Her birthday is coming up in a few weeks, so I thought I’d go ahead and re-post this review of Charlize Theron‘s break-through movie, Monster, which originally appeared in another publication on occasion of the film’s special edition DVD release in 2004. To wit, slightly redacted:

Christina Ricci, the greatest accomplishment of first-time
writer-director Patty Jenkins’ serial killer tale is its capturing — in disarming
ways — the reality that there is “love,” that there is some impulse for
connection, in everyone, no matter how screwed up, formally uneducated,
self-medicated and monstrous they are. (Hey, who knew Journey’s “Don’t Stop
Believin’,” used here pre-Sopranos finale, could be an anthem of the disenfranchised?)

The rise of the so-called geek elite — the kids who
purchased and hoarded comic books and action figures in the 1980s, and then
slipped in the back door of the entertainment industry as grown-ups — is having
far-reaching influences, of which only the first wave we are now experiencing. Movies
like Sin City and 300
are new standards by which genre product will be judged, not merely some quirky
aberrations.

Renaissance fits
into this trend is somewhat hard to say. A French, animated sci-fi crime thriller
that didn’t really catch on at the theatrical box office earlier this year, the movie is set in
the labyrinthine underworld of 2054 Paris,
and unfolds in starkly captivating black-and-white frames that perhaps turned
some folks off. A dystopian thriller loosely in the vein of Blade Runner and Minority Report, the movie paints a bold vision of a not-so-distant
future where all life is monitored, recorded and regulated, thanks to the City
of Lights’ largest corporation, the
health and beauty conglomerate known as Avalon. Detective Barthelemy Karas (voiced
by Daniel Craig in the movie’s English translation) has a reputation for
finding anyone at any cost, but while tracking down Ilona Tasuiev (voiced by Romola
Garai), a scientist abducted in the midst of some groundbreaking anti-aging research,
Karas ultimately finds himself buried beneath the film’s illicit world of
corporate malfeasance and soulless genetic research. Added pressure comes in
the form of Ilona’s bad girl sister, Bislane (voiced by Catherine McCormack),
and her shady boss, Paul Dellenbach (Tony Award-winner Jonathan Pryce), who heads
up Avalon. (Also providing voice work is Ian Holm.)

Whatever one feels about the story, Renaissance’s visual bonafides are not in question; it’s a dizzy,
wondrous, slurry experience. One often finds their mind slinking off into
recesses of the frame, and wondering about the world just out of our field of
vision. The interesting thing is that the movie relies on motion capture for
the bulk of its body animations, which is a strange mixture with black-and-white.
It sort of tricks the brain every once in a while, and you find yourself
sometimes so caught up in the visuals, and trying to piece together backgrounds
in fill-in-the-blank fashion, as to miss a line or two of dialogue.

Directed by Christian Volckman, the film also makes smart,
consistent and specific use of futuristic items that seem plausible in their
extension from today’s society, perhaps due to an exacting and mentally
rigorous pre-production process (Alexandre De La Patelliere, Matthieu
Delaporte, Jean-Bernard Pouy and Patrick Raynal share screenplay credit). If
there’s a knock, it’s that the story is kind of boilerplate, and even attempts
to subvert certain noirish genre clichés announce themselves with, well,
black-and-white signposting.

Renaissance comes
housed in a regular Amray case, presented in its original 2.35:1 widescreen
aspect ratio, enhanced for 16:9 televisions. The film’s video transfer is
excellent, with sharp edges, no enhancement problems or other blemishes. As one
might expect, its tones are quite necessarily deep; there’s no room for shades
of grey here. Audio comes in the form of a Dolby digital 5.1 surround sound
track, and in either English or French it’s powerful, consistent and deep, with
action effects echoing from all channels during the movie’s shoot-outs and brawnier
sequences. Apart from a clutch of trailers, the film’s sole DVD bonus feature consists of a lengthy making-of featurette which explores the
innovative process by which Volckman and his collaborators brought the
digitally animated noir tale to life, over the course of five painstaking
years. Along with interviews with many of the behind-the-scenes players, the
featurette also includes footage of the movie’s wireframe mock-ups and its motion
capture work players — a great look at the unsung heroes of a new-fangled production
like this. There’s also a glimpse at the musical scoring process. B- (Movie) B (Disc)

Ahh, what to make about The
Undagrind
, a gritty little documentary which bills itself with solemnly
introduced title cards as being about “struggle and respect,” then cuts to a
g-string-clad dancer shaking her butt cheeks and executing a stripper’s split?
Every trend spawns its own particular wave of hackish aspirants, of course, but
seemingly none quite so much as the inner city rap craze, at least recently.

The Undagrind isn’t a documentary in any
sort of traditional or even loose sense, which is to say that it might attempt
to explain or illuminate a trend, issue or person. Its back cover text claims
the movie explores the hardships that rap artists endure while they battle to
be heard and respected “on the streetz,” but this meandering, skull-numbing
collection of footage seems assembled in totally random, haphazard fashion.
There is literally no reason or rhyme to be found, apart from several of the
couplets that some rappers drop in freestyle. It’s true that there are a good
number of interview snippets here, with artists popular and unknown alike —
folks like David Banner, Three Six Mafia, Young Jeezy, Slim Thug, Lil’ Scrappy,
PSC, the Ying Yang Twins, Juvenile, I-20, Frasier Boy, Gucci Mane, Poo Baby and
2 Live Crew’s Luke Skyywalker, aka Luther Campbell. But there’s zero contextualization, the bits are
often extremely short and the inane ramblings run about 9:1 over any legitimate
insights (sample inspiration: “You gotta walk before you crawl, and you gotta
crawl before you run,” says a gent named Hustla, slapping the blacktop and
peddling copies of a self-produced CD). Vincent Phillips, president of BME, is
a notable exception, providing a bit of edifying on-the-fly history with
respect to the track laid by underground regional rap artists.

Some of the underground show footage could conceivably be
interesting to aficionados, but it’s not introduced or set up at all, leaving
one to draw their own conclusions about what comes from where. This is an awful
exercise in air-quote filmmaking, plain and simple, a bunch of home video-style footage
strung together in crass fashion. And there’s nary a sense of irony when an associate producer from
a radio station where an on-air rap battle is being held (and maybe even the
movie’s associate producer, Trey Dungy?) is billed onscreen with the moniker “ass.
producer.”

Housed in a regular Amray case, The Undagrind is presented in 1.33:1 full screen, with Dolby
digital 5.1 surround sound audio mix. The disc’s sole supplemental extra? Well,
I wasn’t really sure what the cover tag “bonus shake-off” really meant, but that
would be 12 minutes of booty-wobbling and quaking, performed for cash in front
of a crowd by a quartet of bikini-clad girls. Seriously. I don’t know whether
that’s the best or most objectionable thing about this trough-scraping disc,
but I do know that I need to go take a shower, like, right now. I see this movie, perhaps not so strangely, getting some run from the same crowd who purchase volume after volume of Extreme Chickfights. For more
information, one can visit the movie’s eponymous web site. Oh, right… if that’s
too big a word, umm… just type in The
Undagrind, followed by .com. F (Movie) C- (Disc)

Even my affinity for Michael Keaton can’t lift the snarky little indie flick The Last Time up to the level of a sincere recommendation. He’s the best thing here in this mish-mashed tale of ambition and deceit, but one scenery-chewing character does not a film make, alas.

