Wednesday, August 30, 2006
DVD Invasion - Week Of 8/29/06
Welcome kiddies. Ready to be invaded again? Even for some of you with seemingly unlimited funds, it could be a fairly painful experience for the old bank account. Lots of new diversions and old favorites on the shelves this week. Let the spending spree begin...
The SentinelMichael Douglas has been away from the thriller business for a few years, it seems. With an insanely gorgeous wife (Catherine Zeta-Jones) and young children at home, it's not surprising that the 61-year-old actor would want to take it easy for a while. After all, the man has played every kind of fiery, drug-addled and sex-crazed cop, business man, doctor and "lone nut on a rampage" imaginable in films like Basic Instinct, Fatal Attraction and Falling Down, to name a few. Now Douglas gives another go at the ambiguous hero role he made famous in The Sentinel, co-starring Kiefer Sutherland (in full Jack Bower mode) and Eva Longoria (in not undressed enough mode).
Douglas plays a White House secret service agent who is wrongfully accused of killing one of his fellow agents. The frame-up is a way of getting him out of the way so an assassin planted in the White House by a Neo-Nazi terrorist group can make an attempt to kill the President. Sutherland and Longoria play fellow agents who end up chasing after Douglas while he tries to foil the assassination plot from outside the system. Oh, and Douglas's character is having an affair with the First Lady (played by Kim Basinger), which only complicates things further. It sounds like a familiar formula, very similar to In the Line of Fire. That's not to say it isn't a good formula, but you know what I mean.
Politically-intriguing features include commentary by Director Clark Johnson and Screenwriter George Nolfi, an alternate ending and deleted scenes with optional commentary by Nolfi, "The Secret Service: Building on a Tradition of Excellence" featurette and an "In the President's Shadow: Protecting the President" featurette.
Arrested Development: Season 3One of the great tragedies of the television medium is that some amazing shows get cancelled before they can reach their full potential. The success of a given show is often a matter of chance, a mysterious combination of factors that can't be replicated in a reliable way. If TV execs could do that, we wouldn't see nine different variations of Law & Order and CSI, they would make different shows to reach out to every possible demographic. The fact that Arrested Development barely managed to limp its way into a third season is a real shame. I discovered the show on DVD at about the time the second season ended, so I didn't get a chance to be a supportive viewer until the third season started, and by then it was really too late.
I'm rather pissed that the show ended so abruptly, therefore I'm going to say that Fox didn't give this series enough of a chance to endure. The first season had a full run of 22 episodes, but the second and the third were trimmed to 18 and 13 episodes respectively, meaning that the show lost precious weeks of exposure in those two seasons that could have allowed it to find a dedicated audience. If you have never spent time with the hilarious antics of the Bluth family, by all means, go back and start from the beginning. I guarantee with all certainty that you will be as enraged as I am that Fox didn't spend one tenth of the money it has dumped into so many worthless seasons of The Simpsons to keep a boldly written and highly entertaining show on the air for a little while longer.
Frozen banana features include commentary tracks on 3 episodes by creator Mitchell Hurwitz and some of the actors, 19 deleted and extended scenes, a blooper reel and "The Last Day on Location" featurette.
Friends With MoneyI really like Jennifer Aniston. She's one of the world's sexiest people, but she's also the kind of woman that you wouldn't feel stupid inviting for a friendly round of bowling and beers. In other words, she's no Angelina Jolie. In fact, I like Aniston so much that I don't watch any of the movies she stars in. All liking aside, I don't think she's a very strong actress. She works best in an ensemble cast, which is probably why she seemed to thrive on Friends for ten years among other fairly weak actors (except for Lisa Kudrow, who frankly was slumming on that show). All of which leads me to Friends With Money, another star vehicle for Aniston that I will probably skip. Her role is that of a down-and-out house cleaner who maintains friendships with a trio of wealthy women played by Frances McDormand (Fargo, North Country), Catherine Keener (Being John Malkovich, The 40-Year-Old Virgin) and Joan Cusack (High Fidelity, Grosse Pointe Blank, every other movie her brother John is in). The movie is a sometimes uplifting, sometimes somber study of the inner workings of friendship. Aniston's character is the glue that holds the group together, as her friends strive to help her out of her loneliness and financial troubles as a way to distract themselves from their own superficial lives. We should all be so lucky to have three rich friends to work out our woes for us. Or at least to buy us a few cars everytime we get depressed.
For richer or poorer features include commentary by Writer/Director Nicole Holofcener and Producer Anthony Bregman, a look behind-the-scenes and featurettes on the film's premiere in Los Angeles and at the Sundance Film Festival.
