If your mail client is unable to format this message you may see it via a web browser here:

 

Newsletter - FOR THE WEEK

OF December 9th, 2013

  This Week's Highlights
 
 

Khamzang? - More DVD than Blu-ray this week but still some keen 1080P with Jacques Tourneur, Criterion and the Maysles brothers, and Thomas Vinterberg. DVD has plenty of Warner Archive stuff with Noir and Crime dramas the focus! The Release Calendar has been updated with an Andrei Tarkovsky favorite to Blu-ray ! We've chosen our Feature Blu-ray and DVD for the Month of DECEMBER and there is a new CONTEST posted - good luck!

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

FEATURE Blu-ray and DVD of the MONTH selected for DECEMBER !

 

 

(Week of) December 9th CONTEST  identify the clip on the CONTEST PAGE to win a Criterion Blu-ray of Grey Gardens  

 

BIG THANKS!: DVDBeaver would not exist without the support of many patrons - those who generously donate, and especially those who use our Amazon(s), CD Japan, HKFlix and YesAsia links. That's it. When you go to Amazon - PLEASE use one of our links to get there (they are on every page - top and bottom - and we have 5000 webpages). It costs you absolutely nothing and we get a small commission on items you purchase. This helps pay our bills - in fact it's the only thing that pays our bills.
STRATEGIES: The best way to take full advantage of Amazon is to use...
PRE-ORDERs - lock in at the discount price by ORDERING - if perchance you decide against the purchase you have until the release date to cancel - at no charge AND if you will purchase more than 35 DVDs (or anything) in a 365 day period (and live in the Continental US) it makes excellent financial sense to subscribe to Amazon
NOTE:_

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

Gary at 2ze dot com

LATEST ADDITIONS TO THE RELEASE CALENDAR:

Nostalghia [Blu-ray] (Andrei Tarkovsky, 1983) Kino

Wings [Blu-ray] (William A. Wellman, 1927) RB UK Masters of Cinema

White Dog [Blu-ray] (Samuel Fuller, 1982) RB UK Masters of Cinema

Fellini's Roma [Blu-ray] (Federico Fellini, 1972) RB UK Masters of Cinema

Hands Over the City [Blu-ray] (Francesco Rosi, 1963) RB UK Masters of Cinema

Wake in Fright [Blu-ray] (Ted Kotcheff, 1971) RB UK Masters of Cinema

Serpico [Blu-ray] (Sidney Lumet, 1973) RB UK Masters of Cinema
Serpico [Steelbook] [
Blu-ray] (Sidney Lumet, 1973) RB UK Masters of Cinema

Foreign Correspondent [Blu-ray] (Alfred Hitchcock, 1940) Criterion Collection

Blue Is the Warmest Color [Blu-ray] (Abdellatif Kechiche, 2013) Criterion Collection

Breathless [Blu-ray] (Jean-Luc Godard, 1960) Criterion Collection

King of the Hill [Blu-ray] (Steven Soderbergh, 1993) Criterion Collection)

Tess [Blu-ray] (Roman Polanski, 1979) Criterion Collection

Fantastic Mr. Fox [Blu-ray] (Wes Anderson, 2009) Criterion Collection

Jules and Jim [Blu-ray] (François Truffaut, 1962) Criterion Collection

Computer Chess [Blu-ray] (Andrew Bujalski, 2013) RB UK Masters of Cinema

The Umbrellas Of Cherbourg (50th Anniversary Edition) [Blu-ray] (Jacques Demy, 1964) RB UK Studiocanal

El Dorado [Blu-ray] (Howard Hawks, 1966) Paramount

The Jacques Tati Collection [Blu-ray] - RB UK Studiocanal

Gunfight at the O.K. Corral [Blu-ray] (John Sturges, 1957) Paramount

The Piano [Blu-ray] (Jane Campion, 1993) - RB UK Studiocanal

Classe Tous Risques [Blu-ray] (Claude Sautet, 1960) RB UK BFI

Dead of Night [Blu-ray] (Alberto Cavalcanti, Charles Crichton, Basil Dearden, Robert Hamer, 1945) - RB UK Studiocanal

Blue Is the Warmest Color [Blu-ray] (Abdellatif Kechiche, 2013) RB UK Artificial Eye

The Selfish Giant [Blu-ray] (Clio Barnard, 2013) RB UK Artificial Eye

Fill the Void [Blu-ray] (Rama Burshtein, 2012) RB UK Artificial Eye

Ms. 45 [Blu-ray] (Abel Ferrara, 1981) New Line Video

Many Wars Ago [Blu-ray] (Francesco Rosi, 1970) Kino

Sunrise [Blu-ray] (F.W. Murnau, 1927) 20th Century Fox

In the Heat of the Night [Blu-ray] (Norman Jewison, 1967) MGM

Buffalo '66 [Blu-ray] (Vincent Gallo, 1998) LionsGate

A Chorus Line [Blu-ray] (Richard Attenborough, 1985) MGM

Mother of George [Blu-ray] (Andrew Dosunmu, 2013) Oscilloscope Laboratories

Terraferma [Blu-ray] (Emanuele Crialese, 2011) Cohen Media Group

Nightmare City [Blu-ray] (Umberto Lenzi, 1980) Raro

City of Angels [Blu-ray] (Brad Silberling, 1998) Warner

Afternoon Delight [Blu-ray] (Jill Soloway, 2013) New Video Group

 

 

ONE VOICE (not Ellsworth Monkton Toohey): Thomas Vinterberg's The Hunt is one of the best films I've seen this year and the Blu-ray seems an essential purchase in my mind. What a pleasure it was to find Jacques Tourneur's Night of the Demon out of Wild Side in France is both region FREE and has removable French subtitles - add to the the inclusion of Curse of the Demon in 1080P and the impressive a/v and included book and this Blu-ray package is an absolute winner! Criterion's Blu-ray of Grey Gardens is certainly different from the past DVDs beyond certain colors with a substantial amount of extra information in the frame. Gregory continued his prodigious examination of vintage films to DVD with such alluring titles as Death in Small Doses and Terror on a Train (with the always likeable Glenn Ford). Also sounding appealing are Backlash, Duffy of San Quentin, Grand Central Murder and The Falcon Mystery Movie Collection, Volume 2. Eric strayed from his usual niche with the biography Pablo and self-explanatory titled documentary; Schooled: The Price of College Sports and an unusual drama The Future with Rutger Hauer showing both his age and expanded girth. Enjoy your week - don't stress out about the Holidays!

  THIS WEEK's REVIEWS / COMPARISONS
 

Duffy of San Quentin - Clinton T. Duffy (Paul Kelly) suddenly has a job few would ever want. He's the interim warden at San Quentin, given the job for 30 days after violence and corruption swept what was then the nation's largest prison facility. Duffy aims to make his few days matter, cracking down on notorious guards, wiping out a stool-pigeon network and hiring the institute's first female nurse (Joanne Dru). The reforms take hold. Duffy's 30 days would become 12 years. Based on his memoir, Duffy of San Quentin tells the story of the warden's pivotal early tenure through the prism of his interactions with volatile inmate Edward Harper (Louis Hayward). Filmmaker Walter Doniger guides the action. He next made the prison film The Steel Cage (with Kelly and Maureen O’Sullivan returning as the Duffys) and explored life behind bars again in The Steel Jungle. DVD Release Date: May 7th, 2013

Death in Small Doses - FDA agent Graves goes undercover as a driver in training for a Los Angeles trucking company to crack a case involving the trafficking of "bennies" (amphetamines). The bennies are being supplied to truckers for long distance runs with the result being a number of fatal accidents. Moving into Powers' boardinghouse upon arrival, Graves doesn't have to wait long for suspicious activity. Manic co-worker Connors seems to be on a constant unnatural high, Dierkes freaks out and attacks a Teamster brother with a meat hook, and long-timer Engel turns up dead shortly after warning the newcomer about the dangers of having pills for co-pilots. The increasingly addicted Connors becomes Graves' new partner and unwittingly outs waitress Anders as a connection. DVD Release Date: January 8th, 2013

Backlash - When a burned-out car with a body in it turns up in a ravine, the police potter around trying to find out first who was killed and then who killed him. There was a cop-killer the lawyer saved from a murder charge; his law partner who owned him big money; the district attorney who may have been seeing his restless younger wife; another temptress connected to both the partner and the cop-killer; and so on. In fact there are a few too many red herrings squeezed into this compact (66-minute) can. DVD Release Date: October 15th, 2013

Pablo - Pablo tells the story of the life and times of legendary film title designer Pablo Ferro. Using a blend of character animation, motion design and documentary footage, Pablo tracks Pablo Ferro s rise as a poor Cuban immigrant to the heights of the Madison Avenue commercial industry and then to becoming one of the most celebrated designers in movie history. The film centers on Pablo s presence in the New York counter culture scene of the 1960 s until the mysterious brush with death that changed his life forever. DVD Release Date: November 5th, 2013