The Last Time marks the feature film writing and directorial debut of Michael Caleo, who honed his chops on television shows like The Sopranos and Rescue Me. The film centers around Ted (Keaton), the cynical but hard-charging, top salesman at Bindview, a high-tech New York City company. Ted is chafed by having to show the ropes to optimistic, enthusiastic Ohio transplant Jamie (Brendan Fraser), but when he meets Jamie’s beautiful fiancee Belisa (Amber Valletta), Ted falls hard. The two begin an illicit affair (getting it on in front of a passed-out Jamie, actually), and the Ted of old slowly emerges. Losing his bitterness, though, somehow robs him of his edge, and sales failures follow. Jamie, meanwhile, continues to flounder at the sales game, and Ted’s guilt over the affair prompts him to feed Jamie what’s left of his own sales leads to try and keep him afloat. For Ted, his dalliance with Belisa really seems to mean something, but can the same be said for her?

The benchmarks here are obvious, whether it’s Glengarry Glen Ross or even a few of the bored-housewife-in-the-new-big city B-plot strands of movies like The Devil’s Advocate. The problem is that The Last Time can’t really measure up to any of the films that it most immediately summons to mind. The performances are certainly not bad, but consistency of tone is a bit of a bugaboo, and the movie’s third act twist seems like a commercial contrivance, a genuflection at genre salability. That’s ironic, I guess, given the movie’s backdrop.

Presented on a single-sided disc in both full-screen and a 2.35:1 anamorphic widescreen transfer, The Last Time comes housed in a regular plastic Amray case, and with a smattering of subtitle options. Its Dolby digital 5.1 audio mix sometimes favors the swell of compower Randy Edelman’s score over dialogue straightforwardness, but wide-ranging dynamism isn’t necessarily part of the film’s conceptual sound design anyway, so it doesn’t become too big of an issue. The only supplemental extra is a clutch of nine deleted scenes, running just under 12 minutes in total. More Keaton isn’t necessarily a bad thing, but this showcase isn’t the best platform for him. And for a movie with such an authorial bent, where’s Caleo? To order the film via Amazon, click here. C (Movie) C+ (Disc)

What do director Stuart Gordon, writer Dennis Paoli and star
Jeffrey Combs have in common? Well, besides collaborating on the 1985
horror classic Re-Animator, they now have another shared credit
— this time lifted from a short story of one of America’s most revered
and mysterious writers.

King of the Ants), co-written by Gordon and Paoli (Dagon, Castle Freak) and starring horror icon Combs, The Black Cat is the latest entry in the Emmy-winning Masters of Horror anthology series, and it dives headlong into the unchartered waters of biographic speculation, mixing the telling of the same-named story with elements of Poe’s actual life, much like Shakespeare in Love or the forthcoming Becoming Jane, I suppose.

As gorgeously shot (by Jon Joffin) as it is grisly, the brisk, hour-long movie stars Combs as Edgar Allan Poe. Suffering from crippling writer’s block, he’s deep in debt and in love with the bottle. When not nursing his own woes, Poe cares for his loving wife Virginia (Elyse Levesque), who’s been struck down with consumption. He tends to her, burdened with the knowledge that he cannot save her, especially when the doctor helping to treat her refuses to continue with his care unless Poe can make good on his overdue bills. But is it his wife’s slow, agonizing death and other real-world troubles, or her ever-present black cat that is steadily driving Poe insane? Unsure if he’s been condemned to a living hell of illusion and insanity, the writer sets out on a dark, inner voyage to create one of the more famous early horror stories ever written.

While the source material in all honesty isn’t really the best of Poe, the filmmakers get around this by tricking it out a bit and refracting it through Poe’s life, and the general stylishness with which they accomplish this carries much weight in terms of the project’s watchability. Film fans who abhor navel-gazing and referentiality — in horror or any other genre — will likely not find this among the best Masters of Horror entries, on par with such delightful works as Family and Deer Woman, which are more streamlined and fun. Still, if the means are obviously limited, these restrictions feed a certain imagination, and the film’s execution (no pun intended) is solid.

Presented in 1.78:1 widescreen and enhanced for 16×9 televisions, The Black Cat, like other Masters of Horror titles on DVD, comes housed in a cardboard slipcover, and accompanied by a litter of bonus features. An amiable audio commentary track with Gordon and Combs kicks things off, and much time is rightfully devoted to a discussion about the look of the movie. Running nearly 20 minutes, The Tell-Tale Cat gives a nice overview of the making of the movie, while a separate featurette, Bringing Down the Axe, shines a light on the special effects used herein, and how CGI and practical latex work were combined. Rounding out the disc are a brief biography and filmography on Gordon, a photo gallery from the movie and a DVD-ROM version of its screenplay. B- (Movie) B+ (Disc)

Hollywood’s attempts to perpetually reinvent the thriller require
stylistic dressing consistent with the times, certainly. But they also
increasingly demand labyrinthine and complex myths and legends,
frequently attached to one of the following: nebulous anthropological and/or alien menace (the underrated The Mothman Prophecies); mental fracturing or devolution (Identity, Secret Window, Christian Bale’s own personal two-fer of American Psycho and The Machinist); strong hints or outright underscoring of devilish threat (the in-release Joshua, The Exorcism of Emily Rose, The Omen); or centuries-old religious conspiracy (The Da Vinci Code,
naturally). Maybe it’s a millennial hangover, maybe it’s a sign of a
surging collective anxiety and how we like to displace that nervousness
and apprehension by hanging it on the hook of something bigger than
ourselves. Whatever the case, into this arena steps this week’s new DVD
The Number 23, a stylish if somewhat irresolute thriller about one man’s downward descent into geometric fixation and madness. For the full review, from FilmStew, click here.

Premonition is
proof positive that imaginatively fractured storytelling like Memento doesn’t actually always work. Sandra
Bullock stars as mother and housewife Linda Hanson in this slapdash and
nonsensical dramatic thriller, a jumbled mix of time-bending suspense elements
and tones.

Premonition has a
loose narrative of of personal-stakes investigation, but is frugal in design
and lacking in detail and rationality. Visual touchstones are scattered
haphazardly throughout (a dead crow here, a bottle of wine there), but they
hold neither any concrete meaning nor any surreal, anxiety-provoking allure; they’re just coded markers, wanly tossed into the mix to indicate where we are
on a timeline continuum. Furthermore, there are no sustained, legitimate
attempts to truly dissect Linda’s presentiments, or assign her plight any
importance. A few thinly sketched supporting characters wander in and out of
the proceedings, but do little to realistically impact it. As if these
stultifying inanities weren’t enough, Premonition also (and most
damningly) just comes off as boring, just plain and simple.

Available in either full-screen or widescreen, and housed in a regular Amray case in turn stored in a cardboard
slipcover, Premonition’s tricked-out DVD
release comes loaded with enough bonus materials to make folks perhaps think it’s
a worthwhile title. Supplemental extras include a collection of deleted scenes,
including an alternate ending with optional director’s commentary, a look at
the making of the movie with interviews from the cast and crew, a look at the
major events of the movie put in “normal” order and narrated by freshman director
Mennan Yapo, a short documentary about people who in real life people have had
premonitions about their own futures, and a short blooper reel, which shows
that at least some laughs were squeezed out of this lemon. There’s also an
audio commentary track with Yapo and Bullock. To purchase the DVD via Amazon, click here. F (Movie) B+ (Disc)

“For those that don’t know, this is how it began,” opens Neverwas, a solid enough
fantastical-minded drama which premiered at the 2005 Toronto Film Festival and
was acquired by Miramax, but then probably deemed too reminiscent in narrative and
lacking slightly in comparative lacquered whimsy to something like Finding Neverland to garner the P&A
muscle of a wide theatrical release.

