Electric Shadow

Basterds Blew-Raze

My original viewing of Inglourious Basterds was definitely otherwise influenced, but not by the fact that Tarantino and Eli Roth were present. Rather, it was enhanced by the fact that Tim League and the Drafthouse wizards rigged Nazi flags to unfurl along the sides of the theater just at the beginning of the Nation's Pride premiere.

Re-watching the movie cemented the fact that I really enjoy it a great deal all on its own, with or without an audience. Basterds has the chops to be nominated for Best Picture, but regardless of whether it is or not, the movie will be one of the longest-remembered films of 2009 in the decades to come. The Blu-ray Includes two extended scenes (Lunch With Goebbels and La Louisiane card gme) and an alternate version of the Nation's Pride premiere sequence. Also on there is a half-hour roundtable chat with Tarantino, Pitt, and Elvis Mitchell (a favorite interviewer of mine). There's a 4-minute Making of Nation's Pride piece with Roth playing a German propaganda director and Goebbels and his mistress also featured in-character. A quick The Original Inglorious Bastards piece shows off Enzo Castellari and Bo Svenson's cameos and the original trailer for the 1978 Bastards movie. By far my favorite bits were two short chats with the great Rod Taylor. The first (A Conversation with...) is about how Quentin approached Rod to do the movie, but I like the second more. Rod Taylor on Victoria Bitters is great fun in that it begins by talking about the fabled (to me) Aussie beer I've never tasted because it isn't exported. I replayed it twice. A close third was Quentin Tarantino's Camera Angel, where the clapboard girl's various uses for a tons of scenes' alphabetic reference is on display. For example: 34FN, take 2 would be "Fucking Nazis, take 2". Most would need to see it to understand. Also in there are the complete Nation's Pride short (wish it had been feature length), Hi Sallys (where cast say hi to editor Sally Menke when they fuck up a take), and a Poster Gallery Tour with Elvis Mitchell, where he digs into the film history involved in various movie-placement choices Tarantino made. I liked very much that the disc integrated with my phone so that I could download a couple featurettes to it (I don't just die to watch them on the TV). I wish PocketBLU (the app) would just give me all of the featurettes instead of just a couple. Not just as a reviewer, but as a fan of the format, I'd love for whatever portable "Digital Copy" to be identical in content to the disc. This is one of the few BD-Live features I've seen people be excited about, let alone use. Amazon has the Blu-ray on sale for $17.99 ($4 less than the 2-disc DVD that's lacking a pile of extras).
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Kobe and Spike

I regularly watched three sports with my dad growing up: football (soccer), baseball, and especially basketball. Since those were The Days Before Mark Cuban, we didn't really watch the Dallas Mavericks. We were unapologetic, carpetbagging Bulls and Lakers fans. When your home team blows, you don't have many other choices.

Spike Lee's Kobe Doin' Work took me back to my most fondly remembered of those days. The DVD offers three audio options: no commentary (just the game), Censored Commentary (ESPN broadcast version), and Uncensored Commentary. I loved watching a game with Kobe Bryant doing color commentary on the game itself, his style of play, and things that are picked up by the mic that Spike had on him during one of the biggest games of 2007-08. Spike shoots and edits this piece so well that I can easily see non-fans of the sport having a great deal of difficulty getting bored. I'd love to see Spike shoot an NBA Finals in the same way with mics on players and then have them do after-the-fact commentary. This was infinitely more interesting than the average NBA broadcast. The DVD includes an intro from Spike, deleted scenes (4th quarter, press conference), a Bruce Hornsby music video ("Levitate), and a behind-the-scenes piece. The intro and Spike on Kobe's Commentary abruptly cut off, which might have just been a mastering issue with my disc.
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Unforeseen Delays, Shifting Gears

For very good reason, I've been asked to hold what I've got so far on the Che set, since the Blu-ray proofs are on their way. I'll have a full review turned around in very short order. This gives me a chance to instead get through a pile of backdated disc reviews and tuck all the way in to Discs of the Year and HD Guide pieces that I've been chipping away at for a while.
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Isolated Trauma


