‘Puss in Boots’ Finds Deals

It’s becoming routine: Major niche blockbusters such as fantasy films or animated hits are debuting on Friday street dates instead of the traditional Tuesday. The latest is Paramount’s Puss in Boots on Feb. 24.

Target offered an instant $5 discount with the purchase of any version of Puss in Boots with another DreamWorks animated title, such as a “Shrek” movie or How to Train Your Dragon, priced from $11.99 to $24.99.

Best Buy also offered a $5 discount for Puss in Boots, but only on the 3D combo pack, and only with a coupon from BestBuy.com/PussinBoots, which expires Feb. 25. The weekly ad circular promised temporary tattoos would be available at the in-store display.

Best Buy devoted almost a whole page of its weekly ad circular to promoting preorders of upcoming Blu-rays. Primary among them is HBO’s March 6 release of Game of Thrones: The Complete First Season, offered at Best Buy with exclusive packaging. Best Buy also has a version of Warner’s Feb. 28 Justice League: Doom animated movie packed with a Flash action figure.

New on Disc: 'On the Bowery' and more …

On the Bowery: The Films of Lionel Rogosin Vol. 1

Street 2/21/12
Milestone, Documentary, two-disc set, $34.95 DVD, $39.95 Blu-ray, NR.
1957. John Cassavetes, who mentored Martin Scorsese early in the latter’s career, regarded the late Lionel Rogosin as one of the great filmmakers and On the Bowery as a major filmmaking influence (think Cassavetes’ Shadows right out of the box). Thus, it’s rather fitting that Scorsese introduce the home release of Milestone Films’ highly successful theatrical re-issue from 2010, which includes a wealth of supplementary materials that only strengthen the package of a fiction/nonfiction hybrid (though feature documentary Oscar nominee) that can pretty well stand on its own. Scorsese notes that when he looked out the window from where he grew up, the Bowery is what he saw. The subject is not the domain of Leo Gorcey, Huntz Hall and the Bowery Boys. Bowery is a drama constructed around raw faces, which is one reason why Cassavetes must have loved it — and if the acting here is a little in and out, it absolutely seems authentic and serves the filmmaker’s purpose. The squalor quotient was, in fact, so high that usually estimable interviewer Dave Garroway is fairly patronizing to Rogosin in a 1956 TV clip included as one of the bonus extras. Why, Dave asks, would the latter want to make a movie bound to depress anyone who saw it?
Extras: This material dovetails effectively with then-and-now short subjects included as bonus material (one a look at Bowery life in 1933). Included as well is a making-of look back at the production — treatment afforded to this release’s second feature as well. This would be Good Times, Wonderful Times, made and shown on the early side of the mid-1960s when protests against the Vietnam War hadn’t taken full hold.
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Woody Allen: A Documentary

Docurama, Documentary, $29.95 two-DVD set, NR.
2011. From roughly 1973’s Sleeper (but certainly follow-up Love and Death) through, say, 1994’s Bullets Over Broadway, Woody Allen was on one of the great rolls of the modern era — occasionally stumbling (usually with his dramas) but rarely going more than a couple pictures, artistically speaking, without a loud extra-base hit. Allen has amassed 15 Oscar nominations for screenwriting and seven for directing. This is the kind of life achievement that ultimately gets you pedigreed “American Masters” treatment, and Robert B. Weide’s three-and-a-half-hour portrait indeed aired during two nights in November. Though this is so much an authorized biography that it utilizes the same opening-credits font style that we automatically associate with Allen’s own movies, Weide isn’t hesitant to bring up Allen’s early 2000s fallow period — nor is he afraid to bring up Allen’s marriage to quasi-stepdaughter Soon-Yi Previn.
Extras: The entire bonus section here is a highlight, but the Q&A part is special: Weide says he labored to ask Allen 10 that no one else had ever asked.
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Taxi

Available via WBshop.com’s Warner Archive
Warner, Drama, $19.95 DVD, NR.
Stars James Cagney, Loretta Young, Guy Kibbee.
1932. Perhaps best known as the movie where consummate Irishman James Cagney speaks Yiddish in an early scene, Taxi is transported over its plot holes (sometimes wide enough to swallow up an entire cab caravan) by the palpable chemistry between the actor and co-star Loretta Young, who in one scene even joins him in a dance contest.
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'Once Upon a Time' at Target

Target offered an interesting exclusive for the Feb. 14 new-release week: a $9 DVD of the first five episodes of ABC’s new TV series “Once Upon a Time.” The disc includes a $5 discount coupon for the purchase of the complete first season when it is released later this year.

