In 1994, hip hop experienced an incredible commercial and artistic rebirth, a period that many historians refer to in already wistful terms as “hip hop’s last great year.” There was big-time heart and camaraderie within the industry — this prior to the deaths of Tupac Shakur and the Notorious B.I.G. — and records actually took longer than a week or 10 days to create, and weren’t reliant on a zillion cameos from other artists of whom you’d never heard. The west coast-fueled “g-funk” sound dominated the charts, powered by Snoop Dogg, who then still had an extra “Doggy” in his name; Nas stepped on the scene with the now-classic Illmatic; and the wildly creative Wu-Tang Clan was unstoppable.

Hosted by Koe Rodriguez, Hip Hop Time Capsule 1994 takes a look back at the artists, music videos and cultural movement of that time, as captured in archival footage from (cable access channel show?) RETV. Naturally, that means a huge mixed bag. While it’s true that there are videos herein from House of Pain, Craig Mack, Wu-Tang Clan and A Tribe Called Quest, to name a few, more often than not these snippets aren’t the group’s best-known or biggest hits, and neither do they run in uninterrupted fashion. Sure, you get to see some lost, rarely spun material, like The OC’s “Time’s Up” and the Pharcyde’s “The Rubbers Song,” but is anyone really yearning for House of Pain’s “Legend/Word is Bond”?

The problem here is a matter of focus. Rodriguez is an amiable enough guide through this material, but too many bits — like his interview with producer Maleet, who found inspiration in Beatnuts-style sampling — drag on for too long. If there’s a little attention to chronology, there’s certainly none paid to overall cohesion, sadly. Still, despite its grab-bag construction, there are worthy bon mots for intellectually-minded hip hop fans — that is to say those who dig deeper than just the beat, and find fascination in the music’s relevance and relation to modern-day minority culture. In particular, there is some thoughtful interview material with film director John Singleton, from the press day for Illegal Tender, as well as insightful analysis from Princeton political science professor Melissa Harris Lacewell. Strangely, there’s also unsourced material from the trailer for American Gangster, starring Denzel Washington and Russell Crowe.

Hip Hop Time Capsule 1994 is housed in a regular Amray case, and presented on a region-free disc that features a Dolby digital 5.1 surround sound track, and alternates between widescreen and full screen transfers of source material of greatly differing quality. The good news is that there are ample bonus features here, even if the layout of their presentation leaves a bit to be desired. Smif-N-Wesson’s “Let’s Get It On” is one of 10 bonus musical selections. There are also interview snippets (including with Run DMC’s late, great Jam Master J), clips from the Source Awards, a mini-documentary by LaMar Stephens and four PSAs promoting safe sex, including one that misidentifies Ice-T as Ice Cube. Whoops. To purchase the disc via Amazon, click here. C (Movie) C+ (Disc)

An engrossing, exceedingly literate film, Starting Out in the Evening is an artfully understated portrait of an aged novelist struggling with the flickering flame of creativity’s muse. Anchored by a superb performance from Frank Langella, this is a film that combines the best of intimate stage drama with the best of personal, well-crafted independent filmmaking; the result is something that works on multiple levels, and allows viewers both young and old and everywhere in between a looking-glass glimpse into the other’s psyche.



The story centers around Langella’s Leonard Schiller, a once-famous New York writer now given to small, pedestrian rituals. He’s the standard analogue man in an increasingly digital world; his books long out-of-print, Leonard doesn’t take freelance gigs writing advertising copy because he deems it an objectionable compromise; he instead pecks away at a novel he’s been working on for more than a decade, and enjoys simple get-togethers with his adult daughter Ariel (Lili Taylor, fantastic). Despite having suffered a heart attack the previous year, Leonard still doesn’t have much use for self-reflection, until Heather Wolfe (Lauren Ambrose), an ambitious grad student defined by an obscure hunger for self-definition, enters his life. Leonard’s early novels had an electrifying impact on Heather, and she now wants to use her thesis project to spur a rediscovery of his work.

At once shaken and emboldened by their challenging interview sessions, Leonard’s staid, respectful tolerance for Heather slowly melts into consideration. An indefinable and precarious intimacy develops between them, but the stars in Heather’s eyes dim when she slowly comes to the conclusion that Leonard is too closed-off from certain unacknowledged traumas of his past to ever again write a truly great book. This cooling coincides, meanwhile, with an unexpected turn in Ariel’s life when she rekindles a relationship with ex-boyfriend Casey (a wonderful Adrian Lester), a matter that greatly worries Leonard given their differing priorities (she wants kids, Casey avowedly doesn’t) in life.

Adapted by Fred Parnes and director Andrew Wagner from Brian Morton’s novel of the same name, Starting Out in the Evening is characterized by a great and involving sense of character detail; the movie grapples in an intellectually honest fashion with notions of aging, responsibility and reinvention, and how they intersect with creative fire. Through it all, Wagner (the 2005 Sundance entry The Talent Given Us) trades in an unfussy style that keeps the focus firmly on his characters. The one big knock on the movie is that it has such a strong sense of Leonard that Heather is a bit recklessly sketched. While intelligently written — she’s certainly no bubbled-headed ditz — Heather’s occasional lack of recognition at how others perceive her actions seems implausible, and after a while, her pluck becomes a bit irksome.

I also at first felt that the manner in which Heather, and the movie, eventually address the inevitable elephant in the room, the potential of romantic connection, rings a bit false. Then I ruminated on it, listened to Wagner’s audio commentary during a second viewing, and came around. What one actually sees here is something quite rare in movies, and that’s why it feels a bit discombobulating — namely, characters circling one another, then reaching out and pulling back, several times, in small but meaningful ways.

Through it all, Langella shines. He’s well known for his stage portrayals of larger-than-life characters — including Dracula and Sherlock Holmes, among others — but his perfectly modulated performance here is one of managed disappointment, something apparently too subtle for Academy Award voters to recognize. Leonard is an emotionally imploded man, able, in his great intellect, to parse and justify his self-interested behaviors. In his stillness and the consistency of his proper actions (both in movement and diction), Langella captures the character’s regret in evocative fashion before the story even spells out the particulars. It’s a breathtaking thing — the sort of intimate, ultra-specific and lived-in portrayal one typically sees only on the stage. That it’s captured for posterity only makes one have more affection for this little gem of a film.

Housed in a regular Amray case, Starting Out in the Evening is presented in 1.78:1 widescreen, enhanced for 16×9 televisions, with a pair of Dolby digital 5.1 and 2.0 audio tracks. Unfortunately, the disc’s roster of supplemental bonus materials is pretty slim, and totally lacking in any insight or reminiscence from Langella, which is a shame. Apart from a TV spot and the theatrical trailer, the only extra is the aforementioned feature-length audio commentary track with Wagner. He’s a really smart guy, and a consistently warm guide throughout, but some of his remarks, especially early on, seem a bit scripted. He also rather rarely dotes on physical production detail, except when talking about a few cinematographic choices or set-ups, and composer Adam Gorgoni’s creation of a musical cue of admiration when Heather first enters Leonard’s apartment, and writing room. A lot of his talk is about “finding the democratic balance of storytelling,” which can come across as too theoretical, and lacking in specifics. Thankfully that’s not the case for the movie’s charged kitchen scene between Leonard and Heather, or its reunion between Ariel and Casey, for which Wagner amiably confesses borrowing a line (“I know your silences…”) from another one of Morton’s books. To purchase Starting Out in the Evening on DVD via Amazon, click here. A- (Movie) C+ (Disc)

You have to give it up for Poison frontman Bret Michaels. The guy is 45 years old, and still rocks the “mandana” and eyeliner with devotion. Forgiving the fact that its airbrushed cover totally makes him look like a chick, the DVD release of the first season of Rock of Love — his VH-1 dating show, in which 25 well-toned ex-strippers, damaged little girls, would-be actresses, current strippers, rocker chicks and functional alcoholics… err, I mean, lovely young ladies do battle for an all-access pass to the rocker’s heart — makes for deliciously trashy and engrossing entertainment.



Rock of Love partially takes its cue from Public Enemy hype-man Flavor Flav’s Flavor of Love, in which trainwreck entertainment is seemingly as much the goal as the star/host’s ultimate happiness. That means a Bel-Air mansion, a burly bodyguard (in this case, Michaels’ pal “Big John”) who doubles as a message deliverer to the girls, some goofy competitions, lots of free alcohol and plenty of attendant drama from said free alcohol. Along the way, as the group is “split between the slutty, outgoing girls and the bitchy, introverted girls,” as one lass shrewdly observes (proudly identifying herself as being part of the former cabal), the expected name-calling, screeching and quasi-physical confrontations ensue, with “clown tits,” “your meth-scratched face” and “waste of sperm and egg” ranking as some of the choicest insults. Hearteningly, though, there is a (platonic?) love connection between two of the show’s dimmer-bulb blondes, who become fast friends (“If we put our boobs together, we can think better!”) and seem to care more (much more) about each other’s feelings than any potential attraction thrown their way by Michaels.

There are a couple other notable differences and upgrades, though, that make Rock of Love surprisingly, almost shamefully compelling when stacked up against other celeb-dating shows. First, compared to Flavor Flav, Michaels is — how to put this? — a more eloquent and forthcoming articulator of his own feelings and desires. He may not be the brightest guy in the world and his air-quote concerns may be myopic or not of the average man, but he still comes across as a pretty straight shooter. That may seem like small potatoes, but having at least a somewhat sincere emotional guide through the otherwise orchestrated maelstrom that is women competing for attention and camera time is important. The show also allows for a few surprising glimpses of vulnerability, since Michaels is an insulin-dependent diabetic. Of course, it’s still telling that during the second of the show’s 13 episodes, Michaels makes the ladies simulate phone sex with him. (Personally knowing one of the lawyers who helped draft the series’ sexual harassment waiver language makes this all the more hilarious.)

