An overlong and wildly uneven film and yet still in some ways one of the more brutally effective films of horror maestro Dario
Argento’s latter-day canon, The Stendhal
Syndrome stars the director’s daughter, Asia Argento, as a policewoman
tracking down a violent serial killer and rapist. While trading chiefly in procedural
elements not typically a part of Argento’s more explicit zombie horror flicks,
the film still manages to showcase the filmmaker’s sensory flair and great touch
in eliciting queasiness through stabbing shock.

The Pianist’s Thomas Kretschmann)
through the streets of Italy.
Along the way, she falls victim to a strange, hallucinatory phenomenon which
causes her to lose her mind and memory in front of powerful works of art (above).
Trapped in this twilight realm, Anna plunges deeper and deeper into sexual
psychosis, until she comes to know the killer’s madness more intimately than
she ever imagined.

The Stendhal Syndrome
takes what might be characterized as a few Hitchcockian elements — an imperiled
woman, a strange psychological impairment, psychosexual perversion and mirrored
identities — and places them in a blender. It’s obvious that the movie wants to
also summon forth, in its own way, elements of The Silence of the Lambs and the mid-1980s oeuvre of Shannon Tweed,
but the execution here is merely so-so for vast swatches of the movie’s
two-hour running time, and the fairer Argento, just 20 when The Stendhal Syndrome was filmed over a
decade ago, is a bit too young to pull off the necessary gravitas of a seasoned
police inspector. Anna’s hallucination sequences employ some relatively low-tech
digital effects work, but it works in a way that’s not entirely corny. That said, there’s too much wild overreaching for parallelism here for things to cohere on a structural level. Yet while it doesn’t measure up to Suspiria or Inferno, moments in the film retain papa Argento’s visceral pop
and effectiveness, so much so that certain scenes from The Stendahl Syndrome stuck with me in lingering fashion long
after its initial viewing.

Spread out over two discs and housed in a clear Amray case
with cardboard slipcover, the movie is presented in 1.66:1 widescreen, enhanced
for 16×9 televisions. There are five audio options, three in English (6.1 DTS-ES,
which requires a DTS decoder, as well as Dolby surround 2.0 and Dolby digital 5.1
surround EX. The set’s second disc is full of supplemental extras,
including interviews with Argento, special effects director Sergio Stivaletti, assistant
director Luigi Cozzi, production designer Massimo Antonello Geleng and “psychological
consultant” Graziella Magherini, whose book on the titular condition inspired
Argento to tackle the film.
To purchase the movie via Amazon, click here. C+ (Movie) B (Disc)

High-toned, well-read femininity is on the rebound, as the recent theatrical
release of Becoming Jane and The Jane Austen Book Club both showcase.
And two of literature’s favorite sisters are reunited with WGBH Boston Video’s
release of the superb The Brontë
Collection, a special DVD packaging of two classic romances produced for
the award-winning Masterpiece Theatre series.

Kicking things off is a lavish version of Charlotte Brontë’s
classic novel, Jane Eyre. After a
wretched childhood that leaves her yearning for new experiences and wider
vistas, both figuratively and literally, the orphaned title character (newcomer
Ruth Wilson, delivering a fantastic performance) accepts a governess position
at Thornfield Hall, where she tutors a lively French girl named Adele (Cosima
Littlewood). Jane soon finds herself falling in love with the brooding master
of the house, the passionate Edward Rochester (Toby Stephens, of Die Another Day), and though she gradually
wins his heart, they must overcome the dark secrets of her past before they can
find happiness.

When Jane saves Rochester
from an eerie fire, she begins to suspect that there are many mysteries behind
the walls of Thornfield Hall. Her fears are confirmed when Rochester’s
own secret past is revealed, destroying her chance for happiness, and forcing
Jane to flee Thornfield. Penniless and hungry, she finds shelter and friendship
in the form of a kind clergyman and his family. Costarring Francesca Annis (Wives and Daughters), Lorraine
Ashbourne, Andrew Buchan and Arthur Cox, among others, this sensual new version
of Brontë’s classic novel is modern and moody — nicely directed by Susanna
White, who previously brought a deft touch to 2005’s serial Bleak House and scored a deserved Emmy
nomination here for her efforts.

Sister Emily Brontë’s Wuthering Heights, meanwhile, is another timeless
tale, read in high schools across the country. This 1998 production, helmed by David
Skynner, breaks new ground by covering the complete story of a love so powerful
that it reaches beyond the grave. Orla Brady stars as one of literature’s most
controversial heroines, the spirited but tragic Cathy. Robert Cavanah plays
Heathcliff, the dark stranger whose love for Cathy leads him to take terrible
revenge on anyone who comes between them.

Nothing is known of Heathcliff’s mysterious past when kindly
Mr. Earnshaw (Matthew Macfayden) adopts him into his family, but his daughter
Cathy sees in him a soul very much like her own. They are divided by birth,
class and Cathy’s jealous brother, but nothing can break the bond between them —
not even when Cathy marries the wealthy gentleman Edgar Linton (Crispin
Bonham-Carter, cousin of Helena). Neil
McKay’s adaptation captures all of the windswept love and foreboding of the source
text, and Brady and Cavanah deliver riveting performances.

Presented in full-screen, both Wuthering Heights and Jane Eyre come housed in individual slimline snap cases, and are in
turn jointly housed in an attractive, single cardboard slipcase. Jane Eyre’s bonus features include interviews
with the cast and crew, a small collection of deleted scenes, hour-long audio
commentaries for two of the episodes, and trailers from the program’s original
British broadcast on BBC. To order any DVD release from WGBH Boston Video,
including The Brontë Collection, phone
(800) 949-8670 or simply click here. B+ (Movies) B- (Disc)

From the producers of Lost and Alias, and the screenwriter of City
of Angels and For Love of the Game
comes a contemporary, air-quote heartwarming ensemble about a group of
supportive friends in various stages of romantic relationships and friendships,
this time set in Los Angeles. Quip-laden
sludginess ensues, with lots of attractively made-up people to gaze dreamily upon.

7th Heaven’s Barry Watson), the only
unattached member of his clique. Around him are the newly married Nicole and
Angelo, the seemingly happily married Dave and Deena and the recently engaged
Marjorie and Adam. But what gives with Brian? Of this close-knit group of
friends, everyone else has paired off, while he’s the last bachelor standing.
At 34, regardless of his run of bad luck in matters of the heart, Brian still
holds out hope that one day he’ll open the door and be blinded by love. However
questions about his fate have been popping up more frequently in his head. The
most pressing question is — one that only he can answer — whether all of his
problems could stem from the fact that he’s harboring a secret crush on the
picture-perfect Marjorie (Sarah Lancaster), his best friend’s girl? Lawyer Adam
(Matthew Davis), Brian’s best friend since childhood, was going to break up
with Marjorie, a pediatric surgeon, but found himself proposing to her instead.
Their busy lifestyles leave them little time to plan their upcoming wedding
and, oddly enough, that seems to have given them more time to re-evaluate
whether they’re indeed doing the right thing.

Meanwhile, Brian’s fortysomething sister, Nicole (Rosanna
Arquette), and her boy-toy husband Angelo Varzi (Raoul Bova) are trying hard to
start a family, but something’s not right. Nic’s high-stress work as a record
executive and Angelo’s fledgling acting career have created some anxiety in the
marriage. Now they’re torn between conceiving a child the old-fashioned way or
using modern medicine to speed up the process. Dave (Rick Gomez), who runs a
videogame business with Brian called Zap Monkey, is married to stay-at-home mom
Deena (Amanda Detmer); they’ve been together for 13 years, have three little
girls and a lackluster sex life. This prompts the frustrated and unconventional
Deena to suggest to the more content Dave that they consider having an open
marriage. Like seemingly all married people with their single friends, Deena
and Dave can’t wait for Brian to join their “club,” though they’re not exactly
sure why.

What About Brian
puts forth a premise in which the details are everything, but there’s not a
strong enough, singular creative vision behind the show to give it any extra “oomph,”
something that’s apparent from listening to one of creator and show runner Dana
Stevens’ audio commentary tracks, in which mention is made of three different
versions of the pilot episode. These problems abate and lay dormant for a
while, but never completely disappear; certain plot strands, like Dave and Deena’s open marriage, seem just flat-out stupid. Tone becomes an issue again particularly
in the second season, which careens all over the place. The first season finds
Brian holding out for true love, and pining over Marjorie to such a degree that
you wonder why he doesn’t just walk around with a boom-box, blasting “Layla.” The
show’s aborted second season finds Brian heading down an altogether different
road, no doubt courtesy of some get-on-with-it-already studio notes: life in
the dating fast-lane. A lot of characters wander in for small episode arcs — also
starring are Tiffani Thiessen (she ditched the Amber), Jason George, Krista Allen, Amanda
Foreman, Jessica Szohr, Marguerite Moreau and even Stacy Keibler,
among others — but the ploy reads like desperation, really, throwing diversionary
character strands at a wall hoping something will stick.

