Kaneto Shindo Onibaba Eureka Entertainment Masters of Cinema 470

Kaneto Shindō’s Onibaba heads to Eureka’s Masters of Cinema

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Kaneto Shindō’s Onibaba will be released as part of Eureka Entertainment’s Masters of Cinema series on Blu-ray on 25 February 2013.

One of the most popular Japanese horror films of all-time, Onibaba was directed by Kaneto Shindō, the prolific director of 48 films (The Naked Island, Kuroneko) who passed away in 2012 at the age of 100, and who was still working up until his death.

The high-definition release includes:

  • Gorgeous new 1080p HD transfer
Full-length director’s audio commentary by director Kaneto Shindō and the stars of the film, Kei Satō, and Jitsuko Yoshimura
  • Video introduction by Alex Cox
  • 8mm footage (40-minutes) shot on location by lead actor Kei Satō
  • Optional English subtitles
  • Original theatrical trailer
  • Production stills and promotional art gallery
  • Thirty-six-page booklet with a new essay by Doug Cummings, an English translation of the original short Buddhist fable that inspired the film and a statement from writer/director Kaneto Shindō about why he made Onibaba.

Here’s the official synopsis:

Kaneto Shindō, one of Japan’s most prolific directors, received his biggest international success with the release of Onibaba [The Demoness] in 1964. Its depiction of violence and graphic sexuality was unprecedented at the time of release. Shindō managed — through his own production company Kindai Eiga Kyōkai — to bypass the strict, self-regulated Japanese film industry and pave the way for such films as Yasuzo Masumura’s Mojuu (1969) and Nagisa Oshima’s In the Realm of the Senses (1976).

Onibaba [or Onibabaa, in its alternate spelling] is set during a brutal period in history, a Japan ravaged by civil war between rivaling shogunates. Weary from combat, samurai are drawn towards the seven-foot high susuki grass fields to hide and rest themselves, whereupon they are ambushed and murdered by a ruthless mother (Nobuko Otowa) and daughter-in-law (Jitsuko Yoshimura) team. The women throw the samurai bodies into a pit, and barter their armour and weapons for food. When Hachi (Kei Satō), a neighbour returning from the wars, brings bad news, he threatens the women’s partnership.

Erotically charged and steeped in the symbolism and superstition of its Buddhist and Shintō roots, Kaneto Shindō’s Onibaba is in part a modern parable on consumerism, a study of the destructiveness of sexual desire and — filmed within a claustrophobic sea of grass — one of the most striking and unique films of Japan’s last half-century, winning Kiyomi Kuroda the Blue Ribbon Award for Cinematography in 1965. The memorably frenetic drumming soundtrack was scored by long-time Shindō collaborator Hikaru Hayashi. The Masters of Cinema Series is proud to present Onibaba for the first time on Blu-ray in the UK.


Bakumatsu Taiyo-den by Yuzo Kawashima

Claude Chabrol joins Eureka Entertainment’s Masters of Cinema series

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Eureka Entertainment has used Twitter to announce the March and April 2013 releases in its Masters of Cinema series.

The company’s official micro-blogging account and the Masters of Cinema twitter feed both relayed the details.

From French New Wave and Italian art cinema classics, to lesser known gems from France and Japan, the six-release slate includes big name directors Claude Chabrol, Michelangelo Antonioni, Henri-Georges Clouzot, Yūzō Kawashima, and Sadao Yamanaka.

“In March, we welcome legendary French director Claude Chabrol into the series for the very first time, with a back-to-back French New Wave double-bill, Le Beau Serge [Handsome Serge] and Les Cousins [The Cousins],” said Andrew Utterson, producer of the Masters of Cinema Series. “Alongside fellow French filmmaker Henri-Georges Clouzot’s exquisite comedy-thriller The Murderer Lives at 21 [L’Assassin habite au 21].”

More cinematic treats follow in April with a stunning new presentation of Michelangelo Antonioni’s majestic slice of Italian art cinema La notte [The Night] as well as rare treasures in the form of a blazing new restoration of Yūzō Kawashima’s utterly thrilling but long-unavailable-in-the-west Bakumatsu taiyō-den [A Sun-Tribe Myth from the Bakumatsu Era] and the collected release of fellow Japanese filmmaker Sadao Yamanaka’s entire surviving works.”

Full details of each of the titles announced can be found on the Eureka / Masters of Cinema website.

 


FLOATING WEEDS Masters Of Cinema Yasujiro Ozu

Yasujiro Ozu’s Floating Weeds on DVD & Blu-ray December 2012

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Towards the end of his career, Japanese master Yasujirō Ozu (Tokyo Story, Late Spring, Early Summer, An Autumn Afternoon, Good Morning) returned to a story he had made some 25 years earlier as a silent movie: Ukigusa monogatari.

