I giorni dell’ira / Days of Wrath / Gunlaw / Day of Anger (1967) 2 x DVD9 and Blu-Ray Arrow Video

Having never known his father and a mother who was a whore Scott Mary (Giuliano Gemma) has grown up in the town of Clifton, Arizona being pushed around by the other residents with few who really care enough for him to try and look out for him. Maybe that is why when charismatic gunman Frank Talby (Lee Van Cleef) rides in to town that Scott becomes captivated with the cool killer who takes an interest in him. When Frank realises that the locals bully Scott he takes him under his wing, teaching him how to draw quick and shoot accurately with the young Scott becoming even better than his teacher. The question is why would Talby want to help Scott?

Two versions of the film are included on this release: the original 114-minute cut that opened in Italy and the more familiar 86-minute version that was released internationally. The Italian release version is dubbed in English and Italian, while the international version is dubbed only in English.

Director: Tonino Valerii
Cast: Giuliano Gemma, Lee Van Cleef, Walter Rilla
Country: Italy, West Germany
Genre: Western

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Komisario Palmun erehdys / Inspector Palmu’s Error (1960) DVD5

A closed room mystery begins when an infamous tycoon is found dead in his bath tub. The famous police lieutenant Palmu is summoned to investigate.

DVD5 | PAL 4:3 | 01:42:45 | 4.12 Gb + 3% rec
Language: Suomi
Subtitles: English, Suomi, Svenska
Genre: Comedy, Crime, Mystery, Thriller

Director: Matti Kassila
Cast: Joel Rinne, Elina Pohjanpaa, Matti Ranin
Country: Finland
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Nachts, wenn der Teufel kam / Nights, When the Devil Came / The Devil Strikes at Night (1957) DVD9

This fascinating film, based on a true story, concerns the hunt for a serial killer by the Nazi regime.
Berlin, summer of '44. A detective links a couple of murders and backtracks to a strangler who's been killing women since before the war. Psycho Bruno is eventually arrested, but the case presents a problem for the Nazis: impossible to admit that in the Third Reich a mass murderer could rampage undetected for so long, and he's not even a Jew or a Slav, but a pure Aryan. Steps must be taken.

DVD9 | PAL 4:3 | 01:39:36 | 6.68 Gb + 3% rec
Language: Deutsch, Espanol
Subtitles: English, Espanol, Portugues, Russian, Francais
Genre: Crime, Drama, Thriller

Director: Robert Siodmak
Cast: Claus Holm, Annemarie Duringer, Mario Adorf, Hannes Messemer
Country: West Germany
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Dekalog / The Decalogue (1988–1990) 5 x DVD9 and 4 x Blu-Ray Criterion Collection

Ten commandments, 10 films. Krzysztof Kieslowski sat for months in his small, smoke-filled room in Warsaw writing the scripts with a lawyer he'd met in the early 1980s, during the Solidarity trials. Krzysztof Piesiewicz didn't know how to write, the director remembered, but he could talk. For hours they talked about Poland in turmoil, and together they wrote the screenplay for "No End" (1985), which told three stories of life under martial law. The government found it unsympathetic, the opposition found it compromised, and the Catholic church found it immoral. During the controversy, the collaborators ran into each other in the rain, and Piesiewicz, maybe looking for more trouble, shouted, "Someone should make a film about the Ten Commandments".

They made 10 films, each an hour long, for Polish television. The series ran in the late 1980s, played at Venice and other film festivals, and gathered extraordinary praise. In the same year of Dekalog, Kieslowski expanded Dekalog V and VI into feature films. A Short Film about Killing and A Short Film about Love were produced directly from these two Dekalog films respectively. Both films won wide international acclaim, with A Short Film about Killing winning two awards at Cannes.

The ten episodes are linked by a common setting, a Warsaw high-rise apartment complex where all the characters live (an early establishing shot perhaps suggests the Tower of Babel), and also by the occasional overlapping of characters from one episode into another. There is also an enigmatic, silent observer whose presence in nearly all the episodes suggests some symbolic role. Resisting the temptation to moralise or preach, in their totality the films examine the capacity of humans to deal with great challenges and contain a wealth of knowledge, thoughts, ideas, and emotions as well as being a marvellous and rare demonstration of ultimate craftsmanship in cinema.

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Falstaff – Chimes at Midnight (1965) 2 x DVD9 and Blu-Ray Criterion Collection

When a fully-restored version of Orson Welles' long-lost Chimes at Midnight appeared in theatres in early 2016, it marked the conclusion of a creative journey that had begun nearly a century earlier. In 1930, a 15-year-old Welles combined several Shakespeare plays to create a three-and-a-half-hour school play called The Winter of Our Discontent.

In 1939, Welles staged Five Kings – an even longer version of the same basic concept – as part of the Mercury Theatre's season. Welles played the role of Sir John Falstaff, who was the closest thing the play had to a central character. Alas, critics tore the work to bits, and the idea was set aside once again. Still, Welles fell deeper in love with the character of Falstaff over the years, calling him "Shakespeare's greatest creation". In 1960, he took yet another stab at his Shakespearean experiment: it was now called Chimes at Midnight, and Welles was still playing Falstaff (by this point, there was no one else he could have played: he had grown to Falstaffian proportions). The reviews were good, but ticket sales were not, so the play closed rather quickly.

