Out Today on DVD 8/26

The first movie I’m going to put on my list for the week is David Mamet’s Redbelt.  I’ve never seen it and Tim Allen is in it, but it looked really, really good.  And David Mamet deserves to have another movie as good as Glenngarry Glen Ross, so maybe this could be it.  Who knows.

Well.  Me, I’ll know after I watch it.

A Special Edition release with all kinds of fancy-ass packaging options of The Nightmare Before Christmas hits the shelves today.  There isn’t much to say about that movie.  We’ve all seen it, we all love it.  If you don’t have it yet, here’s your chance.

The Three Stooges Volume 3 (1940-1942) hits today as well.  I like the Stooges.  It makes me a little sad that you can’t find them on television at three in the afternoon on a lazy Saturday anymore like you could when I was a young, newly programmed Swank-bot.  So we’ll have to settle for DVD.  That way we can program a whole new generation of robots in the ways of the stooge.  (Like Ody Mandrell’s Pit Droid Team in Phantom Menace.  Those guys were funny.)

Errol Flynn’s classic, The Adventures of Robin Hood, hits a Blu-ray release today. These old movies are great and I can’t imagine Olivia de Havilland in her prime (1938) somehow looking less attractive in that kind of resolution.

In the world of documentary an interesting little gem that seems to have flown under my radar is The Rape of Europa.  It’s a documentary about the Nazi’s and their plundering of all the great masterpieces in Europe.  It’s a fascinating topic from my favorite period in history to learn about and it’s narrated by Joan Allen.  So, it looks good.

The Bad Ass Nerd Double Feature of the Week award goes to: Cloak and Dagger and The Wizard, together on one disc for the preposterously low price of $12.99 (at Amazon, anyway.)  As a kid, I used to eat these movie up with a spoon.  And yes, I was one of those kids who saw The Wizard opening weekend just for a fleeting glimpse of Super Mario Bros. 3.  And when he’s playing the game at the end of the movie and Mario gets that feather and flies, I about lost it.  And Cloak and Dagger was a great kids spy movie.  It’s got all the roleplaying, video games and intrigue to keep any 12 year old nerd at the edge of their seat, wishing they were the ones in the movie.

Movie to avoid at all costs this week?  Where in the World is Osama Bin Laden? That movie was a flaming bag of turd left on your doorstep.