A marvelously frantic suspense movie about a presidential assassination attempt, Vantage Point,has been issued by Sony Pictures Home Entertainment. The film has several famous stars in smallish roles, but the hero is a recovering Secret Service agent, played by Dennis Quaid, who may have been called back to duty too soon after defending the president from a previous attempt.William Hurt is the president, and Forest Whitaker, Matthew Fox, and Sigourney Weaver are also featured in the 2007 production. The 90-minute movie’s primary gimmick is that the actual story occurs during a relatively brief period of time-about a half hour, total-but the film replays the incident from different character viewpoints. There are six of these segments. The first five run about 10 minutes each and then the final one, which has multiple viewpoints, runs about 30 minutes. The filmmakers do cheat the chronology a little, and when you stop to think about the coincidences and the central premise, the movie may seem a little silly. Nevertheless, it doesn’t take more than the first few minutes to get totally wrapped up in the intrigue and excitement as the story barrels ahead, rolls back, and then barrels ahead again, while your disbelief stands panting in the street, unable to catch up.

The picture is presented in letterboxed format only, with an aspect ratio of about 2.35:1 and an accommodation for enhanced 16:9 playback. The color transfer is sharp. The 5.1-channel Dolby Digital sound accentuates the action effectively and has plenty of power. There is an alternate French track in standard stereo and alternate Spanish, Portuguese and Thai tracks in 5.1 Dolby, along with optional English, French, Spanish, Portuguese, Chinese, Korean, and Thai subtitles. There is a decent 27-minute production documentary, an even better 16-minute piece that goes over how the script was developed, a fine 7-minute piece about the stunts and a minute-long blooper gag.

After the production featurettes, director Pete Travis doesn’t really have much to add in his commentary track. He never goes into too much detail, but talks in general terms about how various scenes were staged and how things were altered in the editing room.

As the sound enhances the film’s excitement, so does the Blu-ray release deliver even more thrills than the DVD. Rear channel directional effects, clearer details and deeper, better rounded power add considerably to a viewer’s involvement in the action scenes and the story as a whole. There are four alternate language tracks and eight subtitling tracks including English. The special features that appear on the DVD are all included, and there is an additional feature that is fun, but really more promising for what it represents than what it delivers. Since most of the movie is set in a relatively confined location (it takes place in Spain, although a lot of it was shot in Mexico City), the BD allows you to bring up a schematic at the bottom of the screen that tracks each major character’s location and alternate viewpoints. It isn’t always present-which also leads to the suspicion that the filmmakers are cheating here and there-but it reinforces the movie’s basic concept in an entertaining manner.

August 21, 2008

– by Douglas Pratt

Douglas Pratt’s DVD-Laser Disc Newsletter is published monthly.
For a free sample, call (516)594-9304 or go to his website at www.DVDLaser.com

I am such a 3-D junkie that the moment I obtained the Walt Disney Studios Home Entertainment 2-Disc Extended Edition release, Hannah Montana and Miley Cyrus Best of Both Worlds Concert, I tore it open with a lustful glee that would not have been equaled had Cyrus herself been sitting next to me on the couch, offering me the sequins on her miniskirt.

The 3-D program appears on the second platter and the standard version appears on the first platter. The 2008 production runs 82 minutes and begins with rehearsal and backstage footage (not in 3-D) before moving on to the concert. Thereafter, there are occasional cuts back to the offstage footage, but they become fewer and fewer as the program progresses. In that nothing needs to be done to enhance the excitement the fans are experiencing simply attending the concert, the choreography is not elaborate and the stage production is fairly basic. Ironically, the viewer is more aware of this because of the attention given to the rehearsals in the opening segment. For each song, there will be one or two mildly complicated moves punctuating a repetitious pattern where Cyrus skips around the stage a bit, advances onto the causeway that extends into the audience, sings and waves a little, and then retreats back to the stage. A few fireworks go off here and there, enormous video screens underscore the action on the stage, and there is enough basic decoration to convey a sense of importance to the event without challenging its profit margins. The first portion of the concert is taken up with the songs made familiar in the Disney TV show that features Cyrus in her clever dual personality (she’s a ‘normal’ teenager who keeps her life as a ‘rock star’ secret), and she performs them in a blonde wig, using the Montana character. The songs speak to this same duality and the conflicts of adolescence that it deftly reflects. After an appearance by the increasingly popular Disney boy band, The Jonas Brothers, Cyrus does a costume change offstage and doffs the wig, to return as her ‘real’ self, with somewhat more mature songs that suggest, rather pointedly, the direction she wishes to take both her persona and her career.

On the first platter, the show is available in both widescreen format, with an aspect ratio of about 1.85:1 and an accommodation for enhanced 16:9 playback, and in full screen format, adding nothing to the top or bottom of the image and losing a lot from the sides. The color transfer is sharp and unaffected by the stage lighting. The 5.1-channel Dolby Digital sound is solid, with some rear channel activity and plenty of power if you feel like pumping the volume. There are optional English subtitles, and a special feature segment that brings up just the songs, with karaoke-style subtitling. There are also two deleted numbers, one featuring theJonas Brothers running 3 minutes and one with Cyrus in her Cyrus incarnation, also running 3 minutes. Additionally, there is a decent 12-minute featurette, showing Cyrus poking around the stage set and talking about the concert (she is part of that maddening vowel shift sweeping America that has changed the pronunciation of ‘tour’ to ‘taur’), her outfits (she pronounces ‘jewelry’ as ‘jolry’) and her schedule leading up to the concert, and including a few quick clips of the Jonas Brothers talking about their participation.

The second platter has just the 3-D version of the concert, again in letterboxed format or full screen format, with no special features other than the optional English subtitling. There are four sets of red/blue glasses included as a jacket insert. They subdue almost all of the colors, but it’s worth it. The 3-D has a tendency to make everything seems smaller, but the perspectives are incredible, and every time Cyrus jaunts down that causeway, you feel like you are hovering just a few feet away. The best angle is from the drums platform, where the entire stage is laid out below and extending, along with the audience, into the distance, and the best segment is the ‘slow song’ that Cyrus (as herself) sings, because the editing and camera movement calm down and you really get a chance to savor the effect within a single shot. But there are also times when the microphone gets thrust toward the camera-and one squeal moment when a guitarist tosses his pic right at the lens-or when one camera captures another on a boom, looming over the crowd and Cyrus like a huge serpent, and there is confetti, the fireworks and all of the other thrills that are so much more tantalizing in 3-D than they could ever hope to be in yesterday’s 2-D.

With video playback technology finally maturing to a level equivalent with film, 3-D in full color cannot be that far off. Many people complain that movies now aren’t what they once were and that nothing new ever seems to be coming out, but in reality, the party is just getting started, and pretty soon, 3-D programs are going to jettison their own toylike trappings just like Cyrus, and take on the world as legitimate entertainment.

August 14, 2008

– by Douglas Pratt

Douglas Pratt’s DVD-Laser Disc Newsletter is published monthly.
For a free sample, call (516)594-9304 or go to his website at www.DVDLaser.com

Being one of Warner Home Video’s core assets, Don Siegel’s 1971 Clint Eastwood film, Dirty Harry, has long since undergone stereophonication and upgraded image transfers. Warner released the title initially in the beginning days of DVD and then put together a collector’s edition with improved colors and a few supplementary features. Warner has now, however, upgraded the movie once more, issuing a Two-Disc Special Edition with even better colors and a stronger soundtrack, and a Blu-ray release that is better still. The film was made during a time when the quality of film stock took a real dive, and the movie has always been somewhat grainy, particularly in its many night sequences. The night sequences on the new release, however, are solid black, and anything illuminated in that blackness is, at the most, a touch soft. Colors are rich and precise. Eastwood’s complexion, which appears pale on both older releases, has a healthy tan on the new release, and in the opening credits, the word, ‘Dirty,’ which was brown before, is now blood red. The differences between the DVD and the BD are subtler, but colors are more finely detailed on the latter. The 5.1-channel Dolby Digital sound also seems to have been overhauled. The music is deeper and more dimensional, and other sounds, such as helicopters and gunfire, are more dimensional. It is here that the BD, especially on its True HD audio track, shines, delivering a sound mix that is as dimensional and engrossing as any contemporary release. Lalo Schifrin’s jazz score-which dovetails his San Francisco jazz score for Bullitt perfectly-makes the movie seem larger and more intimate at the same time, and the atmosphere it creates contributes directly to the film’s suspense. The DVD has French, Spanish, Portuguese, and Japanese audio tracks in mono and optional English, French, Spanish Portuguese and Japanese subtitles. The BD has 5 alternate foreign language tracks and twelve optional subtitling tracks including English. The DVD’s movie platter also holds a trailer, a 7-minute promotional documentary from 1971, and 27 minutes of retrospective interviews covering all of the Dirty Harry films, all of which appeared on the previous DVD release.

Additionally, film critic Richard Schickel provides a relaxed but informative commentary track, for the first time. He has thoroughly picked Eastwood’s brain on the film’s creation and identifies the contributions Eastwood made in choosing locations, actions and story points, as well as what Siegel was responsible for. There are gaps in his talk and he is not adverse to using double negatives as a way of softening his opinions, but his talk is entertaining and he has many rewarding insights. On a complicated night scene that Eastwood himself directed because Siegel was incapacitated: “Clint was terribly pleased that he’d gotten this thing squeezed out in a night. He kind of enjoyed sort of sticking it to the studio and the studio bureaucracy, which had decreed that they’d have to spend an expensive six days on this thing. So there is an analogy, I suppose, between Eastwood’s attitude toward bureaucratic authority, which has never been a happy one, and the attitude of Dirty Harry, involved as he is with a much more deadly and potent bureaucracy.” He also has many kind words for Andy Robinson’s over-for-the top but nevertheless underrated turn as the insane villain. “It’s a terrific performance. He really creeps right up to the edge of breaking down on camera. I mean there is a notable lack of control in his portrayal of psychopathy, when he’s under pressure, in particular. It’s a terrific piece of nut job acting.”

The second platter holds two retrospective documentaries that are geared as much to marketing home video product as they are to providing a historical perspective upon the film at hand. The better of the two is a 58-minute profile of Eastwood and his career, from 1993. The program is selective in the films that it analyzes, but looks at both Warner and Universal releases (as well as the United Artists Sergio Leone pictures), and gives attention to such films as Honkytonk Man and High Plains Drifter, as well as the more expected inclusions, such as Dirty Harry and Unforgiven. The other is an original 25-minute retrospective look at the Dirty Harry films and the first movie in particular, drawing parallels to (Warner) westerns and providing an appreciation of how well the series has held up over time. It is interesting to note, however, that none of the supplements mentions David Fincher’s Zodiac (Feb 08), even though that movie provided an excellent deconstruction of Dirty Harry and its source inspirations.

The BD contains all of the special features found on the two DVD platters, as well as a 30-minute retrospective documentary on the series that appeared on the earlier DVD, and another Eastwood career profile, this one a PBS American Masters program from 2000, running 87 minutes and looking at an even wider array of Eastwood films.

