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 I 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.

Anchor Bay, Wolfe Make Sundance Acquisitions

Anchor Bay Films has acquired all North American distribution rights to director-writer Richard Bates Jr.’s debut feature, Excision, which premiered at the Sundance Film Festival last month.

The horror film stars AnnaLynne McCord (“90210”), Traci Lords (Cry Baby), Ariel Winter (“Modern Family”), Malcolm McDowell and John Waters.  The quirky horror film follows Pauline (McCord), a teenage outcast with horrific fantasies who decides to perform a risky surgery on her sister in order to repair her damaged relationship with her family.

Also, Wolfe Releasing has acquired the North American rights to Mosquita y Mari at Sundance. Writer-director Aurora Guerrero’s debut feature is a complex love story between two young Latinas growing up in South East L.A. Wolfe plans to release the film theatrically this year and on VOD and DVD in 2013.

Sony Classics Announces Actors’ Showcase ‘Carnage’

'Carnage'

Carnage is the kind of film that makes fans of the dramatic arts’ tongues wag. It’s a filmed presentation of a Tony Award-winning play by Yasmina Reza, adapted by Roman Polanski, starring four of the hands-down best actors alive: Christoph Waltz, John C. Reilly, Jodie Foster and Kate Winslet.

Sony Pictures Home Entertainment will release the Sony Classics film, which was nominated for two Golden Globes (for Foster and Winslet’s performances), March 20 (prebook Feb. 16) on DVD ($30.99) and Blu-ray ($35.99).

The story concerns two New York couples who come to meet because the son of one couple punches the son of the other. One couple, played by Waltz and Winslet, at first seem like stereotypical uppity Manhattanites, he on his phone every two minutes to discuss some Wall Street conundrum, she pressed and polite, eager to keep up appearances and smooth away her husband’s rudeness. Foster and Reilly, on the other hand, play, on the surface, a more down-to-earth couple, consisting of a bleeding-heart liberal who pushes fairness and justice upon her peers, and a working-class man who has worked his way up into the upper middle class and carries its associated manners but also a certain internal darkness.

The film takes these four and places them into a room, bouncing their conflicting views and veneers off of one another until all niceties melt away and what’s left is a truer, harsher view of humanity through these people.

“When the gloves come off, it’s pretty revealing,” Reilly said of the characters.

With a film such as this in which nearly all of the action takes place in one room, between four characters, two weeks of rehearsals took place before anything was shot for the film. But don’t expect any of that rehearsal footage to make the home video release, according to Waltz.

“If I had a say in these things, I would do away with all this ‘behind-the-scenes, making-of’ rubbish,” Waltz said. “It’s nobody’s business. Why would you poke your nose in our rehearsals? Where do we then have our safe space where we try and make fools of ourselves and just fathom what it is we need to do?

“… It’s a huge drag, and I try to avoid making-ofs, EPKs, blah blah, ‘Can you explain your character?’ … Why would I? I would be doing myself and the story and, most of all, your experience watching the film, the greatest disservice possible. I’m just there to incarnate … the character that has no body when it was written.”

If there’s one particular sequence of Carnage sticks out in many viewers’ — and the actors’ — minds, it’s when Winslet’s character throws up the peach cobbler the nervous other couple has been foisting upon them. Her character runs off, mortified, to clean herself off, while the others stick around to deal with the mess.

“It was days of that. It was horrible. It was really gross,” Reilly said. “Everyone’s like, ‘Poor Kate, she had to vomit.’ I had to clean up Kate’s vomit.

“… Needless to say, I haven’t had cobbler since I made the movie.”

Regardless, Reilly said the cast of heavy-hitters got along smoothly.

“There wasn’t a diva in the bunch,” he said.

Both Waltz and Reilly had only the highest praise for Polanski, whose resume includes classics from Chinatown to The Pianist.

“If you look at his movies, the only thing that really kind of strings them all together is like, they’re excellent,” Reilly said. “They’re really well-made and beautifully photographed. … He has a lot of variety as a director. I thought this was a really gutsy movie for him to make.”