The average viewer has become accustomed to focusing more on "figuring out the twist" than actually watching the movie. This is thanks to so many films of the last few decades hedging all their bets on one gimmicky little MacGuffin. Thankfully, Scorsese's new film keeps you too busy to get very distracted. It does involve a plot twist, but Shutter Island is much more invested in the series of bends in the road that get you there, and the picture is better for it. The turn itself plays more cathartic than revelatory. The real key is to openly question everything from the beginning. You quickly collect so many conflicting theories that you can't do much other than attempt to solve the mystery at hand along with Leonardo DiCaprio's Edward (Teddy) Daniels. Daniels has been paired with fellow U.S. Marshall Chuck Aule (Mark Ruffalo) to solve the disappearance of a female patient at the Ashcliffe Psychiatric Correctional Facility located on the titular island. Teddy is still overwhelmed by his wife's death and the things that he saw while liberating Dachau during the second World War. He opens the movie with a terrible case of seasickness on the only ferry that goes to and from the island. Upon arrival, Teddy & Chuck are met with terse, confrontational treatment by the facility's staff, from Deputy Warden McPherson (John Carroll Lynch) to facility director Dr. Cawley (Ben Kingsley). Max von Sydow's introduction as Dr. Naehring evokes the sense of foreboding that emanates from the greatest cinematic vampires (pre-Twilight). Michelle Williams plays Teddy's wife in flashback. Emily Mortimer shows a side I've never seen from her. Jackie Earle Haley does a lot with very little time, as does another actor who is not credited. Ted Levine is best known by many in the general populace as the kindly Captain from TV's Monk, and his part as the Warden will show them flashes of Buffalo Bill, his most well-known role among cineastes. If you give him one verbal sparring match, he delivers a title fight. The economy of intensity the whole cast employs is thrilling and refreshing. Going in to very much detail cheapens the mystery and the film. I'll hold off any further praise aside from saying that, had this been a 2009 release, this cast would have been one of the five SAG nominees announced this morning.

In overall execution, Shutter Island maintains a degree of tension and suspense akin to the best films of Alfred Hitchcock. It delves into the human psyche with an overwhelming degree of complexity, made digestible by the tropes of a whodunnit. From within Scorsese's own repetoire, it most reminds me of Cape Fear (for obvious reasons), but much more so of After Hours. It spoils nothing to mention that the movie is chock full of hallucination, misdirection, flashback, conspiracy, and ever-shifting levels of reliability within its protagonist. The sense of restlessness and self-doubt that afflicts Teddy arrests us in the opening minutes and does not diminish. Not only are Teddy's motivation and stability questionable, but we have those same doubts of every character on-screen at one point or another. Scorsese, his cast, editor, and cinematographer really do wonders with an otherwise generic procedural with a twist. Critics and other audience members who declare "I had it figured out from the beginning!" missed the point of what is going on here. I have a strong feeling that hordes of internet critics, bloggers, journalists, and so on will claw each other's eyes out to be the first and loudest to yell "WTF? I am so much smarter than this plot dude, OMG!". Many of these are the same people who are not satisfied by any literary adaptations, whether they've read the book or not. That said, I would advise strongly against watching trailers for Shutter Island or reading the book upon which it is based in advance of seeing the film. Paramount did not push back the release of this movie because it has some glaring quality issues (far from it), but rather, to prevent it from getting the short end of Paramount's awards season focus when they already have a frontrunner on their 2009 slate (Up in the Air). There's no reason to waste a potent wild card when you already have a strong hand. As for its craft and prospects, I can predict without hesitation that Shutter Island is going to kick-start awards season 2010-2011 on February 19th.
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Unexpected Landing

I had my writing and posting schedule all set for today, and then I arrived home yesterday to find an advance check-disc for an upcoming Criterion release in the mailbox. I've already blown through it (only a Supplements disc, no feature/commentary) and am mightily impressed. I'll reveal all in a post full of screenshots and impressions later today. Before then, you can expect my Shutter Island review.
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The 12 Morals Of...BNAT 11

I'm busy working on full coverage in various forms for what I saw at last weekend's BNAT 11. The event was the best programmed from top to bottom of the three I've attended. This will have to do until I can crank out all the individual pieces I've been working on since Sunday evening. I have carefully crafted some bits that spoil nothing, but that BNAT attendees will "get" more so than others.

