In its ever-expanding library of educational
market titles, the DVD format can indulge all sorts of niche interests of the
animal world. That folks like to watch sharks is a foregone conclusion given our
collective cultural predilection for violence — heck, one cable channel devotes
a whole week of its programming each year to the glassy-eyed creatures — but
some of the littlest underwater organisms also get their due.
Yes, deep sea secrets and dispelled myths and rumors get a workout with Shark Attack!and Kingdom of the Seahorse, both new to DVD from
WGBH Boston Video. The former charts a team of researchers who set out to track
movements of the titular predatory beasts, and along the way discover some
surprising truths about the way they kill. The footage here, some never before
available, is pretty amazing, including a shocking seal’s-eye view of one
attack. In fact, if cute albatross chicks and seal pups are your thing, best not
to sample this title. If you do, though, your curiosity will likely be piqued by
some of the questions raised herein, including whether or not tiger sharks are
developing an evolutionary or conditioned taste for human flesh. That you’ll be
left wanting more information about both that topic and more is a sign of the
hour-long disc’s only shortcoming — brevity.
Kingdom of the Seahorse, meanwhile, keeps the wetsuits but breaks out
the close-ups and zooms in an entirely different fashion, primarily exploring an
underwater enclave off the reefs of Australia. Big fans of the movie Junior seahorses must be, because in their world it’s the males who get
pregnant and give birth. (No wonder they’re considered a source of sexual
prowess to proponents of traditional Chinese medicine!) Biologist Amanda Vincent
and others lend fascinating voice to this title, and point up the curious
creatures’ importance in the underwater ecosystem. B (Movies) C (Discs)
Do you love the late Charles M. Schulz’s comic strip Peanuts?
Do you also have a hankering for American history, or the desire to
teach your kids about the full breadth of the same? Then the two-disc This is America, Charlie Brown
is for you — a robust and entertaining filing from the
spoonful-of-sugar-to-make-the-medicine-go-down line of reasoning that
plays equally well to kids and nostalgic young adults entering
first-time parent terrain.
Elementary instruction through colorful animation is nothing new, but the whole Peanuts
gang pops up here as guides through various important events in the
history of our country. Consisting of eight 24-minute episodes, This is America, Charlie Brown
looks all the way back to the Mayflower voyage and the birth of the
constitution, but also hearteningly enters more generalized territory
in offering forth a lively look back at American music throughout the
years. From composers John Philip Sousa and Stephen Foster to the rise
of ragtime and jazz, and the inimitable explosion of blues, a wide
variety of musical genres are touched upon, and it’s nice to see Pig
Pen rock out on bass guitar.
The groundwork of America’s industrial explosion is laid in “The
Building of the Transcontinental Railroad,” while “The Smithsonian and
the Presidency” finds Charlie Brown and company visiting the titular
Washington D.C. museum and learning about Abraham Lincoln and Theodore
and Franklin Roosevelt, taking make-believe journeys that whisk them
back to crucial events from the various eras under discussion. Among
the other episodes are one examining outer space and the NASA Space
Station, as well as the launch of the Wright brothers’ first primitive
airplane in 1903 in Kitty Hawk, N.C. Probably best, though, is “The
Great Inventors,” which results when Sally gives a school report (a
frequently used leaping-off point for the series) that touches upon
Alexander Graham Bell, Thomas Edison and Henry Ford. It’s great for
kids to learn, in such a short, compacted sitting, about a wide-ranging
buffet of information that practically affects their everyday lives.
A cardboard slipcase stores the two slimline snapcases that house This is America, Charlie Brown’s
two discs. Each episode is presented in 1.33:1 full screen with a Dolby
digital English stereo track. While no supplemental extras grace the
release, in a weird way I was almost appreciative of that, as part of
the appeal of the Peanuts has, to me, always seemed to lie in
its comparative restraint — the fact that there wasn’t an all-out
commercial blitz attached to the series, even as those little Snoopy dolls and
lunchboxes became ubiquitous in bedrooms and classrooms across the country. B (Show) C+ (Disc)
Created by bestselling novelist and screenwriter Sidney Sheldon, I Dream of Jeannie bowed in September of 1965, a bit in the shadow of one-year-old hit Bewitched. It immediately enchanted viewers ready for light escapist fare, and by
the time its second season rolled around next fall the slapstick-happy
series had hit its stride and was a consistent ratings winner for NBC,
offering in star Barbara Eden a bit more of a va-voomish sexual
presence, if still not yet a full glimpse of her artfully obscured
belly button.
The series, of course, centered around astronaut
Tony Nelson (Larry Hagman), and his persistent titular servant (Eden),
rescued from a magic bottle during a crash landing on a desert island.
Despite Tony releasing her from her “commitments,” Jeannie returns to
Cocoa Beach, Florida, to live with him, and it’s there that her petty
jealousies, born of a smitten devotion, are steadily played out. Guest
stars from the show’s season include Sammy Davis, Jr., Groucho Marx,
Dabney Coleman and The Munsters’ Butch Patrick, and episodic
highlights include “Always on Sunday,” “My Incredible Shrinking Master”
and “Jeannie Breaks the Bank,” in which Jeannie’s efforts to give Tony
a much-deserved raise arouse the suspicion of auditing authorities. These type of shows point up the series’ time-tested formula, which
basically involves Jeannie trying to grant or give Tony a gift, only to
go overboard and place him either in a pinch or an otherwise
ridiculously convoluted scenario.
Predating the love-in generation and “free love” revolution of the later 1960s and early ’70s, I Dream of Jeannie
was slightly radical or least a bit subversive for its time, and the 31
episodes here present an interesting array of comic set pieces that,
taken collectively, offer an easily recognizable arc and distillation
of the heart of the show’s appeal: the new American male as the object
of sexual pursuit. While rampant promiscuity certainly couldn’t be
tolerated or even portrayed in such a piece of mainstream
entertainment, it was somewhat titillating to feature a male lead as
being constantly pursued, and the female lead as the aggressor. The
supervisory “powers” that Tony had could remain implied (and thus
safely in the head of every male viewer), and females could enjoy
Jeannie’s make-it-so head snaps. While the concept remains evergreen
(indeed, a feature film version of the series is in development,
currently with Kate Hudson and Jimmy Fallon attached to star), it is
its use in this era and context that makes the show so ripe with ironic
sexual tension.
A cardboard slipcase stores two slimline snapcases that house I Dream of Jeannie: The Complete Second Season’s
four discs. The series is presented in color in 1.33:1 full screen (its
first season was broadcast in black-and-white, and available on DVD in
its original form and a colorized version), with a Dolby digital
English language track. The show is also apparently big in Portugal and
Spain, as those countries, too, rate their own audio tracks and
optional subtitles. There are unfortunately no supplemental extras. B (Show) D (Disc)
Self-described as director Barbet Schroeder’s first English film, the 1978 documentary Koko: A Talking Gorilla tells in reserved fashion the fascinating story of 5-year-old Koko, a primate taught to communicate in American Sign Language.
When
one peruses the credits of a straight-to-video title and sees the
above-billed star also featured as a producer, there’s understandably
cause for, A) concern, B ) snickering, C) both A and B, or D) questions
about whether Lebanese-born producer Elie Samaha is involved in what is
invariably described as a long-gestating “passion project” for said
actor. Thankfully there’s no need for D) with regards to Jenna Elfman’s Touched (though the former Dharma & Greg star is a Scientologist and Samaha did have a hand in shepherding the god-awful Battlefield Earth
to the big screen). In the end, though, that doesn’t necessarily make
this straightforward and earnestly pitched tale of yearning and
you-can-do-it inspiration any more entertaining than your average
Lifetime tele-pic.
Written and directed by Timothy Scott Bogart (the short-lived small screen serial Mowgli: The New Adventures of the Jungle Book), Touched
(rated R, kids… but only for language) centers around loving young
father Scott (Randall Batinkoff), who awakens from two years in a coma
following a terrible auto accident to find his life completely changed.
As he struggles to cope with the loss of his son and the gaps in his
memory, he comes to realize that he is quite literally losing his
bearings and sense of touch.
On cue, enter Angela (Elfman), the nurse who tended to Scott during
his two lost years — the nurse with a kindred spirit and wounded past
of her own. Scott finds comfort and rootedness in Angela; she helps him
confront the realities of his new life and point him toward new
possibilities, showing him that there is a journey of hope and love in
the future. Does standard-issue dialogue about bereavement and
reclaimed hopefulness ensue? Check. Coy flirting around trees strung
with white Christmas lights? Check. Bruce Davison in a supporting role?
