Newsletter - FOR THE WEEK OF October 5th, 2009

This Week's Highlights

October 5th CONTEST - identify the clip on the CONTEST PAGE to win a brand NEW sealed Criterion (REISSUE) DVD of Salo -  Best of luck all!

h

FEATURE DVD and Blu-ray of the Month chosen for October HERE

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

Gary at 2ze dot com

Amazon Blu-ray Blowout HERE

• The Movies & TV Boxed Set Sale (up to 60% OFF!)

Blu-rays half price at Amazon UK HERE

• WORLD CINEMA SALE STILL ON - UP To 70% OFF HERE

• SALES: US Blu-ray up to 53% OFF        

•  Amazon France Blu-ray SALE (BUY 1 get 1 FREE!)

LATEST ADDITIONS to the Calendar: (PRE-ORDER & save!):

The Red Shoes [Blu-ray] (Michael Powell + Emeric Pressburger, 1948) R'B' UK ITV DVD

Transformers/Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen  [Blu-ray] - Dreamworks Video

Law of Desire (Pedro Almodóvar, 1987) Sony Pictures

Lock, Stock, and Two Smoking Barrels [Blu-ray] (Guy Ritchie, 1998) Universal Home Video

Beauty in Trouble (Jan Hrebejk, 2006) Menemsha Films

Eagles Over London [Blu-ray] (Enzo G. Castellari, 1970) Severin

Land of the Lost [Blu-ray] (Brad Silberling, 2009) Universal Studios

Death in the Garden - The garden of the title is a terrifying South American jungle, through which an international cast of refugees flees after a surprise banana-republic revolution. This 1956 French-Mexican production was obviously designed as escapist entertainment, but in the hands of director Luis Bunuel it becomes a little more than that. As things get curiouser and curiouser, it's interesting to see how close Bunuel's surrealist vision is to the expected extravagancies of genre filmmaking. No masterpiece, but a prime example of subversive cinema. DVD Release Date: October 27th, 2009

Munyurangabo - After stealing a machete from a market in Kigali, Munyurangabo and his friend, Sangwa, leave the city on a journey tied to their pasts. Munyurangabo wants justice for his parents who were killed in the genocide, and Sangwa wants to visit the home he deserted years ago. Though they plan to visit Sangwa s home for just a few hours, the boys stay for several days. From two separate tribes, their friendship is tested when Sangwa's wary parents disapprove of Munyurangabo, warning that Hutus and Tutsis are supposed to be enemies. DVD Release Date: October 6th, 2009

Monsoon Wedding - Cultures and families clash in Mira Nair’s exuberant Monsoon Wedding, a mix of comedy and chaotic melodrama concerning the preparations for the arranged marriage of a modern upper-middle-class Indian family’s only daughter, Aditi. Of course there are hitches—Aditi has been having an affair with a married TV host; she’s never met her husband to be, who lives in Houston; the wedding has worsened her father’s hidden financial troubles; even the wedding planner has become a nervous wreck—as well as buried family secrets. But Nair’s celebration is ultimately joyful and cathartic: a love song to her home city of Delhi and her own Punjabi family. DVD Release Date: October 20th, 2009

The Prisoner - Complete Series BR - Though it ran for a mere 17 episodes, the sci-fi spy drama THE PRISONER is one of television's biggest cult hits. The brainchild of star Patrick McGoohan, the series followed the adventures of No. 6 (McGoohan), a former secret agent who is being held captive in a highly secured village, the location of which remains a mystery throughout the series. This groundbreaking and innovative show reached an unfortunate end as TV bosses got cold feet following low ratings and increasingly strange story lines. But McGoohan himself took control and steered the show to an ending that continues to cause great debate among THE PRISONER's faithful fans. This release includes the entire series of the show, digitally restored. Blu-ray Release date: September 28th, 2009

Ghost Ship BR - While it offers nothing new for horror buffs, Ghost Ship relocates its haunted house clichés to an eerily effective setting. The Italian luxury liner Antonia Graza, its fate a mystery for 40 years, has suddenly reappeared in the chilly Bering Sea. Lured by a seemingly harmless proposition, Gabriel Byrne and Julianna Margulies lead a salvage crew (including Ron Eldard, Margulies's offscreen partner and fellow ER alumnus) to claim the wreck. But a grisly prologue--in which we witness the horrific fate of the ship's crew and passengers--makes it clear that bad things are going to happen. And they do... with the predictability of tomorrow's sunrise. Blu-ray Release date: October 6th, 2009

