The DVD Report #69: August 26, 2008
The best new movie on DVD is the HBO film Jay Roach's Recount about the 2000 battle over Florida's election results between Bush's thugs and Gore's wimps. No less than five of its actors are up for Emmys: Kevin Spacey as Gore recount point man Ron Klain; Tom Wilkinson as Republican string-puller James Baker; Bob Balaban as Bush-Cheney mouthpiece Ben Ginsberg; Laura Dern as Florida Secretary of State Katherine Harris; and Denis Leary as Democratic consultant Michael Whouley. Dern is particularly memorable as the ditzy Harris. A quirky drama about a professor and his off-beat family, very much in the mode of Wonder Boys, Noam Murro's Smart People stars a deadpan Dennis Quaid as the paterfamilias, Ellen Page as his high school-age daughter, Ashton Holmes as his college-age son, Thomas Haden Church as his long lost adopted brother, and Sarah Jessica Parker as his former student, now the emergency room doctor who treats him after a mild seizure. This very droll and very funny film brings out the best in all of them, especially Quaid who has seldom been better. Based on a 1938 novel Bharat Nalluri's Miss Pettigrew Lives for a Day is admirably filmed as though it were made at the time of the film's setting. Though the pace may be a bit slow for today's audiences, the film's charm catches up with you and by film's end you'll be joining ladies' companion Frances McDormand in cheering daffy Amy Adams on to pick piano player Lee Pace over nightclub owner Mark Strong and young stud Tom Payne. You'll also be hoping millionaire designer Ciaran Hinds will sweep McDormand off her feet. You won't be disappointed by the outcome. An internationally acclaimed film, Erin Kolirin's The Band's Visit was Israel's official entry in last year's Foreign Film Oscar race that was rejected by the Academy for being too much in English - a silly rule. This sweet little movie is about an Egyptian band invited to play in a small Israeli town. The Egyptians speak Arabic, the Israelis speak Hebrew - both speak English, their only way of communicating with each other. So naturally there will be large sections of the film in which English is spoken. Anyway, don't think about, just see it, you'll be glad you did. Finally released on DVD is the director's cut version of the acclaimed 1982 miniseries, The Executioner's Song, directed by Lawrence Schiller from Norman Mailer's adaptation of his book about Gary Gilmore, the violent killer who demanded, and got, his execution by a firing squad. Tommy Lee Jones won a much-deserved Emmy for his performance and Rosanna Arquette received an equally deserved nomination as his long-suffering girlfriend. There are also impressive turns by Christine Lahti, Eli Wallach, Jim Youngs and Grace Zabriskie. Speaking of TV, with the new season just about upon us, DVD distributers have begun releasing last season's shows on DVD to whet our appetites for more. Last season was a strange one as the writers' strike cut short the number of episodes presented by most series. Still, there were episodes enough to fill the demand for box sets of the most popular shows. Enjoying huge success in spite of, or maybe because of, its controversial decision to relegate its major supporting players to bit parts while introducing a host of new characters, House - Season 4 continued to showcase two-time Golden Globe winner Hugh Laurie in one of the best written character leads in television history. Robert Sean Leonard co-stars. For the second time in its five year history, NCIS - Season 5 ends with the brutal death of one of its major characters, and taking a leaf from House - Season 3, ends with the dispersal of the remainder of its supporting players. Not to worry, though, the producers promise they'll be back before long, just as Mark Harmon's character was not kept out of the series despite his resignation at the end of Season 3. One of the great successes of the 2006-2007 season was Heroes. It left so much to live up to that Heroes - Season 2 was bound to be a disappointment. Major criticisms were that the introduction of new characters not connected to original ones and the abandoning of one of the first season's most beloved characters to a sub-plot stranded for too long in Feudal Japan. The criticisms are justified, but it's still worth watching at least once. Perhaps the biggest surprise hit of the 2007-2008 season was Gossip Girl about the spoiled rich kids of a New York Upper East Side private high school. Quick, slick and filled with the gadgets of modern life - primarily cell phones - it's easy to see why it would be appealing to the younger set, but doesn't have much to offer older audiences. The teens are played by actors obviously in their mid-twenties. More satisfying to older audiences is the latest release in the landmark 1950s TV series Perry Mason. Out now is Perry Mason - Season 3, Vol. 1, which, split into volumes might seem like a gyp, but isn't considering that you get almost a full hour per episode vs. less than 45 minutes per episode, when commercials are excluded, for current one hour shows. Raymond Burr and Barbara Hale star as Mason and his secretary, Della Street. This was supposed to be the week that Warner Bros. released a restored, vertical line-free print of How the West Was Won on standard DVD and Blu-ray, but that release has been delayed for two weeks. Available now, however, are ten other westerns from the Warner Bros.-MGM libraries of the 1940s through the 1960s. First up chronologically is the Errol Flynn Western Collection featuring 1940's Virginia City, 1945's San Antonio, and 1950's Montana and Rocky Mountain. Next up is a package of Western Classics consisting of 1953's Escape From Fort Bravo, 1955's Many Rivers to Cross, 1958's Saddle the Wind and The Law and Jake Wade,1960's Cimarron, and 1968's The Stalking Moon. A box office smash hit follow up to the Flynn-Michael Curtiz 1939 hit Dodge City, the similarly-named Virginia City is a mixed bag. Though both Flynn as a Union soldier and Randolph Scott as a wagon train boss are perfectly cast, one has to wonder what they were thinking in casting Miriam Hopkins as a Confederate spy masquerading as a saloon singer and a mustached Humphrey Bogart as a Mexican bandito. Much better is David Butler' San Antonio co-scripted by Alan LeRay, author of The Searchers. Alexis Smith makes a more convincing saloon singer than Hopkins while Paul Kelly and Victor Francen make effective villains. That wonderful character actor S.Z. Sakall is also around to lend comic support. The gorgeous Technicolor vistas more than compensate for the predictable story line. Flynn, Smith and Sakall are reunited in Ray Enright's Montana in which Flynn, a native of Australia who rarely got to play one on screen does so