I didn’t much care for last December’s mixed-format big screen adaption of Alvin and the Chipmunks, for reasons that you can read about here. Naturally, to the detriment of my insurance premium for slack-jawedness, the movie then went on to gross $217 million domestically and another baffling $142 million overseas, where the critters were never very big in the first place. Now comes the inevitable sequel (slated for 2010) and slew of rib-poking, nostalgia-peddling DVD releases from the Chipmunks’ fairly deep canon.

Alvin and the Chipmunks: The Alvinnn!!! Edition collects 14 episodes of the animated series, which ran from 1983 to ’87 on the small screen in the States. The stories, of course, center around wishy-washy single guy Dave Seville, a would-be musician and jingle peddler, and the three talking, surf-happy — and, more importantly, singing — chipmunks that come into his life. Boisterous Alvin is the rascally ringleader of the group, always getting them into trouble; Simon is the bespectacled, rational one; and Theodore is the tubby bastard.

The titles of the episodes, in a couple instances, are more clever than the finished product. The basic template seems to be to crib from some of the routines of the Three Stooges — in which the tiny trio are thrust into an outlandish scenario or graced with an unlikely gift — and then connect a few basic plot points to ensure reliably chaotic, slapstick results. “The Curse of the Lontiki” kicks off the set; Alvin attempts to win a surfing contest, but is instead waylaid by an ancient curse. “Mr. Fabulous” finds Theodore thrust into a wrestling match. “Unidentified Flying Chipmunk” finds Alvin, having recently watched E.T., dressing Theodore (undeniably the “Curly” of the group) up as an alien. “Snow Job” finds Alvin trying to enter and win a celebrity ski contest, in order to impress a girl. “Maids in Japan,” meanwhile, finds the Chipmunks’ dabbling in local culture during a rocky tour of Japan. Other episodes include “A Horse of Course” and “New, Improved Simon.”

The second disc opens with “Every Chipmunk Tells a Story,” the series’ very own Rashomon tale, in which the story of Dave’s broken piano is recounted from three very different perspectives. “Romancing Miss Stone,” one of several episodes to rather wanly reference films or other TV programs, finds Alvin nursing an adolescent crush on a school teacher. “Chip Off the Old Tooth,” meanwhile, details one of those staple fears of adolescence — going to the dentist. Other episodes include “3 Alarm Fire,” “Alvin’s Oldest Fan,” “Whatever Happened to Dave Seville?” and “Cadet’s Regrets.” The vocal performances here are a bit grating, and the quality of the jokes and writing in general is fairly yawn-inducing. A few musical numbers provide brief respite, but that’s not enough to recommend this title.

Housed in a regular plastic Amray case, Alvin and the Chipmunks: The Alvinnn!!! Edition is presented in 1.33:1 full screen, and comes with an English language Dolby digital mono soundtrack. There are no supplemental bonus features, which in a way is just as well, given the title’s failure as a slice of nostalgic pie. For young kids still thrilled by the new-to-them notion of its premise, this collection of cartoons may work as a diversionary time-killer, if not outright amusement. Beware, though, anyone old enough to open the case and pop the disc into a DVD player by themselves. To purchase the DVD via Amazon, click here. D+ (Series) C+ (Disc)

I first saw Brian Regan during some promo reels they used to run before the movie trailers at Los Angeles cinemas in the late 1990s. There was some sort of loose tie-in or affiliation with AMC Theaters, if I’m not mistaken, and the self-effacing bit with Regan showed him purchasing a ticket and concessions, then, when told to enjoy the show, saying, “Yeah, you too.” He then caught his gaffe, and proceeded to berate himself, up and down the dial, as “the guy who doesn’t know when to use the phrase ‘You too.'” It’s a credit to Regan’s offbeat energy and goofy charisma that, despite seeing this bit probably a couple dozen times, I never really tired of it, or winced when it started up.

