DVDBeaver Newsletter - September 17th, 2007

Ahn nyeong ha se yo! - 14 new reviews - 3 comparisons, 2 Masters of Cinema, Visconti, Lang, Shinoda, Corman... an extensive 28 new Calendar Updates and our 5th of 5 'Quote Clips' to win an HD player!

CONTEST: Identify the Five Quotations from film clips win a new Toshiba HD-A2 HD DVD Player: (up to a $400 value!).

THE FIFTH (and last) CLIP IS NOW ON THE HOMEPAGE HERE

Actually here are all 5:

Quote 1, Quote 2, Quote 3, Quote 4 and Quote 5

NOTE: Folks please send all 5 (in email) together at the end.... only way to win.

Just subscribe to our Free Weekly Newsletter (for hints and the winner announcement) and email all 5 answers to contest@DVDBeaver.com

What's next?:

1) I'll announce the correct answers and the winner of the HD-player in next week's newsletter

2) I'm working on getting a Blu-ray player for a new contest - but in the meantime...

3) I'll post one clip a week (probably a Noir, but not always) and give away some prize - I have oodles and oodles of doubles and such.

BIG THANKS!: DVDBeaver would not exist without the support of many patrons - those who generously donate, and especially those who use our Amazon and YesAsia links. That's it. When you go to Amazon - PLEASE use one of our links to get there (they are on every page - top and bottom - and we have 5000 webpages). It costs you absolutely nothing and we get a small commission on items you purchase. This helps pay our bills - in fact it's the only thing that pays our bills.

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Easiest way to catch up is simply read the new Newsletter Archive HERE.

LATEST Additions to the Release Calendar (PRE-ORDER!)

NOTEWORTHY... or how to make a cineophile broke (more broke?): Once again too many strong listings for me to pinpoint a few....

New Reviews:

Sky Captain & The World of Tomorrow BR - It is the eve of the Nazi invasion of Europe. As important scientists around the world mysteriously disappear, Chronicle reporter, Polly Perkins (Gwyneth Paltrow) comes upon information that leads her and ace aviator, Sky Captain (Jude Law), who happens to be her estranged romantic liaison, on the trail of the psychopathic mastermind, Dr. Totenkopf. Their adventure takes them halfway around the world: to the snow-capped Himalyas, to the sea below and the sky above.

All About Eve (Korean drama) - I knew in advance that this title was no coincidence, so you can imagine my reluctance to take this Korean TV drama on. Even before I purchased it, I had visions of Bette Davis putting her cigarette out on my face. By the time I got around to watching the series, I had a few other Korean TV dramas under my belt; my reaction to them was generally very positive, so I bit the bullet.

The Roger Corman Collection - a package with 8 works from the master of limited production Hollywood. The set includes - A Bucket of Blood (1959), Premature Burial (1962), The Young Racers (1963), X: The Man with the X-Ray Eyes (1963), The Wild Angels (1966), The Trip (1967), Bloody Mama (1970) and Gas-s-s-s (1971). DVD Release Date: September 18th, 2007

The Burning - Although Harvey Weinstein claims he had the idea for THE BURNING before FRIDAY THE 13TH, the result is a more polished retread as young campers and their counselors pay the price for an accident that left Cropsy the camp janitor burned beyond recognition and out for revenge with a pair of shears. Like FRIDAY THE 13TH, THE BURNING had its gory Tom Savini make-up effects cut for an R-rating and the resulting film was rather innocuous though it started to gain a cult following once viewers became aware of uncut releases abroad. DVD Release Date: September 11th, 2007

Silence (Chinmoku) - Adapted from the renowned novel by Shusaku Endo, Masahiro Shinoda’s 1971 film Silence (Chinmoku, co-written with Endo) explores the violent cultural conflict amid the arrival of Jesuit missionaries in seventeenth-century Japan. Shinoda’s excellent direction — coupled with a pensive score by the legendary Toru Takemitsu — gives cinematic expression to inner spiritual paradox, and imbues with religious mystery a landscape that seems already sentient with wind, rain, and light. DVD Release Date: September 24th, 2007

Mix-Up - One of the most remarkable and innovative documentaries ever made, this film by Françoise Romand follows the famous true story of two English women who as babies got switched in the hospital and 20 years later discovered that they'd been raised by the wrong sets of parents. Romand enlists all the surviving family members in her haunting and bizarre investigation, which involves not only a recounting but a reenactment of all the significant events in the two daughters' emotional histories. The seriousness and thoroughness with which she pursues her approach create a formal beauty and a witty precision in framing, pacing, editing, use of music, and mise en scene that is inseparable from the film's ethical and philosophical project... DVD Release Date: September 25th, 2007

