[nota bene: The following column, by necessity, contains some spoilers! If you don't want to know the ending of the movies mentioned, don't read on!]
Monday, 20 September, 2004
Listen Up
Every Sunday night I go over to my friend Helaine Garren's house. She has HBO and I don't. With a mostly rotating bunch of friends we watch whatever HBO shows happen to be going on. We slogged through DEADWOOD. I snoozed through CARNIVALE. Gradually I came to like or at least appreciate aspects of SIX FEET UNDER in addition to Claire. The whole Sunday night ritual began, as it did for millions of others, with THE SOPRANOS. But the show we've all come to love the most is THE WIRE.
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I feel I can state unequivocally that THE WIRE is the best dramatic series on television. Creator David Simon and his writers view it not as a show but as one big story chopped up into 13 parts. It pits good cops against bad drug traffickers, but shows that the good guys and girls aren't all that simple and that the bad guys are human beings, too. I've seen the first two seasons about three times each, and yet through all these viewings I never knew most of the actors' names, and in some cases didn't even know the names of some characters. Instead the storyline and the characters entranced me. If nothing else, it's the most realistic drama on TV.
Yet the show doesn't seem to accrue much media attention. There don't appear to be any fan sites. It's not recapped by TelevisionWithoutPity.com. The Emmys ignore it. Reviewers rarely talk about it (although there was a rave in last week's ENTERTAINMENT WEEKLY).
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The third season of THE WIRE started up Sunday, and now there is purpose and meaning to my life, at least for the next three months. However, I hate to say it but maybe my expectations were too high. The episode seemed kind of flat for a season opener. There also seemed to be unexplained gaps between the end of the last show and the beginning of this season, crucial things happened that are mentioned in passing, such as how the task force of cops managed to stay together after the conclusion of the second season. Nevertheless, I'll stick with it (and even buy Simon's book about the making of the show, THE WIRE: TRUTH BE TOLD), because if THE WIRE is notable for anything it's the intricacy with which it builds up its narrative effects. After this opening 60 minutes of throat clearing, the show will probably settle down and do what it does best, mingle the lives of cops, crooks, and politicians in a web of regret and power.
Wednesday, 22 September, 2004
Cartoon Casanova: Russ Meyer Dead at 82!
Good things come in threes, though I suppose that Russ Meyer would argue that they come in pairs. In the course of my life I've had three encounters with Russ Meyer, whose death was announced Wednesday, September 22. Each encounter was one of diminishing returns as Meyer himself aged and became the crusty, somewhat tired grand old man of skin flicks.
I met Meyer on April 25 1979, when he came to Portland, Oregon, to promote his then latest film, BENEATH THE VALLEY OF THE ULTRA-VIXENS. A local publicist set up an interview and the text ran later that year in CINEMONKEY the short-lived magazine run by me and partners Carl Bennett and Chuck Johnson. The publicist himself and another reviewer also joined in during an hour long chat in the lobby of the Benson Hotel, notable for being at one time the location where Richard Nixon "wrote" the Checkers speech.
Meyer was affable and reveled in the attention from a bunch of film geeks who were taking him seriously. He only laughed at us once, when I likened him to Richard Lester. I don't know why that cracked him up, because their fractured editing styles are similar. Be that as it may, Meyer was a gracious interview, and I like to think that we asked him questions he hadn't heard before.
Meyer was a tall slightly pear-shaped guy with a bristly mustache and an aura of Old Spice about him. There was something still very '50s about him, the kind of manly guy who looks forward to reunions with his former fellow enlisted men. But Meyer wasn't alone. He brought along the star of ULTRA-VIXENS, Kitten Natividad. She was about five feet tall and about eight feet deep. LOOKING FOR MR. GOODBAR had just come out and she mentioned that she knew its director Richard Brooks well. Naturally the first thing you think when a sex star tells you she knows a famous personage is "Oh yeah? How well?"
