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Juniper Tree, The
Studio: Arbelos Films
Format: Blu-ray
SRP: $39.99 |
Catalog #:
AR0003BD
UPC #: 663390003299 |
An unsung talent in her lifetime, director, professor and Fulbright scholar
Nietzchka Keene’s stark, stunning debut feature THE JUNIPER TREE is loosely
based on a Brothers Grimm fairy tale of the same name, and stars Björk in her
first on-screen performance. The film premiered to glowing reviews at the
Sundance Film Festival in 1991 and led Keene to further direct HEROINE OF HELL
(1996) starring Catherine Keener and BAREFOOT TO JERUSALEM (2008), the latter
completed after her tragically early death in 2004. Set in medieval
Iceland, THE JUNIPER TREE follows Margit (Björk in a riveting performance) and
her older sister Katla (Bryndis Petra Bragadottir) as they flee for safety after
their mother is burned to death for witchcraft. Finding shelter and protection
with Johan (Valdimar Orn Fygenring), and his resentful young son, Jonas
(Geirlaug Sunna Pormar), the sisters help form an impromptu family unit that’s
soon strained by Katla’s burgeoning sorcery. Photographed entirely on location
in the stunning landscapes of Iceland in spectacular black-and-white by Randy
Sellars, THE JUNIPER TREE is a deeply atmospheric film, evocative of Carl
Theodor Dreyer’s DAY OF WRATH and Ingmar Bergman’s THE VIRGIN SPRING, and filled
with indelible waking dream sequences (courtesy of legendary experimental
filmmaker Pat O’Neill). A potent allegory for misogyny and its attendant
tragedies, THE JUNIPER TREE is a major rediscovery for art house audiences.
New restoration by the Wisconsin Center for Film & Theater Research and The Film
Foundation, with funding provided by the George Lucas Family Foundation.
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Last Movie, The
Studio: Arbelos Films
Format: Blu-ray
SRP: $39.99 |
Catalog #:
AR0001BD
UPC #: 663390002575 |
New 4K restoration. Dennis Hopper’s radical, much-mythologized lost
masterpiece – widely unseen for nearly 50 years until now! Consciously
self-reflexive and co-written by Hopper and REBEL WITHOUT A CAUSE screenwriter
Stewart Stern, THE LAST MOVIE follows a Hollywood movie crew in the midst of
making a western in a remote Peruvian village. When production wraps, Hopper, as
the baleful stuntman Kansas, remains, attempting to find redemption in the
isolation of Peru and the arms of a former prostitute. Meanwhile, the local
Indians have taken over the abandoned set and begun to stage a ritualistic
re-enactment of the production – with Kansas as their sacrificial lamb.
Among the most storied productions of the New Hollywood Era, Hopper was given
carte blanche by Universal for his next directorial feature after the tremendous
commercial success of EASY RIDER, and writer-director-star took the money and
ran – literally – staging THE LAST MOVIE in Peru at farthest remove from the
Hollywood machine, with an on-screen entourage in tow that included Kris
Kristofferson, Julie Adams, Stella Garcia, Peter Fonda, Dean Stockwell, Toni
Basil, Russ Tamblyn, Michelle Phillips and director Samuel Fuller.
Although it won a special award at the Venice Film Festival, THE LAST MOVIE
would effectively end Hopper’s career for many years – the Hollywood
establishment gleefully writing him off as a self-indulgent madman. Yet the
movie remains thrillingly innovative and remarkably contemporary – influenced
greatly by the work of Bruce Conner and the French New Wave, as well as the Pop
and Abstract artists Hopper revered.
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Last Movie, The (2-Disc Edition)
Studio: Arbelos Films
Format: DVD
SRP: $29.99 |
Catalog #:
AR0001DVD
UPC #: 663390002582 |
New 4K restoration. Dennis Hopper’s radical, much-mythologized lost
masterpiece – widely unseen for nearly 50 years until now! Consciously
self-reflexive and co-written by Hopper and REBEL WITHOUT A CAUSE screenwriter
Stewart Stern, THE LAST MOVIE follows a Hollywood movie crew in the midst of
making a western in a remote Peruvian village. When production wraps, Hopper, as
the baleful stuntman Kansas, remains, attempting to find redemption in the
isolation of Peru and the arms of a former prostitute. Meanwhile, the local
Indians have taken over the abandoned set and begun to stage a ritualistic
re-enactment of the production – with Kansas as their sacrificial lamb.
