Movies

The Buster Keaton Collection Volume 5 (Comedy)

Boasting new restorations of the 1923 silent film classics “Three Ages” and “Our Hospitality,” “The Buster Keaton Collection Volume 5” is now available on Blu-ray from Cohen Film Collection.

Keaton’s first foray into feature film production after a successful string of shorts, “Three Ages” is the hilariously inventive satire of D.W. Griffith’s “Intolerance.” The film follows the age-old story of misadventures on the road to finding love, retold in three separate eras — a structure that cleverly allowed Keaton to recut the film into three separate shorts if it failed as a feature. For this restoration, five elements were compared, with a second-generation duplicate negative being used for the majority.

“Our Hospitality,” meanwhile, is perhaps Keaton’s most nuanced comedy and again finds him recreating a bygone era. In it, he plays a 19th-century New Yorker who returns to the antebellum South to claim his inheritance but finds himself also inheriting a longstanding multi-generational feud between his family and that of the woman he loves (played by Buster’s real-life spouse, Natalie Talmadge). For this restoration, a total of 17 film elements were compared, with a first-generation nitrate positive held at the Library of Congress being the main element used.

Eye for an Eye: The Blind Swordsman (Action, Drama)

The martial arts-packed adventure “Eye for an Eye: The Blind Swordsman” debuts on Digital, Blu-ray and DVD Tuesday, Nov. 28, from Well Go USA Entertainment.

After stumbling into the aftermath of a brutal attack that resulted in an innocent man’s murder, a highly trained and exceptionally deadly swordsman temporarily sets aside life as a bounty hunter to investigate. As the truth behind the tragedy comes to light, the former killer-for-hire decides to hunt down his prey for an entirely different reason: rage.

Written and directed by Bingjia Yang (“Fight Against Evil 2”), “Eye for an Eye: The Blind Swordsman” stars Xie Miao (“Ip Man: The Awakening”), newcomer Gao Yi, Zhang Haosen (the “Fight Against Evil” franchise), Gao Weiman (“Tang Men”), Xiang Hao (the “A Round Trip to Love” franchise), Liu Ben (“Animal World”) and Zhang Di (“The Warrior from Sky”). The film is presented in Mandarin with an all-new English dub available.

’Tis the season for giving, which is why Front Row Features has another giveaway for our readers! We are giving away a copy of “Eye for an Eye: The Blind Swordsman” on Blu-ray to three lucky readers. To enter the contest, simply email socalmovieeditor@aol.com by Dec. 4 for your chance to win. Good luck!