Faust
Being a young, attractive woman exponentially increases one's likelihood of being date raped through supernatural means. Old men will do anything to screw young girls. The Devil is not to be trusted, in case you didn't get the memo.

The Lovely Bones
Being a young, attractive girl exponentially increases one's likelihood of being raped and murdered. Old men will do anything to screw young girls. A career in hip-hop can lead to playing an accountant in a movie 20 years after said career. Digital effects combined with digital photography show their seams every time.

Girl Crazy
Being a young, attractive woman exponentially increases one's likelihood of being stalked and spied-upon. Being the only woman in a desolate Wyoming college town full of red-blooded men is only slightly abnormal. Breaking into song is good for the soul, as are shameless mugging for the camera and vaudeville schtick. Even such brilliant words as "snerpy" and "diljo" can evaporate from the collective consciousness. Recycling songs and major plot points can result in a more generally memorable musical (Crazy for You).

The Red Shoes
Being a young, attractive woman exponentially increases one's likelihood of having men destroy your life by trying to control you. "It is worse to have to steal than to be stolen from." Great films turn around even those most averse to words like "ballet", "Powell/Pressburger", and "British classic".

Shutter Island
Trust everything and nothing, everyone and no one. The existence of the internet can (threaten to) ruin even the best of things in the world.

Le Magnifique
Being a young, attractive woman exponentially increases one's likelihood of being stalked by creepy, sleazy older men. The most inventive and ahead-of-their-time films will categorically diminish their later imitators after just one viewing.

Micmacs
Revenge is a dish that can be served as a warm souffle.

Frozen
Being a young, attractive woman exponentially increases one's likelihood of being trapped in the wilderness with two men who are not resourceful in any way. In the age of cell phones, not carrying one with you in the wilderness is the most moronic thing you could do. While in the process of freezing to death, a soul-searching conversation can reinvigorate you. Not even a frostbitten [body part] can stop you when you are truly determined (that applies in more than one case here). Being a hero only pays off in comic books and their movie adaptations.

Centipede Horror
Being a young, attractive woman exponentially increases one's likelihood of being raped by centipedes. Enchanted amulets would prevent a lot of bad things if you'd just wear it like you're instructed to!

The Candy Snatchers
Being a a blonde female exponentially increases one's likelihood of being raped. Mistreating your special needs child will only bring unhappiness, misfortune, and hilarity. Don't fuck with special needs kids. Growing a conscience is nullified by raping someone, no matter what else you do after the rape. Women can totally enjoy being raped and act like nothing happened later!

Kick-Ass
Girls with firearm and bladed weapon training stand no chance of ever being raped. A brilliant comic book movie does not require an existing mega-franchise as its basis to be viable. Never, ever fuck with daddy's little girl. Referring to Adam West will always be smiled upon. Shooting your child square in the chest can be endearing.

Avatar
Being a young, attractive female exponentially increases one's likelihood of having their species and planet raped. Imperialism is wrong. 3D glasses do not have to make your head hurt. What goes around comes around. Only in the movies does nature seek revenge.

The Moral Of... sprang forth fully-formed from the head of a post I made to my Twitter feed.

Disc Roundup (Movies) 12.01.09


New Release of the Week A Christmas Tale The Criterion Collection I haven't been able to see this disc yet (though I have watched the movie). I probably won't have a chance until months down the road. I'm handing it release of the week honors due to the extraordinary treatment of a current arthouse film by Criterion. Blu-ray Upgrade of the Week Gimme Shelter The Criterion Collection From my review: "One of the unsung successes of Criterion's catalog Blu-grades has been the startling clarity of the new lossless audio tracks. Even on a substandard audio system (like mine, I must admit), you can effortlessly detect the difference between the "good for a DVD" track full of hiss and the lossless pool of pure sound."