He gave the film – which translates as A Story Of Floating Weed – a magnificent colour reworking, photographed by legendary cinematographer Kazuo Miyagawa (Rashomon, Ugetsu monogatari).

The plot is simple enough. When a travelling theatre troupe brings their show to a seaside port, Komajurō (Ganjirō Nakamura), an ageing actor, is reunited with his former lover, sake bar owner Oyoshi (Haruko Sugimura), and his illegitimate son Kiyoshi (Hiroshi Kawaguchi), to the distress of his current mistress Sumiko (Machiko Kyō).

From this basic scenario, Ozu builds, one exquisite image at a time, a saga of profound humanity and rich understanding. Encompassing a novelistic range of emotions and tones with the utmost delicacy, Floating Weeds stands tall even amidst a body of work as extraordinary as Ozu’s.

Don’t believe us? Well soon it’ll be making its worldwide Blu-ray debut as part of Eureka Entertainment’s Masters of Cinema series, so you can check out a beautiful new high-definition restoration and see for yourself.

Eureka is releasing both a regular DVD edition and a dual format (Blu-ray and DVD) edition on 3 December 2012.

Special features include:

• Newly translated optional English subtitles

• Original Japanese theatrical trailer

• Illustrated booklet featuring the words of Ozu, rare archival imagery and more.

There could be some additional extras appearing on the disc too, as Eureka says further details will be announced nearer the release date.

 


GATE OF HELL Teinosuke Kinugasa 1953 Eureka Masters of Cinema 470

Teinosuke Kinugasa’s Gate Of Hell gets December dual-format release

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Gate Of Hell dual-format DVD and Blu-ray edition released 3 December 2012 in the UK… 

One of the key works of the early 1950s wave of Japanese films to first reach foreign markets, director Teinosuke Kinugasa’s sumptuous period drama astonished audiences with its dramatic force and spectacular colour cinematography.

Three decades after the director’s iconic A Page of Madness (aka Kurutta ippeji, 1926), Kinugasa’s striking tale of feudal intrigue, political machinations, and erotic obsession won the Grand Prix at Cannes, two Academy Awards for Best Foreign Language Film and Costume Design, and has since been named by Martin Scorsese as one of the 10 greatest colour achievements in world cinema.

Now UK audiences can enjoy that experience in the home for the first time, as Eureka Entertainment releases Gate Of Hell (Jigokumon, 1953) in a dual-format DVD and Blu-ray edition as part of its Masters of Cinema series.

Special features include:

• Beautifully restored high-definition master presented in the film’s original aspect ratio, in 1080p on the Blu-ray

• Newly translated optional English subtitles

• Illustrated booklet featuring the words of Kinugasa, rare archival imagery, and more

• Further details to be announced nearer the release date!

SYNOPSIS:

During feudal unrest in the 12th century, samurai warrior Moritō (Kazuo Hasegawa) manages to thwart a palace rebellion and save the life of the empress, using loyal subject Lady Kesa (Machiko Kyō) as a decoy. When Moritō is offered anything he should desire as reward, he requests Kesa’s hand in marriage. Informed that she is already married to a fellow samurai (Isao Yamagata), he refuses to withdraw his request, setting in motion a tragic chain of events.


Fritz Lang Das Testament Des Dr Mabuse hits Blu-ray for first time ever 470

Fritz Lang’s Das Testament Des Dr Mabuse hits Blu-ray for first time ever

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Fritz Lang’s Das Testament Des Dr Mabuse (The Testament Of Dr Mabuse) will be available to buy on Blu-ray for the first time anywhere in the world when it is released in the UK on 24 September 2012. 

The film is being sold in a SteelBook case as part of Eureka Entertainment’s Masters of Cinema series. It is also available in a dual-format edition that includes both DVD & Blu-ray copies.

A 1080p HD transfer of the film is presented in its original aspect ratio on the Blu-ray and there are optional English subtitles.

The package also includes a feature-length audio commentary by film scholar and Fritz Lang expert David Kalat and a lavish booklet featuring rare archival imagery.

The SteelBook edition of The Testament Of Dr Mabuse costs £17.99 on Amazon UK, while the dual-format edition sells for £13.99.

Lang (Metropolis, M, The Big Heat) saw his film banned in Germany by Nazi Josef Goebbels on the grounds that it might incite terrorism against the state.

In the astonishing second instalment in the German master’s legendary Mabuse series, it’s been eleven years since the downfall of arch-criminal and master-of-disguise Dr Mabuse (Rudolf Klein-Rogge), who is now sequestered in an asylum under the watchful eye of one Professor Baum (Oskar Beregi).

Mabuse exists in a state of catatonic graphomania, his only action the irrepressible scribbling of blueprints that would realise a seemingly theoretical ‘Empire of Crime’. But when a series of violent events courses through the city, police and populace alike start to wonder who is behind it and the answer borders on the realm of the impossible.


