Kevin's December Digital Week I

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Parent Category: Film and the Arts

Category: Reviews

Published on Saturday, 04 December 2010 05:00

Written by Kevin Filipski

Blu-rays of the Week
Knight and Day
(Fox)
Those who aren’t fans of Tom Cruise or Cameron Diaz may find their repartee in this labored James Bond spoof forced. Director James Mangold sets up  many outlandish action sequences in this comic adventure that end up blending together. If you can get excited over Tom and Cameron in a motorcycle chase alongside the running of the (obviously CGI) bulls, then you might find this entertaining, even though there’s too much smugness and tasteless casualness as people are routinely killed.
 
It all looks gloriously slick on Blu-ray, with genuinely atmospheric location shooting in Boston, Brooklyn and Jamaica, but the two stars are simply cashing checks here. Extras include on-set featurettes and a Black Eyed Peas video which I won’t be watching.

The Sorcerer’s Apprentice
(Disney)
The famous Fantasia segment is brought to life in an homage about halfway through this convoluted, entertaining but finally exhausting adventure about an immortal sorcerer (a hammy Nicolas Cage) who reluctantly joins with a New York City teenager to fend off an evil sorcerer (a hammy Alfred Molina). Jon Turtletaub’s sledgehammer directing (the same as in National Treasure) gleefully drives through the huge plot holes, and on Blu-ray, everything looks so magically strange that it doesn‘t matter, especially for its target audience.
 
Extras include deleted scenes, making-of featurettes and a gag reel, along with cast and crew discussing the original Disney short, from Paul Dukas’ music (which Trevor Rabin, the score composer, wisely quotes.)

DVDs of the Week
The Boys, Waking Sleeping Beauty, Walt and El Grupo
(Disney)
These fascinating documentaries give viewers valuable insights into three separate periods of the Disney company’s storied if checkered history. Walt and El Grupo follows Walt Disney on a wartime trip to South America in 1941; The Boys chronicles the close but rocky relationship between the Sherman brothers, composers of immortal songs in Mary Poppins, Chitty Chitty Bang Bang and The Jungle Book; and Waking Sleeping Beauty shows how Disney shook off the ‘70s and ‘80s doldrums to retake the animated world by storm in the ‘90s.
 
All of the documentaries are well worth watching in their own right, but numerous bonus features (commentaries, deleted scenes, even the original 1943 release of Saludos Amigos) make these discs a must for anyone with an interest in Disney...meaning anyone.

Restrepo
(Virgil Films)  
Sebastian Junger and Tim Hetherington’s look at a group of American soldiers in the worst area of Afghanistan is 94 tense minutes of sheer visceral terror, as close to actual war anyone should ever want to get. Restrepo records the day-to-day lives of men in the platoon the directors were imbedded with. Although the Korengal Valley is deep inside the belly of the beast—where the most lethal fighting occurs in this endless war—there’s not a pointedly political comment made by anyone.
 
There are statements about the nearly impossible task given to these brave young men, some of whom look barely old enough to drive, let alone fight in a war. Restrepo singlemindedly places us in the midst of the fighting, showing off its (and its subjects’) integrity.

CDs of the Week
Bryn Terfel: Carols and Christmas Songs
The Welsh bass-baritone’s first holiday CD shows off his powerful voice on carols like “Silent Night” and “What Child Is This?”, along with less obvious candidates like two German-language carols, “Still, Still, Still” and “O Jesulein zart.” A less than felicitous posthumous “duet” of  “White Christmas” with Bing Crosby is an obvious low point, but his “live” duet with Rolando Villazon (“El Nacimiento”) is charming.
 
For good measure, a second disc of carols sung in Terfel’s native language includes Welsh versions of “O Come All Ye Faithful” and “Away in a Manger,” and he also sings “To Bethlehem,” “Christmas? Who Knows?” and “The Baby’s Day.” Terfel sounds engaged throughout, and you can hear the grin on his face as he relives winter nights back in Wales, singing carols with his family.

Wagner’s Ring: Clemens Krauss
(Orfeo)
Among the greatest of all recorded Ring cycles, conductor Clemens Krauss’s 1953 live recordings from Bayreuth, with what’s by all accounts one of the best casts ever assembled, have been remastered and re-released. The 13-CD set omits the libretti which are readily available elsewhere; more important is that this stunning, dramatic interpretation of Wagner’s still-potent 16-hour saga is available once again, sounding cleaner and fresher than ever.
 
Krauss takes fairly quick tempi, which some might dislike, but it undeniably makes the drama more urgent. And what voices: Hans Hotter (Wotan), Astrid Varnay (Brunnhilde), Wolfgang Windgassen (Siegfried) and Regina Resnik (Sieglinde) are peerless throughout the four operas.