DVDBeaver Newsletter for January 12th, 2006
Hope all is well! This has been a very strong week - reviews of 2 Criterions discs, 2 Masters of Cinema DVDs, additional Bergman, Fellini, De Sica, Polanski, an iconic western, a classic Japanese animation, Chabrol thrillers and 50's sci-fi cheese... ohh and some wonderful J.S. Bach. What more can we do? (he says panting)
Those with uncooperative mail clients - you may read our newsletters at our new Newsletter Archive HERE.
Still our biggest attraction - DVDBeaver's DVD of the Year poll HERE for 2005! Lots of info there...
Are you aware of Warner's upcoming Films of Faith Collection ? including (also available individually) "The Nun's Story", "The Miracle of Our Lady of Fatima" and "The Shoes of the Fisherman" or The Busby Berkeley Collection (Footlight Parade / Gold Diggers of 1933 / Dames / Gold Diggers of 1935 / 42nd Street) or Lubitsch and Preminger's A Royal Scandal (1945) or Vittorio De Sica's Miracle In Milan (1951) or the Burton / Bujold gem Anne of the Thousand Days (1969) ? - Then perhaps you should be looking at our release calendar!
RECOMMENDATIONS... This is one of those weeks where we reviewed so many great films I hesitate to only name a few. Here goes - I can't see how any true fans of cinema wouldn't latch onto Masters of Cinema's The Savage Innocents release. Unforgettable is the way to describe the film. Criterion shows their superiority over the pack with two strong entries - The Bad Sleep Well and The Virgin Spring.... and speaking of Ingmar Bergman, you might consider his last film a MUST own - Saraband is a true expression of genius (I hate throwing around that word so I guess I really mean it in this context). The three NoShame releases are all wonderful representatives of Italian cinema at its best - Boccaccio 70', Yesterday, Today and Tomorrow, and the neo-realistic The Railroad Man. Finally a new DVD that I cherish - Bach Relaxation - Beautiful Nature With Bach has exactly what I want at times - just sit back and absorb. A perfect foil for, say - the rigors of the DVDBeaver ListServ discussions!
To all you Ozu lovers, Criterion will be releasing Late Spring sometime this year (maybe in late spring?). Hold tight!
Most Recent Reviews
and Comparisons:
The Savage Innocents - Nicholas Ray's epic 1959 film about Eskimo life
was unfairly victimized on release, censored at the UK cinema, and neglected by
both TV and home video for decades. The Savage Innocents continued Ray's
fascination with alternative lifestyles — examining the life of Eskimos and
their remoteness from "civilized" values. It represents Ray's first and most
ambitious attempt to break free from Hollywood and forge his own route.
Assassination - (or Ansatsu) marked Masahiro Shinoda's first attempt at
a period film, and is widely considered to be his finest achievement. Previously
gaining fame and status alongside Nagisa Oshima and Kiju Yoshida, challenging
established Japanese cinema with tales of reckless youth, The Dry Lake (1960)
and the seminal yakuza drama Pale Flower (1964) Shinoda graduated from Shochiku,
where, like Shohei Imamura, his grounding was working as an assistant to
Yasujiro Ozu.
The Bad Sleep Well - A tense re-working of Hamlet (adapted from a novel
by Ed McBain) is a biting exposé of the corruption and politics of greed at the
heart of Japanese business. Beautifully photographed in ravishing black and
white Tohoscope. Leisurely paced, bitterly ironic, the film employs an arid
visual style, with hard-edged black and white images of Tokyo that perfectly
complement its portrayal of corruption in high places.
Boccaccio 70' - A summit meeting of great Italian directors of the era,
Boccaccio '70 is an antipasto platter of vintage sex symbols and naughty
material. Cooked up and bankrolled by Carlo Ponti and American producer Joseph
E. Levine, the four-part film was meant to tap the international smash of
Federico Fellini's La Dolce Vita, which gave audiences some refreshingly, you
know, "mature" subject matter. Four directors were hired to create segments
ostensibly based on the tales of Boccaccio: Fellini himself (in the lull between
La Dolce Vita and 8-1/2), Luchino Visconti, Vittorio De Sica, and Mario
Monicelli.
Yesterday, Today and Tomorrow - Vittorio De Sica's delightful anthology
comedy from 1963 pairs joined-at-the-hip costars Sophia Loren and Marcello
Mastroianni in three funny stories about sex. It was the winner of the 1964
Oscar for Best Foreign Film. It remains one of the most beloved Italian films of
all time.
The Railroad Man - Severely attacked by the leftist Italian critics of
its time, THE RAILROAD MAN is a heartfelt cry against many of the problems that
plagued Italian society during the mid-50’s. An undisputed masterpiece by its
director and star Pietro Germi.
Chinatown - Roman Polanski's brooding film noir exposes the darkest side
of the land of sunshine, the Los Angeles of the 1930s, where power is the only
currency--and the only real thing worth buying. Jack Nicholson is J.J. Gittes, a
private eye in the Chandler mold, who during a routine straying-spouse
investigation finds himself drawn deeper and deeper into a jigsaw puzzle of
clues and corruption. The glamorous Evelyn Mulwray (a dazzling Faye Dunaway) and
her titanic father, Noah Cross (John Huston), are at the black-hole center of
this tale of treachery, incest, and political bribery.
