DVD Releases: August 24, 2005


	Layer Cake US/Canada Gross - $2.3 million Anyone looking for a stylish British gangster thriller, comparable to Guy Ritchie's Lock, Stock and Two Smoking Barrels and Snatch, need not search any farther then Layer Cake. That's because Matthew Vaughn produced both of Ritchie's mayhem-and-music-filled movies, and he only volunteered to direct Layer Cake after Mr. Madonna turned down the assignment (not for the abysmal Swept Away, one hopes). The plot involves a misdirected cache of Ecstacy, and the efforts of several powerful crime bosses to claim it, but it hardly matters. What counts is the performance by Daniel Craig, as a fitful drug dealer who's desperate to get out of the game while the getting's good. There hasn't been a more dynamic performance by a male star all year. -- Gary Dretzka An Interview with Daniel Craig: "What I like about Layer Cake is its intelligent through-line. First of all, I think it's very close to the truth; I think this is what successful drug dealers are like. They don't drive around in flashy cars, they don't show off, they behave very quietly, they get on with their job and they earn lots of money. And it goes up and up and up and up the scale. Secondly - and selfishly - I like the moral aspect of the movie, which is that violence has consequences, and you feel emotionally involved with the violence." Pride, Unprejudiced: Daniel Craig has been a screen natural in movies like The Mother, Enduring Love and Love is the Devil, and here he's like Steve McQueen inhabiting a role obviously patterned after Bob Hoskins' star-making burn in The Long Good Friday.

	Gladiator (Extended Edition) Worldwide Gross - $456 million The Hot Button: The Good: Ridley Scott is one of the greatest visual directors in the history of cinema. And there hasn't been a real Roman epic in a long, long time. Plus, you have Russell Crowe. Crowe is not only a great actor, but it seems that every gay man and straight woman I run into these days can't wait to ogle him in a skirt for a couple of hours. The Bad: Gladiator is the first Ridley Scott movie that Tony Scott could have directed. The Hot Button: Well, any Oscar® buzz for this movie is just patently absurd. I love Oliver Reed as much as any writer in America. I would have given him a Best Supporting Actor nod for The Adventures of Baron Munchausen in a heartbeat. He was brilliant. But this performance, because of the screenplay, is a one-off...a payday. *I knew a man once who said, "Death smiles at us all. All a man can do is smile back.*


	TV-to-DVD Life as We Know It Mike Hammer: Private Eye T.J. Hooker Once and Again Alf Will & Grace Kung Fu Boy Meets World To me, the greatest thing about T.J. Hooker was its ability to pinpoint exactly what's wrong with most big-city police departments: there aren't enough good-looking cops. Cast alongside a still relatively svelte William Shatner -- whose character rejected a promotion to work with fresh recruits -- were such eye-pleasing actors as Heather Locklear, Adrian Zmed, James Darren and, in recurring roles, Shawn Weatherly and Nicole Eggert (both would go on to various Baywatch projects). All 27 episodes are included in the six-disc package, including the one with a guest appearance by Leonard Nimoy. Whatever happened to Shatner? Last fall, ABC made the epic mistake of putting the promising teen drama, Life as We Know It, against NBC's Apprentice, CBS' CSI, Fox's Tru Calling and an hour's worth of nothing on the WB. Its producers paid for the network's sins by having their show canceled after 11 episodes (2 more aired in Europe). And, these were some of the same folks responsible for Freaks and Geeks and Just Shoot Me! Adapted from Melvin Burgess' Brit-hit novel, Doing It, the show moved the action to Seattle, where a trio of teenage boys struggled with the same issues all teenage boys confront on a daily basis in high school. Instead of portraying the lads and their friends as spoiled mini-adults, with grown-up problems -- like the mostly brain-dead hotties of The O.C. -- the writers anchored the stories in something resembling teen reality. Considering the competition, it was lucky to last as long as it did. The DVD package includes all 13 episodes, along with commentary, deleted scenes and outtakes. (Just for the record: Kelly Osbourne was cast as one of the boys' girlfriends … perhaps, so there would be someone to blame if the series went south in a hurry … which it did.) Mickey Spillaine's hard-boiled PI, Mike Hammer, is one of the most durable characters in genre fiction, movies and television. His big-screen debut came in 1953, in the form of Biff Elliot, in I, the Jury. He has since been played, with various degrees of authenticity, by Ralph Meeker, Robert Bray, Kevin Dobson, Armand Assante, Brian Keith, Darren McGavin, and Spillane, himself. A suitably gnarled Stacey Keach played the gumshoe in two different TV series, the second of which, Mike Hammer: Private Eye (1997-98) is collected on a multi-disc DVD package from Tango. It's a lot of fun. Meanwhile, this week brings the complete second season of Once and Again, the oh-so-sensitive soaper starring Sela Ward and Billy Campbell; the second stanza of Alf, with a pair of animated adventures; the third and final season of Kung Fu, during which Caine re-united with his long-lost brother (and guests included the ubiquitous Shatner and David Carradine's then-wife, Barbara Seagull Hershey); a third go-round for the rapidly maturing cast of characters on Boy Meets World; and a fourth season of Will & Grace. -- Gary Dretzka

