Kevin's September '11 Digital Week I

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Parent Category: Film and the Arts

Category: Reviews

Published on Monday, 05 September 2011 11:00

Written by Kevin Filipski

Blu-rays of the Week

The Complete Jean Vigo (Criterion)

A rule-breaking, delightful quartet of films are collected in this essential release. Probably the most important director who never got to 30 (he died of TB at age 29 in 1934), Jean Vigo--who influenced Truffaut, Godard, Rohmer, Bunuel and Cocteau, for starters--made an absurdist documentary short (A propos de Nice), champion athlete portrait (Taris) and two towering masterpieces: boarding-school classic Zero for Conduct and 90-minute surreal romance L'Atalante. What would he have done if he lived even 10-15 more years?

For their ages, these B&W films look absolutely remarkable. Extras include film commentaries by Vigo scholar Michael Temple, an alternate Nice edit, Truffaut and Rohmer conversation, French TV episode about Vigo's career, a 2001 documentary about L'Atalante and appreciations by directors Michel Gondry and Otar Iosseliani.

The Greatest Movie Ever Sold (Sony)

Leave it to Morgan Spurlock to make a movie from a desperate idea: the ubiquitousness of product placement on our screens and in our lives. So Spurlock's movie chronicles his efforts to get corporate backing for and product placement into his movie, the movie that makes itself. It's funny and thought-provoking about how everything is commercialized nowadays, even if its slight 87-minute running time feels padded.

The film's hi-def video shoot comes across brightly on Blu-ray; extras include commentary by Spurlock and others, deleted scenes, full-length commercials, behind-the-scenes featurette, Sundance footage and behind-the-scenes for the Hyatt and JetBlue ads.

Madea's Big Happy Family (LionsGate)

Another Medea picture comes off the Tyler Perry assembly line, with the expected result: Perry's Medea (a singularly unconvincing drag performance) spits out well-timed (but not very funny) insults to other members of her family when they get together for a family emergency.

Even with a trouper like Loretta Devine in tow, the movie rarely scares up genuine laughs or tears, thanks to Perry's risible dialogue and characters and barely-there directing. The solid-looking Blu-ray image is complemented by extras (on-set and behind-the-scenes featurettes).

Prom (Disney)

This tame, made-for-Disney TV movie won't win awards for originality or (barely) competence, but it does what it sets out to do: entertain its targeted high schoolers and pre-teens who want to watch normal kids going through manufactured problems: when the prom is in jeopardy, the kids ensure it goes on.

It's anything but scintillating, and the performers seem chosen from a Benetton ad, but it's passably entertaining anyway. The Blu-ray transfer is strong; extras include seven music videos, a making-of featurette, bloopers, deleted scenes and a new short film.

Sons of Anarchy: Season 3 (Fox)

The 13 entertaining episodes on this 3-disc set follow the continuing adventures of members of a renegade bikers' club which helps protect a small town from developers and drug dealers and others. Although the show isn't as clever as it thinks, there's something likable about it, thanks to its top cast, led by the indomitable Katey Segal and intriguing Ron Perlman.

The images look stunning on Blu-ray; extras include all-new-to-Blu-ray scenes bridging seasons 3 and 4; extended episodes; writer's roundtable featurette; gag reel; deleted scenes; and commentaries.

The Twilight Zone: Season 5 (Image)

The final season of Rod Serling's all-time classic series (1963-4) returned to the half-hour format after the previous season's hour-long shows. While the 36 episodes are a bumpy ride, several stand with the best ever produced, including "Nightmare at 20,000 Feet" with William Shatner, "Living Doll" with Telly Savalas, and "Caesar and Me" with Jackie Cooper.

Also included is "An Occurrence at Owl Creek Bridge," a chilling Oscar-winning French short film airing once as a Twilight Zone episode. Along with superbly upgraded visuals, this stacked five-disc set includes dozens of audio commentaries, interviews, promo spots, conversations with Serling and 22 Twilight Zone radio dramas.

Win Win (Fox)

In Tom McCarthy's sympathetic story of a down-and-out lawyer/high school wrestling coach trying to straighten out his family's economic difficulties, Paul Giamatti gives one of his most well-rounded performances. McCarthy's excellent script has juicy roles for a crew of non-glamorous actors: alongside Giamatti are Amy Ryan as his devoted wife, Bobby Cannavale as his desperate friend and young Alex Shaffer as the teen wrestling prodigy whose own family situation causes more problems.

This intimate comic portrait has a clean hi-def look; extras include interviews, deleted scenes and a music video.

DVDs of the Week

An American Family (PBS)

Public television's greatest achievement, the 1973 mini-series showcasing the Loud family of Santa Barbara, was a riveting real-life chronicle that presaged the awful spate of reality shows that clutter TV today and remains a dramatic and psychologically penetrating document.

The 12-hour show was reedited to 2 hours for this release, providing a necessarily incomplete overview of the whole messy, sad, funny and compelling series. Extras include a 1973 roundtable discussion with anthropologist Margaret Mead and new interviews with people who worked on the original production.

Carbon Nation (Team Marketing)

Peter Byck's documentary about how we can switch to renewable energy from our dependence on foreign oil--which grows with each passing year--is an evenhanded approach to optimistic solutions rather than another round of finger pointing. Arguing for smart responses rather than those that line the pockets of a few, the film brings together under a big tent all political persuasions who want one future: a real fight against climate change.

Informative extras include eight deleted scenes, two commentaries and three cartoons, along with Byck's first documentary, Garbage.

Eclipse 28: The Warped World of Koreyoshi Kurahara (Criterion)

This is why the Criterion Collection's Eclipse line was invented: to introduce us to a a filmmaker who, for one reason or another, has been buried for decades. Koreyoshi Kurahara, a Japanese contemporary of Nagisa Oshima and Shohei Imamura, made fever-dream dramas that were deliriously free-form but also tightly controlled, and the five films of his that are collected in this set are highly watchable (and even rewatchable) tours de force.

The quintet begins with 1960's Intimidation and concludes with 1967's Thirst for Love, an extraordinarily compelling and typically bizarre adaptation of a Yukio Mishima novel.

A New Look: Samuel F.B. Morse's Gallery of the Louvre and Trimpin: The Sound of Invention (Microcinema)

These documentaries chronicle artists who worked nearly two centuries apart. Although Samuel Morse is best known for the telegraph and Morse Code, his massive painting Gallery of the Louvre is studied in this interesting 30-minute featurette, an important work of American art that, unfortunately, was not accepted by his countrymen, which led to the inventions that would make his name.

Trimpin, a composer who creates music for instruments that he builds himself, is shown in the engaging The Sound of Invention collaborating with avant-garde musicians Kronos Quartet.

CDs of the Week

Rossini: William Tell (EMI Classics)

Rossini never penned music more popular than the last section of the Overture for his 1829 grand opera from a Frederich Schiller play--today, it's best known as the The Lone Ranger theme. Most impressive about conductor Antonio Pappano's brilliantly paced account of this three-plus hour, five-act drama is that even when that familiar theme pops up, it remains in the context of a thrilling story of 14th century oppression.

A tremendous cast led by Canadian bass-baritone Gerald Finley as the hero makes this a thrilling listen, and kudos to EMI Classics for giving it the deluxe treatment--a beautifully designed box, three discs, thick libretto booklet, all a luxury in today's belt-tightening classical world.

Schubert/Gal: Kindred Spirits (Avie)

Franz Schubert's "Great" Symphony is, along with his "Unfinished," the acme of his orchestral music, and a glimpse at where the composer's style might have headed if he hadn't died at age 31 in 1828. Thomas Zehetmair conducts the Northern Sinfonia in a solid rendition of that symphony, pairing it with the Second Symphony from obscure Austrian composer Hans Gal, born 62 years after Schubert's death.

A deliberately paced, enticingly dramatic work, Gal's symphony is good enough to want to hear more: and you can, as Gal's first symphony was earlier paired with Schubert's sixth in the first "Kindred Spirits" release.

Cinefantastique Spotlight Podcast: Don't Be Afraid of the Dark

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Parent Category: Film and the Arts

Category: Reviews

Published on Tuesday, 30 August 2011 13:12

Written by Daniel Persons

Don't Be Afraid of the Dark, the title urges, but you know they're lying. There are things hiding in the dark, little things, nasty things, things that want nothing better than to drag you down, down to the caverns where they dwell in order to, well, let's just say you won't need your library card anymore.

Director Guillermo del Toro was so transfixed as a child by the original telemovie that he re-wrote the tale with frequent partner Matthew Robbins, brought in comics-artist Troy Nixey to direct, and unleashed the darkness-loving creepies on estranged father Guy Pearce, conflicted girlfriend Katie Holmes, and most especially Bailee Madison as the young girl the demons most desperately covet.

Join Cinefantastique Online's Steve Biodrowski, Lawrence French, and Dan Persons as they explore how the story survives the updating, consider whether the chills outweigh the plot holes, and discuss why, after all these years, people still don't realize that when disembodied voices start whispering to you in the dark, it's time to GET THE HELL OUT OF THE HOUSE.

Also: Guillermo del Toro imparts some thoughts on the importance of storytelling; and what's coming in theaters and home video.

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Kevin's August '11 Digital Week IV

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Parent Category: Film and the Arts

Category: Reviews

Published on Monday, 29 August 2011 12:00

Written by Kevin Filipski

Blu-rays of the Week

The Beaver (Summit)

Mel Gibson's performance as a depressed husband and father who uses a beaver doll to "speak" for him is eye-opening but overdone: why would a middle-class American speak in a Geico-lizard accented voice except to allow Gibson to show off? Still, he and director Jodie Foster make a believable married couple, and Foster smartly allows breathing room for the teenage son's (Anton Yelchin) budding relationship with the pretty valedictorian (always spot-on Jennifer Lawrence).

Too bad scriptwriter Kyle Killen's clever idea goes nowhere; Foster's restrained directing and the cast partly compensate. The Blu-ray image is decent; extras are Foster's commentary, deleted scenes and a making-of featurette.

Blood Simple (MGM/Fox)

I've always thought of the Coen brothers' 1984 debut feature as Blood Simpleminded, so contrived is its plot and so impossibly imbecile are its characters. Even the vaunted visual cleverness is just that: the Coens' emptily stylish shots are so relentlessly tacky and naïve that they must be ironic: except even as irony, they don't work.

There are, admittedly, a few cheap thrills as well as a certain chutzpah in their insistence on forcing such gimmickry down audiences' throats. The Blu-ray image is good and grainy; Kenneth Loring's audio commentary is little more but cheerleading.

Boris Godunov (Opus Arte) and Le Songe (Arthaus Musik)

Russian Modest Mussorgsky's epic Boris Godunov, in a version combining his first attempt in 1869 and one in 1874, is seen in a 2010 Turin, Italy staging with conductor Gianandrea Noseda leading the orchestra and Russian singers Orlin Anastassov (Czar Boris) and Ian Storey (Grigory, pretender to the throne) leading the way. Andrei Konchalovsky's vibrant production looks terrific and Mussorgsky's impassioned score is teeth-rattling on Blu-ray.

Choreographer Jean-Christophe Maillot's film Le Songe, a ballet based on Shakespeare's A Midsummer Night's Dream, alternates Felix Mendelssohn's beguiling score with electronic noises I'd hesitate to call music. Still, the dancers are wonderful, the beautiful visuals transfer well to Blu-ray and it sounds impressive too.

If... (Criterion)

Lindsay Anderson's 1969 classic, a rare successful film allegory, was followed by his later failures O Lucky Man and Britannia Hospital. A young, nasty Malcolm McDowell leads revolting boarding school students against stuffy headmasters in a riotous black comedy that still resonates over 40 years later.

By alternating black and white with color and fantasy and reality, Anderson balances menace and exuberance in equal measure. The Criterion Collection's perfect-looking Blu-ray is another winner, with extras comprising McDowell's commentary; actor Graham Crowden interview; 2003 TV program with McDowell and others; and Anderson's 1955 short about a school for the deaf, Tuesday's Children.

In a Better World (Sony)

Susanne Bier's flawed exploration of two families dealing with the consequences of their sons' actions stacks the dramatic deck so obviously that, despite the efforts of a good cast, it never becomes the complex psychological drama it intends to be.

Bier is a humane filmmaker, but she labors with hammer and tongs until her point is made and re-made. The often spectacular visuals are rendered beautifully on Blu-ray; extras include Bier and her film editor's commentary, deleted scenes and director interview.

The Perfect Host and Trollhunter (Magnolia)

David Hyde Pierce has a blast as a fey dinner host who opens his door to a robber in The Perfect Host, an unhinged black-comic thriller that loses its bearings after the first half-hour (it was expanded from writer-director Nick Tomnay's short). The Norwegian chiller Trollhunter, a Blair Witch Project knockoff (why are those still being made?), has effective moments of horror but mainly bounces along as an action-filled B-movie spoof.

Both movies have fine Blu-ray transfers: Trollhunter's grainy look is especially memorable. Host's extras include two making-of featurettes; Trollhunter's extras include deleted/ extended scenes, bloopers and behind-the-scenes featurettes.

Poetry (Kino) and Secret Sunshine (Criterion)

Korean director Lee Chang-dong makes slow, evocative character studies that amplify their protagonists' messy lives and the societies they inhabit. 2007's Secret Sunshine follows a young widow whose decision to return to her late husband's hometown causes more difficulties than she could have imagined, while 2010's Poetry follows a grandmother struggling with early-onset Alzheimer's, taking a poetry writing course and dealing with her beloved grandson's crime.

Both films are leisurely but impressively controlled, with enchanting performances. The Criterion Collection's Secret haes a gorgeous transfer, director interview and on-set video piece; Kino's Poetry has an equally excellent transfer and on-set interviews.

Strike (Kino)

Continuing to release more classic silents on Blu-ray than any other company, Kino presents the great Russian director Sergei Eisenstein's first feature. Made in 1925, Strike is filled with idealistic agit-prop for the Communist state as well as indelible, powerful imagery. The restored copy of the film, despite scratches and visual debris, looks fantastic: the soundtrack, newly commissioned, is played by the effective Mont Alto Motion Picture Orchestra.

Extras include Glumov's Diary, Eisenstein's first short; and Eisenstein and the Revolutionary Spirit, a 38-minute interview with French film scholar Natacha Laurent about Eisenstein's truncated career and artistry.

Wrecked (IFC)

Like last year's unfortunate Buried with Ryan Reynolds as a contractor in Iraq who finds himself in a coffin with little time left, this hackneyed thriller with Adrien Brody lacks crucial suspense in a nameless man's dilemma when he finds himself in a badly crashed car in the middle of a forest surrounded by two dead bodies, cash and a gun.

Director Michael Greenspan finds scant variety in the material, resorting to flashbacks hinting at what happened and bringing in a mountain lion and other animals. Ultimately, however this shaggy dog story has little rhyme or reason, despite Brody's seriousness. The Blu-ray images (shot in the Pacific Northwest) are flattering; extras include making-of featurettes.

DVDs of the Week

The Bleeding House and Neds (Tribeca Film)

While The Bleeding House, a minor horror movie about a straight-laced family being terrorized by a maniac, is negligible, Neds--Scottish actor Peter Mullen's latest and his third devastating directorial effort following Orphans and The Magdalene Sisters--shows Mullen in supreme command of another messed-up slice-of-life tale as a 1972 Glasgow teen tries escaping the hell of his drunken, abusive father and delinquent older brother.

Extraordinary acting by mainly unknowns (with Mullen as the drunken dad) distinguishes this hard-hitting drama. Too bad the English subtitles, instead of making the thick dialects clearer, show the actual slang, rendering everything useless. Each film includes two deleted scenes; The Bleeding House also includes an alternate ending.

Cell 211 and Police, Adjective (KimStim/Zeitgeist)

The enterprising KimStim label has released two IFC Films that would otherwise have fallen completely under the radar. Cell 211 is a familiar but enthralling action pic set during a prison riot, where a guard on his first day pretends he's a prisoner to survive.

Police, Adjective, another example of the current Romanian film renaissance, is a deliberately paced, often dull but at times spectacularly minimalist look at a detective working a routine case. Both films are at least worth a look; it's too bad that only Cell 211 has an extra: a making-of featurette.

Daguerreotypes (Cinema Guild)

This charming 1975 portrait of neighbors on the Paris street where the director has lived for over 50 years now is another light-hearted but endlessly watchable Agnes Varda documentary. She introduces us to the people on the street, their shops and their customers, showing once again that she is the most perceptive documentary filmmaker around.

The disc includes several Varda shorts, including Rue Daguerre in 2005, the follow-up that shows her street over the past 30 years, that consolidate Varda as our most optimistic and good-humored social portraitist.

Everwood: Season 4 and Two and a Half Men: Season 8 (Warners)

These two hit shows, in different ways, have gone as far as they could with their characters. Everwood, the slightly cloying family drama starring Treat Williams, ends its run with its fourth year on the air, while Two and Half Men, as amusing as it is, is better known for its now former star Charlie Sheen's offscreen shenanigans.

Everwood's 22 episodes are complemented by deleted scenes and alternate endings; Two and a Half Men's 16 episodes include no extras.

CDs of the Week

British Composers Series: Bliss; Britten, Berkeley and Rubbra (EMI)

While fans of this superb quartet of British composers already own most of the recordings in these re-releases, they are still indispensable for completists who may be missing a work or two and those wanting an introduction. The valuable five-disc Arthur Bliss set includes many of the underrated 20th century master's best works (A Colour Symphony, Oboe Quintet, Checkmate ballet), along with a disc of Bliss conducting his own works like the Miracle of the Gorbals ballet and the vivid Music for Strings.

The other five-disc set pairs a lot of Benjamin Britten (Peter Grimes, Rape of Lucretia) with works by Edmund Rubbra (including his rarely-heard Piano Concerto) and Lennox Berkeley, whose disc features ear-opening performances of the masterly Horn Trio and lovely vocal and choral works.

Weill: Threepenny Opera Selections and Other Songs (Capriccio)

Kurt Weill's classic scores are heard in historic recordings (1928-1944) of Weill, wife Lotte Lenya and other cast members performing excerpts from The Threepenny Opera, and selections from other works like Mahagonny and Happy End.

While the sound quality on these two discs leaves much to be desired, that's part of the charm as we hear the composing genius and his very best and closest interpreters giving us run-throughs of such classics as "Mack the Knife" and "Alabama Song."

For more by Kevin Filipski, visit The Flip Side blog at http://flipsidereviews.blogspot.com