Time for a quickied DVD/Blu-Ray/Streaming round up. Here's what's new in the past week or so for home viewing:
OSCAR NOMINEES NEW TO DVD / BLU-RAY
- At Eternity's Gate - Willem Dafoe as Van Gogh. (This was the lowest grossing movie outside of Roma to score a big six Oscar nod this year, earning just $2.2 million. Even nearly half the foreign and doc nominees outgrossed it!)
- Bohemian Rhapsody -In case you wanna lipsynch along at home. Maybe you'll win an Oscar, too?
- Can You Ever Forgive Me? - Hope you enjoyed our Richard E Grant interview this week. We're still rooting for him to pull off a deserving shock upset at the Oscars. We'd totally believe he could if "upsets" happened more often on Oscar night. But mostly they don't...
- Shoplifters - We've been proudly singing the praises of this new classic in interview, podcast, and general coverage form. It's the 6th highest grossing foreign film of 2018, too, within the US market.
- A Star is Born - nominated for 8 Oscars and about to lose all but 1 of 'em (sigh)... but that's actually normal for this property. The 1937 version took home only 1 competitive Oscar from its 7 nominations, the 1954 version won zero Oscars despite its 6 nominations, two of them for all-time kind of achievements (Best Actress and Best Song), and the 1976 version only won best song from its 4 nominations.
NOTEWORTHY 99¢ RENTAL DEALS ON ITUNES
These deals never last long so if you haven't seen any of these former Best Picture nominees and you're an Oscar completist, now's a good time.
- All the Presidents Men (1979) - 8 nominations, 4 wins
- Amadeus (1984) - 11 nominations, 8 wins
One of the best films of its entire decade. It also serves as a reminder that American audiences used to have far rangier tastes in what they'd see in movie theaters. This movie ended its run as the 12th biggest hit of its year (!!!). It's a huge irreverent costume drama, the kind that would only make like $30 million today if it was very very very lucky. Or, put it in other words, it would be like seeing The Favourite making A Quiet Place kind of money right about now. - Cat on a Hot Tin Roof (1958) - 6 nominations
In case you're wondering how breaktaking Paul Newman and Elizabeth Taylor were at 33 and 26 years of age respectively. Not that either of them didn't keep on making cameras fawn all over them for many many years thereafter. - Cimarron (1931) - 7 nominations, 3 wins
This is quite bad but if you're a completist, you gotta. Plus leading lady Irene Dunne and character actor George E Stone are there to help you survive the rough patches. 123 minutes doesn't seem that long as running times go... that is until you're actually watching it. But you gotta love its romance novel style posters (see below). Irene Dunne looks terrified of her busty screen husband Richard Dix!
Cimarron's poster
- Dark Victory (1939) - 3 nominations. Honestly if you catch me when I'm not in a Baby Jane mood, you might find me arguing that this is Bette Davis's best performance.
- Sergeant York (1941) - 11 nominations, 2 wins
- A Streetcar Named Desire (1951) - 12 nominations, 4 wins
A rare example of a masterpiece of a play that also became a masterpiece of cinema in its transfer.
NEW TO STREAMING THIS PAST WEEK OR SO...
I want to speak to you about an opportunity...
High Flying Bird (2019) -Netflix
If that opportunity involves watching you, André Holland, we will usually take it. Such a good actor. But we haven't watched this yet (no time prior to Oscar). If you have and have thoughts, do share.
The Party (2017/2018) - Prime & Hulu
Starring Patty Clarkson!
Studio 54 (2018) -Netlix
We've been wanting to see this since Glenn's Doc Corner review.
Does anyone wish to speak?
Umbrella Academy (2019) - Netflix Season 1
Have any of you tried this? We watched the first episode and found it shockingly dull given its fanciful premise. Despite a full hour of nothing much happening beyond exposition, the exposition is so coy that you still feel like you know nothing about the plot or characters. I personally used to hate how overstuffed and rushed pilots used to feel as they tried to entice people to tune in a week later with tons of plot and sensation. Now we have the opposite understuffed problem where many pilots take 40 to 50 minutes to do what could be done in a 10-15 minute set up knowing that if they give you a good visual or plot hook in the last minute, you might let the show continue streaming at your face for another hour. Can't we have a happy medium between the old network problem and the new streaming problem? Both of them cause bad storytelling habits!
The tone of this thing is all over the place. It starts with whimsical Pushing Daisies like narration so we got temporarily excited but then it does a whiplash turn to humorless and mopey, and then turns surreally violent with 'it's funny to watch people slaughtered!' beats like it wants to be Kick-Ass. We always want to support Ellen Page but she got the dullest part and doesn't give the characters sadness more than a couple of expressions that first hour. If you tell me this DRASTICALLY improves in the second hour, I'll consider but otherwise I'm out.
Who's that? Do you know who that is?"
What They Had (2018) - Prime
This family drama got lost in the glut of adult-aimed movies in October (there are always so many at once hoping to use critics and coastal audiences as kindling for awards fire) but it's touching and extremely well acted. Hilary Swank and Michael Shannon have surprisingly believable brother/sister energy (to the point where I hope they co-star again), and Robert Forster gives his best performance since Jackie Brown as their stubborn father, unwilling to deal with his wife's (Blythe Danner) worsening Alzheimers.