Displaying items by tag: Frank Tarzi

I’ve been fortunate to attend a number of great film industry events over the last thirty years, but I can tell you... none of them is more fun than the Saturn Awards.

While the Oscars, Golden Globes, and SAG awards tend to get all the mainstream media coverage, the Saturns are the sort of nerdy-fun party that Hollywood filmmakers actually like to attend.

Founded in 1972 by the late Dr. Donald A. Reed, a film historian, educator, and longtime scholar of genre entertainment, the Academy of Science Fiction, Fantasy, and Horror is a non-profit organization that has a single goal: to support and encourage filmed genre entertainment.

What makes the Saturns so great is that there’s no ego—people attend because they love the work they do, and they love each other’s work even more. Things tend to be very relaxed, everyone mixes together before and after the awards—even during dinner—and you can easily find yourself unexpectedly chatting with people you’ve admired for years.

This year’s event was a whopper; in attendance to either present or accept awards were Tom Cruise, George Lucas, James Cameron, William Shatner, Mark Hamill, Christopher McQuarrie, Kathleen Kennedy, Guillermo del Toro, Bryan Fuller, Laurence Fishburne, Terry Matalas, Jonathan Frakes, Brent Spiner, and many more. The Star Trek franchise was recognized for its 60th anniversary, as was Aliens for its 40th, and the TV series The Boys was given a Spotlight Award. It was definitely a fun evening. [Read on here...]

Afternoon, Bits readers... and welcome to the first week of February!

Tim is taking a much-deserved week off to spend time with his family, but we’ll have plenty of news content here and maybe a review or two as well in the meantime.

Last night, my wife Sarah and I attended The 52nd Annual Saturn Awards here in Los Angeles, produced by The Academy of Science Fiction, Fantasy & Horror Films. It was a lovely evening, a chance to catch up with industry friends, brush elbows with genre celebs (think Nicolas Cage, William Shatner, Mark Hamill, Peter Weller, Christopher Lloyd, Laurence Fishburne, tons of Star Trek cast members, etc), and to celebrate great work in genre entertainment. Denis Villeneuve’s Dune: Part Two took home the Best Science Fiction Film award, as it well should! Denis himself also won for Best Film Director—a nice show of appreciation for the filmmaker, especially given that he wasn’t nominated for Best Director by the Academy this year, despite Dune: Part Two being nominated for the Best Picture. Go figure.

In the Home Media categories, the key winners were:

• Best Classic Film Home Media Release: Invasion of the Body Snatchers (Kino Lorber Studio Classics)
• Best 4K Home Media Release: Saw X (Lionsgate Home Entertainment)
• Best Film Home Media Collection: Batman: 85th Anniversary Collection (Warner Home Video)
• Best Television Home Media Release: Star Wars: Andor – The Complete First Season (Sony Pictures Home Entertainment)

We actually had the good fortune to be seated at the same table as Kino Lorber’s VP of Acquisitions and Business Development, Frank Trazi, who—since he lives on the East Coast—I hadn’t had the chance to meet before. But trust me when I say that Frank is good people, and that KLSC’s fantastic slate of upcoming Blu-ray and 4K titles is in great hands with him. You can watch his new podcast, Shelf Space with Kino Lorber, here on YouTube.

In any case, the event was great fun and it was streamed live online here and on Roku. You can read the complete list of winners here at Deadline today. And all of us here at The Bits would like to offer our congratulations to Frank and everyone at KLSC for their win for Invasion of the Body Snatchers (you can see their actual Saturn statue below the break), to our friend Cliff Stephenson and everyone at Lionsgate for their 4K win with Saw X, and to the disc teams at Warner Bros. Discovery Home Entertainment and Sony Pictures Home Entertainment for their wins as well!. [Read on here...]

We start as always today with more new disc reviews, including…

Stephen’s look at Jonathan Demme’s Last Embrace (1979) in 4K Ultra HD from Vinegar Syndrome’s excellent Cinématographe line, as well as John Waters’ Cry-Baby (1990) in 4K Ultra HD from Kino Lorber Studio Classics.

Stuart’s reviews of Andrzej Żuławski’s L’important c’est d’Aimer... (1975) on Blu-ray from Film Movement via Vinegar Syndrome, along with John Guillermin’s The Whole Truth (1958) on Blu-ray from Powerhouse Films’ Indicator label.

And Dennis’ take on Boaz Yakin’s Fresh (1994) on Blu-ray from Via Vision’s Imprint Films.

Now then, there’s some exciting release news for us to share with you today, but first we want to take a moment to clear up some confusion: The Warner Archive Collection is still the Warner Archive Collection!

Many of you have probably seen that their Facebook page was suddenly rebranded as Warner Classics (click here for the link). But rest assured, the Warner Archive Collection remains! Warner is simply trying to unite all of its “classic film” marketing activity in one social media space. So while the Warner Archive Collection remains the core of this page, you’ll also learn here about forthcoming classic film releases on Blu-ray and 4K UHD from the studio proper, as well as theatrical screening activity, and the like. So everyone can relax—Warner Archive has not disappeared!

In fact, Warner Archive has just shared some excellent release news: The Looney Tunes Collector’s Choice: Volume 4 Blu-ray is officially coming on 11/26! You can see their official Facebook post here. Details of the actual shorts the set will include are yet to be announced, but the release is definitely now in production. Great news indeed! [Read on here...]