Check. Kisses in the rain? Well… you’ll have to watch the movie.
Look, Touched isn’t awful, but neither is it the most
commendable use of Elfman’s sunny-leaning talents. Granted, she’s not
the aggrieved lead herein, but even her casting opposite such seems to
wear off some of her luster. Surely there must be a television pilot or
indie big screen comedy out there in need of an irrepressible female
lead. Right?
Packaged in a regular Amray case, Touched is presented in
1.78:1 anamorphic widescreen, with a Dolby digital 5.1 audio track and
optional Spanish subtitles. There are, unfortunately for Elfman fans,
no supplemental extras to complement this DVD presentation, which does
seem strange given her producorial championing of the project. C- (Movie) D (Disc)
Sure,
she’s crass and abrasive, and probably not someone with whom you or I
would really want to work. (Not to mention horrible at carrying the
national anthem’s tune.) But there’s no denying that Roseanne
Barr-Arnold-back-to-Barr is funny, and that her eponymous sitcom helped
change the face of television in the late 1980s and early ’90s,
becoming a smash hit with an underclass that collectively saw a bit of
themselves in the less than perfect family on display.
Rooted in her in-your-face stand-up persona, Roseanne
starred its namesake as the cranky, sarcastic head of the blue collar,
Midwestern Conner family. Along with husband Dan (John Goodman) and
sister Jackie (Laurie Metcalf), Roseanne rode herd on her three kids,
perpetually exasperated oldest daughter Becky (Lecy Gorenson), sardonic
and reserved tomboy Darlene (Sara Gilbert), and young DJ (Michael
Fishman). The fourth season, spanning 1991 and ’92, finds Dan
continuing to struggle to make ends meet at his motorcycle shop, while
Roseanne picks up shifts at a diner at the mall, where Martin Mull
recurs as her boss. Frank foregrounding of social and other family
issues remains the series’ bread and butter, though, including Becky
asking her mother to consent to getting her birth control bills, as in
the season opener, and Darlene growing continually disaffected as she
enters her high school years.
This fact — and of course Roseanne’s own gum-smacking, dismissively
acerbic personality — points to the show’s greatest strength: its
willingness to show its frequently bickering main characters in an
unsympathetic light and then slowly redeem them through genuine
familial fence-mending. Such indulgence not only makes for a more
realistically three-dimensional family unit, but also lends old sitcom
clichés — as when Roseanne and Dan pull a prank on a neighbor during
Halloween and win a costume contest — a fresh energy. It’s also worth
pointing out that Metcalf really reveals herself as the glue of the
entire show, whether it be in her wide-eyed or slow-burn counterpoint
silences or in a more central role, such as when she becomes depressed
over seeing an ex-boyfriend with his new lover in “Why Jackie Becomes a
Trucker.”
Spread out over four discs in two slimline cases in turn housed in a cardboard slipcase, all 25 episodes of Roseanne’s
fourth season are presented here in 1.33 full screen, with a Dolby
digital audio track that honestly seems mixed across the board a bit
too low. Thankfully, though, distributor Anchor Bay graces the
collection with a number of pleasurable extras rare for many catalogue
small screen releases, and rarer still in later-season sets. Included
are new interviews with the always outspoken Roseanne, as well as
Gorenson and Fishman.
Best among the supplements, though, are two video commentaries with
Roseanne. While it’s obvious she hasn’t prepped at all for these,
that’s part of the charm, as she assays her own look as “pre-nose job,
pre-facelift” and rips writers for, at her insistence, bringing back
guest star George Clooney — who did 10 episodes on the show’s first
season as Booker, Roseanne’s coworker — only to stick him in a moose
costume during most of the Halloween episode. She also reveals a few
random fun tidbits, such as the fact that the cast apparently kept fan
letters stocked in the freezer of the on-set refrigerator, the better
to read through during production down time. B+ (Show) B+ (Disc)
Marrying
the sort of crime fiction widely popular in the 1930s with a grittier
aesthetic, deeper sense of detail and decidedly more world-weary
point-of-view, film noir came of its own as a genre in the 1940s to
mid-’50s, bringing to the big screen a feeling and impression of moral
ambiguity heretofore unseen.
There’s significant debate over when exactly film noir was birthed. Some cite 1941’s The Maltese Falcon as its launching point, others call that film merely a progenitor of Fritz Lang’s M, from a decade earlier. For some it’s a little known RKO picture, 1940’s Stranger on the Third Floor; for others, 1944’s Double Indemnity, or Edward Dmytryk’s adaptation of Raymond Chandler’s Murder, My Sweet,
also from that year. Regardless of what exact line of demarcation one
chooses to use, however, this much is certain: though rooted in certain
tropes and mores of German expressionism and French social realism, the
genre came of age in a big way in the United States after the
conclusion of World War II, when battle-toughened Americans were much
more willing to accept pictures with a harder, more cynical edge, or at
least those that had no desire to reflect or sermonize a broader
cinematic morality.
Characterized by sordid urban narratives frequently told from the
point-of-view of a criminal or at least somewhat morally dubious
character, noir came to be associated, cinematographically speaking,
with deep shadows and strong, canted angles — all the better to disrupt
the typical harmonic space of most pretty-as-a-picture stories.
Narratives were often marked by institutional corruption, sexual or
romantic obsession, duplicitous identity, murder-for-hire and other
manner of extreme psychological duress. To that end, another fine
collection arrives in the form of Warner Bros.’ five-film Film Noir Classic Collection Vol. 3. Included here are Howard Hughes’ 1951 presentation of The Racket, starring Robert Mitchum; the Chandler mystery Lady in the Lake (no relation to M. Night Shyamalan’s soggy tale); 1949’s justly under-regarded Border Incident, starring Ricardo Montalban; and Robert Ryan and Ida Lupino’s On Dangerous Ground,
a visually remarkable slice of investigative fatigue powered by Bernard
Herrmann’s score. Also starring Mitchum and Jane Russell, His Kind of Woman meanwhile least fits the mold here, studded as it is with sassiness and subversiveness, though it’s still a fun time.
A six-disc compendium sold only as a set, Film Noir Classic Collection Vol. 3
includes each film in its own slimline case, all of which collectively
slip into a sturdy cardboard keepcase which features a suitable
pastiche of hardboiled sketch imagery from the film’s individual
posters and one-sheets. A variety of audio commentaries from film
scholars and genre enthusiasts dot each release, and Warner Bros. has,
gratifyingly, spread the assignments around so that the purveyors
aren’t overextended and don’t return to the same description. His Kind of Woman and The Racket lack the accompanying theatrical trailers of the other titles, but the big boon is the inclusion of the documentary special Film Noir: Bringing Darkness to Light.
This edifying 66-minute full screen presentation includes interviews
with a wide variety of figures — from directors like Christopher Nolan,
Paul Schrader and Sydney Pollack to writers Christopher McQuarrie,
Frank Miller and James Ellroy and archivists, authors and historians
like Hayden Guest, Glenn Erickson and Eddie Muller — and benefits from
this widely cast net. Also included on this phenomenal bonus disc are a
collection of five vintage, loosely categorized noir shorts from MGM’s
“Crime Doesn’t Pay Series,” including Oscar nominees Forbidden Passage and The Luckiest Guy in the World. B+ (Movies) A- (Discs)
Wizards
and warriors, knights and princesses will never leave us — there’s just
something indubitably kick-ass about chain metal — but the box-office
success of The Lord of the Rings franchise has definitely
helped unearth and reposition a veritable treasure trove of fantasy
adventure and Camelot-era entertainment product, and one such offering
is the animated Prince Valiant series.
Winner of the
1993 Humanitas Award in the category of Children’s Animation and three
Silver Angel awards honoring productions that uphold values of “moral,
ethical and/or social impact,” Prince Valiant is based on Hal
Foster’s comic strip of almost seven decades ago. In charting the
quests and escapades of its titular headstrong nobleman (voiced by
Robby Benson) and his quest for knighthood under King Arthur (voiced by
Efrem Zimbalist, Jr.), the series offers up lightly moralizing lessons
about navigating treachery and betrayal, “true worth being on the
inside” and the like. Along for the adventures are the loyal Arn
(voiced by Michael Horton) and feisty maiden Rowanne (voiced by Noelle
North), while wise old wizard Merlin (voiced by Alan Oppenheimer) also
pops up from time to time with shrewd advice or a helpful gift.
