A film about the art of burlesque would seem to offer up plenty of titillation for the pre-teen set (once they figured out the word’s definition, naturally), but this academically-minded documentary is far from prurient. Instead, A Wink and a Smile, as its title suggests, is an artful, intellectually probative and lightheartedly humorous look at the act of artful undressing. Directed by Deirdre Timmons, the movie plays, for better and for worse, as an affirming, exactingly reasoned piece of feminist agitprop — a women’s studies graduate student film project.

The tension between private yearnings and our seemingly innate desire for and appreciation of public spectacle are at the heart of A Wink and a Smile, which follows 10 “ordinary” women who each for their own reasons decide to do something extraordinary — learn the art of burlesque dancing and striptease. A 51-year-old homemaker, a 35-year-old opera singer, a 23-year-old college student, a 33-year-old taxidermist/bartender and a half dozen other women join the American revival of burlesque, where performance art and showgirl spectacle crash head-over-heels into a on-stage display of glamour and sensuality. Noted performer and instructor Indigo Blue serves as the chief narrator and guide for A Wink and a Smile, and her knowledge of burlesque’s history — from Lydia Thompson and the “British Blonde” invasion of the late 1800s, which typically mocked current stageplays with their routines, to the lavishly costumed sets of burlesque’s so-called Golden Era, in the 1940s and ’50s — roots this title in a very interesting way, and easily delineates the substantive differences between striptease and, well, the sort of working-the-pole ethos of much of modern-day stripping.

In addition to Blue, the other interview subjects are actually almost all articulate as well, and offer a variety of reasons for their interest in learning burlesque. But there’s still a bit of a cloying distance to the entire affair, an emphasis on reason rather than libidinal impulse — a trait most heartily associated with masculinity, granted, but something which I’m told females actually possess as well. Timmons also wastes far too much time on performance pieces by burlesque “professionals” with names like The Shanghai Pearl and Waxy Moon, the latter being a bearded female impersonator. This tack comes across as a desperate attempt to gin up the intellectual bona fides of the film, and takes away from what could be a much more interesting and full-bodied (no pun intended) look at its amateur participant subjects.

Housed in a regular plastic Amaray case, A Wink and a Smile comes to DVD presented in anamorphic widescreen, with an English language 2.0 stereo audio track that more than adequately handles the relatively straightforward aural demands of the title. Special features include an interview clip with Timmons, a burlesque photo gallery and several bonus scenes. To purchase the DVD via Amazon, click here; to purchase it directly via First Run’s web site, click here. C+ (Movie) B+ (Disc)

Brittany Murphy typically gives good crazy, in Don’t Say a Word, Just Married and, well, her offscreen life. But she can’t give true lift to the waterlogged Deadline, a mopey mood piece that is irredeemably caught halfway between being a “haunted place” flick and a single-character study of unraveling sanity. Recalling various other moody genre efforts both successful (The Others, Session 9) and less so (Dark Water, fellow straight-to-video flick Asylum), Deadline is unappealingly photographed and stitched together without a truly compelling sense of downhill momentum.

With her violent ex-boyfriend about to be released from prison, Alice (Murphy) hitches a ride to a remote Victorian house from her friend Rebecca (Tammy Blanchard), in order to veg out and focus on finishing her screenplay in time for an impending deadline. When she begins hearing strange sounds and seeing apparitions, Alice searches for the source and comes across some disturbing videotapes in the attic. Fascinated by her discovery, Alice digs deeper into mysterious story of the couple on the tapes, newlyweds Lucy and David (Thora Birch and Marc Blucas), a story that involves just the sort of paranoia, jealousy and violence to which she is already accustomed from her own personal life.

Without necessarily giving away the rather sigh-inducing twists within the movie, notions of unwinding artistic sanity have previously been tackled in gripping fashion, in everything from The Shining to David Koepp’s underrated Secret Window. So there is the kernel of an interesting idea here. Deadline, however, is muddled, and most characterized by a forced bleakness that substitutes for interesting characters or story development. Writer-director Sean McConville trades in all the sort of stylistic touches an audience that would most inclined to rent or purchase Deadline has seen before — various drones, affectedly howling winds, dripping faucets, creaky doors and self-consciously eerie whooshes — and the structure of his script, which awkwardly intercuts these temporal flashbacks with Alice watching the videos on her laptop computer, comes across as problematically boring almost from the get-go.

