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Home Video Releases for April 2000 by Eddie Cockrell and Gregory Avery Nitrate Online explores a sampling of the most noteworthy, provocative and satisfying video and/or DVD releases for the month of April (give or take a few weeks). Titles are followed by original country and year of release, as well as release date (if known). Street dates change constantly and often differ from format to format, so check with your favorite online or brick-and-mortar supplier for up-to-date information. Anywhere
But Here
(USA, 1999, April 18) A
not bad, but strangely unfocused film version of Mona Simpson's novel, with
Natalie Portman as the long-suffering daughter of a mother (Susan Sarandon) who
continually uproots their existence to start things anew. Sarandon seems
tentative, even uncertain, at times, as if she weren't too sure how to get this
very contrary character to come across in a way that makes sense. However,
Portman's performance confirms that she is an actress who is someone to watch in
films to come.
-- Gregory Avery Fight
Club
(USA, 1999, April 18) David
Fincher's film suggests that modern American males have become voids who can
only again experience real living by pummeling each other into bloody messes.
Visually dazzling, and with a lead performance by Edward Norton that sometimes
touches upon genius, but overall is disconcerting, to say the least. Brad Pitt
puts in an occasionally amusing appearance as the guy who leads Norton's
character down the garden path; Helena Bonham Carter gives a self-consciously
flamboyant performance as a woman who shows up at lung cancer support meetings
deliberately smoking like a chimney. The DVD edition of this title is now
scheduled for a June 6 release.
-- Gregory Avery For
Love of the Game
(USA, 1999, April 4) In a world of shallow emotions and easy answers, Kevin Costner makes deliberate, earnest, fusty films that are meticulous, self-serving and sometimes very hard to sit through (much less defend). After the triumph of Dances With Wolves and the twin economic disasters of Waterworld (not a bad movie at all) and The Postman (an example of wretched excess and narcissism gone amuck), For Love of the Game highlights the best and worst of Costner’s jingoistic, Capra-esque impulses in its story of aging baseball pitcher Billy Chapel and the mental walk down memory lane he takes while pitching a perfect game in the last outing of his illustrious nineteen-year career (all for the same team, the Detroit Tigers). You don’t have to love baseball to appreciate Costner’s third big-screen foray into the sport, but those without a love of the game will fidget at the overripe melodrama on display. Director Sam Raimi (A Simple Plan) does a superb job with the game itself, employing subtle special effects and a rational approach to the sport that makes the scenes on the field riveting and authentic (John C. Reilly and J.K. Simmons are fine but underutilized as his catcher and coach). Unique among his highly-paid peers, Costner is building a career on a stodgy sincerity that is as admirable as it is out of synch with the times. As such, it is possible to admire his work without necessarily embracing it -- which may be the best way to approach For Love of the Game. There is a Spanish-subtitled tape available, and the DVD features production notes, trailers, a production featurette, deleted scenes and two interactive games. -- Eddie Cockrell Happy,
Texas
(USA, 1999, April 11) “Welcome
to Happy,” barks character vet Paul Dooley shortly into Happy, Texas,
immediately betraying the deceptively pleasant burg’s motto as “The Town
Without a Frown.” And it is from this tension that much of the humor in this
caper comedy arises, as fleeing convicts Steve Zahn and Jeremy Northam (bringing
a tangibly Baldwinesque spin to his American accent) bamboozle their way through
a beauty pageant when the boost the original organizers mobile home. Seen by
some as a courageously anti-PC comedy and others as a gratingly off-color
diatribe against gays and an exaggeratedly clichéd gay lifestyle, individual
tolerances for the film will fall somewhere between the two extremes. Clearly,
the filmmakers must wonder what all the fuss is about, as everyone attacks their
roles with gusto. The dream cast includes William H. Macy (who deftly steals the
film as a small-town sheriff with a secret of his own), Ileanna Douglas, Ally
Walker, Ron Perlman and Mo Gaffney. The special edition DVD features multiple
commentaries/interviews, production notes, deleted scenes, a making-of
documentary and a music video.
-- Eddie Cockrell House
on Haunted Hill
(USA, 1999, April 18) From
the opening credits’ odd blend of Jan Svankmajer stop-motion and Seven-ish
sensibility to the casting of horror movie icon Jeffrey Combs (Reanimator)
to the very idea of remaking William Castle’s 1958 camp classic, House on
Haunted Hill is defiantly proud of its cheesy roots while at the same time
making the most of technology to amp up the fright factor. Summoned to the
now-abandoned former mental institution by impresario Steven H. Price
(Oscar-winner Geoffrey Rush in the Vincent Price role, sporting a pencil-thin
moustache and a James Woods-ish American accent to match), a gaggle of seemingly
unrelated folks are promised a million dollars each (it was a hundred grand in
the original) if they survive the night. Some do, some don’t. Director William
Malone counts among his sparse credits the cable “Tales From the Crypt”
revival, and the presence of two of that show’s executive producers, director
Robert Zemeckis and action film producer Joel Silver, indicate that the picture
was aiming higher than mere multiplex fodder. And, to a certain degree, the
movie delivers, offering some vivid and genuinely unexpected scares amidst the
sly and cheerfully profane performances of Famke Janssen, SNL vet Chris Kattan,
Peter Gallagher, Taye Diggs and especially Rush. “Sure is a funky ol’
house… Ain’t it,” he leers early in the show, and the movie proceeds with
that spirit in mind.
-- Eddie Cockrell The
Insider
(USA, 1999, April 11) One
of the best films of 1999, Michael Mann's picture of how one man's attempt to
act upon his conscience and bring to light some ulterior practices going on
inside the U.S. cigarette industry gradually but surely seizes hold of one's
attention and turns into one of the most suspenseful film dramas in years. Great
spatial use of widescreen cinematography by Dante Spinotti (which will probably
suffer on video), and with impeccable performances all the way around, from
Russell Crowe and Al Pacino, as a T.V. news producer, to Diane Venora,
Christopher Plummer as "60 Minutes" news anchor Mike Wallace, and
Bruce McGill as an attorney who becomes very, very irked during a courtroom
hearing. The elegantly-designed DVD edition includes a brief featurette on the
film’s making and the fascinating dissection of a single scene that offers a
glimpse into Mann’s meticulous creative process.
-- Gregory Avery The
Messenger: The Story of Joan of Arc
(France, 1999, April 4) Luc
Besson's grossly misconceived (and historically and factually inaccurate)
blood-and-thunder historical drama, with Milla Jovovich, overwrought and way out
of her depth, as a hysterical version of Maid of Orléans. Almost worth having a
look at for Dustin Hoffman's appearance in the second half (which, in hindsight,
is rather good), but be forewarned. Very violent, and unpleasant in more ways
than one. --
Gregory Avery Mumford
(USA, 1999, April 18) “What
makes you so popular? What’s your secret?” someone asks the eponymous
small-town shrink shortly into this box-office underachiever from Body Heat
director Lawrence Kasdan, and in the answering of those questions Mumford
proves to be a deceptively charming character study that requires a good deal
more concentration and good will from a viewer than your average Hollywood
movie. Having moved to the bucolic town of Mumford to escape his past “back
east,” Mumford (Loren Dean) specializes in helping his patients through a
combination of palpable empathy and sensible straight talk -- until the audience
learns that he’s a fraud in a dazzlingly constructed confessional. Under the
deceptively simple exterior, Kasdan once again draws the kind of deep and
fully-rounded characters that made The Big Chill (1983) and Grand
Canyon (1991) such bellwethers of their time (perhaps this is why so many of
the actors in Mumford have worked with him before and the first-timers
seem so comfortable). Whether the cumulative effect is satisfying depends
largely on the inquisitive nature of the person watching it: if you’ve ever
wondered whether the diplomas on the walls of your doctor are real, and you
enjoy the telling more than the tale, then Mumford may just be the thing for
you. The DVD includes a trailer and making-of featurette.
-- Eddie Cockrell Music
of the Heart
(USA, 1999, April 25) A
change of pace film for scarefilm director Wes Craven, with Meryl Streep playing
real-life music instructor Roberta Guaspari, who became determined to teach
inner-city students how to play the violin. The film occasionally skirts close
to becoming dismayingly clichéd; Streep's performance (for which she recently
received an Oscar nomination) does not, nor does Angela Bassett, who brings fire
and insight to her portrayal of a burdened school principal.
