A Pinoy Blog About Nothing

Holiday loot. Stuff. Thingamajigs. This is me as a consumer.

Yes, I do get that look around books and DVDs.

Finally got the Fellowship of the Ring and The Two Towers Extended Edition Gift Sets. Why? Because those sculptures of the Argonath and Gollum are nice and the conceptual art they made for the movie are quite awesome in their own right.

Irreversible. A tale of revenge told backwards - it starts with the closing credits and proceeds to unravel the story. One of those movies which the way the story is told is the focus as much as the story itself. And hey you know it features Monica Bellucci.

Blazing Saddles is a classic Mel Brooks comedy. How can you go wrong with that?

Neverwhere this BBC produced mini-series was written by Neil Gaiman. It was written before the novel. It’s the first time they’ve come out with the series on DVD and Gaiman provides the commentary. In the past, bootleg copies of the series have been popular fodder at eBay. This time around the fans get the real thing not some nth generation VHS copy. Although the extras maybe sparse, Gaiman’s insights to the production are quite enlightening and entertaining. Pretty solid BBC stuff.

The one time Mr. Sofia Coppola, Spike Jonze’s best videos and documentaries are neatly packaged in the Director’s Series, Vol. 1 - The Work of Director Spike Jonze. I was one of those people who felt disappointed when I heard he and Sofia, Spike’s frequent collaborator in his projects, were going their separate ways. I think these two have the freshest approach to filmmaking currently in ‘the biz.’ You should see the look on Sofia when Spike Jonze was perfoming with the Torrance Dance Group to Fatboy Slim’s Praise You in the MTV Awards. Ah well.

Kevin Smith’s Clerks-The Animated Series would a good example of a TV network wanting to buy into what’s cool without knowing what it was all about. After two episodes, Clerks - The Animated Series was cancelled. I can see why. I mean no cursing, no frank discussion of anything…essentially all the factors which made the movie worked. The DVD remedies all that. The commentaries are hilarious.

Margaret Cho’s I’m the One That I Want is as expected, funny. Cho’s material in this DVD also contains some anecdotes about her failed TV sitcom and the goings-on behind the curtains. Bitter-sweet but most of it is downright laugh-out-loud funny.

The Complete Far Side by Gary Larson is a monster of a collection. It collects more than 4,000 published cartoons by Larson over the span of twenty years. All the cartoons are still funny though and it’s definitely fun revisiting my favorites. Moo!