Like most of America, I missed Fracture in theaters. It's really a very capable courtroom/procedural howdunnit. It likely inspired an "I'll catch it on cable" from those who saw the trailer. Most people are accustomed to things procedurals like Fracture on TV, not as much in the cinema. It came out on DVD & Blu-ray back in the middle of June, and I'm only just catching up with it. I'm a sucker for courtroom thrillers, which I blame on all the time I spent doing Speech & Debate in school.

Anthony Hopkins plays Ted Crawford, a genius...Read More

Now that more people are jumping on the Blu-ray bandwagon, the question of how to play import discs has become a hot topic. With catalog titles and even select new releases popping up in Europe before the US, serious enthusiasts want to be able to stick a disc from anywhere in and just play.

Orange=A, Green=B, Purple=C. Image from Wikipedia.

A ton of discs, regardless of country, aren't locked by region in the first place. The problem is, it seems like all the ones collectors and cineastes want most from Region B are. Conversely, I don't think...Read More

Last week, Warner Bros. released the six Charlie Brown TV specials from the 1960's in a two-disc set, with half of them on each disc and a featurette, Vince Guaraldi: The Maestro of Menlo Park, on disc 2. Even though the packaging may appear to tell you otherwise, You're In Love, Charlie Brown is on disc 2 as well. Also according to the packaging, all six were remastered. I'll admit, they do look better than I remember them looking on TV. There's still some occasional dirt and a to-be-expected amount of grain in the picture, but these...Read More

As HE's resident Cuban American, it falls on me to point out that the Ricky Ricardo reference by the right honorable Sen. Tom Coburn (R-OK) isn't accurately racist. Sotomayor is Puerto Rican (Newyorquina to be exact), not Cuban. I wonder if that's how Coburn talks to Mel Martinez (R-FL)...

Amazon is already the 800-lb. gorilla mail order company in the US for everything from cereal to LCD TVs. They've had a VOD store for a while now, with neither taking a foothold in a significant way. If they buy NetFlix, that exponentially expands Amazon's footprint and price control abilities.

Allow me to explain:

I know a number of people who are big fans of Netflix Watch Instantly, particularly due to the buffet style of all-you-can-watch on the service. In the acquisition, Amazon would have to leave this service fully intact or potentially lose...Read More

Image cropped and shrunk down from DVD Beaver's excellent review. Go there for many more gorgeous examples of the picture quality of this release.

The Blu-ray released by MGM a couple weeks ago is the best that Spaceballs has ever looked or sounded on home video. Varying levels of contrast and sharpness are noticeable, as is a healthy amount of grain. This ends up being a great reference disc for people who freak out at the mere mention of Digital Noise Reduction, as there is none visible to me here. All the extras are carried over from...Read More

The new Universal Backlot titles all feature exceptional transfers considering their age and the bitrate limitations of DVD. Absent any supplements, the movies turn out to be the best "special feature" you can ask for. I've included some screen captures from the three pictures that aren't Lonely Are The Brave, which I've spent enough focus on for the time being. The bulk of the shots will be from Trail of the Lonesome Pine.

There's been a lot more attention on Trail of the Lonesome Pine's lush Technicolor transfer, but Ali Baba and the Forty Thieves is nothing to...

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...Read More

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, it's 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,...Read More

A press screening of It Might Get Loud (which I've heard good things about) is pushing this week's Digital Roundup to later. It's taking every fiber of my restraint to not stay home and watch the Blu-ray of 12 Monkeys that just showed up. I'll also have some thoughts on a really great pseudo-doc that includes a lot of unwitting participants later on as well.

I'll run something more substantive on the Universal Backlot Series titles released this week once I finish getting through them. I couldn't wait to post some screen captures from Lonely Are the Brave, which was previously unavailable on DVD. It also happens to be one of my favorite westerns. Images link to the raw, high-resolution PNG files.

Disc of the Week

Do The Right Thing
Anyone who owns the Criterion Collection DVD from a few years ago can go ahead and sell it. That is, unless they are conforted by the the spine number physically on their shelf. The most underreported thing since Universal released this Blu-ray (and DVD) last week is that it retains every last supplement from the Criterion disc with the exception of the "Fight the Power" music video. Not only are those hours of extras held over, but they've added a Spike Lee-directed 20 Years Later [HD 35:47] retrospective...Read More

Click on the box art to order from Amazon.

