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OnVideo's Weekly Guide to Home Video Releases
Buddy Games: After six lifelong friends have a five year falling out, Bob (Josh Duhamel), aka “The Bobfather”, reunites his pals for the Buddy Games, an insane competition of absurd physical and mental challenges with the chance to win a $150,000 pot. (DVD release: Day & date)
A Chef's Voyage: The film follows Emmy ("Mind of a Chef") and James Beard award-winning chef David Kinch and his team from their 3 Star Michelin restaurant, Manresa, in California for a one of a kind collaboration with three legendary chefs at their iconic restaurants in Paris, Provence, and Marseille. (Apple TV, iTunes, Amazon Prime)
Deathcember: 24 terrifying short films by directors from around the globe, turning the season of love into a season of fear, with gifts of blood and terror to unwrap for audiences everywhere. Those who makes it through this creepy calendar will be rewarded with additional segments, so save room under the tree for more nightmarish Noel! (Digital only)
Fatman: To save his declining business, Chris Cringle (Mel Gibson), also known as Santa Claus, is forced into a partnership with the U.S. military. Making matters worse, Chris gets locked into a deadly battle of wits against a highly-skilled assassin (Walton Goggins), hired by a precocious 12-year-old after receiving a lump of coal in his stocking. (DVD, Blu-ray release: January 26)
Sweet Parents: Drama follows the pursuit of success, and subsequent struggle as a young sculptor a young chef start side relationships with a successful older man and woman, or “Sweet Parents”, in a last ditch hope of supporting their careers. (Digital only)
Train to Busan Presents: Peninsula: Four years after South Korea's total decimation in 2016's "Train to Busan," the zombie thriller that captivated audiences worldwide, acclaimed director Yeon Sang-ho brings us this next nail-biting chapter in his post-apocalyptic world. Jung-seok, a soldier who previously escaped the diseased wasteland, relives the horror when assigned to a covert operation with two simple objectives: retrieve and survive. When his team unexpectedly stumbles upon survivors, their lives will depend on whether the best — or worst — of human nature prevails in the direst of circumstances. (DVD, Blu-ray release: Day & date)
Vinyl Generation: In 1980s Czechoslovakia an emerging generation took inspiration from alternative culture to create their own world view, politics and eventually, a revolution. 25 years later, this unique generational perspective is explored for the first time in this story of art, revolution and vinyl. (Amazon Prime, Tubi, Vudu)
Princess of the Row: The inspiring tale of a runaway foster child who will stop at nothing to live with the only family she knows: her homeless, mentally-ill veteran father who lives on the streets of LA's skid row. (Digital, VOD only)
Zappa: Documentary by Alex Winter ("Bill & Ted" franchise) looks at the life of the innovative artist and musician through access to the Zappa family trust and other archival footage. (VOD only)
All I Can Say
(2019) An archive of '90s culture and a philosophical study of fame via the intimate video-diary of Shannon Hoon, the late lead singer of alt-rock band Blind Melon. Hoon filmed himself religiously from 1990-1995 with a video camera, recording up until a few hours before his sudden death at the age of 28. His camera was a diary and his closest confidant. In the hundreds of hours of footage, Hoon meticulously documented his life — his family, his creative process, his television, his band’s rise to fame, and his struggle with addiction. Created solely with his own footage, voice, and music, this rare autobiography is a prescient exploration of experience and memory in the age of video. It is also Hoon’s last work, completed 23 years after his death. Formats: DVD, Blu-ray. (Oscilloscope Laboratories).
Babylon Berlin: Season 3
(2020) Three-disc set with all 12 episodes. The ambitious, award-winning German series is a dizzyingly crime drama. Season 3 opens in the fall of 1929 in Berlin, during the tumultuous weeks before Black Friday’s stock market crash. Inspector Gereon Rath (Volker Bruch) and Charlotte Ritter (Liv Lisa Fries) are assigned to investigate the death of an actress, only to realize that the film industry is as rotten as the underworld. In the meantime, the fascist Black Reichswehr are regathering
their forces for their next attempt to bring down democracy and provoke more clashes with the Communists. Formats: DVD, Blu-ray. (Kino Lorber).
Buddy Games
(2019) Dan Bakkedahl, Kevin Dillon, Josh Duhamel, Olivia Munn, James Roday, Dax Shepard, Nick Swardson. After six lifelong friends have a five year falling out, Bob (Duhamel), aka “The Bobfather”, reunites his pals for the Buddy Games, an insane competition of absurd physical and mental challenges with the chance to win a $150,000 pot. Now all bets are off, as the determined dudes fight, claw, and party for the big bucks. Formats: DVD, VOD, Digital. (Paramount).
Frontline: Policing the Police 2020
(2020) A provocative journey inside one police force that's been ordered to reform by the Department of Justice: the Newark Police Department in New Jersey, which was found to have a pattern of civil rights abuses against the city's black residents. A raw and complex look at the challenge of changing how cops operate in a place like Newark: a poor city plagued by violent crime, where the victims and the perpetrators are usually black, and the police force itself is largely black and Latino. The documentary examines the difficulties of fixing a broken relationship with the community after decades of mutual mistrust. Formats: DVD, Digital. (PBS Distribution).
