Monthly Archives: June 2006

Some Scattered, Super Thoughts

June 20, 2006Ephemera, MusingsBrent

I’ll
be posting another item soon, possibly later tonight or perhaps
tomorrow, and the full review will soon follow, but I did want to briefly weigh in from the blogosphere on
that forthcoming little caped-and-blue-tights-clad independent film
called Superman Returns. Perhaps you’ve heard of it…

There’s
been a lot of reportage about the film’s dewy marketing campaign — a
completely understandable attempt, one presumes, to woo the female
moviegoers who stayed away from Mission: Impossible III in droves. But this tack isn’t a cynical bait-and-switch. Superman Returns isn’t a short movie, and it won’t be accused of being overly adrenalized, that’s for sure.

Like Batman Begins, Warner Bros.’ other successful superhero franchise reboot, Superman Returns plays a fairly solemn hand. But there are no real explications of back
story as in that film, and the first hour-plus of the movie is
downright sluggish, despite a foregrounded action sequence centering on
a near-disaster involving the space shuttle. Speaking of which, the
execution of said action sequences in general is frequently dazzling
and there’s an absolutely great effects shot that — though it’s
already been leaked to the movie’s television campaign — I won’t
specifically mention here, lest someone manage to avoid the small
screen saturation and experience it pure, as I had the good fortune to.
Still, the balancing act between relatable drama and big-stakes action
saddles the movie with a lurching momentum. In the end, though, does Superman Returns
deliver for the diehard comic book subset, of which I am not a
card-carrying member? It’ll do huge business, but honestly, I’m not so
sure that it does.

The Boondock Saints

June 19, 2006Blu-ray/DVD ReviewsBrent

In
the spring of 1997, a beer slinger/bouncer named Troy Duffy hit the
aspirant-filmmaker lotto when he sold his gritty screenplay The Boondock Saints
for $300,000 to Miramax’s Harvey Weinstein, who promptly attached Duffy
to direct, agreed to let his band do the soundtrack and, as a goodwill
bonus, even offered to buy and throw in co-ownership of the Melrose
Avenue bar where Duffy worked. If Schwab’s was the old symbol of
Tinseltown discovery, this was a radical new overhaul for the
post-Tarantino age of underclass, videostore-fed auteurism.

Cut
to a couple years later. After enduring months of Duffy’s boorish,
bizarre behavior, and all manner of contretemps over casting and
budget, Miramax put the film — about two avenging angel Irish brothers
and the Latin they intone before blasting various criminal-types in the
head — into turnaround, and dumped it back into the marketplace,
mortally wounded in reputation. It would eventually get made on a
relative shoestring budget, suffer an ignominious, deservedly bashed
New York/Los Angeles theatrical release and find on video a small,
drunken audience addicted to a surfeit of late ’90s, indie-style
posturing. All of which brings us to this two-disc DVD release of The Boondock Saints, ostensibly prelude to a not-nearly-long-enough-awaited (direct-to-video?) sequel.

Running Scared

June 19, 2006Blu-ray/DVD ReviewsBrent

So many studio films these days feel carefully plotted, and even those that shock and thrill audiences often locate their twists within the carefully prescribed confines of their genre. For those who appreciate the particular coarseness of American cinema, but still like a little danger and careening uncertainty in their cinematic diet, might I suggest writer-director Wayne Kramer’s Running Scared.

The film opened in February on the strength of leading man Paul Walker, and seemed a cinch to pull in a large swath of underfed action fans. But its debut booking in only 1,600 theaters and a marketing campaign that couldn’t successfully convey its rangy, idiosyncratic appeal submarined the movie’s commercial prospects, and it pulled in under $7 million domestically. Very diverse critical opinion — some loathed its deep, scandalous plot niches and over-the-top violence — certainly didn’t help matters; it was somehow as if every straightforward action fan telepathically picked up on the movie’s handcrafted eccentricity while potentially sympathetic arthouse fans read populist reviews dinging the movie as brawny, exaggerated and sadistic.

Walker stars as Joey Gazelle, a low-level mobster who finds his life turned upside down when a drug deal goes bad and he’s put in charge of getting rid of a hot weapon used in the shooting of a crooked cop. Before he can, however, the next-door neighbor’s kid and one of his son’s friends, little Oleg Yugorsky (Cameron Bright), finds and uses the weapon on his abusive father, setting off a charged dash through the night in which, alternately, Joey and his wife Teresa (Vera Farmiga), each try to find both Oleg and the gun before the corrupt Detective Rydell (Chazz Palminteri) or Joey’s own criminal family can turn on them. Twists come aplenty, but the movie’s best cards lie in its colorfully out-there supporting ensemble, which includes Johnny Messner, Bruce Altman and Elizabeth Mitchell.

Arriving on DVD in a fine 2.35:1 transfer that preserves both the aspect ratio and lurid color palette of the movie’s original theatrical presentation, Running Scared comes with an English 5.1 Dolby surround sound track and a DTS ES 6.1 surround sound track, as well as English and Spanish subtitles. A graphic novel from PJ Loughran which recreates the film’s climactic hockey-rink sequence is included, along with five minutes of comparative split-screen between Kramer’s storyboards and two finished scenes, as well as an audio-commentary track with Kramer in which he reveals, creepily, the herpes medication prescription in the medicine cabinet of a supporting character.

An 18-minute making-of featurette, meanwhile, includes on-set interviews with all of the principal cast plus producer Michael Pierce and production designer Toby Corbett, and impressively tips us off on a few amazingly non-CGI, practical camera set-ups and shots. Running Scared may have foundered at the box office, but there’s no reason not to give it a shot on DVD, and this nice disc allows for the jaw-dropping unease it induces to be more comfortably experienced at home. B+ (Movie) B+ (Disc)

Dharma & Greg: Season One

June 19, 2006Blu-ray/DVD ReviewsBrent

With all apologies to Paula Abdul, there are no dancing animated cats in Dharma & Greg, but, like the erstwhile pop star and current day, unhinged American Idol
judge’s most (in)famous music video of yesteryear, this popular ABC
sitcom from the late 1990s takes ample delight in the intermingling and
attraction of colorful opposites.

Co-created by Chuck Lorre and
Dottie Dartland as a vehicle for star Jenna Elfman — who then-president
of ABC Entertainment Jamie Tarses had under development contract — the
series was built around the simple conceit of culture clash and
newfound romantic bloom. In the pilot, free-spirited yoga instructor
and all-around hippie chick Dharma Finklestein (Elfman) catches the eye
of moneyed, conservative attorney Greg Montgomery (Thomas Gibson) on
the subway. After she shows up impulsively at his office, they begin a
whirlwind courtship that sees them take in baseball game, fly to Reno
for blueberry pie and finish off the evening with a quickie marriage.
The rest of the show, then, and particularly this first season, is all
about the fits and starts of their doe-eyed second guesses, and the
high contrast between their respective families.

While the show gets off some good jokes here and there, both
highbrow (“I know free spirits like her… I went to Vassar,” says
Greg’s mother of Dharma) and quasi-low (answering his cell phone when
he’s in the shower, Dharma chirps “Greg pants… he’s not in them right
now”), most of the appeal of Dharma & Greg lies in its
savvy ensemble casting (Mitchell Ryan and Susan Sullivan co-star as
Greg’s stuffy parents, Alan Rachins and Mimi Kennedy as Dharma’s
unmarried mom and dad) and the widely drawn dissimilarities of its
characters. While later seasons would wear down under the weight of
this premise, early gambits like having Dharma explain that she doesn’t
have two dogs, but rather one of her dogs has another dog (“It
was his bar mitzvah present…”) somehow here come off as fresh, perhaps
because of the relative novelty of Elfman’s squinty, whimsical grin — a
marked contrast from many of the neurotic small-screen leading ladies
of her era.