here to good effect as a transplanted Aussie who tries to raise sheep in Montana cattle country. Though the story is predictable, the location and on-screen chemistry between Flynn and Smith make it worth your time. The only pairing between Flynn and wife Patrice Wymore, Rocky Mountain, is largely notable for that, and for reuniting Flynn with his Adventures of Robin Hood co-director William Keighley (with Michael Curtiz). It's another Civil War yarn, this one about Yanks and Rebels joining forces to fight off an Indian attack. Featuring Scott Forbes, Slim Pickens and Sheb Woolley, it was Flynn's last western. Similar in plot to Rocky Mountain but much better executed, John Sturges' Escape From Fort Bravo features William Holden as the commandant of an Arizona fort in which Confederate soldier prisoners must help the Yanks fight off the Indians. The top notch cast also includes Eleanor Parker, John Forsythe, Polly Bergen, William Demarest, William Campbell and Richard Anderson. A curious mix of action and comedy, Roy Rowlands' Many Rivers to Cross presents Parker and Robert Taylor in coonskin caps, Victor McLaglen and Josephine Hutchinson in newly minted spectacles, and lots of brawling. Decidedly non-politically correct, the main theme seems to be how long it takes to kill an Indian. Russ Tamblyn and Jeff Richards are wasted as two of Parker's four dumb siblings. Taylor fares much better as the reformed gunslinger in Robert Parrish's Saddle the Wind scripted by The Twilight Zone's Rod Serling. John Cassavetes comes on a bit strong as Taylor's trigger happy younger brother, but Julie London as a seen-it-all former saloon singer, Donald Crisp as a benevolent land owner and Royal Dano as a determined sheep rancher are superb in supporting roles. Taylor had another good role as a reformed bad guy, now much admired town marshal, in John Sturges' The Law and Jake Wade opposite Richard Widmark as his nasty former partner. Patricia Ownes is Taylor's newfound love while Robert Middleton and Henry Silva are Widmark's new partners in crime in this suspense-filled western that is more than just a showcase for its two stars. A better film than the 1931 Oscar winner of the same name, Anthony Mann's film of Edna Ferber's Cimarron has one of the most exciting openings of any film ever made, the mad dash for land during the Oklahoma land rush. After that, it's more soap opera than horse opera. The sterling cast includes Glenn Ford, Maria Schell, Anne Baxter, Arthur O'Connell, Russ Tamblyn, Mercedes McCambridge and Aline MacMahon. Gregory Peck is reunited with the producer/director team of Alan J. Pakula and Robert Mulligan, who guided him to his To Kill a Mockingbird Oscar, in The Stalking Moon. It's a sparse tale of an Indian scout and the freed Indian captive woman he leads to safety with her half-breed son. Eva Marie Saint is the woman, Robert Forster is Peck's young protégé and the gorgeous cinematography is by veteran Charles Lang. Finally, Criterion has released a two-disc special edition of Pier Paulo Passolini's controversial last film Salo. The previous, long-discontinued Criterion release of the film had sold for hundreds of dollars on e-Bay but was as hard to watch with its washed out colors as it was to find. The new, improved version is much easier on the eyes unless, of course, you are put off by the many scenes of degradation and debauchery. For anyone expecting a film along the lines of Passolini's reverent earlier film, The Gospel According to St. Matthew, this film set in World War II Italy whose full title is Salo, or the 120 days of Sodom, will be quite the eye-opener. Its theme that man has no kind nature is given added irony by Passolini's own brutal murder shortly after the film was completed. -Peter J. Patrick (August 26, 2008) |
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The DVD Report #68: August 19, 2008
I'm going to interrupt my chronological coverage of the film years that began with 1957 that has so far gone through 1962 to go back even further in time to talk about the film year 1940. While most film buffs and historians consider 1939 to be the best in Hollywood history, I think 1940 was an even stronger year and is, in my view, Hollywood's best. As has become my custom, I'll start with what I consider the year's ten best, provide an alternative ten best list of equally fine films and list others worth your time and money. Since most films of 1940 have now been released on DVD, I will reference only those that are unavailable. Long considered the great American novel, John Steinbeck's The Grapes of Wrath became, in John Ford's hands, the great American film. It opens in the Oklahoma dust bowl of the late 1930s when whole families lost everything and were forced out of their long time homes. Most of them moved to California in the hope of finding a better life only to be forced to become itinerant workers with no home. Long a paean to itinerant workers everywhere, it has now become a metaphor for our time as well. While we are not quite in another depression, rising fuel prices and falling real estate values along with the failing industries that support them have put many families perilously close to the dire circumstances of Steinbeck's Joad family that even Ford's inherent sentimentality can't take the pressure off. Henry Fonda never had a better role than that of everyman Tom Joad, doomed to wander in the night. Nor did Jane Darwell as the indomitable Ma Joad or John Carradine as the once-proud preacher gone to ruin. Gregg Toland's bleak cinematography and Alfred Newman's plaintive score add immeasurably to the greatness of the work. Alfred Hitchcock's first Hollywood film, Rebecca, was his only work to win a Best Picture Oscar. A faithful translation of Daphne Du Maurier's suspense thriller, it was a rare film for Hitchcock in that he was not in complete control, working under the authoritarian command of producer David O. Selznick fresh from his Gone With the Wind triumph. Nevertheless there are Hitchcockian touches throughout. Brilliantly acted by a cast that seemed born to play their roles from Laurence Olivier's brooding Maxim de Winter to Joan Fontaine's easily manipulated Second Mrs. De Winter to Judith Anderson's evil housekeeper Mrs. Danvers to a virtual who's who of the British acting aristocracy then working in Hollywood including George Sanders, Gladys Cooper, Nigel Bruce, Reginald Denny, C. Aubrey Smith, Melville Cooper and Leo G. Carroll, and the obligatory obnoxious American tourist, the inimitable Florence Bates. Dubbed box-office poison by the Hollywood Press, an undaunted Katharine Hepburnwent back to Broadway to star in The Philadelphia Story, written for her by Philip Barry. With help from Howard Hughes, she purchased the screen rights for