April '12 Digital Week IV

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Parent Category: Film and the Arts

Category: Reviews

Published on Saturday, 28 April 2012 10:00

Written by Kevin Filipski

Blu-rays of the Week

Birdsong

(PBS)

Sebastian Faulks' panoramic novel about the doomed relationship between a British soldier and married French woman during World War I becomes another sophisticated "Masterpiece" entry from PBS, but without the book's framing device, taking place 70 years after these events; that omission loses what made Faulks' story compelling and touching.

Still, this sumptuous production has fine lovers in Eddie Redmayne and Clemence Poesy, and the equally good Marie-Josee Croze as her sister. The nearly three-hour film's nude scenes aren't typical PBS fare, so if that's what you're after, by all means watch. The excellent-looking Blu-ray includes three making-of featurettes.

Camelot

(Warners)

One of the clunkiest movie musicals ever made, this three-hour behemoth of Lerner & Loewe's Broadway hit stars two unlikely stars: Richard Harris and Vanessa Redgrave, both out of their element as a singing Arthur and Lady Guenevere.

But their discomfort is the least of it: the movie's visual dullness (which the added clarity of Blu-ray accentuates even more) and L&L's routine songs drag the whole thing down. We do get to hear the prelude, entr'acte and end music, which is nice; extras include vintage featurettes.

Contraband

(Universal)

Mark Wahlberg has been in too many mediocre action movies like this tired chase flick about a retired smuggler roped into a last dangerous job to help his sad-sack brother-in-law. Unorthodox setting of a container ship at port notwithstanding, the movie's reduced to laughably "tense" scenes as when Marky Mark and a sidekick must close the container doors before they're spotted. Whew!

Kate Beckinsale is completely wasted as Mark's wife, while Giovanni Ribisi makes a standard-issue crook. The film looks decent on Blu-ray; extras include commentary, deleted scenes and making-of featurettes.

Dark Tide

(Lionsgate)

How the mighty have fallen: Oscar winner Halle Berry is reduced to this lukewarm Jaws rip-off about a shark expert who, after a colleague is killed by a great white on her watch, hangs up her flippers, then is talked into a last dangerous—but lucrative—dive.

Despite amazing underwater photography and shark footage (and Halle in a bikini top), John Stockwell's drama features characters whom you don't care if the get eaten. On Blu-ray, the ocean sequences positively glisten; no extras.

The Fields

(Breaking Glass)

Writer Harrison Smith and directors Tom Mattera and David Mazzoni have made an unsettling thriller about a boy haunted by what may be lurking in the fields near his home.

With a wonderful performance by young Joshua Ormond in a deceptively difficult role, The Fields even has nuanced acting from Cloris Leachman (grandmother) and even Tara Reid (mother). The genuinely creepy movie—nothing is overdone—works even better on hi-def; extras include on-set featurettes, footage and interviews.

The Red House

(HD Cinema Classics)

Delmer Daves—a proficient director of entertaining genre movies in the '40s and '50s like 3:10 to Yuma—made this decently acted, technically sound but forgettable thriller.

Edward G. Robinson is surprisingly subdued as a man leery of his daughter's new beau, but this abandoned-house-in-the-woods tale is too stale to be in any way absorbing. The 1947 B&W film looks good on Blu-ray; the lone extra is a commentary.

Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy

(Acorn)

Alec Guinness' performance as George Smiley, Cold War spy extraordinaire, is unforgettable precisely due to its understatement (contrarily, in the current movie version Gary Oldman works too hard for it to be effortless). Watching John Irvin's six-hour masterpiece—which may be even better than John Le Carre's original novel—in hi-def is a treat.

While the 1979 British mini-series doesn't look appreciably better on Blu-ray, the format's added clarity fits the cerebral story. Included are the same extras as on the DVD (Irvin and LeCarre interviews, deleted scenes).

Titanic

(MPI)

Written by Julian Fellowes (Gosford Park and more recently Downton Abbey), this dutiful three-hour reenactment of the legendary ship's demise concentrates on how the boat's class system may have contributed to many needless deaths. The crowded cast, which comprises mainly character actors, features good work by Linus Roache and Maria Doyle Kennedy.

While far better than James Cameron's white whale, this four-part mini-series is not nearly as memorable as the 1958 classic A Night to Remember. The superior production design and special effects nearly jump off the screen on Blu-ray; extras are several featurettes and a commentary.

DVDs of the Week

Eclipse 32: Pearls of the Czech New Wave

(Criterion)

The six films in this essential box set are only the tip of a large iceberg making up the legendary if undervalued Czech New Wave cinema of the late '60s. Although the most famous title, Vera Chytilova's Daisies, is a dated curio easily surpassed by its maker's later films, the others are unimpeachably superlative.

The omnibus Pearls of the Deep combines humor and horror as only Soviet-era Eastern European cinema can, and the others must-watch features (Jan Nemec's A Report on the Party and Guests, Jiri Menzel's Capricious Summer, Jaromil Jires' The Joke, Evald Schorm's Return of the Prodigal Son) brilliantly explore the rigid Communist system with wit and bravery.

The Man on the Train

(Tribeca)

This unnecessary remake of Patrice Leconte's equally vapid crime drama with Johnny Hallyday and Jean Rochefort pairs a past-his-prime Donald Sutherland and U2 drummer Larry Mullen as a dying professor and a tough-guy bank robber who form an unlikely bond. Mullen provides an atmospheric score, which outclasses his acting.

Writer/director Mary McGuckian's low-key style is fatal for a film that has little in the way of surprises or nuance. The lone extra is a deleted scene.

Miss Bala and The Hidden Face

(Fox World Cinema)

These stylish Spanish-language thrillers approach their horrors in opposing ways. Gerardo Naranjo's Miss Bala thrusts its unwitting heroine—a beauty pageant contestant, no less—into the midst of Mexico's extreme gang-related violence, while Andi Baiz's The Hidden Face twists itself into a pretzel keeping a hoary cliché afloat for 95 minutes, when The Twilight Zone could have done it in a third of the time.

The women are each in her own way compelling: Stephanie Sigman in Miss Bala is especially one to watch.

Return

(e one)

Linda Cardellini's poignant portrayal of a wife and mother whose return home from Iraq is more disastrous than the time she spent there—she falls into boozing, neglecting her husband and kids, even sleeping with a Vietnam vet whom she feels a kinship with—is the main reason to see writer-director Liza Johnson's disjointed character study.

There's not much tragic thrust because Johnson is too coy about her protagonist's plight, but Cardellini and the supporting cast (Michael Shannon, John Slattery, Rosie Benton) provide enough dramatic fireworks. Extras include a director/cinematographer commentary and deleted scenes.

Stony Island

(Cinema Libre)

Sixteen years before his hit remake of The Fugitive in 1993, director Andrew Davis made this gritty if slight slice of life among denizens on Chicago's south side.

Despite a game cast—including a newcomer named Dennis Franz and lovely teenagers named Rae Dawn Chong and Susanna Hoffs, future Bangle and daughter of the movie's co-writer, Tamara Simon Hoffs—the movie meanders for 95 minutes and ends where it began: nowhere. Extras include a making-of retrospective and alternate ending.

Strange Fruit: The Beatles' Apple Records

(MVD)

Although the Beatles' Apple label has gotten plenty of ink in the 44 years since it was created (only to implode due to mismanagement a few years later), this informative two-plus hour documentary summarizes how its idealistic communism caused its demise.

Through interviews with journalists and artists from the label (including members of Badfinger, one of its bigger successes) and archival footage of young Apple artists like James Taylor and Mary Hopkin, this doc illuminates one of the Beatles' few failures.

CD of the Week

Peter Gabriel: Live Blood

(Real World)

When I saw Peter Gabriel on his 2010 orchestral tour, the concert's first half comprised cover songs from his album Scratch My Back, followed by a set of Gabriel's own songs. But the concerts recorded (in 2011) for this immaculate-sounding live CD feature an artist who heavily reduced the covers (only 4 of the original 12 are heard) and added more of his own songs, which is what most Gabriel fans want anyway.

His take on Lou Reed's "The Power of the Heart" is achingly personal, but new interpretations of his own classics like "Wallflower," "San Jacinto" and "Biko" are stunningly direct. The New Blood Orchestra, conducted by Ben Foster, sounds magnificent; Gabriel's own daughter Melanie sings beautifully with her father on "Mercy Street" and "Blood of Eden."

April '12 Digital Week III

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Parent Category: Film and the Arts

Category: Reviews

Published on Monday, 23 April 2012 10:00

Written by Kevin Filipski

Blu-rays of the Week
America Revealed 

(PBS)
Host Yul Kwon takes what initially seems a mash-up of themes about America in the 21st century--food, transportation, electricity, manufacturing--and, with the help of stunning aerial and HD photography, makes it compelling, necessary viewing.

