Random DVD and Blu-ray announcements

[wilder]

November 15, 2016

Henry Hathaway's The House on 92nd Street (1945) on blu-ray from Kino



Bill Dietrich becomes a double agent for the FBI in a Nazi spy ring.

[wilder]

2016 TBD

Carl Schenkel's Out of Order (1984) on blu-ray from SubKultur Entertainment (Germany), from a new 4K restoration



Gössmann, a bookkeeper who has just robbed his employer of a large sum of money, gets stuck in an elevator of an office tower together with Jörg, his lover Marion and the young Pit. Because it is Friday evening and an engineer working on the elevators in the buidlding has made a mistake, the alarm system is not working and nobody can hear the men calling for help.








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[wilder]

July 4, 2016

Mario Bava's Blood and Black Lace (1964) from Arrow



A shadowy killer in black brutally murders fashion models.

Blood and Black Lace (1964) - Amazon

[wilder]

October 11, 2016

Takeshi Kitano's Violent Cop (1989) on blu-ray from Film Movement



In his directorial debut, and one of his first dramatic roles, writer/director Takeshi 'Beat' Kitano plays Detective Azuma, a hostile cop who's not afraid of using violent means to catch his culprits. When his sister is kidnapped by a sadistic drug lord, Azuma's Dirty Harry-style tactics escalate in his quest for vengeance in this stunningly innovative cops-and-robbers thriller.

Violent Cop (1989) - Amazon

[wilder]

September 2016 TBD

Miklós Jancsó's Private Vices, Public Virtues (1976) from Mondo Macabro

The story is based on the famous Mayerling incident where Crown Prince Rudolf of Austria was found dead beside his 17 year old lover in an apparent joint suicide. However as with his earlier productions, the director only used history as a jumping off point. The film is pure Jancso. The long tracking shots are there, the horses are there, the naked bodies are there, as are the snatches of folk music and group singing.

The main difference between this film and his more acclaimed earlier works is that it features a host of increasingly bizarre sexual incidents. When it screened as an official entry in the 1976 Cannes Festival and viewers caught on to some of the shocking things that it contained ... well, let's just say that it caused a scandal and in some ways Jancso's reputation never recovered. Like Borowczyk before him, he was almost written off as a one time great film maker who had strayed too far into porn and lost his artistic mojo.

In fact PRIVATE VICES PUBLIC VIRTUES now plays like an overlooked masterpiece. There really is nothing like it in world cinema. The controversy long behind us, we can see that this is one of those rare erotic productions where the point of the film lies in its excess. There's nothing gratuitous about it. Known in Germany as THE BIG ORGY (Die Grosse Orgie), this amazing piece of subversive 70s cinema has never been well treated on home video - pirated, cut and generally not given the respect it deserves. This new release from Mondo Macabro, a world Blu-ray exclusive taken from the original negative, will bring this forgotten classic of world cinema back into the spotlight. It's a film that once seen cannot be forgotten, and it deserves a place in the home of all adventurous film lovers.

NSFW

Private Vices, Public Virtues (1976) - Trailer

[wilder]

September 13, 2016

Colin Higgins’ 9 to 5 (1980) on blu-ray from Twilight Time



Three female employees of a sexist, egotistical, lying, hypocritical bigot find a way to turn the tables on him.

Bobby Deerfield (1977) on blu-ray from Twilight Time



Bobby Deerfield, a famous American race car driver on the European circuit, falls in love with the enigmatic Lillian Morelli, who is terminally ill.

October 11, 2016

Martin Scorsese’s Boxcar Bertha (1972) on blu-ray from Twilight Time



During the depression, a union leader and a young woman become criminals to exact revenge on the management of a railroad.

Robert Aldrich’s Hush…Hush Sweet Charlotte (1964) on blu-ray from Twilight Time



An aging, reclusive Southern belle, plagued by a horrifying family secret, descends into madness after the arrival of a lost relative.

Arthur Penn’s The Chase (1966) on blu-ray from Twilight Time



The escape of Bubber Reeves from prison affects the inhabitants of a small Southern town.

[wilder]

July 12, 2016

Miss Sadie Thompson (1953) from Twilight Time



A self-righteous missionary man seeks to save the soul of a former prostitute.

