New DVDs: Expanded 'Death Proof,' 'Troy'

Pick of the week: Saturday Night Fever
Dog of the week: We Are Marshall

A lot of action out there this week. My DVD players are spinning Quentin Tarantino's racy "Death Proof: Extended and Unrated," the well-heeled "Troy: Director's Cut" and the deliciously gory history lesson "The Washingtonians."

A trio of terrific high-profile movies from a few decades back also make comebacks: "Saturday Night Fever," "Wall Street" and "Deliverance." All three get first-class studio treatments and "Deliverance" comes in HD DVD and Blu-ray.

In TV-on-DVD, my highly rated shows of the week are "Brothers and Sisters" and "Family Guy, Vol. 5."

New and notable:
Alexander: Revisited: The Final Cut (Warner)
Beyond the Gates (Fox)
Blade: House of Chthon (New Line)
BloodRayne 2: Deliverance (Vivendi Visual
The Boss of It All (Genius Products)
Brothers and Sisters: Season 1 (Buena Vista)
Cinema 16: European Short Films (Cinema 16)
Commando Director's Cut (Fox)
Crazylove (MTI Home Video)
Cruising (Warner)
Death Proof: Unrated and Extended (Weinstein Co./Genius Products)
Deliverance: 35th Anniversary Deluxe Edition (Warner)
Dragon Heat (Dragon Dynasty)
Family Guy, Vol. 5 (Fox)
Flashdance Special Collector's Edition (Paramount)
Masters of Horror: Brad Anderson's "Sounds Like" and Peter Medak's "The Washingtonians" (Starz Home Entertainment)
The Pink Floyd and Syd Barrett Story (MVD Visual)
Robinson Crusoe on Mars (The Criterion Collection)
The Roger Corman Collection (MGM)
Saturday Night Fever Special Collector's Edition (Paramount)
The Threepenny Opera (Criterion)
Troy Director's Cut (Warner)
Two Weeks (MGM)
The Up Series Box Set (First Run Features)
Upright Citizens Brigade (Paramount)
The Valet (La Doublure) (Sony)
Wall Street 20th Anniversary Edition (Fox)
Zoo (ThinkFilm)

Complete list of today's releases on my pal Harley's site, onvideo.org

Comments

[kelly]

Hi, thanks for mentioning the Up series!

[Glenn Abel]

Kelly: My pleasure. Wish I'd invested viewing time in those movies when they started. What an amazing project.

Love those time-travel films. I saw one from the same realm not too long ago, about hippies who'd worked as river guides. The docu revisited them in late middle age. Quite touching.

"The Same River Twice"

The main character was facing major mortality issues. He summed up life something like: First it's your turn to be a kid, then to be a reckless teen, a free-spirit college student, a young worker bee, a first-time parent, a middle-aged person, then a senior, and then to die.

You get your turn and go on to the next phase. That's how it all works. You can never step in the same river twice.

The secret to life is to understand, accept and appreciate the cycle, he said. Nothing more complicated than that.

Smart man.