-- Gregory Avery Star
Wars Episode I: The Phantom Menace
(USA, 1999, April 4) The
movie everyone waited sixteen years for: you either loved it (judging from the
box office receipts) or hated it (judging from the disappointing critical, and
also audience, response). The first of three films set prior to 1977's
"Star Wars", and sketching the origins of the characters who would
figure prominently in it, the picture is a triumph of special effects artistry
(most of visuals were computer-generated) even if the story is not all that
different from the first and third "Star Wars" films, and a certain
lack of the human element (evinced by the constrained -- and, in Natalie
Portman's case, often trussed-up -- performances by an otherwise talented cast)
is ever present.
-- Gregory Avery Stuart
Little
(USA, 1999, April 18) Franchising
is the name of the game in Hollywood these days, which is why the well-tooled
yet distractingly antiseptic Stuart Little bears about as much relation
to the E.B. White book on which it’s based (The Sixth Sense
writer-director M. Night Shyamalan is one of the adaptors) as fast food does to
a gourmet meal. That’s not to say the film isn’t a satisfying entertainment
for children and an interesting spin on family values, just that whatever whimsy
is on display results more from cold calculation than the magic generated by the
admittedly super special effects. “He’s very clean,” says family doc
Dabney Coleman to the Littles (Geena Davis and Hugh Laurie) of the glib mouse
(glibly voiced by Michael J. Fox) they’ve just adopted to the astonishment of
their existing son George (Jonathan Lipnicki) and cat Snowbell (voiced by Nathan
Lane). And the same could be said for the film itself: once the novelty of the
special effects begins to wear off and the predictability of the story begins to
settle in, Stuart Little begins to resemble nothing so much as a
provocative cross of the stylized polish of American Beauty and Beetlejuice’s
skewed, slightly otherworldly family vibe (this last may be triggered by the
presence of both Davis and Jeffrey Jones, who co-starred in Tim Burton’s
surrealistic classic, as well as the miniature train set in the Little’s
basement). That’s one way to get through it, anyway. Another is to imagine the
possibilities for future editions of the series -- maybe if Burton or Shyamalan
took a crack at it…? The deluxe DVD edition includes a half dozen deleted
scenes, a gag reel (some of which is also on the rental tape), multiple
commentary tracks, the HBO production featurette, a handful of music videos and
even early conceptual drawings.
-- Eddie Cockrell Superstar
(USA, 1999, April 11) Arguably
the funniest and certainly the most focused of the recent crop of Saturday
Night Live Players, Molly Shannon’s transferal of her disaster-prone Mary
Katherine Gallagher character from skit to feature-length protagonist (under the
tutelage of SNL producer Lorne Michaels) has the same determined, absurdist vibe
as the Norm Macdonald vehicle Dirty Work and A Night at the Roxbury
(in which she also appeared), making Superstar the month’s outstanding
guilty pleasure. Ohioan Shannon, who will next be seen as Betty Lou Who in the
live action version of the Dr. Seuss chestnut How the Grinch Stole Christmas,
surrounds herself with former Kids in the Hall sketch artists Mark
McKinney and Bruce McCulloch (who directed), resulting in that almost patented
Canadian atmosphere of neat-as-a-pin surrealism. The story, such as it is,
follows the nerdy Catholic schoolgirl’s yearning for stardom and acceptance,
but the real fun of the piece comes from the spot-on observances of religious
rigidity shot through with aggressive physical humor and a muted shrewdness that
never draws attention to the anarchy. As he’s done in both Austin Powers
movies, Will Ferrell neatly steals every scene he’s in, here appearing in the
dual roles of school BMOC Sky Corrigan and Mary Katherine’s imagined hipster
Jesus -- who, upon hearing Norman Greenbaum’s “Spirit in the Sky,”
proclaims to the youngster “that song’s about me.” Silly, to be sure, but
also inspired. Paramount’s bare-bones DVD edition includes the theatrical
trailer. --
Eddie Cockrell Three
Kings
(USA, 1999, April 11) Doing
for the Persian Gulf War what Catch-22 did for World War Two and M*A*S*H
did for Korea, this irreverent and kinetic anti-war movie -- improbably
reminiscent, above all, of the giddy clash of greed and glory in the cult 1970
Clint Eastwood movie Kelly’s Heroes -- spreads its cynicism thicker
than most entries in the genre but tempers it with a cheerful streak of
absurdist panache that keeps the irony from overwhelming the drama. Little in
director David O. Russell’s previous two features (Spanking the Monkey
and Flirting With Disaster) indicated his leanings towards this
kind of epic sweep, yet the picture struts along for three-quarters of its
conventional 105 minutes on the sheer brio of its conceit: with a map plucked
from the ass of a dead Iraqi soldier, four unlikely compatriots chase down a
cache of gold ingots and discover the flaws of the military action and strengths
of their individual characters in the process. George Clooney finally seems on
track to get the kind of roles he excels in, while Mark Wahlberg, Ice Cube and
Spike Jonze are precise in support. Special mention to cinematographer Newton
Thomas Sigel for one of the year’s most unorthodox visual styles and composer
Carter Burwell (Fargo) for a memorable score. The feature-laden DVD
edition includes Louis Pepe & Keith Fulton’s irreverent twenty-one-minute
production featurette Under the Bunker, deleted scenes with or without
Russell’s commentary, an interview with Sigel, and, believe it or not, An
Intimate Look Inside the Acting Process with Ice Cube and an “Enhanced
Assmap.” --
Eddie Cockrell Tumbleweeds
(USA, 1999, April 11) Made
on a spit-and-chewing gum budget, this mother-and-daughter-on-the-road story is
in many ways everything that "Anywhere But Here" should have been.
