The ABCs Of Death (2012/Magnolia/MagNet Blu-ray)/Dark
Skies (2013/Weinstein/Anchor Bay Blu-ray w/DVD)/Land Of The Pharaohs
(1955/Warner Archive DVD)/Pretty Little
Liars: The Complete Third Season (2012 – 2013/Warner DVDs)/Teen Wolf: Season Two (2012/MGM/Fox
DVDs)/Tomorrow You’re Gone
(2012/RLJ/Image Blu-ray)
Picture:
B-/B- & C/C+/C+/C+/B- Sound: B-/B-
& C+/C+/C+/C+/B- Extras: C/C-/B-/C-/C/D Main Programs: C-/C-/C+/D/C/C-
PLEASE NOTE: Land Of The Pharaohs is only available from Warner Bros. through their
Warner Archive series and can be ordered from the link below.
Now for a
mix of different genre works that have problems working…
We start
with a high concept dud that should have been a no-brainer, but is pretty
awful. The ABCs Of Death (2012) has 26 “filmmakers” come up with shorts
based on a letter of the alphabet to do a story to and keep the theme of
death. Instead, we get a bunch of
surprisingly forgettable, lame, goofy shorts in a sort of omnibus pastiche that
is barely an anthology and is more interested in being gross, sexual, cutting
up bodies, telling bad sick jokes, getting gross (translation: smug and
self-impressed) and it is a sad work. A
few shorts had some potential, but we get zero suspense and if this is meant to
be a cult item, it fails there too.
Five
featurettes have the makers try to explain what they did and why they did it,
so they should be able to try and explain themselves, but it did not matter and
in most cases, I did not buy what they were saying. This is uncut NC-17 material, so beware if
you view it, but I would say skip it altogether.
Scott
Stewart’s Dark Skies (2013, not to
be confused with the TV series) is an attempt by the ultra-cynical producer of Insidious and horrid Paranormal Activity “films” to do a
haunted house movie and try not to be goofs about it, even hiring Kerri Russell
and John Hamilton as the parents of two boys who slowly start to discover
something is wrong in their home.
Unfortunately, they are also dumb enough to stay behind and this lands
up looking more like a Scary Movie
installment than coming across as anything to do with terror.
It is
just a tired idea done in a tired way and even the one twist we get is done in
the lamest way possible. This was just
awful and awfully boring to the point that I hoped the Wayans would show
up. Skip this one too.
Extras
include Alternate & Deleted Scenes that would have made no difference and a
feature length audio commentary track with the Director and everyone he can
drag into the studio.
Showing
that even great filmmakers can get into genre trouble, Howard Hawks’ Land Of The Pharaohs
(1955) was the groundbreaking filmmakers’ only use of CinemaScope and his only
time to take on the swords & sandals epic.
Jack Hawkins plays the Pharaoh who has his people build him the most
impenetrable pyramid yet so he and his treasures can be together in his
afterlife. Hawks was more interested in
how a pyramid would be built when he took this film on, being an architect in
real life.
Oddly,
many building sequences have singing that turn this film unintentionally into a
bizarre musical more times than it is often noted, meaning what little
narrative the script has comes to a further halt often. The pother actors here, including Dewey
Martin, are not bad, but it turns out that a young Joan Collins saves what
little of the film can be saved when she shows up as a possible gift to the
Pharaoh and lands up becoming much more.
She steals every scene she is in and saves this from being a total
dud. However, it was the one genre Hawks
never cracked and he would never try it again, but it is still one of the more
interesting entries in a genre that was often so repetitive, cheap and
campy. That is why it is worth a look and
manages to be the best title on this list, by default or otherwise.
The only
extra here is a terrific one, a feature length audio commentary track by the
great filmmaker and film scholar Peter Bogdanovich, with excellent history and
observations about the film, those involved, the genre, Hollywood
history and from his archive, audio clips from Hawks! This commentary alone is worth the price of
this entire disc.