Blucas and Birch play types (the silver-tongued abusive lout who comes to believe his wife is cheating, and the pregnant, increasingly terrorized wife who plots to escape his clutches), so the movie is left to sink or sail on its look and manipulation of tone, as well as Murphy’s performance. The former is dreary and unexciting, not nearly darkly seductive enough; poor, puffy-lipped Murphy, meanwhile, captures some of the “hot mess” qualities of Alice, but does not come across as nearly enough of an artistic soul to realistically propel Deadline‘s narrative.

Housed in a regular plastic Amaray case, Deadline comes presented in 1.85:1 anamorphic widescreen, with English language 5.1 Dolby digital and 2.0 stereo tracks, to better capture all the discrete, prodding aural cues. Optional English and Spanish subtitles are also included. Apart from five preview trailers, the only supplemental feature is a 10-minute making-of clip which intercuts behind-the-scenes footage and interview clips with cast and crew, who talk up both the story and producer Roger Betterton’s moxie. To purchase the DVD via Amazon, click here. D+ (Movie) D+ (Disc)

Mike Myers notably likes to meticulously workshop his characters in live, improvisatory settings, but then retreat to craft a story and script out of material that’s been vetted through laughter. For Sacha Baron Cohen, however, deep-in-character comedy is its own special type of high-wire act, in which often unsuspecting members of the public at large are lured into loosely worked-up scenarios, and then submitted to the warped worldviews, invasions of personal space and/or sociocultural manglings of his outlandish characters. That was certainly the case with 2006’s wild, subversive Borat, and it remains true — if to a slightly less shocking degree — of Cohen’s new globe-trotting road film Brüno, a very funny mockumentary that yet again wrings laughter from much of what collectively unnerves us.

The film is built around Cohen’s title character, the gay,self-absorbed, and more than a bit deluded host of an Austrian TV fashion show. After he causes a scene on a runway, is air-quote fired and dumped, and then barred from other fashion events, Brüno decides that he needs to head to America to achieve the celebrity he so richly covets. With lovestruck second assistant Lutz (Gustaf Hammarsten) in tow, Brüno hits Los Angeles, improbably lands an agent and, between anal bleaching appointments, manages to score small screen work as an extra on Medium. After a disastrous focus group session for his own show in which the subjects recoil at his dancing, full frontal nudity and talking urethra, Brüno strikes out in attempting to craft a sex tape with Republican presidential candidate Ron Paul. It’s only then that Brüno comes to the conclusion that he needs to become famous by “solving a world problem,” and thus turns his attention to brokering an Israeli-Palestinian peace. If your head is spinning from the mere comedic potential of these set-ups, all this isn’t even mentioning Brüno’s mock-fellating of one of the members of Milli Vanilli at a seance, Paula Abdul using a Mexican day laborer as a chair, or footage from areal swingers’ party which ends with Brüno getting repeatedly belt-whipped by an angry, plastic-boobed dominatrix.

Owing to the fact that his modus operandi has effectively been outed on a much grander stage than his HBO work on Da Ali G Show ever afforded, Brüno isn’t quite as brilliantly transgressive as Borat, in sum; we more clearly sense the track upon which we’re traveling, in other words. Still, Cohen and director Larry Charles, also his collaborator on the aforementioned film, are masters in picking at the scabs of societal discomfort, whether it’s in the form of African-Americans confronting a gay (and admittedly wildly irresponsible) white man adopting a black baby, or gay conversion advisors being told they have “nice blowjob lips.” These bits are wild and funny, but also striking because they ask us to reflect on exactly why the unwitting participants feel so strongly the way they do, and whether we agree with their views.

While there are laughs to be had at the (good-natured, if raunchily delivered) expense of actual gay couplings, Cohen is mostly interested in using his character’s flamboyance to push buttons about reactions to homosexual men. Some of the movie’s humor is less sophisticated than this mission, though, revolving as it does around the breaking of rules or the breaching of simple interpersonal boundaries that have nothing to do with gay or straight. For all its emphasis on shock, however (and early on, Brüno pushes the envelope with respect to mainstream frames of flapping penis, only further underlining the gulf between studio fare and what independent movies can realistically get away within respect to nudity and sex), the movie also isn’t afraid to indulge in a couple moments of glorious slow burn, as when Brüno goes camping with a trio of good-ol’-boy hunters and remarks that “all the stars in the sky make one think of all the hot guys in the world.” The long uncomfortable silence that follows is hilarious, and speaks volumes.

