Description: J. (George Segal, Where's Poppa?) was a hairdresser until his escalating heroin addiction broke up his family and overtook his life. In filmmaker Ivan Passer's Fun City-set Born to Win, J. and his friend and fellow junkie Billy Dynamite (Jay Fletcher, Foxy Brown), are reduced to running scams all over town together, desperately angling for their next fix. When a free-spirited young woman (Karen Black, Easy Rider) falls for J., it seems they might have a chance to escape this bleak world together, but J.'s addiction means they are never too far from the reach of a merciless drug dealer and pimp (Hector Elizondo, The Taking of Pelham 1-2-3) and a relentless narcotics cop (Robert De Niro, Taxi Driver). In the supporting cast, are Paula Prentiss (The Stepford Wives) as J.'s estranged wife, who turns tricks to support her habit, and, in one of his first roles, Burt Young (Rocky) as a hoodlum.
After directing his acclaimed debut film Intimate Lighting in his native Czechoslovakia, Passer fled to America, following the Warsaw Pact invasion of his homeland. He teamed with playwright and novelist David Scott Milton and producer-star Segal to make Born to Win, his first English-language film. Over fifty years after its initial release, it stands as one of the quintessential and most influential cinematic portrayals of the down-and-out New York City of the early 1970s, and some of its less fortunate inhabitants. For this first-ever Blu-ray release, Born to Win has been restored in 2K from its 35mm interpositive, beautifully preserving the film's indelible images of a New York that otherwise exists only in our memories.
Special Features and Technical Specs:
EXCLUSIVE NEW 2K RESTORATION FROM AN INTERPOSITIVE
Theatrical trailer
Booklet with a new essay by film archivist and writer Justin LaLiberty
Newly recorded audio commentary by Jason Bailey and Michael Hull of the Fun City Cinema podcast
English subtitles
REGION-A "LOCKED"
FROM PARTNER LABEL CANADIAN INTERNATIONAL PICTURES:
Description: Seasoned drug smuggler and thief François "Chico" Tremblay (Panic's Marc Legault) is tired of his modest lifestyle. Given the opportunity to earn $50,000 killing a prominent New York City gangster, he leaps at the opportunity, ignoring the warnings of Montreal's leading mob boss, who has forbidden local criminals from taking the assignment. Upon his return, Chico discovers he is being pursued from all sides, prompting an unlikely response: he calls a local talk radio show and starts revealing the mafia's most carefully guarded secrets. As his revelations get more shocking, so do the tactics of his adversaries, culminating in a devastating gut punch of a finale.
Bringing seedy authenticity to his depiction of organized crime, director Jacques Godbout (YUL 871) reached new heights with this urgent, fatalistic gangster odyssey. Landing somewhere between the American and European crime films of the '70s, The Mob (La gammick) is propelled into constant crisis by its uniquely unscrupulous protagonist – and those determined to avenge his indiscretions. Almost completely unseen outside of Quebec, this is a lost Canadian classic.
In addition to The Mob, this disc includes Godbout's previous film – the madcap hockey-themed Les « troubbes » de Johnny – and Criminels québécois, a new collection of Quebec crime film trailers from the '60s and '70s, highlighting overlooked gems from Denys Arcand, Gilles Carle, Jean-Claude Lord, and several other notable auteurs of the era.
Special Features and Technical Specs:
EXCLUSIVE NEW 2K RESTORATION FROM AN INTERPOSITIVE
Criminels québécois - A collection of Quebec crime film trailers from the '60s and '70s (39 min.)
Les « troubbes » de Johnny (1974, 21 min.)
Bonus short: Hunger (1974, 11 min.)
Booklet featuring an essay by Fantasia programmer Marc Lamothe and a new interview with director Jacques Godbout
Description: David Lee Shepard loves his mother. He's a good boy who wants to make his mother proud. But he also wants to videotape himself strangling prostitutes. From one beautiful corpse to the next, Lieutenant Jerry Delvechio is getting closer to David. A reckless news reporter and a fatally friendly young woman get caught up in the mayhem. ,br>
Special Features and Technical Specs:
Full-length commentary with first assistant cameraman David Akin, moderated by film historian Brad Henderson
Interview with band The Insatiables
Interview with actor John Fertitta
Interview with first assistant cameraman David Akin
The Insatiables "Black and White" music video, featuring scenes from Video Murders
Original VHS audition footage featuring John Fertitta, Lee Larrimore, Virginia Loridans, Tracy Murrell, Frank Baggett, and Jim McCullough Jr.
Description: Suspecting that people are transforming into malevolent shape-shifters, Wyatt flees to New York City to seek out his estranged childhood friend Christian. As the mysterious horrors close in on Wyatt, he questions whether to protect his only friend from an impending war, or from himself. A genre-bending story of love, loyalty and living nightmares.