A nicely packaged set, What
About Brian: The Complete Series contains 24 one-hour episodes (one of
which was never domestically aired) spread out over five DVDs. It’s presented
in 1.78:1 anamorphic widescreen, with a Dolby digital 5.1 surround sound audio
track, and optional French and Spanish subtitles. Supplemental extras come in
the form of the aforementioned audio commentary track, plus cast interviews and
behind-the-scenes footage that speculates as to what would have happened to the
series’ characters in a third season. C (Series) B (Disc)

Lantana director
Ray Lawrence mines the source text of a Raymond Carver short story — one of the
same strands that made up 1993’s Short Cuts,
fans of Robert Altman
will certainly remember — for Jindabyne,
a so-so melodrama that skates by on the focused emotional investment of its starring
leads, Academy Award nominee Laura Linney and Gabriel Byrne.

the chief
problem is one of scattershot focus and stalled dramatic device; this movie is
serial dawdler, and it wrecks much of the accrued downhill momentum that might
otherwise build up in its favor. Both pros, Linney and Byrne give us delicate
shades of how things have gone astray, even if the rest of the movie overcooks Carl,
Rocco and Billy’s relationships with their significant others. Jindabyne was highly praised in its
native country, where it was nominated for nine Australian Film Institute
Awards, include Best Film, Best Actor and Actress, Best Director, Best Adapted
Screenplay and Best Cinematography. As is, though, it remains just a bit too distant
and overdrawn to succeed as the tone poem of heartache that the premise and
evocative staging suggests.

Jindabyne comes housed
in a regular Amray case, and is presented in 2.35:1 anamorphic widescreen, with
a Dolby digital 5.1 soundtrack, and optional French and Spanish subtitles. The
DVD features a small clutch of deleted scenes that runs around six minutes in
total, as well as a hearty collection of trailers, but the main supplemental bonus
is a solid, half-hour making-of featurette that delves into production choices
big and small.
To order the movie via Amazon, click here. C (Movie) B+ (Disc)

The British-produced “Under Review” series has cranked
out some great looks at musical artists, and some snoozers as well. Because
they’re unauthorized productions, there’s oftentimes a refreshing clarity to
the unvarnished opinion they can express; the downside of this fact is that
sometimes there really needs to a licensed audio or video clip to ground the
discussion taking place. So it’s a mixed bag, really.

Keith
Richards: Under Review falls into the camp of solid entries in the series,
mainly because of the innate curiosity factor surrounding its subject — Rolling
Stones guitarist, walking bag of pharmaceutical contradictions, and now Pirates of the Caribbean
costar and inhaler of his father’s ashes.
Maybe it’s because Richards looks for all the world like a living
(well,
arguably), breathing (again, same) version of one of those garish
puppets from Genesis’
“Land of Confusion” video — a grinning, Cheshire-cat badass who’s
exhausted all
of his nine lives and then some, and yet still somehow keeps on
ticking.
Whatever it is, casual music fans and diehard Stones enthusiasts alike
all find this guy fascinating.

This disc is basically a glorified clip-fest,
but it does tap relatively deeply into the vault for rare and classic musical
performances both from the Stones and Richards himself. The charismatic axeman’s
pivotal influences are recounted and assayed, and snippets of live and/or
studio recordings of “Satisfaction,” “Jumping Jack Flash,” “Brown Sugar,” “Tumbling
Dice,” “Start Me Up” and many others give this title a charged energy all its
own. Offering up analytical contributions are a panel of esteemed musical
experts that includes Richards biographers Alan Clayson and Kris Needs, Rolling
Stones biographer Robert Greenfield, former Stones techie Keith Altham,
celebrity guitar coach Wolf Marshall, original Stones member Dick Taylor, ex-Melody Maker journalist Chris Welch, Rolling Stone contributors Robert
Christgau and Anthony DeCurtis, and musical collaborator Bernie Worrall, among many
others. The tapestry of opinion and sheer volume of anecdotal value, then, carries
the day, even if a crisp portrait of Richards the man doesn’t quite emerge from
the haze.

Housed in a regular Amray case in turn
stored in a cardboard slipcover, Keith
Richards: Under Review
is presented on a region-free disc in a letterboxed 4×3
aspect ratio, with a stereo surround mix audio track. In aggregate the
program runs
just under 120 minutes, with supplemental material consisting of
contributor
biographies, a fairly detailed interactive trivia quiz about Richards
and a short
featurette in which aforementioned biographer Needs reminisces about
his
personal encounters with the human riff. To purchase the title via Amazon, click here.
B (Movie) B- (Disc)

Director Brad Anderson, who delivered credible budget thrills with Session 9 and The Machinist, takes the “Masters of Horror” franchise for a spin with Sounds Like, an effectively creepy tale of swallowed grief’s slow transmutation into insanity.

Chris Bauer (The Wire, The Devil’s Advocate) stars as Larry Pearce, a family man and call center supervisor for whom careful listening is a way of life. His days are spent monitoring hundreds of tech support phone conversations, his ultra-sensitive ears attuned to every nuance of voice and sound. When he loses his young son, however, Larry is shattered. Slowly, his sense of hearing becomes even further intensified, to the point of teeth-grinding distraction; even simple noises are magnified into a cacophony of torment. As Larry’s grasp on reality begins to loosen, he grows even more surly and resentful of his wife Brenda (Laura Margolis), who’s been dealing with their son’s death differently. Eventually the deafening clamor is all too much, and Larry slides headlong into shocking acts of violence.

Obviously the big narrative touchstones here are Edgar Allan Poe’s The Tell-Tale Heart and Gene Hackman’s The Conversation, and Anderson summons comparisons to these works favorably from a point of actual execution as well. His skill with sound design — roundly evidenced in particularly Session 9, but also on his episodic work on HBO’s The Wire — comes into play, and makes Larry’s dizzying predicament searingly real. There’s also a smart sense of when to parcel out the moments of shock or air-quote gore (squirmy maggots get some nice play), and when to merely let Bauer sell the distracted, slow-rising distress of this character. Sounds Like isn’t nearly as gory as many other entries in the “Masters of Horror” series, but it works very well within the established parameters of the anthology, and even on its own, if one isn’t familiar with the other hour-long movies. If the ending doesn’t pack a huge twist or reversal, it’s still well acted, well constructed and persuasively moody, auguring a successful return to theatrical feature films when/if Anderson gets the opportunity.

Housed in a regular Amray case in turn stored in a cardboard slipcover, Sounds Like is presented in 1.78:1 anamorphic widescreen, with superlative Dolby digital 5.1 surround sound and 2.0 surround sound audio tracks. Anderson submits to an audio commentary track in which he amply demonstrates his thoughtfulness and preparedness. He has all sorts of anecdotes about the movie’s purposefully ambiguous production design, composer Anton Sanko’s chamber quartet, non-contemporary score and the mad-dash, one week location scouting that preceded the film’s Vancouver shoot.

Thirteen minutes of cast and crew interviews are wisely preceded by a spoiler warning advising those who haven’t yet watched the movie to turn back, and it’s here that series producer Mick Garris shrewdly assays Sounds Like as the story of “what happens when repressed sadness becomes madness,” and one of the best in the “Masters of Horror” series. There’s also a five-and-a-half-minute featurette on the sound effects work in the movie; here, effects supervisor Howard Berger has some interesting insights and cinematographer Attila Szalay offers up some important new advice he learned firsthand on the production: “Backlight maggots!” Rounding things out are a photo gallery and a DVD-ROM copy of the movie’s screenplay. A- (Movie) B+ (Disc)

She’s now shedding the robes of diva-dom, though it may be
too late to resuscitate her career as a mainstream, dependably bankable leading
lady. Still, all those who doubt the acting chops of Jennifer Lopez should check out not
only Bob Rafelson’s Blood and Wine
and Steven Soderbergh’s Out of Sight
as rebutting evidence for the defense, but also her groundbreaking, lead role
debut, 1997’s Selena, in which the
erstwhile arm candy of Ben Affleck and Puff Daddy vividly brings singer Selena
Quintanilla Pérez to life.