The film’s two most jaw-dropping and completely anxiety-inducing moments are counterbalancing examples of Brüno‘s mixture of styles. The first, an evisceration of stage parents who will do anything to see their kids succeed as child models, has nothing whatsoever to do with Brüno’s sexuality. Auditioning babies for a photo shoot with O.J., his own adopted child, Brüno keeps upping the ante to see if the moms and dads will object to anything (mock crucifixions, Nazi uniforms, heavy equipment with a lack of safety harnesses, or just “working around lit phosphorus”). Errr… they don’t.

The movie’s amazing penultimate sequence — in this case a stain on the state of Arkansas specifically, but more tellingly and lastingly a statement on the short fuse of mob mentality — finds Cohen portraying the mustachioed ringmaster at “Straight Dave’s Man-Slammin’ Cage-Wrestling Event.” Whipping the crowd into a furor, and leading a chant of “Straight pride!” before the evening’s festivities are set to kick off, things take a turn for the worse when someone shouts an anti-gay slur at Dave. He challenges them to a fight, and then… Well, with Brüno, Cohen has again delivered a comedy with the capacity to both make you think and genuinely recoil.

Housed on a dual-layer disc in a regular plastic Amaray case in turn stored in a cardboard slipcover, Brüno comes to DVD presented in 1.85:1 anamorphic widescreen, with Dolby digital 5.1 surround sound audio tracks in English, Spanish and French, as well as an English language DVS Dolby digital 2.0 track. Perhaps best of all, Cohen and Charles sit for a feature-length audio commentary track, and extend the action further with pause-and-play antics that literally freeze-frame the action and allow for all sorts of digressive anecdotes that shine a light on exactly how certain outrageous footage was captured. Yes, this is totally a Wizard of Oz-like peek behind the creative curtain that for a certain segment of the population could ruin the suspension of disbelief with regards to his future work, but for those yearning to get a better sense of Cohen’s unique talents and how he goes about shaping his characters and movies, one couldn’t have asked for a bigger treat.

Around 40 minutes of deleted and alternate scenes, meanwhile (the latter amusingly billed on the cover as “alternative scenes”), include loads more interview clips, house-shopping footage from Los Angeles, and sit-down chats with both Latoya Jackson and Pete Rose, the former of which was trimmed from the theatrica
l version of the movie at the last minute after Michael Jackson’s death roughly three weeks prior to its bow. Twenty more minutes of extended footage from some of the movie’s aforementioned set pieces is also included, along with a six-minute chat with Lloyd Robinson, the gentleman conned into playing Brüno’s onscreen agent. To purchase the DVD via Amazon, click here; to purchase the Blu-ray via Amazon, click here. B+ (Movie) A (Disc)

The new Ashton Kutcher-as-gigolo flick Spread, its title evoking images of splayed-open legs, wants to be taken seriously. If the actor-ly, urban cowboy growl that Kutcher affects didn’t clue you in, the movie itself lets you know this over and over with its forced narrative parallelism, its aping of iconic shots from The Graduate and its copious, pelvis-grinding nudity which, you know, is totally a sign of how modern and gritty and real and deep it is. Yes, it’s another sins-of-grind-you-down-Hollywood morality tale, except one in which director David Mackenzie (Young Adam, Mister Foe) and writer Jason Hall — despite an absolutely great tagline, “It’s a business doing pleasure” — do little to advance a narrative that connects on more than a shimmery, physical level.

Kutcher takes a producer credit and also plays Nikki, a twentysomething loafer who trades on his looks and has an aversion to all things untrimmed, a malady which he explains stems from seeing his mom’s giant mound of pubic hair as a kid. Nikki uses his prowling charisma and easygoing charm to get beautiful (and hopefully older, well-to-do) women to buy him things. He has a friend, Harry (Sebastian Stan), who stores his stuff for him, but Nikki otherwise lives like Nick Stahl’s character in Terminator: Rise of the Machines (“off the grid,” except for a cell phone, naturally), without an apartment or car, doling out sexual favors for ladies and depending on them to land couches and beds for the evening, and beyond.

