The third Blake Edwards movie returned to DVD courtesy of the Warner Archive is Victor/Victoria. (I covered the other two, S.O.B. and Skin Deep, last month.) It’s also the best of the three, with its bizarre plot — a soprano who can’t get work pretends to be a female impersonator in 1930s Paris — allowing [...]

Perhaps inspired by the late-70s exhibit of artifacts from Tutankhamun’s tomb, there seems to have been an early-80s trend for Egyptian-set movies. The Awakening (1980), a new release from Warner Archive, is an example of the type, where a standard thriller is enlivened through gorgeous scenery of the country. It’s based on a novel by [...]

Lionsgate has announced that The Hunger Games will be available on home video on August 18. I haven’t read the books, by Suzanne Collins, or seen the movie, but I still want to root for it to do big business, because it makes it very obvious how much a lie the idea that “women can’t [...]

“Forbidden Hollywood” is such a fun title, suggesting all kinds of naughtiness in film. Most recently, it was used for a three-volume line of TCM Archives DVD collections with some of the best pre-Code movies out there, including the one that sums it all up for me, Baby Face starring Barbara Stanwyck. Now comes news [...]

How weird the world is now, where a geek TV show is one of the most successful on television, let alone having a spin-off tie-in t-shirt line at a hip clothing store. To promote the selection of Big Bang Theory tees they have available, Hot Topic is running a contest where HT+1 members (their frequent [...]

The Avengers Ready to watch Disney’s Avengers movie over and over again? (It quit being just Marvel’s when it took in over a billion dollars.) DVD dates have been announced. The Avengers will be available in Blu-ray/DVD combo pack, Blu-ray 3-D/ Blu-ray/ DVD/ digital copy deluxe edition, and (I’m assuming) single-disc DVD on September 25, [...]

Through Wednesday, the Warner online store at WBShop.com will be holding a Blu-ray sale with over 200 Blu-rays priced under $10. If you buy 3 or more, shipping (contiguous 48 states only) is free. Readers of this site may particularly be interested in the following comic-related titles: Batman Begins, $7.99 The Dark Knight, $7.99 Catwoman, [...]

The three Spider-Man movies will be re-released on Blu-ray with new “collectible” slipcovers (“O-ring packaging” in industry lingo) on June 12. All three include an offer for a free movie ticket (up to $10 value) for The Amazing Spider-Man, out July 3, as well as an UltraViolet digital copy. Other than that, the bonus features [...]

Disney has announced that John Carter will be coming to DVD and Blu-ray on June 5. It will be interesting to see if, as many are predicting, the over-two-hour movie finds more of its audience on home video. It’s possible that this could become a perennial favorite, especially since science fiction fans who’ve seen it [...]

It was kind of weird watching a movie with such a specific timeframe on a spring Sunday afternoon, given how much it fetishizes the magic of the titular holiday. The earlier Valentine’s Day had more universal appeal, since that holiday is more anticipated by more people. Everyone wants to be in love then, while most [...]

The Avengers continues setting box-office records. Last weekend, its second in U.S. release, it brought in over $100 million, which set a second-weekend record and took it to one billion dollars overall. It’s now the 11th biggest moneymaker ever, and it’s still climbing. But there’s more to life than money. Tom Spurgeon reminds us that [...]

Dark Shadows is certainly a Tim Burton movie. It’s very deliberately paced, with more emphasis placed on the setting and props than on keeping incidents happening at a rapid clip. It’s as though a joke became a movie. “A ghost, a witch, and a vampire walk into a soap opera…” I also felt as though [...]

From the time I heard about The Best Exotic Marigold Hotel, I knew it would be comfortable and well-done, but I didn’t know how enjoyable and thought-provoking it would be. “Comfortable” comes from the premise. A group of British retirees can no longer afford to live in their homeland, so they all wind up in [...]

As I think we all expected, Marvel’s The Avengers did very well this weekend, with an estimated $200.3 million in ticket sales. It’s been out overseas for 12 days now, bringing it to a total of $641.8 million so far. Disney’s press release points out these record-setting markers: Highest-grossing domestic debut of all time (beating [...]

The USA Network series Fairly Legal stars Sarah Shahi as a legal mediator. In the latest episode, “Ripple of Hope“, her assistant Leo (Baron Vaughn) has a friend Ashley (Laci J. Mailey) who created “XX Chromo”, a “girl superhero” whose first issue “sold 36,000 copies in a week”. Unfortunately, Ashley did it work for hire [...]

It was a very light month, between travel and catching up on TV shows and just not having a lot of time to watch movies. I suspect May will be better. I know I’m going to see The Avengers, and I probably will try for The Pirates as well. Movies The Kiss (1929) — The [...]

Mark Evanier sheds some uncomfortable light on what it’s like to be asked to be part of a DVD bonus feature. Too often, valuable sources like him are asked (even expected) to participate without compensation, regardless of the effect on their schedule. Many times, they aren’t even given a copy of the resulting DVD. More [...]

Cartoon College is a new documentary about The Center for Cartoon Studies. That school, founded in 2005 in White River Junction, Vermont, accepts 20 students a year to work towards a Master of Fine Arts degree focused on the comic medium. The film’s directors, Josh Melrod and Tara Wray, shot from 2007-2010, exploring “what it [...]

Along with S.O.B. and Victor/Victoria, a third Blake Edwards comedy has returned to DVD courtesy of the Warner Archive: Skin Deep (1989). This one, I admit, I knew nothing about, other than that it starred John Ritter and a lot of random women. Ritter (in his bearded phase) is an alcoholic writer and womanizer who, [...]

Blake Edwards’ infamous S.O.B. (1981) has returned to DVD courtesy of Warner Archive. Edwards’ wife Julie Andrews plays a character loosely reminiscent of her real-life self, an actress best known for her family-friendly saccharine musicals. Richard Mulligan is her husband, Felix Farmer, a producer who’s just made his first flop. (Reportedly, the story was inspired [...]