The Indianapolis Star from Indianapolis, Indiana • Page 82

14 Weekend Friday, July 19, 2002 The Indianapolis Star www.indystar.com 1ST Star ratings: excellent, good, fair, poor COMING TUESDAY Crossroads Kung Pow: Enter the Fist (DVD, Season Two) Tarzan Jane The Time Machine July 30 Collateral Damage Dragonfly Resident Evil Speed (DVD special edition) Speed 2: Cruise Control (DVD) Aug. 6 The Adventures of Tom Thumb Thumbelina Deuces Wild The Business of Strangers Dogtown and Z-Boys The Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Ring The Simpsons Season Two (DVD) Star Trek Il: The Wrath of Khan (DVD, director's edition) Super Troopers Aug. 13 Birthday Girl Clockstoppers In the Bedroom Iris Scratch Aug. 20 Jackie Brown (DVD, collector's edition) National Lampoon's Van Wilder Pretty in Pink (DVD) Pulp Fiction (DVD, collector's edition) Some Kind of Wonderful (DVD) True Colors (DVD) We Were Soldiers TOP FIVE RENTALS Video 1. A Beautiful Mind, Universal 2.

Black Hawk Down, Columbia TriStar 3. Orange County, Paramount 4. 1 I Am Sam, New Line 5. Kate Leopold, Miramax CLIP AND RENT Take this reminder list to the video store to help select new releases. Amelie Charlotte Gray Hart's War John Q.

The Royal Tenenbaums Storytelling A Walk to Remember Steve Slosarek DVD outsold VHS movies for the first time last year. There are 96 million VHS players in the United States, but the 35 million DVD players in 27.4 million American homes is growing. Sales of DVDs videocassettes ONCE FORMIDABLE RECORDING FORMAT LOSING TO DISCS. By George M. Thomas Knight Ridder Newspapers he VCR is dead; long live the Yes, VCR.

the death knell was sounded recently by the media and, more importantly, a major retailer when Circuit City cried "No and booted VHS titles from its shelves in favor of DVDs. What took so long? What took any retailer this long to realize that VHS is on the way to the junk pile, much like its technological brethren the reel-toreel tape, the LP and, more recently, the Betamax? The data have been on the disc for a while. Please allow me to bore you with some statistics: The sale of VHS titles was down more than 8.9 percent in 2001; blank videotape sales were down 7.9 percent, according to the Motion Picture Association of America. For the first time, DVD titles outsold VHS movies in 2001. As of April, there were more than 35 million DVD players in 27.4 million American homes.

So far this year, sales are up 29 percent over last year. Manufacturers expect to ship 20 million players this year. Recorders still plentiful Although VCRs can still be /IndyStar.com: Before you rent CAPSULE REVIEWS Roger Ebert Amelie 115 minutes A delicious pastry of a movie a lighthearted fantasy with a winsome heroine who overcomes a sad childhood New release and brings cheer to the needful and joy to herself. Audrey Tautou stars, as a sad waitress in a Paris cafe who accidentally finds out how to make people happy, and renews herself in the process. Mathieu Kassovitz is the young man who makes her dissolve (literally) with love.

Winner of the audience awards at the Edinburgh, Toronto and Chicago festivals; a magical charmer. Directed by Jean-Pierre Jeunet. File photo slowly pushing closer to the finish found in 96 million homes, these figures point to the eventual demise of VHS as a medium for watching movies. And they reveal a basic change in cultural attitudes since the birth of home video. In the mid-'80s, when I sold those clunky VHS machines the size of a 1975 Cadillac Eldorado with questionable picture quality, I tried anything to get customers to buy Beta.

Yeah, yeah, I know. I was a real visionary. But quantity (VHS' longer recording time) crushed quality (Beta's superior picture and audio quality). And it now seems that the home video gods have decided to perform a sort of correction. How apropos that home entertainment tastes have evolved to the point where booming audio systems with theaterlike sound almost require perfect input to enjoy.

And these days, if you're watching a TV program or movie on a screen smaller than 27 inches, you might as well be living in the era of black-and-white TV and Uncle Miltie. If you truly want to enjoy a movie, DVD provides an eyepopping picture and crisp, pristine audio along with the extras that assorted titles offer. To co-exist Of course, the reality is VHS and DVD will co-exist for some time in many households and VHS rental tapes won't be going anywhere yet. Last year, VHS provided Blockbuster Video with 70.9 percent of its revenue; DVD brought the company 18.5 percent and video games accounted for the remaining 10.6 percent, said Randy Hargrove, a spokesman for the company. But so far this year, DVD is on track to give Blockbuster 30 percent of its income and 40 percent by the end of the year wouldn't be surprising, he said.

Ding-dong, the witch is dying. The fact remains that VCR manufacturers could kill VHS whenever the mood strikes them. (Do you sincerely believe that there was a practical reason for killing record albums when 50 gazillion turntables still dominated stereo systems in the '80s, when the compact disc hit the market?) Hail to the VCR Yes, let's hail the VCR for what it did. It changed the way we, as Americans, view home entertainment. It was a revolutionary product that allowed us to view what we wanted when we wanted.

It turned going to the movies into much more of an event. But it was never the ideal medium for watching a flick. The crappy picture, the VHS hum on the audio portion of some tapes and video dropout all made watching tape a less-thanideal experience. By all means, as a way for watching movies, let the VHS format die a quick, honorable death. And what do you do with the VCR? Both my Beta machines made great door stops much to my chagrin.

or buy that movie, check the reviews on the Entertainment channel. John Q. PG-13, 118 minutes The kind of movie Mad magazine prays for so earnest, overwrought and wildly implausible it begs to be paro- New release died. Denzel Washington stars as a factory worker whose son needs a heart transplant. James Woods and Anne Heche are the hospital authorities who demand cash in advance; John Q.

takes hostages and demands his son go to the top of the recipients' list. Robert Duvall tries to negotiate, while Ray Liotta plays a police chief so stupid he's funny. A low-rent "Dog Day Afternoon." Storytelling 87 minutes with pitiless satire, but this time Todd Solondz's film, like his earlier ones, mugs the bourgeois there's an addiNew release tional element: The film contains an argument about its methods. A documentary director is filming an American family, and his ethical choices reflect the film itself. In two parts the first a battle of the wills between a white student and her black professor, the second the doc about a suburban family, led by seething John Goodman Solondz forces us to consider the unthinkable, the unacceptable, the unmentionable, challenging us to decide what we think.

The Royal Tenenbaums 103 minutes A peculiar and sort of brilliant family comedy that exists on a knife-edge between comedy and sadness. There are big laughs, quiet moments when we're touched, and then the rug gets Continued on Page 15.