DVD Releases: September 14, 2005


Who's Who In The Galaxy Zaphod's Campaign Video Sing Along WIth The Dolphins	The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy Domestic Boxoffice Gross - $50.1 million It took 20 years for a film adaptation of Douglas Adams' amazingly successful sci-fi comedy franchise, The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy, to reach multiplexes. In the meantime, diehard fans made do with a radio play, TV series, record album, computer game, novel, comic book, stage show and, yes, commemorative towel. Garth Jennings' film borrowed from three drafts of a screenplay and detailed notes by Adams, who died in 2001. Even so, newcomers could be forgiven if they found it pointless and exceedingly silly. Critics familiar with the source material, however, were more charitable in their opinions. The DVD comes with commentary, deleted scenes (real and fake), a making-of featurette, a sing-along and set-top game, Marvin's Hangman. The uninitiated, though, best to start with the book. -- Gary Dretzka In the beginning the universe was created. This made a lot of people angry and has widely been considered as a bad move.

	Ben Hur Let's see, now … 1907, 1925, 1959 … isn't it about time for a re-make of Ben-Hur? Mel Gibson could finance, produce, write, direct, distribute, star and shoe the horses in the epic, which could serve as a Latin/Aramaic prequel to The Passion of the Christ (the 1925 version of the epic was also known as, Ben-Hur: A Tale of the Christ). Maybe, the same huge audience that embraced Passion, but has since kept its distance from the multiplexes, would find its way back. Good idea? Maybe, maybe not (CGI lepers, anyone?). If anyone were to attempt a fourth version of the grandest of all sword-and-sandals movies, the blueprint already is laid out in Warner Home Video's similarly extravagant, Ben-Hur: Four-Disc Collector's Edition. Not only does it include commentary by Charlton Heston and film historian T. Gene Hatcher, but it also adds the restored 1925 silent version, with a stereophonic orchestral score composed by Carl Davis; the documentary, Ben-Hur: The Epic That Changed Cinema in which contemporary filmmakers reflect on the film's importance; the documentaries, Ben-Hur: The Making of an Epic and Ben-Hur: A Journey Through Pictures; a profile of director William Wyler; screen tests; highlights from the 1960 Academy Awards ceremony; and vintage newsreels. Not bad, for $40 (full retail price). -- Gary Dretzka

	Childstar After making the circuit of major and minor North American film festivals, Canadian auteur-in-the-making Don McKellar's Childstar finally has found a permanent home on DVD. Although the dramedy would have cost a whole lot more to market than it could possibly have made at the box-office, there's enough to admire in this movie-industry parable to warrant a blind date at the video store. Jennifer Jason Leigh plays the self-absorbed mother of a spoiled-rotten 12-year-old American actor, in Toronto to shoot an action movie in which the President's son saves the world from a terrorist threat. McKellar plays the struggling indie filmmaker recruited to ride herd on the little rascal, who falls in love with a prostitute (in Canada, who knew?) and runs away from the runaway production. Naturally, the wannabe director sees in his charge's antics an opportunity to make his bones as a filmmaker. The result is a funny-sad critique of our celebrity-obsessed culture and the harm done to children who display signs of exploitable talent at an early age. And, no, Childstar doesn't always deliver on this promising premise, but it features some very engaging dialogue and the actors command attention throughout its 98-minute length … which, lately, is no small accomplishment. . -- Gary Dretzka

The Dick Cavett Show: Ray Charles Collection Once upon a time, late-night talk shows were distinguished by intelligent conversation and guests who weren't there merely to plug a new movie, record or TV show. Between 1969 and 1974, Dick Cavett's show was popular with audiences who appreciated his keen wit and willingness to take chances on guests viewed as too hip, loud, left-of-center or cerebral for the mainstream gabfests. He also allowed his guests more air-time to get their points across and perform. The Dick Cavett Show: Ray Charles Collection is a perfect reminder of that relatively brief period in late-night history, when viewers really had a choice and show-runners weren't adjuncts of a studio's publicity department. Instead of limiting a giant like Charles five minutes on the couch and a song, Cavett rolled out the red carpet, even opening up an entire show to the Genius. This two-disc set contains extended interviews, 14 songs and other segments from the shows. Look for a similar package on John Lennon and Yoko Ono, later this fall. -- Gary Dretzka