Any other man might have let it go by that point, but Welles was determined to try once again. In 1964, he began pre-production on a film version of Chimes at Midnight.
The film version of Chimes is based on four of Shakespeare's plays; primarily Henry IV Parts 1 and 2, but also Richard II and Henry V. Some dialogue is also taken from The Merry Wives of Windsor.

We follow the young Henry and his escapades with the drunken fool and exciting, and never boring fat man, Falstaff. Through the many bars, to the many women, to the few battles they went on, the young Henry is a good warrior, and also a wild young man. But it all changes the day he becomes king...

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Women in Love (1969) Blu-Ray

Women in Love is Ken Russell's adaptation of D.H. Lawrence's classic novel, though more famous for it's nude wrestling scene between Reed and Bates than Russell's direction.

Set in 1920s England, Gerald (Oliver Reed) and Rupert (Alan Bates) star as friends who fall in love with a pair of sisters, iron-willed artist Gudrun (Glenda Jackson), and her schoolteacher sister Ursula (Jennie Linden). The relationships take markedly different directions as the film explores the nature of commitment and love, Rupert and Ursula learn to give themselves to each other; the more withdrawn Gerald cannot, finally, connect with the demanding and challenging Gudrun.
Set against the lush English landscape, the protagonists engage with nature in a direct and sensuous way, each searching for love but unsure what it means.

BD50 | 1080p AVC | 02:10:46 | 46.1 Gb + 3% rec
Language: English
Subtitles: English
Genre: Drama, Romance

Director: Ken Russell
Cast: Alan Bates, Oliver Reed, Glenda Jackson
Country: UK
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Khoya Khoya Chand / Lost Moon (2007) DVD9

Sudhir Mishra's 'Khoya Khoya Chand' is his tribute to the classic Hindi films of the 1950s-1960s which is considered the golden era of Hindi cinema. The film captures the tumultuous love story between a rising starlet and a talented writer/director in the fickle world of the film industry.
Superstar Prem Kumar (Rajat Kapoor) notices aspiring actress, Nikhat (Soha Ali Khan) on a film set and gives her the break she desperately wants, but at the cost of compromising any morals she has left. Having been raped on the casting couch at the age of fourteen, Nikhat is all too familiar with being used in the industry where she wants to succeed. Zafar (Shiney Ahuja), a writer looking for his first break, stumbles into Nikhat's life and they instantly fall for one another. The ebb and flow of their relationship and individual careers takes them on a personal journey, forcing them to confront issues from their past.

DVD9 | NTSC 16:9 | 02:09:35 | 6.83 Gb + 3% rec
Language: Hindi
Subtitles: English, Arabic
Genre: Drama, Romance

Director: Sudhir Mishra
Cast: Shiney Ahuja, Soha Ali Khan, Rajat Kapoor
Country: India
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Early Murnau – Five Films 1921-1925: Schloss Vogelod (1921), Phantom (1922), Der letzte Mann (1924), Die Finanzen des Grossherzogs (1924), Herr Tartuff (1925) 3 x Blu-Ray Eureka! – Masters of Cinema

One of the most influential and revered figures in all of cinema, Friedrich Wilheim Murnau came to prominence in the first half of the 1920's with a diverse string of productions ranging from buoyant satire to swirling psychological drama. Five key works are presented here: Schloss Vogelod, Phantom, Die Finanzen des Grossherzogs (the Grand Duke's Finances), Der Letzte Mann (The Last Laugh) and Tartuffe. The five films included vary in quality, style, and content, but taken as a whole they offer a portrait of Murnau's gradual development as a filmmaker.

Disc one of this box set includes Der Schloss Vogelod (1921) and Phantom (1922), two early films atypical of the style the director is most famous for. In contrast to the highly stylised expressionism of the earlier The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari (1920), Murnau employs a more naturalistic style for both of these films. Der Schloss Vogelod is an intimate and claustrophobic chamber drama, where terrible secrets from the past return, and Phantom is the tragic tale of a man possessed by a destructive and all-consuming love. Although Murnau was compulsively drawn to magic and the occult, both of these films are notable for their human focus.

Despite their age, there is a great amount of modern relevance in the thematic content of these films, ensuring they are more than just interesting historical artefacts. On disc two there is Die Finanzen des Grossherzogs (1924), a farcical comedy set in the Mediterranean, and Tartuffe (1925), Murnau's subtly satirical adaptation of Moliere's classic play. Compelled towards the source text because of his dislike for the church and his rejection by it (he was openly gay), the film is an open criticism of the sexual hypocrisy of societal institutions.

On disc three there is Der Letzte Mann. This is a poignant social-realist parable about the mental deterioration of an elderly hotel porter, played by Murnau regular Emil Jannings. Always as interested in special effects as he was in characterisation and plot, the film contains some interesting surrealist flourishes and groundbreaking camera work. The eerie and dizzying dream sequence is a notable highlight.

