Rajorajorajo | 30 Aug 2011 | 716 Views | 2 Likes | 0 Dislikes

The DVD/BLU RAY Shed: Augustus Gloop

DVDs and BLU RAYs are the best things ever. That’s why the DVD/BLU RAY Commission of Ontario (the DBCO) recommends four to five servings of BLU RAY or DVD viewing per week. You can find out more at www.thatisafakeorganizationijustmadeup.com, and you can check back here every week for the latest releases on DVD and BLU RAY, even if some of them are complete garbage.

HERE’S THIS WEEK’S SHINY DISC PARADE:

Bobby Fischer Against the World
(dir. Liz Garbus)

2-time Academy Award nominee Liz Garbus crafts a truly fascinating big-budget HBO doc about chess weirdo Bobby Fischer. If you know nothing about Bobby Fischer going in it will really take you for a ride, as it did me. This guy was a chess prodigy, a frickin’ genius, a paranoid egomaniac, a bitter recluse, and his hugely-publicized ‘cold war’ match against Boris Spassky in 1972 (of which this doc has tons of previously unseen footage) was as much of a nail-biter as any great sports story you'll find on film. I highly recommend it.

Prom
(dir. Joe Nussbaum)

This film was the first major release to be shot on Arriflex’s ALEXA HD cameras, Arri’s answer to the ever popular Red One. The Alexa’s great because it can shoot up to 2.88 K resolution and it’s got a 35mm CMOS sensor, which basically means that now more than ever, no-one’s ever going to need to shoot on actual celluloid ever again. This movie features Disney teens singing and dancing, and I’m guessing that it’s terrible.

If...
(dir. Lindsay Anderson)

If you ever wanted to see a prequel to Stanley Kubrick’s A Clockwork Orange, then check out this Malcolm McDowell flick from 1968. In fact, it was his performance in If... that led Kubrick to cast him in his film; specifically it was his close-up in the final scene that inspired Mcdowell’s take on Orange’s Alex, so that’s kind of neat. If... is basically sort-of like Lord of the Flies at a boy’s school in England (but not really). Some of the footage is in black and white. People get shot. Butts get beat. Violence, violence, violence.

Win WIn
(dir. Thomas McCarthey)

Because my memory is poor, I just asked Mike if he saw Win WIn. “Yeah, it’s great. It’s in my top five so far this year.” Turns out he reviewed it back in March, which you can read here. Paul Giamatti plays a high school wrestling coach trying to get his team back to its former glory, which sounds exactly like the kind of role Giamatti excels at. If Mike says it’s good, you can bet it’s worth a watch.

Deadgirl
(dir. Marcel Sarmiento & Gadi Harel)

This film is awful. Disgusting (and I don’t mean the gore). I still regard it as the worst TIFF Midnight Madness selection in the history of the program. It’s about a bunch of teenage boys who discover a zombie girl tied to a table in the basement of an abandoned asylum, so they rape her. Repeatedly, for weeks on end. The film has nothing more to offer other than this. Just a film full of terrible people making terrible decisions, with no lesson to be learned in the end. Now available on Blu Ray!

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