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Sons of Anarchy: Season Two
The badass bikers who keep the fictional town of Charming, well, not what most folks would call “charming” but relatively under control, had a lot to deal with in the second season of this gritty drama: white supremacists (Adam Arkin and Henry Rollins), competitors for their porn business, IRA gunrunners, the feds, even a kidnapped baby. Check out all 13 episodes before season three premieres—and don’t miss the new episodes; guest stars reportedly will include Hal Holbrook and Stephen King. Yes, that Stephen King. The season two set includes deleted scenes, three featurettes, and a music video.—B.R.T.
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Unrivaled Circle of Pain
-By Barbara Rice Thompson
Mixed martial arts hits the home-theater fiction department, brought to you by equipment supplier TapouT. Unrivaled stars Rashad “Sugar” Evans, Nate “the Great” Marquardt, Forrest Griffin, and Keith “the Dean of Mean” Jardine; Kimbo Slice is the Circle headliner, with Heath Herring, Frank Mir, and Roger Huerta. Fighting movies are nothing new, of course, and they share a unique quality with porn: The plot is inconsequential filler between action sequences. These fighters do bring a certain verisimilitude to their roles, though, and the films themselves will work adequately to tide you over between this month’s UFC 114 (with Evans) and 115.
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True Blood: The Complete Second Season
-By Christine Colby
The town of Bon Temps is under the spell of a mysteriously feral femme (Michelle Forbes) who throws drugand drink-fueled orgies—we like her. There’s also a hot blonde shape-shifter in town (played by Ashley Jones, a pig, and a deer), which leads to inter species lovin’ with a canine bar keep (who is also sometimes an owl, a bull, and even a fly). That’s sexier than it sounds, but we’re still glad when the focus is on the vampires, especially gorgeous redheads Deborah Ann Woll and Evan Rachel Wood. Extras include fea tures on the anti-vamp church and a vampire news pro gram. The Blu-ray discs offer a picture-in-picture feature that provides back ground on characters, news reports, and public-service statements from the pro- and anti-vamp camps. It helps if you get too distracted by the sex and nudity to pay attention to details.
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The band that brought us “A Well Respected Man,” “Lola,” “You Really Got Me,” and about a million other classic tunes just can’t get no respect, as a new DVD illustrates in more ways than one.
By Nanette Varian
You Really Got Me: The Story of the Kinks
This film (not to be confused with the 2008 three-disc set The Kinks: You Really Got Me: The Inside Story With Dave Davies) tries gamely to tell the sloppy, drunken, brawling, brilliant story of one of the British Invasion’s most enduring legends—a tale of brotherly feuds (between lead singer/songwriter Ray Davies and lead guitarist Dave), epic misfortune (literally banned from the States during what should have been their peak earning years), and influence that is still being felt 14 years after their last concert—but it’s a pastiche of clips that’s often confusingly ordered and edited. Still, within that collection of clips there are some gems showcasing the band’s myriad styles (think Spinal Tap with much better music), and the sight of a feral, teenage Dave growling through the band’s early blues covers while Ray’s showboaty charisma starts flicking its defiantly loose wrists is worth the price of admission.
Several former band members have been performing boozy U.K. pub gigs as the Kast Off Kinks; sometimes Ray even joins them for a number or two, fueling rumors of a reunion. We’re not holding our breath. But maybe someone will at least cough up the kind of high-quality, comprehensive DVD treatment these guys deserve. Anybody know if Ric and Ken Burns are Kinks fans? Oh, wait. They don’t seem to want to collaborate anymore, either.
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The Lord of the Rings: The Motion Picture Trilogy
Sure, Avatar bumped it into third place on the list of boxoffice champs, but a Blu-ray release was still inevitable. This collection includes the theatrical version of all three films, with seven hours of bonus features (we assume the same features as on the standard-def theatrical release), BD Live interactive capability, and digital downloads. FYI: Warner Home Video is planning to release a Blu-ray edition of the extended editions in the future, although the date has not yet been announced.
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High Plains Invaders
A Wild West town is crawling with giant, insect-like alien robots. A raggedy team of townspeople and ne’er-dowells, led by murderer and train robber Sam Danville (sci-fi fave James Marsters), who’s delivered from the hangman’s noose by the creatures’ arrival, fights for their lives. Marsters carries the film, delivering a topnotch performance as the guilt-ridden Danville, which unfortunately high lights the B-grade acting of the rest of the cast. But the writing is decent, with a lack of annoying one-liners and a pretty heavy theme of redemption and sacrifice. This is an enjoyable escape, with ser viceable CGI and a Sheryl Crow look-alike, tough-as-nails bounty hunter (Sanny Van Hete ren). But mostly: cowboys and aliens! Awesome!
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Lock N’ Load With R. Lee Ermey: The Complete Season One
If only history class had been like this History Channel series. Ermey is a familiar face to most men, as a screening of Full Metal Jacket is (or should be) required viewing upon reaching the age of consent. Here, Gunny delves into the evolution of specific weapons, tracing the development of the obvious—Gatling gun to modern-day Humvee-mounted rapid fire machine gun, for instance; as well as the pistol, the armored vehicle, and the helicopter—and the not-so-obvious—bunker busters like the trebuchet, rockets, and one of our favorites, the blade, from ancient bronze to samurai sword to modern bayonet. He uses cutaways and video clips to illustrate his points, but of course the reason to watch is that he also demonstrates the destructive possibilities of each weapon by shooting, stabbing, and blowing up shit. It’s truly fascinating and informative, and entertaining as hell.
