Heartwarming news: forty years later, the iconic Woodstock couple who posed under a blanket are still together, reports the NYDN.

The special anniversary edition of Michael Wadleigh's doc, which deployed such directors as Martin Scorsese and Richard Pearce in a groundbreaking use of multiple roaming cameras, is available. Amid a lot of Woodstock hooplah, Focus Features is releasing Ang Lee's movie Taking Woodstock, set behind the scenes at the event, on August 28.

Adapting Elliot Tiber's memoir, screenwriter James Schamus (and Focus topper) and Lee explore the cultural moment that Woodstock crystallized—the ways that old and new were clashing and changing. The movie is utterly American, culturally sophisticated, sweet and tender, mood-shifting, and fun. “It was a time when people had t-shirts that didn’t have logos on them,” Lee told me at Cannes.

This behind-the-scenes drama focuses on a family dynamic: two uptight Jewish parents (Henry Goodman and Imelda Staunton) and their vibrant, closeted gay son (Demetri Martin) who, when shoved up against the counterculture, breaks out of their world. Comedy Central star Martin never dreamed of a movie career, but the real discovery is radiant theater actor Jonathan Groff as Michael Lang. Lee and Schamus nail the period. Most of the time they found that hippie lingo didn’t play, and cut much of it out. But when Groff said words like “groovy” and “far out,” he did so with such conviction that they left them in.

Here's the trailer.

The economy is a ruthless, Darwinian Master. Only the strong shall survive, and that applies to the mighty studios as well as everyone else. Sure, the theatrical market is holding up pretty well. But for every Fast & Furious, Star Trek and The Hangover there's a cynically bloated flop like Land of the Lost (for which Universal pulled print ads on its second weekend) or Imagine That. (The Wrap was inspired to do a quickie Stars Who Should Worry chart including Will Ferrell and Eddie Murphy, which probably got the site into more trouble than it was worth.)

In any case, healthy boxoffice doesn't bail Hollywood out of the predicament each studio owner is in. DVDs, once a beautiful way for the studios to reap tidy profits, are inexorably declining, most dramatically among the blockbusters that used to deliver huge returns. For example, Pixar's 2004 The Incredibles earned $260 million at the domestic boxoffice and sold 18 million DVDs. By comparison, in 2008, DreamWorks' Kung Fu Panda earned $215 million domestically, but sold 11 million DVDs. That's a sizable drop. Sales are down across the board, including classic rereleases, and less precipitously, specialty titles.

The studios can recoup those losses in three ways:

Make movies cheaper.

Make talent their partner. Push back the gross to a point where the studio can make some money.

Cut marketing costs. As the studios produce fewer movies going forward, one bonus will be less clutter and noise for marketing departments to cut through.

Studios answer to beleaguered corporate parents fighting their own battles. Paramount owner Viacom--which one report suggests is open to a Paramount merger when there's no evidence that anyone has interest in buying anybody else--has volatile Sumner Redstone at the helm as ad rates plummet. Each of the six media behemoths is rocked to some degree by the horrid ad climate: 30 to 70 % of their incomes come from ads. News Corp and Time Warner are coping with reeling publishing empires. NBC/Universal parent GE is dealing with its troubled financing division. Disney's Robert Iger is worrying about ABC and theme park attendance. And Sony's hardware divisions are getting slammed.

But at this point in history one studio won't buy another studio because it's impossible to put a value on their assets. Studios generate new hits as locomotives for their libraries. That's the studio business. But now it's tough to place value on the library because nobody knows whether the copyrights will live forever, or be worth nothing in a few years because of the Internet. (The music business has gone from a combined value of $30 billion to $8 billion because the music catalogs are worth next to nothing, due to free music downloads.)

Four weaker companies are more likely to seek new alliances in order to survive: indie Lionsgate, having over-leveraged itself, is under attack by financial agitator Carl Icahn; fledgling Overture's pitiless owner John Malone could easily withdraw support if the company doesn't deliver some Summit-sized grosses; and both MGM and The Weinstein Co. are desperately seeking relief from their crushing debt burdens. Trouble is, while a deep-pocketed player could buy enough debt to shut down a company and buy its library, who's to say what it's worth today? Goldman Sachs is desperately trying to recapitalize MGM before its $4 billion comes due next year. Ordinarily they'd find some action, but at this rate they may have to sell the library at a discount to a tech player with a digital future.

Some folks believe the entertainment economy will bounce back. Others think the Internet has killed the golden goose. (Here's Wired's Chris Anderson on the free economy.) Some studios want to pursue a Hulu model, others prefer following iTunes or Netflix. But unless the consumer has an easy way to buy cheap movies, they'll download them for nothing.

Here's a list of some of the vital classics that are still missing from DVDs. Finally, Howard Hawks' Bringing Up Baby is no longer one of them--in part thanks to lists like this. Constant vigilance is required.

