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5 Essential Blu-rays if You’re Looking for Film School in a Box

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5 Essential Blu-rays if You’re Looking for Film School in a Box

As streaming becomes more commonplace and directors like Martin Scorcese speak out about the services and their overall curation practices, certain boutique Blu-ray publishers are using their output as a way to create what is, essentially, film school in a box. Whether you’re looking for works of the great silent masters such as Buster Keaton or Charlie Chaplin, or the output of old Hollywood legends like Marlene Dietrich and Mae West, there’s a little bit of everything for all types of movie fans. Below is a list of five of the essential Blu-rays to check out if you’re looking for film school outside of the classroom.

RELATED: Best Blu-ray Publishers (That Aren’t Criterion)

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Marlene Dietrich & Josef von Sternberg at Paramount, 1930-1935 (Indicator / Criterion Collection)

One of the premier examples of the early collaborations between a director and actress, the work of Marlene Dietrich and Josef von Sternberg is an extremely interesting one. Though their output would begin in the mid-1920s and kick into gear with The Blue Angel in 1930’s Germany, this particular set picks up soon after as it showcases their work in Hollywood primarily before the Hays Code went into effect. The end result is Dietrich at what is arguably her peak and Sternberg right alongside her. The Indicator box set from the UK is about to go out of print, but Criterion’s will remain. Each has its pros and cons, though the Indicator set has a handful of worthy extra bonus features.

Indicator does a great job of also including extras that might otherwise be overlooked or omitted entirely on many other sets. A great example of that here is on the bonus features for Shanghai Express, as they shine a light not on Dietrich or Sternberg, but instead on a supporting actor in the film, Anna May Wong. Wong has largely been considered to be one of the, if not the first, Chinese American movie stars, and this 20-or so minute feature included here gives a nice overview of her life and role in the film. It’s just one of the many features that round out the work of these two legends of early Hollywood.

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Collaborations: The Cinema of Zhang Yimou & Gong Li (Imprint Films)

Sadly, with the way things are right now, there simply aren’t that many English-friendly releases of box sets featuring Asian directors. There are a few that are the exception, such as Criterion’s release of Wong Kar-wai’s films, and Arrow’s recent release of ‘Shawscope Volume 1’, which brings together a number of Shaw Brothers movies. But when it comes to many of the heavy hitters, such as Akira Kurosawa or Yasujiro Ozu, they are largely absent from the format.

That’s why when up-and-coming label Imprint Films from Australia announced ‘Collaborations: The Cinema of Zhang Yimou & Gong Li’, it was a major win for the format. This set has brought together 8 films from the famed director-actress duo with a plethora of extras alongside it. Many of the special features include Tony Rayns, a critic who you might be familiar with if you’ve purchased any Asian films from any of the major boutique publishers. Along with all the audiovisual extras, there’s also a nice lengthy booklet included featuring a number of great essays for you to dive into after watching the films. This is definitely a release to check out if you’re looking to expand your knowledge of Chinese cinema.

Buster Keaton: The Complete Short Films 1917-1923 (Eureka)

Recently gone out of print, this box set, which initially featured a hefty book to go alongside it, will be reissued soon by Eureka. Sadly, though company’s like Criterion have done a good job of putting out many of Charlie Chaplin’s finest films, a box set featuring his work and bringing it all together has largely been absent in the US. That’s why, when taking a look at the other king of silent film comedy, Buster Keaton, this box set was a revelation. This set spans from 1917 to 1923, the year in which he’d direct Our Hospitality, a major landmark in his career.

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Bringing together 36 short films, this is definitely the box set to grab if you’re wanting to learn more about Keaton and his work. It gives you an essential understanding of his techniques both as an actor and as a director, including some of his earliest work as a filmmaker, namely, in the form of One Week and Convict 13. The 184-page book will be missing from the upcoming reissue, but it’s still a box set that’s worthy of showcasing one of the silent era’s greatest stars and a great primer for anyone looking to learn more about Keaton.


Ingmar Bergman’s Cinema (Criterion Collection)

What many might consider the be-all-end-all of movie box sets, the Criterion Collection’s release of ‘Ingmar Bergman‘s Cinema’ is quite simply put, essential for film fans. It might just be the prime example when someone thinks of when they hear about the concept of film school in a DVD set. Criterion has done a lot of these types of releases, as this list could easily just have included their Agnès Varda or Jacques Demy box sets, which give a great understanding of the French New Wave.

Bergman is one of the titans of the film world, and having a largely comprehensive box set of almost all of his works is incredibly important. It’s easy to undersell how essential a release of this caliber is, but when you consider that you’re getting 39 films and a 248-page book, the amount of time you can spend learning about film simply through this set alone is staggering. Criterion explains that they arranged this set as a film festival, and it definitely shows in its design and execution.


