Showing Soon - First Edition… September 12, 2007
Posted by John Hodson in : DVD News & Info, Books - News and Reviews, Showing Soon , 7 commentsAs much for my own benefit as anyone’s (my apologies if that appears to be ever so slightly selfish), I think it might be useful to start a regular - optimistic, but that’s the plan - round-up of new DVD announcements, rumours, and what’s popped up, unheralded, for pre-order at various etailers; Showing Soon, cornball but that’s the kind of hairpin I am (well, that and I couldn’t think of anything else…)
I won’t be attempting to cover everything - which would be foolish as well as tedious - just what piques my interest, so, mainly classic releases, and I’ll chuck in the odd bit of news pertaining to books, screenings and special events. As usual, comments and contributions are most welcome.
Showing Soon in the U.K.
First up, in this piece, we’ll have a look at what happening in the U.K., and initially, what distributor Network has on the table. Possibly their most spectacular release of the year is released October 1. In fact, The Prisoner: 40th Anniversary Special Edition promises to be the best release worldwide of Patrick McGoohan’s idiosyncratic television series. You’ll find most details on Network’s dedicated web page here including some impressive screenshots. I say ‘most’ because, aside from a minor comment on their home page, they don’t highlight what threatens to be one of the set’s best features. Author and TV historian Andrew Pixley has written a book, of around 135,000 words, to accompany the release which threatens to be the definitive word on the production if previous meticulously researched works from the pen of Mr Pixley are anything to go by.
Still with Network: HMV is showing Lindsay Anderson’s This Sporting Life coming September 24, the whisper is that this is being presented full-frame and extras free (the long-awaited Criterion version is as yet still just a rumour), but it’s yet to pop up on the official Network website, which may, or may not indicate a hold-up. Meanwhile MovieMail has a boxset of Three Films by Somerset Maugham: Trio, Encore and Quartet that were released by Network singly earlier in the year, coming October 1. Rene Clair’s The Ghost Goes West is released November 5 and, another former Carlton release, David Lean’s This Happy Breed is on the shelves a week later. MovieMail is also showing David Greene’s Madame Sin (Bette Davis, Gordon Jackson, Denholm Elliott, Robert Wagner) as coming October 1, but it doesn’t seem to be scheduled elsewhere. Again, only one etailer is showing Network releasing a three-disc Paul Robeson Collection November, so we’ll await official news with interest. As usual with Network, any of these titles could suddenly appear on sale, or disappear into limbo, without explanation.
In TV, Network also have the excellent Fox: The Complete Series, a four disc set of the 1980 show, coming October 8.
Released recently in R1, Warners UK have From Beyond The Grave on their R2 schedule for October 15. 
Warners have also scheduled a five-disc Blade Runner: The Final Cut - Ultimate Collector’s Edition for early December which looks to have all the extras of the best of the R1 versions, including the director’s workprint, without the extra luggage (you know what I mean…) Nice price as well; discounted to £17.99 at a couple of etailers.
Arrow films have Christopher Miles The Virgin and the Gypsy slated for the same date. Believed to be thin on extras, save trailers and booklets, the BFI has three noir titles on the books for October 15 - Kiss of Death, Cry of The City and Night and The City.
Tartan has a Paul Morrissey Box Set for October 8: Madame Wings, Women in Revolt, Mixed Blood, the same day Saturday Night Fever: 30th Anniversary Edition is piped on board and Paramount (they purely love an anniversary) is also re-releasing Funny Face as a 50th Anniversary Edition. Paramount also release that not so special Chinatown SE; surely the film deserves a spectacular extras packed set rather than this half-hearted effort? The same month, The Kenneth More Collection comes from ITVDVD: Appointment with Venus, Stop Press Girl, Chance of a Lifetime, Genevieve, A Night to Remember, The Galloping Major, North West Frontier and Reach for the Sky (one big caveat; some etailers say seven films, others say eight, some say five!)