The technological advances shown are staggering to see and contemplate; the four episodes’ extraordinary footage from coast to coast looks particularly amazing on Blu-ray. Twenty minutes of bonus footage is composed of a featurette for each episode.

Baseball’s Greatest Games: 2011 World Series Game 6 

(A&E)
St. Louis Cardinals third baseman David Freese’s dramatic HR in the bottom of the 11th to clinch last fall’s World Series in six games gave the team (and town) its second championship in six seasons.

Anyone who’s even remotely a Cardinals fan will want to pick this up to re-live that immediate classic again and again. Even if you watched the Series on your HDTV, be prepared for more astounding clarity on Blu-ray.

Charlotte Rampling: The Look 

(Kino Lorber)
In her solid documentary about actress Charlotte Rampling, Angelina Maccarone employs an ingenious structure that avoids her movie becoming a mere career chronology: there are nine sections (with title cards like “Exposure” and “Love”), each with Rampling interacting with artist friends like author Paul Auster and photographer Peter Lindbergh, or her son, director Barnaby Southcombe.

Maccarone also intercuts excerpts from some of Rampling’s many films to further illustrate her themes. The movie comprises mainly interviews and film clips, so the Blu-ray transfer is adequate without being stunning.

The Divide 

(Criterion)
One of Yasujiro Ozu’s greatest films is this moving but slyly amusing 1949 tale of a widower who decides that his only daughter should marry. Ozu’s masterly restraint, which remains his singular trademark, is complemented by the touchingly effortless performances by his regular stars Chishu Ryu and Setsuko Hara.

The first of Ozu’s timeless classics to arrive on Blu-ray has noticeable wear and tear, but since these were the best elements available, it’s a stunning-looking 63-year-old movie. Extras include NY Film Festival head Richard Pena’s commentary and 90-minute Tokyo-Ga, Wim Wenders' 1985 documentary paean to Ozu.

Roadracers 

(Miramax/Echo Bridge)
Robert Rodriguez has always made flying-by-the-seat-of-his-pants flicks, and this 1994 made-for-cable road movie is one of his least memorable. It doesn’t help that the blank David Arquette is the leading man, and Salma Hayek--gorgeous, as always--is nearly as wooden.

Even the action scenes and music interludes feel off, making this seem like Rodriguez’s most amateurish effort in a career littered with them. The movie receives a decent but unspectacular hi-def transfer; there’s a Rodriguez commentary and his 10-Minute Film School, both more fun than the movie.

Shame 

(Fox)
Steve McQueen’s studied, stylized soap opera ruins the serious subject of sex addiction. A successful Wall Street dude jerks off at home and at work, hires hookers, picks up women at bars, and even hooks up for anonymous gay sex! But at least he’s a cultured pervert who enjoys Bach’s Goldberg Variations.

This hysterically unconvincing melodrama even burdens the poor guy with a needy sister who stays at his apartment and walks in on him while he’s masturbating in the bathroom. Shame, indeed! Michael Fassbinder and Carey Mulligan are excellent in a less than hard-hitting character study. A ravishing, dream-like Manhattan still looks that way on Blu-ray; extras are five inconsequential featurettes.

DVDs of the Week
Being Elmo 

(New Video)
Kevin Clash’s life story makes a fascinating documentary, and Constance Marks gets it right with her doc about how a kid from Baltimore who grew up loving puppets ended up rubbing shoulders with Jim Henson and turned the “Red Grover” into the most beloved Muppet.

There’s lots of vintage footage--who was around to record some of these things before Clash became famous?--and interviews that shows that, sometimes, good guys can finish first. Extras include additional footage, interviews and a Sundance Q&A.

Bill Moyers: Capitol Crimes 

(Athena)
In the mid-90s, lobbyist extraordinaire Jack Abramoff’s dealings lined his pockets and the coffers of friendly Republicans in Congress with millions in stolen cash. Bill Moyers and his team’s hard-hitting expose shines a light on this sordid story of corruption, showing once again how the Republican party has become synonymous with hypocrisy.

A bonus disc comprises Buying the War, an 83-minute expose of the Bush administration’s case for invading Iraq and the media’s complicity in it, along with interviews with historian Andrew J. Bacevich and Mother Jones magazine’s Kevin Drum and David Corn.

Garbo: The Spy 

(First Run)
Structured as a real-life thriller, Edmon Roch’s documentary tells the bizarre story of the ingenious double agent whose adventures--including a network of fake agents throughout Europe--fooled the Germans into thinking D-Day would happen on a different day and at a different location.