Accessible perhaps to a fault in its flatly rendered style, Prince Valiant’s
matte animation will likely bore latecomers to the medium who’ve been
raised on Pixar’s leaps-and-bounds improvement in background detail and
convincing shading. Likewise, those who don’t naturally gravitate
toward template narratives of honor, duty and sacrifice will likely
find the staid stories and bloodless action of no permanent consequence
herein fairly tedious. Still, across the 33 episodes gathered here
there are enough recognizable guest voice talents (Patty Duke, Wil
Wheaton, Roddy McDowell, Teri Garr, Marilu Henner and Ron Perlman,
among others) to help give the show a bit of a goosing nostalgic
appeal, if only one has sympathetic inclinations for the outmoded
technique on display.
Spread out over five discs and presented in 1.33:1 full screen, Prince Valiant: The Complete Series, Volume 1
comes housed somewhat awkwardly in a double-wide Amray case with a
snap-in tray and a bottom-entry cardboard slipcover. A nice,
eight-page, full-color insert booklet includes episodic summaries, but
the real bonus reward is found in the fifth disc’s collection of
interviews with series creator David Corbett, writer Brooks Wachtel and
comic strip historian Rick Norwood. An impressive storyboard gallery of
well over 150 images, a slideshow of character drawings and background
paintings, a selection of five scripts in PDF format and two episodic
audio-commentary tracks with Corbett, Wachtel and voice talent North,
on “The Trust Betrayed” and “The Awakening,” help mitigate transfers
that import wholesale grain and other artifact inconsistencies. C- (Show) B+ (Disc)
Misty Mundaehas climbed the ladder to the top of the B-movie starlet food chain through performances both smolderingly sexy (Lustful Addiction, Girl Seduction) and slightly goofy and endearing (Spider-Babe, Erotic Survivor). Flesh for Olivia,
though, captures none of her innate charms. Representing her last
starring role for the notorious, underground Factory 2000 film studio —
for whom she starred in numerous features and shorts at the beginning
of her screen calling — it instead serves as an ignominious footnote
chapter in an otherwise successful career.
Written and directed by William Hellfire, Flesh for Olivia is billed as a grim and violent piece of erotica, and a putative sequel to 2001’s Silk Stalking Strangler.
In reality, though, it goes with an elliptical and impressionistic
approach that doesn’t at all suit its material. Further saddled with a
dispassionate voiceover, unfocused performances and lame, droning
music, the 2002 movie is a creative stillbirth and unworthy digression
for longtime fans of Mundae, or indeed anyone interested in this
fashion of indie exploitation.
The story finds Mundae’s title character under the thumb of a
sleazy, violent and voyeuristic pimp, Claudio (Dean Paul). At his
direction, Olivia spends her time seducing willing young women to put
on kinky shows, women like Melody (AJ Khan). When things get out of
hand, though, and Melody’s roommate Alice (Dr. Jekyll and Mistress Hyde’s
Julian Wells) returns and witnesses shocking in-camera footage, she may
be the next innocent beauty to experience the pleasure and pain of
Olivia’s devastating allure.
Hellfire has the barest strands of a narrative, and no real ideas about how to effectively stretch this out to feature length. (Flesh for Olivia
runs 73 minutes, and that’s including the world’s slowest credit crawl
ever.) He opts to flash back and forward through time on occasion, but
this gambit — like the movie’s love affair with affected slow-motion —
comes off as desperate and completely transparent. Mundae, too, seems,
terribly uninterested and uninvested in the proceedings, consigning Flesh for Olivia to the bottom-of-the-basement bargain bin.
Flesh for Olivia comes housed in a regular Amray case with a
full-color paper insert that includes a few cast photos, and is
presented in 1.33:1 full screen. Distributor EI Cinema typically goes
all out with their releases in terms of supplemental materials, but Flesh for Olivia
includes only an admittedly expansive trailer gallery for its other
films. Additionally, the disc is plagued by significant artifacting and
playback glitches around the 25-minute mark, making this seemingly
rushed-out flick one of their worst releases. D- (Movie) D (Disc)
After the media firestorm surrounding her coming out of the closet died
down — and, too, the sitcom that got dragged into the frequently unfunny
fray as a result — Ellen DeGeneres took some time off before
resurfacing in another hotly anticipated, eponymous small screen
vehicle in 2001. Perhaps the timing wasn’t right then for its success (it was axed two-thirds of the way into its debut run) but in
retrospect The Ellen Show, collected here over 18 half-hour episodes, serves as a warm and winning showcase of its star’s talents.
Co-created by Mitchell Hurwitz (The Golden Girls, Arrested Development) and Carol Leifer (Seinfeld), the show centers around Ellen Richmond, a dotcom executive who returnsto her small hometown to receive an honorary achievement award and ends up staying when her company suddenly goes under. Moving back in with her mother Dot (a perfectly batty Cloris Leachman) and younger sister Catherine (Emily Rutherfurd), Ellen accepts a job offer from he ex-high school teacher and mentor, Mr. Munn (Martin Mull), and becomes a guidance counselor at her old school, where she works alongside her erstwhile senior prom date, the genial Rusty (Jim Gaffigan). Hers is no closeted existence, though; Ellen is openly gay if not currently in the market for companionship (much to the chagrin of the school’s gym teacher). While there are clever tweaks here and there about her sexuality (Wonder Woman, Billie Jean King and Charlie’s Angels posters dot her untouched adolescent bedroom walls), the bulk of the show is about the clash of culture and pace that occurs when Ellen unplugs from her Los Angeles rat race and rediscovers her small-town roots.
Given the pleasant comedic density on display in much of Leifer and Hurwitz’s other work, it’s no surprise that The Ellen Show gets mileage out of a variety of comic devices, from recurrent touchstone jokes and upscale literary references (Henry David Thoreau’s Walden anchors the second episode, in which Ellen obsesses over “deep” reflection) to oblique throwaway lines and smile-inducing puns. Its chief attribute, though, is DeGeneres’ sunny, affable personality. Unplugged from any politicized agenda, on the right or the left, you’releft simply with an innately likeable person with crack comic timing, and The Ellen Show captures its subject’s inimitably canted flight-of-fancy humor with grace and style. Spread out over three discs in two slimline cases that are in turn stored in a sturdy cardboard slipcase, The Ellen Show: The Complete Series is presented in 1.78:1 anamorphic widescreen, with an English stereo track. There are unfortunately no sit-down interviews with either DeGeneres or the behind-the-camera talent, or any other supplemental extras. That’s a shame, since this series deserves a more robust revival. B+ (Show) C- (Disc)
I
remembered the pictures and a few minor details from American history
class in grade school, but otherwise recollected little about Hoover
Dam. I hadn’t even stopped to visit it during the several times I’ve
driven through Nevada and the surrounding areas. So, settling down to
watch Hoover Dam, I was prepared for a staid little history
lesson. Wrong. I was quickly sucked into the fascinating story of the
controversial construction America’s own pyramid — a towering structure
which employed thousands during the Great Depression and helped reshape
the economic outlook of all lands to the west.
“Never before have carnal lust, sex and sin been so clearly depicted,” begins a promotional clip for Amazon Jail, one of two slices of ’80s sexploitation from filmmaker Oswaldo De Oliveira new to DVD. Really, never
before? Well, that might be a stretch. Still, these well-produced
titles succeed rather unerringly within the caged confines of their
genre and intent.
Starring Maria Stella Splendore, Nadia Destro and Marta Anderson, 1980’s Bare Behind Bars
is set in an all-women’s penitentiary where group showers, full-on
beatings, water hosings and, yes, body cavity searches at the hands of
a creepy nurse are all part of the normal everyday existence. To stay
out of the torture chamber, inmates can choose to barter their bodies
to the wicked (female) warden, submit to said nurse or rage emptily
against the machine. Fed up with their lot, the inmates eventually rise
up and decide to wreak vengeance on their jailers. Bare Behind Bars
lacks in the detail of its characterizations (no surprise, really), but its full-throb conviction goes a long way, both in terms of the
performances and De Oliveira’s manic staging of its many love scenes,
which highlight the charged dash for release of any kind in such a
shuttered environment.
