News broke on Friday that UK independent distributors Tartan Films has gone into administration. Tartan’s closure reportedly leaves all of the company’s staff redundant and apparently affects both Tartan Films (theatrical) and Tartan Video (home entertainment) divisions. Reports says employees arrived for work on Thursday to find the London office doors shut and were informed later in the day by boss Hamish McAlpine that the company had closed for business.
Tartan has been one of the most well-regarded independent DVD labels over the last few years, with the extra yard taken with audio-visual presentation including DTS soundtracks pretty much as standard. The news will be a blow to DVD and Blu-ray collectors, with Tartan recently having adopted the hi-def format. It remains to be seen what will become of Tartan’s impressive back catalogue, that includes a host of cult and Asian cinema hits including Oldboy and Lady Vengeance.
Tartan’s US division was closed down earlier this month with its 100-strong back catalogue sold off to Palisades Media.
DVD & Blu-ray Review would like to offer our condolences to the staff of Tartan who now find themselves out of work and thank them for the sterling DVDs they have sent our way in recent years. We will bring you news of further developments as they happen.
Thursday June 26, 2008
Win! There Will Be Blood and A Complete Blu-ray Set-up!
It's a gusher! Epic neo-Western There Will Be Blood is out to own on DVD and Blu-ray from July 7th. To celebrate we've got an amazing giveway: win a copy of the Blu-ray disc, a 42” Plasma Screen TV and a Panasonic Profile 1.1 Blu-ray player!
This season’s hot new look for the movie nerd in your life unveiled, in a genius collection of HEAVY T-shirts that go up to 11:
You can buy them from here, although living in the US might help a bit with the postage costs. I am hankering after a ROEG one, in the style of the RUSH logo, myself...
Win! Fido on DVD!
Here Fido! Sit! Good Zombie... Billy Connolly stars in this offbeat zomedy out to own on DVD this week. We've got five copies to give away....
Here’s a first. Pakistan’s first-ever splatter flick to be exact. Banned in its home country, Hell’s Ground arrives on Region 2 DVD in August through TLA Releasing.
Directed by Omar Khan, the premise to Hell’s Ground (aka Zibahkhana) sounds not dissimilar to your common or garden western stalk’n’slash movie: group of good-looking teens take off in a van; van runs out of fuel; teens stranded in woods where they’re prey to some unstoppable, unspeakable terror.
That it throws in ‘rotting, flesh-eating zombies’, a ‘decapitated head-toting, screaming banshee-like hitchhiker’, midgets and cannibalism for good measure is probably no bad thing.
But where Hell’s Ground differs from yer average Texas Chain Saw Massacre-derived horror is in featuring a crazed killer in a blood-spattered burqa swinging a spiked mace. Perhaps predictably, it’s led to the Pakistan authorities banning the movie. Still, gore fans and the curious alike will be able to pick it up from 4 August with extras including a featurette, behind-the-scenes premiere footage, TV promo trailers and a photo gallery.
For more on the colourful background to Hell’s Ground, check out this story from Time magazine. Hell's Ground will be reviewed in a future issue of DVD & Blu-ray Review.
Tuesday June 24, 2008
Readers' Reviews - We Want You!
Fancy yourself as a budding critic?
Read one of our reviews and thought we were talking rubbish?
Fancy getting your name and picture published in DVD & Blu-ray Review and bagging a free DVD for your trouble?
We've got a new 'Reader Review' section in the Chatroom pages of the magazine and we want your contributions. If you've read something we wrote and want to disagree, if you've seen something you loved and just want to rave about it, or if you just feel like flexing your critical muscles and getting your name in the mag, send us your reviews.
Reviews should be about 220 words long and every one we publish will win a free DVD.
You can submit reviews to us via email at dvdbr@futurenet.co.uk and don't forget to include your contact details so we can mail out your DVD if you review is published!
