New DVD Spin: The Bucket List, Catherine Deneuve, High Noon, The Other Boleyn Girl, and More

Need some heat on a chilly June day? Rub Jack Nicholson and Morgan Freeman together.

'Catherine Deneuve Collection' DVD box set - Lionsgate

Mark Bourne, Jun 09, 2008

As I sit here at my desk, near my left hand is some hot coffee (in an Incredibles mug) and a toy robot (Robbie from Forbidden Planet); near my right is a stack of DVDs, my iPod (the main theme from The Great Escape is playing now), and a Fargo snowglobe (the woodchipper scene). What do I hear outside my window? The birds of spring? Lawnmowers motorboating under the sun on a blue-sky day? My neighbor Andy tossing the softball with his future All-American son Tommy? Nope. What I hear, folks, is rain. Lots and lots of Ridley-Scott-in-L.A. rain.

Okay, yeah, sure, I'm in Seattle and it rains here, all the brochures say so. But the calendar on the wall (June is Hitchcock's Vertigo) tells me that summer is just around the corner. Not my corner, apparently, because here it's (Dr. Evil voice:) frikkin' cold outside. So here I sit at my desk like Sam Spade in the middle of a June afternoon and I need the hot coffee to augment the hoodie I'm wearing (Pulp Fiction logo).

What this means is that as soon as we check out a few of this week's additions to our DVD shelves, I'm heading downstairs to the Movie Room (a.k.a. the Temple of Dude), lighting up a fire in the fireplace that's near the Casablanca-themed bar in front of the original Raiders of the Lost Ark poster, and picking one that'll help me feel warm. There are good possibilities here (he says after zipping up the hoodie another inch and deciding to make another pot of coffee).

First off, that new Catherine Deneuve set looks mighty toasty. This week Lionsgate launches its new Celebrity Series line with two matching, multidisc DVD sets, each devoted to one of moviedom's most famous international ways of pleasantly filling a screen. Both sets are affordably priced (roughly $6 per film). In the pillowy black vinyl packaging we get the Catherine Deneuve 5-Film Collection. One of the most memorable and beautiful women in French cinema -- hell, in anyone's cinema -- Deneuve's exquisite signature films aren't here, so you won't find the on-DVD-already titles such as Belle de Jour or The Umbrellas of Cherbourg. But fans, completists, and the curious will find Manon 70 (1968), Le Choc (1982), Le Sauvage (1975), Hôtel des Amériques (1981), and Fort Saganne (1984).

Lionsgate's 'Sophia Loren 4-Film Collection' At the same time, in the hot red vinyl we get the Sophia Loren 4-Film Collection, with the iconically stunning Ms. Loren's heretofore hard-to-find Carosello Napoletano (1954), Attila (1954), Madame Sans-Gêne (1962), and I, Girasoli (1970), plus an 18-minute featurette.

I'll have more to say about both of these sets later this week.

For more recent Hollywood heat, we have The Bucket List. Jack Nicholson and Morgan Freeman star in this warm, serious-minded comedy that our own C. Robert Cargill says is "an entertaining film with moments that will delight you, and it has one of my favorite final lines in a recent movie."

Meanwhile, Sony turns up the burn with Natalie Portman and Scarlett Johansson in The Other Boleyn Girl on both DVD and Blu-ray. In the theaters the movie left critics and many audiences rather chilly, but hey, we're talking 16th-century England here. Throw another witch on the fire, would you, love?

We'll be giving some spotlight attention to the new DVDs that hold last year's weird thriller Funny Games, the indie horror-comedy Otis (with Daniel Stern and Illeana Douglas), and the not-so-hot Wieners (one of two new titles with Jenny "Whatever happened to" McCarthy).

For a classic American movie that places its tick-tick-tick suspense under a hot Western sun, it's hard to beat High Noon. This much-imitated favorite stars Gary Cooper, Lloyd Bridges, Grace Kelly, Henry Morgan, and other names whose stars on the Walk of Fame still polish up damn fine. And now Lionsgate's High Noon: 2-Disc Ultimate Collector's Edition gives this Old Hollywood flag-bearer a great-looking new release with a second disc packed with extras, some new for this edition, such as a new 50-minute documentary "Inside High Noon," narrated by Frank Langella.

From the vaults of Hammer Films comes Sony's Icons of Adventure set, which delivers The Stranglers of Bombay, The Terror of the Tongs, The Pirates of Blood River, and The Devil-Ship Pirates. Glenn Erickson previewed the set for Film.com a little while back.

Highlights from TV on DVD this week are:

John Adams - Paul Giamatti plays the founding father in this HBO miniseries based on David McCullough’s biography.

Da Vinci's Inquest: Season 3 - Acorn Media hands us another welcome installment from the long-running, high-rated Canadian drama series in the mode of Law & Order and CSI.

Other titles out this week include:

Witless Protection (the other Jenny McCarthy title this week, for anyone who might have asked. Anyone? Hello?)

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