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Release: April 26, 2016

$6.99

Description

Seeking to invigorate the American documentary format, which he felt was rote and uninspired, Robert Drew brought the style and vibrancy he had fostered as a Life magazine correspondent to filmmaking in the late fifties. He did this by assembling an amazing team including such eventual nonfiction luminaries as Richard Leacock (Louisiana Story), D. A. Pennebaker (Dont Look Back), and Albert Maysles (Grey Gardens) that would transform documentary cinema. In 1960, the group was granted direct access to John F. Kennedy, filming him on the campaign trail and eventually in the Oval Office. This resulted in three films of remarkable, behind-closed-doors intimacy Primary, Adventures on the New Frontier, and Crisis and, following the president s assassination, the poetic short Faces of November. Collected here are all four of these titles, early exemplars of the movement known as Direct Cinema and featuring the greatest close-up footage we have of this American icon. BLU-RAY SPECIAL EDITION FEATURES - New 2K digital restorations of all four films, with uncompressed monaural soundtracks - Alternate, twenty-six-minute cut of Primary, edited by filmmaker Richard Leacock - Audio commentary on the Leacock edit of Primary, featuring Leacock and filmmakers Robert Drew and D. A. Pennebaker, recorded in conversation with film critic Gideon Bachmann in 1961 - Robert Drew in His Own Words, a new documentary featuring archival interview footage - New conversation between Pennebaker and Jill Drew, Robert Drew s daughter-in-law and the general manager of Drew Associates - Outtakes from Crisis, along with a discussion by historian Andrew Cohen, author of Two Days in June - New conversation about Crisis featuring former U.S. attorney general Eric Holder and Sharon Malone, Holder s wife and the sister of Vivian Malone, one of the students featured in Crisis - New interview with Richard Reeves, author of President Kennedy: Profile of Power - Footage from a 1998 event at the Museum of Tolerance in Los Angeles, featuring Drew, Pennebaker, Leacock, and filmmaker Albert Maysles - PLUS: An essay by documentary film curator and writer Thomas Powers

Release: September 24, 2019

$6.99

Description

Boxing Wednesdays. Wrestling on Fridays. Stoker Thompson is on Paradise City's Wednesday card, fighting after the main event. He's been 20 years in the game and is sure he's just one punch away from big paydays. But there's one thing Stoker doesn't yet know: his manager wants him to take a dive tonight. The Set-Up comes out swinging as one of the great films about the so-called sweet science. Robert Wise directs, shaping real-time events into an acclaimed and unsparing film-noir look at the stale-air venues, bloodthirsty fans, ring savagery and delusional dreams of boxing's palooka world. Robert Ryan embraces perhaps his fi nest screen hour as Stoker. Audrey Totter, an icon of the noir genre like Ryan, plays Stoker's steadfast wife. In a sport that would take their last flicker of dignity, the Thompsons are reclaiming theirs.

Release: February 28, 2012

$7.99

Description

In the nineties, André Gregory mounted a series of spare, private performances of Anton Chekhov’s Uncle Vanya in a crumbling Manhattan playhouse. These treasures of pure theater would have been lost to time had they not been captured on film, with subtle cinematic brilliance, by Louis Malle (My Dinner with André). In Vanya On 42nd Street, a stellar cast of actors—including Wallace Shawn, Julianne Moore, Brooke Smith, and George Gaynes—embark on a full read-through of Uncle Vanya (adapted into English by David Mamet); the result is as memorable and emotional a screen version of Chekhov’s masterpiece as one could ever hope to see. This film, which turned out to be Malle’s last, is a tribute to the playwright’s devastating work as well as to the creative process itself.