After some requisite Hollywood-is-hell voiceover, Spread immediately throws together Nikki and Samantha (Anne Heche, gorgeous and flinty), a stunning, middle-aged lawyer who has a great house offering equally stunning views of the Hollywood Hills. Some club-set smooth talk wins Nikki an evening at her place, which he quickly parlays into a credit card for some stay-in breakfast, shopping trips and a new home base. Nikki can’t stand too much of a good thing, though — continued dalliances with an ex-girlfriend, Emily (Rachel Blanchard), also speak to that, until she wises up — so when he meets waitress Heather (The Invisible‘s Margarita Levieva, below), Nikki tries to add her to his list of conquests, only to find out that she’s a gender-flipped, mirror image version of him. After catching him cheating, Samantha throws him out, so Nikki begins anew his chase of Heather. But will their similarities unite them, or doom any chance at a lasting relationship?

In certain ways, Spread feels like the sprawling adaptation of some lost Bret Easton Ellis novel, before he got into drugs and wild, satiric hyperbole, crossed, perhaps, with a story-strand from The Real World. The film nominally succeeds in sketching out the on-the-grift underbelly of the City of Angels, but its young characters don’t ring true beyond two-dimensional kids looking for hot hook-ups, because we never see any other manifested ambition, artistic or otherwise. What brought them to Los Angeles, and are they really still trying to make it as actors and actresses, writers or musicians? How are their sacrifices in body, dignity or time feeding and fueling their pursuits — or are they only pushing them further away? (We know the answer to this, of course, but, damningly, it’s not because the movie shows us.) Spread is a flesh-peddling fantasy, nothing more, nothing less.

That said, it’s frequently a gorgeous one, thanks to cinematographer Steven Poster and some nice location work. And some
of the gigolo detail here is at least passably intriguing — Nikki’s
explication of creating relationship equity through a points system, for instance. But director Mackenzie is no Larry Clark,
and all of the player-gets-played stuff that Hall and Mackenzie want to
explore simply doesn’t play at all, either emotionally or just
logically. Nikki and Heather are fairly uninteresting characters
individually, and doubly so when stuck together. It doesn’t help,
either, that the movie expends much energy telling us what Nikki thinks
of his surroundings and situation in general, but not Heather
specifically.

The sizzle that pays for all this dawdling, faux-philosophical voiceover comes in the form of much interstitial fucking, and nudity. Wearing skimpy bikinis and often a lot less, Heche goes to great lengths to napalm any lingering memories of her time spent with Ellen DeGeneres, and probably comes out of the movie in the best light, because she at least sketches a believable, fully embodied “cougar” — a successful career woman more than happy to open her home and wallet, but one also capable of rapaciousness. The script sometimes requires her character to do stupid things, but she makes you at least feel the sting of her pain.

As for Kutcher, meanwhile, one could certainly make the argument that Nikki, since he depends on the largesse of women for his survival, is completely, and always, playing a character himself — hence the accent, hipster suspenders and what not. But the script never digs into the character deeply enough to make that interpretation fly. (It might work better spun back into novel form, actually, which is where one learns its roots lie in some of the DVD’s supplemental material.) Consequently, as relaxed and watchable as he is, Kutcher’s performance feels like a breezy, not particularly well thought out thing — like he’s just trading, loosely and lazily, on a glad-handing, amiable image and public knowledge of the fact that he’s married to an older woman. Spread thin, there are no new insights here.

Housed in a regular plastic Amaray case in turn stored in a cardboard slipcover, Spread comes to DVD presented in 2.40:1 anamorphic widescreen, with a Dolby 5.1 surround sound audio track and optional English and Spanish subtitles. Its supplemental features include a 16-minute making-of featurette full of interviews with the cast, as well as a separate six-minute featurette that’s billed as “behind-the-scenes” with Kutcher, but in reality plays merely as an extension of the aforementioned tidbit. Finally, there’s the theatrical trailer and a four-minute featurette in which Kutcher, seemingly partially in character, describes in tongue-in-cheek fashion “the world according to Nikki.” This includes some fashion tips, and also vague social scene advice like, “Hot spots often turn into money spots.”

