DVD ACQUISITIONS

[thomasallencummins]

Picked up The Simpsons Season 9 last night. I haven't gotten to watch it yet but I do know what is in the collection and Season 9 is one of those seasons where you end up saying over and over "Oh yeah! I loved that episode."

SIMPSONS SEASON 9 EPISODE LIST

My favorites include:
The City of New York vs. Homer Simpson - If the title doesn't ring a bell "Crab Juice" ought to trigger a memory.
Season 9 Treehouse of Horror has the one with Homer as the last man on earth, Bart is turned into a fly and Marge as a witch and the true origin of Halloween.
The one where Homer becomes Bart's football coach and his favorite part of the job is...The Cuts. Its great as the final credits are rolling Homer is saying "He's cut. She's gone. Oh yeah, he's definitely cut" etc.
Oh heck there are just too many to list. Just look at the link to the episode guide if you are curious.
I can't wait to get started.

[Captian Nemo]

Well last Christmas, I picked up a used copy of the Claude Raines "Phantom of the Opera". That rounded out my set of the eight original "Universal Monsters" DVD's.
Dracula, Frankenstein, Bride of Frankenstien, The Mummy, The Invisable Man, The Wolf Man, Phantom, and The Creature From the Black Lagoon. That makes for good night of Halloween TV. C.N.

[Captain Nemo]

I managed to cobble together the complete series of "Monty Python's Flying Circus" one disc at a time from E&B games. Some one traded in the whole set, and I picked them up piece-meal. After the fifth disc, they were nice enough to give me the box for the set. I did end up buying one disc from somewhere else, because somebody picked up one from E&B.
P.S. That's me on the post above-I had a small log-in issue. C.N.

[thomasallencummins]

Though I haven't finished watching it, we have the first complete season of Get Smart. I had been waiting for a very long time for it to be available. I also have the first season of the animated TICK series. I have had the entire series on vhs that I acquired from a guy who was selling them, from shows he recorded off of broadcast. The quality wasn't great but I had it all so I didn't complain much. Now that I have the first season on dvd the contrast is dramatic, much improved.

[Captain Nemo]

I just came across a copy of " The Legend of Hell House". It was in around 1973-5 and is just about my fave "haunted house" flick. Now I can re-create my creepiest Drive-In, Double Feature experience..."The Omen", and "The Legend of Hell House". If you get the chance to imbibe...get the popcorn! C.N.

[thomasallencummins]

For Father's Day I got a 3 dvd boxed set of the Tom Clancy "Jack Ryan" films. The Hunt for Red October, Patriot Games and A Clear & Present Danger. And I got a double dvd featuring Kelly's Heroes / The Dirty Dozen. How cool is that? :-)

[ram]

Bought the 2-disc edition of Predator. Finally, this great action flick is in my collection! It was on sale at a super-low price, so it was a no-brainer grabbing it. Haha, get it? No-brainer? A movie about a predator who blows out people's brains? I'm soooo clever...

Of course, I really bought the movie so I can relive Jesse "The Body" Ventura's brilliant acting...NOT

[thomasallencummins]

ram said:

Bought the 2-disc edition of Predator. Finally, this great action flick is in my collection! It was on sale at a super-low price, so it was a no-brainer grabbing it. Haha, get it? No-brainer? A movie about a predator who blows out people's brains? I'm soooo clever...

Of course, I really bought the movie so I can relive Jesse "The Body" Ventura's brilliant acting...NOT

I have the older single disc release from a few years ago. Not much on special features and it only cost me a few bucks. I ought to pick up the version you've got, ram. All I remember about Ventura's performance was a filthy mouth, chewing tobacco and a giant hole in his chest.

[Cad Zombie]

Don't forget the famous quote "I aint got time to bleed"

[thomasallencummins]

cadzombie said:

Don't forget the famous quote "I aint got time to bleed"

Excellent. I forgot about that. What a line! ;D

[ram]

Picked up another old sci-fi favorite for cheap: Logan's Run. I only bought it now out of a sudden intense feeling of nostalgia. I should get pills for that.

I pretty much knew what I was in for, but was still a little disappointed with the picture and sound quality. This belongs to the earlier generation of basic DVD transfers, not the kind of premium THX remastering job we've come to expect nowadays. But at least there's a behind-the-scenes featurette and audio commentary by Michael York and director Michael Anderson. (Too bad they didn't get Jenny Agutter as well.)

I've only watched the featurette. Now I don't mean to be cruel, but it's almost laughable seeing how the filmmakers and media at the time were hyping up Logan's Run to be this sci-fi extravaganza. Maybe in '76 it really was cutting edge stuff. But a year later Star Wars came along and blew Logan's Run and everything else out of the water. Of course, as a kid I just enjoyed LR as another cool sci-fi movie, and that was after I'd seen Star Wars.