Bach Relaxation - Beautiful Nature With Bach - I always thought what a
great idea simply orchestral Bach and magnificent scenery would make for film. I
can leave this looping all day, catching only glimpses or sit and relax for a
few moments and watch. The orchestrations are beautiful and the cinematography
(all motion- no stills) with occasional gentle pans left and right show the
beauty of nature from arctic snowscapes, autumn harvests, rich green forests
with rivers and ponds and clear blue oceans with fish swimming undersea. I am
very happy with this DVD - it is exactly what I was looking for. It may end up
being the most played disc in my house.
The Virgin Spring - Winner of the 1961 Academy Award for Best Foreign
Film, Ingmar Bergman’s The Virgin Spring is a harrowing tale of faith, revenge,
and savagery in medieval Sweden. Starring Bergman stalwart and screen icon Max
von Sydow, the film is both beautiful and cruel in its depiction of a world
teetering between the sacred and the profane and one father’s longing to avenge
the murder of a child.
The Magnificent Seven - A bandit (Eli Wallach) terrorizes a small
Mexican farming village each year. Several of the village elders send three of
the farmers into the United States to search for gunmen to defend them. They end
up with 7 (Yul Brynner, Steve McQueen, Charles Bronson etc.), each of whom comes
for a different reason. They must prepare the town to repulse an army of over
100 bandits who will arrive seeking food. An oft recognized Americanization of
the Japanese Kurosawa film Seven Samurai.
Earth vs. The Spider + War of the Colossal Beast - Samuel Z Arkoff was
born in the Midwest to the parents of Russian and Latvian immigrants.
Opportunistic dreams of Hollywood mogul-dom had him borrow $3000 and with a
partner start the American Releasing Corporation which came to signify itself
with an infamous string of pragmatic 50's B-films. Along with producer/director
of low-grade sci-fi films and simple rear-projection enlargements special
effects man, Bert I. Gordon - what we have in this DVD package are
quintessential examples of two of cinema's colossal (yes 'Colossal') low points,
but something about them is attractive, simply beyond their imperfections. I
admit to having a big soft spot for these low-grade productions which always
represented a kind of innocence to me. Perhaps it reminds me of my childhood,
watching films like these on Saturday afternoons and reminiscing of my own
wide-eyed excitement. I'm only disappointed that the more polished 'The Amazing
Colossal Man' is not available yet on DVD.
Howl's Moving Castle - Director Hayao Mayazaki (My Neighbor Totoro,
Princess Mononoke, Spirited Away) has produced another masterpiece from his
Studio Ghibli. A beautifully crafted, mostly hand-drawn animated feature, Howl's
Moving Castle is the latest in an impressive catalogue of quite simply, some of
the best animation ever committed to celluloid.
A Double Tour - Released in the US as Leda in 1961, Variety called À
double tour a "sleek whodunit," with "good camera work and tricky direction."
Viewed today, À double tour's swooping camera and character eccentricity echo
both Alfred Hitchcock's most personal and obsessive films and Douglas Sirk's
colorful '50s melodramas.
The Blood of Others - based on the novel by Simone de Beauvoir, headed
with an international cast including Jodie Foster, Michael Ontkean, Michael
York, Lambert Wilson, and Stephane Audran. The film will is directed by Claude
Chabrol from a screenplay by Brian Moore.The international co-production is the
story of two young people in love in war-torn France, facing the ultimate
sacrifice. It is a consuming love affair and a dramatic suspense story. Moment
by moment, twist by twist, the suspense and tension build to heights of courage
and heroism, reflecting everyone's responsibility for their own lives and
other's deaths.
Saraband - The most remarkable thing about "Saraband" is that Bergman
makes this kind of intensely emotional filmmaking look simple. The ease with
which the director calls forth the most deep-seated and complex emotions from
his actors is helped by their skill and the decades they've worked with him, but
it's nevertheless exceptional.
Upcoming
Releases:
The Gunfighter (Henry King , 1950) 20th Century Fox UK PAL
Ju Dou (Yimou Zhang, 1990) Razor
Junebug (Phil Morrison, 2005) Sony Pictures
Lord of War (Andrew Niccol, 2005) Lions Gate
Space Amoeba (Ishirô Honda, 1971) Tokyo Shock
(Elmo Williams , 1953) Vci VideoWalking with Monsters - Life Before Dinosaurs
(Tim Haines, 2005) BBC Warner (Masahrio Shinoda, 1964) Eureka/MoC [R2-UK] (Wayne Wang , 1982) Koch Lorber (Lewis Gilbert , 1983) Sony Pictures (Widescreen Edition) (Robert Schwentke, 2005)Touchstone / Disney (Rupert Wainwright, 2005) Sony Pictures (John Cassavetes, 1980) Gaumont [R2-France]La Bataille du Rail (René Clément, 1945) Facets
Captains Courageous (Victor Fleming, 1937) Warner Home Video
The Champ (King Vidor, 1931) Warner
(Wesley Ruggles , 1931) WarnerThe Essential Atom Egoyan Box Set
(Egoyan) Zeitgeist (Ishirô Honda, 1954) BFI R2 UK (Sidney Franklin , 1937) Warner
Wishing you strength, warmth, family... and a few good films on DVD,
Gary
P.S. The AMAZON UK SALE is... OVER! We hope you got in to get some great deals...
P.P.S. Here is a not is subtle reminder to steer clear of DVDSoon.com - technically they are out of business and have absconded with 100's of peoples money. I have no idea what their website is still doing in business. We still have some links to them but I am removing as best as I can. Avoid at all costs!