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Scarecrow Video Pre-Book Club – March 25, 2024
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Welcome to the Pre-Book Club!
Hello! You're receiving this email because you signed up for our
Pre-Book Club. 

As you probably already know, this is a new program specifically design to help those who are interested in building their own collection instead of borrowing from ours. Here's how it works:

Every Monday you will receive an email with a list of titles that will street two to three weeks later (for example, this email includes titles that will street on 4/9 and 4/16.

By replying to this email, you can let us know if there are any titles you would like to order.

Your order will be placed and your credit card on file will be charged.

When the titles arrive, we will email you and they will be ready and waiting on the street date (or we can ship them to you for an additional shipping fee).

From time to time, we will also send out emails about special sales or unique buying opportunities that we will make available to our Club.

One last thing: Release dates are subject to change, so there may be delays or items that you are expecting to see on this list may not appear. If there's anything specific, either a new release or even a catalog title you've been looking for or holding off on, let us know and we'll look into it. Thanks, and happy browsing!

Releases for the week of 4/9
Please reply to this email by 3/29 to order any of the following titles.

The Criterion Collection
Picnic at Hanging Rock (1975, Peter Weir)

This sensual and striking chronicle of a disappearance and its aftermath put director Peter Weir on the map and helped usher in a new era of Australian cinema. Based on an acclaimed 1967 novel by Joan Lindsay, Picnic at Hanging Rock is set at the turn of the twentieth century and concerns a small group of students from an all-female college who vanish, along with a chaperone, while on a St. Valentine’s Day outing. Less a mystery than a journey into the mystic, as well as an inquiry into issues of class and sexual repression in Australian society, Weir’s gorgeous, disquieting film is a work of poetic horror whose secrets haunt viewers to this day.

Special Features:

  • New 4K digital restoration, supervised and approved by director Peter Weir and director of photography Russell Boyd, with 5.1 surround DTS-HD Master Audio soundtrack
  • One 4K UHD disc of the film presented in HDR and one Blu-ray with the film and special features
  • Interview with Weir
  • Program on the making of the film, featuring interviews with executive producer Patricia Lovell, producers Hal McElroy and Jim McElroy, and cast members
  • Introduction by film scholar David Thomson, author of The New Biographical Dictionary of Film
  • On-set documentary hosted by Lovell and featuring interviews with Weir, actor Rachel Roberts, and source-novel author Joan Lindsay
  • Homesdale (1971), a black comedy by Weir
  • Trailer
  • English subtitles for the deaf and hard of hearing
  • PLUS: An essay by author Megan Abbott and an excerpt from film scholar Marek Haltof’s 1996 book Peter Weir: When Cultures Collide
4K UHD / Blu-ray Combo $32.95
MUBI
Fallen Leaves (2023, Aki Kaurismaki)

Master filmmaker Aki Kaurismäki (Le Havre, The Other Side of Hope) returns with his latest deadpan gem FALLEN LEAVES, a luminous ode to romance and moviegoing. In modern-day Helsinki, two lonely souls in search of love meet by chance in a local karaoke bar. However, the pair's path to happiness is beset by numerous obstacles – from lost numbers to mistaken addresses, alcoholism, and a charming stray dog. Finland's Best International Feature Film entry to the 96th Academy Awards. Winner of the 2023 Cannes Film Festival Jury Prize.

Special Features:
  • Q&A with Alma Pöysti & Jussi Vatanen
  • Trailer
  • An illustrated booklet featuring "The World According to Aki Kaurismäki" and credits
Blu-ray $26.95
DVD $21.95
Shout! Factory
King Kong (1976, John Guillermin)

The Big Apple is again besieged by the monstrous King Kong. Jeff Bridges and Jessica Lange star in this ambitious remake of the 1933 original, which adds a great deal of camp and good fun to the story, Again, the gargantuan ape battles attacking aircraft high above the streets of New York, this time plunging from the top of the World Trade Center to his death amidst thousands of horrified onlookers. King Kong won an Oscar for special effects, and the horror and the thrills are brought anew to another generation in this classy production.

