I'd Buy That DVD for...Somewhere in the Neighborhood of $5

H-E-B (for the unhip, a Texas grocery store chain) $3.99 each:

The Quiller Memorandum
Halls of Montezuma
The Magus
The Seven-Ups
No Way Out (the Poitier/Widmark/Darnell noir)
The Omen "Collector's Edition" (2 discs in a steelbook)

The price sticker's claim that these are all "previously viewed", but methinks these are really remainders offloaded by Fox and mixed by the store in a dumpbin with a bunch of genuine retired rentals.

BTW if anyone cares, I watched that Charley Varrick disc that evening, and I wonder if it's just open-matte instead of pan'n'scan. IMDB sez it was shot 1.37:1 but protected for 1.85:1 which was the projection AR. It didn't seen very pan'n'scanny with some scenes having major head room.

Something excellent for $5 yesterday: a new copy of Payday, the '72 film with Rip Torn as a washed-up country singer. "36 hours in the life of a madman," according to the cover.

Also, $7 each for new copies: two-disc Howl and Hour of the Wolf.

Payday's a good'un. There's a passage in Guralnick's I Feel Like Going Home wehere he mentions that on separate occasions Waylon Jennings, Johnny Paycheck, and IIRC, either David Allen Coe or Merle Haggard assured him that the film was based on their life and no others.

Over the last several months, at several different Big Lots, pretty much because of this thread:

$5
There Will Be Blood - feature only
A Fish Called Wanda - 2-Disc Collector's Edition

$3
The Graduate
Walk Hard: The Dewey Cox Story
Brick
Ronin - 2-Disc Collector's Edition
The Big Red One - 2-Disc Special Edition
Wolf Creek
Get Shorty - 2-Disc Collector's Edition
National Lampoon's Vacation
Sweet and Lowdown
Roxanne
True Stories
Species - 2-Disc Collector's Edition
Strange Brew (first thing I saw when I got to the kiosk…)
A Mighty Wind (…last thing I found after twice digging through the dross)
King Kong (Peter Jackson) - 3-Disc Deluxe Extended Edition (<<<< LOL)
AC/DC: Let There Be Rock
Burn After Reading
Do The Right Thing
The Right Stuff
10

$5: An American in Paris, Fort Worth/Colt .45/Tall Man Riding (Randolph Scott), Lost in a Harem/Abbott & Costello in Hollywood

$3: A World Apart, Letters from Iwo Jima, The Sentinel, Antony and Cleopatra (1972)

$2: Dangerous Liaisons, Barton Fink

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1CNyzdmXhe0

$3

After Hours
Casualties of War
Kiss Kiss Bang Bang
Carrie - "1970s Decades Collection" (includes a CD with eight 70s tunes on it wtf???)
The Incredible Mr. Limpet (!!!!!)

Thanksgiving-

Big Lots, $3.75 each (that day's sale price/promotion):

Mad Max "Special Edition"
All The Right Moves

Toys R Us, $1.00:

Funny Bones

Black Friday evening @ a different Big Lots-

$1.88:

Experiment In Terror (perhaps the find of the evening--disc must have been sitting in some wherehouse, has been OOP for ages and goes for $25+ on Amazon)
Heartbeeps
La Chamade ("Heartbeat") (late 60s Francoise Sagan adaptation w/Deneuve & Piccoli)
The Long Goodbye (already have, will be stocking stuffer for friend tbd)
Kiss Me, Stupid
Nick & Norah's Infinite Playlist
Rebecca
"Don Knotts: Reluctant Hero Pack" (bundle of The Love God?, The Ghost and Mr. Chicken, The Reluctant Astronaut and his sought after Bresson collaboration The Shakiest Gun In The West)

$3:

Raggedy Man (fullframe--boo!)
Volver
When Did You Last See Your Father?
"Mission Hill: The Complete Series" (animated series w/Wallace Langham, Brian Posehn, and Jane Wiedlin that ran for 5 minutes on the WB back in '99-2000. been meaning to pick it up for yoinks, so this was the other find of the night)

$5:

Alice (Woody Allen)

Between this, my HEB trip the other week, and the B & N Criterion sale, I finally may have crossed the threshold of having too many fucking movies.

A Don Knotts box set for $1.88: truly a Thanksgiving to remember. (Absence of The Incredible Mr. Limpet notwithstanding.)

Saw a couple at a thrift store on Sunday but didn't get em - Sick (the Bob Flanagan doc), and God Told me To... which is about a serial killer and has Andy Kaufman and the late Deborah Raffin in it. Anyone know if these are any good?

