The Adventures of Tintin (1991–1992) 6 x DVD9 The Complete Collection (Seasons One, Two, Three)

One of the most popular European classic comic strips of all time tells stories of the heroic escapades of youthful reporter Tintin and his loyal canine companion Snowy. From a comic that first appeared in 1929 by Belgian artist Herge, these delightful adventures were spun into books, magazines, TV series, radio programs and theater productions. The television series The Adventures Of Tintin (1991-1993) follows Tintin and Snowy in solving mysteries closely related to the much-loved original stories. A colorful cast of characters is along for the ride, including the salty Captain Haddock, handy Professor Calculus and clumsy Thomson & Thompson. Exploring the globe, solving mysteries and searching for truth and justice, Tintin and crew inspire the adventurer in all of us!

Each episode is faithful to the times, set during the 20th century despite some wondrous events, the world Tintin inhabits is quite realistic and covers some major historical moments including Cuba's overthrow, Japan's Manchurian invasion and many more...

6 x DVD9 | NTSC 4:3 | 900 minutes | 41.7 Gb + 3% rec
Language: English, Espanol
Subtitles: none
Genre: Animation, Adventure, Crime, Family, Mystery

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45 Years (2015) Blu-Ray Criterion Collection

Kate (Charlotte Rampling) and Geoff Mercer (Tom Courtenay) are a mature couple who live their quiet lives in a quaint British community. Their daily routine includes Kate walking the dog in the morning and Geoff reading. They are approaching their 45th wedding anniversary and a big party is going to be held to commemorate the event. As the week leading up to the celebration begins, Geoff receives a mysterious letter. Nearly 50 years ago, Geoff and his then girlfriend Katya, had been hiking in the Alps, when Katya fell to her death. Now, all of these years later, her body has been found under the ice.

This letter rekindles deep-held emotions, and the relationship comes under strain as Geoff is clearly troubled and Kate struggles to understand why. As they discuss it and Kate finds further background it becomes clear that the ancient relationship was no mere tryst for Geoff. Is he being entirely honest with her about it, or does it threaten to taint their trusting relationship? As we see preparations for the 45th anniversary party coming to a head we are taken deep into the couple's emotions, their insecurities and their feelings for one another.

Director: Andrew Haigh
Cast: Charlotte Rampling, Tom Courtenay, Geraldine James
Country: UK
Genre: Drama, Romance
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Pistolary! Films and Videos by Peggy Ahwesh (1989-2003) 3 x DVD5

Peggy Ahwesh's films, videos and found-footage manipulations are among the most complex, alluring, irreverent and pleasurable objects in women's experimental moving image-making. Since the 1980s Ahwesh has produced works encompassing ethnography, melodrama, science fiction, horror, documentary, pornography and virtual reality, each realized through the aesthetic particularities of different formats (including 16mm, Super-8, digital video and PixelVision), her physical uses of cameras, and her 'ornate, complicated pastiche' relationship with processes of editing.1 Aesthetically, formally and structurally Ahwesh's practice is 'slippery', associative and, above all, extraordinarily heterogeneous.

Over the last two decades, Peggy Ahwesh has produced one of the most heterogeneous bodies of work in experimental film and video. Drawing from horror films, psychoanalysis, and the writings of Bataille, her films and videos are sublime studies of culturally complex subjects: sexual pleasure, relationships, and notions of the self. With playfulness and humor, she investigates cultural and gender identities, the role of the subject, language and representation.

This 3-disc DVD collection features nine works by maverick film and video maker Peggy Ahwesh.
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Drei Tage Liebe / Three Days of Love (1931) DVD5

This is the story of the unhappy maid Lena, who falls in love with the furniture mover Franz. But Franz' former girlfriend Karla is jealous of Lena and starts an intrigue against the couple, suggesting that Franz would leave Lena because of her poverty and shabby clothes. So Lena steals a ring and brings it to the pawnshop in order to get some money to buy something more attractive. However, when Franz finds out he throws her out, and Lena only sees one way to end her misery....

A rather impressive and atmospheric early Weimar sound film. This was the debut film by director Heinz Hilpert, whose name isn't exactly well known today and who only directed a handful of films.

