The DVD Report #74: September 30, 2008
Since the introduction of the high-end of high definition, now the exclusive purview of Blu-ray, we have seen films that already looked and sounded great on standard DVD look even better in the new format. Now, we are seeing films that were in dire need of restoration being restored for release in the new format with concurrent releases in standard DVD for those who have not yet made the upgrade. The worm has turned, as they say. There is no better representation of this than The Godfather - The Coppola Restoration. When Dreamworks, the company co-founded by Steven Spielberg, became part of Paramount, Francis Ford Coppola approached Spielberg about looking into the restoration of The Godfather , a film whose negative had been run through the sprockets so many times to produce release prints in the early 1970s that no one, not even Coppola himself, could remember how vibrantly the film originally looked. Paramount had been one of the top studios from the 1930s through the early 1960s, but by the time it was purchased by conglomerate Gulf and Western in 1969, it had become the least relevant of the then-eight major studios in Hollywood. Questions were raised as to whether it would even continue to produce films for much longer. Somehow Production Chief Bob Evans was able to convince the corporate giant to allow him to continue with his already planned projects, most importantly: Love Story and The Godfather. Both Love Story and The Godfather were commissioned by Evans and company to be written as novels and then made into films for his studio. Love Story, released in December 1970, was the first film to be released while it was still a number one best seller. It became a smash hit and single-handedly established Paramount as the hottest studio in town. Evans was allowed to go forward with other projects including The Godfather with the proviso that it be made as cheaply as possible by having the story updated from the 1940s to the then-present and filmed on location in Kansas City rather than New York. By this time, however, numerous directors including Richard Brooks and Elia Kazan had turned down the project. Francis Ford Coppola, who had made one of Paramount's biggest recent flops, 1968's Finian's Rainbow, agreed to make the film under certain conditions. He had read the novel and hated it. Even more, he hated the depiction of Italian-Americans in gangster movies and TV shows from Scarface to The Untouchables. He wanted to change the focus of the story from its emphasis on crime to a family saga in which the family business just happened to be crime, making it into a metaphor for American capitalism. He also insisted that the film be set in the 1940s and filmed in New York, the only two aspects of the novel he really liked. Paramount caved in and Coppola co-wrote the screenplay with the book's author, Mario Puzo. Coppola's biggest hurdle was with the casting. Paramount objected to all of his choices, particularly Marlon Brando, whose career had long been in decline and short, scrappy Al Pacino. The character of Michael, which Pacino was to play, was written with Robert Redford in mind, and Paramount really wanted Redford to play the part. They relented, however, after seeing both actors' screen tests - yes, the legendary Brando had to be tested just like any other actor for the role of Mafia chief Don Corleone. Paramount kept a close watch on the filming. Seeing the rushes, they were dismayed by the look and pacing of the film, and had secretly negotiated with a more action-oriented director to take over filming. That was until Coppola showed them the pivotal restaurant assassination scene in which Pacino's character proves he has the stuff to be the next Godfather. The director waiting in the wings was let go and Coppola was allowed to continue making the film. The film was so highly publicized that by the time it was completed Paramount knew they had a phenomenon on their hands and a sequel was planned. When it was released in March 1972, it had become the most highly anticipated film since Gone with the Wind. Reviews were ecstatic and lines went around the corner at theatres everywhere. Those long, sustained lines signifying intense interest in the film were what forced the studio to strike many more prints of the film than had been intended, causing early deterioration of the film, which has now been digitally corrected. The restorers sought the advice not only of Coppola, but also of his legendary cinematographer Gordon Willis and others. The results are stunning, no more so than in that fabled restaurant assassination scene where you can now see that Pacino's acting is all in the eyes. The film went into the Oscar race with 11 Oscar nominations, which was reduced to 10 when it was discovered that Nino Rota had used elements of one of his own previous scores in composing the film's main themes. It went on to win 3 Oscars for Best Picture, Actor (Brando) and Screenplay, losing most of its nods to the year's other phenomenon Cabaret. Coppola's second film in his eventual trilogy, The Godfather Part II, opened in December 1974. Structured to contrast the life of the new Godfather (Pacino's character) with that of his father at the same age, the film went back and forth numerous times before finally settling in the 1950s for most of its screen time. Robert De Niro, speaking almost entirely in Italian, starred as the young Vito Corelone, the character played by Marlon Brando in the original. Though in better condition than the original, it too had to be restored. The results are once again, stunning. Although passed over in the early awards, the New York Film Critics Circle, the Golden Globes and others, it went on to win 11 Oscar nominations and took home 6, including Best Picture, Supporting Actor (De Niro) and Director. It became the first sequel to win an Oscar and Brando and De Niro became the first, and so far only, actors to win for playing the same character in two different films. It would be another sixteen years before the long-anticipated third film, The Godfather Part III, would make it to the big screen. Released in December 1990 to mixed reviews, the film was nevertheless nominated for 7 Oscars, though it didn't win any. Pacino, who was once again the best thing about the film, failed to pick up his third nomination for playing Michael Corleone, though Andy Garcia did receive one for playing his nephew, Vincent Mancini. For years there was speculation that there would be a fourth Godfather featuring Garcia's character, but as the years go by and the films pass further into myth, that seems very unlikely. The title family of TV's The Sopranos, which included myriad quotes from the Godfather films, has now surpassed the Corleones as the Italian-American crime