Electric Shadow

This Summer, Buckles...Will...Swash

Last weekend, Iron Man 2 beat Robin Hood on the latter's opening weekend, with neither claiming the dollar advantage of 3D screens. It would seem that word of mouth and brand value didn't propel people to the 55th or so retelling of the outlaw story. Maybe if they'd gone in the fundamentally different direction of the original Nottingham script, it would have been a bigger deal. If you want to see the same general story retold in a way you haven't seen before, you have better options on DVD.

Just last week, Sony issued four catalog Robin Hood titles on DVD that I hadn't seen before. Two of them are "next generation" sequels starring someone as Robin Hood's son, and the others are new permutations of the standard Hood tale. Read on and add to your Netflix queue as appropriate.

 

 

The Bandit of Sherwood Forest (1947)
Coming scant years after the end of WWII, Cornel Wilde plays Robin Hood's son Robert, who teams up with good ol' dad to prevent a reign of tyranny. THe Regent of England (William of Pembroke) locks up the boy King and tries to swipe the throne for himself. Beautifully-shot by the same Cinematographer as The Adventures of Robin Hood (Tony Gaudio), Bandit looks great in Academy ratio Technicolor.

 

 

Prince of Thieves (1948)
Costner's movie swiped its title from this flick, which stars Jon Hall, the same guy who played Ali Baba in Ali Baba and the Forty Thieves, as Robin Hood. This one was done as a reworking of the traditional Robin Hood myth, and only runs 72 minutes. Shot in Cinecolor instead of Technicolor, darker scenes early in the movie look like they were colorized from black and white with a dash of acid. I don't mean that as a bad thing.

 

 

Rogues of Sherwood Forest (1950)
Another "son of" Robin Hood tale, I never thought I'd see a "Hood" movie directed by the same guy who made THEM! (Gordon Douglas), but here it is. Rogues was Alan Hale Sr.'s final film appearance, which was also his third time playing Little John over a span of 28 years. Hale's first go was opposite Douglas Fairbanks and his second was in the iconic and much-beloved Michael Curtiz-directed Adventures of Robin Hood with Errol Flynn.

 

 

Sword of Sherwood Forest (1960)
Some people only need the incentive of seeing Peter Cushing play the Sheriff of Nottingham to get them. Add in the director of Hammer Films' Horror of Dracula (Terence Fisher), and you seal the deal. Richard Greene, who played Hood throughout the 50's on TV, plays him on the big screen for the first time here.

Of the four "Hood" movies released on disc recently, this is the only one in 2.35:1 MegaScope widescreen, and it looks wonderful. Combine solid visuals with a story involving an assassination plot against the Archbishop of Canterbury, and this one's more irresistible than the rest. Oliver Reed and Desmond Llewelyn appear in a couple parts early in their careers.

All four titles are $9 from Amazon and can be ordered by clicking on the accompanying screenshot.

Private Ryan Re-deployed

I haven't had time to re-watch the replacement copy of Saving Private Ryan that arrived this afternoon, but I thought it'd be good to get the physical differences in packaging out there to those who'd be interested.

 


I find the implication here hilarious. That is to say: the original disc that I was sent was unclean and impure.

 

 


The Yellow UPC label is the only noticeable outward difference...

 

 


...but the key is that the new Disc 1 now has a blue label instead of grey (like Disc 2 seen on the left).

 

Everybody Comes to Rick's

In his commentary track on the Casablanca DVD and Blu-ray (recorded in 2003), Roger Ebert hits the nail on the head, to wit:

"We're living in a time when, for a lot of people, cinema history begins with Star Wars. A lot of younger viewers are not too interested in old movies, they aren't interested in silent movies, they don't like black and white movies, and yet...they make an exception for Casablanca."

 

 

That, better than anything I could come up with, is why the movie is always a good way to start a Summer Film Series.

I've agreed to contribute some regular column inches to the Summer Film Series held annually at the historic Paramount Theatre here in Austin.

My payment is being remitted in the form of a summer-long, all-access pass and complimentary soda/popcorn for myself and a guest. Don't tell anyone at the Paramount that I was planning to do this anyway, but the comped admission and cinema staples make it more financially feasible to spend as much time at the Paramount as I'd really like to this summer.