Spread out over three double-sided discs housed in slimline cases with a cardboard slipcase, Dharma & Greg: Season One
is presented in clear 1.33:1 full frame transfers, with English and
Spanish stereo tracks and optional English, Spanish and French
subtitles. As far as supplemental extras, co-creator Lorre ended many
episodes with rambling text diatribes as vanity cards, and those are
reproduced here in scrollable fashion. There’s also a 10-question
trivia game, good for a single playing. Less disposable are a clutch of
enjoyable audio-commentary tracks from Elfman, Kennedy and Rachins, who
identify various extras and bit players (Elfman’s real-life niece plays
a young Dharma), speak warmly of Gibson and one another, recollect the
key snipping of several lines of over-obvious reconciliatory dialogue
from the end of the pilot and offer up all sorts of other nice
anecdotes. There’s also a 14-minute retrospective featurette that
includes interviews with Lorre, Elfman and all of the other principals
save Gibson, who apparently can’t be pried away from the set of Criminal Minds in order to offer forth any such glad-handing reminiscences. B- (Show) B (Disc)

On Click, A Scanner Darkly, The Science of Sleep

June 18, 2006Ephemera, MusingsBrent

In forward-looking, decidedly random tidbits, the dirty little secret of Adam Sandler’s Click is that — despite a protracted sequence in which he passes gas in David
“Big in Germany” Hasselhoff’s face — it’s actually a much more
willfully poignant film than Sony’s marketing is letting on. Again,
filmgoer satisfaction surveys and second week numbers will be of great
interest here… Fans of Richard Linklater and independent-minded cinema in general, meanwhile, have a lot to look forward to with A Scanner Darkly, opening in early to mid-July. It’s a film that certainly could have
been made in normal narrative fashion, but the rotoscoping animation
first on wide display in Waking Life lends the picture a
slurry, seductive charm, particularly in its “scramble suit”
application… I was less wowed, however, by Michel Gondry’s The Science of Sleep,
which has a great general conceit and handcrafted production design,
but a mortally wounded sense of storytelling, even within its own dream
logic… Today, I’m enjoying fresh pineapple, courtesy of a corer and
noggin-sized Del Monte pineapple that arrived with a review copy of the
new straight-to-video Lilo & Stitch sequel, Leroy & Stitch. Unlike most things in life, said slicer actually works… I’ll also be
catching some films at the forthcoming Los Angeles Film Festival —
which kicks off in Westwood this week with a screening of The Devil Wears Prada — and hopefully filing a few morsels and opinions from there. ’Til next time…

CineVegas Names Festival Winners

June 17, 2006EphemeraBrent

It’s
not known as the city of sin for nothing, and Las Vegas’ eighth annual
CineVegas proved worthy of its motto as “the world’s most dangerous
film festival,” spotlighting sex, adultery, drugs and dangerous social
circles run amok during its recently wrapped, successful 59-film run at
the Palms Casino Resort and Brenden Theatres from June 9-17.

In
addition to honoring a variety of entertainment icons (Helen Mirren,
Taylor Hackford, Laurence Fishburne, Christina Ricci and Sylvester Stallone) who no doubt enjoyed their comped trips to Vegas, the
festival screened a dozen highly anticipated world and U.S. premieres,
plus showcased a smattering of homegrown Nevada fare.

A jury comprised of director Mark Pellington (Arlington Road, The Mothman Prophecies) and film critics Jean Oppenheimer and FX Feeney awarded the Grand Jury Award went to the film G.I. Jesus,
directed by Carl Colapert and starring Joe Arquette (above),
Patricia Mota, Maurizio Farhad, Mark Cameron and Telana Lynum. Blending
two current, hot-button issues together in chocolate-and-peanut-butter
fashion, the movie tells the story of Mexican national Jesus Feliciano,
who returns to California after a tour of duty in Iraq, where he served
in the Army in exchange for a grant of U.S. citizenship. Suffering from
trauma related to his battle experiences, Jesus tries to put his life
back together even as he feels his family life increasingly threatened.

The jury also bestowed honorable mentions to the films The Favor, written and directed by Eva Aridjis, and The 4th Dimension, written and directed by Tom Mattera and Dave Mazzoni. Park,
meanwhile, received the festival’s Audience Award. Written and directed
by Kurt Voelker, and starring William Baldwin, Ricki Lake and Cheri
Oteri, the film orchestrates a tempest of change in the lives of a
group of Los Angelenos on a seemingly quiet and sunny day in a secluded
recreational area. For more information, visit the festival’s web site by clicking here. Then tell them Shared Darkness sent you, and watch the look of confusion wash over their faces…

Exploring Slapstick with Laurel and Hardy

June 16, 2006Blu-ray/DVD Reviews, MusingsBrent

First-run
DVD sales have experienced a slowdown recently, as increasingly savvy
consumers — emboldened by the convenience and abundance of choice
offered by both discount retailers and Netflix and similar rental and
DVD-sharing web sites — realize they no longer have to shell out a $30
list price to add their favorite movies to a home collection. While the
insatiable sales engine for contemporary titles stalls, though, the
real value of the format is hearteningly explored in releases like
Warner Bros.’ TCM Archives: Laurel and Hardy Collection and 20th Century Fox’s similarly titled The Laurel and Hardy Collection, part of its Cinema Classics line.

Accidentally
paired up in the silent era of the 1920s while both were under contract
to impresario Hal Roach, Stan Laurel and Oliver Hardy made over 100
full-length features and shorts together, surviving the transition to
talkies to become even greater stars during the Great Depression of the
1930s, when audiences more than ever craved and needed escapist
entertainment. The success of their collaborations can likely be traced
to the fact that their irresistible antics were always underscored by
an indomitable sense of optimism. Audiences laughed, sure, but also
felt a draft of uplift. That sanguinity helps explain the enduringness
of their work.

TCM Archives: Laurel and Hardy Collection debuts 1933’s The Devil’s Brother and 1935’s Bonnie Scotland,
which imports the pair’s anarchic slapstick to England and finds them
joining His Majesty’s Service to do manly battle on the frontier of
India. Introductions by Turner Classic Movies host Robert Osborne and
audio commentary tracks on both films by film critics and historians
Richard W. Bann and Leonard Maltin boost their contextual value and
stand alongside segments from such classics as Hollywood Party and Pick a Star, but the best inclusion here may just be Added Attractions: The Hollywood Shorts Story.
Narrated by Chevy Chase, this feature-length documentary frames Laurel
and Hardy’s work alongside that of the Little Rascals and the Three
Stooges, among others.

The Laurel and Hardy Collection, meanwhile, collects World War II-era flicks from the duo’s work at 20th Century Fox, including Jitterbugs, The Big Noise and Great Guns.
The latter, directed by Monty Banks, finds the duo back in the Army,
this time playing a chauffeur and gardener whose hypochondriac employer
(Dick Nelson) gets drafted and takes them along for the ride. The best
of the three, 1943’s Jitterbugs, stars Laurel and Hardy as a
traveling two-man band who operate out of a dilapidated jalopy and form
an unlikely partnership with a likeable con man (Bob Bailey) that in
turn leads to a liaison with a sweet singer, Susan (knockout Vivian
Blaine). The Big Noise, meanwhile, casts the pair as detective
agency janitors accidentally mistaken for super sleuths and hired to
protect a secret bomb. Still photo galleries, audio commentary tracks
from author Randy Skretvedt, Fox Movietone news reels and theatrical
trailers help root the work, and the documentary The Revenge of the Sons of the Desert is also included on The Big Noise.

Qualitatively, TCM Archives: Laurel and Hardy Collection gets a slight nod over The Laurel and Hardy Collection,
if only because of the quality of the films themselves. But each of
these releases is a great leap into cinema’s rich past, and points up
the reward of searching past the new releases section at your local
video store or retailer. B (Movies) A- (Discs)

NewsRadio: The Complete Fourth Season

June 16, 2006Blu-ray/DVD ReviewsBrent

Lost has recently gotten all kinds of credit for juggling an insane number of characters, but NewsRadio
was probably the finest small-screen comedic ensemble collection of the
1990s. Created by Paul Simms, the series never achieved the sexy
zeitgeist heights of a show like Friends, or even the sturdy ratings of something like Frasier, but for those in the comedic know, it was home to laughs born of irony, crisp joke-writing and serial silliness.

What makes NewsRadio
so smart and funny is its blend of disparate comic styles, and the
screwball manner in which it captures the absurdity of inner-office
politics and romance. The show is set at WNYX, a New York radio station
owned by Jimmy James (Stephen Root), an oblivious and eccentric
billionaire. Overworked but perennially positive-minded news director
Dave Nelson (Dave Foley) struggles to juggle the multiple personalities
of his staff, including ambitious ex-girlfriend Lisa Miller (Maura
Tierney), who spells him as boss some this season, and preening,
bombastic anchor Bill McNeal (the late, great Phil Hartman). Rounding
out the cast are distractible office idiot Matthew (Andy Dick),
bubble-headed slacker secretary Beth (Vicki Lewis), electrician Joe
(Joe Rogan) and Catherine (Khandi Alexander).

