New DVDs: 'Mr. Bean,' Kurosawa, 'Waitress'

Pick of the week: Waitress
Dog of the week: I Know Who Killed Me

Not a lot of product this week as we see the DVD blizzard of '07 subside. Some interesting titles are popping up for the first quarter -- stay tuned for a report.

Call me weird, but I liked the underdog comedy release "Mr. Bean's Holiday." ("Mr. Hulot's Holiday" bores the hell out of me, go figure.) The Bean story has heart, lots of laughs and serves up one of the best restaurant gross-out scenes on film. (You know what they say about the first man to eat an oyster?)

Bean wins a freebie vacation, deplanes in Paris and makes his way to Cannes, on the Riviera. Along the way he teams up with a cool kid and a sweet French actress. The bad guy, a hack film director played by a crazed Willem Defoe, meets his match at the film festival as Bean (Rowan Atkinson) proves an unlikely auteur. Not much in the way of extras on this Universal DVD, probably for the best. Hey, we all have our guilty pleasures.

The Criterion Collection makes it two sweet weeks in a row with the release of "Drunken Angel," Akira Kurosawa's first film with Toshiro Mifune.

The 1948 movie, about a doctor and a gangster, is more of a historical marker than a classic, but it's fascinating to see the roots of such an epic collaboration. Extras include another episode of the Toho series "Akira Kurosawa: It Is Wonderful to Create" and a piece on Kurosawa vs. the occupation's censors. Kurosawa expert Donald Richie does the commentary.

Circling the DVD blog's players are Sony's anime adventure "Paprika" and Fox's indie dramadie "Waitress." (Readers of this blog probably know the backstory on Adrienne Shelly's movie about pie baking. If you don't, see the movie before learning about that talented writer-director-actress.)

New and notable:
Drunken Angel (The Criterion Collection)
First Snow (Sony)
Futurama: Bender's Big Score (Fox)
Happy Days: The Third Season (Paramount)
Hot Rod (Paramount, also HD DVD)
I Know Who Killed Me (Sony, also Blu-ray)
Laverne & Shirley: The Third Season (Paramount)
Mr. Bean's Holiday (Universal, also HD DVD)
Mork & Mindy: The Third Season (Paramount)
The Namesake (Fox)
Paprika (Sony, also BR)
Peter Pan in Return to Never Land (Disney)
Spice World (Sony)
Vitus (Sony)
Waitress (Fox)

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

Comments

[LadySkyeFyre]

I've always enjoyed Rowan Atkinson.