Electric Shadow

Hi-Def Valkyrie

I saw Valkyrie in clean, crisp digital projection at BNAT last December, and it was one of the highlights of that insane 24 hours of my screening life. It will be a home video discovery for History Channel fiends and people who enjoy action/thrillers. More often than not, when I mention how well-made it is to friends, the reaction is surprised incredulity. The following is an almost exact transcript of a real conversation from a few days ago:

"You mean the Tom Cruise as a Nazi movie?" "He's in the German armed forces, but he isn't a Nazi." "But...weren't they all Nazis?" "No, actually. What were you planning to go see this weekend?" "Night at the Museum 2, I heard Amy Adams' ass looks great in tho--" "Go rent this and catch the other one when someone rents it at Thanksgiving, you'll thank me." The movie is about the very true story of a small group of German officers who conspired to kill Hitler. Led by Col. Claus von Stauffenberg (Cruise), we all know what the outcome was. The great success of the movie is its vivid, authentic reproduction of how those events played out. The rest of the cast is fantastic, including Bill Nighy, Tom Wilkinson, Christian Berkel (who steals the show), Terrence Stamp, Eddie Izzard, Kevin McNally, Thomas Kretschmann, and Thor helmer Ken Branagh among many others. It's the kind of ensemble you'd kill for. The thing many have nitpicked on in that respect is the variety of accents all the characters have. I wish my US Blu-ray of Valkyrie had a German dub track in addition to the Spanish and French ones. European dubs are always great. Thing is, I really don't mind everyone using their native accents in the standard English language track. It's more consistent than the scads of movies where one lousy accent sticks out and ruins a movie (as it almost did Man Hunt). Are these characters playing Germans who speak English to each other? No. Would it be more perfect to have everyone speaking perfect German? Yes, but there's no way it'd happen for a variety of reasons in a major studio release. It'd hit 12 screens and be nominated for Best Foreign Language Film. More importantly, radically fewer people in the US and UK wold see the movie. Beyond the awards season-standard "the true story that must be seen!" trumpeting, it is very much worth one's time. The story has been done previously, nearly 20 years ago in The Plot to Kill Hitler, a TV movie released on DVD this past January, but that adaptation pales in comparison to Valkyrie. The included supplements are also much more comprehensive than I'm used to on new releases. I haven't listened to all of the two Feature Commentaries yet, but I sampled the first bit of both. The first features Bryan Singer, Tom Cruise, and Chris McQuarrie and the second is McQuarrie and co-writer Nathan Alexander. Similar to the tracks on The Usual Suspects, there's a lot of information to be digested and they both start off lively enough. The featurettes are better than EPK fluff, with The Journey to Valkyrie [HD 15:56] coming the closest to being self-congratulatory but still remaining informative. They could have glued it and the other three pieces of its type together with a Play All, since they all are sourced form the same set of interviews. The African Front Sequence [HD 7:01] covers the bang that opens the movie; Taking to the Air [HD 7:32] covers the real vintage aircraft they used; and Recreating Berlin [HD 6:51] is more about the culture shock of putting up Nazi flags in present-day Berlin than production design. More interesting than all of those for me was The Road to Resistance: A Visual Guide, in which Col. von Stauffenberg's grandson gives a guided tour of significant real-life locations. History Channel documentary The Valkyrie Legacy [HD 1:54:12] is nearly the running time of the movie, and is worth every minute. I'm hot and cold when it comes to artist series Q&A sessions, as they're either great due to talent driving them or terrible due to a lousy moderator. The Reel Pieces with Tom Cruise & Bryan Singer at the 92nd Street Y [SD 38:57] Q&A thankfully stays interesting and stands out from the other extras so as to not be repetitive. The second disc is a Digital Copy, which is nice, but I don't imagine myself wanting to queue it up on a regular basis. All the above features are on the Blu-ray. If you're buying this, make sure you know there are feature differences between Blu and DVD. The 2-disc DVD release is just the Commentaries, The Journey to Valkyrie, The Valkyrie Legacy, and the Digital Copy. The single disc's got bupkis other than the movie. Valkyrie hit the street last Tuesday.

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At the time of this posting, it's a hefty $27.99. I'll keep an eye out for price drops.
A portion of the purchase (whenever it's more reasonable) goes toward supporting disc reviews featured in this column.
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Rio Bravo 2.0: El Dorado Remastered

Similar to this past week's Liberty Valance upgrade, El Dorado has gotten the Centennial Collection treatment with improved picture and sound, with extras sectioned off on their own disc. Two Commentaries are included, one with Peter Bogdanovich going it solo, and the the other with a combination of Richard Schickel, Up star Ed Asner, and Todd McCarthy.

The standout supplement, as with Valance, is a nearly hour long, 7-part featurette called Ride, Boldly Ride: The Journey to El Dorado [41:50]. It's pure Howard Hawks crack for the addict, filled with little interviews and great high-quality stills.

Also included are The Artist & The American West (1967) [5:28] a vintage featurette, and Behind the Gates: A.C Lyles Remembers John Wayne [5:32], which is more a hero worship thing than anything else. This is the best you'll see it until it goes Blu.

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A portion of the purchase goes toward supporting disc reviews featured in this column.
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Man Hunt at last

Fritz Lang's Man Hunt wasn't exactly what I expected at certain points in terms of tone, but as a whole, I loved it. There's a claustrophobic, paranoid air to the movie. Europe is full of Nazis on all sides listening, watching, and waiting to strike. Walter Pidgeon plays dashing Captain Thorndike, a Brit (with an American accent) who goes hunting for Hitler, gets Der Fuhrer in his sights, and is captured.


