Shout! Factory in September

from "Weathering With You"

I've felt a bit underwhelmed in the past few months by Shout! Factory's releases, due in great part to the shipping issues they've experienced at their fulfillment facility. There are a great many titles that have come out recently that, in the past, I would have preordered direct from SF. But knowing they might arrive two or three weeks after the release date has really dampened my excitement. The last straw? I ordered a couple of steelbooks in their sale a couple weeks ago, both of which were in stock. The order's been sitting in pre-shipment for over a week. I'm sympathetic that COVID-19 has screwed everything up, but this sort of thing keeps me from spending money on anything other than that limited edition must have. Speaking of which...

ShoutFactory.com Exclusives

I don't recall seeing any sort of announcement on this program, and it's not like Shout! has put me on their media list yet, but at some point in July, listings for a pair of ShoutFactory.com exclusives popped up on the website. Limited to just 1,000 pieces, they've announced some pretty cool titles so far. July saw a Double Feature Blu-ray of "Caged Heat!" and "Jackson County Jail", along with a Blu-ray of 1985's "Streetwalkin'", featuring a young Melissa Leo. August brings a pair of Roger Corman exploitation Blu-rays in 1957's "Attack of the Crab Monsters" and 1978's "Deathsport". None of these are bare-bones releases; each Blu-ray features a commentary track as well as behind the scenes featurettes, trailers, etc. I'm all for driving traffic to the website, and all but the most specialist retailers would probably skip stocking these, so I'm in favor of the program. It looks like these release the last Friday of each month, so keep your eyes peeled.

September 1

Now let's dive in the ninth month with last year's "Children of the Sea" ("海獣の子供"). Based on the manga by Daisuke Igarashi, "Children of the Sea" sounds like a pretty decent fantasy adventure film: a girl and two mysterious boys meet in an aquarium and try to solve the mystery of the world's missing fish. If watching the trailer says anything to me, it's "whimsy". Longtime Studio Ghibli composer Joe Hisaishi wrote his first non-Ghibli score in 30 years for "Children...", so that's another mark in the plus column. GKids is awful about listing extras for their releases, but I'd assume we'd get Japanese and international trailers on the disc.

The first Scream Factory release in September is "Baba Yaga: Terror of the Dark Forest" ("Яга. Кошмар тёмного леса"), a Russian demon flick that came out just before COVID-19 went wide. Writer/director Svyatoslav Podgaevskiy's last film, 2018's "Mermaid: Lake of the Dead", had some really clever moments, and Slavic monster folklore always interests me. Whether it's rusalkas or the zmey or Baba Yaga, I'm willing to give anything covering this world a bit of my time. And, at a $19.99 list price, one isn't spending a lot to take a wag.

I have to assume that you, kind reader, are probably not the target audience for "Monster Hits: Rock & Rhyme With Elmo". That's cool; I'm still going to cover it. You get two - that's right, two! - hours of sing-along fun with Elmo and his crew. For folks with young kids and without HBO Max, this release is going to be a pandemic godsend. Just park the wee ones in front of the TV with this and let them sing until they can't sing anymore. No word yet on whether these come with a pair of noise-cancelling headphones for Mommy's quiet time.

September 4

It's the rare Friday release! It's concert footage of the classic lineup of the B-52s! It's the US Festival! It's only available on DVD!  "The B-52s: Live at US Festival" captures the Athens quintet at the tail end of their (arguably) best era, playing on the Saturday before Labor Day, 1982, in San Bernadino, CA. Shout!'s been releasing sets from US Festival for almost a decade now, and they've always been pretty well produced. If you want to nerd out, think about seeing the lineup from New Wave Day, 1982:

• The Police: I hate them, but they're at the tale end of the "Ghost in the Machine" tour, and they had the horn section from Sugarhill Records backing them
• Talking Heads: on hiatus, but had started recording "Speaking in Tongues" earlier in the summer
• The B-52s: had been touring behind the David Byrne-produced "Mesopotamia" all summer
• Oingo Boingo: "Nothing To Fear" had come out earlier in the summer, and they'd been opening for the Police
• The (English) Beat: "Special Beat Service" marked their 3rd album in five years, and the end of their classic lineup. Shout! put out a release in 2012 of the Beat's 1982 & 1983 sets at US Festival that's worth checking out
• Ramones: were the Ramones ever bad live? I could take or leave the "Subterranean Jungle"-era Ramones, but I dunno if they even played anything off that record, which they wouldn't start recording until December
• Gang of Four: "Songs of the Free" was their first record with Sara Bell on bass...I'm a fan

September 8

I've been hyped for "True History of the Kelly Gang" since seeing the trailer last year. Of course, it got released here in April, which meant I was not going to see it until the Blu-ray came out. This is a more-fictionalized version of the Ned Kelly story, told by Kelly to his (fictional) daughter. Ned Kelly was the subject of the first featuring length film, "The Story of the Kelly Gang" (1906), as well as a Mick Jagger feature AND a Yahoo Serious comedy that I saw in the theatre. The cast is top notch, starring George MacKay from "1917", and featuring the likes of Russell Crowe (fighting 'round the world), Essie Davis ("Mrs. Fisher's Murder Mysteries"), Nicholas Hoult ("About a Boy"), and Charlie Hunnam ("Undeclared"). There's some great Australian history at play, a great Aussie cast, and I hear the action scenes are really well executed. Sign me up for some bush ranging!

