Coming DVDs

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Precious Doll
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Post by Precious Doll »

A couple of interesting English friendly releases in France recently.

The Given Word (1962) Winner of the Golden Palm at Cannes and Oscar nominated for Foreign Language Film

Visage (Face) (2009) Tsai Ming-liang's latest work met with much disdain at Cannes last year and then virtually disappeared. It's unlikely to turn up in any English speaking markets so if you are a fan of his work, this is a must buy. It's a two disc edition and I understand that the special features are English friendly as is the film.

Film socialism (2010) Godard's latest work with Navajo English subtitles.




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Post by Okri »

Precious Doll wrote:Coming from Criterion in March

The Times of Harvey Film (1984)
....
Heh.

Also, Blu-rays of Yi Yi and Au Revoir, Les Enfants. So glad I never bought that Yi Yi DVD.
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TWILIGHT TIME, new limited edition DVD label, launches with release of John Huston’s 1970 thriller, The Kremlin Letter

LOS ANGELES, CALIFORNIA (December 14, 2010) — The new DVD specialty label, TWILIGHT TIME, launches an ambitious slate of limited edition classic films with an initial offering of John Huston’s The Kremlin Letter (20th Century Fox, 1970) on January 25th, 2011. In line with TWILIGHT TIME’s innovative limited series concept, just 3000 units of this and following releases will be produced, aimed at the collector/classic film aficionado market. At a retail price point of $19.99, titles will be available exclusively online through [url=http://www.screenarchives.com,]www.screenarchives.com,[/url] the nation’s largest independent distributor of specialty soundtracks.

The January 25th debut of The Kremlin Letter will be followed by a new release on the last Tuesday of each month, with a potential ramp-up to a monthly pair after a six-month trial run. Currently on the schedule: director Richard Fleischer’s cult favorite noir melodrama, Violent Saturday (1955); the aviation thriller, Fate Is the Hunter (1964); the surprisingly down-low Pat Boone musical, April Love (1957); and the legendary The Egyptian (1954), directed by Michael Curtiz, and starring Jean Simmons, Victor Mature, and Gene Tierney.

TWILIGHT TIME is the brainchild of 30-year Warner Bros veteran Brian Jamieson and filmmaker/music restoration specialist Nick Redman. In his long tenure at Warner Home Video, Jamieson initiated and oversaw countless legacy restorations, including the films of Stanley Kubrick, Samuel Fuller’s The Big Red One, and Sam Peckinpah’s The Wild Bunch. Redman, a film historian and Oscar nominee for his 1997 documentary, The Wild Bunch: An Album in Montage, is also a prime mover behind Twentieth Century Fox’s pioneering series of limited edition soundtracks. This program, spearheaded by Fox Music executive Tom Cavanaugh since 1993, has seen the restoration and release of hundreds of classic film scores, earning industry-wide recognition, sturdy consumer support, and high praise from film music fans. The flourishing limited edition model for Fox’s soundtrack releases is the inspiration for TWILIGHT TIME.

“In the 1990s,” Redman says, “Fox was the only studio looking to exploit its deep-catalogue music assets in this way. Under the supervision of Tom Cavanaugh, the program was so successful that now every studio has a limited edition soundtrack program. Now Fox is taking the lead again, by taking that limited edition model to DVD.”

Jamieson adds, “Fox is embracing the opportunity to optimize the film enthusiast’s dream, providing long sought-after collectible and fully restored titles, in their original aspect ratios, through the Twilight Time label, all manufactured to the highest quality available, and at a very affordable price.”

Fox Home Entertainment executive Dave Shaw has green-lighted licensing for an initial 20 titles, with more in the offing as the limited edition approach takes hold. Unlike the notorious movies-on-demand offerings currently on display, each TWILIGHT TIME release will be a DVD (not a DVDr) properly pressed from a restored transfer supervised by Fox’s head of Assets Management, Schawn Belston, another longtime lynchpin of the studio’s catalogue restoration program. Each will be accompanied by a collectible 8-page booklet complete with original essay, stills, and poster art. And—continuing the ongoing Fox tradition of synergy between movies and music—each TWILIGHT TIME DVD will offer, whenever possible, that extra most coveted by cinemusic enthusiasts: an isolated score.

According to Redman, the isolated score “synergizes Fox Music's ongoing CD restoration program with the new limited edition Fox Classics movie series, and it offers an added bonus to DVD buyers—both those who are already film music fans, and those who perhaps will become score aficionados as a result. One of Twentieth Century Fox’s great legacies is its music—and here is a way to bring that rich history to the DVD consumer.”

With its emphasis on films featuring stand-out scores from exemplary composers—Violent Saturday by Hugo Friedhofer, Fate Is the Hunter by Jerry Goldsmith, and The Egyptian by no less than two giants, Bernard Herrmann and Alfred Newman—it’s no wonder that film music specialist Craig Spaulding of Screen Archives wanted to throw his hat into the ring with TWILIGHT TIME. But he’s also a fan of the limited edition model, and sees business potential in expanding it from soundtracks to DVD.

