"The Birdcage"
...get this new ARTS video here.
Albert: Whatever I am, he made me! I was adorable once, young and
full of hope. And now look at me! I'm this short, fat, insecure,
middle-aged thing!
Armand: I made you short?
--Robin Williams (Armand) and Nathan Lane (Albert) are gay Miami
nightclub owners forced to play it straight when their son's in-laws
come to town in "The Birdcage," the outrageous and witty update of
the French comedy "La Cage aux Folles."
NEW RELEASES
"Billy Elliot"
...get this new ARTS video here.
Foursquare in the gritty-but-heartwarming tradition of "Brassed
Off" and "The Full Monty" comes "Billy Elliot," the first film from
noted British theatrical director Stephen Daldry. The setting is
County Durham in 1984, and things "up north" are even grimmer than
usual: the miners' strike is in full rancorous swing, and
11-year-old Billy's dad and older brother, miners both, are on the
picket lines....
"The Tao of Steve"
...get this new ARTS video here.
This American indie take on the slacker lothario falls into the old
familiar story: eternally adolescent man meets grown-up woman and is
forced to face up to a life in which he has never taken an emotional
risk or a life-changing plunge. "The Tao of Steve" is a mix of zen,
tough-guy cool, and college philosophy named after the manly triad
of Steve Austin (a.k.a. the "Six Million Dollar Man"), Steve
McGarrett (Jack Lord's unflappable cop on "Hawaii Five-0"), and the
king of all Steves: Steve McQueen....
"Eyes of Tammy Faye"
...get this new ARTS video here.
Tammy Faye Bakker, she of the layers of makeup that made her face
into a living Halloween mask, will forever remain a camp icon of
'80s culture for many of us. Directors Fenton Bailey and Randy
Barbato chart her life from traveling evangelist to the mother of
three religious cable networks, and her fall from grace when husband
Jim Bakker was forced out of the PTL (Praise the Lord) ministry
after a scandalous affair....
BACK TO SCHOOL VIDEO STORE
Ah, the agony and the ecstasy of returning to school! The smell of
the textbooks, the roar of the lunch crowd... Get yourself psyched
for the return to a life of education with our Back to School Video
Store.
...get this new ARTS video here.
"Run Lola Run"
...get this new ARTS video here.
It's difficult to create a film that's fast paced, exciting, and
aesthetically appealing without diluting its dialogue. "Run Lola
Run," directed and written by Tom Tykwer, is an enchanting balance
of pace and narrative, creating a universal parable that leaps over
cultural barriers. This is the story of young Lola (Franka Potente)
and her boyfriend Manni (Moritz Bleibtreu). In the space of 20
minutes, they must come up with 100,000 deutsche marks to pay back a
seedy gangster....
Read more
...get this new ARTS video here.
ADVANCE ORDERS
"Moscow Does Not Believe in Tears"
...get this new ARTS video here.
Russian comedy-drama that won the 1981 Oscar for Best Foreign Film;
directed by Vladimir Menshov
Available September 4, 2001.
"The Five Senses"
...get this new ARTS video here.
Starring Mary-Louise Parker and Pascale Bussieres; directed by
Jeremy Podeswa
Available September 11, 2001.
"Solomon & Gaenor"
...get this new ARTS video here.
Rising Welsh star Ioan Gruffudd ("Titanic," "Horatio Hornblower")
stars as Solomon to Nia Robert's Gaenor in director Paul Morrison's
Oscar-nominated tale of star-crossed lovers living in the
wrong place (Wales) at the wrong time (1911). Solomon is a Jewish
packman who travels door to door selling fabric from his family's
shop to the locals. It is on one such occasion that he meets Gaenor,
the soft-spoken daughter of a miner....
"Shower"
...get this new ARTS video here.
Old and new China collide in Zhang Yang's award-winning drama of a
family-run bathhouse in a crumbling Beijing neighborhood marked for
demolition. Da Ming (Quanxin Pu), the proprietor's estranged eldest
son who left the family business to become part of China's modern
business culture, receives a cryptic postcard from his brother Er
Ming that suggests his father has died....
"The Waiting Game"
...get this new ARTS video here.
At last, a movie made by and for actors with lots of experience in
the service industry. "The Waiting Game" is a slight movie, but nice
enough, and sure to provide a few moments of recognition for actors
still slugging away in the trenches. The characters are familiar
ones: Lenny, the Actor with the Upscale Girlfriend Who Doesn't
Understand His Career; Andi, the Actress Who...
