NASHVILLE, IF...., HAROLD & MAUDE Head Masters Of Cinema Q2 Slate

Another raft of quality classics have just been announced as joining Eureka Entertainment's Masters of Cinema series. Lindsay Anderson's brilliant If...., Robert Altman's Nashville, Billy Wilder's Ace In The Hole and Hal Ashby's Harold & Maude will be released between April and June 2014, alongside Elia Kazan's Boomerang, John Cassavetes' Too Late Blues, Richard Fleischer's Violent Saturday and Charlton Heston medieval epic War Lord.

The latest slate of films from Eureka!'s The Masters of Cinema Series brings together some of the most heralded masterpieces of the 20th century. Releases include Billy Wilder's Ace in the Hole (the follow-up to the great director's Sunset Boulevard, and a follow-up to Masters of Cinema's extremely successful releases of Wilder's Double Indemnity and The Lost Weekend); the great British director Lindsay Anderson's masterpiece If.... starring Malcolm McDowell; Robert Altman's most famous film, the epic classic Nashville, released for the first time on either Blu-ray or DVD in the UK; Boomerang!, an early work by the great realist/method director Elia Kazan just before he made such gargantuan classics such as A Streetcar Named Desire and On the Waterfront; Hal Ashby's provocative classic of the American 1970s Harold and Maude; and the independent master John Cassavetes' second feature Too Late Blues.

 

Producer of the Masters of Cinema Series, Craig Keller stated "In April, we'll be continuing our run of bringing Billy Wilder's best work to the Series with a Dual Format (Blu-ray + DVD) edition of Ace in the Hole, an electrifyingly dramatic critique of society and the media starring Kirk Douglas in one of his very best roles in a career already filled with highlights. Also released in April is the long awaited Blu-ray UK debut of Lindsay Anderson's Palme d'Or-winning If...., which stars Malcolm McDowell in the role that made him famous, as the leader of a rebellious group of youths fighting back against the oppression of their boys' boarding school.

 

May sees the long-awaited Dual Format (Blu-ray + DVD) debut of one of the great classics of the American screen: Robert Altman's stunning, freewheeling Nashville, an epic ensemble tour de force depiction of the Nashville music industry and American society at the end of the Sixties that is as hilarious as it is powerful. Another Dual Format (Blu-ray + DVD) edition comes in the form of Elia Kazan's 1947 noir-inflected crime drama Boomerang!, starring Dana Andrews and Lee J. Cobb in powerhouse performances anchoring a gritty procedural rife with murder and corruption.

 

Hal Ashby's 1971 counter-culture comedy Harold and Maude arrives on Blu-ray this June, and tells the tale of the burgeoning relationship between a 20-year-old and an 80-year-old: it's a razor-sharp, and moving masterpiece that has become considered another of the great classics of the American screen. June also brings the first entry into the Series of a film by American master John Cassavetes in a Dual Format (Blu-ray + DVD) edition -- his second-feature, the studio-backed Too Late Blues, which stars Bobby Darin as a jazz musician down on his luck; it's one of the most explosive films of the late studio era."

 

In addition to the new titles being added to the Masters of Cinema Series, Eureka! have also announced the blu-ray release in April of The War Lord, one of the finest historical adventures ever made and starring Charlton Heston and Richard Boone.  May will see the release of Violent Saturday, a coolly riveting crime saga from director Richard Fleischer, available on blu-ray for the first time ever on home video. And June sees the home video release of The Rocket, the multi-award winning debut feature from Kim Mordaunt about a 'cursed' twin who guides his family to a new life in Laos.  Released in cinemas on 14 March, The Rocket will be released on DVD and Blu-ray formats on 2 June 2014.

 

Managing Director of Eureka Entertainment, Ron Benson added "The finest in world cinema abounds across these nine releases, supplemented as always with a spate of special features and extras, all presented with a meticulous attention to detail and design" 

 

Last but not least, April will also see the re-release of the complete seven series of the much loved BBC TV sitcom The Brittas Empire, unavailable in the UK since 2010.