Via
Eric, Koch Lorber will be releasing Godard's
La chinoise, with Jean-Pierre Léaud and Anne Wiazemsky, in May. 2008 is lining up to be the year of Godard on Region 1 disc, as Lionsgate has already announced their set,
Pierrot le fou is coming from Criterion and Koch has also mentioned that
Le gai savoir will be available sometime later this year (also via Eric).
Water Bearer Films will be releasing the latest from Todd Verow, a director I have negative- to mixed-feelings about, on DVD in March.
Hooks to the Left is shot entirely on a cell phone, chronicling a young man's return to prostitution after a bad break-up. Verow is probably most famous for his unsuccessful adaptation of Dennis Cooper's
Frisk in 1994.
20th Century Fox will be releasing the Hammer horror film
The Nanny, starring Bette Davis, as part of their Bette Davis Centennial Celebration Collection, which will also include a two-disc of
All About Eve, as well as
Hush, Hush, Sweet Charlotte,
The Virgin Queen and
Phone Call from a Stranger. All will be available separately as well as in the set. Cross another off the MIA list.
A special edition of Terry Gilliam's
The Adventures of Baron Munchausen (another title I'm embarrassed I haven't seen) will be available on both DVD and Blu-Ray at the beginning of April. If you're concerned with how I'm doing on eradicating my cinematic negligence, I watched Gilliam's
Brazil for the first time this past week. How about that?
Lionsgate will release the Alain Delon collection in the same fashion they did with the Brigitte Bardot box. The set includes
The Widow Couderc, Julien Duvivier's
Diabolically Yours,
La piscine,
Le gitan and Bertrand Blier's
Notre histoire.
New Yorker will finally release Tomás Gutiérrez Alea's
The Last Supper in March, despite false alarms sometime last spring. This could bode will for Paris vu par... which was also incorrectly announced by certain websites at the same time. New Yorker will also have out Abderrahmane Sissako's
Bamako a week later.
The Weinstein Company has postponed the releases of Christophe Honoré's
Dans Paris and Anton Corbijn's
Control until mid-March. The documentary
Joy Division, acquired along with
Control but never released into theatres, will be available on the same day as
Control, also chronicling the rise and fall of the influential band.
Zeitgeist will be releasing Peter Delpeut's
Diva Dolorosa in March, a pseudo-documentary using archival footage of silent-era Italian cinema. Zeitgeist previously released a two-film set of Delpeut's
Lyrical Nitrate and
Forbidden Quest.
It looks as though The Weinstein Company have officially forgone a theatrical release for the French horror film
Inside (
À l'intérieur) and set a date for 15 April. Their intentions were to keep the film intact, so it will likely be available in an "unrated director's cut" version. However, keeping it from a theatrical release is still rather disappointing. Tartan Films, a division of Genius Products, will finally be releasing
Tetsuo 2: Body Hammer on DVD in March as well.
Music Video Distributors will be releasing the documentary
Richard Kern: Extra Action (and Extra Hardcore), which chronicles his life as a photographer of natural looking women getting naked, in March. The disc reportedly has previously unreleased shorts available though I haven't been able to find out which ones those might be. I'll be sure to get back to you when I find that out.
New Video/Docurama will have out Lynn Hershman-Leeson's documentary
Strange Culture in March as well. The film features her frequent actress Tilda Swinton as well as Thomas Jay Ryan and Peter Coyote.
The documentary
Who Is Henry Jaglom? will be out late-March from First Run Features. The film takes a look at the
New Year's Day and
Last Summer in the Hamptons' director, an acquired taste for sure, and features plenty of famous talking heads including Dennis Hopper, Candice Bergen, Karen Black, Orson Welles, Peter Bogdanovich, Milos Forman and Martha Plimpton.
TLA Releasing has
Socket, a queer horror film in the vain of David Cronenberg, in March, along with the British horror film
The Living and the Dead, which I've heard excellent things about. More about these two around the time of their release.
And, finally, I figured I'd mention, in case you hadn't heard, the untimely passing of troubled former-child star Brad Renfro, who died yesterday in his home. The actor became famous alongside Susan Sarandon and Tommy Lee Jones in
The Client to go on to act in films such as
Bully,
Apt Pupil and
Ghost World. He was reportedly working on a film adaptation of Bret Easton Ellis' collection of short stories
The Informers, with Winona Ryder, Mickey Rourke, Kim Basinger and Billy Bob Thornton.
Yeah, that's right. I finished my thesis... and I'm fucking spent. I actually have to prepare a powerpoint presentation for my evening class tonight, so "finished" isn't the right word. Anyway, good news, kids: Koch Lorber will be releasing a Marco Ferreri boxset on 5 August. The bad news? I have no idea what's in it. It's priced around $150, so I've got my hopes up... What could be in it? The Story of Piera??? Be still my heart! A teenage Isabelle Huppert putting the moves on her mother played by Hanna Schygulla? Count me in. More info when I get it, of course.
Koch Lorber will also be re-releasing René Clément's Joy House (Les félins) with Alain Delon and Jane Fonda. The film was previously released by Image and is long out-of-print. I'm sure the transfer will be improved.
In other sexy news, Lionsgate will release Mariano Barroso's Éxtasis on 29 July, starring that hunk Javier Bardem.
