Arrow Video is delighted to announce release of John Frankenheimer’s 1962 Cold War suspense thriller The Manchurian Candidate. Starring Frank Sinatra, Laurence Harvey, Janet Leigh and Angela Lansbury in her Oscar-nominated role, this newly released Blu-ray and DVD will be available to own from 23rd February 2015. One of the all-time classic paranoid conspiracy thrillers (which developed a conspiracy theory of its own when it became very hard to see between the Kennedy assassination of 1963 and its reissue twenty-five years later), it remains remarkably fresh today, a tribute to just how astute Frankenheimer and source novelist Richard Condon were in distilling age-old fears about foreign invasion and mind control into a heart-poundingly thrilling drama.

The new edition boasts a bumper crop of bonus features such as an audio commentary with director John Frankenheimer, alongside the 2003 hour-long documentary, The Directors, focusing on Frankenheimer, plus an appreciation by William Friedkin (director of The Exorcist) who came from the same hectic live-TV background as Frankenheimer. Packaged together with this, the extra features also include interviews with Frankenheimer, Frank Sinatra, George Axelrod and Angela Lansbury.

The reversible sleeve will showcase both the original and the newly commissioned artwork by Jay Shaw alongside a collector’s booklet featuring new writing on the film looking into the cultural/political context and actual CIA mind control experiments, illustrated with original archive stills and posters.

Synopsis

After saving the lives of his platoon during the Korean War, Sergeant Raymond Shaw (Laurence Harvey) is hailed as a bona fide American hero. This couldn’t have come at a better time for his mother (Angela Lansbury) who is hell-bent on boosting the career of his stepfather, a senator straight from the McCarthyite wing of the US political spectrum with designs on the Presidency.

So far so familiar – but why does Shaw’s former captain (Frank Sinatra) have recurring nightmares that suggest that his distinguished comrade-in-arms might not be all that he seems?

Based on the memorably paranoid bestseller by Richard Condon (Prizzi’s Honor), this is one of the greatest of all Cold War suspense thrillers, not least for its alarmingly original take on the notion of “the enemy within”. Angela Lansbury won multiple awards and an Oscar nomination for her performance as one of the most monstrous mothers in screen history, but perhaps the most unnerving thing about the film is the way that its political satire remains so perfectly on target more than half a century later.

Special Features

· High Definition Blu-ray (1080p) and Standard Definition DVD presentation of the main feature, transferred from original elements by MGM

· Uncompressed 1.0 mono PCM soundtrack

· Optional English SDH subtitles

· Audio commentary by director John Frankenheimer

· The Directors: John Frankenheimer, an hour-long portrait from 2003, including interviews with Frankenheimer, Kirk Douglas, Samuel L. Jackson, Roy Scheider, Rod Steiger and many others

· Interview with John Frankenheimer, Frank Sinatra and screenwriter George Axelrod from the film’s 1988 revival

· Queen of Diamonds: an interview with Angela Lansbury

· A Little Solitaire: an appreciation of the film by director William Friedkin (The Exorcist)

· Theatrical trailer

· Reversible sleeve featuring original and newly commissioned artwork by Jay Shaw

· Collector’s booklet containing new writing by Peter Knight (Conspiracy Culture) and Neil Sanders (Your Thoughts Are Not Your Own), illustrated with original production stills

Available from 18th March on : the fifth (and last) season from Boardwalk Empire.

Concluding a powerful and groundbreaking five-season run, Boardwalk Empire is an Emmy®-winning HBO drama series from Academy Award® nominee/Emmy® Award winner Terence Winter and Academy Award®-winning director Martin Scorsese. Season 5 begins in 1931, a full six years after the end of Season 4. In stark contrast with the Roaring '20s, the country is in the throes of the Great Depression, and with the end of Prohibition in sight, Nucky is looking to legitimize himself by forging alliances with liquor producers, including Bacardi in Cuba. Season 5 also includes flashback scenes of Nucky, Eli, the Commodore, Gillian and others from 1884-1900 – childhood experiences that would shape their relationships and their futures.

live les nuits botanique 17/05

Luis Vasquez never intended for The Soft Moon to reach the public’s ears; for him, music has always been about self­-actualization rather than self-aggrandizement. Nevertheless, the bleak, hushed sounds he created years ago in his small Oakland apartment bubbled to the surface and 2010 saw his debut LP, The Soft Moon, released on Captured Tracks rise to critical acclaim. Pitchfork’s 8.1 review stated that Vasquez made “oblivion seems like an enticing prospect” and, indeed, listeners were immediately drawn into his murky musical wasteland, swathed in the moody atmospheres of jagged dark wave and wayfaring post­punk. For them, and for Vasquez, there was no turning back. The Total Decay EP and Zeros emerged soon after, and now Vasquez returns with The Soft Moon’s most introspective and focused album to date: Deeper.

