Best Blu-Rays of 2010

After acquiring my Playstation 3 last summer, I’ve gone mad with Blu-Ray fever, and I spent most of 2010 attempting to make my Blu-Ray collection resemble the massive and unnecessary scale of my DVD stash. Though I do not have a multi-region player and thus this list will include only Regions A and 0 discs, I stand by my year-end picks of the most essential discs for a cinephile’s collection. Not all will give your home theater a workout, but most will, and they all demonstrate the capacity of the medium to not only give the best possible image but to retain film-like quality like never before. So, without further ado, here are the Blu-Rays, and a handful of DVDs, you need to own.

Best Blu-Rays of 2010

1. By Brakhage, Vols. I & II (Criterion)

A collection of a master’s work that displays its greatness as much by the caliber of material left off the set as the genius of the included short films, By Brakhage is a necessary and infinitely rewarding trove of experimental cinema. Criterion have always erred on the side of preservation of a film’s look over completely smoothing grain, but they’ve managed to upgrade the technical specs of Stan Brakhage’s work while doing nothing to compromise the original image. Grain is omnipresent, because Brakhage incorporated it into his visual freak-outs (some of the shorts left off the set were omitted because Brakhage designed them with the flicker of a proper film projector in mind). Complete with footage of Brakhage’s lectures and interviews and a massive booklet, By Brakhage is a masterpiece right down to the cover art.

2. City Girl/Sunrise (Masters of Cinema)

It’s understandable that the otherwise laudable Kino and Criterion would insist on region-coding now that UK’s Eureka! label have gotten in on the Blu-Ray game: their pledge to release region-free BDs could cause trouble when Americans get a full view of the quality of their products. To date, their finest offerings are two restorations of F.W. Murnau classics. City Girl may not be on the same level as Sunrise (one of the 10 best films ever made), but the restoration Eureka! did for it manages to outstrip even that of Sunrise. A film made In 1931 has no business looking this pristine, and the near-total lack of the heavy damage expected in films this old distracted me from how great the film itself is, and how much it influenced masters like Terrence Malick. As for Murnau’s masterpiece, it shows its age more but still looks fantastic, and the alternate version unearthed looks even nicer. It also comes with a documentary on 4 Devils, Muranu’s legendary lost film, making these two must-owns for any cinephile.

3. The Night of the Hunter (Criterion)

Criterion’s work on Charles Laughton’s fairy tale/horror The Night of the Hunter leaps over the high bar the distributor has already set for itself, turns around, raise the bar higher, then jumps over it again. Certain flaws inherent in the print remain, but the grain is pleasantly balanced when it appears, and the film never suffers for its shifts between cleaner studio shots and hazier location shoots. As impressive is the home video debut of the 2002 documentary comprising a trove of outtake footage Laughton’s widow released after his death. The two-and-a-half-hour behind-the-scenes doc shows just how meticulously and forcefully the director planned each moment, even berating the child actors to make them convincing in their scenes of terror and despair (or maybe he just hated them; Robert Mitchum himself attested to the latter). The Night of the Hunter is one of the most lyrical, multifaceted movies ever made, and Criterion gave it the treatment it well deserved.

4. Apocalypse Now: Full Disclosure Edition (Lionsgate)

Presented in its definitive packaging, the Full Disclosure Edition of Apocalypse Now contains so many extras that it’s almost easy to ignore the film itself. Then you watch it (and, just as importantly, listen to it), and the stuffed-to-the-gills set takes a back seat to the enduring audiovisual might of Coppola’s schizoid triumph. A sterling video transfer and flawless update of the pioneering surround sound track make Apocalypse Now not only a film that should be a go-to on its cinematic quality but as a means of showing off a home theater. They don’t make ’em like this anymore, and that’s probably a good thing for the mental and physical health of every director working today.

5. Beauty and the Beast (Disney)

Disney’s work with their films has been nothing less than exemplary, and I nearly flipped a coin to decide between this and their restoration of Walt Disney’s still-ahead-of-its-time, genre-annihilating Fantasia. But the Beast won out, not only for the slight edge it offers it audiovisual upgrade but for the host of extras it offers. Commentary tracks, a making-of twice as long as the actual film, remastered deleted scenes, a host of ported DVD extras and more add to the immaculate restoration of one of Disney’s finest films, making the complexities of the love story between Belle and a transformed prince all the more engaging. The best Disney movies have the ability to take your breath away, and however much of an imperial sub-power they’ve become, someone over there still recognizes that and has put all effort into ensuring the presentations of those films leave us breathless, too.

6. The Thin Red Line (Criterion)

Far and away the best audiovisual presentation of the year, and certainly a contender for one of the most impressive in home video history, Criterion’s Blu-Ray of The Thin Red Line took one of the most beautiful films ever made and somehow makes it look even better. Fans sent rumors into a whirlwind over the possibility of the original, five-hour workprint version being included, but the scant outtakes that are included are a joy, containing elongated shots of Terrence Malick’s sensual transcendentalism and even the faces of cut actors like Mickey Rourke. Yet the caliber of the extras only seems the cherry on top as I continue to marvel over the sheer perfection of the film’s high-definition mastering. The Thin Red Line is one of the great war films, one that manages to avoid glorifying war while still being enthralling, and the Blu-Ray perfectly captures its power.

