Tuesday, July 27, 2010

Le Video New Arrivals Week 30

Clash of the Titans (2010)

Director: Louis Leterrier
Sam Worthington, Liam Neeson, Ralph Fiennes

The 1981 classic CLASH OF THE TITANS gets a star-studded remake with this film from director Louis Leterrier (THE INCREDIBLE HULK). Sam Worthington (TERMINATOR SALVATION) stars as Perseus, the son of Zeus who must defeat his father’s nemesis, Hades, to keep the world from being overtaken by evil. SCHINDLER’S LIST stars Liam Neeson and Ralph Fiennes are once again pitted against one another as Zeus and Hades, respectively. Trailer

Action, Adventure, Drama, Fantasy - DVD and Blu-Ray


Repo Men (2010)

Director: Miguel Sapochnik
Jude Law, Forest Whitaker, Alice Braga

Writers Eric Garcia and Garrett Lerner team with director Miguel Sapochnik to adapt Garcia's novel about a repo man named Remy whose body has been constructed almost entirely of artificial organs. When Remy (Jude Law) fails to keep up on payments for his recent heart transplant, his former partner vows to take back the organ by force if necessary. Meanwhile, Remy finds an unexpected ally in the form of his long-lost wife, Beth (Alice Braga), who has also been retrofitted with numerous artificial organs. Now, despite the fact that they haven't seen each other since Remy joined the army ten years ago, the desperate repo man and his sympathetic wife attempt a daring escape from a man who holds the lives of millions in the palm of his hands. Forest Whitaker and Liev Schreiber co-star. Trailer

Action, Sci-Fi, Thriller - DVD and Blu-Ray


Operation Endgame (2010)

Director: Fouad Mikati
Zach Galifianakis, Emile de Ravin, Maggie Q, Odette Yustman

A dry action-comedy about two teams of government assassins working out of a top-secret underground facility using code names from the Tarot deck. When our hero--The Fool--arrives for his first day at work to find that the boss has been killed under mysterious circumstances, he must find the killer before the whole place blows up. Trailer

Action, Drama, Comedy - DVD


Accidents Happen (2009)

Director: Andrew Lancaster
Geena Davis, Harrison Gilbertson, Harry Cook, Joel Tobeck

There are dysfunctional families . . . and then there are the Conways. After a family tragedy, 15-year-old Billy Conway has become the de facto glue between his bitter mom, distant brother and stoic dad. But when Billy stars to act out, everything changes for him and his family. Trailer

Comedy, Drama - DVD

 Gold: Before Woodstock. Beyond Reality (1972)

Directors: Bill Desloge and Bob Levis
Del Close, Garry Goodrow, Caroline Parr

Uptight killjoy square cop Captain Harold Jinks doesn't approve of the local hippies in an Old West-style rural community romping about naked, so he zealously enforces various strict laws to ban public nudity. It's up to loopy long-haired rebel Hawk to save the townspeople from Jinks' oppressive reign. Trailer -- Comedy - DVD


How to Make an American Quilt (1995)

Director: Jocelyn Moorhouse
Winona Ryder, Anne Bancroft, Ellen Burstyn, Kate Capshaw

Bride-to-be Finn Dodd hears tales of romance and sorrow from her elders as they construct a quilt.

Comedy, Drama, Romance - DVD



Puppet Master (1989) Remastered

Director: David Schmoeller
Paul Le Mat, William Hickey, Irene Miracle

Psychics at a bay hotel meet the puppets Pin Head, Leech Woman, Tunneler, Blade and Jester.

Horror- DVD



The Cremator (1969)

Director: Juraj Herz
Rudolf Hrusinsky, Vlasta Chramostova

Kopfrkingl enjoys his job at a crematorium in Czechoslovakia in the late 1930s. He likes reading the Tibetan book of the dead, and espouses the view that cremation relieves earthly suffering. At a reception, he meets Reineke, with whom he fought for Austria in the first World War. Reineke convinces Kopfrkingl to emphasize his supposedly German heritage, including sending his timid son to the German school. Reineke then suggests that Kopfrkingl's half-Jewish wife is holding back his advancement in his job (Gilbert).

Horror - DVD (replacement)

Skateboard (1978)

Director: George Gage
Allen Garfield, Kathleen Lloyd, Leif Garrett

Love, laughter, good guys, bad guys and America's greatest skateboarders. The movie that defies gravity!

