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Kabei - Our Mother - After
the success of his "Samurai Trilogy", renowned director Yamada
Yoji draws acclaim and accolades once more with the wartime
drama Kabei - Our Mother. Based on Nogami Teruyo's memoirs,
Kabei follows a normal, loving family as their innocent,
bustling lives are forever transformed by the war. Veteran
actress Yoshinaga Sayuri is the picture of dignity and grace as
a strong and elegant woman who holds her family together in her
husband's absence, while acclaimed actor Asano Tadanobu
disappears into the role of an awkward, affable writer who
becomes the unlikely hero for a struggling family. Also
co-starring Dan Rei from Love and Honor, Kabei is a triumph in
humanistic storytelling, breaking hearts with its realistic
characters, sensitive depictions, and precious moments of
laughter and tears. DVD Release Date: September 8th, 2009
That Hamilton Woman - One
of cinema’s most dashing duos, real-life spouses Vivien Leigh
and Laurence Olivier live their greatest on-screen romance in
this visually dazzling tragic love story from legendary
producer-director Alexander Korda. Set against the backdrop of
the Napoleonic Wars of the late eighteenth century, That
Hamilton Woman is a gripping account of the scandalous
adulterous affair between the British Royal Navy officer Lord
Horatio Nelson and the renowned beauty Emma, Lady Hamilton, the
wife of a British ambassador. With its grandly designed sea
battles and formidable star performances, That Hamilton Woman
(Winston Churchill’s favorite movie, which he claimed to have
seen over eighty times) brings history to vivid, glamorous life.
DVD Release Date: September 8th, 2008
La Tete Contre Les Murs -
Compassionate yet unflinching, La Tête contre les murs is a bold
precursor to the likes of Samuel Fuller’s Shock Corridor and
Milos Forman’s One Flew over the Cuckoo’s Nest, revealing
Franju’s poetic gift for creating images both concrete and
evocative, and an ominous hint of the clinical horrors yet to
come in Les yeux sans visage. DVD Release Date: September
21st, 2009
Hero
BR
- Zhang Yimou’s latest feature film “Hero” is a box office
phenomenon in China and also the most costly Asian film ever
made tipping the scales at about 240 million HK$. It would
immediately spark comparisons to Ang Lee’s “Crouching Tiger,
Hidden Dragon” for aggressive use of the absurdist martial arts
ballet sequences with all but the remnants of supporting wires
gracefully floating fiery combatants of a duel. Asian cinema has
been producing these extravaganzas for years prior to “Crouching
Tiger...” but many western audiences garnered their first
exposure with Lee’s action infused soap opera.
Blu-ray
Release Date: September 15th, 2009
Homicide - In David Mamet’s
cinema, nothing is as it seems—so you better know what you’re
looking for. Unfortunately, the protagonist of Mamet’s
nightmarish urban odyssey Homicide, inner-city police detective
Bobby Gold (Joe Mantegna), is as bewildered about who he is as
who (or what) he’s after. Gold’s investigation, following the
murder of an elderly Jewish candy-shop owner, leads him down a
path of obscure encounters and clues, to a profound reckoning
with his own identity. Filled with Mamet’s trademark verbal play
and featuring standout supporting performances from William H.
