Newsletter - FOR THE WEEK

OF October 25th, 2010

Sundara poeto!  - A lavish Chinese epic, a Sundance Film Festival award winner, and films by Coppola, Kubrick, Robert Wise, Ridley Scott, Robert Zemeckis, + Oliver Stone represent some of the coverage this week on Blu-ray. Resnais and a festival award winner from South Korea, a Brit thriller, Noir, Peter Lorre, Hedy Lamarr, a Tennessee Williams adaptation and Eric's usual horror schlock - on DVD. Plus plenty of calendar updates including Criterion's exciting January line-up, and another new contest... Pretty, pretty, pretty good!

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Sight and Sound Poll UPDATE HERE

TOOLBAR THE 'DVDBeaver Toolbar'! Give it a test drive! I've created a very simple toolbar for Film-Fans/DVD-o-philes/cinephiles. It embeds effortlessly within Internet Explorer 5.0+ (Windows Vista/XP/2000) and Firefox 1.0.1+ (Windows, Mac, Linux). It offers quick links to Searching both the Net (via Google) and DVDBeaver directly, Amazons, Asian etailors, Forums (Criterion, Home Theater, AVS, Rotten Tomatoes, Film Noir), IMDb, DVDBasen, Beaver links, Blu-ray information, Cinephile Blogs/Journals (Rosenbaum, Kehr, Acquarello etc.). What do you think? FOR MORE INFORMATION / AVAILABLE HERE *** (We can adjust this to suit popular opinion - on-the-fly - no re-install required!)

October 25th CONTEST - identify the clip on the CONTEST PAGE to win brand new DVD of Oscilloscope's Kisses!

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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The Amazing Mr. X (The Spiritualist) - THE AMAZING MR. X is a very misleading title for one of the most haunting and original film noirs ever released. It gives the impression of a diabolical criminal genius on the rampage or perhaps a comedy about a milquetoast with fantastic powers. The movie is neither of these. It's a stunningly beautiful and unpredictable look at the phoney spiritualism racket as well as ghosts both real and imagined. An immediate favorable comparison can be made to the works of Val Lewton. THE AMAZING MR. X straddles the line between Lewton's gothic but plausible horrors and great film noir works like MURDER MY SWEET and OUT OF THE PAST. Is it a ghost story? A romance? A crime tale? The answer is, it is all of these things and more. Sony DVD Release Date: September 21, 2010

Moulin Rouge! BD - Baz Lurhmann’s Spectacular Spectacular “Moulin Rouge!” rarely engenders lukewarm responses. Qualified, perhaps, but for the most part, people either love it or hate it. The movie won Oscars for Costumes and Art Direction, Golden Globes for Musical, Actress, Original Score, BAFTA’s for Supporting Actor, Film Music and Sound. The movie barely made back its costs on U.S. screens after an initial run of ten months, but did very well internationally with a total gross over three times its cost. In any case, I’m in the former camp. I think Moulin Rouge! is brilliant: by turns cacophonous, charming, ludicrous, hypnotic and romantic. I watched it three times during its initial theatrical run, the first and second times on successive days just to make sure I wasn’t hallucinating. I’m still not sure. Blu-ray Release date: October 19th, 2010

Not Like Others - Vera (Jenny Lampa) and Vajna (Ruth Vega Fernandez) are a pair of vampire sisters who survive by stealing and feeding off of denizens of the chilly Stockholm nightlife. Vajna is depressed and wants to make a go of living normally (she is shown unsuccessfully trying to eat human food) while party girl Vera only fears getting fat. Dismissing Vajna's boring plan to go see a movie, Vera drags her to an underground club. When Vera kills and feeds off of a biker who roughed her up, the sisters are soon on the run from his biker pals. Hyped as a spiritual cousin to LET THE RIGHT ONE IN, NOT LIKE OTHERS (VAMPYRER) is not as action-oriented as the setup suggests and more character-focused like its supposed model. DVD Release Date: October 25th, 2010

Winter's Bone BD - “Winter’s Bone,” warmly embraced at this year’s Sundance Film Festival, belongs, at least at first glance, to one of that festival’s familiar genres: the regional-realist morality tale. These days, American independent cinema abounds in earnest stories of hard-bitten people living in impoverished corners of the country, their moral and emotional struggles accompanied by acoustic guitars and evocative landscape shots and generally uninflected by humor. Blu-ray Release date: October 26th, 2010

