MCN Columnists
Gary Dretzka

By Gary Dretzka Dretzka@moviecitynews.com

The DVD Wrapup

Jack Reacher: Blu-ray
Not having read the novel upon which “Jack Reacher” was adapted, I couldn’t tell you with any certainty how the movie compares with the 2005 Lee Child thriller “One Shot.” I do know that Tom Cruise bears no physical resemblance to the literary creation and such discrepancies can alienate loyal fans of a popular series. On the other hand, Cruise’s ability to play action heroes can’t be questioned and his willingness to go the extra mile, by performing many of the stunts himself, only adds to more credibility to his performances. I suspect that newcomers to the Child canon might even be drawn to the source material, based solely on Cruise’s willingness to take part in the adaptation and, surely, that’s a good thing. If nothing else, his presence in “Jack Reacher” diverts attention to the fact that next to nothing in writer/director Christopher McQuarrie’s screenplay could actually happen in real life and it’s neither a fantasy nor science-fiction. When it comes to suspending disbelief, after all, the action fantasies of the “Mission:Impossible” franchise wouldn’t be half as much fun without Cruise. “Jack Reacher” didn’t bring home as much bacon as “M:I,” but, without its star, the movie wouldn’t have come close to surpassing its estimated budget, which it did. So, props to him.

As written, the 6-foot-5, sandy-haired Reacher grew up in a combat-hardened family, graduated from West Point and served his country as an officer/investigator in the Army Military Police Corps. Well decorated, he attained the rank of a major, before being demoted and re-promoted. In the movie, we’re told that Reacher mustered out under circumstances that could come back to haunt him and, for the past dozen years, has been flying under the radar. Amazingly, like Paladin, Superman and the Lone Ranger, he tends to show up in the nick of time to rescue some poor soul, and then disappears after his mission is accomplished. Reacher is free to travel light because his brain is the equivalent of a portable CSI lab and his martial-arts skills allow him to forgo the kind of weaponry that he could pick up from any NRA member, gang-banger or sociopath, without first having to undergo an evaluation of his psychological fitness.

Here, he arrives in Pittsburgh in the immediate wake of a multiple murder that could only have been accomplished by a military-trained long-distance sniper. The suspect was easily captured and beaten to within an inch of his death in a van transporting him to jail. Once he awakens from a coma, the first thing he asks for is an audience with Reacher. When Reacher does arrive to investigate the crime, however, he’s confident that the Iraq War veteran simply snapped and, in his mind, was killing terrorists, instead of random Americans out for a stroll along one of the city’s three rivers. It doesn’t take long Reacher to reach a different conclusion, that the marksman couldn’t have shot those people, at least not in the way demonstrated in the opening scene. Now, determined to clear the obvious suspect, he finds an ally in the suspect’s lawyer (Rosamund Pike), who, besides being beautiful (of course), is the daughter of the city’s possibly corrupt DA (Richard Jenkins). This doesn’t sit well with the guys who set him up. Conveniently, again, they make themselves all too visible to the brilliant investigator and the rest of the movie becomes one long chase, frequently interrupted by fists of fury.

The chase scenes are extremely well choreographed and the final shootout, while totally ridiculous, is exciting, anyway. The movie also benefits from the presence of Werner Herzog and Robert Duvall in supporting roles that have to be seen to be believed. The Paramount Blu-ray shouldn’t disappoint fans of the stars and genre, either, as the audio-visual presentation is excellent. There are two commentary tracks, one with Cruise and McQuarrie; and the other with composer Joe Kramer, accompanied by an isolated score presentation. The set adds the featurettes “When the Man Comes Around,” “You Do Not Mess With Jack Reacher: Combat & Weapons” and “The Reacher Phenomenon,” as well as a UV digital copy.

Upstream Color: Blu-ray
If Terence Malick ever attempted a bio-horror thriller, it might look something like “Upstream Color,” a brain-teaser that took home a Special Jury Prize at this year’s Sundance festival. Sonically and visually, Shane Carruth’s second feature delivers a hypnotic charge not unlike the vial substance consumed by the characters before they lose the ability to control their actions. As fascinating as it is, however, “Upstream Color” might as well have been dubbed into Sanskrit, for all the sense I could make of Carruth’s intentions. In this way, it resembles the writer/director’s previous non-linear head-scratcher, “Primer,” which involved time travel and mysterious machines manufactured in a garage. Nearly a decade later, the writer/director seems no more interested in making things easy for his audience. As the movie opens, we watch a couple of boys collect leaves for a young man who will scrape a powdery substance off them. The scrapings somehow lead to the creation of a maggot-borne hallucinogen that literally gets beneath the skin of its unsuspecting victims and causes them to engage in such irrational behavior as signing over the title to their homes and giving kidnapers access to ATM codes. Two of the people who have ingested the drug meet serendipitously on a bus, allowing them to compare notes and comfort each other after the trauma of having the maggots removed from their bodies. The creepy-crawly things are fed to the amateur surgeon’s pigs, which then form an emotional attachment to the donors. I’m not at all sure what the pigs have to do with anything, but we know that they aren’t reluctant to eat things, including humans, no other carnivore would touch. Once digested, the maggot and toxins would be passed along to anyone with a hankering for bacon or ribs. That possibility isn’t fully explained, either. The crazy, wonderful thing about “Upstream Color” is how the pulsating musical score, when combined with the inventive digital cinematography, serves to mesmerize viewers willing to turn their imaginations over to Carruth. Amy Seimetz (“The Killing”) is terrific as the woman who takes the brunt of the punishment here and, even without revealing much skin, seduces us into caring deeply about her fate.

Starlet: Blu-ray
The MPAA braintrust wants us to believe that movies that are rated NC-17 or go out unrated are playing on the same level playing field as movies branded R and PG-13. They also continue to insist, against much evidence to the contrary, that the ratings are intended specifically for use by parents as a tool for determining what movies they’ll allow their children to see. The board, we’re told, doesn’t censor films and it can’t force members to do things that would destroy their integrity or dilute the director’s vision. Maybe so, but that’s exactly what happens when a distributor is faced with the dilemma of requiring an artist to make cuts that would to fit the board’s notion of what a R or PG-13 ought to be, or face the economic consequences. (It explains those annoying CGI cock-blockers in the R-rated version in “Eyes Wide Shut.”) More often than not, making love in movies – however tastefully rendered – upsets the ratings board far more than making war or what passes for it in our urban jungles and trailer parks. Too often, NC-17 and unrated movies can’t find a welcoming screen outside of an arthouse and at festivals. What the MPAA refuses to acknowledge is that exhibitors can’t possibly weigh all films equally when clauses in their leases forbid the showing of NC-17 and unrated pictures and some newspaper won’t accept ads for them. As such, it’s the kiss of death for movies as brave and challenging as “Starlet,” which arrives in DVD and Blu-ray with a NR stamp. In fact, “Starlet” is an excellent movie, with more than the usual number of surprises and plenty of insight about life on the fringes of society. It’s graced by fine acting and sharp dialogue.

