Plot in one sentence: George Smiley is roused from forced retirement to hunt down a Soviet mole in the British secret service.

Extras:

• "A Conversation with John Le Carré, March 8, 2002"(27:28)
• John Le Carré biography (six screens)
• Production notes, from an interview with producer Jonathan Powell (nine screens)
• Filmographies: Alec Guinness (five screens), Ian Richardson (two screens), Michael Aldridge (one screen), Bernard Hepton (one screen), Terence Rigby (one screen), Ian Bannen (two screens), Michael Jayston (two screens), Hywel Bennett (one screen), Anthony Bate (one screen)

It's become commonplace in the wake of excellent television series such as THE SOPRANOS and THE SHIELD to opine that television is better than movies. But the (arguable) superiority of television over movies really began more than 20 years ago. In fact, I can isolate the exact moment. It was September 29th 1980, when the BBC first broadcast TINKER TAILOR SOLDIER SPY. Broadcast on American airwaves via PBS soon followed, with explanatory intros by Robin MacNeil.

Very quickly, the six-part, six-hour series, based on John Le Carré's best selling spy thriller, became a cult object among liberal PBS wrinklies, spy thriller junkies, and worshipers of British TV. Fans appreciated the series' fidelity to the complexities and subtlety of Le Careé source novel, and the accuracy and acumen that the cast brought to characters who lived vividly in readers' mind like the populace of a Dickens novel. The mini-series' collaborators replicated perfectly Le Carré world of rain-battered streets where watchful agents silently await the signal to move, a compromised ambiguous landscape where right and wrong are not as clearly delineated as everyone would like, and where most participants in espionage wander alone, clouds of suspicion, regret, and doubt hovering over their heads. The signature scene in TINKER is when someone from out of your past appears on your doorstep one cold wet night to interview you one more time about events long ago that you know were misinterpreted, or worse, misrepresented to disguise nefarious deeds but which left you in disrepute.

The series was repeated a few times, if I remember right, and eventually released by the BBC on videotape, but for some reason the tapes were hard to come by. In fact I have two VHS cassettes containing the series. They are copies of copies of copies. The sound is OK, but the image is terrible. I have watched them perhaps 20 times.

So to have the whole series come out on DVD is a dream come true, another "missing in action" DVD finally coming into existence. And here I am, obliged to review three or four recent DVD releases, yet I'm obsessively watching TINKER over and over again, late into the night, falling asleep in the chair only to be roused at three in the morning by the sound of the DVD's menu music in my ears. When will this stop? When will I finally have my fill of TINKER TAILOR? Probably when I turn my attention to the sequel, SMILEY'S PEOPLE.

TINKER TAILOR was produced by the BBC in collaboration with Paramount at a time when the British television network was eager to improve its product technically. The series is shot on 16mm film, rather than in a blend of filmed exteriors and taped interiors common to BBC productions at the time. Another trick was to adapt a popular novel that might otherwise have gone to the movies. If it had, the novel would have been terribly compressed, altered, and probably Americanized3the very influence, by the way, the novel in part decries.

TINKER TAILOR concerns the resurrection of British intelligence administrator George Smiley (Alec Guiness — one of the reasons the series is so good is due to its "movie" casting, which includes Joss Ackland in a superb cameo and a silent Patrick Stewart as Smiley's nemesis Karla). He is brought back from retirement many months after the disgrace and death of Control (Alexander Knox), his boss at The Circus, the code name or nickname for British intelligence headquarters. Smiley learns that the very thing Control secretly feared in his last months — the presence of a Soviet spy in the heart of the Circus — is true. Charged by the Minster who overseas Intelligence with secretly finding the mole, Smiley retraces Control's steps, reconstructing events and looking closely at the four suspects. They include Percy Alleline (Michael Aldridge), the puffed up new head of the Circus; Bill Haydon (Ian Richardson), the Soviet expert within British intelligence; Roy Bland (Terence Rigby), son of a communist; and Toby Esterhase (Bernard Hepton), the fussy dandy in charge of the Circus's foot soldiers. Smiley's hunt also takes him to Jim Prideaux (Ian Bannen), the wounded-in-action top spy and one-time lover of Haydon who holds one key to the puzzle.

