October 20, 2009

It's a pretty bad week on the DVD front unless you like giant fighting robots that turn into things...

...in which case, you'll be thrilled. Yes, we all know my feelings about a certain Michael Bay movie, but we'll get to that in a bit. First there must be a PICK OF THE WEEK, and in lieu of any other real legitimate choices, I have no choice but to go with:
Cheri
I thought this Stephen Frears period piece was above average, but nothing special outside of a real good lead performance by Michelle Pfeiffer. That however, is good enough to grab top honors in a week like this. See it for her work, and you won't have any heartburn from this flick, as my grandfather likes to say.
-Also out is Blood: The Last Vampire, a very mediocre adaptation of a Japanese Anime feature. It ultimately was pretty dull, but not actively bad, so if you think this is your thing, then it's worth taking a look at.
-We come now to Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen. There's nothing I can say that will change any minds about this film (I'll have to settle for knowing it's very likely that this will end up as my #1 worst film of 2009), so I'll save my breath and vitriol and simply say that I have no interest in ever owning this on DVD, but if you do, then go for it and enjoy. It is what it is.
-My Vintage pick this week is, in honor of the release of the biopic Amelia, a sadly underseen biopic by the name of Music Within. Ron Livingston does career best work as Richard Pimentel, a deaf man who more or less created the Americans with Disabilities Act, and Michael Sheen did nomination caliber supporting work as Pimentel's friend with Cerebral Palsy. You won't even recognize it's him. It's definitely a film worth discovering on DVD.
-What will you be watching on DVD this week?

11 comments:

  1. Holy crap that is so weird that you mention "Music Within", I just participated in a screening and panel Q&A discussion for that film as part of Disabilities Awareness Month just a few days ago. o_O

    Yeah, I'll be buying Transformers 2 on blu-ray, sue me. :P

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  2. It still amazes me that my personal goddess Michelle Pfeiffer has no Oscar. Damn you Jessica Tandy!

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  3. I feel your pain Andrew. And its weird that you mention Music Within because I met Ron Livingston a few days ago at the In-N-Out Burger on Sunset. He was behind me in line, I got to shake his hand.

    -Robbie

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  4. LOL Joey is being too insightful for his own good lately, our opinions were nearly identical on Where The Wild Things Are last weekend. Crazy stuff. Joey, did you by any chance visit the Dali Lama (sp?) and become enlightened over the weekend? lol

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  5. No sir, I'm still the same fool I've been the last 3 years or so on the sight...still a clod, just one that every once in a while manages not to piss most people off...

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  6. LOL Well, thats good to know...I think.. o_O

    Anywho. Yeah as far as DVDs go, I can see why no one wanted to release anything else today, as TF2 is likely to break a bunch of blu-ray sales records. But I will rent Cheri to check out the performance by Pfeiffer. As far as my Transformers stance goes, to me, its simply my personal "guilty pleasure" movie(s), though I don't really feel guilty for enjoying the movies. But if everyone else gets to enjoy shitty movies like the Saw franchise, and the infinitesimal number of of horrible, low-brow, just plain bad comedies like Sex Drive, Disaster Movie, etc, than Goddammit, I get to enjoy Transformers. :P

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  7. Great point, Neo. I think that people think too much about insane action movies like Michael Bay's films. The point is that you don't think when you see them, they're only meant to be fun and mindless.

    Nonetheless, I've said it before and I'll say it again - "The Rock" is a fantastic film.

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  8. Believe me, I like plenty of fun and mindless movies, but I simply didn't find Transformers 2 to be any fun at all...at least some of the moments in the first one got a chuckle out of me...I guess the Saw films count as my indefensible enjoyments, so fair play to criticism there

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  9. I think that the bigger the budget, the bigger the criticism is going to be. I can see why people didn't think TF2 was fun. 2 and a half hours of Transformers is a LONG time. I admit that comparing the two films is like comparing The Simpsons to Family Guy. I would rather watch a whole episode of the Simpsons than a whole episode of Family Guy, but Family Guy always has great moments.

    The first Transformers has the novelty aspect and tells a better whole story, while the second movie had great moments (IMO). In short, the first movie is a case of the sum being greater than the parts, whereas the opposite is true, for me at least, of the second movie. The action sequences (the forest battle in particular) were much more comprehensible and cool to watch in the second movie, but the first movie had more heart and a sense of novelty and wonder to make up for a few shortcomings in the way some action scenes were shot. Again, the first one was greater than its parts, the second one is better when considering individual parts.

    I of course had a number of issues with the second movie, my main one not even being the Twins. The Leo character was an absolute waste of time and space, and the actor tried too hard to imitate Shia Lebouf's manic energy style from the first movie, but as much as I don't like Shia Lebouf, he's very good at comic timing and manic energy. The actor playing Leo is (IMO) worse at acting than Megan Fox. At least Fox and Lebouf have talent buried underneath. This other guy was embarrassing and nothing but annoying.

    In closing, I will simply quote the line in the movie that made me laugh/smile the most.

    "My great grandfather was the first wheel, do you know what he transformed into?!"

    "No, what?"

    "NOTHING!!!! But he did it with honor!!!"

    :)

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  10. We can agree to disagree, though I'd argue that a bad movie is a bad movie, whether its budget was 100 million dollars or 1 million...bad is bad

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