I love me some Drew Barrymore. She’s my white whale, the one actress that I really want to meet. I actually had a chance this year, but couldn’t do it. Her latest effort, Whip It, marks her Directorial Debut and you can see what attracted her to the material. It’s quirky, funny, and different. It’s a breath of fresh air. I didn’t see this last year when it came out, but now I wish I did. It definitely would have made my 2009 best of list it’s a lot of fun. My only issue with the movie is while it constantly explains the rules of Roller Derby, I still don’t understand what’s going on in the matches.
I love Ellen Page; I think she’s the new DB. She has an honest, open, yet vulnerable quality to her. She doesn’t come across as trying to be "quirky" and "hip." Jimmy Fallon is fun as the Derby Announcer. Barrymore doesn’t do much as a first time director here, she’s competent, it’s her cast, and the strong material that makes this film work. I was so into the characters that the predictability of the 3rd act didn’t bother me.
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I’ll admit I’m a late with my review of Glee Season 1, Volume 1: The Road To Sectionals. I was actually afraid to watch it, Glee was my favorite show of the fall and I honestly didn’t think it’d hold up to repeat viewing, I’m glad to be wrong. I watched a few minutes of the DVD and I was hooked all over again. Glee is like watching two different shows – you have the Baby Glee, which is kind of dark, dreary, and all about Teenage Pregnancy drama, and a separate story about someone faking a Pregnancy then you have the 2nd show that is about the actual Glee Club which is like a breath of sunshine. I love everything that has to do with the actual Glee Club, the baby stuff always felt completely out of place. Sometimes the singing on the show is spotty but what makes Glee work is that every song has a purpose and when the Glee Kids do them or my new dream man Mr. Schuester does one of his white man rap numbers they are done with such wild gusto that you can’t help but get caught up in the moment.
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The Simpsons Season 20 is now on Blu-ray, this special; landmark season gets the Blu-ray release it deserves. It’s packed to the gills with extras including a nice coffee table book that commemorates this milestone, has a 1-hour retrospective, a look at creator Matt Groening, a special look at the China Sweatshop where the animation is actually created and more. Why the 10 hours of extras is worth the price of admission alone! We love you Fox Home Video for giving the fans what they want! If I lived in a dream world, this opening paragraph would have been true. Unfortunately reality sucks and so does The Simpson’s Season 20 featureless Blu-ray set. Not only does it not include any worthwhile features; unless you count a 3 minute Sneak Peak at Morgan Spurlock‘s 20th Anniversary Special, but they didn’t even standardize the picture. Half the episodes are Full Screen 1.33:1 and the other half are in Widscreen 1.76:1.
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I’m one of the only critics who liked X-Men Origins: Wolverine. I’m not saying I loved it and it didn’t have numerous problems but as a generic action film I thought it was, Ok. Just not one you run out and see in a theater. The movie made over $175 million so just like all the other summer movies this year, while all of them failed creatively and no one apparently liked them, all of them (Transformers, G.I. Joe, Terminator, etc) still made plenty of bank at the box office. I think in the comfort of my own home on the Blu-ray I’ll probably like it a bit more. The Blu-ray is coming out September 15 in basically a single disk version with some deleted scenes, blu-ray live, and a couple of alternate takes and a 2nd disk for Digital Copy. Here’s the full press release.
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The eighties had a lot of action heroes – enough for two tiers of them… enough to churn out B-movie action flicks in plain, twisted, ironic and even extra-toasty. Tier one included names like Sylvester Stallone, Bruce Willis, and Arnold. Tier two included the likes of Jean-Claude Van Damme and the star of Driven to Kill, Steven Segal.
Where Van Damme has re-invented himself through the very meta JCVD, Segal has, after trying to make movies that say stuff, returned to what he does best – revenge fantasies. Driven to Kill finds him playing a Russian writer named Ruslan who writes – as a former colleague [i.e. gangster] calls them, “snuff books” [presumably the Russian mob equivalent of The Mack Bolan, Executioner series].
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A few weeks ago the folks at Fox Home Video finally put out the complete X-Men Trilogy on the good old Blu-ray. I checked out the X2: X-Men United Blu-ray and came away feeling mixed. If you have Blu-ray and don’t own the DVDs then this is a must buy set as X-Men and X2: X-Men united are two of the best comic book films of all time. X2 is epic, while watching it this weekend I was forced me to think of last week’s X-Men: Wolverine and how much better it should have and could have been. Wolverine actually affected my enjoyment of X2 because I kept going, wait a second Wolverine totally screwed up a lot of stuff and didn’t even bother to try and remain consistent with the current trilogy. Technically Fox considers Wolverine a reboot of the franchise but if that’s the case then they shouldn’t have had Patrick Stuart do his cameo at the end which, um,,, Hello? Linked the Wolverine film to this trilogy! Anyway, X2 is an almost perfect movie. Watching it on Blu-ray, I didn’t notice much of an improvement in picture or audio quality over the already pristine DVD version. But it is a nice 1080p, 2.40:1-framed transfer.
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I’m not a fan of triple dips, but MGM and Fox Home Video have done an amazing job on the newly released James Bond Blu-ray set. I was generally skeptical about this dip because I already own three different versions of all the Bond films. But these Blu-ray versions are the definitive set. The picture transfer/upgrade is beautiful. I put on Dr. No and it was an eye-opening experience. The colors were deep, reach and sharp. There is so much more depth now it’s hard to believe this film is over 30 years old. It looks like it was shot on HD last week. The blacks are black which make the colors pop on my Vizio HDTV set. The hours and hours of extra features (in Standard Def) are the same ones from the Ultimate Collection from a few years ago with some neat little Blu-ray additions like a 42 Minute HD Feature called Inside Dr. No and a 18 minute feature on Terrance Young, the director of Dr. No.
The one area where they dropped the ball is on the Menu navigation system. It reminds me of the early days of DVD where the one thing you could always count on was Fox Home Video totally screwing up the menu. This is one of the ugliest and most unfriendly systems I’ve seen in awhile. It took me a few minutes to figure out how to play the movie and access the special features. The Pop Up/Menu button doesn’t work once you select a feature. If you select a feature to watch, while viewing the film, it kicks you out and doesn’t return to the point you left off. Each film are on a 50 GB Dual Layer disk, is in Widescreen 1.66:1 (No letter boxing!) and Lossless Audio. The movie sounds amazing on my Sony Crossbar. I sampled a few of the other titles in this collection and it’s safe to say all six of these releases and must own. The Six disk set includes Dr. No, From Russia With Love, Thunderball, For Your Eyes Only, Die Another Day and Live and Let Die. I’m not going to bother reviewing the movies or giving you the TPS, come on it’s Bond! You’ve all see these a million times. My only, minor complaint with this set, beyond the menu system is the lack of Profile 1.1 or BD-Live support. Yeah BD-Live sucks, but I would still like to see them implemented as standard features in all Blu-ray releases. After watching a slew of lackluster Blu-ray releases (I’m looking at you Iron-Man!) this release restores my faith.
Movie Grade (All 6 Films, except Thunderball) – A
Features – A
Picture – A
Audio – A
Final Overall – A
EM Review by
Michelle Alexandria
Originally Posted 10.21.08
Tags:
Blu-Ray,
Blu-ray Reviews,
Fox Home Video,
MGM Home Video
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