One of the two films notably taken out of Hal Ashby's hands during editing (his area of greatest expertise), Lookin' to Get Out has been something of a lost film since original release in 1982. Even though the studio recut the movie and pitched it as some sort of high strung goofy caper, Ashby donated a print of his preferred cut to UCLA. Film historian and author Nick Dawson came across this version of the movie in the process of writing his book Being Hal Ashby. When he...Read More

Last Year at Marienbad is a perplexing art film that openly eschews any attempt to be a conventional, passive experience. It's become as famous for its objective iconography as the sharply-divided critical response. The most concrete the movie gets is that a man tries to convince a woman that they met a year before. Another man appears to be protective of the woman. Trying to sort out any sort of conventional chronology is futile. Is the movie happening in the present tense with flashbacks? Is it a frenzied rush of repressed, traumatic memories? It's one thing and...Read More

Release of the Week

Last Year at Marienbad
I went into my first viewing (while in college at a friend's house) as blind as possible. After having seen it twice more, I'm not sure I've gotten much more out of it than I did on my initial viewing. Then and now it feels to me like a feverish explosion of repressed memories and trauma, which has become a popular opinion over the years. If you're looking for a linear narrative, this is the wrong movie. The dynamic nature of Alain Robbe-Grillet's script leaves the viewer unable...Read More

A new production of Stephen Sondheim's A Little Night Music is opening on my birthday next year in Paris. The show will run for 5 days, and I should start saving now for three reasons: 1) I love the show, based on Ingmar Bergman's film Smiles of a Summer Night. 2) Kristin Scott-Thomas will play Desiree Armfeldt and sing "Send in the Clowns." 3) Leslie Caron (!) will play Madame Armfeldt.

Kristin Scott-Thomas in I've Loved You So Long.

This is the kind of thing you plan a trip overseas for and around. There is a Broadway...Read More

I've already forgotten the name of the protagonist of Shopaholic played by Isla Fisher. I skipped it in theaters but promised myself I'd watch this woulda-been-funnier-in-2006 consumerist comedy if only to marvel at its advanced aging. The movie isn't horrible by any stretch, but I couldn't bring myself to find any of the Girl in the Green Scarf's pathological lies and betrayals even mildly humorous.

Isla Fisher is more talented than this movie

My intermittent reprieve from the "heroine" I had no pity for at all was the clutch of scenes featuring The Girl's savings-minded parents, played by...Read More

In what way is it abnormal for Sarah Palin to ramble off-message and make little sense in a public speech? At this point there are a thousand possibilities as to why she announced her lame duck resignation on Friday of 4th of July weekend. Weird? Yes. Out of character? Not at all.

Her Palinness

I finally read through a rather meaty Vanity Fair piece from last week. My favorite bit was the revelation that after the birth of her son Trig, she wrote a letter to close friends and family from an omniscient perspective and signed it...Read More

In 1962, MGM hired Chuck Jones to do a series of Tom and Jerry theatrical shorts. Jones, best known for his work on Looney Tunes and Merrie Melodies, produced some real classics. The shorts would go on to be aired during the now-extinct Saturday morning cartoon block for decades. The end of the production run on this 34-short series also signaled the closing of MGM's animation department. Warner Bros. released all of them last week (6/23) on DVD.

The actual shorts look better than this studio-provided and approved image.

According to everything printed on the packaging, WB fully...Read More

The reasons I thoroughly enjoyed Michael Mann's Public Enemies are the same points cited by critics who are passively dismissing it. Are critics so-so-ing Enemies because they expected it to visually resemble Bonnie & Clyde? Is it neither strictly conventional nor "arty" enough to please them?

Marion Cotillard in Public Enemies

It seems that more than anything, they would have preferred to direct the movie themselves, with their criticism limited to "if I had resources X and Y, I would have done something different if I were Michael Mann." Others like Daily Beast columnist & host of KCRW's...Read More

I'm playing major catchup here after being laid low by the sinus infection from hell. Thankfully this week's releases are pretty minimal compared to the first half of the month. I'm going to kick this installment of the Roundup off with the week of 6/2 and hit up 6/9 after, so this is a long one. I'm working on better info re: movies new to stream for free. The people at Hulu are outdoing themselves.

