Whoa, vacation sent me into a downward spiral of procrastination, but I should be back on track now. Here's what you missed for the past 3 weeks, plus this week's new releases.
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DVD Picks for September 23rd, 2008
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The Godfather - The Coppola Restoration Giftset
dir. Francis Ford Coppola
I fully expect to see about 7 or 8 more re-releases of this trilogy within the next 20 years.
Product Decsription:
THE GODFATHER: Popularly viewed as one of the best American films ever made, the multi-generational crime saga The Godfather (1972) is a touchstone of cinema: one of the most widely imitated, quoted, and lampooned movies of all time. Marlon Brando and Al Pacino star as Vito Corleone and his youngest son, Michael, respectively. It is the late 1940s in New York and Corleone is, in the parlance of organized crime, a "godfather" or "don," the head of a Mafia family. Michael, a free thinker who defied his father by enlisting in the Marines to fight in World War II, has returned a captain and a war hero. Having long ago rejected the family business, Michael shows up at the wedding of his sister, Connie (Talia Shire), with his non-Italian girlfriend, Kay (Diane Keaton), who learns for the first time about the family "business." A few months later at Christmas time, the don barely survives being shot by gunmen in the employ of a drug-trafficking rival whose request for aid from the Corleones' political connections was rejected. After saving his father from a second assassination attempt, Michael persuades his hotheaded eldest brother, Sonny (James Caan), and family advisors Tom Hagen (Robert Duvall) and Sal Tessio (Abe Vigoda) that he should be the one to exact revenge on the men responsible. After murdering a corrupt police captain and the drug trafficker, Michael hides out in Sicily while a gang war erupts at home. Falling in love with a local girl, Michael marries her, but she is later slain by Corleone enemies in an attempt on Michael's life. Sonny is also butchered, having been betrayed by Connie's husband. As Michael returns home and convinces Kay to marry him, his father recovers and makes peace with his rivals, realizing that another powerful don was pulling the strings behind the narcotics endeavor that began the gang warfare. Once Michael has been groomed as the new don, he leads the family to a new era of prosperity, then launches a campaign of murderous revenge against those who once tried to wipe out the Corleones, consolidating his family's power and completing his own moral downfall. Nominated for 11 Academy Awards and winning for Best Picture, Best Actor (Marlon Brando), and Best Adapted Screenplay, The Godfather was followed by a pair of sequels.
THE GODFATHER PART II: This brilliant companion piece to the original The Godfather continues the saga of two generations of successive power within the Corleone family. Coppola tells two stories in Part II: the roots and rise of a young Don Vito, played with uncanny ability by Robert De Niro, and the ascension of Michael (Al Pacino) as the new Don. Reassembling many of the talents who helped make The Godfather, Coppola has produced a movie of staggering magnitude and vision, and undeniably the best sequel ever made. Robert De Niro won an Oscar®; the film received six Academy Awards, including Best Picture of 1974.
THE GODFATHER PART III: One of the greatest sagas in movie history continues! In this third film in the epic Corleone trilogy, Al Pacino reprises the role of powerful family leader Michael Corleone. Now in his 60's, Michael is dominated by two passions: freeing his family from crime and finding a suitable successor. That successor could be fiery Vincent (Andy Garcia)... but he may also be the spark that turns Michael's hope of business legitimacy into an inferno of mob violence. Francis Ford Coppola directs Pacino, Garcia, Diane Keaton, Talia Shire, Eli Wallach, Sofia Coppola, Joe Montegna and others in this exciting, long-awaited film that masterfully explores the themes of power, tradition, revenge and love. Seven Academy Award® nominations, including Best Picture.
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L.A. Confidential (1997)
dir. Curtis Hanson
Product Decsription:
In a time when it seems that every other movie makes some claim to being a film noir, L.A. Confidential is the real thing--a gritty, sordid tale of sex, scandal, betrayal, and corruption of all sorts (police, political, press--and, of course, very personal) in 1940s Hollywood. The Oscar-winning screenplay is actually based on several titles in James Ellroy's series of chronological thriller novels (including the title volume, The Big Nowhere, and White Jazz)--a compelling blend of L.A. history and pulp fiction that has earned it comparisons to the greatest of all Technicolor noir films, Chinatown. Kim Basinger richly deserved her Supporting Actress Oscar for her portrayal of a conflicted femme fatale; unfortunately, her male costars are so uniformly fine that they may have canceled each other out with the Academy voters: Russell Crowe, Guy Pearce, Kevin Spacey, and James Cromwell play LAPD officers of varying stripes. Pearce's character is a particularly intriguing study in Hollywood amorality and ambition, a strait-laced "hero" (and son of a departmental legend) whose career goals outweigh all other moral, ethical, and legal considerations. If he's a good guy, it's only because he sees it as the quickest route to a promotion. --Jim Emerson
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Leatherheads (2008)
dir. George Clooney
Product Decsription:
Academy Award® winners George Clooney and Ren e Zellweger team up in this fun-filled comedy set against the beginnings of pro football. Dodge Connelly (Clooney) captain of a struggling squad of barroom brawlers has only one hope to save his team: recruit college superstar Carter Rutherford (John Krasinski The Office). But when a feisty reporter (Zellweger) starts snooping around she turns the two teammates into instant rivals and kicks off a wild competition filled with hilarious screwball antics! Critics are cheering Leatherheads as a real winner (Claudia Puig USA Today).
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Run, Fatboy, Run (2008)
dir. David Schwimmer
Not a terribly funny movie, but it's OK. If nothing's on TV and I come across it on HBO, I'd probably watch it again.
Product Decsription:
It only makes sense that a television star would turn to a fellow practitioner for his first film. With Run Fatboy Run--no commas, please--Friends' David Schwimmer doesn't reinvent the romantic comedy, but he finds the perfect lovable loser of a lead in TV vet Simon Pegg (Faith in the Future, Spaced). On his wedding day, London lay-about Dennis (Pegg, who co-wrote with Michael Ian Black) deserts his pregnant fiancée, Libby (Crash's Thandie Newton), seconds before the ceremony. Crippling insecurity--which remains unexplored--prevents him from finishing anything ("Not even a sentence," Libby quips). Flash-forward five years, and he's a loving dad to son Jake (the charming Matthew Fenton), but sports a small potbelly, smokes too much and entertains no ambition beyond his job as security guard at a high-end boutique. Fortunately, he has friends, like gambler Gordon (Shaun of the Dead co-star Dylan Moran) and avuncular landlord Mr. Ghoshdashtidar (Harish Patel). Fit American financier Whit (Huff's Hank Azaria) shakes up his routine when he starts seeing Libby. To win her back, Dennis trains for the same 26-mile charity marathon as Whit. No one believes he can make it to the end, and even Dennis has doubts, but true love is a formidable motivator. It may not have been Schwimmer's intention, but there's more chemistry between the buddies than the couples. That makes the movie a must for fans of Pegg and the scene-stealing Moran--but optional for admirers of Newton and Azaria. --Kathleen C. Fennessy
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This American Life - Season One (2007)
dir. n/a
Product Decsription:
The widely popular, award-winning Chicago Public Radio show of the same name is now a Showtime show. Drawing on a different theme each week, viewers hear compelling stories from everyday folks culled from six months on the road. Host Ira Glass and company create a captivating look at the American Life in a series that’s not quite documentary, not much of a news magazine and definitely not a reality show – it’s simply unlike anything else.
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Aki Kaurismäki's Proletariat Trilogy
dir. Aki Kaurismäki
Product Decsription:
The poignant, deadpan films of Aki Kaurismäki are pitched somewhere in the wintry nether lands between comedy and tragedy. And rarely in his body of work has the line separating those genres seemed thinner than in what is often identified as his Proletariat Trilogy, Shadows in Paradise, Ariel, and The Match Factory Girl. In these three films, something like social-realist farces, Kaurismäki surveys the working-class outcasts of his native Finland with detached yet disarming amusement. Featuring commanding, off-key visual compositions and delightfully dour performances, the films in this triptych exemplify the talents of a unique and highly influential film artist.
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Deception (2008)
dir. Marcel Langenegger
Product Decsription:
With its attractive cast and "stylish thriller" vibe, Deception is a much better movie than a raft of negative reviews might suggest--provided that you can suspend (if not completely discard) your disbelief and go along for the ride. The first feature by veteran commercial director Marcel Langenegger, it stars Ewan McGregor as Jonathan McQuarry, a mousy freelance tax auditor who’s taken under the wing of one Wyatt Bose (Hugh Jackman), a slick, ultra-confident Manhattan lawyer. We know from jump that Jonathan’s new best friend isn’t all, or even any, that he seems, and sure enough, when the pair "accidentally" switch cell phones, a series of credibility-defying events destined to turn Jonathan’s bleak, lonely life upside down is set in motion. At first, it’s all good, as the wide-eyed young CPA finds himself joining "The List," a Wall Street sex club that brings together lawyers, stockbrokers, and other professionals whose lives are too busy for anything more than brief, anonymous assignations at various high-rent hotels (exchanging real names is verboten is this world). But apparently spending nights with the likes of Natasha Henstridge and Charlotte Rampling isn’t enough; when he meets the blonde beauty known only as "S" (Michelle Williams), the club’s credo of "intimacy without intricacy" goes out the window, lust turns to love, and Jonathan is drawn into a protracted cat-and-mouse game that leads to murder, big-time corporate embezzlement, identity switches, and other nefarious activity. One needn’t be Nostradamus to predict where all of this is headed, but that’s hardly the point. Even if you don’t buy a single moment of it, Deception is fun, flashy, and entertaining--and since when is pure escapism a bad thing? --Sam Graham
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Savage Streets - Special Edition (1984)
dir. Danny Steinmann
Product Decsription:
After nearly being rundown by a gang known as the Scars, Brenda (Linda Blair) and friends trash the leader's car. Gang leader, Jake, exacts his revenge by getting his cohorts to gang-rape her mute-deaf sister, Heather (in a gloriously nuanced role by Linnea Quigley). Armed with a crossbow and a bad attitude, Linda Blair sets out to avenge her mute-deaf sister while blazing a bloody, Bronson-inspired trail through 80's Los Angeles.
