New Releases On Blu Ray & DVD: 6/18/13

JACK THE GIANT SLAYER was a giant flop for Warner Brothers back in March, but what’s a studio to do but pretend it wasn’t when it hits the home video market? That’s definitely what they’re doing today with the release of the movie in a shiny new Blu-ray 3D/Blu-ray/DVD + UltraViolet Digital Copy Combo Pack (it’s also available on a single disc DVD). Like just about everybody else, I didn’t see it on the big screen, but for those who are interested, I’ll report that the bonus material includes deleted scenes, a gag reel and an interactive feature called “Become a Giant Slayer,” which contains a bunch of featurettes with titles like “Suiting Up” and “The Magic of a Beanstalk.”

A film I did see in its theatrical release, Dustin Hoffman’s likably fluffy directorial debut QUARTET, starring Academy Award winner Maggie Smith, Golden Globe winner Tom Courtenay, Academy Award nominee Pauline Collins, Golden Globe nominee Michael Gambon and BAFTA Film Award nominee Billy Connolly, is also out today on Blu ray and DVD, albeit in much more modest single disc Blu ray and DVD editions. Special features include a commentary with Hoffman, and a few Behind-The-Scenes featurettes.

Another film releasing today on home video that I quite enjoyed, is Chan-wook Park’s psychological thriller STOKER, starring Mia Wasikowska, Matthew Good, and Nicole Kidman. Alongside Digital and UltraViolet versions, the fine film is packaged with a bevy of Special Features: the mini-doc “An Exclusive Look: A Filmmaker's Journey,” deleted scenes, a few Behind the Scenes featurettes, Red Carpet Premiere: Emily Wells’ performance of “Becomes the Color,” image galleries, and a free song download.

I proudly didn’t see MOVIE 43, the comedy anthology fiasco directed by a gang of directors headed by Peter Farrelly, when it was released in January, but now that it’s out in what’s called an “Outrageous Edition” on Blu ray and DVD…well, I probably still won’t watch it. But with its all star cast including Chloë Grace Moretz, Emma Stone, Gerard Butler, Stephen Merchant, Richard Gere, and Elizabeth Banks (who also directed a segment), and Richard Roeper calling it “the CITIZEN KANE of awful,” I can’t deny being a little curious about it. Not sure why it calls itself the “Outrageous Edition” when it only has a couple of meager Special Features: a trailer and a featurette titled “Find Our Daughter.”

A movie I wish I’d skipped, the directorial debut of THE HANGOVER scribes Jon Lucas and Scott Moore, 21 & OVER, drops today in a 2-disc Blu ray package (Blu-ray/DVD Combo Pack), and on a single disc DVD. The extremely crappy college party comedy concerning the unfunny misadventures of a trio of douches (Justin Chon, Skylar Astin, and Miles Teller) is now joined by Special Features that don’t sound so special - a few featurettes and a gag reel. Bet those are as inessential as the film itself. Read my review of the film from the day it originally opened here.


TV show season sets releasing today: Call the Midwife: Season Two, Body of Proof: The Complete Third Season, Workaholics: Season Three, and Wilfred: Season Two.

On the older films new to Blu ray front there’s Criterion Collection editions of Fred C. Newmeyer and Sam Taylor’s 1923 Harold Lloyd classic SAFETY LAST! (one of the Special Features is  the 1992 American Masters biodoc of Lloyd, THE THIRD GENIUS), William Cameron Menzies’ THINGS TO COME (1936), and Frantisek Vlacil’s MARKETA LAZAROVA (1967). 

On the non-Criterion older films front, the Kino Classics Remastered Edition of OF HUMAN BONDAGE (1934), starring Bette Davis and Leslie Howard, makes its debut on Blu ray. Besides trailers of other classics, the release’s sole Special Feature is pretty special: a feature length biodoc of Somerset Maugham, the British writer who wrote the 1915 novel the film is based on.



More later...

Obligatory Road-Trip Vegas Scene #4: RAINMAN

As my wife is in Las Vegas right now for the NAB Show, in this 5-part series I’m taking a look at those scenes in cross-country road-trip movies in which the Nevada gambling mecca makes a brief cameo appearance. Because of scenes like these, when I was a kid I never thought anybody actually lived in Vegas - I just thought everybody on a road trip would have to stop there, gamble then got back on the road to somewhere else.

Only when I visited there for the first time in 2009, did I see it as an actual living breathing community and not just a place that pops up on the big and small screen every now and then. I understand why I held onto those cinematic visions of Vegas for so long – the place is so surreal and outlandish that it seems like it could only exist in the movies.

