DVD Releases: May 26, 2005


"Sometimes I truly fear that I... am losing my mind. And if I did it... it would be like flying blind."	The Aviator Worldwide Gross - $174 million Not that it matters much in hindsight, but Martin Scorsese's epic biography of Howard Hughes, The Aviator, almost certainly was runner-up to Clint Eastwood's Million-Dollar Baby in this year's Best Picture derby. The Aviator is a wonderfully made and often quite spectacular movie, but its fixation on Hughes' battle with obsessive-compulsive disorder ultimately wore extremely thin. Even so, the nearly three-hour-long film contained much that was admirable, including Scorsese's loving re-creation of the dogfight in Hughes' Hell's Angels, Alda Alda's scary portrayal of the unscrupulous Sen. Ralph Owen Brewster and Cate Blanchett's prize-winning impersonation of Katharine Hepburn. Besides Scorsese's commentary, the first disc is enhanced by the observations of editor Thelma Schoonmaker and producer Michael Mann. The bonus material on the second disc ranges from mundane (a generic 11-minute making-of featurette) to enlightening. The best involve the creation of visual effects, production design, costumes, hair and makeup and Howard Shore's score. Additionally, there's a 43-minute History Channel documentary on Hughes, and a panel discussion with Leonardo DiCaprio, Martin Scorsese and Terry Moore, the billionaire's widow. -- Gary Dretzka The Hot Button: The Aviator is no disaster. It has a few of the best flying sequences ever put on film. DiCaprio, with his clipped Texas accent and baby face, gives a tremendous performance covering a wide range of emotions. Ian Holm and Alan Alda are good for some laughs. And to see a director of Scorsese's skills working against his natural tendencies behind the camera is fascinating. On the other hand… Wide Angle: With The Aviator, his extremely entertaining bio-picture about the young Howard Hughes, Martin Scorsese emerges as a frontrunner in this year's Oscar race. Aviator raises a number of interesting questions regarding Scorsese's Oscar prospects. Will Scorsese win the Oscar at his fifth nomination? And how high will Aviator fly with the Academy voters? First film by director Martin Scorcese to gross over $100 million in the U.S.


	Are We There Yet? US/Canada Gross - $82.3 million There's something terribly disconcerting about seeing Ice Cube playing a beleaguered father figure in the PG-rated comedy, Are We There Yet? As a member of N.W.A. and in his solo albums, Cube scared the crap out of mainstream America, and his street-cred served him well as a featured player in various life-in-the-'hood and hyper-violent action flicks. Non-stereotypical roles in the Friday and Barbershop movies helped set the table for this portrayal of a guy who owns a sports-memorabilia store, and has been entrusted by his girlfriend (Nia Long) with the care and feeding of her mischievous kids on a road-trip from Oregon to Vancouver. It's all very silly, even by the standards of previous Hollywood bratty-kid comedies. Only pre-teens and their parents are likely to fully appreciate the spongy sentiment, goofy horseplay and abundant scatological humor in the writing and direction of Are We There Yet? Cube's fine, though. Reflecting back on his days as a bad-ass rapper made we wonder would have happened if Jimi Hendrix and Janis Joplin had managed to stay alive for a few more years. Wouldn't they have been terrific as the parents in a rock 'n' roll remake of The Brady Bunch? -- Gary Dretzka

	Have Gun - Will Travel For the still immensely entertaining '50s western series, Have Gun - Will Travel, the classically trained Richard Boone created one of the most memorable characters in television history. Paladin not only was an ethically minded gun-for-hire, but he may have been television's first true renaissance man (has there been another?). After the Civil War, the West Point Graduate moved to the Hotel Carlton, in pre-quake San Francisco, where he enjoyed the opera, classical literature, fine liquors and cigars, and pored through out-of-town newspapers for paying gigs. Although he preferred to reason with the bad guys he was hired to track down and kill, if necessary, this knight without armor in a savage land. was as quick with his six-shooter and derringer, as he was with a bon mot from Shakespeare or Milton. The CBS series was distinguished by some of the finest writing and direction in the genre, thanks to such contributors as Andrew V. McLaglen, Lamont Johnson, Gene Roddenberry, Irving Wallace, Bruce Geller, Lewis Milestone, Sam Peckinpah and Ida Lupino, the first woman to direct for a TV Western series. My favorite episode, The Ballad of Oscar Wilde, is included in this six-disc collection of episodes from season two. Long held out of syndication, Have Gun - Will Travel looks as fresh in this DVD edition as it did 40-some years ago, and it's every bit as much fun to watch Needless to say, the Golden Age of TV Westerns is long past, and mourned primarily by people old enough to remember when Pernell Roberts was still a member of the Cartwright clan. If it wasn't for the various Turner outlets -- and HBO's great Deadwood -- the small-screen western would be history. Warner Home Video has just released several such feature-length titles, Last Stand at Saber River, The Desperate Trail, Purgatory and Conagher. Tom Selleck and Sam Elliot, both of whom were born to play western heroes, are well represented in adaptations of stories by Louis L'Amour and Elmore Leonard. -- Gary Dretzka I don't think you got a very good look at this gun while you had it. The balance is perfect. This trigger responds to a pressure of one ounce. If you look carefully in the barrel you'll see the lines of the rifling. It's a rarity in a hand weapon. This gun was handcrafted to my specifications and I rarely draw it unless I mean to use it. Would you care for a demonstration?



