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The Masters of Cinema Series: Eureka! | Recent Updates (28 unread)

• April 23, 2012
• 22:06

  Hitchcock Comes to MoC

   » ‎ The Masters of Cinema Series: Eureka! | Recent Updates

  Now available: our first-ever release of the work of Alfred Hitchcock, and it’s a beauty: Dual Format (Blu-ray + DVD) wartime Hitch, in the form of one 20th Century Fox feature and his two half-hour French-language works made in support of the Resistance — all beautifully restored and presented on the Blu-ray in 1080p HD.

  <a href=“ [eurekavideo.co.uk] found Hitchcock challenging his dramatic skills with this self-imposed limit: tell the story of the ragtag assemblage of survivors of a Nazi-bombed ocean liner in a single setting — a lifeboat adrift in the middle of the sea. The result is a glorious success, a nail-biting suspenser with an entrancing female lead (fiery force-of-nature Tallulah Bankhead) which, in typical Hitchcock fashion, dazzlingly pulls out all the stops of pure cinema technique. Bon voyage concisely sketches a daring escape from behind enemy lines back to the home-front, shot through with the same wry humour that pervades Aventure malgache [Madagascan Adventure], a gripping tale of hidden identity and pirate radio in the milieu of a French theatre troupe. This pair of short works presages the economy and speed that would later distinguish Hitchcock’s own entries over a decade later in the popular Alfred Hitchcock Presents television series.

  The release is accompanied by a 20-minute video documentary on the making of Lifeboat; a 12-minute excerpt from the audio record of François Truffaut’s epic 1962 interview with the director that would serve as the basis for Hitchcock/Truffaut; and a packed 36-page booklet including a new essay on Lifeboat by Hitchcock scholar Bill Krohn, and new essays on both of the propaganda shorts by Krohn, and French critics Arthur Mas and Martial Pisani — the first extended critical examinations of those works. The entire package is also available in a gorgeous SteelBook edition…

  If that weren’t enough, also available now are our 1080p Dual Format upgrades of four Kenji Mizoguchi masterpieces: <a href = “ [eurekavideo.co.uk] monogatari</i></b> with <b><i>Oyû-sama</i></b></a>, and <a href=“ [eurekavideo.co.uk] dayû</i></b> with <b><i>Gion bayashi</i></b></a>. Watch this space for more details about these remarkable, essential films.

• April 08, 2012
• 21:41

  MATTHEW According to Pasolini

   » ‎ The Masters of Cinema Series: Eureka! | Recent Updates

  Now available on Dual Format (Blu-ray + DVD): our edition of Pier Paolo Pasolini’s 1964 masterpiece, <a href=“ [eurekavideo.co.uk] Gospel According to Matthew</i></b></a> [<i>Il vangelo secondo Matteo</i>].

  David Hudson at The Notebook calls attention to some of the reviews of and writing surrounding our release <a href=“ [mubi.com] in the course of which he includes a quote from Martin Scorsese that nicely summarizes what makes Pasolini’s film so great:

  <i>“Up to that point, I had an idea to do a film on Jesus, in cinéma-vérité style, in the Lower East Side of New York with everyone wearing suits, a modern-day interpretation of the story we know. So I was moved and crushed at the same time by the Pasolini film because in a sense it was what I wanted to do. Jesus was played by a Spanish law student, and it was shot in the south of Italy… Pasolini’s use of faces was marvelous. It reminds me of Renaissance art even though it’s in black and white, and I love the music – the Missa Luba and Bach. Just compare his Christ with Jeffrey Hunter. He doesn’t act walking, he is walking; it’s not self-conscious and yet it’s very determined… I like [Pasolini]‘s Christ as a kind of conspirator. It was a revolutionary Jesus. In fact, at the time, people referred to him as a Marxist Christ. The strength of Matthew’s language comes out very clearly, and it’s purer because it doesn’t try to make it a straight story from beginning to end. There are no transitions between scenes, characters come and disappear, they reappear in no dramatic way. Yet the key to the whole picture is Jesus – how forceful He is and how He carries through. ‘Do not think I have come to bring peace on this earth. I have come to bring a sword… He who loves his father and mother more than me, is not worthy of me.’ This is not the stuff you usually hear on Sunday morning in church! He’s a very strong Christ, you’re either with him or against him, and some of the sermons do give you the sense of being yelled at and beaten down.”</i>

  Our HD restored transfer of the film is accompanied by Pasolini’s beautiful 1965 film on the surveying of locations for <i>Gospel</i>, <i>Sopralluoghi in Palestina</i> [<i>Scouting in Palestine</i>]. The films are further supplemented by the original trailer for <i>Gospel</i>, a 1963 newsreel extract about the production, a selection of outtakes from the original <i>Sopralluoghi</i> rushes, and newly translated optional English subtitles across the release. A 36-page booklet features a 1963 letter by Pasolini to Lucio S. Caruso of the Catholic Pro Civitate Christiana; a 2012-updated essay on the film by critic Pasquale Iannone; excerpts from a 1969 interview with Pasolini by Oswald Stack, on both <i>Gospel</i> and <i>Sopralluoghi</i>; an excerpt from the Book of Matthew; and rare archival imagery.

  Later this month: Dual Format upgrades of Kenji Mizoguchi’s towering <i>Ugetsu monogatari</i> (with Oyû-sama) and Sanshô dayû (with Gion bayashi) — all in 1080p HD — and a Dual Format release of our first ever Hitchcock title in the Series: Lifeboat, accompanied by Hitch’s two rare wartime shorts: Bon voyage and Aventure malgache, all presented in 1080p.

• March 21, 2012
• 20:23

  Pasolini’s ACCATTONE

   » ‎ The Masters of Cinema Series: Eureka! | Recent Updates

  Available on 26th March, 2012: <a href=“ [eurekavideo.co.uk] the legendary debut from the martyr of Italian cinema, Pier Paolo Pasolini.

  By turns ragged and graceful, sacred and profane, Accattone charts the rise-and-fall destiny of Franco Citti’s eponymous street pimp, heroically resilient, tragically reliant on the fortunes of a prize whore and the general art of the scrounge.

  Our Dual Format (Blu-ray + DVD) edition presents Pasolini’s film (referenced by Morrissey’s 2006 single ”You Have Killed Me” — clip viewable <a href=“ [www.youtube.com] in a luminous restored HD transfer. It is accompanied by the director’s 1965 feature-length essay documentary Comizi d’amore [Love Meetings], an exploration of Italian attitudes towards sex. Both films sport newly translated optional English subtitles, and are supplemented with their original theatrical trailers; a new feature-length audio commentary by Tony Rayns on Accattone rounds out the discs. The release’s 36-page booklet features a translation of Pasolini’s 1958 poem ”To a Pope”; excerpts from a 1969 interview with Pasolini by Oswald Stack about both films; a 1975 essay on Accattone by the director; Pasolini’s original 1964 treatment for Comizi d’amore; and rare archival imagery.

  Out simultaneously: our new Dual Format edition of Pasolini’s masterpiece <a href=“ [eurekavideo.co.uk] Gospel According to Matthew</i></b></a>, which will be highlighted in this space soon. Look for more Pasolini from The Masters of Cinema Series in the months ahead…

• March 06, 2012
• 19:20

  REPO MAN’s Always Intense

   » ‎ The Masters of Cinema Series: Eureka! | Recent Updates

  Available NOW exclusively on a special director-approved Blu-ray in limited-edition ‘regular’ and SteelBook variations: <a href=“ [eurekavideo.co.uk] Man</i></b></a>.

  Alex Cox’s gonzo po-mo cult classic debuted in 1984 — the perfect year to drop a schizoid, Pynchon-parallel freakout that’s as deft with offering up classical cinematic technique as it is weaving together time-machines, UFOs, and DIY punk ethics into a singular <i>“lattice of coincidence”</i>.

  Blanks might get the job done too, but our release comes loaded and live: a new high-definition master of the feature in its original aspect ratio (with the original mono soundtrack in DTS-HD Master Audio, and optional English SDH subtitles) is accompanied by an audio commentary with Alex Cox and executive producer (of early fame with The Monkees) Michael Nesmith, casting director Victoria Thomas, and actors Sy Richardson, Zander Schloss, and Del Zamora; an all-new 2012 video piece directed by Cox offering further thoughts on the film; the legendary and complete “TV version” of the film as prepared by Cox for network television in the 1980s which incorporates deleted material and surreal overdubs in place of profanity; a retrospective video piece on the making of the film with Cox, producers, and actors; a roundtable viewing of deleted scenes from the film with Cox, Nesmith, real-life neutron bomb inventor Sam Cohen, and character “J. Frank Parnell”; an extended video interview with the great actor Harry Dean Stanton; and the original theatrical trailer. To top the package off, this limited edition includes a mind-blowing full-colour 44-page booklet called <i>The Repo Code</i> specially created by Cox for this release, incorporating all manner of hand-drawn <i>Repo</i> ephemera; we think it’s one of our finest booklets ever.

  In late March, something completely different: two classic Pasolini features on Dual Format (Blu-ray + DVD) editions…

• February 20, 2012
• 1:56

  Imamura; 14 Dual Format Upgrades

   » ‎ The Masters of Cinema Series: Eureka! | Recent Updates

  A busy release month for the Series! — Now available:

  A Dual Format (Blu-ray + DVD) edition of Shôhei Imamura’s 1963 feature <a href=“ [eurekavideo.co.uk] Insect Woman</i></b></a> [Nippon-konchûki, which translates in English to An Account of Japanese Insects] follows Sachiko Hidari’s Tome as she burrows through five decades of Japanese social upheaval and the conflicts of a volatile, violated life. Included in our edition alongside The Insect Woman as part of an Imamura double-feature is the director’s rarely seen 1958 Nishi-Ginza Station [Nishi-Ginza eki-mae, or In Front of West-Ginza Station], a rollicking B-comedy intermittently set to the tunes of ‘50s crooner Frank Nagai. The release is accompanied by a video conversation about The Insect Woman between Imamura and critic Tadao Satô, and a 36-page booklet containing essays on both features by Tony Rayns.