The Nazis offer Thorndike an out should he sign a letter admitting that the British government sent him to kill Hitler. He opts for torture instead, and eventually escapes. The rest of the movie follows the Nazis hunting him step by step. At one point he runs into a spunky young lass named Jerry (Joan Bennett), whose "Cockney accent" is so laughable it repeatedly ruins moments meant to be tender and earnest. The Nazis are lean and brutal, pitch-perfect.

The Feature Commentary by Lang expert Patrick McGilligan, no offense, sounds like he's reading chapters from the book he wrote about the director. The comparatively brief Rogue Male: The Making of Man Hunt [16:43] is much more worthy of one's time. They cover just the right amount of backstory on the source book and the movie's place in history without getting repetitive. I liked the vintage Advertising, Artwork, and Still Galleries as well.

They did a digital restoration on the movie to erase some dirt and scratches, but there's still some evident little spots here and there toward the second half of the picture. There's a few minutes-long Restoration Comparison featurette that covers this. Before this one goes to Blu-ray, it'll really need another pass to completely digitally scrub the print and make the brightness level more consistent across all scenes. Some shots look amazing, with others a little blown out.

You really have to see this in motion to get the difference. This is the best I could do in a screencap, apologies.
The movie looks as good as I expect it would coming with a price tag between $10-15. A Criterion pass at this would have been great in the picture department, but I don't know what else would have surfaced in the way of extras. We may eventually see a full re-scan and cleanup job, and I fervently hope they don't muck with the grain. Grain is not noise. If they make this look like Patton, that's it, we're done. I'm a grain monk, so sue me. More than anything, the impending release of Inglourious Basterds makes me think Man Hunt could be ripe for reimagining in a similar vein. There was a TV remake in the 70's, but I'm talking a more loose thriller. Get Hugh Laurie to play Thorndike, Udo Kier & Thomas Kretschmann to play the main Nazis, and...I dunno...Kristen Bell to play a more three-dimensional Jerry whose allegiance you question. The more I think of it, the more keen I am on it. Set it in the near-future if you don't want to be stuck making another "let's kill Hitler" movie. Whether or not my Man-Hunt idea ever comes to fruition, the original is worth looking at whether you're a Lang completist or someone who just likes a good old-fashioned thriller that hasn't played 100 times on Turner Classic Movies.

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New Life for Pixar's Second Feature


Shot swiped from DVD Beaver. Click here to look at all their lovely screencaps in full size.
[Number 11 on my list of Better Things to Do This Weekend than T4 or Museum 2 is the new Blu-ray of Pixar's A Bug's Life. I'm interspersing paraphrased bits of yesterday's blurb.] I have to admit that I had never seen Pixar's second feature prior to this past Thursday. Yeah, yeah, I know. The movie is ten years old and I'm only now seeing it. It wasn't on my list as something to do on a friday night in High School, so sue me. I haven't seen Cars either, but that'll probably happen next time we visit my in-laws, since Ashley's dad loves it. All the extras from the original DVD special edition are ported over, including a Feature Commentary from Lasseter, Stanton, and director of Toy Story 3 Lee Unkrich (editor on Bug's Life). Plenty of other behind the scenes stuff compliments the movie, with a Disney's Silly Symphonies short and Geri's Game to round things out. The new to Blu-ray features are around a half hour of recently-recorded stuff. Lasseter does an Intro [HD 1:11] to the movie and a motion storyboard version of A Bug's Life: The First Draft [HD 10:49 w/ Intro, 10:16 without]. Dave Foley narrates the very different story, which includes a much more innocuous end for the bad guys. My favorite of the new stuff is a very candid and revealing Filmmaker's Roundtable [HD 21:00] with Lasseter, Stanton, and producers Kevin Reher and Darla K. Anderson. The now-standard BD-Live connection is there as well, offering in-movie chat and trivia and so on. The most complaining I've seen about this title is its pricing. I consider Pixar titles like Criterion Collection releases. I'll pay extra for them, but there are limits. The best "week of release" price I found on the Blu-ray was something like $29.99, which is a bit much for me and many others at this point. I would pay around $20 without blinking. When I factor in the Movie Cash ($8.50 max) off seeing Up, it's priced more like $22, which is a lot more reasonable. If you are devoted fan of Pixar, you're going to spend money to see Up at least twice anyway. The included Digital Copy has become an invaluable extra for parents, who have some sort of digital media player or laptop with them and their kids on any trips they make. For me, I like being able to watch them on-the-go as a convenience. I've watched bits of the chapter-bookmarked WALL-E on my iPod a lot over the last few months. I really enjoyed A Bug's Life as a former Anthropology student, seeing it as A Kid's Guide to Matrilineal Societies and Defining Kinship. It didn't make me well up like Toy Story 2, Monsters Inc., Ratatouille, WALL-E or Up, but I could identify with the well-intentioned, inferiority-complex-ridden protagonist who tries to take on too much. The digital to digital transfer is outstanding, and the sound mix is great. It hasn't jumped into the list of my favorite Pixar movies, but I'm glad I finally got around to it.

