MCN DVD Reviews: June 11, 2008

*The Wrap Up ...*

The Bucket List	While Rob Reiner and Justin Zackham's bittersweet meditation on living and dying well was almost universally trashed by mainstream critics, it did reasonably well at the box office and likely will do brisk business at the local video store.The Bucket List exists in the netherworld between movies made cobbled together to sell lots of tickets and those intended to impress Oscar and Golden Globe voters. Positive reviews are beside the point. Even if comedies rarely are taken seriously as Best Picture candidates by the academy, the right combination of laughter and tears often can grease the skids for consideration in the acting, writing and music categories. Jack Nicholson and Morgan Freeman have been around that block before, with Nicholson bringing home a Best Supporting trophy for his scene-stealing turn as the mischievous retired astronaut in Terms of Endearment and Freeman being named a finalist in the same category for Driving Miss Daisy. The Bucket List falls well short of those two crowd-pleasers, but, arriving as it did in limited release on Christmas week, complete with a song and video by John Mayer, the studio's intentions could hardly be mistaken. Alas, the strategy failed to impress anyone inclined to vote on such matters. Nicholson's Cole and Freeman's Chambers are a pair of terminally ill geezers, one rich and the other a career auto mechanic, who found themselves paired in a no-frills room in a HMO hospital owned by Cole's corporation. (And, no, it isn't likely this would have occurred in real life.) After a bit of Odd Couple back-and-forth, the men grow quite fond of each other, based in no small part on a bucket list of common goals they'd like to accomplish before kicking the, yup, bucket. It's Chambers' invention, but Cole has the money to make everyone's dreams come true. It's as if Cole is president and chief benefactor of his own personal Make-A-Wish Foundation. It's not a bad idea, really. In execution, though, the script feels half-backed - apparently, it was written in two weeks - and the finished product painted by numbers. Tellingly, perhaps, an interview in a background featurette reveals the screenwriter's desire not only to have his idea produced by a major studio but also to publish a collection of celebrity bucket lists to be sold in gift shops, presumably in hospitals. Yikes. It takes a while to warm to Nicholson's character, but once Cole embraces his inner-humanist, The Bucket List becomes a road-trip and buddy adventure. Sadly, too, as the men travel the world together in the time they have left, it's clear the camera rarely leaves the Hollywood soundstage, giving us computer-generated pyramids, savannahs and Himalayas. The easy rapport between the two A-list talents, evident in the expensive advertising campaign, convinced audiences weary of darker holiday fare to give it a shot. The critics weren't quite so needy. In addition to the making-of featurette and a similar look at the creation of Mayer's music video, there is separate menu of extras accessible when played on a DVD-ROM platform.- -- Gary Dretzka

The Other Boleyn Girl	The release of The Other Boleyn Girl, slightly ahead of Showtime's second-season launch of The Tudors, tested the American public's interest in any English monarch not directly related to the martyred Princess Diana. The pairing of Natalie Portman and Scarlett Johansson assured the media would pay attention to the more glossy elements of the period drama, ignoring how it differed from The Tudors and anything else that required knowledge of 16th Century history. It's impossible to determine how much one production fed off the other, but, certainly, the timing did The Other Boleyn Girl no favors. If neither could claim the higher ground of truth and historical accuracy, there's no denying the soap-opera appeal of both productions. The movie is more darkly lit and thematically portentous, while the mini-series offers more exposition, character development, playful moments and nudity. Portman's Anne Boleyn is portrayed as a woman of greater substance and influence than the coquettish ingénue drawn by Natalie Dormer. Johansson's Mary Boleyn is far more prominent in the life and affairs of Henry VIII than the almost incidental character profiled in six episodes of The Tudors. Eric Bana's Henry VIII is a linebacker to Jonathan Rhys Meyers' wily halfback, and seemingly only happy when he's about to commit adultery with a new concubine. Both productions are extremely watchable, even with the redundancies and confluence of key characters. Considering the lusty and historically accurate misbehavior on display in the movie, it remains almost absurdly chaste throughout. This can be attributed both to an insistence on going out PG-13 and the modesty of the leading ladies. The bonus features that accompany the movie are quite good, adding much historical perspective and interesting making-of material. Ironically, the only historical figure who exits both productions with her reputation enhanced is Queen Katherine of Aragon, a woman who was the equal of any European monarch and a victim of her reproductive system. (It's worth noting that despite all the weeping, divorces, excommunications and beheadings, England would be led by the daughter of Anne Boleyn and Henry VIII, and her mother's legacy would be elevated by future generations.) -- Gary Dretzka

Jumper	Based on a 1993 sci-fi novel by Steven Gould, Jumper is blessed with wondrous special effects but cursed by a narrative so perplexing as to be incomprehensible for anyone older than 16. In it, Davy is a teenager who escaped an abusive household using his ability to teleport using only his thoughts. One moment he's in Ann Arbor being pushed around by his dad and other bullies, and the next he's sitting atop a pyramid, touring the Colosseum or invading a bank vault. Unlike Samantha Stephens, in Bewitched, Davy isn't required to do so much as twitch his nose to effect dramatic escapes and cross-Atlantic leaps. In the movie, David Rice (Hayden Christenson) is less motivated by a desire to find his long-absent mother and end the plague of child abuse and terrorists, than to live a sweet big-city life, pay regular visits to the Seven Wonders of the World and eventually hook up with an old girlfriend (Rachel Bilson). Apparently, David's gift is shared by an unknown number of other jumpers, who are in constant danger of being apprehended by vigilante jumper-hunters known as paladins. It's almost impossible to discern what the paladins - led by a white-haired Samuel L. Jackson - have against the jumpers, who, apart from the occasional bank robbery, don't seem particularly sinister. As the paladins close in on David, he's joined by a street-smart jumper (Jamie Bell) wanted even more desperately by Jackson's minions. For most of the movie's 90 minutes, the action owes more to a pin-ball machine than memories of the Matrix trilogy. The bonus features actually are more entertaining than the movie itself. The background material explains how many of the special effects were accomplished, and a separate featurette candidly demonstrates how a notoriously unconventional nitpicker like director Doug Limon constantly tested his actors and budget-wary producers to achieve the look he desired. Alas, what worked in the Bourne series didn't in Jumper.- -- Gary Dretzka