Thank You For Smoking)
as Zach Riley, a psychiatrist who returns to Millwood
Psychiatric Hospital, the place where
his father, famous children’s novelist T.L. Pierson (a gravelly-voiced Nick
Nolte), committed suicide decades ago. The mysteries of Zach’s tragic early
life, contained within the pages of his father’s titular masterwork, are slowly
revealed to the psychiatrist with the assistance of a wide-eyed, allegedly schizophrenic
patient named Gabriel Finch (Ian McKellen). While Zach is reluctant to get
drawn into any analysis or discussion about his father’s Tolkien-esque tome,
Finch insists it’s all real, and that Zach has had a spell cast on him to make
him forget his place as ruler of the magical kingdom.

Elements of the aforementioned Neverland commingle with bits and pieces of What Dreams May Come, Instinct,
One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest and
other tales of psychiatric munificence. Philip Glass’ mesmerizing score
provides Neverwas with a nice aural backdrop,
and if director Stern dips into saturated-frame affectation a bit too often (all
sunlit windows and canted slow-motion), it’s only about half as annoying as one
might typically find it because of all the fine actors more than pulling their
weight here. Abetting Stern is a fabulous cast that includes the aforementioned
players as well as Jessica Lange as Zach’s fretful mother Katherine; William
Hurt as Zach’s new boss, Dr. Peter Reed; and Brittany Murphy as a botanist grad
student and possible love interest, Maggie. Rounding out the cast in small cameo
roles are Alan Cumming, Michael Moriarty, Vera Farmiga, Cynthia Stevenson and
Bill Bellamy.

For fairy tale fans and those predisposed to enjoy drama of
uplift, Neverwas is a decent enough flick,
certainly worthy of a rental. There is essentially only one question at the
heart of the movie, and Stern takes the long way around the maypole in actually
addressing it, meaning that the climax requires a silly confluence of events
and parties. Since all that provides the audience with more time with McKellan,
though, one doesn’t too terribly mind.

Presented in a 2.35:1 widescreen aspect ratio, Neverwas comes with a Dolby digital 5.1 surround
sound audio track, and French and Spanish subtitles. Apart from a gallery of
preview trailers for other Buena Vista DVD releases like The Invisible and Wild Hogs,
there are unfortunately no supplemental extras on the DVD, which is housed in a
regular Amray case. To purchase the film via Amazon, click here. B- (Movie) C (Disc)

Sex farce and wriggling softcore T&A showcase meets foreign-shore political satire in SSI: Sex Squad Investigation, the latest spoof from the EI Cinema folks, who’ve made a nice cottage industry out of lampooning — in often sapphic fashion — recent film and TV hits as well as genre moviemaking in general.

Written by Andy Sawyer and directed by Thomas J. Moose (Zombie Toxin, The Girl Who Shagged Me), SSI is a wobbly-legged thing, done in by the fact that none of its makers seem to really be on the same page. Detective John Honeysuckle (John Fedele) is a troubled cop struggling in his duties as the top dog in the city’s toughest criminal investigation unit. Set up to enforce President George Shrub’s “Illicit Sex Bill,” which has made premarital sexual intercourse punishable by life behind bars, the SSI unit is a mess. With unsolved cases mounting, sexy rookie Katrina Lightbody (AJ Khan) arrives as Honeysuckle’s new partner.

When, as the DVD’s back cover text explains, a “highly profitable crime spree of illegal inhibitions and seductions” hits New York City, Honeysuckle must put aside his differences and work together with Lightbody. As the serial seducer continues her haughty onslaught, though, dirty secrets involving the president (Frank Bowdler) and his promiscuous daughter Jessica (porn star Natalie Heck) come out. Vice President Selina Moon (McKenzie Matthews) eventually reveals herself as someone not to be trusted… after, of course, blouses are doffed and skirts dropped.

I’m generally all for judging a movie on its own terms, within the genre parameters it uses to define itself, if it all. But simply putting whimsical goofball shenanigans and play-acted indulgences to film (or video, as the case may be) doesn’t a “satire” make. Such behavior has a shelf life and appreciatory audience that doesn’t much extend beyond high school English class group projects, and the friends involved in such rib-nudging, look-at-me nuttiness. That pretty much defines all the non-nude portions of SSI. Fedele is a world-class mugger, which serves some spoof work well, but here undercuts everything. This is a low-rent yawner, through and through. There are much easier ways to see naked women, really. Also, for reasons not entirely clear, the movie is shot in the United
Kingdom but set Stateside, which makes for all sort of cross-cultural
bunglings.

Housed in a regular Amray case, SSI is presented in 1.78:1 widescreen, enhanced for 16×9 televisions. Three minutes of bloopers are set to tune that very much owes a debt to Kenny Loggins’ “Danger Zone,” and there’s also included a 31-minute short from 1992, The FBI Guys, that costars Fedele and apparently played at the Meadowland Showcase, according to a rambling commentary of reminiscence tagged on as well. Crap stew with an extra side serving of feces cornbread, you say? You bet. To purchase the movie via Amazon, click here. For more general information, meanwhile, visit Pop Cinema’s web site by clicking here. F (Movie) C- (Disc)

Horror and comedy is a tough mix, but Behind the Mask: The Rise of Leslie Vernon for the most part
inventively juggles the disparate tones of both types of films — certainly
impressively showcasing why the former genre is so frequently traded in by low-budget
filmmakers — and in the process undeniably establishes career beachheads for
all of its young principal players.

The names of both Wes Craven and Christopher Guest have been
invoked in countless reviews of Behind
the Mask, which enjoyed a brief theatrical run in limited markets
nationwide earlier this summer, and it’s not entirely inappropriate, really. Directed
and produced by Scott Glosserman from a generally smart and often quite funny script
co-written with David J. Stieve, the film is set in a world where Freddy
Krueger, Michael Myers and Jason Voorhees all actually exist. Despite its very
specifically evocative title, and the downward-arc biographies of washed-up entertainment
figures that such a designation summons forth, Behind the Mask unfolds in mockumentary form as the grad-school
project for non-fiction filmmaker Taylor Gentry (Angela Goethals), who follows
around up-and-coming homicidal maniac Leslie Vernon (Invasion’s Nathan Baesel) as he plots the labyrinthine killing
spree that will launch him into infamy.

Leslie has graciously given Taylor
and her documentary crew unprecedented access to his life as he trains and
plans for his reign of terror over the sleepy town of Glen
Echo. Along the way he dines with an old mentor (Scott
Wilson), scouts and preps locations, and explains the necessity of the sort of convoluted
rules of procedure that, in the world outside the movie, govern horror films.
Per their agreement, Taylor
refrains from rendering judgment on Leslie’s aspiration, though she finds that promise
more and more difficult to keep as things wear on. A Nightmare on Elm Street’s Robert Englund, meanwhile, plays Doc
Holloran, a vaguely Dr. Loomis-esque figure bent on exposing the truth about
Leslie’s past (“the Ahab of the piece,” as Leslie explains), and stopping his
murderous plans.

