Set in Oklahoma, 1987, the film opens with the pitch perfect harmonies of Pat Benatar’s “Shadows of the Night.” Any movie that chooses to feature classic Benatar scores points, in my book. We quickly learn that Temple (speaking in a twangy accent) is Danielle, the high school slut. She starts her days banging dudes in their muscle cars before entering the school grounds sporting huge sunglasses and a cigarette poised between her lips. Danielle’s outrageous behavior gets her booted out of her regular classes and placed in “challengers,” the room in the basement where all the “troubled kids” wind up. Danielle is a smart girl and her principal challenges her to straighten up so she can return to the normal kids. “No one likes a dirty girl,” he tells her.   No one likes a teenage boy whose openly gay, either; at least, not in the Reagan-era south. That’s why overweight, obviously gay, Clarke (Dozier) is also in the Challengers class.

Clarke and Danielle are immediately paired up in the old “bag of flour parenting experiment” and a friendship slowly begins to form. As we get to know Danielle better and we learn about the emptiness she has from never knowing her real father (she was born out of wedlock to a teenage mother ) and we start to understand why she swears, is abusive and sleeps around.  Clarke takes Danielle’s abuse because he’s friendless and will do anything to get out is house. At home, his mousy mother (Mary Steenburgen) stands by while her foolish husband (Dwight Yokam) tries to beat the gay out of his son.

Danielle’s mom (Milla Jovovich) is planning to marry Ray (William H. Macy) a strict Mormon with creepy kids, so the clock’s ticking before the hammer comes down and Danielle will have to conform. She thinks that if she can locate her real dad she can live with him. Clarke discovers the identity of Danielle’s real father and the two track him down in California. One thing leads to another and soon enough, Danielle and Clarke have hit the road in his father’s gas guzzling car.

Once the road trip begins, Dirty Girl veers into familiar territory; you can pretty much predict how it will end. Still, Sylvia peppers last act of his film with well executed poignant scenes and several surprises, some that I’ve never seen in a coming of age film before. One particular sweet, dream like sequence involves a male stripper, an abandoned drive-in and an acoustic version of The Outfield’s greatest hit.

Despite it’s flaws, I really liked this movie, in part because it really captured the essence of the films I grew up watching, and in part because there is a joy and musicality to the director’s point of view. While it’s not perfect, Dirty Girl has enough heart, humor and a couple of great performances to make it worth checking out.

Fifteen year old Oliver Tate (Roberts) is a daydreaming, literate young man whose home life is on the edge. His father (Noah Taylor, Almost Famous) is a marine biologist who suffers from depression and his mom (Sally Hawkins, Happy-Go-Lucky) has a wandering eye for the self-help guru (Paddy Considine, In America) who has just moved in next door. Oliver fears for his parents’ marriage and keeps track of the number of times they are intimate by gauging whether the dimmer switch in their bedroom is at full illumination or a more romantic setting. His only distraction from home life is the girl he’s fallen for, Jordana Bevan (Paige), a spirited individual known for the distinct red coat she wears each day to school.

Oliver and Jordana begin hanging out as friends. Gradually, she falls for Oliver, although the young lady does her best to ignore his romantic gestures.  Oliver eventually wins her over with a sweetness and innocence that is refreshing compared to the rest of the hormone driven jerks at their school. As their relationship deepens, the one between Mr. and Mrs. Tate deteriorates. Like any loving son, Oliver would give anything to ensure that his parents remained together. Their happiness becomes his obsession, to the point that he nearly ruins things with Jordana.  As the Tates struggle to work things out, Oliver and Jordana must try and do the same because they really love each other. Submarine is insightful, tender and often quite hilarious. It’s a film that deserves a wider audience, an audience it will hopefully acquire now that it’s out on DVD and Blu-ray.

Ayoade has a subtle touch with his actors, bringing out natural, realistic performances, even from the most ridiculous characters (like Considine’s). His film style counters the naturalism of his performers. Using a variety of film stocks, some nifty camera work and editing techniques, this is one film that is a pleasure to watch just for its visuals. The DVD includes a well done behind the scenes featurette about the making of the film.