The Haunting of Mary Celeste
(2020) Emily Swallow, Dominic Devore, Alice Hunter, Pierre Adele, Richard Roundtree. A researcher and her crew set out to sea to prove that the disappearance of a family and crew from a merchant ship was for reasons having to do with the supernatural. Her theory, that those on the Mary Celeste vanished into a "rift" between dimensions, proves true as their boat breaks down and her crew begins to vanish one-by-one. Formats: DVD. (Lionsgate).
Mellow Mud
(2016 -- Latvia) Elina Vaska, Andzejs Janis Lilientals, Ruta Birgere. Harsh circumstances force a resourceful and determined Latvian teen to mature beyond her years in this compelling, bittersweet coming-of-age story from first-time feature helmer-writer Renars Vimba. Following the death of their father and emigration of their mother to England to find work, 17-year-old Raya (Vaska) and her younger brother, Robis (Lilientals), are forced to share a squalid rural cottage with their paternal grandmother (Birgere), whom they despise. When Raya returns from school one day to find their grandmother dead, they uneasily bury her in the garden to avoid the local social worker who has been snooping about and go about their
Riders of Death Valley
(1941) Two-disc set with 14 cliffhanger episodes. This Western serial has cowboy heroes escaping various perils devised by the evil Wolfe Reade and his pack of outlaws, who wish to lay claim to the fabled Lost Aztec Mine. The stable of stars includes Dick Foran, Leo Carrillo, Buck Jones, Charles Bickford, Guinn 'Big Boy' Williams, Lon Chaney Jr., and Noah Beery Jr. Formats: DVD, Blu-ray. (VCI Entertainment).
Train to Busan Presents: Peninsula
(2019) Gang Dong-won, Lee Jung-hyun, John. D Micheals. Four years after South Korea's total
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Essential Fellini
One hundred years after his birth, Federico Fellini still stands apart as a giant of the cinema. The Italian maestro is defined by his dualities: the sacred and the profane, the masculine and the feminine, the provincial and the urbane. He began his career working in the slice-of-life poetry of neorealism, and though he soon spun off on his own freewheeling creative axis, he never lost that grounding, evoking his dreams, memories, and obsessions in increasingly grand productions teeming with carnivalesque imagery and flights of phantasmagoric surrealism while maintaining an earthy, embodied connection to humanity. Bringing together 14 of the director’s greatest spectacles, all beautifully restored, this centenary box set is a monument to an artist who conjured a cinematic universe all his own: a vision of the world as a three-ring circus in which his innermost infatuations, fears, and fantasies take center stage.
The fifteen Blu-ray special edition collector’s set features "Variety Lights" (1950), "The White Sheik" (1952), I vitelloni" (1953), "La strada" (1954), "Il bidone" (1955), "Nights of Cabiria" (1957), "La dolce vita" (1960), "8 1/2" (1963), "Juliet of the Spirits" (1965), "Fellini Satyricon" (1969), "Roma" (1972), "Amarcord" (1973), "And the Ship Sails On" (1983) and "Intervista" (1987). Extras: New 4K restorations of 11 theatrical features, with uncompressed monaural soundtracks for all films; new digital restorations of the short film "Toby Dammit" (1968) and the television film "Fellini: A Director’s Notebook" (1969), with uncompressed monaural soundtracks; feature documentaries "Fellini: I’m a Born Liar" (2002) and "Marcello Mastroianni: I Remember" (1997), the latter presented in its 193-minute version; two-hour, four-part 1960 interview with Fellini by filmmaker André Delvaux for Belgian television; four behind-the-scenes documentaries: "Reporter’s Diary: Zoom on Fellini” (1965), "Ciao, Federico!" (1969), "The Secret Diary of Amarcord” (1974), and "Fellini racconta: On the Set of And the Ship Sails On” (1983); "Fellini racconta: Passegiatte nella memoria," a 2000 documentary featuring interviews with a late-in-life Fellini; "Giulietta Masina: The Power of a Smile," a 2004 documentary about Fellini’s wife and frequent collaborator; "Once Upon a Time: La dolce vita,” a French television documentary about the film; audio commentaries on six of the films; program from 2003 on Fellini's 1980s television advertising work; archival interviews with Fellini stars and collaborators, including Mastroianni, Sandr a Milo, Anouk Aimée, and Magali Noël; archival audio interviews by film critic Gideon Bachmann with Fellini, Mastroianni, and Fellini's friends and family; video essays; trailers. In deluxe packaging, including two lavishly illustrated books with hundreds of pages of content: notes on the films by scholar David Forgacs, essays by filmmakers Michael Almereyda, Kogonada, and Carol Morley; film critics Bilge Ebiri and Stephanie Zacharek; and novelist Colm Tóibín, and dozens of images spotlighting Don Young’s renowned collection of Fellini memorabilia. $199.96. (The Criterion Collection).
