MCN DVD Reviews: August 1, 2008

*The Wrap Up ...*

Shine A Light	For many Baby Boomers, the concept of mortality won't really sink in until Mick Jagger or Keith Richards kicks the bucket, but only from natural causes. The loss of John Lennon and George Harrison was intensely sad, but the Stones mainstays had directly tempted fate so often, and in so many unusual ways, that they gave hope to substance abusers everywhere. It's no wonder that Martin Scorsese, who's been photographing rock concerts since Woodstock, would find something remarkable in the Rolling Stones' ability to command yet another performance out of their no-longer-young limbs. After all, if Richards can make into work every day, what excuse could any of us have for calling in sick? Much of the fascination in Shine a Light comes in watching Scorsese attempt to choreograph the production of his movie, while the Stones clearly had other things on their minds. Much of the craziness centers on planning a benefit concert, hosted by the former Boomer-in-Chief Bill Clinton and the future presidential candidate, Hillary Clinton. Naturally, all sorts of self-important celebrities show up, if only to witness for themselves how much fun their contemporaries are having in their dotage. Appearing alongside the Stones on stage are Jack White, Buddy Guy and Christina Aguilera, who, at 27, likely is too old to get a rise out of either of the Glimmer Twins. Scorsese's artful production reminds that charisma and nostalgia, when combined, can make millions of fans forget that the lads haven't produced a genuine hit or a truly great song in more than 30 years. They're stilling making music, money and whoopee on their own terms, and that's what gives the Boomers hope. The bonus material includes some additional songs and a pleasant backstage featurette. It should be noted, however, that the Stones' roguish reputation didn't preclude Jagger from dropping a couple of politically incorrect lyrics from Brown Sugar and Some Girls … unless he merely forgot what they were. -- Gary Dretzka

21 Two Disc Special Edition Lucky You	As long as mainstream filmmakers insist on injecting sappy romantic elements into dramas about sports, gambling and other forms of competition, one or both of the storylines will suffer. Forcing an athlete or gambler to choose between love, pride or money only works if the script is airtight and there's more at stake than a romp in the sack with a pretty blond. Right now, there's a glut of movies about high-stakes card players. In the poker-savvy dramedy, Lucky You, nothing was gained by having Drew Barrymore and Eric Bana waste their idle hours squabbling over money and broken promises. It was the inevitable confrontation between father (Robert Duvall) and son that mattered, and the dilution of that internal drama convinced distributors that a major marketing investment would be wasted. Despite the star power, it virtually went straight to DVD. In this spring's highly touted 21, all we really wanted to know was how much money the card-counters would be able to make before being caught by casino security. The invention of a tricky liaison between two of the team members served no purpose other than to offer hope to studio publicists that they could turn a suspenseful caper into a romantic comedy. And, judging from some very decent box-office numbers, the gambit worked. Even if the negative verdict was rendered early on for Lucky You, the creative team behind 21 probably dreamed of their baby someday being mentioned alongside such niche favorites as The Hustler, Hard Eight, Raging Bull, The Cincinnati Kid, The Man With the Golden Arm or, even, A Big Hand for the Little Lady. Back in the day, however, people made movies for reasons other than to secure a week's worth of bragging rights at the Grill or Spago. Each of those movies had love stories, but that's not what we remember most about them. Robert Luketic's fast-paced, highly watchable 21 was adapted from Ben Mezrich's book, Bringing Down the House, which took different liberties with the truth. Anyone who's spent more than 10 minutes at a blackjack table has heard one or more variations of the scam re-constructed here. It involved a group of M.I.T. math wizards, who were recruited by a professor to beat Las Vegas casinos at their own game. The scheme required great patience, not a small amount of courage and an ability to instantly calculate the probability of the dealer going bust before the team's big-money drop-in did. The hook to Mezrich's book - whiz kids earning their tuition money in Las Vegas - could hardly be sexier … even without a blond. Kevin Spacey plays the professor who teaches the students how to work the scam and strictly