DVDs, 8/23.

Does it seem to you as it does to me that all of a sudden we have seen some great DVD releases? Last week we had Apocalypse Now: The Complete Dossier and the Rohmer set, preceded by Roma Citta Libera and such novelties as the Mr Moto series, plus A Canterbury Tale and some Louis Malle box sets, and with Arrested Development, a Mel Brooks box set, more Fox noirs, The Death of Mr Lazarescu, Amarcord, Playtime, and the new three-disc Criterion Seven Samurai in our near future.

Besides Double Indemnity, the other prestige item of the week is Noah Baumbach's Kicking and Screaming, which received the Criterion treatment. At the DVD Journal, Dawn Taylor notes that Kicking and Screaming "was one of a number of popular independent pictures that paved the way for the faux-indie movement of the late 1990s," and praises Baumbach for not trying to make "any of his characters especially sympathetic in their slacker journey. He leaves that to the actors, who make these layabouts lovable," and finds that Criterion's disc "does justice to this charming film." Gary W Tooze at DVD Beaver proclaims that it "has the same stylish wit as Baumbach's more mature The Squid and the Whale, also exposing some of the ironies of academia." DVD Talk's DVD Savant, Glenn Erickson, notes that "Criterion's disc... presents the handsome independent film in a sparkling enhanced transfer that flatters its unfussy visuals."

Otherwise this week, though, we have TV and Lindsay Lohan.

Don't get me wrong. I love Lindsay Lohan, despite, or maybe because of her off-screen reputation. But her film Just My Luck breezed in and out of theaters so fast that, though in a fashion otherwise customary these days, it did bespeak a lack of zeitgeist flowing in her veins. Gregory P. Dorr, however, reviewing Fox's DVD release of Just My Luck at the DVD Journal, found that Lohan "hits all the right notes in this kind of material." On the other hand, the controversial and ubiquitous Eric D Snider, here at DVD Talk, snidely calls the film "this summer's real disaster movie," noting that the film "doesn't even adhere to real definitions of luck. Most of the 'unlucky' events in the film are the result of the person being clumsy or stupid." And the anonymous reviewer at CurrentFilm.com (are they really anonymous, or am I just not seeing their bylines?) finds that the "real surprise here is Lohan, who, for the first time, really seems disinterested [i.e., uninterested] and gives little effort in the performance. " Finally, even the enthusiastic "Fusion3600" at DVD Authority was disappointed: "As frequent readers know, I, along with most males in the world, have an obsession of sorts with Lindsay Lohan, so of course, I have to see all of her movies. I actually like most of her flicks, as they're usually fun and brisk... Even so, I wasn't too thrilled about Just My Luck, as the previews made it seem like a second rate Trading Places." All of the writers more or less pass over the supplements as negligible.

Also this week, all the new network television science fiction shows - Surface, Invasion, Threshold - that were canceled mid-season popped up on DVD. Dawn Taylor at the DVD Journal deemed Warner's Invasion: The Complete Series to be "arguably one of the best dramas of the 2005-2006 television season - smart, creepy and addictive," adding that William Fichtner is...

[O]ne of the finest character actors working today, and his ability to evince charm, menace, confusion, subterfuge, and bravery - sometimes all in the course of one episode - made [his role as] Underlay the show's most fascinating character. Invasion was exceptional in that it examined all aspects of the alien insurgence - the effect on the community as the unchanged residents viewed their altered neighbors with suspicion, fear, and even jealousy; the question of whether a forced evolution of the human species was a threat or an improvement; and the emotional complications that come when a loved one isn't the same being that they once were, even though they retain all of the same feelings, memories, and ideals as they did before.

CurrentFilm.com's reviewer duplicates Taylor's views: "It still provides a good deal of surprises and plenty of creepy (often thanks to Fichtner's eerie performance) moments."

At DVD Talk, John Sinnott contemplates Threshold, which aired on CBS for nine episodes, now released by Paramount on DVD with four additional un-aired episodes and numerous extras. Sinnott seems to come down on the side of the network for canceling the show, complaining about the program that "it never found its voice - episodes would jump around from genre to genre - a lot of subplots were dropped" and that "the characters also were a bit on the thin side," but he still found something to praise: "The horror aspects worked more often than they didn't."

Finally, consumers might have been excited at the prospect of the R3 two-disc Syriana but "bradavon," commenting after Gary Couzens's review at DVD Times, notes that the only difference between the R3 and the earlier releases of this film is but one extra: "A Conversation with Matt Damon."

Posted by dwhudson at August 23, 2006 7:56 AM