The DVD Report #39: January 29, 2008
The death of Heath Ledger on Oscar nomination day set a pall over the 80th annual Academy Awards, already suffering from uncertainty due to the Hollywood writers' strike. It was just two years ago that the then 26-year-old actor was nominated for starring in the youth-to-middle-age story of conflicted gay cowboy Ennis Del Mar in Brokeback Mountain. Ang Lee's groundbreaking film won 76 awards and another 64 nominations around the world including Oscars for director Lee, its screenplay and musical score, but failed to win the Oscar for Best Picture in one of the most stunning upsets in Oscar history. Ledger himself won numerous awards for his towering performance including the prestigious New York Film Critics Circle Award, but lost many more including the Oscar to Philip Seymour Hoffman as Truman Capote in Capote, the first of two films about the author's anguished research into the writing of In Cold Blood. The competing film, Infamous, which was released the following year won no major awards. Ledger's loss could hardly be blamed on homophobia as Hoffman's character was also gay. It was more likely due to the age-old Hollywood truism that young actors like Ledger have their whole lives ahead of them while older, more experienced actors like Hoffman had already earned their dues. His experience with journalists during the long publicity tour for Brokeback left him drained and suspicious of many in the profession who just wanted to make jokes about the character he had poured his heart and soul into. Ledger's astounding performance now has an ironic undertone to it. His most compelling scenes are the ones near the end of the film when his character is at an age that the actor himself will never attain. It brings back memories of James Dean, another actor gone too soon, who played the life story of a character much older than he would ever be at the end of Giant. His brief, but amazing career can be followed on DVD. The film which made him a star was 1999's 10 Things I Hate About You,highlighted by his singing of "Can't Take My Eyes Off of You" to Julia Stiles. The updated version of Shakespeare's The Taming of the Shrew, which was also the basis for Kiss Me, Kate, was one of the best teen movies of the last ten years. The two leads are ably supported by Joseph Gordon-Levitt, Larisa Oleynik, David Krumholz, Andrew Keegen, Allison Janney and others. It was directed by Gil Junger. After the success of that film Ledger could have had a nice career continuing to make teen comedies, but the actor preferred to starve rather than be boxed into that particular corner. His next major film was 2000's The Patriot in which he played Mel Gibson's son. The film directed by Roland Emmerich was one of the better films about the American Revolution of 1776. The superb cast also included Joley Richardson, Jason Isaacs, Chris Cooper, Tcheky Karyo, Rene Auberjonois and Tom Wilkinson. Ledger, in order to fulfill his deal with Columbia who produced The Patriot, was contractually bound to make 2001's AA Knight's Tale, directed by Brian Helgeland, an anachronistic comedy about a 14th Century knight in which rock music plays in the background. Ledger's charm and that of featured player Paul Bettany make it a pleasant time killer. Later that year he played a small, but pivotal role in Marc Foster's Monster's Ball opposite Billy Bob Thornton and Halle Berry in her Oscar-winning role. Ledger's next starring role was in 2002's The Four Feathers, Shekhar Kapur's aesthetically beautiful, but long, long version of A.E.W. Mason's oft-filmed classic tale of cowardice and retribution. He leads a competent cast that also includes Wes Bentley, Djimon Hounsou, Kate Hudson and Michael Sheen. After a couple of misfires, he came back strong in 2005. First as the alcoholic owner of a surf board shop in Lords of Dogtown. With false teeth and wig he was pretty much playing a character part in Catherine Hardwicke's film which starred Emile Hirsch. The real life Z-boys portrayed in the film are shown to better advantage in the documentary Dogtown and Z-Boys, but the film does show Ledger's versatility as an actor. Later in 2005 he showed up as half of The Brothers Grimm in Terry Gilliam's dark vision of the life of the fairy-tale storytellers. Matt Damon was the other brother. While the film does not live up to expectations, the performances of the two stars are faultless. Ledger fared much better with his two year-end films of 2005. In Lasse Hallstrom's deft farce, Casanova, he displays expert comic timing and more than holds his own against a supporting cast of expert scene stealers including Jeremy Irons and Oliver Platt. Sienna Miler also makes a fine leading lady. Best of all, though, was his performance in Brokeback Mountain. Portraying a tightly wound man with bottled up emotions, Ledger provides a textbook study of loneliness and regret. Jake Gyllenhaal and Michelle Williams are terrific as well, but it is Ledger's character and his performance that haunts you long after the film ends. Ledger's last completed film is The Dark Knight in which he plays The Joker to Christian Bale's Batman. His untimely death has added to the aura of the film that was already being touted as one of the must-see films of the year. A week ago, if you asked people on the street to name the five