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Friday The 13th - The Series: The First Season (1987)
dir. n/a
Product Decsription:
Fans awaiting the DVD release of this 1987 cult fave made-in-Canada series, this is your lucky day! Friday the 13th: The Series has as much to do with Jason Vorhese as Halloween III: Season of the Witch had to do with Michael Myers; that is to say, nothing. But it stands on its own as a horror anthology series that delivers cheap, but effective, thrills. Louise Robey and John D. LeMay star as Micki and Ryan, distant relations who are reunited after inheriting her uncle Lewis' antiques shop. They learn that Lewis' death was by (super)natural causes; he broke his immortality pact with the Devil to sell cursed antiques. Now, Lewis is in hell (from which he returns in the episode, "Hellowe'en"), and Micki and Ryan must recover everything Lewis sold to an unsuspecting public. Jack (Chris Wiggins), Lewis' former friend, a magician with a helpful knowledge of the occult and an eventful backstory (as revealed in the episodes "Bottle of Dreams" and "Brain Drain"), helps them. The series gets off to an auspiciously creepy start with "The Inheritance," in which yuppie Micki and geeky Ryan attempt to retrieve a killer doll that has worked its demon magic on a spoiled brat (a young Sarah Polley) who uses it to dispatch her strict new stepmother. Perhaps worth the price of this set is "Faith Healer," directed by David Cronenberg, a grisly episode in which a charlatan gains the power to heal from an ancient glove. Atom Egoyan, another Canadian art house darling, directed the episode "Cupid's Quiver." Another memorable episode is "Scarecrow," which introduces a boogieman that gives Jason a run for his hockey mask, a scythe-wielding scarecrow. This inaugural season's most stellar guest star is Ray Walston as an embittered "has been" comic book artist whose superhero creation comes to murderous life. Unlike the movie franchise, Friday the 13th: The Series gets better as the season unfolds. The special effects are resourceful and the gore quotient at times pushes the syndication envelope. All in all, this show delivers--to quote the name of Micki and Ryan's emporium--the "Curious Goods." --Donald Liebenson
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The New Centurions (1972)
dir. Richard Fleischer
Product Decsription:
Fans of the TV series Police Story and Hill Street Blues will dig this gritty 1972 drama based on Joseph Wambaugh's groundbreaking first novel. George C. Scott is in his element as Kilvinski, the philosophical 20-year veteran who mentors his new night shift partner, Roy (Stacy Keach), a "slick-sleeved" rookie. "Kilvinski's Law," he growls, "If a dude uses his fist, you use your stick. If he uses a stick you use your gun." Quincy Jones' Shaft-ian score gives the film a funky '70s vibe. Jane Alexander costars as Roy's neglected spouse, with Eric Estrada and Scott Wilson as fellow rookies, and Isabel "Weesie" Sanford as one of a vanful of prostitutes the partners roust in one of the few sequences played for laughs. Directed by Richard Fleischer (Compulsion) and written by Academy Award-winner Stirling Silliphant (In the Heat of the Night), The New Centurions deglamorizes the cop drama with gallows humor and sudden and shocking violence. It is a little dated, but in portraying the dangers and stresses that beat cops face everyday, The New Centurions is not, to quote Kilvinski, the same old "Hollywood crap." --Donald Liebenson
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The Anderson Tapes (1971)
dir. Sidney Lumet
Product Decsription:
An early example of the techno-thriller, The Anderson Tapes--sharply directed by Sidney Lumet from the novel by Lawrence Sanders--follows just-out-of-jail Duke Anderson (a balding Sean Connery) as he plots the heist of an entire New York apartment building, enlisting a crew that includes Martin Balsam as a vintage 1971 gay stereotype and a very young Christoper Walken in perhaps the first of his jittery crook roles. The gimmick is that Anderson has been out of circulation so long that he doesn't realizse his mafia backers are only supporting him because they feel nostalgic for the days before they were boring businessmen and that the whole set-up is monitored by a criss-crossing selection of government and private agencies who don't care enough to thwart the robbery, which instead becomes unglued thanks to a spunky handicapped kid-cum-radio ham. With a cool Quincy Jones score, very tight editing, a lot of spot-on cameo performances from the likes of Ralph Meeker as a patient cop, The Anderson Tapes hasn't dated a bit: it's wry without being jokey and suspenseful without feeling contrived. --Kim Newman
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$ (Dollars) (1971)
dir. Richard Brooks
Product Decsription:
Superstars Warren Beatty and Goldie Hawn both took on the mantle of Robin Hood as they set out to fleece the criminally over-privileged (drug dealers, racketeers, gamblers, etc.) of $1 million from a safe-deposit vault in Hamburg. He's a security expert, she's a hooker. Together they made a dynamite combination at the box-office.
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Mother of Tears (2007)
dir. Dario Argento
Product Decsription:
The final installment of the "Three Mothers" trilogy. A young American art student, Sarah, "unwittingly opens an ancient urn that unleashes the demonic power of the world's most powerful witch. As a scourge of suicides plague the city and witches from all over the world converge on Rome to pay homage, Sarah must use all her own psychic powers to stop the 'Mother of Tears' before her evil conquers the world."
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Sundown: The Vampire in Retreat (1990)
dir. Anthony Hickox
Product Decsription:
Bruce Campbell co-stars with David Carradine in a terrifying tale of bloodthirsty horror. The townsfolk of Purgatory are mean and ornery for one very good reason-they're vampires! Hidden away in their secret community, the come out at night and feast with gusto! Now the Harrisons, an unsuspecting family from "outside" have ventured into Purgatory. Count Margulak, the ruler of the vampires, has ended their tradition of human bloodletting. Now the vampire get their fix from synthetic bottled blood, a drink so distasteful it's making the natives crave the "real thing." Rebel leader Shane and his army plan to overthrow the count- but it won't happen without a fight! The battle for the "right to bite"- begins at SUNDOWN!
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Last House on the Beach (1978)
dir. Franco E. Prosperi
Product Decsription:
As European producers raced to top the deviant extremes of 1972's LAST HOUSE ON THE LEFT, only one movie dared to combine the genres of sicko-psycho thriller with the unholy depravity of 'nunsploitation'; Ray Lovelock (of LET SLEEPING CORPSES LIE fame) stars as the leader of a gang of brutal bank robbers who invade an isolated seaside villa, only to discover five teenage schoolgirls, their nun teacher (Florinda Bolkan of FLAVIA THE HERETIC), and a nightmare of sexual assault and horrific revenge. Laura Trotter (NIGHTMARE CITY) and Sherry Buchanan (WHAT HAVE THEY DONE TO YOUR DAUGHTERS?) co-star in this rarely seen slice of `70s EuroSleaze - also known as LA SETTIMA DONNA - now presented uncut and uncensored for the first time ever in America!
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Bloody Moon (1981)
dir. Jess Franco
Product Decsription:
Re-Mastered In High-Definition And Featuring An All-New Interview With Jess Franco!As the body-count genre stabbed its way into audiences hearts in the early 80s EuroTrash auteur Jess Franco (SADOMANIA MANSION OF THE LIVING DEAD) was asked to create his own saga of slaughtered schoolgirls complete with gratuitous nudity graphic violence and gory set pieces. But just when you thought you d seen it all Franco shocked the world by delivering surprising style genuine suspense and a cavalcade of depravity that includes incest voyeurism and roller disco. The luscious Olivia Pascal of VANESSA fame stars in this twisted thriller that was banned in England yet is now presented uncut and uncensored including the complete stone mill power saw sequence for the first time ever in America!
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In the Folds of the Flesh (1970)
dir. Sergio Bergonzelli
Product Decsription:
In a genre defined by shocking violence and psychosexual kink, it remains perhaps the most over-the-top 'giallo' in EuroCult history: Former MGM starlet and doomed James Dean paramour Pier Angeli - two decades past her Golden Globe award for 'Most Promising Newcomer' and just one year before her tragic death - stars in this ultra-lurid epic packed with decapitations, pet vultures, creepy incest, groovy fashions, cyanide baths, swirly psychedelics, inexplicable plot twists, Nazi death camp flashbacks and more. Eleonora Rossi Drago (CAMILLE 2000), Fernando Sancho (RETURN OF THE BLIND DEAD) and Luciano Catenacci (KILL BABY, KILL!) co-star in the 1970 sickie that would make Freud himself scream in horror, now fully restored from the original Italian vault elements.
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DVD Picks for September 30th, 2008
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Iron Man (Ultimate Two-Disc Edition) (2008)
dir. Jon Favreau
Still one of the best movies of the year, but I have a feeling once Oscar season is over, it'll probably drop down the list, but still be in the top 10. Robert Downey Jr. is PERFECT as Tony Stark. I love Jeff Bridges, but I'm still not real crazy about his character being the villain. Although, out of everyone in the Marvel Universe, Iron Man probably had the least interesting arch-enemies. Mandarin would be cool, but who would be after that? Fin Fang Foom? That would get ridiculous.
Product Decsription:
You know you're going to get a different kind of superhero when you cast Robert Downey Jr. in the lead role. And Iron Man is different, in welcome ways. Cleverly updated from Marvel Comics' longstanding series, Iron Man puts billionaire industrialist Tony Stark (that's Downey) in the path of some Middle Eastern terrorists; in a brilliantly paced section, Stark invents an indestructible suit that allows him to escape. If the rest of the movie never quit hits that precise rhythm again, it nevertheless offers plenty of pleasure, as the renewed Stark swears off his past as a weapons manufacturer, develops his new Iron Man suit, and puzzles both his business partner (Jeff Bridges in great form) and executive assistant (Gwyneth Paltrow). Director Jon Favreau geeks out in fun ways with the hardware, but never lets it overpower the movie, and there's always a goofy one-liner or a slapstick pratfall around to break the tension. As for Downey, he doesn't get to jitterbug around too much in his improv way, but he brings enough of his unpredictable personality to keep the thing fresh. And listen up, hardcore Marvel mavens: even if you know the Stan Lee cameo is coming, you won't be able to guess it until it's on the screen. It all builds to a splendid final scene, with a concluding line delivery by Downey that just feels absolutely right. --Robert Horton
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Forgetting Sarah Marshall (2008)
dir. Nicholas Stoller
Pretty funny movie, but not something I'd own. I just wish the fictional show "Crime Scene" that was portrayed in the movie was actually a show. I'd watch it for Billy Baldwin alone.
