The Wrap Up ...
2006 Academy Award Nominated Short Films	Those not living near a theater that previewed the short films that made the final cut in this year's Academy Awards -- a very welcome new mini-fest that attracts enthusiastic crowds each February -- ought to check out the clumsily, if precisely titled, A Collection of 2006 Academy Award Nominated Short Films. This DVD is comprised of the five short docs, including the delightful winning entry, West Bank Story; two of the nominated animated shorts, including the whimsical winner, The Danish Poet; and a half-dozen shorts that just missed joining the nominated quintet. (The major studios held back their animated shorts, so they could be included as extras in other DVDs.) -- Gary Dretzka About the Shorts
Dreamgirls	Unlike all too many DVD editions of recent theatrical releases, Dreamgirls: Two-Disc Showstopper arrives with a generous array of bonus features. This means fans won't have to wait for the inevitable special collector's edition to sample the extended and alternate musical scenes, including a previously unseen performance by Jennifer Hudson; the music video Listen, by Beyonce Knowles; the making-of featurette, Building the Dream; footage from auditions and screen tests; a visual gallery with 1,100 images; and other mini-docs on the editing process, theatrical lightning, costume design and choreography. We've been cautioned not to take Bill Condon's adaptation of the much-traveled 1981 Broadway musical as the gospel on the rise of the Supremes and Berry Gordy's less-than-ethical guardianship of Motown talent. But, come on, that's exactly the kind of background dish that informed the musical. If anything, the movie simply amplifies on that sorry chapter in Motown history. It just so happens to be a story that demanded to be dramatized. Apologies from DreamWorks executives to Gordy aside, Dreamgirls would be no less entertaining if the public knew nothing of his relationship to certain members of the Supremes. Even if the story lags from time to time, I found it to be an exhilarating musical experience, with perfect period pitch and adherence to details. And, yes, Eddie Murphy had a right to be pissed when he was passed over for a Best Supporting Actor Oscar. -- Gary Dretzka Dreamgirls - Bill Condon does it as well as can be done in this film musical that has true movie-stopping numbers from both Jennifer Hudson and Beyonce Knowles, an undeniable reminder of the greatness of Eddie Murphy, a generously smarmy performance by Jamie Foxx, the fun of a smooth score that has terrific songs that grow on you on multiple listens. In fact, Dreamgirls is one of those movies that just gets better as you see it repeated times, my experience being that I now find myself surprised by just how much stuff I enjoy is coming right around the corner. I also noticed that the second half of the film, after "And I Am Telling You…" moves like a runaway freight train with very little fat. The film suffers, actually, from having so many high octane moments that people get exhausted before it is over. But who complains about too much of a good thing? The show, as reconceived by Bill Condon, is really about the rise and fall of the most challenged member of the Dreams, Effie White. She is the elder sister, the seduced one who gives the man who will make and break her access, the one who changes and grows up long after she should have, and the one who we want to see get her due in the end. Condon also gave Deena, the "Diana Ross" character, a third act turn that allows her a conscience the stage show never did. Critics seem to want it to be a dark Fosse-esque film, but its not. However, it is easily the best Broadway adaptation since Fosse's Cabaret. - David Poland
Little Children & Alpha Dog The Hot Button Visits Phyllis Summerville	Even with so much solid evidence to the contrary, the myth persists that suburban crime is somehow less ugly and random than that in big American cities. More random it probably is, but the murders, rapes and kidnappings that are committed in the suburbs, cornfields and swamps are no less grotesque than those that are listed in the police blotters of New York, Chicago and L.A. And, yet, many screenwriters want us to believe they're aberrations, and inherently more interesting. They seem to be asking, How could such awful things happen in these, the best of all possible worlds? And, yet, they do. In years past, such films as Blackboard Jungle, American Me, Mi Vide Loca and Boyz n the Hood helped reassure middle-class whites on their decision to abandon the cities. For a long time, suburban crimes were limited to life-insurance scams, adultery, mask-wearing sociopath, fixing Little League games … fun-stuff like that. The true-crime literary genre, fueled by the success of Truman Capote's In Cold Blood, served as a corrective to long-held misconceptions, and became fodder for countless made-for-TV movies. Cable television opened the floodgates on mini-docs, and Hollywood followed. Little Children and Alpha Dog are the latest titles to exploit the notion that suburbanites