The Wrap Up ...
The Kite Runner	Don't tell the producers of The Kite Runner that there's no such thing as bad publicity. Before the parents of three young Afghani actors began fearing for their sons' lives, based on reaction to a necessary portrayal of rape in the film, Marc Forster's adaptation of Khaled Hosseini's best-selling novel was a likely contender for awards consideration and it had a decent shot at success at theaters outside the arthouse circuit. An early rave by Roger Ebert, based on an opening-night screening at the Chicago Film Festival, assured that mainstream audiences and other critics couldn't ignore it. When things started to go sideways in early fall, however, Paramount Vantage was forced to postpone the film's release for six weeks, until the boys and their guardians could be relocated, and abandon plans for an extensive press campaign. Oscar voters will accept some challenges, but not if they thought bearded terrorists might have gotten their hands on Vantage's mailing list and followed the screeners to their doors. The very good news here is that The Kite Runner is an excellent movie, at once intensely powerful and profound, and worthy of great success in DVD. Yes, there's a rape scene, but it's surprisingly brief and not at all graphic. It does, however, serve as a catalyst for everything good and bad that follows in the movie and book. The circumstances surrounding the rape inform the many ordeals Afghanistan would experience in the wake of the Russian invasion and subsequent assaults on the people and culture by brutish soldiers and religious fanatics. It drove a wedge between best friends and devoted fathers, as well as providing an opportunity for redemption by the flawed protagonist. Like Amir, the aspiring writer in the movie, Hosseini would wend his way from Kabul to San Francisco. As an adult, he recalled an Afghanistan in which people from different tribal heritages, religious sects and economic classes co-existed in ways unimaginable today. The good times are symbolized by the kite-flying competitions, in which a pair of boys from diverse backgrounds could succeed against better-equipped youngsters, while the bad are telegraphed by the jealous reactions to their victories. Chinese locations stood in marvelously for pre- and post-invasion Kabul, and the ethnic smorgasbord of the Bay Area is also well represented. If The Kite Runner hadn't hit a brick wall at the box office, the DVD's bonus material might have been more substantial. As it is, though, the movie can stand on its own as a terrifically entertaining and deeply moving cinematic experience. -- Gary Dretzka
Dan in Real Life	In director Peter Hedges' group hug of a romantic comedy, Steve Carell plays an archetypal newspaper columnist, a widower, who, while dispensing advice to other parents, is having the devil's own time dealing with his own three daughters. Like too many movie journalists, Carell's Dan Burns doesn't spend a lot of time at a word processor or inside a newsroom. Here, it's no big deal. What's important is that Burns needs immediate help coping with his girls, which he gets on a family vacation at his parents' oceanside cabin in Rhode Island. It's also clear that it's time he got back into the dating game. In a nicely rendered meet-cute scene inside a local book store, Burns is smitten by a befuddled fellow shopper, Marie (Juliette Binoche), who confuses him with the proprietor. Of all the women in Rhode Island that day, who would be perfectly suited for the writer, Marie just happens to be dating Burns' younger brother, Mitch, played by high-octane comedian Dane Cook. They work hard to keep their friendship secret from Mitch, who probably wouldn't handle the revelation very maturely. Too bad, there isn't a moment that we actually believe Binoche and Cook have any real future together. Their chemistry is limited to that which binds middle-age women and their tennis instructors (or teenage boys and their friends' sexy moms). That glaring inconsistency aside, it's a pleasure to watch John Mahoney and Dianne Weist successfully maintain decorum long enough, at least, to ensure the right lovers find each other in the end. (Emily Blunt has a nice turn as an irresistible, if unlikely blind date for Burns). Hedges, whose previous directing credit is the indie fave Pieces of April, is most successful in keeping the necessary romantic sap from rising far enough to overwhelm the more sentimental moments, and, then, not giving in to the temptation to force more laughs out of Carell and Cook to attract young male viewers. There's nothing in the bonus features you wouldn't expect to find in an HBO making-of special, except for a backgrounder on the quirky musical soundtrack. -- Gary Dretzka
