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DigiGods Episode 267: 2024 Holiday Special and Gift Guide!
199 Plays9 days ago
In this podcast episode, the Gods discuss:
- The 4:30 Movie (4k UHD Blu-ray)
- About Dry Grasses (Blu-ray)
- Addams Family Values (4k UHD Blu-ray)
- American Movie (4k UHD Blu-ray)
- Are You Afraid of the Dark: The Limited Series Three-Season Collection (DVD)
- Beetlejuice Beetlejuice (4k UHD Blu-ray)
- Bill & Ted's Most Triumphant Trilogy (4k UHD Blu-ray)
- Blazing Saddles 4k UHD (4k UHD Blu-ray)
- The Block Island Sound (4k UHD Blu-ray)
- Blue Christmas (Blu-ray)
- A Bluegrass Christmas (DVD)
- Bones and All (4k UHD Blu-ray)
- Born on the Fourth of July (4k UHD Blu-ray)
- CC40 [8½ (1963), Tokyo Story (1953), All That Jazz (1979), Bicycle Thieves (1948), Repo Man (1984), Naked (1993), Jules and Jim (1962), Being There (1979), Weekend (1967), Yi Yi (2000), The Night of the Hunter (1955), Pickpocket (1959), Sweet Smell of Success (1957), On the Waterfront (1954), Do the Right Thing (1989), Ratcatcher (1999), Sunday Bloody Sunday (1971), Mirror (1975), Barry Lyndon (1975), Safe (1995), Seconds (1966), His Girl Friday (1940), Mishima: A Life in Four Chapters (1985), Y tu mamá también (2001), My Own Private Idaho (1991), Love & Basketball (2000), Night of the Living Dead (1968), Ace in the Hole (1951), 3 Women (1977), The Red Shoes (1948), Down by Law (1986), La Ciénaga (2001), Wanda (1970), House (1977), Sullivan’s Travels (1941), The Battle of Algiers (1966), A Woman Under the Influence (1974), Cléo from 5 to 7 (1962), Persona (1966), In the Mood for Love (2000)] (Blu-ray)
- The Crow (4k UHD Blu-ray)
- The Dark Crystal - Limited Edition 4k Collector's Set (4k UHD Blu-ray)
- Demon Pond (4k UHD Blu-ray)
- Drag Me to Hell 4k Collector's Edition (4k UHD Blu-ray)
- Evil: The Complete Series (DVD)
- Fear the Walking Dead: The Complete Collection (Blu-ray)
- Food Wars! The Fifth Plate Limited Edition Premium Box Set (Blu-ray)
- Funny Girl (4k UHD Blu-ray)
- Galaxy Quest 25th Anniversary 4k UHD (4k UHD Blu-ray)
- Godzilla (4k UHD Blu-ray)
- Gummo (4k UHD Blu-ray)
- The Hitcher (4k UHD Blu-ray)
- Hush (4k UHD Blu-ray)
- I Walked with a Zombie / The Seventh Victim: Produced by Val Lewton (4k UHD Blu-ray)
- The Intern (4k UHD Blu-ray)
- Interstellar (4k UHD Blu-ray)
- Irving Berlin's White Christmas (4k UHD Blu-ray)
- The Killer's Game (4k UHD Blu-ray)
- The King of Queens - Complete Series (Blu-ray)
- Labyrinth - Limited Edition 4k Collector's Set (4k UHD Blu-ray)
- Land of the Dead Collector's Edition (4k UHD Blu-ray)
- Pandora's Box (Blu-ray)
- Paper Moon (4k UHD Blu-ray)
- Pulp Fiction 4K Ultra HD 30th Anniversary Collector’s Edition (4k UHD Blu-ray)
- Rock 'N' Roll High School [45th Anniversary Edition] (4k UHD Blu-ray)
- Scarface (4k UHD Blu-ray)
- Seven Samurai (4k UHD Blu-ray)
- The Shape of Water (4k UHD Blu-ray)
- Shawscope Vol 3 [Limited Edition] (Blu-ray)
- Silent Night, Deadly Night [40th Anniversary Edition] + Exclusive Paperback Novelization (4k UHD Blu-ray)
- So Help Me Todd: The Complete Series (DVD)
- South Park (Not Suitable for Children) (Blu-ray)
- A Sudden Case of Christmas (DVD)
- The Swan Princess: The Royal Collection (DVD)
- Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: The Complete Classic Series Collection (DVD)
- The Terminator 4k UHD (4k UHD Blu-ray)
- Thanksgiving (4k UHD Blu-ray)
- Toxic Crusaders (Blu-ray)
- Trap (4k UHD Blu-ray)
- Twisters (4k UHD Blu-ray)
- Walker: The Complete Series (DVD)
- Watchmen Chapter II (4k UHD Blu-ray)
- The West Wing: Complete Series (Blu-ray)
- The Whitest Kids U' Know: The Complete Series (DVD)
Recommended
Transcript
Holiday Show and Awards Season
00:00:40
Speaker
And it is holiday time. And this is our holiday show and gift guide. We are busy as can be. ah Tim, we are up to our gills in ah swag and screeners to watch. We were voting for LAFCA and the Critics' Choice Awards, ah Critics' Choice Awards mercifully later than LAFCA. We had a week left. Are you behind?
00:01:04
Speaker
ah yeah I'm fully and completely behind. so so and You don't have all kinds of issues, ah but yeah, way, way, way behind. LAFCA, of course, in person. ah Someplace fancy this year, I can't remember where. and then But most of Philly, CCAs, more or less an online sort of situation. Yeah, that's thank goodness. um And it requires almost no interaction with other human beings, which is kind of great.
00:01:33
Speaker
i I will say this. so there's there's ah There's a um ah Critics Choice um kind of administrative body that is forming and I and i joined that just to kind of you know get my bearings. and I'm ah very much much a backbencher. I just kind of joined these Saturday morning meetings every few weeks and listened to everybody kind of crash and go back and forth.
00:01:54
Speaker
and um Yeah, it's interesting. It's very different from LAFCA because you have people who are not necessarily film critics. They're film broadcast journalists. They're not all in LA. Some of them are in St. Louis and in Minneapolis and in you know ah Flagstaff. and So they come from places that are outside of Los Angeles. And it's always very refreshing to me to hear those people kind of raise their hands and go,
00:02:20
Speaker
Yeah, you know we don't get all the perks you guys get. so give us some you know Give us some props over here. We're still waiting on that screening. like Nice to hear everybody talk about, oh, we just saw the button. Our screening isn't until next week.
Online Presence and Social Media
00:02:32
Speaker
and it's you know so you You forget that being when you get outside the bubble, there are a lot of people out there who are they're representing different constituencies, and I appreciate that.
00:02:42
Speaker
yeah yeah yeah Back when I worked the junkets circuit real big, um and yeah, I mean literally every Saturday, every Sunday, every other Saturday or Sunday, I literally flew from LA to New York to work, to do the junkets in New York, and then the opposite weekend, I did all the LA junkets. And then you would have these people who would come in from Minnesota and in Detroit and and, you know, and And I, it it was, ah it was a real sort of check for myself. I was like, you know, I should really be happy that I yeah i am where I am. And I do what I do because, you know, uh, one of those kinds of things, but, uh, yes, overworked nevertheless. Yes. Still overworked. I don't care. Uh, super duper overworked.
00:03:24
Speaker
Well, in the meantime, just ah some plugs. but By all means, come visit us at cinegods.com or at scpr dot.org. That's where you will find Film Week, which Tim and I do regularly. Also, come and take a look at my sub stack at hollywoodheretic.substack dot.com.
00:03:40
Speaker
You can email us at gods at digigods.com or gods at cinegods.com. Always like to hear from listeners. You can go to our Facebook pages. Cinegods or Digigods. Digigods is a, yeah is that you have to join.
Thanksgiving and Family Gatherings
00:03:53
Speaker
You gotta ask to be ah accepted to to join the Digigods conversation. But Cinegods, anybody can like the page and and follow the podcast and all the other posts. Gonna try to do a lot more of that stuff in the yeah in the coming year once we get out from under our ah our awards season burden. Did we get ourselves over on Instagram and threads yet? Did that happen? Oh dude, I don't know. You know, you you and I and Mark and Ray, we're going to have to kind of sit down and just say, where where do we need to be? Where can we afford to be with our time and our commitments?
00:04:29
Speaker
Because you know there's no point in sort of having a presence on instagram if like i'm truly i have seen some celebrity instagram pages where i go you like you will see all you know such and such a celebrity the on instagram page you go never been updated like not even not even a single post and it's theirs it'll be like you know i forget it's there for the real the real tom cruise or whatever and then it's still you're still waiting for a first post you know so you That's the thing. You don't want to go to a space where you're not going to regularly participate and update and you kind of want to live life too. You got to yeah kind have a life out there. and the kind of content like I'm not a TikToker. I wouldn't do TikTok for a whole bunch of other reasons. that can sit Also my love of the free world, but but but but also I'm not a TikToker.
00:05:21
Speaker
ah and Oh, yes. Well, let's, you know, not direct the holiday mood, but let's just, we got a lot of people, a lot of people kicked off in the few weeks since we did this last.
Remembering Entertainment Figures
00:05:35
Speaker
How was your Thanksgiving and how's mom, by the way? Well, absolutely lovely, particularly Thanksgiving, because, you know, I just had just been home for a whole bunch of things. I had to move my mom, the whole thing. So mom's doing great, loving a new place. I'm loving her new place because it's a much more ah so of to to to you know 81 two-year-old person and it's just it's it it came out of nowhere but it's but it's great so mom's fine ah how did you and the girls get along over the holiday we fed nine people it was gonna be 11 but two dropped out at the last minute which is fine you know ah we had plenty of food so it was good fed nine people mostly family but had some had some orphans who came and joined and it was
00:06:17
Speaker
It was very, very nice. It was a good crowd. It was a good crowd. And that was the most people we fed in a long time. Wow. And I, and I have, and you know, my nephew who was not with us, he was elsewhere, but one one of my nephews, he, ah he, he exposed me to with the, what is it? The Spatchnick, uh, Turkey, the Spatch, what's it called? Hold on. Spatchcock.
00:06:38
Speaker
Spatchcock, you heard of this? Oh yeah, you basically spread it out. Yeah, you splay it out like you butterfly it and and it cooks in like a fraction of the time and it's juicy and it's a whole deal. It's a thing. yes i'm going to do that i'm I'm going to do that. I'm going to do that next year, I think.
00:06:56
Speaker
Anything's better than frying a turkey. Do not fry a turkey. Fried turkey is great, but you have to kill several children and burn down a house to make one. So to my mind, it's not worth it. I don't think, but other people i i i you know, I see that deep fried turkey thing and and my first thought goes to, first of all, I don't know anyone who actually owns a deep fryer.
00:07:16
Speaker
But second of all, if you've gotten like a 12 pound turkey, how big is your deep fryer? Oh yeah. Yeah. I've seen them. What? I've seen them. It's a thing. I mean, oh my gosh. And how much oil are, you know, what, are you trying to kill people? What's going on? and I'm telling you, I've never seen a deep fried turkey that didn't result in some sort of a fire event. I'm not even exaggerating now. Maybe the whole house didn't burn down.
00:07:42
Speaker
But there was a deep fry in the turkey will result in some thought of a fire event that happens every time. Oh, gosh. Well, let's let's go through all the people we lost. Yeah. Starting with Mitzi Gaynor at 93. A lot of people didn't realize Mitzi was still around. One of the legends of tea of Hollywood mo ah movie musicals. Mitzi, I just adore Mitzi. Loved just about every performance she ever gave.
00:08:08
Speaker
I mean, good, long life, 93, but, you know, go grab a, watch yourself some Mitzi Gaynor on occasion. I'm telling you, I'm telling you, Francesca was her name and she just sparkled. She just, her, yeah all the way through her entire life, by the way, not just when she was young. And we forget Mitzi could dance, Mitzi could act, but Mitzi could dance. Mitzi could sing. She was, she was one of those, you know, we call them triple threats now, but it encouraged me that back in the day, in a certain day in Mitzi's day,
00:08:37
Speaker
you kind of had to be a triple threat just to get a job. right you know that you That was a given, this thing that we think is sort of astounding. Now, look, they can sing and dance. I'm sorry, you had to come off the farm singing and dancing ye in Mitzi's day and and she could do it all. That's right. We lost Linda Oebst at 74. I interviewed ah Linda after her last ah Sleepless in Hollywood book, ah which I think is still an outstanding book. Could have used a little bit of editing, but you know still a great book.