Word has is that the trade think box sets are the way to go; with an RRP a penny shy of £50, Warners are releasing Superman: The Ultimate Collectors Edition; 13 Disc Tin Boxset. If boxes are the way to go, tin appears the way for boxes…
Indeed, gearing up for the Christmas market and there are box sets a plenty coming out, including several reissues with added goodies; a three disc The Young Ones: 25th Anniversary Complete Series 1 and 2, a 14-disc Dad’s Army: Complete Series & Specials, and another 14-discer, Steptoe & Son: Complete Box Set. Also look out for Hancock’s Half Hour 50th Anniversary Complete Collection (8-discs apparently; no other detail) and Father Ted - The Definitive Collection, a four disc set featuring ‘Father Ted Comedy Connections Documentary; Comic Relief With Ted And Dougal; US Interviews With Graham Lineham And Arthur Mathews; Tedfest 2007: A Very Ted Weekend; Tedfest 2007: Two Tribes Go To War; Audio commentary for Series 3 by creators Graham Lineham and Arthur Mathews; Craggy Island Memories; Dougal’s Favourite Memories; Dougal’s Favourite Sound Effects’ (all from 2|entertain in October).
Determined to wring every last penny out of discs already released, Fox wheels out a Battle Of Britain - Limited Edition Gift Set, and I quote: “This limited Edition Gift set features the 2 disc special edition of The Battle of Britain, with the book by Stephen Bungay, entitled The Most Dangerous Enemy: A History Of The Battle Of Britain and a specialised colour picture print.” I should add, all in a humongous box. Hold that thought because Fox also releases The Longest Day - Gift Set: “This gift set features the 2 disc special edition of The Longest Day, combined with the biopic account written by Cornelius Ryan and a specialised colour print.” In November Fox markets The Great Fox War Movies (The Longest Day / Patton / Tora Tora Tora), three films, plus a book.
October 22 and Metrodome has a six disc Berlin Alexanderplatz set, complete with ‘Bonus footage, Trailers, ‘Making of’ documentary, Other documentaries (’A Mega-Movie and its Story’, ‘The Restoration’ ‘The Restoration - Before And After’,'The Original Recaps’), Image gallery’. The same date and Yume Pictures releases Kurosawa’s The Silent Duel.
Eureka’s excellent Masters of Cinema range expands October with Edvard Munch (’New director-approved high-definition restoration of the longer TV version, newly translated optional English subtitles, optional SDH subtitles for the deaf and hard of hearing, 112-page book with a Peter Watkins self-interview, writing by Joseph Gomez, and a timeline of Munch’s life.’), and Gandahar (’New high-definition restoration of the original Laloux version in original aspect ratio, newly translated optional English subtitles, Laloux short film La Prisonnière, 16-page booklet with Laloux interviews and artwork.’)
Possibly most exciting is the November release of what Eureka is calling a ‘definitive’ double disc set of Murnau’s seminal 
horror classic Nosteratu featuring: ‘New 2007 F.W. Murnau-Stiftung restoration with the original score, audio commentary by Brad Stevens and R. Dixon Smith, 53-minute German documentary about Murnau and the making of Nosferatu complete with fascinating footage of the film’s locations today, restoration demonstration, a 96-page book containing articles by David Skal (author of Hollywood Gothic: The Tangled Web of Dracula from Novel to Stage to Screen); Thomas Elsaesser (author of Weimar Cinema and After: Germany’s Historical Imaginary); Gilberto Perez and more…’
Also November Sansho Dayu + Gion Bayashi (Two Films by Mizoguchi), and, according to one etailer at least, Murnau’s final film Tabu: A Story of the South Seas. Eureka say they are considering a Murnau box set, but not for some time yet.
To whet the appetite (as if the specs aren’t enough), there are some screengrabs of the upcoming Nosferatu in this Criterion forum thread here.
Second Sight has Lugosi and Karloff in The Black Cat and The Raven (no extras) in time for Hallowe’en, there’s a raft of PD titles in a new line ‘Cinema Legends’, but please don’t expect anything other than PD quality from the Quantum Leap Group, Sony releases Scarface: 1932 / 1983 - Slim Line Packaging (2 Discs), and another new line (highly likely mostly re-releases) called ‘In The Frame’ featuring Alec Guinness, James Stewart, Julia Roberts, Sidney Poitier, Anthony Hopkins, Dustin Hoffman, Humphrey Bogart and Jack Nicholson. UCA may finally spring those Screen Goddess Box sets featuring Jean Simmons and Jane Russell, which have been bouncing round the schedules, the same goes for the R2 Blood Simple: Director’s Cut from Universal.
October’s Classic Sci-Fi Box Set from Universal features Invasion of the Body Snatchers (1956), The Thing from Another World (1951), The Incredible Shrinking Man (1957), This Island Earth (1955), The Creature From The Black Lagoon (1954), It Came From Outer Space (1953) and Tarantula (1955). Early review copies show, that unlike the current R1 release, This Island Earth is presented in anamorphic widescreen.