One final note. This film was rated ‘R,’ primarily for the language used by the teens in the film. Isn’t it time that the ratings board comes up with a new way to determine what films can been seen by teens under the age of 17? Submarine is yet another film that portrays adolescence in a sincere and realistic manner. It’s a shame that 15 and 16-year-olds who may be experiencing the same dilemmas that Oliver goes through could not see the film in theaters, as it was meant to be seen. I hope that the same teens who wander through the young adult sections of their libraries searching for a story that they can relate to pick up Sumbmarine on DVD.

There’s no better example of this than the collection that comprises this DVD, a document of a show that, literally, came from the basement as the Dogs frequently do house concerts. Landing between the albums Nazarene Crying Towel and The Lost Cabin And The Mystery Trees, songs from the groups first album Scenic Routes intermingle with what would have been their most recent at the time of this recording, Mutt, which was a covers album, which covered material each bandmember had written and recorded with their other numerous bands. We’re talking about seven official albums at that juncture, and where usually at that point band members might have a bristling, subsurface disdain for each other (I’ve seen it in bands after three outings, much less seven) the core of the group shares a camaraderie more akin to family than bandmates.

The sound on the DVD is very good, and that has as much to do with the controlled area it was recorded in as it does with who recorded it (in this case, exec. producer Jeffrey Kotthoff and Jeff Elbel from the band Ping). The visuals, however, are pretty weird, but in a good way. At first it might be offputting to viewers to find how things were assembled, more like the presentation at a seedy drive-in showing a Roger Corman b-movie than a concert feature. There are jump cuts from song to song as opposed to the usual flow of a live recording, but once you’ve adapted to the eccentricities you can start to appreciate the fun all involved are having. Without these trappings, you would have had footage of the band playing a show in a basement. With this band, that’s all well and good but not visually dynamic (last time I checked, it’s still impossible to get a sweeping crane shot in a basement).

The songs, as hinted at before, include favorites like “Why Is The Devil Red?,” Americana-flavored rockers like “Bullet Train” and “A Certain Love” and the satirical fan favorite “Bad Indigestion” featuring this poignant lyric, “The God of our benefits is the great cornucopia, moves His great vegetable hand, puts a little fruit into all of our baskets, helps us function better in the can.”

For those who simply appreciate well-played tunes by seasoned pros who aren’t at each other’s throats or not simply doing it for a crass reunion check, It Came From The Basement is a solid hour of entertainment. For fans of the band, it’s required viewing.

It Came From The Basement is available from Lo-Fidelity Records in three purchase configurations (including audio soundtrack from the show as either a digital download or CD). You can find out more by visiting their Bandcamp page at:

http://thelostdogs.bandcamp.com/

Forever Plaid the Movie features Sparky (Larry Raben), Smudge (David Engel), Jinx (Stan Chandler), and Frankie (Daniel Reichard) as the four Plaids. These first three guys have been involved with the show since its original performance 20 years ago, and Reichard was from the original cast of Jersey Boys, so these guys certainly know what they’re doing. The three original cast members look and sound just as good as they did way back when, and Reichard fits in well with them. The singing is wonderful and the characters are endearingly awkward, whether they’re cajoling Jinx (a guy prone to nosebleeds when he gets nervous) to sing the beautiful “Cry,” or attempting to perform “the entire Ed Sullivan Show in three minutes and eleven seconds.” As a former two time Sparky myself in our local community theatre (Forever Plaid in 2002 and the sequel Plaid Tidings in 2008), I have very strong feelings for this show and was thrilled to see this cast perform it.

With all that being said, I felt that the camera work was overdone. It didn’t seem like ten seconds went by without the shots going from a group shot to a close up to swooping down from the top to filming the audience behind the guys. This was a bit of a surprise considering the movie was directed by Stuart Ross, who conceived the original production. It’s almost like he wasn’t sure if he wanted to film this like a concert or a movie. I personally would have preferred this to be done more like a concert film, staying with a shot of the group most of the time with occasional close ups when needed. But if they wanted to go the movie route, they should have gone all out, showing Sparky as a kid listening to old records or seeing stepbrothers Sparky and Jinx watching The Ed Sullivan Show with their parents to go along with the stories they tell during the show. I think the show really works best without fancy camera tricks, just giving it to the performers to let them do their thing.