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At the time of this writing, it's $29.99, with a free ticket to Up and a Digital Copy.
A portion of the purchase goes toward supporting the disc reviews that appear in this column.
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14 Things More

I just couldn't resist continuing this idea I posted yesterday. I may bring it back every so often over the summer. 15. Option A: Memorial Day Bale-a-thon where you rent The Machinist, American Psycho, and both Nolan Batman movies on Blu-ray and watch well-made movies featuring Christian Bale. Option B: Buy the Machinist Blu-ray. 16. See The Brothers Bloom I missed it at Fantastic Fest, and Jeff walked out of it, hating on it intensely since then. I've been told by people I trust who aren't pally-pally with director Rian Johnson that it's really quite good. Even if it isn't the greatest thing ever, I'd rather reward a movie that tries to be interesting over either T4 or Night at the Museum, which are passive, unengaging "entertainments." 17. Buy 21st Century Breakdown, the new Green Day album. 18. Get your dog a bag of Sweet Potato Jerky or your cat a Kitty Kuddler (if you have a cat you should have one. 19. Buy a bag of animal food for a dog or cat rescue organization. 20. Buy three or four titles from a big box retailers $3-$5 DVD bin that you're glad you didn't spend $20 on three years ago. 21. Get an ergonomic wrist rest for your mouse and an IMAK pain relief bead-filled comfort strap for whatever small shoulder bag you're lugging. 22. Buy a case for your Personal Media Player of choice. I dropped mine the other day and was glad I had it in something. 23. Take an old friend out for lunch. 24. Buy a cheap frame for one of the hundred posters you have still in tubes. 25. Buy Permanent Midnight and Junebug on DVD and grab a sandwich on the way home. Nourish yourself with both. Stiller and Adams in much better movies you can loan friends and not feel bad for doing. 26. Buy a decent Twitter client for your phone or computer (I prefer Tweetie) 27. Buy a couple cheap bottles of summer wine. 28. Start a small savings account where you put money that you would have regretted spending on groupthink impulses. Being picky is not a bad thing.
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Blu Upgraded Machinist & Gates, Affleck Double Feature

Looking back, it's striking to think that Bale starved himself down to 120 lbs. for The Machinist just before bulking up for Batman Begins. It began the current phase of his career spanning the Begins, The New World, Rescue Dawn, The Prestige, 3:10 to Yuma, The Dark Knight, and now Terminator: Salvage Heap and the highly-anticipated Public Enemies.

Click on the corresponding image to order each title from Amazon. At the time of this writing, they're all $19.99.
A portion of the purchase goes toward supporting the disc reviews in this column.
The Machinist Blu-ray features the same edge enhancement issues as the import discs did (obviously the same transfer), but overall it looks fine, with great black levels. I don't expect a double-dip on PQ or extras. Paramount put two new-to-disc, HD-enhanced extras on this release. Manifesting the Machinist [HD ~23:00], which I liked better than the original featurette (listed below), even though it covered much of the same ground. Also included is The Machinist: Hiding in Plain Sight [HD ~14:00], which will be of more interest to creative writing majors than anyone else. It discusses imagery and symbolism in the story. Extras carried over are a Feature Commentary with the director (which I remember being good); The Machinist: Breaking the Rules [SD ~25:00], which is not EPK-level, but not nearly as engrossing as an hourlong making-of would have been; and some Deleted Scenes with Commentary [SD ~12:00]. Trailer included in HD 1080p. This disc is a component in #15 of the soon to be two-part, 28-item-long Better Things to Do This Memorial Day Weekend list. If you're saying "I might as well go see Terminator 4 to see how bad it is," invest intelligently and buy/rent this instead.

Enemy at the Gates came out in the fall of 2001 to little acclaim and not as much box office as $70 million-budgeted war movies usually attract, but it's really quite good. It's a cat and mouse sniper movie that features one of the more intimate and tasteful sex scenes I've ever seen. It tells the story of legendary Russian sniper Vassili Zaitsev, whose name you will know and remember long after seeing the movie. It co-stars Jude Law, Ralph Fiennes, Rachel Wiesz, and Ed Harris (as a Nazi). All the extras are MPEG-2 SD ports of the DVD features, with no Blu-ray exclusive content. Through the Crosshairs [19:36] is a making-of, Inside Enemy at the Gates [15:01] is an actor interview-focused elaboration of the prior, and there are also some Deleted Scenes [10:13]. Trailer included in HD 1080p.

Changing Lanes is under-appreciated. It's often blown off by people who give in to knee-jerk hatred toward anything that involves Ben Affleck. He turns in one of his best performances here alongside a scene partner anyone would kill for in Samuel L. Jackson. William Hurt has one of the movie's most unintentionally hilarious line readings with, "Doyle, you're addicted to chaos!!!" The extras are all SD ports from the DVD. The Making Of, A Writer's Perspective, and Deleted/Extended Scenes total about a half hour, and are more worth your time than the very quiet Director's Commentary. There are big gaps during which you forget you have it on until he talks again. Trailer included in HD 1080p.