My Family, the forthcoming Bordertown), the film is at its core essentially
a melodramatic tribute biopic, but it’s also a legitimately stirring showcase for the young
Lopez, who was 27 when she made the movie. It centers on Tejano superstar
Selena, who at 23 was about to become a crossover sensation on the strength of
tender, mid-tempo ballads like “I Could Fall in Love” and “Dreaming of You.” Her
dreams were tragically cut short, however, when she was gunned down by a crazed
fan. While a good bit of the film is powered by an amiably whitewashed idealism
and optimism born of familial script approval, it’s Nava’s skill and Lopez’s mesmerizing
presence, however, that make Selena
worthwhile.

Academy Award nominee Edward James Olmos stars as Selena’s
father, Abraham Quintanilla, Jr., a dreamer who, along with his wife Marcela
(Constance Marie), nurtures his daughter as the vessel for his family’s
ambitions (but in not quite as scary a fashion as Joe Jackson), all against enormous
odds. Jon Seda stars as Chris Perez, a rebellious guitarist who joins the
family’s South Texas band and is captivated by Selena, in
time becoming her husband. Rounding out the cast are Jacob Vargas as Selena’s
brother, Abie, and Jackie Guerra as her sister Suzette; Lupe Ontiveros (As Good as It Gets), meanwhile, plays
the role of Yolanda Saldivar, the unhinged admirer who would eventually take
Selena’s life.

The film hits all its story beats in rather methodic
fashion, charting the upward trajectory of a girl who had the spirit to believe
in a dream and both the courage and support system to make it come true. Powered
by the voice of the real-life Selena, it’s the movie’s musical passages that most
connect, naturally. Unlike the recent El Cantante,
a biopic of popular salsa crooner Hector Lavoe starring Lopez and her
off-screen paramour, Marc Anthony, there’s not the need here to try to paint
the picture of an entire burgeoning “scene.” Selena is more tightly focused, and better off for it. Lopez,
meanwhile, captures her subject’s exuberance, to a degree that even neophytes
to the Tejano blend of traditional Latin, rock, R&B and pop influences can
still identify in a universal fashion with the joy she feels on stage.

Housed in a double Amray case with a glitzy cover, the 10th
anniversary, two-disc special edition DVD of Selena features, in a nice, 2.35 anamorphic widescreen
transfer, both the original version of the film (127 minutes) and an extended,
134-minute version, and comes with a Dolby 5.1 surround sound audio track, and
English, Spanish and French subtitles. A half-hour, clip-laden making-of featurette
kicks off the supplemental features, examining both the life of the real Selena
(via copious interview footage with her father) and her family’s involvement in
bringing her story to the screen. A clutch of deleted scenes follows, running
just under 12 minutes in total; most of these relate to small moments of
character shading, either travails of Selena’s early life or some trappings of
success related to her rise. There is also a 19-minute featurette that focuses
more specifically on Selena’s music and career, as well as a collection of brand
new interviews with Lopez and Selena’s family, as well as other cast and crew. While
an audio commentary track would have certainly been a nice inclusion, there’s
more than enough material here to warrant an upgrade for hardcore fans of the
title, and definitely merit a look for those unfamiliar with Selena. To purchase the movie via Amazon, click here. B- (Movie) B+ (Disc)

For a short time after first moving to Los
Angeles, I worked for a foreign-born producer who
shall now remain nameless. It was an eye-opening experience, watching this guy
turn over movies and stay just ahead of collections, surfing through stacks of bills
by flipping short-term profits from one project to the next. Taking a short-term
lease on a giant warehouse in downtown Los Angeles,
he would set up anywhere from six to eight movies at a time, shooting
back-to-back (-to-back, -to-back…), and incorporating both like-minded archival
and second unit footage into each project. Part shyster, part trash-heap
collagist, he would peddle his hearty genre wares back to European countries at
Cannes, MIPCOM and other cinematic
markets.

His artistic instincts were reliably awful, but in his own
way this producer was indulging in the sincerest form of flattery toward
super-low-budget indie producer Roger Corman (Rock and Roll High School, Death
Race 2000, Big Bad Mama), who
over the course of more than two decades would have a hand in the launch of
more than a couple significant Hollywood careers, and in doing so lay the
groundwork for guys like Lloyd Kaufman and Nelson Zigler. Now, the improbable
revisionist king-making of Corman continues with the special edition DVD
release of two more movies from his vault of over 50 years of filmmaking — the cult
classics The Intruder and Eat My Dust.

Eat My Dust,
couldn’t be more different — an action-comedy that tracks a young hero who
abandons innocence for a wild ride in a stolen race car. Fledgling
actor-director Ron Howard made a deal with the prince of junk-food cinema that
would forever alter the course of his career; Corman would produce Howard’s
feature directorial debut, Grand Theft
Auto, if Howard would star in his quirky car comedy. Written and directed
by Charles B. Griffith (Corman’s Little
Shop of Horrors), Eat My Dust is
the story of Hoover Niebold (Howard), a small-town teen destined to fade into
obscurity until he gets the guts to ask out the most popular girl in school
(Kathy O’Dare), who says she’ll only hitch up with him if he steals a
professional race car. He drops his innocence, snags the ride and the girl, and
naturally much automotive mayhem ensues. Notable for its brilliant, low budget,
hood-mounted camerawork, the movie still packs a decent action punch even if
its teen angst and stereotypical bumpkins now come off as cornpone.

Attractively packaged, both titles here come in regular
Amray cases, with cardboard slipcases, and are presented in 1.33:1 full screen
with relatively shallow Dolby digital 2.0 mono soundtracks, even though Eat My Dust’s outer cover touts a Dolby
digital 5.1 surround sound track. As far as supplemental material, The Intruder features a nice, if brief, retrospective
look back at what Corman calls his personal favorite film, through the eyes of always
amusing star Shatner and Corman himself. Eat
My Dust, meanwhile, includes an introduction to the movie by Corman, the
film’s original theatrical trailer and a 10-minute, making-of featurette that explores
filmmaking on the cheap. Entitled “How to Crash a Car on a Dime,” this segment of
reminiscences includes interview snippets with editor Tina Hirsch, director of
photography Eric Saarinen and the aforementioned O’Dare. To purchase the latter
movie via Amazon, click here;
to purchase the title via Half, meanwhile, click here.
For The Intruder, do me a favor and click
on those links and just type in the title yourself. Thanks. B/C+ (The Intruder/Eat My Dust) B- (Discs)

The story of Pink Floyd wunderkind Syd Barrett is at once a sad
and familiar one, but a story still fused with its own alluring mysteriousness.
That tale, as well as the formation and rise of the famous band, get a fine
overview in this engaging mid-form (which is to say halfway between short-form
and long-form) 2003 documentary from producer-director John Edginton, a title which
includes interviews with all the members of Pink Floyd.

The Pink Floyd and Syd
Barrett Story retells the fascinating story of the launch of one of the most
influential bands in rock ’n’ roll — named on a whim for an album by obscure bluesmen
Pink Anderson and Floyd Council — and the drug-induced breakdown of their
original songwriter and lead singer. As one of the most famous creators and
characters of the psychedelic era, Barrett conducted no interviews and released
no music between the early 1970s and his recent passing, yet his self-imposed
anonymity still fascinates fans old and new. The prodigiously talented original
songwriter for Pink Floyd was only with the band for a vibrant three years when
he left in 1968, yet when the group released their greatest hits album in 2001 Barrett’s
fingerprints were on over a fifth of the tracks.

The film incorporates rare early footage of the band
performing, including a live show at the UFO Club, and an appearance with
former landlord Mick Leonard on Tomorrows
World. Roger Waters, Dave Gilmour, Nick Mason and Rick Wright retell how Barrett’s
disconnection from reality happened rather quickly, yet still haunted the band
for many years, informing tracks like “Shine on You Crazy Diamond” and, of
course, “Wish You Were Here.” Their recollections are candid (“Should I roar
with laughter or try to kill him?” muses Mason at one point, then adding, “I
don’t remember being overcome with compassion”) and sometimes downright harsh,
particularly as Gilmour was groomed to take over for an unreliable Barrett. Intervention
and drug treatment programs, it seems, were not part of the 1960s London
musical scene.

