Blu-ray Releases of the Week 

Rightly celebrated as The Great American Movie, Orson Welles’ towering debut remains a remarkable achievement, with an innovative narrative structure that still works as strongly 80 years later. And this new release—unfortunately hampered by a new hi-def transfer that’s botched 30 minutes in, so if you have a copy, send the movie disc back to Criterion for a replacement—displays Gregg Toland’s lustrous B&W compositions and throws Welles’ youthful genius into sharp relief: although he came close, he never topped himself in the next 40-plus years of making (or trying to make) movies.

 

 

The three-disc Criterion set is packed inside a ridiculously overcomplicated design that probably won’t last, along with many extras, including the rarely-seen BBC documentary The Complete Citizen Kane; Welles’ 1934 short, The Hearts of Age; interviews and video essays; TV appearances by Welles, producer John Houseman and actor Joseph Cotten; and three commentaries: by Roger Ebert, by Peter Bogdanovich, and by Welles scholars James Naremore and Jonathan Rosenbaum.

 

 

 

 

 

Deep Blues 

Director Robert Mugge’s seminal 1991 documentary, which explores the vital and active rural blues artists, hidden in plain sight deep in the heart of the Mississippi Delta, has as its guide music journalist Robert Palmer, who’s accompanied by Eurythmic Dave Stewart.

 

 

Among the many memorable musical moments in this consistently surprising and satisfying journey are performances by Jessie Mae Hemphil, Big Jack Johnson and Lonnie Pitchford. The film has been given a superior new hi-def transfer; extras are Mugge’s commentary and a behind-the-scenes featurette. 

 

 

 

 

 

Eric Clapton—The Lady in the Balcony: Lockdown Sessions 

Notwithstanding his bizarre and unhinged response to pandemic lockdowns—in his awful new song, “This Has Gotta Stop,” he compares lockdowns to slavery, of all things—Eric Clapton can still sizzle with the best of them on his six-string, as this acoustic performance from this past spring demonstrates. In a 17-song set, Clapton and his terrific band—bassist Nathan East, drummer Steve Gadd and keyboardist Chris Stainton—run through sparkling versions of “Peter Green’s “Black Magic Woman,” Derek and the Dominos’ “Bell Bottom Blues” and solo Clapton tunes “Tears in Heaven” and “Believe in Life” (written for Clapton’s current wife, the lady of the concert’s title).

 

 

I’ll even forgive him for continuing to play his stultifying unplugged “Layla.” The concert has been handsomely photographed and nicely recorded in hi-def, and the entire concert is included on an accompanying CD.

 

 

 

 

 

Lullaby of Broadway 

In director David Butler’s cute if inessential 1951 musical, Doris Day and Gene Nelson sing and tap-dance their way into each others’ hearts as a couple of performers looking for their big break—both professionally and personally—on the Great White Way.

 

 

Highlights are several musical numbers staged by Al White and Eddie Prinz, including the Oscar-winning title tune and Cole Porter’s “Just One of Those Things.” The colorful visuals look splendid on Blu.

 

 

 

 

 

The Thin Man Goes Home 

In the fifth go-round for the classic husband-and-wife sleuthing team, Nick and Nora Charles, the couple (along with their dog Asta) returns to Nick’s hometown, where—of course—they get caught up in a murder: soon, Nick has the chance to prove himself before his always skeptical father.

 

 

Richard Thorpe directed this 1944 sequel, which is a little flabby but still fun. The B&W images look crisp on Blu-ray; vintage extras are a Robert Benchley short, Why Daddy? and a classic Tex Avery cartoon, Screwball Squirrel. 

 

 

 

 

 

In-Theater Release of the Week

The career of music journalist Ben Fong-Torres makes for a lively and informative documentary by director Suzanne Joe Kai, who follows him from his beginnings in San Francisco in the ‘60s through his celebrated cover stories and interviews for Rolling Stone magazine and his very personal political and local journalism about the Chinese-American community, like the still unsolved murder of his brother many years ago.

 

 

Kai not only talks at length with Fong-Torres but also with family members, former colleagues and performers like photographer Annie Liebowitz, fellow staffer turned filmmaker Cameron Crowe, the Grateful Dead’s Bob Weir, the Doors’ Ray Manzarek, Carlos Santana, Steve Martin (Ben’s last Rolling Stone cover story subject) and Elton John, all of whom discuss the man’s talent, influence and taste in a manner that’s quite touching.

 

 

 

 

 

CD Release of the Week 

One of the most grievously underrated composers of the 20th—or any—century, Malcolm Arnold (1921-2006) was best known for memorable film scores such as The Bridge on the River Kwai, for which he won an Oscar. But his wide-ranging concert music—chamber works, concertos, dances, symphonies—showed Arnold as a formidable, original composer of music probing his own variable emotional states.

 

 

This boxed set, for the centenary of Arnold’s birth, collects the excellent complete recordings by conductor Andrew Penny and the National Symphony Orchestra of Ireland of Arnold’s extraordinary cycle of nine symphonies, along with Penny’s CD of Arnold’s dances with the Queensland Symphony Orchestra. Arnold’s symphonic cycle runs a staggering psychological gamut, culminating with his breathtaking ninth symphony, as towering a personal statement as Beethoven’s celebrated “Choral” Symphony, but Arnold’s final Lento movement is as naked and bleak a musical summation ever composed.