Target also had an exclusive wildflower seed bookmark with its copies of The Lorax: Deluxe Edition, the new disc of the 1972 animated special based on the Dr. Seuss book, released as a tie-in to the new movie version.

Otherwise, most of the attention still was focused on The Twilight Saga: Breaking Dawn —Part 1. Notably, Best Buy raised the price of its copies a few days after the Saturday release date, bringing the DVD version from $18.99 to $22.99 and the Blu-ray from $22.99 to $24.99. Best Buy’s weekly ad circular also stopped advertising the chain’s exclusive steelbook packaging.

Target didn’t adjust the prices, but stopped promoting its exclusive DVD gift set.

Walmart offered a special “Bella’s Wedding Dress Edition” DVD gift set with a fabric poster.

New on Disc: 'Under the Boardwalk: The Monopoly Story' and more …

Under the Boardwalk: The Monopoly Story

Street 2/14
Docurama, Documentary, B.O. $0.013 million, $29.95 DVD, ‘G.’
Narrated by Zachary Levi.
2011. Competitive Monopoly gets its day in a portrait that’s more interesting around the edges (the game’s history and the collector mania it has launched) than it is down the middle (the final game of the 2009 World Championship and events leading up to it). 
Extras: This is one of those occasional DVDs for which the chief selling point is the bonus section, which includes about 40 minutes of a fascinating course lecture from super expert Tim Vandenberg on the “methods, math and myths” of the game. There’s a statistical analysis of which properties get landed on the most; why Park Place and Boardwalk are somewhat overrated as desired buys; when it’s smart and not to use “jail” as a tool; and why you have to follow the rules to the letter if you want to wrap a game in a civilized amount of time. (Playing the contest variation where players put all fees in the middle of the board and collect this major booty by landing on Free Parking will only allow a near-whipped opponent to get back on his feet.)
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The Geisha Boy

Street 2/14
Olive, Comedy, $24.95 DVD, $29.95 Blu-ray, NR.
Stars Jerry Lewis, Suzanne Pleshette, Nobu McCarthy, Sessue Hayakawa, Marie McDonald.
1958. Jerry Lewis rarely got the lines between slapstick and sentiment to intersect as harmoniously as much as he did here. Frank Tashlin was Lewis’s best director, other than perhaps Lewis himself, and this bright Technicolor comedy gets off to a good start with an opening credits sequence much akin to the one in Tashlin’s Hollywood or Bust, the 16th and final Martin and Lewis vehicle. Picturing geisha dancers brandishing large Japanese fans, it sets the tone for a farce in which magician Lewis (complete with white rabbit named Harry Hare) takes a USO job after a long period of unemployment. Featured here in her big-screen debut is Suzanne Pleshette, looking good within the limitations of army garb and hindered some by some aggressive lipstick that the makeup person should have toned down.
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Lady and the Tramp: Diamond Edition

Blu-ray available now; Standalone DVD Streets 3/27
Disney, Animated, $29.99 DVD, $39.99 Blu-ray/DVD, $44.99 BD combo pack with digital copy, ‘G.’
Voices of Barbara Luddy, Larry Roberts, Peggy Lee, Bill Thompson, Bill Baucom, Stan Freberg, Lee Millar.
1955. Lady and the Tramp was Disney’s first widescreen feature cartoon (2.55, baby!), and I think it was the animated achievement that most hit its demographic where it lived at the time of release. The Blu-ray presentation really brings back what seeing Lady was like in ’55, and I dug the 7.1 dts-HD Master Audio enhanced soundtrack (there’s a super rendering of the original 3.0 as well). The culmination of Disney’s perennial is a brood spawned by Tramp and Lady, which led to a spin-off puppy who, as Scamp, eventually rated his own comic strip and, in 2001, a direct-to-video sequel.
Extras: A lot of extras, including a nice making-of featurette, are carried over from earlier DVDs. And there’s a newly added “Second Screen” function involving apps, allowing viewers to check out a variety of featurettes as they watch the film.
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A 'Twilight' and a 'Tramp'

Walmart's 'Lady and the Tramp' with dish set

Ordinarily, Disney’s Blu-ray re-release of Lady and the Tramp would have attracted the vast majority of retail attention its first week out.

