DVDBeaver Newsletter - October 15th, 2007

Hafa Adai! - Nice eclectic mix with 17 new reviews this week - 4 of which are comparisons including three Noir gold, 6 hi-def, 35 calendar updates, our recommendations, article update, forthcoming classic releases, a contest winner and a two new contests!

CONTEST ACTIVITY:

and you must be subscribed to our Free Weekly Newsletter and email all answer to contest@DVDBeaver.com

Winner of the clip from the week of Oct 8th (I Walk Alone) was Sam Song of NY, NY (wins a sealed DVD of Criterion's Criterion's Mala Noche Congrats Sam!

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

SECOND NEW CONTEST:

HERE are five pairs of screenshots from as many Korean movies on Leonard's review of Alone in Love.
Name the five titles (in English, please) and email to KoreanDrama@DVDBeaver.com
Include name, shipping address, telephone number and e-mail address with your entry.
The winner will be chosen randomly from those with the most correct answers.
First prize is a free copy of the complete set of Alone in Love, the Korean TV drama (value over $80).
Six Runners-Up will get complimentary discs from the show containing the first three one-hour episodes.

Lizabeth Scott, Faith Domergue and Peggy Cummins added to our article:

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.

STRATEGIES: The best way to take full advantage of Amazon is to use PRE-ORDERs - lock in at the discount price by ORDERING - if perchance you decide against the purchase you have until the release date to cancel - at no charge.

AND  if you will purchase more than 35 DVDs (or anything) in a 365 day period (and live in the Continental US) it makes excellent financial sense to subscribe to Amazon Prime! You will get Free 2-day shipping on your purchases!

BLU-RAY STORE           HD-DVD STORE

 HIGH DEFINITION DVD STORE        ALL OUR NEW FORMAT DVD REVIEWS

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

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

Updated stuff I may indulge in: Rescue Dawn,  Moolaade (compare with the Artificial Eye - R2), Personal Best, G-Men vs. The Black Dragon (just the name is too good to pass up for a serial), Postman in the Mountains - curious curious, curious, Heart Is a Lonely Hunter  - great film as I recall, and to compare -> Affair to Remember (2-disc - 50th Anniversary Ed). The rest:

Rescue Dawn (Werner Herzog, 2006) Fox/MGM,

Rescue Dawn [Blu-ray] (Werner Herzog, 2006) Fox/MGM

The Iron Horse (The Ford at Fox Collection) (John Ford, 1924) - Fox

The West Wittering Affair (David Scheinmann, 2005) Lifesize

New York, New York (30th Anniversary Edition) (Martin Scorsese, 1977) MGM

Cocalero (Alejandro Landes, 2007) First Run Features

Moolaade (Ousmane Sembene, 2004) Ny'er

Deep Water (Louise Osmond, 2006) IFC

Personal Best (Robert Towne, 1982) - Warner

Angel-A (Luc Besson, 2005) - Sony Pictures

Death of Two Sons (Micah Schaffer, 2006) Passion River

G-Men vs. The Black Dragon SERIAL (William Witney, 1943) Cheezy Flicks

Battle of Britain [Blu-ray] (Guy Hamilton, 1969) MGM

Elvis: Blue Suede Collection (Jailhouse Rock/Viva Las Vegas/It Happened at the World's Fair / Kissin' Cousins/Girl Happy/Live a Little, Love a Little/Elvis: That's the Way It Is/This Is Elvis) - Warner Home Video

Shattered (Mike Barker, 2007) Lions Gate

Payday (Daryl Duke, 1973) Warner Home Video

Postman in the Mountains (Jianqi Huo, 1999) Razor Digital

Prisoner of Shark Island (The Ford at Fox Collection) (John Ford , 1936) - Fox

Bob Hope MGM Movie Legends Collection (Alias Jesse James/Boy, Did I Get the Wrong Number/The Facts of Life/I'll Take Sweden/The Princess and the Pirate/The Road to Hong Kong/They've Got Me Covered) - MGM

The Mod Squad - Season 1 Volume 1 - Paramount Home Video

Pan's Labyrinth [HD DVD] (Guillermo del Toro, 2006) New Line Home Entertainment

Pan's Labyrinth [Blu-ray] (Guillermo del Toro, 2006) New Line Home Entertainment

Heart Is a Lonely Hunter (Robert Ellis Miller, 1968) Warner Home Video

Affair to Remember (2-disc - 50th Anniversary Ed) (Leo McCarey, 1957) (1957) - 20th Century Fox

Martin Scorsese Presents: Val Lewton - Warner Home Video

Val Lewton Collection (Cat People / The Curse of the Cat People / I Walked with a Zombie / The Body Snatcher / Isle of the Dead / Bedlam / The Leopard Man / The Ghost Ship / The Seventh Victim / Shadows in the Dark plus 6th disc of Scorsese documentary) - Warner

The Simpsons Movie (David Silverman, 2007) Fox Home Entertainment

The Simpsons Movie [Blu-ray] (David Silverman, 2007) Fox Home Entertainment

Essential John Ford Collection (6-disc -The Frontier Marshall / My Darling Clementine / Drums Along the Mohawk / How Green Was My Valley / The Grapes of Wrath / Becoming John Ford) - 20th Century Fox

New Reviews:.