Enchanted	Even knowing that the ever-delightful Amy Adams plays the princess in Disney's fractured fairy tale, Enchanted, most grown-ups will have a difficult time getting beyond the DVD's cover art, which suggests this is a kids-only zone. They should get over it, and enjoy the ride. Adams' Princess Giselle lives in an idyllic animated kingdom very much like those found in the studio's most beloved stories. At a point in her life when she's most happy, however, Giselle's world is literally turned upside-down by an evil stepmother-to-be. After being unceremoniously pushed into a wishing well, the princess pops out of a manhole in the heart of a very real Manhattan, dodging live-action taxis and marveling at the neon lights of Times Square. At this point, most other princesses would panic. Giselle is able to maintain her bubbly demeanor amid the midtown madness, because she knows that her fiancé, Prince Edward (James Marsden), will soon arrive to rescue her. He does, but not before Giselle is given shelter by a McDreamy lawyer, Robert (Patrick Dempsey), and his daughter Morgan (Rachel Covey), who is something of a princess herself. In addition to being eternally optimistic, Giselle is terrifically resourceful. Denied the cartoon bluebirds, bunnies and handmaidens who normally would meet her every request, Giselle magically is able to recruit a small army of rats, cockroaches and pigeons to help her clean Robert's messy apartment and help her maintain her regal presence. If this charming sequence doesn't bring a smile to your face, call a doctor. Susan Sarandon portrays and voices the evil Queen Narissa, who follows her stepson to the Big Apple to prevent him from eloping with Giselle. Along with her inept henchman, Nathaniel (Timothy Spall), Narissa devises ever more devious ways to eliminate Giselle, including poison apples and fire-breathing dragons. I wouldn't be betraying any confidences by revealing, Everyone lived happily ever after, because that's how all Disney fairy tales end, and the real fun here comes in the journey to that point. Older viewers will enjoy picking out the many musical and visual references to Cinderella, Snow White, Sleeping Beauty, Beauty and the Beast, The Little Mermaid, Lady and the Tramp and other Disney touchstones. The extras include deleted scenes, bloopers, a pop-up game and making-of featurette. -- Gary Dretzka
Bee Movie	Jerry Seinfeld and DreamWorks' Bee Movie is enchanted, as well, but references to royalty are limited to comical jabs at an off-screen queen of the hive. Otherwise, the magic can be found in the ability of one non-conformist bee to re-write the book on millions of years of labor history, as it pertains to the production of honey. Rebel Barry B. Benson is voiced unmistakably by Seinfeld, whose Big Apple shtick is a perfect match for the bee's wiseguy posturing. Normally, Barry's buzzing and pollinating would be reserved for the clover fields of upstate New York. While on a flyover of Manhattan, however, Barry finds himself trapped in the apartment of yuppie couple, one of whom would happily crush him like the bug he is. Once his wife gets used to the novelty of a talking bee, she allows herself to be sweet-talked and charmed by the winged lothario. On a visit to a local market, Barry is horrified to discover that the fruits of a bee's labors aren't necessarily horded by the queen. Indeed, the honey is stolen from her combs by human keepers, who reap sweet profits from their hard work. Like an avian Karl Marx or Jimmy Hoffa, Barry and his new adult lady friend challenge the relationship between workers and management. Together, they map a legal strategy designed to liberate the drones from the shackles that bind them to their hive and queen. The courtroom scenes are very well done, but, like any over-anxious rookie at the negotiating table, Barry fails to see the forest for the trees. Kids might not sit still long enough to discover the moral of the story, but older viewers will find it worth the wait. It helps that the bright yellow palette is so visually stunning - and computer animation so sharp - owners of advanced home-theater systems will be tempted to don sunglasses to watch Bee Story. Apropos of the apian source material, a certain feeling of rapid, unfettered flight also is palpable. Kids will swarm to the treasure trove of bonus features, which include music videos, interactive games and making-of featurettes. Renee Zellweger, who portrays Barry's human sweetheart, is one of several easily identifiable voice actors in the cast, which includes Matthew Broderick, Patrick Warburton, John Goodman, Chris Rock, Kathy Bates, Oprah, Larry King and, yes, Sting. -- Gary Dretzka
August Rush	August Rush is yet another fairytale of New York, but one that owes as much to Charles Dickens as it does to any of its writers or director Kirsten Sheridan. In it, a musically gifted waif longs to find the birth parents he never knew, just as they dream separately of connecting with the child they had no reason to believe was alive. Evan Taylor (a.k.a., August Rush) was the product of a magical night of love enjoyed by handsome Irish guitarist and singer Louis Connelly (Jonathan Rhys Meyers) and the enchanting American cellist Lyla Novacek. An overprotective parent kept the cellist from any further collaboration with the rocker, and orphaned the baby before his daughter could get to know him. For all Lyla knew, Evan died as a consequence of the accident that left her in a comatose in a hospital. A decade passes and the boy remains a ward of the court. Mom and dad live in different parts of the country, and the evil grandfather is ready to kick the bucket. In his deathbed confession, Lyla is told that he kidnapped the child so she could concentrate on her music career. It explains the vacuum left in Lyla's heart, and a similar vague emptiness felt by Louis, who, by now, has abandoned his music career. Meanwhile, Evan (Freddie Highmore) has gotten it into his head that his parents are out there, somewhere, and his innate musicality will bring them together. After disappearing from the orphanage, he's rescued from a life on the streets by the Fagin-esgue Maxwell Wizard Wallace. As conjured by Robin Williams, Wizard is a cross between Bono and the Fantastic Mr. Fox. He quickly recognizes Tyler's gift and its financial value to his musically inclined brood of street urchins. Paths eventually cross and re-cross, but a ghost in the music keeps all of their dreams alive. Unlike too many other such tear-jerkers, the final reunion - hey, it was inevitable - is heart-warming, more or less believable and artistically compelling. Sheridan, whose father is the Irish director, Jim Sheridan, made her feature debut seven years ago with the little seen teen drama Disco Pigs. It starred Elaine Cassidy and a then-unknown Cillian Murphy, and is well worth the effort to find. -- Gary Dretzka
