BFI To Release Chinese Masterpeice Spring In A Small Town On DVD

Regarded as the finest work from the first great era of Chinese filmmaking, Fei Mu’s quiet, piercingly poignant study of adulterous desire and guilt-ridden despair is a remarkable rediscovery, often compared to David Lean’s Brief Encounter. Following its theatrical release last year as part of the BFI’s major season A Century of Chinese Cinema, Spring in a Small Town will be released on DVD by the BFI on 23 February 2014.


China / 1948 / black and white / Mandarin with optional English subtitles / DVD9 / Original aspect ratio 1.33:1 / Dolby Digital 1.0 mono audioAfter eight years of marriage to Liyan – once rich but now a shadow of his former self following a long, ruinous war – Yuwen does little except deliver his daily medication. A surprise visit from Liyan’s friend Zhang re-energises the household, but also stirs up dangerously suppressed longings and resentments.

Focusing on people rather than politics, director Fei Mu’s greatest achievement perfectly captures the dilemma of desire raging against loyalty, and sits alongside both the tender family dramas of Japan’s Yasujiro Ozu and the wonderful post-war humanist realist cinema of René Clément, Satyajit Ray and Vittorio De Sica. It has been acknowledged as a formative influence by Zhang Yimou (House of Flying Daggers), Chen Kaige (Farewell My Concubine), Jia Zhangke (Still Life), and Wong Kar-wai (In the Mood for Love).

Fei Mu’s deft use of locations, dissolves and camera movements makes for a fraught, febrile mood of hesitant passion, entrapment and ennui. Cinematically and psychologically sophisticated, Spring in a Small Town has been restored by the China Film Archive as part of the Digital Restoration Project. It is accompanied here by two rare and fascinating films from the BFI National Archive.



Special features
BFI re-release trailer
A Small Town in China (1933, 9 mins): an intimate portrait of community life in an unidentified Chinese town
This is China (1946, 9 mins): a fascinating compilation of scenes showing diversity and disparity in 1940s China
Illustrated booklet with film notes and credits

Fei Mu's Spring In A Small Town will arrive on DVD from BFI on 23rd February, we are hoping to review  so stay tuned and you can pre-orderSpring in a Small Town (DVD) now.

Sci-fi Short Atropa Pays Homage To Classic Ridley Scott Science Fiction

If you adore Alien, Blade Runner Eli Sasich's Science Fiction short Atropa will be right up your street, paying Homage to classic gritty sci-fi of 1970s & 1980s.

Sasich's beautifully created film tells the tale of a space detective (Anthony Bonavetura) whose sent on a deep space mission to investigate the missing  research vessel Atropa, but what he finds everything is not what it seems.

There's also a big nod to the sci-fi horror Event Horizon here, a fantastically constructed film and for short with impressive CGI. Atropa is another fine example to filmmaker wannabe's that sometimes crating something smaller with plenty of TLC is a smarter move than going the juggular with a full feature. Here's hoping those with the power in film have there eyes on Sasich's fantastic film as it's a film we love to see created into a full feature.

ATROPA -- Sci-fi Short from Eli Sasich on Vimeo.

source: GeekTyrant

BFI To Release Runaways As Fifth Volume Of Their Children’s Film Foundation Series

Saving The World From Total Boredom This July The Aquabats Season 1 on DVD!

Join a new generation of super hero in The Aquabats: Super Show Complete Season One comes to UK this July.

Taking outrageously fun entertainment to the next level for kids and adults alike The Aquabats looks set to take over TV screens with an offering of rock out tracks and hearty laughs. This hit CITV TV show finds itself on DVD for the first time in the UK. Featuring a former ska band and a number of set pieces reminiscent of 90’s cartoons and the Power Rangers, The Aquabats are ready for just about anything.

From the creators of Yo Gabba Gabba! and frontman Christian Jacobs comes the perfect blend of live-action and animation! Follow the amazingly wild comic antics of The Aquabats the galaxy's first group of musical crime-fighting superheroes! MC Bat Commander Crash McLarson Ricky Fitness Eagle Bones Falconhawk and Jimmy the Robot will take you along on their most outrageous adventures to protect space from the creatures and super villains out to destroy it! All 13 Season One episodes can now be found in one deluxe collection sure to banish boredom and make anyone an instant fan of the world's most inept superheroes!



