Blu-rays of the Week 

(Cohen Film Collection)

French director Jacques Rivette’s overlong dramas are mainly self-indulgent exercises, but his four-hour 1991 film about the volatile relationship between a famous painter and his young muse is—along with his two-part 1993 biopic about Joan of Arc—his best work. Rivette’s technique is often like watching paint dry; add in the usually amateurish performances, and it’s downright painful. But here, the volatility between artist and muse is artfully presented and persuasively enacted by Michel Piccoli and Emmanuelle Beart, along with the intricacies of creating art that are shown in real time.

It all looks splendid on Blu; extras include vintage interviews with Rivette and with screenwriters Pascal Bonitzer and Christine Laurent, along with film historian Richard Suchenski’s commentary. Now let’s get a hi-def release of Divertimento, Rivette’s two-hour alternate cut of this material, composed of entirely new shots and sequences.

The Golden Cockerel 

(BelAir Classiques)

This is the second staging to be released on Blu-ray in the past year of Nikolai Rimsky-Korsakov’s fantastical final opera about an aging Tsar whose title bird warns him of danger.

If this version—staged in 2016 in Brussels by Laurent Pelly and conducted by Alain Altinoglu, leading the Le Monnaie Symphony Orchestra and Chorus—is less memorable than the smashing Mariinsky production, it’s a serviceable account of Rimsky’s colorful score. In the title role, soprano Sheva Tahovel and dancer Sarah Demarthe are very fine; hi-def audio and video are good.

Julius Caesar  

One of Shakespeare’s most potent tragedies is given a compelling staging by director Angus Jackson at the Royal Shakespeare Company’s home in Stratford-upon-Avon.

The straightforward telling lucidly dramatizes the hubris and nobility of those involved. Strong acting by Andrew Woodall (Caesar), Alex Waldmann (Brutus), James Corrigan (Marc Antony) and Hannah Morrish, whose Portia who can hold her against these men, provide a laser focus. The hi-def video and audio are first-rate; extras include Jackson’s commentary, actor interviews and historical featurette.

Sex, Lies and Butterflies 

(PBS)

This newest documentary from PBS’s long-running Nature series focuses on those beautiful insects whose unique life-cycle—from cocoon to caterpillar to chrysalis to butterfly—is shown in the most extraordinarily intimate detail.

Narrated by Paul Giamatti, the 53-minute feature follows scientists analyzing the intricacies of these delicate creatures, including moths (obvious relatives of the butterflies); on Blu-ray, the stunning hi-def camerawork allows us to see, as it were, the very folds of these exquisite insects in all their glory.

DVDs of the Week 

(Seventh Art Productions)

For this latest Exhibition On Screen release, Britain’s most famous living painter presents two large exhibits of his recent work: in 2012, his colorful California landscapes, painted on an iPad, of all things; and his 2016 exhibition of 82 intimate portraits and a still life, each done in the course of three days.

Hockney is engaging and amusing during the discussions of his work; we get to see someone who has been painting for decades still reinvigorated by his art and still re-inventing himself.

Laugh-In—Complete 4th Season 

(Time-Life)

This latest Laugh-In release comprises the entire 1970-71 season of the classic comedy-variety show, which was hosted by Dick Rowan and Dan Martin, pitch-perfect ringmasters for the series’ usual bizarre stew of corny jokes, goofy skits, musical interludes and political satire.

As usual, the stars are an always game crew of regulars (like Ruth Buzzi, Gary Owens, Arte Johnson, Lily Tomlin) and a far-flung array of guest stars running the gamut from Rod Serling and Orson Welles to William F. Buckley and Gore Vidal. Along with 26 full episodes, there are bonus interviews with Lily Tomlin and Arte Johnson. 

CD of the Week 

(Masterworks Broadway)

NBC’s recent live version of Andrew Lloyd Webber and Tim Rice’s most popular rock musical was a high-energy affair, which helped cover up flaws in the staging, acting and singing. Still, for the most part, this gets by on adrenaline alone, which is why Alice Cooper’s Herod is transfixing in his big scene and why Brandon Victor Dixon’s Judas scores so highly whenever he’s singing.

Conversely, John Legend’s Jesus has little charisma, and although she has a lovely voice, Sara Bareilles doesn’t do justice to Mary Magdalene’s standard “I Don’t Know How to Love Him.”  Lacking the necessary visual component, this CD is an adequate record of the performance, which is highlighted by Norm Lewis absolutely killing it on “This Jesus Must Die."

But in his play, Shaw decided to forego—except for the long, engrossing trial scene in which competing dogmas and ideologies are put to the test—showing the obvious “big” scenes: we never see Joan in battle, we never see her capture or her execution. As always, Shaw’s interest was in the psychology, politics and morality; with Saint Joan, he had a huge canvas on which to work out such themes, even finding room for a playful epilogue that might seem to belong to a more irreverent treatment.