Atonement	Literate romantic dramas, not unlike Atonement, once were a staple of Hollywood, and, by and large, they were pretty good. In those days, actors from across the pond would make the trek to Hollywood, in order to re-create scenarios inspired by the work of their fellow countrymen. If the studios couldn't find a mansion in Pasadena to pass for English Tudor, its artisans simply would build one on a soundstage. Nowadays, however, it makes far more artistic and financial sense to let the Brits do the hard work, on their turf, and simply distribute the finished product when it's completed. Come trophy season, the talent happily packs their bags for sunny L.A., where they'll be feted for their extraordinary skills and asked why their American peers no longer are getting the great parts. (They are, but not in studio-financed pictures.) Most years, Atonement might have walked away with the bulk of the trophies and statuettes, too. It was trumped by some terrific home-grown indies and actors from London, Scotland, France and Spain, who, for the most part, played Americans in them. Adapted from Ian McEwan's best-selling novel, Joe Wright's film describes just how much damage can be done by a blue-blooded 13-year-old, Briony, who allows her overly fertile imagination to fill in the blanks between fantasy and reality in a repressed sexual environment. The vindictive aspiring writer confused playful flirting between her older sister and the housekeeper's handsome son with lustful foreplay -- and a letter accidentally sent to her sister, with crude pornography -- while completely missing the real crime occurring right before her eyes. When combined with the dishonorable behavior of another upper-crusty student, Briony's inability to distinguish love from lust results in the false imprisonment of her sister's suitor. Pampered from Day One, Briony couldn't anticipate the harsh realities of prison life, or how classism would impact on the outcome of his trial. Nor, could she have foreseen what would happen to the wrongly convicted man when he was released from his cell and send to France as a soldier destined to meet his fate at Dunkirk. How could she? The tragedy is further compounded as years go by, of course, but there's no reason to spill the beans here. Everything in Atonement is first-rate, especially Wright's spectacular re-creation of the evacuation by sea. Splendid performances are turned in, as well, by Keira Knightley, as the cruelly victimized older sister; James McAvoy, as the man who's cheated of his youth and love; and newcomer Saoirse Ronan as the teenage Briony. Among the bonus features are deleted scenes, commentary by Wright and a pair of making-of featurettes. -- Gary Dretzka
I Am Legend Southland Tales Life After People: History Channel	Dozens of filmmakers have attempted to ascertain what a post- or near-apocalyptic landscape might resemble and consider what life forms might be capable of surviving such a calamity. Among the memorable titles to emerge from such head-scratching have been Stanley Kramer's On the Beach, the original Terminator, Robocop and Mad Max, Ridley Scott's Blade Runner, Steven Spielberg's Artificial Intelligence: AI and Minority Report, Nicholas Meyer's The Day After and CBS' Jericho, and the Twilight Zone episodes, Time Enough at Last and The Shelter. Too many zombie epics to mention also have found ways to visualize the unthinkable. Most owe a tip of the hat, at least, to Mary Shelley, Edgar Allen Poe, H.P. Lovecraft, Philip K. Dick, Rod Serling and Richard Matheson, whose 1954 work of speculative fiction, I Am Legend, has been adapted twice before as The Last Man on Earth (1964) and The Omega Man (1971). Will Smith and Francis Lawrence's adaptation of I Am Legend opens in an eerily lifeless Manhattan, devastated by a bio-chemical plague triggered three years earlier by a miracle cancer vaccine. Someone was asleep at the wheel of the FDA when that particular cure was approved, because it had the opposite effect. (At the time of his book's publication, Matheson might have been referencing the desperate hopes raised by Jonas Salk's new polio vaccine and debate over water fluoridation.) Smith plays Robert Neville, a military virologist who considered it his duty to stay behind after a mass quarantine was imposed on the island. The official abandonment, along with his determination to right a gigantic wrong, effectively turned Manhattan into something resembling a giant Petri dish. In his spare time, of which there is plenty, Neville hits golf balls off the deck of an abandoned aircraft carrier and tracks herds of deer with his constant companion, a German shepherd. At night, they navigate the city's deserted streets in an effort to capture a more-or-less-alive zombie/vampire, for use as a guinea pig. Even if he were to discover a cure, however, there's no reason to think more than a handful of humans would still