Unless you’re Julius Caesar, of course. In that case it’d be more like “Hey, watch your back there, dude!”

We’ve got a whole lot of really cool stuff going up on the shelves today, some of it unopened and brand new (old titles, new copies)! Titles like A Beautiful Mind, The Clearing, Cradle 2 The Grave, Michael Clayton, The Craft, A Mighty Heart, Zodiac, Titan A. E., Uncle Buck, Trading Places and a ton more. Lots of not-new stuff going out too, like The Ninth Gate, Great Expectations, The James Bond Collection Volume 1 (seven titles: Dr. No; Goldfinger; The Man With The Golden Gun; The Spy Who Loved Me; License To Kill; Goldeneye and Tomorrow Never Dies), The Trip To Bountiful, Bill and Ted’s Excellent Adventure and lots lots more!

Over the weekend I watched a few movies and realized at the end of it that they were all docudramas, movies based on real people and events. Not a huge surprise, as it’s one of my favorite genres.  I watched Bonnie And Clyde, Amelia and Monster. The only one I hadn’t seen before was Amelia, starring Hilary Swank as Amelia Erhart, one of the world’s favorite missing persons. It’s a fascinating story and I thought the movie was well done, without attempting to explain or speculate about her disappearance. See it if you get the chance.

We’ve got a shelf on the Wall O’Cool right now dedicated to stories about real people and events:

Breach tells the story of Robert Hanssen, played to creepy perfection by Chris Cooper, who sold secrets to the Russians during his 25-year tenure with the FBI.

In Erin Brockovich, Julia Roberts plays the woman who helped bring down a power company accused of polluting a small town’s water supply.

Party Monster stars Macauley Culkin and Seth Green in very different roles for both of them, as flamboyant “club kids” Michael Alig and James St. James respectively. In the late 80s and early 90s, they hosted insane parties in clubs around New York City, did lots of drugs and ultimately killed one of their roommates.

Frost/Nixon is a fascinating look at the drama around and behind the scenes of David Frost’s post-Watergate interviews with Richard Nixon.

W. is another political biopic that’s fascinating to watch, no matter what your politics are. Chronicling the rise and downward slide of George W. Bush, it’s well worth your time.

Philip Seymour Hoffman is fantastic as Truman Capote in Capote. In 1959, two small-time criminals kill an entire family during a break-in. After their arrest, Truman Capote plans to write a New Yorker article about the crime, but ultimately decides to write the book In Cold Blood instead (a book I read when I was 12 or so and which fueled a life-long interest in true crime novels and movies). It’s interesting to see this movie alongside the film version of the book if you get the chance.

Shattered Glass tells the amazing story of journalist Stephen Glass, a writer for the prestigious The New Republic in the mid-90s.  By the end of his time there, it was found that 27 of the 41 articles he’d written for them were partially or completely fabricated. Hayden Christensen is whiny and annoying throughout most of the movie, but this is offset by the story and the rest of the cast, including Chloe Sevigny, Peter Sarsgaard, Hank Azaria, Steve Zahn, Rosario Dawson and the adorable Melanie Lynskey.

Bringing up the rear (pun slightly intended) of this collection is The Notorious Bettie Page, the story the number one pin-up girl of the 1950s. Told in flashback style as Bettie waits to testify before a Senate sub-committee investigating the effects of pornographic material on American adolescents and juveniles, it’s equal parts sexy, sad and funny.

Plenty of stuff to see here, folks. And if you get this coupon, it’s all 20% off for a couple more days!

One of my favorite movie genres is the docudrama or “based-on-a-true-story.” I know there’s always a certain amount of dramatic liberty taken when a filmmaker portrays real events in a drama, so it’s interesting to me when I can learn a little about where the movie veers off from the reality.

Today I read an article in the on-line version of the New York Times about Frank Serpico, the New York City policeman who helped expose corruption within the department in the early ’70s, and about whom there was a book and a movie starring Al Pacino. I haven’t seen the movie in years, but I remember Serpico as a fascinating and powerful story which helped shape my love of this type of film. We have it at the store right now, on what has become an Al Pacino shelf on our New Trades wall, so I may get a chance to see it again soon. Having said that, I’ve pretty much assured that it will sell before I get a chance (which wouldn’t be a bad thing, mind you).

Anyhow, the real Frank Serpico is living in upstate New York, pretty much isolated from the rest of the world. From the article he seems to be a fascinating man, if not still just a little bitter and angry over everything he went through to try to bring change to the police department. He’s also writing his memoir, telling his version of the story, “the rest of the story” as he puts it.

Corey Kilgannon, the author of the article, convinced Mr. Serpico to watch the film with him.

He provided a running commentary: His own wardrobe was much better than in the film, as were his police disguises. The scene in which the police commissioner hands him a gold detective shield in the hospital bed was conjured; in reality, he picked it up from a clerk at police headquarters.

I suppose it looked better on the screen to have it in the hospital, but it’s these little details that change the tone of the story. I don’t really have a point I’m trying to make, other than I find it interesting and I hope that someone else might find it interesting, too.