With the days shorter and the nights colder, it is now more than ever the season for movies at home. Here's what new this week.

 

New Releases:

"Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows - Part 2" (Warner) brings the saga to a close with grand spectacle, yes, but also a greater sense of urgency and mortal stakes than "Part 1," in part because it's more active (none of that hiding out in the wilds stuff here) and in part because it finally brings all the conflicts to a mighty showdown. For anyone who has invested themselves in the movies, it pays off with a satisfying conclusion, because director David Yates and screenwriter Steve Kloves honor the story and the characters. There's not much extra on the DVD  but the Blu-ray is packed with supplements. Note that this arrives on Friday, November 11. Videodrone's review is here.

 

Swinging bachelor Ryan Reynolds and family man Jason Bateman swap bodies in "The Change-Up" (Universal), a comedy promoted as "from the director of "Wedding Crashers" and the writers of "The Hangover"," so you know what you're getting.

 

"Atlas Shrugged: Part 1" (Fox), an independently produced adaptation of the first section of Ayn Rand's novel, received some of the worst reviews of the year. "13 (2010)" (Anchor Bay), Gela Babluani's English language remake of his own 2005 European thriller, was not any more successful, despite a cast that includes Ray Winstone, Mickey Rourke and Jason Statham.

 

Foreign films this week include Catherine Breillat's "Sleeping Beauty" (Strand) from France and Erin Riklis' "The Human Resources Manager" (Film Movement), a low-key piece of comic drama and cultural negotiation from Israel. More on Videodrone here.

 

Browse the complete New Release Rack here

 

TV on DVD:

Just days after its stateside debut on "Masterpiece Contemporary" comes "Page Eight" (PBS), David Hare's low-key political thriller with Bill Nighy as a career intelligence analyst for MI-5. David Hare's first original screenplay in over a decade is John Le Carre territory by way of David Mamet, stripped down and scripted with underplayed precision. The superb cast also includes Rachel Weisz, Judy Davis, Felicity Jones, Michael Gambon and Ralph Fiennes as the Prime Minister. Videodrone's review is here.

 

"Doctor Who: Series Six, Part Two" (BBC) completes the strange and amazing story of River Song and brings the Doctor back to the shocking event that opened the season: the death of the Doctor. It's a trip and Videodrone tags along here. Also from across the pond is "Case Histories" (Acorn), the new British mystery series based on the novels by Kate Atkinson and starring Jason Isaacs.

 

"Mr. Magoo: The Television Collection" (Shout! Factory) collects over 30 hours of animated shows and TV specials from 1961-1977 in an 11-disc box set. "Band of Brothers/The Pacific Special Edition Gift Set" (HBO) pairs up the two acclaimed HBO World War II mini-series on DVD and Blu-ray. Videodrone's review is here.

 

Flip through the TV on DVD Channel Guide here

Cool, Classic and Cult:

Humphrey Bogart dons the collar in "The Left Hand of God" (Twilight Time), playing a Catholic priest in a Chinese mission in 1947. If that doesn't strike you as a Bogart role, just wait, it gets there.

 

"Great Directors" (Kino Lorber) presents conversations with ten of the world's great directors (from Bernardo Bertolucci and Catherine Breillat to John Sayles and Agnès Varda), and "Produce Your Own Damn Movie!" (Troma) is the third collection of DIY filmmaking tips from exploitation auteur Lloyd Kaufman and friends (from David Cronenberg to Roger Corman to The Duplass Brothers).

 

All of the Cool, Classic and Cult here

 

Blu-ray Debuts:

"Blue Velvet" (MGM), David Lynch's masterpiece of the rot under the picture-perfect façade of small town idealism, debuts on Blu-ray with a treasure trove of recently discovered deleted scenes. They aren't added to the film, mind you -- Lynch's original version is his director's cut, no compromises made -- but they are included as a supplement and offer more textures and possibilities for fans to explore. Videodrone's review is here and you can see an exclusive deleted clip here.

 

"Fanny and Alexander Box Set" (Criterion) includes both the Oscar-winning theatrical version of Ingmar Bergman's most autobiographical film and the longer mini-series version he created for Swedish television, as well as two documentaries and a 1984 interview with the director.