most important young actors working today, I doubt Heath Ledger's name would have come up very often. Now that he is gone people are realizing the magnitude of the loss. His close connection to this year's Oscar nominees underscores how relevant and connected he was to today's top talent. You can play the game Six Degrees of Separation between Heath Ledger and all of the acting nominees in this year's Oscar race. In fact, you need no more than two connections to get to any one of them. He has direct links to double nominee, Cate Blanchett, his co-star in I'm Not There. She's nominated for that film as well as Elizabeth: The Golden Age. He also has a direct link to Tom Wilkinson, one of his co-stars in The Patriot. Wilkinson is nominated for Michael Clayton. Through Wilkinson he's connected to George Clooney and Tilda Swinton, also nominated for that film. Wilkinson in turn is connected to Tommy Lee Jones, nominated for In the Valley of Elah trough Sissy Spacek, his co-star in In the Bedroom. Spacek won an Oscar opposite Jones in Coal Miner's Daughter. Ledger is connected to Into the Wild's Hal Holbrook through Emile Hirsch, his co-star in Lords of Dogtown and to Juno's Ellen Page through Allison Janney, one of his co-stars in 10 Things I Hate About You. Matt Damon, Ledger's co-star in The Brothers Grimm, has a direct connection to Casey Affleck, nominated for The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford through Affleck's featured role in Damon's Good Will Hunting, which won screenplay Oscars for Damon and Affleck's brother, Ben. The Afflecks in turn are connected to Gone Baby Gone nominee Amy Ryan, Casey's co-star in that film directed by Ben. Damon is also connected to Charlie Wilson's War nominee Philip Seymour Hoffman, who played a featured role in the Damon starrer, The Talented Mr. Ripley. Ledger is connected to Johnny Depp, nominated for Sweeney Todd, through Jonathan Pryce, his co-star in The Brothers Grimm, who was in The Pirates of the Caribbean: At World's End with Depp. Depp, in turn, is connected to Away From Her nominee, Julie Christie, his co-star in Finding Neverland, which was directed by Marc Forster who had previously directed Ledger in Monster's Ball. Chris Cooper, who along with Wilkinson, co-starred in The Patriot with Ledger, provides a connection to The Savages nominee Laura Linney, who played his wife earlier this year in The Breach. Ledger's connection to Eastern Promises nominee Viggo Mortensen is through Ned Kelly co-star Naomi Watts who stars opposite Mortensen in the film for which he is nominated. Watts also provides a connection to There Will Be Blood nominee Daniel Day-Lewis who won his first Oscar along with co-star Brenda Fricker in My Left Foot. Watts played a supporting role in Fricker's Brides of Christ, also featuring Russell Crowe. Crowe provides the links to La Vie en Rose nominee Marion Cotillard through last year's A Good Year and American Gangster's Ruby Dee with whom he co-starred in that film. Finally, Brokeback Mountainprovides the connection to two of this year's nominees, No Country for Old Men's Javier Bardem and Atonement's Saoirse Ronan. Brokeback's Randy Quaid co-starred with Bardem in Goya's Ghosts, while Brokeback's Anne Hathaway co-starred with James McAvoy, Ronan's Atonement co-star, in Becoming Jane. Ledger's career may have been short, but like James Dean, whose career was even shorter, he will be remembered and his films cherished for decades to come. -Peter J. Patrick (January 29, 2008) |
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The DVD Report #38: January 22, 2008
Last week we took a look back at the Oscars of 25, 50 and 75 years ago. This week, with the release of the 40th Anniversary Edition of In the Heat of the Night and the forthcoming release of the 40th Anniversary Edition of Guess Who's Coming to Dinner, it is a good time to look back at the 1967 Oscars. Postponed for two days because of the assassination of Martin Luther King Jr., it's fitting that major Oscars that year went to two films focusing on race relations. In the Heat of the Night is generally remembered as an engrossing murder mystery but not the trailblazing social drama it was, while Guess Who's Coming to Dinner is generally dismissed as a lightweight, almost naïve, comedy. Yet both were major eye-openers in their day. The key scene in Best Picture winner In the Heat of the Night, directed by Oscar-nominated Norman Jewison,is the one in which Sidney Poitier as a black detective from up North (Philadelphia, Pa. to be exact) visits the home of one of the landed gentry of Sparta, Mississippi during the course of a murder investigation. Poitier says something that offends the old gentleman who then slaps him across the face. Poitier's response is not to turn the other cheek, but to slap the old gentleman back. When the old gentleman, played by Larry Gates, asks redneck sheriff Rod Steiger what he's going to do about it, Steiger shrugs it off with an "I don't know" causing the old man to weep. It's a stunning scene that had it happened in real life might have caused the Poitier character to have been shot on the spot. It was that moment in which the black man, standing tall and proud, announced to the world that there was no turning back, opening the door for many other black leading men. Poitier had another