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.
N/A
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.