Matinee

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domino harvey
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Matinee

#1 Post by domino harvey » Fri Jun 10, 2016 10:11 am

Image

HALF MAN… HALF ANT… ALL TERROR!

So says the advertising campaign for Mant!, the latest low-budget schlock-horror classic from cigar-chomping producer Lawrence Woolsey (John Goodman, The Big Lebowski), who more than makes up for his films' lack of production values by festooning them with gimmicks that would turn even William Castle (The Tingler) green with envy.

But the most potent gimmick of all is accidental: Woolsey schedules a sneak preview of Mant! in Key West, Florida, in October 1962, unaware that the Cuban missile crisis is about to flare up. Will the threat of genuine nuclear war distract the locals from the movie, or will they find it doubly terrifying?

Directed by the legendary Joe Dante (The ’Burbs), this delightful film isn’t just an affectionate love-letter to the sci-fi and horror films that he grew up with in the 1950s and 60s, it’s also a witty and intelligent exploration of the way that the most successful genre films worked by preying on the very real fears of their audiences about everything from Soviet satellite launches to atomic mutation.


SPECIAL EDITION CONTENTS:


High definition digital transfer supplied by NBC Universal
Lossless stereo audio
Optional English subtitles for the deaf and hard of hearing
Paranoia in Ant Vision, a discussion with director Joe Dante about the making of the film
Mant!, the full length version of the film-within-a-film
Discussion with Joe Dante on the effects of Mant!
Vintage ‘making of’ featurette
Rare on-set footage, sourced from Joe Dante’s personal collection
Original theatrical trailer
Reversible sleeve featuring original and newly commissioned artwork by Graham Humphreys

First pressing only: Booklet featuring new writing on the film by David Jenkins

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domino harvey
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Re: Matinee

#2 Post by domino harvey » Fri Jun 10, 2016 10:14 am

Beyond thrilled for this to reach a wider audience, and Arrow already showed with the 'Burbs that they know how to treat Joe Dante right

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rapta
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Re: Matinee

#3 Post by rapta » Fri Jun 10, 2016 10:17 am

I'm infinitely happy Arrow actually picked this up, being my favourite Dante film. I had actually been requesting it from them for the last year or so, and they last responded like this:
The UK rights for Matinee are in a bit of a tangle, and no plans for Small Soldiers.
So it sounds like they've 'untangled' the rights then!

These are the specs according to Amazon...
HALF MAN... HALF ANT... ALL TERROR!

So says the advertising campaign for Mant!, the latest low-budget schlock-horror classic from cigar-chomping producer Lawrence Woolsey (John Goodman, The Big Lebowski), who more than makes up for his films' lack of production values by festooning them with gimmicks that would turn even William Castle (The Tingler) green with envy.

But the most potent gimmick of all is accidental: Woolsey schedules a sneak preview of Mant! in Key West, Florida, in October 1962, unaware that the Cuban missile crisis is about to flare up. Will the threat of genuine nuclear war distract the locals from the movie, or will they find it doubly terrifying?

Directed by the legendary Joe Dante (The Burbs), this delightful film isn t just an affectionate love-letter to the sci-fi and horror films that he grew up with in the 1950s and 60s, it s also a witty and intelligent exploration of the way that the most successful genre films worked by preying on the very real fears of their audiences about everything from Soviet satellite launches to atomic mutation.

SPECIAL EDITION CONTENTS:
  • High definition digital transfer supplied by NBC Universal
  • Lossless stereo audio
  • Optional English subtitles for the deaf and hard of hearing
  • Paranoia in Ant Vision, a discussion with director Joe Dante about the making of the film
  • Mant!, the full length version of the film-within-a-film
  • Discussion with Joe Dante on the effects of Mant!
  • Vintage making of featurette
  • Rare on-set footage, sourced from Joe Dante's personal collection
  • Original theatrical trailer
  • Reversible sleeve featuring original and newly commissioned artwork by Graham Humphreys
Definitely a highlight of the September announcements (though there are another few I'm quite excited about).