Winnowed to three, the final contestants consist of Las Vegas dancer Heather (hopelessly buried in the back in the above photo), absolutely unhinged rocker chick Lacey (the Kool-Aid redhead in the middle, to the left of Michaels) and pink-and-blonde-haired Jes (front, right), who seems to be the most normal and have the least agenda of the trio. (That she’s the only one now without her own eponymous web site may also say something.) Michaels’ inherent instincts for poor choices run up against a seemingly sincere desire for settled-down normalcy, but given that the series just completed its second season run on VH-1, is it any wonder or shock that the five-week-long Rock of Love didn’t result in blessed nuptials? Hosted by Riki Rachtman, the reunion show included here is baffling and incongruous with much of what precedes it, only because it was never made clear that immediately after the show, Michaels and his chosen gal would be separated for six months. Hmmm… strange.

Spread out over three discs in three slimline cases, the first season of Rock of Love is presented in 1.33:1 full screen, with a simple stereo audio track, and comes attractively packaged in a master cardboard slipcover, with Michaels’ huge, mandana-covered grille looming over a pair of woman’s legs. Supplemental extras consist of a five-minute “super-trailer”/promo reel for the series, a four-and-a-half-minute music video for “Get It On” (a song written by Michaels and credited to “Bret & the Booze Bunnies”), and a five-minute-plus sing-along of “Every Rose Has Its Thorn,” during which Michaels reveals he penned the Poison chart-topper in a Dallas laundromat after calling home and hearing a guy in the background with his then-girlfriend.

There are also three deleted scenes, all of which are sort of perversely fascinating. The first is a four-minute drunken food fight; the second is a three-minute segment in which Lacey antagonizes other girls by dancing around naked and shouting that fur is murder (they retaliate by tossing a slab of raw meat at her when she’s in the shower). What’s interesting here, though, is that the sequence shows Heather egging Lacey on, and being much more of an instigator than previously shown. The third clip is a six-and-a-half-minute reel of unbleeped phone sex chat between Michaels and the girls. As they take turns sharing the line, talking dirty and writhing about on a couch, Michaels’ disembodied head creepily floats in the corner of the screen, while he purrs strange things like, “What kind of animal would you spank me like?” (What?!) Even though that makes the series sound sketchy and lascivious (and don’t get me wrong, it is), Rock of Love manages to make an impression because Michaels is at least always honest and sincere about what’s going on his head, and how difficult it is to manage some of the mutually exclusive impulses he feels. A rock star with a brain? Well… yeah, sort of. Who knew? To purchase the set via Amazon, click here. A- (Series) B+ (Disc)

The concept of urban ownership is born of the latter half of the civil rights movement, and predicated upon notions and concepts of self-empowerment that Dr. Martin Luther King and others strived hard to impart in a generation of African-American youngsters. As those leaders have come of age and continued King’s work, they’ve begun to focus on providing to kids in their neighborhoods the encouragement and the same hand up that many of them never received. Winner of the Best Documentary prize at the Boston International Film Festival, The Pact is a stirring documentary account of the big, local difference that can be made through such efforts.

Directed by Andrea Kalin, The Pact tells the gritty, provocative true story of three best friends from the tough streets of Newark who made it out of their neighborhood to become doctors and returned home as men. By high school, Sampson Davis, Rameck Hunt and George Jenkins already knew too much about the drugs, crime and grinding poverty that colored their world, but they pledged to help each other make it to both college and medical school. All three young men beat the statistical odds — which saw only a handful of minorities from their school go on to four-year colleges — became doctors, and then decided to return to their communities to practice medicine. Authoring a book together on their word-is-bond uplift, the trio have turned their focus — despite grueling personal workloads — on inspiring others to stay off drugs, stay away from gangs, stay in school and focus on achievement.

Nicely photographed by Bryan Sarkinen, The Pact unfolds in a highly personal and anecdotal style, with plenty of interview material, and proud, cackling, devotional bragging from the boys’ third grade teacher, Viola Johnson. Davis (above left) talks movingly about the completeness he feels working at Beth Israel Medical Complex, the hospital where he was born, and overall the movie plays as a brisk, booster-shot infusion of positivism and inspiration, with the three subjects holding forth on their “three Ds” of self-betterment — dedication, discipline and determination.

Housed in a regular Amray case, The Pact is presented in 1.78:1 anamorphic widescreen, with 15 chapter stops. Unlike many other WGBH releases, there’s a brief bonus featurette included here, a three-minute mini-trailer of sorts, featuring words of praise from Bill Cosby. In addition to links to The Pact‘s web site, there is also a downloadable DVD-ROM guide highlighting the doctors’ “3-D principle.” To order the DVD, or any release from WGBH, phone (800) 949-8670 or visit their web by clicking here. For more general information, click here. B+ (Movie) C (Disc)

Classic texts endure in part, I suspect, because their adaptations to stage, screen and film provide a training ground for young actors, and they’re also easier to finance and sell (i.e., a known commodity) than some original script by an author who may or may not be heard of. So it’s a cycle of production and re-exhibition, all of which in turn reinforces the original book or play’s elevated status. All of this and more came to mind while watching this very so-so 2007 Masterpiece Theater version of E.M. Forster’s classic love story A Room with a View, directed by Nicholas Renton.

Opening in Florence, Italy in 1912, A Room with a View centers around Lucy Honeychurch (Elaine Cassidy), a young woman who is eager for adventure but finds herself stuck in a safe haven of English tourists, spinsters and clergymen. After she makes the acquaintance of socialist Mr. Emerson (Timothy Spall, most recently of Enchanted) and his son George (Hot Fuzz‘s Rafe Spall, Timothy’s real-life son), she finds herself intrigued. Sparks fly between Lucy and George, but Lucy does her best to ignore them. After an astute observer purposefully mistranslates her request for “the good men” (clergymen) and sends her into the arms of “a good man,” Lucy receives a passionate kiss from George in the middle of a field of poppies. Both profoundly shocked and excited, Lucy is whisked away to Rome by her concerned chaperone before much else can come of this situation.

It’s there that Lucy meets the most suitable Cecil Vyse (Inspector Lewis‘ Laurence Fox), a staid and proper chap whom Lucy’s brother Freddy (Tag Stewart) derides as a straight arrow, and not someone with whom he can “muck in or muck about.” Cecil courts Lucy with high-falutin’ language and labyrinthine compliments, calling her not straightforward beautiful, but possessing of a beauty that is “the embodiment of eternal female mystery.” Meanwhile, back in England, George reappears just as Lucy is on the brink of marriage to Cecil; determined to sop the marriage, he declares his love for her. How will Lucy choose between them? Or is she destined for a life of spinsterhood?

Cassidy makes for a fairly appealing Lucy — she seems tremulous and excited at the same time, which is at the core of Lucy’s being. The rest of the acting is fairly solid too, though the movie is howlingly over-scored, with dubious compositions drowning out the dialogue in many a scene — dialogue that is frequently poorly dubbed, it must be said. It’s also a bit silly that the bare buttocks of men (George and Freddy go swimming in a creek in one scene) are blurred out in a couple wide shots; either shoot around it or not, but don’t stoop to this ridiculous level of editorial censorship. Overall, though, while the story certainly carries its own weight, director Renton does little to shape the material in a favorable light. He just points, shoots and relies on curious insert shots to save him on various edits. Thumbs down on the construction and arrangement, then.

Housed in a regular Amray case, this production of A Room with a View is presented in 16×9 anamorphic widescreen, and divided into eight chapters. As with most other WGBH releases there are no on-disc special features, which is a shame since the closing credits indicate the existence, on the PBS web site, of an interview with Emmy-winning classic adaptation specialist Andrew Davies, who wrote the screenplay here. To order A Room with a View or any release from WGBH, phone (800) 949-8670 or visit their web by clicking here. C+ (Movie) D+ (Disc)

A friend asked me about writer-director Paul Thomas Anderson’s bold oil-boom epic There Will Be Blood not too long ago, having not seen it in theaters, and I explained to him that I found myself in the somewhat difficult and unusual position of having to stand in principled opposition to the cineaste-class who’ve declared it a top-shelf classic right out of the gate, while at the same time having to defend the movie against its most ardent detractors. The truth about the movie, as with much of life, is that it’s somewhere in the middle, between the poles of the most fervently staked out positions.

Anderson has never been one to play it safe. Whereas plenty of indie directors
gladly cede to a bit of formula for the security and financing of a regular studio shingle,
Anderson’s films have almost gotten progressively more idiosyncratic
and left-of-center, and that trend continues with his fifth feature, one of the more critically praised films of last year. Whatever one thinks of it, there isn’t any legitimate way to characterize There Will Be Blood except as a striking work, and almost inarguably by someone of great, innate
virtuosity. Even for a filmmaker who has reveled in the heyday of the
San Fernando Valley porn boom (Boogie Nights), made it rain frogs (Magnolia) and centered a story of emotional constipation and romantic bloom partially around pudding rebates (Punch-Drunk Love),
this is an audacious movie. It’s also a polarizing, punishing work, and to my mind one that is at least somewhat backwards-plotted, with a foreboding title and forestalled conflict working to give lent importance to an otherwise sketchily defined narrative proper.

Using the basic narrative template of Upton Sinclair’s muckraking novel “Oil!” as a jumping-off point, There Will Be Blood
unfolds over the course of a couple decades, against the provocative
and combustible frontier of California’s turn-of-the-20th-century
petroleum boom. The story chronicles the life and times of Daniel
Plainview (Daniel Day-Lewis),
a straight-talking but paranoid and amoral would-be businessman who
transforms himself from a down-and-out silver miner into a self-made,
independent oil tycoon. A brutal mineshaft accident busts open his nose and fractures
his leg, but gives Plainview a small stake from which to start — as well as an adopted son, the offspring of a coworker who doesn’t survive.

When Plainview
taps an underground vein, more money follows. Then Plainview gets a mysterious tip
from a strange passerby, Paul Sunday (Little Miss Sunshine‘s Paul Dano), that there’s a little town out west where oil is literally oozing right
up out of the ground. Sensing opportunity, Plainview sets out with his
right-hand man, Fletcher Hamilton (Ciaran Hinds, above right), and young son, H.W. (Dillon Freasier),
to take their chances in dusty Little Boston, a hardscrabble community
where the main excitement comes from the holy-roller church of
charismatic preacher Eli (Dano again), Paul’s pious twin brother.

