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November 13, 2003
Make Believe it's Nothing
ONCE UPON A TIME IN THE WEST
Original Movie:
- Theatrical premiere: 21 December, 1968, in Italy
- Originally 140 minutes
- NR
- Studio/distributor: Paramount
- Directed by Sergio Leone
- Credited writers: Sergio Donati, from ideas by Dario Argento, Bernardo Bertolucci, and Leone, with English dialogue translated by Mickey Knox
- Cast: Henry Fonda (Frank), Claudia Cardinale (Jill McBain), Jason Robards (Manuel 'Cheyenne' Gutierrez), Charles Bronson (Harmonica), Gabriele Ferzetti (Morton), Woody Strode (Stony), Jack Elam (Snaky), Keenan Wynn (Flagstone sheriff), Frank Wolff (Brett McBain), Lionel Stander (Barman), Marco Zuanelli (Wobbles)
- Cinematography: Tonino Delli Colli
- Editing: Nino Baragli
- Significant music: Ennio Morricone
- Awards: David di Donatello Awards Best Production
- Budget: $3 million
- Stated initial box office returns: NA
Plot in one sentence: A robber, an enforcer, and a man on a secret mission converge on a ranch near Flagstone and the recently widowed woman who holds the key to the future.
Disc Stats:
Paramount DVD
$19.99
Two single sided, dual layered disc
Color
Wide screen transfer (2.31:1) enhanced for wide screen televisions
Animated, musical menu with 33-chapter scene selection
Dolby Digital 5.1 surround, in English, plus a restored mono track, and a French mono track (but no Italian track)
English subtitles, and closed captioning
Laser Disc: none
Previous DVD: none
Region 1
Street Date: 18 November, 2003
Keep case
Extras, Disc One:
- Edited commentary track hosted by Sheldon Hall, with Leone expert Christopher Frayling, directors John Carpenter, John Milius, and Alex Cox, and actress Claudia Cardinale
- One sheet insert with chapter list
Extras, Disc Two:
- Three part documentary: "An Opera of Violence," "The Wages of Sin," and "Something to Do with Death"
- Railroad Revolutionizes the West
- Location gallery
- Production gallery
- Cast credits
- Theatrical trailer
- One sheet insert with chapter list
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I've had a long, complicated, even obsessive relationship with ONCE UPON A TIME IN THE WEST. I first saw it in the summer of 1970 at the Village Theater in far northeast Portland, Oregon. The film was on a double bill with BARBARELLA. As a youngster, I was of course there to see Jane Fonda in the buff, and in fact it was probably the first time I saw nudity on the screen. But after the relatively short Fonda film and its archaic movie-serial style level of cartoony unseriousness came this gargantuan tale of the old west, with its codes and silences and bombastic music. In its way, ONCE UPON A TIME is also cartoony, but it is the cartooniness of pulp literature, in which men enact rituals that take very trivial things hyper-seriously and with great dignity, things that other people make believe are nothing.
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ONCE UPON A TIME was shown to us amid the chaos of a neighborhood double bill that has taken place in thousands of theaters on millions of summer nights and will do so again and again for as long as there are movie theaters and the people who go to them ("an ancient race"). It was a madhouse. Everyone talked. Objects were thrown. Kids ran back and forth, freed of the scrutiny of adults. Those lucky enough to have chicks on their arms made out rather than watched the movie. With unintended irony, I unknowingly dropped my humongous harmonica in the crack of the theater seat and left it there (I've never touched one since).
Yet despite all these distractions, ONCE UPON A TIME IN THE WEST spoke to me and the two buddies I saw it with. We became lifelong Bronson fans, and I suddenly began to "get" the western as a genre.
But first, of course, there was BARBARELLA. The kids laughed and hooted encouragingly as Fonda disrobed (needlessly, as far as the plot was concerned) under the credits while floating in space. Then after the requisite intermission, around 9 pm, ONCE UPON A TIME began. From the very beginning you knew that this was going to be a big blustery movie. Yet at the same time the plot was a little hard to follow. At one point I thought it was Cheyenne who sent two men into the McBain ranch only to be shot by Harmonica. Later I of course figured out that it was Frank (Cheyenne and his men were only watching on the sidelines). But the film was gripping. And it was visually breathtaking. I knew I was going to love the film when the camera twirls around McBain's head as he looks around for danger while he is standing at his water well. That's the kind of flourish a Hitchcock would do, while remaining in keeping with the mood and style of the scene.
Only years later did I realize how lucky I really was. I had stumbled upon a nearly complete print of the movie. It was all there, all the stuff that critics later complained were missing (when I could find anyone who wrote about the movie in the first place). There was the trading post sequence, the scene between Frank and Morton in the cliffs, the love scene in Frank's hideaway, Frank's walking through the massacre at Morton's train, and Cheyenne's death. All there. Missing only was the short sequence of Bronson getting up after the opening shootout, not restored in Paramount's two disc DVD (another scene, of Bronson's character getting beat up in Flagstone by Keenan Wynn's sheriff and a band of henchmen, was shot but the footage was lost; the disc shows only some black and white stills from the sequence). I was a little perplexed by all the complaints I was reading, since I had seen what amounted to almost the whole movie.
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That one screening had a powerful and long lasting effect on my burgeoning film mind. I viewed it again wherever I could, on TV, or revival houses. I bought the soundtrack album. I splurged on a fumetti version of the movie. Years later I wrote a satirical novel called COMPANY TOWN that was serialized in a local paper, and one of the characters was a roguish villain who is the only character who gets to have sex with any of the women in the story, and now I realize that I a circuitous way that character was based on Fonda's Frank. When I popped the DVD into the player and started the film, it only took a few minutes for tears to well up in my eyes, not tears of self-pity, but tears of awe, and lament over codes of behavior now lost, if they ever existed outside the realm of Leone's imagination.
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I am emboldened to share these tedious autobiographical details by the new Paramount ONCE disc, which features such luminaries as John Carpenter, John Milius, and Alex Cox recounting in strenuous detail where and when they first saw ONCE UPON A TIME IN THE WEST and the impact the film had on them (the only person missing is Paramount disc regular Peter Bogdanovich, who had the unlikely task of actually working with Leone for a time). There are certain magical films that extreme film fans fall into. CITIZEN KANE was one. KILL BILL is a recent example. But ONCE UP ON A TIME IN THE WEST is the granddaddy of cult moves that fanatics can't get enough of but that "regular" movie goers don't "get."
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One of the first things I realized about Leone's film was that for all its length, it is a very simple story. Christopher Frayling points out on the Paramount disc that there are only about 19 pages of actual dialogue in the movie. But what Leone has done is to operatically heightened each moment and, under the influence of Japanese directors, to flesh out each moment as far as he can until the sympathetic viewer is enmeshed in the film's world. ONCE UPON A TIME is a film that expands horizontally rather than deeps vertically. In a way it resembles the other big movie from 1968, 2001: A SPACE ODYSSEY. There, too, Kubrick took a handful of narrative chunks but stretched them out each individually until the viewer became lost in their detail out of sight of their elusive meaning. ONCE UPON A TIME IN THE WEST, once reviewer said, is like an opera "in which the arias are not sung but stared."
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ONCE UPON A TIME is the optimum anthology of Leone fixations. There's the structure built on threes. There is the hierarchy of hero, villain, and lesser mortal who has talent but who can only observe in awe the superman with whom he is in uneasy partnership.
But at the same time, ONCE adds something new. A woman. Surely, thousands of teenage boys fell in love with Claudia Cardinale as Jill McBain, but more important to Leone it gave ONCE an endearing focal point around which the stalking males could pace. Perhaps Jill shows the influence of then film critics turning filmmakers Bernardo Bertolucci and Dario Argento, more female friendly minds who collaborated on the original story with Leone. Like everyone else in the film, Jill has a back story that we can piece together through things she and others say, but most important, through what she does, how she acts, and how she looks.
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ONCE UPON A TIME IN THE WEST is one of those movies that has been at the top of missing in action DVDs since the format went public in the late '90s. I've waited a long time for it, and I must say the wait has been worth it. Paramount has done a fantastic job with the film, which from the beginning bears no sign, to these average eyes anyway, of wear or worry. It's a beautiful transfer (it looked especially good on my computer), and the sound comes in two varieties, the new 5.1, and the original mono.
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The extras are something of a mixed bag, though all are still worthwhile. When I heard that the audio track was going to be by Carpenter, Milius, and Cox (who made a spaghetti homage called STRAIGHT TO HELL), I was excited as all get out, but the reality is that track is edited and their chat appears to be adapted from the accompanying documentaries. Primarily the commentary track is by Leone biographer Frayling, who does a scene specific accompaniment to the film, and his insights and observations are valuable (he resurrects the name Mickey Knox, for example, an ex-patriot American actor Leone used to direct the dubbing sessions, and whose translation of the script from the original Italian makes him the unsung hero of ONCE UPON A TIME, as well as some of Leone's other films).
