Newsletter - FOR THE WEEK

OF September 6th, 2010

Dou bula!  - directorial efforts by Hou Hsiao-hsien, Jean-Luc Godard, Robert Altman, George Lucas (all on Blu-ray), Robert Siodmak, Ida Lupino and many more... a mass of calendar updates, FEATURE DVD and Blu-ray of the Month, additions to our essential Noir webpage HERE and another new contest with a sealed DVD package as the prize... Enjoy!

FOLLOW US on TWITTER! (where we post important reviews, contests - prizes, calendar updates - plus much more...)

FEATURE DVD and Blu-ray for September now listed!

TOOLBAR THE 'DVDBeaver Toolbar'! Give it a test drive! I've created a very simple toolbar for Film-Fans/DVD-o-philes/cinephiles. It embeds effortlessly within Internet Explorer 5.0+ (Windows Vista/XP/2000) and Firefox 1.0.1+ (Windows, Mac, Linux). It offers quick links to Searching both the Net (via Google) and DVDBeaver directly, Amazons, Asian etailors, Forums (Criterion, Home Theater, AVS, Rotten Tomatoes, Film Noir), IMDb, DVDBasen, Beaver links, Blu-ray information, Cinephile Blogs/Journals (Rosenbaum, Kehr, Acquarello etc.). What do you think? FOR MORE INFORMATION / AVAILABLE HERE *** (We can adjust this to suit popular opinion - on-the-fly - no re-install required!)

September 6th CONTEST - identify the clip on the CONTEST PAGE to win a sealed Criterion DVD of Revanche!

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

Gary at 2ze dot com

*

Dust in the Wind BD - Determined Wan and his girlfriend, Huen, leave their employ in the minute mining village where they reside and move to the bustling city of Taipei to find careers. Wan becomes a delivery boy while Huen becomes a seamstress assistant. Touching, almost humorous, vignettes abound with the culture shock of the move. To tell of her families shoe sizes at the store Huen pulls out pieces of paper with the outlines of her family's feet traced on them. Heartwarming and still dynamically real evidence of small town innocence fighting for survival in a large metropolis. Blu-ray Release Date: July 2010

Horror High - Vernon (Pat Cardi) is your typical science geek mistreated by his teachers, his gym coach, the janitor, and the jocks. He's been doing some Jekyll-and-Hyde-esque experiments. When the janitor's cat kills his guinea pig and gets itself killed, the janitor forces Vernon to drink his own formula and it has the expected side effects and the janitor winds up in the acid vat (this school allows smoking in the halls, so I guess anything goes here). When Vernon's English-teacher is annoyed that he pays more attention to science than literature and runs his biology project through the paper-cutter, she's next on the chopping block. DVD Release Date: August 10th, 2010

That Evening Sun BD - It's a story confined by time and space, adapted by the director, Scott Teems, from the story "I Hate to See That Evening Sun Go Down" by William Gay. Although the setting is a gentle Tennessee landscape and the houses look like illustrations for a calendar of farm life, the situation owes more to Eugene O'Neill or Tennessee Williams. The actors are more than successful at creating deeply plausible characters. There may have been temptations to go broad, but they're all subtle, even McKinnon, in a role that could have gone over the top. Blu-ray Release date: September 7th, 2010

The Experiment BD - There’s a good deal of gestation going on here, as Paul Scheuring’s The Experiment is a remake of Oliver Hirschbiegel’s 2001 film Das Experiment, which was based on Mario Giordano’s book Black Box, which itself was inspired by the 1971 Stanford prison experiment (see HERE) Both the 2001 film and the new movie focus on a couple dozen men who volunteer for a simulated prison experiment. The men are assigned the role of either guard or prisoner presumably to study the effects of power and control on their psyches and behavior. Blu-ray Release date: September 21st, 2010

Within - After her mother is tragically murdered in front of her eyes, Rachael Weiss (Mia Ford) and her lawyer father Nathan (Sam Jaeger, TV's PARENTHOOD) leave Los Angeles to start over. Rachael, who is able to "see dead people" and hides in closets when upset, does not fit in with her classmates and her father is busy with his new job. She is befriended by precocious Michelle (Sammi Hanratty) although she has overheard the principal ambiguously warning new teacher Abby (Lori Heuring, MULHOLLAND DR.) about the girl. Rachael is unsettled by Michelle's sociopathic behavior, her frightened older sister and parents, visions of Michelle's dead older sister, and the intimations that she may be behind the disappearance of another child the year before and further accidents befalling their classmates. DVD Release Date: September 14th, 2010