family to whom most filmgoers and TV watchers relate. The Godfather Part III did not require restoration, but has been digitally re-mastered for Blu-ray and the results are also stunning. The set is also available on standard DVD. Crooked cops, murder and mayhem in the L.A. and Hollywood of the early 1950s is the background for Curtis Hanson's 1997 masterpiece L.A. Confidential from the novel by James Ellroy. Having been one of the first films to be released on standard DVD ten years ago, it, too, was an obvious candidate for a Blu-ray upgrade and has gotten one from Warner Bros. Budget constraints kept the film from being cast with box office names and therein lies the film's strength with the masterful casting of Australians Guy Pearce and Russell Crowe as the male leads, and the thought-she-had-retired Kim Basinger as the female lead, along with a stellar supporting cast including Kevin Spacey, Danny DeVito, James Cromwell, David Strathairn, Ron Rifkin, Graham Beckel, Jim Metzler and Simon Baker. The film won 70 international awards including Oscars for its screenplay and Basinger's performance as a Veronica Lake lookalike hooker. It was nominated for another 7 Oscars, but lost them all of them to the juggernaut that was Titanic. Loads of extras include several making-of documentaries and the pilot for a TV series shot in 2000 and aired in 2003. Kiefer Sutherland had the lead in the Kevin Spacey role, with Josh Hopkins in the Russell Crowe role, David Conrad in the Guy Pearce role, Taylor Pruitt Vance in the Danny DeVito role, Melissa George in the Kim Basinger role, Tom Nowicki in the James Cromwell role, and Eric Roberts in the David Strathairn role. It was nowhere near as compelling as the film. L.A. Confidential has also been reissued on standard DVD. Also newly released on Blu-ray and standard DVD is the 25th Anniversary Edition of Risky Business, the film for which Tom Cruise won the first of six Golden Globes to date. The film has a number of fun set pieces, not the least of which is the classic scene featuring Cruise dancing in his underwear to Bob Seger's recording of Old Time Rock & Roll. Cruise is so affable as the wayward teen that the moral repugnance of the film defies scrutiny. He plays a high school kid who, after having sex with a hooker, becomes her pimp and tangles with the gangsters who control her. Meanwhile, he's obsessed with the need to get into the right college and finding a replacement for his mother's Faberge egg, broken in a free-for-all party while she was away. The film's emphasis on consumerism set the standard for just about every Hollywood comedy since in which material goods have become the Holy Grail for movie characters in search of what is missing in their lives. For affirmation as to how little we have progressed in Hollywood comedies since, look no further than Sex and the City, the recent hit movie continuation of the long-running TV series, also out now on Blu-ray and standard DVD. Though I was never a habitual viewer of the TV series, I did manage to watch several episodes over the years, any one of which had more character development in its thirty minute running time than the film has in all of its two hours and thirty minutes. The film is an ode to consumerism and greed. All connected with should be ashamed of it. There are no redeeming qualities about the film whatsoever. Sarah Jessica Parker, Kim Cattrall and Cynthia Nixon all dump their lovers for no apparent reason other than for their characters to have something to do other than eat and shop. Kristin Davis has diarrhea, a perfect metaphor for the film. Candice Bergen gets star billing for a one-scene nothing performance, and recent Oscar winner Jennifer Hudson is totally wasted as Parker's assistant. Be smarter than them, don't waste your time. -Peter J. Patrick (September 30, 2008) |
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The DVD Report #73: September 23, 2008
Criterion continues to release near-perfect restorations of classic films. Three new releases add handsomely to their reputation. Director Michael Powell in seeing The Small Back Room at a Lincoln Center retrospective in 1991 found the then-more-than-forty-year-old film to be a cold movie. Although the film was well received by the British critics in 1949 (it didn't open in the U.S. until 1952), it was not a success at the box office. The public perceived it to be a war movie and war movies were out at the time. Those who saw it as a love story couldn't understand why a woman as intelligent as the one played by Kathleen Byron would stay with such as a whiner as the character played by David Farrar for most of the film. Powell agreed with this in hindsight, saying that he should have lightened Farrar's character up, that the problem was that he tried too hard to adhere to the original novel. I think the film is a nice discovery. It's closer to A Matter of Life and Death (Stairway to Heaven) aka Stairway to Heaven in tone than any other Powell/Pressburger film. There's real suspense in the 17-minute bomb-defusing segment near the end. There's the treatment of alcoholism as a disease, though Farrar sobers up a bit too quickly to be totally realistic. It even has a dream sequence that evokes The Lost Weekend, though it was actually stolen from Hitchcock. Powell wanted a sequence like the one Salvador Dali designed for Spellbound. The film is a real eye opener in its casual treatment of sex. Though you could no more show an unmarried couple living together in British films than you could in Hollywood films of the era, Powell gets around it by having Byron living "across the hall" from Farrar though it's clear from the way the two move in and out of each other's apartments so frequently that they are more than neighbors who just happen to work together. Finally there's the cast, a rather strong one for such a "little" film. It's a treat to see Farrar and Byron in roles so different from the ones they played in Black Narcissus just two years earlier. The supporting cast is a veritable who's who of the British film industry from the 30s (Leslie Banks, Anthony Bushell) and includes actors still relevant in the 50s and 60s (Jack Hawkins, Robert Morley, Cyril Cusack) as well as ones still around today (Michael Gough). All of them, and a few others, including Renee Asherson, blend in extremely well, but it's Farrar and Byron's show. My only complaint is that they didn't interview Byron, who is still acting in her 80s, for the one of the DVD extras. It seems silly that the film version of a play that had been performed on stage for more than fifty years would run afoul of the censors in 1951, but that's exactly what happened with Max Ophuls' La Ronde, released in 1950 in France. It wasn't until 1954 that the film was allowed to be shown in New York. In