Shared Darkness

The explosion in popularity of the DVD format has created a new set of both opportunities and challenges for studios eager to exploit their back catalogues. For every comprehensive set like Warner Bros.’ recent Bette Davis Collections, there’s another — or, truth be told, probably three or four — weirdly cobbled together affairs, a rationalized way for studios to justify the cost of releasing marginal or niche titles. Ladies and gentlemen, meet 20th Century Fox’s Robert Altman Collection.

Altman has always been known as a bit of an iconoclast, a savvy corruptor of studio policy and preference. Actors love him because his films are partly mapped out, partly of-the-moment discovered treasures, yet this makes for not only tremendous financial risk, generally speaking, but also a filmography as hit-and-miss as it is narratively diverse. Any representative career sampling, then, is bound to include some highs and lows, even within the same movie. A quartet of diverse flicks makes up this Robert Altman Collection; two are rated R, two are rated PG. The biggest hit of the bunch, 1970’s Best Picture Oscar nominee M*A*S*H, is the odd film out here, and in some ways the least essential, or at least the least related to the rest of the lessons this set teaches us.

Starring Mia Farrow, Lauren Hutton, Carol Burnett, Desi Arnaz, Jr. and silent film legend Lillian Gish, 1978’s A Wedding evidences the director’s abiding love of shaggy ensembles over all else, telling the story of a handsome rogue and blushing bride-to-be whose nuptials are intersected by an obsessed wedding planner, a drunken doctor, meddling relatives and a beleaguered priest. A few moments pop out, but the movie is overall terribly self-indulgent and meandering. A Perfect Couple, from the following year, is a relationship companion piece of sorts, in that Altman cooked up the nascent idea of two young lovers (Marta Heflin and Paul Dooley) tripping through an unusual courtship on the aforementioned film. Formless and just as sprawling, at 111 minutes, it’s a movie that doesn’t live up to its title, but it does score points for astutely predicting the ascendancy of computer dating services.

Those wondering why Paul Newman doesn’t or didn’t do more science-fiction movies, meanwhile, will find their answer in 1979’s Quintet. The salad dressing and popcorn pitchman stars alongside Brigitte Fossey in a film billed as “one man against the world,” no doubt an attempted evocation of his Cool Hand Luke character. Thing is, this is just a weird, weird film. Set against a windswept, post-apocalyptic Ice Age, its characters all live to play — like, literally — a backgammon-inspired board game, created just for the Montreal-shot movie, in which the loser is then murdered. As the brooding Essex, Newman looks mightily unhappy under his Davy Crockett coonskin cap and fur-meets-burlap rags, and not without cause. The bizarre incongruity of it all carries you along for about 20 minutes, but that unfortunately still leaves 100 minutes more. “The thrill is just the magic of it, of making someone sit in their chair for two hours and be curious,” explains Altman in an interview featurette at film’s end. Well, Bob, the sitting, yes. The rest… not so much.

Altman’s audio commentary track, a still photo gallery and the AMC Backstory episode on the film complement the M*A*S*H disc, but the real, if adjusted and to-scale, windfall lies in brief featurettes on the other films that include up-to-date interviews with Altman, his prop master/production designer son Stephen, editor Dennis Hill and others from his steadfastly loyal production team. They’re remarkably frank and wide-ranging, and give crystalline insight into the auteur’s reasoning and thought processes, even if the final product doesn’t meet its intended mark. For filmmakers as risk takers, Altman is an emboldening, sterling example. To purchase the DVD set via Amazon, click here. C (Movies) B (Discs)

No disrespect, Buffy the Vampire Slayer and Angel
fans, but David Boreanaz is one of those of those actors who, if he
hadn’t gotten his big break on the small screen, couldn’t sniff a role
as a lead in a theatrical feature. His eyes limpid pools of
sensitive-guy yearning, his chest properly Soloflex-toned, Boreanaz is
most successful because he’s an empty vessel for (mostly female)
audience projection. Absent a compelling serial arc, though, or a
strong authorial presence in the form of puppet master like Joss
Whedon, you’re left with nothing more than a blank canvas, as the wan,
butt-baring, Canadian sexual comedy These Girls evidences.

Provincial
girls Keira St. George (Caroline Dhavernas) and baseball-loving Jesus
freak Lisa McDougall (Holly Lewis) catch their friend Glory Lorraine
(Amanda Walsh) in the sack one evening with Keith Clark (Boreanaz), a
scruffy, married pot-grower with a young infant and a wife whose
night-shift schedule as a nurse affords him plenty of unsupervised
recreational time. Their own burgeoning sexual curiosity piqued, they
each in turn seduce Keith. Glory finds out and is furious, but the
three eventually find salvaged accord in a unique “joint custody”
program in which they share bed time with him.