August 14, 2008

– by Douglas Pratt

Douglas Pratt’s DVD-Laser Disc Newsletter is published monthly.
For a free sample, call (516)594-9304 or go to his website at www.DVDLaser.com

The more time that passes, the more the 1966Batman The Movie begins to seem like a comical masterpiece, or perhaps a masterpiece in a category all of its own. Originally a summertime knock-off of the enormously successful winter replacement first season of the television series starring Adam Westand Burt Ward, the 105-minute feature concocted a serviceable narrative that had the four most popular villains from the series joining forces in an attempt to extort money from the world, only to have their plans continually thwarted by the heroes. What the movie does really well is distill the TV show’s campy humor-and dazzling production design-while sustaining a viable pace and the semblance of a plot with a beginning, middle, and end. Cesar Romero, who practically stole the series with his appearances as a guest villain, has curiously limited duties in the feature and is upstaged by his three companions,Burgess Meredith, who seems to be channeling FDR, Frank Gorshin, who appears to be ‘doing’Richard Widmark, and Lee Meriwether, who was filling in for Julie Newmar and did a fine job of it. West and Ward have their deadpan deliveries down pat and trust the writers to keep feeding them worthy material as they dangle themselves for the world to ridicule. As to the movie’s art direction, its bright, bright colors more than make up for its cheap-looking designs, and again, the humor of those designs is so engaging that the cheaper they look (the backdrop for the ‘ocean’ tank set is wrinkled!), the better they look.

20th Century Fox Home Entertainment has reissued Batman The Movie as a Special Edition, following an earlier Special Edition release. More importantly, Fox has issued a Blu-ray version with additional special features, a DTS audio track, and an improved picture transfer with total stability to the core in every basic, deep, rich hue.

The new DVD repeats the special features that appeared on the first DVD, including a good 17-minute retrospective featurette, a great 6-minute piece on the car, an excellent collection of production stills, three trailers and a light but still engaging commentary track by West and Ward. “These tights were not terribly comfortable. When we walked out the first day, you just kind of took a deep breath and thought, ‘What’s that crew going to think of me, this guy walking around in tights?’ But you know, it’s a funny thing. You walk out on the set and the lighting’s there, and they’re setting up, and they look at you, and suddenly these grown men are believing that you’re Batman and Robin. So I had a hunch, that first day, wearing the costume, when we made our first appearance on the stage, that maybe this thing was really going to work.”

The picture transfer also appears to be the same, delivering the film’s bright colors effectively, along with stray speckles and other occasional imperfections. The DVD’s stereo sound is generally centered. There is an alternate French track in mono and optional English and Spanish subtitles.

The Blu-ray picture transfer takes a touch off the colors to deliver slightly more realistic fleshtones and an image that is fully free of fleeting flaws, to use the show’s passion for alliteration. The sound is also much stronger. The DTS track does not have significant rear channel activity and the audio is centered, but the music can be pushed without distortion, and, in general, the sound delivery has more Bam! and Whack!. There is also an isolated musical score in DTS. The Blu-ray has an alternate French track in mono, four subtitling options including English, a half-hearted trivia subtitling track, and a subtitling option that presents a map of Los Angeles in the left bottom corner of the screen, which identifies the film’s location shoots as they appear on the screen. (Among its many quirks, the film’s ‘Gotham City’ is a hopelessly phony amalgam of Los Angeles locations and New York stock footage that somehow works as ideally as every other aspect of the film.)

In addition to the earlier special features, the BD also contains a very good 28-minute retrospective featurette that looks at the influence the show and the film had on an entire generation of comic book creators and filmmakers. They also point out that in Britain, which did not have color television until 1969, the movie was the first opportunity fans had to see the program in its true glory. There are also 28 minutes of additional featurettes about the cast, and another commentary track, by screenwriter Lorenzo Semple, Jr., who, in retrospect, feels he should have stayed in television-which was still looked down upon at the time-instead of pursuing a career in motion pictures. He talks in detail about writing for the series and how the movie was put together. Like the West and Ward talk, it does not have extensive insight, but it is still a pleasurable excuse to revisit the film’s batty charms.

August 6, 2008

– by Douglas Pratt

Douglas Pratt’s DVD-Laser Disc Newsletter is published monthly.
For a free sample, call (516)594-9304 or go to his website at www.DVDLaser.com

Running just 80 minutes (the end credits take it to 91),Sylvester Stallone’s 2008 Rambo effectively has no third act, but the first two are more than enough. With CG-enhanced gore littering the screen with body parts, and a basic go-in-and-rescue-the-missionaries plot, the film is not just ideal for endless repeat viewings by action fans, it raises a standard of bullets and blood that had been languishing in the doldrums for a while. Unlike the third Rambo film, the character interplay never feels dumbed down, and the Southeast Asia setting is suitably dense and picturesque. Since Stallone’s character is a stoic’s stoic, his performance need not extend further than shifting his eyes once in a while and never smiling. The more he does it, the more you can’t wait to see him start killing people. Add to all of that an energetic 5.1-channel Dolby Digital soundtrack on the Lionsgate Widescreen release, with plenty of distinctive separation effects, and you hope Stallone keeps making movies like this until his hair turns white and he’s got a walker.

The picture is in letterboxed format only, with an aspect ratio of about 2.35:1 and an accommodation for enhanced 16:9 playback. The color transfer is solid. One of the reasons the CG gore is so effective is that while it is plentiful, it is also fleeting, so even when it looks a little animated, it has a kind of surreal horror impact that it would retain even if it were absolutely real. There are optional English and Spanish subtitles, and a trailer.

Lionsgate has also released a Two-Disc Special Edition. The second platter contains a copy of the film that can be downloaded onto handheld video devices. The first platter, however, has enhanced EX-encoded 5.1-channel Dolby Digital sound, with an even more detailed surround presence. Additionally, there are 18 minutes of deleted and alternate scenes (including some material that really ought to have been left in) and 60 minutes of good production featurettes, going over what it took to get the film off the ground, how the music was adapted from Jerry Goldsmith’s themes in the other films, how all of the crazy weapons were assembled and utilized, and how, when the film opened, kids bought tickets for other movies at multiplexes so they could sneak into the R-rated feature. There is also a satisfying 11-minute look at the real political situation in Myanmar, and what the film did to help raise awareness of its troubles. Stallone supplies a commentary track, talking mostly about the story and the characters, but also explaining how sequences were staged, how much trouble it was to be shooting in a real jungle, and what he was trying to accomplish. On a conversation scene between two characters: “I thought them being separated by a cage like this, with the snake in the center, would kind of like define their relationship.”

July 22, 2008

– by Douglas Pratt

Douglas Pratt’s DVD-Laser Disc Newsletter is published monthly.
For a free sample, call (516)594-9304 or go to his website at www.DVDLaser.com

Although there is never a moment in the 2008 miniseries adaptation of The Andromeda Strain from Universal that provokes laughter or eye-rolling incredulity, the script is not very good and the film is generally unsatisfying. While the show follows the basic outline of the Michael Crichton bestseller and the entertaining 1971 Robert Wise film adaptation, whenever it tries to stray from Crichton’s plot it gets completely lost. Supposedly, the ‘rapidly mutating’ virus that the crack team of disease experts are attempting to conquer was sent to Earth from the future in a time capsule, presumably for the same reason that one gets vaccinations, although they never explain it that way. Instead, there is a government conspiracy to hide its source that is busy murdering reporters who are just trying to get a read on the epidemic. If you stop and think about any major plot point in the film, it makes no sense at all (just how did those teenagers load that heavy, hot fallen satellite onto the back of their pickup?), and what are supposed to be climactic moments in the narrative never provide the emotional release that would compensate for their unlikelihood. Wise’s staging of the ‘climb up the access tube’ lingers in one’s memory long after every other detail of the movie has faded away, but in the miniseries, it is a spectacle without suspense and is instantly forgettable. The entire 176-minute program, which is broken into two parts on two platters, each with full opening and closing credits, comes across as an amalgam of half-hearted ideas tacked onto the Crichton template but never really thought through and certainly not given the intellectual or scientific scrutiny that was the hallmark of Crichton’s writing to begin with.

The picture is presented in letterboxed format only, with an aspect ratio of about 1.78:1 and an accommodation for enhanced 16:9 playback. The color transfer looks fine and the 5.1-channel Dolby Digital sound is reasonably energetic. There are optional English subtitles, an excellent collection of production designs and photos in still frame, a good 16-minute montage of images showing different stages of the special effects being applied to the picture, and a passable 26-minute production featurette. There is a commentary track with several of the show’s creators, including producer David Zucker, and if you can get past their obliviousness to the show’s shortcomings, they do have a lot of rewarding things to say about working under the constraints of a TV budget, the advantages and disadvantages of shooting on digital over film, and the nature of constructing narratives for television broadcast. “[With digital,] you can keep rolling and that’s sometimes a huge advantage because every time you have to reload, it breaks people’s concentration and it takes time and, again, that’s the resource you don’t have enough of, time. Film is still more light sensitive. Film still has a quality that’s very hard to define. Maybe it’s because the grains in a film are organic as opposed to pixels in a digital image that are static. You sometimes get an interference with elements in the shot that you don’t get on film because every frame of film, the grain is in a different place, because it’s moving, and that gives it a little bit more of an organic feel. The other thing is the sensibility to light. The new stocks that are out, of film, are just amazing. If you can see it, you can shoot it, whereas in digital, especially when you’re using the kinds of cameras we did that have the advantage of using the big sensor, they’re not as light sensitive as film is. Then there’s also kind of the tricky question unique to television, in that how, particularly from a grading standpoint, do you approach to get the best filmic look but keep in mind the monitors people will still be watching on at home.

“Usually the script comes with act breaks and so they’re kind of built in and you do want to have something exciting happen at the end of each act. It used to be where there would be seven acts for each ‘2-hour’ movie and now they’ve got them up to, I think it’s nine acts. Some of these acts are very short. They’re only about 5 or 6 minutes, and you have all of these rules in terms of how short the act can be and making sure act breaks, hopefully, don’t fall off the top or bottom of the hour, and so you’re not always serving your story. A lot of times the total length of the show has to be 88 minutes and 14 seconds, and so it is always a battle trying to fit this piece into a certain amount of time, and most of the time it works out, but there are times when you feel you’ve had to cut out too much material, or sometimes acts end a little too abruptly.”

July 9, 2008

– by Douglas Pratt

Douglas Pratt’s DVD-Laser Disc Newsletter is published monthly.
For a free sample, call (516)594-9304 or go to his website at www.DVDLaser.com

Francis Ford Coppola’s lovely intellectual comic book fantasy, Youth without Youth, is presented as a captivating DVD release by Sony Pictures Home Entertainment. To begin with, the 5.1-channel Dolby Digital sound is fantastic. Its hyper-dimensionality and directional effects significantly enhance a viewer’s involvement with the film’s atmosphere and environment. The sound is then supported by Mihai Malaimare, Jr.’s luscious cinematography, which is effectively transferred in letterboxed format only, with an aspect ratio of about 2.35:1 and an accommodation for enhanced 16:9 payback. Coppola has made a couple of pedestrian films during the course of his career, but the picture and sound onYouth without Youth are just too tantalizing to fail the narrative. Tim Roth portrays an elderly college professor who is made immortal, and younger, when he is struck by lightening. He obtains other powers as well, which he uses to his advantage, until he meets a woman who has also been zapped. Set in Europe and elsewhere around the world, the film begins in the late Thirties and advances several decades over the course of its 125 minutes (the film’s end credits, running 4 minutes, are offered as a separate menu selection), contemplating reincarnation, schizophrenia and many other human contradictions. From the upside-down camera angles and leisurely pace to the abstract premise and episodic plot, it is understandable that the film did not seize the imaginations of moviegoers the way in which Coppola’s more popular films have, but if you just accept the story on its own terms, its exploration becomes one of those journeys where the destination is much less important than the exquisite luxury of the ride.