Independent, Drama, Comedy - DVD



World Cinema

 Vincere  (2009)

Director: Marco Bellocchio
Giovanna Mezzogiorno, Corrado Invernizzi, Filippo Timi

The story of Mussolini's secret lover, Ida Dalser, and their son Albino. Trailer

Foreign, Italian, German, Drama, Biography, History - DVD


Secret of the Grain (2007)
La graine et le mulet - aka: Couscous

Director: Abdel Kechiche
Habib Boufares, Hafsia Herzi, Farida Benkhetache

At the port of Sète, Mr. Slimani, a tired 60-year-old, drags himself toward a shipyard job that has become more and more difficult to cope with as the years go by. He is a divorced father who forces himself to stay close to his family despite the schisms and tensions that are easily sparked off and that financial difficulties make even more intense. He is going through a delicate period in his life and, recently, everything seems to make him feel useless: a failure. He wants to escape from it all and set up his own restaurant. However, it appears to be an unreachable dream given his meager, irregular salary that is not anywhere near enough to supply what he needs to realize his ambition. But he can still dream and talk about it with his family in particular. A family that gradually gives its support to this project, which comes to symbolize the means to a better life. Thanks to its ingeniousness and hard work, this dream soon becomes a reality...or almost.... (written by Venice Film Festival). 18 Awards including 4 Cesar for Best Film, Best Director, Best Writing and Best Editing - Trailer

Foreign, France, Drama, Criterion Collection. In French, Arabic & Russian - DVD

                             Eclipse Series 22 - Featuring Director: Sacha Guitry

The Story of a Cheat (1936)
Le roman d'un tricheur

Sacha Guitry, Marguerite Moreno, Pauline Carton

Considered Sacha Guitry’s masterpiece, this fleet, witty picaresque about a gambler and petty thief is a whimsical delight. Guitry himself stars as the “tricheur” looking back fondly on a life of crime, which he narrates with an effervescence matched by his clever editing and cinematography. With its rapid storytelling and inventive use of voice-over, The Story of a Cheat’s style has influenced filmmakers from Orson Welles to François Truffaut.

The Pearls of the Crown (1937)
Les perles de la couronne

Jacqueline Delubac, Arletty, Claude Dauphin, Marcel Dalio

Sacha Guitry plays four roles—including King Francis I and Napoleon—in this multilingual whirlwind of pageantry that investigates the fate of three pearls missing from the royal crown of England. Guitry’s first script written directly for the screen rockets through four centuries of European history with imaginative, winking irreverence.

Desiré (1937)

Arletty, Jacqueline Delubac, Pauline Carton, Saturnin Fabre

Sacha Guitry exchanges his usual top hat for a uniform in Désiré, in which he plays a cavalier valet embroiled in an awkward flirtation with his new employer (played by the actor-director’s real-life wife, Jacqueline Delubac), who is involved with a stuffy politician. A carefree class farce filled with memorable supporting characters, Désiré blurs the line between upstairs and downstairs.

Quadrille (1938)

Gaby Morlay, Jacqueline Delubac, Georges Grey

A sparkling four-way affair overflowing with dialogue that showcases writer-director Sacha Guitry’s wit, Quadrille stars Guitry as a magazine editor whose longtime girlfriend (whom he hopes to make his fiancée) is uncontrollably drawn to a handsome American movie star. Meanwhile, a discerning reporter (Jacqueline Delubac) watches from the sidelines with amusement and provides the final corner of this romantic rectangle.

Foreign, French, Drama, Comedy, Romance, Criterion Collection - DVD


Home (2008)

Director: Ursula Meier
Isabelle Huppert, Olivier Gourmet, Adelaide Leroux

In a quiet stretch of countryside there lies a partially constructed highway.  A few meters from the safety barriers there is an isolated house which is home to a family who have refused to move.  Work on the road is resumed and, once completed, the peace of the area will be lost forever.  How will the family cope with the sudden loss of their country idyll. Trailer

Foreign, French, Drama - DVD

The Tree of Guernica (1975)
L'arbre de Guernica

Director: Fernando Arrabal
Mariangela Melato, Ron Faber, Cosimo Cinieri

The Guernica Tree is Arrabal's most unflinching and personal film - a testimony to the horrors of war, the absurd chaos of life turned upside down and the ache of love. Villa Romero is home to Vandale (Mariangela Melato) a witch, Count Cerralbo (Bento Urago), a powerless land baron, and his four sons. Three of Cerralbo's sons are ruthless sadists who pillage the country side, but the fourth, Goya (Ron Faber), is an artist challenging authority and the church. When Vandale and Goya fall in love they become embroiled in the chaos of war and move ever closer to the doom that awaits in Guernica.

