The prominence of self-conscious genre films in (post-) postmodernism is a phenomenon which at times can grate the nerves, as anyone who has tried to watch Shoot ‘Em Up more than once can tell you. …
Posts by Pat Brown:
This Box is a Mixed Bag: Four Uneven New Releases
Now that Halloween is over, we’re getting dangerously close to the holiday season, so be on the lookout for expensive box sets of DVDs you already own and the bigger movies from this summer, including, …
An Obligatory List of Great Horror Films
More than any other holiday, with the debatable exception of Christmas, the Halloween experience is very much defined by the films we associate with it. The Halloween season lasts for about a week — it’s …
Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of Unintentionally Revealing DVD Special Features
The special features section of popular DVDs has become a place for a film’s creators to advance an argument for the quality of their film. The behind-the-scenes features and exclusive interviews are little more than …
A Taste of Today’s DVD Releases
There was once a video game known as Captain America and the Avengers for the Sega Genesis and Super Nintendo Game Systems. Playing the game as a child, I always chose the stalwart Avenger Iron …
It’s Hard to Hate Sex and The City
Have you ever been to a party and hovered awkwardly around a group of the party-goers, trying to engage in the conversation but feeling completely left behind, without anything resembling a frame of reference by …
Celebrating TV on DVD
It has often occurred to me that there existed a time as recently as my early adolescence when television shows were not regularly released in DVD box sets. I wonder how people survived in the …
The Fall and Bashing DVDs Released to Little Fanfare
Bigger releases (i.e. films that you remember being in the theaters) this week include Tina Fey’s venture into movie stardom, Baby Mama, and Jackie Chan and Jet Li’s collaboration The Forbidden Kingdom. The consistently disappointing …
Vampyr and High and Low Long Overdue on DVD
In autumn, Tuesdays are exciting as summer blockbusters, Cannes and Sundance films, and straight-to-video horror titles all find their way to DVD. But autumn is still a few weeks away and some weeks, like this …
DVD Prices ‘Stay the Course’
An interesting thing I noticed while going through this week’s DVD releases: although this last TV season was shortened by the writer’s strike, television on DVD is as expensive as it ever was. Thus you …