My DVD Sale Madness

Oooh...it's the summer DVD sales, where HMV and Virgin realise they'll have to shovel DVDs out the door in droves to make enough space for all the stuff they're going to be selling (at full price) come Christmas.

Or, as we call it in the Saxon house-hold: "I'm going Christmas shopping six months early! Do we need any milk?"

So, here's my short list of reviews:

Just Friends
Ok, this one was actually from the Play.com sale, but I laughed myself silly watching this at the cinema, and the DVD didn't disappoint. The extras include the usual deleted/extended scenes (including an Allanis Morrisette cameo) and the original ending (very different fro the cinematic one) It's laugh out loud funny, cringe-worthy and sentimental all at the same time.
Highlights include: Taser slapstick, the toothpaste scene, the ambulance sledge and the Volvo vs Christmas ornaments scene. Not one for anyone who's squeamish about their teeth, or has a dentist phobia. Personally, I only suffer from Acro-Chrometophobia. The fear of dropping something expensive from a great height.

OQ: And I swear. By the moon and stars and the sky.....

Paycheck £6.99
I remember this getting a panning when it came out, but I enjoyed it. Sure it's tripe, but it's entertaining tripe: still squidgy enough to use in a joke that you've just sneezed your brains out. The only thing that niggled me, in the whole movie, was in the final showdown. It was when Ben Afflick picked up the machine gun. I was quite happy for an engineer to use a pistol to shoot back, but when he picked that up, it crossed a line into "action-man movie". It would be like seeing Boba Fett running about on the deck of the Titanic: there's something not quite right there.
However, the rest of the film is excellent. Tight little thriller/action flick
DVD also features an alternate ending (not that different from the original one) and numerous deleted scenes, including one that was meant to show that the protagonist was building the machine to prevent accidents (he lost his wife and child). But I think the "screw this, I'm doing it for the money!" was a better motive so I can see why the scene was dropped.

OQ: That would be the Red Sox!

Total Recall £5.99
Paul Verhoeven is a hit or miss man, isn't he? This is a hit in my eyes. Yes, it's cheesier than the 407th Annual Cheese Festival in France, but it seems to acknowledge this. Space physics dodgier than the already dodgy looking prosthetics/makeup and lines delivered by people who look like they are having a huge bet on who can win cheesiest actor of the year award, but dag-nabbit it's fun to watch. And you know it's a classic if South Park parody it.

OQ: Start the reactor....

Batman £4.99
Batman! The original Tim Burton film! On it's own! For just a fiver! Get in! Sadly, no sign of Batman Returns yet. I was always annoyed that HMV had all four Batman films for about £14.99 each, but had a box set of all four for £26, because there ain't no way on this green earth that I'm paying to own Batman Forever or Batman and Robin.
For me, those later films fall into that whole Peter Cushing as Doctor Who area. I ignore them and pretend as hard as I can that they don't exist. A bit like the bogeyman¹.

OQ: Oh my god...

Apollo 13 £4.99
I reviewed this a short time ago, and I still like this movie. An excellent piece of work from god like director Ron Howard. OQ: The time when the astronauts should have emerged from blackout has come...and gone. And the Babylon 5 season 1 box set for £19.99. So just seasons 2 & 5 and my first TV series collection is complete. Well, apart from Firefly, but that wasn't difficult really.

¹It's too bad Humphrey Bogart is dead. It would have been such a great role to play tongue in cheek when he's hard up for some cash. Hot Shots, of course, already stole the best Bogart joke: "I've got a bogey on my tail!"