Plainview has a knack for saying the things that he knows people
like to hear, talking about the schools, fresh bread and milk, and
other goods and services that Little Boston will accrue as a result of
their collective acquiescence for his development. An opportunist
himself, meanwhile, Eli wants assurances that his church will see its
proper share of the profits from the drilling. The rest of the film finds Plainview growing his business and grappling
with three major personal conundrums and crises — the sudden arrival of
a long-lost half-brother, Henry (Kevin J. O’Connor),
an oil well accident that robs H.W. of his hearing, and
a continued, quiet clash of wills with Eli. As the oil wells raise
Plainview’s fortunes along with those of all around him, these
conflicts slowly rise, and the values of faith, community, hard
work and ambition are imperiled by the corruption and deception born of this “black gold.”

From its purposefully threatening title on down to the gleeful nastiness with which Plainview is imbued, There Will Be Blood
feels like the first work in which Anderson has come fully to peace
with the notion of evil in the world, or at least human wickedness and
wanton destruction. Plainview is, to put it politely, a real
son-of-a-bitch, and a man whose heart hardens further with each dollar
he earns. Anderson’s screenplay easily, and deservedly, draws comparisons to The Treasure of Sierra Madre and Citizen Kane,
both by way of its setting and themes — the wild, every-man-for-himself
western edge of the early 20th century, and the manner in which the
movie assays masculinized competition and cresting paranoia. What
Anderson expertly conveys is a deceptive sense of epic scope. We
scarcely leave Planeview’s side, but, thanks to some economically
condensed head-butting with peers, paradoxically have a keen sense of
his place in the oil industry, and the industry’s burgeoning importance
to the country at large.

Similarly, There Will Be Blood’s engaging and effective
evocation of early film history, and silent film in particular, is
purposeful, willful — from the emphasis placed on cinematographer
Robert Elswit’s gorgeous, justly lauded images to the focus on an
isolated, increasingly paranoid central figure. Meanwhile, besting even Michael Mann’s Ali — which opened under the pleading, almost
mournful strains of Sam Cooke’s “Bring It On Home To Me,” for seven
wordless minutes — Anderson’s movie opens with a 14-minute passage in
which no dialogue is spoken.

“And yet,” it must be said, followed by ellipses. For all its superlative production design and exacting sense of order and construction, There Will Be Blood also suffers a bit from a feeling of stifling self-consciousness.
The
film holds one’s attention, but it also feels both airless and maybe just a little self-satisfied,
never more so than in its finale, which (over)reaches for profundity
via an act of arbitrary violence. To call the movie an intellectual
sham would be an overstatement, but
there is a same-note, single-dimensionality to There Will Be Blood,
an anemia aped by Radiohead guitarist’s Jonny Greenwood’s memorable score for the
film — a THX test of nervous string work (particularly the track “Henry
Plainview”) that, somewhat like the story as a whole, comes across as
an elongated act of precious deception.

Plainview and Eli circle one another — not really enemies per se,
but barely swallowed discontent bubbling in each of them — yet little
changes for either man. The audience watches, meanwhile, but doesn’t
deeply identify with either man, particularly once the film awkwardly ducks
forward in time to 1927, when Plainview’s obsessive bitterness and
mistrust has calcified into performance-art-level theatricality, no
matter Day-Lewis’ mesmeric charm. The film could be read partially as an
allegory of false prophets — of preacher-politician-authority figures
who slyly trade in falsehoods, or talk out of one side of their mouth
while lining their coffers with private gain. But the character of Eli,
as well as Plainview’s conflict with him, isn’t really deeply sketched
out enough to support a sustained vindication of this reading. There Will Be Blood is, it seems — first, foremost and
achingly so — a movie for cineastes, with less of a realized arc than
an ending simply designed to be written about. There are far greater sins, of
course, but this eminence front rings of false modesty… or perhaps just
a savvy bit of financial capital raising, after all.

Housed in a cardboard cover, the two-disc collector’s edition version of There Will Be Blood comes presented in its original 2.35:1 anamorphic widescreen aspect ratio, along with a superlative Dolby digital 5.1 surround sound mix, available in English, French and Spanish (all with optional subtitles). A text excerpt from Oil! nicely graces the set’s gate-fold packaging, but doesn’t augur well for the rest of the supplemental bonus material, all of which is housed on the second disc. Along with the cursory inclusions of the movie’s teaser and theatrical trailer, there are two unprocessed deleted scenes and a dailies reel, the latter featuring an alternate take of the explosive restaurant scene between Plainview and other oilmen. All of these, in aggregate, run about just under a dozen minutes.

Eschewing the sort of audio commentary offerings that made the Boogie Nights DVD such a treat, there is instead a silent 15-minute montage of scenes and historical photographs that served as inspiration for Anderson in his crafting of the story. These is interesting, but, absent further contextual discussion, eventually becomes tedious. The only other inclusion, The Story of Petroleum, seemingly rings a few cool bells — a 26-minute doc! — but is in actuality not a making-of featurette but rather a silent-era industrial filmstrip that overlaps a good portion of the previous 15 minutes of footage. The lack of discussion from Anderson on a film with such an authorial stamp is severely problematic, but not necessarily a mortal wound. No, that designation would be saved for the lack of participation from Day-Lewis, for a role widely, and not undeservingly, acclaimed as among the most searingly memorable screen turns of the past decade. To have no chats with them — especially given all the awards-season stumping they did for the film — on a so-called “collector’s edition” is ridiculous. Even notorious commentary soundtrack-hater and DVD minimalist David Lynch thinks this DVD is short on supplemental insight. Still, to purchase the movie via Amazon anyway, click here. B (Movie) C- (Disc)

The new straight-to-video erotic thriller Impulse, written and directed by Charles T. Kanganis and starring Willa Ford, certainly has the right impulse when it opens on three topless women writhing about. Ample nudity ensues, too, meaning that the movie — about a game of awakened, lusty, domestic role-play gone awry — certainly hits its target quotient of bared bosoms.

The story centers on Claire Dennison (erstwhile pop singer and Playmate Ford, below, also of Dancing with the Stars), a beautiful, sensuous advertising executive who is desperate to arouse the desires of her stuffy, slightly older psychiatrist husband, Jonathan (Angus Macfadyen, of Braveheart and the last two Saw pictures), as well as start a family (goals that seem somewhat at odds, but hey, whatever). To further her desire for spark and reconnection, Claire devises a fantasy role-play game involving dress-up (for a sexy clip, click here). After a rebuffed attempt, Jonathan — who always seems to be cooking — acknowledges that there’s been a reduction in the passion department, and cedes to Claire’s idea to spice things up. After Jonathan takes the bait in one encounter, though, things become more complicated. It’s not long before Claire realizes that she’s playing a dangerous game of seduction with someone very familiar, yet also completely unknown — a man, Simon Phillips (also Macfadyen), who looks exactly like her husband. Whoops. Desperate to end the affair, she tells the stranger the game is over, and yet it seems the drama has just begun.

Multi-hyphenate Kanganis (Intent to Kill) infuses Impulse with some decent production value, to the degree that he can. And he also doesn’t shy away from the perverted elements of the conceit, having Macfadyen’s character, umm, smell his fingers after manually stimulating Claire in one scene, and also intimating much more when Claire furiously brushes her teeth after an illicit encounter. So there’s some skeevy titillation here.

Unfortunately, Ford (whose left arm-band tattoo, above, can be glimpsed here through concealment make-up) isn’t necessarily the right actress upon which to hang this material; she’s got the right set of buns, but less convincing assertiveness (“What’s going on out there is way beyond our comprehension — it’s genius!” she says in the scene that introduces her character, meaning to show us her brassy occupational super-competence) and imperiled sympathy. She’s not awful, though — just not very consistent. And it’s worth pointing out, too, that Macfadyen, for whom the movie is really a showcase, succumbs to a lot of the same ping-pong variance that Ford does. For a lot of the running time, one feels this is mostly a matter of a production schedule crunch — that with more time for extra takes and set-ups, this schlocky-fun premise could have been given a real kick in the pants, and made into something a bit more interesting. Then the movie concludes with exactly the sort of stand-off (a gun, mistaken identity) one imagines given the parameters of the story established from the second act on, and the raison d’etre for Impulse, obscured momentarily, again becomes clear: boobs.

Housed in a regular Amray case, Impulse comes presented in 1.85:1 anamorphic widescreen, with Dolby digital 5.1 audio tracks in English, French and Portuguese, and a stereo track in Spanish. Since tales of sexual intrigue translate so well, there are also optional subtitles in English and five foreign languages. I guess Ford — who’s starring in a forthcoming tele-biopic of Anna Nicole Smith — may yet get some play internationally. A gallery of a dozen trailers, including for The Tattooist, The Good Night, Untraceable and Outpost, is the only bonus feature. For another clip, click here; to purchase the movie via Amazon, click here. C+ (Movie) C- (Disc)

Recorded  live in 2006 at the House of Blues in New Orleans and at The Downtown in Farmingdale, New York, Zebra: The DVD is part concert disc, part drama-free band autobiography. It offers up choice, meat-and-potatoes rock ‘n’ roll cuts from a group that’s been around more than 30 years, nicely interspersed with a chronological recounting of the band’s formation in Louisiana all the way through its big break in New York City.