  Following the destruction of much of our stock months ago in the London riots, we are proud to announce <b>at last</b> the renewed availability of 14 titles from the Series — all upgraded to Dual Format. They are as follows:

  • <a href=“ [eurekavideo.co.uk] by F. W. Murnau<br>
  • <a href=“ [eurekavideo.co.uk] Detective</b></i></a> by Johnnie To and Wai Ka-fai<br>
  • <a href=“ [eurekavideo.co.uk] Sonata</i></b></a> by Kiyoshi Kurosawa<br>
  • <a href=“ [eurekavideo.co.uk] femme mariée</i></b></a> by Jean-Luc Godard<br>
  • <a href=“ [eurekavideo.co.uk] All Mankind</a></i></b> by Al Reinert<br>
  • <a href=“ [eurekavideo.co.uk] Planète sauvage</a></i></b> by René Laloux<br>
  • <a href=“ [eurekavideo.co.uk] Girl</a></b></i> by F. W. Murnau<br>
  • <a href=“ [eurekavideo.co.uk] by Fritz Lang<br>
  • <a href=“ [eurekavideo.co.uk] Desires of the Gods</i></b></a> by Shôhei Imamura<br>
  • <a href=“ [eurekavideo.co.uk] Is Mine</i></b></a> by Shôhei Imamura<br>
  • <a href=“ [eurekavideo.co.uk] World</i></b></a> by Jia Zhangke<br>
  • <a href=“ [eurekavideo.co.uk] Burmese Harp</i></b></a> by Kon Ichikawa<br>
  • <a href=“ [eurekavideo.co.uk] Success Spoil Rock Hunter?</i></b></a> by Frank Tashlin<br>
  • <a href=“ [eurekavideo.co.uk] Way for Tomorrow</i></b></a> by Leo McCarey

  And if all that weren’t enough, our special Blu-ray only limited edition of Alex Cox’s 1984 classic <a href=“ [eurekavideo.co.uk] Man</i></b></a> is also <b>available now</b>, in ‘regular’ and SteelBook variations. We’ll be devoting this space to more on Repo Man in the days ahead… but ’nuff said for now!

• February 07, 2012
• 7:15

  LE SILENCE DE LA MER on Blu-ray

   » ‎ The Masters of Cinema Series: Eureka! | Recent Updates

  Out now from The Masters of Cinema Series: Jean-Pierre Melville’s beautiful debut feature, <a href=“ [eurekavideo.co.uk] Silence de la mer</i></b></a> [<i>The Silence of the Sea</i>] in a new Dual Format (Blu-ray + DVD) edition.

  Melville’s independently produced film adapts the clandestinely penned 1942 novel by French Resistance fighter Vercors (the pen-name of Jean Bruller) into a stunningly paced, quietly poetic presentation of the story of a German soldier (Howard Vernon of Lang’s <i>Die 1000 Augen des Dr. Mabuse</i> and Godard’s <i>Alphaville</i>) billeted in the country home of an elderly gentleman and his niece (Jean-Marie Robain and Nicole Stéphane, both of whom would take turns in Melville’s brilliant follow-up rendition of Cocteau’s <i>Les Enfants terribles</i>). Conveyed through the delicate usage of voice-over and flashbacks, tensions play out and empathies form among the familial pair and the officer whose rich aesthetic sensibility and innate humanism place him squarely at odds with the agenda of his tyrannical superiors.

  <i>Le Silence de la mer</i> constitutes the astonishingly assured start to a career that would later bring the world such revered masterpieces as <i>Bob le flambeur</i>, <i>Le Samouraï</i>, <i>L’Armée des ombres</i>, and <i>Le Cercle rouge</i>.

  This edition presents the film in a new high-definition 1080p transfer (on the Blu-ray) licensed from Gaumont, accompanied by a video discussion with Ginette Vincendeau (professor of French cinema at King’s College London and author of <i>Jean-Pierre Melville: An American in Paris</i>) and, on the Blu-ray only, both a 41-minute 2010 documentary about the film called <i>Melville Out of the Shadows</i> and the original theatrical trailer. A 56-page booklet rounds out the package and offers writing by Vincendeau alongside an interview with Melville conducted by Rui Nogueira (author of <i>Melville on Melville</i>).

  Coming soon: Alex Cox’s cult-classic <i>Repo Man</i> on limited edition Blu-ray (in regular and steelbook editions), and a Dual Format double-feature of Shôhei Imamura’s early <i>Nishi-Ginza Station</i> and the 1963 <i>The Insect Woman</i>.

• January 26, 2012
• 20:14

  TWO-LANE BLACKTOP on Blu-ray

   » ‎ The Masters of Cinema Series: Eureka! | Recent Updates

  Out now from The Masters of Cinema Series: American auteur Monte Hellman’s classic of ‘70s cinema, <i><b><a href=“ [eurekavideo.co.uk] Blacktop</a></i></b>, available for the first time anywhere in a Blu-ray only limited edition and steelbook.

  On this open road like a mainline deep into the consciousness of a country, a quadrangle of lonely-souled lovers — James Taylor, Dennis Wilson, Warren Oates, Laurie Bird — hurtle in their ‘55 Chevy and gleaming GTO: a race against time, at the edge of the American night.

  This director-approved edition includes a new, restored high-definition transfer of the feature, sporting both the original mono soundtrack and an optional newly remastered 5.1 mix, in addition to optional English subtitles for the deaf and hearing-impaired; an audio commentary by Monte Hellman and associate producer Gary Kurtz; <i>On the Road Again:</i> Two-Lane Blacktop <i>Revisited</i>, a 43-minute piece in which Monte Hellman revisits the film’s locations — directed by Monte Hellman, Gabriel Cowan, Brett Mann, and John Suits; <i>Somewhere Near Salinas</i>, a 28-minute interview by Hellman with singer-songwriter Kris Kristofferson — also directed by Monte Hellman; <i>Sure Did Talk to You</i>, a 24-minute video piece featuring interviews with producer Michael Laughlin, production manager Walter Coblenz, and the director’s son Jared Hellman — again, directed by Monte Hellman; amazing archival screen-test footage of James Taylor and Laurie Bird; the original theatrical trailer; an optional music and effects track; and a 36-page full-colour booklet featuring a new essay about the feature by critic Brad Stevens and a vintage piece of reporting from the set by Shelley Benoit.

  You can never go fast enough.

  We’ve also just announced our latest titles for Q2 2012 (April, May, and June). They’re all live on <a href=“ [eurekavideo.co.uk] Catalogue page</a>.

• January 15, 2012
• 5:19

  PUNISHMENT PARK on Blu-ray

   » ‎ The Masters of Cinema Series: Eureka! | Recent Updates

  Happy New Year, everyone! We closed out 2011 with feelings of extreme gratitude toward our fans and our supporters for rewarding us with our best and most exciting year for the Series to date. Late-December and early-January saw The MoC Series rank significantly in Time Out London’s list of <a href=“ [www.timeout.com] top 50 releases of 2011</a>, with placings given to Imamura’s <a href=“ [eurekavideo.co.uk] A Man Vanishes</a> and <a href=“ [eurekavideo.co.uk] Pigs and Battleships + Stolen Desire</a>, our double-DVD-set of Lang’s <a href=“ [eurekavideo.co.uk] Der Tiger von Eschnapur</a> and <a href=“ [eurekavideo.co.uk] Das indische Grabmal</a>, Antonioni’s <a href=“ [eurekavideo.co.uk] La signora senza camelie</a>, Murnau’s <a href=“ [eurekavideo.co.uk] Schloss Vogelöd: Die Enthüllung eines Geheimnisses</a>, Trumbull’s <a href=“ [eurekavideo.co.uk] Silent Running</a>, Welles’ <a href=“ [eurekavideo.co.uk] Touch of Evil</a>, Ford’s <a href=“ [eurekavideo.co.uk] The Iron Horse</a>, Kobayashi’s <a href=“ [eurekavideo.co.uk] Harakiri</a>, and, at #2, Pedro Costa’s <a href=“ [eurekavideo.co.uk] Colossal Youth (+ Tarrafal, The Rabbit Hunters, and O nosso homem)</a>.

  We were also extremely humbled to find that many of our releases received mention not only in <a href=“ [www.bfi.org.uk] year-end poll from Sight & Sound magazine</a>, but also placed high in <a href=“ [www.dvdbeaver.com] Blu-rayoftheYear2011.htm”>the major year-end poll from DVDBeaver</a> — with our release of Orson Welles’ Touch of Evil_ winning not only Best Global Blu-ray Release of the Year, but also Best Single Overall Global Home Video Release of the Year!

  So: sincere thanks to everyone for making 2011 such a success. We hope to continue the good work throughout 2012 and beyond — and, to that end…

  We’ve just released our (gorgeous) 1080p HD revisitation of Peter Watkins’ galvanic 1971 film <a href=“ [eurekavideo.co.uk] Punishment Park</a> in a Dual Format edition. Watkins’ 92-minute feature represents a reaction to and critique of the American society and government of the late ‘60s and early ‘70s that spawned and casually digested such contemporary elements as the civilian and military massacres of Vietnam (Tet, My Lai, the whole of the war); the MLK + RFK assassinations; the Chicago Democratic Convention beatings and arrests; the Kent State massacre; and, most directly, the show-trial of the Chicago Seven. If Punishment Park still shocks, appalls, and agitates as much today as it did in 1971, it is due to Watkins’ canny and subversive appropriation of the cinema-/televisual-modes of the dominant paradigm (in ‘12 as ‘71), his implicit interrogation of the onlooker-documentarian’s (and end viewer’s) moral responsibility toward “the event,“ and his implicit understanding and ultimate transcendence of the limitations of traditional scripting and casting. It is due too to the fact that much of what Watkins captured/envisioned has either come to pass or, indeed, in the forty-one years since, simply has not changed.

