NEW RELEASES - MAY 13, 2008

There is a slight delay in all of this weeks New Releases arriving. This list will either be updated later or the rest of this weeks New Releases will be added to next weeks list.

Update: We got the rest of our new releases finally... hopefully this won't happen again...

Ever Since the World Ended * Forgotten Noir Volumes 7 * Forgotten Noir Volumes 8 * Forgotten Noir Volumes 9 * Going Under * The Great Debaters * Hollywood Dreams * Mercy (2006) * The Nameless (Spain 1999) * Radiant City (documentary) * Solstice * Walk All Over Me * Untraceable * Frontier(s) * Lost in Beijing * The Insatiable * Youth Without Youth * Autism: The Musical * Botched * Numb * Nora's Hair Salon 2 * The Proud Ones * Guadacanal Diary * Fire Within (Criterion) * You're in the Navy Now * Twelfth Night* On the Town * Take Me Out to the Ball Game * Anchors Aweigh * Step Live By * Kissing Bandit * It Happened in Brooklyn * Higher and Higher * Double Dynamite * The Lovers * Sinatra * Can I Do It Til I Need Glasses? * Tobor the Great * Mad Money * Timber Falls * Cover * A Raisin in the Sun * The Bite * A Good Man is Hard to Find * California Kid

TELEVISION:
Ally McBeal 6 Episode Collection * Burke's Law Collection * Matlock, Season 1 * The Pallisers * The Chase, Season 1

BLU-RAY:
Master and Commander * Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid * Untraceable

CUSTOMER REQUESTS / REPLACEMENTS:
Catch Me If You Can * Conan the Barbarian/ Conan The Destroyer * Exterminating Angel - VHS * For the Boys * Ghosts of Mississippi * Home of the Brave (2004) * Jackie Brown * La Jetee/ Sans Soleil (Criterion) * The Kid (Chaplin) * L'Aberge Espagnol * Life * McCabe and Mrs. Miller * Phantom of the Opera (Musical) * Rory O'Shea Was Here * The Sand Pebbles * Star Trek III: The Search for Spock * Transporter 2 * Tadpole * Age of Innocence * Spiderman 2 * 10 Questions for the Dahli Lama * Heart: Alive in Seattle * Young Lions * The Screaming Skull

STUFF: SEXY FILM GEEKS, 1968, LAZY ACTORS, BLAH BLAH BLAH

HOLLYWOOD- Sitting here on Saturday Night, drinking a beer, watching The Shootist, when I should be out trying to bang chicks, I recalled back to a couple weeks ago when I was at The Egyptian Theater checking out a James Mason double feature. 

I spotted the fantastic writer Kim Morgan whose website Sunset Gun is one of my favs for interesting articles.

Dorkaly, I said hello to her, said I dug her site and I made googly eyes at her. 

The dudes she was hanging with, shuffled her away from me.

Oh did I mention she’s like, good looking. And she knows a lot about movies!

Oh baby, what coulda been.

So defeated, I went to my seat and watched Joe inhale a box of milkduds.

(Maybe I should have done the Chachi “wa wa wa” to her).

Any-whooo...

Recently she posted a fun piece on her Favorite Car Movies (Two Lane Blacktop, etc. Glad to see Mad Max included)

Personally I hate cars (grew up in Detroit). Maybe I’ll make a list of my favorite bicycle movies...

Let’s see, off the top o’ my head... The Bicycle Thief, Breaking Away, The Muppet Movie, Butch Cassidy & The Sundance Kid, The Wizard of Oz, Condorman, etc. 

(Wow, these lists just roll out of me like magic or a gift (and sometimes a curse) from.... God!”).

Also I should point out a few weeks ago Mrs Masters posted a great piece celebrating what woulda been Bette Davis’ one-hundredth birthday. Give those reads.

Speaking of that old biddy (Davis, not Morgan)

This cool site Cine Beats have a excellent examination of the flick The Nanny (1965)

After being so disappointed watching  Hush… Hush, Sweet Charlotte, I tend to blow off all those post  What Ever Happened to Baby Jane thrillers Davis made, but this piece makes me wanna recheck out this Hammer flick (I watched it some years ago, but didn’t give it my full attention, I think I was clipping my toe nails that evening).

Speaking of sexy movie-nerd babes... 

You may of read Manohla Dargis’ review of a documentary, I’m completely itching to see, Roman Polanski: Wanted and Desired

Good news: it’s been announced that it’ll premiere on HBO this summer, as well as a number of other festival-fav documentaries.

The controversial doc about the shrimpy Polish director of Rosemary’s Baby will premiere on June 9th. 

Hey, can someone with HBO tape it (or burn it or whatever) for me?

For that matter, did anyone tape that final season of The Wire? Salivating to see that as well.

Speaking of Rosemary’s Baby...

It 'twas 1968, a landmark year for flicks, a watershed moment, the end of an era, the summer of love, blah blah blah....

In his Dread Reckoning column at Pop Matters 

Marco Lanzagorta  calls 1968 ‘A Terrifying Ruby Jubilee’

and illustrates “...1968 saw the radicalization of American society, and an accompanying revolution in the realm of horror genre film making".