The style of the programming is predominantly double features running two days apiece, reversing order the second night. The 2010 lineup has great movies coming out of its ears. Here's a taste of some must-sees from now until early September:

Another Thin Man
The Thin Man Goes Home
On the Waterfront
Frenzy
Batman (1966) with Adam West in-person
The Taking of Pelham One, Two, Three
Goodfellas
Raging Bull
Giant
The Last Picture Show
Lone Star
The Adventures of Robin Hood
Shane
The Searchers
Freaks
Alien - The Director's Cut
All That Heaven Allows
Rebecca
All That Jazz
Showgirls
Valley of the Dolls
Mutiny on the Bounty
Captain Blood
Bride of Frankenstein
A Night at the Opera
Badlands
The Red Shoes
Ran
The Umbrellas of Cherbourg
Breathless
Sunrise
M. Hulot's Holiday
West Side Story
Lawrence of Arabia (in 70mm)
Those Magnificent Men in Their Flying Machines
Vertigo (in 70mm)
The Big Lebowski

There are even more wonderful titles peppered in there, so take a look at the full calendar and don't miss a chance to see classics the way they were meant to be seen.

"Film Fan" members of the Paramount get a sneak show of Casablanca tonight preceded by an opening party. Casablanca is tonight at 7pm, followed by The Maltese Falcon ay 9:20pm. They swap showtimes tomorrow night. They show again Sunday in a double-double as follows:

Casablanca
3:45pm & 8:20pm

The Maltese Falcon
1:30pm & 6:05pm

Whether you live in Austin or not, seek out your local summer retro film series and support it. These classics of various stripes are the backbone of the cinema world, and they need support.

Clever Valentine's Day-related Title

I give a pass to sappy rom-coms that actually try, rather than cobble together a pseudo-ripoff of something that's already successful. Valentine's Day is full of people I like in other movies, and a director that seems like a helluva nice guy to work with, but the movie doesn't know what it wants to be.
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Return to Darkness

It's frequently tossed aside that Martin Campbell directed the now-classic original BBC miniseries version in addition to the recent feature version of Edge of Darkness. In one of the "focus point" featurettes included on last week's Blu-ray, Campbell mentions that the only guy who would have made a movie work was Mel Gibson, and he does, for the most part.
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Faux-Controversy Over Waco

I'm disappointed that there's still a false perception as to why Waco isn't shooting in Texas. Frankly, I think it's hilarious that anyone thought a movie about the Branch Davidian thing was going to shoot in Texas in the first place.
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Making Time

Late last year, I covered Criterion's wonderful Golden Age of Television set. Included was the teleplay version of No Time For Sergeants, whose massive success translated into a feature film version three years later.

I'd originally seen the movie before the Golden Age set introduced me to the predecessor. Now that I've seen the movie again, I kind of miss the low-rent, faster-paced vibe of the teleplay performance. Andy Griffith is wonderful as he always has been, but as with all great performers, once you've seen them do their thing in front of a live audience, there's nothing like it. The DVD includes no extras, but is worth having rather than renting for me thanks to there just not being enough Andy Griffith on my shelf that I always have access to.

The trio that made the move from Broadway. Don Knotts played the Army shrink.
The Andy Griffith Show was a comfort program for me. It always reminded me of the moments in life where things are more patient and considered. The world where there were consequences and you felt bad about screwing up. My generation is the one that grew up blaming everyone else for everything we did wrong or not well enough. We could be "anything", we were told, if only we'd put our minds to it. Mayberry introduced me to a place where people figured out what they were going to be and doing it, rather than pissing life away bullshitting about the million things that they were never going to do, or were always about to do. Amazon has the No Time for Sergeants DVD listed at $12.49.
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"I'm Botoxicus!"

I wish I hadn't been disappointed with Universal's Blu-ray of Spartacus from the opening frame, but this one is a burn. The opening shot contains so much edge enhancement that I honestly thought I was watching a DVD. I'm still rather shocked that Spartacus turned out this badly.

 


What was so bad about white letters over black? Did they need to make this key art for the opening bit of the Overture?

