Good News & Sad News

I’ll start with the GOOD news – one of the greatest awful-yet-entertaining movies of all time is FINALLY getting its DVD release.

Kino-Lorber has announced that The Oscar from 1966 is getting a full 4K restoration, as well as commentary tracks from Patton Oswalt, Erik Nelson and Josh Olsen for Hollywood snark, as well as a track from film historians Howard S. Berger, Steve Mitchell and Nathaniel Thompson.

I wrote about the wonders of this film several years ago, so please click on the link to read why you NEED to buy this DVD when it’s released in February.

Harlan Ellison is unfortunately not around to add an audio commentary track, but it looks like the Kino people have consulted his widow, Susan, and hopefully got a lot of material to work with.

I think Jill St. John and Tony Bennett are the only surviving cast members.

The sad news? Well, I just went outside to throw some trash out, and sitting next to my recycling trash can was a cute little rat who looked like he was dying. Totally out of it, barely reacted to me, and it looked from the little puddle of dried piss under his butt that he may have been out there a while.

Maybe one of my neighbors put down some rat poison, in which case I’ll have to make sure to throw him in my grass clippings bin once he’s finally dead to avoid anything up the food chain also stroking out.

Or maybe he’s just depressed and giving up on everything, sitting next to my bin and thinking “Oh go ahead, just kill me and eat me, giant monkey boy” when I threw the trash out.

I feel pretty bad about not doing anything for him. My impulse is to help a sick animal, but it’s probably best to just let nature take its course here. No signs of rats in my house or trying to chew their way in, that’s good. Not sure where a food supply for the little bastard would be, either, since my apple tree’s production days are long months ago.

Poor thing.

UPDATE: I have been informed that Elke Sommer is still alive. And I can inform you that the cute little rat (or large mouse… I really can’t tell) finally died and is out of its misery.