The three part documentary, really one divided into three parts called "An Opera of Violence," "The Wages of Sin," and "Something to Do with Death," are most helpful in understanding the genesis of the movie and how steeped it is in unlikely films such as HIGH NOON, but also JOHNNY GUITAR and various other films that Leone and his collaborators loved. We also learn that the McBain family is thus yclept because of Leone's affection for mystery writer Ed McBain, another interest that Leone shared with Kurosawa, who adapted one of McBain's 87th Precinct novels for HIGH AND LOW. There is also a mostly text based feature called "Railroad Revolutionizes the West" and a nifty little featurette called a "Location Gallery" which contrasts the original sites of the film in Spain and America as seen in the film with what they look like today. There is also a production stills gallery, unusually detailed cast and crew credits, and the American theatrical trailer. The whole thing comes in a dual disc keep case that, incidentally, fell apart after about three openings and closings.
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Parenthood
TOKYO STORY
Original Movie:
- Theatrical premiere: 3 November 1953, in Japan
- Shochiku Films Ltd./New Yorker Films
- 136 minutes
- NR
- Directed by Yasujiro Ozu
- Credited writer: Kôgo Noda and Yasujiro Ozu
- Cast: Chishu Ryu (Shukishi Hirayama), Chieko Higashiyama (Tomi Hirayama), Setsuko Hara (Noriko), Haruko Sugimura (Shige Kaneko), Kuniko Miyake (Fumiko Kyôko Kagawa (Kyoko)
- Cinematography: Yuharu Atsuta
- Editing: Yoshiyasu Hamamura
- Significant music: Kojun Saitô
- Awards: none
- Budget: NA
- Stated initial box office returns: NA
Plot in one sentence: An elderly small town couple visits their children in Tokyo, only to be greeted with impatience by everyone but the widow of their dead son.
Disc Stats:
The Criterion Collection
$39.95
Two single sided, dual layered discs
Black and white
Full frame transfer (1.33:1)
Animated musical menu with 27-chapter scene selection
Dolby Digital mono
English subtitles
Laser Disc: none
Previous DVD: none
Region 1
Street Date: 28 October, 2003
Dual DVD keep case
Extras Disc one:
- Audio commentary by David Desser.
- Theatrical trailer
Extras Disc two:
I LIVED BUT …, documentary about Ozu from 1983
TALKING WITH OZU, a tribute to Ozu by international directors (5:25)
Eight page booklet with an essay by David Bordwell, chapter list, film and DVD credits
One of the most surprising facts in the ONCE UPON A TIME IN THE WEST chat is the influence of Japanese films on Leone. It's obvious once you know it, but still surprising that the work of Ozu might have been of significance to Ozu.
But then, it's not so surprising the more you learn about Ozu. He was a fanatic for American movies, and especially liked westerns and the movies of Ford. In fact, film scholars have noted how much TOKYO STORY resembles Leo McCarey's similar &$151; and even sadder — MAKE WAY FOR TOMORROW. Though Ozu didn't make action or genre films, he appreciated them; for himself, he needed to follow his own light, which took him to a remarkable series of domestic comedy-dramas from the early '50s to the early '60s.
Many, many critics have cogitated about Ozu, including Paul Schrader, Robin Wood, Donald Richie, David Bordwell, and David Desser. Suffice it to say that all the film requires from the viewer is patience. Just the goal of sitting quietly for a little over two hours and absorbing what you are seeing. I know that is hard these days, when Americans seem more impatient than ever with films from other countries, but Ozu is an amazingly rewarding filmmaker.
TOKYO STORY takes as its premise the visit of an elderly couple to their children in Tokyo. The children are now adults working various jobs and active members of their own nuclear families. They don't really have time for their parents. And conversely, the children are something of a disappointment to the parents. Only the widow of their son, killed in the war, shows them the respect and interest they assumed they would receive upon their visit. Finally, the couple returns home, where one of them dies. Once united again in such dire circumstances, the worst traits of the individual members of the family come to the fore. Then they all part again to their separate worlds.
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It's one of the saddest movies ever made, and part of its profound sadness is founded on the inescapable truth about human beings that it patiently lays out, like a grocer methodically eviscerating a fish. The Japanese have a knack for making sad films (AFTERLIFE is another film that is so sad I doubt if I will ever be able to watch it again).
Criterion does its typically excellent job of honoring the movie and the filmmaker. The transfer is fine (it's an old movie, made 50 years ago), and the sound is fine. It's a two disc set, and the extras on disc one are an audio commentary by David Desser, and the original theatrical trailer. Desser's track is excellent, one of the best I've heard. Desser is the editor of a companion volume on the film, published by Cambridge University Press, and his commentary is scene specific, informative, and wide-ranging.
Disc two contains two big documentaries. The first is a long biography of Ozu, called I LIVED BUT …, titled after one of Ozu's films and made for television in 1983. It's a thorough account, as thorough as a movie can be as opposed to a book, of Ozu's life, with clips from hard to see movies. The second is TALKING WITH OZU, a tribute to Ozu by various international directors. Each segment begins with an Ozu-like static transitional shot of a setting, and then a bunch of film directors, such as Wim Wenders and a surprisingly nervous Paul Schrader, talk about Ozu's impact on them. Finally, there is an eight page booklet with an essay by David Bordwell, a chapter list, and film and DVD credits
Raiders of the Lost Art
THE ADVENTURES OF INDIANA JONES BOXED SET
Original Movie:
- RAIDERS OF THE LOST ARK, Theatrical premiere: 12 June, 1981
- 115 minutes
- PG
- Studio/distributor: Paramount/Lucasfilm Ltd.
- Directed by Steven Spielberg
- Credited writer: Lawrence Kasdan, from stories and set pieces batted around by Spielberg and Lucas
- Cast: Harrison Ford (Indy), Karen Allen (Marion Ravenwood), Paul Freeman (Belloq), Ronald Lacey (Toht), John Rhys-Davies (Sallah), Denholm Elliott (Brody), Alfred Molina (Satipo)
- Cinematography: Douglas Slocombe
- Editing: Michael Kahn, with George Lucas
- Significant music: John Williams
- Awards: Oscars for Best Sound, Best Effects: Visual Effects, Best Film Editing, Best Art Direction-Set Decoration; Saturn Awards: Best Fantasy Film, Best Actress, Best Special Effect, Best Actor, Best Writing, Best Director, Best Music; Editor's Guild: Best Edited Feature Film; American Movie Awards: Best Film, Best Screenplay, Best Director; BAFTA Awards: Best Production Design / Art Direction; Boston Society of Film Critics Awards: Best Director; Grammy Awards: Best Album of Original Score Written for a Motion Picture or Television Special; Hugo Awards: Best Dramatic Presentation; National Film Preservation Board, USA 1999, added to the National Film Registry; People's Choice Awards: Favorite Motion Picture; Young Artist Awards: Best Motion Picture Family Enjoyment; plus 14 nominations
- Budget: $20 thousand
- Stated initial box office returns: $383.9 million
Plot in one sentence: The adventures of a '30s archeologist in his race against the Nazis for possession of the chest that contained the 10 Commandments.
Disc Stats:
Paramount DVD
$69.99
Four single sided, dual layered discs
Color
Wide screen transfer (2.35:1) enhanced for wide screen televisions; the set is also available in a full frame format, also for $66.99
Animated, musical menu with 31-chapter scene selection
Dolby Digital 5.1, plus DD 2.0 in French and Spanish
English, French, and Spanish subtitles, and closed captioning
Laser Disc: LDs in 1982 and 1993
Previous DVD: none
One sheet insert with chapter list for each box
Region 1
Street Date: 21 October, 2003
Four keep-cases in paperboard slipcase
Extras:
- "Indiana Jones: Making the Trilogy" (2:06:58)
- "The Stunts of Indiana Jones" (10:57)
- "The Sound of Indiana Jones" (13:20)
- "The Music of Indiana Jones" (12:23)
- "The Light and Magic of Indiana Jones" (12:20)
- Theatrical trailers for all three films, plus two teasers, a re-issue trailer, and an ad for the game
- THX Optimizer
- DVD-ROM material for non-Mac users
When all three Indiana Jones movies are brought together in one package, the first thing you notice is how comically violent the first one is and how pasteurized and bowdlerized the third one ends up.