PIGSTY dvd eureka masters of cinema Pier Paolo Pasolini

Pier Paolo Pasolini: Porcile and Hawks And Sparrows hit DVD in July

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Two movies from Italian director Pier Paolo Pasolini are making their way onto DVD in July as part of Eureka Entertainment’s Masters OF Cinema Series.

Pasolini’s Pigsty (Porcile) and Hawks And Sparrows (Uccellacci E Uccellini) are to be released in the UK on DVD on 23 July 2012.

Eureka described the 1960s movies as “typically provocative Pasolini films”.

If you were worried that wasn’t an accurate description, bear in mind that Pigsty is a portrayal of bestiality, degradation and bourgeois life circa 1969.

It comprises parallel stories: (1) Franco Citti and Pierre Clémenti playing cannibalistic savages who rampage a world outside of any distinct time or place, and who push against the boundaries of human morality; (2) Godard-regulars Jean-Pierre Léaud and Anne Wiazemsky as a romantically engaged couple in a contemporary Germany painted as a morass of industrialisation, fascist impulse, and bestial instincts.

“Not only an exquisitely revolting satire, it is also Pasolini’s most fascinating piece of cinema,” said Time Out Magazine

The new edition of Pigsty has been taken from a HD master and features include:

* Original Italian theatrical trailer

* Newly translated optional English subtitles

* Illustrated booklet featuring rare archival imagery and the words of Pasolini.

* Certificate: 15

* Run Time: 98 minutes

* Format:  1.85 :1 OAR/ B&W

Meanwhile, Hawks And Sparrows (1966) is a political comedy starring popular Italian actor Totò and a Marxist talking crow!

Widely acclaimed, it recveived a nomination for the Palme d’or top prize at the 1966 Cannes Film Festival

One of the handful of films that found Pier Paolo Pasolini sustaining a merrier mode of cultural assault, Hawks and Sparrows features Italy’s popular comic actor Totò (known to cinephiles as the star of Roberto Rossellini’s Dov’è la liberta…?) and Pasolini regular Ninetto Davoli in a picaresque fable that lampoons politics, religion, and the legacy of neorealism.

Featuring a score by the legendary Ennio Morricone (we shouldn’t really have to list The Good, The Bad And The Ugly next to his name but we will), Pasolini’s anarchic comedy remains a time-capsule of the giddy tensions torqued by the dawn of the late Sixties.

This DVD also features a new high-definition transfer in the film’s original aspect ratio. Other

*  Original Italian theatrical trailer

* Newly translated optional English subtitles

* Run Time: 89 minutes

* Format:  1.85 :1 OAR/ B&W

The latest Pasoli DVDs from Eureka follow earlier releases of The Gospel according to Matthew & Accattone.

Both Pigsty and Hawks And Sparrows have a recommended retail price of £16.34.


lost weekend billy wilder blu-ray steelbook packshot

Billy Wilder’s Lost Weekend found on Blu-ray

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Billy Wilder’s The Lost Weekend (1945) is being released on Blu-ray in the UK on 25 June 2012.

Directed and co-written by two-time Academy Award winner Wilder (Double Indemnity, Sunset Boulevard, Some Like It Hot), The Lost Weekend is being released as part of Eureka’s Masters of Cinema Series.

Available in standard and steelBook editions, it’s the first time the film has been available anywhere in the world on Blu-ray.

Ray Milland stars as Don Birnam, a New York author struggling with years of alcoholism and writer’s block. Trying to keep him on the path to rehabilitation are his straight-laced brother Wick (Philip Terry) and devoted long-time girlfriend Helen (Jane Wyman).

When Don absconds from a country excursion, he embarks on a four-day binge, spiralling towards rock bottom.

This gut-wrenching adaptation of Charles Jackson’s The Lost Weekend horrified its studio, was rejected by test audiences and was lobbied by temperance groups, yet went on to huge success and became the awards sensation of its year.

Winner of the Grand Prix at the first ever Cannes Film Festival, as well as Oscars for Best Picture, Director, Actor, and Screenplay, this brutal noir provided one of cinema’s first in-depth studies of addiction.

Not only is it crackling with rapier dialogue, vivid performances and Wilder’s superlative direction, but the Blu-ray also comes with a host of features.

Naturally, it’s been given a polish to create a new high-definition master, officially licensed from Universal Pictures. It also comes with an exclusive new video introduction by cult director Alex Cox

Other features include:

• Optional English subtitles for the deaf and hearing impaired

• The three-part 1992 BBC Arena programme Billy, How Did You Do It? directed by Gisela Grischow and Volker Schlöndorff, featuring Schlöndorff in conversation with Billy Wilder.

• The 1946 Screen Guild Theater radio adaptation of The Lost Weekend – starring Ray Milland, Jane Wyman, and Frankie Faylen.

• The original theatrical trailer

• A 36-page booklet featuring rare archival imagery.

The Lost Weekend is released on Blu-ray in the UK on 25 June 2012.