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The Red Violin
BD - Following the unusual
journey of an original and unique violin, as it survives three
centuries to a present-day auction in Montreal. The violin
weaves a Svengali over all those who play it and becomes the
subject of passion, deception and destruction. It passes through
the hands of traveling Gypsies, a famous concert violinist in
England to near-confiscation in Communist China, the violin
manages to survive the different lives of those it touches. In
present day it again becomes the subject of fascination for a
violin historian, played by Samuel L. Jackson. On discovering
that he has stumbled upon the much sought after 'Red Violin', he
considers instigating a deception of his own kind.
Blu-ray Release Date: June 1st,
2010
Deadly Outlaw: Reeka - When
a hitman for the Otaki clan takes out the head of the Sanada
clan (Tetsurô Tanba, YOU ONLY LIVE TWICE), surrogate
son/chief hitman Kunishada (Riki Takeuchi, who starred in
Miike's DEAD OR ALIVE trilogy prior to this) wants
revenge; however, he is told to stand down as the two groups
plan to negotiate a truce - mediated by the Bando group - rather
than risk a range war. Kunisada takes out the head of the Otaki
group, but the younger members of both clans - in conjunction
with the Bando group - use that to their advantage and try to
make Kunisada into a scapegoat to further their own ends.
Arrow DVD Release Date: November 22nd, 2010
MicMacs
BD - First it was a mine
that exploded in the middle of the Moroccan desert. Years later,
it was a stray bullet that lodged in his brain... Bazil doesn't
have much luck with weapons. The first made him an orphan, the
second holds him on the brink of sudden, instant death. Released
from the hospital after his accident, Bazil is homeless.
Luckily, our inspired and gentle-natured dreamer is quickly
taken in by a motley crew of junkyard dealers living in a
veritable Ali Baba's cave. The group's talents and aspirations
are as surprising as they are diverse: Remington, Calculator,
Buster, Slammer, Elastic Girl, Tiny Pete, and Mama Chow. Then
one day, walking by two huge buildings, Bazil recognizes the
logos of the weapons manufacturers that caused all of his
misfortune. He sets out to take revenge, with the help of his
faithful gang of wacky friends. Underdogs battling heartless
industrial giants, our gang relive the battle of David and
Goliath, with all the imagination and fantasy of Buster Keaton...
Sony Blu-ray Release date:
December 14th, 2010
Harsh Times
BD - An unstable Gulf War
veteran with a savior complex receives a shocking wake-up call
upon returning stateside and accepting a position with the
Department of Homeland Security in the directorial debut of
Training Day screenwriter David Ayer. Jim (Christian Bale) is a
Gulf War veteran who believes his sworn duty to protect his
fellow Americans extends to the streets of Los Angeles, and he
longs to fulfill his destiny by joining the LAPD. Rejected by
the force and left to ponder his future with his impoverished
Mexican paramour -- whom he had intended on bringing to the city
after joining the police -- the dejected and unemployed veteran
is offered a second shot at helping his country when he is
subsequently approached by the Department of Homeland Security.
As Jim and his unemployed best friend, Mike (Freddy Rodriguez),
carve a swath of chaos through the streets of Los Angeles, the
weight of their American dream soon comes crashing down in a
devastating blow that threatens to dash their high hopes for a
bright future. Weinstein Blu-ray
Release date: December 14th, 2010
Suspiria
BD - Argento's masterpiece
of horror, with its assault of garish colors, booming soundtrack
and horrifically dreamlike set pieces, is the cinematic
equivalent of an exceptionally scary fun house. It tells the
story of Susan (Harper) a young, impressionable American who
travels abroad in order to study at a prestigious European
ballet academy. From the first day, however, she begins to
realize that frightening things are afoot at the hallowed
institution. Enduring a rain of maggots, poisoned food and other
unpleasant occurrences, she discovers that the school is a
secret convening place for an ages-old witches' coven. King
Records (Japan) Blu-ray Release
Date: December 8th, 2010
Exit Through the Gift Shop
BD - Exit Through the Gift
Shop is the inside story of street art - a chaotic brew of
illegal self-expression that exploded into a global phenomenon
at the turn of this century - and what happened when an
eccentric shopkeeper-turned-amateur filmmaker named Thierry
Guetta set out to produce the ultimate documentary on the art
form. After spending five years videotaping many of the world’s
most infamous vandals at work, he met Banksy, a camera shy
British stencil artist who felt Guetta himself would make a more
fitting subject for a documentary.
