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)

Simon Baker and Paz Vega headline Not Forgotten, a meandering, Tex-Mex, give-me-back-my-daughter air-quote thriller that plays like a wayward cousin of Angel Heart, some juju potboiler and a lost, half-sketched Zalman King flick. Fans of Baker will perhaps spark to his crusading, paternally protective ways, but general audiences will lose interest long before the movie’s forced twist ending.

Not Forgotten unfolds in Del Rio, a small, peaceful Texas border town. Jack Bishop (The Mentalist‘s Baker) is a picture-perfect husband to new wife Amaya (Vega), and a doting father to his 11-year-old daughter Toby (Chlore Moretz). But when she’s kidnapped, Jack dives headlong into a Mexican hell of barrios and bordellos controlled by the mysterious La Santa Muerte, a sort of religious criminal sect. Working with a newly appointed sheriff and a pair of wary federal agents, Jack vows to track down her abductors no matter the cost; when initial suspect Calvo Huerta (Zahn McClarnon) proves little more than a patsy, however, Jack finds disturbing answers tied up in his complicated past. Borat‘s Ken Davitian, Michael DeLorenzo, Claire Forlani and Benito Martinez all co-star.

An enchanting actress who, given the opportunity, can play alluring and dangerous without merely clanging the one-note keys of “the exotic other,” Vega (Sex and Lucia, Spanglish) here isn’t given much with which to work, though she does kindly reveal her ass, which is a thing of special beauty. She, in her small role, and Baker, in the lead, offer up committed performances, but the characters are more or less ciphers, and their personalities change to suit the necessary actions of any given scene. It doesn’t much help that Not Forgotten will not let audiences forget that they are watching a capital-M movie, by gosh, so pointlessly full of stylized flashbacks is it. The sum effect of its familiar disparate parts — some jittery camerawork here, an Eyes Wide Shut-type masked sequence there, and a pinch of Mexican strip club salaciousness to boot — bores rather than intrigues. By the time an old lady starts spinning a yarn about “the cranes of the lost city of Aztlan,” one wants to pat her on her filthy head and book a flight back to the American ‘burbs, far away from this affectedly grimy, bizarre and alien setting.

Housed in a regular plastic Amaray case in turn stored in a cardboard slipcover, Not Forgotten comes to DVD presented in 2:35:1  widescreen, preserving the aspect ratio of the movie’s limited theatrical exhibition. Audio is presented in the form of a Dolby digital 5.1 surround sound track, which nicely complements the dialogue with moody background ambiance when the situations call for it. A feature-length audio commentary track with co-writer/producer/director Dror Soref and co-writer/associate producer
Tomas Romero is the best of an otherwise spare slate of supplemental extras; the pair yawningly compliment themselves on a few lines, but also talk about the challenges of shooting on location (noise you can’t always control being the biggest hurdle), and point out stage-shot insertions and green-screen composites that one otherwise wouldn’t guess or recognize. A six-minute behind-the-scenes featurette includes some on-set footage, but no interview chats with the cast, unfortunately — only more material with Soref and Romero. The theatrical trailer is also included. To purchase the DVD via Amazon, click here. C- (Movie) C+ (Disc)

I recently penned a full-length review for a cinema annual compendium of Valentino: The Last Emperor, a negative assessment that I won’t reproduce or fully get into here, but I feel again compelled to stress what a disappointment and bore this movie was, on any and every level. This is the laziest sort of documentary filmmaking there is — pick an engaging subject that exists or operates in rarefied air, get granted “backstage” status, and then just kind of see what one can randomly capture, tossing in sit-down interview footage but never substantively following up on any issues raised.

Despite garnering mostly correspondingly positive reviews and beating fellow fashion documentary The September Issue out of the gate by opening first, this March, Valentino: The Last Emperor, a look at iconic designer Valentino Garavani as he prepares to celebrate the 45th anniversary of haute couture, grossed only $1.7 million in theaters, or about half of what the former film pulled in. The chief reason may well be that while The September Issue spent some of its time tracking a relatable workplace rivalry that felt enriched and heightened in stakes by its tony surroundings, first-time filmmaker Matt Tyrnauer scarcely discovers anything of note about any of the relationships that form the crux of his movie, personally or professionally.

In fact, the director is so clearly infatuated with his subject that even when he does capture something approaching a moment infused with drama or intrigue — at one point Garavani has a tiff and insists that he stop being filmed, in another instance his business partner of several decades, Giancarlo Giammetti, asserts that his corporate boss’ opinions “have no value” with respect to the actual direction of the company — Tyrnauer does not follow up on it. The general operating philosophy seems to be to simply point the camera to and fro, and see what it incidentally captures. This lack of intellectual rigor extends from everything from Garavani’s personal life (he and Giammetti were apparently lovers for a dozen years, but the movie never even makes mention of this, let alone inquires as to how the dissolution of a romantic relationship might have impacted their business together) to unexplored, potentially interesting theses about the designer’s professional development, since he confesses to being influenced mightily by the style of screen stars he glimpsed in films and magazines while growing up. Even a 2007 takeover of Valentino Fashion Group by British private equity firm Permira rates only cursory explanations via TV footage, information that scratches no deeper than a thumbnail. Owing to all this staggering incuriosity, there is no greater nut of meaning cracked within the movie, no matter all the rich style on display.

Presumably housed in a regular plastic Amaray case, the movie comes to DVD presented in 16×9 widescreen aspect ratio, with a Dolby digital 5.1 surround sound audio mix, and optional English, French, Spanish and Italian subtitles. Supplemental bonus material consists of three featurettes. Running 30 minutes, the first takes the viewer inside Garavini’s homes around the world, revealing the unique lifestyle he’s created for himself and the amount of work it takes to maintain it. We follow Michael Kelly, the designer’s Irish majordomo, as he prepares a lavish party at the Chateau Wideville estate, outside of Paris. In the eight-minute “The Last Collection,” we see footage from Garavini’s farewell haute couture show from January 2008. Finally, there’s eight additional minutes of footage from the designer’s Rome workshop, where seamstresses work on the red dress featured in the movie, and head seamstress Antonietta De Angelis reveals some of her secrets about dressmaking and working for the legendary, Italian-born designer. To purchase the DVD via Amazon, click here. D+ (Movie) B (Disc)

The notion of a direct-to-video flick costarring Mena Suvari as a money-hungry, social-climbing stripper might sound like cause for the eager rubbing together of palms by many a shoe-gazing twentysomething who came of age (in perhaps more ways than one) with American Beauty, but Lifetime tele-drama Sex & Lies in Sin City generally fails to ignite or engage either dirty or more casually inquisitive minds. A murder mystery based on a true story, the film contains all the requisite, tabloid-ready staples of such dramas — adultery, theft, familial in-fighting and the like — but it’s so haphazardly assembled and poorly acted as to totally drain it of any lascivious punch.

Reckless, drug-addled casino executive Ted Binion (Matthew Modine, seemingly impersonating Yosemite Sam or some other cartoon character) is a businessman who perpetually lives on the edge, but in Las Vegas that hardly makes him remarkable. High school dropout and beauty queen turned stripper Sandy Murphy (Suvari) wins his heart by initially refusing his drunken solicitations, and soon Sandy’s moved in with him, which only further enrages Ted’s estranged sister, Becky (Marcia Gay Harden). When Ted turns up dead, the victim of an apparent overdose, Becky doesn’t believe the diagnosis (“Overdose my fat Aunt Fanny,” are her exact words, I believe), and pushes for a police investigation. Hanging around at the fringes of the story, meanwhile, is Rick Tabish (Johnathon Schaech), a contractor who’s helping Ted build a safe for his precious stash of gold coins and other valuables — and an ex-con who also happens to be Sandy’s former (and perhaps still current) boyfriend. When Rick gets pinched for Ted’s murder, it pulls both Sandy and Becky into a media maelstrom involving not one but two media-circus trials.

Originally broadcast on Lifetime in October 2008, Sex & Lies in Sin City is adapted by Teena Booth from Jeff German’s book Murder in Sin City, though the title change is somewhat amusing, as there’s certainly no prurient additions to the material; to the contrary, if anything the movie feels like too timid a rendering of a seedy Southwestern story. Booth and director Peter Medak, perhaps owing to the source material, invest far too heavily in the legal maneuvering and the third-act skulking about of a reporter, Evan James (Arron Shiver), to the detriment of any real psychological insights to the characters of Sandy and Rick. Copious affected, black-and-white flashbacks substitute for meaningful drama; the performances, meanwhile, range from over-the-top (Modine) and shrewish (Harden) to more subdued and naturalistic (Schaech), which creates a tonal disharmony that can never be resolved.

Housed in a regular plastic Amaray case, Sex & Lies in Sin City comes presented in a completely adequate 1.78:1 anamorphic widescreen transfer, with an English language 5.1 Dolby digital audio track and optional English and Spanish subtitles. There are, alas, no supplemental features. To purchase the DVD via Amazon, click here. D (Movie) D (Disc)

A celluloid mirror is held up to many December family gatherings in the form of Nothing Like the Holidays, a lively, well cast dramedy that captures both the grey-cloud exasperation and silver lining of time spent cooped up with blood relatives who remain outside of driving distance for the rest of the year. Set amongst a sociable Puerto Rican-American family in Chicago’s Humboldt Park area, the film leans on a strong ensemble cast to easily trump its narrative familiarity and pat, sometimes awkward dramatic hurdles.