Filmed during his most recent tour, Brian Regan: The Epitome of Hyperbole showcases the comedian — who could be played by Will Ferrell were there ever a need for a biopic — fully in his comfort zone, in front of a crowd. He starts out talking about taking up speed reading, and the resultant plunge in his reading comprehension. In fact, a good bit of Regan’s show is about education, or the dumbing down of America. (“If reading is supposed to make you smarter,” he opines during one joke, “why do they put the book’s title on the bottom of all the pages?”) In another long run, he assays long sentences (especially in reporting, and newspapers), and how he likes to deconstruct them. In scattershot fashion, Regan also touches on Russell Crowe, criminalizing loitering and the decertification of Pluto as a planet, as well as failed and/or bad ideas for theme park movie rides.

Prowling about like a cat, Regan has a stage presence at once goofy and stalking. He tends to extend titters into bigger laughs with lots of physical pantomiming, but because it’s consistent throughout his set it comes across a lot less as milking time and material and more something that’s built in, and interwoven into the fiber of his act. Regan’s humor is neither particularly dirty nor topical, so it’s definitely something that has some replay value, and can be enjoyed by a fairly broad age range. His observational stuff is pretty solid, but a decent portion of the connection here comes from his affable demeanor and indefatigable insistence at inserting himself into various situations, often as the butt of the joke.

Housed in a regular Amray plastic case with snap-shut hinges and a deep-set tray, Brian Regan: The Epitome of Hyperbole comes presented in 1.85:1 widescreen, with a choice of 5.1 and 2.0 Dolby digital soundtrack options that each more than adequately capture the relatively meager aural demands of this title. The feature presentation runs about 42 minutes, and there are also two bonus featurettes — a four-minute selection of encore material where Regan fields joke requests from fans in the audience, and a 14-minute backstage segment which is partially about Regan’s act but mostly about the logistics of putting the show together. B (Show) B- (Disc)

A distinctive, flamboyantly extroverted personality, Lisa “Left Eye” Lopes traveled a long and challenging road from adolescence to stardom. She was probably the driving creative
force behind TLC, who gained international fame with hit songs like
“Waterfalls,” “Ain’t Too Proud to Beg” and “What About Your Friends?” In the 1990s, the group would become one of the top-selling female R&B groups of
all time, but the whirlwind of fame was suffocating, and at the height
of her shared popularity, Lopes sought to escape the chaos and
regain control over her life. Talented and vibrant, but secretly troubled in ways that tabloid coverage of her more outlandish moments (in 1994 she set fire to the suburban Atlanta home of her on-again, off-again boyfriend, NFL wide receiver Andre Rison) only hinted at, Lopes was a star who
shined brightly before being extinguished in sudden, tragic fashion.

Originally produced for the VH1 Rock Docs franchise, Tupac: Resurrection director Lauren Lazin’s Last Days of Left Eye features archival footage of Lopes, her family and TLC, but is first and foremost a kind of zonked travelogue, built as it is around footage, much of it never-before-seen, from a self-shot documentary that Lopes was planning and filming in April 2002, the month before her death.

Having several years prior met the mysteriously monikered Dr. Sebi, a peddler of an all-liquid herbal cleansing diet, Lopes became infatuated with both his regimen and his homeland of Honduras, building a recreational center there for local children and engaging in other goodwill projects. Wanting to undergo some sort of fuzzily-defined spiritual enlightenment, Lopes decided to take an extended trip with a group of her cousins and other friends, decamping in rural Honduras for four weeks of pilates, talking, sipping of rancid “natural” concoctions, and introspection. Using a video camera and the encouragement of those closest to her, Lopes talked about her ups and downs, never knowing that these home movies would comprise her final audio-visual journals. Near the end of her stay, just before her 30th birthday, Lopes would be killed in a terrible auto accident; the seconds leading up to the event are captured with her own video camera.