  Punishment Park underscores the nightmare-confusion of what is “actual” and what is ‘merely’ “plausible”.

  The feature is accompanied by Watkins’ searing, cogent 29-minute direct-to-camera address Introduction to <b>Punishment Park</b>; an audio commentary by Joseph A. Gomez (author of the 1979 Peter Watkins); and a 40-page booklet that includes extracts from the 1971 press book (with a contemporary contribution from Watkins), an essay on the film by Gomez extracted from Peter Watkins (along with a 2005 postscript), and a 2005 self-interrogatory dialogue by Peter Watkins.

• December 30, 2011
• 4:25

  2011 was not without a hitch…

   » ‎ The Masters of Cinema Series: Eureka! | Recent Updates

  As we recharge before leaping into our ninth year (a leap year), and now with more than 160 discs under our belt, it’s a good time to pause and reflect on the wild year. From the highs of releasing a series of dream projects which we’d been working on for years, to the low of having our entire stock destroyed by fire.

  Since we released our first Blu-ray in 2008, we have struggled with the added work of creating two separate formats per film. This slowed down our small team considerably and was logistically frustrating (two items of inventory, two catalogue numbers / barcodes, two lots of complicated proofing, two of everything..). Within 18 months we were jumping the gun, and ignoring the installed DVD userbase, by moving to Blu-ray only releases, in the small hope that we’d help quicken Blu-ray adoption. The titles we released during this time were not big-hitters and the Blu-ray only policy frustrated as many people as it pleased. For the time being, it became clear that we had a two-tier system and we’d have to continue making both formats.

  After trying <a href=“ [eurekavideo.co.uk] with a Dual Format edition in late 2010, we moved to our current policy of Dual Format editions (a Blu-ray and DVD in the same package) with our two March 2011 Antonioni releases <a href=“ [eurekavideo.co.uk] SIGNORA SENZA CAMELIE</a> and <a href=“ [eurekavideo.co.uk] AMICHE</a> in an attempt to make the logistics slightly easier and cleaner for ourselves and the marketplace. This continued throughout the summer with our long-gestating silent (miracle) Blu-ray of Jean Epstein’s <a href=“ [eurekavideo.co.uk] FIDELE</a> and Imamura’s glorious-looking <a href=“ [eurekavideo.co.uk] AND BATTLESHIPS</a>, while at the same time releasing DVD-only editions where the master materials did not warrant the Blu-ray treatment for some reason (such as the astonishing <a href=“ [eurekavideo.co.uk] YOUTH</a>, shot on miniDV).

  In August, the “London riots” saw the destruction of the Sony DADC warehouse in Enfield, where we — along with many other music and film labels — lost all of our stock. Work immediately focused on getting our entire catalogue back in print. Doing so allowed us to delete separate DVD and Blu-ray editions and to replace them with Dual Format editions. We’ve managed to get 6 of these out and the remaining 8 will be available in early February. During this time, we somehow managed to stay on track with our new releases too (<a href=“ [eurekavideo.co.uk] <a href=“ [eurekavideo.co.uk] IRON HORSE</a>, <a href=“ [eurekavideo.co.uk] BALLAD OF NARAYAMA</a>, <a href=“ [eurekavideo.co.uk] MAN VANISHES</a>, <a href=“ [eurekavideo.co.uk] RUNNING</a>, and <a href=“ [eurekavideo.co.uk] OF EVIL</a>)

  We would love to not have to create DVD editions, instead, spending all our time on the beauty that is Blu-ray. Indeed, we are still looking at ways that we can again move to Blu-ray only editions. We often receive emails from people who “just can’t see what the fuss is about”, and often, on further questioning, it transpires they have had a terrible demonstration somewhere — such as running a Blu-ray player into a cathode ray tube (SD) television. If you love film, admire our editions, but haven’t taken the Blu-ray leap yet, we’d love you to please read <a href=“ [eurekavideo.co.uk] whyblu-ray2011web.pdf”>this document we prepared.</a>

  We now have our 2012 slate mapped out, and if we can pull it off, it could be our best yet. We’ll be announcing our April, May, and June titles in mid-January. Meanwhile, full up-to-date details of what is out-of-print (OOP) and what is being upgraded can be found in our new printed catalogue which is also available <a href=“ [www.eurekavideo.co.uk] CATALOGUE2011_web.pdf”>here as a pdf</a>. Wishing a healthy and happy New Year to you all!

• November 16, 2011
• 19:45

  Five versions, Blu-ray only

   » ‎ The Masters of Cinema Series: Eureka! | Recent Updates

  Out this month: Orson Welles’ final picture for the Hollywood studio-system: <a href=“ [eurekavideo.co.uk] Touch of Evil</a>, in a limited edition 2 x Blu-ray release containing the 1998 Reconstruction Version in both 1.85:1 and 1.37:1 aspect ratios; the 1958 Theatrical Version in both 1.85:1 and 1.37:1 aspect ratios; and the rediscovered 1958 Preview Version in the 1.85:1 aspect ratio. Controversy has raged for some time around which aspect ratio constitutes the “correct one” for the film; with this release, we’ve taken pains to present the film for the first time in all available presentations. (A full explication of the issue can be found in the accompanying booklet.)

  A virtuoso work on every plane, Welles’ film charts the descent of newlyweds Mike and Susie Vargas (Charlton Heston and Janet Leigh) into a maelstrom of vice, corruption, and murder set spinning at the California-Mexico border by small-time gang-leader Uncle Joe Grandi (Akim Tamiroff) and toxic American police detective Hank Quinlan (Welles himself, in one of his most unforgettable characterisations). Plus: Marlene Dietrich, as a Gypsy madame: five minutes of total screen-time that amount to her most indelible, and exhilarating, post-Sternberg turn.

  The versions of the film are accompanied by four separate audio commentaries: Reconstruction producer Rick Schmidlin on the corresponding feature; Schmidlin with Charlton Heston and Janet Leigh on the Reconstruction; scholar and critic F. X. Feeney on the Theatrical Version; and scholars and critics James Naremore and Jonathan Rosenbaum on the Preview Version. Also on-disc: the original 1958 theatrical trailer; two video pieces on the production of the film and the creation of the Reconstruction; and optional English SDH subtitles across all versions of the film. A packed 56-page colour booklet contains writing by François Truffaut, André Bazin, Terry Comito, and Orson Welles — along with full notes on the matter of the varying aspect ratios, and a comprehensive timeline of the film’s production and editing history.

  Written in 1957, Orson Welles’ 58-page memo detailing his desired changes to the studio’s rough-cut can be downloaded as a PDF <a href=“ [eurekavideo.co.uk]

  We are receiving lots of emails each day about the unavailability of certain MoC editions. The London riots in August 2011 saw the destruction of the Sony DADC distribution centre in Enfield. Our stock, along with that of many other labels, was destroyed. MoC catalogue titles are slowly being reprinted or upgraded and will be available as soon as possible. New upgraded Dual Format editions of Sunrise: A Song of Two Humans, City Girl, and Profound Desires of the Gods are already available, and M, For All Mankind, and Make Way for Tomorrow will be ready very soon.

  Full up-to-date details of what is out-of-print (OOP) and what is being upgraded can be found in our new printed catalogue which is also available <a href=“ [www.eurekavideo.co.uk] CATALOGUE2011_web.pdf”>here as a pdf</a>.

• November 09, 2011
• 20:15

  Exclusively restored, Blu-ray only

   » ‎ The Masters of Cinema Series: Eureka! | Recent Updates

  Out this month: the long-awaited Blu-ray debut of SFX master Douglas Trumbull’s eco-visionary sci-fi classic <a href=“ [eurekavideo.co.uk] Silent Running</a>. Trumbull’s picture is that rare specimen which captures the essence of two zeitgeists: from the moment of its 1971 debut and on into our contemporary period forty years later, Silent Running’s prescription for better natural commune diffuses with tender urgency.

  This limited edition, Blu-ray only director-approved release features an exclusive new HD 1080p restoration of the feature (with optional English SDH subtitles); a full-length audio commentary by Trumbull and actor Bruce Dern; an isolated music-and-effects track; the 50-minute 1972 on-set documentary The Making of <b>Silent Running</b>; 31-minute and 5-minute video pieces with Trumbull; an 11-minute conversation with Bruce Dern; the original theatrical trailer; and a lavish 48-page full-colour booklet featuring rare photographs and artwork from Trumbull’s personal collection, and recollections of the film’s cinematographer, special designs coordinator, and composer.

  We are receiving lots of emails each day about the unavailability of certain MoC editions. The London riots in August 2011 saw the destruction of the Sony DADC distribution centre in Enfield. Our stock, along with that of many other labels, was destroyed. MoC catalogue titles are slowly being reprinted or upgraded and will be available as soon as possible. New upgraded Dual Format editions of Sunrise: A Song of Two Humans, City Girl, and Profound Desires of the Gods are already available, and M, For All Mankind, and Make Way for Tomorrow will be ready very soon.

  Full up-to-date details of what is out-of-print (OOP) and what is being upgraded can be found in our new printed catalogue which is also available <a href=“ [www.eurekavideo.co.uk] CATALOGUE2011_web.pdf”>here as a pdf</a>.

  Also out this month: our limited edition Blu-ray only release of Orson Welles’ towering Touch of Evil. Stay tuned.