The Sound of Music BD - In bringing the musical to the screen, director Robert Wise made spectacular use of magnificent mountain landscapes and shooting locations in Germany and Austria. He also found in Julie Andrews the quintessential Maria, radiantly joyful, earnest and energetic, clear of diction and powerful in song. Her performance anchors the film: Any flicker of condescension or insincerity on her part, and the whole thing would have collapsed into treacle and camp. But cynics will search her face in vain: Her sincerity is absolute, and she sells the role and the film. Blu-ray Release Date: November 2nd, 2010

The Oliver Stone Collection BD - Going by the cover on Amazon this set comprises the Warner Blu-rays of Natural Born Killers, Any Given Sunday, and Alexander Revisited. Now, while we can only assume which version they are including ('Unrated Director's Cut' for Natural Born Killers or 'Final Cut' for Alexander Revisited - the cover does say 'Final Cut') but any combination presently appears to be CHEAPER IF YOU BUY THEM ALL INDIVIDUALLY as opposed to in the "Oliver Stone Collection"! Blu-ray Release date: October 26th, 2010

Alien BD - In another way, Ridley Scott's 1979 movie is a great original. It builds on the seminal opening shot of "Star Wars" (1977), with its vast ship in lonely interstellar space, and sidesteps Lucas' space opera to tell a story in the genre of traditional "hard" science fiction; with its tough-talking crew members and their mercenary motives, the story would have found a home in John W. Campbell's Astounding Science Fiction during its nuts-and-bolts period in the 1940s. Campbell loved stories in which engineers and scientists, not space jockeys and ray-gun blasters, dealt with outer space in logical ways. Blu-ray Release Date: October 26th, 2010

The Tomb - In a flashback of unspecified age, aristocratic child Ligeia Romanova loses her mother to the Black Death and becomes obsessed with extending her own existence. Now grown up, Ligeia (Sofya Skya) is a grad student at Tremaine University (actually Washington State University). Her strange experiments are actually her way of extending her own existence by capturing the souls of the dying. DVD Release Date: September 28th, 2010

Silent Scream - 1963: When Larry Winters violently murders a Soho barman in cold blood he is sentenced to life imprisonment. Within ten years he is addicted to prescription drugs and feared as Scotland's most violent inmate. After being transferred to the experimental Barlinnie Special Unit, Winters finds new and creative ways to express himself, but continues to self-destructively explore drugs as a means to escape the confines of his prison cell. Based on a true story, with exceptional performances from both Iain Glen and Robert Carlyle, this brutal, mind-bending journey into the damaged mind of a violent killer is as uncompromising as it is unforgettable. DVD Release Date: October 26th, 2010

Two Films by Marc Isaacs - Following their release last year of Three Films by Marc Isaacs - comprising Lift / Travellers / Calais: The Last Border - Second Run continue with a further two films from one of the UK`s most acclaimed documentary filmmakers. All White in Barking: Isaacs' compassionate and illuminating documentary probes the attitudes of Barking's white residents toward their new immigrant neighbours, characterized by unexamined (and often comic) prejudices about their dress, religious beliefs, and strange cooking smells. Men of the City: In his latest film, Marc Isaacs chronicles the fate of several Londoners from various social classes during the current economic crisis: a rich trader whose family have left him, a spiritually oriented street-sweeper seeking peace in his soul and a Bangladeshi immigrant whose greatest wish is to find a different job, while an apparently well-balanced, cigar-loving insurance agent desperately longs to escape his daily grind. DVD Release Date: October 25th, 2010

Hush - Young couple Zakes and Beth (rising UK talent William Ash of Doctor Who and Christine Bottomley of Torchwood and Hope Springs) are fighting constantly while they travel down the desolate M1 highway. After they spot or think they spot an hysterical woman chained in the back of a truck that almost runs them over, Zakes calls the cops and considers his work done. Beth wants to track the truck down and is so angry when Zakes refuses that she storms off at the next pit stop. When Beth doesn't return, Zakes realizes she too has been captured and plunges into a terrifying high-speed cat and mouse game on the highway. Can Zakes cut off the ruthless trucker or will the mysterious maniac manage to deliver his human cargo to its final, terrifying destination? Take one part Steven Spielberg's classic road rage movie Duel, one part of 80s cult favorite The Hitcher, throw in a sparring couple and you've got the wildly clever Hush, a British thriller that marks the ascendance of writer-director Mark Tonderai. DVD Release Date: October 26th, 2010

Wild Grass - At first glance, Wild Grass may appear frivolous compared to 1959's Hiroshima mon amour or landmark documentary, Night and Fog, but Resnais has displayed great variety of storytelling throughout his expansive career and proven over and over again that not all of his films need be as experimental or as serious as Last Year at Marienbad. (Have you watched his fun period musical Not on the Lips?) Based on Christian Gailly's novel, The Incident, from a faithful screenplay by Laurent Herbiet and Alex Reval, Wild Grass treats its fascinating, complex, adult characters with warmth, respect and also intelligence. Still, there's no denying the great humor throughout the film. DVD Release Date: October 26th, 2010

