Newsletter - FOR THE WEEK

OF December 3rd, 2018

Gouden Dai!, This week we have Blu-ray reviews of British noirs, science-fiction, creature-features, a Robert Aldrich crime-drama, Laurel and Hardy's last film, a Karel Zeman fantasy, 80's teenage vigilante flic, an Arrow Region FREE Terry Gilliam time-travel thriller and a brilliantly curated package on early women filmmakers plus a international and TV series on DVD. Discs by Arrow, Kino, Second Run, BFI, Scorpion, Network, Code Red etc.. Our Calendar has previous updates of films-to-Blu-ray, including February plus UK Criterions of films by Abbas Kiarostami, Seijun Suzuki, Burnett Charles Burnett, Henri-Georges Clouzot, Luchino Visconti, Rainer Werner Fassbinder, Georges Méliès, Bob Fosse, Joseph H. Lewis, Desmond Davis, Tony Richardson, Julien Duvivier, Otto Preminger, Robert Aldrich, Jean Cocteau, Ingmar Bergman, Dennis Hopper, Francis Ford Coppola, Stanley Kramer, David Byrne and more. We have our Feature Blu-ray is posted for DECEMBER Enjoy!!

LAST DAY! 50% OFF Barnes and Noble Sales for all Criterion Blu-ray and DVDs HERE as well as all Arrow US titles HERE - treat yourself and save! Ingmar Bergman's Cinema (reviewed HERE) is still available at the 50% discounted price offered by Barnes + Noble HERE.

LISTING PAGES:

Ingmar Bergman's Cinema, HAGSPloitation, BLAXPloitation, OZPloitation, 'WOMEN IN PRISON' CINEMA, CREATURE-FEATURES (on Blu-ray!), PRE-CODE FILMs (on Blu-ray!), SILENT ERA FILMs (on Blu-ray!), HAMMER Studios (on Blu-ray!) The 100 BEST Neo-Noirs (on Blu-ray!), The GREATEST 100 Westerns (on Blu-ray!), Giallo on Blu-ray!, ESSENTIAL NOIR on Blu-ray!, Shopping Guide for Blu-rays at Amazon.FR (France), Shopping Guide for Blu-rays at Amazon.DE (Germany) and our LATEST ARTICLES: Movies From... the End of the World,  The Beauties of Star Trek (TOS)

Feature Blu-rays chosen for the Month of DECEMBER!

FOLLOW US on TWITTER! (where we post important reviews, contests - prizes, polls, calendar updates - plus much more...)

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

Gary at 2ze dot com

ONE VOICE (not Ellsworth Monkton Toohey): Lots to recommend this week. Arrow's Blu-ray of Terry Gilliam's Twelve Monkeys get the top nod this newsletter - in this you find noir, science-fiction, avant-garde, great characters and an often confusing subtext of animal rights and bourgeoisie agendas. Fascinating cinema. Karel Zeman's Invention for Destruction gets a 4K restoration on Blu-ray from Second Run. It's an influential and visually intriguing work. A strong encouragement to those, even remotely, keen is Kino's 6-Blu-ray disc package of Pioneers: First Women Filmmakers. This is nirvana for those ready to immerse themselves in a blossoming new expression started over 100 years ago. Although released on Blu-ray, by Network in the UK, is the 50's war-drama A Town Like Alice that is less than £4 (about $5 USD). Goodness, just get it. Fans of Brit-sci-fi should indulge in Quatermass (1979) with John Mills as the titular professor attempting to seek solutions to an apocalyptic future already underway. I can't get enough. I liked Mine Own Executioner - an excellent psychological British thriller starring Burgess Meredith - on competent UK Blu-ray. The Grissom Gang gets a substantial boost over the previous DVD thank to Kino Blu-ray transfer - an excellent crime-drama directed by Robert Aldrich. fans of the Grindhouse genre may find plenty to enjoy about the teenage-vengeance film with Linda Blair; Savage Streets - now on Blu-ray from Code Red. Atoll K is Laurel and Hardy's last film and is a fascinating mess. However, this BFI Blu-ray release is stacked to the brim with extras including commentary, video essay, shorts etc. and a wonderful booklet, plus there is value in seeing the, often awkward, film. Grizzly is a scholcky creature-feature from 1976 - but we can awlays find thing to like about the genre. Scorpion Releasing's new Blu-ray is radically different from the previous HD release. Take a peek. On DVD Eric reviewed 6 new international-flair titles; La Familia from Venezuela/Chile/Norway (?), The Poet and the Boy is out of South Korea, Three-Way Wedding from France, Egon Schiele: Death and the Maiden from Austria/Luxembourg, Gabriel and the Mountain from Portugal and Tom's Midnight Garden is a BBC 6 part adaptation.

