Shared Darkness

With a shockingly deep catalog of dozens of albums, and sales topping more than 30 million, Lynyrd Skynyrd remains a major cultural icon, still known to a remarkably wide audience for more than just their beloved Southern rock anthem “Sweet Home Alabama,” which, incidentally, lights up more than two million phones as a downloaded ringtone. The band was recently inducted into the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame, and the group’s latest album, Gods & Guns, debuted on the Billboard Top 20 at #18, representing their highest chart bow since 1977.

It’s against this backdrop that Live From Freedom Hall, one of the last concerts Lynyrd Skynyrd recorded with longtime members Billy Powell and Ean Evans, each of whom passed away last year, streets as both a concert CD and DVD. With Johnny Van Zant on vocals, providing plenty of arm pumps and crowd-stoking greetings (sample: “How ’bout that, Kentucky?”), this well-photographed show solidly showcases the band’s own inimitable brand of stubborn, scruffy, stubbled, deep-fried rock ‘n’ roll, in which boozy, armchair patriotism meets catchy melodies and riffs.

Gary Rossington and Rickey Medlocke man lead guitars, Powell takes care of keyboards, Evans is on bass, Michael Cartellone on drums, Mark Matejka on guitar and Dale Krantz Rossington and Carol Chase provide back-up vocals. “Travelin’ Man,” and “Workin'” open the set, followed by “What’s
Your Name?,” “That Smell,” and a nice rendition of “Simple Man.” The track listing for the rest of the album is as follows: “Down South Jukin’,” “The
Needle and the Spoon,” “Ballad of Curtis Loew,” “Gimme Back My
Bullets,” “Tuesday’s Gone,” “Red White and Blue,” “Gimme Three
Steps,” and “Call Me the Breeze.” “Sweet Home Alabama” and “Free Bird” aren’t played… just kidding! They close the show, of course, and send everyone home happy.

Benefiting from a superb transfer and unfussy direction that neither eschews timely cutting nor indulges in multiple angles willy-nilly, just for cutting’s sake, the DVD is available separately, in a regular plastic Amaray case in a 1.33:1 full frame presentation, with robust Dolby digital 5.1 surround sound and 2.0 stereo audio tracks, or as part of a CD-DVD deluxe set, which lets you take the concert on the road with you. To purchase the CD-DVD combo from Amazon, meanwhile, click here. The group is also on tour throughout the summer. For a full
schedule, and other information about the band, click here. B (Concert) C (Disc)

It’s a fine line that historically inclined documentaries about assassinations like Roads to Memphis have to walk, assaying the actions and motivations of their unpalatable subjects without raising them to the same venerated level of those whom they slew.

Running 82 minutes, this PBS American Experience offering, part of the longest-running history series on TV, artfully and movingly does just that, providing a sober look at the events leading up to and immediately following the April 4, 1968 assassination of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., without getting into killer James Earl Ray’s recantation of his guilty plea and his labyrinthine (and dubious) claims of complicity in a conspiracy, nor his brief 1977 escape from prison and the King family’s subsequent embrace of the belief that he had nothing to do with the murder. Instead, built around stirring reminiscences from King’s inner circle and some of the officials involved in Ray’s capture and
prosecution, as well as other talking heads, Emmy Award-winning director Stephen Ives’ Roads to Memphis provides an important snapshot of a seething and turbulent time and place in American society.

Jesse Jackson is notably absent from the interviewee roster of former aides to the Nobel Peace Prize-winning preacher, but Samuel Kyles, Roger Wilkins and Andrew Young (who notes, “We were never concerned with who killed Martin Luther King, but what killed Martin Luther King”) all offer valuable contextual detail, both in terms of King’s physical movements and actions, but also what was going on in his head in the weeks and days leading up to his death. Similarly, the roster of “establishment” talking heads is articulate and insightful, including among its ranks former CBS News anchorman Dan Rather, writer Gerald Posner, historian Wayne Flynt and Hampton Sides, author of Hellhound on His Trail: The Stalking of Martin Luther King, Jr. and the International Hunt for His Assassin. Most arresting, however, might just be some of the Memphis sanitation workers whose labor strike brought King to their town. Their recollections of their interactions with King, including his remarks to a packed church congregation the rainy evening before his death, put a powerful personal sheen on this documentary, giving it an emotional punch to match its academic insight.