 

There's so much visible de-graining that it's like Universal added a "botoxify" button to the machines that do their masters. The Blu-ray horror show I'd compare it to the most is Fox's Patton, which suffers from similar digital plastic surgery. There's a shot here and there that looks...all right I suppose, but this is a movie that should transfix you on this format, not make you squint or shrink back.

Robert A. Harris, who supervised a very expensive restoration a couple of decades ago, weighed in with his thoughts a few days ago. I agree with him on every point, especially that this rush-job does considerable damage to the brand and reputation of the Blu-ray format. Set aside the fact that as with Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas and others, Universal chose not to license the extras created by the Criterion Collection for their DVD edition. Anyone with the Spartacus Criterion DVD should keep it. Forget about this release completely, since it really has nothing of note to offer.

Remarkably, DVD Beaver gives this release a pass in spite of the consistently redder-than-it-should-be color palette and other glaring issues. Yes, the audio is improved, and yes, the picture is better in some respects in some places, but overall this is a burn, baby, burn from scene one.

I Have No Time, But I Must Screen (Vol. 4)

 


Escape from L.A. is drastically inferior to Escape from New York, but the surfing bit is funnier than most "comedies" released so far this year. I'm on the record despising actors speaking in accented-English, when they should be speaking Russian, or German, or something else that requires subtitles. I dismissed K-19: The Widowmaker out of hand for that very reason, not knowing at the time that Kathryn Bigelow directed it. I liked her work before she was winning Oscars. I admit I didn't catch up with it until the Blu-ray arrived. Carlito's Way and Dune look fantastic, with little to no visible artifacts or evidence of excessive digital noise reduction.

 

 


Sixteen years ago,Tony Stark using a suitcase to become Iron Man wasn't nearly as cool as it is in this year's Iron Man 2. The 1994 Iron Man animated series was nuts from the first episode, incorporating most of the character's rogue gallery immediately (including the much less scary Whiplash/Backlash from the comics). Considerable thesp James Avery voiced James "Rhodey" Rhodes, which was pretty distracting on its own, considering his direct association to playing patriarch Phillip Banks on The Fresh Prince of Bel Air. Stark himself is played by Robert Hays (Ted Striker in Airplane!). The complete series hit DVD on three discs a couple of weeks ago. The final two-disc set of the 90's X-Men series arrived on the same day, and includes an episode guest-starring Captain America. When people complain about comic book adaptations not being "true to the comic", I wish I had a series like this for every property so that I could say "there it is. What you're talking about only works as a cartoon."

 

Complicated Naptime

I didn't dislike It's Complicated for the reason various male critics have: they dismissed it as "older lady wish-fulfillment fantasy". Substitute some nouns and adjectives and that descriptor applies to the best films of Federico Fellini. I'm not saying Nancy Meyers is a female Fellini, just pointing to the flaw in a hypocritical, sexist argument that I see far too often.

There were bits I had fun with, that reminded me of the Shymeyers golden era movies like Father of the Bride duology (which I still enjoy), but they were painfully few and far between. I stayed awake thanks specifically to Streep, Baldwin, and Martin, with a side of John Krasinski. The best thing it's got going is Streep and Martin doing pot. Well, there's that and every time Baldwin opens his mouth. He works wonders with uncomplicated brutes.

The Blu-ray includes a commentary track with writer/director Nancy Meyers and a 20-minute featurette that is nothing more than EPK fluff. Everyone seems to have loved working with everyone, and by the way: everyone was fabulous.

Paramount Officially Recalls Private Ryan

As reported here yesterday by way of The Digital Bits, there's an audio synch issue with all Saving Private Ryan Blu-rays currently in the wild. Today, Paramount issued an official recall posted at The 'Bits. Apparently, the issue is related to a mastering error at "valuable partner" Technicolor prior to mass duplication.

People who already have discs in hand can follow these replacement instructions from at The 'Bits (where you can read the rest of it):

"Technicolor has set up the following toll-free numbers for consumers who have already purchased the Saving Private Ryan Sapphire Series Blu-ray, which provides details on how they can receive a replacement copy -- US and Canada: 888-370-8621, UK: 08000-852-613. Consumers can also return the Blu-ray to the stores where they purchased the product to receive a replacement. Technicolor expects to have replacement discs available at retail no later than Tuesday, May 18."