herself and sold them to MGM with the stipulation that she star in the film version with Cary Grant and Spencer Tracy. Tracey was unavailable so James Stewart got the part and an Oscar while Hepburn picked up the third of her twelve nominations for her iconic portrayal of spoiled heiress Tracy Lord. Deftly directed by Georg Cukor, the film was a comic blast not only for its three stars but for Ruth Hussey, John Howard, Roland Young, John Halliday, Mary Nash and Virginia Weidler as well. It was remade as the musical High Society in 1956. Turn-of-the-Century Budapest is the setting for Ernst Lubitsch's The Shop Around the Corner, one of the most beguiling romantic comedies of all time. Margaret Sullavan and James Stewart are clerks in a notions shop who can't stand one another but unbeknownst to each other are secret Lonelyhearts penpals. Frank Morgan is the shop's befuddled owner and Joseph Schildkraut, Sara Haden, Felix Bressart and William Tracy lend their charm as other employees. It was successfully remade as In the Good Old Summertime in 1949 and You've Got Mail in 1993. It was also the basis of the 1963 Broadway musical She Loves Me. Howard Hawks put his distinct brand of fast-talking comedy on the famed 1931 newspaper comedy-drama The Front Page when he remade it as His Girl Friday with Rosalind Russell at her comedic best as the star reporter and Cary Grant as the conniving editor who is also her ex-husband. Ralph Bellamy is the mama's boy to whom she is now engaged. Turning the reporter of the original version into a woman and adding romantic tension greatly improves what was a near-perfect play to begin with. It was remade less successfully in its original incarnation as The Front Page in 1974 and disastrously as a comedy about a female TV anchor and her male boss as Switching Channels in 1988. Another remake that improved upon the original was Mervyn LeRoy's production of Waterloo Bridge with Vivien Leigh as the ballerina who turns to prostitution after her soldier lover, Robert Taylor, is presumed dead in World War I. Though some prefer the 1931 version of the film, the MGM gloss and Hollywood production code make this muted version all the more effective for most. Leigh was brilliant, even surpassing her work in Gone With the Wind, and the supporting cast was quite wonderful as well with Lucile Watson as Taylor's aristocratic mother, Virginia Field as Leigh's fellow ballerina and prostitute, and Maria Ouspenskaya as the strict ballet mistress are the standouts. It was remade once again as Gaby in 1967. It's available on DVD only as an import. Margaret Sullavan, James Stewart and Frank Morgan were reunited for Frank Borzage's The Mortal Storm, MGM's full-on assault against the rise to power of Adolph Hitler in 1933. Morgan as the beloved professor-turned-enemy of the state has never been better, and Sullavan as his daughter, Maria Ouspenskaya as Stewart's mother and Bonita Granville as his adoptive sister are almost as good. Stewart as the one student not afraid to stand against the rising tide; Robert Young, Robert Stack, William T. Orr and Dan Dailey as young Nazis; and Ward Bond as an older, but equally-virulent Nazi are also memorable. Greer Garson and Laurence Olivier continued their climb to screen immortality in the first and, for many, still best version of Jane Austen's Pride and Prejudice. Directed by Robert Z. Leonard, featuring Garson as Elizabeth Bennett (prejudice), Olivier as Darcy (pride) and the always wonderful Edna May Oliver, Mary Boland and Edmund Gwenn as their elders, Austen's comedy of manners about five sisters searching for husbands in 19th Century England won an Oscar for its rich art direction. The film also stars Maureen O'Sullivan, Karen Morley, Ann Rutherford and Marsha Hunt. Thornton Wilder's Pulitzer Prize-winning play about a small New England town, Our Town , was lovingly directed by Sam Wood, who eschewed the minimalistic production values of the stage version and went all out for richly textured sets which helped make the screen version so much more realistic, even in its harrowing, fanciful conclusion. Martha Scott, William Holden, Fay Bainter, Beulah Bondi, Thomas Mitchell, Guy Kibbee and Frank Craven all gave magnificent performances, with Scott winning an Oscar nomination in her screen debut. Still well remembered as an early talkie, W. Somerset Maugham's steamy melodrama The Letter became a hit all over again as a vehicle for Bette Davis who six years earlier became a star in the first film version of Maugham's Of Human Bondage. Whereas Jeanne Eagels literally got away with murder in the first version, the Hollywood Production Code demanded stern retribution from Davis and got it under William Wyler's knowing direction. Great supporting work from Herbert Marshall, James Stephenson and Gale Sondergaard aids in making the tale seem entirely fresh. That's ten already, so here's an alternative list consisting of equally memorable classics: One of the most lavishly produced fantasy films of all time, the second film version of The Thief of Bagdad took three directors, Ludwig Berger, Tim Whelan and Michael Powell to tell its Arabian Nights tale of evil magicians, flying carpets, genies in bottles and boys turned into dogs. Sabu is at his best as the native boy-wonder who outsmarts evil Conrad Veidt all the while protecting his friend and master, John Justin, and princess, June Duprez. Rex Ingram is also memorable as the genie. Miklos Rozsa's classic score and the eye-popping special effects deserve special mention. Three years after providing box office magic with their first full length animated feature, the Disney studios outdid themselves with a lavish production of Carlo Collodi's Pinocchio about the wooden puppet boy who longs to become a real boy. It is emotionally rich and filled with wonderful characters. The Oscar-winning "When You Wish Upon a Star", voiced by Cliff Edwards as the kindly puppet maker Geppeto, is but one of its major attributes. Alfred Hitchcock was back in typical Hitchcock mode in his second Hollywood film, the England-based Foreign Correspondent with its thrilling set pieces - the assassination in the rain, the fall from on high and so on. Joel McCrea made a stalwart hero in the title Four short plays by Eugene O'Neill about men who make their living at sea formed the basis of John Ford's The Long Voyage Home beautifully rendered by many members of the Ford stock company in atypical roles. Nominated for six Oscars including Best Picture, Ford won the New York Film critics Award as Best Director in conjunction with The Grapes of Wrath. The masterful cast includes Thomas Mitchell, John Wayne, Ian Hunter, Ward Bond, Barry Fitzgerald and Mildred Natwick as a prostitute. For his first on-screen speaking role, Charlie