The Office: Season FourThe Office: Season Four
Steve Carell (Get Smart) returns in his Golden Globe®-winning role of “The World’s Greatest Boss,” Michael Scott, in Season Four of the hit comedy series The Office! This must-own four-disc set includes every irreverent episode from Season Four, including the five extended full TV-hour specials, plus hours of hilarious deleted scenes and bonus features! Rejoin Jim (John Krasinski) and Pam (Jenna Fischer) as they bring romance to the workplace, Dwight (Rainn Wilson) as he continues his q
Rating:  List Price: $ 49.98 Price: $ 17.95 The Last Station
The last years of famed Russian author Leo Tolstoy’s life.Helen Mirren, Christopher Plummer, and James McAvoy lead an impeccable cast in The Last Station, a sweet comedy-drama about the final days of the Russian novelist Tolstoy. Nineteenth-century paparazzi lurk outside of Tolstoy’s estate, hoping to snatch a picture of the rumored strife between the world-famous writer (Plummer, The Insider), who’s launched an antimaterialist movement, and his aristocratic wife, Sofya (Mirren, The Queen). Also
Rating: List Price: $ 27.96 Price: $ 18.99
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(out of 217 reviews)
Review by Low-Ranking Reviewer for The Office: Season Four
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Disappointing season compared to 1,3, and especially 2? Probably. Overpriced box set considering the shortened season due to the writer’s strike? Definitely. Still one of the best shows on tv and still worth owning? Ye-esh. So should you buy it now or discounted later?
Well, i’m a fan of The Office and have all 4 seasons on dvd(recently addicted so i had to play catch-up). This was a day-1 purchase for me only because i love the show; and because i had a gift card and some discounts coming to me. I bought the special edition at Target with the bonus 5th disc being The Office Q&A convention in Scranton, PA with the supporting cast. If you don’t know what to expect(i didn’t), above all else don’t expect professionalism or anything fancy. The convention looked huge and was packed with Office fans! The camera-work had a very “we coulda done this with a camcorder”-look to it. It has the standard host/audience’s questions format. It lasts about an hour and is fun if you’re a die-hard fan. However, i thought it was going to be the support cast for 30 minutes, then the main stars for 30. But Steve, Rainn, John, Jenna, and B.J.(he’s in the writer’s convention extra though) NEVER appear. Oh well.
As for the other discs, haven’t gone through it all yet(episodes or extras-bloopers, deleted scenes, etc) but i was disappointed to see there appears to be only 4 audio commentaries. Now, with a shortened season(which is not their fault) i would think they would try to put as many extras as possible to help make up for it. And with such a large and great ensemble cast, they have plenty of people to choose from to help do this. Yet only 4 commentaries? I only nit-pick about this cause i love the commentaries with the cast and crew and find them(& the deleted scenes) as enjoyable as the shows themselves.
The bonus script is, uh, nice. But you’re gonna have to put it in with the dvd’s everytime or the outer casing will be too big/loose(you’ll see what i mean). The Office sticky notes bonus are also included(yay?). All in one big box for $37 this week at Target. The standard version is on sale for $30 this week minus the big box, 5th disc, and notes. I think Best Buy has their spec.ed., but that comes with a t-shirt/water bottle combo(?).
Anyway, i hope this helps a little as to whether you want to fork over for the Target ‘deluxe’ edition or not. Honestly, after all my credits, i only paid $26 for mine but still feel slighltly jipped on the commentaries and no Michael, Dwight, Jim, Pam, Ryan, or Toby at the convention(but that might be my fault as i didn’t research who was included). Overall 4 stars for dvd set, minus one for price and lack of extra extras to make up for shortened season. Having said all that, i’m gonna hang on to my copy and watch it over and over again, but i’m biased that way. And before you reach for that not-helpful button… FACT: my preview is still better than most reviews like “office rox”, “office sux”, “my shipment hasn’t arrived”.
