Why did we, the college kids, hate on townies? Perhaps it has some deep seeded American-settlers root that you never trust the people who rightfully occupy an area you’ve entered. Whatever the case, it went both ways. “Breaking Away” captures this peculiar hatred between the “rich kid” Indiana University students and Bloomington’s “Cutters” perfectly without making it a message movie. There’s no scene of regret from either side as this strange brand of unrequited bigotry does not get solved for all eternity. The school will always be there and so will the townies, so the best the Cutters can hope for is to find peace somewhere in the middle. Read the rest of this entry »

Berlin Alexanderplatz (Criterion Collection): It’s a landmark day for uber-cineastes as Rainer Werner Fassbinder’s legendary 15-hour epic, originally filmed for German television, gets a lavish and anticipated Criterion edition treatment. No longer will film geeks have to shuttle around shabby VHS copies a friend of their uncle’s college roommate taped off The Z Channel back in ’81; the ambitious between-world-wars saga of one man’s downfall to the vices of the city arrives completely restored and, if you can believe it, a half-hour longer thanks to the PAL to NTSC frame rate conversion. Still, if you are up for devoting an entire waking day to one film, this is the way to do it. Extras on the seven-disc set include several documentaries and a 1931 adaptation of the novel that runs a paltry 90 minutes.
Read the rest of this entry »

Help!: Special Edition

Let’s cut right to the chase, shall we? - Help! gets a bad rap. Sure, upon its arrival in 1965, it may not have seemed as groundbreaking, as fresh and revolutionary as Richard Lester’s first collaboration with The Beatles, A Hard Day’s Night. And no, it doesn’t capture quite the same pure distillation of the Fab Four’s charm as was crystallized in the earlier black-and-white, “fictionalized documentary” which received a lavish restoration and DVD treatment from Miramax five years ago. Still, sophomore status and lack of interventions from the Weinsteins notwithstanding, Help! is a thoroughly enjoyable romp with an equally impressive soundtrack that should never have taken this long to make it to disc.
Read the rest of this entry »

My So Called Life: The Complete Series

It arrived – unbeknownst to much of the viewing public, after over a year on the shelf – as a breath of fresh air, a serious series about teens with minimal flair and predilection for high hairdos and jokey teenspeak. As per their standard for groundbreaking shows at the time, ABC – who between Max Headroom, Twin Peaks and this, were champions of killing off quality shows too soon before having that title aggressively wrestled from them by Fox – didn’t quite know how to market a series to an audience which wasn’t made up of thirtysomethings who watched… er, thirtysomething. Ironic, considering My So Called Life came from the same exec producers, Marshall Herskovitz and Ed Zwick; twenty years later, DVD releases of it are heralded events while thirtysomething has yet to see the light of disc.
Read the rest of this entry »

Cutting Class
By Jessica Dwyer

To get into the Halloween spirit we’re heading back the vaults for this aged slice of 80’s cheese which is getting ready to be released on DVD later this month for the first time in…ever. Cutting Class was one of those flicks that popped up all over VHS in the late 80’s, early 90’s. Rip offs of earlier slasher films, it was in the vein of April Fool’s Day, Prom Night, and Return to Horror High. It’s sometimes whispered about and vaguely remembered by those chosen few who actually watched it when it was first released, before being lost to the ether. Some would say they wish it had stayed lost.
Read the rest of this entry »