By far the highlight of the bonus features, however, is a superb feature-length audio commentary track with Kutcher, Heche and Levieva. Given all the nudity and hook-ups on display, there’s ample opportunity for jokey, uncomfortable asides, but Heche also displays a pin-point skill (“What’s going on here, and why is your shirt off?”) at locating the levity in the situation. Whatever one thinks of him as an actor, off screen Kutcher is an intelligent and highly personable guy, making him the perfect guide for this sort of wide-ranging track, which deftly and entertainingly interweaves anecdotal, industry-specific rants (he’s sick of process trailer drive shots, it seems) with surprising movie trivia (Mackenzie initially staged one post-coital scene with a rack-focus of ejaculate floating in a glass of nearby water) and deeper thematic and psychological observations about the material. In my mind, it still doesn’t quite come together fully, but listening to this chat one can certainly grasp what they were going for, and better appreciate the effort. To purchase the DVD via Amazon, click here; to purchase the Blu-ray via Amazon, click here. C (Movie) B- (Disc)

Featuring if not one of the flat-out worst Photoshopped covers in recent memory then at least one of the outright least appealing, especially given its two leads, Justin Timberlake and Jeff Bridges, The Open Road hits DVD this week, and brings with it a set of wanly fulfilled expectations about the dynamics and stagings of a familial reconciliation travelogue.

Already mired in a slump, joyless minor league baseball player Carlton Garrett (Timberlake) receives more tough news when he learns of a turn for the worse with his ill mother, Katherine (Mary Steenburgen). Trying to fulfill her precondition for signing off on a risky surgery, Carlton hits the road to track down his estranged father, legendary pro player Kyle Garrett (Bridges), at an autograph signing. Knowing his charming yet painfully immature dad’s likelihood to disappoint, Carlton enlists his ex-girlfriend Lucy (Shooter‘s Kate Mara, above left) for emotional support. Once reunited, Carlton struggles to deal with a series of misadventures caused by his father’s antics, including missed flights and car trouble in their rented red Hummer. Years of miscommunication, frustration and awkward attempts at bonding come to a head as the mismatched trio make their way from Ohio back home to Houston to reunite the family.

Button-cute and at home with quiet moments, Mara is a starlet on the rise, and writer-director Michael Meredith otherwise wrangles a fine supporting cast — including Harry Dean Stanton, Lyle Lovett and Ted Danson — for his movie. Bridges, however, overdoes the garbling coot routine by about half, and Timberlake never fully locates a realistic tone of pinched disappointment in the way his character’s relationship with his father has turned out. When their at-odds nature physically manifests itself in what is supposed to be a comedic bathroom brawl, it just feels kind of lame, honestly. All the commitment issue parallelism and other subtext plays on top and obvious, and the dialogue isn’t nearly as whipsmart as Meredith imagines it.

Housed in a regular plastic Amaray case in turn stored in a cardboard slipcover (both with the aforementioned terrible Photoshopped cover), The Open Road‘s DVD allows for viewers to choose either a 2.35:1 anamorphic widescreen or 1.33:1 full frame viewing presentation, to complement the disc’s Dolby 5.1 surround sound audio track. Optional subtitles are also available in English and Spanish. Joining writer-director Meredith on a feature-length audio commentary track is Bridges, and while the two share a warm rapport, there are big gaps in the chat that make for an uneven listen. A few amusing anecdotes — Meredith and his skeleton crew almost getting arrested shooting B-roll, or Bridges spinning a chat about rehearsal back into a reminisce about working with Sidney Lumet — enliven things a bit, but this isn’t a top-shelf chat by any means. There’s also a seven-minute behind-the-scenes featurette — shot in a nostalgic, home video-style, and seeded with EPK-type interviews — as well as the movie’s theatrical
trailer. To purchase the DVD via Amazon, click here. C (Movie) C- (Disc)

The Winter Olympics and especially the Winter X Games have exploded in popularity over the last decade. Ergo, documentaries about skiing and other wintry outdoors pursuits are nothing new; witness First Descent, a gorgeously photographed snowboarding solicitation. Few, however, attempt to connect past and present quite like Intrepid Descent, a superb cinematic morsel that plays as both homage to a notable mountain range and the individuals who dared, and continue to dare, test themselves on its treacherous slopes. Directed by Erik Osterholm and Zander Hartung and clocking in at around half an hour, this short film form rather deftly blends cathartic thrills with steadying analysis, tacking somewhere between suspense and straightly informational. Hardcore skiers and those who prefer the lodge can each find some reward in it, therefore.

Intrepid Descent captures the classic wilderness experience of skiing Tuckerman Ravine, the legendary birthplace of back-woods country skiing. Nestled just below the summit of Mount Washington, the tallest peak in New England, the Ravine, with its near-vertical slopes of rock, ice and snow, has seen triumph and tragedy since the early 1920s, and is home to some of the United States’ most consistently extreme weather. Owing to this, it today remains a mecca for extreme skiers and adventurers (you know, the Mountain Dew crowd) from all over the world. Intrepid Descent is built around talking-head interviews with expert skiers and the like, which are interwoven with rare photos and other footage to reveal Tuckerman’s rich history, where the classic man-against-nature story has been repeated for generations. To drive home the Tuckerman experience, the filmmakers chart the daunting climb to the top of the Ravine and then up over the lip on an exhilarating, heart-stopping descent.

