— Christopher

Hi Christopher. Seven Samurai, a 1954 film by Akira Kurosawa, runs 203 minutes. And we sure wish we could end our reply there, because — really — it's 203 minutes.

But, as most digital die-hards know, the first Criterion DVD edition of Seven Samurai, issued on 5 August 1998, was recalled and replaced by a second DVD on 1 March 1999. At issue was a film-restoration feature that demonstrated how the video and audio elements had been mastered for the DVD presentation, which Toho Films, the owner and licensor of Seven Samurai, objected to. It seems that Criterion had permission to release the title in its entirety, but they were not allowed to present segments out of context of the film proper. That, and a few apparent quibbles over region-coding (or lack thereof) and subtitles that could be switched off, caused Criterion to pull the disc briefly before the re-issue hit the street.

The snafu: Criterion's second release of Seven Samurai is listed at 207 minutes, even though the official running time of the film, in its longest cut, has always been 203 minutes. We'd love to simply pull out that second disc and see what's up, but believe or not we don't have one — just the first edition. Nevertheless, our info is that additional overture and exit music was added to the second edition, just a few minutes worth, which kicked it out to 207 minutes (but whatever the change, it's subtle enough that most people have overlooked it, including us). Criterion's website and virtually all online retail sites also list the new DVD at 207 minutes, despite the fact that the Internet Movie Database is very firm on the 203-minute theatrical cut. This 203-minute time comes in handy for DVD collectors by the way, as there's a lot of concern over buying a 100% genuine first edition of Seven Samurai, along with all sorts of discussion on what fine print to look for on the back of the box. Items such as the location of the UPC code and a "Region 1" logo are frequently mentioned as reliable provenance, but all you need to look for is "203 minutes" — the 203's are the real McCoy.

Complicating the scenario further (and don't we love it when that happens), Seven Samurai was seriously trimmed to 141 minutes when first released in the U.S. and Europe, although we don't know if this cut has ever appeared on home video (Criterion's 1989 Laserdisc release was — you guessed it — 203 minutes). A Region 2 DVD released by the British Film Institute clocks in at 190 minutes. Butchery? Maybe, but we've heard that this actually has to do with PAL conversion and that the entire film is on board — it just runs a bit faster (but, not having that particular DVD handy either, we can't confirm it).

More trivia? Michael Jeck's much-praised commentary wasn't recorded in 1998 for the DVD, but instead first appeared on the 1989 Criterion CAV laser — it's more than twice as old as the DVD format itself, but timeless in its thorough scholarship. Also, Seven Samurai was the first DVD released by Criterion, who were still in the Laserdisc business in '98. That being the case, consider yourself chronically obsessed with all things DVD if you know why — it being the first release — it sports Criterion spine #2.

— Tim

We actually haven't noticed too many auctions for the Alfred Hitchcock Presents discs on eBay Tim (they tend to close a little too low for our regular rankings), but we're not surprised — Alfred Hitchcock personally directed 17 episodes of the long-running CBS-TV series, and the 16 episodes put on DVD by Universal are de rigueur items for Hitchcock completists. Unfortunately, the bad news is that if auctions for individual discs are going for $40 and up, that's just all the more reason for collectors to consider buying one or more of Universal's four Hitchcock collections. After all, the AHP discs were produced merely to create interest in the Universal boxes — big closes on eBay may be just the sort of buzz to keep them where they are for now.

(As for that 17th Hitchcock television episode, in 1961 Alfred Hitchcock Presents was expanded and recast by CBS as The Alfred Hitchcock Hour for its final season, and Hitch directed the one-hour courtroom drama "I Saw the Whole Thing," starring John Forsythe. As far as we can tell, this item is not on home video anywhere.)

— John

Ms. DuPont will get nothing and like it.

Top of the Pops: Here's the top-selling DVDs last week from our friends at Ken Crane's DVDPlanet.com. Click the links to read our reviews of these discs:

1. The Magnificent Seven: Special Edition
2. Miss Congeniality
3. What Women Want
4. Superman: The Movie
5. Quills
6. The X-Files: Season 3
7. Spartacus: The Criterion Collection
8. The Emperor's New Groove: The Ultimate Groove
9. The Mummy: Ultimate Edition
10. Best in Show

Later.

— Ed.

Tuesday, 15 May 2001

In the Works: Here's some new disc announcements, courtesy of Image Entertainment and DVDPlanet.com, and additional staff reports:

• We've known for a while that Fox's upcoming Die Hard: Ultimate Collection is due on July 10, but the final specs for the two-disc sets were just recently released — count on Die Hard: Five Star Collection to include two commentary tracks, one with director John McTiernan and crew, and the other with effects supervisor Richard Edlund. There also will be the original "making-of" short, deleted scenes, a "subtitle commentary," newscast footage from the film, stills, and several interactive features, including an "editing suite." Die Hard 2: Die Harder: Special Edition will offer a commentary with director Renny Harlin, deleted scenes, a look at the visual effects, three featurettes, and promo materials. Last in the series is Die Hard with a Vengeance: Special Edition, with a commentary from director McTiernan, an alternate ending, featurettes, storyboards, and more. The bad news is that only Die Hard: Five Star Collection will be for sale individually (SRP $29.95) — the other two titles only come in the Die Hard: Ultimate Collection box (SRP $79.95).
• In prep at Columbia TriStar are two separate versions of this year's Saving Silverman, with both PG-13 and R-rated cuts due to arrive on July 17 (we are promised that an additional three minutes in the latter contains "racy, never-before-seen footage"). Both discs will include a commentary from director Dennis Dugan, an outtake reel, and two videos as "Easter eggs." Things are looking up for Jet Li fans, as CTHE has Once Upon a Time in China 3 set for July 17, along with a Once Upon a Time in China 1-3 triple-pack (SRP $67.95). More Muppets are on the way, this time with 1981's The Great Muppet Caper, and we can also expect The Karate Kid 2 and The Karate Kid 3, as well as Rainer Werner Fassbinder's final film, the 1982 Querelle (all July 10).
• It's easy to love the folks at Paramount when they keep digging out some choice back-catalog titles for DVD release — Howard Hawks' 1962 Hatari!, Don Siegel's 1976 The Shootist, and the improbable 1969 musical-western Paint Your Wagon all arrive on July 24.
• This year's horror film Valentine will get the SE treatment from Warner with a commentary from director Jamie Blanks, while those of you who think Keanu is the cat's meow can expect Sweet November co-starring Charlize Theron and with a "From the Heart" featurette (both July 24). Also arriving from Warner on Aug. 21 will be Clive Barker's 1990 Nightbreed. But (to the severe angst of several DVD Journal staffers), the entire Blackadder series has been kicked back to June 26.
• Just one from Buena Vista this morning — last year's Dracula 2000: Special Edition will include a commentary with director Patrick Lussier and writer Joel Soisson, deleted scenes with commentary, a behind-the-scenes featurette, storyboards, "audition footage," and a trailer. Look for it on July 3.
• Those of you who are admirers of Christopher Nolan's Memento (currently in theaters) can keep your eyes open for his first film, 1998's Following, which is due on Aug. 28 from Zeitgeist. Meanwhile, due on June 26 is a triple-dose of Atom Egoyan — the double feature Next of Kin and Family Viewing will include an interview with Egoyan and three of his short films, while Speaking Parts: Special Edition will feature another interview as well as a commentary track from the director.
• We miss ya Joey Ramone, but thanks to Music Video we'll be able to enjoy the 1976 documentary The Blank Generation, a look at the New York punk scene at CBGB's with appearances from The Ramones, Patti Smith, Talking Heads, Richard Hell, and many more. Also on the same disc will the be the 1995 doc Dancin' Barefoot, a retrospective of The Patti Smith Group directed by guitarist Ivan Kral. We'll be getting sedated on Aug. 14. Rhino also has a Ramones title in prep — Ramones: Around the World — although we don't have a street date yet.
• As a quick note, New Line announced this week that upcoming titles in their ultra-interactive "inifinifilm" series will include 15 Minutes, Blow, and Rush Hour 2. Even more interesting? They will street in Amaray keep-cases, not the studio's customary Warner snappers.

