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Eclipse Series 18: Dusan Makavejev - Free Radical - There’s
never been another filmmaker quite like Dušan Makavejev. Even in
the 1960s, when all of cinema’s rules seemed to be breaking down
and artists such as Godard, Cassavetes, and Marker were
dissolving the boundary between fiction and documentary,
Yugoslavia’s Makavejev stood alone. His films about political
and sexual liberation were revolutionary, raucous, and ribald.
Across these, his wild, collagelike first three films, Makavejev
investigates—with a tonic mix of earnestness and whimsy—love,
death, and work; the legacy of war and the absurdity of daily
life in a Communist state; criminology and hypnosis; strudels
and strongmen. DVD Release Date: October 13th, 2009
Contact
BR
- Contact is likely to change a lot of perceptions --
not only about the role of humankind in the universe, but about
what special effects can do for a movie when they're used in the
service of a story, rather than the other way around. Contact is
that rare big-budget motion picture that places ideas,
characters, and plot above everything else. The film takes the
richness of astronomer Carl Sagan's bestselling 1985 novel and
re-invents it for the screen, retaining all the power and
fascination of the book while adding a visual aspect that will
not disappoint devoted fans.
Blu-ray
Release date: October 6th,
2009
The GoodTimesKid - Hot-tempered Echo Park slacker Rodolfo Cano
(Jacobs) enlists in the army to escape a meaningless existence
with his free-spirited girlfriend Diaz (Diaz). When his
call-for-service letter somehow winds up in the hands of another
Rodolfo Cano (Gerardo Naranjo, director of Drama/Mex and I'm
Gonna Explode), a quietly dignified loner who lives on a
sailboat, their three lives intersect in odd and beautifully
unexpected ways. Evoking the inventive gags of Chaplin and
Jacques Tati, plus the deadpan minimalism of Kaurismäki and
Jarmusch, The GoodTimesKid finds poetry in wordless scenes of
observation. DVD Release Date: August 11th, 2009
Silverado
BR
- This spirited Western stars Kevin Kline, Scott
Glenn, Kevin Costner, and Danny Glover as four unwitting heroes
who cross paths on their journey to the sleepy town of
Silverado. Little do they know the town where their family and
friends reside has been taken over by a corrupt sheriff and a
murderous posse. It's up to the sharp-shooting foursome to save
the day, but first they have to break each other out of jail,
and learn who their real friends are. Thanks to its authentic
look and spectacular cast, which also includes Rosanna Arquette,
John Cleese, Brian Dennehy, Jeff Goldblum, and Linda Hunt, this
exciting Old West adventure created a whole new generation of
Western fans and earned its "modern classic" status.
Blu-ray
Release Date: September 8th, 2009
Audition
BR
- Audition is the perfectly paradoxical movie
experience, one that leaves me grasping for superlatives while
simultaneously gasping for breath. It puts me in a difficult
spot as well, because you need to be warned about the film’s
subject matter, yet to reveal too much is to dilute the film’s
effectiveness. The film’s focus is on the peculiar relationship
formed between the middle-aged widower Aoyama (played by Ishibashi with a spud-like confused resignation) and Asami, a
mysterious woman he is drawn to and becomes involved with.
Blu-ray
Release Date: October 6th, 2009
Syndromes and a Century - A film in two parts which sometimes
echo each other. The two central characters are inspired by the
filmmaker's parents, in the years before they became lovers. The
first part focuses on a woman doctor, and is set in a space
reminiscent of the world in which the filmmaker was born and
raised. The second part focuses on a male doctor, and is set in
a more contemporary space much like the world in which the
filmmaker presently lives. Pearls of wisdom, descriptions of
syndromes and fragments of time crystallize in luminous
atmospheres and dot the modern architecture of the film,
creating a charming, quiet incantation.
