Seared Vision

New in the shop:

Deftones - Minneapolis / St.Louis ’97 (VHS, 1997)

A fan-made, self-recorded concert video documenting Deftones during their 1997 Around the Fur tour. Recorded in Minneapolis and St. Louis, the footage captures the band at a critical point in their early career, just before their mainstream success.

Released in October 1997, Around the Fur marked a major step forward for the band, with tracks like “My Own Summer (Shove It)” and “Be Quiet and Drive (Far Away)” becoming staples of their live set, still performed today. This tape is a raw piece of fan-recorded footage from that era, preserved in the format it was originally captured on.

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New in the shop:

The Straight Story (VHS, 1999)

Directed by David Lynch, The Straight Story stars Richard Farnsworth, Sissy Spacek, and Harry Dean Stanton in a quietly moving road film based on a true story. In 1994, 73-year-old Alvin Straight travelled roughly 250 miles from Iowa to Wisconsin on a riding lawn mower to visit his estranged brother after learning he had suffered a stroke. Unable to drive because of his failing eyesight, Alvin refused to let his circumstances stop him from making the journey.

The role became the culmination of an extraordinary career for Richard Farnsworth. Before becoming an actor, Farnsworth spent decades as a Hollywood stuntman and horseman, beginning his film career in 1938. He worked as Montgomery Clift’s stunt double on Red River and later doubled for actors including Henry Fonda. He eventually moved into acting and earned an Oscar nomination for Comes a Horseman before Lynch cast him as Alvin Straight.

Farnsworth was already dealing with severe pain from prostate cancer during filming, although the full extent of his illness was kept private. Lynch recalled that Farnsworth would sometimes need help getting out of chairs between takes, yet he appeared to become physically stronger as production continued. His performance earned him a second Academy Award nomination for Best Actor, making him one of the oldest actors ever nominated in the category at the time.

The film also marked David Lynch’s first G-rated feature and the first film he directed without writing the screenplay himself. The Straight Story premiered at Cannes in 1999, where Farnsworth received a long standing ovation for his performance.

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New arrivals in the shop:

Another Day in Paradise (VHS, 1998) French Version [SECAM]
Another Day in Paradise (DVD, 1998) France Region 2/PAL

Adapted from Eddie Little’s novel, Larry Clark’s 1998 film Another Day in Paradise stars James Woods, Melanie Griffith, Vincent Kartheiser, and Natasha Gregson Wagner.

Released shortly after the success of Clark’s Kids, the film took his interest in alienated youth into much darker territory. Where Kids had the raw immediacy of a street-level drama, Another Day in Paradise was more stylized and openly indebted to American crime cinema. The film’s grimy late-‘90s look and damaged characters have helped it develop a cult reputation, particularly among fans of the era’s darker independent films.

Clark’s original cut reportedly ran more than 140 minutes and included material that distributors believed would result in an NC-17 rating. With the production facing pressure to deliver an R-rated version, the film was significantly recut down to 97 minutes. James Woods, who was also a producer on the film, was heavily involved in the re-edited version that was shown at the Venice and Toronto film festivals.

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Important Info:
SECAM VHS only work in dedicated SECAM / Multi-System VCRs. These tapes do not play in standard North American NTSC machines.

From the shop!

Nosferatu: the Vampyre (VHS, 1999) English Version
Nosferatu: Phantom der Nacht (VHS, 1999) German Version

Nosferatu the Vampyre stars Klaus Kinski, Isabelle Adjani, and Bruno Ganz in Werner Herzog’s haunting reimagining of F. W. Murnau’s 1922 silent classic. Rather than treating the story as a straightforward remake, Herzog approached Nosferatu as an homage, recreating elements of Murnau’s iconic imagery while giving the story a more melancholic and tragic tone.

Herzog shot separate German and English-language versions of the film simultaneously, with scenes performed twice rather than simply dubbing one version. The demanding production also added fuel to Herzog and Kinski’s famously volatile creative partnership. Despite the constant conflict, Herzog and Kinski continued to work together across five films, producing some of the most significant work in German cinema at the time.

The films interpretation of Dracula has influenced generations of filmmakers and helped establish a uniquely tragic version of the iconic figure. Kinski’s unforgettable performance continues to define the film, ensuring that Herzog’s version has never been overshadowed by the countless adaptations that have followed.

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Back in stock:

French-Canadian dubbed releases of Kill Bill Vol. 1 & 2.

Tuer Bill Vol. 1 (VHS, 2003) + Tuer Bill Vol. 2 (VHS, 2004)

Quentin Tarantino’s Kill Bill remains one of his greatest cinematic love letters to the many films and genres that shaped him. Across the two volumes, Tarantino pulls from Japanese samurai cinema, Hong Kong kung fu, spaghetti westerns, blaxploitation, anime, and the grindhouse films of the 1970s.

Tarantino and Uma Thurman had been developing the Bride together since the making of Pulp Fiction, with Thurman’s character eventually becoming the centre of one of the most iconic female action roles of the 2000s. The production stretched across locations in China, Japan, Mexico, and the United States, with martial arts legend Sonny Chiba helping train the cast in sword fighting.

The films have since become hugely influential in their own right, introducing a new generation to many of the older films and genres Tarantino was drawing from. Kill Bill helped bring the visual language of Shaw Brothers kung fu, Japanese sword films, exploitation cinema, and spaghetti westerns to a whole new audience.

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Just added this neat Russian import added to the shop:

Ring 0: Birthday (VHS, 2000) Russian Subtitled Edition [PAL]

Directed by Norio Tsuruta and adapted from Koji Suzuki’s Ring universe, Ring 0: Birthday stars Yukie Nakama as Sadako Yamamura. Set decades before the events of Ring and Ring 2, the film follows Sadako as a young actress whose strange abilities and increasingly disturbing circumstances begin to consume her life.

The film explores Sadako before she became the vengeful figure audiences already knew, giving the character a degree of vulnerability that fundamentally changes how the mythology can be viewed. By the time of its release, Ring had already become a cultural phenomenon and helped establish the cursed-media concept as one of the defining ideas of modern Japanese horror.

The film has since developed a particularly strong reputation among fans of the original series for its unusual mixture of supernatural horror, psychological drama, and tragic romance. Yukie Nakama’s performance gives Sadako a very different presence from the one created by Rie Inou in the earlier films.

As the final entry in the original trilogy, Ring 0: Birthday remains an essential piece of the franchise’s mythology and one of the more unconventional films to emerge from Japan’s J-horror boom.

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Important Info:
PAL VHS only work in dedicated PAL / Multi-System VCRs. These tapes do not play in standard North American NTSC machines. If you’d like a watchable copy of this tape, just add our PAL-NTSC Transfer Service to your order. Please note, this tape is factory sealed & the seal would have to broken in order to transfer the tape.