Three from Tartan --- A Submarine with your DVD? --- Warner classics --- Revenger's Tragedy --- New Criterion disks --- The Day Today --- Eureka restores F.W. Murnau classics ---

Three from Tartan, including the latest from Tsukamoto [22 Dec 2003]

Despite some early problems with transfer quality, UK independent distributor Tartan have continued to deliver the sort of titles we here at Outsider crave. Having done a fine job on Revenger's Tragedy, they have announce three more goodies for the new year. Most exciting of the bunch for us has to be Rokugatsu no hebi [The Snake of June], the latest work from Japan's most wonderfully insane director, Shinya Tsukamoto, a retrospective of whose work we will be starting in the coming weeks. The 1.33:1 transfer is true to its original aspect ratio - Tsukamoto often works low budget and on 16mm, but the real joy is the inclusion of not just a 5.1 track, but a DTS one too. Considering the extraordinary use of sound and music in all of of the director's films, this is great news, and a first for Tartan, who until recently have been wedded to Dolby 2.0.

Recieving a simultaneous release is Emanuelle Crialese's Respiro, a multi-award winner at Cannes that tells the tale of a free spirited mother of three whose carefree attitude meets with the disapproval of her fellow villagers, and the suggestion from her relatives that psychiatric help may be in order. A beautifully photographed, energetically played delight, the disk also features 5.1 and DTS tracks, with an anamorphic 1.78:1 picture.

Finally we have Sylvain Chomet's splendid animated feature, Les Triplettes de Belleville, which is being released under its UK title of Belleville Rendez-vous. Again with 5.1 and DTS tracks and a 1.78:1 anamorphic transfer, this disk also has a making-of documentary, an interview with the director and art director, an animation lesson, a music video (and a making of on the video), plus a commentary on three scenes. Of course, if you live in the Thanet area of the UK we would urge you to see this at the cinema when we screen it on February 24, that is if you don't catch it on BBC2 on Christmas Day. Ay caramba, did we get stung here.

All three disks are released on 26 january 2004.

A Submarine with your DVD? [19 Dec 2003]

We're all big on-line DVD purchasers here at The Outsider, and Play.com is definitely one of our favourite sites, with great prices and a ton of bargains (though why did you wait for me to pay out almost the full whack for Twin Peaks series 1 before cutting the price to under £18?). Now I don't know if anyone else out there has done any digging in their new-ish Gadgets section, but Rob likes to poke around in the odder parts of any site and he discovered an extraordinary item. Amongst all the £5.99 DVD bargains, they have what they discribe as an "Underwater Sports Car" for the eye-popping price of £469,999. Now a quick survey of our buying habits revealed that the most popular time to buy disks is midnight on Saturday - usually because we're half pissed and poking around to see what's new and you think "Hey, what the hell?" and click on a few titles and worry about the cost the next day. You can see where I'm going with this. Well fear not, the chances of spending half a million quid by accident here are, well, less than remote. There is a 365 day waiting period and a non-refundable deposit of £100,000 is required. Bargain! If you're interested, click here. I'm sure Play would welcome your order!

Warner archives serve up the classics [18 Dec 2003]

Warner have announced that they will be raiding their archives and hurling the results at eager DVD enthusiasts. Key for Vampire movie enthusiasts like myself is Roman Polanski's The Fearless Vampire Killers, which is also known as Dance of the Vampires and sported the Dr. Strangelove-like suffix Pardon Me But My Teeth Are in Your Neck. This too-little-seen and under-appreciated film is a visual and generic delight, but is this the more commonly distributed 108 minute version or the much sought after 124 minute version? We can only hope.... Also representing the vampire genre are a special edition of the cheesy but generically important The Lost Boys and Tony Scott's interesting but ludicrously backlit The Hunger.

Other upcoming releases include George Lucas's fascinating (and decidedly non-commercial) remake of his student work THX-1183, two-disk special editions of Michael Mann's Heat and (oh at last!) Scorsese's Goodfellas, as well as single disk versions of Scorsese's earlier Alice Doesn't Live Here Anymore (great opening, not so sure about the rest of it), his superb nightmare comedy After Hours (which Gregoire Moulin borrowed heavily from) and his energetic early work Who's That Knocking at My Door?

Unspecified works by masters such as Kurosawa, Buñuel, Godard, Cocteau and Melville are promised - more when we know just what. Also unspecified are the promised Hammer movies, though the studio's ahead-of-its-time kung fu/vampire crossover Legend of the Seven Golden Vampires is confirmed. The kung fu theme continues with a two disk special edition of Enter the Dragon, but let's hope this doesn't follow a recent trend of repackaging well-specified single disk special edition disks with the same damned features spread over two disks (Sixth Sense anyone?).

This all kicks off in January with Michael Curtiz and William Keighley's brilliant Adventures of Robin Hood, which looks to be identical to the already available and frankly superb region 1 edition, then in February is followed by Sam Wood's heart-wrenching Goodbye Mr. Chips, Edmund Goulding's extraordinarily dark Grand Hotel (which includes Garbo's immortal "I want to be alone"), William Wyler's multi-Oscar winner Mrs Minver, Frank Lloyd's definitive version of Mutiny on the Bounty, with Charles Laughton and Clark Gable, Robert Z. Leonard's exuberant biopic The Great Ziegfeld, and George Cukor's 1944 quality remake of the thriller Gaslight.

