ARCHIVED NEWS - 22nd - 28th AUGUST 2005



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NEW AUDIO REVIEW





24th August 2005

There's a new review on the site today. As promised, Matt West has reviewed the final The Tomorrow People DVD box set, which has just been released by Revelation. Click here, or on the sleeve image, right, to read Matt's review.

Granada Ventures will issue a Special Edition version of Neil Jordan's fine BAFTA-nominated 1984 fantasy film The Company of Wolves on October the 17th.

The film, a twist on the Little Red Riding Hood folk tale, based on short stories in Angela Carter's collection The Bloody Chamber, stars Angela Lansbury, David Warner, Neil Jordan regular Stephen Rea and Sarah Patterson. It also features fine British character actors like Brian Glover, Roy Evans and the great Graham Crowden.

Holy Zarqoun! Whatever happened to Sarah Patterson? According to the IMDB, she only made two more films, a version of Snow White for Cannon in 1988 - as Snow White, of course - and a lesbian drama titled Do I Love You? in 2002).

The disc will feature a commentary track by Jordan; a theatrical trailer; a stills gallery and "a behind the scenes definitive guide" (which sounds like marketing speak for "booklet"). Technical details weren't released. RRP for the disc is £19.99.

A big gap in the collections of Clint Eastwood fans will be filled on October the 3rd, when Warner Home Video release the two Philo Beddoe films, Every Which Way But Loose and Any Which Way You Can. Non-fans will probably know the movies best as the films that feature the 165-pound orang-utan, Clyde.

Both films will have 1.85:1 transfers, and Dolby Digital 5.1 audio tracks. Sadly the only bonus features will be theatrical trailers. Considering that these would certainly be mainstays of  5-for-£30 offers by now, if they'd been released a couple of years ago, the RRP is a very steep £24.99.

Does the world really need a Director's Cut of Mark Pavia's dull 1997 adaptation of Stephen King's 1988 short story The Night Flier? The question is immaterial, since that's what Mosaic will be releasing on October the 24th.

The disc, which replaces the one released in 2000, will feature soundbites; TV spots; stills; cast and production notes and "extended gore footage". The company certificated a ten-minute EPK for the film at the BBFC recently, and much of the material will probably be drawn from that (once you take the TV clips out of it, it'll be about six minutes of material). The old version of the film was 92'28" - the press release says the new version will be "97 mins".

A three-disc box set featuring Russ Meyer's Vixen trilogy will be released by Arrow Films on October the 3rd.

The Russ Meyer's Vixens Trilogy Box Set will include Vixen, Supervixens and Beneath The Valley of the Ultra Vixens. The set will be "bulging with extra features", including audio commentaries by Meyer. RRP for the set is £24.99.

Speaking of sex bombs, my thanks to Zeta Minor visitor Sergio Angelini, who has provided a list of titles in the Barbara Stanwyck Screen Goddesses box set (see last week's News for details of the other sets in the collection). It will include Double Indemnity, The Lady Eve, Golden Boy, The Bitter Tea of General Yen, The Miracle Woman and All I Desire.

The Complete Second Season of Without A Trace will be released by Warner Home Video on October the 10th.

The four-disc set will include all twenty-four episodes of the 2003-2004 season, including mysteries involving a school bus full of students, a priest with a dark secret, a woman in the middle of a dinner party and a 14-year-old Russian violinist. Bonus material will include over twenty deleted scenes. The episodes will be presented in 1.77:1 format, with stereo audio. The RRP is £59.99.

The BBFC has posted details of nearly forty-four minutes of deleted scenes, for Fox's forthcoming Titanic special edition DVD:

(The timings given refer to Hours:Minutes:Seconds:Frames)