Aquabats hits every note with rockin’ success. A blending of both humour, action, animation and music, the Super Show packs in a dazzling performance to make a stunning debut season enjoyable for both adults and kids. With references to 90’s ska and some truly out of this world creations, Aquabats places itself centre stage ready to become an instant cult classic.

The Aquabats! Super Show Season One Arrives on DVD in UK 22nd July. The Aquabats are Christian Jacobs, Richard Falomir, James Briggs , Ian Fowles, Chad Larson. Pre-Order or Buy The Aquabats Complete Season 1 (CITV) [DVD] now!

J Is For July Release Of The ABCs Of Death In UK on DVD, BluRay

Monster Pictures announced today the full list of extras that will be included on the UK DVD and Blu-ray release of The ABCs of Death.

The ABCs of Death is perhaps the most ambitious anthology film ever conceived with productions spanning fifteen countries and featuring segments directed by over two dozen of the world's leading talents in contemporary genre film, including the directors of House of the Devil, Hobo with a Shotgun, A Serbian Film, Tokyo Gore Police, You’re Next & four British Directors - Ben Wheatley (Sightseers), Simon Rumley (Red, White & Blue), Jake West (Doghouse) & Leeds based Lee Hardcastle, who with his claymation short, won a competition to be the final Director. Inspired by children’s educational books, the motion picture is comprised of twenty-six individual chapters; each helmed by a different director assigned a letter of the alphabet. The directors were then given free rein in choosing a word to create a story involving death. Provocative, shocking, funny and ultimately confrontational, The ABCs of Death is the definitive vision of modern horror diversity.

This alphabetical arsenal of destruction orchestrated by what has been described as "a stunning roll call of some of the most exciting names in horror across the world." is one of the most hotly anticipated releases for 2013, and will be released on DVD & Blu-ray on 22 July 2013.

The DVD & Blu-ray extras are as follows:

- Filmmaker Commentary
- A Is for Apocalypse - Oil Burns Visual Effects
- B Is for Bigfoot - Making of
- C Is for Cycle - Deleted Scenes
- D Is for Dogfight - Making of
- F Is for Fart - Behind the Scenes
- H Is for Hydro-Electric Diffusion – Behind the Scenes, The Making of Bertie the Bulldog & Frau Scheisse and Finished Short vs. Behind the Scenes
- I Is for Ingrown - Making of
- J Is for Jidai-Geki - Behind the Scenes
- P Is for Pressure - Interviews with Writer/Director Simon Rumley and Producer/Director of Photography Milton Cam
- R Is for Removed - Behind the Scenes Photo Gallery
- T Is for Toilet - Behind the Scenes
- V Is for Vagitus - Deleted Scene, Behind the Scenes and Animatics.
- W Is for WTF! - Behind the Scenes, Bonus Flubs! and Star-Beast Outtakes
- Z Is for Zetsumetsu (Extinction) - Behind the Scenes
- AXS TV: A Look at The ABCs of Death
- Do You Know Your ABCs Trailer
- Redband Trailer

- Greenband Trailer


THE SHORTS
Apocalypse by Nacho Vigalondo (TimeCrimes), Spain
Bigfoot by Adrían Garcia Bogliano (Cold Sweat), Mexico
Cycle by Ernesto Díaz Espinoza (Mirageman; Mandrill), Chile
Dogfight by Marcel Sarmiento (Deadgirl), USA
Exterminate by Angela Bettis (Roman), USA
Fart by Noburu Iguchi, (Robo Geisha), Japan
Gravity by Andrew Traucki (The Reef), Australia
Hydro-Electric Diffusion by Thomas Malling (Norwegian Ninja), Norway
Ingrown by Jorge Michel Grau (We Are What We Are), Mexico
Jidai-Geki by Yudai Yamaguchi (Yakuza Weapon), Japan
Klutz by Anders Morgenthaler (Princess), Denmark
Libido by Timo Tjahjanto (Macabre), Indonesia
Miscarriage by Ti West (House of the Devil; The Innkeepers), USA
Nuptials by Banjong Pisathanakun (Shutter), Thailand
Orgasm by Bruno Forzani & Héléne Cattet (Amer), Belgium
Pressure by Simon Rumley (Red, White & Blue), UK
Quack by Adam Wingard (A Horrible Way to Die), USA
Removed by Srdjan Spasojevic (A Serbian Film), Serbia
Speed by Jake West (Doghouse), UK
Toilet by Lee Hardcastle (T is For Toilet), UK
Unearthed by Ben Wheatley (Kill List), UK
Vagitus by Kaare Andrews (Altitude), USA
WTF! by Jon Schnepp (Metalocalypse; The Venture Bros.), USA
XXL by Xavier Gens (Frontiers; Hitman), France
Youngbuck by Jason Eisener (Hobo With A Shotgun), Canada
Zetsumetsu by Yoshihiro Nishimura (Tokyo Gore Police), Japan

Buy The ABCs Of Death:DVD / BLU-RAY

BFI To Release Complete Humphrey Jennings Vol 3 - A Diary for Timothy This July

Widely celebrated as one of Britain’s greatest filmmakers, Humphrey Jennings is a true poet of the cinema, and his work was the inspiration for Danny Boyle’s 2012 Olympic Games Opening Ceremony. Released on 15 July 2013, this is the third and final volume of Dual Format Edition (DVD and Blu-ray) releases that bring together his entire directorial output. It includes the films he made between 1944 and 1951, and charts his transition from wartime to peacetime filmmaking.

Featuring A Diary for Timothy, Jennings’ much-loved collaboration with E M Forster, The Dim Little Island, a muted but affecting celebration of Britishness, and Family Portrait, the esoteric Festival of Britain film, this essential collection confirms Jennings as a master of the cinematic art.

Films
The True Story of Lili Marlene (1944)
The Eighty Days (1944)
Myra Hess (1945)
A Diary for Timothy (1945)
A Defeated People (1946)
The Cumberland Story (1947)
The Dim Little Island (1949)
Family Portrait (1950)

Special Features

• Presented in High Definition and Standard Definition
• V.1. (1944): alternative cut of The Eighty Days
• The Good Life (Graham Wallace, 1951): the film Jennings was working on at his death
• Illustrated booklet with film notes, credits and biographies by John Wyver, Patrick Russell, Kevin Jackson, Scott Anthony and others.

The Complete Humphrey Jennings volume 3: A Diary for Timothy [Blu-ray] [DVD]

BFI To Release Jean Rouch's Chronicle Of A Summer This Month on Dual Play

On 27 May 2013 the BFI releases the hugely influential French documentary Chronicle of a Summer, newly restored, on Blu-ray and DVD (in a Dual Format Edition) for the first time in the UK.

Shot in Paris during the summer of 1960 and released the following year, Chronicle of a Summer is the compelling result of a collaboration between anthropologist filmmaker Jean Rouch and sociologist Edgar Morin.

Jean Rouch (Moi, un noir, Les maîtres fous) and Edgar Morin set out to chronicle the everyday lives of Parisians using a mixture of intimate interviews, debates and observation. Artists, factory workers, office employees, students and others open up to the camera to share their experiences, fears and aspirations. The film became one of the most influential of the sixties, and redefined the documentary form with its use of handheld cameras and observational techniques.

Rouch, whose work inspired the likes of Jean-Luc Godard, Jacques Rivette and Roberto Rossellini, trained his ethnographic lens on the metropolis, recording a series of extraordinary sequences, including a French survivor’s Holocaust testimony, to reveal the political underlying the personal in a society struggling into the post-colonial era.

The film questions the level of reality and truth in documentary filmmaking, and offers a fascinating insight into 1960’s Parisian society.



Special Features:
• Presented in both High Definition and Standard Definition
• Brand new restoration
• Un été + 50 (Florence Daumon, 2011, 75 mins): documentary on the making of Chronicle of a Summer featuring new interviews with the participants including Edgar Morin and Régis Debray
• Jean Rouch at the NFT (1978, 55 mins): audio recording of a lecture delivered by Jean Rouch on Dziga Vertov and Robert Flaherty's influence on his work and that of his peers
• Illustrated booklet with newly commissioned essays by Professor Ginette Vincendeau

Pre-order /Buy: Chronicle of a Summer (DVD + Blu-ray)

John Cassavetes Opening Night To Get BFI UK Home Release This May

The latest release in the BFI’s John Cassavetes Collection, out on 27 May 2013, is the award-winning Opening Night (1977), starring Gena Rowlands, John Cassavetes and Ben Gazarra.

Released on Blu-ray for the first time in the UK, it is presented in a Dual Format Edition (also contains a DVD disc). Numerous extras include an audio commentary, a documentary – Memories of John and Peter Falk (Columbo) talking about John Cassavetes.

