Category Archives: DVD

DVD, Pointless Personal Digressions

The Twin Quasars of Rock

Oh, we know why the sun shinesI have been trying to see They Might Be Giants for almost two decades now — ever since I heard “Flood” at a film-school party and instantly fell in love with their nerd-rock brilliance.

And after a few false starts, and one miserable night in 2003 when I had a ticket in my hand and wasn’t able to get to the show, I finally caught up with Messrs Flansburgh and Linnell at the Mod Club last night.

It was totally rocking … but then, I expected nothing less. They Might Be Giants are one of the unsung heroes of the rock-and-roll show; you wouldn’t think their wonderful, intelligent and occasionally heartbreaking songs could be turned into a wall-shaking, ear-shredding celebration of power chords, but that’s more or less what they do every time they step up to the stage.

Seriously. One has not fully lived until one has heard the band turn a sleepy 1950s children’s song about astronomy into a thrash-metal anthem.

I’ve been listening to their latest album, “The Else“, for the last week or so. It’s perhaps not as immediately grabby as their last release, “The Spine“, but it’s growing on me — enough that I didn’t mind it when they threw about half of it into their set list, anyway.

Incidentally, if you want to get a sense of the band as both performers and artists, check out A.J. Schnack’s marvelous fan testimonial-slash-documentary “Gigantic“, which makes an excellent — and almost entirely subliminal — argument for the Johns as the bruised but optimistic soul of post-9/11 New York.

At least, that’s what I tell myself to explain why I wept my way through the second half.

DVD, Movies

Bigger. Longer. Uncut.

But is it art?My latest Sympatico/MSN DVD column focuses on the extended versions of “Factory Girl” and “The Hills Have Eyes 2” … two movies I really didn’t like so much theatrically, but which beg revisitation on DVD.

Well, one of them, anyway. Three guesses which one that is, and the first two don’t count.

Also: Beware the new Roberto Benigni movie. How he talked Jean Reno and Tom Waits into appearing in it with him, I cannot imagine.

… well, there’s the Jarmusch connection with Waits, and as much as I respect Reno, he doesn’t turn down many roles (*cough hack “Godzilla” hack cough*), so that’s probably what did it.

But still, guys, jeez. You are so much better than this.

DVD, Movies

Movies You Can Read

Our hotness gives us powerThis week’s Sympatico/MSN DVD column is up, focusing on Mongrel Media’s latest wave of imports — in particular, Jasmila Zbanic’s grim post-war melodrama “Grbavica” (retitled “Esma’s Secret”) and Jean-Claude Brisseau’s fascinatingly weird “Exterminating Angels”.

It’s always nice when the calendar lets me highlight something people might otherwise miss; in this case, it’s a pleasure to cover some intriguing and worthy films instead of trying to find 500 new words to describe interesting misfires like “The Astronaut Farmer” or “The Last Mimzy” … which, ironically, are poised to find a whole new audience on video.

I’d have more to say, but it’s so damnably hot that my fingers are sticking to the keyboard. If I didn’t have to trek out to Soundscapes for the new They Might Be Giants album, I’d be following my own advice and sequestering myself in the basement all day.

(And yes, I know it’s available on Emusic, but the physical disc comes with a bonus CD and stuff, so I’m hosed.)

DVD, Movies

We Fight Now!

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The survivors will move to the octagonI talk a good game, but I’m really kind of a dilettante when it comes to Asian action movies. I mean, I know my way around the racks at Suspect, and I held my own in conversation with Quentin Tarantino back in the day, but if we’d talked about Chow Yun-Fat’s pre-“Killer” filmography for much longer he would have smoked me, pure and simple.

There’s just so much to know, you know? And my formative years were spent on zombie movies.

Still, I know what I like, and what I like is people kicking each other in the face in increasingly spectacular ways, which is why I liked “Born to Fight”, the linchpin of this week’s Sympatico/MSN DVD column. You want to see balls-out martial-arts action, as well as some truly insane stuntwork and lots of explosions, well, turn your eyes to Thailand, grasshopper.

But if you’re more of a Hong Kong disciple, there’s plenty of stuff coming.

Just read the piece, willya? Don’t make me unleash the Five Fingers of Death on you …

DVD

Counter Strike

It's a Blu, Blu SummerLast month, Toshiba announced that it had started shipping its HD-DVD players with three free discs; now, the Blu-ray assocation hits back with its own summer offer.

(American readers can find their version here.)

