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Pinocchio

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  • Title: Pinocchio
  • IMDb: link

Pinocchio Blu-ray reviewAdapted from Carlo Collodi’s The Adventures of Pinocchio, Walt Disney’s second animated film features a morality tale about a young puppet brought to life who struggles to learn lessons about right and wrong. Helping him, but not always being successful, is Jiminy Cricket who is drafted into service as Pinocchio‘s conscience by the Blue Fairy who instills life in the marionette after answering the fondest wish of his creator Gepetto. If Pinocchio can prove himself brave, truthful, and unselfish, he may become a real boy, but before that can happen he’ll make a few wrong turns along the way.

Paroled from the Disney Vault, Pinocchio is re-released on Blu-ray as part of the new Signature Series. Extras include all the previously-released features (behind-the-scenes featurettes, storyboards, deleted scenes, and more) along with a handful of new short featurettes on the film, music, and Pleasure Island, and a vintage black-and-white cartoon.

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Batman: Return of the Caped Crusaders

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  • Title: Batman: Return of the Caped Crusaders
  • IMDb: link

Batman: The Return of the Caped Crusaders Blu-ray reviewBatman: Return of the Caped Crusaders is another middling recent entry to DC’s straight-to-DVD animated films. Playing up the nostalgia to the hilt, the film casts Adam West and Burt Ward to reprise their roles in this animated version of the 60s Batman television show. While the look an style of the movie hearkens back to the original, the tone is never quite right (paticularly after Batman is turned into the villain in the film’s second-half).

Jeff Bergman is well-chosen for the Joker, capturing the sound of Cesar Romero‘s version of the character. William Salyers and Wally Wingert are passable as the Penguin and the Riddler. The casting of Julie Newmar seems like a nice touch, except when you hear an elderly voice coming out of the character meant to be the sexy femme fatale.

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The King and I

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  • Title: The King and I
  • IMDb: link

The King and I DVD reviewRe-released on DVD, 1956’s The King and I brought the Richard Rodgers and Oscar Hammerstein II musical to the big screen in CinemaScope starring Deborah Kerr as schoolteacher Anna Leonowens who instructs more than just her students when she takes a job teaching the children of King Mongkut (Yul Brynner). Winning five Academy Awards (including a Best Actor Oscar for Brynner), the film holds up.

As has been stated in other corners of the Internet, the DVD version of the film is much crisper and cleaner than the Blu-ray release (where lighting and color are both inconsistent). Fans who don’t own the 50th Anniversary DVD should certainly think about adding this to their collection for the music, Brynner’s performance, and an impressive amount of extras.

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Hero at Large

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  • Title: Hero at Large
  • IMDb: link

Hero at Large DVD reviewThis Throwback Thursday we take a look back at a mostly forgotten 1980 film Hero at Large starring John Ritter as a struggling actor who becomes the talk of the town when he stops a crime while dressed in the costume of the super-hero Captain Avenger on his way home from the movie’s premiere. Decades before the boom of super-hero movies, director Martin Davidson‘s (Eddie & The Cruisers) movie plays with the concept of what it means to be a hero as our protagonist struggles with the ramifications and consequences of trying to cash-in on his new celebrity.

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Hidden Gem – State and Main

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  • Title: State and Main
  • IMDb: link

State and Main DVD review

It’s about purity. We’ll double-down on Throwback Thursday this week to take a quick look at David Mamet‘s underrated 2000 comedy State and Main in which a movie set is forced to relocate to the sleepy town of Waterford, Vermont when their star’s (Alec Baldwin) love of underage girls gets them thrown out of New Hampshire. Immensely entertaining and highly quotable, this one never fails to make me laugh.

Go you Huskies. Featuring an amazing cast, Mamet gives us Philip Seymour Hoffman as the playwright turned screenwriter, William H. Macy as the film’s director, Baldwin and Sarah Jessica Parker as the film’s stars, and Rebecca Pidgeon, Clark Gregg, and Julia Stiles as townies. All turn out to be perfect fits for Mamet’s quick dialogue that takes equal swipes at Hollywood and small town life but still finds ways to celebrate each.

Everybody needs a hobby. The conflict in the film comes from the dysfunction of the set, the uproar the movie folks have on the town (in both positive and negative ways), and their star’s latest dalliance which puts the entire project in jeopardy.

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