From Smiley's early entrapment by a chatty, inquisitive club bore named Roddy Martindale (Nigel Stock) who bumps into him on the street, to Connie Sacks (Beryl Reid), the eccentric scholar tutoring in Oxford who was first in the Circus to detect the possibility of a mole, TINKER TAILOR is rich in pithy British weirdos, which is one of the reasons why both the book and the movie are so passionately loved by the English (I assume so, anyway), and by Anglophiles (i.e., everyone who watches PBS). Le Carré's book is tight yet sprawling at the same time, and first time viewers and those unfamiliar with the author are likely to find themselves confused: Le Carré in both the book and the show, demands that you keep up, draw connections that the show doesn't make explicit, and attend to the actors' expressions and gestures (striking matches become a non-verbal rebuke and exclamation point), which is easier on DVD than on tape or television broadcast. If you do pay attention, you find a plot of almost sinister elegance and beauty. Outside of THE GODFATHER, TINKER TAILOR SOLDIER SPY is probably the best adaptation of a novel yet put on film.

At root, the story is really about a man at the height of society yet deeply disgusted with it and betraying everyone around him. And the theme of betrayal is marbled throughout the tale. Not only does the mole betray long time friends and associates and who knows how many undercover agents in the field, in addition everyone else betrays or is betrayed. People gossip about, stab in the back, and undermine each other. A minor operative named Ricky Tarr (Hywel Bennett) must betray a woman in order to find the first seed of suspicion about the mole, but even Smiley betrays and is betrayed, by his wife Ann (Siân Phillips), whose indiscretions were key to diverting attention from the mole. But love, or at least a form of love, is also a theme of the film, the very thing that gets betrayed. Le Carré ponders the power of charisma to cloud men's minds. Almost to the very end, the person who turns out to be the mole is admired, lauded, and defended, to the silent exasperation of Smiley and the few others who know or learn his identity. And charisma affects all generations. In the run-down school where Prideaux ends up teaching, we see the tradition or lineage of love and admiration continuing in the dedication he inspires in the boys, especially Roach (Duncan Jones). Like the warriors of Sparta, the tie that binds these covert soldiers is itself a "betrayal" of the middle class values of the society they are defending.

Acorn Media has provided fans with a good though not great transfer. The transfer is not a "restoration" of the 23-year-old series, and minor flickering, occasional scratches, and some debris is on evidence. BBC shows from this time period tend to look a little murky in the first place. These are minor annoyances and generally not noticeable to TINKER buffs, who tend not to be technical geeks. At the very least, the transfer is better than the splotchy tapes that people have been passing to each other. The audio track is more than adequate for a primarily chatty story, though the excellent, evocative music by Geoffrey Burgon perhaps suffers a little.

Supplements are modest but informative for this six-hour affair. The primary addition is "A Conversation with John Le Carré, March 8, 2002," an almost 30-minute interview with the author by an unseen interlocutor. Like Jonathan Miller or David Hare, Le Carré is a fascinating extemporaneous speaker, whose utterances are perfectly publishable prose. Le Carré talks about the quality of the broadcast, its impact on the culture, and the importance of Guiness on the production's health. He also dwells on the portrayal's impact on his own ability to further write about Smiley. Also covered is Le Carré's own background in espionage and the type of person drawn to the profession ("People who take refuge in the clandestine world tend to be unanchored or very shy. They want to work in private. They share some sense of specialness. They can say to themselves as they go down the escalator, 'Well, I know a few things you don’t.' They all share the same inside out thinking"), and the events since WWII that inform the book. The rest of the extras consist of written material: a bio of John Le Carré, production notes about the making of the series, and cursory filmographies for nine cast members. A four-page insert offers a cast list and a glossary of terms and characters. It's only modestly helpful. It tells you that Connie Sachs's dog is named Flush, but not that the name is an hommage to the dog owned by Virginia Woolf. Some of the many terms used in the film are not defined, such as "reptile fund," which is used several times. Viewers seeking more information can consult Smiley's Circus, by David Monaghan (St. Martin's, 207 pages, $3.95, ISBN 0 312 90127 5).

