Random DVD and Blu-ray announcements

Started by wilder, November 01, 2011, 01:54:56 AM

0 Members and 3 Guests are viewing this topic.

wilder

May 2016 TBD

Takeshi Kitano's Kids Return (1996) on blu-ray from Third Window Films (UK)



Masaru and Shinji are two high school juvenile delinquents who spend their time extorting classmates for small change. After Masaru is beaten up by a former victim, the pair go to a local gym to learn how to box. Shinji, however, proves to have much more innate talent than Masaru, who abandons the sport to join the local yakuza gang. After Masaru's departure, Shinji falls in with Hayashi, an older boxer whose unhealthy influence pulls the youth down. Meanwhile, Masaru's arrogant behavior is getting him into trouble with his gang. Eventually, the two friends' downward spirals of life meet again at their old school.

Kids Return was the first film from acclaimed Japanese director Takeshi Kitano (Sonatine, Hana-Bi) following his near-fatal motorcycle accident in 1994. Kitano was to undergo a long and painful physical rehabilitation, and Kids Return reflects his struggle in the question at its heart: Which is more difficult, to die or to go on living? Featuring a beautiful music score by Joe Hisaishi (Princess Mononoke, Kiki's Delivery Service, Sonatine), Kids Return is a minimalist masterpiece filled with irony and melancholy.







May 2016 TBD

Takeshi Kitano's A Scene at the Sea (1991) on blu-ray from Third Window Films (UK)



Shigeru is a deaf-mute teenager who works as a garbage collector. When he happens upon a battered surfboard, it plants in him the dream of becoming a surfing champion. He also meets Takako, a young deaf-mute woman who becomes his girlfriend and lends him her constant support during the difficult practice sessions and competitions. Throughout the summer, their profound expression of love transcends their silence.

This lyrical masterpiece from acclaimed Japanese actor and director Takeshi Kitano (Kids Return, Sonatine, Hana-Bi) reminds us that images are often as powerful as words. A heartbreakingly romantic departure from Kitano's usual subject matter of gangs and criminals, A Scene at The Sea also features a beautiful music score by Joe Hisaishi (Princess Mononoke, Kiki's Delivery Service, Sonatine).   







May 30, 2016

Masaki Kobayashi's The Human Condition Trilogy (1959-1961) on blu-ray from Arrow Academy (UK)



The Human Condition Trilogy - Amazon UK

Criterion upgrade in the works?

wilder

Harmony Korine on Alan Clarke, posted by Criterion Forum member Antarctica

Quote
Harmony Korine has cited Alan Clarke as a major influence.

From an interview Korine did with Mike Kelley in 1997

"Korine: You know who I love and who no one really knows about? Alan Clarke, the British director. He's a real influence. He did Scum, Made in Britain, and this film Christine about a girl growing up in council flats with size 14 feet. She walks around with a cookie tin under her arm and hooks her friends up with dope. She'll go into houses and kids will be there with a box of Ritz crackers on the television. You'd have these really long tracking shots of her walking. The film was just sort of about what her days were like. And he used real people or people who seemed right. He did this other film I like, Elephant, which is just 16 separate executions, one after the other. There are all these steadicam shots. You see a hit man walking through a gymnasium, walking up stairs and corridors –

Kelley: Are these first-person POV shots?

Korine: Exactly. And then [the hit man] would shoot the janitor, and he'd fall on a pile of jockstraps. But the intention wasn't comedy. After he died in 1988 of cancer, there was a retrospective of Clarke's work at MOMA. There were only about ten people in the audience. I was watching Elephant, and in the beginning it was a little disturbing. And then I started to find humor in the repetition – watching some Indian carwasher get his hand blown out on a squeegee. I start cracking up, and this British bastard in front of me turns and says, "Don't you know what this represents? This is the IRA, you son of a bitch!" He wanted to kill me. I liked that idea. He thought it was about the IRA, and I thought it was about Ritz crackers."


From Dazed & Confused, 1998

Dazed: How did you come across Alan Clarke, because he's quite obscure in America?

Korine: If someone said to me who is the greatest director or my favorite, I would say Alan Clarke without hesitation. His stories, without ever being derivative, and without ever having a simple ABC narrative are totally organic, precious and amazing. It was nothing but him. In a strange way I don't even like talking about him in the press or to people because he is the last filmmaker or artist that is really sacred. But especially in America no one knows who he is, even in England there is very little attention.