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Meyer was barnstorming the country, going from one burg to another in the tradition of Hershel Gordon Lewis and Lawrence Woolsey, with Kitten in hand, who flashed her tits to the local reviewers as a form of harmless bribe. In fact, one local reviewer, a kind of verbose droning Paul Lynde type, got the full effect of Kitten's armature. He happened to be sitting in the aisle seat that she pinpointed for special attention during the pre-game show when Meyer brought her out on stage at the critics' special screening. She did a dance, then jiggled down the aisle, stopped at his chair, sat in his lap, and smothered his broad, flat face with her tits. The whole experience must have lasted for about three seconds but the guy dined out on the moment for decades, telling anyone who would listen that Kitten Natividad had "cleaned my glasses with her bosoms." In fact, he even told people who made it quite clear they wouldn't listen, because they had already heard the story 15 times. With movie reviewers you can never be sure whether or not such an experience is the first time they've had sex.
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As a side note, I tried to position a friend of mine who is a devout breast man into a similar aisle seat when I took him to a later public advance screening at the then cavernous Baghdad Theater. Knowing that Russ would introduce Kitten, who would then do a jig before heading down the aisle, I sat us down at just the point I thought she might descend upon an unsuspecting but potentially grateful victim. I was off by one row. Instead, she pressed her flesh into the face of the gay guy sitting right in front of my friend. Her tits were so big she could have cleaned my friend's glasses from there, too; Kitten's boobs tended to enter a room about two minutes before the rest of her.
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Anyway, the second time I met Meyer was November 4, 1988, when he came to town again to appear as an honored guest at a mini-retrospective of his work at the Cinema 21 in Northwest Portland. A friend of mine, now known as Cindy Mason, got it into her head that, since she and her husband lived only a few blocks away from the Cinema 21, why not invited Russ over for a pre-screening cocktail party? She approached the operator of the Cinema 21, a great and conscientious fellow named Tom Ranieri, a truly noble and moral man in a business that is a viper's nest of subterfuge and betrayal. Tom in turned called Meyer, who said, Sure, why not?
Thus were planted the seeds for one of the craziest nights I've ever lived through. Cindy and her husband Zorn Matson lived in a beautiful apartment reposing in a verdure rich building within strolling distance of the theater. Planning for the event took weeks. There was a menu to create; a guest list to assemble; special dietary or beverage wishes of the guest to be honored.
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There was so much activity, excitement, nervousness, and apprehension in the air, and so much consumption on the night of the event in question, that I recall very little of it now. Brief vignettes rise to the surface. One is that when he arrived Meyer looked like an Arizona businessman, in a blazer and red sweater; as Cindy said, he looked like someone's dad. Another was that all the women appeared to be afraid of him. Cindy invited many more females than arrived, and those who attended chose clothes to accentuate their gams — cocktail ensembles and little back dresses — as if Russ were a leg man (!). Those who shied away appear to have been worried that Meyer would shanghai them into a world of cinematic slavery. And I recall that a few of us finally approached the Maestro and chatted him up. After bitterly complaining of the pectoral deficiencies of Portland women, Meyer pulled out his wallet and showed us a photo of his latest girlfriend, whose bust size, as my colleague M. E. Russell quipped, was about the same as his eventual death age.
The rest of the evening is also a blur, except that I snapped an excellent photo of Meyer as he walked into the lobby of the theater, and that the crowd welcomed him with unironic enthusiasm. I wrote about the whole event for a local paper, and elicited more hate mail than usual.
My last contact with Russ Meyer came around 1991. I was working at a local "alternative" weekly, and one day when I was paged I picked up the phone only to hear a voice at the other end say, "Hello, this is Russ Meyer." I didn't believe him. I thought it was a joke, just the way they do in movies when a prominent person rings up a member of the civilian classes out of the blue and the recipient thinks it's a friend ribbing him. Meyer was audibly miffed at me for thinking him a prankster. But in a few seconds I knew he was legit because he was asking reprint rights for our CINEMONKEY interview of long before for inclusion in his forthcoming autobiography. I gladly supplied the permission, but he evoked a tear-inducing revenge for my suspicious nature: he didn't include quotes from our interview in his book! (At least not as far as I have been able to find.)