"Think of the Paycheck, not the movie, but the money..."
Paycheck, on the other hand, is not much liked by anyone. It's rightfully considered one of John Woo's biggest misfires, but at the end of the day it's just a cheap pseudo-scifi B thriller. However, if this movie's failure drove him to go back to China for Red Cliff, consider me the biggest fan of Paycheck in the world. The movie looks and sounds great, thanks to it only being 6 years old, appropriate grain and picture clarity couldn't have been hard to retain. Regardless of where you judge the content, it looks wonderful. It could be an in-store demo disc. Extras are again 480p SD ports from the DVD. They include: two Feature Commentaries (one with Woo and one with the screenwriter); Paycheck: Designing the Future covering production design; Tempting Fate: The Stunts of Paycheck, which combined with the previous featurette totals about 30 minutes; and finally 6 Deleted and Extended Scenes, none of which make the movie any better. As flawed as the movie is, the Woo track is worth listening to for his candor on his process. Trailer included in HD 1080p.
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14 Better Ways to Spend $14 (or a Few Dollars More)

I'm skipping both Terminator: Salvation and Night at the Museum 2 this weekend, and I recommend everyone reading this do the same and urge others to follow suit. There's nothing must-see about either one. I've come up with 14 better ways to spend $14-$20 on yourself and a friend or loved one than either major new release. I was a film programmer in college, and this is my way of reviving those instincts and urging discerning cinema-goers from making a choice they'll regret. I'm also using this excuse to push myself to get a number of items posted by referencing their in-progress nature here, which will pop up throughout the weekend. I have to explicitly request that anyone reading this not go see Dance Flick, despite the fact it's probably more entertaining than the aforementioned movies on the whole (according to William Goss, who I trust). Some may see paying for Dance Flick as a big "fuck you" to their studio masters who want them watching robots or waxworks. Folks, Uwe Boll is still making movies because people thought it'd be a great idea to pay for his previous movies knowing they'd be bad. Flick will be on video/HBO/TNT soon enough. The options I've listed below are not necessarily for everyone in and of themselves, but there's plenty of variety overall. You can accomplish them all on a budget of $14 to $20, give or take a little for sales tax. There's a lot of "buy this or that" due to my very American compulsion to buy things. 1. Go see Star Trek again, or take friends or family members who haven't seen it. There are people who haven't seen what's becoming the return business king of the summer, as I predicted in my sleep-deprived original review. I ran into a coworker who said she finally convinced her boyfriend it was ok to go see it. This is the kind of blockbuster I'll support, plot holes or no. It's a movie that prominently features time travel, folks. 2. Buy your significant other a nice dinner so that they're ok with you having bought the Star Trek: Original Motion Picture Collection. Spend the long weekend overdosing on original Trek. For my wife, the new Trek movie was the gateway drug. She's more interested in the original series and movies than she ever was before. A full review is coming soon and will be linked here. 3. Rent Valkyrie, The Reader, and Taken on Blu-ray (or DVD) because you missed them in first run. I don't know anyone outside of critics who caught Valkyrie in theaters, and even fewer (critics included) who saw The Reader. Taken pulled in plenty of money at the box office, but many wait for video at this point. In order, they are: better than you've probably heard or expected; worth saying you've watched so you can love/hate; and very, very sharp. Long weekends are great for catching up on movies about which you said "I wondered how that was, I missed it." 4. Rent Wayne's World (1 & 2) and Major League, and order a cheap, terrible quality pizza. Optionally, insert catalog title multi-movie marathon of your choice. I review Blu-rays and DVDs for this column, and I'm not shilling for recent releases here, rather, they reminded me of what I'd like to be doing if I weren't stuck working. When I was in school, I always ran through my VHS collection and on-the-fly programmed a movie marathon for myself. 5. Hybrid Option: Buy Man Hunt and rent Valkyrie This week saw the release of what I'd consider an interesting home-based Let's Kill Hitler Double Feature separated by 67 years. I'll defend Singer's movie to anyone. It's good and worth a watch (particularly the extras...review also forthcoming), but not legendary. Fritz Lang's Man Hunt was released prior to American involvement in WWII, and features a Brit making a selfless sacrifice ten times more affecting than all of The Reader. 6. Take a blank notebook, go to an eatery where you can dine and stay, and put pen to paper. 7. Order a pizza, grab some beer, and clear out all your "I'll watch that when I have time" programs on your DVR, provided Time Warner (or your provider) hasn't accidentally erased it in the last week. 8. Clean your house. Throw away anything that you cannot sell that you no longer need. Knowing this is the year they push Blu-ray heavily over the holidays, prune away DVD titles you plan to upgrade now or soon. 9. Make some focused buys on good deals or movies you like. Love Westerns and/or John Wayne? Buy the new The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance and El Dorado (aka Rio Bravo 1.5). You can get any one of the following Blu-rays for $12.99: Dark City, Bullitt, The Wild Bunch, Superman: The Movie, The Adventures of Robin Hood, or Unforgiven. Click on the links above to buy, with a portion going to support your bargain-hunting columnist's writing habit. 10. Watch the good stuff on Turner Classic Movies and write a letter/send an email/make a call to ask for it in HD fer cryin out loud! Tonight: at 8pm, Battleground with Van Johnson and Ricardo Montalban. Tomorrow: starting at 2:30pm, Where Eagles Dare (Burton & Eastwood), then The Bridge on the River Kwai (but have you seen it?), then Above and Beyond (Hiroshima pilot second thoughts), then The Dam Busters (Michael Redgrave fighting Nazis), capping it off with A Sailor-made Man (Harold Lloyd) and Shoulder Arms (Charlie Chaplin). Fall asleep around 2am. Memorial Day: Wake up early at 7:45 for Sahara, truck through Hell is For Heroes (McQueen & Bobby Darin), and take a nap. Wake up in time for The Devil's Brigade/Dirty Dozen double feature at 12:30pm. Then try to keep it together for Kelly's Heroes, Sergeant York, and The Dawn Patrol, collapsing a little after midnight. If you can do all that, you're tougher than I am, but at the very least, check the listings for war films you might not own but should see. 11. Convince your significant other to go in $10 on the Blu-ray of A Bug's Life, which includes a free ticket to see Up next weekend. I must admit two things: this is the closest to a full cop-out on the price limitation, and I had never seen Pixar's second feature before Thursday. Yeah, yeah, I know. The movie is ten years old and I'm only now seeing it. It wasn't on my list as something to do on a friday night in High School. I haven't seen Cars either, but that'll probably happen next time we visit my in-laws, since Ashley's dad loves it. I'm also working on a review for this, but to put it succinctly, I consider Pixar releases like Criterion. I'll pay extra for them, and when you factor in the money off seeing Up, it's priced like a DVD, relatively speaking. Parents with small children can put the Digital Copy on an iPod and distract their kid at the airport, in the car, at the family BBQ...the list goes on. 12. Buy 14 lotto tickets. It might be your week! I expect a guilt kickback if anyone takes me seriously and wins. Daddy needs a new ranch on Lake Travis. 13. Go see some live theatre. When was the last time you saw a play or a musical? Do you have kids? Have they ever been to the theatre? 14. If you want to do something for soldiers, find as many DVDs as you can of your own or can buy on $20 and send them to armed service men and women recovering from battle. My friend Scott Neumeyer started a Twitter-based phenomenon called #Troopflix a while back. There's no real time limit, as we seem to be perpetually engaged over there, and we never run out of wounded soldiers as long as we're fighting somewhere. Keep in mind who you're buying for or donating to when it comes to selection. From Scott: Send to... Care of LCDR Tim Drill Camp Arifjan, EMF Kuwait (Navy) Warrior Return Unit APO AE 09366 Just write DVD Donations on the customs slip that you fill out at the post office. You SHOULD be able to ship via USPS Media Mail so it should be a very minimal cost for shipping. The address says (Navy) but all branches of the military go to the Warrior Return Unit. And if they receive any duplicate DVDs, LCDR Drill says that he will forward them out to other deployed commands. These are nearly all wounded troops returning so they have plenty of downtime and the DVDs are REALLY useful for them. The only restriction is NO PORNOGRAPHY. --------------------------------------- I could have written a list twice as long as this since so many are planning to see both Terminator and Night, but there are only so many hours in the day. It's currently pouring with no end in sight here in Austin, so it's a great night to go nowhere near a cinema. Instead, I wager I'll grab some grub on the way home and watch something worth my time.
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Eden Log & Yonkers Joe