Universal also releases a Film Noir Box Set with The Killers (Siodmak, 1946), Double Indemnity (Wilder, 1944), The Big Steal (Siegel, 1949), Crossfire (Dmytryk, 1947), Out of the Past (Tourneur, 1947), The Blue Dahlia (Marshall, 1946), The Glass Key (Heisler, 1942), This Gun For Hire (Tuttle, 1942) and Farewell My Lovely (Dmytryk, 1944). Bearing in mind the generally low standard of Universal’s RKO transfers, some of these no exception, caveat emptor.
In early November, Paramount has another crack at Cy Endfield and Stanley Baker’s Zulu with a 2-disc ‘Special Collectors Edition’. No announcement of extras as yet, and I’m really quite intrigued. I recently finished Sheldon Hall’s wonderfully well researched and beautifully presented Zulu: With Some Guts Behind It, The Making of the Epic Movie and while I’m longing for more, the last DVD edition was quite decent. I wonder if they’ve found the six-track stereo tracks for this iteration?
On to Optimum and the movable feast that is their schedule: October sees the release of the Dirk Bogarde vehicle Mind Benders, a John Mills Screen Icons Collection: The Baby And The Battleship, The Family Way, The Gentle Gunman, It’s Great To Be Young! Some sites are still carrying that second Comic Icons set for George Formby, but my bet is that it will be stalled again, meanwhile look out for an Alec Guinness Screen Legends Collection: Last Holiday, Kind Hearts And Coronets, The Man In The White Suit, Captain’s Paradise, and Barnacle Bill.
More Ealing from Optimum, Charles Crichton’s Against The Wind and Basil Dearden’s The Captive Heart, the horror Rosemary’s Killer (aka The Prowler), a three disc (it was originally to be four, Dandy Dick was dropped alas) Comic Icons set for Will Hay: Radio Parade of 1935, Ghost Of St Michaels, Black Sheep Of Whitehall and a five disc Alastair Sim Comic Icons Collection - The Green Man, Folly To Be Wise, Geordie, Left Right and Centre, Laughter in Paradise. By the way, still no sign that the mooted 16 disc Will Hay set will arrive any time soon; shame.
Optimum have a slate of thrillers in November: Fear Is The Key, Chase A Crooked Shadow, Payroll, The Long Arm. Benny Hill’s first film, Who Done It, and Norman Wisdom’s One Good Turn, provide more laughs.
Artificial Eye offer two collections by Rainer Werner Fassbinder October and November, while Arrow Films have The R.W. Fassbinder Collection: Commemorative Edition (1969-1972) and The R.W. Fassbinder Collection: Commemorative Edition (1973-1982) November 5. Arrow also release Lewis Milestone’s Of Mice And Men this month, which features not only wonderful performances from Lon Chaney Jr. and Burgess Meredith but also gave rise to one of my favourite cartoon catch phrases - ‘I’m goin’ to hug him and keep him and call him George…’ - here’s hoping for a scintillating transfer.
The Printed Page
From HammerWeb: The 50th anniversary celebrations of Hammer Horror continue with the revised, fully updated edition of authorised history The Hammer Story by Marcus Hearn and Alan Barnes.
Hammer has given active backing to this fully-authorised history of the company. Compiled with unlimited access to the Hammer archives The Hammer Story provides a film-by-film dissection of the history of Hammer Films, dripping with rare promotional material and previously unpublished photographs.
The Hammer Story features an exclusive foreword by Sir Christopher Lee and is lavishly illustrated with movie stills, behind-the-scenes images, and memorabilia including rare posters and press clippings.
The first edition was published by Titan in 1997 to great acclaim and has long been out of print. Marcus Hearn was previously editor of Hammer Horror magazine, for which co-author Alan Barnes wrote features. Together they have co-authored Tarantino A-Zed, The Cinema of George Lucas and Kiss Kiss, Bang Bang. This new edition is guaranteed to delight and is a must for all Hammer fans.
This definitive guide throws open the crypt doors to provide the ultimate collector’s item for any fan, and will be published by Titan Books on 26 October 2007, priced £24.99.
Odd and Sods
More Hammer: poster collectors might want to pop over to Posters and Stuff to check out their new Hammer Film Poster Collection.
The blurb: The posters are litho printed in the UK on 170gsm paper. Each title in the series has been scanned from an original poster at a very high resolution. They are then digitally restored. All the creases and fold marks are removed along with any pin holes, tears, dirty marks, etc.. This restoration process takes several days to complete, but once done the poster artwork is the same as when it was originally printed. The posters are fully licensed by Hammer Film Productions Ltd and each restored poster has been approved by Hammer Films.
There will be 12 posters in the first series, one per month, starting with The Curse Of Frankenstein to celebrate its 50th anniversary this year and ending with Dracula in its 50th anniversary year 2008. These posters are available to buy individually, or there is a subscription offer with a free double bill Hammer quad for all subscribers and a specially designed box will be available to purchase which will be able to hold all 12 poster tubes.
I’ll finish this Showing Soon with some recent price reductions; pop over to BlahDVD where you’ll find some good prices on Optimum’s Screen Icons sets, £17.19 for the James Mason and Jean Paul Belmondo sets and £17.99 for the Dirk Bogarde box. They also have Louis Malle Collection - Vol. 2 for £14.69. Over at DVD.co.uk, the Catherine Deneuve Screen Icon Collection is £15.95, while both Jean-Luc Godard Collection Vol.1 and Vol 2 are £16.95, and The Louis Malle Collection - Vol. 1 is £17.95. These offers seem to come and go in a hurry, so I wouldn’t hang about…
Welles…Farrago August 12, 2006
Posted by John Hodson in : Books - News and Reviews , 1 comment so farFrom France.
Comforting to note that little has changed since I departed these shores all of two weeks ago; as Roger Waters plaintively wrote ’…and the Jews kill the Arabs and the Arabs kill the hostages and that is the news…’
Plus ça change (is it indeed any wonder that the monkey’s confused?)
Still, I managed to fulfill most of my holiday pledges (spend too much, eat and drink too much; the usual thoroughly reprehensible yet somehow totally satisfying combination of excess and sloath), save one - I couldn’t manoeuvre myself into a position where I asked a waiter for ‘huit huitres pour huit a huit heures’, which would have amused no-one (certainly not the insouciant maitre d’ at that snotty nosed caff in La Rochelle) save this bear of very little brain. Maybe next year.
And I read at my usual ferocious holiday pace, failing to pace myself adequately, so that I finished all the tomes with days to spare, thus having to dip into Mrs H’s bag ‘o books. Who knew that Ian Rankin could prove to be the ideal throwaway holiday pulp read? Jebus, Rebus… Murder, Edinburgh style, with a portly middle-aged compulsive obsessive, the proponent of a line in off colour (half) wit, as the hero. Yum.
However, I can’t tell you (though I will) how much I enjoyed Simon Callow’s quite superb second volume on Orson Welles Hello Americans; it was everything a good biography should be; meticulously researched, beautifully written, a book that exploded much of the mythos surrounding the life and times of an artistic genius. Welles paradox was that he spent much of his life in the full glare of the media spotlight, yet, most sum the man up in a handful of oft repeated cliches - misunderstood, shafted by the system, destroyed by the Hollywood machine, on and on.
The picture Callow paints is of an artist whose films were largely mangled by hands other than his own, but who seemed to be the author of their, well, if not destruction, their mutilation by talents less than diligent to preserve the finished product as envisioned by their progenitor. Callow presents his evidence based on meticulously preserved Welles archives, interviews and the works of friends, colleagues and scholars, who, down the decades have tried to unravel the Gordian Knot that was the driving force behind this visionary of radio, film and theatre.
It’s a superb piece of work, making no judgments on Welles private life, other than as it informed him as an artist, examining his professional relationships, trying to make sense of the nonsensical, and offering an informed critique of both his films and of Welles the actor - as with Laughton, Callow, is not afraid to hand out the brickbats alongside the bouquets. I can’t wait for Volume Three; I only hope - like Callow’s publisher no doubt - I don’t have to wait as long as I did for Volume Two.
What can I say though, about Maureen O’Hara’s autobiography ‘Tis Herself other than, when set alongside Hello Americans, it’s the almost perfect antithesis. Badly written, self-seeking, gossipy tripe, it only serves as a reminder of just how few really fine films Ms O’Hara made. From the opening, treacly, chapter - in which our five-years-old heroine is told by a gypsy that she will find fame and fortune (no fair guessing when the child belongs to one of the best known, and best well heeled families in Dublin) - it’s written in the style of a particularly trite film script (and again, little surprise when it was ghost-written by Hollywood scriptwriter John Nicoletti).