Digital Bits Editor Bill Hunt (scholar, gentleman, and good guy) has confirmed that the "fixed discs" will have yellow UPC labels.

Paging Night Nurse

The original Alamo Drafthouse folks throw any event, whether large or small, better than anyone else. Take the ordinary, and they can make it kind of a big deal with seemingly no effort.

 

Take a Flying Leap

Why the hell did my wife and I watch Leap Year? Morbid curiosity? We shut off the cable and wondered if it could be worse than most of that crap that we watched? In the interest of familiarity, it follows Amy Adams, Matthew Goode, and Louis Vuitton The Suitcase on an impossibly long journey across Ireland so that Anna (Adams) can propose to her boyfriend on Leap Day (an old Irish folk tradition). I won't argue the coincidental nature of a dashing ruffian Irish chef happening to be available as a taxi driver in the tiny village Anna finds herself in. You throw out coincidences, and you throw out most movies, since that literally describes crossing of paths. I will argue that this movie was composed to be a perfect fit as a Lifetime Saturday Matinee. Transitions even quick-fade to black like a commercial is about to pop up. The poster, marketing, and everything is aimed at American women of some Irish descent who identify as "Irish", are obsessed with Cladegh rings, are probably Catholic (lapsed or not), and obsessed with nuclear family values. The three stars make the most they can of the material (admittedly not much),including "Louis" the suitcase. I hope they got a big fat pile of money from Louis Vuitton for product placement, since the repeated brand-dropping is more prevalent than a believable plot or characters to speak of. The Blu-ray tellingly only includes seven minutes of deleted scenes in the extras. The movie bombed hard, and on top of that, everyone involved seemed to be fully cognizant that they were in MadLibs: The Movie (Romantic Comedy Edition!). And, SPOILER ALERT: They spoil the end of the movie in the photos on the back of the case and the clips in the menu, and on top of that, when Anna walked up to a cliff at the end, I kind of hoped she would jump and make the movie somehow memorable rather than execrable.
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House Party 2.5

Just after the release of House Party 2 and a couple of years before House Party 3, Kid N' Play teamed up for Class Act, a Prince and the Pauper descendant by way of Trading Places. Kid plays a poindextery nerd, and Play is a delinquent. They both transfer to the same school, and oh snap, their records and photos get switched! File this one under remakes that don't wouldn't work in the Information Age.

Best-known for her role as Hilary on The Fresh Prince of Bel-Air, Karyn Parsons (seated, left) has the movie's most-quoted line, "Let's make bacon!"
One of the things Class Act does better than many, many movies is that the game show-style academic competition show sequence is blissfully short. The cast is an interesting mix, from Rhea Perlman to Pauly Shore to Doug E. Doug to Meshach Taylor (Hollywood Montrose from Mannequin). There's a brief appearance from the wonderful Loretta Devine. I'd forgotten that one of my college theatre professors, Tony Simotes (now Artistic Director of Shakespeare & Co.) appears briefly as well. Class Act is early 90's, sub-100 minute comedy at its most typical. It's a waste of time to some, but has nostalgic value to many of us.

Madames et Monsieurs...The Wiez
Warner Archive will have Class Act available for sale starting 18 May at this link.
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Criterion Collected: Fixing Up Stagecoach (#516)

In the opening minutes of Stagecoach, Gatewood (the banker) pronounces "what's good for the banks is good for the country!". That moment underscores one of the qualities that makes Stagecoach forever young and fresh: populist social commentary.

Screencap from DVD Beaver's writeup.
Many now cite other movies like My Darling Clementine as their favorite from John Ford. They dismiss Stagecoach as nothing more than a "popular success" and party to an Orson Welles soundbite. I think my collegiate preference for Clementine came from listening to too many academics instead of my gut. In the years since, Stagecoach and The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance have come about even with one another. I'd be curious to ask folks who turn their noses up at Stagecoach how recently they've revisited it. I've watched it three or four times since receiving my advance copy, and I'm not a guy who has a ton of free time to re-watch things. Even though it hasn't always been my favorite Ford, it has always been my favorite picture featuring John Wayne.

