Imprint

[Ribs]

Credit where it's due; that Noir collection is a heck of a lot more "Essential" than either of the previous two.

[swo17]

Not to mention they're all Blu-ray debuts (not counting the PD release for Martha Ivers)

[L.A.]

Secret of the Incas sure is a surprise. Heard Yma Sumac’s songs some time ago and while doing some research about her I saw this title she starred in. An influence for Indiana Jones films obviously, will definitely get the Blu.

Nate and Hayes (1983), maybe Imprint might rescue this little classic?

[ryannichols7]

[selfish post] how dare they release a noir set this good as volume 3, sure to drive OCDness up the wall if I never pick up 1 and 2 [/selfish post]

lots of cool bluray debuts here

[vsski]

What a great month with a lot of firsts on BD and also enticing supplements - the only hesitation for me if these are dated masters like many of the other Imprint titles.

[domino harvey]

Not to mention they're all Blu-ray debuts (not counting the PD release for Martha Ivers)

And since they’re using the Paramount source, which is already the best version available, it’s gonna destroy that PD release

[therewillbeblus]

Strong slate overall, so I can't complain, though I was hoping to see The Yards announced to see its specs. I haven't heard of a bunch of these, but they look interesting

[domino harvey]

My write up of Golden Boy

Golden Boy (Rouben Mamoulian 1939) William Holden’s debut as a violinist who gosh darnit just wants to get rich via boxing is about as green as they come, and he was only saved from being fired thanks to co-star Barbara Stanwyck’s intervention. Too bad no one intervened for her before she got cast in this clunker— I’m unfamiliar with the Odets play, and I think I always will be. Also, Lee J Cobb is a great actor, but unless you’re J Carrol Naish, you can’t get away with playing an ethnic stereotype this broadly.

[swo17]

Strong slate overall, so I can't complain, though I was hoping to see The Yards announced to see its specs. I haven't heard of a bunch of these, but they look interesting

For whatever reason they seem to announce like all '50s films or all '90s films (or pretty close to that) each month, so maybe it just didn't fit with everything else. They've really ramped up production though (from like 5 every other month to 6 or 7 every single month) so I bet you don't have to wait long

[swo17]

For what it's worth, my latest order direct from Via Vision shipped eight days ago and arrived today

[Maltic]

I wasted another 2 hrs on the JB Hifi website this evening. No luck in the end, although I came very close a few times. One of the least user friendly webshops I've come across in this millennium.

[Maltic]

There, I finally managed to order The Straight Story, Breakdown (only the standard edition shipped abroad), Across 110th Street and Let's Scare Jessica to Death

I had to type my address (street name) manually. If I clicked google suggestions, I wouldn't get shipping options. There's a drop down menu for both address and for phone / country code, and I had to select the latter first, otherwise the phone number would register as invalid. Etc.

[willoneill]

It's definitely a trial and error website, but I was able to get an order in for Night Falls on Manhattan (which hadn't be available to ship to Canada for as long as I've been checking but suddenly was), The Contender, Bloody Sunday, and China Gate.

[swo17]

Today marks two years since The War Of The Worlds – Imprint Collection #1 – first hit shelves. And what a journey it’s been!

Now we’re up to Imprint Collection #157, and we don’t plan on stopping anytime soon. We have some mammoth titles launching in coming months – including more worldwide firsts to Blu-ray, limited edition hard-boxsets, director collections, and even our very first Imprint SteelBook…

We couldn’t have made it this far without the overwhelming support of our customers. So, to say thank you, we are having a very special sale – 20% off our Imprint catalogue*, until 11.59pm on Friday 3 June. Just enter code ‘TWOYEARS’ at checkout, at imprintfilms.com.au.

*This offer excludes all pre-orders and also excludes April & May New Release titles.

