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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: A commoner helps a king, Jack Black gets about 400% bigger and Sofia Coppola critiques Hollywood.

Pick of the Week

The King’s Speech

I managed to see The King’s Speech twice in theaters. A feat, I’ll say, that doesn’t happen very often because a) I rarely do this and b) I find I like renting movies much more than seeing them in theaters. It’s cheaper, of course, and a simple way to digest movies when you want to digest them -- while at the same time staving off ads for Coca-Cola and when to mute my cell phone.

Anyway, the second time I saw it was with my aunt, who, God bless her, treated me to an afternoon matinee. Nearby her place is one of those theaters -- maybe it’s become a bit more prevalent -- that has a full food and drink menu. You’re not required to stuff yourself, but you must order something when the server comes ‘round. We both got sandwiches because we hadn’t had lunch yet and settled into The King’s Speech.

The whole idea of a meal at a movie theater -- a wait staff, table bussing, free refills without leaving the seat -- felt very foreign to me. What happened to popping over to CVS before your show begins, buying sweet and salty treats and then packing them into your lady friend’s purse? It’s a fun game.

The King’s Speech, the movie, is a polished piece of cinema that had that distinguished air about it that movies like The Social Network kind of lacked. (And it isn’t solely because The King’s Speech was a product of the UK). I wouldn’t say it was better -- in fact, Aaron Sorkin’s drama was my favorite of 2010 -- but while watching King’s Speech, you got the sense that a lot of the people who joined the production did so because they thought it would be the movie that would win them Oscar.





Colin Firth, Geoffrey Rush and Helena Bonham Carter were all great, and in a perfect world -- or, at least, in a year that didn’t have Christian Bale’s stunning achievements to celebrate -- Rush would have gained a little more recognition than mere nominations. He, and his relationship with Firth’s character, were my favorite parts about the movie.

For me, The King’s Speech was a fine film that could have been even better had it not been so repetitive. King George would fail a lesson with Lionel and it’d be the end of the world. And yet he did the same a day ago, and would probably do the same the next day. I would have liked for there to have been a little more variety.

Disc includes: Audio commentary, Making Of featurette, cast and crew Q&As, Speeches from the Real King George VI featurette, The Real Lionel Hogue Highlights

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