Extras on this DVD include a documentary about how the show came together 20 years ago, and how it was put together as a movie, as well as trailers and commercials for the movie and for the original show. As great as these inclusions are, I regret what was left out. When this was presented to movie theaters, there was a live post-show featuring the Plaids singing some songs not in the movie and even inviting Carol Channing up to sing with them. When I asked a representative of New Video as to why this footage wasn’t included on the DVD, I was told it was because of royalty costs. It’s still a shame that this stuff was left out, because it was great, although you can see some of that footage here. (I heard a rumor that the version of the DVD that was offered for pledging to Public Television stations has this footage on it, but that’s unconfirmed. The same source told me that an upcoming Blu-Ray release would have the footage, but my contact with the company says a Blu-Ray of the movie isn’t planned at this time.)

As a final assessment, I love this show and I do recommend it for the Plaids’ performances of these classic songs. I just wish I would have liked the way it was put together better.

“The best fashion show is definitely on the street. Always has been, always will be.”

Though he is in his early 80s, New York Times photographer Bill Cunningham can, daily, be seen riding his bike around New York City, wearing his trademark blue jacket, snapping pictures of fashionable New Yorkers going about their business. He is at every Fashion Week show worth seeing, sitting front row and making decisions about which designs and designers get enough approval for him to lift his camera for a shot. He knows a trend-in-the-making when he sees one and has been responsible for helping break the careers of some of the most well-known designers in the world. He has been one of the most important fashion photographers in the business for decades and his story, as told in the wonderful documentary Bill Cunningham New York, which was just released on DVD via Zeitgeist Films, is an inspiring one.

To be photographed by Cunningham for his “On the Street” or “Evening Hours” columns in the Times is an honor for most New Yorkers, some of whom value his opinion about fashion above almost anyone. ”We all get dressed for Bill,” says Vogue editor Anna Wintour, who gushes enthusiastically about Cunningham and how much she adores him throughout the film.

Director Richard Press gives us a comprehensive look at the life of the revered photographer, through photographs, footage of Cunningham in action (filmed recently and in the 1980s), as well as revealing interviews with Cunningham and with New York style makers, friends, colleagues and fans — such as Wintour, Editta Sherman, Annette de la Renta, Howard Koda, Kim Hastreiter, Lesley Vinson, Annie Flanders, Carmen Dell’Orifice, Iris Apfel and Patrick McDonald.  In addition to chronicling his career, past and present, Press also gives us a fascinating look at the fight between the artists who, at the time the movie was filmed, lived in the studio spaces at Carnegie Hall — including Cunningham and Sherman —  and the city of New York, who wanted to, and eventually did, evict them from their homes in order to embark upon a massive renovation project.

If you missed seeing this film in the theater as I did (it only played in my city for, like, five minutes), it’s well worth your money to pick up the DVD, which is gorgeously packaged in a brightly-colored cardboard case laden with Cunningham’s photographs. In addition to the film itself, the DVD also includes 20 minutes of additional footage, the original U.S. theatrical trailer and a beautiful 12-page collector’s booklet, which features a statement from Press and more of Cunningham’s terrific photos.

Whether you’re a fan of fashion, photography, art, documentaries, or all of the above, I highly recommend you check this film out. It is definitely one of the best documentaries you’ll see all year.

Aimee Teegarden, an emerging star whose pedigree includes Friday Night Lights, stars as Nova, an overachieving student in a Michigan high school who has just completed planning her upcoming prom. School has been Nova’s life for twelve years, leaving her little room for a boyfriend. Still, knowing that she’s put together the perfect prom for her fellow students gives her satisfaction. That, and the fact that she’s got a full ride to Georgetown waiting for her in the fall. Nova’s dream prom falls apart when the school storage barn burns to the ground, destroying everything she and the prom committee have been working on for months. With just a few weeks to spare, Nova wonders how she’ll ever put the prom back together, especially when her committee walks out on her. Enter Jesse (Thomas McDonell), the school bad boy with a heart. He’s a bad boy because he rides a motorcycle and argues with the principal. He has heart because he comes from a broken home and helps take care of his little brother. If I sound a touch sarcastic, I am. But I’m not the intended audience and my daughter certainly enjoyed this portion of the story.