enforces discipline on the road. Although all of the students played different roles, any breakdown along the way would expose the key player (Jim Sturgess) to immeasurable harm. Things went smoothly, until the lure of easy money turned the math geeks into glitz hounds and babe magnets. The team's primary object of affection is played by the lovely Kate Bosworth, one of dozen interchangeable blond hotties available to the casting director. Sturgess is nerded-up to look the part, but Bosworth's credibility as a M.I.T. brainiac was comparable to having Brigitte Bardot referee a dogfight. At its best, 21 is a perfectly agreeable adult fantasy. Las Vegas, as bright on the Strip at midnight as Cambridge is at noon, provides the perfect counterweight to life on campus, which hasn't changed much since Good Will Hunting. The two-disc edition adds a trio of featurettes, The Advantage Player, Basic Strategy: A Complete Film Journal and Money Plays: A Tour of the Good Life. The Blu-ray edition includes a virtual Blackjack game. -- Gary Dretzka

Satantango High and Low: Criterion Collection	One way to parse the difference between a bona fide film critic and your run-of-the-mill movie reviewer would be to gauge their willingness to compete in the cinematic equivalent of the Iron Man Triathlon. If prizes were awarded, a dyed-in-the-wool cineaste might happily sit through Berlin Alexanderplatz (939 minutes) and any combination of The Decalogue (550 minutes), Three Colors: Red, White, Blue (291 minutes), Heimat: A German Chronicle (931 minutes) or Facet's new DVD edition of Satantango. Even the most dedicated of fanboys might balk at sitting through more than, say, 500 minutes of classic material - or a Godzilla marathon, for that matter - if it meant they'd have to tear themselves from the blogosphere for that long a period. Bela Tarr's monumental Hungarian-language epic, adapted from a novel by Laszlo Karsznahorkai, represents 450 deliberately paced minutes of subtitled, black-and-white storytelling. Satantango is a set in and around an unproductive collective farm after the collapse of communism. The villagers, whose lives haven't changed noticeably since the end of the Cold War, are waiting for the money they've been promised for being relocated. Naturally fearful of being ripped off by speculators, crooks, neighbors and bureaucrats, they'll believe it when they can hold the bills and stuff them in a mattress. It's the peasants' lot in life to dwell forever on the brink of despair. Adding to gloomy atmosphere are the autumn rains, which turn roads into bogs and imprison elderly residents in their own homes. Cinematographer Gabor Medvigy's lengthy montages dissect the characters' inherent fatalism, as if he had traded his camera for a CT scanner. (The average shot is 145.7 seconds long, and one take lasts 10-plus minutes.) For example, in the opening sequence, the camera first lingers on a small herd of cows, as they meander through a barnyard in the rain, then does a 180-degree scan of the immediate area. Yes, the same thing could have been accomplished in a fraction of the time - and in color -- but what would we have learned about the farm and the dreariness of country life? As ridiculous as this may sound, after a couple of hours of such extraordinary camerawork - forcing us to peer through the same windows as the bored villagers -- parallel storylines emerge and distinct rhythms of the devil's dance can be identified. The patience of those who consider cinema to be capable of producing great art will be greatly rewarded. The three-disc package also includes Tarr's Macbeth (made for TV in two uninterrupted shots), the short Journey on the Plain, an interview, a featurette on the restoration and an informative booklet. Most of what American audiences know about Japanese filmmaker Akira Kurosawa derives from his classic samurai films, which could be enjoyed and admired even without subtitles. Kurosawa didn't limit himself to any one historical period, though. The Criterion Collection edition of his 1962 police-procedural also reveals a proficiency in rendering gritty urban crime stories. High and Low was adapted from Ed McBain's King's Ransom, an installment in his popular 87nd Precinct series. In it, a wealthy industrialist, Kingo Gondo (Toshiro Mifune) falls prey simultaneously to an executive-level coup at his shoe factory and the kidnapping of a boy assumed by the abductors to be his son. The kidnapers demand what amounts to, yes, a king's ransom from Gondo, knowing his sense of honor would require him to save the life of his chauffer's son. The ransom nearly equals the exact sum of money he needs to quash the revolt by his associates, and, at first, he refuses to