Disc of the Week
Lonely Are the Brave
From my earlier review:
"Not only one of the great "death of the West" pictures, Lonely Are the Brave is by many accounts one of the best westerns ever made. Its star, Kirk Douglas, rates it as his favorite film he's worked on. It broke the blacklist with Dalton Trumbo's full credit for writing. Aside from a VHS that is long out of print and the occasional Turner Classic Movies airing, the movie has been impossible to find for a long time.
"Douglas plays Jack Burns, a man with no government-issued ID or car. All Jack has is the shirt on his back, a horse, and the bare necessities. He has a friend he finds out has been put in prison. The friend's wife, Jerry, is played by Gena Rowlands. She and Jack have some sort of unrequited chemistry that becomes immediately apparent in Jerry's first moments on-screen. Walter Matthau appears later on as the sheriff tasked with tracking Jack down.
"The two extras are more than I ever expected I'd see on this release. Lonely Are The Brave: A Tribute [19:13] features new interview footage with Kirk Douglas, his son Michael, Gena Rowlands, and Steven Spielberg. It may mark me as a sap, but I've felt for a while now that it would be a terrible injustice to allow the movie to go without a DVD release before Kirk Douglas leaves us. Spielberg's presence as anything other than a fan is only explained toward the end when he reveals his role in getting the DVD out. Rowlands refers to her director son as "Nicky," which made me chuckle. The Music of Lonely Are The Brave [9:46] examines the scoring done by Jerry Goldsmith, and how his work and ingenuity here is reflected throughout his later work. I most enjoyed getting to hear clips of unused cues, the buried treasure of great composers."
This is the rare DVD worth $15 these days.
Free to Stream
Storefront Hitchcock
Watch now on Hulu.
Jonathan Demme's concert doc featuring Robyn Hitchcock can now be viewed for free online. Highly recommended for Demme and concert doc fans. At only 77 minutes long, it's difficult to come up with a decent excuse not to see it now.
Catalog New to DVD
The Trail of the Lonesome Pine
Ali Baba and the Forty Thieves
Beau Geste
I'm happy to see these entries in Universal's Backlot Series in addition to Lonely Are the Brave, even though they lack any extras aside from the odd trailer.
Trail of the Lonesome Pine stars Fred MacMurray and Henry Fonda, and commits one of the Great Mistakes a movie can make (unapologetically, I might add), and I love it for that. I didn't see it coming at all, especially from a movie made in 1936. The movie centers on a Hatfields-and-McCoys-style feud between two mountain families. MacMurray plays an "outsider" (called a foreigner by the mountain folk) who works for a railroad company. Fonda plays the son of one of the warring patriarchs who's been bred to hate and fight. Sylvia Sidney plays Fonda's cousin and wife-to-be, a barefoot mountain girl who has none of that book-learnin' the city folk have. Yes, Henry Fonda once played a definitely-inbred hillbilly engaged to his cousin.
The back of the box accurately proclaims it a melodrama, so expect some wonderful over-acting. The most notable technological achievement of the movie is that it was the first Technicolor film shot outdoors in the Blue Ridge Mountains, and it looks gorgeous. No extras, but I'm glad to finally be able to watch the movie.
The Mongols beat us to invading Iraq, but hey, maybe we'll hold onto it longer!
Ali Baba and the Forty Thieves could definitely support a studio remake with actual middle eastern actors. Jon Hall is tolerable in brownface, and Maria Montez's latin accent passes for "1944 Hollywood Iraqi," but I'd love to see an Iraqi or at least Muslim director's take on the legend. In terms of actors, put Kingdom of Heaven and Syriana's Alexander Siddig in it. Put Oded Fehr in there. Hire some of the actors form Mongol to play the Mongolians. I'm posting some more screencaps for it and other Backlot titles where I'll elaborate a bit more. The 1944 classic's Technicolor transfer is gorgeous, and its cast of thousands upon thousands is a reminder of when CGI didn't give studios excuses for not using live humans.
Beau Geste is one of the many cinema classics from 1939 that everyone should see at some point. This is it's solo premiere, since the movie was previously only available as part of a 2005 Gary Cooper box set that includes Geste, Design for Living, The Lives of a Bengal Lancer, Peter Ibbetson, and The General Died at Dawn. It was a two-double-sided-disc set, with Beau Geste on it's own dual-layer side of disc two with the exact same transfer present on this individual disc. The kicker: that set is now $14.99 on Amazon, the same price as this individual disc.
This transfer has a lot of noticeable grain in it, but that's a good thing as far as I'm concerned. I don't think that even a little DNR would have helped at all. The grain in this movie is part of the constitution of a lot of the picture. The above screen capture links to a higher-resolution version, but as I always advise with older B&W presentations, one should see it in motion to get a good idea of what the grain looks like. The presentation is very film-print-like to me, but that may not be what different viewers are looking for. For comparison's sake, the theatrical trailer is on the disc, and that, my friends, is a swirling, cataclysmic grainstorm.
