Armchair Commentary

DVDs from the Vault: Universal Horror and Hitchcock on Blu-ray! Clint Eastwood! '70s Cult Classics! And (of Course) More!

Universal comes out swinging this month with a fistful of Blu-ray presentations for some of their most iconic vault titles. Chief among the line-up is Alfred Hitchcock: The Essentials, which boils down the 15-disc Masterpiece Collection (2012) to a (more affordable) quintet - Rear Window (1954), Vertigo (1958), North By Northwest (1959), Psycho (1960) and The Birds (1963) - all of which, as the title implies, should be a part of any DVD/Blu-ray collection. Each has been previously released as stand-alone Blu-ray titles as well as in the Masterpiece set (the Essentials set was also previously released on DVD in 2011), so the Essentials set is primarily an upgrade for those making the switch to Blu-ray or for those whose library of classic films lacks these five very significant entries.

DVDs from the Vault: Cary Grant, John Wayne, Barbara Stanwyck, Henry Fonda, Paul Newman - and Marcel Marceau!

Olive Films further cements its status as one of the premier home entertainment labels specializing in classic Hollywood product with its most recent batch of Blu-ray and DVD releases from the Paramount and Universal vaults. Among the memorable titles available this week is The Dark Command (1940), Raoul Walsh's Oscar-nominated Civil War drama with John Wayne and Roy Rogers (in their only screen appearance together) as the former suitor and brother, respectively, of Claire Trevor, who discover that her new, mild-mannered schoolteacher husband (Walter Pidgeon) is actually a Confederate outlaw (based on the real-life raider William Quantrill). There's also Robert Siodmak's The File on Thelma Jordan (1949), a fine late-inning noir with Barbara Stanwyck in one of her best screen roles as a married woman who embroils district attorney Wendell Corey in a series of robberies that culminate in murder. Speaking of stars in their second act, Olive has The Grass is Greener (1960) and Father Goose (1964), a pair of confectionary romantic comedies starring a fiftyish but still charming Cary Grant. The former is Stanley Donen's frothy adaptation of the Hugh and Margaret Williams play with Grant as a British royal who discovers that his wife is being wooed by a smooth-talking American millionaire (Robert Mitchum), while the latter, an Oscar winner for Best Story and Screenplay, casts the star against type as an ill-mannered beach bum who falls in with a French schoolteacher and her young charges while watching for Japanese planes in the Pacific during World War II. While neither are classics, they benefit greatly from Grant's undiminished screen image and make for fine, family-friendly Sunday-afternoon fare.

Customers Have Spoken: Amazon Greenlights Five Original Series

Four senators with the same address, four friends with the same Silicon Valley dream. A kid scientist  with robot helpers, an alien artist taking colorful journeys, and a whimsical fox searching for adventure. Comedy pilots Alpha House and Betas, along with kids’ pilots Annebots, Creative Galaxy and Tumbleaf, have been given the greenlight to begin production on a full series of episodes that will air exclusively on Prime Instant Video later this year and in early 2014.

Amazon and LOVEFiLM customers gave feedback that Amazon Studios used to decide which comedy and kids pilots should be made into Amazon’s first original series. 

“We are thrilled at the enthusiastic customer response to our first original pilots,” said Roy Price, Director of Amazon Studios. “We built Amazon Studios so that customers could help decide which stories would make the very best movies and TV shows. It’s exciting to see the process in motion, doing exactly what we set out to do. The success of this first set of pilots has given us the push to try this approach with even more shows—this is just the beginning.”

“We're thrilled to have emerged safely from this harrowing exercise in online democracy,” said Garry Trudeau, Alpha House creator. “All of us at Alpha House thank both Amazon and its wise and wonderful customer base for such a happy outcome. As the future of episodic TV packs up and moves to Seattle, we hope the audience will continue to have as much fun watching the show as we have making it.”