Gamera: The Showa Era + Gamera: The Heisei Trilogy (Arrow Films)

Originally released as one big box set, Arrow’s Gamera output can now be found in two box sets, separating them into the Showa and Heisei era featuring the famous kaiju. Out of all the other picks on this list, this is probably the most unconventional box set to consider when you’re talking about a film education in DVD form. However, Japanese kaiju films are, no doubt, one of the more important genre staples in the film industry, and a major part of Japan’s cinematic output.

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Arrow, as they almost always do when it comes to genre filmmaking, goes all out with these sets. Criterion’s own release of a kaiju giant, Godzilla, is also a great set, but rather than highlighting that release, the focus on Gamera is important because of how comprehensive the set is. Both sets are packed with a wide variety of extras, as commentaries are present on every film, as well as archival features and documentaries. This is definitely a niche release in comparison to the Godzilla set, but it’s still one that is important when wanting to learn more about kaiju and its importance in film.

As the Blu-ray format continues to expand as far as publishers are concerned, even a more centered exploration of the industry has been undertaken, as genres like folk horror or lesser-known Japanese yokai films are examined. These alternative avenues for those studying film have opened up opportunities that were once almost always relegated to university classrooms. This is explored even more in detail when jumping into supplementary features on these discs, as, oftentimes, hours worth of extras including features from scholars and experts on the titles are included, allowing for continued exploration and understanding of these movies. As publishers continue to put together great projects in regards to their work, it speaks to the large chasm in between themselves and most conventional streaming services and shows the great service they can provide for budding cinephiles.


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Review: SAMARITAN, A Sly Stallone Superhero Stumble

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Review: SAMARITAN, A Sly Stallone Superhero Stumble

Hitting the three-quarter-century mark usually means a retirement home, a nursing facility, or if you’re lucky to be blessed with relatively good health and savings to match, living in a gated community in Arizona or Florida.

For Sylvester Stallone, however, it means something else entirely: starring in the first superhero-centered film of his decades-long career in the much-delayed Samaritan. Unfortunately for Stallone and the audience on the other side of the screen, the derivative, turgid, forgettable results won’t get mentioned in a career retrospective, let alone among the ever-expanding list of must-see entries in a genre already well past its peak.

For Stallone, however, it’s better late than never when it involves the superhero genre. Maybe in getting a taste of the MCU (Marvel Cinematic Universe) with his walk-on role in the Guardians of the Galaxy sequel several years ago, Stallone thought anything Marvel can do, I can do even better (or just as good in the nebulous definition of the word).

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The property Stallone and his team found for him, Samaritan, a little-known graphic novel released by a small, almost negligible, publisher, certainly takes advantage of Stallone’s brute-force physicality and his often underrated talent for near-monosyllabic brooding (e.g., the Rambo series), but too often gives him to little do or say as the lone super-powered survivor, the so-called “Samaritan” of the title, of a lifelong rivalry with his brother, “Nemesis.” Two brothers entered a fire-ravaged building and while both were presumed dead, one brother did survive (Stallone’s Joe Smith, a garbageman by day, an appliance repairman by night).

In the Granite City of screenwriter Bragi F. Schut (Escape Room, Season of the Witch), the United States, and presumably the rest of the world, teeters on economic and political collapse, with a recession spiraling into a depression, steady gigs difficult, if not impossible, to obtain, and the city’s neighborhoods rocked by crime and violence. No one’s safe, not even 13-year-old Sam (Javon Walker), Joe’s neighbor.

When he’s not dodging bullies connected to a gang, he’s falling under the undue influence of Cyrus (Pilou Asbæk), a low-rent gang leader with an outsized ego and the conviction that he and only he can take on Nemesis’s mantle and along with that mantle, a hammer “forged in hate,” to orchestrate a Bane-like plan to plunge the city into chaos and become a wealthy power-broker in the process.

Schut’s woefully underwritten script takes a clumsy, haphazard approach to world-building, relying on a two-minute animated sequence to open Samaritan while a naive, worshipful Sam narrates Samaritan and Nemesis’s supposedly tragic, Cain and Abel-inspired backstory. Schut and director Julius Avery (Overlord) clumsily attempt to contrast Sam’s childish belief in messiah-like, superheroic saviors stepping in to save humanity from itself and its own worst excesses, but following that path leads to authoritarianism and fascism (ideas better, more thoroughly explored in Watchmen and The Boys).