 

Dustin Hoffman is "Little Big Man" (Paramount) in the satirical western, Marlon Brando stars in the 1962 "Mutiny on the Bounty," Gus Van Sant directs Nicole Kidman to one of her best performances in "To Die For" (Image) and Terry Gilliam directs Jeff Bridges in "The Fisher King" (Image). On the cult front is William Wyler's "The Collector" (Image) with Terence Stamp and the tongue-in-cheek horror comedy "Frankenhooker" (Synapse).

 

Peruse all the new Blu-rays here

 

The complete calendar of releases this week is after the jump:

 

The Netflix plan was brilliant. Emphasis on was. After defining and dominating the DVD rent-by-mail market, the company dove into streaming video, made deals with Blu-ray and PSP manufacturers to install software to stream Netflix content to TVs and made the service part of the Netflix subscription: a library of thousands of movies and TV episodes available for free instant viewing, as well as New Releases that could be rented for a fee.

And then they alienated a large part of their subscriber base by deciding it was time to charge for the service at the very time households were cutting back on expenses. It was a self-inflicted wound created by bad timing and PR management and they lost 3 million subscribers in the last quarter. Meanwhile Blockbuster has made a play to take some of the rental-by-mail business and launched a streaming service partnership with Dish Network, the satellite service. And then there's Hulu Plus, the pay component of Hulu, which includes a deal to stream titles from the Criterion library (including films not yet available on Criterion DVD or Blu-ray).

 

Dave Kehr explored some of the rarities and oddities available via Netflix Instant and Hulu Plus for the New York Times (read it here) and you can add Amazon Instant Video and iTunes to the list of options, with thousands upon thousands of movies and TV shows accessible on a per-title basis, the equivalent of a virtual rental or digital purchase. They are all industry heavyweights who don't need a plug from me.

 

Here are a couple of alternate services that offer a different kind of line-up and, unlike Netflix, don't demand a complete commitment. You can subscribe or simply pick a la carte. But if you are tired of the sameness of the New Release rack, these services offer something different.

 

Here's what's new on DVD and Blu-ray this week as featured on Videodrone

 

Hot Tips and Top Picks: DVDs for November 1

 

New Releases:

'Cars 2' - Big Oil, Detroit Lemons and Secret Agent Cars

Exclusive Clip: 'Water for Elephants' - Reese Witherspoon joins the circus

The New Release Rack: 'Crazy, Stupid, Love.,' 'Tabloid,' 'Trespass,' 'Snow Flower,' Ken Kesey and more

 

TV on DVD:

'His Way' celebrates an Old Fashioned Show Business Mogul

TV on DVD Channel Guide: 'Brideshead Revisited' Anniversary Edition, new 'Californication' and the debut of 'The Courtship of Eddie's Father'

 

The Cool and the Collectible:

'Pearl Jam Twenty,' Michelangelo Antonioni at 70, 'Going Places' and Daffy Duck

 

Blu-ray Debuts:

Lon Chaney is the one and only 'Phantom of the Opera'

Blu-ray Round-up: Bill Murray is 'Scrooged,' plus 'Confessions of a Dangerous Mind,' 'Cop Land,' the Grateful Dead and more

 

MOD Movies:

Budd Boetticher in the City: Two crime pictures from the western director

News:

Bargain: 50% Off Criterion at Barnes & Noble

 

Coming up next week:

"Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows - Part 2" (Warner) (Friday, November 11)

"The Change-Up" (Universal)

"Atlas Shrugged" (Fox)

"13" (Anchor Bay)

"Sleeping Beauty" (Strand)

"The Human Resources Manager" (Film Movement)

"Great Directors" (Kino Lorber)

"Page Eight" (BBC)

"Doctor Who: Series Six, Part Two" (BBC)

"Blue Velvet" (Blu-ray) (MGM)

"Mutiny on the Bounty" (1962, Blu-ray) (Warner)

"Fanny and Alexander Box Set" (Blu-ray) (Criterion)

"Frankenhooker" (Blu-ray) (Synapse)

 

For calendar of upcoming releases, click here

 

Despite the efforts of such fans as Clint Eastwood, who produced two documentaries on the director, and Martin Scorsese, Budd Boetticher is still a name known mainly to film historians and fans of classic westerns. Boetticher made some of the greatest, purest, most austere westerns of all time: "Seven Men From Now" (available from Paramount), "The Tall T," "Comanche Station" and "Ride Lonesome" (the latter three in a box set from Sony and Scorsese's The Film Foundation). But like any successful director of the era, Boetticher made a lot more than just westerns. Yes, he did direct three bullfighting dramas (talk about a specialized niche), but he made war pictures, adventures, youth dramas, mysteries and crime pictures. Two of his best crime films arrived almost simultaneously via MOD earlier this.

