The Ultimate DVD Geek By Douglas PrattPratt@moviecitynews.com
Quantum of Solace
There is not a quantum of solace in the latest installment of the James Bond series, Quantum of Solace, a Metro Goldwyn Mayer 20th Century Fox Home Entertainment release. The action scenes move forward relentlessly and the dramatic interims barely interfere with the pace. The film is a true installment as well, with hardly a plot…
Read the full article »An American in Paris
So you’ve just bought a Blu-ray player and you’ve never seen An American in Paris before? Well, aren’t you in for a treat. Warner Home Video has released the 1951 Oscar winner on Blu-ray, and the colors are so rapturous that even the fabulous DVD, which has essentially the same transfer, is nowhere near as satisfying….
Read the full article »Vanishing Point: BluRay
Charlotte Rampling has second billing on the ‘U.K. version’ of Vanishing Point, which runs 106 minutes (although her name does not appear on the end credit scroll). Without her, the American theatrical release runs 98 minutes. Both versions were included on the 20th Century Fox Home Entertainment DVD, and are now featured on the much improved…
Read the full article »The French Connection
Would whoever kidnapped William Friedkin in the late Seventies and replaced him with an evil twin please let the poor man go? In addition to all of the awful movies he has made since then, Friedkin has now gone back and messed with his crowning achievement, the 1971 Oscar-winning cop thriller, The French Connection. 20th Century Fox…
Read the full article »Collector’s Choice: The Films of Michael Powell
After what has seemed like an eternity, Michael Powell and Emeric Pressburger’s outstanding 1946 wartime fantasy, A Matter of Life and Death, which played theatrically in Death-allergic America asStairway to Heaven, has been made available on home video, released by Sony Pictures Home Entertainment as a two-platter The Collector’s Choice DVD set, The Films of Michael Powell, accompanied by…
Read the full article »The Chronicles of Narnia: Prince Caspian
The science of sequels has bedeviled Hollywood for years. Which elements should be retained? Which altered? The makers of the follow up to The Chronicles of Narnia The Lion, The Witch and the Wardrobe faced an even more vexing problem. Should they go with the next C.S. Lewis book in the series, which has a compelling story…
Read the full article »Star Wars: The Clone Wars
It is said that flaws can be tolerated in friends and strangers, but not in one’s parents, and that definitely seems to be everybody’s opinion when it comes to the father of Star Wars, George Lucas. It is because the first movie was so good that the other films became so frustrating and their flaws so…
Read the full article »The Spy Who Came in from the Cold
The Criterion Collection release of The Spy Who Came in from the Cold is so immaculate that the previous Paramount release is rendered unwatchable. Paramount’s presentation turns out to be extensively speckled-white speckles in the black areas of the screen and black speckles in the white areas of the screen-as well as being grainy and having…
Read the full article »An American Carol
I first saw David Zucker’s Airplane! in a crowded urban theater and the audience was laughing uproariously throughout the film, except for one gag, when the airplane’s wing knocks over the antenna of a radio station as the station is proclaiming, “Where disco lives forever.” The theater went dead silent, and remained that way until the next…
Read the full article »Honey West
It lasted just one season, but Honey West was such a breakthrough TV program that it easily overshadows Forbidden Planet as star Anne Francis’ best remembered role. The 1965-66 ABC Network series, spun off from Burke’s Law, was probably too expensive to renew, but it presented, for the first time, a female action heroine as the lead of an…
Read the full article »The Top Ten DVDs and BDs of 2008
With the elimination of a competing format, 2008 saw the establishment of the backwards compatible Blu-ray (BD) system as the high-end subset of the DVD format. While it is less flexible and does not offer significant improvements in supplementary features (except enhanced interactivity and an ability to connect with other fans of a title online),…
Read the full article »Wall-E
The lovely 2008 Pixar feature about a robot who rescues humanity, WALL-E, has been released by Walt Disney Studios Home Entertainment. With minimal dialog but plenty of sound effects and music, the 99-minute computer-animated film depicts the robot cleaning up the trash on Earth left after all of the people have long since departed (in Disney…
Read the full article »The Dark Knight
Every year, hundreds of movies are produced and twenty performers in a few of those movies are justifiably honored with Oscar nominations, but it is far less often that a film performance occurs which is so utterly spellbinding that it transcends the movie it is in to captivate the viewer with the sheer joy of…
Read the full article »Quo Vadis
As the pool of epic movies yet to be released on DVD diminishes, each release that does appear seems to become all the more significant. Warner Home Video has issued an impressive Two-Disc Special Edition of the 1951 MGM production, Quo Vadis. 1951, remember, was before widescreen or stereo sound was utilized to make such movies…
Read the full article »Mad Men
Opening in March of 1960, the outstanding AMC cable series, Mad Men, is a glorious period drama about the generation that parented the Baby Boomers. It is also an incisive analysis of the advertising business during one of its greatest growth spurts, and above all else, it is a superb analysis of the human condition achieved…
Read the full article »How The West Was Won
When it was made, the story in How the West Was Won concluded at a point that reached the lifetime of some of the 1963 MGM film’s oldest viewers (and background extras), so that its own narrative span, depicting in an episodic fashion, the gradual settlement of western America during the Nineteenth Century, could present a…
Read the full article »Birds of Prey
Too comic booky for the masses, or even the WB subset thereof, the short-lived Birds of Prey TV series, about female crime fighters in ‘New Gotham City,’ has finally been delivered to the medium where it can be the most appreciated, as Warner Home Video has released Birds of Prey The Complete Series, a four platter set…
Read the full article »Vantage Point
A marvelously frantic suspense movie about a presidential assassination attempt, Vantage Point,has been issued by Sony Pictures Home Entertainment. The film has several famous stars in smallish roles, but the hero is a recovering Secret Service agent, played by Dennis Quaid, who may have been called back to duty too soon after defending the president from a…
Read the full article »Hannah Montana and Miley Cyrus: Best of Both Worlds Concert
I am such a 3-D junkie that the moment I obtained the Walt Disney Studios Home Entertainment 2-Disc Extended Edition release, Hannah Montana and Miley Cyrus Best of Both Worlds Concert, I tore it open with a lustful glee that would not have been equaled had Cyrus herself been sitting next to me on the couch,…
Read the full article »Dirty Harry
Being one of Warner Home Video’s core assets, Don Siegel’s 1971 Clint Eastwood film, Dirty Harry, has long since undergone stereophonication and upgraded image transfers. Warner released the title initially in the beginning days of DVD and then put together a collector’s edition with improved colors and a few supplementary features. Warner has now, however, upgraded the movie…
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