DVD Releases: October 26, 2005


	Batman Begins: Two-Disc Deluxe Edition Batman: The Motion Picture Anthology 1989-1997 Even in hindsight, it’s difficult to imagine a more durable movie franchise than Batman. Over the course of five episodes, with budgets ranging from $35 million to $135 million, four different actors have been cast in the lead, three directors have put their own stylistic stamp on the series and, twice, supporting players were granted top billing over the hero. And, yet, unlike the James Bond series, Batman has yet to wear out its welcome with critics or the ticket-buying public. Indeed, Chris Nolan’s extremely well-reviewed prequel, Batman Begins, out-grossed the last Bond at the domestic box-office, $205 million to $146 million. And, it cost several million fewer dollars to make. Even so, each new succeeding 007 is greeted by the media as if Humphrey Bogart and Ingrid Bergman were coming back from the dead to star in a sequel to Casablanca. Fans will enjoy the many entertaining and informative extras, which range from scholarly to just plain fun. Batman Begins also includes both a print and interactive comic-book experience. -- Gary Dretzka

	The Wizard of Oz: Three-Disc Collector's Edition Victor Fleming's beloved rendering of L. Frank Baum's classic story -- which can be read, as well, as a discourse on American politics in the first third of the 20th Century -- is hardly underrepresented in video and DVD. God only knows from whence the new memorabilia comes, whenever it comes time for another super-duper multi-disc collector's edition of The Wizard of Oz. Diehard fans must get weary of having to invest another 50 bucks every time someone at MGM -- or, what's left of it -- finds another box full of posters, lobby cards or invitations to premieres. Newcomers have no such concerns, of course, as each new package is better and more technologically advanced than the one that preceded it. New to this "Collector's Edition" are: the Grauman's Chinese Theater's souvenir premiere program; a copy of MGM's in-house newspaper for the week beginning Monday, August 14, 1939; a rare Secondary Education Scholastic, in honor of The Wizard of Oz\; the studio's invitation to the Grauman's premiere, which included tickets; and reproductions of original 1939 Kodachrome publicity portraits and on-set photographs. -- Gary Dretzka

	Herbie: Fully Loaded It's difficult to square the G-rated Lindsay Lohan, on display in Herbie: Fully Loaded, with the R-rated party girl whose encounters with the paparazzi have twice turned into demolition derbies, pitting expensive SUVs vs. Mercedes. Hard to imagine Uncle Walt allowing any unkempt goon with a Nikon getting within a block of Annette Funicello in her prime, but times change … and girls will be girls. Herbie: Fully Loaded, in which Lohan plays a girl with a NASCAR fixation, does a decent enough job of extending the "Herbie" brand to a new generation of tweener girls, and the warm-and-fuzzy reputation of 1963 Volkswagens remains reasonably intact. The DVD includes a blooper reel, deleted scenes, a Lohan music video, a making-of featurette and some NASCAR-approved hoopla. -- Gary Dretzka

Left Behind: World at War You don't have to be a born-again Christian to enjoy the series of movies based on best-selling novels by Tim LaHaye and Jerry Jenkins, but it sure helps. The third chapter, Left Behind: World at War, is set on a post-Rapture Earth, ruled with a slick smile and iron hand by no less a villain the Antichrist, his own bad self. Nicolae Carpathia emerged from the United Nations -- traditionally, a punching bag for America's right wing -- as leader of a coalition of nations dedicated to the extermination of the remaining Christian population. Here, his strategy includes poisoning bibles he knows will end up in the hands of the faithful left-behinds. The movies in the series are well-made, and its producers certainly have a bead on what their audience will tolerate when it comes to action, violence and sexual innuendo. The Left Behind movies are what one would expect to find in series form, if cable's SciFi Channel were to be purchased by the producers of The 700 Club. Personally, if I'm going to invest another 90 minutes into a movie about the Rapture, it had better star Mimi Rogers. -- Gary Dretzka

