Disc Releases We Dig This Week: August 30, 2016 edition

Incredibly exciting releases this week from Criterion, with their double shot of releases from Orson Welles' late period: Chimes at Midnight (1967) and The Immortal Story (1968). Chimes had been previously released on VHS in North America, in poor transfers. Earlier this year the film aired on TCM in a fairly respectable condition. With Criterion at the helm, one suspects this will have never looked better for any home release. The Immortal Story on the other hand I don't think has ever had a home release (at least on this continent). I reviewed the latter film -egad!- five years ago for ESR's tenth anniversary issue. (Perhaps I'll put it up here in the near future.)

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From Criterion's website:
The crowning achievement of Orson Welles’s extraordinary cinematic career, Chimes at Midnight was the culmination of the filmmaker’s lifelong obsession with Shakespeare’s ultimate rapscallion, Sir John Falstaff. Usually a comic supporting figure, Falstaff—the loyal, often soused friend of King Henry IV’s wayward son Prince Hal—here becomes the focus: a robustly funny and ultimately tragic screen antihero played by Welles with looming, lumbering grace. Integrating elements from both Henry IV plays as well as Richard II, Henry V, and The Merry Wives of Windsor, Welles created a gritty and unorthodox Shakespeare film as a lament, he said, “for the death of Merrie England.” Poetic, philosophical, and visceral—with a kinetic centerpiece battle sequence that rivals anything in the director’s body of work—Chimes at Midnight is as monumental as the figure at its heart.

Disc Features:

-New high-definition digital restoration, with uncompressed monaural soundtrack on the Blu-ray

-Audio commentary featuring film scholar James Naremore, author of The Magic World of Orson Welles

-New interview with actor Keith Baxter

-New interview with director Orson Welles’s daughter Beatrice Welles, who appeared in the film at age nine

-New interview with actor and Welles biographer Simon Callow

-New interview with film historian Joseph McBride, author of What Ever Happened to Orson Welles?

-Interview with Welles while at work editing the film, from a 1965 episode of The Merv Griffin Show

-Trailer

-PLUS: An essay by film scholar Michael Anderegg

From Criterion's website:

Orson Welles’s first color film and final completed fictional feature, The Immortal Story is a moving and wistful adaptation of a tale by Isak Dinesen. Welles stars as a wealthy merchant in nineteenth-century Macao, who becomes obsessed with bringing to life an oft-related anecdote about a rich man who gives a poor sailor a small sum of money to impregnate his wife. Also starring an ethereal Jeanne Moreau, this jewel-like film, dreamily shot by Willy Kurant and suffused with the music of Erik Satie, is a brooding, evocative distillation of Welles’s artistic interests—a story about the nature of storytelling and the fine line between illusion and reality.

Disc Features:
-New, restored 4K digital transfer of the English-language version of the film, with uncompressed monaural soundtrack on the Blu-ray
-Alternate French-language version of the film
-Audio commentary from 2005 featuring film scholar Adrian Martin
-Portrait: Orson Welles, a 1968 documentary directed by François Reichenbach and Frédéric Rossif
-New interview with actor Norman Eshley
-Interview from 2004 with cinematographer Willy Kurant
-New interview with Welles scholar François Thomas
-PLUS: An essay by film critic Jonathan Rosenbaum

DVD Releases We Dig This Week (03.19.13)

First, we just wanted to give a nod to a couple of releases that came out on March 12, since we didn't do this column last week. The 1976 drama Ode To Billy Joe, with Robby Benson and Glynnis O'Connor, based on the Bobbie Gentry hit song, is available through Warners. Criterion has also released Fritz Lang's excellent underrated wartime suspense film Ministry of Fear.

This week, Criterion has also released Terence Malick's first film as a director, Badlands (1973), featuring Martin Sheen and Sissy Spacek, based on the Starkweather-Fugate case. They have also re-issued the Powell and Pressburger masterpiece The Life and Death of Colonel Blimp (1943).

Olive Films has a new release this week as well (we're still making our way through their recent boatload of titles): Beyond the Clouds (1995), co-directed by Wim Wenders and Michelangelo Antonioni, starring John Malkovich and Sophie Marceau.

For the midnight movie fans, VCI has released a special edition of the monster movie favourite, Gorgo (1961), which ought to be a great substitute for all those cheap PD versions floating around. Also, Fred Olen Ray's Retromedia (in partnership with Bayview Entertainment) has re-issued the two sets of The Edgar Wallace Collection. If you're a fan of German krimi films from the 1960s, these are must-haves. Volume One features The Mad Executioners (1963) and Fellowship of the Frog (1959); Volume Two presents Curse of the Yellow Snake (1963) and The Phantom of Soho (1964).

More next week!

DVD Releases We Dig This Week (02.26.13)

Wow, we have a boatload of releases to report this week; there should be something new on the shelf for any tastes. Debuting today from the Criterion Collection is the celebrated 1960 documentary, Chronicle of a Summer, by Jean Rouch and Edgar Morin. In light of today's "reality TV" climate, this experimental documentary about real people's reactions to a camera should be even more timely.

And as always, there is a significant pile of DVDs from the ever-surprising Olive Films. We're especially excited because among the new titles is the long overdue DVD release of Robert Altman's moody 1969 film, That Cold Day in the Park. In addition, there is the underrated 1946 Jean Renoir adaptation of Diary of A Chambermaid, starring Paulette Goddard, written by and co-starring her then-husband Burgess Meredith. (The Octave Mirbeau novel was more famously adapted to the screen in 1964 by Luis Bunuel.)