New Release Terminator Salvation (Blu-ray & DVD) Blu exclusives: Maximum Movie Mode, Director's Cut & Theatrical versions Featurettes: The Moto-Terminator, Re-forging the future This movie relies so much on prior knowledge of the franchise that it's a severely mixed bag. I'll get more into it next week. They already did the live director "watch-along" in which McG proclaimed his intent to make two more Terminator movies. He also expounded on the theory of the cinema, saying that in movies, "first there's the sound, and then there's the picture". Night at the Museum: Battle of the Smithsonian (Blu-ray & DVD) Feature Commentary, 12 Deleted Scenes (including Alternate Ending), 6 Featurettes, Gag Reel, 3 "Monkey" featurettes, DVD version, Digital Copy I was bored out of my mind the first time I watched this. I've come around only slightly due to the "maybe kids will like being literate" hope that also came after watching the first one. Erudition is an endangered species. The Deleted Scenes feature a lot of cut stuff involving Christopher Guest's Ivan the Terrible that I liked a lot more than most of the movie. The Alternate Ending puts in a tag with (not-a-spoiler alert) Dick Van Dyke, Mickey Rooney, and Bill Cobbs that one would assume leads into the all-but-certain third movie. The Monkey featurettes are the most worthy of one's time, in that they take a look at the life of the monkeys in the movie. The in-character featurettes are worthless. I might put the commentary on while cleaning the house at some point. Flame and Citron (DVD only) Ride Around the World (Blu-ray & DVD) This was an IMAX feature. The time crunch of the week and weekend is also pushing a writeup of this to next week. Paper Heart (Blu-ray & DVD)

Catalog New to Blu The Mask of Zorro I unapologetically enjoy this movie very, very much. I've still yet to watch the sequel, because I expect to be let down. The picture and audio quality here are top notch, as can be expected from Sony. Gremlins This was a Target exclusive until now. Secondhand Lions The Green Mile Lock, Stock, and Two Smoking Barrels Snatch Catalog The Jazz Singer Disc Roundup (Movies) is posted each week at some point, depending on how many discs there are to get through. Unless otherwise noted, assume that screener copies of titles reviewed were provided by the respective studio.
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99: Sweet Shelter

One of the unsung successes of Criterion's catalog Blu-grades has been the startling clarity of the new lossless audio tracks. Even on a substandard audio system (like mine, I must admit), you can effortlessly detect the difference between the "good for a DVD" track full of hiss and the lossless pool of pure sound.

The picture upgrade is stunning on Gimme Shelter as well, which cements it as one of the few reference-level HD transfers for a vintage, 16mm-shot doc. Whereas there's a big difference in content aside from music as a common general thread, I prefer the quality here to Warner Bros.' Woodstock release a few months ago. All of the extras are the same as the DVD edition: A. Maysles/Zwerin/Stanley Goldstein commentary, Madison Square Garden performances by the Stones, radio excerpts from KSAN's Altamont wrap-up, and an Altamont stills gallery. The original and rerelease trailers are also in there along with a booklet that contains various essays and details on the restoration.
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March on Criterion

Criterion has just officially announced their March slate on their site (links below). Nicholas Ray's Bigger Than Life is definitely the bombshell among them.


(top) Marco Ferreri's surrealist Dillinger is Dead {DVD-only 3.16}, Nicholas Ray's ahead-of-its-time Bigger Than Life {Blu & DVD 3.23}, Letters from Fontainhas: 3 Films by Pedro Costa includes Ossos (1997), In Vanda's Room(2000), and Colossal Youth (2006) {DVD-only 3.30}. (bottom) Blu-upgrades of Days of Heaven, Sanjuro, and Yojimbo {all 3.23}. The Yojimbo/Sanjuro two-pack will also be available.
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The Day My Father Died

I promised this entry for yesterday, but things have been too hectic and it's taken some additional time to feel finished for now. A year ago this past Monday (21 Dec), I was in Florida visiting my wife's family for the holidays. It had been a year of upheaval and re-prioritization and so on and all the so on and so forth that people in their twenties go through. As Guillermo del Toro put it in an interview Jeff did with him for the release of Hellboy II (and I'm paraphrasing), "in your twenties, everything is terrible, and everything is always going wrong, and everything is just crashing down around you." In the late evening of that cold, dark Sunday night, I got a call from my mother to let me know that my father'd had a "catastrophic" stroke according to the doctors, and that if I could manage to financially, "that [I] should come so that I could say goodbye". I never had anything that could be misconstrued as a perfect (or necessarily good) relationship with my father.
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The Moral Of...Christmas in Handcuffs

