Once again we pass the baton on this weekly feature, and I'd like to thank Ray Ellis for bringing his own brand of humor to the proceedings for the past few months. I've decided to try this out myself for a bit, so for the next while, I'll be your guide to the weekly DVD release list.
I'm not going to divide the list by genre — this is an alphabetical, unexpurgated list of what's expected to hit your store shelves on Tuesday. What I will do is tell you what looks good to me and point out noteworthy entries that might be worth a rental or even a purchase.
What's pretty clear from this list is that we haven't hit the pre-holiday season bonanza yet — there aren't any really noteworthy films here, and the TV-on-DVD offerings are fairly lackluster as well.
The stand-out release this week is the box set of Ken Burns' World War II doc, simply titled The War. I managed to watch some of this when it aired on PBS, and it was quite powerful. Instead of a global overview of the war, Burns tells the story of the soldiers on the battlefield by focusing on four men and the towns from which they hailed. The filmmakers dug deep into historic archives and unearthed still photos and film footage which, amazingly enough, have never been seen before (some of the film is in color, which brings an immediacy to it often lacking in newsreel footage of WWII). By using not only their stories but the recollections of family members as well, Burns brings the tale of "the greatest generation" to the screen at a very personal level. The set consists of six discs and clocks in at 840 minutes.
For a complete change of pace, the Audrey Hepburn 5-Pack, from Paramount Home Video, contains some good stuff, most notably the classic Breakfast at Tiffany's, based on a short story by Truman Capote. Fans of older movies will find much to enjoy here. You might want to compare Hepburn's turn as the title character in 1954's Sabrina (with William Holden and Humphrey Bogart as her would-be suitors) to the 1995 remake with Harrison Ford, Greg Kinnear, and Julia Ormond (which, frankly, doesn't hold a candle to the original).
Horror fans - and Stephen King fans - might want to check out 1408, starring John Cusack and Samuel L. Jackson, which releases in both a regular edition and a two-disc collector's edition. Comic fans might or might not cheer the arrival of Fantastic Four: Rise of the Silver Surfer, which received mixed reviews. Some people might be curious about the release of the unrated version of 1979's infamous Caligula, a film about which Roger Ebert said, "this film is not only garbage on an artistic level, but ... also garbage on the crude and base level where it no doubt hopes to find its audience." Noted for its violent and sexual excess, the film stars Malcolm McDowell and John Gielgud.
Article comments
1 - Ray Ellis
Well done, Lisa! I couldn't have said it better myself. And a heart tip of the hat and a bow of gratitude to you for bailing me out on short notice.
You've set a new standard here.
2 - Lisa McKay
Thank you, Ray, but I feel that between you and David before you, I've got big shoes to fill, so let's see how this goes over the next few weeks.
One of the things I'm going to try to do every week is link to reviews of items that have appeared here at BC, so maybe folks will get a chance to read some reviews they might have missed the first time around.