00:09:06
Speaker
about everything that's wrong in Hollywood and it's been quite prophetic. So Linda Oebst, tremendous producer, 74, far too young, um but she is survived by her son who is ah an agent manager and you know her presence is still with us and her books are yeah immortal 67 years old from Michael Newman for those who don't remember he played boomy on ah on Baywatch and i I actually interviewed Michael for ah you know he he died I think it was Parkinson's that got him but it's just so tragic as he was such a big strapping guy physically just the physically yeah now and and you know I interviewed him for entertainment today dude when we were at entertainment today I did
00:09:52
Speaker
they They wanted to get him some PR because everybody else on Baywatch was getting PR. and he was yeah and so i went down because you know I don't live too far from where they were shooting it at the time, so I went down to the beach, to the set, hung out for about half the day and talked to him and and interviewed him there. and you know He was ah a real-life first responder.
00:10:10
Speaker
yeah He was a trained paramedic, a serving fireman in the L.A. County Fire Department, and a life a legit lifeguard. So, I mean, he was all of those things. And and I remember asking him, I said, you know, are are you ever going to throw all that in? I mean, you're an actor now. And he says, no, no, this will come to an end. This will come to an end someday. And you still got it got to have a real job. And I thought, wow, you are grounded. ah Because most like most people I know would be like, screw all the rest of that stuff. I'm a movie star now. I'm a TV star.
00:10:39
Speaker
And he didn' he didn't. He kept he did did both of those things, and of course the show moved to Hawaii. He did not. And he went back to doing all that. And my favorite part of this story was that some years later, because I live in an area where there are brush fires, I've had to evacuate more than my share of times, the fire department comes and inspects your brush clearance. And one year, who do you think showed up on my front door inspecting for brush clearance?
00:11:04
Speaker
michaelco noon It was the greatest catch up moment. I was like, dude, do you remember? me I interviewed you on the beach like, you know, 12 years ago. And he was like, yeah, wow. How you doing? It was a, it was a good moment. It was a good moment. So it, but it was, it was so, it was so profound to see that he was just, he was doing the job. He was just a working class guy and, uh, never he let the TV thing go to his head. It was, it was great.
00:11:28
Speaker
Yeah. Only in Hollywood. only Only in Hollywood. Can you be a star on a television show for a few seasons and still go back to your day job? That's it. That's it. You know, we got we also lost a couple of great athletes. I just want to give them a shout out. Fernando Valenzuela, who was you know an ace pitcher for the Dodgers, died too young, and the great and NBA center, Dikembe Mutombo, recognizable with that gravelly voice of his.
00:11:55
Speaker
du your remember double you know You always knew it. Those after-game interviews with Dikembe, it was my favorite thing because I'd love to hear him say like, I was trying to get a good position in the paint, ah but when I go up for the dunk, it was that gravelly voice. that just There was nothing like it. He was just such a great personality. Dikembe was in Joanna Man. I had a few friends in Joanna Man way back in, I don't know, 2009, 2007, something like that. Dikembe's in that movie.
00:12:23
Speaker
So legit. And then he's an Uncle Drew ah from a couple years ago. And he is hysterical. And Uncle Drew just like really steals scenes ah in in that movie. And he has a few moments in Coming to America too. And you know, the beautiful thing about the Kimi Mutombo, let me tell you, this guy, this is a guy who originally had a career path.
00:12:47
Speaker
where he wanted to be a doctor cuz he came from a very poor part of africa and he wanted to to bring health care to the areas where he grew up and when he became an nba star people thought all people in interview i'm like oh well you know too bad about those those doctor dreams and he said no no no no i i just ah finance the building of a hospital Like, he didn't become a doctor, but he still was committed to that, and he used his wealth and his fame to be able to endow and build hospitals. And and that that, to me, is an extraordinary human being. he He never let go, he never let the fame kind of obscure what he felt was his his his greater obligations, and um never forgot where he came from. So, yeah quality human being became him a tumbo. We also lost the voice of the love boat, Jack Jones. Yeah, yeah, yeah.
00:13:35
Speaker
So, you know. That's it. You gotta just you you gotta to just love ah Jack. yeahm wonderful Wonderful, wonderful voice. ah Memorable crooner. We lost the great Terry Gar, ah who struggled struggled with health health problems for so long. But Terry's so memorable, not just in a classic Star Trek episode. and who had little cameos in, you know, ah like, I think Beva Las Vegas, she's one of the dancers or something, but, but you know, came out of the 60s and started getting guest spots in the 70s, shows up, you know, next thing you know, in Close Encounters is Richard Dreyfus' wife, she's so good, and then in Tootsie and, oh you know, young Frankenstein. Oh, she steals Tootsie from those boys. and young She steals from those boys steals young Frankenstein, young Frankenstein, roll in the hay, roll, roll, roll.
00:14:24
Speaker
ah She's just so wonderful in in all of those performances. So we we loved, loved, loved Terigar. um What else can we say about Quincy Jones? Maybe me most the most prestigious music career of all time. A music career that bled over into the movies um um in in in terms of soundtracks and producing everything, magazines, you name it. Yes, all of that. ah This sort of a teenage savant on the trumpet. People forget to
00:14:55
Speaker
Quincy was actually, quinin played ah Quincy played the trumpet like Wynton Marsalis when he was 16 years old. ah but you know the talent and um so yeah Quincy Jones, um just outstanding, fantastic. and you i've I've been revisiting that to interview where he talks about fighting with Michael on ah on some of some of those tracks where Michael says, no, you got to take the violins out. It's it's killing my groove. and Quincy said, no.
00:15:23
Speaker
the violin stay. They're going to make the song and Quincy was right. of course you know ah the the The genius of Quincy Jones is not just as a songwriter, it is as a songwriter and an arranger and a composer and a musician and a producer and everything that you can do in the music industry.
00:15:41
Speaker
He did. He wrote pop. He wrote classical. He scored the color purple for Crying Out Loud. If you listen to the listen to the score for the color purple, it is right up there with you know John Williams level stuff, and then listen to his themes for TV shows like Ironside. you know And you realize this was a man who mastered everything. He mastered pop. He mastered funk. He mastered jazz. He mastered classical. He did it all.
00:16:06
Speaker
And I don't know that we'll ever have another musical giant like Quincy Jones. The guy just... ah i have to tell I have to tell my my my my my talking with Quincy Jones. We met Quincy a few times at one time. um ah ah Quincy was a jazz guy. If you know jazz guys, you hang around with jazz guys. Jazz guys, are the you know they they cuss a lot. They cuss a lot. I walk into this ah walk to the studio. I sit down with Quincy. Quincy looked at me and he said, you little Spike Lee looking motherfucker, ain't you?
00:16:34
Speaker
yeah He pointed out a little Spike Lee looking motherfucker. I'm like, yeah, it's true. Yeah. Yeah. and but has thought of i I was so honored ah hath for Quincy Jones. They hit me with that. That was that made me so happy. So love me some Quincy Jones. Just a tremendous figure. What a legacy. What a legacy. And then ah Tony Todd. was ah that That I did not see coming. That's a premature death. um
00:17:08
Speaker
Really, I thought had so had a lot of great performances and some other some interesting late life stuff still in him that were we're deprived of. So that's too bad. That was only had that great voice and that presence of certain sort of gravitas that he lent to to that 1990 whatever it was to or whatever a candy man.
00:17:25
Speaker
yeah ah that that really elevated it was one of the first sort of elevated horror films that yes that sort of notion of the elevated horror film that was on the weight of Tony Todd on his voice Tony happened to make I happen to interview him a thousand years ago around 1990 for a remake of Night of the Living Dead. He he played the guy of Night of the Living Dead. And this is a really, really... And the stature of this remake has grown and grown and grown over the last 35 years. So now, they sort of run them together all the time, the original George Muriel and I, Tony Todd's Night of the Living Dead. This really, really strong stuff from 1990. But Tony, and this is where, you know, i kind of I kind of knew him from when I was hanging around the set. Deep Space Nine, Tony played Kern.
00:18:11
Speaker
Worf's brother on Deep Space Nine. So Tony colonny was a Klingon. Cherm was a Klingon on that a couple of those episodes to our our homie Cherm. And he was and it was just he was just great. he those Those episodes ah that centered around Kern and Worf and all that kind of stuff are absolutely operatic.
00:18:30
Speaker
Again, it was one of those things where he just sort of like elevated it all yeah so that it's now suddenly it's Hamlet. it' It's Macbeth. It was just really, really, really good. Some actress could do that and Tony Todd was definitely one of them. Yeah, i'm it just really a tremendous gravitas and that's ah that's a loss.
00:18:49
Speaker
You know, let's talk about ah the famous game show host, Chuck Woolery. I mean, that I didn't see coming either. Chuck Woolery, for those who who may not, you might I mean, he hasn't hosted game shows in quite a while, but Chuck Woolery was one of those guys who changed the whole nature of game show hosting.
00:19:06
Speaker
Chuck Woolery was not your typical game show host. Chuck Woolery was a guy who felt like your buddy. ah You weren't supposed to feel like Bob Barker or or so or you know any of these other guys were your were your buddy. you were supposed to they were They were there for the audience. They were supposed to bring a larger-than-life kind of used car salesman sensibility to the moment. and Chuck Woolery was just a guy.
00:19:27
Speaker
and he He reacted to you and he laughed and he, you know, he he had a more humane reaction as a game show host than most of them normally would. and And in particular for the show, love connection. Now, this used to be an evening thing. It wasn't just, you know, for the old folks, ah the evening game shows, Wheel of Fortune and Jeopardy. It used to be a little more like um an hour that was a little more risque. It was the dating game and love connection.
00:19:57
Speaker
And when you're a teenager, like I think we were at the time, not was that was quite entertaining in the afternoons and early evenings. Love connection as it happens. I know someone who was on love connection at one point in the eighties. And ah man, did Woolery handle that situation with pure comedic aplomb. It was amazing. it It showed you what a game show host could do when he had Completely deranged people who were not in any way compatible on this show he just took it like it like that like Johnny Carson of the game show network and he just ah he took that show over and the one-liners he comes up with it's all spontaneous it's not written for him yeah very good stuff Chuck Woolery another real loss tremendous entertainer.
00:20:44
Speaker
Um, we also just, just this last week, well, Earl Holloman, let's talk about Earl Holloman for a second. The policeman on Police Woman. Love Earl Holloman. Love Earl Holloman on that show. And the thing I loved about Earl, particularly on that show, uh, is that he never played, the character never played, uh, down to Pepper. He never, he, he, he, he, he treated Pepper. Pepper was a cop.
00:21:09
Speaker
Uh, he had her back all the time. He didn't undermine her. You know, he was her boss, but yeah but but it was always, he was always, and I love that take on that character on that show. Uh, because on a lot of shows, you know, it was, it was the other way around, but Earl didn't play a dead way. Um, so he he knew that she could do things that they couldn't do. Uh, uh, but he always had her back. Love that about Earl Holloman, the policeman on police one.
00:21:35
Speaker
Tell us about Jerry Taylor. This is somebody who was behind the scenes, behind the camera, but Tim, you have you have ah very articulately discussed the importance of Jerry Taylor in the in the world of Trek.
00:21:47
Speaker
yeah the the tre The Trek world would be ah diminished for a whole lot of reasons. If it weren't for Jerry Taylor, a woman, ah who a lot of people didn't know ah were a woman. She kind of came in on the heels of DC Fontana, which came in with that first group of Star Trek writers you know with Jean. And so she came in with DC and then DC. Jean had told DC, you know just you know do the DC. Don't tell anybody. Just just just do the D and the C. If they don't know, you'll fare better. Because you know Gene was that guy, he understood the world that these women were having to deal with. And and Jerry Taylor ah learned from DC to just sort of let that float. For years, I thought Jerry Taylor was our dude. As I was watching those credits go, i I'm like, man, that Jerry Taylor shirkin' white, Jerry Taylor, a wonderful woman, an excellent writer and producer of Star Trek, particularly Deep Space Nine.