What Would Jesus Buy? Darfur Now They Filmed the War in Color The Business of Being Born A Generation Apart African American Lives Roving on Mars	The continuing tragedy that is Darfur has inspired several excellent, if ultimately heart-breaking documentaries. Unlike most of the others, Darfur Now spent far less time explaining how the genocide occurred than demonstrating how individuals could affect positive change. It did so by introducing us to a half-dozen men and women from divergent backgrounds whose tireless efforts have paid off in ways the refugees may never learn. On the celebrity end, we are reminded of the tireless efforts of Don Cheadle and George Clooney, as well as California Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger's willingness to acknowledge the petitions gathered by a lone voice in the crowd who called for the divestment of state money in companies benefitting from genocide. Also introduced are relief workers, rebel fighters and an international prosecutor who demanded the arrest and trial of Sudanese soldiers accused of war crimes. Rob VanAlkemade's What Would Jesus Buy? was released in advance of the Christmas gift-purchasing season, perhaps in an attempt to stem the rising tide of consumerism in Christ's name. Fat chance. The film follows Reverend Billy and the Church of Stop Shopping Gospel Choir on a cross-country mission to shame consumers into not succumbing to greed and gluttony. Their encounters with shoppers have some entertainment value, but it's in the too-short discussions of sweat-shop labor, big-box stores and the credit crisis that the real value is found. Americans love to shop to excess, and it will take more than an intervention by performance artists to keep them out of the stores. Alas, WWJB? likely will be admired most by people who already have their spending under control, and less by those addicted to the rush that comes when the fear of going over their credit limit is sated by a computer-delivered authorization of their card. Most of us have been conditioned to recall the real events of World War II in not-so-glorious black-and-white newsreel footage. Hollywood may have added a rainbow hues to the drama and glory of war, but, at the government's urging, it steadfastly refused show us the true colors of carnage. (Today, our government has forbidden photographers from taking photos of caskets, no matter the color, arriving from Iraq.) The rarely seen footage collected in They Filmed the War in Color adds an unexpected new dimension to our collective memory of WWII, while maintaining the gritty newsreel texture that separates real history with Hollywood mythology. The rarely seen material was shot in both theaters of action, and, because some of it came from individual soldiers, is more candid and personal than we've come to expect. Military and history buffs will be especially tickled to observe the war in a different light. In a similar vein, actress Ricki Lake and filmmaker Abby Epstein explain how the most natural of human events - child birth - has gone from being virtually cost-free to barely affordable. Is birthing, a procedure even a cavewoman could do (sorry), really that dangerous and complicated, or have hospitals, pediatricians and midwives-to-the-stars convinced women that an unborn child's every kick is a harbinger of doom? Lake was inspired by the everyday minutiae that piled up in advance of her first child's water-birth, the agony and ecstasy of which was fully captured for The Business of Being Born. The film further chronicles the pregnancies of several other New Yorkers, whose stories are, at once, instructive and dramatic. The truth remains, of course, expectant parents in developed countries have become so risk-averse that the likelihood of reform in the birthing industry will have to wait until insurance companies convince hospital administrators that Q-Tips and aspirin aren't worth their weight in gold. Although released in 1984, A Generation Apart remains relevant as a study of how the lives of the children of Holocaust survivors have been impacted by the horrors visited on their parents. Among other things, it asks, how can men and women who stared into the face of death, and somehow survived, take seriously the problems of children born into the relative safety and affluence of a world at peace? Some parents burdened their children with too much information, while others found themselves unable to compartmentalize their experiences to satisfy the curiosity of their young'uns. Each family dealt with the complexity of the question in its own way. Considering that nationalistic and religious fervor continues to manifest itself in genocide, it's crucial that every new generation of potential victims and perpetrators understand exactly what's at stake. The news last week that NASA had added to the gridlock on Mars by landing another rover on its surface reminded me of Disney and Lockheed's recently released co-production, Roving Mars. Besides allowing viewers to survey the Red Planet through the lenses of Spirit and Opportunity, the G-rated doc further offered a 1957 Disney film on space exploration and a featurette by JPL Rover Team members and students from the Imagine Mars project. Closer to home, our moon is featured in a pair of DVDs presented by Ron Howard and Tom Hanks: In the Shadow of the Moon and Magnificent Desolation: Walking on the Moon. African American Lives 2 expands on PBS' on-going genealogy project, in which prominent black artists, educators and celebrities were made aware of their tribal and ethnic backgrounds, dating back several centuries. For example, narrator Henry Louis Gates learned that he's descended not only from the Yoruba people of Nigeria, but also Irish royalty. Lives 2 examined the backgrounds of 11 more African-American men and women, including Morgan Freeman, Tina Turner, Tom Joyner, Chris Rock, Don Cheadle, theologian Peter Gomes, Jackie Joyner-Kersee and Maya Angelou. Three other participants were culled from a list of 2,000 applicants. The results are surprising and quite interesting, although the true value in such information remains to be determined. The History Channel keeps turning out high-quality documentaries for consumption by DVD owners. The latest include, King, which used the occasion of the 40th anniversary of the civil-rights leader's assassination to recall his live and consider his legacy; Modern Marvels: Engineering Disasters, examines more than 40 of history's greatest catastrophes and what was learned from them; How the Earth Was Made takes us for a mind-blowing ride in the way-back machine, to the beginning of Earth time; Columbus: The Lost Voyage reminds us of the lesser accomplishments of the explorer, who may not have been as great a sailor as we were led to believe; Human Weapon: The Complete Season 1 and Human Weapon: Hand to Hand Military Combat, in which hosts Jason Chambers and Bill Duff are taught by U.S. Marines and Israeli commandoes how to destroy opponents without weapons, and, then, are put to the test by other trained killers. Yummy. . -- Gary Dretzka




Heavy Metal in Baghdad A Lottery Story Churchill: The Life and Speeches The Dialogue: Learning From the Masters Freedom takes many shapes and forms. For some, it means being able to walk down the street without encountering a police checkpoint or masked insurgents, and reading whatever magazine or newspaper to which they care to subscribe. Greedy business owners find freedom in the willingness of their government to allow them to maintain substandard working conditions and inadequate pay. Others believe their constitutionally protected right to pursue happiness includes everything from hunting squirrels with assault rifles to playing music so loud it loosens fillings in the teeth of people a block away from a car's radio. Sadly, too many Americans believe that their personal freedoms should trump those of people with whom they differ politically, ethically and religiously. Eddy Moretti and Suroosh Alvi's revelatory documentary, Heavy Metal in Baghdad, describes what it's been like for a group of young Iraqi musicians attempting to express themselves through heavy-metal music, which is every bit as bizarre and dangerous as it sounds. At first, the documentary portends to be little more than a sidebar to the war and madness occurring in the streets of Baghdad. The head-bangers wear the same logo T-shirts as Beavis, Butt-head and Jeff Spicoli, and admit to no particular political or religious persuasion. A return visit by the filmmakers a year later would reveal just how much had changed for the freedom-loving Iraqis who had yet to find refuge from the madness in other Muslim nations. As the only band in Iraq covering songs by Metallica and Guns N' Roses, Acrassicauda not only lived in constant fear of assassination by cultural jihadists, but also having their stages, rehearsal rooms and instruments demolished in random bombings and rocket attacks. Another year later, Moretti and Alvi would find Acrassicauda attempting to make a comeback in Damascus, where they enjoyed the right to grow their hair a bit longer, but were as welcome as an undocumented Mexican worker at a Republican fund-raiser. Even under the previous regime, the musicians simply were obligated to pay homage to Saddam Hussein in a single song, no matter how indecipherable it was (head-banging, however, was banned for its purported similarity to the ritual head-bobbing and swaying associated with Jewish prayer). As has been noted in news stories, America has been reluctant to protect even those Iraqi refugees who risked their lives as security personnel, translators and police, so most of them have been forced find shelter in countries where they're not allowed to work or freely travel. It's easy to dismiss a documentary perceived as advocating one's right to party, to the exclusion of other freedoms. A close examination of the faces of the heavy-metal refugees, as they watch video taken two years earlier in Baghdad, delivers a more sobering message. Even though Heavy Metal in Baghdad is a story of lost liberty and extinguished hope, set against a background of American political folly, it also testifies to the tenacity of artists to stay productive in places like Iraq, Iran, China and Cuba, where creativity and independence are among the first victims of authoritarian rule. Unlike other documentaries and special news reports about lottery winners who squander their new-found fortunes on hare-brained schemes and other unwise investments, Paul LaBlanc's Millions (A Lottery Story) offers a more balanced account of the instant-millionaire phenomenon. It follows the lives of a half-dozen winners, filling in the blanks between jubilation and que sera sera. The lottery's been around so long now that most of us barely pay any attention to the winners, even if we still plunk down a dollar each week on our favorite numbers. Like fingerprints, no two stories are the same. If anything was sorely lacking in the just-completed series of fund-raising dinners, whistle-stop speeches and primary campaigns, it was great oratory. Rhetoric was in large supply, but almost none of it amounted to anything more substantial than hot air and convenience-store bologna. Occasionally, a keynote speaker at a political convention will stir the assembled delegates - as did Barack Obama four years ago - but candidates have become so adept at avoiding hot-button issues, they rarely say anything at all. Any resemblance between the speechifying of our current chief executive and that of Winston Churchill -- or John F. Kennedy, FDR and Martin Luther King Jr., for that matter - is strictly accidental. White Star's Churchill: The Life and Speeches is a reminder not only of what stirred a nation at a time of desperation, but also what a half-century of American leaders have sorely lacked. More than any other country, I think, America has demanded greater rhetorical clarity from characters in movies than of its politicians. To name just a few: Senator Jefferson Smith's (James Stewart) filibuster speech on moral integrity; Tom Joad's (Henry Fonda) I'll be there farewell message to his mother; Adenoid Hynkel's (Charlie Chaplin) Look up, Hannah democracy speech; Gil Carter's (Henry Fonda) reading, posthumously, of a letter written by a lynched man; Willie Stark's (Broderick Crawford) rousing campaign speech at a fairgrounds barbecue; wheelchair-bound, partially paralyzed Vietnam vet Luke Martin's (Jon Voight) impassioned, there's a choice to be made here speech to high school students; and Howard Beale's (Peter Finch) mad as hell speech to his TV audience. Anyone who's ever harbored a dream about putting words into the mouths of fictional characters will find something of value in The Dialogue: Learning From the Masters, a collection of 27 extended interviews with some of today's most gifted and honored screenwriters. Among them are Paul Haggis, Ganz & Mandel, Callie Khouri, Nick Kazan, Marshall Herskovitz, Nia Vardalos, Paul Attanasio and the Farrelly brothers. -- Gary Dretzka