The Lord of the Rings Trilogy (Theatrical and Extended Limited Edition)If you find yourself in a quandary as to whether you should own this new incarnation of the Lord of the Rings Trilogy, please stop worrying about it now. The answer is simple. If you already own the separate 2-disc theatrical and 4-disc extended editions of all three films, you'll not be improving your collection all that much by grasping desperately for these. If you don't own any of the previous sets, what the hell is wrong with you? You wanted to get them but didn't have the cash, right? Okay, no more judgments on you. My point is that if you are okay with having both versions of the films without all of the supplements of those versions, these new sets are probably for you (and you don't have to buy the box set. Get the individual titles here, here and here). Sorry I lied about the simplicity of the situation.
I can't reason out why I should own three individual releases of these films, even though I love them. I'm also a bit leary about the infamous DVD-18, which is a double-layer, double-sided disc that has been known to be subject to production glitches. Both versions of the films, glued together by a high-tech term known as seemless branching, are split in half over the two sides of the "dreaded" DVD-18. If you can get past that little design quirk, you may be happy to know that there is a second disc with each film which contains some exclusive content. Peter Jackson hired filmmaker Costa Botes to document in great detail the entire production of the trilogy. None of this material, amounting to a feature-length doc for each film, was part of the special features for the other sets, so it seems reasonable to assume that the triple-dip was in the plans all along. Most likely, a rental would be sufficient to appreciate these new documentaries, but if you feel a nagging itch to own every shred of video concerning your beloved Hobbit adventures, please buy away. Since when does logic enter into fandom?.
The Tick Vs. Season OneAlthough it is about time this hilarious, appropriate-for-all-ages cartoon series finally made its debut in the digital realm, the form of this release is a bit scattered. The first season of The Tick had 13 episodes, but here you will only find twelve. Episode 11, "Tick vs. The Mole Men", is strangely absent. Whether the episode's exclusion is due to rumored rights issues or the officially stated "creative concerns", you can decide for yourself how much an incomplete season means to you. The other odd feature of this set is that there ARE no features. I sometimes wonder if studios give in to consumer demand and rush out a mildly cultish release like this, not understanding that we don't want merely a set of episodes, but also to know that the producers or owners of our favorite properties are interested in promoting them with the proper care and attention. In the fantasy world, where all things are done right the first time, such respectful attention would be paid. In the real world, we take what we can get. It's enough for most people to be able to spend some time with the big bag of blue-suited muscles, his sidekick Arthur (The Moth) and their bizarre super friends without succumbing to the temptations of the shoddy, DVD-R copies that have been floating around the usual auction sites for years.
More:
Like I said in the beginning, it's a heavy week for those who need to buy everything on release Tuesday. Personally, I'm beginning to think that is a bad idea, as price drops are occurring much sooner these days (especially on older titles), so that discount of two or three dollars in the first week doesn't mean much anymore. Still, depending on your tastes, there are at least three or four nifty titles pictured above. Serve yourself more prime Douglas in the two classic adventures he starred in with Kathleen Turner, or experience the underappreciated genius of Gregory Hines in two of his dance pictures. Or just give in to your baser instincts and fill your shopping bag/cart/pockets with Chuck Norris, he of the "jokes". Until next week...
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OOOOOO...WHITE NIGHTS!
Together, the forces of Ballet and Tap will nimbly and gracefully defeat communism.
Say you say me.
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The Tick might be the latest in the nostalgic uh-oh purchases. I swear to god this was funnier 10 years ago...and high.
(the video quality is shit, too)
It's too bad you're not a woman (you're not right?), or else you would watch and really appreciate the characters that Jennifer Aniston portrays. She really chooses relatable women in her films. In the "Break Up", co-starring my future love slave, Vince Vaughn, there is a point where you are laughing at her insane behavior--knowing that during some relationship you felt the same way--and then crying and aching for her when she realizes that she made a horrible mistake. It would take a bitch of a woman to say they haven't felt that. And in the "Good Girl"--co-starring Jake Gyllenhaal, another future love slave--you can sympathize with her feelings of guilt and being trapped even when you know she is not doing the right thing. It's sad that men can't appreciate what Jennifer Anniston brings to the screen--aside from her rack!
Season sets of DARKWING DUCK and TAILSPIN came out too, for those seeking nostalgia.
Yeah, when I saw the LOTR DVDs had both movies on ONE disc, I knew that was trouble. This a really half-assed cash grab on New Line's part.
Okay so what "movies" does the Norris collection have? Amazon doesn't say.
Never mind, I zoomed in on the pic. MIA 1-3 and DF 1&2