Digital downloads and the classic movie collector – exploring Vudu

Vudu is an online movie streaming and download service now owned by Walmart.  It's one of several vendors connected with the UltraViolet initiative being touted by the major studios.  The service offers rentals of movies for anywhere from $2 to $5 and downloads you can "own" for $10 to $20.  The service is available on …

An easter egg on a region b blu-ray

I happened to pick up a copy of the Eureka! Masters of Cinema release of Frank Tashlin's "Will Success Spoil Rock Hunter?".  The disc is Region B (Europe) encoded - when you put it in a US player, this screen comes up (click for a larger version):     Hmm... it seems they're not too …

Password (1960s)

One of the hidden pleasures that result from a crappy economic situation is the close-out store. I've made a habit of making regular visits to my local Big Lots, a store specializing in close-outs from major manufacturers.  No one had to tell me that the market for dvds was collapsing - I could see it …

Watchmen – Director’s Cut (2009)

I have a friend who is an unashamed comic book geek, a fanatic about Transformers.  It's fascinating to spend a dinner with him and some of his comic geek friends as they go into arguments and details about the finer points of obscure characters and plots in comic book and superhero tv shows.  It's a …

Estigmas (aka Stigmata) (2009)

When you think of religious pictures, cheesy American epics might come to mind - The Ten Commandments, King of Kings - but filmmakers have explored faith through films as diverse as Monty Python's Life of Brian or Scorsese's Last Temptation of Christ. Estigmas (aka Stigmata) is one of those small, character driven movies that looks …

Boom! (1968)

If you've read or heard anything at all about atrocious movies, Boom! is the stuff of legend. I recently had an opportunity to screen a UK released PAL disc of this fascinating mess to a group of friends in my home theater.  One saw it in a theater during it's original release and recalled sitting …

The Killers (1964)

Who would think that a little tv movie could be revolutionary and ahead of its time? NBC was having quite a bit of ratings success with a movie package they licensed from 20th Century Fox in the early 1960s.  Seeing top rate movies on network television was something fairly new at the time - before …

Mambo (1956)

Robert Rossen, award-winning director of All the King's Men (1949) and The Hustler (1961), after finding his professional life upturned by HUAC, returned to filmmaking in 1955 with Mambo (1956).  He hoped to capitalize on the mambo craze sweeping the country with an inexpensive little drama.  The reviews weren't good at the time, but contemporary …

Funny Farm (1988)

The 1980s, in my opinion at least, was the last great heyday of the studio "programmer" - modestly budgeted little movies with modest ambitions featuring big stars in roles that didn't challenge them too much. Before cable television really took off as a venue for original "movies of the week" and studio budgets ballooned to …

The Big Trail (1930)

Seventy millimeter and widescreen in 1930? Although we associate the birth of widescreen movies with the 1950s, studios, seeing lines around the block for their early sound films, thought that widescreen movies might just be the next big thing. There were several experiments with wide gauge films going all the way back to Edison and …