Mysterious Skin If Oscar voters weren't so queasy about stories that focus on sexual predators and child abuse -- and NC-17 arthouse films, in general -- the buzz surrounding Gregg Aroki's Mysterious Skin would be deafening. It's that good. But, typically, this very compelling study of the long-term effects of childhood trauma is being ignored by all the prognosticators. Joseph Gordon-Levitt and Brady Corbett deliver terrific performances as 18-year-old Kansans, who, 10 years earlier, shared a nightmarish experience involving their spooky-compassionate baseball coach, the details of which only one of them can remember. Aroki's camera is an unflinching and compassionate witness to the destruction of the boys' youth, and efforts to salvage what's left of it. If copies of Mysterious Skin aren't already in the hands of awards voters, they ought to be. -- Gary Dretzka

The Wages of Fear: Restored Edition Criterion Collection deserves a pat on the back for re-releasing its own edition Henri-Georges Clouzot's influential 1953 thriller, The Wages of Fear, only, this time, at its original length and with a second disc full of fascinating background material. The premise is simplicity itself: an American oil company offers four desperate men a relative fortune, if they successfully navigate a truck loaded nitroglycerine across 300 miles of South American jungle. This means driving over bumpy dirt roads, past steep cliffs and wading through a river of oil gushing from a broken pipeline. As in The Treasure of the Sierra Madre, which it resembles, the drama in Wages of Fear extends to the relationship between the men, who are as reckless as they are brave. Much of the restored footage here is from the material originally trimmed to satisfy the demands of distributors uncomfortable with what they interpreted as anti-American propaganda. Even so, the story was so compelling to the white-hot director William Friedkin, he chose to re-make it as Sorcerer, immediately following his successes with The Exorcist and The French Connection. It wasn't bad, but it nearly killed his career. In addition to the restored high-definition transfer, Criterion is offering new interviews with assistant director Michel Romanoff and Clouzot biographer Marc Godin, an archival interview with Yves Montand, and essay by novelist Dennis Lehane. -- Gary Dretzka

Jerry Lewis: The 'Legendary Jerry' Collection It's been nearly 40 years since Jerry Lewis wrote or directed a movie that was taken seriously by anyone outside a small cabal of auteur-ish critics and devoted fans (he was brilliant in Martin Scorsese's dark comedy, The King of Comedy, but the director got most of the credit for that). Indeed, if it weren't for his annual MDA telethon, Lewis would be known more as the punch line for jokes about French taste, than as one of this country's most popular comedians and Hollywood visionaries. The 10 titles that comprise Paramount's The 'Legendary Jerry' Collection -- including The Bellboy, Cinderfella, The Delicate Delinquent, The Disorderly Orderly and The Nutty Professor -- represent some of his best work, and demonstrate the debt owed him by such comedic heirs as Jim Carrey, Eddie Murphy, Rowan Atkinson and Roberto Benigni. -- Gary Dretzka

Marianne Faithfull: Live in Hollywood Those not familiar with blond chanteuse Marianne Faithfull -- a grand dame, if there ever was one -- might try to imagine a multi-hyphenate artist much like Courtney Love, had she lived in Swinging London in the '60s, instead of grungy Seattle in the '90s. Substitute Mick Jagger (she first recorded his As Tears Go By, in 1994) for Nirvana mainstay Kurt Cobain, add many of the same inebriants, and you have another train wreck waiting to happen. If Love is very lucky, she'll commit to a life of sobriety and follow Faithfull's lead, by embarking on a second career as a singer of songs that matter both to her and audiences who've traveled similar roads … instead of constantly trying to live down to her reputation. All the evidence she'd need is contained in the new performance-DVD/CD, Marianne Faithfull: Live in Hollywood. Recorded at a concert celebrating 40 years in show business -- many feared she'd never make a decade -- the DVD is a portrait of clarity, determination and raw sexuality. The bonus CD carries fewer songs, but the idea here really is to marvel in Faithfull's command of the stage -- and her life -- not merely revel in the genius of her smoky, whiskey-cured voice. That said, though, the music is pretty terrific, too. -- Gary Dretzka

