Cinderella Man | March of the Penguins | The Dukes of Hazzard | Fun With Dick & Jane
Ladies in Lavender | Cause Celebre | Shoot the Piano Player: Criterion Collection
Lila Says | The Rockford Files | Sins of the Fleshapoids | A Dog's Life: A Dogamentary
TV to DVD | Ringers: Lord of the Fans | Gone in 60 Seconds: Collector's Edition (NR)
The Bret Hart Story: the Best There Is, the Best There Ever Will Be
The Honeymooners | Kermit's 50th Anniversary Collection

	Cinderella Man After Ron Howard's biography of Depression-era boxer James J. Braddock disappointed at the box office, its distributor did everything but bus homeless people to the local multiplex to keep paying customers from feeling lonely. Universal could have cut its losses, by making a quick retreat from the 2,800 screens on which it had opened and circling its wagons for a potentially lucrative DVD re-launch. Instead, it kept placing ads in newspapers and on TV, and it even allowed the AMC theater chain to offer a money-back guarantee to customers. In anticipation of both the DVD and awards-season campaigns, Cinderella Man also was re-released last week into theaters in key markets. There's no question that the film suffered from comparisons to the similarly inspirational and period-specific Seabiscuit, as well as to recent Oscar-winner, Million Dollar Baby and Raging Bull. (Martin Scorsese's imprint on the fight scenes is as pronounced as painter George Bellows' art is on the film's color palette). Or, maybe, folks knew that Howard would use every trick in the book to manipulate their heartstrings. No matter, Cinderella Man deserves to be seen by anyone who enjoys Hollywood myth-making at its best. As trainer Joe Gould, Paul Giametti nearly steals the thunder from Russell Crowe, who nicely captures Braddock's charisma, but looks like a middleweight alongside Craig Bierko's reigning heavyweight champ, Max Baer. The DVD comes with a generous menu of bonus features, including biographical material on Braddock. -- Gary Dretzka MCN Review: There is a considerable amount to applaud in Cinderella Man and it's not simply a matter of getting things right. It's also a soulful movie and in its own quite way an unlikely champion in an arena dominated by remakes, sequels and franchises. The Hot Button: Has anyone at The Paper run the numbers? If Cinderella Man opened to its $28 million tracking (Seabiscuit opened to $21 million... Road to Perdition opened to $22 million... Collateral opened to $25 million... yeah, $28 million was a reasonable expectation) and dropped the same 50%, would that have made it all okay?
	March of the Penguins Very few documentaries have captured the imagination of the American public as successfully as did this absolutely fascinating study of the mating rituals of the Emperor penguins of Antarctica. For the unaware few, these beautiful animals - who, to most eyes, would be indistinguishable, one from the other - have been known to march from the fertile seas off Antarctica to their frozen and barren breeding ground, 70 miles inland. It's an inconceivable achievement, but, conceivably, one that's continued for countless centuries. French filmmaker Luc Jacquet and his crew accomplished a similarly impressive milestone, by hanging around long enough to record both the penguins waddling journey and their subsequent battle against the elements. The American distributor of "March of the Penguin" deserves much credit for dropping the original soundtrack, which had the birds adding their own commentary to the magnificent cinematography, and substituting it with Morgan Freeman's calming narration. Unlike some of the animal porn shown on cable TV, the sex and violence here are subtle enough for family viewing. The DVD adds a fascinating making-off featurette; the National Geographic documentary, "Crittercam: Emperor Penguins"; and a cartoon encounter between Bugs Bunny and a penguin. -- Gary Dretzka The Hot Button: I didn't hate March of the Penguins. I can't say I really like it, at least for me, either. I'd send my 14-year-old niece and her friends. But I'm not the audience for this film. And while WIP will get their cut of my ticket price, they don't need me either.
