La Notte (The Night) Masters Of Cinema Blu-Ray Review (1961)

Rating:
12
BD/DVD Release Date:
23rd September 2013 (UK)
Distributor:
Eureka Video
Director:
Michelangelo Antonioni
Cast:
Jeanne Moreau, Marcello Mastroianni, Monica Vitti
Buy La Notte:
(Blu-ray) / [DVD]

La Notte is a classic slice of Antonioni. It was made in his native Italy before he later came west and made films such as Blow-Up, Zabriskie Point and The Passenger. It was made at the height of the Italian art films of the early with other films such 8 ½, The Leopard and Accattone. These filmmakers were influenced by or either had their start in the Italian neo-realist movement of the 40s and early 50s. The films instead being about social issues become increasing more internalised and dealt with much more existential themes about alienation and men’s role in modern society.

The film is set during the course of one day not unlike Antonioni’s Blow-Up. La Notte is about a upper middle class married couple, the man Giovanni Pontano (Marcello Mastroianni) and his wife Lidia (Jeanne Moreau). Giovanni is a writer and his latest book La stagine (The Season) has been recently published. They film starts with them visiting a friend in hospital who is terminally ill. Lidia is so upset by the state of her friend she leaves early but Giovanni stays on. On his way out he is almost seduced by a crazy young woman but the nurses pull them apart.

During the course of the day the couple head off to the writer’s book launch party. His wife wonders off from the party but they meet up again in their old neighbourhood, they lived there when they were newly wed. They decide to go to a nightclub and later a party. Over the course of the day their marriage and communication is tested to its limits.

The film is noted for its use of landscape that is empty and barren much like the film’s main protagonists. The film’s credits are over an astonishing shot of city of the Milan from a skyscraper as the camera slowing descends. The film is deliberately made so it bores you at times just like how the married couple is bored of each other.

The film boosts 2 outstanding performances from Mastroianni and Moreau who were really at the top of their game. The character Giovanni is too involved in his narcissistic and needs to plan things. Lidia is the opposite she is too involved in the real word cause she just wonders and distracted by things in the sky and so on.

La Notte is well remembered for it’s stunning cinematography by Gianni Di Venanzo who also shoot 8 ½ starring Mastroianni. Gianni shot the majority of Antonioni’s Italian films. La Notte uses lots of high contrast black and white photography especially at the party segment of the film that is simply breaktaking as is the lighting.

The film was a favourite of Stanley Kubrick, Ingmar Bergman and Andrei Tarkovsky. All these filmmakers had a similar detached view or even cold aesthetic so it’s no surprise that they found a kindred spirit in Antonioni even though Bergman did have a real love/hate thing with his films. It’s a fascinating film with gorgeous cinematography, great performances and a perfect blend of a passion, emotion but also emotional coldness.

★★★★1/2

Ian Schultz

Maurice Pialat's Van Gogh To Master Stroke Its Way Into A Masters Of Cinema Release

UK Release Date:
23rd September 2013
Distributor:
Eureka Entertainment
Buy/Pre-Order:
2-Disc DVD or Blu-ray
Eureka Entertainment have announced that they will be releasing VAN GOGH, considered by some to be the greatest film by Maurice Pialat, the legendary French filmmaker, seven of whose previous films have been given Masters of Cinema editions (including L'Enfance-nue and A nos amours). Van Gogh, the epic and powerful bio-pic of the final weeks in the life of Vincent van Gogh, will be released on DVD and Blu-ray on 23 September 2013.

One of the greatest films by one of the finest directors of the second half of the 20th century, Maurice Pialat's Van Gogh represents an ambitious and crowning achievement in its portrayal of the master painter's final weeks of life, almost exactly one-hundred years earlier.

Van Gogh, depicted by the remarkable actor/songwriter-singer Jacques Dutronc (Godard's Sauve qui peut (la vie)), has arrived at Auvers-sur-Oise to come under the care of Dr. Gachet (Gérard Séty) for his nervous agitation. Soon after the arrival of Vincent's brother Théo (Bernard Le Coq) and his wife, plein air portraiture and conviviality give way to the more crepuscular moods of brothels and cabarets, and the painter's anguished existence, tossing between money worries and an impassioned relationship with the doctor's teenage daughter, finally meets its terminal scene.

With its loosely factual and wholly inspired treatment of the last period of Van Gogh's life, Pialat's film applies an impressionist touch to the biographical picture — indeed, the filmmaker was himself an accomplished painter, and the personal resonance of the subject matter results in an epic, major late work. The Masters of Cinema Series is proud to present Maurice Pialat's Van Gogh on Blu-ray for the first time in the UK, and also in a special two-disc DVD edition.

Check out The Van Gogh trailer...


SPECIAL BLU-RAY AND ‘TWO-DISC DVD’ EDITIONS:

• Gorgeous new restoration of the film, appearing in 1080p on the Blu-ray
• New and improved optional English subtitles
• Van Gogh (1965) — a short, early documentary about the painter, by Maurice Pialat
• A 10-minute video interview with Pialat from 1991
• A 50-minute video interview with Pialat from 1992
• Video interviews with actors Jacques Dutronc and Bernard Le Coq; director of photography Emmanuel Machuel; and editor Yann Dedet
• Deleted scenes
• Original theatrical trailer
• 56-PAGE BOOKLET containing a new and exclusive essay by critic Sabrina Marques; Jean-Luc Godard's letter to Pialat after seeing the film, followed by Godard's tribute to Pialat upon the director's passing in 2003; copious newly translated interviews with Maurice Pialat; images of Pialat's canvasses; rare imagery; and more!