Jesse and Nova are thrown together by the principal to redo the prom. Before you can mutter Ringwald and Nelson, these two opposites start to attract and fall in love. Of course, there are plenty of obstacles as they move along the path to the textbook ending, including Nova’s misguided father butting his head into her affairs. But really, did you think everything wasn’t going to work out?

Nova’s story is the primary plot, but Prom also follows the love lives of three other couples. Lucas (Nolan Sotillo) is an underclassmen who is head over heels for Simone (Danielle Campbell). These cute lovebirds seem destined for heaven, except that Simone has feelings for Tyler (De’Vaughn Nixon), the captain of the lacrosse team. Simone and Tyler kissed once, but then she found out he still had a girlfriend and told him to shove off. Throughout the movie, Tyler, a grade ‘A’ jerk, pursues Simone, even though she continues tells him “no.” When Tyler’s girlfriend breaks up with him (because he’s a cheating liar), Tyler convinces Simone to blow off Lucas and go to prom with him. Poor Lucas. Luckily he has his best friend, Corey (Cameron Monaghan), to lift him up.

Elsewhere, Mei (Yin Chang) struggles with telling her boyfriend, Justin (Jonathan Keltz), that their plans to attend the University of Michigan aren’t going to happen because she’s enrolled at a fashion school in New York. In one of the most non-Disney moments of the film, this couple, who have been together since the 8th grade, reach the adult decision to do their best to stay together, but if it doesn’t work out, they’ll always remain friends. As a parent, and as a dude who gave the old college try to a long distance relationship, I appreciated this message. Sometimes your first love is your only love, and other times there are other loves waiting for you. Not that I could discuss  this with my daughter because she would have told me to “shut up” and leave of the room.

Overall, Prom is light and innocent. The kids kiss, Jess gets into a fist fight (but no blood, strange) and almost everyone has decent values. I say almost everyone because Tyler is selfish and feels absolutely no regret for be irresponsible and causing the fire that nearly destroys the prom. The movie is cute and has a few laugh out loud moments for the grown ups who may see a little of themselves in the characters of the film.

The Blu-ray/DVD combo edition of the movie has plenty of bonus features (most of them on  the Blu-ray). Bloopers, deleted scenes and seven music videos are the best (the sondtrack, by the way, is very good), along with a featurette, “Putting on Prom,” which is informative and enjoyable. The Blu-ray also features the short, “Last Chance Lloyd,” which follows one of the characters as he tries to get a date for the prom.

Harry Nilsson was a lot of things- genius singer-songwriter, Beatle friend, businessman, charismatic hell-raiser of legendary proportions, activist, loving family man- and this documentary manages to touch on all of the varied aspects of the man’s life and legacy. Through interview segments with a host of his surviving friends, collaborators and acquaintances- Richard Perry, Van Dyke Parks, Eric Idle, Jimmy Webb, Terry Gilliam, May Pang, Micky Dolenz, Yoko Ono, widow Una to name but a few- Scheinfeld paints a portrait of a man who left a legacy of contradictions as well as a career that could have/should have been much more than it turned out to be, but was no less remarkable for all that.

As a lifelong fan, I’ve responded to Nilsson on so many levels over the years- as a musician, who made some of the most clever and interesting music that I’d ever heard, which could be vulgar and sweet, crude and wistful- sometimes in the same song- and as a legendary partier, who hung with the Beatles and many other people that I admired, perhaps to his eventual detriment (though his surviving friends certainly do seem to still love him)…it was just so magnetic to me. Still, for all that I found out about him, it seemed like there was so much that was never revealed- why he didn’t work with Richard Perry, the producer with whom he made his most successful and arguably best records with, again after 1972′s Son of Schmilsson, why he let his career unravel after winning his Grammys in 1971, what he did after his semi-forced retirement, how the heck he could drink so much booze and do so many drugs and still be alive- and it wasn’t really until this documentary finally came out on DVD that I was able to get a lot of answers to my 30 year old questions.

