News

Quentin Tarantino crowned Sergio Corbucci as the second-best director of Italian westerns, but our vote goes to Sergio Sollima — this is the most satisfying Spaghetti oater outside of the Leone corral. In his first starring role, Lee Van Cleef is lawman Jonathan Corbett, who pursues Tomas Milian’s killer into Mexico for an American millionaire. Political screenwriter Franco Solinas helped cook up the story, which pitches frontier ethics against ‘establishment’ corruption. The two-disc special edition presents the show in 4 versions, if we count a clever English-Italian language hybrid.

The Big Gundown

Region B Blu-ray

Powerhouse Indicator

1967 / Color / 2:35 widescreen / 110, 90, 95 min. / La resa dei conti / Street Date February 13, 2023 / available from Powerhouse Films UK / £22.99

Starring: Lee Van Cleef, Tomas Milian, Walter Barnes, Nieves Navarro, Gérard Herter, Manolita Barroso, Robert Camardiel, Ángel del Pozo, Luisa Rivelli, Luis Barboo, Benito Stefanelli.

Cinematography: Carlo Carlini

Set decorators: Carlo Leva, Carlo Simi, Nicola Tamburo

Costumes: Carlo...

by Vadim Rizov

Overviews of the spaghetti western inevitably begin with Sergio Leone, whose presentation of Clint Eastwood as the ultimate laconic Westerner grows more iconic throughout the genre-codifying trilogy of A Fistful of Dollars, For a Few Dollars More and The Good, The Bad and the Ugly. Time progressively slows to a mythic crawl, as mundane quick-draw showdowns and bounty hunter pursuits become epic set pieces through sheer duration.

Westerns had been made in Italy and Spain before Leone (largely by non-Italians), but his worldwide success was unavoidably influential. Segments of Sergio Sollima's 1966 The Big Gundown anticipate 1968's Once Upon a Time in the West, with another swoony Ennio Morricone score emphasizing similar slow visual coups. A showy tracking shot through an obscure Mexican village starts with two women at market and stops at a criminal's face being lathered in an open-air barber's chair. The man in pursuit...

Here’s a list of some of the new movie and TV shows coming to DVD and Blu-ray this week that we’re looking forward to seeing. Also, there’s some classic movies hitting Blu-ray for the first time this week as well.

Of all the new releases, we’re particularly interested in the Blu-ray version of The Last Starfighter, Dexter Seasons 1-3 on Blu-ray and the debut of season one of Sons of Anarchy on DVD.

Check them out.

Movies

The 5 Deadly Venoms ~ Five Deadly Venoms (DVD)

Hannah Montana The Movie (3-Disc Combo Pack Blu-ray + DVD + Digital Copy) ~ Miley Cyrus, Billy Ray Cyrus, Lucas Till, and Emily Osment (Blu-ray)

Husbands (Extended Cut) ~ Ben Gazzara, Peter Falk, John Cassavetes, and Jenny Runacre (DVD)

Julia ~ Tilda Swinton (DVD)

Kagemusha – Criterion Collection ~ Tatsuya Nakadai, Tsutomu Yamazaki, Kenichi Hagiwara, and Jinpachi Nezu (Blu-ray)

Last House on the Left (2009) ~ Garret Dillahunt, Monica Potter, Tony Goldwyn...

Dear Staff of Cinema Retro: 

Your magazine is the best of its type and along with FilmFax is one of my favorite reads! Your most recent issue was especially interesting. What caught my eye was the ad for "The Crimson Blade". I have been doing research re: the forgotten films of Sean Flynn, son of Errol Flynn. (I did notice when "the Italian offerings" were mentioned, there was no mention of 1962's "Il Figlio del Capitano Blood"!) The interesting coincidence is that when "The Son of Captain Blood" premiered in the U.K. in 1963, released by Warner-Pathe, in some regions it was shown on a double bill with Hammer's "The Scarlet Blade", which as I am sure your staff knows is the original title of the film released in the U.S.A. as "The Crimson Blade"!  Also according to articles I have been reading re: the release of Sean Flynn...