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The Pacific
BD - The Pacific is
the ten-part sister series to HBO’s
Band of Brothers: a
portrait of WWII's Pacific Theatre as seen through the eyes and
hearts of three U.S. Marines - Robert Leckie, John Basilone and
Eugene Sledge. We follow them from Guadalcanal to Cape
Gloucester, Pavavu, Peleliu, Iwo Jima, Okinawa, and their
triumphant, yet uneasy, return home after V-J Day. HBO is
releasing the series simultaneously on both Hi-Def
Blu-ray and DVD, each with
six discs.
Blu-ray Release date: November
2nd, 2010
The Girl Who Played With Fire
BD - Based on the
international best-selling novel, The Girl Who Played With
Fire is the explosive follow-up to the literary and
cinematic hit
The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo. In this
second installment of Stieg Larsson's phenomenal "Millennium"
trilogy, Lisbeth Salander is a wanted woman. A researcher and a
Millennium journalist about to expose the truth about the sex
trade in Sweden are brutally murdered and Salander's prints are
on the weapon. Her history of unpredictable and violent behavior
makes her an official danger to society. Mikael Blomkvist,
Salander's friend and Millennium's publisher, is alone in his
belief of Salander's innocence. Digging deeper, Blomkvist
unearths evidence implicating highly placed members of Swedish
society - as well as shocking details about Salander's past. He
is desperate to get to her before she is cornered - but no one
can find her anywhere.
Blu-ray Release Date: October
26th, 2010
Hardware - In your
requisite eighties MTV-look post-apocalyptic wasteland, Mo
(Dylan McDermott, THE MESSENGERS) hopes to score with his
shut-in, sculptress girlfriend Jill (Stacey Travis, GHOST
WORLD) by gifting her a disembodied robot head found in the
desert by a "Zone Tripper." Little do they know that the robotic
head belongs to a M.A.R.K. 13 killing machine that is still
aware. In Jill's labyrinthine apartment, M.A.R.K. 13 reassembles
itself using spare parts from Jill's metal sculptures (and
several of her sharp power tools) and resumes its prime
directive of killing all humans. Meanwhile Mo has discovered
that the M.A.R.K. 13 project was put on hold because the drones
(which could power themselves from any source including the sun)
were defective and dangerous. With his pal Shades (John Lynch,
ISOLATION) - who self-medicates with LSD to recapture the
feel of zero gravity from his long stays in outer space - too
tripped out to be of much help, Mo hurries back to Jill's
apartment but M.A.R.K. 13 has taken over the apartment's
computer system and Jill is trapped with the killing machine.
DVD Release Date: October 13th, 2009
Maniac
BD - Mother-fixated Frank
(Joe Spinell,
VIGILANTE) stalks, murders, and mutilates
women on the streets of New York, nailing their scalps to
mannequins in his shrine-like apartment while having
conversations with his mother in his head. By chance, he meets
photographer Anna (Caroline Munro,
STARCRASH in which
Spinell also appeared) and they strike up a relationship (which
includes him moping about in the background during one of her
photo shoots and taking her to visit his mother's grave during a
date). Will Anna wind up his next victim or a perfect live
replacement for his mother (and what will his mannequins think
about that)
Blu-ray Release Date: October
26th, 2010
Chaplin at Keystone -
An International Collaboration of 34 Original Films - Charles
Chaplin came to Mack Sennett s Keystone Studios late in 1913 as
a little-known British vaudevillian, and after a year, had not
only established his Tramp character, learned to write and
direct his own films, and also achieved public recognition as a
star comedian. Although Keystone did not publicize its
performers by name, standees of Chaplin's likeness outside
theaters sufficed to attract audiences. Some of the films,
especially Tillie's Punctured Romance, remained in theatrical
distribution for decades. DVD Release Date: October 26th, 2010
Spirits of the Dead
BD - Federico Fellini, Louis Malle and Roger
Vadim adapt works by macabre author Edgar Allan Poe in the
anthology film Spirits of the Dead [Histoires extraordinaires].
Dealing with tormented characters experiencing a personal hell,
filled with angst and delirium, Spirits of the Dead was a
ground-breaking departure for the adaptation of Poe in cinema.