Here's a taste of Glenn Kenny's rave of the new Disney Blu-ray Pinocchio 70th anniversary DVD:

For borderline boomers such as myself, Pinocchio never played as an "old" movie when we saw it, or bits of it, on the color version of "The Wonderful World of Disney" on our households' first color televisions in the early '60s. But to look at this version is to look at something not just not old, but brand new. The colors, the detail, the almost preternatural absence of smudges, scratches, and whatnot...this does, I think, inarguably, honor the intentions and the labors of the filmmakers in a way that even they themselves could not have envisioned.

When GQ film critic Tom Carson read this, he felt compelled to grab this DVD and re-watch Pinocchio for the first time since he was a wee lad. The impact on him was devastating. As far as Carson is concerned, Disney's Pinocchio is one wacked out nasty movie, brimming with sex, innuendo, a nose like an enlarging penis, and adolescent jack-asses.

Kenny responds here.

I always wondered why the studios didn’t want to sell their classic libraries online, in pursuit of the long tail. Well, Warner Bros., the first distrib to stick a toe in the water by offering some 150 titles starring the likes of Greta Garbo and Demi Moore, found out instantly how much demand there was. From the first day it went live last week, unexpected customers flooded Warners' new classic DVD archive, reports The New York Post's Lou Lumenick: within two hours of the site going live, "orders were placed for 140 of the initial 150 titles." Warner exec George Feltenstein, who plans to make available some 5000 titles from the WB, MGM and RKO libraries, told him: "If initial sales are any indication, we're in for a long ride."

The Twilight DVD sold more than 3 million units when it was released March 21, which lands it in the top five best first day DVD releases over the past two years.

The full release is on the jump:

The reason there's so much heat around Twilight again (and New Moon--Summit finally announced Dakota Fanning's casting as Jane) is that the DVD is coming out March 21. Access Hollywood aired two deleted scenes from Twilight. Sometimes directors cut scenes from movies for a reason.

Frank Borzage's 1933 Man's Castle is a Depression-era romantic drama starring Spencer Tracy and Loretta Young that couldn't be more timely. Set in a New York shanty town, it's terrific, tough, and candidly pre-Code. Glenn Kenny is a fan, and so is Dave Kehr. But it's pretty hard to find. Kehr has made it his number one candidate to be put on DVD. It's available in seven parts on YouTube.

In this detailed report, Anthony Kaufman explores the issue of the disappearing VHS and the films, like Man's Castle, that are vanishing with it. Read it and weep.

Here's Man's Castle, Part One:

Fun reads: At Film.com, Tim Appelo begs Brad and Angelina to save the Oscars, while Mark Harris explains at The Observer that the Academy is not, contrary to popular belief, a monolith. Film Experience examines the fates of the 2004 Vanity Fair Hollywood cover girls.

When my family and I saw the trailer for Paul Blart Mall Cop over the holidays, we all knew it would be a hit. But this big? New York Mag defines a new genre: the Blart. And Stephen Schaefer commends both new comedy star Kevin James and employable Oscar contender Mickey Rourke for recent smart career moves.

Some friends of mine are so afraid of Google they refuse to use it. Slate defines yet another Google triumph: Google Gear.

Steal this: Online retail giant Amazon is selling DVDs of 900 new indie and foreign films, priced from $5.99.

Billy Wilder is one of those tough unsentimental directors whose films get better with time. Years later, they still feel contemporary. And the Oscar-winning The Apartment, reviewed here on video by the NYT's A.O. Scott, is on my All-Time Top Ten List.

Scott picked up some video performance skills while guest-reviewing on Ebert & Roeper; he also recognizes that video reviews are where online criticism is heading. He should do more of these; it works.

Guillaume Canet's unexpected French hit Tell No One, a twisty thriller that was overlooked by bigger stateside distribs and released by upstart Music Box Films, has now grossed over $6.2 million in the US, which makes it the highest-grossing foreign-language film of the year so far.

The DVD and Blu-Ray are due in the first quarter of 2009.

Here's the trailer:

Tell No One could wind up on a lot of ten best lists. Critics' groups tend to give one film a year a best foreign film prize. For me, so many of my fave films this year come from abroad, where filmmakers have the freedom to make small-scale dramas with great actors and unexpected stories that dig into the human condition in a way we don't. Even indie movies, these days, are striving for commercial acceptance (Steven Soderbergh and Charlie Kaufman aside).

Another foreign import that could be rewarded by critics is Let the Right One In, a Swedish vampire film that is artfully made in a way that rarely happens here. While it's about vampires, with horrific but not sexy elements, it is an art film, not a horror thriller:

Lucasfilm has launched an unusual promo for today's DVD release of Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull. Here's the Lucasfilm marketing memo:

Greetings, On behalf of our promotional partner Papa John's, I wanted to make sure you received the news about their fun "Indiana Jones" promotion to celebrate today's DVD and Blu-Ray release of "Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull." It offers a free Papa John's pizza to anyone in the United States named "Dr. Jones" -- and if they live in Indiana, they'll get a DVD, as well!

