DVDs This Week (02/08/11)…

Updated on February 8, 2011 By Ken Begg 16 Comments

First, a few more of Warners’ generally spectacular Doctor Who releases.

First, Doctor Who The Movie Special Edition. Poor Paul McGann, he had real promise (I miss neo-Victorian Doctors), but the Americanized movie kind of sucked. Even so, it’s probably worth revisiting for what might have been—and what is best forgotten, like the idea that the Doctor was half-human so that he could go on a Spielbergian quest to find his missing father, or the first instance of Doctor/Companion romance—and to see Sylvester McCoy one last time. Perhaps to make up for the lackluster central product, the two disc set is packed. Two commentaries to start with, and a ton of other stuff. See the list in the costumer comments in the Amazon listing.

Also available is another 2 disc set, featuring the Jon Pertwee adventure The Mutants.

Other TV listings

Airwolf S4, Columbo Mystery Movie Collection 1991-1993, The Guardian S1, and separately, the Final Season aka season 2 (this was the lawyer show starring the guy now on The Mentalist).

FILMS

Barb Wire is now out on Blu Ray. Thank Goodness.

The much despised I Spit On Your Grave, a movie that roused Ebert and Siskel to campaign against it, is now available, as is the recent remake.

Let Me In, the American version of the Swedish vampire flick Let the Right One In, is now available on both DVD and Blu Ray.

Monsters, the low budget giant monster / illegal immigration flick directed by the guy now entrusted with making the upcoming theatrical Godzilla redo, is out.

My Soul To Take Wes Craven’s most recent horror movie is sadly less Scream and more Cursed, according to those few who saw it.

Ong Bak 3 I think this is a sequel to Jet Li’s Fist of Fury.

Paranormal Activity 2

Safe Not Sorry Another cool set of campy old shorts from the fine folks at Kino. Unsurprisingly, this one features often paranoid safety shorts.

Riot Gene Hackman and Jim Brown plan a prison break. Produced by William Castle.

Sex and Black Magic Eurosleaze directed by Joe Damato.

DTV Stuff

Alice in Murderland
Chain Letter
Death Tube 2
Hatchet 2
Quantum Apocalypse
Red River
Virus X

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  • BeckoningChasm

    The nice thing about the old Doctors was that they never really went away; from what I heard, Paul McGann did a lot of audio-only adventures (as did all the post-Tom Baker Doctors). I believe there was even a triple-header with Davison, C. Baker and McCoy in the same story.

  • fish eye no miko

    Oh God, the DW movie. Seriously, Paul McGann was the only good thing about that piece of Dalek droppings…

    William Castle produced a prison movie? So, what, halfway through, the theater has a “power outage”, then when the lights come back on, there’s a bunch of men in prison garb running through the aisles scaring people?

  • Gamera

    I really liked McGann too, and love the neo-Victorian look they gave to his TARDIS. The regeneration scene played off with the intercutting to James Whale’s Frankenstein I also thought was cool. And if the Doctor has to have a romantic companion I liked the fact the the medical doctor was in her ’30s, stable and smart. Big improvement over loud-mouth teeny-boppers like Ace and Rose…
    Other than that wasn’t very impressed. I thought they tried to turn it into a Hollywood type action show with the car chase and the whole half-human thing left me wondering WTH were they thinking???

  • The Rev.

    I need to pick up Monsters and see what I think of the next G-film helmer.

    I also need to get around to the Ong-Bak trilogy. The Protector was pretty fun.

  • Rock Baker

    If Monsters is the movie reviewed in the most recent G-Fan, I’m already worried about Godzilla.

  • Man with No Face

    I didn’t think the McGann movie was that bad. Not brilliant, but also not worthy of all the scorn Who fans have heaped on it over the years.

    McGann’s characterization was great. As Gamera noted, Grace was a nice potential companion…and the “romance” was sweet but fairly understated, unlike the way Russell T. Davies bludgeoned viewers with Rose.

    As for the car chase scene, well…watch episode 2 of “Planet of the Spiders,” then tell me again that British Doctors never did chase scenes.

  • The Rev.

    Rock: I haven’t read G-Fan in years, but Nathan did a review of it a month or so ago over at Cold Fusion. He seemed to like it all right.

  • fish eye no miko

    @Man with No Face: The action stuff didn’t bother me, either. However:

    but also not worthy of all the scorn Who fans have heaped on it over the years.