On the Street: It's a quiet street Tuesday this morning, although just a brief lull before the May 22 – June 5 stretch of premium releases. Nevertheless, Fox has our attention today with a quartet of classic war films — The Sand Pebbles, Twelve O'Clock High, Von Ryan's Express, and the re-issued Tora! Tora! Tora!: Special Edition. Columbia TriStar also has a highly praised war film out today with Kevin Reynolds' 1988 Soviet tank drama The Beast, while Warner's Best of Show will be snapped up by fans of Christopher Guest (and maybe if enough sell we'll actually get Waiting for Guffman before much longer — cough, cough). Here's this morning's brief but notable street discs, courtesy of DVDPlanet.com and Image Entertainment:

• Antitrust: Special Edition
• The Beast
• Best in Show
• Bounty Hunters
• Bounty Hunters 2: Hardball
• Dumbarton Bridge
• The Fall of the House of Usher (1928)
• Five Dolls for an August Moon
• Franz Kafka's It's A Wonderful Life, And Other Strange Tales
• Full Disclosure
• Hangman
• Horatio Hornblower: The Adventure Continues
• Kept: Special Edition
• Midnight Madness
• Mountaintop Motel Massacre
• Pay It Forward: Special Edition
• My Sweet Suicide
• The Sand Pebbles
• Shopping For Fangs
• Taken
• Texas Funeral
• Tora! Tora! Tora!: Special Edition
• Twelve O'Clock High
• Vineyard
• Von Ryan's Express
• Yakuza Way
• Zone 39

See ya tomorrow.

— Ed.

Monday, 14 May 2001

Disc of the Week: In 1926, China was in turmoil. Shaking off centuries of dynastic rule, the nation had endured many brutal wars and rebellions in the previous century, including the Boxer Rebellion of 1900, before the revolutionary Sun Yat-sen became the first leader of the Republic of China in 1911, ending 2,000 years of monarchy. But despite his goal of creating a Chinese society that would uphold his Three Principles of nationalism, democracy, and socialism, competing political forces were in place. Though small at the time, Mao Zedong established the Communist Party of China in 1921, and the unstable political landscape left warlords in control of several regions. After Sun's death in 1925, his protégé Chaing Kai-shek pursued the nationalist cause, primarily via military force. And in the midst of it all, Western powers — in China not for any political designs per se but rather the vast opportunities for commerce and influence — were omnipresent, be it in the form of trading companies, Christian missionaries, or naval gunboats. Amidst the growing sense of Chinese nationalism, they had long outstayed their welcome.

Robert Wise's 1966 The Sand Pebbles, based on the novel by Richard McKenna, surveys the men of one gunboat, the U.S.S. San Pablo, as it patrols Chinese waters to represent and defend American interests during this tumultuous era. Steve McQueen stars as naval engineer Jake Holman, a sailor who has served on seven boats in his nine-year career — a record that will get the attention of any commanding officer, and especially the no-nonsense skipper of the San Pablo, Capt. Collins (Richard Crenna). But despite his reputation for trouble, Jake's only goal is honest work for an honest wage. "On a small ship, you haven't got any of that military crap," Jake tells American missionary Shirley Eckert (Candace Bergen) on his journey to join the San Pablo. "They leave you alone." But the San Pablo, it turns out, is as complicated as a naval vessel can come — the ship is manned by "coolies," Chinese nationals who earn a meager living serving the needs of the boat and its crew, and Jake immediately takes issue with the unprofessional way the engine room is managed. As a result, he has an uneasy relationship with the Chinese hands and the American crew alike, but one sailor, Frenchy (Richard Attenborough), becomes fast friends with Jake, as the pair often find themselves at odds with their surroundings — particularly when Jake promotes an out-of-favor Chinese hand, Po-han (Mako), to run the engine room, and later when Frenchy falls in love with Maily (Emmanuelle Arsan), a Chinese prostitute. With open revolt in China and the demands it makes on the crew of the San Pablo, matters for the both of them only get worse, particularly as they consider fashioning new lives and destinies for themselves — as civilians, and not sailors.

A sprawling film that retains the episodic qualities of the source novel, The Sand Pebbles remains immensely watchable during its three-hour running time thanks to a remarkably subdued performance from McQueen — it's certainly the best of his career, and the only one for which he earned an Oscar nomination. A great deal of McQueen's famous screen persona comes through in the part, but he also finds small ways to illustrate Jake's uncomplicated view of himself and his life, with his rural accent and clipped speech patterns, and while he's capable of dramatic outbursts, in his scenes with Candace Bergen he's practically a timid teenager struggling for things to say. It's a dynamic turn, and one that shows McQueen was a far better actor than his "King of Cool" reputation let on. Bergen herself was only 19 when shooting began on The Sand Pebbles, but she offers a mature performance as the young missionary who falls for Jake, while Richard Attenborough comes up with a convincing American patter as the chivalrous sailor with a soft spot for damsels in distress (the project also reunited McQueen and Attenborough four years after The Great Escape). Helmed by director Wise (The Sound of Music, West Side Story), The Sand Pebbles was one of the most expensive films undertaken by Fox at the time, shot on location in Taiwan and Hong Kong over eight months, and with a genuine steam-powered gunboat that cost $250,000 alone. But Wise didn't waste his resources — the film is filled with panoramic vistas of the southeast Asian landscape, and several urban locations were extensively made over to resemble 1926 Peking. The result was nine Oscar nominations, and Wise later remarked that it was the favorite film of his career — although, in part, simply because the shoot was so enormously complex. "I suppose having suffered through months and months and months of shooting on it," he told an interviewer, "and the weather problems and everything else that went into it, makes a more memorable experience than the others."

