Cold Mountain
US/Canada Gross: $95.5 millionI admire Cold Mountain even more after listening to the feature-length commentary by Anthony Minghella and uber-editor Walter Murch. If you’ve read Murch’s collaborative book with Michael Ondaatje, “The Conversations,” you’ll have an idea of the kind of alternately practical and wildly theoretical chat you’re in store for. Murch explains how cutting between disparate locations is often like cutting together silk and tweed, and in the process, you learn more about what silk is and what tweed is. It sounds like a mad metaphor at first, but the pair, deferring and ruminating, make sense over the long haul. There’s a whole disk of other extras. Miramax also releasing a 2-disc edition of The English Patient, one of Murch and Minghella’s other collaborations. Two commentary tracks are accompanied by extensive discussions with Minghella, Ondaatje and Murch. (Ray Pride)
15 Weeks To Oscar: To every season, spin, spin, spin… Spin #1 – Harvey is thrilled to have 15 nominations, even though Cold Mountain did not get a Best Picture nod.
The Hot Button: The key into Cold Mountain, it seems, is nature and emotion that lurks beneath the surface. Minghella offers Malick’s The Thin Red Line as one of the inspirations for his work on this story.
Pride, Unprejudiced: Melancholy, exquisite, I wouldn't fault a frame of it. It is a vision of heart, passion and compassion in the most blighted of times. If there is romance, there is hope. If there is desire, there is fulfillment. If there are dreams, we have reason to wake each morning. I'm grateful for Minghella's gleaming confidence.
Blazing Saddles - 30th Anniversary
"Excuse me while I whip this out."It's been 30 years since Mel Brooks achieved the cinematic equivalent of breaking the sound barrier, with his hilariously irreverent Blazing Saddles. In 1974, Brooks' main accomplishments included writing and directing The Producers and The Twelve Chairs, creating the spy-spoof sitcom Get Smart, and being part of Sid Caesar's legendary writing team. Blazing Saddles would represent the first in a long string of hits—Young Frankenstein, High Anxiety and Silent Movie among them—poking fun at Hollywood's time-honored genres. They were conceived at a time when political correctness had yet to take root and Brooks was free to tackle, with scattershot humor, such thorny subjects as racism, homosexuality, political corruption and religious fanaticism. In Blazing Saddles, of course, he also managed to add fart jokes to the cinematic vocabulary.
This special 30th anniversary DVD edition contains commentary by Brooks, the reunion documentary Back in the Saddle, a tribute to the late Madeline Kahn, and Black Bart, the TV pilot that inspired the film. Young viewers may find some of Blazing Saddles forced, silly, and even tame by today's standards, but most of it holds up fine. It's being released simultaneously with Brooks' 1995 horror-movie spoof, Dracula: Dead and Loving It.
(Gary Dretzka)Independent's Day
Marina Zenovich’s 1998 “Independent’s Day” is an amusing look at Sundance and Slamdance filmmakers who’ve become famous since—Neil LaBute, Steven Soderbergh, the underemployed Greg Mottola (“Daytrippers”)—as well as several hubris monsters whose names receded from memory eons ago. This first DVD release includes extra interviews, plus a goofy commentary by Zenovich and editor (and former Time Out New York film editor) Stephen Garrett. (Ray Pride)
Barbershop 2
US/Canada Gross: $65.1 million
Len Klady's Boxoffice: Barbershop 2 was Back in Business as the sequel bettered its inspiration with an estimated $24.5 million debut to lead the weekend box office charts.
Wonder Woman: First Season (1975)
In an era of kitsch, it was at the top of the heap. The Amazons send one of their own to help America fight the Nazi threat. Secretary by day, Superhero by night. When duty and danger call, she transforms. And the wonders never cease.... the power of her costume alone could fill volumes.
A Perfect Score
US/Canada Gross: $10.4 million
Six high school students band together and develop a plan to steal the answers for the S.A.T. in order to prevent the test from unfairly defining who they'll become. Each student in the group has his or her own set of circumstances that leads to the conclusion that the only way to truly decide one's own fate is to beat the system.
Stray Cat Rock: Sex Hunter
From Japan comes Yasuharu Hasebe's wonderfully campy Stray Cat Rock: Sex Hunter!, the third in a five-part series about a gang of girl delinquents. Made in 1970-71, the Stray Cat Rock series used psychedelic effects to add an extra layer of goofiness to stories that reference James Dean's juvenile-delinquent turn in Rebel Without a Cause and other '50s-era teen exploitation films. (Gary Dretzka)