Back to the Future BD - From the Academy Award®-winning filmmakers Steven Spielberg and Robert Zemeckis comes Back to the Future, the original, groundbreaking adventure that sparked one of the most successful trilogies in Hollywood history. When teenager Marty McFly (Michael J. Fox) is blasted to 1955 in the DeLorean time machine created by the eccentric Doc Brown (Christopher Lloyd), he finds himself mixed up in a time-shattering chain reaction that could vaporize his future—and leave him trapped in the past. Powered by innovative special effects, unforgettable songs and non-stop action, Back to the Future is an unrivaled adventure that stands the test of time. Blu-ray Release date: October 26th, 2010

Siege of the Dead - Michael (Michael Fuith) hitches a ride to Berlin to try to win back his girlfriend Gabi under the pretense of returning his keys to her apartment. Instead of Gabi, he finds a plumber and his apprentice Harper (Theo Trebs) in the apartment. Said plumber suddenly goes nuts and tries to attack Michael and Harper. They manage to get him out into the hallway (where Michael drops his phone) and barricade themselves inside. The two men see further attacks happening in the building's courtyard by white-eyed people foaming at the mouth who have suddenly developed a taste for human flesh. They learn from television that a sudden epidemic has spread rapidly across Germany. DVD Release Date: October 25th, 2010

Violence - How would World War II veterans adjust to life on the postwar home front? Hollywood looked at various aspects of that question in major films like The Best Years of Our Lives, Pride of the Marines and Till the End of Time. And it would look at it through the prism of B-movies like Violence, a trim, noir-edged thriller wrapped around a then-topical story of a racketeering organization that recruits angry war veterans into its violent agenda. Jack Bernhard of the previous year’s applauded film noir Decoy directs. And future megahit TV producer Sheldon Leonard brings his snarling, tough-guy demeanor to the role of the racket’s chief muscle. When he says “We got ways of makin’ people talk,” it’s best you should listen. DVD Release Date: September 21st, 2010

A Lady Without a Passport - When a Cuban man is killed on a New York street, the investigation leads to Havana and the man running an alien smuggling ring known as Palinov (George Macready). Pete Karczag (John Hodiak) is the immigration detective assigned to the case in Havana. To infiltrate the ring, he poses as a Hungarian refugee desperate to gain passage to America. While negotiating his trip he meets and falls for beautiful Marianne Lorress (Hedy Lamarr), who is also hoping to make the illegal journey. It’s a Latin dance with frequent lead changes as Palinov and Pete struggle for the upper hand and the attentions of Marianne. As tautly directed by noir specialist Joseph H. Lewis (My Name Is Julia Ross, Gun Crazy), the winner of this high-stakes game is unknown until the climactic finale on a fog-shrouded dock. DVD Release Date: August 17th, 2010

Stranger on the Third Floor - With Stranger On The Third Floor you can see the genre beginning to take shape. It tells a simple story of a reporter named Mike Ward (John McGuire) who stumbles upon a murder victim and identifies a nervous cabbie (played by Elisha Cook Jr) as the person he saw previously arguing with the dead man. On the strength of Mike’s testimony, the little cabbie is convicted. Mike, however, is plagued with doubt. Did he just send an innocent man to the electric chair? These doubts increase after the trial when he runs into a creepy psycho played by Peter Lorre. Is Lorre the murderer? Things take a turn for the worse when it starts to look like Lorre might have just committed another murder, a murder which will point, ironically enough, back to Mike. DVD Release Date: September 21st, 2010

The Chaser - "The Chaser" overturns genre conventions like tables in a saloon brawl — for one, the killer's nabbed in the first half of the film and, unprompted, quickly confesses. Most of the suspense comes from whether or not the astronomically incompetent police force will be able to come up with evidence to actually arrest him — since he was brought in without a warrant, they have to prove he did the things he claims within 12 hours, or he walks. "The Chaser"'s condemnation of the police makes 2005's "Memories of Murder" look marshmallow soft — its cops are lazy, careless, quick-tempered, deaf to what they don't want to hear, more concerned with image than with results and therefore always in search of a way to shift blame. DVD Release Date: October 26th, 2010

