Movie of the Day (5/7/08)

Nominated for the Best Documentary award at the Oscars in 2004, Super Size Me is today’s pick for Movie of the Day. Morgan Spurlock stars in this chronicling of a man’s journey to eat nothing but McDonald’s fast food for 30 days. Only items listed on McD’s menu are accessible to Spurlock during the span of time and every bit is accounted in this popular documentary that helped launched Spurlock’s career. His next film, Where in the World is Osama bin Laden?, got a limited release in the states on April 18th.

For Super Size Me on DVD, there’s only one option. While the video and audio options aren’t great, the disc comes with some interesting bonus features. A commentary track by Spurlock and his girlfriend Alex highlight the extras, with four deleted scenes, six interviews and a couple featurettes rounding out the DVD.

Basic information (IMDb Profile):

• Director: Morgan Spurlock
• Writer: Morgan Spurlock
• Producer: Morgan Spurlock
• Cast: Morgan Spurlock, Daryl Isaacs, Lisa Ganjhu, Dr. Stephen Siegel, Alexandra Jamieson
• Cinematographer: Scott Ambrozy

“Movie of the Day” highlights a specific film of importance with a release date that coincides with the current date.

Criterion Goes Blu

Subscribers of the Criterion Collection newsletter received the following e-mail moments ago:

Dear Criterion Collection Newsletter subscriber,

We’ve got some exciting news for this fall, and we wanted you to hear it first.

Our first Blu-ray discs are coming! We’ve picked a little over a dozen titles from the collection for Blu-ray treatment, and we’ll begin rolling them out in October. These new editions will feature glorious high-definition picture and sound, all the supplemental content of the DVD releases, and they will be priced to match our standard-def editions.

Here’s what’s in the pipeline:

The Third Man
Bottle Rocket
Chungking Express
The Man Who Fell to Earth
The Last Emperor
El Norte
The 400 Blows
Gimme Shelter
The Complete Monterey Pop
Contempt
Walkabout
For All Mankind
The Wages of Fear

Alongside our DVD and Blu-ray box sets of The Last Emperor, we’ll also be putting out the theatrical version as a stand-alone release in both formats, priced at $39.95. Our Blu-ray release of Walkabout will be an all-new edition, featuring new supplements as well as a new transfer; we will also release an updated anamorphic DVD of Nicolas Roeg’s outback masterpiece at the same time.

As a special thank you to our newsletter subscribers, we’d like to offer you all $10 off any order of $60 or more placed on on criterion.com through Monday, May 26. Just use the code OFBT and you’ll also qualify for free shipping.

Enjoy spring!

After Toshiba gave up the high-definition war months ago, many fans of the DVD label wondered when they would finally make the jump to HD. Well, here’s the answer.

Movie of the Day (5/6/08)

It’s late, but it’s here: May 6’s selected movie is Crash, the second and most infamous film by Paul Haggis, writing and directing this effort, who had his big start on Walker, Texas Ranger. This tale of the interwoven lives of outstanding people, with racism on their minds, won three Oscars in 2006, with Best Picture being the most prominent (Editing and Original Screenplay were the others).  Winning the last award of the night came as a big shock to most as Brokeback Mountain, starring Heath Ledger and Jake Gyllenhaal, was the favorite, having won Best Director, Best Music and Best Adapted Screenplay.

To date, many dislike Crash even more for its “undeserved” Oscar despite its fully formed cast, including the great Don Cheadle, Terrence Howard, and Ryan Phillippe (Breach is another example of his ability). The writing, in particular, is pointed out as too elaborate and unrealistic, making the claim that everyone is racist in some form.

Even though the movie is only a couple years old, it’s already been double-dipped with a second version on DVD. The Director’s Cut includes the extra material from the original release (DVD Intro with Haggis, behind the Scenes featurette, commentary with Haggis, Cheadle, and Bobby Moresco, and a few trailers) but with some new bonuses: Eight deleted scenes with commentary, three featurettes (One on Haggis, one called “Unspoken” and the other on LA), music montages, script to screen comparisons, storyboard to screen comparisons, and a music video by Bird York called “In the Deep”.

Basic information (IMDb Profile):

• Director: Paul Haggis
• Writers: Paul Haggis, Bobby Moresco
• Producers: Don Cheadle,  Paul Haggis, Mark R. Harris, Bobby Moresco, Cathy Schulman, Bob Yari
• Cast: Sandra Bullock, Don Cheadle, Tony Danza, Matt Dillon, Jennifer Esposito, Brendan Fraser, Terrence Howard, Thandie Newton, Chris “Ludacris” Bridges, Ryan Phillippe
• Cinematographer: J. Michael Muro
• Composer: Mark Isham

“Movie of the Day” highlights a specific film of importance with a release date that coincides with the current date.