It’s another Clinton
— with her chirpy solicitation to “chat” — that’s taken over the news recently, but comedienne Kate Clinton’s eponymous
stand-up show displays her own hard-edged contours, albeit in typically
self-effacing fashion. Taking material from her 2005 one-woman show “Talking a
Blue Streak,” Clinton offers up her
own uproarious opinion on feminism and lesbianism, and how they in turn feed
her points-of-view on all of the burning issues of the day.

A columnist for The
Progressive as well as The Advocate,
Clinton has performed for more than 25 years, at venues as diverse as comedy
festivals, colleges and universities, gala fundraising events, off-Broadway
playhouses and gay-themed cruise ships and resorts. She touts herself on her laudable
web site as a “faith-based, tax-paying, America-loving political humorist and
family entertainer,” so one knows right off the bat that they needn’t expect
Andrew Dice Clay-style (or Linda Lampanelli-type, for that matter) screeds for
shock’s sake.

Still, there’s a bit of bite contained herein. Clinton’s
self-described “Bush fatigue” runs deep, and feeds most of her best bits, but
she sometimes delves a smidgen too deeply into wonkish policy tangents instead
of merely jabbing at the hypocrisy of an administration whose Vice President’s
openly lesbian daughter is set to adopt a baby with her partner pushing so
transparently for a constitutional ban on gay marriage. When she gets wound up,
Clinton has an energy that recalls
the sputtering, good-natured exasperation of Roseanne Roseannadana. It’s her
writing experience, however, that most deftly serves her, allowing for seamless
transitions between bits about gay love and dating, reality television,
political activism, interior decorating and eco-friendly legislation.

Housed in a regular Amray plastic case and presented in
1.33:1 full screen, Kate Clinton
comes with an English language Dolby digital stereo 2.0 audio track, and runs
just under an hour-and-a-half. The picture is crisp and clear, and Kerry
Asmussen’s direction doesn’t overdo the fawning crowd shots, as with many
concert films. There are a few other preview trailers for films and series from
distributors Here! Films and Genius Products, but unfortunately no supplemental bonus
features. B- (Movie) C- (Disc)

Perth as “Singapore’s
answer to Taxi Driver,” and its
artwork — complete with a yellow cab and its cigarette smoking, blank-faced
proprietor looming in the foreground — further induces feelings of queasy
disconnection with society at large. It’s a comparative swing for the fences,
naturally, and thus a bit of an over-sell. A better leaping off point of comparison, however, might well be 1997’s
Korean import Audition, which spent a
lot of time working in the murky interstices of discontented personal lives
before taking a headlong plunge into shocking violence and torture.

Directed by the singularly monikered Djinn — a gambit that’s
worked out OK thus far for McG, but considerably less well for Tarsem — Perth centers on Harry Lee (Lim Kay
Tong), a Singaporean part-time security guard and taxi driver who wants nothing
more to do with the fast-paced, status-driven society that’s left him a step behind,
socio-economically speaking. Harry’s wife (Liu Qiulian) is cheating on him, and
his dependence on the bottle is leaving him less and less satisfied. His dream,
randomly enough, is to move to the titular Western Australian coast town, but
his attempts to migrate are complicated when he hooks up with some gangster
types and takes on a job ferrying prostitutes about town. The situation becomes
increasingly unstable when he takes an interest in one of the girls in
particular, Vietnamese Mai (Ivy Cheng). This reawakens in Harry a certain amount
of long-missing tenderness, but will his dark and dangerous attempts at
personal redemption pay off or merely bloodily pull down more of those around
him?

Djinn composes his film in woozy, saturated fashion, and with
a heavy reliance on close-ups, but he still packs his frames with telling
detail, and occasionally utilizes quick inserts of domestic objects to convey a
grounded sense of setting. He also deftly deploys a small company of vivid
supporting characters — misogynistic and racist fellow cabbies, quietly
colorful local thugs — who give the movie a well-rounded vibe, along with its
cannily mixed Cantonese, Mandarin, English and local dialects. The film goes a
long, long way toward establishing Harry as a reprehensible character before attempting
to redeem him, and it’s a credit to Tong’s fine performance that we remain
engaged if not totally sympathetic. In this way, Perth also
reminded me a bit of Battle of Heaven
in its focus on wounded souls, though that film ends on a note of violence a
lot closer to Perth’s
midway point.