About the shows:

Comedies

Alpha House, which stars John Goodman and was written by Academy Award nominee and Pulitzer-Prize winner Garry Trudeau and produced by Elliot Webb and Jonathan Alter, is a comedy about four misfit senators turned unlikely roommates (Clark Johnson, Matt Malloy and Mark Consuelos)  who rent a house together in Washington DC.

Set in the land of Silicon Valley start-ups, Betas, written by Evan Endicott and Josh Stoddard, follows four friends as they attempt to strike it rich with a new mobile social networking app. Ed Begley Jr., Jon Daly, Joe Dinicol, Margo Harshman, Charlie Saxton and Karan Soni star in the show. Michael Lehmann will direct and produce the show along with Emmy Award winners Alan Freedland and Alan Cohen, and Academy Award nominee Michael London.

Kids Series

Annebots revolves around Anne, a young scientist, who creates three robot helpers to assist her scientific experiments in the back of her dad’s junkyard. This science-based series from creator J.J. Johnson  aims to introduce kids to science and technology in a fun, new way.

Creative Galaxy is an animated interactive art adventure series, designed to inspire kids creative thinking through crafts, story, music and dance. The series was created by Angela Santomero, creator of Blue’s Clues and the Emmy-nominated literacy series, Super Why!.

Tumbleaf was created by Drew Hodges and Kelli Bixler of Bix Pix Entertainment, the award-winning stop motion studio. The series, aimed at preschoolers, is set in a whimsical land where a small blue fox named Fig plays each day and discovers adventure, friendship and love around every bend. Children will be enriched by narratives that promote play through exploration and scientific thinking.

Comprehensive cast and crew information, including bios and filmographies, is available on Amazon’s IMDb (http://www.imdb.com), the world’s most popular and authoritative source for movie, TV and celebrity content.

 

DVDs from the Vault: Westerns, Gangsters, Paramount Pictures, Cult Madness, Euro Detectives and More!

Westerns of every type, from Hollywood product to B-pictures and their Italian cousins, ride at the head of the DVD herd this week. Chief among the releases is Criterion's Blu-ray of 3:10 to Yuma (1957), Delmer Daves' well-crafted, psychologically complex drama about a mild-mannered rancher (Van Heflin) charged with getting captured outlaw Glenn Ford onto the titular prison-bound train. Based on the short story by Elmore Leonard, the picture explodes popular Hollywood Western myths by making Heflin a weaker, less authoritative figure than the standard-issue cowboy hero, and imbuing Ford (who plays well against type as a charismatic heel) with essentially likable qualities and even ambitions for a crime-free life. The clash between these postmodern Western personalities and Old West perspectives on justice heightens the film's action and suspense (a point missed by James Mangold's needlessly vicious 2007 remake), which preserves the picture's status as a classic with traditional and revisionist fans alike. The Blu-ray includes brief interviews with Leonard, who cut his writing teeth on pulp Westerns before moving on to crime, and Ford's son and biographer Peter. Ford is also featured in Criterion's Blu-ray of Jubal (1956), another forward-thinking Western from Daves, this time with the  actor as a cowhand caught between his friendship with rancher Ernest Borgnine, who rescued him from death, and a growing attraction to Borgnine's sultry wife (Valerie French). It's a fine showcase for both of its leads, as well as Rod Steiger as a scheming ranch hand and Charles Bronson in support.

Amazon Pilots Inside Story: Creators Evan Endicott and Josh Stoddard on "Betas"

Friends with a dream of creating something amazing, something that the public can’t get enough of – this could describe the characters in Betas, a new comedy set in the world of Silicon Valley startups. It also could describe the guys who created the show, Evan Endicott and Josh Stoddard.

They met while working at Alexander Payne’s production company, and started writing together. Their first optioned work is Betas, one of 14 Amazon original pilots now playing for free at Amazon Instant Video and LOVEFiLM. Viewer response will help determine which of these children’s shows and comedies return with full seasons.

Amazon Studios Hollywonk blog contributor Sean Wicks asked Evan and Josh about their show, what they learned from working at Alexander Payne’s production company and how they tapped into the impact that social media has made on our culture as a whole:    

Where did you come up with the idea for Betas?