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It's probably a little too early to talk about Meyer's legacy. For one thing, you don't see a lot of Meyer disciples in cinema, filmmakers who embrace either his physical standards or his editing style. He may remain sui generis for all eternity. But he passed away at an awkward time. His films were starting to bleed into the DVD market. His self-published three-volume autobiography, A CLEAN BREAST!, is a hard to find collector's item that still garners attention. Jimmy McDonough, who has already done books on Andy Milligan and Neil Young, is apparently writing a biography of the man. And Meyer was even the subject of a recently published critical study, LIPS HIP TITS POWER: THE FILMS OF RUSS MEYER, from Creation Books ($17.95; ISBN 1 84068 095 4), an unabashed paean that takes Meyer seriously as an artist (I'm not mentioned in that one, either!). In fact, were it not for Cocktail Nation, a generation embracing the culture and leisure habits of their grandparents, Meyer might have languished further. Cocktail Nation took up Meyer along with Tiki bars, VIP cartoons, and easy listening music. In fact, I feel as if I was there at the creation of Cocktail Nation.
A couple of years before Meyer's visit, the film club at one of the local universities mounted a showing of FASTER PUSSYCAT! KILL! KILL!, and I wrote a little announcement about it in my newspaper's calendar section, quoting John Waters and the usual Meyer adulators. Neither the organizers nor I were prepared for the response. The huge auditorium on campus was packed, turning away business, and during the film the audience easily got into the spirit of the thing. Something had changed in America. It wasn't that feminism had died; it was more that a new generation had shed the presumptions of what made art, entertainment, and sex in order to explore both new and old avenues.
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With his mustache and twinkling eyes, Meyer looked a little like Walt Disney. They also happened to be the aesthetic polarities of the late '50s and early '60s, the avuncular mental babysitter versus a Charon ferrying acolytes across the river Sex. Like Marlon Brando versus Doris Day or Elvis versus Pat Boone in the '50s, they accounted for the weird and incoherent tension in an America experiencing a difficult transition. And they both made cartoons. Disney's impossible physics and bodily exaggerations were no match for Meyer's, which were proffered in the real world. Meyer unearthed what Disney attempted to bury, the roiling sexual subtext and supertext to everything in the culture. The happy domestic situations and nuclear families that Disney reassuringly celebrated Meyer exposed as decrepit lies masking non-stop lustfulness.
Meyer was a pioneer but he has no true followers because the market he created has become an industry unto itself with its own commercial imperatives. If there is going to be another visionary like Meyer it won't be in film, but in video games, or web communication, or some narrative-enhancing technology as yet unpublicized.
Friday, 24 September, 2004
DVD Catch-up
OK, so I spent the last three months writing two books. Both are on Tarantino and together amounted to 135 thousand words. The two books should be out later this year, but the immediate consequence is that I didn't see many movies during that time, and got really behind in my DVDs. So, apologies to all the readers who care and the publicists who live or die on URLs as I attempt to play catch-up this week.
Treasure Trove
MORE TREASURES FROM AMERICAN FILM ARCHIVES
You don't know anything about movies. You think you do, but you don't. You may be a master of the minutia concerning STAR WARS and THE MATRIX, you may be an authority on John Williams or Rick Baker, but you really, really don't know all that much about movies.
I'm the same way, as I came to learn from this three disc set that gathers together almost 60 pieces of film from American film history, including two features, several early short films, numerous "industrial" films and promotional works of all kinds, animated shorts, and newsreels. In other words, there is a whole swath of American film history that I (and probably you) know nothing about, historically, technically, and commercially. As a whole, the set is a revelation, both because many of the films are much more sophisticated than you would expect, and because they are eminently enjoyable on their own despite their age.