It's how to believe that RAIDERS OF THE LOST ARK was made in a more innocent time — shot in 1980, released in spring of 1981 — when it was possible on screen to poison monkeys, show women drinking to excess, casually shoot a sword-wielding thugee in the middle of a bazaar, and revel in melting flesh and exploding heads. All that's missing from RAIDERS is (explicit) sex, which actually isn't unusual given the antiseptic worlds of the Spielberg-Lucas axis — it's almost shocking when you see evidence that Indy and Marion actually slept together aboard ship! In this context, the decline in the series is doubly disappointing. After all, RAIDERS is one of the great exploding head movies of all time. If the last movie is going to be so bad, can't it be bloody bad?
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Oh, sure people die in INDIANA JONES AND THE LAST CRUSADE, but in the 1989 release the filmmakers are careful to leave Indy untainted, an unwilling agent of death. It's "shocking" when Indy and his dad are shown to have slept with the same woman, but the situation is played for laughs, and, after all, she is a Nazi spy, and thus the two men are victims of a wily evil no upright solid man could find resistible.
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Must the first movie in a trilogy or a series always be the best? I'm tired of diminishing returns, be it BATMAN, THE MATRIX, the DIE HARD series, or even the LETHAL WEAPON movies. As Jeffrey Wells points out, Slate's Matt Feeney in his excellent think piece goes a long way toward explaining what is missing from the latest two MATRIX movies. But is there also a larger problem with follow-ups in general? Why is the LORD OF THE RINGS series so good? Because the three films, based on books, are really all one big story. They were planned at the same time. They make sense together. They form a beginning, middle, and end following the large scale scene template set forth by Kristin Thompson. Is there any doubt that the STAR WARS, MATRIX, and INDY series were all developed only after the first one made a ton of money? I think this is true and I don't care what high-minded ex post facto justifying claims the filmmakers make.
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Paramount has put together a good package of films, with fair supplements. I will bow to the detailed attention that Alexandra DuPont has paid to the box and only reiterate that, yes, there is a lot of stuff left off of the disc that could have been there, and echo DuPont's incredulity that Danny DeVito might have been in the movie (along with Tom Selleck and Sean Young).
I particularly lament the fact that the "real" third film never got made. Lucas wanted to put Indy in a haunted house. Well, to my mind there hasn't been a truly great comic haunted house film in a long, long time, and who better to do one than the Disneyfied Spielberg and Lucas? Unfortunately, Spielberg had just come off of POLTERGEIST (um, as "producer"?), and didn't want to do a similar film. Instead he wanted to do the whole father and son thing. Lucas through in the Grail, and remnants of the original haunted house exist only in the castle sequence.
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Which brings us to the story behind the story. If you attend carefully to the big supplementary making-of documentary on disc four, a subtle shadow history begins to emerge. It goes something like this. The two most successful directors in the history of cinema decided to get together and collaborate, because they think that they shared a sensibility and a love for old time movies. They concocted a project based on Lucas's interest in old time serials (no one mentions, by the way, that RAIDERS is structured on 15 minute episodes, just like a serial from the '30s).
They made the first one, but soon significant differences began to emerge. When it came to a second movie, Lucas wanted to go darker, just as he had with the second STAR WARS film. There's an imp of the perverse in Lucas that compels him to, once he's got your attention, prey on your feelings and take you to rancid, grim hopeless places. This is so not Spielberg. Still, Steve goes through the motions on the second film. But now, Lucas is exhausted. When the third film comes around, Spielberg has wrested control of the series from Lucas, and turns the final entry in the franchise into … 1941! Spielberg vulgarizes the concept, inserts the crude humor he is prone to when unsupervised, and betrays all the characters (oh, what he did to poor Denholm Elliott's character still burns me!).
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The bitter paradox is that Spielberg himself grew darker, thanks to EMPIRE OF THE SUN, but especially SCHINDLER'S LIST, all culminating in the uneasy mix of humor and dark in AI and the somber politics of MINORITY REPORT. God knows what a fourth film will be like if they ever finally do one: a really depressing adventure film set within completely artificial CGI landscapes.
Still, a lot of the information in the "making of" was new to me, and I was glad to hear it. Lucas, looking more and more like Chewbacca as time goes by, comes across as the grand old man of movies, even though it is odd for the gray-haired sage to be discussing with such absolute seriousness children's adventure films. Nevertheless, this is standard "corporate" making of material, not at all the agonized, second guessing, disappointed self-scrutinizing sort of extras you get on, say, a New Line disc.
Miami Vice
SCARFACE (TWO-DISC ANNIVERSARY EDITION)
Original Movie:
- Theatrical premiere: 9 December 1993
- Universal
- 170 minutes
- R
- Directed by Brian De Palma
- Credited writer: Oliver Stone, from the Howard Hawks film adapted from the novel by Armitage Trail
- Cast: Al Pacino (Tony Montana), Steven Bauer (Manolo Ray), Michelle Pfeiffer (Elvira Hancock), Mary Elizabeth Mastrantonio (Gina Montana), Robert Loggia (Frank Lopez), Miriam Colon (Mama Montana), F. Murray Abraham (Omar Suarez), Paul Shenar (Alejandro Sosa), Harris Yulin (Mel Bernstein), Richard Belzer (M.C. at Babylon Club), Greg Henry
- Cinematography: John A. Alonzo
- Editing: Jerry Greenberg, David Ray
- Significant music: Giorgio Moroder
- Awards: Five nominations
- Budget: $25 million
- Stated initial box office returns: $23 million
Plot in one sentence: A Cuban refugee climbs to the top of the Florida drug trade.
Disc Stats:
Universal Home Entertainment
$26.98
Two single sided, dual layered discs
Color
Wide screen transfer (2.35:1) enhanced for wide screen televisions
Animated, musical menu with 35-chapter scene selection
Dolby Digital and DTS 5.1
English, French, and Spanish subtitles
Laser Disc: August 1996, with lots of supplements
Previous DVD: about six previous DVDs of various kinds and countries
Region 1
Street Date: 30 September, 2003
Dual DVD keep case
Extras Disc Two:
- Three part making of documentary (55:50).
- Def Jam presents ORIGINS OF A HIP-HOP CLASSIC (20:31)
- SCARFACE: The TV Version, edited by Universal's Henry Tattman (2:48)
- Deleted scenes (22:28)
- Cast and crew bios
We have finally passed a remarkable signpost in the annals of DVDs. It's a time when the supplements on the disc of a top-rated cult hit are better than the movie.
Somehow, I never managed to see SCARFACE, Brian De Palma's 1983 remake — more of a re-think and update — of Howard Hawks's 1932 crime melodrama, itself an inspirer of many imitators and much critical commentary. I like De Palma quite a bit, but somehow that one film slipped between the cracks. I heard a lot about SCARFACE, of course, about its violence and chainsaws and comical cocaine scenes, with tufts of coke clinging to Al Pacino's nose like snowdrift on a St. Bernard, but never saw the entire picture. Until now.
My lord, what a disappointment! It doesn't bother me that the film is over-long, as I tend to like long movies, or that it is relatively slow and ponderous, as I can like the thoughtful pace, too. In any case, there's always been something a little … chunky about De Palma's films. I can't think of a better word, but it's that quality of big set pieces and tableaux not blending right with the main narrative thrust. The fact that often the set pieces have a cartoony feel inconsistent with the strict realism of what's going on around it serves as a benchmark of De Palma's real interest in a given film. Obviously, De Palma is capable of conventional Hollywood "realism," as in CASUALTIES OF WAR and CARLITO'S WAY, and as a genre directors few have made as many top notch, nay iconic films as De Palma has since the '60s. But for me SCARFACE has none of the attractiveness that De Palma's films can sometimes have when he "sells out" (THE UNTOUCHABLES, MISSION IMPOSSIBLE).
SCARFACE, as I now know, is the story of Tony Montana, one of several thousands of Cubans who made their way to Florida after Castro threw open the prison gates for anyone who wanted to get out of town. Confined to a concentration camp, Tony and his pal Manolo (Steven Bauer) contrive to manipulate their way out of confinement and into the burgeoning world of the international drug trade, first as the assistant to Frank Lopez (Robert Loggia) and then as an equal of the real brains behind the industry, Sosa (Paul Shenar), all in a general plot arc that closely resembles, mutatis mutandis, the Hawks film, as well as scores of other little-guy-makes-good films. An imp in Tony's psyche forces him to court disaster, and that is a weird jealousy over his sister, whom he may love in an incestuous fascination that that he can't control or confront.