It begins with a scene I’ll never forget because I was watching it happen live- Dustin Hoffman coming out onstage at the 1994 Comic Relief event broadcast and informing everyone that Harry had died, one day before my 34th birthday. From there, it goes on to several personal reminisces from different people, and goes on to examine his life and career not only through his friends, family and collaborators but in his own voice as well (he had been recording notes for a memoir). We find out about his father-abandonment issues, which he wrote about in such great early songs like “Daddy’s Song” and “1941″, how he got a toehold in the music business via the Monkees, the famous Beatle endorsement and subsequent friendship, his early Randy Newman-esque solo album efforts, Midnight Cowboy and “Everybody’s Talkin’” of course, and when he hit the top, with multiple Grammy awards, hit records, famous friends- he pulled back and withdrew in many ways, not believing himself worthy deep down inside and yet, contradictorily, determined to have his own way in every subsequent career decision he ever made, such as the notion to follow up his best-selling album with a jokey, inside-baseball pop music smorgasbord, the no-less-wonderful but daunting to those who don’t get the joke Son of Schmilsson- and then further derail his momentum by recording a remarkable album of 30′s and 40′s standards with Sinatra’s arranger and a full symphony orchestra, way ahead of his time and way beyond the ability of the average pop music fan in 1973 to process. It’s at this point where the 30 year old question I had about why Perry and Harry never recorded together again gets answered. All the notorious “Lost Weekend” party stories, with Lennon, Pang, Dolenz, Ringo (who declined to be interviewed for this doc; while understandable, it does make it seem a little incomplete), Keith Moon, and others are recounted with great humor and equal sadness at times. This is one of the few places you’ll see extended parts of the film he made with Ringo in 1974, the woefully bad, but no less fascinating “horror-musical-comedy” Son of Dracula as well as many clips from the aborted documentary that was made about the Son of Schmilsson sessions, Did Someone Drop His Mouse? (you can see that in sections on YouTube, by the way), and even a little-seen 1973 short film, Harry and Ringo’s Night Out. His subsequent career is lightly touched on, more on that later, as is his involvement in the Popeye movie and the 80′s all star Yoko Ono tribute album,  his film producer career, failed gun-control activism in the wake of his pal Lennon’s murder, sadly aborted comeback (when will SOMEONE finish those tapes and get them out?) and his family life, even featuring input from several of his children. It concludes with touching reminisces by Van Dyke Parks, Jimmy Webb, and finally Una that certainly got me a little misty, I’ll tell you that. But the account of the funeral, which took place at the same time as the 1994 Northridge earthquake and features Mark Hudson reminiscing about singing at Harry’s grave with George Harrison and others, is funny and bittersweet at the same time, appropriately enough since Harry’s music was often just like that.

It’s not perfect- Scheinfeld gives very short shrift to the music Harry made post-Pussy Cats; many of those releases are some of my favorites of the records he made. Of course, I know he only had so much time to play with, but I was disappointed. Some of the juxtapositions are unfortunate; in trying to get across the dubious proposal that somehow the songs from Son of were inferior to what had come before, we get some of the Mouse footage of Harry recording the blackly humorous “I’d Rather Be Dead” with a room full of senior citizens chiming in on massed group vocals as Perry laments how Harry wouldn’t listen to him about how he should be striving to follow up the more commercial bent of the preceding record, which makes Harry, conducting the choir in a party hat and tuxedo, look like a real buffoon. There are varying accounts of how Harry came to lose his voice during the Pussy Cats sessions; the liner notes of one of the CD releases cite an episode where Harry caught cold while sleeping on the beach, another presented here is a drunken screaming match between Harry and John early in the sessions; not only is this version treated like gospel, but the connection is made to the subsequent decline in his career due to the alleged loss of his singing voice; sure, he lost some range but still turned in some beautiful vocal performances on later records. I didn’t appreciate fine albums like Sandman and …That’s the Way It Is being tarred with the same dismissive brush, based on what I considered a dubious preposition. I was also a little annoyed to see so much Drop His Mouse? footage being used while the Nilsson Schmilsson sessions are being discussed. In general, there’s a subtle slant of “Harry’s music after 1971 was disappointing”, which I of course vehemently disagree with.  All in all, though, other than Harry’s widow Una’s unblinking stare during her interview sessions (She seems like a wonderful person, but geez, I wanted to step into the screen and hand her some Visine!), that’s about all the nits I can pick.