4K UHD / Blu-ray Combo $29.95
WellGo
Monster (2023, Hirokazu Kore-eda)

After a mother (Ando Sakura) discovers that a teacher's bullying is behind her young son's sudden strange behavior, she storms into his school demanding an explanation. Continually left without satisfactory answers—and with an increasingly distressed child—she furiously escalates her concerns to the school board and the media. But as the story unfolds through the multilayered perspectives of mother, teacher, and child, the real truth gradually emerges—and proves much more complex than anyone could have expected.

Special Features:
  • ORIGINAL JAPANESE AUDIO TRACK
  • English dub track
  • Original trailer
Blu-ray $21.95
Releases for the week of 4/16
Please reply to this email by 4/5 to order any of the following titles.

The Criterion Collection
Werckmeister Harmonies (2000, Béla Tarr and Ágnes Hranitzky)

This mesmeric parable of societal collapse is an enigma of transcendent visual, philosophical, and mystical resonance. Adapted from a novel by László Krasznahorkai, Werckmeister Harmonies unfolds in an unknown time in an unnamed village, where, one day, a mysterious circus—complete with an enormous stuffed whale and a shadowy, demagogue-like figure known as the Prince—arrives and appears to awaken a kind of madness in the citizens that builds inexorably toward violence. In thirty-nine hypnotic long takes engraved in ghostly black and white, auteur Béla Tarr and codirector-editor Ágnes Hranitzky conjure an apocalyptic vision of dreamlike dread and fathomless beauty.

Special Features:

  • New 4K digital restoration, supervised and approved by director Béla Tarr, with uncompressed monaural soundtrack
  • One 4K UHD disc of the film and one Blu-ray with the film and special features
  • Family Nest (1979), Tarr’s first feature film
  • New interview with Tarr by film critic Scott Foundas
  • Trailer
  • New English subtitle translation
  • PLUS: An essay by film programmer and critic Dennis Lim
4K UHD / Blu-ray Combo $32.95
Blu-ray $26.95
DVD $22.95
Kino Lorber
High Noon (1952, Fred Zinneman)

Screen legend Gary Cooper (Vera Cruz) won the 1952 Oscar for Best Actor in this classic tale of an aging lawman who stands alone to defend a town of righteous cowards in one of the greatest showdowns in the history of cinema. The movie also marks the first starring role for a beautiful young actress who went on to become one of Hollywood’s most beloved icons—Grace Kelly (The Country Girl). Produced by Stanley Kramer (Inherit the Wind), directed by Fred Zinnemann (From Here to Eternity) and written for the screen by Carl Foreman (The Bridge on the River Kwai), High Noon garnered a total of 4 Academy Awards, including Best Score for Dimitri Tiomkin (Rio Bravo), and now stands high as one of the most cherished and influential films of all time. Western favorites Thomas Mitchell (Stagecoach), Lloyd Bridges (Canyon Passage), Katy Jurado (Arrowhead), Otto Kruger (Duel in the Sun), Lon Chaney Jr. (The Indian Fighter), Henry Morgan (The Ox-Bow Incident), Jack Elam (Support Your Local Sheriff) and Lee Van Cleef (For a Few Dollars More) round out the rousing cast.

Special Features:

DISC 1 (4KUHD):

  • Brand NEW HDR/Dolby Vision Master – From a 4K Scan of the 35mm Original Camera Negative
  • NEW Audio Commentary by Author/Film Historian Alan K. Rode
  • NEW Audio Commentary by Film Historian/Writer Julie Kirgo

DISC 2 (BLU-RAY):

