Greetings! Savant's new reviews today are

It's a busy week at Savant, with one ear cocked toward the nose-diving NYSE. I've been trading graveyard humor with friends about not being able to retire. Since the only people able to afford anything more than potatos will be living in machine-gun guarded communities sealed off from the rest of us unwashed heathen, I'll have to cater my DVD reviews to the tastes of the very rich. They, of course, will renege on paying unenforceable contracts. When I complain I'll either be deported to the Mojave Desert (there to search for Mad Max) or taken to Debtor's Prison in Texas, where I can work clearing drainage ditches on the Bush ranch.

We have to think positively about things like this! Instead of crawling into survivalist mode (jeez, why didn't I install that gun turret on the house last year?) I'm reviewing wonderful movies. If Rome starts burning around me I'll stop, but only when they turn off the power and the zombies are at the door: "Erickson, come out!"

Coming up I have a newly-received stack of Legend discs, a new selection of semi-public domain titles in both colorized and B&W versions. I'll be saying which ones are the best to get. The new Casino and Indiana Jones Blu-rays are also on the way, as well as The Unforeseen, an incredibly timely docu about the effects of Bush & Clinton banking deregulation on the American landscape -- encouraging destructive, unnecessary development for short term gain.

And before I stop being political, there's Criterion's Missing, the Costa-Gavras movie about CIA complicity in kidnapping and murder in Chile in the 1970s.

A great vote of thanks this week to DVDtalk for their hosting efforts and to the studios and independent publicists that keep DVD Savant going. And a special thanks to "save Savant from making a damn fool of himself" fact-checker and pal Gary Teetzel. Thanks for all the kind e-mails! -- Glenn Erickson