Also promoting the DVD is Moviefone, which posts a Harrison Ford Q & A complete with confession that 1) he's not necessarily passing the fedora to Shia LaBeouf just yet, and 2) he'd love to do another Tom Clancy sequel. Hear that, Paramount? They replaced Alec Baldwin as Jack Ryan with Ford, then replaced Ford with a much younger Ben Affleck. That series is stalled under current management and is in need of a major recharge.

Recently I watched the ultimate Jack Ryan movie, The Hunt for Red October, with pleasure for the nth time. Every time it comes on cable, I can't help myself. What is it about this movie that makes me so happy? Director John McTiernan is in his prime, with DP Jan DeBont at his side; the script by Larry Ferguson and Donald Stewart is crisp. The actors--Baldwin, Scott Glenn, Sean Connery, Sam Neill, Stellan Skarsgard--are all in top form.

I asked Glenn at the W party about Red October. He beamed, because it's one of his fave roles too, maybe his best. He told me how he followed a submarine captain around for a while and decided to base the entire character on him: glasses, subdued manner, everything. "Maybe the movie is about bringing out the best in these characters," he said.

Hmmm. There is something satisfying about how these men are really good at their jobs, listen to each other, and act optimistically, in the hope that the other side will do the right thing. These are people you can rely on.

Any theories?

Speaking of escapist musicals, 1000 folks crammed into the Academy Theater on Friday night to escape the financial crisis and fall happily into the giddy world of the 1958 Arthur Freed/Vincente Minnelli musical Gigi, which swept all nine of its Oscar nominations. It's the film's Golden anniversary, and star Leslie Caron flew in from France to be quizzed by critic Stephen Farber. Warners supplied a gorgeous digital restoration. Both Minnelli's Gigi and 1951's An American in Paris are coming out in special two-disc editions.

At the reception beforehand, the tiny, birdlike Caron was surrounded by elderly male admirers from her MGM days, including West Side Story star George Chakiris. Dancer Gene Kelly discovered ballerina Caron on the stage in Paris; she was 18 when she arrived at Metro to test for An American in Paris, and landed the role. Her first naive act was to shear her own hair short with nail scissors, horrifying everyone and delaying the start of production by several weeks. Kelly choreographed and placed the cameras during the dance sequences, she said.

After An American in Paris hit big, Freed asked the dancer what material she liked and she mentioned Colette's Gigi. Freed developed it for years, first as a drama, but eventually realized that the only way to get around the strictures of the Hayes Code--Gigi is in training to be a French courtesan--was to make it a musical. "I'm playing a hooker who made good," said Caron.

[Photo courtesy L.A. Times]

It's not like Errol Morris's Abu Ghraib doc Standard Operating Procedure, for all its merits, is going to go flying off the shelves when Sony releases the DVD on October 14th, even if the doc did win the Silver Bear Grand Jury Audience Award at Berlin. So how do you promote a serious doc about relative truth, photography and torture?

Well, I've never seen this one before: Physicians for Human Rights and Participant Media, which backed the film, are setting up a simultaneous digital screening at 27 medical schools around the country on October 6 (7 PM EST). The medical schools range from Albert Einstein U, Boston U to Brown Medical School and the U of Utah. The screening will be followed by a Q & A with the filmmaker and Farnoosh Hashemian, MPH, author of PHR’s Broken Laws, Broken Lives: Medical Evidence of US Torture and Its Impact.

“Management’s biggest challenge is transitioning into this brave new world without trampling the massive revenue streams that have supported our businesses for so long."

Ain't it the truth. Warner Bros. chairman Barry Meyer states the obvious in a fascinating NYT piece that uses Jeffrey Bewkes' rebooting of the Time Warner empire as a window (no pun intended) into the challenges facing the entertainment business at large. Will Bewkes be able to gain a network by acquiring NBC Universal? Will increased profit margins on VOD save the corporation from declining DVD fortunes? And while The Dark Knight reigns supreme this summer, will putting more focus on the Warners studio yield consistent profits?

[Photo courtesy NYTimes]

Facebook is catching up with MySpace as a key marketing tool for filmmakers. Kimberly Peirce, for example, posted the following DVD promo letter to her Facebook friends:

Hello,

Just wanted to let you guys know that...

STOP-LOSS is ON DVD TODAY JULY 8.

The DVD is loaded with tons of great features, including a commentary track, deleted scenes, a making-of documentary and footage of the actors going through boot camp.