I like that Magnolia (and subsidiary Magnet) will release varied titles to disc in the same week. This week's couldn't be more different, though they have in common the fact you probably missed both theatrically.

Yonkers Joe stars Chazz Palminteri as a dice hustler who goes for a big score to help his son, who has mosaic Down Syndrome. Palminteri impresses as always, playing a guy who is a straight up crook. If he didn't care about his son, Joe would not gain anyone's sympathy. If you're the type given to be offended by a movie glamorizing criminals, that's not what is at play here. Joe's motivation goes back very simply to "would you steal [something] to save your family/wife/son/daughter?" In short, this movie is best appreciated by the working class, not Donald Trump. The supporting cast features Christine Lahti, Michael Lerner, and Linus Roache, along with the most excellent Tom Guiry standing out as Joe Jr. Guiry does an excellent job of sensitively and accurately evoking Joe Jr.'s Down Syndrome in a way few actors have ever done. There is no hall of fame for actors who've portrayed people with developmental disabilities because only three or four have actually done it well. Tom's in there. Extras include video from the Yonkers Joe premiere, and a Behind the Scenes piece. There are three additional featurettes that cover The Look, The Moves, and one where you Meet Fast Jack. These are the most worthy of you time due to the fact they really dig into how real-life crooked gamblers do their thing.

Eden Log is the newest release in Magnet's Six Shooter Film Series, and it's not even your average genre piece. Visually, it's soaked in darkness mirrored by the progression of the plot, which only gives you tidbits along the way as to what is going on. A man wakes up alone inside a cave, unable to remember anything. He's being pursued by a creature. It's engaging, interesting, and overall a very fun ride. Definitely worth at least a rental for the curious. The only quibble I have is that the original language track version (in French) is listed as the DVD's sole Special Feature. That reminds me of the days studio marketing departments listed Chapter Selections as Special Features. If it had lacked the French version entirely, I'd have been annoyed. All I'm saying is that I found this humorous.
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The Reader Paradox