While Sam continues to think otherwise, Stallone’s superhero, 25 years past his last, fatal encounter with his presumably deceased brother, obviously believes superheroes are the problem and not the solution (a somewhat reasonable position), but as Samaritan tracks Joe and Sam’s friendship, Sam giving Joe the son he never had, Joe giving Sam the father he lost to street violence well before the film’s opening scene, it gets closer and closer to embracing, if not outright endorsing Sam’s power fantasies, right through a literally and figuratively explosive ending. Might, as always, wins regardless of how righteous or justified the underlying action.

It’s what superhero audiences want, apparently, and what Samaritan uncritically delivers via a woefully under-rendered finale involving not just unconvincing CGI fire effects, but a videogame cut-scene quality Stallone in a late-film flashback sequence that’s meant to be subversively revelatory, but will instead lead to unintentional laughter for anyone who’s managed to sit the entirety of Samaritan’s one-hour and 40-minute running time.

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Samaritan is now streaming worldwide on Prime Video.

Samaritan

Cast
  • Sylvester Stallone
  • Javon ‘Wanna’ Walton
  • Pilou Asbæk

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Matt Shakman Is In Talks To Direct ‘Fantastic Four’

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According to a new report, Wandavision’s Matt Shakman is in talks to direct the upcoming MCU project, Fantastic Four. Marvel Studios has been very hush-hush regarding Fantastic Four to the point where no official announcements have been made other than the film’s release date. No casting news or literally anything other than rumors has been released regarding the project. We know that Fantastic Four is slated for release on November 8th, 2024, and will be a part of Marvel’s Phase 6. There are also rumors that the cast of the new Fantastic Four will be announced at the D23 Expo on September 9th.

Fantastic Four is still over two years from release, and we assume we will hear more news about the project in the coming months. However, the idea of the Fantastic Four has already been introduced into the MCU. John Krasinski played Reed Richards aka Mr. Fantastic in Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness. The cameo was a huge deal for fans who have been waiting a long time for the Fantastic Four to enter the MCU. When Disney acquired Twenty Century Fox in 2019 we assumed that the Fox Marvel characters would eventually make their way into the MCU. It’s been 3 years and we already have had an X-Men and Fantastic Four cameo – even if they were from another universe.

Deadline is reporting that Wandavision’s Matt Shakman is in talks to direct Fantastic Four. Shakman served as the director for Wandavision and has had an extensive career. He directed two episodes of Game of Thrones and an episode of The Boys, and he had a long stint on It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia. There is nothing official yet, but Deadline’s sources say that Shakman is currently in talks for the job and things are headed in the right direction.

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To be honest, I was a bit more excited when Jon Watts was set to direct. I’m sure Shakman is a good director, but Watts proved he could handle a tentpole superhero film with Spider-Man: Homecoming. Wandavision was good, but Watts’ style would have been perfect for Fantastic Four. The film is probably one of the most anticipated films in Marvel’s upcoming slate films and they need to find the best person they can to direct. Is that Matt Shakman? It could be, but whoever takes the job must realize that Marvel has a lot riding on this movie. The other Fantastic Four films were awful and fans deserve better. Hopefully, Marvel knocks it out of the park as they usually do. You can see for yourself when Fantastic Four hits theaters on November 8th, 2024.

Film Synopsis: One of Marvel’s most iconic families makes it to the big screen: the Fantastic Four.

Source: Deadline

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Dan Aykroyd, Chevy Chase Star in ‘Zombie Town’ Mystery Teen Romancer (Exclusive)

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Dan Aykroyd and Chevy Chase have entered Zombie Town, a mystery teen romancer based on author R.L. Stine’s book of the same name.

The indie, now shooting in Ontario, also stars Henry Czerny and co-teen leads Marlon Kazadi and Madi Monroe. The ensemble cast includes Scott Thompson and Bruce McCulloch of the Canadian comedy show Kids in the Hall.

Canadian animator Peter Lepeniotis will direct Zombie Town. Stine’s kid’s book sees a quiet town upended when 12-year-old Mike and his friend, Karen, see a horror movie called Zombie Town and unexpectedly see the title characters leap off the screen and chase them through the theater.

Zombie Town will premiere in U.S. theaters before streaming on Hulu and then ABC Australia in 2023.

“We are delighted to bring the pages of R.L. Stine’s Zombie Town to the screen and equally thrilled to be working with such an exceptional cast and crew on this production. A three-time Nickelodeon Kids Choice Award winner with book sales of over $500 million, R.L. Stine has a phenomenal track record of crafting stories that engage and entertain audiences,” John Gillespie, Trimuse Entertainment founder and executive producer, said in a statement.

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Executive producers are Trimuse Entertainment, Toonz Media Group, Lookout Entertainment, Viva Pictures and Sons of Anarchy actor Kim Coates.  

Paco Alvarez and Mark Holdom of Trimuse negotiated the deal to acquire the rights to Stine’s Zombie Town book.

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