the meantime it had been released in Los Angeles in 1951 without a hitch, and was in fact nominated for 2 Oscars. Anton Walbrook is the on-screen narrator who glides us through 12 hook-ups involving 11 participants, starting with the prostitute (Simone Signoret) and the soldier (Serge Reggiani), then going to the soldier and the maid (Simone Simon), the maid and a young gentleman (Daniel Gelin), the young gentleman and an older married woman (Danielle Darrieux), the woman and her husband (Fernand Gravey), the husband and a young girl (Odette Joyeux), the young girl and a poet (Jean-Louis Barrault), the poet and an actress (Isa Miranda), the actress and a count (Gerard Philipe) and the count bringing us full circle with Signoret's prostitute. It's very wry and very charming, with all of the actors given a chance to shine against a gorgeous backdrop of 1900 Vienna. The censors didn't try to stop Ophuls next film, his masterpiece, and according to many, including noted critic, Andrew Sarris, the greatest film ever made. The lushly romantic The Earrigng of Madame de... was released in France in 1953 and the U.S. in 1954. Reuniting the stars of 1936's Mayerling, Charles Boyer and Danielle Darrieux, and adding Vittorio De Sica to form its great triangle of aging lovers, it is at once luxuriantly romantic and bittersweet with a heartbreaking, but profound ending. The story itself is a simple one, involving the pawn of a rich woman's earrings and the efforts of her husband to retrieve them at a very dear cost. Extras include an introduction by Paul Thomas Anderson (There Will Be Blood), an essay by Molly Haskell (Mrs. Andrew Sarris), and a re-printing of the novella by Louise De Vilmorin, the film's source material. Coming back down to earth from the headiness of Ophuls, Ira Sachs' Married Life (2007) comes as a nice surprise. It proves to be a witty satire of late 1940s mores about a man who plans to murder his wife rather than have her suffer the indignities of his having left her for a younger woman. You know you're in for a treat when the man is played by Chris Cooper, the wife by Patricia Clarkson and the young mistress by Rachel McAdams with Pierce Brosnan hanging around as the best friend and David Wenham popping up as younger man with designs on the wife. It's all very droll and the period detail, complete with vintage cars, is perfect. Less compelling, but worth a look, is Helen Hunt's Then She Found Me, written, produced and directed by the actress who also stars as a middle-aged schoolteacher reeling from her brief marriage to a mama's boy, played by Matthew Broderick. Colin Firth is the divorced guy with two kids she then falls for, but the meat of the film is about her relationship with the mother who abandoned her as a baby and now wants to be part of her life. She's played by Bette Midler in a nicely controlled performance in which she's less frantic than usual but still has her way with a quip or two or three or four. A tedious romantic comedy of the sort you wish they'd stop making, Paul Weiland's Made of Honor gives away its entire plot in the title. It's a flat and humorless mess about a philanderer and his true love who are best friends but don't realize they're in love until she becomes engaged to another man, a Scottish duke, no less. The film doesn't come alive until its last third set in Scotland, but at least there's that. Patrick Dempsey sleepwalks through the whole thing and Michelle Monaghan doesn't have much to do but look pretty. Michael McKidd, as the other man, outclasses them by a mile. Sony has released the first batch of what it calls Martini Movies. I'm not sure what the message is here - whether it's that these films are better served with a drink or what, but each one of them includes a recipe for a particular type of Martini. Hailed as Rita Hayworth's return to films after her headline marriage to Ali Khan, Vincent Sherman's1952 film Affair in Trinidad is a nifty thriller set in the Caribbean that reunites the volatile redhead with her Gilda co-star Glenn Ford as her brother-in-law investigating her husband's murder. She sings (dubbed, of course), dances and romances as only Hayworth could in one of her best performances. Included is the recipe for the Tropical Martini. Ripped from the headline story of corruption in New York's garment industry,Sherman's 1957 film The Garment Jungle has the tone and pulse of the Oscar-winning On the Waterfront. It even has that film's Oscar nominated co-star Lee J. Cobb again battling the unions. Alas, Kerwin Mathews, in the lead as Cobb's son, is no Marlon Brando, but he does well enough. Robert Loggia also stars. Included is the recipe for the Manhattan Martini. One of the best remembered caper films of the 70s, Sidney Lumet's 1971 film The Anderson Tapes features Sean Connery in one of his first post-Bond roles as the mastermind of a planned jewel heist and a recently released jailbird. His accomplices include Dyan Cannon, Christopher Walken, Martin Balsam and Alan King, while Ralph Meeker is a cop and Margaret Hamilton one of the victims of the high rise apartment building being robbed. Included is the recipe for (what else!) the Shaken Martini. Another well remembered caper film from the same year, Richard Brooks' Dollars, benefits immensely from the location filming in Hamburg, Germany and the first pairing of screen legends Warren Beatty and Goldie Hawn. Breezily acted by the two stars who are ably assisted by Gert Frobe, Robert Webber and Scott Brady, the jaunty bank heist comedy goes off without a hitch - well, almost. Included is the recipe for the Green Martini. Often credited with bringing a gritty realism to police procedurals that formed the foundation for now decades of TV series, Richard Fleischer's 1972 film The New Centurians stars George C. Scott as the veteran cop and Stacy Keach as his rookie partner. The strong supporting cast includes Jane Alexander (as Keach's wife), Scott Wilson, Rosalind Cash, Erik Estrada, Clifton James and Isabel Sanford. Included is the recipe for the Mounted Cop Martini. Forthcoming Martini Movie releases include Our Man in Havana (the Cuban Martini?) and I Never Sang for My Father (the Old Man's Martini?) Based on a true story, the compelling 1987 TV movie Billionaire Boys Club, directed by Marvin J. Chomsky, stars Judd Nelson as a young financial wiz who is on trial for the murder of associate Ron Silver. Told in flashback, the film provides meaty supporting roles for a slew of then-rising stars including Fredric Lehne, Brian McNamara, John Stockwell, Barry Tubb, Stan Shaw, Raphael Sbarge, Jill Schoelen and Gail O'Grady. Veterans James Sloyan, Dale Dye, Alan Fudge and Ben Piazza are also featured. The onslaught of last season's TV series being released on DVD continues unabated. Featuring an