Cleverly intercutting old spy movie footage with informative new interviews, Roch comes up aces. Extras include a half-hour interview with spy expert Nigel West and 27-minute WWII training film Sonic Deception.

The Getting of Wisdom 

(Kino Lorber)
Bruce Beresford’s beautifully realized adaptation of the classic Aussie novel by Henry Handel Richardson is among the underrated director’s very best films, a heartfelt yet humorous look at a young woman from the country (the magnificent Susannah Fowle) who refuses to become a proper Victorian lady.

Don McAlpine’s exquisite photography gleams in this new transfer; a wonderful bonus is an hour-long documentary about the making of the film, including interviews with Beresford, Fowle, McAlpine and others.

Paul Goodman Changed My Life 

(Zeitgeist)
Director Jonathan Lee re-introduces an important figure in radical political history in this illuminating bio-doc of the unapologetic intellectual who might have been too brilliant for his--or any--time.

Hearing his espousal of ideas that made the likes of William F. Buckley squirm--and watching their priceless exchange on Buckley‘s Firing Line program about American education--is worth the price of admission in itself. Interviews with family, friends and colleagues illuminate a towering figure of the American left. Extras include a Lee interview, deleted scenes and readings of Goodman’s poetry.

Secret War 

(Athena)
The clandestine--and largely successful--war against the Nazis by the British spy agency SOE (Special Operations Executive) is rivetingly recounted in 13 episodes on four discs.

Among many others, there’s the group of heroic Norwegians who risked life and limb to destroy the building that was instrumental in developing an atomic bomb, there’s Hardy Amies, who later became a fashion designer following the war; there’s Polish super-agent Christine Granville, who came to bad end after surviving five dangerous war years; and there’s a French triple agent whose allegiance was continually called into question.

CD of the Week
Debussy/Ravel: Seoul Philharmonic Orchestra 

Theater Roundup: "Gore Vidal's The Best Man"; "4000 Miles"; "The Morini Strad"; "Federer vs. Murray"

Details

Parent Category: Film and the Arts

Category: Reviews

Published on Saturday, 21 April 2012 15:00

Written by Kevin Filipski

Gore Vidal’s The Best Man
Written by Gore Vidal
Directed by Michael Wilson
Starring James Earl Jones, Angela Lansbury, John Laroquette, Candice Bergen, Michael McKean, Eric McCormack, Kerry Butler

4000 Miles
Written by Amy Herzog
Directed by Daniel Aukin
Starring Gabriel Ebert, Greta Lee, Mary Louise Wilson, Zoe Winters

The Morini Strad
Starring Michael Laurence, Mary Beth Peil, Hanah Stuart
Written by Willy Holtzman
Directed by Casey Childs

Federer vs. Murray
Written and directed by Gerda Stevenson
Starring Gerda Stevenson, Dave Anderson

Back on Broadway, Gore Vidal’s The Best Man—written in 1960 and taking place during an unnamed political party's presidential convention in Philadelphia—remains a pertinent, sophisticated comic drama that concerns Secretary of State William Russell, who initially refuses to smear his opponent, the crackerjack McCarthy-esque senator Joseph Cantwell, in their battle for the nomination, even though Cantwell has info he's threatening to release if Russell doesn’t bow out.

In director Michael Wilson’s exciting, tautly-paced production, Vidal’s sharp-tongued wit is kept vividly intact by cannily blending overdone histrionics with welcome restraint.

There's satisfying ham in the form of venerable Angela Lansbury as Sue-Ellen Gamadge, head of a women's voting bloc; Kerry Butler as Cantwell’s southern-belle wife Mabel; Jefferson Mays as Sheldon Marcus, Cantwell's former fellow army man whose bombshell revelation might sink Cantwell’s candidacy; and, most spectacularly, James Earl Jones, whose booming, braying basso transforms ex-president Artie Hockstader from homespun folkiness into a memorable orator-in-chief.

More happily restrained are Candice Bergen’s Alice, Russell's plainly elegant estranged wife; Eric McCormack’s smilingly dangerous Cantwell; Michael McKean’s loyal but sardonic Russell campaign manager, Dick Jensen; and, zestiest of all, John Laroquette's eminent and esteemed Russell.

For old-fashioned, intelligent entertainment, The Best Man wins in a landslide.