In all honesty, this season of the show isn’t its finest (half-)
hour. The series was constantly facing cancellation speculation, and
consequently its narratives feel somewhat clipped and uncertain. Too
many episodes recycle old conflicts. While this wouldn’t be the series’
last season, it would be the last one with Hartman — who can take a
simple line reading like “And how!” and turn it into high art — and his
sudden, heart-rending absence dealt the already hamstrung show a blow
from which it would never recover. Still, middling NewsRadio is
better than a lot of sitcoms hitting on all cylinders, and there’s
plenty of piecemeal amusement to be found herein. One episodic
highlight is “Beep Beep,” in which Jimmy gives Matthew a toy car in
which to tool around the office as a birthday present, and also tries
to get Dave and Lisa back together in an effort to goose their
productivity. Also scoring are “Copy Machine,” in which Dave is forced
to eulogize an employee who dies in a tragic office mishap, and the
two-parter “Who’s the Boss?” in which Dave and Lisa’s attempts to teach
Bill a lesson backfire to humorous effect.

Spread out over three discs in slimline cases, NewsRadio: The Complete Fourth Season
is presented in 1.33:1 full screen, with a Dolby digital 5.1 surround
sound English mix and optional English subtitles. Extra features are
relatively sparse, but include an amusing little experimental short
film in which Simms inserts himself into the show’s credits and
recreates various seasonal plotlines in miniature, playing each of the
characters. There are also a clutch of audio commentaries with Simms,
Lewis and writer-producer Joe Furey, which are interesting chiefly in
that they’re also sat in on by a collection of below-the-liners not
typically represented in behind-the-scenes chats: post-production
coordinator Todd “Spider” Chambers, second assistant director Michael
Risner and script supervisor Robert Spina. Finally, there’s a whopping
20-minute gag reel, which includes spittoon rimshot miscues, Foley
accidentally leaving his glasses on and errant Diet Cokes slipping into
frame, as well as a litany of (bleeped) profanities when lines are
flubbed. Watching these genial gaffes, one yearns for Hartman even
more. B+ (Show) B (Disc)

Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid

June 14, 2006Blu-ray/DVD ReviewsBrent

The phrase is such a part of the American lexicon, and so engrained as an element of the modern-day Hollywood filmmaking enterprise, that the movie from which all ramshackle “buddy films” sprang is sometimes almost forgotten: 1969’s Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid. Just a few minutes, though, of screenwriter William Goldman’s dazzlingly unconventional take on the Western genre, sold to 20th Century Fox for a then-record sum of $400,000, and you’ll be hooked, recognizing this film classic’s imprint on future generations of male-bonding-and-bickering action flicks.

When a relentless “super posse” is dispatched to corral notorious Old West outlaws Butch Cassidy (Paul Newman) and the Sundance Kid (Robert Redford), the duo take a break from their lawless ways and flee to Bolivia with Sundance’s girlfriend, Etta (Katharine Ross). But old habits die hard, of course, and the pair soon find themselves on the lam again, outnumbered and outgunned.

Director George Roy Hill’s work is brave and interesting (he keeps his actors committed to the seriousness of their lines, and who else would’ve okayed the offbeat inclusion of “Raindrops Keep Falling on My Head?”), and cinematographer Conrad Hall shoots a gorgeous frame. But it’s Newman and Redford, of course, who make the biggest and best impressions here. The former was already a star, but the latter bloomed into one with this picture.

Housed in a clear Amray case with a snap-in tray for its first disc, the two-disc Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid, billed here as an ultimate collector’s edition, slips into a cardboard keep-case and comes with an eight-page insert booklet that features photos from the movie and offers up some interesting bits of trivia: the studio wanted Paul Newman… for the role of Sundance, and Steve McQueen as Butch Cassidy. And even after Hill stuck to his guns and Newman was cast as Butch, Redford almost didn’t land the role that would help jumpstart and define his career; Marlon Brando was allegedly slated to play the sharp-shooting bandit until he dropped out due to distress over the April 1968 assassination of Martin Luther King. (One can perhaps imagine today an eponymous culinary celebration or Native American arts fair in lieu of a film festival had the part of Sundance remained cast the way it was originally intended.)

The film is presented in a solid 2.35:1 anamorphic widescreen transfer, with audio in English stereo, English mono, Spanish mono and French mono mixes. Imported from the previous DVD release are a nice, hearty handful of period cast interviews; an audio commentary track with Hill, Hall, lyricist Hal David and associate producer Bob Crawford; production notes; and a 43-minute making-of documentary, rife with narrated production footage. Amongst the new supplemental features is an audio-commentary track with screenwriter Goldman, one of Hollywood’s richest and most astute observers and commentators. There’s also a feature-length doc on the history of outlaws of the time, and an all-new retrospective documentary with superb interviews with Newman, Redford, Goldman, composer Burt Bacharach and others. Buoyed with interviews with historians, the 25-minute Wild Bunch: The True Tale of Butch & Sundance, meanwhile, specifically examines the delicate balancing act of fact and fiction with regards to the film’s main characters. A timeless film stocked here with extras of ample value, this DVD release of Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid is a bull’s-eye winner. A (Movie) A (Disc)

Star Trek Fan Collective: Q

June 14, 2006Blu-ray/DVD ReviewsBrent

Am I the best person in the world to be reviewing Star Trek Fan Collective: Q,
the one who’s going to inundate you with all manner of minutiae about
the technological specs of the spacecraft and various linguistic
derivations of Klingons? No, not by a long shot. And yet my outsider
perspective is probably a better fit for something like Star Trek Fan Collective: Q, the sort of one-off collection that’s aimed at more casual fans of the sci-fi franchise.

A word about my own background: I came to Star Trek: The Next Generation as an occasional reader of science fiction, and someone who’d only casually seen the original Star Trek series in reruns, but not followed it with any religious fervor. The late night showings of The Next Generation
dovetailed perfectly with my schedule for a few years, and it was here
that I happened across the familiar face of John de Lancie, whom my
mother knew better as Eugene Bradford from Days of Our Lives.
De Lancie was perfectly serviceable in that role, and many others in
which I’ve seen him, but his distinctive timbre (he would also go on to
be an uncredited letter-reader in Saving Private Ryan) and
expressive face would be best put to use as the impish, omnipotent Q, a
lowercase-G god-like being who would float in from a plane of parallel
existence called the Q Continuum. It was a perfect merging of rascally
talent and character.

Possessing a self-touted IQ of over 2,000, and claiming to be
ageless and beyond the grasp of emotion, Q nonetheless was prone to
petty outbursts and tantrums. The dozen episodes here include eight
from The Next Generation, where Q saw the bulk of his work; three from Star Trek Voyager; and Star Trek: Deep Space Nine’s “Q-Less.” The arc of his relationship with Captain Jean-Luc Picard (Patrick Stewart), though, and the rest of The Next Generation’s
Enterprise crew, is the main attraction here, as Q goes from attempting
to put them all on trial for being a grievously savage race to reaching
a somewhat illuminated respect for humanity, as glimpsed in the series
finale “All Good Things…” Part device of moral engagement, part testily
colorful figure of self-involvement, de Lancie’s Q was never boring,
and he’s over the years brought a lot to the venerable Star Trek franchise, which makes this set plenty of fun.

Star Trek Fan Collective: Q is spread out over four discs
housed in their own plastic trays, and it comes in a sturdy cardboard
casing that in turn slips into a cardboard slipcase with raised
lettering and a slightly holographic cover. Episodes are arranged
chronologically, and presented in 1.33:1 full screen with a Dolby
digital 5.1 surround sound English mix and optional English subtitles.
Extra features are sparse, with text commentary by Michael and Denise
Okuda on three episodes (The Next Generation’s “Déjà Q,” episode #161; Deep Space Nine’s “Q-Less,” episode #407; and Star Trek: Voyager’s “Death Wish,” episode #130). Where’s the in-depth interview with de Lancie, however? Ah well, Q probably knows… B (Show) C- (Disc)

Home Improvement: The Fourth Season

June 14, 2006Blu-ray/DVD ReviewsBrent

My impressions are admittedly forged chiefly by syndicated rerun viewings, but Home Improvement seems the classic example of a television series that defines its audience
early on and then gives that subset more of what it has grown to love,
while also adding enough small character wrinkles to keep things
legitimately fresh and moving forward. The show was originally rooted
in the gruff, “guys’ guy” stand-up comedy of star Tim Allen — part of a
spate of pilot production deals handed out to up-and-coming comedians
in the early 1990s — but anyone who followed the series in its later
years will attest that only the most trace amounts of that edge
remained. Instead, Home Improvement grew into the equivalent of
a pine tree — a dependable if unspectacular small screen laffer with
not quite the majesty of an oak, the delicious novelty of an apple or
lemon tree nor the mannered beauty of a willow tree.

