Classic Sellers film shines on Blu-ray

0 Comments | Deseret News (Salt Lake City), Jun 18, 2009 | by Chris Hicks Deseret News

A classic gets the Blu-ray treatment and a forgotten '50s melodrama makes its DVD debut, leading off these new-to-home-video movies.

"Dr. Strangelove, Or: How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb" (Columbia/Blu-ray, 1964, b/w, $38.96). One of the greatest movies ever made gets a shiny, new Blu-ray brush-up, and it looks fabulous, proving that hi-def can also add sheen to black-and-white cinematography.

If you've never seen this one, you're in for a treat. Oscar- nominated Peter Sellers heads the fabulous cast with three roles in a very dark satirical thriller that has lost none of its paranoia bite in 45 years.

The plot has a crazy general (Sterling Hayden) sending a bomber squadron (with Slim Pickens and James Earl Jones onboard) to attack the Soviet Union, while another equally cockeyed general (George C. Scott) encourages the president to seize the moment and launch an all-out attack. Sellers plays a British captain trying to stop the madness, the ineffectual U.S. president and the German former-Nazi scientist of the title.

Hilarious and chilling.

Extras: widescreen, featurettes (all from the 40th anniversary special edition), new picture-in-picture interviews (with five experts on the Cold War) about what the film got right, new pop-up trivia track; new 32-page booklet (an expansion of the previous edition's booklet)

"The Strange One" (Columbia, 1957, b/w, $19.94). Ben Gazarra, re- creating his Broadway role, made his film debut in this strange movie as a manipulative cadet in a Southern military academy who gets his comeuppance in an unexpected way. George Peppard, also making his film debut, plays a fellow cadet. It's a bit stagy in places with a couple of performances that are too cartoony, but Gazarra is great, and the film makes for an interesting acting exercise.

Extras: widescreen, new interview with Gazzara

"Jesse Stone: Thin Ice" (Sony, 2009, $24.96). Tom Selleck shines in another excellent CBS TV movie as disgraced big-city homicide detective Jesse Stone, now serving as a small-town police chief in Massachusetts. In this episode, he moonlights on a Boston stakeout that goes awry, then has to figure out why. In a parallel plot, Camryn Manheim guests as a mother who believes her long-kidnapped son is alive and in Stone's jurisdiction.

Extras: widescreen

"The Three Stooges Collection, Volume Six: 1949-1951" (Sony, 1949- 51, b/w, two discs, $24.96). This collection could be dubbed "The Shemp Years" (which will continue in the next collection). Shemp Howard takes over for his late brother Curly to join brother Moe Howard, along with Larry Fine, as those slap-happy Stooges. One of the shorts included here has the trio also playing their own wives!

Extras: full frame, 24 shorts

"Elsewhere" (E1/Blu-ray, 2008; R for violence, language, sex, drugs; $24.98). A teenage girl disappears after meeting men online, hoping to be whisked away from her one-horse town. But the town is full of dreaded secrets, which are gradually uncovered by two teen friends who are determined to find her. Weak and predictable.

Extras: widescreen, deleted scenes, audio commentary, featurette, photo gallery

"What Goes Up" (Sony, 2008; R for sex, language, drugs; $24.96). British comic Steve Coogan seems miscast in this downbeat melodrama about a journalist on the verge of disgrace who returns to his hometown in the days leading up to the Challenger disaster. He drops his assignment to follow a group of misfit teens who are depressed over the apparent suicide of their favorite teacher, an old friend of Coogan's. Wildly uneven, though the teen cast (led by Hilary Duff) is game. (The film's title seems to be in very poor taste.)

Extras: widescreen

E-MAIL: hicks@desnews.com