DVD5 | PAL 4:3 | 01:32:00 | 4.08 Gb + 3% rec
Language: Deutsch
Subtitles: English
Genre: Drama, Romance

Director: Heinz Hilpert
Cast: Hans Albers, Kathe Dorsch, Trude Berliner
Country: Germany
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Mildred Pierce (1945), Joan Crawford: The Ultimate Movie Star (2002) 2 x DVD9 and Blu-Ray Criterion Collection

Told in flashback, "Mildred Pierce" opens with a murder and a trip to police headquarters, where we learn that Mildred was a self-sacrificing middle class woman, whose every decision was motivate by her blind lover of her children, particularly her daughter Veda (Ann Blyth).
To give Veda all the best things in life, Mildred becomes a successful restaurateur the hard way, by starting out as a lowly waitress and then working almost continuously to better her position in the industry. Mildred even wrecks her own love life for her daughter's sake, and only after doing so does she discover the depth of Veda's ungratefulness.

"Mildred Pierce" is a stark and intriguing film noir from hard boiled novelist James M. Cain and stalwart director of the time Michael Curtiz, whose name seems to be forgotten today. Joan Crawford won her only Oscar for her whirlwind and emotional performance.

BD50 + 2xDVD9 | 1080p AVC, NTSC | 01:51:00 | 44.4 Gb + 13 Gb
Language: English
Subtitles: English
Genre: Crime, Drama, Film-Noir, Mystery, Romance

Director: Michael Curtiz
Cast: Joan Crawford, Jack Carson, Zachary Scott, Eve Arden
Country: USA
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Science Fiction Theatre (1955–1957) 8 x DVD9 The Complete Series

Blending the discoveries of factual science with the limitless frontiers of fantasy, Science Fiction Theatre offered Atomic Age television viewers an intriguing look at the possibilities science could provide us in the near future as well as the immediate present. Airing from 1955 to 1957 and hosted by Truman Bradley, Science Fiction Theatre's seventy-eight episodes presented its intelligent and fantastic stories in an anthology format, pre-dating The Twilight Zone and The Outer Limits.

The series speculated on such things as visitors from other planets, UFO incidents, space fight, espionage technology, and miracle drugs that could cure all ills. Stories of crackpots, who turn out to be visionaries, and eyewitnesses to the fantastic, fighting to be believed. The show also utilized experts as consultants to help keep the show within the known realm of the scientific possibilities speculated at the time.

Guest stars on this unique program feature a roster of actors well-known to any lover of classic film and television, including DeForest Kelley ("Star Trek"), Hugh Beaumont ("Leave It To Beaver"), Barbara Hale ("Perry Mason"), Gene Barry (The War of the Worlds, "Burke's Law"), Macdonald Carey, Edmund Gwenn (Miracle on 34th Street), Beverly Garland, Basil Rathbone, June Lockhart ("Lost In Space"), and the great Vincent Price.
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The Lupino Collection: No Lady (1931), Her First Affaire (1932), Shipmates o’Mine (1936) DVD9

No Lady (1931)
Stars: Lupino Lane, Renee Clama, Sari Maritza
Lane directs and stars as henpecked Mr Pog, who takes his wife and stepchildren on holiday to Blackpool. He is mistaken for an international criminal mastermind and drawn into a series of adventures that climaxes in a glider race which a foreign power aims to win by fair means or foul. Lovely shots of 1930s Blackpool.

Her First Affaire (1932)
Stars: Ida Lupino, George Curzon, Diana Napier
Ida Lupino stars in her first film aged just 18 and plays an impetuous teenager, who, much to the consternation of her boyfriend (Arnold Riches), becomes infatuated with a famous novelist (Curzon). The boyfriend and the writer's wife (Napier) join forces to deter her, and he decides an early marriage is the best cure.

Shipmates O'Mine (1936)
Stars: John Garrick, Jean Adrienne, Wallace Lupino
A through-the-years story with songs and sentiments. A sailor rises from first officer to captain, gets married and has a son, but loses his command when his ship is rammed and the vessel is abandoned to save passengers. For years he lives in the countryside. Then his son, now grown, contacts his father's old shipmates and eventually their ship is put back into commission with its old skipper in command.
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And Still I Believe… / I vsyo-taki ya veryu… / И все-таки я верю… (1974) DVD9

Romm is a crucial figure for understanding the phenomenon of the Soviet sixties. His film "Nine Days in One Year" (1962) pioneered — and in many ways defined — the aesthetics of film in that decade. "Ordinary Fascism" (1965) turned out to be at the epicenter of debate on the nature of totalitarianism.