be alive to benefit from it. So far, so good. Unfortunately, for those of us easily bored by close encounters with the undead, anyway, it isn't long before Neville's mission to discover a vaccine is superseded by a battle for survival against amped-up creatures of the night, and it sure ain't pretty … or terribly interesting. The arrival on the scene of another immune human being - a Brazilian hottie, natch -- not only suggests there may be more survivors but also a welcome alternative to the store mannequins with whom he's been conversing for the last three years. If I Am Legend had stuck to the core elements of Matheson's story, and reduced the hand-to-hand contact with the vampires, it might have achieved something more admirable than record a $77 million box-office haul over its opening weekend. Smith is extremely convincing as the Everyman hero who channels the loneliness of Burgess Meredith in Time Enough at Last, the humanity of Bob Marley, the dogged conviction of Professor Abraham van Helsing and survivor skills of Arnold Schwarzenegger. In addition to commentary, an animated short and making-of material, the entirety of the package's second disc is devoted to an alternate cut of the feature. People who go to the movies for reasons other than to watch monsters get annihilated by humans - and vice versa - likely will prefer it to the theatrical version. I did. One doesn't have to live in southern California, or be a tragically hip 21st Century boho, to enjoy Richard Kelly's completely off-the-wall Southland Tales, but, as they say, it helps. All one really needs is to be disgusted by the arrogance of the current Bush administration, a willingness to suspend disbelief for 145 minutes and an active appreciation of graphic novels. As the movie opens, we watch helpless as an outdoor birthday party in Anywhere USA is interrupted by a great flash of light and the horrendous specter of a mushroom cloud on the not-so-distant horizon. A disembodied voice informs us that, in fact, the blast triggered World War III, which, in turn, resulted in an ever-stricter enforcement of the Patriot Act, the return of of a conscripted military, a severe energy crisis, policed border crossings at state lines and an armed resistance movement, based at Venice Beach. At the same time, scientists work feverishly to produce alternatives to fossil fuel, and veterans of the war in Iraq are returning home with huge holes in their memory caches. Apparently, too, a popular star of action movies (Dwayne "The Rock" Johnson), who was feared kidnapped or dead, has re-surfaced in Venice with a porn star (Sarah Michell Gellar) on his arm and a screenplay in his back pocket. Kelly, who previously gave us the enigmatic Donny Darko and the screenplay to Domino, describes Southland Tales as a political satire about an alternate future. It's all that and a bag of radioactive popcorn … Marat/Sade as performed by the inmates of Saturday Night Live. The film was shown first at the 2005 Cannes festival, where it was greeted with outright hostility by audiences and apathy by potential distributors. It explains why the 2008 race for the White House, as depicted, feels dated. Kelly intended to parody extremists on the right and left, but, as we know, all the nuts on the conservative side today work for Rupert Murdoch - or a God who speaks to them directly at bedtime - and the left is represented by a few toothless '60s-era rads who deliver their sermons over the blogosphere. His portrayal of the media, as fear mongers and amoral clowns, still holds water. Beyond that, however, it's difficult to explain what exactly transpires during the course of the film, which is 15 minutes shorter than what was shown at Cannes. Kelly is said to be an admirer of Mad Max II, and it shows. It's likely he was influenced, as well, by David Lynch, the Coen Brothers and Terry Gilliam. The large, familiar ensemble cast includes Seann William Scott, Mandy Moore, Justin Timberlake, Nora Dunn, John Larroquette, Bai Ling, Jon Lovitz, Cheri Oteri, Amy Poehler, Miranda Richarson, Wallace Shawn and Zelda Rubenstein, the wee medium in Poltergeist. A quick survey of the making-of material adds greatly to an understanding, at least, of what Kelly had in mind. Remove Robert Neville and the vampires from I Am Legend and what you're left with is the History Channel's chilling, Life After People. The speculative documentary employs special visual effects, scientific testimony and informed conjecture to paint a picture of Earth in the wake of an apocalyptic accident or act of madness by someone with his or her finger on the nuclear trigger. And, yes, except for the anticipated flooding of subway tunnels, Manhattan does look very much like the one in Lawrence's movie. The spec-doc also visits non-CGI American ghost towns, the concrete skeleton of Chernobyl and the catacombs of New York. -- Gary Dretzka
