---

Insights from home entertainment industry experts. Home Media blogs give you the inside scoop on entertainment news, DVD and Blu-ray Disc releases, and the happenings at key studios and entertainment retailers. TK's Take analyzes and comments on home entertainment industry news and trends, Agent DVD Insider talks comic adaptations, and IndieFile delivers independent film news.

---

September 14, 2009
Icarus Bows Chantal Akerman’s Travelogue-Style ‘From the East’

Street Date: 10/6
Studio: Icarus Films
Price/Format: DVD $29.98
Reserve for purchase
Reserve on Netflix

Belgian filmmaker Chantal Akerman (From the Other Side) takes a journey through Eastern Europe, from East Germany across Poland and the Baltics to Moscow, in From the East (D’Est). From the end of summer through winter, Akerman films her travels, made shortly after the collapse of the Soviet bloc, and the resulting film has no dialogue and no commentary; rather, it makes her travels into a soundscape consisting of the noise and voices around her. The 1993 film was salivated over by every hoity-toity this side of the Atlantic (New York Times, Chicago Reader, Village Voice etc.). I can’t say that I’ve ever heard of another film like it; the closest thing that comes to mind is something like Agnes Varda’s The Gleaners and I or a human version of Winged Migration. The DVD includes a booklet with an essay by Akerman.

 

---

September 03, 2009
Strand Releases ‘A Woman in Berlin’

Street Date: 11/10
Prebook Date: 10/13
Studio: Strand Releasing
Price/Format: $27.99 DVD
Reserve on Amazon
Reserve on Netflix

One of the most controversial films of the year, adored by the stuffier critics such as those of the New York Times and Los Angeles Times, A Woman in Berlin tells a tough story. It takes place in 1945, during the Red Army invasion of Berlin near the end of World War II, during which there was widespread rape of German women by soldiers. Anonyma (Nina Hoss) is a journalist and photographer who decides to take matters into her own hands by starting a complex relationship with an officer who can protect her. The film was directed by Max Färberböck, based on a book written anonymously (the writer was later said to be as Marta Hillers, after her death).
 

---

August 10, 2009
Yesterday's News

IndieFile took a much-needed vacation last week (hello, Puerto Rico!). So it’s time to play catch up. Here are some bits and pieces from past week in indie film:

•    The late John Hughes will have one of his cultier classics re-released on DVD Oct. 20 (prebook Sept. 8) with Planes, Trains and Automobiles: Those Aren’t Pillows Edition, from Paramount. The $14.99 DVD includes a special feature on Hughes and how he graduated from teen films to make a film that focused on adults.

•    Gay/arthouse film purveyors TLA Releasing kicks off its 2009/2001 production slate with BearCity, which began principal photography in New York Aug. 10. The film is described as kind of a “Sex & the City” with gay men, and it will be released in 2010. More information can be found at www.bearcitythemovie.com.

•    2009 Sundance Film Festival Official Selection Shrink streets Sept. 29 (prebook Sept. 2) from Lionsgate. The film stars Kevin Spacey as a disillusioned celebrity psychiatrist and co-stars Saffron Burrows, Mark Webber, Dallas Roberts and Keke Palmer. The $27.98 DVD includes deleted scenes, a commentary and interviews with director Jonas Pate and producer Braxton Pope, as well as a the music video for “Here,” a new original song by Jackson Browne.

•    Lionsgate also announced The Dead, John Huston’s final film, starring his daughter, Anjelica Huston, adapted from a James Joyce story about a woman who confesses of a past love to her husband, who then questions the lack of passion in his own life. The $14.98 DVD streets Nov. 3 (prebook Oct. 7).

•    Film Movement announced New York Times Critic’s Pick The Country Teacher would hit DVD Sept. 8 at $24.95. The film is about a teacher who tutors a young man in the countryside and comes to find no one in the town realizes he is gay, or that he has a secret affection for his student. The Country Teacher is in Czech with English subtitles and includes the short film Peter and Ben, from British director Pinny Grylls.

•    First Run Features Sept. 15 releases the awesomely titled Old Jews Telling Jokes at $19.95. I shouldn’t have to tell you why this is going to be awesome and hilarious. Sept. 15 the distributor also releases Full Battle Rattle (DVD $24.95), The Adventures of Werner Holt (DVD $24.95), The Axe of Wandsbek (DVD $24.95) and The Modern Con Man Collection (three-DVD set $29.95).

•    Oscilloscope Laboratories signed a three-year distribution agreement with Milestone Films to give Oscilloscope rights to Milestone’s library of independent features, documentaries, and foreign and silent films (read the story here). Oscilloscope president and Beastie Boy Adam Yauch also said Aug. 6 that he is quickly recovering from cancer surgery. We wish him well.

•    Palisades Tartan will release P, its first Asia Extreme release since acquiring the Tartan Films library last May, Oct. 20 (prebook Sept. 22) at $19.95. The film is about a young exotic dancer in Bankok trained in dark magic who gradually loses control over her abilities. P is directed by Paul Spurrier, who was a child actor in such shows as “Max Headroom.”

