Electric Shadow

The Power of Passion and Soul

Jeffrey Levy-Hinte's Soul Power, one of my favorite films of last year, is now available on Blu-ray and DVD from Sony. It hit shelves last week (26 Jan), and closed out the month of January as one of the first true must-see disc releases of the year. As I said at SXSW last year, it's the undiscovered "killer B side to a doc that many already know and love, When We Were Kings."

Power hit a handful of screens last year, but this is how everyone will find it. Here's some more from my SXSW review: "Interspersed throughout the film are full single song performances by James Brown (the centerpiece of the festival), B.B. King, Bill Withers, Miriam Makemba, Celia Cruz & The Fania All-stars, and others. There's also a healthy amount of Ali spouting philosophy and observations that still ring true 35 years later." "The most significant find of the film, for me, is what I consider the most stirring Bill Withers performance put to film. Most people know him for other songs, but Levy-Hinte chose "Hope She'll Be Happy" out of the hour-long set Withers played. It's only a couple minutes long, but of all the sequences in the film, it left the greatest impression on me. The raw, cathartic wail in Withers' voice really drove home how completely free of emotion or talent most modern music is. Singers used to really pour themselves into it, not just twist the corner of their mouth because it'd look good on American Idol."

Bill Withers performing "Hope She'll Be Happy" at the Zaire '74 music festival
"The film plays fine on its own, but truly is best paired with a recent viewing of When We Were Kings. I watched Kings in the middle of the night before, and this is more than just cutting room, deleted scenes stuff. You're missing a significant part of the history of this event without Soul Power." I'm going to keep beating the drum on this one, so get it in your rental queue or order it up. The extras on both DVD & Blu are deleted scenes (including some more Muhammad Ali) and a feature commentary with director Levy-Hinte and the Zaire 74 festival producer, Stewart Levine. The Blu has the exclusive movieIQ thing with built-in playlist support, but I couldn't figure out how or why to make it work. The picture is grainy (welcome to 16mm in the early 70's), but as good as could be expected from the source. The audio is startlingly clear. Amazon is selling the Blu-ray for $22.99 and the DVD for $24.99.
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That's It

I didn't see This Is It theatrically. Watching it from my couch, I found it to be as surreal as watching him die on Twitter feeds and blogs all over again. Was I seeing drugged-up exhaustion, or the stresses of returning to live performance after years and years out of practice? Was he having trouble keeping conscious, or was he not used to the new gadgets and earpieces used?

As a kid, I loved Michael Jackson's music, partly because it was catchy, and partly because my mother hated it. The bizarre re-shaping of his face, the mystery of his children's genetic source code, and the continued molestation allegations don't change who he was before all of that. To me, Jackson was the person who opened a suburban kid's eyes to environmentalist activism and the realities of the third world. He introduced me to zombies with Thriller. Of course, his life after that horrifies and appalls me. There are tons of screwed up celebrities out there that inspired people at some point or another before their particular perversions went public. Jackson was the most famous of them all, and the fallout and mutation of his tainted legend was truly mythic in scope. I still find myself wondering whether the whole Jackson family saga actually happened or if I just saw it on TV. After watching This Is It and the extras, I'm absolutely shocked that the planned show didn't go on as staged and rehearsed with guest stars filling in for Jackson. Nothing was going to truly replace him, but the celebration of themes and artistry that Kenny Ortega and Jackson put together would still have worked. The 40-minute Staging the Return doc floored me with one thing in particular: the jumbo screen they had rigged was a 100'x30' LED display that was capable of producing enough light that for the first time, a stadium audience would be able to see polarized 3D in a live concert setting. The extras on the Blu-ray are more insightful than the movie, really. The movie is culled entirely from pre-death footage, whereas the extras are almost entirely from the post-death perspective. The "Thriller 3D" and "Smooth Criminal" vignettes are exclusive to the Blu-ray along with the Making "Smooth Criminal" featurette. The below extras can also be found on the DVD. The Gloved One [15:13] covers the full line of costumes that were designed (in some cases invented) for the tour. Particularly impressive was the LED-lit suit for "Billie Jean", which you have to see in motion to believe. Memories of Michael [16:19] is just a series of people who were involved with different stages of the tour relating anecdotes. It's lean, with no superfluous filler. Auditions: Searching for the World's Best Dancers [9:50] is roughly 1000 times more efficient at audition processes than over 20 hours of a reality TV series is in a given season. This Is It hit the street last week (26 Jan) from Sony. Amazon has the Blu for $23.99 and the DVD for $15.99.
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Bright Star