EVAN:  I worked with a producer named Michael London on the film Sideways and he called me out of the blue and asked if I would be interested in doing TV and this was right after Josh and I had just finished writing a pilot together.  We spoke with him about the idea for a ½ hour comedy about an Internet startup.  We both thought that was a fascinating place to spend some time mentally and we were shocked that nobody had done it yet.  Right away the idea of it being a social media startup was both obvious and important to us, especially to explore that aspect of our culture where so many young people are connected – more so than any time in history – yet how that creates its own isolation and set of problems.    It just seemed of the moment. 

You met while working at Alexander Payne’s production company. Did your background in the development world affect the way you approached writing the show?

EVAN:   Absolutely.  I’ve written a lot of notes and deconstructed a lot of scripts that it was extremely helpful.  We made fewer mistakes as a result of reading so much material and deconstructing it.

JOSH:  For me I have a tendency to be very precious with my writing and being partnered with Evan has been good in that regard as he’s able to get us to take two steps back and shuffle things around in new and interesting way than I am less willing to concede and try initially.

Tell us about the pilot.

JOSH:  It’s about 4 unlikely friends who are trying to launch a social media startup in Silicon Valley.    We watch them try to find new ways to improve and engineer other people’s social lives while they fail in their own lives and engage in relationships.

Our two leads are Trey and Nash, who are friends from Stanford.  Trey is the visionary of the group; he’s the one with the big ideas, the big picture, and the guy who could very well be the next [Mark] Zuckerberg.  Nash is the engineer of the group and not a social being at all.  He does not relate to people or emotional issues very well.  He is perfectly happy to have his headphones on and the world is an alien place to him. 

JOSH:  It is surprising how social media and that lens changes the way as to how we perceive people and the concept of friends and relationships in general. 

EVAN:  And identity, just how these people like to project themselves online because they have all these tools to project an image.  …  It’s a complex and fascinating issue.

JOSH:  That mentality that in a way these are the people that are engineering our social life and they are the least social and that irony was also very appealing. 

Tell me about the genesis of the title, Betas?

JOSH:  They are starting out in “beta” mode and trying to work out the kinks but then we have these young people in the show that are effectively in beta, they are still trying to figure out who they are.  Also it’s a male-driven show and these guys aren’t the alphas – they’re the betas.

This is your first option, and your first production.  Did you make any adjustments to the script once you had actors on set and saw them bringing your characters to life?

EVAN:  Once it was cast we started doing rewrites and started writing things specifically for actors and that’s just a different headspace to be as a writer just to know who is going to embody this and what their strengths are and what they might add to a line.  It’s kind of ruined writing for myself because it’s so much more interesting to write for other people.  I think all my characters sound the same in my head and it was a lot of fun to see other people bring them to life.

JOSH:  We got a fantastic cast from top to bottom.

EVAN:  I hope people like the show.  We’re proud of how it turned out and hope people want to see more of it.

Learn more about Amazon's pilots at the Amazon Studios blog, Hollywonk.

Amazon Pilots Inside Story: David Javerbaum ("The Daily Show") on "Browsers," Bebe Neuwirth, Music and More

When the characters in Browsers feel something, they don’t just say it. You don’t just see it. They sing it. They even dance it. And they do it with such wit – almost like an 11-time Emmy award-winning writer for The Daily Show is putting words in their mouth.

And one is: David Javerbaum. He’s actually got a dozen Emmys, having picked up one for the song “Broadway: It’s Not Just For Gays Anymore,” which so memorably opened the 65^th Tony Awards. And he’s also an author (The Last Testament: A Memoir By God; What to Expect When You’re Expected: A Fetus’ Guide to the First Three Trimesters).