There is an alternate French track in 5.1 Dolby and optional English and French subtitles. A passable 9-minute production featurette is accompanied by a more comprehensive 18-minute piece about the movie’s makeup effects and an insightful 27-minute segment about the music (sound designer Walter Murch: “Music is most valuable when it tells the audience how to channel an emotion that the film has already evoked, which is different than the other way of working where you use the music to evoke the emotion itself. And music is very good at that. It’s like a drug, like injecting steroids into a muscle. It can do it. If you put on an emotional piece of music and put it up with the film, it will make people feel emotion, but it creates a dependency on the music to create an emotion, so they’re waiting for the music to tell them what emotion to feel. Whereas what’s much better is if the film, which is to say the story and the characters and the ambience and the photography and the everything, creates an emotion, and then, at the right moment, the music comes in and says, ‘Here’s how to channel that emotion. This is what pocket to put that emotion in.'”).

Coppola provides a rewarding commentary (supported by its own optional subtitling) for the film, explaining his approaches to the story and what the story means to him, going over the history of the production and his experiences shooting in Romania, dissecting his own filmmaking choices, and sharing his directing strategies. “There are a number of dreams in the movie. Because I had underlined in the story, all the dreams with a kind of purple pen, I said, ‘Well, I don’t know how I’ll show it’s a dream. I’ll tint it purple or make it wavy and weird as dreams are.’ And then I thought to myself, ‘You know, dreams aren’t purple, and they’re not wavy and weird. Dreams are very realistic. In fact, at the time you’re having the dream you think you’re in reality and it’s only later, when you look at the context of the dream, you find it strange.’ And so I thought, ‘Well, I’m gonna just do the dreams as upside-down images because that way, they can be totally realistic except that you notice something is fundamentally different, which is that they’re upside down.'”

June 25, 2008

– by Douglas Pratt

Douglas Pratt’s DVD-Laser Disc Newsletter is published monthly.
For a free sample, call (516)594-9304 or go to his website at www.DVDLaser.com

When was the last time a movie broke your heart? It happened to me 45 seconds into the New Line Home Entertainment Widescreen release, The Golden Compass , as a voiceover narration proceeded to explain in itemized fashion almost every mystery the narrative holds. Yes, the 2007 film was co-produced with Scholastic and comes in a family-flagged white jacket, but kids are smarter than that. It is a fundamental tenet of entertainment that an audience must be engaged, and the story’s unique eccentricities (which will be recognizable to viewers familiar with certain popular anime programs) are there precisely to beguile the viewer, to keep the guessing and wondering going so the actual plot has time to build its own momentum. To use a metaphor that is intrinsic to the story itself, the opening narration separates the movie from its soul. For godsake, even if you are eight-years old, scan past the beginning and start watching the movie at the 2:05 mark. The quality of the film will be improved substantially.

Not that it is anywhere near being a perfect film, however. In fact, for the moment at least, the production will be most remembered for the financial scandal it has caused, bringing down the independently spirited New Line as it attempted, with the utterly wrong director for such ambition, to replicate the success of New Line’s Lord of the Rings series and Buena Vista’s first Chronicles of Narnia film. In an alternate universe, a young girl travels to the Arctic to rescue her friends, enlisting the help of those rebelling against the world’s establishment, as well as a talking polar bear warrior. The program has many special effects (it won an Oscar for them), but that, too, becomes a problem, because although the movie’s budget was substantial, the actual ratio of cost per effect appears, at best, to be modest. Not all, but many of the CGI animals, for example, are no better looking than the animals inJumanji. What the 113-minute feature becomes most reminiscent of, however, is David Lynch’s Dune. Like Dune, some of the individual scenes are thrilling, the movie’s fantasy foundation is stimulating, and there is a viable amount of character development augmented by suitable star power (Nicole Kidman has the best showcase. Sam Elliott stands out, too, butDaniel Craig ends up in what amounts to a cameo part, thanks to the truncated ending, and we had to watch the special features on the Platinum Series version to find out where Ian McKellen, Ian McShane, Kathy Bates and Kristin Scott Thomas, or their voices, at least, figured in), but it tries so hard to compact a longish novel into a standard-length film that it has no time for the sort of digressive details and transitions that would make the movie more than a bullet-point abridgement of its source. If your perverse sense of curiosity sends you searching for proof of what a failure the film is, by the way, then don’t miss the laughably awful title song, which plays over the closing credits.

The letterboxing has an aspect ratio of about 2.35:1 and an accommodation for enhanced 16:9 playback. The color transfer is terrific, but that can bring out the shortcomings of some of the effects work. The 5.1-channel Dolby Digital sound, with EX-encoding, and crisper DTS track, with ES-encoding, has a wonderfully active surround presence and delivers all that can be expected of it. There are optional English and Spanish subtitles.

New Line’s 2-Disc Platinum Series release includes a commentary track by screenwriter and director Chris Weitz on the first platter. Unless anger over his basic incompetence prevents you from having the patience to listen to him, he does supply a serviceable talk, describing the production, sharing stories about the cast and explaining his alterations and compromises to author Philip Pullman’s novel as if each choice he made were perfectly legitimate. He hints, incidentally, that the narrative from the final three chapters of the book was actually filmed before it was dropped to create a more succinct conclusion, which might explain why the ending feels so sudden and out of rhythm.

The second platter contains an impressive 168 minutes of production featurettes, including a substantial amount of interview material with Pullman and informative looks at the casting process, production designs, special effects and so on. Many of the featurettes are also accompanied by good still frame collections of design art and production photos.

June 18, 2008

– by Douglas Pratt

Douglas Pratt’s DVD-Laser Disc Newsletter is published monthly.
For a free sample, call (516)594-9304 or go to his website at www.DVDLaser.com

..MCN DVD Wrap ..The DVD Page

Except that the heroes act much more like high school sophomores than seniors, even nerdy seniors,Superbad, doesn’t cop out the way the other 2007 comedy that shared a number of creators and cast members, Knocked Up did, and is a riotously amusing nighttown adventure, similar in a lot of ways to American Graffiti but a great deal less innocent. Actually, the movie comes on a little too strong at first, at least on the Sony Home Entertainment Unrated Extended Edition, but once it establishes its territory, it settles into an appealing display of slapstick, romance and bullseye humor about the follies of youth. Running 118 minutes, most of the film concerns three underage friends who have been handed the task of obtaining and transporting liquor to a party, and the various separations and digressions they undergo before they achieve their goal. The permutations are at once familiar but freshly imagined, so that as each cliché approaches, it always takes an unexpected turn. Not only is the talented cast consistently believable-again, except that they seem to be playing their parts at least two years too young-but their comedic timing is as precise as it is seemingly natural. The ‘hot’ girls the heroes lust after are not being played by starlets in their twenties, but are, instead, normal looking, everyday girls who just happened to be a tad bit more emotionally mature and self confident than the heroes are. There is a great deal of truth in the behavior of everyone involved, and it enhances the humor all the more.

The theatrical version ran 113 minutes, and the Extended footage often continues improvisations at the expense of pacing, though once in a while they delve deeper into naughty territory, as well. The presentation is in letterboxed format only, with an aspect ratio of about 1.78:1 and an accommodation for enhanced 16:9 playback. The film was shot on hi-def video, and so the lighting creates vague, yellow blotches on fleshtones and brings out every unshaved whisker in close-ups (even the Columbia logo is grainy). If this were Days of Heaven, it wouldn’t be such a good thing, but for Superbad, it’s no big deal and could actually be reinforcing the film’s irreverent spirit. The 5.1-channel Dolby Digital sound has a serviceable dimensionality and plenty of power. There are alternate French and Spanish tracks in 5.1 Dolby and optional English, French and Spanish subtitles.

Included as well are 12 minutes of deleted and alternate footage, much of it coming from the continual improvisations that were facilitated by shooting on video. There is another 10 minutes of improvisations, set in the back of a cop car, that have nothing to do directly with the film and involve various cast members and visitors to the shoot. Also featured is a funny 4-minute blooper reel, a passable 13 minute production featurette, a minute-long ‘porn film’ that is glimpsed during the movie, an interesting 5-minute table read from several years before the project got the green light, a 3-minute piece in which one of the stars tries to learn some dance moves for a scene that was eventually altered for the better, and an ill-paced 4-minute promo for a forthcoming dope comedy from the same filmmakers.

Sony has also released a 2-Disc Unrated Extended Edition, which isolates the film on the first platter and carries the above special features over to the second platter, along with an additional 5 minutes of deleted scenes, an additional 24 minutes of cop car improvisations, a 23-minute table read from the eve of the production, 13 minutes of audition footage, about 3 minutes of what are supposedly genuine phone messages left by one of the stars for one of the other stars, 18 minutes of good behind-the-scenes footage from across the length of the shoot, 12 minutes of jokier behind-the-scenes material, a cute little 3-minute piece about shooting a ‘television’ version of the dialog, and a good 13-minute segment on the classic funk musicians who reunited to do the film’s musical score.

Both releases come with an exuberant commentary track from producer Judd Apatow, director Greg Mottola, writers Evan Goldberg and Seth Rogan (Rogan also has a major part in the film), and stars Jonah Hill and Michael Cera. (The commentary is supported by optional English and Spanish subtitles.) They talk a lot about developing the story, their experiences shooting it (using the digital video, they took less breaks than a normal film shoot would, and had less time to relax), and what they think is funny in the film, but along with entertaining the listener on a visceral level, they also supply legitimate insight to their filmmaking process.

For a scene that involved drawings of penises: “Maybe we can talk about the enormous legal complications that went along with getting this scene, of all scenes, to the big screen.”

“Mottola really rocked this.”

“I’m very happy with this scene. We had to have every single drawing approved by the legal department and we would get notes back saying things like, ‘Too big.'”

“‘Too veiny.'”

“I couldn’t even look at them. I was seventeen when we were drawing them, so legally, I could not look at the drawings. I had to get kicked out of the room every time people needed the drawings.”

“I know all you would hear is uproarious laughter from down the hall.”

“I would purposely go, ‘This is the best thing I’ve ever seen! This is the most fun day of my life.'”

“Every now and then, we would just drop one for Chris’ sake.”

“If we ever wanted Chris to leave the room, we would just scribble a [penis] on a piece of paper.”

