DVDBeaver Newsletter - November 24th, 2006
Päivää! - A decent week with 13 new reviews - 2 comparisons, 2 Criterions, some vintage TV, a multi-film boxset, cinema by Rohmer, Sturges, Kiarostami, Olmi etc..
OUR CURRENT 'A" STORES (more to come)
BEST OF WORLD CINEMA' on UK DVD
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(on NTSC DVD)
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- Best of the Best!
SEE OUR ESSENTIAL FILM-NOIR STORE! - 20 new listings added!
CONTEST OVER:
DVDBeaver in conjunction with Zeitgeist Film have raffled off three (3) DVDs of Marc Rothemund's intense cinematic soul search Sophie Scholl (REVIEWED HERE by Yunda Eddie Feng).THE WINNERS ARE:
a2pcinema
alligatorwings
snoogans44
Congrats - you have been contacted via private email as well.
NEW ARTICLE - for those getting a foothold into the Avant-garde, look no further than Daryl Chin's new article - At Home and Abroad: Some Views from the Avant-Garde on DVD.
Easiest way to catch up is simply read the new Newsletter Archive HERE.
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LATEST Additions to the Release Calendar (PRE-ORDER!):
Viva Pedro: The Almodovar Collection (Matador, Law of Desire, Woman on the Verge of a Nervous Breakdown, All About My Mother, Bad Education, Live Flesh, The Flower of My Secret and Talk to Her) Sony Pictures
Douglas Sirk Collection (All That Heaven Allows, Imitation Of Life, Magnificent Obsession, Written On The Wind, All I Desire, Has Anybody Seen My Gal, All That Heaven Allows and The Tarnished Angels) - R2 UK Universal
The Last Days of Disco (Whit Stillman, 1998) R2 DE - Warner Home Video
Eros (Antonioni, Soderbergh, Wong 2004) R2 UK - Artificial Eye
Brooklyn Lobster (Kevin Jordan, 2005) Hart Sharp Video
The Architect (Matt Tauber, 2006) Magnolia
Glamour Girls (Love Me Tonight / The Blue Angel / Pandora and the Flying Dutchman / The Good Fairy / Lured) - Kino Video
Blood & Sand (Rouben Mamoulian, 1941) - 20th Century Fox
The Clock (Vincente Minnelli, 1945) Warner Home Video
Miracle in the Rain (Rudolph Maté, 1956) Warner Home Video
A Summer Place (Delmer Daves, 1959) Warner Home Video
The Loneliness of the Long Distance Runner (Tony Richardson, 1962) Warner Home Video
Performance (Donald Cammell, 1970) Warner Home Video
Caprice (Frank Tashlin, 1967) 20th Century Fox
Little Murders (Alan Arkin , 1971) 20th Century Fox
Road Show (Hal Roach , 1941) Alpha Video
Atomic Age Classics 5: C Is for Communist - Alpha Video
RECOMMEND: This may not be the week to go by my eclectic taste - I LOVE Perry Mason - Season 1 Vol. 2 - some of my favorite TV ever. And while I'm at it I intend to tuck into Star Trek - The Animated Series to boot. Aside from those eccentricities - Preston Sturges - The Filmmaker Collection is a must own - whether you get the NTSC or the PAL editions. I was actually surprised by my own positive reaction to Quay Brothers - The Short Films 1979-2003 - certainly not for all, but you might enjoy it as an obtuse diversion as I did. I haven't seen Tickets, but after Per-Olaf's review I intend to pick it up.
New Reviews:
Little Fish
- “Little Fish” is a at time painful story,
played beyond perfection by Blanchett and
Weaving, and beautifully shot. It may not be a
masterpiece, but it is worth every second.
DVD Release Date: October 23rd, 2006
Swept Away - “Swept Away” is unpleasant,
mean-spirited and simplistic. No wonder Guy
Ritchie couldn’t wait to remake it.
A Tale of Springtime - In acclaimed director
Eric Rohmer's first of the "Tales of the Four
Seasons" series: 1992's "Tale of Springtime",
four characters intertwine in real-life cadence.
We are introduced to them, garner their likes,
dislikes, demeanours... and then they interact.
It's that simple... and that wonderful. Typical
Rohmer.
Preston Sturges - The Filmmaker Collection -
Universal's Boxset is as lean and competent as
you might have anticipated - we get 7 films
(over 7 single-layered DVDs) progressively
transferred for region 1 in the NTSC standard.
The Great McGinty (1940), Christmas in July
(1940), The Lady Eve (1941), Sullivan's Travels
(1941), The Palm Beach Story (1942), The Great
Moment (1944) and Hail the Conquering Hero
(1944).
DVD Release Date: November 21st, 2006
Edward R. Murrow - The Best of Person to Person
- In one memorable scene from “Good Night and
Good Luck” (2005), Edward R. Murrow (David
Strathairn) interviews Liberace. The flamboyant
pianist tells Murrow that he’s just looking for
a good woman to marry, prompting the newsman to
raise a skeptical eyebrow as he tries to
maintain his composure. Whether Murrow’s
doubletake really occurred is a question left
open to history, but the Liberace interview was
a real one, one of many from Murrow’s
long-running series “Person to Person”
(1953-1959).