Here's some quotes about Van Gogh...

"Pialat is one of the finest living French filmmakers, and Van Gogh, his tenth feature, is arguably one of his best." –Jonathan Rosenbaum, Chicago Reader in 1993

"An extraordinary film....We flatter ourselves that if we were around in 1890, we would have recognized Van Gogh's genius and changed his fate. But we probably wouldn't have – just as we probably don't recognize the Van Goghs among us now. In this sad, brilliant film, Pialat gives us a terrible inkling of why." –Michael Wilmington, Los Angeles Times

We will be hoping to review this closer to the release, so stay tuned. Van Gogh will be released in UK&Ireland on 23rd September on DVD and Blu-Ray.

The Tarnished Angels Masters Of Cinema Blu-Ray Review

Rating: 12
BD Release Date:
26th August 2013 (UK)
Director:
Douglas Sirk
Cast:
Rock Hudson, Dorothy Malone, Robert Stack
Buy:
(Masters of Cinema) (Blu-ray)
The Tarnished Angels is a film based on the novel Pylon by noted American writer William Faulker; who in fact wrote quite a few screenplays. Faulkner considered it the only good adaptation of his work he saw in his lifetime. Legendary director Douglas Sirk noted for his Technicolor drenched melodramas and the films normally starring Rock Hudson directed it.

The Tarnished Angels is about the very strange relationship between Roger Shumann (Robert Stack), his wife LaVerne (Dorothy Malone), Roger’s mechanic Jiggs (Jack Carson) and local reporter Burke Devlin (Rock Hudson). Roger is a disillusioned World War I flying ace that is making appearances as a stunt pilot, which also features his parachuting wife. They also have a kid Jack but it’s never clear that if Roger or Jiggs is the father on of the kid. The gypsy like lifestyle of the Roger, LaVerne and Jiggs intrigues Burke Devlin. He wants to do a newspaper piece on it much to the dismay to his editor.

Burke is dismayed by the treatment of his family and especially his wife LaVerne. He gets increasingly more and more attracted to his neglected wife. The key line is when Burke compares Roger, Jiggs and LaVerne as extra-terrestrials to his editor. They are very alien like and can’t form any meaningful relationship even with the ones they love. The film will end in tragedy in a way only true melodrama can.

The film is a slight departure from Sirk’s normally work due to the very contrasty black and white, which Sirk choose to shoot in to the echo the depression era the film is set. It is also perhaps his most bleak and pessimistic film. The film has the characteristic irony that goes though all of Sirk’s finest films. The Pylon, which Faulkner’s novel took its name and the pilots fly around is very overt symbolism of the characters going nowhere. It is brilliantly crosscut with the son Jack flying in circle during a tragic plane clash.

Rock Hudson gives a great performance, as the journo who falls deeply for LeVerne but knows nothing will happen. Rock is always one of the constantly surprising actors of the golden age of Hollywood for proof see Seconds and Giant. The film is also shoot in glorious black and white CinemaScope.

The Tarnished Angels also came out not that soon off one of his most successful films Written on the Wind that shared the same leads with the exception of Lauren Bacall. The film originally was one of his least successful films. The resurgence of his work since the 1970s with directors such as Rainer Werner Fassbinder, John Waters, Todd Haynes and even Quentin Tarantino praising his brand of melodrama. The film has since being re-evaluated as one of his key works.

★★★★☆

Ian Schultz

Australian cult classic Wake in Fright To Get The Masters of Cinema Release In UK.

Eureka! Entertainment are delighted to announce the theatrical and home video releases of Ted Kotcheff's cult classic Wake in Fright (1971) as part of The Masters of Cinema Series, a fascinating rediscovery of a key work of the "Australian New Wave" and so-called "Ozploitation" movement, which was nominated for the prestigious Palme d'Or at the 1971 Cannes film festival.

Neglected for decades, Wake in Fright was expertly restored in 2009 by Australia's National Film and Sound Archive and hand-selected by legendary film director Martin Scorsese to screen at Cannes once more. Wake in Fright's reputation as a brutally haunting, psychologically gripping one-off has been growing exponentially since, and we are proud to be able to bring this seminal shocker to audiences in the UK and Ireland.

Wake in Fright's theatrical run will be co-ordinated by Eureka! Entertainment with screenings in selected cinemas nationwide in early 2014, following a première at the Film4 FrightFest fantasy and horror film festival in London, August 22–26, 2013.

Blu-ray/DVD releases will follow, in very special editions with a raft of special features to be announced nearer the release date, as part of Eureka! Entertainment's award-winning The Masters of Cinema Series.

Wake in Fright is based on the 1961 novel by Kenneth Cook and stars Gary Bond and Donald Pleasance. It was first released under the title Outback, describing the film's arid, sweltering, wasteland setting of Bundanyabba ("The Yabba"), an earthy mining town where schoolteacher John Grant (Gary Bond) descends into a living hell when he is stranded on his way to meet his girlfriend in Sydney. Struggling to escape a men-gone-wild nihilistic world of binge drinking, habitual gambling, and senseless violence, Grant plunges headlong towards his own destruction, joined for the ride by alcoholic doctor "Doc" Tydon (masterfully played by Donald Pleasance).

Ron Benson, head of Eureka! Entertainment, comments: “This once-feared-lost Australian cult classic is a hugely welcome rediscovery, a film that is at once both grimly horrific and frightfully compelling.”