Comprised of lead singer Randy Jackson (no, not the American Idol guy), bass guitarist Felix Hanemann and drummer Guy Gelso, Zebra got together in the mid-1970s in New Orleans, as a Led Zeppelin cover band. They sprinkled in a few of their own tunes as well, and had soon won over a legion of local fans. Initially selling their own musical craftsmanship and technical talents over any pretense of artistry worked well for the local scene, but it left them on the outside looking in when it came to easily landing a record deal. A couple abortive meet-the-labels trips to New York made for some frazzled nerves, but a New Year’s Eve show opening for Rat Race Choir in 1976 helped pave the way for bigger things. WBAB 104.3 deejay Bob Buchman eventually started spinning their demo, anchored by “Who’s Behind the Door,” and talked up the group to Jason Thom, current chairman and CEO of Atlantic Records, but then a fresh-faced, 22-year-old A&R underling just set up by his big-shot lawyer daddy.

Engrossing stories like these stud Zebra: The DVD, and help contextualize the songs, which include the aforementioned single, “As I Said Before,” “Wait Until the Summer’s Gone,” “Light of My Love,” “But No More,” “One More Chance,” “No Tellin’ Lies,” “Tell Me What You Want,” “The La La Song,” “Bears” and “My Life Has Changed,” among others. A nice 25-minute set-up gives the history of the band, and the concert cuts play out over the course of another 90 minutes and change. Between tunes the band offers brief words about the history of the song and its inception, or a celebrity fan (The Tonight Show‘s John Melendez, say) pops up to introduce it. On the surface this might seem to rob the disc of momentum, but it actually worked well, in my opinion. Some of the interview claims herein (a six-hour send-off gig in New Orleans?) stretch credulity, but Jackson and all the guys are so affable and down-to-Earth that you don’t begrudge them a momentary exaggeration.

Housed in a regular Amray case, Zebra: The DVD is presented in 1.33:1 full screen, with crisp picture and a solid, Dolby digital 5.1 surround sound audio track. A seven-minute, stand-alone promo on the DVD itself is included, as well as 15 additional minutes of extra interview material. There’s also six-plus minutes of cool behind-the-scenes material with Hanemann, as he hosts a mini-garage walk through, showing off old T-shirts and other memorabilia from the band’s early days. To purchase the disc via Amazon, click here. For more on Zebra, click here, says the DVD. B (Movie) A- (Disc)

British indie flick The Living and the Dead, a multiple award winner at Austin’s Fantastic Fest a couple years back, is certainly out of step with much of the cinematic output of its national brethren, but never less than rather mesmerizingly so. An unnervingly, chilly blend of madness and pathos, the film is a solid, horrifically engrossing portrait of the slow slide into madness, and the ripple effect that psychological disorders can have on families.

Shot in 2006, The Living and the Dead captures family dysfunction at its most shocking and grotesque. With bankruptcy looming, financially desperate Donald Brocklebank (Roger Lloyd Pack) must leave his bedridden wife Nancy (Kate Fahy) alone with their son James (Leo Bill), a mentally impaired, schizophrenic man-child. Abandoning his medication, James spirals downward into a horrific fit of dementia, locking out both his father and a visiting nurse from their sprawling, palatial estate, and playing solo caretaker to his mother, insisting that “the more [pills] you take, the better you get.” As his ability to distinguish reality from morbid fantasy starts to first fray and then outright rot, James plunges into a mental labyrinth so violent and deranged that it holds dire consequences for everyone involved.

Written and directed by Simon Rumley (Club Le Monde, The Truth Game), and powered by a meticulously constructed sense of atmospheric dread, The Living and the Dead recalls claustrophobic thrillers like William Friedkin’s Bug, and certainly Rob Reiner’s adaptation of Stephen King’s Misery, but also something like Brad Anderson’s Session 9. Shot over the course of 18 days at the Savernam Estate’s cavernous Tottenhouse House in the English countryside — a location that effectively doubles as an extra character in the otherwise spare, intimate psychological drama — the movie unfolds in mostly long-take wide shots, though Rumley also isn’t afraid to stage a canted angle for art’s sake. Rumley has described the roots of the inspiration for the film as coming from his mother’s treatment for terminal cancer, and watching the manner in which medications and the lack of greater social interaction destroyed her connection with the world at large. That mangy sense of pained isolation comes through here. Bill looks sort of like a cousin of Ewan Bremmer, and his twitchy performance creates genuine discomfort — which is of course the entire point.

Housed in a clear, regular Amray case with a paper insert touting a series of TLA releases, The Living and the Dead is presented in 1.78:1 anamorphic widescreen, with a 5.1 Dolby digital audio track. Along with the movie’s original theatrical trailer and a gallery of four other previews for other TLA pictures, supplemental extras consist of a one-minute photo montage, 13 minutes of deleted scenes and Laughter, a 13-minute short film from earlier Rumley’s career, shot in grainy black-and-white. There is also a very nicely done 26-minute making-of featurette, which includes loads of on-set footage and interview material with Rumley, who talks a lot about the difficulties in raising financing for the movie, his fourth feature, as well as its place alongside his other work. To purchase the movie via Amazon, click here. B+ (Movie) B+ (Disc)

An erotic, indie, sci-fi fantasy like no other, Socket finds a pair of gay lovers literally getting a jolt as they plug in for pleasure. Written and directed by Sean Abley, the movie centers on Dr. Bill Matthews (Derek Long), a square-jawed surgeon who, after getting struck by lightning, gets some extra special care from mysterious, smoldering intern Craig Murphy (Matthew Montgomery). Having survived the same natural accident, Craig introduces his new friend to an underground group that uses electricity to reach dizzying new heights of ecstasy. Soon the two develop an insatiable appetite for one another that matches their illicit love for… wall outlets. You see, using his talents as a surgeon, Bill goes that extra step in chasing down the ultimate charge.

A movie about the intersection of the biological, mechanical and sexual, Socket is a film that owes a lot to the work of David Cronenberg; I’m thinking in particular of Videodrome, eXistenZ, and 1996’s Crash — the latter with its focus on the psycho-sexual thrill pursued by a subculture of automobile accident victims, who seek out such incidents and use the adrenalized levels of tension, anxiety and energy they produce (as well as certain, umm, new-wound orifices) to take the notion of “getting off” to an entirely new level. I don’t mean to sound condescending or flip, but the imaginativeness and vividness of Abley’s premise is so stirring — and at the same time rife with visual metaphor and other parallels — that it’s hard to believe him when he says in interviews on the film’s DVD that he’s not sure why he framed it as a story centering around a gay couple. Sure, there’s nothing explicitly gay about the narrative (insofar as the movie isn’t a coming-out story, or anything like that), but there’s a discernible level of social commentary just underneath the surface that wouldn’t work as well if the characters were straight.

An Outfest 2007 presentation, Socket is hampered somewhat by its shoestring budget and meager production value. The story is so outlandish that you want the movie to unfold in a more heightened state. The acting, too, is a bit uneven, though Long effectively channels some of the same smug, plastic eerieness that makes Julian McMahon such a good fit on Nip/Tuck. It’s a credit to Abley, though, that the movie retains a slight sense of humor about itself, even as it goes through some more ominous, thriller-ish paces. Overall this is a movie whose success is driven more by the audacity of its core idea than some of its execution, but what an idea it is.

Housed in a clear Amray case, Socket comes presented on DVD in 1.78:1 anamorphic widescreen, with Dolby digital 5.1 audio. Its lesser supplemental extras consist of a one-minute photo montage and a clutch of a half-dozen trailers for this movie and other TLA releases. The big bonus highlight is easily the disc’s 34-minute, comprehensive and engaging making-of featurette. Powered by interviews with Abley, producers John Carrozza and Doug Prinzivalli, cinematographer Ivan Corona and almost all of the actors, this featurette is a nice behind-the-scenes glimpse into the DIY tribulations and joys of indie filmmaking. Some folks along for the ride, like actress Amy Seeley, are old friends and colleagues of Abley, with working histories dating back 10 years or more. In a moment of appreciated candor, Montgomery and a couple of other newcomers admit to worrying about or at least considering the closeknittedness of the cast and producing team, but feeling relief in fitting in so quickly. Rehearsal footage, honest reflection, good-natured goofing off — it’s all here in this half-hour valentine, a solid retrospective that definitely enhances this disc’s value. To watch the movie’s trailer, click here; to purchase the DVD via TLA’s site, click here. B- (Movie) B (Disc)

Tha Dogg Pound, a rap duo consisting of Kurupt and Daz Dillinger, came up with Snoop Dogg and Dr. Dre in the 1990s, and contributed a slammin’ track to the soundtrack for Murder Was the Case, among other highlights of that era. After that, a lot of external beefs and sub-par music saw them get passed by as break-out artists by a variety of up-and-comers. So… 2008 is the perfect time for a comeback DVD release, right?

The hour-long concert disc Dogg Pound Chronicle features a video mix of 11 songs performed live in Cleveland (hence the disc’s somewhat weird subtitle, “the Cleveland Edition”), hosted by the sultry and seductive “Exotic Companions,” friends of the group. The track listing includes “Who Ride Wit Us,” “Do What I Feel,” “New York, New York,” “All That I Need,” Daz’s version of “Deez Nutz,” “Ain’t No Fun,” “What Would You Do?,” “Explosive” and, naturally, the chant-along pro-marijuana anthem “Let’s Get High.” In between numbers, the region-free DVD also includes behind-the-scenes footage of Daz, Kurupt and the whole Dogg Pound clique chilling out in mysteriously hazy surroundings before the concert. Will this disc give your DVD player a contact high, and possibly a sexually transmitted disease? Possibly, so use protection. As an added bonus, a full-length live set from 40 Cal of Dipset is also included. To purchase the title via Amazon, click here. C (Concert) D (Disc)

Tripping the Rift, the irreverent Sci-Fi Channel show known for its wild, cutting-edge CGI animation and lusty sense of humor, gets a bawdy, full-length treatment in this unrated feature film.