Film noir fans should rejoice that they have also put out Anthony Mann's first noir, the 1944 Strangers in the Night, starring Virginia Grey. Their continued spelunking of the Republic catalogue has resulted in releases of the 1942 John Wayne curio, Lady for a Night, co-starring  Joan Blondell, and the 1949 propaganda picture The Red Menace, directed by R.G. Springsteen, who did many westerns.  For crime fans, there is also the 1963 French film, Monsieur Gangster, starring Lino Ventura.  And lastly, Olive has released the 1957 horror thriller She-Devil, with Mari Blanchard and Albert Dekker! Whew!

Midnight movie fans can also check out the Severin boxed set, The Euro-Sleaze Collection, which features grindhouse delights: The Sister of Ursula, The Sinful Dwarf and Hanna D: The Girl from Vondel Park.  It seems that Fred Olen Ray's Retro Media label is getting back into business. Hot off the recent release of Mark of the Gun is another long-unseen curio. 1967's I, Marquis de Sade is noteworthy for being directed by Richard Hilliard, perhaps best remembered today for his involvement with Del Tenney on The Horror of Party Beach and Curse of the Living Corpse.

This should keep us busy for a while; more next week!

DVD Releases We Dig This Week (10.02.12)

This week features a real (ahem) eclectic bunch of films for DVD release. Wong Kar Wai's visually sumptuous In The Mood For Love is the re-released from the Criterion family, with the usual truckload of extras. 

Classic comedy fans will want to check two boxed sets released by Universal. Don Knotts: Reluctant Hero releases features the comedian in: The Reluctant Astronaut; The Ghost and Mr. Chicken; The Shakiest Gun in the West and The Love God?. I hope this is a step up from the 2004 release that squeezed all four films onto one double-sided disk.

The Bob Hope and Bing Crosby Road To Comedy Collection features four of their classic Road films (Road to Zanzibar; Road to Morocco; Road to Utopia; Road to Singapore). These are definitely worth having-- but four features on one double-sided disk? Oy.

Although it was a flop in its day because far too many fantasy films were released in that summer of 1982, the futuristic action movie Megaforce has since attracted a cult following.  It finally debuts on DVD, thanks to the fine folks at Hen's Tooth. I've never seen this Hal Needham vehicle, featuring Barry Bostwick (Rocky Horror's Brad), but hope to soon!

And finally, a slew of titles from Olive Films. In addition to mining the vaults at Paramount, Olive has recently acquired a long list of movies from Republic. Today, a handful of "Three Mesquiters" westerns, featuring John Wayne (pre-Stagecoach), Ray "Crash Corrigan" and Max Terhune, are released: The Night Riders,  Overland Stage Raiders, Red River Range and Three Texas Steers. Of these, I'm most interested to see Overland Stage Raiders, as it features the legendary Louise Brooks in her final screen role.

ed.

DVD Releases That We Dig This Week (09.25.12)

Brothers and sisters, if there is one DVD release this week that is after our own hearts, it is the set, Weird Noir: Six B-Movies, released from Something Weird.

How obscure are these films? Yours truly has only heard of half of them, and has seen none. All of these B-budgeted films noir harken from the 1950s and early 1960s.

Beverly Garland stars in Stark Fear (1962), who must convince people that her husband is going to kill her; detectives investigate a murder in a burlesque theatre in Girl on the Run (1953) (yup- that sounds like a Something Weird release….); Fallguy (1962) features a teenager who is mixed up in political intrigue and a murder he didn't commit; Jacques Bergerac (The Hypnotic Eye) and Mala Powers (Cyrano de Bergerac) star in Fear No More (1961), about a mentally unbalanced woman accused of murder on a train (and I LOVE train movies….); The Naked Road (1959) is a potboiler about a model who gets involved with a sleazy ad exec and other slovenly characters; and finally, there is The 7th Commandment (1961), directed and co-written by Irv Berwick (Monster of Piedras Blancas), about an amnesiac who is now a reverend, being swindled by an old flame. (I've been curious about this title for years!)

There you have it - a half-dozen little noir quickies that seem perfect for a rainy fall night. Does this mean that Something Weird is finally getting back into releasing factory DVDs? I sure hope so.

But wait! There's more! Today, Criterion also releases actor-director Paul Bartel's hilarious black comedy Eating Raoul (1982), also with his frequent co-star Mary Woronov! As bonuses, the package also features Bartel's early shorts The Secret Cinema (1968) and Naughty Nurses (1969).

All six of the popular Lone Wolf and Cub series of films (from 1972 to 1974) based upon the manga by Kazuo Koike are released in one set by AnimEigo, each featuring Tomisaburo Wakayama as the shogun hero: Sword of Vengeance (1972), Baby Cart at the River Styx (1973), Baby Cart to Hades (1972), Baby Cart in Peril (1972), Baby Cart in the Land of Demons (1973), and finally, White Heaven in Hell (1974).

Also, with ample time before Halloween, Redemption has released Mario Bava's underrated chiller Hatchet For the Honeymoon (1970).

Flicker Alley also has a couple of DVD/Blu-Ray combo packs for the widescreen aficionado this week. This week happens to also be the 60th anniversary of the widescreen process, Cinerama, which changed the scope of movies forever, in order to compete with television. 1952's This is Cinerama introduced movie goers to a whole new movie experience unlike any before. Also, lovers of the big screen process will be thrilled with another combo release: 1958's Windjammer: the Voyage of the Christian Radich. This chronicle of the Norwegian vessel, travelling from Oslo to the Caribbean was the only film to be shot in the Cinemiracle process. Largely unseen since its release, this has been painstakingly restored; and both of these are sure to be collector's items.