The TV Releases The Job: The Complete Series NewsRadio: The Complete First & Second Seasons Fat Actress The best new TV-to-DVD title to arrive this week is The Job: The Complete Series, an unconventional comedy that lasted 19 episodes before being dumped by ABC. In it, Denis Leary played an acerbic New York City police officer, who was to the traditional TV cop what Fox's Gregory House is to TV doctors … cynical, bitter, a pill-popper and extremely good at his job. Imagine Barney Miller on crystal meth, and you'll have some idea of what made The Job so appealing to too-small a percentage of the mainstream viewing audience. It almost certainly would have done better on FX or premium cable, but the show's producers were hoodwinked by network executives who pretended to want edgy material. Several years later, Leary would tweak the character a bit, by turning him into a post-9/11 firefighter, and hand him over to FX for Rescue Me. The first season of the increasingly popular hour-long drama, which is being released on DVD on June 7, was hailed by critics desperately searching for something fresh and interesting, and embraced by viewers who weren't intimated by adult language, overt sexuality and situations. The new season will debut on June 21. -- Gary Dretzka Also new to DVD is NewsRadio: The Complete First & Second Seasons, an ensemble sitcom that schedulers at NBC treated as if it were a hot potato. During its five-season tenure, NewsRadio filled a dozen different timeslots, which meant the show's loyal fans could never be sure when and if the series was being shown, from one week to the next. The absence of a high-profile star -- SNL veteran, Phil Hartman, filled a key subordinate role before his untimely death -- probably didn't help the fight to lock in an audience. Nonetheless, the cast was excellent. Besides Hartman, the players included Maura Tierney, Dave Foley, Stephen Root, Joe Rogan, Khandi Alexander, Vicki Lewis and, God help us, Andy Dick. -- Gary Dretzka Some critics described Fat Actress as Showtime's answer to HBO's Curb Your Enthusiasm, with cranky, self-centered Kirstie Alley in the role of cranky, self-centered Larry David. Both featured the real-life adventures of their semi-fictional, semi-celebrity stars, as they made their way around Hollywood on a daily basis. Unlike David's David, who could live comfortably for the rest of his life on Seinfeld residuals, Alley's Alley is in desperate need of a new job and an effective weight-loss program. As such, it was kind of a bold move for Alley to take such a self-deprecating role, especially at a time when the tabloid reporters were dining out on her inability to get back into playing shape. But, then, we've come to expect such juicy surprises from premium cable.-- Gary Dretzka

Playmate of the Year If there's anything to be learned from the 2005 edition of Playboy's annual Playmate of the Year DVD, it's that Tiffany Fallon puts her jeans on one leg at a time … just like everyone else. It's also possible, we're assured, for a country girl to share a mutual love for looking hot in stiletto heels and driving around the back roads of Tennessee in a pick-up truck. What differentiates the 2005 POTY DVD from Fallon's previous video shoot are the elaborate sets, a classier selection of under-britches and a whimsical homage to the pin-up girls of the '40s and '50s. Depending on the angle, Fallon comes off as a cross between Angelina Jolie and the puckish Sally Field of Stay Hungry, and she's a surprisingly animated conversationalist. But, I guess, that goes with the Playboy territory these days. After all, it's only a short step from the Mansion to a hosting gig on E! Entertainment. Typically, 2005 POTY arrives with plenty of extras, including videos of other of Playboy's nudie-cuties. Also available from Playboy/Image is a two-pack of soft-core features, Personals: College Girl Seeking and Personals 2: Casualsex.com, and another anthology, Sexiest Amateur Home Videos. These stand-alone titles tend to be a bit steamier than the average Playmate shoot-- Gary Dretzka

The Godfather Sequels There are endless permutations of The Godfather saga already available on video. (I know, because I own all of them.) Still, anyone who resisted paying $69.99 for the collected DVD edition, last year, may want to pick up either or both of the sequels for $20 each. Usually, the collection comes after the individual releases, but, and I'm only guessing here, Paramount probably feared some resistance on the part of consumers to paying full freight, just to get the decidedly inferior Godfather III. (I sometimes wonder how Coppola would respond if he was offered $150 million -- and lots of time -- to re-write, re-cast and re-shoot III.) Otherwise, nothing particularly new here, including the commentary by Francis Ford Coppola. -- Gary Dretzka

MCN's 2004 DVD Year In Review
Doug Pratt's Ten Best - Multiplatter And Single Platter
Digital Nation: Gary Dretzka's Best DVDs of the Year
Ray Pride's Five Best DVDs And Five Best Boxed Sets