The Committee Despite the casting of Paul Jones (a.k.a., Manfred Mann) in a central role, a musical performance by the Crazy World of Arthur Brown and a free-form soundtrack by Pink Floyd, The Committee remains a relic of British psychedelia too obscure even to have attained cult status … let alone, a regular home on the midnight-movie circuit. This probably had more to do with a grisly beheading (a Mercedes hood is used as a guillotine) and similarly disgusting re-heading, both of which occur in the film's first 10 minutes, than any of the existential mumbo-jumbo that followed. The pop sociology at the heart of writer-producer Max Steuer's 55-minute exercise in paranoid scholarship -- the world is ruled by committees, whose members are enemies of freedom and individuality -- is almost embarrassingly trite. And, yet, The Committee remains oddly compelling. More than any of Steur's ideas about contemporary alienation, the sustaining interest here derives from the music. The MVD release includes a CD, with Jones singing the theme song and other music from Homemade Orchestra. From here, director Peter Sykes would go on to helm To the Devil a Daughter, and, when he wasn't teaching at the London School of Economics, Steuer would set several world records as a hot-air balloonist. No kidding. -- Gary Dretzka

Milwaukee, Minnesota Some prejudices and stereotypes cut so deep, it's impossible to find anything in their venomous by-products of value. Yes, I'm talking here about the ugly misrepresentations of life in the northern tier of America's great Midwest. Like the Coen Brothers' Fargo, which some bigots mistook for a documentary, Allan Mindel's Milwaukee, Minnesota attempts to feed the passions of anti-cheesehead zealots, in the guise of entertainment. The practically-straight-to-DVD drama stars up-and-coming heartthrob Troy Garity (son of Jane Fonda and Tom Hayden, a Michigander before he went Hollywood) as Arthur Burroughs, an idiot savant whose genius is revealed in his ability to locate and catch trophy fish. When the young man's overly protective mother is killed in a mysterious hit-and-run accident, a pair of scam artists attempt to fill the void in his life. Is the lad capable of defending himself against such diabolical fiends? Do wild bears fart in a forest? Milwaukee, Minnesota is in the tradition of What's Eating Gilbert Grape and Rain Man, so one can expect the intellectually challenged angler to put up a better fight than most of the fish he lands. If those inspirational dramas float your boat, there's a good chance you'll find something to like here. Remember, though, not everyone in Wisconsin enjoys cutting holes through the surface of icy lakes, for the sole purpose of examining their soles … er, souls. And, contrary to the dialogue in Fargo and American Movie, some Midwesterners actually can construct sentences that don't end in, yah, suuure, OK, 'den and fuckin' 'ey. Some can even write tongue-in-cheek critiques of movies that are set and shot in their home state … yuh, know.. -- Gary Dretzka

EXPO: Magic of the White City In the nearly two hours it takes for EXPO: Magic of the White City to un-spool, viewers are asked to digest a lot of information about an event that occurred more than 110 years ago, and didn't require a war to resolve. It would be difficult to imagine anyone being sufficiently interested in any fair -- including one that introduced the world to Cracker Jack, chile con carne and the Ferris Wheel -- if weren't for the stunning success of Erik Larson's novel "The Devil in the White City," for which this exhaustively researched documentary could serve as a teaching aide. Gene Wilder puts a familiar voice to the avalanche of information, which adds historical context and other local color through visualizations and archival material. The documentary was filmed in hi-def, which gives it a crisp look, but the industry may take until the next Columbian Exposition to agree on a single format for the presentation of HD discs. -- Gary Dretzka

The Cutting Edge: The Magic of Movie Editing Not long ago, the Academy of Television Arts & Sciences Foundation released Journeys Below the Line: The Editing Process of '24,' as an educational tool, designed to shed light on the various craft and technical jobs essential to the television industry. In the same spirit comes Mark Jonathan Harris and Wendy Apple's documentary, The Cutting Edge: The Magic of Movie Editing, which takes a more historical look at the craft and includes conversations with such stellar practitioners as Walter Murch, Zach Staenberg, Thelma Schoonmaker, Dede Allen and a who's who of contemporary directors. Any student of the cinema can benefit from the knowledge imparted in this film, but diehard fans of Bullitt are warned that the same disc already is contained in the two-disc Special Edition of the Steve McQueen classic. . -- Gary Dretzka

Playboy's Totally Busted 2 Notable among the latest batch of DVDs from Playboy/Image is Playboy's Totally Busted 2, a naughty-nudie version of MTV's Punk'd, Oxygen's Girls Behaving Badly and, of course, the great-grandpa of all reality-based shows, Candid Camera. As in Volume 1, the Playboy Channel show's hidden cameras were focused on a bunch of poor schlubs who don't quite know what to do when confronted with the DD's of Mary Carey and the Dirty Trick Squad, not to mention the increasingly perverse antics of Jackass refugee, Steve-O. It's funny, in a sophomoric sort of way, but I don't understand why the producers felt compelled to leave in -- or add -- the pixelated blurs intended to cover parts of the body that most computer-adept Americans can see for free on the Internet. Also new are the strip-club tease-a-thon, Playboy: Queen of Clubs and couples-friendly, Secrets of Euromassage and Ultimate Sensual Massage. As guilty pleasures go, you can do a lot worse than Girls of McDonald's, a video pictorial that attempts to refute everything you thought you knew about the effects of French fries on teenage skin. -- 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