"Have a drink, mate? Have a fight, mate? Have a taste of dust and sweat, mate? There's nothing else out here."

Eureka Entertainment Announce Their August/September Line Up

Releases from Fellini, Sirk, Antonioni, Pialat and Antonio Campos are set to join the Masters of Cinema Series as Eureka Entertainment announce their release schedule for August and September 2013

Eureka Entertainment have announced via their twitter feeds (@eurekavideo & @mastersofcinema) the forthcoming releases in The Masters of Cinema series for the months of August and September 2013.

From classic Hollywood to the finest in French and Italian art cinema as well as a brand new film by an emerging auteur, The Masters of Cinema Series is as eclectic as ever in its August and September 2013 line-up – a 6-film slate that includes directors Douglas Sirk, Federico Fellini, Michelangelo Antonioni, Maurice Pialat, and Antonio Campos.

Producer of the Masters of Cinema Series, Andrew Utterson stated “In August, we welcome director Antonio Campos into the series for the first time with his remarkably assured second feature Simon Killer alongside worldwide Blu-ray premières of Douglas Sirk's The Tarnished Angels and Michelangelo Antonioni's La notte [The Night].More cinematic treats follow in September with Maurice Pialat's study of the great artist Van Gogh, the worldwide Blu-ray première of Federico Fellini's early masterpiece Il bidone, and the worldwide Blu-ray première of Douglas Sirk's penultimate Hollywood feature A Time to Love and a Time to Die. “

Managing Director of Eureka Entertainment Ron Benson added “Across six standout films, world and UK premières abound, with new restorations aplenty, as we continue our quest to release the very finest in world cinema, using the very best available materials, and all with a meticulous attention to detail and design.”

Jacques Rivette's Rarely Seen Le Pont Du Nord Getting A Masters Of Cinema Release

Buy :BLU-RAY / DVD
Le Pont Du Nord, the rarely seen, and long-requested key film by one of the world's greatest filmmakers Jacques Rivette, will be released as part of Eureka Entertainment’s Masters Of Cinema Series on Blu-ray and DVD on 29 July 2013.

Eureka Entertainment have announced that they will be releasing the first-ever Blu-ray and DVD editions in the world of Le Pont Du Nord, from the great French New Wave director Jacques Rivette, the creator of such sprawling and legendary works as Out 1, Céline and Julie Go Boating, La Belle noiseuse, and Va savoir. Rarely seen, and long-requested key film by one of the world's greatest filmmakers, the film stars Rivette's staple actress Bulle Ogier and her then-21-year-old daughter, Pascale Ogier. Released as part of the Masters of Cinema Series, these editions will Include a lengthy booklet containing new and vintage writing by Arthur Mas, Andy Rector, Serge Daney, and Caroline Champetier; writing from the original press-book by Jacques Rivette, and Jean Narboni; rare archival imagery; and more. Le Pont Du Nord will be released on DVD and Blu-ray as part of the Masters of Cinema series on 29 July 2013.

“It seems more obvious than ever how much Rivette has influenced a subsequent generation of filmmaker - Spike Jonze, Charlie Kaufman, Michel Gondry - and expanded our sense of the possible.” – Village Voice

The culmination of New Wave master Jacques Rivette's legendary middle period (which ranged from L'Amour fou through Out 1, Céline and Julie Go Boating, Duelle, Noroît, and Merry-Go-Round), Le Pont du Nord envisions Paris as a sprawling game-board marked off with tucked-away conspiracies, where imagination and paranoia intermingle; where the hinted-at stakes are sanity, life, and death.

Regular Rivette actress Bulle Ogier stars as Marie, a claustrophobic ex-con who, shortly after wandering into Paris, encounters the wild and potentially troubled young woman Baptiste (Pascale Ogier, Bulle's actual 22-year-old daughter). Baptiste, a knife-wielding, self-proclaimed kung-fu expert with a drive to slash the eyes from faces in adverts (including, in one instance, those on a placard for Akira Kurosawa's Kagemusha), accompanies Marie on her quest to solve the mystery behind the contents of her former lover's (Pierre Clémenti's) suitcase: an amalgam of clippings, patterns, and maps of Paris that points to a vastly unsettling labyrinth replete with signs and intimations whose menacing endgame remains all too unclear.

Gorgeously shot by the master cinematographer William Lubtchansky, Le Pont du Nord is a freewheeling, powerful experience whose hypnotic rhythm and ominous undercurrents resolve into a frightening and exhilarating portrait of post-revolutionary, early-'80s Paris – and in turn form a prime example of Rivette's uncanny, occult cinema. The Masters of Cinema Series is proud to present Jacques Rivette's rare and essential feature Le Pont du Nord on Blu-ray and DVD for the first time anywhere in the world.

Here's a preview clip from Le Pont Du Nord


Special Features DVD And Blu-Ray:
• Gorgeous new 1080p presentation (on the Blu-ray) of the film in its original 1.37:1 aspect ratio
• Optional English subtitles
• A lengthy booklet with writing about the film by Arthur Mas, Andy Rector, Serge Daney, and Caroline Champetier; writing from the original press-book by Jacques Rivette, and Jean Narboni; rare archival imagery; and more
• More details to be announced soon!