September 15

Much like the rest of the world, I really liked 2016's "Your Name" ("君の名は。"). "Your Name" became the highest-grossed anime film of all time, topping "Spirited Away" by $4 million. Writer/director Makoto Shinkai followed that success up with last year's "Weathering With You" ("天気の子"). It looks like it has a lot of the same sort of mood as "Your Name", and is set in the same world and time period as the previous film. So, based on nothing more than reviews at this point, I'd say, if you liked "Your Name", you'll probably like "Weathering With You". GKids is going full out on this release: you can choose from a DVD, a Blu-ray/DVD combo, or a limited edition steelbook Blu-ray/DVD combo. That steelbook also comes with a lithograph of the cover, which is nice. You'll get both the Japanese v.o. and the US dub, which features Lee Pace, Alison Brie, and Riz Ahmed, as well as trailers, interviews with Shinkai, and an overview of his ouevre. All in all, this should be one of the big releases this month.

I have no recollection of "The TV Set" coming out in 2006. While it wasn't a big budget film, it had a director whose work I followed (Jake Kasdan), a cast of people who I've always liked (Sigourney Weaver, David Duchovny, Judy Greer), the involvement of Judd Apatwo, and a plot about creating a TV show. It also came out the year before "Walk Hard: The Dewey Cox Story", one of my favorite comedies of the past twenty years. So why didn't I hear about this until now, when it hits a lot of my sweet spots? Probably because it was put out by TH!NKfilm, the now-defunct NYC distributor also responsible for "Before the Devil Knows You're Dead" and "Encounters at the End of the World". I recall them having really shitty reach; I had to go to DC to see "Encounters", and waited to see "Devil" until it was on DVD. At any rate, this is the reason Shout Select exists: an under-seen movie comes to Blu-ray, with the kind of extras that contextualize the film and give it new life.

September 22

I've lost track of where things lie with GKids reissuing the Studio Ghibli catalog through Shout! Factory. For example, I really thought they'd already put out 2013's "The Wind Rises" ("風立ちぬ"), the film billed as Hayao Miyazaki's retirement film. But I must have confused it with the earlier Disney release. Meh, it happens. At first blush, it looks like a fairly straight-forward reissue of the 2014 Disney release. This Blu-ray/DVD combo comes with the "Behind the Microphone" featurette, feature-length storyboards, trailers and TV spots. Added to this reissue is a new insert, and an episode from the documentary series "Hayao Miyazaki: 10 Years with the Master". The DVD reissue is missing those new extras, so I'd suggest going combo pack for this one.

Speaking of reissues: the first volume of "The Vincent Price Collection" is back! Originally released in 2013, this collected six of Price's American International films on Blu-ray for the first time. Having gone out of print a few years back, the secondary market for this collection has gotten nuts; I've seen it go for anywhere from $135.00 to $350.00. That's just wild. So it's nice to have it available again. The only change is the removal of the Vincent Price introductions from each film; a nice touch, to be sure, but hardly a deal-breaker. Additionally, 1964's "The Masque of the Red Death", previously only available in this set, is now available as a stand-alone Blu-ray. As before, "Masque" comes in both its theatrical version and extended version. Here's hoping that this means we might see additional stand-alone reissues!

September 29

Has it been 20 years since "Thomas and the Magic Railroad" came out in the cinema? It feels like it was only yesterday that we saw Mara Wilson take her final, glorious stroll across the silver screen, opposite the likes of Alec Baldwin, Peter Fonda, and Didi Conn. What a shame that director/creator Britt Allcroft wasn't able to present her original vision. We're now a step closer to realizing that vision, with this wonderful 20th anniversary edition. It's our first chance to see the deleted storylines, to listen to the actors and composer, to relive the glory of the summer of 2000. Were we ever so young?

Shout! Factory released a complete collection of "The Bob Newhart Show" back in 2014; I think I gave it to my then-girlfriend. Now all 142 episodes are being reissued, in all their mid-70s glory. I love listening to Newhart's standup from the early 60's (rediscovered as a result of "The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel"), and I prefer Bob as innkeeper in "Newhart" over Bob as psychologist in "The Bob Newhart Show". But, as far as sitcoms from this era go, it's pretty good...up there with "The Mary Tyler Moore Show".

We end September with the Scream Factory collector's edition of 2002's "Ghost Ship", or, as I never fail to call it, "Ghost Shit". I saw a matinee of this back then, hungover from work the night before and in between a morning and a night class. Everything about this movie feels like a off-brand version of another movie, from the obvious plot influence of "Event Horizon", to the poster almost completely copied from 1980's "Death Ship". The best part of "Ghost Shit" is the totally brutal opening scene; it's all downhill from there, with a cast borrowed from TV casts (AND Gabriel Byrne!). Of course, only Scream Factory could make this worth purchasing, with better extras than a film of this ilk deserves. Having now seen the "Thirteen Ghosts" release from July, I can better understand why Scream brought director Steve Beck's second and final film to Blu-ray.

What have we learned this month? Well, it's to appreciate that they can't ALL be winners. There's an audience for everything here, and it's ok that I'm not it. I'll be grabbing "Weathering With You" and "The History of the Kelly Gang" this month; any of the others can probably wait until a sale or a full-time job. We're back in 30 for more Ghibli steelbooks, Charlie Kaufman's "Adaptation" on Blu-ray, and the long-awaited "Friday the 13th" collection. Be there; aloha.