As a slice of deconstructive, tongue-in-cheek entertainment,
Behind the Mask is certainly beaten
to the punch by Scream, yet it still
offers a fresh perspective since so much of the movie unfolds in casual
fashion, and through the eyes of the putative villain of the piece. Baesel is a
great guide here; there’s a bit of Seann William Scott’s American Pie mischievousness in his performance. The script is also
deftly balanced between droll and whimsical. One moment Leslie is running
through his training regimen (“You have no idea how much cardio I have to
do…”), the next he’s waxing rhapsodic about his search for the perfect victims,
and the order in which thy must die (“How do the swallows find Capistrano?”).
If there are knocks, it’s that the elements of mythology and back-story that
drive the movie’s latter third don’t fully coalesce, and (another seemingly
minor quibble, I’m sure), Leslie’s killer garb includes an extremely small
mask (above) that, well, seems kind of silly. That said, this is a rather
ingenious little independent movie, and certainly one well worth a look for
genre diehards.

Presented in 1.85:1 widescreen, enhanced for 16×9
televisions, Behind the Mask comes
with Dolby digital 5.1 and Dolby surround 2.0 audio tracks. It’s housed in a
regular Amray case which is turn stored in a cardboard slipcase with a gatefold
cover that sticks shut courtesy of a small touch of non-marking adhesive. It’s
nice to see such a small title, all things considered, anchored by a solid
slate of bonus features. Kicking things off is a rather cluttered audio
commentary track with actors Baesal, Goethals, Britain
Spellings and Ben Pace. This is recommended only for those who’ve seen the
feature once or twice before; while some of the stories and good-natured
ribbing (“Oh, the Yannic imagery!”) are amusing, the constant talking over one
another does get old.

The best supplemental bit is a fantastic 32-minute making-of
featurette, constructed around video diary segments from director Glosserman
(who, humorously, talks about the cast getting together and getting drunk just
prior to the start of production). There’s also six minutes casting tapes from
the audition process, and a clutch of deleted and extended scenes with optional
commentary with Glosserman; the latter runs just over 25 minutes in aggregate. Teaser
and full-length trailers for the movie, along with a DVD-ROM copy of the film’s
screenplay rounds things out. It’s a fantastic package for an inventive, neat
little film. B+ (Movie) A- (Disc)

A featured selection at the 2006 Tribeca Film Festival, Driving Lessons is a decently touching, passingly amusing and laid-track heart-warming little look at a young guy’s coming-of-age, starring
Rupert Grint, of the Harry Potter
films, and further anchored by respected Academy Award nominees Laura Linney and
Julie Walters. If it’s by and by a quite familiar tale, it’s earnestly acted, and one that at least offers
Grint the opportunity to stretch his legs a little bit, which should be
welcomed by fans of the aforementioned series.

We first meet Ben, a shy, bookish 17-year-old, as he’s approaching
a very unpromising summer vacation. While the other kids are out having fun,
Ben spends these precious few weeks attending bible classes, suffering the
titular instruction with his overbearing and self-righteous mother (Linney) and
helping out at a local old people’s home. It’s certainly not his ideal
summer break but, with a demanding, vigilant mother and a passive vicar for a
father (Nicholas Farrell), Ben is anything but in control of his own destiny;
he’s marking time, caught up between adolescence and adulthood.

Ben’s absurdly straitlaced world is turned upside down when
he gets a job assisting Evie (Walters, Grint’s mother in the Potter flicks), an eccentric retired actress. Refined,
vulgar and childish all at once, Evie enters Ben’s life like a hurricane.
Suddenly caught up between these two very different storm fronts, Ben starts to
gravitate more and more towards his employer’s unconventional and often bizarre
ways, even though it continually gets him into trouble with his mother. Evie
drafts Ben as her partner in a series of adventures, culminating in a camping excursion
that turns into a full-fledged road trip when she cajoles unlicensed Ben into
driving her to the Edinburgh Festival. Ben reluctantly ignores his conformist
instincts and jumps behind the wheel. What follows is a journey in which Ben
and Evie help each other move forward in their radically different lives, as
Ben is forced to confront how he was brought up and who he ultimately wants to
be.

Written and directed by feature debut director Jeremy Brock (the co-writer of The Last King of Scotland), who apparently based a
good bit of Driving Lessons on his
own childhood experiences, the movie trades in fairly familiar archetypes to
anyone who’s seen their fair share of repressed-Christian and/or otherwise stifled
adolescent tales of keenly pitched woe and awakening. For all her wild energy, Evie
is essentially just another manipulative force in Ben’s life, and it takes both
him and the movie a while to recognize and own up to this fact. Gangly Grint is
ample as Ben, and Linney and Walters hold serve on screen through the force of
their personalities, but the characters as written are rather thin, and the movie itself doesn’t fully engage so much as glide
smoothly through its conflicts, to its rather unsurprising final resting point.
Though not as harsh a judgment as it sounds, Driving Lessons is essentially a whiler of time, engaging but not
necessarily remarkable.

Housed in a regular Amray case, and presented in a rich 1.85:1
anamorphic widescreen transfer, the film comes with a Dolby digital 5.1
soundtrack which acquits itself nicely, and optional English and French
subtitles. Supplemental special features consist of a perfunctory 17-minute making-of
featurette, which includes on-set footage and interviews. There is also a quartet
of deleted scenes and a very short blooper reel, complemented by trailers for
other Sony arthouse and indie-inflected releases. C (Movie) B- (Disc)

Fronted by the gloriously gloomy Ian McCulloch, Echo &
the Bunnymen’s melancholic post-punk sound — studded with elements of both New
Wave and psychedelic rock — brought the group a slew of hits in the United
Kingdom in the early 1980s. In the United
States, meanwhile, the band attracted a
significant cult following after their self-titled release in 1987. Through the
past two-and-a-half decades, the group has undergone a number of lineup
changes, somewhat messy break-ups and half-hearted reformations, but earlier in
2007 they re-signed to their original record label, cut a new record and
embarked on a mini-tour.

The performance on the new concert DVD Dancing Horses was filmed and recorded at the Shepherds Bush Empire
in the UK in November
of 2005. It includes a robust 20-song set, and serves as outstanding proof of
the group’s songwriting ability and musicianship, if not necessarily their stage
presence. “Going Up” kicks things off, followed by “The Back of Love,” “Bring
on the Dancing Horses,” “Scissors in the Sand” and “The Cutter.” It’s not until
“With a Hip” and “Stormy Weather,” though, that the show really gets some lift,
though McCulloch promptly squanders a good portion of that with an affected, cigarette-smoking
performance of “The Killing Moon.” The cyclical guitar work and steady bass
line of “Never Stop,” scores high marks, and the show’s simple but artistic direction
effectively puts one in the moment, but overall the Bunnymen could stand to
benefit from an infusion of dynamism. “Of a Life,” “The Disease,” “All That
Jazz,” “In the Margins,” “Villier’s Terrace,” “Show of Strength,” “Rescue,” “Nothing
Lasts Forever,” “Ocean Rain” and the radio hit “Lips Like Sugar” comprise the
rest of the disc’s set list.

