Kino Lorber has unveiled some of the details of their December 2022 Blu-Ray and DVD releases from their Kino Classics, Cohen Media Group, Good Deed Entertainment, First Run Features, Gunpowder & Sky, Menemsha Films, Virgil Films and Raro Video imprints. Get all the details on this incredibly packed lineup below:
Street Date: 12/20/22
Synopsis: Long-awaited and unseen anywhere for decades, Maigret (1960-1963) is the definitive adaptation of Georges Simenon’s world famous novels. This BBC television production stars Rupert Davies as Commissaire Jules Maigret, the dogged French detective. Though Simenon’s books have been adapted many times, Davies’s celebrated, BAFTA-winning portrayal won the approval of Simenon himself, who stated: “At last, I have found the perfect Maigret!” This three disc-set includes all 13 episodes of Season 1, in which Maigret reckons with a “Murder in Montmarte”, “The Burglar’s Wife”, and various other vexing cases that only the moody Maigret can solve. Maigret has been remastered in High Definition from original film elements and is featured here in its original fullscreen TV format.
Bonus Features: The State of Maigret (restoration featurette)
Street Date: 12/20/22
Synopsis: This four-disc set showcase more than fourteen hours of rarely-seen silent films about feminist protest, slapstick rebellion, and suggestive gender play. These women organize labor strikes, bake (and weaponize) inedible desserts, explode out of chimneys, electrocute the police force, and assume a range of identities that gleefully dismantle traditional gender norms and sexual constraints. The films span a variety of genres including slapstick comedy, genteel farce, the trick film, cowboy melodrama, and adventure thriller. Cinema’s First Nasty Women includes 99 European and American silent films, produced from 1898 to 1926, sourced from thirteen international film archives and libraries, with all-new musical scores, video introductions, commentary tracks, and a lavishly illustrated booklet. Curated by Maggie Hennefeld, Laura Horak, and Elif Rongen-Kaynakçi, and produced for video by Bret Wood, Cinema’s First Nasty Women is a partnership of Kino Lorber, Le Giornate del Cinema Muto, Women Film Pioneers Project, Eye Filmmuseum, FIC-Silente, and Carleton University.
Bonus Features:
“What Is a Nasty Woman?” – Video introduction to the collection, featuring series curators Laura Horak, Maggie Hennefeld, Elif Rongen-Kaynakçi, and music supervisor Dana Reason
Eleven short documentaries focused on specific films and performers, including interviews with Liza Black, TJ Cuthand, Maggie Hennefeld, Laura Horak, Elif Rongen-Kaynakçi, Dana Reason, Arigon Starr, Susan Stryker, and Kyla Wazana Tompkins
120-page booklet with essays, interviews, photos, and detailed film notes (print copies only available in the Blu-ray Deluxe First Edition; DVD and subsequent Blu-ray editions will feature a QR code for the full booklet contents online)
Audio commentaries for select films by: Jennifer Bean (University of Washington), Liza Black, Enrique Moreno Ceballos (Festival Internacional de Cine Silente México), Liz Clarke (Brock University), Bryony Dixon (British Film Institute), Jane Gaines (Columbia University), Rosa María Licea Garibay (Festival Internacional de Cine Silente México), Joanna Hearne (University of Oklahoma), Maggie Hennefeld (University of Minnesota), Laura Horak (Carleton University), Pamela Hutchinson (Silent London), Elif Rongen-Kaynakçi (Eye Filmmuseum), Mariann Lewinsky (Cineteca di Bologna), Katharina Loew (University of Massachusetts Boston), Cecilia Ramírez Morales (Festival Internacional de Cine Silente México), Ana Belén Recoder (Festival Internacional de Cine Silente México), Lluvia Soto Rodríguez (Festival Internacional de Cine Silente México), Aurore Spiers, Shelley Stamp (University of California, Santa Cruz), Alejandra Calleja Toxqui (Festival Internacional de Cine Silente México), Kristen Anderson Wagner (University of Southern California), Laetitia Vigneron (Festival Internacional de Cine Silente México), and Yiman Wang (University of California, Santa Cruz)
Street Date: 12/6/22
Synopsis: Cohen Film Collection presents a new restoration of a Merchant Ivory classic. Oscar®-winners Vanessa Redgrave, Keith Carradine, and Rod Steiger star in this adaptation of the Carson McCullers novella and the Edward Albee play adapted from it. Merchant Ivory veteran Simon Callow’s only turn as a director is a twisted Southern Gothic dark comedy set in a small rural town in the deep South. Redgrave plays Miss Amelia, the eccentric proprietor of the town’s only cafe and, more importantly to her grip on the townsfolk, the proprietor of a secret moonshine still. Her domineering hold on the town is threatened when two strangers appear with a claim on her past.
Bonus Features: New audio commentary by film critic and author Peter Tonguette | Trailers
Street Date: 12/13/22
Synopsis: Cohen Film Collection is proud to present a new restoration of this Joan Micklin Silver (Hester Street) romantic comedy. In their first film appearance together, real-life husband and wife comedy team Jerry Stiller and Anne Meara star as a couple who have been driving each other crazy for 40 years. Retired and depressed, former shop owner Sam (Stiller) is getting on Molly’s (Meara) last nerve. When he refuses to move the pet carp he’s keeping in their bathroom, Molly leaves him and moves in with her son, Joel (played by Mark Ruffalo), who’s dealing with marital problems of his own. The result is a laugh-out-loud comedy about the trials and tribulations of marriage and family life – and how to stay in love through it all.
