DVD Update

Having finally finished the Angel discs, I decided to take a short break from my usual habit of inhaling entire year's worth of TV shows as rapidly as possible and interpose a movie or two instead. So a couple of days ago I watched Bubba Ho-Tep, which I recently picked up somewhere pretty cheap, and I've now finished watching most of the extras that came with it, as well. I saw this movie in the theater when it came out -- somewhat surprisingly, it did come to Albuquerque -- but I'm rather glad I sprang for the DVD, as I think I liked it even better on second viewing. Possibly just because the first time I spent a considerable chunk of the movie trying to figure out exactly what the heck it was I was watching, and the second time I was able to just relax and enjoy it for what it was right from the beginning. I can totally see why they had funding and distribution problems with it, though. Writer/director Don Coscarelli describes it as a "redemptive Elvis mummy picture," and, well, how on Earth do you market that? It isn't comedy, it isn't drama, it isn't horror... It's a little bit of each, blended together. And it's set in a rest home, for crying out loud, which is hardly going to pack in the oh-so-desirable teens and twentysomethings. Alas. But I do definitely recommend it if you're looking for something a bit... different. Even if you're not a Bruce Campbell fan, or, for that matter, an Elvis fan.

The disc's nice, too. It's got several good little "making of" featurettes, and the commentary track with Campbell and Coscarelli is quite good: they talk pretty much continually about interesting and relevant things, a talent not everybody who sets out to make a commentary track has apparently mastered. I do have to say, though, that the extra commentary with Campbell in-character as Elvis, while it sounds like a cute idea, gets old really, really fast.

Hmm. Now I have to decide what to watch next...