DVD Release Date: November 7th, 2006
Symbio-psycho-taxi-plasm Two Takes - In his
one-of-a-kind fiction/documentary hybrid Symbiopsychotaxiplasm Take One, director William
Greaves presides over a beleaguered film crew in
New York's Central Park, leaving them to try to
figure out what kind of movie they're making. A
couple enacts a break-up scenario over and over,
a documentary crew films a crew filming the
crew, locals wander casually into the frame: the
project defies easy description. Yet this wildly
innovative sixties counterculture landmark
remains one of the most tightly focused and
insightful movies ever made about making movies.
DVD Release Date: December 5th, 2006
Quay Brothers - The Short Films 1979-2003 - The BFI has collaborated with the inimitable Quay
Brothers to release a truly comprehensive
compilation of their short films on DVD; a world
first. The Quays were extensively involved with
the preparation of the DVD, personally
supervising the transfers, recording
commentaries on selected titles, and
contributing an exclusive 20-minute illustrated
video interview.
DVD Release Date: November 20th, 2006
Tickets -
The making of ‘Tickets’ started with a
conversation between director Abbas Kiarostami
and producers Carlo Cresto-Dina and Babak Karimi.
Kiarostami suggested the idea of a trilogy of
feature-length documentaries to be directed by
three different directors. When asked to name
the directors he would have liked to have on
board, he immediately mentioned Ermanno Olmi and
Ken Loach. A fax was sent to the two masters,
who both immediately replied with an almost
identical phone call: 'I am in! The three of us
can make tremendous work together'.
Star Trek - The Animated Series - I was
surprised by the high quality of The Animated
Series. The writing is superb, with intelligent
plots and snappy dialogue. The acting is as
forceful and witty as when the actors appeared
in the flesh. Perhaps due to the compressed time
frame (thirty minutes versus sixty minutes for
the live-action TOS), I felt that a higher
percentage of TAS episodes were tense,
thrilling, and exciting than the percentage of
TOS adventures.
DVD Release Date: November 21st, 2006
Changing Times - Depardieu is super, as usual.
He really doesn’t get enough credit as an actor
(has everyone forgotten his brilliant
performance in Maurice Pialat’s “Loulou”?), at
least not in America where he has become the
default butt of Francophobic jokes. La Deneuve
is still La Deneuve. “Changing Times” isn’t a
masterpiece, or even one of Téchiné’s major
works, but it’s still of interest. Don’t be
fooled by the silly tag line on the DVD cover
(“Can your first love also be your last?) –
there’s a lot more than meets the eye here.
DVD Release Date: October 3rd, 2006
Death in the Bunker: The
True Story of Hitler's Downfall -
Koch Vision has released several WW2 archival
documentaries in the past few months: Embedded’
45: The Shooting War in Germany (also directed
by Michael Kloft), They Filmed the War in Color:
France is Free, and They Filmed the War in
Color: The Pacific War. Of the four, “Death in
the Bunker” is the least compelling, because it
relies on so many talking heads, and covers
ground more familiar to most viewers. But just
for the sheer sake of actually documenting the
events and preserving them for a general
audience, the program and the DVD is worthwhile.
Grey Gardens
- The Maysles brothers pay visits to Edith
Bouvier Beale, nearing 80, and her daughter
Edie. Reclusive, the pair live with cats and
raccoons in Grey Gardens, a crumbling mansion in
East Hampton. Edith is dry and quick-witted - a
singer, married but later separated, a member of
high society. Edie is voluble, dresses - as she
puts it - for combat in tight ensembles that
include scarves wrapped around her head. There
are hints that Edie came home 24 years before to
be cared for rather than to care for her mother.