"Good evening, ladies and gentleman. My name is Orson Welles. I am an actor. I am a writer. I am a producer. I am a director. I am a magician. I appear onstage and on the radio. Why are there so many of me and so few of you?." - Orson Welles

Buy a friend a coffee this month. Make DVDBeaver the friend, and do it monthly. Please?

Invention for Destruction BD - Wildly inventive, and breaking new ground in its combination of live action, animation and design, creating a 'steampunk' aesthetic decades ahead of its time. Zeman's film is both a heartfelt homage and love letter to Jules Verne's wonderful tales of science and adventure, and a valiant cry against man's predisposition to self-destruction. Blu-ray Release Date: November 19th, 2018

Atoll K BD - The feature film finale of cinema's most-beloved comedy duo, Atoll K marked Laurel and Hardy's long-delayed big-screen return. The two great clowns, lured back to the screen amidst the extensive stage tours of Europe that formed the poignant coda to their career, here embark upon a ramshackle sea voyage to save Stan's Pacific-island inheritance. This ambitious attempt to invest their time-honed slapstick with a satirical edge is a testament to the duo's indefatigable comic antics. Blu-ray Release Date: December 3rd, 2018

The Grissom Gang BD - Three punks steal a diamond necklace from young heiress Barbara Blandish (Kim Darby) but foolishly kidnap her after shooting her boyfriend dead. A band of rural bandits run by the tyrannical Gladys 'Ma' Grissom (Irene Dailey) kill the punks and ransom Barbara as their own prize. Slick hood Eddie Hagan (Tony Musante) isn't perturbed by Ma's decision to kill Barbara after the ransom is paid, but her dim-witted son Slim (Scott Wilson) becomes pathologically attached to his prisoner, cleaning himself up to be worthy of her. Meanwhile, Barbara's father John Blandish (Wesley Addy) hires detective Dave Fenner (Robert Lansing), who gets a lead on the Grissoms through nightclub singer Anna Borg (Connie Stevens). The only problem is that after he finds out that Barbara has been sleeping with a degenerate hoodlum, Dad might not want his daughter back. Blu-ray Release Date: November 27th, 2018

Grizzly BD - This ecology-themed horror movie took its inspiration from the success of Jaws and moved that film's man-versus-nature conflict from the seaside to the forest. The plot of Grizzly focuses on Mike Kelly (Christopher George), a forest ranger whose peaceful tenure over a forest housing a busy nature lodge is interrupted by the arrival of a very deadly and hungry 15-foot grizzly bear. As the bear starts killing rangers and campers, Park Supervisor Charley Kittridge (Joe Dorsey) tries to cover up the problem and tries to keep Kelly from acting in a way that will cause public suspicion. Scorpion Blu-ray Release Date: May 14th, 2018

Quatermass (1979) BD - Bernard Quatermass (John Mills), former head of the British Rocket Group, lives in seclusion in western Scotland, watching in appalled silence as Britain slowly turns into a vision of violence, gang rule and governmental collapse. A desperate search for his missing granddaughter plunges him into a terrifying situation when he comes to realise that the mass disappearance of thousands of youths is nothing less than the culling of the human species by an unknown alien intelligence... Blu-ray Release Date: July 27th, 2015

A Town Like Alice BD - Jean Paget, an English woman taken prisoner by the Japanese, is among a group of women and children forced to trek through Malaya during the occupation. During her ordeal she meets captive Australian Joe Harman and there is an instant magnetism between them; as they talk, Jean learns about Joe's hometown of Alice Springs, and his hope of returning there one day. To relieve the suffering of the women and children, Joe steals some chickens from the sadistic Captain Sugaya, but when he is caught Sugaya orders Joe to be executed in front of Jean and the others... Blu-ray Release Date: March 6th, 2017

Mine Own Executioner BD - With compelling, sympathetic performances from double Oscar nominee Burgess Meredith and accomplished Irish actor Kieron Moore, this powerful psychological drama shows the almost super-human demands of a profession that ranks amongst the most challenging. Adapted from his own novel by BAFTA-winning author and screenwriter Nigel Balchin, Mine Own Executioner is presented in a brand-new High Definition transfer from the original film elements. Blu-ray Release Date: March 9th, 2015

