Showing posts with label eureka entertainment. Show all posts
Showing posts with label eureka entertainment. Show all posts

29 September 2014

Blu-ray Review - The Gang's All Here (1943, Masters Of Cinema)

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Genre:
Comedy, Musical
Distributor:
Eureka! Entertainment
BD Release Date:
29th September 2014 (UK)
Director:
Busby Berkeley
Cast:
James Ellison, Alice Faye, Carmen Miranda, Phil Baker,
buy:The Gang's All Here (1943) [Masters of Cinema] [Blu-ray]

Busby Berkeley is one of the names most associated with the classic Hollywood musical. It’s not hard to see why with his first Technicolor film The Gang’s All Here. It also happens to be up there as one of the most surreal films to ever come out of the golden age of Hollywood.

The film’s “plot” is the barest of the bare: a young soldier Andy Mason (James Ellison) falls in love with a New York nightclub singer but he has a long-standing engagement to a childhood sweetheart. This all provides a jumping off point for the quite nauseating (but in a good way) film of melodrama, campy dialogue and the musical numbers that are quite mind blowing.

The film’s cinematography and choreography is what the film is all about; the opening musical number perfectly sets the template for what is to come, and fans of Terry Gilliam’s Brazil will recognize the opening song. The first musical number that starts the spiral of surrealism is the much-celebrated “The Lady in the Tutti-Frutti Hat” which of course features the iconic Carman Miranda. It literally ends with a stunning bit of art direction which makes her fruit hat look it’s going on forever.

The film’s climax, however, remains one of the most surreal pieces of cinema I’ve ever seen, never mind of Golden Age Hollywood. It becomes almost psychedelic which is perhaps unsurprising considering its revival in the 60s and 70s when it gained cult status. It remains a classic musical that even non-fans of the genre will be entertained and swept up in its magic.

Eureka as usual has done a very nice package with a commentary: a 20 minutes documentary on the film, and it’s finished off with a deleted scene and the theatrical trailer. The new HD transfer also gives the film’s visual sparkle that makes the imagery pop out of the screen. It also includes a 56 booklet with writings by director David Cairns and Karina Longworth.

★★★★

Ian Schultz


25 November 2013

Eureka Video Announce Their Masters Of Cinema 2014 Early Releases

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Eureka Entertainment have announced via their twitter feeds (@eurekavideo and @mastersofcinema) their forthcoming releases in The Masters of Cinema series for the months of January, February and March 2014.

With a slate of titles that ranges from the most recent and 1980s American cinema (and, separately, the emergent Australian independent cinema), through to masterworks of the Italian cinema, and on to silent, and 1970s Hollywood, The Masters of Cinema Series runs the cinephile gamut once again with a seven-film January-March line-up that includes works by Federico Fellini, Samuel Fuller, Sidney Lumet, Francesco Rosi, William A. Wellman, Ted Kotcheff, and Andrew Bujalski. As if that weren't enough, Eureka Entertainment are also proud to announce an early summer release for one of Robert Altman's most revered films.

Producer of the Masters of Cinema Series, Craig Keller stated “In January, we welcome Andrew Bujalski into the Series for the first time with his smash indie-success Computer Chess (read review) that is currently enjoying a theatrical run across the UK following its British première at the London Film Festival. Alongside Computer Chess, William A. Wellman's Wings – the winner of the first ever Academy Award for Best Picture (1927-1928) will see its UK home-release premiere. Both titles will be released as Dual Format (Blu-ray + DVD) editions.


In February, we'll be releasing for the first time in the UK, a special edition Blu-ray and Ltd Edition Blu-ray SteelBook of Sidney Lumet's classic police drama starring Al PacinoSerpico (Original Theatrical Trailer http://bit.ly/17Tt2mE ) Secondly, we'll be releasing a Blu-ray edition of Federico Fellini's 1972 epic colour spectacle, a love-letter to the past and present of the city he loved best: Roma .

Another Italian classic arrives in March in a Dual Format (Blu-ray + DVD) release: Francesco Rosi's gripping political procedural, Le mani sulla città [Hands Over the City]. March also finds us two of the most brutally unsparing and controversial independent works of the last forty years. The first is the long-awaited (and uncut) release of Ted Kotcheff's disturbing and subversive Wake in Fright, hailed by Nick Cave as "the best and most terrifying film about Australia in existence," and which Martin Scorsese has stated to have rendered him "speechless" — released in its brilliant 2009 restoration. Prior to its home-video release, Wake in Fright will be released theatrically in selected cinemas in the UK & Eire on 7 March 2014. Here is the brand new 2014 UK theatrical trailer . The second controversial release in March is Samuel Fuller's feverish White Dog, unavailable in the UK for decades, whose premise — a stray white dog turns out to have been conditioned to attack any black person on sight — was woefully misconstrued at the time of its 1982 release; it remains one of Fuller's most passionate anti-racist statements. Both of these works will also be released in Dual Format (Blu-ray + DVD) editions.”

