Spectacles

The Right Spectacle - The Very Best of Elvis Costello
$19.98
I picked this up used at a record show this weekend for $8. I haven't even watched it all the way through yet and already I feel like I scored a tremendous bargain!

I am very appreciative of EC but not one of your obsessive fans. Even so, I enjoyed watching the many videos I'd never seen before, along with Elvis' written commentary appearing as subtitles. I can't wait to watch it again with the audio commentary.

The negative comments I've read in other reviews about the audio and video quality are valid (there are hundreds of other crappy Eighties videos airing daily on VH1 with the same issues), but these issues are not so distracting as to make the videos unwatchable.

Buy it new and it's a good value. Buy it used and it's the steal of the century ...

Elvis Costello: Spectacle - Season One [Blu-ray]
$69.95

Smiles & Spectacles - The Harold Lloyd Treasury
$19.98
I like Harold Lloyd, and this DVD has some very good material. However, the cover shows a scene from Safety Last (where he is hanging from the clock) and that movie is not part of this 5-DVD set.

Stage and Spectacle - Three Films by Jean Renoir (The Golden Coach / French Cancan / Elena and Her Men) - Criterion Collection
$79.95
After the constraints of the US studio system, Renoir returns to France and more freedom. But this collection, while interesting for Renoir fans in showing his movement away from 'realism' and towards more and more theatricality, is uneven. In 'Elena', even Ingrid Bergman can't save the clunky, predictable plot and the rather crass humour. 'The Golden Coach' pushes theatricality to the limit and becomes almost hysterical. The gem in the collection - and that which makes it worth acquiring - is 'French Can Can'. It too is a kind of fairy tale, but absolutely coherent and contained within its own terms. There's a toughness, even a cynicism, under the sentiment and tenderness. The frame is busy, filled with detail and life and sexiness - and Jean Gabin (France's Spencer Tracy) is as charming as ever.