Savage Streets BD - Savage Streets stars Linda Blair as a tough high school coed turned vigilante against a brutal gang of rapists and murderers. Blair is Brenda, vivacious leader of the "Satins," a fun-loving group of pretty high school girls. The Satins are in for trouble from the first moment they play a harmless trick on the "Scars", a vicious gang who runs loose on the Hollywood streets. The scars and their malevolent leader Jake take their revenge seriously first with Brenda's deaf-mute sister, then her soon-to-be-married best friend. Caught up in her rivalry with the cheerleaders, Brenda is at first unaware of the Scar's involvement, but is soon shocked with the full truth. Shock...hatred...and then a deadly vengeance in a skintight black suit, as Brenda searches out the gang members one by one. Blu-ray Release Date: November, 2018

Twelve Monkeys BD - An intense film about time travel, this sci-fi entry was directed by Terry Gilliam, a member of the comedy troupe Monty Python. The film stars Bruce Willis as James Cole, a prisoner of the state in the year 2035 who can earn parole if he agrees to travel back in time and thwart a devastating plague. The virus has wiped out most of the Earth's population and the remainder live underground because the air is poisonous. Returning to the year 1990, six years before the start of the plague, Cole is soon imprisoned in a psychiatric facility because his warnings sound like mad ravings. There he meets a scientist named Dr. Kathryn Railly (Madeleine Stowe) and Jeffrey Goines (Brad Pitt), the mad son of an eminent virologist (Christopher Plummer). Blu-ray Release Date: October 29th, 2018

Pioneers: First Women Filmmakers BD - In the early decades of cinema, some of the most innovative and celebrated filmmakers in America were women. Alice Guy-Blaché helped establish the basics of cinematic language, while others boldly continued its development: slapstick queen Mabel Normand (who taught Charlie Chaplin the craft of directing), action star Grace Cunard, and LGBTQ icon Alla Nazimova. Unafraid of controversy, filmmakers such as Lois Weber and Dorothy Davenport Reid tackled explosive issues such as birth control, abortion, and prostitution. This crucial chapter of film history comes alive through the presentation of a wide assortment of films, carefully curated, meticulously restored in 2K and 4K from archival sources, and presented with new musical scores. Blu-ray Release Date: November 20th, 2018

La Familia - Twelve-year-old Pedro roams the streets with his friends, raised by the violent urban atmosphere around him in a working class district of Caracas. After Pedro seriously injures another boy in a rough game of play, single father Andrés decides they must flee to hide. Andrés will realize he is a father incapable of controlling his own teenage son, but their situation will bring them closer than they have ever been. DVD Release Date: October 2nd, 2018

The Poet and the Boy - A moving, and often funny tale, THE POET AND THE BOY is the story of a struggling poet in his late 30s, who has spent all his life in a small island town, living off his hard working wife. Despite his wife&339;s constant nagging about having a family and his inability to carry his share in the relationship, all he does is think about his writing. One day, the poet meets a teenage boy working at a donut shop and helplessly develops feelings he has never had before, leading to both dramatic and comedic consequences. The debut feature from filmmaker Kim Yang-hee, stars actor/director Yang Ik-June (BREATHLESS), actress Jeon Hye-Jin (THE THRONE) plus young Korean heart-throb and rising star Jung Ga-Ram. DVD Release Date: October 9th, 2018

Three-Way Wedding - A series of seductions and surprising alliances ensue when a famous playwright invites the cast of his new play to his country estate. Amongst the guests are his enchanting assistant, his ex-wife, and her new lover. DVD Release Date: July 24th, 2018

Egon Schiele: Death and the Maiden - At the beginning of the 20th century Egon Schiele is one of the most provocative artists in Vienna. His life and work are driven by beautiful women and an era that is coming to an end. Two women will have a lasting impact on him his sister and first muse Gerti, and 17 year old Wally, arguably Schiele's one true love, immortalized in his famous painting Death and the Maiden . Schiele's radical paintings scandalize Viennese society while daring artists like Gustav Klimt and art agents alike are sensing the exceptional. But Egon Schiele is also prepared to go beyond his own pain and to sacrifice love and life for his art. DVD Release Date: October 9th, 2018

Gabriel and the Mountain - Before entering a prestigious American university, Gabriel Buchmann decides to travel the world for one year. After ten months on the road with his backpack full of dreams, immersed at the heart of various countries, he arrives in Kenya determined to discover the African continent. Until he reaches the top of Mount Mulanje, Malawi, his final destination. DVD Release Date: October 16th, 2018

Tom's Midnight Garden - The classic BBC 6 part adaptation of the much-loved novel by Philipp Pearce. Sent to stay with his aunt and uncle for the summer, Tom Long finds himself alone and bored. Lying in bed one night he hears the old grandfather clock in the hall strike thirteen. He ventures downstairs to investigate, opens the door and is magically transported back in time to a Victorian garden and an incredible adventure. DVD Release Date: November 12th, 2018
 

Next 2 weeks on the Calendar