Following Romm's untimely death during the making of "...And Still I Believe", his former students Khutsiev and Klimov completed this remarkable film montage, a personal journey across 20th-century history and the clash of civilizations told, in part, through Romm's own diary entries and gripping historical footage.

DVD9 | PAL 4:3 | 02:00:15 | 6.95 Gb + 3% rec
Language: Russian
Subtitles: English
Genre: Documentary, Drama

Director: Mikhail Romm, Marlen Khutsiev, Elem Klimov
Country: Soviet Union
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Pickpocket (1959) DVD9 (Reissue) and Blu-Ray Criterion Collection

Michel (Martin Lassalle) is unable to keep a job and feels that all the positions that his friend Jacques (Pierre Leymarie) manages to set up for him are beneath a man of his intelligence. He needs to live however and, believing that society owes him, and resorts to stealing people's wallets. Initially he is not very good but, falling in with a group of thieves and getting lessons from an experienced pickpocket, Michel moves from the random pickings of the Paris underground to elaborate operations on banks and train stations. More than just making money however, Michel feels an elation at asserting his superiority over other people and being beyond the law. But the thrill of evading the police is not enough – Michel needs to actively challenge the police to catch him, meeting a police detective (Jean Pelegri) in a bar and expounding his theories that certain gifted and intelligent people should be free to disobey laws that are restrictive on their freedom of expression and their abilities.

BD50 + DVD9 | 1080p AVC, NTSC | 01:16:19 | 44.1 Gb + 7.60 Gb
Language: Francais
Subtitles: English
Genre: Crime, Drama

Director: Robert Bresson
Cast: Martin LaSalle, Marika Green, Jean Pelegri
Country: France
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F for Fake (1973) 2 x DVD9, Blu-Ray Criterion Collection

This incredible film directed by the great Orson Welles tells not one but three different stories. They mix facts and fiction with such authority that one never feels the need to question its observations.

F for Fake is an autobiographical "essay film" masquerading as a documentary. On the surface, it's a study of notorious art forger Elmyr de Hory and biographer Clifford Irving (shot by cinematographer Francois Reichenbach), and was originally planned as such...but the discovery of Irving's fabricated Howard Hughes biography turned it into a layered examination of fraud and forgery.

With these three stories, Welles' constructs layers of lies while revealing a great many truths. A self-confessed bender of the truth, he's a faker, telling the story of a faker, who told the story of a faker. There are rules about double negatives, but how about triple? Does that negate everything? Not at all, as by delving into the falsehoods, the basest of human realities are put under Welles' microscope and revealed in the truest of lights.

Director: Orson Welles
Cast: Orson Welles, Oja Kodar, Francois Reichenbach
Country: France, Iran, West Germany
Genre: Documentary
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The Chief (1933) DVD5

A bumbling honorary fire chief runs for alderman against a gangster in this madcap comedy.

A timid man (Ed Wynn) is thrust into the spotlight when his father is honored as a hero. He blunders into a series of adventures because of a woman (Dorothy Mackaill) and becomes a hero himself. Although two political parties try to use him for their benefit, he unwittingly foils all their plans. This is based on Wynn's famous radio character, and the film ends with Wynn on his own radio show.

This farce satirizes the corruption of local politics in the big city by making a popular hero out of a clumsy but likable fool.

