Newsletter - FOR THE WEEK

OF November 14th, 2016

Lachi tiri divés! A limited but impressive week with Blu-ray reviews/comparisons via Criterion, Arrow, BFI, Eureka... of films by Abel Gance, Federico Fellini, Luis Buñuel, John Huston, William Friedkin, Laurie Anderson etc.. Our Calendar has the previous weeks listings including films by John Ford, Kent Jones, Takashi Miike, Shirley Clarke, Buster Keaton, Martin Scorsese and more. Feature Blu-ray and DVD is posted for NOVEMBER. We have a CONTEST posted with another BRAND NEW Indicator (UK) - Region FREE Blu-ray prize. Have fun!

BARNES & NOBLE 50% OFF Criterion sale HERE

DVDBeaver has their own store at Movie Zyng - check it out! Many have $1 shipping - even overseas!

Feature Blu-ray and DVD chosen for the Month of NOVEMBER!

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(Week of) November 14th CONTEST  identify the still HERE to win a Brand New Blu-ray prize of CineliciousPics of Private Property Best of luck!

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

Gary at 2ze dot com

To Live and Die in L.A. BD - Spectacularly photographed by Robby Muller and atmospherically scored by the duo Wang Chung, ''To Live and Die in L.A.'' is resolutely modern. It is most involving when Mr. Friedkin keeps it mindlessly kinetic, least so when it even begins to consider the moral implications of its characters' behavior. The occasional flashes of feeling here - for instance, the surprising tenderness Eric Masters shows for the beautiful dancer (Miss Feuer) who is his accomplice and lover - are as enjoyably gratuitous as a car chase or shootout might be in another sort of movie. Today, in the dazzling, superficial style that Mr. Friedkin has so thoroughly mastered, it's the car chases and shootouts and eye-catching settings that are truly the heart of the matter. Arrow Blu-ray Release Date: November 21st, 2016

Roxanne BD - Steve Martin delivers a magnificent performance as an engaging small town fire chief who has only one tiny flaw - his astonishingly long nose. Although he considers it no laughing matter, the hilarity never stops as C.D. Bales (Martin) contends with his bumbling crew of firemen, and his secret love for gorgeous astronomy student Roxanne (Daryl Hannah.) Unfortunately, she is attracted to fireman Chris (Rick Rossovich), who's tall on looks and short on conversation. And when C.D. agrees to coach the dumbstruck Chris in his pursuit of the fair maiden, this ticklish triangle dissolves into a hilarious series of rib-tickling romantic misadventures. Written by Martin as an update to Cyrano de Bergerac, and directed by Fred Schepisi, this remains an enchanting classic. Blu-ray Release date: November 21st, 2016

Heart of a Dog BD - Heart of a Dog marks the first feature film in thirty years by multimedia artist Laurie Anderson. A cinematic tone poem that flows from a sustained meditation on death and other forms of absence, the film seamlessly weaves together thoughts on Tibetan Buddhism, reincarnation, the modern surveillance state, and the artistic lives of dogs, with an elegy for the filmmaker’s beloved rat terrier, Lolabelle, at its heart. Narrated by Anderson with her characteristic wry wit, and featuring a plaintive, free-form score by the filmmaker, the tender and provocative Heart of a Dog continues Anderson’s four-and-a-half-decade career of imbuing the everyday with a sense of dreamlike wonder. Blu-ray Release date: December 6th, 2016

The Exterminating Angel BD - A group of high-society friends are invited to a mansion for dinner and find themselves inexplicably unable to leave, in Luis Buñuel’s daring masterpiece The Exterminating Angel (El ángel exterminador). Made just one year after the director’s inter­na­tional sensation Viridiana, this film, full of eerie comic absurdity, continues Buñuel’s wicked takedown of the rituals and dependencies of the frivolous upper classes. Blu-ray Release Date: December 6th, 2016

Roma BD - Travelogue, memoir, and outrageous cinematic spectacle converge in this kaleidoscopic valentine to the Eternal City, composed by one of its most iconic inhabitants. Leisurely one moment and breathless the next, this urban fantasia by Federico Fellini interweaves recollections of the director’s young adulthood in the era of Mussolini with an impressionistic portrait of contemporary Rome, where he and his film crew are shooting footage of the bustling cityscape. The material delights of sex, food, nightlife, and one hallucinatory ecclesiastical fashion show are shot through with glimmers of a monumental past: the Colosseum encircled by traffic, ancient frescoes unearthed in a subway tunnel, a pigeon-befouled statue of Caesar. With a head-spinning mix of documentary immediacy and extravagant artifice, Roma penetrates the myth and mystique of Italy’s storied capital, a city Fellini called “the most wonderful movie set in the world.” Criterion Blu-ray Release Date: December 13th, 2016

The Asphalt Jungle BD - In a smog-choked city somewhere in the American Midwest, an aging criminal mastermind, newly released from prison, hatches a plan for a million-dollar jewel heist and draws a wealthy lawyer and a cherry-picked trio of outlaws into his carefully devised but inevitably doomed scheme. Anchored by an abundance of nuanced performances from a gifted ensemble—including a tight-jawed Sterling Hayden and a sultry Marilyn Monroe in her breakout role—this gritty crime classic by John Huston climaxes in a meticulously detailed anatomy of a robbery that has reverberated through the genre ever since. An uncommonly naturalistic view of a seamy underworld, The Asphalt Jungle painstakingly depicts the calm professionalism and toughness of its gangster heroes while evincing a remarkable depth of compassion for their all-too-human fragility, and it showcases a master filmmaker at the height of his powers. Blu-ray Release Date: December 13th, 2016

Pioneers of African-American Cinema BD - Among the most fascinating chapters in film history is that of the so-called race films which flourished between the 1920s and 1940s. Unlike the black cast films produced within Hollywood studio system, these films not only starred African Americans but were also funded, written, produced, edited, distributed, and often exhibited by people of colour. Entrepreneurial filmmakers built an industry apart from the Hollywood establishment, cultivating visual and narrative styles that were uniquely their own. Previously circulated in poor-quality 16mm print, these digitally restored presentations allow modern audiences to witness the legacies of Oscar Micheaux, Spencer Williams, Zora Neale Hurston and James and Eloyce Gist with fresh eyes. These pioneers of African-American cinema were truly innovative. BFI Blu-ray Release Date: November 21st, 2016

Napoleon (1927) BD - Marking a new chapter in the history of one of the world's greatest films, the release of Abel Gance's Napoleon is the culmination of a project spanning 50 years. Digitally restored by the BFI National Archive and Academy Award-winning film historian Kevin Brownlow, this cinematic triumph is available to experience on Blu-ray for the very first time. Originally conceived by Gance as the first of six films about Napoleon, this five-and-a-half-hour epic features full-scale historical creations of episodes from his personal and political life, that see Bonaparte overcome fierce rivals and political machinations to seal his imperial destiny. Blu-ray Release date: November 21st, 2016

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