7. The Double Life of Veronique (Artificial Eye)

With Criterion’s own update on the way in February, I shall be interested to see if they can produce a finer transfer than the sterling one offered by Artificial Eye’s region-free disc. Containing most of the extras included in Criterion’s DVD release – the highlight of which are short films by Kieslowski – the Artificial Eye Blu-Ray proves its own mettle with a stunning transfer that restores, then bolsters, the original cinematography to its transfixing, green-yellow glory. Kieslowski was a sensualist poet, treading in metaphysics but only ever putting emotion on the screen in a way that only the finest modern directors – Malick, Kar-wai, Kiarostami – can manage. The Double Life of Veronique is possibly the best starting point for Kieslowski’s

8. Minority Report (Paramount)

Steven Spielberg was an early supporter of Blu-Ray and refused to let his films appear on what he felt was the inferior HD-DVD, but since Paramount initially had HD-DVD exclusivity, we had to make do with the (excellent) Close Encounters of the Third Kind set until Spielberg could get to work on remastering his modern films for Blu-Ray release. The wait was worth it. All of Spielberg’s Dreamworks releases this year — Minority Report, War of the Worlds and Saving Private Ryan — Minority Report benefits the most from the upgrade (besides, it’s my favorite of the three listed). The sterile, hyper-white tones of deceptively utopian society are blinding, while the more chaotic look of the film’s dynamic scenes is immaculately preserved while still looking gritty. Spielberg avoids commentary tracks (a crying shame, since he’d probably be brilliant at them), but there are enough behind-the-scenes mini-documentaries to satisfy all your pressing questions. The bounty of extras pushes a superb offering over the top, and one of Spielberg’s finest films has never looked better.

9. The Twilight Zone: Season 1 (Image Entertainment)

Rod Serling was a few decades ahead of his time when he took the budding television medium to an early zenith with The Twilight Zone. Dismissed in its own time by those who could not process the numerous commentaries on ’50s social and political life — a particularly risible interview at the time had Mike Wallace asking Serling, “For the time being and for the foreseeable future, you’ve given up on writing anything important for television, right?” — The Twilight Zone is today rightly heralded as a masterpiece of programming. Image Entertainment has set out to honor the show’s legacy, and they’ve succeeded beyond doubt with this set. The remastered A/V quality astounds for a 50-year-old series recorded on old T.V stock, but the extras, oh Lord, the extras. The only reason this is just in ninth place is because I haven’t yet had the time to go through them all. Commentaries of 19 of the season’s 36 episodes, the unaired pilot, the unaired unofficial pilot, interviews, radio dramas inspired by the series, lectures by Serling at Sherwood Oaks College. It is an absurdly bountiful package, and I assume the same is true of the recently released second season, which I have not yet bought. The show is a seminal piece of pop culture history, it now looks as if it had just been made, and the extras are voluminous and (at least of the ones I’ve gone through so far) highly rewarding. What more must you know?

10. The White Ribbon (Sony)

A personal choice, perhaps, but I continue to be struck by the perfection of Sony’s transfer of The White Ribbon, one of the most gorgeous films in years. Unlike the other choices on this list, all of which came out before I was born or when I was too young to go see them in a theater or at least retain the experience, I had the luxury of catching The White Ribbon in theaters. Take it from me: the Blu-Ray puts the film on the small-screen without error, completely capturing the texture of its old-school film. Extras may be on the slim side, but this is a film that should seep into your mind without the director standing five feet away informing you of the themes as soon as you finish. For all its beauty, this is not an easy film to watch, but Sony have made things as gentle on your eyes as possible, so give this haunting allegory for the rise of Nazism if you have the fortitude to stand it.

Best DVD-only releases:

Rossellini War Trilogy (Criterion)

Roberto Rossellini’s War Trilogy truly changed the face of film forever, exploding Italy’s nascent neorealist scene into international acclaim. Viewed today, the film that started it all (Rome, Open City) looks remarkably melodramatic, but its spiritual sequels — Paisan and Germany Year Zero are uncompromising and scathingly political in a country that would probably best be served by just keeping quiet and saying only “Thank you, sir, may I have another?” to anyone that paid them attention. Criterion gives these films strong transfers despite the limitations of the grainy, cheap stock used to record them, elegantly preserving some of the most important movies of all time.

The Larry Sanders Show: The Complete Series (Shout! Factory)

While Seinfeld may deservedly command reverence among comedy acolytes for its depiction of “a show about nothing,” for my money it will always live in the shadow of Garry Shandling, whose metacomedic It’s Garry Shandling’s Show subverted conventions far more than a lackadaisically plotted tour of Manhattan. But Shandling’s greatest achievement was a six-season sitcom on HBO that received copious praise but little in the way of commercial attention. Based on the fallout from the Tonight Show handover — with which Shandling, considered to take Letterman’s vacant spot at Late Night when Dave jumped to CBS — The Larry Sanders Show peeled back the veneer of late night, exposing the greasy sheen and phony interest that Johnny Carson could make genuine and inviting but everyone else could not contain. I had previously been acquainted with the show by its first season the only one released by Sony all the way back in 2002, and I was struck immediately by its pitch-black tone of voice, a relentless discomfort that would go on to influence most of the best comedy of the new millennium (Ricky Gervais and Stephen Merchant cited it as a major influence for The Office). Having just gotten it for Christmas, I’ve only just started to work through the other seasons, but taking that and the abysmal video quality of the low-budget show into account, I feel no qualms calling this essential. I’ve heard that the show maintained its quality throughout, but even a dip couldn’t kill the power of its early seasons. A buried classic is finally unearthed.