Set deep in the Amazon jungle (natch), 1982’s Amazon Jail
similarly tracks a group of imprisoned nubile naïfs who writhe about a
lot, suffer the abuses of subjugators who aren’t above sampling the
merchandise themselves (a swarthy Sergio Hingst and his whip-cracking
female second-in-command, Joao Paulo Ramalho) and eventually turn the
tables on their white slave owners. This is probably the more wildly
plotted of the two films, including an illicit love plot and protracted
escape sequence in which some of these desperate women go from out of
the fire and into the frying pan so to speak, escaping brutal bounty
hunters only to get scooped up by a perverted priest that you just know
Marlon Brando would have had a hoot playing. The energetic make-out
sessions and seriocomic writhing of its first third — despite the grim
tawdriness of its set-up — gives way to legitimate unease in this final
act of flight and fight, with De Oliveira using quick cuts to build the
movie’s rhythm to an impassioned pitch. Amazon Jail won’t be
mistaken for great art, but it does rather artfully blend sex and
violence, indulging a base human preoccupation with both subjects.
Both discs are housed in regular clear Amray cases with thin
cardboard slipcovers with raised lettering, and presented in 1.66:1
widescreen enhanced for 16×9 televisions. The audio mixes are English
language Dolby digital mono tracks, and extremely poorly dubbed at
that, but capture the aural demands of the pictures quite fine. And
speaking of those pictures, the image for both movies is superb,
consistent in color and free from scratches and other debris. The only
extras on each disc, unfortunately, are each film’s own declamatory
trailer (“This is the story of women trapped into white slavery,
revealing their innermost desires in their fight to escape the terrors
of the Amazon,” intones Amazon Jail), which are a bit amusing in their meticulousness. I mean, if you have movies titled Bare Behind Bars and Amazon Jail,
you don’t exactly have to spend money on overwritten narration, right?
De Oliveira did, though, and that’s one of the things that made him
different. B- (Movies) C+ (Discs)
Probably the most famous entry of the French New Wave, 1959’s The 400 Blows
introduced not only a precocious film talent to the world, but also
kick-started, in a simplistic yet emotionally florid style, a whole new
trend in cinema — in the process no doubt fooling a small army of
dirty-minded teens looking for more salacious fare based on the title
and its strange English transliteration. In offering up François
Truffaut’s semi-autobiographical account of a troubled adolescence, the
movie would find welcome global commercial and critical reception.
Told through the eyes of Truffaut’s cinematic stand-in, Antoine Doinel (Jean-Pierre Léaud), The 400 Blows
details a somewhat unsentimental, Dickensian world of aloof parents,
oppressive teachers and stifled opportunity. In both story and image,
Truffaut searches for the poetical in the mundane, be it taking out the
trash, suffering the indignities of a mother (Claire Maurier) and
stepfather (Albert Rémy) too busily wrapped up in their own lives to
engage in much hands-on parenting or even grifting a typewriter or a
bit to eat.
For all the talk about the film’s quotidian grace and beauty, its
paramount perceptiveness lies in the manner in which it captures the
clandestine, swallowed anxiety of youth — of how one doesn’t have to be
abused to be detrimentally effected, just merely neglected. Over the
ensuing two decades, Truffaut (and Léaud) would return to Doinel four
more times, fleshing out both the character and this central thematic
preoccupation.
A re-release of one of its earliest, most popular, out-of-print
titles, Criterion’s single-disc release includes a restored, sterling
high-definition digital transfer of the movie, presented in 2.35:1
widescreen with monaural French audio and optional English subtitles. Two audio-commentary tracks stud the release, one from cinema professor
Brian Stonehill and the other from Robert Lachenay, a lifelong friend
of Truffaut, production supervisor on the movie and the model for
Antoine’s best friend, René. Stonehill’s speaks nicely to truths one
can more readily sense on the screen, while Lachenay’s subtitled chat, en français, provides all sorts of background — about the scene involving said stolen typewriter, for instance.
Criterion’s deep contacts in Europe, where upon-release academic
discourse was and still is more encouraged than Stateside, often help
provide valuable tertiary extras for its discs, and The 400 Blows
is no exception. Alongside six minutes of rare audition material and
another half dozen minutes of newsreel footage of Léaud at the Cannes
Film Festival for the film’s premiere, there are excerpts from a French
television program, Cinéastes de notre temps, in which Truffaut
discusses his youth, his body of critical writing, the origins of the
character of Doinel and his similarities and divergence from his own
youth. There’s also a seven-minute television interview with the late
director about his thoughts on the film’s reception. A (Movie) B+ (Disc)
Filmmaker Mitchell Altieri’s festival-christened Lurking in Suburbia
is emblematic of what might be called the Ed Burns school of
independent cinema, named for the sort of angsty,
millennial-approximate young-adult jitters and cud-chewing ennui on
display in the actor-writer-director’s debut Sundance hit, 1995’s The Brothers McMullen,
and virtually every movie for which he’s stepped behind the camera
since then. For some folks, that’s interest-piquing praise, for others
damning dismissal, and for others still neither here nor there.
Our
flustered protagonist herein is Conrad Stevens (Joe Egender, a slightly
more animated and mainstreamed Giovanni Ribisi, though still with the
raccoon eyes), a lackadaisical writer (naturally) who on the eve of his
30th birthday finds himself evaluating his beer-fueled,
commitment-avoiding way of life with increasing antipathy. The movie
charts the events leading up to and beyond a big party. Feeling trapped
in the suburban tract bachelor pad, nicknamed “the Palace,” where he’s
lived with his childhood friends for years, Connie finally comes to the
conclusion that his life has to change, especially after — in a bit
stretching credibility even in a movie of heightened absurdity like
this one — his pal Sean (Samuel Child) tries to hook him up with a girl
who turns out to be the daughter of an old high-school classmate.
Despite its innate and considerable likeability in swatches, part of Lurking in Suburbia’s problem is that the character of Conrad really isn’t
the most steadfast embodiment of irresponsibility, and is thus a phony
proxy for all the navel-gazing talk on display. This wouldn’t matter as
much if the movie were more of an arms-length character study, but
Altieri sets Conrad up as a sort of modern-day Ferris Bueller,
utilizing direct address to try to ply our sympathy. While there are
some interesting characters among Conrad’s pals — gay ex-jock Danny
(Ari Zagaris, coming off as Craig Bierko’s younger brother) is notably
well sketched — and the movie gets many of the details of threadbare
20-something existence right (including the random mismatched furniture
and bare living room walls), it overall feels like a mock-plaintive
exercise in emotional manipulation, with too many bits of fading
adolescent awakening cribbed from Esquire’s infamous “Things Never to Do After 30” essay.
Lurking in Suburbia comes housed in a regular Amray case with
a gold-embossed cardboard slipcover, and is presented in letterboxed
widescreen enhanced for 16×9 televisions. Its English language 2.0
stereo track more than adequately handles the movie’s relatively sparse
aural demands, though the background ambience in some of the party
sequences seems purposefully, woefully under-dialed. Taking a page from
Matt Stone and Trey Parker, there’s a drunken audio commentary track
included herein, as well as a spread of eight deleted scenes and
several trailers. C (Movie) C+ (Disc)
Snow Dogs 2 anyone? No, actually Eight Below,
the Paul Walker-and-sled-dogs tale inspired by a true story, is nowhere
near as wince-inducing as that piece of kiddie entertainment.
Fans of brawny, foreign-language policeman actioners in the Dirty Harry mold will likely spark to the 1978 Italian import Convoy Busters, the adrenalized tale of an ungovernable cop and the bloody swath of street justice he cuts under a Tuscan sun*.
Scripted by Gino Capone and Teodoro Agrimi, Convoy Busters centers around hardboiled cop Olmi (Violent Naples’
Maurizio Merli), who’s busted down a rank from the homicide division
after arresting a diamond smuggler with friends in high places. After
joining Rome’s emergency squad, Olmi’s extreme tactics make him a quick
enemy of both the mob and a press corps hungry for salacious stories.
After killing an innocent man whom he mistakes for an assassin, Olmi
finds himself bounced further down the occupational ladder, assigned to
a quiet beat on the Adriatic coast. There, he finds love in the arms of
a beautiful schoolteacher, Anna (Olga Karlatos). Naturally, however, a
peaceful and idyllic, sunset-filled ending isn’t in the cards for Olmi,
and when his newly found happiness is messed with, he crosses paths
with a gang of vicious gun runners.
The film’s director, the recently passed Stelvio Massi — who also
sometimes went by Stefano Catalano — was a hard-core genre devotee;
among the many titles to his credit as both a cinematographer and
director were Blood, Sweat and Fear, Highway Racer, Destruction Force and the Black Cobra films from the late 1980s. Convoy Busters
fits easily and comfortably into this canon as a robust tale of Italian
machismo; it’s the blueprint for everything Lorenzo Lamas ever tried
and about half of what Steven Seagal did as well. Merli is intense and
mustachioed, just the way you want your avenging angel cops, but the
movie also isn’t afraid to offer forth a few quirks.