The Future - When two orphans, Bianca and Tomas meet up with Tomas gym rat friends, they concoct an elaborate scheme to rob an aging movie star and one-time Mr. Universe, Maciste (played by Rutger Hauer). The boys enlist Bianca to seduce the now blind star so they can get access to his hidden fortune. At once a sly psychological thriller with erotic overtones, this unique film finds a young woman faced with a moral dilemma as a unique friendship develops between her and the actor in his crumbling mansion. Based on the novel, Una Novelita Lumpen by Roberto Bolaño. DVD Release Date: December 3rd, 2013

Schooled: The Price of College Sports - is a comprehensive look at the business, history and culture of big-time college football and basketball in America. It is an adaptation of 'The Cartel' by Pulitzer Prize Winning civil rights scholar Taylor Branch, and his Atlantic Monthly article, 'The Shame of College Sports.' Schooled presents a hard-hitting examination of the NCAA's treatment of its athletes and amateurism in collegitate athletics; weaving interviews, archival and verité to tell a story of how college sports became a billion dollar industry built on the backs of athletes who are deprived of numerous rights. DVD Release Date: November 19th, 2013

Night of the Demon BD - One of the finest thrillers made in England during the '50s, despite the fact that the final cut was tampered with against the director's wishes. Tourneur had used MR James's short story Casting the Runes as the basis for a marvellous cinematic dialogue between belief and scepticism, fantasy and reality. His intrepid rational hero (Andrews) is a modern scientist who is gradually persuaded that his life is threatened by a black magician. The director employed a number of e normously skilful devices to ensure that the audience experiences the hero's transition from confident scepticism to panic, and the process is observed with such subtlety that, in the original version at least, the interpretation of the plot was left open (i.e. the hero may simply be the victim of a conspiracy and/or his own imagination). The producer decided that the film lacked substance (in fact it was far more terrifying than most horror films), and added special effects of the 'demon' very near the beginning, which of course missed the whole point of what Tourneur had been attempting. Even so, the rest is so good that the film remains immensely gripping, with certain sequences (like the one where Andrews is chased through the wood) reaching poetic dimensions. Blu-ray Release Date: November 27th, 2013

The Falcon Mystery Movie Collection, Volume 2 - Tom Conway continues his run as the suave society sophisticate sleuth Tom Lawrence in the second half of the smash RKO mystery series. Making the title role strictly his own, Conway clearly delights in mixing the detective with the dash. The war years and thereafter see the Falcon head out west for an extended sojourn, tackling criminals up and down the coast! Complete the RKO Falcon film saga with this 2-disc, 6 film collection. Beware miscreants - The Falcon is still on the hunt! DVD Release Date: February 19th, 2013

Grand Central Murder - When a not so sympathetic victim (Patricia Dane) is murdered in a private side car at Grand Central Station, detective Van Heflin and a crusty inspector (Sam Levene) join forces to solve the case. A neat little mystery yarn, this was an above average B-picture from MGM that gave us an early glimpse of Van Heflin, a young actor who was certainly blessed with enormous talent. Virginia Grey, Stephen McNally, Samuel S. Hinds, Connie Gilchrist, Tom Conway and Millard Mitchell are fine in supporting roles and the ending comes as a satisfying, if not probable, conclusion. DVD Release Date: March 27th, 2012

Grey Gardens BD - From the filmmakers behind Salesman (1969) and The Rolling Stones’ Gimme Shelter (1970), the Maysles brothers present another of their “non-fiction features”, this time an impossibly intimate, absorbing insight into the lives of two eccentric and reclusive women: Edith Bouvier Beale and her daughter Edie. As aunt and cousin to Jackie Onassis, “Big Edie” and “Little Edie” live together as high-society dropouts in a squalid mansion in wealthy East Hampton. What was once a grand summer residence has been reduced to a fortress of fleas, feral cats, and filth, the gardens long gone to seed and Big Edie and Little Edie confined to just a few of the twenty-eight rooms. Blu-ray Release Date: December 10th, 2013

Terror on a Train - One of these race against time thrillers to defuse a time bomb in a populated area. The modest suspense film packs enough tension to make it watchable and Glenn Ford, as always, delivers a fine performance. Director Ted Tetzlaff ("Johnny Allegro"/"The Window"/"The White Tower") efficiently directs, while padding the story with a dull domestic subplot. Kem Bennett writes the screenplay from his novel Death at Attention. DVD Release Date: June 4th, 2013

