Ian T. McFarland

Oh man, more DVDs?  How does that industrial Hollywood keep doing it week after week?

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It has clearly been far too long since any new DVDs have been released, so let’s just get started right away.

Film:

The Da Vinci Code: Special Edition – Sure, the idea of Forrest Gump, Amélie, Doctor Octopus and Richie Cunningham all making a movie together sounds great, but in reality it fell a little flat.  The myth the film centers on– that descendants of Jesus are alive today – is a fun one to think about, as well as the secret society that protects such relatives; but the script is just dull, lucky we have Ian McKellan to save the film from complete boredom with his fresh and energetic acting.  Da Vinci isn’t all that bad, but for a film that had promise and grossed $70 million on its opening weekend, we could hope for better.  Alan wasn’t exactly jumping off the wall in his review of the film either

John Tucker Must Die – It’s sort of a puzzle to me how high school comedies keep getting made – more so than in other genres, the movies just keep repeating themselves; and with rare exceptions like American Pie and Mean Girls, they don’t usually make very much money.  Still, 20th Century Fox decided to ignore the past of the genre and make John Tucker Must Die, and while you can’t exactly be happy that they took the risk in producing it, it’s not a deplorable film by any means.  I think I put it best in my review a few months back when I deemed it a really mediocre movie.

Strangers With Candy – It’s not for everyone, but Strangers With Candy just might be the funniest film in a year with Talladega Nights, Little Miss Sunshine and Borat.  Having never seen an episode of the television show on which the film is based, I walked into the movie clueless but walked out breathless.  The humor is so chock-full of intentionally stupid humor over-used story elements that it probably shouldn’t work, but thanks to joyously over-the-top performances from the entire cast, it burn your cheeks as you smile for the solid 97 minute running time.  Like the TV show, Strangers With Candy focuses on a middle-aged woman (Amy Sedaris) who re-enrolls in High School after she gets out of Rehab, only to rediscover the problems of popularity and the opposite sex.  Along for the ride is series regular Stephen Colbert, with celebrites Matthew Broderick, Ian Holm and even Philip Seymour Hoffman all stopping by for at least a few scenes.

I really can’t say enough about this largely ignored film; it’s like the production was given a few million dollars to make an after school special, and decided to spend half of the budget on marijuana, and the result was Strangers With Candy.  A true joy for anyone who takes pleasure in stupid movies.

Special Edition:

King Kong: Deluxe Extended Edition – Remember how every geek in the land of geekdom got excited when an extended edition of any The Lord of the Rings film was released?  Flash forward a few years, and the noise being made in apprehension for Peter Jackson‘s latest, the second remake of King Kong is noticeably less.  Maybe it’s because you’re only getting an extra 13 minutes this time around (as opposed to the 30+ minutes found in the extended Lord of the Rings installments,) or maybe it’s just because Jackson’s Kong was already an hour too long in theaters.

But fans of the film may find the purchase worth it – the three-disc set hosts a small army of special features, including eight part documentary of the film, design galleries which – if Weta is involved – is surely worth anyone’s time and, if for some reason you felt like it, you could watch an additional 38 minutes of deleted scenes on top of the already enlarged feature, totalling a 3 hour and 58 minute celebration of not knowing where to cut.

Oldboy: Ultimate Collector’s Set – I never quite understood the extreme adoration for Oldboy that is rampant on inter-net forums, but that doesn’t mean I didn’t still love it.  Following up Sympathy for Mr. Vengeance as the second installment of Chan-wook Park‘s Vengeance Trilogy, Oldboy was faster, more involving and gave off a vibe of being damn furious.  The now famous hallway scene where our main protagonist gets Hammer-crazy on dozens of henchmen is one of the most realistic and bad-ass fight scenes in recent cinema.  The film is hard-broiled, angry and intense, if not a tad too long.  Definitely worth a rental if you haven’t checked it out yet and are familiar with Asian cinema.

For being a three-disc set, however, this release of Oldboy could have done better.  Although it includes a copy of the first Old Boy graphic novel, none of the features on the discs sound too enticing.  Still, compared to the lacking first, single-disc release; this one makes for the better purchase.

Television:

Friends – The Complete Series Collection – I never, ever got Friends.  Sure, it was funny; even funnier than most of its bland sit-com competition.  But that didn’t make it that great of a show, it certainly doesn’t make it worthy of the heaps of admiration that’s been tossed onto its reputation by teenagers who were force-fed the countless Chandler one-liners that took about four seconds to conceive.  But hey, if you really feel like buying this 40-disc set with hours of comedy that you could watch every day in syndication for free, then by all means feel free to fork over the hundreds of dollars.  Could this set be any more pointless?

Friend, come with us on an exciting journey as we glance at seven releases onto Digital Video Disc being made available today.  If you don’t, you aren’t my friend anymore.

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Does anyone really need to own every Bond film (minus the upcoming Casino Royal) on DVD twice?  No, I don’t think so either, but apparently someone in Hollywood does.