Product Decsription:
Breaking up is hard to do--but that doesn't mean you can't have some belly laughs about it. Forgetting Sarah Marshall provides that rare treat: a romantic comedy about breakups, that is both romantic and funny. The laughs, especially from writer-star Jason Segel, are both heartfelt and raunchy, and the film is just unexpected enough that it keeps the viewer's attention till the end. The touches of producer Judd Apatow, who's famously retooled rom-coms to appeal to guys as much as women, are woven throughout the film, but Segel's script, reportedly based on many of his own experiences, is fresh and original. And adult. Forgetting Sarah Marshall features male genitalia laffs presented in unexpected and human ways (the nude breakup scene is played for giggles but also deep poignancy), and the language and sex scenes are strictly for grownups--and rightly so. Segel's script, and his performance as Peter, show that he understands the true nature of adult relationships, which provides the refreshing difference between this film and some of Apatow's other crude creations. The cast is sublime; Kristen Bell (Veronica Mars) plays title character Sarah, a self-absorbed actress, and Russell Brand is her new British honey who accompanies her to--what are the chances?--the exact same Hawaiian resort as Peter, who's nursing his broken heart. Mila Kunis plays Rachel, the resort employee who gives Peter a reason to hope, and Paul Rudd is the surfing instructor who gives him his own brand of heartfelt advice ("When life gives you lemons, just say 'F--- the lemons' and bail," he says cheerily). The pacing is screwball, and the absurdities fly (a "Dracula" musical puppet show, and a surprisingly lovely Hawaiian version of "Nothing Compares 2 U"). Nothing the viewer will forget any time soon.--A.T. Hurley
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An Autumn Afternoon - Criterion Collection (1964)
dir. Yasujiro Ozu
Back to the Criterion Collection where Ozu belongs. I like those Eclipse sets, but I'd much rather have these.
Product Decsription:
Yasujiro Ozu's final film is also his final masterpiece, the gently heartbreaking story of a man's dignified resignation to both life s ever-shifting currents and society's gradual modernization. Though widower Shuhei Hirayama (Ozu's frequent leading man Chishu Ryu) has been living comfortably for years with his grown daughter, a series of events leads him to accept and encourage her marriage and departure. As elegantly composed and achingly tender as any of the Japanese master's films, An Autumn Afternoon (Sanna no aji) is one of cinema s fondest farewells.
DVD Features:
New, restored high-definition digital transfer
New audio commentary featuring David Bordwell, author of Ozu and the Poetics of Cinema
Excerpts from Yasujiro Ozu and the Taste of Sake, a 1978 French television program looking back on Ozu's career featuring film critic Michel Ciment
Theatrical trailer
New and improved English subtitle translation
PLUS: A booklet featuring new essays by film scholars Geoff Andrew and Donald Richie
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Bigger, Stronger, Faster* (2008)
dir. Christopher Bell
Product Decsription:
Pop culture junkies tend to think of Hulk Hogan, Sylvester Stallone, and Arnold Schwarzenegger as entertainment figures. In Poughkeepsie, NY, back in the 1980s, filmmaker Christopher Bell and his brothers viewed them as heroes and became bodybuilders. Like the Hulkster, Mike and Mark Bell even turned to professional wrestling. Chris, a former staffer at Venice's famous Gold's Gym, doesn't use anabolic steroids--he did try them once--but his heroes have and his brothers do, leading him to look deeper at this increasingly common practice. While Bell explores the health costs of juicing, he's mostly concerned with the moral consequences involved in the use of performance-enhancing substances. Though he refrains from judgment, he stopped taking steroids because it felt dishonest. Naturally, his burly brothers feel otherwise. Aside from his family, Bell speaks with doctors, lawyers, congressmen, gym rats, and professional athletes, like Olympic sprinters Ben Johnson and Carl Lewis and Tour de France cyclist Floyd Landis. He also includes footage of José Canseco, Barry Bonds, and Mark McGwire testifying during the federal grand jury and congressional hearings on steroid use in the major leagues (prompted by the publication of Canseco's Juiced: Wild Times, Rampant 'Roids, Smash Hits, and How Baseball Got Big). For the most part, Bell doesn't leave any stone unturned and the personal nature of his entertaining and enlightening inquiry elevates Bigger, Stronger, Faster, i.e. The Side Effects of Being American, above your average exposé. Recommended to athletes, sports fans, health nuts, and of course, pop culture junkies. --Kathleen C. Fennessy
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Taxi To the Dark Side (2007)
dir. Alex Gibney
Product Decsription:
Among the slew of documentaries inspired by the post-9/11 war, arguably none is more important than Alex Gibney's Taxi to the Dark Side. The story it has to tell, with compelling thoroughness and no recourse to rhetoric, should be as disturbing to Americans supporting the war as it is to opponents. In December 2002, Dilawar, a young rural Afghan cabdriver, was accused of helping to plan a rocket attack on a U.S. base, clamped into prison at Bagram, and subjected to physical torture so relentless that he died after two days of it. But Dilawar was innocent--and he'd been denounced by the real culprit, who thereby took the heat off himself and won points with U.S. forces by giving them "a bad guy." Dilawar was the first fatal victim of Vice President Dick Cheney's devotion to "working the dark side"--torturing, humiliating, and otherwise abusing prisoners in the "Global War on Terror." His story, developed in horrific detail with testimony from the soldiers who tortured him, and also from two New York Times investigative reporters, becomes a prism for slanting light onto the "dark side" policy and the mindset behind it. The program at Bagram was deemed such a success that it served as the model for Abu Graibh the following year in Iraq, and both prisons became pipelines to the detainee facility at Guantánamo, Cuba.
The film's impact is powerful and complex. We come to see the very soldiers who broke Dilawar's body and spirit as victims, too--and patsies of a policy that, from Cheney and Attorney General Alberto Gonzales on down, ignored the Geneva Convention and shrouded itself (and commanding officers) in "a fog of ambiguity" while the grunts took the fall. A lot of these grunts testify here, and the accumulation of their individual perspectives on a shared tragedy is devastating. The latter half of the film features penetrating commentary from critics of torture as a policy (Senator John McCain was still one at the time), all of whom agree that it doesn't work and it only damages us. And for Theatre of the Absurd, there's a PR tour of (a discrete portion of) the Guantánamo facility, which turns out to be kinda like summer camp: "They get ice cream on Sundays." Finally, Taxi to the Dark Side isn't about torture or politics or the justness or unjustness of the war in Afghanistan and Iraq. Gibney is entirely correct when he says, "It's really about the American character and whether we have become something rather different from what we imagine ourselves to be." He's asking; he doesn't want it to be true. --Richard T. Jameson
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Sports Night: The Complete Series 10th Anniversary Edition (1998-2000)
dir. n/a
Product Decsription:
With breakout and memorable performances by Josh Charles (In Treatment), Robert Guillaume (Benson), Felicity Huffman (Desperate Housewives), Peter Krause (Six Feet Under), Sabrina Lloyd (Sliders) and Joshua Malina (The West Wing), this was writer/producer Aaron Sorkin's (A Few Good Men , The American President) first television series. And it was director Thomas Schlamme's first collaboration with Sorkin. The pair, who would continue to click brilliantly with The West Wing and Studio 60 On the Sunset Strip, may not have known it at the time, but with Sports Night they defined a new style and raised the bar for all television programs to follow.
Critically acclaimed when it debuted on ABC in 1998, Sports Nigh was an innovative half-hour program about a team of funny, smart and likeable people who put on a daily live sports cable newscast, much like ESPN's SportsCenter. They are a group of consummate professionals whose personal lives operate in apparent chaos, communicating every uncensored thought and feeling through a libretto of witty and honest chatter over the hum of the separate-but-integrated live show-within-the-show.
DVD Features:
*The Show: An in-depth look back at Sports Night with creator/writer Aaron Sorkin, directors Thomas Schlamme and Robert Berlinger, cast members Felicity Huffman, Peter Krause, Josh Charles, Joshua Malina, and Robert Guillaume, Emmy(r) award-winning editor Janet Ashikaga, Emmy(r) award-winning director of photography Peter Smokler, producer John Amodeo, and set designer Thomas Azzari. Includes never-before-seen behind-the-scenes home movies shot by John Amodeo.
*Face Off: ESPN's SportsCenter vs. CSC's Sports Night - Sports Night's real-life ESPN counterparts discuss what the series got right and wrong.
*A Conversation with Aaron Sorkin and Thomas Schlamme
*Inside The Locker Room - A look at the innovations of Sports Night with Aaron Sorkin, Thomas Schlamme, Robert Berlinger, Janet Ashikaga, Peter Smokler, John Amodeo, and Thomas Azzari.
*Season Gag Reels
*8 Episode Commentaries including creator/writer Aaron Sorkin, director/executive producer Thomas Schlamme, director Robert Berlinger, editor Janet Ashikaga, and cast members Peter Krause, Josh Charles, Joshua Malina, Sabrina Lloyd, Greg Baker, Kayla Blake, Timothy Davis-Reed, and Ron Ostrow.
*Original Promos
*36-Page Booklet including an introduction by creator Aaron Sorkin
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The Rebel (2007)
dir. Charlie Nguyen
Product Decsription:
Johnny Nguyen (The Protector) stars as an elite double agent tasked with taking down his own country s freedom fighters. But when he meets a beautiful rebel (pop star Thanh Van Ngo), he rethinks his loyalty to the oppressive French regime and fights back against his sadistic captain (Dustin Nguyen, 21 Jump Street).
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Deadly Duo (Shaw Brothers) (1971)
dir. Chang Cheh
Product Decsription:
It's the Sung Dynasty versus the Chin invaders as the "Iron Triangle" of director Chang Cheh and stars David Chiang and Ti Lung truly hit their stride with this crowd-pleasing kung fu epic. When a handsome prince is taken captive and guarded by a martial arts master it's up to two powerful patriots to fight overwhelming odds. From the first fascinating minute to the final desperate battle to the death--culminating in an unforgettably evocative conclusion--this duo is dynamic as well as deadly.
