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Angels & Demons
BR - Langdon uses his
knowledge of Illuminati symbols to follow the trail though four
Rome churches. He has uncanny luck. He spots and correctly
identifies every clue, even though they're very well-hidden.
Just as well, because one dungeon overlooked or one statue
pointing the wrong way, and he loses. For his companion, Langdon
has the beautiful and brilliant Vittoria Vetra (Ayelet Zurer)
from CERN. Her father was murdered in the anti-matter theft. Her
purpose is (a) to explain that the battery will indeed run down,
(b) request her father's secret journals from Geneva, although
they are never read, and (c) run along everywhere with Tom
Hanks, to provide him with urgent conversation.
Blu-ray Release date: November
24th, 2009
Soul Power
BR - Soul Power is a
vérité documentary – compiled entirely from footage shot in 1974
– of the astonishing back-to-Africa 3-day music festival “Zaire
‘74”. It was held in Kinshasa ahead of the biggest boxing event
of all time: the Muhammad Ali–George Foreman “Rumble in the
Jungle”. Directed by Jeffrey Levy-Hinte, editor of Leon Gast’s
Oscar-winning (Best Documentary) When We Were Kings, and
sourced from the same archival pool, Soul Power features a
legendary line-up of African and African-diaspora musicians –
all of whom are at the very peak of their creative powers.
Alongside Ali’s wit and wisdom – profoundly lyrical in its own
right – vibrant street scenes of downtown Kinshasa, and
“fly-on-the-wall” footage of the festival’s staging, rehearsals,
and jams, the three nights of concerts (lensed by Albert Maysles
and a host of other legendary cameramen) offer electrifying
performances by James Brown, B.B. King, Bill Withers, Sister
Sledge, Miriam Makeba, The Spinners, Big Black, The Crusaders,
Celia Cruz, and many more. Blu-ray
and DVD Release Date: November 20th, 2009
The Dam Busters
BR - At one time seemingly
up as a candidate for culting by those who found the surrounding
footage of Pink Floyd: The Wall to taste (this was the movie
playing incessantly on Pink's TV). Anderson and RC Sherriff's
tribute to Barnes Wallis (inventor of World War II's bouncing
bomb) and Wingco Guy Gibson (who spearheaded their use in
destroying strategically-important Ruhr dams) slips some
thoughtful reservations and some gross sentimentality into its
bouncing bombast. With its final cost-counting, it contorts the
stiff upper lip into something like a deathly grimace.
Blu-ray Release Date: September
21st, 2009
A Walk in the Sun
- One of the best movies to have come out of World War II
literately scripted by Robert Rossen from Harry Brown's fine
novel, and making marvelous use of the repetitive rhythms of GI
banter (with the cheery Conte's Nobody dies!, for instance,
gradually assuming the quality of an ironic incantation).
Discreet, dispassionate, and subtly poetic, it traces the
experiences, through one brief action, of an infantry platoon
which 'came across the sea to sunny Italy and took a little walk
in the sun'. Characterization is sharp and simple, the focus
kept strictly to the immediate realities of fear and boredom, so
that there is none of the special pleading of Milestone's
earlier All Quiet on the Western Front. Here messages are
left to take care of themselves, although the introspective
Ireland's habit of composing letters to his sister in his head
is used more than once to subversive effect. 'We just blew a
bridge and took a farmhouse' he begins after the action in which
a lot of his platoon died, 'It was easy...so terribly easy': a
rare acknowledgement at that time of every soldier's innocently
selfish joy that he didn't die. DVD Release Date: November
24th, 2009
Gimme Shelter
BR - Called the greatest
rock film ever made, this landmark documentary follows the
Rolling Stones on their notorious 1969 U.S. tour. When three
hundred thousand members of the Love Generation collided with a
few dozen Hells Angels at San Francisco’s Altamont Speedway,
Direct Cinema pioneers David and Albert Maysles and Charlotte
Zwerin were there to immortalize on film the bloody slash that
transformed a decade’s dreams into disillusionment. Blu-ray
Release Date: December 1st, 2009
Leon - The Professional
BR - Besson seems fascinated
by the "Pygmalion" story, by the notion of a feral street person
who is transformed by education. He crosses that with what seems
to be an obsession with women who kill as a profession. These
are interesting themes, and if "The Professional" doesn't work
with anything like the power of "La Femme Nikita," it is because
his heroine is 12 years old, and we cannot persuade ourselves to
ignore that fact. It colors every scene, making some unlikely
and others troubling. Blu-ray
Release Date: November 17th, 2009
A Christmas Tale
BR - In Arnaud Desplechin’s
beguiling A Christmas Tale (Un conte de Noël),
Catherine Deneuve brings her legendary poise to the role of
Junon, matriarch of the troubled Vuillard family, who come
together at Christmas after she learns she needs a bone marrow
transplant from a blood relative. That simple family reunion
setup, however, can’t begin to describe the unpredictable,
emotionally volatile experience of this film, an inventive,
magical drama that’s equal parts merriment and melancholy.