Caught On The Web: Modern Android Cybernaut
Welcome to this month's Caught On the Web. As you'll see from the shiny new issue of DVD & Blu-ray Review, already with subscribers and hitting the shops on Thursday, we're celebrating all things Terminator. So come on, do the Robot...
First up: A robo-heavy music video created for the audio track of the same name by the Robotmakers. Now we know what a futuristic Charles Foster Kane would look like...
Caught On The Web: IG-88: The Dancing Robot
Star Wars films aren’t all Jedi action. Mixmaster Lobot spins a sweet tune to get your groove on, while bounty hunter IG-88 does the robot in this top musical animation.
Anyone who’s seen The Simpsons episode ‘Bart The Daredevil’ can’t fail to get a shiver down their spine when they mutter the word “Truckasaurus”. See a real life version in action here.
Monday June 23, 2008
Cat Blanchett
This is amusing. And evil.
Win! The Ultimate Blu-ray Rambo Collection!
If strong graphic bloody violence and big explosions are your kind of thing, then you’re eyes are in for a treat in hi-def! Haven’t upgraded to Blu-ray yet? No problem, the Ultimate Rambo Collection is up for grabs on DVD too...
We caught up with director Peter Berg who was in town for the premiere of Hancock last week, and we thought we might take the opportunity to have a wee chat about another production he is undertaking that has had sci-fi fans twitching – Dune...
“We’re just starting with writers now, I’ve been impressed with the intensity of the Dune fans offering me their comments and their postings and the way they’ve been sending me letters. My feeling is that having read the book twice cover to cover,which I wonder whether some of these guys have actually done, it’s a great adventure tale, it’s a big, rough, fun, intense, dramatic tale. I think if you reread the book and look at even the original Star Wars you’ll see that George Lucas borrowed heavily from Frank Herbert. The Force is as much Frank Herbert as anything I’ve ever read.”
And asked whether we can expect a lavish, blockbuster-scale production this is what Berg had to say...
“What I love about Dune is there’s a real human quality to that book that gets lost if it’s all just scope. Obviously there is scope, y’know, there’s 100 metre monster earth worms that come up, they’re the most ferocious creatures ever put on film…”
Hancock is out in cinemas on 2 July, and will be coming to DVD and Blu-ray soon.
Friday June 20, 2008
Hollywood Goes Shopping
DVD shoppers at HMV in London’s Covent Garden had a bit of a surprise recently when thesps from theatre company Teatro Vivo performed impromptu re-enactments of iconic scenes from movies including Pulp Fiction, Scream, Chicago and Clerks.
The stunt was part of a promotion for Miramax, which is reissuing its back catalogue – including the four flicks above – in new packaging. For your info, HMV is running a ‘2 for £10’ offer on all Miramax DVDs until Sunday 6 July.
Punters were understandably bemused, bewildered and entertained by the actors’ unexpected renditions of classic moments including the Pulp Fiction diner sequence, Jay and Silent Bob’s stoned banter from Clerks and the opening Drew Barrymore phone-call from Scream. Check out these clips for evidence...
“When you’ve danced with her, you stay danced with...”
...That’s what Fred Astaire had to say of Cyd Charisse – the legendary lassie with the classy chassis and the legs that “went on for days”, who sadly passed away on Tuesday from heart failure at the age of 87. Leaving the Ballet Russes for Hollywood in 1943, Cyd partnered Astaire and the era’s other legendary hoofer, Gene Kelly, bringing her smouldering beauty and show-stoppingly precise performances to golden-age musicals like The Band Wagon, Silk Stockings, It’s Always Fair Weather and, of course, Singin’ In The Rain.
She had the kind of range, style and grace that knocks today's wooden-legged, lumpen-footed losers from Dancing With The Stars into Kelly’s artfully cocked hat. At one point, Cyd’s pins were insured for $5 million, and you can see why. Here she is dancing with John Brascia in Meet Me In Las Vegas – mere words do not do her justice...
Ted Turner is surely rubber-stamping an MGM retrospective DVD boxset as we speak. They don’t make them like this any more, that’s for sure...