part with the money. His wife, however, helps convince him to go along with the demands, but not before he reluctantly seeks police help. Even though the detectives couldn't be any more dedicated to solving the crime, the kidnaper proves to be an elusive target. When the balance begins to tip in their favor, however, the cops are in a perfect position not only to put the mastermind behind bars, but also to recover most of the money and convict him for an even more grievous crime. Did I just spoil the ending for you? No, because in procedurals the crime and punishment are far less interesting than the hunt for clues that will deliver the villain to justice. At 143 minutes, Kurosawa afforded himself the freedom to flesh out the protagonists and many of the supporting players, as well as methodically piecing together the parts of the puzzle. The scene I'll keep with me takes place in a seedy red-light district, where junkies and prostitutes co-mingle with western businessmen, Japanese hipsters and mostly black American soldiers. In only a very few minutes, Kurosawa completes a portrait of an underworld milieu most mystery writers and mainstream filmmakers only pretend to understand. A second disc adds a making-of featurette, interviews with Mifune and other actors, trailers from Japan and the U.S., and essays. -- Gary Dretzka

The Witnesses	André Téchiné is in no hurry to get to the heart of his drama about a time in our lives when AIDS had yet to be diagnosed and a wee bit of promiscuity still could be fun. Set in France in the early 1980s, The Witnesses focuses on a tight-knit group of friends and lovers, among them a successful writer of children's book (Emmanuelle Béart); her serious and darkly handsome vice-cop husband, Mehdi (Sami Bouajila); an older, un-closeted doctor (Michel Blanc); and a charismatic hustler, Manu. The drama is divided both by the passage of time and blissful sojourns to the lush French countryside, a world apart from the gritty reality of Paris street life. At least that's case for Manu, who lives with his sister in a building that doubles as a brothel. After a portentous encounter in a park well known for being a refuge for cruisers, the love-starved doctor takes in Manu, whose residence is under the continuous scrutiny of Mehdi's detectives. During a trip to the shore, Mehdi saves Manu from drowning. In the course of resuscitating Manu, an almost visible spark ignites a sexual firestorm between the two men. Later, when Manu begins to display the outward symptoms of the still-unnamed disease, the doctor he jilted takes over his case and attempts to comfort him. Just as all of the friends in the circle shared the good times, Manu's AIDS unites them in pain, sadness and fear for their own safety. Téchiné, a truly exceptional writer-director, expertly avoids the shoals of melodrama and sentimentality, making it easy for viewers to believe that these very different characters would be able to exist in the same orbit. (Try to imagine an American cop in the same situation … you can't). Like HBO's ground-breaking And the Band Played On. The Witnesses works well as a convincing a medical mystery. -- Gary Dretzka

Harold & Kumar Escape From Guantanamo Bay	Given the relatively successful box-office and DVD runs of Harold & Kumar Go to the White Castle, it was inevitable that there would be a sequel. Just as inevitably, that sequel was bound to be inferior in almost every way to Jon Hurwitz and Hayden Schlossberg's disarming original. Despite the title, Harold and Kumar has about as much to do with Guantanamo Bay as the original had with sliders. It's about getting high and never running out of dope. As the movie opens, H&K are on flight to the cannabis capital of the world, Amsterdam, when their bong is confused for a bomb and their fellow passengers mistake the Pakistani and Korean for Arab terrorists. Upon landing, H&K are swept away by federal agents to the prison at Guantanamo Bay. They swiftly escape from the prison, but not before witnessing prisoners being forced to fellate the jailors. After hopping a ride to Florida with a group of boat people, they connect with a rich friend in full orgy mode (bottomless partying, not topless). The one hope to clear their names, however, requires a road trip to Texas and the lavish home of an old girlfriend. Her straight-arrow fiancé has government contacts, but is loathe to call in a favor to rescue these stoners. In between, the pair spend the night in the basement of a creepy swamp cottage, intrude on a Klan picnic, visit a whorehouse with Neil Patrick Harris and smoke dope with President Bush. While often amusing, nothing approaches the hilarity one would expect from such an enterprise. John Cho and Kal Penn are plenty game, but they'll never be confused with Cheech & Chong. The good news for fans of this sort of scatological comedy can be found in the extended unrated edition, in which there's a lot more gratuitous nudity and bathroom humor. A second disc adds commentary, a background featurette, lots of additional scenes, an interview with the actor who impersonates the President and an interactive scene-switching game. -- Gary Dretzka



