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Release: January 11, 2022

$7.99

Description

The Danish Dogme 95 movement that struck world cinema like a thunderbolt began with The Celebration, the international breakthrough by Thomas Vinterberg, a lacerating chamber drama that uses the economic and aesthetic freedoms of digital video to achieve annihilating emotional intensity. On a wealthy man’s sixtieth birthday, a sprawling group of family and friends convenes at his country estate for a celebration that soon spirals into bedlam, as bombshell revelations threaten to tear away the veneer of bourgeois respectability and expose the traumas roiling beneath. The dynamic handheld camera work, grainy natural lighting, cacophonous diegetic sound, and raw performance style that would become Dogme hallmarks enhance the shattering visceral impact of this caustic indictment of patriarchal failings, which swings between blackest comedy and bleakest tragedy as it turns the sick soul of a family inside out. DIRECTOR-APPROVED TWO-BLU-RAY SPECIAL EDITION FEATURES 2K digital restoration, approved by director Thomas Vinterberg, with uncompressed monaural soundtrack Audio commentary from 2005 featuring Vinterberg New interview with Vinterberg Two early short films by Vinterberg: Last Round (1993) and The Boy Who Walked Backwards (1995) The Purified, a 2002 documentary about Dogme 95, featuring interviews with Vinterberg and filmmakers Søren Kragh-Jacobsen, Kristian Levring, and Lars von Trier Program in which Vinterberg discusses the real-life inspiration for the film Documentaries featuring members of the cast and crew at the film’s premiere in Copenhagen and reflecting back on the production ADM:DOP, a 2003 documentary profile of cinematographer Anthony Dod Mantle Deleted scenes, with optional audio commentary by Vinterberg Trailer PLUS: An essay by critic and author Michael Koresky

Release: June 9, 2009

$6.99

Description

Product Description Clive Owen and Naomi Watts star in an adrenaline-pumping, action-packed thrill ride about a man determined to deliver justice to a corrupt international arms-dealing ringthat funds worldwide genocide and terrorism...no matter the cost! Amazon.com The International is actually two movies in one: A highbrow thriller about a sprawling bank that resorts to murder and arms sales to retain its power, and a sleek visual essay on how architecture and interior design shapes your perceptions. Interpol agent Louis Salinger (Clive Owen, still not quite a star despite Inside Man and Children of Men) has been on the brink of conclusive evidence against the villainous international bank, but his sources always end up dead. With the aid of a Manhattan district attorney (Naomi Watts in a woefully underwritten part), he stumbles on the trail of the bank's favorite hit man, who might provide the (literally) smoking gun Louis needs. The International starts out smooth and silky, with visual style to burn and Owen's intense fervor. The plot gradually bogs down in incoherent moralizing, but along the way there are some taut sequences, including a bloody shootout in the Guggenheim Museum where alliances shift unexpectedly. But what makes The International worth seeing is director Tom Tykwer's astute eye for public space: Chic postmodern buildings, broad Italian plazas, Turkish rooftops like mountain paths--Tykwer orchestrates actors through these architectural shapes, his hypnotic visual sense creating far more tension and excitement than the plot. Also featuring Armin Mueller-Stahl (Eastern Promises) and Ulrich Thomsen (The Celebration) as malevolent Europeans. --Bret Fetzer Stills from The International (click for larger image)