Here are some of the things that put me off SCARFACE. The Giorgio Moroder music is at the very least dated, and at the worst, horrible, depending on how you react to his sounds in the first place. The film is also dated in its fashions. I suppose someone could look at SCARFACE's bejeweled and leisure suited haberdashery as a comical comment on the times, but I still prefer to see attractive people in nice clothes, and the styles of, say ORDINARY PEOPLE, to pluck a title out of the air, don't look as dated. There's one moment when you can actually see one character's hair float like algae on a stormy sea as she runs down a staircase. Suffice it to say, the scene is meant to be serious.
Tony's incestuous attraction to his sister isn't especially clear as a plot motivation. Also, characters such as Tony's mother pop up and disappear. The film as a whole has a brown, muddy look. The blood doesn't look real.
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Nevertheless, SCARFACE is interesting in the work of De Palma for its variation on common De Palman themes. Almost all of De Palma's films are about a man betraying his closest friend. And not just betraying him, but fucking the friend over in the most grotesque and evil manner (see OBSESSION and SNAKE EYES for examples from both ends of De Palma's career). Usually, De Palma invests all his emotions into the betrayed. Here, De Palma takes you into the other person's mind, to show you what it is like to be the betrayer. Pacino plays a monster (or should I say overplays), but rarely has De Palma actually investigated the evil side so closely. It's a riveting character and you see Tony's descendants in such films as CITY OF GOD, where the psychopath out Tony's Montana in his utter lack of feeling or loyalty for other people.
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Also, I like the fact that the film has one of the last performances by Paul Shenar (as Sosa). Shenar was a Canadian actor who died of AIDS. He also had one of the most beautifully voices in all moviedom, which probably kept him underrated and undervalued, just like the golden throated John Vernon.
I also find it interesting to contemplate Oliver Stone at this stage of his career. He was still the Oscar-winning wild man of screenwriting, not taken entirely seriously, and not known so much as a director. Yet in a few short years he goes from screenwriter to god. What made the difference? What does he have that other struggling writer-directors don't? I guess it is a sign of how much we diminish the importance of writers, indeed will always diminish them, before the incense-scented shrine of The Director.
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On the second disc of this two disc set is an hour-long, three-part making of documentary that is informative, both to the making of the movie and to its cultural importance despite it's lack of financial success. Especially helpful in that regard is a separate documentary just about the African-American community's relationship with the movie. It's really one of the best features I've ever seen on a disc, and almost makes me like the movie better (I don't happen to think that the movie is as "quotable" as everyone says it is).
Finally, there is a comical feature showing the TV version of SCARFACE, edited by Universal's Henry Tattman, a sizable chunk of deleted scenes, and extensive cast and crew bios.
Lost in Space
STAR TREK: DEEP SPACE NINE, SEASON 6
Original Series:
- Originally aired: 29 September, 1997 through 18 June, 1998
- NR
- Paramount Television
- Cast: Avery Brooks, Colm Meaney, Rene Auberjonois, Terry Farrell, Nana Visitor, Jeffrey Combs, Andrew Robinson, and various guest stars
- Directed by Paul Lynch and others
- Credited writers: Ira Behr and others
- Significant music: Dennis McCarthy's opening theme
Premise in one sentence: Life on a space station hovering near a worm hole entry to an unexplored quadrant of the universe, while war rages among different factions.
Disc Stats:
- Paramount Home Entertainment
- $139.99
- Almost 20 hours
- Seven disc set
- Color
- Full frame transfer (1.33:1)
- Animated, musical menu with eight-chapter scene selection per episode
- Single sided, dual layered discs
- Dolby Digital 5.1, DD 2.0
- Close captioning and English subtitles
- Region 1
- Street Date: 4 November, 2003
- Book-style fold out digipak keep case in plastic slip case
Extras: Disc Seven
- "Mission Inquiry: Far Beyond the Stars" (8:49), about the sci-fi writer episode
- "24th Century Wedding" (10:54)
(8:49)
- "Crew Dossier: Julian Bashir" (14:21)
- "Crew Dossier: Quark" (14:59)
- "Hidden Film 01 (2:28), on "Tears of the Prophets," the season ender that kills off Dax
- "Hidden Film 02 (4:02), about Kira versus Dukat
- "Hidden Film 03 (1:43), on Nana Visitor singing in the show "His Way"
- "Hidden Film 04 (3:32), on the six show story arc
- "Hidden Film 05 (2:49), on Iggy Pop appearing in DS9
- "Hidden Film 06 (1:18), Auberjonois on playing Odo
- "Hidden Film 07 (1:28), Auberjonois on the big kiss
- "Hidden Film 08 (3:16), on "Change of Heart"
- "Hidden Film 9 (2:16), Dukat goes mad in "Waltz"
- "Hidden Film 10 (2:48), "Who Mourns for Morn?"
- "Sketchbook: John Eaves" (9:15)
- Photo gallery
- Indiana Jones preview
- Optional English subtitles, close captions
Having done sex in season five, DEEP SPACE 9 came back strong in season six doing war.
But wait. Doesn't that go against the grain of everything that Gene Roddenberry stood for? Was the mission of the various star ships to observe and catalog different residents of the universe's planets? Surely it was not to run about in small vehicles and blow things up?
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Well, Gene is dead and buried, and there are ratings wars and sweeps weeks to contend with, and so all the original premises of the 1966 series, which no one really paid any attention to or cared about anyway, go out the window. Also dead, at least at the end of this season, is Dax, because actress Terry Farrell had a contract dispute with the show's producers. This must have been disappointing to all, given that the writers had created a marriage story line between her and Worf. But that all got cancelled when actress and management could not agree on terms. Farrell was gracious to come back for this season's supplements, but the fact of the matter is that the show died the following year, and one wonders if her departure seemed to the shows makers to be a harbinger of bad things to come.
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The other interesting things about this season is the romance between Kira and Odo, which reaches its apotheosis, and the deepening of the show's villain Dukat (Marc Alaimo), the Cardassian blowhard. The show's writers took Dukat to interesting places, basically giving him a combo of nervous breakdown and megalomania.
This time around the extras seem a tad tired, as if the sets' designers were getting as tired as DVD reviewers, who have watched something like 140 hours of television in under one years, with 22 hours left to go. Left off of this set is the Michael Westmore survey of make up effects. What's left is a handful of featurettes on individual shows, and those so called hidden films, which are maddening to try and navigate through. For the love of all that is holy, if you want people to watch your fucking supplements, make them accessible.
DEEP SPACE 9 season six begins with a remarkable six episode mini series about war, and has several clever shows in the course of the season, including one in which Sisko spends time in an alternate universe in which he is a science fiction writer for GALAXY magazine. But still, as you watch all these there is the knowledge that it is all coming to an end, with the next season, something that the filmmakers themselves didn't know.
Odds and Ends
STAR TREK V: THE FINAL FRONTIER
Original Movie:
- Premiere: 9 June, 1989
- 107 minutes
- PG
- Directed by William Shatner
- Credited writer: William Shatner, Harve Bennett David Loughery
- Cast: William Shatner (Captain James T. Kirk), Leonard Nimoy (Captain Spock), DeForest Kelley (Dr. Leonard 'Bones' McCoy), James Doohan (Captain Montgomery 'Scotty' Scott), Walter Koenig (Commander Pavel Chekov), Nichelle Nichols (Commander Nyota Uhura), George Takei (Commander Hikaru Sulu), David Warner (St. John Talbot), Laurence Luckinbill (Sybok), Charles Cooper (Captain Korrd), Cynthia Gouw (Caithlin Dar)
- Cinematography: Andrew Lazslo
- Editing: Peter Berger
- Music: Jerry Goldsmith
- Awards: A Razzie award and a Razzie nomination
- Budget: $27 million dollars
- Stated initial box office returns: $70 million world wide
Plot in one sentence: The Enterprise is hijacked by a Vulcan who wants to make a religious trek to the progenitor planet of the universe.
Disc Stats:
- Paramount DVD
- $24.99
- Two single sided, dual layered discs
- Color
- Wide screen transfer (2:35:1) enhanced for wide screen televisions
- Dolby Digital 5.1, English and French 2.0
- English subtitles
- Animated, musical menu with 15-chapter scene selection
- Laser Disc: Five previous LDs
- Previous DVD: Two previous DVDs
- Region 1
- Street Date: 14 October, 2003
- Keep case
Extras, Disc One:
- Commentary by Shatner and his daughter Liz
- Text commentary by Michael and Denise Okuda
- Four page insert with chapter titles
Extras, Disc Two:
- "Herman Zimmerman: A Tribute"
- Original interview, Wiliam Shatner
- "Cosmic Thoughts"
- "That Klingon Couple"
- "A Green Future?"