The Band's Visit Easily one of last year's most delightfully offbeat comedies, The Band's Visit describes what happens when a group of Egyptian musicians -- the Alexandria Police Ceremonial Orchestra - board the wrong bus on a visit to Israel and find themselves in the moribund desert community of Bet Hatikva. Stranded until the bus returns the next day, the musicians are taken in by local residents. At first, music and a few words of English provide the only common ground for the visitors and their hosts. Eventually, though, they find other ways to communicate and share more personal experiences. The unlikely friendship that grows between the jaded café owner, Dina (Ronit Elkabetz), and the stern band leader, Tewfiq (Sasson Gabai), is especially compelling. As the night goes on, several layers of protective covering are shed and all sorts of borders are made to disappear. In another wonderful scene, the band's jazz-loving hornman, Khaled, is invited to join two other couples for a visit to a roller rink. Khaled, who considers himself to be a real player, helps his new friend overcome a severe bout of shyness, so he could connect with his date. Without taking an overt political posture, The Band's Visit argues that language, religion and politics need not be barriers to friendship and understanding, although they almost always are. That message failed to reach the pinheads at the Motion Picture Academy, which decided that too much English was used in the movie for it to qualify for a nomination as Best Foreign Language Picture. Protests over its inexplicable exclusion spurred the academy to rewrite the rules for 2009. -- Gary Dretzka

Towards Darkness The DVD release of Jose Antonio Negret's semi-autobiographical hostage drama, Towards Darkness, benefits from recent headlines documenting the rescue of a group of prisoners taken by years earlier by Colombian rebels. It also helps that the credits carry the name of America Ferrera, who participated in the project as co-star and executive producer. Otherwise, despite the jazzy editing, the story told bilingually in Towards Darkness is almost too familiar, by now, to raise a ripple of excitement outside Latin America. In it, a New York-based photographer is kidnapped and held for ransom while visiting relatives in Colombia. The family hasn't the means to meet the rebels' deadline and demands, which are exorbitant, and turns instead to an American special-ops team. Aside from getting deep into the head of the doomed kidnap victim, Negret orchestrates a very decent chase sequence. The film is furthered informed by the fact that three of Negret's family members also had been kidnapped. -- Gary Dretzka

Cocaine Cowboys 2: Hustlin' With the Godmother Surfwise: The Amazing True Odyssey of the Poskowitz Family Joe Louis: America's Hero... Betrayed Outfoxed: Rupert Murdoch's War on Journalism: Fox Attacks Special Edition In Billy Corben's fascinating 2006 documentary Cocaine Cowboys, which described how drug smuggling quickly went from being a mellow hobby for seafaring hippies to something far more grotesque, he teased us with the story of the Cocaine Godmother. Griselda Blanco. Without elaborating, Corben suggested that this matronly middle-aged Colombian entrepreneur may have been responsible for more murders and overdoses than all of the men profiled in that doc. Hustlin' With the Godmother delivers on his promise to showcase that villainess, as seen through the eyes of law-enforcement officials, lawyers, prosecutors and Oakland crack peddler Charles Crosby. As unlikely as it sounds, Cosby describes how his life was completely altered after mailing a fan letter to Blanco, who was cooling her heels in a nearby prison. Crack had just emerged as the drug of choice for inner-city dope fiends and their friendship would guarantee an uninterrupted flow of cocaine from Colombia to NoCal, with only a slight detour in Miami or other port cities. In part, Cosby was being rewarded for keeping an eye on her young son, Michael Corleone, while she was in the joint. Within months of meeting Blanco, Cosby was a multi-millionaire. Although the Colombians looked upon African-Americans much in the same way as the Klan, the pair added a personal relationship to their business partnership. Soon