• November 02, 2011
• 21:27

  New printed catalogue and fresh editions

   » ‎ The Masters of Cinema Series: Eureka! | Recent Updates

  We are receiving lots of emails each day about the unavailability of certain MoC editions. The London riots in August 2011 saw the destruction of the Sony DADC distribution centre in Enfield. Our stock, along with that of many other labels, was destroyed. MoC catalogue titles are slowly being reprinted or upgraded and will be available as soon as possible. New upgraded Dual Format editions of SUNRISE, CITY GIRL, and PROFOUND DESIRES OF THE GODS are already available, and M, FOR ALL MANKIND, and MAKE WAY FOR TOMORROW will be ready very soon.

  Full up-to-date details of what is out-of-print (OOP) and what is being upgraded can be found in our new printed catalogue which is also available <a href=“ [www.eurekavideo.co.uk] CATALOGUE2011_web.pdf”>here as a pdf</a>.

• October 24, 2011
• 6:59

  Imamura x 2

   » ‎ The Masters of Cinema Series: Eureka! | Recent Updates

  Due to the influx of emails that continue to reach our inboxes on the subject of availability of catalogue titles, we’re repeating this note from a previous News update: “Many of our titles available from online retailers such as Amazon are presently listed as unavailable, out-of-print. Fear not! Following the Sony DADC fire in early August, we have been steadily preparing new Dual Format editions for the titles whose previously separate Blu-ray and DVD stock was destroyed in the blaze. As mentioned in last month’s News update, we’ll be making the following releases available again shortly, now as Dual Format (Blu-ray + DVD) releases exclusively: Sunrise and City Girl by F. W. Murnau; Profound Desires of the Gods and Vengeance Is Mine by Shôhei Imamura; The Burmese Harp by Kon Ichikawa; Will Success Spoil Rock Hunter? by Frank Tashlin; La Planète sauvage (aka Fantastic Planet) by René Laloux; For All Mankind by Al Reinert; Tokyo Sonata by Kiyoshi Kurosawa; Mad Detective by Johnnie To and Wai Ka-fai; Une femme mariée by Jean-Luc Godard; The World by Jia Zhangke; Make Way for Tomorrow by Leo McCarey; and M by Fritz Lang.”

  Now available — two much-awaited films by Japanese filmmaker Shôhei Imamura.

  First: the unclassifiable and long-out-of-circulation 1967 <a href=“ [www.eurekavideo.co.uk] A Man Vanishes</a> (whose Japanese title is Ningen jôhatsu, or The Unexplained Disappearance of a Human Being). It’s a documentary about the disappearance — or, one might say, the dropping-out from society — of a Japanese salaryman named Tadashi Ôshima (his representing a single vanishing among thousands such in the Japanese late-‘60s — a phenomenon widespread enough for the media to lend these lost individuals the singular designation of ”jôhatsu”) and a documentation of the inquiry’s gradual slide into a director-sanctioned manipulation of the principals and the events that surround the inquiry of the disappearance… — in short, a head-spinning investigation into the ontology of filmic, sociological, and biographical “truth.” Our DVD-only edition of Imamura’s classic film sports a new high-definition restoration of the feature with a new English subtitle translation; the original theatrical trailer for the film; a new and excluisve 18-minute video interview about the film with Imamura scholar Tony Rayns; and a 9-minute video interview with Imamura conducted by his son, filmmaker Daisuke Tengan. Also included in the release is a 36-page booklet featuring writing by Imamura in 2004 about directing the film; remarks from 1975 by filmmaker Kirirô Urayama, who assisted in the editing of the film; Japanese magazine clippings from 1967 pertaining to the phenomenon of jôhatsu and the production of Imamura’s film; a critique of the film by Nagisa Ôshima; and rare archival stills.

  And then for something completely different in the Imamura corpus — a work which also stands as one of the director’s most famous films: <a href=“ [www.eurekavideo.co.uk] The Ballad of Narayama</a> [Narayama bushikô], the winner of the Palme d’Or for Best Picture at the 1983 Cannes Film Festival. Imamura revisits material first adapted by Keisuke Kinoshita (of <a href=“ [www.eurekavideo.co.uk] Twenty-Four Eyes</a> fame) in order to calibrate a gorgeous “family drama” constructed from keen observations on the nature of aging, self-sustenance, and compassion for one’s fellow man. We present The Ballad of Narayama in a special Dual Format edition (including both Blu-ray and DVD versions of the film) featuring a new, restored HD presentation with new and improved English subtitles, and supplement it with an exclusive new 20-minute video interview with Tony Rayns, and four original Japanese trailers which include behind-the-scenes footage. Also: a 44-page full-colour booklet containing a 1983 director’s statement by Shôhei Imamura; a newly translated 1983 interview with Imamura conducted by Max Tessier; the newly translated production diary for the film kept by producer Jirô Tomoda; a wide selection of rare production stills; and facsimile imagery from the film’s original Japanese press book.

  This concludes the most recent leg of our “Imamura season” — still in anticipation of our forthcoming Dual Format release of <a href=“ [www.eurekavideo.co.uk] The Insect Woman and Nishi-Ginza Station</a>.

  Next month: our holiday-season releases: Douglas Trumbull’s <a href=“ [www.eurekavideo.co.uk] Silent Running</a>, and Orson Welles’ <a href=“ [www.eurekavideo.co.uk] Touch of Evil</a>. Until then — happy harvest.

• October 06, 2011
• 6:52

  …A Bicycle for Our Minds

   » ‎ The Masters of Cinema Series: Eureka! | Recent Updates

  I bought my first Mac in 1992 (an Apple Macintosh LC with System 6) from a Libyan man in Manchester. It cost a fortune, but perhaps a bit less than it ought to have because it had Arabic installed as the system language and was pretty impenetrable. Within an hour of getting it home I’d installed the new System 7 from floppies. This initial hurdle, quickly overcome, has typified my experience with Macs ever since. They’ve enabled me to do an enormous amount of work quickly: at university (pre-internet), making music and art, and particularly in the last 8 years making DVDs and Blu-rays for the MoC Series. I could go on and on and on, but everything we do here is entirely enabled by Macs, we love them, and I feel a strong urge to pay tribute to Steven Paul Jobs for making everything happen. His passing, a giant loss. —Nick Wrigley

  Apple’s works more or less parallel my time alive, from the mid-/late-1970s to the present day. As a grade-school student in northeast Pennsylvania, the Apple II models represented time away from regular classes to take part in Oregon Trail sessions which proved endlessly more compelling than my time spent in Mrs. Novak’s west-facing homeroom rotely memorizing the correct spelling of “embarrassment” (which, I assure you, came easily enough both then and throughout subsequent years). In high school I had a class in which we were given full access to Macintoshes; we were taught the ins and outs of Hypercard, in order to craft proto-multimedia works. It was around this time that I devoured Steven Levy’s Insanely Great about the founding of Apple and the later creation of the Macintosh. Levy’s book was published concurrent to my fascination with all things “cyberpunk”: Front 242 records, my subscriptions to Mondo 2000 and the newly founded Wired magazine…: thus, computer-enabled music, and the Apple- and Adobe-ushered era of digital graphic design. How could suppositions still exist that the Mac was a “terminal interface,“ an arcana-medium whose inherent tenet was the alienation of “the people who didn’t get it”? Away with that: the Mac was a creative tool for those who abhorred arcana and wanted only to express — whatever, and everything, that means. I had no idea at the time how broad, and profound, would be the implications of this tool — that it would, indeed, reconfigure the very notion of “tool” (like the bone giving way to the space-station) and in so doing reshape the texture of modern living. From the brilliant iMac designs (at the moment of the “comeback” which all Apple adepts could only have dreamed of, c. 1996), to the iPod, iPhone (astonishing), and then iPad, Steve Jobs set a standard of excellence, and sent forth a rebuke to received wisdom, which will, and must, forever inspire the creative individual, and empower the human vessel for whom life is difficult enough without needless exposure in the course of daily tasks to a sense of alienation provoked by the objects and exigencies that demand his or her attention. As Nick has stated, the MoC Series — and much of what we personally and individually cherish — would not have been possible without Steve Jobs’ vision, tenacity, and — important (and symbiotic with the genius of Jonathan Ive) — TASTE. From the most recent works of Jean-Luc Godard or Chris Marker or Jean-Marie Straub or practically every filmmaker currently working whom we all revere — through to the artists in every discipline (using music apps or simple word-processing) and the friends and commerce with which we take part daily in grand exchange, the mark left by Steve Jobs on the modern world can only be assessed as: incalculable, and: staggering. And so Steve Jobs is dead — but, as he brilliantly expressed in his 2005 Stanford address: death is merely ”life’s change-agent.” —Craig Keller

• September 26, 2011
• 4:12

  Kobayashi and Ford

   » ‎ The Masters of Cinema Series: Eureka! | Recent Updates

  First, some administrative notes: Many of our titles available from online retailers such as Amazon are presently listed as unavailable, out-of-print. Fear not! Following the Sony DADC fire in early August, we have been steadily preparing new Dual Format editions for the titles whose previously separate Blu-ray and DVD stock was destroyed in the blaze. As mentioned in last month’s News update, we’ll be making the following releases available again shortly, now as Dual Format (Blu-ray + DVD) releases exclusively: Sunrise and City Girl by F. W. Murnau; Profound Desires of the Gods and Vengeance Is Mine by Shôhei Imamura; The Burmese Harp by Kon Ichikawa; Will Success Spoil Rock Hunter? by Frank Tashlin; La Planète sauvage (aka Fantastic Planet) by René Laloux; For All Mankind by Al Reinert; Tokyo Sonata by Kiyoshi Kurosawa; Mad Detective by Johnnie To and Wai Ka-fai; Une femme mariée by Jean-Luc Godard; The World by Jia Zhangke; Make Way for Tomorrow by Leo McCarey; and M by Fritz Lang.