Audition Simply put, the terrifying Japanese export, Audition, is one of the great horror movies of our time. It was released before Hollywood discovered how well these sorts of psychological thrillers played with American audiences, and, so, was denied much exposure here. When word got out, however, it became something of a cult sensation. Takashi Miike takes his time getting to the needle-sharp point of the film, employing a mock audition as device for a well-meaning widower to screen potential brides. Suffice it to say that he buys a pig in a poke … albeit, an attractive one. As the aspiring ballerina reveals new layers of her horrific past, the widower and viewers are introduced to some truly freaky scenarios … some of which come alive only in the mind. Lions Gate has now released an uncut special edition of Audition, which new material, interviews, commentary and featurette based on Bravo's list of the 100 scariest movies. Watch this one with the lights out. The company has also just released the Pang Brothers' The Eye 2, another psycho-thriller that tears down the wall between the spirit and corporeal worlds. Anchor Bay has brought out DVDs of Trauma and The Card Player, from the legendary Italian horror-meister, Dario Argento. Although many critics have dismissed the writer-director's output as little more than genre schlock, there's obviously a mind at work in his films. Argento, father of the freakishly delicious Asia Argento, cites as influences both Ingmar Bergman and his grandmother, who would recite spooky folk tales to him at bedtime. The current generation of Japanese and European genre specialist appears to have been influenced by Argento, as well.

A Lot Like Love A Lot Like Love is one of those romantic comedies that relies more on the chemistry between its attractive young stars -- in the case, Ashton Kutcher and Amanda Peet -- than a logical plot or convincing dialogue. It's as if the producers were counting on audiences to be so pre-occupied by the presence of the pre-fabricated celebrities that they would ignore the fact that nothing was happening on screen. Apparently, they overestimated the gullibility of their target demographic -- teen girls and college-age women -- as A Lot Like Love did half as much business as Dude, Where's My Car? (at almost three times the budget) and The Whole Nine Yards, in which Peet stole the show from Bruce Willis and Matthew Perry. About the only thing required of the undeniably appealing actors was that they meet- and re-meet-cute every 20 minutes or so, and never lose those winning smiles. Like the movie itself, the DVD's bonus material -- deleted scenes and bloopers, mostly -- will please fans of stars, but nothing here is memorable. Hepburn and Tracy, they're not. -- Gary Dretzka

Style Wars Graffiti: art or vandalism? That question has been debated continually for more than 25 years, especially in cities where taggers have turned entire transit systems into a) mobile galleries, or b) rolling eyesores … depending on your point of view. Made in 1982, Tony Silver and Henry Chalfant's provocative documentary, Style Wars, may have been the first serious attempt to present both sides of the debate, without making advocates of either position seem like Neanderthals or criminals. It introduced the most prominent taggers to PBS audiences, and argued that graffiti, break-dancing and hip-hop music all were a slice of the same Big Apple pie. A second-disc updates viewers on the fates of the B-boys, offers a photo gallery of their work and adds previously trimmed material. -- Gary Dretzka

Bliss The erotic Canadian anthology series, Bliss, is shown in the states on cable's Oxygen channel, usually after Talk Sex, with Susan Johanson. Unlike such pioneering T&A peep shows as Dream On and Red Shoes Diaries, its tales of horny gals of various ages, backgrounds and emotional states are the products of women directors and writers, and, theoretically, at least, are intended primarily for Oxygen's target demographic. Despite the show's proximity to the Sex Grandma, though, Oxygen's censors have decided that Americans are less mature than our neighbors in the Great White North, at least when it comes to exposed nipples (and, they're probably right). The producers of this DVD, which is a compilation of first-season episodes and bonus materials, share none of the same qualms. -- Gary Dretzka

