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1900 and The Conformist |
War and Peace | Sátántangó
| Three Times | Shoah
| Brothers of the Head
| Ghost of Mae Nak
Bertolucci
double on region 1 in December
5 November 2006
Paramount
Home Entertainment over in the US have announced
a December release for two of Italian maestro
Bernardo Bertolucci's most widely known and highly
regarded films. Both are in the way special editions,
although both could prove to fall just short of
being the definitive releases we would hope for.
Released
back in 1976, 1900 is an epic
tale that follows the lives of two boys from very
different backgrounds in the years 1900 to 1945,
against a background of rising fascism and increasing
peasant discontent. Beautifully filmed and featuring
a stella international cast that includes Robert
De Niro, Gérard Depardieu, Dominique Sanda,
Alida Valli, Burt Lancaster and Donald Sutherland,
it's a nonetheless unevenly handled tale that
I primarily remember for Sutherland's almost cartoonishly
evil Nazi (named Atilla, to hammer the point home),
who head-buts a cat to death because it's a 'communist
cat'. It's still a hell of a movie experience,
though, and looks gorgeous.
The
2-disc set will include a 315 minute cut of the
film, which could well be the uncut version already
doing the rounds on European DVDs, though is still
3 minutes short of the 318 minute running time
claimed for the full, uncut print (the 311 minute
running time of the European discs is the result
of PAL speed-up). This could be down to a a couple
of sequences that may still give American censors
the heebie-jeebies. We shall see. What we do know
is that the film will be in anamorphic widescreen
(aspect ratio to be confirmed) and Dolby Digital
2.0 English surround sound (plus optional Dolby
2.0 mono Italian and French), and have the featurettes/documentaries
on the casting, the shooting and the problematic
release of the film.
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Perhaps
even more exciting is the announcement of a Special
Collector's Edition DVD release for Bertolucci's
1970 The Conformist (Il
Conformista), a superb political thriller
who astonishing visual style, courtesy of master
cinematographer Vittorio Storaro, has helped make
this one of the most influential films of the
period. The film is being released here in an
'extended edition', which presumably will restore
the sequence that was cut for the original American
release, but if the rumours are correct still
leaves the film 9 minutes short of the 1995 restored
version. Again, we will have to wait and see on
this one.
An
anamorphic widescreen transfer and optional Italian,
English and French Dolby 2.,0 mono soundtracks
will be backed by three featurettes: The Rise
of the Conformist, Shadow and Light
and Breaking New Grounds.
Both
films are set for a 5th December release, with
1900 priced at $19.99 and The
Conformist at $14.99.
War
and Peace in November
2 November 2006
In
what is looking like a month for long films in
multiple disc sets, Artificial Eye are to release
Sergei Bondarchuk's 1968 epic eight hour adaptation
of Tolstoy's seminal novel War and Peace
(Voyna i mir) as a five-disc
Collector's edition later this month. Interweaving
drama with some of the most breathtaking battle
scenes yet brought to the screen, the film employs
a staggering 120,000 extras and over 35,000 costumes
in what is widely regarded as the defnitive version
of a much-filmed tale and scooped the 1969 Academy
Award for Best Foreign Language Film. Artificial
Eye's DVD set will not only include the full 431
minute cut of the film, but the following extra
features:
2.35:1
anamorphic widescreen transfer;
-
Interviews with the cast and crew, and Mosfilm
Studio President Karen Shakhnazarov;
-
'Making
of featurette;
-
Sergei
Bondarchuk featurette;
-
Leo
Tolstoy featurette;
-
production
design sketches;
-
Historical
background notes;
-
cast
and crew filmographies;
-
Image
gallery.
Reelase
date is set for 20th November 2006 at the RRP
of £49.99. Expect a review in the next couple
of weeks, when we've have time to watch it all!
Sátántangó
in November
2 November 2006
If
you thought Theo Angelopoulos's Trilogy
1 was long at three hours, then Béla
Tarr's study of tha decline of Communism in Eastern
Europe is sure to scare them at seven-and-a-half
hours, and yet talk to those who have actually
seen it and they use terms like "mesmerising"
and "beautiful" and even "masterpiece."
We've not seen it yet, but the three DVDs that
comprise Artificial Eye's upcoming UK release
are sitting there awaiting Slarek's attention,
and he seems to be looking forward to it, despite
what seven-and-a-half hours in a chair will do
to his back at the moment.
