Blu-rays of the Week

Director Bill Morrison, whose The Miners’ Hymnswas a memorably unusual documentary, made this formally rigorous 2002 feature.

Another intriguing film, it uses old, “decaying” footage (hence the punning title) that’s unfortunately married to a monotonous Michael Gordon score, which makes it problematic despite its uniqueness. The Blu-ray image is good; the lone extra is Morrison’s 2004 short, Light Is Calling.

Ice Age—Continental Drift

The fourth Ice Agefeature is proof of diminishing returns, although its target audience—kids and undiscriminating adults—won’t notice, despite a thin story and labored jokes: mammoth Manny, sloth Sid and tiger Diego find themselves trapped on a floating iceberg.

Witty visuals like the opening sequence (which should be a short of its own) and huffing and puffing by Denis Leary, John Leguizamo, Ray Romano, Jennifer Lopez and Queen Latifah (among other voices) can’t compensate for comic flimsiness. The Blu-ray image is impeccable; extras include deleted scenes and interactive viewing mode.

Manufactured Landscapes

Jennifer Baichwal’s documentary, stunningly photographed by Peter Mettler, is ostensibly a records of the massive photographs that artist Edward Burtynsky takes of what are called “manufactured landscapes”—specifically, dams, mines and piles of debris.

But as Baichwal follows Burtynsky through China, she also creates an illuminating portrait of the devastating effects of a massive industrial revolution. The amazing clarity of the Blu-ray image is made for this visual feast; extras include 30 minutes of deleted scenes and interviews with Baichwal, Burtynsky and Mettler.

Pelleas et Melisande

Claude Debussy’s impressionistic masterpiece is the ultimate tragic opera, and with exemplary lead singers—here, American Rodney Gilfry and Spanish Isabel Rey—we’re halfway there.

Conductor Franz Welser-Most beautifully conducts the Zurich Opera House Orchestra and Chorus, adroitly spinning Debussy’s gossamer musical web. But Sven-Eric Bechtolf’s misguided direction horribly butchers such an idealized vision, proving that bad ideas beget bad stagings. The Blu-ray image and sound are tremendous.

In his most absorbing film in years, Spike Lee returns to the neighborhood of She’s Gotta Have Itto explore how its residents are surviving in a part of New York that’s had many changes, zeroing in on a young Atlanta boy visiting his granddad.

Although overlong with too many characters and subplots and no ending, it’s Lee’s most pointed character study—and Bruce Hornsby’s beguiling piano score is a genuine plus. The fine cast includes actors from She’s Gotta Have It doing their own thing. The Blu-ray image is stellar; extras comprise Lee’s commentary, on-set featurette and music video.

10 Years

This routine multi-character drama plays out on the day of a high school reunion, as the usual assortment of loners, losers, jocks and brainiacs converge once again on the scenes of their teenage crimes.

Making Jamie Linden’s movie tolerable is an attractive cast: Channing Tatum and real-life wife Jenna Dewan Tatum, Rosario Dawson, Ari Graynor, Lily Collins and Max Minghella turn these stereotypes into interesting people. The hi-def image is first-rate; deleted scenes are the lone extra.

Total Recall

This overstuffed remake of the 1990 Arnold Schwarzenegger vehicle, directed by Len Wiseman, steals from the dank, dark visuals of Blade Runner and Alien 3.

Of course, Wiseman isn’t Ridley Scott or David Fincher, so his movie has a clunkiness that’s especially noticeable in the 130-minute unrated version. Colin Farrell is a decent hero; Jessica Biel and Kate Beckinsale (the real-life Mrs. Wiseman), are fun action heroines. The Blu-ray image is good; extras are featurettes, director commentary and gag reel.

Trouble with the Curve

Clint Eastwood trots out his crabby old-man number as an aging baseball scout who reluctantly accepts help from his daughter, who’s equally reluctant to leave a cushy job for life on the road—until she falls for an up-and-coming scout.

Eastwood is amusing and Amy Adams is delightful, but eternal lightweight Justin Timberlake fatally damages the romantic subplot. Writer Randy Brown and director Robert Lorenz show little, despite mentor Eastwood’s backing. The Blu-ray image is good; two featurettes are the extras.

DVDs of the Week

These documentaries chronicle specific cultures that will open eyes to their evocations of history, performance and the green movement.

Rehearsal follows John Turturro’s visit to Sicily (his homeland on his mother’s side) as he learns about the lost art of puppetry with Mimmo Cuticchio, while YERT (which stands for “Your Environmental Road Trip) shows a group traveling through all 50 states for a year recycling their garbage. Both films introduce viewers to “characters” in the truest sense, presenting them without condescension but a shared humanity and amusement at our self-inflicted wounds.

Rodion Shchedrin—A Russian Composer

In this thoughtful documentary about Russia’s most notable living composer, he and musician colleagues discuss his career, music and friendship with one of the 20^thcentury’s greatest composers—Dmitri Shostokovich.

Interestingly, only Russian conductor Valery Gergiev speaks in English: the rest range from speaking Russian (Shchedrin) to German (Mariss Jansons, Lorin Maazel). In addition to the enlightening doc, there are two full-length bonuses: an hour-long interview with Shchedrin and an 85-minute all-Shchedrin concert in Moscow on his 75^th birthday in 2007.

The Simpsons—Season 15

This was another season in decline for what was one of the funniest shows on television—but despite that, The Simpsonsin decline was better than other shows at their peak.