00:22:36
Speaker
um ah wrote and conceived several of those that are just extraordinary. um ah And we lost Jerry back in October actually, but you know, I just just forgot to to mention it. But yeah, she's one of those trailblazing women who have shaped the canon of Star Trek. And sometimes we boys forget some girls had a whole lot to do with that.
Gift Recommendations and Holiday Movies
00:22:58
Speaker
And our our good friend David Weishart, who has a great new substat called Character Secrets, by the way. If you're a writer, go go check out Character Secrets. um David Weishart actually pitched an episode to Jerry Taylor back in the 80s. And it's a great story, too. Learn what you don't do in a pitch, too. It's very ah very humbling to hear David share that story. I hope even i hope he puts that on a substat at some point.
00:23:23
Speaker
um And then ah winding down here to the end, Jim Abrahams, the A in Zaz has gone. So the Zucker brothers are now left without the meat of their sandwich. Jim Abrahams was the third wheel in that amazing Zucker Abrams, Zucker team that gave us Kentucky Fried movie and the airplane movies and the Naked Gun films. And ah he was he wound up being the most prolific director of any of them actually. He went on to do a lot of stuff solo and he was just, ah you know, Mafia got was was I think the last one that that he did by himself, but um really ah just a tremendous comedy talent and I'm sorry to see him go.
00:24:07
Speaker
Yeah, yeah, he he was great. I think we did a a ah panel, if I'm not mistaken with those guys, for ah for Film Week. Or maybe I did that, but I don't know. Were you on that panel? with the airplane guys. I was not. No, no, no. It wasn't yeah it was a great it was a great panel and and and and it was ah a great chat. ah And he was responsible for some of the more risque jokes,
00:24:30
Speaker
and in in particularly in that in that first airplane movie. um Just a really, really funny guy. it It remembered me, and I could not believe this, a thousand years ago again, everything everything and for me in this town was a thousand years ago.
00:24:44
Speaker
I worked on a film called Welcome Back, Roxy Carmichael. It might have been his first solo directing thing. I was working for ITC. Remember ITC? ITC is coming. That film was a Winona Ryder movie, a little cute Winona Ryder movie. He remembered me from 30 years ago working on that film. He's like, I remember you.
00:25:09
Speaker
He's like, you were fat. had and You yeah yeah had a beard. and I'm like, yes, that was me. I lost 40 pounds, shaved beard. I'm like, dude, you are good. yeah love that mid mid midwwi Midwest guys, they they do that we can't help it. We can't help it. I love it. I love that. I love that.
00:25:29
Speaker
o Well, so let's let's take a dive into all of our great stuff that we're recommending for the holidays. Speaking of ITC, giving us a good little transition there, and we are going to have an interview at some point in the next few weeks with the yeah the main creative figure here.
00:25:46
Speaker
The Moonbase Alpha Technical Operations Manual for all fans of Space 1999 is amazing. This is the post-breakaway revised edition. ah this is This is such an unbelievably cool thing. It comes from ITV Studios in the UK.
00:26:04
Speaker
ah You got to go online and and order it directly from ITV Studios. But I'll tell you, it is amazing. And all the hard work here is courtesy of Chris Thompson, um who works for Anderson Entertainment. And Chris Thompson is ah is somebody we're going to be talking to to get his insights onto the enduring legacy of Space 1999. So look for that in a few weeks. But this is just an absolutely wonderful book. You know, I'm a technical manual groupie. Like I got every Star Trek technical manual ever published.
00:26:34
Speaker
Uh, not because I need them, just because I like having them. But, uh, no, this is wonderful. And it really is the perfect companion to, uh, any Space 1999 fans, uh, already burgeoning collection. I love that it had, like I'm looking here right now at the Eagle layout.
00:26:51
Speaker
and how the command module and the main view ports work. and you know I never knew that it was called a hot bottle fusion engine array. That's sweet. ah But no, it it really it explains like why the Eagle is designed the way that it is. It's not designed just so that it looks like a bird. No, there's there's actual practical reasons for it. And they get into all of the different module variants here. I love this. there's like ah a laboratory module, there's a rescue module, you know that centerpiece of the eagle you can drop out and replace with all kinds of other stuff. So it's ah there's a lot of practicality to it, a pallet module for hauling stuff around. Jerry proceeds Gene Roddenberry. He's older than Gene Roddenberry.
00:27:37
Speaker
yeah um ah and But but but he he was one of the first sort of creators of this sort of fiction who wanted to consider actual scientific sort of you know issues around things like that. you know So um was it speculative? Yes, extremely speculative. you know They solved most problems by putting rockets on some sort of a launch device and and shooting it off the end. because but but But he was one of the first who who did that. He's like, look, yeah what with the science?
00:28:05
Speaker
call for in order to to make this space station work in order to making moon base viable, etc. it really So he was he was one of those guys. and and And what they have done with this book is just tremendous. It is it is wonderful. if If you are already a Space 1999 fan,
00:28:24
Speaker
You'll be an even happier one afterwards. If you're not a Space 1999 fan and you haven't seen the show, this book will win you over. You don't even need to watch any of the show. It'll it'll just win you over. So that is the Space 1999 Moonbase Alpha Technical Operations Manual courtesy of Chris Thompson, who was one of the writers and illustrators that did it with Andrew Clements. But this is, you know, Chris Thompson is the guy we're goingnna we're going to be grabbing him. and talking a lot of Space 1999 with him ah in the next few weeks. So look for that. for that Also on the book front...
00:28:56
Speaker
A few more to make a quick mention of here. We have a complete a complicated passion, The Life and Work of Agnes Varda by Kerry Rickey, which is ah an absolutely terrific look at the the life of ah one of the great all-time French filmmakers, ah whom we met a number of times at our LAFCA events. she was She was a teacher at USC.
00:29:17
Speaker
she's a constant presence in los angeles and just ah a great lady and ah made some just so many unusual and fascinating movies and of course was married to jock demi so you know a great filmmaker married to another great filmmaker which is also part of the complicated life but anyway A complicated passion, the life and work of Agnes Varda. Beautiful. ah We've also got ah Wes D. Gering's kinds of American film comedy, six core genres and their literary roots. This is a wonderful, wonderful thing for people who want to get into comedy writing. It ah it'll it'll it it breaks down in very, very classic, methodical um terms. The classic yeah archetypes of American comedy writing, especially screwball comedy and
00:30:03
Speaker
which is a kind of American farce, the way that they argue it here. It gets into romantic comedy and it has examples from all these classic movies. It's really, really a great, great scholarly breakdown. And then lastly, The Amazing ah Pandora's Box, How Guts, Guile, and Greed Upended TV by Peter Biskin.
00:30:24
Speaker
Peter Biskind, one of the great chroniclers of Hollywood history that we have, ah previously wrote Easy Riders, Raging Bulls, which was you know the the great chronicle of the 1970s and how everything changed with a whole new generation of ah filmmakers.
00:30:40
Speaker
And he wrote down in dirty pictures as well. ah So he has he is given us some of the most incisive deconstruction of our particular moment in in cinema and in television. And Pandora's Box is amazing because it puts us right into the present day about with streaming and linear television and the crisis of content. Is it too much? Is it too little?
00:31:04
Speaker
what's the impact on movies is the tail wagging the dog or the dog wagging the tail is it movies are streaming all of this stuff gets into the guts of it and it it will really open your eyes especially as to netflix uh it is it is it sort of ends on the question mark too you know the conclusion to this book is not yet written so it is uh that's just Those books alone will make somebody in your circle happy. Let me just put it that way. yeah yeah Well, let's let's let's start off on the disc side by ah hitting some um some holiday titles. And what really is more appropriate for a Christmas show than to start off by talking about the 40th anniversary edition 4K Ultra HD release of Silent Night Deadly Night. and Really? forty Wow. Yeah, it's been 40 years.
00:31:55
Speaker
It's ah which is greatest tagline. There's two taglines actually on the on the cover here. I don't know which one they used when the movie was released but I think it's hilarious. So they obviously figured well we got we got to use them both. So the first one is you you've made it through Halloween. Now try and survive Christmas.
00:32:15
Speaker
yeah And it's a picture of of of Santa, you know, down the, ah down the chimney with one arm holding an axe still sticking out the top of the chimney. And the other tagline is, he knows when you've been naughty.
00:32:32
Speaker
So a yeah, this is one of those Christmas slasher films. ah there There are a few of them. Silent Night, Deadly Night is ah one ah are arguably one of the most offensive of them. um Probably in a pretty good way, I guess. ah But it all started. It's almost campy in hindsight, to be honest, watching this again.
00:32:57
Speaker
Yeah greatly and quickly in this the um the the first really great scream Queen. Yeah, there so yeah, yeah, it's fantastic Yeah, it's it's fine. It's fine. Directed by ah Charles E. Sellier Jr., who I don't think ever i've made another movie. I don't know. Anyway, the premise is, is you know you've got to it sort of tries to take the whole concept of of Halloween and Friday the 13th and import it into Christmas about this little kid who, you know his parents were murdered on Christmas Eve. and ah
00:33:31
Speaker
yeah Then he had an issue with some nuns, so now he's basically become the Michael Myers of Christmas and ah he's going to put on a Santa suit and absolutely go nuts.
00:33:42
Speaker
ah Yes, it is it's Silent Night Deadly Night. It's 4K. I don't know if you need it in 4K, but clearly somebody does. On the list of ah the 8,000 Christmas themed movies that now show up on on Lifetime and Hallmark and every other thing, is just more it's just too much.
00:34:02
Speaker
You know, a bluegrass Christmas is not bad. It's actually kind of sweet.
Film Reviews and Cultural Relevance
00:34:08
Speaker
This stars Amanda Jordan and David Panard. And it's just ah it's just one of those sweet to kind of country horse riding, you know, aimed at aimed at people in Oklahoma and Kentucky kind of Christmas stories. But these are people who have made a ton of Christmas movies already.
00:34:27
Speaker
yeah Everyone in here is maybe there is a formula and it is a formula. They've got not just Hallmark these companies these day. They have these things sort of wrapped up, and and you know, it's a formula that works because it's a formula that works. It is, and the Scrooge in this story is ah is grumpy grandpa, but you know, he's not grumpy for long. We also have A Sudden Case of Christmas with Danny DeVito and ah Andy McDowell, who's not afraid to own the ah gray hair now, and that's that's sweet. um this is and Danny DeVito really kind of just, he really, really gets off on this.
00:35:04
Speaker
He's a guy, hess he plays a guy named Lawrence Arminetti and he runs a hotel in Italy where he brings his family over for Christmas every year. And ah needless to say, bringing the family over winds up not going quite so well this year, but you know what? It all wraps up in ah in a wonderful, wonderful heartwarming finale. And Danny DeVito has so much fun.
00:35:28
Speaker
Well, you know what? I'm looking at the trailer here and this is definitely a location shoot. They went to Italy and they're actually there and I'm thinking Danny's like, you say we're going to Italy for for this thing. Okay. Let's do it. Let's do it. Why not? The cute little Christmas christmas movie. You gotta love it. Yeah.
00:35:48
Speaker
And then lastly here, the 4k ultra HD debut with complete with, uh, with the digital code for Voodoo or, uh, Fandango plus whatever they're calling it now of the classic Irving Berlin's white Christmas. It's 70th anniversary. First time on 4k Bing Crosby, Danny Kay.
00:36:07
Speaker
ah Rosemary, I am George Clooney's aunt Clooney and a Vera Allen. ah Still an absolute classic. I remember watching this movie as a kid. It's colorful. It's touching. It's got all the great Irving Berlin songs. And Rosemary Clooney is just absolutely terrific. She's just wonderful.
00:36:27
Speaker
Fantastic. George Clooney's aunt does ah does the family proud. i Got a ton of extras in here. There's a sing-along and featurettes. There's a 1954 UNICEF documentary with Danny Kay. I mean, it's just, youre yeah really, it is a blast of Christmas nostalgia. You're not going to be able to get enough. It's just absolutely wonderful. Absolutely wonderful.
00:36:53
Speaker
And then there's also a really interesting little oddity here called Blue Christmas. Uh, this is like a, uh, this is from VCI by way of MVD visual and it is region free. Anybody can grab this. You can play it in any region whatsoever. This is like a Christmas noir. Talk about Christmas slasher films. No, put that aside. yeah This is a Christmas noir. And, uh, it is, I guess formally from the creator of the road to perdition.
