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Blu-ray.com has just revealed that Capelight Pictures and MPI Home Video will be releasing a brand-new Blu-ray transfer of Paul Verhoeven’s period action film Flesh+Blood. The film was released back in 1985 and stars Rutger Hauer, Jennifer Jason Leigh, Susan Tyrrell, Tom Burlinson and Jack Thompson. The new 40th Anniversary Edition Blu-ray is slated to hit retailers early next year on February 11.

The description reads,

“Director Paul Verhoeven brings no-holds-barred action and sensuality to the Middle Ages. A band of mercenaries led by Martin (Rutger Hauer) triumph in battle for their leader Arnolfini. When Martin is betrayed by the tyrant Arnolfini, he seeks revenge! Martin’s mercenaries abduct Agnes (Jennifer Jason Leigh), a convent girl and the bride-to-be of Arnolfini’s son Steven (Tom Burlinson). She in turn manipulates Martin to protect her from his men. But is she feigning devotion in order to survive or has she fallen in love?...

The Man from Snowy River receives a mostly glowing review from two stunt performers. Based on the Banjo Paterson poem of the same name, the 1982 Australian Western follows a young man who, after the death of his father, sets out to become his own man by taking a job with a horse rancher, earns the love of his daughter, and fights to clear his name after being wrongly blamed for losing an expensive horse. The movie stars Kirk Douglas, Jack Thompson, Tom Burlinson, Sigrid Thornton, Terence Donovan, Chris Haywood, and Lorraine Bayly.

On the latest episode of Corridor Crew's "Stuntmen React" series, host Niko Pueringer was joined by stunt performers Gui DaSilva-Greene and Anis Cheurfa to breakdown action scenes in movies, including a horse stunt in The Man from Snowy River. Watch the portion of the video below:

The three reacted to a scene in which Tom Burlinson's character rides...

Today marks the 60th birthday of one of the finest and most underrated actors working: the great Jennifer Jason Leigh. Aside from a brief dalliance with the mainstream in the early 90s, her 40+ year career has been spent largely in independent cinema, from her beginnings elevating schlock like Eyes of a Stranger to her most recent role in Lena Dunham’s Sundance 2022 entry, Sharp Stick.

Leigh has never shown any interest in airing any part of her life offscreen in public. This is likely one of the reasons she has gone under the radar throughout her career. She has amassed huge respect in the industry, but her lack of interest in trophy chasing has meant she has just one Oscar nomination to her name and her pursuit of privacy and choice of roles that she’s never been a huge star. I get the feeling that’s exactly how she wants it.

‘Point of No Return.’

Vincent Monton is understandably chuffed that Australians have the chance to discover – or rediscover – his telemovie Point of No Return 25 years after it premiered on Network 10.

Umbrella Entertainment released a digitally restored version of the drama written and directed by Monton, which starred Marcus Graham and Nikki Coghill, on DVD and VOD this month.

Graham played the dual roles of Grady, a former soldier who is traumatized by his experiences in war and prison, and his murdered brother Kristian.

Grady escapes from custody after attending Kristian’s funeral. Coghill is Kate, the girlfriend of the protagonist who later hooked up with his brother.

The producer, the late Phillip Emanuel, had raised the budget to make a telemovie about a prison break but was not happy with the script so he approached Monton. The offer was to write a screenplay in three weeks, which he could...

By Rod Barnett

There have been entire books dedicated to the cinema of Dutch director Paul Verhoeven and with good reason. Known for pushing the envelope of what is acceptable onscreen in both sexuality and violence, his movies have been celebrated and condemned - often by the same critic at different times! To one degree or another I have enjoyed every Verhoeven film I've seen all the way back to the brilliant Soldier of Orange (1977) but it was RoboCop (1987) that stomped across the world and made it possible for the madman to make nearly anything he wanted. I wonder what would have happened if this film - his first English language effort- had not been a huge financial success. Would we have had a series of progressively worse sequels with Rutger Hauer ravishing maidens and slaying nobles for gold? Maybe in a better world.....

