Newsletter - FOR THE WEEK

OF October 19th, 2009

This Week's Highlights

October 19th CONTEST - identify the clip on the CONTEST PAGE to win a brand NEW sealed - Criterion Blu-ray of Monsoon Wedding -  Best of luck all!

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

Gary at 2ze dot com

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

Give 'Em Hell Malone [Blu-ray] (Russell Mulcahy, 2009) National Entertainment Media

The Tournament [Blu-ray] (Scott Mann, 2009) Weinstein Company

Miss Mend (Fyodor Otsep, 1926) Flicker Alley

Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince [Blu-ray] (David Yates, 2009) Warner Home Video

Fuel [Blu-ray] (Oktay Ortabasi, 2009) Vanguard Cinema

The House of the Devil [Blu-ray] (Ti West, 2009) Mpi Home Video

Birdwatchers (Marco Bechis, 2008) R2 UK Artificial Eye

The Gold Diggers (Sally Potter, 1983) R2 UK BFI

Natural Born Killers BR - "Natural Born Killers" is not so much about the killers, however, as about the feeding frenzy they inspire. During the period of their rampage, they are the most famous people in America, and the media goes nuts. There are Mickey and Mallory fan clubs and T-shirts; tabloid TV is represented by a bloodthirsty journalist played by Robert Downey Jr., who is so thrilled by their fame he almost wants to embrace them. The people Mickey and Mallory touch in the law industry are elated to be handling the case; it gives them a brush with celebrity, and a tantalizing whiff of the brimstone that fascinates some cops. Director's Cut Blu-ray Release Date: October 13th, 2009

Sympathy For Lady Vengeance BR - Acclaimed filmmaker Park Chan Wook returns to the director's chair to helm Sympathy for Lady Vengeance, one of the most highly anticipated Korean films of 2005. The film marks the end of Park's hugely popular "Vengeance Trilogy", a series of films that began with 2002's Sympathy for Mr. Vengeance and continued with 2003's internationally successful Old Boy. Unlike most trilogies, this trio of pictures is united not by plot or by characters, but by its thematic content, namely, revenge and its terrible consequences. Blu-ray Release Date: August 28th, 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. A&E Home Video - Region A Blu-ray release: October 27th, 2009

Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen BR - One of the most popular, thrill-packed, franchises of all time is back with even more action and more Autobots and Decepticons! In the highly anticipated Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen, Decepticon forces return to Earth on a mission to take Sam Witwicky (Shia LaBeouf) prisoner, after the young hero learns the truth about the ancient origins of the Transformers. Joining the mission to product humankind is Optimus Prime, who forms an alliance with international armies for a second epic battle. Blu-ray Release Date: October 20th, 2009

Il Divo BR - What is astonishing is that a film like this could be made about a man still living. One imagines Andreotti reflecting that it only enhances his larger-than-life image. His Christian Democrats ruled postwar Italy until 1992, by which time the party was in such disrepute that it no longer survives. Yet he prevails. He prevails, and the legend is only enhanced by the great performance here by Toni Servillo, an actor who succeeds in making him hypnotizing by supplying him with an almost cheerful lack of the slightest magnetism. Here was a man who suppressed the usual charm of a politician, perhaps aware he worked better as an enigma. Was he thinking of himself when he famously said, “You sin in thinking bad about people; but, often, you guess right.” Blu-ray Release date: October 27th, 2009

Adoration BR - What would you do if you found out your father may have been a terrorist? A high school boy writes a story for class that makes this claim. Is it true? Friends, family, teachers and internet chat-room partners start to wonder and worry. Now he must journey through a maze of family secrets to find the truth about his dead father. From Academy Award-nominated director Atom Egoyan (1997, Best Director, The Sweet Hereafter) comes a story of a young man who must question everything he knows in order to learn who he is and who his father was. Adoration presents a world where there is no such thing as us versus them and the truth is never as simple as right and wrong. Blu-ray October 13th, 2009