Jane Campion's film about the love affair of John Keats and Fanny Brawne is artfully done and outstandingly well-designed and paced for the plot and tone they're working with. Sony Pictures Classics' DVD (released 26 Jan) looks and sounds as good as DVD can. I only wish that there had been an accompanying Blu-ray, because this movie would have shown the format off to splendid effect.

Star got a Best Costuming nod the other morning, but it deserves mention for Cinematography as well. The movie is through-and-through a costume drama about the agony of existence before cell phones. It requires patience and concentration, two virtues with which the Notebook generation is less than acquainted. Abbie Cornish puts in a period-appropriate, authentic performance as Brawne, a woman ahead of her time. Ben Whishaw has little to do other than look ill and worried, but he does a solid enough job of the work. The extras include a single two- or three-minute deleted scene and three featurettes that total about 7 minutes. The featurettes are short interviews with Campion. The film speaks well enough for itself, but I would have loved to see a substantive featurette on the costume design process. This is destined for "that movie was pretty good, why hadn't I heard of it?" status.
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Boys Are Back, Last Days of Disney-max

The Boys Are Back, a tender single dad drama, hit DVD (but not Blu) last week (26 Jan) from Miramax. Everybody's Fine was also announced as DVD-only recently. I'd expect the remaining Miramax releases from Disney to go the cost-savings route and forego Blu-ray.

Boys Are Back features a lived-in, naturalistic performance from Clive Owen that not enough people have had a chance to see. Father and son grieve the loss of the boy's mother, and a little ways in, the dad's estranged first son, a teenager, pops up. Scott Hicks, who directed Shine, does an admirable job here moving the show along and not letting the inciting incident (a death) drag us into misery for just shy of two hours. In general sensibility and a few other respects, the movie reminds me of Dear Frankie, a Miramax release from a few years ago. It didn't get a huge theatrical push, nor has it gotten tons of attention on video thus far, but it's a good solid flick. The thing Boys Are Back has going for it that Frankie didn't is the proliferation of Netflix and the much-improved recommendation engine. The two included extras are a series of photos called The Boys Are Back: A Photographic Journey (with optional director's commentary) and a featurette entitled A Father and Two Sons, On Set.
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Forgiving Glee

The soundtrack is saturated with the artificial echo of auto-tuning. The lead guy is obviously not a long-time, practiced singer. Jane Lynch hasn't yet sung a note in the first thirteen episodes. There are tons of instances of contrived reasons for a high school teacher to show off his singing and dancing. The same guy is unnaturally dense and gullible, as if he came to this planet from Pleasantville (pre-color). Despite it all, Glee charms even the most cynical of people.

The (first half of the) first season being on DVD is not, as has been alleged, a shameless grab at money by Fox. It's an extremely wise move to provide it in a form that doesn't involve watching it online, which does not suit the styles of all viewers (myself included). Generally the most rabid social media-engaged folks out there are the ones who cry for blood, assuming that anything other than their style of media ingestion must be some plot to bleed them dry. The extras include a pile of featurettes, most of which will primarily appeal to mega-fans of the show. My favorite got into the genesis of the show and the casting process for the unknowns. The show's hiatus is a great opportunity to power through these first episodes and jump on board, and I have a feeling that plenty of people will.
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Jumbo Pack of Bite-Sized Refreshment

The mouthful I've used to title this piece is the best condensation of Paramount Digital Entertainment's Circle of Eight. The 83-minute feature released on DVD last week is a compilation/re-edit of the Mountain Dew-sponsored, 5-minute webisodes posted exclusively to MySpace last fall.