Convoy Busters comes in a clear Amray case with a dual-sided
color sleeve, and is presented in 2.35:1 widescreen with matching
English and Italian Dolby digital mono audio tracks and, obviously,
optional English subtitles. A 20-page, full-color collectible booklet
offers up The De Falco Solution, an original graphic-novel
short story by Maurizio Rosenzweig and Diego Cajelli set in present-day
Milan but inspired by the ’70s ethos of the subgenre on display in the
feature. There are also, hearteningly, a nice slate of conversational
interviews anchoring the bonus material, including chats with the
namesake son of original star Merli, journalist Eolo Capacci, actor
Enio Girolami and directors Enzo Castellari and Ruggero Deodato, who
cite Convoy Busters as an influence. The movie’s original
theatrical trailer and a scrollable gallery of poster art and still
photographs round out the release. B- (Movie) B- (Disc)
Jessica Biel, writer-director Hunter Richards and
cinematographer Jo Willems conspire for 92 minutes to avoid showing us a full-on
frontal shot of her breasts, London feels from frame one like the disjointed monologue of a barstool liberal arts
graduate resigned to the life of drunken soliloquies. Ridiculous hairpieces abound, and Richards describes his inspiration for the film thusly: “I just locked these two
characters in a New York bathroom with a copious amount of drugs and let them
beat each other up mentally for 50 pages.” For the full DVD review, from IGN, click here.
The second straight-to-video sequel to 2002’s outside-the-box animated Disney hit Lilo & Stitch, Leroy & Stitch
continues the series’ slide into colorful redundancy, offering forth a
healthy smattering of enjoyable character moments, but little of
originality or essentiality beyond that.
As a reward for
rounding up all 625 “experiments,” Lilo, Stitch, Jumba and Pleakley
have been placed around the galaxy in spots where each of them thinks
they truly belong. Chubby Jumba (voiced by David Ogden Stiers) is back
in the laboratory, the excitable Pleakley (voiced by Kevin McDonald) is
teaching college, Lilo is in Hawaii and Stitch (voiced by Chris
Sanders) is commanding a big red battleship. Their lives are all
collectively shook up, however, when the dastardly Dr. Hämsterviel
breaks out of prison and forces Jumba to create a new experiment —
Leroy (also voiced by Sanders), an evil twin of Stitch. Wait — wasn’t
Stitch himself originally an irascible pain in the rump? So that would
make this film a Xeroxed tale of alien versus self, right? Ah, but we
digress…
To make matters even worse, Dr. Hämsterviel soon clones nasty little
Leroy in an effort to form his own standing army. After that, it’s up
to Lilo (this time voiced not by Dakota Fanning, but by Daveigh Chase,
the freaky little girl from The Ring) to gather Stitch and the
rest of the gang from the far-flung corners of outer space to battle
this legion of Leroys. With the chips down and pressure mounting, these
friends discover that the one place they all truly belong is together.
Appreciative parents and young fans who have enjoyed the
Saturday-morning cartoon serial spawned by the original film will still
get a kick out of this flick, but those who were drawn in equal measure
to the original’s hearty emotional investment will find this chiefly an
exercise in elongated character outtakes. The introduction of Leroy
completes the Terminator-esque odyssey of the character of Stitch —
from “bad guy” to less bad guy to full-fledged hero — but Leroy & Stitch doesn’t have quite the scope to make that arc completely stirring.
The film is presented in what is billed as “family-friendly” 1.78:1
widescreen enhanced for 16×9 televisions, with a Dolby digital 5.1
surround-sound audio track and a bonus, never-previously-broadcast
episode of the aforementioned Lilo & Stitch cartoon series. Straight-to-video animation often gets knocked, and while the matte backgrounds here won’t win Leroy & Stitch
any awards for genre trailblazing, its colors are bright and vivid.
Owing to its streamlined production, the only other supplemental extra
comes in the form of a flight simulator game for kids. Like other
titles of this ilk, however, Leroy & Stitch is also
enhanced/enabled with Disney’s “FastPlay” technology, which means it
operates upon start-up, without the necessary use of a remote — all the
better if your kids have sticky hands. And really, what kids don’t have sticky hands? C (Movie) C (Disc)
I recently caught a snippet of the old Saturday Night Live sketch in which Will Ferrell — in full-on, deadpan unctuous mode as Inside the Actor’s Studio host James Lipton — was mock-interviewing Kate Hudson, expertly portraying Drew Barrymore’s bubbly, wide-eyed mania. In it, he intoned that Charlie’s Angels was, many said, “The greatest television show of all time… created by humans.”
Well, the latter really isn’t in doubt, at least. Watching the junior season of the series, spanning the years of 1978 and ’79, it’s clear that Charlie’s Angels is about as preening and populist a slice of jiggly mass-entertainment as can be. Aliens couldn’t devise something this lightweight in its escapism and yet still so heartily insulated from substantive criticism. Yes, Charlie’s Angels is dumb. Next caveat?
The show, of course, centers around a trio of gorgeous female private detectives — Kate Jackson, Jaclyn Smith and Cheryl Ladd — who solve mysteries with the assistance of loyal aide Bosley (David Doyle) and the guiding hand and helpful financial underwriting of their unseen benefactor boss (voiced by John Forsythe), whom they know only as a disembodied voice over the phone. Original Angel Farrah Fawcett pops up for three episodes to further bump up the heat index in what would also be Jackson’s last year with the show.
So, how does one kick off a third season? Why, in Las Vegas, of course, and with a two-parter in which the girls blend in backstage in an effort to solve a murder. Other episodes include the Angels going undercover as cheerleaders (no guys, that wasn’t only an LSD-induced fantasy), as teachers at an all-girls boarding school and as runners in a marathon. There’s also “Counterfeit Angels,” in which the girls go underground to thwart a devious scam by three women who pose as the Angels in order to rob a sports arena box office. Guest stars herein include Dean Martin, Dick Sargent, Scatman Crothers, Robert Urich, Stephen Collins (long before 7th Heaven) and Jamie Lee Curtis (just before Halloween would put her on the map). Spread out over six discs in three slimline cases in turn housed in a cardboard slipcase, Charlie’s Angels: The Complete Third Season is presented in 1.33:1 full screen, with an English language Dolby digital track. Slight grain is steadily present throughout and the colors are sometimes inconsistent, seemingly born of different film stocks. There are also unfortunately no supplemental extras, a tragedy only reinforced by producer Aaron Spelling’s recent demise. Those with a deep and abiding nostalgic yearning for any of the lovely ladies of the cast will adore Charlie’s Angels, but those merely seeking more generalized classic TV kicks can kind better purchase elsewhere. C (Show) D+ (Disc)
The title Sex is Zero may conjure up jointly esoteric and allegorical thoughts of writer-director Don Roos’ 1998 indie The Opposite of Sex,
but South Korean filmmaker Je-gyun Yun’s wild and wooly imported comedy
is actually a bawdy college romp much more in the tradition of Porky’s and American Pie.
While comedy is often thought of as very culturally specific — what’s funny
in one language doesn’t necessarily translate across the ocean — this
movie belies the notion that laughs can’t be universal. From its peppy
opening, set to the Go-Go’s “We Got the Beat,” to its catty female
conversations about breast size, stylized production technique,
sex-doll humping and copious gross-out humor, what’s amazing about
2002’s Sex is Zero is how much it feels like an American
adolescent comedy, how spot-on it is tonally. The story centers around
a pathologically shy first-year law student, Eunshik (Chang Jung Lim),
and his crush on the pretty Eunhyo (Ji-won Ha). The movie is chock full
of lively, Seann William Scott-esque supporting turns, however,
including the funny, flip Kyoungiu (Yi Shin) as one of Eunhyo’s
friends, and Songguk (Seong-Guk Choi) as a randy pal of Eunshik’s.
Those that found hearty hilarity in the pie-humping and DNA-tainted beer of the original American Pie will likely be similarly doubled over during Sex is Zero;
its set pieces include the accidental ingestion of a mouse, a
discussion of hand-job injuries, and a sequence in which one character,
out of eggs, decides to fry up a different kind of protein. (Needless
to say, this gets used on toast, and later eaten by a dimwitted
acquaintance who doesn’t believe his friends when they tell him what’s
actually on it.) Of course, there’s also a scene of hazing underneath a
banner that reads, “Spiritual concentration is our nation’s strength,”
so you don’t completely forget that you’re watching a foreign
flick. The cast is attractive and personable, and only the movie’s
late-act dip toward an unintended pregnancy and possible abortion earn
it a few demerits, since these hairpin turns in pitch and atmosphere
tend to feel like a negation of some previously established character
traits.