Housed in a clear plastic Amray case, Dancing Horses is presented in a 16×9 aspect ratio, with 5.1 Dolby
digital surround sound and PCM stereo audio tracks, the latter of which actually
seems a bit stronger and clearer. The disc’s main motion menu screen gives way
to the 86-minute concert, but the real added value of this release lies in its
47 minutes of interview offerings with McCulloch and Sergeant, who in their
separate chats dish on everything from the origin and metaphorical nature of
the title of their new album, Siberia
(“I don’t wanna say juxtapose, because it’s a crap word…” says Sergeant,
amusingly), to how their songwriting collaborations have changed over the years
(in short, much less in-room jamming these days). Title cards with the
off-screen interviewer’s questions set the table, and McCulloch and Sergeant
take it from there in fascinating fashion, with only the thick brogue of the former
giving one occasional pause. C+ (Concert) B (Disc)

I guess Kenneth Keith Kallenbach is a sort of forerunner to
William Hung, the American Idol contestant,
from a few years back, who was so awful that he achieved a strange sort of meta-fame,
bypassing any and all requirements of manifested talent or hard work. Like
Hung, Kallenbach’s fame — to the degree that it really exists— seems to hinge
on a combination of fortuitous discovery and the snickering derision of those
who from thence forth afford him a platform. All I know is that, Kentucky
waterfall ’do or not, Kallenbach is an awful, awful… comedian or actor, musician
or entertainer, however you want to slice it. (Based on the lanky physicality
and hair, though, I suppose it’s worth noting that Sam Rockwell
could play likely him in a biopic if some suitably grandiose tragic fate should
befall him.)

Billed as a one-of-a-kind jack-of-all-trades, Kallenbach’s bizarre
ascension charts itself back to Howard Stern, on whose very first Channel 9
show he appeared. His outgoing personality and strange delivery — think a
pretty spot-on Bill Paxton, by slight way of Beavis — grabbed one’s attention, I
guess, though since I’m not a habitual listener of Stern’s (favoring XM over
Sirius, sorry…), I’m not sure how Kallenbach is deployed/tolerated, and whether
his apparently recurring guest spots as part of the shock jock’s “Wack Pack” allow for his own brand of air-quote
comedy, or whether he’s really just doing Stern’s bidding.

This single-disc DVD, dubbed American Icon, compiles eye-gougingly atrocious clips of Kallenbach’s
almost two decades in entertainment, from ramshackle, man-in-the-street bits
where he rephrases passersby’s replies to his queries and adds a random lame
observation (on someone’s favorite talk show host: “Yeah, I like Ellen
[DeGeneres] too… I think she’s a lesbo”) to longer-form sketch material. The
entire affair employs production values just below your average cable access
show (sleeping bags duct-taped to a wall serve as the backdrop for an
interstitial talk show wraparound bit, wherein Kallenbach interviews himself)
and, simply put, none of it is funny. Kallenbach talks about bits like cutting off
and eating his own hair, or putting firecrackers in his pants and the like, but
we see precious little of this type of thing, and his humor certainly doesn’t
even fall into the Jackass category
of classification, which might have some goosing, occasional entertainment
value, no matter how insipid the host. Instead, here we get Kallenbach
prattling on and on about himself, and starring in stupid Superman sketches that
will have even the biggest Bryan Singer
detractors yearning for the relative comfort of Superman Returns.
Clocking in at over 90 minutes, this title doesn’t even have the decency
of brevity; bits with an eponymous musical side project, old stand-up footage and
phony phone calls (in which Kallenbach’s “victims” get off much better
one-liners than he) round out the slate.

Housed in a regular Amray case, American Icon is presented on a region-free disc in a cruddy full
screen transfer, with source audio that also sometimes (against considerable
odds) manages to grate almost on par with the material itself. There are no special
features, per se, just the cold comfort of knowing that this DVD is billed as
being comprised of never-before-seen sketches and shorts, etcetera. It should
stay that way, really. F (Movie) D+ (Disc)

Hey, remember dashing billionaire Robin Colcord (Roger Rees)
from the sitcom Cheers? Wanna see him
totally nude in a somewhat kinky, heavily arthouse-inflected sexual drama of
submission and domination? Great news — now’s your chance, in the form of writer-director
Eric Werthman’s Going Under!

Rees stars as Peter, a married psychotherapist who lives a
life of parallel intellectual pattycake alongside his novelist wife. The movie
centers on his relationship with Suzanne (Geno Lechner, above), a professional
dominatrix with whom he’s been involved in a strictly defined, sensual affair
of non-penetrative role-playing in a walk-up dungeon where their anonymity is
protected. Suzanne, however, is preparing to quit her job and pursue her love
of art full time. She has a soft spot for Peter, though, and agrees — and first
broaches the subject, in fact — to see him on the “outside world,” where they
share their real names and try to do normal things like have coffee and chat.
Naturally, all kinds of awkwardness ensues, especially when Peter tries to come
clean to his wife, and confess a deeper obsession to Suzanne, who’s also been
dabbling in lesbianism.

Peter’s relatively unexamined sexual fetishes are one thing
(the movie winks and dashes past this point with a blasé disclosure and a simple
line of dialogue from Suzanne: “Most therapists take a while to admit it”), but
his increasingly erratic acting out stretches credulity for an alleged
professional of his ilk. So too, it’s sad to say, does the notion of Suzanne as
a serious artist; we see her projects, which point to a certain talent, but
learn nothing of consequence of what drives and interests her, what informs
this work that therefore feels quite separate and apart from what we see in the
rest of the movie. Going Under is
painstakingly constructed and fairly nicely shot (David Lynch would probably
like some of S&M scenes, one of which recalls the druggy “Pink Room” from Twin Peaks: Fire Walk with Me), but its
narrative rings rather hollow, and there’s not enough fuel in the tank to
really drive the plot’s engine. What one is left with is a quite tonier but rather limp iteration of the old Cinemax model of deviant sexual exploration. Where’s Zalman King, one wonders?

Housed in a regular Amray case in turn stored in a cardboard
slipcover, Going Under is presented
in 1.78:1 anamorphic widescreen, with Dolby digital 5.1 surround sound and
Dolby surround 2.0 audio mixes. An audio commentary track with Werthman and
Rees kicks off the bonus material, and their rapport is solid and banter quite scholarly and informed, if sometimes off the mark with respect to what’s actually unfolding on screen. A 17-minute segment entitled “Pushing the
Boundaries” is comprised of interviews with Rees and Lechner, the latter of
whom talks some about her career trajectory (in particular landing Schindler’s List), and describes having
a strong reaction to this material. Rees, meanwhile, characterizes his typical
offer sheet as consisting of “bad choices or badly lit lawyers in a lot of
movies.” He claims his agents initially kept the project from him, and then
tried to convince him it was “too naughty,” but that good friend Bebe Neuwirth
(I guess some Cheers friendships do
stand the test of time) gave him the cheeky go-ahead. Six random minutes of
footage from the S&M fetish “Black & Blue Ball,” narrated by Lee Kross,
leave one sure of their own sexual proclivities, which don’t involve ball
torture. Also, available as a DVD-ROM audio file, there are reflections on the
movie from Marta Helliesen, a licensed Ph.D. C- (Movie) B+ (Disc)

Henry James’ classic novella Turn of the Screw gets a mood-driven re-imagining in In a Dark Place, starring Leelee
Sobieski. A sort of cut-rate ghost story with heavy ’70s-style arthouse
inflections, and plenty of lurking window and point-of-view shots, the movie
might most surprise James, though, for the over-under of its tub and bathrobe
scenes, which total a hearty dozen (below).