Chaplin actually gave himself two roles in the long awaited The Great Dictator. He was both the dictator of a fictitious country who looked startlingly like Adolph Hitler, and his doppelganger, a timid Jewish barber. Uproarious from start to finish with a barbed undertone that infuriated the Nazis almost as much as The Mortal Storm, the film featured Jack Oakie as a rival dictator clearly patterned after Benito Mussolini. Raymond Massey was so into the title role in Broadway's Abe Lincoln in Illinois that he would absent-mindedly sign his name as Abraham Lincoln during the run of the show. His total immersion into the character transfershandsomely to the screen under John Cromwell's superb direction. Ruth Gordon is equally memorable as Mary Todd Lincoln and the stalwart supporting cast is led by Gene Lockhart, Mary Howard and Dorothy Tree. Oddly enough, this classic slice of Americana is not available on DVD in the U.S. Leo McCarey wrote it, Garson Kanin directed it and McCarey's co-stars from The Awful Truth, Irene Dunne and Cary Grant, starred in it. My Favorite Wife is a hilarious romp about a wife returning from seven years on a desert island the day after she has been legally declared dead and her husband has remarried. Randolph Scott is the man Dunne shared those seven years with and Gail Patrick is Grant's new wife. The film was remade less successfully as Move Over, Darling 23 years later. Preston Sturges wrote the screenplay, Mitchell Leisen directed the film, and Barbara Stanwyck and Fred MacMurray made beautiful music together in Remember the Night, a little gem of a Christmas movie about a shoplifter and the D.A. who has custody of her until the courts convene after the holidays. It's deliciously played by the two stars and a wonderful supporting cast headed by Beulah Bondi as MacMurray's mother, Elizabeth Patterson as his aunt and Sterling Holloway as the family's handyman. This is another much loved classic oddly missing on DVD. For many years, Hollywood's only female director, Dorothy Arzner, had one of her greatest triumphs with Dance, Girl, Dance in what, in lesser hands, could have been a poor woman's version of Waterloo Bridge about ballerinas who became burlesque queens instead of prostitutes, especially since it featured Bridge's Virginia Field and Maria Ouspenskaya. However, there the similarities end with Maureen O'Hara and Lucille Ball both in memorable early screen starring roles, the latter as a character named "Bubbles". Louis Hayward and Ralph Bellamy co-star. Raoul Walsh's melodrama of brother truckers They Drive by Night co-starred George Raft and Humphrey Bogart, the latter in a breakout role from the usual tough-as-nails gangsters that had consumed much of his career up to that point. Ann Sheridan provided considerable charm as the chief female protagonist, but it was relative newcomer Ida Lupino who made the biggest impression as a vengeful woman. Need more evidence about how great a year it was? How about these? Preston Sturges' uproarious comedy Christmas in July about a man who goes on a shopping spree mistakenly thinking he has won a big contest. This is the film that proved Dick Powell could do more than smile and sing. He gets excellent support from Ellen Drew, Raymond Walburn, William Demarest, Ernest Truex and Franklin Pangborn. One of the screen's nuttiest comedies, The Bank Dick features W.C. Fields at his best as a no-account souse who becomes a bank guard. Directed by Eddie Cline, the cast includes Cora Witherspoon as his wife, Una Merkel as his daughter, Grady Sutton as a prospective son-in-law, and Franklin Pangborn as a bank examiner. The definitive version of the oft filmed The Mark of Zorro directed by Rouben Mamoulian gave us a splendid Tyrone Power as the fey-by-day, romantic-by-night avenger. Also memorable are Linda Darnell as his lady love, and Basil Rathbone and Gale Sondergaard at their villainous best. A stirring high seas adventure, Michael Curtiz's The Sea Hawk gave Errol Flynn one of his best roles as the pirate who becomes an agent for Elizabeth I. The rousing Erich Wolfgang Korngold score is rightfully regarded as one of the best film scores ever. Flora Robson is splendid as Elizabeth. The search for a cure for syphilis is the theme of William Dieterle's Dr. Ehrlich's Magic Bullet, scripted by John Huston and featuring Edward G. Robinson in one of his best roles, abetted by Ruth Gordon, Otto Kruger, Donald Crisp, Maria Ouspenskaya, Sig Ruman and Donald Meek. Alas, it is not yet available on DVD. Pat O'Brien had the best role of his career as Knute Rockne, All American, the famed film about the legendary Notre Dame football coach featuring Ronald Reagan as his star player under the direction of Lloyd Bacon. This is the one with Reagan's classic line, "win one for the Gipper". It co-stars Gale Page, Donald Crisp, Albert Basserman and John Qualen. The source material for Frank Loessser's never-filmed classic musical The Most Happy Fella, Garson Kanin's film of Sidney Howard's They Knew What They Wanted provided memorable roles for Charles Laughton as the fat, homely grape grower, and Carole Lombard as his mail order bride. This is another great one missing on DVD. From Frank Launder and Sidney Gilliat, the writing team of Hitchock's The Lady Vanishes,comes the equally engrossing Night Train to Munich directed by Carol Reed in Hitchcockian style. Margaret Lockwood, Rex Harrison and Paul Henreid star in the espionage thriller. Gary Cooper had the title role in William Wyler's The Westerner but it was Walter Brennan who stole the show as the bombastic Judge Roy Bean, winning his third Oscar in the process. Others in the cast include Doris Davenport, Fred Stone, Forrest Tucker and Dana Andrews. Tyrone Power was out, but Henry Fonda and Gene Tierney had enough star power to keep Fritz Lang's The Return of Frank James, the sequel to Jesse James, afloat. Tierney made her screen debut in the film which also provided strong roles for Jackie Cooper, Henry Hull, John Carradine and Donald Meek. All that, and I haven't even mentioned The Great McGinty (Preston Sturges again), All This, and Heaven Too (another Bette Davis triumph), Kitty Foyle (Ginger Rogers' Oscar winner), Primrose Path (Ginger and Joel McCrea) and Fantasia (Disney's other classic 1940 film). -Peter J. Patrick (August 19, 2008) |
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The DVD Report #67: August 12, 2008