The Grand Zak Penn's mockumentary take on big-money poker tournaments and all the attendant hype is a loosy-goosy affair, focusing more on its rogue's gallery of oddball characters than the competition at the tables. Indeed, the less one cares about the outcome of the winner-take-all Grand Championship of Poker, the more fun can be found in the easy comic interplay between such professional card players as Phil Hellmuth Jr., Phil Gordon and Doyle Brunson and actors Woody Harrelson, Jason Alexander Ray Romano, Mike Epps, Judy Greer, Werner Herzog, Gabe Kaplan, Michael McKean, Dennis Farina, Cheryl Hines, Richard Kind and Hank Azaria. Harrelson plays One-Eyed Jack Faro, the gonzo grandson of a legendary old-school casino owner, who needs to win the $10 million prize if he's going to prevent a developer from turning his property into an architectural disaster. -- Gary Dretzka

Flawless The pairing of Michael Caine and Demi Moore in a period heist movie probably would be sufficient reason for many viewers to take a chance on Flawless in DVD. While they wouldn't be blown away by the story, it isn't likely they'd be terribly disappointed, either. Caine plays Mr. Hobbs, a friendly Cockney janitor at an international diamond conglomerate. Moore's Laura Quinn is the lone female officer in the company, and, because this is 1960, her career is about to collide head-on with the glass ceiling. Instead of finding a convenient niche for her to fill until she got bored and restless - as would be the case today - her boss invents a vague excuse for termination having something to do with screwing up a deal with the Russkies. Although Quinn's not the warmest character Moore has ever played, we pity the workaholic for her hard work and willingness to keep absurdly long hours. In fact, that's how she makes the acquaintance of Hobbs, who checks out at approximately the same time as she's checking into work. A sparkle in the amiable geezer's eye tells us he's in possession of some deep, dark secret - discovered while cleaning the offices of company brass -- and he intends to use the knowledge to screw the company. Quinn is stunned when Hobbs informs her of the company's decision to fire her and promote a former male subordinate to the posting she coveted. Hobbs hopes to turn her anger into action, by informing her of his plan to empty company coffers of a fortune in diamonds. Once Quinn reluctantly agrees to become an accomplice, director Michael Radford shifts the narrative into a higher gear and adding a tick-tock element to the drama. In addition to the crowd-pleaser romance Il Postino, Radford has been at the helm of three of the guiltiest pleasures of the last 10 years: White Mischief, B. Monkey and Dancing at the Blue Iguana. While Flawless bears no similarity to any of those pictures, it benefits from a neat surprise ending and more star power than typically is found in heist pictures. -- Gary Dretzka

Semi-Pro: Two-Disc Unrated 'Let's Get Sweaty' Edition Blades of Glory (Blu-ray)/Mama's Boy There's a very entertaining story to be told about the American Basketball Association, which, in nine crazy years, influenced how professional hoops would be played for decades to come. From 1967 to 1976, the upstart league was as much a part of the counterculture as granola, yogurt and tie-dyed T-shirts. Like those groovy commodities, the ABA would be sucked into the vortex of corporate America and its players would be sugar-coated, so as to suit the tastes of NBA executives and white, suburban fans. The NBA would adopt many of the ABA's better ideas, including three-point shots, outrageous promotions and theme nights, slam-dunk contests, sexy cheerleaders and bulbous afro hairdos. Semi-Pro brings back plenty of fond memories of the ABA and its legendary players. Moreover, though, it conveys the pervading aura of hopelessness and financial doom that was lifted off the shoulders of players, owners and fans by the merger. We're introduced to the executive board of the Flint Tropics and owner-player Will Ferrell just as news of the merger is being announced to the public, and the players are told they'll have to fight to become one of the four teams to be absorbed into the NBA. The Tropics are longshots to make the cut, as the NBA is most interested in keeping the franchises that are bigger markets. This dilemma works in the favor of the audience because the bigger the challenge faced by the hapless Tropics, the greater the potential for comedy. Unlike other roles the 40-year-old SNL alum has crafted in his career, Jackie Moon simply looks too old to survive in a young man's league, as does the hotshot player, Monix, picked up at the last minute to enhance the Tropics' chances. He's played by the 46-year-old Woody Harrelson, who injected too much of his Roy Munson (Kingpin) into Monix and not enough Billy Hoyle (White Men Can't Jump). But, that's the writers' fault. Both actors are funny, in their usual sort of way, and, as a whole, the movie is entertaining, but the premise behind Semi Pro deserved a better shot at success. Maybe if the producers had emulated the ensemble work in The Bingo Long Traveling All-Stars & Motor Kings, Slap Shot and Semi-Tough - instead of relying so much on Farrell - their homage to the ABA might have succeeded. The Let's Get Sweaty and Blu-Ray editions add several interesting bonus features, including a nostalgic look back at the ABA. Farrell also was too old to portray a champion skater in Blades of Glory, but the casting of John Heder -- who's older than he looks -- as his comic foil effectively neutralized the age problem. It also helped that competitive figure skating has become a parody of itself. The Blu-ray edition adds a bit more sparkle to the ice, costumes and makeup, but not much else. In the disastrous comedy Mamma's Boy, Heder plays an older but only slightly more mature version of Napoleon Dynamite. His Jeffrey Mannus is a highly eccentric and terminally geeky 29-year-old slacker, who insists on living at home with his mom (Diane Keaton) and bristles at the likelihood of her marrying a peppy success coach (Jeff Daniels). His determination to sabotage their plans, which stops being funny after about five minutes, detracts from a budding romance between Jeffrey and a nihilistic singer-songwriter/barista, Nora (Anna Faris, from Smiley Face). The movie showed so little promise that it was abandoned by Warner Bros. and shipped to Eastern Europe. If critics in the U.S. had been given an opportunity to review Mama's Boy, one or two of them might have blown the whistle on screenwriter Hank Nelkin, who almost certainly cribbed dialogue from the late John Kennedy Toole's wonderful novel, A Confederacy of Dunces. Add a few hundred pounds, and Jeffrey would be a dead ringer for Toole's corpulent misanthrope, Ignatius J. Reilly, a 30-year-old medievalist, who, likewise, lived with his mother. If Reilly had lived anywhere else but New Orleans, he would have been arrested on sight.-- Gary Dretzka

