|
|
|
OnVideo's Weekly Guide to Home Video Releases
Desolation Center: The untold story of a series of guerrilla music and art performance happenings in the 80s which inspired the birth of contemporary festival culture including Burning Man, Lollapalooza, and Coachella. (Digital only)
Time Warp: The Greatest Cult Films of All-Time Volume 3 Comedy and Camp: The final volume of Time Warp digs deep into what makes people laugh over and over again with the greatest cult comedies and campy classics of all-time. From “Fast Time at Ridgemont High” and “Office Space” to “Monty Python and the Holy Grail,” and “Showgirls.” (Digital, VOD only)
Trolls World Tour Dance Party Edition: Queen Poppy (Anna Kendrick) and Branch (Justin Timberlake) discover that their kingdom is only one of six musical realms —- Funk, Country, Techno, Classical, Pop, and Rock -- that were once united in perfect harmony. When the power-hungry ruler of the Rocker Trolls threatens to silence all other music so her tribe can reign supreme, Poppy and Branch must embark on an epic quest to unite the realms of Trollskind. (DVD, Blu-ray release: July 7)
Ella Fitzgerald: Just One Of Those Things: Much heralded, critically acclaimed documentary about the one-and-only “First Lady of Jazz" reveals an intimate history of a beloved icon. Featuring never-before-seen footage, the film includes interviews with Smokey Robinson, Tony Bennett, Johnny Mathis, Itzhak Perlman, Norma Miller, the late Andre Previn, and a rare conversation with Ella Fitzgerald’s son, Ray Brown Jr. (Released to Virtual Cinemas only)
Irresistible: From writer-director Jon Stewart comes the comedy of a Democratic political consultant (Steve Carell) who helps a retired Marine colonel (Chris Cooper) run for mayor in a small Wisconsin town. (VOD only)
Madagasikara: In 2009, fed up with increased poverty and widespread corruption, Madagascar's citizens took to the streets in protest. After the president was forced to resign, the international community terminated most foreign assistance to this chronically impoverished island nation. Over 60% of the country's revenues were immediately wiped out, resulting in the dramatic curtailment of education, health care, sanitation and access to food. This documentary is the story of three resilient women fighting for the survival of their families and the education of their children against the overwhelming forces of domestic political instability, international political hypocrisy and the crushing poverty caused by both. (Digital only)
A Regular Woman: Based on a contentious, real-life “honor killing” in 2005 that shocked Germany, this film offers a novel and captivating approach: the murdered woman, a 23-year-old German of Turkish-Kurdish ancestry shot point blank by her youngest brother, narrates the action both before and after her death. (Via participating Virtual Cinema theatres)
Legacy of Lies: An ex-MI6 agent ( Scott Adkins) is thrown back into the world of espionage and high stakes to uncover the shocking truth about operations conducted by unknown secret services. (DVD release: Day & date)
And Then We Danced
(2019 -- Georgia, Sweden) Levan Gelbakhiani, Ana Javakishvili, Bachi Valishivili. Romance and rebellion in this passionate tale of love and liberation set amidst the conservative confines of modern Georgian society. The film follows Merab, a devoted dancer who has been training for years with his partner Mary for a spot in the National Georgian Ensemble. The arrival of another male dancer, Irakli -- gifted with perfect form and equipped with a rebellious streak -- throws Merab off balance, sparking both an intense rivalry and romantic desire that may cause him to risk his future in dance as well as his relationships with Mary and his family. Formats: DVD, Blu-ray, VOD. (Music Box Films).
© 1996 -- 2020 OnVideo. All rights reserved June 21, 2020 (ISSN 1094-3676). |
|
Making-of featurette; "Nice to See You" (Directed by Jan Komasa, Poland, 16 minutes): A college student is taken by surprise when her father mysteriously shows up asking her to move back home. (Film Movement).
Dream Demon
(1988) A young bride-to-be's anxieties over her upcoming wedding take on a horrifying, demonic form in this underseen 1988 "rubber reality" shocker from director/co-writer Harley Cokeliss ("Black Moon Rising"), starring Timothy Spall and Jemma Redgrave. As her marriage to decorated war hero Oliver draws near, well-heeled Diana moves into her sprawling new London home where she starts to experience strange and terrifying nightmares. But are these blood-curdling night terrors merely the symptom of an unsettled mind, or the sign of something far sinister at work? Hounded by a pair of sleazy journalists (Spall and Jimmy Nail), Diana soon crosses paths with American tourist Jenny, who appears to have a strange connection to the foreboding house and its sinister past. Long dormant on home media since its original VHS release, "Dream Demon" - a terrific blend of psychological horror and late 80s practical gore effects - has at long-last been stirred from its analogue slumber. Brand new 2K restoration from the original camera negative, supervised and approved by director Harley Cokeliss. Includes Director’s Cut and Original Theatrical Version. Formats: Blu-ray. Extras: New scene-select audio commentary with director Harley Cokeliss and producer Paul Webster; newly-filmed interviews with director Harley Cokeliss, producer Paul Webster, actress Jemma Redgrave, actor Mark Greenstreet; actor Nickolas Grace, actress Annabelle Lanyon, composer Bill Nelson; "Foundations of Nightmare: The Making of Dream Demon" behind the scenes documentary on the production featuring interviews with Cokeliss, Webster, actors Timothy Spall, Redgrave, composer Bill Nelson and more; image galleries; original theatrical trailer
reversible sleeve featuring original and newly-commissioned artwork by Christopher Shy; FIRST PRESSING ONLY: Collector’s booklet featuring new writing on the film by Anne Bilson, author of the Dream Demon novelization, and director Cokeliss; FIRST PRESSING ONLY: Reversible poster featuring exclusive newly-commissioned artwork by Christopher Shy. (Arrow Video/MVD Entertainment).