Housed in a regular Amray case, Sex is Zero is presented in
1.85:1 letterboxed widescreen, with its original Korean language track
and optional English and Spanish subtitles. Wildly gratifying is
distributor Panik House’s superlative treatment of the title, which
includes an English-language audio commentary track with Mike McPadden
and “Mr. Skin” of The Howard Stern Show (“I’m running out of
synonyms for tan nipples …”) and a Spanish-language audio-commentary
track with Jesus “El Pelos” Olvera, the entertainment editor of Al Borde.
An assortment of trailers, production notes, a photo gallery, poster
art, cast biographies and more lend valuably clarifying context to the
movie — which was a smash in its native land — but there are also a
whopping 20 minutes of bloopers and seven minutes of deleted scenes
that are just as fun as portions of the feature proper. The
transliteration of the title may raise some questions, but Sex is Zero richly proves that ribaldry is indeed universal. B (Movie) A- (Disc)
Following in the stop-motion animation footsteps of Willis O’Brien and Ray Harryhausen for 1967’s Equinox,
visual-effects master Dennis Muren and fellow monster maven David
Allen, both under 21 years old at the time, used a slew of preexisting
models that Allen had created as a teenager, including a towering, King
Kong-like ape creature, a tentacled underwater beast which would fit
right in in a kid-theater knock-off of the latest Pirates of the Caribbean sequel and a skeleton right out of Harryhausen’s The 7th Voyage of Sinbad.
The result was a film that inspired fellow monster-magazine readers,
showcasing the rich fruits of possibility of one’s own backyard
creativity.
Still, properly modulated and/or muted expectation is the key prerequisite for Equinox,
as those who don’t appreciate the craft and skill in adolescent
experimentation’s first tentative steps won’t be able to mine much
reward from this movie. Situated in flashback form, the story centers
around a group of four young, sleuthing, amateur archeologists — Jim (WKRP in Cincinnati’s
Frank Bonner), Susan (Barbara Hewitt), David (Skip Shimer) and Vicki
(Robin Snider) — who uncover horror in a dusty state forest. While
questing for a book of spells containing secrets of a strange,
malevolent world which coexists with that of mankind, they find
themselves under attack by winged beasts, huge apes and Satan.
Equinox is simplistic, yes, and its acting quite stilted, but Muren and his writer and co-director Mark McGee utilize forced
perspective, in-camera editing and other sleights of hand to remarkable
effect for such a low-budget, DIY feature (the movie was shot over the
course of 1965 and ’66 for under $6,500). One interesting thing is that
the movie, originally inclusive of the subtitled moniker A Journey Into the Supernatural, was bought by legendary producer Jack H. Harris (The Blob)
on the strength of its special effects, and then passed off to unsung
filmmaker Jack Woods (who previously had helped edit John Cassavetes’ Faces) to lengthen and restructure.
Trimmed to just Equinox, but beefed up with ADR and other
bits to give the movie much more of a conventional horror bent, the
movie was released in 1970, and saw considerable success both in normal
distribution and as a reel-to-reel sell-thru item. While Allen and
Muren — the latter now a nine-time Oscar winner — have each gone on to
provide special effects for all sorts of beastly blockbusters, from Star Wars and Honey, I Shrunk the Kids to The Abyss and Jurassic Park, their cachet in their field has only enhanced the cult status and
youthful charm of their debut creature-feature collaboration.
Both versions of the movie are presented in 1.33:1 full screen with
Dolby digital mono on Criterion’s new double-disc release, along with
the requisite slate of impressive bonus materials. Famous Monsters of Filmland
editor Forrest J. Ackerman provides a self-indulgent, seven-minute
video introduction, and there are two audio commentaries — one for each
version of the movie. On the 82-minute theatrical cut, Harris and Woods
sit together for a genial and exceedingly detailed chat in which they
pay considerable compliments to cinematographer Mike Hoover and offer
forth all manner of minutiae and trivia. (Ed Begley, Jr. on assistant
camera, ladies and gentlemen!) On the 70-minute original feature, Muren
sits for a solo track of reminiscence (on casting: Hewitt “was the
prettiest girl in my high school,” and thusly qualified) that’s nicely
blended with thoughts from McGee and matte artist/cel animator/effects
technician Jim Danforth regarding the amicable handover of the film to
producer Harris.
On the second disc, Muren sits for a seven-minute interview in which
he details his childhood fascination with effects, and urges young
aspirant filmmakers to reach beyond excuses and work with the tools
that they currently have. Interviews with Bonner, Hewitt and James
Duron are also included, along with deleted scenes and outtakes from
the original 1967 version, archival stop-motion test footage and a
short film featuring the same crew, 1972’s Zorgon: The H-Bomb Beast From Hell.
Promotional material and a extensive photo gallery of rare stills
nicely complement the trailer and radio spots that touted the movie’s
theatrical release, and a hearty insert booklet with testimonials from
Harryhausen and George Lucas, and an essay from Brock DeShane, richly
point up this title’s sub-set importance. B- (Movie) A- (Disc)
The success of the small screen’s The West Wing
has helped create, if not an actual and substantial increase in public
interest in the political process, at least more of an appetite for
political entertainment. Ergo, something like ABC’s staid Commander in Chief, which stars Geena Davis as the first female chief executive of the United States.
Davis
is Mackenzie Allen, a political independent who is suddenly elevated
from the vice presidency to the presidency upon the natural death of
her predecessor. Hard-nosed Speaker of the House Nathan Templeton
(Donald Sutherland) tries to box in and/or undercut Allen at every
turn, but loyal chief of staff Jim Gardner (Harry Lennix) helps
effectuate Allen’s populist agenda. Sutherland is fabulous, and guest
star Peter Coyote — as an ex-general and political rival whom Allen
wants to anoint as her vice-presidential nominee — is likewise
excellent, but other casting for the series is weird; as press
secretary Kelly Ludlow, Ever Carradine always seems on the verge of
bursting into tears. Commander in Chief is best when churning
through dialogue and various cloak-and-dagger political scenarios
(“First Choice,” “First… Do No Harm,” “First Scandal”), but later
episodes (“The Mom Who Came to Dinner,” “Sub Enchanted Evening”) come
off as mawkish. The series is also shot in an awfully boxy, staged
fashion, which effectively undercuts any true sense of momentum.
Series creator Rod Lurie previously delved into the Washington
backstabbing and other political maneuvering that accompanied a woman’s
rise to power in the film The Contender, but Commander in Chief definitely cops its moves more from Aaron Sorkin’s aforementioned NBC hit and, I don’t know, 7th Heaven?
There’s a clear-cut attempt made to give parallel balance to the two
narrative rails, the personal and professional, but the show’s family
stuff, with a sad-sack Kyle Secor as the first First Gentleman, Rod
Calloway, comes across, variously, as awkward and inept. Worst is a
scenario in which daughter Rebecca (Caitlin Wachs) loses her diary,
which causes a stir amongst the Secret Service, like there might be
state secrets contained in a teenager’s frustrated rants against a
parent.
I’m not quite sure why a single aborted season of Commander in Chief
is divvied up into two separate volumes on DVD, except perhaps as some
straw-poll ballot initiative to see how much fan support there is out
there for this program, and whether its rumored continuation in the
form of either a series of telepics or serial resuscitation is in fact
economically viable. Regardless, this two-disc set — billed as the
“inaugural edition,” part one — reeks of corporate opportunism, and
while its artificially created, mid-season cliffhanger may drum up some
support for this fall’s release of the rest of the show’s debut season,
it still comes across as crass, hardly the way to legitimately win
hearts and minds.
Housed in a regular Amray case, Commander in Chief is
presented in what is billed as “family-friendly” 1.78:1 widescreen,
enhanced for 16×9 televisions, along with a Dolby digital 5.1 surround
sound audio track. Owing, one supposes, to his eventual ouster as show
runner in favor of television veteran Steven Bocho, there are no audio
commentaries or interviews with series-creator Lurie, and not even a
chat with Davis, which is a real shame. Where’s executive-office
transparency when you most need it? C (Show) C- (Disc)
Before she became famous for, alternately, wriggling about in Whitesnake music videos and physically assaulting her ex-husband, baseball player Chuck Finley, Tawny Kitaen was indeed an actress, as evidenced not just by her breakout role in Bachelor Party, but also director Just Jaeckin’s Gwendoline.
