get yr release on

Nevermind the Nolans and and the Bales.
Tim and Michelle have got this.

- Back to the Future (series)(special edition)
- Batman (1989, directed by Tim Burton)(2 DVD special edition)
- Batman & Robin (2 DVD special edition)
- Batman Forever (2 DVD special edition)
- Batman Returns (2 DVD special edition)
- Black Orpheus – (Criterion Collection directed by Marcel Camus)
- Blindness (2008)
- Chocolate (2008)
- The Enforcer (1995)
- Essential Art House Vol. 2 (Criterion Collection)
- The Exterminating Angel (Criterion Collection directed by Luis Buñuel)
- Fist of the Warrior (2006)
- The 400 Blows – (Criterion Collection directed by Francois Truffaut)
- Frozen River
- Ikiru – (Criterion Collection directed by Akira Kurosawa)
- La Strada (Criterion Collection directed by Federico Fellini)
- The Life and Death of Colonel Blimp (Criterion Collection directed by Michael Powell/Emeric Pressburger)
- The Lodger (1927) (directed by Alfred Hitchcock)
- Miracle at St. Anna
- My Name Is Bruce
- Nights in Rodanthe
- Ode to Billie Joe (1976)
- Otto: Or Up With Dead People
- The Paradine Case (directed by Alfred Hitchcock)
- Pygmalion (1938) (Criterion Collection directed by Anthony Asquith)
- Sabotage (directed by Alfred Hitchcock)
- Simon of the Desert (Criterion Collection directed by Luis Buñuel)
- Soul Men (2008)
- W.
- Young and Innocent (directed by Alfred Hitchcock)



Dex does W. :
Though Oliver Stone's attempt to deconstruct Bush Time provides us with another marvelous performance from Josh Brolin - who is now three-for-three in his interpretations of surly white guys who've found themselves walled off from the rest of the world - what W. needed was a shot of Natural Born Killers' (1993) faux-transgressive-zaniness: in spite of the piles of dead bodies, ruined lives, shattered ecosystems, massive graft, and an economy that's been blown out like a bad knee, it seemed impossible for anyone else to take the last eight years seriously - did I mention all those dead Iraqis? - so shit, why start now? Stone has always been a good director of actors, so stick around for Brolin's clenched Chief Exec, who only stops buzzing with frustration and self-consciousness when he's stretched out with the dogs watching sports or cuddling with Laura (Elizabeth Banks). But be warned that W. peters out quick with tinkly pianos, humorless, expository dialogue, and way too much bleating about unloved sons (again).

Patrick on 2 by Buñuel:

Finally available are two of Buñuel's best, his Twin Towers of anti-(whatever), taking apart bourgeois manners and genitility and religious piety respectively in The Exterminating Angel and Simon of the Desert. Like all the surrealists, Buñuel is primarily concerned with l'amour fou - with that surrealist goal of removing barriers to free expression, barriers that social classism and religious dogma are key in erecting and maintaining; in Freudian terms, in freeing the primal drive of the id from the restrictions of both one's own ego and (especially) the cultural super-ego. I'm gonna just assume you either know the general outlines of the plots (such at they are) or can find them readily enough and move on to thematics, which are explored nowhere in his catalog more extensively than they are here.

Angel gives us a simple, absurd situation in which our interpid bourgeois are inexplicably trapped and their conventional behavior quickly falls away, shown up as useless, pointless trappings with no purpose in the real world where primal needs take precedence over any manners. Buñuel's methods are simple - once the situation is established, he hangs a stream of jokes, flights of fancy, primal imagery and slow advancement of plot toward the climax off the rudimentary structure of the frustrated group. But once they've been through the cathartic events and find themselves in a similar situation to one they'd encountered before, they have ostensibly found their way out via their experiences, possibly having learned something.

Equally trapped in his self-imposed exile on a pole is Simon, modeled after the 5th century Saint Simeon Stylites, whose ascetic removal from earthly needs to devote himself to piety also sets himself apart from the reality of the world, where miracles rate as only "not bad." He's tempted left and right by the Devil in many forms, but mainly as Silvia Pinal in a number of disguises. Like the Viridiana she played in an earlier Buñuel classic or Francisco Rabal's Nazarin, he's at odds with the way things work, and he's shown - though not without some admiration - as absurd, as someone whose faith prevents them in classic Buñuelian fashion from fulfilling his basic needs, his desires, his l'amour fou.

Frustration is the watchword with Buñuel, the thread that winds its way throughout his entire catalog from beginning to end, and this pair of films, finally making their way to a region 1 DVD via Criterion, are as good as he ever got.