Sobieski stars as Anna Veigh, an art teacher who is sort of
shipped off from her current position, to a post as a nanny for two young
orphans, 10-year-old Miles (Christian Olson) and Flora (Gabrielle Adam). Her
new workplace is a remote country estate with beautiful if deserted grounds,
and despite having already seen their fair share of hell in the deaths of their
parents and Anna’s predecessor, Miss Jessel, the children seem courteous and charming,
if initially a bit strange. This quietly mannered world quickly fades as Anna makes
a series of disturbing discoveries, catching glimpses of figures lurking on the
grounds which she later learns are those of two ex-employees who are now dead. Though
she at first questions her own sanity, it comes to seem that the figures have
sinister intentions, and so Anna is forced to confront dark secrets buried deep
in her own psyche as she fights, in somewhat vaguely defined fashion, to
cleanse the children’s souls of darkness.

It’s worth mentioning at this point, lest someone think this
is a good companion piece to Alejandro Amenábar’s The Others, that Anna is accompanied throughout all this by the
children’s uncle’s chilly secretary, Ms. Grose (Tara Fitzgerald, a sort of younger, poor woman’s
Lena Olin), who clearly holds some sort of secrets. It’s never really explained
why Anna is hired for a job that Ms. Grose is materially assisting in — and
could seemingly do herself, actually — but this question fades into
insignificance when the latter’s cold behavior morphs into strangely blackmailed
affection.

Helmed by debut director Donato Rotunno, In a Dark Place has the certain advantage of all sorts of strange little
alleyways not typical of such genre pieces, as well as some weird directorial flourishes,
like an oddball violin electronica-infused sequence which juxtaposes Anna’s
wilderness wanderings with Ms. Grose playing dress-up and writhing about in her
clothes. So it’s original, really, in
a way, but not necessarily all good. The movie delves into the subject of abuse,
and how those abused can become abusers, but only in a very elliptical manner —
one that’s interesting without being wholly satisfying. Sobieski is good at
conveying Anna’s vulnerabilities, but not her slide into… well, quasi-madness,
let’s say, which the script rather short-changes. She does display a bit of cleavage and side-boob, and just a flash of bare behind, though — enough, along with Fitzgerald’s aforementioned
writhing, to help earn an R rating for a film that is otherwise a very tame,
proper and almost PG-rated story of mistreatment and alienation.

Presented in 1.78:1 widescreen, In a Dark Place comes with solid English language Dolby digital 5.1
surround sound and 2.0 stereo audio mixes, as well as optional English and
Spanish subtitles. The sole DVD bonus feature is a 12-minute making-of featurette
which includes interviews with Sobieski, Fitzgerald and director Rotunno, who confesses
to ignoring James’ source text and all previous adaptations, and starting from
scratch with Peter Waddington’s screenplay. Sobieski, meanwhile, says (though
none too convincingly) that her initial attraction to the movie was its “sensitive
and chiseled script,” and talks about how the film was a departure for her in a
sense, because she was heretofore always used to being the youngest on the set.
C (Movie) C+ (Disc)

Acclaimed South Korean director Kim Ki-Duk (Spring, Summer, Fall, Winter… and Spring)
delves back into morally cloudy water with this strange, ethereal, minimalist sea-set
piece, an exploration of rescue, responsibility, duty and proper adult boundaries that
relies heavily on expression, gestures and body language to tell its powerful
story.

The Bow centers on a crusty old man (Jeon Sung-Hwan) and a beautiful young girl
(Samaritan Girl’s Han Yeo-Reum) who live
on a fishing boat which has been floating at sea for over 10 years, the man
having plucked the little lost girl from the ocean at that time. Since then, the man has shown the girl how to fish, and cared for her in every way. But
the man plans to marry the girl on her 17th birthday, and counts the days down
on his calendar, buying scraps of fabric for her wedding dress in piecemeal
fashion and locking them away.

In addition to the girl and life on the ocean, the bearded old man
also cherishes only his bow, which he uses predominantly as a weapon to fight
off would-be admirers of his lovely shipmate. However, the bow is also a useful
device for shamanistic fortune telling, and as well creates wonderfully
enchanting music. The quiet couple’s peaceful and secluded life changes when a
teenage boy comes aboard, and the girl’s horizon and orientation are irrevocably
altered.

The set-up of The Bow is rather arbitrary, and Ki-Duk further ups the arthouse ante by trading in silences. He’s not interested in revealing back stories of his characters (hence their lack of names), or having them come to epiphanies about their situations. The story and setting are almost nipped from a fable of yore; it seems an excuse to play around in grey areas of devotion and subjugation. To that end, the acting and uniformity of tone and vision is what carries The Bow, but it’s certainly not for everyone, and certainly not for the end of a long day, which is the circumstance under which I first tried to watch the movie. If the alignment of interest and attention is right, though…

Housed in a regular Amray case, The Bow is presented in anamorphic widescreen in a very nice transfer, with Dolby digital
5.1 surround sound and DTS surround sound 5.1 audio tracks, both in the movie’s
native Korean. Naturally, English and Spanish subtitles are also available. The
big supplemental extra is a 35-minute making-of featurette, which interweaves subtitled
interviews with the director and his female star with on-set footage of them at
work. Other DVD special features consist of the movie’s original theatrical
trailer, a photo gallery and previews of other Tartan releases. To purchase the film via Amazon, click here. B- (Movie) B- (Disc)

Reserved 11-year-old Jess Aarons (Zathura’s Josh Hutcherson) is a
bit of an outsider — both at school and, as the only boy among five siblings
in a working-class family of seven, at home as well. When he strikes
up a friendship with the quirky new girl in his small town, Leslie Burke (AnnaSophia Robb,
from Because of Winn-Dixie and The Reaping), she introduces him to a world of
imagination. Together they create the secret kingdom of Terabithia, a
magical place only accessible by swinging on an old rope over a stream
in the woods near their homes. There they play-act a series of
fantastical escapades against figurative representations of school
bullies and, in the process, change each other for the better.

Based on Katherine Paterson’s popular Newbery Award-winning novel,
Bride to Terabithia is part family drama, part adolescent fantasy – a
movie about friendship, as well as about the power and exhilaration of
a blossoming imagination. Beautifully fleshed out in non-pandering
fashion by screenwriters John Stockwell and David Paterson, and
directed with a clear, streamlined tone by Emmy Award-winning producer Gabor Csupo (The Simpsons), the film mines
a deep reservoir of genuine feeling that’s often missing in adolescent
entertainment, combining it with just the right amount of sensory
pleasures. Robb and Hutcherson are warm and engaging; the
conflicts, schemes and resolutions are also all believably to scale,
resulting in a winning piece of family-friendly entertainment.

Housed in a regular Amray case with a raised-print, hard-stock cardboard slipcover, Bridge to Terabithia is presented on DVD in anamorphic widescreen, preserving the aspect ratio of its theatrical presentation. Two separate audio commentary tracks headline the slate of bonus materials — one from director Csupo, writer Stockwell and producer Hal Leiberman, the other from cast members Hutcherson and Robb, and producer Lauren Levine. Depending on what sort of information you most want to hear — pre-production back story or goofy production anecdotes — each is worthy in its own right. A six-minute featurette on the movie’s special effects work — by Weta Digital, the visionary, Oscar-winning digital arthouse that created the visual masterpiece of Middle Earth in the Lord of the Rings trilogy — is a worthwhile inclusion, while “Keep Your Mind Open,” a music video featuring Robb, is pure fluff. Rounding things out is a solid little 15-minute production featurette, including interviews with novelist Paterson and cast and crew members. A- (Movie) B+ (Disc)

It’s summer, and I was just attacked by a velociraptor this past weekend, so what better time, really, to re-post this DVD review of Jurassic Park III, originally from 2001? Oh, there’s also the fact that it costars Téa Leoni, who’s in the just-released You Kill Me, and is also totally hot.