(edit: besides the (great)deleted scenes for each episode and 4 commentaries, the other two standard major extras of note are the bloopers which run about 22 minutes and the The Office “Writer’s Block” Convention which runs about 52 minutes. Greg Daniels, Jen Celotta, Mike Schur, Mindy Kaling, BJ Novak, and Eisenberg & Stupnitsky are notables there, but still no Paul Lieberstein)
Review by Steward Willons for The Office: Season Four
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It’s that time of year again – a magical time when television studios release their most successful shows from the previous season in deluxe and frequently expensive DVD sets. But this last seasons was, of course, different. The writers strike cut the season down to 16 episodes and, as expected, many are starting to complain that the price hasn’t been discounted. Paying the same price for less product does seem unfair. That is, to everyone but the media industry. As for me, I’m not surprised in the slightest. I expect to be exploited by the media – it’s nothing new. The real question is, with all Office season four episodes already available on NBC’s website, will people feel cheated enough to forgo this collection altogether?
Season four seemed like something of a departure from the usual style. Earlier seasons featured many episodes with a more-or-less self-contained story that came to some sort of resolution within 21 minutes. Season four seemed to be mainly episodes dealing with larger story arcs. Yeah, there were always little stories going on (e.g. they lose their parking lot, etc.) but they now feel firmly in the background, totally dominated by the more personal stories going on.
I’m not sure how I feel about this. In one sense, I’m happy that the Office is flourishing and moving beyond a simple (but awesome) comedy show. At the same time, I sometimes miss the lighthearted format of the earlier seasons. It’s definitely a matter of personal preference.
Regardless, it’s definitely a strong season and it’s essential viewing for fans of the series because of all the major plot developments. For those who are considering skipping the season on DVD, I would argue that the bonus features make it worth the extra money. You get plenty of deleted scenes, commentaries, and all that good stuff. Sure, you could watch them online for free, but then you have to use NBC’s less-than-stellar video player and you still have to watch advertisements.
Review by Sooz for The Office: Season Four
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I have been waiting since May for this set — I was traveling most of the spring (once the blankety-blank strike was finally resolved) so I missed the final 6 episodes of the season. What a joy to be able to watch the whole season without disruption!
There are so many wonderful story lines in Season 4 – Dwight’s beet farm B&B, Michael and Jan’s disasterous dinner party, Ryan’s big city social life, and the development of Jim and Pam’s relationship — that even with fewer episodes than seasons 2 & 3, the Office crew managed to pack a full season of great writing, acting and directing into a short season.
Yet with all the big stories, there are plenty of small moments that are laugh out loud funny: Darryl’s description of his gang cred (I fell off my couch at “Newsies”), the two versions of “Mad Libs,” Angela’s description of the claw marks on her frozen vegetables, Toby being…Toby.
I’d rate this one a definite “buy.”
Review by for The Office: Season Four
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This show is witty, clever and comical at the same time. I watched the first season on a suggestion from a friend, and didn’t know what I thought. After getting into it and watching every episode after that, I began to love the style and approach. The character and plot development are outstanding! You will quickly grow attached to the characters and their stories… even the challenging times are engaging. I would recommend this show for anyone who enjoys a good laugh, but still wants a story that inspire thought and emotion.
A great show to which almost anyone can relate.
Review by JuryDuty for The Office: Season Four
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This was a great season, and I see a lot of complaints about this kind of price for such a short season. There’s a reason: MANY of these episodes were a FULL HOUR, as opposed to other seasons where almost all episodes were a half hour. Compare the full running time of this set to seasons 2 and 3 and you’ll see it costs less, even though it’s only a bit shorter in overall length.
Review by One More Option for The Last Station
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The film “The Last Station” focuses on the last few months of the novelist and writer Leo Tolstoy’s family and social life. It stars Christopher Plummer as Tolstoy, Helen Mirren as his wife Sophya, James McAvoy as Tolstoy’s new personal secretary Valentin, Kerry Condon as Valentin’s charming and aggressive love interest, and Paul Giamatti as the leader of a group of “Tolstoyans” who wish to widely promote Tolstoy’s ideals.
The film is set in early 20th century Russia, before the harsh realities of the Russian Revolution occurred in 1917 and thereafter (Tolstoy died in 1910). It was a time in history when Socialism was still an untried idealized conceptual form of government, and Tolstoy in his final years became more “radical” in his political, religious, and social philosophies.
