Archive 556

May 2025

"Spring Sale" at Powerhouse Films - lots of titles, such as Blonde Venus, Bluebeard's 8th Wife, John Ford at Columbia box set, Ministry of Fear, etc.

New Blu Ray Disk coming

Laurel and Hardy : The Silent Years 1928 - Blu Ray coming in April – Eurekavideo

2000 copies - 1080p HD presentations on Blu-ray from 2K restorations of Leave ‘em Laughing, The Finishing Touch, From Soup to Nuts, You’re Darn Tootin’, Their Purple Moment, Should Married Men Go Home?, Early to Bed, Two Tars, Habeas Corpus and We Faw Down - Region Coding : A/B/C

Huge sale on disks at Kino – Kinolorber

New Criterion titles coming on disc:

Midnight (1939) - one of the great comedies of the 1930's with Don Ameche and Claudette Colbert on the loose in Paris. Comes out June 17, 2025 - Criterion page link - they say "...a topsy-turvy Cinderella story with a cynical bite" but I think that's stretching it a little, our review of Midnight here.

The Richard Lester directed Three Musketeers and Four Musketeers (1973/74) are coming on 4K UHD disks on May 27, 20245. Criterion page on the disc set here.

Wages of Fear (1953) - The greatest "truck driving film" in cinema gets a 4K UHD release. Criterion page link - they say "one of the greatest thrillers ever committed to celluloid" and they might be right. (Criterion is also bringing out a disk of the William Friedkin remake of the movie titled Sorcerer from 1977 in June, 2025.)

Our 2022 review of Wages of Fear :

This French film is sometimes called one of the greatest movies ever made, and though it has a rather un-Hollywood ending (though apropos), it does contain a huge dose of classic Hollywood tension as two pairs of desperate men attempt to cross rough terrain driving two trucks, each laden with nitroglycerin. As bizarre as that sounds (and it actually fits within the story rather perfectly and logically), there are a number of side-stories that correspond to each man (Yves Montand, Charles Vanel, Peter van Eyck, Folco Lulli) and the sheer fear of the trek is bracketed by what we know about the characters (there's a generous prelude to the trip), as we watch them try to tough out the task through sheer panic-driven bravery, but that becomes impossible to maintain for one man who progressively disintegrates beneath the pressure. Wages of Fear is simultaneously a very direct and straight froward "thriller," and also a character study at the same time, with an exotic location starting at a poverty-stricken village in Central America and then on through the imposing landscape of the jungle towards the goal, a mammoth oil derrick fire where the explosives are needed to snuff the fire out."

The Long Haul - 1957

"I hear you're an honest man. It's a pleasure to meet an honest man. What's your price?" Crooked trucking company boss Joe Easy (Patrick Allan) to Yankee Harry Miller (Victor Mature)

Victor Mature and Diana Dors in a heated up and gritty tale of illegal cross-country trucking in the UK - The Long Haul

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