The handsome packaging on Criterion's Stagecoach (25th May) reminds you of the difference between things you own and things you borrow. I love that they incorporated one of Yakima Canutt's most iconic stunts into the cover art. You don't get a good appreciation for the subtle design flourishes in the cover and packaging in photos, it's something you need to see in person.
It bears mentioning that, contrary to popular belief, he's not really the star. It made him a star, but Claire Trevor is the headliner and the center of the story. I enjoy correcting people who tell me they love the part where Wayne jumps from horse to horse, and I tell them it's actually a European immigrant named Yakima Canutt (but I'll get to him later). Nine people are on a trip from point A to point B on a stagecoach, with Apaches in between. The plot is simple, and thanks to that simplicity, stereotypes rise above their typical implementations. You get enough archetypical characters in one place, and they start to resemble the real world to most viewers. That accessibility is why Stagecoach is credited as catapulting the western into being the juggernaut genre of the next decade or so after its release. Regarding the picture restoration, I'm not going to reprint all of my thoughts from the preview piece that I ran a couple of weeks ago. Instead, I'm going to respond to the concerns Jeff raised recently in response to Gary Tooze's DVD Beaver piece by selectively pulling from one graph of my article and elaborating. In Jeff's piece, he raises concerns about the amount of grain in the image, the fact that they left picture damage in, and that Tooze calls the mono soundtrack "flat". From me: "The dolly shot of Wayne is still blown out, but that's how it looked originally (shot over-lit on a soundstage). There are still some frames that feature some damage, but without inventing wholly missing data, there's nothing else to be done. One shot notably features a black mark dead in the center of the frame for a few seconds, but I presume that there were no suitable elements that contained that portion of the picture intact, so Criterion wisely left well enough alone." I wrote this before I had a copy of the booklet, which details the restoration thusly: "Stagecoach is presented in its original aspect ratio of 1.37:1. On widescreen televisions, black bars will appear on the left and right of the image to maintain the proper screen format. For the DVD edition, the picture has been slightly windowboxed to ensure that the maximum image is visible on all monitors. "The original negative for Stagecoach has been considered lost for decades. For this edition, we evaluated several of the best surviving prints, both restored and original, before we found a 1942 nitrate duplicate negative that showed exceptional detail, gray scale, and clarity. We chose it as the primary source for this new high-definition digital transfer, created on a Spirit 2K Datacine, because we believed it was the best surviving film material of Stagecoach. For safety, a new 35 mm fine-grain positive was made from the negative as a preservation." This is why Tooze notes "different" damage between this and the previous Warner Bros. DVD. Mystery solved, so take Encyclopedia Brown off the case. Glenn Kenny and I park our Grain Monk bicycles at the same abbey. "Inevitably, certain defects remain. The picture suffered from thousands of instances of blended-in scratches and debris, especially around reel changes and in action sequences. In cases where the damage was not fixable without leaving traces of our restoration work, we elected to leave the original damage. Through hundreds of hours of restoration work, we've manually removed the worst of the damage, along with dirt, splices, warps, jitter, and flicker, using..." So yes, they left some damage in because to "correct" it would leave digital fingerprints and smudge marks that would not inspire the latest Jeff meme, "angel erections" from the movie's director. My incredulous disagreement with Jeff's rant the other day comes from knowing that the Masters of Cinema disc of City Girl benefits from dramatically better condition of available elements, including the original negative. By extension, his argument also would contend that all movies of previous eras were shot on the exact same quality of stock with the same DP and the same lighting rigs and conditions. As for his crack about the sound, the audio track is single channel Mono, but as clean and crisp as could be throughout. I wouldn't want some "extrapolated" 5.1 or 2.0 track on this or any Mono movie. This is the extent to which I'll cramp my fingers arguing against an indefensible, sight-unseen "guess-essment". One last thing, though: if you don't like grain and want some digitally smoothed-out botoxified picture, you should go back to DVD and forget Blu-ray exists. The essay in the booklet is written by the extremely knowledgeable David Cairns, who no less than Irish screenwriter Graham Linehan (Father Ted, The I.T. Crowd) touts in a quote on Cairns' website. Cairns does a brilliant job of encapsulating the lasting value of Stagecoach.