VARIETY calls the DVD “worthy viewing for those who missed the film the first time around” and Peter Travers of ROLLING STONE says that Stop-Loss is “the first major movie of the new year that touches greatness.”

You can purchase the DVD through this link:

And you can go to stoplosscontest for a chance to WIN ONE OF THREE PARAMOUNT PRIZE PACKS (or just suggest a reason why I should send you one)

I'd love to hear what you think of the DVD and the extras.

Best,

KP

Here she talks to Current TV:

[Posted by Peter Debruge]
Paul Schrader’s Mishima: A Life in Four Chapters is the latest contemporary classic to get the Criterion treatment, and you can read my take on the film here, but I feel the gorgeous DVD box art deserves a review of its own. So here goes...

Designed by Neil Kellerhouse, the package is every bit as non-commercial as the film it contains, an artistic reflection of Yukio Mishima’s multi-faceted persona, diffracted and mirrored in the movie’s own faux-Asian style.

On the surface, you get an eye-catching gold box emblazoned with bright pink, orange and blue iconography. Extract the inner case and the negative image emerges: cherry blossoms against a stark black background. Open it further, and one of Mishima’s many enigmatic portraits (as recreated for the film) appears multiplied by four. Now, lift the final flaps, and the Golden Pavillion (one of the film’s key symbols for beauty) splits open to reveal two discs imprinted with the image of Saint Sebastian (the same painting Mishima credited with awakening his sexuality).

In short, this whole thing is a work of art. Which leads me to muse whether it is, as I’m tempted to conclude, the best DVD package design of all time. Personally, I tend to throw out all my DVD boxes and store the discs in binders (when you own more than 1,500 discs, space starts to be an issue), but there are some cases I simply can’t part with. Do you have favorites? After the jump, I nominate my top 10 picks.

I like to guest-lecture at various college courses taught by my industry pals because I always learn things. This week I learned from the students that convenience and last-minute gratification are key to their movie-watching decisions.

While some of these kids do check film critics on Rotten Tomatoes, most don't download movies, illegal or otherwise, but they do watch TV shows for free online. They often impulsively check online listings at the last minute when they feel like going to a movie. And they also go for the convenience of renting from Red Box kiosks at McDonalds, Walgreens, Wall-Marts and supermarkets for a dollar a night.

Redbox explains how it works:

To rent a DVD, simply make your selection, follow the easy instructions and, with just a swipe of your credit or debit card, you're on your way in just minutes! And it's so inexpensive! There are no membership or late fees. You just pay $1 a night for every night you have the DVD!

It looks like cheap $1 rentals at Red Box kiosks are picking up. Meanwhile shares of Blockbuster, the largest U.S. movie-rental chain, dropped 23% last quarter, according to Video Business, "while shares of Netflix, the largest movie-rental operator via mail, fell 18%." 11,000 kiosks are expected to be in service by year's end.

Here's Video Business on Redbox's stalled plans for an IPO:

Redbox, the largest U.S. operator of movie-rental kiosks, delayed filing its prospectus for a planned public offering after the stock markets had their worst second quarter in six years. Redbox, majority owned by coin-exchange machine operator Coinstar, said in May that it would file its prospectus by the end of the second quarter. Following that announcement, the company hired former JetBlue Airways chief financial officer John Harvey as its financial chief.

The company, whose investors also include McDonald’s, looked to take advantage of its leadership position in a kiosk industry predicted to surge as movie-rental chain stores cut units. U.S. consumers, attracted by movie-kiosk prices that are lower than movie rentals at stores such as Blockbuster, will spend $800 million at kiosks by 2010, triple the amount spent last year, according to Convergence Consulting Group. Meanwhile, store rental revenue, estimated at $5.4 billion last year, will fall to $3.1 billion by 2010, according to Convergence.

As a sign of the times, City Lights Entertainment is making Hector Babenco's Oscar-winning film Kiss of the Spider Woman available as an exclusive-to-rent or download on Amazon Unbox. It's well worth checking out.

Kiss of the Spider Woman was adapted by Leonard Schrader from the 1976 novel El Beso de la Mujer Arana by Manuel Puig. William Hurt won the Oscar as a man who unexpectedly learns to love another prisoner (Raul Julia) in a Latin American jail. Kiss of the Spider Woman, produced by David Weisman, was the first indie to nab four top Oscar noms, including best picture and best director for Hector Babenco.

There's also a new doc, Tangled Web: Making Kiss of the Spider Woman, available on DVD or Unbox download. You can now rent the pic from Amazon Unbox for $2.99 for 30 days, or download to own for $9.99. Or wait until July 22 to get the Standard Definition and Blu-ray Special-Edition DVDs.