The whole thing is an ultra-short-attention span horror thriller that probably worked better in the bite-sized chunks it was originally served up in. I was a bit lost at first until I paused it and looked into the MySpace page, which is definitely a part of the experience. The Mountain Dew-sponsored bits have all been removed from the video itself, since they were built into the Flash video versions that were posted online. A young woman moves into a cursed/haunted building and starts seeing things. Shit gets real and then it gets out of control. It's nightmarish, hallucinatory, blah-blah-blah. DJ Qualls is the only immediately recognizable member of the cast. He plays the "creepy geek with a video camera". Extras include a behind-the-scenes, an on-location featurette, and a Day in the Life of a P.A. piece. The DVD edition does a good job of giving you a glance at how these tiny-portion, "webisodic" digital features come together. The whole feature isn't terribly interesting, but the nuts and bolts of how it was designed are reasonably diverting. Ah yes, Mark Mothersbaugh, of all people, did the music.
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New Belles at St. Trinian's

By all accounts, I should not have had such a comprehensively wonderful time with the reboot of the St. Trinian's franchise. The first film, based on a comic strip, came out in 1954, and starred Alastair Sim (the greatest yet Scrooge) in drag as the headmistress of a school for unruly girls who were as likely to be packing heat as they were to fail their classes at a "respectable" school. Sim also doubled the role of Miss Fritton's brother. The reboot features a who's who of British talent the likes of which you don't often see.

Rupert Everett takes over the role of Miss Fritton opposite Colin Firth as a conservative Minister of Education. When Barnaby Fritton (Everett) dumps his daughter Annabelle (Talulah Riley) at the looks-like-it-should-be-condemned school, we spend a little time watching her become one of the gang. Riley is probably best-remembered as the Bennett sister from Joe Wright's 2005 Pride & Prejudice who I nicknamed "Buzzkill" Bennett (Mary, I think). Her character goes on to learn that skanking it up is the secret to happiness.

Queen Rupert I
A fiendish plot is hatched to have the school closed, so the girls all come together to prevent this from happening by committing a few crimes. Other members of the cast include Gemma Arterton, Russell Brand as Flash Harry, Lily Cole (The Imaginarium of Dr. Parnassus) as a geek, Lena Headey, Lucy Punch (Timothy Dalton's much-younger girl-toy in Hot Fuzz), and Toby Jones (the "other" Truman Capote in 2005). Oh yes, Mischa Barton appears for a moment as well. A delightful cameo from Stephen Fry as himself was a very welcome surprise indeed. When St. Trinian's played the UK in 2008, it nearly doubled its 7 million pound budget back in box office receipts. The sequel opened in the UK late this past December in second place, right behind Avatar. I honestly think the movie would have done better in wide release in the States than plenty of "teen girl comedies" aimed at a similar audience. It's silly, rude, not-P.C. at all, and wholly offensive to evolved discourse. Sometimes a cheeseburger hits the spot, and sometimes you just want cheap, oily, and greasy fish & chips with plenty of vinegar. The DVD (no Blu-ray) extras include a behind-the-scenes bit (The Official School Diary) that's about ten minutes long, a few minutes of bloopers, a ton of deleted scenes, and the "St. Trinian's Chant" as performed by UK super-girl-group Girls Aloud. Yes, I'll probably watch this one again this year. Am I proud of that? No, not at all, but there it is.
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Free of FriedkinVision


