I don’t know about the wide-front, quasi-maternity pants, fey stance and
possible bolo tie that the mirrored version of Rick Wakeman sports on this DVD’s
cover, but the actual material herein certainly features the legendary keyboard
wizard and Yes man in an interesting new light.

The
Other Side of Rick Wakeman showcases a lifetime of hilarious anecdotes and
escapades from the grumpy composer and raconteur. Wakeman talks about behind-the-scenes
stuff — the equivalent of the cool side of the pillow of his career — including
the first rehearsals with Yes, his multi-marital life, recording session mishaps
like accidentally setting a piano on fire, his exposure in a Japanese toilet (surely
Larry Craig would like this story…) and more. Wakeman also explains his version
of the X-factor, and brings to life the lost chord in the Yes classic “And You
and I.”

Of course, The Other
Side of Rick Wakeman isn’t merely a chat-fest. Running about 10 or 15
minutes short of two hours, this brand new show also features classic material
from Yes, The Strawbs and several of Wakeman’s his hit solo albums, as well as
a couple cover tunes, all performed on in acoustic fashion on the piano. The
track listing herein includes David Bowie’s “Life On Mars,” “The Henry Suite,” “See
a Monkey on a Stick/A Glimpse of Heaven,” “And You and I,” “Gone But Not
Forgotten,” “Wondrous Stories/The Meeting,” “Spur of the Moment/After the Ball,”
“Birdman of Alcatraz,” “Guinevere/Merlin the Magician,” Cat Steven’s “Morning Has
Broken” and the Beatles’ “Help/Eleanor Rigby.” Still, though the music is perhaps
the main course, the more frank stories about working with artists like Bowie,
and other good-natured yarns, are what make this title interesting.

Housed in a regular Amray case and presented in 1.78:1
anamorphic widescreen, The Other Side of
Rick Wakeman comes with a 5.1 surround sound audio track. Case-touted “bonus
materials,” as it were, consist of a single bonus track, “Children of Chernobyl.”
Some interview material would’ve been nice, but as is, this is enough of a disarming
reinvention of its subject for lapsed Yes-heads, prog-rock devotees and middle-aged
music fans in general. B+ (Concert) C+ (Disc)

Between Roving Mars, the just-in-theaters In the Shadow of the Moon (which I’ve
heard great things about, but haven’t yet seen) and several other titles, there
seems to currently be a whole spate of documentaries about outer space
exploration. Directed by Tony Palmer and featuring music written, arranged and
performed by Mike Oldfield, The Space
Movie was made in 1979 to celebrate the 10th anniversary of the moon
landing. Since this represents the first release by NASA and the United States
National Archive of massive amounts of lunar landscape footage, as well as unseen
film of life on the spacecraft, Mars, Venus and beyond, there’s plenty of
top-notch material here, even if it by now seems dated — stuff that you might
have glimpsed in science class some decades back.

Charged with creating a visual history of spaceflight, Palmer
takes full advantage of specially granted access to the NASA video vault to
craft a wonderful montage of the first decade of life in space, running around
80 minutes in total. Included are conversations between the astronauts and
ground control in Houston — the sort
of chatter, alternately authoritative and giddy with excitement, that really
brings the monumental nature of the achievement of space exploration into stark
relief. Oldfield, meanwhile, uses extracts from his ground-breaking symphonic
tone-poems such as “Tubular Bells” and “Hergest Ridge,” interweaving these in
and out of the NASA soundtracks together with new music; the result is a unique
and kind of ethereal soundtrack, nicely matching an equally unique filmic
document.

Housed in a regular Amray case and presented with a 5.1
surround sound audio track, The Space
Movie comes with a slight but fairly rewarding slate of bonus materials:
six previously unseen minutes of footage, and a 26-minute interview with the
chatty Palmer on the making of the movie. Overall this feels like a bit of a
quid pro quo to whet the appetite for All
My Loving, Palmer’s well known, Beatles-enabled British music doc, which is
also releasing through distributor MVD in a few weeks. Still, as far as trade-off
inducements go, this certainly isn’t a bad one. B- (Movie) C+ (Disc)

A collaboration between director Tom Holland (Fright Night, Child’s Play) and writer David Schow (The Crow) would rightly have many horror aficionados on the edge of
their seats in anticipation, but We All
Scream for Ice Cream comes across chiefly as a half-melted case of what might have
been.

The Devil’s Rejects) stars
as Buster, a simpleminded ice cream man in a clown costume who rides around in
his van selling “Cheery Tyme Ice Cream.” When the young neighborhood punk eggs
on other kids into pulling a prank on Buster, however, things go terribly, fatally
wrong, and Buster is killed. One night 20 years later, Buster returns from the
grave (in full clown makeup, naturally) to seek revenge against the now-adult neighborhood
kids who let him die, as well as their children. Tracking down these kids, he
does this by serving up poisonously spiked ice cream cones which cause the kids’
parents to disintegrate and melt away. Standing in the way of Buster’s evil
scheme is the remorseful Layne (Lee Tergesen).

Forsythe is an understandable favorite of director Rob
Zombie and other horror/cult directors dwelling on the genre fringe, mainly
because he’s a fiercely committed actor who never bristled at the suggestion of
“more.” So his work gives We All Scream for
Ice Cream an anchored center, to be sure. The premise, too — which comes
across as part It, and part old-school
throwback to something like Nightmare on
Elm Street — is creepy and unnerving, trading more effectively in morality-play
mood than a lot of recent Masters of Horror titles, of which this film is an
entry. Schow’s story, though, leans heavily on a few predictable plot devices,
and the film ultimately never finds an extra gear that moves it past the level
of mere goosing entertainment.

Housed in a regular Amray case in turn stored in a
cardboard slipcover with an absolutely great cover, We All Scream For
Ice Cream is, like every episode in the aforementioned series so far, presented in a
1.78:1 anamorphic widescreen transfer, with solid flesh tones, deep and
consistent blacks and only a few mild problems with compression artifacts. Well-produced
Dolby digital 5.1 surround sound and Dolby digital 2.0 stereo tracks anchor the
audio presentations. Animated menus give way to the most substantial bonus
feature — an audio commentary track from Holland and Schow, in which the pair somewhat
gruffly talk a good bit about the sacrifices that are made, both in budget and
time, on the Masters of Horror flicks, and how less compression would have
allowed for different potential interpretations, tangents and/or inclusions. Other
supplemental materials include brief featurettes on the movie’s visual effects work
and a more generalized making-of overview, with interview clips from Forsythe (who
says he actually once worked an ice cream truck driver) and others. Rounding things
out are a scrollable photo gallery, trailers for other episodes in the series, a
DVD-ROM version of the movie’s script and a brief biography of Holland. To purchase the film via Amazon, click here. C (Movie) B- (Disc)

I know, I know… Valerie
on the Stairs sounds like a Counting Crows song. And yet it’s not. Adapted
from a story by Clive Barker, Valerie on
the Stairs is in fact the latest entry in the bestselling Masters of Horror anthology series, this time with series executive producer Mick Garris (The Stand) back in the saddle himself as
writer-director.

