New Release Tuesday!!! (4/23/13)

I'm still giddy over last week's Django Unchained release, and I'm not quite done with the multiple exclusives I ridiculously purchased.  And I haven't even cracked open my Criterion Repo Man!  So, it's just a-okay, that this week offers very little in the way of Must-Buys.  We can use a break until the Summer starts cranking out the essential purchases.  However, there are still a couple of gems to take a look at this week.  A look into the Black & White past is your best bet, the newer releases are just fine but not necessarily demanded by your DVD shelf.

BUY!

Champion:  I'm a sucker for a good boxing movie.  And I'm as equally a sucker for these Olive Film blu ray releases.  China Gate, Johnny Guitar, Ramrod.  Classics & not-so-classics have never looked better.  I cannot attest to the genius of this film but Kirk Douglas bashing it out with various dopes in the ring while fending off the whims of Marilyn Maxwell - sounds like a good enough time to me.  The problem will come in how does one consume this picture?  The On Demand options aren't there yet, nor the Netflix route.  If you wanna see it you might find it on some Internet backchannels, but since I don't do that kinda thing, looks like I'm stuck with the Buy route.  See my future Weeks in Dork for the inevitable opinion.

RENT!

Gangster Squad:  All the way up to its release I had high hopes for Gangster Squad.  I love the period.  I loved Josh Brolin, the law enforcer.  I loved Ryan Gosling's squeaky voice.  And I loved Sean Penn's big block Dick Tracy head.  But the film never gels.  It's....ok.  The film starts off as Sin City mean, but loses its way with Emma Stone's moll, and Josh Brolin is never as beastily as he should be.  Not to mention, the digital photography looks like genuine ass.  Sure, you could do worse (see The Black Dahlia), but you're better off with flicks like LA Confidential and even Mulholland Falls.

Jurassic Park 3D:  Just weeks after the theatrical release, Jurassic Park hits your 3D tvs and maybe you care and maybe you don't.  My television is of the lowly 2D variety, so there is no sense in me picking up this disc.  However, I really enjoyed seeing Steven Speilberg's dino romp on the big screen despite its awkward barrage of floating lens flares, and I can see the appeal of darting from T-Rex's on the couch.  One of these days I'll make the plunge and Jurassic Park 3D will probably be one of my first purchases.

The Impossible:  No film made me cry harder last year than The Impossible.  An absolutely punishing film that grabs at all the right heartstrings.  It's not the type of movie that you watch over and over again, so I see no point to adding it to the collection.  But if you haven't seen it and you're in the mood for a good, life-affirming cry than pop it on your queue.  Not to mention it contains some of the best gore makeup I've seen in recent years.  Lots of hanging flesh bits.  Sounds fun, right?

Richard III:  This is one of my favorite works of Shakespeare, but I have never seen the Laurence Olivier version.  Ian McKellen has always been my favorite psycho king.  Now we get a fancy new blu ray upgrade from Criterion and purply new cover.  No more excuses, gotta check it out.  However, I don't like the new purply cover.  I like the Kingdom for a Horse and the mustard yellow background of the original disc.

--Brad

A Fistful of Dick Tracy Faces! (Brad's Picks)

Look at that mug!  Haven't seen the film yet, but I'm in awe of Sean Penn's Dick Tracy face rage exploding all over the Gangster Squad trailer.  I've never been his biggest fan.  I've dug flicks like Milk, U Turn, & Carlito's Way, but for the most part he's just not one of my go-to actors.  That being said, his hammer head performance in that very movie-movie Gangster Squad trailer is hypnotic.  I immediately want to drop him in a Dick Tracy remake, call him Flattop and watch him tommy gun his way through the cops of Chicago.  And his Mickey Cohen got me thinking of all the other great, beastly mugs in cinema.  What other character actors deserved the spotlight of Chester Gould's comic strip.

