New Releases On Blu Ray & DVD: 8/20/13

I didn’t see Chris Wedge’s animated fantasy flick EPIC when it was released theatrically less than three months ago, but since it's one of the top 10 biggest box office flops of 2013 so far, I bet you didn’t either. Well, here it is out today on home video in three editions: a Blu-ray 3D Combo Pack (3 discs, includes DVD, Digital Copy & Digital HD), a 2-disc Blu ray (includes DVD + Digital Copy), and a single disc DVD. Special Features: Several featurettes (adding up to 15 minutes), a seven-part making-of mini documentary entitled “Mysteries of Moonhaven Revealed” (HD, 24:39), and the theatrical trailer.



Next up, Michael Haneke’s excellent 2012 French drama AMOUR, winner of the Best Foreign Language Film of the Year Oscars earlier this year, comes out today in single disc Blu ray and DVD sets. Jean-Louis Trintignant and Emmanuelle Riva (nominated for Best Actress Academy Award) star as an aging couple dealing with dementia in this film which sounds depressing but is absolutely essential viewing. Read my review: Michael Haneke’s AMOUR Earns Its Accolades (2/8/13). Special Features: A “Making of AMOUR” featurette, and a Q & A with Director Haneke.

Other New Release titles today: Mark Steven Johnson’s Robert De Niro/John Travolta action thriller KILLING SEASON, James Marsh’s SHADOW DANCER, Ryûhei Kitamura’s NO ONE LIVES, and Malcolm D. Lee’s atrocious looking SCARY MOVIE 5.

Ramona S. Diaz’s DON’T STOP BELIEVIN’: EVERYMAN’S JOURNEY, a documentary about how the San Francisco Journey found their current lead vocalist on YouTube, is also available today, but on DVD only. A Special Edition of the film is a WalMart, which sure says a lot, doesn’t it? My review of the film, which I saw a screener of last March, is here.

A much better documentary, Shola Lynch’s FREE ANGELA & ALL POLITICAL PRISONERS, also drops on DVD (+Digital and UltraViolet) today. The film, which I saw at the Full Frame Documentary Film Festival last April, tells the story of radical activist Angela Davis, whose trial on charges of murder, kidnapping, and conspiracy riveted the nation in the early ‘70s. No Special Features are listed for it, but a film as packed with archival footage, interviews, and powerful Nixon-era imagery doesn’t really need any.

The Criterion Collection adds a couple of Satyajit Ray titles from a half a century ago, THE BIG CITY (1963), and CHARULATA (1964), to their roster on Blu ray today. Both have tons of supplements, as they call ‘em, including fancy booklets. Also on the older titles new to Blu ray front, there’s Peter R. Hunt’s 1981 action adventure DEATH HUNT, starring Charles Bronson and Lee Marvin; Melvin Frank and Norman Panama’s 1954 comedy KNOCK ON WOOD, starring Danny Kaye and Mai Zetterling; another Danny Kaye comedy, Melville Shavelson's ON THE DOUBLE (1961); Norman C. McLeod's 1951 Bob Hope comedy MY FAVORITE SPY, and Alan Rudolph’s largely unseen 1980 rock comedy ROADIE, starring Meatloaf and Art Carney.

TV series sets releasing today include Boardwalk Empire: The Complete Third Season, The Good Wife: The Fourth Season, Star Trek: Enterprise: Season 2, NCIS: The Complete Tenth Season, Revenge: The Complete Second Season, and Parenthood: Season Four, among many others I'm sure.

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Oscars 2013 Recap!

Now, I wouldn’t say Seth MacFarlane outright bombed in his gig as Oscar host last night, but he sure came close with so many of his jokes being cringe-inducing duds and his song and dance routines being show-stoppers in the worst way.

That he didn’t lapse into his Family Guy character voices like he did in his Saturday Night Live monologue last year is one of the few things I can commend about his performance, but it says a lot that one of the only funny bits he was involved in was a sock puppet production of FLIGHT. 

Other attempts at comedy, like MacFarlane singing a song called “We Saw Your Boobs” (a mock tribute to actresses who’ve done nudity) with the Los Angeles Gay Men's Choir, and an ending number with Kristin Chenoweth dedicated to the losers of the evening, fell horribly flat.

I tweeted that Daniel Day-Lewis joking that he was up for the part of Maggie Thatcher in THE IRON LADY while his Oscar presenter Meryl Streep was up for LINCOLN in his acceptance speech for winning Best Actor was funnier than anything MacFarlane said all night, and I wasn’t kidding.

There were a few genuine highlights - Shirley Bassey singing “Goldfinger” for the 50th anniversary tribute to James Bond being one - but it was a largely forgettable show. The rare tie in one category (ZERO DARK THIRTY and SKYFALL shared the Oscar for Best Sound Editing) will probably be as forgotten as the other five times it happened in the Academy’s history. 



A surprise appearance by Barbara Streisand singing “The Way We Were” in tribute to Marvin Hamlisch as part of the IN MEMORIUM segment brought some much needed gravitas to the proceedings. Points to MacFarlane for not making some rude comment later about it.


