Category: DVD review

Image Entertainment and Milestone Films recently released the complete extant works of Winsor McCay on DVD, Winsor McCay: The Master Edition, totaling ten short films from 1911-1922. It’s a direct transfer of the region 2 DVD, so some PAL-to-NTSC ghosting occurs, but should only upset the purists. McCay, who was a respected New York Herald cartoonist, is considered to have been the first real master of animation, creating extended motion films with great detail and a surprisingly offbeat sense of humor. From large animals who devour everything in sight (a dragon, Gertie the dinosaur, a growing monster) to a …

Tod Browning is probably best remembered for directing BÈla Lugosi in Dracula (1931), but of the handful of his films I’ve seen, his most extraordinary are The Unknown (1927) and Freaks (1932), two movies that use the auspices of the horror convention to reveal complex notions about physical and social “normalcy.” Both films have been released as excellent DVDs in the US, Freaks just this week by Warner Home Video.

Browning was a Hollywood eccentric to be sure, a filmmaker who delved artfully into themes no other mainstream filmmaker seemed to touch, issues that were rooted in his past: at …

Grigori Kozintsev (1905-1973) is a filmmaker whose work I’ve long wanted to see, and thankfully, RusCiCo’s new 2-disc DVD set of his King Lear (1969) finally offers the opportunity. Although its NTSC version is PAL-sourced and therefore exhibits subtle ghosting, its solid widescreen transfer and original mono soundtrack (something RusCiCo has been previously known to abandon) make it a welcome video release.

As a true child of the Revolution, Kozintsev writes in his autobiography of his school days during the Russian Civil War: “Our teachers described the flora and fauna of Africa, explained the conjugation of Latin verbs; and meanwhile …

My pal John Torvi up in Calgary keeps me up-to-date with the latest developments in the animation scene, and he has sent in this report concerning Pioneer’s new DVD release of Haibane Renmei, a Japanese anime series that’s getting rave reviews across the board. Here’s John. –Doug

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By John Torvi

I am fortunate in my volunteer work at the Quickdraw Animation Society to be able to peruse some of the stuff that is coming through our video library before it goes on the shelves for the membership. Found another gem–the Japanese TV series entitled Haibane Renmei…

I haven’t seen The Day After Tomorrow, and given its scathing reviews, I don’t intend to any time soon, but seeing Rialto’s new print of the original Godzilla (1954) last night (certainly a much smoother, dramatically cohere film than its American makeover), I found myself pondering end-of-the-earth films in general, and one my own favorite entries in the genre, Val Guest’s The Day the Earth Caught Fire (1961), in particular.

Available as a superb DVD from Anchor Bay (with a beautiful widescreen transfer and Guest commentary), the movie is an unusually literate and thematically nuanced genre film. Peter Stenning …

I’m finally getting caught up on my writing projects. The following essay is part of a full review of New Yorker Video’s new A Man Escaped DVD (to be released on May 25) posted at www.robert-bresson.com –Doug

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Robert Bresson’s 1956 masterpiece, A Man Escaped (Un condamnÈ ‡ mort s’est ÈchappÈ), is based on a book of the same name published the same year by AndrÈ Devigny, a Catholic French Resistance fighter in WWII. The book recounts Devigny’s true-life laborious escape attempt from the Gestapo’s Fort Montluc prison in occupied Lyon in 1943. While Bresson’s …