Film:

Cars – Ah, Cars, the first Pixar film to let me down.  If you read this column regularly, you know by now that I prefer Over the Hedge or Monster House over this CG flick, but that’s not to say Cars was a bad film.  The visuals were another landmark in animation, perfecting the gleams of polished race cars and the desert landscape lining most of the shots in the film.  But the story wasn’t anything new, and the idea of talking cars was too strange to make them believable.  Alan, on the other hand, loved the film, which you can read in his five-star review of the film.

Wordplay – In line with Spellbound, Wordplay is a documentary of the people who dedicate themselves to applications of the English language, with this film’s application being Crossword puzzles.  It follows several of the nation’s most elite in the game, while also introducing the New York Times’ Crossword Editor, Will Shortz and interviewing famous followers of the Times’ crossword, like Jon Stewart and Bill Clinton.  The film’s a charmer that will have you cheering on the good guys at the annual showdown of the best of the best Crosswords junkies, while booing the annoying assholes.  A cute film that would be hard to regret renting.  Alan agreed in his review of the film.

Special Edition:

James Bond Ultimate Collection Vol. 1 & 2 – So when Die Another Day was released in 2002, they released every Bond film on DVD.  But it’s been almost four years since then, and I guess that’s enough time to let pass before re-releasing them in a new, expensive set.  Volume 1 has The Man With the Golden Gun, Goldfinger, The World is Not Enough, Diamonds Are Forever and The Living Daylights; while you can find A View to Kill, Thunderball, Die Another Day,The Spy Who Loved Me and License to Kill on Volume 2.  You can complete the 20 film collection when Volumes 3 and 4 are released on December 12th.

Rodgers and Hammerstein Collection Box Set Collection – Those wild and crazy guys are back from the grave, in newly DVD packaged form.  This set contains six classics: The King and I, Oklahoma!, The Sound of Music, South Pacific, Carousel and State Fair.  Each film even has a bonus disc, making this a 12 disc set.

The Transformers – The Movie (20th Anniversary Special Edition) – I was born about ten years too late to catch on to the Transformers craze, but it’s undeniable that this movie deserves a spot on a website written up by culture geeks.  And hey, with stars like Eric Idle, Leonard Nimoy and some guy named Orson Welles, it can’t be that bad.  This double-disc edition boasts a good amount more special features than the lesser edition released previously on DVD, including a look at that Masterful Filmmaker, Michael Bay‘s live action Transformers film out in July next year.  Worth looking into for the fans out there.

Television:

The Sopranos – Season 6, Part 1 – I’ll be honest, as much as I would like to be a fan of this show, I’ve yet to see a single episode of The Sopranos.  It’s not out of disinterest, it’s out of the fact that I don’t get HBO.  So I’ll just have to take everyone in the world’s word for it when they say the show is amazing and suggest you, the reader, check it out.  If you’ve got the $60 for one half of a season of television, anyway.

The West Wing – The Complete Seventh Season – I never got in the habit of watching The West Wing on a regular basis, but whenever I did check it out I was blown away.  The show felt cinematic but not too dramatic; engaging but never too episodic.  After Aaron Sorkin was dropped from the show after season four, many believed the show to have built itself back up to an intimidating stance by this final season, which finished airing just last May.  Die-hard fans have the option of checking out the Complete Series Collection instead, with which for just a shade under 200 clams, you get the entire series on 45 discs and script for the Pilot, all inside of a pretty blue box.

Sorry girls and ghouls, this Tuesday’s release of new DVDs is a week one, but if you were thinking “Gee, I could sure go for more of that Tom Cruise fella,” then you are in luck.

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I guess Halloween must not be an enticing day to release new discs.  All we’ve got is slim pickings this week.

Film:

Mission: Impossible III – At last, it’s Tom Cruise the Movie!  After jumping on sofas and glibbing Matt Lauer, Tom Cruise has become too big for his own good.  This writer has no problem with him as an actor, what he does have a problem with is that he couldn’t watch M:i:III without being reminded of Katie Holmes or Scientology every few minutes.  Thanks to all the attention the press has paid him, it’s too difficult to forget about the man our media loves to hate so much and believe that he’s a secret agent for a couple of hours.  Having said that, J.J. Abrams does a successful job of making this one exciting and escaping the doldrums of a dull action movie, and how could any movie where Philip Seymour Hoffman is the nemesis be bad?  Let’s just hope that if there’s ever an M:i:IV, it doesn’t come around until Cruise’s tidal wave of poor popularity washes over.

Those who are planning to make the buy should know that there are two editions of the DVD – coming in single and double-disc packages.  You can hear Abrams and Cruise himself as they discuss the film in their commentary on both editions, other than that none of the special features on either of the discs sound all that enticing.  The one possible exception is a feature called “Tribute Montage: Generation: Cruise” on the two disc set.  I have no idea what that vignette contains, but a montage including Tom Cruise must be worth a couple of laughs.

Special Edition:

It’s a Wonderful Life (60th Anniversary Edition) – Frank Capra.  Jimmy Stewart.  It doesn’t take too much to convince anyone that It’s a Wonderful Life is a wonderful movie, but do you really need to own it?  It’s aired every year on NBC, and with the only special features being a making-of feature, a trailer and a short on Capra, it hardly seems worth spending money on.  You’d be better off putting it in the bank – just don’t let Mr. Potter take it.  What an asshole.