DVD5 | NTSC 4:3 | 01:05:20 | 4.19 Gb + 3% rec
Language: English
Subtitles: none
Genre: Comedy

Director: Charles Reisner
Cast: Ed Wynn, Charles 'Chic' Sale, Dorothy Mackaill
Country: USA
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Dragon Seed (1944) DVD9

A strong cast render good performances in this lengthy film which is based on Pearl Buck's best-seller about the wartime atrocities leveled by the Japanese against the Chinese. Jade (Katharine Hepburn) is the aggressive and idealistic wife of Lao Er (Turhan Bey). Fearing imminent Japanese invasion, Jade persuades her husband to escape to the mountains to work in a munitions factory, although her father-in-law, Ling Tan (Walter Huston), refuses to believe that the Japanese will attack. En route they stay with Ling Tan's son-in-law, Wu Lien (Akim Tamiroff), a well-to-do merchant who slavishly collaborates with local Japanese troops. When Jade learns that Wu Lien is preparing a banquet for Japanese officers, she poisons the food; as a result, Wu Lien is executed. Jade and Lao Er later return to find Ling Tan's farm looted and the old man's opinion of the Japanese drastically changed...

DVD9 | NTSC 4:3 | 02:27:47 | 6.77 Gb + 3% rec
Language: English
Subtitles: English, Francais
Genre: Drama, History, War

Directors: Harold S. Bucquet, Jack Conway
Cast: Katharine Hepburn, Walter Huston, Aline MacMahon
Country: USA
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L’albero degli zoccoli / The Tree of Wooden Clogs (1978) 2 x DVD9 and Blu-Ray Criterion Collection

Ermanno Olmi's masterpiece The Tree of the Wooden Clogs, which follows the lives of three peasant families in turn-of-the-century Lombardy for approximately one year, is unusual among Italian peasant epics in that its director is of peasant stock, and the narrative, based on his grandmother's stories of rural life, reflects his family's own experiences.

Olmi is also a fervent Catholic, and the film, with its warm depiction of traditional Catholic faith and piety as an integral part of the rhythms of peasant life, and its distinct lack of violent revolutionary spirit, has widely been regarded as a gentle Catholic counterpoint to angry Marxist peasant cinema, specifically Bertolucci's thematically similar Novecento.

The film was the winner of the prestigious Palme d'or (Best Picture) at Cannes and is regarded as one of the best Italian films ever produced.

Director: Ermanno Olmi
Cast: Luigi Ornaghi, Francesca Moriggi, Omar Brignoli
Country: Italy
Genre: Drama, History
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1922 (1978) DVD5

The setting for the film is 1922 -- the Greek army is leaving Asia Minor and in its wake, the Turkish army rounds up the remaining Greek civilians and either kills them, or sends them on forced marches outside of the region.

Koundouros' film is based on the autobiographical novel by Greek novelist Elias Venezis (a pseudonym for his real name Elias Mellos) entitled "Number 31328", where he describes his experiences during his 14-month stay in a hard-labor concentration camp. The number in the novel's title references the number he was assigned as a prisoner. The film consists on the development of personal tragedies of three different characters – a wife's merchant, a professor and a 17-year-old adolescent – against the backdrop of the displacement of more than one million Greek Orthodox Christians.

DVD5 | PAL 4:3 | 02:09:05 | 3.46 Gb + 3% rec
Language: Greek
Subtitles: English
Genre: Biography, Drama, History

Director: Nikos Koundouros
Cast: Antigoni Amanitou, Zaharias Rohas, Nikos Kapios
Country: Greece
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Another Part of the Forest (1948) DVD5

"Another Part of the Forest" backtracks 20 years from "The Little Foxes", Lillian Hellman's play, showing the same family of Hubbards and how they got to be that way in "Foxes".

Convoluted family saga set in an 1880 Southern town whose wealthiest citizen (Fredric March) is despised by his neighbors as a Civil War profiteer, but his years of lording it over the townspeople and his own conniving offspring (Edmond O'Brien, Dan Duryea and Ann Blyth) come to an end when his downtrodden wife (Florence Eldridge) reveals a dark secret from his past...

DVD5 | NTSC 4:3 | 01:47:10 | 4.33 Gb + 3% rec
Language: English
Subtitles: none
Genre: Drama, Romance

Director: Michael Gordon
Cast: Fredric March, Dan Duryea, Edmond O'Brien, Ann Blyth, Florence Eldridge, Dona Drake, Betsy Blair
Country: USA
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Das Madchen Johanna / Joan of Arc / Joan the Maid (1935) DVD5

The story of Joan of Arc has been filmed so often that it need not be repeated here. This 1935 version a very effective film which focuses much more on the intrigues of the men around Joan than on the girl herself, who gets surprisingly little screentime. Heinrich George's Duke of Burgundy is almost a buffo character in his arrogance and lecherousness. And Jeanne in her naivity admires the king and doesn't see through his Machiavellian schemes which in the end lead to her death.