Fox's new DVD edition of The Sand Pebbles offers a solid anamorphic transfer (2.35:1) from a clean and colorful source print that's showing very little wear for its age. It is presented in its "roadshow" format, with an Overture and Intermission, although this 182-minute cut falls short of the 196-minute version first screened in 1966 (the additional 14 minutes is lost, possibly forever according to some sources). Audio is available in a new Dolby Digital 4.0 mix, as well as Dolby 2.0 Stereo. Supplements include a feature-length commentary with director Wise, Bergen, Mako, and others; two audio documentaries, "Changsha Bund and the Streets of Taipei" and "A Ship Called San Pablo" (video sources for both apparently have been lost); three radio spots; a still gallery; and the original theatrical trailer. The Sand Pebbles is on the street tomorrow.

Box Office: To the surprise of hardly anybody, Universal's The Mummy Returns is still the 800-pound gorilla of the American box-office, remaining atop the chart for the second week in a row as it added another $32.2 million in the past three days and boosted its overall total to $116.5 million in just ten days (ch-ching!). Landing in the number-two spot was the weekend's only new arrival, Sony's A Knight's Tale starring Heath Ledger, which garnered a respectable $17 million and could turn out to be the sleeper hit of the summer season (and just so we all know these are summer films, they're doing big business while earning some snide reviews from the critics — sounds like summer to us).

Films in continuing release hardly matter this time around — The Mummy Returns and A Knight's Tale were responsible for nearly three-fourths of the weekend box-office, with everything else on the fast-track to DVD prep (no film below the top two earned better than $4.5 million). Miramax's Spy Kids has cleared $100 million to date, while their Bridget Jones's Diary is now over $50 million. The late-spring doldrums have allowed such fare as Blow, Along Came a Spider, and Crocodile Dundee in Los Angeles remain on the chart longer than we expected, but gaining screens (and fans) are Newmarket's Memento and Sony's The Tailor of Panama, both cracking the top ten after several weeks in limited release. But off the charts is one of the most remarkable flops in recent memory — New Line's Town and Country, an oft-rewritten "comedy" starring Warren Beatty and reportedly costing between $80 – 90 million due to production overruns, has bailed out after three weeks and around $6 million in revenue.

Next weekend sees the arrival of Angel Eyes starring Jennifer Lopez, along with the animated Shrek, featuring the voices of Mike Myers, Eddie Murphy, Cameron Diaz, and John Lithgow. Here's the top-grossing films at North American theaters from last weekend:

1. The Mummy Returns (Universal)
   $32,200,000 ($116,500,000 through 2 weeks)
2. A Knight's Tale (Sony/Columbia TriStar)
   $17,000,000 ($17,000,000 through 1 week)
3. Bridget Jones's Diary (Miramax)
   $4,500,000 ($51,000,000 through 5 weeks)
4. Driven (Warner Bros.)
   $3,015,000 ($26,099,000 through 3 weeks)
5. Along Came a Spider (Paramount)
   $3,000,000 ($64,119,000 through 6 weeks)
6. Spy Kids (Miramax/Dimension)
   $2,500,000 ($101,500,000 through 7 weeks)
7. Crocodile Dundee in Los Angeles (Paramount)
   $2,100,000 ($20,648,000 through 4 weeks)
8. Blow (New Line)
   $1,950,000 ($47,238,000 through 6 weeks)
9. Memento (Newmarket)
   $1,200,000 ($10,200,000 through 9 weeks)
10. The Tailor of Panama (Sony/Columbia TriStar)
    $800,000 ($10,500,000 through 7 weeks)
11. Joe Dirt (Sony/Columbia TriStar)
    $750,000 ($25,800,000 through 5 weeks)
12. Kingdom Come (Fox Searchlight)
    $678,000 ($21,400,000 through 5 weeks)

On the Board: Alexandra DuPont has posted a lengthy deconstruction of Fox's two-disc Big Trouble in Little China: Special Edition, due on May 22, while Greg Dorr looked at Mississippi Burning and D.K. Holm spun the revised Tora! Tora! Tora!: Special Edition. Meanwhile, new reviews from the team this week include Von Ryan's Express, M. Hulot's Holiday: The Criterion Collection, Mon Oncle: The Criterion Collection, Antitrust, The Sand Pebbles, The Horse Soldiers, and The Pope of Greenwich Village. Everything's been added under the New Reviews menu here on the front page, while our search engine leads to more than 1,000 DVD write-ups.

Back tomorrow with this week's street discs.

— Ed.

Thursday, 10 May 2001
Weekend Dispatch

'Exhausted' goes digital: Many of you may recall that New Line's second DVD release of Boogie Nights: Platinum Series wasn't as definitive as hoped — a mix of the Criterion Laserdisc edition and New Line's first DVD release, the only thing missing was the 30-minute segment of the John Holmes documentary Exhausted with audio commentary from Paul Thomas Anderson. In fact, early check-discs for the two-disc Boogie Nights contained the supplement, but the documentary soon vanished without a trace and just a few vague comments about "rights" issues.

But now comes word from Exhausted producer Julia St. Vincent that a new DVD version of the entire film will arrive on June 4 (however, PTA's amusing commentary on the non-hardcore elements of the film is still only to be found on the OOP Criterion laser). She also has a few choice comments on the Exhausted/New Line fallout on her website. No editorial from us, or at least not on this sort of legal dispute. But St. Vincent's website is an interesting read for Boogie Nights fans, and those who don't mind viewing adult materials may find the Exhausted disc to be a valauble companion piece to PTA's porn-industry epic.

Quotable: "It's happening whether anybody likes it or not. I have some friends, like Marty (Scorsese) and Steven (Spielberg), and they're not going to change over. They love film. I think Jim Cameron and Francis (Ford Coppola) changed over. It's like the beginning of color. Some still wanted to use black and white, and that's great. It's an addition to what's already existing."

— George Lucas on the transition from film stock
to digital filmmaking, in Entertainment
Weekly.

"I can tell you that (the issues facing the negotiators) were all very difficult. There were no pins that fell on their own. We had to bowl them all over."

— Michael Mahern, secretary-treasurer of the
west coast branch of the Writers Guild of America
and co-chairman of the union negotiating team,
to the New York Times in the aftermath of
the successfully averted writers' strike.

"I'm willing to take large sums of money to vote for your film. I will choose the film whose producer gives me the largest amount of money."

— A tongue-in-cheek Terry Gilliam, who is on the
jury for the 54th Cannes Film Festival. The annual
event kicked off earlier this week.

"A chase is very difficult to film. In many ways, it's a tapestry. You have to see the whole thing in your head. It's all done without sound. The sound is added later, so you have to see it all, and hear it all and then you have to bring it off in a way that people aren't going to get hurt or injured. There's only a handful that have worked, and most of them are in silent films."

— William Friedkin, on the set of his chase film
The Hunted starring Tommy Lee Jones and
Benicio Del Toro.

"It will be interesting to see if they can pull this puppy off. They can't really have McNuggets with kamikaze sauce."

— Chris Pula, former president of marketing for
Disney Studios, on the challenges faced by the
marketers of Pearl Harbor.

"Someone said to me, 'You can't have this kind of music (David Bowie, Bachman-Turner Overdrive, and Rare Earth) in this kind of movie.' So I said, 'What kind of music would you have?' 'An orchestral score,' they said. To which I said, 'The instruments in an orchestra didn't exist in 1370; there were no cellos, no violins, no brass section. So why is it O.K. to be 300 years too early but not 600 years too early?'"