all-star cast, Dirty Sexy Money gives us Peter Krause as a young lawyer bribed with $10 million a year to provide to various charities of his choosing who replaces his late father as counsel to New York's wealthiest dysfunctional family. Family members include Donald Sutherland as the patriarch, Jill Clayburgh as the matriarch, William Baldwin as the State's attorney general with a transsexual mistress on the side, Natalie Zea as a much married divorcee, Glenn Fitzgerald as an Episcopal priest with an illegitimate son, and Seth Gabel as the family's juiced up, not very bright, young rebel. Blair Underwood, Candis Cayne and Shawn Michael Patrick are among the non-family members whose stories intertwine with the zany Darling clan. They don't come any more whimsical than Pushing Daisies, the first season of which is now available. It's way too cutesy-poo for me, but it certainly does have its fans including the Television Academy which gave it 12 Emmy nominations. Lee Pace stars as a pie maker who has the ability to bring dead things, including people, back to life for one minute. Any longer than that and something or someone else must die in their place. Once he touches them a second time, they die for good. Consequently he is unable to touch either his dog or his girlfriend, both of whom he has brought back from the dead. My kind of whimsy leans more to Eli Stone in which Jonny Lee Miller plays a lawyer with a brain aneurism whose affliction causes him to take on cases that place morality above monetary gain. When I wrote about this series a few weeks ago, I mistakenly said it only lasted one season. Thankfully, I was wrong. It's back for a second one with the same wonderful cast including Natasha Henstridge, Victor Garber and Loretta Devine, none of whom are afraid of bursting into song at the slightest provocation. The special effects are first rate, including the collapse of San Francisco's Golden Gate Bridge in the Season's penultimate last episode. Yes, Eli 's back,and I'll be back next week with reviews of new Blu-ray titles including The Godfather - The Coppola Resoration and L.A. Confidential. -Peter J. Patrick (September 23, 2008) |
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The DVD Report #72: September 16, 2008
"A classic movie adventure - breathtakingly reborn via pioneering technology - in 2 stunning new versions never before possible" is the blurb on the Blu-ray packaging of How the West Was Won and for once the hyperbole is accurate. The two-disc set features both the widescreen version transfer tailored to home screens which is also available in standard DVD while the exclusive-to-Blue-ray second disc offers the "special smilebox process transfer replicating the Cinerama wraparound theatrical experience". This is the version to see. The center of the screen in this version is the same somewhat truncated size as the center of the widescreen transfer but the left and right sides of the screen expand to full screen size revealing details you never knew were there. The wraparound aspect of the Cinerama process relied on audience members' peripheral vision emulating the you-are-there aspect of the viewing experience. While no home viewing system yet devised can duplicate the process, this comes as close as anything you're likely to see. The film itself is an eye-popping spectacle taking us from the days of danger-filled commerce on the Erie Canal to the building of the railroads and beyond. Essentially following the travails of one family, it begins with Karl Malden and Agnes Moorehead and their daughters Debbie Reynolds and Carroll Baker who pair up with Gregory Peck and James Stewart, respectively. Reynolds and George Peppard as Baker and Stewart's son are featured more prominently than any other players, who include an early 1960s Who's Who of movie stars. Among them are John Wayne, Henry Fonda, Robert Preston, Richard Widmark and narrator Spencer Tracy. The film is the work of three directors, Henry Hathaway, who handled most the filming; John Ford, who shot the Civil War sequences; and George Marshall, who shot the railroad sequences. Hathaway later revealed that he had re-shot most of Marshall's work. Extras include Cinerama Adventure, a full-length documentary on the three-screen process used fittingly enough to showcase you-are-there style documentaries in the 1950s and early 1960s. How the West Was Won was the first, and only, narrative film made in the three camera-three screen process. Later films such as 2001: A Space Odyssey were filmed in a widescreen process that bore the Cinerama name but were not filmed with three cameras for three screen projection. Warner Bros. is also releasing another 1960s classic in Blu-ray and improved standard DVD editions today. One of Paul Newman's biggest hits, as well as one of his most acclaimed films, 1967's Cool Hand Luke was previously available in a rather weak early DVD transfer. It has now been restored to its original splendor befitting the only one of Newman's three Oscar-nominated anti-establishment titled heroes of the 1960s whose story was shot in color. Set in the Deep South, the film about life on a chain gang was actually shot in Stockton, California which, on a hot summer's day, can be as stifling as any Southern locale. While Newman delivers one of his best performances, the film is also noteworthy for at least two of its supporting performances, those of George Kennedy, who won an Oscar as a fellow prisoner; and Strother Martin, as the head jailer who gets to utter the film's famous catch phrase, "what we have here is a failure to communicate." Extras include commentary from Newman biographer Eric Lax and a making-of documentary featuring new interviews with, among others, director Stuart Rosenberg and original author Donn Pearce. Warner Bros. is also releasing a number of classic musicals in standard DVD. Originally released by MGM in the early days of DVD, Warner Bros.' subsequent reissues of An American in Paris and Gigi were the same original transfers in new packaging. Both films have long been in need of upgrading. There are still those who are shocked to learn that An American in Paris beat both A Streetcar Named Desire and A Place in the Sun to win the 1951 Oscar for Best Picture. While those other films remain high on many people's lists of the best films ever made, An American in Paris, now as then, is a matter of taste. Featuring the glorious music of George Gershwin, the phenomenal dancing of Gene Kelly and Leslie Caron, and the most gorgeous recreation of Paris any soundstage has ever given us, the story about a painter is a slight one and the film really has no ending. There's that long ballet to the title number and a fadeout without dialogue. See it for the music, the dancing and the scenery, not the story. Extras