Somehow
hanging in there, Pretty Little Liars:
The Complete Third Season (2012 – 2013) has painted itself into the odd
corner it seemed it would when I covered the debut season a while back. The lying is deadly, a killer is on the
loose, who is up to what and do we want to stop the murders or see what happens
because the show wants to turn it into a sort of celebrated ugliness?
Of course,
the female cast is attractive, but I would be a big liar if I recommended this
show. Too cynical for its own good, it
is like a one-joke work except that this is no comedy, just a sick, sad
gimmick. I hoped they would possibly
find a better direction, but I was too predictably correct.
Extras
include a Gag Reel, Unaired Scene, Bonus Webisodes, a Making Of featurette and
some Alternate Ending which smacks of a show whose makers could not even decide
what to do with it.
Named
after the Michael J. Fox comedy, Teen
Wolf: Season Two (2012) is really a show in name only because there is no
comedy here and this is a soap opera with some nudity, more than enough blood,
formula drama and nothing we have not seen before. As a matter of fact, the soapy parts are so
overdone that the horror and suspense elements are almost nonexistent and the
Werewolves are more like a bad Twilight rehash meets a bad Halloween party.
You do
not need to start with the debut season of this show to see what a dud it is,
made literally for MTV, it is a joke from the world go and unless you are a
young teen (esp. one who is not a horror fan), than you might like the
show. We get 12 episodes over 3
DVDs. Don’t operate heavy machinery when
viewing.
Extras
include a Gag Reel, six Making Of featurettes, Shirtless montage, audio
commentary tracks on three episodes, Alternate, Deleted and Extended Scenes.
Finally
we have David Jacobson’s Tomorrow You’re
Gone (2012) tries to experiment with the crime drama but setting up a sort
of character study without enough study as Stephen Dorff plays a man just out
of prison, immediately visited by the man (Willem Dafoe) who helped him out,
but wants him to return the favor.
Our
ex-con lead finds things more complicated when he meets a woman (Michelle
Monaghan) who he takes an interest in and vice versa, though we have to wonder
if she is up to no good. All involved
try to create a mood piece out of this and they have good actors and some good
ideas, but the problem here is that none of this adds up to anything and they
had 92 minutes to try. It might become a
curio for some, but I was disappointed because they were at least on track to
maybe making this all work. Oh well.
There are
no extras.
The three
1080p digital High Definition Blu-rays tie as the image champs, but considering
they are all styled down or limited in detail and depth, that only says so
much. ABCs has all 26 shorts at 1.78 X 1, leaving the other Blus at 2.35
X 1. They are the kind of digital
productions that seem a little dated on arrival and none of the images on any
of them really stuck with me, though Gone
was the best-looking of the three and the Skies
DVD (anamorphically enhanced) is the softest-looking disc of all these
releases.
The
anamorphically enhanced 1.78 X 1 image on Teen
and Little are also soft and about
even (slightly darkened and downstyled throughout) throughout all their
respective episodes. I doubt Blu-ray
could make them look much better. That
leaves the anamorphically enhanced 2.55 X 1 WarnerColor image on Land that has the usually flaws and
distortions the CinemaScope system produced, but this is very, very narrowly
the best looking DVD on the list. The
print could use some more work.
All three
Blu-rays offer DTS-HD MA (Master Audio) 5.1 lossless sound mixes that have
inconsistent soundfields, but are also the sonic champs on the list. Gone
has the most realistic sound design of the three. The lossy Dolby Digital 5.1 on the Skies DVD, plus Teen and Little episodes
are next up, but they do not have soundfields that are that good. Thus, the lossy Dolby Digital 2.0 Stereo on Land can actually compete despite
possibly showing its age at times, helped by a fine score by Dimitri Tiomkin,
though I wonder where the four-track magnetic soundmaster might be.
To order Land Of The Pharaohs,
go to this link for it and many more great web-exclusive releases at:
http://www.warnerarchive.com/
-
Nicholas Sheffo
