Showing Soon; BFI Showcases Lubitsch, Huston, Petit, Asquith in May. April 1, 2008
Posted by John Hodson in : DVD News & Info, Showing Soon , trackbackMore upcoming classic film and TV titles set for release in the U.K.
Scratch another Ernst Lubitsch title; his final film, the 1946 romantic comedy Cluny Brown is added to the BFI’s slate in May:
“Combining elegance and wit, Lubitsch’s last film, set in 1938 London, is one of the most engaging romantic comedies. Jennifer Jones and Charles Boyer are well teamed as the plumber’s niece (later housemaid) and the intellectual Czech refugee, who throw English society into disarray with their disregard for conventions. This charming satire, aided by a wonderful script taking in snobbery upstairs, downstairs and in the middle classes, is given a jolly run around by a cast comprising most of Hollywood’s British stalwarts from Sir C Aubrey Smith and Peter Lawford to Sara Allgood and Una O’Connor.”
No details yet on extras, if any.
The BFI are on a roll; to add to their Asquith (the previously flagged A Cottage on Dartmoor) and Lubitsch titles in May comes John Huston’s A Walk With Love And Death: ‘From internationally-acclaimed director John Huston (The African Queen, The Misfits, The Night of the Iguana) this ‘lost’ cult classic stars the director’s daughter, Angelica Huston, as one half of the youthful couple who try against all odds to make their love and idealism endure against the backdrop of a brutal and bloody Medieval France.’
Extras include a ‘Behind the scenes look at film shoot on location’
And a fine May BFI quartet is made up with Chris Petit’s Radio On (1979): ‘Following a young London DJ (David Beames) on the road to Bristol to investigate the mysterious death of his brother, Radio On offers a unigue, compelling and even mythic vision of a late 1970s England, stalled between failed hopes of cultural and social change and the imminent upheavals of Thatcherism. Stunningly photographed by luminous monochrome, by Martin Schafer, and driven by a startling new wave soundtrack (Bowie, Kraftwerk, Lene Lovich, Ian Drury, Wreckless Eric) - and an early screen performance by Sting - Radio On is ripe for rediscovery.’
By the way, DVD Times excellent review (penned by FilmJournal’s Clydefro Jones) of that recent BFI Otto Preminger double - Margin for Error & A Royal Scandal - is here. DVD Times also has the full skinny on that new O Lucky Man! SE, noted in a previous Showing Soon.
Still in May and Yume release Nagisa Oshima’s The Sun’s Burial (1960):
“Set in the post-war slums of Osaka, The Sun’s Burial follows the lives and fates of the denizens of this hellish ghetto. Pimps, prostitutes, drug addicts, vagrants, hustlers and gangsters struggle to survive amidst the poverty and decay of 1950’s Japan.
“Unflinching in it’s portrayal of life in these slums, the film goes beyond a documentary-style realism to achieve a garish, lurid Cinemascope aesthetic that is at once repulsive and yet mesmerising. It’s a pitiless and dispassionate portrait of a living hell that lurks behind the facade of a prosperous new Japan, a place where everything - food, sex, even blood - is simply a commodity to be stolen and sold.”
Among the ‘two-fers’ on the cards in May (all previously released titles from Sony) is Easy Rider / Two Lane Blacktop. Those Indiana Jones SEs mentioned way back are scheduled for release in May; cheap enough, I’ve seen all three for pre-order at £6.99 each - DVD Times has the full details.
I should be ecstatic at the release of another Korda film in R2, however, Charles Laughton’s astonishing portrayal of Rembrandt comes courtesy of Orbit Media, whose capacity to disappoint in the transfer stakes is seemingly boundless. The cover art is typically nice…and bound to trap the unwary.
That Optimum ‘war’ set (Angels Five One, The Dam Busters and Aces High - due for release in June), I mentioned a while back has now been named. It’s the Heroes Of The Skies Collection (or Heroes of The Heights, depending where you look). Still with Optimum, the much shunted about release of Odette is now planned for June as is Wanted Dead Or Alive - Season 2, Volume 1. It should come as no surprise that the seven film Joseph Losey Collection, planned for April, now looks to be a September release alongside Carpenter’s Assault On Precinct 13 - Special Edition. I’m a little worried that those previously flagged Depardieu, Bardot and Attenborough ‘Icon’ sets haven’t appeared on the schedules of any etailer other than HMV. Hmmmm…
BTW a similar fate has befallen the 2|entertain release of Silas Marner, The Weaver Of Raveloe, which is now set for November.
