First Monday: What to watch, listen to and read this month
— -- Margin Call
Lionsgate; R; $19.98 DVD, $29.99 Blu-Ray; Dec. 20
If you hurry, you can still catch the critically praised Margin Call on the big screen. But if you want to see it on your very own big screen, the financial drama lands on DVD/Blu-ray later this month.
Though the film's talented cast (including Jeremy Irons, Kevin Spacey and Paul Bettany) plays bank employees scrambling to dump worthless assets on the eve of the tipping point of the financial crisis, producer Neal Dodson says the movie explores the gray area between vilifying them and giving them a free pass.
"Our writer/director J.C. Chandor had a very human take on this epic tragic tale," Dodson said in an e-mail interview. "I related to these characters, no matter how verbal they are or mathematical they are or how reckless they may have been."
Selling Spelling Manor
HGTV; Dec. 15; 9 p.m. ET/PT
In a land of excess, there's plenty on display in HGTV's tour of the lavish Los Angeles estate of Aaron Spelling, the prolific television producer who died in 2006. Spelling's widow, Candy, put the 56,500-square-foot megamansion up for sale in 2009 for $150 million, and this special appears to have been taped during the 840 days it spent on the market before being purchased this summer for $85 million — in cash — by Petra Ecclestone, a British heiress.
We meet the lucky listing agent and the army of movers but not until Candy Spelling has taken viewers from one specialty room to the next: the 1,000-bottle wine cellar, the doll museum, the bowling alley, the barber shop, the three gift-wrapping rooms, the 17,000-square-foot "attic" that looks more like a warehouse. She's upfront about the opulence — when you entertain presidents and royalty, these are the things you need, she says — and her thirst for acquisition. With her husband constantly working, "I had a lot of time to fill, so I bought a lot and shopped a lot."
It's all rather spectacular, especially when she says, "Living here is not that much different than living anywhere."
Extreme Couponing All-Stars
TLC; Dec. 27; 10 p.m. ET/PT
Fans of Extreme Couponing, in which featured shoppers routinely buy hundreds of dollars worth of groceries for just a few bucks and lots of coupons, will see familiar faces when the reality show returns with an all-star version later this month.
What won't be familiar is the format, as two veterans go head-to-head in a "savings showdown." That's right, competitive couponing. Their mission is to buy as much as they can in 30 minutes while spending as little as possible. Sounds fun, except for the rule that allows the contestants to pre-order items in bulk. That loophole lessens the cart-loading excitement, but builds up the savings percentage, since the couponers use their pre-orders on items such as bottles of flavored water and cases of cleanser they get for free through the clever combination of sale price and multiple coupons that the store doubles.
Both Carla's and Faatima's shopping savvy on the first episode overwhelm their stores' checkout machines, forcing the patient store managers to resort to handheld calculators to tabulate the bottom line. The contestant with the highest percentage of savings — and both get in the 90s — moves on to compete again later in the season, but the real winners might be the charities that receive the shopping spoils.
Screw Business as Usual