enough, Cosby would learn to appreciate why Blanco was known on two continents as the Black Widow, as well as the Godmother. Hollywood would be hard-pressed to create fictional characters as interesting - lethal, too - as the felons we meet here. It helps that Cosby is a natural-born storyteller, as well as a world-class playa'. Surfwise tells another story that would be difficult to believe if the actual participants weren't still around to provide documentation. In Doug Pray's 2007 film, we meet 80-something Dorian "Doc" Paskowitz, who, back in the '50s, turned his back on the American Dream to create one of his own. Like Allie Fox, in Paul Theroux's The Mosquito Coast, Paskowitz pulled his growing family off the grid and committed them to a life centered on the pursuit of sun, sand and surfing. He and his wife raised and educated eight sons and a daughter within the cozy confines of a 24-foot-long camper. Today, this would be called home schooling, but, back then, their bohemian lifestyle was considered weird, if not exactly revolutionary. In the '60s, it was tantamount to a crime for parents to lay their trip on their children … although a surfer's need to follow to follow the waves made the Paskowitz clan exempt. The traumas would come later, when the kids were forced to cope with life outside the trailer. The bonus package adds outtakes, commentary and surfing footage. Like so many other American heroes, the great heavyweight boxing champion Joe Louis didn't know what hit him when the media turned off the spotlight and the IRS came calling for its ounce of flesh. In the heart-breaking HBO Sports biodoc, America's Hero Betrayed, we follow the arc of Louis' career, from becoming a poster boy for America's anti-Nazi ideals to bankruptcy and professional glad-handing. In between, we learn a lot about how Louis' success brought white and black Americans together in ways not previously imaginable, and his struggle to enjoy a normal existence. As documented here, Louis' life qualifies as one of many Great American Tragedies. In 2004, Robert Greenwald's revealing documentary Outfoxed took direct aim at Rupert Murdoch and the attack-dog commentators who were using Fox News to spew right-wing demagoguery to audiences who couldn't spot the difference between Mein Kampf and the Constitution. As convincing as that film was to diehard liberals and folks smart enough to know the Iraq war was doomed to failure, it probably didn't affect the ratings all that much, really. Indeed, Murdoch has pretty much evolved into the devil we know, and his evil has since been eclipsed by aspiring tyrants like Sam Zell, who's well on his way to dismantling several important newspapers. Unlike Murdoch's Post, there's now a real chance that newspapers in Chicago, Los Angeles and Baltimore either will disappear or be reduced to covering celebrities and printing school-lunch menus. Greenwald has updated Outfoxed by adding an hour of additional material, including the short videos in the Fox Attacks series. Also from Disinformation Co. comes Uncounted: The New Math of American Elections, which explains how modern technology was used to steal the 2004 election. -- Gary Dretzka

Comedy Central's TV Funhouse Parking Wars: Best of Season 1 Two Fat Ladies L.A. Ink: Season 1 The Wizards of Waverly Place: Wizard School Phineas and Ferb: The Fast and the Phineas Transformers Cybertron: The Ultimate Collection Baldwin Hills: The Complete First Season A Woman of Independent Means Few recurring segments of Saturday Night Life have held up over time as well as the animated TV Funhouse. They represent the kind of edgy humor for which the show once was known, but now has been left for Mad TV to deliver each week. The same irreverent take on pop iconography was on display in Comedy Central's version of TV Funhouse, which, in 2000, employed puppets, live animals, cartoons and familiar guest stars to skewer Boomer nostalgia for '50s-era kiddie shows. The very twisted Robert Smigel, also responsible for Triumph the Insult Dog, found increasingly bizarre ways to entertain today's hipster youth and their grandparents, who are old enough to have sat in Howdy Doody's Peanut Gallery. In an era when everyone's job, however menial, is fair game for a reality-based television series, doing a show about those brave men and women who ticket, boot, tow and hold our cars for ransom was inevitable. The A&E network struck first by borrowing a concept already attempted on British (where else would American producers of reality show get their ideas?). Here, the series scrutinized the Philadelphia Parking Authority, which provided plenty of fodder for Season 1. It was difficult, however, to separate the heroes from