The cross-country bicycle trip taken by protagonist Leo in Amy Herzog's comic drama 4000 Miles has nothing on his metaphorical journey of self-discovery while living with ornery grandmother Vera Joseph in her Manhattan apartment.

Even though 4000 Miles has laughs and poignancy, the relationship between Leo and Vera never strays far from the level of sentimental soap opera. Of course, these are atypical soap characters: Vera's an unrepentant radical-cum-progressive, and the family's hippie gene has apparently skipped a generation, as grandmother and grandson bond while smoking dope and bemoaning how square his parents/her daughter/son-in-law are.

Lauren Helpern’s set unerringly recreates a typical rent-controlled Manhattan apartment, even down to its corner radiators. Daniel Aukin's unobtrusive direction is helped immensely by his acting quartet. In small roles, Greta Lee acquits herself well as Leo's flaky pickup improbably scared off by his commie grandma, and Zoe Winters imbues Leo’s girlfriend Bec with welcome flashes of life.

As Vera, Mary Louise Wilson's perfectly pitched comic timing deserves better than such a superficial role, while Gabriel Ebert—particularly in the drawn-out monologue in which he describes his best friend's death while they rode through middle America—thrillingly transforms a clichéd hippie into a sweetly misguided young man.

The Morini Strad is Willy Holtzmann's dry, facile two-hander abou tthe conflict between a hands-on artisan and a prima-donna artist. It's famous violinist Erica Morini—a stubborn talent whose playing was derided as too “masculine” when she was younger—vs. violin maker-restorer Brian; they clash after she hires him to restore her precious (but damaged) Stradivarius violin.

Brian obliges, later discovering she wants to sell it for an outrageous sum before vultures led by—she thinks—her conspiratorial cleaning lady swoop in to pluck the priceless instrument from her hands.

Holtzman's standard-issue premise—Brian lives a normal suburban life with his wife, sons and barking dog, while Erica's in a Fifth Avenue doorman apartment with all the arrogance of a celebrity always catered to—keeps his drama on an unsurprising path. There are humorous exchanges, but even more eye-rolling comic lines, as when Erica mentions fellatio, calls John Lennon “Lenin,” or prefers the Rolling Stones because “Michael Jagger” once came backstage.

Mary Beth Peil growls endearingly as Erica, Michael Laurence makes a believably scruffy Brian, and exemplary violinist Hanah Stuart performs Tchaikovsky and Part as a young Erica. Casey Childs has smoothly directed a play that will resonate more with artists or artisans in the audience than the general public.

Gerda Stevenson's Federer vs. Murray packs a lot into 55 minutes. The world-class tennis players of its title never appear, but their important Wimbledon match conveniently parallels the grudge match between a husband and wife, whose own sorrowful tragedy is played out on the bitterly contested battleground of their living room.

Flo (played with steely rage by the author, who also directs succinctly) works overtime at a local hospital and cannot bear to think—let alone talk—about her son, a soldier killed in Afghanistan. Her laid-off husband Jimmy (a superbly controlled Dave Anderson) wants life to go on despite their beloved son’s death: they and (unseen) daughter Mary are alive, and—huge fan of the professional and gentlemanly Federer that he is—he wants to travel to his hero’s native Switzerland and see the Matterhorn in all its snowy glory.

Yes, there are metaphors tripping over metaphors, some clunkily, others snugly: when the couple gets painted faces in their heroes' flag colors, things become amusing if obvious; when a saxophonist (the talented Ben Bryden) appears during interludes to play melancholy music, we see him as their son, whose instrument Jimmy pulls out to toot. In case we miss the connection, Bryden enters at the end wearing fatigues.

She might wield a sledgehammer instead of a racket, but Stevenson has created a powerful portrait of people being pulled apart by grief while trying to keep a tenuous hold on their tattered relationship.

Gore Vidal’s The Best Man
Previews began March 6, 2012; opened April 1; closes July 8
Schoenfeld Theatre, 236 West 45th Street, New York, NY
http://thebestmanonbroadway.com

4000 Miles
Previews began March 15, 2012; opened April 2; closes June 17
Mitzi Newhouse Theater, 150 West 65th Street, New York, NY
http://lct.org

The Morini Strad
Previews began March 20, 2012; opened April 3; closes April 28
59 E 59 Theatre, 59 East 59th Street, New York, NY
http://primarystages.org

Federer vs. Murray
Previews began April 4, 2012; opened April 10; closes April 22
59 E 59 Theatre, 59 East 59th Street, New York, NY
http://59e59.org