Tyron Leitso (Dinotopia)
stars as Rob Hanisey, an unpublished novelist who moves into Highberger House,
a grungy commune for broke, aspiring writers. This affords him the opportunity to
eat on a regular basis, and Tyron figures it might help keep the demons of
rejection somewhat at bay. On his first night, though, he comes into contact
with Valerie (Clare Grant), a gorgeous but mysterious apparition who lives in
the walls of the building and wanders its halls, under the control of a
frightening beast (Candyman’s Tony
Todd) who owns her soul. Rob believes he’s found his muse and a mystery worth
investigating to boot, but none of the other authors want anything to do with
his story. Are they perchance hiding something as well?

Barker has always had a layered penchant for literary in-references,
darkly ironic shading and sexual deviance (just think back to Hellraiser, with its barely contained
lethal-Goth eroticism bubbling just underneath the surface), and a good bit of
that distinguishing instinct remains intact with Garris’ teleplay translation. Valerie on the Stairs, though, while fairly
skillfully constructed from a technical point-of-view, also suffers from the
unfortunate editorial decision (addressed by Garris in one of the bonus
features) to inject goosing moments of gruesome gore and aural smash-cuts. The result
is, because of a small budget to begin with, the reduction in sum effectiveness
of what could have been a much more tightly contained psychological thriller. No need to try to play on a playing field for which you’re not suited, you know?

Housed in a regular Amaray case in turned stored in a
cardboard slipcover, Valerie on the
Stairs is, like every episode in the series so far, presented in a 1.78:1
anamorphic widescreen transfer, with solid flesh tones, deep and consistent
blacks and only a few mild problems with compression artifacts. Dolby digital
5.1 surround sound and Dolby digital 2.0 stereo tracks anchor the audio
presentations, and the latter, scaled-down mix is by the better offering, with
clearer dialogue and music. Animated menus give way to probably the most interesting
bonus feature — an audio commentary track from Garris in which he talks about
the pleasures of working with Christopher Lloyd and the challenges presented by
casting the series as a whole. Other supplemental materials include two production
featurettes with a nice variety of cast and crew interviews, a brief biography
of Garris, a copy of the movie’s script in PDF format for those who happen to have
a DVD-ROM-equipped computer, and a scrollable photo gallery. To purchase the film via Amazon, click here. C (Movie) B- (Disc)

A solid cinematic chess match with legal thriller
trappings, Fracture centers around Ted Crawford (Anthony Hopkins), a well-to-do man who
kills his
cheating wife, and readily admits it to the responding police officer.
Crawford
has his eyes on a bigger game, though, and mitigating circumstances,
including
the lack of a matching weapon, give him several important trump cards
when he decides to represent himself in court against hotshot Los
Angeles assistant district attorney Willy Beachum (Ryan Gosling, below left).

Rosamund Pike, above right) will be his immediate supervisor. Because of this and other factors, Willy underestimates Crawford, and gets sucked into a tangled circus trial that lets a man he knows is guilty walk free.

A very well made genre picture full of smartly modulated
friction, Fracture is predicated
on a few significant leaps in believability, certainly (a murder case going to
trial in under two weeks, for one), but director Gregory Hoblit (Primal Fear) knows his way
around the criminal justice system. Hopkins,
of course, is reliably steady, even if he’s just essentially tossing off a minor chord variation on Hannibal Lecter here. Gosling, meanwhile, gives a great, engrossing
performance as the slick, narcissistic Willy — a blithe egotist who finds his golden touch evaporating before his eyes. When he comes under
fire and suddenly finds an embarrassing blight on his near-perfect record, it
ignites in him a deep competitive instinct that Fracture, quite agreeably, never pawns off on a
reawakened idealism. Not so deep down, Willy’s a bit of a self-centered jerk, you see, but never less
than fascinatingly watchable.

Presented separately in either full-screen or anamorphic widescreen versions, Fracture comes housed in a regular Amray case with a promotional insert, and features a nice transfer and an animated menu screen that plays up the slickness of the film’s flawless design work. Apart from the theatrical trailer, the only bonus feature is a 34-minute collection of seven deleted or extended scenes. Actually, that tally is a bit misleading, since two of those bits are alternate endings (in convening for re-shoots, the filmmakers picked the right one) that run around 12 minutes apiece. An alternate opening provides an amusing introduction to Willy’s character, with him getting stuck in his apartment due to his landlady’s shabby parking job. But the joint highlight and disappointment has to come in the form of two included love scenes (slightly different edits), which showcase Pike… but only in a tasteful negligee, sorry. Interview inclusions from Gosling or at the very least Hoblit would have really given this disc extra value. As is, it’s a great movie with a bit less swagger than it should have on DVD. B+ (Movie) B- (Disc)

On the morning of June
28, 1993, 14 years after recording his first album, punk cult icon GG Allin
was found in a Lower East Side, New
York apartment, dead from a drug overdose following a
final, riot-inducing show. His sudden death surprised those who knew Allin, but
the irony that he would die alone was lost on few, following years of
threatening to actually take his own life on stage in mid-performance.

Road Trip and Old School director Todd Phillips’ senior film thesis project at
New York University, Hated was finished
just before Allin’s demise, and it chronicles his life in unflinching fashion,
never shying away from the on-or-off stage havoc Allin created to challenge what
he saw as a lazy, living-asleep nation of conformists and non-believers. So if
that means footage of Allin smearing his own feces on his face and flinging it
into the crowd, or getting urinated on by a girl at a party… well, then so be
it.

Allin — who once smashed out six of his own teeth and over the
course of his life was arrested over 50 times, on charges ranging from
disorderly conduct to exposing himself to minors — is an undeniably compelling
non-fiction subject, simply for all his outrageous behavior. While Phillips
doesn’t pretend to wear a cap of objectivity (he was responsible for booking the
spoken word performance at NYU where Allin stripped in front of the crowd,
inserted a banana in his ass and taunted the audience with threats and
obscenities, resulting in a stand-off), neither does he ask many tough
questions of Allin, save for one bleary hotel segment where Allin confesses he’ll
probably end up “in prison or a hospital.” This is mostly a rib-nudging,
along-for-the-wild-ass-ride piece of point-and-shoot entertainment, sans
psychological examination.

Clips from an Allin appearance on Geraldo Rivera’s talk show
are amusing in a time capsule sort of way, but it’s cynical former band mate “Chicken
John” actually offers up the most insightful analysis — not something you’d
necessarily expect from a guy with such a name, nor someone who smashes himself
in the face repeatedly during the movie’s concluding wrap-up, illustrating his
point that Allin was essentially a phony performance-artist nihilist, and that
such antics really don’t hurt that much. (Ummm… OK.) A counter-culture document
through and through, Hated isn’t particularly an extremely well made movie, but it by and large held my attention on the strength of its bizarre
subject. Featured songs include “Die When You Die,” “Gypsy Motherfuckers,” “Fuck
Authority,” “Suck My Ass It Smells” (seriously), “I Want To Kill You,” “Carmelita,”
“Bite It You Scum,” “When I Die,” “Highest Power,” “I Kill Everything I Fuck (The
AIDS Song)” and “Look Into My Eyes & Hate Me.”

