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Under discussion:

Being There  (1979)

Any Given Sunday  (1999)

Pride and Glory  (2008)

Nights in Rodanthe  (2008)

Spout has a whole stack of DVDs that we’re raring to send out to some lucky winners today. Here’s what’s stacked up on our desk:

• Being There, the comedy classic starring Peter Sellers as a simple gardener mistaken for a high-society intellectual. If you’ve never seen it you’re missing out on one of the all-time great film performances. (Watch the trailer)
• Pride and Glory, with Edward Norton and Colin Farrell star as police officer friends set against each other in this gritty tale of intrigue and corruption. (Watch the trailer)
• The Sidney Poitier Collection: A four-disc set of some of the legendary actor’s finest roles, including Edge of the City, A Patch of Blue, Something of Value and A Warm December.
• Nights in Rodanthe, which has Richard Gere and Diane Lane finding love late in life in this adaptation of a Nicholas Sparks novel. (Watch the trailer)
• Any Given Sunday, Director Oliver Stone’s tale of the Miami Sharks football team, including Al Pacino as the team’s head coach who knows that both life and football are games of inches. (NOTE: This is a Blu-ray release so make sure you have a Blu-ray player before winning this one.) (Watch the trailer)

Full details and box art for each movie after the jump.

So what do you have to do to win? It’s pretty simple - just follow Spout’s Twitter profile and send it an “@spout” response with “I Like to Watch” and the name of the movie above you’re most interested in winning. Winners will be selected randomly by noon on Monday, February 9th.

Again, you have to be following Spout on Twitter to win. So get along and do that and good luck.

–Chris Thilk, Director of Marketing

Being There
Isolated all his life in a Washington, DC, townhouse, Chance (Peter Sellers) knows only what he’s seen on TV. Cast into the world, he stumbles into the world of power brokers (including Melvyn Douglas in his second Oscar-winning role) eager for “sage wisdom.” You’ll like to watch.

Own it on Blu-ray® and DVD 2/03/09!

Being There © 1979, Package Design & Supplementary Material Compilation © 2009 Warner Bros. Entertainment Inc. Distributed by Warner Home Video, 4000 Warner Blvd., Burbank, CA 91522. All rights reserved.

Pride and Glory
Edward Norton, Colin Farrell, Jon Voight and Noah Emmerich star in a gritty, tension-packed tale of a multigenerational family of cops facing hard realities and tough choices. Set and filmed in Manhattan’s Washington Heights, Pride and Glory draws you into a grippingly raw real world…and into a house divided.

Own it on Blu-ray® and DVD 1/27/09!

Pride and Glory  © 2007 KUMAR Mobiliengesellschaft mbH & Co. Projekt Nr. 1 KG TM New Line Productions, Inc. Package Design © 2009 New Line Productions, Inc. Distributed in the USA by Warner Home Video, 4000 Warner Blvd., Burbank, CA 91522. ALL RIGHTS RESERVED.

Sidney Poitier Collection
This collection includes EDGE OF THE CITY – workmen Poitier and Cassavetes confront NYC  waterfront corruption; A PATCH OF BLUE – A landmark of social conscience filmmaking; SOMETHING OF VALUE – the clash of longtime friends mirrors the bloody Mau Mau uprising in Kenya and A WARM DECEMBER – A new city, a new life.  An American widower in London finds the perfect love.

Own it on DVD 1/27/09!

Titles No So Indicated Are Not MPAA-Rated. Special Features May Not Be Rated or Closed-Captioned or Subtitles.
“Academy Award®” Is the Registered Trademark and Service Mark of the Academy of motion Picture Arts and Sciences. © 2009 turner Entertainment Co. and Warner Bros. Entertainment Inc. Distributed by Warner Home Video, 4000 Warner Blvd., Burbank, CA 91522. All rights reserved.

Nights in Rodanthe
Richard Gere is Paul, a surgeon who long ago unwittingly traded family for career. Diane Lane is Adrienne, a devoted mother trying to move on after her husband’s infidelity. The stars of Unfaithful rekindle their screen chemistry in this rich tale of hearts’ awakenings from the bestseller by Nicholas Sparks (The Notebook, Message in a Bottle).

Own it on Blu-ray® and DVD 2/10/09!

Nights In Rodanthe © 2008, Package Design & Supplementary Material Compilation © 2009 Warner Bros. Entertainment Inc. Love Remains the Same Music Video © 2008 Interscope Records. Distributed by Warner Home Video, 4000 Warner Blvd., Burbank, CA 91522. All rights reserved.

Any Given Sunday (Blu-ray)
Life is a contact sport and football is life when three-time Academy Award-winning filmmaker Oliver Stone and a dynamic acting ensemble explore the fortunes of the Miami Sharks in Any Given Sunday.

Own it on Blu-ray® 1/27/09!