For those
unfamiliar with the Detroit-set show, Allen stars as Tim Taylor, the
affable, pun-loving host of a Bob Villa-type, do-it-yourself television
program called Tool Time. His faithful co-host is Al Borland
(Richard Karn), and his long-suffering wife is Jill (Patricia
Richardson). Together, they preside over a brood of three rambunctious
sons (with an irritating nine names between them — Zachery Ty Bryan,
Jonathan Taylor Thomas and Taran Noah Smith), and live next door to a
rarely glimpsed neighbor, Wilson (Earl Hindman), who dispenses nuggets
of advice that help, when necessary, steer the perpetually
mishap-making Tim toward compromise and apology.

Highlights from the series’ fourth season find Tim dropping a
three-ton beam on Jill’s car, Jill deciding to return to college and
Tim additionally both baffled and slightly jealous when Al is named one
of the city’s most eligible bachelors. Home Improvement, like
many of its familial sitcom brethren, stoops a bit too often to the
overly simplified husband-as-idiot routine. Still, the characters are
nicely sketched and warmly brought to life by both Allen and especially
Richardson, who would pick up the second of four unfulfilled Emmy
nominations for her work this season. Episodic highlights include “Ye
Olde Shoppe Teacher,” “A House Divided,” “Brother, Can You Spare a Hot
Rod?” and the cleverly titled “He Ain’t Heavy, He’s Just
Irresponsible.” Guest stars herein include Dave Chappelle (not as Rick
James, alas), Lucy Liu and Michelle Williams.

Presented in 1.33 full screen with audio in Dolby digital 2.0 stereo, Home Improvement: The Complete Fourth Season
comes in a unique cardboard slipcase that showcases a saw on its
undercover. Spread out over three discs that are in turn housed in
sturdy gatefold packaging, this is a prime example of a bit of extra
time and effort being put into the presentation of a set, and it’s nice
for consumers. Unfortunately, though, the only bonus material comes by
way of a brief blooper reel, at least some of which fans will no doubt
recognize from Dick Clark’s visit to the set for his blooper-laden
specials. C+ (Series) B (Disc)

The Dirty Dozen

June 13, 2006Blu-ray/DVD ReviewsBrent

With
Father’s Day looming just around the corner, one of the classic roles
of tough-guy favorite Lee Marvin gets a superlative special edition DVD
release from Warner Bros. Often imitated but rarely convincingly
duplicated, 1967’s The Dirty Dozen is an indisputable action genre gem.

Marvin
stars as John Reisman, a sturdy, square-jawed and cynical Army Major
assigned by General Warden (Ernest Borgnine) to train and command a
squad of 12 hardened convict misfits on a suicide mission against top,
on-leave Nazi brass on the eve of D-Day in occupied France. Among the
jailbirds who will earn their freedom, if they survive, are Telly
Savalas, Jim Brown, Charles Bronson, Trini Lopez, Donald Sutherland,
Clint Walker and John Cassavetes, the latter an Oscar nominee for Best
Supporting Actor for his work in the film. Neatly divided between its
introduction of the men, their training and fitful regimentation, their
participation in a series of war games and the final raid itself, The Dirty Dozen is naturally clichéd in some instances, but tugged along capably by the personalities on display.

What additionally helps separate The Dirty Dozen from its genre brethren is its script, by Nunnally Johnson and Lukas Heller, and Flight of the Phoenix and The Longest Yard
director Robert Aldrich’s unflinching, sleeves-rolled-up orchestration
of the gritty material (the film takes its name from an incident
wherein the prisoners-turned-soldiers refuse the indignity of cold
water, only to then be told that they won’t shave or shower from there
on). For both fans of war drama and ensemble action flicks, it doesn’t
get much better than The Dirty Dozen.

Spread out over two discs and housed in a regular Amray case with a snap tray insert, this special-edition release of The Dirty Dozen
is presented in a 1.77 anamorphic transfer with a re-mastered Dolby
digital 5.1 audio track that makes superlative use of its front-channel
stereo spread. Interestingly, three made-for-television sequels to the
movie followed two decades later, in the 1980s, and the first of those,
1985’s The Dirty Dozen: The Next Mission is also included here.
(The other two are being re-released as a double-feature DVD this month
by Sony.) A four-minute introduction to the film by Borgnine kicks off
the release, and he fondly and candidly touches on the movie’s English
location filming and the fact that Marvin’s role was originally offered
to John Wayne, who chose instead to make The Green Berets.

Saddled with an amusingly overblown and tersely self-serious narration, the vintage featurette Operation Dirty Dozen
is notable for its almost stream-of-consciousness collection of on-set
footage, including bits that would be unfathomable today, such as the
ensemble cast eating at a King’s Road establishment on their day off
(Sutherland scoops cantaloupe!) and Marvin enjoying a rural, dirt-track
motocross race. Cast members Brown, Lopez, Stuart Cooper and Colin
Maitland anchor a robust audio commentary track that includes film
historian David Schow, screen military advisor Dale Dye, producer
Kenneth Hyman and others, but this is advisable only if you’ve already
seen the movie several times, as ahead-glancing spoilers are rampant.

Two new featurettes nicely complement the release. Chock full of
anecdotal reminiscences from the cast (Sutherland is especially
charming), Armed and Deadly: The Making of The Dirty Dozen lasts a half hour, while a second documentary, running over 45 minutes,
details the real-life airborne division that inspired author E.M.
Nathanson to pen his fictional work upon which the film is based.
There’s also a 30-minute recruitment documentary on Marine Corps combat
leadership skills, the ostensible tie-in being Marvin’s narration. B+ (Movie) A- (Disc)

Grounded for Life: Season 2

June 13, 2006Blu-ray/DVD ReviewsBrent

The brainchild of former 3rd Rock From the Sun show runners Mike Schiff and Bill Martin, Grounded For Life
is a family sitcom that in many ways doesn’t try to reinvent the wheel,
but also makes a few modifications to the well-worn genre that
generally give it a bit of a kick in the pants. The show debuted on Fox
as a mid-season replacement in January of 2001, where it aired for two
seasons before getting quietly snuffed and then traded over to the WB.
It’s subsequently seen a revival on the ABC Family cable network, which
has helped perpetuate confusion as to exactly how long the series has
been around.

The show centers around both Donal Logue and Megyn
Price, who star as Sean and Claudia Finnerty, a fun-loving Staten
Island couple who met in high school and got married when a teenage
pregnancy forced their hand. Now in their early 30s, the excitable
couple have three kids — headstrong teen daughter Lily (Lynsey
Bartilson) and two younger boys, Jimmy (Griffin Frazen) and Henry (Jake
Burbage). The rub, of course, and the source of the title, is that in
becoming parents so young, Sean and Claudia — despite their love for
and unyielding commitment to one another — aren’t really fully settled
adults themselves.

The meddling of Sean’s judgmental, conservative father Walt (Office Space’s
Richard Riehle), and the presence of his kooky, loafer brother Eddie
(Kevin Corrigan), who embodies all of Sean’s extinguished daydreams of
unfettered independence, ensure plenty of contrasting dispositions and
opinions on everything from Lily’s nascent dating practices to familial
shopping trips and birthday gift compromises. The series’ novelty is in
the fashion that it blends traditional, studio-taped segments with
single-camera bits. The general conceit is that there’s some argument,
mishap or misadventure, and this in turn spins back into different
memories of the past that inform or relate to the situation, with these
being the pre-taped bits.

The energy of the cast is what most helps sell these 17 episodes,
along with the relative uniqueness of this parallel construction.
Episodic highlights include “Swearin’ to God,” wherein Sean takes over
as president of the St. Finnian’s parents’ committee, and “We Are
Family,” in which the Finnerty’s plumbing gets busted. On the downside,
Corrigan frequently over-dials the eccentricity as Eddie, and, more
unnervingly, Lily is a thinly veiled knock-off of Kelly Bundy from Married… With Children
— the teen daughter sexpot-in-waiting, albeit here far more
persistently petulant than airheaded. While a definite nod to the
show’s Fox base camp, plotlines like these handicap the series somewhat
as a “tweener,” making it a bit too out-there for full family viewing.