include a making-of documentary featuring interviews with Caron and co-star Nina Foch. More satisfying as a story, Gigi was nominated for, and won, 9 Oscars including Best Picture of 1958. The last of MGM's major musicals, a musical version of Colette's novella about a young Parisian girl raised to be a courtesan had been a dream project of producer Arthur Freed ever since he saw the original French film version in 1951. Censorship issues and a Broadway play from the original source material starring Audrey Hepburn further delayed the project. Finally, after securing the services of Lerner and Loewe and convincing the MGM brass that the film would be the My Fair Lady of the screen, he was given a green light. With an impeccable cast led by Leslie Caron, Maurice Chevalier, Louis Jourdan and Hermione Gingold, directed by Freed favorite Vincente Minnelli, decked out in period costumes by Cecil Beaton, and filmed in actual Parisian locations, the result was the crowning achievement of both Freed's unit and Minnelli's career. Extras include a making-of documentary in which Caron gives her opinion of her director, her co-stars and her own performance. It also includes the original 1948 French film version of Gigi. Of lesser interest, is Warner Bros.' The Busby Berkeley Collection - Volume 2. While the Berkeley musicals are always fun, this collection doesn't feature anything close to the heights achieved by the films in the first collection, which included 42nd Streetand Gold Diggers of 1933, but it does have its compensations. Featured in the new collection are Gold Diggers of 1937, Gold Diggers in Paris, Hollywood Hotel and Vasity Show. Co-directed by Lloyd Bacon and Berkeley, Gold Diggers of 1937 is at its comedic best poking fun at the insurance business, and goes out with a bang musically with its final production number, "All's Fair in Love and War" led by the great Joan Blondell. There's terrific singing, too, by Dick Powell and superb clowning by Glenda Farrell, Victor Moore and Lee Dixon, but by the time the film was released in December 1936, gold diggers stories were passé and there was really nothing in it to cause a revival of the sub-genre. Moving the chorines to Paris and advertising its musical numbers as "songs your mother never taught you" couldn't save 1938's Gold Diggers in Paris, directed by Roy Enright, musical direction by Berkeley, and the sub-genre gasped its last breath. Rudy Vallee and Rosemary Lane headed a rather undistinguished cast. Of more lasting repute is 1937's Hollywood Hotel directed by Berkeley and featuring one truly great song, Johnny Mercer and Richard Whiting's immortal "Hooray for Hollywood". Unfortunately that's about all there is to recommend in the film which more or less wastes the talents of Dick Powell, Rosemary Lane, Lola Lane, Glenda Farrell and even Ronald Reagan in a bit part. Dick Powell and Rosemary Lane return, this time accompanied by Rosemary's other sister Priscilla, in the "college kids putting on a show" musical Vasity Show, directed by William Keighley and with dance direction by Berkeley. If nothing else, it shows why Warner Bros., with only sporadic returns to the genre, threw in the towel on movie musicals until the 1950s. A genre that endures to this day is the murder mystery series. The grand-daddy of them all, Charlie Chan, is back in Fox's Charlie Chan - Volume 5, featuring the last seven titles in the Fox series that began in 1929 and, after shifting to Monogram in 1942, stayed around until 1949. With the release of Charlie Chan's Murder Cruise, Charlie Chan in Panama, Murder Over New York, Charlie Chan in the Wax Museum, Dead Men Tell, Charlie Chan in Rio and Castle in the Desert, twenty-one of the thirty-two extant Chan titles are now available on studio re-mastered DVDs. Included in that count are six Monogram titles previously released by MGM. All forty-two titles are available on sub-par public domain copies. A remake of the lost 1931 Warner Oland film, Charlie Chan Carries On, 1940's Charlie Chan's Murder Cruise is one of the most delightful in the series featuring Sidney Toler as Chan, Victor Sen Young as his number two son Jimmy, and a cast of suspects that includes Lionel Atwill, Leo G. Carroll, Charles Middleton, Marjorie Weaver, Robert Lowery and Cora Witherspoon. The pacing here is tighter than in the original, in which Chan is not brought into the action until halfway through the film. Here he is brought into the case from the beginning. As with other Toler films in the series, the tone is lighter than those of the Oland era. It was directed by Eugene Forde. Another remake, albeit one of a non-Chan film: 1934's Marie Galante, 1940's Charlie Chan in Panama was originally planned as a Mr. Moto film but with American sympathies turning against Japan in the wake of its attack on China, it was quickly reassigned as a Chan film which explains why Charlie is undercover as someone other than himself for much of the film. It was also one of the first films in which Nazi spies are the villains. Sidney Toler and Victor Sen Young again star with Jean Rogers, Kane Richmond, Lionel Atwill (as a different character than the one he played in Murder Cruise) and Mary Nash in the same year she played Katharine Hepburn's mother in The Philadelphia Story. It was directed by Norman Foster. In yet another pre-war sabotage film, 1940's Murder Over New York, Charlie investigates a murder committed to cover up a Nazi plot to steal aircraft plans. Sidney Toler and Victor Sen Young are back as Chan and Jimmy, and the cast of suspects includes such familiar-to-Chan faces as Marjorie Weaver, Robert Lowery and Kane Richmond, each as different characters than they played in the year's previous two Chan films. Directed by Harry Lachman, this was the first Chan film in many years in which the detective's name was not part of the title. In the fourth Chan film released in 1940, a life-size wax dummy of Toler's Charlie gets considerable screen time. Charlie Chan in the Wax Museum revolves around murders in a museum dedicated to crime. In addition to Charlie, there are wax dummies of Jack the Ripper, Bluebeard the Pirate and other nefarious characters. Victor Sen Young is back as Jimmy, and Margeurite Chapman and Marc Lawrence are among the suspects. It was directed by Lynn Shores in the same year he directed the action sequences (uncredited) in The Mark of Zorro. Set aboard an old sailing ship, 1941's Dead Men Tell revolves around the murder of a nice old lady played by Ethel Griffies who is scared to death by a ghost. Charlie and Jimmy investigate others aboard the ship including her family members. Sidney Toler and Victor Sen Young continue as Charlie and Jimmy and the suspects include Sheila Ryan, Robert Weldon, Jay Aldredge and George Reeves. In real life, Griffies, who