Description: It's one debacle after another for Alma (newcomer Sara Luna Zorić). When her long-estranged father is hospitalized in his native Bosnia, a not-quite-headstrong young woman leaves her home in The Netherlands to visit him. When she lands at the airport with a few Bosnian phrases and a new dress, her distracted older cousin Emir neglects to drive her to the hospital, preferring to hang out with his buddy Denis, "who has a girlfriend, so don't even think about it." After dyeing her hair and outlasting her patience, she hits the road on her own, quickly losing her luggage, her money, and her mooring. Along a bizarre chain of events and interactions with a cast of road-weary characters, Alma faces disappointment after disappointment with devil-may-care detachment and a newfound maturity.
In its breathless series of hotels, cars, buses, and waiting rooms, Take Me Somewhere Nice captures the dreary, fish-out-of-water isolation of the unfamiliar highway. An endearing update of Chantal Akerman's Les Rendez-Vous d'Anna, fused with the jazzy cynicism of Wim Wenders' and Jim Jarmusch's 70's road movies, and the stark, sunlit despair of a David Hockney painting. Recipient of the Special Jury Prize at the Rotterdam Film Festival, Take Me Somewhere Nice is the unpredictable, neon-tinted feature debut for Ena Sendijarević, a Bosnian-born refugee raised in Holland who is now one of Dutch cinema's fastest rising talents. Her film's breezy wit and pastel color palette disguise dark truths about national identity, gender, and coming-of-age, making it the first essential road movie about the TikTok generation.
Special Features and Technical Specs:
Interviews with filmmaker Ena Sendijarevic and actress Sara Luna Zoric
IMPORT (2016) - Short Film
FERNWEH (2014) - Short Film
TRAVELERS IN THE NIGHT (2013) - Short Film
Theatrical Trailer
Booklet essay featuring Artist Milos Trakilovic in conversation with End Sendijarevic
Description: Issachar and Zabulon, two brothers in their twenties, are supremely stupid and never bored, as madness is part of their daily lives. When they lose their mother's beloved dog, they have 24 hours to find him - or she will kick them out.
Special Features and Technical Specs:
Nathalie vous nique tous ("Nathalie Fucks You All")
Feature w/ sidecar subs
Trailer w/ sidecar subs
Short Film: La Brigade du Kiff ("Radio Kiff")
Tigre Blanc - beau gosse
Tigre Blanc - J'ai besoin d'amour
Le Pierre Azoulay Show
Collection of Mini-Shorts
"Qui m'a mis dans le puits" The Song in Mother Schmuckers
Description: Other Music was an influential and uncompromising New York City record store that was vital to the city's early 2000s indie music scene. But when the store is forced to close its doors due to rent increases, the homogenization of urban culture, and the shift from CDs to downloadable and streaming music, a cultural landmark is lost. Through vibrant storytelling, the documentary captures the record store's vital role in the musical and cultural life of the city, and highlights the artists whose careers it helped launch including Vampire Weekend, Animal Collective, Interpol, Yeah Yeah Yeahs, William Basinski, Neutral Milk Hotel, Sharon Van Etten, Yo La Tengo and TV On The Radio.
Directed by: Puloma Basu, Rob Hatch-Miller. Starring: Tunde Adebimpe (TV On the Radio), William Basinski (composer), Panda Bear, Avey Tare & Geologist (Animal Collective), Matt Berninger (The National), Stuart Braithwaite (Mogwai), James Chance (The Contortions), Brian Chase (Yeah Yeah Yeahs), Benicio Del Toro (actor), Janeane Garofalo (comedian), Martin Gore (Depeche Mode), Daniel Kessler (Interpol), Ezra Koenig (Vampire Weekend), Mac McCaughan (Superchunk), Stephin Merritt (Magnetic Fields), Keigo Oyamada (Cornelius), JD Samson (Le Tigre), Jason Schwartzman (actor), Regina Spektor (singer/sonwriter), Dean Wareham (Galaxie 500/Luna) and more...
Special Features and Technical Specs:
Extras reel with deleted scenes featuring Jason Schwartzman, Daniel Kessler from Interpol, William Basinski and performances by Gary Wilson, Revl9n, Bill Callahan and Handsome Boy Modeling School
Commentary by Puloma Basu, Rob Hatch-Miller, Duane Harriott, Josh Madell and Chris Vanderloo
Trailer
38-page booklet featuring an Oral History of Other Music, an essay by Tom Scharpling and the 100 albums to check out after you watch the documentary
Description: The strange story of David Huggins, a 72 year-old Hoboken man who claims to have had a lifetime of encounters with otherworldly beings - including an interspecies romance with an extra-terrestrial woman (with whom he lost his virginity to), and chronicled it all in surreal impressionist paintings, few of which have ever been seen.
