Flicker Alley, in association with the Blackhawk Films Collection, is proud to present The Hunchback of Notre Dame, starring Lon Chaney as Quasimodo, looking as if he had just stepped out from the original illustrations of Victor Hugo's novel. This new Blu-ray disc edition is now available to pre-order from the Flicker Alley website (www.FlickerAlley.com) for the special reduced price of $34.95.

Hunchback is a huge production: the sets depicting 15th-century Paris covered nineteen acres of Universal Pictures' back lot and included the façade of Notre Dame Cathedral. Filming took six months and the climactic sequence employed two thousand extras, but it's Lon Chaney's performance that makes the character unforgettable. The Hunchback of Notre Dame premiered at New York's Astor Theatre on September 2, 1923. The success of the film was immediate; it made Carl Laemmle and Universal Pictures a fortune, and turned Lon Chaney into a screen legend.

This edition is mastered from a multi-tinted 16mm print struck in 1926 from the original camera negative. (The film apparently does not survive in 35mm.) Visible wear in the source material is diminished with a moderate amount of digital restoration. It is pictorially much better than earlier video editions and represents the best condition in which this landmark film survives today. A new symphonic score arranged by Donald Hunsberger was recorded in the Czech Republic by a full orchestra conducted by Robert Israel.

Bonus Materials Include:

Essay and optional audio commentary by Chaney scholar Michael F. Blake

Rare footage (in standard definition) of Chaney out of makeup on the Cathedral set

ALAS AND ALACK, a 1915 short film in which Chaney plays a hunchback

Dynamic HD photo gallery with over 100 original production and publicity stills

Digital reproduction of the original souvenir program

www.flickeralley.com

The claustrophobic, miasmic world of Tense Men is a world of scuttling shapes, deformed shadows and rigid, repetitive rhythms. The world of Tense Men has a low ceiling, the walls are wooden, rotting in places and badly varnished. The world of Tense Men is clammy to the touch. Eyes twitch, ears ring. Ears burn, eyes sting. The world of Tense Men is dripping all over your mouldy living room carpet. Reptilian tongues darting in and out tasting the dank air. Human forms jerking awkwardly to a record skipping in a locked, sweaty room. Shrieking voices. Murmuring whispers. Telling you things you don’t want to know over and over again, you listen because you aren’t sure if you’re really hearing it or not. You are! Aren't you?

Tense Men was two and is now three men, varying in tension, height and origination. These men also exist within other entities, namely Sauna Youth, Cold Pumas and Omi Palone, amongst others. It began in the bleak Autumn of 2010 and has henceforth been peddling its suspect wares back and forth, here and there. Prior to Where Dull Care is Forgotten, there was an unnamed cassette on Cazenove Tapes.

Tense Men's Where Dull Care Is Forgotten mini LP is released by Faux Discx on 10th March 2014, available on 12" vinyl (ltd to 300) and digital download.

soundcloud.com/tensemen

If – as Mojo magazine said in its 2012 rave review – REBEKKA KARIJORD’s last release, We Become Ourselves, was “an album that creates its own world”, then the Stockholm based musician’s latest collection is an album that helps generously furnish, and enlarge upon, worlds created by others. The pragmatically titled Music For Film And Theatre gathers together fifteen (largely) instrumental pieces written and produced by Karijord over the last half dozen or so years for films, plays and dance performances. It’s a task that she has frequently embraced with relish.

“I've always found that it’s a good complement to my solo work,” she explains, “since I get to experiment sonically, and push my musical boundaries and knowledge. I also really enjoy the process of finding sounds through loose experimentation.”

Originally from Sandnessjøen, just south of the Arctic Circle in Northern Norway, KARIJORD moved to Sweden a decade ago, where she’s composed music for over 30 films, modern dance and theatre pieces, as well as writing plays and short stories. She’s also acted in films and theatre since the age of 12, while Cirkus Cirkör’s international travelling performance, Wear It Like A Crown, is centered upon KARIJORD’s song of the same title. (She also provided all the additional music for the performance, which has now toured the world for four years, playing over 400 shows for 200,000 people.)