ESSENTIAL VIDEOS
Essential Videos
Casual movie fans and fanatical film buffs alike will love our
Essential Video Store. We've gathered the cream of the crop across a
wide range of genres, from blockbuster epics to side-splitting
comedies to uniquely personal art films. It's the perfect way to
complete your own collection of must-see movies. Lights, camera,
action!
"Traffik - Miniseries"
...get this new ARTS video here.
Like "The Singing Detective," Alastair Reid's award-winning 1989
British miniseries (broadcast in the U.S. on "Masterpiece Theatre")
has taken on mythic status. The critical and box-office success of
Steven Soderbergh's Oscar-winning feature-film adaptation
paved the way for "Traffik"'s home-video release, and it's an even
more gripping and devastating experience. This is understandable in
that it unfolds over five riveting hours, allowing for richer
characterization. "Traffik" also operates on a broader canvas, as
the interlocking stories play out in such far-flung locales as
London and Hamburg, Germany, as well as Pakistan, a reminder that
the war on drugs--in this case, heroin--is a global one....
Attention, budget-minded Art House & International video fans.
Discover all the used Art House & International videos available
at great prices by visiting the Rare & Used Video Store or by
looking for the blue box where you currently shop. Great deals are
added daily.
...get this new ARTS video here.
SOON...
"42 Up"
...get this new ARTS video here.
Director Michael Apted's third segment in the "Up" series now on
video Available August 28, 2001.
"Eyes of Tammy Faye"
...get this new ARTS video here.
A film festival favorite narrated by RuPaul Charles; directed by
Randy Barbato and Fenton Bailey Available August 28, 2001.
Herman Blume: She's my Rushmore.
Max Fischer: I know. She was mine too.
--Bill Murray and Jason Schwartzman star in "Rushmore," a
wonderfully unorthodox coming-of-age story that ranks with "Harold
and Maude" and "The Graduate."
...get this new ARTS video here.
NEW RELEASES
"A Nous La Liberte"
Our price: $16.99 | You save: $2.96
...get this new ARTS video here.
Starring Raymond Cordy and Henri Marchand; directed by Rene Clair
"The Fourth Man"
Our price: $12.99 | You save: $1.99
...get this new ARTS video here.
Starring Jeroen Krabbe and Rene Soutendijk; directed by Paul Verhoeven
"Zero De Conduite"
Our price: $12.99 | You save: $1.96
...get this new ARTS video here.
Starring Jean Daste and Louis Lefebvre; directed by Jean Vigo
"Soldier of Orange"
Our price: $12.99 | You save: $1.99
...get this new ARTS video here.
Starring Rutger Hauer and Jeroen Krabbe; directed by Paul Verhoeven
EDITOR'S PICK
"Rififi"
Our price: $25.99 | You save: $3.96
...get this new ARTS video here.
Hollywood's loss was Europe's gain when Jules Dassin made the House
Un-American Activities Committee blacklist and then fled the country
at the end of the 1940s. His films helped bring the moral ambiguity
of the postwar American thriller to Europe, inspiring a new
generation of critics and filmmakers. Several years before
Francois Truffaut made "The 400 Blows," he praised Dassin for
the way his films combined "the documentary approach with lyricism,"
a method that would inform many of the new wave films of the '60s.
SPANISH-LANGUAGE VIDEOS STORE
Spanish-Language Videos Store
Visit our new Spanish-Language Videos Store to find thousands of
titles subtitled or dubbed in Spanish. Buy current fare from Spain
(like the Oscar-winning "All About My Mother") or translated versions
of such favorites as "The Sound of Music" and "Toy Story 2."
...get this new ARTS video here.
ADVANCE ORDERS
"Cecil B. Demented"
Our price: $59.99
...get this new ARTS video here.
John Waters spoofs independent filmmaking at its most absurd fringe
with this affectionate portrait of a guerrilla filmmaking collective
that declares war on Hollywood drivel. "Cecil B. Demented" is a
bizarre revision of the Patty Hearst story (with Hearst herself in a
supporting role) full of film-insider jokes and '60s revolutionary
references, but it's more spoof than satire.
Available May 22.
"The Wolves of Kromer"
Our price: $59.95
...get this new ARTS video here.
A mix of revisionist fairy tale and social satire, this gay allegory
imagines urban runaways as storybook werewolves lurking around the
fringes of a quaint little village. Gabriel (James Layton) is a
rascally, seductive veteran of the wilds who fancies young Seth (Lee
Williams), an innocent newcomer tossed out of his home by parents
appalled at his sudden transformation from normal boy to... wolf....
Available May 22.