As with their treatment of other Carsey Werner shows (Roseanne, 3rd Rock From the Sun),
distributor Anchor Bay has mostly done right by the series in its
packaging and presentation. Housed in a cardboard slipcase that holds
two slimline cases, the 17 episodes of Grounded For Life’s
second season are spread out over three discs, and presented in a 1.33
full screen transfer, enhanced for 16×9 televisions, that is a solid
duplication of its small screen exhibition. Audio comes courtesy of a
Dolby digital 2.0 track. Eschewing the mondo audio commentaries of the
packed DVD release of the show’s inaugural season, this collection
still features bloopers, a comprehensive (if somewhat dubious)
highlights package and brief interviews with series regulars Burbage,
Frazen and Corrigan. There’s also a three-minute chat with Ashton
Kutcher, who guest stars in an episode as Sean’s daredevil cousin. This
bit, recorded on the set of That ’70s Show, mostly consists of him recounting the plot of said episode, intercut with highlights of the same. C+ (Show) B- (Disc)

Quantum Leap: The Complete Fourth Season

June 12, 2006Blu-ray/DVD ReviewsBrent

Quantum Leap
was a show that could always serve as a common-ground point of bonding
for my girlfriend at the time and I. It was the facile entertainment
value of the series that was its initial draw, but I suppose if I had
to examine it deeper, there was something oddly comforting about its
correlative juxtaposition with a long distance, phone-driven
relationship.

Running from 1989 to ’93, Quantum Leap
centered around the time-traveling adventures of Dr. Sam Beckett (Scott
Bakula) and his striking chin and handsome coif. Having put his six
doctorates to good use in postulating that time travel within one’s own
lifetime was possible, and having built a contraption to test those
theories, the story goes, Beckett was forced to prematurely step into
said time machine or face losing important funding. He then awoke to
find himself trapped in the past, suffering from partial amnesia and
ping-ponging randomly from one period to another. His only contact with
the “present” comes in the form of a holographic apparition of project
observer Al Calavicci (Dean Stockwell), and in turn his oft-befuddled
interactions with a handheld computer named Ziggy (voiced by Deborah
Pratt).

Trapped in the past, Beckett would in each episode leap from one
life to another, putting right simple things that once went wrong and
hoping that each next leap would be his leap home. Apart from the
inherently beautiful structure this fantastical “mission-based”
storyline provided (and the manner the end of each show could thus
tease the following week’s episode), Quantum Leap also did a
great job mixing poignancy with frivolity. As the series wore on, there
were some fascinatingly mind-bending episodes (including Beckett’s jump
back into his own body as a teen), but Bakula always struck just the
right blend of mind-racing, adroit charm and occasional pathos to make
things interesting.

Highlights from this set include “It’s a Wonderful Leap,” in which
Beckett leaps into a cabbie who accidentally hits a woman who claims to
be his guardian angel; “Raped,” in which Beckett leaps into a date-rape
victim; “Hurricane,” which tests Beckett’s powers of persuasion as a
small town sheriff in the path of an incoming storm; and the Bermuda
Triangle-focused “Ghost Ship.” The season finale, meanwhile, finds
Beckett leaping into the body of a younger Al, as a Navy pilot, and on
trial for the murder of the wife of his commanding officer.

Housed in a regular Amray case, Quantum Leap is presented in
1.33 fullscreen, with an English Dolby digital 2.0 audio track and
optional subtitles in English and Spanish. The transfer is only so-so,
with stock footage noticeably different and scratches and grain
persistent throughout. The first season of the show on DVD included a
20-minute retrospective documentary with all-new interviews and
episodic introductions by Bakula. Unfortunately, none of the principals
return here for anything of that nature, and the only true supplemental
extra is the inclusion of the catch-all, half-hour special The Great ’80s TV Flashback, which collects interviews with The Hollywood Reporter’s
Ray Richmond, producer Stephen J. Cannell, reporter Alex Ben Block and
many others. As a bonus, though, there is a fifth season episode,
“Liberation,” in which Beckett leaps into the body of a housewife
during the struggle for the Equal Rights Amendment. B+ (Show) C (Disc)

Date Movie

June 12, 2006Blu-ray/DVD ReviewsBrent

Billing Date Movie as “from two of the six writers of Scary Movie,”
complete with a mock-scrawled caret, is on the surface ridiculous, but
actually a piece of deft marketing, wisely pointing up the flick’s
satirical street cred to the same audience that drove that latter spoof
series to the top of the box-office charts.

Directed by Aaron Seltzer, a co-writer on the film with Jason Friedberg, Date Movie name-checks all manner of comedy hits (Bridget Jones’ Diary, Shallow Hal, Wedding Crashers), both romantic and not, but takes as main tentpoles for its spoof My Big Fat Greek Wedding, Meet the Parents and Hitch.
The story centers around Julia Jones (Alyson Hannigan), an obese,
lovelorn waitress in a “Greek-Indian-Japanese-Jewish” family run by her
well-meaning but overbearing father (Eddie Griffin, apparently having
stolen Dan Hedaya’s eyebrows). After getting a truly extreme
makeover, she finds love with Grant Fockyerdoder (Adam Campbell), an
amalgamation of every foppish, generic, B-list leading man in these
types of movies. There’s trouble in the gathering of Julia’s parents
and Grant’s mom and dad (Jennifer Coolidge and Fred Willard), but the
real romantic obstacle is Grant’s randy bombshell ex, Andy (Sophie
Monk), who makes it her slutty mission to win back her fiancé of only a
week before.

The similarly pitched Not Another Teen Movie is probably the better and more consistent satire of the two, but Date Movie
does have at least a few inspired bits, including a send-up of Paris Hilton’s
slithery Carl’s Jr. carwash commercial, and a terse send-up of Mr. and Mrs. Smith’s
therapy sequence. There’s also a few lines of brilliantly winking
dialogue, such as when we first meet a bikini-clad Andy in the
aforementioned carwash bit and Julia asks, “Why is she in slow motion?”
to which Grant blithely responds, “She likes to make an entrance.”

The film’s blind eye with regards to race in its casting is nice —
Griffin and Hannigan share some amusing scenes together simply by
virtue of their offbeat pairing — and it also has fun with some
obviously fake body doubles for Willard and Hannigan. Far too many
bits, however, seem forced and/or stale — I could have done without the
nonsensical Lord of the Rings parody, another Michael Jackson joke and an abundance of feline gross-out humor meant to be a send-up of Meet the Parents’ Jinx. Many other bits, meanwhile, seem awkwardly shoehorned in only because they share Date Movie’s
distributor, 20th Century Fox. If the filmmakers had gone further back
into the canon of popular rom-coms (as they do with one bit in a nod to
When Harry Met Sally…), the movie would perhaps have felt a
little more grounded. As such, it’s a hit-and-miss collection of
sketches, with an emphasis on the latter.

Where this unrated version of Date Movie really grades out,
though, is in its vast slate of extras. The film is presented in 1.85:1
anamorphic widescreen, with a dozen excised, extended or otherwise
alternate scenes. A production featurette, audition tapes,
screensavers, forthrightly billed extra footage of Monk cavorting about
poolside and a set-top game are also included, as are three audio
commentary tracks. The first is from writers Seltzer and Friedberg; the
second features stars Hannigan, Campbell and Monk; and the third, a
real hoot, is from critics Scott Foundas and Bob Strauss. While Strauss
defends the movie on its own to-scale terms, Foundas quotes from his
review in which he confesses jealousy at the random bit player who
takes a nail gun to his head in the movie’s first two minutes. C- (Movie) A- (Disc)

The King

June 9, 2006Film ReviewsBrent

A Southwestern American pastoral of dormant menace, The King is a film of triple-dipped mood
that turns on an act of shocking violence but still retains a significant
emotional distance. Sharing the hypnotic quietude of movies like In the Bedroom, Monster’s Ball and All the
Real Girls, it is subtly acted and put together of a piece, but also a
movie that seems to substitute willful indistinctness for insight.

Mulholland Drive’s
Laura Harring), and two teenage children, Paul (Paul Dano) and Malerie (Pell
James, above right). David tacitly acknowledges the validity of Elvis’ claim, and even talks
with his wife about it, but keeps things a secret from his children, in an
effort to shut out a reminder of the sinful life he led before being saved.

Elvis, meanwhile, gets a job at a local pizza parlor, and
strikes up a relationship with the naïve Malerie. Pushed into a corner when
Paul threatens to expose what he believes to be a rebellious romantic fling on
the part of his sister, Elvis lashes out, in what might best be described as Single White Male fashion. Confession
and recrimination ensue, with David even repenting before his congregation and
introducing Elvis to them, but more murky tragedy follows.

In his feature debut, documentary filmmaker James Marsh (Troubleman, Wisconsin Death Trip) elicits nice, subtle work
from his cast, particularly Dano and James. Co-written with Milo Addica
(himself a co-writer on Monster’s Ball
and Birth), the film also makes
important use of music, through Max Avery Lichtenstein’s score, Budd Carr’s
musical selections and the character of Paul, who plays religious-inspired
tunes on the electric guitar as warm-up for his father’s sermons. Hurt,
meanwhile, is gently mesmerizing as a truly changed and reinvented man, a nice
contrast from the serene but flippantly theatrical, zonked-out brilliance of
his turn in A History of Violence.