The story centers on far-flung members of the Rodriguez family who converge at their parents’ home to celebrate Christmas. There’s wounded Iraq War veteran Jesse (Freddy Rodriguez, above left), who arrives with rekindled feelings for an old flame (Melonie Diaz), now a single mother. Roxanna (Vanessa Ferlito, above right) is an actress who has been chasing Hollywood dreams for years, and is hopeful of good news on a recent audition. Eldest brother Mauricio (John Leguizamo, above center), meanwhile, struggles to bridge the cultural gap between his high-powered executive wife (Debra Messing) and the rest of his family, most particularly his mother Anna (Elizabeth Peña), who doesn’t hide her dismay that they haven’t yet delivered her a grandchild. Matters are thrown into disarray when Anna shocks her children by announcing that she’s divorcing their father Edy (Alfred Molina), whom she suspects of having an affair.

Director Alfredo de Villa (Adrift in Manhattan) has a writing background as well, which helps him locate the authenticity in this tale: what’s endearing about a sibling one moment can also become suddenly irritating. He achieves this primarily though a lot of jokey, barb-filled crosstalk, but there’s some smart visual detail too, like the photo of Puerto Rican Hall of Fame baseball player Roberto Clemente that hangs in the background on the wall of Edy’s modest bodega.

The script, by Alison Swan and Rick Najara, keeps most conflict at arms’ length, defined only enough to generate momentary drama that never really seeps out of any single, self-contained scene. Owing to this, the movie also has trouble balancing some of the more emotionally charged moments with its seemingly natural instinct to inject comedy, as in a sequence where Mauricio attempts to mitigate the conflict between his parents by inviting over the neighborhood priest, who’s only too happy to stuff his face with Chinese carry-out food. Still, the combined effect of all this voluble engagement is greater than the sum of all its parts, certainly enough to merit a shrug of good-natured acquiescence.

Housed in a regular plastic Amaray case in turn stored in a cardboard slipcover, Nothing Like the Holidays comes to DVD presented in 2.35:1 anamorphic widescreen, with a Dolby digital 5.1 surround sound audio track and optional English SDH and Spanish subtitles. A warm, engaging feature-length audio commentary track with de Villa, producer Robert Teitel and actor Rodriguez alights on all sorts of production anecdotes, and a 12-minute making-of featurette, a whopping 15 minutes of bloopers and on-set flubs, and the film’s theatrical trailer are also included. To purchase the DVD via Amazon, click here. B- (Movie) B (Disc)

The oldest known written recipe in the world is a formula for beer scratched out on a clay tablet, part of an epic poem devoted to Ninkasi, the Sumerian goddess of mood-altering liquids. Yet if you’re anything like me, regardless of which lagers you enjoy either at home or out with friends, you haven’t necessarily spent a whole lot of time thinking of your beer purchase as representing a dollar-for-dollar vote in some larger, sprawling corporate crusade for sociocultural dominance. Anat Baron’s Beer Wars is the movie to change that. An eye-opening, wildly engrossing documentary about how corporate beer giants work to intimidate, silence, swallow up and sink independent brewers, this no-holds-barred exploration of the American beer industry reveals the truth behind the label of your favorite beers.

Somewhere there exist fuller, complete notes on Beer Wars, bristling with deeper comparative insights regarding this movie. At least that’s what my gut tells me. But the truth is I cannot now find them, so I have no proof of such claims. So was I drunk when I watched this DVD? Am I drunk now? Both? Like Brittany Murphy in Don’t Say a Word, I’ll never tell. But I can definitively say that Beer Wars exists at the intersection of overall topical interest and quality, deftly interwoven third-person human interest stories, which is a sweet spot not many documentaries hit.

An industry insider (albeit an unlikely one, given that she’s allergic to alcohol), Baron is the former general manager of Mike’s Hard Lemonade, which she joined early in its existence and helped quickly move up in the market, to over $200 million in annual sales. Baron is neither a Michael Moore-style crusader who impresses her personality upon every frame of her movie, nor a deep-tissue massager of newly unearthed, difficultly won facts, but her movie sheds light on what are now the two mammoth beer corporations — Anheuser-Bush and MillerCoors, the latter of whom merged late in production on the film — who continue to push out and squash the American dream of the small business brewers, whom Beer Wars unabashedly argues have a deeper interest in taste and quality. A small handful of original animation interstitials by David Stone and
Casey Leonard, meanwhile, are peppy and engaging, even if they come off a bit like
a page ripped out of the playbook of The Kid Stays in the Picture or some Moore film.

Interwoven with some noodling around by Baron herself, this story of status quo protection is told chiefly through two of these entrepreneurs battling the financial might and dodgy tactics of Corporate America. Sam Calagione (above) is the personable founder and CEO of Dogfish Head, a Delaware microbrewery, and a guy whose ambition doesn’t seem to outweigh his zeal for a quality product; he’s into smart, modulated growth, which means not taking his company headlong into some harebrained public offering. Meanwhile, Rhonda Kallman, a former executive and co-founding partner at Samuel Adams, has dreams of introducing a caffeinated beer into the market, and works individual storefronts and bars in Boston and the Northeastern corridor to try to make her dream a reality. They’re each great subjects — interesting and relatable.

In trying to understand how unbalanced the beer industry is, Baron discovers an incredible connection between beer and politics, which leads to an explanation of the three-tiered distribution system, established after Prohibition, and why the big players are so intent on preserving their 75-year-old monopoly. This is probably the most fascinating part of the film, and one that could have used a bit more investigative muscle, or naked provocation. The issue here isn’t about the protection and integrity of laws governing underage possession and consumption; it’s that the biggest players seek by hook and by crook to leverage their already ridiculous competitive advantage, pressing for even more favorable legislation (over 37,000 laws and counting) even though the current distribution method basically obliges micro-brewers (who can’t sell their products online, obviously) to use delivery trucks bought and paid for by Anheuser-Bush and MillerCoors, who can then directly limit and otherwise blunt the impact of their competitors’ market penetration. This wouldn’t fly in any other industry; free market proponents would have an absolute shit fit.

Beer Wars comes to DVD presented in a 16×9 aspect ratio, with a nice array of supplemental features, including deleted scenes, extended interviews and a post-screening (if I recall correctly) chat with Baron and her subjects moderated by none other than Ben Stein. To purchase the DVD via Amazon, click here. B+ (Movie) B (Disc)

Stan Helsing is written and directed by Bo Zenga, an executive producer of Scary Movie, a producer of Turistas and the writer of Soul Plane, which is a list of credits that may not inspire much in the way of qualitative expectation. But, somewhat surprisingly and definitely pleasantly, his well cast comedy lampoons contemporary film audiences’ familiarity with the horror genre without ever stooping to senselessly overloaded referential gags, like Disaster Movie or Superhero Movie. Coming off a brief theatrical engagement in select cities, and now out on DVD, the movie stands as a perfectly acceptable Halloween weekend treat for those who like their spook-season entertainment vacuumed mostly free of fright.

The film centers around the misadventures of hapless, hands-off video store clerk Stan Helsing (Steve Howey) and his three pals — ex-girlfriend Nadine (Diora Baird), Teddy (Saturday Night Live‘s Kenan Thompson) and dim bulb massage therapist Mia (an exuberant Desi Lydic). During what should be a routine delivery before heading out to a Halloween evening party, Stan and company find themselves stranded in a mysterious residential development known as Stormy Night Estates. There, Stan learns of his true destiny as a descendant of the legendary monster hunter Abraham Van Helsing, and engages in a battle against evil in the form of character parodies of a half dozen movie monster icons — Jason, Leatherface, Freddy, Michael Myers, Pinhead and Chucky. The big dramatic wrap-up involves double entendres, mock-dream endings, a karaoke showdown… and comedy legend Leslie Nielsen in a small role as a waitress. Yes, a waitress.

Zenga elicits winning performances from his main cast, but also smartly divvies up lines so that the burden of this most excellent adventure is shared, with everyone having a stake in its harebrainedness. Some amusing if inessential early sight gags and jokes rooted in familiar stereotypes of ethnicity (video store customers returning copies of The Ring all drop dead in a pile, while African-Americans dissect The Blair Witch Project and hypothesize this is why black people don’t go camping) eventually give way to comedy of a slightly higher degree of difficulty. Yes, this movie features three bathroom sequences, and some foley fart work, but its dialogue is also funny and, more importantly, consistently true to character. When Terry talks about the phenomenon of “urban mirages,” or when Mia queries a hitchhiker who claims to have been wrongfully incarcerated, “So, how is it that you got invited to prison in the first place?,” it stems reliably from their own warped worldviews. That matters, giving the movie a sense of rooted sincerity that not many of its spoof brethren can match. And it doesn’t hurt, certainly, that Baird spends the entire film in a skimpy Indian costume, while Lydic cycles through three different sexy costumes, for reasons poked fun at within the story.