From Sight & Sound Magazine, April 1998 (Posted on Nick Wringly's site)

By the way, Nick, I'm looking forward to exploring your work about Alan Clarke on that site. I just saw Contact the other night and now consider it one of my favorite films. I love how he boiled everything down. The lack of music is powerful. Thanks for this great resource on an amazing director.

wilder

April 18, 2016

José Ramón Larraz's Symptoms (1974) (coming from Mondo Macabro in the US in mid-March) is also coming to blu-ray from BFI in the UK, with the exact same disc specs



Symptoms (1974) - Amazon UK


And more shit stolen from Criterion Forum:


wilder

Created a blu-ray.com collection with all the titles in this thread, divided into the following categories (distribution territories):

-USA
-USA - Noir
-USA - Foreign
-USA - Horror / Exploitation / Trash
-UK
-UK - Foreign
-France
-Germany
-Other

DVD titles are omitted. The first post of this thread has the link.

wilder

April 5, 2016

Kathleen Collins' Losing Ground (1982) from Milestone



A philosophy professor (Seret Scott) prides herself on being liberal but is jealous of her artist husband's (Bill Gunn) gorgeous model (Maritza Rivera).

Losing Ground (1982) - Amazon





Quote from: IMDB user thepixinatorI really liked this film, and its depiction of how people can use their "artistic soul" as an excuse to be just as self-serving as they want to be... The existential crisis as an excuse to be selfish is so spot on.

Quote from: IMDB user Red-125Losing Ground (1982) is one of the few independent films made in the 1980's by a Black woman director. Kathleen Collins was a brilliant, highly talented professor of film. Unfortunately, she directed only this one commercial film, and tragically, she died when she was just 46 years old.

The movie itself was largely ignored, and would have been truly lost except for a fortunate event. Collins' daughter found the negatives, and Milestone has remastered the film for theatrical release.

wilder

New Restoration of Fritz Lang's Destiny Acquired for North American Distribution   
via blu-ray.com

Kino Lorber have acquired the North American distribution rights to director Fritz Lang's film Destiny (1921), starring Lil Dagover, Walter Janssen, and Bernhard Goetzke.

The film, which was recently restored and screened at this year's edition of Berlinale Classics, will have a limited theatrical release in late spring. A home video release is expected at a later time.

Synopsis: When a woman's fiancé disappears, Death gives her three chances to save him from his fate.

Restoration information courtesy of Berlinale Classics:

"The digital restoration of Der müde Tod (Destiny) by the Friedrich Wilhelm Murnau Foundation was made possible with the support of Bertelsmann, and with funds from the digitisation initiative by the Federal Government Commissioner for Culture and the Media, and through the support of the development association "Freunde und Förderer des deutschen Filmerbes e.V." (Friends and Associates of German Film Heritage). The material basis used for the digital restoration of the film is a 35mm black-and-white duplicate negative from the Museum of Modern Art in New York City. Individual shots were taken from a black-and-white copy from the Cinémathèque de Toulouse. The intertitles are reconstructions from the Munich Film Museum, using "blitz titles" from a copy in the Gosfilmofond of Russia in Moscow as the foundation. Missing titles were reconstructed and supplemented with the help of material from the Národní filmový archive, Prague and the Cinémathèque Royale, Brussels. The lost film tints of individual scenes were simulated using contemporary distribution copies from other Decla productions from the same period. The scan and digital image reconstruction in 2K resolution were completed by L'Immagine Ritrovata, Bologna."

wilder

Quote from: wilder on January 21, 2016, 06:53:24 PM
April 12, 2016

Too Late for Tears (1949) on blu-ray from Flicker Alley



Through a fluke circumstance a ruthless woman stumbles across a suitcase filled with $60,000, and she is determined to hold onto it even it if means murder.

Too Late for Tears (1949) - Flicker Alley






Woman on the Run (1950) on blu-ray from Flicker Alley



Frank Johnson flees police after becoming an eyewitness to murder. He is pursued around scenic San Francisco by his wife, a reporter, the police, and... the real murderer.

Woman on the Run (1950) - Flicker Alley

A couple of interviews with film noir historian/preservationist Eddie Muller of The Film Noir Foundation in San Francisco, who helped rescue these films.

One

Two

P.S. pretty much everything put out by Eddie Muller on noir is worth reading/watching/listening to. He's a very laid back, casually conversational guy - easy to learn from and entertaining. Lots of interviews and film introductions by him are up on youtube. Most recently he recorded a short video essay on Gilda for the Criterion edition, and he's recorded many commentary tracks for other films.