the villains as they went through their thankless paces The only other television reality genre as overexposed as the workplace shows involves the preparation of food, both professionally and at the amateur level. Even prison chow was covered in Goodfellas, which can be seen a dozen times a week on a half-dozen different cable networks. The Brits, at least, aren't reluctant to put a camera in front of people who look as if they stopped counting calories a hundred pounds ago. In Two Fat Ladies, Jennifer Paterson and Clarissa Dickson Wright take their act on the road, providing sustenance and overdoses of cholesterol for everyday fans of their show. They are to cooking what NPR's Car Guys are to automobiles. And, while we're on the subject, how many reality shows about tattoos should one society be expected to endure? Blame all the beautiful young men and women who think their often hideous skin art will magically disappear when the reach retirement age. If it weren't for them, producers of bargain-basement cable series would be stuck prowling the haunts of sailors and bikers to find targets for exploitation. If L.A. Ink was marginally better than similar shows set in Las Vegas and Miami - a dozen other shows about tanning salons, health clubs and nightclubs - it was because of the presence of Kat Von D. Otherwise, who cares? The PBS Home Video doc, Muhammad Ali: Made in Miami examines how the champ's stay in Miami shaped much of what is about to become as boxer and citizen of the world. The Disney Channel is represented on this week's TV-to-DVD slate by several episodes of Wizards of Waverly Place, which had the same basic premise as Harry Potter, except that it was set in New York City and the kids probably won't be allowed to grow up gracefully. The Fast and the Phineas follows the animated exploits of dare-devil stepbrothers Phineas and Ferb, for whom every new day brings a different challenge. There's also a pet platypus that doubles as a secret agent attempting to save the world from the evil Dr. Doofenshmirtz. I can't make this stuff up. In Transformers Cybertron: The Ultimate Collection, Optimus Prime and the Autobots once again labor to save the universe from a fate worse than global warming. The idea here is to claim possession of the Cyber Planet Keys before they're found by the nasty Decepticons and a monstrous Black Hole threatens to suck them into the unknown. Or, is that the plot of last month's Transformers release? Hard to keep track, anymore. Why should the rich and famous offspring of African-American buppies be left out of the loop, when it comes to unrealistic depictions of teen angst in America? Baldwin Hills is a neighborhood in Los Angeles that traditionally has served as a stepping-off point for successful black families on their way to Beverly Hills. The BET network hopes viewers, in L.A., anyway, won't look too closely at the lack of similarities between the real and faux Baldwin Hills. The bold and beautiful youngsters here are every bit as believable as the mutants on display in Beverly Hills, 90210: The Fifth Season, The Hills: The Complete Third Season and Girlfriends: The Fourth Season, whose characters may well have grown up in Baldwin Hills. Sally Fields has been going in and out of style ever since she burst on the scene as Gidget, 40-plus years ago. She's always been good, but memories of her more perky roles linger in the minds of directors longer than those of her dramatic work. For her work in the three-part mini-series, A Woman of Independent Means, Field was honored with her second of seven Emmy nominations. She plays Bess, a turn-of-the-last-century Dallas society lady who, despite her independent bearing, lives a mostly unfulfilled existence. The mini-series was filmed in Galveston and Houston, with Robert Greenwald at the helm. (He would soon turn his attention to such documentaries as Outfoxed and Uncovered.) Like Dracula and his ilk, the urge to create movies, books and TV series about vampires never dies. The DVD release of Dark Shadows: The Beginning, Vol. 5 is a reminder of the long-running ABC series that was, at once, supremely entertaining and totally unique for its time. Spaced: The Complete Series is a compilation of episodes from the British sitcom that starred the very funny Simon Pegg (Shaun of the Dead) and Jessica Stevenson, and should be of interest to fans of Coupling, Peep Show and Not Going Out. The BBC's A History of Britain: The Complete Collection has been repackaged and sent out by A&E. Acorn's Robin of Sherwood: The Complete Collection includes 14 commentary tracks, 4 retrospective documentaries, behind-the-scenes footage and the featurette, Clannad: Scoring Robin of Sherwood. -- Gary Dretzka