In this week’s Blu-ray releases, Drew Barrymore saves the whales, Jason Segel gets stoned, and Madonna tries to rule the world. In other words, it’s just another average Tuesday.
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The biggest miracle about ‘Big Miracle‘ is that the film somehow scored a theatrical release despite so obviously being a TV movie-of-the-week. Aside from Drew Barrymore, the rest of the cast (John Krasinski, Ted Danson, Stephen Root, Kristen Bell) are all TV stars slumming between seasons or between shows. Even director Ken Kwapis is on loan from ‘The Office’. I suppose that kids like whales, or something. If you’ve run out of ‘Free Willy’ sequels to keep your little tykes entertained, I suppose you could do worse than this.
In ‘Wanderlust‘, Paul Rudd and Jennifer Aniston get stuck in a commune full of dirty hippies. Are hippies even really still a thing anymore? Haven’t they all died out by now? I feel like this script was written twenty years ago. Anyway, the movie comes from a lot of the crew behind the old sketch comedy series ‘The State’ and the not-as-funny-as-its-reputation summer camp spoof ‘Wet Hot American Summer’. Aaron and Luke both thought it was pretty decent.
Jason Segel plays a stoner (what a stretch, right?) in the latest indie dramedy from the Duplass brothers, ‘Jeff, Who Lives at Home‘. Ed Helms nicely plays against type as Segel’s total prick of a brother. I saw this at the Toronto Film Festival last year and was pretty underwhelmed by it. Aaron liked it a lot better than I did.
Pitched as ‘The Hangover’ for teens (like that’s a great idea!), ‘Project X‘ is that movie from earlier this year with the incredibly vague ads that had something to do with a house party that gets out of control. According to every single person over the age of 16 who saw it, the movie’s an astoundingly awful piece of crap. The target audience (who were too young to even see it legally) of course at this shit right up, to the tune of a $50 million profit on a budget of about 8 bucks and change. What I want to know is, where the hell are Matthew Broderick and the chimps??
In a post-apocalyptic dystopia, rival gangs vie for supremacy by facing off in ‘Dance Dance Revolution’ competitions – to the death! That sounds kind of awesome, doesn’t it? Sadly, ‘The FP‘ is a one-joke gimmick with terrible acting and even worse production values.
Catalog Titles
This week, Disney dusts off a couple of its biggest flop musicals from the ’90s and tries to pretend that they’re beloved classics. First we have a 15th Anniversary Edition of ‘Evita‘, which may well be the best movie Madonna has ever made, but that’s of course not saying much. This adaptation of the mega-hit stage show was a critical and commercial dud. Improbably, ‘Newsies‘ had just the opposite journey. This notorious movie bomb was recently revived as a hit Broadway show. It’s a strange world we live in, isn’t it? Now you can relive the awfulness of Christian Bale’s singing with a 20th Anniversary Edition Blu-ray.
Until now, fans of the ‘Blade‘ franchise had to settle for some middling-quality Blu-rays from Canada. Finally, New Line has rolled out American Blu-ray editions of ‘Blade’ and ‘Blade: Trinity’, but oddly has omitted Guillermo del Toro’s ‘Blade II’, which is the only halfway decent entry in the bunch. [Looks like these have been delayed, sorry.]
Who knew there were so many movies called ‘Project X‘ that don’t feature Matthew Broderick or chimpanzees? The 1968 version is a sci-fi thriller about a cryogenically frozen spy from famous schlock-meister William Castle. The gimmick in this one (Castle loved his gimmicks) is that the action scenes were all animated by Hanna-Barbera. So, literally, a live-action scene with real actors will cut to a clip from ‘Jonny Quest’. Weird.
Criterion Collection
Criterion celebrates the late monologist Spalding Gray this week with director Steven Soderberg’s 1996 film version of ‘Gray’s Anatomy‘ as well as Soderbergh’s recent documentary about the man, called ‘And Everything Is Going Fine‘. I was fortunate enough to see Gray in one of his last plays in the late ’90s. He was truly a unique talent.
Television
Two of the FX network’s raunchy comedies, ‘Louie‘ and ‘Wilfred‘, make their way to Blu-ray this week. I’m not sure that either show has production values that require high definition to be enjoyed, but it’s nice to see that TV product isn’t completely dead on the format yet. Having watched the entire first season of ‘Wilfred’, I’m still undecided if that show is actually funny, or just weird.
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My wish list for this week is pretty short – just the two Criterion titles. Tell us in the poll and in the Comments about which discs have caught your interest.
HuskerGuy
Nothing for me this week.
EM
I’ll seek out the 1968 Project X for a rental. I’ve never seen it and never heard of it outside of a William Castle filmography. Castle’s gimmick-era B-movies tend to be schlocky but they’re usually entertaining—I consider The Tingler and Strait-Jacket to be classics. In a way, it’s disappointing that he produced Rosemary’s Baby; legitimacy somehow tarnishes the legacy of his career. (Castle was enough of a Hitchcock and Psycho fan that he would probably appreciate having respectability called disrespectable…)
Barsoom Bob
If you like blues inflected Rock and Roll, get The Raconteurs Live at Montreux. A little more pop than normal Jack White, but that is a good thing in this case. He is one of the most unique, original guys we have going right now in REAL music and is especialy good live.
William Henley
Sister Act (could care less about the second one, but its a double-disc set), and planing to blind-buy Evita.
Drew
Correction: No new ‘Blade’ blu-rays are being released this week. They should be removed from the list.
motorheadache
Not sure what happened. I got both from Fry’s on friday, and some people got them from Amazon before it was pulled. Very strange– I assume Warner decided to postpone the release to July 10th so all three films would be released together, but copies got out anyway at some places.
And just to throw it out there, I disagree with Zyber’s take on the series. I love the first Blade, I thought Blade II was okay, and Blade: Trinity was pretty meh. Bought it anyway because it was the trilogy closer and it was essentially 3 dollars if discounting the $5 off a ticket to the new Batman flick.
Drew
You’re exactly right. Warner says they have been postponed indefinitely, but they will probably be released on the same date. Amazon never even had them for sale. I even called them to confirm this.
Drew
…Just spoke with a Warner rep. All three films will be released on July 10. And all three will contain movie cash for ‘The Dark Knight Rises’. Zyber needs to remove these from the list. They won’t be available for another 3 weeks.
Josh Zyber
AuthorFixed, thanks. Sorry for the delay, but I was away from a computer for much of the day today.
Aaron Peck
Actually saw these for sale at my local FYE today. Looks like they all didn’t get pulled as of yet.
Josh Zyber
AuthorI intially forgot to include poll options for “Nothing” and “Other.” Those have been added today.
Nate Boss
the mess with the blade series should tell studios something: RELEASE TRILOGY BOX SETS alongside standalone versions, and make them come out on the same damn DATE. yeesh. i got 1 and 3 today, 10 bucks each, score.
for those curious, the echo bridge 7/17 wave is out in worst buy stores this week, also. some interesting fan favorites in there, and a few former duo-pack titles now getting standalones.