was in her sixties, lived to be over 100, acting until very nearly the end, and delighting TV audiences as a frequent guest on The Merv Griffin Show. Harry Lachman directed. A remake of another Oland Chan, 1931's The Black Camel, 1941's Charlie Chan in Rio revolves around the murder of a woman with a secret past. Sidney Toler's Chan dominates as always, but Victor Sen Young's Jimmy is less prominent in this one in which supporting players Cobina Wright Jr., Mary Beth Hughes, Kay Linaker, Ted North, Victor Jory and Harold Huber carry most of the plot. New York socialite Wright was the Paris Hilton of her day, a model who made only a handful of films. Her more famous mother, Cobina Wright Sr. was a society columnist. Harry Lachman directed. By the time of 1942's Castle in the Desert, Fox was tiring of the Chan series and it would prove to be their last. Toler would be back when the series continued at Monogram two years later with Benson Fong as his number three son, but no longer would the Chan films be given the high production values they were at Fox. The delightful Ethel Griffies is back as a different character, of course, than the one who was murdered in Dead Men Tell, and Arleen Whelan, Richard Derr, Douglass Dumbrille, Henry Daniell and Steven Geray are also in the cast along with Toler and Sen Young. The plot revolves around mystery poisonings at a castle in the middle of the Mojave Desert. It was directed by Harry Lachman. I'll be back next week with reviews of the Criterion editions of The Small Back Room, La Ronde, The Earrigng of Madame de. and other DVDs. -Peter J. Patrick (September 16, 2008) |
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The DVD Report #71: September 9, 2008
Another week and still no truly outstanding new films on DVD, but there are some that will at least keep you entertained in the waning days of summer. Keanu Reeves is at his stoic best in action director David Ayer's Street Kings. Though Reeves' delivery can sometimes be construed as sleepwalking, his cool reserve here is one of the best things in this otherwise standard good cop vs. dirty cops film. He and the equally reserved Chris Evans are not only the moral centers of the film but are the only two actors in it who don't go over the top in their performances. The same can't be said for Oscar winner Forest Whitaker, whose tics give him away long before the script does; Jay Mohr whose supposedly ambivalent character is repulsive from the beginning; or Hugh Laurie who seems to be playing House as an internal affairs cop. The rest of the cast, including Cedric the Entertainer, isn't given much to do. Extremely topical, documentary filmmaker John Jeffcoat's first dramatic feature Outsourced was a hit at film festivals wherever it played but had only limited theatrical release late last year. The film, about a mid-level manager who is dispatched to India to train his replacement when his Seattle call center is outsourced to that country, is both a cultural clash comedy and a wry look at the state of corporate America. Josh Hamilton, in a rare lead role, is excellent as the duck out of water in his new environment. In his 30s, he's considered young and carefree back home, old enough to be a grandfather in the Bombay suburbs. The ending, which you may or may not see coming, is sad and funny at the same time, and a strong indictment of the way things currently are. You may be surprised to see Seann William Scott act like someone his own age for the first time on screen in writer-director Steve Conrad's low-key comedy The Promotion, but the screen's perennial teenager acquits himself quite nicely. Not a lot happens in this slice-of-life will-he-or-won't-he film, but Scott makes you care about his character, an assistant manager at a grocery store with an opportunity to become manager of a new store in town. The premise seems a bit old fashioned in these days of rapid career changes, but Scott and John C. Reilly, as his chief opponent for the job, keep up the suspense nicely. The cast includes Jenna Fischer, Gil Bellows and a shamefully wasted Lili Taylor as Reilly's Scottish wife. It's a widely held belief that all actors want to direct, though few get the opportunity. A good example of why not every actor should is Anthony Hopkins' Slipstream, a dismal puzzle of a film about a writer whose characters intrude on his real life and whose real life intrudes on his characters'. Ostensibly a film in the manner of David Lynch, but without the style and certainly without the substance, it features newsreel images of Adolph Hitler and Richard Nixon, two real life characters Hopkins once played, as well as John Turturo, Christian Slater, Fionnula Flanagan, Kevin McCarthy and others. I recommend it only as a sure cure for insomnia. Much more entertaining is the HBO movie Bernard and Doris, directed by character actor Bob Balaban. Balaban may not be as famous an actor as Hopkins but he is a far better director and has an Emmy nomination to prove it, as do his stars Susan Sarandon and Ralph Fiennes as Doris Duke and the butler she left in charge of her $1.3 billion fortune. Sarandon convincingly plays "the richest girl in the world" from her late seventies to her early eighties without old age makeup and Fiennes affects a haunting image of the butler who died of alcoholism three years after Doris. James Rebhorn heads the supporting cast as Duke's skeptical lawyer. The old Hollywood warhorse about childhood friends who grow up to find themselves on opposite sides of the law is given another spin in 1958's Never Love a Stranger directed by Emmy winning TV director Robert Stevens (Alfred Hitchcock Presents) from an early novel by Harold Robbins. It is of interest today mainly because of the casting of Steve McQueen in his first major role as the noble District Attorney. John Drew Barrymore, whose father John and daughter Drew you are probably more familiar with, has the more colorful role of the gangster. Lita Milan, who shortly thereafter married the son of a Dominican Republic dictator and went into exile in Spain, is their co-star. Universal, and, to a lesser extent, MGM, were the studios that were most successful at making horror films in Hollywood's Golden Age of the 1930s and 40s. That doesn't stop Fox from releasing its own series of so-called horror films. Though more gothic thrillers than horror films, Fox's first release in the genre was so successful it has now spawned a second called Fox Horror Classics Vol. 2. True to form, two of the three films in the set are not really horror films. The big screen version of famed children's radio series, 1932's Chandu the Magician, was co-directed by Marcel Darvel and William Cameron Menzies. It starred Edmund Lowe as the mystical magician and Bela Lugosi, straight from playing Dracula, as