Before we get to the Moral, I should note that I did not watch this ABC Family classic in its entirety, but rather, the last 45 minutes (including commercials) when I arrived home and prepared something to eat. It's a Christmas TV movie starring Melissa Joan Hart, Mario Lopez, Markie Post, and Timothy "That's My Bush" Bottoms. June Lockheart plays Cranky Grandma. Abduction and imprisonment of an attractive male stranger is the only way to work out one's issues with being a quirky, single, artistically-inclined woman. Men are moved to love by horror-styled abduction and handcuffing to the point that they'll realize you're really the one for them. Encourage your elderly grandmother's drunk driving habit for the hell of it, even though it engenders no character development and is never referred to again. The Moral Of... sprang forth fully-formed from the head of a post I made to my Twitter feed.
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My One and Only

You've probably never heard of this Renee Zellweger-starring film that features Chris Noth, Kevin Bacon, Eric McCormack, Steven Weber, and Nick Stahl. It costars Logan Lerman, who will or will not soon be super-famous starring in Percy Jackson and The Lightning Thief.

The movie is about a story from George Hamilton's childhood that he told Merv Griffin. Griffin developed the project all the way until his death in 2007. Zellweger plays Hamilton's mother, and Lerman plays George in this road trip movie where a jilted mother takes her two boys with her to find a new man. It's light, frothy, and a little silly. Sometimes, that's what I'm in the mood for...not always, but sometimes. My One and Only is the kind of movie that Hollywood seems to have trouble believing in or knowing how to sell anymore. Just as the move to Violet Beauregarde expectations (I want it now) for news and reporting have threatened and killed so many print publications, narrative film has been at a crossroads for some years. In an ideal world, one could rent it from their couch for a nominal charge. The movie opened very limited back in August and it is now available for purchase on DVD at Target for $17. It was $10 on Black Friday, and I think they'd be moving a lot more units of it at that price. No one buys a movie they've never heard of (albeit with stars they know) for $20, but for $10, they'll consider it and end up dropping it in the cart. The DVD includes a behind-the-scenes and a making-of featurette.
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Mel Brooks vs. Mel Brooks vs. Rocky

Design isn't what something looks like, it's how it works. I'm paraphrasing here, but that's what came to mind when I opened MGM/Fox's new Blu-ray Mel Brooks Collection. The previous Brooks box included all the films here save Spaceballs: The Twelve Chairs, Blazing Saddles, Young Frankenstein, Silent Movie, High Anxiety, History of the World: Part I, To Be or Not To Be, and Robin Hood: Men in Tights. Brooks himself was involved in putting this set together, which is why you'll find newly-recorded featurettes with Brooks interviews on most titles in the set. UNBOX MB DVD MB BLU ROCKY 9 vs. 7 discs total
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Captain of the Jewish Debating Team

Warner Bros.' new Blu-ray of The Hangover is a relatively satisfying experience. It's one of the only really original, non-franchise (yet) studio releases of the year, and it remains one of the most memorable general audience pictures of the year. For five months, the girls who work in my apartment office have been asking me when "they" are sending The Hangover on DVD for me to review.