For
those of you of similar enthusiasm for this too-little-seen
but enthusiastically acclaimed work, the three-disc
set contains a 4:3 transfer with Dolby 2.0 sound,
and is released on 13th November at the RRP of
£29.99. No extras have been announced, but
you do get 450 minutes of visionary cinema for
your money.
Three
Times in November
2 November 2006
Three-story
films seem to be back in vogue, especially ones
whose title begins with the letter T (Tickets,
Three
Extremes), and to the expanding list
you can now add Taiwanese director Hou Hsiao-Hisen's
Three Times (Zui hao
de shi guang), a trilogy of stories set
in different time periods featuring the same to
actors (Shu Qi from The Transporter,
The Eye 2 and Seoul
Raiders, and Chang Chen from Happy
Together, 2046 and Crouching
Tiger, Hidden Dragon) in
the leads. Three tales of the yearning to love
and be loved and missed chances for both, Hsiao-Hisen's
beutifully observed follow-up to his acclaimed
Café Lumière is
to be released on UK region 2 DVD by Artificial
Eye this month. Included are:
-
Anamorphic
widescreen transfer of the film;
-
Dolby
Digital 5.1 soundtrack;
-
Interview
with director Hou Hsiao-Hisen's;
-
Theatrical
Trailer;
-
Filmographies.
Release
date is November 13th at the RRP of £19.99.
Shoah
in January from Masters of Cinema
31 October 2006
Widely
regarded as the finest cinematic examination of
the Holocaust, Claude Lanzmann's 1985 Shoah
really is the film by which all other that tackle
this difficult but important issue are judged.
Running a challenging but utterly compelling 540
minutes in length, the film features no historical
footage and is made up solely of testimonies of
survivors on both sides, in the process getting
closer to the true experience and horror of what
occured in the Nazi death camps than any dramatic
feature could.
Never
before available on DVD in the UK, the film is
to be release in January 2007 by Eureka's Masters
of Cinema label, who with their upcoming Complete
Buster Keaton Short Film Collection and the
soon to be confirmed (we hope) Three Films by
Mikio Naruse Box Set appear to be moving into
the territory of the multi-disc set. Shoah
is a four-disc collection with new and improved
English subtitles, the only extra announced being
a 180-page (yes, your heard) book.
Price
and exact release date will be confirmed when
we have them.
You
can read more about the release and view a trailer
for the film by clicking here.
Brothers
of the Head in January
27 October 2006
Having
made their name as documentarians, primarily following
director Terry Gilliam's experiences on Twelve
Monkeys with The Hampster Factor
and the complete collapse of his film The
Man Who Shot Don Quixote in the extraordinary
Lost
in la Mancha, teh directing team
of Keith Fulton and Louis Pepe have drawn on their
experience for their first fiction feature, the
docudrama (a drama filmed in the style of a documentary)
Brothers of the Head. The story
of the successful 1970s punk band Bang Bang and
its conjoined twin lead singers Barry and Tom
Howe, the film has met with mixed reviews, but
could well find itself the subject of a minor
cult when it hits DVD, which it is set to do in
the UK in January, courtesy of Tartan Video. The
anamorphic widescreen picture and optional Dolby
2.0, Dolby 5.1 and DTS soundtracks will be backed
up by interviews with directors Keith Fulton and
Louis Pepe and a Making-Of documentary.
Release
date is set for 22 January 2007 at the RRP of
£19.99.
Ghost
of Mae Nak haunts UK DVD in January
27 October 2006
If
you're getting a little weary of the J-Horror
cycle, then Mark Duffield's Ghost of Mae
Nak may just be different enough from
its genre companions to be of interest. Hailing
from Thailand rather than Japan and set in modern
day Bangkok, the film draws on Thai folklore and
harks back to horror films of years past in its
tale of a young couple who awaken an ancient and
angry spirit. Duffiled is reputedly the first
western director to shoot a Thai language film
in Thailand and is also the film's cinematographer
- this is his first film as director after some
years as a director of photography on films such
as Ray Brady's Kiss Kiss Bang Bang
and Love Life and Kaprice Kae's
Butterfly Man.
The
UK DVD release by Tartan Video will have an anamorphic
widescreen picture, Dolby 2.0, Dolby 5.1 and DTS
5.1 soundtracks, an interview with director Mark
Duffield, a commentary (details to be confirmed),
and further extra features, also to be confirmed.
Release
date is set for 29th January 2007 at the RRP of
£19.99.