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Take the first of the two features, CLASH OF THE WOLVES from 1925, a Rin Tin Tin movie. Like Trigger in the William Witney - Roy Rogers films, Rin Tin Tin proves to be an adept and engaging performer and his reputation is clearly no joke. This film is eminently enjoyable and is probably, as they say, fun for the whole family, despite the fact that it is silent. CLASH OF THE WOLVES also turns out to be the first Rin Tin Tin movie available on DVD, so just on that score the set is a must have.
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But it doesn't stop there. Disc one has a short film featuring Annie Oakley, an early version of THE WIZARD OF OZ, an interesting episode from an on going serial with a plucky heroine, and one of the first cavalry films, which stars Francis Ford (older brother of John Ford), may have been directed by him, and has a scene that foreshadows a similar moment that the John Ford later used in STAGECOACH. There is also a newsreel featuring a surprisingly nervous seeming and inept George Bernard Shaw, one of my culture heroes and the only man (so far) to win both an Oscar and the Nobel Prize.
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The set is a "sequel" to the earlier four-disc set called TREASURES FROM AMERICAN FILM ARCHIVES, which came out in 2000. Like the first set, MORE TREASURES is curated by film scholar Scott Simmon (author of a fantastic book on early westerns) from numerous institutions, and once again he writes an enjoyable, detailed book that explains the programs. Disc 2 includes some polemical work, the only surviving reel from a rare Asian American production, and early sound film, one whole and complete Hearst newsreel (apparently a rarity), and a "city symphony" by Jay Leyda. Disc three includes LIFE OF AN AMERICAN FIREMAN, the Ernst Lubitsch feature based on Oscar Wilde's play LADY WINDERMERE'S FAN, and trailers for six films now otherwise lost, including an early version of THE GREAT GATSBY. Many of the films have audio commentary tracks by a wide assortment of interesting specialists, and all the silent films have musical accompaniments organized by MIT's Martin Marks, most of the tunes carefully derived from actual scores used in movies at the time.
I can't praise this set enough. It's one of the most exciting DVDS I've seen so far this year, because it opens up a whole world that was lying there dormant to me. In his notes, Simmon remarks about a clip of Mussolini on the second disc "newsreels can have chilling retrospective power." The same can be said of all the films on this whole set. MORE TREASURES FROM AMERICAN FILM ARCHIVES is available from Image in an all-region edition, was released on September 7, and retails fro $79.95.
That Girl Again
MEAN GIRLS
My views on this top notch Lindsay Lohan vehicle from the bowels of the SATURDAY NIGHT LIVE team (one of the few truly good SNL cinematic efforts) are well known and you can visit my review of the theatrical release if you care. Here I'll concentrate on the supplements to the disc, which came out Tuesday, September 21, and retails for $29.95.
It's a packed disc. The making of material itself is extensive and though, yes, it is the usual pabulum about how fun everyone was to work with (oh, come on, we're talking about mean girls, right?!), there is the occasional insightful comment, especially from writer Tina Fey, who went to adapt a book about high school who to have to confront the fact that it was a non-fiction sociological study.
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There is also a commentary track with Fey, producer Lorne Michaels, and director Mark Waters. The writer and director laugh perhaps a tad too hard at Michaels's non-jokes, but you do learn a thing or two, such as that Waters had Rachel McAdams, who plays main mean girl Regina, to watch GLENGARRY GLEN ROSS and study Alec Baldwin's cameo as a role model. There are also nine deleted scenes with optional commentary, and as usual these scenes could just as easily be left in the film or integrated into the DVD version of the movie with no problem. One of the scenes also happens to show what a fabulous pair of gams Lohan sports.
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There is a five-minute outtakes reel with people making the usual faces at the camera. You do happen to notice this time though how much the male lead looks like a young Sam Donaldson. Usually gag reels have no actual gags in them, but this one ends with a witticism by co-star Daniel Franzese that not only is legitimately funny but also induces in Lohan a fantastic spit take.
In addition, there is the theatrical trailer, some trailers for other Paramount releases, and what appears to be three TV spot teasers, and three teasers, that seem to be better photographed than the movie itself, and which make all the stars, especially Lohan, even more ravishingly beautiful.