“We’ve been in business since 1975,” Spaulding says, “We’re a Mom-and-Pop business, but when we send out an email blast to our customer base, it goes to 30,000 people. And I can tell you, they collect more DVDs than they do audio. The potential niche for Twilight Time is bigger than the niche for soundtrack releases. And since we’re selling the label exclusively, it’s a no-brainer. The audience will have to come to us to get it.”

TWILIGHT TIME will be focusing its initial efforts on bringing out heretofore unreleased-on-DVD films from the 1950s and 60s: what Redman calls “Fox's Cinemascope period, those gorgeous widescreen entertainments that had it all—beauty, glamour, drama.” But, he adds, “We will also be selectively tackling the earlier years—the 1930s and 40s—and sampling every genre, presenting, hopefully, something for everyone.”

Jamieson notes that “these films are revered by true cineastes and film buffs. They complete the ‘void’ in their collections. This is niche marketing in the true sense of the term: identifying a certain consumer demographic, and then satisfying their needs. Twilight Time will be serving both the collectible drive of film enthusiasts, and, in a larger sense, the cause of cinema literacy.”

A genuine devotion to our cinematic heritage is the heart of the matter for both TWILIGHT TIME founders. “Our label is called Twilight Time,” explains Redman, “because that is what we are facing: the sun setting on the world of physical media. But before all the light ultimately fades over the horizon, we aim to make Fox’s legacy shine as brilliantly as possible for as long as we can.”
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Post by Precious Doll »

Coming from Criterion in March

The Times of Harvey Film (1984)
Topsy-Turvy (1999)
The Mikado (1939)

Coming from Eclipse in March

Five silent films from Mikio Maruse

Flunky, Work Hard (1931)
Every-Night Dreams (1933)
Apart From You (1933)
No Blood Relation (1932)
Street Without End (1934)
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Post by Big Magilla »

Warner Archive has just released remastered editions of Black Fury, Night Must Fall, The Window and Girl of the Night.

The first three are well-known classics. The last one is one of my earliest guilty pleasures, an excellent 1960 film about a call girl, played by Anne Francis, with John Kerr as the pimp she thinks she's in love with, Kay Medford as her boozy madam and Lloyd Nolan as her shrink.

Elizabeth Taylor and Shirley Jones both won Oscars for playing prostitutes that year, and Melina Mercouri was nominated for playing one as well, but none of them were as good as the under-rated Ms. Francis in her best role ever. Kay Medford's performance here is almost as good, much more memorable than the bit role she was nominated for in Funny Girl eight years later in which Ms. Francis had an even more forgettable role.

The film, which is based on a true story, is much more frank and realistic than similarly themed films made within the Production Code era. It should be better known than it is.




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Post by Precious Doll »

Sony MODs for January release:

Assignment: Paris (1952)
Battle of Rogue River (1954)
The Black Dakotas (1954)
The Gun That Won the West (1955)
Jungle Man-Eaters (1954)
The Nevadan (1950)
Paula (1952)
Psyche 59 (1964)
Return to Warbow (1958)
Streets of Ghost Town (1950)
Summer Wishes, Winter Dreams (1973)
The Swordsman (1948)
X, Y and Zee (1972)

**Anyone thinking of buying X, Y and Zee should probably order the region 2 available exclusively from MovieMail which aside from having an excellent transfer is on a pressed DVD and not a DVDR that sony will provide. The title for the English release is Zee & Co.
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Post by Big Magilla »

Hmmm. Could it be Warners is going to reissue some of their more popular archive titles as regular pressed DVDs to test the market?
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Post by anonymous1980 »

Big Magilla wrote:What region are Bhowani Junction and Hot Millions being prepared for? Both were among the original U.S. releases by the Warner Archive program.
It's English U.S. so it's a Region 1 release, I believe.
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Post by Big Magilla »

What region are Bhowani Junction and Hot Millions being prepared for? Both were among the original U.S. releases by the Warner Archive program.
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Post by anonymous1980 »

Another title I forgot to mention:

Bhowani Junction by George Cukor and starring Ava Gardner and Farley Granger. Fascinating look into the lives of Anglo-Indians during the British withdrawal from India.
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Post by Precious Doll »

Some of the titles coming from Fox MOD (DVDRs)

Bad Jim (1990), 92 min.
A cowpoke buys Billy the Kid’s horse and, upon riding it, becomes an incorrigible outlaw himself.

By Love Possessed (1961), 116 min.
Lana Turner and Jason Robards star in a drama of passion and propriety as blue-blooded pillars of a small New England town who must face their defiant son’s (George Hamilton) increasingly rebellious behavior.

Diary Of A Madman (1963), 96 min.
Vincent Price turns in a classic performance as a sculptor, possessed by an evil spirit, who hires a model (Nancy Kovack) to pose for him — then learns thereafter that she has been brutally murdered.