00:37:24
Speaker
ah And yeah it's like, it it it's all i it verges on parody at times. okay It almost feels like they're they're you know like they're there really trying to riff on everything Sam Spade and and and Raymond Chandler and all that stuff.
00:37:41
Speaker
But it at a certain point, it really does kind of settle in to this whole gumshoe private eye thing. And you just kind of buy it. You just kind of buy the fact that you're watching a Christmas no noir. And it's it's done in that whole 1940s style. It takes place in Chicago in 1942. And um it's got, you know, the funfital and all the nasty, ugly people. And and then you've at a certain point, you begin to realize Oh, I'm watching a Christmas Carol done as a noir, aren't I? ah ah and then have And then you realize, Christmas Carol is a noir. Yeah, it's very much. Yeah. Right? yeah yeah I'm with you on that one, bro. See? and And that's what I thought was interesting. you like Because now it's made me reevaluate a lot of Dickens. I'm like, Dickens was sort of like the original, he was the original Raymond Chandler in some respects.
00:38:34
Speaker
He kind of was. He was writing noir for his day. I can see. I can walk right through that with you. I can absolutely see. Oliver Twist is noir, man. yeah yeah Great Expectations is noir. It's weird, but that's like a sudden dawning for me. I hadn't thought of that before. So anyway, ah give that a look if you're so inclined. It's very specialized, but Blue Christmas, very clever. I yeah i kind of i kind of appreciated what it was doing.
00:39:00
Speaker
All right, we've got 4Ks, we've got criterions, we've got box sets, we've got television. What should we launch it? Let's bump over to the 4Ks. Oh yeah. Because there are a few in there. I want to i happen to be listening yeah i see Interstellar in there. it's a thing that po Oh my gosh, it's a beautiful set. And I happened to be listening to something, Neil deGrasse Tyson or something like that. And he was chit chatting with Kip Thorne.
00:39:25
Speaker
thorne who of course was the scientific advisor the study ah for Interstellar and was really interesting conversation as Kip was really explaining ah that he was actually, him and him and Linda Opes, if I'm not mistaken, um ah the the creators of that original story.
00:39:47
Speaker
ah And the in that that ah you know that you you Chris Nolan and came and his brother came to him and they and they sort of like it and then they take took it and turned it into this whole other thing. But all the science, he and he was trying to talking about all the science in Interstellar, and it was kind of neat to listen to Kip explain how all of those things that always bugged me personally about Interstellar, I'm talking about this sort of yeah is scientific, interesting scientific narrative now.
00:40:13
Speaker
I'm like, oh, you can't do that. And Kip explained why I was wrong. ah and and And the things that all, you know, people jump on all the science and all these things. He he explains, nope, this is exactly why you people are all wrong. Now you had to read the book in order to get all of that. It may not all be in the movie, but it's it's really, really kind of cool. So anyway, what's up tonight? that's look it is near this no This is a tremendous set. oh ah More than three hours of special features, ah old and new, ah including a look back at Interstellar. from Really just an absolutely great documentary.
00:40:46
Speaker
ah it's this is the but this is the i i mean I can't believe this. This is the 10-year anniversary. I can't believe it's been 10 years, dude. That just freaks me out. But this is the 10 year anniversary released. It is a nice big old kind of slim boxed set. It's got, you know, posters and souvenirs, stickers and little booklet and all kinds of just great stuff in it. I mean, it really is a nice collector set. It's really, really terrific. But ultimately, you know what, this movie has some of the best audio you will ever going to hear on a 4K. It's just a It's a great, great mix. It really is, it's just stunning. And as long as we're on the subject of Interstellar, there's also First Time on 4K Galaxy Quest. Which still has a wonderful following. And I am so, so, so proud because my friend Dave Howard was the basically creator of Galaxy Quest. And I still remember when Dave Howard pitched me the original idea. It was originally called Captain Starshine.
00:41:50
Speaker
And I was talking to Dave at a friend's party in Topanga, and, you know, Dave is trained as a playwright, and he said, yeah, you know, I've got this spec that I'm shopping around. It's called Captain Starshine. It's kind of like a spoof of, you know, Shatner and Spock and and that whole thing. And he pitched it to me, and I thought, that's the funniest damn thing I've ever heard in in my life. I said, you've got to be able to sell that. Next thing you know, is DreamWorks and, you know, there's a whole lot of drama and whatnot, but it winds up becoming Galaxy Quest. yeah And there it is. And, you know,
00:42:19
Speaker
It's, it's weird when you are privy to the evolution of something like that so many years before and you see it coming from wishing. And, uh, was it exactly the way that he pitched it to me? No, but it, you know, close enough. Yep. And all of the elements that came together to me, I think it was is Dean, Dean, Dean, Dean, parasite, parasite. Yeah. yeah And, uh, but Tim Allen, Sigourney and Allen, all just sort of wonderful, perfect, perfect elements, uh, coming together to make that, to make the Tony Shalhoub. And it's just so, so, so great.
00:42:49
Speaker
So let me roll through some of these others so that we don't get too bogged down in time. We got Oliver Stone's Born on the Fourth of July from Shout Select and 4K Ultra HD, one of the great Tom Cruise performances of all time. As ah Ron Kovik, ah part of Oliver Stone's Vietnam moment when he was, I think it was kind of a trilogy that he did. Heaven and Earth, what came right after this, this was right after Platoon.
00:43:13
Speaker
But you know has all the stuff you'd want on commentary by Oliver Stone TV spots commentary by ah film critic Matt Zeller sites ah all yeah It's it's I mean it's loaded it's absolutely loaded so a good one from shot select Got Tom Cruise's second to last time doing a serious dramatic role. Yes to Second I think the last time was Magnolia. What's what what's yeah, so yeah. Yeah Yeah. and I can't, I can't remember time. Rainman. 80s, 80s. That's rain. That's something that brother. Yeah, man. So yeah, tom Tom only did that about four times and that was one of them.
00:43:52
Speaker
American movie, one of the more entertaining ah docs ah from the last few decades is on 4K. I'm not entirely sure why. This wasn't exactly a great looking film, but it's, you know, it has a cult following. These two guys are are just absolutely weird and hilarious. And ah I guess, you know,
00:44:15
Speaker
4K suits the fans. ah mel but Mel Brooks' is Blazing Saddles gets 4K treatment all by its own, by its lonely. Still hilarious, still beautifully ah beautifully made, and you know what, some of the best screen chemistry I have ever seen between the on this cast. Clevon Little and Gene Wilder are just priceless.
00:44:36
Speaker
um yeah Harvey Korman has some of the best lines in movie history. It's just a lot of fun. This movie is just irreverent and priceless and timeless. So, love me some Blazing Saddles. We've also got the new Beetlejuice Beetlejuice. How did you feel about this, Tim? Yeah, the new one. How'd you feel about Beetlejuice Beetlejuice?
00:44:57
Speaker
yeah It was terrible, far too dark. ah and in in i in my in In my opinion, far too dark. ah Much darker than the Beetlejuice movie that I remembered. um so you know but made Made a ton of money though. Made a ton of money. yeah ah We're starting to get our Hitchcock films on 4K. This is one of the few that is not universal, ah North by Northwest. a This was, you know, ah one of his rare detours away from um away from a Universal. This is a Warner Brothers library film. And I actually took ah took ah my wife and daughter to go see the 70 millimeter projection of this at the Arrow Theater in Santa Monica two months ago. And another family, one of my daughter's friends and and her her family came along as well. And everybody, it's just it was amazing to see these 11 year old girls
00:45:51
Speaker
experience a Hitchcock action thriller for the first time. It was, I mean, they got it. They just got it. They they got it. It was good. It was nice to see it work. With Cary Grant's most memorable roles, James Mason is great. A young Martin Landau speaking of Space 1999 is terrific as well. One of the mistaken man movies in Hitchcock's body of work. but Really, really great. And of course that all-time classic finale on the the great studio mock-up of Mount Rushmore.
00:46:20
Speaker
Um, trap. Tim, did you see trap?
00:46:26
Speaker
Yeah, with Josh Hartnett resurfacing after. I think I mis-trapped that week. I love to rip on M. Night Shyamalan and the horrible B-level that his career has descended to, but I'll tell you something. This is a little bit of a return to form. He's not just phoning it in here. It's nice to see that Josh Hartnett has emerged from that cave in Argentina that he's been hiding in for the last 20 years.
00:46:51
Speaker
ah he's a he he's kind of still got it he still you know got the matinee idol looks I don't know where he's been but um yeah this is a this is a little bit of a It's a little, it borrows a little bit from Targets, the Bogdanovich film. um it all you know It's about a father and a daughter at a yeah at ah at a concert event. And ah it's it's ah it's a very intelligent way of analyzing our current um
00:47:23
Speaker
Our current moment that we're having with ah public events, post-COVID, public events, in the would like that what happened in Las Vegas those those years ago in the shooter, where you know do we do we still have we descended so far into our internet lives that we don't actually want to have public lives anymore. Are we afraid? And if so, is it about convenience or is it about fear? there's all All those ideas are are ah treated here. and You know, again, it's not A-list Shyamalan, but it feels like he's working a little harder than than he has in quite some time. So, ah yeah yeah, it might be worth ah worth ah and an exploration trap on 4K from M. Night Shyamalan. Thoughtful.
00:48:03
Speaker
Uh, anything else here in the four K's you want to jump into? Uh, let's see. Oh, look, they reached all the way back to, uh, Adam's family values. Yeah. Um, uh, which is, you know, uh, what was that the second in the? Yes, it was in the cinematic Adam's family movies. If I'm not mistaken, uh, you know, Adam's, uh, yeah, that's right. Uh, so.
00:48:26
Speaker
i remember I remember thoroughly enjoying this film. The first film was a big hit. yeah um But I remember thoroughly enjoying this film. I do not remember whether or not it was as popular as the first film. It was nearly as popular. It was nearly as popular. But it was not, you know what, they they did such a good job of casting the first one that they almost had to bring everybody back just to let us kind of soak in some more of the casting because then it's it's a lot of it's a lot of people. And I you know i almost wanted, I could have done with the third one.
00:48:55
Speaker
yeah I could have done with a third, maybe even a fourth. I could have lost Raul Julia somewhere along the line there. Raul played Gomez. He was just an exquisite Gomez. Now we do, though, have Wednesday, whatever that is, a Netflix or Paramount series, whatever it is. So the Chuck Adams concept there seems to linger on over the years either way.
00:49:20
Speaker
Yeah. Well, this is first time on 4k. Uh, the, my only regret with this movie, and of course it has the digital, uh, thing, the digital code included. My only regret with this is that Christopher Lloyd played Uncle Fester because that part was originally supposed to go to John Lovett's and there's still a part of me that feels like John Lovett's was the better choice. He would have got me. do we just got yeah I see you on that one. Yeah.
00:49:46
Speaker
Well, speaking of slasher movies for ah for ah for the holidays, we also have Thanksgiving. Why do they always use an axe in the ads? This is an axe that is just clobbered down into a turkey for Thanksgiving. Eli Roth's Thanksgiving.
00:49:59
Speaker
Uh, yeah, it's 4k. It's coming out now. I'm not quite sure why, but it's kind of a standard Eli Roth, uh, slasher thing. And, uh, it's got a lot of, uh, a lot of extras on here, including the featurette that is so aptly titled Carve diem. Oh dear. Oh dear. my Anyway, but no this, this'll, uh, play on your movie. This'll go into your movies anywhere, digital locker, because it's Sony. I don't know why.
00:50:26
Speaker
Paramount refuses to get on board. Maybe once they yeah they're part of once the ownership change takes place, maybe Paramount will finally join the movies anywhere. Consortium. Collector's Edition and 4K have dragged me to hell. Oh yeah. Sam Raimi basically saying, I'm done with the superhero stuff. I want to make a horror film again. Enough with the Spider-Man. Let's just make ah what I'm comfortable making.
00:50:48
Speaker
This movie is hysterical. Yeah scary. It's a little scary, but man is it funny ah That scene fighting the crazy rabbit old lady in the car is outstanding is Outstanding filmmaking it is just absolutely outstanding. No check this movie out. It's a lot of fun This is just classic Sam Raimi throwing caution to the wind ah two discs set That cannot get better. Lots of interviews in here. Alison Lohmann and Ivan Ramey and you know the Peter Deming, the cinematographer, ah Christopher Young, the composer. Everybody shows up on this thing. Everybody's having a good time. Drag me to hell.