Cassandra's Dream Boarding Gate Dario Argento Box Set Crash & Burn/Living & Dying The Take/Illegal Tender Maybe you'll be as surprised as I was to learn that Woody Allen wrote and directed a psychological thriller, Cassandra's Dream, and it was released in January to almost no fanfare or marketing support. It's my job to know when a movie is opening at a theater near me, but non-professional moviegoers have more urgent things on their mind. We've already probably read more overheated gossip about Scarlett Johansson and Penelope Cruz's two-second movie snog in Vicky Cristina Barcelona than we'd care to admit. What else do we know about that movie or the entirety of Cassandra's Dream? Nada. No matter, when it comes to the Woodman, at least, no news often is the best news. Cassandra's Dream marks his return not only to England, but also to the necessarily laugh-deficient crime genre. Assuming the roles of Cain and Able here are Ewan McGregor and Colin Farrell. They play Cockney brothers, who, in attempting to fix a temporary financial setback, create another one with far greater ramifications. Satan's snake arrives in the form of their rich uncle, played with ice-cold detachment by Tom Wilkinson, who makes them an offer they should have refused. Representing the banished Adam and Eve, now older and much worse for the wear, are hard-working middle-class parents who differ on whether a small bite from Uncle Howard's apple might be fatal. That's it … no fireworks, belly laughs or Sapphic snogs … just a wee bit of cinematic moralizing inspired by Genesis. I liked it, but not to the same degree as I enjoyed Annie Hall, Manhattan, Broadway Danny Rose or Mighty Aphrodite. It reminded me far more of Crimes and Misdemeanors, Allen's profound reflection on the consequences of adultery, lust and remorse. Even if the critics were mostly unimpressed by Cassandra's Dream, I think, they might have had a different response to it if it had been written and directed by someone carrying less baggage. Ift would be easy to dismiss Boarding Gate as yet another incomprehensible and gratuitously lurid jet-set Euro-thriller. That would be doing a disservice to Asia Argento, an unabashedly sexual actor who commands every scene with her expressive face and provocatively tattooed body. Argento is capable of mixing and matching a full spectrum of emotions, ranging from dementia and hate, to fear and vulnerability, seemingly in the flash of an eye. Neither does Argento, the daughter of Italian scream maestro Dario Argento, register any sign of self-consciousness as her sultry ex-prostitute, Sandra, taunts an ex-lover with memories of sexual escapades past, then strips down to her britches, grabs a pistol and, well, you can try to guess the rest. Let's see Julia Roberts top that. Assayas has always populated his movies with women of great beauty and sexual allure, and, without appearing prurient, has conceived myriad ways to for them to disrobe. He also was one of the first European directors to fuse east and west in his movies. Boarding Gate opens in one presumably western capital and climaxes in the giant beehive that is Hong Kong. Sandra's occasional lover, Miles (Michael Madsen), is an arrogant wheeler-dealer whose projects are failing so quickly he's become the laughing stock of the international business community. Sandra goes to him because she needs money to open a nightclub in Beijing. Somewhere along the line, gets involved with heroin smugglers, a Hong Kong financier and several of his nasty girlfriends. What they have against Miles is anyone's guess, but, before long, Sandra finds herself in the middle of a dimly lit conspiracy with tentacles that stretch for thousands of miles. All of Assayas' films have required some work on the part of viewers, and critics have enjoyed debating whether it's worth their effort. The one title upon which almost everyone agrees is Irma Vep (1996), an engrossing movie about making movies. In it, Hong Kong action star and Assayas' then-wife Maggie Chung played an actor recruited to star in a remake Louis Feuillade's silent serial Les Vampires. Argento cut her acting teeth performing in freaked-out Italian slasher-thrillers awash in spilt blood, pierced skin, crazed assassins and exceedingly strange music. Her father, Dario, is one of the acknowledged masters of the form - a.k.a, giallo - a new boxed set of his work has been newly released. The titles include, Do You Like Hitchcock?, Card Player, Trauma, Phenomena (a.k.a., Creepers) and Tenebre. All have been re-mastered and restored to their original pre-censorship length. Look for such familiar faces as Jennifer Connelly, Anthony Franciosa, John Saxon, Donald Pleasance and Piper Laurie, in addition to Asia and other Italian actors who've worked extensively with giallo specialists Argento, Mario Bava, Sergio Martino, Umberto Lenzi, Pupi Avati and Aldo Lado. Assayas has said that he intended Boarding Gate to remind international audiences of an American B-movie. Perhaps, that's how Madsen came to be cast as one of the nominal bad guys. At 49, the Chicago native has 156 acting credits listed on his imdb.com page. He's done memorable work in such movies as Thelma & Louise, Reservoir Dogs, Kill Bill, Free Willy and Donnie Brasco, but, lately, he's topped the marquee in the sort of B-movies that skip theaters and go straight to ancillary outlets. Crash & Burn and Living & Dying won't make anyone forget his star turn in Reservoir Dogs, in which his Mr. Blonde dances and slashes to Stuck in the Middle. The former is a bargain-basement knock-off of The Fast & the Furious, while the gratuitously violent and wholly incompetent Living & Dying merges bank-heist and hostage-taking clichés. All original ideas are overwhelmed by gunfire and the directors' heavy hands. While Madsen more than holds his own in Boarding Gate, the reigning King of the B's could have phoned in his performances in the others. While The Take and Illegal Tender can't proclaim even the shortest of cameos by Madsen, they're representative of the better work being done in the B-movie niche. In The Take, a security guard and armored-car driver played John Leguizamo is forced to participate in a heist at one of his pick-up locations. Even though Felix is shot and left for dead by the gunman, his miraculous recovery not only makes him a target for the bad guys, but it also provides lazy police detectives with a fall guy. Their persistence turns the model citizen and good husband into an emotional basket case. In his desperation to solve the crime himself, Felix finally manages to alienate his wife (Rosie Perez) and children, who split until the smoke clears. Left alone and increasingly paranoid, he stumbles onto the one clue that will allow him to find the real culprit. Naturally, the case is closed only after a long, noisy, bloody and highly unlikely chase through the streets of L.A. The quick-cut editing and in-your-face cinematography camouflage mask most of the holes in the script, and the acting is much better than one would expect from a genre flick that enjoyed only a momentary release. Wanda De Jesus, recently departed from active duty in CSI: Miami, is the primary reason to sample Illegal Tender, a revenge thriller in which the predators become the hunted. De Jesus plays the wife of a drug dealer who double-crossed the mob and paid for it with his life. She escapes from New York with her infant son and manages to stay below the mob's radar for 21 years. Because, like De Jesus, her character never lost her good looks and hot bod, she's easily recognized in a suburban supermarket. From that point on, Illegal Tender reverts to B-movie form. -- Gary Dretzka

