The DVD Report #67

These are the dog days of summer as far as DVD releases are concerned. Having exhausted their release schedule of last year’s big screen hits and saving up this year’s for holiday season shopping, DVD distributers have little to offer anyone looking for new and worthwhile theatrical films to rent or buy. I guess they figured, when setting their release schedules that people would have their viewing hours filled this time of year by the Olympics and the forthcoming political conventions. There are, however, some new, lesser-known films, TV series and miniseries being released that may be worth your time and money.

Just in time for the Beijing Olympics, Sony has released The First Olympics: Athens 1896. The title is a misnomer. 1896 was the year of the first modern Olympics, not the first games which were played from 776 BC to 393 AD.

The 1984 miniseries was inspired by both the success of the 1981 Oscar winner Chariots of Fire about the 1924 Olympics and the impending games in Los Angeles.

The miniseries is about the struggle of a group of determined men to organize a global athletic competition in Athens just as the Ancient Greeks once did. Faced with minimal funding, apathy and harsh opposition, they set out to find a group of loyal and dedicated athletes. The focus is primarily on the American team, an Australian and an illiterate Greek shepherd. Even if you didn’t know the outcome, you could tell by the focus on these men that they would be among the ultimate winners, but how they get there, most of them amazed at their own success, is what makes it fascinating.

The cast is headed by Hunt Block, David Caruso, Alex Hyde-White, Benedict Taylor, Nicos Ziagos, Matt Frewer and Jason Connery as the principal athletes and Louis Jourdan, David Ogden Stiers, Edward Wiley, Gayle Hunnicutt, Honor Blackman, Virginia McKenna, Bill Travers, Titos Vandis and Angela Lansbury as their sponsors, coaches, family members and other supporters. Stiers won an Emmy nomination for his passionate portrayal of the tireless American team organizer. The miniseries was also nominated for its art direction and won for its musical score. In addition, it won a WGA award for its screenplay.

The Weinsten Company attempted to redefine the word “prequel” by advertising Stephen Frear’s 2003 British TV film The Deal as a prequel to his 2006 film The Queen. The word prequel is a relatively new one. It was invented in the 1970s. It means “A literary, dramatic, or cinematic work whose narrative takes place before that of a preexisting work or a sequel”. Since The Deal came first, it is not technically a prequel. If anything, The Queen is a sequel to The Deal. The question is, though: is it any good? The answer is: not really.

As a history lesson, The Deal holds some interest. As a dramatic work, however, it is rather flat and uninvolving unless you are a student of recent British history.

The film concerns the efforts of two promising members of the Labour Party, future British Prime Ministers Tony Blair and Gordon Brown, to reform the party and win, instead of losing, national elections. It’s all very dry with Michael Sheen appearing not yet comfortable in the role of Blair, which he later played to perfection in The Queen. David Morrissey fares much better as the lesser known, dour Scot Brown. Released theatrically in the U.S. in 2007, it was not a success on this side of the Atlantic.

Much more satisfying is Cranford, the British miniseries from the novels of Elizabeth Gaskell (1810-1865) which takes place in a small English town on the cusp of the industrial revolution. Wonderfully done with a brilliant cast headed by current Emmy nominees Dames Eileen Atkins and Judi Dench, the five-part miniseries proved so successful that it has been announced as a regular series and will soon begin filming a second season. The superlative supporting cast includes Michael Gambon, Imelda Stanuton, Simon Woods, Joe McFadden, Francesca Annis, Philip Glenister, Axel Etal, Julia McKenzie, Jim Carter, Lesley Manville and Martin Shaw, all of whom are given moments to shine. Atkins won the BAFTA over Dench. Will Emmy agree?

Pulitzer Prize-winning author James A Michener was undoubtedly a master storyteller. The 1978-1979 miniseries from his novel Centennial, newly released on DVD,clocks in at 26 hours and takes a long time to get where it’s going. It is worth your time to watch the settlement and growth of a Colorado boomtown over the course of 200 years. Framed against the majestic Rocky Mountains, Michener introduces the series, which is then narrated by David Janssen. The huge cast includes Richard Chamberlain, Robert Conrad, Sally Kellerman, Barbara Carrera, Michael Ansara, Raymond Burr, Chief Dan George, Stephen McHattie, Gregory Harrison, Stephanie Zimbalist, Cristina Raines, Chad Everett, Mark Harmon, Richard Crenna, Cliff De Young, Timothy Dalton, Brian Keith, Alex Karras, Lois Nettleton, William Atherton, Lynn Redgrave, Robert Vaughn, Andy Griffith, Sharon Gless, Mark Harmon, Dennis Weaver and many more, all of whom have their moments.