A sort of intergalactic South Park with a hearty helping of questing spirit, Tripping the Rift tells the saga of a bunch of derelict mutant misfits who live, work and play on the starship Jupiter 42, controlled by a neurotic A.I. being known as Spaceship Bob. Bob’s neuroses are kept in check by the fat, verbally abusive pilot T’nuk (Gayle Garfinkle, offering up a wan David Hyde Pierce impression), while the ship’s inner workings are tended to by robot Gus (voiced by Maurice LaMarche, of Pinky and the Brain), the melancholic chief engineer. No one’s really sure what job is performed by teen slacker Whip (voiced by Rick Jones), but everyone has a definite idea of the specialties of sexy android Six of Nine (voiced by Jenny McCarthy) — she’s the buxom, custom-crafted love slave of Captain Chode (voiced by Stephen Root, of Office Space), a snide, walking purple blob of rancor who hates his crew and feeds off their returned carping disrespect. As Chode and his crew work on their latest money-making scheme in the space princess protection racket (something at which they’re not necessarily very skilled), a cyborg killing machine known as the Exterminator is sent back in time by their nemesis, Bobo, to eliminate them all.

Desperate Housewives, Star Wars and the Terminator series all get tweaked here, and oral sex jokes abound, with plenty of Georgia O’Keefe imagery also trotted out to visually hammer home the point. All the characters here are pretty much your standard two-dimensional types, which cuts both ways: it made the movie very easy to pick up for someone like me, unfamiliar with the series, but it also means that an awful lot of the scenes are pretty rigidly defined in terms of what they offer comedically. The highbrow-meets-lowbrow art design of the project, though, is at times intriguing — Tim Burton-esque black-and-white animation rubbing brusquely up against garishly colorful, far less angular creations.

Housed in a regular Amray case with a cardboard slipcover, Tripping the Rift is presented in 1.78:1 anamorphic widescreen, with English language Dolby digital 5.1 and Dolby surround 2.0 audio tracks. A seven-minute making-of featurette includes interview snippets with the show’s voice cast and creators, and gives a nice overview of the series’ inception and coarse raison d’etre. To purchase the movie via Amazon, click here. C (Movie) C+ (Disc)

Welsh rockers Man had some success in the late 1960s and early ’70s, turning out noodling rock jams. By 1976, though, Mickey Jones was the only founding member of the group left. He was joined by guitarist Deke Leonard (then on his third stint with the band), drummer Terry Williams, bassist John McKenzie and keyboardist Phil Ryan. Despite a couple years together with this roster, they all decided to part ways, and put together a farewell tour (nevermind that they would reform in 1983, actually) which culminated with a trio of shows in December of 1976, at the Roundhouse in Chalk Farm.

Unfortunately for Man fans, this newly released concert disc, running 52 minutes in total, doesn’t offer up the full set, but rather just six tunes from the band’s relative heyday — “Let the Good Times Roll,” “7171-551,” “Babe, I’m Gonna Leave You,” “C’Mon,” “Born with a Future” and “Bananas.” On the plus side, there is plenty of interview footage interspersed between the musical numbers. Draining pints together, there doesn’t seem to be a lot of drama or acrimony to the split; McKenzie just says there’s been “spilt milk,” and everyone is interested in pursuing different musical avenues. (In a moment of somewhat unintentional amusement, Ryan says that he wants to be in a band with three female singers.) Manager Barrie Marshall and road manager David Hall also pop up talking about their work with the band; the former seems kind of drained, like he’s watching the promise of a mortgage payment go up in smoke. Finally, there’s also a bit of rehearsal and backstage footage, with Jones stretching and warming up, and Ryan letting loose with a shimmery keyboard riff, and explaining that “people on certain substances like that kind of thing.”

Housed in a regular-sized, clear Amray case and presented on a region-free disc, this DVD plays in full screen, and the video — a combination of 8mm and 16mm, I’d say — is well-worn, and certainly not the title’s strongest selling point. The stereo audio, however, is strong and consistent, both in the performance segments and during the interview chats. Apart from a short essay by Jon Kirkman on the inside sleeve of the DVD cover, there are unfortunately no supplemental bonus materials here, though, further making this title of interest only to a small niche audience. To purchase the disc via Amazon, click here. C+ (Concert) C- (Disc)

Part Celine Dion, part Jennifer Lopez, part… Tiffany, I guess, Canadian émigré Chantal Chamandy is a multicultural pop diva, all the way. She hit it big as part of a group as a teenager (she was Chantal Condor then, presumably soaring high) before disappearing for a while, spending some of her accrued loot on lamé dresses and high heels. Now 36, she’s on the comeback trail, bankrolled by the largess of her husband and his financial and industry muscle. So what’s bigger and better than merely a new CD and all-stops-pulled domestic tour? Well, how about a concert at the foot of the regal Spinx?

Yes, on the night of September 7, 2007, singer-songwriter Chamandy made history by becoming the first person ever to be granted permission to perform a taped concert at the base of the Great Pyramids on the Giza plateau in Egypt, a concert that can now be seen in its entirety on Chamandy’s new DVD release, Beladi: A Night at the Pyramids. The night was especially important for the Egyptian-born, Montreal-bred Chamandy, as she returned to her birthplace to deliver a positive portrayal of middle-eastern culture. Surrounded by a variety of dancers, from Tanoura and the Egyptian National Ballet Company, Chamandy’s performance in front of a mostly enthusiastic capacity crowd of 5,000 is abetted by the Cairo Symphony Orchestra, and captured by acclaimed video and stage musical director Gérard Pullicino, choreographer Geneviève Dorion-Coupal (The Beatles’ “Love,” by Cirque du Soleil) and set designer Guy St-Amour (also from Cirque du Soleil).

The show opens with “Salma ya Salama,” “Peace” and “Sometimes,” and the rest of the track listing is comprised of a mix of mostly new material studded with a few older tunes, including “You Want Me,” “Feels Like Love,” “Zindegi,” “Nunca Sera Igual,” Helwa ya Baladi,” “Crazy,” “Let’s Talk About You,” “Truth or Dare,” “Dis-Moi,” “Take a Chance,” “Somewhere,” “Pray,” “Free,” “More” and “Music of the Moon.” The staging here is nicely done, and the direction allows for the widescreen capture of the impressive scope of the concert’s setting. It’s undeniable, too, that Chamandy’s success is a reminder that music has
the power to bridge differences and transcend national boundaries; the international inflections of her music — a blend of synth-pop, reprocessed Euro-dance and chart-baiting American balladry, with a hearty pinch of middle-eastern traditionalism — make for a convincing statement about the world as a melting pot. Yet it also true that Chamandy’s Beladi: A Night at the Pyramids at times comes off as a bit much — a lot of (prepaid) sound and fury, an exercise in stagecraft. So much effort is expended on the spectacle, and force of its sell, that the music itself can feel a bit overwhelmed. It seems the new “American way,” of overkill, has crossed borders north, and headed overseas as well.

Housed in a regular Amray snap-case with an extra tray for its second disc, the DVD is presented in 16×9 widescreen with a sterling Dolby digital 5.1 audio track, and includes an exhaustive feature-length documentary, The Journey, which offers up no shortage of rehearsal footage and other interview clips in its behind-the-scenes look at the making of this extraordinary event. (For what it’s worth, the concert performance is also available only on CD, simply titled Beladi.) For more information on Chamandy, meanwhile, click here. C+ (Concert) B+ (Disc)

Based on the best-selling book by renowned author Jack Ketchum, The Lost is a psychological thriller about the ennui of small town life and a young, charismatic serial killer who looks like the lead singer of The Killers — sporting mascara, an affected beauty mark and crushed beer cans in his boots to give him a boost in height as well as ego.

Inspired by actual events related to Charles Schmid, the so-called “Pied Piper of Tucson,” The Lost delves into human horror on a fairly mundane level. For sadistic sociopath Ray Pye (Marc Senter, above left), who lives with his (very much alive) mother at the hotel they own and operate together, small-town life is a dead-end road of sex, drugs, liars and losers. Yet Ray’s cajoling charm and intelligence mask a raw temper and insatiable compulsion to lash out.

After shooting a couple girls in the woods (Seduction Cinema staples Misty Mundae, né Erin Brown, and Ruby LaRocca), twentysomething-ish Ray and his two younger acolytes, Jennifer (Shay Astar) and Tim (Alex Frost), go about their business, which consists of biding their time during the day so that they can party and do as they please during the evenings. In an effort to protect the young girlfriend, Sally Richmond (Megan Henning), of an old friend, Eddie Anderson (Ed Lauter), Detective Charles Schilling (Michael Bowen) pays a visit to Ray, to sort of let him know in informal fashion that he’s got his eyes on him. Ray, though, has other options when Sally spurns his amorous advances, and he eventually confesses his act of murder to a new girl, Katherine (Robin Sydney), in a warped effort to impress her. Things come to a depraved head when

Notwithstanding a very brief but strikingly emotional cameo by Dee Wallace-Stone and the appearance of Luke Y. Thompson as “Handsome Country Club Patron,” The Lost is for the most part a meandering (the movie runs just under two hours) ensemble mood piece about vice, violence and psychopathy. Adapted for the screen and directed by Chris Sivertson (I Know Who Killed Me), The Lost bills itself as a suburban fairy tale gone horribly wrong, which I suppose is partially true. But since most of the film unfolds four years after the initial murder, and its effects are largely out of sight and out of mind after the first 15 minutes, there’s a weird disconnect between those events and the present day, even though we obviously know Ray is psychotic. He was the only suspect in those slayings, but Schilling seems awfully resigned to his freedom, and The Lost consequently suffers, since for much of its running time there is simply no direct conflict or ticking-down moral clock driving the movie forward.

What we get instead is a bunch of discrete scenes of hair-trigger temper, some of which work, and some of which don’t. The Lost is a movie that bears some small similarity to young-homicidal-lovers-on-the-lam flicks (Kalifornia, Natural Born Killers, Jimmy and Judy), but the mentor-lover-friend triangle between Ray, Jennifer and Tim isn’t fully explored until Schilling and company come crashing in, via a series of interrogations, in the third act. By that point, through other dawdling scenes (a protracted introduction to Katherine, for instance), you’ve been wanting a fuller, in-all-its-tangled-ingloriousness exploration of the twisted dynamics between the aforementioned trio, not just some post-mortem.