At its core, “Starlet” is an updating of the age-old story of a young woman, who, in the course of assuaging her conscience, forms a bond that seals a permanent, if unlikely friendship. Twenty-one-year-old Jane (Dree Hemingway) purchases a thermos at a yard sale from a cranky old dame who is quick to warn her of her no-return, no-exchange policy. After discovering several thousand dollars’ worth of rolled-up bills in the bottle, Jane attempts to return it to Sadie (Besedka Johnson), but she’s given the cold shoulder and a slammed door for her efforts. Still feeling a tad guilty, Jane conspires to befriend the older woman and do favors for her in lieu of the money she isn’t being allowed to return. If Jane and Sadie don’t have much in common, both are lonely as hell and in need of a friendship that doesn’t come with conditions. Co-writer/director Sean Baker’s challenge, then, was devising a way for these two women to discover each other and open their hearts to the possibility that they have more in common than an interest in yard sales. If some dreams are answered along the way, well, that’s OK, too.

Here’s comes the rub, though, and it isn’t revealed until about a half-hour into the movie: like hundreds of other young adults living and working in the San Fernando Valley, Jane and her ditzoid roommate, Melissa (Stella Maeve), are employed in the sex industry and to establish the credibility of the characters, there’s a scene containing graphic sexuality. The other nudity barely merits a “R.” Moreover, Jane and Melissa aren’t embarrassed by their work or were driven to it by an abusive relative. Their boss isn’t particularly sleazy and they make more money than most people living in the San Fernando Valley, even if they tend to blow it on recreational drugs and hot cars. If there were better jobs available for young women without college degrees, Jane, at least, probably would grab one. Until then, she’ll grin and bear it. It represents the kind of moral ambiguity that has offended industry watchdogs for most of the last 100 years and is punished with more severe ratings. As a result of the NR, “Starlet” never made it past a handful of bookings in select theaters and festival appearances. Baker could have saved himself some agony by editing the graphic scene to fit the borders of a “R” and send out a director’s-cut edition in Blu-ray, but it wouldn’t carry the same weight or tell us all we need to know about Jane. Baker doesn’t solicit pity or disgust in the time allotted him in the bonus package.

In fact, he’s far more anxious to laud the wee canine actor that bore the name, Starlet, and introduce us to 87-year-old Johnson, who died after realizing her own lifelong dream of becoming an actor. “Starlet” would be her first and only movie credit. If anyone had been able to see her performance, academy voters might have tossed a few votes her way as Best Supporting Actress. As it is, “Starlet” won the Robert Altman Award for ensemble acting at the 2013 Independent Spirit Awards and was nominated for the prize named for John Cassavetes. Dree Hemingway, daughter of Mariel, won the prize for Breakthrough Performer at the Hamptons International Film Festival and Baker was nominated for top prizes at the Locarno and Mar del Plata festivals and won the Fipresci Award at Reykjavik. If that isn’t validation for a micro-budget indie, I don’t know what is. The Blu-ray arrives with a bunch of interviews and background pieces, as well as a lengthy making-of featurette.

Last Summer Won’t Happen/Time of the Locust
Doctors of the Dark Side
The Exorcist in the 21st Century

For those who have seen, heard and read enough about the “turbulent 1960s” to last two lifetimes, please forgive me for suggesting two more documentaries, both short and directly related to the antiwar movement. Peter Gessner’s rarely seen “Last Summer Won’t Happen” was shot at a particularly auspicious period in modern American history, in 1968, a year after San Francisco’s Summer of Love and a few months between the “levitation of the Pentagon” protest and student takeover at Columbia University and the Democratic Convention in Chicago. The people we meet in the film had either watched or participated in the events and were trying to come up with a way to radicalize hippies and create a unified popular front against the Vietnam War. To mobilize the flower children of the Haight-Ashbury – Berkeley, across the Bay, having already been radicalized – it would take something more than the urging of a group of would-be urban guerrillas from New York’s Lower East Side. The idea was to fuse the disparate countercultures in Chicago, before the convention, by staging events that combined music, street theater, chanting, speechifying and lots of dope. Once the crowd was merged, the newly born Youth International Party (Yippie!) would add the thick dollop of New Left politics to the recipe. What happened instead, of course, would be a series of violent confrontations with Chicago police and four years of mostly destructive chaos.

What makes “Last Summer Won’t Happen” noteworthy is its proximity to several of the key players in the Movement at this crucial juncture. It also demonstrates how clueless everyone who would play a key role in the events to come still was, from the insipient Yippies and student radicals, to the Chicago cops and Democratic politicians. Their clearly was no endgame on the left side of the equation and pols happily allowed the police to take the heat for their divisive policies. Here, the angry young men, predominantly, based in crowded Lower East Side apartments sit around and debate the efficacy of violence and confronting police; the relevance of the hippie culture, if any; the role of anarchists in the emerging counterculture; and how to get by each day without any visible means of support. If Mayor Daley and the DNC had been able to watch early rushes of “Last Summer Won’t Happen,” they might have decided to welcome the protesters to Grant Park, sanction their concerts, authorize a few marches and stand by while the kids numbed themselves with pot and LSD. After dismissing the McCarthy challenge, the Dems could have nominated Hubert Humphrey and avoided sharing tear gas with the protesters. Instead, the world watched as cops beat the crap out of defenseless kids and refused them their right to free assembly. Humphrey’s campaign ran out of gas before it started and a radical SDS splinter group would return to Chicago to battle police, destroy property and steer media attention in its direction. Gessner’s film ends before any of that plays out, but you don’t need a Weatherman to know which way the wind would blow from there. The primary players shown in the documentary are professional rabble-rouser Abbie Hoffman; editor of the Realist, Paul Krassner; folksinger and activist Phil Ochs; anarchist Osha Tom Neumann; a young drug dealer and squatter; and a runaway hippie chick who seems distinctly out of place in Lower Manhattan.

If, in 1966, Gessner’s riveting 13-minute documentary, “Time of the Locust,” had been widely seen outside a few film festivals, Americans might have reassessed their support of our early involvement in Vietnam and forced their congressmen to get out while the getting was good. Legend has it that JFK had soured on the war before he was assassinated and would have avoided the quagmire it quickly became. The same evidence available to JFK was denied voters and the rest is history. “Time of the Locust” and other films uncolored by the major media’s get-along, go-along attitude might have provided a tipping point for withdrawal. It is a brutal film, full of images deemed too horrifying for consumption by American TV audiences. Instead of relying on footage compiled by cameramen allowed to tag along with the American troops, Gessner assembled material taken from other points of view. It came from non-network news agencies, Japanese journalists and Vietnamese National Liberation Front combat footage. At this point in the war, the Pentagon had convinced lawmakers that the South Vietnamese army would soon be able to stand its ground against the Vietcong, freeing the U.S. to shut down the North Vietnamese Army and split town. Nothing could be further from the truth. Here, we see Vietcong prisoners being beaten nearly to death and shot full of holes before any useful intelligence was gleaned. The South Vietnamese soldiers’ arrogance alienated and frightened the peasants, who were even more petrified by the American tanks that rambled through their rice paddies and demolished anything they saw as a potential VC hideout. “Locust” was free of narration, so the images spoke for themselves. The same Americans who, in 1965, had been shocked by images of our soldiers torching peasant huts with flamethrowers and Zippo lighters might have recoiled even further after watching a blindfolded prisoner being machine-gunned in front of their eyes.

