Universal Home Video will release a second volume of Woody Woodpecker cartoons on Tuesday. Picking up right after Volume 1, this three-disc set contains the next 45 Woody cartunes (Volume 1 covered 1940-1952). It also has 30 additional Walter Lantz cartunes, featuring characters like Chilly Willy, Andy Panda, and even has a few Lantz-era Oswald the Lucky Rabbit cartoons. I can’t tell you how much I enjoyed Volume 1. If you haven’t seen any Woody Woodpecker cartoons in a while, Volume 1 is a great way to reacquaint yourselves and remember just how funny these shorts were.

Here’s a great screengrab from one Vol. 2 cartune, which I stole from Thad K’s blog.

I got a kick out of Richard Shepard’s last flick, The Matador, and I’ve been looking forward to his latest, The Hunting Party, for a while. Sadly, it only had a limited release and went by unnoticed. It played at the Landmark Sunshine in my street, but with all the awards films coming out at the same time, I missed it. Then when it came out on video recently, it had a Very Long Wait for what seemed like an eternity on Netflix. The Hunting Party was released by The Weinstein Co., who have an exclusive rental agreement with Blockbuster. Netflix still manages to get copies of these films, as they are for sale at any store, but they are only able to get a handful of them. (Well, maybe more than just a handful, but compared to the quantities they carry for other titles, it’s very little) So, that’s why I didn’t see this until now, despite the fact that I was anxious about seeing it.
I can’t say that I was disappointed - I enjoyed it - but it wasn’t all that memorable. That said, Richard Gere was outstanding, as he has been in most of his recent roles, and that made it worth seeing. 2.5 out of 5 stars.

What happened to Rod Lurie? He started out with an interesting doomsday thriller in 1999 (Deterrence), followed it up with the terrific political thriller The Contender in 2000, but then struck out with the Robert Redford/James Gandolfini prison flick The Last Castle a year later. He didn’t make any more films until last year’s Resurrecting the Champ, which I finally watched the other day. Samuel L. Jackson tries a squeaky voice and makes every scene he is in almost unbearable. Shockingly, Josh Hartnett’s acting is solid, and Alan Alda and Peter Coyote are notable in supporting roles. It tries to be inspirational, which usually equals ’sappy’ and/or ‘melodramatic’ - a territory I wasn’t expecting Lurie to tread, based on his first two films. (I don’t remember The Last Castle well enough, other than the fact that I disliked it. Lurie has another film coming out this year, which I anxiously await.

2 stars out of 5

For the past 2 or 3 weeks, the posts here were out of order. Well, I finally was able to fix it by installing a new version of WordPress. I intend to write more regularly. But really, don’t count on it.

The server had an update and now all of my posts are in reverse order.

Picture: No Country For Old Men will and should win.
Director: The Coen Brothers will and should win.
Actor: Daniel Day-Lewis will and should win.
Actress: Julie Christie will win but Marion Cotillard should win.
Supporting Actor: Javier Bardem will win but Hal Holbrook should win.
Supporting Actress: Cate Blanchett will win but Amy Ryan should win.
Original Screenplay: Diablo Cody will and should win for Juno.
Adapted Screenplay: The Coen Brothers will and should win for No Country for Old Men.
Animated Feature: Ratatouille will win. It’s the only one I’ve seen of the three nominated films.
Cinematography: There Will Be Blood will and should win.
Art Direction: Atonement will and should win.
Editing: No Country for Old Men will and should win. I’ll be angry if The Bourne Ultimatum wins.
Song: Once will and should win.
Documentary: No End in Sight will win. I’ve only seen that one and Sicko, and thought Sicko was better.
Foreign Language Film: The Counterfeiters will win. I haven’t seen any of them.
Visual Effects: Transformers will win but I think 300 should win.
Costume Design: Atonement
Make-up: La Vie en Rose
Sound Mixing: No Country for Old Men
Sound Editing: No Country for Old Men
Score: Atonement will win but 3:10 to Yuma should win. There Will Be Blood would have been a lock had it not been disqualified.
Animated Short: I only saw I Met the Walrus. My guess is that one will win.
Live Action Short: The Tonto Woman. I haven’t seen any of these.
Documentary Short: Sari’s Mother. I haven’t seen any of these, either.

Other predictions:
-Heath Ledger will be mentioned twice (including In Memoriam)
-Our president will be mentioned twice
-Anna Nicole Smith will not be part of the In Memoriam segment
-Roy Scheider, despite missing the cut-off, will be included in the In Memoriam segment
-In Memoriam will be ridiculously short, as usual
-Writers will be thanked more than usual
-After last year’s overkill, no airtime will be spent on environmental issues
-Despite bringing last year’s ceremony to a few screeching halts, there will be just as many pointless montages

Do you also have a Wii? Would you like to add me as a friend? My Wii number is: 1994 0863 5447 6637. Let me know what yours is so I can add you.

My top 10 for 2007, so far:

1. There Will Be Blood
2. No Country for Old Men
3. 3:10 to Yuma
4. The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford
5. Atonement
6. Rescue Dawn
7. Juno
8. Into the Wild
9. Sweeney Todd: The Demon Barber of Fleet Street
10. I’m Not There

The top four films loosely fit into the western genre, and part of I’m Not There, which I have in the tenth spot, is also a western.

And beyond:

11. I Am Legend
12. American Gangster
13. Grindhouse
14. Beowulf
15. Gone Baby Gone
16. The Man from London
17. Michael Clayton
18. The Darjeeling Limited
19. Zodiac
20. The King of Kong
21. 300
22. Charlie Wilson’s War
23. Eastern Promises
24. Superbad
25. Sicko

There are still some majors that I need to see, but this is the list as of this moment. Agree? Disagree? Comments? (I’ll actually check for them this time)

Last year, Fox put out the first season of that great 80s hospital drama St. Elsewhere on DVD. It didn’t sell very well, so Fox isn’t releasing a second season. If you were like me and finished the DVD set hungry for more, tune to American Life TV, a new network that recently picked it up. It started showing St. Elsewhere and Hill Street Blues earlier in the year, so I picked up a few weeks ago when they got started with season 2. It’s on every Sunday night.
Of course, I couldn’t wait to see the infamous final episode, so I recently cued it up at the Museum of TV & Radio (it’s called the Paley Center now, but I don’t like that name) so I could see the autistic kid play with the snow globe, revealing that the entire series had taken place in his imagination.

I decided that it was time for a new television. I remember getting my first job at a video store when I was in high school. For the first few months, I barely spent any of my money, until I finally bought a television. It was beautiful (to me), and 27″ - just as big as the biggest TV in our house. I took it to college and had the biggest TV on the floor of my dorm. It was five hundred hard-earned bucks well-spent, nearly ten years ago.
A few weeks ago it was time to upgrade. To be honest, I don’t know why I hadn’t done this sooner. I own a million DVDs and watch a billion DVDs each year, and while 27″ was once huge to me, times have changed and it doesn’t really do all the shit I watch justice. This is what I upgraded to:

It’s a Sharp Aquos 46″ 1080p LCD and I love it. I have that Blu-Ray player that I won that goes great with it, and while the Wii doesn’t look all that wonderful (not high-def) it still looks much better than it did on the old set. I also love the HD channels - CBS, NBC, Discovery, Fox, etc. Regretfully, nearly all the programs I watch (Kid Nation, 60 Minutes, The Suite Life, Survivor, and St. Elsewhere reruns) aren’t in HD.