The Mad Fox
(1962 -- Japan) In stark contrast to the monochrome naturalism of his earlier masterwork "Bloody Spear at Mount Fuji," visionary master director Tomu Uchida took inspiration from Bunraku and kabuki theater for arguably his strangest and most lavishly cinematic film, "The Mad Fox." Amidst a mythically-depicted medieval Japan, a court astrologer foretells a great disturbance that threatens to split the realm in two. His bitter and treacherous wife conspires to have the astrologer killed, as well as their adopted daughter, Sakaki. The astrologer's master apprentice, Yasuna, who was in love with Sakaki, is driven mad with grief and escapes to the countryside. There, he encounters Sakaki's long-lost twin, Kuzunoha, and the pair meet a pack of ancient fox spirits in the woods, whose presence may be the key to restoring Yasuna's sanity, and in turn bringing peace to the fracturing nation. Finally available outside Japan for the first time, Uchida's stunning, wildly stylized widescreen tableaux - using expressionist sets and color schemes - are highlighted in a world premiere Blu-ray release. Brand new restoration by Toei. Formats: Blu-ray. Extras: Brand new audio commentary by Japanese cinema expert Jasper Sharp, recorded exclusively for this release; original theatrical trailer; image gallery; reversible sleeve featuring original and newly commissioned artwork by Matt Griffin; FIRST PRESSING ONLY: Illustrated collector's booklet featuring new writing on the film by Ronald Cavaye and Hayley Scanlon. (Arrow Video/MVD Entertainment).
resisting chattel marriage, by furtively observing her. What unfolds in exquisite tension is an exchange of sustained gazes in which the two women come to know each other’s gestures, expressions, and bodies with rapturous intimacy, ultimately forging a subversive creative collaboration as well as a delirious romance. Charged with a yearning that almost transcends time and space, "Portrait of a Lady on Fire" mines the emotional and artistic possibilities that emerge when women can freely live together and look at one another in a world without men.
Formats: DVD, Blu-ray Disc with new director-approved 4K digital master, with 5.1 surround DTS-HD Master Audio soundtrack on the Blu-ray. Extras: New conversation between director Céline Sciamma and film critic Dana Stevens; new interviews with actors Adèle Haenel and Noémie Merlant; interview with cinematographer Claire Mathon from the 2019 Cannes Film Festival; interview from 2019 with artist Hélène Delmaire on creating the paintings for the film, along with behind-the-scenes footage; an essay by film critic Ela Bittencourt. (The Criterion Collection).
Tokyo Olympiad
(1965 -- Japan) A spectacle of magnificent proportions and remarkable intimacy, Kon Ichikawa’s documentary remains one of the greatest films ever made about sports. Supervising a team of hundreds of technicians using more than a thousand cameras, Ichikawa captured the 1964 Summer Games in Tokyo in glorious widescreen images, using cutting-edge telephoto lenses and exquisite slow motion to create lyrical, idiosyncratic poetry from the athletic drama surging all around him. Drawn equally to the psychology of losers and winners -- including legendary Ethiopian marathoner Abebe Bikila, who receives the film’s most exalted tribute -- Ichikawa captures the triumph, passion, and suffering of competition with a singular humanistic vision, and in doing so effects a transformative influence on the art of documentary filmmaking.
Formats: DVD, Blu-ray Disc with new 4K digital restoration, with uncompressed monaural soundtrack on the Blu-ray. Extras: Audio commentary from 2001 by film historian Peter Cowie; new introduction to the film by Cowie; eighty minutes of additional material from the Tokyo Games, with a new introduction by Cowie; archival interviews with director Kon Ichikawa; new documentary about Ichikawa featuring interviews with cameraman Masuo Yamaguchi, longtime Ichikawa collaborator Chizuko Osaka, and the director’s son Tatsumi Ichikawa; trailers; an essay by film scholar James Quandt. (The Criterion Collection).
