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It is now available for pre-order.

Eureka has a thing for medieval Janet Leigh pics, eh

domino harvey wrote:Eureka has a thing for medieval Janet Leigh pics, eh

Janet Leigh + Corset = What's not to like

Great to hear Ralph Bakshi's Wizards is coming on Blu-ray. Will it have the same special features as the Fox DVD?

Are the subs optional on Last Days of Mussolini?

TMDaines wrote:Are the subs optional on Last Days of Mussolini?

They sure are.

Some new announcements up on HMV:

Casper Andreas' Between Love & Goodbye
Casper Andreas & Fred Caruso's Big Gay Musical
Joseph Pevney's Tammy & The Bachelor
Ralph Bakshi's Wizards: Dvd / Blu-Ray

Wizards is sounding very appealing from a synopsis that states "...1970s blend of swords, sorcery, science fiction, kung-fu, fascism, and nuclear holocaust" and "In a postapocalyptic future that appears as a blend of World War II Europe and J.R.R. Tolkien's Middle-earth".

bigP wrote:Some new announcements up on HMV:

Casper Andreas' Between Love & Goodbye
Casper Andreas & Fred Caruso's Big Gay Musical
Joseph Pevney's Tammy & The Bachelor
Ralph Bakshi's Wizards: Dvd / Blu-Ray

Wizards is sounding very appealing from a synopsis that states "...1970s blend of swords, sorcery, science fiction, kung-fu, fascism, and nuclear holocaust" and "In a postapocalyptic future that appears as a blend of World War II Europe and J.R.R. Tolkien's Middle-earth".

Between Love and Goodbye and Big Gay Musical aren't Eureka titles, we are just handling sales and distribution on them in the UK for another label.

Wizards is the film that can be seen as Bakshi's preparation for doing the Lord of the Rings animated film, utilising the same combination of cell animation and rotoscoping of live action. It actually works better than the Lord of the Rings film for not being burdened by weight of expectation and being able to be much more its own thing - a tribute to rather than an adaptation of Tolkien.

I'm not entirely critical of the Lord of the Rings film - I even have the hardback A5 full colour illustrated film book of it that my dad bought at the time of the film's release, and for a long time while growing up that was the only way I knew the Tolkien film, the still images being beautiful and creepy at the same time (the LP images on Jeff Wayne's War of the Worlds album had the same effect on me!) and kind of burning their way into my imagination of what the actual film would be like. However when I finally got to see the result, it sadly did not work as well as in the still images, and the animation was rather stilted (though the Ringwraiths at the inn and then chasing Frodo to the ferry were standouts - not even the Jackson film managed to surpass that). Plus of course the Bakshi Lord of the Rings has the problem of both condensing the story and finishing half way through the The Two Towers, to be continued in a second film that was never made (it is interesting to note that Peter Jackson's version was originally going to do the same counterintuitive, except to the money men, thing and condense the three books down into two films until New Line said they would be amenable to tackling the work as three separate films)

To counteract Colin, I'll say be very cautious about any Bakshi, but especially Wizards. Not only is the animation constantly off-model, but the tone is more schizophrenic than I have see in any other. One instant it's looney tunes, but kept to a gory realism, The next everything is being treated with a seriousness most dramas even attempt to hold. I really can't think of a redeeming quality to the movie at all that isn't immediately killed off by Bakshi's incompetency as a story-teller.

That's the way I feel about Bakshi's Lord of the Rings; it's like a movie made by someone who's never seen a movie. The acting and blocking seem made up on the spot (then immortalized in animation cels for all time). The pacing isn't weird or experimental, it's just bad: he jumps from scene to scene without caring if the audience can keep up, but instead of giving the film a fast clip, he just alternates between long dialogue scenes and weird expressionist/non-narrative fight scenes. Would like to see Wizards, but if it's half as bad as LotR, Ima Throwup.

Colin, I spent some time on YouTube; couldn't find a moment where any hobbit ran to the ferry in Bakshi's LotR. There is a scene, very similar to Jackson's LotR, where the Wraiths find the Hobbits in the Inn, but there's no ensuing chase. In fact, the cut directly to the swamp is quoted almost verbatim in Jackson (a short montage of travel separates the two locales, but that's it). It's almost as if the Bakshi was not only his inspiration, but also his template.

Sorry Svevan I probably gave the wrong impression - I really just meant the whole inn sequence and the one at the ferry, which Jackson's film does follow quite closely.

Anyway to wash the bad taste out of your mouth after the Bakshi, try watching Peter Greenaway's lo-fi take on a Tokien-esque world in Water Wrackets!