The book also includes the short story "Stage to Lordsburg", which inspired the film.
The commentary track by author Jim Kitses (Horizons West) proposes some interesting hypotheses and makes some compelling arguments in favor of Stagecoach's worthiness as a classic of its genre and cinema in general. Especially notable are his sound points regarding allegations of racism against Ford here, which I agree are largely baseless. The inclusion of the once-lost Ford silent Bucking Broadway (1917) is nice, complete with a new score written and performed by Donald Sosin. I don't really plan to re-watch it much, but it's a good historical antecedent to the New Western that Stagecoach was. I should hope future Criterion silent westerns (hope hope) make use of Sosin for new scoring. One of the most satisfying parts of the package is an hour-plus 1968 interview with Ford conducted by British TV presenter Philip Jenkinson. Ford just lets Jenkinson have it with every ounce of snark and acerbic wit he can spew. The 15-minute interview with Peter Bogdanovich plays as a nice complementary piece to the Ford chat in that it's almost wholly concerned with how Bogdanovich broke through Ford's shell. The appreciation featurettes of both Yakima Canutt and trader Harry Goulding are the kinds of things you only find in the Criterion Collection. Goulding was the guy who brought Ford out to Monument Valley, the place that would be Ford's cinematic stomping grounds for some time to come. Canutt is the spiritual father of all modern stuntmen, and performed the big stunts in the film: the horse-jumping one for Wayne and the Apache going under the stage, both during the big chase sequence. Yakima Canutt deserves his own biopic, but failing that, the short featurette on this disc suffices in highlighting his significant contributions to stunt work and film in general. Tag Gallagher contributes another of his wonderful video essays, examining Ford visual approach and choices. Gallagher's essays are mini-workshops on framing, lighting, and focus: how and why they did what.

Amazon is offering Stagecoach for pre-order at $29.49. The Criterion Store lists it at a firm $31.96.
Criterion's release of Stagecoach is the finest overall presentation of a western available on Blu-ray. The restored transfer and absolute feast of supplemental material have set a new standard for the respect that should be paid to classic westerns on disc. As I said in my tease to this article, I hope this means that we'll see Criterion take on more of them, since they really know how to put the shine back into an old, appreciated, but neglected saddle.
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Remembering Ryan (and 1998)

The night before I watched Saving Private Ryan on Blu-ray, Shakespeare in Love was on one of the various movie channels. The cable service we're cutting off in a few days has caused me to unintentionally be suckered into re-watching all kinds of things that I haven't seen in years. The last time I watched Ryan was 2002 or 2003, but all throughout college, I was subjected to the "Ryan v. Shakespeare" Best Picture argument over and over. I preferred Elizabeth and The Thin Red Line to both, personally.

Contrary to Jeff's accuracy arguments dashed off of the top of his head last week, the biggest "true to life" failings were the prominent officer marking on Hanks' helmet, all the talking they did in the Normandy bit while ostensibly sneaking around, and that our group of heroes are in Wave One, of which there were basically no survivors. The video transfer on Ryan is stellar, as with other Sapphire Series titles (excepting Gladiator, which is being re-released later this year). It's a gigantic improvement over the muddy (by comparison) DVD transfer. The biggest improvement is in the contrast levels, where less is hidden in unintended murky shadows. The hint of color in skin that could be seen in theatrical prints has returned in the new HD transfer. The color palette was always desaturated, but the DVD turned everyone into a pale vampire. As reported by The Digital Bits today, there is an audio sync issue that's now been acknowledged by the studio. It's not your player, it's the disc. My copy was affected by this and I held my review because I couldn't ascertain if it was my player, a concentrated issue, more widespread, or something else. The issue affects any and all discs currently out there, and Amazon has temporarily pulled it from active sale. Retail stores are following suit. The good news is that there is going to be a disc replacement program put into place ASAP. This is a shame, since the video transfer is one of the top modern film Blu-ray transfers of the year thus far. The Blu-ray extras are wholly repurposed from the D-Day 60th Anniversary Commemorative Edition released in 2004. They still omit the 20-minute featurette from the original 1998 DVD release, but it was un-memorable enough that I've completely forgotten it by now. I'm very happy they cleaned up and re-transferred the theatrical and re-release trailers, but they're the only extras in HD. The fact the extras are on a Blu-ray disc would be great if they were in HD, but the ported featurettes are all SD.
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Authentic Ass-Kicking

I like Defendor a great deal more than Kick Ass. Woody Harrelson's Arthur Poppington is the genuine article good samaritan against sane judgment. Only part of my relative preference is due to Defendor sticking with a world of realistic physics rather than setting that up and then eschewing it as Kick Ass does. That isn't to say that I disliked Kick Ass.