I finally watched The Reader. I got hung up on the idea of making time for a movie many would shelve in the "Holocaust Oscar Bait" section of the couple video stores left in existence. On top of that, I couldn't bring myself to argue in favor of watching "Nazi Softcore Porn," as my wife referred to it. It turned out to not be that bad, but Winslet won that Oscar for her body of work and Revolutionary Road (Blu-ray review coming soon), not this. The way people talked about Hanna Schmitz, the former concentration camp guard Winslet plays, during award season makes me laugh now. People went on about her "bravery" and how her story "had to be told" like she was Madame Curie. None of her personal resolve or actions absolve her of what she openly admitted to having done. Should she have gone to prison for as long as she did? No, but I don't have any pity for her pride. Sorry. Bruno Ganz's law professor character has it right that cases in German courts of the time were not about justice, but German guilt. Moreover, that contrast is exactly the motivation behind the movie's protagonist, promising student Michael Berg. Michael Berg's compulsion to help Hanna in his early and later life (as played by David Kross and Ralph Fiennes) comes from a strain of Stockholm Syndrome. Things start to slide downhill for Michael once he feels like he wants to help her after his older woman lover is exposed as complicit in genocide. Plenty of my online film writer colleagues (the male ones at least) have ignored the narrative and hailed it for the nudity. I feel rather alone in finding it sociologically disturbing none of them see this as a case of sexual trauma. Yes, the fifteen year old loved getting it on with a woman in her 30's who was gladly obliging. Thing is, it obviously stunted his interpersonal communication ability with members of the opposite sex his own age through to later life, forcing him into a rather solitary existence. It's well-made and well-acted, to be sure, but I can't help but feel rather indifferent after watching it. I felt sorry for those the movie concerns, but it was pretty miserable hanging with them for any length of time, particularly 124 minutes. The Weinstein Company released the DVD a few weeks before the Blu-ray at the end of last month. Extras include a ton of Deleted Scenes [42:08] (mostly just extended versions of existing scenes) as well as some featurettes. Adapting a Timeless Masterpiece: Making The Reader [23:02] has a title and content that are batter-dipped and fried in hyperbole. Among the other featurettes, I most enjoyed Kate Winslet On the Art of Aging Hanna Schmitz [12:49] because you get to see Winslet be herself, and Coming To Grips With the Past: Production Designer Brigitte Broch [7:21], which has an equally long title. A Conversation with David Kross & Stephen Daldry [9:46] was fine and all, as was A New Voice: A Look at Composer Nico Muhly [4:07].
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Trek IMAX Last Chance (for now)

Ashley and I are heading downtown for the 2pm show of Star Trek at the IMAX here in town, since Night at the Museum 2 takes over Trek's screens starting tomorrow. I'm expecting Trek will find its way back on some of those screens over the summer as other IMAX shows underperform or taper off, similar to how the Jonas Brothers 3D movie faded off 3D screens to find Coraline returning based on demand. Back later with more on IMAX and this week's disc releases.
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linkWANTED

The Moon's Our Home (Seiter, 1936) The Mating Season (Leisen, 1951) Run of the Arrow
(Fuller, 1956) House of Secrets
(Green, 1956) Five Gates to Hell
(Clavell, 1959) Key Witness
(Karlson, 1960) Summer and Smoke (Glenville, 1961) Bachelor Flat
(Tashlin, 1962) [on Hulu] The L Shaped Room (Forbes, 1963) The Chalk Garden (Neame, 1964) You're a Big Boy Now (Coppola, 1966) The Whisperers (Forbes, 1967) Skidoo (Preminger, 1968) Tropic of Cancer (Strick, 1970) I Never Sang for My Father (Cates, 1970) Sometimes a Great Notion (Newman, 1971) Pete 'n' Tillie (Ritt, 1972) Celine and Julie Go Boating
(Rivette, 1974) Rafferty and the Gold Dust Twins (Richards, 1975) American Hot Wax (Mutrux, 1978) Hot Stuff (DeLuise, 1979) Scavenger Hunt (Schultz , 1979) Resurrection (Petrie, 1980) Twice Upon a Time (Korty & Swenson, 1983) The Glass Menagerie (Newman, 1987) King of the Hill
(Soderbergh, 1993) Dadetown (Hexter, 1995) SubUrbia (Linklater, 1997) The Fortune () 32 Short Films About Glenn Gould September 30, 1955 (James Bridges) Reunion (Jerry Schatzberg) Hardbodies (Mark Griffth) Homer (John Trent) Willie and Phil (Mazursky) The Comic (Reiner) Fraternity Row (Tobin) Interlude (Kevin Billington) Inferno (Starring Robert Ryan, Directed by Roy Ward Baker) Naked Dawn (Edgar G. Ulmer) The Group (Sidney Lumet) Dust Be My Destiny The Walking Stick WUSA Laughter in the Dark It's My Turn" from director Claudia Weill Supercops - Gordon Parks Rolling Thunder - John Flynn Survive! - Rene Cardona Jr. The Happening - Frank Pierson The Seven Minutes - Russ Meyer Abby - William Girdler The Man - Joseph Sargent Move - Stuart Rosenberg The Crazy World Of Julius Vrooder - Arthur Hiller The Oscar - Russell Rouse The Choirboys - Robert Aldrich Can Hieronymus Merkin Ever Forget Mercy Hummpe and Find True Happiness? - Anthony Newley The Evictors - Charles B. Pierce False Face Three and Four Musketeers Trapeze (Carol Reed Tell Them Willie Boy Is Here (Polonsky) Richard Williams' The Thief and the Cobbler. Restored. Would blow minds on BluRay
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Drained

The last few days have been exhausting. Having trouble sleeping on top of that. Decided I'm just going with the Star Trek Collection as one gigantic post at this point. I've got a Catlow writeup with screencaps coming later [edit: Warners has asked me to hold on to this until closer to Catlow's new street date...June 24th], but otherwise, today will be quiet 'round these parts. El Dorado ain't happening until tomorrow at earliest, since Man Hunt and Valkyrie arrived today.
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Cleaning Up Liberty Valance

The most striking thing about Paramount's new Centennial Collection DVD of The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance is a dramatic improvement in image clarity and contrast. By comparison, the original transfer is an under-lit, badly-done scan. Note in the screen captures I've included below: the old disc had a terrible matte job that's off-kilter.