Running around 50 minutes, the movie at times feels like it
could use a bit more fleshing out, either from others who knew Barrett outside
of the band (an old girlfriend provides key reminiscences, for instance,
including the revelation that “Arnold Layne,” the tune that helped the group
first ink a record deal with EMI in 1967, was actually about a local
panty-sniffer) or critical-minded music authorities. Still, there’s no denying the
fascinating value of the insights and anecdotes that the major players all
provide. Brief guitarist Bob Klose even half-jokingly notes that the band “needed
me to leave” to hone their signature sound.

The film is presented in widescreen, with superlative audio in
the form of complementary Dolby digital 5.1 and DTS surround sound tracks. Supplemental
extras on the first disc include a few interview outtakes, and though these
seem to be mixed a bit lower, they include Gilmour’s thoughts on “Wish You Were
Here,” and him noodling around on what he recalls as the actual guitar that
birthed the original riff. There are performances, too: Blur guitarist Graham Coxon,
who talks up “Bike” during the movie, performs “Love You,” while Robyn
Hitchcock performs “Dominoes” and “It Is Obvious.” There’s also a detailed text
biography of Barrett. The release’s second disc contains the supplemental jackpot,
however, with more than two hours of unedited interview footage between an
offscreen Edginton and his subjects. Overall, this great disc strikes a great
balance; it’s accessible enough for casual music fans looking to learn more
about Pink Floyd, while the high quotient of the never-before-seen footage (there’s
even some home video footage of one of Barrett’s first LSD experiences) is
impressive enough to woo longtime fans as well.
To purchase the film via Amazon, click here. B+ (Movie) A- (Disc)

The Notorious B.I.G., né Christopher Wallace in 1972, is no
doubt on every hip-hop fan’s short list of the greatest rappers of all time.
B.I.G. was respected and revered by his peers in the game; everyone from Jay Z and
Tupac Shakur to Sean “Puffy” Combs became captivated by the Brooklyn
big guy’s velvety flow and unparalleled rhyme style. He left behind a legacy
that reached mythic status.

Biggie and Tupac,
but director Peter Spirer’s superlative Notorious
B.I.G.: Bigger than Life gives a new and different perspective, celebrating
the rap superstar’s life and investigating the East Coast/West Coast beef that
fed into his death without getting bogged down in specific conspiracy theory.

Narrated by Big Daddy Kane, Bigger than Life opens in novel fashion, with a series of answering
machine messages introducing the rapper in tangential fashion, and conveying
the immense love and respect out there for him in the industry. The rest of the
film is powered by interviews with not only rap heavyweights like Method Man,
Common, P-Diddy, Matteo “Matty C” Capoluongo, E-40, Raekwon and many more, but
also plenty of childhood friends, and academicians like USC cinema professor
Todd Boyd and author Cheo Hodari Coker. The firsthand accounts of Biggie’s
youth from his closest friends are fascinating, and Method Man spins some
interesting stories about Biggie’s personality and their collaboration on “The
What.”

Spirer (Tupac Shakur:
Thug Angel) knows his stuff, and gets great material from his interview
subjects, especially Ready to Die
producer Easy Mo Bee and “Unsigned Hype” Source
columnist Capoluongo — seminal figures within the industry that aren’t your
obvious, top-level, go-to interview “gets.” Additional feathers in the title’s
cap include rare home video footage, a never-before-seen interview done with
Biggie shortly before his death and
undisclosed home video footage from the night of his murder outside the Petersen
Automotive Museum
in Los Angeles. In fact, it’s here
that Bigger than Life shines. Without
direct implications, the film paints a gripping, sad portrait of how Shakur’s
paranoia over his first, non-lethal shooting fed unfounded rumors about Biggie’s
involvement, and in turn how Puff Daddy made several miscalculations (including
releasing the single “Who Shot Ya” so close after Shakur’s shooting) that would
create or at least engender the sort of toxic environment preceding Biggie’s
own murder. While somewhat hamstrung by a lack of music rights licenses (when
you’re hearing about the crafting of a track like “Juicy,” well… you want to hear it), Bigger than Life is still a fantastic look at a rap superstar taken too
soon.

The film comes housed in a stylish, gatefold case which
slides into a thin, clear, plasticine slipcase, saving a bit of shelf space and
making for an attractive, tightly packaged title. Bigger than Life is presented in 1.78:1 anamorphic widescreen, with
solid Dolby digital 5.1 surround sound and Dolby 2.0 stereo audio tracks. DVD
bonus features include a seven-minute, music-set photo gallery montage and nine
minutes of classic Bedford Stuyvesant street
jam footage. The latter is definitely a kick, just to see a young Wallace
enjoying life and rocking the mic with his pals. To purchase the title via Amazon, click here.
A- (Movie) B (Disc)

Wasted Orient, a
film about Chinese punk band Joyside, plays like a soused travelogue document —
an alternately rowdy and curiously lulling waste of time for anyone not
directly connected to the movie’s subjects or its maker.

A biography of Pennsylvania-born director Kevin Fritz
proudly notes that he applied for an overseas internship as a joke, and ended
up at China’s
prestigious Peking University
to study Chinese. There, he met Joyside’s band members in 2003, and began
filming their tour that same year. Obsessed with Johnny Thunders and the
philosophies of American punk, Joyside decide to spread their beer-soaked
message of apathy across the countryside, filming everything along the way. This
mainly means countless binge drinking sessions, a few performances captured in
tight, handheld fashion (songs include “I Don’t Care About Society,” “I Want
Beer” and “I Wanna Piss Around You”), and band members traipsing through public
toilets and their cigarette-littered apartments. There are also a few muddled interview
segments, but mostly Wasted Orient offers
up a grab-bag collection of random footage, like someone pouring hot candle wax
on their tongue, or a mosh-pit kid dealing with a busted eye.

Fritz obviously somehow mistakes nihilism and the indulgence
of base behavior for truth, and refuses to dig deeply at all into the personal
lives and backgrounds of his subjects — a group that includes perpetually bleary-eyed
frontman Bian Yuan (a figure somewhat reminiscent of G.G. Allin), as well as Liu
Hao, Fan Bo, Xin Shuang and Yang Yang. Viewers learn more from a random sticker
(using the first letters of the band’s name to spell out its ostensible “likes,”
which include: “Johnny Rotten, Orgasm, Your Money, Slut, Ice-Cold Beer, Drugs,
Every Fucking Day!”) than from anything that Fritz manifestly offers forth.

Presented in 1.33:1 full-screen, Wasted Orient comes housed in a nice, clear plastic Amray case,
with a tri-fold, full-color insert that includes a lengthy and surprisingly
well-reasoned director’s statement on one side and a smattering of Joyside
photos and illustrations on the other side. The English subtitles touted on the
back cover are not present on the disc, which is a huge additional strike on this title, since it leaves one to
decipher the ramblings of Bian Yuan on their own. Sometimes he slips into
English and one can follow him (he deems rock ’n’ roll “an addiction to chaos,”
and says that he has no relationship with the world, and isn’t interested in
one), but just as frequently one is left grasping for straws. The disc’s
sole bonus feature consists of six extra minutes of footage rather pointlessly divided
into three chapters; here we see another performance and… hey, some vomiting! Yawn.
To purchase the movie via Amazon, click here.
D+ (Movie) D+ (Disc)

It’s my fault, really. I fired up a movie called Dorm of the Dead totally sober, and for that I have been rightfully punished. I should have known what I was in store for when a mock-frightful introduction included the line, “Zombies will crawl out of their graves!” (Err… zombies have graves?) Reminiscent of movies like Satan’s Cheerleaders, Zombie High and all those completely anonymous, schlocky, VHS-era horror flicks from fly-by-night companies, Dorm of the Dead is a horrible, horrible mess of both idea and execution, simply jaw-droppingly inept on every level.

Set at the fictional Arkham University, Dorm of the Dead unfolds against the backdrop of a zombie virus, which gets out when a philandering professor starts waving around a vial of “real zombie blood” picked up during a research trip to Haiti. Campus bimbo Clare (Jackey/Jackie Hall, simply awful) and her friend Julie (Andrea Ownbey) decide to exact revenge against vegetarian goth chick Sarah (Ciara Richards). In a parallel strand, abused and bi-curious Amy (Tiffany Shepis) escapes her jerky boyfriend, only to fail victim to a bite that renders her a member of the undead. Then… um, other stuff happens.

Where to start? The acting in this movie is atrocious; you could honestly pull a collection of people randomly off the street and coax, in aggregate, better performances out of them. Hall, Richards, Adrianna Eder (cute, but clueless) and Ownbey are the main offenders, but everyone gets in on the act. To compare Dorm of the Dead to any of the movies by which it might nominally be inspired would be to blight those titles perhaps irreparably.

