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)

Bookmark It

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)

Bookmark It

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)

Bookmark It

This week, CL Charlotte film critic Matt Brunson reviews stoner comedy Harold & Kumar Escape from Guantanamo Bay, the Larry McMurtry classic Lonesome Dove, and British coming-of-age story Son of Rambow, which first caught our attention last spring at the Atlanta Film Festival.

HAROLD & KUMAR ESCAPE FROM GUANTANAMO BAY (2008). 2004’s Harold & Kumar Go to White Castle looks better with each passing year, but it’s pretty much guaranteed that Harold & Kumar Escape from Guantanamo Bay won’t be enjoying a similar critical ascension in the future. That’s largely because the satire is less subversive and more overt, meaning that what you see is basically what you get. Kal Penn and John Cho are again an engaging team, and here, the plot requires their characters to get mistaken for terrorists, leading to an interrogation by a moronic Homeland Security honcho (Rob Corddry) who decides to send them to Guantanamo Bay to enjoy a steady diet of “cock-meat sandwiches.” Read the rest here.

(Photo by Jaimie Trueblood/New Line Cinema)

Bookmark It

Check out this week’s View from the Couch DVD-review column by Matt Brunson of Charlotte’s Creative Loafing. This week Matt takes a look at The Counterfeiters, Doomsday, The Inglorious Bastards and Vampyr (which I unfairly chastised Matt last week for not having reviewed).

We’re grateful that Matt got around to Vampyr; he likey!

There are images here that are staggering in their artistry: the shadow of a one-legged servant separating from its owner and taking off on its own; a ferryman wielding a scythe next to a fog-encrusted lake; the ultimate fate of the doctor, undone by (spirit-assisted) machinery even more imposing than the wheels and cogs encountered by Charlie Chaplin in Modern Times; and, most famously, the POV shots that find a prematurely boxed Gray witnessing the activities occurring just above the glass window on his coffin.

(more…)

Bookmark It

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!

Bookmark It