Graduation Remember the Daze As a rule, any movie that involves teenagers and a bank robbery probably ought to be avoided, if only because it's easier to hold-up convenience stores and steal credit-card numbers off the Internet. Michael Mayer's freshman feature, Graduation, is a long way from perfect, but it should be good enough to impress producers and casting directors looking for new talent. On the eve of their graduation, four close friends agree to combine their wits and strengths to find the $100,000 necessary to afford an operation for one's mother. Polly, the lone female member of the father, unsuccessfully pleads her friend's case to her father, a banker. She's doubly disappointed to learn that dad (Adam Arkin) is having an affair with his assistant. This revelation only makes it that much easier for her to suggest they launch an attack on his bank and time it to coincide with the graduation ceremony. Preparations for the heist go smoothly enough, but personal issues threaten to screw up the plan's execution. Once the bank is surrounded by cops, it seems impossible for any of the kids to escape jail or a bloodbath. If the resolution is inarguably far-fetched, it also is clever and entirely satisfying. The actors take their roles seriously, and make this minor entertainment enjoyable. Jess Manafort's debut picture, Remember the Daze (a.k.a., The Beautiful Ordinary), attempts to re-capture some of the same good vibes that informed Dazed and Confused, American Pie and American Graffiti. It's1999, and nearly two dozen generic teenagers from a generic American suburb are hoping to make the overnight leap to adulthood. The kids have a few odds and ends to clean up at school, but most of their time is reserved for last-minute party preparations. Manafort's downfall here comes in the preponderance of one-dimensional characters and absence of compelling through-lines. The actors, though, are so fresh, enthusiastic and attractive that it's difficult to imagine them not being recognized for work on the big or small screen. - Gary Dretzka

Valentina's Tango How She Move I don't have the vaguest clue what might have been going through Rogelio Lobato's mind when he began plotting Valentina's Tango. No sooner do we buy into it as a steamy, dance-filled romance than Lobato changes directions by adding a chilly gang-banger angle, complete with cholo clichés and macho posturing. Within moments, however, the dialogue turns darkly comic and Valentina's Tango threatens to turn into a Farrelly Brothers' farce. Longtime lovers Valentina and Eduardo have enjoyed a passion-filled marriage ever since they shared a first dance in their remote village, somewhere in the Spanish-speaking world. That dance resulted not only in a roll in the hay, but also forced marriage and a child. Valentina, it seems, can only achieve orgasm through dance, and, when it comes, it's volcanic. Fast-forward about 20 years and the couple (Guillermina Quiroga, Jordi Caballero) now owns a nightclub, where they entertain customers with exciting tangos and Valentina climaxes in front of unsuspecting audiences on a nightly basis. I'm pretty sure Lobatro intended this proclivity to be hilarious or, at the very least, ironic. Judging from the seriousness of purpose evidenced on their faces, however, I happily allowed him the conceit. Quiroga and Caballero perform a mean tango, which, in the right hands, is a dance that can generate enough heat to melt icebergs. The couple's two sons are another thing, altogether. One is studying for the priesthood, while the other aspires to a leadership position in a local gang. Neither one can keep his trousers zipped, but only one feels particularly guilty about it. An angry dispute between the bad son and his nutso girlfriend leads to a shooting that leaves Eduardo paralyzed and Valentina devoid of sexual stimulus. The story goes totally haywire from there, alternating darkly comic moments with tragedy, farce with romance. It would take a writer and director far more accomplished than Lobato to pull that trick off, and the result here is almost - almost -- comically freakish. On the plus side, I could watch Quiroga tango the night away and still come back for more. Just as a well-turned tango helped mask the weaknesses inherent in Valentina's Tango, a dance I hadn't heard of before distracted me from the decades-old clichés in. How She Move. Here, it's Jamaican-influenced step-dancing that comes to the rescue of young woman, Raya, who's on the brink of disaster. Despite her humble background, Raya (Rutina Wesley) has been able to attend prep school and harbor hopes of a satisfying career. The loss of Raya's similarly talented sister to a drug overdose, however, causes her to blow an opportunity to test into an arts program, while lack of tuition money forces her to return to her dead-end neighborhood. Upon her return to Toronto's tough Jane-Finch Corridor, Raya is greeted with disdain by other teenage girls, who are jealous of her aspirations and accomplishments. Constantly challenged, she nearly succumbs to the same demons that have prevented her peers from escaping the chains of poverty. Using her sister's memory as inspiration, Raya endeavors to become the best stepper in her multi-ethnic community. It is her only means for survival, and she performs well. Again, the great dancing - not dissimilar to that on display in Stomp the Yard, which this movie resembles -- trumps genre chestnuts that can be smelled a mile away from the multiplex. The soundtrack includes music by Missy Elliott and Busta Rhymes. - Gary Dretzka

The Violin Noise Watching Francisco Vargas' extremely compelling debut feature, The Violin, I was reminded of a slogan affixed to the face of Woody Guthrie's guitar: "This Machine Kills Fascists." I have no way of knowing if Vargas had seen the iconic photo of Woody strumming away on his ax, but the same message could have applied to the violin played by Don Plutarcho, the peasant musician at the heart of his film. Set in a nameless Central American country, at no particular point in the last 30 years, The Violin describes how a simple stringed instrument was used as a weapon against a platoon of thuggish soldiers entered the old man's rural village, and killed everyone suspected of harboring insurgents. Plutarcho, his son and grandson are returning from a nearby city when they encounter neighbors escaping the slaughter. We already know that the guitar-playing son, Genero, is a key player in the insurgency, and can easily assume he was a target of the soldiers. While Genero takes refuge from the federales with his comrades in the thick forest, Plutarcho decides to avenge the murders by helping the rebels reconnect with the cache of weapons hidden in his corn field. Even though he's lost the use of one hand and looks old enough to have ridden with Villa and Zapata, Plutarcho is seen as a threat by the squad leader. It's at this point that Vargas reveals the single common denominator between the two men: music. The soldier is impressed by the one-handed peasant's ability to play the instrument and allows him to return to his 10-acre patch to tend to the corn crop. It's here that he devises a strategy for getting the cache past the ubiquitous guards. Because The Violin was shot in black-and-white, and exuded a palpable air of freshly dug earth, it couldn't help but remind me of Herbert J. Biberman's agitprop masterpiece Salt of the Earth and the neo-realistic films from post-war Italy. The story is so fascinating, and the performance of 81-year-old amateur Don Angel Tavira so miraculous, it would be a shame if The Violin didn't find a larger audience. Also newly available from Film Movement and Netflix, by way of Australia, is the psychological police thriller, Noise. Matthew Saville's first feature demonstrates how two hideously violent crimes not only unhinge a community but also threaten to destroy a cop already suffering from a debilitating ear ailment. Despite an intense citywide investigation, Melbourne police seem incapable of zeroing in on a legitimate suspect. Neither are they able to protect the identity of the sole eyewitness to the massacre on a commuter train. Meanwhile, the cop who called in the first report of the attack has been exiled to a community-outreach trailer not far from the scene of the murder of a young local woman. Constable Graham McGahan's acute tinnitus tends to kick in when he's most under pressure to perform, causing his boss to doubt it exists at all. Saville's great accomplishment in Noise was devising a way for viewers to empathize directly with McGahan's maddening condition, illustrating sound through color and light. Film Movement titles all arrive with an award-winning short and various other featurette (www.filmmovement.com). - Gary Dretzka