[Posted by Peter Debruge]
When critics inevitably say Dirty Harry looks better than ever on Blu-ray, they won’t be kidding (I wasn’t). Warner’s new hi-def edition is stunning in its clarity, to the degree that the word “gritty” (so much a staple of the Dirty Harry conversation in the past) no longer applies. These new hi-def transfers are so sharp, virtually no sign of film grain remains, a decision that surely reflects what the market currently demands, but also suggests a certain amount of very sophisticated tampering on the part of Warner Home Video.

Watching these films, I’m reminded of an interview with Eastwood’s longtime editor Joel Cox, who oversaw how the star’s films were being handled during the early days of homevid. Referring back to 1983, he told me, “We had just finished the film ‘Sudden Impact,’ and they put it through the process. They put the film out and changed the color and widened it and changed the sound around a bit. Clint had me go in and check it out, and we realized the people who did it took it upon themselves to make ‘corrections,’ figuring that we didn’t know how to time the picture or make the sound correct.”

Why Clint likes it gritty after the jump...

It fascinates me that folks are still commenting on the No Country for Old Men ending--or lack thereof.

Brett Ratner's Rush Hour 3 beat out some pretty big heavyweights as top DVD Rental of 2007, generating $71.2 million in rental revenue, according to Home Media Retailing. Rush Hour 3 out-performed Spider-Man 3, Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix, and Shrek the Third.

The 2003 BBC mini-series State of Play made riveting watching, and it was no surprise when director David Yates was put on the Harry Potter movies, nor when Working Title scooped it up for a movie remake directed by Kevin Macdonald, which was originally to star Brad Pitt, but thanks to the Writers Strike, now stars Russell Crowe. The original is now out on DVD, reports Stephen Schaefer:

Is “State of the Play” the greatest miniseries ever made? The BBC’s six-hour “State of Play” is only now being released on DVD in the US, five years after its 2003 debut and many months before the Hollywood Americanized version starring Russell Crowe enters Oscar’s end of the year sweepstakes.

Smartly topical and smart about journalism and the power plays that govern our lives, “State of Play” is a perfectly pitched conspiracy thriller that begins with two deaths: The stalking and assassination of a black youth on the streets of today’s London and the apparent suicide of a beautiful, blonde research assistant to up-and-coming politico Stephen Collins (David Morrissey in a career-defining portrait).

When Collins breaks down giving a statement to the press about his assistant Sonia Baker, the tabloids smell blood and go to town. “State of Play” centers on the nicely, appropriately named Herald newspaper as these deaths are linked by its intrepid team of reporters led by Cal McCaffrey (John Simm), his colleagues Della Smith (Kelly Macdonald, so unforgettable as Josh Brolin’s Texas wife in “No Country for Old Men”), Helen Preger (Amelia Bullmore) and Pete Cheng (Benedict Wong), their boss, the elegant Cameron Foster (Bill Nighy).

As a story unfolds that gradually spins ever upward, we discover that Cal is Collins’ former campaign manager, that he has a yen for Collins’ estranged wife (Polly Walker, as good here as she was in HBO’s “Rome” though hardly as evil) and that Sonia’s ex Dominic Foy (an unforgettable turn by a new face, Marc Warren) may have the information and the truth about why she died.

There are a couple of cops whose lives are in very real danger and a charming freelancer (James McAvoy, beginning his road to international stardom) who joins the Herald team. Think of “All the President’s Men” and today’s oil cartels and, yes, how the BBC “Traffic” was turned into an Oscar-winning Hollywood movie.

It's no surprise that on May 13, just days before the opening of Indy 4 on summer screens, Lucasfilm and Paramount Home Entertainment will release all three Indiana Jones pics as special edition individual DVDs in a new box set. The Raiders of the Lost Ark (1981), Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom (1984) and Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade (1989) special editions boast new bonus features delving into the making of these classics and showcasing the characters, action and VFX.

All three films were originally restored and remastered in 2003. Directed by Steven Spielberg from stories by exec producer George Lucas, the three Indiana Jones movies earned six Oscars and nearly $1.2 billion worldwide. Previously available only in a trilogy box set, the three Indy Jones adventures were restored and remastered with new bonus content from Spielberg, Lucas and others who also hint about what to expect in the new installment.

The NYT breathlessly details the success of the Indy 4 trailer online. Lucasfilm and Paramount are pushing the pic on a younger generation. Boomers are already hyped.

More details on the discs are on the jump:

You know something's wrong in Hollywood when movies with stars can't get a theater opening. Edward Burns took his latest relationship pic Purple Violets exclusively to iTunes, and Madonna is threatening to do something similar with her badly reviewed Berlin flick Filth & Wisdom. That would be an interesting test of the power of the Internet, if Madonna used her marketing machine to sell her film online.

This weekend, Ebert & Roeper critics Tony Scott and Richard Roeper did a segment about movies with marquee names that have gone direct to DVD. Scott recommended the Michele Pfeiffer/Paul Rudd romance I Could Never Be Your Woman, while Roeper thought Jennifer Lopez was strong in Gregory Nava's The Border. And here's a review of a 2001 unreleased Alan Rudolph movie finally hitting video stores.