Kaneto Shindô's The Naked Island To Be Released On Blu-Ray Part Of Masters Of Cinema Series

The Naked Island, the breakthrough film by Kaneto Shindô, director of such classics as Onibaba and Kuroneko, will be released as part of Eureka Entertainment’s MASTERS OF CINEMA Series on Blu-ray on 17 June 2013.

Eureka Entertainment have announced that they will be releasing an updated 1080p edition of The Naked Island, the breakthrough film by Kaneto Shindô, director of such classics as Onibaba and Kuroneko. The brand new blu-ray edition of this classic of '60s Japanese cinema, and Moscow International Film Festival winner of the Grand Prix will include copious special features including a full-length audio commentary by the director Shindô and composer Hikaru Hayashi, an exclusive video introduction by Alex Cox, and a 24-PAGE BOOKLET with an essay by Acquarello and Joan Mellen's interview with the director. The Naked Island will be released on blu-ray as part of the Masters of Cinema Series on 17 June 2013.

Filmed on the virtually deserted Setonaikai archipelago in south-west Japan, The Naked Island [Hadaka no shima] was made — in the words of its director — "as a 'cinematic poem' to try and capture the life of human beings struggling like ants against the forces of nature". Kaneto Shindô (Onibaba, Kuroneko) made the film with his own production company, Kindaï Eiga Kyôkai, who were facing financial ruin at the time. Using one-tenth of the average budget, Shindô took one last impassioned risk to make this film. With his small crew, they relocated to an inn on the island of Mihari where, for two months in early 1960, they would make what they considered to be their last film.

The Naked Island tells the story of a small family unit and their subsistence as the only inhabitants of an arid, sun-baked island. Daily chores, captured as a series of cyclical events, result in a hypnotising, moving, and beautiful film harkening back to the silent era. With hardly any dialogue, Shindô combines the stark 'Scope cinematography of Kiyoshi Kuroda with the memorable score of his constant collaborator Hikaru Hayashi, to make a unique cinematic document.

Shindô, who had worked with both Kenji Mizoguchi and Kon Ichikawa, shot to international fame in 1952 with the astounding Children of Hiroshima. Eight years later, the BAFTA-nominated The Naked Island won the Grand Prix at the Moscow International Film Festival (where Luchino Visconti was a jury member). It is now considered to be one of Shindô’s major works, and its success saved his film company from bankruptcy. The Masters of Cinema Series is proud to release The Naked Island for the first time on Blu-ray in the UK.

SPECIAL FEATURES

- Newly restored 1080p transfer, in its 2.35:1 original aspect ratio

- Full-length audio commentary by director Kaneto Shindô and composer Hikaru Hayashi

- Video introduction by Alex Cox

- Optional English subtitles

- 24-page booklet with an essay by Acquarello, and a reprint of Joan Mellen’s interview with Shindô from Voices from the Japanese Cinema

Pre-order/Buy: NAKED ISLAND, The (Masters of Cinema) (BLU-RAY)

Silent Film Great F.W. Murnau's TABU The Latest Edition To Masters Of Cinema

Tabu: A Story of The South Seas , considered one of the greatest films of the silent era, will be released as part of Eureka Entertainment’s MASTERS OF CINEMA series on Blu-ray and DVD on 17 June 2013.

Eureka Entertainment have announced that they will be releasing Tabu: A Story of The South Seas, the final film by one of the greatest of all filmmakers, F. W. Murnau (Nosferatu, Sunrise). In an updated edition of one of the great classics in the Masters of Cinema series, the film will be appearing for the first time ever in its proper 1.19:1 original aspect ratio on both the Blu-ray and DVD, and in an HD 1080p transfer on the Blu-ray. Featuring copious special features including a 15-minute making-of documentary, a full-length audio commentary track on the feature, newly presented outtakes from the original shoot of the film, and a 56-page booklet with original writing by the principals, essays, rare imagery, and more. Tabu: A Story of The South Seas will be released on DVD & Blu-ray as part of the Masters of Cinema series on 17 June 2013.

“a touching and poetic story of ill-starred love” – The Guardian

In 1929, F. W. Murnau (Nosferatu, Faust, Sunrise), one of the greatest of all film directors, invited leading documentarist Robert Flaherty (Nanook of the North, Man of Aran) to collaborate on a film to be be shot on location in Tahiti, a Polynesian idyll in which Murnau imagined a cast of island actors would provide a new form of authentic drama and offer rare insight into their “primitive” culture. The result of their collaboration was Tabu, a film that depicts the details of indigenous island life to tell a mythical tale that is rich in the universal themes of desire and loss.

Subtitled "A Story of the South Seas", Tabu concerns a Tahitian fisherman (played by an islander, Matahi) and his love for a young woman (played by fellow islander Reri, who went on to star on Broadway) whose body has been consecrated to the gods, rendering her tabu as far as mortal men are concerned. The lovers flee their island and its restrictive traditions, but will their love prevail in the "civilised" world?

This Oscar-winning film (the Academy Award went to cinematographer Floyd Crosby) is both poetic and simple in tone. The Masters of Cinema Series is proud to present – completely unc­ensored and fully restored – this landmark film of rare exoticism and magical beauty, described by critic Lotte Eisner in 1931 as "the apogee of the art of the silent film", for the first time ever on Blu-ray in its original aspect ratio.

SPECIAL BLU-RAY AND DVD EDITIONS

• New 1080p HD transfer on the Blu-ray of the Murnau-Stiftung / Luciano Berriatúa 75th anniversary restoration of the pre-Paramount, longer Murnau-approved version of the film, with uncensored scenes and titlecards, appearing in its original 1.19:1 aspect ratio for the first time

• Full-length commentary track by R. Dixon Smith and Brad Stevens.

