Monday, October 26, 2009

"Recent" DVD releases

It's hard to believe that it's been more than two months since my last update. The time has flown by. Between classwork and house work, it's been busy here.

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They're going to take away my DVD Guru status because for most of this year I haven't been keeping up with the new releases the way I used to. I check with the usual sources every so often and I've seen some surprises (this post has been in draft stage since June...).

At the end of April this year, the 1971 film Johnny Got His Gun was finally released on DVD, another of my Most Wanted discs. I never saw this on TV and didn't know anything about the movie or the novel. My first introduction to it was the surreal and disturbing scenes included in Metallica's video for "One", as Glenn Erickson mentions in the review linked above.

I had always admired Dalton Trumbo for his stand against the Hollywood blacklist and his work on Spartacus. Seeing the fever-dream images from "One" sparked my curiousity, but the lack of a legal release (or even a readily-available bootleg) had kept me from seeing Johnny Got His Gun all these years. I'm glad someone made the decision to approve this release. I'll have to be in the right mood to watch it, though -- it certainly isn't a feel-good movie.

More DVD news soon!

1 comment:

miakoda said...

I'd never heard of this one, but yes, it does sound like it just keeps meandering down that "downer" trail... That idea of being trapped in a nonfunctional body has always terrified me. Still, I'm intrigued by the descriptions of the photography and acting. Thanks for the link.