Written by Kirk Baird
The Christmas season is all about traditions, especially when it comes to holiday films. In addition to those annual viewings of classics including It’s a Wonderful Life, Miracle on 34th Street, and A Christmas Story, here are five other holiday treats worth the time.
Christmas in Connecticut (1945): In this warm holiday tale, Barbara Stanwyck is a food writer sorely lacking culinary and housekeeping skills whose deception may be exposed when her boss and a returning World War II soldier invite themselves to her home for a Christmas Day feast.
Nutcracker with Rudolf Nureyev (1968): This filmed performance features perhaps the greatest male ballet dancer in peak form in a celebrated interpretation of Tchaikovsky’s ballet masterpiece and holiday mainstay.
The Ref (1994): Denis Leary plays a cat burglar who breaks into a home on Christmas Eve and then must play mediator to a warring couple (Kevin Spacey and Judy Davis) and their family in this painfully funny R-rated dark comedy.
Un Conte de Noel (A Christmas Tale) (2008): Catherine Deneuve stars in this acerbic French comedy-drama about a highly dysfunctional and feuding family that gathers at the parents’ house for Christmas and learns the strong-willed matriarch has leukemia.
Arthur Christmas (2011): Santa’s clumsy son Arthur alternately ruins and then saves Christmas in this wondrous holiday classic. While audiences missed the film in theatres, Arthur Christmas deserves to be a staple of the season for years to come.
Written by Kirk Baird
Arthur Christmas is a charming holiday film that deserves a place among the classics of the season. This animated tale is as joyous as the season it celebrates, with a warm message for Christmas about the spirit of giving.
The story concerns the silly and sometimes clumsy son of Santa, Arthur (voice of James McAvoy), a good-natured soul who spends time working in the letter department at his dad's North Pole facility. Arthur loves Christmas, but his taskmaster brother Steve (voice of Hugh Laurie), who runs Santa's workshop and the gift deliveries, treats the holiday as a business. He's transformed Santa's workshop into a high-tech business to ensure children worldwide receive their Christmas gifts on time.
But when a little girl is inadvertently passed over, Steve focuses on how well the operation went otherwise, with only a tiny percentage point of error, and convinces an old and rather worn down Santa (voice of Jim Broadbent) that he shouldn't worry about the happiness of a single child out of a billion. Arthur feels differently, and with the help of his Grandsanta (voice of Bill Nighy), who retired from the family business long ago, as well as a gift-wrapping elf, he sets out to make things right, leading to a rash of problems and important life lessons along the way.
Arthur Christmas eschews most of the conventions of today's animated films. There are no cute, talking animals, and only a few scattered pop culture references. In that respect, Arthur Christmas, like its message about losing some of the magic of Christmas with high-tech gadgetry, is a throwback. The computer animation is well done and the 3-D subtle but effective. The cast, led by McAvoy and Laurie, are spot on. McAvoy brings a quirky and fun sensibility to Arthur, and Laurie makes Steve stern but never overbearing. Steve is as close to an antagonist as the film provides, but he's really not that bad — just a bit misguided about the importance of Santa.
Arthur Christmas was directed by Sarah Smith in her feature-film debut. Smith also co-wrote the script with Peter Baynham ( Borat and Bruno).
Arthur Christmas was overlooked by audiences during its holiday run last year. Now out on DVD and Blu-ray, here's hoping holiday history won’t be repeated.
Written by Jon Williams
Something big is coming. Random House sent a notice this week to alert distributors about a major new title to be released on December 6. They're keeping a tight lid on exactly what it is, though: referred to only as Untitled, even Random House employees are being kept in the dark about the project's nature. It is being called, however, a "major media event."
What could this top secret title be? Your guess is as good as ours. All we know is that it’s billed as a “wonderful surprise” that’s “bound to become a classic.” Feel free to post your speculation in the comments section below.
CVS Midwest Tape will bring you the details on this intriguing new title as they become available. Keep an eye on our blog and our company homepage for up-to-the-minute information.
Written by Kirk Baird
Lawrence of Arabia sets the new standard for Blu-ray releases, as this miraculous 4K high-definition transfer brings stunning life to one of the truly great and influential works of cinema. An epic in every sense of the word, the sprawling desert landscapes of Lawrence of Arabia is why theatres exist, while this is undeniably the definitive version for the home, with a polished print so clean it’s doubtful the film has ever looked this beautiful.
Based on the autobiography of T.E. Lawrence with a script by Robert Bolt and Michael Wilson, Lawrence of Arabia is the tale of an extraordinary British man (an impossibly handsome Peter O’Toole, whose blond hair and blue eyes brighten the screen as never before) who fights ancient allegiances, armies, and himself in an effort to unite Arabia under one rule during World War I.