He Came From the Swamp: The William Grefé Collection
Killer sharks and human jellyfish and living mummies, oh my! Arrow Video presents the first ever collection of works by William "Wild Bill" Grefé, the maverick filmmaker who braved the deep, dark depths of the Florida everglades to deliver some of the most outrageous exploitation fare ever to go-go dance its way across drive-in screens. Bringing together seven of Grefé's most outlandish features, all new to Blu-ray, "He Came from the Swamp: The William Grefé Collection" packs in a macabre menagerie of demented jellyfish men ("Sting of Death"), zombified witch doctors ("Death Curse of Tartu"), homicidal hippies ("The Hooked Generation") and seductive matrons ("The Naked Zoo") - not to mention the ubiquitous go-go dancing college kids - to create one of the most wildly entertaining box-sets of all time. Seven William Grefé films, all newly restored from the best surviving film elements: "Sting of Death" (1966), "Death Curse of Tartu" (1966), "The Hooked Generation" (1968), "The Psychedelic Priest" (1971), "The Naked Zoo" (1971)," Mako: Jaws of Death" (1976) and "Whiskey Mountain" (1977). Brand new, extended version of Ballyhoo Motion Pictures’ definitive documentary "They Came from the Swamp: The Films of William Grefé." Formats: Blu-ray. Extras: Fully illustrated collector’s booklet featuring an extensive, never-before-published interview with William Grefé and a new foreword by the filmmaker; reversible poster featuring newly commissioned artwork by The Twins of Evil; reversible sleeves featuring newly commissioned artwork for each of the films by The Twins of Evil; commentaries; featurettes; galleries; behind-the-scenes; more. (Arrow Video/MVD Entertainment).
The Irishman
(2019) Martin Scorsese’s cinematic mastery is on full display in this sweeping crime saga, which serves as an elegiac summation of his six-decade career. Left behind by the world, former hit-man and union truck driver Frank Sheeran (Robert De Niro) looks back from a nursing home on his life’s journey through the ranks of organized crime: from his involvement with Philadelphia mob boss Russell Bufalino (Joe Pesci) to his association with Teamsters union head Jimmy Hoffa (Al Pacino) to the rift that forced him to choose between the two. An intimate story of loyalty and betrayal writ large across the epic canvas of mid-20th-century American history, "The Irishman" (based on the real-life Sheeran’s confessions, as told to writer Charles Brandt for the book "I Heard You Paint Houses") is a uniquely reflective late-career triumph that balances its director’s virtuoso set pieces with a profoundly personal rumination on aging, mortality, and the decisions and regrets that shape a life.
Formats: DVD, Blu-ray, with new 4K digital master, approved by director Martin Scorsese, with Dolby Atmos soundtrack on the Blu-ray. Extras: Newly edited roundtable conversation among Scorsese and actors Robert De Niro, Al Pacino, and Joe Pesci, originally recorded in 2019; new documentary about the making of the film featuring Scorsese, the lead actors, producers Emma Tillinger Koskoff, Jane Rosenthal, and Irwin Winkler, director of photography Rodrigo Prieto, and others from the cast and crew; new video essay written and narrated by film critic Farran Smith Nehme about "The Irishman’s" synthesis of Scorsese’s singular formal style; "The Evolution of Digital De-aging," a 2019 program on the visual effects created for the film; archival interview excerpts with Frank “the Irishman” Sheeran and International Brotherhood of Teamsters trade union leader Jimmy Hoffa; trailer and teaser; an essay by critic Geoffrey O’Brien. (The Criterion Collection).
eake and Elsa Rassbach; pandemic era conversations with Damien Leake, Clarence Felder and Bill Duke; "The Making of The Killing Floor" interview with producer-writer Elsa Rassbach; booklet with new essays by Professor James R. Barrett, University of Illinois and Professor Joe William Trotter, Jr., Carnegie Mellon University. (Film Movement).
lives as if nothing has happened. So when a high school English competition promising a trip to London for the finalists provides hope for Raya to escape her desperate situation -- maybe even help them find her mother -- she ultimately makes a series of decisions that bring her to an unenviable crossroad. Winner of the Crystal Bear for Best Feature Film at the Berlinale.
Formats: DVD, Digital. (Corinth Films).
decimation in 2016's "Train to Busan," the zombie thriller that captivated audiences worldwide, acclaimed director Yeon Sang-ho brings us this next nail-biting chapter in his post-apocalyptic world. Jung-seok, a soldier who previously escaped the diseased wasteland, relives the horror when assigned to a covert operation with two simple objectives: retrieve and survive. When his team unexpectedly stumbles upon survivors, their lives will depend on whether the best — or worst — of human nature prevails in the direst of circumstances.
Formats: DVD, Blu-ray, 4K Ultra HD/Blu-ray Combo, Digital. (Well Go USA).