Bonus Features: On-Stage Q&A with the Director and Co-Writers | Original Trailer | Re-release Trailer
ON THE YARD/A WALK ON THE MOON: TWO FILMS BY RAPHAEL D. SILVER
Street Date: 12/13/22
Synopsis: COHEN FILM COLLECTION Presents Two NEWLY RESTORED and RARELY SEEN Films Directed By RAPHAEL D. SILVER. ON THE YARD: Landing himself in a state penitentiary, Juleson (John Heard), a bookish con artist, fails to adjust to the intricate social order of the prison system. Juleson’s independent way of thinking does little to impress his fellow inmates and runs him afoul of Chilly (Thomas Waites), the leader of one of the most powerful gangs in the prison. Facing a group of cold-blooded killers on his own, Juleson discovers firsthand what individualism can bring to a loner behind bars. A WALK ON THE MOON: Summer 1969. The Apollo 11 mission brought the first human to set foot on the moon and with it a renewed sense of optimism that anything is possible, while on a farm in upstate New York, Woodstock would become an icon of the power of the counterculture’s influence on America and the world. It’s against this backdrop that the story of an idealistic Peace Corps volunteer named Everett Jones (played by Steppenwolf Theatre Ensemble regular Kevin Anderson) assigned to a remote Colombian village is set. When he arrives, he is confused by the cynical attitude of his predecessor (Terry Kinney, Steppenwolf co-founder) and the apathy the villagers seem to hold toward him. It’s both a tale of hubris and hope, as Jones attempts to bring his version of progress to the rural village. Featuring stunning color cinematography by Adam Greenberg (TERMINATOR, GHOST, NEAR DARK), this feature was produced by director Raphael and Joan Micklin Silver’s daughter Dina and includes an extended cameo by Claudia Silver.
Bonus Features: Trailers
Street Date: 12/6/22
Synopsis: When a troubled couple escape to their rural farmhouse for a weekend of reconnection, they realize that their ability to save their marriage will literally determine the fate of humankind itself.
Bonus Features: Featurettes: The Big Reveal, A Day at the Market, and Camera in the Water | Trailer
Street Date: 12/13/22 (DVD ONLY)
Synopsis: FREE PUPPIES! tells the story of a chronically overlooked crisis that’s dogging the rural American South. Directors Samantha Wishman and Christina Thomas narrow their focus on Dade County in northwest Georgia, where an intrepid group of local women have stepped up to compensate for the lack of an operating animal shelter – rescuing countless dogs and taking matters into their own hands.
Bonus Features: Film Trailer | Bonus Scenes
WORST TO FIRST: THE TRUE STORY OF Z100 NEW YORK
Street Date: 12/6/22 (DVD ONLY)
Synopsis: The true story of the legendary Z100 New York radio station – following the colorful characters that started the station in the early 1980s, and how they used unconventional and outlandish methods to go from New York City’s worst-rated radio station to #1.
Bonus Features: Deleted Scenes | Audio commentary by DJ Scott Shannon and Director Mitchell Stuart | Trailers
Street Date: 12/13/22 (DVD ONLY)
Synopsis: PLAN A is based on the incredible true story of the “Avengers“ – a group of Jewish vigilantes, men and woman, who after surviving the Holocaust vow to avenge the death of their people – “an eye for any eye, a tooth for a tooth“.
Max (August Diehl) is a Holocaust survivor who has lost his entire family in the camps. Full of rage and with nothing left to live for other than revenge, he decides to help the Jewish Brigade, soldiers under British command (led by Michael Aloni). Off the record they find and execute Nazis accused of holding leadership positions in the Nazi system. When the brigade is called off, Max follows Anna (Sylvia Hoeks) and a group of former partisans to Nuremberg, where they soon realize that they will not find redemption in the upcoming Nuremberg trials.
Led by charismatic leader Abba Kovner, they formulate the biggest revenge operation in history – “Plan A“. They infiltrate German water companies as undercover engineers with only one goal: to poison the drinking water in Nuremberg, Munich, Cologne, Weimar and Hamburg and “to kill six million Germans, one for every Jew slaughtered by the Germans“.
Based on the book Nakam by Prof. Dina Porat, chief historian at Yad Vashem, PLAN A asks the impossible question of how survivors plagued by traumatic memories struggled with conflicting feelings about a lust for justice and the desire for payback.
Bonus Features: Theatrical Trailer
Street Date: 12/13/22 (DVD ONLY)
Synopsis: Anne Murray: Full Circle takes audiences on a personal and emotional journey showcasing in-depth interviews with Anne exploring her evolution as a ground-breaking, trailblazing female Canadian artist from the ‘60s and ‘70s to a global superstar, having sold more than 55 million albums in pop, country, and adult contemporary music over a 40-year career.
Bonus Features: Trailers
Street Date: 12/27/22
Synopsis: One Hundred Steps (2000) tells the shocking story of Peppino Impastato (Luigi Lo Cascio), a young left-wing activist who vocally opposed the mafia in the 1970s and paid a brutal price. This was an era when almost nobody dared to speak about the mafia in Sicily, and several politicians maintained that it did not even exist. Impastato repeatedly denounced local mob boss Tano Badalamenti’s (Tony Sperandeo) criminal activities and the whole mafia system by broadcasting his ironically funny political pronouncements over a small local radio station. His passionate diatribes earn him a loyal audience, as well as the growing ire of the mob, whose irritation grown into violent retribution. Nominated at the 2001 Golden Globes for Best Foreign Film.
Bonus Features: Audio commentary by writer and actor Andrea Purgatori
Dillon is most comfortable sitting around in a theatre all day watching both big budget and independent movies.