Alligator - Post-modern 'B' junker that has enough believability to make for moderate to high camp fun entertainment. Notables associated include being penned by John Sayles (what the...?) and often unnoticeable lead Robert Forster (Mulholland Dr., Jackie Brown etc.). It doesn't take itself too seriously and that may be the highest compliment we can give (straight-faced). DVD Release Date: September 18th, 2007

Closure - With a futuristic feel we have a middle-age woman (Gillian Anderson) and a younger security expert hooking up after he installs her systems and she invites him to a lavish party in a friend's countryside estate. After leaving they encounter three savagely violent men who dramatically beat him and horrifically gang-rape her. After surviving this terrifying encounter, the traumatized couple stay together - quite possibly to support each other after the ordeal. The female really needs to enact some revenge upon them while the man is content to move on - even with one of his eyes severely damaged. After she finds out who and where they are - she utilizes a rifle that her father gave her - eventually convincing him to go with her although they really have no formal game plan. DVD Release Date: September 18th, 2007

Ballad of Narayama - Based on the novel by Shichiro Fukuzawa, Narayama Bushiko is a haunting and deeply affecting portrait of love and humanity struggling against the rigidity of tradition, obedience, and sense of duty. Using jarring, anachronistic imagery and unusually stylized artificial lighting, Keisuke Kinoshita presents a relevant examination of the pervasive national ideology of wartime Japan that underscores the dichotomous, and often self-destructive conflict between personal conscience and social conformity: the idiosyncratic fusion of traditional (kabuki) and modern (film) dramatic media; the perversion of cultural and moral norms within the primitive society (disrespect for elders, disposability of life, regression of human logic into base instincts for survival); and the incongruous, final shot that juxtaposes ancient and contemporary images to evoke timelessness, passage, and transience. Inevitably, Narayama Bushiko becomes a haunting allegory on the perils of blind allegiance, martyrdom, and repression - a humanist reflection of the profound introspection, cultural erosion, and ideological ambivalence of postwar Japan. DVD Release Date: June 11th, 2007

Bellissima - Perhaps the most unjustly neglected of Luchino Visconti's early films is this hilarious 1951 comedy, tailored to the talents of Anna Magnani, about a working-class woman who is determined to get her plain seven-year-old daughter into movies. A wonderful send-up of the Italian film industry and the illusions that it fosters, delineated in near-epic proportions with style and brio. DVD Release Date: September 24th, 2007

Ministry of Fear - Lang had himself wanted to purchase the film rights for Ministry of Fear, as a long time admirer of Grahame Greene. As it turned out Paramount trumped him but asked him to direct from a screenplay adaptation by Seton Miller. As a consequence Lang continued to play down the value of this movie to whoever would listen. But it is in fact something of a "missing in action" gem. Nowhere does Lang so wonderfully set up a linear and compulsive atmosphere of unnerving paranoia in the opening sequences, save perhaps for the incredible opening of Testament of Dr Mabuse. And the movie forces the viewer to constantly take on Milland's POV in comprehending the succession of action and mistrust which advance the narrative. Although Lang may have been right about the casting of, say Marjorie Reynolds and Carl Hilfe as the German couple, these characters are more than amply compensated for by splendid bits from Allan Napier and Hillary Brooke as the "Mentalist". And Milland is perfect. DVD Release Date: September 3rd, 2007

Deliverance - Four Atlanta businessmen decide to prove that the frontier spirit is not dead by spending a canoeing weekend shooting the rapids of a river high in the Appalachians. Terrific boy's own adventure stuff with adult ingredients of graphic mutilation and buggery, but Boorman is never content either to leave it at that or to subscribe to the ecological concerns of James Dickey's novel (where man's return to nature becomes vital because 'the machines are going to fail, and then - survival'). Instead, he adds a dark twist of his own by suggesting that concern is too late. From the quartet's first strange encounter with the deformed albino child in a mountain community almost Dickensian in its squalor, down to the last scene where Voight watches coffins being unearthed and removed to safety before the new dam floods the valley, their trip down the river becomes an odyssey through a land that is already dead, killed by civilization and peopled by alien creatures rather than human beings. DVD Release Date: September 18th, 2007

A Few Good Men BR - ...a central image in the film adaptation, which gracefully opens up the story of a military court-martial without allowing the tension to evaporate. There are times when the movie seems to force-feed the audience essential information, and when the audience might well wonder whether the emotional crises of the defense lawyers really are of more interest than the fates of the two men on trial. The Blu-ray DVD Release Date: September 18th, 2007

Snow Cake - Evans’ “Snow Cake” is an awfully intimate dramedy that’s intent on getting us close enough to its characters so that we can feel what character Alex feels after he mistakenly ruins two lives on a road trip, and often it can work. The slim budget helps Rickman obtain a sense of an average personality, and his usual venerable persona is dialed down to portray a man who simply has to live with himself. DVD Release Date: September 11th, 2007