Tons of people will be buying this movie on one format or another. Only a few of the extras are really worth spending time with. I'll probably revisit the movie from time to time, but none of the supplements cry to be re-watched. There isn't a mountain of supplements to be devoured, but there are a couple of things that are worth your time here. To get it out of the way, the 8-minutes-longer "Unrated Cut" advertised on the box amounts to a couple of extended sequences and a new super-brief scene toward the end, but it's nothing racy or newly-revelatory. You get a couple more minutes with the tiger (when the guys take it in the elevator), and a little more Jeffrey Tambor. It's more of a "slightly longer, not as snappy" cut than an "Unrated" one. I'll edit this when I peg what they added in the opening ten minutes. The Picture in Picture commentary with director Todd Phillips and stars Ed Helms, Bradley Cooper, and Zach Galifianakis is really laid back. They touch on an interesting tidbit here and there, and seem as super-psyched (sarcasm intended) to be doing the video commentary as the Observe and Report folks were. The movie had been re-cut since the last time any of the actors had seen it, so they spend a lot of time exclaiming "oh, you added that back in, cool". At one point, Galifianakis relates how he met and was asked by Kanye West to be in one of the superstar's videos. My friend Luke will love the chatter about the baby's "Dutch Rudder" and how Phillips and Galifianakis negotiated it past the parents. I learned that term from Zack & Miri, by the way. The part that I rewound three times was when they bleep the word "dick" when Phillips says "...make you suck my dick" in the commentary to Galifianakis. That makes this a contender for the most ironic "Unrated cut" release of the year. Thank god that all the little children watching The Hangover on Blu-ray won't hear the director joke about the extra double gay thing he'll "make" one of the actors do to him. It's not the kind of thing that anyone should get up in arms about, but it's worth noting as an outstanding and hilarious moment in the history of censorship. The two extras worth watching right off the bat are the Gag Reel [8:16] and The Madness of Ken Jeong [7:56], which shows off some really unhinged alternate riffs he did as "Mr. Chow". The one Map of Destruction featurette to look at is the "Mike Tyson's House" one, in which the title of this article is uttered. Also in the mix are a 30-second mashup of the various action bits, the "Three Best Friends" song and the Dan Band performance of "Fame", none of which particularly interested me. Trust me and do not raise your expectations whatsoever for the "100 NEW Photos from the Missing Camera" advertised on the box. They've put some featurettes online-only through the WB BD-Live portal. They include a cursing mash-up and the Tyson Sings teaser. The PiP commentary and the BD-Live stuff is only on the Blu-ray.

A Digital Copy is thrown on the Blu-ray, which is currently $15.99 on Amazon, $4 less than the 2-disc DVD. New release Blu-rays are finally hitting DVD-like first week price points! The Blu, DVD, Digital Download, and On Demand versions of The Hangover go live this coming Tuesday, 12.15.
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Imagined Memories of an Immigrant



My father was a teenager during the revolution and the ousting of Fulgencio Batista, and I've spent my whole life being told myriad conflicting versions of what things were like then, since, and now. Sometimes that storm of disagreement came from his own conflicted and confused memories of that time in Cuba's history. A fair warning to those who don't know many Cubans: conversations about politics span not only hours, but days. Likewise, those with embedded stakes in Cold War-era politics will debate the most minute of details, and those on both ends of the political spectrum will effortlessly tell you that you don't know "the real truth" about anything. Regular readers of this column know that on the US political spectrum, I fall definitively left of center. My sympathies regarding the Castro revolution lie with the lower classes of Cuba, and not the wealthy upper class that fled the country with Batista and the majority of the national treasury. I don't condone or support the Castro regime, but I likewise do not support the US taking it over and putting a Starbucks on every corner. Soderbergh's movie does not deal with the mass executions at La Cabana (which occurred after the events in Part 1), nor does it touch on various moments that subject matter experts consider significant and iconic in Guevara's very full life. I'm fine with that, because those events may be important to those positing their individual take on Guevara's worth as a human being, but not to the narrative they intended here. Che is a chronicle of two military campaigns, and the through-line of how failure inevitably follows success.
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Pandora-Free Zone

With the exception of this post, I'm not touching anything Avatar today. Hopefully, that's a marked alternative compared to the plethora of people who will break embargo faster than light after now-unspooling screenings, whether in articles or on their Twitter feeds (albeit in code). I'm skipping the press screening here in Austin because I have too many other things to do. My expectation is that people will once again suddenly explode with predictions of this being the next huge Cameron box office success and bomb in an equal split. I'll see it at some point, but it's not leaving theaters any time soon.
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Maintenance Day

I'm prepping some pieces to be posted tomorrow and Friday, before BNAT completely destroys my sleep schedule for 25 hours and then some. I'll try to tweet during the event, since I know various cohorts managed to last year (I didn't even try). The Mel Brooks Blu-ray set arrived yesterday. I hate the packaging but like the book. More tomorrow, including video of a flaw in the case that at least five people have reported.
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The Moral Of...Four Christmases

Hide everything from the person you love and everything will work out to domesticated bliss. Any insane thing that your parents do is totally normal, because when people get older, they do the craziest shit you could imagine.

The Moral Of... sprang forth fully-formed from the head of a post I made to my Twitter feed.