One of the most unusual TV series of the 1980s was The Equalizer, Season 1 of which has just been released on DVD. Golden Globe winner Edward Woodward stars as a sophisticated former government agent atoning for the sins of his past by becoming a private detective righting the wrongs of a flawed legal system by helping its innocent victims. Robert Lansing and Keith Szarabajka co-starred in the series which included as first season guest stars: Jim Dale, Karen Young, Will Patton, Christine Baranski, Blanche Baker, Meat Loaf, Lonette McKee, Marisa Berenson, Sylvia Miles, Kim Delaney, Gwen Verdon, Patricia Clarkson, John Cullum, Philip Bosco and Tony Musante among many others. The DVD collection also includes a bonus episode from Season 2.

The role of the tough-as-nails, yet compassionate avenger fit Woodward like a glove. It was the culmination of a career that ranged from musical comedy star in Broadway’s delightful High Spirits, the musical version of Blithe Spirit, to cult film star in the horror classic The Wicker Man, and the true life Australian drama Breaker Morant.

Although it’s been out on DVD for a while now, not much attention has been given to the 1982-1983 series Voyagers!

The series, which explored time travel was set in the present (1982) where Phineas Bogg, a member of a group of “voyagers” (i.e. people who travel across time) has been grounded due to a malfunction of his gold watch. Through a series of mishaps he is stuck in time with a twelve-year-old boy whose parents have recently died. Together they travel through history to prevent major catastrophes from occurring.

Created as an educational series for children, the series’ light touch provided its history lessons without pomposity or hitting the audience over the head with preaching. Among the historical figures, real and imagined, whose stories were told were: Isaac Newton, Thomas Edison, Alexander Graham Bell, T.E. Lawrence, Teddy Roosevelt, the Wright Brothers, Charles Dickens, Robin Hood and Jack the Ripper.

The series starred Jon-Erik Hexum and Meeno Peluce. Hexum, who was at the beginning of a promising career, accidentally shot himself in the head during a break on a later TV series. The 26-year-old actor carried an organ donor card with him and his organs, including his heart, were transplanted providing the organ donor program with much needed good publicity.

So much for classy TV series. Two newly released theatrical films on DVD are nowhere near as good.

In the golden age of the movies, films with all-star casts were events helmed by world class directors. Nowadays they are more often films in which a group of well meaning actors get together to bolster the career of a new or unknown director. Such efforts rarely turn out to be great films. A case in point is The Air I Breathe directed by the unknown Jieho Lee.

The film tells four separate stories that intersect in the manner of a Crash or Babel, though this one is unlikely to be remembered at Oscar time.

Forest Whitaker’s story is the first one presented. In the course of his section of the film, Whitaker goes from being a mild mannered clerk to chance taking gambler to hapless bank robber. His story intersects with that of hit man Brendan Fraser and Fraser’s boss, Andy Garcia.

In Fraser’s story, he saves Garcia’s nephew, Emile Hirsch, from a gangland killing and is seriously injured himself. Fraser is in love with Sarah Michelle Gellar, a singer whose character gets the third story line. Gellar in turn is linked to the fourth story focusing on emergency room doctor Kevin Bacon. It all ends with Gellar’s flashback encounter with Whitaker.

Strange as that one might have been, the most bizarre film I’ve seen this week is Nim’s Island which marks the directorial debut of someone named Jennifer Flackett.

Ostensibly a family film, it tries to be an amalgam of just about every family adventure film ever made with a good splash of adventure parody films thrown in. You get a little Swiss Family Robinson, a little Romancing the Stone, and a lot of some very accomplished actors doing some very silly things.

Gerard Butler, a decent actor usually stuck in movies beneath his talents, is stuck in yet another one here. He plays the dual role of a scientist living on an isolated island with his only daughter and a fictional swashbuckling hero created by writer Jodie Foster. Abigail Breslin is Butler’s daughter who basically mopes around the island waiting for Butler to return from his travels. She develops an on-line pen pal relationship with agoraphobic Foster who leaves her safe world behind to join Breslin on the island in order to watch over her until Butler’s return. I must have dozed off during the part in which they explain where the electrical power came from on the island and how Foster got there.

On the plus side, this is Foster’s loosest performance since Freaky Friday, which she made when she was in her early teens. She and Breslin make a great team. Too bad they didn’t have better material to work with.

-Peter J. Patrick (August 12, 2008)