Housed in a regular Amray case, this superlatively packaged special edition release
of Hated comes with a special poster
offer for a reproduction of serial killer John Wayne Gacy’s original portrait of
Allin (the pair struck up a pen-pal friendship); a set of temporary tattoos
designed after Allin’s own body art; an exclusive interview with brother Merle
Allin and drummer Dino Sex; an art gallery of submissions from the contest held
to select the release’s cover art; a rare, three-minute interview with Allin’s
mom; three music videos; and an engaging audio commentary track with Phillips
and the aforementioned Allin and Sex. To purchase the movie via Amazon, click here.
C+ (Movie) B+ (Disc)

Whatever you think of him, Adam Rifkin is a guy who has had
an interesting career. He’s made a living, I guess, penning mainstream,
kid-friendly fare like Small Soldiers,
Mouse Hunt, Zoom and, most recently, Underdog. As a director, meanwhile, he’s championed the thespian
abilities of Ron Jeremy,
shown audiences how to have sex while driving at high speeds (The Chase) and made perhaps both the
best and worst film ever made about four teenagers trying to scam their way
into a Kiss concert in 1978, Detroit Rock
City.

Rifkin cut his teeth on Never
on Tuesday, Tale of Two Sisters
and The Invisible Maniac (the latter
under his frequent nom de plume, Rif Coogan) before, in 1991, turning out the
bizarre cult hit The Dark Backward, a
movie about a Marty Malt (Judd Nelson), a garbage man who gives stand-up comedy
a try, fails, and then fortuitously grows a third arm on his back. “Wha…?” you ask.
Yes, seriously.

Marty lives a sad-sack, beaten-down existence in a rundown
town where seemingly everything is owned by the Blump Corporation. He fails
miserably because… he’s just not funny. After he finds a small lump on his
back, Marty goes to a doctor (James Caan), who provides a band-aid, quite
literally. Soon, though, that itchy nuisance is a full-fledged appendage. Marty
is flabbergasted, but his accordion-happy pal Gus (a wildly theatrical Bill
Paxton) figures out a way to use the new arm, and gets them signed with a
sleazy talent agent (Wayne Newton). Marty may be a freak, but now he’s in
demand. Just when success seems near, though, Marty’s waitress girlfriend, Rosarita
(Lara Flynn Boyle), leaves him. For Gus, who prefers his women plus-sized,
that’s not a big deal. Marty, though, is thrown for a loop, even though their
passion-less relationship was far from ideal.

Co-starring Rob Lowe, The
Dark Backward is about as canted as they come — a wild, unrehearsed
forehand smash volley across the net. If one prefers structure, cordiality and
some loose sense of rules and governance to their comedy, Rifkin’s riff-happy
flick won’t be for you. And honestly, far too much of the story here comes off
as arbitrary, lending the movie the feeling of an indulgent, film school
exercise. That said, there’s some loopy fun in the interstices. It may require a
slightly regressive mindset to appreciate it, however. For me, it wasn’t
happening.

This special edition DVD of The Dark Backward comes housed in a regular Amray case, and
presented in 1.85:1 anamorphic widescreen, with a Dolby digital 2.0 stereo
audio track. A clear labor-of-love — both in its original production and here,
re-imagined and gussied up for the digital age — this disc comes loaded with
all-new bonus material, starting with a brief introduction to the movie from
Rifkin. A special, 40-minute Q&A session with Paxton, Nelson and Rifkin and
producer Brad Wyman, from 2006, proves interesting and amusing, as does an
engaging audio commentary track from the same quartet. A never-before-seen collection
of deleted and extended scenes runs about six minutes, and contains some flubs,
as well as longer versions of extant material, with only unnecessary headers
and footers trimmed. A solid little making-of featurette includes a nice array
of interview material with all the aforementioned parties, plus Newton,
editor Peter Schink and a few other behind-the-scenes figures. There’s also an
interesting assortment of promotional videos that Rifkin made to take to the
Cannes Film Festival to secure financial backing, and a gallery collection of assorted
trailers. For a “deep cut” niche catalogue title like this, one could scarcely
ask for a better DVD rendering with a straight face. C- (Movie) A (Disc)

So I need a specific reason to re-post this DVD review of Lara Croft: Tomb Raider, from 2001? What, like you have some objection to another picture of Angelina Jolie or something? Whatever…

Angelina Jolie), the film is a big hunk of depressingly dumb summer programming, and so
the main question one feels hanging over any viewing of the movie or
exploration of its more than three hours of painstakingly culled extras is: all
this, in service of what?

Well, a film franchise, one certainly presumes. But Lara
Croft: Tomb Raider is an inauspicious bow. This is not to suggest that Jolie,
who flings her body about with grace, precision and a persuasive air of
authority, is at all at fault. If some of the videogame’s more overt sexual
elements are understandably sacrificed at the Canonized Altar of PG-13, Jolie
still manages to convey a kick-ass sexual liberation merely with her leonine
gait and the sly, timely displacement of one of her increasingly famous
eyebrows (note to studios: investigate possibility of buddy cop flick with The
Rock).

There’s also a charismatic, guileful intelligence to match those
erotically hip-holstered hand cannons. If every other single character seems
flat and boring, thanks to Jolie we at least get a good sense of well-off
adventurer Lara Croft — of both her place within the film and why she’s such a
popular videogame character. The film’s putative plot revolves around a clock
and Lara retrieving two halves of a mysterious time travel device before the
sneeringly evil Manfred Powell (Iain Glenn) and his Illuminati, a group of
typically sinister-looking folks in typically sinister high-backed chairs, can
wreak world domination.

Yet on any level of sane judgment, the film fails. The
movie’s much-labored over script, on which six folks, including West himself,
share some form of credit, features dialogue so inescapably bland and
banal — actors sometimes just repeating other characters’ lines in the absence of
anything else to say — that entire exchanges can evaporate, like butter melting
between your ears, before you even know what the hell you’ve missed. Perhaps
most damning for an action movie, though, Tomb Raider just isn’t very exciting.
Apart from the frenetic opening sequence and an admittedly way-cool, bungee
cord-type shoot out in which Jolie is suspended on what for all intents and
purposes is a massive rubberband, Tomb Raider’s action is a dull pastiche of
loosely related jumps ’n’ stunts, the equivalent of preordained action dominoes falling
listlessly. We never for a moment feel peril — indeed, feel anything — and aside
from the gorgeous settings (the dense jungle of Cambodia,
the tundras and caves of Iceland),
Tomb Raider offers nothing of quality for its charismatic lead to plunder or
rescue.