Doctors of the Dark Side” asks other disturbing questions about the way Americans wage war. Whether or not one agrees with the use of torture to interrogate prisoners, this documentary demands that we ask ourselves where we draw the line between lawful techniques and inhuman behavior. If we treat the Geneva Conventions as if they don’t apply to us, how can we expect our enemies to do so when Americans are captured? It is possible to hold the moral high ground while also mucking around in the mud? Producer/director Martha Davis asks these questions and more, knowing that Americans already are aware of the excesses reported from Guantanamo Bay, Abu Ghraib and CIA black sites, as described in “Zero Dark Thirty.” The tight focus here is on the role of doctors and psychologists in the implementation and supervision of Enhanced Interrogation Techniques. After four years of research, Davis felt confident enough in her finding to make “Doctors of the Dark Side,” a film that makes a persuasive case for condemning ongoing practices. According to established guidelines, doctors must be present when EIT techniques are employed and psychologists must be immediately available to assess the ability of prisoners to mentally withstand torture. Instead, they are routinely required to participate in the interrogations and ignore evidence that guidelines have been surpassed. In essence, doctors sworn to honor the Hippocratic Oath (“to abstain from doing harm”), even above the Geneva Conventions, have willingly or forcibly engaged in practices that make mockery of it. In one worst-case scenario, doctors who couldn’t prevent the beating death of a prisoner were called upon to falsify certificates and make it look as if the man died in his cell, instead of a torture chamber. The evidence is verified by military, legal and medical experts, as well as witnesses and former detainees. At the same time as news of hunger strikers being force-fed in Guantanamo are being reported – minus descriptions of how it’s done – Davis recounts the same thing happening years earlier, using methods widely condemned when ducks and geese are fattened for tastier foie gras. However grotesque, “Doctors of the Dark Side” makes a persuasive argument without resorting to polemics or partisan politics. President Obama, after all, has as much to answer for on the subject as his predecessor.

The Exorcist in the 21st Century” straddles the thin lines that divide exploitation, entertainment and enlightenment, as they pertain to the most controversial and intriguing rite in the Roman Catholic Church. That it originated in Norway is only the first of several surprises. There aren’t all that many native-born Catholics in Scandinavia, so, when one recently underwent a church-authorized exorcism, it caught the attention of Norwegian filmmakers Fredrik Horn Akselsen and Christian Falch. They introduce us to Father José Antonio Fortea, whose job it is to visit parishes where possessions are reported and, if the facts justify such an extreme treatment, do battle with the devil. He patiently and articulately describes the process, which is deemed necessary more times than one would imagine. I found it interesting, as well, that Father Gabriele Amorth, the Vatican’s official exorcist, considers “The Exorcist” to be a fair representation of the practice and that he keeps a copy of the movie in his library. The filmmakers traveled to a remote corner of the Andes to meet a woman who was about to undergo an exorcism and interview people close to her. Her freak-outs aren’t nearly as extreme as those experienced by Linda Blair, but they’re hellishly noisy and more than a little bit disturbing. Fortea follows them to Colombia to conduct the rite, which is staged in a way that recalls a revival meeting in the American South. Fortuitously, because he’s conversant in the language of tongues, he’s on somewhat equal footing with the demon. The DVD adds more interview material and a longer version of the exorcism ritual.

The Oranges: Blu-ray
In less capable hands, the suburban family drama “The Oranges” might have become a prime candidate for a Golden Raspberry. Instead, Julian Farino (“Entourage”) finds the humanity in a so-so script by first-timers Ian Helfer and Jay Reiss and gets out of the way of actors capable of making an infomercial for flameless candles entertaining. “The Oranges” is a tale of two families that live across the street from each other in the tranquil New Jersey town of Orange. Carol, Terry and Nina Ostroff are played by Allison Janney, Oliver Platt and Leighton Meester, respectively, while Paige, David, Toby and Vanessa Walling are portrayed by Catherine Keener, Hugh Laurie, Adam Brody and Alia Shawkat. The men are best buddies; the women are borderline miserable; the daughters, once BFFs, are estranged; and Brody’s handsome, young economist undergoes torture by match-making. Because “The Oranges” is set during the holiday season, it’s fair to expect evidence of dysfunction to emerge any minute. Sure enough, a scandal involving both families is revealed early in the proceedings, catching everyone off-guard. Even as it tears apart the fabric of their friendship, the possibility always exists that a happy ending can be pulled out of Farino’s hat. He does just that, but not in a fashion one might expect. The story includes several humorous moments, but they’re mostly born of misery and, again, the cast works overtime to deliver the laughs. The resolution ties things up pretty smoothly, without resorting to melodrama or flakey logic. While “The Oranges” isn’t on the same block as “American Beauty,” fans of the actors probably won’t mind squeezing out some time to see it.

Safe Haven: Blu-ray
I know it isn’t fair to dismiss “Safe Haven” by concluding, “If you’ve seen one adaptation of a Nicholas Sparks novel, you’ve seen them all,” but there are far too many similarities in the seven movies not to come to that conclusion. Almost all of them have been set and shot in quaint, seaside communities in the South, where time comes to a standstill at irregular intervals. The young protagonists are always good-looking, a bit troubled, harboring dark secrets and are soon to be tested. There’s romance, but no couplings so steamy they would threaten its PG or PG-13 rating. They are modestly budgeted and make lots of money, even if boyfriends would rather eat worms than sit through one with their best girl. If there’s any such thing as a critic-proof movie, it would be one adapted from a Sparks’ novel. “Safe Haven” is set in the lovely town of Southport, North Carolina, where, one day, a young woman (Julianne Hough) decides to get off the Greyhound and put down roots. We already know that Katie is escaping from a bad scene back home, although we don’t know exactly what happened. Once in Southport, she plays really, really hard-to-get with a handsome widower and single father, Alex (Josh Duhamel), with whom she’s destined to come to some kind of romantic resolution. That’s not a spoiler, it’s a given.

Whatever it is Katie did in her former life, she’s turned into a model citizen of Southport, single-handedly rehabbing a dilapidated cabin and waiting tables at the best and, perhaps, only restaurant in town. When Katie and Alex inevitably hook up, one of the kids warms to her immediately, while the other takes some work. Katie can’t help but feel snake-bit when her past finally comes back to haunt her. Hough and Duhamel make a cute couple, just as Zac Efron and Taylor Schilling, Channing Tatum and Amanda Seyfried, Richard Gere and Diane Lane, Ryan Gosling and Rachel McAdams, Shane West and Mandy Moore and Kevin Costner and Robin Wright did before them. In his second visit to Sparks’ territory, Lasse Hallstrom (“Dear John”) lets the story speak for itself, while also milking the natural beauty of the scenic location and chemistry between the possibly star-crossed pair. The Blu-ray takes full advantage of both qualities, adding deleted and extended scenes, an alternate ending, a set tour and featurettes “Igniting the Romance in Safe Haven” and “Josh Duhamel’s Lessons in Crabbing.”

The Rabbi’s Cat: Blu-ray
Writer and director Joann Sfar (“Gainsbourg”) has grappled with issues pertaining to Jewish identity for at least as long as he’s known that one of his parents is Ashkenazi and the other Sephardic. For him, it’s like having bloodstreams that run in opposite directions in the same veins. The same tug-of-war is waged in his graphic novel and animated feature, “The Rabbi’s Cat,” in which a cat raised by the rabbi, Sfar, and his voluptuous daughter, Zlabya, develops the ability to communicate with people after it swallows a parrot. Not too timid to engage in serious conversation, the cat asks the rabbi if having a Jewish master and mistress makes him Jewish. If so, then, the cat would like to have a bar mitzvah. (Circumcision is whole other kettle of fish.) Confounding the identity issue even further is the fact that the rabbi has a cousin who’s Muslim.

The film opens in Algiers, where, between the wars, people of different faiths and ethnicities live next-door to each other in relative harmony. It isn’t until the rabbi, his daughter, the cat and a Russian Jew – he snuck into Algeria in a crate containing religious texts – embark on a journey to Ethiopia, in search of “the Jerusalem of Africa.” Here, they encounter people who are far less tolerant. Because “The Rabbi’s Cat” is adapted from different volumes of Sfar’s popular series of comic books – graphic novels, if you prefer – the narrative doesn’t always flow in a straight direction. The movie is beautifully rendered to take advantage of the Arabesque setting and artfully conceived Saharan skies, gardens, palms and sand dunes. The movie was released into 3D in its theatrical run. It’s not yet available here in that format, but anyone interested in the source material can find it at Amazon and other outlets. The Blu-ray adds the featurettes, “The Making of ‘The Rabbi’s Cat’” and “Joann Sfar Draws From Memory.” There’s nothing in the movie that parents would find objectionable for ’tweens and teens, but younger children probably would need a translator – or rabbi – for the theological discussions.

The Great Gatsby: Midnight in Manhattan
Barrymore: Blu-ray

When a movie has been adapted from a popular novel, it’s sometimes difficult for a reviewer to recommend in what order a potential viewer should experience both works, if at all. Too often, fans of the book are disappointed to the point of depression by a film’s take on the material, while there are times when the movie actually makes the book look better than it is. In the case of “The Great Gatsby,” it would difficult to do any real damage to the source material because the story is only as long as it needs to be and reads as if it were written for film. Anyone who’s a fan of classic cinema could cast it in a half-hour. I have yet to experience F. Scott Fitzgerald’s masterpiece in 3D — the format preferred by Baz Luhrman for his adaptation – but the trailers and teasers whet my appetite for the May 10 release. (It also will be shown in standard 2D.) The BBC documentary “The Great Gatsby: Midnight in Manhattan” makes me want to go back and read the novel, as well, for the third or fourth time. It was filmed in advance of the novel’s 75th anniversary, in 2000, but the only thing that’s really changed is the status of several of the people interviewed, including Hunter S. Thompson, George Plimpton, William Styron, Christopher Hitchens, Budd Schulberg and Norman Mailer, who are no longer with us. Among the other witnesses are granddaughter Eleanor Lanahan, Garrison Keiller, Jay McInerney, several notable scholars and critics, and the secretary who was with Fitzgerald when he died, Francis Kroll Ring. All of them agree on “The Great Gatsby” being the novel that most closely captures the elusive American Dream and qualifies as the Great American Novel. If Scott and Zelda Fitzgerald can be credited for defining the Jazz Age, they argue, it’s also true that they invented their roles in it. What’s truly remarkable, though, is how prophetic the assembled experts turned out to be. Seven years before the second Great Depression, they predicted how the then-booming U.S. economy would, of necessity, go bust in much the same way as it had in Fitzgerald’s era. It’s uncanny.

To add value to the 43-minute documentary, BBC Home Entertainment has paired “Midnight in Manhattan” with the 1975 made-for-TV drama, “A Dream of Living.” The “Omnibus” presentation describes a day and a night in the life of the Fitzgeralds, while they were living large in a Long Island mansion. In it, Ernest Hemingway drops by one afternoon to discuss his decision to turn from reporting to fiction and offer praise for “The Great Gatsby.” The men are still close friends and heavy drinkers. Zelda has yet to be diagnosed with bipolar disorder and is rehearsing for her debut as a ballerina. The evening portion of the teleplay is set during a party that is only slightly less grand and debauched than the ones described in the novel. David Hemmings and Annie Lambert are terrific as the star-crossed couple.

Fitzgerald and the great American thespian John Barrymore both were working at the top of the game during the Roaring ’20s, even as both men’s livers were taking a beating and the early symptoms of alcoholism were beginning to reveal themselves. “Barrymore” re-creates the 1997 production of William Luce’s two-person play, during which Christopher Plummer delivered a tour-de-force performance as the actor in his decline. It is set on a props-filled stage, in 1942, when Barrymore supposedly was making one last stab at a comeback as Richard III, a role he had performed triumphantly on Broadway in 1920. The two characters are a memory-challenged Barrymore and his increasingly frustrated “reader.” Although the actor needs to be prodded on lines he had long memorized, there also are stretches of lucidity when Barrymore is as brilliant as he ever was. In between, he recalls life in the celebrated theater family and anecdotes about the good old days, when he was the undisputed champion of Hollywood and Broadway. He even recites a few bawdy limericks. Clearly, though, the alcoholism has already taken its toll. Plummer, an actor of similar stature, is nothing short of mesmerizing in a Tony Award-winning performance that demands frequent shifts in demeanor and dramatic soliloquies. The Blu-ray adds a very good backgrounder on the play, Barrymore and Plummer’s career.

Mama: Blu-ray
It has become something of a Hollywood truism that movies released in January, even those with prominent stars, have been dumped there as placeholders between the holiday pictures with those with more commercial potential to come. Once Valentine’s Day rolls around, thoughts of summer already are consuming the minds of Hollywood distributors. It’s possible that the handlers of “Mama” knew that they had something marketable, at least, with Jessica Chastain’s career still in its ascendency. It also carried the imprimatur of executive producer and master of horror Guillermo del Toro. Word-of-mouth worked wonders for January’s child, as Andres and Barbara Musshietti’s film grossed several times more than its estimated budget. That should give fans of stories about ghosts and bogeymen an idea of its rent-ability in DVD and Blu-ray. The movie opens auspiciously, when a wildly distraught man murders his wife and drags his two very young daughters to a cabin deep in the woods, where he intends to kill them. Before he can pull the trigger, though, a hairy something-or-other leaps from a cabinet and, well, we don’t know exactly what it does. Five years later, a couple of hillbilly hunters discover a pair of feral children lurking suspiciously in the darkness of the same cabin, which looks uninhabitable. They’re taken to a children’s psychiatric center for rehabilitation, before being handed off to their punk-rock uncle and aunt, Lucas (Nikolaj Coster-Waldau) and Annabelle (Chastain). It isn’t long before the girls display symptoms of not being ready for polite society. That’s the setup and any more information would spoil the suspense … and fun. Suffice it to say that whatever kept them alive for those five years still has a hold on them and its agenda has yet to be fully revealed. As the kids, Megan Charpentier and Isabelle Nelisse bounce smoothly and frequently between sweet and creepy. The twice-nominated Oscar candidate, Chastain, is barely recognizable here from her characters in “Zero Dark Thirty” and “The Help,” but she’s credible as a woman who evolves from aspiring musician to doting stepmom. Del Toro encouraged the Musshiettis to expand a three-minute short they had made into a feature film, with the help of British writer Neil Cross (“MI-5,” “Luther”), and have the characters speak English, instead of Spanish. Far from perfect, it’s exactly the kind of movie that makes movie lovers think differently about January. It arrives with the short, “Mamá,” and an introduction; commentary; deleted scenes; and a pair of background featurettes.

ID:A
Danish director Christian E. Christiansen enjoyed 15 minutes in the Hollywood sun, when his 2007 short film, “At Night,” was nominated for an Oscar. His 2011 feature “ID:A” bypassed the U.S. entirely, but not because it wasn’t any good. My guess is that there simply wasn’t any place to put it. In the wake of the success of such book-to-film franchises as “The Girl With the Golden Tattoo” and “Wallander,” one of the places fans of character-based thrillers look first for entertainment is Scandinavia. “ID:A” may not compare to those titles in terms of originality or heart-pounding drama, but it is frequently quite exciting and, for those not allergic to subtitles, an easy way to kill a couple of hours. The sneaky-sexy Swede actress Tuva Novotny plays a woman who wakes up one morning with no idea who she is, how she found her way to the bottom of a rocky riverbed in France, why her head is bleeding and she has a long scar on her tummy, and where she picked up the 2 million euros in a backpack she’s clutching. The setup puts us in Jason Bourne territory and that’s exactly where Christiansen and the film’s producers want us to believe we’re heading. Not quite, because recollections of her back pages eventually come back to her. Still, her journey of discovery is quite compelling.

After finding refuge in a nearby country inn, the woman is told that her accent betrays her as being Danish. It doesn’t take long for a pair of thugs, more interested in the money than the woman who possesses it, to track her to the inn. We know from news coverage on the television that a Danish politician was recently assassinated and, perhaps, that’s where the loot might have derived. Nevertheless, the innkeeper’s son takes a shine to the stranger and he helps her find people who can help her buy time to discover her identity. Once she gets to Copenhagen, though, her new hair style and color can’t disguise the probability that she’s the wife of a famous Danish opera singer and he’s been distraught she disappeared, only a few weeks ago. From this point forward, each new clue leads to a conspiracy that not only threatens her life, but those of everyone in her orbit. So, you’ll have to watch the movie to unscramble the mystery, right alongside the protagonist.

Mistress of the Apes
She Cat/Female Teacher Hunting
The Exhibitionists

It isn’t often that a DVD arrives in the mail that can compete with “Troll 2,” “Kingdom of the Spiders,” “Birdemic” and “Plan 9 From Outer Space” for the honor of being one of best bad movies of all time. That’s exactly how I felt after watching “Mistress of the Apes,” a picture that kept my jaw locked in the dropped position throughout the entirety of its 84-minute length. Made in 1979, but apparently never distributed here, “Mistress of the Apes” was written and directed by self-proclaimed “schlockmeister” Larry Buchanan, who also gave us the original “Mars Needs Women,” “Hughes and Harlow: Angels in Hell” and “Free, White and 21,” among other quick-and-dirty gems. “Mistress of the Apes” opens in a hospital, where the wife of a world-famous anthropologist is about to deliver a baby. At the same time, a group of dope fiends invade the facility looking for the drugs locked in a cabinet in the same room. In the ensuing fracas, Susan literally slides off the operating table, causing the baby to be stillborn. As if that news weren’t sufficiently bad, and ultimately irrelevant, the blond bombshell (Jenny Neumann) is told that her husband has disappeared while on a dig in Africa and is believed to be dead. Knowing that he had discovered something that could change everything we know about the evolution of human beings, she immediately volunteers to make the grueling trek to the jungle with a gun-crazy hunter and his sexy wife and one of her husband’s associates. Apparently, the only reason she’s been summoned to Africa is to raise the spirits of her husband’s betrayers by flashing her world-class breasts every so often and giving them an opportunity to rape a white woman. It’s a distinction she shares with the hunter’s wife (Barbara Leigh).

It doesn’t take long before Susan discovers what made her husband so excited: missing-link humanoids, “near” men and women, who closely resemble body-builders with faces swollen by the stings of dozens of killer bees. Cutting to the chase, Susan invents a language by which she can communicate with the near-men, who seem more entranced by those magnificent breasts and blond hair than her linguistic skills. To get even closer to the near-people, Susan seduces at least one and, perhaps, all of them in a nearby cave. Meanwhile, she is being pursued by the hunter and others who want to cash in on the discovery. This description doesn’t come close to doing justice to the idiocy of the screenplay, cheesy production values and Buchanan’s conspicuously bad taste. “Mistress of the Apes” is also graced with a couple of the worst songs in the history of the cinema, suggesting that the whole thing is a joke on the audience. If that was Buchanan’s intention, it worked.

The soft-core porn on display in the movies that comprise the “Nikkatsu Erotic Films Collection” are so sexually perverse and tortuously plotted that they straddle the line between “so bad they’re good” and “so bad they’re really bad.” The latest installments in the continuing series of “roman porno” titles from Impulse Pictures are “She Cat” and “Female Teacher Hunting,” both from the early 1980s. The former is a female-revenge epic, in which an attractive hit-woman, who spends far too much time taking showers, blows an assassination and becomes a target of other killers. “Female Teacher Hunting” is a cautionary tale about how leveling a false accusation about rape can lead to real violence and heartbreak. In the “Female Teacher” sub-genre, the rapes are shown and exploited for their titillation value among teenage boys, who fantasize about doing the same thing to their teachers. Because of Japan’s curious restrictions on showing pubic hair and penetration, the brutality of an act that otherwise would be too graphic to stomach is diluted. The DVDs come with booklets that put the individual movies, stars and director into the context of the time.

The Exhibitionists” is low-budget indie in which a group of friends and a dominatrix ringer attend a New Year’s Eve party, during which they’re expected to reveal their deepest secrets and relationship hang-ups to the host, a documentary filmmaker. Being New York yuppies, the guests all have problems in the love department and the dominatrix is employed as a provocateur. The host seems most determined to tape the confession of his brother-in-law, a soft-spoken fellow who seems haunted by a deep, dark secret that he wants to exploit cinematically. Director Michael Melamedoff adds an appropriately dark and moody texture to the party scenes, but freshman scripter Michael Edison Hayden’s dialogue lacks the venom and surprises one would expect from this group of people. The shocker scene is easily predictable and there isn’t enough bare skin to be sexy.

The Assassin’s Blade: Blu-ray
Shanghai Noon/Shanghai Knights: Blu-ray

If you can imagine “Romeo and Juliet” crossed with “Mulan,” you’ll have a pretty good idea of what happens in “The Assassin’s Blade,” a martial-arts romance that began life with the far more accurate title of “Butterfly Lovers.” Released in 2008, Jingle Ma’s film paired attractive pop stars Charlene Choi and Wu Chun in a story that had been filmed previously by Tsui Hark and is based on the classic tale of Leung Shan-Pak and Cheuk Ying-Toi. Ma’s re-interpretation isn’t nearly as successful as Hark’s, but the target audience of Asian teenyboppers probably got a kick out of it. Here, Zhu (Choi) is the daughter of a wealthy merchant sent into the mountains to study martial arts under a master teacher. At the time, women were forbidden from joining such elite schools, so she’s required to assume a male disguise. Something of a loose cannon from the get-go, Zhu is ordered to accept the tutelage of a handsome trainer, Liang (Wu). It takes Liang an inordinately long time to realize Zhu is a woman, but, once he does, his heart begins to flutter like a butterfly. It is at this juncture that a childhood friend, Ma, informs Zhu that her parents are in danger and she needs to return to the village. Because Ma expects to be granted permission to marry Zhu, her rejection of the arrangement makes him dangerous to the family. And, this is where east meets west in a scenario that recalls the tragic ending of “Romeo and Juliet.” I can see where teens and young adults might be drawn to “The Assassin’s Blade,” but viewers not enamored with the stars wouldn’t be able to get around the fact that only a blind person could mistake Zhu for a man. Neither is Wu strong enough an actor to convince us that he could be fooled so easily. That said, however, the scenery is quite beautiful and the fighting scenes aren’t bad, either.