Filmed in an intimate, nonjudgemental style, Love and Saucers lets David tell his story, and in turn lets the audience decide what is fact, fiction, and everything in-between.
Special Features and Technical Specs:
Audio commentary with director Brad Abrahams and producer Matt Ralston
Q&A with David Huggins
Zoom interviews with: David Huggins, Robert Crumb, Richard Hatem, Rob Kristofferson, Munn Powell, Killer Acid, Julian Feeld, Jeffrey Kripal, Derk Renemen and Brad Phillips
Description: A marauding, muscle-bound burglar named Frank the Tank violently invades the home of an elderly woman who promptly turns the tables; killing him with a shotgun and burying his corpse in her backyard before abruptly dropping dead from a heart attack. Several years later, a group of young friends unsuspectingly vacation together at the aforementioned beach house. When their new, witchcraft obsessed acquaintance Token attempts to conjure up a rain spell, she inadvertently brings Frank the Tank back from the grave. One by one the guests are gruesomely dispatched by the wise cracking, pizza-faced, undead burglar in a staggering flurry of maniacal murder and mayhem.
A seminal SOV standout from the early '90s mail order horror boom, Burglar From Hell built a dedicated following in the underground with its riotous mix of practical splatter effects, low-brow toilet humor, gratuitous nudity, and unexpected attempts at social commentary. An engaging time capsule of 1990s Queens, New York that is notable as the feature debut of indie scream queen Debbie D. (Eaten Alive: A Tasteful Revenge), Burglar From Hell helped put filmmaker Phil Herman (Tales Till The End) and his Falcon Video collective on the micro-budget map and continues to intrigue audiences with its endearing homespun charms and bewildering bouts of camcorder phantasmagoria.
Note: This feature was shot and edited on video. Please be advised that the transfer quality is confined by the limitations of the format.
Special Features and Technical Specs:
NEW TRANSFER from the recently unearthed SVHS master tape
Audio commentary with writer / director Phil Herman
"A Chip Off the Old Block" - an interview with director Phil "Chip" Herman
"From Pop Scene to Scream Queen" - an interview with actress Debbie D.
"Rockaway Beach Memoirs" - an interview with actor Barry Gaines
"Frank the Tank Speaks!" - an interview with actor Bryant Sohl
Bonus movie: THE WRONG SIDE OF TOWN (1989) - Phil Herman's previously unreleased SOV action feature debut! -- Newly scanned from the SVHS master (64 min.)
"Mercenary" - an early short film by Phil Herman (19 min.)
Description: Before there was Tom Green...before there was Jackass...there was Ralph Zavadil. His Canadian cable access show, The Cap'n Video Show, ran from 1990 to 1995, spawning a small but loyal cult following. Each week, Ralph performed a series of idiotic and occasionally dangerous stunts, challenging the sensibilities of his small audience for five seasons. With the advent of the internet and reality television still years away, his unique brand of gross-out stunt comedy was truly ahead of its time. All it took was a broken neck for him to get noticed.
Now, thirteen years after his show disappeared from the airwaves, Ralph decides to give the Cap'n one last chance in a brand new anniversary special shot for the same cable station that cancelled him years earlier. Together with his best friend Robert, Ralph attempts to recapture the magic that made him a local hero so many year ago, while confronting some of the unexpected - and sometimes dark - turns his life has taken since his days on Cable 10.
Description: Horny monsters, erotic dancers, lonely youths, mourning lovers, and people who just wanna party. Yann Gonzalez's cinema is full of unique islands with exciting characters, gorgeous cinematography, and hypnotic sonic arenas. Before Knife+Heart, these short films would go on to win Yann a devoted cult following and awards at festivals like the Queer Palm winning Islands. Working closely with the director we've compiled seven of his short works here as a main program (many newly restored in HD) and an appendix of music videos and other works.
Also included is the English-language blu-ray premiere of Gonzalez's first feature film You and the Night featuring The Stud, The Teen, The Slut, and The Star as guests at a pansexual orgy thrown by the mysterious and sexy ménage-a-trois of Mathias, Ali, & Udo. You and the Night is an erotic and wild take on The Breakfast Club with each character baring their inner souls to the group to find acceptance and love. An original score by M83 sets the dreamy and transcendent tone for the eternal night. Also featuring a kinky cameo by the legendary Béatrice Dalle (Betty Blue).
The Islands of Yann Gonzalez
Special Features and Technical Specs:
Four Music Videos
Four Other Works
Compilation Trailer
Other Trailers
20-page booklet featuring an interview with Director Yann Gonzalez by poetess Élodie Petit and 'Notes on the Program' by Yann Gonzalez