The thing is that KA falls into the wish fulfillment subset that never see the stakes raised. I never felt that the hero wouldn't emerge triumphant, not for a moment. Come to think of it, that's how I felt about the army of drone bots in Iron Man 2. Everything in KA lives in a heightened reality: the physics, the motivations, all of it. I liked it within the rules it set up and bent, I did, but there was no suspense to the whole endeavor (and that isn't because I read the comic...I didn't). Defendor is more of a success in the respect of it being a compelling "regular guy becomes a vigilante and gets his ass kicked a lot" story. I didn't really give a shit about the hero of Kick Ass after a point. I was much more interested in the complexity of Big Daddy and Hit Girl. Harrelson's Arthur/Defendor never lost me for a moment. Maybe I loved this because the bad guy's name is Captain Industry. Maybe I just dug Harrelson's "Bale Batman Voice". Maybe it was the WWI trench club, or maybe it was the well-intentioned, gentle texture that is missing from so many comic book heroes. The other guys were all painted with the same broad-shouldered brush in the 60's and 70's, and that's the reason so many comic movies have a homogenized plot, hero, and structure. Kat Dennings and Elias Koteas are both also in top form. Dennings I'd only seen in House Bunny and Shorts previously, but here she actually has something to work with. Netflix it, RedBox it, rent or buy Defendor in whatever flavor you prefer. This is "comic book hero" cinema that enriches the field rather than simply retread things with a glossy CG sheen. It's yet another triumph for Harrelson, and a credit to all involved. Sony released it last month, and Amazon has it for $21.49, and I'd classify it a safe blind buy if you're the type. The DVD includes deleted scenes, outtakes, a bundle of featurettes, and a commentary track with Harrelson, Dennings, the producer, and the writer/director. This was a great discovery for me.
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Disc Roundup (Movies & TV) 11 May

The Disc Roundup is making a comeback, as I want to trim down my overall number of posts, but localize disc coverage and at once make the content more substantive. Standalone reviews and little bits will still pop through, but only as time and merit dictate. Assume that all titles are Blu-ray and DVD unless otherwise noted.

Release of the Week - Catalog New to Blu (tie) M (The Criterion Collection) I'm crowning this title sight-unseen based on recent track record of Criterion's B&W releases. All supplements from the DVD reissue are present along with the English language version, once thought to be lost. Rock N Roll High School (The Roger Corman Collection) Shout! Factory is kicking off their Roger Corman Collection with one of his highest-profile and most beloved movies. Shout! has informed me that a copy is in the mail to me, so I'll follow up once I've had my eyes on it.