Release of the Week

Revolutionary Road
From my review on 6/4:

One of the Great But Ignored of last year (along with Che), Revolutionary Road was...Read More

The Digital Bits is reporting in their Rumor Mill that Paramount has set a Centennial Collection DVD-only release of The African Queen for October 13th of this year. Blu-ray could follow later this year or next year. This is all unofficial and subject to change, but it's great news nonetheless. The African Queen has become on of the most conspicuous movies MIA on DVD, having not appeared on any digital format at all to this point.

Finally available somewhere other than a Best Picture marathon on TCM.

So why aren't we getting a Blu-ray at the same...Read More

Does anyone really think that the company backing the Michael Jackson Tour that would have been doesn't want to make as much money as they can? I haven't seen anyone float the idea that's been running through my head since it was certain he had died, so here it is: if they have any sense, they'll assemble an all-star tribute concert.

There are plenty of faded-glory performers who could use a boost. They'll retitle the concert to something like "Long Live the King" that'll inspire angry responses from Elvis fans in rural areas. Paula Abdul will be there, who else needs a major...Read More

The last thing I expected to encounter today was a movie with Leonard Nimoy fighting in the nude. Two years after the original Star Trek series and just before his appearance in one of my favorite episodes of Night Gallery, Nimoy played a snarling bounty hunter baddie in Catlow. His presence and the fact the movie is based on a book by Louis L'Amour are likely the reasons why this wasn't made a Warner Archive title. The movie is really quite enjoyable and a welcome alternative to the crap clogging the multiplexes.

Yul Brynner in Catlow.

Catlow is...Read More

Marie Nyrerod's Bergman Island is worth a look, whether you splash out for the full Criterion reissue of The Seventh Seal or not. This doc and the included extra (Bergman 101) are included on both the DVD and Blu-ray editions of the Seal re-release.

Island is an 83-minute condensation of a nearly 3-hour made for Swedish TV doc. Snips must have come mostly from the second part, which dealt exclusively with his theatre career, because I learned more about the director and his influences here than I did in a course about him in college. The intimate...Read More

Nobel Son is noble effort at taking a decent concept, some decent ideas, and some excellent talent and molding them into something cohesive. I get what they were trying for, but it didn't get moving quickly enough to build up any steam. Alan Rickman is a philandering chemist who is cheating on Mary Steenbergen of all people. Bryan Greenberg plays their PhD student Anthropologist son. I tried to like it just because it featured an Anthro major, but then I found out his thesis was about cannibals and lost the interest I manufactured.

So Rickman wins a...Read More

Based on the evidence, it looks like this is how they're branding catalog Best Picture winners going to Blu-ray from here on, with new extras. Braveheart and Gladiator hit on September 1st, with Forrest Gump following on November 3rd.

Braveheart features over two hours of new features (my comments in brackets):

Interactive Timelines
Three distinct timelines featuring a combination of video, images, text and audio that can be accessed linearly or randomly.
Production: A comprehensive chronology of the motion picture from conception through theatrical release, from a behind-the-scenes point of view.
Historical: Chronological modules feature...Read More

I'm going to do a rundown of some other stuff that played, but I wanted to hit on a couple hot bits of news regarding a couple favorites that played up in Silver Spring. Soul Power, which I reviewed back at SXSW, won a Special Jury Award over the weekend at SilverDocs. Sony Pictures Classics will open it limited this July. It's the spiritual sibling of When We Were Kings, covering the Zaire 74 music festival that went on concurrent to the Rumble in the Jungle. As I said in March, it features my favorite Bill Withers performance put to film.

Another...Read More

I'm going to give this new format a spin and do on longform capsule review column each week highlighting DVD/Blu-ray/VOD/streaming releases and do individual pieces on titles as time and merit permit. I'll be breaking things down by category as well. Also, just because something comes out, I'm not necessarily going to include it if I don't feel compelled to. Without further ado...

Release of Week

The Seventh Seal: The Criterion Collection
Criterion's update to one of their first releases is pretty comprehensive. They've kept the existing features, added a new (better) subtitle translation, and of course re-transferred the...Read More

The thing I liked most about Valkyrie was that they left everything consistent. Everyone spoke in English with their native accents because technically they're all speaking the same language. Some had a beef, I didn't. So what happens when there's more than one lingua going around? Defiance handled this amiably by having Daniel Craig and Liev Schreiber make even more heterosexual women melt in their seats by speaking actual Russian in addition to their accented English that represented Yiddish.

What bothered me most while watching it was that I didn't feel riveted to my seat at all....Read More