- "Harve Bennett's Pitch to the Sales Team"
- "The Journey: A Behind the Scenes Documentary"
- Makeup Tests
- Previsualization models
- "Rock Man in the Raw"
- STAR TREK V press conference
- Deleted scenes
- Theatrical trailers
- TV spots
- Production gallery
But speaking of STAR TREK, everybody is complaining about the way the Wachowski Brothers are ruining the good will they had with THE MATRIX in the two subsequent films, but what about the STAR TREK series? Millions of fans wanted that series to be revived, and Paramount responded, only to methodically tear and slash and erode it. But I think I know why the series has declined so much on screen. The animals were put in charge of the zoo.
If there is one thing I don't want, it is "story ideas" by Shatner, Nimoy, and all the rest. What the hell gave them the idea that they could "write" and direct? Once these morons were given the reins to show they proceeded to bore the hell out of us with inept stories and changes in characters that betrayed the original conception.
In this one, in which the Enterprise is hijacked by a relative of Spock's who is on a quest to find god, the writing is terrible, the acting is awful, and the story is boring and inconclusive. What the hell was it about? It makes no sense. The marriage of science and religion is uneasy at best, but the nitwits who put this together had no idea what the hell they were talking about.
Suffice it to say, this garbage is treated like CITIZEN KANE 2, with fawning interviews, deleted scenes, ponderous explanations about how the obvious special effects were achieved. Never have I spend more tedious time with a DVD set in my life. And the agony will only end when I type the final words of this review and give the fucking box to a first person I see.
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Probably the thing I liked about this movie the least was the acerbic, indeed hostile personality of "Bones," with his constant carping and complaining and witless insults. His character as written must have been a cruel trick on the actor by people on the set who hated him. What's funny is that the discs for the TREK movies tend to emphasize the fact that it's all a happy team of good friends and long time colleagues. But they must have hated each other. You can feel the tension and boredom in the press conference tape that is included on the second disc. The cast stands numbly behind Shatner as he preens before the world's press. The tedium of this film can be found in its pathetic attempt to recreate the Cantina scene from STAR WARS. What a pallid imitation, with its triple-breasted cat woman and ugly bar flies. STAR TREK has outlived its usefulness. Stick a fork in it. It's done.
Butch and Some Dunce: The Early Years
DUMB AND DUMBERER: WHEN HARRY MET LLOYD
Original Movie:
- Premiere: 13 June, 2003
- 85 minutes
- PG-13
- Producer/distributor: New Line/Avery Pix
- Directed by Troy Miller
- Credited Writers: Robert Brener and Troy Miller from characters created by Peter Farrelly, Bennett Yellin, and Bobby Farrelly
- Cast: Eric Christian Olsen (Lloyd Christmas), Derek Richardson (Harry Dunne), Rachel Nichols (Jessica), Cheri Oteri (Ms. Heller), Luis Guzmán (Ray)
- Cinematography: Anthony B. Richmond
- Editing: Lawrence Jordan
- Significant music: Eban Schletter
- Awards: none
- Budget: $19 million
- Stated initial box office returns: $26 million
Plot in one sentence: The back story on how the two friends from DUMB AND DUMBER formed their satanic alliance.
Disc Stats:
- New Line Home Entertainment
- $27.95
- One single sided, dual layered disc
- Color
- Widescreen transfer (1.85:1) enhanced for widescreen televisions
- Animated, musical menu with 15-chapter scene selection
- Dolby Digital 5.1 Surround, DD 2.0
- English subtitles and closed captions
- Laser Disc: none
- Previous DVD: none
- Region 1
- Street Date: 11 November, 2003
- Keep case
Extras:
- Audio commentary with Troy Miller, and actors Eric Christian Olsen and Derek Richardson
- Audio commentary with film critics Samuel Shavers and Thompson Jennings
- Audio commentary with the Ciccone Family, only for one chapter
- Nine deleted scenes (21:58)
- Bloopers and outtakes (7:44)
- "Casting the Perfect Dummies" (25:14)
- "Dumb and Dangerous" making of doc (17:09)
- Teaser trailer, and theatrical trailer
- Trailers for DUMB AND DUMBER, THE MASK, AUSTIN POWERS GOLDMEMBER
- DVD-ROM access for non-Mac users: script to screen, 1986 hair salon
- Four page insert with chapter list
The other film this week with a three-breasted character is this prequel to DUMB AND DUMBER. Well, I guess if STAR TREK can make a lame joke about an abundance of pectorals majors, so can Harry and Lloyd.
When it comes to comedy, everyone has a weakness. For some, it is the Zucker brothers, for others the Marx brothers. For some reason, for me it is the Farrelly brothers, even in a watered down form like this second iteration of DUMB AND DUMBER with a completely different cast of lesser thespians and a stupid plot out of a POLICE ACADEMY entry.
The film tells the story of how this great and lasting friendship was formed. It seems that the high school the two guys are going to is run by a principal (Eugene Levy, in league with Cheri Oteri) so evil that he will stop at nothing to fill his coffers, which includes bilking the state out of money by forming a fake special ed class, that Harry and Lloyd end up in. Along the way, the two boys also meet an intrepid reporter (Rachel Nichols) for the school newspaper who is out to uncover the scam and both of them fall for her. This leads to a fantasy scene in which the three breasts appear.
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In fact, the whole movie seems to be a vehicle for the realization of various fantasies. Among them is seeing Rachel Nichols kissing Mimi Rogers in a hot tub. All I can say is, if stars don't want vicious rumors to circulate about themselves they shouldn't do scenes like this. In any case, the result is a movie that I actually chuckled at a couple of times, mostly in the scene where Lloyd imagines himself marrying Harry's mother (Rogers), and thus becoming Lloyd's scolding step-father in about five seconds. But it must be said that most of the film isn't funny, and that's because the Farrelly's probably put as much of their wit into this movie as a bartender puts vermouth in a martini.
New Line does great, inventive discs. Unfortunately, the movies themselves are often not worth the effort. Still, for someone interested in movies as a whole, they offer fantastic insights into the filmmaking process.
In some cases the supplements here (as with SCARFACE?) is better than the movie itself. Certainly, the deleted scenes and the bloopers are funnier than the movie. One deleted scene is a priceless musical number starring of all people, Luis Guzman, who plays Harry's father.
Other deleted scenes are filled with near nudity, and there are two making-ofs and three audio commentary tracks, although two of them are jokes and end after only one chapter.
The 30 Per Cent Solution
THE SHERLOCK HOLMES COLLECTION, VOLUME ONE
Original Movie, SHERLOCK HOLMES AND THE VOICE OF TERROR:
- Theatrical premiere: 18 September, 1942
- Universal
- 65 minutes
- NR
- Directed by John Rawlins
- Credited writers: Robert D. Andrews, John Bright, Lynn Riggs
- Cast:Basil Rathbone (Sherlock Holmes), Nigel Bruce (Dr. John H. Watson), Evelyn Ankers (Kitty), Reginald Denny (Sir Evan Barham, Intelligence Inner Council/Heinrich von Bork, Nazi Agent), Henry Daniell (Sir Alfred Lloyd, Intelligence Inner Council), Montagu Love (Gen. Jerome Lawford, Intelligence Inner Council)
- Cinematography: Woody Bredell¹
- Editing: Russell Schoengarth
- Significant music: series theme music by Frank Skinner
- Awards: none
- Budget: NA
- Stated initial box office returns: NA
Plot in one sentence: The consulting detective is summoned to help the British government track down a Lord Ha-Ha-style radio broadcasting traitor.
Disc Stats:
- MPI Home Video
- $69.98
- Four single sided, dual layered discs
- Black and white
- Full frame transfer (1.33:1)
- Static, musical menu with 12-chapter scene selection
- Mono
- English subtitles
- Laser Disc: CBS-Fox released some LDs
- Previous DVD: none
- Region 1
- Street Date: 28 October, 2003
- Multi-DVD keep case
Extras:
- Audio commentary by Holmes scholar David Stuart Davies on the fourth of the four movies
- Animated stills and poster gallery
What a boon the 20th century was to actors. I would say that thespians benefited more from that horrible century than any other groups, more than scientists, generals, or industrialists.
In the 19th century, actors were a scurvy lot, disreputable, pretentious, and layabouts — not unlike rock musicians today. When a traveling troupe of actors came to town, you locked up your daughters, your sons, and your booze. There were a few practitioners of the actor's craft in London and France who took the profession serious, and there were many playwrights who did serious work, but for the most part acting was not something that was going to give you a career, money, or prestige.
Then movies came along. Suddenly, the products of an actor's craft could be mass produced. The burgeoning movie industry needed people to photograph. Actors suddenly became mass consumption products that everyone wanted to own (or be). With the advent of radio, and then television, the hunger for actors became even more intense. It is safe to say that there are more actors now than there has ever been in the history of mankind. To what ultimate purpose, only the aliens who will eventually inherit this planet some thousands or millions of years will be able to judge.
