Based on a true story, and the highly lauded book of the same name by Jean-Dominique Bauby, The Diving Bell and the Butterfly tells the emotional tale of the successful and charismatic editor-in-chief of French Elle (Mathieu Amalric), who suffers a sudden stroke that leaves him in a life-altered state. Beset by physical challenges and left with little hope for a normal future, he discovers escape in memories and a rekindled imagination, and works to write an improbable memoir by literally blinking out words and phrases using his one good remaining eye.

Scripted by Ronald Harwood, the Oscar-nominated screenwriter of The Piano, and directed by Julian Schnabel (Basquiat, Before Night Falls), this film is the very definition of a tough commercial sell (ergo its unfortunate domestic washout, at $6 million earned, for distributor Miramax), but it’s still an amazingly evocative
and rather subtly moving portrait of a castaway soul. It’s a movie that
highlights and plays up elements of shared humanity rather than just
differences, or what’s been robbed and taken away from Jean-Dominique. The first 12 to 15
minutes or so are a fascinating exercise in subjectivity, told from his
warped point-of-view; particularly squirmingly effective and amazing is a scene in which
Jean-Dominique gets one of his eyes stitched shut, to ward off sepsis.

While it works on this base level as a cautionary dramatic cow-prod — encouraging one to “seize the day,” and all that — the work here from all the actors, as well as the movie’s construction, is on an elevated plane. This is where The Diving Bell and the Butterfly really gets into your head and heart, something I discovered on a second viewing of the movie. Justly nominated for four Academy Awards, it taps into the infrequently pondered essence of human consciousness, and what it means to be alive, separate from any bodily implications.

As Jean-Dominique struggles with speech and physical rehabilitation therapy, administered by Henriette (Marie-Joseé Croze, above) and Marie (Olatz Lopez Garmendia, Schnabel’s wife), he also is forced to try to forge reconnections with his recently divorced wife, Celine (Emmanuelle Seigner, Roman Polanski’s wife), and his father (Max Von Sydow), an irascible shut-in grappling with his own fear of mortality. The scenes with Celine are especially fraught with tension, since he has left her, the mother of his children, for another woman — a woman whom he has to admit to her that waits for every day in the hospital. By not deifying Jean-Dominique — by presenting him as “just” a man, with all the complications and interpersonal entanglements that includes — the movie achieves a much deeper emotional resonance than it would if it made more obvious plays for sympathy.

Housed in a regular Amray case with an accompanying cardboard slipcover, The Diving Bell and the Butterfly comes presented in 1.85:1 widescreen, enhanced for 16×9 televisions. English, French and Spanish language tracks are available in Dolby digital 5.1 surround sound, and optional subtitles are available in all three languages as well. A
12-minute making-of featurette includes interviews with all the
principal on-screen and off-screen players, and of particular anecdotal
interest is the fact that Almaric reveals he used a razor with a real
blade in a scene in which he shaves von Sydow, so as to concentrate and make real his fear, and drain his character of any other visible expression or thought. Writer Harwood is credited with the creative breakthrough of setting the story firmly from Bauby’s perspective, a choice that producer Jon Kilik admits makes the beginning of the movie a somewhat panic-inducing experience for many audiences. Schnabel also talks candidly about making the movie for his father, who he says was afraid to die. A separate, seven-minute featurette focuses on both the creative decisions that informed Janusz Kaminski’s award-winning cinematography, and the nuts-and-bolts effects that achieved the look, from a special swivel-and-tilt lens and latex piece, to low-fi solutions like

There are also two more rewarding special features with Schnabel. The first is a feature-length audio commentary track in which the filmmaker shares production anecdotes and, more rewardingly, talks grand-strokes themes. The second bit is a 20-minute appearance on Charlie Rose’s PBS talk show, in which Schnabel quotes liberally and movingly from Bauby’s source text, in which he says that his life was “moments of joy I let drift away, a race whose outcome I knew beforehand, but didn’t bet on winning.” A true artist in every sense of the word, Schnabel’s prints are all over The Diving Bell and the Butterfly, and this disc gives full, beautiful voice to the scope and detail of his work, without shortchanging his collaborators. One could nitpick and hope for longer interviews (more, more, more!) with the cast, all of whom have interesting things to say, but the truth is this is solid DVD rendering of a beautiful film. To purchase the movie via Amazon, click here. A (Movie) B+ (Disc)