Last Days of Left Eye bills itself as providing insight into the life of a musical superstar “who seemed to have regained a new spirit for life just as an untimely death took it away.” In reality, though, it’s a desperately mixed bag. There’s the obligatory hint of rock-doc, detailing TLC’s 2.3 million-selling 1992 debut, subsequent financial struggles (in hilarious and yet clear-eyed fashion Lopes breaks off some great math on the specifics of record label deals), and personality clashes resulting from Lopes’ increasingly erratic behavior. The much more interesting portions, though, actually recall Shooting Sizemore, the brief-lived VH1 series in which actor Tom Sizemore’s stab at recovery was intercut with darkly fascinating paranoid ruminations that he had self-recorded at various points over the previous years.

When Lopes, perhaps undiagnosed as bi-polar, is talking about “Nikki,” her drunken persona, or showcasing the inch-tall scar on her arm that reads “Hate,” carved there after Rison failed to visit her as much as she would have liked in rehab, one gets a sense of the very deep reservoir of pain in this girl. Likewise, in eerie fashion, the week leading up to Lopes’ death finds her convinced that an evil spirit is stalking her. Her fears are reinforced when a young boy runs out in front of a car in which she is traveling, and is fatally wounded; she thinks the spirit was coming for her, and simply “missed.” Delving into some of these rants and/or beliefs, either with family or psychologists, would have been illuminating, but this is a non-fiction project of simple presentation, not investigation. No great sin, really, but that limits Last Days of Left Eye‘s appeal — which Lazin litters with interstitial cards both platitudinal and speculative (“During yoga, Lisa digs deeper…”), and never quite finds a smooth tone of interweaved intrigue — mainly to those that already know her, and her troubled story, quite well.

Last Days of Left Eye comes housed in a regular Amray case with yellow-spined slipcover art, adorned by the above photo on the cover. It’s a full-frame presentation, and the stereo audio track more than adequately handles the meager aural demands of the program. When source audio gets a bit potentially fuzzy, and even when it’s just captured at a low level, subtitles are provided to aid the viewer. Bonus material consists of deleted scenes from Lopes’ source tapes, and an exclusive new unreleased song, “Let’s Just Do It,” that’s available via DVD-ROM, and touted as being part of a forthcoming Lopes album, consisting of material she recorded prior to her death. To purchase the movie on DVD via Amazon, click here. C- (Movie) C+ (Disc)

Narrated by Russell Crowe, Bra Boys is a documentary film about the real-life brotherhood, murder and family loyalties of Australia’s warring surf gangs — most notably the chest-thumping, title-indicated clique from Maroubra, an economically depressed beach-side suburb 14 kilometers from the Sydney Harbor.

Written, directed and produced by Sunny Abberton, himself a childhood
resident of Maroubra’s public housing projects, the film traces the
cultural evolution of the tattooed, much maligned youthful
surfing community. Abberton uses his own brothers as a narrative point of entrance for the subcultural study. In addition to himself,
there’s Koby, Jai and Dakota — one charged with murdering a Sydney “standover
man” (Australian slang for an extortionist who uses threats or physical violence
to extract payment on behalf of another), another pursuing
a professional surf career but charged as an accessory in his brother’s
murder trial, and another trying to hold the family together. Then there’s Sunny, whose sole inheritance is his siblings’ national infamy.

Using archival shots, new on-site footage and interviews with all sorts of local figures, Bra Boys presents a dynamic portrait of the current “surf vision,” a story that is at once compassionate, compelling and confrontational: fights for against-the-odds success, predictable failures. The centerpiece of the film details a massive incident in which Bra Boy members tangled with a bunch of off-duty coppers at a birthday party. “Just a good, old-fashioned brawl,” demurs one participant, but it’s this easy, reflexive embrace of knuckle-dusting that comes across as most unnerving. One sees how this shrugged-off behavior calcifies into justification for further violence when an older member says of the area’s rampant carjackings and shootings: “It’s good, it turns us into what we are.”

Grim stuff, it sounds like, and that’s not entirely untrue. Ultimately, though, part of the film’s narrative illustrates how even amidst the burdens of a stigmatized legacy, a new generation can hope and strive for better, and work to try to end violence. If other surf documentaries like Dogtown and Z-Boys and Bustin’ Down the Door only whetted your appetite for international glimpses at the cultural surrounding dedicated beach life, this film is definitely worth a look.

