Home Video and DVD Releases for January 2001
Compiled by Eddie Cockrell,  1 January 2001
Written by Eddie Cockrell, Gregory Avery

Nitrate Online explores a sampling of the most noteworthy, provocative and satisfying video and/or DVD releases for the month of December 2000 (give or take a few weeks). Titles are followed by original country and year of release, as well as release date (if known). All reviewed DVD’s are Region 1  coded unless otherwise indicated; Region 1 means they’re playable on machines sold in the United States only. Street dates change constantly and often differ from format to format, so check with your favorite click or brick supplier for up-to-date information.

Top-secret United Nations dirty tricks operative Shaw (Wesley Snipes) is hung out to dry by unscrupulous superiors in a tense and rainy New York City (actually Montreal) in The Art of War, a needlessly labyrinthine and ultimately numbing new action thriller from Canadian director Christian Duguay, who fared much better with the 1995 sci-fi/horror film Screamers. Snipes has subsisted on a kind of "righteous player on the run" routine for a good number of movies now (Drop Zone, Murder at 1600, U.S. Marshals), and even though he’s leavened his career with more serious parts (One Night Stand, Down in the Delta), he’s at serious risk of caricaturing himself. Not surprisingly, the best things about this film are Canadian: even when he phones it in, Donald Sutherland as the U.N. ambassador is never less than regal, and rumpled character actor Maury Chaykin is affably implacable as an FBI agent on Shaw’s tale. And the action sequences, particularly a zig-zag footrace the plot demands Snipes run not once but twice, exhibit Duguay’s facility for large-canvas action scenes. Yet the entire endeavor might best be summed up by one character, who describes the shadowy action within the film as "reality mixed with illusion mixed with bullsh*t." The bare-bones DVD offers Dolby Digital 5.1 only, with no commentary or extras. 

In the year 3000, rebellious young "man-animal" Jonnie Goodboy Tyler (Barry Pepper, the prescient sniper from Saving Private Ryan) matches wits with security chief Terl (John Travolta), representing the thuggish and gangly race of Psychlos who have conquered the planet and are mining it for gold before destroying the roving bands of surviving humans in and around the ruins of Denver, and blowing it up. Think of the most miscalculated, unbalance, ill-conceived high-profile movies: Howard the Duck, The Postman (with which this shares a sketchy, post-apocalyptic future), maybe that Al Pacino movie Revolution (or Bobby Deerfield, take your pick). Battlefield Earth trumps them all, mixing a very weird, slang-filled sense of humor that finds its characters finding many uses for the word "crap" with a cheesy look and feel made even more galling by the fact that director Roger Christian actually won an Oscar for set direction once upon a time (for the first, uh, fourth Star Wars -- the one in 1977). When a Hollywood star initiates a vanity production there’s usually some vanity involved, yet John Travolta, who shepherded this adaptation of L. Ron Hubbard’s novel to the screen, has conceived Hubbard’s Psychlos as dreadlocked giants with guttural speech and huge hands (and no, he doesn’t seem to be grinding some Scientologist ax, either overtly or subliminal). They might be accurate according to the book, but onscreen they’re not only less than intimidating, but just plain icky. And Christian’s visual style is fundamentally irritating, a jumble of mismatched shots and crazy angles that is all wrong for the material. Incredibly, a supposed selling point of the DVD is Travolta’s make-up test, one of a handful of the disc’s handful of features and hidden bonuses which only the truly dedicated or demented will bother to mine.

Young Violet (Piper Perabo) travels the forty-two miles from South Amboy, New Jersey to the wilds of New York City intending to be a performer, only to be waylaid as a "Coyote" -- part bartender, part camp counselor, part stripper -- in the impossibly wild watering hole of the title. A throbbing male fantasy posing as a popular entertainment, producer Jerry Bruckheimer’s second of three films released in 2000 (it was bookended by the equally weighty Gone in Sixty Seconds and Remember the Titans) is the kind of movie where everyone in Joisey has an accent except Our Heroine, whose childhood chum finds a parking spot right in front of the chicly fleabitten tenement to which she relocates. Debuting director David McNally brings a Flashdance-y energy to this improbable cocktail, which never rise much above a supercharged hodgepodge of show-business wannabe clichés (although screenwriter Gina Wendkos did write a terrifically perceptive play called Ginger Ale Afternoon some eleven years ago -- a movie of which might still be floating around the video shop). The entertaining -- if wildly uneven -- supporting cast includes Maria Bello (formerly of E.R. ) as heart-of-gold owner Lil, model Tyra Banks as one of the barmaids, John Goodman as Violet’s grudgingly supportive dad (whose climactic bar dance is a highlight), LeAnn Rimes as herself, director Michael Bay (the upcoming Pearl Harbor) as a Village Voice photographer, Mad TV"s Alex Borstein as a lusty patron and Bud Cort (Harold in Harold and Maude) in a blink-and-you’ll-miss-him bit as a counterman. The DVD features a number of production featurettes, deleted scenes (!!!) and a music video by Rimes.

