In describing What's Up Tiger Lily? we thought it best left to Woody himself: 'We took a Japanese film made in Japan by Japanese actors and actresses and I took out all the soundtrack and knocked out all the voices and I wrote a comedy. The result is a movie where people are running around doing all those James Bondian things but what's coming out of their mouths is something wholly other. It was done before actually in Gone With The Wind but not many people know that. Those were Japanese people actually and we dubbed in American voices Southern voices. But that was years ago'. Woody Allen.
Following a mass murder in rural Japan ex-special forces soldier Ajisawa (Ken Takakura) adopts the sole survivor of the massacre an amnesiac young girl. Intending to put the past behind them the pair instead find themselves in conflict with the corrupt and powerful leaders of a small town. As the girl's memories begin to emerge Ajisawa must call upon all of his killer instincts to ensure their survival...
Ring (1998): Within a week of watching a mysterious videotape a group of teenagers are dead. The bodies are found gruesomely contorted their eyes frozen as if they had seen something more terrifying than any physical threat. The video then becomes an urban myth. Insidiously an unseen force is pointing its deadly finger at those poor souls unable to resist their curiosity. One of those people is cynical journalist Reiko who soon finds herself unwillingly drawn into a spiralling nightmare of fear from an unseen omnipresent threat. The most unsettling film since The Exorcist with an unnatural presence that touches every nerve in your body 'Ring' is a beast of an entirely different order. Critically acclaimed as one of the most frightening horror films in years 'Ring' delivers a tense spine-chilling atmosphere filled with an overwhelming sense of dread and a potent presence of unworldly evil. Dark sinister and genuinely horrifying this is a film you will never forget. Dark Water (2002): In the midst of a custody battle Yoshimi and her beloved 6 year old daughter move in a creepy apartment. Once there the discovery of a schoolbag left behind by a mysterious young girl along with the appearance of damp patches on the ceiling and walls begins to haunt them as rumours circulate of a little girl who disappeared from the apartment above... Premonition (2004): Hideki Satomi (Mikami) his wife Ayaka (Sakai) and their young daughter Nana (Inoue) are driving blissfully through the countryside when the workaholic Satomi stops at a roadside phone booth to send an e-mail from his laptop. In the booth he discovers a smudged scrap of newsprint with Nana's picture on it -- and an article describing her death in a traffic accident. Three years later Satomi has not recovered from his failure to prevent the accident while his marriage has also ended. Meanwhile Ayaka has joined forces with a psychological researcher (Ono) to unravel the mysteries of prophecy. They interview a psychic who has the ability to take Polaroids of the future with her mind - but becomes suspicious of the researchers' motives. Then another new newspaper arrives at Satomi's flat - saying that one of his students (Maki Horikita) a girl with piercing eyes and an uncanny presence will die. Can he save her and himself?
Janacek's The Cunning Little Vixen is a real charmer of an opera, a tale that shows the natural world the composer had loved from childhood in its true colours: miraculous, beautiful, mysterious but also cruel. The inspiration came from a series of illustrated stories published in a Czech newspaper. The Vixen of the title is captured by a forester and taken home as a plaything for his children. She is soon thrown out of the house and has to make her own way in the world, encountering lust, stupidity, pride, love and ultimately death. This 1995 performance was taken from the Chatelet Theatre in Paris. Visually, Nicholas Hytner's production is a triumph, the animals wonderfully wittily wrought (the mosquito with its syringe for a nose, the mangey old dog, distasteful in baggy Y-fronts, the hideous, goggle-eyed frog). And it's also brilliantly cast: Eva Jenis's Vixen is funny, sexy, endearing and youthful enough in voice and figure to convince. Thomas Allen is a veteran of the role of the Forester, a huge presence and singing in impeccable Czech. In fact, there's not a weak performance here, and that goes for the dancers and instrumentalists as well as the singers. And at the helm, who better than Sir Charles Mackerras, arguably the greatest living interpreter of Janacek's music? This is in essence a grown-up fairy tale, ravishingly done and extremely highly recommended. On the DVD: The Cunning Little Vixen is presented on disc in vividly remastered PCM stereo, with 16:9 picture format that does full justice to the alluringly colourful designs. The disc is encoded for regions 2 and 5, and the menu and subtitle languages are English, German, French and Spanish. The useful booklet gives coherent background information and synopsis as well as full casting details. There's also a substantial (23-minute) trailer of other offerings from Arthaus Musik. --Harriet Smith
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