So, if I’ve piqued your interest at all, go here to view this film until the 19th of August.  Perhaps it’s because I’m such a fanatic about the subject matter, but I think it’s one of the best documentaries I’ve ever seen and I was moved in ways I wasn’t expecting at all. I hope you like it half as much as I did!

Watch more free documentaries

It isn’t.

Affleck stars as Bobby Walker, a successful businessman living in the big house with the kick ass car and the monthly membership to the posh golf club. Within minutes of the opening of the film, he’s fired from his job, a victim of the economic fiasco most of us have been suffering through. Instead of somehow making Bobby a sympathetic character that we all root for, Wells has written a real jackass who doesn’t understand that his throne as a master of the universe has been tossed on the junk heap along with the rest of the other unfortunate souls who find themselves scrambling to pay their bills and feed their children. Luckily, Bobby has a great wife, Maggie (Dewitt), who tries to be supportive even though their savings is getting smaller and smaller. They try to make ends meet, but gradually, the car gets sold, the house gets sold, and Bobby must grovel to take a carpentry job with his brother-in-law (a very effective Kevin Costner). There is nothing inherently wrong with Bobby’s story, as he eventually learns from the error of his ways and becomes a better man. However, Bobby isn’t the only character in this film.

Jones plays Gene, the corporate vice president (and Bobby’s friend) whose soul is being torn asunder by the way men and women are being treated by the company he helped build from the ground. With each firing, Gene seems to die a little. He valiantly tries to save as many of his people as possible, but Gene’s power becomes more and more limited. Sounds like a pretty decent guy, right? Well, not so much. See, for as great as Gene may appear in the office, the guy is a schmuck at home. He treats his wife with a cool distance and cheats on her with Maria Bello’s character (she plays a role similar to George Clooney’s in the far superior Up in the Air). I ask, why, Mr. Wells, did you have to make the one character who’s supposed to represent some kind of ethics, a cheating jerk?  Okay, I understand the need to have characters (particularly those in an indie movie) live in the gray areas, but I just never respected Gene enough and when he has a triumphant ending, I said to myself, “Great, all the assholes in the world get to succeed while the working man continues to get screwed.”

Finally there is Chris Cooper as Phil, a corporate weasel who has a family and expenses he can’t maintain once he gets the inevitable axe. Again, we’re supposed to feel sorry for Phil, even though he’s a tool. Meanwhile, the only character who seems to have any redeeming qualities is Costner’s Jack. As Maggie’s older brother, he’s quick to offer Bobby a job, even though he’ll have to eat the cost of hiring someone else on to his jobs. Unfortunately, Jack isn’t in the film that much. Wells should have known better, especially after all of his experience on ensemble series like E.R. and Third Watch, that he needed another point of view besides that of the rich men who lost their high paying jobs. What about the blue collar men and women who also lost their jobs? How does the downsizing of the factories being closed effect them? I wish that we’d had seen one character from a different social class, but tied to the same dilemma, just so we could see how the recession is changing their lives, too. That missed opportunity, along with the episodic, TV nature of Well’s script is what makes The Company Men such a disappointment. At this stage in Wells’ career, we expect more.

The DVD has some nice bonus features, considering that the film was very small and kind of got thrown out on to the DVD market without a lot of fanfare. The audio commentary and the behind the scenes featurette are excellent. The alternate ending is interesting because it shows a more ambiguous ending for Bobby, rather than the Hollywood ending he was given in the final cut.