The packaging on Blu-ray of “Shanghai Noon” and “Shanghai Knights” reminds us once again how much fun it is to watch perfectly mismatched characters cut loose in an action comedy. Jackie Chan plays martial-arts expert Chon Wang (John Wayne, get it?), the imperial guardsman sent to America to rescue kidnapped Princess Pei Pei (Lucy Liu) from bad hombres. Owen Wilson not only is Wang’s polar opposite as a lawman, but his surfer-dude good looks also make seem as out of place in the Wild West as Wang. Most comedy lovers could easily predict what happens next, if not the many insider gags and easy rapport the actors share. “Shanghai Noon” did well enough to inspire a sequel, “Shanghai Knights,” which extends the conceit to England. Chon’s father has been assassinated and the investigation points to conspirators based in Europe. Hong Kong stars Donnie Yen and Fann Wong join the boys there, but on opposite sides of the mystery. Both movies received glowing reviews, while also exposing eastern and western audiences to unfamiliar actors. The Blu-ray adds deleted scenes, commentary and making-of featurettes from both movies.

Last Caress
Joint Body
Federal Agents vs. Underworld Inc.
Silver Case

Fans of classic Italian giallo probably will be the only constituency to embrace Francois Gaillard and Christophe Robin’s low-budget slasher flick, “Last Caress.” It involves an attractive group of friends who gather at a rural manor, where their first mistake is to pull out a Ouija board and summon the spirits that reside there. No good can come from playing that game in a movie. Besides having to deal with a family curse, however, the young men and women become the target of a psychopath looking for a painting that carries a curse of its own. Billed as an exercise in “glamour gore,” “Last Caress” jumps from one grisly, giallo-inspired murder to another, with brief interludes for sex. While the men are non-descript nobodies, the women are modern replicas of Italian bombshells from the 1960-70s. Timing in at 72 minutes, there isn’t much space left for a distinct storyline to make sense of the killings. Given the target audience, though, the bloody tableaux are the only things that matter. The DVD arrives with some making-of material and the similarly violent, but more coherent short, “Die Die My Darling.”

The most common complaint about crime dramas made by aspiring filmmakers is that violence too often is used to advance a story, instead of incorporating the violence into a balanced narrative. The opposite is true of Brian Jun’s “Joint Body,” in which the potential for violence percolates under the surface of the story, but is only allowed to cut loose once. Everything else is there, including an attractive cast, a decent foundation for explosive action and borderline sleazy locations. The missing ingredient is the one most crucial to the story. Veteran hard guy Mark Pellegrino is in prison, about to be released on parole, when his wife tells him she wants nothing to do with him. That stings, but what’s more hurtful is the condition of his release that requires him to refrain from contacting his teenage daughter. Nick’s parole officer sternly warns him against breaking the terms of his release, and he seems intent on staying free. He moves into a cut-rate apartment building, where the first people he meets are a red-headed stripper (Alicia Witt) and an elderly woman being wheeled out of the residence on a gurney. Upon making contact with his estranged brother, Nick is surprised to learn that he’s married and a newly minted cop. In a decision that begs credulity, the cop gives his brother an untraceable handgun “for protection” – a direct violation of his parole – and suggests they maintain some distance between each other. The gun will come into play soon thereafter, bringing Nick and the stripper together as desperadoes. If that scenario portends anything, it’s that the second half of “Joint Body” should be explosive. Instead, none of threads lead anywhere, except to a tepid resolution. Witt and Pellegrino are quite good, given the limitations of the script, so it would have been nice if they were given more to do.

The release of “Federal Agents vs. Underworld Inc.” and other movie serials from the Cheezy Flicks catalogue serves as a reminder of how much fun it was to go to the movies in the days before multiplexes and cost-cutting by studios, distributors and exhibitors. In addition to a double feature, audiences were treated to a cartoon, trailers, a newsreel and a multipart serial with cliffhanger endings. During the Depression, women were specifically targeted with special “Dish Night” giveaways and contests, while kids were lured to cartoon marathons. Today, we get commercials and placards from local merchants and a nearly endless stream of over-amped previews of coming attractions, most of which leave little to the imagination. As primitive as the serials look in hindsight, such studios as Republic did invest some money in them. The 12-part “Federal Agents” cost $155,000 to make and it was the least expensive serial of 1949. My estimate would have been much lower. Here, an international crime ring steals a gold hand from an ancient temple, thinking it has the power to control minds. It causes federal agents to search near and far for the tomb raiders and, of course, save mankind from totalitarian rule. The fistfights and rescues border on the ludicrous, but it’s unlikely that audiences were any more fooled by this setup than they were by the weekly trials of Flash Gordon and Buck Rogers. Cheezy has cleaned up the images to the point where it’s actually pleasant to watch the episodes.

It’s all too easy to criticize a movie for borrowing freely from Quentin Tarantino. Usually, it can be seen in a stylized approach to criminality, creative use of profanity and inventive casting. In “Silver Case,” co-writer/director Christian Filippella borrows the mystery of the glowing briefcase from “Pulp Fiction” and builds an entire movie around it. The missing element, of course, is Tarantino’s wild imagination. Eric Roberts plays a Hollywood mogul named Senator, who, in an effort to curry favor with another big shot, hires a courier to deliver a silver suitcase to the Master. The courier is warned not to tamper with the lock or lose track of it, which is the first thing he does. From there, the suitcase is passed from crook to crook, until it finally is retrieved by the Master’s thugs. By the time we learn what’s inside it, we’ve lost interest.

The Henry Fonda Collection
Viva Zapata: Blu-ray
The Great Escape: Blu-ray
Brubaker: Blu-ray
The Verdict: Blu-ray
Henry Jaglom Collection, Volume 2: The Comedies
One Hour Photo: Blu-ray

There are plenty of good reasons this week to check out the classics section of your local purveyor of DVDs and Blu-ray titles. Several of the medium’s most significant and popular titles have been collected in box sets, while others have been sent out in hi-def editions for the first time. The award in the Best Bang for Your Buck category goes to Fox for the “The Henry Fonda Film Collection,” which is comprised of “Jesse James,” “The Return of Frank James,” “Immortal Sergeant,” “Drums Along the Mohawk,” “The Grapes of Wrath,” “The Ox-Bow Incident,” “My Darling Clementine,” “Daisy Kenyon,” “The Boston Strangler” and “The Longest Day.” Priced at just south of $50, I can’t think of a better Father’s Day gift for film buffs who might have might caught one or more of the movies at the local Bijou during their initial go-round. It is by no means a definitive collection of Fonda’s greatest performances, as he also contributed fine work to the inventory of other major studios. It does, however, demonstrate Fonda’s depth, genre range and immeasurable contributions to Twentieth Century Fox, during the golden years. Three of the titles here were directed by John Ford, while also represented are Fritz Lang, William Wellman and Otto Preminger. (I’m surprised that Ford and Fonda’s “Young Mr. Lincoln” isn’t included, as it was in the “Ford at Fox” box.) Collectors might consider waiting for the inevitable Blu-ray assemblage, but those who haven’t already added these titles to their collection can pick them here at a bargain price.