Nowadays a minimal theatrical release is just a short-cut to the video store. With the current indie-finance glut, there are more movies seeking alternative distribution than ever, judging by how few got picked up at Sundance. Here's my column on alternative distribution on the Internet.

Many small-scale success stories are out there, as filmmakers and online distributors such as B-Side, IFC, Withoutabox, Cinequest, iTunes, Amazon and Netflix experiment with economic models. It's only a matter of time before we have more breakouts to show the way. Check out the online break-through flicks Head Trauma, Blood Car and Four Eyed Monsters (pictured) as well as the hockey doc In the Crease.

[Posted by Peter Debruge]
You know how you can tell that even your own mother hasn't been reading your movie reviews? When she calls you from the video store to gauge your opinion about a film you panned in print. That's why I resolved to get her an online DVD rental subscription for Christmas this year, so I could log in and load the queue with classy choices I know she'd love (like The Lives of Others or Breaking & Entering).

The question? Should I go with Netflix (the service I use myself) or Blockbuster Total Access, which would allow her to trade in my picks for any movie she pleases for free in their stores? I was leaning towards Blockbuster when I stumbled across this price-hike news from Variety's sister publication, Video Business:

Blockbuster, in a bid to increase the profitability of Total Access, is changing the prices of DVD rental subscription programs, with rates for its Total Access Premium offering unlimited mail order and in-store exchanges going up a hefty $5 to $10. ... The changes take effect on the next billing cycle for existing customers and on Dec. 27 for new customers.

Seems the in-store advantage is costing the company too much money, and they're adjusting the prices accordingly (it should be noted that they're decreasing some of the plans that don't include in-store trade-ins to compete with Netflix). Of course, if I wanted to get really classy, I'd would have gone the mom-and-pop route and hooked her up with a GreenCine membership, which caters to true film snobs by delivering hard-to-find titles.

When I was growing up, our family Christmas-watching rituals included A Christmas Carol, starring Alistair Sim as Mr. Scrooge, Frank Capra's It's a Wonderful Life, and Holiday Inn, featuring Bing Crosby crooning White Christmas.

But when you start a family, Christmas habits change. David added Bob Clark's A Christmas Story to our holiday ritual. And while Nora loves It's a Wonderful Life, she never responded to the black-and-white A Christmas Carol. And somehow, Richard Curtis's Love Actually has snuck into our regular Christmas viewing. Here's DVD Spindoctor's Christmas list.

And of course, no Christmas would be right without watching Judy Garland sing Have Yourself a Merry Little Christmas to the sobbing Margaret O'Brien in Vincente Minnelli's Meet Me in St. Louis:

This is a strange 1963 TV reprise:

The Oregonian's Shawn Levy on the new refurbished Help DVD.

Here's the trailer:

One Christmas gift for the Stanley Kubrick-phile who doesn't already own any of the preceding Kubrick collections is the just-released 10-disc Warner Director Series: Stanley Kubrick. The boxed set boasts remastered versions of five of his last six films: 2001: A Space Odyssey, A Clockwork Orange, The Shining, Full Metal Jacket and Eyes Wide Shut, plus the add-on doc Stanley Kubrick: A Life in Pictures. According to the NYT's Dave Kehr:

The 10-disc boxed set includes many extras but has been attracting some controversy for using the wide-screen theatrical versions rather than the full-frame versions Kubrick originally released to the home video market.

Here's CNN's take. Screenhead. And DVD Spindoctor.

Here's the "Dawn of Man" sequence from 2001:

This Variety Rome Film Fest review of Francis Ford Coppola's return to personal filmmaking, Youth Without Youth, reminds me that I still need to check this movie out for myself. Here are two Rome fest Coppola AP stories. And interestingly, George Hickenlooper's famous doc Hearts of Darkness about the making of Apocalypse Now is finally coming out on DVD, reports Filmmaker Magazine's blog.

The International Documentary Association named the 25 best documentaries. Number one? Hoop Dreams. Number two is Errol Morris's The Thin Blue Line, and number three is Bowling for Columbine from Michael Moore, who, not surprisingly, has three films in the top 25.

Martin Scorsese's The Last Waltz, featuring The Band and Bob Dylan, leads Rolling Stone's top 25 music DVDs. Here's a Dylan/Band clip from the movie:

It's also hard to argue with Monterey Pop or A Hard Days Night as absolute must-sees.

And Snarkerati has the top 50 dystopian movies. The top 5: Metropolis, A Clockwork orange, Brazil, Wings of Desire and Blade Runner. Next time they do this list, they may want to add Pixar's upcoming Wall-E.