Best Music DVD:

The Promise: The Darkness on the Edge of Town Story

Bruce Springsteen intended to give 30th anniversary reissues to his classic albums – which is a redundancy on my part, as they’re all classics – but he never made it to the second reissue without problems. Two years late, the anniversary edition of Darkness on the Edge of Town makes up for the setback by blowing the impressive Born to Run package out of the water. The box set offers a remastered album and a two-CD set of songs that were left off the meticulously planned final cut of Darkness — and these 21 songs are but a fraction of the nearly 70 Springsteen wrote during the legal duress that kept him from recording after Born to Run, some of which would make his release The River while others remain in the vaults or nothing more than notebook scribblings. But the three DVDs are the chief draw. One features a making-of documentary for the album with background info on the legal troubles and a self-critical eye toward the writing and recording of ten perfectly chosen songs. The second disc features the album played in its entirety last year, while the third unloads a previously unseen film of one of the Boss’ legendary Darkness tour shows in Houston. While I wish he’d remastered the Dec. 20 show in Seattle, a bootleg I hold so dear I would actually trade the memory of concerts I’ve attended just for high-quality audio of this performance, I think it’s admirable Springsteen would acknowledge the efforts of bootleggers to put out material from that tour and give them something new. Bruce Springsteen is simply the most dynamic white man to perform rock ‘n roll, and he never topped the energy and force of his ’78 tour. To have an official release finally documented it is a joy, and the other five discs included – to say nothing of the impressive packaging – are delightful extras compared to it.

– Jake Cole is a journalism student at Auburn University, where he regularly avoids people in favor of writing about film, television and music on his blog, Not Just Movies. Where he gets the nerve (or the money) to get and review all these Blu-Rays is anyone’s guess. After all, he’s too fat to be a thief. The mystery continues.

Scott Pilgrim Vs. The World

The biggest and most pleasurable surprise I have had at the multiplex this year is the astonishing crop of unique, stylistic and transgressive romantic comedies to hit theaters. Iranian filmmaker Abbas Kiarostami’s France-set Certified Copy used his typically metafictional approach to undermine the entire genre even as he tapped into the core of pain and anxiety that propels the conflicts not only of romantic comedy but romance itself. 87-year-old legend Alain Resnais used his own fourth-wall breaking effervescence to bypass the emotion to get to the sexual lust of love in Wild Grass.

I knew Edgar Wright’s Scott Pilgrim vs. the World would be no less aesthetically daring when the opening credits warped the dimensions of the apartment where the titular protagonist and his band practice, suddenly playing hyperkinetic colors cascading over the screen, matching the sort of industrial indie grind belted out by the band, Sex Bob-omb. In a flash, Wright uses some of the first moments of the film to recall the great experimental filmmaker Stan Brakhage, a man who took film form to new heights when he ceased filming and simply painted and scratched on film stock. What I noticed upon re-watching Scott Pilgrim was how much the seemingly random swirl of neon actually reveals about the characters, from the faint etching of “One! Two! Three! Four!” on Allison Pill’s credit or the straight edge exes for Brandon Routh’s.

What I did notice the first time I watched the film but saw even more clearly now was how much Scott Pilgrim vs. the World is a logical progression from Wright’s breakthrough, the Britcom Spaced. Spaced, a British — read: funny – update on Friends with a dash of Three’s Company, used the conceit of two friends posing as a married couple to live in a nice, affordable flat to explore feelings of Gen-X ennui and idle. Simon Pegg and Jessica Stevenson (now Hynes) wrote characters who dreamed of being artists, only to toil away in minimum wage jobs and watch the same geeky movies and shows over and over without purpose.

Wright and co. turned the sitcom into a surreal masterpiece, using one episode to launch a zombie invasion, another to pit characters in Robot Wars-like combat, and so, so much more. Through it all, the crew never lost track of why they put so much focus into seemingly gimmicky, absurd episodes: in doing so, they captured the mentality of Generation X, social alienation that offered no cultural touchstone upon which to build an identity. So, they built it on the artifice of pop culture. For the first time, movies defined a generation, and the ones that did were typically filled with allusions to previous generation’s cinema. As funny as Spaced was, the central dramatic arc of the series concerned the characters bumping up against the limitations of that worldview, as critical of getting trapped in adolescent geek worship as it was gleefully accepting.

Scott Pilgrim vs. the World jumps Spaced forward a generation, shifting the cultural bedrock from slacker cinema to the millennial age. The film’s frenzied, luminescent aesthetic befits a generation raised on the Internet, diagnosed with ADHD in disturbing numbers. Match cuts jump characters through time and space as Scott’s scatterbrain wonders off in conversation, only to pick up consciousness hours later; it’s a testament to how pointless everyone’s conversations are that each line can run into a later chat without any discrepancy.