	The Dukes of Hazzard By asking his fans to boycott The Dukes of Hazzard, Ben Cooter Jones probably did more to ensure a blockbuster opening than anyone besides Jessica Simpson's underwear wrangler. What greater endorsement would your average teenage boy need than a former resident of Hazzard County, whining about how it's a sleazy insult to all of us who have cared about The Dukes of Hazzard for so long. Imagine what the former congressman would have to say about the Unrated version, which adds beaucoup T&A (alas, Simpson keeps her puppies in the dog house), pot smoking and creative cussing to what originally was a PG-13 title. Although the story that supports the conceit behind the film is about as original as your average made-for-TV movie -- Luke, Bo and the General Lee must save the town from Boss Hogg's greed and wardrobe -- the overall product easily qualifies as a guilty pleasure. The car chases are terrific, and Simpson, Johnny Knoxville, Seann William Scott don't embarrass themselves as the irrepressible cousins. Can't wait for the unrated collector's edition of Gone With the Wind. -- Gary Dretzka
Fun With Dick and Jane Are Dick and Jane books still used as primers in 1st Grade, or are kids expected to be sufficiently literate to handle The Catcher in the Rye, by then? If, indeed, these primitive leaning tools are obsolete, I wonder if anyone under the age of 40 will be able to appreciate the pun in the title of Jim Carrey and Tea Leoni's updating of the 1977 Jane Fonda and George Segal vehicle, Fun With Dick and Jane. Certainly, the set-up will be familiar, as it's been borrowed by any number of filmmakers attempting to comment on greed, ambition and conspicuous consumption by yuppies (actually, pre-yuppies). For those who enjoy this sort of exercise, the DVD release of the original will provide ample opportunity to compare not only how the movies stack up against each other, but also how their A-list stars dealt with the material. In Ted Kotcheff's version, Fonda and Segal play a married couple whose suburban idyll is interrupted by the unexpected loss of Dick's job. To make ends meet, Dick and Jane turn to robbing banks. Despite the presence of such huge stars - both Fonda and Segal were very hot properties at the time - Fun With Dick and Jane didn't exactly light up the nation's box office (although, it's possible that audiences were frightened by the presence of Ed McMahon in a key supporting role). From the gossip surrounding Dean Parisot's re-make, however, it could make the original look like Bonnie and Clyde, by comparison. -- Gary Dretzka
Ladies in Lavender Cause Celebre Watching Judi Dench and Maggie Smith go mano-a-mano (mujer-a-mujer?) in this veddy, veddy Brit romance - which wouldn't have a prayer of getting made in Hollywood, these days - is enough of a reason for older viewers to consider renting Ladies in Lavender. Set in a quiet pre-WWII Cornwall fishing village, Charles Dance's directorial debut puts sisters Janet and Ursula in a position to nurse back to health a Polish violinist, who mysteriously washed up on the beach outside their home one morning. Given the parochial nature of the surrounding, their neighbors aren't nearly as charitable as the sisters, and wonder what in the world they were thinking. The made-for-TV Cause Celebre (1987), starring the inimitable Helen Mirren, also takes place in pre-war England. Mirren portrays the upper-class wife and mom, Alma Rattenbury, who falls for an 18-year-old boy and must defend herself in court after her much older husband is found bludgeoned to death. The similarly gifted David Suchet plays the lawyer who champions her case, against the howls of outrage from a shocked public and his client's own confession. -- Gary Dretzka
Shoot the Piano Player: Criterion Collection Blessedly, Criterion Collection decided to turn its attention to upgrading the DVD edition of the delightfully schizo 1960 thriller, Shoot the Piano Playerr, in which American noir is given a wet French Kiss by nouvelle vague pioneer, Francois Truffaut. The hi-def digital transfer looks and sounds great, and there's a ton of new commentary, interviews and a 28-page booklet included in the two-disc package. Among them are chats with cinematographer Raoul Coutard and stars Marie Dubois and Charles Aznavour, who played the concert pianist turned saloon player. Alternately funny and grim, Shoot the Piano Player remains a terrifically entertaining work of art by one the last century's true masters. -- Gary Dretzka
Kermit's 50th Anniversary Collection If it sometimes seems as if the Muppets have been around forever, it's only because Kermit the Frog is as old as many of the baby boomers who adopted him as the mascot of their generation (and subsequently force-fed the floppy flannel frog on their children). Although the Muppets didn't appear on the general public's radar screen until Jim Henson's troupe introduced his creations to Ed Sullivan, in 1966, Kermit was an original member of Sam and Friends, which appeared on a station in Washington, D.C. Disney, which now owns the Muppet franchise, has re-packaged and updated the feature-length The Muppet Movie, The Great Muppet Caper, The Muppet Christmas Carol and Muppet Treasure Island, in special Kermit's 50th Anniversary Editions. -- Gary Dretzka