  On to new releases, available now:

  Masaki Kobayashi’s 1962 samurai-packed, psychological pressure-cooker <a href=“ [eurekavideo.co.uk] Harakiri</a> (aka Seppuku) is finally available in a gorgeous Dual Format (Blu-ray + DVD) edition mastered from a new Shochiku HD transfer. The release also includes the original Japanese theatrical trailer; an excerpt from a 1993 Directors Guild of Japan video interview with Masaki Kobayashi discussing the film with fellow iconic director Masahiro Shinoda; and a 28-page booklet featuring a new essay by critic Philip Kemp, a 1963 interview with Kobayashi, and rare archival production stills.

  Our second release of the month is a DVD-only edition of John Ford’s epic silent classic <a href=“ [eurekavideo.co.uk] The Iron Horse</a>. A blockbuster at the time of its release in 1924, The Iron Horse passes from the hometown of young lawyer Abraham Lincoln through the era of the same man’s presidency as its tale of the creation of the transcontinental railroad unfurls. This special two-disc edition includes the original, US 150-minute version of the film, and the shorter, international 133-minute version of the film (which includes alternate takes), both accompanied by a 2007 score by Christopher Caliendo; an audio commentary for the international version by film scholar Robert S. Birchard; Then Came a Dream, a new and exclusive 20-minute video essay about the film by critic and Ford expert Tag Gallagher; a DVD-ROM PDF of the film’s original shooting script; and a 40-page illustrated booklet containing vintage artwork and publicity material.

  Next month sees the release of two watershed Shôhei Imamura works: a DVD-only edition of the long-sought-after A Man Vanishes, and a Dual Format edition of The Ballad of Narayama. Remember to follow us on Twitter <a href=“ [www.twitter.com] where we’ll be announcing in early October our 2012 first-quarter lineup!

• August 21, 2011
• 4:04

  Pedro Costa and F. W. Murnau

   » ‎ The Masters of Cinema Series: Eureka! | Recent Updates

  These are crazy times. And yet the end of the month of August finds our team thrilled to be releasing works on DVD by two master filmmakers who represent for The MoC Series, on one hand, our commitment to a filmography which as a whole stands as a breakthrough in 20th century cinema language, and on the other, a chance to further expose the public to an oeuvre which in the last several years has confronted the modern world with a singular brilliance and pushed the artform into a realm which critic Jonathan Rosenbaum has declared “the cinema of the future”.

  From the silent era: F. W. Murnau’s 1921 <a href=“ [eurekavideo.co.uk] Schloss Vogelöd: Die Enthüllung eines Geheimnisses</a> Castle Vogelöd: The Revelation of a Secret. This early work by the director of such landmarks as Nosferatu, Der letzte Mann, Sunrise, and Tabu weaves the mystery around a past murder-of-passion into the fabric of a country-manor party beset by live-wire suspicion, wuthering weather, and phantasmagoric nightmare. Our DVD edition of the film has been mastered from a recent FWMS restoration which includes the original German-language intertitles with optional English subtitles, and is accompanied by a bracing piano score by Neil Brand. A 31-minute video piece by Luciano Berriatúa, The Language of the Shadows: Friedrich Wilhelm Murnau and His Films provides context on Murnau’s opus in the first half of the 1920s, while a 32-page booklet contains a newly translated vintage essay on the film by Charles Jameux and an assessment by Lotte H. Eisner.

  It’s already a given among many who have seen Pedro Costa’s films that the awe and enthusiasm generated by the mere mention of names like “Murnau” need not be an emotion relegated to looks back upon an older, supposedly purer epoch. Pedro Costa’s 2006 feature <a href=“ [eurekavideo.co.uk] Colossal Youth</b></a> [also known by its Portuguese title Juventude em marcha, or Youth on the March] set the world of cinema alight in 2006 with its debut at the Cannes Film Festival — and has since gone on to be ranked near the top of the greatest films of the 2000s in polls of worldwide film critics. Impossible to summarise easily, we refer to the blurb for our release, which we strained to make as concise as possible: An intimate epic wherein present and past move as one, Colossal Youth chronicles Ventura, the towering Cape Verdean who has assumed the role of surrogate “father” to an untold number of characters around Lisbon and its now-razed neighbourhood of Fontaínhas. Through Ventura’s ghost-like visitations to figures such as Vanda Duarte (the central personage of Costa’s previous In Vanda’s Room) and repeated recollections of this man’s past life as a newly migrated manual labourer, Costa explores the nature, and necessity, of storytelling in the course of the human adventure.

  Our two-disc DVD special-edition of Colossal Youth (with the main film presented in its original PAL format and runtime of 149 minutes) complements the feature with the three astonishing shorts Costa made in 2007 and 2010: Tarrafal (18 minutes); The Rabbit Hunters (also known by its Portuguese title A caça ao coelho com pau, or Hunting the Rabbit with a Stick, 23 minutes); and the home-video première of O nosso homem (Our Man, 25 minutes), which last month won the Best Portuguese Film award at the Curtas Vila Conde Festival, and was cited as being “by far the best Portuguese film shown in the competition”. Also included in the release is the home-video première of Craig Keller’s 118-minute 2010 film Finding the Criminal, which documents a 2008 conversation between Pedro Costa, Keller, and Andy Rector on the history of cinema, cinema aesthetics, politics, music, etc. Rounding out the discs are a new and exclusive 17-minute video piece filmed at the Tate Modern, London, featuring Costa discussing Colossal Youth, and the original Japanese trailer for the film. A 56-page full-colour booklet contains writing on Colossal Youth by French philosopher Jacques Rancière; an essay by the legendary Portuguese critic João Bénard da Costa; a facsimile reproduction of Ventura’s letter from the film; and new and exclusive short pieces on Tarrafal and The Rabbit Hunters by Arthur Mas, José Oliveira, Martial Pisani, and Andy Rector.

  One more update: Following the recent fire at the Sony DADC facility in London where much of our backcatalogue stock was destroyed (along with that of over a hundred independent cinema and music labels), we will be repressing many of the films in The MoC Series catalogue that previously carried separate Blu-ray and DVD editions. Going forward, the following titles will be available in Dual Format (Blu-ray + DVD) editions exclusively: Sunrise and City Girl by F. W. Murnau; Profound Desires of the Gods and Vengeance Is Mine by Shôhei Imamura; The Burmese Harp by Kon Ichikawa; Will Success Spoil Rock Hunter? by Frank Tashlin; La Planète sauvage (aka Fantastic Planet) by René Laloux; For All Mankind by Al Reinert; Tokyo Sonata by Kiyoshi Kurosawa; Mad Detective by Johnnie To and Wai Ka-fai; Une femme mariée by Jean-Luc Godard; The World by Jia Zhangke; Make Way for Tomorrow by Leo McCarey; and M by Fritz Lang. Watch this space for more details on release dates, or follow us on Twitter <b><a href=“ [https:] We’ll be announcing our early 2012 releases there only a short time from now…

• August 04, 2011
• 4:18

  MoC vs. Phaidon

   » ‎ The Masters of Cinema Series: Eureka! | Recent Updates

  The production team of The Masters of Cinema Series went on strike Tuesday 2nd August 2011 out of desperation and in protest against the publisher Phaidon’s appropriation of the already well established The Masters of Cinema Series brand for a Phaidon series of books about great film directors, without any permission or prior consultation.

  The series of books Phaidon call The Masters of Cinema Series were originally released in France as “COLLECTION GRANDS CINEASTES” (“Great Filmmaker Collection”). A textbook case of ‘passing off’, one would imagine this to be an open and shut case – except, Eureka Entertainment Ltd are now forced to launch expensive legal proceedings to protect The Masters of Cinema Series brand. We believe that Phaidon should do the right thing and acknowledge their unfortunate lack of brand awareness.

  The Masters of Cinema Series originally contacted Phaidon to express astonishment at the naming of their range of books in November 2010. Richard Schlagman, the owner of Phaidon, responded that it was all “pure coincidence” and that they “do not see that there will be any room for confusion as DVD and Blu-rays cannot be confused with books”. The Masters of Cinema Series subsequently filed a formal legal complaint, which has recently been rejected by Phaidon’s lawyers.

  A David and Goliath situation is now in full swing as The Masters of Cinema Series attempt to protect their identity against a much larger company (Phaidon) who have an appetite for litigation but the inability to recognise the damage a public PR firestorm will have on their reputation. The Masters of Cinema Series have taken to Twitter to mobilise their 6,500 followers in an unusual PR move which attempts to settle this unnecessary situation quickly.

  The Masters of Cinema Series was founded in January 2004 by Eureka Entertainment Ltd and the MoC organisation / mastersofcinema.org / mastersofcinema.com / mastersofcinema.co.uk (est. 2001). The Masters of Cinema Series has established itself as one of the best-loved Blu-ray and DVD labels in Britain and is well known around the world, releasing over 150 films by auteur directors, in award-winning editions, each with a substantial book or booklet.

  Phaidon Press is a worldwide publishing group specialising in books on the visual arts, and is headquartered in London, with offices in New York, Paris, Berlin, Milan, and Tokyo. In 2009, Phaidon acquired the film magazine Cahiers du cinéma.

  There is no doubt that great confusion has been sown by Phaidon’s damaging appropriation of The Masters of Cinema Series brand for their range of books (Eureka Entertainment Ltd regularly receive numerous mistaken public and trade requests about Phaidon’s books) and whether this is all “pure coincidence” or not, is irrelevant. The Masters of Cinema Series was already established over 5 years earlier and Phaidon are trading on direct association with our good name.

  If you are a supporter of The Masters of Cinema Series of Blu-rays and DVDs, please let Phaidon know that you think they should acknowledge us and rename their The Masters of Cinema Series of books to avoid confusion.

  <a href=“ [www.phaidon.co.uk] publicity team can be contacted here.</a>

  The publicity contact for Great Britain & Ireland is <a href=“mailto:jlea@phaidon.com”>jlea@phaidon.com</a> Thank you!

