DATELINE BURBANK: DVD DEMOCRACY IN ACTION

"Please do not adjust your set. The white bars at the top and bottom of your screen are necessary to present Rod Steiger's tattoos in the aspect ratio originally intended by the director of the film."

Warner Home Video has done it in the past, and they’re at it again. They’ve got another DVD Decision campaign underway, in which you can cast your vote among a “select” group of films, the votes getting the most votes being the ones to next be released from the massive Burbank vaults and get the Warner Home Video treatment, which has come to be known, with good reason, as second only to the Criterion Collection in terms of excellence in the presentation of its classic titles. DVD Decision 2006 is a joint promotion from Warner Home Video and Amazon.com in which movie fans can vote online for 30 catalog candidates from the Warner Bros. Studios library, 10 of which will then be released on DVD. Voting will occur at Amazon.com during the month of June 2006.

As of this writing, the leading vote-getters are Joseph Mankiewicz’s There Was a Crooked Man…, Robert Clouse’s Gymkata, Raoul Walsh’s Band of Angels, Jack Smight’s The Illustrated Man and Mervyn LeRoy’s Madame Curie.

I cast my votes for: Gymkata, a patently ridiculous action picture that I remember being about 50 times as entertaining as I had any right to expect; The Illustrated Man, which I’ve never seen outside of the CBS Friday Night Late Movie back in the mid ‘70s; Band of Angels-- the more Raoul Walsh the better; Angels in the Outfield, a much better movie than it’s smelly Disney remake would ever lead you to believe; April in Paris, a Doris Day-Ray Bolger musical which I’ve never seen, but voted for on the strength of the E.Y. Harburg/Vernon Duke title song alone; James Bridges’ much-maligned, definitely flawed but fascinating Debra Winger vehicle Mike’s Murder; and the one that has got me most excited, though it’s probably one of the lowest vote-getters, Tommy Smothers, Orson Welles, John Astin and Katharine Ross in the well-regarded but very rarely seen < a href=http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0068637/>Get to Know Your Rabbit, directed by Brian De Palma.

The voting continues through the end of June, so head over to Amazon.com and cast cast your ballot for the Warner Home Video titles you most want to see on DVD. And since there’s no limit to how many titles you can vote for, click off a vote for Get to Know Your Rabbit for me, would you? I bet my friends Blaaagh, Don, Peet and Jim would tip their hat to you if you did too!