What a director must do is keep Saint Joan fluid without degenerating into static scenes of exposition and dialogue. Daniel Sullivan partially solves that with some judicious if not entirely necessary cutting: Shaw’s words are so poetic and pregnant with meaning that even too many of them aren’t problematic. Sullivan’s sober atmosphere also helps his mainly absorbing production from tripping itself up.

Scott Pask’s uncluttered set is dominated by what appear to be organ pipes hanging from the ceiling, which also allow Shaw’s words to remain center stage. And the males surrounding Joan—the French and British military and religious leaders and the Dauphin, the French regent who later became King Charles VII—are enacted by several serious stage actors like Jack Davenport, Patrick Page, John Glover, Walter Bobbie and Daniel Sunjata, all of whom provide a perfect balance of gravity leavened with humor. 

Only Adam Chanler-Berat falls prey to overacting, making the Dauphin more boyish and immature than Shaw calls for—inexperienced and foolish is one thing, but foppish and campy is quite another. Condola Rashad’s Joan is well-spoken and girlish—sometimes too much so, as when she looks out into the audience with wide eyes to show off her youthfulness—but rarely compellingly tragic: as technically accomplished as she is, Rashad only finds Joan’s soul in her fleeting final moments begging for mercy from her prosecutors.

Saint Joan—which has been accurately described as “a tragedy without villains”—is one of Shaw’s most complex works, and Rashad and Sullivan provide an intermittently challenging interpretation.

Blu-rays of the Week 

(Warner Archive)

This clumsily executed 1957 musical comprising Cole Porter’s beguiling tunes recounts the friction among the partners in a famous cabaret act, with Gene Kelly doing his usual razzle-dazzle alongside his main ladies Mitzi Gaynor, Kay Kendall and Taina Elg, who all are worthy of the praise Porter showers on them.

Too bad George Cukor’s curiously flatfooted direction keeps this from taking off like the best movie musicals of its era do. The colorful widescreen compositions look excitingly alive in hi-def; extras are an archival featurette hosted by Elg and a vintage cartoon.

The Insult 

(Cohen Media)

In Lebanese director Ziad Doueiri’s volatile Beirut-set feature, hurled insults between a local and a Palestinian laborer spiral into a national case that is judged in the media and the courtroom. Doueiri’s taut story raises the stakes between the two men at first, but then becomes more strident and contrived, so much so that its power is diminished.

Still, Doueiri’s formidably authentic actors lend the film the gravitas it needs. There’s a superb hi-def transfer; lone extra is an informative 33-minute interview in which Doueiri discusses (in English) his film’s genesis.

Rock’n’Roll Hall of Fame In Concert 

This invaluable two-disc set for music fans collects the most recent quartet of Rock’n’Roll Hall of Fame induction ceremonies: 2014, 2016 and 2017 in Brooklyn and 2015 in Cleveland.

Not surprisingly, the highlights are many: 2014 features the remaining members of Nirvana with singers Joan Jett, Kim Gordon, Annie Clark and Lorde; 2015 brings a Ringo and Paul reunion for Starr’s belated solo induction; 2016 finally admits both Deep Purple and Cheap Trick; and 2017 does the same with both ELO and Yes (with Geddy Lee playing bass in place of the late, great Chris Squire). Hi-def video and audio are first-rate.

12 Strong 

(Warner Bros)

After the Sept. 11 attacks, an elite troop of U.S. Special Forces goes to Afghanistan to kick-start the War on Terror by (at first begrudgingly and later more willingly) teaming with the North Alliance to battle the Taliban and al Qaeda.

This straightforward and effective dramatization of the group’s heroics has been directed by the workmanlike Nicolai Fuglsig, and the heroes are enacted with true grit by Liam Hemsworth, Michael Shannon and Michael Pena, among others. The hi-def transfer is exceptionally good; extras comprise two behind-the-scenes featurettes.

DVDs of the Week

Capitalism 

Ilan Ziv’s exhaustive six-part feature documents the history of capitalism, from Adam Smith’s incisive and misinterpreted insights (like his legendary phrase, “invisible hand”) to the 2008 global collapse, which—according to many renowned economists—wasn’t supposed to happen.

Through interviews with sundry experts and witty sequences explaining integral concepts, Ziv has made a thorough, impactful look at what, to paraphrase Winston Churchill, is the worst of all possible economic systems—except for all others.

A Violent Life 

(Distrib Films)

The Mediterranean island of Corsica (Napoleon’s birthplace) isn’t usually in movies, especially as shown in Thierry de Peretti’s gritty drama, whose protagonist returns from Paris to the raw, violent isle he grew up on after his best friend (and fellow gang member) is murdered.

Through clever flashbacks, de Peretti trenchantly explores the underbelly of a modern society whose everyday life is gripped by crime and a regional fractionalism so severe that it’s led to a separatist movement against the arrogant French state.