So here’s Obligatory Road Trip Vegas Scene #4: RAINMAN (Dir. Barry Levinson, 1988)

This one is similar to the Vegas scene in #5 (STARMAN), except Dustin Hoffman as Raymond Babbit doesn’t have supernatural powers – he’s an autistic savant who has an incredible memory. Raymond’s brother, Charlie (Tom Cruise) realizes that he can exploit it by counting cards in Vegas and winning big. In the car on the way into town, Charlie tells Raymond: “Casinos have house rules. The first one is they don’t like to lose. So you never never show that you are counting cards. That is *the* cardinal sin, Ray.” “Counting is bad.” Raymond replies.

Once in Vegas, Charlie pawns his watch and the film cuts to a quick montage of shots of Caesar’s Palace. The brothers aren’t there to take in the sights though – Charlie briskly takes his brother to one of the clothes shops in the Forum so they can get suited up in Armani and hit the Blackjack tables (Incidentally the shot of them making their entrance on the escalator into the casino was memorably parodied in THE HANGOVER).

Check out the RAINMAN Vegas scene here:

For folks who’ve never been to Vegas, but only fantasized about it while playing online casino games, scenes like this give them all the noisy spectacle of the strip in an appealing glitzy flash. Love that funky Hans Zimmer synthesizer score driving the sequence too.



More later...

BARNEY'S VERSION: A Tragicom Schlub Story

BARNEY'S VERSION (Dir. Richard J. Lewis, 2010)BARNEY'S VERSION (Dir. Richard J. Lewis, 2010)

In this tragicomic indie (for lack of a better genre classification), based on the 1997 Mordecai Richler novel, we first meet the crabby Barney Panofsky, played by Paul Giamatti, drunkenly cold calling his ex-wife at 3 AM.

It's a suitable introduction for such a lovably pathetic character, one that has shades of Giamatti's likewise hung-up-on-his-ex-wife work in SIDEWAYS.

Though here Giamatti swigs hard liquor not wine, and he’s got a devious confidence, but he still tumbles down a hill in the middle of a tussle with his best friend as he did in that 2004 sleeper hit.

In a modern day Montreal bar, Mark Addy as a crusty old ex-cop slides across the bar to Giamatti a copy of his just published sensationalistic book (“With Friends Like These”) which speculates on the dark past of our aging protagonist. Addy addles closer, getting up in Giamatti's face, and says:

“You screwed over everyone you ever knew or cared about. Now the whole world’s gonna know what a murderer you really are.”

Giamatti responds: “You could use a mint.”

As he pages through the hardback, Giamatti flashbacks to Rome in the mid '70s where he is living it up bohemian style. He marries his pregnant girlfriend (Rachelle Lefevre), but it's a short lived honeymoon when he finds out the baby isn't his.

The film goes back and forth through the last few decades giving us ample opportunity to piece together the scrappy narrative that mainly concerns Giamatti's 3 marriages.

Lefevre commits suicide shortly after the couples' estrangement, Giamatti relocates to Canada taking a television producer gig, and in the process meets a wealthy Jewish princess played to perfection by Minnie Driver.

Driver, of course, becomes wife #2. The comic predicament that Giamatti finds himself in is that he falls head over heels in love with another woman (Rosamund Pike) right after getting married to Driver - at their wedding reception mind you.

A further wrinkle is provided when a junkie boozer writer wannabe friend (Scott Speedman) from Giamatti’s days in Italy shows up wasted at his lakeside cottage. I won’t spill the beans on what transpires there, but I will tell you that this is where Addy’s future murder accusations come into play.

The always welcome Dustin Hoffman has a short, but sweet role as Giamatti’s retired policeman father Izzy who amusingly doles out questionable advice while constantly embarrassing his son.

Those looking for a rom com (as the trailers are packaging it as such) are likely to be a bit overwhelmed by the sad intensity of much of “Barney’s Version”, but those looking for a drama with depth are going to find a lot to wallow in.

That said, there are a lot of genuinely funny moments in this film. There's a lot of sharp wit, but the tone is set mainly by humor of the cringe inducing variety.

The chemistry between Giamatti and 3^rd wife Pike is strongly affecting although we know it’s a doomed union. When the suave Bruce Greenwood appears and hits it off with Pike (much to Giamatti’s chagrin) we know for sure that their marriage is in trouble.

But we knew that from the start as we have seen the elder broken down Giamatti – a very convincing makeup job that scored an Oscar nomination for Adrien Morot – and know that’s he will most likely die alone.

So Giamatti sits and stews in his memories, repeatedly requesting Leonard Cohen songs on the radio, and ignoring the attempts to care for him that his daughter (Anna Hopkins) makes.

Cohen croons “Dance me through the panic till I’m gathered safely in,” - a fitting epitaph for a man whose romanticized yet jagged memories are all he has left.

More later...