00:01:26:03 #1 - I'LL BE THE FIRST
00:01:33:03 #2 - ROSE FEELS TRAPPED
00:06:17:00 #3 - BROCK'S DILEMMA/ ROSE VISITS THIRD CLASS
00:01:25:02 #4 - ROSE'S DREAMS
00:02:25:01 #5 - COME JOSEPHINE...
00:01:06:09 #6 - EXTENDED SNEAKING TO FIRST CLASS
00:00:58:21 #7 - EXTENDED ESCAPE FROM LOVEJOY
00:01:04:13 #8 - A KISS IN THE BOILER ROOM
00:01:35:20 #9 - WIRELESS ROOM/ THE CALIFORNIAN
00:00:29:04 #10 - HOW 'BOUT A LITTLE ICE?
00:00:38:16 #11 - FLIRTING WITH ICE
00:00:32:14 #14 - MOLLY BROWN'S ROWING SCHOOL
00:00:56:20 #16 - IDA STRAUS WON'T LEAVE
00:01:17:23 #17 - FAREWELL TO HELGA
00:02:13:11 #18 - BOAT SIX WON'T RETURN
00:00:34:10 #19 - RELEASE THE HOUNDS
00:00:47:08 #20 - ROSE GETS A HUSBAND'S LETTER
00:05:14:07 #21 - JACK AND LOVEJOY FIGHT
00:00:32:03 #23 - I'M NOT GOING
00:00:20:04 #24 - CORA'S FATE
00:01:00:11 #25 - EXTENDED JACK AND ROSE IN THE WATER
00:00:36:24 #27 - HOW DARE YOU!
00:01:05:13 #28 - CHINESE MAN RESCUE
00:06:22:13 #29 - EXTENDED CARPATHIA SEQUENCE
00:00:54:18 #12 - THE FIRST S.O.S.
00:00:36:22 #13 - ISMAY PANICS
00:00:20:20 #26 - OUT OF THE QUESTION
00:00:38:18 #22 - GUGGENHEIM AND ASTOR
00:00:51:15 #15 - IRISH HOSPITALITY

Finally, I promised I'd pass on this promotional link for Ring 2. Check it out. Or don't. See if I care.


22nd August 2005

Ceri has updated the Incoming list, with details of a lot of newly-discovered information, including lots of BBC titles. As we get closer to Christmas, there'll be a lot of titles shifting around, and we'll do our best to keep up with the changes. Apologies again for the formatting errors that continue to irritate. We're investigating other ways of bringing this info' to you. If anyone is able to offer some advice and assistance about moving elements of the site over to database-driven format, I'd love to hear from you! (Use the E-mail link in the menu strip, left).

Twentieth Century Fox Home Entertainment will release the terrific-looking CGI-animated film Robots on September the 19th.

The film will be presented in 1.85:1 anamorphic format, with 5.1 audio, and English SDH subtitles.

Bonus features include a commentary track by the animators at Blue Sky Studios; a new four-minute CGI-animated guided tour of Robot City Station, titled Aunt Fan's Tour of Booty; Discontinued Parts (three deleted scenes, presented with optional commentary by film-maker Chris Wedge); two interactive games, Robot Dance and Fender Photo Shoot; Meet The Bots (interactive 3D character biographies); The Voices of the Robots (local language dubbing featurettes); Ice Age 2 teaser; Ice Age 2 Sneak Peak; and a Robots public service announcement.

The disc has an RRP of £19.99. There'll also be a double-pack, with Ice Age, available, with an RRP of £24.99.

The release date for the Screen Goddesses box sets, which were announced last week, has been changed to October the 3rd. Still no info' on the Barbara Stanwyck set, sorry!

Lost - The Complete First Season will be released in the US in a couple of week's time (on the 6th of September). UK customers who don't want to import this version will have to wait until October the 31st for Buena Vista to release the first half of the season, as Lost Series 1 Part 1. Presumably this decision has been forced on Buena Vista, because of Channel 4's tardy scheduling (the second season starts in the US next month).

If you're still not convinced that UK fans are getting a raw deal, consider, too, that the Part 1 set will cost about the same as people importing the US set are paying for the whole season. (Few UK retailers seem to be listing the UK release at the moment, and most of the ones that are don't have a price yet. The exception seems to be HMV, and they have it for £24.99, here). The press release doesn't quote an RRP.

The four-disc UK set will feature the first twelve episodes spread across three discs, and a fourth disc devoted to bonus material. Features include: The Essential Lost; The Genesis of Lost; Designing a Disaster; Before They Were Lost; Audition Tapes; Welcome to Oahu: The Making of the Pilot; The Art of Matthew Fox; deleted scenes; Lost at Comicon; and Lost on Location. Sleeve image courtesy of HMV.

Desperate Housewives - The Complete First Series will be released by Buena Vista on October the 10th.

The six-disc set will feature all twenty-two episodes of the first series. The press materials supplied by Buena Vista include a sample menu screen that gives "Extended Episode" available as option, but there's no mention of that in the press release. This does seem to be confirmed, though, by the Amazon listing.