    Dude, the beginning ALONE makes it worthy of scorn. The Daleks, known for exterminating first and asking questions never, put The Master on trial? Then give his remains to The Doctor? That’s just insane. And that’s before the opening credits. We also get: Half-Human Doctor, the Eye of Harmony being in the TARDIS (not quite, guys) and needing a HUMAN eye to open it (how does that even make ANY sense?), going back in time to bring grace and Lee back to life (no. No no no), and just about EVERYTHING about the Master (they couldn’t even get a British actor?)…

  • Rock Baker

    Peter Cushing is my Dr. Who. Much less to get worked up about. (Although I did just finish the newest series and really enjoyed it. The new guy is young, but pretty good. And then there’s Amy Pond…and I thought Rose was cute!)

  • GalaxyJane

    Yeah, what fish eye said…

    Although at least we got the highly-underrated Sylvester McCoy back to pass the torch. Admittedly, they then wasted the opportunity by having him die in the most ignominious way any Time Lord yet managed (shot by gang-bangers? Really?)

  • fish eye no miko

    GalaxyJane said: “Amittedly, they then wasted the opportunity by having him die in the most ignominious way any Time Lord yet managed (shot by gang-bangers? Really?)”

    I’d say that Six (Colin Baker) had a worse death, but at least there was a reason for that one…

  • tim

    they retconned Eight being half human in the comics, saying he was only pretending to be so to fool the master.
    is there a site that has a list of every movie on bluray? I know I can go to amazon or any other site and check if the movie I’m looking for is on bluray. but I’m curious if there’s a site set up that just has a list.
    also, is there a site that shows a schedule for upcoming bluray releases? the one on the imdb only seems to go a month or two ahead.
    another also, are there sites set up where fans can campaign to have movies released on bluray? I’d love to see prince of darkness, legend, and hoffa get the treatment.

  • Gamera

    Sorry, never meant to say there was anything wrong with having a car chase in a Who episode. Just wondering if the show had been picked up there would have been a car chase in every (or nearly so) episode like many US TV shows.

  • Ericb

    “Although I did just finish the newest series and really enjoyed it. The new guy is young, but pretty good”

    I wasn’t expecting much from the latest Dr. but I was pleasantly suprised. The kid actually makes a pretty good Dr. and I liked that the gave the companion another love interest so they could keep the Dr. somewhat aloof from it all like in the old days.

  • Marsden

    I agree with fish eye and Galaxy Jane. The Doctor has faced down so many hordes of aliens just to get shot in a random crime? Duh. Plus everything fish eye posted, it reminds me of when they adapt a comic book into a movie and change everything, as if this wasn’t a continuation but an adaptation, but then get the actual old Doctor for the begining. I was, however, glad they didn’t try it “didn’t exist” in the new series by showing McGann when they show all of the Doctor’s old faces, at least they own their mistake.

  • Man with No Face

    Controversy time.

    Actually, I took tremendous satisfaction in seeing the highly OVERrated Thylvether McCoy gunned down like a punk. (Though as fish eye points out, even that beats the Doctor regenerating because he fell off an exercise bike. Or do you mean the reason for that was that Colin got fired?) Of course, as a companion Grace wasn’t as cool as “Oi’ll blarst ye wit’ me Noitro-Noine, armpit!”

    I figured the “Daleks put the Master on trial and gave the remains to the Doctor” had the makings of a fascinating “untold tale.” Why WOULD the Daleks put the Master on trial? Why WOULD they give the remains to their hated enemy, the Doctor? Rather than just dismissing the idea, I thought, “now, THAT’S a story I’d like to see!” And it might make a kind of sense, if the Master’s trial followed directly on from him screwing up the Dalek’s plot in “Frontier in Space/Planet of the Daleks.” They never say WHICH incarnation of the Master was put on trial; and it could explain why the Delgado Master just vanished, to reappear in a rotted body (like the way Eric Roberts’ body was disintegrating in the telemovie…?)

    The Eye of Harmony stuff was wrong, true, but going back in time to retrieve Grace and Lee? Who’s to say the Doctor CAN’T do this? Maybe he’s just not supposed to. You may use the death of Adric as an example, but I’d respond: would YOU have gone out of your way to bring Matthew Waterhouse back to life? 

    And I LIKED the “half-human” idea. It could’ve explained a lot about the Doctor, like his affinity for humanity and Earth, his familiarity with human history, his choices of clothing, that line from “Black Orchid” where the Doctor says he wanted to drive a steam train “when I was a boy” (super high tech Gallifrey uses steam-powered railroads?), and so forth.

    Let’s face it. The background of Gallifrey and the Doctor has been constantly added to, changed, revised, and retconned throughout the show’s history. As such, there’s nothing INTRINSICALLY wrong with the idea of the Doctor being half-human. I’ll admit it wasn’t done very well; but if it had been, it might have been merely one more revelation about the Doctor’s mysterious past. (And let’s face it – if Robert Holmes had come up with the “half-human” thing, fanboys would be creaming their jeans at the brilliance of it.)

    As always, YMMV. But then, disputing stuff like this is most of the fun of being a fan. 