Kitaen did for the French magazine Lui
upon the European release of the movie. Two different trailers — one
for the American cut of the movie, another instrumental-only, much more
artistic version for international audiences — point up the film’s
different selling points (extra nudity also graces the abroad version,
of course). The supplemental knockout, though, is a new sit-down
interview with Jaeckin in which he talks about the movie’s 18-week
shoot, its chariot race sequence and how he was resistant to taking the
project unless he could play up the concept’s humor and bawdy banter.
Extra props, too, to the off-screen interviewer for asking him about
the incident with Finley, and if Kitaen ever displayed any proclivities
toward violence on his set. Jaeckin’s classic answer: “Huh. No. But I
am strong.” B- (Movie) B+ (Disc)
At
age 19, aspirant drummer and walking tattoo parlor Tommy Lee helped
form the hard-charging rock ’n’ roll band Mötley Crüe, so who had time
for a liberal-arts education? Now twice-divorced and the father of two
young boys, Lee is trying to put his infamous bad-boy rep behind him,
and one way to do this — since they haven’t yet invented body erasers —
is to go to college, specifically the University of Nebraska.
Comprised of a scant six half-hour episodes originally aired on NBC and VH-1, Tommy Lee Goes to College
can’t really gather the necessary downhill momentum to truly deliver on the absurdist cachet of its concept. While it faithfully replicates
many touchstone freshman experiences and Lee is a respectful figure,
the sum doesn’t match the whole of the show’s parts. Further saddled by
an officious narration, the series comes across as a cycle of set-piece
vignettes strung together in rib-nudging fashion by an overactive
editor. This means the inclusion of washed-out effects and other
post-production gimmickry — tacks that rather quickly grow tiresome.
Still, it’s undeniable that there’s some fun to be had here. In the
series’ fourth episode, Lee’s English class debates the merit of his
autobiography, which opens with an imagined conversation between Tommy
and his penis. (The reactions of the co-eds are priceless.) Later, he
tries to pledge a fraternity, which births the priceless images of Lee
scrubbing a filthy toilet and trying to negotiate a bundle of laundry,
finally emptying an entire bottle of liquid detergent into the washer.
Pity that we don’t see the consequences of that, though — or much of
anything else. Instead of following this strand through to its logical
conclusion, Lee and another student get a house and try to start their
own frat. Wait… didn’t I see this in a Porky’s movie or something?
Again, the series works best when subverting expectation, and
thrusting the affable Lee back into a corner as the definitive butt of
the show’s joke. It’s savvy that they bestow upon him a smokin’ hot
blonde tutor, senior Natalie Reidmann, but do we really need a slow-mo
introduction complete with windswept hair? Likewise, the very idea of
Lee in chemistry and criminal law classes (he audited a semester, but
did not formally enroll) is rife with its own subtextual hilarity, but the series indulges only fitfully in its subject’s self-effacing, himbo
confusion, which is actually quite endearing.
Tommy Lee Goes to College is presented in 1.33:1 full screen,
with an English language stereo track. Relatively sparse supplemental
extras represent a further missed opportunity, including a clutch of
self-touting music videos and behind-the-scenes rehearsal footage
(“Tryin’ To Be Me,” “Hello, Again” and the surprisingly soulful “Good
Times”) from Lee’s most recent, commercially underwhelming CD, Tommyland: The Ride. Hard-core fans of Mötley Crüe and other celeb-based entertainment will likely enthusiastically spark to Tommy Lee Goes to College, but for more casual audiences, this remains an elective course. C+ (Show) C- (Disc)
The
life of a character actor can be a fairly anonymous one, but there’s
something about Stephen Tobolowsky’s malleable visage — ranging from
plaintive to droll — that earns him an easy place in your memory. Of
course, it doesn’t hurt that he’s been stealing scenes and memorably
serving stories since first parlaying his education in theater at the
University of Illinois into a string of television roles in the
mid-1980s. Movies soon consistently followed, both comedic and dramatic
work, and from Groundhog’s Day (“Phil? It’s Ned… Ned Ryerson!”), Mississippi Burning and Spaceballs to Memento, Sneakers and Single White Female,
among many others, Tobolowsky has become a go-to guy for all sorts of
bit parts officious, unctuous, exasperating and craven. In the
deliciously entertaining Stephen Tobolowsky’s Birthday Party, though, he takes center stage as never before.
Mena Suvari’s ex-husband), the movie is a cinema verité
slice-of-life which finds Tobolowsky holding forth in absorbing,
good-naturedly verbose style with all sorts of stories and anecdotes
from his life. It was shot in simple, straightforward fashion to mark
the real-life occasion of its subject’s 54th birthday celebration, but
the idea came much before that, from Tobolowsky’s esteemed status as a
great party guest.
“The genesis was 17 years ago, with Coronas in hand, in my kitchen,”
recalls Tobolowsky, “with me telling stories about being held hostage
at shotgun (one of the movie’s best bits) and other things that had
happened to me, and everyone standing around laughing. Robert
immediately said it would make a great idea for a movie. So it only
took 15 years to do it. I think one of the other people in the kitchen
was a woman who became a producer at NPR, and years later she asked me
to write one of these stories down and perform it live on the radio.
And that forced me to put pen to paper, because the expectation of
performance is much different in a kitchen… than when people are paying
$25 bucks a head on stage to see someone on stage read a story. They
expect professionalism at that rate, and because it was successful on
the radio I had the confidence to think that Robert’s idea might work
on film.”
The movie holds sway because of Tobolowsky’s gift as a beautiful
storyteller, a weaver of colorful detail, but also because the tales
are all so relatable. Well, almost all of them — maybe not the
one about the evening with the stripper spent looking through her high
school yearbook. “Robert wanted lots of Hollywood-type stories,” says
Tobolowsky, who admits he has a few, some of which are included here,
“but the thing that I felt and still maintain is that stories that are
not about film or celebrities or Hollywood figures are ultimately more
exciting, because they have a chance to be more universal and
consequently more powerful. Some of the strongest memories I have are
not necessarily of Hollywood dinner parties, but more of evenings on
front porches where people would tell me stories about their lives, or
talking with the trucker at 3 a.m. Those seem to be the ones that stick
with me.”
Despite the movie’s sometimes frank diversions into adult arenas,
Tobolowsky has had no problems sharing it with his two boys, ages 12
and 17. Surprisingly, he says, they both loved it. “My oldest son
started inviting groups of friends over, I guess because they couldn’t
believe some of the sex and drugs stories,” he says with a laugh. “I
try to be truthful about everything,” he continues. “What I tell them
is that, at my ripe old age now, I don’t know a single soul who wishes they had smoked an extra reefer as opposed to read another book. I haven’t done drugs in years and years and years,
and I regret the amount of time that I wasted doing them, but we all
wish that we had used that time in a more valuable way. That’s what I
tell them.”
Both for those who’ve sparked to Tobolowsky’s rich performances over the years or merely sort of recognize him, his Birthday Party
is a wonderful and funny insight into the man behind the poker-face.
With stories like these, you won’t feel bad about skipping out on your
ex-roommate’s lame party. For more information, visit www.STBPmovie.com.
