How to Spend $20
By Eric Hughes
December 30, 2008
Welcome to How to Spend $20, BOP's look at the latest DVDs to hit stores nationwide. This week: Alan Ball lays a goose egg, Michael Moore gets owned and comics laugh at Mr. Tanner.Pick of the WeekFor people who think Alan Ball is doing just fine with his vampire love affair on HBO: Towelhead
Wow. With just one movie, Alan Ball proved just how it easy it is to go from the top to the very, very bottom. In 2000 the writer, alongside director Sam Mendes, won serious hardware at the Academy Awards for their critically acclaimed American Beauty, released in September of the previous year. The movie ended up earning $130 million. People loved it. You know the story.
Jump ahead nine more Septembers to 2008, where Ball makes his triumphant return to Hollywood with Towelhead, based on Alicia Erian's debut novel that happens to carry a number of American Beauty-esque themes. Its domestic total? Not even half a million. To be exact, just $372,000 and change. Sheesh. The likes of Toni Collette, Aaron Eckhart and Maria Bello apparently did nothing to save the project.
Never appearing in more than 100 theaters in a weekend, the drama didn't make it out to my neighborhood. So to no one's surprise I haven't seen it. However, what can be said is that the book, about an Arab American girl who struggles to adjust to unfamiliar racist attitudes following a move to the South to live with her strict Lebanese father, is quite good. Coming from Ball, who was the brains behind the fantastic Six Feet Under and current hit True Blood, it's safe to assume this one was severely overlooked.
Disc includes: Towelhead: A Community Discussion featurette
For people who think David Zucker would have more success in crafting another Airplane! sequel: An American Carol
Running out of films to spoof through the unmistakably lucrative Scary Movie franchise he has a stake in, Airplane! alumnus David Zucker found a new target in filmmaker Michael Moore, that brash, loud-mouthed fat man who's apparently more un-American than any other American. (I decline to agree with this, but so be it). At least that's the loose premise to An American Carol, a spoof that uses the framework of the classic Christmas Carol in telling the story of a cynical Hollywood filmmaker, Michael Malone (Kevin Farley), who goes on a crusade to rid the nation of the Fourth of July holiday. That's when he's visited by three spirits (played by Kelsey Grammer, Jon Voight and Trace Adkins) who attempt to teach Michael the true meaning of America.
On paper, it sounds smarter than the Scary Movies or any of the other seriously deranged spoofs (Epic Movie, Meet the Spartans, Superhero Movie, Disaster Movie, etc.) that have hit theaters in recent years. Even so, An American Carol disappointed at the box office. Just $7 million was earned in the States, against a budget of $20 million.
Disc includes: Audio commentary, deleted scenes
For people who like to know just how Joan Rivers got to looking the way she does today: Nip/Tuck: Season 5, Part 1
A precursor to shows like reality hit Dr. 90210, FX's Nip/Tuck ranks as one of the cable network's most popular dramas, right up there with The Shield, which just ended its seven-season run on November 25th. Focusing on the lives of two plastic surgeons, Sean McNamara (Dylan Walsh) and Christian Troy (Julian McMahon), the show has maintained a fairly consistent buzz ever since its debut season premiered to the tune of 3.7 million people. The fifth season, which was broken up into two parts – the second of which is expected to resume in early 2009 – started out with 4.3 million viewers.
Due to a plot-related development, the series relocated its two star surgeons from Miami, their home for the first four seasons, to Los Angeles, where Nip/Tuck has been ironically filmed from the start. Following the two-part fifth season, 19 more episodes are slated to be produced, which will end the show with an even 100 episodes.
Disc includes: Hollywood Hedonism: The Transition from Miami to Hollywood, unaired scenes, gag reel
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