The Ten Minute Guide Continued...
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ONLY FIVE MONTHS BEHIND SLOVAKIA, ICELAND AND LATVIA
 A lot of press has been given to the fact that Spider-Man 3 opened in Asia (and Europe, Australia and Africa) some three days before it opened in the United States. The reasons behind this are really anybody’s guess; piracy concerns would initially be the go-to choice, but it’s hard to see how three days could affect illegal distribution of the film one way or the other. Absolutely no press, however, has been given to the fact that there is a major English language feature that is currently out-grossing all comers in the foreign markets, including 300, that isn’t scheduled for release in America until late August. It pulled in a whopping $33 million dollars in its opening weekend and has earned and estimated $90 million in its first three weeks. That film (if you haven’t guessed by the accompanying photo) is Mr. Bean’s Holiday, starring Rowan Atkinson. And before you rationalize that Mr. Bean’s Holiday has probably just been released in the UK, tempering the surprise factor of this story, think again: Mr. Bean’s Holiday has been released everywhere outside the US. 39 different countries, including Slovakia, Iceland and Latvia, are presently showing Mr. Bean’s Holiday. If DVD release patterns remain static for the next couple months, there’s a good chance couples in Estonia will be able to enjoy the comedy hijinks of Mr’s Bean Holiday at home on DVD before it even has its theatrical premiere here in the states.
THE COMPLETELY INFORMATIVE, COOLER THAN ICE, TITANIUM EDITION OF THE TEN MINUTE GUIDE
When DVDs originally hit the market some 10 years ago, they didn’t have very fancy names. The DVD for the movie Seven was titled, of all things, the DVD for Seven. It was generic, but to the point. As the format started to catch on, studios started introducing Collector’s Editions and Special Editions to the mix. A movie might be released to a barebones DVD and then six months later be released as a Special Edition, loaded with extras. In 2000, attempting to one up the Collector’s Editions and the Special Editions available, Universal and Artisan started releasing DVDs under the Ultimate Edition label. The DVD industry remained happy with its Collector’s, Special and Ultimate Edition titles for a number of years, only occasionally breaking from tradition and releasing a Masterpiece Edition, a Platinum Edition or an Anniversary Edition of a film. In the last eighteen months, however, the home entertainment wing of Hollywood has decided that this level of DVD naming homeostasis is a marketing hinderance and has been tripping over itself to come up with new and ‘clever’ names for their big DVD releases. This trend came to a head (and my attention) this week when I received a total of eleven DVDs, eight of which had edition names other than the ones I’ve listed above. Included in this ten were: • Big: The Extended Edition • Trading Places: The "Looking Good, Feeling Good" Edition • Coming to America: The Special Collector’s Edition • Dreamgirls: The Showstopper Edition • Epic Movie: The Unrated, Uninhibited, Unbelievable Edition • The Siege: The Martial Law Edition • Kung Fu Hustle: The Axe Kicking Edition • The Die Hard Collection: The Yippie Ki Yay Edition. I started perusing through the Stumped? DVD archives and found the following DVD editions as well.
• The Parent Trap: The Special Double Trouble Edition • The Getaway: The Special Uncut, Unrated Version • E.T.: The Limited Collector’s Edition • Terminator 2: The Extreme Edition • Dazed and Confused: The Flashback Edition • The Full Monty: The Fully Exposed Edition • Fast at Ridgemont High: The Totally Awesome Edition • Booty Call: The Bootiest Edition
The Bootiest Edition? People are getting paid for coming up with these names? About the only positive I can see coming of this is if Buena Vista decides to release Apocalypto: The Human Sacrifice Edition.
