The Carpetbaggers - BLU-RAY

Nominated for four Academy Awards, Cross Creek tells the inspiring and romantic story of Marjorie Kinnan Rawlings (Mary Steenburgen, Melvin and Howard), the Pulitzer Prize-winning author of The Yearling. In 1928 she left her husband and career as a newspaper reporter to embark on an adventure in the backwoods of Florida. Intent on a new career as a novelist, she also encounters an array of inspiring characters, including a handsome local businessman (Peter Coyote, Bitter Moon), a cantankerous backwoods joker (Rip Torn, Men in Black) and his caring daughter (Dana Hill, National Lampoon's European Vacation). Directed with authority by the great Martin Ritt (Hud), Cross Creek is a powerful feminist biopic, and a remarkable true story of one woman's struggle to find her own voice.

Set against the backdrop of World War II, this provocative drama stars Sissy Spacek as Nita, a divorced mother of two boys working as a telephone operator in a sleepy Texas town. When a handsome sailor (Eric Roberts) arrives in her life, Nita begins a friendship with the mysterious stranger. But can their new familiarity survive the rumor-mongering of local residents? With Sam Shepard, William Sanderson. 94 min. Widescreen; Soundtrack English; Subtitles English; audio commentary; theatrical trailer.

A prolific filmmaker who explored documentary, narrative, and experimental cinema, Pat Rocco captured the essence of queer culture in the late 1960s and early '70s, when it was still largely ignored by the popular media. Having achieved notoriety in the gay underground, Rocco expected his third feature to cross over to general audiences. A West Coast response to Midnight Cowboy, Drifter observes the odyssey of an emotionally ambivalent bisexual hustler (Joed Adair) as he wanders through a series of relationships with men and women, yearning for a sense of belonging in a Southern California characterized by impersonal pick-ups and S*x for hire. Playful and irreverent, Rocco's films could also be disarmingly earnest and sensitive and might have found a greater audience had not serious gay narratives remained such a stubborn cultural taboo. As it was, Rocco's breakthrough film failed to receive commercial distribution, and for decades Drifter remained virtually unseen. Fifty years later, Kino Cult celebrates Rocco's magnum opus with a 2K restoration from the original 16mm A/B negatives preserved by the UCLA Film and Television Archive, setting the stage for a reappraisal of Rocco's eclectic and historically significant body of work.