Ridley Scott's Blade Runner will screen at the New York Film Fest before playing in NYC. Here's an update on Blade Runner then and now. Here's Wired's uncut Ridley Scott interview.

I admit I was killing two birds with one Stone: checking out the spanking new Gensler CAA building at 2000 Avenue of the Stars, and spending an evening hanging out with pals of Oliver Stone as we watched the latest expanded "final" hi-def cut of Alexander "Revisited" in the fancy CAA screening room.

The building is a glass stunner, with a lobby looking through to the hillside lawn on the other side. CAA is down the hall to the right, and once you get through those portals, no cameras are allowed. No shots of the rosy-hued reception area, the tall central atrium, the fabulous art. I meekly handed over my camera to security and went up to the buffet dinner, said hi to Don Murphy and Roger Avary, and ate souvlaki, hummus and grape leaves on my lap with Jessica Bendiger and pals on the balcony outside.

Inspired in part by seeing Paul Haggis's no-frills In the Valley of Elah, Stone is prepping to shoot Pinkville, starring Bruce Willis as Army general William R. Peers, who investigated the massacre of hundreds of Vietnamese civilians in My Lai by U.S. army soldiers. United Artists' Paula Wagner, Stone's old agent, is putting up $40 million for Stone to shoot the pic in super-16. Willis was willing to cut his price to do this. Channing Tatum and Michael Pena also star. (Stone was unable to land his U-Turn star Sean Penn.) The movie starts shooting in Thailand in early November. Jon Kilik is producing.

Alexander Revisited: The Final Cut is not the version released on DVD not so long ago, but Stone's fourth pass in two and a half years at this epic biopic of the conquering Macedonian hero. Thanks to Warner Home Video, he got to tinker and fuss. I didn't see the intervening shorter "director's cut." I saw the first theatrical cut in 2004--the one that was rushed into release because neither Intermedia nor Warners was able to stop the global release date that was apparently written in stone. Whoops. I keep using that word.

So Stone made some mistakes first time out. The very Black Irish Colin Farrell was too blond. Nothing to be done about that. And there were some awkward bloopers, scenes that rang false, made you cringe. Not so now. This is a damned good movie, it runs much longer, with a great battle right at the top and an intermission dividing the two halves. Now, the male/male relationships make sense, as does Roxanne (a sexy Rosario Dawson) and the parental dysfunction with Dad (Val Kilmer) and Mom (Angelina Jolie). Most important, the reason why Alexander kept going, the urge to conquer, to keep conquering--that rings clear, too. In this case, more is more. It's a good movie.

Next up on the classical sword and sandals front: Leonardo DiCaprio may star in a big-screen adaptation of Robert Graves' I, Claudius for producer Scott Rudin.

At a recent dinner I got into a John Ford vs. Akira Kurosawa argument. It was about who was the best director of all time. It's damned close. Look at this fabulous list, organized by one of my favorite cinephile bloggers, Edward Copeland, of the top 100 foreign films of all time. I too voted for Jean Renoir's Rules of the Game as number one, and Kurosawa's The Seven Samurai as number two. (My list is on the jump.) But I only allowed myself one movie per director on my list of 25. More Kurosawa films were nominated than any other director; the final top twenty boasts four of his films, and three by Ingmar Bergman. (When I made my final cut, I erred on the side of older films because I knew that more recent films from the likes of Werner Herzog and Alejandro Gonzalez Innaritu had an edge. I wasn't worried about them. I was right.)

David Lynch talks Inland Empire (and other things) at MTV.com on the occasion of the experimental digital video's DVD release. While I admired Lynch's witty marketing efforts on behalf of the film (including hanging with a cow on Hollywood Boulevard), I somehow managed to skip this one.

[Posted by Peter Debruge]
For anyone who loves movies, assembling special-edition DVDs for Criterion sounds like a dream job. Not only do they get to spiff up and research the world’s best films, but in many cases, they also have a chance to work directly with the directors when doing so (including the late Ingmar Bergman on that five-disc Fanny and Alexander set).

On Criterion’s “On Five” blog, Lee Kline discusses the task of restoring Terrence Malick’s Days of Heaven (a movie that makes my all-time top-10 list):

Terry made it clear that the new transfer needed to feel natural and not too “postcardlike.” [You gotta love that these guys are on a first-name basis with “Terry,” one of Hollywood’s most reclusive helmers.] We weren’t allowed to use words like golden or warm. The natural beauty of the land needed to be represented, since that was what they were going for when shooting. When we first started to take out the gold and the warmth, it was heading toward a really different place from the previous transfer. Not bad, mind you, just different and definitely more natural. I would sometimes joke in the room that such and such a shot was pretty, and then I would say to Terry, “But not too pretty!” … After three days of Terry, Billy, and John’s expertise, we were finished. It looked beautiful, but boy, was it different. I told Terry that people were really going to be pretty surprised by this new transfer, since it was such a radical departure from before, but he said it was perfect.

