More sad news from Hollywood – Lauren Bacall has died at the grand age of 89. While she will be mostly remembered by her professional and private partnership with Humphrey Bogart, she had a very distinguished film career in her later life and was even active until shortly before she passed away. She was an actress with attitude and never held back when it came to voice her opinions. Read the Guardian Obituary all the way to the end for a lovely anecdote about her feelings for the modern film industry.

Lauren Bacall presenting the murder weapon in Sidney Lumet’s Murder on the Orient Express in 1974.

Yesterday, the incredibly sad news that Robin Williams had died made the rounds. He apparently took his own life in a battle against depression, but this is not a time to talk about his death, but about how much joy and laughter he created. He was such a brilliant comedian, but also a very serious character actor, although he will mostly be remembered for his completely out-of-the-world improvisation skills. As a guest on television shows, he regularly had his hosts in stitches like in this 2002 interview with Michael Parkinson and his regular and almost anarchic visits to the Daily Show had similar effects on Jon Stewart. I could go on and on, but The Guardian has a wonderful obituary with a few additional articles about him very much worth reading. Robin Williams was one in a million, there will never be anyone like him again!

Robin Williams letting it rip in Terry Gilliam’s The Adventures of Baron Münchhausen

It was just one year ago when the first glimpse of the new incarnation of Carl Sagan’s Cosmos, now called Cosmos – A Spacetime Odyssey was revealed to the public – now, the series has not only been completed, but also broadcast and released on home video. Initially, I was not even sure if I could afford the DVD set, but then the price finally dropped and I was not able to resist importing the Region 1 release. The series is every bit as amazing as its predecessor and Neil deGrasse Tyson was a brilliant choice for the new host walking in the footsteps of the late Carl Sagan. Even the involvement of Fox has not hurt the series and the studio has also put together a solid home video release containing not only the complete episodes, but also some very worthwhile extras. Today’s article is first and foremost a long, in-depth review of the series itself, but I also have the usual look at the excellent DVD release itself.

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In between writing something new, I finally did what I should have done a long time ago: to prepare a new Review Index with only the English-language articles in it. I replaced the older index, which I had not updated for over a year, with it, but still left a link to the original. This is just a quick fix to end the chaos of the old index, but in the future there will be three lists: the master index with the English reviews, a legacy list of the German reviews and a third index of all the DVDs in my collection, the latter two for requesting purposes. At the moment, there are “only” 44 reviews in the new main index, but I hope to write slowly, but steadily more. If anyone has requests for unreviewed discs or untranslated reviews, I’d like to hear them! You can always contact me here in the comments, via Email or over on Google+, Twitter or Facebook.

So, in lieu of any actually new reviews, please accept this index as proof that DVDLog isn’t dead yet! Two brand-new reviews are in the making, but judging from the extremely warm weather coming in the next days, they are still going to take a while – one of the discs hasn’t even arrived here yet!

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Originally intended as a direct followup to last month’s Towel Day posting about the original television series, it’s better late than never with today’s article about The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy in its 2005 cinema incarnation. Completed four years after Douglas Adams had passed away, it was still very much a creation of its original author with a passionate crew of filmmakers and actors brilliantly succeeding in making not only a movie, but also a loving memorial. Sadly, the quirky humour and its utter Britishness failed to impress many viewers unfamiliar to Douglas Adams’ work and while the movie managed to financially break even, its success was so minimal that a sequel was never made – but it stands well enough on its own. Today’s review tells the story how the movie came about in a translated, expanded and improved version of an earlier German article.

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Today is Towel Day, the annual rememberance of Douglas Adams and his Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy in its multiple incarnations. Because I certainly know where my towel is, I finally managed to translate and improve my original article about the original 1981 television series, which was based not on the books, but actually on the radio series. It might be corny and low-budget over thirty years later, but next to the radio play and the 2005 movie, it remains simply the best and most original incarnation of Douglas Adams’ story until today. Watch the earth get blown up with Arthur Dent and Ford Prefect making a narrow escape! Vogon poetry reading! Space battles! Two-headed presidents on the run from the law! Listen to Marvin, the depressed robot argue with a smug talking door! All lovingly restored with many interesting extras on DVD from the BBC and even though the release is already twelve years old, it’s still the best way to watch the series. Read all about the beginnings of the Hitchhiker’s Guide and the creation of the radio play and television series in today’s article.

Continue to The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy Review »
Bonus Youtube Link: Douglas Adams on the South Bank Show »
Bonus Youtube Douglas Adams Playlist » from my Towel Day posting on the other blog.

I have not written anythingabout the new incarnation of Cosmos with Neil deGrasse Tyson here, because I am technically not allowed to watch it yet from Germany. What I can carefully say is that I have been able to see a couple of episodes and it’s really great, but different than Carl Sagan’s original series from 1980. I was somewhat reluctant to announce the North American home video release coming on June 10th  because Amazon.com had initially listed disappointingly high prices, but at the moment you can get the DVD for $24.99 and the Blu-Ray for $29.99, which is really reasonable for a 4-disc set. The release actually comes just two days after the broadcast of the final episode and according to The Digital Bits, there are some cool extras like a making-of documentary, archive material about Carl Sagan and even an audio commentary on the first episode, so these are definitively worth buying even if you have seen the series previously on television!

Who is the better Sherlock Holmes? In the 1980s, two of the four full-length novels by Arthur Conan Doyle about the victorian master detective were adapted in two very different ways, each with its own strengths and weaknesses. The Sign of Four was one of the two stories which had been filmed both with Ian Richardson in 1983 and with Jeremy Brett in 1987 – the latter was made for the 100th anniversary of the first short story publication, while the former actually preceded the Granada series. The fascinating story of both movies and how they are related to each other is part of today’s double review, which is actually more about the movies themselves than the admittedly not very exciting, but still absolutely watchable DVD releases. Both articles are improved and expanded from my previous German versions.

Continue to The Sign of Four (Jeremy Brett) »
Continue to The Sign of Four (Ian Richardson) »

Is Sherlock Holmes still fit for modern television? This was the question in the late 1980s and early 1990s, when Granada continued to produce its amazing adaptations of Arthur Conan Doyle’s novels with the brilliant Jeremy Brett in the title role. Despite several problems including the failing health of the lead actor, the last twelve episodes with the collective titles The Case-Book and The Memoirs of Sherlock Holmes brought the adventures of the master detective magnificently to life and although they could not quite reach the brilliance of the earlier episodes, they were a wonderful finale to series. In Germany, these last episodes had never been broadcast on television until 2009, when Koch Media had commissioned a German dub and finally released them on DVD four years after the previous boxset. Today’s review is based on my earlier German article about the Koch Media boxset, but also concludes the three-part collection of posts about the series itself, which will be followed with more detailed reviews about the Granada feature films soon.

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Each year around this time I try to post a somewhat vaguely Easter-related review, but this year I have nothing new written or translated, so I’ll just do a rerun: Last year I posted an updated and translated article about Who Framed Roger Rabbit, which is not exactly Easter material, but has a certain cartoon bunny as its star. It’s also not typical Disney stuff, instead the story is more a satirical and even cynical take on the whole cartoon film industry paired with a hard-boiled 1940s film noir thriller. It was also a brilliant technical achievement, seamlessly blending animated characters and scenery with real footage, all done without the help of computers. While the DVD is now over ten years old, it’s still amazing in quality and content and since last year the movie is also available on Blu-Ray with all the great extras from this old Vista Series release.

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