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Online Gift Catalogue

STOP!  Don’t go and buy another pretty coffee table book that looks great but provides its recipient with only an hour or two of vacuous and ephemeral enjoyment before transforming into a lifeless chunk that its new owner struggles with guilt feelings over before giving it the inevitable heave-ho.  Just say no to that CD Box of best-selling “classics” that everyone has heard so many times already that any pleasure in owning them (again) is diminished to the point of near non-existence.  That best-seller that everyone feels that they have to read, but no one actually wants to?  Pass.  And those nifty high-priced repackagings of  “favorite” comics that everybody who's interested already has?  Ditto.

Be adventurous and provide gifts that surprise and enthuse, that stimulate the senses more than they drain the wallet, and that will be treasured for years to come.


Title Director Publisher Price
Encyclopdedia Destructica: Volume Bumba, Issue the Fourth Gordon Nelson Encyclopedia Destructica $15.00
($15.00 list)
Encdestivsm
Read more and comment... 		This, the final installment of "Volume Bumba," is the film and video issue.  It comes with its own DVD containing a whopping 38 original film and video works running a mind-bending three and a half hours ensconced in a 118-page illustrated catalogue that is hand bound in a hand-silk-screened hardcover.  Produced in a limited edition of only 500 copies, this is an excellent survey of the great variety of talent working in film and video in Pittsburgh, and an amazing value that you won't want to miss.  While, yes, some of the works here are amateurish and some are obviously student films, others are totally amazing.  We are still reeling from the experience of watching Gordon Nelson's 15-minute and 48-second "Sixties Teen Dance Party," which contains what is quite possibly The Greatest Found Footage of All Time, footage which has, in turn, been artfully optically printed by Mr. Nelson, who has also added an original soundtrack which itself was recorded live (although, you might find yourself unable to resist the temptation to turn down the volume on your TV and put some classic '60s dance music on the hi-fi and crank it up while you watch this amazing film).  "Sixties Teen Dance Party" alone is, in our humble opinion, easily worth the price of the entire package.  But there's so much more.  Other highlights include Suzie Silver's "Peggy Love 101," in which the lyric "love" has been excised from the catalogue of Peggy Lee songs and rhythmically edited along with found footage (yes, we seem to have a predilection for this...) of her performances to create an abstraction of pop love.  "Sports and Diversions" by Bum Lee, a series of black and white animations inspired by Eric Satie's Sports et Diveritissements, a series of short piano pieces that are performed (and quite well, too!) here by Pei Wei Lin, is quite a marvel and might very well be the single most original piece you'll see this year.  Watching Jessica Fenlon's "Crossroads" provides a meditative three and a half minutes that will lower your blood pressure.  And, we can't leave off without mentioning John Allen Gibel's "Pleromadromadhatu (trailer)" which is either a parody of or an homage to -- or both -- the films of Dusan Makavejev and Alejandro Jodorowsky.  We could go on and on here as there are still over  thirty pieces we haven't even mentioned yet, many of which we'd like to tell you about.  Suffice it to say that this is something that you'll kick yourself (hard) if you miss out on it.  So don't!
The Golden Age of Television John Frankenheimer, Rod Serling Criterion Collection $44.44
($49.95 list)
Goldenagetv
Read more and comment... 		This three-disc extravaganze from Criterion features some of the finest television dramas ever produced and in the process captures an era.  Rod Serling looms large here, in his pre-Twilight Zone persona of heavy hitting director.  Also, John "Manchurian Candidate" Frankenheimer, and script writer Paddy Chayefsky.  Actors include Jack Palance, Mickey Rooney, Piper Laurie, Cliff Robertson, Kim Hunter and many,many more.  485 minutes of complete classic television dramas, all originally broadcast from 1953 to 1958, plus plenty of the great bonuses we have all come to expect from Criterion.