Casting Michael Cera was a masterstroke on Wright’s part, and he did it for the exact right reason. He said he wanted someone who “audiences will still follow even when the character is being a bit of an ass,” and Cera has that quality in spades. But Scott is such a self-absorbed character that, paradoxically, his myopia breaks Cera of the increasingly narrow range in which he works. Cera manages to play his usual, endearing geek, only to then pit that type against itself. Wright has an underappreciated ability to draw out the stunted emotions of his male characters and the subtler maturity of his equally regressed females. The latter is particularly important because so many filmmakers take the easy way out and make their women not only the moral core of the work but the mental one. There’s an admirable lack of Madonna/whore complexes in Wright’s work, and every time he brushes up against that dead horse, he veers off magnificently as if a showboating pilot buzzing a tower.

Wright, working with Bryan Lee O’Malley’s comic series, positions Scott as one of those awkward nice guys who doesn’t notice just how hurtful he can be. His geekiness makes him lazy and focused only on avenues of entertainment — his hilariously bad band, video game arcades — incapable of noticing how many girls he’s casually dumped as he continues to wallow in misery over the one time someone screwed him over. He dates Knives Chau (Ellen Wong), a 17-year-old Catholic schoolgirl with strict Chinese parents whose repressed naïveté makes her view Scott as some kind of catch, validating Scott after the one time he got burned in a relationship.

When he turns his attention to Ramona Flowers (Mary Elizabeth Winstead), literally the girl of his dreams, we find that she’s not that much better. She’s had her own experiences with breaking hearts, and in her more revealing moments, she seems just as lost and confused by her place in the world as Scott, even if she is maturing faster than him. She’s just moved from New York to Toronto to get away from her life, but neither her change of location nor her constant skating through subspace can give off the impression that she’s going anywhere in life.

“Everybody has baggage,” she tells Scott, but hers comes in the form of seven evil exes who challenge Scott to duels to the death. Each battle has its own fighting style, from a warped Bollywood dance to a showdown between bassists to a battle of the bands fought through amps. Wright ingeniously changes up color palettes to ensure that not only the fighting differentiates from other battles, but the look of the film itself shifts too.

Underneath the brilliance of these fights, however, is a nagging question: why are these jilted lovers fighting Scott? None of them seem that hung up on Ramona, and even the ringleader, Gideon (Jason Schwartzman) never cared about her when they were together. O’Malley and Wright make the exes more a projection of Ramona’s guilt and aimlessness than people in their own right. Rather than portray her as just a femme fatale who dates someone just long enough to break his (or her) heart. By unloading her hang-ups onto Scott, she brings him into her world, the dark, nebulous transition from Scott’s obliviousness and adulthood. When Knives, who blames Ramona for Scott dumping her instead of the boy, starts to stalk and attack Ramona, we see how Scott has his own baggage that he can’t own up to. Like Spaced‘s Daisy, Ramona may be a bit more mature than the men in her life, but she’s just as mired in listlessness and feelings of inadequacy.

But let me back away for a moment to discuss why Scott Pilgrim vs. the World is not just insightful but, quite simply, the most damn fun I had at a theater this year. There isn’t a single scene that tries to be funny and fails. Wright and Michael Bacall’s script fluidly adapts O’Malley’s comics, which struck a balance between early Kevin Smith, Pegg and Stevenson’s writing on Spaced, and even a heaping dose of Tarantino circa Kill Bill. One-liners fly so fast that I’m still finding one I hadn’t yet heard on a third watch: when her ex-girlfriend joins the fray, Ramona excuses that aspect of her past by saying it was just a phase. “You had a sexy phase?!” asks Scott incredulously. Nearly everything Scott’s gay roommate, Wallace (Kieran Culkin), says will make you double over in laughter.

Then there’s the matter of Wright’s visuals. There haven’t been as many sight gags in American comedic cinema in, oh dear, decades? His penchant for reference humor finds its most frenetic outlet, quoting liberally from classic video games, action movies, Natural Born Killers (the use of a laugh track in one sequence, which also plays the Seinfeld bassline) and the split-cell design of comic books. Gideon is openly modeled after the vile, demonic producer Swan from Brian De Palma’s woefully under-seen music industry musical Phantom of the Paradise.

De Palma could be seen as the overriding influence on Wright’s film, and Scott Pilgrim at times resembles what the elder director might make if he could get his hands on a sizeable budget again. Wright puts digital animation over the movie, scribbling onomatopoeic words like “Ding-dong” for doorbells or adding action lines and lighting bolts to communicate the “epic epicness” of the film’s tagline. The use of split-screen makes the film more like a comic book, but it also carries De Palma’s stamp through and through, as do some of the more complicated camera movements and the odd use of iris. Wright has his team throw in objects such as a “pee bar” that hovers over Scott and drains as he empties his bladder, depict the battle of the bands between Sex Bob-omb and the Katayanagi twins as a duel between beasts summoned from the power of rock (and house) music. It bewilders me even now to think that the film cost less than $100 million when it contains more ingenuity and more dazzling effects than Michael Bay’s Transformer movies.