Managing Director of Eureka Entertainment, Ron Benson added “The finest in world cinema abounds across these seven releases, supplemented as always with a spate of special features and extras, all presented with a meticulous attention to detail and design. The same ethos applies to a film we'll be releasing in May, and for which we're thrilled to be able to provide an early sneak-announcement: Robert Altman's epic 1970s ensemble classic, Nashville, released for the first time on UK home video, in a Dual Format (Blu-ray + DVD) edition.”

17 August 2013

The Tarnished Angels Masters Of Cinema Blu-Ray Review

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Rating: 12
BD Release Date:
26th August 2013 (UK)
Director:
Douglas Sirk
Cast:
Rock Hudson, Dorothy Malone, Robert Stack
Buy:
(Masters of Cinema) (Blu-ray)

The Tarnished Angels is a film based on the novel Pylon by noted American writer William Faulker; who in fact wrote quite a few screenplays. Faulkner considered it the only good adaptation of his work he saw in his lifetime. Legendary director Douglas Sirk noted for his Technicolor drenched melodramas and the films normally starring Rock Hudson directed it.

The Tarnished Angels is about the very strange relationship between Roger Shumann (Robert Stack), his wife LaVerne (Dorothy Malone), Roger’s mechanic Jiggs (Jack Carson) and local reporter Burke Devlin (Rock Hudson). Roger is a disillusioned World War I flying ace that is making appearances as a stunt pilot, which also features his parachuting wife. They also have a kid Jack but it’s never clear that if Roger or Jiggs is the father on of the kid. The gypsy like lifestyle of the Roger, LaVerne and Jiggs intrigues Burke Devlin. He wants to do a newspaper piece on it much to the dismay to his editor.

Burke is dismayed by the treatment of his family and especially his wife LaVerne. He gets increasingly more and more attracted to his neglected wife. The key line is when Burke compares Roger, Jiggs and LaVerne as extra-terrestrials to his editor. They are very alien like and can’t form any meaningful relationship even with the ones they love. The film will end in tragedy in a way only true melodrama can.

The film is a slight departure from Sirk’s normally work due to the very contrasty black and white, which Sirk choose to shoot in to the echo the depression era the film is set. It is also perhaps his most bleak and pessimistic film. The film has the characteristic irony that goes though all of Sirk’s finest films. The Pylon, which Faulkner’s novel took its name and the pilots fly around is very overt symbolism of the characters going nowhere. It is brilliantly crosscut with the son Jack flying in circle during a tragic plane clash.

Rock Hudson gives a great performance, as the journo who falls deeply for LeVerne but knows nothing will happen. Rock is always one of the constantly surprising actors of the golden age of Hollywood for proof see Seconds and Giant. The film is also shoot in glorious black and white CinemaScope.

The Tarnished Angels also came out not that soon off one of his most successful films Written on the Wind that shared the same leads with the exception of Lauren Bacall. The film originally was one of his least successful films. The resurgence of his work since the 1970s with directors such as Rainer Werner Fassbinder, John Waters, Todd Haynes and even Quentin Tarantino praising his brand of melodrama. The film has since being re-evaluated as one of his key works.

★★★★

Ian Schultz



24 July 2013

The Birth Of A Nation (Masters Of Cinema) Blu-Ray Review

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Rating:NR
BD Release Date (UK):
29th July 2013
Director:
D.W. Griffith
Cast:
Lillian Gish, Mae Marsh, Henry B. Walthall
Buy: (BLU-RAY)

The Birth of a Nation is one of the most notorious films in film history and rightfully so. The film is probably the most important film of the silent only possibly topped by Battleship Potemkin. The film is directed by one of the very first true masters of cinema D.W. Griffith and is rightfully included in Eureka’s Masters of Cinema range. The film over the almost 100 years since it’s release has been indicted for being just racist trash. It’s no questionably incredibly racist but it’s a film with full of such amazing cinematic craftsmanship. The racism is so over the top are times it’s laughable especially the infamous 2nd half.

The film is a nutshell is about 2 families; one is Northern Stonemans and the Southern Camerons. They are friendly and one of the Stoneman boys falls in love with one of the Cameron girls. However the American Civil War happens. Sons of both families die during the war. After the war John Wilkes Booth (played by later noted director Raoul Walsh) assassinates President Abraham Lincoln.

