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Was there any tracking or did it just arrive?

It came without warning in an order I had recently placed (Morvern Callar, Koko-di koko-da, etc.)

Okay so another few weeks for me then (hah). Thanks.

New partner label preorders are up:

Two Lottery Tickets / A Month in Thailand (Dekanalog)
Tragedy Girls (Gunpowder and Sky)
Red Spirit Lake / We Await (Saturn's Core)
Quiet City / Dance Party USA (Circle Collective)
I Do Not Care If We Go Down In History As Barbarians (Big World Pictures)
Hypnosis (Altered Innocence)
Ham on Rye (Factory 25)
Delta Space Mission (Deaf Crocodile)
Cain and Abel (Kani)
Blood On Her Name (Yellow Veil)
Bilitis (Fun City Editions)
The American Scream (Cukture Shock)

Totally shocked to see that those Aaron Katz films are coming back in print. They're certainly not for everyone, but I personally feel they're the best of the short lived mumblecore movement along with Andrew Bujalski's first few features.

Vinegar's releases:
Drop Dead Fred
Sister Sister
Beware Children at Play
Wolfpack

Sister Sister is the best film VS has ever released. Did they license it by mistake?

The Elegant Dandy Fop wrote: Tue Feb 01, 2022 5:17 pm Totally shocked to see that those Aaron Katz films are coming back in print. They're certainly not for everyone, but I personally feel they're the best of the short lived mumblecore movement along with Andrew Bujalski's first few features.

I'm glad to hear that, because I blindly purchased it, along with the Dead Crocodile, Big World Pictures, and Kani titles.

I'm down for the Jude. Has anyone seen that Lino Brocka film?

Ham on Rye and Sister, Sister are quick pre-orders (the latter partly because of the unexpected praise above). "...Barbarians," Cain and Abel, Hypnosis, and Two Lottery Tickets/A Month in Thailand all sound interesting too. Blood On Her Name is available on Amazon Prime, so I think I'll stream that instead.

Interestingly, Ham on Rye has a director's cut. Here's hoping Taormina doesn't Donnie Darko the film's wonderfully unsettling ambiguity...

Here’s my write up from the Horror List

domino harvey wrote: Sun Aug 26, 2012 1:31 am Sister Sister (Bill Condon 1987) Surprisingly effective Gothic melodrama concerning Jennifer Jason Leigh's sexual immaturity as filtered through varying stages of concealed victimhood. Leigh is as ever a national treasure and the best thing here, but the film surrounds her with an effective murder mystery that unravels with a winningly hammy eagerness in the final act. Condon links sex with some form of transgression throughout, creating a compelling and novel track of suppressed Southern sexuality wherein the orgasmic release of life ultimately can only be ushered in by the dead!

Also I’m dead at their partner label releasing a David Hamilton movie in 2022. There truly is a label that doesn’t give a fuck!

The Elegant Dandy Fop wrote: Tue Feb 01, 2022 5:17 pm Totally shocked to see that those Aaron Katz films are coming back in print. They're certainly not for everyone, but I personally feel they're the best of the short lived mumblecore movement along with Andrew Bujalski's first few features.

Wonderful! I think Dance Party, USA and Quiet City are the best of the mumblecore films, up there with the work by Andrew Bujalski (Although that probably has to be balanced against my never particularly getting on the Duplass Brothers or Joe Swanberg train. Not really a fan of The Puffy Chair or LOL). They both have that kind of meandering early Richard Linklater quality about them. Cold Weather is also well worth tracking down too.

I Do Not Care If We Go Down in History as Barbarians's cover art is excellent, though unfortunately frugal with supplements (the man has so many shorts!) Still a great film and an easy purchase

colinr0380 wrote: Tue Feb 01, 2022 6:19 pm

The Elegant Dandy Fop wrote: Tue Feb 01, 2022 5:17 pm Totally shocked to see that those Aaron Katz films are coming back in print. They're certainly not for everyone, but I personally feel they're the best of the short lived mumblecore movement along with Andrew Bujalski's first few features.

Wonderful! I think Dance Party, USA and Quiet City are the best of the mumblecore films, up there with the work by Andrew Bujalski (Although that probably has to be balanced against my never particularly getting on the Duplass Brothers or Joe Swanberg train. Not really a fan of The Puffy Chair or LOL). They both have that kind of meandering early Richard Linklater quality about them. Cold Weather is also well worth tracking down too.

