The weekend’s here. You’ve just been paid, and it’s burning a hole in your pocket. What’s a pop culture geek to do? In hopes of steering you in the right direction to blow some of that hard-earned cash, it’s time for the Quick Stop Weekend Shopping Guide – your spotlight on the things you didn’t even know you wanted…
If you were to plunk down your heard-earned cash on just one tome this weekend, the only patriotic thing to do is try everything in your power to secure one of the sure-to-be-scarce copies of Stephen Colbert’s I Am America (And So Can You!) (Grand Central Publishing, $26.99 SRP). Winner of the prestigious “Stephen T. Colbert Award For The Literary Excellence”, the book more than lives up to that impressive award, with all of the insight, humor, and pathos we’ve come to expect from Colbert and his no legendary Colbert Report.
Everybody Hates Chris (Paramount, Not Rated, DVD-$38.99 SRP) continues to be a little gem of a sitcom that more people should be watching. The ensemble is top-notch, and the writing is even stronger in its second season than the already-snazzy first. The 4-disc set features all 22 episodes – unfortunately, this go-round the fun, free-wheeling commentaries are missing, but at least you get 8 behind-the-scenes featurettes, plus a gag reel.
Seuss fans will delight in The Annotated Cat: Under The Hats Of Seuss And His Cats (Random House, $30.00). As the title suggests, it’s an in-depth look at the most iconic and popular of the good doctor’s creations. While you’re at it, also make sure to pick up the 50th anniversary retrospective edition of How The Grinch Stole Christmas (Random House, $24.99 SRP, with 32 pages of bonus archival material and commentary.
If that weren’t enough Seuss for you, be sure to pick up the recently revised and spruced up editions of classic tales like Yertle The Turtle and Other Stories, If I Ran The Zoo, And To Think That I Saw It On Mulberry Street, The Lorax, Horton Hears A Who, and One Fish Two Fish Red Fish Blue Fish (Random House, $14.95 SRP each).
It’s a great shame that the US version of Aardman Animation’s wonderful claymation comedy, Creature Comforts America (Sony, Not Rated, DVD-$29.95 SRP), didn’t seem to catch on. Utilizing actual interviews with ordinary people and then animating them as various creatures of the animal kingdom, it retains the same sly wittiness of the UK version, and I hope people snap up the complete first season on DVD, which features additional episodes, live action videos, deleted/alternate scenes, and more.
It seemed like only yesterday that the first Film Crew release – reuniting MST3K‘s Mike Nelson, Kevin Murphy, & Bill Corbett – was released. Now we’re already to the fourth and final flick that the trio produced – at least until more are commissioned – The Giant of Marathon (Shout! Factory, Not Rated, DVD-$19.99 SRP). They go out in style with a “classic” Steve Reeves sword and sandals epic, with bonus features including “An Apology From Mike Nelson” and selected scene commentary from Walter S. Ferguson.
Hot on the heels of their success with Planet Earth, the BBC has gone back and revisited their previous wildlife epic Blue Planet (BBC, Not Rated, DVD-$59.98 SRP) with a 5-disc collection featuring a bonus disc of brand-new material. For all intents and purposes, the bonus material is like having four additional programs in the series, focusing on the Amazon, a shark-infested underwater volcano, a winter estuary, and the desolation of Antarctica.
I remember the second season of Family Ties (Paramount, Not Rated, DVD-$38.99 SRP) as the one where everything clicked and the show really took off. Michael J. Fox’s Alex P. Keaton became more than just a conservative kid in a hippie family gag, and the writing became consistently funny. See for yourself with the 4-disc set, featuring all 22 episodes, plus a making-of featurette, an interview with Fox, and a featurette entitled “The Year Of The Beard”.
Twomorrows notches up another great entry in their fantastic Modern Masters series of in-depth artists profiles, this time turning the spotlight on Jerry Ordway (Twomorrows, $14.95 SRP). Featuring an in-depth interview and copious amounts of rare artwork (including a color section), this belongs on your shelf (alongside all the other must-have volumes in this series).