The radical congressmen are determined to punish the South and by doing so they alienating white Southerners. Ben Cameron forms the Ku Klux Klan to fight back against the radical congressmen giving blacks “more rights than their white counterparts.” The film becomes increasingly becomes more and more absurd especially with the fried chicken eating mostly black legislature scene and the portrayal of African Americans as basically anarchic savages. To add insult to injury most of the black characters in that lovely old technique of blackface and the “Negro speak” intertitles are absurd.

The film boosts truly stunning cinematography and composition. The battle scenes are truly stunning and the end scenes with the KKK on horseback racing down to save the white people of the town are spellbinding. D.W Griffith are invented most of the editing techniques that are still used today. The film basically started feature length films as a realistic option, they’re about a dozens attempts previously… mostly lost sadly. It started the rise of Hollywood as a dominating force in the world for better or worse.

The Birth of a Nation a is film that is very much of it’s time and that has to be taken into account when your watch it. The film is clearly racist and pro-KKK even though D.W Griffith’s own beliefs has been much debating in the almost 100 years since it’s release. However as everyone knows the time it was made was a very racist time decades before the civil rights movement. His next film Intolerance was his response to the film’s criticism over its portrayal of the KKK and African Americans. Intolerance was all about how we should all come together and be tolerant of each other.

The film is an important piece of history that shouldn’t be dismissed outright. The film still deserves to be studied by students of film. The great Charles Chaplin once said “D.W Griffith was the teacher of us all” and he had a point. Masters of Cinema as always has released the film with loads of bonus features including a documentary and many of D.W Griffith’s civil war short films on both blu-ray and dvd.

★★★★

Ian Schutz



22 May 2013

Kaneto Shindô's The Naked Island To Be Released On Blu-Ray Part Of Masters Of Cinema Series

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The Naked Island, the breakthrough film by Kaneto Shindô, director of such classics as Onibaba and Kuroneko, will be released as part of Eureka Entertainment’s MASTERS OF CINEMA Series on Blu-ray on 17 June 2013.

Eureka Entertainment have announced that they will be releasing an updated 1080p edition of The Naked Island, the breakthrough film by Kaneto Shindô, director of such classics as Onibaba and Kuroneko. The brand new blu-ray edition of this classic of '60s Japanese cinema, and Moscow International Film Festival winner of the Grand Prix will include copious special features including a full-length audio commentary by the director Shindô and composer Hikaru Hayashi, an exclusive video introduction by Alex Cox, and a 24-PAGE BOOKLET with an essay by Acquarello and Joan Mellen's interview with the director. The Naked Island will be released on blu-ray as part of the Masters of Cinema Series on 17 June 2013.

Filmed on the virtually deserted Setonaikai archipelago in south-west Japan, The Naked Island [Hadaka no shima] was made — in the words of its director — "as a 'cinematic poem' to try and capture the life of human beings struggling like ants against the forces of nature". Kaneto Shindô (Onibaba, Kuroneko) made the film with his own production company, Kindaï Eiga Kyôkai, who were facing financial ruin at the time. Using one-tenth of the average budget, Shindô took one last impassioned risk to make this film. With his small crew, they relocated to an inn on the island of Mihari where, for two months in early 1960, they would make what they considered to be their last film.

The Naked Island tells the story of a small family unit and their subsistence as the only inhabitants of an arid, sun-baked island. Daily chores, captured as a series of cyclical events, result in a hypnotising, moving, and beautiful film harkening back to the silent era. With hardly any dialogue, Shindô combines the stark 'Scope cinematography of Kiyoshi Kuroda with the memorable score of his constant collaborator Hikaru Hayashi, to make a unique cinematic document.

Shindô, who had worked with both Kenji Mizoguchi and Kon Ichikawa, shot to international fame in 1952 with the astounding Children of Hiroshima. Eight years later, the BAFTA-nominated The Naked Island won the Grand Prix at the Moscow International Film Festival (where Luchino Visconti was a jury member). It is now considered to be one of Shindô’s major works, and its success saved his film company from bankruptcy. The Masters of Cinema Series is proud to release The Naked Island for the first time on Blu-ray in the UK.



