Available from 18th February on Belga Home Video on both DVD and Blu-ray.

SAMBA

Directors:Olivier Nakache, Eric Toledano
Stars:Omar Sy, Charlotte Gainsbourg, Tahar Rahim

Samba migrated to France 10 years ago from Senegal, and has since been plugging away at various lowly jobs. Alice is a senior executive who has recently undergone a burnout. Both struggle to get out of their dead-end lives Samba's willing to do whatever it takes to get working papers, while Alice tries to get her life back on track until fate draws them together.

A compendium of artistic differences offering a distinct sound that testifies the beauty behind love and demise. An intense desire to deliver a rage of indulgence towards the pursuit of unlocking contempt for one's self and failure to covet what is duly worth. Each piece is performed with undying adoration that vows to display purity and ingenuity.

A band produced, recorded, mixed and mastered by Joelen Mingi of the legendary German Goth-Rock band “The Angina Pectoris”, who also contributed and wrote the songs "Even If I'm Broken" (both versions) and "Forces Within", rearranging George Harrison's classic "Something", adding backing vocals and went further even contributing additional instruments such as keyboards, drums, acoustic guitars, samples, piano and violins on aforementioned songs.

Cheatahs have gifted us another track from their forthcoming Sunne EP, and the title track is every bit as optimistic as you were last week about your New Year resolutions. Luckily, Cheatahs bright new outlook is going to last a hell of a lot longer.

Title track ‘Sunne’ drives forward, littered with whirring tones and tape-worn melodies while popping in all the right places. “Sunne is partly an attempt to encapsulate the feelings I had when I read (Hemingway's) The Sun Also Rises, a book that had quite a profound effect on me.” says James Wignall. “We ran the guitars through a very cheap (and slightly broken) recorder onto old cassette tape, which evokes a bittersweet end-of-day feeling, as if the sun were setting.”

The Sunne EP is the band's first release since their self-titled debut album in early 2014. The word “sunne” (an old English spelling) is perhaps apt for describing the four new songs, at turns scorching ambient punk and blissed-out anti-rock.

As with all their previous material, the London based four-piece recorded the EP themselves, doing so mostly in their houses, and their friends Part Chimp’s Camberwell studio when their flatmates/neighbours got annoyed. Ever since their early releases, Cheatahs have been evolving and developing their craft, and this EP is the most clearly defined and ambitious set to date, exploring new territory via sketchy back alleys and sunlit, swampy meadows.

The new EP takes a giant step once again, pushing things further along. Cheatahs are burning bright and it’s time you stepped into the light and joined them.

www.stereogum.com/1729075/cheatahs-sunne-stereogum-premiere/mp3s

Arrow Films’ Arrow Academy label is proud to announce the release of Stanley Kubrick’s first masterpiece, the crime classic The Killing (1956), making its Blu-ray debut in the UK from 9th February 2015. This exclusive edition will also include the director's previous feature, Killer’s Kiss (1955), another essential piece of noir 50s cinema.

This feature-packed Blu-ray will include a high definition transfer of the film, alongside an introduction and appreciation by noted British filmmaker Ben Wheatley. Together with this, the disc will also include an archive interview with lead actor Sterling Hayden, alongside a featurette looking at Kubrick’s 1950s output with critic Michel Ciment. The disc will also feature the original theatrical trailers for both films, with a reversible sleeve featuring original and newly commissioned artwork by Reinhard Kleist and a collector’s booklet containing new writing by Peter Krämer, Barry Forshaw and filmmaker Ron Peck, illustrated with original archive stills.

Synopsis

An ex-con, a corrupt cop, a reformed alcoholic, a wrestler, a sharpshooter and a pair of inside men: these seven men intent on executing the perfect robbery and taking a racetrack for two million dollars. But this is the world of film noir, a tough, sour place where nothing quite goes as planned…

For his third feature Stanley Kubrick adapted Lionel White’s Clean Break with a little help from hard-boiled specialist Jim Thompson (The Killer Inside Me), and in doing so created a heist movie classic, one to rank alongside John Huston’s The Asphalt Jungle and Quentin Tarantino’s Reservoir Dogs. The robbery itself is one of cinema’s great set-pieces, as taut a piece of filmmaking as you’ll ever find, expertly controlled by Kubrick, who called The Killing his “first mature work”.

Starring Sterling Hayden (Johnny Guitar, The Godfather), perennial fall guy Elisha Cook Jr (The Maltese Falcon, The Big Sleep) and Marie Windsor (The Narrow Margin) as his duplicitous wife, The Killing is quintessential film noir, still as brutal, thrilling and audacious as it was almost six decades ago.

This deluxe package will be full of special features and bonus material including:

 · High Definition Blu-ray (1080p) presentation of the feature

· Original uncompressed mono PCM Audio

· Optional English subtitles for the deaf and hard of hearing

· Stanley Kubrick’s second feature, Killer’s Kiss (1955), presented in High Definition (1080p)

· An appreciation by filmmaker Ben Wheatley (Kill List, Sightseers)

· An extract from the French television series Journal de la cinéma featuring an interview with Sterling Hayden

· A look at Kubrick’s 1950s output with critic Michel Ciment

· Original theatrical trailers for both films

· Reversible sleeve featuring original and newly commissioned artwork by Reinhard Kleist

· Collector’s booklet containing new writing by Peter Krämer (author of volumes on Dr. Strangelove, 2001: A Space Odyssey and A Clockwork Orange), Barry Forshaw and filmmaker Ron Peck, illustrated with original archive stills

Illuminata, founded in 2006, is a female fronted metal-band from Graz, Austria. It currently consists of five members:

 Katarzyna Nieniewska– Vocals
Sabrina Supan– Keyboards
Thomas Kern– Drums
Lukas Knoebl– Guitars
Christoph Vide– Bass

 
The first LP From the Chalice of Dreams (2009) established the band's general direction with, what 'Metal-Archives' called, a 'promising début'.
 
Being a completely independent production from start to finish and without affiliation to any record label, the music of Illuminata’s first professional release A World So Cold (2011) has been favourably reviewed by major magazines and webzines like Legacy or Stormbringer and was described as a compelling symbiosis of heavy metal and film score.
 
Now, with Illuminata’s newest release Where Stories Unfold, their unique and refined style is even more dominated by a strong presence of orchestral elements. The album is heavily influenced by recent ‘larger than life’ blockbusters movies and combines two of the most powerful genres, Heavy Metal and Film Music. Finally, the band’s cooperation with the prestigious, 60-piece Czech Film Orchestra and the overall top-notch production culminates in a one of the most vibrant, emotional and innovative releases in the genre to date. Welcome to Hollywood!

About The New Album

Illuminata – Where Stories Unfold (2015)
Length: 62 minutes; 11 Tracks
For our newest project, entitled Where Stories Unfold,to be released in early 2015, the band has tried to create something of truly epic proportions. So far this has included recordings with one of Europe's most prestigious orchestras, the Czech Film Orchestra, in the television studios of Prague. Furthermore, additional chamber strings as well as a classical choir and a Musical Choir have been recorded and Mario Plank, for years vocalist of Visions of Atlantis, again contributed to the album as a guest singer. The album was mixed and mastered by Jan Vacik at Dreamsound Studios, Munich, whose references not only include albums by Edenbridge, Serenity and Visions of Atlantis but who also did an amazing job on A World So Cold.