pivotal moment in the nominated Guess Who's Coming to Dinner, directed by nominee Stanley Kramer,in which he tells his father, played by Roy Glenn, "you think of yourself as a black man, I think of myself as a man." Despite Poitier's strong presence in both films, it's the performances of other actors that won the awards that year. Steiger, bringing nuances to the bigoted redneck sheriff one wouldn't have thought possible, easily won the Best Actor Oscar and Katharine Hepburn, nominated for the tenth time, finally won her second Oscar after 34 years for playing her first ordinary housewife in Guess Who's Coming to Dinner. Two-time Oscar winner Spencer Tracy won his ninth and final nomination posthumously for playing Poitier's prospective father-in-law in Dinner, and Cecil Kellaway and Beah Richards won supporting nods, he as a kindly clergyman, she as Poitier's dignified mother. Though not the first film to deal with interracial romance, Guess Who's Coming to Dinner was the first boasting a cast of the magnitude of Tracy, Poitier and Hepburn. It wasn't the romance between Poitier and Katharine Houghton, Hepburn's real-life niece, which was central to the film, but the reaction of her parents played by Hepburn and Tracy. There is real poignancy in Tracy's last speech and those were real tears welling up in Hepburn's eyes as she quietly listens to what he has to say. Despite the immediacy of In the Heat of the Night and Guess Who's Coming to Dinner, the films most people associate with the year were two other Oscar nominees: Bonnie and Clyde, due in an upgraded Special Edition DVD in Marchand The Graduate, the 40th Anniversary edition of which was released last year. The violence that permeated Bonnie and Clyde was so new to American cinema at the time that several critics who panned it as being too violent were forced to take a second look after the public embraced it, reversing their earlier opinions. One of the rare films to receive five acting nominations, it won one for Supporting Actress Estelle Parsons as the duplicitous Blanche, married to Clyde Barrow's brother, Buck. Warren Beatty as Clyde Barrow, Faye Dunaway as Bonnie Parker, Gene Hackman as Buck and Michael J. Pollard as gang member C.W. Moss were the other nominees. Among the film's other nominations were those for director Arthur Penn, and Theodora Van Runkel for her much-copied costumes. The film won a second Oscar for its cinematography. Its reputation as the most violent film ever made by a Hollywood studio was eclipsed by The Wild Bunch just two years later. Breaking ground in a different area, Best Director winner Mike Nichols' The Graduate ushered in the era of well known contemporary music playing in the background. Simon and Garfunkel's "Mrs. Robinson", which was written for the film, was only heard in snippets, the full song released on a later album, but the rest of the score including "Scarborough Fair" and "The Sound of Silence" was already well established. It acts as a soothing backdrop to the tale of a bored teenager seduced by the wife of his father's partner. Dustin Hoffman, in his first major screen role, and Anne Bancroft in her what has become her most famous role, were ideally cast as Benjamin and Mrs. Robinson. They, as well as Katharine Ross as Bancroft's daughter and Hoffman's true love, were nominated for their performances. The fifth nominee was the critical and commercial dud, Doctor Dolittle, shockingly nominated over Richard Brooks' acclaimed film of Truman Capote's In Cold Blood. Twentieth Century-Fox, still struggling despite the overwhelming success of The Sound of Music just two years earlier, put all its resources into promoting Dolittle, based on the classic children's stories, including urging studio employees to vote for it in various Oscar categories. The film won an astounding eight nominations, all seven others in technical categories. It won two, for Special Effects and Best Song for the catchy "Talk to the Animals". Brooks' faithful transcription of Capote's best known work won just four nominations, but they were important ones - two were for Brooks (for Best Direction and Best Adapted Screenplay), one for Conrad Hall's cinematography, and one for Quincy Jones' evocative score. Jones, whose even more memorable score of In the Heat of the Night oddly failed to win him a second nomination for Best Score, did receive one for the song "The Eyes of Love" from the long-forgotten Banning. Joining Steiger, Tracy, Beatty and Hoffman in the best actor race was Paul Newman in Cool Hand Luke, a sort of 1960s version of I Am a Fugitive From a Chain Gang that coined the phrase "what we've got here is a failure to communicate". If Steiger's win had been expected, Hepburn's came as a surprise. Clearly given the award out of sentiment, it was arguably the weakest role of the twelve for which she would eventually be nominated and the weakest of the group in which she was found herself. Audrey Hepburn as a blind woman in peril in Wait Until Dark and the aforementioned Bancroft and Dunaway all had heir supporters, but the front-runner was generally considered to be Dame Edith Evans as a lonely old lady suffering from paranoia in The Whisperers. She had won every award under the sun that year up to, but alas, not including the Oscar. Two years later she would play a supporting role in