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knives wrote:Both those are good. Paints a really different picture of Akkad than his work on the Halloween series did.

Although the way that the filmmakers find to get around portraying the unshowable figure of Mohammed in The Messenger as being the camera's point of view turns out to be extremely similar to the killer pov shots of Halloween a year later!

If anyone has the US disc of Wim Wenders' "Tokyo-Ga", could you tell me the exact runtime of the disc?

edit: nevermind! Found it on DVDBeaver.

Re: Wenders' "Tokyo-ga"

You know it was included as a supplement on Criterion's release of Ozu's "Late Spring", right?

http://www.criterion.com/films/298-late-spring" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;

Yes, I know. I have both.
The Anchor Bay disc has a Wim Wenders commentary as an extra, which is not on the Criterion.
But the Anchor Bay disc is missing English subtitles, so the portion where Werner Herzog is speaking in German is untranslated. The Criterion has the subtitles fortunately.

For the Boys (1991) is showing up on amazon.com for a 4/7/15 release via Anchor Bay/Starz. Is this signs of a new sub-licensing agreement for Fox titles, a one-off, or does Fox no longer have rights to this film?

(EDIT: The last Fox licensed titles came out in 2013)

More Fox titles in May

5/5

The Adventures of Ford Fairlane (1990)
Kiss of the Dragon (2001)
Supercross (2005)

Also, on 5/19 Anchor Bay/Starz has scheduled a release of The Osterman Weekend (1983)

captveg wrote: 5/5

The Adventures of Ford Fairlane (1990)

My letters paid off

Nice to see The Osterman Weekend making it to Blu, presumably loaded with all the features from the 2-disc DVD. A somewhat shallow work-for-hire, to be sure, but a less flat out atrocious one than The Killer Elite or Convoy.

I also think that The Osterman Weekend isn't narratively great, being full of plotholes and convoluted, impossible to follow double-dealings, but especially in the second half it still has flashes of the old Peckinpah, and the great ensemble playing of the cast make up for the film's biggest flaw: that it is a film about technological paranoia and manipulation that doesn't really understand how all this new-fangled technology works (according to the commentary apparently the Ludlum book is all about radio bugging which gets changed in the film to more visual video camera spying. But the cameras keep doing impossible things and omnisciently capturing impossible shots!). Apart from the great scene with John Hurt having to improvise reading the weather bulletin on a television, it is a much better film when it is less about the technology and more about a group of 'friends' bickering with each other!

It is also a film made hugely more entertaining and interesting by the Peckinpah scholars commentary track, so I'm very much hoping that makes it to the Blu-ray at least! (It might be perverse but I'd love to hear them do a commentary on The Killer Elite too!)

EDIT: I see that Mark Cousin's Moviedrome introduction is on YouTube too! Though I don't really agree with Cousins's simplistic ideas on Peckinpah's politics or views of women, which are much more nuanced than he suggests. After all The Osterman Weekend contrasts our main ineffectual, rather too intellectual male character with his more dynamic, woman of nature, huntress wife. The only real flaws that the always sympathetically, though complexly and believably humanly portrayed, women in Peckinpah films have is that they are regularly betrayed or failed by the men around them.

And while Cousins gets the idea of Burt Lancaster's character being 'stale', I think he misses the point that Lancaster's character is fully meant to be portrayed as one of the 'old guard' (he is even introduced with a war cemetery backgrounding him!), trying to grapple and manipulate with new technology by bringing in outside specialists to work for his interests (whether to assassinate or manipulate), yet eventually still being comprehensively betrayed by all sides by the subversive new media landscape he has in some ways enabled to exist.

colinr0380 wrote:It is also a film made hugely more entertaining and interesting by the Peckinpah scholars commentary track, so I'm very much hoping that makes it to the Blu-ray at least! (It might be perverse but I'd love to hear them do a commentary on The Killer Elite too!).

They did do one for the Twilight Time release of The Killer Elite.

If they don't include the special features from the 2-disc edition (especially the rough cut), no sale for me.

Hmmm, I'm not that enamoured of Killer Elite, but its good to know they did one!

I wasn't too thrilled with shelling out $35 to Twilight Time for The Killer Elite, but they hooked me with the inclusion of Peckinpah's 1967 ABC television drama Noon Wine, which has never been available on home video before.

Now, if only someone would do a good Blu-Ray treatment of Junior Bonner...

http://www.blu-ray.com/movies/The-Kille ... 86/#Review" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;