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The Last Laugh (Restored Deluxe Edition) (1924)
dir. F.W. Murnau
Product Decsription:
Two-DVD Deluxe Edition - The crowning achievement of the German expressionist movement is F.W. Myrna's THE LAST LAUGH. Emil Jennings stars in the bleak fable of an aging doorman whose happiness crumbles when he is relieved of the duties and uniform which had for years been the foundation of his happiness and pride. Through Jennings's colossal performance, THE LAST LAUGH becomes more than the plight of a single doorman, but a mournful dramatization of the frustration and anguish of the universal working class. Restored in 2003 by Lucian Berretta and the Friedrich Wilhelm Myrna Sifting, this Kino edition is the definitive version of a silent masterwork, presented with unprecedented clarity and a new orchestral recording of the original 1924 score. Photographed by Karl Freund (Cinematographer of Tod Browning s 1931 Dracula).
DVD Features:
Two-DVD edition featuring both THE RESTORED GERMAN VERSION and THE UNRESTORED EXPORT EDITION
New recording of the original score by Giuseppe Becce, available in 5.1 Stereo Surround or 2.0 Stereo
The Making of THE LAST LAUGH; a 40-minute documentary
Original German title sequences
Image Gallery
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Boss (1974)
dir. Jack Arnold
I seem to recall this movie having a longer title.........
Product Decsription:
The Boss (former football star Fred Williamson), has "decided to hunt white folks for a change," becoming a bounty hunter and setting out on the trail of fugitive outlaw Jed Clyton (William Smith). With his comic sidekick Amos (D'Urville Martin), he rides into the town of San Miguel, finds that it has no sheriff and takes the job himself. Boss takes a bite out of local crime and brings the hammer down on Clyton in this amusing and action-filled parody of the 1970s blaxploitation genre, as he institutes black man's law in this white man's town!
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DVD Picks for October 7th, 2008
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You Don't Mess With the Zohan (2008)
dir. Dennis Dugan
I know it looks pretty stupid, but give it a chance, especially if you like Adam Sandler, even a little bit. One of the funniest movies of the year so far in my opinion.
Product Decsription:
If You Don't Mess with the Zohan feels like an extended and crazed sketch from Saturday Night Live, there are reasons for that. Zohan's star and SNL alumnus Adam Sandler is joined by several fellow cast members (in uncredited cameo roles) from his years on the NBC show. But Sandler also co-wrote the film's absurdist script with SNL veteran writer and sometime-performer Robert Smigel. Echoes of a few of their classic skits on the show--built around high-strung Israeli characters obsessed with disco and selling junk electronics out of a New York shop--are in revisited in Zohan and are a lot of fun to see again. Zohan is unbridled nonsense thrown at the wall, but with a sunny disposition that proves surprisingly persuasive. Sandler stars as an Israeli intelligence operative who fakes his death to reinvent himself in New York City as a hairdresser. Putting the lie to assumptions that any man in that professional field must be gay, Zohan routinely provides raucous sexual favors for all of his older female customers. The sight of bottles of gels and hairsprays falling off shelves while the indefatigable Zohan pleasures randy grannies on the other side of a salon wall is pure SNL, and is funnier than it might sound. The silly story involves an old, Palestinian enemy of Zohan, the Phantom (John Turturro), showing up in Manhattan, but everything is really leading to a Big Apple version of the resolution of Israeli-Palestinian conflicts we'd all like to see on a large scale. The film is almost instantly forgettable, and there are many times it veers toward the dumb, but it also sells itself well as a nutty concept. --Tom Keogh
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Sleeping Beauty (1959)
dir. Clyde Geronimi
Product Decsription:
Disney's 1959 animated effort was the studio's most ambitious to date, a widescreen spectacle boasting a gorgeous waltz-filled score adapting Tchaikovsky. In the 14th century, the malevolent Maleficent (not dissimilar to the wicked Queen in Disney's Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs taunts a king that his infant Aurora will fatally prick her finger on a spinning wheel before sundown on her 16th birthday. This, of course, would deny her a happily-ever-after with her true love. Things almost but not quite turn out that way, thanks to the assistance of some bubbly, bumbling fairies named Flora, Fauna, and Merryweather. It's not really all that much about the title character--how interesting can someone in the middle of a long nap be, anyway? Instead, those fairies carry the day, as well as, of course, good Prince Phillip, whose battle with the malevolent Maleficent in the guise of a dragon has been co-opted by any number of animated films since. See it in its original glory here. And Malificent's castle, filled with warthogs and demonic imps in a macabre dance celebrating their evil ways, manages a certain creepy grandeur. --David Kronke
DVD Features:
All-New Digital Restoration With Enhanced Picture And Sound
All-New 5.1 Disney Enhanced Home Theater Surround Sound
All-New Once Upon A Dream Music Video, Performed By HANNAH MONTANA'S Emily Osment
Sleeping Beauty Castle Walkthrough A Fully Immersive Virtual Tour
All-New Enhanced Dance Game With Help From Briar Rose's Forest Friends, You Can Learn How To Dance
Never-Before-Seen Alternate Opening
Deleted Songs
All-New Making Of SLEEPING BEAUTY Featurette
And Much, Much More
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The Happening (2008)
dir. M. Night Shyamalan
Product Decsription:
You'd expect the end of the world to be no day in the park, but in M. Night Shyamalan's The Happening, a day in the park is where the end begins. One otherwise peaceful summer morning, New Yorkers strolling in Central Park come to a halt in unison, then begin killing themselves by any means at hand. At a high-rise construction site a few blocks over, it's raining bodies as workers step off girders into space. And all the while, the city is so quiet you can hear the gentle breeze in the trees. That breeze carries a neurotoxin, and what or who put it there (terrorists?) is a question raised periodically as the film unfolds. But the question that really matters is how and whether anybody in the Middle Atlantic states is going to stay alive. The Happening is Shyamalan's best film since The Sixth Sense, partly because he avoids the kind of egregious misjudgment that derailed The Village and Lady in the Water, but mostly because the whole thing has been structured and imagined to keep faith with the point of view of regular, unheroic folks confronted with a mammoth crisis. Focal characters are a Philadelphia high-school science teacher (Mark Wahlberg, excellent), his wife (Zooey Deschanel) and math-teacher colleague (John Leguizamo), and the latter’s little girl (Ashlyn Sanchez). Instinct says get out of the cities and move west; most of the film takes place in the delicately picturesque Pennsylvania countryside, with menace hovering somewhere in the haze. There are no special effects (apart from a wind machine and some breakaway glass), but the movie manages to be deeply unsettling in the matter-of-factness of its storytelling. Especially effective is its feel for what we might call the surrealism of banality. One warning sign that someone has been infected by the neurotoxin is irrational or erratic speech and behavior, yet Shyamalan has a genius for dialogue that sounds normal and everyday as it's spoken, yet flies apart grenade-like a second later as its logic (or illogic) sinks in. Then there's Deschanel's eye-rolling dodginess about the messages some guy has been leaving on her cellphone. Or the fellow (Frank Collis) who addresses his greenhouse plants as though they were his children--has a stray toxic zephyr wafted his way, or is this just his idea of normal? --Richard T. Jameson
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The Visitor (2008)
dir. Tom McCarthy
Richard Jenkins is the MAN. That is all.
Product Decsription:
A deeply moving drama built around longtime character actor Richard Jenkins, The Visitor is a simmering drama about a college professor and recent widower, Walter Vale (Jenkins), who discovers a pair of homeless, illegal aliens living in his New York apartment. After the mix-up is resolved, Vale invites the couple--a young, Syrian musician named Tarek (Haaz Sleiman) and his Senegalese girlfriend (Danai Gurira--to stay with him. An unlikely friendship develops between the retiring, quiet Vale and the vital Tarek, and the former begins to loosen up and respond to Tarek’s drumming lessons as if something in him waiting to be liberated has finally arrived. All goes well until Tarek is hauled in by immigration authorities and threatened with deportation. His mother, Mouna (Hiam Abbass), turns up and stays with Vale, sparking a renewed if subdued interest in courtship. But the wheels of injustice in immigration crush all manner of hopes in post-9/11 America. Vale soon realizes his unexpected capacity for anger over Tarek’s plight, and the positive changes to his personal life that emerged from a deep involvement with his friend and Mouna, might be the only legacy he takes from this experience. Writer-director Thomas McCarthy has created a wonderfully measured story about change and renewal, and put it all on the shoulders of Jenkins, a largely unheralded but masterful performer whose time for renown has surely come. --Tom Keogh
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The Simpsons - The Complete Eleventh Season (1999)
dir. n/a
Product Decsription:
The Simpsons is the ultimate (if very unorthodox) nuclear family. Homer, the lovable dufus father, stumbles apathetic ally through his family life and work at the local nuclear power plant. Marge, the overbearing but responsible mother, Bart, the 4th grade underachiever and nemesis to Springfield elementary's principal, Lisa, the brainy and responsible 8 year old, and Maggie, the oft-forgotten baby, round out the family. Based on a series of small cartoon sketches from the Tracy Ullman show, the Simpsons enjoy many wacky exploits in their hometown and beyond. Other characters include an incompetent lawyer, the tyrranical nuclear power plant owner, the too-perfect neighbors (the Flanders) of the Simpsons, and the less than perfect "Klown", Krusty. Colorful characters and situations abound.
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Le Doulos - Criterion Collection (1964)
dir. Jean-Pierre Melville
Can't get enough Melville. I'm surprised there are still films of his that Criterion hasn't got ahold of yet.
Product Decsription:
The backstabbing criminals in the shadowy underworld of Jean-Pierre Melville's Le doulos have only one guiding principle: Lie or die. A stone-faced Jean-Paul Belmondo stars as enigmatic gangster Silien, who may or may not be responsible for squealing on Faugel (Serge Reggiani), just released from the slammer and already involved in what should have been a simple heist. By the end of this brutal, twisty, and multilayered policier, who will be left to trust? Shot and edited with Melville's trademark cool and featuring masterfully stylized dialogue and performances, Le doulos (slang for an informant) is one of the filmmaker's most gripping crime dramas.