— Director Brian Helgeland on the unusual music
he selected for his medieval jousting film A
Knight's Tale.

"His voice is, um, I was, um — well, he's a great guitar player."

— Wyclef Jean, producer of Steven Seagal's new
record album.

Coming Attractions: That stack of new DVDs never stops piling up, and new reviews on the way include Big Trouble in Little China, the re-issued Tora! Tora! Tora!, and more. We'll see ya Monday.

— Ed.

Wednesday, 9 May 2001

Mailbag: It's time to clean out some of the reader mail here at The DVD Journal:

— Paul

While we can't possibly vouch for the integrity of any eBay seller, it's likely that the majority of auctions for George Stevens' 1956 Giant on DVD are bona fide. Yes, a Giant DVD exists, and it's not a bootleg. Warner released a fat special edition — a DVD-18 in fact — sometime within the last year. The disc is based in part on the February 1999 Laserdisc edition from Warner (the third and final LD of Giant to be produced), which featured the 202-minute cut from the 1996 "40th Anniversary" restoration, and also on the laser is an introduction by George Stevens Jr., the making-of documentary "Memories of Giant," and two featurettes. The Region 1 DVD release adds a lot more to the mix, with all of the above and interviews with cast members, a segment with composer Dimitri Tiomkin, newsreels, original promotional footage, and four theatrical trailers. Sounds like a nice package, actually.

Of course, a lot of folks are unaware of this Giant DVD as Warner decided — for whatever reason — to distribute it only to Canadian retailers, and it was on sale in Canada for several months at a very reasonable price, less than $20 U.S. And, as noted, we are talking about a Region 1 DVD — no need for a code-free deck or PAL conversion. We're sort of sorry we missed it, because — just as mysteriously as it arrived — Warner's Giant was pulled in February or March of this year from Canadian retailers. What's more, by some accounts this was not simply a case of the disc being allowed to run out of stock, but that it was actually recalled, and anybody who had an outstanding order at a Canadian online retailer was simply notified that the disc was no longer available. This was done with so little warning, and less solid information, that some folks figured that the disc was merely in short supply and Canadian sellers would be re-stocking the title soon. But as of this time, we cannot find any Canadian e-tailer who has the disc in stock and ready to ship. And as for Stateside e-tailers, it's pretty much as if the disc never existed at all.

All of which prompts many, many questions. First, why was such a nice special edition of Giant produced by Warner but only distributed in Canada? Anybody's guess is as good as another — it makes no sense to us. Was Canada being used as some sort of test-market in this case? If so, why would a straightforward DVD release like Giant need a test-market?

Secondly, after getting the product out there, why recall the disc? Again, we don't have a firm answer at this point, but we have heard it suggested that Warner somehow lost the rights to Giant. However, we aren't aware of any recent scenario under which Warner would lose the rights to the film. What's more, VHS editions of Giant are still for sale in both the U.S. and Canada — no recall, no deep-six, nada. The property is still Warner's to do with as they please.

Our only conclusion at this time is that the Giant DVD disappeared in Canada because Warner plans to revisit the product. We certainly can see a scenario where a revised Giant: Special Edition will arrive in the U.S., and in order to keep the package consistent throughout Region 1 Warner wanted to get the Canadian edition off the market as quickly as possible. Therefore, while you can get a Giant DVD on eBay, we are not recommending that anybody buy it, especially for inflated prices. We're convinced that its OOP status is not a death-knell, but merely a sign of better things to come.

— T.M.

Good Lord — The Breakfast Club: Ultimate Edition! Two discs! Funny behind-the-scenes stories! Another hour of impromptu group therapy! We shudder at the mere thought of it.

In any event, there's no word yet from Universal on their several John Hughes properties previously licensed to Image but now back at UHV. The Breakfast Club has always been a Universal release and is still available bare-bones. Among re-releases we can expect sometime in the future from Universal are Sixteen Candles and Weird Science, likely with improved transfers and supplements of some sort. In the meantime, other Image titles that are currently OOP while Universal ponders new editions are Midnight Run, Double Indemnity, and the Marx Brothers classics Duck Soup, Animal Crackers, and Horse Feathers. We say don't pay too much money on the OOP versions at this time — there's no telling what's around the corner (perhaps even a funny anecdote or two about Molly Ringwald's underpants).

Top of the Pops: Here's the top-selling DVDs last week from our friends at Ken Crane's DVDPlanet.com. Click the links to read our reviews of these discs:

1. Superman: The Movie
2. Space Cowboys
3. Spartacus: The Criterion Collection
4. The Unbearable Lightness of Being: The Criterion Collection
5. The Complete Superman Collection
6. Miss Congeniality
7. The Mummy: Ultimate Edition
8. Rififi: The Criterion Collection
9. The Emperor's New Groove: The Ultimate Groove
10. Finding Forrester

Bye for now.

— Ed.

Tuesday, 8 May 2001

In the Works: Let's get a look at some new disc announcements, courtesy of Image Entertainment and DVDPlanet.com, and additional staff reports:

