The Screengrab : mrs. doubtfire

DVD Digest for May 13, 2008

Paul Clark — Tue, 13 May 2008 14:00:00 GMT

This week: two new Criterion DVDs, the comeback effort of a master filmmaker, and the Chairman of the Board all compete for your DVD dollar. Who will win? Why, DVD buyers, of course!

DVD of the Week: For sheer comprehensiveness, nothing can touch Warner’s 22-film, 5-box-set tribute to the one and only Frank Sinatra. For all of Sinatra’s success as a recording artist, he was also a talented actor, given the right role, and this week sees the release of a number of his finest films. Among these are his Oscar-nominated performance in Otto Preminger’s The Man With the Golden Arm and Vincente Minnelli’s Some Came Running, both of which are included in the Frank Sinatra: The Golden Years box set. But if you prefer Sinatra the fresh-faced young crooner, check out Frank Sinatra: The Early Years, which includes such early-career titles as Step Lively, It Happened in Brooklyn, and The Kissing Bandit. Or see Sinatra match his pipes with Gene Kelly’s nimble feet in The Frank Sinatra and Gene Kelly Collection, comprised of the classic musicals On the Town, Take Me Out to the Ballgame, and Anchors Aweigh. And if special features are your thing, there’s always The Rat Pack Ultimate Collector’s Edition, which finds the Chairman at his least inspired vehicles but leaves plenty of room for gawking at swingin’ celebrities of yore. Heck, Warner is even releasing 1993’s miniseries Sinatra on DVD this week, in case you want your Sinatra without all that Sinatra. All that’s missing is Sinatra’s two most acclaimed films, The Manchurian Candidate and From Here to Eternity. But I’m guessing you already own those, right?

As previously mentioned, this week also brings the release of two brand-spankin' new Criterions, Louis Malle’s The Lovers and The Fire Within. Also of note in classics on DVD: The Big Trail: Fox Grandeur Special Edition; the Godard double-feature of La Chinoise (Kino) and Le Gai Savoir; a new edition of Anthony Mann’s Man of the West (Fox); Saturday Night Live: The Complete Third Season (Universal); and the Fox Western Classics Collection, which includes the new-to-DVD titles Garden of Evil, Rawhide, and The Gunfighter. And in shameless cash-in news, this week brings new DVDs of all three Indiana Jones films, with a few added extra features so that buyers won’t feel completely ripped off.

In more recent films, today brings the release of Francis Ford Coppola’s Youth Without Youth (Sony, also Blu-Ray), his first official directorial effort in a decade. The film was generally regarded as a critical and popular disaster, but I found it fascinating- flawed to be sure, but intriguingly so- and I believe it’ll finally be appreciated for what it is on DVD. Also this week: Diane Lane in Untraceable (Sony, also Blu-Ray); Diane Keaton, Katie Holmes and Queen Latifah in Mad Money (Anchor Bay); and the French horror film Frontier(s) (Lionsgate). The other major new release this week is the DVD debut of The Animation Show 3 (Paramount), last year’s touring program of animated shorts presented by Mike Judge and Don Hertzfeldt. The DVD includes Hertzfeldt’s latest masterpiece Everything will be OK, as well as sixteen other shorts, some of which have been added especially for the DVD release.

This week’s Blu-Ray only releases are: Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid (Fox); Master and Commander: The Far Side of the World (Fox); Mrs. Doubtfire (Fox); and just in time for this weekend’s new blockbuster, The Chronicles of Narnia: The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe. Which brings me to this week’s Huddleston corner, in which we sigh over the lonely release of Warner’s One Missed Call on HD-DVD. I mean really, guys- you’re just kidding around now, right?

In Other Blogs: List-o-Mania

Scott Von Doviak — Fri, 28 Mar 2008 15:30:00 GMT

Our “In Other Blogs” survey team has been working around the clock to determine exactly how best to serve you, the “In Other Blogs” reader. The results are in, and it turns out: you like lists! This works out well for us, since our research also indicates that other blogs love to run lists. Here’s a roundup from the week in ranking pop culture ephemera.

Spout offers up both the 5 Best and the 5 Worst Directorial Sellouts of All Time. Any such “worst” list seems incomplete without Francis Ford Coppola’s Jack, and it’s hard to view Michael Moore’s Canadian Bacon as a sellout since nobody was buying. We can't argue with Finding Forrester, though. “After the huge success of Good Will Hunting, Hollywood would let Gus Van Sant make anything he wanted. Unfortunately it was a shot-for-shot remake of Psycho, which was deemed the biggest-budgeted experimental film of all time. When that deservedly tanked, Van Sant went for this, his real sellout.”

The sci-fi blog io9 presents 15 Great Movies You Didn’t Know Were Science Fiction. After reading the list, we still don’t know about most of them. For example, the 1992 undercover cop thriller Deep Cover apparently qualifies simply because it contains “a fictional designer drug created by a combinatorial chemist.” And consider us decidedly unpersuaded by this argument for Jim Jarmusch’s Ghost Dog: The Way of the Samurai: “He's a black samurai who works for the Mafia, and he communicates via carrier pigeon. He clings to the Bushido, the way of the Samurai, in the midst of a world of randomly murderous thugs, and seems to have almost superhuman fighting abilities. Plus he can communicate somehow with his friend who only speaks French. (Telepathy?)”

While we’re in the science fiction realm, how about Mahalo’s list of the Best Evil Robots? Of course, the T-1000 and Mechagodzilla are given their due, but we’re more impressed by the inclusion of the grotesque Bicentennial Man. “I defy anyone to watch the trailer for Bicentennial Man without feeling your soul in peril. Not only is Bicentennial Man singlehandedly responsible for destroying Robin Williams' career, but it's just plain evil through and through. Director Chris Columbus must be a sick, depraved individual to have thought: ‘Hey, I think I'll follow up on Mrs. Doubtfire with a sequel of sorts. Except instead of a cross-dressing man invading the privacy of his ex-wife's life, I'll have a robot, played by the same actor, infiltrate a family! Over the course of 200 years, he can trick everyone into acknowledging him as a sentient being, all the while waiting and biding his time, trying to marry the youngest daughter of the family! Then when that doesn't work out, I'll have him fall in love with her daughter!’”

Finally, someone calling himself the Sports Blawger weighs in with the Top 10 Guy’s Guy Movies. Most of his choices are what you’d expect: The Great Escape, The Good, the Bad and the Ugly and The Dirty Dozen are perennial favorites at the Screengrab’s Manly Man Movie Night gatherings. But Mr. Blawger’s top choice has us questioning his usage of the phrase “guy’s guy”: “300 has freaking awesomeness all around it. The Spartans were history's original guy's guys. Spartans would look at today's metrosexual ‘guys’ with contempt, and then stab them through the stomach with their spears so they would die the slow and painful death they deserve. Spartans don't get manis and pedis. Spartans exist for one reason: to be AWESOME. Is there anything that says ‘guy's guy’ than 300 guys armed with only swords and spears, protected by only helmets and shields, destroying a million man army?” He forgot to mention all the glistening hairless chests.