Last Stage

Based on a centuries old tale with roots in real events, Chikamatsu Monogatari [A Tale From Chikamatsu, aka The Crucified Lovers] tells the hauntingly tragic story of a forbidden love affair between a merchant’s wife, Osan (Kyoko Kagawa), and her husband’s employee, Mohei (Kazuo Hasegawa), in an era when the punishment for adultery was crucifixion. When a series of innocent events lead to the false accusation of an affair between Osan and Mohei, the accused pair are forced to flee an almost certain death sentence. On the run, the outlaw couple grow closer together, drawn inexorably towards the romantic crime of which they are accused. In the hands of Mizoguchi, Chikamatsu Monogatari depicts two people caught up in a constricted world where true love and social obligation are at odds. His portrayal of the lovers’ dilemma lead famed director Akira Kurosawa to describe the film as “a great masterpiece that could only have been made by Mizoguchi.”
The Masters of Cinema Series is proud to present Mizoguchi’s films for the first time on home video in the UK - Chikamatsu Monogatari is only available as a twinpack with Uwasa no Onna.

Cremaster 5 (55 min, 1997) is a five-act opera (sung in Hungarian) set in late-ninteenth century Budapest. The last film in the series, Cremaster 5 represents the moment when the testicles are finally released and sexual differentiation is fully attained. The lamenting tone of the opera suggests that Barney invisions this as a moment of tragedy and loss. The primary character is the Queen of Chain (played by Ursula Andress). Barney, himself, plays three characters who appear in the mind of the Queen: her Diva, Magician, and Giant. The Magician is a stand-in for Harry Houdini, who was born in Budapest in 1874 and appears as a recurring character in the Cremaster cycle.

Based on Donald Davis and Owen Davis' stage-adaptation of Pearl S. Buck's sprawling novel, Sidney Franklin's The Good Earth is the story of a Chinese farming couple whose lives are torn apart by poverty, greed, and nature. Paul Muni stars as Wang Lung a hardworking, but poor, farmer who weds freed-slave O-Lan (Luise Rainer). They struggle to build a life together, but after finally finding success, a plague of locusts descends upon their land, bringing a true test of the couple's perseverance. For her performance, Luise Rainer won the second of back-to-back Best Actress Oscars, while cinematographer Karl Freund took home an Academy Award for his photography work. The Good Earth was the final film production of Irving Thalberg, who died before the film was completed.

Georges Méliès built the world's first movie studio in 1896 near Paris; from it cascaded fantastic magic films, dream films, historical reconstructions, imaginary journeys, melodramas, slapstick comedies – even erotic films. Examples of all are here, with many still retaining power to astonish and charm. This monumental thirteen hour collection on five DVDs gathers for the first time nearly all the surviving films of Georges Méliès from his first, Card Party (1896) to his last, The Voyage of the Bouririchon Family (1913), bracketing more than 170 others. Included are the celebrated and famous journey films, among them A Trip to the Moon, The Impossible Voyage, The Kingdom of Fairies, The Merry Frolics of Satan, The Palace of the Arabian Nights, and The Conquest of the Pole…..

The German tenor Jonas Kaufmann is one of the hottest properties in the opera world. He captivates audiences with the power, emotion and beauty of his singing, the intelligence of his acting, his matinee-idol delivery, and his extraordinary range - from the heroic stage roles in Wagner to the intimate songs of Schubert on the concert platform.

Uriah Heep was one of a handful of important progressive rock bands to emerge from Britain during the 1970s, alongside Led Zeppelin, Black Sabbath and Deep Purple. Formed in London in 1969, the band debuted in explosive fashion way back in 1970, rapidly following their heavy metal-pioneering first record "Very 'Eavy …Very 'Umble" with a string of classics, including the definitive Heep album "Demons and Wizards" and "The Magician's Birthday", both from 1972, arguably two of the founding documents of the hard rock subgenres known as progressive metal and power metal.

An unsung comic triumph from David Lean, Hobson’s Choice stars the legendary Charles Laughton as the harrumphing Henry Hobson, the owner of a boot shop in late Victorian northern England. With his haughty, independent daughter Maggie (Brenda De Banzie) decides to forge her own path, romantically and professionally, with none other than Henry’s prized bootsmith Will (a splendid John Mills), father and daughter find themselves head-to-head in a fiery match of wills. Equally charming and caustic, Hobson’s Choice, adapted from Harold Brighouse’s famous play, is filled to the brim with great performances and elegant, inventive camera work.

The film is based on the stage musical Oh, What a Lovely War!, originated by Charles Chilton as a radio play, The Long Long Trail in December 1961,[1][2] and transferred to stage by Gerry Raffles in partnership with Joan Littlewood and her Theatre Workshop in 1963

Case Closed, known as Detective Conan (名探偵 コナン, Meitantei Conan?) in Japan and most countries, is a detective manga and anime series by Gosho Aoyama which has been published in Weekly Shōnen Sunday magazine since 1994. The series depicts the cases and adventures of a brilliant young private detective who was inadvertently turned into a prepubescent little boy by a secret criminal organization who gave him a drug that was supposed to kill him, but backfired. Due to the fact that he is supposed to be dead, he must live under an alias, as well as keep his true identity a secret from those around him. Even with his shrunken body, he continues to solve many difficult cases, and is struggling to discover more about the organization responsible for his condition, so that he can one day return to his normal body and normal life.