[wilder]

July 4, 2016

Jeff Lieberman's Blue Sunshine (1977) on blu-ray from FilmCentrix in a 3-disc limited edition





A bizarre series of murders begins in Los Angeles, where people start going bald and then become homicidal maniacs. But could the blame rest on a particularly dangerous form of LSD called Blue Sunshine the murderers took ten years before?

Pre-orders are now live on FilmCentrix

[wilder]

September 19, 2016

The Blue Dahlia (1946) on blu-ray from Arrow (UK)



An ex-bomber pilot is suspected of murdering his unfaithful wife.

The Blue Dahlia (1946) - Amazon UK



The Glass Key (1942) from Arrow (UK)



A crooked politician finds himself being accused of murder by a gangster from whom he refused help during a re-election campaign.

The Glass Key (1942) - Amazon UK

[jenkins]

wilder, or general person... probably wilder

what've been the impressive and recent r1 releases? in terms of newly discoverable movies, not counting criterion. i'm currently so outside movies that i was looking at the IV blu-ray, i couldn't find The Witch, and i didn't know what else to do! surely i've missed a movie or two

[wilder]

In terms of newly discoverable, I'm not sure, you're probably aware of most of these. Here are a few recommendations:


-Symptoms (1974) from Mondo Macabro

-Kamikaze '89 (1982), starring Rainer Werner Fassbinder, should be coming to blu-ray from Film Movement by the end of the year. The trailer is awesome:

-Cohen Media Group just released The Films of Maurice Pialat Vol. 1, which includes Loulou (1980), The Mouth Agape (1974), Graduate First (1979), and a feature-length documentary on Pialat from 2007 called ‘Love Exists’. The first set is all four of those films for 30 bucks. Under the Sun of Satan (1987) is also out, and Van Gogh (1991) will be released in July.

-Cohen also just released Fellini’s City of Women (1980)

-Flicker Alley put out Too Late for Tears (1949), a great underseen noir.

-Polanski’s What? (1972) is now out on blu-ray from Severin

-Synapse released a 3-disc limited edition of Dario Argento’s Tenebrae (1982) on blu-ray

And speaking of IV, Candy (1968) is a real trip, and I’m pretty sure PT mentioned it as an influence on Inherent Vice at some point, which makes sense. The sense of humor is equally/similarly insane. Come to think of it the blonde girl in Dr. Blatnoyd's office also looks just like Ewa Aulin.

Oh and I haven't seen it, but Belladonna of Sadness (1973) is coming to blu-ray in July from Cinelicious and seems like something you might like:

[jenkins]

you ~complete me xx.

once got a long e-mail from Cinefamily's head person about Belladonna of Sadness, saying its rerelease was his idea and this is the best thing he's done all year. it played there for longer than a week and was a huge hit with certain people i know, haven't seen it yet, also looking forward to it.

[wilder]

Q1 2017 TBD

Lamberto Bava's Delirium (1987) on blu-ray from 88 Films (UK), also coming to blu-ray from Code Red in the US (eventually)



This spaghetti horror's storyline revolves around a former hooker (Grandi) running a successful men's magazine. An obsessed admirer systematically slaughters her models (occasionally increasing the magazine's output) and supplies the mistress with pictures of their disfigured corpses taken in front of her semi-nude posters visible in the background. Is she going to be the psycho's next victim?


NSFW

[wilder]

December 8, 2016

Bernardo Bertolucci's La Luna (1979) on blu-ray from Kino



While touring in Italy, a recently-widowed American opera singer has an incestuous relationship with her 15-year-old son to help him overcome his heroin addiction. Shot by Vittorio Storaro.

[wilder]

May 23, 2016

Dissent & Disruption: The Complete Alan Clarke at the BBC on blu-ray from BFI (13 discs)



Includes all surviving BBC TV productions directed by Alan Clarke, extensive extra features, a comprehensive book with new essays and full credits, and an exclusive bonus DVD containing the seven surviving Half Hour Story episodes directed by Clarke: Shelter (1967), The Gentleman Caller (1967, previously considered lost), George's Room (1967, previously considered partially lost); Goodnight Albert (1968), Stella (1968), The Fifty Seventh Saturday (1968) and Thief (1968, previously considered lost).

Dissent & Disruption: The Complete Alan Clarke at the BBC - Amazon UK

Read more about Clarke's work in this thread at Criterion Forum

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

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.