But now on to how I did with my predictions that I posted last Friday.

Although up until the broadcast I’ve been referring to the 2013 Oscars as the most unpredictable race in recent memory, I got more of the categories right than I have in over half a decade -18 out of 24. That’s better than the 15 I got right last year, and much better than the 13 I got the previous two years before that.

Christoph Waltz for Best Supporting Actor for DJANGO UNCHAINED, and Ang Lee for Best Director of LIFE OF PI were the big surprises last night. I figured Waltz had won, also for a Tarantino picture, not that long ago so I counted him out.



Spielberg seemed like the safe bet for his direction of LINCOLN, but, despite having picked LIFE OF PI for Score, Cinematography, and Visual Effects I really didn’t think it would win Lee the big Best Director award, and from the other predictions I’ve seen, not many others did either.

Here’s what else I got wrong:

BEST PRODUCTION DESIGN: I predicted LES MISÉRABLES (Eve Stewart, Anna Lynch-Robinson), but LINCOLN (Rick Carter, Jim Erickson) got the gold.

DOCUMENTARY SHORT: OPEN HEART (Kief Davidson, Cori Shepherd Stern) I’ll just chalk this up to the fact that I didn’t see any of the Documentary Shorts, was just guessing, and I’ll leave it at that. I’ll have to seek out the winner - Sean Fine and Andrea Nix’s INOCENTE – sometime soon.

MAKEUP: THE HOBBIT: AN UNEXPECTED JOURNEY (Peter King, Rick Findlater, Tami Lane). I should’ve known THE HOBBIT wouldn’t win anything. It seems obvious in retrospect that Lisa Westcott and Julie Dartnell would get it for LES MISÉRABLES, but then a lot of things do.

ADAPTED SCREENPLAY: LINCOLN (Tony Kushner) I thought playwright Kushner was a shoo-in, but since I’m more of a fan of Chris Terrio’s screenplay for ARGO I wasn’t disappointed to get this one wrong.

I was happy to be right about ARGO winning Best Picture - Affleck got snubbed for a Best Director nomination, but now that's just a future trivia question.



AMOUR's Best Foreign Picture win and LIFE OF PI's mini sweep with four wins were also nice to see. With hope, those moments will linger longer in memory than MacFarlane's lame material.

More later…

Hey Kids - Funtime Oscar Picks 2013!

As I’ve said before, the 85th Academy Awards, airing Sunday night on ABC, is looking like one of the most unpredictable Oscars ever. So I bet I get more wrong this time than usual. But it's all in fun so what the Hell!

Here are my picks:

1. BEST PICTURE: ARGO 

Yep, I'm going with the theory that the Academy will make up for not nominating Ben Affleck for Best Director and give him the gold for his film, which I think deserves to win. LINCOLN looks pretty possible too, and I could see SILVER LININGS PLAYBOOK being an upset, but I'm still going with ARGO.

2. BEST DIRECTOR: Steven Spielberg for LINCOLN

3. BEST ACTOR: Daniel Day-Lewis for LINCOLN



4. BEST ACTRESS: Jennifer Lawrence for SILVER LININGS PLAYBOOK


5. BEST SUPPORTING ACTOR: Robert De Niro for SILVER LININGS PLAYBOOK

6. BEST SUPPORTING ACTRESS: Anne Hathaway for LES MISÉRABLES

And the rest:

7. PRODUCTION DESIGN: LES MISÉRABLES (Eve Stewart, Anna Lynch-Robinson)

8. CINEMATOGRAPHY: LIFE OF PI (Claudio Miranda)

9. COSTUME DESIGN: ANNA KARENINA (Jacqueline Durran)

10. DOCUMENTARY FEATURE: SEARCHING FOR SUGAR MAN

11. DOCUMENTARY SHORT: OPEN HEART (Kief Davidson, Cori Shepherd Stern)

12. FILM EDITING: ARGO (William Goldenberg)

13. MAKEUP: THE HOBBIT: AN UNEXPECTED JOURNEY (Peter King, Rick Findlater, Tami Lane)

14. VISUAL EFFECTS: LIFE OF PI (Bill Westenhofer, Guillaume Rocheron, Erik De Boer, Donald Elliott)

15. ORIGINAL SCORE: LIFE OF PI (Mychael Danna)

16. ORIGINAL SONG: “Skyfall” (Adele, Paul Epworth)

17. ANIMATED SHORT: PAPERMAN (John Kahrs)

18. LIVE ACTION SHORT: CURFEW (Shawn Christensen)

19. SOUND EDITING: ZERO DARK THIRTY (Paul N.J. Ottosson)

20. SOUND MIXING: LES MISÉRABLES (Andy Nelson, Mark Paterson, Simon Hayes)

21. ORIGINAL SCREENPLAY: DJANGO UNCHAINED (Quentin Tarantino)

22. ADAPTED SCREENPLAY: LINCOLN (Tony Kushner)

23. ANIMATED FEATURE FILM: BRAVE (Mark Andrews, Brenda Chapman) What I want to win: WRECK-IT RALPH.

24. BEST FOREIGN FILM: AMOUR (Dir. Michael Haneke)

Check back Monday morning to see how many I got wrong.

