Fresh Loaf

This week, CL Charlotte’s Matt Brunson discusses the DVD releases of Casablanca, Hancock and more.

CASABLANCA (1942). Bogart. Bergman. “As Time Goes By.” “Here’s looking at you, kid.” You know the rest. So round up the usual accolades for one of the all-time greats, which premiered on DVD in 2002 in an OK package, was given the two-disc Special Edition treatment in 2003, and is back again in an Ultimate Collector’s Edition.  Read the rest here.

(Courtesy of the Criterion Collection)

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This week, CL Charlotte’s Matt Brunson discusses the DVD releases of The Gregory Peck Collection, Wall-E and more.

WALL-E (2008). Although this animated effort from Pixar is a treat for the young and old alike, it’s the rare sort of toon tale that may have ended up endearing itself even more to adults than to kids. And it’s not just because grown-ups will enjoy the usual asides tossed their way (e.g. a witty reference to 2001: A Space Odyssey; Aliens star Sigourney Weaver providing the voice of a ship’s computer); it’s also because the plot speaks to them in a way that it can’t to humans who still don’t possess all their permanent teeth. Read the rest here.

(Photo courtesy Walt Disney and Pixar)

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This week CL Charlotte’s Matt Brunson discusses the DVD releases of the Alfred Hitchcock Premiere Collection, Hellboy II: The Golden Army and more.

ALFRED HITCHCOCK PREMIERE COLLECTION (1927-1947). The home entertainment arms of Warner Bros. and Universal Pictures released their own Hitchcock collections in 2004 and 2005, respectively, and now here’s 20th Century Fox belatedly joining the party with their own resplendent box set.

Hitchcock had already directed a couple of films before helming The Lodger: A Story of the London Fog (1927), but this is the movie that was commonly called (even by the Master himself) “the first Alfred Hitchcock picture.” Read the rest here.

(Photo Courtesy MGM)

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This week CL Charlotte’s Matt Brunson discusses the DVD releases of Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull, The Strangers and more.

INDIANA JONES AND THE KINGDOM OF THE CRYSTAL SKULL (2008). Let’s try to put this in perspective, shall we? On the Scale of Cinematic Achievements, Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull places dead last among the four big-screen Indy adventures. Given the quality of its predecessors, however, that can hardly be construed as a smackdown. Read the rest here.

(Photo by David James/Paramount & Lucasfilm)

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This week CL Charlotte’s Matt Brunson discusses the DVD releases of Ewan McGregor-Hugh Jackman movie Deception, Iron Man, the special Coppola Restoration of all three Godfather movies and more.

DECEPTION (2008). It’s hard to believe a movie starring Hugh Jackman and Ewan McGregor, two impossibly charismatic actors, could be so dull, but the evidence is right here. McGregor stars as Jonathan McQuarry, a meek accountant who has no fun until a lawyer named Wyatt Bose (Jackman) swoops down like a slumming deus ex machina and introduces his new pal to the pleasures of pot, nightclubs and mixed doubles tennis matches. Just before Wyatt leaves town for a business trip, he “accidentally” switches cell phones with Jonathan; soon, the virginal numbers cruncher is receiving calls during which sexy female voices merely whisper, “Are you free tonight?” Passing himself off as Wyatt, Jonathan soon discovers an anonymous sex club in which the members all turn out to be Wall Street movers and shakers. Read the rest here.

(Godfather photo courtesy Paramount Pictures)

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Mila Kunis and Jason Segel in Forgetting Sarah Marshall

This week CL Charlotte’s Matt Brunson discusses the DVD releases of Cool Hand Luke, Forgetting Sarah Marshall, Leatherheads and more.

COOL HAND LUKE (1967). In a career filled with iconic anti-heroes – including what I deem the “4-H Club” from the 1960s (Hud, Harper, Hombre and The Hustler) – Lucas Jackson just might be the most popular of all the societal misfits played by Paul Newman. After drunkenly destroying parking meters in a small Southern town, Newman’s wisecracking loner is shipped off to a prison whose inmates break their backs working on a chain gang. Read the rest here.

(Photo by Glen Wilson)

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This week CL Charlotte film critic Matt Brunson takes a look at 88 Minutes, An American in Paris and more, including that dizzying color-fest Speed Racer.

AN AMERICAN IN PARIS (1951) / GIGI (1958). The film industry has produced a substantial number of truly transcendent musical masterpieces – Singin’ in the Rain, Top Hat and A Hard Day’s Night are but three examples – yet rarely have these films won Best Picture Oscars. Instead, the Academy’s taste in musicals tends to run toward lavish, overproduced extravaganzas that often lumber rather than waltz across the screen. MGM’s two Best Picture musical winners in the 1950s are entertaining enough – and certainly superior to such victors as Oliver! and The Great Ziegfeld – but they represent neither the finest of their respective years nor the movie musical genre itself. Read the rest here.

(Photo courtesy Warner Bros.)

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This week, CL Charlotte film critic Matt Brunson reviews the Tina Fey comedy (mom-edy, perhaps?) Baby Mama, director Vadim Perelman’s The Life Before Her Eyes, Snow Angels and Young@Heart — all on DVD for the first time — as well as the second collection of the Fox Horror Classics.

BABY MAMA (2008). With Will Ferrell, Adam Sandler and other man-children routinely hoarding the screens in our nation’s multiplexes and living rooms, here come Tina Fey and Amy Poehler to remind audiences that girls just want to have fun. Indeed, the Cyndi Lauper hit of that name is granted its own karaoke-set scene, and its inclusion is fitting in a movie that’s similarly pointed, joyous, and light on its feet. This stars Fey as Kate Holbrook, a successful businesswoman who, upon finding out that she only has a one-in-a-million chance of getting pregnant, turns to an agency to provide her with a surrogate mom; she ends up getting Angie Ostrowiski (Poehler), who clearly resides several rungs down the social ladder. Read the rest here.

(The Life Before Her Eyes photo by Phillip Caruso. Courtesy Magnolia Pictures.)

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This week, CL Charlotte film critic Matt Brunson reviews the special edition release of the Coen brothers’ 1998 The Big Lebowski, as well as the French film Brotherhood of the Wolf, the two-disc edition of Tim Burton’s Nightmare Before Christmas and more.

THE BIG LEBOWSKI (1998). Joel and Ethan Coen’s The Big Lebowski may be sloppy, repetitious and occasionally abrasive, but it’s also imaginative, sharp-witted and ofttimes very, very funny. Jeff Bridges plays Jeff Lebowski, an unkempt pothead who calls himself “The Dude.” An avid bowler – he spends his days knocking down pins with his buddies (John Goodman and Steve Buscemi) – The Dude finds his life turned upside down when a couple of thugs mistake him for L.A.’s other Jeff Lebowski: the incapacitated millionaire (David Huddleston) whose sexpot wife Bunny (Tara Reid) ends up getting kidnapped. Read the rest here.

(Photo courtesy Walt Disney Home Entertainment)

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Here’s this week’s View from the Couch DVD-review column by Creative Loafing/Charlotte’s own Matt Brunson, who reviews releases of 21, In Bruges (which Curt Holman reviewed for us) and more. Unfortunately, Matt didn’t touch on the Criterion Collection’s spiffed-up release of Carl Theodor Dreyer’s 1932 classic, Vampyr. (Don’t worry; I’m squirreling away ghoulish-movie DVD reviews for Halloween. Stay tuned.)

I actually found what appeared to be a full-length clip of the movie on YouTube, but in deference to Dreyer and Criterion, I’ll just post this clip of the first four minutes of the movie. Oooh, scary!

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