This week and last week in DVD

Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows Part 1: I'm still two movies behind on this franchise, but I feel better about that when I think that I'm still ALL books behind. If I start reading them now, maybe I can catch up by the time the movie comes out. Or I could take them TO the last movie, which I'm sure will be long enough for me to plow through a few thousand pages/

Country Strong: Gwyneth Paltrow, not content to be a mere actress/lifestyle expert/pop singer, adds COUNTRY CHANTEUSE to her resume. Is there anything Gwynnie can't do...other than win an invite to a Mayberry marathon at Rancho Yesteryear?

The King's Speech: You know, I JUST realized that the title is a pun in that ol' Kingy has to give a speech, but the movie is also about his speech impediment. I'd like to think part of me realized that all along on some level, but still, bear that in mind as you read my opinions on these movies.

The Way Back: Colin Farrell, Ed Harris and friends escape a gulag and walk a long, long way to freedom. OK, so let me see. It's called "The Way Back" because...it's a backbreaking task to walk thousands of miles? Or because they are...going back? Uh, what about "Way?" Let me see, the trip "weighs" heavily on them? OK, I'm stumped. I just can't figure out the pun in this title.

Gulliver's Travels: Jack Black is a guy who goes to a land of little people and towers over the population as a giant. Kind of like the opposite of his career path lately.

Rabbit Hole: Ncioe Kidman and Aaron Eckhart grieve over the loss of their young son in what sounds like the most depressing release of 2010...except maybe "MacGruber." Seriously, that got made?

Car 54 Where Are You Season 1: I talked about the sillier aspects of this release last week, but for now let me praise the show itself, an underrated classic that merits a spot in any classic TV lover's library.

Definitive Tracy/Hepburn Collection: A lot of the same stuff you've already seen, plus a few new-to-DVD to rook you into buying the whole big set. This is typical, Warner Brothers! Talk about the definitive GREED of a company! I mean, making fans buy--

What? You can buy "Keeper of the Flame" and "Sea of Grass" separately? You DON'T have to buy the whole set and endure multiple double-dips to get them?

Never mind.

Bob Hope Collection II: Shout Factory delivers another set of Hope's films, and these ones are clearly in the "less-beloved" part of the ledger, but that's no excuse for Shout to issue cropped versions of widescreen films, as an Amazon review indicates. I don't want to get ahead of myself like on that Hepburn and Tracy thing, but considering Volume ONE had issues, too, I am inclined to trust this review.

Jews and Baseball: What a great title. Add "egg creams" and t would be, like, Larry King's dream documentary. Seriously, though, I saw this on PBS a few weeks ago, and, uh, it lived up to its title. It's a cool flick.

Ernie Kovacs Collection: Big box set of TV pioneer Kovacs' work from the Golden Age of Television (or thereabouts). When I say it's too rich for my blood right now, it doesn't mean that this fantastic-looking set isn't worth the hefty price tag. It just means I have a family and a mortgage. But, yeah, it is pretty expensive--50 bucks at Amazon, 55 plus shipping direct from Shout if you want an exclusive bonus disc.

My wife reads "People" so you don't have to: Sweet Valley update

"People" spotlights "Sweet Valley Confidential" as its "Buzz Book" in the book section of its April 18 issue, and if you think I'm going to mock that selection, well, you're wrong. I mean, give "People" credit for even having a book section, and besides, a lot of its readers may well be interested in what the "Sweet Valley High" twins are up to in this "series reboot" from author Francine Pascal.

(Before you ask, I have no vested interest in the franchise. I had a passing familiarity with the series through my little sisters...and of course the haunting theme song to the TV series).

What amuses me is the way the mag summarizes how the characters have changed, in a paragraph titled..."How They've Changed":

They're on Facebook and listen to Beyonce.

Is this all it takes to denote "modern women" these days? Perhaps this is just "People's" shorthand speaking and not an accurate reflection of how Pascal has updated her characters, but I don't know, that sounds a little shallow and generic. I just had to laugh at the thought of an author hunched over her keyboard, straining to connect with today's 27-year-old and reconcile who her famous twins should be with her readers' conceptions of who they were. "I got it! They listen to Beyonce! And they'll use Facebook a lot!"

Then, in the paragraph titled "Should You Read It," "People's" Clarissa Cruz writes:

"Sweet Valley Confidential" is poorly written and out of touch...and the characters have gotten even more oblivious and superficial with age. But if you once devoured "Sweet Valley" books like bonbons, it's a confection you won't be able to resist."