Lila Says The riots may have died down, but the tensions that sparked the hostilities between Arab youths and French authorities will continue to plague the country for years to come. In the wake of the riots, this sexy drama takes on added - perhaps, unintended - meaning. Set in Marseilles, Lila Says tells the story of a stunning 16-year-old blond whose sudden appearance in a poor Arab neighborhood threatens to ignite a firestorm of jealousy and rage among a gang of local toughs. As temptations go, Vahina Giocante rivals any apple in the Garden of Eden. -- Gary Dretzka
The Rockford Files: Season One One time or another, we've all been asked to make a list of our favorite television shows … the ones we hope will be on the waiting-room monitors when we get to St. Peter's office in heaven. Depending on one's age, those lists can go back as far as The Phil Silvers Show and The Honeymooners, or begin and end with Seinfeld and Joey. High up on my list is The Rockford Files, the first season of which has just become available in a multi-disc set encompassing nearly 20 hours of great television. Created by Stephen J. Cannell and Roy Huggins, and starring the inimitable James Garner, the series was a NBC staple between 1974 and 1980, has since lived on eight made-for-TV movies and in horribly edited reruns. As the ex-con-turned-PI, Garner was Philip Marlowe with Malibu tan and a decidedly less pragmatic approach to his clientele. Testing his resolve, however, was a supporting cast of wonderfully drawn cronies, including Noah Beery Jr. (Rocky), Stuart Margolin (Angel), Gretchen Corbett (lawyer, Beth Davenport) and Joe Santos (Det. Dennis Becker) and a much-abused Pontiac Firebird. Apart from the scams, fisticuffs and car chases, The Rockford Files was distinguished by some of the most-clever plotting and witty dialogue ever recorded for television. As such, it both broke the mold and set the standard for dozens of PI shows to come. -- Gary Dretzka
Sins of the Fleshapoids Made in 1965, at about the same time that Andy Warhol, John Cassavetes, Kenneth Anger, Jonas Mekas and Mike Kuchar - the man mainly responsible for this extremely bizarre sci-fi epic - kept busy turning out films that would form the nucleus of America's avant-garde movement (a.k.a. underground and experimental). Like almost everyone else in the '60s, these filmmakers aggressively attacked every rule governing mainstream cinema, and mocked all genre conventions. Sins of the Fleshapoids imagined life on a post-apocalyptic Earth, a million years in the future, where robots indulged the carnal passions of surviving humans. It's said that Sins of the Fleshapoids was a major influence on the emerging indie movement - then, personified by John Waters and Paul Morrissey - but it could just as easily been the missing link between stag films and narrative porno. -- Gary Dretzka
TV to DVD Jackass: Volume 1 The West Wing: The Complete Fifth Season Full House: The Complete Second Season Batman: The Animated Series, Volume 4 The Magnificent Seven: The Complete First Season Roseanne: The Complete Second Season Someday, our grandchildren may live long enough to see Jackass: The Criterion Collection, and that day almost certainly will come before Johnny Knoxville's most-recent performance is enshrined in The Dukes of Hazzard: The Criterion Collection. Thank God, for small favors. Today, however, we've been given the opportunity to pick up the long lost first incarnation of what would become one of MTV's trademark shows. The new package includes commentary by each of the Xtreme-stunt actors. In the fifth season of The West Wing, the leadership of the House transferred to a Republican cabal, and President Bartlet began addressing the question of what kind of legacy he would leave after his incumbency ends. The new package offers commentary by John Wells, Alex Graves, Christopher Misiano, Jessica Yu, and Debora Cahn, as well a presidential profile of Bartlet and Martin Sheen, the featurettes Gaza: Anatomy of an Episode and unaired scenes from three episodes. During the course of the second season of Full House, Danny Tanner moves from sports to talk radio, and adds a co-host in the person of Jesse's future wife, Rebecca. Meanwhile, Jesse and Joey team up to write ad jingles, and the girls get bigger and more precocious. If that sounds appetizing, also know that the set also contains a trivia contest and a guide to parenting. The latest addition to Warners' DC Comics Classic Collection represents the fourth season of the animated Batman series, which also was known as The New Batman Adventures and Batman Gothic Knights. This was the year in which Dick Grayson took a powder from the crime-fighting duo, taking flight as Nightwing, and Batgirl fought alongside the Caped Crusader. The extras include commentary by three of the animators and the Interactive Arkham Asylum, which allows perusal of case