Hey, it's not like I do this by popular demand--my weekly rundown of new DVD releases are, according to my stats, among my least-read posts--but it's a tradition, dammit, so here goes:
The good folks from The Criterion Collection continue their invaluable series of Jules Dassin noirs with the tough-as-nails prison epic Brute Force, in which Burt Lancaster practically burns a hole in the screen--a great movie star who was also a great actor.
Also, another of my personal DVD prayers has been answered with the release--finally!--of Robert Altman's Thieves Like Us, a thirties gangster saga with a solid, unsentimental script, great performances by Shelley Duvall, Keith Carradine and John Schuck, and peerless direction from Altman--it's one of the few movies well loved by people who normally hate his stuff.
And finally, Not Just the Best Of the Larry Sanders Show collects various episodes from the entire run of Garry Shandling's brilliant comedy/tragedy, as fine a show as ever broadcast on television, and ladles on the extras to give a real sense of what it was like to work on this series--apparently, showbiz is as hellish in real life as it was on the show.
That's it, unless you care about the second season of Mork And Mindy. If you want to see the origins of Robin Williams' loveable manchild persona, this would be the place to start. Then afterwards, pound your head with a hammer until you forget everything you've seen.