Foreign, French, Italian, Drama, War. In French, English subtitles - DVD


Captain Abu Raed (2007)

Director: Amin Matalqa
Nadim Sawalha, Rana Sultan, Hussein Al-Sous

An aging airport janitor who is mistaken for an airline pilot by a group of poor neighborhood children weaves fantastical stories to offer hope for a sad, and sometimes unchangeable, reality. Won 16 Awards including Sundance Audience Award for World Cinema Dramatic. Trailer

Foreign, Jordanian, Independent, Drama. In Arabic, French and Italian with English subtitles - DVD


Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon (2000)
Wo hu can long

Director: Ang Lee
Yun-Fat Chow, Michelle Yeoh, Ziyi Zhang, Chen Chang

Two warriors in pursuit of a stolen sword and a notorious fugitive are led to an impetuous, physically-skilled, teenage nobleman's daughter, who is at a crossroads in her life. Won 4 Oscars. Trailer


Foreign, Chinese, Taiwan. In Mandarin - Now on Blu-Ray (DVD already in)


IP Man (2008)
Yip Man

Director: Wilson Yip
Donnie Yen, Simon Yam, Siu-Wong Fan

A semi-biographical account of Yip Man, the first martial arts master to teach the Chinese martial art of Wing Chun. Winner of 12 Awards. Trailer

Foreign, Chinese, Hong Kong, Martial Arts - DVD and Blu-Ray

 
The System (1964)
The Girl-Getters

Director: Michael Winner
Oliver Reed, Jane Merrow, Barbara Ferris, Julia Foster

In a seaside village, a group of local young men mingle among the seasonal tourists in search of sexual conquests. Near the end of one summer, the leader of the group, Tinker, a strolling photographer, aims to conquer a fashion model from a well-to-do family, but he finds himself unexpectedly falling in love. The tables thus turned, Tinker begins to see that maybe it's not the tourists who are being used in these sexual games. (George S. Davis)

Foreign, British, Drama - DVD

Documentary

The Art of the Steal (2009)

Director: Don Argott

Born into a working-class family in Philadelphia, Albert C. Barnes was a man who through hard work and determination became a doctor and medical researcher, founding a successful pharmaceutical firm that made him a multimillionaire. As his fortune grew, Barnes developed a taste for art and in time assembled one of the world's most remarkable private collections, featuring original paintings by Van Gogh, Renoir, Picasso, Cézanne, and many other important artists. Barnes relied on his own instincts rather than the advice of experts when he bought paintings, and he had little use for the pretentious attitudes of Philadelphia's art collectors and high society; the animosity between Barnes and the city's art establishment grew to the point that in 1922 he opened the Barnes Foundation, a private gallery where he kept his collection rather than share it with institutions such as the Philadelphia Museum of Art. The Barnes Foundation was open by invitation only, and the doctor preferred to have his collection seen by students and serious art lovers rather than those he felt didn't appreciate the work. Barnes died in 1951, and made strict provisions in his will that his collection was not to be sold, lent to other museums, or removed from the grounds of the Barnes Foundation. Lincoln University, a traditionally African-American college, was appointed to oversee the foundation's collection. But after the death of Barnes' protégée Violette de Mazia in 1988, Lincoln University's trustees took full control of the collection, now estimated to be worth 25 billion dollars, and a number of individuals and organizations inexperienced in the world of art laid hands upon the Barnes archive. THE ART OF THE STEAL is a documentary by Don Argott that explores how greed, political power, and good intentions colluded to violate Albert C. Barnes' wishes and scatter his collection across the globe. THE ART OF THE STEAL was an official selection at the 2009 Toronto International Film Festival.
Trailer

Documentary, Art - DVD

Joan Mitchell: Portrait of an Abstract Painter (1993)

Director: Mario Cajori

A powerful and intimate portrait, JOAN MITCHELL: PORTRAIT OF AN ABSTRACT PAINTER captures Mitchell's independent spirit and testifies eloquently to Mitchell's art. One of the great abstract painters of the 20th century, Mitchell was an active participant of New York's dynamic Abstract Expressionist scene and hung out with fellow painters Franz Kline, Willem de Kooning and Philip Guston, as well as poets Frank O'Hara, James Schuyler and John Ashbery. In the mid-fifties, she moved to Paris, where she was part of a circle of friends that included Pierre Matisse, Samuel Beckett and Alberto Giacometti. This elegantly edited documentary weaves together interviews with the acerbic Mitchell and other leading painters and critics, while letting her stunning pictures dominate the film. Stephen Holden of the New York Times says, 'The canvases have grand chaotic romanticism. While celebrating the physical universe with an ecstatic love of color, they don't shy away from expressing a harsh, feral apprehension of nature and its violence.