files. John Sturges' The Magnificent Seven was one of many western classics that fans of the genre probably would have preferred not be adapted for viewing on the small screen. The conceit behind the movie, which itself was borrowed from Akira Kurosawa's Seven Samurai, proved elastic enough to provide a foundation for this not-bad syndicated action-hour. The origin of the mercenary septet apparently stems from an attack on an attack on an Indian village by renegade veterans of the Confederate Army. The second season of Roseanne is represented in a new 530-minute volume, from Anchor Bay. It restores the bites taken out of several episodes, new interviews with John Goodman and Michael Fishman, and a video salute to sister Jackie (the great Laurie Metcalf), who that year joined the police academy. -- Gary Dretzka
A Dog's Life: A Dogamentary There are few more nauseating sights on Earth than that of a human French-kissing an animal. This bizarre home movie - in which a fortysomething New Yorker seeks love for herself and her pet Shih Tzu, Chelsea -- overflows with such horrifying moments. In their wanderings around Gotham, Chelsea is outfitted with a lipstick camera, which provides a dog's-eye view of their lives together. Just as director Gayle Kirschenbaum was about to wrap up production, reality intervened in the form of the 9/11 attacks. A witness to the disaster, Kirschenbaum elected to reload her camera, chuck the single-in-the-city foolishness and give Chelsea a legitimate gig. In this case, it involved comforting victims of the attacks and, later, patients at local hospitals. Absent these nice moments, A Dog's Life would have no redeeming value to anyone, except those who see nothing strange about bathing with their pets. -- Gary Dretzka
Ringers: Lord of the Fans Just as Star Trek inspired such entertaining sidebar fare as Trekkies and Free Enterprise the popularity of Peter Jackson's Lord of the Rings trilogy begat this informative documentary about the influence of J.R.R. Tolkien's fantasy on intellectuals, moviegoers, rock musicians and all of those fans who have yet to have gotten a life. Carlene Cordova and Cliff Broadway are kind to the self-proclaimed geeks, preferring to focus on Tolkien's hugely popular novel and its impact on the '60s counterculture and academia, as well as the boost given to New Zealand's economy by the movies. -- Gary Dretzka
Gone in 60 Seconds: Collector's Edition (NR) More fun than a barrel of grease monkeys, H.B Halicki's original Gone in 60 Seconds is the car-chase epic against which all future car-chase movies - including the 2000 remake, starring Nicolas Cage - would be measured. And, although the narrative is primitive, at best, the auto-erotic antics remain thrilling. Here, more than 100 cars are destroyed and four dozen others are stolen, including the prize 1973 Mustang Mach 1 named Eleanor. Made on a shoestring budget, and cast mostly within the Halicki family, Gone in 60 Seconds is one of the great guy movies of all times. Halicki died in 1989 performing a water-tower stunt for the sequel. -- Gary Dretzka
The Bret Hart Story: the Best There Is, the Best There Ever Will Be If the DVD industry is, indeed, experiencing a kind of midcourse economic correction - which is far different than the slump some have declared in to be - no one dare blame the downturn on the WWE. Historically, pro wrestling and porn have always led the way, when it comes to the economic welfare of new mediums. Thanks to the never-ending stream of stadium and pay-per-view events - and decades worth of archival material - there likely will be no downturn in the availability of new wrestling titles. And, demand grows exponentially as soon as another generation of fans enters the marketplace. Now, in addition to various WrestleMania, SummerSlam and bikini-wrestling contests, we're seeing multi-disc video-biographies of the WWE's greatest stars. The latest three-disc volume focuses on the formidable career of Bret Hart, who was born into a wrestling family and was able to exploit those connections as part of his character. It follows WWE Tombstone: History of the Undertaker and, just in time for Christmas, the mammoth, 21-disc, WrestleMania: The Complete Anthology 1985-2005, which includes a photo gallery and comes in a holographic box. -- Gary Dretzka
TV to DVD Aeon Flux: The Complete Animated Collection Fame: The Complete First Season Home Improvement: The Complete Third Season The Golden Girls: The Complete Third Season The Dick Cavett Show: John Lennon & Yoko Ono Coincidental to the release of the feature-length version of Aeon Flux, which stars Charlize Theron and opens next week, comes Aeon Flux: The Complete Animated Collection. Peter Chung's sexy secret agent first appeared on MTV in 1995, when the cable network first attempted to distance itself from the music videos upon which it was founded. Part sci-fi and part soft-core porn, Aeon Flux fulfilled the many fantasies of its post-pubescent male audience, while also feeding their appetite for stylized action and intrigue. The episodes in the boxed set have been digitally restored and given a 5.1 Dolby Digital Surround Sound audio track. Two years after Alan Parker's feature of the same name, the music- and dance-filled Fame made the natural migration to television, where it was given the kind of prime-time soap-opera spin that would ensure a long run, while capturing much of the spirit of the original. The students of the New York City High School for the Performing Arts already led highly theatrical lives, magnified by their need to succeed at an early age in the city's professional arts arena. Debbie Allen stepped in for Irene Cara as the focus of story, but retained several of the actors from the film. The first season actually was the meatiest, issue-wise, as the show was steered toward more family friendly storylines by its network sponsor. Season No. 3 found Home Improvement in the catbird seat among sitcoms, behind only 60 Minutes. If the season is notable for anything else, besides the overall soundness of the production, it's for the arrival of Heidi Keppert, as the Tool Time girl. It would be difficult to find anyone in Hollywood these days to champion a show about the sex lives of four dames, who share an apartment while getting over the deaths of their husbands and/or divorces. Even if Bea Arthur, Estelle Getty, Betty White and Rue McClanahan were 20 years younger, they'd still be 20 years too old to impress network programmers. Those who remember the show with fondness, or have since grown into the least-desirable demographic for advertisers in the last 15 years, will find the DVD box far more convenient than trying to find reruns on Lifetime, using the remote control. And speaking of the network that caters to those too old to tolerate MTV and most other channels, there's The Golden Girls: A Lifetime Intimate Portrait Series, which profiles the actors. The four-part DVD is narrated by Valerie Harper, John Ritter and Alex Trebek, and features guest appearances by Angela Lansbury, Harvey Fierstein, Norman Lear, Mary Tyler Moore, Edward Asner and Rosie O'Donnell. Lifetime has also packaged two of its original movies, Widow on the Hill, and Lies My Mother Told Me. In the former, Natasha Henstridge stars as a nurse who cares for a dying woman and marries the rich widower (James Brolin), while, in the latter, Joely Richardson plays a con artist who goes on the lam with her daughter. They're described as women on the edge movies, a genre that would encompass nearly every movie-of-the-week every made. Shout Factory's The Dick Cavett Show: John Lennon & Yoko Ono is as much an indictment of the vapidity of today's TV talk shows, as it is riveting entertainment. This set includes three shows from the early '70s, when Lennon and Ono were as celebrated and vilified - in equal measure - as Brad & Jen and Britney & Kevin ever were, combined. The sessions include lively conversation, performances with Elephants Memory, clips from their experimental movies and music videos (then known, far more accurately, as promotional films). -- Gary Dretzka
The Honeymooners: Special Collector's Edition Sadly, John Schultz' updated version of what arguably is the greatest television sitcom of all time more closely resembles Amos 'n Andy than Jackie Gleason's The Honeymooners. And, I say that in as colorblind a way as is possible, because that much-maligned series had many attributes. Cedric the Entertainer and Mike Epps come close to approximating the physical mannerisms of Ralph Kramden and Ed Norton, but their interpretations lack the brilliantly choreographed slapstick and mock rage of Gleason and Art Carney. But, how could they? The original Honeymooners episodes were designed as sketches within a hour-long variety show, and everything played at the rhythm of a precisely calculated gag. Here, Kramden and Norton's get-rich schemes keep coming at us, like so many Agent Smiths in The Matrix, and their complexity is more in line with the scams cooked up by the Kingfish (the great Tim Moore) and Andrew Hogg Brown (Spencer Williams). Adding to the comedic tension of the original Honeymooners was the pressure-cooker atmosphere inside the Kramden's snug and sparsely decorated one-bedroom apartment (by contrast, the homes of the characters in Amos 'n Andy seemed spacious and nicely appointed). In the '50s, a New York bus driver and sewer worker likely would have had to scramble to make ends meet; today, however, any municipal worker would likely be able to buy exactly the kind of duplex this generation of Kramdens and Nortons was unable to afford. Adding to the disconnectedness here, too, was the decision to give Alice and Trixie jobs of their own, as waitresses, and to let most of the story unfold outside their apartments. Thus, the less one is able to recall of the original Honeymooners, the more enjoyment they're likely to get from this PG-rated version, whose major sin was trying to update a classic, but forgetting what made the original so great in the first place. -- Gary Dretzka

MCN's 2004 DVD Year In Review
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Ray Pride's Five Best DVDs And Five Best Boxed Sets