Also from the Fox library, this one in Blu-ray, arrives Elia Kazan and John Steinbeck’s exhilarating, if historically dubious portrait of Mexican revolutionary Emiliano Zapata. Among other good reasons for picking it up, it’s fun to watch heavyweights Marlon Brando and Anthony Quinn go toe-to-toe, alongside Jean Peters and Joseph Wiseman. Both men had received glowing reviews for their interpretation of Stanley Kowalski and vied for the lead role in “Viva Zapata!” Kazan used their rivalry to add sizzle to an already scrumptious steak. Although I would caution students against using it as reference material, “Viva Zapata!” ranks high on the list of Hollywood biopics with tremendous performances and wonderful location cinematography. Scholars have argued that the Kazan’s “power corrupts” take on Zapata was colored by his own negative attitudes toward totalitarianism and he used the trajectory of the Mexican Revolution to comment on the failures of the Soviet system. The maestro’s use of Zapata as a stand-in for Stalin – however obliquely — disturbed many Mexican historians and left-wing scholars.

Released in 1963, “The Great Escape” not only is one of the greatest war movies of all time, but it is an entertainment that can be enjoyed as much today as it was 40 years ago. Based on an actual escape from the maximum-security POW camp Stalag Luft III, it remains one of the period’s few big-budget, high-profile projects that allowed the collaborative process to play out as intended, both on and off screen. Behind the camera sat director John Sturges (“The Magnificent Seven”), screenwriters James Clavell (“Shogun”) and W.R. Burnett (“Little Caesar”), and composer Elmer Bernstein. In front of it was an all-star cast that gelled as an ensemble, but left room for Steve McQueen to emerge as the hero among heroes. Also contributing wonderful performances were James Garner, Charles Bronson, James Coburn, Richard Attenborough, Donald Pleasence, David McCallum and James Donald. Among the recycled bonus features are commentary with cast and crew and eight worthwhile mini-docs.

In “Brubaker” (1980), Robert Redford plays a reform-minded prison warden who finds himself caught between a totally corrupt penal system and hundreds of potentially convicts who have no good reason to trust him. It, too, was based on the experiences of an actual person and a scandal that rocked the state of Arkansas. Providing solid work in supporting roles are Yaphet Kotto, Jane Alexander and Morgan Freeman, for whom “Brubaker” represented a stepping stone to a great career. (Earlier that year, he also played a prisoner in “Attica.”) Watch it back-to-back with “The Shawshank Redemption.”
Paul Newman gives a stirring performance as an over-the-hill Boston lawyer given one last opportunity to prove he can do something besides blowing cases and getting soused. The 1982 courtroom drama “The Verdict” was written by David Mamet and directed by Sidney Lumet, with James Mason, Charlotte Rampling, Jack Warden, Milo O’Shea and Lindsay Crouse in strong supporting roles. The Blu-ray bonuses include “Paul Newman: The Craft of Acting,” “Milestones in Cinema History: The Verdict,” “Sidney Lumet: The Craft of Directing” and commentary with Lumet and Newman.

Even though he practically defines the term, “acquired taste,” Henry Jaglom ought to be given far more credit than he receives as a pioneer in independent filmmaking. He’s been making movies his way for more than 40 years, no matter how the public and critics react to them. Aspiring filmmakers could learn a great from watching his pictures and emulating his ability to stretch a dollar as far as it will go. If nothing else, watch them to see how his actors respond to the specificity of his hyper-personal conceits. In this way, he could very well be considered the godfather of the mumblecore movement. Jaglom’s disturbingly neurotic ensemble artists deliver largely unrehearsed dialogue – lots of it – that causes viewers to feel as if they’re eavesdropping on conversations they have no right to be hearing. He encourages a style of acting that’s so naturalistic it can be mistaken for complete improvisation, which it’s not. Actors have been encouraged to re-interpret his words, but the frameworks remain true to his vision.

The new “Henry Jaglom Collection, Volume 2: The Comedies” contains “Sitting Ducks” (1980), a kooky heist/caper movie that actually made money; “Can She Bake a Cherry Pie?” (1983), in which an abandoned wife (Karen Black) enters into an unlikely romance with a man (Michael Emil, Jaglom’s brother) she meets at a New York City café; and “New Year’s Day: Time to Move On,” in which Jaglom arrives at a New York apartment he’s leased, 24 hours before three young women are prepared to move out of it. (Look for Maggie Wheeler, David Duchovny and Milos Forman.) The only bonus features appear with “Sitting Ducks,” and one of them borders on legendary. In an interview with an Israeli reporter, Emil spends almost a half-hour discussing his personal sex life, from obsessive masturbation to becoming a self-described and, perhaps, self-inflated orgasm donor to his lovers. His perceived prowess and analytic approach to sexual intercourse was incorporated into his character in “Cherry Pie.”

After 20 years of making people laugh, Robin Williams hit the kind of wall that allowed critics and detractors to reconsider his entire body of work and call for a priest to deliver last rites to his movie career. While it’s accurate to say that Williams became too enamored of his shtick, or, perhaps, too willing to play to the wet-tissue crowd, it wasn’t true that he didn’t have the chops to resuscitate his career. After bottoming out critically with “Patch Adams,” “Jakob the Liar” and “Bicentennial Man,” Williams reversed direction with terrific dramatic turns in “One Hour Photo,” “Insomnia” and the inky black comedy, “Death to Smoochy.” In “One Hour Photo,” he plays the creepy clerk of a photo booth in a large discount store. Things go sideways when he insinuates himself into the personal life of one of his most frequent customers, a woman who isn’t aware that her husband is cheating on her. In fact, the longtime employee is probably the only person, apart from the participants, who can prove what’s been happening behind her back. After piecing the parts of the puzzle together, he takes it upon himself to right the wrong. Fox has re-released “One Hour Photo” in Blu-ray, with several making-of featurettes and a backgrounder hosted by director Mark Romanek.

Superman Unbound: Blu-ray
A month ahead of the long-anticipated release of Zach Snyder’s “Man of Steel,” Superman geeks are encouraged to whet their appetite with the all-new made-for-video movie, “Superman Unbound.” In the animated feature, Superman and Supergirl take on Brainiac, the evil android supervillain who collects the intellectual DNA and miniaturizes the significant landmarks of intergalactic civilizations he plans to destroy. Brainiac’s mad goal is to collect the wisdom and invest it in his own devastated homeland. When our superheroes learn that Brainiac has gleaned everything worth knowing from the miniature Kandor and is ready to wipe out all memory of Krypton, they commit themselves to preventing the tragedy. The movie has been adapted from Geoff Johns’ 2008 comic book story arc, “Superman: Brainiac.” Among the voicing-cast members are Matt Bomer, John Noble, Stana Katic, Molly Quinn and Francis Conroy. The Blu-ray includes a month’s worth of bonus material, including commentary, background featurettes, four bonus cartoons, previews and a digital-comic excerpt from the graphic novel on which it’s based. One thing that struck me as being a tad twisted is the amount time the camera spends lingering on Lois and Supergirl’s gams and cleavage. I’m sure the teenage boys appreciate the extra effort.