Mary Shelley's Frankenstein BR - During the course of more than thirty adaptations, sequels, spin-offs, rip-offs, and spoofs, the name of "Frankenstein" has become associated with one of the world's most recognizable movie monsters. The creature, as typified by Boris Karloff with outstretched arms, flat-topped head, and ubiquitous neck bolts, has met the likes of Dracula, the Wolfman, and even Abbott and Costello. It has been played by (among others) Charles Ogle, Karloff, Lon Chaney, Bela Lugosi, Glenn Strange, Christopher Lee, Fred Gwynne (as Herman Munster), and now, Robert De Niro. Rarely, however, has a cinematic interpretation of "the daemon" approached the level of three-dimensionality with which it is portrayed in the novel. Blu-ray Release date: October 6th, 2009

Wolf BR - The movie contains most of the materials of traditional werewolf movies. Much significance is attached to the full moon, and horses shy away when Nicholson comes near, and his sense of smell develops to the point where he can tell that a man had tequila for his breakfast. There is of course the obligatory eccentric old scientist with the foreign accent, who explains werewolves to Nicholson. And beautiful women to be his lovers and/or victims. Blu-ray Release date: October 6th, 2009

Bram Stoker's Dracula BR - This is it, the quintessential vampire movie. Based on Bram Stoker's 1897 gothic masterpiece "Dracula." There are many arguments as to who was Stoker's influence for The Count, and the most rabid purists insist that it is NOT Vlad the Impaler. However, this movie forms it's basis around the Vlad story, and I'm obliged to agree that this is the most familiar of all the various versions of the tale of Count Dracula, and whether or not this is where Stoker got his influence is a moot point and does not make this film any less of a masterpiece. Blu-ray Release date: October 2nd, 2007

Miracle on 34th Street BR - Six year old Susan has doubts childhood's most enduring miracle Santa Clause. Her mother told her the "secret" about Santa a long time ago, so Susan doesn't expect to receive the most important gifts on her Christmas list. But after meeting a special department store Santa who's convinced he's the real thing, Susan is given the most precious gift of all - something to believe in. Blu-ray Release date: October 6th, 2009

A Throw of Dice - A Throw of Dice (Prapancha Pash) is the third film in a pioneering trilogy of silent films made through a unique partnership between German director Franz Osten and Indian actor-producer Himansu Rai, whose films combined documentary techniques with narratives derived from Indian myths and legends. After the beautiful Sunita nurses Ranjit back to health following dramatic events during a royal tiger hunt, his wicked rival Sohat persuades him to risk his kingdom and his love in a fateful game of dice.

La Roue - Taken to its bare bones, the story deals with Sisif, a locomotive engineer who saves Norma, an infant girl, from a train wreck and raises her as his adopted daughter. Norma thinks Sisif's son Elie is her brother, and when the two fall in love, she leaves to marry a virtual stranger. Sisif is also obsessed with her and the plot elaborates this triangular relationship. German director G. W. Pabst, an ardent admirer of La Roue, was encouraged by Gance's example to undertake his own remarkable explorations of human psychology in such silent films as Secrets of a Soul, Pandora's Box and Diary of a Lost Girl.

Jigsaw - In fact, its modest story of a young "assistant D. A." who investigates two murders and uncovers a vicious "hate group" is a neatly blueprinted fiction in every detailed respect, except that the jowlish villains are some vague sort of "mongers of hate." It is sluggishly directed by Fletcher Markle, who also co-authored the script, and almost indifferently played, where good playing would do the most for it, by Franchot Tone in the principal role.

Nature's Grave - Scripted by Australian horror regular Everett DeRoche (who also scripted the original), the remake follows the original fairly closely and that is perhaps its weakness. The actors and the filmmakers seem to be going through the motions. Blanks and his cinematographer deliver a slicker but bland image than the atmospheric original (the original's cinematographer Vincent Monton is credited here as 2nd unit DP) but the pacing and buildup of what should be odd occurrences is haphazard (the dugong corpse that makes its way up the beach seems thrown into the script as if the filmmakers remembered it at the last moment). It's bad but not in the sacrilegious way of many remakes and re-imaginings, it's just unnecessary. DVD Release Date: August 4th, 2009

Whispering City - Watchable minor film noir, that is competently directed by Fyodor Otsep from a story by George Zuckerman and Michael Lennox. The acting by Paul Lukas and Helmut Dantine is far beyond what you would expect in such a cheapie film. But the narrative has too many coincidental plot points to be believable, though the crisply told story is for the most part entertaining. The film is told in flashback by a tourist guide sleigh driver to two riders in Quebec City.

This Land is Mine - Renoir's second American film, made in the same brutal year as Stalingrad and El Alamein, is one of his quietest and least startling, featuring Laughton as a timid village schoolteacher 'somewhere in occupied Europe' who muddles his way to martyrdom. Both Laughton - happier in this role than many - and O'Hara are fine, but the film's main attractions remain the elegant Renoir set-ups (some recalling La Bête Humaine) and the script's unusual ethical stance: not that Nazism was wrong because it denied free enterprise, but that it was wrong because it stood against the possibility of Socialism, human dignity, and political emancipation.