DVD Afternoon Podcast #75: Dumb Lawn Jokes

Achieving success at the Sundance Film Festival and winning the Oscar for Best Foreign Language Film: if you want to make sure that critics will look at your movie with suspicion, these are the two most reliable ways to do it. I know that I had my doubts about the two films Heather Noel and I had decided to review on this week's DVD Afternoon podcast—the Will Ferrell dramedy Everything Must Go (based on a short story by Raymond Carver!), and Susanne Bier's First World/Third World melodrama In a Better World—and I think Heather probably had her doubts about them as well.

But surprise, surprise! Both films got a much friendlier reception than you might expect, undoubtedly throwing off DVD Afternoon office pools across the nation. In other contrarian news, we even start off the show by finding some nice things to say about Blockbuster Video and George Lucas' continued tinkering with his Star Wars films. Plus: I contribute a (probably overly forgiving) review of the straight-to-DVD David Hyde Pierce thriller The Perfect Host, and in our weekly roundup of notable new DVDs and Blu-Rays, Heather and I each select a different Brian De Palma movie as our "disc of the week."

Here's the episode breakdown:

0:00 — Intro/Blockbuster bites the dust/George Lucas: "Nooooooo!"/The Perfect Host

14:22 — John Williams, "Cantina Band"

14:59 — Everything Must Go

27:45 — The Mountain Goats, "Estate Sale Sign"

28:40 — In a Better World

41:49 — Clem Snide, "Better"

42:49 — Other noteworthy new DVDs and Blu-Rays/Outro

You can subscribe to DVD Afternoon through iTunes, or you can download this week's episode directly by clicking here.

And if you'd like to comment on the show, respond to our reviews, or suggest other movies for Heather and me to talk about on the air, you can reach us at dvdafternoon [at] gmail [dot] com. Next week, we'll be reviewing two of the year's most critically acclaimed films: Abbas Kiarostami's cerebral car-trip flick Certified Copy and Kelly Reichardt's neorealist western Meek's Cutoff. If you've seen either of those films and want to send us your thoughts about them, or if you'd like to add to our discussion of Everything Must Go or In a Better World, we'd love to hear your thoughts (and possibly read them on-air).