Still one of my favorite car chases
I'm greatly relieved that MGM/Fox Home Video's Blu-ray of To Live and Die in L.A. is not displayed in FriedkinVision, with the colors acid-washed like the French Connection travesty of last year. The picture looks sharp and crisp, with no evidence of digital distortion, and I'll be damned if the dialogue has ever sounded this clear on a home video edition. It almost sounds like they re-ADR'd all the dialogue. Delayed from release last year, To Live and Die includes both a Blu-ray and DVD. The only really bothersome thing is the fact that all of the DVD SE extras are only on the DVD. The Blu-ray includes the feature and original trailer...and that's it. If you don't already have the DVD SE, $16 isn't bad. Otherwise, you're spending $16 for just the "Blugraded" visuals and audio.
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Perfectly, Seriously Timed

Had there been ten Actor and Supporting Actor nominees to match Best Picture this year, Michael Stuhlbarg, Fred Melamed, and Richard Kind would all be wearing tuxes in a month or so. The Blu-ray of A Serious Man hits next week (9 Feb), and it cleanly does what it needs to and gets it over with. The video and audio are crisp and clean, with no evidence of digital over-scrubbery.

What a couple.
The three extras included are Becoming Serious (a 17-minute making-of featurette), Creating 1967 (a 14-minute piece on the production design), and Hebrew & Yiddish for Goys (a 2-minute primer on terminology used throughout). I honestly can't think of what else I'd have wanted them to throw in, since the film speaks so well for itself. Becoming Serious covers all the ground the Coens were interested in covering, and leaves vague the things no one with any sense wants explained. They dedicate a few minutes to the "Looney Tunes short" that precedes the feature, and dub Sy Abelman (Melamed) "The Sex Guy" to hilarious effect for reasons that will make sense when you watch Becoming. Creating is not too much, not too little on how they acquired, found, and reworked everything from clothes to gadgets to cars and houses. H&Y for Goys only left one thing out that I recall: dybbuk; however, if you don't get what that is after watch the Finkel Short, you're probably not going to like the movie in the first place. Amazon's got it on Blu for $19.49 (50 cents more than DVD). I bet Universal is thrilled to have such a juicy free marketing tool (the Best Pic nom) announced 7 days out from this hitting the street.
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Out of Print Watch: Criterion's StudioCanal Titles

Criterion has announced that a pile of StudioCanal titles will go OOP in March, with rights going to Lionsgate. I knew the two weeks hence StudioCanal Collection Blu-rays (Ran, Contempt) were something of a precursor to this. Most notable among the disappearing are Grand Illusion (spine #1), Le corbeau, Pierrot Le Fou (second Blu to go!), Alphaville, Carlos Saura's Flamenco Trilogy and Peeping Tom. I'm not optimistic about Lionsgate handling these titles, but I'm open to being proven wrong. A full list with Amazon/Criterion prices (and links) follows after the jump.

 


"Have you heard the terrible news?"

 

I've listed links for both keeping in mind that Amazon often cuts their prices to match or beat competitors on top of the fact that one may run out of some of these before the other. I will update this post with pricing changes and updates over the coming weeks, so either bookmark this page or keep an eye on my Twitter feed.

My passion for home video and for Criterion specifically is born of the fact that this is the only way people will be introduced to classic movies in an era of ever-fewer repertory and retrospective screenings. Speaking of, there is a screening of Tati's Trafic in Chicago on the 13th & 15th of February.

I'm re-arranging my writing schedule for the day to get my Pierrot le fou review done a week ahead of when I'd planned. It should hit in the morning.

Eclipse
Carlos Saura's Flamenco Trilogy (Blood Wedding, Carmen, El Amor Brujo) [$37.49 Amazon/$30.96 Criterion Store]
This is the first Eclipse set to go out of print, and it's a blow to the Collection. Carmen is one of my favorite films: at once a dance film and a surreal romantic classic.

Criterion editions
Godard's Alphaville [$24.99 Amazon/$18.96 Criterion Store]
Spine Number 25 was Godard's surrealist science fiction classic, one of the least "conventional" films ever made.