[therewillbeblus]

It's inexplicable that The Scarlet Hour would get a standalone release against the noir box, as aside from Curtiz' name it's an unspectacular noir programmer in every sense. There's a decent midpoint setpiece and the ending is quietly dark in its use of space to obstruct communication of feeling and reinforce isolation with minimalist anti-catharsis, but those aren't particularly thrilling either. Maybe it'll reveal greater strengths once it looks all cleaned up- but doubtfully enough to earn its place outside of a B-noir title in a box et

[therewillbeblus]

For what it's worth, my latest order direct from Via Vision shipped eight days ago and arrived today

To my surprise, the first part of my order from JB-HiFi shipped on 5/25 and arrived yesterday, a timeline of only a week (apparently one day less than Imprint direct). We'll see how the next part fares...

[Ribs]

Imprint has shared a new stock update:

Out of Print
The Wicker Man
Drugstore Cowboy
Kitten With a Whip
The Counterfeit Traitor

Selling Fast
The Out-of-Towners
Last Train from Gun Hill
Body Parts
The Parallax View
Man on a Swing
Let’s Scare Jessica to Death
The Naked Jungle

[therewillbeblus]

Now that I've sampled the remaining films in the third noir box, The Scarlet Hour's standalone release is even more inexplicable, but I won't complain as this box doesn't have a 'bad' film in it! The Strange Love of Martha Ivers and The Desperate Hours are excellent of course, but I was surprised how much I enjoyed the other two. No Man Of Her Own is the weakest link, and the film never rises above the thrilling opening act, involving an jarring setpiece on a train that unexpectedly switches the actively-sewing tracks we thought we were on and kicks off the real plot! Still, it earns points for leaning heavily into its self-awareness that it is an absolutely ridiculous noir with eerie cartoonish personas and unexplained events. The audacity to leave one character's fate to a mysterious circumstance off-screen, yet showing the result on-screen is an uneasy yet brilliant use of an anticlimactic device to absolve its principals of accountability under the code. Not a great film, but far from a humdrum programmer either.

The Turning Point was a lot more fun, constantly pivoting around an economical rotation of sociopathic cover-ups that manage to be excitingly absurd without making audience-shocking disbelief a key element to disrupt engagement (as No Man Of Her Own frequently did, though the films approach to their distinct wavelengths appropriately in this respect). I wasn't with the film 100% of the way (the film understandably takes its time to establish its core characters and their roles' relationships to systems, which left me in a space between detachment and curiosity for its first stretch), but once the crime syndicate starting forming and actualizing their self-preserving schemes at the pace of bullets flying, I was all in.

[hearthesilence]

Imprint has shared a new stock update:

Out of Print
Drugstore Cowboy

I nearly picked this up, but apparently they did a pretty poor job of mastering/encoding it for their Blu-ray disc. (I'm guessing Apple's relatively inexpensive HD download is derived from the same master.)

[cdnchris]

Oh yeah, it looks like ass.

[therewillbeblus]

I picked it up anyways, there’s something about the familiarly grimy world this characters inhabit that’s fitting for a bleakly shoddy presentation. I’ve only seen this film on VHS (many times) and that’s always felt like the right format to watch it on!

[therewillbeblus]

So the Coen bros must be fans of Secret of the Incas- surely everyone will recognize the score during the opening credits, which they issued a vocal cover of for an unforgettable surrealistic sequence in their most popular film!

[therewillbeblus]

Unfortunately the earworm score is the best thing about Secret of the Incas, which is oft-credited as inspiring Indiana Jones but to call it Indy-lite would be too charitable. Not only does it lack charm or creative setpieces, but it's just not exciting whatsoever. There are long interludes of banal music and rituals, and even the scenes of cool-headed interplay between will they/won't they romantic partners, peers, villains (or, really anybody) fall flat. It's something neutral to throw on in the background I guess, but I can't see myself sitting through it again with any attention span.