The Girl Done Good: A Documentary Review Bob Dylan: 1978-1989: Both Ends of the Rainbow Control/Joy Division: The Miriam Collection Typically, friends and relatives wait for the eulogies to be read before closing the book on a loved one. They regret not sharing their kind thoughts and honoring that person's accomplishments at a time when it might have meant something. Because Amy Winehouse appears to be in a hurry to join Billy Holiday, Janis Joplin and Jimi Hendrix at that great NA meeting in the sky, some of her admirers already have begun preparing their eulogies. It's difficult to say if that's what motivated the producers of Girl Done Good to create a career retrospective after only two albums, but it's probably a good thing they did. At a time when Winehouse's reputation resembles something the paparazzi might have dragged in, Girl Done Good should provide detractors with an alternate view of her value to the music scene and the media something to fixate on, besides the beehive, tattoos and drug habit. Girl Done Good documents Winehouse's evolution from her rebellious teens in North London to British chart-topper, international stardom, paparazzi magnet and rehab regular. As this is an unauthorized biography disguised as a critique, Girl Done Good relies on music and images not licensed by the chanteuse, as well as the first-hand testimony of former teachers, band members, music arrangers, journalists, singers and other industry professionals. Even if most of them came to praise Winehouse, the documentary doesn't whitewash her failures. The testimony describes an artist in whose voice can be found traces of Billie Holliday, Ella Fitzgerald, Peggy Lee, Diana Ross, Otis Redding, the Ronettes, Shangri-las and, briefly, Michael Jackson. Even without Winehouse's immediate presence, Girl Done Good entertains and informs in equal measure. (I would have recommended adding subtitles to Winehouse's comments, as her thick accent is nearly impenetrable.) Both Ends of the Rainbow probably should have been released to coincide with the arrival in theaters or on DVD of I'm Not There. Both films attempt to demystify Bob Dylan, without the benefit of his actual physical presence, which was reserved for profiles by Martin Scorsese and 60 Minutes. Here, the Under Review panelists pore through the evidence provided in song and sensational news stories to make sense of Dylan's weirdest decade, which spanned Slow Training Coming and Oh Mercy, and included flirtations with evangelical Christianity, the Chabad Lubavitch community of Orthodox Jews, Hollywood, Deadheads, rap music, needy farmers and the people who thought rock 'n' roll needed to validate itself by opening a Hall of Fame. Most musicians don't go through that many changes in their lifetime, let alone a mere 10 years. And, in hindsight, Dylan also managed to produce some excellent material, along with lots of the dross. As is the case generally with Under Review titles, the conversations, commentary and archival material makes for an enjoyable two hours. The bonus material adds The Dylan Gospel Interviews and additional chat. Anton Corbijn's stunning rock biopic, Control, expands on the hard life and brief career of Ian Curtis, lead singer of Joy Division and one of the lynchpin characters in Michael Winterbottom's underappreciated 24 Hour Party People. Both films offer a comprehensive look at the British music scene at a time when glitter-rock would give way to punk, and working-class Manchester became the epicenter of change in rock music, nightclubs and drug consumption. In 1976, the 19-year-old Curtis was just another aimless youth, looking for a regular job and a reason to get out of bed in the morning. He enjoyed Bowie, but didn't really come out of his shell until he was introduced to the Sex Pistols at an ill-attended performance in a union hall. After absorbing the group's anarchic diatribes and the raw fury of their music, the aspiring poet and singer would join two other local musicians in a band that would be known first as Warsaw and, two years later, Joy Division (the name was taken from a 1955 novel, in which Nazis offered Jewish women a chance to escape certain death by becoming sex slaves). For the next two years, the decidedly gloomy band would struggle to find an identity in the emerging post-punk genre. They became hugely successful in England, but, on the eve of a first American tour, Curtis committed suicide. The seemingly inexplicable act made Curtis an instant rock martyr, and his band mates would go on to form New Order. Corbijn, an exceptional photographer, has set a mood perfectly in keeping with the band, the city and the music. Grant Gee's rockumentary, Joy Division, goes over much of the same territory mined in Control and 24 Hour Party People, adding interviews with people characterized in those movies and music played by the actual band. It complements those films especially well. - Gary Dretzka

American Crude It isn't often that a film can be said to have no redeeming qualities. Typically, someone in the cast or crew has done something to warrant faint praise, at least. The only positive thing I could find to say about the straight-to-DVD reject, American Crude, is that it's relatively short. So, why bother reviewing in it? How about, so unsuspecting fans of Rob Schneider, Ron Livingston, Jennifer Esposito, Michael Clarke Duncan, John C. McGinley, Missi Pyle, Amanda Detmer and actor-turned-director Craig Sheffer don't accidentally step into this steaming pile of dog do-do in the local Blockbuster. And, no, despite the R-rating, there isn't even enough nudity to satisfy the curiosity of a 12-year-old schoolboy. The story, such as it is, revolves around one married man's efforts to discourage his lover - who happens to be his wife's best friend -- from marrying his own best buddy. Taking its cue from Tom Hanks in Bachelor Party, Ron Livingston's character arranges for a pre-nuptial visit to a local strip joint, so Schneider's groom-to-be will do something so hideous that his fiancé will call off the ceremony. In due course, we also make the acquaintance of such C-movie archetypes as the tranny hooker, pervy plumber, runaway virgin, wacky Mexican kidnappers, a wheelchair-bound granny, a predatory grandpa, revenge-minded rape victim and her black boyfriend, who only pretends not object to her constant use of the N-word. In the hands of a veteran director - or veteran hack, for that matter -- some of this mishegaas might have been funny. First-timer Sheffer, however, was forced to put far too many ingredients into too weak a broth, and the finished product proved to be inedible. There ought to be a law against good actors appearing in movies this bad. Come to think of it, though, I did run across an even less appealing comedy DVD recently: Bad Meat. It concerned two trailer-park Lotharios who thought they could win the heart of a local waitress by kidnapping a visiting congressman (former A-lister Chevy Chase) and using the ransom money to buy her a mobile home. It almost broke my heart to learn the director and co-writer was an editor-in-chief of Onion and a fellow Wisconsin Badger. - Gary Dretzka

