Once again there’s slim pickings on the first-release movie DVD front. I’ll cover a few, then pad out this column with a few quick TV-on-DVD releases. Has Hollywood become so abysmally dead for material they have to let the small screen supply us with our viewing material? For shame.

Now on DVD:

Empire Falls
Not even a theater-release movie itself, but a TV mini-series first-run movie. At least TV isn’t afraid to put in a sweat. And this movie reminds me distinctly of sweat, salty and unpleasant. Ed Harris plays a character, and this character is surrounded by other characters in this dull and ugly town that’s supposedly charming. Based on a novel, but few would know that since nobody reads anymore. And there’s less and less reason to watch television.

Fever Pitch
Sure, it’s a movie—if you can call this a movie. Jimmy Fallon, the always intolerable Saturday Night Live player, plays an always intolerable Red Sox fan in a story that’s supposed to be cute and funny but is more reminiscent of every scene in every other Farrelly Brothers movie. Ah, the Hollywood star fades so fast. A few years ago they could snap their fingers and get Jim Carrey. Now Jimmy Fallon has to be cajoled into their movies. They traded dick jokes for sentimentality, and made me even more nauseous in the process.

Lost: The Complete First Season
A long-anticipated DVD release of the TV show everybody’s talking about, which is to say, all the creatively dead drones who need something to talk about at work and have to stimulate themselves with the idiot box every night. A group of roughly 50 men and women, about 15 of whom ever get a speaking part, survive a plane crash and land in the middle of a blood-and-guts soap opera. Whoopee. Good idea, let’s turn the bitchy/whiney show Survivor into an even more melodramatic and nonsensical teleplay. Get Lost, and I mean it.

Fraggle Rock: The Complete First Season
At last, one of the most brilliant works of the twentieth century finds its way to the home digital format, where its true genius can be enjoyed in repeated viewings without the loss in quality of analogue formats. Fraggle Rock is an amazing expanding of the boundaries of television and art, both a subversive treatise on the American class structure and an entertaining song-and-dance extravaganza. The Fraggles at first appear a harmless and simple children’s show, but astute viewers who watch things until their eyes blur have uncovered the subtle commentary on wage slavery and the wealthy subsets of our country. I have watched the intricate layers of Fraggle Rock play on each other until comment after comment becomes apparent, until you think, "Can they really get away with saying such a thing on television?" Jim Henson was a true master of political satire, and I don’t doubt Griswald Dreck’s assertion the CIA killed him with a death flu for this witty avant-garde brilliance. I’ll enjoy watching them all again, particularly "You Can’t Do That Without a Hat," where Boober’s missing chapeau allows for a dark and subversive statement on drug addiction.

That’s all for this week’s releases. Until more Fraggle Rock comes along, just keep tolerating the usual garbage that comes rolling out.

August 29, 2005
Holy Toledo, America. I've never been to the place, but it sounds like quite the religious Mecca. What religion? I have no idea, but if it's Ohio, it's probably Shriners. That just seems to fit. Anyway, we're back and black after a wonderful... (8/29/05)

August 22, 2005
Greetings, sub-middle America. The healthy computer-glow tan I received over my vacation reminds me that I wasn't around to comment on the recent box office failure of The Island. I would gloat until the cows came home, then chop them into... (8/22/05)

July 11, 2005
Stop the madness, America! Sorry, I thought that might be the secret cure for mental illness that has been eluding us all these eons. But I can see from my window that guy in the beekeeper outfit is still panhandling outside, so apparently my... (7/11/05)

July 4, 2005
Here’s the choice: Get out of the house for a while and see an appallingly awful action movie, or stay at home and watch some hideous 6-month-old pretentious Oscar-contenders. Either way, you lose, but your expenses are reduced when you suffer in... (7/4/05)