Like De Palma, Wright never lets the joke get in the way of a deeper sincerity, but where De Palma’s vision is fundamentally cynical, Wright’s is more optimistic. It shows in the greater rapport he has with actors, whom he trusts, and the giddy playfulness he brings to his work. I wasn’t entirely satisfied with the ending the first time I saw Scott Pilgrim vs. the World, feeling that it arrived too quickly off of a climactic fight that didn’t calm things down enough. Now, however, I find it as clever as anything else in the movie. As with Spaced, Scott Pilgrim ends an resolved note, but an ambiguous one. The characters have only finally made it to a breakthrough, but we won’t get to see them at last move into the next phase of life. It’s perhaps the most touching moment in Wright’s canon so far, proof that after he’d made bromance so affecting with his last two features, he could finally do love with adroit skill. It’s easy to get caught up in how fun Edgar Wright’s movies are, because they have all held up to all the repeat viewings I can give them. But it took me a while to see just how much empathy he has for his characters, and how fluidly he can make the personal work of another artist (O’Malley) his own. Armed with a perfectly chosen cast, a deft script and a touch of brazen visual surrealism that surely damned the film by making it ahead of its time, Wright has shattered the boundaries between film, video game, comic book and cartoon. What’s more impressive is how effortlessly he does it.

Blu-Ray Specs

Universal’s AVC-encoded 1080p transfer looks magnificent. Scott Pilgrim vs. the World is a mixture of dazzling effects and lo-fi, indie-music-as-visual-aesthetic cinematography, thus creating a possible quality leap between the brilliant, popping colors of the animated effects and the drab look of snowy Toronto. Fear not, this transfer handles the juxtaposition almost flawlessly, presenting a healthy, natural amount of grain and an eye-popping presentation of the more striking visual aspects of the film. Black levels are incredible too, and the shot of Scott silhouetted in total darkness as he wears a blue parka looks perfectly crisp, not washing out the blue in the black at all.

As for the audio, well, I had to keep turning the volume down because the DTS-HD Master Audio 5.1 mix is so overwhelming I was afraid neighbors would come knocking even in the middle of the afternoon. The combination of the film’s garage/indie soundtrack, overwhelming Foley effects in fights and subtler use of sound gave Scott Pilgrim one of the better mixes of any film this year, and it’s all been ported over to the home theater. There are as many gags on the soundtrack as there are in the visuals, so the audio quality is especially welcome in unpacking the film’s numerous treats.

Special Features

Edgar Wright has never been one to let his work hit home video without copious extras, but he outdoes himself here. First up, he offers a whopping four commentaries: 1) Wright, co-writer Michael Bacall and Byan Lee O’Malley; 2) a technical track with Wright and cinematographer Bill Pope; 3) cast commentary with Cera, Winstead, Wong, Schwartzman and Brandon Routh; 4) a second cast commentary with Anna Kendrick, Aubrey Plaza, Kieran Culkin, and Mark Webber. I have not had the chance to listen to all of them yet, but the first cast commentary is light while insightful and the snippet I listened to of the second promises some goods as the supporting players are all hungover from the premiere they attended the night before.

Elsewhere, we get:

• Deleted scenes: 21 deleted and extended scenes, almost all of which would have been a welcome addition to the film. Wright also throws in the original ending which seemed the more logical and appropriate choice when I first watched the movie but now that I actually see what was proposed, I agree with the choice ultimately made.
• Alternate Footage.
• Blooper Reel.
• Documentaries: four docs on various aspects of the film, the highlight of which is a 50-minute broad overview of the movie’s production.
• Pre-Production: An 85-minute look into the long and studious pre-production process on the film, from casting to rehearsal to set design.
• Visual Effects: A more in-depth look at some of the more impressive animation sequences in the film.
• Soundworks Collection: A sadly brief examination of the masterful sound editing on the feature.
• Music Promos: Includes music videos, remixes and montages set to the film’s music.
• Adult Swim: Scott Pilgrim vs. The Animation: An animated short made for Cartoon Newtork.
• Blogs: Wright’s production diary
• Galleries: Production stills and press kit material.
• Trivia Track: A pop-up feature with tidbits. Somewhat unnecessary given the presence of four commentary tracks.
• U-Control: Offers Picture-in-Picture storyboards.
• Scott Pilgrim vs. the Censors: Re-loops the dialogue to avoid swears.
• Theatrical trailers and TV spots.

And if that’s not enough, the disc is also BD-Live enabled.

Final Thoughts

Scott Pilgrim vs. the World is Edgar Wright’s third straight masterwork in a row (fourth if you count Spaced). With a fraction of the usual summer blockbuster budget, Wright has delivered the most inventive mainstream film in years, but also one that develops the same themes that have occupied him his whole career. It changed my opinion of Cera, deepened my appreciation for Winstead (who is one of the best young actresses working) and Culkin, and gave us a fantastic newcomer in Wong. Some say Scott Pilgrim is destined to become a midnight movie, which I’m sure would send Wright over the moon. I think that’s probably true, but I also believe that the film is cleverer than midnight popcorn fare. As much as I still love to cheer on its lunacy, I find myself increasingly affected by its ideas and more and more able to see myself, and my friends, in the characters. Wright was already ahead of the curve in terms of making riotous, reference-heavy genre film with heart, but here he not only transcends genre, he transcends art form. He’s so ahead of everyone now that he’ll have to take the next few years off just to let people catch up. That is, if he wants them to at all.

– Jake Cole is a journalism student at Auburn University, where he regularly avoids people in favor of writing about film, television and music on his blog, Not Just Movies. When he is not writing movie reviews, he is inevitably writing something else and will continue to do so until he runs out of excuses not to go outside.