Still, for those inclined, the Tomb Raider DVD does offer a lot of nice
extras, including an audio commentary track by West, a look at Jolie’s intense training for
the role, a production featurette, four deleted scenes (including one that
sheds crucial light on Croft’s relationship with part-friend/part-nemesis Alex,
and two more which achieve the dubious distinction of having even worse
dialogue than the film), an alternate title sequence and the unedited version
of U2’s “Elevation” video. The most compelling extra, however, comes in the
form of a brief set interview with Jolie and her father Jon Voight. While this
may be a questionable choice for their first screen teaming, it’s heartening to
see the two reconciled and happy together… for the moment. To purchase the DVD via Amazon, click here. D (Movie) B+ (Disc)

The archives here at Shared Darkness are in desperate need of being expanded, but a master plan of sorts is being delayed a bit while a laptop is repaired over the next few weeks. Still, there’s this DVD review blast from the past (not to be confused with Diane Keaton’s 2006 film of the same name), originally published in 2001 in a now-defunct Los Angeles weekly:

Multi-hyphenate Kevin Di Novis’ psychosexual drama bills itself as a “dark comedy of gender manipulation,” but that’s advertising a description it doesn’t completely earn. Festival-lauded (the film snagged prizes at Slamdance, and the official Underground gatherings in both New York and Chicago), Surrender Dorothy certainly has the off-kilter protagonist, wild narrative arc and shocking ending of a searing manifesto on psychosexual identity. It also posesses a certain lilting, collegial art rock ethos (several montages pad out the 87-minute running time), but its basic plotting is rather calamitous, with false drama (chiefly the narrative crutch of heroin use, but also specifically a brawl with some club punks and a faux-menacing drug dealer) lending the movie a feeling of contrivance rather than the downward-spiraling urgency no doubt intended.

Trevor (Peter Pryor, a sort of more menacing iteration of Kid in the Hall Kevin McDonald) is a reclusive restaurant busboy who we’re told repeatedly can’t make a connection with a female — never mind the fact that he can’t seem to make a connection with anyone. Trevor spends a good deal of time getting pushed around at work and masturbating in the bathroom with a pair of scissors jammed up to his nose. (Ummm, yeah…) Enter tinny-voiced smack addict Lahn (Di Novis), a moocher drifting through life and in need of a place to stay. Trevor lets Lahn move in with him, but their relationship soon degenerates into a loose jailer/captor scenario, with Trevor working out various interpersonal issues — and possibly subjugated homosexual urges — in increasingly distubring fashions.

The stark black-and-white cinematography of Jonathan Kovel is something to be admired here; it’s a lot more difficult than people realize to achieve this effect, especially on a budget. Yet overall Surrender Dorothy feels like a student short run amok — too much artifice and affect, not enough studied and skillful manipulation of reality. The DVD’s supplemental features include chapter selection, an audio commentary track with Di Novisa and the film’s producer, detailed production notes, cast and crew biographies and picture galleries. To order the film via Amazon, click here. C- (Movie) C+ (Disc)

It had been a long time since “Pass the Dutchie,” but crowds and fans demanded that Musical Youth come back, and so in the middle of 2005, original members Dennis Seaton and Michael Grant got together with the Reggae Revolution, which included Steve Morrison and James Renford, and put together an awesome live show with all their hits, including the aforementioned tune, “Youth of Today,” “Never Gonna Give You Up,” “Tell Me Why?” and “007 (Shanty Town),” along with some newly recorded tracks, such as “Into Something Good.” The result was a small club tour of America and Europe, which in turn resulted in this solid, hour-long concert disc release from a one-off show in the United Kingdom. In addition to the songs above, others tunes included here are “54:46:00,” “Sixteen,” “Pretty Woman” and “One Love.” Housed in a regular Amray case, this region-free disc comes with Dolby digital audio. No smokeshop accoutrements, though. For more information, click here.

Look, I know it’s not right, but there’s something just
vaguely, snickeringly quasi-sexual about Handy
Manny. I don’t know if it’s the fact that the subtitle of this DVD
collection the preschool hit is “Tooling Around,” I don’t know if it’s the fact
that the eponymous handyman
(handykid?) has, on the cover, a toolbox full of phallic-shaped implements with
their own sets of eyeballs and unnervingly wide grins, I don’t know if it’s
because title simply rhymes with “tranny.” I don’t know if it’s all of these
things, none of these things, or what — all I know is that when I first laid
eyes on this DVD, I laughed out loud. Of course, this all but clinches the fact
that when I have kids of my own, this will be their favorite show, and I’ll be
forced to watch it with them, left to contemplate if it’s actually possible
that I could be less mature than a toddler.

The Playhouse Disney preschool hit makes its DVD bow with
this hour-long title, in which Manny (voiced by That ’70s Show’s
Wilmer Valderrama) and his posse of talking tools work to fix problems around
their neighborhood of Sheetrock Hills. Along the way they impart messages of
teamwork, friendship and community, all while providing an introduction to
basic Spanish-language skills. Included episodes consist of “Amigo Grande,” “A
Sticky Fix,” “Pat the Screwdriver,” “Supremoguy” and the never-before-seen
bonus episode “Squeeze’s Day Off.”

The template structure here obviously involves a certain
amount of repetitiveness, befitting the target demographic for this title.
Ergo, whenever Manny and the tools get ready to fix something, there’s the same
sing-song little introduction. That said, the sweetly moralizing lessons
(about, say, small duties and acts serving a larger benefit in the grand scheme
of things) are easily applicable to any number of other situations.

Handy Manny: Tooling
Around comes in a regular Amray case, presented in 1.33:1 full screen, with
a Dolby digital 5.1 surround sound audio track. A simple set-top,
problem-solving game provides a few fun activities for the whole family, and
serves as the title’s only bonus feature of note, apart from sneak peeks at
other Disney kids’ titles. To purchase the title via Amazon, click here;
to purchase the title via Half, click here.
B (Show) B- (Disc)

It’s of course difficult if not impossible to watch 8 Simple Rules for Dating My Teenage
Daughter without thinking of John Ritter’s unfortunate death. Taken too
soon, Ritter was one of Hollywood’s
most affable, well-liked stars. The son of legendary country crooner Tex
Ritter, he ascended to stardom in the late 1970s with his Emmy- and Golden
Globe-winning portrayal of randy every-bachelor Jack Tripper in the classic
sitcom Three’s Company. Ritter later
tackled a variety of memorable roles big and small, including turns as a
bumbling dad in the G-rated Problem Child
franchise, a San Francisco cop in
the Steven Bochco-created Hooperman, a
strange, wires-crossed suitor in Buffy
the Vampire Slayer and a friendly listener in the critically acclaimed
indie flick Sling Blade.