Housed in a regular plastic Amaray case, Roads to Memphis comes to DVD presented in 1.78:1 anamorphic widescreen, with an English language stereo audio track. Divided into 11 chapters, the title includes an eight-minute extended interview session with aforementioned author Sides, a Memphis native who, though only six or seven years old at the time, recalls being pulled out of school and taken out of town by his parents in the days following the shooting, since they feared more violence to come. To purchase the DVD, phone (800) PLAY-PBS, or simply click here. Or, to purchase the DVD via Amazon, click here. B+ (Movie) B- (Disc)

The writing and directing debut of Parks and Recreation actor Paul Schneider, Pretty Bird is an ambling, relatively forced-cute rumination on hazy American ambition, wherein the cart of end result is always put before the horse of honed idea. In some ways a cross between Tucker and The Music Man, the film sails along for a while on the charm of its lead actors, but ultimately unwinds into a messy, unsatisfying spool of questionable motivations, curious actions and unresolved loose ends.

Adapted from Paul Brown’s book The Rocketball Caper: A True Tale of Invention, Obsession and Murder, the movie, which debuted at the Sundance Film Festival two years ago, tells the story of three would-be entrepreneurs who join forces and set out to invent and market a personal rocket belt. Curtis Prentiss (Billy Crudup) is the forcefully upbeat driving personality behind the entire endeavor, which comes together under the banner of a company Curtis names Fantastic Technologies, Inc. Curtis hits up his best friend, Kenny Owenby (David Hornsby), who owns and operates a mattress store, for seed money. He also uses some of that cash to sign the brains of the operation, Richard Honeycutt (Paul Giamatti), a married ex-rocket scientist wallowing in a funk of depression ever since being laid off from his job.

For a while, a set of mysterious blueprints which give Richard a nice head start on
the contraption, along with Curtis’ indefatigably positive, can-do mindset and offbeat sensibilities (he wears a white tuxedo to an eventual field test of the contraption, above) seem to be enough. Maybe this brash, unconventional start-up will yield startlingly successful results. Soon, though, Richard begins to wonder why none of Curtis’ investors seem to be coming through. As personalities clash and contrasting agendas seem to emerge, the partnership begins to unravel in unexpected ways. Kristen Wiig and Anna Camp also appear, as Kenny’s secretary and Curtis’ married neighbor, respectively.

Pretty Bird has some charm and plenty of diverting amusement around the edges, mostly courtesy of some warped banter, but is mightily dinged by a too-cute elliptical ending, which makes a reach for some metaphorical significance where there is none. At the core of the film’s problems is its enervated tone. Additionally, there’s not enough of a forced perspective through Curtis to make his paranoia and petty tyrannical rants — born of an intellectual insecurity — truly matter, or pop. Is Curtis merely quixotic, or deeply unhinged? We don’t ever really get a firm answer on this front, which would actually be fine if someone other than Richard — who is motivated by his own concerns over being squeezed out, and denied the glory of credit — seemed to actually care. Kenny, however, is a sop — a weirdly, purely functional character, which is problematic when constructing a shared-perspective character piece.

Housed in a regular plastic Amaray case with hollowed-out spindles that are, you know, in theory better for the environment, Pretty Bird comes to DVD presented in a crisp, color-consistent widescreen transfer, with an English language Dolby digital 5.1 surround sound audio track with optional English subtitles. Apart from the obligatory chapter stops (15, in this case), there are unfortunately no supplemental bonus features, except for a small collection of trailers for films like Echelon Conspiracy and Wrong Turn at Tahoe, the latter being the latest of many straight-to-video flicks starring Cuba Gooding, Jr. To purchase the DVD via Amazon, click here. C- (Movie) D (Disc)

Working from a screenplay by writer John Collee, director Jon Amiel delivers a waterlogged look at Charles Darwin with Creation, a muttenchop enthusiast’s delight that’s part historical drama, part hysterical  drama. While the film doesn’t span decades, but instead concentrates on a more tightly prescribed patch of time in Darwin’s life, it still proves true an old maxim regarding cinematic postscripts: the more you feel it necessary to say in pre-end credit crawl text, the less you’ve probably said during the entire rest of your movie’s running time.

