DVD Day

[filkertom]

Pretty slight week, actually:

• The Tale of Despereaux
  
• What I'm sure the studios consider one of the Big Guns in the SF genre for the week, The Day Keanu Reeves Tried Again To Act And Gosh Look At All The Special Effects (Two-Disc Widescreen Edition)
  
• Max Fleischer's Superman: 1941-1942 -- all 17 of the Fleischer cartoons, the precise same ones as restored for the Ultimate Superman collection from a few years ago, only now available without having to buy Superman 3, Superman 4, and Superman Returns
• Can't believe I think this one might be good: Adam Sandler in Disney's Bedtime Stories (also 2 Disc DVD + Disneyfile). If you haven't seen the trailer, decide for yourself
• Kinda the same thing on Jim Carrey in Yes Man (Single-Disc Edition and Two-Disc Special Edition + Digital Copy)
• My choice for coolest rerelease of the week: A Song Is Born with Danny Kaye and Virginia Mayo, including performances by Benny Goodman and Louis Armstrong
• Doubt (the must-see, feel-good movie of the year)
• Pre-Code Hollywood Collection (The Cheat / Merrily We Go to Hell / Hot Saturday / Torch Singer / Murder at the Vanities / Search for Beauty) -- films with Cary Grant, Talullah Bankhead, Frederic March, and a host of others, in the wild days before the 1934 Hollywood "Production Code"
• i.o.u.s.a., which looks like a hard-hitting documentary about the nation's financial woes until you realize the filmmakers' solution seems to include disemboweling Social Security and Medicare
• My Friends Tigger, Pooh and a Musical Too -- strictly for the kids who can't get enough W-t-P
• Scooby-Doo and the Samurai Sword -- get i.o.u.s.a. and the Pooh one before you get this

Oh, and, Freakazoid!: Season 2 and Tiny Toon Adventures: Season 1, Vol. 2 are available for pre-order -- they're out in two weeks.

Any other new DVDs we need to know about?

Comments

[crwilley.livejournal.com]

Daughter saw Bedtime Stories and thought it was awesome. Daughter is 11, so that may need to be taken with a grain of salt, but she's got reasonably good taste in film.

As far as The Day The Earth Stood Still goes - the commercial I saw last night was making a repeated point that the "original classic" was being included as a bonus feature. I'm astonished that they're inviting the direct comparison that way, but maybe that's the only way they think they can sell DVDs.

[shockwave77598.livejournal.com]

I'll just buy the original and pretend the remake doesn't exist.

[ladysprite.livejournal.com]

No new DVDs to talk about, but I did go see Yes Man when it first came out, and it was actually pretty darn cute and fun. Not a world-changing, mind-opening Work of Deathless Art, but if you're in need of cheering up and distracting, it's worth seeing.

(Though I admit to being rather partial to Jim Carrey - from everything I can tell, he does the slapstick low-brow comedy to fund his obscure mind-bending art film habit....)

[shockwave77598.livejournal.com]

I will have no part of that travesty of a remake Reeves did. While I'm glad they finally found a role for mr. Roboto to play, the fact that they totally spun the message around 180 degrees makes me want to burn every copy I see. The first movie brought the message "Don't be afraid" into the middle of the Red Scare. This... this brings the message "Your time is almost up" to the land of Report All Suspicious Activity. If you aren't going to even try to stick with the story as written, why even bother calling it by the same name? Save some licensing money and call it "DOOM BUBBA and the MECHA SLAYER FIVE" or something...

[shsilver.livejournal.com]

I love A Song Is Born. Thanks for pointing it out. Forget Danny Kaye, forget Virginia Mayo. The jam sessions are worth the cost of admission. That and seeing Benny Goodman fumbling around with jazz as Professor Magenbruch. And, of course...Tommy Dorsey, Lionel Hampton, The Golden Gate Quartet, Louis Armstrong, Charlie Barnet, Mel Powell, and many more.

[redaxe.livejournal.com]

Season 1 of The Paper Chase is very tempting.

Tales of Ordinary Madness (Ben Gazzara as a thinly veiled Charles Bukowski, and based on Bukowski's short stories) looks interesting, too.

I think I'll pass on Ba'al: The Storm God, though :-)

[filkertom.livejournal.com]

Eep! Forgot about the Paper Chase set. Hell of a good show.

[kilbia.livejournal.com]

Oooooh! Freakazoid!

[lapislaz.livejournal.com]

They sent me a review copy of Despereaux, and I thought it was a lovely fairy tale-type movie. Some of the extras were definitely aimed at the kid set (in fact this is probably a great babysitter's survival DVD). But the voice talent is pretty high class - Dustin Hoffman, Frank Langella, and Sigourney Weaver, plus many others I can't remember right now. Definitely worth a rental, especially if you missed it at the theater (like me).

[bryanp.livejournal.com]

Both Sandler and Carey have made a couple of movies worth watching over the years, but they've both made a bunch of crap too. (not that that can't be said about any number of actors ...) Fortunately I have friends who watch all their movies and I let them pre-filter for me.

The only movie with Keanu Reeves in it that I consistently enjoy on any re-watching is Parenthood. He plays a secondary character and the role is well within his abilities.

[elektra-h.livejournal.com]

I'm afraid my guilty pleasure for the week was Quantum of Solace, it's not deep, but it has it's moments.

[wyldemusick.livejournal.com]

Actually, you could get the Fleischer cartoons without having to buy anything beyond SUPERMAN: THE MOVIE in the four disc reissue -- the nine non-Fleischer cartoons were on the Superman 2 package.

I'm curious as to whether the cartoon package includes any additional materials, because otherwise it's quite a gyp. As it was, there was a docuentary included with the cartoons on the 4 DVD set.

THE DAY KEANU STOOD STILL was really, really atrocious. Oddly, it wasn't because of Keanu specifically, as I think he fit the material quite well (sit very still and talk on a monotone.) It was the stupendously awful take on the story, the lack of logic anywhere through the thing, and The Message being applied with a nuclear-powered Message Sender. Some of the effects were interesting though. But, gad, it's a moronic movie.