Written and directed by Donald Farmer, the movie is an utter hack job, through and through — incompetently conceived, written, shot, paced and edited. The dialogue is wretched, continuity is routinely butchered, and basic principles of angle and sightline are just as frequently ignored. There’s also a two-and-a-half-minute scene of Ownbey and Hall walking through a building, the latter repeatedly saying, “Come on!” (This is actually one of the high points of the film — along with a passing mention of Abu Ghraib, only because that was the only thing that fixed this movie in time.) I wholeheartedly support the baring of breasts (on film, in life), and quite early on I figured out that that’s what this movie was — a student film (albeit a really bad one) constructed mainly to get a couple chicks to awkwardly lift blouse. But no… Farmer is 50 years old!

Presented in 1.33:1 full-screen, Dorm of the Dead comes in a regular plastic Amray case bearing the hilarious salutory blurb “Nice job — congratulations!” from Howard Stern. (Ownbey, it seems, is “Miss Howard Stern.”) A trailer is included, but the only other supplemental extra is a true jewel — a 15-minute “making-of featurette” (actually just a collection of on-set footage) in which Shepis fixes the camera in her gaze and sighs, “What we do to pay the rent…” Another dude, meanwhile, actively runs when the camera is pointed in his direction, saying, “I’m not in this!” If I were to give grades lower than a F, it would be in special cases like this. If for some reason you’re still interested, to check out the movie via Amazon, click here. F (Movie) C- (Disc)

American history gets turned upside down in The Washingtonians, one of the latest entries in the “Masters of Horror”
anthology series. Starring Johnathon Schaech and Saul Rubinek, the movie posits that a grisly secret has been kept for more than two centuries by a homicidal, clandestine sect of cloak-and-dagger historians — namely that first American president George Washington’s had a cannibalistic urge for the flesh of children.

The Washingtonians centers on Mike and Pam Franks (Schaech and Venus Terzo, respectively), a young married couple who, along with their daughter (Julia Tortolano), move into an old Virginia home willed to Mike by his late grandmother. While rooting through some of his grandmother’s old belongings in the basement, Mike finds a strange painting of George Washington (Gozer not included), along with a hidden note in the frame that makes mention of eating children and making utensils from their bones. After deducing that the note is from Washington himself, Mike naturally starts casually mentioning it around town, and receives plenty of cold stares and clenched jaws. Mayhem ensues.

Helmed by Peter Medak (Pontiac Moon), whose abundant episodic television experience no doubt helped him when it came to crunching this production’s brisk schedule, and whose arguable comedic experience on Species II no doubt helped, at least in theoretical terms, in striking a balance between black comedy and horror, The Washingtonians has at its core a deliciously goofy concept, the perfect thing for this sort of anthology series. The problem, though, is that the treatment here doesn’t live up to the parallel story a viewer has in their mind, making for a frustrating viewing experience. If done right, the movie could be a cross between, say, The Da Vinci Code, The Wicker Man and some schlocky slice of ’80s-era horror. Schaech and co-writer Richard Chizmar, though, adapting a short story by Bentley Little, don’t have enough interesting set-ups or layered ideas, and so the movie becomes a quite literal (and boring) exercise in pitchfork-type ensemble cover-up and lynching.

Housed in a regular Amray case in turn stored in a cardboard slipcover, The Washingtonians
is presented in 1.78:1 anamorphic widescreen, enhanced for 16×9 televisions. It comes with superb Dolby
digital 5.1 surround sound and 2.0 audio tracks. Multi-hyphenate Schaech and director Medak team up for a joint, feature-length audio commentary track, in which they dole out mad praise to all involved in the production and talk up both the challenges and the exhilaration of tackling such a shoestring-budgeted movie. Similarly effusive cast and crew interviews anchor a 13-minute making-of featurette, and there’s also a seven-minute-plus featurette on the make-up effects of the movie, and its many powdered wigs and bloody teeth. Rounding out the special features are a photo gallery, a DVD-ROM copy of the
movie’s screenplay, and plenty of trailers for other films in the series. C- (Movie) B+ (Disc)

All My Loving is award-winning
filmmaker Tony Palmer’s groundbreaking documentary on music and its effect on
pop culture in the late ’60s, with previously unseen footage from The Beatles,
Cream, Jimi Hendrix, The Who, Pink Floyd and many more. Produced for the BBC and
initially broadcast in 1968 only after being nervously shelved by fuddy-duddy
types for six months, the project was born out of a collaboration and challenge
of sorts from John Lennon and Paul McCartney, who tasked Palmer, then a
classical music documentarian, to make a film that encompassed the radical
changes taking place in the music world at that time. Alternately interesting
and hallucinatory, this hour-long title, powered by performances and chats, finally
makes its DVD debut, and while some of the pertinence is dented by time, there
remains an undeniable, slurry time-capsule value to it.

Daily
Express’ James Thomas said at the time, a “hideous, clamorous force” about All My Loving, which leans mightily on
production affectation. And if some of the interview segments are indulgent and
unfocused, they’re almost all compellingly photographed in their own way, and
there’s no denying the worth of the British television debuts of Hendrix, Pink
Floyd (who had just lost Syd Barrett), Frank Zappa, Cream and the Animals’ Eric
Burden. The film passingly examines notions of audiences hero worship, but also
how keen almost all of these musicians are to change the world through the
power of their music. “Pop music is crucial to today’s art,” Pete Townsend
points out.

Palmer’s grand innovation comes in the striking
juxtapositions that he makes of the aftermath of the “Summer of Love” and the
beginning of the peace movement with all the violence that is still raging
around the world. There’s a razor’s-edge, in-your-face defiance to the manner
in which he intertwines gruesome newsreel footage with woozy performance pieces,
and sometimes the metaphorical dots connect and sometimes they don’t. For my
money, it was a Peoria, Illinois
Opera House performance by The Who that stood out as much as anything else,
courtesy of Townsend’s wild head-butting antics and mic stand playing. At the
bit’s conclusion, a fan runs up and furtively grabs a souvenir — as much for
the sheer shock value of what he’s just witnessed as anything else, it seems.

All My Loving is
presented in full-screen, and housed in a clear, regular Amray case. In
addition to a 90-second montage of Ralph Steadman cartoons set to the music of
Cream’s “Born Under a Bad Sign,” the DVD comes with a supplemental extra that’s
quite worthwhile if still a very shaggy, unpruned affair — a new, 40-minute interview with
Palmer conducted by Jon Kirkman, who mostly lobs a few softballs at his subject
and gets out of the way for Palmer’s lengthy, digressive responses. Palmer
talks about meeting Lennon as a student in 1963 at the Cambridge
premiere of A Hard Day’s Night, and also
amusingly details the reactions of BBC management upon his completion of the
movie. For more information, click here, or to
purchase the disc on Amazon, click here.
B- (Movie) B (Disc)

The wave of fright flicks from the east isn’t limited to
movies from Korea
and Japan. Thailand
is getting serious about its scares as well, as evidenced by films like Shutter and Dorm. Most recent on this list is The Victim, a movie inspired by actual criminal events, with many
of the scenes recreated in the film based on real crimes and shot on the actual
locations in Thailand.

The film’s story centers on Ting (Pitchanart Sakakorn), an
aspiring actress who dreams of becoming famous. One day the police ask her to
help solve a murder case by portraying a victim in the reenactment of the
crime. Ting relishes the opportunity, and is quickly asked to recreate fatal
experiences of other victims. Now a local celebrity, Ting is soon invited to
reenact a very high-profile murder case; the victim is a former Miss Thailand
and the murder especially gruesome and peculiar. However, this reenactment is
not like the others, as Ting, to her horror, genuinely feels the terrible pain
and suffering that the murdered beauty queen endured. Frantically searching for
answers, Ting fears she herself is in danger of becoming the next victim.

Directed by Monthon Arayangkoon, The Victim plays with certain tropes of twisted reality programming
in a manner not entirely unlike the recent Captivity. The acting is somewhat
uneven and there are certainly some issues with pacing, but the film does exude
a menace, and is well photographed and pieced together. Housed in a regular
Amray case in turn stored in a cardboard slipcover, Tartan’s DVD release of the
movie comes with a small collection of TV spots and a special making-of
featurette, as well as the original theatrical trailer. Presented in anamorphic
widescreen, it comes with solid DTS 5.1 and Dolby digital 5.1 audio tracks in
Thai, and the requisite English and Spanish subtitles. To purchase the movie via Amazon, click here.
C+ (Movie) B+ (Disc)

Back in the 1980s, American Greetings charmed consumers
everywhere with its Care Bears and Strawberry Shortcake lines. Only slightly less
known was its Holly Hobbie line. The sweet and sparkling girl with the “twinkle
in her eye” gets her own showcase here on a new direct-to-DVD title, however, showing pre-teen girls that
good friends can be found in the most surprising places.