These are the dog days of summer as far as DVD releases are concerned. Having exhausted their release schedule of last year's big screen hits and saving up this year's for holiday season shopping, DVD distributers have little to offer anyone looking for new and worthwhile theatrical films to rent or buy. I guess they figured, when setting their release schedules that people would have their viewing hours filled this time of year by the Olympics and the forthcoming political conventions. There are, however, some new, lesser-known films, TV series and miniseries being released that may be worth your time and money. Just in time for the Beijing Olympics, Sony has released The First Olympics: Athens 1896. The title is a misnomer. 1896 was the year of the first modern Olympics, not the first games which were played from 776 BC to 393 AD. The 1984 miniseries was inspired by both the success of the 1981 Oscar winner Chariots of Fire about the 1924 Olympics and the impending games in Los Angeles. The miniseries is about the struggle of a group of determined men to organize a global athletic competition in Athens just as the Ancient Greeks once did. Faced with minimal funding, apathy and harsh opposition, they set out to find a group of loyal and dedicated athletes. The focus is primarily on the American team, an Australian and an illiterate Greek shepherd. Even if you didn't know the outcome, you could tell by the focus on these men that they would be among the ultimate winners, but how they get there, most of them amazed at their own success, is what makes it fascinating. The cast is headed by Hunt Block, David Caruso, Alex Hyde-White, Benedict Taylor, Nicos Ziagos, Matt Frewer and Jason Connery as the principal athletes and Louis Jourdan, David Ogden Stiers, Edward Wiley, Gayle Hunnicutt, Honor Blackman, Virginia McKenna, Bill Travers, Titos Vandis and Angela Lansbury as their sponsors, coaches, family members and other supporters. Stiers won an Emmy nomination for his passionate portrayal of the tireless American team organizer. The miniseries was also nominated for its art direction and won for its musical score. In addition, it won a WGA award for its screenplay. The Weinsten Company attempted to redefine the word "prequel" by advertising Stephen Frear's 2003 British TV film The Deal as a prequel to his 2006 film The Queen. The word prequel is a relatively new one. It was invented in the 1970s. It means "A literary, dramatic, or cinematic work whose narrative takes place before that of a preexisting work or a sequel". Since The Deal came first, it is not technically a prequel. If anything, The Queen is a sequel to The Deal. The question is, though: is it any good? The answer is: not really. As a history lesson, The Deal holds some interest. As a dramatic work, however, it is rather flat and uninvolving unless you are a student of recent British history. The film concerns the efforts of two promising members of the Labour Party, future British Prime Ministers Tony Blair and Gordon Brown, to reform the party and win, instead of losing, national elections. It's all very dry with Michael Sheen appearing not yet comfortable in the role of Blair, which he later played to perfection in The Queen. David Morrissey fares much better as the lesser known, dour Scot Brown. Released theatrically in the U.S. in 2007, it was not a success on this side of the Atlantic. Much more satisfying is Cranford, the British miniseries from the novels of Elizabeth Gaskell (1810-1865) which takes place in a small English town on the cusp of the industrial revolution. Wonderfully done with a brilliant cast headed by current Emmy nominees Dames Eileen Atkins and Judi Dench, the five-part miniseries proved so successful that it has been announced as a regular series and will soon begin filming a second season. The superlative supporting cast includes Michael Gambon, Imelda Stanuton, Simon Woods, Joe McFadden, Francesca Annis, Philip Glenister, Axel Etal, Julia McKenzie, Jim Carter, Lesley Manville and Martin Shaw, all of whom are given moments to shine. Atkins won the BAFTA over Dench. Will Emmy agree? Pulitzer Prize-winning author James A Michener was undoubtedly a master storyteller. The 1978-1979 miniseries from his novel Centennial, newly released on DVD,clocks in at 26 hours and takes a long time to get where it's going. It is worth your time to watch the settlement and growth of a Colorado boomtown over the course of 200 years. Framed against the majestic Rocky Mountains, Michener introduces the series, which is then narrated by David Janssen. The huge cast includes Richard Chamberlain, Robert Conrad, Sally Kellerman, Barbara Carrera, Michael Ansara, Raymond Burr, Chief Dan George, Stephen McHattie, Gregory Harrison, Stephanie Zimbalist, Cristina Raines, Chad Everett, Mark Harmon, Richard Crenna, Cliff De Young, Timothy Dalton, Brian Keith, Alex Karras, Lois Nettleton, William Atherton, Lynn Redgrave, Robert Vaughn, Andy Griffith, Sharon Gless, Mark Harmon, Dennis Weaver and many more, all of whom have their moments. One of the most unusual TV series of the 1980s was The Equalizer, Season 1 of which has just been released on DVD. Golden Globe winner Edward Woodward stars as a sophisticated former government agent atoning for the sins of his past by becoming a private detective righting the wrongs of a flawed legal system by helping its innocent victims. Robert Lansing and Keith Szarabajka co-starred in the series which included as first season guest stars: Jim Dale, Karen Young, Will Patton, Christine Baranski, Blanche Baker, Meat Loaf, Lonette McKee, Marisa Berenson, Sylvia Miles, Kim Delaney, Gwen Verdon, Patricia Clarkson, John Cullum, Philip Bosco and Tony Musante among many others. The DVD collection also includes a bonus episode from Season 2. The role of the tough-as-nails, yet compassionate avenger fit Woodward like a glove. It was the culmination of a career that ranged from musical comedy star in Broadway's delightful High Spirits, the musical version of Blithe Spirit, to cult film star in the horror classic The Wicker Man, and the true life Australian drama Breaker Morant. Although it's been out on DVD for a while now, not much attention has been given to the 1982-1983 series Voyagers! The series, which explored time travel was set in the present (1982) where Phineas Bogg, a member of a group of "voyagers" (i.e. people who travel across time) has been grounded due to a malfunction of his gold watch. Through a series of mishaps he is stuck in time with a twelve-year-old boy whose parents have recently died. Together they travel through history to prevent major catastrophes from occurring. Created as an educational series for children, the series' light touch provided its history lessons without pomposity or hitting the audience over the head with preaching. Among the historical figures, real and imagined, whose stories were told were: Isaac Newton, Thomas Edison, Alexander Graham Bell, T.E. Lawrence, Teddy Roosevelt, the Wright Brothers, Charles Dickens, Robin Hood and Jack the Ripper. The series starred Jon-Erik Hexum and Meeno Peluce. Hexum, who was at