DVD Release Date: December 5th, 2006
Perry Mason - Season 1
Vol. 2 - Perry Mason is an
attorney who specializes in defending seemingly
indefensible cases. With the aid of his
secretary Della Street and investigator Paul
Drake, he often finds that by digging deep,
startling facts can be revealed. Often relying
on his outstanding courtroom skills, he often
tricks or traps people into unwittingly
admitting their guilt. DVD Release Date:
November 21st, 2006
Next 2 weeks on the Calendar:
Week of November 27th, 2006
12:01 (Jack Sholder, 1993) Image Entertainment
L'Armee des Ombres (Jean-Pierre Melville, 1969) - R2 UK BFI
Edi (Piotr Trzaskalski , 2002) Facets
George Reeves Double Feature (Thunder in the Pines & Jungle Goddess) VCI
Hammer Film Noir - Vol. 4 (Terror
Street, Wings of Danger) VCI
Hammer Film Noir - Vol. 5 (The Glass
Tomb, Paid to Kill) VCI
The Innocents (Jack Clayton, 1961) - R2 UK BFI
Marlene Dietrich: Movie Collection - 18-disc - (Angel, Blonde Venus, Desire, Destry Rides Again, The Devil Is A Woman, Dishonored, The Flames Of New Orleans, Follow The Boys, A Foreign Affair, Golden Earrings, Morocco, Pittsburgh, The Scarlet Empress, Seven Sinners, Shanghai Express, The Song Of Songs, The Spoilers, Touch Of Evil) - R2 UK Universal Pictures Video
Otomo (Frieder Schlaich, 1999) Facets
Presagio (Luis Alcoriza , 1975) Facets
Sara (Maciej Slesicki, 1997) Facets
School of Senses (András Sólyom, 1996) Bunyik Entertainment
Superman - The 1948 & 1950 Theatrical Serials Collection - Warner Home Video
Things to Come (Special Edition) (William Cameron Menzies, 1936) Liberation Ent
Time to Leave (Francois Ozon, 2005) Strand Releasing
Week of December 4th, 2006
20 centímetros (Ramón Salazar, 2005) Tla Releasing
1900 - Special Collector's Edition ( Bernardo Bertolucci, 1977) Paramount Home Video
The Architect (Matt Tauber, 2006) Magnolia
The Beales of Grey Gardens (Albert + David Maysles,2006) Criterion Collection
The Conformist: Extended Edition (Bernardo Bertolucci, 1970) Paramount Home Video
Forbidden Hollywood Collection 1 - Baby Face, Red Headed Woman, Waterloo Bridge (1931) - Warner Home Video
Holiday (George Cukor , 1938) Sony Pictures
The Last Days of Disco (Whit Stillman, 1998) R2 DE - Warner Home Video
Lubitsch in Berlin: Anna Boleyn (Ernst Lubitsch, 1920) - Kino Video
Lubitsch in Berlin: Oyster Princess & I Don't Want (Ernst Lubitsch, 1919) - Kino Video
Lubitsch in Berlin: Sumurun (Ernst Lubitsch, 1920) - Kino Video
Lubitsch in Berlin: The Wildcat (Ernst Lubitsch, 1921) - Kino Video
The Michael Haneke Trilogy: The Seventh Continent/Benny's Video/71 Fragments of a Chronology of Chance - R2 UK - Tartan
Mikio Naruse - Three Films - Repast (1951) Sound Of The Mountain (1954) Flowing (1956) - R2 UK Eureka, MoC
The Premiere Frank Capra Collection - 6 disc - (Mr. Smith Goes to Washington, It Happened One Night, You Can't Take It with You, Mr. Deeds Goes to Town, American Madness and Frank Capra's American Dream) Sony Picture
Elizabeth Taylor & Richard Burton Film Collection - Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf? - 2 disc, The Sandpiper, The V.I.P.s , The Comedians - Warner
Mission Impossible - The Complete First Season (1966) - Paramount Home Video
Symbiopsychotaxiplasm: Take One (William Greaves, 1968) Criterion Collection
The Wim Wenders Collection, Vol. 2 - Room 666 (1984), The Scarlet Letter (1972), Tokyo-ga (1985), A Trick of the Light (1996), The Wrong Movement (1974) - Anchor Bay
Criterion-ville:
Border Radio (Allison Anders, Dean Lent, Kurt Voss 1987) - Criterion Collection
The Double Life of Veronique 2-disc (Krzysztof Kieslowski,1991) Criterion Collection
Monsters And Madmen (4 DVD Box Set) - (The Haunted Strangler, Corridors of Blood, The Atomic Submarine and First Man into Space) - Criterion Collection
Mouchette (Robert Bresson, 1970) - Criterion Collection
Sanjuro (Akira Kurosawa , 1963) - - Criterion Collection
Yojimbo & Sanjuro: Two Films By Akira Kurosawa - Criterion Collection
Yojimbo (REISSUE) (Akira Kurosawa , 1961) - Criterion Collection
FASTER? - No patience for the Beaver homepage? - try the streamlined http://www.dvdbeaver-lite.com/ (a text version with all the same intrepid info!)
DON'T FORGET: Craving the stuff you can't seem to get anywhere else? Beavers TOP YesAsia picks are listed HERE
Enjoy!,
Gary
P.S. SOME DEALS FROM UK:
Marlene Dietrich (6-disc - Screen Goddess Collection)
- The Lady Is Willing (Dir. Mitchell Leisen, 1942), Shanghai Express (Dir. Josef von Sternberg, 1932), Foreign Affair (Dir. Billy Wilder, 1948), Destry Rides Again (Dir. George Marshall, 1939), Blonde Venus (Dir. Josef von Sternberg), Devil Is A Woman (Dir. Josef von Sternberg, 1935) - R2 UK Universal is 60% OFF HERE ! - 58% off!The Cook Thief, His Wife And Her Lover (1989)
- 69% off!The Almodovar Collection (Vol.1)
- 38% off! - 65% off! 60% off! - 55% off! - 28% off!The Almodovar Collection (Vol.2)
- 38% off! - 60% off! 60% off! 60% off!Last Year At Marienbad (1961) -
55% off! - 69% off!Sherlock Holmes - The Definitive Collection
- 54% offSherlock Holmes - The Complete Collection
(Jeremy Brett) - 60% off!