DVD Features:
New, restored high-definition digital transfer
Selected-scene audio commentary by film scholar Ginette Vincendeau, author of Jean-Pierre Melville: An American in Paris
Video interviews with directors Volker Schlöndorff and Bertrand Tavernier, who served as assistant director and publicity agent, respectively, on the film
Archival interviews with Melville and actors Jean-Paul Belmondo and Serge Reggiani
Original theatrical trailer
New and improved subtitle translation
PLUS: A new essay by film critic Glenn Kenny
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Le Deuxième Souffle (1966)
dir. Jean-Pierre Melville
Product Decsription:
With his customary restraint and ruthless attention to detail, director Jean-Pierre Melville follows the parallel tracks of French underworld criminal Gu (the inimitable Lino Ventura), escaped from prison and roped into one last robbery, and the suave inspector, Blot (Paul Meurisse), relentlessly seeking him. The implosive Le deuxième soufflé captures the pathos, loneliness, and excitement of a life in the shadows with methodical suspense and harrowing authenticity, and contains one of the most thrilling heist sequences Melville ever shot.
DVD Features:
New, restored high-definition digital transfer
Audio commentary by film scholar Ginette Vincendeau, author of Jean-Pierre Melville: An American in Paris, and film critic Geoff Andrew of the British Film Institute
New video interview with director Bertrand Tavernier, who served as publicity agent on the film
Archival footage featuring interviews with Melville and Lino Ventura
Original theatrical trailer
New and improved subtitle translation
PLUS: A new essay by film critic Adrian Danks
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Touch Of Evil (50th Anniversary Edition) (1958)
dir. Orson Welles
Product Decsription:
Considered by many to be the greatest B movie ever made, the original-release version of Orson Welles's film noir masterpiece Touch of Evil was, ironically, never intended as a B movie at all--it merely suffered that fate after it was taken away from writer-director Welles, then reedited and released in 1958 as the second half of a double feature. Time and critical acclaim would eventually elevate the film to classic status (and Welles's original vision was meticulously followed for the film's 1998 restoration), but for four decades this original version stood as a testament to Welles's directorial genius. From its astonishing, miraculously choreographed opening shot (lasting over three minutes) to Marlene Dietrich's classic final line of dialogue, this sordid tale of murder and police corruption is like a valentine for the cinematic medium, with Welles as its love-struck suitor. As the corpulent cop who may be involved in a border-town murder, Welles faces opposition from a narcotics officer (Charlton Heston) whose wife (Janet Leigh) is abducted and held as the pawn in a struggle between Heston's quest for truth and Welles's control of carefully hidden secrets. The twisting plot is wildly entertaining (even though it's harder to follow in this original version), but even greater pleasure is found in the pulpy dialogue and the sheer exuberance of the dazzling directorial style. --Jeff Shannon
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Paranoid Park (2007)
dir. Gus Van Sant
Product Decsription:
It's hard to believe that a middle-aged filmmaker can fully evoke the chaotic, anxious world of a troubled teenager, but that's what Gus Van Sant has done with Paranoid Park. Alex (newcomer Gabe Nevins), a teenaged boy whose parents are going through a difficult divorce, is drawn to the rough community that's built up around the titular skateboarding park in Portland, Ore. One night, when an older boy is showing him how to hop a freight train, Alex accidentally kills a security guard. The movie captures the before and after by looping back and forth in time, focusing far more closely on Alex's state of mind than the investigation that threatens to close around him. Filmgoers leery of the drawn-out, atmospheric sequences of Van Sant's recent films (like Gerry and Last Days) need not fear; though Paranoid Park favors mood over plot, it successfully balances character, mood, and story, resulting in considerable dramatic tension, similar to Van Sant's meditation on the Columbine shootings, Elephant. This is not a thriller; Paranoid Park pays as much attention to Alex's relationship with his girlfriend Jennifer (Taylor Momsen, Gossip Girl) as to the killing. The result is a vivid, compelling portrait of adolescence, in all its messiness and confusion. This may be Van Sant's best film since his early masterpieces, Drugstore Cowboy and My Own Private Idaho. --Bret Fetzer
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Vertigo (Universal Legacy Series) (1958)
dir. Alfred Hitchcock
These Hitchcock movies have been released on DVD about a bazillion times a piece, but they've never looked better than on these Universal Legacy Series DVDs. Veritgo is my favorite of all Hitchcock movies, but he's made so many classics that it's almost impossible to pick a favorite (although it usually seems to be between Vertigo and Rear Window).
Product Decsription:
Although it wasn't a box-office success when originally released in 1958, Vertigo has since taken its deserved place as Alfred Hitchcock's greatest, most spellbinding, most deeply personal achievement. In fact, it consistently ranks among the top 10 movies ever made in the once-a-decade Sight & Sound international critics poll, placing at number 4 in the most recent survey. (Universal Pictures' spectacularly gorgeous 1996 restoration and rerelease of this 1958 Paramount production was a tremendous success with the public, too.) James Stewart plays a retired police detective who is hired by an old friend to follow his wife (a superb Kim Novak, in what becomes a double role), whom he suspects of being possessed by the spirit of a dead madwoman. The detective and the disturbed woman fall ("fall" is indeed the operative word) in love and...well, to give away any more of the story would be criminal. Shot around San Francisco (the Golden Gate Bridge and the Palace of the Legion of Honor are significant locations) and elsewhere in Northern California (the redwoods, Mission San Juan Batista) in rapturous Technicolor, Vertigo is as lovely as it is haunting. --Jim Emerson
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Rear Window (Universal Legacy Series) (1954)
dir. Alfred Hitchcock
Product Decsription:
Like the Greenwich Village courtyard view from its titular portal, Alfred Hitchcock's classic Rear Window is both confined and multileveled: both its story and visual perspective are dictated by its protagonist's imprisonment in his apartment, convalescing in a wheelchair, from which both he and the audience observe the lives of his neighbors. Cheerful voyeurism, as well as the behavior glimpsed among the various tenants, affords a droll comic atmosphere that gradually darkens when he sees clues to what may be a murder.
Photographer L.B. "Jeff" Jeffries (James Stewart) is, in fact, a voyeur by trade, a professional photographer sidelined by an accident while on assignment. His immersion in the human drama (and comedy) visible from his window is a by-product of boredom, underlined by the disapproval of his girlfriend, Lisa (Grace Kelly), and a wisecracking visiting nurse (Thelma Ritter). Yet when the invalid wife of Lars Thorwald (Raymond Burr) disappears, Jeff enlists the two women to help him to determine whether she's really left town, as Thorwald insists, or been murdered.
Hitchcock scholar Donald Spoto convincingly argues that the crime at the center of this mystery is the MacGuffin--a mere pretext--in a film that's more interested in the implications of Jeff's sentinel perspective. We actually learn more about the lives of the other neighbors (given generic names by Jeff, even as he's drawn into their lives) he, and we, watch undetected than we do the putative murderer and his victim. Jeff's evident fear of intimacy and commitment with the elegant, adoring Lisa provides the other vital thread to the script, one woven not only into the couple's own relationship, but reflected and even commented upon through the various neighbors' lives.
At minimum, Hitchcock's skill at making us accomplices to Jeff's spying, coupled with an ingenious escalation of suspense as the teasingly vague evidence coalesces into ominous proof, deliver a superb thriller spiked with droll humor, right up to its nail-biting, nightmarish climax. At deeper levels, however, Rear Window plumbs issues of moral responsibility and emotional honesty, while offering further proof (were any needed) of the director's brilliance as a visual storyteller. --Sam Sutherland
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Psycho (Special Edition) (Universal Legacy Series) (1960)
dir. Alfred Hitchcock
Product Decsription:
At last--a great American movie available on video for the first time in its original aspect ratio. For all the slasher pictures that have ripped off Psycho (and particularly its classic set piece, the "shower scene"), nothing has ever matched the impact of the real thing. More than just a first-rate shocker full of thrills and suspense, Psycho is also an engrossing character study in which director Alfred Hitchcock skillfully seduces you into identifying with the main characters--then pulls the rug (or the bathmat) out from under you. Anthony Perkins is unforgettable as Norman Bates, the mama's boy proprietor of the Bates Motel; and so is Janet Leigh as Marion Crane, who makes an impulsive decision and becomes a fugitive from the law, hiding out at Norman's roadside inn for one fateful night. Psycho gets the masterpiece treatment it deserves on DVD, with extras including newsreel footage surrounding the making and release of the movie; an archive of production stills; the special trailer in which Hitchcock (acting as one of the original Universal Studio tour guides) himself leads viewers around the Bates place; credit designer Saul Bass's original "shower scene" story boards; posters and advertising materials for the movie's William Castle-like publicity campaign (No One Will Be Seated After the Feature Begins!); and a 90-minute documentary on the making of the film! What more could any movie fan possibly want? --Jim Emerson
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Young Frankenstein (1974)
dir. Mel Brooks
One of the funniest movies ever. If you didn't already know that, then I'm not really sure why you're even looking at this whole thing to begin with.