That’s the credo of Trailers from Hell, and if you’ve ever been burned by a disappointing movie that had a great trailer, you’d be inclined to agree. Shout! Factory, in conjunction with the website, has just released Trailers From Hell! Vol. 2 . The DVD is a twofer of sorts, because not only does it include twenty different trailers for movies both obscure (Stranglers of Bombay) and famous (Jaws), but you can also listen to optional commentary provided by the likes of  Joe Dante, Guillermo Del Toro, Roger Corman, and more (some of whom worked on the movie they speak about). It’s actually a pretty neat concept, because it’s like getting a Readers Digest Condensed commentary of each film. There are currently over 200 trailers featured on the website (with more added every week), but these trailers are exclusive to the DVD. The only bad thing about watching this is that you may have a hard time searching for some of these long-lost gems. I also wish there would have been something included (either in a booklet inside the case or as a feature on the DVD itself) that explained who all these people were. I knew most of them, but some were unfamiliar to me. I also feel like I should warn you that, while most of these are safe to show around a general audience (even Flesh Gordon looks quaint now), Lloyd Kaufman’s Terror Firmer does contain nudity and some gore. But what do you expect from a Troma movie?

I said this DVD was a twofer; I guess I should have said it’s a three-fer, because also included is the original Roger Corman classic The Little Shop of Horrors, presented for the first time in anamorphic widescreen. If you’re like me, you probably already own a few copies of this public domain staple. This is a pretty clean copy, but the problem is that this movie wasn’t originally in widescreen. That means that the picture gets cut off on the top and bottom. (It’s sort of the opposite of the fullscreen/widescreen argument, in that if you own a widescreen TV, the picture covers the screen, but that picture is incomplete.) But it is just an extra, so it’s hard to complain.

All in all, this is both a fun collection of trailers and an interesting collection of reminiscences and opinions of these classic (and not-so-classic) films. Also, for a limited time, if you order this DVD directly from Shout! Factory, you’ll also get the first volume of Trailers from Hell for free!

So where’s the new new? In MODs–those manufactured-on-demand DVD-Rs that I wrote about with great fanfare more than two years ago, before the scales fell from my eyes regarding Blu-ray and when I had just one mouth to feed. One never knows about these things but it looks like MODs are here to stay, before the rapture hits home video and migrates the chosen titles to Internet streaming. The Warner Archive, which got the ball rolling, continues to be out in front regarding number and image quality of titles, plus hard-to-come-by discounts; Sony’s Screen Classics by Request line offers consistently mouth-watering transfers of once-forgotten Columbia movies; the MGM Limited Edition Collection is full steam ahead after rough seas in the beginning (I purchased The Best Man three times until they got it right); and Universal has revived its seemingly abandoned Vault Series from its coma. Problems arise–the latest I’ve read about is buyers ordering a disc and finding a different film encoded on it, which can bring on heart attacks if you’ve sat down with The Nun and the Sergeant and found yourself with Burn Witch Burn instead–though they’ve gone from chronic from some distributors to manageable, and the skeptics have fallen silent. (The Home Theater Forum is the best place to check for flareups.)

“Going MOD” is the best way to keep tabs on obscurities, failures, quirky curios, and yes, even good movies that have somehow fallen through the cracks. (And not just on DVD; some of these movies never made it to VHS or laserdisc, either.) The Sony initiative has brought me a bloody good Sherlock Holmes movie, 1965′s A Study in Terror (an early feature credit for Judi Dench), Michael Caine, Peter Cook, Dudley Moore, and Peter Sellers in the occasionally uproarious period comedy The Wrong Box (1966), and an unsung gem of suspense from 1944, Address Unknown, that was unknown to me. The Vault Series unearthed a fine-quality letterboxed print of Robert Aldrich’s great 1972 Western Ulzana’s Raid, replacing a flat and lifeless transfer that had gone out of print. I’ve lost track of the number of intriguing pictures that have come my way through the Warner Archive, from the beloved Japan-made sci-fi schlocker The Green Slime (1969) to Ken Russell’s toe-tapping 1971 film of the musical The Boy Friend to  James Woods in the sleazily delightful prison movie Fast-Walking (1982); I see that the thrilling mercenary yarn Dark of the Sun (1968), from which Quentin Tarantino extracted a main theme (by Jacques Loussier) and a co-star (Rod Taylor) for his Inglourious Basterds, is up for pre-order. Sold!