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Goodfellas
One of the greatest mobster tales in Hollywood history is back on Blu-ray, in a 20th Anniversary Edition. The previous Blu-ray release was gorgeous, and took full advantage of what the format could offer in terms of picture and sound quality. Final details about bonus features were hard to come by, but the disc comes in a 34-page digi book and is slated to include a feature length documentary, Public Enemies: The Golden Age of the Gangster Film; two commentary tracks; three featurettes; and four Warner Bros. mob-related cartoons, which sound intriguing.
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House of the Devil
A pretty young coed (Jocelin Donahue) takes a babysitting gig in a big, spooky house near a cemetery on the night of a lunar eclipse. As cliché as it sounds, Ti West’s movie works because he places it firmly in the eighties, at the height of satanic panic and before Scream-style irony entered the horror canon. Shot on 16mm in a muted palette, so it looks vintage, and played totally straight, it’s a throwback to the days before audiences were so jaded. Not even the stunt casting—Dee Wallace of The Hills Have Eyes; Mary Woronov, Warhol muse and star of Rock ’n’ Roll High School; Manhunter’s Tom Noonan—distracts from the scares. Any fan of classic supernatural horror will appreciate this devilish tale. Too bad the skimpy bonus features don’t add much.
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Braveheart
This may very well be the ultimate guy movie, especially in this two-disc Sapphire Series Blu-ray edition. It’s gorgeous, of course; boasts new Dolby TrueHD 5.1 audio; and has new content, including three interactive timelines and featurettes on the making of the film and the history of William Wallace and Scotland (“Smithfield: Medie val Killing Fields” and “Battlefields of the Scottish Rebellion”). Those of you who try to get a body count will be thrilled: Your chances of success have never been better.
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Anvil! The Story of Anvil
These “demigods of Canadian metal” inspired groups that went on to fame and fortune, and filmmaker Sacha Gervasi puts that out front and center, kicking off the doc with quotes from Metallica’s Lars Ulrich, Guns N’ Roses’ Slash, Motörhead’s Lemmy Kilmister, Anthrax’s Scott Ian, and Slayer’s Tom Araya. But while Anvil! begins with talking heads discussing the band’s seminal album Metal on Metal, and footage of the guys living the dream at Super Rock ’84 in Japan, the film is really about middle-aged rockers who are still trying to make it big. It’s an emotionally rich, deep, and heartfelt explo ration of the often completely aver age lives of singer/guitarist Steve “Lips” Kudlow and drummer Robb Reiner, who decided at 14 that they’d rock together forever. It’s probably not the first time you’ll see a band put together a demo, go on a low-rent tour of Europe (including a drug toss in fear of a police search), or borrow thousands from family to record a CD, but we bet it’ll be the first time you see 51-year-olds doing it. There may be moments when you almost feel sorry for them, but their passion and enthusiasm for metal, the artists who create it, and especially their loyal fans is a joy to watch. You’ll be thrilled that the guys are enjoy ing some post-doc success, including opening for AC/DC on their New York City–area dates.
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The Plot:
In some ways, Sons of Anarchy is your typical family drama. Clay (Ron Perlman) and Gemma (Katey Sagal) head up the Tellow-Morrow clan, which owns a neighborhood auto-repair shop and struggles with messy divorces and bizarre love triangles. They also happen to run a notorious Northern California biker gang, and their idea of “family time” includes trafficking illegal weapons, fighting a rival gang of white-supremacist meth-heads, and imposing vigilante justice on the locals.
Buy or Rent?
Rent. Unless you’ve been harboring a Peg Bundy obsession since the late eighties, you probably won’t watch it repeatedly. But you should get up to speed before rocker Henry Rollins takes on the crew next season.
Added Value?
Bonus features include a gag reel, commentaries, deleted scenes, and a making-of featurette.
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This Is Spinal Tap
The Plot:
Cue the “it goes to 11” jokes. Spinal Tap, widely considered the best cult film of all time, turns 25 this year and celebrates with a Blu-ray release. The mockumentary follows a fading glam-rock band as it clings to its last milliseconds of fame, desperately trying to stay relevant with the help of a very small Stonehenge replica and a very loud amp.
Buy or Rent?
Buy. Comedies don’t get much better than this. The film is revered by rock stars and preserved in the National Film Registry. And David St. Hubbins would never settle for standard def, would he?
Added Value?
Pretty good, especially for a fictional band—highlights include a Live Earth performance from 2007, a Flower People press conference, four music videos, and an hour’s worth of deleted footage.
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Natural Born Killers
The Plot:
Few movies in history have pissed off as many people as Oliver Stone’s supremely fucked-up love story. Mickey and Mallory (Woody Harrelson and Juliette Lewis) take a sociopathic road trip through New Mexico, making occasional pit stops to massacre the locals and becoming unlikely media darlings in the process.
Buy or Rent?
Rent. This movie can basically make you lose your faith in humanity in two hours flat, so one screening is plenty.
Added Value?
Sure, you could call it that. The Blu-ray director’s cut includes a scene that makes the jailhouse riot even more gory, along with the alternate ending, documentary on the media shitstorm surrounding the movie, deleted scenes, and Stone’s appearance on Charlie Rose that were on earlier releases. New features include “NBK Evolution: How Would It All Go Down Now?”
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Easy Rider
The Plot:
After closing a drug deal in L.A., two bikers (Peter Fonda and Dennis Hopper) stash the cash inside a motorcycle fuel tank and head to Mardi Gras. Along the way, they get high, get arrested, and get their asses handed to them by a bunch of rednecks.
Buy or Rent?
Buy. Its hippie-trippy idealism might seem a little hokey after 40 years, but it does triple duty as buddy movie, road-trip saga, and one of the original stoner flicks.
Added Value?
The extras probably won’t blow you away—the last big re-release included a making-of documentary, audio commentary, and talent files (in case you’re wondering who that talented young actor named Jack Nicholson is).
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