Hmm. Sounds an awful lot to me like, "If you're still lightweight enough to have read the lightweight stuff you read as a teen, you'll eat this up. " Maybe "People" isn't as benevolent to its audience as I thought.

Oh, and elsewhere in this issue, we learn Sacha Baron Cohen and Isla Fisher attended Reese Witherspoon's wedding. Why? I don't know. "People" can't answer everything for you, you know. Sometimes you gotta do a little research yourself.

The shocking final season of "Hazel"

Well, it's shocking to ME to see good ol' domestic engineer extraordinaire Hazel serving someone other than the Baxters. Oh, they call themselves "the Baxters," this 3-piece family Hazel and Harold move in with for the series' fifth and final season, but they are a weak substitute for the real deal, George, AKA Mr. B; and Dorothy, AKA Missy.

As Antenna TV winds up its first complete cycle of the series, I think it's fair to say that fifth season ain't getting any better. I've seen a good batch of these episodes, and while I enjoy them because it's still Hazel and because I've never seen them before, it just isn't the same. I find myself watching Mr. B's brother Steve, his wife Barbara, and their non-entity daughter Susie, and demanding the return of MY Baxters.

Susie is not the problem, as she means very little one way or the other, though in one episode I saw, she was terrorizing the family cat, wrecking Hazel's meals, and generally showing signs of a budding young sociopath. As for the women of the show, well, Lynn Borden as Barbara is gorgeous; Whitney Blake as Dorothy is...Meredith Baxter's mom. Fact is, the show never gave Dorothy much that was interesting to do, so she isn't conspicuous by her absence.

The REAL loss of season 5 is, of course, Mr. B. Nobody does "taken aback" like Don DeFore, and his quiet exasperation at Hazel's antics led to a handful of great sitcom actor "takes" in every single episode. As Steve Baxter, Ray Fulmer has a pleasant enough Dick-Sargentesque presence, but compared to DeFore he is--forgive me--a scrub.

One of the worst things about the "transition" from season 4 to season 5 is that the Baxters (the real ones, that is) leave off camera, and it's left to Hazel to tell the audience, via a convo with her busybody friend Rosie, what happened to force this jarring change. It's kind of funny, actually, because one by one, the two Sunshine Girl cohorts cover just about all the questions the audience has about what's going on. I know because my wife sat down with me to watch this one, and when I told her what was going to happen, she started peppering me with queries. I'm not saying Hazel answers them in a satisfying way, but she does answer them.

George and Dorothy, we learn, went to the Middle East for business. As far as Hazel knows (or is willing to tell Rosie), Mr. B is doing big-shot corporate lawyer stuff, blah blah blah. Personally, I believe he is conducting covert ops for a quasi-governmental "security" organization, which explains why he leaves the States so quickly and ditches his son. Ostensibly, Harold stays behind to "finish his schooling," and I realize American-style schooling may not have been as sophisticated in the 1960s as it is today, but still...COME ON! Harold's not in some kind of fast-track advanced college prep system, and he's not exactly Albert Einstein, besides, so one wonders why the Baxters are so eager to strand him in the USA. Perhaps after years of sharing living quarters with an inquisitive boy and an intrusive maid, George and Dorothy just want a little "us" time. Mr. B, you DOG, you!

For her part, Hazel stays behind because she can't bear to leave little Harold...or the Baxters threatened to auction her to a decrepit emir's harem if she tagged along, take your pick. Now, after hours of research at the Paley Center and the Library of Congress (not really, but that sounds better than "I looked at an online message board), I have discovered that behind the scenes, the Baxters were basically canned for financial reasons, and Shirley Booth soldiered on for this one last year before ending the show due to her own declining health. Even in season 5, we see an attempt to shift attention to some other characters, and we see less of Hazel's superhuman feats of skill, like kicking a football or bashing a gangster over the head with a frying pan.

This all makes more sense than the notion that someone thought it was a good idea creatively to replace DeFore and Blake, or that Booth pulled a power play and replaced them with some nonthreatening, less interesting players. Looks like it was just one of those stupid decisions. CBS did get one more season out of "Hazel," and because of Booth's health, any more would have been unlikely, anyway. That fifth season is easily the weakest, but it's worth a look just for the novelty value.