Still, the film overall feels like more than a bit of a
cheat. The King means to stand as a
muted, somewhat archetypal tale of sin, redemption and retribution, but its
interactions and consequences are too delicately arranged by half. Malerie
falls under Elvis’ sway not because he’s a rakish charmer or for any other good
reason, but because… he has a beat-up old car? Really, this is the cliché we’re trotting out? Elvis, meanwhile, is a
complete enigma. Bernal effectively tamps down the considerable wattage of his
mischievous smile, but there’s nothing about the character, as written, that
illuminates the intent behind his actions. If Elvis were either a case study of
malevolent disregard or acting out of some deeply seated, wholly subconscious
impulse, that would be fine, but Marsh and Addica saddle him with a slew of
weird, and weirdly timed, admissions, and he thus comes across as an amazingly
arbitrary central figure.

Equally damning, especially for general audiences, is The King’s steadfast adherence to
flattened effect. Even as tension within the narrative mounts in the aftermath
of Elvis’ true identity being revealed to Malerie, the film doesn’t really
convey the tautness and anxiety of this situation. With characters and entire
sequences so underplayed, one has plenty of time to dote on incongruous
details, like the lack of follow-through on David’s part after issuing an edict
to Malerie not to see Elvis. There’s some good work in the surrounding details,
but The King is too uncertain and
vague. (THINKFilm, R, 105 mins.)

Cars

June 9, 2006Film ReviewsBrent

Cars,
long a passion project of company CEO John Lasseter, who here jumps back behind
the “camera” and directs for the first time since 1999’s Toy Story 2. The tale of a hotshot rookie race car who discovers
the value of friendship and life in the slow lane when he’s stranded in a small
desert town en route to an important race, the colorful movie should be an
off-the-line commercial smash, but its bloated running time and somewhat
abstractly sentimental tenor might mitigate youthful enjoyment, particularly of
the repeat viewing variety.

Owen Wilson voices Lightning McQueen, a self-centered,
high-performance sports car gunning for the coveted Piston Cup. (A quick word
about Cars’ characters: while all are
anthropomorphized and imbued with their own personality traits, the film is
additionally, somewhat unnervingly, devoid of all humans. Autos drive
themselves, and the racing pit crews are manned by other vehicles, etc.) With
the esteemed King (voiced by Richard Petty) retiring, glory-hound Lightning
also sees this as his opportunity to wrest important sponsorship dollars away
from perennial runner-up Chick Hicks (voiced by Michael Keaton). After a
photo-finish tie in the race that opens the movie, a special run-off across the
country in California is
announced.

An accident along the way shakes Lightning free from his
trailer, and — since race cars don’t have headlights — he finds himself lost.
His situation becomes a more fixed detour when, after a high-speed chase that
tears up the sleepy, abandoned town of Radiator Springs, Lightning is sentenced
by Doc Hudson (voiced by Paul Newman), himself secretly an old race car, to fix
up and re-pave the streets he has damaged. Resentful at first, and panicked to
get to California as quickly as possible, Lightning slowly comes to appreciate
the town’s denizens, including local attorney Sally Carrera (voiced by Bonnie
Hunt), a curvaceous Porsche; sociable tow truck Mater (voiced by Larry the
Cable Guy); and emotional tire shop owner Luigi (voiced by Tony Shalhoub), a
1959 Italian Fiat.

As is typical of Pixar’s efforts, the animation on display
in Cars is jaw-droppingly impressive,
approaching photorealism at times. Even more astutely, those who have traversed
I-40 or the old Route 66 on cross-country drives will likely recognize specific
landmarks and geographical formations. This attention to intricate detail
elevates the material and helps rescue a few passages that might otherwise be
characterized as dramatically inert. The characters, too, grow on you. While it
takes some getting used to the imposition of human eyes and lids on windshields
— and the absence of humans seems a bit too Christine,
and never fully explained — the various collisions of personality that the
movie draws out make for some fun scenes.

Where Cars bogs
down some is in its too-brawny opening (all dialed-up sound mix) and pointedly
nostalgic but somewhat malingering efforts to play up the then-versus-now
changes in lifestyle (can we retire for a bit the obligatory montage with a
Randy Newman song?). Amidst a competitive animated slate this season —
including the underrated Over the
Hedge, as well as the forthcoming Monster House and The Ant
Bully — Cars could find its
grosses stalled around or significantly under the $260 million domestic take of
The Incredibles. Its G rating,
compared to that film’s PG, will help, but the sort of blockbuster haul of Finding Nemo (which pulled in $340 million)
looks unlikely, in part because the lessons learned in Cars play more to adult sensibilities.

Ranking somewhat to the low end of Pixar’s body of work is
no great shame, given the quality of that canon. But that’s the reality of
comparison. The world of Cars feels
less lively, spry and inherently interesting than the worlds of the Toy Story movies, even though it’s just
as lovingly sketched and populated. (Disney/Pixar, G, 116
mins.)

Viva La Bam: Complete Seasons 4 & 5

June 9, 2006Blu-ray/DVD ReviewsBrent

For the full review, from IGN, click here.

Viridiana

June 8, 2006Blu-ray/DVD ReviewsBrent

Banned
in its homeland of Spain and denounced by the Vatican even before it
was bestowed with the Palme d’Or at the 1961 Cannes Film Festival,
director Luis Buñuel’s Viridiana is an irreverent vision of
life as a beggar’s banquet. While not the most essential of the
surrealist master’s works, it’s still an intellectually arresting and
visually captivating movie, well worth the time of devoted film buffs.

A sour allegory of Spanish idealism and its fault-line collision with and corrosion by pragmatism, Viridiana
was Buñuel’s first film made in his homeland after a self-imposed exile
of almost 20 years. It centers on an innocent, young, aspirant nun
(Silvia Pinal) who visits her lecherous and contemptible uncle, Don
Jaime (Fernando Rey). Viridiana strongly resembles her deceased aunt,
and Don Jaime begs her not to take her vows as a nun, but instead marry
him; when Viridiana refuses, he drugs and gropes her, though stops
short of complete violation. One night, then, Don Jaime hangs himself,
and leaves his estate to Viridiana and his illegitimate son, Jorge
(Francesco Rabal), who naively open the house’s doors to beggars.

Given its content, Viridiana could easily come off as
hectoring or oppressively muggy and dark, but Buñuel has such a spry
touch that the movie veritably sings at times, and its religious
provocation (chiefly a staged recreation of Leonardo Da Vinci’s “The
Last Supper”) may seem relatively mild by today’s standards. The
director’s fondness for Rey — a frequent collaborator — is readily
apparent, even glimpsed through the lens of this disgusting character.
The film as a whole, meanwhile, turns a skeptical eye toward the
politics of faith, and is vacuumed free of most of the absurdist
touches for which Buñuel is best known.

Housed in a regular Amray case, Viridiana comes in a
restored, high-definition digital transfer in 1.66:1 aspect ratio, with
some artifacting and minor grain here and there. Unlike most Criterion
releases, there is no audio-commentary track, relatively surprising for
a work so rife with opportunity for symbolic and critical dissection. Cineaste
editor Richard Porton, however, does sit for a 13-minute interview in
which he provides a contextual analysis of the movie and its place
within Buñuel’s canon, and Pinal sits for a 14-minute chat in which she
discusses both Viridiana and her other movies with Buñuel. Best, though, are the collected excerpts from a 1964 episode of the French television show Cineastes de Notre Temps.
The French, of course, take their auteur theory black and serious, and
in this regard Buñuel is a perfect subject. The theatrical trailer and
an insert booklet completes the set, with the latter containing an
essay by author Michael Wood and, most valuable of all, an extended
interview with the artist and filmmaker himself. B+ (Movie) C+ (Disc)

Something New

June 7, 2006Blu-ray/DVD ReviewsBrent

Good,
yet still funny, romantic films are hard to come by. Most romantic
comedies bend too heartily to some outrageously contrived conceit,
sacrificing plausible characters and interactions in an effort to pump
up comedic set pieces. On the opposite end of the spectrum, many
tearjerkers typically over-inflate or too obviously compact the drama
and pathos of fresh love, missing out on its facile, easygoing
vibrancy. Rare are the films which are both funny and yet seem utterly
human as well, films which generate conflict from deep, real personal
problems, not just surface conflict. Into that latter category dances Something New, a movie that slowly grows on you and paradoxically seems even fresher when granted some time and a second viewing.

