The four volumes of “Fun With Shorts” are now available for purchase once again! Details on the DVDs page.

For the past few years I’ve sold Fun With Shorts DVDs out of my bedroom, burning, printing, and mailing them on demand. It suited me well at first, but as orders have increased and I’ve gotten busier it’s become a bit of a burden. And I think I spend more on ink and labels than I could ever hope to make from sales.

So I am no longer selling DVDs the old way. I am working with CreateSpace – an Amazon.com self-publishing company – to offer online sales that I won’t have to fulfill myself. I hope these will be available sometime in January. They will cost a tiny bit more (about $13), but they will be more attractively printed and packaged, and they will be a heck of a lot easier for me to deal with. They’ll be listed in the Amazon store, which sounds cool, but Amazon takes a HUGE cut of the sales. When the time comes, I’ll suggest that interested buyers use the CreateSpace store, as their revenue sharing is much more reasonable.

Lastly, I’ll be adding a new title to my DVD offerings: Voyage to the Prehistoric Planet (which is currently available at Rifftrax.com as a download) plus the short “Toward Emotional Maturity.”

In the past week I’ve watched a slew of DVDs of films I wished I’d seen in theaters last year. Most of them lived up to or exceeded their hype.

Pan’s Labyrinth

Guillermo Del Toro’s shocking and beautiful Pan’s Labyrinth is probably my favorite of this batch. Such a haunting, engrossing, tragic movie. It feels small and intimate and personal despite the fact that it tells a rather large story and features such spectacular fantasy elements.

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It’s getting very hard to defend the growing pile of crap films on top of my filing cabinet. I’m in this RiffTrax thing for the long haul, but I’ve found myself thinking how embarrassed I’d be if someone broke into my house and saw these.

Some really great DVD sets have come out in the last week or so that I’d be remiss not to mention. Fox has released The Simpsons Season Eight, which is possibly the greatest season the show has ever had (and was also one of the very last great seasons in many fans’ estimations, as the show is generally regarded as having gone downhill in the tenth season). This set contains some of the very greatest episodes of the show (EVER), including: 

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While many web sites and organizations hand out DVD awards and post “10 Best” lists around this time of year, I thought I’d offer up my list of the ten most significant events to take place on and around DVD video this past year.

10. Mike Nelson’s commentaries on Legend DVDs
Legend Films was both very naughty and very nice in ‘04. First they desecrated some classic films by colorizing them (the cinematic equivalent of crumpling something up and peeing on it), then they cancelled out that evil by recording audio commentaries with Mike Nelson (former head writer and host of Mystery Science Theater 3000).

Mike’s hilarious ramblings make Legend’s releases of Reefer Madness, Carnival of Souls, and Night of the Living Dead must-own titles for MSTies. Highlights include Mike’s weak defense of the church group responsible for Reefer Madness and his detailed account of how to mix a drink called the Zombie during the more boring passages of NOTLD.

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No time for a charming introduction! Too many DVDs! Must begin!

Reefer Madness: Special “Addiction”

The Movie
Tell your children! “Reefer Madness” is the most important film you and your family will ever see. No film has been more daring, more honest, more vital to your success as a human being. Except maybe “Brewster’s Millions.”

“Reefer Madness” is a 1938 attempt by a well-intentioned church group to scare American teens away from marijuana. The result is one of the most misguided, overblown, campy and hilarious pieces of propaganda ever to grace our nation’s screens.

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