For those who aren’t big music fans (or scrupulously avoid out-of-field information with respect to genres in which they have no interest), a DVD spine reading, in bright, colorful letters, “Nashville Pussy” can create a bit of a stir. Kind of like the time one had to review another music-related disc entitled This Ain’t Your Mom’s Hardcore, Vol. 2.

Yep, it’s a concert disc, this DVD, and it features the band Nashville Pussy (named in reference to a line from a Ted Nugent’s Double Live Gonzo LP) rifling through 19 blistering songs in a 70-minute set from the Key Club in Hollywood. Husband-and-wife duo Blaine Cartwright and Ruyter Suys — the latter on guitar, the former handling vocals and additional guitar work — are joined by drummer Jeremy Thompson and new bassist Karen Cuda (replacing Corey Parks, sister of douchey ex-Dook hoopster Cherokee Parks), and together they all give the crowd exactly what they want, and then some.

The disc’s track listing consists of “Pussy Time,” “Going Down Swinging,” “High as Hell,” “Piece of Ass,” “Come On, Come On,” “Good Night for a Heart Attack,” “She’s Meaner Than My Momma,” “Go Motherfucker, Go,” “One Way Down,” “Hate and Whiskey,” “Hell Ain’t What It Used to Be,” “I’m the Man,” “Nutbush City Limits,” “The Bitch Just Kicked Me Out,” “She’s Got the Drugs,” “Shoot First, Run Like Hell,” “Lazy White Boy,” “Snake Eyes” and perhaps my favorite (based on title alone) “I’m Gonna Hitchhike Down to Cincinnati and Kick the Shit Outta Your Drunk Daddy.”

Housed in a regular Amray plastic case, this region-free disc comes with Dolby digital audio, and a bonus feature entitled “Pussy Home Movies.” So sit back, grab your bottle of whatever, and enjoy some good, old-fashioned sleaze-rock, if that’s your thing. If not, you might want to query Word Entertainment as to when that Amy Grant concert you liked so much is finally coming to DVD. To purchase the disc via Amazon, click here; for more information on the band, click here. C+ (Concert) B- (Disc)

Thrillers of expansive natural scope that retain both an authentic sense of place and a tightly coiled sense of character interplay are a fairly rare breed, but it’s just that small target for which director Brad Anderson is aiming with Transsiberian, a
slow-boil, humanistic thriller about an American couple who get sucked
into a downward spiraling drug investigation while traveling by train
in a foreign land.

Co-written by Anderson (The Machinist, Session 9) with previous collaborator Will Conroy, Transsiberian
unfolds largely on and around the legendary, same-named train. Iowa hardware store owner
Roy (Woody Harrelson, operating in his charming goofball mode) and his
wife Jessie (Emily Mortimer) decide to take the long way home after a
church-outreach sojourn to China. En route from Beijing to Moscow, the
pair meet up with another young couple, Carlos (Eduardo Noriega) and
Abby (Kate Mara), and bond over booze for the guys and cigarettes for the gals.

Roy
gets separated from the group at a stop, and complications ensue when
the trio disembark to wait for him to catch the next train, which ends
up taking a day and a half. When Roy and Jessie are reunited, the
former is accompanied by Ilya Grinko (Ben Kingsley), a Russian narcotics
detective who’s trying to track down some missing heroin, which he
believes may be being smuggled in novel form.

On its own deliberately plotted terms, Transsiberian more or less works, though chiefly as a drama instead of a thriller. As with Session 9, Anderson convincingly establishes a place that serves as a compelling anchor of mood for his film as a whole;
here, though, it’s not plumbed for creepy effect so much as it is for
general detail. The movie turns on a couple shocking acts of violence
that complicate the story in interesting ways, with the intrigue really
thickening at the 50-minute mark, and again with a second story bump at
the 80-minute mark.

Not entirely coincidentally, after an early
introduction, these moments loosely align with Kingsley’s
reintroduction to the narrative. As Grinko, an ex-KGB agent turned longtime cop who’s
suffered the socioeconomic disadvantages of the end of the Cold War and
dissolution of the Soviet Union, Kingsley
displays a certain darkly chameleonic charm; partly solicitous, partly
menacing, he slips into the movie, skulks around and stalks off with
its soul, mostly because we never seem to get a firm grasp of
what exactly he wants. Far from coming off as irresolute, though,
Kingsley just deftly plays the undertones of sometimes conflicting
motivations. Even after fates are decided in relatively stark terms for
the other characters, we’re left to wonder a bit more about Grinko, which seems
in every way appropriate, given Kingsley’s performance.

Housed in a regular Amray case with an accompanying, attractive cardboard slipcover, Transsiberian comes presented in 2.35:1 anamorphic widescreen, with an English language 5.1 Dolby digital surround audio track, and optional English SDH and Spanish subtitles. Alas, there are no supplemental extras here, apart from a clutch of previews, which is a drag. Bonus-free discs like these are pointless these days, and a slap in the face to consumers — all the more so since Anderson is such a thoughtful interview. B (Movie) D- (Disc)

In honor of the new month, here’s a DVD review of indie flick November, originally published on IGN upon its initial release a couple years back. To wit:

There are an unfortunate number of independent movies that ape their big-budget siblings in story and attempted scope, telling indulgent tales of smart-talking, gun-toting criminals and the like when you know that the filmmakers have neither the personal experience nor the resources to back up their narratives. Instead of chronicling something they know and are passionate about, these writer-directors (after all, multi-hyphenates are a default designation when variable viewpoint collaboration is the enemy) simply undertake a miniaturized recreation of something much more formulaic. With substance taking such a deep, deep backseat to style, in the worst of these movies you can virtually feel the filmmakers — and even the actors, sometimes — all padding out their reel, reaching for that peach Hollywood gig.