Meanwhile, Senter — as mentioned before, dolled up like the lead singer of The Killers, to mimic some of the Elvis-inspired “peacocking” of Schmid — delivers a performance that’s often forceful and engaging, but ultimately tips over into precious, look-at-me theatrics, with tics, wild gesticulations and snarled asides. It doesn’t help that Sivertson shoots much of the movie in tight close-up, giving viewers a claustrophobic urge to ditch the proceedings even before the most egregious bloodletting commences. Music (composed and rock) is also used liberally, to wildly varying effect.

Forced-play trailers for The Girl Next Door, also from Ketchum, and the forthcoming theatrical release Sex and Death 101 open the DVD, which comes in a regular Amray case that’s then housed in a cardboard slipcover with mock bullet holes on the front. Presented in 2.35:1 widescreen, enhanced for 16×9 televisions, the disc comes with Dolby digital 5.1 surround and Dolby surround 2.0 audio tracks.

As for supplemental features, first up is a rather snooze-inducing audio commentary track with Ketchum (his first such undertaking) and fellow horror novelist Monica O’Rourke. Ketchum offers up a very few interesting tidbits early on, like how the inspiration for the story came from a newspaper clipping from friend and fellow writer Christopher Golden, but he has virtually nothing to say about the production, so while interesting or notable things are unfolding on screen, he’s just as likely to be talking about an idea for another book project, or speech he gave years ago. Thankfully, the rest of the bonus features are a bit better. There are seven minutes worth of audition footage and 16 minutes worth of outtakes, including some random nudity. There’s also a three-and-a-half-minute storyboard sequence and an Easter egg that’s accessible from the bonus menu screen — a two-minute black-and-white short film, Jack and Jill, which gives grim new meaning to picnic offerings. C+ (Movie) B- (Disc)

A riveting, perfectly constructed crime saga of counterweighted hopelessness and humanity, Joel and Ethan Coen’s No Country for Old Men, based on the novel of the same name by Pulitzer Prize-winning author Cormac McCarthy, is a film that originally seduces you with its cool sheen of menace and nervy, swallowed intensity, and then, in subsequent viewings, wins you over with all the broader questions its desperate scramble for survival raises.



That the back of No Country for Old Men‘s DVD cover synopsis ends by touting the movie’s “heart-stopping final moment” is… I don’t know, ironic? Or maybe just stupid? No Country for Old Men is several things at once — a dusty ensemble elegy for simpler times, a neo-western, and a relentless, stalking psycho-killer picture — but its famously contemplative ending (more on that in a bit) isn’t a conventional capper by any stretch of the imagination. Irrespective of its box office gross (it made $74 million domestically), to try to sell this movie as a “super-charged action thriller” (another lame-brained quote from the DVD cover text) to folks who haven’t yet seen it is to simply set everyone up for confusion and potential disappointment, if only based on expectation. Just sell the many things that it is, and let that be enough.

The winner of four Academy Awards (for Best Picture, Best Directors, Best Adapted Screenplay and Best Supporting Actor, for Javier Bardem), No Country for Old Men was also nominated for four more Oscars, and features achingly beautiful cinematography from Roger Deakins as well as a sparsely used score from composer Carter Burwell’s that summons the feelings of a distant roar of thunder — a thin string of vague, atmospheric discomfort until, finally, full-fledged menace suddenly overtakes you. That’s in keeping with the overall tone of the movie, actually — at once the most ambitious and reserved Coen brothers’ picture in some time.

Violence and mayhem erupt in the parched scrubland and panoramic skies of West Texas, a land dominated by beiges and greys. While out hunting one afternoon, cud-chewing Llewelyn Moss (Josh Brolin, above) stumbles on a suitcase containing $2 million dollars, and the site of drug deal gone very bad. Fleeing with the money and sending his girlfriend Carla Jean (Kelly Macdonald) off for safety, Moss finds himself stalked relentlessly by Anton Chigurh (Bardem, eerie and mesmerizing), an unstoppable sociopathic killer with a pageboy ‘do and chilling, thousand-yard stare.

A hired gun who takes his task very, very personally, Chigurh, who could well be an even more demented cousin of Bobby Peru, has no qualms at all with violence, and leaves a bloody trail in his wake while searching to recover the cash. As Moss scrambles to hang on to the money and his life, small-town sheriff Ed Tom Bell (Tommy Lee Jones), a taciturn third-generation lawman, closes in on both men, but wonders what he’s gotten himself into. Meanwhile, fellow bounty hunter Carson Wells (Woody Harrelson — a tall, cool glass of water) tries to find Moss and convince him to turn over the money before Chigurh does away with his family.

The cast here is uniformly excellent, but the revelation of the movie, though, may be Brolin, who had quite a 2007 between American Gangster, In the Valley of Elah and Robert Rodriguez’s vibrant, fun Planet Terror portion of the misguided experiment that was Grindhouse. He’s the emotional heartbeat of this film — the character you’re most sympathetic to, and personally interested and invested in… unless perhaps you’re a retiree.

Jones’ character is hamstrung by the fact that he ducks in and out of the film more than Moss or Chigurh; if they’re the mouse and cat, respectively, he’s the old hound dog sitting on the backyard porch, trying to figure out a way to get down and catch up to both of them. Large swatches of the movie address his dissipating passion for his work, his worn-down weariness at having to confront evil. (“This is a mess, ain’t it, sheriff?” asks his junior deputy at the aforementioned outdoor crime scene, to which Bell replies in deadpan fashion, “If not, it’ll do ’til one arrives.”)

The first go-round, some of these passages might seem to slow the movie down a bit. But they actually give it a corresponding real-world starkness and depth that serves to counterbalance the inexorable march of Chigurh. This is most robustly embodied in the film’s finale, in which Bell recounts some dreams he’s recently had — dreams featuring his father. There’s a specificity of intent there, but Bell’s monologue of recollection is also about hope and the future, about recognizing a world outside of and independent from all the evil, familial acrimony and missed opportunity in the world (“And then I woke up…”), and choosing to live there. While more overt Iraq films have flailed at the theatrical box office (not the least of which Jones’ own In the Valley of Elah, written and directed by Paul Haggis) because Americans by and large don’t like to see on the big screen mirrored reflections of real life and/or what they’ve been seeing on the television news, in certain ways No Country for Old Men is very quietly, shrewdly and profoundly political. It’s a movie whose grace-note ending presages some of the hope attached to the presidential candidacy of Barack Obama. The arc of Bell’s character represents a typical independent American voter, from 2002 to 2007.

Housed in a regular Amray case in turn stored in a cardboard slipcover, No Country for Old Men is presented in 2.35:1 anamorphic widescreen, enhanced for 16×9 televisions, with a Dolby digital 5.1 surround sound audio track and optional French, English and Spanish subtitles. Along with a gallery of trailers, supplemental extras consist of a trio of featurettes, running around 40 minutes in total, and pieced together from the same interview sessions with cast and crew. The first, a more general making-of overview, charts all the ins and outs of production. Another featurette examines working with the Coens, and includes some amusing anecdotes about their working methods. Finally, “Diary of a Country Sheriff” offers up a more thematic and slightly esoteric view of the film itself, using the character of Bell and the movie’s geography to give it some contextual mooring. Oh, and there’s also a six-minute striptease lesson from Tommy Lee Jones… just kidding. A (Movie) B+ (Disc)

Taking its title from a lyric in “Dancing in the Streets,” popularized by Martha and the Vandellas, the three-disc DVD set Don’t Forget the Motorcity (it pains me to type that as one word — it’s like punching the nitpicker in me in the face) offers up a jaw-dropping, treasure chest-like collection of studio promotional videos from the 1970s, ’80s and ’90s. For fans of the catchy Motown sound, it’s an hours-long trip back in time.

The impetus behind this labor-of-love project was producer Ian Levine’s love of the Motown sound, from when he was about 10 years old. By the age of 14 he’d collected every British Motown release, and after a huge run of hits in the 1980s, he went to Detriot and Los Angeles, and recorded over a hundred different artists who were signed to the Motown label in the 1960s and ’70s. The result was a staggering total of over 800 songs, roughly an eighth of which appear here. Sadly, more than half these artists are no longer with us, but this priceless footage remains — much of it never before seen prior to the release of this DVD.

The artist roster is impressive, but most of all deep, eschewing a lot of the obvious hit-makers for singers like C.P. Spencer, Frank Wilson, Frances Nero, Sammy Ward, The Elgins. Big-ticket draws like The Supremes (who offer up “Crazy ‘Bout the Guy”), Mary Wells, the aforementioned Martha Reeves, and The Contours are here, but more as part of the flavoring than the main ingredient. Mary Wilson’s catchy “Oooh Child” is a definite highlight, and The Vandellas’ “Nowhere to Run” will always get me on my feet. Edwin Starr —
who probably has the most songs here, with four — contributes an exceptionally
smooth version of “Back Street,” as well “Where Is the Sound,” “I Have
Faith in You” and “Darling Darling Baby.” Frankie Gaye’s “My Brother” is an emotional cut, and I also quite enjoyed Vee McDonald’s “You’re My Loveline” and The Lovetones’ “Fire Alarm.” Overall, in aggregate, this footage captures the magic of a long-gone era — it’s music to make your feet tap, your hair tingle and your fingers snap. The high feel-good factor makes one feel like they’re driving down the Pacific Coast Highway on a warm, carefree summer’s day, with only good friends and fond memories as their companions.

Housed in a regular Amray case with a snap-hinge tray which holds two of the discs on reverse sides, the three-disc, region-free set runs a whopping 360 minutes in total, and comes with a paper insert that celebrates the artists on display. There are otherwise unfortunately no extras, which is a shame, given the doubtlessly fascinating anecdotes attached to such an undertaking by Levine. To purchase the DVD via Amazon, click here. B+ (Concert) C- (Disc)

Launched in 1997 and having just kicked off its 12th season on Comedy Central, Trey Parker and Matt Stone’s South Park remains perhaps the most freewheeling, irreverent and consistently anarchic half-hour of comedy on the small screen, certainly since the dissolution of Chappelle’s Show. While other series (Queer Duck, for instance) may be more outré in their conception or framing, South Park comes by its outrageousness more legitimately, if that makes sense. The entire raison d’etre of the series is the slaughter of sacred cows. (Well, that and the dissemination of scatological jokes.) If further proof is required, one only need submit to Imaginationland — originally presented last season as part of a three-episode arc, and now available as a feature-length, uncensored DVD with all-new material added in.