Breathless BD - Paris, 1959: you are there. Michel, A charismatic young hot-head (Jean-Paul Belmondo) has killed a cop in Marseilles and fled to the capital to hide out with Patricia, his on-off American girlfriend (Jean Seberg). As the authorities close in, Michel and Patricia’s relationship comes under increasing pressure… Blu-ray Release Date: September 14th, 2010

36 Quai des Orfèvres BD - Director Olivier Marchal has roots in law enforcement but I sincerely hope the muddled extremes examined in the plot between power hungry cops and unconscionable criminals is pure fiction. Totally dissimilar to Henri-Georges Clouzot's 1947 classic called simply Quai des orfevres, 36 (as it became marketed as) still gives a very entertaining ride based, in great part, to Daniel Auteuil's commanding performance. He resembles Robert DeNiro in this film to quite a strong degree and is the fair cop essentially foiled by the letter of the law turning against him. Blu-ray Release Date: November 2nd, 2009

Girls on the Road - Bookish Karen (Dianne Hull, CHRISTMAS EVIL) and cheerleader Debbie (Kathleen Cody) graduate high school and decide that by the time they return from their summer roadtrip they will no longer be wallflowers. Expressing their freedom by going bra-less, weaving across lanes in their borrowed Trans-Am, flashing motorists and causing accidents, the two seek out cute hitchhikers to deflower them (heedless of the string of murders of young women along the coast). After a couple "comic" encounters with hippies and gay hitchhikers, they pick up handsome Will (Michael Ontkean, TV's TWIN PEAKS), a traumatized Vietnam Vet on his way back to the "Institute for Higher Consciousness" encounter group in Big Sur. DVD Release Date: August 31st, 2010

Sons of Anarchy Season Two BD - Season One (Reviewed HERE) followed several threads that would become significant as Season Two gets under way: Jax (Charlie Hunnam) read his long deceased father’s journal that questioned the club’s present direction. Jax is committed to SAMCRO (Sons of Anarchy Motorcycle Club, Redwood Originals, aka: Sam Crow) but not entirely to what it has become. Jax’s mother, Gemma (Katey Sagal), long married to Clay - who, like Jax’s father, was a founding member of the club - and seriously protective of the club, finds a coy of the journal at the end of the season. Blu-ray Release date: August 31st, 2010

The Player BD - “Movies. Now more than ever!” That’s the motto of the movie studio where fast-tracking exec Griffin Mill (Tim Robbins) works. But rumor has it a power play could push Mill out. And a rejected writer who’s sending anonymous death threats could push him under. Robert Altman directs this acclaimed and satiric love/hate valentine to Hollywood, and from the bravura opening tracking shot to the spot-the-star cameos (60+!) to the inside skinny of studio life to the gleeful finale, you’re in good, knowing hands. The Player. Now more than ever! Blu-ray Release date: September 7th, 2010

Point of Terror - Lobster House lounge singer Tony Trelos (Peter Carpenter, BLOOD MANIA) catches the eye of Andrea (Dyanne Thorne, ILSA, SHEWOLF OF THE SS). Fortunately, she's the wife of abusive wheelchair-bound National Records president Martin Hilliard (Joel Marston) and she gets Tony a recording session and seduces him poolside. When Tony witnesses Andrea murder her husband, he blackmails her and sets up in the Hilliard household (casting off his own girlfriend Sally [Paula Mitchell, whose bizarre career included behind the scenes work on SALO, CALIGULA, Fellini's CASANOVA and CITY OF WOMEN]). DVD Release Date: August 31st, 2010

THX 1138 BD - A chilling exploration of the future is also a compelling examination of the present in George Lucas’s THX 1138, starring Robert Duvall as a man whose mind and body are controlled by the government. THX makes a harrowing attempt to escape from a world where thoughts are controlled, freedom is an impossibility and love is the ultimate crime. Blu-ray Release date: September 7th, 2010

