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Media | A2Q Archives | A2Q #63 | November 3, 2008: Welcome to Add to Queue, Levi’s round-up of this week’s US home video release highlights. Sorry, rest of the world. Region locks are the industry’s way of saying they still don’t understand the Internet. If you are from the US and reading this on Tuesday, November 4th, STOP. Go vote for crying out loud. Unless you already did. In that case, affix your “I Voted” sticker to the monitor to unlock additional content in this week’s episode.*
Out This Week
| [[image:a2q081104_bender.jpg:Bender’s Game:left:0]] | Bender’s Game
Here’s a question: are mediocre Futurama movies better than no Futurama at all? I think they are. There are enough good jokes spread across the three direct-to-video movies to justify their existence, and at a certain point, I just want to hear Bender’s dulcet tones advising me to “bite [his] shiny metal ass,” no matter the context. Fun fact for video game fans: the voice behind Bender is also the voice of Gears of War main character Marcus Fenix. |
| [[image:a2q081104_getsmart.jpg:Get Smart:left:0]] | Get Smart
Uh, watch The Office on Hulu instead. Carell seems to be really hit-or-miss on celluloid: Dan in Real Life, The 40-Year-Old Virgin, and Little Miss Sunshine were all excellent, but this and Evan Almighty — not so much. IMDB tells me that he was also in Bewitched, a movie that I wisely had the foresight to avoid like the plague. |
| [[image:a2q081104_trans.jpg:Transsiberian:left:0]] | Transsiberian
Sometimes when I sit down to put this column together, I find out something that really makes me regret not looking into these films earlier. I’d seen the trailers for Transsiberian, and it looked like it had the potential to be a great thriller. It didn’t play anywhere near where I live, so I forgot about it until now. Checking out the cast list on IMDB in prep for Add to Queue, I found out that this film was directed by Brad Anderson. He directed two of the best suspense thrillers in recent history, Session 9 and The Machinist, and now I really wish I’d made the long trip to civilization so I could have seen this before now. The reviews are all pretty glowing, too. Don’t make the mistake I did: watch this as soon as you can. |
| [[image:a2q081104_universal.jpg:Universal Soldier:left:0]] | Universal Soldier
I don’t know if my strong urge to revisit this is due to some kind of douchey hipster irony, or if I just really wish I were thirteen again. Either way, I’ll be renting this. |
| [[image:a2q081104_whatwe.jpg:What We Do Is Secret:left:0]] | What We Do Is Secret
Speaking of being thirteen, another band that defined my adolescent years is getting the biopic treatment. (The other recent example was Control, focusing on Joy Division’s Ian Curtis). Like Ian Curtis, Darby Crash, the lead singer of The Germs, managed to make an indelible mark on music and the people who knew him in a tragically short amount of time. Somehow I doubt Ian Curtis or Darby Crash would be doing butter commercials if they’d managed to live through imprinting themselves on the early punk rock scene. |
Cover art courtesy of Amazon. Well, don’t look so surprised. Even a call girl can scramble an egg. Follow me on Twitter. You can also e-mail me at vsrobot [dot] blog [at] gmail [dot] com. Thanks for reading! *Note: Do not actually stick anything adhesive to your monitor. :P
To be fair to John Lydon, he’s never been but completely honest about making money off either his music or his image.
Anyone who has seen him on SNL knows how charismatic and funny Dwayne “The Rock” Johnson can be.
Oh, and John DiMaggio was in Gears of War? Neat!
He was in FFX and FFXII, too. Guy gets around.
Well, Futurama has always been mediocre anyway, so I guess I’m not surprised Bender’s Game is just that.
I dunno. I’m beginning to think that the cancellation of Futurama was a blessing in disguise. Bender’s Big Score was okay, but The Beast with a Billion Backs was total crap–I’m talking late-era Simpsons-level crap. Just terrible. I look forward to Bender’s Game with extreme trepidation. Shoving the characters into a fantasy world seems to demonstrate a certain creative bankruptcy. But, we’ll see.
I don’t know how you can be down on Get Smart, it was probably the only movie I’ve laughed at in recent years that was actually intended to be funny.
Just a couple corrections: While Carell and Binoche were quite good in Dan in Real Life, the movie itself sucked. It’s a bad rom-com filmed like an indy, and an insult to the viewer. Dane Cook is in it as the 2nd male lead for cryin’ out loud! Also I have it on good authority that the 5 minutes of Carell in Bewitched is the only five minutes worth anyone’s time.
You are all fools! ;) Futurama is KING! And Carell is about as fun to watch as a Chris Kattan movie… i.e. NOT VERY! Glad I never watched movies like Universal Soldier as a kid either… then again… when is Big Trouble In Little China coming to Blu-Ray for some Hi-Def Egg Shen goodness? Eh?
DiMaggio was also in Escape from Butcher Bay. Unfortunately I think Futurama is suffering from the fact that they can’t keep a full writing staff, or work on an episode on and off for months.
Actually, it kind of reminds me that the third Hellboy Animated DVD isn’t out…I want me some Lobster Johnson. (Especially if it was an adaptation of Iron Prometheus. :) )
I’ve yet to see the Darby Crash flick, looks interesting though. Big fan of The Germs.
Sorry for the double post, but Levi, I don’t know if you know this but the actor who played Crash in the film actually started singing with the reformed Germs. I’m not entirely sure how I feel about this, but I haven’t seen either the reformed Germs nor the movie so I’m not sure how this guy does.