  • Brand NEW HD Master – From a 4K Scan of the 35mm Original Camera Negative
  • NEW Audio Commentary by Author/Film Historian Alan K. Rode
  • NEW Audio Commentary by Film Historian/Writer Julie Kirgo
  • A Ticking Clock: Featurette (5:53)
  • A Stanley Kramer Production: Featurette (14:00)
  • Imitation of Life - The Blacklist History of High Noon: Featurette (9:27)
  • Ulcers and Oscars - The Production History of High Noon: Featurette (12:02)
  • Uncitizened Kane: Featurette (11:01)
  • The Making of High Noon: Featurette (22:11)
  • Theatrical Trailer
4K UHD / Blu-ray Combo $31.95
Fletch (1985, Michael Ritchie)

Comedy legend Chevy Chase (Foul Play) is at his fetching best in this suspense-packed and laugh-stacked thriller based on Gregory Mcdonald’s bestseller. Irwin Fletcher, a.k.a. Fletch (Chase), is an investigative reporter who changes his identity more often than his underwear. While working on a drug exposé, Fletch attracts the attention of a strange businessman (Tim Matheson, Up the Creek) who wants to be killed so his wife will inherit more insurance. The wily Fletch senses a scam, and soon he’s up to his byline in frame-ups, murder, police corruption and forbidden romance. It’ll be the story of the year, if he can stay alive to meet his deadline! Take fast-paced direction by Michael Ritchie (Prime Cut, Diggstown), add an uproarious screenplay by Andrew Bergman (The In-Laws), sprinkle in a spicy cast with Joe Don Baker, Dana Wheeler-Nicholson, Richard Libertini, M. Emmet Walsh, George Wendt, George Wyner, Kenneth Mars, Geena Davis and Kareem Abdul-Jabbar, and you’ve got the makings of Chevy’s funniest chase ever!

Special Features:

  • Brand New HD Master – From a 2K Scan of the 35mm Interpositive
  • NEW Audio Commentary by Entertainment Journalists/Authors Bryan Reesman and Max Evry
  • Just Charge it to the Underhills: Making and Remembering Fletch – 2007 Featurette with Actor M. Emmet Walsh, Actor Richard Libertini, Actor Tim Matheson, Screenwriter Andrew Bergman, Actor George Wyner, Actor Larry Flash Jenkins, Actress Dana Wheeler-Nicholson, Producer Alan Greisman, Producer Peter Douglas, Editor Richard Harris, First Assistant Director Wolfgang Glattes, Associate Producer/Production Manager Gordon Webb and Featurette Producer Jason Hillhouse (26:32)
  • The Disguises: From John Cocktoaston to Harry S. Truman – 2007 Featurette with Makeup Artist Ken Chase, Hair Stylist Bunny Parker, Screenwriter Andrew Bergman, Actress Dana Wheeler-Nicholson, Actor Tim Matheson, Actor Larry Flash Jenkins, Producer Peter Douglas, Producer Alan Greisman and Associate Producer/Production Manager Gordon Webb (4:53)
  • Favorite Fletch Moments – 2007 Featurette (2:35)
  • Chevy Chase: Reba Merrill Profile – 1985 Interview with Chevy Chase (3:41)
  • 4 TV Spots
  • Theatrical Trailer (Newly Mastered in 2K)
  • Optional English Subtitles
Blu-ray $19.95
Shout! Factory
Affliction (1997, Paul Schrader)

Winner of the 1997 Academy Award® for Best Actor in a Supporting Role (James Coburn), and Oscar®-nominated for Best Actor in a Leading Role (Nick Nolte), this emotionally captivating film co-stars Oscar® winner* Sissy Spacek and Willem Dafoe. When events shatter the quiet of his small town, Wade Whitehouse (Nolte), with the aid of his new girlfriend (Spacek), is forced to confront his past and reexamine his life. Determined to fill the emptiness, he must either stand tall against his childhood demons or fall victim to his father's abusive ways. A wrenching but rewarding film depiction that you'll never forget, Affliction is "already an American classic" (The Village Voice).

Blu-ray $29.95
That's all for this week's list. Once again, please reply to this email with your selections by the dates indicated above. Thanks for your orders!

If you have any further questions, email prebookclub@scarecrow.com.

You'll receive another list next week for titles releasing on 4/16 and 4/23.
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