Virtual Fun

S1M0NE

• Theatrical release: August 23, 2002
  
• New Line Home Entertainment
  
• $26.98
  
• 117 minutes
  
• Rated PG-13
  
• Region 1
  
• Street Date: January 21, 2003

• Single disc
  
• Color
  
• Golden widescreen (2.35:1) transfer enhanced for widescreen televisions
  
• Animated, musical menu with 18-chapter scene selection
  
• Dual-sided dual/single-layered disc
  
• DTS ES 6.1 Surround, Dolby Digital EX 5.1 Surround, and DD 2.0 Surround
  
• English subtitles
  
• Closed captioned
  
• One page insert with chapter list
  
• Keep case

• Cast: Al Pacino, Rachel Roberts, Catherine Keener, Winona Ryder, Jay Mohr, Evan Rachel Wood, Pruitt Taylor Vince, Jason Schwartzman
  
• Directed by Andrew Niccol
  
• Credited writer: Andrew Niccol

Plot in one sentence: A frustrated movie director who exploits a virtual actress to achieve his cinematic vision opens a Pandora's box of media attention.

Extras:

• "Cyber Stardom" (7:41)
• "Simulating S1m0ne" (6:51)
• 19 deleted and alternate scenes with the option of having them integrated into the movie (:) "How Hank Got on the Lot" (1:02), "Why Synthespians?" (:39), "Sunrise Premiere" (1:20), "Sunrise Uncut" (2:56), "Simone's SAG Card" (:39), "Introducing Max Sayer" (1:38), "A Fan" (1:23), "The Red Carpet" (1:30), "Eternity Forever Uncut" (1:03), "What It Means" (1:33), "Exclusive Footage" (1:50), "Map to Simone" (:17), "Moving Violation" (:37), "Simone's Mother" (2:43), "Truth in Trash" (:47), "The Critic" (1:56), "Everything's Fake" (:32), "Send No Flowers" (:31), "My Baby!" (:55).
• Teaser trailer (1:20)
• Theatrical trailer (2:20)
• DVD credits (six screens)

Have you ever noticed how much Al Pacino resembles Jerry Lewis?

It's not just the height (five-six to Lewis's five-ten) or the dark hair, or the showbiz shtik each is drawn to (Lewis always, Pacino only occasionally). It's also, surprisingly, the gestures. Pacino has a way of sitting that is right out of Lewis. It's theatrical and funny and designed to make everyone look at him. Acting requires some arrogance, and Pacino sits arrogantly. He raises his right hand and adjusts his butt as if his coattails were bunching up his crack; then, these private functions done, he turns his head with sleepy eyes and mouth agape and emerges from his self-absorption to give his auditor some consideration. Kevin Spacey can mimic Pacino doing this perfectly.

Pacino's occasional Lewis influence is evident in — and relevant to — S1M0NE, the film about a simulated actress who takes the world by storm. It's too bad that director and writer Andrew Niccol couldn't get this idea up on the screen earlier, when it was fresh. After an Esquire cover story of a few years ago, as well as FINAL FANTASY, and the use of digital actorial manipulation in both the latest STAR WARS movies and XXX, the film has lost its currency and audacity. Instead it's a poor man's version of WAG THE DOG.

The plot is simple enough, so simple it's been used before, most significantly in Billy Wilder's IRMA LA DOUCE (itself adapted from a play). Director Viktor (!) Taransky (Pacino), an idealistic filmmaker bucking up against Hollywood's tendency to stifle visionaries, is having trouble with his lead actress Nicola Anders (Winona Ryder, shown first in the movie going through a clothes rack). When she walks off the set, Taransky is left without a star. Thanks to a computer designer named Hank (Elias Koteas), who is cancer stricken in the right eye like someone out of a Cronenberg film, Taransky is able to replace Anders. Hank has perfected a program for creating simulated actors, and his creation, Sim. One, or Simone (based on the computer-modified Canadian model Rachel Roberts), which Hank later leaves Taransky in his will, comes to Taransky's rescue. The director, who at first says he knows nothing about computers, is then able to create CGI scenes with the "actress," have her appear on live television shows, and sing holographically to millions ("Natural Woman") in stadia around the globe.