Browsers, one of 14 Amazon original pilots now playing for free at Amazon Instant Video and LOVEFiLM,  is about four interns at Gush, a content-aggregating website (a la The Huffington Post or The Daily Beast) founded and run by the charismatic but mysterious Julianna Mancuso-Bruni (Bebe Neuwirth). “The show pokes fun at modern workplaces, the media, and more specifically Gush — starting with its penchant for deriving most of its content by cutting and pasting material from other websites,” Javerbaum said.

We asked Javerbaum about the setting of Browsers, the terrific cast, and the challenges of mixing comedy and music.

Why this world, why these characters?

I’ve long considered The Huffington Post the quintessential cultural artifact of our time in terms of what it covers, how it covers it, and why it remains popular. It literally provides a window into the state of the world, and so I thought setting a show there — and making the entirety of its universe fair game for our show — would provide an enormous amount of material.

As for the characters, as soon as I began formulating ideas for musical television shows, I knew I wanted the leads to be young people in their 20s, because that’s the age where you have the most energy, passion, uncertainty, and all that other good interesting quirky singable stuff. 

How does having music in the show adds to the experience/story?

The songs serve a different purpose here than they do in shows like Smash and Glee, not only because they are original, but because they are not “actually” happening. Rather, the songs are internal, taking place inside the character’s heads, meaning they are bound only by the laws of imagination and not by reality. 

Tell me about your awesome cast, and what they brought to the show.

Bebe Neuwirth (Julianna): The consummate professional. Hilarious on take one, still hilarious on take five.

Brigitte Davidovici (Kate): A beautiful person inside and out. Instantly winning from the moment you see her. Also an excellent baby-sitter.

Dustin Ingram (Josh): Gets more comedy out of one word than most people get out of a book. (Even the Bible, which is pretty funny.)

Constance Wu (Prudence): Beautiful. Intense scene presence. Funny and smart. Extremely fun to be around.

Marque Richardson (Gabe): Brings an inherent likability to a serious, sometimes humorless character. And man, can he tap dance. (For a later episode…)

Chris Wood (Justin): The interns’ supervisor. Half-man, half-douche, all-awesome.

Writing songs is hard enough – how much does it increase the degree of difficulty to also make them funny?

Actually, writing funny songs — at least songs I think are funny — is not that difficult once you come up with a single solid comedic premise for each one. The songs are for the most part much shorter than songs in either pop music or musical theater — two minutes tops, with the one-time exception of the opening song in the pilot episode — and, like a Monty Python sketch, we’re free to stop them at any time as soon as they no longer feel funny. But the good thing about writing songs in this format is that the burden of comedy is shared by not only the song and the performer, but by the visuals and the directing, and that is where a director of Don Scardino’s skill comes in and makes a song that was good on paper look amazing on screen.

How has the Amazon experience been so far?

I would not want Browsers to be anywhere else on TV — not network, basic cable or premium cable. The amount of freedom and trust I’ve been given, the commitment of money and resources, the directness of the communication with the powers-that-be and the quality of their notes, the possibilities entailed in a show about a website being aired on one — I couldn’t ask for anything more.

Check out the Amazon Studios Hollywonk blog for a song-by-song look at the Browsers soundtrack, available for free at Amazon MP3.

DVDs from the Vault: Forgotten Noir, Jungle Thrills - Plus! Rock, Doris, Popeye, Penrod and Sam (and More!)

Let's begin this week's feast of vintage features on DVD with a newly remastered quintet of lessr-known noir, all culled from the Warner acquisitions library and released via their manufacture on demand imprint, Warner Archives. Monogram's The Fall Guy (1947) benefits greatly from its source material - the short story "Cocaine," by Cornell Woolrich,, whose doom-laden work also served as the inspiration for The Leopard Man (1943), Phantom Lady (1944), Rear Window (1954), The Bride Wore Black (1968) and countless other films. The Fall Guy draws from one of Woolrich's favorite tropes - the crime commited in the wake of an alcohol- or drug-fueled blackout (see also Black Angel and The Guilty, both 1947) - with actor/director Leo Penn (father of Sean, Chris and Michael Penn, and here billed as Clifford Penn) discovering that he may have murdered a woman while in the grip of a bender. The left-field upbeat ending and budget-driven is balanced by the presence of Robert Armstrong (King Kong, 1933) as Penn's cop brother-in-law and Elisha Cook, Jr., in full ferret mode as a highly suspicious stranger. 