In the posh Georgetown section of Washington DC, young Regan (Linda Blair) becomes possessed by the devil, and must undergo a violent and horrifying exorcism at the hands of Fathers Merrin (Max von Sydow) and Karras (Jason Miller) under the watchful eye of her mother Chris (Ellen Burstyn). Among the greatest of contemporary horror films, The Exorcist survived the creative tussling of author William Peter Blatty and director William Friedkin to emerge a taut, absorbing, completely plausible horror thriller. Now, after a "25^th anniversary" tape and DVD edition, followed by the surprise box office success of "The Version You’ve Never Seen," the latter cut of the film comes to video (priced to rent) and DVD. For the record, there are approximately eleven minutes of previously cut footage woven into the whole, the bulk of which involve an early psychiatric examination of Regan and Chris’ discussion of it with her doctor (who prescribes the then-unkown Ritalin). A major downer of the new disc is Friedkin’s morose and literal commentary, which comes across as more of a pitch; in his zeal to describe what’s happening on screen (often mouthing dialogue with the characters), he completely forgets to point out such interesting trivia as Blatty’s early crowd-scene cameo ("Mr. Blatty," he calls him later) or the grotesque and shocking "spiderwalk" sequence (which can be glimpsed in the documentary accompanying the previous DVD issue). While the track is of interest to those who prize structure and character motivation, there’s little else to recommend it. And leaving aside the admitted value of the added footage to the film’s overall impact, the numerous versions of the film in print smack of a distasteful manipulation on Warner Bros.’ part. Sure, it’s a great movie, but enough already with versions of The Exorcist.

When a child goes missing outside a Toronto apartment block, the resulting investigation accelerates and reveals the subtle linkages of the tenants, each of whom unconsciously represents a sensory perception: there’s massuese Ruth (Gabrielle Rose), teenagers Rachel (Nadia Litz) and Rupert (Brendan Fletcher), baker Rona (Mary-Louise Parker), bisexual housecleaner Robert (Daniel McIvor), and opthamologist Richard (Philippe Volter). As these five stories unfold, the viewer is invited into a unique and enthralling universe where everything is familiar but at the same time fraught with new and provocative meaning. "The Five Senses," says writer-director Jeremey Podeswa, "has always been, for me, a film about the difficulties we encounter when we venture outside ourselves… We live in a cynical age, but the natural senses predate urbanity, ennui, jadedness. The senses are elemental, and in connecting us to the world, they connect us to others." Winner of the Best Canadian Feature Film award at the 1999 Toronto Film Festival and a Best Director Genie for Podeswa (whose sophomore feature this is), The Five Senses is a remarkable exercise in pure filmmaking that is at once visually rigorous and emotionally enveloping. Warner’s austere DVD release is coded for Dolby Digital 5.1.

Twelve hours in the lives of San Francisco area kids attending a rave in an abandoned warehouse refitted for the event. A blissed-out and thus dramatically flimsy feature film debut from writer-director-editor Greg Harrison, Groove gets into a shallow one early, opting for a simplistic approach to character development and story structure that plays more like a series of quasi-dramatic events strung together by sequences of music and joyful dance than a traditional beginning-middle-end plot (perhaps just how one of these raves play out over the course of a night). The best of these stories involves David (Hamish Linklater), the straight-arrow brother of rave vet Colin (Denny Kirkwood), who loosens his inhibitions long enough to take some ecstasy and relate to Leyla (Lola Glaudini), a transplanted New Yorker who advises him to breathe deeply and drink lots of water to counteract the drug (gee, is that all it takes?). While this gentle utopia may be appealing to the susceptible teen looking to surf the current zeitgeist, the cumulative effect is less of thrill-seeking than ennui; when someone describes the look he’s going for as "a suburban living room meets opium den kinda thing," the similarity to the finished product carries no small irony. Best moment: when an awestruck DJ tells real-life turntable wunderkind John Digweed (one of many playing themselves) "if you’re ever in Fresno, I do a weekly there…" The "Special Edition" DVD features numerous extras, including a commentary track, behind-the-scenes footage, deleted material, auditions and camera tests, the Bedrock music video for "Heaven Sent," and a choice of letterboxed or full-frame presentations.

Hollow man, hollow movie: brash researcher Sebastian Caine (Kevin Bacon) decides to use himself as a guinea pig for advanced experiments in invisibility, only to succumb to paranoia and rage at his new isolation. The latest slick, high-decibel action opus from Paul Verhoeven is a decided step down from his previous high water mark Starship Troopers (also shot by Jost Vacano), due in large part to the same strategy that made that film a success: a quasi-no-name cast and a cheerful flaunting of the genre conventions under which it labors. As has been a hallmark of Verhoeven’s work since 1987’s Robocop, the violence is unexpectedly and brutally blunt and the special effects are first-rate, depicting the process from seen to unseen as a gruesome yet fascinating layering of bone, veins, tissue and skin. Yet for all its efforts the movie itself is unable to achieve a similar depth, with the maneuvering between Bacon and his long-suffering minions conceived as high drama but executed as little more than the connecting, uh, tissue between high-tech set-pieces. The slickly-packaged DVD includes a commentary track with Verhoeven, Bacon and producer Andrew Marlowe; the HBO production featurette; three deleted scenes with director commentary; and, of greatest value to the collector, an isolated music track with commentary from legendary composer Jerry Goldsmith (The Man From U.N.C.L.E., Chinatown, the Oscar-winning The Omen).