The film raises 2 universal questions: 1) What do you do when the love of your life is in conflict with your highest priority ideals? And how does your treatment or mistreatment of the people closest to you, who have loved and cared for you the most, reflect on the quality of your ideals?
~Spoilers Ahead ~
In the final months of Tolstoy’s life, he abandoned his wife of 48 years, Sophya. Before Sophya and Leo married, Sophya knew of his many sexual escapades he shared with her in his diaries. She knew he had fathered a child with one of the servant girls in his household. Nevertheless, she loved him and married him, giving him 13 children, 5 of whom died in childhood. The movie implies the question: At what point does your life become more than a solitary pursuit? After how many years of good treatment and co-dependence with those close to you does your life necessarily and deservedly become considerate of more than just your own priorities? Where should your deference be?
In 2009, it was widely reported that a British couple, both 98 years old, divorced. When a friend of mine heard of the story, she said, “What was the point?” It’s a fascinating question. When do we ever stop wanting to define ourselves, our relationships, and our boundaries?
James McAvoy’s character Valentin is a young, romantic idealist who wishes to promote Tolstoy’s ideals. He runs into a young woman named Masha, who is less interested in layers of idealism, moral laws, and controls, and is more interested in physical and emotional feelings and connections. She quickly disarms his protests by being sexually aggressive with him. His ideals lose some of their zeal and absolutism when confronted with Masha’s ability to naturally please him.
The film parallels Valentin’s young love story with Tolstoy’s love story with Sophya. Valentin is given a rare view, at a young age, to watch “ideals” clash with “love.” Valentin, living in the house with Tolstoy, is able to watch a “great man” who is leading a “revolutionary” movement. He’s able to watch how Tolstoy’s focus on “the greater good” appears to harm and betray his wife, whose ideals are in conflict with his.
The film implies that Sophya did more than simply do housekeeping while Tolstoy wrote. She tempered his novels’ dialogues and added exceptional advice to his female portrayals. She transcribed and edited his major novels. She was not simply his wife, she was a co-creator of his greatest artworks.
The film is based on a 1990 novel “The Last Station” by Jay Parini. The title refers to many things, including the fact that Tolstoy died at a train station, fleeing his wife and estate. The title also implies the question: How will your actions in the last station of your life define your legacy? What will your last station leave behind for your immediate social circle and your community in general?
The screenplay is tight, moving, and never circuitous. The direction is solid and never distracting. The actors are excellent. I’ve heard the most praise for Mirren and McAvoy, but I found Plummer’s and Condon’s performances to be equally excellent. Plummer is in top form, less affected than in his younger roles. The film is a perfect length and the roles are not drawn as too overwrought or too “good” vs. “evil.” We see the conflicting ideals of each of the main characters and we can easily understand the warfare that develops when their strong boundaries don’t wish to co-exist.
I was hesitant to give this film a “number of stars” rating. But I appreciate it when other reviewers place some measurable rating on the films they review. When trying to come up with a correct number, I asked myself: “What was wrong with this film?” And I couldn’t think of anything.
It’s difficult for viewers to leave this film feeling good. This is not a film with a “feel good” ending. It’s a real story about complex people who in the end desperately didn’t want the same things. There are no clear winners in the final act of Tolstoy’s life’s story. But over time, I’m glad the work of his whole life has shined brighter and more prominently than his final chapter.
Review by John F. Rooney for The Last Station
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“The Last Station”–oh, what a great movie experience. It has superb acting, a fascinating story, stunning cinematography, and the evocation of a period in history. Leo Tolstoy, Russia’s greatest novelist, espoused many ideas and spiritual principles in his later life which formed the Tolstoyan movement. Christopher Plummer is magnificent as Tolstoy in his last days, and Helen Mirren, is, as usual, truly memorable. A battle is going on in the film between Mirren as the Countess wife of Tolstoy versus Paul Giametti, at his nastiest, playing the head of the Tolstoyan movement. He wants the copyrights to the master’s works to go to the Russian people, while she wants the rights to go to her and the family.