DVD Release Date: June 23rd, 2008
La Belle Captive - In contemporary parlance, Alain
Robbe-Grillet’s “La Belle Captive” (1983) might best be
understood as a mashup or perhaps a proto-mashup. Based on a
“collaborative” novel by Robbe-Grillet and René Magritte (even
though Magritte was already dead), the story employs Magritte’s
art work as the inspiration for a noir-ish detective story that
also relies heavily on classical music and borrows liberally
from the tradition of the vampire film: mysterious leather-clad
boss-lady Sara Zeitgeist (Cyrielle Claire) appears to be an
homage to the infamous Irma Vep. DVD Release Date: Sept 14th,
2009
F For Fake - Trickery. Deceit. Magic. In Orson Welles’s
free-form documentary F for Fake, the legendary filmmaker (and
self-described charlatan) gleefully engages the central
preoccupation of his career—the tenuous line between truth and
illusion, art and lies. Beginning with portraits of
world-renowned art forger Elmyr de Hory and his equally devious
biographer, Clifford Irving, Welles goes on a dizzying cinematic
journey that simultaneously exposes and revels in fakery and
fakers of all stripes—not the least of which is Welles himself.
Charming and inventive, F for Fake is an inspired prank and a
searching examination of the essential duplicity of cinema. MoC
DVD Release Date: February 26th, 2007
The Isle - Following the controversial Bad Guy, Ki-duk Kim's The
Isle is a gentler take on the themes of isolation and obsessive
love, though it contains some still more violent scenes. Set
around a lake where fishermen inhabit floating shacks, it
explores the relationship between suicidal newcomer Hyun-Shik
and Hee-Jin, the woman who runs the lake's shop and, with her
boat, controls access for everyone. Though we see her early on
engaged in prostitution and being treated badly, it gradually
emerges that Hee-Jin is the most powerful person in the
vicinity, and, with the constant rowing she does, physically a
match for anyone. This independence disturbs and intrigues Hyun-Shik
in equal measures, and what develops is a violent sado-masochistic
relationship in which both characters struggle frantically
against losing their independence to love. DePlanta DVD Release
Date: May 6th, 2008
Moscow Elegy - One of Sokurov's series of 'elegies', this is a
tribute to his former mentor Andrei Tarkovsky who died in 1986.
A long way removed from a conventional documentary, it is more a
meditation on Tarkovsky, an attempt to capture his essence, than
a chronological account of his life and work. Sokurov visits
Tarkovsky's one-time Moscow apartment and speculates on why he
went into exile and what his legacy is to Russian cinema. The
style is deliberately subjective and impressionistic. It's
fascinating to see the footage from an old Soviet propaganda
feature in which Tarkovsky acted as a very young man, and to
watch him at work on the set of his final film, The Sacrifice.
AE DVD Release Date: May 28th, 2007
J'Accuse - Abel Gance's J'Accuse (1919), a politically and
stylistically daring anti-war drama produced while the trench
warfare of World War I was still grinding up soldiers on both
sides of the battle, opens with the title spelled out by the
bodies of soldiers striding into formation, like a marching band
at a half-time show. Then they collapse, as if dead, to
startling effect. Appropriating the cry leveled by Emile Zola
during the Dreyfus affair, Gance levels his accusations at war
itself. DVD Release Date: September 16th, 2008
Princes and Princesses - Ocelot's...anthology Princes
And Princesses, while less visually ambitious [than Kirikou and
the Wild Beast], is a great deal more fun. Alone in an office,
three animators—a grizzled old mentor and two mildly egotistical
assistants—devise fairy tales, then costume themselves (via a
creepily simple machine) and play out their stories onstage....
[T]he stories are terrifically creative, tight little fillips,
ranging from a 19th-century Japanese fable to a far-future love
story to a silly fantasy about a prince and princess who change
shapes whenever they kiss. The animation reproduces Lotte
Reiniger's pioneering silhouette style, but the material is pure
Ocelot: funny, sharp, and endearingly grounded, no matter how
fanciful the concepts get. DVD Release Date: August 22nd, 2001
The Hidden (Oculto) - At a conference on the
interpretation of dreams, fashion editor Natalia (Angela Cepida)
relates a series of dreams (featuring the monolith from 2001: A
SPACE ODYSSEY) that seem to contain premonitions of the
directions her life is taking. Upon overhearing this, the
conference's organizer Beatriz (Laia Marull) passes out (it is
revealed that she has a tattoo which combines elements from
Natalia's latest dream - the outcome of which she is still
awaiting - and Beatriz starts to think Natalia may somehow hold
an answer to her own inner demons). Also at the conference is
magazine editor Alex (Leonardo Sbraglia) who pursues a sexual
relationship with Natalia but he has also caught the eye of
Beatriz. Beatriz confides in the dreams that she has been having
"as Natalia" which seem to suggest that the soul of Natalia's
spurned lover (William Miller, ROTTWEILER) is not at rest; but
is there a not-so-supernatural yet equally sinister explanation?