Indeed, Target offered an $8 discount with purchase of the new Blu-ray and one of several previous Disney Blu-rays. Best Buy offered a Lady plush, as well as a $5 discount if customers turned in an old Disney DVD. And Walmart offered the Blu-ray packaged with a dinner bowl, fork and spoon.

Then there’s the release of The Twilight Saga: Breaking Dawn —Part 1 on disc.

Target went the most all-out with its in-store displays and advertising. The chain’s weekly ad circular included a four-page insert of “Twilight” merchandise, including tie-in books, CDs, T-shirts, jewelry, cellphone accessories and more. Target also promoted a contest to stay at the island resort featured in the film, at www.IsleEsmeSweepstakes.com.

Target has a special limited-edition two-DVD set that includes prop flowers from the film’s wedding scene, and endcap displays in the electronics department displayed most of the tie-in products as video screens played invitations from the cast to attend Target’s midnight sale to see a preview of Breaking Dawn — Part II.

Best Buy’s “Twilight” exclusives include a Valentine’s Day sleeve for the new DVD and a steelbook case for the Blu-ray.

New on Disc: 'Project Nim' and more …

Project Nim

Street 2/7/12
Lionsgate, Documentary, B.O. $0.4 million, $19.98 DVD, ‘PG-13’ for some strong language, drug content, thematic elements and disturbing images.
2011. James Marsh’s new documentary makes it clear that Nim Chimpsky didn’t relish his time in the limelight. In the case of this chimpanzee, screen appearances were restricted to scientifically mandated home movies, which provide a lot of rich source material for Marsh in his follow-up to 2008’s Oscar-winning Man on Wire, which this also-amazing story nearly equals.

It was the 1970s, which meant that when Columbia Prof. Herbert Terrace hatched a brainstorm to raise a young chimp in a human environment to see if the creature could end up communicating in sign language, at least one of the participants (beyond, it sometimes appears, Terrace himself) would turn out to be a flake. The biggest, at least from Nim’s presentation, was probably the wife of a wealthy poet who offered her family’s Manhattan brownstone as a kind of chimp flophouse. Nim occasionally was given alcohol and even a reefer, and he enjoyed knocking the poet’s books of the shelf in an offbeat form of domestic violence. Much later, with the now much-larger Nim treated to intended peace that didn’t quite pan out on writer Cleveland Amory’s ranch for abused animals, his “attitude” escalated. This is when he picked up a pet dog that had proven to be a personal irritant and smashed it to death against a wall. The story has several more byways, and while it isn’t a black-and-white harangue against using animals for research, it likely will be a subject of conversation at PETA mixers and fundraisers because this is one melancholy story.
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The Jazz Singer

Street 2/7/12
Inception, Drama, $14.98 DVD, NR.
Stars Jerry Lewis, Anna Maria Alberghetti, Eduard Franz, Del Moore.
1959. For all its importance as the technological and marketing innovator that put talking pictures into popularity more than any other single movie, Al Jolson’s corn repository The Jazz Singer wasn’t that far away from being an instant museum piece when it opened in 1927. But let’s not forget this Jerry Lewis NBC-TV version intended as homage to Jer’s childhood idol Jolson — one that’s been too obscure in recent years to be notorious, though it certainly was at the time when I watched it live. We can and should view this print from the Lewis archives as the archeological find it is.
Extras: The nicest feature of this release is its inclusion of not just a kinescope of the black-and-white version that actually aired but (as a bonus) one of the earliest color videotape versions that currently exists of a TV show.
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Tall Story

Available via WBshop.com’s Warner Archive
Warner, Drama, $19.95 DVD, NR.
Stars Anthony Perkins, Jane Fonda, Marc Connelly, Bob Wright, Ray Walston, Tom Laughlin, Anne Jackson, Murray Hamilton.
1960. If you recently saw 74-year-old Jane Fonda looking so smashing on the Golden Globes, it’s possible that you can project how she affected, at age 22, young boys who were entering puberty. The object of Fonda’s affection here is a college hoops star played by Anthony Perkins, who soon after would appear in Psycho. Between the sports and sex angles, I’ve always had some mild affection for what undeniably is romantic piffle, a modest black-and-white comedy running less than 90 minutes.
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The ‘Buddies’ Bring the Love

Walmart's 'Treasure Buddies' Gift Set

Several retailers offered the same promotion related to the new direct-to-video Treasure Buddies movie from Walt Disney Studios Home Entertainment.