Product Decsription:
If you were to argue that Mel Brooks's Young Frankenstein ranks among the top-ten funniest movies of all time, nobody could reasonably dispute the claim. Spoofing classic horror in the way that Brooks's previous film Blazing Saddles sent up classic Westerns, the movie is both a loving tribute and a raucous, irreverent parody of Universal's classic horror films Frankenstein (1931) and Bride of Frankenstein (1935). Filming in glorious black and white, Brooks re-created the Frankenstein laboratory using the same equipment from the original Frankenstein (courtesy of designer Kenneth Strickfaden), and this loving attention to physical and stylistic detail creates a solid foundation for nonstop comedy. The story, of course, involves Frederick Frankenstein (Gene Wilder) and his effort to resume experiments in re-animation pioneered by his late father. (He's got some help, since dad left behind a book titled How I Did It.) Assisting him is the hapless hunchback Igor (Marty Feldman) and the buxom but none-too-bright maiden Inga (Teri Garr), and when Frankenstein succeeds in creating his monster (Peter Boyle), the stage is set for an outrageous revision of the Frankenstein legend. With comedy highlights too numerous to mention, Brooks guides his brilliant cast (also including Cloris Leachman, Madeline Kahn, Kenneth Mars, and Gene Hackman in a classic cameo role) through scene after scene of inspired hilarity. Indeed, Young Frankenstein is a charmed film, nothing less than a comedy classic, representing the finest work from everyone involved. Not one joke has lost its payoff, and none of the countless gags have lost their zany appeal. From a career that includes some of the best comedies ever made, this is the film for which Mel Brooks will be most fondly remembered. Befitting a classic, the Special Edition DVD includes audio commentary by Mel Brooks, a "making of" documentary, interviews with the cast, hilarious bloopers and outtakes, and the original theatrical trailers. No video library should be without a copy of Young Frankenstein. And just remember--that's Fronkensteen. --Jeff Shannon
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Ray Harryhausen Collection (20 Million Miles to Earth, Earth vs. Flying Saucers, It Came from Beneath the Sea, 7th Voyage of Sinbad)
Product Decsription:
20 Million Miles to Earth
When an American spaceship crash-lands off the coast of Sicily, a rescue team discovers that the crew has brought back a gelatinous mass that soon hatches and evolves into a strange bi-ped creature which increases in size rapidly. Soon 20-feet tall, the creature rampages through Rome before being destroyed as it seeks refuge in the Colosseum.
The 7th Voyage of Sinbad
It's an incredible cinematic adventure as the legendary Sinbad sets off on a dangerous journey to the mysterious Island of Colossus. His quest is to break the spell cast over his beloved princess by a diabolical magician. But before he can save her, Sinbad must battle an awesome collection of mythical monsters, the man-eating Cyclops, a saber-wielding skeleton, a ferocious two-headed bird called the Roc and a fire-breathing dragon. Starring Kerwin Mathews, Kathryn Grant, Torin Thatcher and highlighted by the stunning visual effects mastery of Ray Harryhausen. Now in a pristine, hi-definition transfer that captures the magic of Harryhausen's "eye-popping" special effects in dazzling Technicolor.
It Came from Beneath the Sea
A giant stop-motion-animated octopus (with six arms) attacks San Francisco. A pair of scientists and a nuclear sub captain try to stop it before it tears down the Golden Gate Bridge.
Earth vs. the Flying Saucers While driving through the desert with his wife Carol Marvin to a military base to send the eleventh rocket to the orbit of Earth for helping the exploration of the outer space in the Operation Sky Hook, Dr. Russell A. Marvin and Carol see a flying saucer and accidentally records a message in their tape recorder. Once in the base, Dr. Russell is informed by his father-in-law and general that the ten first satellites had mysteriously felt on Earth. When Dr. Russell decodes the message, he encounters the aliens that ask him to schedule a meeting with the leaders of Earth in Washington in 56 days with the intention to invade Earth without panicking the population. Dr. Russell develops an anti-magnetic weapon that becomes that last hope of human race against the hostile aliens.
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Watership Down (Deluxe Edition) (1978)
dir. Martin Rosen
Product Decsription:
Much like Richard Adams's wonderful novel, this animated tale of wandering rabbits is not meant for small children. It is, however, rich storytelling, populated with very real individuals inhabiting a very real world. The animation is problematic, sometimes appearing out of proportion or just subpar; but it seems to stem from an attempt at realism, something distinguishing the film's characters from previous, cutesy, animated animals. A band of rabbits illegally leave their warren after a prophecy of doom from a runt named Fiver (Richard Briers). In search of a place safe from humans and predators, they face all kinds of dangers, including a warren that has made a sick bargain with humankind, and a warren that is basically a fascist state. Allegories aside, Down is engaging and satisfying, and pulls off the same amazing trick that the novel did--you'll forget that this is a story about rabbits. --Keith Simanton
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DVD Picks for October 14th, 2008
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Alfred Hitchcock Premiere Collection
MOVIES INCLUDE:
Lifeboat (1944)
Spellbound (1945)
Notorious (1946)
The Paradine Case (1947)
Sabotage (1936)
Young and Innocent (1937)
Rebecca (1940)
The Lodger (1927)
This set kicks ass, and is a must-buy for any serious Hitchcock fan. Some of these have been (and still are) available, some have been out of print for a while. Now they're all in one collection with lots of extra shit, and I'm looking forward to tearing into it.
Product Decsription:
With hours of all-new special features including audio commentaries, featurettes, screen tests, still galleries, vintage radio interviews, an AFI Tribute to Hitchcock and more, the DVD collection also includes a 32-page notebook with trivia, and production notes. Rebecca, Spellbound and Notorious will also be available as single discs. The following is the press release for the set:
Lifeboat (1944)
After their ship is sunk in the Atlantic by Germans, eight people are stranded in a lifeboat, among them a glamorous journalist , a tough seaman, a nurse and an injured sailor. Their problems are further compounded when they pick up a ninth passenger - the German captain from the U-boat that torpedoed them. With its powerful interplay of suspense and emotion, this legendary classic is a microcosm of humanity, revealing the subtleties of man's strengths and frailties under extraordinary duress. Nominated for three Academy Awards, Alfred Hitchcock's World War II drama, is a remarkable story of human survival.
BONUS FEATURES:
Commentary by Film Professor Drew Casper
The Making of Lifeboat
Still Gallery
Young and Innocent (1937)
In this witty, suspense thriller a police chief's daughter helps a fugitive accused of murder prove his innocence.
BONUS FEATURES:
Commentary with film historians Stephen Rebello & Bill Krohn
Isolated Music and Effects Track
Audio Interview: Peter Bogdanovich Interviews Hitchcock
Audio Interview: Francois Truffaut Interviews Hitchcock
Restoration Comparision
The Lodger (1927)
One of the best silent films still in existence has no extra features? I know it was previously only available in the public domain, so believe me, I'm thankful, but nothing?
Story synopsis: A serial killer is seeking blonde girls as his victims in London. A strange lodger moves into a rented room. The man goes out on foggy nights, keeps a photo of an unidentified blonde girl in his room, and flirts with the landlady's daughter, Daisy, who just happens to be blonde. Daisy's boyfriend is a police detective, and jealousy arouses his suspicion more than it might normally be stirred.
Notorious (1946)
Daughter of an accused World War II traitor, Alicia Huberman (Ingrid Bergman) is enlisted to entrap one of her father's colleagues in Brazil, Alexander Sebastian (Claude Rains). Her American contact, secret agent T.R. Devlin (Cary Grant) is openly contemptuous of Alicia and instructs her to wed Sebastian. It is only after she is wed that Devlin lets himself admit that he's fallen in love with her.
BONUS FEATURES:
Commentary with film historian Rick Jewell
Commentary with film historian Drew Casper
Isolated Music and Effects Track
The Ultimate Romance: The Making of Notorious Featurette
Alfred Hitchcock: The Ultimate Spymaster Featurette
AFI Tribute to Hitchcock
1948 Radio Play Starring Joseph Cotton and Ingrid Bergman
Audio Interview: Peter Bogdanovich Interviews Hitchcock
Audio Interview: Francois Truffaut Interviews Hitchcock
Restoration Comparision
Still Gallery
PLUS: A 4-Page Booklet
Rebecca (1940)
A young woman marries a fascinating older widower only to discover that she must live in the shadows of his first wife, Rebecca, who died mysteriously several years before.
BONUS FEATURES:
Commentary by film historian/author Richard Schickel
Screen tests
Making of Rebecca Featurette
The Gothic World of Daphne Du Maurier Featurette
Original 1938 Radio Play Starring Orson Welles
1941 Radio Play Presented by Cecil B. DeMille
1950 Radio Play with Vivien Leigh and Laurence Olivier
Audio Interview: Peter Bogdanovich Interviews Hitchcock
Audio Interview: François Truffaut Interviews Hitchcock
PLUS: A Four-page booklet
Sabotoge (1936)
A woman learns that her movie theater manager husband is actually a foreign agent when a device he has made kills her brother. Based on Joseph Conrad's novel, The Secret Agent.
BONUS FEATURES:
Commentary with film historian Leonard Leff
Audio Interview: Peter Bogdanovich Interviews Hitchcock
Restoration Comparision
Spellbound (1945)
When John Ballantine (Gregory Peck), the new director of a mental institution arrives on the job, the staff is concerned. He seems too young for the position and his answers to their questions are vague and detached. Dr. Peterson (Ingrid Bergman), while knowing he is an impostor with emotional issues, nevertheless falls in love with him. Turning to her mentor, Dr. Alex Brulov (Michael Checkhov) and the use of psychoanalysis she tries to get to the root of Ballantine's emotional problems.
BONUS FEATURES:
Commentary with film historians Thomas Schatz & Charles Ramirez Berg
Guilt by Association: Psychoanalyzing Spellbound Featurette
A Cinderella Story: Rhonda Fleming Featurette
Dreaming with Scissors: Hitchcock, Surrealism and Salvador Dali Featurette
1948 Radio Play Directed by Alfred Hitchcock
Audio Interview: Peter Bogdanovich Interviews Hitchcock
Audio Interview: Film Historian Rudy Belhemer Interviews Composer
Still Gallery
PLUS: A Four-page booklet
The Paradine Case (1947)
Beautiful Anna Paradine (Alida Valli) is accused of poisoning her older wealthy husband. Her lawyer, the happily married Anthony Keane (Gregory Peck) takes the case but also lets his heart rule his head when he falls hard for his client.
BONUS FEATURES
Commentary with film historians Stephen Rebello & Bill Krohn
Isolated Music and Effects Track
1949 Radio Play Starring Joseph Cotton
Audio Interview: Peter Bogdanovich Interviews Hitchcock
Restoration Comparision
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4 Months, 3 Weeks and 2 Days (2007)
dir. Cristian Mungiu
I liked this movie, but, I don't know...it just didn't grab me. It looked amazing, and the acting was great, but it was a little slow and the plot generally couldn't hold my attention. More power to you if you thought it deserved the Palme D'Or, but I didn't.