• 15-minute German documentary about Tabu by Luciano Berriatúa.

• Newly presented outtakes from the original shoot of the film

• Treibjagd in der Südsee (1940) - an archival short film

• 56-PAGE BOOKLET with articles by Scott Eyman, Richard Griffiths, and David Flaherty; an interview with the film’s cinematographer Floyd Crosby; and the original story treatments written by Murnau and Flaherty for Tabu and its aborted predecessor Turia.

Pre-order/Buy Tabu-A Story of The South Seas:DVD

Eureka Entertainment acquire Sundance-winner Computer Chess

The groundbreaking, Alfred P. Sloan Prize-winning, and fiercely independent “artificially intelligent” comedy from Andrew Bujalski (Funny Ha Ha, Mutual Appreciation, Beeswax),Computer Chess which continues to collect raves on the festival circuit, is slated for a national UK theatrical release from Eureka! Entertainment and a home-video release as part of Eureka!’s The Masters of Cinema Series.

Eureka! Entertainment are thrilled to announce that they have acquired all UK/Eire rights to Andrew Bujalski’s Computer Chess, which had its debut in January at the Sundance Film Festival. Computer Chess is the fourth feature film from the brilliant and maverick American filmmaker Andrew Bujalski, whose previous works include Funny Ha Ha (the early ‘00s film that arguably kicked-off the so-called “mumblecore” movement of American independent cinema), Mutual Appreciation (an acclaimed comic portrait of love and longing in the milieu of the Brooklyn indie music scene), and Beeswax (which among its principals starred Alex Karpovsky, the indie filmmaker and actor who has gone on to great renown for his role in Lena Dunham’s cultural-phenomenon and hit TV series Girls).

Prior to final completion of Computer Chess, Bujalski was awarded a Tribeca Film Institute Sloan grant in 2012. Directly following Bujalski’s newest and long-anticipated film’s Sundance premiere, Computer Chess was given the prestigious Alfred P. Sloan Award, which honours a film based around the theme of science and/or technology. The film went on to have its International Premiere at the latest Berlin Film Festival, and will be presented as part of the distinguished BAMcinémafest this June in Brooklyn for its New York premiere, before moving on to a major UK festival debut in anticipation of a UK theatrical run coordinated by Eureka! Entertainment in late autumn, and an early-2014 Blu-ray and DVD release as part of the highly esteemed and awarded-winning Masters of Cinema Series.

A boldly intelligent ensemble comedy with a feel and atmosphere that surpass easy comparison, Computer Chess takes place in the early-1980s over the course of a weekend conference where a group of obsessive software programmers have convened to pit their latest refinements in machine-chess and the still-developing field of artificial intelligence (AI) against an assembly of human chess masters. Computer Chess is a portrait not only of the crazy and surreal relationships that come to pass between the abundance of characters who participate in the weekend event (and among whose ranks include Wiley Wiggins, the revered indie-game developer and star of Richard Linklater’s classic Dazed and Confused), but of the very era of early computing itself – and of the first, rudimentary video games – and (if that weren’t enough) of the hopes and insecurities that persisted through the film’s “retro” digital age into the present-day — that semi-virtual, hyper-social, maybe-kind-of-dehumanised landscape that, let’s face it, is our very own 2013. If that still weren’t enough: it’s also one of the wittiest, most shift-and-cringe-in-your-seat, and entirely LOL-hilarious movies of recent times.

“The UK has been great to me and my films in the past,” states Computer Chess director Andrew Bujalski, “and I couldn’t be more delighted to be bringing Computer Chess there with the (intimidatingly named!) Masters of Cinema Series. I hope that means that THEY’VE mastered cinema — I’m still, uh, working on that... And my education certainly wouldn’t be complete if I didn’t try to make at least one bizarre, left-field, mindbender movie — Computer Chess is that. I’m eager to get it to British audiences.”

Ron Benson, Managing Director of Eureka! Entertainment, comments: “Computer Chess is an audacious, poignant, and entertaining movie. It’s a rare film indeed that has the capability of appealing not only to general audiences, but to hardcore film buffs, to video-game enthusiasts, to chess mavens, to science lovers, to folk who are mesmerised by ‘retro’ design in all its forms — and to anyone who’s interested in how we collectively made our way from that earliest 1980s ‘digital era’ all the way up to the period of the iPhone and of the iPad. Audiences who took interest in the smash-hit retro-gaming documentary The King of Kong — not to mention anyone who has a warm place in their heart for Robert Altman’s classic ensemble film Nashville — will fall head-over-heels with Andrew Bujalski’s Computer Chess.”

Craig Keller, producer of The Masters of Cinema Series, remarks: “It’s an immense pleasure to be able to include Andrew Bujalski’s Computer Chess in The Masters of Cinema Series. With the astonishing series of films that Bujalski has directed over the last several years, this director has made his mark as one of the most consistently thrilling, most intelligent filmmakers in American cinema — okay, let’s just say world cinema taken as a whole, never mind as an ‘indie filmmaker’ or otherwise. Seeing Bujalski’s debut feature Funny Ha Ha was literally a life-changing experience for me, and he has not only consistently ‘delivered’ with each subsequent film but, from Mutual Appreciation to Beeswax, has exceeded, and checkmated, expectations. His work should be, and indeed of late has been, an inspiration to an entire generation of young filmmakers; it’s a body of work that sets the bar very high indeed for anyone, in any country, to aspire toward. Computer Chess, with its radical retro video aesthetic and wry rumination on digitality and where-we-are-today, marks another breakthrough. It’s an awesome film that’s sure to attain cult status and expose his vision to an even wider audience. It’s even farther-reaching, more ambitious, than everything he’s done before. And so I would have to say, simply and without hyperbole, that this is one of the most exciting releases we’ve had the honour of releasing.”