Broadway actress Myrtle Gordon (Gena Rowlands) rehearses for her latest play about a woman in denial at the onset of her autumn years. When Myrtle witnesses the accidental death of an adoring young fan, it leads to a crisis of confidence in both her professional and her personal life which threatens to undermine the whole production.

Featuring a startling and compelling performance by Gena Rowlands, which won her the Silver Bear for Best Actress in 1978, Opening Night is arguably one of John Cassavetes’ most self-reflexive works and offers an insightful and intriguing evocation of the theatrical experience from both sides of the proscenium.

Click here to see Peter Falk talking about the director, along with a short clip from the film:

Special Features

• Presented in both High Definition and Standard Definition;
• Audio commentary by Tom Charity, Mike Ferris and Bo Harwood;
• Memories of John (DVD only, 29 mins);
• Falk on Cassavetes: the later years (DVD only, 14 mins);
• Illustrated booklet featuring interviews and essays from Tom Charity, Al Ruban and Peter Bogdanovich

Pre-Order/Buy: Opening Night (DVD & Blu-ray) 1977

The Complete (Existing) Films of Sadao Yamanaka To Get Masters of Cinema DVD Release

Eureka Entertainment have announced the long-awaited follow up to one of the earliest MoC DVD titles — Humanity and Paper Balloons, THE COMPLETE (EXISTING) FILMS OF SADAO YAMANAKA featuring the aforementioned film alongside rare footage of other lost Yamanaka films - overall includes the complete surviving works from this legendary director. The set will be released in a 2-disc DVD edition on 20 May 2013.

The brief but prodigious career of Japanese director Sadao Yamanaka resulted in a catalogue of work characterised by an elegant and unforced visual style, fluid editing, and a beautiful attention to naturalistic performances. Although he made 22 films over a six-year period (before dying of dysentery in a Japanese Imperial Army outpost in Manchuria at the age of 28), only three of them survive, collected here for the first time in the West.

Tange Sazen: The Million Ryô Pot is a gloriously comic adventure yarn as the titular one-eyed, one-armed swordsman becomes embroiled in the hunt for a missing pot that points the way to hidden treasure. In Kôchiyama Sôshun, a subversively humanistic adaptation of a classic kabuki play, a small but invaluable knife stolen from a samurai leads to a chain of an increasingly complex and troublesome set of circumstances. His last film, Humanity and Paper Balloons, is an unsparing ensemble drama set among the lowest rungs of Japanese society in the 18th century.

The Masters of Cinema Series is delighted to present these treasures of world cinema in a long-awaited two-disc DVD set, including rarely-seen fragments of two other lost Yamanaka films.

“Humanity and Paper Balloons is a beautifully shot and well told story” – DVD Times

“There really isn't any questions whether this should be part of your cineaste DVD collection. It is tantamount to being imperative.” – DVD Beaver

“Humanity and Paper Balloons is a fascinating time capsule of a movie that not only reframes the feudal period in which it is set to present a harsh critique of the social and political conditions of the time it was made, but also demonstrates just how tight, coherent, and entertaining films from this period actually were.” – Jasper Sharp, Midnight Eye

SPECIAL TWO-DISC DVD EDITION:
• New digital transfers of all three films
• New English subtitle translations
• Rare fragments of other lost Yamanaka films
• A lengthy booklet, including Yamanaka's will, excerpts from his diaries, essays by Tony Rayns, Shinji Aoyama, Kimitoshi Satô, and more
• More extras to be announced closer to release date

Pre-Order/Buy The Complete (Existing) Films of Sadao Yamanaka: THE COMPLETE (EXISTING) FILMS OF SADAO YAMANAKA (Masters of Cinema) (DVD)

Ti Amo Roma! Woody Allen's To Rome With Love Home Release This February

Press Release:

Experience the allure of the eternal city when Woody Allen’sTO ROME WITH LOVE arrives on DVD February 11 from Sony Pictures Classics and Sony Pictures Home Entertainment. This enchanting romantic comedy, set in Rome, features a star-studded cast including Woody Allen, Alec Baldwin (TV’s “30 Rock”), Academy Award® winner Roberto Benigni (Best Actor, Life is Beautiful, 1999), Academy Award® winner Penelope Cruz (Best Supporting Actress, Vicky Cristina Barcelona,2009), Judy Davis (A Passage to India), Jesse Eisenberg (The Social Network), Greta Gerwig (Damsels in Distress) and Ellen Page (Inception). Alison Pill (TV’s “The Newsroom”) and Allesandra Mastronardi also star in the film.