Can you guess that sooner or later the mythical creation takes on a life of its own? Taransky can't delete her. Because she has been programmed to be the most appealing person on earth, no matter what Taransky makes her do — —praise smoking on TV, dine with hogs in a muddy trough in a film she "directs" herself—the public loves her even more. When he decides to kill her off, she demands resurrection, like Sherlock Holmes. Taransky himself is blamed for the murder owing to a mountain of coincidences. Only the intervention of his computer buff daughter Lainey (Evan Rachel Wood) saves Taransky, and gives him and his reconciled family the chance to poise Simone for a political career.

You expect a lot from a movie about movies. And it's always baffling when a film made by insiders (such as David Mamet's STATE AND MAINE) fails to have verisimilitude. For example would a studio chief (Taransky's ex-wife, played by Catherine Keener) really let someone use a whole sound stage on her lot and comply with the rule not to go in? Is Taransky unaware of how long it actually takes to create a digital image? Could he really create a holograph of Simone for a concert and no one would notice that it's a fake? The list goes on.

Like Woody Allen's HOLLYWOOD ENDING, a director is on the outs with his producer ex-wife, and the films within the film are incomprehensible and un-film-like; they resemble the awful play John Turturro is writing and producing in ILLUMINATA, or the inauthentic movie in production in THE LAST TYCOON. And the goofy thing is that Taransky's teenage daughter is much more attractive — level headed, smart — than the supposedly perfect digital Simone.

Another weird thing about this movie is that several of the actors aren't credited. Koteas is missing, for some reason. And so is Rebecca Romijn-Stamos, who has a nifty cameo as a stand-in for Simone.

The extras are manageable. There is no audio commentary track, but two little featurettes that probably say everything that could be revealed in a yak track. Both "Cyber Stardom" and "Simulating S1m0ne" are fairly straightforward. There is a mountainous 19 deleted scenes for this movie, amounting to about 20 more minutes of extra material. As usual, most of the scenes should have stayed in the movie, even if they do expand its running time to a Taranskian "non-commercial" length. But fortunately, the disc offers the option of integrating the scenes back into the movie, in a kind of modified ifinifilm format. "How Hank Got on the Lot" gives you some nice little background on the studio where the action is taking place (actually Paramount), and "Why Synthespians?" has a good joke in it that the finished film sorely needed. "The Critic," though, continues the lack of realism about the movie biz and its satellites.

There's a teaser trailer and the plot-spoiling theatrical trailer. Finally, and this is a nice thing, there are credits for those who put the DVD together.

Serving Sell-Outs

SERVING SARA

• Theatrical release: August 20, 2002
  
• Paramount Home Entertainment Widescreen Collection
  
• $29.95
  
• 99 minutes
  
• Rated PG-13
  
• Region 1
  
• Street Date: January 28, 2003

• Single disc
  
• Color
  
• Good widescreen (2.35:1) transfer enhanced for widescreen televisions
  
• Static, silent menu with 17-chapter scene selection
  
• Single-sided dual-layered disc
  
• Dolby Digital 5.1 Surround, DD 2.0 Surround, and a French language track
  
• English subtitles
  
• One page insert with chapter list
  
• Annoying ad (2:42) for other Paramount romances preceding the opening menu
  
• Keep case

• Cast: Elizabeth Hurley, Matthew Perry, Bruce Campbell, Vincent Pastore, Cedrick the Entertainer
  
• Directed by Reginald Hudlin
  
• Credited writer: Jay Scherick and David Ronn

Plot in one sentence: Process server takes the side of his quarry.

Extras:

• Audio commentary track by Reginald Hudlin
• "Serving Sara: A Look Inside the Process" (19:07)
• Outtakes (4:00), "Gordon in the Office," "Mechanical Bull," and "Tony on the Plane," with optional director's commentary
• Deleted Scenes (2:11): "Roadside," "Tony Asks for Directions" with optional director commentary
• Extended/alternate scenes (4:18): "The Punch," "Meadow Muffin," "Missing Stapler," with optional director's commentary
• Plot spoiling theatrical trailer (2:32), with some footage not in the actual film

Let no man come between me and my Elizabeth Hurley movies. I would crawl through three miles of broken glass just to insert BEDAZZLED or PASSANGER 57 into the DVD player. I know that my peers seem to hate her, despite the fact that she started out as a chubby punk rocker only to become a fashion pitchwoman and movie producer. But to me she is both an exemplary careerist and a sublimely attractive actress. If she had been born a few generations earlier, she would have been the star of THE AVENGERS, not Diana Rigg, the actress she most resembles in voice and facial expressions.