Consumers who picked up the Blu-ray of Treasure Buddies along with the Blu-ray of an earlier “Buddies” movie, Snow Buddies, could save $8 off the total purchase price. The Snow Buddies Blu-ray was offered at $19.99 at both Best Buy and Target.

Walmart offered the Treasure Buddies Blu-ray combo as part of a travel journal adventure kit with a map, stickers and more.

Otherwise, promotional opportunities were relatively light. Best Buy promoted several deals in its weekly ad circular, such as a selection of Blu-rays at $19.99 each or two for $30, and a “Blu-ray on a Budget” selection at $9.99 each. Best Buy also had a selection of TV DVD season sets at $9.99 each, and 30% to 40% off TV DVD gift sets and complete series.

In time for Valentine’s Day, Best Buy offers select Disney films at $12.99 each, in pink sleeves with a special Valentine’s Day kit.

New on Disc: 'Revenge of the Electric Car' and more …

Revenge of the Electric Car

Docurama, Documentary, B.O. $0.15 million, $29.95 DVD, ‘PG-13’ for brief strong language.
2011. Director/co-writer Chris Paine’s sequel to his 2006 film Who Killed the Electric Car? exists in an interim universe it simultaneously captures, much as last year’s Page One: Inside the New York Times became a permanent time capsule of the newspaper industry at a crossroads of change. Will electric cars catch on in any great measure if the prices can ever come down? I don’t know. But their owners (like featured Danny De Vito) seem to like or even love them, and the vehicles certainly tap into an American yearning that will never go away. You know: the one that says to Foreign Oil, “We’re not interested anymore.” The other principals featured here are Carlos Ghosn, whose Nissan Leaf may determine the fate of Renault/Nissan; Greg “Gadget” Abbott, who soups up existing cars with electric technology and has to survive an arson attack on his makeshift factory; and Elon Musk, an entrepreneur-ish developer of the Tesla who also has a parcel of other interests, including five children and a fiancée (later wife) who says she wants more. Paine’s film makes reference to doomed ‘40s auto maker Preston Tucker (who never was able to buck a system that demanded endless resources of capital), and Musk’s home life has some of the hustle-bustle seen in the very underrated Tucker: The Man and His Dream from 1988. Paine’s portrait, which includes a nourished menu of DVD extras, isn’t exactly in your face. Dramatically speaking, it lacks the natural story arc of its predecessor and isn’t necessarily the kind of documentary that makes one say, “Hey, you gotta see this” to friends. And yet, if you’ve seen the original (which is still burned fairly prominently into my movie mind), you may think it a story that virtually demanded to be filmed, given its back-from-the dead hook.
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American Madness

Manufactured on demand via online retailers
Sony Pictures, Drama, $20.95 DVD, NR.
Stars Walter Huston, Pat O’Brien, Kay Johnson, Constance Cummings.
1932. I have a sweet spot for Frank Capra’s early talkies, and American Madness is one of my favorites. It is nothing if not topical. You don’t find too many Hollywood movies sympathetic to bankers, but the one Walter Huston plays here is a straight shooter with an altruistic streak. Huston’s character trusts his customers and his own instincts in loaning money (which, of course, puts him on the outs with his board of directors). In about 75 zippy minutes, Capra and his longtime screenwriter Robert Riskin manage to work in boardroom battles, Huston’s mildly straying wife (Kay Johnson, real-life mother of actor James Cromwell), a gangster subplot, a bank robbery that erroneously implicates a bank clerk (Pat O’Brien), and a run on the bank by depositors who don’t need Depression economics and heist artists with their own ways of depleting bank funds.
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Youngblood Hawke

Available via WBshop.com’s Warner Archive
Warner, Drama, $19.95 DVD, NR.
Stars James Franciscus, Suzanne Pleshette, Geneviéve Page, Mary Astor.
1964. There’s not exactly an eBook-era feel to the quaint movie version of Herman Wouk’s doorstop novel about the novelist’s angst, but this is probably the trashy selling point for a black-and-white potboiler about a Kentucky truck driver who comes to New York as a hotshot writer to conquer publishers, editors, agents, effete critics (well, at first) and the bed of another man’s wife. It’s all very broad and overripe in that early-1960s Warner fashion.
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Real Deals for ‘Real Steel’

Shoppers looking to pick up Disney’s new robot boxing flick, Real Steel, had a few options once it hit shelves Jan. 24.

