<< 'G.I. Joe' Deploys at Retail | Blog Home | Tech Toured and Absorbed >>

 

New on Disc: 'Ishtar' and more …

5 Aug, 2013 By: Mike Clark

---

Ishtar: Director’s Cut

Street 8/6
Sony Pictures, Comedy, $19.99
Blu-ray, NR.
Stars Warren Beatty, Dustin Hoffman, Isabelle Adjani, Charles Grodin.
1987. This movie is, of course, best known for prodigious cost overruns partially sparked by Elaine May’s directorial indecision that led this Road to Morocco for the 1980s to be termed “The Road to Ruin” by one or more industry wags. Accordingly, easy-to-pronounce Ishtar has become, for a quarter century now, convenient shorthand to convey a bomb for all seasons immersed in a tsunami of red ink. Warren Beatty and Dustin Hoffman play singer-songwriters so desperate for any gig they take a bargain-basement engagement in a desert burg mired in international intrigue involving a threatened Emir and his CIA cronies. I suppose some will carp that there are no bonus extras here, but can you see going to Beatty or Hoffman or Isabelle Adjani or May and asking them to do a commentary?
Read the Full Review

Blood and Sand (Blu-ray)

Fox, Drama, $24.99 Blu-ray, NR.
Stars Tyrone Power, Linda Darnell, Rita Hayworth, Anthony Quinn.
1941. There’s Technicolor beauty to burn in director Rouben Mamoulian’s remake of the Vicente Blasco Ibanez bullfighting warhorse. Tyrone Power plays an illiterate who finds his financial success as a matador compromised by the usual leeches and hangers-on who become part of the package. To a Blu-ray degree I’d never fathomed in previous viewings, here’s one of the absolute hallmarks of Hollywood Golden Age pigmentation. The Oscar it got for color cinematography is no lie, and the scenic design, which could serve as the final in someone’s geometry class, really gets a Blu-ray boost here.
Read the Full Review
 

Bookmark it: