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Film and the Arts

November '13 Digital Week II

Details: Parent Category: Film and the Arts; Category: Reviews; Published on Monday, 11 November 2013 03:23; Written by Kevin Filipski

Blu-rays of the Week

Farscape—The Complete Series
15^th Anniversary Edition

(Cinedigm)

As the Sci-Fi (now Syfy) Channel’s first original dramatic series, Farscape remains an entertaining mix of special effects, intriguing characters, bizarre creatures and even cheesy humor 15 years later. And this comprehensive boxed set comprises everything any fan would need or want.

In addition to all 88 episodes of the show’s four-season run (1999-2003)—all of which look as pristine as possible in hi-def—the Blu-ray set also features so many bonuses most fans probably won’t get through them all. There are 29 episode commentaries, documentary Memories of Moya—an Epic Journey, featurettes, interviews, 90 minutes of deleted scenes and a 16-page mini-comic book.

Fearless

(Warner Archive)

Peter Weir’s pretentious 1993 drama (from screenwriter Rafael Yglesias’ novel) about dealing with death and survival after a plane crash was overrated from the start, and remains uninteresting despite powerhouse acting by Jeff Bridges and Rosie Perez as the people affected by the tragedy who bond despite their families’ misunderstanding them.

Weir ratchets up the hyper-realism in his meretricious finale, scored to the repetitious and dull Third Symphony by Polish composer Henryk Gorecki. The hi-def image, while good, could be better.
(available at warnerarchive.com)

Intolerance

(Cohen Media)

D.W. Griffith’s 1916 epic is one of the most audacious movies ever—nearly three hours of moralizing about sin throughout the ages, from ancient Babylon to then-modern America. If much of it is slow-moving today, remember that it was made a century ago with primitive means, and Griffith’s achievement—even more so than in the racially-charged Birth of a Nation—remains indelible.

This two-Blu-ray set includes the film—which looks the best it ever has—on one disc and two full-length films (The Fall of Babylon and Mother and the Law) based on Intolerance segments and Kevin Brownlow’s analysis on another disc.

James Dean Collection

(Warners)

When James Dean died at age 24 in a car crash, he had made only three films, all classics: Elia Kazan’s East of Eden (1954), Nicholas Ray’s Rebel Without a Cause (1955) and George Stevens’ Giant (1956). Dean’s magnetic presence is as important to their success as anything—or anyone—else.

This magnificent boxed set has the films in immaculate hi-def transfers and four DVDs with Giant extras, Oscar-winning documentary George Stevens—a Filmmaker’s Journey, and full-length docs James Dean—Forever Young and American Masters—James Dean: Sense Memories. Eden and Rebel extras are commentaries, featurettes, deleted scenes and screen tests.

Lady Antebellum—Live on This Winter's Night

Move Me Brightly (Eagle Vision)

Country trio Lady Antebellum’s Christmas concert comprises 11 holiday perennials, from “Silver Bells” and “Let It Snow” to “The First Noel” and “Silent Night”—the group’s lilting harmonies are perfect for these seasonal melodies.

In honor of what would have been Jerry Garcia’s 70^th birthday, his Grateful Dead buddies and musician friends like Carlos Santana and Sammy Hagar play tunes like “Terrapin Station” in engagingly laidback arrangements. Both discs look and sound stunning on Blu-ray; extras include additional songs (an hour’s worth on the Garcia disc).

Moby Dick

(Euroarts)

Composer Jake Heggie and librettist Gene Scheer transformed Herman Melville’s sprawling classic novel into a straightforward, conventional opera about a ship’s crew chasing a white whale. While the music is strikingly dramatic—especially as sung and played at last year’s San Francisco Opera world premiere—none of Melville’s poetic flights of fancy is present or even approximated.

Another mistake is making Melville’s famous opening line the opera’s last words: this too-clever transposition adds nothing. Still, it’s a nice-looking production, and the melodic music can stand up to repeated hearings. The Blu-ray image and sound are very good.

Passion

(e one)

Brian DePalma returns to the stylishly empty thrillers of his early career with a unnecessary remake of Alain Corneau’s superior Love Crime, with the superbly matched Kristin Scott Thomas as a backstabbing boss and Ludivine Sagnier as her put-upon associate. DePalma turns it cheap and glitteringly shallow.

Ravishing Rachel McAdams is gleefully nasty and Noomi Rapace holds DePalma's merciless close-ups without embarrassment, but it’s all for naught: at the end, DePalma plagiarizes himself with a series of ridiculous—and desperate—dream sequences. The Blu-ray image is first-rate; extras comprise DePalma, Rapace and McAdams interviews.

The Right Stuff
30^th Anniversary Edition

(Warners)

In a perfect synthesis of theme, tone and talent, Philip Kaufman made a spectacular, enduring 1983 classic from Tom Wolfe’s trendsetting book about the early Mercury astronauts and Chuck Yeager, then the fastest flier alive. For over three hours, Kaufman treats these space explorers as both satirical cartoons and men worthy of serious study.

It works splendidly, thanks to terrific acting, brilliant pacing and direction and epic subject matter that can withstand such unconventional treatment. The Blu-ray image looks amazing; extras include a 40-page commemorative book, deleted scenes, Kaufman/cast/crew commentaries and featurettes.

Strauss—Die Frau ohne Schatten (Mariinsky)
Ravel—L’Heure espagnole and L’enfant et les sortileges
(Fra Musica)

Richard Strauss’ rarely-produced, 3-1/2-hour Frau contains the ultimate melodist’s most gorgeous score—and Hugo Hofmannsthal’s unwieldy libretto. Luckily, Jonathan Kent’s visually unappealing modern-dress staging (St. Petersburg, 2011) is rescued by top-notch singers and Valery Gergiev leading his Mariinsky Orchestra and Chorus’s arresting performance.

Maurice Ravel’s delightful L’Heure and L’enfant, presented at England’s Glyndebourne Festival last summer, are wonderfully sung and played, but only L’enfant’s staging really shimmers; L’heure has been awkwardly updated to no discernible point. On both discs, the Blu-ray image is impeccable and the surround sound is stellar; the Ravel operas each have a making-of featurette.

DVDs of the Week

Complicity

(Inception)

In this ordinary high school thriller, a female accuses a male of raping her at a house party, whereupon he’s accidentally killed by her friends; thankfully, there’s not enough time in its 80 minutes to pick apart its plot holes and flaccid characterizations.

Of course, the performers were picked more for their attractiveness—Heather Hemmens, who wears a see-through blouse and black bra in class, looks like no girl I remember from my high school days—but the movie doesn’t give them much of anything to do.

Computer Chess

(Kino Lorber)

Andrew Bujalski’s best movie idea consists of a group of computer programmers getting together for a weekend of chess playing and other intellectual pursuits.

Although clever—and shot in B&W by cinematographer Matthias Grunsky with a 1969 video camera in the old academy (or TV) ratio—Bujalski’s feature has little dramatic or comedic weight as its ciphers spout “witty” dialogue that sags under its own weight. What could have been an excellent short film has been stretched to 92 minutes. Extras include brief spots about funding the film and original computer chess matches.

Dean Martin Roasts —The Complete Collection (Star Vista/Time Life)

Over the years, Dean Martin’s ‘70s TV roasts have been released in separate sets, and this deluxe boxed set brings everything together: with extras thrown in for good measure.

The roasts—whose “victims” included Johnny Carson, California governor Ronald Reagan, Muhammad Ali, Angie Dickinson, Betty White, even Truman Capote—were the last word in politically incorrect humor, as racial and ethnic jokes that would never pass muster today are tossed around by the likes of Don Rickles, Sammy Davis Jr, Rich Little, Milton Berle and Ruth Buzzi.

The set’s 25 discs, comprising 54 roasts, provide hours of unalloyed nostalgic fun, while 15 hours of extras—which include featurettes, interviews, a 44-page book, bonus comedy sketches, home movies, even two DVDs of episodes of Dean’s variety show—will provide additional fun.
(available at timelife.com)

First Monday in October

(Warner Archive)

In this stolid adaptation of Jerome Lawrence and Robert E. Lee’s play about the first female Supreme Court justice, director Ronald Neame, despite surefire stars Walter Matthau and Jill Clayburgh, fumbles this promising comedy-drama pitting a young female conservative against a cranky elder-statesman liberal.

Neame never finds a way to allow Clayburgh and Matthau to bloom, together or separately; its release right after Sandra Day O’Connor was nominated to the Court in 1981 is its only claim to fame.
(available at warnerarchive.com)

Manhunt—The Inside Story of the Hunt for Bin Laden

(HBO)

In Greg Barker’s riveting, skillful documentary from Peter Bergen’s book, the CIA’s decade-long hunt for the man behind the September 11 attacks is recounted through interviews and valuable—and often pulse-pounding—archival footage.

Some detractors might say that this puts Zero Dark Thirty into perspective (or into its place), even though Kathryn Bigelow’s compelling film can stand on its own. Both films can coexist as complements to show a particularly dark chapter in our history.

Tabu

(Adopt)

Portuguese director Miguel Gomes’ self-conscious bipartite drama follows a woman, seen first as a senior citizen in Lisbon and second as a beautiful pregnant wife in colonial Africa who has an affair with an explorer.

Shot in shimmering B&W and in old academy ratio, the visually alluring film—whose very title evokes F.W. Murnau’s silent classic Tabu—relies on obvious metaphors (a crocodile’s recurring appearances nearly collapse its fragile structure) and surface pleasures to mask its alarming lack of depth or insight.

The Wall

(Music Box)

In this understated adaptation of Marlen Haushofer’s allegorical novel, the quietly affecting Martina Gedeck plays a woman who, with her trusty dog, becomes trapped by an invisible wall that seems to have saved her from a fate that befell others: she survives against all odds, killing animals for food and writing a diary to keep from going insane.

It’s not that risible (at least not Stephen King’s Under the Dome level), but director Julian Roman Polser goes on too long; even allegories must know when to stop. The glorious photography deserves a Blu-ray, which unfortunately isn’t an option.

"The Rocket" Blasts towards the 86th Academy Awards

Details: Parent Category: Film and the Arts; Category: Reviews; Published on Saturday, 09 November 2013 19:22; Written by Laura Blum

Palm fronds swaying in the breeze, moon-lit mountains, petal-strewn altars: Laos may be the most paradisical place on Earth. But this paradise harbors a darker superlative: At nearly 80 million cluster bombs (minus the 500,000 that have been cleared), it's the most bombarded country per capita in history.

rocketposter Laos's beauty and bête noire are on full view in Kim Mordaunt's redemptive tale, The Rocket. The Laotian-Australian production centers on 10-year-old Ahlo, an artful operator who is born under a bad omen as a twin. Ahlo is held culpable for his family's accruing misfortunes as they're forced off their land to make way for the construction of hydro-electric dams by an Australian corporation. To overcome his jinx, Ahlo sets his eyes on the prize at the Rocket Festival. This rambunctious Spring ceremony, rooted in a traditional phallic rite, entails firing rockets at the sky deities to bring on the rainy season.

One of the most memorable scenes in The Rocket plunges us underwater as Ahlo discovers buddha heads, wat ruins and sundry village detruitus that have sunken with the dam project. "It's a foreboding of what was about to happen to this ancient community and also what was going to happen to his mother," explained Mordaunt. Shot in a real hydroelectic lake, this haunting sequence anticipates the literal and figurative submerging of local culture, or what Mordaunt described as the "ghosting of their traditions by this Australian-Lao dam."

Behind this saga of dislocation lurk digs at today's economic aggression and its eerie echoes of the American strafings that drove a million Laotian peasants from their homes during the Vietnam War. Mordaunt probed the lingering fallout from that campaign in his 2007 documentary Bomb Harvest.

With his fiction debut, the Australian writer-director now takes aim at Australia's dealings that he believes threaten to destroy indigenous Asian traditions and resources. "Australia does a lot of ethical business in Asia, but a lot of unethical business as well," he told Film Festival Traveler. Lamenting that developers are currently planning 52 dams across Laos, he stated, "That's really why I made the film -- I could see what was happening in
Laos and elsewhere in Asia."

The Rocket, like its young hero, is out to reverse a curse. Happily, though, Mordaunt resists all temptation to AhloBlossoms preach. This makes The Rocket a far more cheerful experience than its war-torn landscape and unkindly taboos might suggest. Mordaunt is making a statement, but his bully pulpit is adorned with blossoms. An especially lyrical example is Ahlo's friendship with Kia (Loungnam Kaosainam), which begins as the 9-year-old orphan literally rains down purple flowers on him from her perch in a tree.

Both fledglings revel in adventure while allowing audiences a close view of tender sorrows. Played by former street urchin Sitthiphon “Ki” Disamoe, Ahlo blends pathos and pluck with such naturalism it's sure to leave a nick. That Ki's performance would be so raw wasn't apparent from the outset of his new acting gig. At first Mordaunt "couldn't get to the core of his emotions," he recalled. "I thought, this guy is never going to open up because he's learned to protect himself on the street. It was only when the director shared that he too had lost a parent at age 10, like Ahlo, that Kai started to "talk about his losses" and to reveal emotion.

Mordaunt's ode to fallibility advances another unsung hero, Kia's Uncle Purple. The man who plays him, Thep Phongam, is a veteran Thai-Lao entertainer; he's also the only professional actor in the cast. Inspired by a Laotian villager that the director had met while making Bomb Harvest, this spiky war veteran fought alongside the CIA and displays a weakness for James Brown and liquor. He is both a wise man and a fool, an avatar -- like the ubiquitous explosives -- of conflict and a Laotian hippie who wields his ostracism as social critique. Both Purple and Ahlo recognize their pariah link, yet the older man's dysfunction ignite the boy's fuse to rocket towards something higher.

The Rocket, with its totems and taboos, makes for a feast of archetypes and aphorisms. Garnished with humor and soul, it makes up in humanity what it may lack in narrative simplicity. "Lao culture is full of folklore," said Mordaunt, "so we decided we'd give the film a fable-like quality."

Armed with awards garnered at such fests as the Berlinale and the Tribeca Film Festival, Australia's submission to the 2014 foreign-language Oscar pool has resonated with cinephiles in various countries, though it has yet to be screened in Laos. Mordaunt was hardly surprised that it didn't clear that country's censorship board. "The dam issue is very, very political; it's worth hundreds of millions of dollars," he noted. But he has no regrets. "The Lao-Australian community didn't want to make a piece of propaganda."

Film Review: "Diana"

Details: Parent Category: Film and the Arts; Category: Reviews; Published on Friday, 08 November 2013 02:41; Written by Matt Oakes

"Diana"
Directed by Oliver Hirschbiegel
Starring Naomi Watts, Naveen Andrews, Douglas Hodge, Cas Anvar, Daniel Pirrie, Charles Edwards, Geraldine James
Biography, Drama, Romance
113 Mins
PG-13

A princess locked away in her castle has never been quite as dull as in Diana. Even her knight in shining armor is a touchy troglodyte, so petrified of being in the public eye that he'd sooner bury his passion under a callused doctoral turtle shell than mumble "I love you" one more time. Diana keeps telling us to root for this unlikely and spotted relationship and yet we see it clearly for how fickle and irrevocably broken it is, eviscerating all emotional attachment and leaving its audience with cold feet.

While Diana the woman was a visionary humanitarian, Diana the movie is blind to its own half-baked inconsequentiality - a relic of biography as bore that has no place in the rom-com market it nearly exists in. A shining example of the tail wagging the dog, Diana is tugged through the mud with its lackluster "universal love story" front and center, a mistakenly proud icon of this flunky biopic.

Rather than focusing on Princess Diana's chest of civil achievements, Oliver Hirschbiegel contends himself with this turkey of a love story. In doing so, he misses out on establishing historical interest and wholly makes us wonder why he choose to make a film about Diana at all since this lame love story could have belonged to pretty much anyone else.

Film Review: "Thor: The Dark World"

Details: Parent Category: Film and the Arts; Category: Reviews; Published on Friday, 08 November 2013 02:35; Written by Matt Oakes

"Thor: The Dark World"
Directed by Alan Taylor
Starring Chris Hemsworth, Tom Hiddleston, Natalie Portland, Stellan Skarsgård, Anthony Hopkins, Christopher Eccleston, Jaimie Alexander, Zachary Levi, Ray Stevenson, Tadanobu Asano, Idris Elba, Kat Dennings, Chris O'Dowd
Action, Adventure, Fantasy
112 Mins
PG-13

Between Chris Hemsworth's washboard abs and the FX razzle-dazzle signature of Marvel's brand, Thor: The Dark World uses blinding awesomeness to cast shade on its portended plotting. First and foremost a Marvel movie, this second (or third if you're counting The Avengers) outing for the God of Thunder rounds all of the superhero studio's likely bases, but a gilded touch from Game of Thrones director Alan Taylor helps bring an epic scope to the proceedings. Far exceeding the first film in terms of visual panache and high stakes action beats, the crowning gem of the Thor camp continues to be Tom Hiddleston's Loki. Deviant, seething, and locked away for treason, Loki may not be as much of a focal point as he was as the big baddie in The Avengers but he persists in being the most complex and unpredictable character in Marvel's stable.

This time around, Thor lacks the megalomaniacal egoism of the first installment, his (massively sized) head distracted by the clout of his lost love, Jane Foster (Natalie Portman), waiting for him back on Earth two years after Thor's first departure. But a new evil stirs in the Dark Elves, a race that predates all living beings, warriors born of darkness (whatever that means) and intent on bringing all nine realms back under their control, demanding Thor and his (named) hammer's attention.

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