Forbidden Planet BD - Classic '50s sci-fi, surprisingly but effectively based on The Tempest, with Nielsen's US spaceship coming across a remote planet, deserted except for Pidgeon's world-wearied Dr Morbius (read Prospero), his daughter (Miranda) and their robot Robby (Ariel). Something, it transpires, has destroyed the planet's other inhabitants, and now, as Bard and Freud merge, a monster mind-thing Caliban begins to pick on the spaceship's crew. An ingenious script, excellent special effects and photography, and superior acting (with the exception of Francis), make it an endearing winner. Blu-ray Release Date: September 7th, 2010

The Dark Mirror - Impressively unusual thriller with typically simplistic Freudian elements as psychiatrist Ayres is called in by the police to help investigate a murder committed by one of two identical twins...but which one? Intriguing cat-and-mouse games and perverse power struggles as both he and we try to fathom which of the sisters is the warped psycho, with de Havilland (in the dual role) and Siodmak managing admirably to counteract the contrived plot. What really makes it work, though, is Siodmak's firm grasp of mood and suspense; the opening scene, in which the camera prowls a darkened room until it finds a corpse, sets the tone perfectly for the sense of uncertainty and chaos that follows. DVD Release Date: December 4th, 2009

Experiment in Terror - The film boasts one of the most memorable opening scenes of any thriller: Kelly Sherwood (Lee Remick), an attractive single woman living in the suburbs of San Francisco, drives home from her job as a bank teller. After getting out of her Ford Fairlane convertible, she becomes aware of another person waiting for her in the dark of the garage; she hears a heavy asthmatic wheeze in his voice. The man grabs her from behind and, disturbingly, tells her, "I know a good deal about you, almost everything there is to know," and to prove it he recites her measurements. DVD Release Date: February 11th, 2010

Desert Fury - Everything is a little bent about this film (pun indented)... to a degree that, with the exception of Edgar G. Ulmer's Detour (1945), Desert Fury is a singular anti-social statement unlike practically anything the American screen produced in the 40s. Take the central character for example. It's a woman - an anomaly in film noir - and the woman, in the guise of Lizabeth Scott's barely legal horniness, is the one driving this Technicolor narrative, which the archetype femme-fatale has been replaced by John Hodiak's male-fatale (there is a long scene with him sunbathing with his shirt off, Barbara Stanwyck-like just in case you need a pointer). DVD Release Date: December 4th, 2009

The Machinist BD - El maquinista is the story of Trevor Reznik, a machinist who hasn’t slept in over a year. Working in a machine shop, Trevor faces the usual occupational hazards, yet his extreme fatigue only makes them worse, causing him to accidentally cut off a co-worker’s hand. What Trevor suffers from clearly isn’t a typical case of insomnia… Tartan Palisades Blu-ray Release date: August 16th, 2010

9th Company BD - Based on real-life events, 9th COMPANY recounts a year in the shared lives of a group of young soldiers drafted to serve in Afghanistan during the final year of the Soviet conflict. It is a poignant story of the unit s dedication to each other during their valiant defense of Height 3234...a futile battle that ravaged their forgotten company, who fought on, unaware that the war had ended. Blu-ray Release date: August 31st, 2010

The Exploding Girl - When twenty-year-old Ivy heads home Spring Break with a fresh romance in her heart, everything seems to be going perfectly. When her best friend Al finds himself without lodgings, Ivy and her mother take him in and Ivy and Al's friendship strengthens while her boyfriend grows more distant from afar. Increasingly distressed about her conflicting feelings, Ivy must stay resilient in the face of her epilepsy, lest her emotions become something she can't control. Marking Zoe Kazan's first leading role, Bradley Rust Gray's film is a meditative and realistic portrait of a young girl coming of age and finding a deeper kind of love in New York City. DVD Release Date: September 7th, 2010

Suddenly - Suddenly is an obvious attempt at eroding any pacifist leanings. It uses and targets women as the weak link in the chain of vigilant security. The young mother Ellen Benson (played by Nancy Gates), has lost her husband in Korea (fighting the communist menace) and consistently attempts to keep her son Pidge (Kim Charney) from playing with guns. The strong father-in-law opposes this and the mother is portrayed as a simple un-worldly female unaware of the threats that society is consistently exposed to. From this standpoint the film is a true classic of pro-war propaganda and 'defense of country' with nationalistic intent. You can almost hear in the narrative " The commies could be everywhere". DVD Release Date: January 5th. 2010