5.  Jason Clarke - I first noticed Mister Clarke's crazy looking mug in Paul W.S. Anderson's Death Race remake as he stomped to the hateful drum of Warden Joan Allen.  Looking straight on at the man, you see a slightly doughy face sharpened with a pair piercingly hateful eyes.  But it's the profile that truly makes Clarke's face a must pick for goons.  He's got this jutting chin that can assault your lead actor well before his fists make contact.  He's built for the head butt.  Clarke is starting to gain some waves with rolls in TV shows like Showtime's Brotherhood & ABC's The Chicago Code as well as bit parts in Lawless and Zero Dark Thirty - Now is the time for his Miller's Crossing.

4.  Jack Elam - A childhood staple.  I first encountered Jack Elam the Goof yucking it up with Burt Reynolds and Dom Deluise in Cannonball Run. He had those Marty Feldman eyes that swiveled on his noggin like the most untrustworthy of chameleons.  He could give you a cock-eyed glance that could produce coughing laughter, but if you watch his brutes in Westerns like Hannie Caulder & Once Upon A Time In The West, he represented an animalistic thug.  Funny looking, but pretty damn scary.  He played a lot of heavies, but he also never got that right Heavy - of The Untouchables variety.

3.  Jeff Kober - Here's a scary looking bastard.  One of my favorites.  He's stalked Lou Diamond Phillips' good guy cop in the Satanist thriller The First Power.  He's gotten drunk on milk & beaten the snot outta James Caan in Alien Nation.  And he's worn a plethora of latex masks for various incarnations of Star Trek.  He's got the stretchy, demonic grin of Willem Dafoe and a plank of wood forehead that rivals Christopher Walken.  Jeff Kober should have been in Warren Beaty's Dick Tracy.  He would have been a diabolical Cut Famon.

2.  Ron Perlman - Beautiful.  And at this point we all know it.  Ron Perlman got his Dick Tracy villain role in last year's Drive.  But that does not mean he should hang up the goon gloves.  In the last six months I've become obsessed with Sons of Anarchy.  Perlman might go down as the guy behind the latex (Beauty & The Beast and Hellboy have assured that) but the man is doing his best work right now  on a weekly basis with nothing more pancaked on his mug heavier than that damn charming grin.  But I gotta say, I'm really excited to see what he does with his small role in the upcoming Pacific Rim.  The few stills I've seen, promise some seriously glitzy slime.

1.  Rondo Hatton - You can't talk about Dick Tracy faces without ending the conversation on Rondo Hatton.  But as much as I enjoy flicks like The Brute Man and Sherlock Holmes & The Perl of Death, Hatton never really got that essential role to showcase his obviously unique visage.  The closest I got to the Ultimate Hatton Role is the heavily crafted homage in Disney's The Rocketeer, and we all just have to be satisfied with his tiny, small roles.  And photos like the one above.  Man.  That's a true Heavy.

--Brad

Trailer & Poster: Gangster Squad

We've got a new poster and trailer for Gangster Squad which is hitting the big screen early next year.  Still bummed that this got pushed to 2013.  Love the idea of Ryan Gosling & Josh Brolin bashing their way through the underworld of 1940s LA.



--Brad

Trailer: Gangster Squad

Oh yeah, I definitely dig this trailer for Gangster Squad even if one twitterer I saw was right in saying that Sean Penn's face looks like a Dick Tracy monstrosity.  This all looks like a very glitzy, punched up version of an imagined James Ellroy adaptation and I'm A-OK with that.  Plus, Brolin & Gosling.  Nice.



--Brad

Trailer: The Three Stooges...

The below Three Stooges movie makes me want to punch a baby.  It's so damn awful.  But it does seem to contain the type of humor found within those original Stooge episodes...which I thought were damn awful.  Never cared for the orginals and I sure as hell don't care about this new Farrellly Brothers atrocity.  But can you imagine if Benecio Del Toro and Sean Penn stuck with this project?  That might have been amazing.

Still, this is a film one was asking for.

--Brad

Sean Penn: Ho. Ly. Cr. Ap.

Go to Badass Digest for more info on this madness.

--Brad