Mr. Topaze (aka I Like Money) (Blu-ray) by Stuart Galbraith IV Mr. Topaze (1961) is a real curiosity. It's the only movie directed by Peter Sellers, who also stars, and for decades all but impossible to see. The film received mixed reviews and flopped at the box-office, and apparently Sellers himself had all theatrical prints withdrawn and destroyed. The original camera negative apparently no longer exists or is otherwise inaccessible. The British Film Institute eventually located Sellers's personal 16mm reduction print, and two faded 35mm theatrical prints were used for its 2K mastering. The movie is an adaptation of Marcel Pagnol's play Topaze, already filmed seven times prior to Sellers's version, including twice by Pagnol himself, in 1936 starring Arnaudy, and twenty years later in a version starring Fernandel. Sellers's version is most unusual: superficially it resembles other "little" British comedies of the period, and was marketed along si...Read the entire review »

The Ipcress File (Special Edition) (Blu-ray) by Stuart Galbraith IV As the 007-inspired spy movie craze began to take hold in 1965, producer Harry Saltzman, already one-half of the team (with Albert R. "Cubby" Broccoli) of the "official" three-years-old James Bond movie series, launched a second series starring Michael Caine as Len Deighton's working-class spy Harry Palmer. While The Ipcress File utilizes many of the same key behind-the-scenes personnel, including production designer Ken Adam, editor Peter Hunt, and composer John Barry, the approach to this spy was completely different. Indeed, The Ipcress File is closer in spirit to the darkest of ‘60s espionage films, The Spy Who Came In From the Cold than it is to any of the Bonds. Two more Harry Palmer movies, also with Caine, followed, in the same order as Deighton's novels, Funeral in Berlin in 1966 and Billion Dollar Brain in 1967. Caine later returned to the charac...Read the entire review »

DCs Stargirl: The Complete First Season (Blu-ray + Digital Copy) (Blu-ray) by Kurt Dahlke DC's Stargirl: The Complete First Season:I was a Marvel teen in the early ‘80s. Sure, I would also read DC comics, and loved many (Teen Titans leaps immediately to mind). As I moved away from reading comics, more or less, I still dipped in upon occasion, especially for those DC comics that revived and legitimized the genre for many (I'm looking at Watchmen and The Dark Knight). But even with Michael Keaton and Tim Burton, and Christian Bale and Christopher Nolan, it always seemed to me that Marvel just did it better. Tone, story, special effects, all top rate. In my biased opinion, DC always seemed to try too hard. And then came Stargirl, a print-property about which I had zero knowledge prior to seeing this season set appear on the screener table at DVD Talk headquarters. Being a comic movie fan, one who hasn't dipped into the modern slate of comics television AT ALL, I am the prov...Read the entire review »