The Masters of Cinema Series producer Craig Keller and Eureka! Entertainment’s Managing Director Ron Benson negotiated the deal for the film with Andrew Herwitz, head of The Film Sales Company on behalf of the producers.

Computer Chess stars Patrick Riester, Myles Paige, James Curry, Robin Schwartz, Gerald Peary, and Wiley Wiggins. The film was produced by Houston King and Alex Lipschultz, and was directed by Andrew Bujalski.

check out the trailer...

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)

Clouzot's The Murderer Lives At Number 21 (L'assassin habite... au 21) To Get Masters Of Cinema Treatment

Eureka Entertainment have announced that they will be releasing the long-awaited release of Henri-Georges Clouzot's (Les diaboliques, The Wages of Fear) debut film THE MURDERER LIVES AT 21 [L'ASSASSIN HABITE AU 21]. The film is a brilliant hybrid of crime thriller and comedy, and will be released in a breathtaking high-definition restoration by Gaumont in a Blu-ray & DVD edition on 20 May 2013.

One of the most revered names in world cinema, Henri-Georges Clouzot, made a remarkably self-assured debut in 1942 with the deliciously droll thriller The Murderer Lives at 21 [L'Assassin habite au 21].

A thief and killer stalks the streets of Paris, leaving a calling card from "Monsieur Durand" at the scene of each crime. But after a cache of these macabre identifications is discovered by a burglar in the boarding house at 21 Avenue Junot, Inspector Wenceslas Vorobechik (Pierre Fresnay) takes lodging at the infamous address in an undercover bid to solve the crime, with help from his struggling-actress girlfriend Mila (Suzy Delair).

Featuring audacious directorial touches, brilliant performances, and a daring tone that runs the gamut from light comedy to sinister noir, as well as a subtle portrait of tensions under Nazi occupation, this overlooked gem from the golden age of French cinema is presented in a beautiful new high-definition restoration.

“good fun for whodunit fans” – The New York Times

“clever cocktail of humour and drama” - Le Miroir de l'Ecran

SPECIAL BLU-RAY AND DVD EDITIONS:

• Gorgeous new Gaumont restoration of the film in its original aspect ratio, presented in 1080p HD on the Blu-ray
• New and improved English subtitles
• A fully-illustrated booklet, including the words of Henri-Georges Clouzot and rare imagery

Pre-Order/Buy The Murder Lives At Number 21 (L'assassin habite... au 21): DVD / Blu-ray

The Cousins (Les Cousins) Blu-Ray Review (Masters Of Cinema)

Making its way to the cinema screens of Paris only a month after Le Beau Serge, Claude Chabrol’s Les Cousins, still preceding François Truffaut’s The Four Hundred Blows by three months, became the first box-office success of the nouvelle vague. Featuring the previous film’s starring pair of Jean-Claude Brialy and Gérard Blain, the film went on to win the Golden Bear at the 1959 Berlin Film Festival.

With the film’s script written around the same time as that of his feature debut, Les Cousins mirrors Le Beau Serge’s story. But, whereas Le Beau Serge revolved around a Parisian student’s return to the village he grew up in, Chabrol’s second feature tells the story of a student from the country who goes to stay with his cousin in Paris.

Not content with mirroring the previous film’s story, Chabrol also reverses his leading actors’ roles: Brialy now takes on the bad-guy role with his portrayal of a decadent bohemian type student while Blain becomes the good-guy with his role as the hesitant provincial type thrust into life in the big city.

In a similar way to Le Beau Serge, Les Cousins tackles those assumptions and judgements held between social classes. It is also similar to Le Beau Serge in the way it contrasts the central characters, with Les Cousins seeing the sophisticated Parisian able to cruise through life with ease while the unfortunate provincial student works hard to no avail. By the films end, the conflicting fortunes of the cousins as become tragic and a dangerous slide ensues with cruel and harsh results.

Not for nothing is Claude Chabrol known for “his sardonic view of life as a matter of the survival of the fittest.”

★★★★☆

Shane James

Rating:12
DVD/BD Release Date: 25th March 2013 (UK)
Director: Claude Chabrol
Cast:  Gérard Blain, Jean-Claude Brialy, Juliette Mayniel
Buy:LES COUSINS [THE COUSINS] (Masters of Cinema) On Blu-ray / DVD

Le Beau Serge Blu-Ray Review (Masters Of Cinema Release)

The first film of the nouvelle vague, or at the very least the first feature directed by a Cahiers du Cinéma critic, Claude Chabrol’s beautifully observed film preceded François Truffaut’s highly acclaimed The Four Hundred Blows by a year. Winning the 1958 Le Prix Jean Vigo award, and receiving praise from friend and colleague Truffaut for being “as masterly as if Chabrol had been directing for ten years,” Le Beau Serge defined the nouvelle vague’s aesthetic with its use of non-professional actors, location shooting, natural black and white photography, and its personal vision.

