My apologies for this week’s updates, as I usually try to watch at least most of the releases before I write them up, but this week, with the Spill fest and the prep for the LEOG party taking up so much of my time, I didn’t get the chance to watch many of them. I’ll do the best I can for ya...

HOT TUB TIME MACHINE (Blu-Ray and DVD)

Seriously. How can you not see this for the hysterical, screwball, time traveling, send-up of 80’s movies that it is? It’s not flawless, sure, some jokes fall embarrassingly flat, but there’s so much whizzing back and forth at you here, so much self-aware craziness, that it’s baffling to me that there were actually some folks didn’t embrace this wholeheartedly. Of course, it’s just as much a man-child love fest of misogyny and toilet humor in some ways as all the other comedies of its ilk that have been released in the last few years. Perhaps that was the dividing line for those who didn’t take to it, but those same people tended to like “The Hangover”, a film guilty of the same things. The difference, for me, is that HTTM doesn’t have any pretensions to be more than what it is, which is a surreal comedy that wears its implausibility proudly...and well it should. The moments when the characters are self-aware of how stupid an idea this is are by far the funniest in the movie. John Cusack, Clark Duke, Rob Corddry (who is the break-out star here), and Craig Robinson fall off their rung on the time ladder, being thrust back into the 80’s (into their younger selves although we see them as older) to relive and reconsider their actions on a fateful weekend at a ski resort, and hit every appropriate pop culture joke on the way down. This is easily one of my favorite comedies in years. It doesn’t give a fuuuuuuuuuck.
EXTRAS: A 90 second longer ‘director’s cut’; ten minutes of deleted scenes; four promotional spots; digital copy
CLICK HERE FOR THE ORIGINAL SPILL.COM REVIEW

CLICK HERE TO BUY Hot Tub Time Machine (blu-ray)

BASS ACKWARDS (DVD)

Get ready low budget film fans, this new release produced by Mark Duplass (“Cyrus”, “The Puffy Chair”), who is definitely, along with his brother, the biggest success of the fringe mumblecore film movement, looks to be, well, another meditative, intentionally awkward, and character-rich story that may or may not be too boring to sit through. The story follows Linas (Linas Phillips) on a road trip across the country in an old VW minibus, meeting eccentric colorful characters, and learning things about himself and about humanity in general. Yeah, it’s a road trip movie only without the ‘sex-comedy’ or ‘family film’ addendum that most have to their themes. Perhaps there is something to this, as it played as the 2010 Sundance Film Festival. We’ll see once I pop it in.
EXTRAS: Commentary with Linus Phillips, the cinematographer, co-writer and cast member Davie-Blue and film critic Michael Tully; “The Making of” featurette; Deleted scenes and Bloopers
CLICK HERE TO BUY Bass Ackwards

HOW THE EARTH CHANGED HISTORY (Blu-Ray and DVD)

Anybody remember waaay back in August of 2008 when I reviewed “Earth: The Biography” and raved about it? I celebrated the way that it shook up your expectations of the usually somewhat dry nature/science documentary series, and injected it with energy, higher production values, and crazy-excited Scottish host Dr. Iain Stewart. He’s back again with this new National Geographic series that focuses on how the geological changes in the Earth forced the changes of civilization. Much like “Earth: The Biography”, it’s divided up into episodes focusing on particular qualities of our planet: “Water”, “Deep Earth”, “Wind”, “Fire” and finally an episode called “The Human Planet” leading us up to the environmental hazard we ourselves have become. Yes, much like the previous series, Iain has an agenda, and much like in my review of that one, I’m gonna back him up on it. Regardless of how you feel about killing your home planet personally, this series looks GORGEOUS on blu-ray, as these things tend to be. I haven’t watched the whole thing, but it looks like a WIN for you peeps who love this sort of thing. Let’s face it: nothing looks better on HD than these types of documentaries. Now I REALLY don’t need to leave the house. The world comes to my living room in high definition. Sweet.
EXTRAS: Three featurettes with Iain talking about some of his more exciting journeys.
CLICK HERE TO BUY How The Earth Changed History (blu-ray)

PREDATOR: ULTIMATE HUNTER EDITION (Blu-Ray)

Let the double-dipping commence! Blu-Ray has only been out for a few years and already some films are getting second releases on the format. Not that it’s a huge surprise that Fox wants to scrounge together whatever extras dollars it can on the eve of its new entry into the series, “Predators”. Assuming that the new film is any good (which may be assuming a lot), I’d imagine they’ll collect a pretty penny on enthusiastic fans who can’t control their predatory buying habits. Yes, I am talking about Co-Host. Like it’s not true. Please. Regardless, this latest version of the overrated (yeah, that’s right, I said it) but still fun Arnold Schwarzenegger-starring science fiction action film suffers from a mixed quality visually, according to some of the more tech-saavy sites I visited and a slightly better audio remix. I suppose the real question for fans is whether this is worth picking up over the previous release. Let’s get right to it:
EXTRAS: “Predator: Evolution of a Species” - a new HD featurette about the film’s script and how it developed into a film featuring new behind-the-scenes footage and interviews with Robert Rodriguez and the new film’s director Nimrod Antal, clinching any doubts that this was nothing but a quickie promotional release; Commentary by director John McTiernan; Text commentary by film historian Eric Lichtenfeld; “If it Bleeds, We Can Kill it” - A old ‘Making Of’ featurette; 9 production featurettes; four “Short Takes with the Filmmakers”; Deleted Scenes; Outtakes; trailers; a sneak peak at the new “Predators” film adding behind the scenes footage; D-box code....so, basically, a mix of old stuff, some new stuff, and a still less than perfect HD upgrade.
CLICK HERE TO BUY Predator (blu-ray)