• June 27, 2011
• 22:39

  Epstein and Imamura

   » ‎ The Masters of Cinema Series: Eureka! | Recent Updates

  Out now as Dual Format (Blu-ray + DVD) releases: Jean Epstein’s astonishing 1923 silent work <a href=“ [eurekavideo.co.uk] fidèle</a></b>, and Shôhei Imamura’s lacerating 1962 feature <a href=“ [eurekavideo.co.uk] and Battleships</a></b> [<i>Buta to gunkan</i>].

  In Imamura’s breakthrough film, the feverish pulse of the Yokosuka underworld sets the tempo of a young couple’s attempt to make a life against the backdrop of military occupation. This exclusive restoration from an HD master made from the original camera negative is supplemented by a progressive transfer of Imamura’s 1958 debut: the sensationalistic <i>Stolen Desire</i> [<i>Nusumareta yokujô</i>]. A 36-page booklet containing new essays on both films by noted critic and scholar Tony Rayns rounds out the release.

  The down-and-out continue to persevere in Epstein’s unutterably beautiful <i>Cœur fidèle</i> [<i>True Heart</i>]. A small story about true love divided by family and badman alike, this work from the great cine-poet of <i>La Chute de la maison Usher</i> and <i>Finis terrae</i> contains images that arrest the heart. A new restoration of the film running at its correct frame-rate and run-time is presented with original French intertitles (and optional English subtitles) and accompanied by a lovely, melancholic score by Maxence Cyrin, a gallery of rare production stills and images from the set, and a 44-page booklet packed with writings by Epstein, Henri Langlois, Jean Cocteau, René Clair, and more.

  Coming in August — DVD releases of F. W. Murnau’s early feature <i>Schloß Vogelöd: Die Enthüllung eines Geheimnisses</i> [<i>Castle Vogelöd: The Revelation of a Secret</i>, aka <i>The Haunted Castle</i>] and Pedro Costa’s modern classic <i>Colossal Youth</i>.

• April 12, 2011
• 2:15

  Fritz Lang’s Indian epic on DVD

   » ‎ The Masters of Cinema Series: Eureka! | Recent Updates

  It’s a long way from Die Spinnen or <a href=“ [eurekavideo.co.uk] Mabuse, der Spieler.</a> to 1959 — but once Fritz Lang reached the cusp of the 1960s, he took on the task of directing a final two-part epic which at once looked backward to his earlier diptych works that propelled the German studio system to its highest heights, and held its own against the expressionist colour extravaganzas that characterised some of the greatest late work of fellow masters like Renoir, Rossellini, Ford, Hawks, or Ophuls.

  The two-part film known as the “Indian epic”, which consists of <a href=“ [eurekavideo.co.uk] Tiger von Eschnapur</a> [The Tiger of Eschnapur] and <a href=“ [eurekavideo.co.uk] indische Grabmal</a> [The Indian Tomb] and totals over 200 minutes in length, finds Lang working again in his native Germany, dragging the adventure serial form beyond all conventional, contemporary mores. (Indeed, he and frequent collaborator Thea von Harbou were involved in the production of the first version of the story, one ultimately directed in the ‘20s by Joe May.) The result is arguably Lang’s most breathtaking, consistently audacious work since his first German period.

  Our two-disc edition of the Indian epic, presented in one of the most glorious transfers of a colour film on the DVD medium, is packed with special features. It includes two separate soundtracks — the original German-language track, and the English-language overdub created for overseas distribution; newly translated optional English subtitles; new and exclusive feature-length audio commentaries for both Der Tiger von Eschnapur and Das indische Grabmal, recorded by esteemed Lang scholar and critic David Kalat; a 20-minute documentary on the making of the films; three minutes of vintage 8mm footage shot on location by actress Sabine Bethmann; the original trailers for both films; and a packed 48-page booklet containing an essay on the films by Lang scholar Tom Gunning (author of The Films of Fritz Lang: Allegories of Vision and Modernity), excerpts from interviews with Fritz Lang about the film, testimonials from the director’s collaborators on the production, and rare production photographs.

  The perfect bookend to the career of the man that created Die Nibelungen and <a href=“ [eurekavideo.co.uk] the Indian epic influenced the colour passages of The Odyssey presented within Jean-Luc Godard’s immortal Le Mépris [Contempt] that have been ostensibly directed by Lang — and it is Lang himself who, in that film, perhaps best sums up his late, great 1959 work when he pronounces: ”Jerry, don’t forget. — The gods have not created man. Man has created gods.”

  Also out NOW: our DVD version of F. W. Murnau’s glorious, gorgeous late work <a href=“ [eurekavideo.co.uk] Girl</a>, which features a new 2008 score composed and arranged by Christopher Caliendo, a full-length audio commentary by David Kalat, and a 28-page illustrated booklet with an essay by Adrian Danks. City Girl joins the ranks of our other releases which were previously available on Blu-ray only but have recently seen new MoC DVD releases: Shôhei Imamura’s <a href=“ [eurekavideo.co.uk] Desires of the Gods</a>, Kon Ichikawa’s <a href=“ [eurekavideo.co.uk] Burmese Harp</a>, Frank Tashlin’s <a href=“ [eurekavideo.co.uk] Success Spoil Rock Hunter?</a>, and Leo McCarey’s <a href=“ [eurekavideo.co.uk] Way for Tomorrow</a>.

  Stay tuned for news of some very exciting upcoming releases from The Masters of Cinema Series in the weeks and months ahead…

• March 17, 2011
• 0:48

  Antonioni x 2 on Dual Format

   » ‎ The Masters of Cinema Series: Eureka! | Recent Updates

  We’re very excited to be releasing two of Michelangelo Antonioni’s long-unavailable, and most stunning, ‘50s works as our very first Dual Format releases. Each package contains two discs: a Blu-ray version of the film, and a standard-definition DVD version.

  <a href =“ [eurekavideo.co.uk] signora senza camelie</a> [The Lady Without Camelias] is a deeply expressive chronicle of an Italian movie starlet’s career-ascent — and of her subsequent emotional chastening. <a href=“ [eurekavideo.co.uk] amiche</a> [The Girlfriends] decalibrates the ‘ensemble drama’, mapping the psychic fissures that variously divide — and bind — a group of Torino women to one another in the face of envy, suicide, and sexual voracity.

  Both films arrive in gorgeous new transfers (in 1080p AVC HD encodes on Blu-ray, and progressive encodes on DVD; Le amiche sources the recent restoration by Cineteca di Bologna, L’Immagine Ritrovata, and Martin Scorsese’s Film Foundation) with newly translated optional English subtitles. Each release sports a video introduction for the respective film alongside new videos on Antonioni’s career and influence, and feature critic and teacher Gabe Klinger, shot and recorded by filmmaker Joe Swanberg in Chicago. In addition to the original Italian theatrical trailer for the film included with La signora senza camelie, both titles feature lengthy booklets containing newly translated vintage criticism, excerpts from period interviews with Antonioni, and more.

  Next up from The Masters of Cinema Series: April releases of F. W. Murnau’s breathtaking <a href=“ [eurekavideo.co.uk] Girl</a> (made available on DVD for the first time in the Series) and a two-DVD set of Fritz Lang’s jaw-dropping 1959 “Indian epic”: <a href=“ [eurekavideo.co.uk] Tiger von Eschnapur</a> [The Tiger of Eschnapur] and <a href=“ [eurekavideo.co.uk] indische Grabmal</a> [The Indian Tomb].

  Last but certainly not least: <a href=“ [www.eurekavideo.co.uk] out our current March sale!</a> Not only can you pre-order new releases and save up to 60% on certain titles — you also get a chance to nab remaining inventory of out-of-print titles while it lasts. Full details <a href=“ [www.eurekavideo.co.uk]

  And with that: happy viewing!

• January 07, 2011
• 0:08

  Ophuls and Late Mizoguchi

   » ‎ The Masters of Cinema Series: Eureka! | Recent Updates

  With winter come winds that whip like Max Ophuls’ camera, and fogs and mists as thick as any in <i>Ugetsu monogatari</i>. As such, we’re proud to draw attention to our recent releases…

  We’ve released a single-disc DVD edition (spine number 100) of Ophuls’ astonishing <a href=“ [eurekavideo.co.uk] signora di tutti</i></a>. Anyone familiar with the master’s late, great films like <i>La Ronde</i>, <i>Le Plaisir</i>, <i>Madame de…</i>, or <i>Lola Montès</i> will feel in this 1934 work starring the bewitching Isa Miranda the same exuberance, the same fatalistic delirium of the final masterpieces: it is Ophuls in a mode of full expressivity. The disc presents the film in a gorgeous new transfer, with newly translated optional English subtitles, and features a new and exclusive half-hour video essay about the film by videomaker-scholar-author Tag Gallagher called <i>So Alone…</i>. A 44-page booklet features a new and exclusive essay by filmmaker-critic-cinema hero Luc Moullet, along with newly translated testimonials from Max Ophuls, Isa Miranda, and filmmaker Alfredo Guarini.

  The box set <i>Late Mizoguchi: Eight Films, 1951-1956</i> compiles our four earlier releases of eight films by one of the directors who looms largest across cinema history: Kenji Mizoguchi. This box reproduces all the booklets and supplements of the single releases, but consolidates them into a single, low-price package. If you’ve yet to experience <a href=“ [eurekavideo.co.uk] <a href=“ [eurekavideo.co.uk] monogatari</i></a>, <a href=“ [eurekavideo.co.uk] bayashi</i></a>, <a href=“ [eurekavideo.co.uk] dayû</i></a>, <a href=“ [eurekavideo.co.uk] no onna</i></a>, <a href=“ [eurekavideo.co.uk] monogatari</i></a>, <a href=“ [eurekavideo.co.uk] or <a href=“ [eurekavideo.co.uk] chitai</i></a> — then the time to start freeing up slots on your all-time top ten list is now.