 

Between his big studio breakthrough at Universal (where he made nine pictures in two years, most of them westerns) and his first of seven pictures with Randolph Scott, Boetticher directed "The Killer Is Loose" (MGM Limited), a 1956 crime drama starring Joseph Cotten as a police detective whose wife (Rhonda Fleming) is targeted by an escaped criminal looking for payback. Wendell Corey is superb as the soft-spoken bank teller turned robber who becomes twisted by revenge and pretty much slips over the edge of sanity. Boetticher's biggest strength is efficiency and restraint, creating a camaraderie in the police squad room and a sense history between Cotten and his partner (Michael Pate), and he's at his best building tension through dialogue and stillness that builds to a sudden burst of action. When Corey takes his former sergeant (John Larch) hostage, he never looses that quiet, deliberate composure, calmly reasoning his way to murder and executing his sacrifice without hesitation. Boetticher punctuates the gunshot with one of the great images of explosive violence: a shattered milk bottle. The sudden explosion shatters the tension of the deliberately measured scene and the burst of white milk against Larch’s black suit gives the sound a striking visual dimension.

It's a stand-out moment in an otherwise conventional film. Cotten is less compelling as the married man trying to keep the truth of the dragnet from his wife (Fleming, who plays the part like a society girl making a sacrifice to live middle class) but then he was never a good fit for these kinds of everyman roles. Alan Hale (before his tour of duty as The Skipper on "Gilligan's Island") provides a little comic relief as an amiable beat cop with a big appetite and a good heart. Presented Academy Ratio full screen (1.33:1).

 

 

The original "Phantom of the Opera" (Image), starring Lon Chaney in his most iconic role, is still considered the definitive version of the classic novel, thanks to Chaney's committed performance and the magnificent sets and scale. It arrives on Blu-ray in multiple editions the day after Halloween. Videodrone's review is here.

 

And shifting holidays, Bill Murray is "Scrooged" (Paramount) in the screwball take on the Dickens classic, learning the true spirit of Christmas from a screwy trio of Christmas spirits. The post-"Ghostbusters" production is a big effect extravaganza with pratfall humor and Murray in sarcastic bully mode as a TV network executive who has turned his Christmas specials into cynical pieces of pure exploitation. Just swap out eighties TV culture for Victorian London and Tiny Tim for the mute son of his overworked assistant (Alfre Woodard) and you've got "A Christmas Carol" for its era, right down to the tinny insincerity. It's really not a very good movie but director Richard Donner never lets up on the madcap pacing and hasn't met a gag he doesn't like. This works hard to entertain, what with rats crawling out of John Forsythe's corpse make-up, David Johanson blowing smoke from his ears and especially Carol Kane's Ghost of Christmas Present as a madcap Disney fairy with the sensibility of the Three Stooges. The wickedly funny cameos will mean nothing to kids but really captures the era for baby boomers, and it's kind of cool that Murray's real-life brothers are on hand to play his on-screen family. No supplements on the Blu-ray. 

 

George Clooney directs "Confessions of a Dangerous Mind" (Lionsgate), the strange (and possibly untrue) story of "Gong Show" creator and alleged CIA assassin Chuck Barris, from Barris’ “unauthorized autobiography” and Charlie Kaufman’s equally creative adaptation. Sam Rockwel is all overworked charm and naked ambition as Barris, sliding from studio gopher to cloak-and-dagger spy to audience-hungry host to hard-boiled burn out cranking out his memoirs with prose out of yet another fantasy, and Drew Barrymore is the forgiving girlfriend trying to hold onto the slippery identity of the always in motion Barris. Julia Roberts co-stars as a shadowy femme fatale and Clooney himself dryly plays Barris’ CIA recruiter. Features commentary by director George Clooney and cinematographer Newton Thomas Sigel, eleven deleted scenes with optional commentary, a "Behind the Scenes" featurette, Sam Rockwell’s screen test, the documentary portrait "The Real Chuck Barris" and performances from the five “greatest acts” from "The Gong Show."