,<br />
<b>but also demonstrated that her use of the signs wasn’t based around<br />
inviolate holds</b>. She could, in fact, recombine words in novel fashion<br />
to form new compound names — <b>pointing to a ring and calling it a<br />
“finger bracelet,” for instance</b>.</p>
<p>Whether or not you’re deeply into animals, the footage here is<br />
absolutely fascinating, and persuasive enough to lead one to conclude<br />
that humanity isn’t purely “different in kind.” <b>In Koko’s<br />
inquisitiveness, moodiness and occasional petulance, one sees the<br />
basest elements of human adolescence.</b> Also interesting is her<br />
introduction to another gorilla, a younger male named Michael. While<br />
rife with unanswered, slippery-slope questions about different elements<br />
of Koko’s socialization (the slapdash research environment isn’t<br />
exactly what you’d call locked-down), there’s something undeniably engaging on a very basic level about the movie. </p>
<p>Though he includes bits of an interview with one of the zoo’s<br />
directors, <b>a sympathetic Schroeder obviously takes the side of<br />
Patterson and his subject</b> in a largely glossed-over dissection of a<br />
battle for Koko’s future disposition. Schroeder does this by <b>including<br />
in the movie’s sparse narration various questioning voiceovers about<br />
the nature of a person</b>. This vouching doesn’t really rankle, though,<br />
because Schroeder doesn’t demonize those that disagree or have doubts<br />
about such “humanization” of a primate, and because the film is so<br />
hands-off and almost under-produced in general, <b>much more a relaxed<br />
filmic study than an impassioned screed</b>. </p>
<p>Criterion typically does a smash-up job on the presentation of its<br />
DVDs, and this title is no different, as the movie arrives in a new,<br />
restored digital transfer that cleanly showcases its 1.33:1 full screen<br />
image. Only once or twice does the material’s age show in<br />
end-of-mag-roll flashes; grain is extremely rare, giving us a great<br />
look at Koko up close. The audio comes courtesy of a monaural<br />
soundtrack, and an alternate French language track with optional<br />
English subtitles. <b>A 16-page insert booklet includes two essays</b> — one<br />
by Marguerite Duras dating to the time of the film’s release, and a new<br />
one from Gary Indiana that centers on Schroeder’s relationship with<br />
Koko and where she falls in his documentary canon, which also includes<br />
Idi Amin. </p>
<p>Unfortunately, <b>the only disc extra is an 11-minute interview with<br />
Schroeder</b>. In this chat, he recounts the project’s roots, and also how<br />
he initially saw it as the groundwork for a narrative feature to be<br />
scripted by Sam Shepard and produced by Saul Zaentz. The problem is<br />
that <b>neither he nor the rest of the disc takes into account the<br />
viewers’ forward-looking interest in the story</b>. Where are the updates?<br />
Where are Koko and Michael now, and what information has Dr. Penny<br />
Patterson’s research yielded? To exclude any information of this sort<br />
is nearly unforgivable. <b>B (Movie) C- (Disc)</b></p>
<div class=)
 and the four, 56-foot diameter diversionary tunnels<br />
that opened up the canyon. The period piece photographs are amazing,<br />
particularly some time-lapse shots, and there’s also quite a bit of<br />
home video footage, which puts viewers right in the thick of things.<br />
Equally important is the time the program affords to the period leading<br />
up to the building of the structure, like the great Imperial Valley<br />
flood of 1905. This contextual material lends the Hoover Dam — which<br />
had many detractors at the time, and some still now — an important<br />
sense of reason and necessity.<b></p>
<p>As with most programs of this ilk, however, <i>Hoover Dam</i>’s<br />
bread and butter comes in the form of its overview interviews</b>, which<br />
here include well-spoken talking heads like Nevada state archivist Guy<br />
Louis Rocha and architectural historian Richard Guy Wilson, but also<br />
several natty old coots who were actually there. These include<br />
photographer W.A. Davis, who richly details the jeers that went up when<br />
it was announced the dam would be named for the tremendously unpopular<br />
sitting president, Herbert Hoover.<br />
Like other “American Experience” releases on DVD from PBS, <i>Hoover Dam</i><br />
is presented in 1.33:1 full screen, with an English language Dolby<br />
digital audio track that easily accommodates the meager aural demands<br />
of its production. <b>The only supplemental extras include printable<br />
teaching materials that educators may access through the Web.</b> It’s a<br />
testament to the allure of <i>Hoover Dam</i>’s salute to American ingenuity that it leaves you so mightily irked, wanting more. <b>B+ (Show) C- (Disc)</b></p>
<div class=)
 works his way back to them, his beloved huskies —<br />
including noble pack leader Maya, rambunctious rebel Shorty and<br />
headstrong Max — must learn to survive together. <b>(What’s that, you say?<br />
Slice open the belly of the weakest with a light saber and crawl inside<br />
to stay warm? Feh! They’ll be none of that here.)</b> Driven by unwavering<br />
bonds of friendship, an enormous belief in one another and tremendous<br />
courage, Jerry and the dogs make an incredible journey in this suitably<br />
spirit-rousing action-adventure for generation-spanning family<br />
audiences.</p>
<p>Adapted by freshman screenwriter David DiGilio, <i>Eight Below</i><br />
is based on a Japanese expedition to the South Pole in the late 1950s.<br />
With a game (human) supporting cast consisting of Bruce Greenwood,<br />
Jason Biggs and Moon Bloodgood, <b>the movie definitely aims for a bit of<br />
moralizing and lesson-teaching</b>. At two hours, younger kids will grow a<br />
bit bored at times, but Walker provides a suitable amount of ballast<br />
and the dogs seem to evince real personalities. While the ADR looping<br />
was surely a headache, longtime producer and occasional director Frank<br />
Marshall — who in addition to helming <i>Congo</i> also had plenty of experience in cold environments and under extreme duress, from 1993’s <i>Alive</i> — ties it all together with aplomb. This is a movie that is what it is, and for that reason it’s hard to knock. </p>
<p>Housed in a regular Amray case, <i>Eight Below</i> is presented in<br />
2.40:1 widescreen — all the better to enjoy its vistas — and Dolby<br />
digital 5.1 surround sound, with French and Spanish subtitles. Its<br />
animated menu screen gives way to a 10-and-a-half-minute making-of<br />
featurette, which discusses the film’s location shoot in Smithers, a<br />
town 800 miles north of Vancouver, Canada. It was only there on a ski<br />
resort plateau devoid of trees that the filmmakers finally found a<br />
suitable expanse that could effectively double for Antarctica. Animal<br />
trainer Mark Forbes also provides some interesting comments here. <b>Five<br />
deleted scenes run just under 10 minutes in aggregate, and Marshall<br />
provides alternate commentary on them, along with two other genial<br />
feature-length audio-commentary tracks</b>. The first includes producer Pat<br />
Crowley, and in the second he sits with director of photography Don<br />
Burgess and Walker, who’s always a treat in interviews and settings<br />
like this because he possesses so little of a filter between thought<br />
and vocalization. <b>B- (Movie) B (Disc)</b></p>
<div class=)
Jessica Biel, writer-director Hunter Richards and, and eventually retains his mercenary<br />
services in an effort to help find her missing father. <b>Based upon the<br />
orgiastic vision of legendary fetish artist John Willie</b>, who first<br />
invented the plucky, nubile heroine for his infamous comics of the<br />
1950s, the movie is <b>a mash-up of the same sort of swashbuckling and<br />
male-female bickering on display in <i>Raiders of the Lost Ark</i> and <i>Romancing the Stone</i></b>.<br />
Depraved pirates, scorching deserts and jungle wildlife all stand in<br />
the way of Gwendoline and Willard, as well as their own naked desires.<br />
And even if they can find the legendary lost “Land of the Yik Yak”<br />
where Gwendoline believes her father is, will the duo survive a final<br />
ordeal against an empire of lust-crazed warrior women?</p>
<p>What helps differentiate the material from some of its obvious big<br />
screen inspirations, of course, is its much more overtly erotic<br />
undertones, beautifully shepherded to screen by legendary erotica<br />
director Jaeckin (<i>Emmanuelle</i>, <i>The History of O</i>). Still,<br />
while definitely steamy, the nudity herein does (shockingly) fall<br />
within the confines of the story, and <b>the movie is also graced with<br />
some wonderful art design, costumes and sets</b>. The production quality<br />
here is truly top-notch, and <b>illustrative of what’s missing in the<br />
derisible canon of modern “erotic thrillers”</b> that litter<br />
straight-to-video release lists. It’s also quite funny much of the time<br />
(“Get away from me, you’re not my type!” barks Willard to a leering<br />
snake), though it does counterbalance levity with some rather<br />
flippantly shocking acts of violence, such as when Willard pulls a<br />
prison guard’s head between two bars and sharply downwards, thus<br />
slicing off his ears. <b>For what it is, <i>Gwendoline</i></b> <b>works fairly well</b>.</p>
<p>In addition to this unrated director’s cut, clocking in at 105<br />
minutes, and fully restored with scenes never before seen in America, a<br />
brushed-up version of the 88-minute theatrical release, <b>released under<br />
the title <i>The Perils of Gwendoline in the Land of Yik Yak</i></b>, is<br />
also separately available. Both are new anamorphic transfers enhanced<br />
for widescreen TVs, and they look pretty great for their age. Audio<br />
comes in the form of a 5.1 English audio track, a 5.1 French audio<br />
track with optional English subtitles, a 2.0 English audio track and a<br />
2.0 French audio with optional English subtitles. <b>Jaeckin sits for an<br />
engaging, if accented, audio commentary track</b>, and there’s an <b>audio<br />
interview</b> with aforementioned <i>Gwendoline</i> creator Willie as well as a photo gallery of 11 pictures from a photo spread that <a href=)
Kitaen did for the French magazine Lui
Mena Suvari’s ex-husband), the movie is a cinema verité