an evil madman who wants to control the world. The film spawned two sequels in which Lugosi, interestingly, was cast as the magician hero. Leading lady Irene Ware had been Miss United States in 1926 when she was just 16 years old. The directorial debut of screenwriter Joseph L. Mankiewicz, 1946's Dragonwyck, starred Gene Tierney as a young governess who falls in love with the lord of the manor, played by Vincent Price in one of his early villain roles. A superb supporting cast, including Glenn Langan, Walter Huston, Anne Revere, Spring Byington, Connie Marshall, and Harry Morgan, surrounds them. But it is the tug of war between Tierney and Price that holds this gothic thriller together. The one real horror film in the collection, actually Fox's first horror film, Dr. Renault's Secret, was produced in 1942 with character actor J. Carrol Naish in a rare lead as a half-man, half-ape with a blood lust. George Zucco is the evil scientist who controls Naish's character. Lynne Roberts is Zucco's innocent daughter and John Sheppard is the young doctor who loves her. It was directed by Harry Lachman and produced by Sol Wurtzel, the man who discovered both Rita Hayworth and Marilyn Monroe. A genuine horror classic, 1988's Child's Play spawned a long-running franchise with Chucky the killer doll featured in four sequels and a brand new remake, but the original, directed by Tom Holand, remains as fresh and engaging as it ever was. Catherine Hicks is the mother of the six-year-old boy who buys him a life-size doll for his birthday unaware that it has been possessed by the soul of executed murderer Brad Dourif. Chris Sarandon is the slow-to-respond detective, and a terrific Alex Vincent is the kid. The brand new 20th Anniversary Edition features commentary by Hicks and Vincent as well as two other separate commentaries, one by writer Don Mancini and producer David Kirschner, and a scene-specific one by Chucky himself. Major TV series continue to release prior season compilations in order to draw attention to their coming seasons. This week there are three high profile releases. One of the most compelling series of recent years has been Medium, based on the life of Phoenix, Arizona psychic Allison Dubois. This season is more compelling than ever as Allison and her husband Joe, both having lost their jobs at the end of Season 3, struggle to raise their family and pay the mortgage while looking for new jobs. Having been held up to public scorn at the end of that season, Allison, played by Emmy winner Patricia Arquette, must now overcome her own notoriety in addition to the skepticism that was always there, in solving the most heinous of crimes. She has a new ally in private investigator Cynthia Keener played by Oscar winner Anjelica Huston who is nominated for an Emmy for her seven guest appearances over the course of the season. Less compelling is Grey's Anatomy - Season 4, a series that in the past countered its soap opera situations with life and death matters that drew you in even when the soap opera elements let you down. Last year's Emmy winner Katherine Heigl got a lot of heat for taking herself out of this year's Emmy race saying her story lines didn't warrant consideration. She was right, but instead of being hailed for her honesty, the always cynical pundits berated her for trying to upset the show's producers to the point where they would tear up her contract so she could make more high profile theatrical films. Heigl wasn't the only one let down by the scripts, the abbreviated season did no favors for Ellen Pompeo, Sandra Oh, Patrick Dempsey, or any of the other cast members, either. Coming off a fabulous first year, the sophomore season of Ugly Betty was bound to be a letdown. Whereas the first season mixed pathos with its irreverent comedy, the second season placed its emphasis on the funny bone with mixed results. Still, America Ferrara's winsome Betty Suarez and Vanessa Williams' catty troublemaking Wilhelmina Slater remain two of the freshest characters on television. Each earned Emmy nominations again this year, though it's doubtful either will win. Tony Plana, Ana Ortiz and Mark Indelicato as Betty's family members; Eric Mabius, Rebecca Romijn, and Judith Light as her boss and his family; Michael Urie as Wilhelmina's assistant; and Christopher Gorham and Freddy Rodriguez as Betty's love interests, are good, too. Take you pick and pop one of these DVDs in your player this week. -Peter J. Patrick (September 9, 2008) |
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The DVD Report #70: September 2, 2008
With the pickings remaining slim in DVD releases of exciting new movies, one would think this would be the ideal time for DVD distributors to fill the gap with releases of from their extensive catalogues of classic films. Alas, that isn't the case, but there are a few gems being released here and there. This was supposed to be the week that Fox finally released Elia Kazan's Boomerang! The superb 1947 film was supposed to be part of the DVD release of films in its film noir line more than two years ago, but rights issues forced the DVD to be stopped dead in its tracks after a few release copies were sent to sellers. Now the same thing has happened all over again. If you can find it, grab it before it goes on sale on e-Bay at some ridiculous price. The film, a true life account of the murder of an Episcopal priest, was, and is, a prime example of the genre centering on the capture, interrogation and prosecution of an innocent man - a splendid precursor to today's police procedurals done in enormous style. Dana Andrews had one of his best roles as the prosecutor torn between his ambitions, loyalties and morals and he was supported by a superb cast that included Jane Wyatt as his wife, Lee J. Cobb as the local police chief, and Arthur Kennedy as the wrong man in the wrong place at the wrong time. Cara Williams, Sam Levene, Robert Keith, Taylor Holmes, and future Oscar winners Karl Malden and Ed Begley also provide memorable turns. The other two films in the planned release, 1942's Moontide and 1948's Road House, are actually being released today. The casting is what makes Archie Mayo's Moontide memorable. The moody, expressionistic film about beachcombers stars the great French actor Jean Gabin, in his only Hollywood film, opposite Ida Lupino. Cast as a longshoreman who falls in love with suicidal Lupino, the "French Spencer Tracy", in his first film in five years, proved to be just as charismatic in English as he was in French. Thomas Mitchell, in a rare villain role, and Claude Rains co-star in the film started by legendary director Fritz Lang who was fired and replaced by Mayo. Extras include an excellent documentary on the making of the troubled film. Lupino is back and both Cornel Wilde and Richard Widmark