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Casotto / Beach House (1977) DVD9

It is a comedy and at times a little bit goofy. But, the film is far smarter than that. It makes wonderful observations about life and its flawed characters are, despite the obvious exaggerations, recognisable as the scheming, the vain, the pious, the hypocritical, the manipulative, the chaste and so on. It's life in microcosm

The film is set in one room. That room is a changing room on a beach or a beach-house and the characters reveal more of their inner selves as they interact with each brief visit. Highlights include a sunburned couple who seek a quiet moment to make love without touching, a man with two dicks and the competition for female companionship between two wide-boys from Rome and two posers from Torino with tissue paper stuffed down their trunks.

DVD9 | PAL 16:9 | 01:39:31 | 7.84 Gb + 3% rec
Language: Italiano
Subtitles: English, Italiano
Genre: Comedy

Director: Sergio Citti
Cast: Catherine Deneuve, Jodie Foster, Paolo Stoppa, Michele Placido, Ugo Tognazzi
Country: Italy
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Der mude Tod / The Weary Death / Destiny (1921) Blu-Ray

With Der mude Tod (Destiny, 1921), Fritz Lang mounted one of the most revolutionary and influential works of the German Expressionist movement. The film was a lavish Decla-Bioscop production co-scripted by Lang and his second wife, Thea von Harbou, who originally went uncredited. The scenarists were aided by splendiferous set pieces by three highly talented art directors and a cadre of cinematographers. Destiny is famous for introducing Luis Bunuel to the "poetic expressiveness" of cinema and convinced the Spanish surrealist to become a filmmaker. Additionally, death in Destiny as both a recurrent theme and visual specter almost certainly caught Ingmar Bergman's attention for the Swede used the character of Death to probe existential questions during the Black Plague in The Seventh Seal (1957).
In his commentary track on this disc, film critic Tim Lucas discusses several other films that are indebted to Lang's work.

Destiny is a visually ambitious, cinematic allegory in which a young woman (Lil Dagover) confronts the personification of Death (Bernhard Goetzke), in an effort to save the life of her fiance (Walter Janssen). Destiny contains four historical episodes: a modern parable, an Arabian tale set in ninth-century Baghdad, a Venetian tale set in the Italian Renaissance, and a nineteenth-century Chinese tale set in the Emperor's palace.

Restored by Anke Wilkening on behalf of the Friedrich-Wilhelm-Murnau-Stiftung, this definitive presentation of Destiny preserves the original German intertitles and simulates the historic color tinting and toning of its initial release. Accompanying the film is a newly-composed score by Cornelius Schwehr as a commissioned composition by ZDF / ARTE performed by the 70-member Berlin Rundfunk Symphony Orchestra under the direction of conductor Frank Strobel.

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Forbidden Hollywood Collection Volume 8: Blonde Crazy (1931), Dark Hazard (1934), Hi, Nellie! (1934), Strangers May Kiss (1931) 4 x DVD5

Warner Bros. has a lot of pre-Code cinema, so much that they're up to volume 8 of their popular Forbidden Hollywood series. This latest set is especially diverse, mixing comedy and drama and settings from swanky hotels and European villas to raucous newsrooms and racetracks.

Blonde Crazy (1931) (Dir. Roy Del Ruth)
A bellboy (James Cagney) joins forces with a chambermaid (Joan Blondell) and embarks on a new career as a con artist.

Strangers May Kiss (1931) (Dir. George Fitzmaurice)
A young woman (Norma Shearer) with modern views on romance finds herself torn between a pair of beaus (Neil Hamilton and Robert Montgomery).

Hi, Nellie! (1934) (Dir. Mervyn LeRoy)
In a more lighthearted turn than usual, Paul Muni plays a newspaperman demoted to writing the love advice column after botching a big story...or so he thinks.

Dark Hazard (1934) (Dir. Alfred E. Green)
A former hotshot gambler (Edward G. Robinson) finds a second chance at success with a dog named Dark Hazard.

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Anna (1972-1975) DVD9

ANNA is an astonishing nearly four-hour documentary about a 16-year-old homeless junkie, eight months pregnant, whom the filmmakers discovered in Rome's Piazza Navona. The film was initially constructed on the basis of the events and experiences of its protagonists, but soon the script was abandoned for a full immersion into their daily lives.
ANNA cuts between long, often discomfiting domestic scenes and equally protracted cafe discussions back in the square, where the unruly cross talk among hippies, bums, bourgeoisie, and angry young men touches on the movie's key themes of obligation and intervention: between filmmakers and their subjects, the state and its citizens, fellow members of society.
Of the eleven hours filmed, a short version was transcribed onto 16mm film using a vidigrafo created by Alberto Grifi, before making its debut at the Berlin Film Festival in 1975.

DVD9 | PAL 4:3 | 03:33:41 | 7.91 Gb + 3% rec
Language: Italiano
Subtitles: English
Genre: Documentary

Directors: Alberto Grifi, Massimo Sarchielli
Country: Italy
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