"Das Madchen Johanna" was intended at least partly as a Third Reich propaganda film which shows both the French and the English as morally corrupt and conversely at least implicitly turns the Maid into a national 'leader' figure, German style.

DVD5 | PAL 4:3 | 01:17:39 | 3.99 Gb + 3% rec
Language: Deutsch
Subtitles: English
Genre: Biography, Drama, History

Director: Gustav Ucicky
Cast: Angela Salloker, Gustaf Grundgens, Heinrich George
Country: Germany
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An Act of Murder / Live Today for Tomorrow (1948) DVD5

Calvin Cooke (Fredric March) is an old-fashioned kind of man whose profession, a judge in a small town near Philadelphia, allows him to pass sentence literally on his fellow citizens. When his beloved wife Catherine (Florence Eldridge, March's wife in real life) falls terminally ill, he and their doctor conceal the nature of her illness in a vain attempt to ease her suffering. After Calvin witnesses a policeman put a dog, critically hurt by an automobile, out of its misery by shooting it, he knows what he has to do. He's willing to die along with his wife, but the irony is that he survives their deliberate auto crash; he must then stand trial for her murder and he winds up with David Douglas (Edmond O'Brien), a brash young lawyer who is dating the Cooke daughter, as his lawyer. Douglas has clashed with Calvin in the courtroom before, and their adversarial relationship continues, as Calvin insists on following the letter of the law, pleading guilty to his crime.

DVD5 | NTSC 4:3 | 01:31:11 | 4.33 Gb + 3% rec
Language: English
Subtitles: none
Genre: Crime, Drama, Film-Noir

Director: Michael Gordon
Cast: Fredric March, Edmond O'Brien, Florence Eldridge
Country: USA
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La noire de… / Black Girl (1966), Sembene: The Making of African Cinema (1994), Borom sarret (1963) 2 x DVD9 and Blu-Ray Criterion Collection

Ousmane Sembene is considered by many to be the father of African cinema. A political activist, author, and filmmaker, the Senegalese Sembene made it his life's mission to tell distinct African stories without white European influence (Senegal was once a French occupied territory). He made his feature debut in 1966 with the brilliant and stirring Black Girl. Featuring a moving central performance by M'Bissine Therese Diop, Black Girl is a harrowing human drama as well as a radical political statement — and one of the essential films of the 1960s.

Black Girl tells the story of a young Senegalese woman named Diouana (Mbissine Therese Diop) who travels to France to work as a servant to a white French couple (Robert Fontaine, Anne-Marie Jelinek). At first, Diouana takes her trip with optimism, thinking that her primary duties would be taking care of the couple's children. That optimism quickly turns to despair as Diouana is immediately put to work, cooking and cleaning and doing everything the couple orders her to do. She's treated more like a slave than a person, never allowed to travel around France and subjected to constant verbal abuse by Madame (Jelinek) while Monsieur (Fontaine) barely even notices her. She fantasizes about her home country before she left, even the possibility of a romance. But her desperation for money snaps her back to reality. Things start to fall apart when Diouana is the subject of racism by the couple's dinner guests. As the tension mounts and Diouana's insubordination escalates, the narrative takes a tragic and shocking turn that may be disturbing, but sadly isn't surprising.
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Fellini’s Roma (1972) DVD9 and Blu-Ray Criterion Collection

Directed by Federico Fellini, Roma is a strangely compelling film. Part travelogue and part surrealist expose, the film is very much a love letter written to the city in Fellini's own inimitable style.

Fellini's disjointed but stunningly original tribute to Rome could have been an unmitigated disaster. There's no plot, no main characters, no common thread linking the disparate parts that make the whole. It spans 40-odd years, jumps back and forward, mixes fact and fiction, gets off to a slow start and much of it doesn't seem to make any sense at all. But none of that matters because this autobiographical history of the Eternal City works brilliantly.

