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Welcome to How to Spend $20, BOP’s look at the latest Blu-ray discs and DVDs to hit stores nationwide. This week: Leonardo DiCaprio lays on the beach, Shrek travels in time and Steve Carell makes breakfast in four hours or less.

Pick of the Week

For people who own totems: Inception

A rare thing happened for me upon leaving a matinee showing of Inception: I really wanted to see Inception again – like, at that moment. Soon after, I realized that kind of thing would’ve been horrifically excessive for a weekend afternoon and promptly sally forthed to lunch with friends. Yet, may the record indicate I was satisfied, but then again not fully satisfied with 148 minutes of Christopher Nolan goodness. I could’ve gone for another round.

I find the idea telling of the film’s quality, actually, when I can probably count on one hand the number of times I went to the movie theater this year to watch a new release. Simply, I just don’t go anymore. I’d much rather wait, or, which has become more natural to me, not see the movie at all. To say such a thing on a movie industry website reads odd, I know. Yet I’m not going to pay for crap anymore when there are many, many more things out there more deserving of my hard-earned dollars than Hollywood. I’m doing my best to not get fooled anymore, and I wish the same to you.

So… Inception. I dug it. I loved it, actually, and look forward to another viewing - or two - to, hopefully, pick up on the things I missed the first time. Even though I feel like I understood the movie – its shell, at least – Inception is a complicated piece of fiction that requires its audience to be perfectly attentive. And I mean perfectly.





I’m leaving out plot details for a reason here: Inception is a dish best served cold.

I get excited when a quality movie does extremely well at the box office. (Inception made over $292 million in the U.S. alone). It makes me think – or, at least, makes me want to think – that Hollywood’ll put more faith in original ideas and concepts by producing more big-budget movies that have zero roots in a book series, television show or current event. Go ahead and try thinking of some blockbusters that didn’t get their starts in other media. (The Matrix is one). I’m willing to bet you don’t get far. Granted, anyone can understand why studios struggle to open their wallets to ideas without built-in audiences. Yet, to me, that thinking makes Hollywood feel lame and secondhand.

Disc includes: Extraction Mode featurette, Dreams: Cinema of the Subconscious featurette, Inception: The Cobol Job: Comic Prologue in Full Animation and Motion featurette

For people who live in fairy tales: Shrek Forever After/Shrek: The Whole Story Quadrilogy

And with every success (see above), there’s, of course, disappointment. I haven’t seen the fourth (and final?) Shrek movie – which earned a healthy $238 million in the States – but I can only imagine that any of the magic that was built in the series’ debut and subsequent chapters has been all but used up by now. Why? There are only so many ways to tell the same story. (Oftentimes, once).

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