Paul Bettany stars as British scientist and author Charles Darwin, a brilliant and deeply emotional man devoted to his religious wife Emma (Jennifer Connelly, Bettany’s wife in real life) and the rest of his family, but also somewhat increasingly removed from them. Part of that distance stems from a burgeoning conflict between his (flickering) faith and the rooted reason of science, which is driving a wedge between he and a longtime family friend, Reverend Innes (Jeremy Northam). Charles and Emma have also lost a child, which has understandably strained their relationship. As his health begins to falter and Thomas Huxley (Infamous‘ Toby Jones), a strident comrade-in-reason, urges him on, Darwin struggles to finish his legendary book On the Origin of Species, which would of course go on to lay the foundation for much of evolutionary biology.

The movie is built around multiple conversations with the deceased Annie (Martha West, above), and then additionally flashes back in time to various stories Darwin relates to her. Collee’s script is based on Annie’s Box, a biography penned by Darwin’s great-great-grandson Randal Keynes using personal letters and diaries of the Darwin family. Perhaps this insider-ish access compromises any sense of independent thinking that would give this project some definition and perspective, it’s hard to definitively say. Regardless, Collee, and by extension Amiel, are so heartily invested in showcasing Darwin’s descent into near-madness, and injecting overwrought emotionalism into their story, that they dip into dream-sequence-within-dream-sequence nonsense, to the detriment of any accrued interest and narrative momentum in Darwin’s scientific research and writing. In so hammering home the guilt Darwin feels over having married and had children with his first cousin, the filmmakers render secondary (perhaps even tertiary, behind interpersonal relationship histrionics) the importance or modern-day relevance of his work.

Consequently, Creation feels slack and inert, its stakes shrunken and collapsed to the point of near-pointlessness. There are certain personal details here (Darwin’s affinity for bracing water therapy, for instance, which provides Amiel with the chance to get a bit arty) that are obviously fascinating to consider as they relate to Darwin’s work. But the film connects the dots in only the most obvious and perfunctory ways. The personal overwhelms any deeper consideration of the professional in Creation; gimmicky, surface-level grieving and hand-wringing gives way to pitched, plaintive and downright grating voiceover narration, and one just knows at some point that Connelly will look beautiful but get all emotional, screaming and crying about how she’s had enough and can’t take it anymore. (She obliges.) By the time the movie posits that the impetus for Darwin’s writer’s block being cured is a simple act of coitus, however, well, one could be forgiven for thinking that Creation bears no evidence of evolution in storytelling nuance.

Housed in a regular plastic Amaray case, Creation comes to DVD presented in 2.35:1 anamorphic widescreen, with a Dolby digital 5.1 surround sound audio mix, and optional English and Spanish subtitles. Bonus features come by way of a feature-length audio commentary track with director Amiel, a special making-of documentary, and around 10 other separate featurettes which include a wide array of cast, crew and academic-leaning interviews, as well as a tour of Darwin’s home, which has been turned into a museum. To purchase the DVD via Amazon, click here. D+ (Movie) A- (Disc)

A competent, character-driven remake of George Romero‘s original 1973 film of the same name, recently released on Blu-ray by Blue Underground, with an evocative cover, The Crazies is a fairly slickly made mid-level thriller of tickled paranoia, the type of movie one could see lots of Tea Partiers rabidly embracing, as a prophetic vision of the coming governmental jackboot pressed against the neck of average, honorable, small town gun-toting citizens.

When a string of quasi-catatonic rages and other violence rocks a small Midwestern town, the sheriff of Ogden Nash, David Dutton (Timothy Olyphant), finds himself waging an uphill battle to convince the mayor and other powers-that-be that a mysterious toxin has accidentally infected the town’s water supply, and is to blame. Black helicopters (well, vans and other ground vehicles, really) soon arrive, and the secretive government round-up begins. Separated from his pregnant wife Judy (Radha Mitchell), Dutton breaks free from containment, reunites with his deputy, Russell Crank (Joe Anderson, quite good), and then sets out with Judy and teenager Becca (Danielle Panabaker), trying to jointly work their way past checkpoints and dangerous, marauding, infected loonies, out of town.