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domino harvey
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Re: Matinee

#4 Post by domino harvey » Fri Jun 10, 2016 10:21 am

Wonder what happened to the deleted scenes Joe Dante talked about wishing Universal had asked him about when the DVD came out? I'm surprised Arrow didn't get an interview with Lisa Jakub, since she memorably resurfaced recently and was pretty open to fielding questions from people about her career as a child actor

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Re: Matinee

#5 Post by beamish13 » Fri Jun 10, 2016 10:39 am

No Charlie Haas interview/commentary? Love that guy and his work on this, Gremlins 2 and Over the Edge

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domino harvey
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Re: Matinee

#6 Post by domino harvey » Fri Jun 10, 2016 10:40 am


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Re: Matinee

#7 Post by beamish13 » Fri Jun 10, 2016 10:41 am

Yep. Love how writing a Joe Dante film means getting a SAG card, too!

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Re: Matinee

#8 Post by Finch » Fri Jun 10, 2016 11:26 am

I have hearing issues and the French BD which I imported didn't have English subs, so between that and the booklet, it's reason enough for me to double-dip on the Arrow. The film is a masterpiece so I'm thrilled it gets more exposure.

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JamesF
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Re: Matinee

#9 Post by JamesF » Fri Jun 10, 2016 11:29 am

rapta wrote:
The UK rights for Matinee are in a bit of a tangle, and no plans for Small Soldiers.
So it sounds like they've 'untangled' the rights then!
Pathe had the UK rights for years, hopefully this being sorted out means that another former Pathe UK title has a better chance of coming out through Arrow - Alex Winter and Tom Stern's Freaked!

Needless to say, am very happy about this one. I put on a screening of this film a while back where I dressed in a homemade paper mache Mant costume to terrorise the crowd.

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Re: Matinee

#10 Post by MichaelB » Fri Jun 10, 2016 11:36 am

Way back in the mid-1990s, I put on a double bill of Matinee and Creature from the Black Lagoon (in 3-D, obviously) which still ranks high as one of the greatest experiences I've ever had in the cinema.

The Dante was wonderful, of course (it wasn't a first viewing), and got the audience in just the right mood to very obviously and vocally take the side of the Creature throughout, complete with cheers and applause when he kidnapped Julia Adams and leaped over the side of the boat.

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Re: Matinee

#11 Post by domino harvey » Fri Jun 10, 2016 11:40 am

JamesF wrote:Pathe had the UK rights for years, hopefully this being sorted out means that another former Pathe UK title has a better chance of coming out through Arrow - Alex Winter and Tom Stern's Freaked!
"I'd just like to add one thing-- those who oppose us will stand knee-deep in the blood of their loved ones." Another great and hilarious film desperately in need of a wider audience. The US Blu-ray ported over none of the extensive (exhaustive, really) extras from the long OOP Anchor Bay special edition, Arrow wouldn't even need to produce much in the way of content, just port over those copious extras.

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Re: Matinee

#12 Post by cdnchris » Fri Jun 10, 2016 1:43 pm

domino harvey wrote:Beyond thrilled for this to reach a wider audience, and Arrow already showed with the 'Burbs that they know how to treat Joe Dante right
I'm always sort of surprised how unknown this film is. It was a huge hit in my family and we had a VHS we wore out where tracking wouldn't even fix it anymore. It's one of my sister's favourite movies and she's not region free, so she'll probably be disappointed by the fact it's locked, but I'm hoping it makes its way over here somehow (I always figured it would be a good title for Criterion, but I'm guessing it's more likely Shout! will pick it up).

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Re: Matinee

#13 Post by colinr0380 » Fri Jun 10, 2016 2:09 pm

Matinee also has a very early brief role for Naomi Watts in the film within a film satirising wacky 60s family comedies! (Proof that once you've acted against a sentient shopping cart David Lynch cannot be too far off in your future!)