Eureka’s Masters of Cinema range has two films from Kenji Mizoguchi coming at
the end of May in a double-header; Akasen Chitai and Yokihi, to follow up another Mizoguchi set in April featuring Ugetsu Monogatari and Oyu Sama.
Cheapo label (sorry, but you are…) Lace International Ltd are releasing more budget titles in May/June. Among them, 1980’s Fiend, apty enough a low-budget horror directed by Don Dohler, 1989’s Communion and the good old PD standby 1967’s Hells Angels on Wheels.
June and it looks like Universal is splitting their Laurel & Hardy titles into themed box sets: Laurel and Hardy: Armed Forces, Laurel and Hardy: Crime and Punishment, Laurel and Hardy: Family Life, Laurel and Hardy: Music. No details on the number of titles in each set, but they’ll be available from around £14.99 each. I mentioned ITVDVD Blu-ray releases of Black Narcissus and The Boys From Brazil for June recently; add the George Pan Cosmatos wartime romp Escape to Athena and Alan Parker’s Bugsy Malone to that HD slate.
That Network release of Jamaica Inn I mentioned a while back turns out to be 1985 TV series starring Jane Seymour and Patrick McGoohan (seems to have fooled some etailers too); released April. A couple of filmed stage shows from British comedy legends; SonyBMG releases Norman Wisdom - Trouble on Tour and The Thoughts of Chairman Alf - Live the same date:
“Kick back in your comfy armchair, knock off your slippers and get ready for a trip down memory lane as the legendary slapstick actors Sir Norman Wisdom and Warren Mitchell, better known as Alf Garnett bring you classic comedy in the first two releases on SonyBMG’s new Retro TV DVD label. Both titles have not been seen since 1994 when they were released on VHS in a series called “Comedy Box” now revived on DVD and digitally remastered, including surround sound mixes and special bonus features,
“Released in 1994, ‘Norman Wisdom’s Trouble on Tour’ features Norman on stage performing the gags, songs and stunts that have made him one of Britain’s most well loved and admired comics of his generation. Norman, who is now 92, was recently featured in a documentary called ‘The Secret Life of Norman Wisdom aged 92¾’ on BBC2.”
Warren Mitchell appears in The Thoughts of Chairman Alf, a 1994 recording of his famous stage show that later became a TV series: “Mitchell stars as Alf Garnett, the UK’s most reactionary, mean-spirited, selfish, bigoted, racist, misogynistic, and anti-Semitic man. Alf Garnett was a fictional character on the BBC television sitcom Till Death Us Do Part, the ITV sitcom Till Death… and later In Sickness and in Health. First shown in the theatre in 1976, ‘The Thoughts of Chairman Alf’ won the Evening Standard award for best comedy in London’s West End and was snapped up by other theatres. Twenty-two years later, Warren Mitchell reprised the role in Australia in front of a live studio audience as a TV series.”
Spotted at the BBFC; a pass for a 1939 20 minute short Lincoln in The White House, which will be on The Old Maid, part of the upcoming ‘Bette Davis’ box from Warner. Passes too for some Dirty Harry extras which will be on the new set (due for release June, as a stand alone SE and in a new Dirty Harry box set); Clint Eastwood on Directing is only just over five minutes long, John Milius - Getting The .44 Magnum is a mere 3m 41s, Evan Kim - The Martial Artist weighs in at 2m 5s, and Patricia Clarkson On Female Attraction is even shorter - 2m 1s, the same length as Andy Robinson - Does A Flip. Dirty Harry: The Original - Interviews For Dvd - Arnold Schwarzenegger is 2m 47s, Hal Holbrook - Being Seen is a ’blink and you’ll miss it’ 40 seconds.
In the last Showing Soon I mentioned the possibility of the sci-fi classic Colossus; The Forbin Project coming to DVD in the UK, in widescreen, complete with extras. The BBFC has now certified the film (but not those extras), not for Fabulous Films as showing at various etailers, but for Medium Rare - a subsidiary of some sort? (EDIT - I’m now reliably informed that Medium Rare are indeed Fabulous Films Ltd.) The BBFC has also certified the 1965 Anthony Simmons films Four in The Morning (to be released June) for Odeon.