 

"Cop Land" (Lionsgate) - Sylvester Stallone is impressive as the hearing impaired sad-sack small town sheriff treated like a servant by the New York cops who rule their community like feudal lords. James Mangold’s 1997 sophomore feature is an ambitious project with a high powered cast (among them Harvey Keitel, Ray Liotta, and Robert DeNiro) and a traditional western structure. Yet he tries for so much that he loses track of major characters (not something one does with De Niro) and resorts to the most hackneyed of climaxes. The Blu-ray features the longer 116-minute Director's Cut of film, plus commentary by writer/director James Mangold, producer Cathy Konrad, actors Sylvester Stallone and Robert Patrick, the featurette "The Making of an Urban Legend," deleted scenes with optional commentary and storyboards from the “Shootout” sequence.

 

"The Grateful Dead Movie" (Shout! Factory) - Jerry Garcia personally took charge of the 1977 concert film (co-directed by Leon Gast) that most fans consider the definitive cinematic Dead document, a concert film shot over the band’s 1974 five-night "farewell" engagement at Winterland (before a year and a half hiatus) that is as dedicated to the Dead experience as it is to the music. The two-disc set features a newly-remastered edition of the concert film and a bonus DVD with the supplements from the earlier DVD special edition: over 95 minutes of bonus concert footage, the documentary featurettes "A Look Back," "Making of the Animated Sequence" and "Making of the DVD," an archival TV commercial, a gallery of stills and posters and other supplements, including a 24-page booklet.

 

"In a Glass Cage" (Cult Epics), the notorious debut feature by Agustín Villaronga follows the obsessive relationship between a handsome male nurse (David Sust) and his monstrous charge, a former Nazi doctor (Gunter Meisner) who performed unspeakable atrocities against young boys and now survives immobile in an iron lung. The 1986 film from Spain is releases in a restored new High-Definition transfer and the Blu-ray features the director's earlier short films "Anta Mujer" (1976), "Laberint" (1980) and "Al Mayurca" (1980), plus a featurette on and a Q&A with the director.

Also debuting on Blu-ray along with DVD: Michelangelo Antonioni's "Identification of a Woman" and Bertrand Blier's "Going Places." More here.

 

And don’t forget the New Releases of "Cars 2," "Crazy, Stupid, Love." and "Water for Elephants," to name but a few. Browse the New Release rack here.

 

Same Movies, New Package:

The five films in the "Tom Cruise Blu-ray Collection" (Paramount) have all been released on Blu-ray individually, but you can't fault the choices made for this collection in terms of defining films and choices in his career. It includes two of his hotshot savant movies ("Top Gun," which made him a superstar, and "Days of Thunder," both directed by Tony Scott), his two Steven Spielberg collaborations ("Minority Report" and "War of the Worlds") and Michael Mann "Collateral," arguably his best performance. All but "Days of Thunder" and "Minority Report" come with supplements (the original "Minority Report" Blu-ray put all the supplements on a second disc).

 

There's nothing new in the "It's a Wonderful Life Gift Set" (Paramount) in terms of video supplements but you gotta admire the gimmick: it comes with a miniature bell Christmas ornament. Yeah, it's a cheap little gewgaw and the promised "Commemorative Booklet" is an eight-page leaflet, not worth the price increase from the Blu-ray-only release, but the bell is a clever touch. 

And don't forget: all Criterion titles are 50% at Barnes & Noble this month through November 21. More on Videodrone here.

 

For more releases, see Hot Tips and Top Picks: DVDs and Blu-rays for November 1

 

"Pearl Jam Twenty" (Columbia) is a documentary portrait of the Seattle band by rock journalist-turned-fi​lm director Cameron Crowe. Says Philadelphia Inquirer critic Stephen Rea: "A must-see for Pearl Jam fans - and for folks keen on gleaning insights into the pressures that come with megastardom - Crowe's doc has a field day with old archival recordings, videos of nascent club shows, and serious sit-downs with a charmingly contemplative Vedder, bassist Jeff Ament, guitarists Stone Gossard and Mike McCready, and current drummer Matt Cameron." I'll give him that, there's not much here for anyone not already in the fan club. The film had a limited release and a PBS showing before arriving on DVD. Features commentary by director Cameron Crowe and bonus footage.

