Will Success Spoil Rock Hunter?

Frank Tashlin, 1957

BLU-RAY ONLY RELEASE

Unsold on celebrity? Congested with consumption? Addled by status? You’re in The World, kiddo, brought to you by Frank Tashlin — “Because Someone’s Got to Live in It.” And now a brief word on our latest fine product, the one that gives you the answer to that nagging question: Will Success Spoil Rock Hunter?

Ladies and gentlemen, no-one does straight-and-narrow quite like Tony Randall, and we guarantee his turn as lovable ad-man Rockwell P. Hunter will leave you in so many stitches you’ll be just silly with sc-HAH-rtissue! And speaking of tissue: once you see Jayne Mansfield bob and weave as starlet Rita Marlowe, the ambidextrous angel who takes Hunter under her “wings” to launch his agency into the $trato$phere, you too will coo her trademark “ooo”! But that’s not all! You’ll also get Ms. Joan Blondell, star of Nightmare Alley and of Opening Night, who rounds out the package as Ms. Marlowe’s assistant and handler — as they say in Paris, quel package!

Will Success Spoil Rock Hunter? proves that love CAN be manufactured (how else could we get our Blu-rays in your hands??), and finds Frank Tashlin doing what he did better than everyone else: frank tashlin’!!! Trust us when we say we here at The Masters of Cinema Series are simply over-the-moon to be presenting Will Success Spoil Rock Hunter? for the first time on Blu-ray anywhere on the planet!


SPECIAL FEATURES:

• Gorgeous high-definition transfer of the film in its original 2.35:1 aspect ratio

• New and exclusive video introduction of the film by director Joe Dante (Gremlins 1 & 2, InnerSpace, Looney Tunes: Back in Action, The Hole 3-D)

• Vintage Movietone short which captures Jayne Mansfield on tour promoting the film

• Alternate music & effects track with a different musical score for the opening of the picture and other ‘temporary’ effects-placement

• Original theatrical trailer

• Optional English SDH subtitles for the deaf and hearing-impaired

• 44-page booklet featuring two new essays by film writer David Cairns, and an exclusive 2003 interview about the film with Tony Randall, conducted by Ethan DeSeife



Make Way for Tomorrow

Leo McCarey, 1937

BLU-RAY ONLY RELEASE

Of Make Way for Tomorrow, Orson Welles told Peter Bogdanovich: “Oh my God that’s the saddest movie ever made.” Long unavailable for home viewing, Leo McCarey’s personal favourite among all his films (which included The Awful Truth and An Affair to Remember) is sad, yes, but it also stands as cathartic affirmation of the dignity of human feeling, and in the testament of such achieves a subtle complexity of characterization on par with Renoir, Ford, and Hawks.

Victor Moore and Beulah Bondi, two of the great Hollywood character actors, appear makeup-aged beyond their actual years to portray the couple whose house the bank has foreclosed upon (the film was set and produced in the midst of the Great Depression), and who are forced subsequently to move into their children’s homes in the city. A near-musical restructuring of gratitude and debt ensues once the offspring deem the couple’s lodging an imposition: the two are separated, then reunited weeks later… as they glide inexorably into an uncertain future.

Unrelentingly unsentimental, yet maintaining a balance of pathos and levity unseen in not only American studio pictures but most of the rest of world cinema, Make Way for Tomorrow exerted a powerful influence on Yasujirô Ozu’s Tokyo Story and several other key entries in the Japanese master’s body of work. It is a film profoundly concerned with questions of filial obligation and the way we treat one another as human beings; it is a film that, to give Welles the last word, “could make a stone cry.” The Masters of Cinema Series is proud to present Leo McCarey’s truly great Make Way for Tomorrow for the first time on Blu-ray anywhere in the world.


SPECIAL FEATURES:

• Gorgeous high-definition transfer of the film in its original 1.37:1 aspect ratio

• 20-minute video piece with filmmaker and writer Peter Bogdanovich (The Last Picture Show; The Cat’s Meow) discussing the film and Leo McCarey’s career

• 21-minute video piece with writer Gary Giddins discussing McCarey’s work and the social and political contexts of the film

• Optional English SDH subtitles for the deaf and hearing-impaired

• Lengthy booklet featuring a new essay on the film by writer and Library of America editor Geoffrey O’Brien, and an excerpt from Josephine Lawrence’s source novel Years Are So Long

Now's your chance to own a piece of limited edition cinema history. On 22nd November our editions of the restored and reconstructed Metropolis will be released on DVD and Blu-ray.

With its dizzying depiction of a futuristic cityscape and alluring female robot, Metropolis is among the most famous of all German films and the mother of sci-fi cinema (an influence on Blade Runner and Star Wars, among countless other films). Directed by the legendary Fritz Lang (M, Das Testament des Dr. Mabuse,The Big Heat, etc.), its jaw-dropping production values, iconic imagery, and modernist grandeur – it was described by Luis Bunuel as "a captivating symphony of movement" – remain as powerful as ever.

Along side the standard DVD and Blu-ray editions we will be releasing a limited edition dual format Steelbook. Over the next 48 hours we are giving away a FREE Metropolis T-shirt with every pre-order for this very limited dual format release. T-Shirts will be shipped within 14 days and you will be guaranteed early delivery of the steelbook. The set comes with 3 discs, 1 x Blu-ray and 2 x DVD, special features are listed below.

This offer is strictly on a first come first served basis. Artwork for illustrative purposes only.

Metropolis Steelbook Special Features:
• 150-minute reconstructed and restored 2010 version (including 25 minutes of footage previously thought lost to the world)
• Separate DVD and BD editions with wraparound embossed sleeve, or Ltd Ed Steelbook Dual Format edition
• Pristine new HD transfer (1080p on Blu-ray)
• New 2010 symphony orchestra studio recording of the original 1927 Gottfried Huppertz score in 5.1
• Newly translated optional English subtitles as well as the original German intertitles
• Full-length audio commentary by David Kalat and Jonathan Rosenbaum
• Die Reise nach Metropolis (2010, 53 minutes), a documentary about the film
• 2010 re-release trailer
• 56-page booklet featuring archival interviews with Fritz Lang, a 1927 review by Luis Bunuel, articles by Jonathan Rosenbaum and Karen Naundorf, and restoration notes by Martin Koerber.

And more!