First Sunday costars Ice Cube and Tracy Morgan teamed up previously… sort of. In 2005’s Cube-fronted Are We There Yet?, erstwhile Saturday Night Live player Morgan voiced a Satchel Paige bobblehead doll that was of special importance to Cube’s character, a sports memorabilia dealer. Writer-director David Talbert’s First Sunday, though, is a much better pairing of their yin-and-yang energy, casting the duo as reluctant thieves who find their hand called after trying to stick up a church.

It’s a steamy summer day in inner-city Baltimore when Durell Washington (Cube) learns that his baby mama (Regina Hall) plans to take his son to Atlanta to live unless Durrell can come up with $17,000 to help her keep her hair salon afloat. A dedicated if chronically underemployed father, Durrell has spent years trying to give his boy better chances in life than he had — trying to turn his gift for tinkering into a full-time job, and all the while resisting the harebrained criminal schemes of his lifelong pal, LeeJohn Jackson (Morgan).

In a moment of weakness, though, he agrees to help LeeJohn deliver a truckload of stolen wheelchairs for a local thug. The job ends in chaos, and arrest, and Durrell and LeeJohn are sentenced to 5,000 hours of community service. While the aforementioned thug wants $12,000 for his undelivered wheelchairs, Durrell is more concerned with the pressing demand of money that will keep his son in town, and thus close to him. Rationalizing that the Lord helps those who help themselves, Durrell eventually decides to help himself to the neighborhood church’s building fund.

LeeJohn joins him, but the two down-on-their-luck men are dismayed to discover the cash has already been stolen, so they hold the congregation hostage in a Hail Mary attempt to learn who amongst the supposedly righteous has already taken their targeted loot. Katt Williams, Chi McBride, Michael Beach, Rickey Smiley, Keith David, Loretta Divine, Malinda Williams and two-time Flavor of Love reject and certified hot mess Tiffany “New York” Pollard also appear.

Morgan and Cube are of course basically playing the same, most popular versions of themselves that they’ve traded on for years of screen work, but what works here is that First Sunday is (fairly) realistically pitched; the amount of money Durrell needs may be in the savings accounts of many members of the middle-class, or at least somewhat within reach, but it’s just not a reality for Durrell. This isn’t the reinvention of the wheel, of course, but Talbert takes great care with his characters to present them as real people with real needs and motivations, not merely shrieking joke peddlers whose rationale shifts with each new scene. The injection of the additional mystery of the missing money, meanwhile, gives the proceedings a slight Clue-type bent, and the movie’s gifted ensemble is more than game in teasing this set-up along.

Housed in a regular Amray case with a cardboard slipcover, First Sunday is presented in anamorphic widescreen, and comes with a bevy of supplemental extras, kicked off by a feature-length audio commentary track with writer-director Talbert, who comes across as supremely humble. A 16-minute making-of featurette includes cast and crew interviews — many from the movie’s Long Beach location shoot set — and does a good job in such a short period of time of hitting all the bases with respect to the project’s history. Cinematographer Alan Casso, meanwhile, talks about lighting the movie as more of a drama than a comedy, and “letting shadows fall where they may.”

Running four-plus minutes, a gag reel showcases plenty of Williams’ improvisations, and finds a crew member amusingly exhorting Cube by quoting one of his rap rhymes (“You can do it, put your back into it!”). There are also a couple outtakes and deleted scenes with optional commentary; again, most of these showcase Williams’ snippy choir teacher, though the aforementioned Pollard, guesting as a bickering client of  Durrell’s hairdresser ex-girlfriend, also makes an appearance here. Most unique and moving, though, is a three-minute wrap speech by Talbert after completion of principal photography; the playwright and son of a pastor gets choked up talking about his affection for his cast (name-checking them along with Poitier, Cosby and Pryor), and this nakedly emotional glimpse behind the curtain of production is a cool addition.