Both of those are amazing

Will have to stop by again soon, they were 3 or 4 bucks each.

A Don Knotts box set for $1.88: truly a Thanksgiving to remember. (Absence of The Incredible Mr. Limpet notwithstanding.)

They actually had several copies of that one separately for $3 (It's a WB title, while the box is from Universal), so I passed for the time being. But Knottsfever may lead me back...

"Don Knotts: Reluctant Hero Pack" amazing

Sick (the Bob Flanagan doc) is p amazing but keep the blindfold handy for the hammer scene.

Saw a couple at a thrift store on Sunday but didn't get em - Sick (the Bob Flanagan doc), and God Told Me To... which is about a serial killer and has Andy Kaufman and the late Deborah Raffin in it. Anyone know if these are any good?

― nickn, Monday, November 26, 2012

Finally went back last Sunday, Sick was gone but I did get the other one for $3.

I rolled the dice on the Mayan thing and have been stocking up on cheap DVDs. Well played, me.

$5: Cujo, Purple Noon, Joyride, The Host, Dead Man, Crash (the comatose one film critics like...some, anyway)

3/$10: North by Northwest, The Agronomist, Adoration, Dead Alive, Naked Lunch

$3: Joe, Capricorn One, The End of Violence, Paraíso Travel, Dr T and the Women, Thirst, Back to Bataan, Extract, The Incredible Mr. Limpet, Born into Brothels, Volver, Candyman, Horsemen (watched this--HOF awful performance from Dennis Quaid), Monkey Shines, Airplane, Fun with Dick & Jane ('70s), Deep Cover, The Pebbles and Bamm-Bamm Show.

Also a Bob Hope box with seven films for $15. I'm occasionally seeing Big Lots stickers on some of this stuff, so, as suspected, it all comes from the same warehouse.

we are in a golden age of cheap, overwhelmingly plentiful entertainment. some good finds in there.

Momus Man of Letters for $1. It's actually a 36-minute VHS tape, but I'm including it cause it's Momus.

I picked up Mel Brooks's "To Be or Not To Be" at a flea market for about $5 this summer. Good fun.

Heartbeeps is weird, like in a "This must have been greenlit between regimes" way.

H-E-B, $3.99:

The Great White Hope
Warlock (the Widmark/Fonda/Quinn western)
Casino Royale "Collector's Edition" (the '67 version, reissued to tie in with Quantum of Solace; doesn't come with the 50s version, which I think other editions of this do)

Another thrift store haul, they were having a 99 cent sale:

Dead Ringer (Bette Davis movie from 1964)
Play Misty For Me
South Pacific (2-disk "Collector's Edition")
Volver
Vicky Cristina Barcelona
History Channel doc on the 1906 SF earthquake

See Thread Revive on phone while running errands, remember there's a Big Lots not 5 minutes from where I stand, bargain sirens begin to sing...

$3:

Beautiful Creatures
The Gingerbread Man (Altman once claimed this was the biggest time he ever got screwed by a studio)
The Incredible Mr. Limpet (Knottsfever did indeed bring me back)
Compulsion
The Great Northfield Minnesota Raid

$5:

"Saturday Morning Cartoons 1960s Volume 1" (2-disc comp featuring a bunch of Warner holdings with the odd notice on the back cover "[this collection] is intended for the Adult Collector and is Not Suitable for Children", which leads me to believe it contains the long-anticipated "Wilma Flintstone & Betty Rubble lezz it up" cartoon)

$3: March of the Penguins, L.A. Story (Kael's last-ever review, I think), Storytelling, Get Shorty, The Green Berets

$5: Don't Bother to Knock, The Accidental Tourist, Crimes and Misdemeanors, Manhattan, Annie Hall

H-E-B, $3.99:

The Newton Boys

Big Lots, $3:

The Border
Panic In The Streets (I wish I could find more of the Fox noirs this way)

PS, I watched the "Flintstones" ep on that Saturday Morning set. There was no hot Wilma on Betty action to be had.

All Fred and Barney, eh?

Worse--Fred and...Dino.

3/$10: The Limey, Land of Plenty (Wenders--looks bad), Interview with the Assassin (looks gimmicky)

$5: Take Shelter, Assault on Precinct 13 (original), Red Hook Summer, Basquiat, Rollover (early-'80s Pakula film I'd forgotten)

$10: Elizabeth Taylor Turner/MGM Collection (Cat on a Hot Tin Roof, Butterfield 8, Father of the Bride, The Sandpiper)

$20: Hepburn/Tracy box with all nine films + documentary (thought this was incredibly lucky, but I see it's on Amazon for even less)

Uh-Oh, Big Lot's is having a 20% sale on everything for rewards members for part of this weekend.