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Re: Matinee

#14 Post by domino harvey » Fri Jun 10, 2016 2:19 pm

cdnchris wrote:I'm always sort of surprised how unknown this film is.
I've been doing my part, as I've used it quite a few times in history classes and film history classes. It's always gone over great, especially since showing it at the tail end of studying the period means my students always feel a lot of ownership over "getting" many of the period-specific gags and references when they pop up.

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Re: Matinee

#15 Post by Jean-Luc Garbo » Fri Jun 10, 2016 4:21 pm

domino harvey wrote:The US Blu-ray ported over none of the extensive (exhaustive, really) extras from the long OOP Anchor Bay special edition, Arrow wouldn't even need to produce much in the way of content, just port over those copious extras.
Any chance of this happening?

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Re: Matinee

#16 Post by rapta » Fri Jun 10, 2016 8:01 pm

JamesF wrote:
rapta wrote:
The UK rights for Matinee are in a bit of a tangle, and no plans for Small Soldiers.
So it sounds like they've 'untangled' the rights then!
Pathe had the UK rights for years, hopefully this being sorted out means that another former Pathe UK title has a better chance of coming out through Arrow - Alex Winter and Tom Stern's Freaked!

Needless to say, am very happy about this one. I put on a screening of this film a while back where I dressed in a homemade paper mache Mant costume to terrorise the crowd.
Haha, excellent!

As for your comment about Pathé, if that is true I wonder if their rights to The Player are now freed up for someone to release (maybe Criterion, assuming they licensed it from Warner Bros and the rights presumably revert back to them). What else is from Pathé though? Black Christmas, The Cars That Ate Paris, Boiling Point, Topsy-Turvy, Hunger? Will the rights automatically revert to Fox, Lionsgate or Film4, or they just there for the taking?

I noticed a similar thing is happening with Entertainment in Video at the moment - with their rights expiring and reverting back to studios (e.g. American Psycho, Magnolia, American History X etc.). Might mean we'll start seeing titles we wouldn't have expected to see before.

Anyway, I'm especially excited to see Mant! in full, and also watch all the other extras. I notice David Jenkins (Little White Lies) is doing more and more stuff for Arrow - first 3 Women and Waking Life, now Matinee and Raising Cain...basically four of my favourite Arrow announcements! Coincidence, or just common taste?

I wonder if we'll get more Universal titles from Arrow now they've announced these two. I wonder if they could get either The Hudsucker Proxy or The Man Who Wasn't There, assuming Universal don't plan to release either themselves (in regards to the latter, they may well port the US disc over here now that EiV's rights have expired).

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Re: Matinee

#17 Post by Emak-Bakia » Sun Jun 12, 2016 11:19 am

rapta wrote:Anyway, I'm especially excited to see Mant! in full, and also watch all the other extras. I notice David Jenkins (Little White Lies) is doing more and more stuff for Arrow - first 3 Women and Waking Life, now Matinee and Raising Cain...basically four of my favourite Arrow announcements! Coincidence, or just common taste?
I hate to be a buzzkill, but I've got the laserdisc that has the Mant! featurette, and it's only a compilation of the Mant! clips (with some extra footage) assembled in order and running about 25 minutes total. It's a neat curiosity, but it's not nearly as exciting as a full cut of Mant! would be. I see that Arrow is advertising it as the "full length version," though it seems hard to believe that Dante would have shot and edited the entire Mant! film (or, rather, that the studio would have allowed such a thing.)

Anyway, I am very excited for this release.

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Re: Matinee

#18 Post by MichaelB » Sun Jun 12, 2016 11:46 am

It's the full-length version of what Dante shot. The word "feature" is conspicuously absent from the description, as such a thing obviously doesn't exist.