Futureworld (1976), 104 min.
An amusement park of the future caters to any adult fantasy. Lifelike androids carry out your every whim. A fun place, right? Not so, as a reporter and his Girl Friday find out while on a press junket to the newly opened Futureworld…

The Hawaiians (1970), 132 min.
A sea captain’s discovery of water on a plantation leads to planting of pineapples on the island.

Rolling Thunder (1977), 99 min.
A gang of sadistic thugs murder the wife and child of a Vietnam vet, who, along with his war buddy and a woman, track down and kill the murderers.

The Satan Bug (1965), 114 min.
John Sturges directed this sizzling suspenser about a nerve-racking chase to recover flasks of a lethal virus which were stolen from a government lab by a deranged and dangerous scientist, who has decided that now it is his turn “to play God”…

The Spikes Gang (1974), 96 min.
Lee Marvin gives a spellbinding performance as a wounded outlaw who appears as a romantic figure to two impressionable youths (Ron Howard and Gary Grimes). Nursed back to health by the boys, the outlaw enlists them in his robberies…and then callously betrays them.

Still Of The Night (1982), 91 min.
Roy Scheider and Meryl Streep star in a highly charged, Hitchcock- inspired murder mystery set among New York’s chic world of high- rolling antique brokers. Co-stars Jessica Tandy.

Vigilante Force (1976), 89 min.
In this fast-paced adventure, an embittered Vietnam veteran (Kris Kristofferson) is hired by the residents of a small California town, who are weary of the disruption caused by unruly oil workers. The vet brings in other workers who do the job, then take over the town themselves…

The Witches (1968), 100 min.
A film of five separate comedy to drama segments–directed by Visconti, Bolognini, Pasolini, Franco Rossi and de Sica. The international cast includes Clint Eastwood, Annie Girardot and Alberto Sordi, and features Silvana Mangano.
DVD

The 7th Dawn (1964), 123 min.
William Holden fights Communist terrorists hell-bent on winning Malayan “independence” in this action-packed, edge-of-your-seat adventure that also stars Susannah York.

99 River Street (1953), 83 min.
A down-on-his-luck boxer, who is reduced to driving a cab, offers to help a would-be actress who is accused of murdering a stage producer…but finds that he must clear his name as well when his wife’s lifeless body turns up in the back of his cab] Based on a story by George Zuckerman.

Captain Kidd And The Slave Girl (1954), 83 min.
In this energetic swashbuckler, Eva Gabor has been dispatched by villains to seduce Captain Kidd (Anthony Dexter). But love blooms, and she stands by his side as he battles his way across the seven seas.

Crusoe (1989), 95 min.
An exciting and insightful re-telling of the classic legend. This historically faithful drama challenges the morals of the time as Crusoe, now an American slave trader, confronts a “Friday” who is his equal. Renowned cinematographer Caleb Deschanel directs in visually spectacular style.

Flight From Ashiya (1964), 100 min.
A U.S./Japanese co-production. Three rescue pilots (Yul Brynner, George Chakiris, Richard Widmark) must overcome their fears, differences and hatreds as they undertake the dangerous rescue of raft-bound Japanese on storm-tossed seas.

Leo The Last (1970), 103 min.
Marcello Mastroianni plays the last in a line of princes who gradually emerges from his decaying mansion to become involved with and help the people living in his deteriorating London neighborhood.

Big House, U.S.A. (1955), 82 min.
A tough and realistic crime drama unfolds as ruthless convicts (Broderick Crawford, Charles Bronson, Ralph Meeker, Lon Chaney, Jr., and William Talman) execute a successful prison escape to secure $200,000 in hidden ransom money.

Callie & Son (1981), 120 min.
Drama about a poor waitress who becomes the queen of a Texas publishing empire. On the way, she is reunited with her long-lost son.

The Private Files Of J. Edgar Hoover (1977), 112 min.
The story of the late J. Edgar Hoover, who was head of the FBI from 1924-1972. The film follows Hoover from his racket-busting days through his reign under eight U.S. presidents.
"I want cement covering every blade of grass in this nation! Don't we taxpayers have a voice anymore?" Peggy Gravel (Mink Stole) in John Waters' Desperate Living (1977)
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Post by anonymous1980 »

Damien wrote:The clever, delightful Hot Millions was a 1968 nominee for Original Screenplay. It lost to The Producers.
I loved Maggie Smith in this one. I'm so used to seeing her play wise and/or rich, regal characters so it was really funny to see her play a ditz.
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Post by Damien »

The clever, delightful Hot Millions was a 1968 nominee for Original Screenplay. It lost to The Producers.
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Post by Big Magilla »

That's interesting. Hot Millions was one of he first Warner Archive titles released. It had been a regular release in Region 2 before that.

Desk Set, eleven years earlier, was the first film to have computers integral to the plot in a contemporary, realistic setting.
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Post by anonymous1980 »

I'm currently working on a 1968 film called Hot Millions starring Peter Ustinov and Maggie Smith and directed by Eric Till.

Correct me if I'm wrong but I'm guessing this is one of the earliest films to have computers integral to the plot in a contemporary, realistic setting.
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