I started browsing through this online catalogue the other day, and it seemed like everything you and I are buying from these cutout bins was there:

http://www.daedalusbooks.com/Products/?Media=DVD

Ah, that's not as fun as digging through stacks of discs flanked by discontinued lawn furntiture and nearly expired Little Debbie's.

Big Lots 20% Weekend

$2.40:

Brando-Rama w/ The Teahouse of The August Moon, The Formula, Mutiny On The Bounty (two-disc "Special Edition") & A Countess From Hong Kong.
She's Gotta Have It
Moon Over Parador
Cold Comfort Farm
Hilary and Jackie
The Baxter

$4:

Village of The Damned/Children of The Damned "Horror Double Feature"
On Her Majesty's Secret Service "Special Edition" (from 2000--the first SE of this title)
Xanadu "Magical Edition"
The Thrill of It All! (Doris Day/James Garner advertising satire from '63. Script by Carl Reiner, direction by Norman Jewison. Watched last night and is amsuing in very Kennedy-era way. Wonder if the "Mad Men" creatives ever saw it?)

was pretty happy to find Slap Shot for $4.99 at a gas station in Forest, Mississippi

$4:

Village of The Damned/Children of The Damned "Horror Double Feature"

Every time I see this, I want to buy it all over again--great deal. A (somewhat annoying) former VJ here, Kim Clarke Champniss, was in one or both of them when he was a kid.

http://i.ytimg.com/vi/_jL30Z1R09Y/0.jpg

Hmm, didn't know that.

On a somewhat related note, Big Lots has started carrying a fair amount of cds. It looks like they've struck deals w/Concord Music Group (found a bunch of their Jazz reissues and some Stax stuff in the bin) and Wal-Mart (several copies of Kiss' Sonic Boom and AC/DC's Black Ice alongside discarded copies of the latter's back catalog--I got the Columbia High Voltage for $4 sale price).

I also found a copy of Chinese Democracy.

4/$10: Do the Right Thing (2-discs), The Class, Me & Orson Welles, Consenting Adults (Pakula)/An Innocent Man

3/$10: Lorna's Silence, Inland Empire, Elevator, Here, 12, Battle Beneath the Earth/The Ultimate Warrior

I'll get to the ones with subtitles later--tawdry '90s thrillers are my go-to films at home, so I'm already all over Consenting Adults.

Haven't done this in awhile, and besides the $5 CD bin at Fry's (Universal & Sony catalog titles as far as the eye can see!) is quickly becoming my new money pit.

H-E-B, $3.99:

Tony Rome
Man of The West

These two purchases were separated by like a month. The store's stock is seemingly frozen.

I also just ordered Caddyshack for $3.99 to fill out an Amazon order for free shipping, and I missed getting a copy of Foreplay (70s sex comedy omnibus thing w/Jerry Orbach, Paul Dooley, Zero Mostel & others, now distributed by Troma) from Fry's for around $1.79.

Same here--of the four or five places I check semi-regularly, the stock has been frozen for months in all but one of them, as if that's it for budget DVDs once they're gone. Also, the Zellers chain here was bought out by Target, and Target has nothing. I've consequently been forced to expand into the high-rent district of $7 and $10 DVDs, where I sometimes run into Donald Trump and Warren Buffet while browsing bins.

$10: Warners Academy Award Winners from the '50s (Around the World in 80 Days, A Streetcar Named Desire, The Bad and the Beautiful)
Marlene Dietrich: The Glamour Collection (Morocco,Blonde Venus, The Devil Is a Woman, The Flame of New Orleans, Golden Earrings)

$7: Fiddler on the Roof (2 discs)
The Seven-Ups
Darling
Murder, Inc.

$5: Twilight Zone: The Movie
Chariots of Fire
Hereafter
Viva Knievel!
Piranha
Foxes
Valley Girl
The Net
The War on the War on Drugs
Casablanca (2 discs)

$3: Somewhere

of the four or five places I check semi-regularly, the stock has been frozen for months in all but one of them, as if that's it for budget DVDs once they're gone.

I hear that. Was out today and happened to pass by a less-frequented by me Big Lot's. I dropped in, more out of curiosity than the need to actually buy something since I'm still wading through the purchases from the last several months.