The self-styled feisty, charming, ‘Oirish beauty uses this as a device to end most chapters with ‘….but the gypsy wasn’t done with me yet’ rather after the fashion of Alan Partridge and his ‘..but, of course, I had the last laugh.’
I saw it coming, but as part of a circle that included John Wayne and John Ford I was hoping to add to my knowledge of both. There was, sadly, nothing about the Duke that I didn’t already know, but as for Pappy she paints a very strange picture indeed. For starters she publishes love letters that Pappy sent to her in the run up to filming The Quiet Man; they seem to be written by a man besotted with O’Hara, but ‘herself’ rather sweetly rationalises them as a great director living the part of Sean Thornton. Ford, she implies, was formulating the script and goes into some sort of ‘method scriptwriting’.
She also details some of the nastier aspects of Pappy’s personality and I find it hard to reconcile this picture of a woman who ‘refused to bow her knee to no man’ (and I won’t go into details of her first two marriages, where it seemed to me that she allowed herself to be particularly badly handled) with the woman who seemed terrified of upsetting Ford (could it have had something to do with the fact that he was the author of what are undoubtedly her finest roles), to the extent that he punched her in the face and got clean away with it? Though O’Hara claimed to love him dear, she does take the opportunity of fingering Ford as the man who destroyed her brother’s Hollywood career (did the old man have such power in ’60s Tinseltown?), and, astonishingly, outs him as a homosexual.
Now I couldn’t give a damn about Pappy’s sexual orientation, but here it’s done in such a prurient, slyly nasty way that it does leave a bitter taste. She also makes the same allegation - ‘cocksucker’ she says was the word that gives him away - about her second husband. Obviously, damning someone homosexual is the worst La O’Hara, proud of Wayne’s assessment of her as ‘one of the boys’, can do. How much credence can be placed on her suspicions? Well, she also says that two stuntmen were killed during the making of Rio Grande, the first I’d ever read of such an incident. Knowing that Ford was absolutely devastated by the death of Fred Kennedy in a stunt that went badly wrong whilst filming The Horse Soldiers, and there are no reports of the old man being similarly badly affected during the making of Rio Grande, I will take it with a large gulp of Guinness.
I managed to finish this farrago, but only as a sense of duty, a little like refusing to walk out a cinema, no matter how poor the picture…
World’s End July 26, 2006
Posted by John Hodson in : Books - News and Reviews , 3 commentsTo France for a fortnight; no blogging, no posting at various fora (no work!), indeed, no films. But a chance to finish, at last, Patrick O’Brian’s fabulous Aubrey / Maturin series, something I’ve been putting off. Not that I don’t want to read them, of course, but I simply don’t want the adventure to end.
These supremely written and researched books formed the basis for Master and Commander - The Far Side of The World. Peter Weir’s excellent film took it’s title from two of of the 20 novels (I also have the unfinished - O’Brian died in 2000 - and untitled, 21st), but also little plot snippets and characters from many others. It’s a delight, now that I’ve read most of them, to watch the film again (and again) and pick up the various references. It’s also delightful to watch a film that so effortlessly entertains; a fine companion for the swashbucklers of the Golden Age. I can pay it no high a compliment.
I’ve followed the rambunctious Captain Jack Aubrey and his friend, the acutely intelligent surgeon and spy, Stephen Maturin, from their first meeting, blazing their guns across the seven seas, through riches and bankruptcy, illness, love, marriage and tragedy. I’ve come to know and love them both…and I don’t want to turn the last page.
I’ll also be taking Simon Callow’s second part of his mammoth Orson Welles biographical trilogy, Hello Americans, a lip-smacking prospect considering the breathtaking standard of his first Welles tome, and Maureen O’Hara’s autobiography ‘Tis Herself, for which I don’t hold out much hope, but what the hell.
I pledge, whilst away, to do as little as humanly possible, eat, drink (and eat) far too much (it’s a man’s work I have in front of me…) and return to these shores further pledging that next time - next time - I’ll see much more of la Belle France’s cultural delights, and ingest less of it’s gastronomic temptations.
Speaking of which, where’s that blasted toasted cheese? Killick? Preserved Killick there..!