Making some of this far from ‘incidental’ music available is an idea she’s had for a while, but it’s only recently that she’s been able to take a break long enough from touring, composing for new projects and starting work on her next record to explore her archives. The result is a collection that unusually – given the genesis of the material – operates successfully outside of its original context, providing a whole that KARIJORD describes as “soothing, yet stirring and complex in its layers and contrast”

Though elements of her previous work are undeniably evident during Music For Film And Theatre, it represents an alternative side to KARIJORD’s muse, with vocals employed as instruments rather than as a song’s focus, and her fascination with stringed instruments also very much to the fore. “They’re an attempt to get away from the melody driven formula,” she elaborates of the compositions, “to challenge my sense of form, to dare to be more abstract than I allow myself when I write traditional songs. My solo songs have to stand up for themselves, whereas film music pieces are players in an orchestra. I see them as something underlining the emotional thread, the unsaid, the fundamental tone chiming throughout. The music is supposed to capture that, in a subtle way, sometimes pulling along with it, sometimes working against it: creating understanding, creating friction. Sometimes the music can be a manipulator, but in a caring way, softly resting a hand on the viewer’s back, saying ‘Go this way...’”

Music For Film And Theatre provides a gorgeous, frequently lush experience. It’s one to which KARIJORD herself often accurately applies the label ‘ambient’: within the repetition of tracks like ‘Madrigal’, ‘Salhus’, ‘Migratory Birds’ and ‘Morula’ there’s an undeniable Eno-esque quality, though inevitably KARIJORD moves in different directions to the godfather of the ambient movement. Elsewhere there are other comparably experimental excursions: the angelic choral vocals and Arvo Pärt violin of ‘Nowhere Home’, the ethereal, mystical ‘The End, and ‘Kjaere Gud’, which conjures up the remarkable ghosts of Le Mystère des Voix Bulgares. There are also airier tracks, like the placid, moving yet strangely tense ‘Snö’, the gentle piano strains of ‘Waltz For Norma’, and ‘Anchor Boy’, as delicately melancholic as anything Agnes Obel has delivered.

There will be more to come, too. Now that Music For Film And Theatre has been compiled, KARIJORD is currently working on a further three film projects, and has also begun work writing for her next album. For the time being, however, Music For Film And Theatre is a wonderful opportunity to enjoy another, mesmerising side to an extraordinary artist’s talents.

We already gave you the trailer from the newest Spiderman, but that all seemed so far away back then....

But hang on, on 16th April the newest adventure from America's most loved hero will hit the screen. In three months that is!

Peek-A-Boo not only can reveal the brand new poster, but also the latest trailer.

SYNOPSIS:

Peter Parker runs the gauntlet as the mysterious company Oscorp sends up a slew of supervillains against him, impacting on his life.

Director: Marc Webb

Stars: Andrew Garfield, Emma Stone, Jamie Foxx 

Second Run DVD presents their newest releases.

ILLUMINATION

"Of the third postwar generation of Polish directors... the most important is Krzysztof Zanussi" 

David Cook, A History of Narrative Film

Unanimous winner of all three main prizes at the 1973 Locarno International Film Festival, Zanussi’s landmark film is a dazzling kaleidoscope of ideas and images. Illumination explores the life of a self-absorbed young physicist trying to understand his place in the universe. He thinks science will provide the answers, but ultimately learns far more about himself through experiencing love, betrayal, loss, and facing his own mortality. 

As much a philosophical essay as a narrative feature Illumination is a cinematic mosaic combining art and science, intellect and emotion. Innovatively structured, this unflinching examination of one man’s life became an iconic cultural marker for a whole generation.

The DVD is presented from a superb new high-definition restoration of the film, approved by the director and contains the short A Trace (Ślad) - Marcin Latałło's acclaimed 1996 film about his late father, the lead actor in Illumination, Stanisław Latałło plus a new interview with Zanussi and a booklet featuring a new essay by film critic and author Michał Oleszczyk.

COMING NEXT

TRANSPORT FROM PARADISE

"One of the most brilliant works of both the Czech New Wave and Holocaust cinema" Dennis Grunes, A Short Chronology of World Cinema

Zbyněk Brynych's award-winning film presents a vivid picture of the infamous Terezín Ghetto during World War II, where thousands of Jews from around Europe were held awaiting transportation to Nazi 'work camps'. The inhabitants are forced to participate in a sickening charade to convince an imminent Red Cross delegation that normal life continues in the Ghetto. Gradually, a sense of the cold grip of terror gathers as the Nazi's grotesque preparations for genocide become clear.

Scripted by survivor Arnošt Lustig (Diamonds of the Night) and filmed in Terezín itself, Transport from Paradise is a profoundly affecting drama shot through with moments of strange and intense beauty. This powerful and haunting feature, presented for the first time ever in the UK, lingers in the mind long after viewing.