Bonus materials break down as follows:

Disc 1 - Deleted Scenes (with optional commentary by creator Marc Cherry); A Stroll Down Wisteria Lane featurette; Marc Cherry’s favourite episodes

Disc 2 - Desperate Housewives Around the World; Deleted Scenes; Marc Cherry audio commentaries

Disc 3 - Deleted Scenes; Dressing Wisteria Lane featurette; Marc Cherry audio commentaries

Disc 4 - Deleted Scenes; Marc Cherry audio commentaries

Disc 5 - Deleted Scenes; The Ladies Favourite Scenes; Marc Cherry audio commentaries

Disc 6 - Deleted Scenes; Behind the Scenes of Desperate Housewives; Secrets of Wisteria Lane featurette; Bloopers from the set; Marc Cherry audio commentaries
 

Here's a slightly overdue look at the two latest CD releases from the Film Score Monthly label...

The Golden Age Classics release pairs another couple of LP releases from the defunct Colpix Records label: Bronislau Kaper's Lord Jim and Dušan Radic's score for the The Long Ships.  Admirers of big symphonic scores will have a field day with this disc.

Kaper's work should need no recommendation, especially to those who bought FSM's outstanding Mutiny on the Bounty set. Lord Jim, an epic film based on a novel by Joseph Conrad's novel about the adventures of a young seaman, provides a memorable role for Peter O'Toole, and plenty of globe-trotting scope to fire Kaper's imagination.

The Long Ships was a Viking epic, made a few years after The Vikings, and directed by that film's cinematographer, Jack Cardiff. The film - an American / British / Yugoslavian production - is a lot of fun, although it lacks the machismo that Tony Curtis and Kirk Douglas brought to The Vikings. Fans of Ray Harryhausen's films might like to know that the film was co-written by Beverley Cross, who gave us Jason and the Argonauts, Clash of the Titans and Sinbad and the Eye of the Tiger. Yugoslavian-born Radic's work probably won't be familiar to film music collectors: his only other English-language film was Irving Allen's Genghis Khan. The score is heavily-influenced by the Main Title's heroic, brassy fanfare.

Both scores were taken from Colpix's quarter-inch album master tapes. Both are in stereo, although The Long Ships was probably recorded in mono, and electronically-processed for stereo for the album. The results aren't terribly impressive, but the disc was sourced from the only materials known to survive. For contractual reasons, both scores are presented in their original album order, although Jeff Bond and Lukas Kendall's extensive sleeve notes suggest how The Long Ships can be straightened out, for listeners who prefer their scores in film order, (as well as correcting a couple of errors made when the tracks were sequenced and titled).

The Silver Age Classics release is of Dave Grusin's Academy Award-short listed score for Sydney Pollack's 1975 film The Yakuza. The film marked the first of many collaborations between Pollack and Grusin, whose films together include Havana, The Firm and, perhaps most memorably, The Fabulous Baker Boys (earning Grusin four Oscar-nominations in the process).

The announcement of this title at Film Score Monthly's website was greeted with a degree of indifference the hardcore film score collectors, probably because they don't hold Grusin in the same esteem as Jerry Goldsmith, or John Williams (or Bronislau Kaper, for that matter). Grusin has his own career away from film scoring, and his own fans, so hopefully FSM will pull in sales from them, and not have to rely on score collectors, who often seem a little narrow minded. If they don't pick up The Yakuza, it will be their loss. The score is a heady blend of Eastern and Western influences, with some exotic oriental instruments - including the shakuhachi, now familiar from numerous seemingly identical James Horner scores - woven into a traditional orchestral setup.

The disc was mastered from the original sixteen-track 2" recordings, supplemented by the original "live" half-inch, three-track mix, and the mono film stems, as necessary.  The main score is supplemented by about half an hour of bonus tracks (source tracks, and alternate versions). The sound quality is excellent, and there are excellent background notes and track-by-track analysis in the twenty-page booklet, provided by Jon Burlingame and Nick Redman. Hopefully the release of the score will raise the film's profile sufficiently to merit a DVD release.

Both releases are limited to 3000 copies, and are available from the usual suspects: specialist soundtrack retailers, or directly from FSM's trading partners, Screen Archives.

Speaking of Sydney Pollack, did you read the interview posted here last week, in support of his latest DVD release, The Interpreter? Click here to read it - The Yakuza doesn't get a mention, but it's worth reading!


Previous Zeta Minor News entries can viewed here.


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