Housed in a regular Amray case with an attractive accompanying cardboard slipcover, Bra Boys is presented in a non-anamorphic 1:78 aspect ratio, with Dolby digital 5.1 surround sound and 2.0 stereo audio tracks.
Unfortunately, and somewhat surprisingly, there are no supplemental extras, which seems quite curious for a boutique release whose maker is obviously so passionate about, and personally involved in, the movie’s subject matter. To purchase the DVD via Amazon, click here. B (Movie) D (Disc)

Jamie Kennedy is an interesting celebrity case study. When his most recent film came out, I received an amusing email from a friend, baffled that — more than a decade after Scream, and despite ample evidence rejecting a widescale public embrace of him as a comedic leading man — Kennedy could still headline a film in which he gets to kiss Maria Menounos. Tonally, the email was one of awed respect. A bit tongue-in-cheek, perhaps, but tinged with true amazement. Kennedy, though, is undeniably fairly shat upon; a quick perusal of message board threads on IMDb turns up: “Annoying and not funny,” “Nothing worse than a dude who thinks he’s black,” “How did he sink so low?,” “Horrible comedian” and “Cancer is funnier.” Only Carrot Top and Dane Cook may currently serve as the targets of more vitriol amongst comedians.

All of which brings us to Heckler, Kennedy’s two-headed, ramshackle documentary examination of show-interrupters and professional critics. Directed by Michael Addis, the movie is packed full of revelatory interviews with other comedians, which form the backbone of the film and are inarguably its highlight. Bobby Lee recounts getting punched out by a guy. Louie Anderson jokes about shooting a single heckler, to end it all. (Word would quickly spread, he reasons.) Patton Oswalt, meanwhile, advocates for a que sera sera mindset, saying, “Eroticism and comedy you really can’t argue. If there’s a comedian I hate but everyone else is laughing at him, then I’ve lost the argument.” Other interviewees include Bill Maher, Joe Rogan, Lewis Black, Jon Lovitz, Dave Attell, Carrie Fisher, Henry Winkler and Craig Ferguson. Arsenio Hall probably gets in the best sideways crack, assaying Michael Richards’ infamous moment of profane heckler snap-back thusly: “That’s some other kind of problem — like, ‘I need therapy,’ or ‘Somebody from the Raiders fucked my woman.'”

There’s also some semblance of intellectual inquiry, with Dennis Prager, Christopher Hitchens and Drew Pinsky offering up their thoughts on why hecklers heckle. More of this line of social examination and evaluation would have been welcome and edifying, particularly at the expense of the baffling talking head inclusions of ex-football coach Mike Ditka, singer Jewel Kilcher and a random transsexual.

Coming off a nasty critical drubbing in Son of the Mask, Kennedy obviously feels aggrieved, and that he has an axe to grind, but the connection that Heckler tries to make between live, in-person stage heckling and film criticism (however poorly written, and/or driven by ad hominem attacks) is a fairly tenuous one at best, and it doesn’t make its argument very convincingly. The movie succeeds rather smashingly as a piece of lightweight entertainment, but it suffers from this bifurcated focus. Kennedy should have either made Heckler much more of a personal journey — meaning even more interviews with dissatisfied club patrons and (published) critics of his work — or gotten out of the way. As is, Heckler is caught in a weird limbo that mitigates its effectiveness.

Presented in 1.85:1 anamorphic widescreen with a Dolby digital 2.0 audio track, Heckler was sent to me on a bare-bones screener disc, sans bonus features. Touted supplemental extras include a feature-length audio commentary track with Kennedy and Addis, and more than 35 minutes of deleted scenes and extended material, including footage of director Uwe Boll‘s boxing challenge matches with critics. To purchase the movie via Amazon, click here. B- (Movie) I, for Incomplete (Disc)

A sort of laboriously “hip,” teen-pitched re-interpretation of a literary classic, Virgin Territory is adapted and directed by David Leland from Giovanni Boccaccio’s The Decameron, and bills itself, weirdly, desperately, as “a freewheeling mix of Monty Python’s historical absurdity with American Pie‘s teen raunch.” In reality, this period piece comedy — packaged by executive producer Dino De Laurentiis and produced by his wife Martha — is an atonal mish-mash that star Hayden Christensen probably took on for the several scenes in which he gets to make out with various topless nuns (as shown below), in some weird dream fetish realization.