Any Given Sunday © 1999, 2000, Package Design & Supplementary Material Compilation © 2009 Warner Bros. Entertainment Inc., Full Contact:  The Making of Any Given Sunday © 1999 Home Box office and Warner Bros. Entertainment Inc. Shut ‘Em Down Music Video © 1999 Warner Sunset/Atlantic Recording Corp. Distributed by Warner Home Video, 4000 Warner Blvd., Burbank, CA 91522. All right reserved.

Under discussion:

Repo Man  (1984)

Sid and Nancy  (1986)

Suburbia  (1983)

This is England  (2007)

It was 30 years ago this week that Sid Vicious rang the death knell for punk rock, overdosing on heroin on February 2nd while awaiting trial for the murder of girlfriend Nancy Spungen. So in honor of the spike-haired rebel who was the face (if not the sound) of punk, and whose chaotic life ended at the tender age of 21, I present five punk rock films that really rock.

Suburbia

Suburbia was released in 1983, and though Sid Vicious had flamed out along with punk’s heyday years before, America’s hardcore scene was in overdrive with bands like Black Flag and the Dead Kennedys reinventing the music by playing at the speed of light, pumping up the adrenaline from coast to coast (and causing this minor threat to later consider the Ramones as slowpoke as The Beatles.) Director Penelope Spheeris, best known for docs like Decline of Western Civilization and her later forays into sellout Hollywood, thrillingly applied the original punk DIY ethos to filmmaking, using guerrilla tactics and nonprofessionals to create a time capsule of L.A.’s underground scene. In other words, the film not only documents punk, it is punk – and a must-see for a young punk as much as the latest Bad Brains album was a must-hear. In fact, I must’ve seen this film about a group of runaways who form a punk family a dozen times during my anarchistic teenage years, never sober and usually with my own extended, Mohawk coiffed, leather-and-chain-wearing family. Indeed, the image of lead character Evan kicking at white walls like a trapped animal, futilely trying to fight his way out of society’s cage, often would be the last I’d see before passing out next to a spike-toed Doc.

Repo Man

Emilio Estevez has never been as good as he was in Repo Man. Appropriately released in that Orwellian year of 1984, Alex Cox’s surreal take on the world of mercenary repossession agents is every bit as bizarre as anything Terry Gilliam ever put onscreen. As punk rocker Otto, Estevez stoically faces losing his job, being dumped by his girlfriend, UFOs and government conspiracies – not to mention a quintessentially slimy Harry Dean Stanton as his mentor – all set to a soundtrack featuring everything from Iggy Pop to the Burning Sensations (whose ditty “Pablo Picasso” has some of the punkest lyrics ever written: “All the girls would turn the color of an avocado/ When he’d drive down the street in his El Dorado/ Though he was only five-foot-three girls could not resist his stare/ Pablo Picasso was never called an asshole…not like you”).

Sid & Nancy

I’ve already waxed rhapsodic about Sid & Nancy in my recent Criterion Collection essay at The House Next Door, but suffice to say that this true love story of the Sex Pistols’ bassist Sid Vicious and his junkie groupie-turned-girlfriend Nancy Spungen is anything but your typical tabloid biopic. Alex Cox’s 1986 film is nothing less than a masterful visual translation of the greatest punk rock story ever told. As with Repo Man, the director digs deep, discovering the surreal in the everyday while mining the humanity and even humor of the nihilist 70s. Songs by The Pogues and the late Clash front man Joe Strummer round out the soundtrack. And of course, Gary Oldman and Chloe Webb are equally unforgettable as the leads.

Valley Girl

Martha Coolidge’s 1983 film is basically “Romeo and Juliet” set in the San Fernando Valley with no sword fights, a happy ending and, most importantly, as Sparks would say, “music that you can dance to.” Nicolas Cage plays the punk rock, knight-in-shining-armor Randy to Valley Girl Julie (Deborah Foreman) with just the right mix of lovesickness and weirdness. Equally impressive is the soundtrack, with such classics as Josie Cotton’s “Johnny, Are You Queer Boy?” and songs by virtually every new wave band that mattered, from The Psychedelic Furs to Sparks to The Plimsouls. And as an added bonus, it contains one of the best pickup lines ever, “I like tacos, ’78 Cabernet and my favorite color is magenta.” Totally awesome!

This Is England

My awestruck review pretty much sums up my passion for Shane Meadows’ semi-autobiographical 2007 film about growing up skinhead in the early 80s of Thatcher’s Britain. Defying every cliché with subtlety and specificity Meadows follows 12-year-old Shaun whose dad has been killed fighting in the Falklands War as he discovers a father figure in the leader of the local skins, taking tough love and hard lessons from his new Doc-stomping, Ben Sherman shirt clad family. In fact, This Is England is the perfect companion piece to Spheeris’ Suburbia , released nearly a quarter century before, proving that punk rock really didn’t die with Sid, and that it never lost its heartfelt cool.