Perth
is presented in a solid if saturated anamorphic widescreen transfer, with so-so
Dolby digital 5.1 surround sound and DTS surround sound audio tracks. (Djinn’s
reliance on source audio and lack of foleyed effects mars a handful of scenes.)
Djinn also sits for a somewhat tinnily recorded audio commentary track in which
he cites influences as diverse as Lee Tamahori’s Once
Were Warriors (which I can see) and Don
Quixote (which I have more trouble visualizing); more engaging is the
erudite Tong, who also sits for his own solo commentary track. Doling out
production anecdotes (the production photographer is drafted to play a random character
who’s dog Harry steals) alongside thoughts on Harry’s quiet inner rage, the
thoughtful and avuncular Tong serves up as pleasant an aural guide as could be
imagined for a film as grim as Perth. He also contributes his thoughts to
six minutes of deleted scenes. An 11-minute set design featurette on art
director Andy Heng’s work rounds things out, along with the movie’s original
theatrical trailer and previews for other Tartan releases. B (Movie) B+ (Disc)

In Her Line of Fire
is an interesting-in-theory, recombinant amalgamation of various pieces of tried-and-true
genre formula. The title, of course, immediately summons to mind Clint Eastwood’s
superb Secret Service actioner In the
Line of Fire, and that’s no accident. There’s also a heartier helping of
more old school action film tropes, though — reaching back to something like Sylvester
Stallone’s soldier-of-fortune Rambo
movies. Then there’s the imperiled travelogue element of something like John Boorman’s
1995 film Beyond Rangoon. There’s
also a side serving of Lost (no polar
bears, though), since the movie takes place in the wake of a plane crash on a
remote island. Oh, and did I mention it’s got a lesbian angle? Fascinated yet?

In
Her Line of Fire is no better or worse than this elementary grab-bag necessarily
sounds. Mariel Hemingway stars as Lynn Delaney, a tough Secret Service and
ex-military officer agent assigned to guard the Vice President Walker (David
Keith). While flying over the Pacific Ocean for the troubled nation of San
Piedro, the group’s plane goes down in a storm, and Walker is kidnapped by a
cabal of rebel soldiers led by a power-hungry mercenary (David Millbern, chewing
through scenery and enjoying his closely shorn haircut). Against this backdrop
of rescue, Delaney leads the fight to save all of their lives while also developing
a crush on press pool secretary Sharon Serrano (Jill Bennett).

The notion of local political unrest as filtered through
white liberal eyes is a tired chestnut, so director Brian Trenchard-Smith (the
telepic DC 9/11: Time of Crisis) and co-scripters
Anna Lorenzo and Paula Goldberg avoid it as much as possible, though their
America is one of slightly tweaked, left-leaning reality, with warm and fuzzy
policies regarding human rights issues and alternative fuel sources. Lorenzo
and Goldberg also treat the lesbian love affair as frosting, much in the breezy
manner of a ’80s actioner. (Well, OK, it’s slightly
more updated, but still of that vein.)

The movie is shot rather flatly, and the scope of its action
scenes isn’t particularly jaw-dropping. Neither is Hemingway’s performance born
of the same type of physical transformation we saw from Sigourney Weaver in the Aliens franchise or Demi Moore in G.I. Jane. Still, the weight is definitely
placed more on the action and escape elements of the movie (in Australia it was
released as Air Force Two, a great
kitschy title), and in its own wily way, In
Her Line of Fire succeeds as a piece of lightweight entertainment, mainly
because it lets its idealistic updates to societal norm lay lightly and
concentrates more purely on diversionary pleasures.

Housed in a regular, sturdy Amray plastic case and presented
in 2.35:1 anamorphic widescreen, the film benefits from a fairly solid video transfer,
with rich and consistent colors amongst its lush green-blue palette. An English
language Dolby digital stereo 2.0 audio track anchors things aurally, but apart
from a smattering of trailers for other Here! releases, there are unfortunately
no supplemental features, which is both somewhat puzzling and slightly unkind
for the release of such a niche film. C+ (Movie) D+ (Disc)