First of all, their stock is the smallest I've ever seen at this location (lots of empty space on shelves). Secondly, pretty much everything they had was stuff they'd had to have had for at least a few months, almost all of which falling into the categories of "already got" or "never gonna get". And finally, although I ended up buying no dvds, I was still out three bucks because I got ambushed by a panhandler inside the store. On top of that, this person hadn't held my three singles 30 seconds before asking for another $10-15 so they could leave and tie up the convoluted sob story I just heard. Put me right out of whatever spending mood I had left in me.

Ugh.

Also symbolic (and more on dvd topic), I found a copy of Gigantic, a 2009 Zooey Deschanel/Paul Dano/John Goodman quirkfest, only to discover somebody already liberated the disc from the case. This was a $3 movie...at Big Lot's...and still it was stolen.

Ghost World for $1.50 at a thrift store. It was a Blockbuster rental, but the disk appears to be in good condition.

For $2 I found a copy of King Vidor's 1929 Halleluja, his first talkie (also a 'singie') and the first all-black feature from a major studio. Disc extras include two additional Vitaphone musical 2-reelers from the '30s. A nice find.

$5: All the Real Girls, Snow Angels (also David Gordon Green--no recollection of it coming out), Network (2 discs, so I can be twice as ambivalent), Night of the Hunter, Halloween, Get Low, Rise of the Planet of the Apes, Osama, Munich, Proof of Life, Caddyshack, Brick Lane, Ulee's Gold, Houdini (one of the very first films I watched as a kid).

$3: Breakfast at Tiffany's, Shane (didn't realize it was full-screen--useless), Narrow Margin, Chalk (some Morgan Spurlock pseudo-documentary that follows three first-year teachers--not hopeful).

$3 or $5 (I've opened and watched them all, and I don't remember): Source Code, Everything Must Go, Random Hearts, One Hour Photo, Deja Vu, Bernie.

Snow Angels (also David Gordon Green--no recollection of it coming out)

It didn't really come out. It was one of the last films distributed by Warner Independent (Towelhead was another), and iirc, it's spare release was after they'd shut down offices and promotion. No wonder DGG went into Comedies & TV afterward.

Shane (didn't realize it was full-screen--useless)

The George Stevens western? I think it was shot full-frame ('53 release).

On My End, Wal-Mart, $5 each:

Pretty In Pink "Everything's Duckie Edition"
Planes, Trains and Automobiles "Those Aren't Pillows!" Edition

I've seen Shane three or four times, but only on TV, I think, so I always assumed it was widescreen. It seems like a film that ought to be widescreen...Anyway, glad to hear what I've got is okay.

The subtitles of those Hughes DVDs are hilarious. I wonder if they'd extend the format to other releases.

Deliverance "Squeal like a pig" edition.

I've seen Shane three or four times, but only on TV, I think, so I always assumed it was widescreen. It seems like a film that ought to be widescreen...Anyway, glad to hear what I've got is okay.

― clemenza, Monday, June 10, 2013 6:40 AM (7 hours ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

Jeff Wells' Stopped Clock Moment. It has since been announced that the blu will have standard ("correct") and the wider version.

Big Lots, $3:

Gentleman Broncos
There's Something About Mary "Digital Copy" (one regular dvd & a data disc in a slimline case)

This location was down to one four-way floor display of discs, easily the smallest assortment I've ever seen there. Last time, back in January, this one had two overloaded four-ways and an endcap. On the brightside, according to my receipt, both of today's purchases were part of a "May Assortment". So they are still getting stuff in, albeit in smaller amounts.

$5: The Fountainhead, A Wedding (I think I'm close to having every Altman film--can't be missing more than five), Revenge ("I consider Revenge to be Tony Scott's masterpiece"; Tarantino quote on the cover--bought it anyway), The Andromeda Strain (TV remake).

$7: used copy of 1900

$10: Brando Franchise Collection (The Night of the Following Day, The Ugly American, A Countess From Hong Kong, The Appaloosa)

$20: Natalie Wood Collection (Bombers B-52, Cash McCall, Splendor in the Grass, Gypsy, Sex and the Single Girl, Inside Daisy Closer)

Tried to watch Sex and the Single Girl, bailed after 20 minutes.

Clintpalooza @ Wal-Mart, $4:

A Perfect World
The Gauntlet
Any Which Way You Can
Every Which Way But Loose

The former pair were birthday presents for a family member. The latter duo are mine.

Can't find the Clyde movie parody from "The Critic" on youtube, so enjoy this instead:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Lu7PxhwDGqw

I see cheap films from "The Eastwood Collection" all over the place--I've bought two or three. Somebody must have broken up a whole bunch of box sets.