Previous 2001 Paramount DVD of The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance (top) and the new 2009 Centennial Collection DVD (bottom). Captures taken by me, please credit if you use. Click on the images to view in larger size.
The old 2001 disc, which will now be relegated to the 25 cent bin at your local DVD shop, only had the Theatrical Trailer as an extra. Even that looks better on the new one. The feature takes up the first disc on its own, with two commentaries. The Feature Commentary is done by Peter Bogdanovich with interspersed archival recordings of John Ford & Jimmy Stewart. There's a Selected Scene Commentary that includes archival audio of John Ford, Jimmy Stewart, and Lee Marvin with an intro by Ford's grandson Dan. I've listened to pieces of both, and I can tell you right now that film students will be plagiarizing these tracks before I finish writing this. The major standout is a 7-part The Size of Legends, The Soul of Myth [50:52] featurette, viewable in chapters or all at once. There's a Still Gallery with Lobby Cards and production stills aplenty too.


Previous 2001 Paramount DVD of The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance (top) and the new 2009 Centennial Collection DVD (bottom). Captures taken by me, please credit if you use. Click on the images to view in larger size.
This movie will look even better in the inevitable Blu-ray upgrade. No plans or release date for that currently exist, but the sooner a Liberty Valance Blu-ray exists, the sooner people's dads start buying Blu-ray players. As it stands, this DVD edition is still fine for Western fans like me or those buying presents for John Wayne/John Ford devotees. This is one of three notable Western DVD releases this week, along with an upgrade on El Dorado and the first DVD release of Catlow, starring Yul Brynner, Richard Crenna, and Leonard Nimoy (as the villain). Why no one seems to be covering this release or the others this week is beyond me.

Click on the box art to order from Amazon. At the time of this writing, it's $14.49.
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Intentionally Off-Putting Cavalcade

I've never been a fan of Family Guy, but I'll watch it from time to time, mostly because it's on and nothing else of interest is. This happens any time Letterman's a repeat. I occasionally find episodes or individual bits funny. The non-sequitur gags the show is rabidly loved and derided for makes up this "spare idea drawer" project. Seth MacFarlane's Cavalcade of Cartoon Comedy is a youTube-hosted series first sponsored by Burger King and now Priceline.com. Getting through the whole first "season" took a great deal of patience and elicited a lot of groaning from me during its 54-minute runtime. The clips are fully uncensored on disc, whereas the first 12 eps weren't originally. Extras are limited to a Red Carpet Premiere [HD 4:21] and a set of progressive Still Galleries that show the process from rough to finished models. There's a promo sticker on the package that gives you a free iTunes download of the first episodes of Futurama, Family Guy, and American Dad. If you love Family Guy and Seth MacFarlane, you'll love this. If you don't, you are going to hate this with every fiber of your being. If you're like me, you'll likely forget you watched it the day after. Features are the same on DVD & Blu-ray, the only difference is picture and audio resolution.

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Taken Blu

I was surprised to find myself choked up going through the supplements on this one. I missed the movie in first run, so I watched the Theatrical Cut included on the dual-layer, BD50 disc and will probably cue up the Extended Unrated Cut Digital Copy on my iPod at some point.

The Blu-ray features both cuts through seamless branching. The Extended Harder Cut (as it is in European releases) is only a couple minutes longer (93 minutes versus 91), so I'd wager the differences are snips here and there of violence. One of the attendees of the premiere put it best saying he was glad to see a French film at the pace and with the styling of an American one, and that's the best way to describe it. The aforementioned Digital Copy (also on the 2-disc DVD) is only the Extended version, not Theatrical. Included extras are two Feature Commentaries, one with Director Pierre Morel and his dual cinematographers and the other with screenwriter Robert Mark Kamen. Le Making-of [HD 18:24] is just that, and gets the job done, but a more interesting production extra is found in Storyboard-to-Screen: "Inside Taken" [HD 11:05], where key action scenes are viewed in final form and behind the scenes. Black Ops Field Manual (exclusive to the Blu-ray) is the becoming-standard PiP popup fact track, including geographical info and trivia. Avant Premiere [HD 4:48], a taping of the French premiere event is the kind of thing I usually skip, but in the first few seconds, Natasha Richardson showed up on screen and I almost dropped the remote. The thing friends and family who pay attention to Hollywood said after she passed was "how can he keep working?" A lot of people retreat into their work to assuage grief, and many actors are no different. Seeing how Neeson carried himself before the accident and after is indicative of how decent and humble a person he is, and that's why people will go see whatever he's in, be it a genre movie or a period drama. With regard to the disc, it's well-done and worth grabbing. I hope no one who reads here would consider the bare-bones single-disc in the first place.

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A portion of the purchase goes toward supporting the disc reviews featured in this column.
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Hayter and Co. to Judge

David Hayter's Dark Hero production company is presiding over this year's Austin Film Festival Sci-Fi Screenplay competition. Aspiring screenwriters still have a couple days to enter, with a late entry deadline stretched all the way to June 8th.
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Later Today

Coming by midday are reviews of Taken, Seth MacFarlane's Cavalcade of Cartooon Comedy, and (hpefully) the first installment of my Trek box set review. I'll be posting on Warner's Catlow and Paramount's excellent (but not Blu) do-over of The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance after I clear the backlog of last week's releases. Depending on time I may get this week's Paramount catalog Blus up too...we'll see.
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Half of Charlie Sheen

I admit somewhat reluctantly to indulging in Two and a Half Men on CBS from time to time. I catch an episode here and there, but don't make a big effort to catch every single time a new one is on. It's a bit of a sad enterprise, wishing I were watching Charlie Sheen doing something more...interesting. Watching Major League recently made me wonder what Charlie Sheen would do if he were headlining movies and not a TV show (one of the highest-rated on) these days. I think the main reason I watch is that I'm constantly amazed at how much they get away with in "Family Hour" on a major network. The fifth season hit DVD last week (5/12) in a nice, sleek, single-DVD-sized amaray case with three discs inside. The featurettes include Two and a Half Men at 100, shot during the taping of the sydication-bringing 100th episode, where they talk about how the show and the "Half" in the title have grown. More interesting to me was The Lore of Chuck Lorre: Must Pause TV, in which producer Lorre talks about how he has (and hasn't) gotten away with some really naughty stuff in the vanity cards that are gone in a blink at the end of each show. Two and a Half Men - Dying is Easy, Comedy is Hard is all about the crossover that made me wonder last season, where the writers of CSI wrote an episode of this show and vice versa (that Bonus Episode of CSI is included too). The result was one of the best episodes of either show and one of the cheapest (but effective) semen jokes in the show's history.