She hectors her husband not to give in to Giamatti and deny the family the income from his work. It’s a titanic struggle among Plummer, Mirren, and Giamatti that forms the basis for the story. The Tolstoys have been married for forty-three years and have had a number of children. Even though Tolstoy dressed in peasant garb, they still lived a privileged life with many servants.
Giamatti gets a Tolstoy disciple, played with great skill and artistry by actor James McAvoy to become Tolstoy’s secretary and spy on the wife. Celibacy is one of the guiding principles of the movement, but on the commune he quickly falls for a young woman and forgoes his vow. Mirren walks a thin line, avoiding shrewishness in her battle, and showing her true love for her husband. Their love scenes together show true chemistry. The rooster and hen scene is great fun.
One of the outstanding features of the movie is the way it photographically recreates life in the first decade of the twentieth century on a Russian country estate and the life and work of the many peasants who endured lives of quiet desperation in Czarist Russia. In every outdoor scene you see the serfs toiling in large numbers.
It’s a love story in which a woman’s struggles for family equity get entangled with the fanaticism of an ideology. The movie’s title will become apparent at the end. It’s an antidote to all of the action movies and drivel out there. What shines through in all the characters is their deep humanity and their depths of emotion. It’s a superior film, very satisfying and enriching.
Review by S. Curley for The Last Station
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“War & Peace” and “Anna Karenina” are two of the longest and most famous novels in Russian literature (as of this writing, I’m about 800 pages into the first; only 400 to go), produced by author Count Leo Tolstoy (“Lev”, literally, transliterated into English as Leo). In the 21st century, they’re really the only things that most people are familiar with about him, but, apart from a raft of other (much shorter) fiction, Tolstoy, in the later decades of his, became a central figure in the global pacifist movement, a Christian anarchist philosopher par excellence who corresponded with a young Gandhi, and who was cited as the most influential pacifist in the world by American feminist Jane Addams in 1902. His death was news worldwide. “The Last Station”, based on a novel of the same name by Jay Parini, depicts his final months, and the conflict between his wife and his acolytes over his literary legacy. Directed by Michael Hoffman, “The Last Station” is a quality period drama that should interest fans of the genre. Spoilers are discussed below.
The novel was written in an epistolary format, with a number of different narrators on a chapter-by-chapter basis: Tolstoy himself, his wife Countess Sofya Tolstoya, his daughter Sasha Tolstoya, his doctor Dushan Makovitsky, his ally Vladimir Chertkov, and his private secretary Valentin Bulgakov. The film telescopes things considerably, with the Tolstoys and Bulgakov the primary focus; the others are present, but as supporting characters. Bulgakov (James McAvoy; as in “The Last King of Scotland”, playing the viewpoint character to other actors who earn the Oscar nominations; poor guy) is selected by Chertkov (Paul Giamatti) as the new secretary, as well as Chertkov’s man in the Tolstoy residence, since he needs to keep an eye on the Countess. At stake is Tolstoy’s copyrights, which his wife wants to pass to his heirs to sustain the family (they’ve a standing offer a million rubles for the whole set, which is nothing to turn down lightly), while Chertkov wants the whole body of work to enter the public domain, as a gift to the people of Russia (and the world). The Countess (Helen Mirren, who earned her fourth Oscar nomination for her dynamite work here) is very materially-minded, unlike Tolstoy (Christopher Plummer, who was finally delivered from the ranks of great actors passed for Oscar nominations with his role), who lives in a state of deepening spiritual conflict over the lavish lifestyle his wife desires.
The conflict between intellectual ideas and practice is at the heart of the film. Tolstoy himself admits that he is, in a lot of ways, not a very good Tolstoyan, mainly when it comes to his ideas about the value of chastity (having thirteen children, and quite a few past lovers). Bulgakov, young and idealistic, finds himself increasingly involved with Masha (Kerry Condon), a spirited woman at the Tolstoyan commune; and, in his capacity as secretary, he’s at the centre of the tug-of-war between Sofya and Chertkov. Bulgakov finds himself increasingly drawn to the side of Sofya, who sees Tolstoy’s work as the work of her life as well; anyone can sympathize with somoene who copied out “War & Peace” in longhand six times. Mirren invests her with quite a bit of relatability, as well showing her a truly spectacular drama queen (much more of one than any of the four real queens Mirren has played). She’s well-matched with Plummer; their scenes together are the highlights of the film. McAvoy does what his role requires, and he and Condon make a believable couple, even if their more low-key characters are always in the Tolstoys’ shadow. Also present is McAvoy’s real-life wife Anne-Marie Duff (amusingly not playing his love interest, but Tolstoy’s daughter Sasha). Giamatti and John Sessions (as the family doctor) provide able support.