Director David Lean’s triumph took seven Oscars in 1963, including Best Picture, though the Academy failed to reward O’Toole for what is essentially his stunning debut film performance. Considering his competition that year — Jack Lemmon for Days of Wine and Roses, Burt Lancaster for Birdman of Alcatraz, Marcello Mastroianni for Divorce Italian Style, and winner Gregory Peck for To Kill a Mockingbird — such an oversight is forgivable, though no less tragic.
The magnificent cast includes Alec Guinness as a prince sheik (it’s a testament to his acting that his performance is so commanding, despite a fake black beard and tan makeup), Anthony Quinn, Omar Sharif, Anthony Quayle, Claude Rains, and Jose Ferrer. The film also picked up Oscars for Freddie Young’s gorgeous cinematography and the lush score by Maurice Jarre – who was the fourth choice to compose the soundtrack and who had only six weeks to write it and record it once hired by Lean.
The nearly four-hour movie takes up one Blu-ray, with several extras packed on a second Blu-ray disc, including a delightful recent interview with O’Toole as he reminisces about the film and his colleagues on the set.
Lawerence of Arabia is an enduring classic, universally praised as one of the greatest films of all time. And on Blu-ray, it finds a release worthy of its fame.
Written by Kyle Slagley
Science and drama have long been partners in mainstream television. Shows like Grey’s Anatomy hire consultants to advise on the medical aspects and shows like Homeland hire military consultants, all for the sake of being more realistic and believable. Sometimes the advice is taken; other times the consultants are ignored because, hey, is the audience really going to know if the intern doctor breaks sterile while trapped in the elevator with a dying patient?
Recently my girlfriend discovered the series Lie to Me, a show that ran on Fox from 2009-2011. In the show, lead character Dr. Cal Lightman (played by Tim Roth) is a leading expert in deception and lie detection. Lightman and his three co-stars work run the Lightman Group, which is contracted to help with crimes from missing persons to national security by – you guessed it – discovering when people are lying.
Lightman does all this by detecting what are called ‘micro-expressions’: instinctive flashes of emotion that appear on your face when you’re lying before you have a chance to hide them. The micro-expression method is grounded in scientific fact, and thanks to this show my girlfriend has decided that she is now an expert in lie detection and, well, let’s just say it’s led to an interesting discussion or two.
Even though I do find Lie to Me entertaining, I tend to prefer my science straight up and take my drama separately. Luckily, there are quite a few series out there that are almost purely science. Here are a few of my favourites.
How It’s Made – Since 2001, this series has been showing viewers how manufacturers make everything from stuffed olives (yes, they’re stuffed by hand) to golf balls. Each of the 250 episodes shows the process for making three or four different items. You can’t get any more real than this.
Top Shot – Your standard competition-elimination reality show, this series takes highly skilled experts in all manner of weapons and pits them against each other in contests that are based in legend (like severing a burning fuse with an old-western six shooter) or fact (a 1,000-yard shot with a .50 caliber sniper rifle).
Man vs. Wild – Adrenaline junkie and former British Special Forces Operative Bear Grylls takes on some of the most treacherous locations and life-threatening situations on Earth. The circumstances of his feats are by no means realistic, but as an outdoorsman with rudimentary survival knowledge myself, I can tell you his tips and advice are great if you can remember them.
Survivorman – If Bear Grylls is a superstar adventurer, Les Stroud is his everyman counterpart. In my not-so-humble opinion, Stroud is more awesome than Grylls because he adventures completely on his own. There are no camera crews, no medical team, no “take two,” and no lush hotel at the end of a hard day of filming. He plunks down by himself in extreme locations for five days at a time, films every shot himself, and only activates his SOS beacon in extreme emergency.
Doing Da Vinci – A disappointingly short series, this show tasks two teams with the creation of full-size, working prototypes of some of Da Vinci’s more ambitious inventions out of only materials that would have been available in the inventor’s time. Throw a few conflicting personalities into the mix for flavour and you’ve got six episodes that are a must for any history buff.
Written by Jon Williams
It’s been a while since we made note of artists whose music isn’t available via iTunes. Since then, a number of heavyweights have decided to get on board with digital distribution. The biggest of these, of course, was the Beatles, who came to iTunes with much fanfare in November of 2010. Others have joined with less notice, such as Eagles member Glenn Frey, who released most of his solo catalog digitally along with his latest solo album, After Hours, in May of this year. Then there are artists like Kid Rock, whose latest offering, Rebel Soul, is available through the digital distributor, but not his back catalog (although rumour has it that it may be coming soon).
And then there’s AC/DC. Perhaps the biggest remaining holdout has finally reversed course, making their entire catalog available digitally as of November 20. The classic hard rock band was reluctant to offer their music as individual tracks as opposed to complete albums; however, the continued, expanding popularity of iTunes (it may account for up to 29% of U.S. music sales) was too strong to continue their resistance.