“I had so many meetings about this because we had to have a girl look at it, a little girl. So if you can imagine me in a room with about four or five lawyers debating what the California labor laws are for looking at a drawing, and ultimately we had to find an older woman with tiny hands. And the other issue was, can someone look at it, where the kids don’t see it but the actor sees it, like over their shoulder, so we had to storyboard and debate every single shot. It was pretty brutal.”

July 10, 2008

– by Douglas Pratt

Douglas Pratt’s DVD-Laser Disc Newsletter is published monthly.
For a free sample, call (516)594-9304 or go to his website at www.DVDLaser.com

Only a grouch could seriously dislike the high-energy adventure fantasy, National Treasure 2 Book of Secrets, released by Walt Disney Studios Home Entertainment (UPC#786936735390, $30). Nicolas Cage, whose often eccentric screen persona fits perfectly with the 2007 film’s fanciful alterations of government institutions and monuments, stars in the tone-perfect follow up to the first National Treasurefeature, with his character persuading friends and family to aid in the collection of encrypted directions that lead to a ‘lost city of gold.’ The blend of genuine facts, both current and historical, with make-believe discoveries gives the film a legitimate intellectual stimulation that overrides its Disney cleanliness, just as having the characters related to one another enhances the emotional significance of their by-play and teamwork. The action scenes are super, too, but it is really just the wide-eyed presumptions the film is putting forth about government and history that makes it so enticing. It’s a modern tall tale, told with a cheerful earnestness, and with Cage as its salesman, resistance is pointless.

The picture is in letterboxed format only, with an aspect ratio of about 2.35:1 and an accommodation for enhanced 16:9 playback. The picture is sharp and glossy. The 5.1-channel Dolby Digital sound does not have an intense mix, but it is fully collaborative with the entertainment, offering plenty of directional effects and dimensional ambience. The 125-minute program has alternate French and Spanish tracks in 5.1 Dolby, and optional English, French and Spanish subtitles. Co-star Jon Voight joins director Jon Turteltaub for a light but informative commentary track, talking about the film’s historical underpinnings, its location work, the story, the stunts, and the cast. Voight had a great time working with Helen Mirren, who was a new addition to the cast that was otherwise carried over from the first film. “I said, ‘You know, we’re going to do a movie together. This is great, Helen. We’re going to do a movie, but what we’re going to do here is we’re going to have a lot of fun being children. Doing things, like kids, you know, swinging on vines. Doing a lot of fun, action stuff that we never get to do.’ And when we got together, we found we liked each other, we found we had a lot of laughs together. We could tease each other right away, and so, that’s all part of it, too. When you’re doing your best work, you’re dependent on the other actors to some degree. You’re open, and you’re listening. You’re responding. Now sometimes you can do something by yourself, but if you do good work, you should be responding to the other personality, and it was great to be with Helen. It was just fun in the discovery. We had a lot of reasons to have a real friendship, and I guess we were discovering it as we were working on these scenes. We liked each other and we liked the creative process of arriving at this. I’d say, ‘What about this?’ and she’d say, ‘No, what about this?’ and, ‘What about that?’ That kind of thing. And then we come to it and we’re working on it and we’re really listening to each other. We’re really at risk with each other. That’s what makes it good, I think.”

Disney has also released a 2-Disc Collector’s Edition (UPC#786936746594, $35). The first platter is identical to the single-platter release. The second platter contains 17 minutes of deleted scenes. There are a couple of points in the movie where the editing clearly jumps the plot ahead. One moment, when the hero is escaping from the Library of Congress, seems especially cheesy, because he gets away too easily, but when you see the scene that is missing, you understand why it was removed, because it was too slow for the pace of the sequence as a whole, even though it does make the hero’s effort more believable. In any case, while the scenes would have slowed the film down, they are all worth seeing for their humor or imagination. Also featured is a 5-minute blooper reel and 56 minutes of reasonably good production featurettes, including a nice tour of said Library of Congress.

June 4, 2008

– by Douglas Pratt

Douglas Pratt’s DVD-Laser Disc Newsletter is published monthly.
For a free sample, call (516)594-9304 or go to his website at www.DVDLaser.com

Anxiety over the fallout from a botched jewelry store robbery is the engine turning the emotional grinder inSidney Lumet’s fine 2007 drama, Before the Devil Knows You’re Dead, a ThinkFilm Image Entertainment release. Philip Seymour Hoffmanand Ethan Hawke are brothers, frantically trying to cover their tracks and deal with the absence of the cash flow they thought would become available with the robbery, and discovering they have another family tragedy to cope with as well. Albert Finney turns in an especially poignant performance as their father, and Marisa Tomei has some hot moments as the wife of Hoffman’s character. Running 117 minutes, the narrative jumps back and forth in time to keep things interesting, and leaves the fate of one character open at the end. It is definitely a bleak film, but there is enough intrigue and psychological ambiguity-and downright riveting, guts out acting by all involved-to counteract the sense of dread and disaster sweeping over the heroes, while desperation chips more and more into their façade of competence.

Shot unnoticeably on highdef video, the picture is presented in letterboxed format only, with an aspect ratio of about 1.78:1 and an accommodation for enhanced 16:9 playback. The image transfer is unblemished, although the film has a deliberately gritty look at times. The 5.1-channel Dolby Digital sound has a passable dimensionality. There are optional English and Spanish subtitles, a trailer and a very good 24-minute production documentary in which Lumet talks about filmmaking and the cast members talk about working with Lumet. Those rewards extend to the feature’s marvelous alternate commentary track, as well, in which Lumet, Hoffman and Hawke talk about the ins and outs of shooting and performing on HD, about Tomei and the film’s great sex scenes, about sex among movie stars (Lumet teasing mentions but does not name several beautiful famous actresses he has known who were ‘frigid’), and about the more professional aspects of his long career. When the discussion turns to child actors, Hawke, who has been acting since he was twelve, offers an unexpected opinion. “I have a very bizarre relationship to it, which is that I don’t think they should be doing it. It’s very hard for me not to go up to their parents and ask them to take them home. I mean, I know we have to make the movie. I started acting with River Phoenix. For some people, myself included, it was okay. It was a tiny part of my life and it didn’t really make a huge register on my psyche, because I really wanted to be a writer. Acting was like a hobby, and then it kind of took over, and I realize, I survived it, but there’s a big casualty list of young actors. It’s not good for the self esteem.”

Lumet was also a child actor and recalls the time fondly, as it kept him ‘off the streets’ and contributed significantly to his education. Having made so many movies across his career, however, he hasn’t always succeeded, and he willingly discusses his failures, although, as with the unromantic actresses, he doesn’t identify them by name. “One of the things I keep my fingers crossed about it is that when I get the knowledge that it’s not going to work, please God don’t let me find out the first day of shooting. And it has happened. It’s happened to me once, on one picture, during rehearsal. I knew that everything I saw in it was a complete fantasy. I had invented a whole other movie in my own mind and was not going to be able to do that.”

“And you felt like at that moment you couldn’t stop it?”

“Not only couldn’t stop, I couldn’t even talk to anybody about it, because I’m the director. Talk about alone. And the last person you want to tell is the producer, because they’ll panic and go to the company and say, ‘Can I have my deferment now, please.’ It’s the worst feeling in the world. And another time it happened to me on the second day of rushes, and always for the same reason, self-deception. And we need the self-deception. That’s what helps us make the good work, too.”

May 20, 2008

– by Douglas Pratt

Douglas Pratt’s DVD-Laser Disc Newsletter is published monthly.
For a free sample, call (516)594-9304 or go to his website at www.DVDLaser.com

Remove the handful of action and battle scenes, andAnthony Mann’s epic-styled 1964 take on The Fall of the Roman Empire would seem to work perfectly well as a stageplay. There is an awful lot of talking in the movie, and its sluggish pace, combined with its relatively dark atmosphere, led not only to the film’s financial failure, but the precipitous fall of producerSamuel Bronston’s own filmmaking empire. Nevertheless, there is enough grandeur and history in the 185-minute feature to justify The Weinstein Company Home Entertainment Miriam Collection Two-Disc Deluxe Edition and to make the three-platterLimited Collector’s Edition well worth considering.

The first hour or so of the film can be exasperating, depicting endless processionals and arcane political discussions, but the film does improve as it goes along, and there are indications, even at first, when a surprising amount of the movie was somehow staged in a genuine snowstorm, that the film is to be reckoned with. It is perfectly understandable that general audiences stayed away in 1964, not because they wanted cheerier movies but because they wanted more energetic ones, but something curious does happen as the film advances and its central theme becomes more pronounced. It turns out to be relevant to times present. The topicality of its arguments-which are essentially about corrupted conservative values overriding idealized liberal values to bring on the beginning of the end (the film’s title is less facetious than it once seemed)-takes on a fresh fascination that heightens not only the impact of the film (which has more vitality in its second half, anyway), but satisfaction in how it plays out. Stephen Boyd stars as a levelheaded military commander and Sophia Loren is the emperor’s daughter who loves Boyd’s character but is married off to a foreigner (played in a blink-and-you-miss-him capacity by Omar Sharif). Alec Guinness is the meditative emperor, Christopher Plummer delivers the movie’s strongest performance as the emperor’s upstart heir (a playboy with no more than a simplistic grasp of foreign and domestic policy dynamics-sound familiar?), and James Mason, a counselor, is the film’s conscience. Bronston’s Rome set, which is unseen until near the end of the movie’s first half, is an amazing piece of industry. Constructed in Spain and close to a half-mile in length, it is a recreation of the actual plaza in front of the Roman senate that is as exact as possible in both size and detail. The movies had seen nothing like it since Intolerance and now, because of CGI, they never will again. Ultimately, there are not enough motion picture spectacles in the history of cinema-what happened to Bronston is one of the main reasons why-so that those which did manage to make their way to the screen are loved unconditionally by many fans for the shear grandeur of their existence, and The Fall of the Roman Empireis not only a prime example of this romance, but a justification of it.

The picture is presented in letterboxed format only, with an aspect ratio of about 2.35:1 and an accommodation for enhanced 16:9 playback. The color transfer is spotless (the precision and crispness of the transfer does not help when it comes to Boyd’s hairpiece, however). The 5.1-channel Dolby Digital sound has a limited surround presence, but the front separations and directional effects are marvelous. The film comes with an Overture, Intermission and Exit Music, and is presented on two platters with the break at the Intermission point (the Entr’acte closes out the first platter). There are optional English and Spanish subtitles.

The first platter is accompanied by a fine 22-minute promotional documentary from 1964 that contains a lot of great behind-the-scenes footage and includes an impressive dissolve from the real ruins of Ancient Rome, to an artist’s rendering of how those ruins once looked as standing buildings, to the film’s constructed sets, with nary a variance in scale or position from the first to the last. There is also a trailer, filmographies of the cast & crew, and a passable collection of uncaptioned still photos.

The second platter has a fine 29-minute retrospective documentary, a good 11-minute piece about how the Roman Empire actually collapsed, another good 10-minute piece about the film’s historical accuracies and inaccuracies, and an aggressively comprehensive 20-minute piece about Dimitri Tiomkin’s overblown and dirgey musical score.

