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Favorite Discs of 2007

[Savant Links] [Year Five Report]
Write Savant (Glenn Erickson) at
dvdsavant@mindspring.com!
(dvdsavant@mindspring.com)

Saturday July 19, 2008

Greetings! Savant's new reviews today are

Heathers
20th Anniversary High School Reunion Edition
Anchor Bay

and
Before the Rain
Criterion

For devotées of deep-dish horror fare, Savant has a new review up at film.com for Criterion's revelatory new disc of Carl Dreyer's Vampyr. I've already watched it three times, and it's still a mysterious work of art.

Online forums sometimes provide a venue for uninformed hotheads, but they also score the occasional scoop: over at the Classic Horror Film Board, frequent poster and informed author Tom Weaver has leaked the following Warner double bills as Best Buy exclusives, out just ten days from now on July 29:

Allied Artists' trippy World Without End with the Cinemascope rarity Satellite in the Sky,
Jim Danforth's stop-motion triumph When Dinosaurs Ruled the Earth with Hammer's Moon Zero Two and
the xenophobic anti-Commie Battle Beneath the Earth with the Yul Brynner post-apocalyptic survival film The Ultimate Warrior.
They're said to be all 16x9 transfers with the original art on covers, and priced at $19.97. Now all we have to worry about is finding them for sale at our local Best Buys. To paraphrase a friend's email, Warner's must be being paid up front to guarantee a profit on the deal, but Best Buy neither promotes these titles or makes them easy to order online. Often, they're hard to find in the stores. What's in it for Best Buy, besides irate customers? Thanks for reading, Glenn Erickson


Tuesday July 15, 2008

Greetings! Savant's new reviews today are

Dirty Harry
Blu-ray
Warner DVD

and
Stop-Loss
Paramount

Hello --- I'm hoping things will lighten up this week, work-wise; I'm trying to conquer a stack of reviews that threaten to get out of control. Criterion has several exciting titles coming up (Vampyr, Trafic, High and Low and I still need to cover worthy releases already in hand: Man of a Thousand Faces, Heathers, Patriotism, Emile de Antonio - Radical Saint, The Ballad of Narayama, The Future of Emily and Perils of the New Land. New Blu-rays are One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest and Natural Born Killers.

Am also about a week behind in updating the Savant Wish List ... and hope to remedy that by the weekend. Hope somebody out there is enjoying a vacation! Glenn Erickson


NEWEST FEATURE ARTICLES
Heathers - 20th Anniversary High School Reunion Edition
Can't believe it's been twenty years since this black comedy hit the screens; Winona Ryder and Christian Slater became stars as mixed-up teens trying to realign their high school by offing the leader of the Heathers, a cruel elitist clique. Stacked with profane, witty dialogue lines and unerringly true to its cynical premise. Anchor Bay   7/18/08

Before the Rain
Milo Manchevski's 1994 tale of ethnic and religious violence in Macedonia, told in three oddly intersecting episodes. Stars Katrin Cartlidge and Rade Serbdzija, from Criterion.   7/18/08

Dirty Harry Blu-ray
The original Harry Callahan police-state thriller appears in a deluxe Blu-ray boxed set with its four sequels and a pile of extras. Warners.   7/16/08

Stop-Loss
Ryan Phillippe and Abbie Cornish star in a story of an ugly policy being exploited in the Iraq war -- what John Kerry called a "back door draft". An eye-opening film in support of our troops deployed overseas. Paramount.   7/16/08

Berlin-Schonhauser Corner
First Run Features comes up with a winner, a great co-feature for The Lives of Others. This East German juvenile deliquency picture from 1957 bears close parallels with American JD films, but with a pronounced socialist message. An effective piece of propaganda that the East Germans tried to suppress -- because, as everyone knows, the perfect Worker's Society doesn't have juvenile delinquency! Great photography, good acting, and the Commie equivalent of Suzie-Q hot dates. Recommended.   7/12/08

Picnic at Hanging Rock (Region 2 Pal Special Edition)
UK correspondent (and man of mystery?) Lee Broughton offers an in-depth review of a new Region 2 PAL special edition with, among other things, a longer version of Peter Weir's film containing some highly unusual material. Second Sight.   7/12/08

The Busy Body
Sid Caesar looks for a missing corpse with a million bucks of mob money, in this weak William Castle crime comedy. A number of good supporting actors and comics - Robert Ryan, Dom DeLuise, Anne Baxter - can't fix a bum script. Featuring the first film appearance of Richard Pryor. Legend.   7/12/08

Firestorm: The Allied Bombing of Nazi Germany
An unflinching German documentary about the 'round the clock strategic bombing in WW2, evaluating the lessons of Total War and whether or not the policy was morally, or even militarily, correct. First Run Features.   7/08/08

 Phase IV   Sophia Loren Four Films Collection: Attila, Carosello Napoletano, Madame Sans-Gêne, I Girasole  The Furies  Classe tous risques  Journey to the Far Side of the Sun  The Restoration of The Quatermass Xperiment  Heartbeat Detector  Hitler: The Last Ten Days  Shinobi no mono 2: Vengeance  The Night They Raided Minsky's  The Man Who Could Cheat Death  The Professionals Blu-ray  Django - Die Totengraber Warten Schon (Johnny Hamlet) and   Im Staub der Sonne (Shoot, Gringo, Shoot) Region 2 PAL reviews by Lee Broughton  Patton Blu-ray  High Noon Ultimate Collector's Edition  There Will Be Blood Blu-ray  Indiana Jones: The Connect the Dots Game  Cloverfield Blu-ray   Icons of Adventure: The Stranglers of Bombay, The Terror of the Tongs, The Devil-Ship Pirates, The Pirates of Blood River  Day of the Outlaw  Company: A Musical Comedy  Tobor the Great  Night of the Living Dead 40th Anniversary  Carve Her Name With Pride  Easy Living  The Secret Invasion  Some Came Running  Baby It's You  The One That Got Away  The Thief of Bagdad  Man of the West  The Movie Orgy (Special Screening Notes)

 DVD Savant 2007 Favored Disc Roundup

 SAVANT'S DVD WISH LIST 2008

Hundreds more Savant reviews at the Other End of this Link!


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Don't forget to write Savant at dvdsavant@mindspring.com.

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