 

"Identification of a Woman" (Criterion), Michelangelo Antonioni's 1982 Italian feature, is arguably the final masterpiece from the master filmmaker. The story of a filmmaker (played by Thomas Milian) looking for inspiration for his next film in the faces of women he clips from papers and magazines, and looking for someone to fill the hole left by his divorce, it returns to the themes of his sixties classics like "L'aventurra," but with the gentler, more sympathetic sensibility of an older man (he was 70 at the time) looking back. Perhaps there's a bit of autobiography here too. It is also masterfully directed, filled with mysteries that are never resolved and images both desolate and lovely. The sense of alienation is still here, but the roots are less about society and more about the difficulty of intimacy from a man so used to standing apart. By which I mean emotional intimacy; old man Antonioni isn't at all shy when it comes to the sexual intimacy of Milian and his beautiful, young lovers. It's beautifully mastered in soft, rich colors and textures seeped into the image on both DVD and Blu-ray. Unusual for a Criterion disc, this has no supplements of any kind apart from a trailer and the accompanying booklet, which features as essay by John Powers and an archival print interview with Antonioni.

 

"Going Places" (Kino Classics) was the third film from director Bertrand Blier but the first you could really call "Un film de Bertrand Blier." The story of a pair of aimless, amoral twenty-something buddies (Gérard Depardieu and Patrick Dewaere) spending their lives in constant state of petty criminality is Blier's take on the rebel movie where the rebels are smug, swaggering young men running on impulse, machismo and empty pleasure. The 1974 feature made a star of Gerard Depardieu, who plays the beefy alpha male of the fellowship with thuggish charm and studly swagger, and Miou-Miou, who falls in as the third leg of this bohemian ménage-a-trois, content to drift along with them from one scam to the next: Bonnie and Clyde and Clyde. There's nothing admirable in their behavior apart from their loyalty to one another but Blier seems to have a soft spot for these childish blowhard punks, an attitude reinforced by the comic presentation of their criminal antics and the lighthearted, jazzy score by jazz violin legend Stephane Grappelli. Call it an anti-protest film, where the rebellion is an indictment of their self-involved generation and unthinking culture. Watch for a teenage Isabelle Huppert as a kindred spirit in the final moments of the film. On DVD and Blu-ray with no supplements on either edition beyond a brief stills gallery and a trailer, but the trailer is worth checking out just for the cheekiness of it.

 

"The Essential Daffy Duck" (Warner) collects the many of the best of the Daffy classic cartoons along with revivals and TV specials on a two-disc set. They've all been released in various collections elsewhere. This is a distillation, from his debut in "Porky's Duck Hunt" (directed by Tex Avery) through "The Great Piggy Bank Robbery" (with Daffy as Duck Twacy), "Deduce, You Say" (he's Dorlock Holmes and Porky is his Watkins), "Robin Hood Daffy" (with Porky as Friar Tuck), "Ali Baba Bunny," "Duck Dodgers in the 24 ½ Century" and "Duck Amuck," one of the most ingenious animated shorts of all time. The last couple are by Chuck Jones, who helped evolve Daffy from the "woo-hoo!" madman to the splenetic con man. The new cartoons like "The Duxorcist" and "Night of the Living Duck" don’t hold a candle to the classics and the vintage TV shows mostly recycle old cartoons. Also includes the new profile "Daffy Duck: Ridicule Is the Burden of Genius."

 

"Warren Miller's Wintervention" (Shout! Factory) is the latest ski-travaganza from the extreme ski movie mogul.

 

For more releases, see Hot Tips and Top Picks: DVDs and Blu-rays for November 1

 

Are you in on the secret?

 

Every year, Barnes & Noble drops prices across the board on their entire in-stock collection of Criterion titles. Old and new, DVD and Blu-ray, everything as long as it's in print and on hand.