There is also a running commentary during the film by Bronston’s son, Bill Bronston, and film historian Mel Martin. While they are a bit too forgiving of the film’s flaws (they give Boyd’s performance, and his hair, a free pass), they still supply an excellent talk about Bronston, Mann, the other members of the cast and crew, the production (Bill Bronston visited the set during the shoot), the far-reaching ways in which the film’s production changed Spain’s economy, and the film’s historical context. They do also try to reconcile the film’s boxoffice failure. “I don’t think that people got that this was really an absolute x-ray of what it is that undoes the integrity of society. It came late in people being overrun by spectacles, by too much, too big. Maybe one of the actual contradictions here was that the bigness of this movie, ironically, played against its intense historical message. I don’t know what you could have done about it, and the only thing that’s really exciting is that the re-release of the movie now gives a different generation, with a different experience, an opportunity to really look, big screen, at today, because this movie is about today. Make no mistake.”

Along with miniaturized re-creations of lobby cards and the film’s souvenir program, Collector’s Edition comes with a third platter that features a terrific collection of three color Encyclopedia Britannica educational films, running 57 minutes including the introduction by creator Bill Deneen, which were shot on the film’s sets and incorporate footage from the film. The first,Life in Ancient Rome, presents a portrait of Rome pretty much at the time Empire is set, about 140 AD. The second, Julius Caesar: The Rise of the Roman Empire, cheats a little bit with anachronisms to go back two centuries earlier and tell the story of Caesar. The final film, Claudius: Boy of Ancient Rome, is the most impressive of all, showing what a child’s life was like in Ancient Rome and depicting two European boys-one the son of a landowner and the other, his best friend, a slave on the estate-and the conflict that arises when the one boy tries to treat the other as property.

May 8, 2008

– by Douglas Pratt

Douglas Pratt’s DVD-Laser Disc Newsletter is published monthly.
For a free sample, call (516)594-9304 or go to his website at www.DVDLaser.com

As an actor, Sean Penn has exhibited an appreciable range in the characters he has portrayed, but as a director, he seems permanently locked into one emotional aesthetic, that of the sophomoric adolescent male. Each of his movies has been gratingly obvious and whiny, striving so hard and with such tunnel vision to achieve certain emotional themes that subtlety and sophistication are just the first casualties, with dramatic integrity following close behind. Penn’s 2007 feature about a college graduate who cuts ties with his family and begins aimlessly crisscrossing America, Into the Wild, however, is his least terrible feature. It is still zoned in on adolescent resentment, fear of adult responsibilities, and the single-minded pursuit of narcissism, but where his previous movies have sought unsuccessfully to disguise these attributes in nominally adult characters, here Penn, who wrote the script and directed the film, embraces the culture of adolescence straight on. The hero has the same name as Penn’s own deceased sibling, so that every voiceover reference to him missing or his parents’ guilt (and they occur steadily throughout the film; there are also numerous crosscuts to his anxious parents) takes on a self-conscious meta-level reinforcement of the movie’s primary themes. It may have the subtlety of a sledgehammer, but it is resonant depth, nevertheless.

Into the Wild, which has been released by Paramount (UPC#0973-63481249, $30), will eventually come to be known as Penn’s masterpiece, and it is destined to acquire a feverish cult popularity, as young men, when they eventually discover the movie on home video and through word of mouth (it’s going to take some prodding), will embrace the film with the same fervor that a previous generation embraced On the Road. The movie is episodic as the hero, played with a strong Leonardo DiCaprio vibe by Emile Hirsch, meets different people and has different adventures. To Penn’s credit, these interludes are the film’s classiest sequences, creating engaging and entertaining portraits of various individuals-a wheat farmer, a pair of Scandinavian tourists, Hal Holbrook’s retired widower, a pair of aging hippies (the film is set in the Eighties)-each giving the movie an energy boost so it can travel along with Hirsch to the next interlude. Yes, Hirsch’s character sees nicely dressed people eating at a restaurant and he seethes at their conformity, but Penn never really takes his side, so you don’t resent the moment. Hence, the 148-minute adventure becomes an epic journey across America and through the young male self (coupled with never-ending fantasies about the people who are missing him), and although its values are cringe-inducing and its pain is sniveling to those who know better, it is ambitiously true to its own vision and monumental in the effort and consistency it has employed to achieve that goal.

The picture is presented in letterboxed format only, with an aspect ratio of about 2.35:1 and an accommodation for enhanced 16:9 playback. The color transfer looks fine. Penn’s image compositions seem haphazard, as if he had thought really hard about some and left others to chance. His direction is incomplete in a lot of ways. When Hirsch’s character is dying in Alaska from starvation, it’s an idealized death-he looks skinny, but immaculately clean, with no sores on his body, his feet or his face. Even his books look brand new. The 5.1-channel Dolby Digital sound has an adequate dimensionality and a reasonable amount of detail. The musical score, much of which was composed by Eddie Veder, is rather dull and redundant. There are alternate French and Spanish tracks in 5.1 Dolby and optional English, French and Spanish subtitles.

Paramount has also released a 2-Disc Collector’s Edition (UPC#0-97361316949, $40). The first platter is identical to the standard release. The second platter has two production featurettes running a total of 39 minutes, and a trailer. One of the featurettes looks at the background of the film, which is based on a true story, while the other covers the actual production.

April 15, 2008

– by Douglas Pratt

Douglas Pratt’s DVD-Laser Disc Newsletter is published monthly.
For a free sample, call (516)594-9304 or go to his website at www.DVDLaser.com

In the throes of my adolescence, I loved Bullitt madly, and the company that had produced and distributed the film, Warner Bros., also produced and distributed Bonnie and Clyde, a movie that I saw when it first came out and greatly admired. In those days, there was no such thing as home video and successful movies were often reissued to theaters. Warner eventually paired Bullitt andBonnie and Clyde as a double bill, and as I went back to watch Bullitt again and again, I gradually started to like it a little bit less and Bonnie and Clyde a lot more. Both movies had thrilling action scenes, but the characters in Bullitt were fairly superficial-a good deal more nuanced than characters in most action films, but still, ultimately, superficial. No matter how often I sawBonnie and Clyde, however, the psychologies and emotions of the characters just continued to get richer and deeper. They were real people, caught in the hardships of their times and the maelstrom of their own impulses, and compelled to their fates entirely by their interactions with one another. Nicely modulated with humor, the narrative presented a steadily woven advancement of successes and failures that I would later come to learn was part of a long tradition in Warner gangster films, going back to the days when the real Bonnie Parker andClyde Barrow, consciously or subconsciously, styled themselves upon the exploits ofJames Cagney and Edward G. Robinson. Superbly staged and encouraged by directorArthur Penn, the performances of Faye Dunaway, Warren Beatty, Gene Hackman, Estelle Parsons and Michael J. Pollard are as breathlessly vivid as they are iconically attractive, and all five received Oscar nominations, with Parsons, who acrobatically manages to be as shrill as a fire alarm without alienating the viewer, going on to win a statue. Dede Allen’s editing is smart and invigorating, and the final scene in the movie, depicting the pair’s death, is probably one of the ten best shot and edited sequences in the history of American cinema. The 1967 feature crossed over some kind of invisible line of cinematic grammar that arose during its era, so that in capturing an earlier period of time while not shying away from sexuality or violence, it has never seemed to age in any aspect of its production, and can rivet the attention of young as well as older viewers today just as readily as it did when it first came out.

Warner Home Video released Bonnie and Clyde twice previously and has now taken yet another shot at it, with a Two-Disc Special Edition (UPC#085391167983, $21), presented in letterboxed format only, with an aspect ratio of about 1.85:1 and an accommodation for enhanced 16:9 playback. The monophonic sound is solid and the 111-minute program comes with optional English, French and Korean subtitles, and two trailers. The color transfer is a definite improvement over the shared transfer on the older releases. Although they looked fine in their day, they appear pinkish compared to the pure whites and truer fleshtones on the new release. Unfortunately, there is room for even more improvement. You are aware as you watch the movie that the hues are a little bland, but when you move on to the second platter and view two deleted scenes that have been included, the differences are stunning. One of the deleted scenes has footage that did remain in the film and can be compared directly to what is seen in the feature. The colors in that deleted scene are incredibly bright and precise, and the colors in the feature are, in comparison, flat and dispiriting.

The 5 minutes of deleted scenes are silent, but are supported by optional subtitles and are as welcome a revelation as any found footage from such a significant film would be, including an ambiguously erotic interchange between Dunaway and Pollard’s characters. The second platter also contains 8 minutes of silent costume tests with Beatty, featuring the same vivid colors that the deleted scenes have. There is a good 65-minute retrospective documentary that manages to talk to almost everyone involved, including Curtis Hanson, who had parlayed some early glamour shots of Dunaway into a visit to the set, and Morgan Fairchild, who was Dunaway’s double. The program goes over the New Wave/Sixties phenomena and that sort of thing, but its real strength is in the comprehensive detail it brings up about the many components that came together so well in the film. Art director Dean Tavoularis, for example, points out, “I was very happy to see that Texas had not progressed very much out of the Depression. You had these beautiful roads with wooden sidewalks and businesses that were mostly shut, but beautifully preserved. At that time, I found everything I wanted, very quickly.” Finally, there is an efficient 43-minute History Channel documentary from 1994 about the real Parker and Barrow. It is a bit jarring to see how some of the events in their lives were copied meticulously while others were completely romanticized, but that’s the movies for you.

April 2, 2008

– by Douglas Pratt

Douglas Pratt’s DVD-Laser Disc Newsletter is published monthly.
For a free sample, call (516)594-9304 or go to his website at www.DVDLaser.com

When the camera was invented, painters had to move away from realism to compete, but the camera’s rule may turn out to be short-lived. Since 1937, when Walt Disney created Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs – or perhaps even earlier, when Winsor McKay depicted the sinking of the Lusitania-artists and painters have been working to represent reality on their own terms, and in the past decade or two, their inroads in contributing to motion picture storytelling have been substantial. At the moment, they still fill a supplementary role, but with greater and greater frequency, movies are being developed where the role of the painter exceeds the role of the cinematographer. It is fitting that Paramount’s Beowulf Director’s Cut(UPC#097361323145, $30), a significant example of what the future holds in store, is an adaptation of a defining work in English literature-much in the way that Snow White was. The story of a warrior whose deeds of glory in killing an ogre are compromised by both the reality and legacy of his actions, the film utilizes animation not just for its spectacular action sequences, but to render entirely its setting and costumes, and even to manipulate its performances. While actors participated in the film’s staging and blocking, their images have been altered (the pudgy Ray Winstone plays the svelte, muscular hero), so that even when a shot, such as a closeup of a face, looks completely real, it isn’t. The 2007 Robert Zemeckis feature was released in theaters in 3-D, a presentation format that home video has yet to replicate in all but its crudest forms, but as simply the 2-D feature that appears on the DVD, the film is still a highly exciting and entertaining experience-the final battle with the dragon is hold-your-breath dazzling-and one that is enriched by its pointed exploration of archetypal forces. Will animation someday overwhelm visual storytelling entirely? Like the conclusion to Beowulf, the vanquished may not entirely disappear, but nothing will ever be as it seems.

