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Insights from home entertainment industry experts. Home Media blogs give you the inside scoop on entertainment news, DVD and Blu-ray Disc releases, and the happenings at key studios and entertainment retailers. TK's Take analyzes and comments on home entertainment industry news and trends, Agent DVD Insider talks comic adaptations, and IndieFile delivers independent film news.

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October 05, 2009
Anchor Bay Opens ‘Paper Heart’

Genre: Comedy/Drama/Documentary
Studio: Anchor Bay
Street date: 12/8
Prebook: 10/29
Price/Format: $29.98 DVD $39.98 Blu-ray
Reserve for purchase (DVD or Blu-ray)
Reserve on Netflix

Dec. 1 Anchor Bay is releasing pseudo-doc cuddlefest Paper Heart on DVD and Blu-ray. Charlene Yi, the funny Asian girl from Knocked Up, co-wrote and stars in the film, which weaves interviews with ministers, children, lawyers and plenty of others about love together with a sort of fantastical love story between her and actor Michael Cera. I don’t think it really matters which parts of it are real. No one cares that “The Hills” isn’t real. It’s original and Yi and Cera are irresistible geeks for the ages.

 

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September 17, 2009
December Criterion Titles Include Akira Kurosawa Set

Title: AK 100: 25 Films By Akira Kurosawa
Street Date: 12/8
Prebook Date: 11/10
Studio: Criterion
Price/Format: DVD $399
Reserve for purchase

Criterion is pulling out the big guns in December, releasing an ambitious, 25-film set from Akira Kurosawa to commemorate the 100th anniversary of the birth of the legendary Japanese director. The linen-bound set includes an illustrated book with an introduction by Stephen Prince (The Warrior’s Camera: The Cinema of Akira Kurosawa) and notes on each film and a remembrance by Donald Richie (Films of Akira Kurosawa). It includes restored digital transfers of the following films:

The Bad Sleep Well (1960)
Dodes’ka-den (1970)
Drunken Angel (1948)
The Hidden Fortress (1958)
High and Low (1963)
I Live in Fear (1955)
The Idiot (1951)
Ikiru (1952)
Kagemusha (1980)
The Lower Depths (1957)
Madadayo (1993)
The Men Who Tread on the Tiger’s Tail (1945)*
The Most Beautiful (1944)*
No Regrets for Our Youth (1946)
One Wonderful Sunday (1947)
Rashomon (1951)
Red Beard (1965)
Sanjuro (1962)
Sanshiro Sugata (1943)*
Sanshiro Sugata, Part II (1944)*
Scandal (1950)
Seven Samurai (1954)
Stray Dog (1949)
Throne of Blood (1957)
Yojimbo (1961)

*previously unreleased on DVD


Title: Gimme Shelter
Street Date: 12/1
Prebook Date: 11/3
Studio: Criterion
Price/Format: Blu-ray $39.95
Reserve for purchase

This new high-definition digital transfer of 30th anniversary version of the notorious 1969 Rolling Stones tour film is remastered and restored from the camera original and has a DTS-HD master audio soundtrack, exclusive Dolby Digital and DTS 5.1 surround-sound mixes, commentary with directors Albert Maysles and Charlotte Zwerin and collaborator Stanley Goldstein, backstage outtakes and more. This edition also includes a booklet with essays by Mick Jagger’s former assistant Georgia Bergman, music writers Michael Lydon and Stanley Booth, and film critics Amy Taubin and Godfrey Cheshire.

Title: A Christmas Tale (DATE CHANGE)
Street Date: 12/1
Prebook Date: 11/3
Studio: Criterion
Price/Format: DVD or Blu-ray $39.95
Reserve for purchase (DVD)

Catherine Deneuve stars as the matriarch of a troubled family at Christmas.

Additionally, the release dates of Criterion’s October titles have been changed (see the releases and new dates here).

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August 31, 2009
Magnolia Has ‘The Answer Man’

The Answer Man

Street Date: 11/3
Prebook Date: 10/6
Studio: Magnolia
Price/Format: $26.98 DVD, $34.98 Blu-ray
Reserve on Amazon (DVD or Blu-ray)
Reserve on Netflix
Watch Now on Amazon

Indie comedies about self-help gurus seem to be growing in popularity, as this is the second one in a week I hear about coming to DVD. This one stars Jeff Daniels as Arlen Faber (which, incidentally, was the original name of the film), the author of “Me and God,” which has been translated into more than 100 languages. Twenty years after being published, the book still inspires people, but curmudgeon Arlen, who’s sort of a reclusive, self-help version of J.D. Salinger, couldn’t care less. Chance occurrences bring him into contact with Elizabeth (Lauren Graham), a single mom raising as seven-year-old, and Kris (Lou Taylor Pucci), a young man just out of rehab. They’re touched by his book, and Arlen is faced with actually having to interact with the people his book has helped. The film also stars Kat Dennings (Nick and Norah’s Infinite Playlist) and Olivia Thirlby (Juno), who are both great but sort of remind me of each other. The Answer Man was an official selection at Sundance.

 

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August 27, 2009
No Stopping the Pattinson Machine

Robert Pattinson in How to Be

Independent film distributors are like 14-year-old girls when it comes to Robert Pattinson. MPI Media Group is the latest to announce a small film release from a Twilight star; it’s releasing the comedy How to Be on Nov. 17 (reserve the movie on Netflix or Amazon). The IFC film stars Pattinson as a musician in a rut who makes a self-help book author become his life coach. Haven’t we all been there!

OK, so the movie sounds a bit hokey, but it actually looks really funny (watch the trailer at the film’s official site, www.howtobemovie.com). And hitching your wagon to either Pattinson’s or Kristen Stewart’s stars seems like a pretty good idea. I didn’t love Twilight, but they’re both good in it; Stewart has been around a while now, a strong child actor in films like David Fincher’s Panic Room, and I see her eventually going the Winslet rather than Lohan route. At least I hope so.

As for the Robert Smith-coiffed Pattinson, I think there’s more to him than the brooding stares and unbuttoned shirts of supermarket checkout counter magazines. He seemed lighthearted in a MySpace interview with Paramore’s Hayley Williams that I’ll admit to watching. Maybe indie comedy will suit him.

If you’re a fan, you’ll be happy to learn the DVD has an exclusive interview with Pattinson and behind-the-scenes footage for even more Pattinson. And if you’re sick of him, Kristen Stewart and vampires altogether, you’re basically S.O.L.

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August 25, 2009
Monterey Media to Serve Up ‘Humble Pie’

monterey media has acquired Humble Pie. No, not the ’70s supergroup, but rather an offbeat comedy along the lines of Napoleon Dynamite (it’s from the same producer), to release theatrically and then on DVD in December.

 

It has won a bunch of awards at smaller film festivals and was an official selections at AFI, the U.S. Comedy Arts Film Festival and Slamdance. Judging by the trailer, it’s not hard to see why. Hubbel Palmer plays a sarcastic, chubby young man working at a supermarket in a dead-end town, living with a bitchy mom (Kathleen Quinlan) and his sister (Mary Lynn Rajskub, who was in Julie & Julia, but I’ll always love her from her hilarious role as a mom jealous of her own baby in a “Mr. Show” skit). It’s rare that a trailer will make you laugh as hard as this one does, with awkwardness aplenty. The movie also stars William Baldwin in the sort of self-parodying role the Baldwins seem to be doing lately (including Stephen).

 

Watch the trailer at the movie’s official site:

http://www.americanforkmovie.com/trailer.html

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