Product Decsription:
There was a loud outcry when Romania's 4 Months, 3 Weeks and 2 Days failed to garner a 2008 Academy Award nomination for Best Foreign Film, and it could certainly be argued that this extraordinary movie was unfairly overlooked. At the very least, had it been nominated, it would have offered a stark contrast to Best Picture contender Juno. Whereas the latter is a funny, touching tale of a teenage girl who decides to find more suitable parents for her soon-to-be-born child, 4 Months is a decidedly bleak look at a time and place when one of the two alternatives to adoption (i.e., keeping the child) is beyond consideration and the other is an illegal, highly dangerous last resort. It takes a while for the viewer to realize that abortion is the subject of director Cristian Mungiu's film; for the first 40 minutes or so, all we know is that Otilia (Anamaria Marinca) and Gabita (Laura Vasiliu), college roommates in a country still controlled by the Ceausescu dictatorship, are up to something they'd prefer to keep secret. Gabita, it develops, is pregnant. She is also an innocent, scared screw-up who's unable to handle any of the necessary details involved in solving her problem, which obliges the far more capable Otilia to take care of everything from booking the hotel and meeting the abortionist to buying black market cigarettes for the pair. What follows is anything but cute, clever, or romantic. Mr. Bebe (Vlad Ivanov), the abortionist, is a straightforward but frightening character who demands more than money for his services. Meanwhile, Adi, Otilia's boyfriend, is a decent but essentially clueless fellow who insists that she attend his mother's birthday party on the very day that the two girls have checked into the hotel where Gabita's procedure takes place; the two scenes in which we meet Bebe and Adi's parents, reveal Mongiu's mastery of his medium and are at once intense, discomfiting, and completely riveting. And if Oscar voters missed the boat, many other didn't: among numerous other plaudits for the film was the '07 Palme d'Or at Cannes. --Sam Graham
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Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull (Two-Disc Special Edition) (2008)
dir. Steven Spielberg
Ugh. I GUESS I'll mention this. It's very sad to me that 1) I won't buy this and 2) I don't give a fuck. I know that Spielberg still has great movies left in him, but George Lucas is just an old bag of shit as far as I'm concerned.
Product Decsription:
Nearly 20 years after riding his last Crusade, Harrison Ford makes a welcome return as archaeologist/relic hunter Indiana Jones in Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull, an action-packed fourth installment that's, in a nutshell, less memorable than the first three but great nostalgia for fans of the series. Producer George Lucas and screenwriter David Koepp (War of the Worlds) set the film during the cold war, as the Soviets--replacing Nazis as Indy's villains of choice and led by a sword-wielding Cate Blanchett with black bob and sunglasses--are in pursuit of a crystal skull, which has mystical powers related to a city of gold. After escaping from them in a spectacular opening action sequence, Indy is coerced to head to Peru at the behest of a young greaser (Shia LaBeouf) whose friend--and Indy's colleague--Professor Oxley (John Hurt) has been captured for his knowledge of the skull's whereabouts. Whatever secrets the skull holds are tertiary; its reveal is the weakest part of the movie, as the CGI effects that inevitably accompany it feel jarring next to the boulder-rolling world of Indy audiences knew and loved. There's plenty of comedy, delightful stunts--ants play a deadly role here--and the return of Raiders love interest Karen Allen as Marion Ravenwood, once shrill but now softened, giving her ex-love bemused glances and eye-rolls as he huffs his way to save the day. Which brings us to Ford: bullwhip still in hand, he's a little creakier, a lot grayer, but still twice the action hero of anyone in film today. With all the anticipation and hype leading up to the film's release, perhaps no reunion is sweeter than that of Ford with the role that fits him as snugly as that fedora hat. --Ellen A. Kim
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The Ultimate Matrix Collection
dir. Andy Wachowski, Larry Wachowski
This is pretty much the same set that came out a few years ago, except on Blu-ray. If it were a little cheaper, I might buy it, but I can't justify paying $80-90 for one great movie and two pieces of shit.
Product Decsription:
The definitive seven-disc Blu-ray set, The Ultimate Matrix Collection features all three films in the trilogy together for the first time ever with a newly remastered picture and sound for The Matrix. Also included is the companion piece The Matrix Revisited and the best-selling The Animatrix, plus two entirely new Blu-ray discs packed solid with brand-new supplemental materials that encompass every aspect of the Matrix universe, including two new audio commentaries on each film, Enter the Matrix video game footage, 106 deep-delving featurettes/documentaries and much more!
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Mongol: The Rise of Genghis Khan (2007)
dir. Sergei Bodrov
Looking forward to watching this....the reviews are all over the map, but it seems like a movie I'd enjoy.
Product Decsription:
Subtitled "The Untold Story of the Rise of Genghis Khan," director Sergei Bodrov's sweeping MONGOL focuses on battles physical and emotional as it follows the early ascent of the "Great King" in the 12th and 13th centuries. Born Temudgin to a kingly father, the film introduces the nine-year-old Temudgin (Odnyam Odsuren) making his first fateful decision: going against his father's wishes and choosing the lesser-born Borte as his future wife. When his father is poisoned, Temudgin flees from his father's rivals. Temudgin is saved by a young prince, Jamukha, and the two become blood brothers. That bond of friendship is tested, though, when the grown Temudgin (Tadanobu Asano) wages war--against the Mongol code--to win back the captive Borte. As Temudgin asserts his own power, he must also face Jamukha in all-out battle if he is to secure the safety of his family and his own kingly destiny. Gorgeously shot on location in Kazakhstan and Inner Mongolia, MONGOL represents the first in a proposed trilogy of films that will chronicle the full impact of Genghis Khan's reign. As ambitious in scope as its subject was in life, MONGOL--a 2008 Academy Award nominee for Best Foreign Language Film--offers a unique look at the influence of love and loyalty to the life and times of one of history's most enigmatic rulers.
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The New World - The Extended Cut (2006)
dir. Terrence Malick
The theatrical cut was already a little long in my opinion, but sometimes extended cuts and director's cuts can make the pacing a little quicker depending on what goes where, and can generally make the movie better. It worked wonders for Kingdom of Heaven. I'm kinda baffled as to why they wouldn't release this on Blu-ray. Malick's films are just screaming to be watched in high-def.
Product Decsription:
The legend of Pocahontas and John Smith receives a luminous and essential retelling by maverick filmmaker Terrence Malick. The facts of Virginia's first white settlers, circa 1607, have been told for eons and fortified by Disney's animated films: explorer Smith (Colin Farrell) and the Native American princess (newcomer Q'orianka Kilcher) bond when the two cultures meet, a flashpoint of curiosity and war lapping interchangeably at the shores of the new continent. Malick, who took a twenty year break between his second and third films (Days of Heaven and The Thin Red Line), is a master of film poetry; the film washes over you, with minimal dialogue (you see characters speak on camera for less than a quarter of the film). The rest of the words are a stream-of-consciousness narration--a technique Malick has used before but never to such degree, creating a movie you feel more than watch. The film's beauty (shot in Virginia by Emmanuel Lubezki) and production design (by Jack Fisk) seems very organic, and in fact, organic is a great label for the movie as a whole, from the dreadful conditions of early Jamestown (it makes you wonder why Englishman would want to live there) to the luminescent love story. Malick is blessed with a cast that includes Wes Studi, August Schellenberg, Christopher Plummer, and Christian Bale (who, curiously, was also in the Disney production). Fourteen-year-old Kilcher, the soul of the film, is an amazing find, and Farrell, so often tagged as the next big thing, delivers his first exceptional performance since his stunning debut in Tigerland. James Horner provides a fine score, but is overshadowed by a Mozart concerto and a recurring prelude from Wagner's Das Rheingold, a scrumptious weaving of horns fit to fuel the gentle intoxication of this film. Note: the film was initially 150 minutes, and then trimmed to 135 by Malick before the regular theatrical run. It was also the first film shot in 65mm since Kenneth Branagh's Hamlet. --Doug Thomas
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Standard Operating Procedure (2007)
dir. Errol Morris
Product Decsription:
It's impossible to talk about Standard Operating Procedure without referencing Taxi to the Dark Side. Fortunately, both documentaries are vital to any discussion about US military interrogation techniques. While Alex Gibney's Oscar winner uses the death of an Iraqi taxi driver as a framing device, director Errol Morris and writer Philip Gourevitch (We Wish to Inform You That Tomorrow We Will Be Killed with Our Families) examine the issue through visual evidence (they also collaborated on a book of the same name). While Gibney concentrates on Bhagram, Morris focuses on Abu Ghraib, but his self-described "non-fiction horror film," which features a dramatic Danny Elfman score and slow-motion reenactments, runs along two tracks. First, he aims to find out what happened at the infamous institution. Along with the photographs and video footage, he speaks to the guards and the brigadier general who oversaw their operations, including former army specialist Lynndie England, who has all the charm of Aileen Wuornos (so memorably immortalized in Monster). As in his Thin Blue Line, accounts contradict other accounts. In Morris's world, absolute truth doesn't exist; it's up to viewers to decide which subjects seem most reliable. This leads to his parallel goal, which is to question the reliability of imagery. Photography was prohibited at Abu Ghraib, so he identifies the responsible parties, the reasoning behind their rule-breaking, and the stories behind the most incendiary pictures. If less emotionally engaging than Gibney's feature, Standard Operating Procedure is just as essential--and every bit as disturbing. --Kathleen C. Fennessy
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Chaplin (15th Anniversary Edition) (1993)
dir. Richard Attenborough
Even though he's done some great work over the years, especially recently, I think this is still probably Robert Downey Jr.'s best performance to date. The real footage of Chaplin showing up at the Oscar tribute still chokes me up a little (although bringing out his hat and cane was lame).