Both Director’s Cut and the standard theatrical release run 114 minutes, so the differences amount to a few extra-gory moments here and there, and an extra touch of licentious behavior. The picture is presented in letterboxed format only, with an aspect ratio of about 2.35:1 and an accommodation for enhanced 16:9 playback. The picture transfer is precise at all times, and crisp even during the darkest sequences. The 5.1-channel Dolby Digital sound has some good separation effects and a reasonably strong dimensionality. There are alternate French and Spanish tracks in 5.1 Dolby, optional English, French and Spanish subtitles, a trailer, 10 minutes of deleted scenes that, along with supplying a little more background detail for the characters, give the viewer a chance to grasp the interim animation steps, and 43 minutes of excellent production featurettes, which talk about the story (and explain the more complicated aspects of the plot), the casting, and how the film was executed. After the artwork, scale models and storyboards were completed, the cast members dressed in jumpsuits and their faces were inundated with dots. They gathered in a gymnasium-sized soundstage and, without worrying about lighting and other matters, played out the drama and fighting stunts in just a few weeks (the horses had a harder time keeping their dots on). Get used to it. Someday, most movies are going to be made this way, the upside being that naturally talented artists and painters, people with vision and imagination, will always be gainfully employed.

March 21, 2008

– by Douglas Pratt

Douglas Pratt’s DVD-Laser Disc Newsletter is published monthly.
For a free sample, call (516)594-9304 or go to his website at www.DVDLaser.com

Denzel Washington gives one of his increasingly appealing, wise, movie star performances as a successful drug kingpin in the Universal 2-DiscUnrated Special Edition, American Gangster. As Washington’s stardom is sustained, he seems to be drifting away a little bit from acting – from trying to find the real emotional truth in every moment – but what he is doing instead is so crisp and irresistible that it is a great deal more satisfying … like dessert compared to vegetables. He gives a little grin and delivers what might be the most innocuous line imaginable, but he conveys such deft authority with each inflection and gesture that you’re spellbound by his every word and move. Poor Russell Crowe can’t sustain an American accent for a full movie to save his soul, but otherwise he carries the other half of the 2007 Ridley Scottfeature effectively, as a police detective (who later becomes a prosecutor working on the same case) trying to figure out just exactly who the drug kingpin is. The film is based upon a true story and delivers what feels at least like an accurate historical portrait of both the drug business and law enforcement in New York in the Seventies, doing so in a consistently engrossing and entertaining manner. The theatrical film runs 158 minutes and is a fully enjoyable concoction that will endure entirely because of the star power that is carrying it. On the same platter as the theatrical version, Universal has also included an ‘Unrated Extended Version,’ which runs 177 minutes. While the additional story details the longer version supplies are gratifying, the film’s tone shifts at the end, into the ‘white guy redeems the black guy’ cliché, which leaves the theatrical version as the more mature and stimulating cut.

The picture is presented in letterboxed format only, with an aspect ratio of about 2.35:1 and an accommodation for enhanced 16:9 playback. Scott has the daunting task of setting the film in New York City and New Jersey, but keeping it in period, and he pulls it off enjoyably well. The picture often has a gritty, street look, but that is conceptual and the color transfer is solid. The 5.1-channel Dolby Digital sound has some decent surround effects and a strong dimensional presence. There is an alternate French track in 5.1 Dolby and optional English, French and Spanish subtitles.

Scott and screenwriter Steven Zaillian are intercut on a commentary track that runs over the theatrical release. Zaillian talks about wrangling the many details of the true story into a workable feature film. Both he and Scott reference the extensive research they did and share the insights they gained from it. Scott’s commentaries are always exemplary. He speaks instructively on various aspects of making the film-he talks quite a bit this time about choosing the music-breaks down the story and the character motivations as he sees them, and analyzes his own creative process, revealing that it has become more intuitive as he has gotten more films under his belt. “What I need as a director, what Russell needs as an actor, what Denzel needs as an actor are all kind of slightly different things. I like frugal, intelligent frugality, because that leaves me room to function because I’ll always stretch with what I do. What I do is not really discussible or describable, because half the time, I’m not sure what I’ll do yet until I actually get there, but once I get there, once I’ve seen all the locations and smelled all the wardrobe and smelled the paint inside the rooms and cast the people, I’ve got the universe in my head. Even as I’m driving in that morning, I’m knowing exactly what I’m going to do. The whole organic structure of the scene will be all laid out in my head, and that’s how it works. Whereas, actors are essentially on their own in relation to whoever they may be in the scene, and they of course, then, have to learn the words, so if the words aren’t learned or the words aren’t absolutely tied down, they ought to adjust them, then that has to come together. The other person is aware they are going to be adjusted. And frequently, a structured film like this doesn’t have time for rehearsal. People are always shocked about how little rehearsal I do. Russell likes to rehearse. Denzel, less. I think they’ve got a sense I’ll always arrive knowing exactly what I want them to do. ‘I’ve thought this, this, this, this, this.’ Silence. ‘Okay, you want to walk it?’ ‘Why not…’ We walk it. I say, ‘You want to shoot it?’ They say, ‘Okay.’ So then now we’re going to shoot it. That’s it. It defies all logic about film schools and acting schools and all that stuff. What it finally comes down to-these two arrive here incredibly experienced. Your experience will give you that probable confidence to push some things this way or that way, or recognize it when it’s happening, and then agree.”

The second platter contains a very good 78-minute production documentary with lots of excellent behind-the-scenes footage (one of the best segments-a look at the dolls that are used to fill an auditorium during a prize fight scene), supplemented by a terrific 25 minutes of additional footage concerning a script meeting, a discussion on how to test heroin purity, and the staging of an action sequence. The real life individuals represented by Russell and Crowe both participated in the film’s production and are given decent coverage in the documentary. There are also 4 minutes of deleted scenes, but they don’t amount to much-one, an alternate opening, would work better as a trailer teaser.

Universal has also released a 3-Disc Collector’s Edition. The first two platters are identical to the 2-Disc release. Accompanied by a glossy booklet containing photos and essays, the third platter features a 5-minute look at the acting and musical contributions of Common and T.I. to the film, a bland 18-minute promotional documentary, a much better 22-minute promotional documentary (Crowe says with amusement that he would have liked to have played Malcolm X), an Anthony Hamilton music video, a Jay-Z music video, a trailer, and the ability to download a copy of the Unrated version for playback on computers and handheld devices.

March 5, 2008

– by Douglas Pratt

Douglas Pratt’s DVD-Laser Disc Newsletter is published monthly.
For a free sample, call (516)594-9304 or go to his website at www.DVDLaser.com

2007 turned out to be a great year for quality movies, and Julie Taymor’s Across the Universe was one of the crown jewels of the group. It is a musical depiction of life and culture across the Sixties that uses Beatles songs to define the emotional and spiritual states of the characters and to evoke, with a comprehensive authority, nostalgia for the times. Released as a 2-Disc Deluxe Edition by Sony Pictures Home Entertainment, it makes a fantastic DVD, not just because the picture looks amazing during the psychedelic digressions and the 5.1-channel Dolby Digital sound keeps your room spinning, but because this is the kind of movie that, if you like it, you’re going to want to watch it over and over again.

The last musical to use wall-to-wall Beatles songs was an unmitigated disaster, Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band. In part, its flaws were simply a result of marketing hubris, bad direction and an innocuous fantasy narrative, but it also failed because Beatles producer George Martin was too involved with creating the soundtrack and generally did not let the songs’ interpreters find their own voices. Many of the songs in Across the Universebegin a cappella, and even those that don’t often have radically different orchestrations than the original numbers. But that is what becomes so riveting, at least the first few times you watch the film. No other group of songs is so well known down to the minutest changes in pitch or rhythm, and so their application in the movie not only works from the familiar, but from where the choices are made to alter the familiar. Early in the film, a gay cheerleader sits on bleachers watching the other members of her squad while singing “I Wanna Hold Your Hand,” and it is the explosion of feelings that comes from what is expected with the song crashing into what is unexpected that makes the sequence so rapturously powerful.

The film’s true spiritual doppelganger is Milos Forman’s Hair. Several parts of the plot appear to have been lifted from the stage version, as the central character comes from England and hangs out with another group of characters living in New York City’s bohemia during the Sixties, while the Vietnam War and other social upheavals loom around them. There are shots in the marvelous draft induction sequence (posters of Uncle Sam come alive, singing “I Want You” ) that are taken directly from Forman’s designs, and there is the general atmosphere of hippies breaking into song, supported by often subtle and always transcendent choreography. Viewers who don’t understand or connect with musicals are likely to dismiss both films as inconsequential fluff, but what is missed in judging the aesthetic of all musicals is that the music is a valid substitute for drama, even though its payoffs are less quantifiable. The joy the music brings to the viewer is a legitimate alternative to the more detailed exploration of human relationships that a non-musical must deliver. Across the Universe runs 132 minutes, which would seem to be way too long, but what could Taymor possibly have cut out to the movie’s advantage? There is one poor little 57-second deleted number that appears with the film on the first platter, and you wish that even it had been left in. The narrative has several romantic plot strings, which are all strummed in exquisite harmony, and the emotional performances back up fully what is being exchanged in the dialog and the songs. The characters are in love, the viewer loves the music, and from the music and the characters, then, the viewer’s capacity for love is massaged and enlivened. That’s all you need, right?

The picture is presented in letterboxed format only, with an aspect ratio of about 2.35:1 and an accommodation for enhanced 16:9 playback. There is an alternate Spanish track in 5.1 Dolby (with English songs) and optional English, French, Spanish, Portuguese, Chinese, Korean, and Thai subtitles (“Quelqu’un va-t-il écouter mon histoire? A propos de la fille venue pour rester…”), a nice collection of production stills, and two alternate takes, running six minutes, of Eddie Izzard singing “Being for the Benefit of Mr. Kite,” one of the weakest sequences in the film, because it is the one segment that brings to mind nightmares of Sgt. Pepper, whereGeorge Burns did the number.

Taymor and music orchestrator Elliot Goldenthal supply a commentary track. Goldenthal explains how he approached each tune. Taymor spends some time describing what is happening on the screen, but she does provide details on how the major sequences were conceived and shot, speaks eagerly about the young cast members, explains some of the inspirations for the different passages (although she fails to give credit to Magical Mystery Tour even as she lifts not just allusions but actual cinematic tricks from the film, commenting upon the latter as if they were her own idea; she doesn’t acknowledge Hair, either), and deconstructs some of the film’s cultural influences. “The thing about the music is, a lot of it has that tremendous inspiration from black American music, and so when you are starting to produce and rearrange it again, in some ways it was interesting to go back to some of the sources in the orchestration of that music, and that gives it, also, variety, so all the songs aren’t done with the same orchestration a band would have.”