Skin in the 70's - Blue Summer: Follow Tracy and Gene on a wild summer road trip full of hitchhiking hotties and crazy-ass roadside adventures. Sometime Sweet Susan: Beautiful but silent, the mysterious Susan harbors a deep and disturbing secret in this soft cut of the breakthrough 1975 sexy shocker. Summer School Teachers: What goes on when three coed cuties are hired as summer substitute teachers? A silly, sensual, 70s sex romp featuring starlets Candice Rialson (Carnival of Souls) and Pat Anderson. Teenage Divorce: Three free spirits cut their ties with the old-fashioned “square” world and shack up in a love commune. A Seventies cult favorite featuring Star Trek’s George Takei. DVD Release Date: October 13th, 2009

Nuri Bilge Ceylan- The Early Works - Thanks to the dedicated efforts of the folks at Artificial Eye, the works of Turkish filmmaker Nuri Bilge Ceylan are accessible to a wider audience and while film goers in North America may be most familiar with some of his more recent efforts like Climates, here we get a double disc release with his first two films. As anyone who’s seen both Kasaba and Clouds of May knows, the two are radically different in terms of style. DVD Release Date: May 28th, 2007

Went the Day Well - Conceived, like Ealing's earlier The Next of Kin, to highlight the dangers of a Nazi invasion, Went the Day Well? is one of the most effective wartime films, although it suffered from the fact that, by the time of its release, the real threat of invasion had passed....Turville in Oxfordshire... [is] the sort of village invariably described as 'sleepy'. True to form, the villagers take some time to wake up to the presence of the enemy among them. But when they are roused, they respond with determination, resourcefulness and, when necessary, a surprising ruthlessness. DVD Release Date: November 13th, 2006

How I Met Your Mother - Season 4 BR - The set-up for the series is at once simple and clever: The year is 2030 and Ted Mosby relates to his teenaged children the story of how he met their mother. He spins his tale out for at least five TV seasons worth of half episodes. And, like Scheherazade, Ted knows well enough not to give away the identity of the “lucky” girl, else he (and the TV series he has innocently spawned) will have lost the interest of his audience. Blu-ray Release date: September 29th, 2009

Waterworld BR - Kevin Costner, admittedly not the world's greatest actor, is fine as the dour Mariner. With a greater range than Schwarzenegger, Stallone, Van Damme, and Seagal combined, Costner is more than capable of handling the limited role of an action hero. Dennis Hopper, on the other hand, serves a dual function: chief villain and comic relief. Not content with merely going over-the-top this time around, Hopper makes it obvious that nothing about Deacon is to be taken seriously -- and the approach works. There's a strand of unmistakable, completely intentional humor running through Waterworld. Blu-ray Release date: October 20th, 2009

The Finances of the Grand Duke - Die Finanzen des Großherzogs sees Murnau exploiting the Mediterranean clime to film the tale of a rakish duke whose lifestyle has dried up his noble coffers. When word arrives about the existence of valuable sulphur deposits on his tiny duchy of Abacco, a comic adventure of high-seas intrigue, “animal impersonators”, and the Crown Princess of Russia unreels at a sprightly pace. Max Schreck (the mythic actor behind the makeup of Nosferatu’s Count Orlok two years earlier) appears in a supporting role, in what might be Murnau’s nimblest effort. DVD Release Date: October 19th, 2009

Phantom - In Phantom, an aspiring poet on the verge of what he takes for a big break experiences a chance encounter with a beautiful woman in the street — and falls headlong into love and fantasy. With debts piling up and his promised literary celebrity failing to materialize, the poet descends into obsession, deception, and, ultimately, a criminal act in this delirious film that stands as an early precursor of Hitchcock’s Vertigo. DVD Release Date: October 19th, 2009

Drag Me To Hell BR - Last year Raimi returned to his B-Movie “roots’ with your basic horror genre keywords: gypsy-curses, blood spewing, insect crawling in and out of body cavities, séance, graveyard and psychic phenomena. You want it – Drag Me To Hell’s got it. And it’s all done without the tongue-in-cheek flair of Army of Darkness. Quite the contrary - though many moments will provoke a reflexive chuckle from the sheer ridiculousness of the situation. Drag Me To Hell is a masterful early 1980s style (check out the older Universal logo that kicks things off here) horrorshow combined with the latest visual and sound effects and prosthetics. Blu-ray Release date: October 13th, 2009
 

Z. (Costa-Gavras, 1969) - Criterion Collection (BEAVER REVIEW)