Batman - The Movie (1966) is coming again to R2 it seems, both with more extras and (probably) in HD; the BBFC has just passed a commentary by screenwriter Lorenzo Semple Jr., which should be in addition to the previous commentary track with West and Ward providing it is carried over from the last release.
That’s it for now; until the next Showing Soon, same Bat-time, same Bat-channel…
Comments»
Thanks for linking to my Preminger review John. The meager view count suggests Otto x 2 is still only a third as popular as something like Enchanted. No ardent admirers of A Royal Scandal in dissent, I suppose.
I can’t wait for Cluny Brown. Not my favorite Lubitsch by a wide margin, but I’m excited nonetheless. I’d love to see a commentary or other relevant supplemental material.
Frustrating isn’t it when, not just a review you’ve worked damned hard at, but films you feel would attract a reasonable amount of traffic, seemingly fails to get the attention they deserve. Sometimes a simple ‘thank you’ is enough isn’t it? So thanks clydefro - it was nice work…but that’s a given.
After ‘Bigger Than Life’ and ‘The Innocents’ I hoped for better things from the BFI in terms of extra features; but it’s not looking good here is it? I’m tempted to go for the R1 ‘A Cottage on Dartmoor’, (which I held off buying because I felt an R2 might top it), because it includes the ‘Silent Britain’ documentary (also available here from the BFI for anound £15!) as an extra. It’s suspected to be an PAL > NTSC conversion, but still…
We’ll see; still time to pull the rabbit from the hat.
I’ve never seen the Huston film, but I’ve read that it’s long on atmosphere, short on action and doesn’t go anywhere. Sounds like my kinda film…
John, I own the Kino ‘Cottage on Dartmoor’ and while it is a PAL>NTSC conversion it’s definitely not as bad as they can look if that’s any kind of recommendation. Kino’s silent film DVDs can be so frustrating as they always seem to use the best available source materials but then so often expend no effort in actually getting the transfer right.
I had slightly mixed feelings on Silent Britain when it was broadcast on TV and haven’t yet revisited it DVD.
It introduced me to a lot of filmakers and films I’d never heard of and included a wealth of great clips and information and was generally fascinating but it did also seem to be trying too hard to claim (not altogether convincingly) the invention of basically every single early cinematic technique for Britain.
I’ve never seen ‘A Walk With Love an Death’ either but I think I’ll pick it up as I can’t really resist most Huston films (OK I draw the line at Annie but I would snap up Freud). I just got The List of Adrian Messenger this week.
I’m looking forward to Criterion’s supposed release of Wise Blood whenever it appears and it would be great if ‘The Dead’ was also on the cards for the Criterion treatment in the not too distant future.
Thanks Bob; I’ve been told that ‘The Dead’ is not on the Criterion schedule, but we can only hope that the information is wrong.
Even “Annie” has Carol Burnett at her most extravagantly over-the-top and Albert Finney’s vocal impersonation of the director… In fact, I can’t think of a Huston film I haven’t found something to enjoy in.
Maybe I’m being slightly harsh on Annie and thinking of all the Huston films I’ve seen I have to agree with you Mike that there really are none that don’t have at least something to recommend them.
What about ‘Phobia’? I’ve never seen it but it seems to have the very worst reputation of all his films.
Phobia is nonsense but it’s got a certain camp charm. Certainly among his worst movies but I enjoyed watching it.
Thanks Mike.
Incdentally John, I notice on Mike’s blog you say you’d like an anamorphic copy of ‘The Boys from Brazil’. Well it’s available anamorphic in last Years ITV Laurence Olivier collection.
Comparing with the screen captures on DVDBeaver it’s brighter cleaner, sharper and less cropped than previous editions. It’s only 4.31 GB so not perfect but it looks great in comparison with the Carlton disc.
I’d assumed it would be the old Carlton disc so was very pleasantly surprised much like when I bought ITV’s Kennth More collection last month and found ‘Northwest Frontier’ was a very nice looking anamorphic transfer unlike the previous ITV DVD.
Now there are two pieces of news that have made my day. Last year, I emailed MovieMail and asked them if the copy of ‘The Boys From Brazil’ in the set was anamorphic (I figured it HAD to be), and was astonished when they replied and told me it wasn’t. You have the set? How does ‘Henry V’ look?