Most of my time this week was taken up with watching - Treasures III: Social Issues in American Film, 1900-1934 and The Jazz Singer.... and better spent it could not have been. Comparing and re-watching the three noir entries - Night and the City, Kiss of Death, and Cry of the City made me realize how much I love the style (including the film from our clip this week). Wow - pure joy. By no means masterpieces but I enjoyed both hi-def releases - Carlito's Way HD and Edward Scissorhands BR with their improved ... everything. Eddie's review makes Into Great Silence sound somewhat intriguing. Ditto for Michael's review of Le Combat Dans L'Ile (Fire and Ice) . And just between you and me <whispering> I bought Planet Terror - haven't watched it yet.

The Jazz Singer - Experiments in sound film had been occurring almost since the birth of silent pictures, but Warner Bros. - until then considered a second-string studio - took the initiative in creating sound feature films after setting up its own radio station in 1927. Using its newly developed Vitaphone process, the studio added a score and sound effects to Don Juan (1926), a John Barrymore silent already in production. The success of this film, plus a series of musical shorts, inspired the creation of the first real "talkie" feature, The Jazz Singer. DVD Release Date: October 16th, 2007

The Fly BR - The name, David Cronenberg, was once synonymous with "Disturbing" – with a capital "D." And his 1986 remake of the classic short story and 1958 film, starring Vincent Price is no exception. Back in those days, Cronenberg depended a great deal on shocking effects, as if he couldn't tell the inner drama without them. Yet, while those effects reached the depths of wretch in The Fly, the human drama became more clarified. In future years, he would depend less and less on effects as he mastered what he wanted to say about the emotional truth behind them. DVD Release Date: October 9th, 2007

Carlito's Way HD - Al Pacino, in first collaboration with director Brian De Palma since Scarface, plays a Puerto Rican, Carlito Brigante, an ex-con who, within the time-honored code of nobility, and tries to go straight. His character's grace and dignity help carry the duality of the film and bind us through his honorable noble-thief intentions. Penelope Ann Miller is uncharacteristically playing a stripper (the good) and is certainly capable of pulling some strings of sensuality, but the true star, and continually proven best actor of his generation, in one of his least recognizable, but most memorable, roles as dishonest Jewish lawyer Kleinfeld (the bad) is Sean Penn - who incidentally did this film solely for money to help fund his masterful The Crossing Guard. De Palma, whom I have consistently been on the fence about, cuts a smooth stylish cloth of both exciting action and intense emotions. The film is a rough ride... but an impacting one. One of the better, if not the best film to come out of the vacuous Hollywood of 93'. DVD Release Date: October 23rd, 2007

Edward Scissorhands BR - Quirky and stylistic seem to go hand-in-hand when discussing director Tim Burton. In, possibly his defining film, Edward Scissorhands he invests an obtuse premise, essentially involving societal tolerance in extremes, into viewers acceptance... and it works. Both unique and excessively creative Edward Scissorhands is refreshing, humorous and completely watchable. This film is by no means a masterpiece but it certainly helped establish Burton as a viable and offbeat mainstream force in Hollywood and the film definitely has things to say, much of which is interpretational but not exceedingly poignant. DVD Release Date: October 9th, 2007

Alone in Love (Korean Drama) - A young couple, probably in their early thirties, meet for dinner at a hotel restaurant. They reminisce about memory and about the fallibility of memory. For the moment, they stop short of commenting on the consequences of remembering and not remembering, since they share a particularly painful experience which one cannot forget and the other refuses to remember.

Fantastic 4: Rise of the Silver Surfer BR - We could categorize movie adaptations of comic books in terms of relative darkness. While the Star Wars saga may have lit the match in a nearby genre, I don't think this territory was seriously explored until Tim Burton's 1989 Batman, in which both Jack Napier and Bruce Wayne as the Joker and Batman respectively, were shown to have more in common than was comfortable – for Wayne, at any rate. What with later Batman incarnations through to Peter Parker's Spider-Man, we have been saturated with darkness and irony. Enter – or, more properly, re-enter: the Fantastic4, whose dark side could well be charted midway between Bob Squarepants and Buffy. This is not necessarily a bad thing. If nothing else, it's a relief. DVD Release Date: October 9th, 2007

Le Combat Dans L'Ile (Fire and Ice) - Alain Cavalier's first feature is a surprisingly effective combination of political thriller, social commentary, romantic melodrama and New Wave stylism. You can spot influences of Bresson throughout, though of course Bresson would never have cast Trintignant or Schneider. The two actors are both at their absolute peak in this film. Romy Schneider, in particular, seems to be relishing the opportunity to escape from those endless Sissi confections. The love-fear relationship between their characters (with Henri Serre forming the third corner of the triangle) is drawn with great skill and subtlety, often through fragmentary but telling details.

