One of the most underappreciated elements of cinema is the DVD commentary, if only for the moment the world discovered a clip of Ben Affleck’s sarcastic Armageddon commentary. But with movies and TV shows increasingly viewed via streaming services, commentary tracks are slowly being lost to the ages. So writer Andrew…
CDs were supposed to be the indestructible answer to the problem of fragile media. They were easier to store than vinyl and weren’t nearly as easy to scratch or damage. They sounded better than tapes and didn’t suffer from the same level of degradation over time. Or, at least, that’s what people were meant to believe.
For decades, Circuit City was a popular, near-ubiquitous retailer of consumer electronics and physical media. But industry changes and poor management decisions caused the New York-based chain to cease operations in 2009. Seven years later, the American landscape is still dotted with the remains of former Circuit City…
The people who brought DVDs into the world could never even agree on what the letters should stand for. It was initially suggested by some that they should stand for “Digital Video Disc,” while others behind the technology felt that “Digital Versatile Disc” would better reflect the many non-video applications of the…
Perhaps sensing that the world needs a good guffaw or two after weeks of grim headlines, considerate Imgur user zhuzu20 has helpfully compiled a brief but satisfying gallery of awkwardly and inaccurately translated bootleg DVD covers. These images, many plucked from a long-dormant site called Knocking Off, show the…
What would you do if The A.V. Club sang out of tune? Wait, don’t stand up and walk out on us, because this Joe Cocker-esque warbling is in service of free stuff. Specifically: A copy of the complete-series DVD box set of The Wonder Years, due this fall from StarVista Entertainment/Time Life. Though it’s not one of the …
The worst mistake a music documentary can make is to pull its punches and hide its subjects’ warts. What makes a good one compelling to viewers who don’t fall into the band’s immediate fan base is a mixture of conflict and triumph, not just a highlight reel. The Stone Roses: Made Of Stone, which was directed by an…
Considering its cultural primacy, Bram Stoker’s Dracula has been remarkably ill served by the movies. The 1931 film starring Bela Lugosi, though nominally considered a classic, is the creakiest and most soporific of the early Universal horror titles, not a patch on the same year’s Frankenstein. Francis Ford Coppola’s…
The first time we see La Notte’s two protagonists—a long-married couple, Giovanni and Lidia Pontano—they’re so distant from the camera as to seem insignificant. Even those who know that the movie stars Marcello Mastroianni and Jeanne Moreau might have to squint and lean forward, wondering if that’s them. As in his…
Vincent Price’s menacing presence and facial hair receive suitably adoring treatment courtesy of Scream Factory’s The Vincent Price Collection, a four-disc, six-film Blu-ray set that houses some of his greatest genre achievements. Overstuffed with extras—including introductions by the actor himself—and boasting…
With its designated chapter stops, which easily allow viewers to skip right to the good parts, this DVD set was made for Bruce Lee movies, all of which flirt with complete uselessness whenever their star isn’t actively kicking ass. Shout! Factory’s mammoth 11-disc set Bruce Lee: The Legacy Collection comes…
At the very end of last year’s critical/cinephile favorite Holy Motors, there’s an inexplicable moment (within the context of the narrative, though the whole movie is pretty inexplicable) in which Edith Scob, playing the limo driver who’s been conveying Denis Lavant from one bizarre “appointment” to another, dons a…
In 1948, Ingrid Bergman, at the height of her fame—she was between Hitchcock pictures at the time, Notorious and Under Capricorn—wrote a fan letter to Italian filmmaker Roberto Rossellini, expressing her admiration for Open City and Paisan and offering him her services as an actress. (“Also, we could combine our…
Slacker may be the only film with a sensibility that’s discernible just by perusing its cast of characters. Writer-director Richard Linklater, who delivers a hilarious monologue about dream logic in the opening scene, is credited as playing Should Have Stayed At Bus Station. Others sport “names” like Grocery Grabber…
Home Video Hell is where filmic outcasts—straight-to-video, straight-to-VOD, or barely released—spend eternity.
The Spy Who Came In From The Cold is about many things, but it’s mainly a film about Richard Burton’s face. Martin Ritt’s 1965 adaptation of John Le Carré’s 1963 Cold War novel is obsessed with the countenance of its lead, which—whether in close-up, or shunted off to the corner of the frame—expresses the heartbreaking…
When Ernst Lubitsch borrowed the title for his comedy To Be Or Not To Be from Shakespeare’s most famous tragedy, he couldn’t know how grimly apropos that choice would become. The film was already grappling with unusually weighty subject matter: Opening commercially in March 1942, less than a year after America entered…
In a just world, Madhabi Mukherjee would have the same iconic presence in cinema history (for an American audience) as European contemporaries like Jeanne Moreau, Catherine Deneuve, and Giulietta Masina. Deneuve is perhaps the strongest parallel—both women are so stunningly beautiful that it’s easy to overlook the…
Home Video Hell is where filmic outcasts—straight-to-video, straight-to-VOD, or barely released—spend eternity.
Wildly prolific Spanish trash auteur Jess Franco (who died earlier this year at age 82) never met a beauty he didn’t want to undress for some onscreen psychosexual madness, as evidenced by Redemption’s deluxe Blu-ray releases of three early Franco efforts.