Rowdy, sometimes howlingly funny, and with dramatic moments that sometimes make
you sit up and wince, the picture has a superb performance by Janet McTeer
(who's British, but, telling from her performance here, you wouldn't notice it),
along with excellent work by Kimberly J. Brown, as McTeer's daughter, Jay O.
Sanders as a would-be suitor, and Gavin O'Connor (who also co-wrote and directed
the film). Highly recommended.
-- Gregory Avery Beyond
the A-list: Blue
Velvet
(USA, 1986, April 25) Although
nearly fifteen subsequent years of Dennis Hopper’s shenanigans, Twin Peaks
and all the various movies and TV shows influenced by Blue Velvet have
blunted its impact somewhat (particularly for first-time viewers, who may wonder
what the fuss is all about), the film was groundbreaking in its day and remains
unique and startling, a fact reconfirmed early in this first-ever DVD transfer
from MGM. When young Jeffrey Beaumont (Kyle MacLachlan) discovers a severed ear
in a field, it leads him to the seamy underworld that lurks just beneath the
bucolic surface of his hometown, Lumberton (the film was shot in Wilmington,
North Carolina). As he digs deeper, he becomes torn between torch singer Dorothy
(Isabella Rossellini) and his partner in crime Sandy (Laura Dern), the wholesome
daughter of the town’s chief detective. The odd juxtaposition of normalcy and
violence remain jarring (The Hardy Boys Get Naked?), particularly in the
cryptic, vein-popping, altogether mesmerizing performance of Hopper as mad
inhaler Frank Booth and the lulling discord of Angelo Badalamenti’s music,
Alan Splet’s sound mix and Frederick Elmes’ crisp photography. The menu
interface is particularly clever, using the concept of the blue velvet curtain
to separate the available items -- which include no special extras (wouldn’t a
commentary by Lynch be just the thing?) and a disappointingly sparse
“Collectible Booklet.” “One day when it’s all sewed up I’ll let you
know the details,” someone says, referring to the stray ear. The genius of Blue
Velvet is that is that the strange and sinister events in Lumberton will
never be sewn up, and it’s doubtful that Lynch will ever reveal the details of
his bizarre, unsettling and dreamlike world.
-- Eddie Cockrell Brown’s
Requiem
(USA, 1998, April 4) Adapted
from the novel by James Ellroy, Brown’s Requiem is a satisfyingly
low-key hardboiled private eye film that marks an auspicious feature debut for
writer-director Jason Freeland. Michael Rooker (Henry: Portrait of a Serial
Killer) stars as former LAPD cop and current recovering alcoholic Fritz
Brown, whose gig moonlighting as a sleuth while not repossessing cars leads him
to follow the sister of filthy racist caddie Frederick “Fat Dog” Baker (Mad
TV's Will Sasso, who has since dropped a lot of the weight he sports here).
The investigation leads Brown through a grimy yet oddly chaste Los Angeles
underworld more in keeping with the 1950s spirit of Ellroy’s work -- part
pulp, part passion -- than more contemporary and heavy-handed spins on the genre
(Cynthia Millar’s brooding, elegant score helps). And Freeland’s got a fine
eye for the City of Angels, from the stained glass bar of the Rustic Inn to
rain-soaked Venice. Winner of the best premiere Jury Award at the 1998 Ft.
Lauderdale Film Festival, Brown’s Requiem sports the stellar supporting
cast of Kevin Corrigan, Brad Dourif, Harold Gould, Barry Newman, Valerie
Perrine, Christopher Meloni (Law and Order: Special Victims Unit) and the
late Brion James (who made no fewer than 13 films between this and his death in
August 1999). It’s a modest surprise among the relative wasteland of
contemporary B pictures and thus worth a look when the high-profile fare just
won’t do. There’s a Spanish subtitled tape available, as well as a DVD
edition featuring commentary by Freeland and Rooker, deleted scenes, a “making
of” documentary and production notes.
-- Eddie Cockrell Cabaret
Balkan
(Bure Baruta, aka The Powder Keg,
France/Greece/Republic of Macedonia/Turkey/Yugoslavia, 1998, April 11) To
the exclusive list of visionary, subversive films made from innovative,
politically-charged urban theater pieces (Ettore Scola's Le Bal and Reinhard Hauff's Linie
1 come immediately to mind; there are more), add Cabaret Balkan
(formerly knows as The Powder Keg),
the violent, funny, profane and dazzling new movie from veteran director Goran
Paskaljevic. Adapted from a stage play that clocks twenty-four harrowing hours
in the underbelly of urban Belgrade and injected with a strong but subtle dose
of political pertinence by the filmmaker -- the movie is set on the eve of the
Dayton Peace Accord in late 1995 -- these short cuts
comprise a crazy and combustible daisy chain of coincidence, as strangers
and friends alike ricochet off each other in an extended ballet of
misunderstanding, pain, frustration and anger that begins with a minor traffic
altercation and escalates to murder. A meek citizen erupts when a careless
teenager involves him in a fender bender; a seventeen-year-old Bosnian Serb
refugee rebels against his idealistic parents and becomes enmeshed in a shady
drug scheme; two burly boxers square off in their gym's shower, with tragic
results; an agitated teenager hijacks a bus for a brief midnight joyride; a
returning immigrant tries to woo back a former lover. The huge, all-star cast of
iconic types -- pawns, really -- seem driven by a particularly cruel fate, a
sensation heightened by "Boris, the esoteric cabaret artist" who opens
and closes the film. Although patches of the film are rough going (which is as
it should be), Paskaljevic's point is that just beneath the confusion and
hair-trigger mayhem, these honest, good-hearted people remain defiantly human (a
self-confessed "shameless optimist," the director affirms "it is
in that humanity that I place my hopes"). Explosive, unpredictable and
passionate, Cabaret Balkan -- winner
of the European Film Academy's 1998 European Critics Award, Best Film awards
from three festivals (including Venice, where it received a 10-minute standing
ovation) and Yugoslavia's official submission to the Academy Awards -- is
urgent, relevant cinema of the highest order.
-- Eddie Cockrell Coming
Apart
(USA, 1969, April 4) Alone
in the annals of uncompromisingly personal filmmaking, there’s nothing quite
like Milton Moses Ginsberg’s Coming Apart, a tightly scripted and
ferociously acted black and white inquiry into the mental disintegration of
Manhattan shrink Joe Glazer/Glassman (Rip Torn) via a procession of visiting
women (including Viveca Lindfors and, in a career-making performance, Sally
Kirkland) he bullies, seduces and otherwise impacts over an unspecified course
of time. Filmed with a single, mostly static camera that looks primarily at a
sofa with the skyline reflected in a huge mirror above it, Coming Apart
opened to mixed reviews in 1969 and promptly dropped from sight, only to be
rediscovered by the Museum of Modern Art and Kino International, which
re-released the film to great critical acclaim in 1999. The DVD includes Cominga
Part 2, a forty-one-minute assemblage of video footage documenting the
film’s recent festival screenings in Los Angeles, New York, Boston and
Washington, as well as Ginsberg’s 1999 short video “The City Below the
Line.” Remarkably fresh in spite of its period trappings (two of the doc’s
visitors are canvassing for Eugene McCarthy), Coming Apart may stimulate
further inquiry into this type of filmmaking; if so, Ginsberg points to Kon
Ichikawa’s Odd Obsession (Kagi, aka The Key, 1959), Luis
Buñuel’s Belle du Jour (1967), Alain Resnais’ Last Year at
Marienbad (1961), Michelangelo Antonioni’s L’Avventura (1960),
Jean Eustache’s The Mother and the Whore (1973), John Cassavetes’ The
Killing of a Chinese Bookie (1976) and, of course, the L.M. “Kit”
Carson/Jim McBride collaboration David Holzman’s Diary (1968) as
influential inspirations. “If oblivion is what you crave…follow me!”
Ginsberg says in the essay included on the DVD, and it’s an invitation worthy
of response.
-- Eddie Cockrell The
Kids of Degrassi Street Fans
of this Canadian series that spanned twelve years in the lives of a group of
Toronto youngsters (and inspired Fox to create “Beverly Hills 90210” when
American rights negotiations broke down) can rejoice now that all twenty-six
episodes of Kids, forty-two
episodes of Junior High and twenty-eight episodes of High are
finally available in three box sets and as individual tapes that pair two
episodes from each series. Now all that’s needed is the video release of the
post-High feature film School’s Out (1992) and the subsequent
six-part Degrassi Talks series of topical documentaries on issues of
importance to teens. The Degrassi series requires a major commitment of
time but pays off spectacularly, as this seminal franchise is nothing less than
the real-life version of Michael Apted’s Up series of British
documentaries, and unlikely to be equaled in this generation.
-- Eddie Cockrell Last
Night
(Canada, 1998, March 28) Known
principally as the co-writer, with François Girard, of the art-house hits Thirty-Two
Short Films About Glenn Gould and The Red Violin (he plays Samuel L.
Jackson’s tech-savvy assistant in the late reels of the latter), Canadian
writer-actor Don McKellar comes into his own as a filmmaker with Last Night,
a dryly funny genre exercise about a group of interrelated people facing the
last six hours of life on earth as we know it in a mysteriously sun-drenched
Toronto. He stars as Patrick Wheeler, who, in the course of those hours, strikes
up an oddly tender relationship with Sandra (Sandra Oh), who, in turn, is trying
to catch up with her politely solicitous gas company employee husband Duncan
(filmmaker David Cronenberg) in time to honor their simultaneous mutual suicide
pact. The terrific cast features Sarah Polley as Patrick’s sister, Callum
Keith Rennie as a priapic childhood chum of the protagonist, the great Arsinée
Khanjian (the wife of Atom Egoyan, for whom McKellar acted in Exotica) as
a mysterious woman on a bus, Geneviève Bujold as a schoolteacher, Jackie
Burroughs as sort of a doomsday jogger and blink-and-you’ll-miss-‘em
walk-ons by Girard and director Bruce McDonald as rowdies. Among the film’s
funniest gags is the ubiquitous radio countdown of all-time great hits (heavily
skewed to the Canadian), which includes appropriately thematic tunes by The
Fifth Dimension, Looking Glass, Parliament, The Defranco Family, Edward Bear,
Randy Bachman, Pete Seeger and, of course, The Guess Who. A charming and
provocative antidote to the other two high-profile 1998 end-of-the-world movies
(Armageddon and Deep Impact), Last Night signals the
beginning of a promising new directorial career.
-- Eddie Cockrell Lord of the Flies (United Kingdom, March 14) Making a long-awaited appearance on DVD courtesy of the Criterion Collection, British theater director Peter Brook’s low-budget, highly absorbing 1963 adaptation of William Golding’s 1950s novel about a group of 30 English choirboys and their descent into savagery after crash landing on a deserted tropical island carries echoes of contemporary films from The Blair Witch Project to The Beach but endures as a unique and masterful triumph of emotion over style. Criterion’s transfer is, in a word, flawless, and even the airless looping of dialogue (“the beast is us”) and the abrupt jump cuts serve to heighten the surrealism of the allegorical story. Accompanying the film is commentary from the principals (Brook, producer Lewis Allen, cinematographer Tom Hollyman, and cameraman/editor Gerald Feil), excerpts from the novel read by Golding, a deleted scene accessible with or without commentary, the theatrical trailer, excerpts from Feil’s 1972 documentary on Brooks’ theatrical process and a generous selection of production stills, home movies (many charting the film’s Cannes festival premiere) and outtakes. Yet another example from Criterion of how DVD restoration, presentation and packaging should be done, this edition of Lord of the Flies is definitive, and thus, priceless.
New Orleans (USA, 1947,
April 25) One
of three unjustly neglected and rarely-screened Hollywood musicals released on
the above date by Kino Video, Arthur Lubin’s New Orleans features
performances by Louis Armstrong, Woody Herman, Kid Ory, Meade Lux Lewis and
Billie Holiday, who brings an ethereal beauty to the blues number, “Farewell
to Storyville.” The other two titles in the series are Edgar G. Ulmer’s 1947
drama Carnegie Hall (featuring performances by Artur Rubinstein, Lily
Pons, Jascha Heifetz, Leopold Stokowski and others) and Terence Young’s
British-French 1960 Technicolor romp Black Tights, starring Cyd Charisse,
Moira Shearer, the Ballets de Paris of Roland Petit and the narration of Maurice
Chevalier. All titles save Carnegie Hall are also available on DVD.
-- Eddie Cockrell Regret
to Inform
(USA, 1999, April 25) In 1968, on Barbara Sonneborn’s twenty-forth
birthday, she learned her husband Jeff had been killed in Vietnam. Twenty-four
years later, the established photographer and visual artist traveled there to
confront her past, accompanied by a film crew and Xuan Ngoc Evans, herself a
South Vietnamese war widow who immigrated to America in the 1970s. Made in part
to neutralize the “social invisibility” suffered by widows of that war, Regret
to Inform profiles the lives and experiences of numerous women on both sides
of the conflict (called “The American War” in Vietnam). These remembrances
are visualized with over 150 archival clips, creating a you-are-there feel to
these previously untold stories. Winner of the Documentary Director’s Award at
the 1999 Sundance Film Festival, the Video Source Award from the International
Documentary Association, and one of the Final Five in the Documentary Feature
category of this year’s Oscar race, Regret to Inform -- nine years in
the making -- is a powerful, valuable document of war and the unforeseen
devastation it wreaks on those who survive, robbed of their loved ones.
-- Eddie Cockrell The
Shop on Main Street (Obchod
na korze, Czechoslovakia, 1964, March 21) Newly-available
in a version vastly superior to what’s circulated in America for years, this
Home Vision Cinema/Janus Films joint release of The Shop on Main Street
restores this Best Foreign Language film winner (from the former Czechoslovakia)
to something very near its original condition. During the Second World War, a
small village in Slovakia reels from the occupation.
Appointed the Aryan supervisor of a button shop and its elderly Jewish
proprietress Rozalie (Ida Kaminska), the listless but inadvertently principled
Tono Brtko (Josef Kroner) forms a friendship with the woman that is threatened
by current events. The direction of Ján Kadár and Elmar Klos renders the film
remarkably fresh today, emphasizing the absurdities inherent in the situations
without sacrificing any of the dramatic impact of the choices made by average
people in extraordinary circumstances. Kaminska, then-star of Poland’s Warsaw
Yiddish Theater, was nominated for a Best Actress Oscar for her moving
performance, winning the acting award from the Cannes festival that year
alongside Kroner as the petty little man who shields her from harm as long as he
can. At the moment, this release appears to be exclusive to VHS -- a pity, since
the new transfer is spotless.
-- Eddie Cockrell Son
of the Sheik
(USA, 1925, March 21) Gigolo
or immortal lover? The question has always dogged Rudolph Valentino, the silent
screen star who went from Italian country boy (his given name was Rodolpho
Guglielmi di Valentina d’Antonguollo) to Hollywood heartthrob in the first
five years of the 1920s before abruptly dying of severe peritonitis in 1926. The
sequel to his career-making turn in 1921’s The Sheik, George
Fitzmaurice’s brief (sixty-eight minute)
Son of the Sheik casts Valentino once again as a sultry lover,
this time a desert leader whose love of a dancing girl (Vilma Banky) isn’t
without cost. The other two titles in Kino Video’s “Notorious: Movies of the
Jazz Age” series are Cecil B. DeMille’s 1920 drama The Affairs of Anatol
(adapted from a play by Arthur Schnitzler, who wrote the material that became
Stanley Kubrick’s Eyes Wide Shut) and D.W. Griffith’s jazz age comedy
The Battle of the Sexes. Of the three, only Son of the Sheik is
available in a spartan DVD edition, which begins rather choppily but features
some luminescent blue tinting as the pair pitch nocturnal woo and the
atmospheric sets of William Cameron Menzies (The Thief of Bagdad).
-- Eddie Cockrell Don't have a DVD player? Didn't find what you are looking for? Look in the back issues of the store or in the extensive catalog of Amazon.COM by entering your search in the text box below: Contents | Features | Reviews
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