8 Simple Rules for Dating My Teenage Daughter and broadcast on ABC from
2002 to 2005, 8 Simple Rules was
created and shepherded through production by veteran television scribe Tracy
Gamble (According to Jim). Small
screen hall-of-famer Ritter plays sportswriter Paul Hennessey, a father who
lives by a set of dictums which basically boil down to one golden law: keep
your hands off teenage daughters Bridget (Kaley Cuoco), the boy-crazy one, and Kerry (Amy Davidson, above right), the moody and artistic one. Ergo
his rules, which basically read as follows: 1) Use your hands on my daughter
and you’ll lose them afterwards, 2) You make her cry, I make you cry, 3) Safe
sex is a myth — anything you try will be hazardous to your health, 4) Bring her
home late, there’s no next date, 5) Only delivery men honk — dates ring the
doorbell, 6) No complaining while you’re waiting for her — if you’re bored,
change my oil, 7) If your pants hang off your hips, I’ll gladly secure them
with my staple gun, and 8) Dates must be in crowded public place — if you want
romance, read a book. Paul’s wife Cate (Katey Sagal) for the most part supports
Paul’s doting interventions, but her recent return to work as a nurse eats up
much of her time, leaving dad to play a more active role, sometimes to his
daughters’ chagrin. Luckily for the already overburdened Paul, there’s youngest
son Rory (Martin Spanjers, above left) on hand, to lend wisecracks and mischief.

The season here spans 28 episodes — a full-order commitment
that showed ABC’s confidence in the series and its star — though it takes a
while to find its footing, tonally. Some episodes incorporate flashback
elements, to help bump up the blink-and-you’ll-miss-them identification with
Paul and Cate with respect to their kids growing up. If the characters themselves are pretty broadly drawn, Ritter’s
charisma and crack comic timing go a long way toward helping establish
something approaching warm and fuzzy invitation, which is all that most sitcoms
aim for. In fact, many of the more genuine, out-of-left-field laughs on the
show come from moments of sputtering bewilderment from Ritter, one of his
specialties. (For some of Paul’s unwanted lessons in street slang, click here).
Helping the series too is Sagal, who, of course, was nominated for four Golden
Globes for her portrayal of lazy housewife Peggy Bundy on Married… with Children,
a very solidly written solid sitcom that never got the respect it deserved
because it reveled in sneering blue-collar affinities. Here she gets a softer
edge, but a little bit of sardonic edge slips through, in pleasing fashion.
Popping up in single-episode guest starring roles are Terry Bradshaw, Jason
Priestley and Cybill Shepherd.

Housed in a nicely packaged Amray case, 8 Simple Rules is spread out over three discs and presented in
1.78:1 anamorphic widescreen, courtesy of a great-looking transfer with no
problems with edge enhancement or layer-change hiccups. A Dolby digital 5.1
audio mix, meanwhile, playable in either English or French, adequately captures
the series’ front-mixed sound design. Optional English, Spanish and French
subtitles are also available. Somewhat strangely, there’s no sort of memorial
retrospective on Ritter, though there is a nice, 10-minute collection of
bloopers and outtakes from the 2002 season of the Emmy Award-winning sitcom, in
which lines are flubbed and blame jokingly assigned and diverted. For a clip of some of Ritter’s on-set hijinks, click here.
Meanwhile, to purchase the set via Amazon, click here.
B (Show) C (Disc)

Now, was there ever a chance that Are We Done Yet? — a sequel to 2005’s $82 million-grossing Are We There Yet? — was going to be a critics’ darling? No, probably not. But the first film was a harmless enough family comedy about besieged masculinity and eventual maturation. It had its moments of diverting amusement, and it actually told a linear story in some loose, relatable sense. This sub-moronic re-up, though, is completely divorced from any sort of reality (even of its own invention) and totally mind-numbing, even at well under 90 minutes.

Scrubs‘ John C. McGinley, above left), Nick’s dream home becomes a nightmare.

That Are We Done Yet? runs on comedy of the predictable is surely no surprise, but Hank Nelken’s script is especially atrocious, a desultory mix of slapstick and bland bickering, powered by mind-boggling contradictions in character. You know going in that there will be: a) toys stepped on; b) a leaky roof; c) a falling chandelier; d) a comic electrocution; and e) Ice Cube falling through said roof. And there are, courtesy of Steve Carr’s reliably awful direction. What you don’t expect, necessarily, are bits involving a talking raccoon, a deer whose eyes bug out in cartoonish fashion and Ice Cube wrestling a giant sturgeon.

Still, it’s the breathtaking manner in which the movie so immediately announces its complete gracelessness and lack of respect for its audience’s intelligence that is most amazing. After ananimated opening credits sequence that trumps the entire combined feature for imagination and sheer entertainment value, Ice Cube’s character is awakened by his alarm clock, at 5 a.m., to an outdoors that is completely bright and spilling sunlight into the room. Nothing gets much better from there, in either attention to detail or certainly cleverness. Despite its cheery pitch, this most certainly isn’t one for the entire family.

Are We Done Yet? comes housed in a regular Amray case and presented in 1.85:1 anamorphic widescreen, with a Dolby digital 5.1 surround sound audio track. Distributor Sony tries to put a nice face on matters, with supplemental extras consisting of a five-minute featurette about McGinley’s character, an interactive quiz on the movie, three minutes of bloopers (during which McGinley goes spitfire, and directs himself), and a short, seven-minute making-of featurette. F (Movie) C (Disc)

Circle of Iron,
also known as The Silent Flute, has
over the years gathered some cultish acclaim, chiefly since it was a
labor-of-love project that was to be Bruce Lee’s English-language breakthrough.
While Lee was still a struggling actor and martial arts dayplayer, he and
friends James Coburn and Stirling Silliphant (the Oscar-winning writer of In the Heat of the Night) developed a
mystical epic about the quest for enlightenment and peace; it blended thick
religious symbolism, surreality, complex location shoots and, of course,
head-cracking action. It was also abstruse and un-filmable.

In the intervening years, Lee went on to international
acclaim in Enter the Dragon, and when
his friends raised the necessary capital to lens their passion play, a haughty
Lee informed them that they could no longer afford him. (So much for that
all-for-one, one-for-all dream…) Five years after Lee’s mysterious death,
however, the vision would finally be realized, though this time with David
Carradine as its star.

The movie — about a young man named Cord (Jeff Cooper, above right, possessing
one of the largest, most unusually shaped craniums I’ve ever seen) searching
for clarity via a “book of enlightenment” and occasional conversations with a
wise old blind man named Ah Sahm — is still a wildly mixed bag of
Eastern-tinged esoterica, action and weird humor. Eli Wallach (above left), for instance,
pops up as a man in a large pot in the desert who is trying to dissolve his own
testicles in hot oil. Still, Carradine’s multiple performances (he co-stars as
Ah Sahm, Monkey Man and Death) and some simply gorgeous location shooting makes
for riveting retro-showcase theater for appreciative zen-martial arts fans, if
not mainstream audiences.