Clouzot's Le corbeau [$26.99 Amazon/$18.96 Criterion Store]
This came out before Wages of Fear and caused the director no end of ill will at home in France from both the Vichy surrender monkeys and the liberal opposition. Once upon a time in Nazi-occupied France, it was unpopular to be anti-Gestapo.

Coup de torchon [$27.99 Amazon/$18.96 Criterion Store]
A bumbling police chief (Philippe Noiret) turned killer and his mistress (Isabelle Huppert) go on the run in French West Africa.

Bresson's Diary of a Country Priest [$35.99 Amazon/$26.96 Criterion Store]
Bresson's fourth film about a priest summarily rejected by his new parish. At least we didn't also lose Au hasard Balthasar, my favorite Bresson.

Carol Reed's The Fallen Idol [$23.99 Amazon/$18.96 Criterion Store]
The third collaboration between Carol Reed and writer Graham Greene (after The Third Man and Our Man in Havana). As one of the post-rebranding titles, I was really hoping to see a Blu-ray of this eventually. Alas and alack.

Clement's Forbidden Games [$26.99 Amazon/$18.96 Criterion Store]
Winner of a special Foreign Language Academy Award, this Rene Clement "loss of innocence" film from 1952 features a girl whose family and dog are killed by the Nazis. She is taken in by the family of a young boy. They team up to found their own little animal graveyard where they start burying all sorts of animals they find. They court trouble by stealing crosses...

Renoir's Grand Illusion [$32.49 Amazon/$26.96 Criterion Store]
The biggest hole in the Collection will now be the first spine number. If a film studies professor never showed this to you in an introduction to film course, they are a failure to academia. Erich von Stroheim's be-gloved supporting performance as von Rauffenstein is still brilliant. It kinda breaks my heart that Criterion may never do a deluxe re-do of this one for Blu-ray.

Cocteau's Orphic Trilogy (The Blood of a Poet, Orpheus, Testament of Orpheus) [$62.49 Amazon/$58.96 Criterion Store]
Cocteau's subversive trilogy spread across 29 years (1930, 1949, 1959) includes his final film.

Powell/Pressburger's Peeping Tom [$32.49 Amazon/$26.96 Criterion Store]
Another heartbreaker, this film was reviled at the time of release but is now considered an all-time great. It is still shamelessly ripped off by student (and professional) filmmakers to this day.

Godard's Pierrot le fou (Blu-ray) [$25.99 Amazon/$26.96 Criterion Store]
Godard's Pierrot le fou (DVD) [$35.49 Amazon/$26.96 Criterion Store]
Only a few weeks ago, I ordered this one myself, and it's crushing that it is going out of print less than a year after release. This is the second Criterion Blu-ray to go out of print (after The Third Man). It's one of the best uses of Jean-Paul Belmondo, and one of the last collaborations between Anna Karina and her ex-husband, Jean-Luc Godard. I was going to review this next week, but now's the time. The Blu-ray is the way to go, even if you don't have the equipment. Get it now or (possibly) never.

Port of Shadows [$27.49 Amazon/$23.96 Criterion Store]
A favorite of Carl Theodor Dreyer, it makes a brief appearance in Atonement.

Clouzot's Quai des Orfevres [$26.99 Amazon/$23.96 Criterion Store]
This untranslated title refers to a famous Paris police precinct. Clouzot's followup to Le corbeau is a jealous husband/actress wife story that shouldn't be ignored due to a perplexing-to-Americans title.

Powell/Pressburger's The Small Back Room [$35.99 Amazon/$26.96 Criterion Store]
The followup Powell/Pressburger project to The Red Shoes was not only done in black & white, but much more an individual character study. If it helps encourage anyone to seek it out, I'd call it something of a spiritual precursor to The Hurt Locker (the main character is a bomb disposal expert). This is one of the best WWII movies you've probably never seen.