Sorry to keep bothering you about this Colin, but I spent a half hour before and another half hour just now trying to find ANY scene in this film that's on a ferry. Unless it somehow happens before Hobbiton or after Rivendell, I don't think it's in there. But lemme know if I'm missing it, and which YouTube video it's in.

knives wrote:To counteract Colin, I'll say be very cautious about any Bakshi, but especially Wizards. Not only is the animation constantly off-model, but the tone is more schizophrenic than I have see in any other. One instant it's looney tunes, but kept to a gory realism, The next everything is being treated with a seriousness most dramas even attempt to hold. I really can't think of a redeeming quality to the movie at all that isn't immediately killed off by Bakshi's incompetency as a story-teller.

I have to second that, particularly the last bit. Bakshi really doesn't understans anything deeper than cliches, even when he's handed the story (as with Tolkein) and his sense of pacing & storytelling are nonexistent. I've never quite understood the love for this guy & had begun to think it was something wrong with me.* I remember going to see AMERICAN POP in the theater with friends. I though it was utter crap, but they all loved it.

*And maybe it is, but at least I see some kindred spirits here.

Svevan, I'll have to check my copy of the film when I have a spare moment. I could have sworn that there was such a sequence, but then it could just be my overactive imagination playing tricks on me.

new release for July:



Also on DVD

That's a really fun film and not like your usual Hammer film. Obviously inspired by Psycho, but doesn't necessarily follow its blueprint.

Matt wrote:That's a really fun film and not like your usual Hammer film. Obviously inspired by Psycho, but doesn't necessarily follow its blueprint.

Agreed - this was the (IIRC) the second of Hammer's 'mini-Hitchcocks' following the success of Taste of Fear and is one of the most entertaining of a generally fun subgenre. Generally, after Taste of Fear, the better ones tend to be directed by Freddie Francis.

Well, I say mini-Hitchcocks - it has been argued (including by me), that they tend to be

Spoiler

more mini-Clouzots. They tend to be variants on Les Diaboliques more than Psycho (although this one has clear echoes of both).

What I'd really like to see, as I've only seen a poor quality pan & Scan vhs off-air recording, is Francis's Psychopath - Amicus's entry into the subgenre, with a script by Robert Bloch. Even in the poor quality version I've seen, this is a remarkable film - one of Francis's (and Amicus's) best. A widescreen version would be lovely - Francis liked the scope frame, and certainly its use here has been praised by those lucky enough to see a scope print.

Is that the first ever Hammer Blu Ray?

Unusual choice, if so, but one I'll certainly get. As a teen, I loved their luridly coloured horrors, but these days I find their black and white excursions into sci-fi, thriller and melodrama more interesting.

I'm pretty sure it's the first. If it isn't - why wasn't I told?

It's a few years since I did a big blow out going through as many Hammer films as I could find - mainly for the thesis. The colour gothics are, historically, the most important - but I'd agree that it's the sf films in particular that stand as the most consistently interesting of their output (much as I love Fisher, Val Guest tops my list of Brit directors of whom more needs to be done - and his Nigel Kneale adaptations, along with his war films, are major works).

Now, if Eureka could just find an Amicus film or two to put out on Blu...

Dr Amicus wrote:...Val Guest tops my list of Brit directors of whom more needs to be done...

Definitely. I guess his problem was that he was both prolific and a jack of all trades turning his hands to all sorts of films, most of them good fun but unworthy of much critical examination. But he made some gems that have been seriously overlooked.

I'm a huge fan of his black and white Scope films of the late-50s and early-60s that took a staple B-pic genre - hospital drama (80,000 Suspects), police thriller (Hell is a City), sci-fi (The Day the Earth Caught Fire), crime (Jigsaw) - and shot them in a realistic style in specific and named cities: Bath, Manchester, London and Brighton respectively. This is in contrast to the original novels of Suspects and Hell, which were set in ficticious towns.

I saw a 35mm print of 80,000 Suspects a couple of years ago at Brighton's Duke of Yorks cinema (100 years old this year) and it was stunning. It was a wet weekday afternoon around November and the place was surprisingly full considering the time. I was pleased to see that it wasn't just me who appreciated this film.

I really wish the BFI (possibly Flipside) or Masters of Cinema/Eureka would give these films the BD treatment.

I watched Wizards last night. It's a wonderful film, kind of like an underground comic take on sword and sorcery, with plenty of humour and social comment. The transition to BD was well done: good audio-visual and a few nice extras. It could easily be a Masters of Cinema title, except that it lacks both a booklet and spine number. Highly recommended and a bargain at £11.99 from MovieMail.

RossyG wrote:Wizards ... a bargain at £11.99 from MovieMail.

Or from Eureka themselves.

DVD Beaver on The War Lord. Bravo to the MoC folks for changing the Eureka menu designs. It's a definite improvement.

If Eureka titles are just becoming MoCs without the MoC label and the booklet then that is two thumbs up from me. I do like MoC's clean presentation.