That being said, SERVING SARA is crap. If the theme of people who dislike Hurley is that she's a sell out because she dropped her punk authenticity to peddle perfume, than SARA is a symphony of selling out, from its lesser stars to its director.

The film has the pitchable premise that a process server turns around and chooses to aid the person he has been pursuing. The server is Joe Tyler (Matthew Perry, and it is unlikely that you will remember his character's name after seeing this film). He's a down on his luck lawyer working for Ray Harris (Cedrick the Entertainer) and in competition with Harris's other server Tony (Vincent Pastore). The subject is Sara Moore (Hurley), whose rich Texas husband George (Bruce Campbell) is dropping her for a younger edition. The trick is that if Joe serves the husband first, that flips the court case back to New York, and that makes for better alimony terms for Sara. Sara convinces Joe of the justice of this scheme (and offers him a million dollars) and they zip across the country to try and find her husband.

I laughed when Perry called through a door to the bouncer in a nightclub, "Thug? Oh, thug?," but that was it. I didn’t even chuckle over the fake 300 pound Debra Winger erotically riding a bull machine in the background of one scene. It's strange how we can sit through so many so-called modern comedies and not laugh once. I particularly didn't laugh at a scene involving a real bull, a plastic glove, Perry's hand, and some K-Y jelly. It's sad when light comedies have to draw upon utterly incompatible predecessors such as FREDDY GOT FINGERED to desperately evoke yuks. There is also a gross attention to detail. Perry has a five o'clock shadow throughout too many time zones, while his pursuing competitor Tony manages to criss-cross America — from New York to Miami to Maine to Texas — way too fast.

Annoyingly, the disc begins with a lengthy ad for other romantic comedies from Paramount, which only serves to highlight how pallid the offering to follow happens to be (you can hit the chapter advance button to skip it). Being derivative in almost all ways, SERVING SARA is a half-assed blend of IT HAPPENED ONE NIGHT (there's even a bus scene) and MIDNIGHT RUN. Even an homage to the dress that made Hurley famous (there are some big pins on her pleated skirt) seems more like a steal than a cute autobiographical quote. A torture session interrupted by a phone call is out of THE LONG KISS GOODNIGHT and Gordon's bodyguard is a replica of Hawk from SPENSER FOR HIRE. Joe's interest in wine is a borrowing from Lawrence Kasdan's FRENCH KISS. Since SARA is lifted from so many sources, the filmmakers should have borrowed from some good crime comedy. SARA could have used a little wit and plot convolution from an Elmore Leonard novel. I hate to pick on the guy again, but the mediocrity of the film may be attributable at least in part to Dan Halstad, a former Oliver Stone protégé who was a main character in a book about Stone, where he was called Danny the Weasle.

Given that the film isn't all that much worth looking at, Paramount has done a good job with the transfer and the elaborate sound production (but then, do we ever expect recent movies to suffer bad transfers?). Extras are abundant.

The theme of selling out is carried over to the supplements. A movie length audio commentary track is director Hudlin in which he tries to put on his game face about the fact that he has gone from HOUSE PARTY to SERVING SARA (now that I think about it, maybe that's really a rather short trip). There's also a making of called "Serving Sara: A Look Inside the Process" which as usual is mostly trailer, with everyone talking about everyone else in the most glowing terms. Hudlin calls Hurley "one of those women who can do anything they want." That's just about the note of mutual admiration of this featurette and the commentary track as well. "The people of Texas are so welcome and so generous," he notes. Those "people" are Ross Perot, whose ranch was used as a set. Hudlin sounds particularly vexed when he says that "there's nothing wrong with making a movie for people who work all week…it's a big popcorn movie." The only negative note comes when Hurley admits she didn’t have much fun shooting a scene in the baggage hold of an airport.

There are three outtakes, one of them a long take of the Winger clone on the mechanical bull (still not funny), and the optional director's commentary doesn't make you like the scene more or think it any less weirdly cruel. There also three deleted scenes, which don’t seem all that different from outtakes, as do the three "Extended/alternate scenes" that come next. Finally, there is a plot spoiling theatrical trailer. But what the hell, you've seen it all before anyway.

James Cameron in Short Pants

PIRANHA PART TWO: THE SPAWNING

• Theatrical release: 1981
  
• Columbia Tristar Home Entertainment
  
• $19.95
  
• 84 minutes
  
• Rated R
  
• Region 1
  
• Street Date: January 28, 2003

• Single disc
  
• Color
  
• Adequate full frame transfer
  
• Static, silent menu with 28-chapter scene selection
  
• Single-sided dual-layered disc
  
• Dolby Digital two channel mono
  
• English, Spanish, Thai, Chinese, and Portuguese subtitles
  
• One page insert with chapter list
  
• Keep case

• Cast: Tricia O'Neil, Lance Henriksen, Steve Marachuk, Ricky G. Paull
  
• Directed by James Cameron and Ovidio G. Assonitis (uncredited)
  
• Credited writer: H. A. Milton

Plot in one sentence: Escaped military-industrial flying piranha reek havoc on a Caribbean resort.

Extras:

• Trailers for ANACONDA, CREATURE FEATURES package of five Stan Winston films, THE FORSAKEN

There's a resort area under siege from a relentless natural foe and the people in charge, blinkered by commercialism, won't listen to the scientists and cops who know the real danger.

If this premise sounds familiar that's because PIRANHA PART TWO: THE SPAWNING is only one of many films inspired by the JAWS template for success. That PIRANHA barely comes close to the artistic success of its predecessor is not due solely to the low budget (this is a Dutch financed film with an Italian crew) or the threadbare state of the genre by the time this film was made. No, the film is just vulgar and tired, with numerous distracting side plots about romancers at the Caribbean resort where the movie is set, a cluster of LOVE BOAT refugees whose "fates" at the hands of the flying piranha are murky thanks to a listless screenplay. In any case, in its obsession with endangered kids afloat on the sea it's really more like a sequel to JAWS II.

The film concerns Anne Kimbough (Tricia O'Neil), diving instructor for the resort. Mysterious deaths alert her and her estranged cop husband Steve (Lance Henriksen). After the usual slow dawning that something is amiss, thanks to disappearing people and oddly chewed corpses, the duo go into action with the help of Tyler Sherman (Steve Marachuk), at first just another slimy Club Med hustler, but who turns out to be one of the scientists behind the development of the flying piranha for military purposes.

One of the minor reversals that make the plot differ from the usual bio-nightmare is the prominence of Anne as an action heroine. That's probably due to the contribution of director James Cameron in his first feature length directorial effort. The fact that he helmed the film is what provides its only — modest — interest. Anne is the thin daguerreotype for what was to become the standard Cameron woman, an active, tempestuous, argumentative woman estranged from her husband and as brave as him. That Anne goes down into the sea to confront the monsters in the climax is characteristically Cameron. What is uncharacteristic is the weird relationship between mother and son—but then, the co-director was Greek. Cameron fanatics will want to own this disc, but for everyone else it's a rental, if that.

Such a bad movie, to paraphrase Woody Allen, and such small portions! As it did with BAND OF THE HAND, Columbia Tristar chose to release this disc full frame. We know it is 1.85:1 because the credit sequence switches to that aspect ratio. OK, maybe the film isn’t worth too much bother, but if Columbia went to the trouble of releasing it at all, why not do it at least adequately or celebrate its awfulness? Get a good transfer (instead of what appears to be a repeat of the laser disc). Find somebody who could have bothered to talk about the film, such as Henrikson, one of the most interesting actors in Hollywood, whose frankness would have been refreshing. Some discs only have seven minute retrospective "makings of." Could they not come up with even that much of a supplement? The disc doesn't even have the movie's own trailer.

NEXT TIME: SMILEY'S PEOPLE, THE CRIMINAL, PREACHING TO THE PERVERTED, and more!

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