Powell/Pressburger's The Tales of Hoffmann [$29.99 Amazon/$26.96 Criterion Store]
I have two words for you: Powell/Pressburger. I have four more words for you: Martin Scorsese commentary track. Click the link, it describes it better than I can here.

Tati's Trafic [$35.49 Amazon/$26.96 Criterion Store]
It's difficult to put into words how much I wanted there to be a Blu-ray edition of this, the last Monsieur Hulot movie, so I won't try. The next thing that comes to mind is, "does StudioCanal also own M. Hulot's Holiday and Mon oncle?" Anyone budgeting for this Get It While It Lasts Sale should have this on their acquisition list. There's a 2-hour 1989 doc about Hulot on here. That should be enough for Tati aficionados.

Le trou [$26.99 Amazon/$18.96 Criterion Store]
"The Hole" is the true story of five inmates tunneling to freedom. The director died months after finishing the movie, and one of the real-life participants acted in the movie. Most of the cast are non-actors.

Fellini's The White Sheik [$29.49 Amazon/$18.96 Criterion Store]
A slapstick comedy was Fellini's solo directorial debut. Nino Rota did the score, and his wife Giulietta Masina acts.

Essential Art House editions
The Essential Art House collection are all movie-only, and I'm leaving out links for now in the interest of getting this posted. Criterion started this series so that people interested in just the movie could get their hands on it. Titles denoted with a (*) are also OOP in their Criterion editions.

Forbidden Games* [$17.99 Amazon/$10.96 Criterion Store]

Gervaise [$17.49 Amazon/$10.96 Criterion Store]

Grand Illusion* [$17.99 Amazon/$10.96 Criterion Store]

Le jour se leve [$19.49 Amazon/$10.96 Criterion Store]

Last Holiday [Amazon/$10.96 Criterion Store]

Mayerling [$17.99 Amazon/$10.96 Criterion Store]

The Tales of Hoffmann* [$17.99 Amazon/$10.96 Criterion Store]

Variety Lights [$17.99 Amazon/$10.96 Criterion Store]
The Criterion edition is already OOP, but Amazon will still let you order the Criterion version for $26.99 even though it shows as "Temporarily Out of Stock".

The HD Guide's Out of Print Watch is designed to give a head's up to collectors and fans of movies that are going out of print before they're hard to find, over-priced, or both.

Back to the Edge

I spent nearly three hours of my weekend watching the first half of the 1986 BBC miniseries original Edge of Darkness starring Bob Peck. Peck is best-remembered as Muldoon from Jurassic Park ("Clever girl."), but this was his breakout role. I'll wait to rent the new Mel Gibson feature do-over, even though director Martin Campbell did both. There's a quiet, underplayed simmer to the original that I don't see the Age of Information improving by adding cell phones and the internet to the mix.

I mention that Peck is "remembered" because he died of cancer far before his time in 1999. The breed of English stage actors he shared marrow with are all but extinct. They moved from the theatre world to film, but not out of hubris. Peck was of the same style as Ian McKellen, Patrick Stewart, and Jeremy Irons, all board-treaders who went to TV who then went to film. They're past endangered and are all but extinct in terms of newcomers. Flanking Peck are very young, fresh-faced versions of the inimitable Joe Don Baker and Ian McNeice along with Joanne Whalley (as the slain daughter) and Zoe Wanamaker. BBC/Warner Home Video released the original series on DVD late last year, and I'd rather pay the $23.99 Amazon is asking before I'd have spent roughly the same on tickets and dinner out last weekend. What makes this worth purchasing is that the extras are uncommonly good. Vintage interviews, featurettes, and TV chat show clips on Disc 1 manage to not spoil things that happen in the second half on Disc 2 because they actually aired during the night of the third episode or just after. I was also glad to see the return of the now rarely-found Isolated Score track across the whole series. The alternate ending to the final episode is interesting as well. When the Mel of Darkness remake hits video, I'll be interested to see how the two compare. For now, I'll hang with Bob Peck.
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Out of Print Watch: Sleeping Beauty

 


Screencap from DVD Beaver's writeup

 

This past Saturday, 30 January, Disney put Sleeping Beauty "back in the vault", so existing DVDs and Blu-rays (reviewed by me here) will disappear from shelves in the coming months. If you want an example of ultra-widescreen classic animation on Blu-ray, no better one exists than Sleeping Beauty. Amazon is currently listing the Blu-ray at $24.49, so grab it if you want it.