Alternative Halloween Movies

I like Halloween, but I dislike horror films. ‘Tis the season to be scared and while I get a kick out of the costumes, jack-o-lanterns and all the other traditions, at the end of the day I’m still a complete wuss.

I hate horror films. Or to be more specific, I hate gory films. I’m a bit squeamish and so seeing someones finger nails being pulled off is not my idea of fun. I do like scary films though. I just need it to be the old fashioned “nasty stuff happens off-screen” kind of horror.

If, like me, you’d like to indulge in some Halloween appropriate films, but don’t want to have nightmares check out my list of DVDs you can watch this Sunday that won’t have you hiding behind a cushion.

The ‘Burbs

Not only is this a great comedy film (and one of the last in Tom Hanks resume) but also a fun story involving creepy neighbours who might be burying victims in the backyard.

The film was directed by Joe Dante who is a genius at this sort of genre. Just look at Gremlins for an example of this kind of family friendly creepy movie. As a side note, Gremlins would have made it onto this list except that it was set at Christmas and therefore will be on a different alternative movie list.

Added to the fun script is a great cast with Carrie Fisher playing Tom Hanks’ sceptic wife, Bruce Dern as his paranoid military obsessed neighbour, the always wonderful Henry Gibson as the creepy new neighbour and even Cory Feldman as the local wise ass teenager! I think we can all agree that’s a cast not to be sniffed at.

The ‘Burbs is an under appreciated classic and deserves a place in every film buff’s collection so if you don’t have it to watch this Sunday… go get it!

Buy it from Amazon HERE.

Ed Wood

Edward D Wood Junior was an odd man and a director of less than stellar quality but he loved films and had a real passion for making them, even if he wasn’t very good at it.

Tim Burton’s ode to Ed Wood is wonderfully quirky and really shows the fun and adventure people have in making low budget films.

Johnny Depp plays the title character and lovingly camps up his portrayal but never loses Wood’s love for both movies and his friends. Martin Landau acts his socks off playing a down and out Bella Lugosi. With Bill Murray and Jessica Sarah Parker rounding out the cast of misfits.

Tim Burton owns this style of film and you can tell this was an important subject for him as every scene drips with charm. While Ed is the title protagonist you’ll find that it’s Lugosi’s tragic story that you’ll remember after the credits.

Buy it from Amazon HERE.

Labyrinth

You remind me of the babe. What babe? The babe with the power. What power? The power of voodoo. Who do? You do. Do what? Remind me of the babe.

If you’re not a fan of Jim Henson you have no soul. FACT. If you haven’t seen Labyrinth already you didn’t have a childhood. FACT. So if you don’t already own this DVD for god’s sake go out and get it.

Not only is it a children’s classic but it’s still enjoyably barmy and watchable now that you’re old enough to pay rent. Plus it wins bonus points for being a good movie starring David Bowie (not many of those around) and a nice introduction to the bushy eyebrow of Jennifer Connelly.

Perfect for Halloween with so many monsters running about but also any other time of the year

Buy it from Amazon HERE.

Rear Window

This one is here for a few reasons:

1) It has Grace Kelly, one of the most beautiful women in the world ever. For reals.
2) It has Jimmy Stewart, one of the best leading men to have graced the big screen.
3) It’s an Alfred Hitchcock murder thriller so it’s perfect for Halloween.
4) It just so happens to be Hitchcock’s best film. As stated by me and therefore true.

I could go on all day about the many other reasons why this is not only a classic but perfect viewing anytime anywhere but it’s been said before and by more-big-brain-smart people than I.

I will however say that it’s a perfect Halloween night kind of film because it appeals to two sensibilities. Fear and mystery. Much better than any gore film.

Buy it from Amazon HERE.

Donnie Darko

Despite it being very much a marmite film (people either love it or hate it, strongly) Donnie Darko is either in too many film lists or not enough depending on who you ask. But nobody can deny that it’s definitely a Halloween film.

The time traveling, mind bending adventure of Donnie, played by the eerily young Jake Gyllenhaal, is a film student’s favourite. It’s great for a post movie discussion of “what the hell was that all about?”.

But make no mistake, the story is compelling and the performances are strong so don’t let the hype fool you, it’s worth the watch. Also, if you have the DVD with commentary from the director and cast make sure to give it a listen because not only is it enlightening but pretty damn funny too.

Buy it from Amazon HERE.
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So there you have it, my list of DVDs worth a watch over Halloween to get you in the mood without making you fear the dark. If you have any picks of your own please leave a comment!

– Aaron Poole is a maverick renegade who plays by his own rules. He is also more acurately an editor for FRED and rarely leaves the house. If you like what you read here, or more likely want to leave him some hate message, check out his blog http://aaronfever.blogspot.com

Apocalypse Now

When a worried Francis Ford Coppola walked out of a rapturous reception of Apocalypse Now at the 1979 Cannes Film Festival, his fears turned to confidence, and the press conference he gave summarized both the film’s troubled production and the hallucinatory, exhilarating and terrifying effect of the final product with a single sentence that no critic has ever topped.

“My film isn’t about Vietnam, it is Vietnam.”