Following live line­-up changes and a lull in the The Soft Moon’s constant touring schedule, the year 2013 found Luis Vasquez lost in the void. Though he fatalistically stated that 2012’s Zeros would be the last album where he was the sole songwriter, Vasquez realized that The Soft Moon has always been one man’s vision. Over time, it’s been the one place where Vasquez can express himself, totally and singularly, on his own terms.

Thus, in July of 2013, Vasquez decamped from Oakland, CA to Venice, Italy, unsure of where The Soft Moon would land. While Zeros was written and recorded between long days on the road, Deeper was begat from an almost primal urge to recoil from the world and experience total solitude. During the writing process, Vasquez pushed himself to discover the reality and nightmare of living with yourself, in entirely foreign surroundings with nothing and no one to fall back on. Stepping back and letting inspiration fall where it may, Vasquez only had one goal in mind for his third album: to pen his most emotional record yet. Between frequent visits to Berlin, Vasquez retreated to Venice’s Hate Studios, located in the mountains near electronic guru and spiritual anchor Giorgio Moroder’s hometown.

At Hate, he worked for almost a year with producer Maurizio Baggio to piece together Deeper, only completing the album in August 2014. While maintaining the stark sonic formula so indicative of The Soft Moon’s music — that bass that reeks of chorus, those unrelenting, mechanized beats, that wailing synthesizer and those eerily, angular guitar lines that worm into your ears and never leave — Baggio also worked to refine the album’s gothic palette, leaving Vasquez to concentrate more intensely on songwriting and singing than ever before:

“I’ve never worked so closely with someone before. Working with Maurizio felt right and I completely opened up to him during the entire process. I finally felt the urge to express myself more verbally with this record and I was able to focus more on songwriting rather than just experimenting with soundscapes.”

The voice of The Soft Moon has never been more clear and honest than it is on this record. With eerie, immersive tracks like the dogged “Far” and slow, beautifully melancholic “Wasting” (the first track written for Deeper), the album is a penetrating portrait of Vasquez as he wrestles thoughts of suicide, vulnerability and what it means to heal. By facing the most hopeless parts of himself without illusion and putting his past demons to bed, the creation of Deeper was an intense personal exploration of existence for Vasquez — old wounds were forcibly opened, deep anger and paranoia were manipulated into song — and he did not emerge unchanged. Deeper may have delivered Vasquez back to the waking world, but it willingly drags us further into The Soft Moon’s dark, euphonic universe once more.

In cinemas 22 July

The Barden Bellas are back in Pitch Perfect 2, the follow-up to the original smash hit. The comedy will be helmed by Elizabeth Banks, co-star and producer of Pitch Perfect, and produced by Paul Brooks, Max Handelman and Banks. Writer Kay Cannon returns to the team to pen the next chapter.

After having been active with various side-projects for some time, the German master of uncompromising dark elektro Pedro Engel is back with a new digital EP "Zigeunerjunge" serving us the perfect appetizer for the band's forthcoming 5th studio album "Pest"… Aggressive, powerful and dirty,

ACYLUM knows no limits in its artistic approach and dares to write about touchy socio-political topics in Europe and mixing them with provocative German vocal samples. This new club hit will once again make alarm sirens resound across the globe: ACYLUM is definitely back in town! Their new sonic virus will spread fast and without limits especially when augmented by the astounding remixed versions by AMDUSCIA, COLD THERAPY or yet BENJAMIN'S PLAGUE! The EP also reveals the slower and more melancholic work of ACYLUM with the bewitching and dense atmospheres of "Follow Me" and an interesting reinterpretation of "My Knife" by INAKI KREATOR.