Blu-ray Release Date: September 6th, 2010
Meet John Doe - Written by
a discharged journalist as a publicity stunt, and as a parting
shot at the paper's new editor, the premise of the letter
unexpectedly fires the imagination of the Bulletin's readers and
the wider American public. Its real author, Ann Mitchell
(Barbara Stanwyck) who has fabricated the letter in her final
column, is rehired, and now needs to find someone to play the
part of the fictional John Doe. Gary Cooper is perfectly cast as
Long John Willoughby, an injured and penniless former baseball
pitcher lured into impersonating John Doe with the promise of
medical treatment. In what would have undoubtedly been an Oscar
winning performance, were it not for his own success that same
year in Howard Hawk's Sergeant York, Cooper excels himself here
as Willoughby's initial indifference to his undertaking turns to
genuine concern at his role. DVD Release Date: November 30th,
2010
The Three Burials of Melquiades Estrada
BD - As anyone familiar with
the career of screenwriter Guillermo Arriaga (Amores Perros, 21
Grams) would expect, the initial ‘modern revenge Western’
premise is merely the framework for a subtle, involving
exploration of friendship, loyalty, sex, death and forgiveness —
all the good stuff. Arriaga’s fragmented style allows the
audience to experience Melquiades’ (Julio Cedillo) life when
he’s already dead, flavouring the warmth and charm of his scenes
alongside best pal Pete (Jones himself, marvellous) with an
underlying sadness and sense of fate. Similarly, we know Officer
Norton is a killer-to-be when we witness his callous attitude
both to his wife and the “wetbacks” he brutalises at every
opportunity. German Blu-ray
Release Date: August 19th, 2010
The Town
BD - Ben Affleck follows his
acclaimed Gone Baby Gone directorial debut by directing,
co-writing and starring in a taut thriller about robbers and
cops, friendship and betrayal, love and hope and escaping a past
that has no future. He plays Doug MacRay, leader of a Boston
bank robber gang but not cut from the same cloth as his fellow
thieves. When Doug falls into a passionate romance with the bank
manager (Rebecca Hall) briefly taken hostage in their last
heist, he wants out of this life and out of the town. As the
Feds close in and the crew questions his loyalty, he has one of
two choices: betray his friends or lose the woman he loves.
Blu-ray Release date: December
17th, 2010
Battle Royale
BD - In a future where
society is on the verge of collapse, the government takes
drastic action against the problem of rebellious teenagers in
this violent sci-fi opus from Japan. In the year 2002, Japan's
economy has taken a dramatic turn for the worse, and massive
unemployment and inflation have thrown most adults into a state
of chaos; the nation's youth culture responds with unprecedented
violence, delinquency, and truancy. Desperate to restore order,
the Japanese parliament responds by creating the Millennial
Reform School Act, in which groups of junior high students are
selected at random, sent to an isolated island, and forced to
play a rigorous war game, in which all but one of their number
are killed. Kitano (Beat Takeshi) is an embittered school
instructor who guides the 44 students of the Zentsuji Middle
School's Class B through the deadly game known as "Battle Royale,"
as they struggle to survive against the elements and each other.
Blu-ray Release Date: December
13th, 2010
Hard Boiled
BD - Violence as poetry,
rendered by a master—brilliant and passionate, John Woo’s Hard
Boiled tells the story of jaded detective “Tequila” Yuen (played
with controlled fury by Chow Yun-fat). Woo’s dizzying odyssey
through the world of Hong Kong Triads, undercover agents, and
frenzied police raids culminates unforgettably in the breathless
hospital sequence. More than a cops-and-bad-guys story, Hard
Boiled continually startles with its originality and dark humor.
Blu-ray Release Date: December
14th, 2007
Blue (Kieslowski)
BD - "...in other ways,
however, the Three Colours films cannot be faulted. They
showcase a director working at the summit of his powers, with
equally skilled and talented collaborators like Piesiewicz and
composer Zbigniew Preisner. Many moments will surely linger in
the memory - be it the reflections in the dark pools of
Binoche's huge eyes, or the elliptical time-lapses of Blue;
the orgasmic flashes of blinding white light in White;
the catwalk sequence in Red, where Jacob is illuminated
by flashbulb after flashbulb, or even just recurring in-jokes
like the music of Van Den Budenmayer."