Flesh + Blood (1985) takes place in Western...

A film easy to admire but equally hard to love, Paul Verhoeven’s 1985 film Flesh+Blood, his last title to make it to DVD about a decade ago, gets an exciting Blu-ray transfer this month. Notable in multiple regards, this was the last infamous collaboration between Verhoeven and his star Rutger Hauer, the pair having completed five previous films. Reportedly a grueling shoot, and the rising tensions between director and star didn’t help anything, this was also Verhoeven’s first English language film, the first time he didn’t use storyboards, and the last film he would make in his native Netherlands for two decades. While this sounds like a recipe for disaster, there is more to praise than damn in this ambitiously realized portrait of Medieval Europe that’s worthy of reconsideration.

It’s Western Europe in 1510, and amidst the bloodletting, Bubonic plague, and scourging of lands, a...

The Paul Verhoeven filmography screens at the Tiff Bell Lightbox through April 4th, culminating in a screening of his new “crowdsourced” film, Tricked.

Common wisdom dictates that cynicism and sentimentality are carefully linked, if not outright synonymous. In filmic terms, the most comfortable formulation of that argument is to align, for instance, romantic comedies with socially-acceptable (and, often, utterly noxious) notions of gender politics. Through the deployment of relationships and character profiles that support popular notions of how women and men behave, these movies are able to exploit comfortable mores in order to mainline easy pathos. What’s less common is to consider how that relationship between affect and effect can be subverted, perhaps because it’s relatively rare for truly subversive artists to be handed the proverbial keys to the kingdom.

Enter Paul Verhoeven. From his early Dutch features, including Turks Fruit (Turkish Delight) and Soldaat van Oranje (Soldier of Orange...

Hugh Jackman was forced to keep a huge secret from his actress wife Deborra-lee Furness as he helped organise a special Australian TV tribute in her honour.

The X-Men star struggled to keep quiet after Furness was selected to have her achievements and career celebrated on documentary show This Is Your Life, which is set to air Down Under on Monday.

In the taped tribute, Jackman reveals, "I'm not good at keeping secrets, but she has no idea," before a stunned Furness is welcomed onto the set and informed she will be the star of the show.

The couple, who married in February 1996, later relived their wedding day by dancing to All the Way, sung by Tom Burlinson and Kate Ceberano.

Fellow Aussie actresses Naomi Watts, Sigrid Thornton and Nicole Kidman, and comedian Jerry Seinfeld all appear in taped video messages, with the funnyman declaring: "She (Furness) is not a woman who is overwhelmed or thrown for a loop by anything in this world."...

Kyle Sandilands is expected to announce his role on the Australia's Got Talent judging panel tomorrow. The former Australian Idol judge is tipped to make the announcement on his breakfast radio show. According to The Daily Telegraph, Sandilands has signed a deal with Channel 7 for his TV return. Brian McFadden is also reportedly joining the panel alongside show regular Dannii Minogue. Tom Burlinson (more)...

Kyle Sandilands has reportedly been approached to become a judge on Australia's Got Talent. The radio DJ, who was axed from Australian Idol after he grilled a 14-year-old rape victim about her sex life live on his breakfast show, is believed to be joining the reality TV talent show this year. A TV insider told The Sunday Telegraph that the Seven Network is "extremely" keen on asking Sandilands to join current judges Dannii Minogue, Red Symons and Tom Burlinson. They added: "In a year without Idol, Seven's (more)...

CANNES -- Bob Yari Prods. has acquired worldwide distribution rights to Clancy of the Overflow, a project being billed as a prequel to The Man From Snowy River, the company said Sunday. 20th Century Fox released Australia-set Man From Snowy River in 1982. George Miller directed the film with a cast that included Tom Burlinson and Terence Donovan as well as Kirk Douglas in dual roles as twin brothers. The story centers on Jim Craig, who lived his first 18 years in the mountains of Australia on his father's farm. When his father dies, he is forced to earn money to get the farm back on its feet.