I’ve been watching a lot of stuff on DVD since Christmas, got the Jeeves and Wooster and Blackadder complete box sets for Christmas, thanks Mom. I’ve just barely cracked into them so far. I’ve been distracted by a little four dollar treat from the Great Escape. It’s one of those multi disc el-cheap-o packages of mostly public domain movies. This one has twenty movies that have some, sometimes quite slight, connection to racing, or cars. They are all B level or worse films but they are all pretty interesting for one reason or another. The older ones have plots of varying levels of ridiculousness and tons of stock footage, one even has some glorious clips of European Grand Prix racing. The real jewels though are three movies made in the seventies. One biopic of Richard Petty starring Richard Petty, he’s not bad actually, and the dad from The Christmas Story playing Lee Petty, There’s some fun car chases with vintage iron and seventies NASCAR racing. Then there is the sublimely bad, a movie about a couple of dope smugglers and one about the most unlikely California Highway patrolman turned repo men you can imagine. They make Cannonball run look like Citizen Kane. What’s cool about them though is that they got made at all. You can just imagine the filmmakers hitting up their families and friends for money and maxing out credit cards to finish the things. The scripts and acting are pitiful but they still manage to put up some interesting car chases.

Then there is another movie that I just got my hands on Monday. I couldn’t watch it Monday night, I had to watch something to review for Cinegeek Monday night so I didn’t get to watch it till Tuesday, but I’ve seen it three times since then and I didn’t get in till about two am last night. It’s Gran Torino Clint Eastwood’s latest movie. It is amazing. A perfect movie. When you get a chance you have to see it. I’m not saying anything else about it so I don’t ruin it for you, if that that’s possible, but it is fantastic.

Well I got just enough time to get this posted and then get cleaned up to meet some friends for lunch so I’ll cut this off for now.

Happy New Year everybody.

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