That said, here are a few remaining iTunes holdouts:
Def Leppard: Like Kid Rock, their latest release, Mirror Ball, is available on iTunes, but not their back catalog. Unlike Kid Rock, it seems unlikely that the situation is going to change anytime soon.
Bob Seger: Seger released two live albums with his Silver Bullet Band to iTunes in 2011, as well as a greatest hits compilation. Fans looking for more than that, however, will be disappointed.
Black Sabbath: Yes, there actually are quite a few Sabbath albums on iTunes. None of them, however, features Ozzy Osbourne on vocals. Those albums, essential to classic heavy metal fans, are nowhere to be found.
King Crimson: Exactly one King Crimson track (“The Court of the Crimson King”) is available on iTunes, and you can’t get it individually. You have to purchase the entire Children of Men soundtrack to get it.
Tool: Unlike the artists above, absolutely no music from Tool is available from iTunes. Like AC/DC did, they prefer their music to be available in album form only.
Garth Brooks: Taking over for AC/DC as probably the biggest remaining holdout, the country star also takes issue with selling songs as individual tracks, as well as iTunes’ pricing structure.
Make sure your patrons have access to the music they crave by stocking albums by these artists on your library shelves.
Written by Kirk Baird
Given his box-office success with the graphic novel-turned film 300, Zack Snyder was a wise choice to shepherd the long-in-development Watchmen to the big screen as well. One of the most influential graphic novels of all time, Watchmen offers an alternate universe where men and women dressed as superheroes rise up to maintain order in society, and that’s not a good thing. The heroes have changed the course of our history, and by 1985 are used as offensive agents by the U.S. government, vilified by the police and the media, and feared more than respected by the general population.
It got so bad that the federal government outlawed the masked vigilantes in 1977, which effectively ended the reign of Watchmen, the best-known and most powerful group of heroes. Years later, as they have tried to return to a semblance of a normal life with varying degrees of success, an unknown, powerful assailant is tracking down the older heroes and killing them, giving the Watchmen cause to reunite – if they can stand each other long enough.
There are other problems in the world besides masked heroes being offed. Richard Nixon, now in his fifth term as U.S. president, has the United States on the brink of nuclear war with the Soviet Union, a hostility fueled in part by the government using the godlike Doctor Manhattan as a weapon of fear. The graphic novel, written by Alan Moore, is rich in subtext, scope, and depth, and when released in the mid-1980s, almost immediately helped change the possibilities of comic books to come. There’s also a lot going on within its hundreds of pages, which is why many filmmakers struggled with bringing Watchmen to the big screen, and many, many more fans hoped that they wouldn’t.
Snyder essentially places himself in the proverbial no-win situation with his adaptation, co-written by David Hayter and Alex Tse. Moore scoffed at the film even as it was in production, and the notion of successfully porting the graphic novel into anything less than a miniseries frustrated fans, who felt too much of Watchmen would be sacrificed in a film – even at two hours and 42 minutes in length. They were right. Watchmen as released to theatres in March, 2009, was incredibly ambitious and just as shallow, an attractive movie with fantastic parts that never amounted to much as a whole – certainly not when held to the high standards set by Moore’s work. The film also was nearly unintelligible to anyone who went into the theatre having never read the graphic novel.
But the Collector’s Edition, with its three-hours-and-35-minutes cut, helps resolve that issue. Known now as the Ultimate Cut, this new Blu-ray set is Snyder’s director’s cut version along with Watchmen’s Tales of the Black Freighter sub-comic now incorporated into the main narrative, instead of a separate DVD as it was originally released. This should please Watchmen fans, who missed having the separate features packaged as one entity, as in the graphic novel. This Ultimate Cut release and its animated segments also effectively break up the real-world story into chapters, and provide jarring subtext and allegory to the Watchmen storyline. Warning: These animated segments are as graphic as the hyper violence in the main feature, including a raft made of the decaying bodies of dead sailors.
While the Ultimate Cut resurrects quasi-important character – and narrative – development moments originally left in the editing room, it also benefits substantially from the less-heightened expectations of seeing the film at home, rather than on the big screen, which magnifies a film’s weaknesses. In other words, Watchmen simply works better at home, which gives further credence to the fanboys who thought the graphic novel should have been a miniseries all along.
The Ultimate Cut also features two commentaries by Snyder and graphic novel co-creator and illustrator Dave Gibbons, and on separate Blu-rays 11 video journals and four featurettes, a Watchmen motion comic, featuring the entire graphic novel in 12 chapters of limited motion, voice, and sound, and the original theatrical cut on DVD. The set also features DC Comics’ first-ever hardcover edition of Watchmen, featuring the recoloured pages found in Watchmen: The Absolute Edition.
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