Welcome to The Slipped Disc, our monthly column for exciting new DVD, Blu-ray, and 4K UHD releases from a variety of imprints and boutique labels.
Kino Lorber
Since they have Pride all year round, Kino Lorber released a flight of canonical queer films this month, giving them a loving sheen and preserving their special sparkle. First up is their Blu-ray release of The Rose Tattoo (1955). Directed by Daniel Mann and based on the play by Tennessee Williams, the film follows Serafina Delle Rose (Anna Magnani), a grieving widow in the Southern heat who gets caught up in a whirlwind romance with Alvaro Mangiacavallo (Burt Lancaster), who shares an uncanny similarity with her recently deceased husband.
Kino’s release cleans up the film to reduce the noise and lets us deeply appreciate the sweltering heat and passions that drive the plot of this queer and complex fairy tale. Mangani and Lancaster’s performances feel even more crisp now that we can clearly see their gestures and reactions. Writers Julie Kirgo & Peter Hankoff provide an insightful audio commentary that provides worthwhile contexts for these performances and The Rose Tattoo’s special place in Tennessee Williams’ oeuvre.
Order here.
During a recent appearance at the Music Box in Chicago, director Ang Lee referred to Brokeback Mountain as one of his “mid-life crisis” movies. Thanks to Kino’s efforts, the love story between two hired hands (Jake Gyllenhaal & Heath Ledger) during the 1970s and ’80s now appears in absolutely breathtaking 4K. The mountain and pastoral settings take on a richer presence. The period details become rich textures in a worn and suffocating world. The denim really denims. I can’t recommend this restoration enough. The cherry on top is having Julie Kirgo return with fresh commentary, making it clear that Brokeback Mountain deserves not just a place in the queer canon but in the Western genre canon as well.
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Frank Oz’s In & Out often gets overshadowed in the queer canon by The Birdcage, which came out the year before. But this new 4K restoration celebrates the quaint filmic quality that gives the queer comedy its special charm. Howard Brackett (Kevin Kline) lives a simple life in Indiana as an English teacher, inspiring youths with his passion for life and Shakespeare. When a former student (Matt Dillon) suggests he’s gay during an Oscar speech just days before his wedding to his girlfriend, Emily (Joan Cusack), Howard’s life gets turned inside-out but ultimately for the better. Screenwriter Paul Rudnick’s commentary celebrates this film’s gentle bravery, even in “The Gay ’90s.” And this new scan preserves the charm by retaining the warm film grain we’re nostalgic for in 1990s mid-budget dramedies.
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But if you want a scan that celebrates the glorious grit of older film stock, look no further than the new 4K release of Nancy Allen’s Can’t Stop The Music (1980). Where the previous two films discussed are important for their openness, this faux-biography of The Village People is fascinating for how not-quite-queer it is/had to be. The story follows a New York DJ, Jack Morell (Steven Gutenberg), and his roommate, Samantha Simpson (Valerie Perrine), as they search to put together the greatest club act of the 1980s.
Framed within a bland romance story with then-recent Olympian Caitlyn Jenner, Can’t Stop The Music has its moments of tedium but then explodes into a fantasia of music, color, and joy. In this new 4K the famous “Milkshake” number looks delicioushy jaw dropping and worth the price of admission. The commentary provided by Jeffery Schwartz, an expert on producer Alan Carr’s sensibilities, and comic legend Bruce Vilanch adds a delightful and irreverent perspective on the film’s implicit and explicit queerness. It transforms a film that was by and large dismissed into a film from which we can learn a lot about history.
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Arrow Video
One of the many advantages of home video releases is that they often include supplementary materials that enhance the viewing experience. On first pass, Howard Hawks’ 1965 film Red Line 7000 might fail to throttle the motor. Its interweaving romance plots starring a young James Caan and set against the world of early NASCAR lack any real drive compared to the real racing footage shot for the action sequences. Yet, once again, Julie Kirgo brings her knowledge of film history to properly frame the late and bizarre entry within the legendary director’s other works like The Big Sleep and Rio Bravo.
Her commentary is further supported by a stunning new visual essay by Kat Ellinger about the way gender functions in this curious film from the mid-’60s and how the women compare to the other women in Hawks’ films. Critic Howard S. Berger sets it all on track in his new visual essay, “Gas, Gears, Girls, Guys & Death,” synthesizing the shifting historical, technological, and gender changes that whiz by in the film’s 110 minutes. With the fresh knowledge provided by these insightful critics, Red Line 7000 begins to pick up speed.
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Sometimes, commentary comes from the directors themselves. For their release of “The Nico Mastorakis Collection,” Arrow Video has completed a new interview with Mastorakis for each of the six entries in the set. These interviews are invaluable inroads for those unfamiliar with the idiosyncratic Greek director. The Mastorakis is defined by a high degree of cinematic genre pilfering alongside a pervasive hedonism. These interviews make it clear that Mastorakis loves movies from watching to making them and they help that passion come across in the films. Included in this set are some of his more serious works, like The Time Traveler, about a Christ figure who arrives in modern-day Greece.
But the collection soon escalates into some delightful vulgar auteurism that captures the fast-paced pleasure chasing of the 1980s. Films like Sky High, Ninja Academy, and Glitch are some of the best entries in the himbo cinema canon and perfectly contain all that was good and bad about Late Capitalism. But Mastorakis’ cinematic send-ups Terminal Exposure and The Naked Truth are the most enjoyable of the set. The former riffs on Anoninoi’s Blow Up and De Palma’s Blow Up but manages to surpass them both in horniness; the latter is a Some Like It Hot for the 1990s charmingly devoid of transphobia.
All told, this set does exactly what a set should: provide an overview of works and supplements that allow new and returning audiences to develop a relationship with and appreciation for an artist.
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MVD Marquee Collection
Some releases manage to introduce us to an artist in one release, like the new Blu-ray release of The Linguini Incident. This remastered version arrives with the complete film director Richard Shepard (Cool Blue, The Matador) intended in a new director’s cut. Set in an ultra-swanky restaurant themed after the paintings of Dali, this film of the New York New Wave follows two employees (Patricia Arquette and David Bowie) as they attempt to rob their employer to finance their dreams. This delightful anti-heist film has wonderful ensemble players like Marlee Matlin, Buck Henry, and Andre Gregory. Though things don’t go as planned, it’s an entertaining snowball ride with a wonderfully surreal backdrop.
Listening to the introduction and commentaries provided by Shepard and some of his cast, you can feel how much of a passion project this remains for those involved. Home releases like this and all the ones considered here are a testament to what it means for a film to be a “living text” that gets revisited and reinterpreted as time goes on.