Savant's excited by a new pack of DVDs arriving soon - the stack was running low, horror of horrors. Among them are some obscure, desirable discs that I didn't even know about until they showed up on a DVDTalk orphaned screeners list. So there'll be some extra enthusiasm in the writing, perhaps.

Today from Miramax I have Stephen Frears' superior noir thriller The Grifters. This one's really unique; there have been a lot of Jim Thompson adaptations but this is the best one to capture the full depth of Thompson's depraved misanthropy, served up in his cynical crime tales. It's a recycle job, a Collector's Series entry that improves on an older HBO disc with a couple of well-conceived docus. Starring Anjelica Huston, John Cusack and Annette Bening.

Back soon with more discs you didn't think anyone would review! Glenn Erickson