The John Barrymore Collection
Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde (1920)
Sherlock Holmes (1922)
Beloved Rogue (1927)
Tempest (1928)
Kino's new set includes the DVD premiere of Barrymore's turn in Sherlock Holmes. Breaking down to around $13 a disc, this is a great value compared to paying over $20 apiece for Image Entertainment's Beloved Rogue and Tempest and $18 for Kino's 2001 Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde. They're available individually, but are priced such ($22.98 each) that if you want two of them, you might as well get the whole set for $45 from Kino directly. I haven't gotten my eyes on any of these, but I always trust Kino's track record.
Catalog DVD Re-issue
Peanuts 1960's Collection
Includes:
A Charlie Brown Christmas
Charlie Brown's All-Stars
It's the Great Pumpkin, Charlie Brown
You're In Love, Charlie Brown
He's Your Dog, Charlie Brown (New to DVD)
It Was a Short Summer, Charlie Brown (New to DVD)
Warner Bros. has collected six of the Peanuts TV specials from the 60's, with the latter two coming to DVD for the first time. If you ask me, It Was a Short Summer, Charlie Brown sounds like a horror movie. I'll dig into the quality of the transfers and the included featurette on Vince Guaraldi's music (The Maestro of Menlo Park) in the coming days.
Catalog New to Blu-ray
Grumpy Old Men
The transfer on this movie looks great, and the only extra is the original trailer. This was one of my favorite movies from childhood. Yes, my childhood. I was 10 when it was in theaters. Jack Lemmon, Walter Matthau, Ann-Margaret, Ossie Davis, and Burgess Meredith are all perfect. Kevin Pollak and Darryl Hannah likewise. Christopher MacDonald shows up long enough to reinforce his talent for playing condescending, dickheaded bullies to perfection. If I didn't already have it, this would be the perfect gift to give me. I start the movie and I can't bring myself to just watch part of it.
The Deep
A fun post-Jaws "danger in the water" movie starring Robert Shaw and Jacqueline Bisset. I figure fewer people will buy this than want to rent it in HD.
New Releases (DVD & Blu-ray)
Knowing
I skipped it, but will eventually give it a look on Alex Proyas' name alone.
The Unborn
I watched this one through (the Unrated version), and I didn't take to the jump-scares it relies upon. The only extra on it is a set of Deleted (and Alternate) Scenes.
Push
I can't dedicate any more time of my life to watching this than I did seeing a few minutes of footage last December at BNAT.
TV New Releases
Reno 911! Season 6
This show started while I was in college, and it took meeting my wife to have her introduce me to it. I have been a longtime fan of The State, which is where principals Thomas Lennon, Robert Ben Garant, and Kerri Kenney-Silver made their start. Coincidentally, this DVD set opens with a forced ad for MTV's complete series set for The State (coming next week).
UCB veteran Ian Roberts and State alum Joe Lo Truglio join the cast after the departure of Garcia (Carlos Alazraqui), Clementine (Wendi McClendon-Covey), and Cherisha Kimball (Mary Birdsong). The show is still really funny, with the two-part Murder Mystery episode being particularly hilarious.
Extras include Audio Commentary by the cast on selected episodes as well as Extended and Deleted Scenes, the first of which is a great example of how difficult it must be to edit this show. Profiles in Valor: Deputy Frank Rizzo and Sergeant Jack Declan are character moments with the two new officers.
The only beef I have with this set is that it advertises a Digital Copy of the whole season and some extras, but there's a huge catch. Said Digital Copy is Windows Media-only, and is not compatible with iPods, iPhones, PSPs, Macs, or Zunes...but is allegedly compatible with PlaysForSure-enabled devices. PlaysForSure as a brand was discontinued in late 2007 and rolled into Certified for Windows Vista. The Microsoft Zune never supported MS's PlaysForSure standard, only working with their Zune Marketplace media. So, if you have one of the few remaining devices that support this dead standard, there is indeed a way to take the media on the go! If this Digital Copy followed the compatibility of that on so many DVDs and Blu-rays these days, sales of TV sets would go up and piracy would go down. Aside from that, this is a great set.
Kath & Kim Season 1
A now-cancelled remake of a wildly-successful Australian sitcom, Kath & Kim was not as bad as some made it out to be. It's about a mother and daughter pox on humanity pair that have no idea how intolerable they really are. Molly Shannon and Selma Blair played off each other really well, and frankly did such a good job playing absolutely worthless wastes of humanity that I ended up watching a lot of the show as it aired. Their repellant personalities made me want to vomit like when I ingest grain alcohol, but I just kept drinking like an idiot. John Michael Higgins is in the show enough to make it watchable all on his own, and Mikey Day as Kim's husband Craig was enjoyable enough that I'd like to see him do some other stuff.
There are two sets of Deleted Scenes [1:47 and 2:13 respectively] split to go with the episodes on each disc. The Gag Reel [9:13] has some good bits on it, including the crew thanks videos from the cast that usually only the crew sees. There are also commentary tracks on a good chunk of the episodes.