THE WHITE RIBBON (Blu-Ray and DVD)

I don’t even want to look too closely at any of the details of this new Michael Haneke film before I see it for myself, so highly have I heard it praised, despite its director having directed one of my most loathed films (twice) in the last decade, “Funny Games”. Apparently, it’s abstract, somewhat obtuse and confusing, and yet totally beautiful with its crisp black and white photography. Hell, it got two Oscar nods this year and a Golden Globe win so it must be worthy of at least a look. The story follows a small German settlement right before World War I where mysterious accidents keep happening and it looks like it might just be the children of the town who are responsible. As you might expect, Haneke is going to leave a lot up to the viewer to decide by the end. It remains to be seen (by me) whether that works to its advantage or not.
EXTRAS: “Making of” - 39 minute featurette that has it’s own art sensibilities, something you rarely see in bonus features; “My Life” a 50 minute doc about the director; trailer; the premiere at the Cannes film festival; Interview with the director
CLICK HERE TO BUY The White Ribbon (blu-ray)

RED VS BLUE: THE BLOOD GULCH CHRONICLES (DVD)

I suddenly have a special place in my heart for this collection of all five seasons of this very funny internet series. It’s because the creators of it, the guys behind the company Rooster Teeth Productions, were part of the Spill dot Com festival this year. Regardless, I'm enormously grateful to have this six-disc box set in my hands, despite such flagrant nepotism on my part. Even with the simple premise: two rival military forces stuck in a box canyon using footage from the original “Halo” Xbox video game with snarky voice overs, it’s the quality of the humor that gets you past the tediousness of the visuals. The graphics naturally get higher quality as they go along, not only because of better quality "Halo" games to take from, but because the company got officially approved by Microsoft and were given access to the models to animate with. That's almost neither here nor there as it’s always been the clever writing that made this series into the sizable hit it became. It sure would have been nice to have subtitles here though, as sometimes it’s hard to make out all the dialogue with the echoey helmet-hidden voice effects that the audio is masked with, but apparently it didn’t hurt ‘em that much on the internet. Hell, if you get a DVD release for your internet series, you’re pretty much unquestionably doing pretty well. Hey...when’s the Spill.com box set coming out? Or do I not want to know the answer to that question?
EXTRAS: Two “Red vs Blue” miniseries, “Out of Mind” and “Recovery One”; Two different commentaries by the makers; Outtakes; ‘Making of’ videos; Deleted scenes; “Public Service Videos” and “Special Videos” which are like little mini-episodes that were all previously released; menu screen jokes; profile of Rooster Teeth Productions; Jebus, this just goes on and on. LOTS more. There’s more than any fan could ask for and well done at that.
CLICK HERE TO BUY Red vs Blue: The Blood Gulch Chronicles (DVD)

CREATION (DVD)

A movie about Charles Darwin while he was writing “On The Origin of Species”? I can only imagine the shrieks of horror that went up in the foreign marketing offices of the BBC when they were handed this to distribute in America. It’s not really a wonder that, despite a cast featuring Paul Bettany as Darwin and Jennifer Connelly as his religious wife Emma, it barely surfaced stateside. As one of the producers said about that and the controversy over evolution in America, “It is unbelievable to us that this is still a really hot potato in America. There's still a great belief that he [God] made the world in six days. It's quite difficult for we in the UK to imagine religion in America. We live in a country which is no longer so religious. But in the US, outside of New York and LA, religion rules." This, as you might have imagined, caused certain parts of the internet to descend into complete anarchy for awhile. Whole sites went up in flame wars. Finally, campaigns to release it here somewhat paid off, as it got limited distribution in January. Of course, all this probably would have felt more important if the film hadn’t gotten such mixed reviews. Even so, Bettany was widely praised for his portrayal of Darwin and the general consensus seems to be that despite some flaws, “Creation” is still worth a look. You can bet I’m going to. I’m even thinking about buying extra copies to slip inside the cases of “Left Behind” dvds at Wal-Mart.
EXTRAS: Commentary with director John Amiel; ‘Making of’ doc; “Debating Darwin” - some featurettes about the controversy, stupid as it may be; “Digging Deeper into Darwin” - a look at some of the other things going on in the man’s life other than his study of evolution; a talk show with Nick Pollard on the movie
CLICK HERE TO BUY Creation (dvd)


Click here for PART TWO of the NEW RELEASES