When asked what Polanski brought to his performance, Waltz replied: “Precision. Exactitude. Concreteness. All the qualities that I adore and that I really strive for and that I’m grappling with and fighting with, and where I derive all my inferiority complexes and all that.”

Perhaps that precision is why the film’s DVD and Blu-ray don’t include any deleted scenes.

“It’s all there,” Reilly said. “What we said is what’s in the movie.”

The DVD and Blu-ray do include a making-of of sorts in the form of an “Actor’s Notes” featurette, as well as a red carpet featurette and another dubbed “An Evening with John C. Reilly and Christoph Waltz.”

Magnolia Nabs ‘Marley’

Magnolia Pictures has landed the U.S. rights to Marley, a documentary about reggae legend Bob Marley directed by Academy Award winner Kevin Macdonald (The Last King of Scotland) and executive produced by Bob’s son, Ziggy Marley, and Island Records founder Chris Blackwell.

Marley will make its world premiere at the 62nd Berlin International Film Festival in February and will premiere in North American at the SXSW Film Festival in Austin in March. The film comes to theaters day-and-date with VOD April 20.

“This documentary is the ultimate revelation of my father’s life,” said Ziggy Marley. “The family is proud to be able to have the world finally experience this emotional journey."

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.
Read the Full Review

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.
Read the Full Review

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.
Read the Full Review

Redbox: Only Disc Rental in Town

When we first moved into our house, there were two Blockbuster Video stores and a Hollywood Video within about a mile. A few years later, I heard about neighbors waiting to get movies in their queue at Netflix. I noted to these neighbors that they could easily get what they wanted at the local rental store (either Blockbuster or Hollywood). But they all were content to wait in the queue (after all, the price couldn’t be beaten). First one Blockbuster closed, then the Hollywood, then the other Blockbuster.

Then I noticed the stream of people waiting in line at the local grocery store to rent a movie from Redbox (at that time $1 a day). It was a different kind of queue, but one that seemed to be making inroads in its battle with Netflix.

The studios soon took notice and slapped windows on the kiosk company and subscriber rental service Netflix, both of which were charging what the studios considered too small a sum for content. Lawsuits were filed, they made up, and we got a window. But it wasn’t big enough for Warner, which in January announced a 56-day window (widened from 28) for rental companies such as Netflix and Redbox. Netflix agreed, as it continued its laser focus on streaming content from a vast library of (albeit older) licensed TV shows and movies.

But Redbox said (to quote a popular film), “Bring it on.”

And here we stand: Once again in a window war. But this time, Redbox is definitely bigger and probably wiser. According to The NPD Group, the kiosk vendor’s share of the disc rental business rose from 25% in 2010 to 37% in 2011. Meanwhile, Blockbuster’s and Netflix’s share of the disc rental business receded. Just this month, Blockbuster parent Dish Network announced it was closing more of the chain’s stores than originally planned.

Redbox says it will work around the window by obtaining its discs through “alternative means,” according to an executive. Even so, with more than a third of the rental market, and as the only disc rental business in my town, I believe consumers will wait in that queue to get their second or third choice, if No. 1 is unavailable.

Black History Month Roundup: ‘The Tuskegee Airmen,’ ‘The Help’ and More

It’s officially February, which means it’s Black History Month, a time when we reflect on the accomplishments and positive impacts that African Americans have made throughout the years.

There are a number of films currently available on DVD and Blu-ray Disc that highlight historical African Americans, including Malcolm X, Thurgood Marshall, Josephine Baker, the Tuskegee Airmen and Angela Davis, among others.

While it’s great to pay homage to the civil rights leaders and prominent figures of yesteryear, there are some wonderful things going on within the urban film genre that embody the sentiments of Black History Month.

Allen Blackwell, VP of Entertainment One’s urban film and comedy programming, had this to say: “I think where these films tie in [to Black History Month] is showing our diversity, showing our strengths and our weaknesses, and showing the evolution of us. I think that we have evolved to be very successful in many ways, and we still have two to three hundred years to make up on lost time.”