Housed in a regular plastic Amaray case, Intrepid Descent comes to DVD presented in 1.77:1 widescreen, with an English language stereo audio track. Bonus features consist of a photo gallery, director’s notes, biographies and a short featurette which throws a spotlight on the New England Ski Museum. To stock up for winter and purchase the DVD via Amazon, click here. B+ (Movie) C+ (Disc)

In early 1974, in New York City, stage choreographer-director Michael Bennett gathered together almost two dozen dancers and, plying them with jugs of red wine, taped 12 hours of conversations about their creative passions, personal histories and occupational highs and lows. His goal was to craft a Broadway musical that placed the hardworking artisans at the center of its story, and the eventual result, A Chorus Line, became an international phenomenon that won multiple Tony Awards in 1976, as well as a Pulitzer Prize for Drama.

Exploring a bit of the history of this show but mostly chronicling for over a yearlong period the casting process leading up to a successful 2006 stage revival, the buoyant nonfiction film Every Little Step serves as a portrait of reach-for-the-stars aspiration, as well as a behind-the-scenes glimpse at the pre-rehearsal mounting of a Broadway show. Both its aims and achievement are modest, but for a country which regularly counts demi-celebrity dance-offs and other artistic competitions among its most popular TV series, this movie should satisfy a general audience’s relatively uncomplicated interest in the specialized backdrop against which it unfolds.

Every Little Step starts with footage from a massive open call audition, and tracks the process as potential cast members are whittled down from literally thousands to hundreds, and then only dozens. All of this is intercut with interview footage from some of those who have a hand in either this iteration of A Chorus Line or its original production, including Broadway legend Bob Avian, original cast members Baayork Lee and Donna McKechnie, and composer Marvin Hamlisch, to name a few. Certain anecdotal tidbits prove fascinating. Hamlisch relates how audiences simply were not responding to what he felt was one of the best tunes he had ever written, a sardonic, woe-is-me tale of a dancer’s body issues entitled “Tits and Ass.” Figuring out that the program’s song listing tipped off audiences to the punch line, he and Bennett changed the title to “Dance: 10, Looks: 3,” and it received raucous reaction the very next evening.

Eschewing any florid stylistic touches, co-directors James D. Stern and Adam Del Deo tell the story in a fairly straightforward manner, hoping that the natural drama of watching actors being put through the paces of grueling song-and-dance routines will carry the day. In this manner, the documentary is not unlike the audition rounds of perennial small screen sensation American Idol, except for the fact that all the contenders actually have at least a modicum of talent. In terms of overall tone, this approach mostly works, in that Every Little Step locates, engagingly if a bit fitfully, the sense of need in performers — their burning desire for expression, which is the very emotion that forms the spine of A Chorus Line itself. There is also a pleasure to be found in simply bearing witness to the basic reaction of human joy attached to reward — of seeing someone become emotional after achieving a hard-fought dream, even if the dream is not your own. When one performer talks about dance being “the best part of me,” her unsentimental, straightforward self-analysis is enough to give one a catch in their throat, providing there is anything the viewer feels a flicker of applied passion for in their own life.

Where Stern and Del Deo misstep is in not delving deeper into Bennett’s groundbreaking concept of shaping both A Chorus Line‘s music and book through a series of grueling workshops, for which all involved were paid only $100 per week. It also seems a bit strange that Bennett’s death (he passed away from AIDS-related lymphoma in 1987), bisexuality and brief marriage to leading lady McKechnie are not mentioned. They are not necessarily matters to be doted on, but for either more casual followers of Broadway or those with no knowledge whatsoever of the show they would augment and enhance a reading of the creation of the musical, so their absence seems a misguided choice erring on the side of personal privacy. In the end, though, these are thinking criticisms that would offer a more fine-tuned product; A Chorus Line is ultimately about the depth of feelings of its subjects, and the price of consistently flaunted vulnerability — a brutal necessity in the acting trade. Every Little Step captures those difficulties, pitfalls, trade-offs and rewards, more than adequately.