Christmas 3 Weeks Early

This would have been posted yesterday, but in a page taken out of a Christmas movie, I was locked out of our car and stranded at an outlet mall. Before all that happened, my in-laws has come into town for a long weekend (since we wouldn't be able to visit during Christmas proper), so I had a perfect use for the stack of Christmas-themed discs that have been piling up. Here are quick thoughts on some Christmas-themed titles I have not (and some I have) covered that have been released this year. I'll probably do a second installment of this, since I didn't have Criterion's A Christmas Tale in time to include it here.

A Very Sunny Christmas (Blu-ray & DVD) Last year, my non-traditional (or is it?) Christmas Special of choice was Stephen Colbert's A Colbert Christmas. Thankfully, there's something this year that carries a similarly irreverent tone. I've watched this three times to counterbalance the ABC Family junk that's been clogging the airwaves on more than just that network. The cast of the show does what people do in so many of these specials: they rediscover the magic of Christmas. Charlie and Mac appear at one point in videos from their childhood (with deleted scenes included on the disc) that are funnier to regular viewers of the show. That isn't to say that not being a fan diminishes the quality of the program in any way. The DVD/Blu-ray also includes a Behind-the-Scenes/Making-of piece and a Sing-a-long.

Santa Buddies (Blu-ray & DVD) I wasn't dying to watch Santa Buddies the moment it arrived, but I knew at some point I had to find out what George Wendt and Christopher Lloyd were doing in something this soul-draining. This is the fourth direct-to-video spinoff of Disney's Air Bud, a relatively enjoyable kids' movie from 1997 (the year I started high school!). The back cover of this movie is so intent on declaring it a "Christmas classic" that it mentions this...three times? They introduce a canine counterpart to Santa Claus: Santa Paws. How absolutely ingenious a play on words. There are some moments of acting from Lloyd and Wendt that transcend the extraordinarily boring script. The trailer has one great laugh that is funnier there than in the movie itself: when a little Yorkie starts singing like a Disney Channel starlet. This movie reminds me of the really terrible Christmas specials that air on the ABC Family network this time of year. That isn't to say everything they show is terrible, but most of it is. I'm not a complete snob when it comes to entertainment for small children, but if you're going to subject any kids to this, make sure they're young enough that they won't mind the crass opportunism. Extras on the Blu-ray include some sing-along Christmas songs and a DVD copy of the movie. Four Christmases (Blu-ray & DVD) From my review earlier: If this movie continued at the same level as the opening scene, I wouldn't have lost interest so quickly during its 88 minute length. My mother-in-law watched it after watching The Proposal and said this one was "just all right, I guess" compared to "really enjoying" The Proposal. Vince Vaughn and Reese Witherspoon are great individually, but they don't have much to do here. Extras include a couple of featurettes and a Gag Reel. "Seven-Layer Holiday Meals in a Flash" is hosted by TV food star Paula Deen and Katy Mixon, who plays Favreau's country-fried wife in the movie and Kenny Powers' hometown sweetheart in Eastbound and Down. The other featurette isn't much more than "gee, how close to real-life craziness was that scene in the movie, right?". The Gag Reel is better than the movie in terms of second-for-second laughs, as any reel of its sort featuring Vaughn. This one hit the street on 11.24. The Judy Garland Holiday Special (DVD only) Liza Minelli performs "Steam Heat" in this B&W special from 1963. Jack Jones is in it too, along with Mel Torme, Lorna & Joey Luft, and Tracy Everitt. There's a not-surprising (for the year it was made) emphasis on songs from Oliver! and Judy closes the thing out with Somewhere Over the Rainbow a full 24 years after she appeared in The Wizard of Oz. This is the kind of holiday special that's worth watching or having on DVD. White Christmas (DVD only) The only reason I can suppose this didn't hit Blu-ray simultaneously with this new DVD version is no time, money, or incentive in putting this in HD when Blu-ray hasn't yet taken over as the new standard. This edition has some nice new extras and pimps the live stage show that's touring various cities this winter. It's a Wonderful Life (Blu-ray) I did the unthinkable and allowed the colorized version to be played in my house. My mother-in-law and wife prefer it to the black and white. My father-in-law seemed to be ambivalent on the matter. This is one classic film for which I don't feel the need for extras. I don't watch it every year, but more like every few years. Owners of previous DVDs get a $10 rebate on this Blu-ray.
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