DVD Release Date: 20 November 2007
Karloff & Lugosi - Horror Classics - The Walking Dead is
a unique blend of cinematic horror and the classic Warner Bros.
gangster stylings. This long-admired cult favorite stars Boris
Karloff, who gives an outstanding performance as John Ellman, an
ex-con framed for murder who's sentenced to the electric chair.
When Ellman is brought back to life through the miracles of
science, his only task is to seek revenge against those
responsible for his death. Michael Curtiz directs. Package also
includes You'll Find Out (1940), Zombies of Broadway (1945) and
Frankenstein 1970 (1958) DVD Release Date: October 6th, 2009
Willy Wonka & the Chocolate Factory
BR
- The story of
Charlie Bucket, a little boy with no money and a good heart, who
dreams wistfully of being able to buy the candy that other
children enjoy. Charlie enters into a magical world when he wins
one of five "Golden Tickets" to visit the mysterious chocolate
factory owned by the eccentric Willy Wonka and run by his
capable crew of Oompa-Loompas. Once behind the gates, a cast of
characters join Charlie and Grandpa Joe on a journey to discover
that a kind heart is a far finer possession than a sweet tooth.
Blu-ray
Release date: October 20th, 2009
Blood (O Sangue) - Perhaps the most overtly Bressonian
of Pedro Costa's body of work (albeit suffused with the brooding
shadows of a Jacques Tourneur film), Costa's first feature, O
Sangue, nevertheless bears the characteristic imprint of what
would prove to be his familiar preoccupations: absent parents,
surrogate families, unreconciled ghosts, the trauma and violence
of displacement, the ache (and isolation) of longing. The
thematic convergence is insightfully revealed in an episode that
occurs near the end of the film, when the older brother Vicente
(Pedro Hestnes), having been held captive by his father's
nefarious associates on New Year's Eve in a half-baked attempt
to collect his father's unpaid debt from him, awakens in the
darkness of an unfamiliar apartment to the sight of a restless
silhouette on the balcony - the shadow cast by his father's
mistress (Isabel de Castro) that has been made spectral and
incandescent by the transient glow of exploding fireworks and
the sweep of wind against translucent curtains (a sense of
otherworldliness that also reinforces a captor's earlier idea of
conducting a séance in order to contact Vincente's missing
father). DVD Release Date: September 28th, 2009
The Wizard of Oz
BR
- There's no place like home, and
there will never be another movie like 'The Wizard of Oz'. Every
so often you forget how enchanting this film is... and then a
song surfaces on the radio, or a scene is shown on TV. Any
single segment of the film has maintained its cultural and
sociological status as an embedded icon in our collected memory
banks. The dialogue has become the stuff of legend and
repeatedly blended with some popular films (ex. Wild at Heart ,
After Hours etc.) for its extensive longevity and lilting
imaginative significance. This is a film that shaped lives...
viewers as well as the actors - Judy Garland would forever to be
identified as the wide-eyed Dorothy singing "Over the Rainbow"
in her own inimitable style.
Blu-ray
Release Date: September
29th, 2009
Sunrise - A Song of Two Humans
BR
- Made in the twilight of the silent era, it became both a swan
song for a vanishing medium and one of the few films to
instantly achieve legendary status. Winner of three Oscars for
Best Actress (Gaynor), Cinematography, and a never-repeated
award for “Unique and Artistic Picture”, its influence and
stature has only grown with each passing year. The Masters of
Cinema Series is proud to present a new 2xDVD and Blu-ray
special edition of the film, including an all-new alternate
version recently discovered in a Czech archive of a higher
visual quality than any other known source.
Blu-ray
Release Date: September 21st, 2009
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