Blu-ray Boxset Release Date: October 13th, 2010
It Conquered the World - A
giant vegetable from another planet runs amok, under the
unflinching direction of Roger Corman. It may look like a giant
bean bag, but the monster is infinitely more expressive than
Beverly Garland, Lee Van Cleef, or the inevitable Peter Graves
(and for early American International Pictures, that's an
expensive cast). Amazingly, this 1956 picture isn't half bad—Corman
keeps plugging away long after any sensible director would have
grabbed his check and split. DVD Release Date: July 28th,
2010
Cat People - Tourneur's
1942 Cat People is one of those rare films that has an
indefinable appeal - it unwittingly achieved cultish status
while leaving a very long-lasting impression on those who see
it. It expressed its unusual plot with such a degree of garish
suspense while at the same time underachieving the lurid posters
that drew its crowds to the theatre. With a low budget and
virtually no special effects it is still quite haunting even by
modern standards. There is a slight inference of feline/feminine
disdain and outright fear of women, but its is a bit of a
stretch. The feminine mystique of the film is till very
prevalent though and perhaps this is its appeal. With a
macguffin-like horror that is never disclosed and it has
under-discussed origins. Because of its age Cat People
would be easy to dismiss with poor production values and
unrealistic performances, but the hidden appeal of the film does
not seem to diminish even when you become impatiently aware of
these limitations. DVD Release Date: September 16th 2010
The Underworld Story -
Crime reporter Mike Reese (Dan Duryea) has a nose for news…and
an eager hand under the table in return for spinning the truth
in favor of moneyed perps. But after he tries to cash in on a
story involving a maid accused of a society murder, Reese
ultimately finds the courage to reveal the truth and make amends
for his tainted past. One of this noirish film’s lines of
dialogue refers to ancestral witch burnings. Intentionally or
not, the line underscores the imminent blacklisting of The
Underworld Story’s costar Howard da Silva plus the director and
the screenwriter. The intriguing story is by Craig Rice, the
famed female mystery writer of the 1940s and ’50s who was the
cover-story subject of Time’s January 28, 1946 issue. DVD
Release Date: September 7th, 2010
God's Bloody Acre - When
brothers Monroe (Thomas Wood aka Bill Kerwin of the original
gorefest BLOOD FEAST), Ezra (Daniel Schweitzer), and
bushy-haired Benny (Sam Moree) find their backwoods Eden invaded
by land developers intending to turn it into a campground, they
decide to scare the interlopers off. When an over-enthusiastic
Benny accidentally kills one of the builders, the three decide
that there is no turning back and are determined to defend their
home to the death. Unfortunately, some a diverse set of weekend
campers have stumbled upon the in-construction camp ground -
including bigotted Robert (Robert Rosano) and his bickering wife
Carol (Kayelynne)... DVD Release Date: January 25th, 2011
Three Steps North -
Although it was filmed in Amalfi with a largely Italian cast,
which includes the great Aldo Fabrizi in a distinctly minor
role, W. Lee Wilder's melodrama, "Three Steps North,"
follows the routine pattern of low-budget American crime films.
Indeed, its hard-boiled hero, whom Lloyd Bridges arrogantly
plays, is a familiar type of American movie criminal, returned
to Italy after a trick in jail to dig up some black-market money
that he had stashed away there during the war. And his
subsequent adventures in Amalfi, as recorded on the Palace's
screen, are no different from those of his opposite number in a
movie set in Kansas City, say. DVD Release Date: September
28, 2010
Rivals - Widowed Manhattan
gallery owner Christine's (Joan Hackett, THE TERMINAL MAN)
already-tense relationship with her Oedipally-obsessed,
precocious "ten year old" filmmaker son Jamie (Scott Jacoby, THE
LITTLE GIRL WHO LIVES DOWN THE LANE) becomes even more
complicated - and deadly - when she catches the eye of obnoxious
tour guide Peter (Robert Klein, THE OWL AND THE PUSSYCAT) who
proposes marriage upon meeting her. DVD Release Date:
November 9th, 2010
Rio Breaks - Neither a
traditional sports documentary, nor a surfing travelogue like
the goofy, bubbly FOLLOW ME (1969), RIO BREAKS
follows Fabio and Naama, two boys living in a Rio de Janeiro
slum who have a love of surfing. At home, they have to withstand
the pressures to join the drug-trafficking trade(with few other
options). On the beach, they mix in with the tourists and the
more affluent and get to show off their surfing chops. The goals
of these and many other boys (and some girls, we find out) from
similar backgrounds is to compete in surfing competitions and
secure sponsorship as a way out of the slums. DVD Release
Date: August 31st, 2010
NY Export: Opus Jazz -
Jerome Robbins' expanded his WEST SIDE STORY choreography
into a New York urban ballet that became a world-wide hit and
was performed on The Ed Sullivan Show (under Robbins' technical
direction). The film, co-produced by "Great Performances," takes
the performance off the stage and out of the TV studio to a
handful of little-seen (on film), atmospheric urban New York
locations. The performance is bookended by a "pure cinema"
prologues and epilogues of the dancers' downtime as well as some
interstitial bits between the four acts. DVD Release Date:
November 22nd, 2010
Lost Highway
BD - The thrill of this kind
of enigmatic rhyming structure, combined with Lynch's masterful
and often powerful fusions of sound and image, is that it makes
all sorts of splashy expressionistic effects possible--moments
of "pure" filmmaking in which the ideological trappings of noir
become subverted by the heady mixtures (such as the literal and
figurative grafting of the Mystery Man onto the body of
Arquette). The limitation is that, even if the thematic
preoccupations at times appear to float and circulate
independent of the inner tubes, their assumptions remain mired
in the adolescent mind-set ("dirty" sex and corrupted male
innocence) that informs virtually all of Lynch's features.
Blu-ray Release Date: November 3rd,
2010
You and Me - Lang's third
US picture, like Fury and You Only Live Once,
deals with the subject of crime, but this time in a far less
sombre manner. A real curiosity, the film is a lively mixture of
musical, romantic comedy, gangster movie, social drama and
Brechtian satire, the latter underlined by the songs of Kurt
Weill. According to Lang, 'There's no question but Brecht was
most responsible for the film.' The setting is a department
store whose liberal owner employs mostly former prisoners. Two
of them, Raft and Sidney, fall in love and marry, though he
doesn't realize she's an ex-con like him. DVD Release Date:
December 3rd 2010 |