Such thoughts are evoked by seeing these four Sherlock Holmes movies in a nice package (the first of several) from MPI. As you witness these quickly produced Universal program fillers you wonder where the hell all these actors came from. There are thousands of them! Millions! You can't escape them! There are more actors than there are rats! Like cockroaches, they will survive the nuclear holocaust!
That being said, it should be noted that basil Rathbone was a superb Holmes. In theory, anyway. This series began at another studio and was taken on by Universal in order to use the Holmes character to proselytize on behalf of the war effort. Thus, Holmes fights spies and Nazis, and goes to Washington to save Britain, and finds Moriarty enlisted in the Nazi cause.
According to the discs, the public soon grew weary of this Holmes modernization, and Universal quickly backed off and returned Holmes to traditional ratiocination. Of this first quartet of Holmes films, only the first one is really any good. That's because it was directed by John Rawlins. The rest are directed by Roy William Neill, a truly terrible director with no story sense. The final three films in this set simply don't make any sense. Plus, while Holmes remains an attractive character, Nigel Bruce's Watson is presented as a buffoon, whom Holmes must always order to shut up. It's not very fun to watch. Also, the history of Holmes's hair in this series is worthy of a treatise.
For the record, the other three films on the disc are SHERLOCK HOLMES AND THE SECRET WEAPON from 1942, SHERLOCK HOLMES IN WASHINGTON from 1943, and SHERLOCK HOLMES FACES DEATH from 1943, which shows the death of the "modernization" experiment, and is based on the Doyle story, "The Musgrave Ritual."
The transfers are all excellent, highlighting the black and white film noir style of these films, and movies in general at the time. The supplements are not as extensive as the box would have you believe, consisting of one audio commentary by Holmes scholar David Stuart Davies on the fourth of the four movies, and an animated stills and poster gallery. Davies is informed and informative, and a delight to hear, with a thorough knowledge of Sherlockiana and the production histories of these films. He manages to pack a lot of info into the last film's short running time.
A Nightmare on Elm Street
THE TRIAL OF LEE HARVEY OSWALD
Original Movie:
- Theatrical premiere: 1964
- 98 minutes
- NR
- Distributor/Producer: Falcon International
- Directed by Larry Buchanan
- Credited writers: Larry Buchanan and Harry Hoffman
- Cast: George Russell (Defense Attorney), George Edgley (Presiding Judge), Arthur Nations (Prosecuting Attorney Atkins), Charles Mazyrack (Lee Harvey Oswald)
- Cinematography: James R. Davidson
- Editing: Larry Buchanan
- Awards: none
- Budget: NA
- Stated initial box office returns: NA
Plot in one sentence: In an imaginary universe, Lee Harvey Oswald is tried for the assassination of JFK in a Texas courthouse.
Disc Stats:
- Something Weird video, via Image Entertainment
- $19.99
- One single sided, dual layered disc
- Color and black and white
- Wide screen transfer (1.85:1), nonanamorphic
- Static, silent menu
- Laser Disc: none
- Previous DVD: none
- One sheet insert with chapter list
- Region 1
- Street Date: 11 November, 2003
- Keep case
Extras:
- Commentary tracks with director Larry Buchanan
- A host of trailers and short subjects from Something Weird
Just in time for the 40th anniversary of Kennedy's assassination, Larry Buchanan, the fascinating grindhouse auteur of rural Texas (MARS NEEDS WOMEN), releases his suppressed film about an imaginary legal reckoning of the reputed killer of JFK. I say "reputed" because thanks to the House Committed investigation into American assassinations in 1977 the official stance of the U.S. government is that there was indeed a conspiracy to eliminate JFK. Personally, I take the position of Willie O'Keefe (Kevin Bacon) in Stone's JFK, expressing outrage that the mediocre Oswald should get credit for something so extraordinary.
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Now that we can actually see OSWALD (the film, which was made in Dallas within a year of the assassination, was pulled from release, as far as I can tell from the vague audio track references to this situation, under pressure from some bigwigs who found the film in bad taste), TRIAL turns out to be a rather straightforward courtroom drama that takes place solely in the over-lit Dallas hall of justice where Oswald faces his accusers. "Faces" is actually not the operative word. The camera plays games with Oswald the physical presence. He is obscured by others or placed just off-frame, or shown in Leone-intense close-ups of his shifty eyes and mournful brow.
Meanwhile, a couple of hams who play Oswald's prosecutor and defense attorney chew up the scenery, leap to their feet to object, point out that one or the other is "leading" this or that witness, give summations that require much jowl shaking and eye-narrowing mugging, and in general both show the vast fund of legal knowledge that viewing several episodes of PERRY MASON can provide.
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Through a succession of some 18 witnesses the prosecution puts together the by now familiar sequence of events — Oswald leaving the Texas School Book Depository, Oswald getting on a bus, Oswald taking a cab, Oswald changing clothes, Oswald making his bloody way to a Texas movie theater, Oswald arrested in the auditorium decrying police brutality. Buchanan includes footage shot by his movie team, including images of Dealey Plaza in the aftermath of the gunfire, with cops fumbling with their motorcycles, as well as shots of Oswald shunted down the hallway of the Dallas police station. This is valuable historical footage, and Buchanan himself says, during the audio track, that someday the Dealey footage might be of interest to photo analysts looking for men with badges amid the foliage (you do see the Umbrella Man sitting on the curb).
Some of these performers in this film are so awkward they may well be real witnesses to the slayings, cajoled into relating their experiences on film (Buchanan liked to do this in his other films). There is something fascinating about the bad acting in this film. Like the poor thesping of major stars such as Gary Cooper or Chuck Norris, the bad acting actually gives the actor cachet with the viewer, who accepts him as authentic because of his very amateurishness. The acting here is a combo of carnie midway hustling, old time religion revivalism, and the feral discomfort of Nazis on display outside a concentration camp.
OSWALD ends on an ambiguous note, with the judge charging the jury (whom we never see, the jury being "us"), and the film concluding with a short talk by a prominent jurist of the day. We never find out if Oswald was convicted in this imaginary realm. Still, the movie does feel weighted toward conviction, if for no other reason than that the evidence as presented is fairly damning, though circumstantial. Also, the movie seems to take the stance that Oswald would have accepted an insanity defense. This seems unlikely given the fascinating, lengthy tape of Oswald on a New Orleans radio show offered in the movie itself, in which he comes across as an argumentative ideologue. Also, in this setting Oswald doesn't take the stand, as I believe the real Oswald would have. No, to see Oswald "on the sand," the viewer has to go to the supplements on the two-disc JFK DVD, which includes a deleted scene of Oldman as Oswald addressing the jury from a witness stand beyond the grave.
Also on the disc is THE OTHER SIDE OF BONNIE AND CLYDE, a quasi documentary made by Buchanan in the wake of the popularity of Beatty's BONNIE AND CLYDE. The "other side" turns out to be the law, and the film emphasizes the lawman who brought down the couple. The film also suggests that Clyde was gay, as it includes a photo of Clyde holding hands with one of his colleagues. It's an informative film, but made in that grainy 16mm style that you see in Christian documentaries and features about aliens making pyramids.
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The disc comes to us from Something Weird via Image Entertainment, and offers acceptable transfers with audible mono sound. The black and white OSWALD looks better than the grainy-colored BONNIE, and I am beginning to think that DVD technology works better with black and white films and color animation. Regular color movies seem to fluctuate a lot. In any case, the disc has an audio commentary track for each film. Buchanan talks a lot about the people he interviewed for BONNIE, and though he is a Warren supported in terms of OSWALD, he lays great hints about shadiness in the background of LBJ, making the auditor wonder what Buchanan would make of the recent Mac Wallace revelations. Buchanan also lays claim to knowing Jack Ruby, and that he shot one of his films in a club owned by Ruby.
The disc is also laden with numerous grindhouse movie trailers, all presumably available from Something Weird, and a few short subjects that capture the tenor of a "life of crime," the theme of the disc as broadcast on the box.
Crash
2 FAST 2 FURIOUS
Original Movie:
- Theatrical premiere: 3 June, 2003
- 107 minutes
- PG-13
- Distributed by Universal
- Directed by John Singleton
- Credited Writer: Michael Brandt, Derek Haasm, and Gary Scott Thompson
- Cast: Paul Walker (Brian O'Conner), Tyrese (Roman Pearce), Eva Mendes (Monica Fuentes), Cole Hauser (Carter Verone), Chris 'Ludacris' Bridges (Tej), Thom Barry (Agent Bilkins), James Remar (Agent Markham), Devon Aoki (Suki)
- Cinematography: Matthew F. Leonetti
- Editing: Bruce Cannon and Dallas Puett
- Significant music: David Arnold
- Awards: none
- Budget: $76 million
- Stated initial box office returns: $127 million
Plot in one sentence: The non-disgraced and former undercover cop returns to infiltrate the organization of a Miami based drug kingpin.