the beginning of a promising career, accidentally shot himself in the head during a break on a later TV series. The 26-year-old actor carried an organ donor card with him and his organs, including his heart, were transplanted providing the organ donor program with much needed good publicity. So much for classy TV series. Two newly released theatrical films on DVD are nowhere near as good. In the golden age of the movies, films with all-star casts were events helmed by world class directors. Nowadays they are more often films in which a group of well meaning actors get together to bolster the career of a new or unknown director. Such efforts rarely turn out to be great films. A case in point is The Air I Breathe directed by the unknown Jieho Lee. The film tells four separate stories that intersect in the manner of a Crash or Babel, though this one is unlikely to be remembered at Oscar time. Forest Whitaker's story is the first one presented. In the course of his section of the film, Whitaker goes from being a mild mannered clerk to chance taking gambler to hapless bank robber. His story intersects with that of hit man Brendan Fraser and Fraser's boss, Andy Garcia. In Fraser's story, he saves Garcia's nephew, Emile Hirsch, from a gangland killing and is seriously injured himself. Fraser is in love with Sarah Michelle Gellar, a singer whose character gets the third story line. Gellar in turn is linked to the fourth story focusing on emergency room doctor Kevin Bacon. It all ends with Gellar's flashback encounter with Whitaker. Strange as that one might have been, the most bizarre film I've seen this week is Nim's Island which marks the directorial debut of someone named Jennifer Flackett. Ostensibly a family film, it tries to be an amalgam of just about every family adventure film ever made with a good splash of adventure parody films thrown in. You get a little Swiss Family Robinson, a little Romancing the Stone, and a lot of some very accomplished actors doing some very silly things. Gerard Butler, a decent actor usually stuck in movies beneath his talents, is stuck in yet another one here. He plays the dual role of a scientist living on an isolated island with his only daughter and a fictional swashbuckling hero created by writer Jodie Foster. Abigail Breslin is Butler's daughter who basically mopes around the island waiting for Butler to return from his travels. She develops an on-line pen pal relationship with agoraphobic Foster who leaves her safe world behind to join Breslin on the island in order to watch over her until Butler's return. I must have dozed off during the part in which they explain where the electrical power came from on the island and how Foster got there. On the plus side, this is Foster's loosest performance since Freaky Friday, which she made when she was in her early teens. She and Breslin make a great team. Too bad they didn't have better material to work with. -Peter J. Patrick (August 12, 2008) |
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The DVD Report #66: August 5, 2008
It's time for another in my series of "Films By Year" and their availability on DVD. While my articles on the years from 1957 through 1961 focused on films released in the U.S. in those years, I'm doing a bit of shift in focus starting with 1962 and going with the first year of theatrical release anywhere in the world. This actually affects far fewer films than you might think. These are the films of 1962 I consider to be the year's ten best. All but one of them is currently available on DVD in the U.S. Prior to the advent of big screen TVs, it was fairly horrendous trying to absorb in home viewing a monumental achievement of the likes of David Lean's Lawrence of Arabia, the epic adventure of the life of Britain's T.E. Lawrence that was nominated for ten Oscars and won seven including Best Picture and Director. Focusing on Lawrence's World War I campaign of organizing Arab tribes in fighting against the Turks, the film really should be seen in a theatre with a large screen at least once. Peter O'Toole's Oscar-nominated, star-making performance is backed by a memorable supporting cast including Alec Guinness, Anthony Quinn, fellow Oscar nominee Omar Sharif, Arthur Kennedy, Jose Ferrer, Claude Rains, Donald Wolfit, Anthony Quayle and Jack Hawkins. It's a film that succeeds on all levels from its literate script to its majestic cinematography, with an unforgettable score by Maurice Jarre. At the opposite end of the spectrum is the intimate, but equally brilliant To Kill a Mockingbird directed by Robert Mulligan from Harper Lee's Pulitzer Prize winning novel. Nominated for eight Oscars, it won three including one for Gregory Peck as Best Actor. Peck, eschewing his usual romantic lead, plays the widowed lawyer and father of a six-year-old girl and ten-year-old boy in the Deep South who takes on the case of a black man falsely accused of raping a white woman. The film is filled with rich characters including Mary Badham and Phillip Alford as the children, John Megna as their friend, Brock Peters as the defendant in the case and Robert Duvall as the mysterious Boo Radley. It's magnificently scored by Elmer Bernstein. Taking us into yet another completely different world, John Frankenheimer's The Manchurian Candidate gave us a glimpse into the ugly hearts and minds of those plotting a Presidential assassination a year before JFK was shot. Moody, atmospheric and presenting one shocking scene after another. Both Laurence Harvey as the titled weakling and Frank Sinatra as his Korean War buddy give career-high performances, but the film really belongs to Oscar-nominated Angela Lansbury as Harvey's evil mother and James Gregory as Lansbury's politician husband, a Vice Presidential contender. Sinatra, who owned the film, withdrew it from exhibition after the Kennedy assassination. It had been out of circulation until the late 1980s. Without changing a single line of dialogue, Sidney Lumet shifts the focus from the father to the mother in his filming of Eugene O'Neill's Long Day's Journey Into Night simply by focusing the camera on Katharine Hepburn rather than Ralph Richardson. The emphasis both supports and enriches O'Neill's autobiographical study of his miserly actor father, drug addicted mother, alcoholic brother and his young consumptive self. Hepburn, Richardson, Jason Robards as the brother and Dean Stockwell as the O'Neill substitute all give extraordinary performances. All four shared the Venice Film Award but only Hepburn got an Oscar nomination for it. One of the exuberant joys of the theatre-going world for several seasons was Meredith Willson's The Music Man which was brought to the screen by Morton Da Costa in a joyous celebration of life in the Midwest circa 1912. Robert Preston