The Abominable Dr. Phibes
Moving some distance beyond the silliness that dominated the last few entries in Corman's successful series of Poe-inspired horror films starring Vincent Price, director Robert Fuest (of TV show The Avengers fame) was inspired by the Italian giallo genre in this uniquely campy homage to the films that made Vincent Price such a big star in the 1960s. Delivering what is basically a pantomime performance, Price clearly has a grand old time as he exacts his revenge on ten doctors he holds responsible for his wife's death, using the ten Biblical plagues as his template. Some effectively spooky moments and attention-grabbing guest stars make this one of the most memorable midnight movies, having gathered quite a cult audience over the years.

Alice in Wonderland (1966)
Completely eschewing the talking animals and fantasy elements that defined the oft-maligned Disney adaptation of Lewis Carroll's literary tour de force, Jonathan Miller's handsomely mounted TV adaptation can be viewed as the antidote to that and similar child-friendly Technicolor kitsch. Miller conjures an eerie, dreamlike atmosphere through the use of unusual angles, some dexterous editing, ethereal music courtesy of Ravi Shankar, and stylized (if dated) behavior from the extras. Those drawn in by the remarkable list of actors, including Peter Sellers, John Gielgud and Michael Redgrave in rather small roles, may be disappointed by the film's determinedly literary approach, but fans of Carroll's books will find much more to enjoy here than in more literal film versions that have appeared both before and since. The extras include a highly informative director's commentary, a gallery of stills, an illuminating essay, and an eight-minute film version of Alice in Wonderland that dates all the way back to 1903 (and is believed to be the book's first film adaptation).

*** Turkey of the Week ***
Alice's Restaurant
'This song is called Alice's Restaurant. It's about Alice. And the restaurant. But Alice's Restaurant is not the name of the restaurant, it's just the name of the song. And that's why I called the song Alice's Restaurant.' Thus - for the unitiated - begins Arlo Guthrie's hilarious 20-minute musical monologue that served both as a peacenik anthem and a comic highlight of late-1960s counterculture. Desperate for material that might attract the 1970s youth audience in the wake of Easy Rider, someone at MGM/UA latched onto the idea that Guthrie's mini-narrative would somehow make a good, or rather: lucrative film. With director Arthur Penn, who had somehow managed to attract that elusive youth market with Bonnie and Clyde a few years earlier, and non-actor Arlo Guthrie playing himself, Alice's Restaurant was a moderate financial success but a dismal creative failure. Put together by a production team with no understanding of or appreciation for the hippie counterculture the film was supposedly portraying, the film buries Guthrie's tale under an incoherent mess of seemingly random events, arguments and pointless discussions that are dressed up in hippie regalia, but which only serve to criticize the ideals of the generation the film was supposedly portraying.
These points as well as many others are elaborated on at length by Arlo Guthrie in his commentary track that is featured as the sole extra on the American DVD of Alice's Restaurant, making it one of those rare discs made enjoyable by its commentary rather than by the film itself. But alas: the European DVD has jettisoned the commentary, thereby losing the sole reason one might reasonably have to enjoy the film.

Along Came Polly
The pairing of Ben Stiller, the uncrowned Nebbish King of contemporary romantic comedy, with Friends-superstar Jennifer Aniston would seem to be enough reason to make a movie. Both performers are likable enough, but so little thought seems to have gone into the screenplay, that the only moments that linger in the mind afterward (if any) are those by scene-stealing supporting actor Philip Seymour Hoffman or the hilarious cameo by the equally reliable Hank Azaria as a bride-stealing French nudist with a scuba-diving fetish. The rest of the film is simply made up of generic spare parts from previous genre entries, with a special debt to There's Something about Mary and its moments of animal abuse and gross-out potty jokes.
The DVD contains a generous helping of extras, ranging from an inconsequential but entertaining director's commentary to an alternate opening scene that should have made the cut, as it offers a better introduction of Stiller's character.

The Amityville Horror: Special Edition
Released as a quick and easy cash-in on the recent remake, this two-disc DVD is further continuation of the real-life curse of one of the worst horror franchises in history: the 1979 film, itself a low-budget cash-in on charlatan George Lutz's much-hyped 'non-fiction' book, is a total dog, but one that was successful enough to spawn several sequels, a TV series, and a whole cottage industry of parapsychological literature. The fact that such an insipid, flat-out boring picture could inspire this amount of spin-off products boggles the mind. Nor is the film awful enough to qualify as camp: Rod Steiger's over-the-top scenery-chewing offers the odd giggle, but James Brolin, Margot Kidder and the rest of the cast are simply treading water in an unending river of horse manure, which is all that this movie really is.
The deluxe double-disc DVD presentation visited upon us by MGM/UA holds a sparkling new transfer, a revamped 5.1 audio mix with all the usual trimmings, a new 25-minute featurette that features interviews in which the main contributors reveal the shocking fact that the stories leaked to the press of the set actually being haunted were in fact made up. Two longer items were produced for the History Channel, and provide hyperbolical 'explorations' of Amityville in search of the question whether the story was true or not. While theoretically interesting, the approach here is so sensationalistic and superficial that the result is nothing more than an utter waste of time.

Animal Farm
One of the very few British animated features to have made its mark in a market all but monopolized by Disney productions, Animal Farm was also something of a novelty at the time, being geared as it was explicitly towards an adult audience. The animation lacks some of the technical polish and detail of its Disney-produced peers, but it makes up for its occasional rough edges with its tight pace, excellent use music and sound effects, and highly imaginative staging. The only true eyebrow-raiser is the film's ending, which is a rather drastic departure from the brilliantly cynical circular logic of Orwell's political fable. Either the filmmakers unwisely thought to improve on Orwell, or the producers balked at the prospect of ending an already disturbing animated picture as a downer.
Universal's new Region 2 release of Animal Farm claims to offer a fully restored transfer, but apparently some restorations are more equal than others, as the image looks disappointingly faded and lacking in detail, although there are indeed very few instances of damage or interference in the source print. Sadly, no extras at all have been included to offer any further context for this remarkable film.

The Assassination of Richard Nixon
Only very few contemporary actors have the kind of reputation Sean Penn boasts, but between big-budget formula films like The Interpreter and his rather overrated performances in Academy pleasers like Mystic River, he doesn't get to show off his true brilliance and versatility as often as he did earlier in his career. The Assassination of Richard Nixon might not be one of the best films of the year, but it certainly boasts one of Penn's best performances in recent years, playing a self-proclaimed victim who may best be described as a cross between Travis Bickle and Rupert Pupkin. Like Robert de Niro in these seminal roles, Penn is able to invest an unlikable, pathetic character with a degree of empathy that enables us to at least engage with his feelings on a basic level. Apart from this obvious homage to the De Niro/Scorsese collaboration in the late 1970s, the film as a whole is very much attuned to the filmmaking aesthetics of that period, its classical score, bare-bones look and feel and melancholy atmosphere giving the film the quality of a time capsule from the 1970s, making the inevitable question why these themes are relevant in our time even more interesting.
The Dutch DVD release from Sony Pictures is unfortunately devoid of any extras. The image transfer is fine; the audio is presented in a modest but competent 2.0 stereo mix.

The Ballad of Cable Hogue
As Sam Peckinpah himself was fond of saying: one of the biggest ironies of his career was that he was constantly attacked for making violent films, but whenever he made a film without any violence, nobody would even bother to see it. Sadly enough, this held true as well for The Ballad of Cable Hogue, a light-footed, lyrical comic Western featuring Jason Robards in one of his finest roles. He plays the eponymous Cable Hogue, a good-natured old good-for-nothing prospector who is betrayed by his partners and left to die of thirst in the middle of the desert. But at death's doorstep, he rails at God, engaging in a one-sided argument that ends with Cable's miraculous discovery of a hidden spring in the middle of the desert. From this point onwards, the film is best approached as a lyrical, dream-like metaphor for Cable's acceptance of death, during which he finds love, success and peace with God. It's a slightly uneven but always engaging tale with quirky, surprising performances by Stella Stevens, David Warner, and Peckinpah regulars like L.Q. Jones.
The DVD features a 25-minute interview with Stella Stevens as its main extra, in which she reminisces on her career in general and this production in particular.

Batman: Special Edition
After having spent over a decade in development hell at Warner Brothers, it was with a true sense of vindication that the Tim Burton-directed film finally made its way into the popular consciousness in 1989. Without going as dark as then-recent graphic novel reinvention of the Batman myth in Frank Miller's astonishing The Dark Knight Returns, the first true feature film about this superhero did manage to shake off the persistent camp of the 1960s TV show. This approach had been the comic book fans' worst fear, triggering the much-publicized outcry when Michael Keaton was first announced for the role. The end result, overshadowed as it was at the time of release by the marketing phenomenon that accompanied it, was not a flawless film: it is marred by the use of the much-maligned Prince songs, whose all but ceaseless droning in the background stands in shrill contrast with Danny Elfman's sweeping score. This schizophrenia also affects other elements of the film, with Gotham City never coming across as a consistent, fully realized location: too many scenes seem to take place in the banality of an everyday city rather than in the brilliantly conceived Anton Furst design for Gotham.
The first four Batman features were among the first Warner Bros. titles to be released on DVD in the late 1990s, and the first two especially were certainly ripe for an update in the audiovisual department, as well as the kind of extras befitting such a popular culture phenomenon. The new two-disc sets for all four films are indeed as close to definitive versions as one might expect, featuring gorgeous new transfers and pounding new DTS tracks (a first for Warner Region 2 DVD's). The two-disc set is filled to bursting with quality extras, beginning with an audio commentary track from Tim Burton. While hardly a natural speaker, Burton still has enough to tell about the film, which he does in his usual laid-back style. Far more dynamic are the range of supplements found on the second platter, which range from an excellent documentary on Batman's history across various media (from his first comic book appearance through to the graphic novels of the late 1980s). A second documentary that runs close to an hour offers an in-depth examination of the film, from its protracted development through to its phenomenal success, while another extended series of featurettes looks more closely at various technical aspects of the production, from the Batmobile to special make-up effects. All in all, a terrific package.

Batman Returns: Special Edition
Warner's hopes of establishing a new movie franchise came true with the phenomenon that was the first Batman movie, so a sequel was simply inevitable. The first film's director, who - in hindsight - delivered competent but hardly characteristic work on the first film, but who had played a key role in the film's marketing hype, proved difficult to ensnare for this second mammoth production. Only with the promise that he would be given free rein to direct a 'Tim Burton movie' could he finally be convinced to take on Batman Returns. The result, although a commercial success, was received by the studio (as well as much of the audience) with very little enthusiasm. Burton was also given a good lambasting in the press, with many critics at the time naming Batman Returns as an example of all that was wrong with empty-headed summer blockbusters. But although this sequel clearly isn't a children's film (and never should have been marketed as such), this dark, perverse, action-packed thrill-ride presents one of Burton's most consistent, fleshed-out worlds. The fascinating trio of Batman, Catwoman and the Penguin represents one of the best-cast groups of comic book characters yet to grace the screen, while Danny Elfman's score further improves on his already-impressive first Batman score. That's not to say it's a perfect film: it clearly goes on too long, and its stagebound scale now seems modest - the crowd scenes are decidedly claustrophobic. But its approach to fleshing out a consistent comic book world in a consistent, gothic style, it's hard to improve upon.
The remastered transfer and DTS mix improve enormously on the shoddy older DVD, its razor-sharp image doing full justice to Bo Welch's spectacular production design. Tim Burton contributes another relaxed, reasonably informative commentary track, that pleasant enough but once again all but eclipsed by the collection of documentaries and featurettes on the second disc. Burton, Michael Keaton and Danny DeVito are the only voices to appear in new interview footage who prove to be unrepentant of the sequel's controversial darkness. A vintage featurette is also on board, as are several deleted scenes.

Batman Forever: Special Edition
After the backlash that had greeted Batman Returns, Warner Bros. felt it was time for a minor re-imagining of its main franchise at that time, and brought in Joel Schumacher to take over from Tim Burton (who was willing to take on a third Batman project, but was given the clear message that his directing talents were no longer required for that particular series). As a result, the third film in the studio's hottest franchise took a shallower approach, one that favors a more garish type of comic book, with lurid colors and near-constant noise. Val Kilmer is able to match Michael Keaton's famously furrowed brow, but lacks the twinkle in his eye that gave both Batman and Wayne the spark of life, while Nicole Kidman is dead wood as a breathy psychologist with the hots for the Dark Knight, and Tommy Lee Jones fares no better in a deadeningly dull one-note performance as Two-Face. In fact, the only actor to strike just the right note in this kind of over-the-top environment is Jim Carrey, effortlessly stealing every scene he appears in, while actually manging to generate solid laughs from an otherwise awkwardly unfunny screenplay.
The extras here follow a pattern similar to that of the first two films in its re-release form: Joel Schumacher chimes in with a self-congratulatory commentary track, while the second disc is a continuation of the interview-based 'making of' material on the other two releases. This DVD however houses more deleted footage, including an ambitious but ultimately risible confrontation between Bruce Wayne and a giant bat in the batcave. The deleted scenes can be watched with optional commentary from Schumacher. In-depth looks at technical aspects of the production can again be found under the 'Beyond Batman' menu, while a vintage featurette, trailers and galleries round out the extras.

Batman & Robin: Special Edition
There is something irresistible about films with seriously terrible reputations. The moniker 'worst film of all time' in many cases guarantees a more entertaining experience than most films that are all too predictable in their mediocrity. Some, like Plan 9 from Outer Space, Battlefield Earth and Showgirls even attract devoted cult followings. No such luck thus far for the ill-fated Batman & Robin, a film so dedicatedly awful that it resists every attempt to coax any real entertainment value out of it by all but the most hardened of masochists. Curiously, its infamy notwithstanding, the film was a major box office success. This was followed however by such a strong wave of public and critical resentment that Warner ended up shelving its top-earning film franchise for close to ten years. From the well-past-his-prime Schwarzenegger, whose dialogues consist of nothing but ill-chosen clunkers of one-liners, to the curiously wooden George Clooney and the game but helpless Uma Thurman, there is precious little to appreciate here amongst the hectic, deafeningly noisy chaos in search of a narrative.
As awful as the film is, both image quality and sound mix are top of the line on this re-release, any part of the film qualifying effortlessly for demo material status (although that begs the question who in his right mind would use this piece of garbage to show off his equipment with...). Extras consist once again of a director's commentary track - an apology-ridden affair from Joel Schumacher - and the now-familiar collection of interview-based featurettes, in which the main contributors attempt to blame the toy company's involvement for the film's creative vacuum.

Batman - The Animated Series: Volume One
In the wake of the blockbuster success achieved by Tim Burton's two Batman feature films, a Saturday morning cartoon based on the long-runing adventures of the Dark Knight seemed all but inevitable. What was surprising, however, was that the series that came to be aired in this severely ghetto-ized environment was actually a quality production that pleased both older kids and adult Batman devotees. Within a year, the show had attracted so much attention that it not only resulted in a critically acclaimed feature-length animated film (Batman: Mask of the Phantasm), but that it made the unprecedented move from Saturday morning to primetime Sunday evening scheduling.
Dark in tone as well as in design, the show sticks closely to the pre-1960s Batman, placing its familiar gallery of heroes and villains in an Art Deco version of Gotham City that owes as much to Burton's live-action films as it does to Fleischer's 1940s Superman cartoons. The classically structured narratives, most of which show a firm grasp of character, pacing, and framing, also benefit from a faithful re-working of Danny Elfman's Batman theme, reconfigured in what is surely one of the finest orchestral soundtracks for any contemporary cartoon series.
Having first appeared hesitantly on DVD in a number of themed four-episode 'Best Of' collections, Warner has since started releasing full four-disc collections of episodes, to the fans' great delight. The first 39 episodes are housed in the first volume box set, exhibiting decent transfers hindered by little besides the sometimes obvious limitations of the source material, while the extras are limited to a poor-quality demo reel developed by Bruce Timm and Eric Radomski, which led to their being commissioned to produce the series, and two highly informative and enthusiastic audio commentary tracks. The box set consists of four discs in slimline cases held together by a cardboard box.

The Beyond / City of the Living Dead
Italian gore-meister extraordinaire Lucio Fulci has developed a sizable international cult following, and his two most appreciated films are brought together here in a nicely packaged but otherwise rather minimal release. The films feature near-identical plots (or rather: situations), as a gateway to Hell is unlocked, allowing zombies to run rampant in American small-town communities populated mostly by dubbed Italian character actors. Both films are celebrated (by their many fans) not so much for their narratives or production values, but for their notoriously gorey setpieces, which are indeed effectively over-the-top.
The new DVD release from Dutch Filmworks repackages the transfer that had been available as separate releases on a single disc, with The Beyond in solid anamorphic widescreen, and City of the Living Dead in rather inferior but still acceptable non-anamorphic widescreen. The disc houses no extras whatsoever.

The Big Lebowski: Collector's Edition
In 1998, the Coen brothers were the true film aficionado's one and only Dynamic Duo of contemporary American filmmakers. Their unbroken record of six critical successes , from their debut neo-noir Blood Simple to their Oscar-winner and sleeper hit Fargo made each new release something for any self-respecting film freak to get truly excited about. Seemingly uninhibited by commercial concerns, their genre-hopping resumé of films displayed the true cinephile's love of the medium, their continued references to both classic and obscure films offset by the films' consistently outstanding casts and their quirky sense of humor.
The Big Lebowski was the first film to be greeted by a rather less euphoric reception: accustomed as they were by now to the Coens' tightly constructed screenplays and dry wit, this new film's convoluted, freewheeling plot and bawdier sense of humor gave both critics and audiences reason to complain. But the film has aged well in the course of the past seven years, building an increasingly devoted audience that continues to mine the film for its wealth of quotable lines and its justly famous setpieces.
After an early DVD release from now-bankrupt Polygram Features, Universal has now finally gained the rights to The Big Lebowski, and seeks to accommodate its legion of fans with a new home video release that improves in many ways on the older version. Image quality is certainly better than that of the reasonably but clearly too-compressed Polygram version, while audio is indistinguishable, and the only new supplements are a hilarious but hardly essential new introduction to the film and a collection of photographs taken on the set by Jeff Bridges. A 23-minute featurette is recycled from the older disc, and though it suffers from including too much footage from the film, it does hold a fair share of anecdotes and background tidbits from the Coens. True Lebowski collectors may feel inclined to dish out a far heftier sum for the so-called 'Achiever's Edition', which packages an identical disc in a large bowling-lane themed box together with eight printed Bridges photos, four personalized coasters and a 'collectable bowling towel'.

Blade Runner: The Director's Cut (Remastered)
Ridley Scott's highly influential science-fiction thriller has been out of print on DVD for some time now, but impatient fans be warned: this new DVD release is little more than a stopgap in anticipation of the eagerly awaited multiple-disc Special Edition that is set to appear this spring. That coveted set, which is scheduled to follow a limited theatrical release of an improved director's cut, is said to hold three different versions of Scott's signature film: the much-maligned studio version, complete with voice-over and happy ending, the 'director's cut' version that has been available on video and DVD before, and a new, improved director's cut that is supposed to approximate Scott's original vision for the film. Buyers are therefore advised to hold their breath just a little longer, though those in dire need of a fix will find that the transfer on this vanilla disc is a clear improvement over the previous DVD release (though the sound mix remains the same).

Blood Diamond
One of the few surprises in last year's Oscar nominations was the fact that Leonardo DiCaprio was given the nod for Blood Diamond instead of for the infinitely superior The Departed. After some reflection, I can't help but assume that this was the result of the fact that he stands out that much more in a film that is poorly written, chaotically constructed, and populated with stock characters who make DiCaprio's growing acting chops more obvious than they are when he is surrounding by Scorsese's uniformly excellent ensemble. Like Matt Damon, DiCaprio seems to improve exponentially as he grows older, and it's his presence alone that makes Blood Diamond bearable at all. Jennifer Connelly is sadly wasted in an anaemic role that gives her little to say and even less to do, while Djimon Hounsou once again steps into the role of a noble savage victimized by evil black men, who are in turn being exploited by evil white men. It is - as always in a film directed by Edward Zwick - up to a reluctant white hero to guide the narrative to a climax so misguided and patronizing, it is hard to believe it caused what minor controversy as it did. Punctuated by scenes of barbarism and genocide that are exploitative rather than illuminating, Blood Diamond is - like The Interpreter and so many other recent 'message movies' from recent years - little more than an excuse for good-looking white movie stars to flirt with each other before an exotic backdrop of real-world mutilation and genocide.
Released in Europe as a single-disc DVD, the only extra on board is a bafflingly self-congratulatory audio commentary from director Edward Zwick, supremely confident in the misguided notion that the film is making some kind of Important Statement and should therefore be taken extremely seriously.

Body Heat: Deluxe Edition
Lawrence Kasdan's directorial debut was a steamy take on Double Indemnity that made him an A-list director and made star out of William Hurt and Kathleen Turner (in her film debut). This 'neo-noir' - a genre that quickly devolved into increasingly feeble 'erotic thrillers' - immediately became fashionable once again, and Body Heat has since been acknowledged as a minor classic within its sub-genre. With its elegant cinematography, cine-literate screenplay and forthright sexuality, it remains a hugely enjoyable film, even though it adds very little to the themes and situations of classic noir.
Among the first titles to appear on DVD from Warner's back catalogue, this new 'Deluxe Edition' improves noticeably on the grainy transfer from that earlier release, and adds generous extras as well: a thorough making-of featurette and some interesting additional footage trimmed from the final film.

Bonnie and Clyde: Special Edition
One of the very first Warner catalogue titles to have graced the DVD format back in the early years of digital home video, Bonnie and Clyde fittingly reappears just as the next-generation disc format is starting to enter the mainstream. Arthur Penn's classy, cine-literate and somehow perpetually hip ode to youthful rebellion without a cause continues to age well, successfully combining the best traditions of classical Hollywood filmmaking with European New Wave styles that were only just beginning to affect American sensibilities back in 1968. As such, the film spearheaded the memorable opening salvo that would usher Hollywood into the Golden Age of the 1970s and the Movie Brats who would briefly but acutely make their mark in Tinseltown.
Considering the long wait that preceded this much-anticipated '30th Anniversary Edition', out now on Blu-Ray and as a two-disc DVD release, the features are disappointingly basic: the film has been spruced up and remastered in a spiffy new transfer that shines with handsome detail, improving greatly on the commendable but rather dated previous DVD release. The audio remains limited to its original mono incarnation, which sounds as good as one could expect it to. The extras on the second platter are limited to a new documentary that covers the mostly familiar background of the film's production and reception, featuring new interview footage with pretty much all the surviving contributors (including an unusually loquacious Warren Beatty). A History Channel documentary narrates the real-life exploits of Bonnie and Clyde, which are of course nothing like the events pictured so entertainingly in the film. Some archive footage has been unearthed, bringing us some shots of Beatty's wardrobe tests, and two deleted scenes with video in remarkably good condition, but including the dialogues in subtitle format only.

The Bourne Supremacy
Although I wasn't initially taken by The Bourne Identity and wrote a rather grumpy review, I have had to revise my opinion since then, and now count it among the better Hollywood action films of recent years. Taking over from director Doug Liman, English up-and-comer Paul Greengrass was signed to direct the inevitable sequel, and he managed to deliver a similarly efficient spy thriller that's both more grown-up and more intelligent than most average multiplex fare. A few tiresome clichés aside, The Bourne Supremacy provides a consistently engaging yarn, well played by an excellent cast and quickly paced by a director with real talent.
Greengrass offers his thoughts on the production in an informative but rather dull audio commentary track, while a wide selection of nine short featurettes offer more insight into the production process, focusing especially on the film's elaborate stunts and action sequences. A selection of seven minutes of deleted scenes, all in fairly rough condition, along with some promotional trailers round out the extras.

The Brat Pack Movies & Music Collection:
The Breakfast Club / Sixteen Candles / Weird Science

Having released the three John Hughes teen comedies to which it holds the rights quite recently as a nicely remastered but extras-deficient 'High School Reunion Collection', Universal has stepped up to the plate once more with a triple-dipping of said titles in this new 'Brat Pack Movies & Music Collection'. Not only are the movies in this release yet again bereft of any extras apart from the incidental trailer, but the discs are completely identical to those released in their previous 'High School Reunion' incarnation (down to the forced trailers for that collection). The only new element in this release is the addition of a music CD containing classic pop hits from these and other 1980s teen movies, ranging from the Simple Minds' Don't You (Forget About Me) to Yello's Oh Yeah. Another novelty about this new collection is the packaging: rather than the usual digipak or keep case box set, the four discs are held together in a nifty (if impractically-sized) three-ring binder, each disc in its own plastic envelope.

As for the films themselves: The Breakfast Club holds up fairly well, its cast members up to the challenge of maintaining interest and at least a modicum of credibility in this cleverly conceived but also rather strained basic set-up. Sixteen Candles is a less remarkable film, but also still an efficient entertainment machine, its re-tooled Cinderella fairy-tale hampered by its abrupt, unconvincing ending, and its appeal problematized by one of the most offensive Asian stereotypes of all time. Finally, Weird Science is that rarest of treats: a guilty pleasure to be sure, but one that wallows in its own surreal sense of reckless fun that it could almost be considered an avant-garde piece of postmodern art by future scholars. All three films boast decent transfers and strong DTS audio tracks.

Breach
The great conspiracy theory thrillers of the 1970s (The Parallax View, The Conversation, All the President's Men) are among my favorite historically and culturally specific subgenres, and what has generally bothered me most by the 'updates' we've seen in recent years (like Enemy of the State) is that more often than not, they obliterate that much-needed sting in the tail by sugarcoating the ending: the hero survives, bringing down the bad apples who have been corrupting an otherwise good and just system. Billy Ray's second feature Breach plays like a clear homage to Pakula paranoia flicks, right down to its Gordon Willis-inspired cinematography, but thankfully, this one doesn't take the easy way out. Like Ray's first film Shattered Glass, the film is based headline-catching true events, this time dealing with the bringing down of a longterm Russian mole inside the FBI. Ryan Phillippe plays the young, ambitious agent charged with winning the mole's confidence, and he acquits himself well. But the film belongs to Chris Cooper, who makes antagonist Robert Hanssen such a fascinating character that one is constantly trying to gauge what is going on behind his constantly shifting serpentine gaze. It's a great performance by an actor whose resumé is already hugely impressive.
The DVD release offers a solid transfer and sterling sound mix that is superb in its understated effects. Director Billy Ray is joined in an excellent audio commentary track by Eric O'Neill, the former FBI agent played in the film by Phillippe. Together they discuss where the film deviates from actual events, offering valuable perspective on the film's complex but mostly reliable representation of actual events. Twelve minutes of deleted scenes can be watched with optional commentary from the director and his editor, and are all worth catching. Less interesting is the selection of featurettes that offer little more than standard EPK material, while Dateline NBC special report called 'The Mole' offers some basic information, but mostly sensationalizes then-current events.

A Brief Vacation
Director Vittorio de Sica, whose films had moved into more fashionable (and more commercial) directions after his first successes like Bicycle Thieves and Umberto D., finally returned to his neo-realist roots at the close of his career. A Brief Vacation, the director's penultimate film, offers a well-chosen mix of elements from De Sica's illustrious career, tempering the despair and hopelessness of his Neo-Realist films with a more optimistic journey of personal growth and discovery. The majestic Florinda Bolkan delivers a magnificent performance as Clara, the miserable factory worker who slaves away to support her large, unappreciative family living in a Milan basement. After she is diagnosed with TBC, she is sent on a state-sponsored trip to a mountain sanatorium, where she discovers a sense of self-worth through friendship and even romantic love. Perhaps a little too sentimental at times, the film remains moving and believable thanks to its powerhouse central performance, and its bittersweet ending is well chosen, though it does come rather too abruptly. It's brought to DVD by Home Vision Entertainment in a splendid transfer, and includes the first and last segments from De Sica's English-language anthology film Woman Times Seven as wholly unrelated but very welcome supplements. Both feature Shirley MacLaine playing different roles, along with Peter Sellers, Anita Ekberg, and Philippe Noiret.

Broadcast News
The shoulder pads and big hairstyles have dated badly in this sardonic, sharply written satire-cum-melodrama. But its performances are as fresh as they ever were, and writer/director/producer James L. Brooks's acidic commentary on the American news media is as pertinent today as it was in 1987. Compared to that other TV newsroom classic Network, this film shifts the balance from satire to character, allowing the three main performances (especially Hunter and Brooks) to transcend the types and movements they are clearly meant to represent. It's a more understated film than Lumet's occasionally hysterical benchmark, and a more intimate one, that also allows the viewer to share in the addictive, adrenalin-soaked world of TV news reporting. Finally out now on DVD for Region 2, this new European release sadly carries the same non-anamorphic transfer that drew so many complaints when it was released in North-America several years ago. No extras.

Brother Bear
This penultimate hand-drawn animated feature to emerge from the Disney stable is clear evidence of the dearth of fresh ideas that has since led to the announcement that the formerly undisputed leader in family entertainment is closing down its traditional animation departments. In a half-hearted attempt to cater to more than one age group, the filmmakers have included some adult-oriented humor and several intense, violent sequences that will scare off all but the heartiets of toddlers. The rest of the film is little but cute animals frolicking through unsullied landscapes, garnished with unbridled sentimentality as the main character learns Important Lessons both facile and patronizing.
The Dutch/Belgian DVD caters exclusively to the so-called 'family audience', reducing the gimmicky but effective dual aspect ratio of the theatrical release to the unimpressive 1.66:1, following the rationale that mothers and small children are less likely to be upset over small black bars than wide ones. The extras are also mostly child-oriented, though there are a few deleted scenes (in storyvboard form) and conceptual art galleries for desperate animation fans.

Brubaker
A fine cast brings some much-needed credibility to this fact-based but hugely formulaic prison drama of a prison warden bent on reforming a corrupt state prison. The film's opening reel plays like the worst kind of exploitation film, flooding the audience with about as much torture, murder, rape and general unpleasantness as it can take before settling into the overlong predictability of its remaining hour-and-a-half of running time. What makes the film enjoyable is the way it ends up taking its place among the short-lived line of conspiracy thrillers of the 1970s, though Redford's impossibly idealistic title role is more akin to the doomed messianic protagonist from Coll Hand Luke than to the flawed investigators of The Parallax View or All the President's Men. The video transfer on the DVD looks terrific, but the film is let down by a poorly mixed, muffled soundtrack with too much distortion. No extras.

Buffalo Soldiers
Notoriously shelved two days after its Sundance premiere on September 9, 2001, Buffalo Soldiers has potentially gained relevance as a satire on immoral behavior of American soldiers in light of the recent revelations from Iraq. And the film starts off promisingly, with strong, funny performances from Joaquin Phoenix and Ed Harris, both displaying a refreshingly cynical touch. Unfortunately, director Gregor Jordan soon fumbles the ball, failing to make a clearly defined choice between satire, drama, broad comedy and heist film. The film's second half marks a descent into increasingly chaotic set pieces full of explosions, drugs and unpleasant violence. Hard to believe that a director should miss even such an easy-to-hit target as the American military in a long-overdue update of anti-authoritarian classics like MASH and Catch-22. The American release includes an audio commentary from the director, while the Dutch Region 2 release holds a room-filling DTS surround mix.

Bullitt: Special Edition
Besides being the film that cemented Steve McQueen's iconic status as the 'King of Cool' and Hollywood's top leading man, Bullitt is of course famous first and foremost for its legendary chase sequence through the hills of San Francisco. This remarkable bit of filmmaking, which occurs about an hour into this entertaining but also predictable and confusingly plotted police thriller, remains an exhilarating sequence with a physical impact that truly transcends the film's age.
Re-released many years after the film's first appearance on DVD, Bullitt looks and sounds marginally better than its previous on-disc incarnation, but fortunately has extras where it counts. Director Peter Yates provides a soft-spoken but immensely involving audio commentary, offering tremendously detailed insight into the production process. The second disc only holds two items, but they're both outstanding. The first is an 83-minute documentary on Steve McQueen, which offers a slickly produced but never superficial overview of the screen icon's life and career. Featuring many well-chosen clips from McQueen's many films, this documentary is simply required viewing. Even better is the 95-minute film The Cutting Edge: The Magic of Movie Editing, which has little direct bearing on Bullitt (besides the fact that Bullitt was awarded an Oscar for Best Editing), but which is the kind of documentary that film buffs dream of: generously laced with comments from editors and high-profile directors that include the likes of Scorsese, James Cameron and Quentin Tarantino, it's also a non-stop barrage of movie clips that plays like a well-picked Greatest Hits of motion picture history. In other words: it makes the DVD worth buying even if you don't like Bullitt.

The Cars that Ate Paris / The Plumber
Peter Weir's directorial debut is a low-budget black comedy about a likable anti-hero who finds himself in a small town in the Australian outback whose inhabitants make an increasingly desperate living off car accidents staged with some imagination. It's a fun film that benefits from its full 'scope presentation (available for the first time in its original ratio on home video), but somehow remains less than the sum of its parts. But although it may not be immediately obvious from its packaging, this DVD is a double feature release that also holds Weir's The Plumber, a feature-length film produced for Australian TV that is actually far better than the disc's main presentation. Supported by trailers, an essay and excellent new interviews on both pictures with Weir himself, this disc may have been released under the Home Vision banner, but could easily have merited the label of HVE subsidiary The Criterion Collection.

Casa de los Babys
After his perfect batting average in the 1990s, with all six films he directed in that decade magnificently diverse demonstrations of his many talents and interests, indie godfather John Sayles seems to have hit something of a post-millennial slump. Sunshine State seemed like a less inspired rehash of City of Hope, while his most recent film Silver City proved a dissapointingly flat-footed attempt at political satire. Casa de los Babys is a good deal better than either of these, thanks in large part to its extraordinary cast, but it still feels like Sayles Lite: a skillful but fairly obvious study of a conflict-free situation featuring the expected political footmarks.
Fortunately, a lesser Sayles film is still better than most other contemporary filmmakers' best work. And if he seems to be treading thematic water, at least he does so with skill, style and a set of actresses who each deserve a Best Actress gong for their appearances here alone.
The Region 2 DVD unfortunately misses out on the director's commentary track featured on the American release as well as the featurettes that documented the film's production. It does however carry over a crystal clear transfer and Dolby Digital 5.1 that serves Mason Daring's excellent score well.

Cat on a Hot Tin Roof: Special Edition
Another famous catalogue title to be released in Warner's early DVD push, Cat on a Hot Tin Roof has finally been given a much-needed digital update: this new special edition release adds a few extras: a ten-minute featurette touches (very briefly) on the personal issues that plagued the film's two stars during production, but adds little to our understanding of the film. Far better is the commentary track by film historian Donald Spoto, devling deeply into Tennessee Williams' play and his involvement with this adaptation. The greatest improvement however is the new transfer, adding perviously unsuspected color saturation and detail to the washed-out and faded image we know from its earlier video incarnations. These improvements help bring back to life a subtly played and exceptionally well-directed adaptation of a stellar play, featuring what might be a career-best performance from Elizabeth Taylor, and an electrifying turn from Paul Newman that turned the young actor from a good-looking young star into a performer who was to be taking seriously.

Charlie and the Chocolate Factory: Special Edition
As the first remake in which director Tim Burton teamed up with veteran producer Richard D. Zanuck was the god-awful Planet of the Apes, the announcement that both names would now be attached to a 're-imagining' of children's classic Charlie and the Chocolate Factory offered cause for trepidation. But unlike the Gene Wilder version, this was promised to be a faithful adaptation of the Roald Dahl book rather than a platform for a contemporary movie star to cavort around a semi-psychedelic series of vignettes. And the pairing of Burton with Johnny Depp had only given us winners thus far, so there was also room for careful optimism.
The result, though critically and financially successful, is something of a curious mixed bag. Oddly enough, the main culprit seems to be the source material: Dahl's episodic, even repetitive children's book may be one of his most famous works, but it certainly doesn't rank among his best. Burton and his screenwriter John August followed the right instincts in their attempt to flesh out Willy Wonka's life story (with a delightful cameo from Christopher Lee), but its incorporation into the main narrative is awkward, the character development it attempts to add remains tacked-on. So with a strong narrative arc failing to materialize, the film relies solely on its traversion of various polished set pieces to engage the viewer once Charlie enters the titular factory. Some of these are splendid, with Depp's curio performance striking some good notes occasionally, but others tend to grate, while most of the show-stopping Oompa Loompa numbers bring the lumbering narrative to a complete - and infuriating - standstill.
The movie is available on DVD in single-disc and double-disc editions, both of which feature a flawless, colorful transfer and an aggressive sound mix. The extras on the second disc consist of a collection of brief featurettes, most of which deal with various technical elements of the production. The most rewarding is a BBC-produced item on author Roald Dahl, which provides a superficial but entertaining introduction to the famously grumpy writer's life and work.

Christine: Special Edition
Made in an age when director John Carpenter's name above the title meant something other than the film being most likely to go direct to video, Christine was perceived at the time as one of a recent glut of mediocre Stephen King adaptations. And in spite of the recent efforts of Carpenter apologists and nostalgics fond of 1980s schlock, there isn't really much more to Christine than that. Somehow aware of the fact that the notion of a homicidal car is intrinsically laughable rather than scary, Carpenter flounders around in the film in search of an angle from which to approach the problematic bestseller. He moves back and forth between high school drama, cheap scares and broad comedy. He ultimately seems to settle for generic monster movie clichés in which the car is the monster and its teenaged owner takes on a kind of mad scientist role. Its setpieces however fail to deliver, while the film's condensation of time makes it dramatically inept, its characters mere sketched outlines of generic archetypes.
Re-released on DVD by Columbia Tristar in a luxuriously packaged Special Edition, the DVD at least offers the film's fans (and Carpenter completists) a worthy package. Carpenter is joined by lead actor (now director) Keith Gordon in a new ly recorded audio commentary that's engaging without reaching the level of previous Carpenter commentaries. A trio of featurettes dwells on the production history, while the half-hour of deleted scenes points in the more character-driven direction the film could have taken.

Closer
Mike Nichols' critically lauded adaptation of Patrick Marber's acclaimed play showcases an undeniably strong ensemble cast, the only weak link in the foursome being Natalie Portman, whose diction and range has clearly improved since her trio of turns as Padme in the Star Wars prequels, but not enough by far to hold her own among the three mature stars that surround. Jude Law does well, but is shackled to some of the worst lines in the piece, but the real stars of the film are Clive Owen, all bristling rage and virility in an electrifying performance, and - somewhat surprisingly - Julia Roberts, displaying an emotional range here that goes well beyond our expectations of the world's biggest female movie star. But in spite of some powerhouse scenes, the dialogues ultimately ring true too rarely. Marber's lines tend to sound written, with too many lines pounding down obvious observations that would have been better left implied. Still, I guess we should be thankful for a major studio picture that is at least about characters and relationships rather than about prefabricated star appeal and high concept plot concepts.
Closer is gorgeously presented on an immaculate DVD transfer, but sadly without any extras apart from a redundant music video.

The Constant Gardener
If we had to name one actor who thankfully leapt back into the public eye after far too long a period on the fringes of audience awareness, it would have to be Ralph Fiennes. Having made a strong impression with his first major role as nazi Amon Goeth in Schindler's List, he was quickly compared to Laurence Olivier for his combination of classically trained acting chops, dashing good looks, and trademark introversion. He followed his Oscar-nominated turn in the celebrated Holocaust drama with similarly high-profile turns in Quiz Show, Strange Days and The English Patient, but after his disastrous foray into the Hollywood summer blockbuster in über-flop The Avengers, he veered away from the spotlight, making an ill-advised brief appearance in Red Dragon and impressing a regrettably limited audience in Cronenberg's masterful Spider.
But Fiennes was finally back in full swing in 2005, acting in The White Countess, doing a memorable vocal turn in Wallace & Gromit: Curse of the Wererabbit, providing the Harry Potter series with a truly scary Voldemort, and - best of all - starring in The Constant Gardener, which looks poised to make a strong showing in the upcoming awards season, and which is out on DVD this week. In an odd bit of serendipity, Mike Newell was slated to direct this highly anticipated John le Carré adaptation, but bowed out after being offered the director's chair for the fourth installment in the Harry Potter series (also with Fiennes). Brazilian City of God director Fernando Meirelles stepped in to fill the void, and everything seems to have turned out for the best: Newell delivered a commercially successful Potter picture, while Meirelles proved to be just the right choice for this romantic thriller set - and shot - in Kenya. Meirelles' semi-documentary approach yielded a freshness that invigorates the occasionally obvious plot, while Fiennes delivers one of his truly great screen performances, his mix of shyness and fragility crumbling visibly under the character's grief and growing determination.
The DVD provides an excellent showcase for the film's astonishing visuals, along with a powerful, subtly mixed surround track. The supplements are limited to an informative but superficial selection of featurettes that are mostly promotional in nature, the best of which features an interview with John le Carré, clearly pleased as punch with this adaptation of his novel. Some solid deleted scenes round out this highly recommended package.

Cry-Baby: Director's Cut
'I'm John Waters, and I make crap.' Thus begins the audio commentary track on this new director's cut of the notorious Baltimore trash-meister's first-ever studio film. Following the breakthrough success of the independently produced Hairspray, Waters suddenly found himself the object of a studio bidding war, as the director who had previously courted infamy with underground films like Multiple Maniacs and Pink Flamingoes prepared himself for the production of his first musical. Universal ultimately picked up Waters' pitch for Cry-Baby, a self-proclaimed 'trash epic' set in the early 1950s starring 21 Jump Street teen idol Johnny Depp in his first leading film role, joined by one of the most bizarrely eccentric supporting casts of all time: former porn star Traci Lords, punk icon Iggy Pop, heiress-turned-terrorist Patricia Hearst, Polly Bergen, etc.
The result is as fun, trashy, crazy and bizarre as one woulld expect it to be. Most of the cast members pout, mug and scream their way through the wafer-thin script, which can be tedious, especially for non-Waters-fans. The only one who manages to strike just the right note is the young Johnny Depp, who demonstrates in his first major film role what an absolute natural actor he is. With just the right mix of irony and conviction, he makes Cry-Baby Walker the only character in the film who doesn't look and sound like he's performing in a high school play, effectively proving his acting chops and shedding his teen idol persona in one fell swoop.
For the new director's cut featured on this DVD, a few scenes that were cut at the studio's behest have been reinstated, which don't add much to the film besides making John Waters' signature slightly more recognizable (two f-words that had been bleeped away to secure the required PG-13 rating have also been unveiled). The DVD release's strongest points however are the new 50-minute documentary in which all major contributors reminisce enthusiastically (and at times sardonically) about the making of the film, and John Waters' infectiously hilarious audio commentary, which is definitely the preferred way of watching the film. A selection of deleted scenes that weren't included in the director's cut have also been included on the disc.

Curb Your Enthusiasm: The Complete Fourth Season
Easily the funniest TV comedy to emerge in the past decade, Seinfeld co-creator Larry David's exploits in HBO's Curb Your Enthusiasm has become a reliable dose of edgy humor in a genre that is still dominated by formulaic complacency. A clever mixture of reality TV aesthetics, improvised sitcom, and wittily cast celebrity cameos, David's persona enters season four fully honed and ready for ten new episodes of embarrassing, painful and hilarious misadventures. Like the restaurant opening in the previous season, this fourth outing contains a season-spanning story arc, this time involving Larry being cast as one of the leads in the Mel Brooks musical The Producers, and some of the season's funniest moments are the result of the lack of chemistry between David and his co-stars Ben Stiller and David Schwimmer. Another highlight of the season is The 5-Wood, which can easily take its place among the funniest episodes yet produced. Unfortunately, the last five episodes are a good deal less amusing than the first five, making the season as a whole anti-climactic (especially with the season finale unnecessarily drawn out to hour-length).
On disc, the ten episodes look the same as the previous DVD releases, their video-shot origins hardly impressive but unproblematically rendered. Sadly, no supplements whatsoever are to be found on this fourth season DVD.

The Darjeeling Limited
Having established a highly recognizable visual style and his trademark quirkiness firmly with his second feature film Rushmore, every successive film by Wes Anderson was praised more or less grudgingly upon its first appearance. Most notably, critics tend to stress the recurring elements in his films, which willfully skirt the borders of glib, sentimental artifice. But every new picture so far has managed to grow and develop in appreciation, while remaining true to this burgeoning auteur's regular hallmarks.
Following what ssems increasingly like an intentional thematic arc that deals with father figures (from Bill Murray's surrogate father in Rushmore via Gene Hackman's redeemable patriarch in The Royal Tenenbaums back to Murray in The Life Aquatic with Steve Zissou), Anderson now seems to come full circle back to his début feature Bottle Rocket, but with the maturity that was so clearly lacking in first first film. As with Bottle Rocket, Anderson's latest stars Owen Wilson as the eccentric naïf who feels compelled to maintain and reaffirm the filial ties with his estranged brothers. The Darjeeling Limited deals engagingly and often touchingly with family wounds both new and ancient, and the question how to establish one's position as a man in the absence of a father figure (Bill Murray tellingly appears briefly - and wordlessly - in the film's opening and closing scenes). Against all odds, Anderson has succeeded once again in creating a masterful family drama that casual viewers might write off as merely 'quirky', but which will reward careful viewers with that rarest of thigs: an American comedy both artful and truthful, both funny and insightful, both silly and heartbreaking.
As glorious as the film doubtlessly looks in its retail DVD incarnation, it is hard to substantiate on the basis of the watermarked screener disc we received for review. The Dolby Digital 5.1 audio in any case does justice to the director's familiar blend of obscure pop oldies and other bits of musical ephemera. The extras are very limited, especially in comparison to the Criterion editions of his previous three films. The film proper is preceded by the short film Hotel Chevalier, a kind of prelude starring Jason Schwartzman and Natalie Portman. The only other supplement (apart from a small collection of trailers) is a pointdly tiresome featurette entitled 'The Darjeeling Limited Walking Tour', which takes the viewer on a guided tour of the train compartments used for the film.

Days of Glory (Indigènes)
One of last year's Oscar nominees for Best Foreign Picture, Days of Glory uses a familiar, well-worn formula to introduce a subject that deserves wider attention: the role played by North-African colonial soldiers in the French army during World War II. Its four main characters are drawn from different parts of the former French colonies in North-West Africa, with most attention focused on Sami Bouajila as Abdelkader, the only one of them with an education and true career ambition. The film charts their war experiences from enlistment and North-African military campaigns all the way to late-war battles in Germany, all the while emphasizing how these soldiers were discriminated against by the military leadership. Not only was it impossible for these men to get shore leave or any kind of serious promotion in the army, but the film also shows that they were often used as mere cannon fodder in several of the battles. The film is hardly subtle about the points it makes, but the characters are interesting and well-rounded enough, the battle scenes are expertly directed, and the film's message is timely and hard to ignore.
The DVD makes a great showcase for the film's impressive cinematography, while the surround audio comes into its own during the battle scenes. An excellent documentary on the making of the film is included on the disc, along with a terrific animated film by director Rachid Bouchareb on the treatment of the Senegalese after the end of WWII.

The Departed: Special Edition

Clearly afraid of forever becoming even more of a laughing-stock than it already is, the Motion Picture Academy in its infinite wisdom finally voted to bestow an Oscar on Scorsese at this year's turgid ceremony, thereby at least attempting to right one of the more glaring wrongs in its strange and dubious history. On the other hand, as Terry Gilliam recently said in a public interview, people like Alfred Hitchcock and Orson Welles never won an Oscar until they were given 'honorary awards' out of embarassment, so Scorsese would still have been in good company. At any rate, it is still somewhat ludicrous that the director of Taxi Driver, Raging Bull and GoodFellas has now won the Oscar for The Departed, a solid and extremely well-acted crime thriller, but one that is certainly not in the same league as much of the director's finest work.
A faithful remake of the excellent Chinese film Infernal Affairs, Scorsese and screenwriter William Monahan successfully expand on the original film's highly streamlined narrative, padding it out from under 100 minutes to close to two-and-a-half hours. Fortunately, most of this time is spent on developing the characters and their relationships, allowing the Boston crime scene and police department to come to life that much more convincingly. Jack Nicholson as Irish crime boss Costello rants and raves amusingly, but his younger co-stars Leonardo DiCaprio and Matt Damon outshine his one-dimensional presence effortlessly, bringing vulnerability and pathos to their tragic characters. Both of them seem to get better with each successive film, and both are at the peak of their powers here. The weakest link is love interest Vera Farmiga, who is very pretty, but somehow uncomfortable in the truly contrived love triangle she finds herself in.
The film plays well on the smaller screen, maintaining interest and suspense throughout its running time, while Michael Ballhaus's tightly framed cinematography comes through beautifully in a flawless transfer, and both the Irish-influenced rock and folk music (assembled and produced by Robbie Robertson) and Howard Shore's sensitive score are supported ably by a generous Dolby Digital 5.1 audio mix. The second disc houses two featurettes, the first of which deals with the real-life inspiration for the Costello character, and the second of which offers a superficial but entertaining analysis of how gangster films have influenced Scorsese's film career. The best extra on board is the inclusion of twenty minutes of outstanding deleted scenes, each of which is introduced by Scorsese. (A feature-length documentary on Scorsese's entire film career is featured on the American two-disc release, but is sadly absent on the European DVD.)

The Dick Cavett Show: Comic Legends
Yale-educated writer and stand-up comedian Dick Cavett was first offered a limited run of late-night talkshows on ABC in 1969, and his razor-sharp, articulate and extremely intelligent style paid off immediately, with viewers writing in by the thousands, clamoring for more from this droll, acerbic host with a passion for comedians and contemporary rock music. He is best known today for the stage he offered counterculture musicians such as Jimi Hendrix, Janis Joplin and John Lennon (many of which have already appeared on DVD in previous releases). But his own background as a comedy writer resulted in longtime friendship with a legion of multi-generational comic legends, many of whom are featured prominently on this new four-disc collection.
The first of the twelve full episodes included in the set is one of the best, and certainly the most famous: Groucho Marx takes center stage in an impromptu hour-long chat session, which made such an impact that it was aired twice in 1969, just as the show was taking off. Groucho was by then an elder statesman of comedic banter, but he was very clearly still in his prime, effortless tossing off tunes, puns, double entendres and anecdotes on everyone and everything from Irving Thalberg to uncomfortable gorilla suits. But other highlights in this varied, richly packed set are many, from the young Woody Allen (in two episodes) to Bill Cosby, Bob Hope, George Burns and Lucille Ball.
As the shows were recorded on videotape, image quality isn't as razor-sharp as one might wish for, but the tapes have clearly been well preserved and apart from some haziness and ringing, there is little to complain about. Extras in the set include early appearances by a young Cavett on The Ed Sullivan Show and a selection of recent interviews offering retrospectives on the episodes from Cavett himself. Outtakes from the 1969 Woody Allen Q&A session are also included.

The Dick Cavett Show: Hollywood Greats
Legendary talk show host returns in a third broadly themed DVD collection of twelve complete episodes, following the previous two sets centered around 'Rock Icons' and 'Comic Legends'. This third collection may very well be the most consistently great of the bunch though, moving from strength to strength as Cavett interviews Hollywood personalities that range from Katharine Hepburn to Orson Welles. Other rarely-interviewed luminaries to make appearances here are a mesmerizing Marlon Brando, an ingratiating Alfred Hitchcock, a hilariously laconic Robert Mitchum, and Mel Brooks on top comedic form, sharing an episode with directors Peter Bogdanovich and Frank Capra.
With most of them, Cavett broaches still-relevant questions like 'Is Hollywood dead?', inviting them to share their views on their own work and on filmmaking in general. The most captivating aspect of the discussions is that - in stark contrast with today's promotional chit-chats - the interviewees generally have little interest in pushing their most recent release, choosing instead to veer off on tangents as revealing about themselves as they are about the times. Brando's interview is the most extreme in this respect: dismissing Cavett's suggestion that acting is in any way different from being a plumber, he refuses to talk about his films at all, choosing instead to bring the Native American plight to the fore in a surprisingly convincing manner. The way in which Cavett is sidelined by most of the legends he talks to is perhaps the only criticism that may be leveled at this mesmerizing, beautifully packaged four-disc collection.

The Dirty Dozen: Special Edition
An absolutely seminal film in Hollywood's late-1960s transition from classical heroes to anti-heroes, The Dirty Dozen provides a suddenly-fashionable anti-authoritarian narrative, produced with a maximum of Hollywood gloss and polish and featuring a huge ensemble all-star cast. It's a bit of ramshackle affair: it starts up slowly and doesn't find sure footing until about halfway into its extended running time. But once the elements have clicked into place, it's a veritable entertainment machine, with Lee Marvin once again proving himself a master of understatement among a group of eager young actors rather prone to chewing the scenery.
Warner's new DVD release marks the fourth appearance of this particular film in the format, and it looks like this is finally a definitive release: a group commentary track, edited together from comments by cast, crew, film historians and military advisers, proves marvelously informative and a very lively listen, while a new half-hour 'making-of' documentary tells the basic story of the film's production history. The vintage featurette 'Operation Dirty Dozen', which also appeared on the film's previous DVD release, is unintentionally hilarious, as is the tiresome 1985 telefilm The Dirty Dozen: The Next Mission, starring Marvin and Borgnine. Two additional featurettes on the film's slim factual basis and on the Marine Corps round out this impressive release.

Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde (1932 / 1941)
The 1932 version was produced by Paramount and the 1941 film by MGM, but Warner now holds the rights to both, and has done good by Robert Louis Stevenson's seminal story by combining these two features on opposite sides of a single DVD. Although only the 1932 version, now restored to include 17 minutes of previously censored material (including a few brief shots that are completely new to this DVD release), qualifies as a real cinema classic, the lavishly mounted Spencer Tracy version has quality and class to spare. It's a pity that the proceedings are weighed down by a slackly narrated plot and an overabundance of religious symbolism. It makes the more recent film the one that has dated the more badly of the two, with Fredric March's sadistic Hyde almost hard to watch in the film's stronger scenes, and director Rouben Mamoulian's characteristically roving camera adding a bold layer of visual stylization that gives the film its unique flavor, freeing it from the stasis of most other early talkies. The 1932 film is accompanied by an outstanding audio commentary track by film historian Greg Mank, who is well-prepared, energetic and marvelously entertaining. The vintage Looney Tunes short Hyde and Hare offers Bugs Bunny's perspective on the familiar story, and the 1941 trailer rounds out the extras.

Dreamcatcher
Gigli took most of the heat last year from the critics, and will most likely be the biggest winner/loser at the upcoming Razzie awards. But it was another great year for bad movies in Hollywood, and few were as entertainingly atrocious as Lawrence Kasdan's hilariously bad Stephen King adaptation. A nonsensical mishmash of moments stolen from better-known predecessors like Stand by Me and It, the film deals with four childhood friends who develop psychic abilities after saving a seemingly retarded boy from humiliation. After a weird narrative U-turn, their abilities prove to be no use to them whatsoever once a story of alien invasion begins to unfold, with Morgan Freeman putting in the most bizarre appearance of his career as a nutty army general. A riot from start to finish, the experience is highly recommended, but only for those with a good sense of humor and low expectations.

East of Eden: Special Edition
After being cast not so much for any real belief in his acting abilities, but rather for director Elia Kazan and author John Steinbeck's shared notion that Dean was simply the embodiment of Cal, the young actor suddenly shot to fame in this prestigious adaptation of the acclaimed, hugely pretentious novel. And indeed, Dean's shy mumbling and sudden outbursts of adolescent tantrum-throwing work very well in this heavy-handed but still compelling picture, especially in the scenes where he plays off of old-fashioned character actor Raymond Massey's obvious irritation. Kazan's expressionistic use of the Cinemascope frame can be distractingly vertiginous at times, but the overall result is still a success that remains a vivid experience today.
The ultra-widescreen Cinemascope frame has been gorgeously restored, in line with Warner's other recent restoration efforts. Increasingly ubiquitous film critic and commentator Richard Schickel provides an audio commentary that is somewhat less soporific than some of his other recent efforts, yielding some choice nuggets on the production background, and most specifically on the Kazan-Dean dynamic during the troublesome shoot. The second disc starts off with a newly produced twenty-minute featurette that provides the basic background information on the production, again featuring generous amounts of commentary from Schickel, followed by the obligatory hour-long documentary in memory of James Dean that fails to add much of interest to the many well-known stories on the short-lived screen legend. For the record, Dean's screen test has been included on the disc, along with several takes and coverage for two deleted scenes. Dean completists might also find things to enjoy in the extensive footage of silent wardrobe tests and newsreel coverage of the film's New York premiere. The film's trailer rounds out these generous extras.

Easter Parade: Special Edition
Although Fred Astaire is still most fondly remembered for the 1930s musicals in which he was paired with Ginger Rogers, the celebrated high-class hoofer did come out of retirement a few times to lend his talents to a few of the lavish Technicolor musicals produced at MGM by the legendary Arthur Freed unit in the late 1940s and early 1950s. Easter Parade is not only a rare late-career performance from the still-dazzling Astaire (coming out of retirement to replace Gene Kelly after an injury), it was also his one and only pairing with Judy Garland. And despite the forty-year age difference, the stars' remarkable chemistry (together with Astaire's unparallelled affability) supercedes any notion that there could be anything fundamentally wrong with their inevitable on-screen union.
Gorgeously restored for its DVD release, Easter Parade shines once more in all its Technicolor glory thanks to Warner's untiring restoration efforts. The film was released on DVD in the United States as a two-disc Special Edition similar to other recent Warner classics on DVD, but due to a rights issue surrounding the feature-length documentary on Judy Garland, it has been reduced to a single-disc release for Canada as well as all European countries. Fortunately, very little is missing apart from said documentary: there's a pleasant commentary track from Astaire's daughter, who is also featured in the newly produced featurette, which discusses the many problems surrounding the film's production engagingly. A 'Garland trailer gallery' houses the trailers for nine musical featuring the film's female star, while the final extra reveals the numerous camera set-ups for the musical number 'Mister Monotony', culminating in the final version as seen in the film.

Entourage: Season One
Programmed by HBO as a male-oriented successor to Sex and the City in that popular show's half-hour slot, Entourage was a high-concept experiment that proved a huge success by the end of its first tentative ten-episode run. The intriguing premise is based on co-producer Mark Wahlberg's own experiences after moving to Hollywood as a rising young star expected to be 'the next big thing'. On the show, Adrian Grenier plays Vincent Chase, a handsome rising star who has brought his two best friends and his has-been older brother with him on his road to success. The four characters work well together, although there is too little development of their individual characters to provide enough dynamics in this first season. The show does however make clever use of its Hollywood setting, filling every episode with as many big-name cameos as possible, and painting a polished but audience-pleasingly ribald portrait of Hollywood as a community. As the first season draws to a close, it does however start building up more momentum, thanks in large part to Jeremy Piven's tour-de-force performance as Vincent's agent Ari.
The two-disc set holds the ten episodes in their original fullscreen transfers with adequate 2.0 soundtracks, while the extras consist of a superficial ten-minute featurette and three audio commentary tracks featuring writers/creators Doug Ellin and Larry Charles, who provide drily comic insight into the production.

Entourage: Season Two
Following the promising but overly hesitant first run of ten episodes (which together feel more like a pilot than a full season), HBO's lightly satirical inside look at Hollywood from the perspective of a rising star and his buddies he brought along from his native Queens 'hood comes into its own in its second season. Over the course of the second season, the characters go through several new developments, while the star-laden cameos are employed more effectively than before, with hilarious turns resulting from the stunt casting of names like Bob Saget and Ralph Macchio. The main narrative arc for this 22-episode series hinges on Vince's involvement in a James Cameron film (who appears in several episodes in terrific self-mocking form), while Kevin Dillon joins Jeremy Piven as one of the show's top performers: the episode where his character Johnny Drama attends a comic book convention stands as one of the show's funniest and savviest moments so far.
The three-disc set that houses the second season again carries the episodes in their native fullscreen format, but unfortunately this second run is even lighter on extras: it holds only an enjoyable but overly slick collection of interviews with the main cast and crew, in which series creat Mark Wahlberg walks them through some superficial questions.

The Fast Show: Series One and Two
By now something of a legend amongst fans of British sketch comedy, The Fast Show ran for three highly successful seasons from 1994 to 1996, cementing co-creator and star Paul Whitehouse's reputation as one of England's brightest and funniest new comedians. The show's success hinges on the eponymous speed with which the sketches move along, the show's main cast playing dozens of roles per episode, and on the repetitiveness of the jokes and setups throughout the season: lines and characters that may seem silly or baffling upon a first viewing build up cumulative laughs as they return in following episodes, with notably slight variations. The six episodes of the first season establish the show's MO, which is then taken to the next level as the second season's zeven episodes reach rare heights of skit comedy.
The first two seasons, with a total of thirteen episodes, is now out on two separate DVD releases with adequate full-frame transfers, but wholly devoid of any extras.

51 Birch Street
Most home movies never leave the comfortable confines of the living room, and - one would suppose - justifiably so. For who could possibly be interested in the family turmoil that goes on behind the closed doors of perfect strangers? But now that digital filmmaking and editing tools have made it affordable for nearly anyone to put together a decent-looking and -sounding flick, the number of documentariies that would traditionally have been filed under the much-maligned 'home movie' moniker have been finding their way to movie screens. Tarnation was a much-discussed previous example, fascinatingly cobbled together from hundreds of hours of Super 8 footage shot over the length of the filmmaker's boyhood into a feature-length dissection of one highly dysfunctional family. 51 Birch Street similarly offers a probing examination of what on the surface seems like an entirely average suburban American household.
Here too, the film's genesis lay not in a script and a film idea, but in documentary filmmaker Doug Block's desire to document his parents' memories and personalities as they approached old age. But when his mother passed away unexpectedly just after he started his project, his father almost immediately married his secretary (who had been his associate for the better part of three decades) and Block discovered a huge collection of diaries exhaustively documenting his mother's emotional life. All of this yielded a compelling, often moving portrait of the secrets that lie behind even the most 'ordinary' and stable families, and the depth of emotion one can find all around as long as we are willing to look closer.
The DVD includes a few extras of added value, including a look back at the film with Block and the family members featured in the film, offering their take on how their lives were represented in his film.

Flags of our Fathers
At age 76, Clint Eastwood shows no signs at all of slowing down his output, which has now moved decisively from the popular action pics that made him a movie icon to the status of an acclaimed cinematic auteur and the darling of every awards season. Fortunately, the double bill of films he managed to direct last year represent a significant step up from the Oscar-friendly but hugely overrated Million Dollar Baby. Of these two, Letters from Iwo Jima is the one to be nominated for Best Picture, but Flags of our Fathers, out now on DVD, is also a film of exceptionally high standards. Utiliizing a complex narrative structure of flashbacks, dreams and memories, Eastwood attempts to deconstruct one of the icons of twentieth-century American patriotism: the famous photograph of the raising of the American flag at Iwo Jima. By approaching this moment from multiple perspectives, both past and present, Eastwood offers a subtle if not altogether novel (re-)interpretation of heroism. The film features several explosive and extremely violent battle scenes, but where the film truly impresses is in its portrayal of the soldiers who were recruited by the military's PR department and were then carted up and down the nation as "heroes" on a promotional tour to sell war bonds.
The DVD is entirely stark in its presentation: even the usual scene selections menu is absent, as are any and all extras - not even the film's trailer is included. While this starkness does seem appropriate and tasteful considering the film's contents, it would seem likely to assume that a more substantial Special Edition release is to be expected in the future; perhaps paired with Letters from Iwo Jima.

Gallipoli: Special Collector's Edition
Having established a solid reputation within Australia's burgeoning national cinema in the 1970s with The Cars that Ate Paris and The Last Wave, Peter Weir first attracted the international arthouse crowd with his ethereal thriller Picnic at Hanging Rock. The young director seemed primed for a major international breakthrough, but for his follow-up project, he chose a film that by its very subject matter would have very limited appeal outside of Australia: he spent the next few years of his life preparing and producing a masterpiece of a film on the senseless slaughter of thousands of Australian soldiers in a WWI battle against the Turkish army. And indeed, Gallipoli to this very day has failed to muster the kind of attention that has been lavished on the Aussie director's other, often less accomplished efforts. War films had long gone out of fashion by the late 1970s, and still have great difficulty finding an major audience. Now that Gallipoli is being reissued on DVD in a wonderfully improved special edition release, it is still being marketed to international audiences on the basis of Mel Gibson's star appeal. But as impressive as the actor is in this part (his first leading role following his Mad Max breakthrough), the film's lyrical power and shattering climax elevate it to the short list of finest war films ever made: a beautifully shot, extraordinarily moving picture that deserves to be discovered by a much wider audience.
The new DVD release improves enormously on Paramount's previous movie-only release, not only in the better-looking video and decent 5.1 audio mix, but especially in the supplements that have been included. The main extra is an hour-long documentary on the production and the historical background, bringing together historians, war veterans, and most key contributors to the film (including Weir and Gibson) in extended, highly articulate new interview footage. It's a feature that adds greatly to the film, deepening one's understanding for the scope of the film (which comes across as massive despite very limited production values) and for the historical events it portrays.

Ghost Rider
Superhero movies based on comic books are quickly turning into Hollywood's summertime bread and butter. Even relatively obscure characters like Marvel's Gost Rider are now getting the blockbuster treatment, complete with tie-ins and the inevitable onslaught of paint-by-numbers CGI sequences. Writer/director Mark Steven Johnson seems to be turning this subgenre into an actual career, having followed up the horrendous Daredevil with the even more atrocious Elektra. Considering how awful - and humorless - those two sad attempts were, his latest venture represents a slight step up. Clearly trying to be at least a little quirky here, Johnson has star Nicolas Cage repeating his wacky shtick from back in the day and casts Peter Fonda as the devil (in a movie about bikers - get it?).
Unfortunately, Cage's 'quirkiness' is evidenced mostly in nonsensical habits like sipping jellybeans out of a Martini glass, while the film's narrative remains defined by a screenplay so bland and uninspired it is almost guaranteed to send one off to slumberland well before the halfway point (which is exactly what happened to me when I saw this on the big screen). Towards the end, Sam Elliott shows up, which is always something to look forward to, and the film has a few lines clunky enough to merit camp classic status ('Your Penance Stare won't work on me: I have no soul to burn!...'). The 'extended version' featured on the DVD doesn't so much make the film any better or worse, just longer. In an attempt to appeal to the fanboy segment that actually spends time watching featurettes about an uninspired movie that was nevertheless based on a comic book, there's an entire second disc full of elaborate discussion of this project and its background. Most interesting - especially for those with little prior knowledge of the character - are the items on Ghost Rider's history in comic books, as any discussion of the film proper is immediately made silly and redundant by the simple fact that there's hardly anything in the film worth talking about at any length.

The Good German
Judging by his frequent appearance on audio commentary tracks for films that aren't his own, Steven Soderbergh is as much an anorak-wearing movie buff as he is a gifted commercial (and - occasionally - experimental) filmmaker. His 1999 film The Limey incorporated footage from the 1967 feature Poor Cow, which were used as flashbacks within the new film's overarching structure. With The Good German, Soderbergh attempts to make a film that looks, sounds and is structured as though it had been made fifty-odd years ago. The only tell-tale additions are the inclusion of profanity and a brief sex scene, but apart from that, there is nary a thing that would give The Good German away as anything but a post-war noir thriller from major Hollywood studio.
Unfortunately, there seems to be little point to the entire exercise besides proving that it is possible to achieve the look and feel we are familiar with from films such as The Third Man and - most especially - A Foreign Affair. The characters, like the film's narrative structure, seem like they are trapped in amber, never engaging more than a flutter of viewer interest as they move through the increasingly predictable paces of its tiresome screenplay. Like Gus van Sant's shot-by-shot Psycho there seems to be no pointm, no relevance to the entire undertaking, making it hard to classify The Good German as anything but a curiosity that is above all a huge waste of talent.

Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire: Special Edition
With the law of diminishing returns being applied so effortlessly to nearly every major cinema franchise, it was with both relief and surprise that one was able to witness the Harry Potter series improving substantially with every new installment. But unfortunately, following the extraordinary accomplishment of Alfonso Cuarón's Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban, the most recent exercise in British adolescent wizardry is marked by a sudden decline in quality (if not in commercial success: Goblet of Fire was second only to the first picture). For where Cuarón had succeeded in grounding his characters' fantastical exploits in an earthy, beautifully textured environment that provided the much-needed subtext for their increasingly frightening encounters to take on more universal meaning, director Mike Newell returns to the ersatz light show that typified the first, more child-friendly episode.
Without any conflict or drama grounding the kids' adventures at Hogwarts in any sense, the film becomes an infuriating assemblage of cluttered exposition and overwrought CGI, with the adult actors over-acting without shame or restraint, while the children are neither fresh nor convincing. When Ralph Fiennes finally appears to give shape and form to the long-faceless Voldemort, he does so with style and panache, but by then it is a case of too little, too late.
Visually, the film carries through the increased levels of darkness, making this a film to watch at home with the lights turned down and the TV's contrast levels well calibrated. The transfer is in any case exquisite, doing full justice to the expensive CGI effects that dominate every scene. The sound mix is similarly strong, the film's many noisy sequences full of surround presence and subwoofer thumps that will have your windows ringing and your sofa pounding. The Harry Potter films have so far been modest affairs as far as the supplements on DVD were concerned, and this fourth episode is no exception. The most welcome inclusion is a deleted scene that adds some much-needed character interaction (along with even more exposition, of course), but the rest of the extras remain limited to superficial interviews, a brief look at the creation of the dragon scene, and the obligatory games and activities.

The Harry Smith Project Live
Legendary music collector and archivist Harry Smith took it upon himself to record, archive and document traditional American forms as folk music of the early twentieth century, releasing a vast collection of unique recordings in his landmark 1952 LP box set Anthology of American Folk Music. Now that traditional folk and country music has once again established itself as a viable force in popular culture, it is high time to give credit where credit is due, and this is where the Harry Smith Project came to life as a series of special concerts organized in London, New York and Los Angeles from 1999-2001. At these events, contemporary artists from various genres of popular music payed tribute to Smith by performing their own interpretations of great songs now thankfully preserved for posterity.
That project has now finally come to fruition in a major DVD release from Shout!, which has made a wide selection of performances from that concert series available either as an inexpensive stand-alone DVD or in a much more luxurious box set containing two audio CD's, a DVD with the documentary The Old, Weird America, and the stand-alone concert DVD. Having received only the single DVD for review, we would be quick to recommend either release to any serious music collector, though we must note that the editing together of tracks by very different performers and of very different quality makes for a rewarding but rather uneven viewing experience. Perhaps it is best appreciated piecemeal, moving through performers such as Elvis Costello, Beck, Richard Thompson, Nick Cave, and the McGarrigle Sisters as one feels inclined. It is in any case a fittingly eclectic tribute to an extraordinary man who can be described as something of a national treasure in his own right.

Hero
While it may not have achieved the kind of worldwide breakthrough success of Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon, which clearly inspired this exquisitely crafted martial arts epic, Hero has slowly but surely managed to reach a Western audience in one way or another since its original release in China over two years ago. Released on DVD in Europe around the same time it topped the late-summer box office in the US, Hero is an even more elaborately stylized ballet than Ang Lee's cross-over smash hit. Its colors are almost transcendently beautiful, and its fight scenes employ the same kind of zero-gravity trickery, alternating between lightning-fast and serenely paced. At a mere 90 minutes, the film is perhaps a tad short, which may be part of the reason why the film's mythical tragedy never takes on the emotional weight that was Crouching Tiger's main strength. Its grand scenes of spectacle are however unparallelled, making this film an easy recommend even for those who usually steer clear of the genre.
Released in the Netherlands both as a two-disc and a single-disc edtion, the double-platter release carries a serviceable but short featurette on the making of the film, while the main supplement is a full second feature film starring Jet Li, the entirely inappropriately chosen Jet Li-starrer Last Hero in China.

High Noon
Fred Zinnemann's real-time masterpiece is an ethics lesson dressed up as a Western, and remains a hallmark of narrative efficiency and classical film style. Gary Cooper's aging marshal brings a true sense of increasing dread and vulnerability to what could easily have been a drearily one-note role, while the supporting cast clicks together in iconic roles to deliver what was clearly meant to be one of the Great Westerns of the late-classic period.
The new Region 2 release from Paramount carries the same decent transfer as the American DVD, but - alas - without any of the supplements (not even a trailer). It is in any case a vast improvement over the UK release, which has a very soft, washed-out picture.

High Sierra
Bogart's big break finally came about through the actor's rather back-handed advise to George Raft, who had been offered the part of Earl 'Mad Dog' Drummond first, to decline this picture. It's easy to forgive Bogey for this bit of outmaneuvering, however, as one can only imagine how tedious the same film would have been with famously one-note Raft in the lead role. In a film that served as an eloquent epitaph for the gangster films of the 1930s, and one couldn't ask for a director more capable or more knowledgeable than Raoul Walsh. He gives the somewhat predictable narrative both a sense of futility and the feeling of immediacy through his rapid cutting and explosive action moments. But it's Bogart who carries the film, revealing for the first time his depth as an actor by convincingly portraying a man both frighteningly brutal and hopelessly sentimental. A 12-minute featurette celebrates the film's accomplishments and places it within the context of Bogart's larger career, while offering some insight into the production's background.

Hoffa
The most ambitious work by Danny de Vito both as an actor and as a director, this David Mamet-scripted epic biopic paints legendary union man Jimmy Hoffa's exploits on the broadest of canvases, but remains a flawed film. De Vito himself plays a fictitious aide/henchman/friend, who accompanies the ebullient but always intangible Hoffa loyally through the peaks and valleys of his career. It's a questionable way of offering us access to the film's main character (impressively brought to life by a transformed Jack Nicholson), not only because it defies credibility, but also because it continually keeps Hoffa at some distance from the viewer. This device however does open up interesting questions about the unquestioning sense of devotion Hoffa was supposedly able to instill in his followers, while the film's solid production values and many visual flourishes keep the viewer engaged, if not enthralled, throughout its protracted running time.
The European DVD release drops the commentary and other extras that were featured on the North-American version, while the excellent 5.1 audio track and slightly blurry but otherwise serviceable anamorphic transfer have been carried over.

Hope Springs
A romantic comedy that few will have heard of but that features three recognizable faces in the lead performances, Hope Springs clearly has the term 'in-flight movie' written all over it. It's an instantly forgotten string of rom-com clichés that holds no surprises and only a single laugh. All the more disappointing as the film starts off promisingly, with the reliably stern Colin Firth arriving in the generic American small town of Hope in the midst of a huge, potentially life-altering depression. But all hopes for an interesting variation on a familiar theme are lost almost as soon as Heather Graham's chirpy therapist character is introduced, the film's fate sealed with an unbearable first courtship scene clearly supposed to be cute but simply embarrassing instead. The film then quickly degenerates into the most predictable kind of airline fodder, from the 'wacky' small-town residents down to the American/British culture clash, which this film reduces to a running gag about American no-smoking laws.

House of Wax / Mystery of the Wax Museum
Recently remade as a formulaic slasher vehicle for Paris Hilton's underwear, the 1953 novelty hit House of Wax - the first and biggest hit in the short-lived 3-D fad - was itself a faithful remake of the 1933 film Mystery of the Wax Museum. This earlier film had some novelty value itself, as it was shot in the rare two-strip Technicolor process, yielding a pleasingly artificial, picturebook quality in the images it produced. With Lionel Atwill as the mad sculptor and Fay Wray as his intended victim, the film is easily the better-known remake's equal. It features beautifully expressive, heavily atmospheric cinematography, its palette similar to that of nostalgic CGI-driven pieces such as Sky Captain and the World of Tomorrow. The remake, at a far longer running time without offering much more in the way of plot, is the slower-moving film, digressing occasionally to indulge in fourth-wall-breaking showcase scenes that show off the film's 3-D novelty act. But Vincent Price, in a career-defining role, is a delight throughout, and maverick director André de Toth gives the proceedings just enough of an edge to maintain interest throughout. Also, watch for a young Charles Bronson in a sizable non-speaking role as the mute Igor.
Visually speaking, the older film is clearly (and understandably) the worse for wear, with damage and detritus showing up regularly, and frame drop-outs also a regular occurrence. House of Wax has the muddy color palette that is usually the result of films shot using this contrived process, with heavy grain also showing up occasionally. Image quality for both films however is quite acceptable, and none of these minor defects distract overly from the viewing experience. The only extra on this recommended double bill is a silent two-minute collection of footage from the star-studded 1953 premiere, featuring stars like Ronald Reagan and Bela Lugosi.

The Hunger
Director Tony Scott's feature film debut is a slickly designed but increasingly nonsensical approach to the vampire myth. It starts off rather well, with David Bowie and Catherine Deneuve portraying a vampiric couple that feeds on the blood of New Wave rock concert audience members (in the cleverly edited but badly dated opening sequence). Casting the famously androgynous David Bowie as a vampire was something close to a stroke of genius, but sadly, his character doesn't make it out of the first act, after which point the film falters increasingly. What little plot remains deals with Deneuve's search for a new mate, soon settling on Susan Sarandon, which plotline give Scott the opportunity to include that notorious (and utterly hilarious) lesbian sex scene.
The DVD offers an excellent transfer that shows off the glossy cinematography, unproblematically rendering the many smoke-filled interiors. An engaging commentary track is a composite track of material recorded separately by Scott and Sarandon. The director dominates the track with some interesting talk of how the movie came about, the many ways in which he changed the screenplay to suit his visual needs, and how he would approach this project if he were making the film today. Sarandon pops up a few times, but only very briefly, though her criticism on the film's epilogue is definitely one of the more sensible remarks on the film. A still gallery and the trailer round out the disc.

I Am Legend
Richard Matheson's novel I Am Legend has been made into a film twice, its best-known cinematic adaptation being the flawed but still fun The Omega Man with Charlton Heston. Neither version however had seemed to do justice to Matheson's horror masterpiece, and fans of the book had therefore spent many a year looking forward with great anticipation to the 'definitive version' that was long rumored to be in the making. Ridley Scott was attached to such a project at one point, with Arnold Schwarzenegger cast as 'last man on Earth' Robert Neville, but budget overruns finally caused the project to be abandoned. After a number of other abortive attempts to get the project green-lit, the film version finally came to life again once Will Smith attached himself to a new Akiva Goldsman screenplay, and last December, the film finally saw the light of day, to great commercial success and generally positive reviews.
Unfortunately, director Francis Lawrence's film hardly represents an improvement as far as bringing Matheson's startling vision to the screen is concerned. As disappointing as that may be to the many fans of the book who recognize its potential as a terrific sci-fi/horror film (as Steve Niles' graphic novel adaptation has also illustrated), all would of course be forgiven if the final product had been engaging in its own right. But unfortunately, the film represents a true collection of missed opportunities. The scene is set promisingly enough in the fascinating depiction of an abandoned, overgrown Manhattan. A restrained Will Smith brings his considerable talent and charisma to bear on a fatally underdeveloped character, yielding a handful of scenes in the opening reel that breathe an eerie sense of dread. But sadly, Goldsman's screenplay fails to make any sense of these visually rich settings, nor do the uninspired 'Night-Seekers' add much to the equation once their badly CGI-ed bodies appear on the screen. One's hesitant admiration for the film's visual acumen then soon begins to make place for annoyance with the narrative's increasing reliance on messianic archetypes that may stroke the star's ego, but that go entirely against the spirit of the source novel as well as the film's preceding logic.
The home video release (on Blu-Ray and 2-disc DVD) features reference-quality audio and video, and includes an 'alternate theatrical edition' that - for once - radically revises the ending. Although this second version does mitigate some of the most irritating Christ metaphors from the original release, it introduces entirely new annoyances in its own right, illustrating to an even greater extent what a bad idea the introduction of the woman-and-child couple was. The other extras are made up of utterly redundant 'animated comics' that take place in the film's world on the first disc, and a long series of brief featurettes that document the production process. Although the wealth of material suggests an abundance of information, one has to wade through seemingly interminable monologues from the enthusiastic but hardly insightful cast members. Most of the time is spent in any case showing and discussing in great detail the technical challenge of shooting many of the scenes in New York, thereby inconveniencing huge numbers of city dwellers and entertaining masses of tourists.

I Spit On Your Grave
Few exploitation films have reputations as notorious as I Spit On Your Grave, the infamous rape-revenge film that was banned for years in the UK and several other countries, but which has been an overt influence on mainstream films from Kill Bill to contemporary Hollywood-produced horror flicks. The film tries to straddle the rather hopeless position of offering exploitational imagery in the context of a feminist-oriented revenge fantasy. One could argue that the lustful way in which the camera ogles the female protagonist is a legitimate part of the reversal that takes place later, making the audience realize it has been guilty of the same objectifying gaze that led the barbaric rapists to their 'she was asking for it' motive. But the revenge scenario that follows the endlessly protracted rape sequence sits poorly with the preceding traumatic events: one can't possibly imagine this woman willfully engaging in sexual acts with two of her rapists before exacting her bloody revenge on them.
The DVD shapes up reasonably well, with the transfer looking as good as can be expected given the limitations of the low-budget source material. The main extra is an audio commentary from the director, which dwells on the film's problematic reception without resolving the film's inherent contradictions.

Inside Man
Having been relegated back to the sidelines of the film industry for years, where he produced experimental, little-seen curiosities like Bamboozled, Spike Lee has now thankfully returned to the position of prominence he so clearly deserves. With the current publicity surrounding his four-part TV documentary on New Orleans in the aftermath of hurricane Katrina, the DVD release of a highly successful studio genre film can only serve as a further boon to this maverick director.
With Inside Man, Lee proved that he was able to deliver a studio picture for a mainstream producer like Brian Grazer (The Da Vinci Code, The Nutty Professor) without surrendering the edginess that has made him the New York filmmaker most strongly attuned to the city's post-9/11 vibe. In his fourth pairing with Denzel Washington, Lee brings a great deal of cinematic panache to what a highly entertaining and cine-literate heist picture. As entertainment with some smarts, it's hard to beat, although it does go on a bit too long, and Jodie Foster's character fails to fit in with the rest of the film.
The DVD is similarly impressive, boasting a terrific audio commentary with Spike Lee (more jovial than usually on these things), a slick but informative 'making-of' featurette, a welcome selection of deleted scenes, and a great ten-minute chat pairing up Lee and Washington who look back over their past collaborations and the state of black filmmakers in Hollywood.

Intolerable Cruelty
Most likely as a result of the immense success of the O Brother, Where Art Thou? soundtrack album, the perennially eccentric Coen brothers have embarked on a flirtation with big Hollywood producers for their last two projects, with disappointing results. Until very recently, every new movie of theirs was a cinephile's dream, full of weird angles, film references and their typically quirky sense of humor. Intolerable Cruelty is an amusing film, its sense of disappointment stemming from the anonymity with which it has been directed. A glossy star vehicle in the tradition of the screwball comedies of the 1930s, George Clooney and Catherine Zeta-Jones acquit themselves of their roles with verve and sharp tongues. But there is very little about the picture to distinguish it from run-of-the-mill Hollywood produced romantic comedies. The scenes that play like straight homages to Ben Hecht-penned Cary Grant comedies are handled with energy and wit, but the broader segments are poorly directed, and the film runs out of steam at least fifteen minutes before the end. The DVD is also a minimum-effort release: apart from the glorious cinematography and a few blooper reels, there is little to differentiate this disc.

The Iron Giant: Special Edition
With the recent smash success of The Incredibles, one would think the time had finally come for the discovery of writer-director Brad Bird's first feature film: the criminally overlooked masterpiece The Iron Giant. All but completely ignored during its poorly marketed theatrical run in 1999, the film has since then developed a sizable group of devoted fans who praise the film as one of the finest animated films in history. First released on DVD back in 2000 boasting an excellent transfer along with a few modest extras. Fans of the film will surely welcome the new special edition, offering a slightly improved transfer and a decent collection of new supplements, including an audio commentary track, 18 minutes of deleted scenes in storyboard format, and a few short featurettes. There seems howevere to be very little PR push behind this re-release. With a little more faith and a modestly sized PR budget, one could easily imagine a successful marketing campaign with stickers and displays ('Discover the first animated classic from the creator of The Incredibles', or words to that effect) that might give the film the popular status it so surely deserves.

It's Alive! / It Lives Again / It's Alive III: Island of the Alive
B-movie director extraordinaire Larry Cohen helmed all three films in the It's Alive! 'trilogy', and his presence (in commentary form) on these DVDs is one of the main reasons for recommending them. Cohen's love and appreciation for the genre and inside perspective on the film industry together with his complete lack of pretention make his trio of yack-tracks an unexpected delight that makes these three discs far more enjoyable than they might have been. Which is not to say that the films are without any merit: although made on a shoestring budget, the films actually boast fairly impressive pedigrees, from the atmospheric score by Bernard Herrmann to Rick Baker's early-career simple but effective make-up and creature effects. The first film is a minor genre classic, featuring a suitably earnest performance by John P. Ryan, while the second film expands the first film's premise by tripling the number of babies and including more set pieces. The third film might however be the most rewarding of the bunch, with its knowing combination of laughs and scares geared more closely towards a 'postmodern' viewers perspective on this kind of thing. All three films are in any case best enjoyed along with a few beers, a silly sense of humor, and - preferably - the company of Larry Cohen.

Jailhouse Rock
When the King first swung his hips on-stage, the effect could hardly be underestimated. Sadly, Elvis was soon chewed up and consumed by the industry that saw in him little more than a way to make vast amounts of money from the suddenly-profitable teen audience. In order to appropriate his rebellious image into the Hollywood system that would eventually all but milk him dry, Elvis was tamed and turned into a boy-next-door type with only the most superficial remaining trimmings of his once-rambunctious persona.
Jailhouse Rock is that rare early film in which Presley's unique energy can be admired in more or less full swing. Even though the script is a rather clunky first attempt to construct a narrative around the rise of a new rock star and Elvis's acting skills are as limited as they would remain from that point onwards, the young rock 'n roll god's charisma is on display here more nakedly than in any other feature film of his, making this perhaps the only one of his pictures not to deserve the derogatory 'Elvis movie' description/putdown.
The new 'Deluxe Edition' DVD's most compelling added value over the OOP older disc is the beautifully restored video quality, displaying crisply defined blacks and white across the width of the stunningly wide Cinerama frame. Audio quality is similarly impressive, with the songs spread across the wide soundstage, while extras remain limited to an informative but dry audio commentary and a featurette that (over-)emphasizes the film's importance as a pioneering rock film, with plenty of attention reserved for the rollicking title track.

The Jerk: 26th Anniversary Edition
Few TV comedians ever made such a successful movie debut as 'wild and crazy guy' Steve Martin did with his 1979 classic The Jerk, which remains one of the funniest film comedies in history, and the perfect antidote to Forrest Gump. Martin's relentlessly stupid protagonist, 'born a poor, black child', experiences a succession of phenomenally funny encounters that range from the moronic to the sweetly romantic to the resolutely surreal (most notably both encounters with M. Emmet Walsh: 'He's shooting cans!'). A stupid movie for smart people, The Jerk manages to satirize bad taste rather than glorifying it, while allowing Martin free reign in his unparallelled physical comedy. Twenty-six years onward, the film however also stands as a cruel reminder of how far this once-great comedian has fallen.

Offering a long-awaited improvement on the previously available pan-and-scan DVD, this new unfunnily monikered '26th Anniversary Edition' at least sets matters straight on the audiovisual front, with a grainy but satisfactory widescreen transfer and a surprisingly solid new 5.1 mix. The extras however are a pitiful bunch: so bad in fact that they beg the question whether these supplements are some kind of perverse ironic statement that should be read sarcastically. Besides the trailer, the extras in any case consist of a segment titled 'The Lost Filmstrips of Father Carlos Las Vegas de Cordova', featuring an unsuccessful Steve Martin impersonator painfully expanding one very funny scene from the movie. The other extra is a semi-serious interactive tutorial on how to play 'Tonight You Belong to Me' on a ukelele. I kid you not. The less said about these extras, the better, but having an acceptable version of the film will probably be enough for most fans.

A Kid for Two Farthings
Director Carol Reed, whose remarkable career included such masterpieces as The Third Man and Oliver!, may not have produced any truly unwatchable films, but any sense of anticipation caused by the unearthing of this lesser-known film of his will soon be dashed by the sonorous boredom that marks this modern-day fairy tale. With an unlikely ensemble cast that includes Celia Johnson (of Brief Encounter), body-builder Joe Robinson and platinum blonde bombshell Diana Dors (the English answer to Jayne Mansfield), this overly twee tale follows a young boy's misguided attempts to work miracles with his young goat, which he has been fooled into believing is really a unicorn with the power to grant wishes. Little of consequence actually happens, while the wee lad's incessant cries of exultation start to grate well before the film's lacklustre finish. With its faded, worn print and lack of any extras apart from an essay unconvincingly singing the film's praises, this DVD release is only recommended for dedicated fans of this director.

Kiss Kiss Bang Bang
Shane Black, the wunderkind screenwriter who shot to fame (and a fat bank account) with his testosterone-fuelled screenplays for high-concept 1980s action comedies such as Lethal Weapon and The Last Boy Scout, takes place in the director's chair for the first time here. The hugely clever, highly cine-literate Kiss Kiss Bang Bang is a blast for any true film aficionado, poking fun at genre conventions while delivering the goods simultaneously. The film's medium-savviness makes it the smartest bit of meta-fiction this side of Adaptation., while providing Robert Downey Jr. with one of his truly great roles and even offering Val Kilmer some form of redemption for the career limbo he has found himself in recently. A film that rewards repeated viewings while treading the thin line between the brilliantly self-reflexive and the annoyingly too-smart-for-its-own-good, Kiss Kiss Bang Bang is that rare treat that is able to have its cake and eat it too.
The DVD release from Warner Home Video holds a commentary track from Shane Black, Val Kilmer and Robert Downey Jr. as its sole extra. Sadly, it's a complete waste of time, finding the three doing little more than clowning around and making bad jokes, with occasional moments of plot description.

Labyrinth: Columbia Classics edition
Pitched somewhere between Alice in Wonderland and The Wizard of Oz, Jim Henson's second and last non-Muppet feature film throws a few humans into his usual menagerie of puppet in all shapes and sizes. The droll screenplay by Terry Jones (formerly of Monty Python) is very episodic, as it has teen heroine Connelly encounter a wide variety of creatures and close calls. It's often funny and quite good-natured, with some extra hilarity thrown in by some irresistibly tacky disco tunes from David Bowie. He is clearly having a lot of fun in a fittingly bizarre costume, a hairstyle that could only have been conceived in the 1980s and no actual acting required. The nonsensical dialogues and logic loops aren't as witty as they would like to be, and some of the encounters are somewhat tedious. Also, many of the sets look disappointingly stage-bound, giving much of the movie a rather limited, almost amateurish look. But a handful of Pythonesque jokes, the brilliant puppeteers and the true sense of lighthearted fun make this a most enjoyable romp, especially for children.
Re-released on DVD once again, this time in a handsomely packaged 'Columbia Classics' edition that includes a booklet with Brian Froud's original designs and six card reproductions of his artwork along with a reprint of the first DVD release. While technically inferior to the recent Superbit disc, both video and audio are good enough, and the disc also includes the outstanding hour-long 'making of' documentary along with several photo galleries, storyboards and the trailer.

Land of the Dead: Unrated Director's Cut
After the long-defunct zombie genre was recently resuscitated by the popular success of 28 Days Later, Shaun of the Dead and the slick but highly effective remake of Dawn of the Dead, the stage was set for George A. Romero's return to the director's chair. The long-rumored continuation of his earlier 'Dead trilogy' was finally green-lit by Universal last year, but the result was a major let-down even compared to the unpretentious mainstream zombie offerings that had invaded multiplexes recently. The tepid, formulaic and thoroughly disposable film that is Land of the Dead should have surprised no one, though. All three of Romero's previous zombie films (Night of the Living Dead, Dawn of the Dead and the underrated Day of the Dead) were independent productions that succeeded on their own modest terms by making the most of their limited budgets thanks to innovative effects and thoughtful, politically aware screenplays. The studio budget on display in Land of the Dead however drowns out Romero's admittedly limited range of ideas in a deafening barrage of over-familiar gags, while the gore never achieves the impact or immediacy of its much more effective moments in the original trilogy. Worst of all are the main characters, changed from Romero's trademark motley crew of thrown-together survivors to a thoroughly generic gang of stock movie clichés, its nadir represented by Dennis Hopper dialing in his performance as an upper-class proto-fascist. Lacking both a sense of empathy for its main characters and the claustrophobic feeling inherent in the set-bound previous offerings, Land of the Dead has little to offer that hasn't been done more effectively in numerous Romero rip-offs.
Judging from the list of extras on this handsomely packaged 'Unrated Director's Cut', one might think that this was truly a value-enhanced special edition worth owning for the extras alone. Not so. All but a few of the supplements consist entirely of shallow marketing material, the sole stand-out being the amusing but slight featurette 'When Shaun Met George', which follows Shaun of the Dead creators on their odyssey to the Canadian set, where they were to meet Romero for the first time as they accepted cameo parts as living dead. The audio commentary is also a disappointment, full of awkward silences and typified by its lack of interesting perspective on the film from those involved.

Libeled Lady
Boasting an impeccable line-up of movie star talent, Libeled Lady enters the ranks of the very finest screwball comedies of the 1930s with breathtaking ease. Myrna Low and William Powell, the comedic romantic duo familiar from the Thin Man franchise (and many other screwball efforts) are paired here with Spencer Tracy and Jean Harlow, and the combination results in comedic, sexual and romantic sparks flying all over the place in the very finest screwball tradition. The plot, as complicated as it is unlikely, involves newspaper editor Tracy employing notorious playboy Powell to seduce society girl Loy in order to wreak vengeance for the libel suit she's bringing forth against his paper, while Harlow becomes an increasingly resistant pawn in their game. Of course, the usual complications and hilarious pratfalls ensue, given substance by the tangible chemistry between the four leads. Harlow was an actress of fairly limited range, but she's ideally suited to the bellowing character she plays here, while Tracy is irresistibly slimy as the scheming newspaper editor. Powell and Loy however outshine them all with their effortless charisma and unique sexual chemistry. It all builds towards a climax as hilarious as it is convincing, with enough surprises along the way to keep the final act deliriously unpredictable.

Un Long Dimanche de Finançailles: Special Edition
French director Jean-Pierre Jeunet joins forces again with Amélie star Audrey Tautou for their second consecutive feature film, relocating their particular brand of romantic whimsy to the more gritty environment of WWI trench warfare. The complex, almost Rashomon-like narrative deals with Tautou's tireless search for her boyish fiancé, one of a group of five condemned to death by the French authorities following attempts to escape the army. Her search leads her through a huge variety of anecdotal setpieces, many of which are compelling and all of which are brilliantly visualized. But as with Amélie, there is never enough of a narrative throughline to anchor these encounters and tales, and to provide the film as a whole with enough of a sense of suspense or expectation. This visual feast is therefore likely to leave many viewers unsatisfied with its ending, which simply doesn't have the punch it should have.
Warner's two-disc release of Un Long Dimanche de Finançailles (English title: A Very Long Engagement) is packed with excellent supplements, from Jeunet's amiable commentary (in French with subtitles) to a 75-minute fly-on-the-wall documentary that follows the massive production through every possible stage with a minimum of editorializing. Two ten-minute featurettes are focused on the zeppelin explosion and the recreation of early-1920s Paris, respectively, and eleven minutes worth of deleted scenes can be watched with optional commentary from Jeunet. A teaser and trailer round out these worthwhile extras.

Look, Up In The Sky! The Amazing Story of Superman
It seems that the market for 'making-of' featurettes and DVD special features has by now grown so far as to extend to releasing stand-alone extras solely to support theatrical releases. Peter Jackson started the trend by releasing his King Kong Production Diaries as his giant ape swung into theaters, and now Warner is supporting their release of Bryan Singer's Superman Returns with a documentary offering that originally appeared on the WB network. It's a two-hour look at the Man of Steel's long and varied history across several media, directed by Ken Burns (who also produced and directed the Star Wars DVD documentary Empire of Dreams) and narrated by Kevin Spacey. It's an entertaining and competently produced item, whose principal delight is encountered halfway, when we see footage of the never-aired TV pilot 'Superpup', featuring an all-midget cast wearing dog masks enacting the Superman characters in canine form. Much of the rest is generally familiar territory, including sentimental eulogies for now-deceased Superman actors George Reeves and Christopher Reeve. Annoyances are that all video and film segments are cropped to fill the feature's 16:9 frame, and that the last half-hour plays like an extended promotional effort for Smallville and - of course - Superman Returns.

Madagascar: 2-disc Special Edition
Now that computer animation has become the rule rather than the exception as far as animated feature films are concerned, mediocrity has re-established itself as the qualitative benchmark for most such endeavors. Only Pixar has been able to consistently raise the bar for each and every new production (though the trailer for Cars doesn't exactly bode well for them either). Madagascar, a Tex Avery-inspired fish-out-of-water comedy romp featuring four animals from the New York Zoo accidentally ending up in the African wild, is mildly diverting, but fails to deliver more than the occasional chuckle. Feeling padded even at 75 minutes, there simply isn't enough to it to qualify for its feature length: the voice actors lack charisma, and the interesting nature-or-nurture theme is toyed with but never resolved in any way beyond a pat ending. The only moments in which the film manages to transcend its decidedly modest aspirations are those that feature the penguin characters, who are given center stage in the superior Christmas-themed short featured as an extra on the second disc in this DVD set. The other extras are superficial but engaging featurettes that are often blatantly promotional in nature, dwelling on the design and the remarkably self-congratulatory voice cast members. Technically, the DVD is beyond reproach - like the film itself. But the lack of any spark of originality makes it a movie that's so calculating in its approach that it's hard to love.

The Man without a Past
The latest entry in Finnish director Aki Kaurismäki's increasingly impressive (if perpetually frosty) body of work offers yet another affectionate portrait of downtrodden outcasts finding romance and happiness against the odds. Whimsical, melancholy and hilariously funny by turns, The Man Without a Past may be Kaurismäki's most accessible, life-affirming play on his familiar themes of alienation . It verges on cornball sentiment occasionally, but manages to sustain its uplifting fantasy by the strength of its performances, its well-chosen soundtrack of offbeat rockabilly, and its deadpan sense of humor. The Dutch Region 2 DVD release from distributor Total Film carries an anamorphic transfer from a decent source print and straightforward 2.0 soundtrack, but no extras. Then again, self-contained gems like this perhaps fare best with a minimum of ballast attached to them.

Mary Poppins: Special Edition
Disney's long-time family favorite makes it onto its third DVD edition for the film's fortieth anniversary, featuring a newly restored transfer that is impressive, but still limited by the technology of its time: the multitude of optical composite shots results in an unavoidably faded, inconsistently colored picture that has clearly been scrubbed as clean as it will ever be, but that doesn't offer the kind of jaw-dropping experience we've seen with other Disney restoration efforts. The film itself remains a highly entertaining if uneven and rather overlong experience, full of delights for those who can stand Dick van Dyke's unfathomable 'Cockney' accent and the general sense of hysteria only just held at bay by Julie Andrews' justifiably celebrated matter-of-factness.
The wealth of extras in this two-disc set (the Dutch version of which rather confusingly has its labels reversed) starts off with a composite audio commentary track in which Andrews, Van Dyke and a few other contributors (including Walt Disney speaking from beyond the grave) wax nostalgic over the flick. The track sets off a wave of hagiographic comments that pervades the 52-minute documentary on the second disc as well as most of the other featurettes. All of this stuff is both entertaining and reasonably informative, but it's coated with such a thick layer of artificial sentimentality that it's bound to make some viewers' teeth ache on occasion. Continuing a regrettable trend to 'expand' popular features with mediocre new additions, Julie Andrews makes an ill-advised appearance in a half-animated adaptation of a P.L. Travers story that has little to do with the film proper. A rich and varied assortment of promotional featurettes will delight historians, while there are also games and activities on board to keep small children occupied with the DVD even longer.

The Matrix Revolutions
What started out as a cleverly conceived, brilliantly visualized sci-fi epic that redefined the action genre came wheezing to a halt last year in the two misbegotten sequels that completed the once-promising trilogy. Now bereft of any truly original ideas, this final part is awkwardly paced, ineptly plotted and poorly executed, its anaemic characters moving predictably but inconsequently from one giant setpiece to the next. Considering the fact that first film offered a highly original mix of fresh ideas and startling visual effects within a genre that had become weighed down by its formulaic predictability, it can be considered ironic that this final installment does little besides following the generic rules of the religious epic cross-bred with the post-apocalyptic sci-fi tropes. As with supposedly less remarkable Hollywood fare, the attraction lies almost solely in the expensive production values.
As a DVD, The Matrix Revolutions fares a good deal better than the previous two parts, offering a decent selection of making-of material, even if it is all extremely self-congratulatory and very slickly edited. The most curious thing about the many featurettes that explore the film's secrets is the almost total absence of the Wachowski brothers, who are mentioned by nearly every talking head on the disc but who never venture to put in an appearance of their own. Besides the hours of documentary material, the double-disc release also includes trailers for all three films, storyboards and concept design, and a multi-angle breakdown of the (anticlimactic) final duel between Smith and Neo.

Meet Me in St. Louis
Vincente Minnelli's handsomely produced musical is a nostalgic paean to an innocent version of America that must have seemed especially appealing at the time of the film's release, during the latter years of WWII. But its enchantingly fresh use of songs that are integrated into the film's (admittedly spare) narrative represented a huge leap forward both for the genre as a whole and for high-gloss specialist studio MGM in particular, ushering in a veritable Golden Age of musicals. The film today remains a captivating delight, perhaps Judy Garland's finest moment and still renowned for its evocative seasonal cinematography.
Meet Me in St. Louis is the third Technicolor classic to be given a full-blown restoration by Warner, digitally recombining the three-strip color process, of which this film remains one of the most glorious early examples. They didn't skimp on the extras either, though European DVD buyers unfortunately miss out on the full two-disc set released in North-America. The extras most relevant to the film proper however have been included in the European single-platter version: an outstanding audio commentary, a terrific half-hour documentary, the isolated score, and an alternate version of the song 'Skip to my Lou' as performed by the score's two composers. Most highly recommended.

The Missing
Ron Howard tries his hand at directing a gritty Western in this gorgeous-looking but rather soulless half-feminist rehash of The Searchers. Cate Blanchett looks as ravishing as one might expect as a single mother out to rescue her teenage daughter, who has been kidnapped by a particularly nasty Indians. The film makes all kinds of twists and turns to make sure to point out that white folks can be just as bad as Indians, and not only are there also good Indians, but the bad ones became bad (more or less) due to bad white folks. Howard succeeds in building up tension in more than a few sequences, but subsequently drops the ball by ending it all with a ludicrously trumped-up finale with violence both incredible and unnecessary. Thanks to the gorgeous cinematography and a handful of solid sequences, however, the film remains watchable at least.
The extras on the DVD offer us a look at the 'Westerns' Howard has made previously: silent home movies shot as a teenager, along with quite a bit of interview footage from the always-charming former actor. Two alternate versions of the ending serve to illustrate how much trouble they had in ending this thing; neither one improves on the disastrous finale in the finished film. There are also other deleted scenes on board, along with a few other featurettes and trailers.

Mrs. Miniver
Proving once again that propaganda films, no matter how strong the reception at the time, rarely end up transcending the historical circumstances of their time (Casablanca of course being one of the most famous exceptions to this rule). Mrs. Miniver was a true prestige picture in 1942, winning six Oscars out of a stunning twelve nominations, including Best Picture, Best Director and Best Actress. Of all the awards lavished on it at the time, the praise for Greer Garson's performance now seems the most deserved. Her portrayal of the title figure, anxious to hold together her family in war-ravaged England. The film is badly dated, especially by its notoriously romanticized Hollywood version of an English small town in the 1940s, complete with American character actors with bizarrely phony English accents. It's still an entertaining, handsomely mounted film, but it hardly constitutes great cinema. The enjoyable extras include two highly non-PC propaganda shorts along with footage of Greer Garson accepting her Oscar.

Music and Lyrics
It's a sad but undeniable truth that decent romantic comedies these days are few and far between. A genre that Hollywood could reliably spew out like clockwork is now dominated by pandering garbage that is as cynical as it is exploitative. From Love Actually to The Holiday and from Something's Gotta Give to How to Lose a Guy in 10 Days, the irony is that these films targeted primarily at females dragging along reluctant boyfriends are not only unfunny and unromantic, but generally misogynistic to a frightening degree. With narratives like these continuously spoon-feeding young women self-loathing and platitudes that make Hallmark greeting cards seem profound in comparison, it is cause for minor celebration if a Hollywood-produced romantic comedy comes around that is simply not that bad.
I may be damning Music and Lyrics with faint praise, but the fact that this modest piece of prefab feel-good ickiness didn't make me want to throw up was a huge relief. The film looks and sounds like it was made for TV, the director's point-and-shoot attitude making every non-musical scene frankly dreary to look at. But with Hugh Grant capturing just the right mix of charm, insecurity and nastiness, Drew Barrymore managing to be kooky without coming off as thoroughly annoying (for once), and an obvious but still highly effective bunch of fake 1980s pop hits, the film somehow manages to be endearing without being cloying. It's not exactly one for the history books, but compared to most other films to appear lately in this genre, Music and Lyrics seems like a friggin' masterpiece.
The DVD is unsurprisingly light on extra features, providing little more than the hilarious music video featured in the opening credits, and a blooper reel with Hugh Grant's frequent and doubtlessly highly explicit profanity bleeped out.

Mutiny on the Bounty (1935)
The best-known tale of mutiny on the high seas has served as the inspiration for three major film adaptations, but this Oscar-winner from 1935, the biggest Hollywood production of its time, still outshines the more recent versions starring Marlon Brando and Mel Gibson, respectively. The young Clark Gable holds his own as Roger Christian, convincingly tortured and charismatic in spite of his incongruous American accent, but the show clearly belongs to the inimitable Charles Laughton, pouting and leering his way through a performance that borders on caricature, but revealing unexpected strength of character in the film's final reel. The DVD boasts surprisingly solid image quality for such an old film, but is sadly low on supplements for such a legendary picture, including only a vintage featurette on Pitcairn Island, some brief newsreel footage from the Oscar ceremony, and trailers for the film and the 1962 remake.

Mutiny on the Bounty (1963): Special Edition
The lavish production values do little to breathe new life into the ever-popular account of mutineers in the Pacific, nor does Marlon Brando's distractingly clipped British accent heighten our enjoyment of this overlong take on a distinctly familiar story. What tension there is during the first half of the film all but dissipates once Fletcher Christian and fellow mutineers reach Tahiti, where little of interest actually happens as the film drags on endlessly.
The most fascinating element of this production is in fact its notoriously troubled production history, during which Brando proved to be unusually uncooperative. Unfortunately, none of the three documentaries included in this two-disc set dwell on the making of the film, focusing instead on the actual ship the HMS Bounty. So in spite of a ravishingly beautiful video transfer, this DVD release is truly a missed opportunity: what could have been a fascinating case study of a studio production run amok has instead turned into a thoroughly dull period drama.

My Fair Lady: Special Edition
This hugely popular musical adaptation of Shaw's Pygmalion suffers from the overly stagey, totally uncinematic direction of George Cukor. But the performances (even without Audrey Hepburn singing her own vocals) make it all worthwhile, while Rex Harrison's delivery of Alan Jay Lerner's Shaw-derived lyrics constitutes a delectable treat upon each consecutive viewing. The previous DVD release was marred by an overabundance of edge enhancement in the film transfer, while the enjoyable audio commentary was the only extra. The new two-disc release features a somewhat better transfer, drawn from the same master but with a lesser degree of edge enhancement, and a repeat performance of the same commentary on the first disc. The second platter houses an hour-long documentary that was produced in 1994 and that shows its age in the editing and in the overemphasis on issues of film conservation and hagiography that are familiar by now even to the most casual movie watcher. A few other vintage featurettes and several galleries round out the package, which doesn't quite live up to the high standards set by previous Warner two-disc DVD's.

Mystic River
Clint Eastwood's strongest directorial effort since Unforgiven met with gushing praise from critics all over the world upon its theatrical release, but is a film that's easier to admire than it is to really love. An ensemble piece that offers a strong cast ample opportunity to show their acting chops, the film is so heavily doom-laden that its slow-moving, elaborately plotted tragedy feels contrived, its belabored inevitablity at odds with the compellingly realistic environment in which the narrative is set. Sean Penn and Tim Robbins walked away with Oscars that yet again seem to be deserved more by the sum total of their careers so far than for their turns in this particular picture (which never seems like much of a stretch for the always magnetic Penn), but Kevin Bacon turns in the most impressive performance, cleverly underplaying his character's world-weariness in the face of some scenery-chewing by the other main performers.
The film is released in North-America in both two-disc and three-disc editions (the latter including the soundtrack CD as a bonus disc), with a commentary from Bacon and Robbins, and a variety of interviews and featurettes on-board the second platter. Sadly, Warner failed to go the distance with the European release on this occasion, including only the slender 'From Page to Screen' featurette on the single-disc release foisted upon the European markets.

Nickelodeon
Film critic and historian Peter Bogdanovich made quite a name for himself with his first few films in the mid-1970s: Targets, The Last Picture Show, What's Up, Doc? and Paper Moon were all solid hits that were well-reviewed and drew in decent-sized audiences. And among this generation of film school-educated 'movie brats' who seemed to have taken over Hollywood in this period, there wasn't a single one who didn't produce at least one enormous flop. Almost all of these directors were able to regain their stride, but Bogdanovich somehow failed to find his footing once more after disaster struck. The multi-million dollar production Nickelodeon, the director's homage to the film industry's infancy, wasn't his first total flop: it followed his two previous bomsb Daisy Miller and At Long Last Love, both of which had similarly been ignored by audiences and savaged by critics. But Nickelodeon's failure signified the last time he would be entrusted with a big budget by a major Hollywood studio, and the end of his output of a director making films based on his own idiosyncratic obsession with film history. Bogdanovich, who has found a niche int he DVD industry recording audio commentaries and pontificating in documentaries on film history, has since been consigned to the status of a hack director, and although he has delivered the occasional minor hit (like the 1985 melodrama Mask), his fall from grace remains something of a mystery to this date.
Nickelodeon remains a failure that offers little reward to whomever decides to sit it out: an unfunny, underplotted and overplayed collection of slapstick gags and useless exposition; a wasted opportunity that makes little use of the opportunities suggested by the film's setup. It is presented on DVD in a handsome transfer without any extras.

The Night of the Iguana
Not since Elia Kazan's revolutionary adaptation of A Streetcar Named Desire had a film director's sensibilities been so well matched to the content of playwright Tennessee Williams' work as John Huston's efforts to bring The Night of the Iguana to the screen turned out to be. Famously isolating his formidable cast (made up of the likes of Richard Burton, Deborah Kerr, Sue 'Lolita' Lyon and Ava Gardner in a career-best performance) in a remote Mexican coastal village, Huston began the shoot by giving all his principals pistols carrying bullets with their co-stars names engraved upon them. He then proceeded to engage in a unique balancing act of emotionally unbalanced movie stars going at each other full throttle without actually having them kill each other. The resulting film is a beautifully baroque adaptation that opens up the play effectively while staying absolutely true to the play's meaning and structure. It's one of the highpoints of Huston's illustrious career, and one of the very finest film adaptations of Williams' plays.
The transfer on this new DVD release is the best of all the new Tennessee Williams adaptations recently released by Warner, and the extras are modest but informative: a new featurette gives us the basics on this unusual location shoot, while a vintage featurette provides some rare color footage of Huston at work.

Ocean's Twelve
Steven Soderbergh's sequel to his frothy, star-studded remake that proved a huge popular success a few years ago ups the ante by reuniting the eleven-head crew from the original and adding Catherine Zeta-Jones into the mix as an opportunity to provide Brad Pitt's character with a love interest. Unfortunately, her character (an insurance investigator determined to put Ocean's crew away) remains dispiritingly flat throughout: while the playfulness of the rest of the cast and the pleasant eye candy offered by the abundance of European cities manages to keep this bauble of a movie more or less afloat, the picture takes a nosedive each time her character gets a big scene. Julia Roberts on the other hand steps up to the plate with conviction and enthusiasm in what is surely one of the most surreal sequences of Hollywood self-reflexivity in cinema history.
The film's look, with its handheld camerawork and its ingenious use of freeze-frames and montage, is one of its chief delights, and it is therefore appropriate that a film that is all about surfaces is given such stellar visual treatment on DVD. The audio mix is similarly dynamic and alive, making the picture perfect for an evening of unassuming entertainment. While American DVD buyers are currently offered only a movie-only release, European consumers are given the choice between a single-disc release and an alleged '2-disc Special Edition' that's a little more expensive. In this case however, it's definitely wiser to stick with the movie-only release, as the second disc contains nothing but a fluffy 'First Look' featurette and a handful of unremarkable deleted scenes.

The Osterman Weekend: Special Edition
Notorious maverick Sam Peckinpah directed his final picture after five years in limbo, unable to find a studio or producer willing to land him a seat in the director's chair. Relieved though he must have been to at least be working again, Peckinpah continued to seek out conflict with his producers and financiers throughout the highly problematic shoot. After a disastrous preview of Peckinpah's first cut, the director refused to change a single frame of his film, more or less forcing the producers to take over the film and recut parts of it. The resulting film is flawed in any case, but remains a fascinating film, as convolutedly plotted as it is, that deals with issues that elevates it beyond the violent Cold War thriller that it appears to be on the surface.
Already available on DVD in North-America and the UK as a splendid two-disc 'Commemorative Edition', expectations among Dutch fans were high for the double-disc Special Edition that was announced for release in the Netherlands by Dutch FilmWorks, especially because the currently available DVD release is a shoddy fullscreen edition mastered from a VHS source. But incredibly, this handsomely packaged new edition recycles the previous release as the first disc in the set, adding to it a second disc identical to that available in other territories. This does include an extremely low-definition version of the film titled 'Sam's first cut', mastered from a badly worn tape, which is clearly the only available version of this footage still in existence, and is therefore attractive only for historical purposes, as it is a truly headache-inducing experience to sit through. The 73-minute documentary 'Alpha to Omega' offers a thorough run-through of the entire production history, with extensive new interview footage with the producers and the entire surviving cast (except for Dennis Hopper). It's an outstanding supplement, a worthy documentary in its own right, and one that makes the absence of a watchable version of the film itself in this release all the more unforgivable.

Pat Garrett and Billy the Kid: Special Edition
Of the many film productions that have become notorious for clashes between director and producer resulting in a bowdlerized version of the film in question being released theatrically, Sam Peckinpah's Pat Garrett and Billy the Kid remains one of the most discussed. Taken away from the director by the studio after Peckinpah had just neared completion of a first rough cut, the film soon became known mainly as yet another example of a director's artistic vision unacceptably compromised by a movie studio's commercial sensibility. In the late 1980s, the preview cut that had been assembled by Peckinpah and his editor before it was taken away from them was rediscovered and released to renewed acclaim, even if it was clearly still an unfinished work that was rather rough around the edges. This has since stood as the preferred version of the film, but this DVD release from Warner Home Video includes a new 'Special Edition', which represents film editor and self-proclaimed Peckinpah expert Paul Seydor's attempt to finish the film along the lines of the director's original vision. Unfortunately, in trimming the film down by 10 minutes, he has jettisoned not only some awkward moments that clearly don't belong in the finished film, but also entire scenes that are by now beloved by many fans, and which do enrich the film's experience. The opening of the Preview version is clearly far superior to the new cut, and though both versions have things to recommend them, it is clear that Pat Garrett and Billy the Kid will remain an unfinished and therefore eternally fascinating work.
The first disc in this double-platter set holds the new cut of the film, which has been beautifully restored with rich colors and terrific sound. The 1988 Preview cut has image quality that is vastly inferior, with faded colors and noticeable collateral wear to the print, and dialogues and sound effects that are occasionally distorted and all but unintelligible. This second disc also includes some featurettes made up of interview footage, of which the sessions with Kris Kristofferson are the most rewarding. Both cuts of the film also include scholarly audio commentary tracks.

The Prestige
Re-uniting the Dream Team of Christopher Nolan, Chrstian Bale and Michael Caine after Batman Begins, the year's second period picture about 19th-century magicians was markedly superior to the flatfooted The Illusionist. Like in all of his films so far, Nolan once again proves himself unusually adept at constructing a labyrinthine narrative that is nevertheless surprisingly easy to follow in spite of its continuous shifts of time and perspective. Moving back and forth effortlessly between diary accounts, alternating voice-over narration and court testimony, the film succeeds in captivating the viewer on several levels simultaneously. Nolan has become such an expert at manipulating the viewer's expectations that one suspects that the 'guessable' secrets were in fact meant to be picked up, while the film's final hat trick comments not only on the nature of trickery, but on the construction of film narratives and their own illusionistic qualities. Among the film's few weaknesses are a badly miscast Scarlett Johansson, who once again fails to register, and a general lack of empathy for the deliberately nasty and vindictive protagonists. Of the two, the remarkable Christian Bale pulls off his part with conviction, but Hugh Jackman tends to fall short in comparison. The film's strong points however are so many that they easily outweigh these slight misgivings.
The film looks and sounds terrific on DVD, where repeat viewings yield greater pleasure as one can focus more on the film's intricate structure and the fun to be had in its many exquisite details. The supplements are made up of a small but highly informative selection of featurettes made up mostly of interview footage with the main contributors both before and behind the camera.

Performance
Produced in 1968, but shelved until 1970, Nicolas Roeg and Donald Cammell's Performance was a strange embarassment for the studio at the time. Hoping to capitalize on rock star Mick Jagger's acting début as well as on the film's setting in Swinging London, one can imagine the executives' panic when faced with the finished film: an avant-garde exploration of identity along with a callous deconstruction of the very concept of celebrity, presenting a baffling logic, innovative editing, and - to cap things off - the film's supposed star failing to appear until almost halfway into the picture. When it was finally released, the demise of 1960s optimism so tellingly predicted by the film's two auteurs had already come to pass (and is ironically documented most chillingly in the Rolling Stones concert documentary Gimme Shelter), and the film failed to connect with its intended audience.
Having acquired cult status by now, the film finally arrives on DVD as part of the early Roeg canon, looking wonderfully well preserved, and blessed with the inclusion of some decent extras. A new featurette collects several talking heads, who wax lyrical on the project, its difficult production history and troubled reception, while dispelling several myths (most notably on the true nature of the film's legendary sex scenes). A vintage short focuses - unsurprisingly - on Jagger, and his musical contribution to the film, while the trailer illustrates how the studio failed to find a convincing way to handle the film's marketing at the time.

The Philadelphia Story: 2-disc Special Edition
Of the many great romantic comedies of the 1930s and 1940s, most are remembered for their sharp dialogues, their lightning-paced screwball plotting, and their legendary movie star pairings. The Philadelphia Story has all these elements, but what makes this classic such a stand-out is its dramatic content, which holds its own within a screenplay that is legendary for its many zingers that come across as fresh today as they did over half a century ago. The development that Katherine Hepburn's character undergoes is not only all but unique within the genre, but it lends emotional poignancy to a brilliantly plotted and perfectly cast comedy narrative.
Previously available on DVD for Region 1 on a movie-only disc, The Philadelphia Story is now out for both Region 1 and 2 in a handsome two-platter release that presents a nicely restored transfer along with a rich selection of extras: the audio commentary from film scholar Jeannine Basinger is informative and well-researched, but sounds like its being read from prepared notes and therefore can become a little dull in parts. Disc two holds a 70-minute documentary that offers a kind of self-portrait of Katherine Hepburn, narrated and hosted by the star herself at age 85. The other major feature on disc two is an episode of Richard Schickel's series 'The Men Who Made the Movies' on director George Cukor's career. Some shorts, trailers for this and other Cukor films, and two radio versions of the film round out these worthwhile supplements.

Point Blank
In an age when Hollywood was frantically in search of new styles and subjects that would appeal to contemporary youth audiences, several major studios decided to give European directors a shot at helming an American motion picture in an effort to combine arthouse credibility with reliable genre staples, Hollywood stars and big production values. Many of these experiments were fiascoes, but British former TV director John Boorman's first Hollywood film was an unqualified success, both commercially and artistically. By using associative editing, innovative sound design and an extraordinary feel for color schemes, he managed to update the film noir formula and bring it up to date with the dynamic, colorful and downright noisy late 1960s.
What's most astonishing today about Point Blank is how well it has held up: its simple story fused admirably to its complex editing and mise-en-scène, and Lee Marvin's lead performance one of the finest in his career.
This classic is brought to DVD by Warner in a finger-lickingly good release: the transfer is flawless, the film somehow miraculously well preserved the better to showcase its eye-popping California colors along with all the detail in its widescreen canvas. The feature is complemented by a terrific audio commentary in which director John Boorman is joined by Steven Soderbergh. As on Catch-22, the pairing of Soderbergh with an older director on a film he admires so greatly yields a fascinating, articulate and amazingly screen-specific track that reveal a huge number of ins and outs of the film's themes, tricks and anecdotes. Two short featurettes on Alcatraz, produced to promote the film at the time of its release, are included on the disc, as is the film's original theatrical trailer.

The Postman Always Rings Twice (1946)
It may lack the subtlety and economy of narrative that marked Visconti's earlier adaptation of James M. Cain's novel, but this handsomely produced MGM version has great iconic value, even if it does gloss over the baser elements of the novel with thick coats of Hollywood varnish. John Garfield and Lana Turner both succeed admirably in negotiating the weird loops and bends of character development they are made to undergo by the heavily sanitized screenplay, though a young Hume Cronyn just about steals the film from under their noses in the final reels, as a deliciously amoral but utterly competent defence lawyer. The film is preceded by a five-minute introduction that does a good job at placing the film in its historical context and offering the basic information that helps one appreciate both its strengths and its weaknesses. There's also an image gallery with stills from the film and trailers for this version as well as the 1981 remake, but the highlight among the extras is the fascinating 58-minute documentary that charts the career of John Garfield.

Prince of the City
The best-known of the first generation of TV-trained directors, Sidney Lumet is a still-active filmmaker who is considered not so much an auteur as a consummate professional whose skill is consistent, but whose productions rely more on the material he works with than on any recognizable style Lumet has displayed across his impressive CV. Most famous for the two seminal 1970s films with Al Pacino he directed, Dog Day Afternoon and Serpico, Prince of the City saw him returning to similar themes in 1981, with lesser but still highly worthwhile results. Defeated at the box office by its mammoth running time of nearly 170 minutes and perhaps by the darkness of its material, the film has aged well and deserves to be rediscovered. Telling the intricately detailed story of a crooked detective who decides to cooperate with an investigative unit and spill the beans, the film's main weakness is its young lead actor Treat Williams, whose performance is compelling but inconsistent. Nevertheless, the film builds towards a remarkable, highly ambiguous climax, and is bolstered by a large number of exceptional supporting actors and real New York locations.
The film is spread out across two DVDs, the second of which holds a new half-hour documentary on the making of the film, in which its main participants speak proudly of their work on the film (several listing it as the favorite in their entire career).

The Producers
As Mel Brooks' feature film debut enters its third incarnation and the film adaptation of the successful Broadway musical based on his film hits American movie screens, the time seems right to return to the original and re-evaluate what many now consider a true comedy classic almost by default. And as so often, the perennial question what the fuss is all about once again raises its head. Neither particularly good nor unusually atrocious, The Producers has some funny lines, one hilarious musical number, and quite a few yawns, chuckles and shrugs in between as Brooks and his game cast (ranging from the legendary Zero Mostel to the hammy Kenneth Mars) pad out a 25-minute sketch to a 90-minute comedy. It certainly pales in comparison to the director's only two decent films (Blazing Saddles and Young Frankenstein), but judging by the scathing reviews, it is certainly better than the new musical adaptation starring Nathan Lane and Matthew Broderick.
A Special Edition DVD featuring a long documentary on the making of the film is available in most countries, but the Dutch DVD release is a wholly bare-bones affair, which is perhaps just as well for a basically unassuming little film like this. The transfer is adequate in any case, as is the sound mix.

Pumping Iron
As Arnold Schwarzenegger took office as governor of California, closing his film career with the disappointing second Terminator sequel, the Austrian Oak simultaneously looked back at the very start of his movie career, when he famously took center stage in the highly successful documentary Pumpin Iron. This weirdly fascinating, consistently uproarious film allows a rare insider's look into the bodybuilding subculture, focusing relentlessly on the petty feuds and fragile egos of these bloated musclebound posing kings. Much of its drama may be partially orchestrated by the film crew, as confessed by contributors in the many featurettes and documentaries that embellish this 25th Anniversary Edition DVD, but the film still offers a highly convincing portrait of a microcosm that later developed into the fitness craze that has dominated our culture ever since. Arnold also makes a half-hearted attempt to retract some of the more Machiavellian manipulations he gleefully expounds on-camera ('He comes to me for advices. So it's not that hard for me to give him ze wrong advices...'). His most hilarious quote however remains unchallenged:

[Pumping] is as satisfying to me as coming is, you know? As having sex wiz a voman and coming. And so can you believe how much I am in heaven? I am like getting ze feeling of coming in a gym, I'm getting ze feeling of coming at home, I'm getting ze feeling of coming backstage when I pump up, when I pose in front of 5,000 people, I get ze same feeling, so I am coming day and night. I mean, it's terrific. Right? So you know, I am in heaven.

Punch-Drunk Love
Popular indie director Paul Thomas Anderson's follow-up to the sprawling Magnolia managed to make it to a few of last year's Top 10 lists, but was considered a disappointment by most. It's a deceptively simple romantic fable that sets out to explore the hidden depths of rage, madness, anger and passion that lurk beneath the infantile but crowd-pleasing characters usually played by star comic Adam Sandler. The film starts off uneasily, with Sandler's initially familiar frustrated man-child character doing little besides suffering the insults of his many sisters and gazing longingly at persons and items that represent his desire for a different kind of life. But once he meets Emily Watson's forthright character and is instantly smitten, the film settles into a more stable narrative vein, and builds towards a pleasing but somehow half-finished finale. The DVD sadly fails to add much of value to what initially looks like a promising two-disc set, missing out on any director's commentary and filling its second disc with only a few minor extras such as deleted scenes and promotional material.

The Quiet American (1958 / 2002)
Michael Caine received his sixth Oscar nomination last year for his role as cynical correspondent Thomas Fowler in the second film adaptation of Graham Greene's novel The Quiet American, and this relatively little-seen film does indeed feature one of the iconical actors most subtle performances. He is joined by an equally impressive Brendan Fraser (in a rare but satisfying dramatic role) in this impressive production directed by Phillip Noyce, the veteran director who is suddenly growing more interesting with every film he makes after years of hack action work for the majors. In something of a coup, the Dutch Region 2 release from distributor Paradiso not only adds an outstanding DTS track to the offerings on the American DVD, but an extra disc with the entire 1958 version, directed by Joseph L. Mankiewicz. This celebrated but rarely-shown adaptation is terminally talky, but features a fantastic lead performance by Michael Redgrave, along with a career-best turn from Audie Murphy. Noyce's film admirably condenses the screenplay, leaving the basic elements intact while adding more action and suspense, and he also offers a more faithful adaptation of Greene's cynical views. Noyce is featured prominently in a mesmerizing group audio commentary track, featuring all the film's major participants.

Quick Change
By now firmly ensconced as a kind of éminence grise of the American indie film scene, it's almost easy to forget that Bill Murray was Hollywood's top box office draw for comedies a mere two decades ago. As the famously laconic star began to approach middle age in the late 1980s, his first attempt to spread out into new directions was taking on a shared director's credit for the flawed but engaging heist comedy Quick Change, which has now finally been granted a DVD release after residing on many fans' Most Wanted Lists for several years. The actual heist an amusing but rather over-the-top initial bank robbery setup, the premise quickly moves to an episodic road movie that never leaves New York City, for once attempting at least to approach the Big Apple as something other than the Emeral City function it has in most other mainstream films. The encounters are a bit uneven, and the main trio's roles are severely underwritten, but the talented cast makes the most of the slender screenplay, with Jason Robards effortlessly stealing every scene he's in. No extras.

Racing with the Moon
Actor/director Richard Benjamin's finest hour behind the camera is a delicate, impeccably crafted and pleasantly modest low-key romance featuring Sean Penn and Nicolas Cage in remarkable early-career performances. The plot, which could easily have turned into a broad sex farce, is handled with sensitivity and tastefulness, while the period is convincingly recreated in spite of a limited budget. Overlooked upon its release, Racing with the Moon has since developed something of a following on TV and home video, and Paramount's surprisingly generous DVD treatment will delight the film's admirers: the transfer is crisp and clean, the soundtrack has been bumped up to a solid 5.1 mix, and the disc is graced with a terrific commentary track by director Benjamin, along with a solid documentary on the making of the film. For a title that one would expect to appear in a back catalogue dump, the fact that Paramount went to so much trouble to give the film a solid DVD release is commendable indeed.

Rebel Without a Cause: Special Edition
The first major picture to deal openly with teen angst made James Dean a huge star, and his performance effortlessly carries the entire film close to fifty years after its release. His disarming combination of fragility and tough-guy posing makes his iconic performance a deserved highlight of 1950s cinema. The film's Freudian psychological explanations may have dated rather badly, but its semi-apocalyptic atmosphere now seems eerily fitting, as all three stars suffered tragically premature deaths.
The newly remastered image offers quite an improvement over the previous single-disc release, and that early DVD's modest supplements have been expanded to fill a second disc. The film itself is supplemented by a commentary from author Douglas L. Rathgeb, an expert on the film who provides abundant details on the production's background. On the second disc, a new 36-minute documentary gives a solid overview of the production, including interviews with surviving cast and crew members as well as film scholars and historians. The second major item on disc two is an hour-long TV feature in which the James Dean is eulogized by the likes of Sal Mineo, Natalie Wood and Sammy Davis Jr. Though dated, this slow-moving 1970s production has obvious historical and archival value due to its many now-deceased contributors. Sixteen brief deleted scenes also have mostly historical value, and include footage from the film's original black-and-white film stock, before the decision was made to shoot the feature in color. Elaborate screen and wardrobe tests also offer little entertainment value, while the final supplement is a holdover from the single-disc release, comprised of promotional interviews with Natalie Wood, Jim Backus, and James Dean.

The Rockford Files: Season One
James Garner first entered the public consciousness in the 1950s hit TV series Maverick, in which he established the laconic, likable persona that would remain intact throughout an otherwise long and varied career. He was one of the few actors to move gracefully back and forth between TV and movie successes, appearing in 1960s big-screen hits like The Great Escape and Support Your Local Sheriff, and returning to TV once again in the 1970s for what was to become his trademark role as private investigator Jim Rockford in The Rockford Files. He played the part of ex-con turned nickel-and-dime PI for six years, finally forced to abandon the hit show for medical reasons, and the episodes in this first season clearly live up to the show's excellent reputation. Limited as it may be by its overly familiar locations (i.e. the Universal backlot and the hills on the outskirts of Los Angeles), the 50-minute episodes each deliver their fair share of dry one-liners, car chases and reasonably tight plotting, as well as the usual assortment of 1970s-era guest stars (including a young James Woods in a noteworthy early role).
The 23 episodes of the show's first season are brought to DVD by Universal on three dual-sided discs featuring impressive transfers and clear-sounding audio. The discs are housed in slimline cases held together by an attractive cardboard box. The only extra is a new eight-minute interview with James Garner in which the aging star reminisces engagingly - if all too briefly - on the show.

The Rockford Files: Season Two
Not only was The Rockford Files one of the finest and most successful 1970s detective shows, it was also one of the most consistent ones as far as its level of quality was concerned: from the first episode onward, it seemed like James Garner stepped into Jim Rockford's shoes with remarkable ease, the rest of the regular cast congealing around his main character immediately in a basic formula that stayed fresh for six full seasons and a range of consecutive TV specials. The second season, now released on DVD by Universal Home Video as part of their Classic Television line-up, is therefore on a par with the first season, carrying on Jim Rockford's lackadaisical approach to private investigations. Guest stars in this second set of episodes include Stefanie Powers, Rob Reiner, Linda Evans, Robert Webber and Louis Gossett Jr., among many others.
As there have been reported problems with the dual-sided DVD's that Universal previously employed for these box sets, and this new season set therefore arrives on six single-sided discs instead. Extras once again are slim, but include the original series pilot and a ten-minute interview with series producer Stephen J. Cammell. Highly recommended for fans of James Garner and this classic detective show.

Ryan's Daughter: Special Edition
Best known for grandiose epics that combine huge, sprawling canvases with a genuine interest in character studies and human conflict. Following the vast international success of Doctor Zhivago, Lean's next film was the first in his long career to be greeted with unfavorable reviews and audience indifference. Criticized for its lack of a strong plot and its slow pace, the film looked as gorgeous as one would expect from a David Lean production, but had neither the emotional drawing power nor the sheer spectacle of films like Lawrence of Arabia. Reviewing the film today, one is struck first and foremost by its formal beauty: shot entirely on location on the inhospitable but geniuinely gorgeous Irish shore. The modest scale and slow development of its actual plot lends itself well to the small screen, while the film's major flaws however still manifest themselves: most obviously in the character of Major Doryan, played by Christopher Jones, who is the weakest link in an otherwise excellent cast. Due to his distant, unappealing central role, the romance that is central to the narrative never comes to life, and the three-hour-plus running time therefore becomes rather tedious at times.
The two-disc DVD release is an impressive package, with the long film spread across both discs, and the second platter holding both an hour-long newly produced documentary and a selection of worthwhile vintage featurettes.

Rumble Fish: Special Edition
Francis Ford Coppola may have filed for bankruptcy after his ridiculously expensive failure One From the Heart failed to find a distributor, let alone an audience. But as legal matters were dragged out in courts for several years, he managed to continue making films in his ruined Zoetrope Studios for a few more years. Desperate to put the resources he had accumulated to some use before a buyer was found, he cranked out two pictures based on books by S.E. Hinton within a single year. The Outsiders was a cynical crowd-pleaser, clearly made to counter the naysayers who claimed Coppola was a burn-out unable to address a 1980s audience, which he did successfully.

The second film, Rumble Fish, was a much more personal affair, an 'art film for teenagers' that was both a clear artistic statement and a clear example of what Coppola's self-invented filmmaking technology was capable of delivering. A stylistic tour de force, the film bewildered audiences, reaching only the burgeoning arthouse crowd successfully, but it's a film that has aged well, its gorgeous deep-focus cinematography and pulsating percussion score the most remarkable standouts among its many strong points.

Previously released as a movie-only DVD, Rumble Fish is back on the shelf in a nicely packed Special Edition that features a handsome new transfer, powerful 5.1 sound mix, and a pleasant assortment of extras, the best of which is a feature-length commentary track featuring Coppola at his most engaging. His fond recollections of the film he dubs 'one of his personal favorites' are laced with interesting technical details and personal anecdotes in this outstanding track. Other supplements include a short featurette on Coppola's innovative digital editing technology and an interview with Stewart Copeland on his memorable score.

Schindler's List
With the appearance of Steven Spielberg's highly acclaimed Schindler's List on DVD, the list of popular films still missing on DVD grows increasingly shorter. By next year, the biggest films still missing on what has so swiftly become the world standard for home video are likely to be obscure films to most audiences. Universal has in any case failed to drop the ball for once on this release, though the version released in several parts of Europe (including Belgium and the Netherlands) inexplicably carries a French DTS track, with the original English 'only' in Dolby Digital 5.1. It doesn't make that much difference in this case at any rate, as the DD-audio is perfectly fine, with a nice-looking transfer of Janusz Kaminski's award-winning black-and-white cinematography. The film is beyond criticism to many, having been elevated to the status not only of educational material but also of Oscar-winning classic in which Spielberg allegedly comes of age as a mature, 'serious' film director. But in spite of its rock-solid reputation and powerful sequences, Schindler's List remains a film that plays it safer than it should have, fumbling around ineptly at crucial points (eg. the infamous red jacket and the tear-ridden final speech, not to mention the ill-advised parade of descendants in the finale. For our money, Roman Polanski's The Pianist is the better film, but Schindler's List will no doubt continue to rule supreme among the many films about the Holocaust.
The only major extra on the two-disc release (with the film spread across both platters to accommodate its long running time) is a moving 70-minute documentary made up of interviews with surviving 'Schindler-Jews'.

School of Rock
After scene-stealing smaller roles in comedies like High Fidelity and Mars Attacks!, Jack Black missed his first few shots in leading roles, but finally makes good on his promise with this surprisingly fresh formula comedy. Playing a loafer whose only dream is to become a hard rock legend, Black's manic energy is given free rein once he takes over his roommate's job as a temp teacher in a prep school, where he of course has his classful of adorable moppets rocking in no time. What sounds on paper like a recipe for undiluted Hollywood schmaltz however becomes a surprisingly effective piece of entertainment, thanks in no small part to the band of pre-teens cast for their musicianship first and for their acting prowess second. Director Richard Linklater doesn't betray his indie roots, keeping proceedings brisk and fun, while the solid rock soundtrack for once knows the difference between good music and commercial drivel.
The DVD features some fun extras, several of which are geared towards a young audience. The most engaging supplements are the ones dominated by Black's love-it-or-loathe-it brand of humor, though he remains fairly subdued during a fine commentary track he recorded together with Linklater.

The Searchers: Special Edition
Upon its first release in 1956, The Searchers was viewed as a competent but unremarkable new entry in the line of John Wayne westerns helmed by veteran director John Ford. But as time passed and auteur theory gained in momentum, The Searchers would prove itself ripe for re-evaluation, ultimately becoming one of the greatest influences on the 'movie brats' of the 1970s (its reach extending from Paul Schrader and Martin Scorsese through to George Lucas). By now, its reputation as a canonical, 'all-time Top 10' film has been firmly established, and it is often called the best western ever made.
The fact that its legend developed over the years may be contributed in large part to the film's complex structure and subtle characterization. What would seem at first sight to be drawn-out rescue mission is ultimately better appreciated as a character study that delves into the very core of American mythology. The film is further strengthened upon repeated viewings by the many contradictions that are addressed but never resolved: Edwards is both a hero and a bigot, both a loving uncle and an outsider to family life, both a friend and a supreme bastard. Add to this some of the most gorgeous cinematography in the genre's history, and we can be sure that this film's impeccable reputation will last.
Warner revisits The Searchers on DVD with a double-disc set offers restored video, with a cleaned-up source print and a color palette quite different from the previous single-disc DVD release, alongside a wealth of extras. After a brief (and redundant) introduction from the Duke's son Patrick Wayne, the film can be enjoyed with audio commentary from Peter Bogdanovich, which is competent but rather superficial: he points out the basic elements of Ford's style, but never digs deeply into the film's complex themes, and occasionally indulges in his notorious habit of doing poor John Ford impressions. Far better is the half-hour segment 'The Searchers: An Appreciation', in which directors John Milius, Martin Scorsese and Curtis Hanson discuss the film in depth: a far better companion to the film than Bogdanovich's lackluster commentary track. A 1998 featurette on the film offers further insight (most particularly from John Milius), as well as rare home movie footage of Ford and Wayne relaxing together. Some vintage featurettes produced for Warner Bros. Presents are also included.

Secret Window
Almost parodic in endless recycling of elements from previous Stephen King adaptations, Secret Window entertains thanks to Johnny Depp's droll performance, clearly having fun bringing a surprising amount of life to a vastly underwritten role. David Koepp's direction is also up to scratch, giving proceedings enough pace to distract from the fact that there's barely enough narrative to sustain an average Twilight Zone episode, if that. Proof positive once again that no matter how much skill, effort and inspiration is thrown at a poorly contrived plot, the results will be intermittently amusing at best.
The DVD wins points ofr its solidly produced extras, including an eloquent audio commentary made almost wholly redundant by the generous selection of featurettes that chart the film's development, with plenty of feedback from the highly sympathetic Koepp. The last featurette is worth watching if only for an outtake featuring Depp impersonating Marlon Brando, Roman Polanski and Christopher Walken. Deleted scenes, including an even less subtle ending, and animatic sequences are also included.

Secretary
Life-affirming romantic tales of self-discovery are rarely combined with S&M routines, and for good reason, one would think. Director Steven Shainberg however proves that these two unlikely bedfellows can actually work to each other's advantage if tackled with taste, sensitivity and a sly sense of humor. The film's paradoxical premise, perhaps best summed up as empowerment through submission, is made credible by Maggie Gyllenhaal's thrilling central performance. James Spader's character seems less developed, but his performance does give Gyllenhaal the required support. The Dutch Region 2 release is sadly low on extras, missing out on the director's commentary featured on the American release, but it does include a powerful Dolby Digital 5.1 soundtrack, along with the trailer and some EPK interviews.

Seinfeld: Season 5
Sony Home Entertainment continues to roll out those amazing box sets of what remains one of the funniest TV comedies of all time. The format has not changed for this fifth four-disc set of Seinfeld, nor has the high level of its contents dipped below the standards set by the previous seasons. All episodes feature droll 'Facts About Nothing' subtitle tracks that point out bits of trivia, while many also include fun 'Inside Look' featurettes that focus on memorable themes and/or guest stars, and audio commentaries that bring together writers, cast members, and other participants. Every box set so far has also included a featured documentary on the show, but the one on this fifth set is the weakest so far: it focuses on the George Costanza character and his correspondence to writer/producer Larry David, but it's made up for the most part of interview footage that will be familiar from the extras on earlier box sets, as is the featurette's main theme, which was covered thoroughly on the first two season sets.
But the extras on this otherwise fabulous release remain merely icing on a cake that is well worth consuming over and over again: there's hardly a weak episode among the 22 shows in this fifth series. Highlights include the famous puffy shirt episode and the one where Courtney Cox guest-stars as Jerry's 'wife'. The episodes remain side-splittingly funny, no matter how many times they've been seen before.

Seinfeld: Season 7
For ten long seasons, Seinfeld maintained a remarkably consistent level of sophisticated humor that tested the boundaries of permissiveness within a network sitcom and that ushered in a new era of TV comedy, and Sony's line of DVD releases is similar in upholding its own level of excellence. Much of this was thanks to the unique sensibilities of writer/producer Larry David, the latter-day Curb Your Enthusiasm star, played on Seinfeld by Jason Alexander as George Costanza. By the seventh season, the notoriously irascible David finally made good on his continued threat to leave the show, after which point Jerry Seinfeld took over as the sole creative force responsible for keeping the show going on the same track. Unsurprisingly, Larry David made sure he went out with a bang, providing this seventh outing for Jerry, George, Elaine and Kramer with a narrative arc that sees George getting engaged to the increasingly annoying Susan, whose demise in the last episode was to become perhaps the most divisive single moment in the show's history.
The generous supplements, all of which are presented in the outstanding format familiar from the previous five box sets, cover Larry David's departure from the show and the challenges and comic opportunities arising from George's wedding plans in some depth, along with a plethora of other behind-the-scenes input from all the regular collaborators on the show, as well as many of the guest performers.

Seinfeld: Season 8
Few things (besides death and taxes) may be reliable in life, but in the past few years, the regular appearance of Seinfeld season box sets on DVD has become a ritual that would always deliver. The episodes have long proved their extensive shelf-life in countless TV repeats, but Sony has proved wonderfully committed to providing excellence in the presentation and added material on this run of releases. The episodes of the eighth season are surprising only for the fact that they proved that Seinfeld could stay consistently funny after the long-delayed departure of Larry David (although the first few are noticeably hesitant). Like the previous six DVD sets, the added material on the four discs ranges from terrific Inside Looks, deleted scenes and audio commentary tracks that are specific for most episodes to longer featurettes on the season as a whole, and fall-over-funny blooper collections, which tend to be even more infectiously hilarious than the episodes themselves. A longer look at Jerry Seinfeld and his new role as sole creative force behind the show after David's departure is enjoyable, even if it consists of not much more than cast and crew members talking about how wonderful he is. If one might make one complaint about the set, it is a continued annoyance at the Russian doll approach to the packaging: the four discs are couched inside no fewer than three layers of cardboard packaging, a concept that seems pointless, unpractical and wasteful. But at least in this aspect the eighth season displays amazing consistency with its precursors.

Seinfeld: Season 9
It had to come to this: for several years now, one of the treats we have come to rely on each year was at least one more season of Seinfeld to appear on DVD in collections that set the standard for television shows in this format. And few shows are better suited for this kind of home video treatment: not only are the episodes endlessly rewatchable, but the abundance of extras adds huge and varied added value to our enjoyment of classic episodes that will be familiar to most viewers by now. After writer/creator Larry David's departure at the beginningo of season eight, this ninth set of episodes ups the ante on the outrageousness of the previous season, while never losing touch with the characters that hold the show together so well. For those who have resisted the urge to pick up the sets as they were being released, Sony has also put out a handsome box set that holds all nine seasons along with a bonus DVD and several collectables, including Kramer's famous coffee table book.

Seven Brides for Seven Brothers: Special Edition
As hokey, stagebound and politically incorrect as it may be, Stanley Donen's rafters-raising mountain musical remains one of the most irresistibly exuberant musicals of MGM's celebrated Golden Age. Its show-stopping dance numbers performed stunningly by a legendary team of rough-and-tumble dancer/athletes that includes Russ Tamblyn, Jeff Richards and Rommy Rall, the show offers a rush of entertainment fuelled by maddeningly hummable country-based showtunes. The rarely equalled troupe of dancers is headed by the hilariously ill-matched duo of boisterous giant Howard Keel and petite Jane Powell (who seems only slightly taller than Keel's boots).
Seven Brides was MGM's first musical in CinemaScope, and it's clear from the awkward, highly theatrical staging that the production team was ill at ease with this extreme widescreen format. First released on DVD with a non-anamorphic transfer, the new two-disc version improves on the previous version with improved, 16:9-enhanced visuals, though the problematic 'scope lenses and film stock still result in a transfer that's often downright blurry. To safeguard against the possibility that CinemaScope wouldn't catch on among theater owners, a backup copy of the film was shot simultaneously in the standard widescreen ratio of 1.85:1. That version sees the light of day for the first time on the second disc in this double-platter release. Colors are a little brighter and the picture is clearly sharper, while the fact that one isn't watching such an oddly narrow strip of film inevitably yields more detail. On the downside, the outstanding Dolby Digital 5.1 mix from the 'scope version is much better than the thinner-sounding stereo soundtrack on the alternate version. Another difference is a little harder to pinpoint, but one does get the feeling that the alternated version is somewhat less energetic than the 'scope film, giving the impression that the performers saved their best bits for the 'scope cameras. Both versions are present in any case to choose from.
As far as extras go, it's not as meaty a package as we've come to expect from Warner's 2-disc Special Editions: the reasonably informative 'making-of' featurette - hosted by an elderly Howard Keel - is a holdover from the earlier DVD, while octogenarian Stanley Donen reminisces grumpily about the production difficulties he had. Newsreels and trailers round out the extras.

The Shield: Season 3

As much of a boon as it has been to serious film collectors, the digital video phenomenon has also had a huge effect on TV shows as DVD distribution and downloading through services like iTunes have become increasingly viable sources of income for quality television series. For many, the ease and comfort of sitting back and watching an entire run of episodes within a week (and without commercial interruptions) has fundamentally changed the way that TV shows are watched, and by extension therefore also the way they are produced and distributed.

The Shield - already in its sixth and last season by now on American TV - benefits from its DVD full-season sets mostly because of its highly addictive nature: most major plot lines extend across many episodes, or even across an entire season, making the option to keep watching one episode after another hard to resist. The third season is one of the show's very best: the actors now fully inhabit their characters, the stories have a well-developed history to draw on, and the action is intense, hard-edged and uncompromising. On this run, the tension builds on morally ambivalent protagonist Vic Mackey from several angles at once: the Armenian mafia they robbed in the previous season is increasingly hot on the Strike Team's tail and out for revenge; political struggles in the Barn change detective Wyms' position on the team; and Mackey's team is forced to work together with a competitive new 'Decoy Team'.

The European DVD, distributed on this end of the pond by Sony, has the advantage of offering widescreen transfers of all the episodes, giving the frame some welcome extra space and giving the whole thing a nicely cinematic feel. Eight of the episodes come with lively audio commentary tracks from producers, writers, cast members and other contributors. The other extra in the set is a 73-minute inside look at how the season finale was put together, including plenty of fly-on-the-wall peeks at the writing and rehearsal process.

The Shield: Season 4

With its outstanding third season, the main characters of edgy cop show The Shield had finally hit something close to rock bottom: the season's tense pile-up of close calls, growing concerns and old grievances finally reached the point of meltdown. And although Vic Mackey once again manages to save his hide (if only by the skin on his teeth), the previous season's Armenian money-train heist does ultimately lead to the Strike Team's ultimate demise as its members have become increasingly paranoid and estranged from each other.

So for better or for worse, the fourth season of this consistently excellent series would have to see some major changes, and the producers chose to shake things up with some stunt guest casting: movie star Glenn Close was brought in to take over from Aceveda as the Barn's captain. Fortunately, the gamble paid off, as the interplay between the show's star Michael Chiklis and guest star Close yielded plenty of on-screen chemistry. While the other characters slowly work their way back into more or less manageable shape, both personally and professionally, the season's story arc deals with Close's controversial new policies as head of the police force. Add to this a formidable long-running guest spot for Anthony Anderson as the season's mob boss Antwon Mitchell, and the conclusion is yet another winning season for a fabulous TV show.

As with the previous DVD box sets, this release houses a wealth of terrific extras: cast and crew contribute to eight entertaining and informative audio commentary tracks along with key episodes, while most episodes also feature a selection of deleted scenes. The final disc in the set also includes a 60-minute documentary that is made up of several shorter featurettes detailing the making of this fourth season of The Shield.

The Shield: Season 5
After four seasons in which the rough-edged exploits of Vic Mackey and his Strike Team gained dramatic power as well as urgency with each passing episode, this fifth outing begins to show some signs of fatigue. Season four's stunt casting of Glenn Close as Farmington's temporary captain worked surprisingly well, especially so thanks to the combination with Anthony Edwards as magnetic villain Antwon Mitchell. His departure leaves a vacuum in the show's dramatic arc that new cast addition Forest Whitaker somehow fails to fill as Mackey's new nemesis: an Internal Affairs agent obsessed with bringing down the Strike Team. The conflict between these two characters works well, but plays more like an entr'acte between the previous season and the next than a full work in its own right. This sense of incompleteness is further aggravated by the fact that the European release includes a sadly reduced final episode that leaves out key scenes tying up plot strands that are now left dangling.
Still, even if this new set doesn't quite live up to its predecessors, The Shield remains one of the most riveting, edgy police dramas on TV, and this new release does bode well for its final two outings. As for extra material, none of the preceding DVD sets has been as richly packed with supplements as this fifth season, with commentary tracks for nearly every episode, deleted scenes, a feature-length documentary on the production of the final episode, and numerous shorter featurettes on other aspects of the show's production.

*** Turkey of the Week ***
Shrek 2
Last summer's biggest money-maker (and - for as long as it lasts - the most successful animated film in history) was also easily this year's most obnoxious sequel, attempting to beat Disney at its own game this time by delivering a franchise that does nothing but regurgitate jokes and themes from an original that wasn't really that good to begin with. With the main characters and situations now familiar, Shrek 2 succeeds in wearing out its welcome within the first ten minutes, by a succession of parodies that are both obvious and unfunny. New celebrity-voiced characters that look good on paper are granted not a single truly funny moment in the picture itself (the sole exception being Antonion Banderas's underused and overmarketed Puss in Boots). Awash with annoying product placement and gratingly obvious jokes, the film is yet another depressing example of how a worldwide audience will embrace any kind of swill as long as it's marketed properly.
Sure to dominate holiday season sales, the animated commercial behemoth is let loose on DVD in a variety of editions, including a 2-disc release that adds precious little to the sufficient extras on the more modestly priced single-disc version. Along with a self-satisfied audio commentary from the otherwise highly sympathetic filmmakers, we find a wide variety of promotional featurettes that milk the celebrity voices for all they're worth. The most ill-advised (and gratingly unfunny) addition is a newly animated cash-in on the worldwide popularity of the TV show American Idol. A woodenly animated version of celebrity judge Simon Cowell passes judgment on the film's main characters as they deliver renditions of familiar pop tunes. As DVD is still mistakenly marketed occasionally as an interactive medium, the viewer gets to choose his or her own winner, to be rewarded by one of several equally concluding scenes. This clever but utterly cynical addition contributes to making the DVD at least as critic-proof as its theatrical outing has proved to be.

Shut Up and Sing

When Natalie Maines, lead singer of the Dixie Chicks, told a London audience she was ashamed the US President came from Texas, the group made world headlines. The enormous flurry of publicity and polarization that followed was indicative of the growing division between pro- and anti-Bush camps, both in the US and abroad. What was most surprising was not that a celebrity had spoken out against Dubya on the eve of a highly controversial war - after all, left-wing celebrities like Tim Robbins and Sean Penn seem to do little else besides making such statements - but that this relatively minor comment came from a group that came from the South, played country music, and was therefore assumed to be among Bush's loyal supporters. Maines' comment led to the group being banned from country radio, a furious media debate, and - ultimately - to a new musical direction for the Dixie Chicks, as they felt forced to move further outside the confines of a music culture that had been so quick to reject them.

Of course, the more troubling implication of this otherwise fairly everyday hoopla is the rampant sexism these events revealed, which are brought to the fore even more clearly in the documentary Shut Up & Sing. As the film's title implies, and as former fans and Fox TV commentators continuously avow, these girls shouldn't have the audacity to step beyond the confines of their roles as sexy, harmless entertainers. The three members of the immensely successful group, none of whom proves to be particularly fascinating as a character in this film, are at first bemused, their manager immediately picking up on the free publicity CD burnings would bring. But as the story spirals beyond their control, they have increasing difficulty with their roles as entertainers who are clearly perceived so differently by their audience than they perceive themselves. The musical development we witness within the three years captured in this film is a testament to their dedication to their art and to themselves as a group.

As a documentary, Shut Up & Sing provides an entertaining look inside this much-hyped media event, but its many detours (one of them has twins, and we spend a little too much time behind the scenes of their most recent album) deflates the film's impact somewhat. A single tearful moment is meant to imbue the story with pathos, but coming just before the end, it's a matter of too little, too late. Camera-savvy as these Chicks are, it would probably have been too much to expect more insight into them as people and musicians; on the other hand, there doesn't seem to be enough to them as characters to make them fascinating to watch besides the inherent voyeurism of seeing celebrities acting candidly. The DVD, on which the film is presented fullframe, has the film's trailer as its only extra.

Sin City
If any single author may be held responsible for the rise of the adult-oriented comic book (or 'graphic novel') as a legitimate art form in the 1980s, Frank Miller's name would be the first to come to mind. His brilliantly conceived Batman: The Dark Knight Returns didn't only breathe new life into that particular superhero franchise, it also focused attention on a genre that had been seeking recognition since comic book legend Will Eisner first brought the term 'graphic novel' into widespread usage in the late 1970s. Today however, Miller is best known for his hard-edged work on his Sin City books: a series of noir-inspired hardboiled tales that has developed a devoted cult following. As a highly successful author within his chosen medium, it didn't take long for Hollywood to come calling on Frank Miller, but the writer's experiences with the film industry made him averse to having his work adapted for the big screen.
It took the dedication of maverick director Robert Rodriguez to finally convince Miller that his graphic novels could in fact be adapted faithfully. The Mexican-born director produced a demo reel in his privately owned digital film studio which - together with the promise of a co-director credit - finally convinced Miller to sign on the dotted line. The results - a nifty three-part anthology of highly stylized sex, violence, action and romance - is an astonishing accomplishment, especially when compared to other studio-distributed films to appear in this era. Like Kill Bill and Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas, what is most astounding about Sin City is the fact that such an unflinchingly original work is distributed - let alone financed - by a major studio at all. But although it is easily Rodriguez' best film so far, the talented but undisciplined self-made director finally restricted by clearly structured source material, a few annoyances do remain. First among them is the film's major eye-catcher Jessica Alba, who manages to ruin every scene in which she is required to open her mouth. But be that as it may, the film's visuals are truly phenomenal, and most other actors are well cast (Clive Owen once again a standout). The transfer is as glorious as one would expect digitally-sourced material to be, while both Dolby Digital and DTS 5.1 audio mixes add the required oomph to the many explosive action sequences. No extras on this first release apart from the trailer, but an expanded cut with tons of supplemental material has already been announced for a December Region 1 release.

Six Feet Under: The Complete Fourth Season
After the disappointing third season, which spent most of its time cleaning up the fascinating mess left by the various catastrophes that occurred in the unparallelled second season, it's nice to see the characters in Six Feet Under once again getting on with their lives and starting to develop in some new directions. Series creator and screenwriter Allan Ball however fails to steer completely clear of the trap that caught him in the very first season, where it was pretty clear halfway through where the character were heading. Some of the traumatic moments in this fourth outing therefore seem rather forced: finding new ways of plunging these characters into crisis is clearly becoming quite a challenge, as developments across the four seasons thus far clearly point them in rather specific directions. But in spite of these structural problems, the actors are still outstanding, having fleshed out their characters fully while still managing to imbue them with fresh quirks (especially Claire, easily the most interesting family member in these episodes).
The episodes are again classily presented in a beautifully packaged five-disc box set that remains consistent with the previous collections. The extras consist mostly of insightful audio commentaries from writers and directors involved in the series, along with an overly dry featurette on the editing of the series.

The Sopranos: Season 6 - Part 1
No other TV drama - not even those from the vaulted HBO stable - can claim the kind of track record The Sopranos can by now. From the first season, its commitment to excellence in writing, directing, and consistent character development has been unparallelled, which makes it both good news and bad that it has now officially entered its final season. It's good news because it means that it will not wear out its welcome and peter out into a repetitive and increasingly tiresome series. It's bad new of course because this sixth season will constitute the swan song of one of the true greats in television history, and it's always sad when a great one leaves us. After much debate and speculation about the form the Sopranos finale would take, the final choice came down to an extended sixth season that was to be cut into two segments: the first twelve episodes were aired on HBO last spring, and are now out on DVD. The final handful of episodes are set to shoot this fall and air next spring - or perhaps even later.
This makes it slightly difficult to render judgment about this first baker's dozen in the season, as it ends leaving several narrative lines dangling, hopefully awaiting closure sometime next year. But apart from that minor caveat, the twelve episodes featured here are without exception outstanding, living up with ease to the high standards set by previous seasons, and offering surprises and shocks galore. The finest moment among many is Tony's extended dream/hallucination in which he imagines an entirely different kind of life for himself. It's a tour de force for James Gandolfini, and the writing is simply flawless. As with previous DVD releases, there are engaging audio commentary tracks for select episodes, but otherwise, the extras are extremely limited.

Spartan
Writer/director David Mamet, best known for his idiosyncratic verbal style and his dialogue-heavy thrillers, tries his hand at a more conventional action yarn in which the titular adjective is made to apply not only to the hero's quest and its mythological subtext, but equally to the film's storytelling style. Eschewing Mamet's usual deliberate directing pace, Spartan instead all but completely avoids exposition of any kind, dropping the audience into the action abruptly and cutting away to the next sequence before one would expect it to. This clipped editing pattern at first gives the film a sense of urgency and tension that sustains it through its first half, the film's overly familiar generic tropes notwithstanding. It all starts to fall apart however from the halfway point onwards, when the plot's first conspiracy is quickly revealed to be as uninteresting as it is obvious. From this moment of realization on, the film's stylistic idiosyncracy simply fails to hold the viewer's interest as the plot increasingly defies credibility.
The Dutch Region 2 DVD sadly crops the film's original 2.35:1 aspect ratio down to 1.78:1, giving the wide frame an overly cramped feel but rarely missing out on visual information essential to the plot or the film's spare aesthetics. Star Val Kilmer's audio commentary track didn't survive the transition either. There is very little difference between the Dolby Digital 5.1 and DTS tracks on board, while the interviews and B-roll footage that make up the extras are nothing more than bland EPK material.

Splendor in the Grass
Melodramas of the early 1960s generally tend not to age very well. But under the direction of Elia Kazan and featuring sterling performances from Natalie Wood, Warren Beatty (in his film debut) and Pat Hingle in scene-stealing form, Splendor in the Grass holds up surprisingly well considering the trite, familiar nature of playwright William Inge's screenplay. The film is frank for its in its treatment of the themes of sexual frustration that make up the core of the narrative. But the film is brought to life by the strength of its individual scenes rather than by its full narrative arc, which is disappointingly formulaic.
The new Region 2 DVD recycles the transfer from the years-old Region 1 release. The source print is in near-flawless shape, but the grainy transfer is clearly limited by the mastering technology of its time. Sadly, there are no extras on the disc.

Stage Fright
One of Hithcock's most maligned experiments has at the very least provided film theorists with the ne plus ultra of unreliable narration: the flashback that opens the film and - supposedly - sets up the basic plot of an innocent man as the victim of circumstance turns out to be a straightforward lie. The mass of criticism that rained down on Hitch following the film's release apparently taught him the lesson that you can't first show something and later reveal it to be untrue (at least, not in a mainstream Hollywood thriller).
Actually, Hitch drops so many hints throughout the film that the opening flashback is likely to be all but forgotten by most viewers as the film reaches the halfway point. Michael Wilding is in any case such a fidgety, unappealing leading man that it's impossible to root for him, even as a supposed underdog, while Marlene Dietrich's scenery-chewing presence is such an obvious red herring that the film's failure to build up much suspense is hardly the fault of the film's unusual narratological experiment alone. There are however several bright moments of light comedy from Hitchcock's reliable selection of character actors, and Dietrich performs what would become one of her signature tunes memorably.
Of the six films in the DVD collection, Stage Fright is unsurprisingly in the worst shape, apparently having been preserved rather carelessly and having undergone only a bare minimum of restoration effort. But although the print has more visible damage than the other films in the collection, it is still eminently watchable. An engaging 20-minute featurette consists mainly of interview footage from a predictable but enjoyable group of talking heads that includes the uniquitour smarm of Peter Bogdanovich and the jovial remarks of Patricia Hitchcock. Various familiar film historians also shed their light on the film and the minor uproar it caused, while Jane Wyman is heard from in clips from a vintage TV interview.

Star Trek VI: The Undiscovered Country
The original cast's final ensemble outing aboard the USS Enterprise was a decent swansong, if not exactly memorable cinema for uninitiated in Star Trek lore. Nicholas Meyer, responsible for the second (and best) Star Trek feature, returned to the director's chair, and though the result is still probably a respectable second best among the Trek features, it's a remarkably more stodgy affair than Meyer's rousing sci-fi/pirate movie. There's enough well-paced incident in the script to keep it moving along at a nice clip, but it's weighed down by its top-heavy load of Shakespeare quotes courtesy of the overbearingly literate Meyer. Nor is the film served particularly well by its whodunnit plot device, which not only plays like Agatha Christie in Space (with Spock's little grey cells standing in for Hercule Poirot), but which is capped by a resolution that breaks just about every rule in the book when Spock forcibly mind-melds with the culprit.
In an unsettling moment in an otherwise engaging commentary track, Meyer and his co-screenwriter comment on how 'sexy' they find this excruciatingly tasteless moment of misogyny, noting that the scene was 'meant to be erotic'. Meyer also takes center stage in most of the many documentaries and featurettes documenting numerous aspects of the film's production. Clearly convinced of the fact that he's a rare member of an educated élite in Hollywood, he's rarely as clever as he thinks he is, but he's a fascinating character unafraid of voicing his stronger opinions. The usual number of contradictions in the anecdotes and recollections from Shatner, Nimoy and the like provide highly entertaining backstage material, and the package makes for an engrossing look at the whole Trek phenomenon.

Starsky & Hutch (2004)
Ben Stiller and Owen Wilson, the all-but-inseparable comic duo after appearing together in The Royal Tenenbaums, Meet the Parents and Zoolander, get full double billing for the first time in this ill-conceived parody-cum-homage supposed to send up the once-popular 1970s cop show. Truly a case in which the producers should have simply made the trailer and left it at that, the film features not a single moment of true mirth, apparently laboring under the misconception that a 1970s wardrobe is a hilarious thing in and of itself, while demeaning itself and its viewers by its leering at the few female characters in the film, all of whom are sluts and bimbos in various stages of undress. With Wilson and Stiller clearly present for no reason other than a fat paycheck, this cynical, unpleasant and deeply unfunny product is one of the prime candidates for Worst Movie of the Year, although even that may even be too much honor for this sad waste of time.

The Station Agent
The fate of little people in motion pictures is rarely a happy one: either consigned to roles of comic relief (as in the Austin Powers movies) or as visual shorthand for dreams scenes or general weirdness (as in Twin Peaks), midget actors are rarely offered the opportunity to actually develop a performance, let alone act as the protagonist in a film. It is somehow fitting that Peter Dinklage, the actor who railed so hilariously about the fate of midgets in Hollywood movies in Living in Oblivion ('Have you ever had a dream with a dwarf in it? Do you know anyone who's had a dream with a dwarf in it? No! I don't even have dreams with dwarves in them. The only place I've seen dwarves in dreams is in stupid movies like this!'), should be the first actor in years to be featured as the lead role in a movie. Miles removed from his familiar 'angry dwarf' routine, Dinklage carries The Station Agent effortlessly with an understated, melancholy, and hugely charismatic performance as an aloof, emotionally isolated short person who inherits a remote New Jersey station depot and slowly befriends a few of the locals. He is in fact so irresistible that the charm of his performance makes it easy to forgive some of the clichés and plot holes that pop up regularly.
The Dutch Region 2 DVD disributed by Total Film features solid audio and video, but unfortunately does not include the audio commentary featured on the American DVD. It does hold a selection of excellent deleted scenes, with optional commentary from Dinklage and director Thomas McCarthy. The trailer is the only other extra.

Straight Time
Originally intended to serve as Dustin Hoffman's directorial début, the mercurial actor ended up handing over the reins to his friend and close collaborator Ulu Grosbard after a stressful first week on the set. Fortunately, the end result more than makes up for any kind of on-set production troubles, as this little-known crime drama is certainly good enough to justify a re-appraisal by a larger audience. Based on the book No Beast So Fierce by Edward Bunker (ex-convict, author, and Mr. Blue in Reservoir Dogs), the film offers a credible portrait of a classic recidivist fresh out of jail. The film is mostly made up of excellent extended vignettes featuring Hoffman (at his very best here) working with character actors like Gary Busey, Harry Dean Stanton, and M. Emmet Walsh. The only false note is struck by the young Theresa Russell, who is stunningly beautiful, but fails to quite fit into this role convincingly.
The DVD features an immaculate transfer, with the film complemented by a fact-filled commentary track by Hoffman and Grosbard, recorded separately and edited together seamlessly. The other extra is a vintage promotional featurette that focuses on Bunker and his life.

A Streetcar Named Desire: Special Edition
With its characters and dialogue long since having entered popular culture in oft-parodied form, perhaps the most astonishing today abouut Tennessee Williams' groundbreaking play is that it survives as well as it does. Not only does Elia Kazan's astonishing film make one forget the Simpsons parodies and countless other homages and rip-offs, but thanks to its miraculous cast and brilliant staging, it gives today's viewer a similar sense of excitement audiences in 1951 must have felt upon seeing this entirely new breed of actor. Not only is Brando good enough to meet even the most unrealistically raised expectations, but his performance is matched by co-stars Karl Malden and Kim Hunter, both of whom share his supremely realistic Method approach in their roles. Vivien Leigh's theatrical style is completely at odds with the rest of the cast, but her explicitly theatrical performance suits the character perfectly, and somehow sends sparks flying with her co-stars. A masterpiece of cinema, as fresh today as it was half a century ago.
The new two-disc special edition from Warner features a digitally restored transfer that is cleaner than that on the previous single-disc release, but which also suffers from occasional softness and digitization artifacts. It looks very good in any case for a film of this age, but the question of which transfer one prefers is mostly down to personal taste. The extras in any case are top-notch, ranging from an audio commentary with actor Karl Malden and film historian Rudy Behlmer to an excellent making-of documentary in five parts, a feature-length documentary on Elia Kazan's career, Brando's screentest, and a selection of movie and audio outtakes.

A Streetcar Named Desire (1995)
This star-laden TV adaptation of Tennessee Williams' classic play won Jessica Lange an Emmy for her tragic role as oft-parodied loony Blanche DuBois, but her co-stars Alec Baldwin, Diane Lane and John Goodman deliver more impressive performances. Lane's subtle but heartrending expressiveness especially is far more affecting than Ms. Lange's skilled but overly showy scenery-chewing. At two-and-a-half hours, this may be a bit of a stretch for some. But for viewers looking for a faithful, well-played adaptation of the complete work, this modestly staged but effective adaptation is the way to go. Out now for Region 2 only, no extras.

The Sugarland Express
Steven Spielberg's first theatrical feature following his film début with the made-for-TV smash hit Duel is a film that fits in better with its period than with the rest of the director's resume. In the vein of Hal Ashby's small-scale human dramas, the wunderkind director turned this real-life tale of a couple on the run into a gentle study of two misguided young people brought down early in their ill-conceived quest by their failure to relate to the harshly bureaucratic world around them. Though the film stops briefly to take swipes at the instant cult of celebrity that quickly surround the runaways, the film remains true to its characters all the way through to its refreshingly uncharacteristic ending. Goldie Hawn is in top form in one of the best roles in her entire career, while the underrated William Atherton is equally good as her slightly brighter husband, who seems to sense their ultimate destination, but is unable to resist the pleading of his simple-minded (but always sympathetic) wife.
Unlike Duel, this other early Spielberg film is completely bereft of extras in its DVD debut, though it is presented in a handsomely polished transfer.

Sweeney Todd: The Demon Barber of Fleet Street
When thinking of the great actor/director combinations in film history, a handful of astonishing duos come to mind: Akira Kurosawa and Toshiro Mifune, François Truffaut and Jean-Pierre Léaud, Martin Scorsese and Robert de Niro... And with Edward Scissohands, Ed Wood, Sleepy Hollow, Charlie and the Chocolate Factory, Corpse Bride and now Sweeney Todd making up an increasingly impressive record, it is beginning to look ever more likely that history will also look kindly at the partnership formed by Tim Burton and Johnny Depp. Burton's directing career may be somewhat erratic, nor is their collaboration a surefire recipe for cinematic genius. But Depp has functioned as Burton's protagonist-cum-alter ego in his finest moments of the past, and with last year's adaptation of Stephen Sondheim's grisly musical, the pair manage to scale new heights.
Burton's films, though consistently celebrated for their visual flair, have always been criticized for their lack of narrative coherence, so the rigorous structure of this musical, pared down to its dramatic essence, comes as a welcome relief. His staging of the musical numbers reveals once again that Burton is at his best when visualizing tightly orchestrated scenes of movement and lyricism. His cast, meanwhile, is superb across, the board, with Helena Bonham Carter the ideal romantic foil to Depp's obsessive killer, and Alan Rickman lending a note of pathos to the true heavy of the piece. Add to this heady mix a gleeful penchant for giallo-inspired geysers of blood and a hilarious guest appearance by Sacha Baron Cohen, and the end result is the best Burton/Depp picture so far, and easily one of last year's finest films.

Released in other areas as a two-disc DVD with a second platter full of documentaries and featurettes, the Dutch standard-definition disc is limited to a single DVD housed in a 'collectable' steelbook case, its sole extra the 26-minute featurette "Burton + Depp + Carter = Todd", which does a decent job of giving a background overview for the film. The other extras absent from this release have of course been included on the Blu-Ray edition in what seems like an obvious move to promote the purchase of hi-def releases.

Taking Lives
Hollywood's obsession with serial killers (and the obsessive FBI agents who track them down) continues in this derivative and ultimately laughable new entry in the genre. The film starts out promisingly, with a strong, stylized opening flashback, while the film's Canadian setting shows off the strengths of the city of Montreal (populated by a supporting cast of familiar French character actors). Elements from Se7en and The Silence of the Lambs quickly surface, as the plot settles for the basic 'did-he-or-didn't-he' plot that's little more than a slipshod reversal of Basic Instinct. Ethan Hawke struggles to bring life to his ultimately self-contradictory role, while Angelina Jolie merely pouts and does her best to look pretty throughout. There are a few cunningly executed jump scares in the film's first half, but its downward trajectory swiftly sets in towards one of the more ridiculous finales in recent memory.
Released on DVD in the US in an 'unrated director's cut' featuring six additional minutes of sex and violence, the European DVD surprisingly features the slightly tamer theatrical release (though it does feature a selection of unused scenes not included on the Region 1 version). Other extras consist of a superficial collection of featurettes and a gag reel at odds with the film's gloomy atmosphere.

A Tale of Two Sisters

In the past two years, the crossover success of Asian films in Western marketplaces has been increasingly common. While the recent Japanese mainstream cycle of films to penetrate western markets successfully (Ringu, Ju-On the Grudge, Dark Water) is now starting to grate with mediocre predictability, South-Korean cinema is shaping up as one of the most dynamic and interesting film cultures in the world. A Tale of Two Sisters has been one of the most popular recent films among western horror fans thanks to its clever, open-ended plot, its emotional depth and its cunningly timed, highly effective shock moments. Academics and critics meanwhile have honed in on the film's themes of sexual repression, Freudian symbolism and its narrative ambiguity.

The plot deals with two teenage sisters returning home from unspecified treatment after their mother has died under unknown circumstances. They are received by their emotionally impotent father and his domineering new spouse, whom the older daughter, fiercely protective of her sister, immediately rejects. This leads to a haunting power struggle that seems to incorporate supernatural elements, though the extent to which they are actual plot elements rather than figments of one character's overactive imagination remains open to interpretation. The result, whiile not flawless, is mesmerising throughout: the screenplay may be a little sloppy, with the director seemingly following his instincts rather haphazardly, and the conclusion is so ambiguous that many will find it inherently unsatisfying. But with its visual poetry, its mastery of staging and cutting, its narrative hoops and twists, and a stunning use of color, A Tale of Two Sisters comes highly recommended indeed.

Available in most territories in a double-disc DVD set that includes numerous extras (mostly interviews and illuminating deleted scenes) as well as a DTS audio mix, the Dutch DVD release is unfortunately a bare-bones affair, featuring a solid transfer and decent Dolby Digital 5.1 mix.

Tales of Terror
A stylish anthology film featuring a trio of stories loosely inspired by Edgar Allen Poe stories, with Corman regular Vincent Price joined by aging stars Peter Lorre and Basil Rathbone. The first tale is rather dull, but the second and third are boosted by the guest performances and offer the right mix of silliness and thrills that made this series such a success. The print used for the transfer is of variable quality, but good enough to highlight the stylish work of production designer Daniel Haller.

Talk to the Hand: Barenaked Ladies Live in Michigan
Having broken through in Canada as a witty novelty band with catchy tunes like 'You Could Be My Yoko Ono' and 'If I Had $1,000,000', Barenaked Ladies has since been working to establish itself as a more serious-minded pop/rock band. But despite the modest success of their snappy single 'One Week', the band has never managed to move very far beyond its devoted niche audience. As this first live CD/DVD combination illustrates, the band's fan base consists of an audience that appears to be made up of the very same college students who were responsible for their first success about fifteen years ago.
And as the DVD clearly shows, a BNL gig plays mostly like an insider's occasion, the musicians clowning around on-stage and spewing forth informal banter to the fans' delight, and offering up acoustic versions of oldies that only loyal fans can sing along to.
But although this set is unlikely to win over new fans to the BNL's avid fan base, it is sure to please those already converted to the cause. The gig covers the bases, from older, well-tested tracks to more recent material, the strongest tracks coming from guitarist/co-lead vocalist Ed Robertson. The DVD carries strong DTS surround audio and a brief band interview with the band as an extra.

The Tenant
Paramount continues its budget-friendly release of catalogue titles with The Tenant, Roman Polanski's weird but highly gripping psychological horror film with darkly comic undertones. Adapted from surrealist Roland Topor's novel, Polanski plays the eponymous tenant who comes to believe his neighbors are turning him into the previous tenant: a woman who committed suicide by leaping out the window. The only major distraction in this excellent film is the poor dubbing job, as many of the cast members spoke no English but were dubbed in later. The DVD boasts superb image quality but no extras apart from the trailer. It's out now for Region 1 and 2, and if they made it any cheaper than list price, they'd be giving it away.

Terminator 3: Rise of the Machines
Finally, we also spent some time perusing Governor Schwarzenegger's acting career send-off. While it's certainly not the worst film ever made, it is easily one of the most unwarranted sequels. It jettisons the ambitious message-movie-with-thrills approach from Cameron's sequel and returns to the B-movie roots of the first film, but brings its chases and explosions to the screen with big bucks rather than the ingenious tricks of the low-budget original. Director Jonathan Mostow knows how to handle the succession of action set pieces, but without anything even remotely interesting holding it together, it's all just so much noise. Great demo material for those wishing to show off their home cinema systems though... The extras in the unnecessarily loaded two-disc set range from an introduction from Schwarzenegger (who basically says 'Welcome to Terminator 3' and disappears) to the usual breakdowns of the more complicated effects shots.

They Drive by Night
Having spent years playing expendable gangsters in one Warner Bros. feature after another, Humphrey Bogart played his first sympathetic part in nearly a decade as a supporting character to George Raft's disappointingly one-note star performance. Not only is the superior Bogey playing second fiddle to an uninteresting lead, but his character all but disappears haflway into the film. Director Raoul Walsh then suddenly shifts gears abruptly (no pun intended), moving away from a social drama about the exploitation of poor truck drivers to a contrived courtroom drama showcasing starlet Ida Lupino's scenery-chewing antics. Walsh keeps the pace up, and the stars each have their moments, but as a whole, the film fails to gel, while Bogart fans of today will certainly feel short-changed by his lack of screen time. An 11-minute featurette offers some welcome historical context, establishing the film's place in Bogart's career, but also overestimating its importance and quality.

Thief
Michael Mann's feature debut remains a typical film for its director, all about the inescapability of fate and the work ethic of a master criminal. James Caan brings impressive life to the eponymous safe cracker, a man who lives his life by adhering to a strict code visualized by a photo collage that he carries around. Tuesday Weld is also terrific in the role of Caan's disillusioned but still romantically inclined new girlfriend. The narrative is however both more predictable and more slackly delivered than in Mann's later films in which he revisits similar territory, while his keen sense of visual style is not served well by a grainy, poorly defined and non-anamorphic transfer. Nor have the commentary track or any other extras from the American release been carried over to this Region 2 DVD.

The Third Man: Special Edition
Carol Reed's seminal post-war thriller, famously set - and shot - in a divided, bombed-out Vienna remains as compelling as it ever was, no matter how many times one has seen it. Its stylish Dutch angles, impeccable staging and flawless performances have earned it an enduring spot in many all-time-best lists, including a permanent percht atop the BFI's 'Best British Films' listing. It provided Orson Welles with his most iconic role as Harry Lime, all the more memorable for the succinct appearance he puts in.
The new double-disc DVD release from Universal for Region 2 includes most of the extras previously included on the region-free Criterion Collection disc (though it doesn't have the image gallery, the alternate opening or the second radio play), but it does include a second disc holding a whopping 90-minute 'making-of' documentary 'Shadowing The Third Man', a recent British film which fans of the film are guaranteed to lap up with huge enjoyment. This exhausive look at the legendary production does indulge in a few too many extended replays of famous scenes from the film (rather pretentiously projected on locations in Vienna), but it does offer a truly insightful look at the film's production history, including many memorable anecdotes. All in all, an essential purchase for classic cinema buffs.

This is Elvis
Elvis documentaries are by now a genre unto themselves, with an entire shelf often reserved for examinations of the King in larger video stores. This is Elvis is one of the rare efforts to have made it all the way to theatrical exhibition at the time of its release in 1981, and it was later expanded in length for oft-repeated TV broadcasts. Its high reputation among Elvis fans must be thanks largely to the fact that it was one of the first major films to document Elvis's life and career, because as a documentary film, it is generally rather awkward and often downright amateurish. Its major selling point at the time must have been the film's incorporation of many highlights from the Elvis archives (together with a rare look inside the Graceland mansion). The filmmakers' decision to have the film narrated in the first person by an Elvis impersonator is questionable at best, but this works out better than expected. Far more problematic is the assembly of 'vox pops' street interviews that are clearly fake and that are extremely poorly acted. These editorializing interludes are therefore inaccurate and entirely annoying, undermining what is otherwise an engaging look at the King of Rock 'n Roll.
The two-disc DVD set is remarkably short of extras, choosing instead to offer the longer TV cut of the film on the second disc, while the only actual addition is a vintage featurette on the Graceland mansion.

This Property is Condemned
A Tennessee Williams one-act play is given a highly inappropriate high-gloss Hollywood treatment, with Redford still mired in his pre-Butch & Sundance blandness and Natalie Wood, confident after her success in the earlier Williams adaptation Splendor in the Grass, poorly cast in the female lead. It starts off slowly and gets bogged down from there, with scene after scene both predictable and interminable. Seemingly hamstrung between the classicist studio traditions and the 'new realism' that was beginning to show its face in American cinema, neither the sets nor the costumes seem credible, and few of the actors ever strike the right chord. And with its one-act structure drawn out to a running time of over two hours, the whole thing does become something of an endurance test.
The film may not be a keeper, but the transfer presented here is simply phenomenal: richly colored, sharp and highly detailed, the visual presentation is rarely less than stunning, even in the many problematic nighttime scenes. The audio is likewise fine, though the lack of extras is once again disappointing.

To Have and Have Not
A film most often referred to either as an imitation of Casablanca or as the film that first brough Bogart and Bacall together, To Have and Have Not is indeed most memorable for presenting Bacall's electrifying screen debut, but also holds up well as a straightforward wartime action film, efficiently directed by maverick extraordinaire Howard Hawks. Despite its obvious similarities to Casablanca (reluctant American cynic in exotic, Nazi-occupied locale ends up siding with the resistance), To Have and Have Not is in a distincly different film tradition, focussing on action scenes and budding romance where its predecessor played up suspense and complex relationships between a group of characters. It's all great, sizzling but empty fun that would actually have had a slightly better shot at true classic status without the distractingly silly sailor's outfit worn by Bogart throughout most of the picture. The DVD has a print that could have done with a little more restoration work, and includes an 11-minute featurette on the film's production history as well as a very funny Merrie Melody cartoon send-up of Bogart and Bacall's best-known scenes from the film.

Tom & Jerry: The Collection - Vol. 1
After countless requests and innumerable delays, Warner is finally releasing the coveted classic Tom & Jerry cartoons on DVD this year, though the international release strategy is likely to infuriate as many hard-core fans as it will delight others. Unofficially, a Warner spokesman has recently announced that a complete, restored and uncensored set will be released on DVD in America, similar to the Looney Tunes Golden Collection that premiered late in 2003. But ahead of any official announcement, European DVD buyers are already being treated to a series of twelve discs, each of which is to hold a dozen classic 'toons. However, the European release not only lacks any kind of supplementary material, but it also presents the cartoons with the politically incorrect gags either revised or edited out completely. This means that Mammy Two-Shoes' voice has been redubbed by someone with a less pronounced racial caricature to her voice, and many of the gags that showed Tom ending up in blackface after an explosion of some kind have perished. This kind of revisionism is frowned upon by any kind of serious animation fan, though the main strength of the cartoons, which are presented here in decent image quality, still remains fully intact.

Trainspotting: Definitive Edition
Previously available only as a movie-only DVD of questionable quality, this new two-disc release sports many improvements over all of the film's previous home video incarnations. With a good-looking, uncensored presentation of the European cut of the underground hit film, this release has this black comedy-drama looking about as good as we may expect it ever will, while the Dolby Digital and DTS audio tracks offer an appropriately aggressive, nicely detailed surround sound experience. Among the extras, the audio commentary featuring most principals of cast and crew is the chief delight, though the deleted scenes section (some of which were incorporated into earlier home video releases) has some rewards of its own. The supplements on disc two however come across as a little disjointed, combining 'then' and 'now' featurettes in which contributors to the film discuss particular aspects of Trainspotting both in archival EPK footage and in newly recorded featurettes. Together with the many other bits and pieces, it makes for a reasonably entertaining package, though the moniker 'definitive edition' may be stretching it a bit. The release is out now in Europe, distributed by Universal, while a similar two-disc set is scheduled for release in North-America soon from distributor Miramax.

Troy
Although it is hardly surprising that the latest Hollywood behemoth to bastardize a classic legend should automatically forego any attempt to remain true to its source, it is still disheartening to see that the committee of screenwriters has once again excluded the very elements that made the tale interesting in the first place. With the gods completely excluded (though they are continuously - and pointlessly - referenced by the characters), Achilles a mere mortal who just happens to be invincible in battle, and the Trojan war taking place over the course of a full weekend, there is precious little left of Homer's epic tale of jealousy, romance, revenge, hubris, betrayal and conquest. Brad Pitt is singularly unappealing as the self-obsessed Achilles, while the film goes out of its way to establish him as a purely heterosexual hero by continuously referring to Patroclus as his cousin, and throwing in a lustful romance with a captured slave girl for good measure. Orlando Bloom is an absolute embarrassment as the weakling Paris, while the German model playing Helen makes her not so much a beauty worth going to war over, as one worth buying cosmetics for. The only actor to emerge more or less unscathed from this disaster is Eric Bana, who struggles to bring some dignity to Hector, the only character besides Peter O'Toole's Priam worth caring about at all. Add to this the most ridiculous collection of hairdos we've seen since the early 1980s, and the results - alas - speak for themselves.
Released in both single-disc and double-disc DVD editions, the allegedly 'special' edition houses no more than three brief featurettes on the film's battle scenes and special effects, along with a feature that (adding insult to injury) informs the viewer about the Greek gods who have been so rigorously excluded from this misguided adaptation. Viewers in search of film versions of Homer's works would do better sticking with the Coen Brothers' O Brother, Where Art Thou?, which isn't only more entertaining, but which is also a good deal more faithful to its Greek muse.

The Truman Show: Special Collector's Edition
Continuously extolled as the prophetic precursor of the persistent contemporary tyranny of reality TV, The Truman Show in fact has remarkably little to do with television at all. Granted, there are superficial similarities between the idea of a TV show dedicated to watching a single impervious man living in an artificial environment 24 hours a day and the recent commercial success of programs like Big Brother. But anyone with even the most casual familiarity with this TV genre will realize all too well that these shows are all about performance: contestants sign up expecting to cash in on the seeming guarantee of their individual fifteen minutes of fame. And although the film touches - glancingly - on some of these highly interesting issues, the film's drama is more about existential problems than it is about media hypes. It is ultimately the story of a man who grows increasingly aware of the highly artificial 'reality' that holds him captive, and tries to break free of a world that seems as surreal and constrictive as Plato's cave, but which is in fact bracingly similar to contemporary America. In passing, The Truman Show touches on numerous other issues, but the film seems to make the most sense as an attack on the artificiality and strangeness of pre-produced American consumerism. It therefore seems like a dispiriting concession to this very artificiality when Truman is not only allowed to escape from this world, but that the only answer Weir is able to offer is the old standby of romantic love as the only possible avenue of escape from cultural imperialism.
The extras on this second DVD release are worthwhile, but fail to compare all that favorably to those on the other two Peter Weir films released simultaneously by Paramount: Jim Carrey is only included in press junket footage, while the contributors' insights into the film are limited to pointing out how far ahead of its time the film was in predicting the rise of reality TV, along with a variety of hagiographic comments on Weir and Carrey's talents.

12:08 East of Bucharest
Given the continuously repeated proof of the artistic bankruptcy of American cinema both major (Transformers) and 'independent' (Babel), one's eyes are perpetually aimed outwards in search of a national cinema that will provide momentary salvation for cinephiles by actually bringing new perspectives, new talents and new ideas into the mix. After recent flurries about Mexican and South-Korean cinema in the past few years, all eyes are now suddenly on Romania, the modest success of The Death of Mr. Lazarescu paving the way for more filmmakers to break out beyond the borders.
12:08 East of Bucharest is the second Romanian film to reach international audiences, and it's as fresh and charming as its direct predecessor. This wry comedy is set in a small city east of Bucharest, where an amateur TV presenter for a local station sets out to investigate to what extent a revolution had actually taken place in his fair city. Unfortunately, the guests he had envisioned for his talk show on a local station have all cancelled, and he is stuck with two locals, one of whom claims to have been one of the true revolutionaries, and one of whom is elderly, unemployed, and has little idea what he is doing there at all. Most of the film simply documents the painfully uncomfortable TV broadcast, as callers contest the guests' claims and the teenage cameraman has trouble keeping the speakers in focus and even keeping the camera level as he seems to doze off during the interminable discussion. The film as a whole works extremely well as an understated indictment of the way everyone seems quick to join the bandwagon and proclaim himself a hero in hindsight, even when faced with the harsh fact that most of us aren't in fact that brave or committed.
The DVD features no extras besides the film's trailer.

25th Hour
Spike Lee achieves a partial renaissance as a director with this ambitious and frequently impressive obituary for a pre-9/11 New York City. His visually impressive film charts sympathetic former drug dealer Edward Norton's final 24 hours before the start of a seven-year prison sentence. For the film's first hour, Lee succeeds far more often than he fails, marking a growth that belies recent duds like Summer of Sam and Bamboozled. In an apparent attempt to reconnect with his single unqualified success, one sequence even refers back directly to Do the Right Thing. But towards the film's ending, it gets lost and ends up mired in an extended dream sequence, by which time Terence Blanchard's over-emphatic score also begins to grate. The film is still however a great step up for a singular talent now hopefully getting back on track.
The film looks sensational on DVD, with a terrifically creative sound mix and some decent extras, including rather languid commentary tracks from Lee and screenwriter/novelist David Banioff, and a documentary clearly aimed at re-establishing Lee's credentials as a filmmaker, featuring more famous talking heads than you can count. Out now for both Region 1 and Region 2.

21 Grams
After single-handedly revitalizing international interest in the New Mexican Cinema with his extraordinary triptych Amores Perros, director Alejandro González Iñárritu moved his core production crew to the US, where Hollywood's top talent was eager to work with the Mexican wunderkind. Securing the services of Sean Penn, Naomi Watts and Benicio del Toro, Iñárritu reworked some of the main themes and structural conceits of his debut in rather more ambitious terms. Moving beyond the sequential structure of Amores Perros' three conjoined tales, he mixes up characters, events and chronology here to create a more cohesive way of showing how the three main characters' lives are irrevocably interwoven by a tragic car accident. While challenging at first, this approach succeeds in adding impact to a gruelling narrative that is emotionally harrowing, but uplifting in its affirmation of the connections it traces between seemingly unrelated characters and events. The three stars deliver in the way one would expect from such gifted actors, while Rodrigo Prieto's glorious cinematography has the same organic quality it had in the director's previous feature. An infinitely rewarding film, 21 Grams confirms the arrival of a major new cinematic voice.
The DVD boasts excellent visuals, while Gustavo Santoalalla's layered sound design is richly represented in the 5.1 mix, present in impeccable Dolby Digital and DTS versions. Somewhat skimpy on the extras, the disc does include a pleasant 20-minute featurette that includes a good deal of candid on-set footage of the director at work on the set with his cast and crew.

The Untouchables: Special Edition
De Palma's recycling of gangster movie mythology is built up of so many movie clichés, it comes dangerously close to self-parody. Thanks largely to its nicely stylized cinematography, rich production design and formidable star turns from De Niro and Connery, it nevertheless succeeds as an operatic adventure piece, and remains one of its director's most popular and effective works. The film fully embraces its own cheesiness, milking every scene for effect and going over the top whenever possible. Whatever else can be said about De Palma, he is a master craftsman who remains able to make the most of action set pieces and who provides the more sentimental scenes of Elliot Ness and his family with a hilarious earnestness totally befitting the simple-minded good-versus-evil nature of the rest of the movie.
Previously issued as a barebones disc with a decent transfer but an artificial-sounding 5.1 mix, the new Special Edition presents a similarly grainy (and occasionally spotty) transfer, but the audio remix is quite good, breathing more convincingly room-filling life into Ennio Morricone's popular score. Only De Palma, producer Art Linson and Charles Martin Smith could make themselves available for the new selection of featurettes produced for this DVD by Laurent Bouzereau, but the others are at least represented by EPK interview footage shot at the time of the film's release, and the decent collection of documentary material does a decen job of charting the film's production history, development and reception.

Vacancy
Exploitatioin horror films, long the domain of small cult audiences, have recently broken into the mainstream with the popular success of the seemingly endless Saw franchise, the Hostel films, and the onslaught of remakes of classic 1970s horror flicks. But while most of these films seem to be daring the audience to see how much explicit gore and extended torture scenes it can stand, Vacancy brings an unexpected but very welcome dose of class to this much-maligned subgenre. In the film, Luke Wilson and Kate Beckinsale play the familiar couple-with-issues that ends up at an unlikely remote motel with equally familiar suspsicious backwoods trappings. And before you can say 'Bates motel', they find they have arrived at a place where the rooms are all wired for sound and video, and where the murderous bellboys create their own snuff films.
Rather than throwing blood and gore at his audience, director Nimród Antal instead aims for Hitchcockian suspense, making the most of the film's modest running time of less than 80 minutes.

Van Helsing
After the guilty pleasures of director Stephen Sommers' Mummy movies, one might be tempted to discard the forebodingly unpleasant trailers and actually try to watch last summer's prime blockbuster abomination Van Helsing. But what already looked ridiculous on paper fares even worse on the screen, as a decidedly charmless hero mumbles his way through an interminable succession of downright ugly CGI effects. Not even worth seeing simply to answer the 'is it really as bad as the critics said' question, this piece of detritus deserves to be forgotten not just for abandoning even the semblance of cinematic craftsmanship, but also for dishonoring not one, but three of Universal's most memorable horror icons. There have been plenty of horrible Dracula, Frankenstein and Wolf Man pictures, but for a single film this charmless and devoid of character or narrative to feature all three must certainly be considered a regrettable first in cinema history.

The tragedy of hurricane Katrina, the biggest natural disaster ever to strike the United States, took far too long to register with the general public. Due to understated media attention and especially an almost total show of indifference from the federal government, hundreds of people in and around New Orleans died unncecessarily in the deluge of organisational incompetence that followed the actual flood.

Never one to equivocate, filmmaker Spike Lee took it upon himself to vent some of his outrage over the way this disaster was handled by the Bush administration in a four-hour documentary that was broadcast to wide acclaim a year after the events had taken place. Part investigative journalism, part commemorative ritual, When the Levees Broke may be Lee's finest, most nuanced and most heartfelt work yet. Unlike the demagogical Michael Moore, Lee's work never browbeats or condescends to the viewer, offering an impassioned but level-headed account of a fiercely complicated mess. He gives voice to those who are rarely heard in our media while also listening carefully to the governor, the mayor, and others responsible in various ways for the way things got so terribly out of hand in Louisiana. Watching this 'requiem' is a wrenching, emotionally devastating experience that will hopefully open some eyes to events one can hardly imagine could occur in a country like the United States.

Lee's film arrives on DVD in a three-disc set, with the original four acts spread across the first two discs, and a new fifth part added on the third platter. Instead of the expected 'look back' at how things have developed further after the release of this film, the extra hour-long addition is made up mostly of excellent interview footage that simply didn't make it into the final film. Actor Sean Penn makes a much longer appearance, discussing in detail how he was able to use his celebrity status to make some wheels turn much faster when direct action was needed, and several other interview segments in this fifth act feature Spike Lee in a much more prominent role as the interviewer, either asking critical questions or cracking up in laughter. Lee also provides an outspoken, profanity-ridden and frequently hilarious audio commentary that gives more background detail on the events that occurred that received little emphasis in the documentary itself. The third disc also includes a large collection of harrowing photos of the disaster, set to Terrence Blanchard's haunting score.

Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf? - Special Edition

Mike Nichols' directorial début is a stunning work in so many ways, it is challenging to single out any single contributor for praise. From Ernest Lehman's stunning adaptation of Edward Albee's groundbreaking play to Haskell Wexler's perfectly framed and beautifully shot cinematography to all four actors' career-best performances, the film is a group effort that remains a small miracle of fortuitous circumstances, especially given several key participants' lack of film experience. As an adaptation of a stage play, it captures the claustrophobia of the original while simultaneously transforming it to a work of cinema by its use of editing, framing and its subtle use of scoring.

Re-released on DVD in a dual-disc presentation by Warner Home Video, this new edition improves on the previous DVD in every aspect. The video has been restored, the film's black-and-white camerawork presented in all its glorious detail. Also, this release includes many valuable extra features, the best of which are the audio commentaries that accompany the film. The first of these features director Mike Nichols, accompanied (once again, as on his commentary track for Catch-22) by Steven Soderbergh, who goads Nichols on through an admiring but also highly informative track. Even more interesting is the commentary recorded by cinematographer Haskell Wexler, who focuses more specifically on the challenges - both technical and personal - of filming this great work. The featurettes on the second disc are of varying quality, the best being the 20-minute 'A Daring Work of Raw Excellence', which provides a newly produced overview of the film's production history and reception. A 1975 hour-long documentary on Elizabeth Taylor is quaint and campy, but otherwise of little interest. Sandy Dennis's screentest on the other hand reveals how effortlessly she slipped inot this part. The trailer rounds out the extras.

The Wild Bunch: Special Edition
Commonly regarded as director Sam Peckinpah's masterpiece, The Wild Bunch remains not only a stunning , visionary work of cinema, but also the most influential action film of its time. In this film, Peckinpah perfected his balletic scenes of slow-motion violence. Ironically, this new focus on the actual effects of gunfire led to the oft-heard accusation that Peckinpah sought to glorify the orgies of bloodshed he displayed on-screen. Truth, in this case, must be found in the eye of the beholder, for although he did bring a twisted gracefulness to these scenes, it remains clear throughout the picture that the real-life effects of gunfire are gory, destructive and deeply unpleasant.
Warner's new two-disc Special Edition offers a huge improvement over the previous movie-only edition: not only does this new release feature an anamorphic widescreen transfer of a nicely restored print, but its second disc includes several valuable new extras alongside the Oscar-winning 30-minute documentary on the making of the film that graced the earlier DVD. Best among the new extras is the 90-minute documentary on Peckinpah's career as a director, focused explicitly on his Westerns and narrated by Kris Kristofferson.

Witness: Special Collector's Edition
Peter Weir's first Hollywood production, for which he stepped in at the eleventh hour, expressing the wish to make 'a simple genre film', was the first successful combination of the Aussie director's lyrical style with a straightforward classical narrative. Eschewing the unsettling open-endedness of his early films like Picnic at Hanging Rock and The Last Wave, Weir chose to focus on the portrayal of the Amish community as a separate world: a film about time travel more than anything else. The film works best when it hones in on the details of Harrison Ford's Chicago cop adapting to the life and customs of an eigteenth-century rural community, featuring some gorgeous Vermeer-inspired lighting and convincingly naturalistic performances along the way. The film however comes apart each time contemporary urban life is portrayed, reverting immediately to the stalest of clichés, and settling for an unpleasantly violent climax that leaves a sour aftertaste to an otherwise charming picture.
The previous DVD release featured one of the shoddiest video transfers in the history of the medium, made unwatchable by the transfer's immensely grainy, poorly compressed visuals. This new 'Collector's Edition' DVD thankfully boasts a vastly improved transfer with an excellent 5.1 audio mix, while an extended three-part documentary touches all the bases pertinent to the film's production history. Weir, Ford, McGillis (all but unrecognizable in fright-wigged middle age), Lukas Haas, Viggo Mortensen, cinematographer John Seale, and various other contributors offer a breezy selection of amusing sound bites, including the usually reticent Fort engaging in an endearing moment of dry humor. A single deleted scene (which has been included in syndicated TV broadcasts of the film) and the trailer round out the extras.

he Wrong Man
Rarely have a director's pet theme found such undiluted expression in a film so untypical of that director's style and sensibility. Shot, acted and edited in a naturalistic, semi-documentary style indebted to European film, The Wrong Man presented an unremittingly bleak look at an innocent man whose life is destroyed through a series of unfortunate circumstances. Confused by anxious bank tellers for a robber who bears a superficial resemblance to him, a musician and dedicated family man is arrested and knocked around the inflexible justice system long enough to cause his wife to lose her wits. The film's first half is absolutely brilliant, using Henry Fonda's everyman persona to fantastic effect, and making the most of the film's absolutely convicing 'this could happen to you' conceit. Unfortunately, the film loses quite a bit of momentum during its final reels, as it charts Vera Miles' character's descent into madness. Hitchcock himself voiced his concern about this structural flaw in the film, but felt obliged to honor the events as they had actually transpired, and was therefore bound to the narrative as presented here, in spite of its dramatic imperfections. It remains a powerful in any case, revealing what Hitchcock was capable of when restricting himself to a rigorous stylistic concept.
The spotless transfer looks simply superb, its handsome levels of greyscale impeccable presented in an all but flawless transfer. Another 20-minute Laurent Bouzereau-produced featurette offers some insight into the production's background, featuring the usual collection of contributors, and the theatrical trailer rounds out the extras.

Zwartboek (Black Book)
As Bill Chambers wrote in his review of Zwartboek, you can take Paul Verhoeven out of Hollywood, but you can't take Hollywood out of Verhoeven, as his first Dutch-produced film in twenty-three years will attest. A high-gloss WWII yarn about a sexy Jewish fugitive-turned-spy, the plot twists and turns around every conceivable shape and form, from erotic thriller to Resistance fighter sage all the way to Agatha Christie-style whodunnit. As entertaining as the film is, it's an awfully bumpy ride, with characters appearing and disappearing haphazardly, and at least three final twists too many. On a more positive note, leading lady Carice van Houten has charisma and sex appeal to spare, effortlessly holding one's attention throughout the film's admittedly overlong running time. Her co-star Sebastian Koch (familiar from last year's German Oscar-winner The Lives of Others) is also very good, and their scenes together are the true highlights of the film.
The Dutch two-disc DVD release includes English subtitles for the film itself, but no such luxury for any of the extras, which include separate audio commentary tracks from Verhoeven and screenwriter Gerard Soeteman. The second disc houses a wide range of promotional video material, including the standard 'making-of' documentary, a Dutch TV talkshow featuring the key members of cast and crew, and - most entertainingly - a featurette that tags along with the cast members to film festivals and junkets.