor-sharp, hard-boiled neonoir set somewhere in Texas, where a sleazy bar owner releases a torrent of violence with one murderous thought. Actor M. Emmet Walsh looms over the proceedings as a slippery private eye with a yellow suit, a cowboy hat, and no moral compass, and Frances McDormand’s cunning debut performance set her on the road to stardom. The tight scripting and inventive style that have marked the Coens’ work for decades are all here in their first film, in which cinematographer Barry Sonnenfeld abandons black-and-white chiaroscuro for neon signs and jukebox colors that combine with Carter Burwell’s haunting score to lurid and thrilling effect. Blending elements from pulp fiction and low-budget horror flicks, Blood Simple reinvented the film noir for a new generation, marking the arrival of a filmmaking ensemble that would transform the American independent cinema scene. Criterion Blu-ray Release Date: September 20th, 2016

Cat People (1942) BD - The first of the horror films producer Val Lewton made for RKO Pictures redefined the genre by leaving its most frightening terrors to its audience’s imagination. Simone Simon stars as a Serbian émigré in Manhattan who believes that, because of an ancient curse, any physical intimacy with the man she loves (Kent Smith) will turn her into a feline predator. Lewton, a consummate producer-auteur who oversaw every aspect of his projects, found an ideal director in Jacques Tourneur, a chiaroscuro stylist adept at keeping viewers off-kilter with startling compositions and psychological innuendo. Together, they eschewed the canned effects of earlier monster movies in favor of shocking with subtle shadows and creative audio cues. One of the studio’s most successful movies of the 1940s, Cat People raised the creature feature to new heights of sophistication and mystery. Criterion Blu-ray Release Date: September 20th, 2016

The Shop on High Street BD - Antonin Tono Brtko is a poor carpenter appointed by his Nazi brother-in-law to be 'Aryan controller' of an old Jewish widow s sewing shop in a Nazi-occupied Slovakian town in 1942. The widow, Rozalie (Yiddish theatre legend Idá Kaminská, nominated here for a Best Actress Oscar® for her performance) is near deaf, isolated and partially sighted. Barely even registering there is a war going on, she fails to fully realize the implications of the context in which she lives. Believing Tono is simply her new assistant, the two develop a tentative friendship that sees him maintaining that fiction as he attempts to protect her from the encroaching Nazi horror. Blu-ray Release Date: August 15th, 2016

Canyon Passage BD - Considered by many to be unjustly overlooked, “Canyon Passage”, Jacques Tourneur’s first Western and Technicolor film, is presented in a pristine transfer with high definition video and audio. A thrilling adventure set in untamed Oregon Territory in 1856, Tourneur’s portrayal of settlers in the mining town of Jacksonville is undoubtedly one of the most vivid portrayals of pioneer life in the Old West ever brought to the screen. Blu-ray Release date: August 23rd, 2016

A Woman's Vengeance - Country squire, Henry Maurier (Charles Boyer), is regarded as a saint for putting up with his neurotic, invalid wife Emily (Rachel Kempson). But when Emily s brother visits them with his voluptuous mistress, Doris (Ann Blyth), the ageing squire falls instantly in love with the young temptress. That very night Emily dies suddenly of chronic heart disease, and Henry is left free to seduce and later marry Doris much to the annoyance of their neighbour, Janet (Jessica Tandy) who has secretly loved Henry for many years. When a post-mortem shows that Emily's death was precipitated by arsenic, Henry is arrested for murder and placed on trial for his life. But is he guilty? Gripping drama directed by Zoltan Korda and written by Aldous Huxley. DVD Release Date: April 25th, 2016

Do You Know This Voice? - When a ransom bid results in the death of a child, the police have only one lead the old lady who witnessed the kidnapper using a public phone box. Though her recollection is vague, she volunteers to act as bait for the killer telling the press that she had seen the kidnapper's face, she waits for him to attack... DVD Release Date: April 18th, 2016

Step By Step - In this espionage drama, a WW II veteran teams up with a government secretary and begins hunting a gang of Nazi agents who are seeking the secret documents carried by the G-man they killed. The two heroes are hindered on their hunt by fellow government agents who believe the two are responsible for the FBI agent's death. Mayhem ensues until the two prove their innocence, capture the culprits, and save the US from fascism. DVD Release Date: November 1st, 2014

Strange Bargain - Although its central character, an underpaid bookkeeper, becomes involved in an improbable fix—he is offered $10,000 by his boss to help make the latter's suicide look like murder—the ensuing developments unfold briskly and in convincing style. Our conscience-stricken hero unwillingly carries out his unsavory assignment and the cops pursuing the obvious leads are about to arrest the innocent man. But the denouement—it isn't suicide after all—is swift, perhaps overly melodramatic but completely surprising. DVD Release Date: December 11th, 2013

People of the Mountains - Shot almost entirely on location (in the harshest conditions imaginable), using mostly non-professional actors, a devotion to realism and the details of daily life, and an indictment of the prevailing conditions, this was a groundbreaking film. Sz ts auspicious debut was, however, refused a distribution license by Nazi minister for Propaganda, Joseph Goebbels and condemned as 'Communist propaganda'. In spite of this, the film went onto to win a major prize at the 1942 Venice Film Festival and later cited as an early model for the post-war Italian Neorealism movement, praised by Vittorio De Sica and Cesare Zavattini among others. A powerful, elemental vision suffused with poetic lyricism and a romantic anti-capitalist zeal, People of the Mountains is the jewel of Hungarian cinema of the period. DVD Release Date: August 29th, 2016

Unspoken - Horror written and directed by Sheldon Wilson. After a family mysteriously disappears from their home without a trace, it is left untouched and abandoned for 17 years. When single mum Jeanie (Pascale Hutton) and her young son Adrian (Sunny Suljic) decide to move in, local girl Angela (Jodelle Ferland) ignores pleas from her superstitious father not to work at the notorious house as Adrian's childminder. Things soon turn sinister however, when a number of disturbing phenomena occur, leaving Angela in no doubt that an evil that has remained dormant for years has now returned to torment a new set of victims. DVD Release Date: September 5th, 2016

Puzzled Love - Sun from Chicago (USA) and Lucas from Mallorca (Spain) meet each other in a students's flat in Barcelona. They fall in love, trying not to think about its inevitable conclusion with the school year's end. Watching all their ups and downs, is it possible, though, that young love will prevail? DVD Release Date: August 2nd, 2016

Sea Fog - Kang, a long time captain of the Junjin, is disheartened to learn that his ship has been sold by its owner, leaving Kang's entire crew in danger of losing their livelihood. Swallowing his pride, Kang pays a visit to Yeo, a human trafficking broker, and decides to take on the dangerous job of smuggling illegal migrants into South Korea. When the Junjin arrives at the pickup point, a violent storm forces the boat to stall in the open waters, inevitably pitting Kang's crew against the migrants. As tension and unrest spread throughout the Junjin, a dense sea fog envelops the boat, and tragedy unfolds in the mysterious depths of the fog... DVD Release Date: August 2nd, 2016

Our Last Tango - Executive produced by Wim Wenders, Our Last Tango tells the life and love story of Argentina's most famous tango dancers Maria Nieves Rego and Juan Carlos Copes, who met as teenagers and danced together for nearly fifty years until a painful separation tore them apart. Relaying their story to a group of young tango dancers and choreographers from Buenos Aires, their story of love, hatred and passion is transformed into unforgettable tango-choreographies. DVD Release Date: August 16th, 2016
 

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