Here’s a list of some of the Black History Month-related titles that currently are out on home video or are coming soon:

■ ENTERTAINMENT ONE has Church Girl (DVD $14.98), a stage play centering on a pastor’s daughter struggling with her faith. It stars Robin Givens, A’ngela Winbush and Karen Clark Sheard. Arriving on Valentine’s Day is The Marriage Chronicles (DVD $19.98), featuring Vivica A. Fox, Jazsmin Lewis, Mel Jackson and Darren Dewitt Henson. It paints a picture of couples trying to stay together and building strong familial foundations.

■ HBO HOME ENTERTAINMENT offers Thurgood (DVD $26.98, Blu-ray $34.98), a one-man play starring Laurence Fishburne as Supreme Court Justice Thurgood Marshall. Also making their Blu-ray debuts are The Josephine Baker Story and The Tuskegee Airmen ($14.98 each), a perfect tie-in to Red Tails, currently in theaters.

■ MAGNOLIA HOME ENTERTAINMENT Feb. 7 offers A Mother’s Love (DVD $26.98), a story about three generations of broken women adapted from a gospel stage play. From director Tim Alexander (Diary of a Tired Black Man), starring actress and talk-show host Rolonda Watts and Vanessa A. Williams (“Melrose Place,” “Soul Food”), the film was an official selection at the 2011 Pan African Film Festival.

■ MPI MEDIA GROUP/IFC FILMS sounds off The Black Power Mixtape 1967-1975 (DVD $24.98), chronicling the rise of the Black Power Movement in and prominent activists like Angela Davis, Stokely Carmichael, and Black Panthers founders Huey P. Newton and Bobby Seale. Talib Kweli and Ahmir Khalib Thompson (Questlove) of the Roots, Erykah Badu, Harry Belafonte, Danny Glover and Melvin Van Peebles, among others, provide commentary.

■ PBS DISTRIBUTION celebrates the 25th anniversary of the landmark Emmy and Peabody award-winning documentary, Eyes on the Prize (three-DVD set $69.99). The six-hour program from the late Henry Hampton documents the history of the civil rights movement, as is narrated by Julian Bond, a social activist, Civil Rights Movement leader, politician, professor and writer.

■ PHASE 4 FILMS has Church: The Movie (DVD $29.99), a Dove Foundation family approved film, starring Darius McCrary (“Family Matters”), Art Evans (Die Hard 2), Joseph Philips (“The District”) and Sam Sarpong (Love Don’t Cost a Thing). The inspirational drama has been characterized as a “musical journey of praise, forgiveness and redemption,” and received the Best Religious Film Award at the 2011 San Diego Black Film Festival.

■ SCREEN MEDIA FILMS offers Dog Jack (DVD $24.98), starring Academy Award winner Louis Gossett Jr., the story of a slave boy and his dog who escape from a plantation, join the Union army and eventually face their former master on the battlefield. The story is based on the true-life adventures of the mascot of the Pennsylvania 102nd. Edward T. McDougal directed the film.

■ WALT DISNEY STUDIOS HOME ENTERTAINMENT provides The Help (three-disc Blu-ray/DVD/digital copy $44.99, Blu-ray/DVD combo pack $39.99, DVD $29.99), about the diverse groups of women who build an unlikely friendship around a secret writing project in the 1960s South. Based on the best-selling book by Kathryn Stockett, the ensemble cast includes Emma Stone, Golden Globe winner Octavia Spencer, Critics’ Choice Award winner Viola Davis and Bryce Dallas Howard. Bonus material includes a making-of featurette, deleted scenes, a music video for Mary J. Blige’s “The Living Proof” and more.

■ WARNER HOME VIDEO presents on Blu-ray ($34.99) for the first time Malcolm X, the biopic of the influential Black Nationalist leader portrayed by Denzel Washington, who earned an Academy Award nomination for Best Actor in a Leading Role for the part. The 20th anniversary release includes hours of special features and a collectible 40-page Blu-ray book with rare images, cast biographies, production notes and more.