Hepburn's widely panned The Madwoman of Chailllot and received universal acclaim for her performance with many reviewers saying the film might have been half way decent had she, and not Hepburn, played the lead. The Supporting Actor award went to George Kennedy as one of Newman's fellow prisoners in Cool Hand Luke. Joining him, Hackman, Pollard and Kellaway in the race was John Cassavetes as a killing machine in the high adventure war film, The Dirty Dozen. Parsons' competition for supporting actress, in addition to Ross and Richards, included Carol Channing as a 1920s flapper in the musical Thoroughly Modern Millie and Mildred Natwick, hilarious as the muddled mother of the bride in Barefoot in the Park. I recommend another look at some of these films this week, especially the much improved transfer of the 40th Anniversary Edition of In the Heat of the Night with reminiscences from director Norman Jewison, director of photography Haskell Wexler, composer Quincy Jones and producer Walter Mirisch. If that's not enough to keep you entertained, you might want to consider the work of one of the year's honorary award winners, actor Gregory Peck (To Kill a Mockingbird), director Alfred Hitchcock (Psycho) or producer Arthur Freed (The Band Wagon). -Peter J. Patrick (January 22, 2008) |
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The DVD Report #37: January 15, 2008
With the nominations for the 80th Annual Academy Awards less than a week away, I thought it would be a good time to take a look back at the films Oscar liked 25, 50 and 75 years ago. Twenty-five years ago the Best Picture nominees were E.T.: The Extra-Terrestrial, Gandhi, Missing, Tootsie and The Verdict, all of which are available on DVD. With wins from the National Board of Review, the New York Film Critics and the Golden Globes, the latter in the foreign film category, Gandhi was the inevitable winner even if L.A. film Critics and Golden Globe drama winner, E.T. was then, as now, more popular. The best thing about Gandhi is the performance of Best Actor winner Ben Kingsley as the East Indian leader. The film's slow pace under the direction of Oscar winner Richard Attenborough, despite its epic sweep, seems more ponderous as the years go by. Not so, E.T. and Tootsie, the Golden Globe comedy winner, both ofwhich remain as fresh today as they were then. E.T. remains a delightful film about childhood innocence, chronicling the adventures of a friendly alien stranded on Earth and the ten-year-old boy who befriends him. Henry Thomas, Robert MacNaughton and Drew Barrymore turn in naturalistic child performances under the assured direction of Oscar nominee Steven Spielberg. Tootsie is a hilarious comedy about an obnoxious actor who finds his heart as well as success when he disguises himself as a woman and lands a job on a TV soap opera. The film, directed by Best Director nominee Sydney Pollack, provides best actor nominee Dustin Hoffman with one of his best roles. He is ably supported by Oscar winner Jessica Lange and Oscar nominee Teri Garr. Paul Newman had one of his best late-career roles as an alcoholic lawyer taking on the medical profession and the Catholic Church in The Verdict, an engrossing courtroom drama directed by Best Director nominee Sidney Lumet and featuring superb supporting performances by Oscar nominees James Mason and Jack Warden. The Oscar nominated performances of Jack Lemmon and Sissy Spacek as the father and wife, respectively, of a missing American in Latin America, sustain Costa-Gavras' provocative Missing. Missing from Oscar's Best Picture line-up of 1982 were several films that have stood the test of time better than Missing or Gandhi. They include Das Boot, a streamlined version of a German TV mini-series directed by Oscar nominee Wolfgang Petersen; Victor/Victoria,a musical remake of a German screwball comedy of the 1930s with Oscar nominees Julie Andrews, as a woman pretending to be a man pretending to be a woman, and Robert Preston, as a gay nightclub emcee; An Officer and a Gentleman with Richard Gere in one of his best roles as a cadet in the Naval Officer Candidate School, Oscar nominated Debra Winger as his girl, and Oscar winner Louis Gossett Jr. as a tough drill instructor; and Sophie's Choice with Meryl Streep at her career peak as a Polish mother in a Nazi concentration camp forced to make an unholy decision. Also worth checking out are The World According to Garp with supporting actor and actress nominees John Lithgow and Glenn Close, and My Favorite Year with Best Actor nominee Peter O'Toole. The Best Picture nominees of fifty years ago were The Bridge on the River Kwai, Peyton Place, Sayonara, 12 Angry Men and Witness for the Prosecution, all of which are available on DVD. Having swept all three precursors then in existence, the National Board of Review, the New York Film Critics and the Golden Globes, The Bridge on the River Kwai was a virtual certainty to take home the Oscar, and it did. Coining the term "high adventure", Oscar winner David Lean's film is about a group of British soldiers in a Japanese POW camp who are forced to build a bridge as a morale booster. The film featured exquisite cinematography, pulse-pounding suspense, a haunting music score and great performances by Oscar winner Alec Guinness as the half-mad leader of the British work group and nominee