Written by Kriss Turner, produced by Stephanie Allain and directed by Sanaa Hamri, Something New
is on the surface a minority-skewing, light-and-airy look at
interracial romance — the story of an uptight, white-collar
African-American workaholic who learns to relax and get her groove
back, all courtesy of an unlikely blind date hook-up with a decidedly
blue-collar white guy. “I take hard soil and make something bloom,”
says Brian Kelly (Simon Baker) of his job when he meets Kenya McQueen
(Sanaa Lathan), but he might as well be talking about the effect he’ll
eventually have on her.

Something New starts out from upon a bit of a pedestal, with
its pedantic talk of “42.4 percent of all black women never getting
married,” and Kenya and her trio of well-to-do professional friends all
bemoaning the current states of their unions, or rather lack thereof.
Viewers can be forgiven for bracing themselves for another harebrained
film in which men are stereotypically dogged and only the most obvious
racial differences get trotted out for some sassy badinage.

But a funny thing happens on the way to the wincing. Such hectoring
chatter abates, because both Kenya and Brian are beautifully sketched,
three-dimensional characters. The work of both Lathan and Baker ranks
as the best of their respective careers, and the movie even does a
handy job of introducing another dashing romantic prospect, Mark Harper
(Blair Underwood), who on the surface is a much better match for Kenya.
When Kenya bristles at Brian innocently inquiring about her weave, or
the pair fight about race after a tired Brian innocently interrupts
her, but thus offends her sense of being, Something New lives
up to its title. It’s an entertaining and optimistic film that’s also
decidedly of the 21st century in a way that even a lot of very
intelligent people aren’t — open-minded and accepting of other races
while also being honest about our differences.

Something New is presented in a 1.85:1 anamorphic widescreen
transfer that is crystal clear, with no discernible grain or edge
enhancement. The audio — a Dolby digital 5.1 English language track —
is more than capable to handle the relatively sparse aural demands of
this film, and optional Spanish, English and French subtitles are also
included. Unfortunately, though, the supplemental materials are rather
lacking. A cursory, 11-minute making-of featurette includes interviews
with virtually every member of the movie’s ensemble cast, and while
there are a few insightful comments about race and love that help raise
this above the level of congratulatory back-slapping one might expect
from such an EPK-style mini-doc, you’re still left wanting more. In the
only other extra, a brief, 15-second introduction from Underwood sets
up a five-minute segment in which cast members share their own
do-and-don’t tips for first dates. Where’s the filmmaker-producer
commentary track? B+ (Movie) C (Disc)

The Omen Opens, World Survives…

June 7, 2006Box Office, MusingsBrent

Box office prognosticators have been thrown several major curveballs already this summer, what with the record-setting gross of X-Men: The Last Stand, the larger-than-expected $38 million opening weekend haul of the deceptively marketed but hearteningly substantive The Break-Up and the lower-than-hoped-for gross of Mission: Impossible III. The latest surprise: 20th Century Fox’s The Omen, a film made to custom-fit the apocalyptic release date of June 6, 2006.

Bowing
yesterday, the film generally wasn’t expected to do more than $7-8
million or so (though wouldn’t a $6.66 million gross been absolutely
awesome?). Instead, early reports peg the remake of Richard Donner’s
1976 chiller as having raked in a whopping $12.5 million single-day
take — a possible record for Tuesday, pending final data. Lukewarm
critical reception appears not to have yet substantially hurt the film,
directed by John Moore and starring Liev Schreiber and Julia Stiles,
but a more telling indicator of its commercial legs will come this
weekend.

While Disney’s latest release from Pixar, Cars, will undeniably own the box office’s top spot, other releases — like filmmaker Robert Altman’s A Prairie Home Companion, William Hurt’s The King and an expansion of Al Gore’s global warming documentary An Inconvenient Truth — don’t provide much mainstream adult competition. If The Omen‘s grosses remain high and the movie places a strong second, the public’s
seeming fascination with wan, religious-themed menace and thrills could
help embolden a new tide of flicks about evil incarnate. After all, at
least one is already in the can: Universal’s similarly themed Whisper, starring Lost‘s Josh Holloway, is slated for release in early 2007, presumably sans gimmickry.

District B13

June 6, 2006Film ReviewsBrent

After several features, French filmmaker Luc Besson really burst onto the international scene in 1988 with The Big Blue, and further made an impression with 1990’s La Femme Nikita and 1994’s The Professional, which jointly helped inspire many a Quentin Tarantino bloodbath, as well as all manner of low-grade American independent scene rip-offs. In the ensuing years, though, apart from the colorful The Fifth Element and the Joan of Arc biopic The Messenger, Besson has turned into a veritable entertainment impresario, writing, co-writing and/or producing more than two dozen features in the last six years, including Kiss of the Dragon, Wasabi, two Transporter flicks, Unleashed and several iterations of the same-named French series that spawned the American abomination Taxi, starring Jimmy Fallon and Queen Latifah. His latest: District B13.

Set in a gritty, crime-riddled Paris less than a decade into the future, the film draws its title from a walled ghetto where crime lord Taha (co-writer Bibi Naceri) rules without mercy. Early in the picture, whirling dervish Leito (David Belle) loses his sister to Taha — who literally keeps her as a dog, strung out on drugs and on a leash — and is imprisoned as an enemy of the state. When a high-grade weapon goes missing in the titular district, however, undercover elite task force policeman Damien (Cyril Raffaelli, a Gaelic Seth Meyers, if he were an action hero) draws the time-sensitive assignment of breaking into the fortified borough and disarming it. Since Leito knows every nook and cranny of the area, and additionally has a score to settle with Taha, Damien springs him from jail and makes him a proposition: find and stop the bomb with him, and then they’ll rescue his sister.

In keeping with the overriding ethos of many of these films in which Besson has served as creative facilitator, Magnolia Pictures’ District B13 (expanding throughout June) is — how do you say this? — not a movie of murky or clandestine motivations. Its story is straightforward, save a single, socially conscious twist that anyone familiar with any of Besson’s work will see coming, if perhaps embrace no less heartily. A fan of expertly crafted, populist lowbrow, Besson keeps things ludicrously simple (genre haters would substitute the word “dumb”), working with a cool, precise shorthand that assures one never focuses for too long on the roughhewn plot seams of the movie. Director Pierre Morel, meanwhile, shoots a kinetic frame, and indulges the leonine muscularity of his two stars. Each possess a lithe, gymnastic ability — including one madcap sequence where Leito and Damien each go Qbert on a split-level apartment building — that is refreshing in a genre of overly brawny action set pieces.

The reason? District B13 centers its action around the discipline of parkour, which embraces the art of continuous movement. Eschewing brute force in favor of physical agility and quick, improvisatory thinking, this tack of balletic action dovetails perfectly with the movie’s economy of means. Cinematographer Manuel Teran’s caffeinated work sometimes gets a bit ahead of itself, but in involving the actors in their own choreography and leaning heavily upon their natural charisma, Morrel and Besson craft a movie that takes advantage of many of its restrictions. As Hollywood cycles through outrageous concepts and struggles to top itself with more and more radical and clamorous set pieces, it takes a streamlined, unrepentant piece of genre fare like District B13 — fast, furious and en français — to remind those who most enjoy these types of cathartic movies that there’s a certain joy to be found in simply working with the basest elements. Luc Besson, in all his mad scientist, chop shop glory, gets that. (Magnolia, R, 84 minutes)

The Omen

June 6, 2006Film ReviewsBrent

A marketer’s dream, The
Omen is buoyed by (I guess that wouldn’t necessarily be “blessed with”) the novel
opening date of June 6, 2006 — numerical shorthand which steadfastly announces
its intentions to tap into the burgeoning tide of vaguely menacing religiosity
that’s fashionable in an anxiety-laden culture driven by the engines of terror,
war and natural disaster. A retelling of director Richard Donner’s 1976 chiller
about the spawn of the Devil, the horror flick is an earnest, decorous and
occasionally jolting rendering of the material, an entirely serviceable piece
of pop entertainment that will play best to those who haven’t seen or heard
much about the original.

The Manchurian Candidate) stars as
Robert Thorn, a young, well-heeled governmental attaché, and the godson of the
President of the United States.
After the stillborn death of their infant, Robert accepts another child without
telling his wife Kathryn (Julia Stiles), and they lovingly raise Damien (Seamus
Davey-Fitzpatrick) as their son, with Robert of course closely guarding this
aforementioned secret. It’s not long before Robert is elevated to the post of
Ambassador to Great Britain
when his boss dies in a freak accident.