Release date: February 2014

OUT NOW

IKARIE XB 1

Czechoslovakia, 1963

"Remains one of the most original and exciting science fiction films ever made... A game-changing film that profoundly influenced the genre and showed that science-fiction movies weren't only about special effects; they were also high art" Alex Cox, The Guardian

Jindřich Polák’s pioneering and much-imitated feature Ikarie XB 1 is one of the cornerstones of contemporary sci-fi cinema. It predates Star Trek and Kubrick’s 2001: A Space Odyssey and was clearly an influence on both, as well as on almost every other science-fiction work that followed.

Adapted from Stanisław Lem's 1955 novel The Magellanic Cloud, the film is set in 2163 and follows a mission deep into space in search of alien life. During their perilous journey the crew confront the effects of a malignant dark star, the destructive legacy of the 20th century and, ultimately, the limits of their own sanity. With outstanding design and cinematography, Ikarie XB 1 is imbued with a seriousness, intelligence and attention to detail rarely seen in science-fiction cinema of the period. Second Run are delighted to present this seminal work of fantasy cinema for the first time ever in the UK. 

The DVD is presented in a new anamorphic transfer with restored picture and sound and features a new filmed appreciation by author and critic Kim Newman and a new essay by writer and film historian Michael Brooke.

THE WHITE DOVE

Second Run DVD present a unique double bill of two early works now regarded as two of the main precursors of the Czechoslovak New Wave.

The debut feature of master filmmaker František Vláčil (Marketa Lazarová; The Valley of the Bees) The White Dove's straightforward narrative belies complex themes and striking visual imagery. A young boy injures and then nurses a white dove back to health so that it can continue its journey home. Echoing Ken Loach's film Kes, and with music by the great Zdenek Liška, the film emerges as a work of great poetry and humanism.

The surrealist masterpiece Josef Kilián (making its world-première release on DVD) is a dark and absurdly humorous, biting allegory of life under a totalitarian regime. Inspired by the grotesque nightmares of Franz Kafka and another icon of Czech literature, the anti-militarist, anti-authoritarian Jaroslav Hasek, the film was supressed by the authorities after the Soviet invasion of 1968. 

Having made only four films, and despite being the author of the screenplays for Chytilová's Daisies, Polák’s Ikarie XB1 and Zeman's A Jester's Tale (a title we will be releasing in 2014), Juráček remains one of the Czechoslovak New Wave's most neglected artists.

Presented in a new digital transfers, these two remarkable films are released for the first time ever in the UK.

THE SUN IN A NET

Czechoslovakia, 1962

"The Sun in a Net is still fresh and young, complex and rewarding. It has the vivacity and love of life that we found in the early films of Truffaut. The only mystery is why has it been unknown outside Czechoslovakia for almost half a century?" Senses of Cinema

Štefan Uher's exquisite, groundbreaking feature is consistently ranked among the greatest films in the history of Slovak cinema and is cited as the film that kick-started the whole 'Czechoslovak New Wave' movement.

Bringing to the screen a number of hitherto unacceptable social and political themes, The Sun in a Net is a complex interplay of sunlight and darkness, sound and silence, vision and blindness, truth and lies. We are delighted to bring this masterpiece of East European cinema to UK audiences for the very first time.

The DVD is presented in a superb new HD digital transfer with restored picture and sound and features a newly filmed appreciation by filmmaker Peter Strickland (Katalin Varga, Berberian Sound Studio), and a new essay on the film by author Peter Hames.

ONE, TWO, ONE

Iran, 2011

"Mania Akbari has emerged as one of Iran's most distinctive filmmakers. Her work is fresh, audacious and relevant" 

Geoff Andrew, BFI

Mania Akbari, star of Abbas Kiarostami's Ten, is one of Iran's most distinctive filmmakers and One. Two. One is her most confrontational work, whose banning finally led to her exile from Iran.

Composed of rhythmically structured and meticulously planned long takes, the film presents a series of conversational pieces connected to a beautiful woman named Ava whose face has been disfigured in an acid attack. Truths emerge in close-up and a narrative of love, loss and renewal unfolds.

Transgressive and deeply critical of a society where women are considered inferior to men, Akbari also questions the concept of beauty and the weight placed upon it by her society. Her protagonist Ava also functions as a metaphor for the scars her country bears, making this deceptively modest film inherently rich in courage and ideas.

"This disarmingly, deceptively simple film,which takes the form of a series of dialogues, brilliantly played by a sizable cast and directed with a magnificent sense of rhythm, light and movement" Chris Fujiwara