Téa Leoni), contract Grant’s services. Under the
impression that he’s merely serving as a well-paid emcee on a low fly-by, Grant
awakens to discover he’s back in the one place in the world he least wants to
be.

With very few and very minor story qualms aside, Jurassic Park III is
structurally sound; it’s an easy story to buy into, and under director Joe
Johnston’s solid summer romp guidance, there’s plausible suspension of
disbelief. A good deal of credit should also go to the unlikely pinch-hit
writing team of Alexander Payne and Jim Taylor (Election), who stepped in and
did such a significant stem-to-stern rewrite that they ended up sharing
screenplay credit with Peter Buchman. It would have been very easy for the
character of Grant, though necessary as a guide and narrative device, to be an
overly cynical and burdensome presence. But he’s not; though often agitated and
exasperated, he’s not grumpy, and we get a surprisingly clear sense of what
Grant feels and has gone through since the events of the original film. By
design, this third installment is a lot more of a straight-up action film than
its predecessors — without the wide-eyed, untainted wonder of these creatures
being (first) brought to life to capture our attention, the filmmakers rightly
realize that the entertainment is in new dinosaurs, new combinations and new
situations.

As one would expect, the DVD is chock full of supplemental extras, including
storyboards, bios, trailers for all three films in the series and an
informative but slightly intrusive feature-length audio commentary from Stan Winston,
animated effects director Dan Taylor and several other techies. The best bets,
though, are a self-guided virtual tour of Winston’s studio, a 3-D look at the
12 dinosaurs created for the film and a special making-of featurette, which
offers viewers insight into the filming of several key set pieces. B+ (Movie) B+ (Disc)

If James Brown was, up until his death, the hardest working
man in show business, Sam Moore couldn’t have been that far behind, as he puts
plenty of heart, soul and sweat into the two shows that comprise this concert
DVD presentation, The Original Soul Man.

As one half of the famous 1960s Stax-minted R&B duo Sam
& Dave — known for their emotional intensity and gospel-infused
call-and-response style — Moore earned seven gold and platinum records and a
1967 Grammy to boot. Supported by the songwriting talents of Isaac Hayes and
David Porter, the group produced a string of hits starting with “You Don’t Know
Like I Know” in ’64, and followed by such classics as “Hold On, I’m Coming,”
“Soul Man” and “Soul Sister, Brown Sugar.” This DVD features two complete mini-concerts
performed by the original soul man. The first set, clocking in at 28 minutes,
was recorded live in Cannes, France
and the second, an 18-minute, three-song affair followed by a rendition of “My
Boyfriend’s Back” by The Angels, comes from the Church Street Station in Kissimmee,
Florida.

Of the two, the former set is the more substantive. Clad in
blue (suit, shirt and, yes, shoes too), Moore has a friendly, welcoming stage
persona, and jokes around a bit between numbers with the crowd (“No, I’m not
going to give you my tie!” he says at one point, when he ditches his yellow-colored
slipknot after “Hold On, I’m Coming.”) It’s funny to see Moore get the French
crowd going with numbers such as “You Got Me Hummin’,” “I Can’t Stand Up” and
“Take What I Want.” The highlight of the show, easily, though, is Moore’s
duet with Carla Thomas on “When Something Is Wrong With My Baby,” a showstopper
in every sense of the word.

The Florida set, I gather from sometime in the ’80s, gives
off a slightly cheesy vibe, though it’s funny to see a crowd boomers shaking
their thing on the dance floor, and three small kids up front near the corner
of the stage, goofing off. The energetic “Wrap It Up, I’ll Take It” (not part of the first
concert) is given a great run here, but it’s “When Something Is Wrong” that
gets everyone slow dancing. That doesn’t stop Moore
from sweating it out, though.

Housed in a regular Amray case, The Original Soul Man is presented on a region-free disc in 1.33:1
full screen, with a Dolby 2.0 stereo audio mix that is adequate if not
mind-blowing. Nit-picking but slightly irritating is the fact that the disc
lists its runtime as 75 minutes, which must be including some of the
self-described “propaganda” clips (not of Moore) that round out the disc,
touting other soul and folk releases from manufacturer Quantum Leap. Moore’s
inclusions, as noted, run well under a combined 50 minutes, so that little fib
marks things down a notch in my book. Other meager bonus features include a
brief biography and discography for Moore,
as well as a scroll-able text history of Stax Records. B (Concerts) C- (Disc)

Showtime’s Emmy-winning, hour-long Masters of Horror
series, written and directed by some of the genre’s leading practitioners, has from
its inception married its predilection for macabre, spookiness and well-timed
gore with interesting topicality and sociopolitical inflections, as with John
Carpenter’s Pro-Life.
Another such piece was Joe Dante’s first-season offering Homecoming, which tackled the issue of the Iraq
war in somewhat controversial fashion. Now, with The Screwfly Solution, Dante (The
Howling, Gremlins) returns to the
series, tackling a conflict as old as time itself — the eternal rift between men
and women.

Blending social observation and satirical commentary with
the sort of budgeted horror mayhem that series fans have come to expect, The Screwfly Solution is adapted by Sam
Hamm, from James Tiptree, Jr.’s award-winning short story. It begins with an
unexplained outbreak of isolated homicides around the world, normal male sexual
urges suddenly transformed into violent rage. With the number of incidents on
the rise, a father-son pair of scientists, Alan (Beverly Hills 90210’s Jason Priestley) and Barney (Elliott
Gould, most recently of Ocean’s Thirteen), find themselves locked
in a desperate race against time to figure out both how and why this war
between the sexes has turned murderous. Is a mysterious virus making every
red-blooded man a potential lady-killer? Could the extermination of all women
lead to the extinction of the human race?

Well, duh. While part of the “Masters of Horror” formula lies
in telling a story from a very focused and specific point-of-view, the
narrative conceit herein might be a bit too big, even though it’s framed in
such a fashion, with Kerry Norton (Battlestar
Galactica) co-starring as Alan’s wife Anne, as to make its stakes personal. The Screwfly Solution
is much more graphic than Dante’s previous series entry, but the material seems to
dictate that. Some of the delight to be found in his usual light touch, though, is missed, if understandably not appropriate. Priestley and Gould are an interesting match, and each give good performances. If the piece’s wide-turn climax catches some off-guard, the worst that can be said is that the movie feels like it deserves a larger palette.

Housed in a cardboard slipcover and presented in 1.78:1 widescreen, enhanced for 16×9 televisions,
The Screwfly Solution’s DVD bonus
features include kick off with an audio commentary with Dante and writer Hamm, in
which they talk about the making of the movie, and adapting the short story’s
South American setting for production in Vancouver, but also discuss the state
of the horror genre and industry in general. A brief making-of featurette is
also included, while a segment entitled “The Exterminators” takes a more focused
look at the movie’s special effects. Rounding out matters are a DVD-ROM copy of
the screenplay and an image gallery. B+ (Movie) B (Disc)

Beat poetry and longer texts set to free-form blues, folk or
soul music always spark suspicion amongst a certain set of the population,
perhaps because of their pungent association with a certain breed of hippie
that’s no longer (or never was) in favor. Encouraged by writer Langston Hughes,
though, gangly, Tennessee-bred spoken word performer Gil Scott-Heron, the son
of a Jamaican footballer, did some quite interesting things; he tried his hand
at keyboard in several rock groups and published The Nigger Factory,
a raw examination of racial politics and activist university life in the 1970s.