Unrequited childhood loves and blinding grudges, brutal
outbursts and sudden slapstick, music, movies, and poetry, A
Christmas Tale ties it all together in a marvelously messy
package. Blu-ray Release date:
December 1st, 2009
The Golden Age of Television
- The hugely popular live American television plays of the 1950s
have become the stuff of legend. Combining elements of theater,
radio, and filmmaking, they were produced at a moment when TV
technology was growing more mobile and art was being made
accessible to a newly suburban postwar demographic. These
astonishingly choreographed, brilliantly acted, and socially
progressive “teleplays” constituted an artistic high for the
medium, bringing Broadway-quality drama to all of America. The
award-winning programs included in this box set—originally
curated for PBS in the early 1980s as the series The Golden
Age of Television, featuring recollections from key cast and
crew members—were conceived by such up-and-comers as Rod Serling
and John Frankenheimer and star the likes of Paul Newman, Mickey
Rooney, Rod Steiger, Julie Harris, and Piper Laurie. DVD
Release Date: November 24th, 2009
The Curse of the Crying Woman
- Recently married Amelia (Rosa Arenas) travels with her new
husband Jaime (producer Abel Salazar, THE BRAINIAC) to the
remote mansion of her Aunt Selma (Rita Macedo) after several
years without seeing her. Unbeknownst to the newlweds, Aunt
Selma moonlights as an eyeless specter who causes a series of
deaths in the area with the help of a knife-throwing maniac
(also her handyman) and her three mastiffs and that Amelia
figures into her plan to resurrect the corpse of The Crying
Woman (whose skeleton currently resides in the basement torture
chamber) at midnight. Adapted to film at least three times
prior, the legend of La Llorona tells of a woman who murdered
her own children to be with the man she loved only to
subsequently be rejected by him causing her ghost to wander in
search of her own children. That backstory has largely been
dispensed giving the woman little reason for wailing since she's
your standard witch (but negative-printed flashbacks used to
illustrate her hellish past utilize excerpts from THE BRAINIAC
and WORLD OF THE VAMPIRES). DVD Release Date: November 23,
2009
Ichi
- ICHI is a variation on the long-running ZATOICHI
blind swordsman series with a wandering blind female protagonist
Ichi (Haruka Ayase) in search of her teacher. After she
decimates three members of the notorious Banki gang, she is
joined by Toma (Takao Osawa), a reticent samurai who endeavored
to save her before she took matters in hand. Ichi and Toma
arrives in a small village living in fear of the Banki gang.
Disfigured rogue samurai Banki sends his men after the samurai
who killed three of his men. The men assume that Toma is the one
responsible since the village has hired him to defend them.
Banki's underestimation of Ichi enables her to help Toma and the
village take on Banki's gang but Banki suggests to Ichi that he
may know the man she is looking for and had also picked up
learned enough from the blind swordsman to be a formidable
rival.
The Terence Davies Collection
- British director and screenwriter Terence Davies is noted for
his highly personal and often autobiographical chronicles of
British working class and the struggles they face in the
post-WWII world. He first gained recognition for his TERENCE
DAVIES TRILOGY (1976-1983), which is comprised of three
black-and-white religious-themed short chronicles of daily life.
The TRILOGY is included in this collection, along with
Davies' later works DISTANT VOICES STILL LIVES (1988), THE
LONG DAY CLOSES (1992), and OF TIME AND CITY (2008).
DVD Release Date: Nov 16th, 2009
Frank Borzage Vol 1: Seventh Heaven +
Street Angel
- This is an exceptionally well-acted place of work and Janet
Gaynor's performance as Diane is true and natural throughout.