A batch of arrivals from the MGM Limited Edition Collection typifies what MOD programs are all about. I picked up a cable favorite, 1980′s coming of age story Those Lips, Those Eyes (1980), with Frank Langella in a wonderful performance as a stock company player who contributes to the growing pains of stagestruck Cleveland teen Tom Hulce. Anticipating Alien, Queen of Blood (1966) inserts John Saxon and a pre-Easy Rider Dennis Hopper into a clever vampirism scenario comprised mostly of effects footage lifted from a Soviet sci-fi epic that the enterprising producer Roger Corman had purchased and made over. Cohen and Tate (1989) is a quick and dirty hit man thriller pairing a talkative Adam Baldwin with a close-mouthed Roy Scheider, on the last legs of his stardom. I was especially pleased to revisit Paul Schrader’s Patty Hearst (1988), a claustrophobic yet riveting account of the abduction and repurposing of the heiress, anchored by Natasha Richardson’s adventurous, ambiguous performance. (But you can’t win ‘em all. 1974′s The Destructors is a promising title for a wan movie, with Caine, Anthony Quinn, and James Mason going through the motions in a more standard-issue hired killer scenario, set in the French Riviera.)

Looking for something a little more “Popdose” I took a look at the MGM release of How I Won the War (1967). Here is a movie that you’d think would have made it onto standard DVD, given that its star (John Lennon) and director (Richard Lester) were hot off the two Beatles movies. I can imagine someone in the front office saying, “Yeah, we’ll get to it, we’ll get to it,” then as the market dwindled offloading it to the MOD division, unsure of what to make of it. I get it: British antiwar fare of the late 60s, like Tony Richardson’s The Charge of the Light Brigade (1968) and Richard Attenborough’s Oh! What a Lovely War (1969), still radiates boxoffice poison, and Lester’s film, with its thick accents and goonish humor, is USer-unfriendly. Still, someone cared enough to have Lester and editor John Victor-Smith supervise the transfer, and I’m told that, rare for mostly feature-free MODs, the package contains a commemorative album of behind-the-scenes photos (I didn’t get them).

Lennon’s face fronts the cover but he’s more of an ensemble player here, and a minor one at that, with Michael Crawford cast as a foppish, disapproving officer assigned to set up a cricket pitch in North Africa during World War II. That’s the gist of it, anyway, as he and his men are drawn into the absurdity of war, in a mess of styles that are passably interesting if you can get on Lester’s peculiar wavelength, where war parody bleeds into actual combat footage and dead characters return painted from head-to-toe as silent toy soldiers. Me, I tire pretty quickly from “funny” names (Lennon’s is Gripweed) and an intentionally scrambled and disconnected tone, from which, to be fair, I extracted a few gems. (When Gripweed reveals an early flirtation with fascism, a colonel, played the peerless Michael Hordern, insists that “fascism is something you grow out of.”) I assume Lennon, in this one stab at acting, got more from it, as he wrote “Strawberry Fields Forever” while on location in the Spain made famous by spaghetti Westerns and started wearing his round glasses. (And you’ll get those nice photos, sniff.)

For their film debut the Beatles got Lester; the Dave Clark Five got John Boorman (1965′s Having a Wild Weekend) and the Monkees, Bob Rafelson (1968′s Head). I figured Herman’s Hermits got the short end of the auteur stick when Arthur Lubin was assigned to their first starring feature, 1966′s Hold On!, but, in a remarkable instance of Popdose synchronicity, I figured wrong. Turns out Lubin, who had successfully directed Francis the talking mule and Mr. Ed the talking horse, was just the right guy for the Hermits, and the movie is a pleasant bit of cotton candy distinguished by 10 of their catchy songs. (You don’t get this one for the plot, which involves starlet Shelley Fabares and some skulduggery involving a Gemini space capsule named after the band.) Producer Sam Katzman produced a bunch of rock ‘n’ roll quickies for MGM in the 60s, including Roy Orbison’s lone feature The Fastest Guitar Alive (1967), and the Warner Archive has dug them up in relatively mint condition (Hold On! is presented in the proper Panavision 2.35:1 aspect ratio, so you can see all the Hermits in every shot). “The only similarity to Help! is the exclamation point” sniffed the Boston Globe–but here and in 1968′s Mrs. Brown, You’ve Got a Lovely Daughter, also available from the Warner Archive, they certainly put some mod into MOD.