If he’s never really broken out into the mainstream, and
additionally had to battle his own personal demons (he recently served a prison
stint of several years on a drug-possession charge), Scott-Heron is one of
those figures whom other artists you
admire would certainly recognize and cite as an important influence. His music
and lyrics, mixing the political with the poetic, and denouncing the repressive
violence and oppression inflicted upon African-Americans by society at large,
made him a cult hero in the eyes of radical rap and hip-hop musicians
throughout the world.

Newly released on DVD, this concert performance from July of 2001 at the New Morning club in
Paris showcases Scott-Heron’s fine,
bristling soul tradition, billed alongside the Amnesia Express. “Blue Collar”
kicks off the two-hour set, followed by the frequently sampled “A Lovely Day,”
an airy valentine of perfect-stride empowerment. Other tracks include “Three
Miles Down,” “Work for Peace,” “Angel Dust,” “There’s a War Going On,” “Did You
Hear What They Said?,” “Your Daddy Loves You,” “Everybody Loves the Sunshine,”
“Winter in America,” “95 South (All of the Places We’ve Been),” “Johannesburg”
and “The Bottle.” What one sees in these tunes, regardless of their familiarity
with the peddler, is the laid-track for the sort of social consciousness found
in rap from groups as disparate as Public Enemy, The Roots and Common.

Housed in a regular Amray case and presented in 4×3 full
screen on a region-free disc, this disc comes with fairly solid Dolby digital
5.1 and DTS stereo audio tracks. There are no DVD extras (an interview or
something would have been nice), but this DVD is a fine example of a fitfully rebellious
storyteller’s sterling ability. To purchase it via Amazon, click here.
B (Concert) C+ (Disc)

The Winnie the Pooh
books, penned by A.A. Milne and illustrated by Ernest H. Shepard, were a staple
of childhood for many, and certainly the barbershop-style, lightly crooned
theme song by Richard and Robert Sherman, with its evocations of “deep in the
100-Acre Wood, where Christopher Robbin plays,” is like a front row seat in a
ride back in time. That trip gets a mainstream release, now, with the DVD bow
this week of the three magical tales that really started the Pooh tradition —
“Honey Tree,” “Winnie the Pooh with Tigger Too” and “The Blustery Day,” the
latter the Academy Award winner for Best Animated Short Film of 1969.

Delightfully low-fi, The
Many Adventures of Winnie the Pooh features a live action opening which
pans over to a bookcase and picture book, thus setting the piece — in the
tradition of many classic fairytales — firmly in the imagination, both
individually and collectively, of its viewers. Narrated by Sebastian Cabot, the
adventures that follow are warm, friendly and lightly moralizing set pieces for
the entire family — stuff like Pooh getting stuck in Rabbit’s house after
eating too much honey, Pooh being feted by Christopher Robbin on “Hero Day”
after an act of kindness, and together everyone battling the perils of high
winds. All the lovable characters that from the frontline of Disney’s stable
are here: Pooh (voiced in young-hearted fashion by Sterling Holloway), Tigger,
Eeyore, Owl, Rabbit and Piglet.

Despite its relatively minimalist palette — sharply captured
here, in a crisp transfer with surprisingly little grain — it’s interesting how
many of this movie’s images trigger such a strong sense of recollection, from
Pooh and Piglet’s plummet over a waterfall to Piglet tearfully ceding his home
to Owl, who doesn’t recognize it as Piglet’s. (Piglet takes ineffectual
timidity to a new level.) The material was first grouped together for a feature
release in 1977, and the animation cheekily feeds the notion of the entire
enterprise as a story of the adolescent mind, with the seams on Pooh’s back
popping open at one point, before he sticks his own stuffing back in.

Presented in 1.33:1 on a dual layer disc that triggers a
smallish pause mid-feature, this “Friendship Edition” of The Many Adventures of Winnie the Pooh comes housed in a regular
Amray case that in turn slides into a sturdy cardboard slipcover. Running just
under 75 minutes, the movie comes with a Dolby digital 5.1 surround sound audio
track, and is actually available in three languages — English, French and
Spanish. A nice little slate of bonus features complements the main attraction,
kick-started by the debut episode of the Disney Channel’s television show My Friends Tigger & Pooh, a
performance of the movie’s theme song by Carly Simon (!) and a brief video art
gallery. For younger viewers, there’s a special short for Eeyore, a sing-along
special and a “100-Acre Wood Challenge” set-top game. On the outside of the
release, there’s a coupon good for purchases on other Disney titles, on the
inside there’s a cardstock insert and a small, fold-out advert with information
on the aforementioned Disney Channel spin-off show, its special Christmas movie
and the Disney “Movie Rewards” program. B+ (Movie) B+ (Disc)

I
Love the ’80s series, or snarky fan web sites dedicated to sarcastically
keeping the flames of Sydney Barnes or Matthew Happnard alive. R&B, rock ’n’ roll… they each had
their hot-risers who stand (or more aptly lay) in total obscurity today, but
perhaps none so much as the soul scene, which put artists and church-trained crooners
through the wringer like so much grist through the mill.

The performance compilation DVD Soulvation, concentrating ostensibly on the regional speciality of Northern soul, attempts to rectify some of that anonymity, collecting
20 anthems from the underground dance music scene, each performed by their
legendary (and in some cases not-so-legendary) artists. Its play list is as
follows: Frank Wilson’s “Do I Love You,” Bob Brady and the Con Chords’ previously
unreleased “Everybody’s Goin’ To the Love-In,” top-shelf belter Brenda Holloway’s
“Reconsider” (a real stand-out), Kim Weston’s “Helpless,” Edwin Starr’s “I Have Faith in You,”
Sandi Sheldon’s “You’re Gonna Make Me Love You,” Leon Haywood’s “Baby
Reconsider,” The Artistics’ previously unreleased “Hope We Have,” Richard
Temple’s “That Beatin’ Rhythm,” the aforementioned Barnes’ “I Hurt on the Other
Side” (once put to good use by Spike Lee), JJ Barnes’ “Our Love Is in the
Pocket,” The Gems’ “I’ll Be There,” Lee Andrews and the Hearts’ “Nevertheless,”
The Carstairs’ enervated “It Really Hurts Me Girl,” Evie Sands’ “Picture Me
Gone,” The Platters’ “With This Ring,” Jackie Ross’ “Selfish One,” Betty
Lavette’s “Let Me Down Easy,” Pat Lewis’ “No One to Love” and Tobi Legend’s “Time
Will Pass You By.” As a grab-bag title, Soulvation more or less succeeds, but it’s obviously got niche appeal; for me, only about a quarter of the tunes connected in lasting fashion.

Housed in a regular Amray case, Soulvation is presented on a region-free disc in 1.33:1 full
screen, with a Dolby 2.0 stereo audio mix that is certainly adequate if not
mind-blowing. The video quality of its footage varies a bit, but most is solid considering the sources and time of its recording. Overall, the title runs 70 minutes, padded out a bit with interview footage,
though some academic overview would definitely have been welcome, particularly
given the missing-in-action nature of some of the included acts. C+ (Concert) C-
(Disc)