Thirty years on, Apocalypse Now continues to stand as the ultimate cinematic statement on the Vietnam War, a position largely unchallenged even in the face of such classics as Platoon and Full Metal Jacket.

Coppola’s line is true, but not in a literal means. Of the various Vietnam films, Apocalypse Now possibly has the least ties to the reality of the war. Christ, it has the least ties to reality, period. But it is Vietnam, capturing the madness, pointlessness, fear and the death of America’s sense of superiority that makes it our most embarrassing period in the public consciousness – more people are willing to talk about it as our most humbling moment and not slavery or the genocide of Native Americans.

Loosely adapted from Joseph Conrad’s Heart of Darkness, Coppola’s magnum opus unfolds in an episodic fashion, each vignette shot with its own color palette and sound design. It’s a subjective overload, from the exhilarating “Ride of the Valkyries” segment shot from the POV of the arrogant, jingoistic Air Cavalry division to the gaudy sleaze that oozes off the screen when a bunch of sex-starved GIs riot in the presence of a tacky, inane show from some Playboy Playmates.

At a certain point, the film travels into the far-out realm of druggy excess, no doubt a byproduct of the splintering sanity on-set but also a naturally unnatural progression from the events of the rest of the film. The humming and churning Moog score contrasts sharply with Coppola’s usual love of opera, and its perfect integration into the mix (courtesy of master editor Walter Murch, who has as much a right to call Apocalypse Now) his film as Coppola) keep the audience on edge, and the increasingly surreal imagery delves further and further into the soul of madness.

What is most interesting about Apocalypse Now is how indirectly it actually deals with Vietnam. It doesn’t even care about the Vietnamese, not in the racist way that The Deer Hunter sets up the Viet Cong as a vague demon that weighs over the psyches of the hearty American men sent to fight them. No, Coppola, surprisingly working with a script the ultra-conservative John Milius (he of Red Dawn fame), paints the war as the result of insane mismanagement by a command structure that kept pressing on for no reason.

Capt. Willard (Martin Sheen) is sent on a top-secret mission not to kill any enemy leader but a renegade American colonel, a decorated vet who went mad in the jungle even as he started fighting the war in a way that got results standard operating procedures could not create. There is an air of jealousy in the chain of command that sends Willard on his mission, correctly calling Kurtz insane but doing so more because he flaunts their authority.

Elsewhere, visions of America’s aimlessness rise to the surface. The Air Cav colonel, Kilgore (Robert Duvall), orders an attack on a Vietcong stronghold simply because the areas has good waves and he loves to surf. In the film’s most hallucinatory segment, Willard and the boat crew that ferries him come across a bridge that the VC blow up each night and the Americans rebuild in the morning just so they can defend it again. With all commanding officers in the area dead, the line deteriorates, and one sees how Kurtz’s brutal methods could attract those who see the old system failing in front of them.

Coppola ignited a minor controversy at the film’s Cannes premiere when he said he wasn’t sure about the ending. Though he never referred to anything more than a few minor alterations he considered in the editing bay, it must be said that the one aspect of Apocalypse Now that lacks is the final moments. Yet the ambiguity, even the defeatism of Willard’s quiet withdrawal from the Kurtz compound also carries a powerful weight to it, the act that proves Willard is no longer tied to either Kurtz’s seductive methods (which would have had him assuming leadership over the native army Kurtz assembled) nor the old power structure (which would have had him bombing the compound into oblivion). As roughly as Coppola arrives at the moment, it serves its purpose: to break us from this nightmare in such a way that we wake up but cannot shake the fear. He denies us a catharsis, even with that brilliantly edited montage of Willard/Kurtz and the sacrificial bull. Were the ending more memorable, it might let us dispense of everything and move on. Instead, Apocalypse Now sits with you for years, the safest kind of shellshock one can suffer.

Blu-Ray

Lions Gate Entertainment has released Apocalypse Now on Blu-Ray in two separate editions: a two-disc set that contains both the 1979 theatrical and 2001 “Redux” version of the film and a slew of extras. The 3-disc “Full Disclosure Edition,” however, is what you want. In addition to the two cuts and the extras, you get an HD version of Hearts of Darkness, the full-length documentary shot by Coppola’s wife Eleanor. What originally started as a means of gathering the usual EPK material blossomed into a horrifying look at the dying moments of New Hollywood as production spiraled out of control, Francis Ford Coppola started to fall apart and Martin Sheen suffered a heart attack. Along with Les Blank’s Burdern of Dreams, a look at Werner Herzog’s equally demanding jungle feature Fitzcarraldo, Hearts of Darkness stands as the definitive making-of documentary, a testament to the film’s insanity and the impressive way Coppola made the production work even when a typhoon obliterated all the sets.

The question typically arises with the film: which cut is better? The “Redux” version, running about 50 minutes longer, contains mostly elongated looks at existing scenes. It draws out a number of fascinating commentaries on the war, extending the end of the “Charlie don’t surf” sequence to show that the napalming of the tree line that Kilgore orders to make it safe to surf ends up sucking up all the wind and calming the water. It’s the best metaphor in the film and it’s a shame Coppola cut it from the original version. Likewise, the notorious French plantation scene, which makes up a bulk of the added footage, gets to the heart of the difference between the colonialist French and the Americans. A handful of French settlers defend a plantation because it is their home, even if they understand they will die there and it will rightfully be retaken by the Vietnamese. But why are the Americans here? “You are fighting for the biggest nothing in history.”