Imaginationland opens with all the South Park kids trying to capture a leprechaun that Cartman swears he has seen. In fact, Cartman has a $10 bet with Kyle that if said leprechaun does exist, Kyle then has to suck Cartman’s balls. Everyone is astonished when it turns out not to be another case of Cartman’s exaggeration or lying. The leprechaun escapes, though, and some of the boys of South Park are transported to the magical realm of Imaginationland, where all the characters of fiction cavort in a brightly colored gumdrop heaven. Circumstances are dire, though — Stan, Kyle, Jimmy, Kenny and Butters find themselves in Imaginationland just as terrorists launch an attack that unleashes all of mankind’s most evil characters — a legion of nasty, bloodthirsty villains that includes Darth Maul, storm troopers, the Big Bad Wolf, a marauding Alien, Jason Voorhies, Freddy Krueger, Frankenstein, etcetera.

With the world’s imaginations spinning out of control, the government prepares to nuke Imaginationland — and thus put an end to all imagination — in an effort to quell the chaos. Racing against time to prevent total nuclear annihilation, the citizens of Imaginationland realize their only hope of salvation lies with the unlikeliest of heroes: Butters. Cartman, on the other hand, couldn’t care less about the impending apocalypse; he just wants his balls sucked. After seeking a court order to uphold the legitimacy of his signed contract bet with Kyle, Cartman sets out on a Jack Bauer-style quest of tunnel-visioned justice and retribution, following Kyle — who, along with Stan, has been detained by the government in an attempt to help contact Butters — to extreme lengths to impose the terms of their agreement.

The show’s spoof of the questing-hero plot machinations of dramatic serials like 24 and Battlestar Galactica is airtight, and as with the more politically trenchant South Park episodes, the notion that terrorists most win only when we cede them permanent space in our heads is a worthy, if debatable, leaping off point for satirical exploration. Likewise, the single-mindedness of Cartman’s efforts at subjugating Kyle is a brilliantly lewd (if perhaps off-putting, to some) encapsulation of certainly his ego-centric, maniacal personality, as well as to a certain extent the entire macho world of testosteronized adolescence.

Housed in a white Amray case with a giant, text-free portrait of a rampaging Manbearpig (more on this in a moment) on the back cover and an open-front cardboard slipcover, Imaginationland is presented in full screen. A pair of two-minute, black-and-white storyboards chart the progress of the episode’s animation, and executive producers Parker and Stone also sit for an audio commentary track that’s a much deeper and more substantive offering than their typical episodic mini-commentaries on the seasonal DVD sets of the series. While they joke around some, indicating that the show’s bumper music will play whenever lawyers deem it necessary to block out defamatory content for which Comedy Central could be sued, the pair also talk (semi-) seriously about the issues at the core of the show, and admit that they strongly considered using the idea as the basis for a second South Park feature film. They also talk about the front-loaded production value and work schedule (the first episode got a lot of extra time and attention), and point out some of the dialogue content trims in the project dictated by television, including a portion in which some of the villains talk about raping children in front of their parents.

Also included on the disc are two bonus episodes from past seasons whose characters play an active role in Imaginationland — “Manbearpig,” about Al Gore’s “super-serial” obsession with the so-named mythical creature, and the scathingly hilarious “Woodland Critter Christmas,” an earnestly narrated tale in which Stan stumbles upon a group of chipper forest animals and
helps them build a manger for
their savior child, only to discover that the critters are actually Satanists, and he
just paved the way for 10,000 years of darkness and the return of the
(woodland) Antichrist. These are nice inclusions, but the release undeniably does feel a bit thin, especially for those who might already have the seasonal DVD sets containing the two bonus episodes. Still, it’s hard to push for supplemental extras that simply don’t exist for an episodic creation like this. To purchase the DVD, click here. A- (Show) B (Disc)

Very much reminiscent and of a piece with fellow non-fiction extreme-skiing flick First Descent, director Mark Obenhaus’ Steep is an engaging documentary look at thrill-seeking slope masters and legends. Powered by legitimately breathtaking cinematography, this streamlined flick serves as an ample, exhilarating showcase for the world’s best freestyle skiers, who go beyond their dreams in conquering some of the craziest, near-vertical runs ever faced.

From the sheer cliffs of Grand Teton and the treachery of Chamonix France to the untouched Alaskan peaks of Valdez, these hardcore skiers sacrifice their lives for a thrill, but what a thrill it is. Legends Jean-Marc Boivin, Pierre Tardivel, Anselme Baud and Patrick Vallencant, among others, are all captured in stunning period footage, and a well-communicated historical overview of freestyle, downhill extreme skiing highlights both just how much of a personal endeavor this pastime was before it evolved into something more approaching a sport. The big sell here, though, is of course just the imagery on display, and the fantastically beautiful photography of some of the most magnificent mountain peaks on the globe — along with the requisite devastating avalanches and fatal spills — deliver plenty of gape-mouthed drama. There’s also a slight environmental bent to the picture, as several of the skiers talk about how climate change conditions have rendered Chamonix impossible to ski nowadays.

Housed in a regular Amray case, Steep comes presented in 1.78:1 anamorphic widescreen, with an English language Dolby digital 5.1 audio track, and optional English and French subtitles. Bonus features kick off with an audio commentary track with director Obenhaus and skiers Andrew McLean and Ingrid Backstrom. There’s also a 13-minute Q&A session from the movie’s 2007 AFI Fest presentation, where McLean fields a question and talks about skiing on all seven continents. The best bonus feature, though, is a lean yet still superb 17-minute making-of featurette which assays the astonishing means by which Obenhaus and his crew captured some of the skiing footage. For back-country work, this meant laying in cable-cams with ridge-to-ridge wire, a process captured with base-camp shots from helicopters, which were also used to freight in all the production infrastructure. Wrapping things up are two-and-a-half minutes of photo montages, plus a March 2006 interview with Doug Coombs from La Grave, France. Also included are preview trailers for My Kid Could Paint That, The Natural, Across the Universe, Persepolis, Talladega Nights and five other Sony DVD releases. To purchase the movie via Amazon, click here. B (Movie) B (Disc)

I didn’t get around to a proper review of Things We Lost in the Fire last autumn, when it opened theatrically, though it wasn’t for lack of admiration for the movie. I guess I just knew, in my heart of hearts, that it was a certain commercial non-starter, and when Benicio Del Toro’s mesmerizing lead performance didn’t critically catch fire en masse and spark much awards talk, I unfortunately let it kind of drift away. My shameful mistake, really.

Written by Allan Loeb and directed by Susanne Bier, the movie centers on Audrey Burke (Halle Berry) who, after her husband Brian (David Duchovny) dies unexpectedly, develops and nurtures a symbiotic relationship of need and guilt with an old childhood friend of Brian’s, a recovering drug addict named Jerry Sunborne (Benico Del Toro). For reasons even she can’t fully articulate, Audrey invites Jerry to move out of the flophouse in which he’s staying, and come live with she and her two children. Still wounded by their dad’s sudden departure, 10-year-old Harper (Alexis Llewellyn) and 6-year-old Dory (Micah Berry) latch onto Jerry, and he to them. Jerry even gets help and a job offer from one of Brian’s friends (John  Carroll Lynch), and strikes up a casual acquaintanceship with a fellow recovering addict (Alison Lohman) whom he crosses paths with in a 12-step meeting. And then… other stuff happens — big, yes, but mostly small. That logline suffices, since Things We Lost in the Fire is chiefly about coming back to life after loss, the unlikely blooms that develop after fields have been burned low.

It sounds weird, I realize, but one tangential, if esoteric, way to analyze/praise Things We Lost in the Fire is to say that it feels like an adaptation of one of Bier’s superlative Danish films (Family Matters, Open Hearts, Brothers, After the Wedding). It’s a movie that has the same intimacy and disarming honesty as much of her previous work, and that’s how easy and form-fitting the union of material and helmer feels.

The fractured structure of the film works to its advantage in that we don’t see “user Jerry” early in the movie; when he inevitably backslides (this is what addicts do, after all), it’s almost more of a shock than it should be. There’s not much here narratively that’s formally shocking, though it is intriguing to witness the movie indulge Audrey’s foregrounded resentment and anger toward Jerry to the hearty degree that it does. This is a bit of a change-up from the films of weepy, lean-on-me reconciliation that we’ve come to expect from Hollywood, and something I appreciated even if I found the character of Audrey still a bit of a cipher. Chiefly, though, Bier has the great benefit of Del Toro, whose eyes convey the force of an inner turmoil. There’s a whole other off-screen story in those eyes, and Jerry’s tale, while an uncomplicated one (a smart guy who dabbled in drugs and quickly got in over his head), is what gives this movie its pull. We witness how fragile and slippery the nature of recovery truly is, as well as how helping others heals ourselves.