The entire movie is made up of unconnected vignettes of Rome today and yesterday, bound only by Fellini's eye for the bizarre and the absurd, and by his ever-present dry wit. It is a walk on the Italian wild-side; a great personal view of one of the world's great cities.

BD50 + DVD9 | 1080p AVC, NTSC | 02:00:20 | 43.2 Gb + 7.35 Gb
Language: Italiano
Subtitles: English

Director: Federico Fellini
Cast: Britta Barnes, Peter Gonzales Falcon, Fiona Florence
Country: Italy, France
Genre: Comedy, Drama

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Night and the City (1950) 2 x DVD9 and Blu-Ray Criterion Collection 2015 edition

Harry Fabian (Richard Widmark) is an American hustler trying to make a name for himself in London. Fabian's the sort of guy who's always looking for a new way to stick his hand in somebody else's back pocket, smiling, laughing and dispensing empty flattery as a distraction. He has an on-and-off romance of sorts with Mary Bristol (Gene Tierney), a nightclub owner who disapproves of Harry's scheming tendencies.

One day, Harry discovers what he believes to be a golden opportunity. He witnesses an argument between legendary wrestler Gregorius the Great (wrestling legend Stanislaus Zbyszko) and Gregorius' son Kristo (Herbert Lom) which reveals that Gregorius is unhappy with his son's methods of wrestling promotion. Kristo essentially runs the whole wrestling industry in London, and anyone who attempts to take a piece of that market is asking for trouble. However, Harry becomes convinced that he can get away with it if he manages to secure Gregorius' support...

Director: Jules Dassin
Cast: Richard Widmark, Gene Tierney, Googie Withers, Hugh Marlowe, Herbert Lom, Mike Mazurki
Country: UK, USA
Genre: Crime, Film-Noir, Mystery, Sport, Thriller
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Riso amaro / Bitter Rice (1949), Giuseppe De Santis (2008) DVD9 and Blu-Ray Criterion Collection

Taking place during the rice planting season in Northern Italy's Po Valley, Bitter Rice sympathetically follows the plight of dozens of women who make the annual pilgrimage to harvest the existing crops and deposit new plants (a job ideally suited for delicate female hands).

In a desperate attempt to avoid the police Francesca (Doris Dowling) and Walter (Vittorio Gasman) find themselves on a busy train station in Northern Italy where massive groups of seasonal workers are heading towards the rice plantations of the Po Valley. As Walter disappears in the crowd Francesca joins a group of women who seem visibly excited that work is finally on the horizon. Francesca soon befriends the voluptuous Silvana (Silvana Mangano) and upon arrival at the rice fields the two quickly become involved in a deadly web of lies and murder.

BD50 + DVD9 | 1080p AVC, NTSC | 0 | 44.2 Gb + 7.77 Gb
Language: Italiano
Subtitles: English
Genre: Drama

Director: Giuseppe De Santis
Cast: Vittorio Gassman, Doris Dowling, Silvana Mangano, Raf Vallone
Country: Italy
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Bring Me the Head of Alfredo Garcia (1974), Sam Peckinpah: Man of Iron (1993) 2 x Blu-Ray Arrow Video Limited Edition

Bring Me the Head of Alfredo Garcia concluded a remarkable period for filmmaker Sam Peckinpah. It brought to an end a seven-year and seven-film run of masterpieces that included the taboo-breaking ultra-violence of The Wild Bunch and Straw Dogs, and the more elegiac tones of The Ballad of Cable Hogue and Junior Bonner. A love story that plays out in a brutal environment, Bring Me the Head of Alfredo Garcia sits somewhere between these moods and may just be Bloody Sam's greatest work, as well as his most autobiographical.

The film centers on Bennie (Warren Oates, The Wild Bunch), a retired U.S. Army Officer who now works as a piano player and saloon manager in Mexico City. One day, Bennie encounters a pair of well-dressed Americans who are looking for a man named Alfredo Garcia. It seems this Garcia impregnated the daughter of a wealthy Mexican crime lord, and now has a large bounty on his head. Bennie pays a visit to Garcia's girlfriend – a prostitute named Elita (Isela Vega, The Yellow Rose) – and learns that Garcia died in a car accident a few days earlier. Recognizing an opportunity to make a little money and improve his status in life, Bennie strikes a deal with the Americans: $10,000 in exchange for Alfredo Garcia's head.