The film is more direct than the novel in taking sides in the battle between Sofya and Chertkov, pronouncedly sympathizing with her, which is, I think, a somewhat indulgent view in many ways. It’s quite true she invested a lot of her life in the work, but the film deals only glancingly with the social justice concerns at the heart of the Tolstoyan movement. The reality of Russia in 1910 was a population of tens of millions living in abject poverty and illiteracy (one of my favourite parts of the novel, not included here, was Tolstoy’s speculation about what those millions could possibly think of a novelist, not being able to read, nor really having the time for such things), under the sway of a despotic Tsar, a corrupt government, and an indifferent ruling class, a class that Countess Tolstoya belonged to. The core dispute between Sofya and Chertkov was that Chertkov cared quite a bit about the plight of those millions, and Sofya not at all; Chertkov’s great sin was being more interested in the world’s grotesque social problems than keeping the Tolstoy family in their enormous mansion. Sympathetic as she might be at times, a bit more perspective might be advised there.
Recommended.
Review by Keris Nine for The Last Station
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If you’ve read War and Peace and Anna Karenina or any other works by Tolstoy, the idea of a film about the great Russian author’s fascinating latter years as he disavowed his earlier writings for deep religious principles and social reform is an intriguing prospect, but I’m sure there can’t be too many others similarly thrilled by the notion.
It is a strange subject to make a film around, there’s no denying that, and indeed The Last Station – based around the struggle over the publishing rights of his entire works between Tolstoy’s favourite disciple Chertkov (who wants them to be given freely to the people) and the Countess Sofya (who believes they belong to the family and herself who have supported the Count over the years) – isn’t the most dramatically thrilling of situations. To add variety to the constant back and forth battles, showdowns and shouting matches between Chertkov and the Countess over the terms of Tolstoy’s will, there is a conventional romance thrown in between naïve new disciple Bulgakov and the rather more worldly Masha on Tolstoy’s commune.
Despite the fact that nearly all the situations take place around him between the other protagonists, Tolstoy however rightly retains the strongest position in the film, a fact that can be attributed almost entirely to a convincing performance by Christopher Plummer. While performances are equally as good elsewhere from Helen Mirren, James McAvoy, Paul Giamatti and John Sessions (particularly Mirren), it’s hard not to see them as indeed “performances” by well-known and respected actors, whereas Plummer completely inhabits his role and convinces as Tolstoy, putting real character behind the man’s revolutionary ascetic, pacifistic ideals. While it never really explores these beliefs and sentiments in any great detail (go read Tolstoy’s later works if you are interested, they are worthwhile and, ironically, out of copyright in English translation they can now all be downloaded for free from Gutenberg), it does go some way towards making The Last Station a little more meaningful and enjoyable as a film.
Review by M. Gibb for The Last Station
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There are few, very few films, that warrant the word perfect.
But “The Last Station” certainly falls into that rare category.
Visually stunning with a wonderful attention to detail, it tells simple but moving story with great pose and warmth, and travels beautifully from the light heart moments of the early exchanges between the cast to an achingly sad yet complete ending. The closing scene as the train carrying the coffin leaves the little station with a poised Countess Tolstoy starring out of the window with an air of contentment, knowing she is taking her husband home, will live with you long after you leave the cinema.
And then there are performances, worthy not only of Oscar nominations but Oscar trophies, from Helen Mirren and Christopher Plummer while James McEvoy as the innocent at large is wonderful.
Don’t wait for the DVD release; give yourself a treat and see “The Last Station” on the big screen.