Housed in a regular Amray case with snap-shut hinges, Things We Lost in the Fire comes presented in anamorphic widescreen, with its theatrical trailer and 12 minutes of previews for other Paramount titles, including Margot at the Wedding, Into the Wild, Beowulf and The Kite Runner. A collection of seven deleted scenes runs about nine-and-a-half minutes in total, including one big sequence that feels like it should’ve been left in — a scene where Audrey gives Jerry the cabinet she was working on before her husband’s death, and confesses an argument in which she believed him to have stolen money out of her car. The only other supplemental bonus feature is a 20-minute “discussion” about the movie with interview snippets from all of its principal players, including Berry, Duchovny, Del Toro and Bier, as well as writer Loeb and producers Sam Mercer and Sam Mendes. There are plenty of insights and interesting tidbits herein (Berry talks about trying to find “different levels of shock” for her character, which I’d argue that perhaps she doesn’t do), but the Achilles heel of this piece is that too many clips from the movie — far more than necessary for illustrative purposes — are interspersed between the interviews, ruining any delicate sense of flow or momentum. To purchase the DVD via Amazon, click here. B+ (Movie) B- (Disc)

At first glance, Furnace looks a lot like just about any other anonymous, single-titled, independently produced down-market action thriller, especially given the fact that its cast consists of Ja Rule, Tom Sizemore, Michael Paré and Danny Trejo. It’s got a hearty injection of possessed-machinery-gone-wrong horror, though, making for strong (if wholly undesired) recollections of 1995’s righteously awful The Mangler. Directed by William Butler (Madhouse), Furnace is a mash-up of copped moves, familiar characters and generally underwhelming special effects and execution — a combination which overwhelms the mostly sincere efforts of a game cast.

While investigating a series of deaths inside a maximum-security prison, Detective Michael Turner (Paré) uncovers a nightmare more threatening than the hardened criminals serving time — a group that includes Terrence (Ja Rule) and Fury (Trejo) — or the rogue prison guard, Frank Miller (Sizemore), who runs drugs for the inmates. Behind the walls, you see, lies a supernatural force hellbent on revenge — making for a rising body count that matches the rising temperature.

Furnace claims to be inspired by real events, but the set-ups and the movie’s dialogue, penned by Butler and co-writers Aaron Strongoni and Scott Aronson, are all of the wildly signposted and underlined emotion variety. Production designer Chad Keith does what he can to mask the low budget, but Furnace simply doesn’t have the capital to create a convincing backdrop, and Butler doesn’t downwardly adjust his vision or visual plan accordingly. The result is a movie with a few pockets of watchability, but also some real howler-type sequences.

Furnace comes presented in 16×9 widescreen, with an English language 4.1 surround sound audio track, and is housed in a regular Amray case in turn stored in a cardboard slipcover. In addition to an 80-second trailer for the movie, there are also previews for a quartet of other flicks, and a modest collection of six deleted scenes. By far the best supplemental extra, though, is a collection of cast interviews with Sizemore, Trejo and Ja Rule. The latter two segments run four-and-a-half and 14 minutes, respectively, and feature static interstitial cards indicating the offscreen questioner’s query, like “What is your roll [sic] in the film?” Sizemore’s 17-minute sit-down, though, is truly fascinating, partly because he’s totally candid and honest about his recent legal and substance abuse problems, and partly because he still seems a missed bout of medication or two away from snapping, as when he notes, gesturing offscreen, “There was a time when people would make too much noise, like this, and I’d get angry, but that’s OK…” There’s also a one-minute Easter egg bonus, accessible via the main screen, of the little girl, in crispy make-up, who plays the embodiment of the haunted furnace. For more information on the movie, click here. C- (Movie) C+ (Disc)

Upon its release in 1962, film critic Pauline Kael rightly called The Manchurian Candidate perhaps the most sophisticated political satire ever made. That by turns its frightening, surreal and slyly satirical story holds up — here a bit more so than in Jonathan Demme’s 2004 remake, starring Denzel Washington, Liev Schreiber and Meryl Streep — is a testament largely to Richard Condon’s novel and George Axelrod’s screenplay adaptation. The printed word remains the thing. Of course, director John Frankenheimer’s skill with a scene didn’t hurt either — his staging of the dual tea club/Communist brainwashers garden party remains a classic.

Frank Sinatra’s star turn as distressed soldier Bennett Marco, meanwhile, is much remarked upon, but for me alternately stiff and mannered. (I’d blocked from memory, too, Sinatra’s tiger-fist martial arts rootdown.) Instead, it’s Laurence Harvey, as programmed solitaire player Raymond Shaw, who with his cool, deadpan state anchors The Manchurian Candidate, a film prescient for the manner in which it assays the perversion of the political process. Supplemental features on the film’s special edition DVD are anchored by two 14-minute interview segments with co-star Angela Lansbury and filmmaker William Friedkin, the latter of whom serves here as a loosely historical framer. (There are also two Easter egg tidbits from the special menus screen, accessed by scrolling to the right over the playing card.) Finally, rounding things out is an audio commentary track with Frankenheimer recorded prior to his death, as well as an adulatory, recycled eight-minute interview from the movie’s 1988 VHS release with tidbits from the filmmaker, writer Axelrod and Sinatra. To purchase the movie via Amazon, click here. A- (Movie) B (Disc)

The same reason that I could never be a habitual smoker is the same reason that I wouldn’t make a good big screen vampire.
This occurred to me while watching 30 Days of Night, the latest adapted entry in Hollywood’s favorite source material of the moment, the graphic novel. The film’s
vampires are really inefficient when one gets right down to it. After
all, if it’s blood one craves, why would you puncture a jugular, enjoy
only a quick pint (or less) in orgiastic fashion, and then simply leave
the body? This, to me, seems terribly wasteful — the genre equivalent
of lighting a cigarette and flipping it away or stubbing it out after a
quick, single drag. While 30 Days of Night doesn’t exactly encourage such pause
for thought, the fact that I had time to reflect on such matters is
indicative of how at least somewhat botched a rendering of a great
concept the movie is.

30 Days of Night
unfolds in the isolated northern town of Barrow, Alaska, 80 miles away
from the next closest civilized enclave. Each winter, as the title
hints, the icy burgh is plunged into a state of complete darkness that
lasts a full month. It’s a time of hunkered-down communal survival,
with liquor and beer taps turned off at the local bar in order to temper tempers.
Relishing this
free rein, a group of bloodthirsty vampires, led by Danny Huston,
arrive to take advantage of the situation by feeding on the helpless
residents. It’s up to Sheriff Eben Olemaun (Josh Hartnett), his estranged wife Stella (Melissa George) and an
ever-shrinking group of survivors to do everything they can to
last until the next daylight. If this means going Anne Frank and holing
up in an attic to much bickering discord, so be it.

Penned by Steve Niles (the co-author of the original graphic novel), Stuart Beattie and Brian Nelson, 30 Days of Night is directed, improbably enough, by David Slade, who most recently made the indie two-hander Hard Candy. As in that film, Slade here trades heartily in tight close-ups, though of
course dialing down the color saturation to play up the surrounding
darkness. Early on, this tack suits the material, as the movie is a quickened-pace, Dawn of the Dead-style
re-imagining of pure, streamlined genre material. Vampires
swoop around in quick bursts and speak in a subtitled dialect of
phonetic clicks and high-pitched shrieks; you can see why the town’s inhabitants are crapping their pants. Much more an exercise in
horror than action, the movie dashes through its moral quandary
checklist — a violent attack by an infected kid, the assisted suicide
of another infected person — and gets some of its ya-yas out via the
group assault of a young woman used, to no avail, as bait to try to
lure humans out from hiding.

Diehard
vampire aficionados and source text fans will appreciate much of the
film, and it definitely plays better in the intimate confines of one’s own home, as well as earning points for a bleak ending that doesn’t
try to put an unrealistic shine on things. Still, 30 Days of Night remains essentially a somewhat
shrug-inducing vessel of unfulfilled potential, consisting of solidly
executed attack passages followed by great stretches of relative
tedium, or at least overly familiar genre dawdling (the waylaid
re-supply trip, the infected survivor). The great potential of its concept never takes full bloom,
partially because of wanly sketched supporting characters, but chiefly
because the restrictive conditions of space and passing time are
communicated in such a fuzzy, haphazard fashion.

Housed in a regular Amray case with a cardboard slipcover, 30 Days of Night is presented in 2.40:1 anamorphic widescreen on DVD, with matching English and French language 5.1 Dolby digital audio tracks and optional English, French and Spanish subtitles. Producer Rob Tapert — who sounds a bit like Wallace Shawn, actually — sits for a feature-length audio commentary track with Hartnett and George, a pairing that is good in theory (actors plus a behind-the-line guy) and practice, as they exhibit a warm rapport with one another that stands in stark contrast to the chilly weather on display. Among the anecdotes shared is the fact that Slade originally wanted to cast Forest Whitaker in Mark Boone Junior’s role, and that George is… a former rollerskating derby champion?! Hartnett also points out the scenes in which he is noticeably sick, the result, he claims, of a globe-spanning flight to the film’s New Zealand set straight from another production.

The big bonus feature selling point comes in the form of eight top-notch, behind-the-scenes featurettes, which can be played separately or together, at a total running time of around 50 minutes. Shot in a loose, very off-the-cuff style and compiled in a manner to at least partially mimic the movie’s comic book roots, these segments cover all manner of detail with regards to the movie, kicking off with a look at pre-production, before Slade, Tapert and company decamp to New Zealand and an abandoned equestrian facility to mock up their version of the town of Barrow. The interviews herein are brief, but informative, and well interspersed with edifying information that illustrates what’s being discussed. Stunt coordinator Allan Poppleton talks about wire work on one of the roof jumps in the movie, while — perhaps most interestingly — we glimpse production designer Paul Austerberry’s work with production illustrators and model makers. Though the production shot “day for night” and worked with interiors for as much of its production as possible, an infusion of funds for a car chase and fiery finale dictated five weeks of night shoots (and an accompanying 20,000 cups of coffee!), which is amusingly captured in the last behind-the-scenes segment. Slade, who at one point mutters, “Help me die!” seemingly only half-jokingly, evidences plenty of wear and tear, but really gets into showing his vampires how to strut their stuff, and has nothing but high praise for the talented base of creature performers that the Lord of the Rings series has left in New Zealand. Apart from the aforementioned commentary track, this ample slate of featurettes and the savvy inclusion of a half-hour episode of the forthcoming Japanese anime release Blood+, the only other supplemental feature is a vast collection of preview trailers — mostly genre product like the Resident Evil flicks and (gulp)  the awful-looking Zombie Strippers, starring Robert Englund and Jenna Jameson — but also other Sony films like Across the Universe. C (Movie) B+ (Disc)