00:51:28
Speaker
Uh, the 430 movie. Did you see the 430 movie? I had to review this for film week. I do not, I do not remember the 430 movie. No, sir. So the 430 movie, uh, now on 4k, but not so on 4k that they can't put a VHS logo on the cover of this thing and a please be kind rewind sticker just to be dorky. Like this is basically what's going on.
00:51:50
Speaker
Uh, Kevin Smith yeah what went out a couple of years ago and saw Licorice Pizza, the Paul Thomas Anderson movie, and thought to himself, well, hell, I grew up with all that stuff. It's like my childhood too. I could make this movie. No, you can't.
00:52:07
Speaker
ah But it didn't stop him from trying. So Kevin Smith went and basically made his version of licorice pizza, which has its moments. I will say, you know, these, these, it's so, these, these nerdy kids going to see movies, trying to, you know, con the movie theater. Ken Jeong is the guy who owns the movie theater. He keeps kicking one of them out. And then they sneak back in and there's a bromance.
00:52:34
Speaker
None of it quite works, but it is ah it is Kevin Smith's first attempt at making a licorice pizza type nostalgic reminiscence about his his movie going upbringing, his movie going teen years.
00:52:48
Speaker
yeah So it is a little charming. It's a lot amateurish. It's also a lot, not very coherent, but I guess in the overall Kevin Smith body of work, it it's, you know what, it's better than clerks. It fits in. It fits in. Yeah, it fits. No production value.
00:53:06
Speaker
It just needs more production value. They all do. All Kevin Smith movies needed more production value. Even even if even at the top of his career with Ben Affleck and the Lambs, Kevin and in Matt Damon roaming around, his movies still needed more production value, which, you know, you know, what are you going to do?
00:53:23
Speaker
Well, ah so as far as gift sets, 4K gift sets, let me tell you some nice ones we got here. um House of the Dragon, the complete second season, comes with eight character cards. This is a nice little set if you are keeping up with that, ah the ongoing prequel saga of ah Game of Thrones. House of the Dragon, season two, not ah not a bad little gift consideration. We also have a couple of ah Steel Book releases, brand new 4K Steel Book releases.
00:53:52
Speaker
of ah from Shout Factory of Dark Crystal and Labyrinth for some reason both of those things those were the two you know Henson yeah company productions and they every time one of them gets released the other one gets released it's like they're they're joined at the hip Jim Henson's Labyrinth and Jim Henson's Dark Crystal Labyrinth not such a great movie in my opinion I think Jennifer Commonly is wonderful ah David Bowie looks ridiculous with the wig Lots of extras on here pretty nice steelbook but ultimately Dark Crystal is the movie that lingers for me that was a first of its kind and ah Remains an absolutely wonderful state-of-the-art ah Milestone in cinematic volunteering. Yeah, i I you know Oswald Morris the legendary cinematographer does a great job fantastic store from Trevor Jones I just think this is a great movie. I think it's a really really great movie director Frank doesn't get enough credit for
00:54:46
Speaker
You know no co-directing and directing with Jim no that's him that he does not that he does not and maybe someday And then we also have Bill and Ted's most triumphant trilogy on 4k look what can I tell you? it's It's all three Bill and Ted movies, which are basically the same ah The jokes are one note. I don't particularly care for these movies, but man a lot of people love these movies, so I Knock yourselves out. They are out there courtesy of Shout Factory. Finally, all three Bill and Ted movies on 4K in a single box set for Christmas. That'll make somebody happy. So, so, so, so, so, so. Excellent adventure. Uh, it was just 89 and 90. Yeah. Right?
00:55:23
Speaker
Uh, bogus journey, I think was right after that, uh, within a year or two. And then they wait like what? 10, 15, 20 years or something like like that. yeah per millin ten face the music the music movie yeah yeah Yeah. Yeah. I don't know, man. That's that that's, that's waiting a while to get back in the well. there boy yeah Yeah. Yes, it is. Uh, the crow, the new crow, man, that tank, but it's out on 4k. That was, um, yeah.
00:55:48
Speaker
ah Tim, how how'd you feel about the new Crow? did well Did we need it? Actually, no, we didn't need it, but I will say this about it. FKA twigs, who you know played the sort of female version of the the you the whole thing that happens in the Crow, they get killed and all this kind of... She was quite strong in this movie. She's a rapper, a performer. She was quite strong in this movie. But the movie itself was basically sort of a John Wickian sort of conception.
00:56:13
Speaker
of the the crow story. and you know So it becomes this gun movie. I don't know if you remember that first crow movie. That first crow movie was really kind of cool. It had all these sort of like yeah B characters that were really wicked, you know? Yeah, yeah, yeah. yeah yeah and I don't know, but this is just like, it's John Wick ah meets the Quaro. And we have all these big gun sequences. But but I did love F.K. Twig. She was really sexy in this movie.
00:56:40
Speaker
ah Did we need the new Twisters, speaking of movies that came long after the original? Yeah, no, but it was required, as this was the, ah I guess the summer, the spring, summer of Lynn Powell. So yeah you need everything that Mr. Powell did, ah we were required to watch. um And you know, the thing about that new Twisters movie, I think that you know that first Twisters movie had a boy, Bill Paxson, and and ah ah who who was it?
00:57:09
Speaker
hele um Hunt, helen Helen Hunt. Yes. Helen Hunter. Helen Hunt. Helen Hunt. And they were really great in that movie. I mean, they brought this sort of really, yeah again, I'm going to use that word again, that sense of gravitas. these You bought it in Jean de Bonne's film. You bought it. And this film, I'm looking at these kids. I'm like, shouldn't you kids be at home? Does your mom know you're running out running around out here?
00:57:35
Speaker
around the, I didn't, you know yeah yeah i didn't yeah it Helen Hunt and and Bill Paxton, I bought that they were who they portended to be in that movie here. I just felt like this is a bunch of kids and somebody should call their parents and tell them they're out here chasing twisters. But, you know, the the special effects, um which for that first Twister movie were really astounding. You know, I don't know, yeah here, not the same. It just doesn't doesn't report the same.
00:58:03
Speaker
Well, here here are a bunch of films that all have some degree of nostalgia to them. They're all now on 4K. We're going to start with, but well, I'm going to go right through them. The Hitcher, intern, tag, The Terminator, Pulp Fiction, and Rock and Roll High School. So let's start with Rock and Roll High School, 45th anniversary edition. That's kind of a big deal.
00:58:24
Speaker
And I think this film ah by Alan Arkish, really his 1979 right kind of at the tail end of the 70s just looping into the 80s, introduces a lot of people to the Ramones. One of those movies that just sort of, one of those youth culture movies that I think stitches the decades together, does it hold up? Yeah, I don't know what it held up at the time, but it It definitely is a unique film co-written by ah Joe Dante. you know A lot of people may not realize that. um it's a i i feel like they I feel like it has more to say now than it did at the time. So I do have some ah grudging appreciation for what it was doing then, which i didn't I don't think I appreciated in previous times. Lots of extras. So Rock and Roll High School. um The Terminator on 4K, I don't know what took so long. but
00:59:17
Speaker
Here it is. Not enough and way by way of special features, some deleted scenes and some featurettes. Not nearly enough. Needs a lot more. Jim Cameron, go give us an audio commentary, please. You really got to step it up for that one. But that being said, ah looks really good. It's a great 4K transfer. Terrific. Absolutely terrific. Has digital movie code on it. So that means that you can get it on the Voodoo or the Fandango or your your Apple platforms. The hitcher. Hmm.
00:59:45
Speaker
Boy, Rutger Hauer is the hitcher. I've gone back and forth on whether or not the reason this movie disturbs me has more to do with the movie or me. How so?
01:00:08
Speaker
I don't know. I mean it it's i feel like i I want to hate this movie, but at the same time um it's just too disturbing for me to fully dismiss it. If that makes sense. yeah yeah it is it's it's a It's a creepy movie. It's a creepy movie.
01:00:26
Speaker
I mean, nobody really hitchhikes anymore, picks up hitchhikers, but you know it's it's really, really well shot. I think that might be part of it. It's just so well executed. ah The intern, let's talk about the intern for a second with ah you know the Nancy Meyers film with Robert De Niro and Anne Hathaway. ah This isn't that old, actually. I mean, this is about 2015, I guess it is, nine years old. um The, um, this is sort of the last time, even though it's a Nancy Meyers villain, we want to, might want to dismiss it. This was sort of the last time that I felt that Robert De Niro was stretching. He was trying to do something that was outside his comfort zone. Yeah. And he wasn't playing that guy.
01:01:07
Speaker
He wasn't playing that guy, exactly. He wasn't playing that guy. And I appreciated that. There's like, there's a scene in this film, which I thought was particularly sweet, where, um, all the other guys at the job, you know, De Niro plays an old guy who goes back to work and, you know, is working an office as an intern. And, um, it's a generational comedy. It's a, it's, it's meant to be poignant about aging and all of the things that go along with aging and the differences in generations.
01:01:31
Speaker
And there's this scene where these guys at the office, they're talking to De Niro. These guys are all sitting there with scruff, and they're messy, and they're wearing hoodies, and De Niro's there wearing his coat and tie, and he's cleanly shaved. And they're saying to him, they're like, oh, so you shave every day? And he nods, he goes, yeah, yeah. you You know, so like you said, 2015. So you're coming up on 10 years ago, a decade ago.
01:01:58
Speaker
Uh, so, so a decade ago, you know, I was in my, I was in my, I was in my mid fifties and I was watching this movie and I was thinking to myself, I don't know. De Niro seems to be making a whole lot of sense to me. out of but what's What's, what's the, what's, what's, the yeah you know what I mean? So now 10 years later, I watched this movie and I'm like, this should be mandatory watching for people who go to work at any company at all, anywhere. Cause not for nothing. That's my generation. That's the way I used to go to work. I used to wear a suit and tie back in the day.
01:02:27
Speaker
Yeah. you Yeah. So, you know, anyway, a very, very funny, funny. Don't know if these jokes play today. Don't know if they ah only a decade later. And, and you know, ah yeah everybody's been walking around in their hoodies for for a decade now, ah you know, a Facebook boy and and what all I don't know. I don't know what we'd have to see.
01:02:48
Speaker
Well, we talked about Quincy Jones earlier and Quincy's daughter, Rashida, is still with us. Very talented actress, writer, and director. Rashida is is ah is a hyphenate just
Exploring Obscure Films and Criterion Collection
01:02:57
Speaker
like her dad. a lot of that A lot of those good genes got passed down. And she is the one of the voices of sanity in tag, which was only made in 2018, but this is actually based on a real story. Now, it's highly fictionalized, but There really were and are these guys who have been playing tag since they were in first grade. And the game is ongoing and it interferes with all of their adult lives. And boy, does this have some funny stuff in it. Great cast is part of what makes this thing work. Jeremy Renner, along with Jon Hamm and Leslie Bibb and Hannibal Burris and Isla Fisher and Jake Johnson, Ed Helms.
01:03:42
Speaker
It's a, it's a funny bunch of guys and they're all playing tag, uh, way beyond what should be tolerated in real life. Uh, but you know, there's some funny, funny stuff in this movie. I'll just say that some funny, funny stuff. So that's on 4k. If you want to knock yourself out, um, ah getting down here on the, yeah on the nostalgia and pulp fiction, it's 30th on a painful man, 30th anniversary limited edition.
01:04:10
Speaker
Uh, wow. I cannot believe it's been 30 years since I was at the Cannes Film Festival and this thing won. I was there, man. I was there when this won the Cannes Film Festival and no one expected it to. Clint Eastwood had announced it was a big old surprise because everyone thought Keeslowski was going to get it for red and milk. It didn't happen. Pulp Fiction won. And a French lady in the audience ah screamed and swore up and down and Tarantino flipped her off from from the microphone when he collected the award. It was great. Uh, anyway.
01:04:38
Speaker
You know what, ah this ah this has so many just pointless goodies in it, little collectible postcards and and stickers and little, I mean, truly, that' just there's junk in here you were never ever going to use at all.