Television:

Party at the Palms –Okay, there is not much to say for the first season of this show, a late night E! network series, hosted by Jenny McCarthy, that showcases crazy parties and the even crazier girls that occupy them.  Yawn.  But something worth mentioning is that at the Amazon page for Party at the Palms, there’s an incredibly odd bundle offer of this two disc set alongside the seventh season of The West Wing together for $61.48.  Okay, that’s not much to talk about; but come on guys, it really is a slow day.

Another Tuesday, another batch of DVDs thrown at the consumer to purchase.  Ah, capitalism.

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Just in time for Halloween, it’s three scary movies!  There’s Monster House for the kids, Slither for the gut-busters out there and, scary enough to make anyone wet themselves, Nacho Libre! 

Film:

Monster House – You may have read last week’s column when I declared Over the Hedge to be the best animated film of the year.  This was a sloppy statement, because I had completely forgotten Monster House.  Erie, unnatural and with a bit of sophomoric humor (Mountain Dew bottles are used to store . . . similarly colord liquids,) it was a perfect realization of how a The Twilight Zone movie for the whole family would look like.  Another plus of the film is the look – instead of jumping on the bandwagon of making everything look more real in CG movies today, House went for style.  Instead of having every character’s hair blow gently in the breeze, this one just glues the hair down to the head, in a style not unlike claymation.  And best of all, it never ascends PG-rated frights, making House a great way to introduce your kids to scary movies.  Alan enjoyed the ride too, as you can read by kindly clicking here.

Nacho Libre – I love Jack Black.  I loved Napoleon Dynamite.  So, naturally, when I heard that Black and the director of Dynamite, Jared Hess were making a movie together called Nacho Libre, I was very content.  One year later, I was somewhat less content while in a theater watching Nacho.  Why?  Because I never perceived that a Jack Black vehicle could be so mind-shatteringly dull.  As hard as this film tries to be so obscure and silly that it gives the viewer a wave of giggles; Nacho only has one scene that inspires chuckles, every other shot is just of Black and friends being weird.  Aaron didn’t exactly disagree in his short review

Slither – 2006 has been a good year for comedy.  It’s given us Little Miss Sunshine Borat, Strangers With Candy and Little Miss Sunshine – all delivering laughs in high abundance.  But even in such a successful year for humor, Slither has a good shot of being the funniest movie of the bunch.  A send-up of horror a la Shaun of the Dead, Slither takes up the particularly simple (and easily achieved) task of pointing out everything mindless about a horror movie.  Shaun and Slither will find an identical audience, with the only differences between the movies being that the latter is less romance-oriented, and a lot scarier.  Scary enough, with its red and shriveled man-eating slugs, to be the creepiest movie put out in at least the last year.  If justice is alive, then Slither will find an audience on DVD.

Special Edition:

Reservoir Dogs: 15th Anniversary Edition – Hot off the heels of the 10th Anniversary edition comes this third edition of those ear-cutting Dogs to DVD.  Compared with the long line of Special Features from the last edition, 15 doesn’t have much to offer.  It scraps off just about everything from that edition except deleted scenes, while adding a couple of docs and . . . get excited . . . ENGLISH SUBTITLES!  A purchase for the die-hardiest of die-hard fans.

Television:

Batman Beyond: Season Two – Okay, nothing’s ever going to top the Bruce Timm-produced Batman from the 90s.  It’s just not going to happen.  Having said that, Batman Beyond is not a complete waste of time.  One of the first cartoons to embrace a jagged, straight line-oriented look that has come to dominate action cartoons today, Beyond was carefully designed and written to keep it from falling into just being a kids show, with solid plot lines that could appeal to any nine-year-old boy and his dad.

SNL: The Best of Saturday TV Funhouse – The Ambiguously Gay Duo?  Ex-Presidents?  As someone who watched and studied Will Ferrell era SNL throughout middle school in the hopes of becoming funnier, the Robert Smigel helmed short cartoons hit close to home.  The crude animation paired with obscurely silly humor worked better than many of the live-action skits on SNL, and with voice actors like Steve Carell and Stephen Colbert what reason don’t you have to check this out?

The Swan – You’re kidding me.  I mean really, you’re kidding me, right FOX?  I still have a hard enough time believing there was ever a show like The Swan, a reality show where they turn the less attractive members of our society into beauty queens, and torture the contestants by not letting them within sight of a mirror while they undergo plastic surgery liposuction and recovery from such procedures, but now you’re putting it on DVD so it can live on forever?  Really?

That’s My Bush! – Before I was allowed to watch South Park, my parents and I would make an occasion of every Wednesday night to watch That’s My Bush!, a live-action show about George W. that mocked the average American Sit-com just as much as the American President, created by the same guys that gave us South Park.  With the annoyingly perfect neighbor, a catch-phrase that ended every episode (“Oh Laura, one of these days, I’m gonna punch you in the face!”)  and even a traditional, couch dominated Sit-com living room set that occupied the White House, Bush somehow managed to be hilarious regardless of your feelings on the namesake of the show.  With only 13 episodes, it left office early but used its time wisely.