Last Year at Marienbad Alain Resnais Criterion Collection $34.95
($39.98 list)
6f0dfx6i
Read more and comment... 		directed by Alain Resnais from a screenplay by Alain Robbe-Grillet w/ Delphine Seyrig and Giorgio Albertazzi  <<<•>>> There are few truly one-of-a-kind films.  By any measure,  Last Year at Marienbad is clearly one of them.  A film that is successful like none other in recreating a mental landscape, that shows the inner workings of a restless mind and haunted memory, that employs the language of cinema to probe the interior twists and turns of consciousness, that demonstrates how thought is action in a manner that, while tempermentally quite different from, may yet be considered the most successful translation of the Proustian approach to narrative in any film yet realized.  Here, in L'année dernière à Marienbad, like in Á la recherche du temps perdue, we are confronted with a life turned inside out.  Robbe-Grillet, Resnais & Co. managed a feat that has yet to be repeated, and now we are presented with the – for now – definitive DVD edition, courtesy of The Criterion Collection (who else?).  This is a two-disc edition with some interesting and worthwhile extras – including two short Resnais documentaries from 1956 & 1958 – but all pale next to the glory of the restored high-definition transfer of the film itself.  Your film education is incomplete until you've seen this film.  And this is also one film that can quite decidedly stand up to repeated viewings, as its aesthetic pleasures and intellectual challenges are not easily exhausted. 
Giant 600 Cartoon Collection $24.95
($29.95 list)
600cartoons
Read more and comment... 		Should you or anyone you know ever find yourself totally burned out, unable to form a single cohesive thought, and in need of some serious downtime where not one iota of effort is required from your enfeebled being, this might be just what you're looking for.  This box set of 600 cartoons on 12 discs averaging 50 cartoons each will do the job, and then some, and at a price of less than a nickel per cartoon.  About half of the cartoons in this feature characters and cartoons that will be familiar to most, and include some real classics, most notably Betty Boop, Popeye, Felix the Cat and Gumby; and if you really need to dumb it down to numb, put on the discs featuring massive runs of Three Stooges cartoons .  Then there are the surprise treats: literally hundreds of cartoons that you may have never seen before featuring characters you're either only dimly aware or never even heard of.  Some of these are destined to be your favorites.  Don't believe us?  You'll see...
Anita O'Day: The Life of a Jazz Singer Ian McCrudden, Robbie Cavolina $25.00
($29.98 list)
Anita_oday
Read more and comment... 		Years in the making, this definitive documentary film portrait of one of the all-time great jazz singers is now here.  It's a two-disc marvel with a bonus disc that includes what all true aficionado's crave:  90 minutes of uninterrupted live performances!  Make sure to get a taste here, at the official Anita O'Day website.
My New New York Diary: A Film Book Michel Gondry PictureBox $22.22
($24.95 list)
Newnydiarysm
Read more and comment... 		 And here's another new one from PictureBox.  In 2008, Gondry contacted Doucet with a film proposal.  Involving a unique hybrid of still, unanimated drawings, and live action filming, Gondry and Doucet worked together to try to make something new, and they have:  this is an equally unique film-book (or, book-film?).  An 80-page hardcover complete with DVD of the entire film that resulted from Doucet and Gondry's collaboration, which is small, personal film that is a unique hybrid of drawing, animation and live-action that runs about 20 minutes.
Popeye The Sailor: 1933 - 1938 Dave Fleischer, Max Fleischer Paramount $19.99
($64.92 list)
OUT OF STOCK!
Popeye33-38sm
Read more and comment... 		This is it, the one we've all been waiting for!  The first sixty Fleischer Studios Popeye cartoons, fully restored and uncut; PLUS the first two three-color Technicolor double-length cartoons: "Popeye the Sailor Meets Sinbad the Sailor", and "Popeye the Sailor Meets Ali Baba's Forty Thieves", and plenty of great bonus features.  NOW ON SALE FOR A CRAZY PRICE!!! (need we say it?  – while supplies last)