BIG LOTS, BIGGER DEALS: My Big Lots Closeout DVD Purchases for 08.01.10, PART ONE!!!

I know, I know. Many of you may think you're "too good" for discount store Big Lots. I was once like you, until one day a year or two ago I wandered in and found so many great DVDeals. And while they always had great stuff, for some reason in the past six months, Big Lots' acquisitions have gone from great to insane in the membrane. Insane in the brain, if you will. They are getting real DVDs from real studios and, best of all, all for only three bucks! Here's my haul from this week--feel free to post yours in the comments!



I used to think nothing about buying stacks and stacks of $3 DVDs from Big Lots in one sitting, spending God knows how much inbetween great deals on out of date Capri Suns and Shania Twain cologne, but, recently, I've been leaving with maybe only two or three titles at a time. Not because of financial troubles, mind you, but because the Lots are getting the most mainstream titles possible from Columbia, Paramount and Warner Bros., leaving behind those real cult rarities that made them so awesome to begin with. Gone are the copies of THE HOWLING 3 and LEGEND OF THE CHUPACABRA, replaced with pallets of MUST LOVE DOGS and MONA LISA SMILE. And, while for most people three-buck copies of pseudo-feminist Julia Roberts flicks are a shower-nozzle masturbation fantasy unto itself, but, for me, it's just more money in my pocket to spend elsewhere. Like on tacos. Delicious tacos.

Still, over the past couple of months, I've been able to, on occasion when no one is looking, sink to the bottom of the neatly-packed stacks like a fat kid in a McDonald's Playplace ball-pit, finding a few real treasures, as few and far between as they are. I've bought enough to make a two-part posting, although I doubt most of them will make you all that jealous, like in the past...

* THE 6TH DAY - A fine-enough latter-day Schwarzenegger effort from 2000, made around the time when you could tell that Arnold just kinda gave up on this whole acting thing. END OF DAYS, people? THE 6TH DAY is entertaining but also instantly forgettable. As a matter of fact, I saw this in the theaters and for ten years, erased its existence from my memory, right until I saw this in the BL stacks, when all those memories came rushing back, causing a slight nosebleed. I'm holding it in my hands right this very minute and am still not sure if this is real.

* THE BRADY BUNCH MOVIE - Surprisingly, I didn't own this comedy classic--and, yes, it really is a comedy classic. Some of it is pretty dated, mostly for all the ill-advised grunge-rock music and fashions, but the massage remains the same: by tattling on your friends, you're really just tattling on yourself. And by tattling on your friends, you're just telling them that you're a tattletale. Now is that the tale you want to tell?

* WATERMELON MAN - I miss the old days when race was dealt with head-on, with real humor that wasn't afraid to offend. Try getting SANFORD AND SON on the air today; the NAACP would probably call it a subversive "Tea Party hate-crime" plot! Someone from the Ministry of Entertainment is gonna get fired for that shit! Aside from Redd Foxx, Godfrey Cambridge did a damn good job at making light of whitey in this tripped-out 60s comedy about a stodgy white businessman who wakes up to find himself a total soul brother. The hypocrisy of liberal attitudes are utterly destroyed here, in a way that seems more important today than then. Of course, if it were to be remade today, it would probably be by Tyler Perry and would star Zac Efron. And instead of a black man, he'd be turned into the Easter Bunny. And it would be brought to you by Disney. Soundtrack by Soulja Boy.

* 48 HRS. - Has Nick Nolte always been 65? And drunk? I feel like I need to buy him a fresh pack of Hanes.

* NICOLAS CAGE TRIPLE FEATURE: FACE/OFF / SNAKE EYES / BRINGING OUT THE DEAD - Three of Nick Cage's best works, although, really, how does one honestly choose the "best"? FACE/OFF is a total action classic, SNAKE EYES is a Brian De Palma curiosity that is pretty good, and BRINGING OUT THE DEAD is Scorsese's hilarious attempt at being Oliver Stone, circa U-TURN. CAGE IS FREAKIN' AND TWEAKIN' BRO!

* HEARTBEEPS - Oh, HEARTBEEPS. So maligned, so forgotten. Andy Kaufman and Bernadette Peters "star" as robots finding love and then building a baby robot. I had not seen this since the glory-days of early 80s HBO, and, you know...it's really not all that bad. I actually teared up at one point towards the end. But, yeah, it's also pretty stupid too. So, whatever. Asshole.

* HALF PAST DEAD - Hard to believe, but there was a time when Steven Seagal was a past-his-prime joke. I know. Then, in the early aughts, he released the back-to-back action hits HALF PAST DEAD and EXIT WOUNDS, both of which I saw with Bookgasm's Rod Lott at half-past-filled premiere screenings in the "urban" part of town and had a blast. No, really: there was a drive-by. (For those keeping count, by the way, this is the tenth Seagal flick I've picked up at Big Lots. It's my own private Seagal Superstore!)

* BLACK SNAKE MOAN - Christina Ricci plays half-naked nympho white trash so good that, when you're masturbating to this, you kinda almost forget that she just got raped. Kinda.

* THE NAKED GUN - I think that Big Lots might have gotten this from Canada. Half of everything on the packaging is in French. For example, "Supplements Non Classes" means "Special Features Not Rated" in French. In other words, USA #1!

* STILL CRAZY - One of the finest, yet totally overlooked, rock movies of the past 25 years, made in the wake of the tedious overload of British underdog comedies like THE FULL MONTY. STILL CRAZY got lost and forgotten over the years, which is a shame because this is a fun, funny and touching look at past-their-prime classic rockers, with a killer soundtrack that I need to track down as well. Most of you would probably hate this though.

TO BE CONTINUED...