"Mansfield Park"
Our price: $16.99 | You save: $3.00
...get this new ARTS video here.
In "Mansfield Park," based on Jane Austen's strongly
autobiographical novel, penniless city mouse Fanny Price (Frances
O'Connor) comes to live in a handsome country manor with the
Bertrams, her heartless, class-conscious relations. After many cruel
setbacks, Fanny manages, by dint of writing talent and moral
integrity, to win the day and the love of her life
("Trainspotting"'s Jonny Lee Miller). Canadian director Patricia
Rozema delivers full-blooded Jane Austen, a protofeminist, with
savvy charm in this entertaining ride in the socioeconomic fast
lane, circa 1806.
Available June 5.
"Give us the future; we've had enough of your past. Give us back our
country, to live in, to grow in, to love."
--Liam Neeson in "Michael Collins" (1996)
...order here.
NEW RELEASES
"Cinema Paradiso"
...order here.
Giuseppe Tornatore's beautiful 1988 film about a little boy's love affair
with the movies deservedly won an Oscar® for Best Foreign Film and a
Special Jury Prize at Cannes. Philippe Noiret plays a grizzled old
projectionist who takes pride in his presentation of screen dreams for a
town still recovering from World War II....
"Princess Mononoke"
...order here.
This epic, animated 1997 fantasy has already made history as the
top-grossing domestic feature ever released in Japan, where its combination
of mythic themes, mystical forces, and ravishing visuals tapped deeply into
cultural identity and contemporary, ecological anxieties. For international
animation and anime fans, "Princess Mononoke" represents an auspicious next
step for its revered creator....
"East Is East"
...order here.
Manchester in 1971 was not the ideal place and time to raise a proper
Pakistani family. But George Khan (Om Puri), father of seven unruly moppets
and husband to a willful British wife (Linda Bassett), was determined to
wield his influence over his clan....
EDITOR'S PICK
"Titus"
...order here.
Considered by many to be Shakespeare's worst play, "Titus Andronicus" is a
bloodthirsty tragedy full of villainous heroes and bottomless
revenge--hardly the stuff of big-screen directorial debuts, it would seem.
Yet Julie Taymor dives headfirst into moviemaking with "Titus," a
spectacular adaptation that manages to find beauty and humor in the piles
of carnage....
RECENTLY REDUCED FAVORITES
"Delicatessen"
...order here.
--Outrageously surreal black French comedy about cannibalism
"The Double Life of Veronique"
...order here.
--Perfect for fans of Krzysztof Kieslowski's "Three Colors"
"Smilla's Sense of Snow"
...order here.
--Julia Ormond as a captivatingly icy character
LOST CLASSICS FOUND
MGM Movie Vault
We're shining a light on 99 films, long unavailable, in our new MGM Movie
Vault--and they're all $7.99! Find lost classics, cult favorites, and
neglected titles boasting popular stars like Katharine Hepburn, Gene
Hackman, and Glenn Close, exclusively at Amazon.com.
...order here.
IT'S OSCAR TIME!
The Nominees, Please!
Don't miss our red-carpet coverage of the 73rd annual Academy
Awards.
...order here.
ADVANCE ORDERS
"Tokyo Story"
...order here.
Yasujiro Ozu's economical style reaches its zenith in this deceptively
simple 1953 story of an elderly couple in rural Japan who go to visit their
married children in Tokyo. Chishu Ryo (Ozu's favorite performer) and Chieko
Higashiyama star as the aging parents who find a cold welcome waiting for
them from their two urbanized children, too busy with work and their own
lives to pay them any attention....
Available March 20.
"Pelle the Conqueror"
...order here.
Wonderful 19th-century drama about a humble old widower (Max von Sydow) and
his young son Pelle (Pelle Hvenegaard), Swedish immigrants in Denmark. They
are simple folk with simple, modest dreams, yet they must valiantly
struggle for survival in a world rife with everyday cruelties and
injustices. The life-sustaining closeness between father and son is
especially poignant....
Available April 10.
"The Virgin Suicides"
...order here.
Previously criticized for her marginal acting skills, Sofia Coppola made
her directorial debut with "The Virgin Suicides" and silenced her
detractors. No amount of coaching from her director father (Francis
Coppola) or husband (Spike Jonze) could have guaranteed a film this
assured, and in adapting Jeffrey Eugenides's novel, Coppola demonstrates
the sensitivity and emotional depth that this material demands....
Available April 24.
You'll find more great videos, articles, and interviews in
Amazon.com's Art House & International Video section.
...browse here