The Hunt BD - THE HUNT is a disturbing depiction of how a lie is taken as truth when gossip, doubt and malice are allowed to flourish and ignite a witch-hunt that soon threatens to destroy an innocent man's life. Lucas is just starting to get his life back together after losing his job and facing a difficult divorce, when his life is shattered by an untruthful remark throwing his small community into a collective state of hysteria. As the lie spreads, Lucas is forced to fight a lonely battle for his life and dignity. Blu-ray Release date: December 10th, 2013
 

 Next 4 weeks on the Calendar

December 9th, 2013

 

The Big Gundown [Blu-ray] (Sergio Sollima, 1966) Grindhouse Releasing

Demonic Toys [Blu-ray] (Peter Manoogian, 1992) Region FREE UK 88 Films (BEAVER REVIEW)

Grey Gardens [Blu-ray] (Albert Maysles, David Maysles, Ellen Hovde and Muffie Meyer, 1976) - Criterion Collection (BEAVER REVIEW)

The Hunt [Blu-ray] (Thomas Vinterberg, 2012) Magnolia (BEAVER REVIEW)

Inferno [Blu-ray] (Dario Argento, 1980) RB UK Arrow Video (BEAVER REVIEW)

Jayne Mansfield's Car [Blu-ray] (Billy Bob Thornton, 2012) Anchor Bay

Leviathan [Blu-ray] (Lucien Castaing-Taylor, Verena Paravel, 2012) RB UK Dogwoof (BEAVER REVIEW)

Martin Scorsese’s World Cinema Project [Blu-ray] (9-disc Boxset) (Touki bouki - 1973, Redes - 1936, A River Called Titas - 1973, Dry Summer - 1964, Trances - 1981, The Housemaid - 1960) - Criterion (BEAVER REVIEW)

Mary Poppins: 50th Anniversary Edition [Blu-ray] (Robert Stevenson, 1964) Disney

Post Tenebras Lux [Blu-ray] (Carlos Reygadas, 2012) Strand Releasing (BEAVER REVIEW)

Three Colours Blue [Blu-ray] (Krzysztof Kieslowski, 1993) RB UK Artificial Eye
Three Colours White [
Blu-ray] (Krzysztof Kieslowski, 1994) RB UK Artificial Eye
Three Colours Red [
Blu-ray] (Krzysztof Kieslowski, 1994) RB UK Artificial Eye

 

December 16th, 2013

 

The Beast Within [Blu-ray] (Philippe Mora, 1982) Shout! Factory

Big Trouble in Little China [Blu-ray] (John Carpenter, 1986) RB UK Arrow
Big Trouble in Little China Steelbook [
Blu-ray] (John Carpenter, 1986) RB UK Arrow

The Blue Angel [Blu-ray] (Josef von Sternberg, 1930) Kino

Cinema Paradiso [Blu-ray] (Giuseppe Tornatore, 1988) RB UK Arrow Video

Crawlspace [Blu-ray] (David Schmoeller, 1986) Shout! Factory

Elysium [Blu-ray] (Neill Blomkamp, 2013) Sony

The Family [Blu-ray] (Luc Besson, 2013) 20th Century Fox

The Lone Ranger [Blu-ray] (Gore Verbinski, 2013) Disney

The Long Goodbye [Blu-ray] (Robert Altman, 1973) RB UK Arrow

Museum Hours [Blu-ray] (Jem Cohen, 2012) Cinema Guild

Percy Jackson: Sea of Monsters [Blu-ray] (Thor Freudenthal, 2013) 20th Century Fox

The Whip and the Body [Blu-ray] (Mario Bava, 1963) Kino Lorber (BEAVER REVIEW)

 

December 24th, 2013

 

More Than Honey [Blu-ray] (Markus Imhoof, 2012) Kino Lorber

 

December 30th, 2013

 

Attila [Blu-ray] (Anthony C. Ferrante, Emmanuel Itier, 2013) Asylum - Gaiam

Il Bidone [Blu-ray] (Federico Fellini, 1955) RB UK Masters of Cinema

Bullet Ballet [Blu-ray] (Shin'ya Tsukamoto, 1998) RB UK Third Window

Hell Baby [Blu-ray] (Robert Ben Garant, Thomas Lennon, 2013) Millennium

Himalaya [Blu-ray] (Eric Valli 1999) Kino

Nightmare City [Blu-ray] (Umberto Lenzi, 1980) Raro

Sweet Vengeance [Blu-ray] (Logan Miller, 2013) Arc Entertainment

   
     
Contact Us   Weekly Newsletter Archive
To unsubscribe send a message to DVDBeaver-unsubscribe@yahoogroups.com