Kids' Pilots at Amazon: "We Want to Create Characters that Are Worthy to Have a Playdate With"

 

See how the kids' shows produced by Amazon (available at www.amazonoriginals.com) have been created with a commitment to educating children as well as entertaining them. And be sure to share your thoughts — viewer response will help determine which pilots return with additional episodes.

 

The Inside Story on Zombieland's TV Roots, What the Future Might Hold, and Post-Apocalyptic Upsides

What fans of Zombieland may not realize is that the 2009 hit movie, written by Rhett Reese and Paul Wernick, was originally imagined as a TV series.

“We wrote it in 2005 as a spec pilot and sold it to CBS and – this was pre-Walking Dead – and the idea was that zombies had been so successful on the big screen but they have never really been tapped on the small screen,” Paul said.  “The success of Zombieland in some ways paved the way for The Walking Dead to be on-air, and The Walking Dead is obviously a huge success. We’re so happy to be back on TV.”

Zombieland: The Series, is one of 14 Amazon original pilots now playing for free at Amazon Instant Video and LOVEFiLM. Viewer response will help determine which of these shows return with full seasons.

We asked with Paul and Rhett about zombies, their cast, and what the future might hold for their characters.

There are a lot of zombie stories out there, but you  but you guys have taken it in a direction that I think is more humorous than one might expect, post-apocalypse. 

Rhett:  Well I think what we wanted to do is to treat the post-apocalypse like an escapist fantasy.  There are a lot of post-apocalyptic stories like The Road and similar movies that treat the post apocalypse as a grim experience as it likely would be in real life, but we thought we wanted to turn it on its head a little bit and imagine the post-apocalyptic landscape as a fun one, and one where you could be free and do the kind of things that you wanted to do.  Maybe you were the last guy on Earth and maybe there was a cute girl who is also alive, and what would that mean?  So we wanted to look at the post-apocalyptic world as a playground full of toys and full of zombies to bash over the head and full of fun experiences and that was a jumping off point for us.

Paul:  It’s kind of like Los Angeles during the holiday season when everyone goes out of town, and traffic is a lot less and the air is cleaner and people are happier and we thought my God, that feels a little bit of what it would be like in the post-apocalypse, except you’re being chased by zombies.  So the wish fulfillment of that world is something that we really wanted to tap into that really sets us apart from all the other zombie projects, the idea that again you can drive Lamborghinis.  You can just go to the Lamborghini dealership and grab a yellow Lamborghini if you wanted to.  And you could get the hot girl because, you know, there aren’t a lot of choices out there.

What do you say to those who are nervous about seeing Zombieland as a series?

Paul:  Well I would say that they are in the best hands that they could be in.  The reason this was and is an original idea, it wasn’t based on a graphic novel it came out of our heads and it is now in our hands where it belongs and we have the utmost respect for the world and the franchise and the fans and we’ve captured the tone and feel of the movie.  We have cast wonderful actors who are playing characters – not replacements for other actors. 

Rhett: It bears mentioning that when we wrote Zombieland, we wrote the character of Tallahassee based upon an actor we knew, a friend of ours and an actor we had worked with named Kirk Ward, and he really inspired the character.  We wrote it for him intending for him to play it but when it became a movie, we needed a star and we went to Woody Harrelson, we found a phenomenal guy who left an indelible mark on that character and obviously brought it to life in a way that it will never be forgotten that will always set the bar of excellence.  That said, when it came time to turn it into a TV series again we desperately still wanted to work with Kirk Ward and to have him be our guy and it was a long circuitous casting process but we got our wish so people will be seeing in him our original vision for that character and I think that the other cast members are equally wonderful and are wonderful discoveries.  It’s true in theater that characters get passed on from one great actor to another and it’s almost like a legacy and we hope that it will be the case in this case.  There are also a lot of good examples of movies becoming Television shows, something like The Odd Couple – you know Jack Lemmon, Tony Randall, two wonderful actors playing the same part.  There’s Billy Bob Thornton and Kyle Chandler on Friday Night Lights.  I think there is certainly precedent for what we are doing and we hope to catch lightning in a bottle again. 