Blu-ray Release date: October 25th, 2010
711 Ocean Drive - Academy Award® winner Edmond
O’Brien (Best Supporting Actor, The Barefoot Contessa, 1954)
stars in this top-flight film noir, based on actual events. He
plays a telephone repairman who uses his knowledge to help his
bookie expand his business to increased profits and rises to the
top. But when syndicate head Otto Kruger (Saboteur) wants to
take over, things start to get dicey — and O’Brien’s in too deep
to call the cops. With gritty photography by Frank F. Planer
(Champion), direction by Joseph M. Newman (This Island Earth),
and a white-knuckle climax atop Boulder Dam, this is one of the
finest crime thrillers of its era. The excellent cast also
includes Joanne Dru (Red River) and such veteran tough guys as
Barry Kelly, Donald Porter, Howard St. John and Robert Osterloh,
plus a brief appearance by Cleo Moore (Over-Exposed). DVD
Release Date: September 2010
The Evil / Twice Dead - Psychiatrist C.J. (Richard
Crenna,
JADE) obtains permission to transform an abandoned
mansion - built over desert sulfur pits - into a drug treatment
center. From the start, his physician wife Caroline (Joanna Pettet,
WELCOME TO ARROW BEACH) sees strange things in the
house. C.J. brings along some of his former students and friends
to help renovate the house. In TWICE DEAD, a family of four
inherits a mansion that once belonged to stage actor Tyler
Walker (Jonathan Chapin) who hanged himself (after stabbing a
female mannequin). The teens of the family, Scott (Tom Bresnahan)
and Robin (Jill Whitlow), run afoul of the neighborhood's
leather-jacketed, eighties-bad-hair gang of delinquents who
torment them at home and at school. DVD Release Date: October
5th, 2010
Frozen - Joe (Shawn Ashmore,
X-MEN) is none-too-pleased
when his buddy Dan (Kevin Zegers, the
DAWN OF THE DEAD remake)
brings new girlfriend Parker (Emma Bell, HATCHET II) along for
their ski-trip. Since Parker is an inexperienced skier, the guys
have to stick to the kiddie slopes. Wanting to get one last ski
in before the lifts close for the night, they get Parker to
flirt with the operator into letting them onto the lifts. A
shift change leaves the trio unexpectedly stranded on the chair
high above the ground as night falls and the temperature begins
to drop below zero (it's Sunday and they do not re-open until
Friday for the next weekend). With frostbite setting in and
after a failed attempt to get the attention of a passing
snowplow driver, they decide to take drastic measures which turn
deadly. DVD Release Date: October 18th, 2010
Perth - The beaches of the Australian city of Perth is
the dream retirement destination of 51 year old Singaporean cab
driver Harry Lee (Lim Kay Tong, BROKEDOWN PALACE) who was laid
off six months before from his job as a security guard and is
finding himself coming up short with retirement funds (his
ex-wife also took off with a chunk of his money). With his
relationship with his own son Darius (Kevin Murphy,
AVATAR)
virtually non-existent, Harry's only friend is fellow cab driver Selvam (A. Panneeirchelvam). Harry's former supervisor Angry Boy
Lee (Sunny Pang,
THE MAID) gets Harry and Selvam jobs driving
up-market hookers to their clients at night. Harry falls for
hooker Mai (Ivy Cheng) and wants to save her from her lifestyle.
DVD Release Date: 16 January 2007
While the City Sleeps - Conventional wisdom has it that
the greatest stylistic influence on film noir was German
Expressionism, with all its dark fatalism, subjective camera
angles and movement, and sharp chiaroscuro lighting. So when an
early Expressionist master takes on a noir subject, the result
is bound to be pretty much definitive. DVD Release Date:
October 11th, 2010
Psycho
BD - Credited with inventing the genre of the
modern horror film, PSYCHO has had its share of sequels and
imitators, none of which diminishes the achievement of this
shocking and complex horror thriller. Alfred Hitchcock's
choreography of elements in PSYCHO is considered so perfect it
inspired a shot-by-shot remake by Gus Van Sant in 1998. However,
Hitchcock's black-and-white original, featuring Anthony
Perkins's haunting characterization of lonely motel keeper
Norman Bates, has never been equaled. Bates presides over an
out-of-the-way motel under the domineering specter of his
mother. The young, well-intentioned Bates is introduced to the
audience when Marion Crane (Janet Leigh), a blonde on the run
with stolen money, checks in for the night. But Momma doesn't
like loose women, so the stage is set for this classic tale of
horror--and one of the most famous scenes in film history. US
Blu-ray Release Date: October 19th, 2010
Paths of Glory
BD - Stanley Kubrick’s
Paths of Glory is
among the most powerful antiwar films ever made. A fiery Kirk
Douglas stars as a World War I French colonel who goes
head-to-head with the army’s ruthless top brass when his men are
accused of cowardice after being unable to carry out an
impossible mission. This haunting, exquisitely photographed
dissection of the military machine in all its absurdity and
capacity for dehumanization (a theme Kubrick would continue to
explore throughout his career) is assembled with its legendary
director’s customary precision, from its tense trench warfare
sequences to its gripping courtroom climax to its ravaging final
scene. Criterion Blu-ray Release Date: October 26th, 2010
House
BD - An unforgettable mixture of bubblegum teen
melodrama and grisly phantasmagoria, Obayashi's deranged fairy
tale HOUSE is one of Japanese cinema's wildest supernatural
ventures and a truly startling debut feature. Distressed by her
widowed father's plans to remarry, Angel sets off with six of
her schoolgirl friends in tow for a summer getaway in her aunt's
isolated mansion. But all is not well - in this house of dormant
secrets, long-held emotional traumas have terrifyingly physical
embodiments and the girls will have to use all their individual
talents if any are to survive. A rollercoaster ride without
brakes, HOUSE is by turns sinister, hilarious and curiously
touching, with ceaseless cinematic invention and a satirical,
full-blooded approach to the horror genre. Criterion
Blu-ray
Release Date: October 26th, 2010
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