Saturday July 21 through Thursday July 26, 2007

Saturday July 21 Through Tuesday July 24, 2007
Robin of Sherwood - 1984 - 1985

Five discs, four of episodes, the fifth is extras. The first two seasons where Michael Praed plays Robin (although I thought it was the complete series, it does NOT include the third season, featuring Jason Connery as Robert). Celtic music, muddy sets (very realistic), and a fascinating intersection of "old world" religion and christianity.

This is an awesome show. I saw it on the local PBS channel back in late 80's in South Carolina. Here's a funny story. I never understood the words of the title song. Between the accent and the music, I just couldn't make out what they were saying after "Robin, the...". I never saw the initial episodes, which explained the whole "hooded man" mythos. Now, it's clear that they're singing "the hooded man", but I never got that back in the day. Okay, so maybe it's not so funny, but I was happy to finally know what the title song was saying.

There are commentaries on many episodes, but due to the length of time needed to watch them all (13 episodes at 55 minutes apiece, plus several HOURS worth of extras on disc 5), I only listened to a few. The pilot two episodes have a commentary by the writer (Richard Carpenter) and director (Ian Sharp). Some technical info, some behind the scenes info, and some reminiscing. There's a funny story where they tried to sell it to US TV by telling them it was Dukes of Hazard with bows and arrows. Couldn't be any further from the truth.

Later commentaries tell us that they only had 3 episodes written when they started shooting. That the whole series was only shown ONCE in England (which seems insane to me, seeing as how popular it was in the USA). The commentaries got pretty dull, as the folks are not very animated. I stopped listening to them by the end of the second day.

The fifth disc has TWO HOURS of extras. The major thing I got was that there was an incredible camaraderie on the set, that carries on even to today. There's a blooper reel that shows just how much rain they had to deal with. LOTS of slipping in the mud, which IS funny.

Wednesday, July 25, 2007
Ghidorah, The Three Headed Monster - 1964

These Media Classic releases are just AWESOME. Well, if you like Godzilla movies, that is. My younger son and I have a fun time watching them. This disc comes with both the English (International) version, and the Japanese version with subtitles. I enjoy watching both, noting the differences. The transfers are flawless. And the commentaries and educational and entertaining.

And speaking of commentaries, this disc has one by a David Kalat, who has written a scholarly book about Godzilla movies (A Critical History and Filmography of Toho's Godzilla Series). I like this guy's attitude. In this commentary, we learn that the making of this movie was a 9 month process, from start to showing. There's an interesting discussion about how some of the edits were necessitated by the dubbing process to make it look better (hide impossible lip sync issues, etc).

This is a great disc for fans of Toho. If not, this is a good one to try out if you've never experienced the joys of Godzilla.

Thursday, July 26, 2007
The Hills Have Eyes 2 - 2007

Picking up many months after the first remake, here we see a group of lame-ass army wannabees (and let me just say here that if I was in the National Guard, especially if I'd had to go over and fight in the Middle East, and I saw a movie depicting National guardsmen this candy ass and lame, I'd be PISSED!) tracking the mutants into their underground lair.

The BEST thing this movie has going for it is gore. There's plenty of that. Gorehounds disappointed by the recent Brain Damage Films' releases will find much joy here. There is, without a doubt, one of the most disgusting bits of brain-foo at the end of this movie I have ever seen. In fact, the final 30 minutes really make up for some of the slowness and lameness of the first hour. Only the final two minutes ruins it, by being crashingly dumb.

Other extras include a collection of deleted scenes. Most not missed, but I'd have left in "Missy wakes up". Not that long, and it adds to the creepy quota. There's an alternate ending that's as dumb as the theatrical ending. There's a gag reel that's not very funny because they are trying to be funny, and that seldom works. And a "mutant attacks" featurette, that's a sort of behind the scenes with cast and crew interviews. Not bad.

There's a featurette called "Birth of a graphic novel" that was REAL interesting. Evidently, making a comic book is a LOT harder than you'd think.

There's a making of called Exploring the Hills, where we learn that Wes Craven and his son wrote this movie together. We also learn what a tough shoot it was, with most of the actors doing a lot of their own stunts. This was pretty interesting too.

Finally, there's this cool featurette from Fox Movie channel called Life After Film School, where three film students are varying stages of their courses interview Wes Craven. This was without a doubt the best extra on the disc, and was really great!