Rather admirably rooted in the interplay of its principal players, The Crazies is basically an intimately conceived and almost claustrophobic tale with a few big altercations and effects sequences thrown in to goose up the production value and thrill quotient. Some of these work, in a very gut-level kind of way, while others — like a screwy car wash scene — are less successfully conceived, and even more problematically executed. With almost any reflection, some of the movie’s basic plot points don’t really hold up. First, there’s the revelation that an airplane went down in a nearby lake, but only one person apparently noticed/heard it. Then there’s the more basic strategic command decision of an anonymous army swarming into a town, with all forms of outside communication rendered useless; if eradicating an entire town was always part of the possible agenda, why go in “soft” at all, with soldiers who are willfully misinformed about the threat? In regards to the outside threat — and even the potency of the viral communicability, which is never really fully explained — the filmmakers seem to want to leave a lot up to the imagination of viewers, but after a while some of these narrative hiccups and gaps start to come across as lazy.

What makes The Crazies mostly work, however, is its casting; all the main actors emotionally invest in the material, and Anderson in particular gets an interesting arc, moving from sympathetic to antagonistic and back again. This isn’t reinventing the wheel, and the dialogue in particular could use a little extra pop, but The Crazies is aided by the fact that its aims are fairly modest, and director Breck Eisner — Sahara helmer, and son of Disney honcho Michael — for the most part has a smart sense of pacing and involving visual style.

Housed in a regular plastic Amaray case in turn stored in a cardboard slipcover, The Crazies comes to DVD presented in 2.40:1 anamorphic widescreen, with an English language Dolby digital 5.1 surround sound audio track, and optional Spanish and English SDH subtitles, which each offer up a few flubs. Its slate of bonus material is most impressive, though, kick-started by a superb audio commentary track from Eisner. In it, he talks about Olyphant getting an enthusiastic pitch for working with him from Steve Zahn (with whom the filmmaker had worked before) on the set of A Perfect Getaway. Eisner also chats about location shooting in both Iowa and Georgia, and some of the challenges, specifically, that a large controlled burn (see picture above) presented. Naturally, there is some spoiler talk, too, so don’t listen to this chat unless/until you’ve already seen the feature first.

Next up is an 11-minute making-of featurette built largely around Eisner, in which he talks about screenwriter Scott Kosar’s first draft focusing much more on the military response within the movie. A 10-minute look at the “politicized horror” of Romero features a couple talking-head web writers, and there’s a visual effects featurette to boot. Two episodes of the short motion comic are included, as well as a featurette which spotlights the contributions of make-up mastermind Rob Hall. There are also a clutch of Easter eggs, accessed with the left
toggle button on the first menu screen of supplemental material, which
showcase the choreographing of several action sequences with stunt folks
standing in for the actors. Three theatrical trailers and 10 TV spots round things out, along with storyboards and a behind-the-scenes photo gallery. Only a bit more by way of chats with the actors could elevate this 90-minute-plus collection of bonus material. To purchase the DVD via Amazon, click here. B- (Movie) A- (Disc)

As the American economy has cratered, and helped create one of the most imposing and hostile job environments on record for emerging college graduates and young people in general, there have been all sorts of money management titles pop up on video, designed to give the under-40 set and other Millennials more information about how to navigate the choppy investment waters of a refashioned financial market. Emotionally of a piece with these titles is the PBS/NOVA production Mind Over Money — an entertaining and penetrating exploration of why mainstream economists failed to predict the crash of 2008, why we so often personally make irrational financial decisions, and what one can do to avoid common pitfalls and mistakes others make.

Narrated by Lance Lewman, Mind Over Money reveals how our emotions interfere with decision-making, and explores controversial new arguments about the world of finance. Before the current crash, most Wall Street analysts believed that markets are, to bottom-line it, “efficient” — that investors are reasonable and always operate in their own economic self-interest. Most of the time, these assumptions of classical economics work well enough. But in extreme situations, people panic and conventional theories collapse. In the face of the recent crash, can a new science that aims to incorporate human psychology into finance — behavioral economics — serve as a more accurate predictor of financial markets?

Mind Over Money chronicles some of this new field’s most compelling experiments, assaying the brains and bodies of Wall Street traders as they buy and sell stocks. One particularly ingenious experiment reveals how an excessive number of spending choices can overwhelm a consumer’s ability to make rational decisions. Through these entertaining real-life experiments, this title demonstrates how mood, decision-making and economic activity are all tightly and irrevocably interwoven.