The second platter features an excellent 29-minute production featurette with lots of behind-the-scenes footage where you can watch Taymor coming up with ideas as well as seeing to their execution. There is also a good 27-minute segment about the cast, a 15-minute segment about adapting the music, a nice 9-minute segment on the choreography and a 7-minute piece on the special effects. Finally, there is a 35-minute collection of extended song numbers, which makes an ideal encore for the film

February 28, 2008

– by Douglas Pratt

Douglas Pratt’s DVD-Laser Disc Newsletter is published monthly.
For a free sample, call (516)594-9304 or go to his website at www.DVDLaser.com

Outrageous on purpose, Shoot ‘Em Up, from New Line Home Entertainment, is a serious 2007 spoof on action films that are forever trying to top what came out the month before, but it works because it uses story and character logic to push its way from one set piece to the next. The hero is sitting on a bus bench one night, chewing on a carrot, when a very pregnant woman runs by, followed shortly thereafter by a ruffian with a gun. He thinks about it for a moment, decides that he can’t live in a world where people shoot pregnant women, and goes to help her, eventually getting chased all over the city (it was shot in Toronto, but pretends to be a generic American metropolis) with the newborn baby in his arms. Clive Owen is the hero, Paul Giamatti is the villain, and Monica Bellucci is an acquaintance the hero solicits to help with the baby (in perhaps the movie’s most outrageous sequence, they are making love and continue to copulate while Owen’s character shoots a dozen attackers that have barged into their hotel room). As the story barrels forward to its inevitable final showdown, the action scenes are wild to a Rube Goldberg degree, the violence is invigorating, and the humor is always lurking beneath the blood and gore. You wonder, however, what they can possibly come up with next month.

The picture is presented in letterboxed format only, with an aspect ratio of about 2.35:1 and an accommodation for enhanced 16:9 playback. A few of the special effects sequences are a bit cheesy (there is a lengthy gun fight among parachutists), but for the most part, the picture is crisp and finely detailed, and is always an accurate representation of the cinematography. There is a 5.1-channel Dolby Digital track with EX-encoding, and a DTS track with ES-encoding. There are plenty of surround details and directional effects, but the mix doesn’t really get into the spirit of the film-it would be more fun if it were as exaggerated as everything else is. The 86-minute program has optional English and Spanish subtitles, 8 minutes of smartly deleted beats, 53 minutes of decent production featurettes, and 3 trailers.

The director, Michael Davis, made self-animated versions of each action scene, not just to prepare for the shooting, but to actually sell the project (and his skills as a director) to begin with. The 20-minute reel of these animatics is presented on the DVD, with an optional commentary. “I ended up doing the drawings on my Wacom Tablet, hooked up to my computer, and I would save every sketch as a ‘.pic’ file, and then import it into my i-movie program on my Macintosh, and I would just tell them to ‘assign three frames, two frames, whatever,’ for each drawing, and ended up animating out ten to eleven of the big action scenes.” Davis also supplies commentaries for the deleted scenes and the film. He’s very proud of the movie and speaks excitedly about the film’s wildest and freshest action ideas. He also talks a little bit about the movie’s staging, working with the cast, and, by our count, says, “Rube Goldberg,” four separate times.

February 12, 2008

– by Douglas Pratt

Douglas Pratt’s DVD-Laser Disc Newsletter is published monthly.
For a free sample, call (516)594-9304 or go to his website at www.DVDLaser.com

Few movie making careers have crashed and burned as resoundingly as William Friedkin’s. It began to skid out of control beforehand, and it is still smoldering in mediocrity today, but the flames of disaster reached their apex with Friedkin’s head-scratchingly stupid 1980 story of an undercover cop, played by Al Pacino, trying to solve a series of murders among gay men, Cruising, and, unable or unwilling to leave well enough alone, that film has become one of the most fascinating portraits of denial ever issued on DVD, thanks to the Warner Home Video Deluxe Edition. The picture is presented in letterboxed format only, with an aspect ratio of about 1.85:1 and an accommodation for enhanced 16:9 playback. The color transfer is solid, although Friedkin has ‘raised the lighting’ in the bar scenes, so you can see all of the Gomorrah-like activity more clearly, and the sound has been remastered in 5.1-channel Dolby Digital, highlighting one of the movie’s only legitimately artistic components, Jack Nitzsche’s edgy musical score. There are optional English, French and Spanish subtitles.

Along with a 44-minute retrospective documentary, in which the producer and a few other secondary members of the cast and crew chime in with their recollections of the shoot (which was challenged, during much of the location filming, by substantial and malicious protestors), Friedkin supplies a fascinating commentary track, which, combined with what he has to say in the documentary, suggests that he still doesn’t understand what he has done.

“In Cruising, there is subliminal imagery. The whole notion of the subliminal is that it is not something that you are to be directly conscious of. To me, it’s the way the mind works.

“Before I made the film, I would go into the club, and I went in on ‘dress code’ nights. I had to dress the way the dress code called for. I remember having to strip down to my jockstrap and socks on ‘Jockstrap Night’ and everyone else was in a jockstrap, and everyone else there had these incredible bodies. You know, they were really physically in great shape, and I was easily the ugliest guy in the room. Nobody hit on me.

“I had no intention of making a statement one way or the other about what was happening in the leather bars. I went with pretty much documentary-type cameras and recorded what I saw, and there’s no comment made in the film about what the audience is seeing. There’s no comment from me or from any character in the film that this is right or wrong or moral or immoral or whatever. And that’s how I feel about it today.”

That is all well and good, except that throughout his talk, he reveals that there is no one killer in the film, and that the identity of the killer is meant to be ambiguous. So what he is actually saying, even though he is ‘not conscious’ of it himself, is that every man in the leather bar is probably a homicidal maniac.

“The shot of Pacino shaving and finally just staring into the mirror at the audience is something I had in mind throughout as being the next-to-last shot of the film. What it’s meant to suggest or to say is, ‘When you look at someone, do you really know who they are? Do you know who I am? Do you know what I am? Do I know, and who are you?”

In the documentary, one of the producers claims that while the 102-minute film was universally castigated when it first appeared, it has somehow become justified because of its enduring cult popularity, but what he fails to admit is that the movie is popular for the same reason thatShowgirls is popular, not because it is good or daring, but because it is so incredulously bad. Pacino’s character goes into a shop for gay attire and asks the attendant for an explanation of the coded handkerchiefs on a rack display, and yet, just a few scenes later, he is not only wearing one of the handkerchiefs as was explained to him, but his character is utterly oblivious to its meaning and surprised by the reaction it receives. Another character, overly anxious, apparently, to start his evening, drives up to a porn shop and goes rushing in to use one of the peepshow booths, not bothering to put the top up on his convertible even though he has valuable items in the back seat (in New York, in a porn shop neighborhood). It doesn’t matter, though, since he doesn’t come out alive. There are other, smaller idiocies throughout the film (a suspect is interrogated in the police station by a large black detective wearing only one of the aforementioned jockstraps; there is a box full of addressed letters, but the addresses don’t have zip codes; and on and on), and it is continually amazing that having once made one of the best films ever about New York City cops, The French Connection, Friedkin then proceeded to create one of the absolute worst.

Fortunately for the DVD, his commentary, much of which is a play-by-play description of what is happening on the screen, is equally ridiculous. “Instinctively he goes to Richards’ closet, where he finds the wardrobe of the leather bars…They stare across the road at one another like opposing gunfighters…They’re alone, in a deserted park, probably after midnight… It’s not clear who will make the first move, but Burns parades right in front of Richards, sits down on the bench next to him, and makes a crude attempt at conversation. He asks him for a light… They face each other, eye to eye, and thus begins the slow courtship toward an endgame. Forbes is trying to think through what he’ll first say to Richards. Richards is waiting. And Forbes puts on his leather cap, Richards’ leather cap, and he starts to sing the little refrain that was heard at the scene of two of the murders. ‘Who’s here? I’m here. You’re here….'”

January 28, 2008

– by Douglas Pratt

Douglas Pratt’s DVD-Laser Disc Newsletter is published monthly.
For a free sample, call (516)594-9304 or go to his website at www.DVDLaser.com

2007 marked the end of the first decade of DVDs and represented a profound change in the motion picture business. Where previously, home video was an ancillary market, with the full penetration of the inexpensively manufactured 5-inch (actually, 12cm) format (and while artists and film executives-and television producers-are not entirely willing to admit it yet), DVDs are now the final product. Theatrical or broadcast distribution has become an occasionally profitable marketing step to that end. No theatrical film and virtually no non-reality network television program today is budgeted without the knowledge that it will also be released on DVD. Additionally, DVDs have altered the artistic designs of the films themselves, providing an emotional steam valve for writers, directors and so on, allowing them to compromise the theatrical version of a production with the knowledge that their personal vision will eventually be disseminated to perhaps an even larger audience. This has disadvantages-the creators do not fight as hard, initially, to preserve their artistic integrity; and their alternate versions can lack the necessary discipline that boxoffice responsiveness would require-as well as the more obvious advantages-not only do DVDs foster greater artistic freedom, but they expand the audience’s consciousness by revealing the alternative dramatic and artistic dimensions in which a film exists (in the most general terms, that characters can both live and die simultaneously; that there is drama and comedy in the creative process itself; and so on). Regardless of the pluses and minuses, it is unquestionable that DVDs have, in effect, altered the playing field of making movies, forever.

The following ten titles are an ordered representation of the most significant DVDs to reach the marketplace during that first decade:

1. The Lord of the Rings Extended Editions (New Line Home Entertainment). By the time Peter Jackson finished shooting his paradigmatic fantasy trilogy, it was clear that the theatrical films were simply a way station and that the opportunity to create the longer DVD versions was fueling the fire of his creative enthusiasm and industry. First and foremost, the three films are ideal programs for DVD playback. Their length is less taxing in a home environment, while their many special effects and action scenes create one demonstration sequence after another that can utilize the full expanse of audio and video playback. Additionally, the three films in the trilogy are each accompanied by production featurettes of lengths equal to the features themselves (every film and its supplement is spread to four platters), and numerable commentary tracks in which every major artist who worked on the films has an opportunity to reflect upon his contribution and share his memories of the production.

2. The Ultimate Matrix (Warner Home Video). The original Matrixwas the first blockbuster DVD, again because in addition to the basic, uncompromised intelligence of the drama, the film contained many spectacular special effect sequences that were especially invigorating in the home video environment. The film’s two sequels may have been an artistic and intellectual letdown, but the visceral stimulations continued, and in the outstanding ten-platter set, the flaws of those films are confronted head on by ‘pro and con’ commentary tracks, as well as extensive and stimulating supplements that examine not only how the films were created, but what scientific and philosophical resources served as their inspiration. 20th Century Fox Home Entertainment’s The Alien Quadrilogy performed a similar feat with the less directly related quartet of Alien films, each presented in both original theatrical format and in a longer director’s cut, with exhaustive supplements and commentaries. On a smaller scale, Fox’s The Star Wars Trilogy, Warner’s Blade Runner The Final Cut and Lionsgate’s Terminator 2: Judgment Day combine spectacular transfers with copious supplements.

