Tag Archives: Film Movement

DVDs, Movies

Have no reservations about checking into a Copenhagen hotel, “Room 304”

Sex! Betrayal! Corruption! Such facts of life unravel in a Copenhagen hotel, where nine disparate lives intersect by chance or fate.

A hotel manager peers into the abyss of his empty life, leading to devastating consequences for himself, his wife and his mistress.

A Spanish stewardess reaches out for intimacy and finds it in a most unexpected way.

A reserved concierge is forced out of his shell by a shocking event, and an Albanian refugee gets a chance to avenge his wife, but ends up discovering something surprising instead.

An Official Selection in Competition at the Karlovy Vary International Film Festival, Room 304 (Film Movement), director Birgitte Staermose’s debut feature, will make home audiences think twice before booking a hotel room again.

DVDs, Movies

“The Paris Opera” hits all the high notes when it comes to a fascinating behind-the-scenes documentary

Sweeping in scope yet full of intimate moments, Film Movement’s The Paris Opera,  offers a candid look behind the scenes of one of the world’s foremost performing arts institutions. Over the course of one tumultuous season, director Jean-Stéphane Bron nimbly juggles multiple storylines, from ballet and opera rehearsals, to strike negotiations, last minute crises and ticket disputes, revealing the dedication of the talented personnel who bring breathtaking spectacles to the stage night after night.

 
It’s Autumn 2015 and, at the Paris Opera, new director Stéphane Lissner is putting the finishing touches to his first press conference.  Backstage, artists and crew diligently prepare to raise the curtain on a new season with Schönberg’s opera, Moses and Aaron.  However, the announcement of a strike and arrival of a 2000-pound bull in a supporting role complicate matters greatly.  As the season progresses, more and more characters appear, playing out the human comedy in the manner of a documentary Opera.  Enter promising young Russian singer, Mikhail Tymoshenko, who begins at the Opera’s Academy; in the hallways of Opera Bastille, his destiny will cross paths with that of Bryn Terfel, one of the greatest voices of his time.  And Lissner will have to weather star choreographer Benjamin Millepied jumping ship soon after taking over as director of ballet at Palais Garnier.  But when the terrorist attack at The Bataclan plunges the city into mourning, the company recognizes the show must go on.
And it does.

 

DVDs, Movies

The naked truth: Two Joseph W. Sarno soft-porn gems have cum out. Bravo!

For those who need a bit on enlightening when it comes to director and screenwriter Joseph W. Sarno, known as the “Ingmar Bergman of Porn” and the “Chekov of Soft-Core”, we offer some bare facts, a dose of the naked truth. Sarno’s early black and white films are praised for their chiaroscuro lighting and their complex psycho-sexual plots, but it was his more explicit art-house film, Inga, shot in Sweden in 1968, that brought him international attention.  Never a fan of explicit triple-X filmmaking, Sarno continued to write and direct adult films through the ’70s and ’80s, often working under a pseudonym or offering his director’s credit to the film’s female lead.

Film Movement Classics has partnered with Film Media and Something Weird to release new HD restorations of two Sarno classics on Blu-ray for the first time: All the Season of Sodom and Vibrations.
For years, only poorly-preserved prints were available for retrospective screenings; now, cinema aficionados will be able to screen Sarno’s classics, restored to a pristine state for optimal viewing. (New 2K theatrical masters were created for each film.) Packaged together, this exclusive collection, also featuring specially-produced extras such as an interview with Sarno himself and audio commentary, will be available on Blu-ray. Other special features include commentary by Film Historian Tim Lucas and Joe’s wife, Peggy Steffans-Sarno and a booklet featuring liner notes from Lucas.
Shot back-to-back with Vibrations in 1968, All the Sings of Sodom has the sexploitation auteur at the top of his game in this penetrating study of ambition, romance and lust set inside the world of fashion photography.  Encouraged by his agent, Henning, a struggling New York City photographer, begins a daring portfolio of his model, Leslie.  But all too soon, jealousies erupt when another model vies for his camera and bed in this elegantly filmed time capsule of late ’60s New York.

In Vibrations, aspiring writer Barbara moves to Manhattan to jump-start her career and sex life, but ends up typing manuscripts.  Alone at night, she listens to the sound of her sexy neighbor as she entertains herself and her friends with the aid of her vibrator.  When her extroverted sister, Julie, comes to town, Barbara is forced to confront her repressed sexual desires.
DVDs, Movies

“Resistance” shines light on the little-known, top-secret Winston Churchill organization

And you think our country is in trouble.
What if D-Day had failed and the Third Reich continued to roll across Europe?  Following in the alternate history footsteps of The Man in the High Castle and Fatherland, Resistance shines a light on the little-known British Resistance Organization (BRO), Winston
Churchill’s top-secret and highly trained civilian army designed to wreak havoc on occupying enemy forces. This BAFTA Award-winning revisionist drama will be available on DVD and Digital on March 7 from Omnibus Entertainment, the specialty label of award-winning independent and foreign film distributor Film Movement.
Starring Michael Sheen, Andrea Riseborough, Iwan Rheon and Tom Wlaschiha, Resistance, based on the acclaimed novel by Owen Sheers is set in Nazi-occupied Britain.  D-Day has failed, and, as Panzer divisions and Nazi troops sweep westward across the dispirited countryside, Sarah Lewis (Riseborough), a young Welsh farmer’s wife, awakens to find that her husband, along with all the other men are gone, presumably having fled the village to join the top-secret BRO.

Shortly thereafter, a small Wehrmacht platoon arrives in the pastoral countryside and sets up an outpost in the valley to root out the resistance.  And when the severe winter forces them to cooperate with the locals, Sarah befriends the commanding officer, Albrecht (Wlaschiha), and the lines between collaboration, duty, occupation and survival are put to the test. Called “a beautiful, elliptical war film with the haunting qualities of a ghost story” by Empire Magazine, Resistance was nominated for the prestigious Cinevision Award at the Berlin Film Festival and a BAFTA Cymru Winner for Best Actress (Sharon Morgan).

Celebrity Chatter, DVDs

Film Movement releases the sci-fi cult classic “The Quiet Earth”

Film Movement, the New York-based distributor of arthouse and independent films, has released Geoffrey Murphy’s sci-fi cult classic The Quiet Earth. It’s news that shouldn’t remain quiet: The 1985 flick is now available for the first time on DVD and  Blu-ray.

Bruno Lawrence stars as scientist Zac Hobson, a mid-level scientist working on a global energy project who wakes up to a nightmare. After his project malfunctions, he discovers that he may be the last man on Earth. As he searches empty cities for other survivors, Zac’s mental state begins to deteriorate, culminating in the film’s iconic and hotly debated ending.

Called “the best science fiction film of the ’80s” by the Los Angeles Daily News, The Quiet Earth is loosely based on Craig Harrison’s novel of the same name. With this film Geoff Murphy ushered in a renaissance of classic New Zealand films in the ’80s. The film, which was originally screenwriter and producer Sam Pillsbury’s project, was sold to 80 countries, gained a cult following and won Murphy attention in the United States.

The DVD and Blu-ray editions feature a unique bonus: Commentary by astrophysicist Neil deGrasse Tyson, the Director of the Hayden Planetarium of the Natural History Museum in New York, together with rogerebert.com film critic Odie Henderson. FYI: The Quiet Man is one of deGrasse Tyson’s favorite science fiction films.