A 44-minute special DVD, Holly
Hobbie: Best Friends Forever is the latest title in an altogether charming little
series (other titles include Surprise
Party, Christmas Wishes and Secret Adventures) starring a new Holly
— with an updated, modern day spirit to go alongside her familiar and timeless
charm. Brought to life in richly back-grounded and colorful style by acclaimed
animators from Nickelodeon, and directed by Mario Piluso and Monte Young, Holly
is voiced by “tween” star Alyson Stoner (The Suite Life of Zack and Cody),
and features a theme song from Grammy-winning singer LeAnn Rimes.

The thinly sketched story centers on 10-year-old Holly and
her friends — Amy and Carrie, members of the Hey Girls Club — as they
experience a few milestones of joy and trepidation. Everyone in their idyllic
hometown of Clover is at first afraid of the person known as the “town witch,”
Annabelle (voiced by Happy Days’ Marion
Ross), until Holly finally faces her fears and takes the time to discover that
the witch is actually a wonderful old lady (and an old friend of her
great-grandmother) who’s actually just in need of some help.

Today’s Holly, the original’s great-granddaughter, is
perfectly poised to befriend a whole new generation of girls. In a sign of the
times, she wears boots and a funky signature cap complete with a touch of
gingham — a nod to the iconic bonnet worn by the classic character. The updated
Holly feels a deep sense of connection to her great-grandmother, and mirrors
her winning personality, creativity and warmth. As such, the character and this
title can be enjoyed by multiple generations together. And hey, between the
shenanigans of Britney Spears and Lindsay Lohan, we’re more in need of positive
young female role models than ever.

Housed in a regular Amray case in turn stored in a sturdy
cardboard slipcover, Holly Hobbie is
presented in 1.33:1 full-screen. The DVD includes a selection of all-new bonus
features, including kid-friendly, jump-straight-to sing-alongs to two tunes from
the movie, including LeAnn Rimes’ performance of “Twinkle in Her Eye.” There’s
also a pop quiz game and a Holly Hobbie dress-up interactive game, too. To purchase the title via Amazon, meanwhile, click here.
B (Movie) B- (Disc)

Written and directed by Raquel Cepeda, Bling: A Planet Rock is the perfect example of a movie that’s
pulled along by the weight and importance of its subject matter, versus its
subjects. A documentary examination of the high cost of the conflict diamond
industry on war-torn Sierra Leone, the movie is essentially a travelogue in
which a few hip-hop heavy hitters (including Paul Wall, Raekwon and Tego
Calderón) travel to the West African country, in July of 2006, to come face to
face with the true cost of their “bling.”

A brief prologue uses interview snippets with other rap
superstars to set the scene. Says Kanye West: “It’s in us to want to shine,
from the time of kings and queens to show off our jewelry and gold. We’ve had,
for years, chains around our necks, but this time we’ve got diamonds in them.”
From there, it’s off to Sierra Leone,
where the group meets victims of the “blood diamond” industry, including
miners, amputees and former child soldiers. They’re accompanied by Ishmael
Beah, a former child soldier himself turned best-selling author (A Long Way Gone: Memoirs of a Boy Soldier),
and it’s his eloquence that stands in stark contrast to the inarticulateness of
Wall and the other subjects here. His tale of miming Naughty By Nature’s “OPP”
and LL Cool J’s “I Need Love,” in an effort to convince an armed militia of the
improbable truth — that as kids he and his friends were merely hip-hop fans
traveling from one village to another, performing, rather than rebel spies — is
both riveting and sad.

Cepeda’s film does a pretty decent job of illustrating how “bling”
is so deeply entwined with urban culture, and the roster of interviews — which
includes chats with the aforementioned West, Big Daddy Kane, Jadakiss and Juelz
Santana — is impressive. The bulk of the movie, however, unfolds in situ against a backdrop of some
graphically intercut footage of Sierra Leone’s decade-long civil war (including
a head on a spike and a young boy getting his legs ripped apart and broken), a
battle that saw more than one million people killed, displaced, raped and
maimed. The gravity of this terrible human toll is undeniable, and several
native African rappers make a compelling case for how their aping of Western
culture has had a negative effect on their country. These segments — at Koidu
Holdings, for instance, the country’s only industrial diamond mine — are
fascinating.

Still, Bling
suffers from something largely beyond its control — namely, the fact that its
subjects, even when confronted with this harsh peek behind the diamond trade’s
curtain, don’t necessarily have insightful qualities of immediate self-reflection and
verbalization about how this information impacts their worldview. There are a lot of repetitive mutterings and “ya knows?” (And don’t get me
started on Texas-bred Paul Wall, whose steady stream of hickish inanities
boggles the mind.) Big points are doled out for intention and effort, and Bling highlights an important issue. A
bit more academic dissection and less celebrity wheel-spinning would have made
this title even better, however.

Housed in a regular Amray case in turn stored in a sleek,
attractive, black slipcase, Bling is
presented in 1.78:1 anamorphic widescreen, with solid Dolby digital 2.0 stereo and
Dolby digital 5.0 surround sound audio tracks. To purchase the title via Amazon, click here.
C+ (Movie) B- (Disc)

Small screen family dramas are usually programs of smaller
margins and return, pitched toward captive, boomer-plus audiences who don’t
much escape the confines of their couches for entertainment options. As such,
they can be (and typically are) constructed around one or two marginal stars or
recycled veterans; it’s a game of just a little ventured, something gained. Brothers & Sisters, however, has a
cast that makes you sit up and take notice, something confirmed by the recent Emmy victory
of two-time Oscar winner Sally Field (Best Actress for 1979’s Norman Rae and 1984’s Places in the Heart), something
obviously surprising and warmly received, no matter how censored her acceptance
speech was.

Alias’ Rifkin does a turn as Nora’s
brother Saul, second in command of the Walker
family business, while erstwhile West
Winger and Democratic National Convention enthusiast Lowe plays Kitty’s
boyfriend, Senator Robert McAllister.

Produced by Ken Olin (the thirtysomething actor turned TV multi-hyphenate), Greg Berlanti (Everwood, Dawson’s Creek) and Jon Robin Baitz (a writer on The West Wing and Alias), the show’s strength lies in its blend of business, personal
and political intrigue, and well-crafted interplay. While the characters
themselves are not necessarily strikingly original, all of the members of the
stellar cast breathe fresh life into their subjects, and Brothers & Sisters’ mealtime scenes are a delight — albeit
sometimes a wince-inducing one, full as they are of shrewd detail. There’s also
a lot of room for both growth and conflict, as evidenced by shifting alliances
and leaked secrets, big and small. The show’s smart direction, meanwhile, is
evident in the manner in which previous crutches of some of the featured actors
— Getty’s squinty posing, say, or Flockhart’s wide-eyed, parakeet mania — are
either tamped down or used for effect, commented upon by their screen siblings.

Spread out over six discs and housed in a sturdy cardboard
slipcase, Brothers & Sisters is
presented in a 1.78:1 aspect ratio, with a Dolby digital 5.1 surround sound audio
track. Alongside all the outstanding episodes from the show’s first season is a
special, bonus un-aired episode, intended to be the first full-fledged episode
after the pilot. Other revealing supplemental features include a half-hour, general
making-of featurette which leaves no Walker
family stone unturned and a special, six-minute behind-the-scenes segment on
the cast members comprising first half of the series’ title, tagging along with
Getty, Annable and Rhys. A brief segment entitled “Family Business,” meanwhile,
introduces fans to Olin’s family, the real family story behind the show’s
success. Rounding things out are two-and-a-half-minute blooper reel, a small
clutch of deleted scenes and audio commentaries on four episodes from the
aforementioned producers and other behind-the-scenes creative folks, making for
a superlative package. B+ (Series) A- (Disc)

Originally broadcast in 1980 as a two-part television movie, this gripping recreation of the horrible tragedy of the Jonestown mass suicide in November 1978 connects largely owing to the mesmeric, Emmy-winning lead performance of Powers Boothe.