Revolver Rockaway	One shouldn't have to re-watch the entirety of a movie - especially one purported to be a genre picture -- to make sense of it. Nor, should it be necessary to study the bonus material, as if it were a PhD dissertation. Guy Ritchie's truly smashing debut, Lock, Stock and Two Smoking Barrels, required little more than one good ear for British-gangland slang and a high tolerance for bloodshed. At first glance, Revolver would appear to offer more of the same high-octane fun. Instead, it's a slice of thug life that wants to be taken as seriously as any film by Alain Resnais or Michaelangelo Antonioni. Noble, but, given today's skittish audiences, not very practical. Jason Statham plays Jake Green, a conman seeking revenge on the crimelord, Macha (Ray Liotta), he holds responsible for his seven-year incarceration. The time in stir wasn't wasted, however, as he was housed between two older gents who taught him surefire ways to find an edge while gambling or playing chess. Upon his release, Green actually does win a fortune at the tables, but can't resist sticking it to his old boss. Macha is a sensitive type, who resents Green's ability to beat him at his own game in his casino. As punishment for being made to lose face, he orders his henchman to wipe out Green, once and for all. It's on his way to an ambush that a mysterious pair of loan sharks (Vincent Pastore, Andre Benjamin) introduces themselves to the gambler. Their ability to predict Green's future borders on the clairvoyant, and leads them into an uneasy - and largely incomprehensible - alliance. In exchange for Green's willingness to help drive Macha nuts, he is forced to turn over part of his fortune to them to use in their business. Ritchie compounds the intrigue by adding a gang of Asia drug dealers and an enigmatic financier: Mr. Gold. If, by this time, the names Gold and Green don't raise a red flag of symbolic noteworthiness, then the conversation Green enters into with his id, ego and super-ego isn't likely to make Revolver any more enjoyable an experience for you. Ritchie's commentary will help those who stay the distance to understand his ambitions, at least. Apart from all that, Revolver is charged with discernible Ritchie-esque electricity, and the picture looks quite splendid. Those qualities alone should help it eliminate the memory his and Madonna's horrific Swept Away. Lock, Stock and Two Smoking Barrels and Snatch didn't influence nearly as many aspiring filmmakers as Reservoir Dogs and Pulp Fiction, but, along with Tarantino, Ritchie opened doors previously closed to genre specialists and makeup-effects artists. Rockaway never will be confused with any of the aforementioned movies, but it is a direct descendent of Billy Jack, Walking Tall and Death Wish, and, as such, adds ever more creative ways to exact revenge on thugs and druglords. The primary difference here is the emphasis on Nuyorican environment, a Spanish-language hip-hop soundtrack and a dialogue track that caters both to Hispanics and Anglos. The protagonist is Trane (Nicholas Gonzalez), a decorated hero of the ongoing war against the Taliban who is allowed to return to Queens after the murder of his wife and child. Her crime apparently was standing up to the local heroin pushers and pimps, by snitching to the police about their activities. The hoodlums display their lack of patriotism by mocking Trane and the army's failure to capture Bin Laden. Undaunted, he takes it upon himself to eradicate his new enemy at its source. In the film's single original idea, Trane is pitted against Russian gangsters who, likewise, served in Afghanistan, and were similarly hardened by the experience. He knows that guns alone won't force the Russians to abandon the neighborhood, and the Latino thugs won't go as long as the Russians have their back. Instead, Trane's strategy is to trick each side into mistrusting the other, and waiting for opportunities to diminish their ranks one victim at a time. As outlandish as this strategy sounds, it adds the clever twist missing in most run-of-the-mill vigilante dramas. Meanwhile, such veteran Armies of One as Steven Seagal, Chuck Norris and John-Claude Van Damme keep kicking ass, even if their films now go straight-to-video. Seagal's latest efforts carry the inviting titles Pistol Whipped and Urban Justice. In the former, Seagal plays a former cop who finds himself in debt to the mob, while, in the latter, he takes on the gangster (Eddie Griffin) he holds responsible for the death of his policeman son. In The Shepherd: Border Patrol, Van Damme confronts rogue Special Forces operatives as they smuggle heroin and illegal immigrants across the Mexican border. In the last three years, Chuck Norris mostly has kept busy saving the world from Democrats, illegal immigrants and people who interpret the bible differently than he does. In his spare time, he also promotes the World Combat League, which he describes as the only full-contact, team-combat, martial-arts league in the country. The results can be found on World Combat League: Season One and WCL: Greatest Knockouts and Knockdowns. -- Gary Dretzka
Steep Extreme sports aren't for everyone. Some of us consider the adrenal rush associated with hurling one's self down a mountain or across a body of water at breakneck speeds to be a completely inadequate reason for risking life and limb. One need go no further than such cable shows as Maximum Exposure and Jackass to see what happens when one pushes gravity and centrifugal forces beyond their natural limits. And, yet, done right, testing limits is what humans have done since they learned to walk upright. In many cases, the exhilaration felt by daredevil athletes translates directly into exciting viewing experiences for more timid souls. As captured by the hi-def cameras of Steep writer-director Mark Obenhaus - and, for nearly 60 years, the lenses of Warren Miller - it's also possible to find the art in the madness of balls-out snow skiing. As it so often happens in skiing and surfing, the natural majesty of the setting serves as the perfect complement to the courage of the athletes. When the delicate balance