SPECIAL FEATURES

- Newly restored 1080p transfer, in its 2.35:1 original aspect ratio

- Full-length audio commentary by director Kaneto Shindô and composer Hikaru Hayashi

- Video introduction by Alex Cox

- Optional English subtitles

- 24-page booklet with an essay by Acquarello, and a reprint of Joan Mellen’s interview with Shindô from Voices from the Japanese Cinema


Pre-order/BuyNAKED ISLAND, The (Masters of Cinema) (BLU-RAY)

15 May 2013

Silent Film Great F.W. Murnau's TABU The Latest Edition To Masters Of Cinema

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Tabu: A Story of The South Seas , considered one of the greatest films of the silent era, will be released as part of Eureka Entertainment’s MASTERS OF CINEMA series on Blu-ray and DVD on 17 June 2013.

Eureka Entertainment have announced that they will be releasing Tabu: A Story of The South Seas, the final film by one of the greatest of all filmmakers, F. W. Murnau (Nosferatu, Sunrise). In an updated edition of one of the great classics in the Masters of Cinema series, the film will be appearing for the first time ever in its proper 1.19:1 original aspect ratio on both the Blu-ray and DVD, and in an HD 1080p transfer on the Blu-ray. Featuring copious special features including a 15-minute making-of documentary, a full-length audio commentary track on the feature, newly presented outtakes from the original shoot of the film, and a 56-page booklet with original writing by the principals, essays, rare imagery, and more. Tabu: A Story of The South Seas will be released on DVD & Blu-ray as part of the Masters of Cinema series on 17 June 2013.

“a touching and poetic story of ill-starred love” – The Guardian


In 1929, F. W. Murnau (Nosferatu, Faust, Sunrise), one of the greatest of all film directors, invited leading documentarist Robert Flaherty (Nanook of the North, Man of Aran) to collaborate on a film to be be shot on location in Tahiti, a Polynesian idyll in which Murnau imagined a cast of island actors would provide a new form of authentic drama and offer rare insight into their “primitive” culture. The result of their collaboration was Tabu, a film that depicts the details of indigenous island life to tell a mythical tale that is rich in the universal themes of desire and loss.

Subtitled "A Story of the South Seas", Tabu concerns a Tahitian fisherman (played by an islander, Matahi) and his love for a young woman (played by fellow islander Reri, who went on to star on Broadway) whose body has been consecrated to the gods, rendering her tabu as far as mortal men are concerned. The lovers flee their island and its restrictive traditions, but will their love prevail in the "civilised" world?

This Oscar-winning film (the Academy Award went to cinematographer Floyd Crosby) is both poetic and simple in tone. The Masters of Cinema Series is proud to present – completely unc­ensored and fully restored – this landmark film of rare exoticism and magical beauty, described by critic Lotte Eisner in 1931 as "the apogee of the art of the silent film", for the first time ever on Blu-ray in its original aspect ratio.



SPECIAL BLU-RAY AND DVD EDITIONS

• New 1080p HD transfer on the Blu-ray of the Murnau-Stiftung / Luciano Berriatúa 75th anniversary restoration of the pre-Paramount, longer Murnau-approved version of the film, with uncensored scenes and titlecards, appearing in its original 1.19:1 aspect ratio for the first time

• Full-length commentary track by R. Dixon Smith and Brad Stevens.

• 15-minute German documentary about Tabu by Luciano Berriatúa.

• Newly presented outtakes from the original shoot of the film

• Treibjagd in der Südsee (1940) - an archival short film

• 56-PAGE BOOKLET with articles by Scott Eyman, Richard Griffiths, and David Flaherty; an interview with the film’s cinematographer Floyd Crosby; and the original story treatments written by Murnau and Flaherty for Tabu and its aborted predecessor Turia.

Pre-order/Buy Tabu-A Story of The South Seas:DVD




10 May 2013

Eureka Entertainment acquire Sundance-winner Computer Chess

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The groundbreaking, Alfred P. Sloan Prize-winning, and fiercely independent “artificially intelligent” comedy from Andrew Bujalski (Funny Ha Ha, Mutual Appreciation, Beeswax),Computer Chess which continues to collect raves on the festival circuit, is slated for a national UK theatrical release from Eureka! Entertainment and a home-video release as part of Eureka!’s The Masters of Cinema Series.

Eureka! Entertainment are thrilled to announce that they have acquired all UK/Eire rights to Andrew Bujalski’s Computer Chess, which had its debut in January at the Sundance Film Festival. Computer Chess is the fourth feature film from the brilliant and maverick American filmmaker Andrew Bujalski, whose previous works include Funny Ha Ha (the early ‘00s film that arguably kicked-off the so-called “mumblecore” movement of American independent cinema), Mutual Appreciation (an acclaimed comic portrait of love and longing in the milieu of the Brooklyn indie music scene), and Beeswax (which among its principals starred Alex Karpovsky, the indie filmmaker and actor who has gone on to great renown for his role in Lena Dunham’s cultural-phenomenon and hit TV series Girls).