The Farrelly brothers' latest piece of calculated outrage, Me, Myself & Irene has Jim Carrey playing a state trooper who develops a second, more aggressive personality in response to the way everyone keeps using him as a doormat; when he has to transport a pretty young woman (Reneé Zellweger) across state lines, his second personality keeps coming out and won't go away. Less a matter of bad jokes (bodily fluids fly, cows get wrestled to the ground and held at gunpoint, plastic sex toys are hurled, etc.) than of bad storytelling: Carrey wrestles with himself and with trying to bring two superficially drawn characters to life, while Zellweger keeps slamkicking him over and over again. The two of them could be pounding sides of beef in a cooler. The late Rex Allen, who narrated the Walt Disney True Life Adventure short films, also narrates this picture, and nobody seems to know why. The DVD features a commentary track from the brothers, deleted scenes with optional commentary, production vignettes, a "making of" featurette and the Foo Fighters video for Breakout.

Spain, 1519: pals Tulio (Kevin Kline), a realist, and Miguel (Kenneth Branagh), equipped with a loftier vision, win a map to the title treasure in a game of dice, fall into cahoots with explorer Hernando Cortes on his journey to South America, get the girl (Rosie Perez) and even help invent basketball. Sort of a cross between one of those old Bing Crosby/Bob Hope "Road" pictures (1945’s Road to Utopia has always been a favorite) and John Huston’s The Man Who Would Be King, The Road to El Dorado is an amiable yet shallow animated film (and don’t even think about historical accuracy), proving that in this new era of commercial viability for the form, there will be pedestrian films in this genre just like there are in every other phase of Hollywood filmmaking. Still, DreamWorks SKG’s strides in the production of this kind of movie, under the stewardship of studio partner Jeffrey Katzenberg (the "K" in SKG), is impressive: Chicken Run was also bankrolled by DreamWorks and is one of the best movies of 2000, and they’re also the studio of record for The Prince of Egypt. The Road to El Dorado features some nice verbal interplay between Kline and Branagh, a half-dozen new songs by Tim Rice and Elton John (the popstar-turned-composer also narrates the action) and a message-free mood that is, in its own goofy way, rather liberating. The extras-laden DVD includes an informative fold-out booklet, a behind-the-scenes featurette, filmmakers’ commentary track, an Elton John video and oodles of interactive content for younger viewers.

During the New Year’s Eve celebration in San Juan, police commissioner Victor Benezet (Morgan Freeman) and prominent local attorney and philanthropist Henry Hearst (Gene Hackman) play a tense game of cat-and-mouse over the recent murders of two young girls. What begins as a ten-minute meeting prior to a glitzy fundraiser turns into a night of accusations and maneuvering that sucks in Hearst’s young trophy wife Chantel (Monica Bellucci, Malena and one of Dracula’s brides in Coppola’s Bram Stoker’s Dracula) as well as Benezet’s hotheaded colleague Felix Owens (Thomas Jane, from Boogie Nights and Deep Blue Sea). Under Suspicion, which is a remake of Claude Miller’s highly regarded 1980 French film Garde à Vu (currently out of print), isn’t a bad movie, exactly, just… unnecessary. Freeman, whose company produced the film, doesn’t find much new in essentially the same character he played in both Seven and Kiss the Girls, while the always-dependable Hackman seems weary and fussy beyond the demands of Hearst’s defiant discomfort. The best thing about the film is the fluid visual strategy employed by director Stephen Hopkins (Lost in Space), who opens the action up from the single office set by playing provocatively with time and points of view. It is within these shards of memory that Under Suspicion feels most at home. Alas, there are no extras on the DVD to explain its methods or trace its odd existence.

"Can’t you people see there are guns here?" In a contemporary American southwest redolent of Sams Shepard and Peckinpah, tough-guy punk loners "Parker" (Ryan Philippe) and "Longbaugh" (Benicio del Toro), possessed of an almost mystical form of silent communication, bite off more than they can chew by kidnapping the woman (Juliette Lewis) carrying the baby of a local kingpin (Scott Wilson). The directorial debut of Christopher McQuarrie, who won an Oscar for writing The Usual Suspects, The Way of the Gun is a gleefully defiant genre exercise that combines a savvy understanding of lowlife honor codes with the more violent and surreal elements of movies like The Wild Bunch and Bring Me the Head of Alfredo Garcia. Thus, the duo is able to appear both noble and doomed, defiant young men in the service of an urge for violence and bloodshed that seems predestined, yet somehow almost righteous. McQuarrie clearly doesn’t care what you think of the film’s morals (or lack thereof), and over time that gambit becomes strangely refreshing. James Caan is terrific in his best tough-guy supporting role in eons, and that’s Lewis’ father Geoffrey (Clint Eastwood’s sidekick in those monkey movies) as his resigned associate, who has a great death scene. Artisan Entertainment’s stylish DVD edition features a 16x9 version (the film was shot in muted earth tones by Mike Leigh’s long-time cameraman Dick Pope), script and storyboards for a deleted scene and a commentary track with McQuarrie and composer Joe Kraemer. Of overriding interest, however, is an isolated track with Kraemer’s commentary that highlights his muscular and percussive score, an exhilarating throwback to such 1970s action movies as Dirty Harry and The Taking of Pelham, One Two Three. Note that people named "McQuarrie" were responsible for costume design, weapons and on-set massage. "Karma’s only justice without satisfaction," someone says, and that pretty much sums up the cold clarity inherent in The Way of the Gun. For another cracking good kidnap caper, see Akira Kurosawa’s High and Low (preferably the Criterion Collection DVD edition).

Made by director Robert Zemeckis while on hiatus in the middle of the Cast Away shoot, What Lies Beneath stars Michelle Pfeiffer as a woman who senses all is not right in the house she shares with her husband (Harrison Ford), and that it all has something to do with some wrongdoing that may have occurred there not that long before. The first hour is splendid -- the picture does for bathtubs what Psycho did for showers -- and Pfeiffer's performance is superb; during the second hour, the filmmakers push their luck, and the picture goes right off the table, but Pfeiffer's performance remains superb and holds one's attention even during some of the most outlandish moments. Diana Scarwid is also excellent in the role of the heroine's friend from the big city. The DreamWorks DVD features Zemeckis’ commentary track, production notes, a theatrical trailer and a behind-the-scenes production featurette.

Beyond the A List

In late 1960s southern California,renegade scientist DeMarco (John Carradine, father of, uh, all those other Carradines) has unleashed the bloodthirsty mutant of the title on an unsuspecting populace. Who will track down the monster first: will it be a team of CIA agents led by office-bound Wendell Corey (who, seemingly surprised to be in the film, glowers in front of a portrait of Lyndon Johnson) -- or a gang of hinky Mexican secret agents who take orders from the slit-skirted Tura Satana (of Russ Meyer’s Faster, Pussycat, Kill! Kill! fame), whose idea of problem-solving is to shoot anyone who disagrees with her or obeys too slowly. Directed, co-written and edited by horror vet Ted V. Mikels (who went on to write and helm the immortally titled Corpse Grinders and Blood Orgy of the She Devils) in a style not unlike the popular 1960s TV show Batman (whip-pan cutaways between scenes, the same credit font), The Astro-Zombies was co-written and co-produced by Wayne Rogers, who segued to some fame in the early years of the M*A*S*H TV show. The film is bargain basement all the way, with hopelessly stilted and convoluted dialogue ("Prepare him for brain transplant and total astro mobilization!") alternating with long real-time passages where nothing much happens. There is an interesting sound design, however, with heartbeats signifying the presence of the not-so-hideous mutants, dripping water, whooshing electronics and what sounds like a Theremin in the score. The print used for Image Entertainment’s DVD transfer is spotty at best, with crisp sequences alternating with fuzzy, washed-out stretches and a couple of tears in the print (a fullframe theatrical trailer of poor quality but possessed of a pleasing urgency is the only extra). "Quickly now! The blood exchanger!".

A story combining the Creation and a Frankenstein-ish genre plot is brought to life in fuzzy, nightmarish black and white, with an ethereal soundtrack of wind, nature and secret things. Among the most unique and exciting American experimental films of the last decade, this debut feature by E. Elias Merhige -- director of the John Malkovich/Willem Dafoe horror dramedy Shadow of the Vampire (see also Nosferatu, below) -- is unlike anything you’ve ever seen; think Stan Brakhage at the helm of The Texas Chainsaw Massacre or early David Lynch and you’re in the right zip code. Unrelentingly intense and profoundly disturbing, the film is an early, visionary example of distressed cinema, with Merhige (who’s spent the intervening decade in the theater and directing Marilyn Manson videos) taking in excess of ten hours per minute of film to reprocess and otherwise alter the image. The cumulative effect is disconcerting and immensely thought-provoking, prompting the viewer to question not only fundamental beliefs but the very idea of seeing the world as well. Although not previewed at press time, the World Artists DVD release promises a souvenir booklet, interactive menus, a theatrical trailer and, most tantalizing, a gallery of previously unseen stills and color production photos. The company is to be congratulated for bringing this little-known yet pivotal work back to the marketplace.

In 1980s Hong Kong, counterfeiters Mark (Chow Yun Fat) and Ho Tse Sung (Ti Lung) are framed on a bust and separated for three years, after which they team up to wreak revenge on their betrayers while staying one step ahead of Sung’s brother, Kit (Leslie Cheung), a rookie cop who blames his sibling for the death of their father. Although difficult to view properly for nearly a decade (poor prints, worse subtitles, wretched video dupes), the effect of these two films on the contemporary Hollywood blockbuster is incalculable, providing as they did an entrée into the business for director John Woo, who counts among his recent movies both the exhilarating Face/Off and the enough-already Mission: Impossible 2, and Chow, currently starring in the breakout hit Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon. It’s all here in rudimentary form: Woo’s ballets of bullets and bodies, the melodramatic male bonding (Chow is the essence of cool) and the stylized visual effects. Pressed into a sequel by producer Tsui Hark, Woo dances with who brung him in the sequel, sticking close to the plot and structure of the original -- even inventing a twin brother for Mark, who’s offed in the first installment. The Anchor Bay DVD releases offer clear widescreen transfers (enhanced for 16x9 TV’s), crisp subtitles, theatrical trailers in both English and Cantonese and talent bios. The original Chinese title translates as "The Nature of Heroes," a fitting moniker for the subsequent success of A Better Tomorrow’s director and star.

In contemporary Manhattan, prostitute Claire Dolan (Catrin Kartlidge) tries to break free of the profession with the help of taxi driver Elton (Vincent D’Onofrio) and against the wishes of her pimp Roland (Colm Meaney), but finds that her expertise with men doesn’t extend to trust or being completely independent from them. This second feature by Lodge Kerrigan (Clean, Shaven, which is about schizophrenia) is distant, cold, and formal, but that doesn’t make it uninteresting by any means. Kartlidge, so fearless as Emily Watson’s sister-in-law in Breaking the Waves and the roommate in Mike Leigh’s Naked, is extraordinarily focused as the title character, an Irish émigré so in touch with the defensive value of her emotional distance that she finds it well nigh impossible to come closer to anyone. Meaney is all beady-eyed menace as Roland, while D’Onofrio continues a remarkably varied career as the quiet, sincere working-class lad who may or may not be Claire’s savior. As usual, New Yorker Video’s letterboxed transfer is first-rate (this release is exclusive to video and moderately priced at $49.95), preserving the hard edges of the film’s look and feel. Seldom has a movie dealt with prostitution in so unsentimental a fashion, and seldom has that strategy resulted in a film so unutterably sad.

Of the slew of Blaxploitation pictures currently being re-released on video and especially DVD, Cotton Comes to Harlem is among the earliest and best of a genre that seems now forever associated with the 1970s in which it flourished. The writing and directing debut of actor Ossie Davis (from the novel by Chester Himes), the genial, action-packed film stars Godfrey Cambridge and Raymond St. Jacques as plainclothes cops Gravedigger Jones and Coffin Ed Johnson, who become involved with "Back to Africa" preacher Calvin Lockhart and a stash of cash hidden in the title textile. The neat supporting cast features Cleavon Little (still aways off from Blazing Saddles), Lou Jacobi and Redd Foxx as Uncle Bud. Cotton was followed by a 1972 sequel, Come Back, Charleston Blue, and is not to be confused with Hell Up in Harlem (1973), legendary B movie director Larry Cohen’s energetic sequel to the Fred Williamson starrer Black Caesar (aka The Godfather of Harlem, 1973). Also of interest is Norman Jewison’s earlier, more serious treatment of racial tensions (rural division), 1967’s multi-Oscared In the Heat of the Night, which was scheduled to make its DVD debut on the same date as Cotton Comes to Harlem as well as numerous other titles of the genre.

One of the best films of the 1990s, and one of the few to communicate the experience of the creative process. Victor Erice's 1992 film follows Spanish painter Antonio Lopez as he attempts to capture the subject of his latest painting, the quince tree that grows in the backyard of his home in Madrid as it look in the light of the late summer sun. We see Lopez's acumen and patience as he makes accomplishments and encounters setbacks in the step-by-step process which he takes in realizing his goal, from setting stakes into the ground so that his stance will be the same at his easel from one day to the next, marking the leaves and quinces on the tree with dabs of paint that serve as reference points for when the branches lower with the change of seasons, and dealing with more uncontrollable elements such as the weather (Lopez does not begin his painting until late September). Meanwhile, the film includes such other elements as Lopez's tender relationship with his wife, Mari; a visiting Chinese artist who is an admirer of Lopez's work; advice, wanted or otherwise, from Lopez's longtime friend Enrique Gran, also a painter, and Polish workmen who go about tearing apart and renovating Lopez's house, and on whose portable radios news buzzes in the background about the reestablishment of diplomatic ties between Russia and Israel, the reunification of Germany, and Saddam Hussein calling for a jihad while warships steam into the Persian Gulf. The picture has a beautiful, easy rhythm, along with a highly evocative visual style. It is one of the few films that leaves you more invigorated after having watched it than you may have felt before sitting down to do so. The Facets Video release is tape-only, with a price of $79.95.

Among the most inspired documentary ideas in recent memory, East Side Story asks the immortal question "who knows how things might have turned out if socialism had just been more fun?" To this end, it gathers clips from pre-World War II and Iron Curtain-era musicals produced from the 1930s to the 1960s in the USSR, Bulgaria, Czechoslovakia, the German Democratic Republic, Poland and Romania. With titles like Hard Work, Happy Holiday and Tractor Drivers and Vacation on the Black Sea and The Swineherd and the Shepherd, the films were envisioned to entertain the working classes but are here analyzed by critics, actors, technicians and even audience members (one scholar points out that people seemed to need these films "for no other reason than to survive"). It’s easy to laugh at the movie and that’s OK, but care has been taken to place the genre in a context that will provoke sobering thought. The clips were researched by an American, Andrew Horn, who lives in Berlin, and the film was directed by Dana Ranga. Kino’s DVD transfer (the tape was released in late August) does right by the meticulous attention to quality displayed by the filmmakers, and although the disc has no enticing extras the clips are organized by title and country for ease of access. Ranga and Horn are rumored to be at work on a sequel examining science fiction films produced during the same period.

Recruited from the vaudeville stage by legendary comedic Svengali Mack Sennett in 1923, Iowa-born silent era comedian Harry Langdon was immensely popular with moviegoing audiences throughout that decade, a mournful, simple-minded manchild who found humor in situations both recognizably mundane and comically absurd. Yet by 1930 he had alienated those around him (including young gagman/director Frank Capra), declared bankruptcy and begun a slide into relative obscurity that ended with his death in 1944. Image Entertainment has gathered three of his early features on a single DVD, beginning with his second -- and best -- film, 1926’s The Strong Man (directed by Capra), in which young Belgian vet Langdon (who looks a bit like Andy Kaufman with more makeup) returns from the Great War and attempts to win his sweetheart. In his first film, Tramp, Tramp, Tramp (1926), Harry stars alongside a young Joan Crawford as the ambitious son of an embattled shoemaker who enters a cross-country foot race. In Capra’s weird Long Pants (1927), Langdon’s donning of the title trousers results in a comic odyssey to save his newfound sweetheart -- a drug smuggler. Respected film restorer David Shepard has done a superlative job of restoring these films (the release is a joint effort of Image Entertainment and Kino on Video), which are more clean and crisp than anyone had a right to hope for.

Curious about the gambler who has driven one of her patients to the brink of suicide, popular psychiatrist and author Margaret (Lindsay Crouse) leaves her bright and well-ordered world for the urban House of Games and Mike (Joe Mantegna), a professional card sharp who promises to amortize the patient’s debts if the shrink spends some time soaking up the atmosphere with him. Appropriately enough, this writing-directing debut of David Mamet enjoys a long-anticipated DVD-only debut close on the heels of the nationwide rollout of his latest movie, State and Main. Yet while the new work plays things strictly for acidic yet ultimately benevolent laughs, the sinister atmosphere of this early effort leaves no room for comedic release; peopled by many of the same weather-beaten faces -- grifters of one sort or another picked up by the director in his underworld sojourns -- who would congregate at the intersection of State and Main thirteen years later (save for the brilliant and late lamented character actor J.T. Walsh), it carries the sinister shock of the new and announced Mamet (who was then married to Crouse) as a writer of extraordinary rhythm and a director whose static compositions are often mistaken for dramatic lethargy.

A heartfelt if somewhat overheated melodrama set against the Turkish immigrant transvestite community in contemporary Berlin, this handsome fourth feature from L.A. and Istanbul-based writer-director Kutlug Ataman displays lots of seamy atmosphere and some solid storytelling chops in service to a tale best suited for a gay audience. Sixteen-year-old Murat is hesitantly experimenting with his sexuality in parks and bars, dodging his hostile classmates and uptight, gay-hating brother Osman. But when Murat falls in with nightclub performer Lola (one third of the popular "Gastarbeiter," or "Guest Worker," transvestite trio at a local club), his/her lover Bilidikid (after Billy the Kid), closeted German aristo Friedrich and his wisecracking mother Ute (a standout performance by Inge Keller), the teenager learns that in this closed society very little stays secret for long. While not exactly on the order of "Norman Bates is his own mother," Murat’s discovery of a family link to Lola underscores the secrecy inherent in the lifestyle. Lola and Billy the Kid shared a jury prize from the nine gay and lesbian fest programmers who bestow the popular annual Teddy Awards at the Berlin International Film Festival. The release is exclusive to DVD.

Correctly hailed as the first and perhaps the best version of Bram Stoker’s landmark horror classic "Dracula," F. W. Murnau’s Nosferatu was in fact an unauthorized adaptation of the book. The resulting lawsuits resulted in the attempted destruction of the film, which explains the dupey, truncated versions available over the years. Image Entertainment’s new DVD release of this pivotal work (which follows the recent Kino Video tape by almost a year to the day) goes a long way towards rectifying that situation, adding the color tints and presenting it with a remarkable new score (in 5.1 Dolby Digital) by the Silent Orchestra (Carlos Garza, Rich O’Meara), which incorporates elements of the rich organ score by Timothy Howard found on the Kino tape. Watch it for the historical importance, as Murnau took the Expressionist movement outdoors and thus heightened the feeling of otherworldly dread. Watch it for the intriguing tweaks to the story, as Van Helsing’s character is minimized in favor of Orlok’s hold over the beautiful Ellen. But most of all, watch it for Max Schreck’s astonishingly contemporary performance as the demonic count, a repulsive creature with none of the suave dignity of Bela Lugosi’s later interpretation. Plus you’ll be able to judge for yourself if there’s a grain of truth to the premise behind E. Elias Merhige’s Shadow of the Vampire (see Begotten, above) or if Willem Dafoe’s reading of Schreck as a real-life vampire is indeed Oscar-worthy. Also included on this disc is a "Nosferatu tour," in which silent film historian Lokke Heiss presents a series of 22 then-and-now location photos, as well as some production sketches, early publicity material, artistic influences and a bibliography. Like the count himself, this disc is one for the ages.

Among the most formidable and affecting documentaries ever made, The Sorrow and the Pity blends archival footage and interview material conducted by filmmaker Marcel Ophuls to trace the history of the French occupation during World War II in the modest industrial city of Clermont-Ferrand. Initially rejected by French television, the film first opened in a tiny Left Bank theater in Paris, growing in stature and acclaim to win an Oscar and be used as a recurring motif in Woody Allen’s Annie Hall (this restoration was released under the filmmaker’s name). Nothing less than inquiry into the nature of complicity, tolerance and resiliency, the movie explores how ordinary people conducted themselves in an extraordinary situation. As in art this chunk of life has heroes, villains -- and even a soundtrack of Maurice Chevalier chestnuts. Available for the first time in fifteen years and for the very first time entirely undubbed and with new electronic subtitles, The Sorrow and the Pity is being released exclusively to VHS -- in a two-tape set to accommodate its 260-minute running time -- by Milestone Film & Video (800.603.1104) and is highly recommended for students of documentary, history and humanism.

The life of unconventional artist/filmmaker/professional celebrity Andy Warhol is explored, with particular emphasis on his legacy of breaking down the barriers between art and advertising in the 1960s and 1970s and his redefining of fame in the 1980s (according to one admirer he "would go to the opening of a drawer"). Anyone with an interest in Hollywood knows what director/editor/writer/producer Chuck Workman does: he’s the fellow who assembles those breathtaking movie montages for the Academy Awards ceremonies, and his short film Precious Images, although unavailable for home viewing, is the definitive compendium of snapshots from a century-old art form (the less said about his star-studded yet dramatically spotty fiction feature work, the better). Superstar opens, and is punctuated by, dazzlingly edited cavalcades of culturally pivotal footage and soundbites, placing Warhol firmly in the firmament of icons he both promoted and helped define. Winstar’s fullframe video and DVD editions of the film are clean and evocative (the disc comes in a pink plastic case); its value may be summed up by former New York Times critic Hilton Kramer, who once said of the artist "he treated it all as a game and the name of the game was success."

In 1860’s New Zealand, noble Maori warrior Te Wheke (Anzac Wallace), once a guide for the British forces, rebels and seeks revenge ("utu," in Maori) against the outsiders for slaughtering his people. This he accomplishes in a series of brutal and ferocious raids ("I must kill the white man," he cries in anguish before having ritual battle tattoos applied to his entire face). Among the first films from New Zealand to have an impact on the American art-house circuit (Roger Donaldson’s Smash Palace was another), Utu finds its power in an emotional unpredictability from sequence to sequence: the elegiac opening segues into a brutal pre-credit massacre, and industry mainstay Bruno Lawrence brings Clint Eastwood’s Man With No Name to mind as Williamson, the bearded, long-coated mercenary who vows to stop Te Wheke’s reign of terror and bring the rebel to "justice" for the murder of his wife. Utu was until that time the most expensive film ever made in New Zealand (and its portrayal of Maori culture feels authentic), with noteworthy cinematography from Graeme Cowley and John Charles’ lush, mournful score setting a mood of both beauty and dread. The new DVD and tape editions from Kino on Video is spotless, restoring approximately 18 minutes of footage cut for the film’s initial American release (this version now runs a full two hours).

Box Set Corner:

An occasional exploration of video and DVD’s higher end

"It’s more important than baseball," "Take Five" composer Dave Brubeck enthuses about jazz and its impact on society, and from the context it isn’t entirely clear whether he’s referring to America’s national pastime and indigenous music or Ken Burns’ marathon take on each. No matter: at ten episodes with an average running time of nearly 107 minutes each (the first is shortest at 86 minutes and episode eight is the longest at 122 minutes), for a total running time of a whopping 1,066 minutes -- well over 17 hours -- Jazz the movie is for all intents and purposes as important as jazz the music, tracing its New Orleans roots in the 1890s all the way up to today’s scene. Along the way there are thousands of film and video clips, interviews with various critics, writers and and performers (with Wynton Marsalis the most prominent and unabashedly enthusiastic) and, of course, the music: excerpts from 497 separate pieces, from the 1920s Jazz Age through big band to post-World War II bebop and even 1970s fusion. While some are arguing that the series dwells to long on the Swing Era of the late 1920s through the war at the expense of the last two decades, while others object to the omission of certain artists, the naysayers are missing the point: this wealth of detailed information, like democracy itself (to which jazz is often referred to as a symbol of), is focused yet messy, inclusive to a fault but by it’s very nature unable to take it all in. As such, the film is an invaluable tool not only as a history of the major players, but a way to clear up confusion over lesser-known but nonetheless important musicians, the Chick Webbs and Charlie Hadens who have either faded from memory or haven’t achieved the household-name status of the Duke or Satchmo or Bird or Dizzy. The Public Broadcasting Service has partnered with Warner Bros. for this handsome release, which comes on ten separate discs in a sturdy cardboard box. The booklet in disc one has a brief episode guide and details on the surprise extras, which include a 16-minute featurette "Making of Jazz" on disc one, Louis Armstrong’s complete 1933 Denmark performance of "I Cover the Waterfront" on disc two, Duke Ellington’s "C-Jam Blues" performed in a 1942 short called Jam Session, and Miles Davis performing the complete "New Rhumba" with Gil Evans conducting on a 1959 television program (the trumpeter’s earliest filmed appearance). Also worth mentioning is the velvety narration of actor Keith David (who may also be seen currently in Darren Aronofsky’s Requiem for a Dream), who brings just the right tones of urgency and soothing to the material. But the key feature of the set, and one that elevates it to must-own status, is the music information mode, whereby the viewer can choose to have each piece of music discreetly identified in the lower left-hand corner during play. Click on the title, and a screen showing detailed information on the song is displayed while the film is running. Thus it is possible to develop a pleasing rhythm of clicking on songs as they go by, enriching the total experience in true multimedia fashion. On the downside, viewers who wish to watch the DVD on their computers must put up with the annoying PC Friendly program, which installs itself with barely a warning and is apparently the only software under which it will run. Strike your own blow for freedom by deleting the program immediately after viewing. In all, this set is the sweet lowdown on a vital musical heritage much in need of the spotlight; to paraphrase the movie itself, "above all, Jazz swings."

Among the most audacious and subversive conjurers in the cinema, Dusan Makavejev (b. 1932, Belgrade) used the do-it-yourself filmmaking aesthetic necessitated by his Yugoslav birth and upbringing, combined with a keen appreciation for psychology (in which he majored at university) -- and an eternally controversial championing of the libido over all -- to fashion some of the most distinctive and freewheeling feature films ever conceived. Built largely around staged sequences featuring actors improvising in real-life situations (often supplemented by "found" footage), each work is a volatile mix of drama and documentary, comedy and tragedy, sex and politics, all uniquely informed by the filmmaker’s nomadic lifestyle. After years of spotty availability, Facets Video has assembled six of his 10 features to date (including his first four) into one cohesive package that charts the improvisational yet firmly focused concerns of this visionary, provocative filmmaker. In Man is Not a Bird (Čovek nije Tica, Yugoslavia, 1965), an engineer assembling machinery in a small town finds love and wonder, while Love Affair, or the Case of the Missing Switchboard Operator (Ljubavni slučaj ili tragedija službenice, Yugoslavia, 1967) looks at the romance between a rat exterminator and the title character. Innocence Unprotected (Nevinost bez zaštite, Yugoslavia, 1968) reassembles the surviving cast and crew of a grade-Z 1942 melodrama made in Nazi-occupied Belgrade, while his most notorious work, W.R. -- Mysteries of the Organism (W.R. -- Misterije organizma, Yugoslavia/Federal Republic of Germany, 1971) hilariously mixes the teachings of sex therapist Wilhelm Reich with various dramatic and documentary sequences promoting political and sexual insurrection (that the "W.R." might also mean "world revolution" is just one of many elements that earned the film both the Luis Buñuel prize at the Cannes festival and a an exhibition ban from unamused Yugoslav authorities). Two flamboyant tales of sexual emancipation in France and Holland form the backbone of the eternally controversial and little-seen Sweet Movie (France/Federal Republic of Germany/Canada, 1975), while the 1992 return to form Gorilla Bathes at Noon (Germany, 1992) follows a disoriented and abandoned Russian officer around the changing Berlin landscape. Of his remaining four features, only 1981’s Swedish-British co-production Montenegro (aka Pigs and Pearls, starring Susan Anspach) is available; among the works apparently gone missing is among his most high-profile, 1985’s Australian-shot The Coca Cola Kid, in which Eric Roberts and Greta Scacchi tryst against the backdrop of a whimsical soft drink war (many of these films will be broadcast on the Sundance Channel in early February). Each tape is also available individually at $24.95; at $149.95 the complete set is no monetary bargain but offers the committed cineaste an invaluable glimpse into iconoclastic mid-century central European filmmaking.

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