Disc Stats:
- Universal Home Entertainment
- $26.98
- One single sided, dual layered disc
- Color
- Wide screen transfer (2.35:1), enhanced for wide screen televisions
- Animated, musical menu with 19-chapter scene selection
- Dolby Digital 5.1 in English, French, and Spanish
- English, French, and Spanish subtitles
- Laser Disc: none
- Previous DVD: None
- Region 1
- Street Date: 30 September, 2003
- Keep case
Extras:
- Audio commentary with John Singleton
- "Inside 2 FAST 2 FURIOUS" (10:02)
- "Did You Know That?" animated anecdotes
- Deleted scenes (6:06)
- Outtakes (2:44)
- Supercharged stunts (5:28)
- Tricking out a hot import car (3:22)
- Brian's Car Exclusives: Spotlight on Paul Walker (2:18)
- Brian's Car Exclusives: The Ride (4:13)
- Brian's Car Exclusives: Driving School (2:46)
- Roman 's Car Exclusives: Spotlight on Tyrese (2:16)
- Roman 's Car Exclusives: The Ride (2:37)
- Roman 's Car Exclusives: Driving School (2:07)
- Suki's Car Exclusives: Spotlight on Devon Aoki (2:23)
- Suki's Car Exclusives: The Ride (2:26)
- Suki's Car Exclusives: Driving School with Devon (1:48)
- Making Music with Ludacris (4:59)
- Video game preview (1:19)
- Cast and crew info
- DVD-ROM features
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I'm not going to argue that 2 FAST 2 FURIOUS is a better film than its predecessor. After all, it doesn't have Vin Diesel. As a matter of fact, no film seems to have Vin Diesel, including the sequel to his own xXx. But I will argue that 2 FAST is at least as enjoyable as the first, if all you want out of a film is fast cars and girls.
Frankly, I don't think that the first film was really all that good. The street culture just didn't seem plausible to me. It lacked verisimilitude. Also, it was derivative of numerous films of its type from the '50s and later. Its only selling point was the great stunt work, and its (supposed) star-making turn with Diesel.
2 FAST is not better, but it is no worse. The strategy of the filmmakers, including John Singleton (who used to be an important director) is to adopt a kind of BAD BOYS/48 HOURS dichotomy. This strategy actually works here, because the film is not so much about a guy going underground and facing danger from really scary customers. Instead it is about two guys overcoming their resentments to form an alliance. And it's about the car chases.
If there is something of a poverty of imagination about the car scenes in 2 FAST that's probably due to the fact that Singleton didn't really know anything about car culture, as is made clear from the supplements. At a certain point he probably abrogated all authority about the cars to the second unit, and just concentrated on the guys and chicks. Everyone on the supplements goes out of their way to emphasize how tough, stern, and demanding Singleton was on the set, but these claims are belied by the very fact that he wasn't in total command of this movie.
For being an aesthetically modest summer drive in movie, the film is treated on the disc as if it were JURASSIC PARK. This is a very supplements heavy disc, material that takes twice as long to watch as the movie itself. A film student might get a lot out of this material if they watch it discerningly. But for anyone else to watch all this they need to really, really, really love 2 FAST 2 FURIOUS.
Among the wealth of materials are shots of all the stars taking driving lessons. We are also shown how to trick out a car, profiles of all cast, even the secondary characters, who on treated in the supplements as if they were major players but who in the reality of the film have maybe 15 minutes of screen time.
Still, despite all that, there is something about the movie that tugs at you. I think it is hope. Even the most acerbic critic wants to watch a good movie, sometime, somewhere. Often reviewers see in movies the movie they want to exist, rather than the one the filmmakers were able to create in the face of budgetary and other constraints. 2 FAST is no masterpiece but it has modest virtues of congeniality and speed.
Blonde on Blonde
LEGALLY BLONDE 2: RED WHITE AND BLONDE
Original Movie:
- Theatrical premiere: 2 July, 2003
- 95 minutes
- PG-13
- MGM
- Directed by Charles Herman-Wurmfeld
- Credited Writers: Amanda Brown, Eve Ahlert, Dennis Drake, Kate Kondell
- Cast: Reese Witherspoon (Elle Woods), Sally Field (Rep. Victoria Rudd), Regina King (Grace Rossiter), Jennifer Coolidge (Paulette), Bruce McGill (Stanford Marks), Dana Ivey (Congresswoman Libby Hauser), Bob Newhart (Sid Post), Luke Wilson (Emmett Richmond), James Urbaniak (Lab Technician)
- Cinematography: Elliot Davis
- Editing: Peter Teschner
- Significant music: Rolfe Kent
- Awards: none
- Budget: $45 million
- Stated initial box office returns: $89 million
Plot in one sentence: Elle Woods discovers that the fashion industry is based upon animal torture, and, after being fired by her firm, moves to Washington, D.C., to lobby against animal testing.
Disc Stats:
- MGM Home Entertainment
- $27.95
- One single sided, dual layered disc
- Color
- Wide screen transfer (1.85:1) enhanced for wide screen televisions
- Animated, musical menu with 32-chapter scene selection
- Dolby Digital 5.1; French and Spanish Surround
- English, French, and Spanish subtitles
- Laser Disc: none
- Previous DVD: None
- Region 1
- Street Date: 4 November, 2003
- Keep case
Extras:
- Cast audio commentary, with Jennifer Coolidge, Jessica Cauffiel, and Alanna Ubach
- Making of (22:25)
- Seven deleted scenes: Original opening, Elle prepares to go to Washington, In the tunnels beneath Washington, Elle gets into political shape, Political horse trading, Elle inspires people across the country, The Snap Cup Song
- Gag reel (2:39)
- "We Can" music video with LeAnn Rimes (3:39)
- Interactive quiz
- Photo gallery (38 screens)
- Theatrical trailer, and two other spots
There is a funny story in the NEW YORKER for October 20. It's a profile of Jaime Pressly, the sexy yet struggling Hollywood starlet. Writer Rebecca Mead follows the actress around as she yells at her agents and tries to attend auditions. In the course of the day, Pressly often cites two competing actresses as benchmarks: Britney Murphy and Reese Witherspoon.
What's funny about Witherspoon's screen persona is that she often plays ambitious characters who would be exactly like the grasping Pressly if they were real instead of characters in a crowd-pleasing comedy. LEGALLY BLONDE is in a sense a softening of the HEATHERS template.
In case you don't know, in this sequel Elle Woods, who balances an interest in the law with a thorough knowledge of the various fashion houses, ends up fired from her law firm and ends up in Washington, D.C., as an aide to a senator (Sally Fields) whom she hopes will help pass legislation banning animal testing. Whenever a problem comes up, Elle draws upon her real knowledge people and their vanity in order to effect change. In a sense Elle's is a twist on Mrs. Marple, who used her knowledge of village life to solve the great murder mysteries around her.
It's a movie that really rides on the charm of its lead star, and basically here, unlike the first film, there is only the charm of the star to carry the film. If anything, this movie is even uglier to look at than the first, and Luke Wilson has even less to do. As the tale lurches to its predictable finale, you wish that the filmmakers had believed in the subject matter as much as the first film's fans did.
For those who love the second film as much as the first there is an abundance of supplemental material, from a gab fest with three of the film's actresses, numerous deleted scenes, a making of, a gag reel, and the film's music video.
The Night Comers
WIDE SARGASSO SEA
Original Movie:
- Premiere: 16 April, 1993
- 98 minutes
- NC-17
- Distributed by New Line
- Directed by John Duigan
- Credited Writers: Carole Angier, John Duigan, and Jan Sharp, from the novel by Jean Rhys
- Cast: Karina Lombard (Antoinette Cosway), Nathaniel Parker (Edward Rochester), Rachel Ward (Annette Cosway), Michael York (Paul Mason), Martine Beswick (Aunt Cora), Claudia Robinson (Christophene), Casey Berna (Young Antoinette), Rowena King (Amelie), Naomi Watts (Fanny Grey)
- Cinematography: Geoff Burton
- Editing: Anne Goursaud and Jimmy Sandoval
- Significant music: Stewart Copeland, Briccialdi (song "Andante"), Joseph Haydn's "Quartet, Opus 64. No.5 Minuet", and Franz Schubert's "Quartet"
- Awards: none
- Budget: NA
- Stated initial box office returns: $1.6 million
Plot in one sentence: A prequel to JANE EYRE, telling the story of the events around Rochester's marriage before returning to England.