Treasures III: Social Issues in American Film, 1900-1934 - This third groundbreaking set in the Treasures from American Archives series presents over 48 films never before seen on video. Over 12 hours of rare cartoons, newsreel stories, serial episodes, advocacy films, and features. Preserved by the George Eastman House, the Library of Congress, the Museum of Modern Art, the National Archives, and the UCLA Film & Television Archive. DVD Release Date: October 16th, 2007

Manufactured Landscapes - Critique may be too strong a word. Still, at its most arresting, Manufactured Landscapes does suggest that Ms. Baichwal and her excellent cinematographer are not entirely at ease with Mr. Burtynsky’s work, which tends to subordinate the human form to the harmonious use of color, the balance of graphical forms and the overwhelming man-made and man-ravaged environments. In many of these landscapes (which I have looked at only in this film and online), scores of anonymous workers become specks of canary yellow and blots of bubble-gum pink, a pointillist population. DVD Release Date: November 20th, 2007

28 Weeks Later BR - We left off in 28 Days Later with a world about to be overrun by zombies, so a sequel seemed inevitable. But a new director and writer? We worry. We see the names Danny Boyle and Alex Garland as Executive Producers and we breathe a sigh of relief. We are reassured by the movie's opening scene, so reminiscent of the original's fearful paranoia, and arbitrary carnage. We smile in anticipation as the protagonist runs to save his skin while his wife is being ravaged by the "infected." Ah, an interior drama is coming, we think. DVD Release Date: October 9th, 2007

28 Days Later BR - 28 Days Later is not particularly original in concept, owing much to the inexplicable horror of George Romero's Night Of The Living Dead, the social breakdown of Day Of The Triffids, and the joyless inevitability of Nevil Shute's On The Beach. It is in the nature of its unyielding intensity and violence, the graphic consequences of the breakdown of society, and the subtle way the actions of its characters and the cinematic narrative argue its politics, rather than in dialog, that sets this new film apart. DVD Release Date: October 9th, 2007

Into Great Silence - In 1984, German director Philip Groning asked the Carthusian monks if he could shoot a documentary about them in their monastery up in the French Alps. Sixteen years later, the monks told Groning that they were ready for him. Sixteen years! I’m sure that, during those sixteen years, Herr Groning sometimes forgot that he was once interested in documenting the lives of such withdrawn men. Yet, Herr Groning got his wish, and he spent about half a year shooting footage of the monks as they went about their daily routines.

Night and the City - Richard Widmark delivers an indelible performance as Harry Fabian, a small-time American nightclub tout and desperate dreamer who tries to worm his way into the wrestling rackets of post-war London. In his path lie the formidable obstacles posed by a vengeful club owner Phil Nosseross (Francis L Sullivan) and the racketeer Kristo (Herbert Lom). The club owner's sultry wife (Googie Withers) schemes with him, and a long-suffering girlfriend (Gene Tierney) does her best to save Harry from himself. Like many a noir hero before him, Harry thinks he can outrun his fate. He's wrong. BFI DVD Release Date: October 15th, 2007

Kiss of Death - A gritty tale of deceit and manipulation filmed with an almost documentary-style realism, this hard-edged noir thriller stars Victor Mature as a gangster who takes the rap for a jewelry-store heist to protect his wife and children. But when his friends on the outside fail to honor their promise, he turns the tables on the mob and works with the FBI to incriminate the men who helped put him away. Richard Widmark debuts as the evil mobster with the manic laugh. BFI DVD Release Date: October 15th, 2007

Cry of the City - Richard Conte's dazzling performance as Rome conveys a seductive ruthlessness opposite the brawny Victor Mature - a Fox favorite following his powerful performance in Kiss of Death - as Lieutenant Candella, the 'good guy' in the film's running battle between good and evil. They are supported by a brilliant cast including Debra Paget, Shelley Winters, and the mesmerizing, scene-stealing Hope Emerson in her most original and remarkable role as a thieving murderess. BFI DVD Release Date: October 15th, 2007

The Stendahl Syndrome - The movie's main character is the beautiful and young policewoman Anna Manni (played by Dario Argento's daughter - Asia Argento) who is tracking down a violent serial killer and rapist (played by Thomas Kretschmann). Her track leads her to the Uffizi museum in Florence. There however, Anna is struck by the Stendhal Syndrome, which makes her faint, when among certain works of art, like paintings and statues. Her new handicap makes it very difficult for her to track down the killer, since every work of art could make her faint. Eventually Anna finds the killer and confronts him, but this is far from the end of Anna's troubles... Blue Underground DVD Release Date: September 25th, 2007

Planet Terror - Ms. McGowan plays Cherry Darling, a hard-luck go-go dancer. She reunites with an old boyfriend (Freddy Rodriguez), who turns out to be a notorious gunslinger. They team up with a bunch of other townspeople -- we’re somewhere in Texas -— to fight off rampaging zombies (including Bruce Willis and Mr. Tarantino, who also has a small role in Death Proof). The zombies have been infected by a virus, and the only hope for a cure is... DVD Release Date: October 16th, 20007

Next 2 weeks on the Calendar: