Fifteen years ago, it certainly wouldn’t have seemed likely to your average fan of MTV’s Singled Out, but Jenny McCarthy has become the most recognizable public face of the anti-vaccine movement, owing to her eight-year-old autistic son, and belief that overly aggressive vaccinations play a part in the onset and spread of autism. So it comes to be that she’s on the cover of The Vaccine War, along with then-boyfriend Jim Carrey.

A one-hour documentary, The Vaccine War goes behind the lines in a growing national debate over vaccines and their impact on our health. Public health scientists and clinicians tout vaccines as one of the greatest achievements of modern medicine, but for many ordinary Americans vaccines have become controversial. Young parents are concerned at the sheer number of shots — some two dozen or more inoculations for 14 different diseases by age six. Some advocacy groups, like McCarthy’s Generation Rescue, argue that vaccines are no longer a public health miracle but instead a scourge — responsible for alarming rises in disorders like ADHD and autism. With scientific medicine and the public health establishment on one side and a populist coalition of parents, celebrities, politicians and activists on the other, it’s a din unlikely to die down any time soon. While short on concrete answers, The Vaccine War provides ample platform for debate, and at least sparks thought and lively conversation. If those things are of interest to you, you might be intrigued by this title.

Housed in a regular plastic Amaray case, The Vaccine War comes to DVD with an English language Dolby stereo audio track. There are unfortunately no supplemental bonus features, save some recommended Internet links. To order a copy of the documentary, phone (800) PLAY-PBS, or click here. Alternately, to purchase the DVD via Amazon, meanwhile, click here. B (Movie) D (Disc)

From her first professional appearance on stage in 1964 to her 1968
West End debut in Hair and her Laurence Olivier Award-winning
performance as Eva Peron in Evita, Elaine Paige continues to earn the
acclaim of
critics and audiences alike. And, as its title would suggest, Elaine Paige: Celebrating 40 Years on Stage honors the fourth-decade anniversary of the woman often called “the First Lady of British musical theater.”

Filmed in Sydney, Australia, at the beautiful State Theatre, and overseen by director Christopher Luscombe — who brings a wealth of experience with dynamic show management to bear — this title sees Paige perform her litany of West End and Broadway hits, as well as
the new song “Small Packages,” written especially for her. The show-stopping musical performances — part of Paige’s first
filmed concert since 1991 — are nicely supplemented with a hefty segment of personal anecdotes and highlights from her storied career, in the form of a bonus interview. Songs herein include “Life Goes On,” “Tomorrow,” “Easy To Be Hard, “Broadway Baby,” “I Don’t Know How To Love Him,” “Small Packages,” “Hello Young Lovers,” “Shoot the Breeze,” “Yesterday,” “Don’t Cry For Me Argentina,” “As If We Never Said Goodbye,” “By The Sea,” “I Get a Kick Out Of You,” “I Dreamed A Dream,” “I Know Him So Well,” “Poor Old John,” “If You Love Me,” “Cry Me A River,” “Memory” and “With One Look,” among others.

The DVD is presented in anamorphic widescreen with a superb Dolby stereo audio track, and its special features include a bonus performance of the song “Grow Young” as well as, most notably, a half-hour-plus behind-the-scenes interview with Paige. Also available for purchase is companion piece CD of the concert. To order a copy of Elaine Paige: Celebrating 40 Years on Stage, phone (800) PLAY-PBS, or simply click here. To purchase this or other PBS DVDs with
public performance rights, meanwhile, click here. B+ (Concert) B+ (Disc)

Capitalism has taken a pounding as of late, from Michael Moore’s invigorated documentary takedown to just the general feeling floating out there in the air, where you might have a random conversation with someone at a supermarket about the financial difficulties facing them and their family, that America’s economic system no longer has at its heart the lasting interests of the common person. But against this backdrop of equal parts skepticism and populist anger arrives The New Recruits, a nonfiction film about a battalion of jet-setting
business students armed with a radical plan to help end global poverty:
to actually charge poor people for goods and services.

Produced and directed by Seth Kramer, Daniel Miller and Jeremy Newberger, and narrated sparingly by Rainn Wilson, this hour-long title focuses on three recent business school graduates tapped for the Acumen Fund‘s prestigious year-long fellows program, which encourages social entrepreneurship by placing apprentices with upstart enterprises around the world, intending to help poor people by treating them as customers rather than just the needy recipients of charity. It’s an intriguing idea, certainly — the notion that the free market has more of a vested interest in a certain baseline equitability because they will stick around longer, for reasons of profit. A shame, then, that The New Recruits — while succeeding rather smashingly as a piece of personality-driven entertainment — doesn’t really ask the tough lurking questions of its subjects when their headstrong faith in capitalism begins to somewhat wane, challenged by the choppy waters of an uneducated and/or uninterested consumer base.

The trio of subjects hail from Mumbai, California and Alabama, and after some set-up and biographical noodling with each — including a bit of uncomfortable Christianist proselytizing by the Alabama kid, with Senator Richard Shelby in the audience — we follow their year-long journeys. One is assigned to Ecotact, a company supposedly serving Kenya’s poor by building pay toilets in slums; another is sent to India to work with D.light Design, a company which manufactures solar-powered LED lights for the rural population to use instead of kerosene; the Alabama kid is sent to Pakistan and assigned to Micro Drip, a company that sells drip irrigation systems to poor farmers, and tries to wean them off of wasteful flood-irrigation. Each encounters all sorts of cultural hurdles, naturally, along with a healthy pinch of sexism (a billboard in India actually exclaims “I Hate Working Women!”) and, quite frankly, sales teams that come across as under-motivated.

It’s interesting to see these youngsters — bright, resourceful, ambitious and to varying degrees idealistic, if at times hamstrung by their own inflated egos — confront real world challenges in business environments that aren’t exactly Fortune 500-type situations. The eye-opener of the entire film — perhaps unintentionally, given the degree to which its makers try to sidestep any sense of conclusions drawn — is that for all the talk about freedom of economic choice, workable solutions mean nothing to a population that cannot grasp or be convinced of the potential for positive impact on their lives. And, of course, the hearty embrace of free markets as a silver bullet in developing nations means even less when, unlike here, it’s just about sneakers or soda pop instead of sustainable sanitation, drinking water, energy costs and the like. Don’t tell Sarah Palin, though.

Housed in a regular plastic Amaray case and presented in solid 16×9 widescreen transfer with an English stereo track, The New Recruits comes to DVD unfortunately devoid of supplemental features, apart from a separate menu screen touting material available on the eponymous PBS web site. To order a copy of The New Recruits, Roads to Memphis or any other PBS
title, call (800) PLAY-PBS or click here. To purchase
DVDs with public performance rights, meanwhile, click here. Finally, if Amazon is totally your thing, click here. B+ (Movie) D (Disc)

I’ve had many a conversation over a beer, or glass of wine, about how humankind’s knowledge of its own mortality is pretty much the root cause of all of our anxieties, aggressions and troubles. The lurking recognition of a finite period of time in which to luxuriate, however much we try to cram that deeper into the recesses of our minds, warps our thinking, and leads to fitful acting out or otherwise perverted rationalizations. After all, who doesn’t want more of life, just on their own terms?

Well, some folks, of course. Life is hard, and psychological thriller After.Life, written and directed by Agnieszka Wojtowicz-Vosloo, centers on someone for whom it might just not be worth it anymore, no matter the recent trajectory. In telling the story of a young woman caught up between life and death, it assays in intriguing fashion a unique viewpoint — the forlorn depressive — not frequently accorded much front-and-center screen time.

Elementary school teacher Anna Jordan (Christina Ricci) has suffered through plenty in her life, some of which is spelled out and some of which is only hinted at. She’s built up a wall around herself, though, that much is evident — even though she has a boyfriend, Paul Coleman (Justin Long), who clearly loves her, and wants to take their relationship to the next level. An argument at dinner one night leads to a car
accident, after which Anna wakes up to find herself on the preparatory table of local funeral director Eliot Deacon
(Liam Neeson). He calmly tells her she’s dead, and that her
funeral is in three days time. At first Anna doesn’t believe him. Does Eliot truly have the
gift to talk to the dead and help them transition to the afterlife? Or
is he concealing a more sinister secret? As time passes and her funeral service looms, Anna becomes resigned to passing on into whatever realm awaits her, but Paul launches his own investigation, unconvinced of her death.

After.Life, Wojtowicz-Vosloo’s feature debut, has a quiet, unfussy sense of cool menace, in addition to low-fi style to burn, told as it is in claustrophobic fashion in a muted palette of greys and blues, with Anna’s blood red slip purposefully serving as a visual signifier of her predicament. (The filmmaker’s choice of end credit music, Radiohead’s haunting “Exit Music for a Film,” further underscores her arthouse inclinations, and clear preference for emotional murkiness.) For most of its running time, this dance of tenuous reality works. At a certain point, however, the grip of its hold starts to loosen, mainly the result of a narrative strand involving a student of Anna’s, which feels either like a wholesale miscalculation or fumbled execution (take your pick). Unarguably, though, after so trading on ambiguity in a facile manner, the movie in its last six minutes tacks on one too many appended twists, aiming for a more corporeal and “complete,” forward-leaning payoff that just isn’t necessary.

If Ricci isn’t afforded quite enough meaty dialogue to fully color her character and take the film’s mopey doom and gloom to truly dizzying heights, the acting here is still
engaging, and in particular some of the scenes involving Neeson’s
character holding forth on death have an eerie quality, given the
still-recent passing of his wife, Natasha Richardson. At the very least After.Life deserves points for the atypical nature of its effort. If Wojtowicz-Vosloo doesn’t fully follow her instincts, but instead seemingly yields to her idea of what an air-quote commercial take on such subject matter would be, well… it’s hardly the most venal of filmmaking sins.

After.Life comes to Blu-ray presented in 1080p, in 2.40:1 widescreen, with Dolby digital 5.1 surround sound and PCM 5.1 audio tracks, as well as optional English SDH and Spanish subtitles. Its supplemental features, in addition to its own preview and trailers for forthcoming DVD releases of Spartacus and The Disappearance of Alice Creed, consist of an audio commentary track with Wojtowicz-Vosloo and a fairly short making-of featurette in which she is also the chief figure. Both are heavy with spoilers, and in the latter, somewhat surprisingly, the filmmaker actually addresses her work’s ambiguity, answering outright the question of Anna and Eliot’s respective states, and — not unlike Richard Kelly’s deflating Donnie Darko audio commentary track — taking some of the punch out of her work in the process. To purchase the Blu-ray via Amazon, click here. If DVD is your thing, meanwhile, click here. B (Movie) C+ (Disc)

As the public debate over homosexuality pivots from generalized tolerance and more toward the issue of marriage equality, it’s becoming harder for many under 30 or so to remember a time when the idea of a public homosexual identity was actually such a big deal. Word Is Out, which debuted in 1977 as the first feature-length documentary about lesbian
and gay identity made by gay filmmakers, and now three-plus decades later makes it DVD debut, takes viewers back in time to that era.

Formed in the mid-1970s, the Mariposa Film Group consisted of Peter Adair, his sister Nancy Adair, Andrew Brown, Rob Epstein (The Times of Harvey Milk), Lucy Massie Phenix (Winter Soldier) and Veronica Selver. They were a group that sought to create a simple and straightforward film free of political didactics — a movie that would reflect the complex experience of both growing up gay and coming out of the closet in America. After conducting 140 interviews, the filmmakers narrowed their focus to a couple more than two dozen people encompassing various races, ages and regional backgrounds. They then simply let the cameras roll, and recorded their stories.

Both through a theatrical release and prime-time television broadcasts, Word Is
Out quickly became a sociocultural landmark in socially-minded independent cinema, helping untold numbers of people accept themselves, and also introducing to friends and
families the notion that gay people weren’t somehow radically different than them. As a film, Word Is Out holds up because of its inherent emotional honesty; one senses the almost subterranean electrical charge coming off of some of these subjects, as they verbalize feelings for the first time in their lives. (On that front, it’s tangentially interesting to observe how many interviewees
enjoy the crutch of a smoke or beer while they recount feelings of isolation, desperation and the like.) The stories crackle with energy, and run the full gamut of human emotion.

The Outfest Legacy Project and UCLA Film & Television Archive worked
in painstaking fashion to restore the film, and this DVD release is pegged to the 40th anniversary of the first Gay Pride marches. That this stirring nonfiction work, a prima facie document of considerable humanistic import, can now move, charm, engage and perhaps further galvanize future generations is a good thing.

Housed in a regular plastic Amaray case, Word Is Out comes to DVD with English SDH subtitles, and a wealth of fairly engaging bonus material that properly contextualizes the film. A 25-minute, then-and-now retrospective includes interview material with the filmmakers and many of the film’s participants, as well as David Bohnett, whose generous contribution helped make the high-definition video restoration of this DVD premiere possible. Another featurette, quoting liberally from an article penned by Peter Adair, entitled “So You Wanna Be a Collective,” assays the collaborative nature of the movie’s production, and a separate tidbit also provides a more detailed breakdown of the Mariposa Film Group’s history. A trailer for the movie, afterthoughts by participants, a standalone chat with the aforementioned Bohnett and an Outfest Legacy Project PSA round out the supplemental material. To purchase the DVD directly, phone (800) 603-1104, or click here. Or if Amazon is totally your thing, click here. B+ (Movie) B+ (Disc)

The success of Easy Rider spawned all sorts of indulgent, wonky and mostly terrible “free love,” anti-establishment knock-offs, but one of the more notable arrives on home video for the first time in any format in Gold: Before Woodstock, Beyond Reality. A goofy, loose-limbed, nudity-filled western musical dramedy, the movie stars improvisational godhead Del Close, who would populate only bit roles and cameos in TV series and movies (mostly those that came through Chicago, like Ferris Bueller’s Day Off and The Untouchables), but through his teachings come to influence some of the biggest names in comedy over the past 30-plus years.

In the summer of 1968, filmmaker Bob Levis led a rag-tag band of drop-outs and drug-happy darlings (some with professional acting experience, some not) into the California wilderness to make a movie loosely centered around the notion of a killjoy police captain, Harold Jinks (Garry Goodrow), and his battles with a crippled eccentric, Hawk (Close), in bringing an end to all the debauchery in his community. The result is Gold, a bizarre journey into the mind and madness of the late 1960s — a project overflowing with fantasies of revolution, recreation and sexual experimentation, and fueled by a groovy, funky soundtrack that includes MC5 and more.

In all honesty, while the movie itself is a profound potpourri — and thus holds some interesting standalone lessons from a certain academic and anthropological point-of-view, mostly for the manner in which it sets out to systematically shatter various filmmaking rules — it doesn’t hold up that well, narratively speaking. Close’s performance is a cracked, wily thing, though, and the disc itself holds such an abundance of colorful reminiscences that aging boomers –even those who missed out on all the partying the first go-round — may want to give this title a spin.

Housed in a regular plastic Amaray case with snap-shut hinges, Gold comes to DVD presented in 1.33:1 full screen, divided into 18 chapters, with a main menu screen music loop that repeats every eight seconds or so, and will infiltrate your brain if you get pulled away to a string of emails upon start-up, and leave it playing in the background. The movie boasts two superlative feature-length audio commentary tracks. The first, with director Levis and star Goodrow, contains plenty of warm production anecdotes and other behind-the-scenes stories (Levis used to date star Caroline Parr), and tangentially provides an intriguing sort of time capsule snapshot of DIY production from that era.

There’s also a special
commentary track from Upright Citizens Brigade founding members Matt Walsh and
Ian Roberts, each of whom studied under Close. While this chat takes a while to warm up, the nature of the duo’s recollections is broad-ranging and fascinating, especially when they get into Close’s battles with addiction (he kicked alcohol through aversion therapy, gave up speed and other drugs, but kept smoking weed and cigarettes, and would also lecture passersby on the so-called “hobo code” of not rubbing out a butt with the heel of one’s shoe) and depression (he would attempt suicide a number of times). Close was a fascinating character, full of contradictions, and this presentation of Gold hearteningly allows him one final curtain call.

The other supplemental material is just as engaging, starting with a wide-ranging hour-long 2008 interview chat with Levis by Harold Channer from a New York City public access cable show. There’s also 10 minutes of material from a good-natured roast of Goodrow, plus trailers for Gold and a half dozen other films, and a self-scrolling presentation of lobby card art from the movie’s original release. To purchase the DVD via Amazon, click here. C- (Movie) A- (Disc)

Casual fans may know only Mick Jagger’s strut and sneer, and Keith Richards’ seemingly unlikely hold on life, but the years during which Mick Taylor was the fifth Rolling Stone are often regarded as part of the band’s golden age, the period in which the group recorded some of the
finest and most adventurous music of their career.

On landmark albums like Let It Bleed, Sticky Fingers and Exile On Main Street, the Stones’ sound underwent a metamorphosis as they developed new ideas and were informed by a range of new influences. At the center of those changes was Taylor’s sophisticated blues and jazz licks, and fluid style of playing that really gave the Stones an added dimension for a five-year period stretching into the mid-1970s — one they lacked before and have certainly had much trouble recapturing since.

New to DVD, hour-long doc The Rolling Stones 1969-1974: The Mick Taylor Years tells the behind-the-scenes story of this hugely productive era for the group. Interviews with Taylor and John Mayall form the spine of the work, but the roster of talking heads is deep, formidable and well-heeled, including author and group colleague Robert Greenfield; Village Voice music editor Robert Christgau, U.K. music critic Barney Hoskyns and Stones session musicians Al Perkins and Bill Plummer, among others. While a lot of music documentaries targeting boomer audiences run ashore on the shoals of rights issues and ergo tend to err on the side of academic dryness, this program thankfully also includes liberal performance footage of the Stones, as well as a nice smattering of archive interviews and other footage. While it doesn’t totally get to the bottom of how others necessarily felt about Taylor’s departure (punted or otherwise muddied songwriting credits were an issue, it seems), this title is an engaging and intellectually honest exploration of the difficulties inherent in nurturing creative relationships amidst a backdrop of druggy, world-touring excess.

Housed in a regular plastic Amaray case, The Rolling Stones 1969-1974: The Mick Taylor Years comes to DVD on a region-free disc in a regular plastic Amaray case, in turn stored in a cardboard slipcover. The feature is presented in a 4:3 aspect ratio, with a fairly robust English language stereo sound mix. In addition to a roster of contributor biographies, DVD extras include a featurette in which Mayall and music historian Alan
Clayson provide a nice biographical sketch of Taylor prior to his entry with the Rolling
Stones. To purchase the DVD, click here. Or if Amazon is totally and inescapably your thing, click here. B (Movie) C+ (Disc)