Also, though it’s touted in accompanying print materials as being only part of the movie’s Blu-ray release, there’s also an optional “Almighty Version” fact track, which includes pop-up, subtitled, random trivia about the cast and film. Some of this is very broad and pointless, but other tidbits point out location filming (Roscoe’s Chicken and Waffles, on Pico Boulevard, serves as the restaurant in which Durrell and LeeJohn hatch their scheme) and other anecdotes that are cool in particular for Los Angeles-based fans of Cube and Morgan. To view the movie’s trailer, click here. B- (Movie) B+ (Disc)

A languid, thinly sketched and habitually unfunny supernatural love-triangle comedy that never scratches beyond the surface of its conceit, Over Her Dead Body must have gotten its initial greenlight during the headlong dash toward pre-strike (over-)production. Nevertheless, the movie works neither in the vein of an exaggerated, farcical romantic rivalry, a la Death Becomes Her, or a more traditional romantic comedy, like recent fellow chick flick 27 Dresses. No, instead Over Her Dead Body just stinks, in painful, yawning fashion, and quickly wears out its welcome, in both this world and the next.



Telling the story of a pleasant guy, the psychic who falls for him and the former’s vengeful, deceased fiancé trying to keep them apart, the movie opens with ill-fated nuptials, then flashes forward a year, after the tightly wound bride, Kate (Eva Longoria Parker), of veterinarian Henry (Paul Rudd) is crushed by a falling ice sculpture. Henry’s well-meaning younger sister Chloe (Lindsay Sloane), who just wants to restore some easygoing normalcy to her mopey brother’s life, sets him up for a reading with Ashley (Lake Bell), a psychic who also runs a catering company with her gay best friend, Dan (Jason Biggs).

Chloe eventually steals the late Kate’s diary and gives it to Ashley, so she can use the private information to pretend to communicate with Kate’s ghost, and thus “release” Henry from obligation. As Ashley begins to slowly fall for Henry, though, and vice versa, a disgruntled Kate reveals herself, and stakes a possessive claim on her former fiancé. Gamesmanship ensues, as Ashley — the only one who can see and hear Kate — alternately fights for and considers ceding Henry to the spectre of his vengeful ex.

The directorial debut of Jeff Lowell, an episodic television writer who also penned 2006’s John Tucker Must Die, Over Her Dead Body is a movie of phony raucousness. Owing to the small screen roots of its creator, the tone veers wildly from scene to scene; comedy writ large and obvious (hapless Dan creating a mess in the kitchen in slapstick fashion, Kate making sounds of mock-flatulence that she believes Ashley will mistake for Henry) rules the day. Absent a laugh-track, though, the staleness of these gags reveals itself.

Dialogue is wooden and on-the-nose, and the film’s staging is frequently awkward, from the opening scene of Chloe and Henry’s introduction to Ashley (in which Dan implausibly remains in the kitchen, in order to lamely conceal his identity for a joke later in the film) to a hallway-set scene involving the important revelation of Kate’s diary. The “combative spat” portion of the conceit — potentially the richest comedic terrain — is also hazily defined, with Longoria Parker’s Kate not very well integrated into the movie as a whole. She comes and goes, haphazardly. Additionally, there’s no soft side to Kate to make us see she and Henry as a legitimate couple in the first place.

Meager points go to Lowell and the film’s makers for rounding up capable comedic actors (Sloane, Stephen Root, et al) for some of the movie’s bit supporting parts, but the script consistently lets them down. It takes ill-conceived, cardboard-thin stereotypes and somehow makes them worse. Even a big story reversal at the end of the second act fails to give the film any punch. Because nothing about the characters or any of their relationships is in the least way believable, even in any world of heightened affect, the ludicrous twist falls painfully flat.