The knock-on effect was that I also assumed ‘Northwest Frontier’ to be the same old, same old. Excellent to read otherwise - thanks Bob.
BTW, interesting that in the BFI’s blurb about the upcoming Huston they list ‘From internationally-acclaimed director John Huston (The African Queen, The Misfits, The Night of the Iguana)’, when I usually think ‘The Maltese Falcon, The Treasure of The Sierra Madre & The Asphalt Jungle’, or even such under-rated fare as ‘The Red Badge of Courage’, ‘Reflections in a Golden Eye’ and ‘The Dead’.
Some director huh?
I’ll definitely be picking up that Kenneth More set now - and it’s going cheap at the moment. Unbelievable how this kind of thing doesn’t get publicised.
Anyone seen “Sinful Davey”? It’s one of the few Huston’s I’ve never caught up with.
The Huston film that I’d love to see on DVD is ‘The Roots of Heaven’ - I remember seeing it on TV years ago and enjoyed it quite a bit.
‘The Roots of Heaven’ is excellent isn’t it? Quite a bit ahead of its time, and it would surely find a new audience now.
I have only the very vaguest memory of ‘Sinful Davey’ Mike; nothing useful - sorry.
Yes I own the Oliver set John.
It took me a long time to take the plunge and buy it as I couldn’t find any information/reviews on it (like you I specifically wanted to know about ‘Henry V’) and it was and is pretty expensive. I eventually got it in February for £31 from Amazon marketplace.
Here is a quick overview with comparisons where possible, bearing in mind I only owned ‘Rihcard III’, ‘That Hamilton Woman’ and ‘The 49th Parallel’ beforehand and I’m not looking at the discs at this moment. I also haven’t watched most of them the whole way through yet just glanced at them to assess the quality..
‘21 Days’ is pretty rough looking. Dark and soft with persistent but not extreme dust, flecks etc and quite a bit of background hiss on the soundtrack throughout. What I expected but watchable nonetheless.
‘That Hamilton Woman/Lady Hamilton’ is from a print with the ‘Lady Hamilton’ title as opposed to DDHE’s disc which was ‘That Hamilton Woman’. The ITV transfer is generally brighter (except for the titles where it is very dark and grainy) and loses some information but was perhaps better looking overall. I think the DDHE disc seemed horizontally squashed. I need to take a proper look.
‘The 49th Parallel’ is almost identical though slightly superior in sharpness to the French disc from Warner but not as good as the excellent Criterion.
‘The Demi-Paradise’ is frankly VHS quality and lets the set down. Extremely severe combing, very soft and basically a mass of grey.
‘Henry V’ is far superior to Criterion’s when looking at the screen captures on DVDBeaver. The colurs look great. Framing varies between the two from scene to scene with some scenes showing more on the ITV and others showing more on the Criterion but neither one ever looks overly cropped. The Criterion looks ridiculously pink/red in a lot of scenes in comparison to the ITV.
‘Hamlet’ looks very good. It’s brighter than the Criterion and sometimes significantly sharper looking at the DVDBeaver captures. Sometimes it seems vertically stretched in comparison with the Criterion or maybe the Criterion is squashed it’s hard to tell. Again framing seems to vary between the two sometimes the Criterion shows more and sometimes the ITV does.
‘Richard III’ looks slightly sharper than Network’s disc and therefore pretty much identical to the Criterion’s disc looking at DVDBeaver. Both ITV and Network seem to have a little more information along the top in comparison with the Criterion but it’s negligible.
I’ve already covered ‘The Boys from Brazil’ which looks very good.
‘The Jazz Singer’ looks simply OK. It’s anamorphic but it’s very grainy and quite dark at times. I have nothing to compare it with but I think it is the same disc previously released as it is the only one without ‘Laurence Oliver collection’ menus.
All discs are barebones. The half hour interview is on it’s own disc.
Just a quick word
on the Kenneth More set.
‘A Night to Remember’ is non-anamorphic and has the same hour long making-of documentary that is on the Criterion but not the commentary.
‘Genevieve’ is a new transfer which if you look carefully is very slightly smoother but otherwise identical in colurs, framing etc. It’s missng the documentary from the Carlton disc though which is irritating.
Each disc has production notes and stills.
Also the review on Amazon which states that ‘The Galloping Major’ is in the set is incorrect.
Also ‘The Roots of Heaven’ really is a good film.