Sessue Hayakawa as the camp commandant. Exquisite cinematography was also the hallmark of two of the other, albeit completely different, nominees: the New England-based Peyton Placeand the filmed-in-Japan Sayonara. Based on the scandalous bestseller, Peyton Placewas considerably toned down for the screen but remained provocative in its then-frank sex talk and suggestions of incest. Among the film's nine nominations were one for its director, Mark Robson, and five for acting: Lana Turner as the prim mother of fellow nominee Diane Varsi, the film's narrator, Hope Lange as a poor girl who becomes pregnant after being raped by her stepfather, Arthur Kennedy as the mean, alcoholic stepfather, and Russ Tamblyn as Varsi's mother-dominated friend. The then-exotic locale of post-war Japan and the poignant romance of secondary players Red Buttons and Miyoshi Umeki, who won Oscars for their performances, were the main drawing points of Sayonara, which also won nominations for director Joshua Logan and star Marlon Brando. Henry Fonda produced as well as starred in 12 Angry Men, a suspense-filled look at how a jury works as, one by one, this particular jury must determine the fate of a young man accused of murder. Sidney Lumet won his first nomination for Best Director for this, his first film. The most fun film of the five nominees was Witness for the Prosecution, based on the Agatha Christie stage smash. It was directed by Oscar nominee Billy Wilder and featured great performances by Oscar nominees Charles Laughton as an English barrister embroiled in a tough murder trial against doctor's order and Elsa Lanchester as his disapproving nurse, a role written for the film version. Equally memorable are Marlene Dietrich in the title role, the German war bride of defendant Tyrone Power, and Una O'Connor as the hard of hearing housekeeper of the murder victim. Only Power, of the film's main players, disappoints. Other Oscar-nominated films worth seeking out include Heaven Knows, Mr. Allison with Robert Mitchum and Best Actress nominee Deborah Kerr as a marine and a nun stranded on a Japanese-held island during World War II; The Three Faces of Eve in which Best Actress winner Joanne Woodward plays a woman with multiple personalities; and two not yet on DVD. Wild Is the Wind features nominees Anthony Quinn as a widowed rancher and Anna Magnani as the sister of his dead wife whom he marries to remind him of her; and A Hatful of Rain, a grim melodrama about drug addiction with Eva Marie Saint, Don Murray and Oscar nominated Anthony Franciosa as the brother of addict Murray. Seventy-five years ago there were no precursors. The New York film Critics would not come into existence for another three years, the Golden Globes for eleven and the National Board of Review covered the calendar year while the Academy year went from mid-1931 through mid-1932. They also had eight nominees for best picture as opposed to the now conventional five, which came into being in 1944. The eight nominees were Arrowsmith, Bad Girl, The Champ, Five Star Final, Grand Hotel, One Hour With You, Shanghai Express and The Smiling Lieutenant, of which only Arrowsmith, The Champ and the winner, Grand Hotel,have thus far been released on DVD. Good news, however, as both One Hour With You and The Smiling Lieutenant are being released next month as part of Criterion's Lubitsch collection. Shanghai Express is available in Region 2, but shockingly not in Region 1. Bad Girl and Five Star Final have not been released in either region. The first of the all-star-cast films, MGM's grand Grand Hotel seems rather ordinary in retrospect. Sure, it was the first film in which Greta Garbo as a lonely ballerina announces "I vant to be alone" and then-mega-stars Joan Crawford and Lionel Barrymore stood out in what were basically supporting roles, she as a stenographer, he as a dying bookkeeper. But others such as John Barrymore as a jewel thief and Wallace Beery as a particularly tiresome businessman don't fare quite as well. Beery does much better as the battered old boxer in Oscar nominee King Vidor's The Champ, for which he shared the Best Actor prize with Fredric March in Rouben Mamoulian's Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde. The latter, a particularly poignant and adult take on the classic horror story, is a better film than any of the Best Picture nominees and March's performance is the better of the two, though Beery is certainly no slouch, particularly in his scenes with young Jackie Cooper as his adoring son. Legendary director John Ford was not happy with his film version of Sinclair Lewis' Arrowsmith, but critics of the day raved about the performances of Ronald Colman and Helen Hayes as the pioneering doctor and his ill-fated wife. Hayes proved even more popular in the tearjerker, The Sin of Madelon Claudet, for which she won the Best Actress Oscar as unwed mother. Claudet is not available on DVD. Frank Borzage's Bad Girl isn't as well remembered as some of his other romantic dramas, notably A Farewell to Arms, History Is Made at Night and The Mortal Storm, but it was thought well enough of in its day to get him his second Oscar for direction, his first having come in the first year of the awards for 7th Heaven. The story is a simple one about a year in the life of a young couple, neither of whom is "bad". One of the best of the Marlene Dietrich-Josef von Sternberg collaborations is Shanghai Express for which von Sternberg joined Vidor and Borzage as one of only three nominated directors. The film still sizzles with Dietrich's provocative portrayal of a woman with a shady past and Warner Oland is terrific in a then-rare villainous role as a Mongolian warlord. Anna May Wong is also quite impressive as another lady with a shady past and Lee Garmes' Oscar winning cinematography still dazzles. One of the best films ever made about the media, Mervyn LeRoy's Five Star Final, is about a daily newspaper, but could just as easily be about today's tabloid scandal sheets or even cable TV news shows. Edward G. Robinson stars as an editor who doesn't stop to think about the damage he's causing the subjects of his exposes, leading to a tragic double suicide. Aline MacMahon, in her film debut, more than holds her own as his loyal secretary. The two Lubitsch musicals, One Hour With You with Maurice Chevalier and Jeanette MacDonald, and The Smiling Lieutenant with Chevalier are delightful bon-bons of the type they stopped making a long time ago. Other Oscar nominated films of 1931/32 worth seeking out include Best Original Story nominee, What Price Hollywood?, and Emma with Best Actress nominee Marie Dressler, neither of which are available on DVD, though you can still find What Price Hollywood? on VHS. Constance Bennett and Lowell Sherman star in the first version of the oft-filmed A Star Is Born, directed by George Cukor who would later do the Judy Garland-James Mason musical version. Emma is not the Jane Austen story, but rather a well-made tearjerker of the kind they don't make any more. Dressler, fabulous as always, plays an elderly housekeeper and nanny who marries her employer after his kids are grown and is subsequently sued by the spoiled brats over the old man's estate when he dies. Dressler receives strong support from Jean Hersholt as the old man and Richard Cromwell as her one unselfish stepchild. Celebrate the Oscar nominations by watching at least one of these old gems. -Peter J. Patrick (January 15, 2008) |
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The DVD Report #36: January 8, 2008
Inexplicably lost among the summer blockbusters, Stardust rightfully won the Phoenix Film Critics Society Award as the most overlooked film of 2007. Judging its DVD sales numbers, it could also emerge as the most overlooked DVD of 2007-2008. Directed by Matthew Vaughn (Layer Cake), this rollicking adventure is worth all the year's blockbusters and sequels rolled into one. Charlie Cox stars as the son of a man from the real world and a woman from the fantasy world who enters the fantasy world in search of his mother and finds all sorts of adventures involving witches, ghosts and goats among other things. Sienna Miller is the mortal girl he thinks he's in love with while top-billed Claire Danes is his true love, a fallen star. The cast includes a wealth of name actors who provide terrific support, chief among them are narrator Ian McKellen, Peter O'Toole as the dying ruler of the fantasy world, Robert De Niro as a sea captain of the air and Michelle Pfeiffer as the most wicked of witches. This is the second film this year, after Hairspray, in which Pfeiffer steals the film playing a villain. It's terrific fun. Elmore Leonard's short story, 3:10 to Yuma was the basis for a memorable 1957 western of the same name directed by Delmer Daves (Spencer's Mountain) with Glenn Ford as a captured gunman and Van Heflin as the rancher who volunteers to escort him to prison for some much needed cash. Fifty years on, James Mangold (Walk the Line) has directed a new version of 3:10 to Yuma with Russell Crowe as the gunman and Christian Bale as the rancher. The new version is more complex, with more richly developed characters and situations. While I am not generally in favor of remakes, if you're going to do one, this is the way to do it: take a good movie and make an even better version. Bale is especially good here playing his first middle-aged character, but the entire cast including Gretchen Mol, Dallas Roberts, Peter Fonda, Alan Tudyk and Logan Lerman is quite good. The one exception, in my view, is Ben Foster's over-the-top portrayal of a loathsome cold-blooded killer that has been much praised elsewhere. The film has excellent production values including Phedon Papamichael's (Sideways) cinematography and Marco Beltrami's (Scream) score. I often complain about the practice DVD companies have of double dipping, i.e. releasing a popular film in a movie only-edition, then going back and re-issuing the same film with special features. A rare instance of double-dipping that is worth renting or buying the expanded edition is Zodiac. At least in this case, they were up front about it, readily admitting that the movie-only DVD was being released because there hadn't been time to put together a special edition, but that one would be forthcoming. This is indeed a movie that cried out for a special edition, as the film raises more questions than it answers. The two-disc Special Edition includes commentary by stars Jake Gyllenhaal and Robert Downey, Jr., producer Brad Fischer, producer/writer James Vanderbilt, and L.A. Confidential author James Ellroy, and several documentaries. Among the documentaries