Were the French plantation scene boiled down to that essence, and maybe the provocative but overly joking second interlude with the Playmates, removed, I would call “Redux” the superior version. It’s still one of the greatest alternate cuts ever made, and the additions are direct without being forced (I especially like Kurtz reading a pre-Tet Offensive piece from Time magazine, mocking the media’s inability to expose the pointlessness of the war, allowing themselves to be controlled by the state). Ultimately, though, I prefer the more oneiric, hallucinogenic tone of the theatrical cut, which omits a few of the added sequences I love as much as anything in both cuts but also has a better flow and leaves more to interpretation. Either way, both cuts are masterpieces of the first order and proof that big-budget entertainment can be as beautiful and thought-provoking as underground cinema.

Image/Sound Quality

Francis Ford Coppola has overseen all of the Blu-Ray transfers done for his films – though he must have slept through the Dracula remaster – and the results here are as sterling as his magnificent Godfather restoration. Apocalypse Now‘s 1080p image, presented in the proper 2:35:1 aspect ratio (previous editions came in 2.0:1), cannot fully overcome the limitations of late-’70s color film stock (which was of such infamously low quality Martin Scorsese made Raging Bull in black-and-white partly so he knew it would last). But the work done here has turned the softness of the stock into crisp depth and texture. There is an inconsistency to the image because of the various lighting, color and shooting methods employed for each segment of the film, but in some moments you can count the beads of sweat on Martin Sheen’s face. The black levels have never looked better, and the grain is well preserved. I saw a few tiny scratches near the end, but they were harder to spot than the pops in the latest films I see in the theater. This is a remarkable job and one of the most impressive transfers of the year, bar none.

As for the audio, imagine the same level of care done on the video, without the setback of the dated source material. Apocalypse Now‘s DTS-HD Master Audio 5.1 is going in my book as one of the first tracks I will use to test out any new home audio system. Coppola’s film along with Star Wars, pioneered the 5.1 sound mix, and it’s nice that the track that started it all has been treated so lovingly. The subtleties of Walter Murch’s editing are brought out in the very first moments, while Carmine Coppola’s Komita-inspired score is enhanced through the fantastic low-frequency levels. I must admit that audio is the area I am least qualified to speak upon when it comes to these things – which is saying something, because I’m qualified for sweet F-A – but tracks like these, man they do the work for you. The video borders on reference quality in general and certainly stands as one of the best remasters done to date, but the audio is the best I’ve heard all year, even above Criterion’s masterful work with The Thin Red Line‘s soundtrack.

Extras

Oh dear God, where to start. I am confident now in saying that the only Blu-Ray release this year that will best the treasure trove offered here will be the Alien anthology due at the end of the month. It’s not often you get truth in advertising, but when they said “Full Disclosure Edition,” they damn sure meant it.

Disc One

Audio commentary for both cuts: Francis Ford Coppola offers some of the best commentary you’ll ever hear, and the rich production history and thematic interpretations of Apocalypse Now afford him more topics of conversation than any of his other works. He offers technical info, anecdotes, unlikely inspirations and all kinds of tidbits that make his discussion as interesting at times as the film itself. The two tracks are clearly taken from the same recording, with the “Redux”-specific comments inserted in with the same seamless branching that the film uses.

Disc Two

As far as I can tell, all of the extras placed in the previous “Complete Dossier” DVD have been ported over. These include:

• Additional scenes
• “Monkey Sampan” deleted scene: Separate from the additional scenes, this rough cut of a disturbing scene was correctly described as the film in a few minutes. The PBR rides by an abandoned Vietnamese fishing boat overrun with monkeys, only for the wind to shift the sail and reveal a man flayed to death. The boat is floating downstream from where Willard and the crew are heading. It’s redundant, but I wish it had made the final cut.
• The Hollow Men: A clip of Marlon Brando reciting T.S. Eliot’s poem with scenes from the film and production interspersed into the video.
• The Birth of 5.1 Sound: A short piece that traces the prototypical stereo design on Star Wars to the breakthrough of Apocaylpse Now
• Ghost Helicopter Flyover: A focused look at Walter Murch’s sound design for the perfectly edited sound of choppers in the opening montage of the film
• The Synthesizer Soundtrack<.i>: A reprint of Bob Moog’s essay from Contemporary Keyboard about the film’s score.
• A Million Feer of Film: The Editing of ‘Apocalypse Now’: A 17-minute piece on the Herculean task Walter Murch and his team faced having to edit a film that had a shooting schedule that lasted four times longer than it was meant to.
• Heard Any Good Movies Lately? The Sound Design of ‘Apocalypse Now’: A more in-depth look at the sound design of the movie that deepens the look of the other audio-centric features.
• The Final Mix: A brief piece on throwing together the sound into the final mix and what was involved in bringing together all the disparate elements.
• Apocalypse Then and Now: A piece made to go with the release of “Redux” to talk about some of the differences between cuts and reasons for the new edit.
• PBR Streetgang: Features interviews in 2001 of the actors who played the PBR crew
• The Color Palette of ‘Apocalypse Now’: A 4-minute look at the three-strip dye transfer techniques used to get the complex color palettes on the film.