• The late August slate from MGM is now in, and we can look forward to a few Brian De Palma goodies, including a double-dip of Carrie as a special edition with two 45-minute documentaries, a featurette, a segment with novelist Stephen King, a still gallery, and the original trailer. Also getting the SE treatment will be De Palma's 1980 Dressed to Kill in the "uncut director's version," and on board will be a 45-minute doc, three featurettes, stills, and more. Unfortunately, getting the bare-bones treatment is arguably the best of the trio, 1981's Blow Out, starring John Travolta. All three street on Aug. 28.
• Along with the De Palma discs, MGM will open their horror floodgates at the end of August in early preparation for Halloween — Killer Klowns from Outer Space will offer a few behind-the-scenes features, but beyond that expect bare-bones releases of Audrey Rose, The Beast Within, Breeders, Candyman 2: Farewell to the Flesh, Count Yorga – Vampire, The Dunwich Horror, The First Power, Haunted Honeymoon, The Howling, Invaders from Mars, The Island of Dr. Moreau (1977), It! The Terror from Beyond Space, Mars Needs Women, The Monster that Challenged the World, Planet of the Vampires, Reptilicus, Scanners, Theater of Blood, and Twice Told Tales. Get what you can on Aug. 28.
• So does that mean we can expect special editions of both The Silence of the Lambs and Hannibal from MGM in August? Yes — on Aug. 21, actually. However, final details on the feature-sets are not yet available.
• Some folks have been waiting a long time for this one — Warner will release Richard Donner's 1985 The Goonies as an SE on Aug. 21, and we can count on a commentary from Donner, deleted scenes, a featurette, and a music video from (egad!) Cyndi Lauper. Those of you who decided to hold off buying one of the Oliver Stone boxes just to get your hands on the two-disc Any Given Sunday can now snap it up as a stand-alone on Aug. 7. Also on the way is Paul Schrader's critically acclaimed 1985 Mishima: A Life in Four Chapters (Aug. 7), with a commentary from Schrader.
• If you missed it in theaters, a DVD's the next-best thing — Columbia TriStar will release Ed Harris's Pollock on July 24, and features include a commentary with Harris, deleted scenes, a featurette, and a Harris interview on "The Charlie Rose Show." Also in the pipe from CTHE is Brian De Palma's 1976 Obsession, starring Cliff Robertson, Geneviéve Bujold, and John Lithgow (June 26).
• Upcoming from our friends at Criterion is Gregory La Cava's 1936 screwball comedy My Man Godfrey, starring William Powell and Carole Lombard, and features will include a commentary with film historian Bob Gilpin, the Lux Radio Theater adaptation (also starring Powell and Lombard), outtakes, stills, and a trailer. Meanwhile, John Schlesinger's 1963 Billy Liar will sport a commentary with Schlesinger and stars Tom Courtenay and Julie Christie, an excerpt from the BBC-TV series "Hollywood U.K.: British Cinema in the Sixties," and more. Also on the way is Ingmar Bergman's 1972 Cries and Whispers, with "Ingmar Bergman: Reflections on Life, Death and Love with Erland Josephson," a 52-minute interview originally broadcast on Swedish television. Get all three on June 19.
• In prep at Universal is The Family Man: Collector's Edition (July 17), with a commentary from director Brett Ratner and writers David Diamond and David Weissman; a second track from producer Marc Abraham; a third commentary, this one with composer Danny Elfman; deleted scenes; a music video by Seal; a script-to-screen feature; and lots more. Also in the works is Kasi Lemmons' The Caveman's Valentine, starring Samuel L. Jackson (July 17), and this year's blink-and-you-missed-it teen romance Head Over Heels (July 3).
• Those of you who enjoyed Steven Soderbergh's Traffic might want to look for the 1989 UK miniseries Traffik, which was the basis of Soderbergh's film. A DVD edition is due to arrive from Acorn on June 26.
• The folks at Music Video certainly market a lot of music-oriented titles, but not to be overlooked is Dracula director Tod Browning's super-controversial 1932 Freaks, appearing on DVD apparently for the first time. And not content with that, MV will release a double-feature of the 1933 films Island of Lost Souls and Mystery of the Wax Museum. The heebie-jeebies get handed out on June 12.
• Chris Rock fans take note — HBO will release The Best of the Chris Rock Show #2 on Aug. 7, with such choice cuts as "Mr. Sweet Potato Head and Other Racist Toys" and "Daddy Still Has a Flattop."
• On the way from A & E is the documentary miniseries Egypt: Beyond the Pyramids, as well as two new boxes of the '60s television series "The Saint," starring a pre-007 Roger Moore. Everything streets on June 26.

On the Street: We have another MGM catalog dump today with a diverse set of titles ranging from the westerns The Magnificent Seven, Buffalo Bill and the Indians, and The Horse Soldiers, to dramas such as Eight Men Out and Mississippi Burning, and even popular comedies like City Slickers and Throw Momma from the Train. Paramount has the Mel Gibson/Helen Hunt comedy What Women Want on the street, while Columbia TriStar has released Billy Bob Thornton's All the Pretty Horses, although not in the much-discussed director's cut (at least on this first edition). We're looking forward to Criterion's The Scarlet Empress, while Fox is sure to gain attention with the arrival of Quills. And all of you X-philes have another big box of discs to pick up — The X-Files: The Complete Third Season is out now. Here's this morning's notable street discs, courtesy of DVDPlanet.com and Image Entertainment:

• All the Pretty Horses
• Angels Don't Sleep Here
• The Apache
• Boesman and Lena
• Buffalo Bill and the Indians, or Sitting Bull's History Lesson
• City Slickers
• Downward Angel
• Duets
• Eight Men Out
• A Family Thing
• Flying Saucer
• God's Comedy
• Horse Soldiers
• Incubus
• The Kentuckian
• Love and the Frenchwoman
• The Magnificent Seven: Special Edition
• The Miracle Worker (2000)
• Mississippi Burning: Special Edition
• Mon Oncle Antoine
• Notorious Daughter of Fanny Hill / The Head Mistress: Special Edition
• La Notte
• Party
• The Pope of Greenwich Village
• Louis Prima: The Wildest
• Quills: Special Edition
• The Return of the Magnificent Seven
• Rio Bravo
• The Scarlet Empress: The Criterion Collection
• Semi-Tough
• Sunshine
• Suspect
• Throw Momma from the Train
• Tito and Me
• What Women Want
• The X-Files: The Complete Third Season (7-DVD Set)
• Yi Yi

See ya.

— Ed.

Monday, 7 May 2001

And the winner is: Enrique Gomez of Austin, Texas, wins the free Wonder Boys DVD from our April contest. Congrats, Enrique!

Our totally free DVD contest for the month of May is up and running, and we have Fox's The X-Files: Season Three up for grabs — the whole enchilada. Be sure to drop by our contest page to send us your entry, and don't forget to take our monthly DVD poll while you're there.

Disc of the Week: Usually, remaking a classic film is an exercise best left alone, and for every truly remarkable movie in world cinema there are a handful of imitators, and just as many disappointing sequels. But when John Sturges decided to translate Akira Kurosawa's 1954 Seven Samurai to the American West, he actually hit paydirt. His 1960 The Magnificent Seven was not an instant box-office success in the U.S., but it played very well in overseas markets — so much so that it eventually earned renewed screenings in America and gained a following that has continued to this day. But among its earliest fans was non other than Kurosawa, who, after seeing the film for the first time, sent Sturges a ceremonial samurai sword as a token of appreciation. Surprising? Not really — Kurosawa's career blossomed in the postwar Japanese film industry, starting with his 1950 Rashomon, and he readily admitted he was a great admirer of American westerns, and in particular the films of John Ford. The Magnificent Seven began one of the most famous cultural exchanges in world cinema — westerns that inspired samurai films would once again become westerns, illustrating not only the universal qualities of cinema, but the worldwide appeal of archetypal drama as well.

Yul Brynner stars in The Magnificent Seven as Chris Adams, a gunfighter adrift in the American southwest with a great deal of ability but little sense of purpose. However, when members of a small Mexican village cross the border looking for protection from a group of bandits — led by the menacing Calvera (Eli Wallach) — Adams agrees to round up a group of men to defend the farming community. And as it turns out, there's a few gunslingers around with little going for them but spare time — including the hard-nosed Vin (Steve McQueen), quiet Bernardo (Charles Bronson), knife-expert and sharpshooter Britt (James Coburn), outlaw-on-the-run Lee (Robert Vaughn), and mercenary Harry Luck (Brad Dexter). One young man Adams had rejected, Chico (Horst Buchholz), decides to tag along, eventually earning acceptance from the group. But the greatest trouble lies ahead, as their number is only seven and Calvera has 40 armed men with horses at his disposal. And as the bandito needs to loot the village's harvest to feed his men for the winter, he will not turn away without a fight.