The superb supplemental extras on this special edition DVD
also elevate the release from Blue Underground, their second treatment of the
title. They include an audio commentary track with director Richard Moore, the
film’s theatrical trailer, an alternate title sequence, a mini-documentary
tracing the project’s strange history to the screen, the first draft of the script
on DVD-ROM and a fantastic new interview with Carradine in which he reminisces
about the film and its special place in his heart — he rates it “probably his
favorite,” especially for the ideas it espouses. Hmmm… okay. C (Movie) A- (Disc)

Jim Gaffigan has made his supper via supporting film roles
and as a go-to guy in a variety of sitcoms, including The Ellen Show.
He’s front and center in this familiarly plotted but diverting little feature,
however — a road movie about a quartet of thirtysomething guys who attempt to reclaim some of
their youthful mojo with an annual trek to take in as many high school hockey
games as possible.

No Sleep ’til
Madison is set in Midwest (this allows for frequent
use of the word Sheboygan), and
stars Gaffigan stars as 30-year-old Owen Fenby, the enthusiastic and compulsive
planner of the group. Owen loves his girlfriend Loretta (Molly Glynn Hammond),
but he loves high school hockey more. So, forced to choose between his
girlfriend and his annual pilgrimage to the Wisconsin High School Hockey Tournament,
he picks the latter. Accompanied by 18-year-old videographer/protégé, Dave (Ian
Brennan), Owen meets up with three former teammates who now live out of state.
There’s Greg (T.J. Jagodowski, of the ubiquitous Sonic commercials),
who’s bored with married life with his wife Beth (Rebekah Louise Smith).
There’s Tommy (Michael Gilio), also married, who sings karaoke in French to
help impress some ladies. And then there’s Vern (Jed Resnik), a stocky St.
Louis district attorney who suffers from gout, and is
the requisite single guy in the group.

The trip, unfolding in a recently procured laundry truck, gets
off to an inauspicious beginning (the T-shirts that Owen ordered read, “No
Sheep ’Til Madison”), and proceeds through
a wide array of obstacles as the guys careen from one location to another. Crises
both personal and professional infect the trip (no gay jokes or bird crap,
though, unlike Wild Hogs),
and, worst of all, a mysterious black pickup truck seems to be stalking them. Finally,
one by one, friends drop out, leaving Owen to face some hard truths about his obsession
and arrested development.

The story here is one of a comfortable template, certainly,
but what makes the film so pleasant is the relaxed chemistry between all of the
guys. If the direction is sometimes a bit slipshod, and the character of Dave seemingly
chiefly on hand to allow the filmmakers to cheat a bit and slip back and forth
between film and digital video, one doesn’t mind too much because of the warm glow
that the main actors’ rapport creates. It’s enough to make you want to set out
on a roadie with your old high school chums… and also enough to remind you why
that might not be such a good idea.

Presented in 4:3 aspect ratio, with a Dolby 2.0 AC3 stereo
soundtrack, No Sleep ’Til Madison
comes housed in a regular Amray case, and with an engaging audio commentary
track from the directors. Other bonus materials include 15 minutes of cast
audition tapes and an extremely cursory behind-the-scenes clip (that would be
70 seconds worth of material) that actually includes its own credited director!
The randomly strung together footage is chiefly just a bunch of on-set cutting
up, a good bit of it with people kidding Gaffigan about his weight. For more
information, click here. B- (Movie) C+ (Disc)

I got an email from a friend last night asking about movies with Laura Linney (she’d apparently been crapping her pants after watching The Mothman Prophecies on cable), so I thought I’d re-post this slightly redacted DVD review of P.S., which originally ran in another publication that… oh, how shall we put it this time, has yet to provide completion funds. It isn’t among the best of her canon, but does showcase the fact that you never get a stupid or wrongheaded performance from Linney. To wit:

A movie to be acknowledged for its atypical potentiality
rather than praised for its execution, P.S.
is the second feature from Roger Dodger
helmer Dylan Kidd. Here Kidd adapts, with original author Helen Schulman, the
contemporary-set novel of the same name — the story of a thirtysomething art
school admissions officer at Columbia University, Louise Harrington (Linney), who meets with and falls for a student candidate, F. Scott Feinstadt
(Topher Grace), who bears an uncanny resemblance in name, physicality, passion
and spirit to her dead high school sweetheart. Together they embark on a
hesitant, awkward affair, all while Louise tries to discern whether F. Scott is
in fact the reincarnation of her former beau.

P.S. is an
independent movie in all the best senses of the word — thoughtful,
performance-centric and meticulously crafted — it’s just that it actually doesn’t
live up to the quiet hype of its premise, or even the sum of its parts. Linney is characteristically
fantastic, and Grace brings a quiet sensitivity and, well, grace to his role
that will help make him a huge movie star in the very near future. The other
actors, though — which include Paul Rudd as Louise’s brother Sammy, a recovering
drug addict; Gabriel Byrne as her colleague and ex-husband Peter, who still
harbors a dark secret; and best-friend-by-default Missy (Marcia Gay Harden), a
harridan and functional alcoholic — all seem underused and/or arbitrarily placed,
emotional stimulators who drift in and out of the story whenever Louise needs
to be goosed. The film is much better put together, technically speaking, than
Kidd’s wordy, gimmick-driven debut, and augurs for a perhaps substantial and
successful filmmaking career where previously there might have been doubt. In
the end, though, that isn’t enough to recommend the movie, as it just doesn’t
hang together.

DVD extras include a fairly discerning and scholarly audio
commentary track from Kidd, and a collection of five excised/alternate scenes,
two of which are extended versions of what appears already in the film and
three of which were deleted entirely. Of these latter three, the exclusion of
the last — a seven-minute plus tête-à-tête between the two leads — intrinsically
changes the nature of the story. Kidd contends in optional audio commentary
that it was necessary to cut because, due to its setting, the scene’s inclusion
would infantilize F. Scott after he had, within the story, “become a man”
(Kidd’s wording). He has the germ of a point, but the trim comes at the expense
of Louise (it changes the prism through which you view her character) and the
movie as a whole. P.S. is still only
worth catching if you’re a huge fan of Linney or Grace, but watch these deleted
scenes only after the full film, and see if it doesn’t bump your estimation a
half-letter grade if they had been included. C- (Movie) C (Disc)

I’ve written before about Home Improvement,
and many other like-minded meat-and-potatoes sitcoms of the 1980s and ’90s, and
it’s shows like these that most bear out the maxim that one man’s trash is
another’s treasure.

Well, “treasure” is overstating it. Maybe “trash” too,
actually. The notion of comfort food might be a more appropriate comparison.
Just as there are times when hunger strikes independent of the ability to make another decision at the tail end of a
long day, and one finds themselves at a local haunt picking up the same
take-out they’ve ordered a hundred times before, there are also times — many
times, it turns out, and for many people — when the thought of actively
grappling with something like new characters or narrative nuance is as big of a
turn-off as a pre-liposuction Roseanne Barr in a floss-thin thong.