Directed by William Graham, Guyana Tragedy: The Jim Jones Story features a cast stuffed with heavyweight names and familiar faces — James Earl Jones, Ned Beatty, Brad Dourif, Diane Ladd, Meg Foster, Randy Quaid, Levar Burton, Colleen Dewhurst, Rosalind Cash, Veronica Cartwright and Irene Cara are among the supporting players with roles large and small — but it’s undisputably Boothe who anchors the tale of San Francisco preacher Jones, who relocated his followers to a religious colony carved from scratch into a remote South American jungle. Tracing Jones’ early social activist period to his rise as an ego-driven, modern day messiah, Guyana Tragedy wrings a lot of production value from its relatively low budget. And the climactic suicide sequence is convincingly recreated in quasi-documentary style, a credit to Graham. But the movie’s script — and in particular the dialogue — never gives the broader elements of the story (the social turmoil of the time, particularly among working-class-poor African-Americans) a full, insightful reckoning, so we’re left at a loss for the ingredients that informed a lot of Jones’ disciples, and made the Kool Aid-laced suicide of 913 individuals, including many women and children, possible. Boothe makes up for a lot of that with his eyes — he’s an ace at conveying compassion and dead-pool menace within the span of a single conversation — but the 189-minute running time requires a bit more, truth be told.

Housed on a region-free disc in a regular Amaray case, Guyana Tragedy: The Jim Jones Story comes presented in its original 1.33:1 full screen aspect ratio, with a billed Dolby digital soundtrack that suffers from a few pops and some seeming warping or range compression. Trailers for other VCI Entertainment releases are included, along with brief cast biographies. Yes, this is unfortunately a case of one of those releases — like in the early days of DVD — that bills “scene selection” as a supplemental extra, which is really a shame. Boothe won a flipping Emmy for this, and Robert Rodriguez has gone on record as saying that was one of the reasons he cast him in Sin City, so why weren’t Boothe’s representatives on the ball on this one? Even if they had to give up some time gratis, surely the profile bump of an honestly reflective DVD release would have earned the actor a bump in profile, and possibly some new industry fans. Alas, the lack of bonus features is Guyana Tragedy‘s real tragedy. To purchase the DVD via Amazon, click here. C (Movie) D- (Disc)

The wild and woolly days of Internet start-ups aren’t completely behind us, but certainly the
dotcom bust of the new millennium brought a lot of dreams crashing to the floor
in a relatively permanent fashion. Still, of course, every one of those
entrepreneurs got a raw deal, and remains the star of their own story. It
wasn’t necessarily their idea (and certainly not them) that failed, so much as the mechanisms around them, right?

Classic Game Room, a title which charts, as its subtitle proclaims,
the rise and fall of the Internet’s greatest videogame review show — a
low-budget, self-produced program which, in tongue-in-cheek fashion, reviewed
arcade classics like Frogger, Duck Hunt, Missile Command, Perfect Dark
and Yars’ Revenge in the shadow of a
burgeoning, increasingly pixilated videogame craze. Hosted by Mark Bussler and
David Crosson, the show was a relaxed, beer-swilling affair that ran from
November 1999 to October 2000 on FromUSALive.com, a start-up that would
eventually succumb to the same cold fate of so many other mismanaged
businesses. While certainly self-celebratory, this title’s advantage lies in its
sardonic nature and wholehearted embrace of its cult/niche status.

Helmed by Bussler, the director of nonfiction titles Expo: Magic of the White City and Johnstown Flood, this movie is mostly a
fawning glimpse back in time, with a few modern day, context-providing
interview segments interspersed around plenty of footage from seven years ago.
The two hosts’ dry rapport is a real pleasure to watch, even if a little of this
goes a long, long way. Classic Game Room
is essentially a one-note inside joke, aimed at hardcore gamers. While bits
like a mock memorial to giant flying ostriches (part of the show’s Joust review) are amusing, there’s
overall not enough of an objective glimpse of the behind-the-scenes business
considerations related to the show’s demise to give this title any true,
second-rail parallel economic perspective.

Housed in a regular Amray case, Classic Game Room is presented in a 4×3 full-screen aspect ratio,
with a solid Dolby digital 2.0 stereo audio track. The DVD includes a feature-length
audio commentary track from writer-director Bussler, three video blogs on
production (including a bonus review of Berzerk
for Atari 2600) and a collection of trailers for this and other niche titles. All
in all, for those seeking a nostalgic fix of Gen-X ruminations on Dreamcast
titles like SeaMan and Sega GT, this flick is a good time. To
others, it might be a little too narrowly defined in its scope. To purchase the title via Amazon, click here.
B- (Movie) B- (Disc)

They say not to judge a book by its cover, but sometimes a cover says everything, and Unholy features one of the worst covers in recent memory. Starring legendary horror queen Adrienne Barbeau (The Fog, Swamp Thing, Creepshow)
and erstwhile stutterer and Buffy the
Vampire Slayer co-star Nicholas Brendon, Unholy is a story of supernatural
controversy and intrigue, a movie that tries to play up X-Files-type fears of grand conspiracy, spinning a story that spans
decades and continents out of a grab-bag of spooky and villainous elements (Nazis, witches, governmental
cover-up).

Following World War II, a classified U.S.
military document recounting the results of a Nazi occult experiment was
uncovered and smuggled into an underground facility in Downingtown,
Pennsylvania. Many years later, Martha (Barbeau), a widowed mother of two, is confronted with the grisly reality of the
suicide of her daughter Hope (Siri Baruc). Completely shaken by the experience, Martha takes
it upon herself to prove that someone had a hand in her death. Now, with the air-quote
assistance of her stoned, slacker son Lucas (Brendon), Martha throws
herself into unraveling the mystery that surrounds her daughter’s death. The
only person who really seems to care about Martha is her neighbor Charlie
(Merwin Goldsmith), whose ex-wife Gertrude (Susan Willis) peddles a convoluted theory
that occult-loving Nazis may have something to do with Martha’s personal
tragedies.

It turns out that Gertrude isn’t that nuts, as a bizarre cult plot is uncovered — one which involves the aforementioned Nazis, invisibility and other paranormal powers, brainwashing,
time travel and, of course, a federalized cover-up. But exactly how are all these events linked? That will be up to Martha to sort out.

Lacking the sort of gore quotient that would satisfy diehard
genre fans, and grinding gears with its stultifying dialogue and inane characterizations, Unholy conforms to the easiest set-up
for dismissal: it’s an unholy mess. The plot is tangled seemingly only for effect’s sake — to make things as muddled and complicated as possible, feeding endless chatter. While in a very general sense it’s nice to see Barbeau (ahh, those Cannonball Run memories…) in a more front-and-center role than most of her recent work has afforded her the opportunity, Unholy isn’t a vehicle that lets her shine.

The film’s DVD, housed in a regular Amray case in turn
stored in the aforementioned cardboard slipcover, comes with an insert listing
chapter stops and a small clutch of bonus features, fronted by an audio commentary
track with writer-director Daryl Goldberg and co-writer-producer Sam Freeman. They good-naturedly share a few production anecdotes and talk about their own love of genre movies, but it’s never a good sign when a film’s makers cop to a bit of narrative confusion. The
movie’s trailer and a gallery of poster and still images is also included. The
film is presented in a 1.78:1 anamorphic widescreen transfter, with solid Dolby
digital 5.1 and Dolby surround 2.0 audio tracks. A lack of subtitles, though, means
that Unholy can’t translate itself to
other languages. And maybe that’s not a bad thing. To purchase the film via Amazon, click here. D (Movie) C+ (Disc)

Expansion isn’t merely for Star Jones’ waistline. We swell the rolls here at Shared Darkness as time and inclination permits. Ergo, this DVD review of Lost and Delirious, originally published upon its release in 2001:

I hate to stoop to such obvious levels, but: six and 28:45.
That’s the chapter number and elapsed run time into the film of the lesbian sex
scene in Lost and Delirious, and
really the only reason anyone might want to sit through this deliriously lost
little movie, a wan, meandering ball of pretension, romanticized youthful
“vigor” and manufactured intensity, all proudly wrapped up in its own pomposity.