The unrecognizable Ann Jillian (only recognizable because I saw her in the cast listing) has a regular role, too, as realtor Steve's secretary. George's annoying sister shows up again as a foil for Hazel, too, which points out one of the show's problems at this point: The chemistry between Hazel and Steve just isn't there, which is of course in stark contrast to the Hazel/George relationship which drives previous seasons. There is a half-hearted attempt early on to position Steve Baxter as someone who will go toe to toe with Hazel, or at least try to, but predictably he fails, and Hazel soon becomes "one of the family." This was true with Mr. B, too, and no one ever really thought the two were truly at each other's throats, but at least they went through the motions and enjoyed playing the game. Steve isn't even in the same league.

So without DeFore, without even the way-overexposed Mr. Griffin, season 5 strains to provide that ol' Hazel magic. It's probably best that it's the last season. I would like to see a sixth season in which Mr. B dramatically returns and announces the family must go underground to avoid a congressional subpoena, but that will have to remain a figment of my imagination.

Brooks on Books: "The Bad Guys Won" by Jeff Pearlman

The Bad Guys Won by Jeff Pearlman: Pearlman tells the story of the world champion 1986 new York Mets, and he tells it with gusto. The Mets were a hard-drinking, hard-partying, even hard-drugging team that spent the whole season backing up its swagger. In other words, yeah, the bad guys won, thanks in part (but by no means BECAUSE of--don't forget the wild pitch, folks, and besides, it was game 6, not game 7) Bill Buckner's infamous mishandling of Mookie Wilson's grounder to first.

There is soooo much more to that '86 season than even that notable World Series, though, like the classic NLCS showdown with the Astros, who featured dominant scuffballer Mike Scott and were really in the Mets' heads. Speaking of Houston, there was a scuffle several players had with cops at an area bar during the season. There was the idiocy of the "Let's Go, Mets Go" video. There were brawls, pranks, home runs, strikeouts, and all kinds of action on and off the field. Pearlman focuses on the off the field stuff, and he produces a wild, often hilarious book.

One thing must be said about the author: He's a complete wise ass, and I don't mean that in a negative way. The whole book is written in a tone that isn't exactly confrontational, but which certainly makes no excuses for this team of characters. Pearlman's prose is biting, and his comments sharp, but he backs up his tone with the incredible stories he offers. If you're expecting a scholarly, detached tome summarizing the '86 Mets, look elsewhere; if you relish the idea of a guy clearly having fun while recounting the wild times of a chaotic club, here you go.

I was a Mets fan back then. In my defense, I grew up on steady helpings of Yankees and Mets games on TV in addition to my beloved Pirates, so I pretty much rooted for the teams I saw all the time (Thank goodness we didn't get TBS in my area until later). Plus this team was exciting, colorful, and fun to watch. Pearlman's account does the '86 Mets justice. He doesn't try to reinvent the slider or anything. His narrative is a fairly straightforward chronological telling of the season, with appropriate sidebars when necessary to fill in some info. Fans will love this book, and by now it's hardly news that the team had some miscreants, so they needn't worry about having their innocence shattered. Non-Mets fans should enjoy laughing with Pearlman unless they hate the team so much they can't stand to even read such a cynical book about them.

UPDATES on previous posts

To get maximum enjoyment out of this post, each time you see the word "UPDATE," please read it out loud the way Dennis Farina barked "UPDATE" for the added material he recorded to tack onto older segments during his "Unsolved Mysteries" reboot.

UPDATE Antenna TV will indeed bring out those older shows: A lot of us classic TV lovers, jaded by the shabby treatment given us by TV Land, felt queasy when Antenna launched without some of the true rarities that had been promised as part of the initial lineup. Well, the ever-informative Pavan of the indispensable Sitcoms Online news blog reported last week that "Burns and Allen," "Circus Boy," "The Iron Horse," and "Rin Tin Tin" really are coming at the end of May, along with more recent/less rare additions "Soap" and "Mad About You."

Pavan reported this on the site's message boards with maybe a wee bit of unseemly self-satisfaction, especially considering us skeptics weren't doubting HIS integrity so much as Antenna's genuine commitment to showing the rare and vintage. I don't think it's an unreasonable approach to say "we'll wait and see" with regards to this programming service, especially given that it is showing edited episodes of everything. Still, thanks to Sitcoms Online for setting the record straight, and thanks to Antenna for freshening its lineup without dumping anything of consequence ("The Nanny" will not be missed in my household). There are a lot of changes, though, and "Hazel" is getting booted to the wee hours, but, hey, change isn't always a bad thing, and "Hazel" is on the verge of completing a full run in the next few days or so.

The only disappointing aspect of this news is that we still have to wait for "Farmer's Daughter" and "Ford Theatre," two other shows postponed from that January launch--the two I may have been most excited to see. Antenna assures us they are coming as soon as they get usable tapes from Sony, and I will say this news certainly gives me confidence that they mean it. We'll just have to wait.