I should also mention that the DVD editions of The Jungle Book, its sequel, and the 101 Dalmations family of movies (animated & live-action) all went back in the vault as well.

The HD Guide's Out of Print Watch is designed to give a head's up to collectors and fans of movies that are going out of print before they're hard to find, over-priced, or both.

HD Waistcoats

Watching Atonement and Pride & Prejudice (2005) on Blu-ray last week, my thoughts turned to Jane Campion's Bright Star and how wonderful it would look in HD...but alas, it's DVD-only for now. These dual Joe Wright successes from Universal look and (especially) sound lush and crisp. Neither adds additional supplements beyond what was on the original DVDs.

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Stallone/Schwarzenegger

Cliffhanger has aged very, very well, to the point that my wife just sat down on the couch with me to watch it after watching the opening. Once it was over, she told me she digs the idea of going through the Rocky series with me. This was Friday night. On Sunday, we bought Over the Top, the arm-wrestling classic. Last Action Hero, on the other hand, may hold nostalgic value for some, but hasn't aged terribly well.

Sony's Blu-rays of each hit back on the 12th. Both films look fantastic. Cliffhanger includes all of the extras from the previous DVD SE (commentary, featurettes, deleted scenes). Both titles include the BD-Live "movieIQ" interactive trivia track. Last Action Hero features no other extras.
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Re-Scrubbed

I'd be remiss if I didn't add a brief mention of the Scrubs Season 8 Blu-ray as part of my recovery regimen last week. I had reviewed the DVD edition last fall, but at the beginning of December ABC re-issued it on Blu-ray (with a $10 rebate coupon for DVD owners). The Blu adds an extra featurette and the now-standard ABC SeasonPlay (also found on LOST) to the existing DVD extras. The biggest plus to me is the fact the whole thing fits on just two discs.

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Birth of "Seagalteur"

I almost coughed up a lung reading the cover of The Keeper, which hits you with the following like a kick to the eyes: "Steven Seagal (Driven to Kill) unleashes his wrath -- and his fists -- in this fast-paced thriller...caught in a web of deceit, racism, and murder." At the end of the second graph "...Sallinger (Seagal)'s job turns from protector to hunter as he untangles a dangerous web of lies and murder..." Where the hell did the racism go? That mystery aside, The Keeper sees the birth of a new cinematic term: The Segalteur.

A Seaglateur is one who directs multiple Steven Seagal movies in succession. I am not the expert on Seagal that we all aspire to be, so I can't say if director Keoni Waxman, also the director of The Anna Nicole Smith Story, is the first Seagalteur we've had or not. His other contribution to the ever-expanding Seagalibrary is the upcoming A Dangerous Man, which I wish had been an action sequel to A Serious Man. Seagal would have played the rabbi who kills bad guys by night and keeps kids kosher by day at schul. "Mazel tov, mothuhfuckuh!" I fell asleep multiple times during The Keeper on account of being ill, but the plot wasn't too complicated. Seagal's an LA cop whose partner turns on him and shoots up Seagal so that he starts at a major physical disadvantage, which is necessary for Seagal to be unable to waste all the bad guys in the opening minutes due to his inhuman amount of strength and agility). Seagal is forced into medical retirement from the force. While all this is happening, a rich man's daughter who has an idiot redneck boxer boyfriend is kidnapped. This creates a new job for Seagal. Seagal then hunts down the bad guys and yadda-yadda-yadda. Sites like Steven-Seagal.net were born for this movie.
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So Irreparably Lost

Wrong Turn at Tahoe joins a burgeoning special collection of direct-to-video Cuba Gooding Jr. movies (including the recent Hardwired that co-starred Val Kilmer). The movie isn't outrageously awful so much as it doesn't ever really go anywhere such that it even has the potential to take a bad turn (that's the only groan-inducing metaphor, I promise).