Years later, Robert and Kathryn’s happy lives begin to take
a turn for the worse when Damien’s nanny hangs herself in front of a crowd at
his sixth birthday party. Father Brennan (Pete Postlethwaite), a mysterious but
traumatized priest, shows up and forecasts more horrible things for Kathryn,
Robert and others; Damien, he says, is the Antichrist, the human spawn of
Satan. Increasingly disconnected from and frightened by her son, Kathryn slips
into a depression. These events coincide with the Thorns’ hiring of a new
nanny, Mrs. Baylock (Mia Farrow), as well as the realization by photographer
Keith Jennings (David Thewlis) that distorted photos he’s taken may serve as
indicators of deaths both previous and impending.

As directed by John Moore (Behind Enemy Lines, The Flight
of the Phoenix) and updated by David Seltzer, the writer of the original
film, The Omen delivers a few
effective blows of menace, but ultimately leans too heavily on the theoretical
injection of viewers’ own beliefs and end-time apprehension to supply its
dread. This is evident in everything from the absurdly baroque touches that
stud threatening montages which are completely emotionally unconnected to the
narrative to a third act steeplechase that only bothers to sketch out the
barest details of a conspiracy that birthed Damien and brought him to Robert
and Kathryn’s care. In recreating two of the big five set pieces, retaining the
primeval nature of other deaths and fetishistically replicating its source
material’s meticulous production design, the movie most heartily evidences a
desire to be “all evil to all people.”

The original Omen
presented Damien as a sullen, neatly coiffed, little brunette kid — the
smallest member of the AC/DC dress-alike fan club — and this movie duplicates
that sedated character bit. Yet if, as the film suggests, all that we see here
is part of the Devil’s sly campaign of ascendancy — prologue to an apocalyptic
showdown on Earth — wouldn’t it be more chilling to contrast such murders and
death with a (somewhat more) charming countenance? The power of the Devil,
after all, lies in charismatic appeals to vanity, or at least an ability to lie
low and dormant (e.g., the phrase, “like a snake in the grass”) until proper
opportunity. Given the circumstances of mortal dispatch on display in The Omen, there’s no persuasive reason
to believe a sympathetic yet secretly malevolent figure could emerge. With a
remote stare, malevolent pout and about eight lines of dialogue in the entire
movie, Davey-Fitzpatrick’s Damien is a cipher for immoral wickedness — evil as
muted petulance.

Stylish yet mannered, The
Omen is a blank canvas that draws its anxiety from viewers’ own sense of
impending moral peril. A few good jolts are meted out, and if one allows their
mind to wander and indulge the narrative possibilities the story flirts with,
it’s certainly easy to muster some disconcertment. Mostly, though, the film’s
solemn creepiness is hermetically sealed off from its more direct, goosing
passages, proving that evil can be just as boring as saintliness. (20th Century Fox, R, 106 mins.)

Under Review: Kate Bush/The Velvet Underground

June 5, 2006Blu-ray/DVD ReviewsBrent

Along
with concert documentaries, there’s a burgeoning sub-genre of musical
biographies making their way to DVD, and while these often serve
chiefly as sermons for a converted choir, they’re also handy primers
for abiding music fans who perhaps want to fill in a few gaps in their
own musical history. Cases in point: Under Review: Kate Bush and Under Review: The Velvet Underground, two superlative looks at influential acts.

Kate
Bush, one of Great Britain’s most enduring solo acts of the past two
decades, is always a singer for whom I’ll hold a special place, as the
favorite literate chanteuse of an old college flame, who first
introduced me to her. Similarly, mixing interviews, rare performance
footage and commentary and contextualization from peers and critics,
this finely culled Under Review title (a branding to which
Captain Beefheart and Small Faces have also submitted, with a disc on
The Smiths due later in June) is the perfect introduction for those who
have perhaps heard of Bush’s music but never given her a spin. From her
striking debut, The Kick Inside, to latter-era work like 1993’s stirring The Red Shoes and last year’s double disc Aerial,
a comprehensive chronological overview is given. Deejay Paul
Gambaccini, producer Morris Pert, music journalists Lucy O’Brien and
Phil Sutcliffe and many others lend their insight into Bush’s lilting
melodies, and live and studio recordings include such numbers as
“Wuthering Heights,” “Army Dreamers,” “Running Up That Hill,” “This
Woman’s Work,” “Wow” and “Cloudbusting.” Also featured on this
90-minute doc — which lacks only a firmer imprint of Bush’s own
personality — are an interactive quiz, complete discography and
extended classic television interviews.

Clocking in at a lean 80-some minutes, Under Review: The Velvet Underground
tackles the music and career of a band which esteemed rock ’n’ roll
journalist Lester Bangs — portrayed by Philip Seymour Hoffman in the
movie Almost Famous — claims kick-started “modern music.” Village Voice
music editor Robert Christgau and author Clinton Heylin provide some
clear-eyed analysis, but some of the other talking heads here grate and
waste time more than anything else. That said, there’s a heady mix of
rare performance footage (“Pale Blue Eyes,” “All Tomorrow’s Parties,”
“Heroin,” “Venus in Furs,” “Sweet Jane,” “White Light/White Heat” and
“Sunday Morning”) and new interview material exclusive to this release.
The best probably comes courtesy of drummer Moe Tucker. Even without
any words from Lou Reed himself, Under Review: The Velvet Underground
illuminates the uncommon and extraordinary blend of gritty social
realism and sexual kink that made the band’s music so intoxicatingly
original.

Each Under Review title comes in a regular Amray case that is
in turn housed in an extremely thin cardboard slipcase. Supplemental
extras are a bit dashed off, limited to the aforementioned interactive
quizzes (nice evaporations of time for hardcore fans, but ill-suited
for neophytes or casual viewers), discographies and amorphous extended
footage. That said, Under Review: Kate Bush and Under Review: The Velvet Underground are both appealing introductory-level documents of two legendary musical acts. B- (Movies) C (Discs)

3rd Rock From the Sun: Season 4

June 5, 2006Blu-ray/DVD ReviewsBrent

While
crime procedurals and all other manner of show featuring lawyers and/or
doctors sniping at and tumbling in and out of bed with one another
crowd the docket of network television, the modern sitcom slate has for
the most part congealed into entirely predictable family-oriented dreck
(According to Jim is still on? Really?), aging animated shows, a few attractive ensembles (How I Met Your Mother)
and a fewer still number of star vehicles. The time is ripe, in many
ways, for a half-hour dose of Franklin Roosevelt’s famous prescription
of “bold and persistent experimentation.” Actually, come to think of
it, I guess that was what Arrested Development was, and nobody watched. Damn.

At any rate, at a time of development deals parceled out to up-and-coming comedians, 3rd Rock From the Sun
was, from 1996 to 2001, a wild and wooly antidote — a show about aliens
posing as humans that took great delight in re-injecting colorful
silliness into prime time. As oblivious and self-satisfied patriarch
Dick Solomon, star John Lithgow embraced with glee the opportunity to
engage in all manner of physical slapstick and humiliating comedy, and
the result was a series that, while still working within the confines
of a traditional family show, infused a fresh, anarchic spirit into the
half-hour sitcom.

Episode highlights here include “Paranoid Dick,” featuring a Neil
Diamond impersonator; “Y2dicK,” in which Dick becomes furious over his
inability to retrieve grade reports from his computer; “Collect Call
for Dick,” in which young Tommy (Joseph Gordon-Levitt) gets drafted
into duty as his school’s mascot after not showing the proper spirit at
a basketball game; and the self-explanatory “Dick and Taxes.” Guest
stars include recurring bit players William Shatner and Jan Hooks, plus
Kathy Bates, Laurie Metcalf, Larry Miller, Kurtwood Smith and Kevin
Nealon.

Spread out over four discs in solid and extremely attractive gatefold packaging, 3rd Rock From the Sun
marks the latest winning release from Anchor Bay. First off, the
picture on these two dozen, full-frame presentations is fairly solid,
with no problems with grain or compression. There is perhaps a bit of
attrition in color, but nothing that mortally wounds your enjoyment of
the show. Audio comes courtesy of a competent Dolby digital stereo
track, which more than adequately captures the show’s meager aural
demands. A full spate of season-specific bloopers anchors the slate of
supplemental materials, though there’s also an interview with Jane
Curtin in which she discusses the challenge of tending to her
character’s rigidity on such a wild set. There are also season
highlights, but these are a bit repetitive and unnecessary for the
casual viewer.

While there are unfortunately no audio-commentary tracks from the
show’s writer-producers, there is, thankfully, a full-color, 16-page
insert booklet that includes photos, substantial episodic recaps and a
humorous, canted guide to human vanity and all sorts of other quirks,
as seen through the eyes of the alien Solomons. Sample line about
prosthetic legs: “Some people apparently prefer the durability of wood
or plastic to traditional meat legs. First popularized by pirates.” B+ (Show) B+ (Disc)