are This Is the Zodiac Speaking, an all-new feature length film covering all aspects of the investigation, featuring interviews with original investigators and surviving victims, and His Name Was Arthur Leigh Allen about the prime suspect in the case. The "director's cut" of the film itself, at 2 hours and 42 minutes, runs five minutes longer than the theatrical release. Warner Bros. is throwing the spotlight on five directors whose work is not especially well known, by releasing five classic films made between 1968 and 1982, one film from each of them. The oldest and best known of the group is 1968's The Heart Is a Lonely Hunter, directed by Robert Ellis Miller (Reuben, Reuben), most of whose previous and subsequent work has been on TV. Alan Arkin won a richly deserved New York Film Critics Circle Award for his moving portrayal of a deaf mute savant who is able to solve everyone's problems but his own. Both he and Sondra Locke, in her film debut, as a sensitive teenager and stand-in for author Carson McCullers, also won Oscar nominations for their performances, but the entire cast is outstanding. It includes Chuck McCann as Arkin's dimwitted friend, Stacy Keach as a recovering alcoholic, Percy Rodriguez as a haughty black doctor and Cicely Tyson as his troubled daughter. Dave Grusin's score is also noteworthy. Another film from a director known mostly for his TV work is 1973's Payday, directed by Daryl Duke (The Thorn Birds). This very cynical film, which compares favorably to Elia Kazan's A Face in the Crowd Crowd, exposes the truth about a beloved country singer much in the way the Kazan film exposed the truth about a popular television star. Rip Torn has one of his best roles as the singer who is a total jerk in real life. Terrence McNally (Frankie and Johnny) adapted his hit Broadway play, The Ritz, for the screen in 1976. The director is Richard Lester (A Hard Day's Night), whose work is probably the best known of the five directors represented here. Jack Weston stars as the bookkeeper hiding out from his mobster brother-in-law Jerry Stiller in a gay bathhouse whose denizens include Treat Williams and F. Murray Abraham. Rita Moreno, repeating her Tony Award-winning role as a never-been has-been singer, has never been better. It's a hilarious farce from beginning to end. Oscar-winning actress Lee Grant (Shampoo) is also an acclaimed director. Her 1986 film, Down and Out in America, won an Oscar as best documentary of its year. Represented here, though, is one of her earlier dramatic films,1980's Tell Me a Riddle. Featuring acclaimed performances by Oscar winners Melvyn Douglas (Hud, Being Therer) and Lila Kedrova (Zorba the Greek), it is basically a character study of an elderly couple who have grown apart and re-connect as the wife lies dying of cancer. Kedrova is especially moving as the wife who has spent much of her life turning off her hearing aid and retreating into her books to shut out the world. Oscar-winning writer Robert Towne (Chinatown) made his directorial debut with 1982's Personal Best, one of the best sports films of its day. Mariel Hemingway, who spent much of her career making trashy films, gives perhaps her best performance as an Olympic track and field hopeful. Scott Glenn as her coach, Patrice Donnelly and Kenny Moore as fellow athletes, with whom Hemingway has affairs, are also quite good. The film is also notable as one of the first mainstream American films to realistically depict a lesbian romance, the one between Hemingway and Donnelly. Moore later wrote, and Donnelly acted as technical advisor on, Towne's unjustly neglected Without Limits. Criterion has given the two-disc special treatment to the 1971 cult road movie Two-Lane Blacktop. Singer-songwriter James Taylor and the Beach Boys' Dennis Wilson star in their only film as a drag racer and his mechanic who enter into a cross-country race with the older owner of a new car. Acting honors go to Warren Oates as the other driver. Director Monte Hellman insists his film is a better movie than The Graduate and Easy Rider. It isn't, but if you're into 1955 Chevys and 1970 GTOs it may just be your cup of tea. From Fox comes the 50th Anniversary Edition: An Affair to Remember, a two-disc special edition that includes Leo McCarey's beloved romantic comedy starring Deborah Kerr and Cary Grant as well as an AMC back story on the film, and documentaries on Kerr, Grant, McCarey and producer Jerry Wald. Until next time, that should be enough to keep you warm and dry. -Peter J. Patrick (January 8, 2008) |
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The DVD Report #35: January 1, 2008