want her in Jean Nuglesco's Road House in which Lupino is at her best as a lounge singer whose sultry interpretations of "One for My Baby", "About a Quarter to Three" and "Again" bring down the house. Widmark, still in the vicious killer role of his career that began with his Oscar-nominated turn in the previous year's Kiss of Death, also turns in a memorable performance. Cornel Wilde, in one of his trademark good guy roles, and Celeste Holm, in one of her nice other woman roles, are also memorable. Extras include a documentary on the careers of Lupino and Widmark at Fox. One of the great surprise hits of 1979, Nicholas Meyer's Time After Time takes two legendary figures, The Time Machine author H.G. Wells and serial killer Jack the Ripper, and combines them in this charmer about Wells chasing the Ripper through time to present day San Francisco. There the emphasis is not so much on fantasy as it is on the blossoming romance between the transplanted Wells and a female bank officer. Malcolm McDowell, in his first U.S. film, is the perplexed Wells, and the delightful Mary Steenburgen is the bank officer, with the superb David Warner properly menacing as the Ripper. The real life romance between McDowell and Steenburgen, which echoes their characters' development, provides the film with an added poignancy that's hard to resist. This new Special Edition DVD features commentary by Meyer and McDowell and loads of other extras. One of the best films about the Vietnam War, Sidney J. Furie's The Boys in Company C was released in 1978, the same year as The Deer Hunter, Coming Home and Go Tell the Spartans, and tends not to be as well remembered as those more celebrated films. Its narrative, which begins with the soldiers' training and then moves to their hellish tour in Vietnam, pre-dates the similarly themed and structured Full Metal Jacket by nine years. Stan Shaw and Andrew Stevens star. Stevens won a Golden Globe nomination for his film debut. Releases of last season's TV series are now in full swing. Among those being released this week are Desperate Housewives - Season 4, Ghost Whisperer - Season 3 and Eli Stone - Season 1. Recovering nicely from a disastrous second season, Season 3 of Desperate Housewives put the series back on track, but the abbreviated Season 4 was something of a head scratcher. By the end of the season more characters had met their demise, and in the final episode, a teaser of things to come, the series moved ahead by several years. As always, though, it's the housewives themselves, Teri Hatcher, Felicity Huffman, Marcia Cross, Eva Longoria and Nicolette Sheridan, who remain the show's main selling point and they don't disappoint. Changing direction with the death of a major character at the end of its first season, Ghost Whsiperer maintained its audience's support through a somewhat tamer second season but stepped up the gore for Season 3, which again ends with the death of a major character. More disturbing for fans, however, might be the sudden aging of another character midway through the season. Jennifer Love Hewitt plays the woman with the ability to see the recently departed, and David Conrad plays her fireman husband. Camryn Mannheim is Hewitt's business partner and Jay Mohr is a likeable local professor. One of the few compensations of the strike-aborted TV season was the late-season introduction of shows given a chance to fill in for the striking shows. One such show was Eli Stone . It only lasted 13 episodes, but they were 13 intriguing ones about a lawyer with a brain aneurism that allows him to see things that aren't there, taking cases for their moral significance rather than the amount of money they might bring. The talented cast, whose faces are probably more familiar to the general public than are their names, included Johnny Lee Miller, Natasha Henstridge, Loretta Devine, Matt Letscher, Sam Jaeger and Victor Garber. The Blu-ray revolution is still in its infancy. It continues to take baby steps with releases of some new movies going day and date with the release of the standard DVD version while others are being completely ignored. Here's a sampling of classic films recently made available in the new format: Warner Bros., which was a huge supporter of the discontinued HD-DVD format, is slowly re-issuing the titles they issued in that format on Blu-ray. Newly released is The Adventures of Robin Hood. One of the earliest examples of Technicolor added to a film, the 1938 multiple Oscar winner looks as glorious as it did 70 years ago when it was released with the tagline, "only the rainbow can equal its brilliance!" Errol Flynn, Olivia de Havilland, Basil Rathbone, Claude Rains, Alan Hale, Patric Knowles and Eugene Pallette head the impeccable cast under the dual direction of Michael Curtiz and William Keighley. It's not just the best Robin Hood movie, but it's also one of the best films of all time. The wealth of extras includes home movies shot by Rathbone and composer Erich Wolfgang Korngold during production. Presently an Amazon exclusive, the Blu-ray disc, as well as the Standard DVD release, of Hector Babenco's Kiss of the Spider Woman will be made available to other retailers in October. William Hurt stars in his Oscar winning role as a gay Brazilian prisoner who makes movies in his mind and relates them to his political prisoner cellmate, played by Raul Julia. The movie within the movie stars Sonja Braga as the titled spider woman in a tale of love and betrayal paralleling what is going on in the prisoners' real life situation. Extras include several documentaries on the making of the film. Featuring two audio commentaries, deleted scenes and a new documentary on the real life president among its extras, Oliver Stone's Nixon remains a fascinating look at the unraveling of the former president. Though Anthony Hopkins stills seems to me to be an odd choice for the title character, Joan Allen as Pat Nixon and Paul Sorvino as Henry Kissinger are perfectly cast. With this release most of Stone's films have now been transferred to Blu-ray. Still to come: the highly anticipated release of JFK in November. Looking sharper than ever, Tim Burton's The Nightmare Before Christmas, also being reissued in standard DVD format, is no doubt making yet another home video appearance to drum up publicity for Disney's third annual theatrical release of the 3-D version next month. The stop-motion classic is accompanied by loads of extras, some of them new to this release, some not so new (like the inclusion of the short films Vincent and Frankenweenie). Like Stone's films, most of Burton's have now been released on Blu-ray. Still to come: the long awaited release of Beetlejuice in October. Happy viewing. -Peter J. Patrick (September 2, 2008) |
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