Macy, Ving Rhames, and Rebecca Pidgeon, Homicide is a taut, rich
work from a true American original. DVD Release Date:
September 8th, 2009
Wagon Master - Collectivity
is one of Ford’s grandest and most persistent themes, and it
comes to the fore in this small-scale western with no stars than
remained one of Ford’s personal favorites. The minimal plot
focuses on the various interactions between half a dozen
separate groups: ornery outlaws (who kill a bartender out of
spite in the pre-credits sequence), horse traders (Ford regulars
Harry Carey Jr. and Ben Johnson), traveling Mormons (including a
couple of more Ford standbys, Ward Bond and Jane Darwell) who
hire the horse traders to help them out, show people (including
Joanne Dru and Alan Mowbray), lawmen, and Indians. Furthermore,
this may be the closest Ford ever got to making a musical,
another form that’s usually collective in spirit; the Sons of
the Pioneers--a vocal group that Ford would use again on his
next feature, the last and least of his cavalry-trilogy films,
Rio Grande--sings no less than four songs, and when cowpokes
Carey and Johnson decide to join the Mormons, their decision is
expressed by singing the movie’s theme song. DVD Release
Date: September 15th, 2009
Night of the Dribbler - A
smiling, basketball masked assailant is maiming and killing (in
various ridiculous ways) members of the Watergate Plumbers
basketball team. The coach (Fred Travalena, who plays two other
characters as well) seems more concerned with winning the season
than the number of bodies piling up. Is the killer waterboy/wannabe
player Stanley Bates? His pipe and slippers father? One of the
opposing team? Zucker Brothers-type sight gag comedy and
Travalena's Leslie Nielsen-style delivery as the coach (one of
three roles he plays) is more miss than hit (but there are a few
laugh-worthy moments). As usual, the actors playing the college
students are all too old and the eighties hair and clothes are
simply atrocious (as is the music which was seemingly inspired
by that annoying eighties Yello hit "Oh Yeah"). Director Bravman
is more concerned with every single character's quirks and
background jokes than what plot there is and the cookie cutter
slasher structuring of the scenes just escapes the mechanical
feel by the runaway pacing but even the amused commentators are
hard-pressed to be complimentary at length. DVD Release Date:
September 8th, 2009
Choke Canyon - While it
might have seemed like a run-of-the-mill low budget action pic
when first released (more so with the onscreen British release
title ON DANGEROUS GROUND), CHOKE CANYON proves to be quite a
riveting film with ambitious stunt and special effects work
(only the model work sometimes seems ropey) and a refreshing
sense of humor. Collins makes for a likable and resourceful
"cowboy physicist" and his retaliations against the various
thugs who come after him are entertaining and gratifying.
Svenson (who was also in the Assonitis-produced AMOK TRAIN)
makes for a great relentless bad guy (though his primary
antagonistic presence gives co-star Lance Henriksen little to do
than look sinister; Henriksen was also in the Assonitis-produced
THE VISITOR forthcoming from Code Red). Sylvester Levay's
(better known for his arrangements for other Hollywood composers
of the time like Giorgio Moroder) score is well-suited but
sounds now very much like eighties action flick music. DVD
Release Date: June 23rd, 2009
Exploitation Cinema: Teenage Graffiti &
Teenage Mother - TEENAGE GRAFFITI focuses on
farmboy Josh (Michael Driscoll) who has just graduated from high
school and is planning to leave for college. His foster parents
show him more affection than they do their own sons who resent
Josh even more when he is gifted with a sports car as a
graduation present. Josh also becomes friendly with the afluent
Carters who are at the other end of the social scale to his
family. When his foster father offers Josh the farm to prevent
him from leaving (after a misunderstanding with the Carters
anyone else could see coming a mile away), his psychotic foster
brothers try to kill him. Believed dead, Josh is rescued by a
philosophic hermit and must decide whether to go back or run
away. The directorial debut of producer/distributor Jerry Gross
(in his pre-Cinemation days), TEENAGE MOTHER is undeniably an
exploitation film but it also kind of feels like an educational
scare film marked as a piece of juvenile schlock cinema. From
the over-the-top portrayals of repressive adults, angry parents,
noirish drug dealers, psychotic thugs, troubled young lovers,
and well-meaning idealistic teachers (including an early
appearance by Fred Willard as the squeaky clean coach) to the
too perfectly wrapped up "lesson learned" ending fade-out,
TEENAGE MOTHER comes across as a loopy dramatization rather than
a fictional film. DVD Release Date: August 25th, 2009
Fist of Fury
BR
- The raw, powerful fighting skills of Bruce Lee have never been
so potently portrayed as in Fist of Fury (a.k.a. The Chinese
Connection)! This classic tale of a student avenging his
master's death rises to higher cinematic levels thanks to its
charged setting of 1908 Shanghai, when Japanese-Chinese tensions
were at their most explosive. Chen Zhen (Bruce Lee) arrives back
in Shanghai to attend the funeral of his master, famed boxer Ho
Yuan Chia, founder of the Ching Wu Martial Arts School. Days
later, the grieving school receives an anti-Semitic message from
the Japanese Association, and Chen Zhen storms over to vent his
pent-up fury. His actions spark a power struggle in Shanghai,
which is further complicated by the shocking revelation that his
master was poisoned! Flying fists and flailing bodies are the
result of Chen Zhen's righteous fury in Fist of Fury, an
emotional and exhilarating kung-fu drama that showcases Bruce
Lee at his absolute best!