Housed in a regular plastic Amaray case, Every Little Step comes to DVD presented in 1.78:1 anamorphic widescreen, with an English language Dolby digital 5.1 audio track and optional French and English subtitles. Hamlisch and co-directors Del Deo and Stern sit for a feature-length audio commentary track, and there’s a massive clutch of deleted scenes, around 35 minutes total, that gets more substantively into exactly the sort of workshop particulars mentioned above. Two other short but edifying featurettes are also included — a 16-minute conversation with McKechnie, as well as with an eight-minute conversation with the aforementioned Avian, Lee and revival producer John Breglio. A theatrical trailer and previews for around a dozen other Sony DVD releases round out the disc. To purchase the DVD via Amazon, click here. B (Movie) A- (Disc)

One has to wonder, looking at the cover box art for The Maiden Heist, whether there was any craft services table taunting on the set of the film, with Academy Award winners Christopher Walken, Morgan Freeman and Marcia Gay Harden teaming up to harass mere Oscar nominee William H. Macy over his honorific shortcomings and lack of little gold trophies.

A Boston-set caper comedy very loosely in the vein of the Ocean’s flicks, The Maiden Heist tells the story of a trio of art museum security guards who scheme to steal several of their favorite pieces from their workplace. Charles (Freeman), George (Macy) and Roger (Walken) are honest and
hardworking, to a man. But when they learn their favorite artworks are
set to be sent overseas to another museum, they concoct a plan to
switch out the real masterpieces with fakes. All goes well until a
mistake forces these first-time thieves into a last-minute escapade.

Consigned to a direct-to-video release after the capital problems of original bankrolling distributor Yari Film Group, The Maiden Heist is neither as bad as that fate suggests, nor a true gem that somehow just slipped through the cracks. It’s a straight-up programmer, in other words — something with which to while away the time, but not necessarily aggressively seek out. While the three male leads (most notably Macy and Walken) each impress upon the movie their own moments of inimitable delight, director Peter Hewitt (Zoom, Garfield, Bill and Ted’s Bogus Journey) never quite locates a streamlined tone. He isn’t abetted by Harden. I admired the actress’ Oscar-winning performance in Pollock, but have since found her to various degrees shrill and insufferable — and not always in keeping with character — in everything from Mona Lisa Smile and (gulp) Welcome to Mooseport to American Dreamz, The Mist, The Hoax and even straight-to-video fare like Sex & Lies in Sin City. Here, as Roger’s controlling, shriek-prone wife, she just about torpedoes every scene in which she appears. She makes you turn on the character, and the manner in which the story utilizes her, never a good sign in a movie.

Housed in a regular plastic Amaray case, The Maiden Heist comes to DVD presented in 1.85:1 anamorphic widescreen, with an English language Dolby digital 5.1 surround sound audio track, and optional English subtitles. Supplemental bonus material consists of an audio commentary track with Hewitt, scribe Michael LeSieur (You, Me and Dupree) and producer Rob Paris, in which the trio, in glad-handing fashion, recount the wintry difficulties of the movie’s location shoot, and share other warm, if sometimes a bit bland, anecdotes about the cast. An 18-minute making-of featurette works through some more particulars of the film, originally titled The Lonely Maiden, and includes on-set interviews with the principal talent, as well as below-the-line players. There is also a collection of a dozen deleted scenes with optional commentary, and a three-minunte blooper reel which features flubbed lines galore and Walken’s Scarface impression, if thankfully no cell phone interruptions in the middle of takes. To purchase the DVD via Amazon, click here. C (Movie) C+ (Disc)

Actor Thomas Jane’s directorial debut, Dark Country, comes across as a modestly sketched episode of The Twilight Zone with its visual ambition peddle pushed all the way to the floor. A brooding, passably eerie two-hander whose early woozy, pop-art hold unravels considerably in its final half, the movie will win over a handful of fans of The X-Files, as well as generally satisfy those that already appreciate Jane’s squinty on-screen charms.

Fresh off a quickie Las Vegas wedding, two honeymooning near-strangers, Dick and Gina (Jane and Lauren German, one of Hostel: Part II‘s wayward party girls), pick up a mysterious car crash survivor while trekking through the Southwestern desert in the middle of the night. But their decision to save the man soon becomes increasingly regrettable when he tries to assault Dick, and forces them to take drastic action in order to save themselves. The fact that the stranger possibly seems to know a little something about each of them stokes the fires of paranoia in both Dick and Gina, and a blur of paranormal chaos ensues, ultimately leading to the entrance of a local police officer (Ron Perlman) who seems to have his own doubts about the story he’s being peddled.