Solitary Man BD - Ben (Michael Douglas) once ruled a car-dealership empire vast enough to fuel a glossy Manhattan lifestyle and endow a library at an East Coast university. But by the time he arrives at the college with his girlfriend’s daughter, Allyson (Imogen Poots), who is a prospective student, his world has collapsed around his ears. A business scandal has cost him his income and his marriage to Nancy (Susan Sarandon). His ever-present lust for every passing attractive woman threatens to take what little Ben has left. Even his new relationship with Jordan (Mary-Louise Parker) oscillates with tension. When Ben takes Allyson to tour the school, his motives are more than mixed. Blu-ray Release date: September 7th, 2010

The Hitch-Hiker - Ida Lupino, Hollywood's sole female filmmaker of the 1950s, directs an all-male cast in a taut, 70-minute thriller. Frank Lovejoy and Edmund O'Brien are two war buddies taking a break from the wives for a Mexican fishing trip; a hitchhiker they pick up turns out to be a crazed killer wanted in nine states (William Talman, later the perennially defeated district attorney on Perry Mason) who forces them at gunpoint to drive him through the desert. Talman's Everett Myers is a fascinatingly abstract creation, filmed by Lupino first as a discorporate flurry of hands and feet, then as a satanic figure whose grinning, key-lighted face seems to float by itself in space. With his paralyzed right eye (he sleeps with it wide open), Myers may represent the return of the fascist evil the two men confronted during the war; he may also represent something inherently violent in the American male that, having been liberated by the war, has to be faced down and defeated by the two vets before they can return to a normal life. Lupino's use of the desert setting, rich with associations of nuclear devastation, seems to look forward to the science fiction films that would flourish later in the decade. DVD Release Date: January 5th. 2010

D.O.A. - Delirious descent into the maelstrom of '40s film noir as a small town businessman trades dull days and a loyal lover for a fling in the jazz nights of San Francisco. How he becomes enmeshed in the crueller, deadlier corruption of LA, solving the case of his own murder, involves a succession of ingenious twists too good to give away. Maté shoots fast and always to the point as he drives his protagonist through endless doorways and rooms which are like trapdoors and boxes in an accelerating nightmare. Maté, whose credits as cameraman include Vampyr, Foreign Correspondent and Gilda, holds it all together with no trouble, and without the slightest appeal to art gives the images the intensity of a dying man's last story. Breathless, indeed. DVD Release Date: January 5th. 2010

Waltz With Bashir BD - Documents the filmmaker's journey toward discovering the truth about an Israeli Army mission he participated in during the first Lebanon War of the early 1980s that left him with a loss of memory about the events. The long-forgotten images begin to resurface as the director interviews old friends and comrades around the world. Artificial Eye Blu-ray Release date: March 30th, 2010

The Island - Not quite a monastery, more a handful of crumbling buildings and a bell tower, this retreat on an island in the Baltic is home to Father Anatoly (Pyotr Mamonov), a seemingly unofficial Orthodox monk said to possess mysterious healing powers. He's certainly a man of contradictions--riddling prankster one minute, fervent worshipper the next--whose devotion is partly explained by the opening World War II flashback showing Nazi invaders forcing him into killing a comrade. What follows is a contemplative fable, not without its wry wit, which effectively ponders the workings of faith, specifically the connection between gnawing guilt and a desire to do good-- the austerely beautiful surroundings (think ECM album covers) providing a strikingly appropriate context. Haunting cinematography and Mamonov's persuasive central performance almost seal the deal, yet there's something just too pat about the storytelling which prevents total surrender. DVD Release Date: June 21st, 2010

Sons of Anarchy Season One BD - The Sons of Anarchy is an outlaw motorcycle club with many charters in the United States. The [Northern California] Charming local is the original founding charter of the Sons of Anarchy. Led by Clay Morrow, the club protects and controls Charming through close community relationships, bribery and violent intimidation. The full name of the motorcycle club is Sons of Anarchy Motorcycle Club, Redwood Original [abbreviated "Sam Crow"]. Club members have "day jobs" in local industries, most of them working at Clay's auto repair shop, but they primarily make money by importing illegal weapons and selling them to drug gangs in the East Bay, along with protection runs for local businesses by protecting valuable truck shipments from hijacking. Blu-ray Release date: August 18th, 2008
 

 Next 4 weeks on the Calendar