Disc Stats:
- New Line Home Entertainment
- $19.98
- One single sided, dual layered disc
- Color
- Widescreen transfer (1.35:1) enhanced for widescreen televisions, in both R and NC-17 versions
- Animated, musical menu with 23-chapter scene selection
- Dolby Digital 5.1 Surround, DTS Surround, 2.0
- English subtitles and closed captions
- Laser Disc: none
- Previous DVD: none
- Region 1
- Street Date: 4 November, 2003
- Keep case
Extras:
- Theatrical trailer (2:39)
- DVD-ROM features
- One sheet insert with chapter list
John Duigan is known mostly for his coming of age films such as THE YEAR MY VOICE BROKE and FLIRTING, this last with a young Nicole Kidman, whose career Duigan helped found in the Australian TV mini-series VIETNAM. In an unusual move that presaged an expansion of Duigan's interests, the director next chose to adapt Jean Rhys's "prequel" to JANE EYRE, published by Rhys in the '60s, a book that anticipated a trend in the 1990s of prequels, co-quels, and sequels to popular novels, among them new takes on GONE WITH THE WIND and DR. JEKYLL AND MR. HYDE. Rhys's book recounts the incidents back in Jamaica that provide the backstory to Rochester's troubled adulthood. Rhys takes the female perspective on these events, however, and tells the story through Rochester's wife Antoinette.
Like the book, the film is also told from the perspective of Antoinette (first Casey Berna as the young Antoinette, then Karina Lombard as the adult). Antoinette is fated to experience much the same marital situation as her mother, Annette Cosway (Rachel Ward), i.e., to marry an Englishman (Michael York in Annette's case), become estranged from him, and then have her palatial home burn down. In Antoinette's case it is Edward Rochester (Nathaniel Parker) who comes to wed her in an arranged marriage, her dowry being the prize he needs to keep going in the intricate family hierarchies of English society. So smitten is he with her beauty, however, that he faints dead away upon first eying her, showing that his mercenary necessities can be transcended by his lust.
The middle section of WIDE, the best part as it shows the early days of their marriage. But, as all happy marriages in movies must, it turns bad, partially under the influence of a trickster who sends the Rochester anonymous letters about the background of his wife, and partially by the hostility (not especially clearly related) of the indigenous peoples. Also as usual, the forthcoming troubles in their marriage are somewhat contrived, and there is a bitter irony that occurs when hub comes back home from a party with a rejuvenated sense of commitment to the union, only to find his wife even more proud and entrenched, all based on a vague misunderstanding.
From there on things go from bad to worse, as Rochester bangs one of his wife's plantation enemies right in front of her, and Antoinette soon descends into "madness." The premise of her madness is, of course, that society is defining her thus, not that she really is crazy in the conventional sense. In a post-script to the story, found in the movie but not in the source novel, we see her in the full glory of this now real madness, destroying the Rochester ancestral home.
There is a big problem with prequel style stories. On a purely narrative level, we know what's going to happen. Therefore, the events have a fated, immovable quality that they wouldn't have in a story not already set in stone. Worse, there is actually no reason to see the prequel if you have already done the source. In any case, if Bronte wanted to tell us what happened back in Jamaica she would have. As it happens, prequelitis is mostly used to "correct" the perceived political horrors of hoary old items on the required reading list, a revisionism in transit which, happily, most average viewers have no interest in. In any case, WIDE is even kind of tedious within its small narrative confines. The film is about the evils of eavesdropping. Almost every character at one point or another walks up to a room only to hear himself discussed frankly by the people already there. This trick gets old fast, and in fact, doesn't even say anything interesting about the characters or their situations.
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WIDE is "famous" for being released as one of the few NC-17 movies, a rating that now almost all Hollywood shuns.
In 1991, under the influence of Universal and the proselytizing of Siskel and Ebert, NC-17 was invented to take over from the X rating, which had come to be associated with hard core movies. Several web sites and film trivia books list HENRY AND JUNE as the first NC-17 film, though because the early history of the rating is ambiguous, it may well be that Peter Greenaway's THE COOK, THE THIEF, HIS WIFE, AND HER LOVER is actually the first NC-17 film (some viewers, especially in the Southwest, note that COOK was released there before HENRY AND JUNE). Unfortunately, newspapers still wouldn't run ads for these movies because the NC-17 rating couldn't shake the X "stigma" within the middle brow minds that run papers. There were also problems at chain rental stores. The IMDB lists 129 movies with an NC-17 rating.
Still, despite the promise of some hot sex scenes, is WIDE SARGASSO SEA really worth all the bother? WIDE has a slow beginning and a devolving end, but the middle is good, from the time Antoinette and Rochester get married to the first fissures in their union. The sex scenes per se are only interesting because real live actors had to be present for them. Films at the source of controversy rarely live up to the hubbub that arises around them.
New Line provides a fine transfer of the film with OK sound, and no supplements aside from a bunch of New Line trailers. The film is offered in both its R and its NC-17 versions, which amounts to a difference of about two minutes, and consists of explicit if privates-obscured humping.
By the way, Karina Lombard also played the seductress on the beach in THE FIRM. Also, Naomi Watts is in the film somewhere, but I couldn't detect her, though I wanted to.
Hell is Other Toons
COOL WORLD
Original Movie:
- Theatrical premiere: 12 July, 1992
- 102 minutes
- PG-13
- Studio/distributor: Paramount
- Directed by Ralph Bakshi
- Credited writers: Michael Grais and Mark Victor
- Cast: Kim Basinger (Holli Would), Gabriel Byrne (Jack Deebs), Brad Pitt (Detective Frank Harris), Frank Sinatra Jr.
- Cinematography: John A. Alonzo
- Editing: Steve Mirkovich and Annamaria Szanto
- Significant music: Moby, Brian Eno and others
- Awards: two noms, including a Razzi
- Budget: NA
- Stated initial box office returns: $14.1 million
Plot in one sentence: A comic book artist is lured into his illustrated world.
Disc Stats:
- Paramount DVD
- $14.99
- One single sided, single layered disc
- Color
- Wide screen transfer (1.85:1) enhanced for wide screen televisions (it was shot 1.37:1)
- Animated, musical menu with 15-chapter scene selection
- Dolby Digital 5.1, DD 2.0 Surround in English and French
- English subtitles, and closed captioning
- Laser Disc: 1993
- Previous DVD: none
- Region 1
- Street Date: 11 November, 2003
- Keep case
Extras:
- One sheet insert with chapter list
I was on the verge of softening my adult antipathy to animated films. Then I saw COOL WORLD.
Made by Ralph Bakshi after the success of his R. Crumb adaptation and the failure of his ambitious LORD OF THE RINGS project, COOL WORLD is a film that shows a lot of similarity to WHO FRAMED ROGER RABBIT, released four years earlier. There is a general sense of weariness and lack of imagination to COOL WORLD, which feels like it is covering old ground by blending noir and cartoons, and live action with animation.
The style of the cartoon itself is derived from Wally Wood, Tex Avery, Milton Caniff, and Al Capp, as it tells of a popular comic book artist (Gabriel Byrne) who survived prison because of his cartooning skill. He is pulled into his comic book world by the femme fatale (Kim Basinger) he has created. Meanwhile, a recent war vet (Brad Pitt), is also drawn into this world, where he becomes a private eye and falls into love with a "doodle." As in THE LAST ACTION HERO, fake and real worlds intersect disastrously at the "suspenseful" conclusion.
The film seems to exist to convey the fact that Basinger is a sex pot. I like to see women writhe on pianos as much as the next guy, but even I was embarrassed by how stupid Basinger's character is suppose to be.
The disc looks good. But then animation almost always looks good on DVD. The disc comes with no extras. Perhaps no one wanted to have to explain themselves.
DVD QUOTE OF THE WEEK: David Desser: "Ozu's penchant for the tatami eye view has a number of explanations. To some people it reflects the most typical situation in which a Japanese would sit in the traditional house, sitting on tatami looking out. In fact, Ozu's angle is a little bit lower than that. It's a few inches off the ground, not the three feet off the ground that such a person would be sitting at. I think Ozu likes the angle so he can take in the entire scene. People sitting. People standing. People coming. People going. It's a pleasing composition, but it also allows his characters to remain in full frame. So I think it's a compositional element, and not a symbolic one, not a religious one, but rather a formal one.'" —Japanese film scholar David Desser on Ozu's unusual camera framing in TOKYO STORY and his other films.
NEXT TIME: KING OF THE HILL, NAKED LUNCH, LARA CROFT TOMB RAIDER, and more!
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