Hamilton Book - Shout Titles From $3 (DOCTOR & THE DEVILS, etc)

[AndyDursin]

Some fine deals on Kino Lorber and a few Shout titles -- THE MASTER Complete Series is only $7.95! 1492 is $6.95 also, along with SPIRAL STAIRCASE, BLAME IT ON RIO, and plenty more:

https://www.hamiltonbook.com/products/s ... er_search=

Also a great line of bargain movie books, among other subjects (and CDs too):

https://www.hamiltonbook.com/books?cat_ ... 5B16%5D=16

[andy b]

sadly do not ship to Canada! Three titles that are really great. Oh well.

Andy b

[Monterey Jack]

Is there a "free shipping" threshold?

EDIT: Owen Gleiberman's Movie Freak for three bucks is an INSANELY good deal.

[AndyDursin]

There's a flat $4 shipping fee for as many books and discs as you want to cram into a single order.

[Monterey Jack]

Grabbed the following:

DISNEY THE ART OF FROZEN - Hardbound
$6.95

LEONARD PART 6 - Blu-ray
$1.95

PRESUMED INNOCENT / FRANTIC - Blu-ray
$6.95

SCOUTS GUIDE TO THE ZOMBIE APOCALYPSE - Blu-ray
$5.95

JEREMIAH JOHNSON - Blu-ray
$5.95

MOVIES 4 YOU: Timeless Westerns - Blu-ray
$3.95

PHANTOM OF THE OPERA - Blu-ray
$5.95

Product Total:
$37.65
Shipping:
$4.00
Grand Total:
$41.65

Ten movies plus a nice-looking Disney art book for just over $40. Yeah, Leonard Part 6...but I've always been morbidly fascinated to see it, and two bucks is enough to satiate my curiosity.

[AndyDursin]

Some great pick-ups there MJ. The Shout Fox westerns BD set is a total bargain at $4 especially and I've recommended it before.

I buy from these guys all the time. They have some good Code Red/Scorpion exploitation titles cheap at the moment, and I also grabbed the GODZILLA - ART OF DESTRUCTION book for $5. Also have really good customer service and they're located right in CT. so transit times are fast for us.

As for Leonard...I recommend it for $1.95!

I honestly never thought I’d see the day when Bill Cosby’s infamous 1986 bomb LEONARD PART 6 (**, 1986, 85 mins., PG) – which the star warned audiences away from while appearing on talk shows days before the movie opened – would arrive on Blu-Ray, but that day has actually come thanks to the catalog crazies at Mill Creek.

The “Cos” was at the height of his “Cosby Show” popularity when he produced, co-wrote and starred in this outlandish secret agent comedy as Leonard Parker, a former Bond-type who has to don his old outfit and try to stop a nefarious villainess (Gloria Parker) intent on destroying the world with her crazy collection of animals.

“Leonard Part 6” certainly had all the makings of a hit. Cosby brought in a top-notch production crew to support the movie, including cinematographer Jan DeBont, visual effects master Richard Edlund and composer Elmer Bernstein, but forgot one basic element: an actual script. The movie is a mess, offering an off-kilter balance of action and slapstick, as well as tedious “domestic” sequences involving Cosby’s ex-wife and daughter. There’s also the fact that Leonard has become a restaurant entrepreneur since his secret agent retirement, which leads to the movie’s unabashedly ridiculous end credits sequence.

Despite the problems (and there are a ton of them), “Leonard Part 6” isn’t the worst Bad Movie ever made. The off-the-wall mix of elements, combined with solid effects and a terrific soundtrack, makes for a fascinating genre curio, and the icing on the cake is Peabo Bryson and Regina Belle’s gorgeous end credits ballad “Without You.” Several years prior to their award-winning teaming on “A Whole New World” from “Aladdin,” Peabo and Regina offer what is unquestionably one of the best songs ever written for a flop movie, and enjoying the ballad over a marathon end credits sequence (where Leonard and his ex-wife engage in a food fight) is unquestionably the highlight of the movie.

Mill Creek’s Blu-Rays typically shun lossless audio and AVC encoded video, but not here. The 1080p (1.85) transfer is indeed AVC encoded and the audio is lossless LPCM, offering a pretty nice stage for the original Dolby Stereo sound design. The bit-rate is high though compression issues occasionally manifest themselves – otherwise, this is one of the better Mill Creek Blu-Ray releases to date. In fact, it’ll be hard for Golden Turkey fans not to soak up the fun of this fiscal turkey from Christmas of ‘86, now nicely preserved in high-def.

[AndyDursin]

Worth noting on the FRANTIC/PRESUMED INNOCENT disc, if the UPC sticker on the exterior wrap ends with 203956, you're good (it'd be the sticker on the wrap, not the UPC code on the packaging itself)

The 1st pressing of this had the wrong version of FRANTIC on there, where some of the dialogue was dubbed over in French (which made no sense since Ford isn't supposed to know how to speak it)

[Monterey Jack]

I'll know when I pick up my package at the post office tomorrow. Got my Frozen book in a separate shipment today, though.

[AndyDursin]

It should be newer stock I'd imagine, but I'd check it out just in case.

[Monterey Jack]

Worth noting on the FRANTIC/PRESUMED INNOCENT disc, if the UPC sticker on the exterior wrap ends with 203956, you're good (it'd be the sticker on the wrap, not the UPC code on the packaging itself)

The sticker on mine ends with 121823. Did I get screwed? Is there a replacement program?


Also got the nifty glow-in-the-dark slipcover on Phantom Of The Opera, which was only slightly dinged by the packaging.

[AndyDursin]

Hmm, interesting. I actually don't know. Probably a good sign, maybe a newer release or a Canadian copy?