TV to DVD Bewitched: The Complete Second Season Hart to Hart: The Complete First Season MADtv: The Best of Seasons 8, 9 & 10 Alias: The Complete Fourth Season The L Word: The Complete Second Season Fans of the long-running '60s TV sitcom, Bewitched, will find the memory of this summer's feeble film adaptation much easier to extinguish, thanks to release of The Complete Second Season on DVD. The new collection of 38 second-season episodes -- 38 episodes, compared to the 22 demanded of content providers today -- is noteworthy primarily for the arrival of baby Tabitha, as well as the first appearance of Paul Lynde (the quintessential center square, for you youngsters) as Samantha's uncle and Alice Pearce's final performance as freaked-out Gladys Kravitz. Also look for the episode "Man's Best Friend," which featured an impossibly young Richard Dreyfuss as a warlock who transforms himself into a dog to break up the Stephens' marriage. For the record, the re-make also arrives on DVD this week. The '70s were awash in gimmicky hour-long crime-fighting series, in which the heroes and occasional heroines came in as many different shapes, tastes, textures and colors as Heinz had condiments. Hart to Hart imagined the perfectly matched Robert Wagner and Stefanie Powers as Jonathan and Jennifer Hart, a wealthy couple who trot the globe solving crimes, cracking wise and showing off their formal wear … always in the company of their loyal servant, Max (Lionel Sander). They offered a jet-set take on Nick and Nora Charles, from Hammett's The Thin Man, and the movies and TV show it inspired. The concept of mixing and matching such partnerships -- professional, and otherwise -- goes back as least as far as the comedy team of Holmes and Watson, but, for all I know, Caesar may have run across and wrote about a salt-and-pepper pairing of Gallic spooks, who, centuries later, would inspire Morton Fine to create a show entitled I Spy. These nostalgia-inducing shows live on in re-runs, and boxed DVD sets. Wouldn't it be great, though, if the MPAA imposed a ban on turning such shows as The Mod Squad and Starsky & Hutch into feature-length films? There are those who would argue that hardly a week goes by when Fox's MADtv doesn't eat the lunch of NBC's Saturday Night Live. I won't argue the point, especially considering the current cast's fixation on each other's pregnancies and newborns. For most of its tenure on the Peacock's late-night grid, SNL has been hamstrung by the demands of a network that panders to the many managers, agents and studios that have a vested interest in promoting Hollywood's current flavor-of-the-week. Because of this, the writers have elected to dumb down their material to appeal to the fan clubs of each succeeding guest host and featured musician. If you're over 17, there's no reason to watch SNL, anymore. Absent such burdens, MADtv seems far more willing to go for the jugular, and plumb the depths of razor-sharp parody and tasteless humor. Of course, its demographic base also requires lots of exceedingly juvenile humor, too, but it seems less calculated. (Hard to imagine the likeness of any of these characters showing up on a slot machine, as have many SNL fixtures.) This newly released three-hour package encapsulates the highlights of seasons 8, 9 and 10. Very few people in Hollywood gave the show much hope of lasting that long. I have no explanation for the longevity of ABC's much-discussed Alias, except to credit it to the cover-girl appeal of its very appealing star (who, early on, was required to act in her underwear). For all I know, its storylines are as complex and satisfying as those that distinguish the spy dramas on BBC America from those created in Hollywood. The hype surrounding Jennifer Garner was so oppressive that it cooled any desire on my part to invest the time necessary to dissect the intricacies of plotlines. (But, then, I can never tell what time it's supposed to be on 24, either.) Still, that's what makes these boxed sets of entire seasons so valuable to people like me. They allow us to pick up the story at any point in the narrative, and, at least, pretend we know what's happening, and that's a very good thing. As near as I can tell, Season 4 describes Sydney's migration from the CIA to another agency's new Black Ops unit, in L.A. … and, this year, she's having a baby. Good for her. The discs also offer a conversation with Garner, bloopers, deleted scenes and features on Mia and Marshall, whoever they are. The cover insists that the contents of the new The L Word box represent the entirety of The Complete Second Season of the Showtime soaper. It has become so familiar, though, it feels as if it's been a premium-cable fixture for much longer. And, no, I'm not confusing it with Queer as Folk, which just ended its remarkably long run. The L Word ostensibly is a series that documents the trials, tribulations and triumph of a close-knit group of big-city women of the Sapphic persuasion. Conveniently, though, this particular group of lesbians just happens to be attractive enough to wet the appetites of guys whose awareness of the gay-and women's-rights movements derives solely from the girl-girl action in on display in Penthouse. But, hey, a ratings point is a rating point. No matter, the women who populate The L Wordare no less or more believable than any of the other impossibly attractive characters meant to represent average Jacks and Jills on prime-time television. (Anyone who enjoys seeing fat, ugly and socially inept Americans can visit their local shopping malls on the day after Thanksgiving. Television is for the above-average.) The twin shadows of death and divorce weighed heavy over The L Word throughout most of Season 2, although there was plenty of room left for a goofy hidden-camera subplot, the occasional guest lesbian, some strange partnerships and Jenny's cathartic striptease before a room full of braying men. Hot, but huh? -- Gary Dretzka