Housed in a regular plastic Amaray case in turn stored in a cardboard slipcover, Stan Helsing comes presented in 1.85:1 anamorphic widescreen, with a Dolby digital 5.1 surround sound audio track and optional English SDH subtitles. Bonus features are anchored by a feature-length audio commentary track with Zenga and actors Thompson and Lydic, in which the trio discuss the movie’s Vancouver night shoot, Thompson’s driving skills and penchant for improvisation, as well as Baird’s prodigious rack (“We all wanted to touch them,” says Lydic). There’s an 11-minute making-of featurette in which Howey rails in mock-anger against Zenga for his wig-and-bandana combination (which Baird points out makes him look like Bret Michaels, “which isn’t a good thing”), while a half dozen extended, alternate and excised scenes — including, yes, “deleted doll rape” — run a total of eight minutes. The movie’s theatrical trailer and a clutch of photographic stills and storyboards, in two separate scrollable galleries, are also included, along with five minutes of outtakes in which the cast members accidentally destroy a wooden four-post bed that their characters are meant to simply push out of frame. To purchase the DVD via Amazon, click here. B- (Movie) B (Disc)

Greg Giraldo is most widely known, along with Jeffrey Ross, as arguably one of the top two comedians who rips apart everyone from Flavor Flav and Bob Saget to Pamela Anderson and Joan Rivers on Comedy Central’s regular roasts. In his stand-up special Midlife Vices, though, Giraldo lets loose less on people than on more whimsical topics, and the result is every bit as side-splitting and delightful.

Recorded in front of a raucous hometown crowd in New York City, and new to DVD, Midlife Vices is a worthy follow-up to Giraldo’s amazing debut CD, Good Day To Cross a River. Giraldo has a stage demeanor that, unlike a lot of comedians, doesn’t ooze either anger or neediness; this allows his mood and delivery to shift more naturally with the tone and tenor of the material, conveying bewilderment when he’s digging into the innate ridiculousness of some unspoken rule of dating, or agitation when he’s shifting gears into more of a rant.

Giraldo’s choice of material, too, is wide-ranging. Unlike many comedians, he doesn’t necessarily “pre-sort” his topical assaults through the filter of a single, immovable personality, so there’s a genuine sense of gleeful surprise when he bounds from the political arena and talking about the energy crisis into a discussion of koala bear sex. While overt political statements aren’t part of his main agenda, Giraldo does get into the 2008 election and talk interestingly about coded campaign language, which is something in which I have a specific interest. He also makes points in roundabout fashion, as when he launches into a dissection of homosexuality by saying both that “there’s a certain level of gayness that seems a choice,” as well as, “Discriminating against gays seems stupid, because it’s not a choice — just like I don’t choose to be attracted to women, that’s just the way I am. And it sucks, because it means basically every 10 years or so I have to give away all my stuff and move out.”

Midlife Vices is a rangy title, with Giraldo touching on everything from obesity in modern children (“You aren’t supposed to be winded when you’re 9 years old and on flat ground”) to peanut allergies and the craziness of texting, as embodied by the problem of accidentally sending messages to the wrong people, like his mother. He also relates an anecdote about a group of homeless a capella guys he recently saw, and wondering how they met. Other objects that feel the burn of Giraldo’s ire include Obama‘s cessation of smoking, the uproar over Michael Phelps’ bong shots, and a rastafarian audience member who falls asleep in the third row during his set. One of the rare comedians of his age (he’ll be 45 next year) who can get away with both lowbrow and highbrow humor with equal, matching grace, Giraldo is far less well known than he should be. Give his Vices a spin; the vicarious thrills and naughtiness will likely do you good.

Housed in a regular plastic Amaray case with two snap-shut hinges on the inward spine, Midlife Vices comes to DVD presented in 1.78:1 anamorphic widescreen, with a 2.0 stereo audio mix. Bonus features consist of a 22-minute installment of the revolving comedian serial Comedy Central Presents, featuring a bit leaner Giraldo from 2000, as well as the never-before-seen pilot for a sex-centric show called Adult Content, with Giraldo as its smirky emcee. A bit more backstage or behind-the-scenes stuff would have been a nice touch, but the hour-long feature presentation more than carries the day. To purchase the DVD via Amazon, click here. A- (Concert) B- (Disc)

Nick Swardson started stand-up at the age of 18, and was chosen early
to perform at the prestigious U.S. Comedy Arts festival. In 2000, he
hit a milestone when he taped his first Comedy Central half-hour
special at the age of 22 — the youngest comedian to do so. His career
really benefited from the championing and guidance of Adam Sandler, though; after bit parts of a string of films produced by and/or starring Sandler, Swardson co-wrote and starred in the Happy Madison films Grandma’s Boy and The Benchwarmers, a pair of reliably goofy, varying-by-degrees naughty comedies (one R-rated, the latter PG-13) that helped cement his status as goofball inheritor to the throne of crass juvenilia upon which Sandler made his name. So it’s no surprise, really, that his latest comedy DVD arrives under the moniker Seriously, Who Farted?

This hour-long set from Swardson’s sold-out concert in Austin, Texas earlier this year features plenty of material built around guy comedian staples — sex, bar life, videogames and Las Vegas debauchery. Swardson starts out by copping to the fact that many folks know him first and foremost from his effeminate guest-starring role on Reno 911 — as hot-shorts-sporting, roller-skating gay prostitute Terry — and thus think he’s homosexual. From there the comedian segues into a dissection of how fast food tastes differently depending on one’s state of intoxication (it’s the “food of the gods” with enough liquor in the system, he asserts), and the hits to one’s self-esteem that online videogame playing delivers. Swardson also cycles through segments on the cockiness of drunken women, his love for brainless blockbuster movies like Transformers, and how he looks forward to getting old, if only because it allows for getting away with saying and doing pretty much anything. Somewhat surprisingly, there’s more than a pinch of nervousness to Swardson’s set, which somewhat dampens the impact of his otherwise impeccably timed anecdotes. The material here isn’t driven by thunderously original insight, but Swardson’s affable persona is warm and inviting, which makes up for a lot.

Housed in a regular plastic Amaray case, Seriously, Who Farted? comes presented in 1.78:1 anamorphic widescreen, with a 2.0 stereo audio mix. Supplemental extras consist of eight minutes of the show’s opening act, Beardo and Dirt Nasty, followed by a commercial for a mock holiday album from his aforementioned Reno 911 character and a soused parody trailer for 28 Days Later entitled 28 Drinks Later. A seven-minute mock profile of Swardson connects best, featuring the comedian in all sorts of different incarnations, spanning the 1920s to the present day. To purchase the DVD via Amazon, click here. B (Concert) B- (Disc)

Author and “friend of the program” Telly Davidson contributes this insightful look at ABC’s late, maybe-not-so-great (except in adventurous spirit) cop drama Life on Mars, new to DVD in collected form:

The subject of how we perceive the reality (or is it reality?) of the days of our lives has been the stuff of legend ever since the birth of religion and storytelling. And the thought of time travel in a serious context is also rife with philosophical questions that stumped the likes of Sartre and Einstein, though happy-go-lucky adventures like Back to the Future and comic books have superficially taken the edge off. In more recent times, filmmakers like Charlie Kaufman, Michel Gondry, David Lynch, Ingmar Bergman and Jean-Luc Godard, and novelists like Philip K. Dick and Kurt Vonnegut, made careers out of it. There is also the documented phenomenon of people “remembering” detailed past-life situations from seminal events in history (the Civil War, Cleopatra’s Rome, the Holocaust), even though the people doing the remembering were born decades if not centuries after the events described took place.

Still, taken seriously, the possibility poses challenges to the core beliefs of both religious right fundies and no-intelligent-designers like nothing this side of Darwin himself. Could there be an alternate reality where the Inglourious Basterds did stop Hitler, where John Lennon, Elvis Presley, Marilyn Monroe, James Dean and Heath Ledger are all having a party, where JFK never got shot and Mohamed Atta got shot down? (No, the National Enquirer doesn’t count.) Reincarnation at least postpones a belief in instant-karma heaven (or hell or purgatory), and obliterates the atheist (dis)belief in permanent midnight.

Scott Bakula’s signature Quantum Leap was the first solid, long-running hit about a man who came unstuck in time, and since then there have been other one-season wonders jaunting their way through network prime on their inexorable journey to rerun marathons on SyFy. The latest was ABC’s Life on Mars, starring Jason O’Mara (above right) as a 2008 New York cop named Sam Tyler who, following a car accident that may or may not have been intentional (while pursuing a lead in a serial killer case), finds himself warped back in time 35 years, to the spring and summer of 1973. Strangely, he finds himself working as a cop in much the same precinct (minus computers, cell phones, fax machines, DVDs and DNA, natch), with a crew of 1970s cops who seem to have always known and worked with him.

The fact that he is at first confused by his surroundings and doesn’t remember them lead the group to tease him as “Space Man,” and leads Sam to wonder — could 2008 have just been a dream? Is 1973 where he was from after all? And why 1973, anyway, other than it being the title of a groovy James Blunt song? (The title “Life on Mars” refers to a Velvet Goldmine-era David Bowie hit.) Sam was born in 1969, so it wasn’t to revisit his birth — though both ominous events in his own childhood and the serial killer case he was investigating when he was struck in 2008 both date back to that fateful year. And like a comatose victim, Sam sometimes hears faint voices and hallucinates “visions” of 2008, beckoning him to come back — or to go end-of-watch forever.