This year the sale began on Tuesday, November 1 and runs through Monday, November 21. It's a great opportunity to pick titles you've missed along the way or get that gift for a cinephile friend.

 

The sale runs through every store and on the website. You can browse the titles here.

 

The HBO Original documentary "His Way" (HBO) profiles Hollywood producer Jerry Weintraub and his five-decade career, with an emphasis on style and culture over his career. Videodrone's review is here.

 

"Brideshead Revisited: 30th Anniversary Collection" (Acorn) features a new HD edition of the classic 1981 BBC miniseries, and adaptation of the Evelyn Waugh novel that became a TV event when it played in Britain (and three months later in the US on the PBS showcase "Great Performances"). It effectively launched the career of Jeremy Irons, who stars as the young Oxford student Charles Ryder who falls under the sway of aristocrat Sebastian Flyte (Anthony Andrews) and his entire decadent, doomed family before World War II snaps him back to reality. The series remains a high water mark of the form and one of the most sumptuous TV dramas ever. Diana Quick co-stars as Sebastian’s sister Julia and Simon Jones is his elder brother, Lord Sebastian, and the supporting cast of grand old British actors includes John Gielgud, Claire Bloom, and Laurence Olivier. Charles Sturridge and Michael Lindsay-Hogg direct.

 

The new edition features two newly-recorded commentary tracks with producer Derek Granger (on Episode One) and director Charles Sturridge (on Episode Eleven) and director Michael Lindsay-Hogg with a bonus commentary set to a "Brideshead Remembered" slide show of stills, plus the previously-available​ 2006 documentary "Revisiting Brideshead" and the two commentary tracks from the earlier DVD edition.

 

The bad behavior continues on "Californication: The Fourth Season" (Paramount), the Showtime series starring David Duchovny as Hank Moody, novelist, hedonist and the least admirable father figure on TV. The season begins with his arrest for statutory rape (he didn't know she was underage, but then again it never occurred to him to even ask) and ends with the trial and aftermath. In between, the show pretends to confront his aggressive recklessness and disregard for anyone but himself ("I sometimes make people angry," he confesses with a little boy grin), but its not fooling anyone. The show is almost as hypocritical as Hank, letting him off the hook for his worst behavior and pretending that he is actually a good dad because he always bad about it when his daughter finds out, but there is something fascinating about the show. Or maybe its just all that cable sex and raunchiness. 12 episodes on three discs in a box set of two thinpak cases, plus bonus episodes of "Gigolos" and "Episodes" and two web-accessible episodes of "The Borgias."

 

"The Courtship of Eddie's Father: The Complete First Season" (Warner Archive), the sixties sitcom about widowed father Tom Corbett (Bill Bixby) and his devoted young son Eddie (Brandon Cruz), debuts on DVD-R from the Warner Archive collection. The stories generally revolve around Eddie's efforts to find a wife for his dad (not that dad needs much help; he's quite the charmer and Eddie is so cute his dates just love the boy) but the chemistry between the two is terrific. Miyoshi Umeki co-stars as their maternal housekeeper Mrs. Livingston and James Komack is Tom's swinging bachelor best friend and Eddie's "Uncle" Norman. 26 episodes on four discs in a standard case with hinged trays.

Also from the Warner Archive comes "Dragon's Lair: The Complete Series" (Warner Archive), a short-lived Saturday morning animated series based on the blockbuster video game. 13 episodes on two discs.

 

Another season:

"Rawhide: The Fourth Season, Volume 2" (Paramount) features the final 14 episodes from the fourth season the cattle drive western series starring Eric Fleming as the trail boss and Clint Eastwood in his breakout role as Rowdy Yates. The four-disc collection also features a bonus episode from Season Five. "Victorious: Season One, Volume Two" (Paramount), the Nickelodeon series about students at Hollywood Arts, presents nine episodes plus a bonus "iCarly" crossover episode on two discs.

 

'Tis the Season:

The made-for-cable movies "Dear Santa" (Image) with Amy Acker and David Haydn Jones and "The Santa Incident" (Vivendi) with Ione Skye and Greg Germann try to bring the spirit of Christmas to  the small screen.

 

For more releases, see Hot Tips and Top Picks: DVDs and Blu-rays for November 1