Contrary to Pete Hammond's box quote, Tahoe isn't ever intense or gripping, let alone really qualify as a thriller. Gooding is a henchman with a kid who works for Miguel Ferrer. Harvey Keitel plays a rival crime lord. Someone steps on someone's turf, some shit gets real, and some shit goes down, all thanks to some moron who shot their mouth off. Welcome to DTV Actionland, where every ride is the same one with a different paint job and style of clothing to fit the time period. If you rent this at your local Blockbuster that hasn't yet closed, Keitel's entrance scene is worth watching even if what comes before it gives you fits. The girl in her underwear on the cover is a red herring and a half: the movie is solely comprised of events that lead to things getting worse for unlikeable, unsympathetic people through a desaturated color filter and "extra grime" lens. Wrong Turn at Tahoe is like fast food so greasy, it makes you want to take a shower and a blood test afterward. Of course, that's exactly what some people are looking for.
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Scrubbing In

The 12th season of ER hit DVD back on 12 January, and especially when I'm sick, this is the kind of stuff I put on repeat, for better or worse. This, House MD, Scrubs, or any medical series in the book fits the bill, but ER most of all. Now that I type that, it seems rather morbid that I'm so attracted to medical dramas when ill.

Going back to 1994, I've been an unapologetic follower of the series. It's a guilty pleasure to some extent, but the acting and scripting has been consistently good throughout the show's run. Yes, it's a nighttime drama that went on and on and on, but they found ways to keep the show topical. I'm certain that, were it still on, we'd abruptly see a shift to Haitian relief efforts at present, just as season 12 followed members of the cast to Iraq and Darfur. The 6-DVD set contains unaired scenes on 16 of the season's 22 episodes. An added bonus to me is that the case only takes up the space of two standard DVD cases. Amazon has it for $31.99, or roughly $1.45 per episode.
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Out of the Woods

I don't make a habit of disappearing for the better part of a business week, but I've been pretty horrendously sick thanks to a sudden ear and respiratory infection. I'll get a couple of things up today and then get back to bed so as to sleep the rest of this away. Sleep has helped the most, but running a close second is a pair of Steven Seagal DTV movies. Life could be worse: I could be living one of those realities.
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Nerdy White Jew Plays Black Man

The most surprising thing about Seth MacFarlane's Family Guy: Something, Something, Something Dark Side is that they had such a dearth of black characters (pre-Cleveland Show) to work with that they had to use "Mort Goldman" in brownface as Lando Calrissian. For those who don't follow the show or find themselves sucked into syndicated airings periodically (like me), that makes no sense whatsoever.

Family Guy's Empire Strikes Back spoof, like the New Hope one before it, relies as much on the framework of the original films as it does in-jokes from the Family Guy universe. I found it much more digestible than most FG episodes, so I suppose the solution to stomaching MacFarlane's work is to chase or blend it with something else. The Blu-ray includes a commentary with MacFarlane, Seth Green, three producers, and the director of the 54-minute "deluxe episode". They touch on why they'll never do a spoof of the prequel trilogy and various bits that were cut or re-written. The "Fact-Ups" (pop-up trivia) are as informative as they are satirical of themselves. My favorite featurette by far was the one that covered the hand-painted cover art they did called The Dark Side of Poster Art. It's about ten minutes of graphic design geek fodder. The full table read of Something, Something, Something Dark Side is included, as are the opening minutes of the one for the next chapter.
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