Top 5 DVD's of the Week 9/7/10

PICK OF THE WEEK – MacGruber (Blu-ray/DVD)

Will Forte’s MacGruber character was a pretty simple joke on Saturday Night Live, so expanding it into a feature may have been a bad idea (and the grosses suggest people weren’t convinced), but funny is funny, and this demented and horny film from Forte and director Jorma Taccone  (of Lonely Island and Saturday Night Live) deserves to find an audience. I’m a little scared of the unrated cut, as the theatrical release goes pretty far in terms of boundary pushing - though likely all that’s added are a couple of throwaway gags (I’m surprised unrated cuts still have any marketing value). MacGruber is a seriously kinky, filthy comedy, and deserved better.

 

RETRO  – Tommy (Blu-ray)

Also known as Tommy: The Movie. That may seem self-evident, but there was also the original album, and later a play (with an original cast recording soundtrack), and on top of that a soundtrack to the movie. One can have three different CD copies of Tommy. Growing up, my parents owned a scattershot of albums, with the standout being The Rolling Stone’s greatest hits. At the time I thought that meant my father liked The Rolling Stones, but going by their record collection I don’t think they were ever engaged in any scene - they had a Pink Floyd album, but it was Ummagumma. I was more into The Beatles, but my best friend was a The Who fan. Though we’d listen to Who’s Next, and The Who Sell Out, it was college that really hipped me to them. Tommy is a period piece, and an uneven movie, but as directed by Ken Russell, and with the band’s original line-up in the cast and with the cast (which included Tina Turner, Oliver Reed, Jack Nicholson, Elton John, etc.) and with Ann-Margret writhing around in a bunch of baked beans, it’s fair to call the film indelible, and a must see for Who fans and film fans alike.

 

RETRO – THX 1138 (Blu-ray)

Warners is releasing a series of Science fiction films this week (Lost in Space, Mars Attacks, Forbidden Planet, The Matrix Reloaded), and this is easily the most fascinating of them. Like all of George Lucas’s later re-tweaks, the original version is now ignored, and the CGI-enhanced version is considered the final cut. THX 1138 is Lucas at his most raw and hard science-y (all things considered), and – from the six films that represent his directorial career – this is the film he threatens to return to but never does. It has a purity of vision, and a tonality all its own, but it also feels like an expanded student short (which it is). Lucas’s fascination with dehumanization is also very effective, and it’s fun to get lost in the movie. The great thing about the Blu-ray is that includes all the supplements from the previous DVD, with great featurettes on the making of and Zoetrope in that time (Francis Ford Coppola’s production company, which launched Lucas)

 

RETRO – The Player (Blu-ray)

That said, the biggest problem with a number of these Warner Blu-ray editions is that other than a new transfer, there’s no reason to upgrade since all they do is just repackage the DVD. I like Robert Altman’s The Player, at the time it was considered a return to form and put him back into the mainstream (or mainstream-ish, the early nineties was all about the rise of the art film, but more people still saw Cliffhanger than anything Altman did). This is definitely a good to great Altman, and one of the best movies about Hollywood, but Altman’s run in the 70’s is one of the great runs in cinema. But it’s going to be a while before those films ever hit Blu-ray. And there’s no great incentive to upgrade based on the supplements, which repeat New Line’s previous edition.

 

Retro – The Norm Show (DVD)

Norm MacDonald had the perfect job as the anchor on Saturday Night Live, but he ended up pissing off the president of NBC so much that he was fired. That’s a legendary story to have in your pocket, but not exactly the best thing that can happen to a career. Now we’re at a point where MacDonald – revered by his peers – has made a life for himself as a touring comic, because he hasn’t found a landing place since. The Norm Show was his sitcom, and it could be wickedly funny, but you felt that the show was trying to beat the censors and occasionally too hemmed in to the structure of a sit-com. Sometimes that worked, but – like Norm’s hilarious flop Dirty Work – it didn’t find its audience. But Shout Factory has put the entire run on DVD, and I can’t wait to see how it did and didn’t work.