Home Improvement, at least in many of its
earlier incarnations. But as this collection of the show’s seventh go-round
reflects, blue-collar inspiration has a certain shelf life. Spanning 25 episodes,
this season of the Detroit-set show finds Tim “The Toolman” Taylor (Tim Allen) scoring box seats to a Thanksgiving
pro football game, where he somehow manages to cause a blackout. Tim’s eldest
son Brad (Zachery Ty Bryan) almost gets hitched in the episode “An Older
Woman.” Tim’s wife Jill (Patricia Richardson, who received her fourth Emmy
nomination this season) makes some rather inappropriate comments about her
husband’s fix-it-up television show in “From Top to Bottom,” while wise but
rarely seen neighbor Wilson (Earl Hindman) goes face-to-face with an alien in
“Believe It or Not.” Rounding out the cast are Tim’s mischievous younger sons
Randy (Jonathan Taylor Thomas) and Mark (Taran Noah Smith), with former Family Feud host Richard Karn costarring
as Tim’s unflappably upbeat, flannel-wearing Tool Time sidekick, Al Borland. The parade of guest stars includes
appearances from Dan Akroyd, habitually injured NBA “superstar” Grant Hill and
astronauts Ken Bowersox and Steve Hawley

Home Improvement
co-creators Matt Williams and Carmen Finestra previously wrote for iconic ’80s
sitcom The Cosby Show, so their work
retains much of that show’s good-heartedness, if not quite the same aplomb with
which the requisite “very special episodes” are handled. Home Improvement was, of course, originally inspired by some of Allen’s
standup comedy, but little of that kick remains here — just familiar sitcom
stories with a pinch of watered-down familial drama, carried along by charisma
and goodwill. Allen has gone on to film quasi-stardom, with box office hits
like Wild Hogs and The Santa Clause franchise, proving
that he knows his audience. Here, they know him too. And that’s just the way
they like it.

Some of Home
Improvement’s previous DVD incarnations came in novelty cases, or at least somewhat
imaginative packaging (a buzzsaw half-slipcase, etcetera), but the seventh
season’s release sees no such fancifulness. Presented in a 1.33:1 aspect ratio
(that would full-screen), the set’s Dolby digital stereo audio track is
certainly more than adequate to handle the skimpy requirements of the series’ sound
design. There are a few times when some cockamamie scheme of Tim’s blows up in
his face, either figuratively or literally, but these bits are conveyed through
volume and aural smash cuts, not really much fading or layering. Spread out
over three discs, this compilation’s only supplemental extra consists of a new blooper
reel comprised of the funniest outtakes from the 1997-1998 season. Flubbed
lines lead to some consternation, but unlike, say, Chris Tucker in every Rush Hour movie, at least no one leaves
their cell phone on. To order the set via Amazon, click here. C (Show) C+ (Disc)

America
does nostalgia quite well, and the emergence of new technologies allows us to
continue to perpetuate this unrelenting packaging of yesteryear. Presenting
eight cherry-picked acts each jamming through two tunes, the concert
compilation ’60s Rock ’n’ Roll Jukebox
does a good job of that, even if its material is somewhat uneven.

Recorded live at The Rock ’n’ Roll
Palace in Orlando,
Florida, the big glasses, helmet hair and
awkward crowd dancing mark this title a kitsch delight of sorts. Erstwhile teen
heartthrob Bryan Hyland kicks things off — he of the chart-toppers “Sealed with
a Kiss” and “Itsy Bitsy,” that rather cloying tune currently getting some
commercial run pegged to that yogurt ad about the girl who works up the courage
to finally sport her bikini at the beach. Del Shannon follows, working through
the utterly pedestrian “Hats Off to Larry” before more or less still
approximating the high notes of the solid bop ditty “Runaway,” which also
features a wicked synth keyboard pattern.

The middle portion of the disc is its undeniable highlight. Spencer
Davis — whose top 10 hit “Gimme Some Lovin’” helped bring British rock to the
rest of the world — plays that tune and “Keep on Runnin’,” while ex-Byrd Roger McGuinn
offers forth lilting versions of “Mr. Tambourine Man” and “Turn Turn Turn,”
which the audience doesn’t really seem to recognize until about halfway through
its first choral pass.

Famous deejay Wolfman Jack, the master of ceremonies for the
rock ’n’ roll generation, grabs a stool to massacre “Old Time Rock ’N’ Roll”
and “Shake Rattle & Roll” in sweaty, obese fashion, while the goofily
earnest John Sebastian reveals himself a one-trick pony with the very
similar-sounding “What a Day For a…” and “Welcome Back Kotter” (yes, the TV theme
for the show of the same name). Rounding out the disc are Johnny Tillotson
— who charted 26 hits between 1958 and ’65, and here plays “Dreamy Eyes” and “Poetry
in Motion” — and Ray Peterson, who contributes “Goodnight My Love” and the
maudlin “Tell Laura I Love Her.”

Housed in a regular Amray keepcase, ’60s Rock ’n’ Roll Jukebox is presented on fullscreen on a
region-free disc. Its soundtrack is pretty solid, though definitely not given
to a lot of rear channel differential. There are some nice, quite extended
text bios for most of the acts (Spencer Davis also plugs his own web site), but
this title runs only 38 minutes, despite the hour-long running time advertised
on its back cover. Additionally, a few of the numbers end abruptly, giving off a very
choppy, unprofessional vibe. B- (Concert) C- (Disc)

Dr. Ravi & Mr.
Hyde is a comedy about a doctor who goes to film school to make a film about
being a doctor. It’s produced, written and directed by and starring Dr. Ravi
Godse, who plays himself, or at least an approximation thereof. Even the thick,
vanity-project scent which that description gives off, though, doesn’t fully do
justice to the eye-gouging amateurishness on display herein.

The movie opens with a sing-songy tune set under the lyrics,
“Movie/I wanna make a movie/A groovy movie/It’s the dream of my life…” Seriously.
It then segues into a halting, accented introduction from Godse (above center), who sets the
scene, and describes, without a hint of irony, “sleeping comfortably in the
arms of the one I loved.” We then cut to Godse sleeping in a queen-sized bed, a
good four to five feet apart from his wife (Olga Segall), who is also a doctor.
Incongruities like these (Godse is Indian, Segall appears Latino, and the pair’s
young son is white) are a hallmark of this production, whose first 20 minutes or
so will have you wanting to slam your head against a nearby table or book, if
only to numb the pain of what’s unfolding. A funny thing then happens, though.
The movie doesn’t so much necessarily become good as become just slightly more competent. The urge to do harm to
yourself through consuming massive quantities of ice cream slowly passes.

The plot? Well, I guess
you could say it’s loosely inspired by something like Woody Allen’s Melinda and Melinda, with a pinch of Living in Oblivion and mistaken
indentity mob caper thrown in for good measure. Like many men his age, Dr. Ravi
finds himself halfway through his life having not yet achieved the greatness he
anticipated. He is rich (as he tells us many times), but is sick of being
constantly on-call, and being accosted on the street by the flower guy for a
Viagra prescription. Sure, he could buy a sports car or have an affair with a young
babe to help him through his midlife crisis, but Dr. Ravi yearns for more. His
search for personal fulfillment takes him from the halls of a hospital to what he
believes is his true calling — directing and producing a true “timeless classic”
motion picture, a movie that just so happens to be an adaptation of a novel he’s
relatively recently self-published. (What inspired him to pen that is a mystery
hopefully left unexplored in an imaginary prequel.)