I Am the Law and Storm Center are of a piece, as two films centered around lone moralists fighting problematic systems. Edward G. Robinson is naturally the more compelling player in the better picture, but that's not an endorsement. Robinson does what he can whenever he's on screen, but I Am the Law is a frustratingly exaggerated portrait of extremist binary modes of operation in human behavior, with no room for adaptive survivalism, or observant complexity to those who skated into moral grey territory. Corrupt politicians wear their plottings on their sleeves with faux-coyness, disallowing them to ascend cartoonish other'ing, and old shopkeepers who are confronted by a gang of armed gangsters take a moral stand to their faces without support like no person ever would. I've seen some pretty absurd moralism in Code-era pics, but even the Scarecrow from The Wizard of Oz had more of a brain. The problem with these stances is that the film thinks it's interested in taking on systems, and yet it condescends to our current struggle through minimizing the systems themselves as complex and thus the route to correct them as difficult either. Hey, there's plenty of fine unapologetic idealist polisci porn coming out of this time period, but this plays everything out sincerely with unchecked reverence, and it's got a pretty thin narrative plan of how to clean up the streets to earn its high-road sneering.

Storm Center is barely worth talking about- I don't like Betty Davis very much to begin with, but the implications of how and why the moralism spreads to the kid's reactive pyro tantrum takes things a bridge too far after the film already tested the audience's patience with whatever it can pull out of its hat to fill the time. This material would be better served in a half-hour after-school special than an entire narrative film- it's agonizing to watch. Even if this is historically important as the first openly anti-McCarthyism Hollywood film, or whatever, I hated sitting through it, and almost turned it off several times. I should probably mention that I'm anti-crime and anti-McCarthyism and identify as a progressive- but I'm also anti-sugarcoated arrogance, and while I respect that films of this era tended to create black-and-white patterns of schematic association across causes, it's still the process by which a film like this conducts itself that invalidates and destroys opportunities to actually progress. I like musicals because they show us a That Was Easy button and are self-aware enough to know it's not that easy by the nature of the numbers and what the characters return to without that supportive space. These movies (*not* this type of movie, but these movies specifically) are like a musical number that other people don't get, a reality they're not in but can get to if they only shape up. If they only 'got' it, we'd be fine. It's actually really easy in real life, just get on my level (because otherwise kids will do crazy things like burn down buildings from disillusionment, or something). Wait, this sounds like every political thread I've come across in the last six years. Maybe people will like it

I also see a Stanley Kramer film was announced for August, but I'm not going to watch that one- it'll probably be akin to these, at best

[MichaelB]

I thought this was a flat-out masterpiece, a quietly philosophical shaggy dog tale that manages to be deeply emotional without being overstated. It’s fascinatingly restrained and an honest reconstruction of bromance pictures, with both leads giving incredibly complex and eclectic performances. Spader is unrecognizable behind facial hair and an accent, and it may be his very best work (ditto to Patinkin). Is either Haas or Auster’s other work anywhere close to on par with this?

It's also worth noting that it's a significant improvement on the source novel in quite a few aspects, not least the ending - and what's particularly delightful about that is that it features an Auster cameo, as if to signal to the audience "yes, they changed it, but I'm OK with that."

(Avoiding spoilers, the book's ending was a total cop-out and the film's very much isn't.)

[ryannichols7]

new announcement...

Coming later this year: Directed by Walter Hill (1975 – 2006) - Imprint Collection #164 – 169.

Pre-Orders not yet live – keep an eye on our socials.

Walter Hill has been directing films for almost 50 years and has established himself a reputation of delivering thrilling, gritty and highly stylized films.

This special edition box collects six films from one of the most important and influential filmmakers of modern cinema.

1975 Hard Times
1978 The Driver
1981 The Long Riders
1987 Extreme Prejudice
1989 Johnny Handsome
2006 Broken Trail

Limited Edition 6 Disc Hard box edition. 1500 copies.

Our six September releases are to be announced Friday 1 July. A foreign masterpiece finally coming to Blu-ray, a nihilistic alcoholic biography, another Zhang Yimou flick at home on Blu-ray, a sporting scandal, a controversial adaptation, and a story of forbidden love...

I wonder what the Yimou title is? guessing either Not One Less or maybe even Hero.