Blu-ray
Release Date: August 6th, 2009
The Big Boss
BR
- Bruce Lee's big screen break came in director Lo Wei's The Big
Boss, a wildly successful kung-fu film that made the legendary
screen icon into a powerful box-office force! Chang Chow An
(Bruce Lee) is a reluctant warrior who promises his mother to
leave his violent days behind him. Chang goes to live with his
uncle and gets a job at the local ice factory. But something is
amiss at the factory. Chang's co-workers begin to mysteriously
disappear, and Chang himself is distracted by the evil "Big
Boss", who uses power, money and women to direct Chang's
attentions elsewhere. But when Chang learns once and for all
that the Big Boss is a bad man, it's time to let the dragon out
of the bottle! It all comes down to knock-down kung-fu showdowns
featuring Bruce Lee's trademark power and charismatic flair!
Known to American audiences as Fists of Fury, The Big Boss is
required viewing by anyone who considers themself a Bruce Lee
fan.
Blu-ray
Release Date: August 6th, 2009
The Human Condition -
Masaki Kobayashi’s mammoth humanist drama is one of the most
staggering achievements of Japanese cinema. Originally filmed
and released in three parts, the nine-and-a-half-hour The Human
Condition (Ningen no joken), adapted from Junpei Gomikawa’s
six-volume novel, tells of the journey of the well-intentioned
yet naive Kaji (handsome Japanese superstar Tatsuya Nakadai)
from labor camp supervisor to Imperial Army soldier to Soviet
POW. Constantly trying to rise above a corrupt system, Kaji time
and again finds his morals an impediment rather than an
advantage. A raw indictment of its nation’s wartime mentality as
well as a personal existential tragedy, Kobayashi’s riveting,
gorgeously filmed epic is novelistic cinema at its best. DVD
Release Date: September 8th, 2009
Dead Calm
BR - Thriller
specialist Philip Noyce (Patriot Games, The Saint) directs three
splendid actors - Sam Neill (Jurassic Park), Nicole Kidman (Eyes
Wide Shut) and Billy Zane (Titanic) - in riveting performances.
Joe and Rae Ingram (Neill and Kidman) do the right thing and
rescue the half-delirious sole survivor (Zane) of a crippled
schooner. But soon the stranger will plunge the unwary pair into
an intense battle of cat and mouse. And life or death.
Blu-ray
Release date: September 8th, 2009
The New World
BR
- It is so refreshing to see such poetic images that can speak
luminous volumes in a modern epically proportioned film. Based
on the classic Pocahontas and John Smith legend, director
Terrence Malick scripted this penetrating drama of conflict
between Native Americans and English settlers in the 17th
century 'New World'. The heart of each film in Malick's sporadic
oeuvre (a twenty year break between his second and third films -
Days of Heaven and The Thin Red Line) must be cinematography.
This is shot in Virginia by Emmanuel Lubezki, and continually
overwhelms us with beauty, wild detail and washes us clean like
a breath of mountain air. With organic precision Malick crafts
films that can only be his own - a fervent pioneer in a
profession spilling over with copycats. An elegant visionary
peeling away contemptible overused ploys and centering his cast,
crew and lenses on adventure, romance with the grace of your
senses. Masterpiece seems an understatement.
Blu-ray
Release Date: September 8th, 2009
High Crimes
BR
- This is the second movie Judd and Freeman have made together
(after "Kiss the Girls" in 1997). They're both good at
projecting a kind of Southern intelligence that knows its way
around the frailties of human nature. Although Freeman refers to
himself as the "wild card" in the movie, actually that role
belongs to Caviezel, whose very identity is called into question
by the military charges. "Is your name Tom Chapman?" Claire asks
her husband at one point. She no longer knows the answer.
Blu-ray
Release date: September 1st, 2009
Sons of Anarchy - Season One
BR
- In September of 2008, Fox's FX channel premiered Sons of
Anarchy, developed by Kurt Sutter, a former writer/producer for
one of FX's most popular and most critically acclaimed series,
The Shield. While there are obvious nods to The Sopranos and a
sly set-up reminiscent of Hamlet, Sons of Anarchy stands on its
own terms.
Blu-ray
Release date: August 18th, 2008
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