•    SXSW 2010 is coming. Press applications will be accepted beginning Sept. 8, and the site has been redesigned (http://www.sxsw.com).

•    Lionsgate/Barnholtz Entertainment Sept. 1 release Drifter: Henry Lee Lucas at $26.98, starring Antonio Sabato, Jr. as the true-life serial killer. Should be interesting to see how a former underwear model takes on this infamous murderer.

•    Deadgirl, a screwed up horror film about teens who find a captive girl in an abandoned mental hospital and decide to keep her there, will be released by MPI’s Dark Sky Films Sept. 15 at $24.98. Bloody Disgusting loves it, so that tells you what you’re in for. The film from executive producer Christopher Webster (“Hellraiser” and “Heathers”) and co-directors Marcel Sarmiento (Heavy Petting) and Gadi Harel comes in an unrated director’s cut with a making-of featurette, a commentary and a make-up effects still gallery.

•    Cinevolve Studios this week is screening two of its first theatrical offerings, 12 in a Box and El Tinte de la Fama, at the Laemmle Music Hall in Los Angeles. Both films scored nice reviews from the LA Times.

 

---

July 22, 2009
‘Sügisball’ (Autumn Ball) Moves to DVD

Street Date: 9/22
Prebook Date: 8/25
Studio: Strand Releasing
SRP/Format: $27.99 DVD
Reserve on Amazon
Reserve on Netflix

Sügisball is a multicharacter drama/black comedy that concerns characters in an apartment building attempting to overcome isolation in Soviet-era Estonia. Veiko Õunpuu’s feature debut has won much recognition at European film festivals. It’s about as bleak as it gets, but it’s also visually arresting and memorable. Plus, Estonian sounds really cool.

WARNING: TRAILER HAS CONTENT OF A SEXUAL AND VIOLENT NATURE.

In Estonian with English subtitles.

---

July 17, 2009
Criterion Announces October Slate

Criterion continues its record of excellence with Blu-ray debuts as well as some new DVDs of major works from by the filmmakers Costa-Gavras (Z), Wim Wenders (Wings of Desire), Mira Nair (Monsoon Wedding) and James Ivory (Howards End), the latter of which won first place in a poll for which Criterion film viewers most wanted on Blu-ray Disc. The discs feature new high-definition transfers.

Monsoon Wedding
Street Date: 10/20
Prebook Date: 9/15
SRP/Format: $39.95 DVD or BD

Mira Nair’s Indian wedding comedy comes in a restored high-definition digital transfer, supervised by director Mira Nair and director of photography Declan Quinn. The discs feature a commentary with Nair; short documentaries and short features by Nair; a new video interview with actor Naseeruddin Shah, conducted by Nair; new video interviews with Quinn and production designer Stephanie Carroll; a new and improved English subtitle translation; and an essay by critic and travel writer Pico Iyer.

Wings of Desire
Street Date: 11/3
Prebook Date: 9/22
SRP/Format: $39.95 DVD or BD

Wim Wenders’ film about an angel who gives up his immortality to be with a woman comes in a new, restored high-definition digital transfer, supervised and approved by director Wenders. The discs include a commentary with Wenders and actor Peter Falk, a documentary on the film, exerpts from a French television program, an interview with director of photography Henri Alekan, deleted scenes and outtakes, excerpts from related films, notes and photos by production designer Heidi Lüdi and art director Toni Lüdi, a new and improved English subtitle translation, and a booklet featuring an essay by critic Michael Atkinson and writings by Wenders and screenwriter Peter Handke.

Howards End
Street Date: 11/3
Prebook Date: 9/22
SRP/Format: $39.95 BD

Director James Ivory’s version of E. M. Forster’s 1910 novel about class divisions in Edwardian England, starring Emma Thompson, Anthony Hopkins and Vanessa Redgrave, comes in a high-definition digital transfer, supervised by cinematographer Tony Pierce-Roberts. The Blu-ray includes a featurette on late producer Ismail Merchant by director James Ivory, several making-of featurettes and an essay by critic Kenneth Turan.

Z
Street Date: 10/27
Prebook Date: 9/29
SRP/Format: $39.95 BD

Costa-Gavras’s political thriller comes in a high-definition digital transfer, approved by cinematographer Raoul Coutard. The Blu-ray includes a commentary featuring film historian Peter Cowie; new interviews with Costa-Gavras and Coutard; archival interviews with the cast, crew and Vassilis Vassilikos, author of the book Z; a new and improved English subtitle translation; and a booklet featuring an essay by critic Armond White.

In addition, Criterion’s Eclipse line present in October will release three films by Yugoslavian director Dusan Makavejev. He’s known for scandalous political comedies WR: Mysteries of the Organism and Sweet Movie, and the new releases encompass his three films, which look at Communist Yugoslavia in the 1960s.

Eclipse Series 18: Dusan Makavejev Free Radical
Street Date: 10/13
Prebook Date: 9/15
SRP/Format: $44.95 DVD

---

---