Among the most storied productions of the New Hollywood Era, Hopper was given
carte blanche by Universal for his next directorial feature after the tremendous
commercial success of EASY RIDER, and writer-director-star took the money and
ran – literally – staging THE LAST MOVIE in Peru at farthest remove from the
Hollywood machine, with an on-screen entourage in tow that included Kris
Kristofferson, Julie Adams, Stella Garcia, Peter Fonda, Dean Stockwell, Toni
Basil, Russ Tamblyn, Michelle Phillips and director Samuel Fuller.
Although it won a special award at the Venice Film Festival, THE LAST MOVIE
would effectively end Hopper’s career for many years – the Hollywood
establishment gleefully writing him off as a self-indulgent madman. Yet the
movie remains thrillingly innovative and remarkably contemporary – influenced
greatly by the work of Bruce Conner and the French New Wave, as well as the Pop
and Abstract artists Hopper revered.
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Mutual Appreciation
Studio: Arbelos Films
Format: Blu-ray
SRP: $39.99 |
Catalog #:
AR0002BD
UPC #: 663390002933 |
Arbelos Films Presents MUTUAL APPRECIATION – Indie auteur Andrew
Bujalski’s character study of 20-somethings in contemporary New York City –
never before released on Blu-ray! An instant critic’s darling
upon its release in 2006, MUTUAL APPRECIATION is at once an utterly timeless and
distinctly mid-aughts portrait of the ebb and flow of twenty-something life in
New York City. Richly observed and deeply humanist, the film follows Alan
(Justin Rice), an aspiring musician, who crash-lands in town following the
breakup of his band in Boston, immediately taking up with his old friends Ellie
(Rachel Clift) and Lawrence (writer-director Andrew Bujalski) while negotiating
the affections of a local radio DJ (Seung-Min Lee). In the tradition of Éric
Rohmer, John Cassavetes and Jacques Rivette, Bujalski crafts a deft yet
unassuming generational statement that finds its inspiration less in plot than
in sharply drawn relationships and captivating conversations. Lovingly lensed in
intimate 16mm black & white film, MUTUAL APPRECIATION is a generous and witty
ode to the friendships that hallmark our awkward and enthralling post-collegiate
years. Mutual Appreciation, along with 2002’s equally lauded FUNNY HA
HA, signaled the triumphant arrival of indie auteur Bujalski, who has gone on to
write and direct a suite of critically acclaimed features including BEESWAX
(2009), COMPUTER CHESS (2013), RESULTS (2015) and 2018’s SUPPORT THE GIRLS.
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Sátántangó
Studio: Arbelos Films
Format: Blu-ray
SRP: $39.99 |
Catalog #:
AR0004BD
UPC #: 663390004357 |
One of the greatest achievements in recent art house cinema and a seminal work of “slow cinema,” Sátántangó, based on the novel by László Krasznahorkai, follows the members of a humble agricultural community living in a bleak and punishing backwater after the fall of Communism. As a few of the villagers secretly conspire to take off with all of the community's annual earnings for themselves, a mysterious messiah, long thought dead, returns to the village and alters the course of everyone’s lives forever.
Shot in stunning black-and-white by Gábor Medvigy and filled with exquisitely composed long takes, Sátántangó unfolds in twelve distinct movements, alternating forwards and backwards in time, echoing the structure of a tango dance. Béla Tarr’s vision, aided by longtime partner and collaborator Ágnes Hranitzky, is enthralling and his portrayal of rural Hungary beset by drunken revelry, treachery, and near-perpetual rainfall is both transfixing and uncompromising. Sátántangó has been justly lauded by critics and audiences as a masterpiece and has been restored on occasion of its 25th anniversary.
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