Come Drink with Me Heroes of the East Bad news first: Tartan America, the company responsible for introducing audiences here to some of the scariest, creepiest, hyper-violent and action-packed niche pictures from the Asian-rim countries - as well as several excellent arthouse titles - has gone into foreclosure. The good news from Tartan arrives in the form of newly re-mastered editions of classic martial-arts movies from the Shaw Brothers catalog. Foremost among them is King Hu's kung-fu classic, Come Drink With Me, which, in 1996, introduced Hong Kong audiences to sword-wielding women warriors. Brilliantly staged and expertly choreographed, it paved the way for other female action stars and influenced such pictures as Crouching Tiger/Hidden Dragon and Kill Bill. The great Cheng Pei-pei plays Golden Swallow, who's assigned to rescue a government official - her brother - from a notorious gang of thugs. She's up for the task, but is slowed by a poisoned dart to the shoulder. A drunken master in beggar's clothing comes to her aid. In Lau Kar-Leung's similarly worshipped Heroes of the East (1979), Gordon Liu plays a Chinese martial-arts student who takes a fiery Japanese bride and inadvertently sparks an international clash of the titans. In an effort to save his marriage, Liu agrees to a match that will decide which nation's fighting styles are superior. More contemporary Dragon Dynasty titles include Wilson Yip's Flashpoint, Benny Chan's Invisible Target and Johnnie To's PTU: Police Tactical Unit. Here, the combatants carry firearms and cops are the only thing standing between chaos and harmony. As with all of the new Dragon Dynasty releases, the discs come loaded with the kind of interviews, commentaries and making-of material that will keep action geeks mesmerized for hours. - Gary Dretzka

The Untouchable La Chinoise/Le Gai Savoir Sadly, the tres, tres exotic French actor Islid le Besco remains largely an unknown quantity outside France. Only 25, she's appeared in more than 30 films in the last 10 years, and already is testing the waters of direction, production and screenwriting. There's no easy way to describe Le Besco's face, except to say it is an enchanting amalgam of Algeria, Vietnam and Brittany's ancient Celtic past. Her voluptuous body perfectly complements the expressiveness of her face - more Picasso than Modigliani - which lends itself equally to portrayals of women in the throes of feral lust, romantic bliss, youthful vulnerability, threatened innocence, emotional trauma and childlike wonder. In The Untouchable, Le Besco plays an aspiring actor, Jeanne, who, on the occasion of her 18th birthday, is told by her mother that her father is an Indian man she once met on the banks of the Ganges. The man was of the untouchable caste, which apparently gave her no hope for a continuing relationship, and almost certainly is unaware of his parenthood. Stunned, Jeanne leaves a key role in a Brecht play and agrees to appear in soft-core picture, strictly to afford the trip to India. Once there, she manages to track down her biological father's family, which survives very well, thank you, on the profits made from providing wood for the funeral pyres of Varanasi. Her arrival coincides with a family celebration to which she's warmly welcomed and given a primer in Hindu 101. Once he accepts that Jeanne has no nefarious intentions, her grandfather explains some of the facts of caste life in India. She learns where her father, a teacher, lives and works, but has mixed feelings about revealing herself to him. Once the action moves from France to India, it's easy to think you're watching a completely different DVD, which, I suppose, was director/writer/producer Benoit Jacquot's intention, anyway. Even if The Untouchable falls short of being a top-drawer French export, Le Besco makes the DVD well worth investigating. Koch Lorber has brought out two of Jean-Luc Godard's films from the period that coincided with the uprising of French students and workers in 1967 and 1968. Almost unrecognizable from the nouvelle vague titles that American buffs were accustomed to seeing at the local arthouses, these films were intended to provoke dialectical exchanges among intellectuals and activists at a time when revolution was in the air in Paris and America. Godard recognized that not all of the street-fighting men and women held a firm grip on political reality and their philosophies ranged from rational to completely insane. In La Chinoise, Godard's camera follows one group of students as they walk the rhetorical tightrope connecting Marx and Lenin to Chairman Mao, blissfully unaware that their Little Red Books wouldn't protect them from being forced to spend the Cultural Revolution growing potatoes or breaking rocks in a quarry. Le Gai Savoir (The Joy of Knowledge) proved even more challenging, as Godard dispensed with formal narrative and required of Jean-Pierre Leaud and Juliet Berto that they simply sit still and weigh the shortcomings of capitalism. A far cry from Breathless, it even left cineastes and Godard loyalists scratching their heads. Forty years later, though, the films from this period can be viewed as artifacts from a bygone era and helpful clues to any investigation into to the mysteries of Godard's fascinating career. - Gary Dretzka

A Raisin in the Sun Holocaust The Grand: Complete Collection Cranford Twelfth Night/Othello: Shakespeare's Globe Theatre Production The Andromeda Strain Miniseries Is Sean "Diddy" Combs a Renaissance man, a jack of all artistic trades or merely an applause junkie? He's nothing, if not ambitious …that's for sure. After becoming a key player in the worlds of music, fashion, production, business, philanthropy, acting, long-distance running and the game of celebrity seduction, who would be surprised if he didn't run for President someday? He couldn't do any worse than the one we have now, certainly. (It might be fun to have a chief executive who never left the White House without his shades, and a posse in lieu of a cabinet.) His latest endeavor was exec-producing and starring in the television adaptation of Lorraine Hansberry's A Raison in the Sun. Four years ago, minus both the P and the Diddy, Combs stepped into the pivotal role of Walter Lee Younger, winning the respect of theater critics along the way. The play was re-mounted for television and DVD this year with the same fine cast and director. If Combs does nothing more than bring young eyes -- especially those of the urban persuasion -- to the theater, more power to him. In 1978, at the height of the mini-series craze, NBC courted controversy and possible critical scorn by turning the greatest atrocity of our time into a prime-time soap opera. Instead, the star-studded Holocaust proved to be hugely popular and a critical success. It would dominate that year's Emmys and make headlines when it aired in Germany, where, at the time, the term Holocaust didn't exist. The mini-series feels far less consequential today than it did 30 years ago, if only because such films and documentaries as Shindler's List, The Pianist, Sophie's Choice, Shoah, Sunshine and Heimat were able to take advantage of the creative license derived from the mini-series' success. Thirty years later, Holocaust may come off as soapy and melodramatic, but the star power continues to impress. Foremost among the international cast of actors who made the parallel stories of the Weisses and the Dorfs their own were Meryl Streep, Ian Holm, Michael Moriarty, Sam Wanamaker, David Warner and James Woods. If one looked for a common thread linking Grand Hotel, Upstairs, Downstairs, Fawlty Towers, The Duchess of Duke Street, The Grand and Hotel Babylon, it would be the democratic treatment accorded the stories of both the servant and ruling classes. OK, maybe Fawlty Towers is a stretch, but it's a better specimen than the absurdity that is NBC's Las Vegas. The Granada Television production was set in Manchester, post-World War I, just as the opulent Grand hotel was about to re-open its doors. The owners plot against each other, while the help dreams of better times ahead. Not surprisingly, perhaps, the hotel's doorman mans the gateway separating both worlds. The series lasted two years and this package includes all 18 episodes. It took far less time for Cranford to make the leap from the BBC and PBS to the DVD marketplace than most other mini-series. Indeed, it may still be playing in some markets. The popular five-part mini-series, which will be re-visited in 2009, was adapted from the novels of Mary Gaskell, who convinced readers that gossip exchanged in 1840 by a gaggle of women in a Cheshire market town would amuse women more than a century later. Even though rural Cranford had started feeling the vibrations from the machinery driving the industrial revolution, there's still plenty of room for chatter about the indiscretions of neighbors and friends. The cast includes Eileen Atkins, Judi Dench, Imelda Staunton, Simon Woods and Francesca Annis, but, as always with BBC mini-series, the real stars work behind the scenes in the wardrobe department and as set designers. The presence of Sir Alec Guinness, Sir Ralph Richardson and Joan Plowright would be reason enough to recommend John Dexter's 1969 production of Shakespeare's Twelfth Night. The gravy arrives in the form of a faithfully conceived interpretation of the Bard's fanciful comedy of mistaken identities, gender confusion and love. It originally was broadcast on Britain's ITV. Far more sobering is Kultur's Othello, a tale of jealousy, deception and murder that was recorded last year at Shakespeare's Globe Theater, a venue that is conducive to productions that accentuate acting over technology. Wilson Milam's production starred Eamonn Walker, Tim McInnerny and Zoe Tapper. The Andromeda Strain was the first of Michael Crichton's novels to be adapted for the big screen. He would, of course, go on to compete with Stephen King to see who could supply Hollywood producers with the greatest number of scary ideas. Thirty-five years later, A&E would present The Andromeda Strain as a four-hour mini-series, starring such small-screen stalwarts as Benjamin Bratt, Christa Miller, Eric McCormack, Ricky Schroder, Andre Braugher, Viola Davis and Daniel Dae Kim. The two-disc set adds plenty of commentary, making-of and background material. - Gary Dretzka