Included in this 22-episode season boxed set are such classics as Treehouse of Horror XIV; celebrity guest voices range from Jerry Lewis, Tony Blair and Jackie Mason to the Olsen twins and Mr. T. Extras include Matt Groening intro, commentaries on every episode, deleted scenes and featurettes.

CDs of the Week

Sir Edward Elgar is not one of my favorite British composers—I prefer Vaughan Williams, Bax, Bliss, Rubbra, Arnold and of course Britten by far—and his incidental music and songs for a 1916 children’s play encapsulates why: it’s weighted down by Elgar’s proficient but uninspired harmonies and melodies.

There are few thrilling moments as the work meanders along, which might work onstage as one watches the play; just listening gets quickly tiresome. The vocal soloists don’t get a chance to impress, Simon Callow’s narration provides needed color, and Sir Andrew Davis adeptly conducts the Scottish Chamber Orchestra.

Zelenski/Zarebski—Chamber Music

Written by Clifford Odets; directed by Bartlett Sher

Performances through January 20, 2013

It’s not easy to make a creaky theatrical piece an edge-of-your-seat spellbinder. But that’s what director Bartlett Sher has done with Golden Boy, Clifford Odets’ tragic melodrama that, in this scorching 75^th anniversary production (in the theater it premiered at), feels more urgent than anything on or off Broadway.

Odets’ play concerns boxing phenom Joe Bonaparte, an immigrant kid who decides to fight instead of following his artistic temperament to play the violin. Despite the play’s hokiness, there’s humor, tension, romance and tragedy galore, and its characters are wise-cracking, gritty, tough New Yorkers (with one from New Jersey) souls who lead a willing audience through a familiar but absorbing story for three hours.

Sher smartly plays it straight: by avoiding irony or adding a contemporary feel, this production never condescends to the play, taking its plot holes, dated dialogue and near-caricatures at face value. That extends to the brilliant production design: Michael Yeargan’s sets, Catherine Zuber’s costumes and Donald Holder’s lighting create an onstage world in which everyone’s blood, sweat and tears are deeply felt.

Of course, none of this would work without a phenomenal cast, and Sher’s excellent ensemble has not one weak link among its 19 performers. Even small parts, like local sportswriters and rival boxers, are acutely etched, as are juicy supporting roles like Joe’s sister Anna (an appropriately frumpy Dagmara Dominczyk) or talkative neighbor Mr. Carp (a sly Jonathan Hadary).

If Tony Shaloub, as Joe’s immigrant father, overdoes his “Eye-talian” accent, he also has profound moments of quiet subtlety toward the end; likewise, Anthony Crivello’s Eddie Fuselli—the mobster promoter who buys a piece of Joe on his way up—begins as an unbearable Little Italy stereotype, then shrewdly reins it in as the show progresses.

The always reliable Danny Burstein nails the essence of Joe’s loyal trainer Tokio, and Danny Mastrogiorgio displays remarkable restraint in what could have been showiness as manager Tom Moody, who reluctantly takes Joe on.

Seth Numrich’s Joe perfectly blends bravado and vulnerability, especially in his intimate scenes with Yvonne Strahovski, a superb Australian actress who, in her Broadway debut, takes the stock part of Lorna, Tom Moody’s secretary/mistress from New Joisey, and invests her with so much emotional intensity that she almost steals the play from Odets’ conflicted protagonist.

Amy Herzog’s latest play, after her overrated After the Revolution and 4000 Miles, again provides little illumination on an interesting theme: in the case of The Great God Pan, it’s the persistence of memory—or forgetting.

Jamie, a 30ish blogger, meets with Frank, a childhood friend he hasn’t seen in years, who confesses that his own father sexually abused him and asks Jamie if he remembers anything that might bolster the criminal case against his dad. Jamie initially demurs, but slowly discovers more about what may have happened to him when he was a child—talking to his sympathetic girlfriend Paige, visiting his parents and the old lady who was his and Frank’s babysitter—but despite circumstantial evidence that something might have happened, he can’t (or won’t) remember.

Herzog tries to keep her characters—and the audience—off-balance. As the possible evidence mounts, Jamie slowly realizes he’s always erased inconvenient memories, but Herzog merely checks off what’s on Jamie’s not-to-do list with little urgency or drama. He didn’t tell his parents when his dog died, he’s cagey about his new job, he bristles when Paige brings up his sexual inadequacies, and he even begs her to allow him a week to think when she announces her pregnancy.

None of this is particularly insightful, which Herzog seems to sense, so she fleshes out her play with peripheral characters. She drags in Polly, the former babysitter, merely so that a wisecracking octogenarian in a wheelchair can garner laughs—and bring up the play’s title, which comes from an Elizabeth Barrett Browning poem which Polly recited to the boys.

Herzog also includes two dramatically deadly scenes in which Paige—an ex-dancer whose injury ended her career—in her new role as therapist deals with an anorexic teenage girl; they feel like forced attempts to draw a parallel to Jamie’s own emotional baggage.

Carolyn Cantor’s straightforward staging isn’t helped by Mark Wendland’s foliage-laden set, which represents the woods where the boys played while Polly watched them both naturally and symbolically, with neither particularly incisive. And the abruptness of Herzog’s shaggy-dog non-ending—the play should have begun where its author stops—does the director no favors dramatically.

Finally, Cantor’s talented cast cannot overcome these characters’ flimsiness. Jeremy Strong does little more but mope as Jaime, while Phyllis Goldberg’s Paige, despite the actress’s natural appeal, remains a cipher. There’s one very strong scene, a small disagreement between Jaime and Paige that plausibly erupts into a battle royale in short order: but it only throws into sharp relief the muddiness and vagueness of the rest.