Housed in a regular plastic Amaray case, Mind Over Money comes to DVD presented in anamorphic widescreen, with an English language stereo track that more than adequately handles the title’s straightforward aural demands. There are unfortunately no supplemental features… nor a lottery ticket. To purchase the DVD, phone (800) PLAY-PBS, or simply click here. If Amazon is totally your thing, meanwhile, click here. B (Movie) D (Disc)

If you’ve ever watched a service animal in amazement from afar, and wondered more about their training, Through a Dog’s Eyes might be a nice watch for you. A heartwarming look into the special bond between people and dogs, this short-form documentary tracks a series of dogs from their initial training through to their work with the disabled people they help every day.

Narrated by Neil Patrick Harris, Through a Dog’s Eyes centers around Jennifer Arnold, founder of Canine Assistants, one of the
country’s leading service dog organizations. Her unique teaching methods
combine the latest canine research with an unwavering kindness and
respect for dogs. Writer Don Campbell and director Peter Schnall have a knack for what makes this story interesting, blending a more removed, just-the-facts explication of Arnold’s work with more overt emotional-appeal snapshots of just how greatly the lives of service dog recipients are changed. The end result provides new insights into one of life’s most curious relationships: the
powerful human/canine bond. Even cat lovers can appreciate this hour-long title.

Housed in a regular plastic Amaray case, Through a Dog’s Eyes comes to DVD presented in anamorphic widescreen, with an English language stereo audio track. Supplemental extras consist of a series of step-by-step training pointers from Arnold. To purchase the DVD, phone (800) PLAY-PBS, or simply click here. Or if Amazon is totally your thing, click here. B (Movie) C- (Disc)

It’s a sad but seemingly inexorable truth that the nature of the 24-hour cable news network allows for political backbiting to overwhelm almost any reasonable discussion of the most gripping problems facing our nation, but the arguably positive flip-side is that when true disaster strikes, the news media is in a uniquely advantageous position — quite unlike any other time in human history — to broadcast from strife-stricken zones in real-time, in a manner that can crucially impact initial response.

Such was certainly the case with the heartrending images that followed in the wake of the massive earthquake that rocked Haiti on January 12 of this year, leveling Port-au-Prince and crippling that poor nation’s infrastructure. Running an hour long, the PBS Frontline title The Quake, written and produced by Marcela Gaviria and Martin Smith, takes cameras directly into the midst of this devastation, but also goes even further beyond the stories covered in the news over the first weeks and months, revealing faults in the Haitian government and world organizations that simply were not prepared to face such a disaster.

Bearing witness to the disaster and ill-coordinated relief efforts in one of the poorest countries in the Western hemisphere, The Quake focuses on those responsible for handling the catastrophe, including the Haitian state and the United Nations, which were crippled by the magnitude of the disaster and struggled to craft an effective national response. Drawing on exclusive interviews with relief workers and politicians, including Secretary of State Hillary Clinton and Rene Preval, the president of Haiti, The Quake makes a shaming case that portions of the disaster were unavoidable, but that the world can also do better.

Housed in a regular plastic Amaray case, The Quake comes to DVD presented in anamorphic widescreen, with an English language stereo track. Its static menu screen proffers chapter stops, but unfortunately no other supplemental material. To purchase the DVD, phone (800) PLAY-PBS, or simply click here; if Amazon’s your thing, meanwhile, click here. B- (Movie) D- (Disc)

Written and directed with a lyrical, unfussy directness by Stephane Gauger, Owl and the Sparrow tells the simple story of a young, runaway orphan whose resolute, openhearted nature helps forge a bond between two adults she drafts into her life as a sort of replacement
family.

For plucky 10-year-old Thuy (Pham Thi Han), life in her small Vietnamese village is mostly confined to working in the bamboo factory of her cantankerous uncle Minh (Hau Nguyen). All of that changes when she packs her bags, smashes her piggy bank and runs away to the bustling metropolis of downtown Saigon. There, Thuy comes to grips with the challenges of daily survival, getting by initially by selling roses on the street. Striking up individual conversations with beautiful flight attendant Lan (Cat Ly) and gentle, lonely animal keeper Hai (Le The Lu), who tends to elephants at the local zoo, Thuy also finds the sort of adult role models for whom she has been yearning. In the hustle and bustle of the big city, these three individuals are all seeking some measure of greater human connection. But in order to avoid getting sent back to her strict uncle, Thuy will need all of her cleverness and determination.