Finally there are three makings of that can be viewed as one. "Only the Strong Survive" is a straightforward, 24-minute account of the movie. The 10 minute "The Politics of Girl World" consists mostly of an interview with Rosalind Wiseman, who wrote the book from which Fey adapted the script. And there is "Plastic Fashion," a 10-minute profile of costume designer Mary Jane Fort, in which she explains, among many other things, how she came up with the sexy Santa costumes for the girls.
Porn Fiction
THE GIRL NEXT DOOR: UNRATED VERSION
Don't get too excited about this unrated version of the underrated teen comedy about a guy who learns that the chick who just moved in next door is a former porn star. At most there is about 25 seconds of dirty stuff, images of a smut movie that one of the characters is watching and a few seconds of "thrusting" from star Elisha Cuthbert.
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But don't pick up this disc for the dirty parts. Pick it up because it is one of the best films from last year and definitely going on my 10-best list. My colleague M. E. Russell of the Portland OREGONIAN summarized one of the movie's many pleasures with this tone poem in praise of the film's villain: "Speaking of which: It's time for a mini-rave about [Timothy] Olyphant's portrayal of Kelly, the two-bit porn producer. It's the year's biggest supporting-actor surprise. Olyphant hasn't had the greatest run as an actor — poor fella had a part in DREAMCATCHER — but in THE GIRL NEXT DOOR he suddenly explodes into an insane combination of a young Bill Paxton and Johnny Knoxville, only with better acting chops. He's a total smarm bomb, lying, flattering and thieving his way through the film — and yet you kind of like him, even as he pits people against each other and makes fun of Matthew by pretending to be really interested in the kid's sheltered life. You can never tell if he's going to clap the trusting geek on the back or stick a shiv in him. There's a virtuoso scene where Kelly royally messes with Matthew's head as they sit in a convertible — within the space of a minute, he takes Matthew into his confidence, gives him advice, sexually threatens him, smacks him upside the head, doses him with Ecstasy and talks him into breaking into a house." You can read the rest of Russell's review here.
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Fox's disc of THE GIRL NEXT DOOR comes with a sharp widescreen transfer (1.85:1 enhanced) with Dolby Digital 5.1 audio. The two-sided disc has supplements on both flaps, with Side A notable for a interesting and confessional commentary from director Luke Greenfield and a pop-up trivia track that is truly trivial — few of the tidbits have anything actually to do with the movie. Greenfield starts off his track by announcing that his lawyers have instructed him in what not to say, and one can only assume that means either any references to the title character's possible inspiration in Tracy Lords, and suggestion that she might have been underage back when the character was making the porno movies she is famous for.
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The second side is all features, with scene-specific commentaries from Emile Hirsch, whose character, by the way, seems based on Richard Dreyfuss in AMERICAN GRAFFITI, and Elisha Cuthbert. Their tracks are at odds with each other. Hirsch scoffs at the idea in one scene that anyone could pick up underwear from a moving car, while Cuthbert reveals that she actually did that stunt. The rest of the features consist of a 10-minute making of called "A Look Next Door," a mocumentary called "The Eli Experience," featuring co-star Chris Marquette at the Adult Video News Awards in Las Vegas in character (like all the co-stars in this film, he looks like Cameron Crowe), 16 deleted or extended scenes with an optional commentary, a three-minute gag reel, some stills, and trailers. THE GIRL NEXT DOOR: UNRATED VERSION hit the street on August 24, and retails for $27.95.
Shoe Horned
THE MAN WITH ONE RED SHOE
I don't think that people in my social set hate Tom Hanks as much as they hate Tom Cruise, whom I am always defending to them, but now that Hanks is super-successful the actor and comedian seems to have provoked a similar level of disdain. But he is really good, and really funny. From THE MONEY PIT to THE LADYKILLERS, Hanks has been hilarious, studiously so in fact, with occasional forays into serious acting.