The much rarer flip side of this phenomenon — the category into which the indie November, a noteworthy letdown, unfortunately falls — is that of a movie so self-serious and hell-bent on showcasing its pseudo-intellectual weight that it saps from the audience any notion or recollection that film, as a medium, might actually be fun or stirring. Directed by Greg Harrison (Groove) from a script by Benjamin Brand, November is every bit the coy calling card as every bad Tarantino or Scorsese knockoff out there, the only difference here being that the ambition is not a big studio deal but independent financing for another exercise in willfully arty mimicry.

In the lead, Courteney Cox absolutely swallows her extroverted Friends personae, in what is undoubtedly the film’s strongest selling point. She stars as Sophie Jacobs, a quiet amateur photographer and instructor at a local community college whose short, sensible haircut her bossy mother (Anne Archer) deems that of “an underachiever.” After a dinner out, Sophie and her boyfriend Hugh (James Le Gros) stop at a convenience store. Hugh runs in to buy some chocolate, but is murdered in violent smash-and-grab robbery.

Sophie is haunted by guilt, and starts visiting a psychologist (Nora Dunn) to cope with both her feelings and a series of debilitating migraine headaches. When photo slides of the store from the night of the murder — showing Sophie sitting in her car outside — start mysteriously appearing at her class, Sophie becomes convinced there may a witness that can help apprehend the heretofore uncaught perpetrator.

November is divided equally into three segments — titled “Denial,” “Despair” and “Acceptance” — that re-tell the same basic narrative arc of the plot with differing details, perspective and style. Like Run Lola Run, the film can be loosely construed as the story of a troubled mind trying to set right the confounding and contradictory details swimming around in our protagonist’s head. With its carefully attuned sound design (ominous noises from the apartment above Sophie’s) and the totemic importance given certain objects, November has the feel, for its first half hour, of something of weight and substance. Harrison also deftly uses color filters, slight costume changes and other schemes to differentiate his shifting realities.

The problem with November is that it gets progressively less unsettling and interesting as it unspools. The film is neither fish nor fowl. It doesn’t work as a thriller — it’s too plodding and ponderous for that — and neither are its dramatic stakes high enough to hold sway on its own. There’s no expanding sense of doom or intrigue to the movie, in other words. Once the riddle of its premise is easily unlocked, there’s little left but some experimental and somber filmmaking — a display case presentation. November wears its solemnity like a cloak, but I for one am calling “emperor’s new clothes.”

On DVD, November is presented in a 1.85:1 anamorphic widescreen transfer that does cinematographer Nancy Schreiber’s dark, moody digital video compositions few favors. While contrast holds steady and grain, of course, isn’t a problem, there are recurrent pixilation problems. Colors, too, seemingly suffer from attrition around the edges of frame. While the artistic strategy and reach of the movie still comes through, the capacity of Harrison’s rigorous saturation suffers in a small screen presentation, particularly in low- and fluorescent-lit scenes in the convenience store and Sophie’s apartment.

An English language, Dolby digital 5.1 mix anchors this release, and it’s a solid one. The dialogue is clear, if mixed a bit lowly. Plenty of room is instead given to slurry and surreal effect, with natural ambience tightly tamped down. The film’s partitioned construction offers up an interesting primer course for would-be filmmakers, in that returned-to settings are manipulated aurally as well as visually. Sophie’s dinners with her mother, for instance, become more disquieting and estranged, and Sophie’s apartment an unnerving extension of headache-riddled confusion. Subtitles in French are also included — a good choice, since November seems the type of conjectural, inwardly reflective movie that Franco-philes would enjoy.

Two audio commentaries anchor the bonus materials, and offer parallel views of the movie’s exacting construction. The first features Harrison and screenwriter Brand, and delves into the plot twists and decisions about the repeated-act structure. While not riddled with spoilers, this almost assuredly isn’t a commentary you’d want to indulge in before watching the film. A bit more academic, then, is cinematographer Schreiber’s commentary track, also in conjunction with Harrison. Also included are an alternate opening sequence, static photo galleries and a nine-minute conversation with Lew Baldwin, who, interestingly, wore two hats as both the movie’s composer and visual effects supervisor. His thoughts are interesting, and while November doesn’t hold up well as a whole due chiefly to some story flaws, this inclusion does make you pine for a more streamlined post-production sound team. If more filmmakers and/or composers had an intimate grasp of music composition and sound design, movies (particularly those of the independent variety) would benefit from this uniformity of purpose.

Overall, as its thoughtful extras indicate, November is a film that at least attempts to do some different things, to stretch beyond the normal modes of pat, indie narrative. Its forced dourness, though, isn’t a convincing substitute for artfulness. C- (Movie) B (Disc)