For the longest time – due to the well-known controversy over the on-set accident during the filming of John Landis’s segment of the film – it seemed that we’d never get a nice DVD edition of Twilight Zone: The Movie (Warner Bros., Rated PG, DVD-$19.97 SRP). And, honestly, we haven’t. We’ve got the theatrical trailer, but no other bonus features to speak of. Still, the film is presented via a brand-new transfer that beats anything I’ve seen on cable, so I suppose we should be grateful that we’ve got that, at least.
Even though I’ll never forgive Joseph Campbell and his treatises on myths for making a supreme prick out of George Lucas, I still find his lecture tours – collected in the 2-disc set Joseph Campbell: Mythos I (Acorn Media, Not Rated, DVD-$39.99 SRP) – to be fascinating explorations of the power of storytelling conventions.
If you’re eager to get the BBC’s recent, wretched new take on Robin Hood out of your mouth, start with Robin of Sherwood (Acorn Media, Not Rated, DVD-$59.99 SRP) – the second set of which is now available. Essentially, it’s the tale of Robert of Huntingdon, who assumes the mantle of the fallen Robin of Loxley and puts the merry band back together to take down the still malevolent Sheriff of Nottingham. The second set features the final 13 episodes of the series, plus audio commentaries, a pair of retrospective documentaries, behind-the-scenes footage, outtakes, and more.
Just last week, I praised the space-related output of Apogee Books, and I’m happy to continue to do so. I’m an avowed space geek, so I dove right into Astronautics: Book 2 – To The Moon And Towards The Future (Apogee Books, $24.95 SRP). Author Ted Spitzmiller gives an engrossing blow-by-blow account of mankind’s efforts to reach the stars, and I suggest you snag both this and volume 1, Dawn Of The Space Age.
If only for the new transfer, the 25th anniversary edition of Poltergeist (Warner Bros., Rated PG, DVD-$19.98 SRP) is worth picking up. Sadly, the bonus documentary is paranormal bullshit – the title “They Are Here: The Real World of Poltergeists” should be indication enough that this is the kind of crap that would find a nice programming slot on the Sci-Fi Channel.
The Halloween season is full of all kinds of stories about ghosts and vampires and witches and more, but I prefer the History Channel’s Haunted Histories Collection (History Channel, Not Rated, DVD-$24.95 SRP), a set of 5 programs that give the historical background behind the tales of things that go bump in the night (and Halloween itself).
Speaking of Halloween, the spooktacular (yeah, I just used that) themed issues of Uncle Scrooge & Walt Disney’s Comics & Stories – issues #370 & #685, respectively (Gemstone, $7.99 SRP) – are available now, and are both pretty spiffy reads.
Gary Sinise & co. return in the third season of CSI: New York (Paramount, Not Rated, DVD-$64.99 SRP), which once again proves that CSI: Poughkeepsie is inevitable. The 6-disc set features all 24 episodes, plus a quartet of audio commentaries and featurettes.
Many times while watching Evan Almighty (Universal, Rated PG, DVD-$29.98 SRP), I wondered if someone had gathered up the jokes two by two and shuffled them off to some other flick. Hoping to capitalize on the success of Steve Carell and keep some kind of franchise alive after the departure of Jim Carrey, this bloated, middling spin-off of Carell’s Evan character – cast here as a reluctant Noah by a for-the-paycheck God (Morgan Freeman) – is just painful. Bonus features include deleted scenes, outtakes, featurettes, and more.
If you fancy a hearty laugh at the expense of a bunch of dead-serious kooks, try the supernatural buffoonery that is Britain’s Most Haunted (Koch Vision, Not Rated, DVD-$59.98 SRP), as a team of paranormal investigators – and a nutty “spiritual medium” named Derek Acorah – journey around to spend 24 hours in spirit-infested locations. The 6-disc set features 20 episodes, plus behind-the-scenes featurettes and an extended walkthrough of a location. It’s stuff like this that makes me love Derren Brown all the more.
So there you have it… my humble suggestions for what to watch, listen to, play with, or waste money on this coming weekend. See ya next week…
-Ken Plume
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