On this journey, Dr. Ravi must cope with unscrupulous
agents, reluctant colleagues, an unenthusiastic wife and even the mafia. From
the streets of Pittsburgh to the
sun-swept shores of South Africa,
Dr. Ravi’s search takes him near and far, and eventually brings him to the
realization that it’s not important what he does or how well he does it, as long
as he just does something.

I don’t know how much the M. Night Shyamalan comparisons get
bandied about in his home, but Godse, whose novel was apparently a Top 5
bestseller in India, is an awful actor, and though the film’s ensemble cast features
American Radio Hall of Fame inductee Myron Cope as well as Emmy-winning TV
personality Dave Crawley, for the most part this is strictly amateur hour. There
are multiple incidences of an actor looking at the camera, or visibly toeing
their cue, and the ADR is at times atrocious, recalling the scene in Grindhouse
where Tarantino’s squirrelly bartender in the Death Proof segment is purposefully looped from off-camera.

The other production value — at least visually — isn’t that
bad, all things considered. And where Godse scores is in some of the movie’s sardonic
asides and ping-pong dialogue exchanges, like when Dr. Ravi’s book agent advises
him to drum up controversy to help his movie’s chances at getting off the
ground, and offers his help thusly: “I have contacts in the Indian government —
I can get it banned.” The problem, though, is that the story is extremely
indulgent and just not very inviting. Tone is a big problem; one minute you’re
supposed to be taking things seriously, but that’s hard to mesh with a harridan
wife and buffoonish film school colleagues.

Presented in widescreen enhanced for 16×9 televisions, Dr. Ravi & Mr. Hyde comes with chapter
stops and a gallery of trailers for other films, but no other bonus materials —
surprising for a film made with such personal gusto. Or who knows… maybe there’s
a feature-length documentary on its making just around the bend. To order the movie via Amazon, click here; to order the movie via Half.com, click here. D- (Movie) D (Disc)

Word of advice: when you have a stack of DVDs sitting
around, slated for review, and the spine of one of them, in large pink text on
a black background, reads This Ain’t Your
Mom’s Hardcore Vol. 2, it’s not unreasonable to assume that your girlfriend’s
eye might be drawn to it, and think it’s porn.

This Ain’t Your Mom’s Hardcore is a punk/aggro
compilation disc, and a suitably eye-opening and tympanic membrane-annihilating
one at that. Featuring almost two dozen bands and almost 150 minutes of video, the
disc spotlights 28 ferocious live performances by artists such as Maylene and
the Sons of Disaster, Bury Your Dead, Destroy the Runner, Misery Signals,
Secret Lives of the Freemasons, The Chariot, Haste the Day and As Cities Burn. (Incidentally,
this reminds me of the time a friend and I spent an entire chemistry class
period sitting around thinking up band names for another mutual friend, and
while I’m unable to remember them all, it’s safe to say that a little more
brainstorming should have likely gone into some of these handles.)

Shot mostly in and around the Atlanta
area, these packed shows, filmed from every angle, serve as a loud, loud reminder why
nothing quite compares to a live rock concert. While the material itself is
quite uneven, and in fact generally ranging on the downside of average, the video footage
itself is filled with incredible breakdowns, sonic blasts and energy; the variety, in both
venues and stagecraft, is something to be admired, if only barely through the din. Among the more memorable
acts are Grace Gale, August Burns Red, Classic
Case and Thumbscrew. I also really like the
name Twelve Gauge Valentine, but am unfortunately unable to give their music a
thumbs up. Fleshing out the live sets are some music videos and interviews,
though the regional, super-niche appeal of some of these acts renders those
bits for the most part irrelevant.

Housed in a regular Amray keepcase, This Ain’t Your Mom’s Hardcore Vol. 2 is presented on a region-free
disc, with a solid Dolby digital stereo audio track that captures the
hard-charging aural demands of these thrash-and-burn acts. Not for all tastes,
definitely, but the sheer volume has to be appreciated on a certain level I suppose, especially at a time when so
many concert discs try to fallaciously inflate or pad out their running times. C- (Concerts) C+ (DVD)

Sunshine,
and he expressed no small amount of wonderment at humankind’s instinct for
exploration and sort of beautifully arrogant propensity for believing that that
which it can scarcely see with the naked eye it can visit, explore and
eventually harness and control. A visually stunning short-form documentary that
garnered justly excellent reviews during its original presentation on IMAX
screens last year, Roving Mars is a testament
to just that sort of impulse and intuition. While definitely possessing a bit
of the sort of compulsory awe present in the best forms of propaganda, the
movie is a perfect gift for science and space enthusiasts, as well as history
or general non-fiction film fans looking for a unique new experience.

The movie centers around the 2003 Mars Rover mission, in
which two robots — feted as Spirit and Opportunity — were
sent to explore the red planet. Roving
Mars opens with the development of the machines by a team of dedicated scientists,
and chronicles the project through to the stunning images of Mars sent back
from the unmanned explorers. For something whose final outcome is never really
in doubt, a lot of time and effort — if not necessarily parallel exacting detail
— is spent chatting up the Mars Rover mission as a near-impossible challenge. Head
scientist Steve Squyres and others give long odds for its success without really delving into the trial-and-error process that led to certain key calculations and conclusions.

Directed by veteran, award-winning documentarian George Butler (1977’s Pumping Iron, 2000’s The Endurance), Roving Mars won the 2007 Visual Effects Society Award for
Outstanding Visual Effects in a Special Venue Project, and this is where the movie really succeeds. Though definitely ceding some of its original majesty in this reduced-to-scale form, Butler and his colleagues do a nice job of blending actual landscape footage and speculative CGI work, providing for some stunning vistas that might be glimpsed by future generations but no one living on Earth today.

Presented in both 1.78:1 widescreen, enhanced for 16×9
televisions, and a full screen option as well, Roving Mars comes with a Dolby digital 5.1 surround sound audio
track, complementary French and Spanish audio tracks, and French and Spanish
subtitles to boot. Its video transfer is clean and clear, with crisp, vibrant
colors and no problems whatsoever with edge enhancement. As far as supplemental
material, a 53-minute 1957 animated television special entitled Mars and Beyond — hosted by Walt Disney himself, and part of the Walt Disney Treasures Tommorowland set — offers a fantastic look
into the scientific knowledge about space from that era. Also included is the forward-looking, 25-minute Mars: Past, Present & Future, a new
feature developed especially for this release that includes personal
reflections on Mars from the filmmakers, JPL Rover team members and students
from the “Imagine Mars” program. The most interesting parts of this featurette take a look at the very real possibilities of eventual manned flights to Mars. Handy proof-of-purchase title tabs, meanwhile, allow for participation in the Disney Movie
Rewards program. B- (Movie) B (Disc)