Owl and the Sparrow is a simply told film, without a lot of bells,
whistles, or narrative head feints and gamesmanship. It’s without guile,
really, and sometimes that’s really charming. The Vietnamese-American Gauger, born in Saigon to an American civilian contractor and his Vietnamese wife, seems to have a unique insight into the delicate nature and frailties of fractured adolescence, the success of which can be measured by his movie’s robust reception in various festival arenas, including Los Angeles, where it picked up an audience award last year. The film wouldn’t succeed to half the degree it does, however, with a lesser actress than young newcomer Pham Thi Han, who projects a captivating innocence. Composer Peter Nguyen’s musical contributions are gorgeous and evocative as well — further evidence of Gauger’s skill at plucking heartstrings without tipping over into maudlin cliché.

Housed in a regular plastic Amaray case, The Owl and the Sparrow comes to DVD presented in 1.78:1 anamorphic widescreen, with a Vietnamese language Dolby digital 5.1 surround sound audio track, and optional subtitles in English and Spanish. Its chief supplemental features consist of a feature-length audio commentary track with director Gauger and a seven-minute behind-the-scenes featurette which includes brief interview snippets with cast and crew, as well as some audition tape footage. There are also two deleted scenes, a self-scrolling two-minute collection of production still photographs, cast and crew pictures, and the movie’s trailer. To purchase the DVD via Amazon, click here. B- (Movie) B- (Disc)

What’s the most important lesson of Thirst, a stranded-in-the-desert ensemble flick starring Lacey Chabert, among others? Make sure you’re with at least one busty chick, since her breast implants, in a real pinch, may eventually allow you to give yourself a saline drip that will mitigate hallucinatory dehydration.

Somewhat unironically dubbed “Open Water in the desert” by Horrorsquad.com’s Peter Hall on its cover box, Thirst centers on vacationing med student Noelle (Chabert) and her husband Bryan (Tygh Runyan), who accompany another
couple, photographer Tyson (Brandon Quinn) and his new model-girlfriend Atheria (Mercedes McNab), on a day trip into the hot, desolate California desert for what they think will be a nice, uncomplicated photo shoot. Whoops. When Tyson accidentally puts their car into a ravine, the group is left stranded, and ill prepared to easily extricate themselves from the situation.

Following the car crash, Atheria is concussed and bleeding internally, which soon leads to some gnarly shenanigans with a screwdriver, in an effort to release pent-up pressure and swelling in her brain. The chief problem, though, is of course the group’s dwindling supply of water. With no shelter, no food and no cell phone reception, they make a directional miscalculation, and suffer its consequences. Lost and increasingly hopeless, one by one the group begins to fall victim to the relentless elements, unable to stave off the effects of dehydration with rattlesnake blood or their own urine. (Yeah, seriously.)

Thirst doesn’t reinvent the wheel, certainly, but neither does it terribly embarrass itself. The basic plot machinations are all more or less expected, but director Jeffery Scott Lando redeems himself a bit with a few long-form scenes which invest heartily in Bryan and Noelle’s relationship, and make this genre entry more female-friendly than a lot of other films of its ilk. The script, too, doesn’t put its foot down too heavily on the intra-group bickering; there’s recrimination, but it’s fairly well modulated. That said, the folks here do seem to compound their situation by continuing to make terrible decisions, like traveling during the day and resting during the cool of the evening, hypothesizing that it’s “not safe to travel in the dark.” It’s thinking like that which makes it hard for one to root for you, kids.

Housed in a regular plastic Amaray case, Thirst comes to DVD divided into a dozen chapters, presented in 2.35:1 anamorphic widescreen, with English language Dolby digital 5.1 surround sound and 2.0 stereo audio tracks. The picture transfer is mostly solid, and free from edge enhancement or any artifacting; colors seem inconsistent, however. (This may be reflective of creative choices; it’s not entirely clear.) There are also optional English SDH and Spanish subtitles, but there are unfortunately no other supplemental extras, save a preview trailer for the movie and a quartet of other First Look titles, including the iguana-riffic Bad Lieutenant: Port of Call New Orleans. Given that Chabert also pulled a producer credit on the film, it’s a bit curious she didn’t submit to/push for at the very least some EPK-style on-set interview chats. To purchase the DVD via Amazon, click here. C+ (Movie) D+ (Disc)