Also, I should again plug my appearance on postmodcast in which I discuss the Oscars with host Kevin Brewer.

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Michael Haneke’s AMOUR Earns Its Accolades

This Oscar nominated French film opens today in Raleigh at the Colony Theater and the Grande 16:

AMOUR
(Dir. Michael Haneke, 2012)

The set-up is so simple and the story so spare, that initially many movie-goers may wonder why this was nominated for both Best Picture and Best Foreign Picture Academy Awards for 2012.

But as they come to know Jean-Louis Trintignant and Emmanuelle Riva, as a long-time married couple in their 80s, and how their retirement has gotten less comfortable after Riva suffers a debilitating stroke, very few will question why this film is getting such accolades.



Trintignant and Riva, former music teachers, live in a fairly spacious apartment in Paris, which you’ll get to know almost every inch of as the movie almost completely takes place there (we first meet the French couple in a great long shot of the audience at a concert of one of Riva’s former pupils, but after that…).

Early in the film, Riva, also worthy of her nomination for a Best Actress Oscar, stops speaking mid-sentence and goes while sitting at breakfast. Trintignant panics after failing to get her attention, and as he is about call for help, she snaps out of it. This is her first stroke, and shortly after, Trintignant takes her in for surgery, but complications make her condition worse.

Riva, now paralyzed on one side and confined to a wheelchair, makes Trintignant promise he won’t put her in the hospital again. The worried Trintignant does what he can to tend to his ailing wife, but he knows that she’s in heavy decline and that her days are numbered. Nurses (Carole Franck and Dinara Droukarova) help out, and their daughter (Isabelle Huppert) also checks in.

AMOUR is a very quiet film - there’s no score; the only music present is when Trintignant puts on CDs of Schubert and Beethoven, and a visiting star student (Alexandre Tharaud) plays a piece on piano for the couple.

Tharaud sends Trintignant and Riva a note after his visit, in which he writes that seeing them was “beautiful, but sad.”

That sums up the movie succinctly, but the emotional power present is much more overwhelming than that simple sentiment suggests. Previously, director/writer Michael Haneke’s filmography (FUNNY GAMES, CACHE, THE WHITE RIBBON) has left me a bit cold, but the warm feeling that he has for these two lovely characters is felt in every frame, and the delicate room-length distance he gives his subjects pays proper respect.

The French film icon Trintignant (AND GOD CREATED WOMAN, Z, THE CONFORMIST), who wasn’t nominated for an Oscar but picked up a European Film Award for Best Actor, puts in an affectingly relatable performance as the stressed out yet still endlessly devoted husband.

Riva, best known for her starring role in Alain Resnais’ HIROSHIMA MON AMOUR (1959), is incredibly and disturbingly convincing in her fearless performance of a woman losing her fight with life. It’s nearly impossible not to tear up at times when witnessing her helpless pain.



It would indeed be satisfying to see Riva, the oldest actress ever to be nominated for an Academy Award, take home the gold on February 24th.

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Oscar Nominations, Upcoming movies, & Other Whatnot

When the Oscar nominations were announced earlier this month one of the biggest surprises was that Ben Affleck wasn’t nominated for Best Director for ARGO. Critics are theorizing that this may help it win Best Picture to make up for the snub, but to me it’s just another factor in what looks like one of the most unpredictable Academy Awards programs ever.

For instance, try to predict who will win for Best Supporting Actor - Alan Arkin, Robert De Niro, Phillip Seymour Hoffman, Tommy Lee Jones, or Christoph Waltz. They’ve all won Oscars before! I guess this will take the edge off for all five nominees because no matter who wins, the other four can’t really be that disappointed. They’ll each think something like “it’s not like I don’t already have one.”

There’s also the interesting inclusion of Michael Haneke’s AMOUR as both a Best Picture and Best Foreign Language Picture of the Year nominee. I’ve just seen the movie and am happy it got nominated, but it looks like a real long shot for it to win Best Picture. Not sure if that means it’s a shoo-in for Best Foreign film though. I’ll still make predictions when the day is closer (the Oscar ceremony will take place on February 24th), but I bet I’ll get more wrong than ever before. 

In other movie news, this is a pretty slow season for quality movies but there are some that I’m looking forward to: Fisher Stevens’ STAND UP GUYS starring Al Pacino, Alan Arkin, and Christopher Walken and Dave Grohl’s documentary SOUND CITY (a recent episode of Marc Maron’s WTF podcast with Grohl really whet my appetite for this one).

Speaking of documentaries, I recently saw an interesting one by Douglas Tirola called ALL IN: THE POKER MOVIE (2009). Come to think of it, this poker movie reminds me that I never saw ROUNDERS. As it is expiring from Netflix Instant at the beginning of next month, I better get on that.

More later…