A common response whenever The Magnificent Seven is mentioned is that it's not nearly as great of a film as Seven Samurai, which must be admitted. Trimmed down from Kurosawa's nearly three-and-a-half hour running-time to a little over two, and with two supporting characters melded into one, it retains a great deal of Seven Samurai's themes, if not its epic scope. Put simply, watching The Magnificent Seven is not an excuse to overlook Seven Samurai (but then again, is there any valid excuse not to see one of the greatest films in history?) Nonetheless, The Magnificent Seven, while unable to stand completely on its own merits, does have several things to recommend it, in particular the performances. Brynner — famous at the time for his role on stage and screen in The King and I — offers a subdued, complex turn as the team's leader, rarely letting any setback ruffle his icy exterior. Most of the remaining cast (in particular McQueen, Bronson, and Coburn) had gained some attention working in television westerns, but none had yet to become major box-office stars — The Magnificent Seven is an enjoyable opportunity to see these actors just prior to when they would become leading men in their own right. But most interesting is the place that The Magnificent Seven holds in the Hollywood Western genre. Prior to 1960, the majority of American westerns dealt with iconographic conflicts — forces of good aligned against forces of evil, with honorable men fighting the good fight and winning (cf. the paragon of classic westerns, Shane). But by the mid-'50s, the western began to turn inward, and films from such directors as Anthony Mann surveyed inner dramas as much as external conflicts. The Magnificent Seven, with its scofflaws-turned-heroes, formed a cinematic turning point that led to such later fare as the Sergio Leone spaghetti westerns, Sam Peckinpah's The Wild Bunch, and Clint Eastwood's Unforgiven. Always a reflection of contemporary American society, the nature of western heroes had come under scrutiny, often in films that refused to draw clear lines between heroes and villains. Indeed, in one of the final scenes in The Magnificent Seven, the malicious Calvera makes a pragmatic appeal to reason, asking Adams why he has chosen to fight with little chance of survival and less profit. Typical of the western heroes who would follow in the '60s and beyond, Adams has no answer — an existential wanderer freed from all social codes of conduct, he's not entirely sure himself. Discovering a personal set of values has become his journey across the western frontier.

MGM's new DVD edition of The Magnificent Seven: Special Edition offers a clean anamorphic transfer (2.35:1) with audio in either the original mono (a nice touch) or a new Dolby Digital 5.1 mix (from which Elmer Bernstein's famous score benefits nicely). Features include an informative commentary track with James Coburn, Eli Wallach, producer Walter Mirisch, and assistant director Robert Relyea; the 46-minute documentary "Guns for Hire: The Making of the Magnificent Seven," with comments from most of the film's principals, including archival segments with Yul Brynner; two theatrical trailers; and several still galleries filled with promotional photos and behind-the-scenes shots. The Magnificent Seven: Special Edition hits the street tomorrow — it belongs in every film buff's personal collection.

Box Office: The early-summer box-office season took off like a rocket over the weekend, as Universal's The Mummy Returns earned a stratospheric $70.1 million in just three days. It was the largest opening for a film on a non-holiday weekend, besting The Phantom Menace's $64.8 million in 1999. A string of unimpressive films over the past several weeks, combined with the fact that nobody wanted to open against The Mummy Returns, left the field wide-open for a blistering debut. The only picture considered to be possible competition was Warner's Sly Stallone vehicle Driven, but the film took a pummeling in its second frame, earning just $6 million — good enough for second place, but less than one-tenth of the Mummy's box-office.

In continuing release, Miramax's Spy Kids, stands at $98.5 million, while their Bridget Jones's Diary is shaping up well with a $44.7 cume. Paramount's Along Came a Spider has survived this last month's doldrums and cleared $60 million, while New Line's Blow has been another box-office survivor, with $44.2 million in five weeks. But looking ugly are USA's One Night at McCool's and New Line's Town and Country — both are plummeting into early DVD prep with approximately $5 million each.

The Mummy Returns will have its first taste of competition this weekend as the Chaucer-inspired A Knight's Tale, starring Heath Ledger, goes wide. Here's the top-grossing films at North American theaters from last weekend:

1. The Mummy Returns (Universal)
   $70,100,000 ($70,100,000 through 1 week)
2. Driven (Warner Bros.)
   $6,055,000 ($21,556,000 through 2 weeks)
3. Bridget Jones's Diary (Miramax)
   $6,000,000 ($44,700,000 through 4 weeks)
4. Spy Kids (Miramax/Dimension)
   $4,000,000 ($98,500,000 through 6 weeks)
5. Along Came a Spider (Paramount)
   $3,800,000 ($60,042,000 through 5 weeks)
6. Crocodile Dundee in Los Angeles (Paramount)
   $3,200,000 ($18,032,000 through 3 weeks)
7. Blow (New Line)
   $2,400,000 ($44,198,000 through 5 weeks)
8. The Forsaken (Sony/Columbia TriStar)
   $1,500,000 ($5,387,000 through 2 weeks)
9. Joe Dirt (Sony/Columbia TriStar)
   $1,500,000 ($24,767,000 through 4 weeks)
10. One Night at McCool's (USA Films)
    $1,331,789 ($4,712,318 through 2 weeks)
11. Town and Country (New Line)
    $1,300,000 ($5,173,000 through 2 weeks)
12. Kingdom Come (Fox Searchlight)
    $1,206,500 ($20,528,000 through 4 weeks)

On the Board: Alexandra DuPont spent the better part of last week digging through Criterion's two-disc Spartacus, while Dawn Taylor has posted a look at Fox's Quills, starring Geoffrey Rush and Kate Winslet. New reviews from the team this week include All The Pretty Horses, What Women Want, The X-Files: Season Three, Sunshine, The Magnificent Seven: Special Edition, Threesome, Suspect, The Substitute 4: Failure Is Not an Option, and the charming coming-of-age comedy Just Looking. Everything's been added under the New Reviews menu here on the left-hand side of the front page, and even more reviews can be found with our handy search engine.

We'll be back tomorrow to let you know about this week's street discs.

— Ed.

Thursday, 3 May 2001
Weekend Dispatch

On the Block: Our latest round of DVD auction rankings at eBay are in, and the ultra-rare THX Theatrical Trailers demo disc has moved to the head of the class this time around with a $565.00 close, far outpacing the runner-up (and frequent top-trader), Criterion's Salo, which went as high as $310.00 in recent weeks. The usual suspects from Criterion continue to draw the big-time bidding, in particular The Killer and The 400 Blows, but their OOP This is Spinal Tap failed to make our chart for the first time in recent memory — perhaps the MGM re-issue is finally making a dent. Oddities crossing the board lately include a rare retail-store demo of the video for Madonna's "Music" (the one that played on the telescreen at this year's Grammys), which garnered $168.50 after 25 bids. Even stranger is the $123.50 hammer-price for a code-free edition of Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band, the 1978 film starring Peter Frampton and The Bee Gees (we couldn't figure out if this was a bootleg or not). Meanwhile, Fab Four fanatics managed to boost the MPI edition of A Hard Day's Night even higher, to $150.00. And that's not a typo in the chart either — that particular auction received a shattering 116 bids.

Here's the highest recent closing prices of rare and out-of-print DVDs from online auctions at eBay:

1. THX Theatrical Trailers Demo DVD
   $565.00 (13 bids)
2. Salo: The Criterion Collection
   $310.00 (1 bid)
3. The Killer: The Criterion Collection
   $291.22 (27 bids)
4. The 400 Blows: The Criterion Collection
   $209.25 (1 bid)
5. Army of Darkness: Limited Edition
   $192.50 (20 bids)
6. THX Surround EX Demo DVD
   $189.00 (1 bid)
7. Madonna "Music" promo DVD
   $168.50 (25 bids)
8. A Hard Day's Night (MPI edition)
   $150.00 (116 bids)
9. The Arabian Nights
   $137.50 (15 bids)
10. Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band
    $123.50 (7 bids)
11. Seven Samurai: The Criterion Collection (first edition)
    $117.61 (14 bids)
12. Live at Knebworth
    $109.35 (5 bids)
13. Hard Boiled: The Criterion Collection
    $108.00 (12 bids)
14. Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory
    $105.00 (6 bids)
15. Rock 'n' Roll High School
    $102.50 (15 bids)

Quotable: "There is not a germ of truth to this vicious, self- promoting story. While (Tom) Cruise thoroughly respects others rights to follow their own sexual preference, he is not a homosexual and had no relationship of any kind with Kyle Bradford and does not even know him."

— Excerpt from a $100 million lawsuit filed this
week by Tom Cruise against gay porn actor Kyle
Bradford, aka Chad Slater. Bradford allegedly
claimed having a sexual affair with Cruise in an
interview with Actustar magazine.

"When I was prepping Pearl Harbor, I told Dan Sasaki at Panavision, 'I need a weird point-of-view lens.' He told me about a lens he'd been developing for (cinematographer) Amy Vincent for a project that never came together. Although it wasn't finished, we put it together, and I flipped. He built me two of them, a 40mm and a 100mm. They had severe chromatic aberrations and a score of other 'defects.' Everything that you try to get a lens not to have, these lenses had in spades! They ended up being incredibly gorgeous, and we used them all the time for POVs once the attack happened."

— Photographer John Schwartzman, telling
American Cinematographer about one
of the many visual innovations he brought
to the upcoming Pearl Harbor.

"The sensation is actually... it's sheer terror. It really is. I won't be brave about it. It isn't, like, 'Oh, yes, I'm thinking about Hawaii and running with the bulls in Spain.' You're not thinking that. You're going, 'Oh, my God, I am really a coward.' "

— Sylvester Stallone, discussing his high-speed
driving in the new film Driven, on "Late
Night with David Letterman."

"The worst misconception is that stars are driven by such hard work. A sitcom star works 25 weeks a year. The last time I counted, I think there were 52 weeks in a year. Stars want people to feel sorry for them. The big excuse of pressure is nonsense. What pressure does Matt Perry have?"

— A former television producer, speaking
anonymously to Entertainment Weekly
about actors and their drug problems.

"You either love Hollywood or you hate it. It's a question of age. It's a question of generation. It's practically a question of physiology. You either love it or it fills you with horror from the moment you land, from your first step onto its streets."

— French poet Blaise Cendras, in his book
Hollywood, Mecca of the Movies.

Coming Attractions: New DVD reviews are on the way, including Spartacus: The Criterion Collection, All the Pretty Horses, and plenty more. This also will be the last weekend to enter this month's totally free DVD contest for a copy of Wonder Boys, so be sure to visit our contest page if you haven't yet, and don't forget to take our monthly DVD poll while you're there. We'll be back Monday to announce the winner, and we'll have a new contest up and running as well.

Enjoy the weekend — we'll see ya soon.

— Ed.

Wednesday, 2 May 2001

Mailbag: Wednesday is the day we get to our reader mail here at The DVD Journal, and while we aren't able to personally respond to all of your letters, we'd like to let you know that we read everything we get. Here's a couple of reader questions from this week:

— Eric

Thanks for the heads-up Eric. We also recently noticed that Universal's "Collector's Edition" DVD of Scarface has been quietly deep-sixed — and if you ask a lot of DVD fans, they'll tell you it's about time. While Brian De Palma's 1983 Scarface ranks among his better films, the DVD edition is sorely lacking. Released in March of '98, it's one of the few Universal discs to appear with letterboxing but without an anamorphic transfer, and the audio is in the original Dolby 2.0 Surround. Of course, for presentation-purists such may be fine — and have no doubt, the Scarface DVD has its defenders — but the MPEG-2 transfer is shaky as well. All told, the disc doesn't have the same sort of A/V sparkle we get nowadays on well-packaged DVDs of far inferior films. By now, a Scarface re-issue probably is overdue.

Universal has not made any official announcement on a new Scarface DVD at this time, or at least not on their secure press-only website. And since the rights to Scarface have not changed hands and Universal still owns the film, let's work on the basic (and obvious) conclusion that a re-issue is in development. There are two things we can be certain of: 1) It will be anamorphic, as the virtually identical Region 2 Scarface: Collector's Edition, just released in Europe this past January, actually has a new anamorphic transfer; 2) The audio will be in a Dolby Digital 5.1 (or better) mix, and DTS may also be on board. A fairly safe third presumption is that there will additional supplements, as the chief extras on the OOP disc are a 50-minute documentary and deleted scenes. Tacking on some new things (such as a De Palma and/or Oliver Stone commentary) would convince even more consumers to upgrade.

A strong candidate for a revamped Scarface package is Universal's new "Ultimate Edition" line — The Mummy: Ultimate Edition is the first title to appear in the two-disc series, and upcoming arrivals (all retreads) include Notting Hill, Meet Joe Black, and Patch Adams (all on July 17). Because these Ultimate Editions all concern previously issued Universal DVDs with value-added features, Scarface seems a likely selection as well. Then again, Universal hasn't placed the original Mummy: Collector's Edtion on moratorium, nor any of the other Ultimate titles announced at this point. Don't get us wrong — we'd love it if Patch Adams went OOP forever. But putting a disc on moratorium before releasing an Ultimate Edition is not part of Universal's modus operandi at the moment. The loss of Scarface appears to be a special case.

If we don't get a Scarface: Ultimate Edition, it's possible that we'll get a re-issued Collector's Edition disc. But if the marketing isn't distinct from the previous release it won't make as big of a splash — it seems it must somehow be packaged differently. Your suggestion of a "20th Anniversary" release has a lot of appeal — the only problem is that Scarface was released theatrically in December of 1983, which means any sort of "Anniversary" package would arrive at least two years from now. Would any studio bury a re-issue for that long?

Our answer to that question is: Maybe. Like it or not, there's a lot of value in hype. Warner pulled their Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory disc last year to make way for an upcoming SE, and even though it's obvious that patient DVD fans will be able to snap up the re-issue for less than $20 someday, perhaps even this year, top closes on eBay for the original DVD have soared well beyond $100 in recent months. All Warner had to do was pull their bare-bones disc and then keep relatively quiet for Willy Wonka to achieve the status of "collectable DVD," although there's nothing very special about the disc at all. In the same vein, Miramax's delay of A Hard Day's Night on DVD has the original MPI edition riding high on eBay — and DVD-loving Beatlemaniacs all in a tizzy. Miramax simply may be taking some extra time to add additional features (why let MPI get the better of them?), but the delay of A Hard Day's Night has doubled the anticipation just the same. Can anybody doubt that it will be the top-selling disc the week it arrives? Or that the longer the wait, the greater the sales?

We hate to say it, but a two-year moratorium on Scarface is not out of the question, and it seems to us that the longer Universal stays mum on the issue, the more likely it is that we'll be in for a deliciously long wait. But if that's not the case, then we're guessing that Scarface will arrive as an "Ultimate Edition" disc, and probably within the next 12 months.

— Sam

Our handy search engine, on the left-hand side of the front page here, will scan all DVD reviews for movie titles, keywords (such as actors' names), and pretty much anything else in the DVD review database. That also includes our staff writers — just type in "Alexandra DuPont" and away you go.

Top of the Pops: Here's the top-selling DVDs last week from our friends at Ken Crane's DVDPlanet.com. Click the links to read our reviews of these discs:

1. Space Cowboys
2. Spartacus: The Criterion Collection
3. Lawrence of Arabia: Limited Edition
4. The Mummy: Ultimate Edition
5. Triumph of the Will: Special Edition
6. Slayers Try Collection
7. The Unbearable Lightness of Being: The Criterion Collection
8. Billy Elliot
9. Finding Forrester
10. Rififi: The Criterion Collection

See ya.

— Ed.

Tuesday, 1 May 2001

In the Works: Here's some new disc announcements, courtesy of Image Entertainment and DVDPlanet.com, and additional staff reports:

• Four new discs are in prep at Criterion, including two Preston Sturges classics — 1941's The Lady Eve, starring Henry Fonda and Barbara Stanwyck, will include a commentary from film historian Marian Keane, the Lux Radio adaptation, a look at Edith Head's costumes, an introduction from Peter Bogdanovich, and publicity materials. Also on the way is the 1942 Sullivan's Travels, with a commentary featuring Christopher Guest, Michael McKean, and Noah Baumbach, the documentary "Preston Sturges: The Rise and Fall of an American Dreamer," an interview with Sturges's widow Sandy Sturges, and lots of other goodies. Also look for Bruce Robinson's 1987 Withnail and I and his 1989 How to Get Ahead in Advertising. All street under the Criterion folio July 10.
• Does a film that grossed $260 million at the American box-office need any more hype? Absolutely, according to Universal, who have sent an early announcement that Ron Howard's The Grinch: Collector's Edition will street on Nov. 20. Features will include a "Spotlight on Location" featurette; behind-the-scenes segments on Whoville, Jim Carrey's Grinch make-up, and the special effects; deleted scenes; outtakes; a Faith Hill music video; sing-alongs and read-alongs for the kids; and the Descriptive Video Service for the visually impaired. Also on board as DVD-ROM content will be a "Kazoo 3D" photo-merging program, games, a screen-saver, and lots, lots more. And just to cap off what will be a massive home-video promotion from Universal (the largest in their history), there will be a Grinch: Limited Edition Gift Set, which combines the DVD with an interactive play-set (SRP $39.98).
• WAY!! After what seemed a long delay to us, Paramount will street both Wayne's World and Wayne's World II on July 10, both as stand-alone releases and in a box set (Wayne's World 1 & 2: The Complete Epic – SRP $49.98). Expect the first disc to include a commentary from director Penelope Spheeris and some cast and crew interviews, while the second disc will sport more interviews and a yack-track from director Stephen Surjik. Also in the pipe is this year's Chris Rock comedy Down to Earth, with deleted scenes (July 10), and Sam Raimi's The Gift, featuring a music video (July 17).
• Columbia TriStar will double-dip My Best Friend's Wedding as an SE on July 3, and special features will include a commentary with director P.J. Hogan and writer Ronald Bass, deleted scenes, a featurette, the trailer, and notes. Also due are Higher Learning: SE, with a commentary by writer/director John Singleton, 1995's family film The Indian in the Cupboard: SE, with a track from director Frank Oz and a still gallery, the 1985 The Last Dragon: SE, sporting a commentary from director Michael Schultz, and the straight-to-video The Body, starring Antonio Banderas and Derek Jacobi. All arrive on July 3 as well.
• This year's box-office underachiever Sugar and Spice is due from New Line on July 17. Expect deleted scenes, notes, and a DVD-ROM script-to-screen feature .
• On the way from BFS is a trio of miniseries, including 1985's The Last Place on Earth, portraying the 1911 race to the South Pole, and with supporting performances from Max von Sydow and Hugh Grant. Also due is the Irish drama Falling for a Dancer from 1998, and the 1978 saga Flambards. The multi-disc boxes street on June 5.
• Monty Python fans take note — Kultur has released a disc of the 1968 pre-Python TV special How to Irritate People, featuring John Cleese, Graham Chapman, and Michael Palin. It's on the street now.

On the Street: It's a thin street Tuesday this week — then again, what's not to like when Warner's long-awaited Superman: The Movie is now on the shelves (along with the three sequels and a big box-set)? It appears that a lot of other studios decided to get out of the Man of Steel's way this morning, although Buena Vista has released their two-disc Emperor's New Groove: The Ultimate Groove SE, while Columbia TriStar has a pair of catalog titles up for grabs, Postcards from the Edge and Ice Castles. But if The Bard's your bag, the 1984 British TV production of King Lear, starring Lawrence Olivier, is now available from Kultur. Here's this morning's notable street discs, courtesy of DVDPlanet.com and Image Entertainment:

• America's Darkest Day: Pearl Harbor
• The Dominici Affair
• The Emperor's New Groove
• The Emperor's New Groove: The Ultimate Groove (2-DVD Set)
• Farscape: Vol. 3
• Henry Rollins: Talking From The Box: Rollins Goes To London
• The Hi-Lo Country
• Ice Castles
• Inspector Morse: The Dead of Jericho
• King Lear (1984)
• Lady of Burlesque
• Love Potion #9
• Miss Congeniality
• Myst (Nuon DVD)
• Pearl Jam: Touring Band 2000
• Postcards from the Edge
• Roy Orbison: Anthology
• Superman: The Movie
• Superman II
• Superman III
• Superman IV: The Quest for Peace
• The Superman Collection
• Threesome
• A Tribute to Alvin Ailey
• Wham! Bam! Thank You, Spaceman!: Special Edition
• When It Was A Game #2
• When It Was A Game Triple Play Collection

Planning to buy that Superman DVD in L.A.?: Then be sure to drop by the world-famous Dave's Video tonight (12144 Ventura Blvd. in Studio City) between 7 - 8 p.m., where director Richard Donner will be signing copies — but please note that you will have to purchase that Superman disc from Dave's for the privilege. A portion of the proceeds will be donated to charity.

— Ed.

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