Futurama: The Beast With a Billion Backs is obviously the top pick of the week, nerd or otherwise.  It’s your civic duty to buy a copy of this movie, watch it, give it to someone and then buy another copy.  They will keep making these if we keep buying them, and I’m certainly going to do my part.  Futurama was the best show on TV.  Period.  Forever.

Do your part.

Persepolis is next on the list.  I didn’t see it, but it looked really cool and seemed like the sort of animation we should be supporting.  Anybody see it?  Anybody have an opinion?

The first classic movie on the list is James Cagney’s The Man of a Thousand Faces.  This is one of the best bio-pics I’ve ever seen.  Cagney stars as Lon Chaney, the man of a thousand faces.  He was a silent film star who first immortalized stories like the Hunchback of Notre Dame and the Phantom of the Opera.  If you don’t know who he was, then, most likely, you’re some sort of idiot.  James Cagney deserved a bloody Oscar for this movie though and a new special edition set of it would be the perfect way to check it out for the first time.  Interesting sidenote: Robert Evans, producer ofa number of movies, including the Godfather and basis for that Comedy Central show Kid Notorious made an appearance in this film as a very young Irving J. Thalberg. This film is a must see.  If you don’t buy many movies, certainly add this one to your list movies to rent.

There is another Criterion release this week called The Furies.  It’s a 1950 western directed by Anthony Mann and stars Barbara Stanwyck and Walter Huston.  Sounds like it could be a good time.

Honorable Mention: Xanadu.  It was sort of a disgrace that a filmmaker as influential as Robert Greenwald has become (Outfoxed, Wal-Mart: The High Cost of Low Price) started his career with the last, worst film of screen legend Gene Kelly.  This film is an acid-trip train-wreck and might be worth watching once for an MST3k style laugh with a group of the fellas, some pizza and massive quantity of beer.

So, I’ll see you guys next week with new releases for the first week of July.