3. Brazil (The Criterion Collection). The supplementary sections and commentaries on DVDs did not arise suddenly from nowhere. In the decade the preceded the first DVDs, 12-inch laser discs (LDs) provided a high-end home video outlet that allowed filmmakers to share their experiences about the filmmaking process, with trial by error determining what sort of commentary and supplemental formats were effective and what were not. From almost the very beginning of LDs, the Criterion Collection specialized in producing ‘collector’s editions’ of important films, and it was essentially their template that DVD producers utilized as soon as the format became cost productive. Criterion itself made the shift almost immediately from LDs to DVDs and has produced scores of outstanding presentations that deliver not only sterling transfers of classic and stimulating films, but extensive supplements that enhance a viewer’s appreciation of both the film itself and its context within human culture. Many fans simply make it a habit of obtaining every title Criterion releases, knowing that each program will be rewarding and its presentation nearly flawless. Brazil, which Criterion created initially for LD and then issued on DVD, is nevertheless probably the best representation of how the DVD format can be advantageously employed. Firstly, although the film’s audio track does not have an elaborate surround mix, Terry Gilliam’s movie is nevertheless a highly phantasmagorical experience well suited to repeated home video playback. Secondly, its production history could serve as a topic for a feature film itself (as nearly every Gilliam film seems to, and one, at least, has). Taken away from Gilliam and re-cut with the very best intentions by Universal Studios executives, not only is the complete story of the troubled production presented, but three very different cuts of the film are all featured, allowing the viewer not just the opportunity to pass judgment on those responsible, but to share in the alternative perspectives each version offers of Gilliam’s vision.

4. The Simpsons The Complete Sixth Season (20th Century Fox Home Entertainment). There were complete collections of television shows in shelf-busting videotape formats, and near the end of their run, hefty, expensive boxed sets of popular American TV series had begun to appear in Japan on LD, but it was the concise size and relative inexpensiveness of cramming TV episodes onto DVDs that allowed that portion of the market to achieve (much to the surprise of traditional-minded distributors) relative parity with popular feature films. At first, companies attempted to issue ‘best of’ packages, but they quickly learned that viewers themselves wanted to pick and choose their favorites, and that the ideal organized delivery format was the ‘complete season,’ which indeed, normally, represented a complete, singular artistic effort on the part of TV series creators, who were essentially living or dying, from an economic and production logistic standpoint, from one season to the next. Television shows with continuing stories actually play better on DVD than they do on the TV, because you don’t have to wait a week or a month from one cliffhanger to the next and, more importantly, it is easier to access a show’s greater themes when it is viewed as a whole (you aren’t nearly as annoyed by the digressions in HBO Video’s The Sopranos or the loopy turns that occur in Buena Vista Home Entertainment’s Lost). If you ever get a free month and the chance to do it, watch all ten seasons of Warner’s Friends from beginning to end and you will realize that it is a magnificent six-character romantic comedy with a brilliant, single-narrative arc, about the beginning, middle and end stages of male and female bachelorhood. As fulfilling as such programs have been, however, the best TV DVDs are those that equal the experiences of the best theatrical DVDs in terms of supplementary features. Indeed, when you hear the commentaries on MGM Home Entertainment’s Stargate SG-1 The Complete Fourth Season advance brilliantly from episode to episode, creating what in essence is a complete filmmaking seminar (and a very entertaining one at that), then the efforts on most feature film commentaries pale in comparison. With its outstanding, morally dense, continuing story, terrific commentaries and other superb supplements, Fox’s The Shield, which might just be the best television show ever created anyway, comes close to achieving the ideal DVD, particularly in The Complete Third Season. Nevertheless, television is inexorably central to the American family, depictions of that family have long been a primary topic of popular shows and, with animation allowing the characters to avoid aging (although their voices change and the advancement of time has created various cultural paradoxes), The Simpsons has become the penultimate American television show. And, season after season, the Simpsons collections have been exceptional not only for the basic humor and insightfulness of the program itself, but for the DVD supplements, especially the commentary tracks, which, like the Stargate commentaries, strive to open up as widely as possible the creative process that the artists went through to achieve both the images and the stories. Sixth Season represents the best so far, as the creators were still in their initial throes of invention. Every season has brilliantly funny episodes, but Sixth Season has the fewest that are less than that.

5. The Fantasia Anthology (Walt Disney Home Entertainment). No film company has been more conscientious of preserving its artistic legacies and, therefore, no film company has been in a better position to draw upon those resources for its DVDs than Walt Disney. Disney has just one primary challenge, and that is to satisfy without confusion the interest its product generates in both adults and very small children. To this end, Disney has released its best known titles as many as three or even four times to date, usually with the initial release designed for general audiences, followed by a more sophisticated collector’s edition for enthusiasts, and then subsequent versions with modified extras to continually massage its forever renewable market. The best Disney collector’s editions exhibit an unabashed pride in the Disney legacy and make use of the company’s comprehensive archive not just to present a historical portrait of a film’s creation, but to explore the dynamics of that creation. From Snow White to the Pixar films, the sets have combined interviews with artists past and present, explored the inspirations for both designs and narrative, and have offered related works that allow the viewer to better understand the significance and uniqueness of the central program. Like Warner’s Looney Tunes collections, Disney’s boxed sets of classic cartoon shorts have included extensive background and archival materials, and pristine transfers. Yet, even within this context,Fantasia Anthology stands out for the comprehensive scope of its historical supplement, for the aural and visual impact of its central programs (both the original Fantasia, and Fantasia 2000), and for an effort so reverential that animation originally conceived and then dropped from the films has been expressly completed for the DVD.

6. Ford at Fox (Fox). Whenever an outsized collection of less-than-blockbuster films is issued in a pricey DVD set, it is dogged by derisive remarks about ‘ego trips’ and unjustified expenses, but for a true movie fan, such collections are a godsend, the very best of which replicate what was once accessible only to a few hardy souls-the ‘museum retrospective.’ Warner’s Oliver Stone Collection, when it first came out, included supplementary features and expanded versions of films that were not available as single DVDs, all with fresh commentaries by Stone. Taken individually, they might not even be that interesting-who wants to sit through Nixon to begin with, let alone a longer version of it?-but given the opportunity to access so many works by one artist that are presented with the intention of being viewed in tandem, and especially with that artist’s own reflection upon his work so readily at hand, turns the whole into a sum much greater and more rewarding than its parts. For Fox’s gargantuan set, representing about half of the movies John Ford made at Fox, the collection reissues excellent special editions of great classics (Grapes of Wrath, Criterion’s Young Mr. Lincoln), presents forthright editions of classics for the first time (The Iron Horse, The Prisoner of Shark Island), unveils largely forgotten gems (Seas Beneath, Pilgrimage) and demonstrates that even Ford’s most rote, studio assignments (Wee Willie Winkie, Judge Priest) contain invaluable moments of cinematic brilliance that might easily be passed by if they were not thusly anthologized. As much as Fox is offering up some great entertainment with the set, it is, even more so, planting a flag on the shores of film history for the utilization of the DVD as a primary tool in the exploration and understanding of cinema.

7. King Kong (Warner). It took Warner a long time to get around to releasing a movie that ought to have been included with its first sloppy batch of introductory titles, but at least when they did finally put the classic 1933 feature out, they did so in smashing style. Not only was the transfer pristine and the historical supplement exhaustive, but they even allowed Peter Jackson the ultimate fan indulgence of attempting to replicate the infamous ‘spiders in the canyon’ sequence, in black-and-white, so it can be optionally inserted in the running of the film. Not every classic movie needs this kind of treatment-Warner has done a lovely if more traditional job putting out extensive collector’s editions of The Maltese Falcon, Casablanca, The Wizard of Oz, The Jazz Singer, 2001: A Space Odyssey, Gone with the Wind and many, many other great films in its library-but the King Kong DVD contemporizes the film’s popularity without spoiling its legacy, and preserves its joys for fresh generations of fans.

8. Firefly The Complete Series (Fox). Fox has demonstrated an uncanny ability to utilize DVDs in the resuscitation of supposedly dead television programs. The popularity of its Family Guy sets was the primary inspiration for the animated series’ belated renewal. While Futurama has not been quite that lucky, its success on DVD has facilitated new direct-to-DVD episodes. ForJoss Whedon’s short-lived sci-fi action series, Firefly, the DVD set was a revelation, presenting the episodes for the first time in their proper order and unveiling several that did not achieve a broadcast before the series was misguidedly cancelled. Seen coherently, the show was both exciting and stimulating in the best tradition of science-fiction programs, and the popularity of its definitive DVD release inspired the production of the feature film,Serenity, which was itself issued as a reasonably enjoyable Collector’s Edition by Universal. By way of comparison, the normally resourceful Warner completely dropped the ball with the potentially awesome Birds of Prey, which will probably never make it to DVD.

9. The Complete Monterey Pop Festival (Criterion). DVDs are for more than just movies and TV shows. Music programs are ubiquitous and range from platters containing a single music video, sometimes glued to a CD on the flip side, to boxed sets of Richard Wagner’s Ring Cycle (you want some interesting dreams? Watch the entire Ring Cycle in a single day…). Operas have benefited greatly from DVDs, with excellent sound mixes, optional subtitling and the visual perfection of high definition image recording. Ballet, although much more beholden to the whims of camera angles and editing, has also benefited, particularly in superb artist-oriented collections such as Criterion’s Martha Graham Dance on Film.From pristine looking and sounding concerts to exhaustively researched ‘Review’ programs, rock music has been thoroughly represented on DVD, and while individual tastes will determine the appeal of most programs, productions such as TGA’s Rolling Stones Four Flicks are representative of the potential DVDs have for not only delivering incredible picture and sound, but supplying a fluid supplement of behind-the-scenes images and revelations. As for Criterion’s Monterey program, its heart is the classic D.A. Pennebaker documentary about the watershed 1967 music festival, but from there the collection expands to include extensive background information about the festival itself and exhaustive selections of unused footage, all transferred with exquisite care and a good deal of audio power.

10. The Up Series (First Run). Finally, while special effect action films greatly benefit from the quality of their audio and video transfers on DVD, and fictional films, classic or otherwise, are enhanced by well-made (or amusingly wrong-headed) supplements, no genre has benefited more from DVD design than the documentary. The reason for this is quite specific. The documentary is meant to teach, and the DVD supplement is meant to teach, so a documentary with a supplement is enhanced not doubly but exponentially in its educational rewards. From the Ken Burns and David Attenborough epics to small or challenging works like BBC Home Video’s Into the Arms of Strangers or HBO’sCapturing the Friedmans, DVD supplements greatly enhance and sometimes even alter a viewer’s understanding of the material presented in the original program. It should also be noted that extensive sets of classic championship sports competitions, also accompanied by extensive supplements, are beginning to proliferate. Yet there is one documentary DVD set that is as unique as it is rewarding. Michael Apted’s monumental lifework, revisiting and re-interviewing individuals every seven years for nearly five decades, The Up Series, enables the viewer to see each iteration of the project in its entirety and also hear Apted’s insightful commentary on the 42 Upfilm, in which he discusses the challenges the project has presented and goes over the backgrounds of the individuals in ways that the films cannot.
January 9, 2008

– by Douglas Pratt

Douglas Pratt’s DVD-Laser Disc Newsletter is published monthly.
For a free sample, call (516)594-9304 or go to his website at www.DVDLaser.com