STUDIOCANAL PRESENTS FASSBINDER'S 'LOLA.' (1981) REVIEW BY SANDRA HARRIS.

Marlene Dietrich's The Blue Angel To Get Masters Of Cinema Treatment

THE BLUE ANGEL [DER BLAUE ENGEL] will be released as part of Eureka Entertainment’s MASTERS OF CINEMA Series in a DUAL FORMAT (Blu-ray & DVD) edition on 28 January 2013

Eureka Entertainment have announced that they will be releasing THE BLUE ANGEL [DER BLAUE ENGEL] as part of Eureka Entertainment’s MASTERS OF CINEMA Series on 28 January 2013.  The film launched the career of the legendary Marlene Dietrich and her multi-film collaboration with Josef von Sternberg, and stars Emil Jannings, the famous German actor of such classics as Faust, The Last Laugh, and The Last Command.  The Blue Angel showcases Dietrich in performance singing many of the songs that would take on the status of trademarks throughout her long career.

“A remarkable performance from Emil Jannings.” – Kim Newman, EMPIRE Magazine

“Not only is Mr. Jannings's and Miss Dietrich's acting excellent, but they are supported by an unusually competent cast.”– New York Times

“Exceptionally high drama for its day, this tragic, tragic tale is one of the best examples of well-realized filmmaking from the first half of the 20th century.” – Filmcritic.com

Synopsis:The Blue Angel is one of the first German language sound films (filmed simultaneously in an English-language version), and the picture that represents the initial collaboration between Josef von Sternberg and his immortal muse, Marlene Dietrich. 

Following up his role in Sternberg's great silent The Last Command, Emil Jannings portrays a schoolteacher named Immanuel Rath, whose fateful expedition to catch his students frequenting the cabaret known as "The Blue Angel" leads to his own rapture with the establishment's main attraction Lola (Dietrich) — and, as a result, triggers the downward spiral of his life and fortune.

Directed by Sternberg while on loan from America to the pioneering German producer Erich Pommer, The Blue Angel is at once captivating, devastating, and powerfully erotic, laced-through with Sternberg's masterful cinematography. From here, the director and Dietrich would go on to make six more films together in the span of five years, and leave a legacy of some of the most indelible iconography in the cinema of glamour and obsession. The Masters of Cinema Series is proud to present The Blue Angel in a new Dual Format presentation that incorporates both versions of the film in 1080p HD for the first time in the UK.

SPECIAL DUAL FORMAT (BLU-RAY + DVD) EDITION:

• New 1080p HD presentation of both the German-language and English-language versions of the film, with progressive encodes on the DVD.

• Newly translated optional subtitles on the German-language version, and SDH on the English-language version.

• New and exclusive video essay on the films by critic and scholar Tag Gallagher.

• New and exclusive feature-length audio commentary by critic and scholar Tony Rayns on the German-language version.

• Original screen test with Marlene Dietrich.

• Archival interview clips with Dietrich.

• Substantial booklet containing writing on the film, vintage excerpts, and rare archival imagery.

• More features to be announced closer to release date!

Pre-Order:THE BLUE ANGEL [DER BLAUE ENGEL] (Masters of Cinema) (DUAL FORMAT) [Blu-ray] [1930]

Eureka Entertainment Announce Early 2013 Masters Of Cinema Line Up

Stanley Kubrick, Federico Fellini and Sacha Guitry join the Masters of Cinema Series as Eureka Entertainment announce their release schedule for January and February 2013.

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

Following a spate of epic releases for the last quarter of 2012 which included Fritz Lang's Die Nibelungen and Carl Dreyer's The Passion of Joan of Arc, The Masters of Cinema Series returns in 2013 with the nearly-impossible-to-see debut feature film by Stanley Kubrick, a long-awaited Blu-ray and DVD Dual Format release of Josef von Sternberg's classic first-collaboration with Marlene Dietrich, new restorations of films by the European giants Fellini and Guitry, and a Blu-ray upgrade of Kaneto Shindô's cult horror confection Onibaba.

Producer of the Masters of Cinema Series, Craig Keller stated “January sees the release of Stanley Kubrick's 1953 debut feature Fear and Desire, newly restored by The Library of Congress — a war-film psychodrama that exhibits many of the thematic obsessions and visual motifs that would course throughout all of Kubrick's films over the next four decades — needless to say, ravishingly photographed, even this early on in his career. We are extremely excited that UK audiences will at last be able to see where that body of work called "Kubrick" all began. Also this month: we've got the HD debut of Josef von Sternberg's immortal The Blue Angel, in both its German and English-language versions (shot by Sternberg simultaneously) featuring Marlene Dietrich as the impossibly erotic cabaret singer who bewitches Emil Jannings — and consigns him to perdition.

In February we present three titles, two of which capitalise on sumptuous HD restorations carried out by Gaumont. The first of these is Federico Fellini's unhinged 1980 post-punk epic, City of Women [La città delle donne / La cité des femmes], starring the great Marcello Mastroianni in a kind of reprise of his role from Fellini's 8-1/2. The second new HD restoration is the initial entry into The Masters of Cinema Series by the French comic genius Sacha Guitry — La Poison [Poison] — starring the equally brilliant Michel Simon (of Renoir's La Chienne and Boudu sauvé des eaux, and Vigo's L'Atalante). We're so proud to introduce this venomously witty murder-comedy to UK audiences — it's a perfect example of why Guitry was revered as a kind of god both by the French public at large and by the critics and filmmakers that went on to form the New Wave. Our last release of the month is a new Blu-ray upgrade of the recently deceased Kaneto Shindô's Onibaba — one of our most popular films — an unsettling, atmospheric erotic horror film whose Scope frames veer between sunlit existential dread and moonlit mystery/suspense.

Managing Director of Eureka, Ron Benson added  “We're very excited by this Jan/Feb lineup — with new HD elements of all five films, each accompanied by numerous supplements and the kind of lengthy booklets our fans will be thrilled to pore over. But we're only getting started — 2013 might be our most exciting year yet."

No Exact dates have been confirmed yet however we’ll update you when we get the details and fingers crossed we’ll have the reviews of the films when they arrive as well as the remaining 2012 Masters Of Cinema releases.