Summer and Smoke - Based on a play by Tennessee Williams (expanded from his one-act piece Eccentricities of the Nightingale). From childhood, Alma (Geraldine Page) has loved John Buchanan (Laurence Harvey). Repressed by the pressure of a minister father and a mother who has never recovered for a nervous breakdown, she keeps these feelings bottled up. Her life becomes unbearable when John returns from medical school and takes up with the sultry Rosa (Rita Moreno), the daughter of the casino owner who is as open and willing, as Alma is shy and repressed. Geraldine Page delivers a smoldering, stellar performance... DVD Release Date: September 28th, 2010

Legend of the Black Scorpion BD - Such opulence demands a worthy story, and writers Qiu Gangjian and Sheng Heyu opt to transplant Hamlet to a particularly turbulent period of Chinese history. Although the basics remain the same - Emperor Li (You Ge) has seized his brother's throne and married his queen, Crown Prince Wu Luan (Daniel Wu) tries to expose his uncle's evil by gauging his reaction to a play that recreates the murder, Li sends Wu Luan into an exile from which he is not to return, and then final, bloody resolution at a banquet - several intriguing changes have been made. Gone are the ghost of the prince's father, his faithful friend Horatio, and the less faithful Rosencrantz and Guildenstern. Where Queen Gertrude was a vaguely complicit figure in Shakespeare's plan, Zhang Ziyi's Empress Wan is at the center of everything, and having her be the prince's young stepmother makes for a big change in the relationship. Blu-ray Release Date: October 26th, 2010

Apocalypse Now BD - Apocalypse Now is one of the great films. Photography, score, acting and direction are without flaw. Coppola never scaled such heights subsequently. It seems the sheer effort to produce such a work extinguished much of his creative spark. Stravinsky frightened himself with the awesome force of his Sacre Du Printemps, and changed directions after, never to match this achievement; Richard Strauss fled into Neo-romanticism after writing the disturbing Elektra and Salome, unable to equal their innovation and power. But these seminal works (Le Sacre, Salome, Elektra, Apocalypse Now) remain as peaks of Art. Like the great classics of literature, each viewing of this film reveals deeper levels of meaning. It's stupid to even apply an arbitrary rating to this work. Blu-ray Release Date: October 18th, 2010

A Clockwork Orange BD - Everything about A Clockwork Orange from the casting to the near-future set designs suggest that Stanley Kubrick was at the height of his creative power during this time. If, in fact, you are aware of the initial reaction to the film, Kubrick's mastery of his craft may have been too effective. He wound up voluntarily withdrawing the film from circulation in the UK in 1974 after the movie was blamed on a copycat murder and he and his wife received death threats. It was not re-released in England until after his death in 2000. Blu-ray Release Date: October 23rd, 2007

Dawn of the Dead (Arrow - 2010) - The living dead were born October 2, 1968, in Pittsburgh, when a group of commercial directors decided to make a horror film, which in turns should become amongst the best and most influential horror films ever: “Night of the Living Dead”. But due to creative differences, John Russo and George Romero broke up. They decided that Russo kept the rights to “living dead” and that Romero would henceforth use “dead”. After the break, Romero went on to make two quiet brilliant horror films, “The Crazies” (1973) and “Martin” (1978), before returning to zombie territory. Both films were poorly distributed and failed at the box office. Frustrated and longing for a success, he began preparing “Dawn of the Dead”, with the intention, to create a sequel, that would outdo the original in every way possible. DVD Release Date: September 20th, 2010

Everyone Else - A young couple's relationship is pushed to the brink while vacationing in the Mediterranean in this smart, sexy drama from acclaimed new filmmaker Maren Ade. A Critic's Pick in The New York Times which noted "the film's uninflected realism and unforced beauty alone make it worthy of exploring and revisiting. DVD Release Date: October 26th, 2010

Agatha Christie: Murder on the Orient Express BD - Traveling from Istanbul to London on the Orient Express, Poirot (David Suchet) must solve the murder of a ruthless businessman. His little grey cells are tested to the limit when the train is trapped by a blizzard in the Serbian mountains. This luscious new adaptation of Dame Christie’s novel was seen on Masterpiece Mystery! in 2010. With Hugh Bonneville, Eileen Atkins, and Barbara Hershey. Includes David Suchet on the Orient Express bonus feature. Blu-ray Release date: October 26th, 2010

Kisses - After a violent altercation with his father, Dylan runs away from home and Kylie decides to run away with him. Together they make their way to the magical night time lights of inner city Dublin, to search for Dylan's brother, and in the hope of finding, through him, the possibility of a new life. Lance Daly's vision of Dublin, as seen through the innocent eyes of our protagonists, is a kaleidoscope of magic, wonder and mystery. But as the night wears on, and Dublin takes on a darker character, the two kids have to rely on the kindness of strangers, the advice of Bob Dylan and their trust in each other to survive the night." DVD Release Date: October 26th, 2010
 

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