It’s a simple deal: Buy any qualifying Blu-ray player (and by “qualifying”, they mean “any”, including the PlayStation 3) between now and September 30th, and receive five Blu-ray discs by mail. There are twenty titles to choose from; in the tradition of the Toshiba HD-DVD mail-in rebate, they’re grouped into studio-defined tiers, which limits the options somewhat. (I’d have taken “The Last Waltz”, “Transporter 2” and, er, “Species” out of Category 5, if they’d let me.)

Even so. Five free discs, from six different studio partners — Sony, Disney, Warner, Paramount, Fox/MGM and Lionsgate; it’s a subtle yet undeniably effective slap at Toshiba’s deal, which offers only three discs because, well, HD-DVD only has three studio partners.

And if you’ve decided to buy Panasonic’s DMP-BD10A — the one with five free discs included already — you don’t have to worry about duplicate titles. Pretty sweet deal.

Oh, and apropos of nothing, an animated rodent kicked John McClane’s ass over the weekend. In a manner of speaking.

DVD, Movies

Guilt and Pleasure

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Now, this is how you sell a movieMy latest Sympatico/MSN DVD column is up now, saluting Craig Brewer’s “Black Snake Moan”.

Yes, Samuel L. Jackson is playing a crazed bluesman who sorta-kinda abducts an even more crazed young woman. Yes, Christina Ricci spends a lot of time in a state of undress. Yes, there are crazy plot turns that still somehow make emotional sense.

But here is the thing: Sam Jackson sings “Stackolee”, and any film where Sam Jackson sings “Stackolee” is an instant cult classic.

If only he’d brought his guitar along on that plane ride …

DVD, Pointless Personal Digressions

If It Ain’t One Thing …

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It's cold and airless outside the tubes… it’s a 15-hour DSL outage, returning your faithful correspondent to the horrible world of dial-up.

The bright side was that after two and a half years, I’ve finally figured out how to receive e-mail on my Treo — up till now I was only able to send, which sort of defeats the whole purpose of the thing — so I wasn’t totally at sea. And hey, it could have been worse — my home could have flooded or something.

The dark side was that I HAD NO FRACKING INTERNET ACCESS FOR FIFTEEN HOURS. That does very bad things to a man’s mind. It’s like that scene in “Event Horizon” where Sam Neill explains what that alternate dimension was like — you eventually have no choice but to go insane, because it’s comforting.

And you miss stuff when you’re offline — like, apparently, the high-def DVD format war kicking up a couple of notches in the wake of Blockbuster’s decision to go exclusively with Blu-ray in its rental expansion.

DVD File puts it all together nicely here, with individual studio reps commenting on the state of the war … and then Variety delivers what could be HD-DVD’s death blow in a rather elegant manner. Love the flourish about shoes dropping.

Anyway, it’s a deadline Thursday. Back to work …

DVD

Radical Action

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No, we cannot just get alongI was dazzled to see Toshiba’s A2 HD-DVD player slashed to just $349 at Future Shop this weekend — and that includes those three free discs! — though I still couldn’t bring myself to buy one: It doesn’t output 1080p, and it takes a full 40 seconds to boot up and open its disc tray, which I still find incredibly frustrating.

It probably won’t hurt to hold out a little longer. Toshiba’s only going to get more and more inventive on its price cuts and rebates … and I have a feeling the holiday season will bring some heavy discount action on the A20, which does offer 1080p and is apparently a little faster on the draw than its buddies.

Of course, that’s assuming the HD-DVD camp doesn’t crawl into a hole and die over the summer, having been dealt a potentially lethal blow by Blockbuster’s decision to exclusively rent Blu-ray titles in its stores. The chain will continue to offer HD-DVD discs for sale online, but the announcement that Blu-ray will be the high-def format of choice in its brick-and-mortar locations is pretty dramatic.

If you do want that A2, the price is valid until Thursday. Me, I think I’ll wait until they offer a Simon Pegg bundle — A20, discs of “Shaun of the Dead” and “Hot Fuzz” … and, um, a bonus cricket bat.

DVD

Nicolas the Mad

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Your smoothness is strange and troubling to meSo it turns out that there’s an upside to staying up all night while the plumbers wait for one’s bathroom to flood again, in order to trace the source of the water coursing through one’s basement: One gets to really exploit all that time one would normally spend, you know, sleeping.

Oddly, my frame of mind after that 25-hour day — which included a leisurely afternoon barbecue, a rocking evening concert and a lot of panicked midnight heavy lifting — turned out to be just about ideal for today’s Sympatico/MSN DVD column.

See, I imagine Nicolas Cage spent a lot of time in a similarly altered state while working on “Ghost Rider”, possibly even staying up all night running around his hotel shouting “I’m the Ghost Rider! I’m the Ghost Rider!” at random passers-by.

One thinks of these things, at the 26th hour.