Product Decsription:
Sir Richard Attenborough's biographical film of the life and times of Charles Chaplin is a little thin as a narrative, but it is so charmingly creative and ultimately moving, it's hard to care about any deficits. Robert Downey Jr. does an excellent job re-creating Chaplin's graceful slapstick and getting inside the silent-film superstar's head over many years of triumph, defeat, scandal, official persecution, exile, and inner peace. A huge cast portray the allies, friends, lovers, and enemies in Chaplin's life, including Moira Kelly as his final, longtime wife, Oona, Kevin Kline as Douglas Fairbanks, Geraldine Chaplin as Charlie's mother, and James Woods as a prosecutor working hard to nail Chaplin for anti-American sentiments. Attenborough declines to tell the story in a flat, linear way, employing such clever techniques as detailing one chapter in Chaplin's life as a silent comedy. The climactic scene set at an Oscar tribute for Chaplin will get the tears flowing. --Tom Keogh
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War, Inc. (2008)
dir. Joshua Seftel
Cusack is always solid, but this movie hasn't really interested me up to this point.
Product Decsription:
A wobbly mix of violence and sentiment, War, Inc. takes up where Grosse Pointe Blank left off. A conscience-stricken killer in the previous film, producer/co-writer Cusack now plays an international assassin. In Joshua Seftel's political satire, corporations operate like governments. In the volatile nation of Turaqistan, Cusack's hot sauce-addicted Brand Hauser sets his sights on Omar Sharif--the oil baron, not the actor (it's never clear why this is meant to be funny). As a cover, Hauser passes as the producer for an economic trade show with fellow operative Marsha (Joan Cusack) acting as his assistant. Trained by Southern smoothie Walken (Ben Kingsley) in his CIA days (depicted though flashbacks), Hauser now takes orders from an oily CEO (Grosse Pointe co-star Dan Aykroyd). Offing Sharif, however, turns out to be harder than expected. Hauser's obstacles include left-wing journalist Natalie Hegalhuzen (Marisa Tomei) and foul-mouthed pop tart Yonica Babyyeah (Hilary Duff, erasing innocent images of Lizzy McGuire). Cusack and his crew come up with a few clever ideas, but too many crass gags blunt their thesis about military contractors run amok. Pitched somewhere between Stanley Kubrick’s Dr. Strangelove and Mike Judge’s Idiocracy, War, Inc. registers as more of a miss than a hit. On the plus side, Cusack and Tomei have a snappy rapport; it's the more over-the-top performers who look out of place, especially Ms. Cusack and Kingsley, though the latter's deft turn as a boozy hit man in the overlooked You Kill Me almost makes up for this misfire. --Kathleen C. Fennessy
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Young People Fucking (2007)
dir. Martin Gero
Product Decsription:
This frank--and frankly hilarious--Canadian indie certainly lives up to its risqu‚ title, but there's more going on in than just sex in this debut from writer/director Martin Gero. YPF follows one night in the lives of four couples and one threesome. Though most of the actors are unknown south of the Canadian border, each of them gives a heartfelt, genuine performance that should lead to more work in the future.
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Revenge of a Kabuki Actor (1963)
dir. Kon Ichikawa
Product Decsription:
While performing in a touring kabuki troop, leading female impersonator Yukinojo comes across the three men who drove his parents to suicide twenty years earlier, and plans his revenge on them.
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Holiday Inn (1942)
dir. Mark Sandrich
Sure you've all heard the best selling single ever, "White Christmas", but have you seen the movie where it came from? It's pretty great in its own right, and is definitely deserving of a 2-disc + soundtrack edition DVD.
Product Decsription:
In 1942, Fred Astaire and Bing Crosby teamed up at Der Bingle's Paramount Pictures for Holiday Inn, a black-and-white musical that proves more entertaining than Crosby's color semi-remake White Christmas in 1954. Astaire and Crosby play partner/rival song-and-dance men who compete for the hand of their performing partner, played by Virginia Dale. After Crosby loses, he moves to the Connecticut countryside where he creates a resort that is only open on holidays and puts on the shows with the help of Marjorie Reynolds. Dumped by Dale, Astaire makes a drunken arrival at the inn on New Year's Eve and dances with Reynolds. He decides she'll be his new partner, but doesn't remember what she looks like, setting off a frenzied search at every subsequent show while the once-bitten Crosby does his best to steer him off track. The theme gives Irving Berlin an excuse to craft or recycle a number of holiday-themed songs, such as (in the former category) "Washington's Birthday" or (in the latter) "Easter Parade." The most famous of the new material, of course, is "White Christmas," which became one of the bestselling songs of all time and the title song of Crosby's 1954 film. Astaire and Crosby also team up for "I'll Capture Her Heart," which playfully contrasts the stars' specialties, and Astaire's "It's So Easy to Dance with You" became one of the signature songs of his post-Ginger Rogers career. Astaire and Crosby teamed up again for Blue Skies in 1946. --David Horiuchi
DVD Features:
Disc 1: Original Black & White Version
- A Couple of Song and Dance Men: An intimate retrospective of Bing Crosby and Fred Astaire featuring an interview with Ava Astaire-MacKenzie
- All Singing-All Dancing: Experience the making of the unforgettable song and dance numbers of Holiday Inn
- Audio Commentary: Feature-length audio commentary with film historian Ken Barnes with archive audio comments by Bing Crosby, Fred Astaire and John Scott Trotter
- Original Theatrical Trailer
Disc 2: New Color Version
- Coloring a Classic: Learn how Holiday Inn was color-designed using amazing new technology that transformed the black and white classic to color with the help of Jan Mucklestone, personal sketch artist of the famed costume designer Edith Head
Disc 3: Music Soundtrack CD
- 12 classic Irving Berlin holiday songs from the original soundtrack including Bing Crosby's "White Christmas" and "Happy Holiday"
Track Listing
1. I'll Capture Your Heart (Bing Crosby & Fred Astaire)
2. Lazy (Bing Crosby)
3. You're Easy to Dance With (Fred Astaire)
4. Happy Holiday (Bing Crosby)
5. Let's Start the New Year Off Right (Bing Crosby)
6. Abraham (Bing Crosby)
7. Be Careful, It's My Heart (Bing Crosby)
8. I Can't Tell a Lie (Fred Astaire)
9. Easter Parade (Bing Crosby)
10. Song of Freedom (Bing Crosby)
11. I've Got Plenty to be Thankful For (Bing Crosby)
12. White Christmas (Bing Crosby)
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Icons of Horror: Hammer Films (2-disc)
MOVIES INCLUDE:
The Curse of the Mummy's Tomb (1964)
The Two Faces of Dr. Jekyll (1960)
Scream of Fear (1961)
The Gorgon (1964)
Product Decsription:
Though perhaps not as iconic as their Dracula and Frankenstein pictures, this quartet of fright flicks from England's Hammer Films deliver enough Saturday afternoon creature feature thrills to please devotees of the legendary studio's output and vintage horror fans alike. 1964's The Gorgon will be the title to attract the most immediate attention due to the presence of Hammer's biggest stars, Christopher Lee and Peter Cushing, in its cast, and its most celebrated director, Terence Fisher, behind the camera. It's an atmospheric and offbeat entry in the Hammer canon, with one of its most unusual villains: a snake-haired fiend from Greek mythology who turns men into stone. Cushing and Lee are typically fine (both are on the side of the angels for once), and the picture's sole stumbling block is the lackluster makeup for its monster. Lee is also present in supporting roles in two other films in the collection: Scream of Fear (1961), one of several competent psychological suspense features made by Hammer in the wake of Psycho, with Susan Strasberg as a fragile young woman plagued by terrible visions and a house full of suspicious types; and Fisher's The Two Faces of Dr. Jekyll (1960), a revamp of the Stevenson story with Paul Massie as the dour scientist whose personality experiments unleash a virile but unhinged alter ego. Hardcore Hammer aficionados will be thrilled to discover that the DVD version is uncut and preserves much of the (mildly) salacious material trimmed for its release in America under the title House of Fright. The final film on Icons of Horror is Curse of the Mummy's Tomb, with Hammer exec Michael Carreras (son of company founder James Carreras) behind the camera for a featherweight monster romp that doesn't hold a candle to Terence Fisher's Mummy in 1959. Unlike previous Icons of Horror DVDs, the supplemental features here are slim--just the theatrical trailers for each film--though they do offer their own degree of charm, especially the ballyhoo-heavy tone of Mummy and the oddly elegant and unnerving preview for Scream of Fear, which is centered solely around an image of Strasberg's face. --Paul Gaita
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Ghost House Underground Eight Film Collection
MOVIES INCLUDE:
Dance of the Dead (2008)
No Man's Land: THe Rise of the Reeker (2008)
The Substitute (2007)
Dark Floors (2008)
Trackman (2007)
Room 205 (2007)
Last House in the Woods (2006)
Brotherhood of Blood (2007)
Product Decsription:
Sam Raimi and Rob Tapert, the creative forces behind 30 Days of Night and the Spiderman, The Grudge and Evil Dead franchises, bring you Ghost House Underground – eight premium branded horror movies in one frightening collection. The DVDs included are Dance of the Dead, No Man’s Land: The Rise of the Reeker, The Substitute, Dark Floors, Trackman, Room 205, Last House in the Woods and Brotherhood of Blood. Hand picked by Raimi and Tapert, the most trusted names in horror, Ghost House Underground will bring fans a fresh look at horror from around the world.
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The Edge of Heaven (2007)
dir. Fatih Akin
Product Decsription:
Fatih Akin, the critically-acclaimed director of HEAD-ON, weaves overlapping tales of friendship and sexuality into a powerful narrative of universal love. Six characters are drawn together by circumstances-an old man and a prostitute forging a partnership, a young scholar reconciling his past, two young women falling in love, and a mother putting the shattered pieces of her life back together. Akin's piercing sense of the human condition and contemporary world events charge these hyperlinked stories into a multi-cultural powder keg.
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4 comments:
Cecil you just made my day with that Hitchcock set, I honestly had no idea that was coming out. What fantastic news since I stupidly never purchased Notorious or Spellbound when Criterion first released them. Rebecca for that matter too. But Notorious is my favorite and so I look forward to finally buying it and not feeling like I'm getting a substandard version.
And motherfucking Yukinojo Henge? Ol' An Actor's Revenge type shit? Icing on the motherfucking cake, I been waiting for that a while now.
Edit: this is the same post that I deleted fyi, just changed a word
dude you can just call me Andy it's cool
yeah that Hitchcock set is butter
hehe.. This page about straem heroes online is good too.
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