This young woman was discovered by Winfield R. Sheehan, general
production manager for the Fox Film Corporation. Never once does
she falter in her difficult task of reflecting the emotions of
the character she portrays. There is no effort to make her
unduly beautiful with a halo over her head. She is winsome from
the moment one beholds her countenance. She can cry and smile
simultaneously and she impresses one by her depiction of faith
when every day at 11 o'clock she "meets" her Chico, who is in
the trenches. DVD Release Date: October 26th, 2009
Frank Borzage Vol 2: Lucky Star + Liliom
- With a prizewinning new score from Stuart Hancock, Borzage's
long-lost wisp of a romance was made, like Blackmail, in both
sound and silent versions (a silent print was rediscovered in
the Netherlands Film Museum). It offers two fairytales for the
price of one: while Gaynor's poor overburdened farm girl is
given a Cinderella-like make-over by her seemingly platonic
admirer Farrell, he in turn is abjuring his feelings for her, as
the Beast did for Beauty, having come home a cripple from the
Great War. His ultimate transformation, if taken literally, is
hard to swallow these days; it's also far from clear what the
villain of the piece thinks he's up to. Still, Borzage's
romantic conception of love - as hard-won, shared innocence
buffeting the world's ignorance and exploitation - is assuredly
expressed, and the glancing realism of the war and family scenes
gives it a firm grounding. DVD Release Date: October 26th,
2009
Rocky - The Undisputed Collection
BR - Along with Star Wars
many would consider Sylvester Stallone's Rocky films to be one
of the screen's important iconic sagas. If popularity is a
useful measure, then these movies, good, bad and fair, certainly
qualify. It might be easy to forget just how much these films,
from start to finish, are tied up its star, Sylvester Stallone,
who had been knocking about Hollywood in small roles – take
another look at Woody Allen’s Bananas if you don’t know
about one of his earliest) until he landed a more significant
role in Lords of Flatbush and later in Death Race 2000.
But his screenplay for Rocky predated all this. Hardly a visible
or pedigreed member of the Hollywood establishment, it was some
while before Stallone could get the necessary backing. The next
thing he or anyone knew, Rocky was an overnight sensation.
Blu-ray Release date: November 3rd,
2009
M
(1951) - It only required one viewing to realize that the ’51 M
is a criminally undervalued film – for a variety of unfair
reasons – and one of the very best noirs from that year, if not
the best. Even if it was a turkey, it still would be essential
viewing for the performances of its exceptional cast, the
spectacularly shabby Los Angeles/Bunker Hill location settings
of the period and the mesmerizing cinematography of Ernest
Laszlo. It’s a near classic if not a full-fledged one, and one
that complements the original’s vision and power as opposed to
diminishing it, demonstrating pretty effectively that the social
conditions which produced such a film in early 1930s Germany
could be successfully transported to 1950s noir-era America.
Gradiva
- GRADIVA is - along with BLUE VILLA - probably
one of Robbe-Grillet's most accessible films due to its
relatively wordy and straightforward plotting (here, the
metafictional aspect of the memoirs seems more like a concession
to arthouse ambiguity as was the mirroring of legend, fiction,
and true crime in BLUE VILLA) and the familiarity of the
backstory (which recalls Jensen's novel just as much as Jensen's
novel recalls Theophile Gautier's ARRIA MARCELLA). DVD
Release Date: August 25, 2009
Born of Fire
- The film is stunningly photographed with beautiful Turkish
location photography (it may be one of the most beautiful
British horror films of the eighties) and effectively scored by
underrated genre Colin Towns (FULL CIRCLE) with
accompaniment by Kudsi Ergüner. The downside of the film is how
talky it is for a film just over eighty minutes. Each and every
strange hallucination or vision is then talked about and
sometimes explained; Arabic mythology is very interesting but do
we really need to know what a djinn is to make the appearances
of mysterious black clad woman any more effective? DVD
Release Date: October 27, 2009
I Love You Beth Cooper
BR - Denis (sic) Cooverman (Pauk
Rust) is about to give his big speech at his high school
reunion. Denis is his school’s valedictorian, and our stumbling,
nerdy, totally lacking in confidence antihero has decided to use
this opportunity to say what he’s been unable to say or act upon
in any way for years. We might think that to declare his love
for someone who may not even know he exists in such a public
forum would be a whole lot harder than to have said “hello” at
any other time in the past but, as Denis sees it, he doesn’t
want to go through the rest of his life regretting inaction.
It’s a noble sentiment – one that most of can appreciate, at any
age. Blu-ray Release date:
November 3rd, 2009
Angel Heart
BR - Mirroring the plot of
Orson Welles’ “Mr. Arkadin” - where Mr. Arkadin employs
Stratton to investigated his past, as Mr. Arkadin claims to be
suffering from amnesia, so does Cyphre employ Angel to
investigate Favourite’s past; and Angel is also suffering from
amnesia. And, as in “Mr. Arkadin”, those of importance along his
way are befallen by death. - “Angel Heart” is a strange blend of
pulp detective story, giallo and horror. One would not credit
Angel with neither intelligence nor detective skills, but he is
in fact quiet an observant detective - the sequence with the
ball-point pen reference still impresses me. It is also pretty
obvious for most viewers that Louis Cyphre is the Devil. But why
would the Devil ask someone to track a person down? The answer
to that question is what is beneath the surface of the story and
is what makes “Angel Heart” such a great film.
Blu-ray Release Date: November
24th, 2009
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