A traditional way to start the New Year is to review the prior year's best, so without ado, here is my ten best list of DVD releases for 2007. 1. Ford at Fox. A massive 24-film set including: Pilgrimage, The Prisoner of Shark Island, Young Mr. Lincoln, Drums Along the Mohawk, The Grapes of Wrath, How Green Was My Valley and My Darling Clementine. It also features a documentary on legendary director John Ford, his World War II documentaries, a coffee table book and reproductions of the original souvenir programs for The Iron Horse and Four Sons. 2. Charlie Chan Collection - Vol. 3. Continuing the commitment they brought to the release of the first two sets of four films in 2006, Fox has lovingly restored the last four of the Warner Oland Chan films, complete with commentaries and documentaries. Charlie Chan Collection - Vol. 4, featuring the first four Chan films with Sidney Toler, who took over when Oland died, releases February 12. 3. If... and O Lucky Man! Lindsay Anderson's respective 1968 and 1973 films with Malcolm McDowell as Mick Travis were finally made available. The first was released by Criterion with their customary bells and whistles, the second by Warner Bros., as one of their prestige releases for the year. We have McDowell to thank for the latter, as his condition for doing a commentary on the Warner Bros. reissue of A Clockwork Orange was that he be allowed to do one for O Lucky Man! as well. 4. Warner Home Video Directors Series - Stanley Kubrick. Spruced-up special editions of some of Kubrick's best: 2001: A Space Odyssey, A Clockwork Orange, The Shining, Full Metal Jacket and Eyes Wide Shut. It also includes the documentary Stanley Kubrick: A Life in Pictures. Though I am not usually in favor of double dipping (re-issuing the same films over and over again), these titles were way overdue for an overhaul. 5. Pan's Labyrinth, Children of Men and The Departed. Examples of the quick-release pattern of really great movies from theaters to DVD. It used to be that only box office bombs found their way to home video within a few months of their theatrical release, but these films were all made available shortly after their theatrical runs ended. This is a welcome trend that seems to be continuing unabated with such recent theatrical releases as Into the Wild, Gone Baby Gone, Amerian Gangster, Lust, Caution, In the Valley of Elah and The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford all scheduled for imminent release on DVD. 6. The various John Wayne collections made available on the 100th anniversary of his birth, as well as the modest collections of Katharine Hepburn and Babara Stanwyck films made available for their centenary. Where, though, was the 100th birthday salute to Rosalind Russell? Sadly, Columbia, not Warner Bros., Fox or even Paramount, controls most of her unreleased films and they apparently couldn't care less. James Stewart and Bette Davis are among those whose centenaries will be celebrated in 2008. There aren't many James Stewart films that haven't been released yet, but Warner Bros. is still sitting on a number of Bette Davis titles. This would be a great time to release them. 7. Forbidden Hollywood - Vol. 1. Though technically a December 2006 release, this is cause for celebration no matter which year it hit the shelves. The initial release in the Warner Bros. series dedicated to films made before Hollywood's production code put creative brakes on movie frankness, it features Jean Harlow in Red-Headed Woman, Mae Clarke in Waterloo Bridge, and Barbara Stanwyck in Baby Face. Volume Two is coming in March loaded with even more once-scandalous films. Norma Shearer in both The Divorcee and A Free Soul, Bette Davis in Three on a Match, Ruth Chatterton in Female, and Stanwyck again in Night Nurse. It will also feature a new documentary: Thou Shalt Not: Sex, Sin and Censorship in Pre-Code Hollywood. 8. Robert Mitchum - The Signature Collection. It finally made available three of the most requested titles since the inception of DVD a decade ago: Home From the Hill, The Sundowners and Angel Face along with three others. Hats off to Warner Bros. Signature collections in general, which have also thrown worthy spotlights on Bette Davis, Joan Crawford, Clark Gable, Errol Flynn, Paul Newman, James Stewart, Humphrey Bogart, Burt Lancaster and others. 9. Fox Horror Classics. Though the three films included in this release, The Lodger, Hangover Square and The Undying Monster are more appropriately classified as suspense films, not horror films, any advertising ploy that draws attention to them gets my support. 10. Alfred Hirtchcock Presents: Season Three and all the great TV series DVDs out there. This series, which ran from 1955-1962, has lost none of its unique charm. The third season was one of its best with guest stars that included Vincent Price, Hume Cronyn, Jessica Tandy, Peter Lorre, Fay Wray, Joseph Cotten, William Shatner, Jack Klugman and E.G. Marshall. An Honorable Mention goes to Universal for finally releasing The Heiress. But where are An American Tragedy, Back Street (1932), Magnificent Obsession (1935), Private Worlds, Remember the Night, Hold Back the Dawn, Back Street (1941), Love Letters, To Each His Own, Magnificent Obsession (1954), The Tarnished Angels, This Earth Is Mine, Back Street (1962), Freud and all the other titles they are sitting on? While I'm on the subject, although Warner Bros. remains the pre-eminent purveyor of classic films on DVD, there are still scores of titles they haven't yet released. Where, for example, are Night Must Fall, The Mortal Storm, Waterloo Bridge (1940), Blossoms in the Dust, The White Cliffs of Dover, The Corn Is Green, The Valley of Decision, The Green Years, Green Dolphin Street, The Secret Garden (1949), The Blue Veil, Tea and Sympathy, The Dark at the Top of the Stairs, Sunrise at Campobello, A Majority of One, All Fall Down, America, America, Dear Heart, The Subject Was Roses and Rachel, Rachel? -Peter J. Patrick (January 1, 2008) |
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