by Jared Logan, Blerds DVD critic

Well, it’s time for my annual review of all the new DVDs that come out around the holidays.  There’s some real choice pickings in this slew of digital video delights, so let’s get right to the reviews!

EMPTY NEST Season 1

Retail: $34.95

This four disc set contains all 26 episodes of the first season of Empty Nest, the celebrated sitcom starring the irrepressible Richard Mulligan as Dr. Harry Weston, a pediatrician with a dead wife. Who can forget Harry’s hilarious catchphrase “(sobbing) My wife! My wiiiiiiiiiife!! (more sobbing).” Harry’s two young daughters move back in with him after the death of his wife, causing him endless irritation.  This is the show that summed up the popular eighties idea “Let’s get our children to move out as soon as possible so that we can experience joy once again.  Children are a burden!”  Joe Isuzu has a hilarious turn in this series as the wacky neighbor with a huge libido, Charlie Dietz.  My favorite episode in the first season is the one where Charlie screws both of Harry’s daughters in the same night, prompting Harry to quip, when he finds out, “Get out of my house you rotten whores!!” I laughed and laughed, even though I think the scene was intended to be serious.

Special Features and Easter Eggs

In the special features menu, you can choose the option  ”RESURRECT DEAD WIFE” and watch the show with Libby, Harry’s dead wife, present in all the scenes.  This isn’t as cool as it sounds.  She is a fairly boring character.  Her dialogue is confined to lines like “You guys look like you could use a soda” and “My body is alive, but my soul still feels dead.”

Rating: Two Snaps Up, In a Circle

BOSTON PUBLIC The Complete Eighth Season

Retail: $84.95

This is the twelve disc set containing all 39 episodes of the eighth season of the celebrated Fox drama, Boston Public, and man! Is this season a doozey or what?!?  You knew they was gonna blow the lid off cuz this wuz the final season!  And guess what?  They did!!  Mmmmm-hmmmm!  This show is about a big highschool in Boston and the lives of all the teachers there.  FYI: them teachers is FUH-REAKS!!  Great subplots of this season include: *By-the-book Vice Principal Scott Guber catches rebellious geology teacher Harry Senate getting it on with a student, so he shoots him in the head with a bow and arrow from the school’s archery set.  Senate survives, but his brain is altered, giving him multiple personalities! One of the personalities is a sexy female cat! *Principal Harper begins receiving racist death threats after he discontinues sloppy joes in the cafeteria.  In a rage, he puts the entire school on lockdown.  For three days, nobody goes in or out.  Starving, and mad with paranoia because she’s off her meds, Special Education teacher Marla Hendricks ravenously devours three of her mentally disabled students, then escapes the school, committing suicide in front of the network news cameras outside.

Special Features and Easter Eggs

Series Creator David E. Kelly provides nearly four hours of video lectures on The Art of Creating Realistic Television and talks, at length, about how he wanted to avoid the sensationalism usually associated with network TV.  There’s also a special feature “Make all ‘em characturrs talk like ‘is here!!” which makes all of the characters speak in a humorous dialect.  The line, uttered by Scott Guber,  ”I want to know exactly what you were doing in the gymnasium with that student” becomes “I wants ta know ezzakly what you was doin’ inna gym with that stoo-dent, beeeeeeyatch!”

Rating: Two snaps up, with attitude!

THE CRITERION COLLECTION: HOOK

Retail: $52.99

Leaving the world of TV, we venture off to magical Never Never Land in this groundbreaking motion picture that is finally receiving the Criterion treatment!  Hook is, of course, the ground-breaking artistic masterpiece directed by Steven Spielberg, released in 1991.  It follows the adventures of a middle-aged Peter Pan (Robin Williams!) who must return to Neverland to rescue his children, who have been kidnapped by Captain Hook (Dustin Hoffman!).  The star-studded cast also includes Julia Roberts (as embarrassed Tinkerbell), Bob Hoskins (as Who Cares?), and Dante Basco (as Rufio, the lost boy).  Dante, who has one of those ‘please look at my headshot’ names many actors seem to possess, disappeared in 1994.

This movie is a winner (i.e. horrible loser) because it combines all the fun of watching middle-aged people prance about like fairies, with shameful and flagrant Hollywood excess in the form of expensive actors, high-budget special effects and elaborate sets.  When one watches the scene in which Peter and the Lost Boys gobble down imaginary food, one cannot help but marvel at how many third world countries could have been fed using the budget for that scene alone.

Special Features and Easter Eggs

As always, the Criterion collection DVD is filled with extras that make it well worth its much-inflated price tag.  There is a special color control option that allows you to remove the blush of embarrassment from all of the actors’ faces.  This would be even better if there was an option that could remove the viewer’s embarrassment while watching Hook.  The deleted scenes are amazing, including one entire alternate cut of the movie wherein Robin Williams/Peter Pan gets his youthful spirit and peter pan powers back by snorting a bag full of coke.  This cut of the movie, I will attest, is much funnier.  Finally, there are several great reels of Dustin Hoffman outtakes.  In one candid outtake, Hoffman is in a rage over the temperature of a hot towel brought to his trailer and rips out the eye of a makeup girl with his hook while screaming the names of movies he’s been in.  “Tootsie!” he howls “Marathon Man!  The Graduate!  MIDNIGHT COWBOY!!!!”

Rating: Two farts in the wind, and a warning.  Hook is unwatchable.

GEORGE W BUSH’S 9-11 DEGREES CELSIUS: THE COOLEST TEMPERATURE

Retail: $19.95, but it’s free with your tax refund in ‘07

Billed as a “docu-adventure,” this film, written and directed by our 43rd president, George W. Bush, was created as a reprisal to a similarly titled Michael Moore film, Fahrenheit 9-11.  Like Moore, Bush uses documentary footage, the techniques of cinema verite’, narration and interviews to forward his counter-argument to Moore’s film; that being: “I’m probably the best defense this country has ever had against terrorism.  I’m like a big wall, keeping the terrorism out.” This is actually uttered by Bush in the film before he goes on to say “Except, you know, on 9-11.  Couldn’t keep ‘em out that day. That was the day that The Wall cried.”  The visual during this narration is footage of Bush’s face superimposed over the burning towers.  One tear falls from his eye.

Unlike Moore, Bush also intersperses “re-enacted” scenes featuring actors into his film.  In many scenes, Bush’s staff and cabinet are portrayed by well-known actors.  In a confusing casting decision, Charlie Sheen plays Dick Cheney.  Colin Powell and Condoleeza Rice are portrayed by husband and wife team Will Smith and Jada Pinkett Smith.  Bush always plays himself.  These scenes often highlight the “adventure” portion of this “docu-adventure.”  The actors and Bush run from terrorists with uzis who invade the White House and dodge sidewinder missiles fired from the windows of passenger planes.  In one scene, Laura Bush (Alyssa Milano) defuses a bomb while wearing only a bikini. Bush repeatedly uses “judo skills” to quickly subdue terrorists who attack him and continually utters the catchphrase “It’s time to get nasty!” This reviewer guesses that many of these scenes were fictionalized.

The movie also inexplicably contains clips from other films such as Silence of the Lambs, Goodfellas, and Jackie Chan’s The Tuxedo.  One presumes that these are films President Bush enjoys, but wonders what purpose they serve as clips in his own film.

Special Features and Easter Eggs

There is a companion film included with the feature, Where Do You Find the Time? The Making of 9-11 Degrees Celsius.  This behind-the-scenes doc chronicles George W. Bush’s battle to get his film made.  “Everyone was against me,” he confesses in an interview with himself, “Everyone said ‘You’re the president! You can’t make a movie!’ But see, I thought different.  I thought ‘I can make a movie because I’m the president.”  Bush’s battle with Congress is, by now, legendary, but in the end he was given a year off from the presidency to make his film.  This making-of feature is actually much stronger than the film itself, having been directed by Ron Howard.

Rating: One snap up, One snap down.  By turns horrifying and insane-making.  A film experience like no other.

Well, that’s about all for now.  Join me next time when I review the DVD releases of Face Eaters 4: Say Goodbye to Your Eyeballs, The Mexican 2, and seven different CGI talking animal movies.

Happy viewing!

02/01/2007
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