Nimrod Nation: The Complete Series Mannix: The First Season Exes and Ohs: The Complete First Season The Invaders: The First Season Intervention Season 1: Then and Now Absolutely Fabulous: Absolutely Everything DNA/The Chase Get Smart: The Complete Series The Upper Peninsula is to the rest of Michigan what Bangla Desh is to Pakistan. Instead of leaning east toward Lake Huron, Comerica Park and Michael Moore's Traverse City Film Festival, residents of the UP share a greater kinship with their cheesehead neighbors to south. They love the Green Bay Packers, sound like the characters in Fargo, prefer snowmobiles to Buicks and reserve their comp time at work for deer hunting season. If frigid weather, mosquitoes, venison jerky, stray bullets and raking leaves aren't an obstacle, the border town of Watersmeet might be your idea of paradise. It wasn't until recently that anyone south of Milwaukee and west of Duluth knew the city even existed. When ESPN found its high school team's nickname unusual enough to use in an ad campaign, Watersmeet officially became a town worthy of media exploitation. Mercifully, filmmaker Brett Morgen (The Kid Stays in the Picture) played it straight in his eight-part Sundance Channel mini-series, Nimrod Nation, resisting the temptation to turn the community into a setting for The Great White North … South. Instead, by hooking his documentary to the success of the school's basketball team, Morgen was able to tell a story about contemporary life in what's left of small-town America. Everyone in Watersmeet is passionate about the Nuggets, so it wasn't difficult for Morgen to blend into the woodwork, and engage locals in conversations at the cafes, lodges and bars. It turned out to be an extremely compelling experience. When CBS' Mannix first hit the airwaves in 1967, the gumshoe genre was about to be overwhelmed by a flood of fish-out-of-water crime-fighting shows, ranging from the hippie cops of Mod Squad to Peter Falk's disheveled interrogator in Columbo. As drawn by manly man Mike Connors, Joe Mannix was a PI from the old school. The only gimmick involved his learning to rely less on his fists than modern surveillance technology. Even so, Mannix offered plenty of violence. His brawn complemented the brains of his boss, played by Joseph Campanella, who often used now-primitive computers to speed their investigations. Mannix is a true classic of the genre. Logo's relationship series Exes and Oh's blends humor and drama in the service of a more realistic portrait of lesbian life than that drawn by The L Word. The characters experience the same traumas and joys as the Showtime ladies, but aren't required to look as if they had just stepped out of the pages of Penthouse Forum. While this dose of reality might not be welcome on a premium-cable network, lesbians who come in all shapes, sizes, colors and temperaments found the show to be far more credible. Lee Friedlander, who directed The Ten Rules: A Lesbian Survival Guide, is at the helm of Exes and Oh's. Stop me if you heard this one already. In The Invaders, Roy Thinnes played an architect who wanders the highways and byways of America to warn citizens of the presence of aliens in their midst. Hardly anyone listens, so he has to capture them himself. No? How about Invasion of the Body Snatchers and The Fugitive, which was produced by Quinn Martin? Even by the dubious standards set by producers of network reality shows, Intervention promised to be a hard sell to audiences. The first-season episodes introduced us to a half-dozen individuals who had trouble recognizing their addictions, even as they threatened to destroy their lives, marriages, jobs and credit ratings. After a certain point, the junkies' stories began to resemble each other … just as in real life. In DNA, the extremely likeable British actor Tom Conti plays a Manchester criminologist attempting to piece together what's left of his career after suffering a nervous breakdown. Sadly, his first case back closely resembles the one that put him into a tailspin. Also from Britain, comes The Chase, which was set in a Yorkshire veterinary hospital. The animals' problems pale in comparison to those of the staff. The series was created by Kay Mellor, who also was responsible for Coronation Street, Band of Gold and Strictly Confidential. I long ago tired of parsing the different variations of Absolutely Fabulous available on DVD. And, yet, they keep right on coming. Blu-ray notwithstanding, the new Absolutely Everything promises to be the last word on the delightfully twisted sitcom, which, even in reruns of reruns, remains hilarious. This edition is packaged in a plush silver folder, which contains nine discs. In addition to five seasons' worth of shows, the collection includes The Last Shout, The New York Special, White Box, the Mirror Ball pilot show, early sketches from French and Saunders and so on and so forth. I'm not sure how Get Smart: The Complete Series, which encapsulates only the 1995 revival series, was able to get away with that billing, when there's already a Get Smart the Complete Series: Seasons 1-5 extant. Depends upon where the colon is placed, I suppose. The new Get Smart aired on Fox, and, unlike the CBS original, only featured weekly cameos by Don Adams and Barbara Feldon. Also missing were the show's creators, Mel Brooks and Buck Henry, both of whom proved to be irreplaceable. Here, the son of Maxwell Smart and Agent 99 is played by Andy Dick - yup, that Andy Dick - and Elaine Hendrix was Agent 66. Again, this week, there's a wide variety of returnees to the TV-to-DVD marketplace. They include: The Jeff Corwin Experience: Season 2, Gunsmoke: The Second Season, Vol. 2, Rawhide: Season Three, Vol. 1, The Muppet Show: The Complete Third Season, Two and a Half Men: The Complete Third Season, Drawn Together: Uncensored!: Season Three, Lovejoy: The Complete Season 3, Rescue Me: The Complete Fourth Season, Mission Impossible: The Fourth TV Season, Penn & Teller: Bullsht!: The Complete Fifth Season and JAG (Judge Advocate General): The Sixth Season. - Gary Dretzka*