The DVD SE released last fall got Blu-graded a couple of weeks ago (26 Jan), and it's got a really clean, naturally grainy look to it. In particular, the audio upgrade is immediately noticeable for a film like this one that relies so much on audio but came before clean, crisp digital sound became standard on all major releases. This movie retains all the soul completely missing from the phony, reality TV-influenced remake, which I dislike more and more as time passes.

This came to me by way of multiple Twitter feeds linking to Topless Robot, and it's one of Dolph Lundgren's best performances.

I wish I could say that Whiteout maintained some sort of suspense or at least my interest throughout, but it didn't at all. I didn't have the heart to watch the From Page to Screen featurette, even as an avowed fan of Greg Rucka. There's a certain novelty to the movie having been shot in tremendously adverse conditions, but that doesn't help make it exciting in the watching. The Coldest Thriller Ever and the aforementioned Page/Screen featurettes are exclusive to the Blu-ray, but the deleted scenes are on both editions. The Blu hit on 19 January and...

Piles of comparisons have already been made between Avatar and Surrogates, which both feature protagonists who climb into some sort of machine and transfer their consciousness into another body. Avatar uses biological hosts you control from a coffin in a trailer, whereas Surrogates uses androids you control from home.

The DVD & Blu-ray hit two weeks ago (26 Jan), and is destined to be a huge rental success. Bruce Willis and the action genre are catnip to the Blockbuster/Redbox-browsing crowd. Director Jonathan Mostow put together a reasonably serviceable graphic novel adaptation here that's certainly worth a rental....Read More

I had a very fortunate opportunity to speak with Amelia (and Monsoon Wedding, Salaam Bombay!, & Mississippi Masala) director Mira Nair last week. We chatted for about fifteen minutes, and we touched on Amelia toward the beginning but moved to other topics she hadn't been asked about seventy times. This was in the interest of both getting into what she's working on next and to make this piece worth your precious time.

I feel that people went into Amelia with heavily loaded expectations as to what type of movie it was going to (or should) be and...Read More

Lorna's Silence dispenses with the idea of loading you with exposition by picking up with our protagonist as she's going about her day. Lorna (Arta Dobroshi) is an Albanian emigre in Belgium who has agreed to a sham marriage to a junkie so that she can gain Belgian citizenship.

Lorna works hard all day in a laundry, juggling her illegal responsibilities as best she can. She's made a deal with a Russian gangster to become a naturalized Belgian, but she then has to leverage that to do him a favor back. Wherever we follow her, she is...Read More

Jeffrey Levy-Hinte's Soul Power, one of my favorite films of last year, is now available on Blu-ray and DVD from Sony. It hit shelves last week (26 Jan), and closed out the month of January as one of the first true must-see disc releases of the year. As I said at SXSW last year, it's the undiscovered "killer B side to a doc that many already know and love, When We Were Kings."

Power hit a handful of screens last year, but this is how everyone will find it. Here's some more from my SXSW...Read More

I didn't see This Is It theatrically. Watching it from my couch, I found it to be as surreal as watching him die on Twitter feeds and blogs all over again. Was I seeing drugged-up exhaustion, or the stresses of returning to live performance after years and years out of practice? Was he having trouble keeping conscious, or was he not used to the new gadgets and earpieces used?

As a kid, I loved Michael Jackson's music, partly because it was catchy, and partly because my mother hated it. The bizarre re-shaping of his face, the mystery...Read More

Jane Campion's film about the love affair of John Keats and Fanny Brawne is artfully done and outstandingly well-designed and paced for the plot and tone they're working with. Sony Pictures Classics' DVD (released 26 Jan) looks and sounds as good as DVD can. I only wish that there had been an accompanying Blu-ray, because this movie would have shown the format off to splendid effect.

Star got a Best Costuming nod the other morning, but it deserves mention for Cinematography as well. The movie is through-and-through a costume drama about the agony of existence before cell...Read More

The Boys Are Back, a tender single dad drama, hit DVD (but not Blu) last week (26 Jan) from Miramax. Everybody's Fine was also announced as DVD-only recently. I'd expect the remaining Miramax releases from Disney to go the cost-savings route and forego Blu-ray.

