The Informer (1929) DVD9 and Blu-Ray

This rare silent adaptation of Liam O'Flaherty's famous novel is set among Dublin revolutionaries in the early days of the newly independent Irish Free State, formed in 1922.
It is a tale of revolution and betrayal, with an underground cell of activists torn apart when one of their member accidentally kills a police officer.

The dense narrative develops in a short time heightening the intensity of emotional effect. Our sympathies are challenged to deal with the complexity of personal versus political loyalties, where no-one is entirely innocent and the implications of seemingly minor or impulsive decisions create inescapable moral dilemmas for all the protagonists.

The story of "The Informer" has been made into feature films a few times over the years. The 1929 film was the first.

This Dual Format Edition includes the silent version alongside the rare sound version which was produced at the same time. The sound version of the film was restored in 2005 from the picture camera negative while the silent version was restored in 2014. The sound version has a good but lesser restoration while the silent version is simply amazing.
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La pirogue / The Pirogue (2012) DVD9

Baye Laye is a Senegalese fisherman who reluctantly agrees to navigate and pilot a boat carrying over thirty people illegally from the African coast to the shores of Spain where they can all live our their dreams of becoming athletes, rock stars, or reuniting with their families. Not only is the boat drastically overweight and the equipment faulty at the best of times, but not even all of the passengers speak the same language, some of which have never even seen the ocean before. He seems to be the only one capable of keeping a level head since the trip's organizer is more fashionable than reasonable and the ship's back-up "captain" is nothing more than a boy.
Senegalese director Moussa Toure gives us the sympathetic perspective of those who take that risky journey, and relives what it's like for his countrymen who travel almost a thousand miles from West Africa to Spain's Canary Islands.

DVD9 | PAL 16:9 | 01:24:13 | 6.94 Gb + 3% rec
Language: Wolof
Subtitles: English, Francais
Genre: Drama

Director: Moussa Toure
Cast: Souleymane Seye Ndiaye, Laity Fall, Babacar Oualy
Country: France, Senegal, Germany
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Eclipse Series 26: Silent Naruse: Flunky, Work Hard! (1931), No Blood Relation (1932), Apart from You (1933), Every-Night Dreams (1933), Street Without End (1934) 3 x DVD Criterion Collection

It's sad to read in the liner notes for the Eclipse set, Silent Naruse, that of the twenty-four films that the Japanese writer/director Mikio Naruse made in his first years of filmmaking, only the five contained here still exist. An early cinematic pioneer whose career spanned nearly half a century, he made eighty-nine films in total, and only about half of them have survived the decades since. In an age when film seems so permanent, and even the worst box office dud gets preserved in high-definition for future generations to suffer through, we can't forget that, once upon a time, the art of movies was mutable.

Thus, Mikio Naruse is a director that more of us probably know by name rather than by his work. He was an artist whose specialty was what was termed the "woman's picture." Like Douglas Sirk in the U.S., Naruse made movies that, for the most part, focused on family drama with a female center. Many of his films were emotional tales that explored the unique struggle of women in Japanese society--particularly those who lived on the fringe, either economically or socially, or sometimes both, one dictating the other. This peek into his earliest work confirms that these were issues he was concerned with from pretty much the get-go, though the core ideas would be ones that would develop over time, along with his style.
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Vitaphone Varieties: Volume Two (1927-1931) 2 x DVD9

Starting in 1926, a year before "The Jazz Singer," Warner Bros. started producing a series of sound shorts, usually musical or comedy acts, mostly taken from the vaudeville stage. These shorts have been difficult to see and much coveted by aficionados. Last year saw the release of a magnificent four-disc collection of these shorts, "Vitaphone Varieties." Now comes "Vitaphone Varieties: Vol. 2," a two-disc collection of 35 short films, which originally played in theaters in the years 1927 through 1931 and haven't been seen since.

Viewers will find several novelty acts in this set, and we can be thankful that their performances were recorded for posterity.

Nestled in among 35 Jazz Age gems to be found on this 2-Disc collection are appearances by Edgar Bergen, Fred Allen, Fred Waring, Blanche Sweet, Bert Lahr, Pat O'Brien, Joe E. Brown and a (very) young Natalie Schafer – the future Mrs. Thurston Howell III on Gilligan's Island.

2 x DVD9 | NTSC 4:3 | 02:24:42 + 02:51:54 | 7.40 Gb + 7.57 Gb
Language: English
Subtitles: none
Genre: Short, Comedy, Music

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Curb Your Enthusiasm (2000-2011) 16 x DVD5 The Complete Collection (Seasons 1-8)

This half-hour HBO comedy follows comedy writer and co-creator of Seinfeld, Larry David, through the regular day hell that is his life. That's not to say that he doesn't have a great life: he's rich, he's got a beautiful, loving wife and a successful career, but what makes this show funny (which is the same thing that made Seinfeld funny) is the endless series of uncomfortable situations and hilarious misunderstandings that Larry constantly finds himself in.

For a show that was only created as a one-off, one-hour, mock-doc special, and was never intended to be a show in its own right, the profound success of it has been a huge surprise to all; not least Larry David. The self-confessed 'rich fuck' who co-created, wrote and produced hit US sitcom, Seinfeld, has become an on-screen cult icon for his larger-than-life portrayal of himself in HBO's Curb Your Enthusiasm.