UPDATE RTV's Facebook page is back up: Well, not exactly "back up," as the old one was nuked and replaced with a new one. A few weeks back, I speculated that the demise of the network's Facebook outpost was due to company incompetence, but RTV reports it was a Facebook screw-up. Hmm, very strange. But I owe RTV an apology, and I welcome them back to social media.

Unfortunately, I'm not linking to the new Facebook page because...I can't find the damn thing! It may well still be there, but I spent 5 minutes hunting for it without success, and since that's about 4 minutes 57 seconds longer than it should take to locate a page for a major media company, I'm wondering if there are some kind of shenanigans occurring again. But I DID see it last week. Honest, I did.

***UPDATE to the UPDATE: A kind soul provided the link in the comments below, and kinder yet, did not add, "How could you have not found this, you idjit?" So thanks to that individual, and in case someone sees this post but not that comment, click here to get to the new, still somewhat undertrafficked RTV Facebook page.

Oh, and my local RTV affiliate carried the same schedule over to the second quarter, meaning no "Kojak." I don't hear any word about RTV freshening up its offerings, either.

UPDATE Not exactly an update to a previous post, but an update to a post I didn't actually produce: Ivan at Thrilling Days of Yesteryear wrote an entertaining review of "Sing and Like It," a fun little picture recently screened on TCM. I had thought about writing something about the movie myself, but Ivan did it first and surely better, and you should go read it if you haven't yet done so.

All I'll add is that any film with Nat Pendelton, Ned Sparks, John Qualen, and Edward Everett Horton is a must-see in my book, and that while I don't want to condone the roughing around of Pert Kelton performed by Pendelton's character, Pert IS tougher than the Saturday "Times" crossword in this movie and is even more menacing than he is.

UPDATE Budget DVD Theater to return to Cultureshark after all?: I'm almost too embarrassed to bring this up (and notice I'm burying it at the bottom of a lengthy post), but, uh, remember around the holidays--sadly, I don't mean St. Patrick's Day, either--when I touted the return of the occasional Budget DVD Theater feature with a fresh look at one of the worst things I had ever seen?

Well, it's been a while, yes, and I've been busy, but I DID see the material in question. Odd thing was, it wasn't nearly as bad as I remembered. Oh, it wasn't great, but I found myself kind of understanding what it was going for and appreciating it on some level. So this kind of killed my enthusiasm for writing about it because, hey, if you can't go on your blog and make bitchy comments about something, what's the use, right?

But I do feel the need to revisit it at some point, and now that the second little shark in the family is getting older and life is getting a bit more routine at Cultureshark Tower, I do intend to bring back the feature. Uh, no promises as to when, though.

Car 54, Which Episode Are You?

I'm not sure why this story on TV Shows on DVD amuses me so much. I think it's just a general sense that it seems so...unprofessional for a company to do business like this.

I'm happy that Shanachie Entertainment is giving us Nat Hiken's great "Car 54, Where Are You?" on DVD, with apparently uncut episodes, and I hope to upgrade my *ahem* set, but there is at least one odd thing about this week's season 1 release. The episodes are arranged in neither production order, nor airdate order, but, according to this news item, in order of "popularity," this after supposed consultation with "historians and buffs" yielded the opinion that that would be the "most attractive presentation."

First of all, in order of popularity? This isn't choosing sides in junior high dodgeball, it's producing a DVD set of a television program. Once someone owns the discs, they can program them in any order they wish, so why predetermine it for them? Just put them on in some coherent arrangement, like, you know, 99% of other complete TV season sets.

Besides, this is an old show that hasn't been in heavy circulation lately, and how many people are able to rank the episodes, anyway? So not only is the idea itself silly, but the execution is surely suspect.

I'm curious to know who the historians and buffs are who told Shanachie, "Ooh! Ooh! Let's put them in order of popularity!" One would think most of those individuals would want some kind of semblance of historical accuracy in the presentation of the shows.

Even if it is a more "attractive" presentation this way, what exactly is the harm in presenting the episodes in chronological order? Like someone who makes the effort to find and purchase this set is going to open it up, put in the first disc, and go, "Hey, these aren't the best episodes! I'm taking this thing back." And it's not like the earliest episodes stink or anything. They're really funny!

I'm glad this company produced this set, and I hope season 2 makes it out as promised, but this decision, while admittedly not the biggest deal in the world, all things considered, is baffling.