The show boasted one of the most A-level casts in recent network series TV, with Michael Imperioli and Harvey Keitel (above left) as the politically incorrect cops in Sam’s precinct, and Gretchen Mol as a possible 1973 love interest, and the only female cop in the squadroom (her semi-affectionate nickname: “No-Nuts”). Based as it was on a BBC miniseries, original stars Philip Glenister and John Simm were approached (strangely, the lead actor in Life on Mars seems to have been intended to be significantly less famous than his costars) but they turned it down, though eventual lead O’Mara is also a son of the United Kingdom.

As someone who has felt severely lost in time for most of his life, this was a guaranteed attention-grabber. Though the show is consistently interesting, it begins to feel like a forced march as it progresses from here to eternity. And its episodic plots, which already have to be contrived to some degree by the nature of the very premise, turn downright gimmicky. CBS’s reliably popular (and superior) Cold Case already covered the theme of contrasting today’s comparative freedom with the stifling racial, sexual and class morays of the ’40s and ’50s (and the boundary-free liberated excess of the 1960s, ’70s, and go-go ’80s) — in far more memorable and emotionally haunting fashion. (While Cold Case can have a heavy hand, Life on Mars hits with a trash compactor.) Without the time-travel MacGuffin, this show is just yet another innumerable wannabe spin-off of original-recipe CSI, Law & Order or NYPD Blue — let alone quirky, flawed, instantly buzz-worthy sleuths like Monk, House and The Mentalist — and without most of those shows’ literate storytelling stylishness.

While I won’t spoil the series ender, it has a fittingly spaced-out final explanation — although, like Dallas‘ notorious “dream sequence” or the autistic-child’s-fantasy ending to St. Elsewhere, the Life on Mars denouement also reduces all the drama and emotional investment in the characters to a mere space oddity. Unless handled with home run brilliance, any reductive explanation of such an outlandish premise is bound to disappoint, though the show at least deserves an “A” for effort in trying, rather than just leaving the viewers hanging once the 17 episode orders ran out. But for a considerably superior — and far more provocative and stylish — small screen look at altered states, one need look no further than your TiVo, for Eliza Dushku and Joss Whedon & Co. on Fox Fridays, with Dollhouse.

Housed in clear plastic Amaray case in turn stored in a cardboard slipcover, Life on Mars comes presented in 1.78:1 widescreen, enhanced for 16×9 televisions, with a Dolby digital 5.1 surround sound audio track and optional Spanish and French subtitles. Bonus features include four episodic audio commentary tracks interspersed throughout the series, as well as 10 deleted scenes, a short gag reel, and a 15-minute behind-the-scenes featurette comprised of EPK-style interviews with cast and crew. Somewhat bizarrely, there’s also a brief featurette in which The Six Million Dollar Man‘s Lee Majors tours the Life on Mars set with O’Mara. To purchase the DVD via Amazon, click here. C+ (Show) B (Disc)

German filmmaker Wolfgang Buld is chiefly known for his early work covering the Sex Pistols, the Clash, Stranglers, Boomtown Rats, Rough Trade, Killjoys, Jolt, the Jam, Subway Sect, Anonymous Chaos and other hard-driving rock ‘n’ roll acts, so the remastered version of his 1978 magnum opus, Punk in England, is a welcome DVD gift for thrashers of yesteryear.

The second part of Buld’s roughly fashioned trilogy on the wild music scene of the United Kingdom, circa the mid- to late-1970s, records the suburban sprawl of the punk movement, as it bleeds from London’s tiny, grubby, packed clubs to more open expanses, where punk-inspired kids would take notes on the energy of the movement and use it to experiment with new wave, ska and so-called rude boy music. Interviews galore stud this 90-minute title — including with Ian Dury and members of the Clash, the Specials, Secret Affair, Madness and more — but of course the main attraction is the music itself. A good thing, then, that Punk in England delivers some full-throttle live clips, no matter how roughly captured. Prima facie historical documents aren’t always neat and proper, ya know?

Housed in a regular plastic Amaray case, Punk in England comes to DVD on a region-free disc, presented in 1.33:1 full frame, with a relatively meager English language mono audio track. A few trailers for complementary Buld releases Punk in London (1977) and Reggae in a Babylon (1978) are also included, as well as a brief documentary on women in rock, which includes interviews and live performance clips with Siouxsie, The Slits, Girlschool and other seminal groups. To purchase the DVD via Amazon, click here. C+ (Movie) C+ (Disc)

If a David Lynch acolyte with a jones for art history and a basic working knowledge of the canon of Ingmar Bergman decided to shoot a casually sleazy, cautionary tale of intellectual and sexual midlife crisis, it would likely resemble French director Alain Robbe-Grillet’s Gradiva, a flatly shot, self-serious 2006 erotic thriller that isn’t quite lurid enough to succeed as an Angel Heart-type piece of provocation, and isn’t psychologically perspicacious enough to satiate arthouse audiences.

A gothic murder mystery that the film’s DVD cover bills as “in the style of Alfred Hitchcock’s Vertigo,” Gradiva centers around English historian John Locke (James Wilby, a sort of Gaelic cross between Matthew Modine and Timothy Hutton), who comes to Morocco to work on a study of painter Eugene Delacroix. Embarking on a search for a rare series of engravings, Locke sees a beautiful woman dressed in white wandering the narrow streets of the ancient medina, and becomes obsessed with unearthing her identity and tracking her down. Locke’s newly taken young lover, Belkis (Dany Verissimo, above), tries to warn him off both his academic search and his obsession with the mystery blonde, whom he comes to find out is named Leila (Arielle Dombasle). But Locke is convinced these elements somehow hold the key to some groundbreaking thesis work, and so it may be too late for him to escape from this dangerous labyrinth of swirling desire and intrigue.

Robbe-Grillet, director of the infamous, Oscar-nominated Last Year at Marienbad, trades in an astonishingly flat and unengaging visual style, and elicits wildly uneven, often derisible performances. (Farid Chopel is especially noteworthy in the negative sense, even in a fairly functionary role.) The filmmaker thinks nothing of casually shooting an outdoor cafe sequence where an actress has her nipple hanging out of her blouse for the entire scene, but titillation seems back-burnered with respect to the mock intrigue of the plot, which means there’s lots of wandering dusty side streets and run-ins with authority figures both real and perhaps contrived. Gradiva represents Robbe-Grillet’s final film (he passed away in 2008, at 85 years of age), and it’s a grand-scale misfire that doesn’t work as either a legitimate treatment of the themes of quixotic desperation and obsession it wishes to explore or a sex-tinged, exotically set thriller.

Housed in a red plastic Amaray case, Gradiva comes presented on a region-free disc with a 1.85:1 anamorphic widescreen transfer that — despite coming from a brand new striking of the negative — is sullied by a bit of grain, if no problems with edge enhancement. Audio comes in the form of a Dolby digital stereo track. The film’s original theatrical trailer is included along with extensive production notes and cast biographies, plus a seven-minute preview trailer spotlighting other Mondo Macabro releases. The chief supplemental extra, though, is a 31-minute interview with a red scarf-clad Robbe-Grillet, in which he discusses both his cinematic influences more generally (Jean-Luc Godard, Michelangelo Antonioni and surrealist master Luis Buñuel, naturally) and the movie specifically. To purchase the DVD via Amazon, click here. D+ (Movie) B (Disc)

There are big familial shoes to fill when your last name is Romero and you’re tackling the horror genre, which is unfortunately part of the problem of outsized expectations that weighs down Staunton Hill, a thin bouillabaisse of The Texas Chainsaw Massacre, Psycho and a half dozen other horror flicks, directed by Cameron Romero, son of zombie flick godhead George Romero.

Set in the autumn of 1969, for seemingly no other reason than to give its subjects the chance to talk about “the rally” in Washington, D.C., the movie centers on a group of five college-age kids hitchhiking through a remote mountainous region of Virginia. There’s Boone (Kiko Ellsworth) and Raina (Christine Carlo), Jordan (the strangely named Cristen Coppen), Cole (David Rountree, also the film’s writer) and Cole’s old crush Trish (Paula Rhodes). After hooking up with Quintin (Charlie Bodin), a nice young guy who offers to give them a ride, the group makes it a couple dozen miles deeper into the woods before Quintin’s beat-up truck breaks down. After holing up in what they think is an abandoned barn for the night, in the morning they unwittingly stumble across the Staunton family, for whom the nearby hill is named. They subsequently find themselves at the mercy of a depraved, diabolical brood (headed up by the tubby Kathy Lamkin) that will stop at nothing to rid their property of these “trespassers.” The only law on Staunton’s Hill is the law of the Stauntons, and in this case, not too surprisingly, the penalty for defying that law is death.

The work of the actors here is a bit uneven, but for the most part naturalistic and vacuumed free of histrionics, though Coppen is a late offender in this regard. Rountree’s screenplay baits a passably intriguing if somewhat familiar premise, but ignores the basic dynamics of group interaction by allowing Quintin to steer some collective decision-making. The film’s twist is tipped fairly early on by Romero’s use of affected flashbacks/flashforwards, so by the time the requisite big, lumbering, retarded guy in overalls, Buddy (B.J. Hendricks), starts dropping people with shovels to the face, one has a fairly fixed sense of where this is headed. The remaining thrills, in either gore or suspense, don’t connect enough in level of execution, and the final reel sags tremendously, including a two-minute tracking shot of a putative escape. Sans closing credits, in fact, Staunton Hill clocks in at an undernourished 81 minutes. Of note, however, is composer Jesper Kyd’s music, which is superlative.