Written by Tab Murphy — who took a story credit on the Oscar-nominated Gorillas of the Mist, but whose output has heretofore consisted chiefly of animated fare like Tarzan, Brother Bear, Atlantis: The Lost Empire and The Hunchback of Notre Dame — the movie starts off like a companion piece to Red Rock West, with gravelly voiceover narration from Jane’s character, heavily processed, shadow-saturated shots and stock-genre details (a vending machine that simply reads “Raw Cola”) that give the film a feeling of something unrooted in any specific time period. As the newlyweds awaken from their stupor and get to better know each other as they hit the open road, Jane pushes the envelope further — there’s a scene in which Dick finger-blasts Gina to the strains of Beethoven’s Fifth Symphony while pushing 100 miles per hour on an open blacktop — making clear that in his mind, at least, this story is something of an allegory, about fate and/or lost identity.

Cinematographer Geoff Boyle, working with Jane, shoots the shit out of the movie, after seemingly constructing a visual scheme that’s equal parts noir homage and low-budget Sin City riff. Dutch angles, processed rear-view projection, looming close-ups and obstructed compositions abound, and if it only ends up working in the truest sense of the phrase about half the time, you at least appreciate the ambition with which this material was approached. The woozy hold of the movie’s first half soon wanes, though, as Dick’s investigative quest for clarity doesn’t hold sway quite like the filmmakers hope and believe. It doesn’t help, either, that Jane abandons the arms-length circumspectness of the movie (and his performance) for naturalistic hyper-emoting. Sure, Gina is Dick’s wife and what not, but they haven’t really known each other that long, so there’s no reason to go all, “Stella!” on things.

Housed in a regular plastic Amaray case with carved-out spindles under the main disc tray, in an effort to use less plastic, Dark Country comes to DVD presented in 1.85:1 anamorphic widescreen, with an English language 5.1 Dolby digital audio track and optional English and French subtitles. Special features consist of a brief making-of featurette, and a feature-length audio commentary track with Jane, Murphy and producer Patrick Aiello. In the latter, Murphy talks about the short story that was the genesis of the idea for the script, and Jane and Aiello address some of the hurdles of the movie’s nighttime shoot in New Mexico, as well as the happy coincidence of a dying moth that obliged a shot Jane had storyboarded but been unable to adequately plan. In more elliptical fashion, Aiello and Jane also talk about post-production bad luck and delays, from a fire that wiped out a hard drive on which editorial material was stored to a switch from Avid to Final Cut Pro, and bringing in a new editor. All in all, Jane pegs the post-production at around 18 months — an incredibly long time for a film of this nature. To purchase the movie via Amazon, click here. C (Movie) C+ (Disc)

A spoonful of sugar helps the medicine go down, it’s been said, so Scrubs‘ Donald Faison serves as the host/emcee of Your Life, Your Money, a one-hour program filled with straightforward information and practical advice about money management.

During these uncertain financial times, it’s becoming clearer that living with less is a here-to-stay imperative, and this informative PBS documentary, targeted at young adults, empowers twenty- and thirtysomethings, single and married alike, to get their financial lives on track and in order. The celebrity insights from hip-hop icon Russell Simmons, R&B pop singer D. Woods and others may skew this program a bit towards the unblinkingly ironic, but at its core it also addresses a crucial need for honest and open financial advice that doesn’t come in the form of some buffoon like Jim Cramer shouting empty and self-serving, Wall Street-approved slogans.

Your Life, Your Money features advice from leading personal finance experts, including Get a Financial Life: Personal Finance in Your Twenties and Thirties author Beth Kobliner, New York Times money reporter Ron Lieber, syndicated financial columnist Michelle Singletary, and other respected national financial advisors. Through real-life stories of young people dealing with
credit card debt and various other financial obstacles, this title raises
fiscal consciousness and knowledge on everything from banking and investments to budgeting, insurance and self-employment — all without alienating viewers or making them feel like idiots.

Housed in a regular plastic Amaray case, Your Life, Your Money comes to DVD presented in widescreen format, enhanced for 16×9 televisions. There are no supplemental features. To order a copy, call (800) PLAY-PBS or click here. Alternately, to purchase the DVD via Amazon, click here. B (Movie) D (Disc)