01:04:54
Speaker
But you know i mean seriously, the pop-up slip cover, it's a little pop-up thing of of Uma Thurman and Travolta doing the dance. It's like ah out of a pop-up book. why would you like Seriously, why? That's so extreme. Anyway, here's the point. Pulp Fiction in 4K is beautiful, is absolutely beautiful. It's a beautifully shot film. Sam Jackson and and and Travolta just in 4K, that whole deal is great. Tim Roth, all of them, they're just terrific. Bruce Willis, it's really fun to watch this again. Fun to watch again. ah Let's see, we got a few other things here in 4K. Watchmen Chapter Two, did you see that by by chance? The animated? The animated. No, I don't know that one, no. Yeah, no, this is Chapter Two, the animated Watchmen, which I don't think is as interesting as the live action stuff that they were doing on on HBO.
01:05:50
Speaker
ah But it is more faithful, I guess, to the comic and and it comes with a few extras and whatnot. If you didn't see chapter one, I wouldn't get into it. It's really trying to be very faithful to the comic, so it really is just completing the saga as the comics outlined it. Killer's Game, which I only caught up on, you know, this didn't do quite so well. ah Dave Batista and Sofia Butella and Ben Kingsley shows up in this thing as well.
01:06:18
Speaker
I don't know. What, what did I, what did I miss with this? Why was this feels like, feels like this should have been a bigger deal. Uh, it's one of those assassin movies, kind of one of those, uh, post John Wick assassin movies trying to kind of get in on the same game. Terry Cruz is in it as well. Um, feels like it feels like it should have done better.
01:06:39
Speaker
Yeah, look i look, you got this, it's a fairly, ah yeah well, I was gonna say cliched, but well-worn sort of notion hit, I hit man, a top-notch hit man, he gets diagnosed with ah an illness, a terminal illness, and he decides to take himself out, you know, they one of those kinds of things. Not for nothing, I'm almost sure that was an episode of Get Smart. it's it's it's it's it's one it's one But in the context of this particularly bloody movie,
01:07:06
Speaker
That's funny, but mostly just, you know, action, blood and guts. Yeah. You know, it can it can wear thin pretty soon. I don't know if you can get a whole movie out of that.
01:07:18
Speaker
Well, and then we've got to wrap up with a few ah few other 4Ks here that are a little bit more specialized. George Romero's Land of the Dead collection edition on 4K from Shopify. So that one, that's not bad. ah John Leguizamo and Ozzie Argento and Dennis Hopper all show up in this ah as well.
01:07:38
Speaker
ah So that's, you know, kind of on the tail end of the ah ah Romero's saga. The Block Island Sound by the McManus Brothers on 4K, unexpectedly. This is an interesting new ah horror movie. ah These are the guys who created Cobra Kai. And just you know a yeah but this is rural horror. or Or even suburban horror, you could almost say it all kind of takes place in a shoreline area around this island known as Block Island, where animals are dying and just crazy things are happening. And, ah you know, what is at the root of all of this? And, you know, let's get to the root of the
01:08:18
Speaker
the history of this place. It's a haunted house movie, except the haunted house in this case is an island. who ah As long as we're in the you know still emphasizing horror for Christmas, gosh, a lot of horror coming out. Isn't it true? It's just so much. and There's there's ah a collector's edition of Hush also from Shop Factory and Stream Factory on 4K.
01:08:38
Speaker
ah this also is kind of rural horror but this is from mike flanigan who previously did doctor sleep if you're familiar with that and and yeah this is a you know woman who goes into the woods and ah You know, she's deaf. She goes into the woods to have a more peaceful life. And next thing you know, you got some Michael Myers guy who's stalking her. It's absolutely terrifying. It really is. It's very effective. It's a horrible degree. I hate Luca Guadagnino's movies. I just want to say that in advance. I really do. I did review one this past week. I'm so sick of that.
01:09:13
Speaker
Which one, what do I do? Queer, the yeah adaptation of the William Lester Burroughs, blah, blah, blah. Yeah, not and not going to watch it. Yeah, I i did. and And I can recommend that you don't. i just therefore i So i'm I'm so over him. And for a lot of different reasons, not just Luca. yeah yeah yeah i i yeah I'm with you on Luca. He has these sort of concepts, but he always has to take these sort of interesting concepts. And he finds the most prosaic way to frame these things. I'm like, bruh.
01:09:40
Speaker
I get it, I get it, I get it. You're a gay guy coming at this from a particular perspective. that ah That I have no problem with, no issues with whatsoever. But even within that context, you pick the most askew.
01:09:56
Speaker
angle ah to approach this stuff on and you just sort of choose these things that I just don't buy. That's what it really comes down to with Lucas movies. Challengers was another one that he had this year. Challengers in this. And at the end of the day, what always happens in one of Lucas movies is this. A gigantic moment that is wholly and completely not believable. That didn't happen. That didn't happen. That wouldn't happen. You just made that up.
01:10:24
Speaker
ah and and and and and And it happens every single time. and ah so yeah know but Well, in the case of the 4K of Bones and All, which is the movie I'm holding here right now, that pretty much applies that applies to the whole movie. Yeah, didn't it? Look, I love Taylor Russell. You know that. You and I both adore Taylor Russell. yes Cannot get enough of that girl.
01:10:42
Speaker
I even tolerate Timothee Chalamet if he's in the right thing, right? Like Dune, I'm all in. I'm all in. But Taylor Russell and Timothee Chalamet is young lovers on the run who also happen to be cannibals because they're born with like a cannibal gene and they got to start killing people and eating people. I don't really want to see that.
01:11:00
Speaker
yeah no and no And I do not give a damn what it's a metaphor for. Everybody, oh they they they say, oh, well, you know it's a metaphor. I don't care. now yeah I don't care. I don't care what it's a metaphor for. It doesn't matter to me at all. It's just gross. Leave me alone. And ah so lastly on that count, for some reason, and I i guess I trust them, but ah for some reason,
01:11:22
Speaker
we We have an Ultra HD, a 4K Ultra HD of Zizix Road, John Penny's 2006 thriller starring ah Katherine Heigl and Tom Sizemore and Leo Griot. I don't really understand that. I mean, there's a lot of these kinds of movies, right? They were crazy stuff happens in the desert. It's like crazy stuff happens in the woods, crazy stuff.
01:11:46
Speaker
it just it's It's using the environment for for as a is a character in an otherwise well-intentioned thriller. Anyway, this all takes place in the Mojave Desert right off of Interstate 15.
01:11:58
Speaker
and i you know People going nuts in the desert and chasing each other around and ah having hallucinations. and You know, I, yeah, yeah okay. ah the The thing is that this was, this movie was released. Here's what makes this movie famous. This movie is famous because it's entire theatrical run. You know how much money it grossed? You know how much money this move made in its theatrical run? 2006 or so, right? 30. $30. $30. Not 30, not 30 million, not 30,000.
01:12:40
Speaker
$30. In 2006, that's ah that's that's ah three tickets. yeah to Three $12 tickets, four $12 tickets, something like that. Yes. It opened in one theater.
01:12:55
Speaker
And ah it was ah the officially the lowest grossing movie in American theatrical release history on until 2011 when the movie aptly titled The Worst Movie Ever made $11.
01:13:12
Speaker
so oh So I don't understand who who out there is thinking, Oh my gosh, this is Xizix Road. We got to put this out on 4k. What? There's a documentary. this Is that doc a part of that release? There's a doc about the making of.
01:13:31
Speaker
i'm wondering I'm wondering if they stuck that on there. they's not just love about Grab the dock too. graed the doc too any thing yeah so so there yeah there it is Let's ah let's let's ah knock through some criterion here because then we can dovetail into the boxed sets.
01:13:47
Speaker
So um I'm going to go through just some of these really fast because we're we're trying to you know focus on on the but really, really key stuff that you should know about what's out here. Produced by Val Luton is a great 4K criterion with a couple of great Val Luton ah Productions on it one of them directed by Jacques tourner that's I walked with a zombie and the other one is a seventh victim directed by the great mark robson um you know Val Luton a Basically a genre producer but both of these have ah have really really classic followings And there are a lot of extras here as you would expect so that's a that's a couple of a couple of fun films for the season still more horror for the holiday season don't know what that's doing and Also, a 4K of Demon Pond by Masahiro Shinoda. This is a classic Japanese New Wave film from 1979, kind of the the the tail end, still technically Japanese New Wave, even though that's mostly the 1960s. But Shinoda is very much a figure of that movement. And, um you know, this is this is basically a very haunting kabuki-inspired tale that is really one of the great Japanese movies, I'd say, in the last
01:14:55
Speaker
50, 60 years. It's pretty great. I'm not a Harmony Corinne fan, but Gummo is out on 4K. Tell me why i why why I should care about this horrible movie. Well, yeah your harmony the the thing that Harmony did is he made some interesting movies with much but not much of anything.
01:15:11
Speaker
and sometimes that'll sort of get you there. What was that, about 97 or so, that Gummo came out? That was very interesting. Yeah, that's a good recollection, 1997, absolutely, yeah. I like that, yeah. Yes, it's sort of like Setta. It's just these people living these ridiculously sort of nihilistic lives. It was of interest to folks in the early 70s. Him and Larry Clark and a few other people got away with making these movies.
01:15:39
Speaker
for a little while, they kind of went away. ah Thirteen was another one, yeah. i am ah I'm a big fan of Nuri Bilj Salon, the Turkish filmmaker who makes very, very long meditative movies that most people here don't see. I'm hoping that about Dry Grasses, which is out from the Janus contemporaries line of Criterion, will get a little bit of awards attention this weekend. I'm not holding my breath, however. ah This was released in 2023, but I think it qualifies for, it's made in 23, but I think it still qualifies this year.
01:16:10
Speaker
I believe it's on our list. so ah But it was you know it in Cannes last year, it won Best Actress. It's a really terrific film. So it was officially Turkey's entry for last year's Academy Awards, but I think it qualifies for every other category this year. I am hoping people pay some attention to it. I liked it. I don't know if you saw it, but I really
Classic Films in 4K and Restorations
01:16:30
Speaker
like it a lot. Not see that one off. It's a really good film.
01:16:34
Speaker
ah Let's get into some some juicy stuff here. Funny Girl is out on 4K. Finally. Yay, Barbara. um I just love this movie. ah Ray and I have a disagreement over this. Ray hates this film. but I think this is this is William Wyler at his best. ohsh Omar Sharif is wonderful. Barbara in her first big role, ah she won best actress and tied with Katherine Hepburn across the generations. Wonderful, big, beautiful, bold musical numbers and it's colorful and it's exuberant and I just love this movie. I really do. it's I mean, obviously the story of Fanny Brice.
01:17:11
Speaker
It's been in revival on Broadway for for a little over a year now, I think. And you know what? It's great. It's just absolutely great. But when Barbra Streisand at the beginning of this thing, you see her entirely from behind that great opening shot and she looks in the mirror and she says, hello, gorgeous. Oh my gosh, scrape me off the floor. I love it. I love it so much. There's a joke and I think it's on the IMDb page about about somebody asking William Wilder about working with Streisand and whether or not it was difficult. And he said something like,
01:17:41
Speaker
no No, considering it was the first film she ever directed.
01:17:50
Speaker
ah that's sharp What a great line. What a great line. Well, there's a wonderful documentary here called, uh, directed by William Wyler, which, uh, you know, pays apt tribute to the man who still to this day has more, uh, Academy award nominations, I think than any other director in history. And so that's a tough act. if I think 11 times he was nominated.
01:18:12
Speaker
ah Paul Muni in the original Scarface with Boris Karloff and George Raft, also in 4K, produced by Howard Hughes, directed by Howard Hawks, the Howards. ah this You know what? I mean, look, I love me some Al Pacino and various other incarnations of this story, but...
01:18:28
Speaker
it's It's pretty great. The original is really, really great because it just came right out of that gangster moment in 1932 and there's ah there's a great conversation on here with ah um Megan Abbott and Bill Hader, which is totally unexpected and absolutely wonderful. This includes the censored alternate ending of the film, which I had never seen before, which is fascinating. um Might even be better, but still it's just really, really intriguing. And you know what? I i thought this was great.
01:18:57
Speaker
It's nice to have a 4K of Scarface, the original. um Paper Moon, man. Peter Bogdanovich, 4K. Ryan O'Neill and Tatum O'Neill together. I'd forgotten how good this movie was. Yeah, early 70s, 73 or so, I think. 73. 73, yeah. We black and white, absolutely gorgeous sort of film. i don't You can't make these kind of films today.
