About an hour ago, as I sat here wondering how to start this new blog about DVDs — why we like ‘em and the movies or TV shows that are on ‘em, how they hit us on a personal level — I checked out what’s happening with one of my favorite film and DVD bloggers, Kim Morgan of Sunset Gun fame.

Kim has rocked me on my feet since we worked together at DVD Journal back in the day. Since then she has moved to L.A., where her street-smart style, sassy eloquence, and movie savvy have taken her to appearances on Ebert & Roeper — where she remains the only guest critic to note that “severed heads are beautiful” — and caused Entertainment Weekly to praise her “vivid, hard-headed, muscular manifesto-essays” as the first of “5 Reasons to Live.”

Anyway, while wondering how the hell I was going to kick off this new more-or-less regular dialogue between you and me (and DVD makes three), it was Kim who reminded me that this past Saturday, April 5, would have been Bette Davis‘ 100th birthday. For Kim (a.k.a. that “blogger/critic/moody chanteuse of prose” according to Vanity Fair‘s James Wolcott), “if there is or was any female figure to whom others should turn to in times of crisis, loneliness and despair, it is Miss Bette. Why? Because Bette Davis is every woman (and some men) wrapped into one: ugly and beautiful, sweet and biting, honest and deceitful, classy and vulgar.”

Go read Kim’s tribute to the great Bette. “Like other gutsy women, she made men’s heads spin,” says Kim, who’s something of a gutsy head-spinner herself:

“Is she a bitch? Or an assertive fox? This is the continuous (and exciting) inward query (and you know hubby Gary Merrill got all hot and bothered by that alluring combo). Like a lot of strong women, she had a Napoleon complex, but we love that in men (Pacino, De Niro). We get a thrill watching Joe Pesci shove a pen in someone’s eye. But Bette? That would scare the shit out of us. Just imagine what Bette could do to an attacker — the carnage a maniacal Bette would leave defending herself — all that flying fur (real of course), red scratching fingernails and a lit cigarette to the face. I honestly can’t see Bette Davis successfully getting mugged.”

Meanwhile, elsewhere around the Web, I see other testimonials and glass-raising toasts. Greencine Daily has compiled a plentiful blog roll of them, such as actress Joan Collins’ remembrances for the London Times in a piece titled “Bette Davis taught me to be a bitch.” There’s also a link to Dennis Lim’s LA Times special on Warners’ six-film DVD set, The Bette Davis Collection: Volume 3, and Fox’s five-film DVD box, The Bette Davis Centenary Celebration Collection.

“With nothing but raw talent and raw determination, she became the most famous woman in the world, taking on the Hollywood studio system, the FBI and the Catholic Church,” writes Johann Hari. “She had a voice like sour cream, and eyes like a raven. Humphrey Bogart said about her, ‘Unless you’re very big she can knock you down.’ And she was one of the great events of her time.”

Glenn Erickson, in his DVD Savant feature, reviews last week’s release of The Bette Davis Collection, Vol. 3. He says that this excellent Warner Brothers set “concentrates on the war years at WB, where it seemed that the town’s top acting diva came up with one winner after another. By 1940 Davis really was a genre unto herself, starring in quality vehicles that repeatedly showed her a master of the dramatic arts. When the material was good she made it better and when it wasn’t she made up the difference in personal commitment.”

Gary Tooze at DVD Beaver gives us ample screen shots and info on The Bette Davis Centenary Celebration Collection, which gathers All About Eve (1950), Phone Call from a Stranger (1952), The Virgin Queen (1955), The Nanny (1965), and Hush…Hush, Sweet Charlotte (1964).

So go rent some Bette and raise a glass. (Just remember that she’d probably drink you under the table, and then use the table for a card game.) In the meantime, a number of YouTube Age fans have posted their video appreciations, such as this one that’s set to the only song (come on, seriously now) you’d pick for it: