MCN DVD Reviews: October 27, 2009

..MCN Weekend

Orphan
Fear(s) of the Dark
Sauna
Pandemic
Stan Helsing

There is a cautionary note posted at the beginning of Orphan, reminding viewers that, despite everything that happens during the course of the movie, adopting children is a good thing and almost none of them will want to kill their adoptive families. Duh. Along with thrillers about evil twins and babies spawned by Satan, films in the bad seed sub-genre all resemble each other in certain obvious ways. Most horror fans could have walked into Orphan half-way through its two-hour length and guessed what already had transpired and in which direction things probably were headed. Here, the well-to-do owners of a swell rural home have decided to add to their brood, after another child was delivered stillborn. Somehow, a local orphanage just happens to have a cute, intelligent and English-speaking 10-year-old available. Esther (Isabelle Fuhrman) had survived a fire at the home of the couple that had brought her to America, from Russia, and she seemed remarkably free of trauma. Once ensconced in her new digs, Esther seems to be a model child. She can even engage in sign-language conversations with her deaf younger sister. At her new school, however, she is treated shabbily by less-charitable classmates, including her status-conscious brother. When the abusive behavior triggers an evil impulse in Esther's brain, it becomes abundantly clear that people are going to get hurt. At home, the emotionally fragile mother (Vera Farmiga) is the first to smell a rat in their midst, while the easy-going dad (Peter Sarsgaard) is more patient. Esther takes advantage of the situation by making it seem as if the mother, a recovering alcoholic, has started drinking again and is abusing her. Then, other gory accidents begin happening to people in Esther's orbit. Finally, after too long a wait, director Jaume Collet-Serra (House of Wax) reveals the secret behind Esther's bad behavior, and it's a doozy. I won't spoil the fun by revealing what the secret might be, but it's simultaneously freaky, creepy and scary. The violence surrounding Esther's transformation is ratcheted up at this point, as well, elevating Orphan above the bulk of uninteresting genre pictures. Fuhrman and Farmiga turn in memorable performances, and the overall production values are solid. The DVD set includes deleted scenes and an alternate ending, while the Blu-ray edition adds Mama's Little Devils: Bad Seeds and Evil Children, BD-Live features and a digital Copy of the film.

Fear(s) of The Dark is a six-part anthology of animated shorts, conceived and shot in black-and-white. They are tentatively linked by a fellow trying to keep a pack of leash dogs together, until he lets them go individually. The scary shorts were constructed by artists, Blutch, Charles Burns, Marie Caillou, Pierre di Sciullo, Lorenzo Mattotti and Richard McGuire.

The horrors in Sauna are the direct result of atrocities committed during a long-ago war between Sweden and Russia. A truce has allowed a pair of Finnish brothers, Eerik (Ville Virtanen) and Knut (Tommi Eronen), time to carve a new border in a boggy region between the two forces. As the surveying team moves through the swamp, it is visited by apparitions in the form of people and buildings that appear to be floating above the morass. They represent various less-than-savory aspects of the war experience for the brothers, who see things quite differently than other soldiers on the team.

Perhaps, the most noteworthy thing about Pandemic is that it marks the directorial debut of Jason Connery, the son Sean Connery and Diane Cilento. Otherwise, it's pretty standard stuff. A New Mexico veterinarian is asked by the Centers for Disease Control to investigate the outbreak of a mysterious and highly dangerous contagious disease affecting people and livestock. Aiding in the investigation is a local anti-government conspiracy theorist.

In the limp-noodle parody of slasher and other horror-genre conventions, Stan Helsing, a video-store employee is continually being confused with the legendary vampire-hunter Van Helsing, a distant relative. While on his way to drop off DVDs (gay porn, it turns out) at the rural home of the store's owner, Stan Helsing and his pals are confronted by an array of sociopathic freaks, such as Freddy, Jason, Leatherface, Pinhead, Michael Myers and Chucky. It's a weak premise, but, apparently, it's the only one writer-director Bo Zenga had. Even as a spoof of horror-genre spoofs - of which there already are far too many - Stan Helsing is anemic. Once again, it begs the question: doesn't anyone read these things before they get approved for production? For those who care, the DVD includes commentary, alternate and deleted scenes, a making-of featurette and storyboards.-.– Gary Dretzka

..MCN Weekend

Ice Age: Dawn of the Dinosaurs: Blu-ray
Tinker Bell and the
Lost Treasure: Blu-ray
Mickey's Magical Christmas

Upon the release of the third film in Fox's Ice Age franchise, consumers once again spoke louder than critics at the box-office. Guess whose testimony the studio is more likely to believe to when it comes time to decide if the inevitable Ice Age IV is released theatrically or straight-to-video. Nearly $200 million in domestic ticket sales suggests that critics will have one more opportunity, at least, to kick Scrat & Co. around the ice floe … and in 3-D, no less. Trying to review animated features as if they were anything but popular entertainments is a fool's game. Kids know what they like, and it hardly matters what adults think about their cultural standards. Indeed, unlike most sequels, IA3 out-grossed its predecessors, while getting the worst reviews of the trio. (Roger Ebert judged it to be the best of the bunch, though, and, if any critic's opinion could make a difference at the box-office, it was his.) For what it's worth, IA3 focused on family planning. While Manny and Ellie (Ray Romano and Queen Latifah) were expecting a baby mammoth, Sid and Diego (John Leguizamo, Denis Leary) dealt with their feelings of being left out by preparing to welcome dinosaur hatchlings into the world. And, if this doesn't make any anthropological sense, the creators have added a parallel underground world that's more conducive to the needs of giant cold-blooded lizards. Another new face belongs to a hyperkinetic weasel, Buck (Simon Pegg), who adds some comic relief to the fractured history lesson. In addition to the DVD and digital copy, the Blu-ray set adds commentary, deleted scenes, a Walk the Dinosaur music video, a story maker, a pair of Scrat shorts, drawing tutorials, character studies with Romano, Latifah and Leguizamo, and several other making-of featurettes.

As much as I hate paying nearly $10 for a box of popcorn and a beverage at the local megaplex, I'm not about to put the blame for inflated concessions prices on greedy theater owners. Considering that exhibitors have virtually no say in the quality of the pictures they're required to show, and their share of ticket prices is miniscule, they're far more worthy of pity than scorn. I'm guessing that theater owners were none too pleased to learn that Disney elected to release its new Tinker Belle movie in DVD and Blu-ray domestically, but in theaters in some other countries. Most DVD originals aren't worth the time or effort to open anywhere except the small screen, of course, and the same can be said of some of Disney's straight-to-DVD titles. It seems to me, however, that Tinker Bell and the Lost Treasure is exactly the kind of picture that not only could put much-needed currency in the pockets of exhibitors between holiday blockbusters, but also do extremely well in DVD, without losing a beat. That's none of my business, though. In what essentially is the second prequel to Disney's beloved Peter Pan, Tinker Bell and the Lost Treasure documents the wee fairy's efforts to save her forested realm from a depletion of Pixie Dust. Queen Clarion and the Minister of Autumn have asked her to create a scepter capable of focusing the light of the blue harvest moon through a rare moonstone, so as to keep trees producing their magic pollen. When trouble ensues, Tink is required to come up with a Plan B, pronto. The plot wouldn't make anyone forget the original sprite - Julia Roberts' turn in Hook couldn't, either - but it's serviceable enough to please kindergarten-age kiddies and, in Blu-ray, quite delightful for parents to watch, too. Maybe, if Disney had added a few vampires into the mix, the movie would have been considered worthy of a trip to the mall. As for extras, the package arrives with 20 minutes of outtakes and bloopers; a Guide to Pixie Hollow in the movie; a behind-the-scenes look at Disney World's Pixie Hollow; a music video, in which Demi Lovato sings The Gift of a Friend; a standard DVD edition; and BD-Live functionality. The voicing cast includes Mae Whitman, Kristin Chenoweth, Jane Horrocks, Anjelica Huston, Jesse McCartney and Raven-Symone.

Meanwhile, Disney has wasted no time getting into the Christmas spirit - such as it is -with the 2001 Mickey's Magical Christmas: Snowed in at the House of Mouse joining the already re-re-released Mickey's Christmas Carol on video-store shelves. Magical Christmas features three dozen of the most familiar Disney cartoon characters, and is joined on the disc by The Nutcracker, Mickey's Christmas Carol, Donald on Ice, Pluto and the Christmas Tree and the finale of The Best Christmas of All. Other goodies include the premiere episode House of Mouse, a pair of sing-along songs and a sound-effects featurette. . – Gary Dretzka

Whatever Works: Blu-ray

Among the actors who have played reasonable facsimiles of Woody Allen in Allen's comedies are Seth Green (Radio Days), John Cusack (Bullets Over Broadway), Kenneth Branagh (Celebrity), Jonathan and Robert Munk (Annie Hall, Stardust Memories) and, in Whatever Works, Larry David. Matthew Broderick often plays Allen in other people's movies and Mia Farrow has occasionally played his female counterpart, as well. David, the curmudgeonly star of Curb Your Enthusiasm and, writer-producer of Seinfeld, is more like Allen's evil twin than a stand-in for the hyper-neurotic Renaissance man. In Whatever Works, David plays a mean-spirited New York physicist-turned-chess-teacher, Boris, who makes room in his home and heart for a disarming Southern beauty queen, Melodie (Evan Rachel Wood). One night, after a typically argumentative conversation with pals in a neighborhood café, Boris arrives home to find the shivering waif taking shelter in his stairwell. She gets him to agree to providing shelter for a night, but stays for the long haul. Shortly after the couple gets married - yeah, surprise, a young tootsie and old coot fall in love in an Allen picture - Melodie's nutty mom makes an appearance. As played so marvelously by Patricia Clarkson, the deeply religious Mississippi belle is Boris' polar opposite, and she won't rest until she's broken up the marriage. In the meantime, she makes friends with Boris' artsy buddies, who encourage her to turn a photography hobby into a vocation. The transition from belle to beatnik is hilarious to observe. It gets even better when Melodie's even more uptight dad shows up at the loft and taps into a Manhattan melodrama of his own. Old fans of Allen's work will find more here to like than those who come to the movie because of David. Thanks to Curb Your Enthusiasm, David's persona no longer is that of a dyed-in-the-wool New Yorker, but a ex-patriot who's fallen in love with the informal L.A. style, faux-hip West Side vibe and Hollywood money. Too much of Boris' acidity here seems forced and discordant, while the repetitive insults quickly lose their sting. Still, as a DVD diversion, Whatever Works is hard to beat. As is the case with most Allen discs, the bonus features are practically non-existent.

Another view of Gotham is provided in the Home Alone 2: Lost in New York, which has just been re-released in Blu-ray. I wonder how many parents in the last 17 years have indulged their kids by springing for a weekend stay at the Plaza Hotel, based solely on the Macaulay Culkin's excellent adventure. The hi-def looks fine, but don't strain your eyes looking for extras. . – Gary Dretzka

The Samuel Fuller Collection

Like John Huston, John Ford and Howard Hawks, Sam Fuller lived the kind of life the most masculine of his characters would envy. A natural-born story teller, the Massachusetts native based many of his screenplays on events he witnessed as a reporter in New York City and rifleman in World War II. Not surprisingly, perhaps, Fuller approached each new movie as if it were a battlefield, where the forces of love, hate, violence, action and death all played strategic roles. Abrupt and grizzled in demeanor, the cigar-chomping filmmaker was interested first and foremost in putting what he considered to be the truth on display. This wasn't always easy, considering the limitations imposed on the medium by the Production Code, budgetary concerns and demand for large-than-life heroes in the wake of World War II. As such, Fuller often clashed with studio heads more interested in dousing the flames of controversy than risking profits by fanning them. It also explains why he was more admired in Europe than America, where his films often filled the bottom half of a double-feature. The freshly restored pictures represented here are from Fuller's days at Columbia. They include It Happened in Hollywood (1937), Adventure in Sahara (1938), Power of the Press (1943), Shockproof (1949), Scandal Sheet (1952), The Crimson Kimono (1959) and Underworld U.S.A. (1961). A terrific bio-doc, The Men Who Made the Movies: Sam Fuller, offer a no-holds-barred portrait of the artist. Martin Scorsese, Curtis Hanson, Tim Robbins, Wim Wenders and daughter, Samantha Fuller, add their perspective in interviews and introductions to special features. - Gary Dretzka

Champions Forever: The Definitive Edition

Today, the most exciting boxing takes place in divisions reserved for fighters who wouldn't look out of place at any big-city gym or participating in sports that don't require smashing an opponent in the chops. Ever since the self-immolation of Mike Tyson's career, no heavyweight champion has managed to capture the public's interest, let alone the collective imagination. This wasn't always the case, however. For most of the 20th Century, the easiest way to start an argument was to compare Muhammad Ali unfavorably to Joe Louis, Joe Frazier, Jack Dempsey or Jack Johnson, and vice versa. Champions Forever is comprised of long-ignored interviews with Ali, Frazier, George Foreman, Larry Holmes and Ken Norton, none of whom had any trouble selling tickets to their matches. They were conducted by Craig Glazer, who understood not only the sport, but also how it fit within the context of the turbulent times. This set is dominated by Ali, who, in 1990, was still able to engage in long conversations and be understood throughout, despite the noticeable emergence of Parkinson's syndrome. Here, he is playful, funny and introspective. In other interviews, the former champions sat together and reminisced candidly about their most famous fights, the weight of the heavyweight crown and how Ali's legal battles impacted on their careers. Carefully selected scenes from their matches also are fun to watch. It's terrific stuff. – Gary Dretzka

Medicine for Melancholy

This festival favorite describes how an ill-conceived one-night stand can evolve from disaster to dreamy within the span of 24 eventful hours. In Medicine for Melancholy, Wyatt Cenac and Tracey Heggins play an appealing pair of Buppies attempting to make sense of life in a city, San Francisco, where African-Americans are being marginalized by gentrification. Indeed, according to the filmmaker's notes, San Francisco has the smallest proportional black population of any other major American city. It isn't that the accidental couple doesn't fit right into the white bread scene, however. They make their way around town on bicycles, enjoy strolling through art museums on their days off, aren't in love with hip-hop music, hold jobs typically reserved for Yuppies and share the same neuroses as their trendy neighbors. They could hardly be written off as Uncle Toms, but that doesn't prevent them from feeling more than a little bit alienated. Without hitting viewers over the head with a shovel, writer/director Barry Jenkins allows the couple's day-after relationship to evolve slowly and naturally, avoiding the traps of political correctness and racial sermonizing. Medicine for Melancholy will appeal not only to black audiences, but any urban viewers who don't go through life wearing blinders. – Gary Dretzka

Perestroika
From the East

As far as I can tell, Slava Tsukerman's compelling drama about an astrophysicist who returns to Russia played in exactly one theater before disappearing last spring. There's no good reason for Perestroika to remain lost on DVD. In it, Sam Robards plays the Jewish scientist, Sasha Greenberg, who, after 17 years of self-imposed exile in the United States, travels to Moscow to speak before old friends and former colleagues and lovers at a Congress on Cosmology. Much has transpired in the ensuing 17 years, of course, both in the world of science and inner universe of Greenberg's soul. While his Russian peers were enduring the harsh conditions of life in the Soviet Union, Greenberg was enjoying the perks that come with being a distinguished scientist in the west. His former colleagues, too, were required to adjust to the transition from the Soviet bureaucracy to a tentative democracy. No longer are they required to treat him as a traitor … openly, at least. Not surprisingly, the more things have changed for Sasha, the more things stayed the same in Moscow. Once there, his guilt feelings resurface alongside the anti-Semitism that convinced him to leave in the first place. Also playing key roles are F. Murray Abraham, Ally Sheedy and Oksana Stashenko. The Moscow settings, which never seem to get any newer with each passing movie, also add to the authentic feel.

Shot during the same period described in Perestroika, Chantal Akerman's From the East is much more an intellectual exercise than a film to be enjoyed by mainstream audiences. I can imagine students being tested on its conceits by tweedy professors at Ivy League schools, one of which employs the director, Chantal Akerman. For self-described cineastes, however, From the East surely is worth the effort of trying to figure out what it all means. Employing a decidedly non-narrative approach to her subject - the faces of change in an essentially stagnant environment - Akerman uses agonizingly long pans of crowds, cues and gatherings of people in Eastern bloc countries. There's little joy to be found in the faces of people bundled up to prevent frostbite, while going about their chores and commutes. In warmer seasons, the people don't look all that much happier, either. – Gary Dretzka

Z: Criterion Collection
Il Divo

In the turbulent 1960s, Costa-Gavras' Z was one of the movies that allowed student radicals to feel as if they were part of an international movement, instead of one based solely on finding convenient ways to avoid the draft. After its initial theatrical run, it would be shown on campuses in heavy rotation alongside such anti-fascist flicks as Burn, Battle of Algiers, Salt of the Earth, I Am Cuba, The Great Dictator, King of Hearts, Modern Times, The Grapes of Wrath, Dr. Strangelove, Lord of the Flies, Metropolis, Dutchman and anything starring the Marx brothers. It was based on actual events in Greece, surrounding the 1963 assassination of left-wing activist Gregoris Lambrakis. Yves Montand and Jean-Louis Trintignant gave unforgettable performances, and Mikis Theodorakis' score accentuated the tension inherent in the investigation and cover-up. One needn't have been a leftist to be glued to the edge of his or her seat as the depth of the crime is revealed and a fragile democracy is corrupted both by right-wing brutes and agents of other paranoid democracies. The Criterion Collection edition is enhanced by a high-definition digital transfer, approved by cinematographer Raoul Coutard; audio commentary, with historian Peter Cowie; new interviews with Costa-Gavras and Coutard; archival interviews with Costa-Gavras, producer-actor Jacques Perrin, actors Yves Montand, Irène Papas and Jean-Louis Trintignant, and Vassilis Vassilikos, author of the book, Z; and an essay by critic Armond White.

No democracy has been burdened by political upheaval and outright corruption more than that in Italy, since the end of World War II. It continues today, as well, with the sexual shenanigans of Premier Silvio Berlusconi and an 18-year-old model. Il Divo describes a more traditional, if seemingly less acceptable form of political scandal, involving seven-term Prime Minister Giulio Andreotti, His unpunished crimes began with bribery and extortion and grew to include murder and collusion with conspirators in the Vatican, the Mafia and a neo-Fascist Masonic Lodge. Paulo Sorrentino's portrait, which has all the trappings of a black comedy, reminds us once again of the banality of evil. – Gary Dretzka

On the Road with Charles Kuralt, Set 1
The Prisoner: The Complete Series: Blu-ray
The Guardian: The First Season
Legend of the Seeker: The Complete First Season
Western TV Treasures

Although it's now become a staple of broadcast news, it wasn't until 1967 that the late CBS reporter Charles Kuralt took to the open road to find everyday folks with uncommon talents and fascinating stories to tell. His On the Road segments knew no boundaries, and the only requirement for inclusion in the vignettes was that a subject represented a genuine slice of American life. Kuralt was the kind of a guy who people immediately trusted with their innermost feelings and eccentricities. His stories were as homespun as pair of freshly knit mittens, but the personable reporter was just as comfortable in New York and Washington, as he was on one of the six motor homes he and his crew wore out on the nation's highways and byways. While other reporters were assigned the daily task of assessing body counts and budget deficits, Kuralt's mission was to introduce us to people who gave us hope, joy and relief from the political and financial wars. This set represents just the beginning of a remarkable journey. There's plenty more material available in the CBS archive. The DVD also includes a making-of featurette, updates and a biography of Kuralt.

Also from the vast recesses of the 1960s comes The Prisoner, one of the most imaginative, offbeat and influential series in the history of television. Created in England and exported to the U.S. in 1968, story focused on a government agent (Patrick McGoohan) who is abducted from his London home and forced to live among other former spooks, with knowledge valuable to one mysterious force or another. The prisoners, known only by numbers, are held in The Village, from which they're all trying to escape. That's much easier said than done, however. In addition to visually and audibly restored episodes, A&E's Blu-ray package contains a feature-length documentary on the production of the show; new featurettes, The Pink Prisoner and You Make Sure it Fits!; a promo for the new AMC mini-series of the same title; original edits of Arrival and The Chimes of Big Ben; restored soundtracks; commentaries; a photo gallery; and other memorabilia.

Simon Baker has enjoyed a great deal of success with The Mentalist, but the handsome Aussie has appeared in other TV dramas, as well. In The Guardian, he played a corporate lawyer, who, after being nicked on a drug charge, was required to contribute 1,500 hours of service to his community. The cases he handles as a part-time child advocate at Pittsburgh's Legal Aid Services involve kids who need protection as much from each other as the society at large.

The Disney sword-and-sorcery series Legend of the Seeker told the story of a young man whose destiny it is to wage a war against evil in this world, using the powers of magic and martial-arts skills. The youthful hero is joined in his mythic quest against the powerful sorcerer, Darken Rahl, by a mysterious hottie and a kind wizard. The first-season set arrives with deleted scenes, several making-of and location featurettes, commentaries and a chat with Terry Goodkind, whose book provided the source material.

The real and imagined history of the American West provided the fodder for countless TV series in the early days of the medium. Western TV Treasures represents a broad cross-section of cowboy adventures from the 1950s. The 150 episodes in the set come from such shows as The Adventures of Jim Bowie, Annie Oakley, The Cisco Kid, The Gabby Hayes Show, Judge Roy Bean, The Tim McCoy Show and Sheriff of Cochise.

Monty Python: The Other British Invasion is comprised of previously collected
documentaries on the formative years of Monty Python. One describes the introduction of the troupe to American audiences, while the other introduces more recent fans to of clips of pre-Python projects, including Do Not Adjust Your Set. Another TV-to-DVD offering is The Secret Saturdays: Volume 2, in which an adventurous family protects unusual creatures from the power of evil.