01:19:21
Speaker
No. i'm so good um ah that just Just sort of roams around. He saw like dramatic sequences, all those those sequences where he's fighting what you're trying to get it to get in the car and stuff like that. I mean, ah that was the stuff of cinema. It was. Today, I don't know. Shot by Laszlo Kovacs, one of the best things he's ever shot. Beautiful. Beautiful, beautiful, black and white. And what's really great on here,
01:19:44
Speaker
in particular is a um bits from a 1973 Tonight Show episode ah with Johnny Carson where Bonk Donovich and Ryan and Tatum were all together on the show. Absolutely wonderful moment. Makes you realize how far we've drifted from great late night television. But anyway, yeah. And Madeleine Khan's in this too. I mean, just ah the the whole Dust Bowl recreation is as good as it gets. Really a beautiful movie.
01:20:09
Speaker
ah G.W. Pabst and Louise Brooks made Pandora's Box in 1929. Very, very, I mean, this was this is, you know, early ah kind of late stage silent, but early stage of what Pabst and a lot of the ah German expressionism veterans would be doing in Hollywood. ah What the the influence that they would spread. Really, really ah utterly fascinating film.
01:20:37
Speaker
um tremendous ah musical score here, too. i This is just ah kind of an eerie, haunting movie. Louise Brooks' performance is fantastic. ah And everything changes right after that. ah You know, this is pre-code. This is very, very German um story of a showgirl with sexual energy that just pours off the screen because it's silent. And because you yeah the sexuality of this film is something you become very aware of because it is silent.
01:21:09
Speaker
um We've kind of lost that with the sound era, I think. The sound kind of ah erases a lot of stuff, but anyway. ah We also got a 4K of The Shape of Water, Guillermo del Toro's ah best picture winner from 2017. I think it's nice that it gets a criterion release.
01:21:26
Speaker
um ah Does this film hold up, do you think? You know, it did i was I was not as big a fan of that film then as everybody else was. I thought it was, you know, intriguing. Certainly it fit within his canon. But yeah, ah but but i but I wonder, I wonder. I haven't seen it in a long time, probably since 2017, when that was a bit of a surprise win for me. Yeah, it was kind of for me too. but I think everybody loves the big guy. you know Everybody loves del Toro and Sally Hawkins really is tremendous in it. so Nice 4K treatment from Criterion. The last two ah standalone Criterion here, um you know Japanese classics both, totally different films. Ishiro Honda's Godzilla in 4K and Kurosawa's Seven Samurai in 4K. Just to understand how how rich the post-war environment for Japanese cinema became, Japan was a devastated nation in 1945. And nine years later, in the same year,
01:22:29
Speaker
Seven nineteen fifty four so you get seven samurai and and godzilla otherwise known as good jira that is an amazing recovery by any means for these two films to come out of that film industry nine years after the the two atomic bombs. So just want to underline that for everybody more extras here than you can possibly consume in a lifetime really it's just tons of the audio commentary.
01:22:52
Speaker
um ah for on Godzilla. there's there's ah i mean you know they They also include um Godzilla King of the Monsters on here by the way. but um the ah Which is the, you know, the American version that was done two years later. So you get the original film and the Americanized version. Perry... I was going to say Perry Mason. um Terry Morse. Yeah. No, Raymond Burke. With Raymond Burke, exactly. that was all and And that was all Terry Morse who reworked all that stuff. Who reworked it all, yes. okay Anyway, David Collat, who's a wonderful historian, we've worked with him in the past, he used to run a couple of different DV companies, does great commentary for both of those films.
01:23:30
Speaker
That's really terrific. But ah you also get Michael Jek weighing in with, ah you know, a other lot of other people on on Seven Samurai, which is, you know, just had a re-release as well in theaters. Just amazing. Both of these films. ah Just stupendous and absolutely superb. So we cannot go wrong with either of them.
01:23:50
Speaker
Um, and, uh, yeah, I think that does it for the Criterians. Now we get into the Big Mama. So Criterion is having its 40th anniversary, Tim. Oh, wow. And for people who really, really can't get enough of their Criterion, they have released CC40, which is Criterion Collection 40, a boxed set with 49 Blu-rays and 40 films.
01:24:18
Speaker
It is amazing. This is a 40 film celebration of Criterion's 40th anniversary. And it is, if these are not, I mean, I'll just give you some of the films. Eight and a half. Tokyo Story. All that jazz. Bicycle Thebes. Repo Man. Naked. Jules and Jim. Being There. Weekend. Yi Yi. Night of the Hunter. Pickpockets. Sweet Smell of Success.
01:24:41
Speaker
on the waterfront, do the right thing, Ratcatcher, Sunday Bloody Sunday, Mirror, Barry Lyndon, Safe, Seconds by Frankenheimer, His Girl Friday, Mishima, E2 Mama Tom Bien, My Own Private Idaho, Lovin' Basketball, yay Gina!
01:24:58
Speaker
ah Night of the Living Dead, Ace in the Hole, Three Women, The Red Shoes, Down By Law, La Cienega, Wanda, House, Sullivan's Travels, The Battle of Algiers, A Woman Under the Influence, Cleo from nine to from Five to Seven, Kingmar Bergman's Persona and In the Mood for Love.
01:25:15
Speaker
that is unreal. i look at them i'm looking for some sort of a pattern some sort of a reason for that for for those forty i was looking for maybe some sort of but the or or something like that i don't i don't know that i see one i mean they're they're all extraordinary but i don't know that i see a theme per se other than just ah forty yeah fantastic film so Yeah. 40 fantastic films, all of them digitally restored. ah There is no theme. It's just to make people happy. Yeah. Yeah. And I mean this, and this, this thing is a brick. You could, I mean, you could kill a person by dropping this on their head. saying that Don't, don't do that. Don't, don't by any means do that. But yeah, it is a, it is an absolutely wonderful collection. Boy, I mean, this is, if you don't have, if you don't already have all these films,
01:26:03
Speaker
ah then this you want to get this. But if you already have all the films, save the money. you know Make a donation to ah to a you know a shelter or something like that. But anyway, now that we're into the big box sets, boy, we've got some other really big box sets. um We have in the past talked about the Shaw Scope films. We've talked about the yeah the Shaw Scope ah box sets.
01:26:25
Speaker
for all the great Shaw Brothers movies from ah in their amazing widescreen from the 1960s and 70s. We got another one, volume three. It's amazing and it includes the one armed swordsman. I'm just saying very, very happy that Jimmy jimmy Wang Yu and the one armed swordsman are making it on onto a set finally. So this is ah just sensational.
01:26:47
Speaker
and This is from Arrow, and ah they they have 9 discs, 10 discs, but no yeah ten discs ten discs but ah the 10th one is is all is just a CD with music, so it's 9 discs of movies.
01:27:03
Speaker
And they got some great ones in here. um Buddhist palm, bastard swordsman, 14 Amazons is a total classic. Obviously the one-armed swordsman and returned the one-armed swordsman and the new one-armed swordsman are all on here. Confessions of a Chinese courtesy, sentimental swordsman, the avenging eagle.
01:27:21
Speaker
uh the magic blade and clans of intrigue jade tiger it's a lot of great stuff if you are a fan of these films as i am um this is this is a great christmas i'm telling you moronica or whatever else but uh yeah it's uh it's it's great you gotta gotta to get all these and the swan princess the royal collection you know how many swan princess movies there are tim i do not i can take a while take yeah take a wild stab take just a wild step i'm i'm gonna i'm gonna go with 14 Ooh, close. 12. 12. 12, okay. I knew 20 would be too many, but 10 would not be enough. Yeah, 12. I had no idea. And ah yeah and I had no idea. 12 movies. All ah the complete collection on DVD, along with a limited edition musical ah jewelry box is part of the Swan Princess, the Royal Collection. Boy, they have Rich Rich, who who you know is a former Disney animator who formed the
01:28:20
Speaker
his own company and started making these and has basically just built a company off of making nothing but these movies. ah You know, the music box is not bad. It's gimmicky. But let me tell you something. I have a very, very fond recollection of the Swan Princess because I was at the Cannes Film Festival in 1993.
01:28:37
Speaker
When the swan princess threw a the mother of all parties There's a castle just outside of can called Lana pool the castle of Lana pool and that's where every year they used to have the moving pictures magazine would throw a big party there and you know There's a lot of I had a lot of fun times there. They're they're the moving pictures parties. I saw you know I
01:28:59
Speaker
the Leningrad Cowboys performed there one year, ah saw an absolutely hysterical drag show by Varla Jean Merman, another year who had starred in the movie Francesca Page, hysterical, got a little kiss from Varla Jean, supporting some sporting some afternoon, sporting some afternoon shadow backstage after that. It was quite amusing. A lot of fun times, but what they did in 93, the rich, rich people, First One Princess was amazing. They threw a classic banquet with some of the greatest food you have ever eaten. You walked in, they seated you. They had, you know, it was it was like a Downton Abbey thing, right? They were seating you with like servants and, you know, the hors d'oeuvres and everything. And it's just like you were taken care of. And then afterwards, everyone went out on the patio for a fireworks show. It was spectacular. And there was a little presentation on the movie, of course, in the middle of it all. But it was really, really class A stuff. It was, ah it was what you would have expected Disney to do once upon a time. It was amazing. And I brought all my all my friends at the festival. I got all the all my Swedish and Canadian friends to to join in, and they still talk about it to this day. So that was Swan Princess. The sequels, not so much, but that original film really had something special going.
01:30:16
Speaker
Yeah, it's's it's one of those ones that had to sort of linger about and in and and come to people. Didn't make any money at when it was released. No. ah But linger, as opposed to some of those Disney films, like you mentioned, the thing about those movies, yeah big they they just made the crapple of the money. Lion king King came out that year, too, and just made the crapple of money.
01:30:34
Speaker
The Swan Princesses, every bit is engaging the film, but you know it did not have the Lion King Disney apparatus behind it. That's it. But you know nevertheless, it's based on a classic Swan Lake, and the chi out in in in it has sort of grown over the years and into something very very interesting. Regina Bell and Jeffrey Osborne sang that beautiful theme song yeah that year. It's just really, really great.
01:31:04
Speaker
And then we have an unbelievably ridiculous anime box set. Food Wars, the fifth plate, limited edition box set, which is really not to be believed.
Complete Series Box Sets and Blu-ray Releases
01:31:16
Speaker
It's just enormous. It doesn't weigh as much as the criterion bit, but it's it's got you know it's life it's got ah it's got so much stuff in it. it it like this Oh, I can't even get into it. It's just it's all the anime stuff, that you know they thought collectible stickers, and ah little a little bamboo box and all this other stuff in it. It's just, it's it's really out of control. ah It's ah in like little little wooden bamboo, um what do you what do you call them? Like wood pressings. it
01:31:52
Speaker
Yeah. they're I mean, they're like they're like coasters, but you you're not going to put a you're not going to put anything on these things. there what do What do you call when you when you have engraved wood? the ah The old school, like hundreds of years ago, when they'd engrave in wood and you can use that. With with the little burning, they would burn into it. Yeah. yeah yeah that car yeah that's Kind of a classic Japanese art form. Anyway, it's got some stuff like that. It's just it's ah it's out of control. It's unhinged. yeah if you're If you're a Food Wars fan, you will just absolutely eat it all up, ah so to speak.
01:32:23
Speaker
Anyway, ah ah sorry, I had to do that. ah let's Let's wrap everything up with some, with some oh, hold on. Let's wrap everything up with some TV. All right, because we got a ton of TV box sets here, and that seems to be where everybody's attention goes at holiday time. ah The Whitest Kids You Know was a late arrival here for us, the complete series of The Whitest Kids You Know. I can't exactly say I get this show,
01:32:52
Speaker
But, um you know, it ran for five seasons, 2007 to 2011. Kind of a, you know, ah one of the first alternative comedy shows of its, I mean, you know, it's a little bit like, I mean, it's I don't know, what's, what, what it's it's a sketch show.
01:33:10
Speaker
um Very kids in the holly, more kids in the holly than, yeah than than um ah you know, third certainly Sarah Night Live or anything like that, you it because did these sort of independent out in sort of world sketches, ah which, you know, it's okay. ah yeah Kids, very kids in the hall, very yeah upright citizens brigade. There we go. Lives and that lives in that space.