Written and directed by John Hazlett, These Girls ascribes
arbitrary traits to its characters, particularly the underwritten
Keith, who wows one girl by… pulling a knife on some 13-year-olds who
are non-threateningly heckling another kid. Wow, how chivalrous! The
movie tries to mine comedy from Keith’s sexual weariness, but it
doesn’t really work. The fetching Dhavernas (who would also turn in
good work in the unfortunately short-lived Wonderfalls) is by
far the best of the three actresses, but none of them really
convincingly pass for teenagers — the use of posed cigarettes and
retainers for props notwithstanding — and horrible voiceover narration
only further highlights the parade of obviousness already on display. A
desultory score is credited to Ned Bouhalassa, Peter Hay and Polo,
though pop act Tegan and Sara’s “Walking with a Ghost” provides a pinch
of vibrancy, however brief.

What else… oh, right, the butt-baring.
Yes, Boreanaz drops reverse-trou at one point, and stands prone in his
underwear another time. Didn’t do much for me personally, but there you
have it, ladies.
The film is presented in a clear, 1.85:1 anamorphic widescreen
transfer, with no grain or discoloration that sometimes mar independent
releases. English 2.0 stereo and English Dolby digital 5.1 audio mixes
ably complement the visuals, but there are no additional bonus
features, save some preview trailers for other Ardustry releases. D (Movie) C- (Disc)

The
idea of a sketch comedy show with Jim Carrey, Chris Rock and Jamie Foxx
is enough to send shivers of anticipation running through most folks,
but it’s already happened, about a dozen years ago on the fifth season
of In Living Color. That reunion would cost you, what, around
$35 million right off the top these days? And that’s not even counting
David Alan Grier and his Ambien prescription.

An unruly, irreverent half-hour show, In Living Color
was the brainchild of Keenan Ivory Wayans, and it was the perfect match
for the upstart Fox Network. By the fall of 1993 and into ’94, Keenan,
his brother Damon and his sister Kim had all departed — the result of
various contract and creative squabbles — but the series still employed
a few original cast members, including Carrey, Grier and Tommy
Davidson, to go along with a new roster that included Alexandra
Wentworth, Anne-Marie Johnson, Marc Wilmore, Reggie McFadden and
others. Rock, meanwhile, migrated over from Saturday Night Live to do a bit of part-time night-player work.

This season honestly isn’t the show’s best, as it showcases the
difficulty of sketch comedy in the half-hour format unless comedic
capriciousness is fully embraced, a la David Cross and Bob Odenkirk’s Mr. Show. There’s a funny if too brief African-Americanized send-up of The Mary Tyler Moore Show,
and the idea of a talk show built around the illegitimate black
children of white celebrities — wherein Carrey delivers a perfectly
unctuous turn as Geraldo Rivera — similarly runs out of steam after
just scratching the surface potential of its conceit. These partially
birthed bits are most emblematic of the show’s struggles, but the
series also has a tendency to infuse overt “wackiness” into basically
funny ideas, as it does in Grier’s “Loomis Simmons: Custom Built
Condoms,” about a small businessman/sexual pinch hitter.

Foxx and Tommy Davidson’s recurrent “Ace and the Main Man” sketches,
in which they hold forth as chattering security guards at a variety of
locations, don’t particularly hold up as anything more than unfunny
placeholders for a clutch of celebrity cameos (Tupac’s is refreshing,
though for all the wrong reasons — Johnny Gill’s, not so much). Among
the bits that do sustain an edge are an “Ike Turner &
Hooch” bit, interrupted by fake news coverage of white looting after
the Reginald Denny case verdict, and “Jerry Seinfeld in the Ghetto,” in
which Carrey pontificates: “Projects? Looking at the state of it, I
hope they’re grading on a curve” and, “Why do they call it ‘the hood’?
Is it like the entire city’s a big sweatshirt and that’s the part you
pull over your head? What… is the deal?” Likewise, some of the musical
segments (Us3, Souls of Mischief, Me’Shell NdegeOcello, Leaders of the
New School) are bracing because so there’s so little performance
footage on some of these acts.

Housed on three double-sided discs in slimline cases stored in turn in a cardboard slipcase, all 26 episodes of In Living Color: Season Five
are presented in 1.33:1 full frame, with English 2.0 stereo mix and
optional English and Spanish subtitles. There was some uproar,
previously, over the fact that the DVD releases of the series featured
abridged episodes, trimmed for syndication. The packaging on In Living Color: Season Four
more clearly advertised that fact, but we’re back here to a policy of
don’t ask, don’t tell, and I honestly can’t discern whether or not
these are the condensed versions, though I suspect they are.
Furthermore, there are still no supplemental extras to add additional
value to the set. While it’s obvious that the major headliners (and
even probably Grier) have busy schedules and better things to do with
their time, it’s a shame that some of the series’ writer-producers
weren’t corralled for commentary tracks or retrospective interviews. In Living Color was a trailblazing series in its own right, and while it’s quite nice to get full-season releases (paging Lorne Michaels and Saturday Night Live!), they deserve to go out on a higher, slightly better-packaged note than here. B- (Show) C- (Disc)