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."