01:33:34
Speaker
We also have ah the Toxic Crusaders, the series. ah Not much of a series, I got to say. You know, this is the animated Saturday morning cartoon version of the Toxic Crusader and all of his friends. ah it's A little bit weird, but Lloyd Kaufman, you know, it's kind of standard, it's par for the course for Lloyd to do something totally unhinged like this. ah You know, I wouldn't show this to children. no but ah But a cartoon.
01:34:01
Speaker
But for adults who who've had maybe you know too much to drink, sure, why not? um We've got the West Wing, the complete series, on Blu-ray. I wonder if this show isn't it Is this show, like given where we are and how much the the real West Wing has become more chaotic and fascinating and weird and dramatic in our lives just in the last decade than the West Wing on this show? Because this show when this show aired, there wasn't a whole lot of drama going on in the real West Wing. Now, does it does is truth stranger than fiction?
01:34:39
Speaker
Oh, it's far in the way, far in the way. Not just in terms of you know which which direction you want it to go. Not to mention, in the interceding years, we had that really um ah ah very funny, but also that yeah um ah still stranger than fiction, Julia Lee Dryford's show, where she played the vice president. of where it did Yes. V. V. Right. so so So, you know, so all it's funny. Yeah. All of these, yeah the what be it drama or comedy or whatever, you know, no, no, no. Uh, nothing that you can come up with will be, uh, more dramatic or stranger than something that's actually happening.
01:35:16
Speaker
And then we've also got, ah kind of so help me Todd, the complete series, ah which I had never seen originally. Marsha Gay Harden, I've seen on occasion in town, her her her kids ah used to play, like when my daughter was at the park.
01:35:32
Speaker
uh starting to learn soccer her kids would be there like ah f playing basketball stuff like that so i see her around once in a while i haven't done for a while but uh lover is an actress and uh this is an interesting premise uh you know she's a she's an attorney who hires uh skylar austin as kind of the um uh ah Well, how do we put this? she she is He's her son, and she needs him to be her detective at her law firm. Is that the best way to put it? He's Paul Drake. he's sort To her, Perry Mason. Only she's his mother, and that makes for the comedy. so So follow me on this. It's basically um moonlighting meets Oedipus.
01:36:23
Speaker
Solid. Absolutely. am i Am I in the ballpark? right right You're right there. yeah right we are right Okay. All right. Just want to make sure that I wasn't, you know, misreading this. Anyway, um so deleted scenes and gag reels. Interesting show. Also the complete series of evil, which I have seen very, very little of, but I know people who are really, really love this. A lot of evil. So a lot of evil. like I like evil. As a matter of fact, it it changed networks about mid run. I think it went from agency to Hulu or which is practically the same thing, but something like that.
01:36:57
Speaker
um ah But a very interesting show. Kind of X-Filesy, a little bit. very A little bit X-Filesy, you know, the Kings over there doing that. ah Kadia Herbert, she's so sexy, she's wonderful. She's still, give the and of course, Mike Colter, who's also so sexy, he's wonderful. I can say that about both of them. And it's in ah in a very sort of interesting show that plays around with these notions. He's a priest, she's a a psychologist, and the the question is whether or not the Oh, Exorcist and other sort of supernatural a horror things that are going on in the show are real. Of course, he's coming at it from the perspective of the church and she's coming at it from the perspective of the oh a psychologist and and we and we play these games. um ah it's ah It's a completely sort of cheaty show though, because all this stuff is totally and completely real. I'm sorry, I'm not ruining this for anybody. else but you and so but But we play it in this particular way. So yeah, it's a really, really neat sort of show.
01:37:56
Speaker
And then Nickelodeon gave us ah Are You Afraid of the Dark, the limited series three season collection, which is ah very nice. This is ah from 2019 to about 2023, three different seasons of ah this very, very cool spooky show that's not too spooky. It's just spooky enough for kids and a little bit educational and quite nicely done. So ah that's nice. The limited series three season collection of Are You Afraid of the Dark? do And Then we've also got Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, the complete classic series collection. The original, not not not not the last 17 different series that they have done. No, this is the original ah from 1987 to 1996. Ran a good long time.
01:38:40
Speaker
And it has three, it's 193 episodes, three hours of special features. It's fun, people. It's not violent. It's not lame and kitschy. This is the one that started it all. It actually is really fun. And I got to admit, I didn't like this at the time, but watching it now, I'm kind of into it. 23 discs. It's a fun show. It was a way out of my, you know, i would say I was so far out of my age range, yeah but but nevertheless, looking back at this now,
01:39:07
Speaker
Uh, particularly when we consider the legacy that lay James Avery, you got a lot of great voices, uh, playing, playing, playing a whole lot Dorian Harewood, uh, played some of these characters. Uh, uh, you got, uh, Barry Gordon, uh, and Sam Clark, it's, you know, yeah' these sort of great voices that we know, but we didn't know that we were listening to way back at the time.
01:39:29
Speaker
ah We also have Walker the complete series not Walker, Texas Ranger. No, no, no No, this is the reboot of Walker with a guy who is not Chuck Norris, which makes it utterly not worth watching But ah because he's not funny like Chuck Norris is funny. He's cheesy. He's Chuck I don't really understand why this show existed But you know what it ran it ran for a bit So I guess it had something going for it that I didn't understand Jared Pilecki from over on ah Oh the other sci-fi show from the CW there, but but yeah think about Walker Chuck, Chuck was about the karate. yeah That's what Chuck was doing, the karate. ah he he he He was bringing martial arts to Texas Ranger. It was mar martial arts meets Texas Ranger. This guy, he's just a Texas Ranger. And you know and and and that's all great and good and everything. but we That's not what we're doing. if That's not what we're doing at all. No, no, no.
01:40:25
Speaker
ah Fear the Walking Dead, the complete collection, ah the AMC series ah here on ah in a really bold Blu-ray keep case, the whole 30 disc operation. I don't know if I can handle that much zombie, but I know a lot of people just cannot get enough of this saga and these shows. and So knock yourselves out. ah You know, a eight seasons, loads of special features, 30 discs. And it's all very, very well done. ah It's just, ah it's too much for me. Hey, look, I've been, I've been, I've been ah calling the ah the death of the walking dead for. Yeah. And you know what? I'm wrong. The Walking Dead will walk on. I hear you. It's going to go on forever. It's going to be like Law and Order. It's like Law and Order Special Zombie Unit or something. king We have the complete series of so of King of Queens. Another one of those shows that just keeps hanging around. And you know what? Kevin James is a funny guy. He is. He's a funny guy, man.
01:41:24
Speaker
I'm still waiting for my WKRP to come out on Blu-ray. Looking for that. Looking for it hard. Hotel Ocean View is the episode that I most want. ah But anyway, 207 episodes, nine seasons. This show had a really good solid run. Terrific cast. Funny supporting performances. Leah Romini's great. um You know, Jerry jerry ah Stiller is terrific. They're all really, really fun. So there it is. ah You can now pick up the King of Queens and Blu-ray, complete series from Mill Creek.
01:41:53
Speaker
And then winding down second to last, saving the best for last, but second to last is South Park, not suitable for children. There's special event, which is outrageously funny. Um, all of this centers around the discovery that one of the teachers at South Park elementary has an only fans page. Oh my gosh. Do they milk this? They milk it so beautifully. It's so, so funny. Um, anyway, we're going to give away four of these.
01:42:22
Speaker
So go ahead and send us an email to gods at digigods.com or gods at cinegods.com with ah South Park. Two words in the subject line. And make sure it gets to us by December 10th. And ah we will we will pick a winner. And on December 11th, we will let four lucky people know if you're going to receive the South Park Nazi War for Children Blu-ray for this. Which you should not allow children to see, by the way. No, by no means. But it is. it see It really you know i think they can still keep making me shows as funny as they are is just amazing to me i was talking i was talking to a friend today about that you know about what how matt and tray have sort of been hollywood's conscience in many respects cuz they don't care and everyone is so afraid that they will be targeted that everyone treats them really nicely.
01:43:10
Speaker
because no one wants it, right? so So they kind of get to do what they want. It's like, oh, please don't make fun of me here. i we'll we'll We'll really do right by you. And ah they they get to do what they want. It's fantastic. I absolutely adore it. yeah lastly Lastly, here's what we're going out on because this has been long in the coming. um The entire complete series, finally on Blu-ray, of this the sitcom that started it all and is still one of the best, I Love Lucy.
01:43:39
Speaker
People have waited for this for a very long time i love lucy the complete series one hundred and ninety four episodes on blu-ray long overdue um along with all the great extras the original pilot the original opening and closing credits photo galleries the my favorite husband radio episodes that were converted into the first batch of episodes for i love lucy people don't realize that same scripts slightly different characters um audio commentaries on many of these episodes, and you know, the sponsor spots, all those cigarette ads that they're afraid to show anymore. all All this stuff is here. It is absolutely wonderful. And my daughter, who has memorized the episode order of this damn show, all 194 episodes, I can't even stump her anymore. She'll say to me, she'll be I mean, should we play this game?
01:44:29
Speaker
Like, well, uh, name an episode of I Love Lucy. I'm like, a sweetie, I can't name any episodes. Like, like, I know what you're going to do. You want me to name an episode and then you're going to name another episode and ask me which one came first. I don't know. I don't want know what seasons they come in. So I'm thinking about doing like, like doing that to her with Star Trek and seeing how she likes it. How you like that? How's that? You know what I forgot?
01:44:53
Speaker
huh is um how young and pretty Lucy, you know, was, is yeah in the in the early, early, early seasons. 1951, I think is the first season. yeah and And she's young and she's absolutely beautiful, ah ridiculously beautiful ah in that show. So particularly, you know, with these, you know, ah blue waves, you know, she's just exquisite. She's so pretty. yeah And um yeah, that's it's really, really great.
01:45:19
Speaker
it's ah you know the and And what I love is ah seeing some of the guest stars, you know Richard Crenna as a young goofball on that- 17, 18 years old, yeah. So so so funny. And then you know when they moved to Connecticut, there's there's an episode where Barbara Eden shows up. She's like 22 or 23 years old and all the men are gaga over Barbara Eden. and You're just like, oh my gosh, it's a pre-Genie Barbara Eaton. Those are precious TV moments. yeah Those are precious TV moments. So all of that here on Blu-ray. My daughter has watched this show on Pluto TV.
01:45:56
Speaker
which is not blu ray quality i will add it is but it's better than original nineteen fifties broadcast quality so ah there is that but i cannot wait for her to see all of this stuff on blu ray which is just pristine it's so pristine ah wonderful wonderful master work from paramount so.
Holiday Wishes and Upcoming Shows
01:46:12
Speaker
god bless them they finally got around to it you know the first season of i love lucy was a released on blu-ray something like twelve years ago and released it on dvd and then like they released the first season on blu-ray and they didn't sell well enough and now we've been finally the the whole run on blu-ray it's fantastic i'm thrilled that they finally got around to it so there it is All right, everybody. Tim, what are we, yeah what are we wishing everyone for the holidays and the new year? a A lovely, lovely, good time, oh yeah yeah be health and safety with their family. and And, hey, check us out. Check us out at the various different places where we are um you over on Elliast and you over at Substack. And yeah we'll make sure to keep you up with what's going on out there.
01:46:54
Speaker
And we're gonna try to have at least ah one, maybe two more of these little ah special shows before the end of the year, before we come back in January with the news on our voting. nightmare this week. i are you Are you going to be there in person? Are you going to be at the show in person? yeah yeah the voting i and it depends on it Depends on a couple of different things, but it's yeah my intention. yeah i yeah I will probably not be there ah being as it is my wife's birthday, but it is also if because our daughter, she has ah soccer playoffs. and you know if If the Saturday games go well, then we will be playing on Sunday and and possibly ah trying to
01:47:33
Speaker
trying to you know make our way to Bakersfield for the big regional playoffs. Gee, how exciting. Am I rooting for the for this but the privilege of driving to Bakersfield for a soccer playoff sometime next year? I don't know. I don't know. Maybe we throw a couple of those games. that' right yes what That's We love Bakersfield. We love you, Bakersfield. We do. it just It's all in good fun. ah Listen, have have a wonderful holiday season. Whatever holiday you celebrate, ah be good to your neighbors, love your families, and we will see you soon. A Festivus for the rest of us.