Opening with the words “this film was shot entirely in the village of Sardent (Creuse). Our warmest thanks to the residents and local authorities there,” Chabrol’s film introduces the audience to François (Jean-Claude Brialy), a Parisian student returning to his home village to recover from a serious illness.

Upon arrival, François seeks out his childhood friend Serge (Gérard Blain), now an unhappily married alcoholic with a baby on the way, and the pair reminisce in an attempt to reconnect. But it isn’t long before the pair become disconnected due to the differences in their circumstances: the superior François is content with his life and his education, whereas Serge has become bitter and discontented at the prospect of a life stuck in a provincial village.

The film ends when François, suffering from some kind of, as the village Doctor jokingly attests, “martyr complex,” tries to ‘save’ his debilitated friend on a snowy night after Serge’s wife goes into a premature labour. A scene wonderfully shot by cinematographer Henri Decaë, chosen because of his expertise in capturing natural light in films such as Jean-Pierre Melville’s Bob le Flambeur.

The film takes a bleak look at the judgements and assumptions held between social classes with a story that could be deemed as being simplistic and somewhat conventional. But what sets it apart, what turns it into something new, is the radical way in which it moves away from that style of filmmaking, much despised by the Cahiers critics, called the Tradition of Quality. With its aforementioned use of natural photography, location shooting, and a personal vision, Le Beau Serge became the standard-bearer for a new generation of filmmakers.

★★★★☆

Shane James

Rating: 12
DVD/BD Release Date: 25th March 2013 (UK)
Director: Claude Chabrol
Cast: Gérard Blain, Jean-Claude Brialy, Michèle Méritz 
Buy: LE BEAU SERGE [HANDSOME SERGE] (Masters of Cinema) (Blu-ray)

Atonioni's La Notte To Get The Masters Of Cinema Blu-Ray Treatment This April

Eureka Entertainment have announced that they will be releasing LA NOTTE on Blu-ray for the first time anywhere in the world on 22 April 2013. One of the most famous international films of the 1960s, directed by the master filmmaker Michelangelo Antonioni (L'avventura, Red Desert, Blow Up, Il grido, Le amiche, Zabriskie Point), LA NOTTE stars two of the biggest stars of the European cinema: Marcello Mastroianni (La dolce vita, 8-1/2) and Jeanne Moreau (Jules et Jim, Bay of Angels)

One of the masterworks of 1960s cinema, La notte [The Night] marked yet another development in the continuous stylistic evolution of its director, Michelangelo Antonioni — even as it solidified his reputation as one of the greatest artists of the 20th century. La notte is Antonioni’s "Twilight of the Gods", but composed in cinematic terms. Examined from a crane-shot, it’s a sprawling study of Italy’s upper middle-class; seen in close-up, it’s an x-ray of modern man’s psychic desolation.

Two of the giants of film-acting come together as a married couple living in crisis: Marcello Mastroianni (La dolce vita, 8-1/2) and Jeanne Moreau (Jules et Jim, Bay of Angels). He is a renowned author and "public intellectual"; she is "the wife". Over the course of one day and the night into which it inevitably bleeds, the pair will come to re-examine their emotional bonds, and grapple with the question of whether love and communication are even possible in a world built out of profligate idylls and sexual hysteria.

Photographed in rapturous black-and-white by the great Gianni di Venanzo (8-1/2, Giulietta degli spiriti), La notte presents the beauty of seduction, then asks: "When did this occur — this seduction of Beauty?" The Masters of Cinema Series is proud to present Michelangelo Antonioni’s haunted odyssey for the first time ever on Blu-ray.



SPECIAL BLU-RAY EDITION FEATURES:

• New 1080p presentation of the film in its original 1.66:1 aspect ratio with previously censored sequences restored for the first time

• New and improved English subtitles

• Original Italian theatrical trailer

• 56-page booklet with an essay by film-critic and scholar Brad Stevens, and the transcript of a lengthy Q&A conducted in 1961 with Antonioni upon the film’s release.

Pre-order / Buy: LA NOTTE [THE NIGHT] (Masters of Cinema) (Blu-ray)

City Of Women Blu-Ray Review (Masters Of Cinema Release)

City of Women was one of the great Federico Fellini’s very last films. It along with most of later work commercially and critically unsuccessful. It premiered at the Cannes film festival in 1980 and was lambasted by the critics and even fellow filmmakers like the great but miserable sod Andrei Tarkovsky who called the film “worthless”. However the film is about as Fellini-esq as you can get and deserves reappraisal.

The film is about the middle age Snàporaz (Marcello Mastroianni) and Snàporaz like all of Mastroianni character’s in Fellini’s films is the director’s alter ego (this is most obvious in 8½ and it’s also his first lead role in a Fellini film since 8½). Snàporaz is on a train going home but he sees a big breasted women and they have brief fling in the bathroom but it’s cut short and the women must get off the train. Snàporaz follows her off the train and eventually finds him at a feminist polyandry conference. The film from that point becomes a bunch of increasing surreal vignettes which include roller skating, druggy lesbian post-punk teenagers who try to kill Snàporaz, attempted rape by a fat women, a court to test his masculinity among others.

The film came out after a difficult time for Fellini after some not entirety successful films he made in the wake of his classic Amarcord. What Fellini does with City of Women is to do a gloriously over the top sex farce with surrealistic touches throughout, there is hilarious sex scene which a women with an enormous ass which is obviously fake. However like Fellini’s work it’s really a film about his love/fear of women. Fellini was interested in feminism but he certainly wasn’t a feminist despite the fact the women in the film he certain sympathies with because they being mistreated by the male population. He certain makes the feminists in the film laughably absurd but Snàporaz is as well and the character Dr. Katzone with his mansion full of sexual art and absurd phallic sculptures.