skillfully reprises his Tony Award-winning performance as charlatan Professor Harold Hill and Shirley Jones beguilingly takes over the role of charming Marian the Librarian from Broadway's Barbara Cook. Ronny Howard is her charmingly stuttering younger brother and Pert Kelton repeats her Broadway triumph as their perplexed mother (Kelton, at the time, was a huge star in TV commercials). Buddy Hackett, Paul Ford and Hermione Gingold also have major roles. The eternal conflict between good and evil is examined in Peter Ustinov's film of Herman Melville's seagoing classic Billy Budd with Oscar nominee Terence Stamp hitting all the right notes as the personification of good as the titled naïve merchant seaman. Robert Ryan is at his snarling best as the personification of evil as the master at arms who hates the young sailor for no apparent reason. The excellent supporting cast is led by director/screenwriter Ustinov as the ship's captain and former matinee idol Melvyn Douglas in his first film in more than ten years as the weather-beaten old sailmaker who has seen it all. Daryl Zanuck's meticulous, painstaking recreation of D-Day, June 5, 1944, The Longest Day required the efforts of three directors, Ken Annakin, Andrew Marton and Bernhard Wicki, to bring the producer's dream project to fruition, but the result is absolutely breathtaking. The all-star cast including John Wayne, Henry Fonda, Richard Burton, Robert Mitchum, Richard Beymer, Red Buttons, Robert Ryan and Sal Mineo acquits itself well, each member of the cast turning in a fine vignette of a performance. The film, one of the last great black-and-white epics, has stood the test of time despite advances in film techniques that might render a lesser undertaking obsolete. Otto Preminger was in the midst of his career resurgence as the go-to director of bestsellers when he mounted Allen Drury's Advise & Consent about a Senate investigation into the President's newly nominated Secretary of State. With Henry Fonda as the candidate, Walter Pidgeon as the Majority leader, Charles Laughton as a wily Southern senator, Franchot Tone as the President, and Lew Ayres as the Vice President, you knew you were in for a treat. The film was also notable as the first Hollywood film to give a face to homosexuality in the form of Don Murray as a young Senator who is the victim of blackmail. Laughton, Murray, and Burgess Meredith as a congressional witness are the standouts. Released in Great Britain in 1962, but not released in the U.S. until 1963, Bryan Forbes' The L-Shaped Room provided Oscar nominee Leslie Caron with one of her best roles as an unwed pregnant French woman residing in a shabby English boarding house until the birth of her baby. Her relationship with the other borders makes up the bulk of the story. Tom Bell as a blocked writer, Brock Peters as a prudish musician and Cicely Courtneidge as a retired vaudevillian provide staunch support. Courtneidge's character was the screen's first sympathetic lesbian. Sadly, this film is not available in Region 1 and oddly enough has only been available in Region 2 for about a year. A TV play memorably adapted for Broadway and then brought to the big screen intact, Arthur Penn's film of William Gibson's The Miracle Worker had its genesis in Helen Keller's autobiography. Anne Bancroft as Keller's nearly-blind teacher, Annie Sullivan, and Patty Duke as blind, deaf and, until Annie talk her how to speak, dumb Keller are magnificent in their Oscar-winning roles, having honed them to perfection on stage. Teresa Wright and Patty McCormack had played them in the original 1957 TV production. That only scratches the surface. An alternate top ten might consist of these classics, seven of which are available on DVD in the U.S.: The last film directed by master Japanese director Yasujiro Ozu, An Autumn Afternoon is a typical late Ozu masterpiece that tells the simple, yet powerful story of an aging widower who arranges a marriage for his 24-year-old daughter so that she is not obligated to look after him for the rest of his life. Acclaimed Japanese actor Chishu Ryu gives one of his finest performances as the old man. Like most of Ozu's films, this did not open in the U.S. until after Ozu's death in December 1963. Best known for his later violent westerns, Sam Peckinpah directed one of the gentlest as well in Ride the High Country featuring screen legends Randolph Scott and Joel McCrea, each in their last great screen role as aging gunmen, now respectable citizens, ruminating on their past lives when one of them decides to go for broke with one last daring holdup. Highly literate and beautifully photographed, the film features Mariette Hartley in a striking debut performance as McCrea's daughter and character actor Edgar Buchanan in one of his signature roles as a judge. It took me a long time to truly appreciate John Ford's masterful The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance, his meditation on the end of an era. Having first seen this film as a teenager, I couldn't get past the seeming miscasting of James Stewart as a naive young attorney and John Wayne as his not much older mentor. Now that I'm older than they were at the time, this no longer presents a problem for me and I can enjoy the film for what it is, the last great western from the movies' greatest director of westerns. Vera Miles as the woman both men love, Lee Marvin as the notorious title character and Edmond O'Brien as the savvy reporter who sums it all up, provide strong support. While Stewart and Wayne could still draw huge crowds playing virile young men, their female contemporaries Bette Davis and Joan Crawford were viewed as has-beens who could no longer carry a film. But put together as battling old bats, they set off fireworks. Robert Aldrich's What Ever Happened to Baby Jane? was not even given a proper opening, it was unceremoniously dumped into wide release in early November, but became an unexpected smash hit creating a brand new sub-genre of horror films in the process. Not great art, but great entertainment nonetheless. Geraldine Page had the role of her career in Richard Brooks' film of Tennessee Williams' Sweet Bird of Youth as the aging actress who accompanies gigolo Paul Newman to his home town where he faces the enmity of the town boss, played by Oscar winner Ed Begley. Brilliantly cast with Shirley Knight as Begley's daughter and Newman's former girlfriend Mildred Dunnock as her supportive aunt, and Rip Torn as Begley's stooge, the film closely follows the stage version except for the watered-down ending. In addition to Begley, Page and Knight were nominated for Oscars. William Holden had one of his best roles in the true story of an American expatriate living in Sweden forced to spy for the Allies during World War II in George Seaton's The Counterfeit Traitor. Filmed in many of the actual locations in which the story took place, the film makes fictional spy thrillers look like child's play. Lilli Palmer is transcendent as the undercover German agent who is his chief informant. Her last scene leaves an indelible impression. Hugh Griffith, Ernst Schroder and Werner Peters also offer memorable characterizations. Dated now, but only because numerous TV dramas have long since stolen its premise, Frank Perry's Oscar nominated examination of teenage mental illness David and Lisa provided rising stars Keir Dullea and Janet Margolin with the roles of their burgeoning careers. Dullea is especially memorable as the boy who literally can't be touched. Howard Da Silva masterfully plays the psychiatrist who treats them both. Eleanor Perry made it a family affair, winning an Oscar nomination for her screenplay to go with her then-husband's directorial nod. Another look at mental illness was beautifully captured in Serge Bourguignon's Sundays and Cybele with Hardy Kruger in his career-high performance as a French soldier suffering from post-traumatic stress after a tour in Vietnam, who develops a friendship with a hapless young girl. The two have an idyllic relationship until he is inevitably and wrongly assumed to be a pedophile. Inexplicably this film has not been released on DVD anywhere in the world though it has long been available on VHS. John Schlesinger won the Golden Bear at the Berlin Film Festival for his first film, A Kind of Loving, featuring a star-making performance by Alan Bates as one of Britain's angry young men forced into marriage with pregnant girlfriend June Ritchie and life under the thumb of the mother-in-law-from-Hell played by Thora Hird. While long available in Region 2, this film has yet to be released in Region 1. Focusing on his early struggles for acceptability from his Viennese medical colleagues, John Huston's film Freud won an Oscar nomination for its absorbing screenplay. Montgomery Clift was "Siggy", with Susan Kohner as his wife and Susannah York as one of his patients. Larry Parks was also prominently cast in his first film in a dozen years. For some reason this film has never been released on commercial home video anywhere in the world, not even on VHS. Then there were these gems: Francois Truffaut's film about life and life changes as seen through the eyes of a woman in love with two men is examined in Jules and Jim with Oskar Werner as Jules, Henri Surre as Jim and Jeanne Moreau as Catherine, a film whose swirling camera movements have been compared to Citizen Kane. It was one of the landmark films of the French New Wave. George Marshall, John Ford and Henry Hathaway each directed segments of How the West Was Won, the first and last western to be filmed in Cinerama. Oddly this quintessential American classic was released in Europe a year before it made it to U.S. theatres. Debbie Reynolds, James Stewart, Carroll Baker, Gregory Peck and George Peppard have the largest roles among the many stars in the film set for an upgraded DVD release at the end of the month. Two years after his Oscar win for Elmer Gantry, Burt Lancaster grabbed another nomination for his moving portrayal of longtime Alcatraz inmate Robert Stroud in John Frankenheimer's Birdman of Alcatraz cataloguing his years of imprisonment and eventual transformation into a useful citizen. Telly Savalas as a fellow prisoner and Thelma Ritter as Stroud's mother were also Oscar nominated. Jack Lemmon and Lee Remick won Oscar nominations for recreating the roles made unforgettable by Cliff Robertson and Piper Laurie in the TV version of Days of Wine and Roses directed by Blake Edwards. Good as Lemmon and Remick are, they can't erase the memory of the originals, especially Laurie in her descent into alcoholic hell. Charles Bickford repeats his TV role as the woman's disapproving father. The first and best version of John D. MacDonald's suspense thriller Cape Fear, tautly directed by J. Lee Thompson, provided Robert Mitchum with one of his best roles as the killer who menaces attorney Gregory Peck and his family. Polly Bergen co-stars as Peck's wife and Lori Martin is their daughter. A faithful adaptation of the Jule Styne-Stephen Sondheim musical, Mervyn LeRoy's film of Gypsy won Rosalind Russell her fifth Golden Globe for her portrayal of Gypsy Rose Lee's stage mother. Natalie Wood was Gypsy née Louise and Karl Malden was Herbie in the underrated film version of what has become Broadway's most revived musical. Martin Ritt directed Adventures of a Young Man also known as Hemingway's Adventures of a Young Man with Richard Beymer in a semi-autobiographical role as the budding writer. Acting honors go to Paul Newman as a punch-drunk boxer, and Arthur Kennedy and Jessica Tandy as Beymer's bickering parents. James Stewart and Maureen O'Hara had their first roles as grandparents in Henry Koster's hilarious domestic comedy Mr. Hobbs Takes a Vacation in which Stewart takes the family on a vacation in which anything that could go wrong does. Laurie Peters, John Saxon, Marie Wilson, Reginald Gardiner and Fabian all figure into the plot. Before directing Angela Lansbury in The Manchurian Candidate, John Frankenheimer directed her in All Fall Down, in which she is equally fine as another mother-from-Hell, and for which she won the National Board of Review award in tandem with her more famous role. Warren Beatty and Brandon de Wilde are her sons, and Karl Malden is her husband in this domestic drama from James Leo Herlihy's novel. It is not available in Region 1. The best of the many films made about animal hunting in Africa, Howard Hawks' Hatari! provided John Wayne with a great change-of-pace role, ably supported by Hardy Kruger, Elsa Martinelli and Red Buttons. One of Henry Mancini's most infectious scores adds immeasurably to the fun. There were others, but too many to mention. I will stop with a nod to two films from 1961 that I left off of my previous report because they hadn't been released in the U.S. until 1962: A multiple-award-winning film, Tony Richardson's A Taste of Honey featured Rita Tushingham in a star-making performance as a young British girl impregnated by a black sailor who is cared for by a compassionate gay man played by Murray Melvin. Tushingham and Melvin took acting honors at Cannes. It is not available in Region 1. Dirk Bogarde won a BAFTA nomination for his portrayal of the closeted gay lawyer who goes after a blackmailer in Basil Dearden's groundbreaking Victim, a noirish thriller that is also educational. Sylvia Sims as Bogarde's astounded wife and Dennis Price as a fellow blackmail victim are also excellent. -Peter J. Patrick (August 5, 2008) |
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