Someone had the bright idea to basically make a Jason Bourne movie with “Stone Cold” Steve Austin. And when I say bright idea, I of course mean terrible idea. It’s not entirely Austin’s fault, per se. He’s taking a check, and trying to branch out a bit from the comfort zone of his more natural skill sets (i.e., cracking heads). But this desultory, slapdash, poorly directed straight-to-video flick about an amnesiac, double-crossed killing machine takes ideas and scenes we’ve seen dozens of times before, and then executes them lazily and poorly.

Austin (above) plays a hulking guy with no name and no memory (and thus nothing left to
lose, Bob Dylan might opine). When he finds himself being hunted by the Russian mob, however, this amnesiac decides to fight back. Working with FBI agent Mason Reese (Adam Beach), Dr. Grace Bishop (Erica Cerra) is also trying to track down Austin’s character; she’s treated him, and is convinced his faulty sense of self-identity, in which he randomly “reboots” every couple weeks or months, can be cured. Enduring beatings, bullets and betrayal, Austin’s stranger slowly starts to remember bits and pieces of
the horror that took away his career, his family and his life. Naturally, more fisticuffs ensue, against a backdrop of governmental let-down and duplicity.

Working from a script by Quinn Scott, director Robert Lieberman delivers messy, uninvolving action, indiscriminately mixing slow-motion and regular-speed mayhem, and cross-cutting in a manner that mars whatever intent stunt coordinator Lauro Chartrand might have had. Austin, meanwhile, is required to do stupid things (like show up at Dr. Bishop’s hotel room… after she drops off her business card at a bar he frequents?), and do some ruminative emoting, which doesn’t come all that naturally to him. If there’s at all a silver lining to this yawning mess, it’s that The Stranger is at least rated R, so it doesn’t pull punches on its bloody beat-downs. Even hardcore action fans will be hard-pressed to care about this Stranger‘s identity, however.

Housed in a regular plastic Amaray case stored in turn in a cardboard slipcover with lenticular imaging (that’s fancy talk for 3-D, folks), The Stranger comes to DVD presented in 1.78:1 anamorphic widescreen, with a Dolby digital 5.1 surround sound audio track and optional Spanish and English SDH subtitles. Apart from a trailer, its only supplemental feature is a six-minute behind-the-scenes featurette, in which Austin talks about the time constraints of the production and also (pretty intelligently, actually) about the difference in fighting for camera versus fighting in the ring, and how the former is “less of a dance.” To purchase the DVD via Amazon, click here. D (Movie) C- (Disc)

Excepting its slightly freaky cover art, The Human Spark, hosted by Alan Alda, proves a warm and engaging scientific exploration for the layperson — an inquisitive nonfiction title that takes viewers on a spectacular and
sometimes personal journey.

Actor, author and science enthusiast Alda explores our uniquely human brains in this three-part PBS series, which delves into a wealth of a scientific
disciplines — including archaeology, primatology, neuroscience,
behavioral psychology and even philosophy. After billions of years of life’s evolution on this planet, and long after
recognizable humans first walked its surface, a new human species burst upon the
scene, apparently unannounced. It was us. Until then our ancestors had
shared the planet with other humanoids. Soon, however, there was only us,
with unprecedented power and dominion over all other animals and our
environment. That mysterious something was and is the “human spark” at
the center of this title.

Visiting with dozens of scientists all over the world and participating directly in many of their experiments (including a comprehensive examination of his own brain to see where
his “most human” abilities reside), Alda serves as a genial stand-in guide for viewers. By studying the fossilized bones and tools of our ancestors and
examining our nearest living relatives, Alda helps viewers understand
what we have in common with and what sets us apart from our ancestors. Aspirant scientists and armchair anthropologists alike will spark to this title, with its smart mix of breadth and depth, of both the cerebral and social.

Housed in a regular plastic Amaray case, The Human Spark comes to DVD presented in anamorphic widescreen, with an English language stereo audio track. To purchase the DVD, phone (800) PLAY-PBS, or simply click here. Or if Amazon is totally your thing, click here, then. B+ (Movie) C- (Disc)