Boys Are Back features a lived-in, naturalistic performance from Clive Owen that not enough people have had a chance to see. Father and son grieve the loss of the boy's mother, and a little ways in, the dad's estranged first son, a teenager, pops up. Scott Hicks, who directed Shine, does an admirable...Read More

The soundtrack is saturated with the artificial echo of auto-tuning. The lead guy is obviously not a long-time, practiced singer. Jane Lynch hasn't yet sung a note in the first thirteen episodes. There are tons of instances of contrived reasons for a high school teacher to show off his singing and dancing. The same guy is unnaturally dense and gullible, as if he came to this planet from Pleasantville (pre-color). Despite it all, Glee charms even the most cynical of people.

The (first half of the) first season being on DVD is not, as has been alleged,...Read More

The mouthful I've used to title this piece is the best condensation of Paramount Digital Entertainment's Circle of Eight. The 83-minute feature released on DVD last week is a compilation/re-edit of the Mountain Dew-sponsored, 5-minute webisodes posted exclusively to MySpace last fall.

The whole thing is an ultra-short-attention span horror thriller that probably worked better in the bite-sized chunks it was originally served up in. I was a bit lost at first until I paused it and looked into the MySpace page, which is definitely a part of the experience. The Mountain Dew-sponsored bits have all...Read More

By all accounts, I should not have had such a comprehensively wonderful time with the reboot of the St. Trinian's franchise. The first film, based on a comic strip, came out in 1954, and starred Alastair Sim (the greatest yet Scrooge) in drag as the headmistress of a school for unruly girls who were as likely to be packing heat as they were to fail their classes at a "respectable" school. Sim also doubled the role of Miss Fritton's brother. The reboot features a who's who of British talent the likes of which you don't often see.

Still one of my favorite car chases

I'm greatly relieved that MGM/Fox Home Video's Blu-ray of To Live and Die in L.A. is not displayed in FriedkinVision, with the colors acid-washed like the French Connection travesty of last year. The picture looks sharp and crisp, with no evidence of digital distortion, and I'll be damned if the dialogue has ever sounded this clear on a home video edition. It almost sounds like they re-ADR'd all the dialogue.

Delayed from release last year, To Live and Die includes both a Blu-ray and DVD. The only really bothersome thing...Read More

Had there been ten Actor and Supporting Actor nominees to match Best Picture this year, Michael Stuhlbarg, Fred Melamed, and Richard Kind would all be wearing tuxes in a month or so. The Blu-ray of A Serious Man hits next week (9 Feb), and it cleanly does what it needs to and gets it over with. The video and audio are crisp and clean, with no evidence of digital over-scrubbery.

What a couple.

The three extras included are Becoming Serious (a 17-minute making-of featurette), Creating 1967 (a 14-minute piece on the production design), and Hebrew & Yiddish for...Read More

Criterion has announced that a pile of StudioCanal titles will go OOP in March, with rights going to Lionsgate. I knew the two weeks hence StudioCanal Collection Blu-rays (Ran, Contempt) were something of a precursor to this. Most notable among the disappearing are Grand Illusion (spine #1), Le corbeau, Pierrot Le Fou (second Blu to go!), Alphaville, Carlos Saura's Flamenco Trilogy and Peeping Tom. I'm not optimistic about Lionsgate handling these titles, but I'm open to being proven wrong. A full list with Amazon/Criterion prices (and links) follows after the jump.

"Have you heard the terrible news?"

I spent nearly three hours of my weekend watching the first half of the 1986 BBC miniseries original Edge of Darkness starring Bob Peck. Peck is best-remembered as Muldoon from Jurassic Park ("Clever girl."), but this was his breakout role. I'll wait to rent the new Mel Gibson feature do-over, even though director Martin Campbell did both. There's a quiet, underplayed simmer to the original that I don't see the Age of Information improving by adding cell phones and the internet to the mix.

I mention that Peck is "remembered" because he died of cancer far before...Read More

Screencap from DVD Beaver's writeup

This past Saturday, 30 January, Disney put Sleeping Beauty "back in the vault", so existing DVDs and Blu-rays (reviewed by me here) will disappear from shelves in the coming months. If you want an example of ultra-widescreen classic animation on Blu-ray, no better one exists than Sleeping Beauty. Amazon is currently listing the Blu-ray at $24.49, so grab it if you want it.

I should also mention that the DVD editions of The Jungle Book, its sequel, and the 101 Dalmations family of movies (animated & live-action) all went back...Read More

Watching Atonement and Pride & Prejudice (2005) on Blu-ray last week, my thoughts turned to Jane Campion's Bright Star and how wonderful it would look in HD...but alas, it's DVD-only for now. These dual Joe Wright successes from Universal look and (especially) sound lush and crisp. Neither adds additional supplements beyond what was on the original DVDs.