That’s what I love about Criterion: Those guys can take a perfect film and make it perfect-er.

For any indie filmmaker lacking a theatrical distributor who is eager to get their DVD reviewed, Last Night With Riviera knows a web critic who will review your film. Chris Gore at Film Threat will also review some indie pix.

Writer-director-actor triple threat Steve Buscemi, who is always fun to watch no matter how he gets tortured or killed (in the case of his adaptation of Theo van Gogh's Interview, Sienna Miller does the torturing), delivers his top ten dvds.

Quentin Tarantino, Elvis Mitchell and David Chute add commentary to the new Dragon Dynasty The Shaw Brothers Classic Collection DVD, King Boxer: Five Fingers of Death. Here's DVD Spindoctor, and Kung Fu Cinema:

Audio commentary is provided by filmmaker and Dragon Dynasty consultant Quentin Tarantino and film scholars David Chute and Elvis Mitchell. I knew this commentary would be at least interesting with the very vocal Tarantino on board, but it turns out to be even better than I could have hoped for. The trio seems to know each other fairly well and each contributes in a distinctive way that compliments the others. These guys definitely know their genre films and references come fast and hard. Young or casual listeners may be left in their dust, but fellow filmmakers and film enthusiasts will feel right at home as they dissect KING BOXER with references to old Hollywood B-movies, chambara movies and obscure kung fu classics even I haven’t seen yet like director Jeong Chang-hwa’s HEADS FOR SALE. There is also a lot of talk, particularly from Tarantino and Mitchell about the first impression this film had on them back in the grindhouse movie days. This is always fun to hear as a younger fan who missed out on this era, yet has still gotten to sample from revival screenings of Shaw Brothers classics in more recent years. The truth is that these movies have and always will be best served to a theater packed with uninhibited, hollering fanatics.

When I first interviewed Tarantino for EW for Pulp Fiction, I had a wonderful time talking with him--it was like talking to my film critic husband David, who provides commentary with Tarantino and Mitchell. He also joins Tarantino on another Dragon Dynasty collector's edition: The One-Arm Swordsman, this time with critic Andy Klein. These guys know more than you'll ever want to know about these films!

UPDATE: For more on these DVDS, listen to Christian Johnson's "Geekerati Radio" episode on July 16 on "DVD Extras," 7 to 8 PM. Catch it live, call in or find old podcasts at blogtalkradio/geekerati. If you join in on the conversation, they might might give out a free copy of a movie.

Watch out for the MPAA Police! Once a popular genre movie like Live Free or Die Hard is in release, countless movie pirates infiltrate theatres with their camcorders and cell phone cameras, ready to upload their data files online. The MPAA has tracked down five movie thieves with camcorders at Transformers showings in New York, California, Georgia, Illinois and Florida.

Inside the movie download community, which is wary and watchful of the MPAA, pirates like these are seen as rebel warriors. ""These are the unsung heroes that sacrifice so much for the enjoyment of so many," writes one unapologetic movie downloader. The studios see themselves as fighting the good and righteous fight against movie pirates to preserve the status quo for everyone who works in the movie business. But on some level they are turning their own customers into criminals, who enjoy their maverick status in the download underworld.

It's a tricky wicket. Lowering the price on legit high-quality downloads ASAP is one solution--which the studios won't do because they are still making so much cash on DVD sales commandeered by giant retailers like Wallmart, who call the shots. But that won't last forever.

Classic library titles are one place to start. I still don't understand why the studos don't sell those titles themselves online and let the long tail rule, as it does on Netflix.

Here's the Variety story.

Dave Kehr announces that Fox is preparing to release a massive 21-disc (unaffordable) John Ford DVD collection in December. Excellent Christmas news.

Kehr also reveals that the AFI's exhaustive historic catalog archives are now available for viewing at Turner Classic Movies Database, or TCMDB. IMDB watch out! Here's their entry on John Ford, for example.

The TCMDB lists their ten most requested movies not on DVD:

1. Green Mansions (1959) 4119 votes
2. The Mortal Storm (1940) 3454 votes
3. Smilin' Through (1932) 3168 votes
4. Northwest Passage (1940) 3081 votes
5. The African Queen (1951) 2846 votes
6. North West Mounted Police (1940) 2845 votes
7. An American Romance (1944) 2765 votes
8. Stop, You're Killing Me (1953) 2721 votes
9. Only Yesterday (1991) 2490 votes

And DVD Spindoctor lists AFI Top 100 list entries that are available on DVD.

James Ellroy presents the Payback DVD.

The late lamented Kurt Vonnegut wrote a slew of good books and several of them, most notably Slaughterhouse Five, were turned into terrific movies. DVD Spindoctor rates them.