Best Buy advertised a $5 coupon that could be used on the three-disc Blu-ray/DVD/digital copy combo pack, bringing the price down the $22.99. The coupon was available at RealSteelCoupon.com/BestBuy through Jan. 29.

Target had a different kind of Real Steel deal, offering a $5 discount off the joint purchase of any Real Steel Blu-ray and a $7.49 Real Steel action figure.

Other promotions focused on Paramount’s Paranormal Activity 3. Best Buy offered the first two films on DVD for $4.99 each and on Blu-ray for $9.99 each.

Target offered a $5 instant savings with the joint purchase of Paranormal Activity 3 with either of the first two films.

New on Disc: 'Godzilla' and more …

Godzilla

Street 1/24
Criterion, Sci-Fi, $29.95 DVD, $39.95 Blu-ray, NR.
Stars Akira Takarada, Momoko Kochi, Takashi Shimura.
1954. Though no one will ever categorize the vintage Toho library holdings as a cache of pristine print sources, the fact is that the new Criterion DVD of 1954’s Gojira (which launched the by now all-but-eternal “Godzilla” franchise without necessarily intending to) looks and sounds even better than the Blu-ray version of it that Classic Media put out in 2009. So let’s get this not insignificant point established right up front — even if the real fun from this release is in learning about Gojira’s production and its re-editing into the most commercially successful Japanese import that had reached U.S. shores at the time — as, of all possibilities, one of screen history’s stranger Raymond Burr showcases.

This latter and largely English-dubbed version, which became the source of much school playground discussion when I was in the third grade, was titled Godzilla: King of the Monsters. Directed by the era’s well-known “film doctor” Terry O. Morse (who was often called upon to reconstruct and save the life of ailing productions), it is included in full here as a bonus feature, which effectively makes this Criterion release a two-fer.

The fun of watching director Ishiro Honda’s original comes in being able to appreciate it as a more solemn (even mournful) Godzilla pic, one that is not quite as sensationalistic as the American re-edit.

Extras: The Criterion extras here touch upon the special effects, actor reminiscences and the effective score — plus an interview with film critic Tadao Sato. Film historian David Kalat offers commentaries for both versions of the film, though the Morse-Burr cut (which he likes and defends) offers more opportunities for voiceover revelry.
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The Last Hunt

Available via WBshop.com’s Warner Archive
Warner, Western, $19.95 DVD, NR.
Stars Robert Taylor, Stewart Granger, Lloyd Nolan, Debra Paget.
1956. In this Richard Brooks Western released two years before the end of his MGM run, Robert Taylor played one of the few bad guys of his career. I’ve known or read of more than a couple of people who think The Last Hunt contains Taylor’s best performance, and I’d probably concur. Swashbuckler Stewart Granger plays a former Dakota buffalo hunter wary of resuming his old trade, who gets nudged into doing so by a cattleman hopeful (Taylor) whose stock is stampeded by an already endangered species.
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Frontline: The Anthrax Files

PBS, Documentary, $24.99 DVD, NR.
2011. The material forming the basis for this documentary led to editorials calling for investigations into the FBI’s wobbly case against the late army scientist Dr. Bruce Ivins. But whether you’ve determined for yourself that Ivins didn’t — or actually did — send anthrax-filled letters to government officials in 2001, this multilayered cautionary tale shows how a mere accusation of having done “A” can cause a lot of hitherto well-concealed “Bs” to become a part of the public record to abject embarrassment and despair. This was a major tragedy with huge national security ramifications — yet it’s this documentary’s portrayal of a personality disintegrated (Ivins is portrayed as a sometimes very jolly, funny guy) that gives it the extra kick that a lot of viewers may not expect going into a film with this kind of title.
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