Anyway, in watching Logan's Run again, there's no getting around it: the opening shots just don't work. The domed city miniatures look every bit as fake as I remember them. The filmmakers should've opened the movie in some other way, or else gotten the model makers to put a lot more detail into the miniatures.

Meanwhile, the live action sets in the city do have a certain visual flair, even if the studio lighting is obvious and not very inviting. But maybe that's the point: the city is supposed to feel sterile and claustrophobic. At any rate, the Carousel sequence remains a visual highlight. Whatever else the movie may be criticized for, it can't be faulted on this standout scene. It's still eerie and disturbing, seeing all those masked people floating haplessly up to their doom - what they think is "renewal."

The other thing you can't criticize LR for is of course the presence of Jenny Agutter. While the awful opening sequence alone may justify a modern remake, you just can't "improve" on Jenny Agutter. I mean, sorry, but who cares about Michael York?

The movie really finds its groove once the chase begins, with Logan and Jessica fleeing the relentless Francis. This was the portion of the film that really fired my imagination - the idea of leaving behind the shiny city and entering its bowels, the forbidden levels.

When Logan and Jessica at last come out to "outer" Earth and see the Sun in the sky and don't know what it is - that moment staggers me as a viewer because it makes me realize the appalling degree to which these people have been cut off from knowledge of the outside. Basic knowledge of the Sun, the stars, the Moon, etc...it's simply horrible and inconceivable that human beings should not know of the Sun, it has dominated human existence from the beginning.

The scenes of the swampy old city and derelict Capitol buildings are still effective at conveying that sense of ages-old decay, a forgotten era of human history. Once Jessica and Logan get to the old man, the film does drag a bit. It's relieved somewhat by Logan's final confrontation with Francis, unbelievably still single-minded in his mission to terminate the two "runners" even after all that he's seen.

The final part of the film is so-so. Logan's return to the domed city and interrogation by the computer is interesting, but it baffles me how the machine could blow up like that just due to Logan's resistance to the mental probing. If anything, it should've been the computer that fried Logan's brain first. Other than that beef, the interrogation procedure itself was fascinating - this idea of splitting Logan's mind into different parts for "surrogate" questioning. I had never seen that before, and I'm not sure that we've seen anything like that since.

The final, final scene with all the "young" people going down to meet the old man is, I guess, meant to be a poetic and uplifting moment...but it seems just a tad ludicrous, looking at it today. I mean, these people are supposed to be fleeing the destruction of their city, with their way of life in shambles. Yet here they are, calmly cuddling the old guy like they're just having a nice evening in the park.

I'm still fond of this movie...but it's not a good sign when you become more and more distracted by the flaws.

Crap, didn't know I was going to produce an essay about the movie!

[thomasallencummins]

Ram,

Sounds like I have the same dvd version of LR that you do. We also seem to have same impressions of the film. I mentioned on Kevinswatch that would have liked to have seen LR enhanced the way Star Trek the Original Series is being updated with digital special effects or what Lucas did with Star Wars. Just a few important scenes (particularly the exterior shots of the plastic toy city) would need to be changed.

The most likely scenerio is that the the film will be remade in its entirety and most likely ruined. Having said that....
I like me some Logan's Run. ;D

[Avatar]

I just got part 1 & 2 of V this weekend. A real classic from my childhood, I was pleasantly surprised by how well the majoity of it has held up, over 20 years later. Only the makeup and "jaw animation" looks bad. Most of the rest survived nicely. Was good to see it again. Now I just need the rest of it.

--A

[thomasallencummins]

avatar said:

I just got part 1 & 2 of V this weekend. A real classic from my childhood, I was pleasantly surprised by how well the majoity of it has held up, over 20 years later. Only the makeup and "jaw animation" looks bad. Most of the rest survived nicely. Was good to see it again. Now I just need the rest of it.

--A

I watched V back when it aired. I was 18 or so at the time. I also believe I have the two parts of the story that you have, Av.
I was intrigued by V when it began and watched like many other did but something killed my interest. I couldn't let loose of the concept that aliens capable of interstellar travel would cover that incredible distance and then once here begin bickering and back stabbing each other like human characters on a bad afternoon soap opera.

[Avatar]

Haha, this is weird...I'm busy reading your post about it on the Watch at the same time.

Y'know, I never even thought of that. But then, people are people, even wen they're big lizards. Think of the post in the Loresraat about the psychological effects of long space journeys...

--A