Looney Tunes: Golden Collection, Volume 3 Looney Tunes: Movie Collection Tom and Jerry: Spotlight Collection Having once been a child myself, I was struck by the warning found on the back of the Looney Tunes: Golden Collection and Tom and Jerry boxes, which stipulated that the cartoons contained within were intended for the adult collector and may not be suitable for children. What? Did I miss something on my way to adolescence? Yes, the geezers who drew the great cartoons of yore worked on the premise that kids weren't the only ones watching their creations, and occasionally threw in stuff that was too hip for most of the rooms in which they were shown. But, the only minds warped by Looney Tunes were those already predisposed toward anarchy and disrespect for authority … in other words, everyone who came of age in the '60s. People are so uptight in Hollywood, the caveat probably is there to protect against lawsuits from the parents of those aspiring sadists who watched Tom & Jerry cartoons before torturing their pets. I say, rubbish. This is terrific stuff. Looney Tunes: Movie Collection carries no such warning, just the good news about what's inside: The Bugs Bunny/Road-Runner Movie, Bugs Bunny's 3rd Movie: 1001 Rabbit Tales and plenty of animated extras. -- Gary Dretzka

Detective Story Although William Wyler's Detective Story will strike most contemporary viewers as quaint and overly stagebound -- it was, after all, adapted from a Broadway play -- the old-fashioned police drama remains a compelling viewing experience. This, even as it suffers from the familiarity that comes with having had its plot recycled by 54 years worth of ensemble cop series on TV, ranging from Barney Miller to NYPD Blue. Its lingering charm derives primarily from the appearance of a very young Kirk Douglas, whose manic energy constantly threatens to devour the work of such co-stars as Eleanor Parker, William Bendix, Joseph Wiseman, Horace McMahon and an equally young and hammy Lee Grant. -- Gary Dretzka

King of the Corner The excellent American character actor, Peter Riegert, starred, directed, co-wrote and served as chief cheerleader for this often entertaining drama about a successful New York marketing executive. His Leo Spivak is struggling through both a crisis in confidence at work and an acute attack of the middle-age crazies at home. (Fifth Avenue types seem far more vulnerable to such maladies than other movie professionals, especially when some young hotshot covets his corner office.) Adapted from Gerald Shapiro's short-story collection, "Bad Jews and Other Stories," King of the Corner languished in film-festival purgatory before being arriving in DVD. This has more to do, probably, with the almost simultaneous release of In Good Company, than any deficiency on the movie's part. It is blessed with a very decent cast of supporting actors -- Isabella Rossellini, Eli Wallach, Eric Bogosian, Rita Moreno, Beverly D'Angelo and Dominic Chianese, among them -- but the show really belongs to Riegert. -- 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