Tartan release Revenger's Tragedy [13 Dec 2003]

Seemingly with little warning, UK indie film distributors Tartan have released Alex Cox's Revenger's Tragedy. For us this is not only Cox's best film since Repo Man, but a hot contender for best British film of the year, no mean feat when you consider it's up against the likes of Morvern Caller, Lawless Heart and In This World. A modern updating of Thomas Middleton's 17th century play to a futurisic, crumbling Liverpool, the film features a terrific central performance from Christopher Eccleston and fine support from Derek Jacobi and - in one of his best roles yet - Eddie Izzard. Not much in the way of extras, it would seem, but an anamorphic 1.77:1 transfer and Dolby 2.0 sound will do fine, and it's in the shops now.

New Criterion disks make it an expensive new year [7 Dec 2003]

US specialist disk company Criterion has built a solid reputation for high quality restorations of classic films, which are often released with excellent extras, but at a price, something that is especially an issue to UK viewers, who run the risk of being clobbered for VAT and import taxes if they do not buy with care. For film fans, though, the risk is worth it - the print quality on both Red Beard and The Hidden Fortress (both Akira Kurosawa) has to be seen to be believed. Their Kurosawa releases continue in January with his wonderfully humanistic story of a faceless office clerk who is transformed in unexpected ways when he discovers that he is dying of cancer. The disk comes complete with a delicious collection of extras, including a 90 minute new documentary, A Message From Kurosawa.

Also released in January is Jean Renoir's masterpiece le Règle du je (The Rules of the Game), which featured highly in a recent BFI poll of film-makers on their favourite films of all time. Again, this comes loaded with extras, including a commentary track by film scholar Alexander Sesonske and film-maker Peter Bogdanovich.

Which, at about £25 a pop made for a pricey January, but Criterion have just announced a further seven disks for February release, all of which are mouth watering. Robert Bresson's 1951 Diary of a Country Priest was a big influence on Paul Schrader and on the development of the character of Travis Bickle in Taxi Driver and comes with a new digital transfer, a commentary by film historian Peter Cowie and 11 minutes of deleted scenes. Barbet Schroeder's 1976 Maitresse was my introduction to a young actor names Gérard Depardieu and if being presented in its uncut form, as I suspect it is, then be ready for the real-life Maitresse footage that had all the males in the cinema crossing their legs and wincing. A new anamorphic transfer is joined by an interview with the director. Ronald Neame's 1960 Tunes of Glory was one of my father's favourite films and a cracking character drama. Interviews support the new anamorphic transfer. Le Corbeau is a too little seen 1943 work from French master Henri-Georges Cluzot, director of Wages of Fear and Les Diaboliques. The new transfer is accompanied by extracts from a documentary featuring the director and an interview with director Bertrand Tavernier. Francesco Rossi's 1961 Who Murdered Salvatore Giuliano? comes loaded with features, including a commentary by Peter Cowie and a 55 minute documentary. Possibly the most well-known of the bunch is Laurence Olivier's 1955 Richard III which comes on a well featured disk that includes a commentary by playwright and director Russell Lees and Governor of the Royal Shakespeare Theatre John Wilders. the prospect of a new anamorphic transfer of this strikingly shot film is exciting enough, but apparently it is to include newly discovered footage from the original theatrical release. But top of my list has to be Pickup on South Street, Sam Fuller's terrific 1953 story of ambitious petty thief Richard Widmark who finds himself a tool of cold war dealings. Widmark's brilliantly drawn, viciously cynical central character is worth the price of the disk alone, but there is the expected new transfer and a very useful collection of extras to back it up.

This is the Neeeews! [7 Dec 2003]

The release of Brass Eye, Jam and My Wrongs Number 8245-8249 And 117 on DVD have been more than welcome, and useful reminders of the very singular talent of Chris Morris. Lest we forget, Morris and his colleagues started out on Radio 4 with On the Hour, which eventually moved onto TV in the shape The Day Today, a brilliantly funny parody of Newsnight-style news and current affairs programmes. With its hilarious mock presenters - who included the wonderfully named Collatallie Sisters and Peter O'Hanraha'hanranhan - and madly over-the-top computer graphics, one of my favourite bits was "Speak Your Brains," which nicely prefigured the celebrity hoodwinking that was to land Brass Eye in such hot water. It also introduced a wider audience to a sports newscaster by the name of Alan Partridge.... Release date 1 March 2004.

Two restored F.W. Murnau classics from Eureka in the new year [6 Dec 2003]

Having delivered a stunning quality special edition re-issue of Fritz Lang's M, UK based Eureka Video have two more early classics from brilliant German director F.W. Murnau (whose Nosferatu remains the grandfather of all vampire movies) lined up for release early in the new year. First up is the result of Murnau's move to the US, the visually and emotionally stunning Sunrise: A Song of Two Humans, the result of being given the sort of artistic freedom that is almost unimaginable now. Given the sort of eye-popping restoration that made M a must-buy, this two-disk set features a commentary by cinematographer John Bailey, a documentary by film historian R. Dixon Smithg, out-takes with optional commentrary, the original screenplay and scenario, with Murnau's own annotations, reconstruction infor, stills and trailer. The disk hits the streets on 26 January.

Arriving on 16 February is Murnau's earlier but equally remarkable 1924 The Last Laugh. Telling the story of a proud hotel doorman whose life is crushed when he is domoted to the role of washroom assistant. Though silent cinema by its very nature was required to communicate visually, Murnau took this a step further by abandoning the traditional technique of intertitles to provide a visual equivalent of dialogue, and with a central performance as terrific as that provided by Emil Jannings and cinematography by the legendary Karl Freund, the film remains a joy to this day. Unlike Sunrise, this is a single disk release, but the picture has once again been digitally remastered, a 5.1 soundtrack, plus a making-of documentary.