between risk and reward is disturbed, however, natural beauty can turn ugly in a split second. Steep traces the evolution of extreme skiing from Bill Briggs' conquering of Grand Teton, in 1971, to the probing of the borders of sanity in Chamonix, to Alaskan peaks so formidable and remote that helicopters are used to shuttle in skiers and, finally, to the north face of the Icelandic frontier. At each stop, Obenhaus is required to employ extreme engineering techniques to fully capture the drama and, yes, extremity of the sport. Into these crystal-clear images, he splices the archival footage, home movies and interviews with such big-mountain pioneers as Ingrid Backstrom, who broke the sport's gender barrier; Mohawk-coiffed bad boy, Glen Plake; high-flier Seth Morrison; Mont Blanc conqueror, Stefano De Benedetti; and the late Doug Coombs, who was killed in a skiing accident a few days after his interview was recorded. Anyone who's watched a few docs on extreme surfing, skateboarding, moto-crossing, skateboarding and off-roading will know not to expect much in the way of profound philosophical observations from the thrill-seekers here. Simply put, they stand up to nature and the laws of physics because they can. Not all of the athletes are in the possession of the Right Stuff, as Tom Wolfe ascribed to the Mercury astronauts. Indeed, many are knuckleheads with nothing better to do with their time, and they were born with an ability to keep vertical when others are laid horizontal or upside-down. It's only in the last-quarter century that any radical skier has made money from endorsements, prize money and video sales, and it's more likely a snowboarder will become a millionaire before someone who discovers the route to the world's best powder. Steep provides as good a reason as any to consider buying a Blu-ray machine. In hi-def the downhill heroics and high-altitude scenery are even more breathtaking. -- Gary Dretzka
The Dragon Painter Once again, Milestone Films is to be congratulated - and thanked, profusely -- for resurrecting a movie from the silent era that long ago was given up for lost. Made in 1919, The Dragon Painter was a product of Sessue Hayakawa's Haworth Pictures, a company formed, in large part, so Asian-American actors occasionally could play characters that weren't completely stereotypical or downright odious. Hayakawa and his wife, Tsuru Aoki, were among the most popular of all actors of the period, and here they play the hermitic painter, Tatsu, and the lovely Ume Ko, who is the spitting image of the princess/fiancée/ muse he believes was captured by a dragon. As luck would have it, a team of surveyors is working in the vicinity of the talented artist's mountain hideaway (the Yosemite Valley does a fine job standing in for a Japanese forest). Summoned to the home of famed artist, Kano Indara, Tatsu agrees to become the master's protégée and artistic heir, but only if his daughter, Ume Ko, will marry him. Ironically, marital bliss rids Tatsu of any desire to draw beautiful pictures. Ume Ko blames herself for her husband's lack of creativity, and elects to do the only honorable thing available to her. Or, does she? It's a beautiful story, made even more entertaining by the splendid restoration performed by George Eastman House. Also included in the set is a restored edition of Thomas Ince's The Wrath of the Gods (1914), starring Hayakawa and Aoki; How to Build Your Own Volcano, by Jack Theakston; the 1921 Screen Snapshots, with Hayakawa, Roscoe Fatty Arbuckle and Charles Murray; and the novel, The Dragon Painter, by Mary McNeil Fenollosa, in PDF format. -- Gary Dretzka
Don't Forget the MotorCity Richard Kern: Extra Action and Extra Hardcore Captive Files I Paradise Operation Pussycat MVD Visual strikes again. It would be difficult to find a more eclectic menu of titles than the one created by the company that no longer limits itself to music videos and concert footage. Leading off the list is a three-disc collection of videos from artists who helped make Detroit the capital of R&B and soul music in the late '50s and '60s. Memphis and New Orleans could make the same claim, of course, the native talent had to work harder to find crossover appeal, and they couldn't match the impact Motown artists had on fashion, dance and the '60s zeitgeist. In addition to such usual suspects as the Miracles, Supremes, Mary Wells, Martha and the Vandellas and the Marvelettes, the set's 100 videos feature the talents of the Velvelettes, Billy Preston, Syreeta, Edwin Starr, the Contours, Marvellous Marv Johnson, Kim Weston, Chuck Jackson, the Elgins, Johnny Bristol and Brenda Holloway. As was the case with most pre-MTV videos, these specimens represent in-performance and lip-synched footage, and, perhaps, some primitive visual effects. It wasn't until the mid-'80s that the music in music videos became subservient to the visuals. This is terrific stuff, so find your parents' or grandparents' vintage bell-bottoms and get ready to dance. Supreme Court Justice Potter Stewart famously said that, while he couldn't define obscenity or what constitutes hard-core pornography, he knew it when he saw it. While most of us in the movie-reviewing business - or is it a charity? - would probably admit to the same rhetorical dilemma, we constantly draw lines in the sand … or have them drawn for us by our readers and editors. It explains why so little adult material, straight and gay, gets reviewed in the mainstream and alternative media, no matter the artistic intent of the