Lifetime: Steel Magnolias
Nature: What Plants Talk About
Rookie Blue: The Complete Third Season
Fringe: The Complete Fifth and Final Season
Sesame Street: Elmo the Musical

The restaging of popular shows and movies, using actors and characters markedly different in ethnic or racial background than those featured in the original, often can be fairly described as a gimmick. The recent Lifetime Network updating of “Steel Magnolias” looks and sounds like Robert Harling’s 1987 play and Herbert Ross’ 1989 movie, except for the obvious fact that the primary cast members are African-American. The remake not only is true to the spirit of the all-white versions, but in some ways improves on previous presentations. And, it does so without resorting to the addition of cultural clichés or stereotypes. Six Louisiana women gather regularly at Truvy’s Beauty Spot to gossip, swap lies, cry, commiserate with each other’s problems, herald their personal triumphs and occasionally get their hair done. When the daughter of one of the regulars decides to have a baby, despite a potentially dangerous kidney condition, the ladies worry as one and exhale simultaneously when she survives the delivery. Ditto, when she undergoes a transplant to save her life. Those kinds of emotions aren’t limited to one ethnic or demographic group, but the scope of the small screen appears to intensify the experience. Director Kenny Leon and exec-producer/star Queen Latifah were able to round up a stellar group of women actors that includes Phylicia Rashad, Adepero Oduye, Condola Rashad, Jill Scott and Alfre Woodard. Their male counterparts, including Lance Gross, Tory Kittles, Michael Beasley and Afermo Omilami, get a fair shake, if not equal screen time.

Plants may not converse with each other, per se, but, as we learn in the “Nature” presentation, “What Plants Talk About,” they are able to share valuable information in ways that scientists of only recently begun to assess. It helps them survive in conditions not normally conducive to growth, as well as in rainforests where the weak could easily get overwhelmed by taller and heartier vegetation. Apparently, they also are able to summon the enemies of their enemies to prevent being eaten. Plant ecologist J.C. Cahill takes us from the Great Basin Desert to the western coast of Canada, where there never seems to be a shortage of water and nutrition, but other dangers exist. To reinforce their theories, the scientists also go underground to demonstrate how root systems work and how information is passed through them.

ABC’s police drama “Rookie Blue” is one of the rarest of all television flowers, a summer series that remains where it took root and is about to enter its fourth season. Normally, summer is the dumping ground for the broadcast networks as the fresh material tends to be limited to reality, game shows and episodes of already canceled series that have yet to air. Every so often, a network will attempt to create an avenue for summer entertainment, but the interest shown by sponsors, especially, is minimal. The same doesn’t hold true for cable, which eats the networks’ picnic lunches each summer by adding fresh series and bringing back series that have already proven themselves. Just as the teenagers on “Glee” and “Gossip Girl” can’t be seniors forever – or, can they? – the rookies of 15 Division quickly became seasoned, occasionally jaded cops. Their assignments and interpersonal relationships intensified, accordingly. The DVD set adds seven making-of featurettes, plus behind-the-scenes and on-set interviews.

There was no guarantee that the Fox sci-fi series “Fringe” would be granted a fifth-season run, if only to tie up loose ends from Season 4 and create a scenario for closure. In this case, the 13-episode renewal was justified by bringing “Fringe” to the magic No. 100, at which point syndication becomes a near certainty. Why anyone would wait for reruns and sit through commercials when full-season and full-run DVD compilations are available remains a mystery to me, though. Season 5 picks up from events depicted in last season’s flash-forward episodes, when the seemingly peaceful Observers seized control of our universe in 2015. Now, in 2036, they have become ruthless rulers who stand unopposed. Can the Fringe Team save humanity and turn back time? Stay tuned. The series finale is a real fan-pleaser.

Generally, the axiom that cautions against fixing things that aren’t broken applies as much to television as any other pursuit. Only bad things can happen when tinkerers are allowed to mess with success. The “Elmo’s World” segment of “Sesame Street” was by no means broken, but it was felt that the whole show could stand a bit of tweaking to appeal to a slightly older demographic. “Elmo the Musical” finds the beloved character stepping out in white tails and high hat, in search of educational adventures and entertaining musical interludes. The show’s mission of promoting math, science, engineering and technology didn’t change, but Elmo does. Turns out, he has feet and knows what to do with them, as “full-body Elmo.” The new five-episode set adds the full-length video, “Let’s Make Music!”

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2 Responses to “The DVD Wrapup”

  1. QG says:

    Just watched “Jack Reacher,” and you have the synopsis a little wrong. The accused sniper asks for Reacher right away, BEFORE he gets beat up in the prison transport and goes into a coma, not after.

  2. Gary Dretzka says:

    Really? I thought I had it right, but could easily have gotten the chronology wrong. The effect was the same, however. I was thinking about ‘Reacher’ the other day and the scene in which the sniper sat for days on end, only to be frustrated.

    You didn’t say whether you enjoyed the movie.

Dretzka

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Quote Unquotesee all »

It shows how out of it I was in trying to be in it, acknowledging that I was out of it to myself, and then thinking, “Okay, how do I stop being out of it? Well, I get some legitimate illogical narrative ideas” — some novel, you know?

So I decided on three writers that I might be able to option their material and get some producer, or myself as producer, and then get some writer to do a screenplay on it, and maybe make a movie.

And so the three projects were “Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep,” “Naked Lunch” and a collection of Bukowski. Which, in 1975, forget it — I mean, that was nuts. Hollywood would not touch any of that, but I was looking for something commercial, and I thought that all of these things were coming.

There would be no Blade Runner if there was no Ray Bradbury. I couldn’t find Philip K. Dick. His agent didn’t even know where he was. And so I gave up.

I was walking down the street and I ran into Bradbury — he directed a play that I was going to do as an actor, so we know each other, but he yelled “hi” — and I’d forgot who he was.

So at my girlfriend Barbara Hershey’s urging — I was with her at that moment — she said, “Talk to him! That guy really wants to talk to you,” and I said “No, fuck him,” and keep walking.

But then I did, and then I realized who it was, and I thought, “Wait, he’s in that realm, maybe he knows Philip K. Dick.” I said, “You know a guy named—” “Yeah, sure — you want his phone number?”

My friend paid my rent for a year while I wrote, because it turned out we couldn’t get a writer. My friends kept on me about, well, if you can’t get a writer, then you write.”
~ Hampton Fancher

“That was the most disappointing thing to me in how this thing was played. Is that I’m on the phone with you now, after all that’s been said, and the fundamental distinction between what James is dealing with in these other cases is not actually brought to the fore. The fundamental difference is that James Franco didn’t seek to use his position to have sex with anyone. There’s not a case of that. He wasn’t using his position or status to try to solicit a sexual favor from anyone. If he had — if that were what the accusation involved — the show would not have gone on. We would have folded up shop and we would have not completed the show. Because then it would have been the same as Harvey Weinstein, or Les Moonves, or any of these cases that are fundamental to this new paradigm. Did you not notice that? Why did you not notice that? Is that not something notable to say, journalistically? Because nobody could find the voice to say it. I’m not just being rhetorical. Why is it that you and the other critics, none of you could find the voice to say, “You know, it’s not this, it’s that”? Because — let me go on and speak further to this. If you go back to the L.A. Times piece, that’s what it lacked. That’s what they were not able to deliver. The one example in the five that involved an issue of a sexual act was between James and a woman he was dating, who he was not working with. There was no professional dynamic in any capacity.

~ David Simon