16 x DVD5 | NTSC 4:3 | 2820 minutes | 69.3 Gb + 3% rec
Language: English, Francais
Subtitles: English, Francais, Espanol
Genre: Comedy

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British Comedies Of The 1930s Volume 7: Lost in the Legion (1934), The Dominant Sex (1937) DVD9

If you like you vintage classics, you'll find it hard to go past this little piece of movie history. The British Film Collection from Network is reissuing classics, many of which have not been seen since they were released in cinemas. Part of a five-year plan to release more than 450 old films, this series showcases significant comedies from the 1930s, an era when comedy was so important to an audience who needed the release and escapism from the Great Depression. Volume 7 contains two great films, The Dominant Sex and Lost in the Legion.

The Dominant Sex, stars Phillip Holmes and Diana Churchill as a young married couple who constantly argue. The husband has invented a machine that could change their financial circumstances, but he's hoping to return to his roots as a gentleman farmer rather than sell it. Directed by Herbert Brenon who won best director at the first ever Oscars, the film is quite startling in it's modernity and sexual politics.

The second comedy, Lost In the Legion, is more traditional, with Leslie Fuller co-starring with his regular sidekick Hal Gordon as two ship's cooks who fall for a couple of dancers. When the cute dancing girls get kidnapped and sold into a harem, they're determined to rescue them, but during their exploits, they are rescued by the French Foreign Legion and accidentally enrol for service.
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Caltiki il mostro immortale / Caltiki, the Immortal Monster (1959) DVD9 and Blu-Ray Arrow Video

The mystery of the Mayans is one which may never be solved: why did they leave their homes after centuries of prosperity never to return, with their cities decaying behind them?

A group of archaeologists are in Mesoamerica investigating Mayan ruins when a delirious expedition member (Arturo Dominici) stumbles into their camp and collapses. Led by Dr John Fielding (John Merivale) and Max Gunther (Gerard Herter), they enter a cave in search of his missing colleague. Imagine their delight on discovering a deep pool of water containing priceless treasures, guarded by a statue of the Mayan goddess Caltiki. They can't believe their luck until a shapeless monster emerges from the depths...

BD50 + DVD9 | 1080p AVC, NTSC | 01:16:25 | 44.8 Gb + 7.63 Gb
Language: Italiano, English
Subtitles: English
Genre: Adventure, Horror, Sci-Fi, Thriller

Directors: Riccardo Freda (as Robert Hamton), Mario Bava (uncredited)
Cast: John Merivale, Didi Sullivan, Gerard Herter, Giacomo Rossi Stuart
Country: Italy, USA
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The Mary Pickford Signature Collection: The Poor Little Rich Girl (1917), Rebecca of Sunnybrook Farm (1917), Pollyanna (1920), Little Annie Rooney (1925) DVD9

Mary Pickford (1892-1979) was a multifaceted pioneer of early cinema. She was a talented performer, a creative producer and a savvy businesswoman who helped shape the film industry as we know it today.

Mary Pickford rose steadily to fame at a time when there was no path to follow. Actresses who came after her, such as Joan Crawford and Jean Harlow, cut pictures from fan magazines, pinned them to their walls and dreamed of stardom. Mary was known as "the girl with the curls" and "the Biograph girl" before audiences learned her name; fan magazines were created because of stars like Mary Pickford. In fact, the very first issue of Photoplay in 1912 featured Mary dressed in character for Little Red Riding Hood.

Her first film director was D.W. Griffith and she went on to work with most of the greats of her era such as Cecil B. De Mille, Allan Dwan, James Kirkwood, Marshall Neilan, Sidney Franklin, Maurice Tourneur and Ernst Lubitsch. Her career was buoyed by fellow professionals who were also friends, including the cinematographer Charles Rosher and the screenwriter Frances Marion, at a time when the art form was in a near constant state of change.
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Ludwig (1973) 2 x Blu-Ray Arrow Academy Limited Edition

Luchino Visconti's film Ludwig is an example of a biopic done as an epic, a grand and opulent study of the life of the 19th-century "mad kind of Bavaria," Ludwig II.

The story behind Ludwig is a rather tragic one. A young man becomes king of Bavaria, providing him with the freedom to explore his love of art, music and young men in a decadent lifestyle that ultimately leads to his downfall.

The director was able to withstand the urge to convey Ludwig as a simple crazy regent, and instead delve deep within the mystique and draw out the complex historical character. He is never portrayed in the film as being crazy, but overly passionate regarding architecture and music.

2 x BD50 | 1080p AVC | 238 min | 87.4 Gb + 3% rec
Language: English, Italian
Subtitles: English
Genre: Biography, Drama, History

Director: Luchino Visconti
Cast: Helmut Berger, Romy Schneider, Trevor Howard, Silvana Mangano, John Moulder-Brown, Gert Frobe
Country: Italy, France, West Germany
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Animated Soviet Propaganda: From the October Revolution to Perestroika (1924 – 1979) 4 x DVD

There hardly is a time in world history more politically polarized than the 20th century, which divided the globe in two camps — capitalism and communism — divided at the height of the divergence by the infamous Iron Curtain. The Cold War was very much a war of ideologies and each side relied heavily on the ideological unity of its people, often employing the power of the visual arts — graphic design, animation, illustration — to drive its message home. From 1924 to perestroika the USSR produced 41 animated propaganda films. Their target was the new nation and their goal was to win over the hearts and minds of the Soviet people. Anti-American, Anti-British, Anti-German, Anti-Capitalist, Anti-Fascist, some of these films are as artistically beautiful as the great political posters made after the 1917 revolution which inspired Soviet animation. Unearthed from Moscow's legendary Soyuzmultfilm Studios, the 41 films in Animated Soviet Propaganda span sixty years of Soviet history.

4 x DVD | NTSC 4:3 | 8h 34min | 21.7 Gb + 3% rec
Language: Russian
Subtitles: English
Genre: Animation

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