The old release with the bad disc was 883929106370

The newer disc with the corrected pressing was 883929203956 (and they slapped a sticker on the exterior plastic wrap)

You may just have to check it out and see...here's the problem from an Amazon review (I actually sat through the "wrong version"!):

All the dialogue between English-speaking characters is still in English, but most of the exchanges that Ford and Buckley have with French characters are now in UNSUBTITLED FRENCH, dubbed by Ford and Buckley themselves. It's jarring, since it's a huge plot point that Ford's character can't speak a word of French.

In addition the French characters all speak to each other in dubbed French now. This despite the fact that their mouths are clearly moving to the English words, since that's the language the entire film was shot in. Their exchanges are only subtitled with the useless "SPEAKING FRENCH" for every line.

[Monterey Jack]

You may just have to check it out and see...here's the problem from an Amazon review (I actually sat through the "wrong version"!):

All the dialogue between English-speaking characters is still in English, but most of the exchanges that Ford and Buckley have with French characters are now in UNSUBTITLED FRENCH, dubbed by Ford and Buckley themselves. It's jarring, since it's a huge plot point that Ford's character can't speak a word of French.

In addition the French characters all speak to each other in dubbed French now. This despite the fact that their mouths are clearly moving to the English words, since that's the language the entire film was shot in. Their exchanges are only subtitled with the useless "SPEAKING FRENCH" for every line.

Hmmm...the only scene where the lip-synch seemed "off" is when the two dudes are grilling Emmanuel Seigner in her apartment in unsubtitled French, but I still got the gist of what was going on (especially when I heard "statue" repeated a few times).

Anyways, this was the first time I've ever actually sat through the film (I probably would have branded it a "Boring Adult Movie" had my Dad taken me to it as a kid, like how I found Witness alternately dull and awkward in theaters at the age of ten ), and found it absorbing enough without ever being especially gripping. I appreciated it as the kind of classy, adult-oriented thriller we rarely see in this day and age, but it's not especially hard to figure out what's going on, so the early, Vanishing-like passages of Ford wandering around trying to find his wife don't really attain the kind of nightmare eeriness they're supposed to. It's also like a Hitchcock movie totally leached of his usual, prickly humor (i.e. anything he made after The Birds, Frenzy excepted), meaning the craftsmanship is impeccable (as you'd expect from a Roman Polanski film), and yet you're never truly on the edge of your seat. Good film, but not great.

Also watched Rio Conchos, which was an agreeable enough western potboiler, aided immeasurably by Goldsmith's terse, whip-cracking score. But, about fifty minutes in, there's a patch of several minutes where the sound quality takes a noticeable dip, with the voices and score sounded like a warbly, disintegrating cassette tape. Did I get a bad copy, or do all of them sound like that? There were no skips in the picture, and I even enjected the disc to inspect the back (looks pristine) and play back that last segment, but it persisted.

[AndyDursin]

Nah it's not your disc -- it's the source materials that have a problem. I don't remember it specifically but the Blu-ray.com review mentions it (still gives it a "3.5" rating!) -- "things are generally clear here virtually all of the time, though there is some crackling that crops up occasionally, most noticeably about two thirds of the way through the film". If it's a problem with the source (likely), it probably needed some major restoration work that Shout wasn't going to pay for.

I didn't really care for FRANTIC. It's completely watchable but not very good at the same time, the script being the big problem. Some of the set-pieces (Ford on the roof with his shoe) were silly and Morricone's score is pretty blah too. But by today's standards (like you say, they don't make 'em anymore in general) it's better than it actually is IMO.

[Monterey Jack]

Nah it's not your disc -- it's the source materials that have a problem. I don't remember it specifically but the Blu-ray.com review mentions it (still gives it a "3.5" rating!) -- "things are generally clear here virtually all of the time, though there is some crackling that crops up occasionally, most noticeably about two thirds of the way through the film". If it's a problem with the source (likely), it probably needed some major restoration work that Shout wasn't going to pay for.

Gotcha. It doesn't last that long, and, frankly, it's a film I probably won't watch again anytime soon.

I didn't really care for FRANTIC. It's completely watchable but not very good at the same time, the script being the big problem. Some of the set-pieces (Ford on the roof with his shoe) were silly and Morricone's score is pretty blah too. But by today's standards (like you say, they don't make 'em anymore in general) it's better than it actually is IMO.

It doesn't help that Ford just seems kind of sleepy throughout, which was appropriate in the early scenes where he's literally jet-lagged, but later in the film he just seems logy and not terribly invested in what's going on. Compare to his pair of turns as Jack Ryan in the early 90s, and the simmering Don't-Hurt-My-Family! rage under the surface is much more potent. Did chuckle when he broke out the Finger Of Doom late in the proceedings, though.



Eh, considering it was Ford + Polanski + 80s, I was expecting more, but for what little I paid for this, I can't complain, fudged dubbing and all. I have seen Presumed Innocent before, but not for at least twenty years, so it's overdue for a fresh look. I just remember it being one of the very few John Williams scores I ever sold off, because I found the soundtrack CD kind of dull.

[AndyDursin]

I watched PRESUMED INNOCENT last year and liked it more than I recall. The kind of movie that it is doesn't make for repeat viewing but a couple of decades helps! Truthfully the ending was always a problem for me...I really didn't care for it (and still don't)...but knowing in advance how it works out, I found the rest of the picture well-executed with good performances.

Williams' main theme is very similar to the one he wrote for ANGELA'S ASHES years later, and the score itself is just a "thriller score" which fortunately he didn't dabble a whole lot in, because there are limits musically to what a composer can do there. I don't blame you for selling it off -- I did at one point also. At least it's still more musical than Goldsmith's score for CRIMINAL LAW!