Housed in a regular Amray case with a hollowed-out spindle area to reduce the amount of plastic used, Staunton Hill comes to DVD presented in 1.78:1 anamorphic widescreen, with a Dolby digital 5.1 surround sound audio track and optional English subtitles for the deaf and hard of hearing. The title is divided into 12 chapters via a separate static menu screen, but there are no supplemental features, which further dents any collectible value. To purchase the DVD via Amazon, click here. D (Movie) D- (Disc)

An acid-tongued, comedically inflected mystery with attitude to spare, Assassination of a High School President is a fun, engaging recasting of high school angst and adolescent friendships and liaisons, in all their white-hot heat — and not merely because of the awesome-adjacent name of its director, Brett Simon. Sharply acted and powered by some clever writing, the movie is an unblinking, straight-faced send-up of noir conventions, and the heightened stakes and skulking, fringe’s-edge energy of the best of those genre pictures meshes surprisingly well with Simon’s private school setting, and its hidden machinations.

Set at tony St. Donovan’s, the film takes as its protagonist sophomore newspaper reporter Bobby Funke (Reece Thompson, above in
background), a hard-charging quasi-outcast who is assigned by editor-in-chief Clara (Melanie Diaz) to
write a cover story on popular class president, National Merit scholar and soccer team captain Paul Moore (Patrick Taylor). After a stack of SAT tests is stolen from the office of Principal Kirkpatrick (Bruce Willis), a hard-as-nails war veteran, Bobby publishes an expose that names Paul as the prime suspect, which brings him notoriety and acclaim — and even an audience with Paul’s now ex-girlfriend, a slinky senior named Francesca (Mischa Barton) who continually (along with other characters) mispronounces Bobby’s surname.

Feeling pressure from a journalistic rival, the sniveling Tad Goltz
(Aaron Himelstein), and starting to question the motivations of erstwhile vice
president Marlon (Luke Grimes, of Brothers & Sisters), who is also Francesca’s step-brother, Bobby begins to doubt the star jock’s guilt. Something doesn’t quite add up. When further investigation uncovers a campus-wide conspiracy that threatens to take down students and teachers alike, Bobby must decide whether or not to tell the truth and risk a prestigious journalistic summer internship, or simply enjoy the social upgrade that his work has afforded him.

The feature directorial debut of Simon, Assassination of a High School President is written by Tim Calpin and Kevin Jakubowski, a pair of former production assistants on South Park. What’s right about the movie mostly starts with Thompson, so striking in the underrated Rocket Science, and a wry anchoring presence here in a filmic exercise whose hearty stylistic leanings could have otherwise tipped over into irritation quite quickly. With its canted dialogue delivery and recasting of high school as both a riddle to be solved and a dangerous, hormonally charged swamp of criminal plotting, the movie strongly recalls the imaginative Brick.

The plot, part Chinatown mystery, part The Usual Suspects shell game (both heartily copped to as influences in interview material with the writers), is a take-it-or-leave-it affair that might be too cute by half for some, but it’s mainly the involving style of the film and its barbed dialogue, along with Thompson’s engaging performance, that seduces. Sometimes bits and pieces of Bobby’s moody voiceover narration errs on the side of juvenilia (“Their alibis were like Dutch ovens — gamey, but airtight”), but the banter and other little asides smartly inform the characterizations (“I coached English for two seasons” boasts Michael Rapaport’s dimwitted instructor, also in charge of the soccer team), and hold one’s attention up through an ending that will feel familiar to anyone who chafed at the less well reasoned of high school’s rules and constraints.

Housed in a regular plastic Amaray case, Assassination of a High School President comes presented in 2.40:1 anamorphic widescreen, with an English language Dolby digital 5.1 surround sound audio track that too frequently comes across as mixed low, both in dialogue and upper register ambient noise. Extracurricular activities on the disc include 20 minutes of extended and alternate
scenes, and another seven minutes of deleted scenes, all with optional commentary from the aforementioned writers. Also included is an alternate opening sequence, part of a much longer tracking shot, which Calpin and Jakubowski explain had to be trimmed for the sake of out-of-the-gate clarity. Preview trailers for Fragments, Year One and a handful of other films are also included. To purchase the DVD via Amazon, click here. B (Movie) B- (Disc)

Do notions of right and wrong, good and evil, fall from heaven, or do we make them here on Earth? Timed to release on DVD to coincide with the public television
broadcast of a similarly themed special and the debut of Professor
Michael Sandel’s book of the same title, Justice: What’s the Right Thing to Do? challenges perceptions of morality through the Socratic recreation of a compelling lecture series at Harvard University. The result, for those who like to look outside of themselves, is a one-of-a-kind take on what we perceive, both individually and on a societal level, as ethical, and our views toward humanity and moral reasoning.

More than 14,000 students at Harvard have taken the “Justice” course, making it one of the college’s most popular classes. And now, in collaboration with WGBH Boston, Harvard opens up Professor Sandel’s classroom to the world. The course aims to help viewers become more critically-minded thinkers about the moral decisions we all face in our everyday lives. The two dozen featured lectures here read like a cross-section of high
school debate topics — affirmative action, abortion, the death
penalty, euthanasia, sex education, privacy protection, elder care, same-sex
marriage and public health legislation — but the level of discourse is of course higher than the chirpy, easily digestible facts and specious reasoning parroted back in Mrs. Osborne’s 11th grade class. Sandel presents students with ethical dilemmas on modern-day issues, and then conducts lively, engaging and remarkably intimate debates that challenge students’ moral reasoning.

By title, the topic list includes: “The Moral Side of Murder,” “Putting a Price Tag on Life,” “How to Measure Pleasure,” “Free To Choose,” “Who Owns Me?,” “This Land is My Land,” “Consenting Adults,” “Hired Guns?,” “For Sale: Motherhood,” “Mind Your Motive,” “The Supreme Principle of Morality,” “A Lesson in Lying,” “A Deal Is A Deal,” “What’s a Fair Start?,” “What Do We Deserve?,” “Arguing Affirmative Action,” “What’s the Purpose?,” “The Good Citizen,” “Freedom vs. Fit,” “The Claims of Community,” “Where Our Loyalty Lies,” “Debating Same-Sex Marriage,” “The Good Life” and, yes, “The Case for Cannibalism.” While there’s an understandable societal hesitancy to tackle the big challenges and problems confronting our notion — change is, after all, a scary thing — this DVD lays the groundwork for reasoning, reflection, soul-searching and (gasp!) empathy, and ultimately makes the point that all, rightly, influence and shape our opinions and problem-solving skill sets.

Running around 12 hours and spread out over three DVDs, with a snap-in, dual-sided tray housing the first two discs, Justice: What’s the Right Thing to Do? is presented in full screen. Special features include an excerpt from Sandel’s same-named book, as well as a printable series viewing guide. To order the DVD, phone (800) PLAY-PBS or merely click here. A- (Show) C (Disc)

The big, blustery physical comedy of Jack Black makes for a mostly amusing fit with Michael Cera’s quiet comedy of self-negation in Year One, a ramshackle banished-buddy picture which connects more on the strength of its scene-to-scene joke writing than any startlingly grand execution of its premise. Pushing far away from one’s brain any recollections of of historical or religious antiquity is of paramount importance given the historic license this movie’s story takes. Once that is accomplished, though, there’s airy delight in the mixing of slightly contemporized but socially inept consciousnesses with a primitive setting. It’s not fall-down great, but Year One works slightly more than not, making for a decent enough rental.



When oafish hunter Zed (Black) eats from the forbidden tree of knowledge and later accidentally sets fire to his village, he’s banished. Reluctantly accompanying Zed out into the wilderness is his reserved gatherer pal Oh (Cera, sporting a generally ridiculous wig that undergoes an unexplained metamorphosis three-quarters of the way through the movie); left behind are their respective crushes, Maya (June Diane Raphael) and Eema (Juno Temple). Discovering that the story of the world’s edge is false, the wandering pair comes across hothead Cain (David Cross), and bear witness to his murder of his brother Abel (Paul Rudd).

Again fleeing, Zed and Oh come across Abraham (Hank Azaria) , who warns them of the sins of the nearby city of Sodom. This sounds like a great place to Zed, however, so off they go, to partake of its pleasures. Once there, they again cross paths with Cain, as well as Maya and Eema, who have been sold into slavery. While Zed tries to devise a plot to free the ladies, Oh fends off the advances of the king’s creepy, flamboyant high priest (Oliver Platt). Olivia Wilde also lends her prodigious, come-hither eyebrows to the proceedings.

Though somewhat similar in some of its targets to Monty Python’s Life of Brian or Mel Brooks’ sprawling History of the World: Part One, Year One is more assertively a comedic hodgepodge of different eras, in this case commingling polytheism alongside Judeo-Christian Biblical stories separated by hundreds of years. Trying to hold onto and make any sense of the manner in which this intersects chronologically factual human history or cognitive development is akin to swimming upstream into a headstrong current. It doesn’t help, either, that the movie can’t seem to decide whether Zed and Oh are accidental masters of their fate (upon arriving in Sodom, they briefly become royal guards), or habitual victims of circumstances and their surroundings. The sooner one relinquishes the notion that this is more than anything than just an unfettered spit-balling of widely generalized life in a dusty, bygone era, the more simply they’re able to appreciate the movie’s otherwise generally solid joke-writing and characterizations.

The lead performances certainly don’t differ wildly from the personas that the two actors have cultivated; Black plays a libidinal, instinctive chatterbox, while Cera trades in wallflower asides and nervous, awkward silences. In their juxtaposition and interplay, though, there’s something approaching a sincere freshness. This owes to basic differences in age and demeanor, yes, but also size — something that director Harold Ramis (who also takes a writing credit, along with The Office‘s Gene Stupnitsky and Lee Eisenberg) isn’t afraid to exploit through both written material and physical gags large and small. One wishes that the story exhibited a bit more discipline, instead of leaning on supporting characters that often seem like tacky appendages; that would help this movie really take flight. Still, especially for fans of its principals, Year One offers up enough fun to qualify as a diverting weeknight rental.

Housed in a regular plastic Amaray case, Year One comes to DVD presented in 1.85:1 anamorphic widescreen, with matching English and French language Dolby digital 5.1 surround sound audio tracks and optional subtitles. Anchoring the supplemental material, a feature-length audio commentary track with Ramis, Black and Cera quite obviously predates the movie’s tough-luck box office reception (a mere $43 million domestic haul, under its production budget), with Ramis providing production anecdotes and the guys by and large complimenting each other’s choices. There’s also a 18-minute making-of featurette, a seven-minute blooper and gag reel, five-plus-minutes of line reading improvisations, and an additional 14 minutes of excised scenes, a couple of which expand upon Bill Hader’s bit role as a tribal shaman. To purchase the regular theatrical version DVD via Amazon, click here; to purchase the unrated DVD (which runs 11 minutes longer) via Amazon, click here. C+ (Movie) B (Disc)

Looking at comedian Mitch Fatel before listening to his act, one might have a different impression of his set, and areas of focus. If, however, they know the titles of his previous concert CDs, Miniskirts and Muffins and Super Retardo they’d have a better idea of what awaits them, no matter his unassuming physical demeanor and dweeby delivery. Yes, Mitch Fatel Is Magical, the comedian’s first full-length Comedy Central special, is filthy and sex-saturated.

That’s not the problem. In fact, a good bit of Fatel’s act is actually pretty solid, digging as it does into the specific preoccupations of the male psyche, and his own canted views on the female body (“Small breasts have more personality!”), sexual proclivities and what drove Thomas Edison to invent the light bulb (he wanted to see what was going on when he was receiving blowjobs, the comedian posits). What undercuts Fatel’s comedy is his overly affected execution; with his beaming, squinty-eyed, angelic smile and garbled-sweet voice, he comes across as a Forrest Gump-type simpleton. That this doesn’t match the lewdness of the material is only the most immediate surface problem. More grating is how frequently this works against the very nature of the material, leading to awkward pauses and hiccups in pacing when Fatel should be hammering home a point or scoring building mini-laughs off of a single themed punchline.

These strikes of delivery against this hour-long stand-up special notwithstanding, Mitch Fatel Is Magical does hold some genuine laughs, especially for guys who are willing to be honest about their base carnal desires, and the women who are willing to enjoy (but not judge!) such peeks behind the gender curtain. Herein, Fatel laments the declining popularity of one of his favorite sexual pastimes, the handjob (“They’re like a very slow movie that gets good at the end…”), and also waxes poetic about his love for certain female body parts. Naturally, he also devotes a huge portion of his show toward a dissection of blowjobs, from the points-of-view of both genders. From the male perspective, Fatel says, “Whenever we buy one of those romantic cards that talks about [the power of] our eyes meeting… that’s what we picture.” From the female perspective, he jokes about women enjoying kissing a man’s stomach for 15 minutes before heading further south, “because it makes them feel like a lady.”

Housed in a regular plastic Amaray case, Mitch Fatel Is Magical comes to DVD as an extended and uncensored version of the same-named concert special broadcast recently on Comedy Central. Presented in 1.85:1 anamorphic widescreen with Dolby digital 5.1 surround sound, the title’s bonus material consists of chopped-up concert outtakes, material from Fatel’s DVD cover photo shoot, special animation and a clutch of interviews with longtime fans. No opinion on his act from his mother, though. To purchase the DVD via Amazon, click here; to purchase it via Comedy Central, click here. B (Concert) B (Disc)

Climb on board for some tween-targeted fun on the high seas with this mash-up/crossover special of three favorite Disney Channel shows. In Wizards on Deck with Hannah Montana, the S.S. Tipton embarks on a triple-length comedy crossover event when Justin (David Henrie) wins a cruise to Hawaii and a chance to meet London (Brenda Song). Both Justin and Max (Jake T. Austin) do their best to win the heiress’ affection, while Cody (Cole Sprouse) tries to win concert tickets for Bailey (Debby Ryan), and Alex (Selena Gomez) accuses Zack (Dylan Sprouse) of being a prankster. Between the kids’ various jokey stunts (who turned Justin blue?) and all manner of other crazy schemes (Alex sneaks a girl on board to take her make-up science class), enterprising kids will perhaps learn a new trick or two to pull on a younger sibling.

What about Miley Cyrus… err, Hannah Montana, though? Well, the excitement goes overboard when the international pop superstar (a demonstrative Cyrus) checks in on her way to a sold-out concert in Hawaii. But when Miley Stewart (Cyrus again… displaying wily range?) loses both her lucky charm anklet and her Hannah wig, are her days as the world’s biggest pop star over forever? Well… probably not, if the flush-with-cash executives at Disney have anything to say about it. None of this, naturally, is as radically inventive and subversive a mash-up of different forms of entertainment as the Moesha spec script a friend and I once co-wrote based on a cast photo, without benefit of ever having watched the show, not the least of which is because all the ingredients here are so vanilla. Still, fans of each individual series will delight at the colorful gum-bumping and kids being pushed into pools, so if there’s a tween girl if your life with a birthday looming on the horizon, this is certainly a good title to flag.

Housed in a regular plastic Amaray case in turn stored in a cardboard slipcover, the 68-minute Wizards on Deck comes to DVD presented in a 1.33:1 full frame aspect ratio. Bonus features consist of a brief video essay spotlighting the honing of power-writing skills, the sort of which won Justin and his siblings a spot on the S.S. Tipton Teen Cruise. There’s also a five-minute collection of bloopers and backstage interviews with the stars, and a brief clip in which the Sprouse twins tout the technological advances of Blu-ray in a manner that kids will likely parrot back to their parents. To purchase the DVD via Amazon, click here. C (Movie) C+ (Disc)

Another self-satisfied, allegorical tale of the gritty dark side of Northeastern suburban paradise and its attendant loss of innocence, Lymelife is a bunch of discrete, thematically similar scenes in search of a cogent narrative punch. The directorial debut of Derick Martini, the movie is sort of a facile, surface-polished lesser entry in the canon of thematically like-minded films like The Ice Storm, The Chumscrubber and American Beauty, in which sensible and in some regards overly mature kids grapple with their place in the world amidst philandering and emotionally stunted adults.

Centering on two deeply troubled, dysfunctional families during the dog days of the 1970s, Martini’s film revolves around an awkward, sensitive 15-year-old boy, Scott Bartlett (Rory Culkin, above left), whose family life is ostensibly turned upside down after an outbreak of Lyme disease hits his community, spreading illness and paranoia. Scott’s parents –workaholic father Mickey (Alec Baldwin) and overprotective mother Brenda (Jill Hennessy) — are unhappy in swallowed ways bubbling just underneath the surface,and his older brother Jim (Kieran Culkin) is back on brief loan from the Army, and about to ship off for war. Complicating matters, Scott has fallen in love with his neighbor and longtime friend, Adrianna Bragg (Emma Roberts, above right). Troubled in different ways, Adrianna’s less affluent family consists of her uptight mother, Melissa (Cynthia Nixon), who’s carrying on a not-so-clandestine love affair, and her father, Charlie (Timothy Hutton), whose sanity seems to be slowly unraveling from the effects of Lyme disease.

Derick Martini and his brother Steven, the writer-actors behind the winning, low-budget 1999 indie Smiling Fish & Goat on Fire, collaborated on Lymelife‘s script based on their own experiences growing up on suburban Long Island, but the movie feels too cute by about half, and overly groomed for indie flick preciousness in certain scenes. Lymelife premiered at the 2008 Toronto Film Festival, and truth be told it’s the warm bosom of a welcoming throng of international filmgoers that’s the best home for this decently acted but otherwise entirely marginal domestic ensemble.

There’s something of a charismatic star spark from the young Roberts, particularly in the manner in which she captures how teenage females drive the bus of sexual experience, and set the tone for the vast majority of adolescent amorous encounters. But overall her performance is a hot-and-cold thing, a lot of which is admittedly dictated from a scattershot characterization that finds Adrianna admonishing and/or patronizing Scott one moment (“I can call your mom, she can bring you an icepack or a Yoo Hoo or something,” she says in an awkward,meant-to-be-serious moment, after a bully thumps Scott), and then flashing him her red bra in confessional booth the next. Yes, lust can bloom quickly, especially for adolescents, but Adrianna’s actions feel more a product of narrative manipulation than anything else.

The Martinis have a nice touch with some end-around, unexpected moments of interpersonal friction or personal introspection — there’s a great bar scene between Mickey and Charlie that ranks among the best scenes of screen-captured passive-aggressiveness I can recall– but the Lyme disease-as-metaphor stuff doesn’t play, and the Martinis absolutely overreach when they aim for more overt emotional manipulation. These hamfisted instincts most reveal themselves in thunderously stupid and unrealistic behavior by cheating adults — bits crammed in to advance scenes, and feed revelation amongst minors — and reach their apex in a woefully misguided finale that feels like a straight-up gangsta rip-off of American Beauty, only without the balls of actual catharsis through bloodletting.

Housed in a regular plastic Amaray case in turn stored in a cardboard slipcover with raised cover text, Lymelife comes to DVD presented in 2.40:1 anamorphic widescreen, with English language Dolby digital 5.1 surround sound and 2.0 stereo audio tracks and optional Spanish subtitles. Bonus features consist of an audio commentary track with writer-director Martini and the younger Culkin, eight minutes of deleted scenes with optional audio commentary, and an alternate ending that basically re-frames the last 20 minutes or so of the movie. No cast interviews here, though, somewhat strangely. To purchase the DVD via Amazon, click here. C- (Movie) B- (Disc)

Important Things with Demetri Martin is a stream-of-consciousness
Comedy Central sketch and variety show from multi-hyphenate Demetri Martin. Each episode focuses on a single topic
as filtered through the prism of Martin’s unique point-of-view,
encompassing quick-hit sketches, sketchboard-assisted written jokes,
low-fi animation and dryly delivered stand-up. “Timing,” for instance
includes sketches about a man who uses time travel to meet women as
well as an actor with terrible timing, while “Games” includes a bit
about an “emotional escape artist” who finds the tables turned on him
when he attempts to end a relationship.

Martin, who dropped out of law school to pursue comedy, swinging to a position as a staff writer on Late Night with Conan O’Brien, has the look of a most affable Jewish Muppet, and a top-shelf touch with absurdist deadpan humor to boot. His “Trendspotting” has been an occasional featured segment on The Daily Show with Jon Stewart since late 2005, and he’s lined up acting and screenwriting jobs that undeniably mark him as an emerging multiple-threat talent. The promos for Important Things, though, won me over with their delicious embrace of offbeat simplicity; pointing to a hand-drawn picture of a windowless van, Martin said, “When vans first arrived, I bet creeps were like, ‘Yeah! OK…'” That sort of canted humor gets a solid workout in this engaging and amusing series, which cycles through jokes at a just-right pace that doesn’t wear out its premise or conceit. H. Jon Benjamin provides frequent sketch support, and David Cross, Amanda Peet and John Oliver also pop up in cameos.

Housed in a regular, white plastic Amaray case, the seven first season episodes of Important Things with Demetri Martin comes to DVD presented in 1.33:1 full screen, with a Dolby digital stereo audio track. Included in the packaging are a mini-poster and sticker for the series. Its special features consist of four audio commentaries with Martin and his co-creators on the show, pegged to the episodes “Timing,” “Power,” “Coolness” and “Games.” In the chats, Martin and company talk in fairly laconic fashion about the series moving away from concrete point-of-emphasis topics (“Chairs” being the show’s pilot) and more into the conceptual realm.

Hand-sketched production graphs and sketch line-ups are curios, nothing more. More substantively, there is also a clutch of deleted sketches, 10 in all, with additional audio commentary. This material runs the gamut, from goofy outtakes from a “Parking Wars” bit and the musically rooted “Killing Someone with Kindness” (sample advice: “Beat them with a mix tape,” or, “Help them move… into a haunted house”) to the thumbnail sketch “A Yellow Belt Breaks an Awkward Silence,” which is exactly what it sounds like, but nonetheless quite amusing. A long, three-minute version of “Cult Leader in Love” (used heavily in the show’s promotion on Comedy Central) is included, which Martin correctly identifies and breaks down as problematic. Other bits, especially a mock safety instruction using a CPR dummy, come off as flat as well. Overall, this material is more miss than hit, but hey, that’s why it was excised to begin with, and Martin and company are upfront about owning up to why they feel the material doesn’t work. That’s somewhat refreshing, and maybe even important. To purchase the DVD via Amazon, click here. B+ (Show) B (Disc)

Detailing four interconnected stories revolving around love, drugs,
poverty and modern ennui, Explicit Ills unfolds chiefly amidst a bunch
of rundown tenements in a boarded-up, bombed-out area of
Philadelphia. So drab and depressing is its setting that it seems like
the movie, the feature writing and directing debut of young actor Mark
Webber, could be alternately titled American Shantytown. Lyrical,
earnest and well photographed, Explicit Ills is ultimately more
intriguing than good; its narrative is so meandering and its grip so
loose that one loses interest a bit less than halfway through its
90-minute running time.

The intertwined stories? Seven-year-old asthmatic Babo (Francisco Burgos) lives with his mother (Rosario Dawson) in the badlands of North Philly. His slightly older teen neighbor Demetri (Martin Cepeda), who makes moves on a girl by approaching her and asking if she wants to kiss him tomorrow, methodically a more bookish persona in order to try get the girl. Michelle (Frankie Shaw), a well-off art student, falls into a drug induced love affair with her dealer Jacob (Lou Taylor Pucci, above). The marriage of Kaleef (Tariq Trotter, of The Roots) and Jill (Naomie Harris) suffers tension as they pursue their dreams of bringing “produce to the people,” while their lanky teenage son Heslin (Ross Kim-McManus) improbably focuses on heading to Jamaica to compete in the World’s Strongest Man competition. Around the periphery, meanwhile, floats would-be actor Rocco (There Will Be Blood‘s Paul Dano).

Webber draws upon his personal relationships to help round out the cast (several of the actors are past costars), and his obviously collaborative approach yields some quiet, sensitive work. What’s most interesting about Explicit Ills is the manner in which individual scenes subtly undercut one’s expectation about where they’re headed. Also somewhat engagingly, Webber proves himself the rare first-time filmmaker who doesn’t overwrite; he’s much more interested in crafting mood (additional props to cinematographer Patrice Lucien Cochet’s inquisitive camerawork, and Michael Hersey’s art direction) than pushing forward a specific narrative agenda, either collectively or individually. In this regard, his movie variously recalls works like George Washington, Raising Victor Vargas and/or Jim McKay’s underrated Our Song.

Unfortunately, Explicit Ills suffers in comparison to all of these films, and its putative multicultural macro lesson — in which disparate individuals stumble toward connection with one another as they try to circumvent the isolating influences of homogeny and drug use, and draw together as a community — is tied together awkwardly in the third act, and doesn’t connect in a strong enough, emotionally resonant manner to really hold one’s attention. Notwithstanding some wholly invested performances and, again, an impressively atypical artistic instinct for a filmmaker of Webber’s age, Explicit Ills slots as more of an interesting misfire than a must-rent for one’s Netflix list.

Presented in 2.35.1 widescreen, which preserves the original aspect ratio of its March theatrical exhibition, Explicit Ills comes to DVD in a regular plastic Amaray case. A clutch of deleted scenes were touted in the original home video announcement for the movie, but the disc’s only bonus features are the theatrical trailer and some text-screen information on social activism issues raised in the movie. The film is also available on Blu-ray in 2.35:1 widescreen in 1080p. To purchase the DVD via Amazon, click here. C- (Movie) D (Disc)

Debuting in 2005 as a television series specifically for preschoolers, Disney Little Einsteins was created in conjunction with both child development experts and musicians, which helps make it colorful but also slyly educational. The lovable and diverse cast of the show — Leo, June, Quincy, Annie and Rocket — each bring a special talent to the group of spirited adventurers. Leo is six years old, loves music, and is the conductor of the group. Annie is four years old and Leo’s sister. She loves to sing, and can make up a song on the spot. She’s also the only one who can fly Rocket all by herself. Five-year-old jokester Quincy is a musical virtuoso who plays any instrument he gets his hands on, and especially likes the trumpet and violin. June is six years old and loves dancing; her leaps, spins and twirls help change the direction of each mission. The magical Rocket, meanwhile, is the best friend of all four children; he has lots of gadgets, and can transform himself into anything imaginable.

Little Einsteins: Fire Truck Rocket’s Blastoff collects four episodes of the series, in which the Little Einsteins set out on rescue missions that take place in all corners of the world. In the never-before-seen title episode, Rocket transforms into a hybrid fire truck rocket, and the Einsteins rush to rescue an adorable monkey from an erupting volcano on the tropical island of Java. The second episode is “Melody the Music Pet,” which features the Little Einsteins in France, watching animals board the special train that takes pets to their new homes. When Melody can’t find her ticket for the train, Leo and company promise to help Melody find it; an adventure ensues that takes them over Monet’s famous painting of lily pads, through the French countryside and all the way to the top of the Eiffel Tower. In “Carmine’s Big Race,” meanwhile, the Little Einsteins head to the Grand Prix in Monaco to cheer for Quincy’s friend Carmine, a musical car. The final episode is “Mr. Penguin’s Ice Cream Adventure,” in which the team explores the Patagonia region of South America.