director and performers. The work of photographer and filmmaker Richard Kern provides a perfect example. Most of the material in Extra Action and Extra Hardcore, if packaged frame-by-frame format between hard covers, wouldn't be considered out of place in the photography section of many mainstream book stores. In DVD form, however, it would be difficult to find outside the adult sections of most video stores. Even then, the material wouldn't be sufficiently gonzo to justify stocking it. The young women aren't doing much more than putting on and taking off their britches, according to the whims of the photographer, and what sex there is wouldn't shock anyone familiar with the Kama Sutra or The Joy of Sex. Kern's ability to pose his glammed-down models in ways that are intrinsically voyeuristic - or in apparel many viewers wouldn't consider to be particularly fetishistic - is provocative without being dirty, and both photographer and model clearly seem to be enjoying themselves. As well, the soundtrack is comprised of free-form guitar solos by Sonic Youth's Thurston Moore, not the cheeseball music available in bulk form from software catalogues. So, what's a critic to do? In this case, I'll accept it as art, alert those who might be offended by the content, and hope admirers of Kern's work find the DVD. That's all. The set also includes several shorts whose content is more thematic. There's quite a bit of sex in the Japanese psycho-thriller Captive Files I, and most of it could hardly be described as consensual. In it, a postal worker becomes enamored with a young woman he encounters along his route. Instead of asking her out on a date, he kidnaps her and turns her into his personal pet. The small and seemingly fragile captive has few options but to make the best of a very bad situation and plot her escape in silence. Her abductor isn't overtly creepy or sadistic, and she's kept clean and well fed. One day, she finds a book that describes Stockholm Syndrome, and her attitude toward the man changes into something that resembles the condition. It could even be construed as love. Her willingness to play her captor's game, making him believe he's won her heart, is as a fascinating as it is perplexing. Our patience is rewarded with a second half that is as complex and rewarding as the first half was brutish and discomfiting to watch. Also from Japan comes the twisted psycho-sexual drama, Paradise, which resembles both the non-Madonna version of Swept Away and Robinson Crusoe. After spending an awkward afternoon campaigning for political office in her hometown - a fishing village in southern Japan -- a well-known TV anchorwoman finds herself stranded on a remote island with an angry young fisherman and a sex-starved Chinese oddball. The struggle for survival and domination evolves in ways that are impossible to predict, and, again, we're left to ponder the nature of sexual relations under pressure. Operation Pussycat, on the other hand, is one of those truly nutso girl-gang movies that escape from Japan every once and while, and get championed by people like Quentin Tarantino. Even with subtitles, it would be difficult to explain the motivations of the three juvenile-delinquent chickies, who endeavor to rob a local millionaire and kill a girl he treats like a slave. While it is bloody and not particularly well made, it's fun to watch …in a sick sort of way. Operation Pussycat would make a great background video for drunken '60s party. Also from MVD: Cantankerous Titles & Obscure Ephemera, Vol. 1, is a collection of short docs by Joe Biel about bikes, trains, dogs, patches and the board game RISK; $100 and a T-Shirt examines of the quirky zine movement in the Pacific Northwest; and Homeland Insecurity is comprised of three experimental documentaries by Bill Brown, including one describing politics, culture and paranoia along the U.S.-Mexico border. -- Gary Dretzka
The Love Boat: Season One, Vol. 1 Love American Style: Season 1, Vol. 2 The Mod Squad: Season 1, Volume 2 The Untouchables: Season Two, Vol. 1 Greek: Chapter One Archie's Funhouse: Complete Series Sam & Max Freelance Police: The Complete Series Lil' Bush: Resident of United States: Season One Human Giant: The Complete First Season Five Days Slowly, but surely, ABC's entire prime-time lineup of the late '60s and '70s is finding its way to DVD. This will come as welcome news to those viewers who demanded happy endings to even the most unlikely of romantic scenarios, as well as cops and criminals unrecognizable in real life. Such iconic Aaron Spelling series as The Mod Squad, The Love Boat and Love American Style - prominent among this month's new TV-to-DVD releases - demanded the attention of audiences exhausted by coverage of the Vietnam War, drugs, staggering inflation and the liberal moralizing of Norman Lear (God bless him, anyway) on CBS stations. Other silly-sexy shows, like Fantasy Island, the jiggly Charlie's Angels and Three's Company, Starsky and Hutch, Baretta, Hart to Hart and all the various Happy Days spinoffs offered escapist fun for teens and blue-collar America. If CBS was the Tiffany Network, ABC was Kmart. NBC had the Peacock, PBS had Big Bird and ABC had the Fonz. While critics disparaged the content of its prime-time lineup, ABC forever changed the way everyone would cover sports and news. And, of course, the ratings proved the network programmers right. The Love Boat and Love American Style re-imagined the anthology concept, adding comedy and romance to what previously was