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Snow White goes from Platinum to Diamond

Disney announced today via press release that the new Blu-ray of Snow White is launching their Diamond Collection line, which is going to take over its previous branding as Platinum for the Blu-ray and DVD release. This Diamond Collection isn't replacing Platinum, but supplementing it, understandably so in this case where a prior Platinum release exists. More significant in the announcement is that they included some of the supplemental features that hadn't been previously announced. Here's what they teased (emphasis mine):

Hyperion Studios - Audiences are digitally transported to 1937 to discover first-hand the Hyperion Studios, the original studio Walt Disney himself built and where Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs was conceived and developed. Viewers will virtually walk the halls of this historic landmark experiencing life at Hyperion Studios back in the 1930's. This amazing "Backstage Disney" feature contains newly dimensionalized archival photos, animator recordings, archival transcripts and rare footage of Walt himself revealing how Disney's gifted filmmakers crafted the very first animated feature. This sounds very much like the tour of Sleeping Beauty's castle on that DVD/Blu-ray, but this is much more interesting to me as this is more Film History than Theme Park History. Magic Mirror - Using the latest in Blu-ray technology, the iconic Magic Mirror guides the audience through the Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs Diamond Edition features with ease serving as the "host" for an incredibly immersive experience. The Mirror will recognize viewing patterns, knows where the audience has left off and will even suggest where to navigate next. This marks the first use of artificial intelligence in a Disney Blu-ray release and provides viewers the control to personally create a customized Snow White experience. The disc will "talk" to you about data the player has collected regarding how many times you've watched, when you've left off where, and so on. Read the Terms and Conditions when you get the disc and see if any of that info is transmitted back to Skyne--er, Disney. DisneyView - Disney's pioneering animated feature is brought to the modern era of widescreen high definition viewing by allowing the user to expand their viewing experience beyond the original aspect ratio of the film. Utilizing Disney Blu-ray technology, acclaimed Disney artist Toby Bluth was able to 'draw' beyond the borders of classic full frame cinema and fill the otherwise dark edges of the screen with beautiful custom imagery, giving audiences a new view of their animated classic favorite. This is the one people will howl about. Snow White was a 4:3 Academy ratio movie, and now all these parents out there are buying big wide 16:9 HDTVs. Instead of stretching the picture to get rid of those "horrible black bars," they've drawn in borders. Before purists start screaming, it's an option, not a forced feature. About Toby Bluth - Disney artist Toby Bluth tells how the movie inspired him to create the superb DisneyView art. No one start crying about how Toby Bluth is the Devil incarnate. He's Don Bluth's brother. This is his website. Mirror, Mirror On The Wall - Through BD-Live, this mirror can find the secret princess inside each viewer with a series of questions, then create for them a personal message from their favorite princess who will call them on the telephone. "Honey, why the hell is Princess Aurora trying to sell me long distance??" What Do You See? - To win this exciting interactive game, players must untangle scrambled images. Memory: now with the power of Blu-ray Disc! Jewel Jumble - Players put jewels from the Dwarfs' mine in the proper order to win this game. Uhhh, Columns from the Sega Genesis? Scene Stealer - Allows viewers to upload a personal photo and experience life as one of the Seven Dwarfs--on-screen in the actual film. Remember the Wedding Crashers online game that allowed you to paste your face on one of the guys in the hunting sequence? It's that, but for the whole movie. You too can be as Grumpy or Dopey as you want. Hopefully there's a screening process, or we'll see a ton of screenshots of Doc with a penis for a face.

Ignore the Platinum in this image and expect lots of "cutting edge" comments.
Snow White: Diamond Edition arrives in a two-Blu, one-DVD Combo Pack set (like Sleeping Beauty and Pinocchio) on October 6th, with a DVD version following seven weeks later.
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Red Cliff Recut

John Woo's Red Cliff has been picked up by Magnolia/Magnet for US distribution with a catch: the version going to theaters is the condensed 2.5 hour version instead of the full two-part, 4 hour thing. This isn't unexpected, since that's the version Woo's people were known to be shopping around, but it's a shame nonetheless. Didn't Che do really well in limited Roadshow engagements? Isn't that treatment owed to the highest grossing mainland Chinese film in history? Won't the same people averse to reading subtitles wait for video anyway, regardless of length?

Viewers in the US can see the whole thing VOD or on disc only. I know plenty of people, myself included, who've seen it on import Blu-rays during the long wait for someone to pick it up in the US. The cost is prohibitive (something like $40 a Blu) to import, so I borrowed rather than buy them myself. As a purist, I'm glad I got to see the full thing first, but I'll still go see the shorter cut if only to see most of Red Cliff on the big screen. I wish I could see the whole thing that way.
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