Longoria Parker trades on the broadly conveyed arch indignation that serves her well on the small screen, but otherwise brings nothing new to her character; Rudd, on the other hand — so good when given a good dance partner, as in something like I Could Never Be Your Woman — is left to define Henry solely through sardonic parrying. That brings us to Bell, who plays best friend to Cameron Diaz in the forthcoming What Happens in Vegas; here she displays affability and an admirable willingness to indulge in pratfall hijinks, but there’s absolutely no palpable romantic chemistry with Rudd, and her canted, slightly off-center interpretation seems more ideally suited to secondary lead roles.

In a seeming nod-of-the-head concession to its theatrical commercial washout and critical lambasting earlier this winter, Over Her Dead Body comes to DVD with no supplemental extras, save the requisite gallery of trailers. Nevertheless, to purchase the movie via Amazon, click here. Housed in a regular Amaray case, it offers up clean transfers of both 2.35:1 widescreen and 1.33:1 full screen versions of the film, with English language Dolby digital 5.1 surround sound and stereo surround sound audio tracks, and optional English and Spanish subtitles. D- (Movie) D (Disc)

Two Academy Award nominated animated adventures are available together with The Classic Caballeros Collection, which packages together a pair of 1940s Disney curios, Saludos Amigos and The Three Caballeros, on one DVD.

Blending animated and live-action footage, and preceded by a card which announces Disney’s “sincere appreciation for the courtesy and cooperation of artists, musicians and friends in Latin America,” Saludos Amigos is a sort of pre-chewed cultural investigatory piece, in which Disney artisans embark on thrilling adventures to Mexico and South America with Goofy, Donald Duck and Walt Disney himself. After showcasing some 16mm footage captured in narrated, newsreel-type fashion (“Lake Titicaca is eight thousand square miles of water, two miles above sea level…”), the roughly hour-long title segues into a quartet of whimsically animated escapades which span from the Bolivian Andes to the Argentine pampas, and find Donald and little airplane Pedro exploring the countries and customs of the area. The movie earned three Academy Award nominations in 1943, including Best Musical Score, Best Sound and Best Original Song.

It also a spawned a sequel of sorts, the slightly longer The Three Caballeros. After he watches a lengthy filmstrip about a penguin, Pablo, who longs for tropical shores (part of the inspiration for Surf’s Up, it seems), Donald teams up with talkative, energetic parrot José (or Joe, to Donald) Carioca, and takes a fantastic journey through these colorful lands. Full of lighthearted dance and lively music, The Three Caballeros in particular set the stage for future live action/animation blends. This interplay, and the animation in general, is hardly dazzling by modern standards — though there are some nice touches, like Donald’s hat ducking into the light of a projector — but it nonetheless does hold up fairly well. It’s easy to see how and why audiences of its time were wowed by the material — as much for its blend of affable, kid-friendly song and dance as the glimpses of far-flung culture it afforded them.

Overall, The Classic Caballeros Collection is a curious thing, which its supplemental features serve to highlight. Professionally packaged in a regular Amray case with snap-shut hinges, and stored in turn in a glossy cardboard slipcover, The Classic Caballeros Collection comes presented in 1.33:1 full screen, with a Dolby digital 5.1 surround sound audio track in English, French and Spanish, and optional subtitles for each language. DVD bonus features are anchored by a 33-minute newsreel featurette, “South of the Border with Disney,” that includes footage of Brazil’s September 7 Independence Day parade, and much more. There are also two bonus cartoon shorts starring Donald Duck, “Don Donald” and “Contrary Condor,” each running eight minutes. It’s an old, one-minute-40-second CBS interview with Disney himself, however, that provides the most illuminating back story on this material. He talks about being asked by the government to embark on a goodwill tour of “the ABC countries” (that would be Argentina, Brazil and Chile), and initially declining. When pressed, however, he said he could do some movies, and despite Disney’s statement to the contrary, one has to assume these short films are, to a certain extent, federally underwritten peeks into the cultural ruminations of countries with whom we had complicated, if quasi-friendly, relationships. Interesting, the power and reach of capitalism, entertainment and, more specifically, “the Mouse House.” To purchase the disc via Amazon, click here. C+ (Movie) B- (Disc)