  And in close — a heartfelt thank you, on behalf of the entire MoC team, to everyone who helped make 2010 such a success for the Series. We’ve got a slew of great releases (and more than a few surprises) planned for 2011 — a potential blinder of a year. Only the beginning: our forthcoming DVD editions of previously Blu-ray-only titles <i>Profound Desires of the Gods</i>, <i>The Burmese Harp</i>, <i>Make Way for Tomorrow</i>, <i>Will Success Spoil Rock Hunter?</i>, and <i>City Girl</i> — and, as the first releases in a new and to-be-frequently-repeated MoC Series policy, <b>Dual Format editions</b> — <b>containing both a Blu-ray and a DVD version of the respective films</b> — of Michelangelo Antonioni’s <i>La signora senza camelie</i> (aka <i>The Lady Without Camelias</i>) and <i>Le amiche</i>.

• November 20, 2010
• 22:23

  METROPOLIS – Available Now

   » ‎ The Masters of Cinema Series: Eureka! | Recent Updates

  One of our most anticipated releases ever is available at last: the reconstructed, restored edition of Fritz Lang’s visionary 1927 epic Metropolis.

  Many never expected the day to arrive: the moment when the 25 minutes of footage excised against Lang’s wishes by distributors on both sides of the Atlantic would be rediscovered. And yet 81 years after the film’s initial première (and following the release of successive restorations which could only ever synopsise the lost scenes with the insertion of ‘stopgap’ title cards), the dream scenario came to pass: the missing footage was found in the archives of Buenos Aires’ Museo del Cine. The story of the discovery (and how the footage wound up there in the first place) is now part of the history of Metropolis itself, and is recounted across the supplements accompanying our new editions of this integral, 150-minute version of the film as reconstructed and restored over the last two years through a joint effort of the Friedrich-Wilhelm-Murnau-Stiftung in Wiesbaden, the Deutsche Kinemathek in Berlin, and the Museo del Cine in Buenos Aires.

  The Masters of Cinema Series is proud to offer three editions of this landmark release: on <a href=“ [eurekavideo.co.uk] (in HD with a 1080p AVC encode), on <a href=“ [eurekavideo.co.uk] (in a progressive encode), and a limited edition steelbook which contains both a Blu-ray and a DVD of the film. The special features are the same across all editions: a new 2010 symphony orchestra studio recording of the original 1927 Gottfried Huppertz score in 5.1 surround sound and Dolby Digital 2.0 stereo; newly translated optional English subtitles to accompany the original German intertitles, presented intact on the feature; a new and exclusive feature-length audio commentary by film critics and scholars David Kalat and Jonathan Rosenbaum; a 55-minute 2010 documentary, Die Reise nach Metropolis, about the film and the discovery and restoration of the missing footage; the 2010 MoC re-release trailer; and a 56-page booklet featuring an archival article about Metropolis by Fritz Lang, a 1927 essay on the film by Luis Buñuel, pieces by Jonathan Rosenbaum and Karen Naundorf, and restoration notes by Martin Koerber.

  With its clarification of once obscure plot points, and a more robust development of particular thematic strands, the reconstruction of Metropolis brings Lang’s bizarre allegory-opus into spectacular focus.

  It also provides a happy lesson about hope: if, after all, an entire Metropolis might be salvaged, then maybe four devils can still be summoned up from the depths… — and perhaps the Ambersons will yet attain their original magnificence…

• October 14, 2010
• 9:08

  Couples

   » ‎ The Masters of Cinema Series: Eureka! | Recent Updates

  Out for the second half of October: two major works of the Hollywood studio-system, released two decades apart, and calibrated at two completely different velocities…

  <b><a href=“ [eurekavideo.co.uk] Success Spoil Rock Hunter?</a></b> stands as a prime example of the legendary director Frank Tashlin at his explosively anarchic, deliciously satiric comic best. By the time of the picture’s release, Tashlin was already esteemed for his brilliant work directing a number of classic Looney Tunes episodes for Warner Bros. — for the smash-hit Hope/Rogers vehicle Son of Paleface — and for the very best (and last) films starring Dean Martin and Jerry Lewis as a functioning duo: the astonishing Artists and Models and Hollywood or Bust. Will Success Spoil Rock Hunter? saw Tashlin reuniting with the non-linear genius-IQ starlet of his 1956 picture The Girl Can’t Help It (one of the first, and still best, pictures about the then-nascent “rock-‘n-roll” movement) to craft an as-they-say ‘uproarious’ examination of celebrity-worship and total media in-“fan”-tilism. Ingenious gags, Borax-box palettes, and Tony Randall staking his pre-Odd Couple claim as one of the most gifted actors in American movies add up in aggregate to a film-of-its-time for the ages. Included in our Blu-ray-only edition of the film (presented in a 1080p AVC encode, with its original Scope aspect ratio intact) — a new and exclusive video introduction for the film featuring the great Joe Dante (director of Gremlins 1 & 2, InnerSpace, Matinee, Looney Tunes: Back in Action, Homecoming, and the recent The Hole 3-D, among many others); a vintage Movietone short which captures Jayne Mansfield on tour promoting the film; an alternate music-and-effects track with a different musical score for the opening of the picture and other ‘temporary’ effects-placement; the original theatrical trailer; optional English SDH subtitles for the deaf and hearing-impaired; and a 44-page booklet featuring two new essays (and one Surrealist poem) by film writer David Cairns, and an exclusive 2003 interview about the film with Tony Randall, conducted by Ethan DeSeife.

  And then there’s <b><a href=“ [eurekavideo.co.uk] Way for Tomorrow</a></b>. One of the most-requested films for release on video across the last decade (at least), the now-widely-available arrival of Leo McCarey’s undeniable masterpiece has the potential not only to change the way that ‘canons’ and best-of-ever lists have been previously formulated, but to remind the hearts and minds of its audience of the civil role that empathy, that sensitivity plays in the world outside of the screen — the world the screen frames. And it does so without the slightest recourse to cheap sentimentality. McCarey’s achievement with Make Way for Tomorrow is colossal and, without divulging anything of the story that unfolds between those forever-living souls embodied by Victor Moore, Beulah Bondi, Thomas Mitchell, etc. (to do so would be gross impropriety), it’s enough to say that to miss out on seeing Make Way for Tomorrow is tantamount to passing by on the very best of John Ford (e.g., How Green Was My Valley, The Long Gray Line), of King Vidor (e.g., Hallelujah, The Champ), of Howard Hawks (e.g., Rio Bravo, Hatari!). Our Blu-ray-only release features a 1080p AVC encode of the film in its original 1.37:1 aspect ratio, a 20-minute video piece with filmmaker and critic Peter Bogdanovich (The Last Picture Show, Saint Jack, They All Laughed) discussing the film and the breadth of McCarey’s career, a 21-minute video piece with writer Gary Giddins (Warning Shadows: Home Alone with Classic Cinema) discussing the social and political contexts of this Great Depression film, optional English SDH subtitles for the deaf and hearing-impaired, and a 36-page booklet featuring a new essay by writer and Library of America editor Geoffrey O’Brien (Red Sky Café, The Fall of the House of Walworth) alongside an excerpt from Josephine Lawrence’s long out-of-print 1934 source novel Years Are So Long.

  Coming soon: a DVD of Max Ophuls’ early masterpiece La signora di tutti, and… the long-awaited Blu-ray and DVD editions of Fritz Lang’s immortal Metropolis — reconstructed, for the first time ever, to its approximate original length…

• August 30, 2010
• 22:59

  Love and war: Jia and Ichikawa

   » ‎ The Masters of Cinema Series: Eureka! | Recent Updates

  We’ve just released two dazzling humanist epics from the East this month, making their worldwide debuts on Blu-ray.

  The first is Jia Zhangke’s spectacular tapestry <a href=“ [eurekavideo.co.uk] World</a> <i>[Shijie]</i>, detailing the lives and loves of workers and migrants in Beijing’s World Park. We’re especially pleased to present it from the fully digital original HD source, with a rich bounty of supplements: an engrossing hour-long on-set making-of piece — <i>Made in China</i> — and a fascinating 25-minute interview, <i>The World According to Jia Zhangke</i> (both subtitled in English for the first time), along with an exclusive new video introduction by Tony Rayns. The accompanying booklet includes a further discussion of the film by Rayns, an essay by Jia on “amateur cinema”, a tract of PR copy from the actual World Park, and a short essay by Craig Keller on the ending of the film.

  Our other release is Kon Ichikawa’s haunting, magisterial <a href=“ [eurekavideo.co.uk] Burmese Harp</a> <i>[Biruma no tategoto]</i> — the director’s breakthrough work which also stands as the first of the two versions of the film made during the course of his career. (The second, a colour version, dates from 1985.) We’re proud to present one of the most beautiful films of the 1950s in a glorious HD master, with a new subtitle translation and a 20-minute video introduction by Tony Rayns, as well as the original Japanese trailer. The booklet features rare stills and an essay by the sadly missed Keiko I. McDonald.

  Coming up — brace yourself for tears of laughter and sorrow with two of the most uncompromising films ever to emerge from studio-era Hollywood…

• August 04, 2010
• 3:24

  Upgraded and expanded for Blu-ray

   » ‎ The Masters of Cinema Series: Eureka! | Recent Updates

  Available now are two of our most popular catalogue titles, upgraded and expanded for Blu-ray: <i>Vengeance Is Mine</i> and <i>La Planète sauvage</i>, released originally under the title “Fantastic Planet”.

