British distributors Network will add five new titles to their Blu-ray catalog: Alfred Hitchcock's Sabotage (1936), Gus Van Sant's To Die For (1995), Peter Yates' Robbery (1967), Alberto Lattuada's Without Pity (1948), and Halas & Batchelor Collection
Sabotage
Celebrated for the macabre, tour-de-force plots and sublime twist endings that would come to define the very genre of suspense, Alfred Hitchcock is one of cinema's greatest auteurs, his career spanning six decades and over sixty films. Based on Joseph Conrad's The Secret Agent and starring Oscar Homolka and Sylvia Sidney, Sabotage is one of Hitchcock's most significant pre-war British films. Featured here in a High Definition transfer from original film elements, this classic early thriller has never looked better.
Karl Verloc, manager of a London cinema, is secretly involved with a gang of European saboteurs who are plotting a massive bomb attack in Piccadilly Circus. With the police already suspicious of Verloc, they place an undercover detective on his trail – can he bring the saboteurs to justice before they perpetrate their outrage on London?
Special Features:
Introduction by Charles Barr
On Location featurette, introduced by Robert Powell
Image gallery
STREET DATE: JUNE 1.
To Die For
Featuring a career-best, award-winning performance from Nicole Kidman as a relentless, malevolent news anchor with delusions of grandeur, this highly stylised neo-noir from Oscar-nominated Gus Van Sant won multiple awards – including a Golden Globe. This blackly comic tale is featured here in a High Definition transfer from original film elements in its original theatrical aspect ratio.
Fifteen minutes of fame was never going to be enough for Suzanne. Married to small-town restaurateur Larry Maretto, all she ever wanted was to be a high-flying anchorwoman on network TV. Blessed with more determination than ability, she plans her way to the top and will do absolutely anything to achieve her goals – but as Suzanne's ambition grows, her grip on reality starts to slide…
Special Features:
Original theatrical trailer
Image galleries (including deleted scenes)
TV Spots
Promotional material PDFs
STREET DATE: JUNE 15.
Robbery
Based on the planning and execution of criminal cause celebre The Great Train Robbery, this taut, meticulously researched drama stars Stanley Baker as a crime boss undertaking the heist of his career – with James Booth, Frank Finlay and Barry Foster among the gang he assembles.
Co-produced by Baker and directed by multiple-Oscar-nominated Peter Yates, Robbery is a classic of British Film – exceptionally scripted (winning a WGGB Award for Best British Screenplay), beautifully acted and sporting a legendary score by composer-arranger Johnny Keating. It is presented here as a brand-new High Definition transfer transfer from original film elements in its original aspect ratio.
Having successfully pulled off a daring jewel heist, Paul Clifton prepares to hit a mail train heading south from Glasgow. Several difficulties stand in his way, however, not the least of which is the police – who are hot on his tail and already in receipt of a tip-off about his next job…
Special Features:
Original Theatrical Trailer
Image Gallery
Promotional Materials PDF
STREET DATE: JUNE 22.
Without Pity
Co-written by a young Federico Fellini and directed by Alberto Lattuada, this award-winning film from the earlier years of Italian Neo-realist cinema stars John Kitzmiller as a black G.I. who opts to stay in Italy rather than return to a racially segregated U.S. after falling in love with an impoverished local girl.
While its groundbreaking theme of inter-racial love made Without Pity one of the most significant and daring films of the immediate post-War period, it was banned in the United States and, as such, has never received wider recognition for its frank, sensitive handling of a subject that for many years was still controversial.
A film that helped launch Fellini's career yet little-seen throughout the decades since its initial release, Without Pity (Senza Pieta) is featured here in a brand-new High Definition restoration from the original film elements in its as-exhibited theatrical ratio.
STREET DATE: JUNE 8.
Halas & Batchelor Collection
Highly influential and internationally acclaimed, the fondly-remembered work of husband-and-wife animation team John Halas and Joy Batchelor encompassed children's series, public education films and adverts, and they were affectionately referred to as 'the British Disney'. This collection of short films will both remind and reinforce how stunningly innovative, whimsically humorous and subversively entertaining their four decade body of work actually was.
From an uncannily prophetic, Oscar-nominated satire on technological overkill and automated gridlock (Automania 2000) to the adventures of two paper-cutout canines (Snip and Snap), the films present wide-ranging content in a gloriously inventive fashion. Drawn from an archive that includes numerous international award winners, these animated gems have been newly transferred in High Definition from the original film elements; all showcase the beguiling humour, questing yet playful spirituality and sheer technical brilliance that characterised the studio's output, serving as both an introduction to and celebration of a unique body of work that is ripe for re-evaluation.
CONTENT:
The Magic Canvas
Flying Free
The Owl and the Pussycat
Figurehead
The History of Cinema
Foo-Foo: The Stowaway
Habatales: The Cultured Ape
Snip and Snap: Top Dogs
Hamilton the Musical Elephant
Automania 2000
DoDo - The Kid from Outer Space: The Kidnapped Kid
Tales from Hoffnung: The Symphony Orchestra
Flow Diagram
The Question
Children and Cars
Butterfly Ball
Autobahn
Dilemma
STREET DATE: JUNE 29.
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