Cliffhanger has aged very, very well, to the point that my wife just sat down on the couch with me to watch it after watching the opening. Once it was over, she told me she digs the idea of going through the Rocky series with me. This was Friday night. On Sunday, we bought Over the Top, the arm-wrestling classic. Last Action Hero, on the other hand, may hold nostalgic value for some, but hasn't aged terribly well.

Sony's Blu-rays of each hit back on the 12th. Both films look fantastic. Cliffhanger includes all of the extras...Read More

I'd be remiss if I didn't add a brief mention of the Scrubs Season 8 Blu-ray as part of my recovery regimen last week. I had reviewed the DVD edition last fall, but at the beginning of December ABC re-issued it on Blu-ray (with a $10 rebate coupon for DVD owners). The Blu adds an extra featurette and the now-standard ABC SeasonPlay (also found on LOST) to the existing DVD extras. The biggest plus to me is the fact the whole thing fits on just two discs.

I almost coughed up a lung reading the cover of The Keeper, which hits you with the following like a kick to the eyes: "Steven Seagal (Driven to Kill) unleashes his wrath -- and his fists -- in this fast-paced thriller...caught in a web of deceit, racism, and murder." At the end of the second graph "...Sallinger (Seagal)'s job turns from protector to hunter as he untangles a dangerous web of lies and murder..." Where the hell did the racism go? That mystery aside, The Keeper sees the birth of a new cinematic term: The Segalteur.

A...Read More

Wrong Turn at Tahoe joins a burgeoning special collection of direct-to-video Cuba Gooding Jr. movies (including the recent Hardwired that co-starred Val Kilmer). The movie isn't outrageously awful so much as it doesn't ever really go anywhere such that it even has the potential to take a bad turn (that's the only groan-inducing metaphor, I promise).

Contrary to Pete Hammond's box quote, Tahoe isn't ever intense or gripping, let alone really qualify as a thriller. Gooding is a henchman with a kid who works for Miguel Ferrer. Harvey Keitel plays a rival crime lord. Someone steps on...Read More

The 12th season of ER hit DVD back on 12 January, and especially when I'm sick, this is the kind of stuff I put on repeat, for better or worse. This, House MD, Scrubs, or any medical series in the book fits the bill, but ER most of all. Now that I type that, it seems rather morbid that I'm so attracted to medical dramas when ill.

Going back to 1994, I've been an unapologetic follower of the series. It's a guilty pleasure to some extent, but the acting and scripting has been consistently good throughout the...Read More

I don't make a habit of disappearing for the better part of a business week, but I've been pretty horrendously sick thanks to a sudden ear and respiratory infection. I'll get a couple of things up today and then get back to bed so as to sleep the rest of this away. Sleep has helped the most, but running a close second is a pair of Steven Seagal DTV movies. Life could be worse: I could be living one of those realities.

The most surprising thing about Seth MacFarlane's Family Guy: Something, Something, Something Dark Side is that they had such a dearth of black characters (pre-Cleveland Show) to work with that they had to use "Mort Goldman" in brownface as Lando Calrissian. For those who don't follow the show or find themselves sucked into syndicated airings periodically (like me), that makes no sense whatsoever.

Family Guy's Empire Strikes Back spoof, like the New Hope one before it, relies as much on the framework of the original films as it does in-jokes from the Family Guy universe. I found...Read More

I did not expect to enjoy G-Force at all. That style of opening is often followed by something akin to "I'm shocked, shocked to admit right here in front of God and all the world that I loved it!", but that's not what I think of it.

Months ago, when G-Force was in first run theatrically and I was busy not supporting it by buying a ticket or going to a press screening by choice, I had a short chat with a good friend. In college, I spent most of my time working with FSU's campus...Read More

I didn't make up a BINGO-style scorecard, but I did have a little list of things I expected to see and hear while watching John Wayne's The Green Berets. While talking to conservative-minded friends about the movie, more than a couple have responded immediately with something along the lines of, "that one's kind of embarrassing, huh?"

The condescending manner in which Wayne's Col. Mike Kirby tries to inculcate David Janssen's reporter George Beckworth with "true" patriotism would be infuriating if it weren't hilariously shortsighted. Wayne's Vietnam "epic" is full of racism, arch-conservatism, and peppered with plenty of...Read More