And New Release Tuesday is back! With what is both a terrible and great day for releases. Yes. There are two essential purchases this week, but that's pretty much it. I could stretch this column out with a couple of lame rentals, but why bother? We all know that the only thing worth talking about today is Quentin Tarantino's Spaghetti Westernploitation (is that a redundancy? Not when you're dealing with QT). The real question is which exclusive disc are you going to buy? Target has a steelbook case with the 2012 Comic Con panel. Best Buy has a slip case with a bonus disc featuring Django Around The World. And Wal-Mart has the regular cover but with an extra disc featuring a Making Of doc. I went with the Wal-Mart.
MUST BUY DVD OF THE WEEK!
Django Unchained: My favorite film of 2012! A violent, angry flick that succeeds not thanks to the gallons of Karo syrup supplied by KNB, but the romantic heroes quest driving the narrative. This is an old school epic poem of a Western (or Southern as QT has dubbed it) and it's equally heartwarming as it is infuriating. Much love has been given to Christoph Waltz, Leonardo DiCaprio, and Samuel Jackson but Jaime Foxx does a bang up job as well. Look at that campfire storytelling sequence or that eyeball showdown with DiCaprio just before the hounds are unleashed. Tarantino brilliantly guides him from freed slave to badass blaxploitation hero, and when you hit that explosive climax you're on your feet cuz you've felt every punishing step. So yeah, it's awkward, painful, and bloody. But it all builds to an uplifting experience. Frankly, I can't believe I haven't done the On Demand thing yet, but I've also been eagerly anticipating the High Def glow. Looking at previews online, the HD shots are crackingly vibrant.
THE OTHER MUST BUY OF THE WEEK!
Repo Man (Criterion): I haven't seen this film in a good decade, maybe longer. Alex Cox's punk rock sci-fi follows two oddcouple repo men (Emilio Estevez & Harry Dean Stanton) who nab a car with the corpse of an alien in the trunk. Things get...weird. As you would expect from the man who dropped helicopters & Time Magazine into Walker's 19th Century Nicaragua. Having recently watched Criterion's Kiss Me Deadly, I'm excited to see how that iconic noir influenced this 80s monstrosity. And I'm simply stunned by Jay Shaw's cover art. Mondo recently released it as one of their prints and it, of course, sold out in seconds.
BUY!
Quentin Tarantino's Rolling Thunder Presents: I actually haven't seen The Mighty Peking Man, but I can attest that the other two films in this pack are excellent genre cinema. Switchblade Sisters is Jack Hill trashy and nowhere near as good as either Coffy or Foxy Brown, but it's fun enough. It follows a girl gang known as "The Dagger Debs" as they self destruct over men and knife fights. Detroit 9000, on the other hand, is actually a rather gripping crime story. Arthur Marks directed a bevy of Blaxploitation must-sees (Bucktown, Friday Foster, JDs Revenge, The Monkey Hustle), but Detroit 9000 is his finest effort. When $400,000 is stolen from a political fundraiser, Detectives Alex Rocco (The Godfather) & Hari Rhodes (Shock Corridor) team-up to take down the thugs involved. It's a straight up, Elmore Leonard kinda crime film. Two guys bickering their way through the investigation, where the dialog is as exciting as the gun play. Well worth the $10 price tag.
--Brad
No comments:
Post a Comment