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THE MAN WITH ONE RED SHOE, a remake of a French film, was Hanks's fourth feature, probably conceived just before he made a splash with SPLASH. To that end, its maker cast Lori Singer as a sort of sub-Daryl Hannah. But if you thought that Hannah couldn't act, you would be even more appalled at Singer, whose thespian skills don't even attain the level of an Ali MacGraw. Her line readings have virtually no conviction. No one else in the film is any good, either, as it tells a story of a feud between two CIA agents in which the hapless and mostly unaware Hanks, a violinist, gets caught in the middle.
Directed by Stan Dragoti, RED SHOE is one of the worst films ever made. There is a scene between Charles Durning and his underling, played by Edward Herrmann, that is the most poorly written, poorly acted bit of film footage I have ever witnessed, and I wondered what the poor actors thought of the shit they were spouting. Dabney Coleman acts like a prototype of O'Reilly, Jim Belushi and Carrie Fisher are witlessly over the top, and the bulky, soft, pastel fashions make everyone look like a mime.
Yet Hanks is a rock at the center of this mess. He manages to maintain his dignity while everyone else is sabotaging their careers. He's a real castaway here, along on his own in a sea of mediocrity. If you want to witness the banality, THE MAN WITH ONE RED SHOE hit the streets on September 21, and retails for $14.95.
Lost in Translation
JAPANESE STORY
Viewers might be thinking of picking up this award winning Australian film because it looks like it might be another SHALL WE DANCE or LOST IN TRANSLATION. But in fact it is a tearjerker written and directed by two TV soap opera veterans and has in Toni Collette the perfect tear mop and drudge. JAPANESE STORY may be a tearjerker with a bit of a brain, but it is still a tearjerker.
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Not far beneath its arty and well-photographed surface the soap opera foundation is visible. Collette plays Sandy, a geologist with a small firm who has to baby-sit the son of a Japanese investor, the childlike Tachibana (Gotaro Tsunashima). Sandy is presented, as per current Bridget Jones soap standards, as a mother dominated terror who eats fast food alone (while listening to her phone messages, in what is fast becoming a cliché of the genre) and is too distracted to be nice to her friends. In general she is presented as a very unpleasant person, although the filmmakers may not think so. Tachibana is also annoying, but as per the genre we know that they are going to make love (though it is strange love, with her wearing his pants).
What we are not prepared for is what happens next, and even saying that is probably something of a spoiler. In any case, the film takes a new direction and explores emotions rarely registered on film, our reactions to what might have been instead of what was. Still, despite this interesting twist, the film is still thin and an excuse for wallowing in emotion and suffering.
Columbia TriStar's disc offers JAPANESE STORY in a sharp widescreen transfer (1.85:1, enhanced) with good Dolby Digital 5.1 audio. Aside from the trailer, some deleted scenes, and a photo gallery, the main supplement is an audio commentary track by director Sue Brooks and writer Alison Tilson. It's refreshing because they discuss intentions and character and plot instead of locations and technical difficulties. The disc hit the street back on May 11th, and retails for $24.96.
Overrated
COFFEE AND CIGARETTES
My nominee for most overrated director is Jim Jarmusch. Even more than Ang Lee he inspires otherwise sensible reviewers to raptures of praise. I'm not sure what they are all getting out of him, and I have read a lot about Jarmusch and seen all his available films. God, they are dull, and this one is no exception. What makes the situation sad is that it took him 17 years to make it, since 1986 compiling occasional short films he was staging into one be work.
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The film's 12 vignettes feature Roberto Benigni, Steven Wright, Steve Buscemi, Bill Murray, Iggy Pop, Tom Waits, Kate Blanchett, Jack and Meg White, Alfred Molina, Steve Coogan are among the many pairs peeped in upon whilst enjoy some coffee. I didn't get it, and probably never will. Nevertheless, MGM presents COFFEE AND CIGARETTES in a solid widescreen transfer (1.78:1, enhanced) with DD 5.1. Supplements consist of the trailer, and trailers for other MGM films, a music video by BLAH called "Tabletops," an outtake with Bill Murray, and an interview with Taylor Mead, all exceedingly brief. COFFEE AND CIGARETTES coast $29.95, and went on sale September 21.