I liked some of the Duplass Brothers films like The Do-Deca-Pentathalon, but as soon as they began dipping their toes into mainstream cinema with Cyrus and Jeff Who Lives at Home, they suddenly no longer seemed like films made from scratch about folks from the off-skirts of suburbia, but just middle-brow, middle-class entertainment for post-collegiate gen-Xers with anxiety about their comfortable economic status. It makes sense that they found their home on television. The only great thing they've done in a decade was produce Sean Baker's Tangerine.

Joe Swanberg is a director I've tried to understand and get, but has never clicked with me. I find him to be the most navel-gazing of all those indie directors of that era, in no help to the opening of Kissing on the Mouth where he literally just plays with his dick on camera for a couple of minutes. I respect the fact that he kept making films with so little and was a workaholic for a few years, but his films have never sparked with me. At least you were able to pinpoint the sexual transgression in his early as maybe a point of interest, but he seems to have become just a middling TV director. He also seems like a very nice person aside from all that.

It's too bad Katz hasn't ever been able to make big moves as a director. I never saw Gemini as I heard mixed reviews from friends, but Cold Weather remains one of the favorite independent films of the 2000s. I remember him mentioning that he wanted to pivot to genre cinema, even going as far as writing a sort of murder-mystery that takes place on a boat in the twenties, but I doubt it will ever come to fruition.

Now that Factory 25 is a partner label, I'd love to see proper HD releases of Frownland, The Color Wheel, and a non-BD-R release of Funny Ha-Ha.

Delta Space Mission looks wild, and I'm interested also in Sister Sister, and possibly the Brocka.

The Elegant Dandy Fop wrote: Tue Feb 01, 2022 6:39 pmIt's too bad Katz hasn't ever been able to make big moves as a director. I never saw Gemini as I heard mixed reviews from friends, but Cold Weather remains one of the favorite independent films of the 2000s. I remember him mentioning that he wanted to pivot to genre cinema, even going as far as writing a sort of murder-mystery that takes place on a boat in the twenties, but I doubt it will ever come to fruition.

Quiet City is a lovely film and one of the relatively few "mumblecore" which use the genre's limited technology to its aesthetic benefit. I've been curious about Gemini, primarily because the plot synopsis seems so similar to Personal Shopper; I just can't imagine any film with similar content being as good as the Assayas.

It’s nothing like it, Gemini is a laid back modern noir riff

An update in their latest email about Thriller:

Just a quick update on the status of our filmmaker authorized and special features loaded 4K UHD/Blu-ray edition of THRILLER.

Work is well underway on our exclusive new restoration of THRILLER, in preparation for its world premier UHD/BD release this May! The completely uncut and uncensored 16mm AB Roll Camera Negative (which has never before been accessed) is currently being scanned in 4K and will be graded under the supervision of director Bo Arne Vibenius, who will also be participating in the bountiful special features planned for the disc.

As there has lately been some confusion over the status of the film, we'd also like to confirm that ours is the only current and planned release which has been licensed from and authorized by its original copyright holder, BAV Film AB, via its successor, Channel 1 Home Video AB.

The “V-Day weekend sale” is live through the 14th, VG and partner label x-rated releases are 50% off

I’m hesitant to participate in this one, but welcome recommendations (ideally with explanations selling the films!) if anyone feels strongly about any titles

therewillbeblus wrote: Sat Feb 12, 2022 6:07 pm The “V-Day weekend sale” is live through the 14th, VG and partner label x-rated releases are 50% off

I’m hesitant to participate in this one, but welcome recommendations (ideally with explanations selling the films!) if anyone feels strongly about any titles

SexWorld (in UHD!) is a fun, silly take on Crichton's WestWorld in which a group of mostly strangers take a bus to a remote park where their fantasies and fetishes are brought to life. The production design and cinematography are surprisingly adept, and the concept has even more potential than Spinelli gets out of it, but it's still a pretty impressive piece of film history. And it's incredible how pristine the materials are. $21.99 is a steal for the amount of care that went into this one.

Just announced. This is an exciting second release from Canadian International Pictures.

The Other French New Wave Vol. 1 (Featuring three features: Le chat dans le sac, The Merry World of Leopold Z, and YUL 871, plus shorts by Arthur Lipsett and Norman McLaren)

Well, that's my most anticipated release for the next few months.

And I love the "Vol. 1" part.

Volume 2 will probably be my most anticipated release for the next several months after that.

I wonder if any more of Groulx's films will be released. His documentary shorts seem to be of no small interest, and I would have thought they'd be included in a release of his most famous film.