a vehicle for drama or sci-fi. The workplace formula was stretched to fit cruise ships, Club Med-style resorts and the assignments given undercover cops and sexy PIs. The family expanded to include two girls and a guy, and extended clans of high school students and factory workers. The cops often looked like criminals, and fathers rarely knew best. Fantasy Island, The Love Boat had a handful of familiar resident characters, but the stories didn't necessarily revolve around them. Indeed, Love American Style could have an entirely different cast each week, and some episodes doubled as pilots for later projects. Like the latest Untouchables package, it's great to have them around on DVD. Less terrific, though, is having to swallow them in half-season bites. It shows a lack of respect for consumers, and pisses off loyal fans. Disney/ABC attempted to steal a chapter from MTV's book with Greek, a mostly comic series about contemporary college life that was shared by the ABC Family and ABC networks. The central gimmick involves a brother and a sister, both of whom are enrolled at Cyprus-Rhodes University. One is a freshman geek, while the other is a sorority princess. Whenever their paths cross on campus, something goofy or traumatic tends to happen. Theoretically, CRU is the kind of place to which the bright and peppy kids from Disney's High School Musical would matriculate if they didn't go straight to Broadway or Hollywood. Chapter Two begins next week. In the early '70s, Archie's Funhouse followed The Archie Show, which animated the long popular teen comic-book series and such archetypal characters as Archie Andrews, Reggie Mantle, Forsythe Jughead Pendleton Jones III, Betty Cooper, and Veronica Lodge. This version added a variety-show element, with Laugh-In inspired bits thrown in for good measure. The bubble-gummy music founds its way to the Top 40 charts, as well. Sam & Max is another one of those late-night animated comedies that delight in thumbing their noses at genre conventions, and find inordinate success among less socially resourceful types. All are clever, but few can be described in one or two quick sentences. Here, the Freelance Police are represented by a 6-foot-tall canine Columbo and an exceedingly strange rabbit half his size. They take the assignments deemed too weird for by-the-book police work, and are assisted by a teen genius who lives in their Sub-Basement of Solitude. Lil' Bush takes a satirical look at President Bush and administration insiders, all depicted as kids. It's not the first time a show ridiculing the sitting President, whose cartoonish approach to the world's most important job is funny only when one doesn't think about it much. Human Giant, like The Whitest Kids U Know, is a sketch-comedy show for audiences of the Internet age. Loud, unsubtle and targeted at MTV viewers with twitchy trigger fingers on the remote controls, the troupe makes an interesting contrast to the more cerebral and polished humor of their forebears in Second City and the Groundlings. The gang consists of Aziz Ansari, Paul Scheer, Rob Huebel, and Jason Woliner. The HBO miniseries, Five Days, chronicles the search for a missing mother and the subsequent disappearance of her children, after a brief stop on a British highway. The original production aired on the BBC. The American pick-up added some tinkering for Yank sensibilities. Among the returning TV-to-DVD sets are South Park: Imaginationland, which packages a three-episode arc from last season; Flight 29 Down: Hotel Tango: Series Finale, wraps up Discovery Kids that walks, talks and quakes like ABC's Lost; the gapping jaws of a shark pretty much wrap up the appeal of Animal Planet's Most Extreme; The Wild Wild West enters its fourth season, while Wings embarks on its sixth. Acorn Media has stayed busy introducing - and, in some cases, re-introducing - classic series from the BBC and other British and Irish networks. Americans might recall Tony Robinson as Baldrick in Blackadder. In his one-man show Cunning Night Out, he uses the character as an entry point for a discussion of his own life and its role in world history. The World War II drama Housewife, 49 was based on diary excerpts by Lancashire housewife Nella Last, and descriptions of everyday life on the home front for the Mass Observation Survey. Midsomer Murders kept track on the investigations into gruesome crimes in bucolic, Midsomer County, and Set 10 and The Early Cases Collection are newly available. I prefer the original title, Diamond Geezer, to Rough Diamond, for a series about a master criminal who doesn't let his age intrude on his work. Visions of Ireland continues the series of airborne travelogues that began with helicopter flights over England and Scotland. The second set of Monarchy With David Starkey covers the period between 1660 and the modern royals. Previously shown here on PBS' Masterpiece Theater, Sorrell and Son chronicles two decades in the life of a decorated WWI British army officer, whose return home is marred by widespread unemployment, poverty, the departure of his wife and need to educate his son. Father Ted: The Definitive Collective overflows with stories about a colony of Irish priests, who continually find new ways to get themselves in and out of trouble on Craggy Island. Simply put, Wire in the Blood is one of the best crime series that Britain has exported to BBC America, which means it's as good or better than the police dramas shown on broadcast TV here. And, that's saying a lot. -- Gary Dretzka