So the Criterion Collection has released the extraordinary collection America Lost and Found: The BBS Story, which includes such iconic American indies as The Last Picture Show, Easy Rider, and Five Easy Pieces. And since it's almost a guarantee that plenty of critics will wax effusive about these films while pooh-poohing the very first BBS production -- the Monkees vehicle Head -- I come to praise it.
Yes, believe it or not, this one's a Christmas movie. This excerpt from Have Yourself a Movie Little Christmas explains why:
At a Christmas party, Manhattan physician Bill Harford (Tom Cruise) and his wife Alice (Nicole Kidman) are sexually propositioned, separately; she turns down her suitor because she's married, but he seems to send his away only because he is called into service when the mistress of the party's host (Sydney Pollack) overdoses in the bathroom.
This little-seen selection, featured in Have Yourself a Movie Little Christmas, stars Jennifer Connelly (back when she was curvaceous) and Patrick Dempsey (before he was McDreamy):
Cocky college student Michael (Dempsey) travels to Québec City to spend Christmas with his girlfriend Gaby (Connelly), who has been out of school because of her grandmother's illness. Upon his arrival, Gaby informs Michael that she no longer loves him, but that's just the first of many shocks to his system.
John Woo's action classic Hard Boiled makes its Blu-Ray debut this week (in a two-disc "Ultimate Edition" from Dragon Dynasty), and if you weren't around in 1992, it's hard to describe the impact that Hong Kong action cinema had on film nerds of the era.
This excerpt from Alonso Duralde's book Have Yourself a Movie Little Christmas takes us to a charming Hungarian boutique where almost everyone seems to speak with an American accent:
Co-workers Klara (Margaret Sullavan) and Alfred (James Stewart), both clerks at an upscale Budapest boutique at the turn of the 20th century, despise each other, but they unknowingly exchange breathlessly romantic letters as pen pals. There's no shortage of intrigue at the store, owned by Mr. Matuschek (Frank Morgan), whose wife is cheating on him -- he incorrectly believes Alfred may be cuckolding him, not realizing that his wife's lover is someone else on his payroll. When Alfred loses his job, he's too depressed to keep his date with his pen pal, but after a friend peeks in and tells him that Klara is the girl he was supposed to meet, Alfred has to decide whether or not to declare his love to his rival. Whatever happens between Alfred and Klara, it's going to have to wait until after the Christmas rush.
This holiday favorite from Have Yourself a Movie Little Christmas takes Santa Claus to some dark places:
On Christmas Eve 1947, young Harry sees Mommy do more than just kiss Santa Claus; he's so shaken by the event that he smashes a Christmas snowglobe, cuts himself with the broken glass and bleeds on the snowy cabin inside. Cut to 33 years later: Grown-up Harry (Brandon Maggart) sleeps in Santa Claus pajamas, covers his wall with St. Nick paraphernalia, creates a fake "Santa" beard with shaving cream, and monitors the neighborhood kids for his "naughty" and "nice" lists.
Mumblecore mavens the Duplass Brothers got raves for their first relatively mainstream effort, this summer's Cyrus (out on DVD this week from Twentieth Century Fox Home Entertainment). But while this comedy -- starring Jonah Hill as an overgrown mama's boy who tries to sabotage mom Marisa Tomei's burgeoning relationship with schlubby John C. Reilly -- goes to some wonderfully squirmy places, it fits into a longstanding tradition of moms and sons who are too close for comfort. Ahead, five other worrisome mother-son pairings.
As we make our way toward Christmas Day, we asked Movieline DVD Editor Alonso Duralde to share a dozen of his favorite movies from his new book, Have Yourself a Movie Little Christmas (Limelight Editions). We'll be running his excerpts from the book all the way to December 25. Up first, you're invited to a holiday party at Nakatomi Plaza.
Unless your 3-D movie this year was about piranhas or jackassery, odds are that the stereoscopic effect prompted headaches more than it did enthusiasm. Case in point: Tim Burton's Alice in Wonderland (now available from Walt Disney Home Entertainment), a movie that would have been merely annoying and underwritten screened flat, but wound up having the extra misery of those glasses and those blurry effects with the 3-D that was added to it in post.
One of the cornerstones of the then-nascent FOX network in the 1980s, Married...with Children certainly wasn't everybody's cup of tea. But the sitcom -- whose earliest episodes drew comparisons to Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf? -- had a acrid, raucous, and thoroughly unsentimental take on family life that felt far more acidic than anything we had previously seen on TV. With next week's release of Married...with Children: The Complete Series (Sony Pictures Home Entertainment), it's worth reflecting on other sitcoms that challenged the norms of TV and, for better or worse, expanded the boundaries of what you could get away with doing.
From sneaking a peek at naughty postcards from behind the barn to entering "hot three-ways" into Google, youngsters always manage to summon forth the forbidden pleasures of adolescence by gaping at forbidden images of human sexuality. Somewhere between the Depression and the Internet generation, there was HBO, providing a steady stream of soft-core salaciousness (before they pushed that sort of thing onto their less-reputable cousin, Cinemax). One film that impacted me during my tween years was Big Bad Mama (out this week from Shout! Factory as part of its series of Roger Corman classics) -- not only was there fairly explicit (albeit non-graphic) humping, but it was being performed by recognizable TV stars Angie Dickinson and William Shatner!
Whether you thought Inception (out this week from Warner Home Video) was a stirring piece of cinematic art, a brainy popcorn movie, or a confusing headache-inducer, there's no denying that the dream sequences, in and of themselves, were pretty rockin'.
Once Thanksgiving is over, It's a Wonderful Life season officially begins. But by the time director Frank Capra ventured to Bedford Falls, he had already made one of the greatest Christmas movies ever: Meet John Doe, which gets a "70th Anniversary Ultimate Collectors Edition" release this week from VCI Entertainment. And like many of Capra's little-guy-against-the-corporations movies, it feels more relevant than ever.
Disney has gotten very savvy about its ferociously devoted audience: Hard-core Mouseketeers can join D23 -- an official, corporation-sponsored fan organization that puts together conventions and allows the faithful early peeks at upcoming movies and park attractions -- and the company offers any number of ways for devotees to spend their money, from sportswear to worldwide vacations. Home video definitely plays a part in stoking the base -- buy those DVDs now, before they go out of print! -- and Walt Disney Studios Home Entertainment has four new releases that will no doubt thrill their target demographic...and the people who drew them in the Secret Santa raffle.
Under the radar of most people -- not including New Beverly Cinema programmer Phil Blankenship, who brought this film to my attention when he booked it as a midnight movie a few months ago -- Standing Ovation (now available at Amazon.com) snuck in and out of theaters this summer. But this shrieky kids' tuner isn't merely a would-be High School Musical; it's the kind of delicious disaster you were hoping Burlesque was going to be.
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