Rhett:  We really believe that we are holding the standard of the movie and it will be up to America and the world to decide. It’s not for us to decide, but we have confidence in it. 

Great zombie stories – like yours – have a unique way of helping people understand humanity. Is that kind of thing in your mind at all?

Rhett:  A little bit.  To some extent we don’t want to take ourselves too seriously.  I do think that zombies are a stand-in for all of our collective fears; you know each of us fears different things in life.  Zombies are a nice way within the world of fiction to embody those fears into something then bash it over the head with a baseball bat.  I think there’s something to that; it’s a kind of cathartic kind of movie or TV show.

If the series goes forward, how do you envision it unfolding over time?

Paul:  Inherent in the movie and in the pilot is this idea that they are on the road, it’s a traveling circus and we would like to embrace that.  As we are heading out of California and heading east, these adventures will take place in Vegas and Graceland and Mount Rushmore.  We want it to take advantage of the landscape and America and all the fun that awaits them on the road.  That would be what I say most.  They’re all looking for their own sense of home and peace and I think that Tallahassee is looking for love and hopefully will find it and Columbus will hopefully find it in Wichita.

Rhett:  And a show like Battlestar Galactica a real endgame, that being let’s get back to Earth, let’s get back home.  As they had that, and I think we also have the idea let’s ultimately try to find a place of safety, a home and a community for the future.  That won’t be reached right away because then there wouldn’t be a show, but I think in the long run we’ll try to take our guys to that mythical place of safety and renewal.

- Stephanie Reid-Simons

 

"Those Who Can't" Creators and Stars on TV, Comedy, and Making a Pilot for Amazon

Adam Cayton-Holland, Andrew Orvedahl, and Ben Roy, the co-writers and stars behind Amazon’s new original pilot, Those Who Can’t, recently sat down with one another in Adam’s living room in Denver, Colorado to talk about their show, which is now available for free on Amazon Instant Video. It went a little something like this:

Adam: So I’ll start with the first question: Who are you guys and what are you doing in my house?

Andrew: Adam, it’s us. Your early-onset dementia is getting the better of you again.

Ben: Alright, are you guys excited about the premiere of Those Who Can’t?

ADAM SCREAMS UNINTELLIGIBLY.

Andrew: I’m very excited. … I don’t know what the average daily visitor count to Amazon’s website is but I’d imagine it’s quite a few. To think of that many people being able to watch our show for free is kind of intimidating.

Andrew: What other sitcoms inspired you guys in writing this?

Adam: I was watching It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia a fair amount during this. I was watching The League a little bit too. I was also watching The Larry Sanders Show a lot. That’s a great show.

Ben: I watch a lot of older sitcoms. Now that my son is old enough I’ve been re-watching some of my old favorites with him — The Wonder Years, Freaks and Geeks, a few others…

Ben: We definitely were influenced by Strangers With Candy. We all mentioned that one when we started brainstorming the show.

Andrew: Probably one of my favorite shows ever. We all like high school shows and high school settings so it was really fun to make one of our own.

Adam: Andrew, what was your favorite part of filming?

Andrew: Anything other than getting hit in the face with a kickball over and over again. Not that for sure.

Ben: That was my favorite part.

Andrew: The most fun part was watching other people’s scenes, because then you could just sit back and it was kind of fun to watch. I don’t know, pretty much every scene I was in with Rory was pretty fun and really hard not to laugh. I broke like forty times.

Adam: Rory Scovel is hilarious in this episode. He plays the principal of Buchanan High School, where the show is set and where we’re all teachers.