The task seems easy enough: join Elita on a road trip to visit Garcia's grave, dig up the body, retrieve the head and collect the money. Alas, this is a Peckinpah movie, so it won't be quite that simple. The journey is filled with betrayals, violent encounters and unexpected moments of emotional conflict, slowly evolving from a simple mission into a fight for survival into a bizarre journey of soul-searching.

Limited Edition also includes:
Sam Peckinpah: Man of Iron – The Director's Cut, A brand-new, extended version of Paul Joyce's documentary, containing more than TEN HOURS of previously unseen interview footage, featuring actors RG Armstrong, James Coburn, LQ Jones, Kris Kristofferson, Ali MacGraw and Jason Robards, director Monte Hellman, producers Michael Deeley and Daniel Melnick, writers Alan Sharp and Jim Silke, writer-producer Gordon Dawson, assistant Katherine Haber, editor Garth Craven, satirist Mort Sahl, property master Bob Visciglia, bar owner Tom Runyon and cousin Bob Peckinpah, plus newly-shot interviews with Joyce, Haber and actor David Warner.
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Butch and Sundance: The Early Days (1979) DVD5 and Blu-Ray

In this prequel to Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid, we discover how the titular outlaws (now played by Tom Berenger and William Katt) first met and watch as they plunder their way through the old West.

Featuring two young actors with uncanny resemblances to Newman and Redford, the film took a quirky but generally realistic look at frontier life as it related to the pair's early criminal life and friendship, ending in the 1890s at the point where they were becoming aware of being legends, leaders of a gang called the Wild Bunch.

BD25 + DVD5 | 1080p AVC, PAL | 01:51:26 | 19.6 Gb + 4.23 Gb
Language: English
Subtitles: Svenska, Suomi, Norsk, Dansk
Genre: Comedy, Western

Director: Richard Lester
Cast: William Katt, Tom Berenger, Jeff Corey, John Schuck, Peter Weller, Brian Dennehy, Christopher Lloyd
Country: USA
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The Apu Trilogy: Pather Panchali / Song of the Little Road (1955), Aparajito / The Unvanquished (1956), Apur Sansar / The World of Apu (1959) 3 x DVD9 and 3 x Blu-Ray Criterion Collection

In 1992, Satyajit Ray received an honorary Academy Award for an extensive career of soulful, thoughtful realist dramas that included films like The Music Room, An Enemy of the People, and Devi, as well as his most celebrated contribution to the fabric of world cinema, his beloved Apu trilogy (1954 – 1959). When the Apu films (Pather Panchali, Aparajito, and Apur Sansar) were shown, in clips, at the Oscar telecast, the producers winced at their poor quality. The prints of the Apu trilogy were shipped to London shortly after the broadcast for immediate restoration. There was, in London, a nitrate fire in the film vault (older nitrate prints are notorious for how fragile and immensely combustible they are), and the only known prints of the Apu trilogy were severely damaged. At the time, the Academy deemed the prints to be unsalvageable, and we would have to content ourselves to watch Ray's masterpieces on old VHS tapes. For decades, it seemed like the films were more or less lost.

In 2013, the venerable Criterion Collection and the Academy Archive, armed with updated technology and a fervent obsession with cinema and posterity – not to mention the cooperation of an Italian restoration house – began the epic project of meticulously restoring the Apu trilogy to its original glory. The work that was done is nothing short of miraculous. The films are clean and gorgeous and do not show a single sign that they had ever been damaged. Only an errant scratch here or there marks their age.

The three films in The Apu Trilogy are, not to put too fine a point on it, among the best films ever made. They are a biography of a young boy who grows into a man, but free of the grandiose narrative histrionics or obscene melodrama that dominated Indian cinema at the time (Bollywood is often known for overwrought romantic musicals). They are quiet and realistic. they feel intimate and personable, as if we're spending time with a friend, or perhaps even living in this world ourselves. They ache with sadness and loss, as when the young Apu loses his elderly aunt, his sister, his father, his mother, his bride.
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