The Wives of Bath
by Susan Swan, adapted by Judith Thompson and directed by Lea Pool, Lost and Delirious’ story of young,
sapphic love is set at an all-girls’ boarding school where it looks like an
Aerosmith video could break out at any moment. (It turns out in this instance, though,
to be the Violent Femmes’ “Add It Up.”) New arrival Mary (Mischa Barton, the
little sick girl in The Sixth Sense)
is taken under the wings of her two new roommates, Victoria (Stardom’s Jessica Paré, above right) and Paulie (Coyote Ugly’s Piper Perabo). Victoria,
or Tori, is a bit of an ingenue, while Paulie smokes cigarettes intensely, has
a poster of Che Guevera over her bed and generally presides over the roost like
a cross between One Flew Over the
Cuckoo’s Nest’s R.P. McMurphy and Angelina Jolie’s wide-eyed Girl, Interrupted menace. Tori and
Paulie have a thing, you see, but Tori breaks it off after her younger sister
catches the two in bed. Paulie takes it none too well, and their perfect world
falls apart.

A jewel in the mud, Barton is actually pretty fantastic, though she’s forced to
spend an awful lot of time pretending to be asleep while her roommates make out
and giggle or bicker and fume. Perabo’s performance, meanwhile, falls between
unchecked and astonishingly god-awful; she stalks about, chewing scenery and
aggressively mouthing along in class to poetry. I understand all too well the
intoxicating nature of adolescent affection, but please — someone interrupt
this girl. A few dewy-eyed dissenters may cite Paulie’s fractured relationship
with her birth mother as part of some grand romantic gesture (I get it, she has a tortured parallel
history of past rejection!), but this poorly constructed movie is indulgent,
obvious and ridiculous. Tears are shed, cages rattled and transparent metaphors
deployed (Paulie cares for a wounded falcon), and it’s all in the name of a
lame story that has a single obvious conclusion. Presented in anamorphic widescreen with close-captioned subttitles and an English Dolby digital 2.0 stereo track, the DVD comes with no supplemental features. D- (Movie) C- (Disc)

Distributor Blue Underground has made a mint making the digital
age safe for the best of sexploitation and other niche cinema of the 1960s and ’70s,
and their superlative treatment of those genres continues with 1975’s willfully
sleazy Women Behind Bars, a screwy and
somewhat flatly peddled little crime flick with a hearty serving of naked lounging
about and a twist ending in which director Jess Franco cameos and gets gunned
down.

99 Women and Barbed Wire Dolls) is marked by all the sort of familiar bits one would expect from the genre,
from bumping fuzzies and sexual favor brokering to a reprehensible warden and monologues
about the pleasure of cigarettes and sweltering heat. Somewhat underwritten, the
film is also marked by the same amusingly weird mixture of overly formal dialogue
(“We will do everything in our power to help you forget, as far as possible,
your condition as women condemned to punishment by society,” says Carlo) and cheerful
over-emoting that are also a fixture of the this field. Though careful zooms in
on pubic thatches and plenty of bared bosoms gain featured time, much of Women Behind Bars is shot as a gorgeous,
alluring travelogue — one manner in which Franco’s work differentiates itself
from that of many of his colleagues.

Presented in 2.35:1 anamorphic widescreen, with a solid Dolby
digital soundtrack, Women Behind Bars
comes housed in a regular Amray case in turn stored in a thin cardboard
slipcover. Apart from the movie’s French theatrical trailer, the disc comes
with but one supplemental bonus feature. Given that it’s a newly filmed 17-minute
interview with Franco, however, one easily falls for this offering. In his
wide-ranging chat — which is thankfully subtitled, given the heavily accented Franco’s
penchant for slipping between English and Spanish — the filmmaker touches on his
initial inspiration for working in the genre (an old Corinne Luchaire flick
entitled Prison Without Bars), and
also notes that William Berger was his initial choice for the role of grubby warden
Carlo, but a late scratch, necessitating the casting of Weiss. The movie’s
outdoor locations are also compared with present-day Nice, and Franco talks a
bit about his love affair with Romay, which would begin on this film, and last
to this day. C+ (Movie) B (Disc)

Co-directed by Tiago Guedes and Frederico Serra, Portuguese
import Bad Blood centers on the prominent
and respected Monteiro family, who inherits a beautiful home in the country,
nestled alongside a tiny village. Despite protests from his children and wife Helena
(Manuela Couto) — who have grown accustomed to the finer things that city life in
Lisbon has to offer, and believe the property should be sold for profit — stressed-out
patriarch Xavier (Adriano Luz) decides to uproot everyone and move to the new
house, hoping for a change and pleasant slowing of pace. The title tells us, of
course, that everything doesn’t turn all idyllic and carefree.

Almost immediately, the rather secular Monteiro family — eldest
daughter Sofia (Sara Carinhas) is even an unwed mother — learns that the quite
religious villagers nearby are held in the powerful and mysterious grip of
superstition and folklore. Soon, strange events begin occurring, and family is
forced to consider an alarming rumor running rampant throughout the village: that
by inheriting the house, they have also inherited a dark and menacing curse.

Praise for this sort of film will likely involve the dutiful
deployment of words like “atmospheric,” “moody” and “slow-burning,” but there
reaches a point where one has to call a spade a spade, and Bad Blood is on the other side of that line, unfortunately; it’s
merely boring. The acting is naturalistic, and across the board rather decent,
and there’s no cheating, glossy lean toward modernity within the film’s
production design; everything of is of a piece, and its locales carry the day.
Unfortunately, the film is shot, by cinematographer Vitor Estevao, in a rather
unappealing fashion, and a poor, grainy transfer and/or elements blown up from 16mm
only make matters worse. The film is being sold in the vein of recent Asian
chillers and/or something like Alejandro Amenábar’s The Others, a category in which it most certainly does not fall.

Bad Blood comes
housed in a regular Amray case, presented in anamorphic widescreen with Dolby
digital 5.1 surround sound and DTS surround sound 5.1 audio tracks. Guedes and
Frederico Serra serve as the linchpins of a comprehensive, completely
subtitled, 30-minute making-of, though writer Rodirgo Guedes de Carvalho and
most of the principal cast is also interviewed. There’s a lot of talk about
here about the legends and beliefs of rural areas, including werewolf-like
creature Carrazeda de Anciães, and how this was distilled for the movie’s
screenplay. There’s also talk about M. Night Shyamalan’s The Village — a movie whose somewhat thematically similar sleepy
rhythms of rural menace outstrip this tale by a four-to-one pace — and the
movie’s premiere presentation at the 2006 edition of the Fantasporto Festival
in its native country. The film’s 90-second theatrical trailer and a gallery of
other Tartan previews are the only other supplemental extras. To order the film
via Amazon, click here;
to purchase the film via Half, click here. D (Movie) B (Disc)

“I had no idea Legos could be gay,” said a friend of mine
when he caught a glimpse of the first season DVD of Rick & Steve sitting on my coffee table. And he’s kind of got a
point. That offhand description of this somewhat snarky and irreverent stop-motion
animated series is as good a leaping-off point as any, really, because it’s
exactly that notion of expectation that the show uses to pleasantly disarm new
viewers.

Eating Out), Rick & Steve centers on the
so-called “happiest gay couple in all the world.” Set in the WeHo-inspired
hamlet of West Lahunga
Beach, the show debuted on gay
cable network Logo in July of 2007, and was an instant smash success. Its titular
central subjects are real estate broker Steve Ball (voiced by Peter Paige) and
his stay-at-home Filipino-American steady, Rick Brocka (voiced by Will
Matthews), but the show also centers on Rick’s best friend, lipstick lesbian
Kirsten Kellogg (voiced by Emily Brooke Hands), and her butchy girlfriend Dana
Bernstein (voiced by Taylor Dooley). Alan Cumming, meanwhile, lends his voice
as Rick’s HIV-positive, wheelchair-bound pal Chuck Masters, while Wilson Cruz
is Chuck’s well-kept houseboy, Evan Martinez. Brocka’s touch with barbed
dialogue is evident throughout, and the fact that he’s been working with many
of these characters for quite a while (the show was inspired by a series of
short films he made in 1999) helps bring to the show a well-roundedness that
nicely counterbalances its naughty satire.

Housed in a regular Amray case, Rick & Steve is presented in 1.33:1 full-screen. The latest
addition to Logo’s home entertainment product line continues to add to the
network’s widening footprint on television, broadband online video, home
entertainment, portable media devices and wireless phones — all made possible
through partnerships with some of the nation’s leading technology companies and
content providers. This single-disc release includes all six episodes in the
series’ first season, and its special features include a nice collection of behind-the-scenes
extras, a featurette on the animation process, cast interviews and a dozen
web-friendly “digisodes.” For free downloads, exclusive web content and video clips,
visit the gang from West Lahunga
Beach by clicking here. Meanwhile, to purchase the title via Amazon, meanwhile, click here.
B- (Series) B+ (Disc)