Anticipating programs at Film Forum and The Lincoln Center in the NY Times, A.O. Scott explains under the title The Spirit of ’68 “Paris in 1968, as turbulent a year cinematically as it was politically”

I’m waiting to find a used copy or when it comes out in soft cover, but I’m excited to read Mark Harris’s book Pictures at a Revolution: Five Movies and the Birth of the New Hollywood. 

He breaks down who the five flicks nominated for the Best Picture Oscar came to be and what they represented in the film world.

On KCRW’s The Treatment, Harris was interviewed by Elvis Mitchell 

Sarah Kerr at Slat reviews the book.

What Five Academy Award Contenders Can Tell Us About The '60s

There’s an excerpt from the book on Entertainment  Weekly’s website 

Inside the Making of 'The Graduate

Sam Kashner had his own The Graduate article in the March issue of Vanity Fair.

Now it’s posted on the ‘net.

Here’s to You, Mr. Nichols: The Making of The Graduate 

Speaking of ‘68... 

Gene Hackman got famous that year with Bonnie And Clyde (the new double disc DVD has some great ‘making of’' shit on it).

Geoffrey MacNab of The Independent reports that Gene Hackman Bows Out (he's retiring from acting)

To bad some of his peers continue to make terrible flicks

On the Rocket Blog I pointed out the limits in the roles Pacino and De Niro do in Cop Or Criminal

And back in January, under the title Coppola Now! in writing about the two method hams I wondered....

“The movies no longer feel like events and De Niro no longer seems to give a shit who he works with. 

Why did he do Hide and Seek? Was he dying to work with the director of Swimfan?”

Stealing my idea, Patrick Goldstein in The LA Times says “The once-great actors are embarrassing”

Pacino and De Niro: How the mighty have fallen

(and he doesn’t credit me and his writing doesn’t have my charming drunken grammatical errors. Mister Bigshot, with an editor).

Speaking of fading acting careers (no not my own)...

Michael Cieply at The New Times went all Aint It Cool News, reporting about a sneak preview....

Tom Cruise, in Bit Role, Nips Studio’s Top Gun

They raved about his unbilled role in the latest forthcoming Ben Stiller flick Tropic Thunder

And now with all the disastrous speculation being written about his new flick Valkyrie 

The Times writes another lovey-dovey piece in defense of him.

The Nazi Plot that's haunting Tom Cruise And United Artists

Hmmm. I wonder if the the toothy star has “an in” there. 

Speaking of... nothing

Okay, quickly...

From Twitch

I hope this flick gets released.

Can PARANORMAL ACTIVITY Be Seen?

I kinda liked this low budget flick Mulberry Street (my ‘lil review here)

At The House Next Door there’s a good interview with the Writers/ Director

This is a crazy cool web site.

TOMB IT MAY CONCERN - David Zuzelo Scribbles on Mangled Media! One man's journal through the swamps of mangled media! From Jess Franco to Christina Lindberg to the art of Eurocine. Mangled Media knows no bounds. Nor does it recognize good taste!

"sweeneyrules out"

Joe's Top 5's - Film Noir

#1. The Asphalt Jungle – John Huston created the quintessential film noir. The underworld provides the backdrop for a heist gone wrong, corrupt business, the ultimate moll (in the form of Marilyn Monroe), and a farm? Sterling Hayden proves he owns this genre as the only anti-hero. And Jean Hagen as Doll provides the only woman that could make you forget that Marilyn Monroe was in the previous scene.





#2. Thieves’ Highway – It’s official: I hate Lee J. Cobb! It won’t take you two minutes to agree with me. Pay attention to the composition of the apples-rolling-down-the-hill shot. Beautiful. Four words about Valentina Cortese: Soft hands… Sharp nails. Yet another reason the blacklist was blasphemy, Jules Dassin rocks!








#3. Deadly Is the Female (re-named Gun Crazy) – Bonnie and Clyde without the slo-mo bloody gunfights. A fun romp as these two fight the law and each other. The bank robbery shot from the car is inspired filmmaking. One shot. One take










#4. Port of Shadows (Le quai des brumes) – The two French critics Borde and Chaumeton coined the phrase flim noir to describe American films from 1941-1953, so it seems only natural to have the French open and close something only they could coin. Marcel Carne quite arguably defined the genre with this masterpiece starring Jean Gabin. This has all the earmarks of the ideal with a bad guy hero and his damsel/moll in distress. But the other bad guys just won’t let him go good. And the best part is the see-through trench coat…





#5. Hands Off the Loot (Touchez pas au grisbi) – Jacques Becker closes the genre with the anti-film-noir. Jean Gabin embodies the death of noir as the aging thief who has just pulled off the final heist of his career. We don’t see the heist and the majority of this film is focused on the normal living aspects of people living abnormal lives. Ten minutes devoted to brushing teeth and putting on pyjamas! Never has a genre been killed so entirely, and yet so lovingly, by one film. Gabin closes the door he opened sixteen years earlier with a performance that will leave you wanting more, but there is no more. No more film noir.