Ill Advised
EPIDEMIC
Two filmmakers late for a deadline lose the script they have been working on. In a pinch they decide to come up with an entirely new story, and conjure up a tale about an epidemic that levels Europe. Then in a strange twist, the illness from their imaginations take root in reality.
That more or less sums up Lars Von Trier's EPIDEMIC, though you wouldn't necessarily get that from simply watching it cold. It's a dry, slow, confusing film with some beautiful imagery but a story that is ambiguous to the point of treachery.
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Shot in 199x when Von Trier was already one of the rising forces of Danish cinema (only to be overtaken temporarily by filmmakers such as Gabriel Axel, who did BARBETTE'S FEAST, and Bille August who did PELLE THE CONQUEROR), EPIDEMIC was something of a setback for the filmmaker. As the middle film of his somber European trilogy, however, it served as a necessary transition to his marvelous ZENTROPA (as it is known in the states), which finally launched his international reputation. Epidemic remains achingly slow and confusing, however, with seemingly unnecessary digressions that include a trip to Cologne to meet Udo Kier and an elaborate story about pen pal mail solicited from some Atlanta teenage girls that exposes the vacuity of the American mind, especially when they cruelly play a tape one of the girls sent. The film within the film also includes some images of doctors brooding in the basement of a hospital that serves as something of a foreshadowing of Von Trier's superb THE KINGDOM (I'll review Stephen King's remake in a few weeks).
Home Vision Entertainment does an excellent job with the DVD, however, and I hope it serves as a prelude to more Von Trier films from the company. The film, which is grainy to begin with, nevertheless comes in an excellent transfer (1.66:1, enhanced) and with adequate sound. There are two main supplements. The first is an audio commentary track by Von Trier and his co-star and co-writer Niels Vorsel. They have the decency to be as bored by the film as the viewer, and Von Trier even yawns a couple of times. They are also as equally puzzled by the narrative digressions as we are. You wouldn't know it from the yak track that for a long time Von Trier considered this his favorite of all his films. The second supplement is FREEDOGME, an hour-long record of a media event in which Von Trier, Wim Wenders, Jean Marc Barr, and Lone Scherfig, the director of ITALIAN FOR BEGINNERS, are linked up by camera and telephone for an elaborate conference call-interview by a Swedish film critic. The quartet discusses dogme films, and Von Trier comes across as much more engaging and calm than his bad boy image would suggest. The disc also contains a Von Trier filmography and a couple of dogme manifestos. It hit the streets September 21, and retails for $29.95.
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TWISTED
I wanted TWISTED to be good, I really did. I wanted that more so after hearing the heartbreaking audio commentary track and seeing the various loving supplements on this disc. Director Philip Kaufman speaks eloquently about the film, the visual motifs he included, the nuances of the story (as he sees them), and the details of the neighborhood close to where he works where he shot the film.
But the film is the bunk. It's yet another one of those twisty cop thrillers that intends to keep you guessing up until the very end, but evacuate logic or sense in order to get there.
If only it had made sense. If only there weren't so many, many implausibilities. If only Kaufman really had known what he was getting into. I can appreciate him wishing to work with Ashley Judd, who seems to be America's official co star for the nation's great African American actors, but did they read this damn thing?
This Paramount's DVD is rife with extras, including Kaufman's commentary, which would be beautiful if the film were better. Also on hand are some making ofs, including "Creating a Twisted Web of Intrigue" (11:00), "The Inspectors: Clues to the Crime" (10:00), and "San Francisco: Scene of the Crime" (7:00). There are no less than 10 deleted or extended scenes with an optional director's commentary, plus trailers for other Paramount titles. It went on the street August 31, and retails for $29.95.
NEXT TIME: Tarantino's blog, Guy Maddin's COWARDS, WALKING TALL, THE REAL SWIMSUIT ISSUE, EASY RIDER, VIDEODROME, several STAR TREKS and more!
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