Here! Films returns to the DVD market

Missing from the DVD market since March of this year, Here! Films, with the first Oscar under their belt and a newly restructured roster, will begin releasing DVDs in January of 2010 though a partnership with E1 Distribution (formally Koch). Their first release, naturally, will be Yojiro Takita's Departures, which won the Best Foreign Language Oscar this year, hitting shelves on 12 January. The heavily maligned teen comedy Tru Loved (you may remember what Roger Ebert had to say about this one) will be released on the same date. Two more titles, Paul Morrison's Little Ashes with Robert Pattinson as Salvador Dalí and Shamim Sarif's lesbian romantic comedy I Can't Think Straight (which is truly dreadful, by the way), will street on 26 January. With two more Foreign Language Oscar possibilities (Asghar Farhadi's About Elly from Iran and Xavier Dolan's I Killed My Mother [J'ai tué ma mère] from Canada), Lucía Puenzo's latest El niño pez and James Bolton's surprisingly good adaptation of Jim Grimsley's adaptation of Dream Boy on their upcoming roster, Here! Films looks to have a successful year in 2010.

2009 Notebook: Vol 4

I still haven't decided on how I want to list the films I've watched. Putting them into a hierarchical grouping feels like a cheap way of reducing the films to star ratings and grades, which always end up changing the more I think (or don't think) about them. I also don't feel like writing cute, singular titles for them either as that's just an even lazier version of a capsule review. So for now, they'll just be placed into two: First viewing and Revisited.

First Viewing

The Cabin Movie - dir. Dylan Akio Smith - Canada - 2005 - N/A - with Arabella Bushnell, Ben Cotton, Brad Dryborough, Ryan Robbins, Justine Warrington, Erin Wells

The Dark Hours - dir. Paul Fox - Canada - 2005 - Freestyle Releasing - with Kate Greenhouse, Aidan Devine, Gordon Currie, Iris Graham, Dov Tiefenbach

Doubt - dir. John Patrick Shanley - USA - 2008 - Miramax - with Meryl Streep, Philip Seymour Hoffman, Amy Adams, Viola Davis, Joseph Foster II

Dream Boy - dir. James Bolton - USA - 2008 - N/A - with Stephan Bender, Maximillian Roeg, Thomas Jay Ryan, Diana Scarwid, Randy Wayne, Owen Beckman, Tricia Mara, Rickie Lee Jones, Tom Gilroy

Six Days, Six Nights [À la folie] - dir. Diane Kurys - France - 1994 - N/A - with Anne Parillaud, Béatrice Dalle, Patrick Aurignac, Alain Chabat, Bernard Verley

The Story of Piera [Storia di Piera] - dir. Marco Ferreri - Italy/France/West Germany - 1983 - N/A - with Hannah Schygulla, Isabelle Huppert, Marcello Mastroianni, Bettina Grühn, Angelo Infanti, Tanya Lopert, Renato Cecchetto, Maurizio Donadoni

Revisited

Buffalo '66 - dir. Vincent Gallo - USA - 1998 - Lionsgate - with Vincent Gallo, Christina Ricci, Anjelica Huston, Ben Gazzara, Mickey Rourke, Rosanna Arquette, Jan-Michael Vincent, Kevin Corrigan

Exotica - dir. Atom Egoyan - Canada - 1994 - Miramax - with Bruce Greenwood, Elias Koteas, Mia Kirshner, Don McKellar, Arsinée Khanjian, Sarah Polley, Victor Garber

Freeway - dir. Matthew Bright - USA - 1996 - Republic - with Reese Witherspoon, Kiefer Sutherland, Dan Hedaya, Wolfgang Bodison, Brooke Shields, Amanda Plummer, Michael T. Weiss, Bokeem Woodbine, Alanna Ubach, Brittany Murphy, Guillermo Díaz, Tara Subkoff

Wild Tigers I Have Known - dir. Cam Archer - USA - 2006 - IFC Films - with Malcolm Stumpf, Patrick White, Fairuza Balk, Max Paradise, Kim Dickens, Tom Gilroy