Release of the Week - Catalog TV Daria: The Complete Series They had to replace some music due to music rights complications (the plague of many an MTV property). I haven't received a copy yet, but a friend and major Daria devotee assures me that it's every bit as satisfying as MTV's The State collection from last year. Release of the Week - Movies New Release Daybreakers The Speirig Brothers are among the genre filmmakers out there that really know what they're doing. I was shut out of a Fantastic Fest press screening of this movie that I had put on my schedule and was told I was clear for. I was given the thumbs down by the flack at the door, because I hadn't "signed up to do an interview with talent". I said, "fine, I'd love to, I just didn't think I would have time to talk with them and didn't want to abruptly no-show or cancel on you." To that, I got a "sorry, we're all full" from the rep who obviously didn't understand the definition of the word "publicity". Being fully cognizant of how little influence I have as just one guy, I didn't kill myself to get into the public Closing Night screening (which was sold out anyway). I also missed it in first run because there was too much going on at the time. I trusted in the Speirigs putting together something worth watching, and figured that I'd just wait for DVD/Blu. Aside from the eleven million trailers in-between popping in the disc and the main menu, the disc is nicely put together. Extras include commentary with the directors and Steven Boyle (creature designer), a printed note from the directors in the case (a rarity these days), a feature-length Making of Daybreakers doc, Speirig Bros. short The Big Picture, picture-inpicture animatics and storyboards during the feature, and the requisite digital copy. A nice package overall, complimenting a worthy new entry into the vampire genre. [Note: future DR installments will feature more mini-reviews like this]
From Hammer Films' Sword of Sherwood Forest
Release of the Week - Catalog Movie New to Disc Bandit of Sherwood Forest (1946) Prince of Thieves (1948) Rogues of Sherwood Forest (1950) Sword of Sherwood Forest (1960) Sony put together four of the 52 film incarnations of Robin Hood in concert with the Ridley Scott-ified version of the legend premiering at Cannes this week. I'll have a screencap-laden spread on these titles tomorrow. Movie New Releases Edge of Darkness I dearly love the original miniseries starring Bob Peck, which Warner put out last year. I didn't catch this one in first run, and plan on spinning it in the coming days. North Face (DVD only) Legend of the Tsunami Warrior Tidal Wave Malice in Wonderland (DVD only) Magnolia & Magnet have this trio of curiosities out today. Tsunami Warrior and Tidal Wave are South Asian titles that interest me, but I'm just aware of their existence. Into the rental queue they go. Legion This is worthy of skipping according to friends. I can't see making the time, myself. Catalog New to Blu The Karate Kid Collection (The Karate Kid I & II) I have a healthy amount of nostalgia attached to these movies, as I re-watched them many, many times on VHS as a kid. The AV transfers are solid, and it recreates the theatrical experience as best as I'd gather is possible. All previous extras from the most recent DVD editions are preserved. Added for Blu-ray is a fact/trivia track. I'll have more to say relative to these movies and the upcoming Chan-headlined remake. The Edge Mamet, Baldwin, Hopkins, and Bart the Bear: a wonderful combination. I haven't gotten my hands on this disc, though I was told I'd have it by now. Such are the troubles associated with moving and being of a million different comp lists. The Magnificent Seven Collection (The Magnificent Seven, Return of the Magnificent Seven, Guns of the Magnificent Seven, The Magnificent Seven Ride!) I've only seen the first two in the series, but have to say I'm tremendously impressed with MGM/Fox Home Video putting them all out in HD simultaneously. I haven't managed to get my hands on this yet, so I can't speak to the transfer quality on them. They're westerns, so I'll end up tracking the box down sooner or later. Hang 'Em High Ditto for this one: gotta have it as both a solid Eastwood-headlined western and as an enjoyable revenge movie. The Man in the Iron Mask (1998) I have no interest in revisiting this, one of the big stunt casting bores of the 90's. Marked For Death (1990) These are Seagal's finest 94 minutes. Reissue/Repackaging Kid With the Golden Arm (1980) The original US DVD edition of this was apparently taped off of a TV screen. This has to be some sort of improvement, right? Robin Hood: Men in Tights History of the World Part 1 High Anxiety Blu-rays of these all came out as part of the Mel Brooks Collection. Now you can get them separately. The box set comes out cheaper per disc if you want all the movies in it. Catalog Movies New to Disc One Deadly Summer (L'ete Meurtrier [1983]) "French movie arrives on Region 1 DVD for the first time": a headline not often written. The Cantinflas Collection El Circo El Senor Fotografo El Gendarme Desconocido El Mago Si Yo Fuera Diputado A Volar Joven Los Tres Mosqueteros The "Mexican Chaplin" Cantinflas' movies have been available on extremely poor quality bootlegs in the US for years, but Sony has finally released them properly. I haven't been able to look at these discs in advance, but I've not seen a terrible DVD or Blu mastering job by Sony in years. More titles will come to their Cantinflas series this summer. TV New Releases Raising the Bar Season 2 Catalog TV The Fresh Prince of Bel-Air Season 5 I'm prepping a short Will Smith then and now bit for tomorrow (emphasis on short). Larry McMurtry's Streets of Laredo Larry McMurtry's Dead Man's Walk thirtysomething Season 3
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