Prior to final completion of Computer Chess, Bujalski was awarded a Tribeca Film Institute Sloan grant in 2012. Directly following Bujalski’s newest and long-anticipated film’s Sundance premiere, Computer Chess was given the prestigious Alfred P. Sloan Award, which honours a film based around the theme of science and/or technology. The film went on to have its International Premiere at the latest Berlin Film Festival, and will be presented as part of the distinguished BAMcinémafest this June in Brooklyn for its New York premiere, before moving on to a major UK festival debut in anticipation of a UK theatrical run coordinated by Eureka! Entertainment in late autumn, and an early-2014 Blu-ray and DVD release as part of the highly esteemed and awarded-winning Masters of Cinema Series.

A boldly intelligent ensemble comedy with a feel and atmosphere that surpass easy comparison, Computer Chess takes place in the early-1980s over the course of a weekend conference where a group of obsessive software programmers have convened to pit their latest refinements in machine-chess and the still-developing field of artificial intelligence (AI) against an assembly of human chess masters. Computer Chess is a portrait not only of the crazy and surreal relationships that come to pass between the abundance of characters who participate in the weekend event (and among whose ranks include Wiley Wiggins, the revered indie-game developer and star of Richard Linklater’s classic Dazed and Confused), but of the very era of early computing itself – and of the first, rudimentary video games – and (if that weren’t enough) of the hopes and insecurities that persisted through the film’s “retro” digital age into the present-day — that semi-virtual, hyper-social, maybe-kind-of-dehumanised landscape that, let’s face it, is our very own 2013. If that still weren’t enough: it’s also one of the wittiest, most shift-and-cringe-in-your-seat, and entirely LOL-hilarious movies of recent times.

The UK has been great to me and my films in the past,” states Computer Chess director Andrew Bujalski, “and I couldn’t be more delighted to be bringing Computer Chess there with the (intimidatingly named!) Masters of Cinema Series. I hope that means that THEY’VE mastered cinema — I’m still, uh, working on that... And my education certainly wouldn’t be complete if I didn’t try to make at least one bizarre, left-field, mindbender movie — Computer Chess is that. I’m eager to get it to British audiences.

Ron Benson, Managing Director of Eureka! Entertainment, comments: “Computer Chess is an audacious, poignant, and entertaining movie. It’s a rare film indeed that has the capability of appealing not only to general audiences, but to hardcore film buffs, to video-game enthusiasts, to chess mavens, to science lovers, to folk who are mesmerised by ‘retro’ design in all its forms — and to anyone who’s interested in how we collectively made our way from that earliest 1980s ‘digital era’ all the way up to the period of the iPhone and of the iPad. Audiences who took interest in the smash-hit retro-gaming documentary The King of Kong — not to mention anyone who has a warm place in their heart for Robert Altman’s classic ensemble film Nashville — will fall head-over-heels with Andrew Bujalski’s Computer Chess.

Craig Keller, producer of The Masters of Cinema Series, remarks: “It’s an immense pleasure to be able to include Andrew Bujalski’s Computer Chess in The Masters of Cinema Series. With the astonishing series of films that Bujalski has directed over the last several years, this director has made his mark as one of the most consistently thrilling, most intelligent filmmakers in American cinema — okay, let’s just say world cinema taken as a whole, never mind as an ‘indie filmmaker’ or otherwise. Seeing Bujalski’s debut feature Funny Ha Ha was literally a life-changing experience for me, and he has not only consistently ‘delivered’ with each subsequent film but, from Mutual Appreciation to Beeswax, has exceeded, and checkmated, expectations. His work should be, and indeed of late has been, an inspiration to an entire generation of young filmmakers; it’s a body of work that sets the bar very high indeed for anyone, in any country, to aspire toward. Computer Chess, with its radical retro video aesthetic and wry rumination on digitality and where-we-are-today, marks another breakthrough. It’s an awesome film that’s sure to attain cult status and expose his vision to an even wider audience. It’s even farther-reaching, more ambitious, than everything he’s done before. And so I would have to say, simply and without hyperbole, that this is one of the most exciting releases we’ve had the honour of releasing.”

The Masters of Cinema Series producer Craig Keller and Eureka! Entertainment’s Managing Director Ron Benson negotiated the deal for the film with Andrew Herwitz, head of The Film Sales Company on behalf of the producers.

Computer Chess stars Patrick Riester, Myles Paige, James Curry, Robin Schwartz, Gerald Peary, and Wiley Wiggins. The film was produced by Houston King and Alex Lipschultz, and was directed by Andrew Bujalski.

check out the trailer...