New Releases On Blu Ray & DVD: 3/12/13

This week, the biggest new release on Blu ray/DVD is Ang Lee’s LIFE OF PI, fresh from winning four Oscars, and it’s available in a 3 disc Blu ray 3D set (includes digital copy and DVD), and in a standard single disc DVD. It has an abundance of Special Features such as Deleted Scenes, a bunch of featurettes, Art Gallery, Storyboards, and a theatrical trailer, all of which are in 3D for those with those fancy new 3D TVs. Read my review of LIFE OF PI here.

Next up, Peter Ramsey’s RISE OF THE GUARDIANS is also out today in a 3 disc Blu ray 3D edition with a bunch of whistles and bells (commentary with director and producers, deleted scenes, multiple featurettes, some sort of interactive game). It’s also available in a 2D 2-disc Blu ray version, and a single disc DVD. I missed this one when it hit theaters last fall (not a big fan of DreamWorks' animated output), should I see it now? Anybody?

Sacha Gervasi’s bland biopic HITCHCOCK, a real disappointment last December (my review), is also out today on Blu ray/DVD (not in 3D thankfully), with a plethora of Special Features: a deleted scene, a plethora of featurettes including somehitng called “Sacha Gervasi's Behind-the-Scenes Cell Phone Footage,” a commentary with Sacha Gervasi and Stephen Rebello, the theatrical trailer, and that damn Hitchcock Cell Phone PSA that I’m getting sick to death of as it has been playing before every movie at the theater where I work part-time for 3 months now! 

Mojtaba Mirtahmasb and Jafar Panahi’s THIS IS NOT A FILM is another movie I missed in its theatrical run (actually I’m not sure if it came to my area), so I’m happy to see it out now on DVD. It comes with only a few Special Features but they look juicy: an interview with Panahi by Iranian expat film professor Jamsheed Akrami, and a feature commentary by Jamsheed Akrami.

A movie I did see when it briefly played in town and liked was James Ponsoldt’s SMASHED, starring North Carolina native Mary Elizabeth Winstead, and Breakin’ Bad’s Aaron Paul, out today on both Blu ray and DVD. It’s a thoughtful, well acted drama about alcoholism that’s definitely worth a rental. Special features: commentary with director James Ponsoldt and Winstead, deleted scenes, and a couple of featurettes, one a “Making of” deal, and the other concerns the Toronto Film Festival Red Carpet and Q&A. 

Dave Grohl’s documentary about the legendary Los Angeles recording studio Sound City Studios, SOUND CITY, also drops on Blu ray and DVD today. It contains over 40 minutes of bonus material, including 3 full songs. 

A film I’m a little scarred of seeing, Paolo Sorrentino’s THIS MUST BE THE PLACE, starring Sean Penn as Robert Smith of the Cure (well, not really but he sure looks like it), comes out today. But how can I resist a movie that has the tagline: “A former rock star is hunting down a Nazi criminal...This could be his greatest hit.” It doesn’t bode well that neither the Blu ray/DVD have any Special Features, but I’ll give it a chance. 

On the remaster re-issue front we’ve got deluxe Blu ray releases of Robert Zemeckis' WHO FRAMED ROGER RABBIT?: 25th Anniversary Edition, and Ron Howard's WILLOW (also celebrating its 25th Anniversary), a movie that I bet comes off differently now after watching Warwick Davis’s pitiful BBC/HBO series Life's Too Short.

More later…

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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LIFE OF PI: The Film Babble Blog Review

     

Opening tomorrow, Wednesday, November 21st, at a theater near you:

LIFE OF PIE (Dir. Ang Lee, 2012)

For his first film since 2009’s TAKING WOODSTOCK, Ang Lee has taken what to many (including me) thought was an unfilmable novel (written by Yann Martel, published in 2001), and turned it into a vivid visual spectacle.

But much like Paul Thomas Anderson’s THE MASTER from a few months back, its beauty may not transcend audiences’ bafflement over what it’s all supposed to mean.

But let’s start with the story. In an extremely notable film debut, the well-cast Suraj Sharma plays Pi Patel, a spiritually hungry Indian boy who lives at his family’s zoo in Pondicherry, India (the opening credits contain wondrous shots of the various zoo animals).

When his family decides to sell the zoo, Pi travels with them and the animals on a cargo ship to North America. The weather gets violently rough, and the ship sinks, leaving Pi as the only human survivor stranded in a lifeboat with a zebra, a hyena, an orangutan, and a vicious Bengal tiger named Richard Parker. That’s right.

The tale is told, in feature-length flashback form, by an older Pi (Irrfan Khan) to Rafe Spall, who is only credited as “The Writer.” Thankfully, this doesn’t mean there’s voice-over narration so we’re alone with Pi and his peculiar predicament.

The tiger, mostly rendered in flawless CGI, stays for stretches under a tarp, allowing Pi space to build a makeshift raft which he ties to the boat, so that he can rest in safety.

One by one, the other animals are killed. After a series of gripping tension-filled scenes with the backdrop of the vast ocean (their journey spans 227 days), Pi and Richard Parker reach a surreal island (as if the rest of this film isn’t surreal) filled with thousands of meercats.

That’s as far as I’ll go with the plot. Largely due to the explemplary cinematography by Claudio Miranda, LIFE OF PI is overwhelmingly immersive eye candy, utilizing some of the best 3D imagery since Martin Scorsese’s HUGO. One’s eyes can get just as lost in the shining sea as Pi and his tiger companion.

However, the conclusion isn’t as succinct or effective as it was in Martel’s novel even though David Magee’s screenplay adaptation is faithful and contains the same basic material. It still works, but it was a much satisfying ending in the book. I believe that’s because the religious undertones were part of what was unfilmable in the original text.

LIFE OF PI looks like no other film in director Lee’s (who also produced) filmography. Its Spielbergian sunniness, and its soaring scope makes it stand out from his other work, though he’s come really close to this aesthetic before (see: CROUCHING TIGER, HIDDEN DRAGON).

“Why does it have to mean anything?” The Older Pi asks “The Writer.” It’s a good question, and sure, it doesn’t have to mean anything, because there’s a huge difference between a work that’s meaningless, and a work that frees one from meaning. Although it lacks the depth of the book, and its vision may not be as infinite as the amount of digits of the mathematical constant that our hero takes his name from, it still achieves the latter.



This is a sponsored post. All opinions are my own. Photos courtesy of Twentieth Century Fox Film Corporation.

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