Housed in a regular plastic Amaray case, Little Einsteins: Fire Truck Rocket’s Blastoff comes to DVD presented in a 1.33:1 full screen aspect ratio, rated TV-Y in the United States and G in Canada. Audio tracks are available in English, Spanish and French, and the DVD also features a “Magic Mission Viewing Mode,” which let little viewers use the remote
control to answer fun questions about colors, shapes and sizes. The title has micro appeal, to be sure — kids older than six years old will become bored quickly, and squirm away from the set — but for younger viewers there’s a lot to like here, especially since the aforementioned interactive options split into two levels, meaning four- to six-year-olds don’t have to cycle through the same super-easy-to-answer questions as pre-verbal toddlers. To purchase the title via Amazon, click here. B (Show) B- (Disc)

Mickey Mouse Clubhouse ranked as the top cable series with children under the age of 5 in February 2009, with a whopping 24 million-plus unique viewers — over 42 percent of preschool kids. No surprise, really. In an era of multitudinous and ever-expanding entertainment options for toddlers and the pre-verbal set, the show, which centers around the typical blend of genial slapstick and easy-to-digest storylines encouraging teamwork and problem-solving, has a leg up on other similar series in the form of the iconic characters of Mickey and friends.

Inspired by Disney’s animated classic Alice in Wonderland, Mickey Mouse Clubhouse: Mickey’s Adventures in Wonderland features all-new animation and original songs, set around a story involving Mickey, Donald Duck and other classic Disney characters. Slipping into a colorful alternate dimension full of giant mazes, mysterious riddles and zany croquet matches, Mickey and the entire Clubhouse gang encounter Tweedle Chip, Tweedle Dale, Goofy Hatter and other characters. Their zany quest becomes a race against time in order to get back to the clubhouse for Daisy’s surprise birthday party.

Housed in a regular plastic Amaray case in turn stored in a cardboard slipcover, Mickey’s Adventures in Wonderland is presented in a 1:78:1 widescreen aspect ratio, with English, French and Spanish language Dolby digital 5.1 surround sound audio tracks. Like a handful of other Disney DVD titles, it features interactive adventure modes, with two separate levels of difficulty. Using the remote control, kids ages 2-3 can answer fun, easy questions about colors, shapes and sizes as the story moves along. The second level, appropriate for kids ages 4-5, is slightly more difficult, with questions aimed at testing memory, logic and the ability to tell time.

While the feature presentation’s relatively scant 50-minute running time may serve as a strike in some quarters — that’s barely enough time to get small kids situated in front of the TV set, put away all the groceries and fix dinner for many parents — the DVD does also include a bonus Mickey Mouse Clubhouse episode, “Goofy Goes Goofy,” in which Goofy accidentally gets slimed with the Professor’s latest experimental goop and splits into a half dozen different Goofys. Hey, it’s no Multiplicity, but it’s a serviceable kid-friendly rendering of a shopworn concept. To purchase the disc via Amazon, click here. B (Show) B (Disc)

I’d interviewed her a couple weeks before its release, but I didn’t get a chance to tell writer-director Marianna Palka after her movie’s theatrical bow last fall — when I saw later her headed to a screening at the Landmark, her Prius adorned with matching “Got Dick?” bumper stickers — that if Tidal-era Fiona Apple were able to spawn a movie, it would be Palka’s Good Dick. And that’s a compliment. A barbed love story wrapped inside a threadbare character drama of swallowed anger and despair, Palka’s film eschews the achingly manufactured quirkiness or shaggy desire to please of so many of its American indie brethren. It’s instead simply seeded with moments of dark humor, and a few nice supporting turns that make it seem quietly fleshed-out, pained, funny and real, all in equal measure.

Yes, the title summons forth all sorts of jokey impulses, not to mention visions of dumb Hollywood studio comedies or, as mentioned, indie projects a lot more pat and self-satisfied. But the spare, intimate Good Dick proves that, well, size doesn’t matter. Its story centers around a sullen, emotionally deadened, pathologically introverted young woman (multi-hyphenate Palka) and an equally adrift Los Angeles video clerk (Jason Ritter, above) who slowly draws her out of her claustrophobic world. At first he merely recommends more artistically satisfying pornography, but soon he’s camping outside her apartment and pursuing a relationship with her. After slowly chipping away at her sexual antipathy and deflecting her prodigious flashes of anger with Job-like patience, the two reach an impasse in their strange, partly platonic, partly romantic relationship. The question for both: is said morass permanent, or just a final hurdle en route to more firmly rooted happiness?

The characters aren’t ever named, which contributes a bit to a sense of the metaphorical heft of the story being stretched thin. But the performances, unsurprisingly, are perfectly modulated and bounced off of one another, and Palka doesn’t use a limited budget as an excuse to punt on production value; the movie is gorgeously, economically shot by Andre Lascaris, in a manner that feeds the shuttered worldview of its wounded protagonists, who are also a couple in real life. Unconcerned with and unburdened by traditional notions of both feminine centeredness and masculine chivalry, Good Dick is at its core about awakening to the notion of a life lived looking forward, and how one good, hard… friendship (what did you think I was going to say?) can serve as a tethering lifeline in a sea of intra-personal turmoil. The other stuff? Extra benefits, don’tcha know…

Housed in a regular plastic Amaray case, Good Dick comes to DVD with a cover that features its kissing characters superimposed over a hand-sketched, art school-approved background that summons immediate comparisons to the hand-crafted nature of Juno‘s promotional game. That may or may not help draw more of a home-screening audience for the film, but it certainly isn’t a good comparison, given the lack of preciousness and precociousness in the manner in which the film unfolds. Presented in 16×9 enhanced widescreen, with English language Dolby 5.1 surround sound and 2.0 stereo audio tracks, and optional Spanish and English subtitles, Good Dick is divided into a dozen chapters via a static menu screen, and comes with two versions of its original theatrical trailer — the all-audiences version, as well as a restricted red-band version.

Its supplemental features are intriguing, anchored by a 65-minute featurette which trails Palka, Ritter and costar Eric Edelstein around the Sundance Film Festival, where the movie premiered. There’s a lot of material from post-screening Q&As, which is nice, but plenty of photo shoot, guitar-jam noodling and other random stuff as well, and the rub is that almost all of it is hamstrung by poor sound, seemingly captured only by whatever source-mic was on the digital video camera(s) being used. There’s also a 12-minute gag reel, time-code stamped and unprocessed, which features flubbed lines and crack-ups from Ritter’s character’s video store buddies (Edelstein, Mark Webber and Martin Starr), Palka’s penchant for belching, Los Angeles’ constant goddamned police and fire sirens, and an old lady neighbor wandering cluelessly through frame during a shot at Palka’s apartment complex. To purchase the DVD via Amazon, click here. B (Movie) B (Disc)

Tween-targeted adventure, fun and excitement arrives on DVD in the form
of The Suite Life on Deck: Anchors Away!, a sort of fleshed-out, thematically grouped spin-off offering of the hit Disney Channel
original series The Suite Life of Zack & Cody, starring Dylan and Cole Sprouse.

Reprising their roles from the show, the twins Zack and Cody Martin hit
the high seas with hotel heiress London Tiptoe (Brenda Song, above center), enrolling in a semester-at-sea program aboard the S.S. Tipton. Much to his chagrin, dutiful hotel manager Mr. Moseby (Phill Lewis, above right) also gets sucked along on the outing, assuming responsibility for all three youngsters. Hijinx ensue, don’tcha know, as well as romance; the boys try to woo some young ladies, to the extent that “action” involves holding hands and a peck on the cheek. Ashley Tisdale, of the High School Musical flicks, even reprises her role as Maddie from the original series.

Some of the outfitting is all wrong (hipster and vintage videogame T-shirts?), but the shaggy-haired Sprouse twins serve as harmlessly charming anchors for this slice of diverting adolescent entertainment. The direction is pretty flat and straightforward, and the writing makes sure to carefully underscore each set-up, but it’s all performed with cheery enough aplomb, and thankfully doesn’t feel the need to “dual-pitch,” with coded double entendres or other jokes for adults.

Housed in a white plastic Amaray case with snap-shut hinges, The Suite Life on Deck comes presented in 1.33:1 full screen, with a Dolby digital surround sound audio track, and optional French and Spanish language tracks and subtitles as well. The disc’s supplemental features include “Much Ado About Nothing” and “International Dateline,” two bonus episodes which offer up further sea-set adventures. The latter, in which the crew enters a time warp and is forced to repeat the same day over and over, is no Groundhog Day, but probably ranks as the best offering of the bunch. There’s also a 10-minute segment, “Debby on Deck,” in which the Sprouse twins goof around with and interview Debby Ryan (above left), the newest member of the cast, as well as an additional 10 minutes of glad-handing incidental footage from the on-deck premiere event for the show. Yes, parents, this is a suitably wholesome distraction. To purchase the DVD via Amazon, click here. B- (Show) B- (Disc)