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Illustrations by Chantall Veerman.Every few years, a projection screen is installed in a clearing near the Greek village of Lyssarea, in Arcadia. Hundreds of red beanbags and pillows dot the field, with benches at the rear and a 16mm film projector atop its wooden stand. As the sun sets over the craggy Peloponnese, the projector whirs to life and spectators settle in for open-air cinema. Crickets chirp. Dogs bark. The temperature falls. Moths prepare for an epic frenzy.Without any opening credits, a flash of light floods the screen and then cuts to black. This is the Temenos. Long sections of black film leader advance and then strobe with clear leader, until sustained illumination bathes the audience. Dark again, the projection surface dissolves into the sky as our eyes readjust from the brightness. Finally, an image appears on the screen: the torqued body of a naked man glistening in warm light,...

Blu-ray Release Date: Jan. 25, 2013

Price: Blu-ray $29.99

Studio: Lionsgate

Gotta dance, gotta sing in Luis Buñuel's That Obscure Object of Desire.

French filmmaker’s Luis Buñuel’s (Belle de Jour) final feature, the 1977 romantic comedy-drama That Obscure Object of Desire explodes with eroticism, bringing the director’s lifelong preoccupation with the darker side of desire full circle.

Buñuel regular Fernando Rey plays Matthieu, an urbane widower, tortured by his lust for the elusive Conchita. With subversive flare, Buñuel uses two different actresses in the lead role – Carole Bouquet, a sophisticated French beauty and Angela Molina, a Spanish coquette. Drawn from Pierre Louys‘ 1898 novel La Femme et le Pantin, the movie offers a dizzying game of sexual politics punctuated by a terror that harkens back to Buñuel’s surrealistic beginnings.

Issued on DVD by Criterion back in 2001 but out-of-print for years (though it’s still available through used disc brokers), That Obscure Object of Desire...

(Luis Buñuel, 1977, Studio Canal, 15)

In his final movie the 77-year-old Luis Buñuel is at his most puckishly anarchic and insouciantly surreal with an updated version of an early 20th-century novel by Pierre Louÿs, filmed four times previously, most famously in 1935 by Von Sternberg and Dietrich as The Devil is a Woman. Co-scripted by his regular writer, Jean-Claude Carrière, it stars the great Spanish actor Fernando Rey as Mathieu, a pathetic, rich philanderer regaling his fellow railway passengers with the story of being led up the garden path of a poisoned Eden by an alluringly unattainable young woman. She's played by two women – Carole Bouquet representing her cool northern side, Ángela Molina her hot, earthy, Mediterranean aspect – and it's part of the old master's skill that we rapidly accept the capricious duo as a single person.

Meanwhile the besotted Mathieu is oblivious to the terrorist outrages masterminded by the "Revolutionary Army...

Studiocanal are pleased to announce the release of their latest Studiocanal Collection that aims to revisit some of the most iconic films from Studiocanal’S back catalogue of over 5,000 titles.

Bringing together the very best of cinema, the Studiocanal Collection is a series of acclaimed and influential films on Blu-ray with unique special features and accompanying booklets, available in HD so as to present the best possible picture and sound quality. Discover or re-discover great classics, iconic contemporary works or adaptations from literary masterpieces.

The Trial and That Obscure Object Of Desire will also be available on DVD on September 10th. Quai Des Brumes is out on DVD now.

We have one copy of each Blu-ray to give away as a box set to our readers…

The Studio Canal Collection: The Trial (1962)

Available on Blu-ray: September 10th, 2012

Based on the influential Franz Kafka novel, The Trial is a paranoid masterpiece...

Marlene Dietrich is Turner Classic Movies last "Summer Under the Stars" star of 2011. Today, TCM is showing 12 Marlene Dietrich movies, in addition to J. David Riva's 2001 documentary Marlene Dietrich: Her Own Song. Riva, I should add, is the son of Maria Riva and Dietrich's grandson. [Marlene Dietrich Movie Schedule.] Unfortunately, TCM isn't presenting any Marlene Dietrich movie premieres today. In other words, no Dietrich opposite David Bowie in Just a Gigolo, or Dietrich next to Jean Gabin in Martin Roumagnac / The Room Upstairs, or any of Dietrich's little-known German-made silents, e.g., Ich küsse Ihre Hand, Madame / I Kiss Your Hand, Madame; Das Schiff der verlorenen Menschen / The Ship of Lost Men; and Gefahren der Brautzeit / Dangers of the Engagement. None of the silents are exactly what I'd call good movies — nor is Just a Gigolo — but they all are worth a look if only because Dietrich is in them. Another option for...

Certainly there are lots of books which have been filmed far more times than Pierre Louÿs' The Woman and the Puppet, but his book has the distinction of having formed the basis for four widely varying masterpieces, or so I'd argue.

The book, in which a poor factory girl drives a middle-aged nobleman to sexual distraction by incessantly leading him on, then spurning him, became Buñuel's final film, That Obscure Object of Desire (1977). Famously, Don Luis cast two actresses in the role of the schizoid heroine, but declined to follow standard logic by having one play consistently hot, the other cold.

Only slightly less celebrated is Josef von Sternberg's last Dietrich vehicle, The Devil is a Woman (1935), flaunting the Production Code by having Dietrich tease two men to the point of murder, and blithely get away with it. Her victims are Lionel Atwill and Cesar Romero (real-life...