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Re: Matinee

#19 Post by Emak-Bakia » Sun Jun 12, 2016 2:18 pm

Thanks for confirming. I never read it as being a feature film, but, after reading rapta's post, it occurred to me that there could be some confusion. (Though I don't mean to presume rapta's interpretation of the description, as I also might be misunderstanding what he means when he writes "in full." #-o)

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Re: Matinee

#20 Post by rapta » Sun Jun 12, 2016 7:47 pm

Emak-Bakia wrote:Thanks for confirming. I never read it as being a feature film, but, after reading rapta's post, it occurred to me that there could be some confusion. (Though I don't mean to presume rapta's interpretation of the description, as I also might be misunderstanding what he means when he writes "in full." #-o)
I assumed it would be a short film with an end-to-end plot, and Dante had just cut sequences of it into Matinee to make it appear to be a full feature film. I'll be glad to see the whole thing, as every time it showed up in the film I was grinning ear-to-ear!

Or are you saying that every scene of Mant! (the film-within-a-film) shown in Matinee (the film itself) constitutes the entire existing film; that Dante didn't flesh the plot out any further than what was shown? Either way, I'll just be over the moon to see the whole thing, as obviously some of it is heard off-screen or interrupted.

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Re: Matinee

#21 Post by domino harvey » Sun Jun 12, 2016 8:11 pm

The latter, though some of the footage is obscured or in the background during the actual film, so it'll be new to you, as NBC used to put it

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Re: Matinee

#22 Post by rapta » Tue Jul 26, 2016 12:50 pm

Final specs, according to Arrow on Facebook:
SPECIAL EDITION CONTENTS:
• High definition digital transfer supplied by NBC Universal
• Lossless stereo audio
• Optional English subtitles for the deaf and hard of hearing
Newly edited interviews with director Joe Dante and select cast and crew members
Paranoia in Ant Vision, a discussion with Joe Dante about the making of the film
Mant!, the full length version of the film-within-a-film
Introduction to Mant! by Joe Dante
• Vintage ‘making of’ featurette
• Rare on-set footage, sourced from Joe Dante’s personal collection
Deleted and extended scenes sourced from Joe Dante’s workprint
• Original theatrical trailer
• Reversible sleeve featuring original and newly commissioned artwork by Graham Humphreys
First pressing only: Booklet featuring new writing on the film by David Jenkins
New additions in bold. I notice they've taken out 'Discussion with Joe Dante on the effects of Mant!' but I assume the footage from that has been blended into one of the other interviews/discussions. Either that or they ditched it for some reason, which would be a shame, but it would have been for logistical reasons.

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Re: Matinee

#23 Post by tenia » Tue Jul 26, 2016 1:53 pm

I have the French disc, and it seems that the Arrow release looks like it will be more loaded in extra features. The French disc contains :

• Paranoia in Ant Vision, a discussion with Joe Dante about the making of the film (31 min)
• Mant!, the full length version of the film-within-a-film (16 min)
• Introduction to Mant! by Joe Dante (6 min)
• Vintage ‘making of’ featurette (4 min)
• Original theatrical trailer
+ a still gallery
+ Mant! trailer

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rapta
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Re: Matinee

#24 Post by rapta » Tue Jul 26, 2016 4:46 pm

Ah right, so the new Arrow-produced bits are:
• Newly edited interviews with director Joe Dante and select cast and crew members
• Rare on-set footage, sourced from Joe Dante’s personal collection
• Deleted and extended scenes sourced from Joe Dante’s workprint
So it sounds like they had (or will have) a productive trip to visit Dante! He has collaborated with them before (and Eureka too, from memory), so you know you'll get an especially good release when he's involved...especially if it's one of his own films.

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Re: Matinee

#25 Post by domino harvey » Thu Sep 22, 2016 6:44 pm

Just got my copy in and I think there's something hinky with the deleted scenes? The last two (?) scenes seem truncated far beyond what one would expect. The next to last is just Lisa Jakub saying "If you count up all the real people--" which then cuts to the TV and someone saying "Mexico City" and then the deleted scenes end? What the hell? They collectively run 2:27 on my copy, is this right Arrow?

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