Thursday, April 2, 2009 Shameful Naked Avarice

I've still got a lot of DVD's I haven't watched, but there's some recent releases out there that I'm really jonesing for. Here are the top 5 DVD's I buy in a heartbeat if I was still employed:

5) The Room - A staggeringly bad film that I'm dying to see in its full glory. I've heard a lot about this new cult favorite over the last couple of years, and the snippets I caught on Adult Swim this week lived up to the hype. I do love how they tacked on some quotes at the end of the trailer to make it look like an intentional comedy.

4) Venture Bros Season 3 Blu-Ray - I'm still not 100% sold on Blu-Ray, but for ten bucks more you get an HD print and a copy of the soundtrack? Done!

3) Ip Man - There's a lot of positive buzz on this biopic starring Donnie Yen as Bruce Lee's wing chun instructor, though most reviewers give it higher marks as an action film than as biography. I actually had a copy, a gift from my cousin who picked it up in Alberta's Chinatown; it looks to be a legit Mainland release with excellent sound and visual quality but incomprehensible English subtitles. I need an upgrade before I can watch this film!

2) Cinematic Titanic - I was a huge fan of MST3K even before my cable provider carried it ("keep circulating the tapes", indeed), and I was lucky enough to catch the CT crew live when they played Chicago last December. However, I don't own a single one of their DVD releases. That needs to be rectified ASAP.

1) Thundercrack! - I was lucky enough to catch a screening of this legendary film during a trip to London, and I've been itching to inflict it on my friends ever since. The long-promised official DVD looks like vaporware, but there's a new release from a Scandinavian company called AWE that is rumored to be the best version yet available. However, even a really good transfer of this film is still going to look like hell (see the segment below, taken from a previous release). Of course, that's part of Thundercrack's charm as far as I'm concerned.

Runners up include The Good, The Bad, and The Weird, part two of Red Cliff (so I can finally watch part one), and the latest Futurama movie. Cripes, I need a job.