  Shôhei Imamura’s triumphant return to fiction filmmaking a decade after <i>Profound Desires of the Gods</i>, <i><a href=“ [eurekavideo.co.uk] Is Mine</a></i> [<i>Fukushû suru wa ware ni ari</i>] is one of the most unorthodox, brilliantly engrossing crime-spree films ever made. The Blu-ray edition features an entirely new and greatly improved subtitle translation, the original Japanese trailers from Shochiku, and the Alex Cox video introduction and Tony Rayns commentary from our previous DVD release. The 56-page booklet now contains an extensive new career interview with Imamura which spans the entire interior.

  René Laloux’s legendary <i><a href=“ [eurekavideo.co.uk] Planète sauvage</a></i> [<i>The Savage Planet</i> — aka <i>Fantastic Planet</i>] has undergone an even more significant update. Centrestage is a breathtaking new restored HD master created in 2009, along with a fascinating 27-minute documentary by Florence Dauman entitled <i>Laloux sauvage</i> containing lengthy interviews with the filmmaker and his collaborators, and a roster of five short films spanning Laloux’s entire career, two of which (<i>Les Dents du singe</i> [<i>The Monkey’s Teeth</i>] and <i>Les Temps morts</i> [<i>Dead Times</i>]) have never been available on any MoC edition before. Our booklet has been expanded, containing a newly-translated interview with Laloux and more artwork, as well as Craig Keller’s original essay from the DVD edition.

  This is the first of three all-Blu months ahead. Our forthcoming releases — Jia Zhangke’s <i>The World</i>, Kon Ichikawa’s first, 1956 version of the <i>The Burmese Harp</i>, Frank Tashlin’s <i>Will Success Spoil Rock Hunter?</i>, and Leo McCarey’s <i>Make Way for Tomorrow</i> — will all mark the first time ANY of these films will have been available for home viewing in the UK.

• June 03, 2010
• 23:03

  Feyder and Imamura

   » ‎ The Masters of Cinema Series: Eureka! | Recent Updates

  Just in time for summer, MoC are releasing two of our most primal, sun-drenched titles, both crucial missing links in our filmic heritage.

  First: Jacques Feyder’s <a href=a href=“ [eurekavideo.co.uk] Grand jeu</i></a> is a vivid example of what’s been termed the cinema of poetic realism. With its easy-going performances, relaxed charm, character-led plotting and richly imbued atmosphere, it’s a work of such startling modernity as to seem a spiritual cousin of ‘70s New Hollywood. Among other amazements of this great film, we now see that what Lubitsch was to Wilder, or Rex Ingram to Michael Powell, Jacques Feyder was to Marcel Carné. A sultry, aching masterwork that we are pleased to release in the UK for the first time on any home-viewing platform. This DVD package contains a booklet featuring a brand new essay by Ginette Vincendeau and newly-translated material by, and in testimonial to, Jacques Feyder.

  Then, on Blu-ray only, Shôhei Imamura’s <a href=“ [eurekavideo.co.uk] Desires of the Gods</i></a> [<i>Kamigami no fukaki yokubô</i>] is one of the thunderous epics of post-war cinema. A richly orchestrated examination of human foibles and “progress” in the midst of paradise, this glorious tragedy deserves mention in the same breath as Murnau’s <a href=“ [www.eurekavideo.co.uk] A Story of the South Seas</i></a>. With this BD release, its reputation as one of the most extraordinary examples of ‘Scope and colour cinematography in the history of the medium should be secure. Taken from a stunning HD master, to which we have applied extensive additional restoration, we are thrilled to present this masterwork with an exclusively filmed introduction from Tony Rayns, the remarkable original trailer featuring footage not seen in the finished film, a brand new subtitle translation, and a 44-page booklet containing an essay by Rayns to accompany his introduction (but to be read after the film), two statements by Imamura on filmmaking and his influences, and a previously unpublished transcription of an introduction and Q&A session featuring Imamura and Mark Cousins which followed the Edinburgh International Film Festival’s 1994 screening.

  This is only the beginning of an all-Blu summer; six more BD-only titles are planned before the clocks go back!

• March 23, 2010
• 0:11

  The end of a cycle

   » ‎ The Masters of Cinema Series: Eureka! | Recent Updates

  A cycle of Maurice Pialat releases comes to a close with the twin releases of landmark works by one of the true giants of the motion-picture artform.

  Pialat’s 1983 <a href=“ [www.eurekavideo.co.uk] A nos amours.</a> [To Our Romance. / Here’s to Love.] pits the filmmaker himself in a tender, ruthless performance against Sandrine Bonnaire at the moment of her tremendous, entirely natural-born debut into the world of cinema. This 2x DVD edition includes a 2003 video-interview with Bonnaire; the outstanding 55-minute film-analysis of A nos amours. by Xavier Giannoli (director of last year’s A l’origine), L’Œil humain; a 14-minute excerpt from a 1983 interview with Pialat, interspersed with rushes from scenes deleted from the final film; 31 minutes of video screen tests; and trailers for all seven of the Pialat features currently in The Masters of Cinema Series. An accompanying 48-page booklet includes a new essay by critic and filmmaker Dan Sallitt, a short image-essay by Craig Keller, and an English-language transcript of the sit-down conversation that took place between Pialat and Jean-Luc Godard one fine day in 1984.

  We’re also proud to be releasing a 2x DVD set dedicated to a pair of Pialat’s crucial early short works (1951's Isabelle aux Dombes, or Isabelle in La Dombes, and 1953's Congrès eucharistique diocésain., or Diocesan Eucharistic Congress.) and one of his most lauded features: the 1987 Palme d’Or-winning <a href=“ [eurekavideo.co.uk] Sous le soleil de Satan</a> [Under the Sun of Satan]. Both Pialat and Bonnaire return, this time playing opposite the extraordinary Gérard Depardieu to breathe cinematographic life into Georges Bernanos’ haunting novel of a country priest in the throes of spiritual crisis and the village girl whose compulsions formulate an earthly, and tangible, satanism. This uncanny, hypnotic picture is supplemented on-disc by a massive assembly of extra material: an 11-minute 2003 video interview with Gérard Depardieu; 13 minutes of footage from the 1987 Cannes Festival press-conference for the film’s premiere; a 7-minute interview with Pialat and Depardieu, shot directly after the film won the Palme d’Or; a 54-minute 1987 TV programme given over to discussion about the film by Pialat and Catholic writer André Frossard; 14 minutes of on-set footage; a 55-minute featurette containing excised scenes and alternative versions of sequences from the film, commented upon by editor Yann Dedet, apprentice editor and future director Cédric Kahn, and screenwriter and assistant Sylvie Pialat; and trailers for the seven Pialat features in The Masters of Cinema Series at present. The set also includes a 28-page booklet containing a new illustrated essay by writer Gabe Klinger, excerpts from a 1987 interview with Pialat, and remarks from Sandrine Bonnaire made shortly after the filmmaker’s 2003 death.

  If you still haven’t plunged into the profound and bracing depths of Maurice Pialat — a filmmaker whose art deserves unexaggerated mention in the same breath as “Vigo” or “Renoir” — now is the season to discover something new under the sun.

• March 01, 2010
• 4:57

  Murnau, Lang, and Sirk

   » ‎ The Masters of Cinema Series: Eureka! | Recent Updates

  Now available: sterling editions of classic works by three directors whose careers enjoyed enormous success in the German film industry and the Hollywood studio system alike.

  F. W. Murnau’s 1930 <a href=“ [www.eurekavideo.co.uk] City Girl</a>, the buoyant and lyrical follow-up to <a href=“ [www.eurekavideo.co.uk] 2/“>Sunrise_</a> that for too long dwelt in the earlier film’s expressionist shadow, appears from MoC in a breathtaking 1080p transfer of the definitive silent version’s 20th Century Fox restoration — and marks our first ever Blu-ray only release. The feature is accompanied by the 2008 score by Christopher Caliendo, and includes a new and exclusive optional audio commentary by film scholar David Kalat. A 28-page booklet rounds out the release, and contains a 2003 essay on the film by Adrian Danks, flanked by a selection of production stills.

  The immortal 1931 Fritz Lang masterpiece <a href=“ [www.eurekavideo.co.uk] M</a> at last sees the light of day on Blu-ray in its restored form. Peter Lorre gives one of the most brilliant and moving performances in cinema history as the child murderer who is hunted like vermin by the Berlin police — and the Berlin underworld. A new 2x DVD edition of the film is also available, with both editions hosting identical supplements: two separate audio commentaries (Anton Kaes and Eric Rentschler on one; Peter Bogdanovich, Martin Koerber, Torsten Kaiser, and excerpts from Bogdanovich’s 1965 audio interview with Fritz Lang on the other); the rarely seen 1932 English-language retooling of the original film; and Erwin Leiser’s 1968 interview documentary Zum Beispiel Fritz Lang [For Example: Fritz Lang]. A heavily illustrated 48-page booklet containing essays by Lang, Anton Kaes, and Robert Fischer is also included.

  Finally, we bring you a DVD-only edition of one of Douglas Sirk’s greatest Hollywood achievements: the heart-wrenching <a href=“ [www.eurekavideo.co.uk] There’s Always Tomorrow</a> from 1956. Norma Vale (Barbara Stanwyck) and Clifford Groves (Fred MacMurray) are two people who thought their successful careers had put an end to the love they shared long ago. But after ‘magically’ crossing paths once again, they discover that their love might have been rekindled… despite the presence of a wife (Joan Bennett) and three children. A rough only-extant version of the original American theatrical trailer appears on the disc, along with Pascal Thomas’s and Dominique Rabourdin’s marvelous 61-minute 2008 documentary Quelques jours avec Sirk [A Few Days with Sirk], largely constructed out of early-‘80s archival film footage of Sirk in conversation and in lecture. A 40-page booklet presents an essay by Andrew Klevan and excerpts from a 1977 interview with Sirk.

  Herzlichen Kinowunsch!