Seek and You’ll Find

I recently had an illuminating conversation with Brett Dismuke, SVP of acquisitions at One Village Entertainment, Image Entertainment’s urban film division, about this quarter’s slate of titles.

I must say, it does my heart proud to see that there are so many films (presently and forthcoming) that portray blacks in a positive, authentic light and relay the various situations that are part of our experience. Whether you enjoy a serious drama (as in All Things Fall Apart, starring Curtis “50 Cent” Jackson), vivid stand-up comedy (see I Ain’t Scared of You: A Tribute to Bernie Mac) or a saucy stage play (a la What My Husband Doesn’t Know), it’s all there for the watching.

It reflects a concerted effort on part of certain studios to provide an assortment of quality urban content.

“It’s been an age-long tale that African Americans in this country have not had the opportunity to see a diverse mix of images that reflect their experience,” Dismuke said. “So it’s important, especially in a day and age where African Americans are only getting four to six major theatrical releases per calendar year, that we (Image/One Village) supply a wealth of content from an independent perspective.”

Urban films are even making their foray into less-chartered genres such as horror. Last year I had the privilege of interviewing Effie T. Brown, the producer of The Inheritance, a horror movie with a predominantly black cast. Image/One Village released it on Blu-ray and DVD in April 2011.

The Inheritance was an excellent film with an intricate yet compelling plot line and persuasive special effects on par with some of the mainstream movies. This, admittedly, came as a surprise to me.

“There’s a misperception in some circles that ‘independent films’ means that they’re bad films, which is not necessarily the case,” Dismuke noted.

I, too, once held that inaccurate belief. That was until I began to explore for myself and found some outstanding movies. The Image/One Village films that I previously mentioned are all examples of great urban storytelling.

By the way, these movies also star talented, respected black actors such as Lynn Whitfield (The Josephine Baker Story), Mario Van Peebles (Ali), Brian White (The Game Plan), Clifton Davis (“Amen”), Golden Brooks (“Girlfriends”), Darrin Dewitt Henson (Stomp the Yard), DB Woodside (“Single Ladies”) and Adriane Lenox (The Blind Side), among others.

My advice to those growing tired of waiting for the next Tyler Perry flick to see our stories on the big screen: Take matters into your own hands and see what’s out there. Like me, you’ll be surprised at the treasure you find.
 

More UltraViolet on Smaller Releases, Please

'Drive'

My first experience with UltraViolet came with the release of Sony Pictures Home Entertainment’s Drive — my personal pick for movie of the year, Oscars be darned.

The Blu-ray Disc came with an easy-to-follow card offering simple steps to enjoy your UltraViolet copy of the film. Within a determined five minutes, I was able to enjoy a copy of the film on my computer.

But I’ll echo the sentiments of plenty of other consumers out there: It’s far from a flawless process. Having to sign up for two separate websites to get the copy is cumbersome. I have to download a separate app (Flixter) and sign up for that, too, to play the thing on my iPhone. And the process of sharing the movie is a bit awkward, too — I have to create the person’s login information myself, or they have to use my sign-in information.

I’d love to see UltraViolet streamlined so that you only sign into one site, you can easily add devices (that spot on the site just says “coming soon” for now) and you can add family or friends to your account, simply by emailing them and allowing them to set it up themselves within your account. There should be some sort of social element, as well, built into UltraViolet — look at the success of Spotify or Netflix to see how alluring a social media element can be to a service such as this.

I think the service could be a great alternative to selling independent films wholesale to a service like Netflix. If the price were cheaper just to buy an UltraViolet copy of a film, I’d definitely pay for something like that. I’d love to pay $5 to be able to stream Melancholia and let my closest friends do the same. I could see movie clubs cropping up around that sort of thing — again, I think it all comes back to social. Studios could charge a lower price for smaller films so that independent film fans who can’t stream newer films on Netflix — and who’ve abandoned buying films on DVD or Blu-ray — could be brought back into the fold.

There’s a lot more that can be done with UltraViolet. In the meantime, I’ll be enjoying my digital copy of Monty Python and the Holy Grail when that movie comes out on Blu-ray with an UltraViolet copy March 6.

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.