In the aftermath of the “Black Plague” in 14th century Florence, the city’s lusty young men and chaste maidens flee to the countryside. But for charming scoundrel Lorenzo di Lamberti (Christensen), the only woman that sets his heart ablaze is orphaned beauty Pampinea Anastagi (Mischa Barton), who is betrothed to an obsessed Russian nobleman, Count Dzerzhinsky (Matthew Rhys), but also being pursued by Gerbino de la Ratta (Tim Roth, playing the Rufus Sewell role), a conniving countryman and business associate of her late father who has vowed to take Pampinea’s virtue. With Gerbino trying to kill him, Lorenzo escapes to to countryside, where he feigns being deaf and mute in order to be taken in at the Sacred Sisters of the Blessed Heart convent. Naturally, these nuns turn out to be quite lusty, so they make Lorenzo their kept boy, and take turns satisfying themselves on/with him.

As Pampinea escapes to the countryside and Gerbino and Count Dzerzhinsky square off, Lorenzo’s adventures are intercut with another band of wayward travelers, including a guy whose chirpy, proper redheaded girlfriend (Rosalind Halstead) is making him wait until marriage to savor her carnal delights. (Think of him as the film’s Jason Biggs character.) Pampinea soon comes across Lorenzo, and things come to a head when he has a chance to confess his feelings to her, and eventually win her over in swashbuckling fashion.

Made in 2005 and screened last year at the Toronto Film Festival, the sumptuously costumed Virgin Territory has trouble connecting in large part because it
can never settle on a convincing tone. It partially desires to be a
twisted look at 14th century love and angsty sexual repression, but it’s staged, written and shot with an eye toward decidedly modern tropes, set-ups and visual flourishes — hence very straightforwardly presented nudity, characters falling face down in piles of feces, and a terrible, surf guitar-infused score from Ilan Eshkeri. The movie is also saddled with a strange, rib-nudging narration from a supporting character, painter Tindaro (Craig Parkinson), that is far less clever and essential a guide than director Leland clearly thinks.

Christensen and Barton — frequently bagged on by critics for their star turns in the Star Wars prequels and on the small screen in The O.C., respectively — are individually fine, but never really given the chance to generate quite as much lead-character heat as this movie needs to sustain its fallow passages. The air-quote wit here is pretty thin, which makes the whole thing feel like a time-warp episode of your average high school small screen serial, recast in period-piece fashion in Florence for sweeps, or a fourth season kick-off. On the upside, there is plenty of nakedness, but 15-year-olds no longer need faux-arty film rentals to glimpse such things, do they?

Virgin Territory comes housed in a regular plastic Amay case stored in a cardboard slipcase with alternate cover art, and is presented in 1.78:1 anamorphic widescreen, enhanced for 16×9 televisions, with a Dolby surround 5.1 audio track. A cover sticker touts the movie as being part of Anchor Bay’s new “Unzipped”
label, whatever that means (presumably films with copious nudity). A 13-minute behind-the-scenes featurette includes interviews with Christensen, Leland and cinematographer Ben Davis, but also leans far too heavily on long scene snippets for such a short production overview. In addition to the movie’s trailer, a preview of Rock of Love that starts automatically upon insertion of the DVD, and a three-minute spotlight of David
Walliams — the star of TV’s Little Britain, USA, who has a bit part here as a doofusy cart pusher who Lorenzo happens upon — there are about three-and-a-half minutes of material billed as “censored scenes of sexuality.” These are for the most part extended/alternate takes of material already in the movie, including a scene in which Kate Groombridge emerges from a river and showcases her landing strip. Though unbilled on the back cover, there’s also a scrollable picture gallery of Roberto Cavalli’s costume sketches. C- (Movie) C+ (Disc)