That’s terrifc work Bob; very much appreciated. ‘The Demi-Paradise’ sounds much like Network’s (via Granada of course) ’The Return of The Scarlet Pimpernel’, which is so bad I want to just chuck it away…
No problem John.
As a final post on the Olivier collection I’ve now had a chance to take another look at the discs and for the most part my comments above are about right.
I’ll just add that I think I was partly confusing aspects of the two ‘That Hamilton Woman’ discs I own. The ITV DVD is the better of the two. The contrast is better, the blacks are richer and there is more shadow detail. It is occasionally cropped but it doesn’t really affect the viewing experience. Also even though it’s the ‘Lady Hamilton’ print it is still billed on the disc and packaging as ‘That Hamilton Woman’.
As for ‘The Demi-Paradise’ it looked atrocious and near unwatchable on my PC. In fact it looked quite dark and murky compared with viewing on TV just because of the sheer amount of combing obscuring everything in a mass of grey. Having now looked at it deinterlaced on TV it looks merely extremely weak. Very bright, with no contrast, a persistent lot of print damage and sometimes a lot of hiss on the soundtrack. It is watchable if you imagine you’re watching an unrestored broadcast master rather than a DVD released 2007. It looks more like a PD release than a ‘real’ distributor’s.
I assume that Network’s ‘Pimpernel double feature (I had no idea it was even released) is similar if not identical to the DDHE set I have? Return is very murky indeed on that disc.
I don’t think anything’s beaten the kick in the teeth I got from Universal UK’s Bachelor Mother though. It even stated on the packet that it’s b/w but turned out to be a Turner colourised monstrosity.
I would guess that the ‘Pimpernel’ transfers are probably near identical, both (like ‘Hamilton…’) from the same Granada source. Ironically, I recorded ‘The Scarlet Pimpernel’ from a C4 broadcast recently (ads and all…), and the off-air recording is superior to the Network transfer - sharper, cleaner, and with better contrast, though I admit there’s not much in it.
Universal UK treat us like suckers don’t they? I got the ‘Going My Way’ / ‘Bells of St Mary’s’ double bill after hearing that the R1 of the latter wasn’t up to much. Compared to Universal’s sub-VHS R2 effort, it looks like a Criterion restoration. I soon shipped out the R2 double (it was OOP at the time and brought a decent price) and bought both the R1s; the Artisan ‘Bells’ shows some cross-colouration, but simply turning off the colour on my display sorted that.
BTW, I got the ‘John Mills Screen Icon Set’ recently, and that boasts one of the poorest colour transfers I’ve seen in a while; ‘The Baby and The Battleship’ goes from eye-stingingly appalling, to atrocious, to almost acceptable and back again (in the interests of fairness, I will say the other transfers in the set are pretty good). And these aren’t the only examples from what are, after all, not your average fly-by-night PD outfit.
Why do such big outfits like Granada, Universal, Studio Canal (and others) think that this level of work will do; is it, ‘well it’s only for the UK, they’ll put up with anything…’
These continuing updates on UK DVD happenings are a blessing to us Region 2 collectors in the US! Your articles and reviews are all outstanding. The recent coverage on Gary Cooper and “High Noon” was terrific — “Vera Cruz” was incisive writing to be sure. Such fine work is much appreciated here!
Thank you John; that’s very encouraging.
Since Bachelor Mother I haven’t bought UK releases of RKO films as Universal are so poor and Warner are so good with their R1 efforts. I think only ‘The Thing from Another World’ looks superior in it’s UK incarnation.
Getting an Optimum DVD of a classic British film always seems a lottery especially as so many don’t get any kind of review at all particularly the Screen Icons box sets.
For example, you wouldn’t happen to know if ‘The Man Between’ transfer in the James Mason Screen Icons set is any good would you?
That John Mills set is only £9.99 on DVD.co.uk at the moment so I’ve ordered it and now at least know what to expect. Thanks.
I’ve got to agree with John McElwee. The Cooper coverage really was excellent and eye opening.
You’ll enjoy the Mills set; the transfer of ‘The Family Way’ in particular is quite lovely, makes up for the faults.
Have a look at my comments on ‘The Man Between’ transfer in the review here; excellent set as a whole BTW.
I keep meaning to do more on Coop, but then I always seem to find some lame excuse to put it off. Must try harder…
Thanks John.