The film’s centrepiece is the well-known scene after he crawls under his bed he enters a dreamlike slide where he revisits all childhood crushes. Which is beautiful filmed by Giuseppe Rotunno (who later worked with Fellini’s disciple Terry Gilliam) and constructed.

Overall the film is a really fun surrealist romp though the loves and desires of Federico Fellini, it’s not 8½ but what is? It isn’t without it’s flaws however, it’s a bit too long and has some over dubbing ever on a film, most evident in the conference scene in the beginning. Worth checking out especially with Masters of Cinema’s beautiful hd transfer.

Ian Schultz

★★★★☆

Rating: 18
BD/DVD Release Date: 25th February 2013 (UK)
Director:Federico Fellini
Cast: Marcello Mastroianni, Anna Prucnal, Bernice Stegers
Buy City Of Women: DVD / Blu-ray

Masters Of Cinema To Release Claude Chabrol's Le Beau Serge And Les Cousins

Eureka Entertainment have announced that they will be releasing two films starring Jean-Claude Brialy and Gérard Blain by the master director of the French thriller, Claude Chabrol - his debut feature, LE BEAU SERGE [HANDSOME SERGE], the first feature film of the French New Wave starring & the breakthrough feature and first massive commercial success, LES COUSINS [THE COUSINS], winner of the Golden Bear (Best Film) at the 1959 Berlin Film Festival. Both titles have been painstakingly restored by Gaumont for these new HD restorations and will be released on DVD & Blu-ray on the 25 March 2013. These editions will include documentary extras, shorts, and lengthy booklets packed with writing about the film and interviews with Chabrol.

Le Beau Serge (Handsome Serge)
Synopsis:Gérard Blain and Jean-Claude Brialy star in the first of their collaborations with the great Claude Chabrol. The director's masterful feature debut — ironic, funny, unsparing — is a revelation: another of that rare breed of film where the dusty formula might be used in full sincerity: Le Beau Serge marks the beginning of "the Chabrol touch."

In this first feature film of the French New Wave, one year before Truffaut's The Four Hundred Blows, the dandyish François (Brialy, of Godard's A Woman Is a Woman, Rohmer's Claire's Knee, and countless other cornerstones of 20th-century French cinema) takes a holiday from the city to his home village of Sardent, where he reconnects with his old chum Serge (Blain), now a besotted and hopeless alcoholic, and sly duplicitous carnal Marie (Bernadette Lafont). A grave triangle forms, and a tragic slide ensues.

From Le Beau Serge onward up to his final film Bellamy in 2009, the revered Chabrol would come to leave a significant and lasting impression upon the French cinema — frequently with great commercial success. It is with great pride that we present Le Beau Serge, the kickstart of the Nouvelle Vague and of Chabrol's enormous body of work, on Blu-ray and DVD in the UK for the first time.

SPECIAL BLU-RAY AND DVD EDITIONS

• Gorgeous new Gaumont restoration of the film in its original aspect ratio, presented in 1080p HD on the Blu-ray

• New and improved English subtitles

• Original theatrical trailer

• A 56-minute documentary about the making of the film

• L'Avarice [Avarice], Chabrol's 1962 short film

• A lengthy booklet with a new and exclusive essay by critic Emmanuel Burdeau; excerpts of interviews and writing by Chabrol; and more

Les Cousins (The Cousins)
Made barely a year after Claude Chabrol's debut Le Beau Serge, Les Cousins featured the earlier film's same starring pair of Jean-Claude Brialy and Gérard Blain, here reversing the good-guy/bad-guy roles of the previous picture. The result is a simmering, venomous study in human temperament that not only won the Golden Bear at the 1959 Berlin Film Festival, but also drew audiences in droves, and effectively launched Chabrol's incredible fifty-year-long career.

In Les Cousins, Blain's character journeys from the country to Paris to crash at the luxurious flat of his worldly and decadent cousin, portrayed by Brialy, during the study period for an upcoming law exam which both have set out to undertake. It becomes clear soon enough that only one of the cousins is terribly committed to his work; as sexual promises and alcohol intervene, the set-up becomes untenable for the provincial, — and a tragic slide ensues.

A gripping and urbane examination of city and country, ambition and ease, Les Cousins continues to captivate and shock audiences with its brilliant scenario, the performances of Brialy and Blain, and the assuredness of Chabrol's precocious directorial hand. The Masters of Cinema Series is proud to present Claude Chabrol's breakthrough film in a beautiful new Gaumont restoration on Blu-ray and DVD for the first time in the UK.

SPECIAL BLU-RAY AND DVD EDITIONS:
• Gorgeous new Gaumont restoration of the film in its original aspect ratio, presented in 1080p HD on the Blu-ray

• New and improved English subtitles

• Original theatrical trailer

• A 47-minute documentary about the making of the film

• L'Homme qui vendit la Tour Eiffel [The Man Who Sold the Eiffel Tower], Chabrol's 1964 short film

• A lengthy booklet with a new and exclusive essay by critic Emmanuel Burdeau; a new and exclusive translation of a rare text about actress Françoise Vatel provided for this release by its author, the filmmaker and critic Luc Moullet; excerpts of interviews and writing by Chabrol; and more