Documentary, Art, Independent - DVD

Loos Ornamental (2008)

Director: Heinz Emigholz

One of the pioneers of the European modernism in architecture, Adolf Loos turned against building ornamentation, triggering a controversy in architectural theory. His development of a '"spatial plan" launched a new approach to thinking about building spaces. His houses, furniture, facades, and monuments were constructed between 1899 and 1931 and represent a refreshing approach to modern architecture. Filmmaker Heinz Emigholz chronicles Loos' work in this quirky documentary that features intricately composed still shots of 27 of the architect's buildings in the order of their construction. Another in Emigholz s series on important or unusual architects (Sullivan's Banks; Maillart's Bridges; Schindler's Houses). In German with English subtitles

Foreign, German, Documentary, Art, Architecture - DVD

Chow Down (2010)

CHOW DOWN is the documentary film which exposes America’s number One Killer – Heart Disease. With lighthearted animation, piercing expert interviews and a feisty attitude, CHOW DOWN shows us what and who is behind all of the information that is not helping us in achieving healthy lifestyles. Watch and root for Charles, John, and Garnet as they try to buck the system of pills and procedures and outfox their heart disease and diabetes. Trailer

Documentary, Health - DVD



Civilisation - Complete series (1969) BBC

The greatest of all art history series courtesy of
the BBC - 670 mn


Documentary, British, BBC - DVD (replacement)



Music

Altamont Now (2008)

Director: Joshua Brown
Daniel Louis Rivas, Frankie Shaw


Self-indulgent pirate TV broadcasts. Painfully lame interpersonal arguments. Angsty whining about The Man. The completely unnecessary use of fire arms. Welcome to the Indie Rockalypse. Now. Altamont Now is a biting satire of how the "alternative" youth culture of America lifts its rebellion from the past. Borrowing the form of the Maysles' Gimme Shelter that documented the Rolling Stones' tragic Altamont concert, Altamont Now presents a unique revisioning of 1960s rock-sploitation films.

Comedy, Musical - DVD

All the Way from Michigan Not Mars

Director: Matt Boyd
Sufjan Stevens, Rosie Thomas

Using intimate live performances with fellow songwriters Sufjan Stevens and Denison Witmer as a pathway, All the Way from Michigan Not Mars is a meditative exploration of Rosie Thomas' work as it connects to her as a human being. Often raising more questions than answers, the film is a lyrical examination of Thomas' quest for an expression of truth and her unique brand of performance; combining songs of plaintive melancholy with sharpwitted banter and Sheila, her bizarre stand-up comedian alter ego.Featuring: Rosie Thomas, Sufjan Stevens, Denison Witmer and Sheila Saputo.

Documentary, Music - DVD


Television

Agatha Christie Hour - Set 1 (1982)

In these stories, lesser-known Christie heroes and heroines solve crimes of the heart as well as puzzling cases of larceny and murder. With just the right mix of danger and deception, romance and revenge, innocence and intrigue, these classic adaptations are Christie at her best, now on DVD for the first time. 300 mn

Television, Mystery, Crime, PBS - DVD



Californication - 2nd season (2007)

David Duchovny, Natascha McElhone, Evan Handler

A writer tries to juggle his career, his relationship with his daughter and his ex-girlfriend, as well as his appetite for beautiful women. Won Golden Globe. 

Television, Comedy, Drama - DVD (replacement)


Director: Cyril Coke
Sabina Franklyn, Elizabeth Garvie, Clare Higgins

Jane Austen's witty and romantic novel springs vividly to life! This realistic production truly captures all the nuances of the 18th century life among the English gentry, a society obsessed with profitable marriage contracts. When the wealthy and aloof Mr. Darcy insults Elizabeth Bennet at a dance, the tension and romance of their relationship is sparked, while the family beauty, Jane, attracts the attention of a gentleman presumed to be above her station. Her flirtatious younger sister Lydia lands herself in a steamy scandal that could ruin the reputation and chances of all the Bennet sisters.

Television, British, BBC, Romance, Drama - DVD (replacement)

Family


Missing Lynx (2008)
El lince perdido

Directors: Raul Garcia and Manuel Sicilia

A group of animals look for a way off of an eccentric billionaire's own personal Noah's Ark. Watch as Felix the jinxed Lynx and his crazy collection of comrades learn the value of working together in this unlikely tale of friendship and heroism.Antonio Banderas is one of the movie producers. Won 3 Awards. Trailer

Foreign, Spain, Animation, Family, Comedy - In English - DVD


Batman: Under the Red Hood (2010)
The Special Edition

Director: Brandon Vietti

Batman faces his ultimate challenge as the mysterious Red Hood takes Gotham City by firestorm. Trailer

Animation, Action - DVD

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