Jamboree Made in 1957, the rock 'n' roll melodrama Jamboree (a.k.a., Jockey Jamboree) tried desperately to capitalize on the popularity of The Girl Can't Help It, and excitement being generated by a new generation of teen heartthrobs. Like Frank Tashlin's eminently more entertaining show-biz satire, Jamboree is filled with wonderfully nostalgic performances by such artists as Jerry Lee Lewis, Carl Perkins, Count Basie, Joe Williams, Frankie Avalon, Fats Domino, Buddy Knox, and Slim Whitman (Frankie Lymon appears under an alias). Unlike The Girl Can't Help It, though, it was otherwise populated with some of the squarist squares in North America, and no actor who even approached Jayne Mansfield in pure star power. The story, such as it is, revolves around a boring boy-girl duo, whose managers keep coming up with new ways to nip their careers in the bud. The most peculiar conceit, however, involves a wrap-around of real-life deejays who introduce the acts from their respective home studios. Dick Clark, who, at 27, looked no different than he did at 70, uses the occasion of a national telethon to introduce his many radioland pals, several of whom probably spent the next couple of years sweating out payola indictments. -- Gary Dretzka

Oldies But Goodies The Truman Show Witness New Jack City In the course of a 35-year career, Aussie director Peter Weir has continually demonstrated that quantity and quality are two completely different virtues. He may only have a baker's dozen worth of theatrical releases to his credit, but almost all of them have left a profound impression on audiences, critics and the career trajectories of their stars. The arrival of special DVD editions of Paramount's Witness and The Truman Show reminds us, once again, of Weir's attachment to fish-out-of-water characters and Twilight Zone scenarios, in which a thin crust of normalcy barely contains the ferocity of a personal hell. In Witness, Harrison Ford played a hard-boiled Philadelphia cop required to adopt the ways of the Pennsylvania Amish, in order to protect the young witness to a murder. Ford's convincing portrayal of John Book, who infects the peaceful farms of Lancaster County with a virulent strain of big-city violence, demonstrated that he could star in a movie that was outside the action-fantasy genre. Likewise, in The Truman Show, Jim Carrey proved that he could be tremendously effective as a dramatic actor, even if the script didn't include fart jokes and homages to Jerry Lewis. Released in 1998, The Truman Show imagined a world not unlike the one we have today, in which the citizens of an otherwise-normal Florida town exist primarily as participants in a non-stop reality show. Fans of these pictures are encouraged to sample such titles from Weir's pre-Hollywood days as Picnic at Hanging Rock, Gallipoli, The Last Wave and, even, The Cars That Ate Paris. Another look at the under-appreciated psychological thriller, Fearless, also is warranted. (Both of the newly released DVDs feature plenty of behind-the-scenes material, fresh interviews and deleted scenes.) Like Brian De Palma's adaptation of Scarface, Gordon Parks Jr.'s Superfly and Anthony Yerkovich's Miami Vice, Mario Van Peebles' druggy thriller New Jack City has become something of a pop-cultural icon among dope fiends and wanna-be crime lords. Made in 1991, when the drug of choice among discriminating gangsta's was rock cocaine, New Jack City presented Wesley Snipes as Nino Brown, the charismatic king of crack for all of New York. As such, he cut a very cool figure in the Harlem night. Brown was pitted against three dedicated undercover cops -- Ice T, Judd Nelson, Van Peebles -- who conspired to take down his empire, before the lure of easy money began to seduce any aspiring entrepreneurs in the audience. Chris Rock plays a junkie who has a change of heart after a near-death experience, and is very good. The second disc is given the Scarface treatment with documentaries on the impact of New Jack City on hip-hoppers, a video tour of Harlem and music videos. -- Gary Dretzka

MCN's 2004 DVD Year In Review
Doug Pratt's Ten Best - Multiplatter And Single Platter
Digital Nation: Gary Dretzka's Best DVDs of the Year
Ray Pride's Five Best DVDs And Five Best Boxed Sets