TO ROME WITH LOVE is told in four independent vignettes about four characters whose adventures change their lives forever: an average Roman wakes up one day to find himself a well-known celebrity; an American architect revisits the streets on which he used to live as a student; a young couple on their honeymoon are pulled into separate romantic encounters; and an American opera director tries to turn a singing mortician into a star.

The DVD comes with the special featurette “Con Amore: A Passion for Rome,” providing a first time glimpse into the secretive world of Woody Allen’s filmmaking process featuring exclusive cast and crew interviews with Alec Baldwin, Penélope Cruz and Greta Gerwig.

The film, which opened the 2012 Los Angeles Film Festival, was written and directed by Allen, produced by Letty Aronson (Midnight in Paris), Stephen Tenenbaum (Midnight in Paris), Faruk Alatan (Pope Joan) and Giampaolo Letta with co-producers Helen Robin (Midnight in Paris) and David Nichols (The Tourist), and    co-executive producer Jack Rollins (Midnight in Paris). 

TO ROME WITH LOVE has a run time of approximately 107 minutes and is rated 12.

Pre-Order/Buy To Rome With Love:DVD / Blu-Ray

Mark Hamill Going AIRBOURNE This July

Hell quite literally breaks loose at 30,000 feet as passengers on board a Trans-Atlantic bound for New York come face-to-face with an ancient evil. But wait we have a Jedi Master on hand so will the terrified passengers be rescued only one way to find out is to watch Mark Hamill's  first stint in front of the camera in many years in Brittish chiller AIRBOURNE.

As a severe storm front rapidly closes in on the UK, all flights out of East Midlands airport are cancelled – all save Atlantic Sky Airways Flight 686, bound for New York. Shortly after take-off, several passengers become concerned when one of their number inexplicably goes missing. Their anxieties are further increased when it becomes apparent that the flight has veered off course and it is revealed that the plane is carrying an interesting item of cargo: a rare and extremely valuable ancient Chinese vase. The assumption is that terrorists are responsible, but nobody on board is showing their hand – for now. With tensions rising amongst the passengers and crew, violence soon breaks out, forcing those behind the deadly plot to expose their identities.

Meanwhile, on the ground, concerned aviation chiefs and the military have together authorised the launch of fighter jets to deal with what they believe could be a deadly hijack situation. But hijacking is soon proved to be the least of anybody’s worries when the owner of the vase recounts a myth surrounding its ancient origins.

In the fine tradition of other high-altitude thrillers such as“Executive Decision”, “Snakes On A Plane”, “Passenger 57”, “Red Eye” and “Con Air” and the winner of the British Lion Award at the 2012 British Independent Film Festival, Airborne is a Twilight Zone-esque thriller with a hint of the supernatural and some amazing production values that, for us, places it leagues ahead of what we’ve come to expect from the usual “gangster flick-centric” British indie genre movies. To top it off, it also features a welcome return to the screen for Mark Hamill who in recent years has almost been reclusive while establishing himself as one of the most in-demand voiceover artists in the business. 

Airbourne will be terrifying British skies when it's released by Chelsea Films on DVD July 30th (new release date). The film also stars  Julian Glover (Games Of Thrones), Gemma Atkinson (Boogie Woogie), Simon Phillips (The Rise And Fall Of A White Collar Hooligan), Alan Ford (Snatch), and Fiona Ryan (The Tudors).

RED DOG Coming To UK DVD/Blu Ray This June

ORIGINAL ‘THE GIRL WITH THE DRAGON TATTOO’ DVD HITS SALES OF 1 MILLION

Jean Du Jardin's LUCKY LUKE Coming TO UK On DVD

The CIA Trained Her and then Betrayed Her. Stephen Soderbergh's HAYWIRE On DVD This May

“Supernatural Tales”, an anthology of 16 horror short films coming to DVD!

Takashi Miike's Crows Zero Finally Coming To the UK This April

MVM Bringing Kenichiro Nishiumi's SAMURAI WARRIOR To UK On DVD

Anchor Bay Bringing URBAN EXPLORERS To UK In March

Bernardo Bertolucci's THE CONFORMIST (Il Conformista) Coming To The UK on DVD & BluRay