:: theLogBook.com DVD Reviews ::

Ed Wood has had a long, strange trip to the digital promised land of DVD. To begin the journey, we need to look at the early days of the DVD revolution and a strange little offshoot known as DIVX. For those of you who don’t know what DIVX was, it was a format created by Circuit City that utilized specially coded discs that only played for two days after first being run in their DIVX-enabled DVD players. Since the price of these discs was set at about $4, it was intended to be a replacement for video rentals. Customers who wished to continue to watch the movie after the viewing period had ended could “purchase” the movie by paying an additional $20 and unlocking the movie for long-term play. The special nature of these discs not only allowed Circuit City to control how long they could be watched, but on which machines, since it they would only work indefinitely on the machines in which they were unlocked. It also provided protection against copying (to this day, no one has broken the DIVX format. Of course, who knows if anyone is trying?).

The practical upshot of this was that many studios that were skeptical about the DVD format (strange to think of that attitude today) chose to release their movies on DIVX. One of these studios was Disney. One of the films they released was Ed Wood. (more…)

Masterful yet flamboyant gentleman thief Arsene Lupin III and his accomplice Jigen rob a European casino. But when Lupin discovers that he’s only gotten counterfeit bills, or “goat bills”, he decides to go after the source in the tiny country of Cagliostro. When he discovers a mysterious ring and the forced marriage of Lady Clarisse and Count Cagliostro, the mastermind behind the counterfeiting operation, Lupin and his compadres manage to put a stop the to the evil count and his plans, and end up revealing a hidden treasure. (more…)

Containing both the original Doctor Who And The Daleks movie and its sequel, Daleks: Invasion Earth 2150 A.D., as well as a bonus DVD with the interesting Kevin Davies documentary Dalekmania, Anchor Bay’s Doctor Who DVD box set is a nice little budget-friendly way to get the whole Peter Cushing-as-Doctor Who experience in one place. My comments on the DVD of the original movie have been recorded elsewhere, so I’ll focus on the other two discs here. (more…)

Ahhh, Cube. I reviewed Cube in our Movie Review section after seeing it on the Sci-Fi Channel in late 1998, and never has a single article on this web site brought about so much hate mail. You wouldn’t believe it. I will agree with Cube’s apparently quite loyal legion of fans that it’s an artistic triumph, but where I’ll disagree is in whether or not one of those arts in which it triumphs is storytelling. Fortunately, the DVD helps to clarify some of the issues that have made be so ambivalent about this movie for so long. For those of you who filled my e-mail box with blistering, profanity-laden missives, I think there was a fundamental misunderstanding - I really did like a lot of things about Cube, especially from a production and design standpoint. I thought the acting was generally very good. I just had a bit of a problem not so much with the downbeat ending, but the throwaway explanation that we can chalk it all up to “boundless human stupidity.” (more…)

What a long, weird road these movies have had. Originally released in Britain in 1965, Doctor Who And The Daleks is a lightweight retelling of the first appearance of the dreaded Daleks in the BBC’s most famous SF series. The movie, since it revamps the show’s mythology a little bit (making the Doctor not a Time Lord but an absent-minded human scientist, though it’s important to remind ourselves that even by BBC-TV standards, the Doctor wasn’t a Time Lord until 1969, and wasn’t noticeably non-human until 1966). And out of necessity, it also rehashes some of the ground covered in the first episode as well. Cushing is about as different from William Hartnell’s Doctor as any of Hartnell’s TV successors were, but Cushing - most often identified with Hammer horror flicks and Grand Moff Tarkin - brings his own unique charm to the role. (more…)

Not exactly feature-heavy, the DVD release of Mark Pellington’s dark, post-McVeigh psychodrama provides a lot of insights with its audio commentary. Pellington and star Jeff Bridges comment throughout the movie on its strengths, its weaknesses, and what they wanted to do here and there. They both heap - justly - much praise upon Tim Robbins, whose stone cold conspirator-next-door portrayal anchors the movie while Bridges goes, ever so slowly, off the deep end.

And in the course of listening to the commentary, I gradually come to think to myself, “Here are two guys who are probably never going to make a movie together again.” (more…)

I can’t, in all honesty, claim that I’ve examined every feature this DVD has to offer, but I’m reviewing it anyway. And what’s stopped me?

Jodie Foster told me not to.

No, really. Let me explain. I started out listening to Foster’s audio commentary track, one of a grand total of three such alternate audio tracks available while watching Contact. And mere seconds, maybe a whole minute, into the movie - during that pullback that spans the entire universe - Ms. Foster says “I’m not sure how they did this. If you want to know about that, go listen to the special effects guys. Now.”

Well, who am I to argue with Jodie Foster? (more…)

I’ve already raved ad nauseum about the movie, but now it’s time to heap praise - well, mostly praise - upon the long overdue DVD release of The Black Hole.

This is one of those movies that begs to be seen in widescreen, and Anchor Bay, those saviors of Disney’s original troika of non-G-rated films, released a remastered edition of The Black Hole on VHS and DVD. And the package is, minus any commentaries or an isolated score track, almost perfect. (more…)

While this is far from the most feature-packed of DVDs, the excellence of the movie itself and the quality of those features that are included make it well worth owning. The DVD includes two commentaries - one by director Ron Howard, one by Jim and Marilyn Lovell - plus a documentary (”Lost Moon: The Triumph Of Apollo 13″) and the entire film score as the background music to the Menu screen. The commentaries are enlightening, especially to those who want to know more about where things in the movie don’t quite match up with historical fact; both Howard and the Lovells are open and detailed about those changes and provide some nice background information. Marilyn Lovell doesn’t talk much, but what she does say gives a little insight into what it’s like to have actors come into your life and prepare to portray you to an audience of millions, which is something just as valuable as Jim’s historical factchecking. (I love the movie, but this is an invaluable resource to have on the DVD - as good a job as the filmmakers did in bringing the Apollo era to life, they did play fast and loose with some facts. That’s regrettable, but at least they take the opportunity to clear up the record somewhat.) (more…)

To the best of my recollection, this was 20th Century Fox’s first foray into the world of DVD, and the first time a double-disc set was devoted to a single movie. And what better movie than James Cameron’s epic, oft-misunderstood The Abyss? I’ve always liked that film’s feel, its characters, the cast, the sets, the music, and just the total atmosphere that is the sum of all of those elements. Sure, by the time Cameron reaches the point at which he delivers his anti-war message, it’s brought home to the viewer with the quiet, delicate touch of a jackhammer at a Manhattan construction site, but if you’ve made it that far into the movie, chances are you’ll be too engrossed in other things to be put off by the oversimplification of the sermon. And hey, it’s still more eloquent than “All these worlds are yours, except Europa…” (more…)