Disc Release of the Week
The State: The Complete Series
One of the most long-awaited catalog TV releases has finally arrived, after delay upon delay upon delay. This one sketch comedy series launched the careers of the stars of Wet Hot American Summer, Reno 911!, Stella, and countless other original, interesting movies and TV shows since. One of the things I and others of my generation loved it for was how gleefully inappropriate the subject matter was, along the lines of other successful sketch shows like Monty Python's Flying Circus and The Kids in the Hall. Like those shows, the sketches The State put together age really well.
Some sketches were so controversial that they never re-aired. One from the first episode made Budweiser really angry because it depicted binge drinkers as depressed, angry people. The new controversy surrounding The State comes from the re-scoring of some sketches for DVD. They were cheap to shoot with famous songs back then, but they were never cleared for home video, so replacement cues had to be done. The millions of dollars it would cost to use the original music will never fall on MTV's doorstep, so this is the most definitive release anyone can hope for unless the music industry goes completely copyright-free.
Each Season is contained on its own disc, with Commentary on every episode done by different members of the group along with some vintage interviews and outtakes. The interviews are culled from what seems like the same session, just chopped into easily-digested bites. The outtakes don't run more than ten minutes on any given disc.
The Bonus Disc is where the bulk of the extras lie. First off is the original Pilot and a giant heap of unaired sketches from the Pilot and Seasons 1-3, all of which feature full commentary tracks. There are even outtakes from the unaired stuff. Next up are a series of special appearances the cast did, including a favorite of mine from The Jon Stewart Show. They also did MTV's "Shut Up & Laugh, Panama City," "Spring Break Safety Tips," and an MTV Christmas Party video. The Promos included are miniature sketches disguised as commercials.
The show has never been available legally, and the extras have never appeared anywhere. Let's all hope the cast gets residuals from DVD sales and act like good consumers and buy it, shall we?
Reissue
For All Mankind
Criterion has remastered and re-supplemented one of my favorites of their early DVDs in both Blu-ray and DVD. The new transfer is glorious, from what I've been told.
DVD Only
[REC]
Spanish horror done well and remade under the title Quarantine. Haven't looked at the disc, but from all reports it looks and sounds good. Worth renting if not buying to send the purchasing message that people want to watch this title.
Grey Gardens
HBO's Emmy-nominated dramatization of the Maysles doc Grey Gardens, which is also now a musical called Grey Gardens. Malkovich Malkovich? Malkovich Malkovich. It's supposed to be really well-done.
Horsemen
Skipped it by virtue of not knowing it existed.
Van Wilder: Freshman Year
Direct to DVD
They made a sequel with Kal Penn whooping up the Indian stereotype character of Taj, which made no money, so they decided to do a prequel. Not that the original was any sort of masterpiece, but they've betrayed the nature of what does work about it: that you don't need to know the specifics of Van Wilder's seven debauched years that came before. People were interested in how Darth Vader became Darth Vader, but no one gives a shit about this "universe," so guys, stop trying to squeeze blood out of the turnip. Apparently someone from MTV is in this too and the campus ROTC organization is the bad guy.
New to Blu
Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon
Only available in a box set with Zhang Yimou's House of Flying Daggers and Curse of the Golden Flower, I've heard good things about this transfer and should be seeing it soon. More then.
The Towering Inferno
Let's hear it for 1970's paycheck blockbusters starring people who were working beneath their quality grade! Haven't looked at it, but would like to at some point.
Catalog TV
The Transformers: 25th Anniversary Matrix of Leadership Edition Complete Series
Mail Order Only through Shout! Factory
This set will hit major retailers, online and B&M, later in the year, and it's the best treatment the show has ever gotten on home video. Previous releases have featured flawed audio tracks with added sound effects and horrendous video transfers of various episodes. In addition to all 98 installments of The Transformers, the commercials, and PSAs, the package also includes a couple of magnets and a collectible booklet listing all the episodes with summaries.
I grew up with this show. It originally premiered when I was a year old, so I saw the big rerun go of it they did later in the 80's. There are toys secreted away in some plastic tub somewhere in my parents' house that I haven't seen in years. And no, I don't have any interest in buying new toys from either the movie or the ones from the original shows that pushed my parents into more debt than I could comprehend at that point.
I wasn't particularly interested in watching every episode of the show when it arrived, but I couldn't wait to look at the featurettes, of which there are nearly two hours included. That being said, I did hunt down a few episodes I had either forgotten or never saw. In particular, the one called Thief In The Night (just like a Christian propaganda film) would never get made today. I've still got to get through some of this and should have a full review up sometime this weekend.
G.I. Joe Season 1.1
This is the first chunk of what's teased in an advertisement inside the Transformers set: a G.I. Joe mega-set that includes the entire series and all 78 costumes worn by Cobra Commander and Snake Eyes. Kidding about that last part. I've been watching and live-tweeting episodes from this set partly for comic relief. The more socio-political programming I see, the sicker it makes me to think most of my generation was conditioned with this stuff.
This set includes the three miniseries (5 episodes each) that relaunched the toy line and the first 7 episodes of the first season proper. Extras include the "Knowing is Half the Battle" PSAs that have been unavailable since G.I. Joe: The Movie went out of print, the original 1963 Toy Fair presentation, and some commercials with the kids' faces blurred out.
New Release TV
Leverage Season 1 (DVD only)
This show makes me want to actually pay attention to TNT, a network that has more than a passing familiarity with Drama (according to them). Timothy Hutton plays an ex-insurance industry investigator who is hired to work alongside the people he used to try to catch: thieves of various stripes. Nate (Hutton) got out of the corporate racket when the company he worked for deemed the treatment his terminal son needed to be "experimental" and let the kid die.
Beth Riesgraf (mother of Jason Lee's kid Pilot Inspektor), Aldis Hodge, and Christian Kane play his new "teammates." I'm only really familiar with Kane from his acting in Secondhand Lions and Friday Night Lights. All three are fun to watch work. Gina Bellman, a favorite of mine from UK sitcom Coupling, plays a grifter who's a better actress off-stage than on.
The show gets everything up to speed in lightning fashion in the first episode, and uses a great comedy/action dynamic overall. There is Episodic Commentary on the whole 13-episode season from the three Executive Producers and sometime writers and directors, who include Dean Devlin. Deleted Scenes are on each disc for episodes they pertain to, and Disc 4 has four Behind-the-Scenes featurettes and a short done for iF Magazine where Beth Riesgraf plays a crazed version of herself.
Mad Men Season 2 (DVD & Blu-ray)
The reviews for this show are so over the moon, I feel like the uncool kid at school for not having seen more than a few minutes of the first episode. I'll catch up, I promise.
BBC Earth: Wild Pacific
Capitalizing on the hours and hours of footage compiled by the BBC for their Planet Earth series, they've done a look at the Pacific Ocean that clocks in just seven minutes shy of 6 hours. I'll have something more in-depth on this once I have a chance to give it a look.
On Demand
New Orleans Mon Amour
Watchable on FilmBuff VOD channel on some cable providers.
I missed Michael Almereyda's New Orleans Mon Amour at SXSW when it played there. I'll have some more on this one next week.
Fresh from the Cinema
The Edge of Love
The Haunting in Connecticut
I had no time for either of these movies. Apologies if that bothers anyone.