P.P.S. The Film Noir Foundation also puts out an in-depth quarterly magazine / e-mag called Noir City - extremely worth reading (the last issue was 112 pages and featured an editorial on Dorothy B. Hughes, author of the novels Ride the Pink Horse and In A Lonely Place were based on) - which can be subscribed to via a $20 donation to the foundation by Paypal.

jenkins

Quote from: wilder on February 16, 2016, 01:09:12 AM

P.S. pretty much everything put out by Eddie Muller on noir is worth reading/watching/listening to. He's a very laid back, casually conversational guy - easy to learn from and entertaining. Lots of interviews and film introductions by him are up on youtube. Most recently he recorded a short video essay on Gilda for the Criterion edition, and he's recorded many commentary tracks for other films.

P.P.S. The Film Noir Foundation also puts out an in-depth quarterly magazine / e-mag called Noir City - extremely worth reading (the last issue was 112 pages and featured an editorial on Dorothy B. Hughes, author of the novels Ride the Pink Horse and In A Lonely Place were based on) - which can be subscribed to via a $20 donation to the foundation by Paypal.

you're a local phenomenon.

maybe i just like how you said Ride the Pink Horse. that's currently a seduction code for my movie tastes.

wilder

March 14, 2016

Philip Ridley's The Reflecting Skin (1990) on blu-ray from Soda Pictures



A young boy tries to cope with rural life circa 1950s and his fantasies become a way to interpret events. After his father tells him stories of vampires, he becomes convinced that the widow up the road is a vampire, and tries to find ways of discouraging his brother from seeing her. He must deal with an abusive mother, a father with a charge of molestation, a band of youths creating havoc, and an unforgiving environment in general.

The Reflecting Skin (1990) - Amazon UK



03


wilder

2016 TBD

The Claude Chabrol Collection on blu-ray from Cohen Media Group

-Betty (1992)



Alone and drunk, Betty, is led to a Paris restaurant by a stranger. Here, she meets an older woman, Laure, with whom she strikes up an instant rapport. The two women seem to have suffered the same lot in their lives. Laure takes Betty back to her hotel and helps to cure the young woman of her depression and alcoholism. Little by little, Betty pieces together her recent history and realizes that perhaps her life is not worth living. The she meets Mario, Laure's lover... Starring Stephane Audran, Jean-Francoise Garreaud and Marie Trintignant. 2K RESTORATION.

-L'Enfer (1994)



Paul (François Cluzet) has just bought a charming waterfront hotel in the heart of France. In debt for the next ten years, he sets to work with his beautiful new wife, Nelly (Emmanuelle Béart). The life of the young couple resembles a dream come true until Paul's suspicions and jealousy get the best of him. His increasing obsession turns into madness that ends in a tragedy. Starring Emmanuelle Béart and Francois Cluzet. 2K RESTORATION.

-The Swindle (1997)



Betty and Victor tour quietly around France in their motor home living safely on part-time swindles...until they become involved in a scam with high stakes and international implications. Chabrol's 50th film is a deft and entertaining thriller. Starring François Cluzet, Isabelle Huppert and Michel Serrault. 2K RESTORATION.









wilder

April 19, 2016

Frank Tashlin's Susan Slept Here (1954) from Warner Archive



Susan Slept Here (1954) - Amazon

Screenwriter Mark Christopher gets a Christmas present that isn't on his Santa list: a 17-year-old delinquent named Susan, deposited in his bachelor pad by a cop pal who doesn't want to see the kid spend Christmas behind bars. Touched by Susan's plight, Mark decides there's only one way to keep her out of juvie: marry her in name only and get an annulment when she comes of age. But after a Vegas elopement, Susan isn't so sure she wants to be the ex-Mrs. Christopher. Dick Powell (in his last film role before devoting himself to a hugely successful TV career) and Debbie Reynolds play the (maybe) mismatched couple in a big-hearted romantic comedy from animator-turned-director Frank Tashlin that makes merry use of its Yuletide setting.   

The blog Tish Tash contains a 12-part biography of Frank Tashlin, spanning his origins as an animator to his turn as a live-action feature director

wilder

May 31, 2016

Federico Fellini's City of Women (1980) on blu-ray from Cohen Media Group



City of Women (1980) - Amazon



wilder

2016 TBD

Michele Soavi's The Sect (1991) aka The Devil's Daughter aka Demons 4 on blu-ray from Shameless (UK) - also coming from Code Red (US) later in the year



Following a 1970s-set prologue, the film takes place in present day Frankfurt, Germany. Miriam Kreisl (Kelly Curtis) is a young schoolteacher who narrowly misses running down with her car an old man carrying a box. Reluctantly, she takes in Moebius Kelly (Herbert Lom), the mysterious old man. What she doesn't know is that their meeting is no accident. Moebius is the elder of a Satanic sect and she has been chosen to give birth to the son of Satan.







03

i forgot about this film. it's very very good.