THE LIST:
Great Quotes from Rescue Me: Season Three
Denis Leary’s F/X series, Rescue Me, is most certainly a drama. Focused on the personal unraveling of firefighter Tommy Gavin (Leary) after one of his children died, the third season of Rescue Me investigates Gavin’s descent into moral corruptness, alcoholism (again), spousal abuse and some light child neglect, all thanks a generous helping of post-traumatic stress disorder. The strangest part of Rescue Me is that, roughly once an episode, one of the characters delivers an absolutely brilliant, laugh-out loud funny line of dialogue. I initially took notice of this trend in the first episode of the season. Gavin’s sister-in-law asks him to talk to his nephew about some condoms she found in her son’s room. After a few exchanges, Gavin’s nephew spills the beans: he’s been having sex with his biology teacher, a woman in her late 30s. Gavin’s reaction is priceless. Attempting to convince his nephew that he shouldn’t be dating an older woman, much less having sex with her, Gavin tries the following approach. He asks his nephew, "Have you ever seen your grandmother naked? I’m talking about seeing her naked and then wanting to bang her. Of course not, that’s completely screwed up." The quote, naturally, doesn’t seem to have anything to do with anything. It’s funny because A) Leary’s extremely serious delivery of the line sells the sheer absurdity of the topic and B) the leftfield nature of the question perfectly captures the scattered and illogical thinking of an absolutely horrified uncle who is forced to talk to his nephew about sex. By the third episode of the season, I started keep track of these lines. Welcome to this week’s list.
1) "He’s not doing either the dating or the raping… He’s just doing the selling… to the guys who are doing the dating or raping…"
- Denis Leary tries to put a positive spin on his nephew’s possession of both roofies and Viagra.
2) "You’re taking life lessons from a semi-retarded bear. And it’s not even a real bear!"
- John Scurti chastises a fellow firefighter for reading The Tao of Pooh
3) "When you want to talk about something other than throwing your sperm around, why don’t you call me. Oh, and, by the way, you may want to think about being nicer to black people." 
- Callie Thorne knows how to leave a room.
4) "Oh, this is fine. Listen, as soon as this guy stops sawing through that little girl’s skull you can watch again."
- John Scurti waves off a seven-year old’s concern about watching R-rated movies.
5) "For a man who looks like a garden gnome, you’ve got a lot of demands."
- A female character shows what not to do when flirting with a man.
6) "I’m just saying, if this was an episode of Columbo, I’d be sweating my balls off."
- Denis Leary comments on guilt.
7) "They’re a crafty people, the retards. Case in point, the Special Olympics. They call their Olympics special; what does that make ours?"
- John Scurti ponders athletics
8) "Wait, like Rain Man retarded? Or Paris Hilton retarded?"
- John Scurti ponders athletics
The third season of Rescue Me is available on DVD and Blu-ray on June 5, 2007
HAPPY MOTHER’S DAY! NOW GO CHEAT ON DAD!
Studios tend to reprice, repromote or rerelease certain DVDs around the holidays that seem like a natural fit with the subject material of given projects. One can often see new editions of romantic comedies being released before Valentine’s Day, special editions of black themed films in time for Black History Month, action/adventure titles for father’s day, World War II movies on D-Day and December 7 and so forth. We recently received word from Fox that roughly a dozen titles were being repromoted in time for Mother’s Day. The headline of the press release said it all: “Give Mom a Gift She Can Enjoy Over and Over”. The funny thing about this repromote though was how many of the titles being championed as a good way to show mom that “she is better than a box of chocolates” involved sexually suggestive titles (The Banger Sisters, Woman on Top, Man Trouble) and plot lines ripe with infidelity (A Walk in the Clouds), lesbians (Kissing Jessica Stein) and failing marriages (Trust the Man).
There has got to be a better way to celebrate Mother’s Day than by giving her a DVD of Unfaithful and telling her to enjoy Olivier Martinez's steamy, adulterous sex romps. Somehow, Fox’s suggestion that I might also enjoy giving my mother a DVD of the biopic of sex researcher Alfred Kinsey's life, Kinsey, didn’t seem much better. This year I just erred on the side of caution and wrapped up a copy of the Kama Sutra for dear ole mom.
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