are deceiving themselves if they think they can outrun crime. Something's rotten in the peaceful little town put under the microscope in Todd Field's Little Children. Some residents have traced the odor to the convicted pedophile who's moved into their neighborhood to live with his mother, but there's enough stink to go around. Almost everyone we meet is harboring some kind of a secret that comes with a fuse attached, but the pedophile makes a convenient target … not that he's harmless, mind you. As portrayed in a brilliant performance by Jackie Earle Haley -- a former child actor whose career had been dormant for 13 years -- the sexual predator gives the locals every reason to think he's a ticking time bomb. If his crimes have been well documented, however, the hatred, deceit and hypocrisy of his neighbors ooze from their pores and manifest themselves in unpredictable, yet similarly shocking ways. Also superb is Kate Winslet, as one of the moms who gather daily in a local playground to dish the dirt and fantasize about the hunky single dad in their midst. The aspiring MILFs dare Winslet's more laid-back Sarah Pierce to approach the house-husband (Patrick Wilson) and see if he might be open to a little monkey business. He isn't, but, as most guys would, he allows himself to be flattered and tempted. In the meantime, Pierce's husband gives her reason to test her new friend's limits. The poop hits the fan on a single fateful night, and few emerge from the experience unscathed. In its depiction of small-town intolerance and hypocrisy, Little Children -- adapted from a novel by Ted Perrotta -- can stand as a kink-free, east coast version of David Lynch's similarly disturbing Blue Velvet. Alpha Dog also can be counted among the films that qualify for it-can't-happen-here status. In Nick Cassavettes' fact-based horror show, it's the kids who have gone insane. The adults merely are missing a few of their marbles. The teenage miscreants in Alpha Dog carry the same cinematic DNA as the neo-Nazi youths in American History X, over-achieving Asian-Americans in Better Luck Tomorrow, rebellious teeny boppers in Thirteen and amoral voidoids in River's Edge. Their genes also carry markings from The Outsiders and Rumble Fish, Heathers and The Virgin Suicides, and the great-granddaddy of all juvenile-delinquent pictures, Rebel Without a Cause. Too bad Father Flanagan isn't around to straighten these kids out, although these punks put Mickey Rooney and his ilk to shame. Alpha Dog documents the actual, on-going case of Jesse James Hollywood, a very successful San Fernando Valley dope dealer, who ordered the murder of the brother of another teenager who owed him $1,200. Before he was executed, though, the boy enjoyed the camaraderie and intoxicants of his kidnapers, who apparently were more willing to murder a wannabe than risk going to trial for his abduction. If anything, writer-director Cassavetes downplayed the lavish lifestyle the wages of sin afforded James -- here, Johnny Truelove (Emile Hirsch) -- but captured the magnetic attraction of unfettered hedonism to under-parented, middle-class kids who include Eminem and the characters in hyper-violent video games among their role models. The news that such monsters exist in the suburbs won't come as much of a surprise to anyone who actually lives in one. Older members of the cast, including Bruce Willis and Sharon Stone, voiced plenty of shock when interviewed for the making-of video. Parents know their kids face similar temptations every time they leave home for school or the mall. Sex, drugs and bling are on the menu every night of the week, not just on weekends. A guy like Jesse James Hollywood personifies everything middle-class parents fear their sons will become -- and their daughters will bring home -- while they're putting in 60-70 hours a week at the office to afford a nicer car than their neighbor. Once the walls come tumbling down, as they do late in Alpha Dog, no amount of revisionist parenting will being their sons and daughters home from prison in time for their 21st birthday. In addition to Stone and Willis, Alpha Dog benefits from the presence of a convincingly scary Justin Timberlake and rarely-seen-anymore Harry Dean Stanton. Although it isn't noted in the making-of feature, Alpha Dog had its release delayed by a controversy involving local cops who granted Cassavetes access to sensitive files and information, and served as advisers. They hoped to smoke out Hollywood, who had been on the lam in Brazil, before being apprehended in 2005. -- Gary Dretzka MCN Review: In Little Children's case, "we" are stay-at-home mothers and stay-at-home-fathers and working moms and working dads and convicted sex offenders and the mothers of convicted sex offenders and cops and the handicapped and the emotionally handicapped and neighbors and of course, lots of little children of many different ages. We are all so unique. We are all so different. Our decision-making is so inevitably passionate and so inevitably rational. This is the remarkable power of Little Children. And, make no mistake, it will take a lot of people more than a moment to get used to that power. The film is very, very funny, but audiences are afraid to laugh at a lot of the humor. After all, how funny are cheating and perversion and mean-spiritedness and outright stupidity? Very funny. But it's a Kubrickian humor… tough and more than a little shocking. More >>
Camelot The Best of the Tony Awards: The Plays	Few Broadway musicals are as durable and universally loved as the Lerner & Loewe warhorse, Camelot. This version was captured for airing on HBO, in 1982, on its way to New York's Winter Garden Theater. It starred Richard Harris as King Arthur, the role he took over from Richard Burton during the original run. Meg Bussert plays Guinevere and Richard Muenz portrays Lancelot. The DVD restores two songs cut from the movie, Before I Gaze at You Again and The Seven Deadly Virtues. Harvey Fierstein hosts The Best of the Tony Awards: The Plays, which is a compilation of non-musical performances from various Tony Award broadcasts. The actors represented include such marquee talents as James Earl Jones, Kevin Kline, Maggie Smith, John Lithgow, Philip Bosco, Jane Alexander, Len Cariou and Viola Davis. -- Gary Dretzka
Planet Earth: The Complete BBC Series Savage Earth	Anyone looking for a good excuse to purchase a BluRay or HD-DVD player will find one in the five-disc boxed set of episodes from the wondrous BBC/Discovery Channel series, Planet Earth. From the creators of the similarly epic nature series, Blue Planet: Seas of Life, the 11-episode Planet Earth takes viewers on a what amounts to a marathon safari without borders or geophysical impediments. The producers assigned 40 cinematographers to monitor 200 separate locations, with instructions to bring back hi-def images of animals -- rare and abundant -- in their natural habitats, no matter how risky and difficult they may be to reach. While it is comforting to know that so many amazing creatures can be found in locations that remain unspoiled by man, the fragility of these habitats is explicitly clear, as well. It's the animal kingdom, after all, that serves as a living barometer on the effects of pollution, uncontrolled development and global warming. As good as nature films and documentary have become in the past several years, Planet Earth raises the bar to an entirely new level. So enthralling are the images, narrator Sir David Attenborough is never forced to exaggerate the threat or deliver lectures, a la Al Gore. Each episode on the DVD ends with a 10-minute Planet Earth Diary, detailing how the filmmakers were able to capture footage from such habitats as a piranha-infested river, deep caves and remote mountain ranges. The package also adds a disc dedicated specifically to Planet Earth: The Future, which expands on the environmental and scientific warnings issued during the series. Stacy Keach narrates the four-part WNET/Granada Television series Savage Earth, which documents how dangerous it can be to inhabit a planet that provides few warnings for its murderous rampages. In Waves of Destruction, Out of the Inferno, Restless Planet and Hell's Crust, we're reminded that in the last 500 years, nearly 300 million people have perished in earthquakes, while tsunamis, volcanoes, floods and mud slides have exacted huge tolls of their own. The series provides new information on such events ranging in time from the destruction of Pompeii and Krakatoa, to Mt. St. Helens and the Loma Prieta quake in San Francisco. Considering the horrific natural disasters that have occurred in the last few years, the 1998 series feels slightly dated. Even so, fans of such naturally violent fare will eat up Savage Earth. -- Gary Dretzka
The Dogwalker	Jacques Thelemaque's very appealing low-budget drama -- shot largely in the picturesque hills and valleys of the Santa Monica Mountains -- describes one abused woman's escape to the anonymity of Los Angeles, and her efforts to make a new life for herself. Diane Gaidry's Ellie is an attractive blond of indeterminate age, who bears the scars from what must seem like a lifetime of hard living and bad choices. In this way, she has much in common with the many stray dogs that cross her path as a professional dog-sitter. Hey, in L.A., it's one of the most lucrative outdoor gigs around, if you don't mind a little poop on your shoes. It comes after she's rescued from a period of homelessness by a terminally ill woman, Betsy (the late Pamela Gordon), in need of someone to help mind her canine clients. The misanthropic ex-con is a stern taskmaster. Ellie, who enjoys her pot and booze as much as the next gal, must get used to waking up at 6:30 each morning, in order to get all the animals in their care to the local dog park in time to meet their pals. Not being especially attentive to the complexities of the job, Ellie fails to notice when the expensive dog of a popular singer takes a powder during her morning marijuana break. A local pet psychic volunteers her services -- remember, this is L.A. -- but it isn't until Ellie and her posse check the local dog pound that the fugitive is found. It is roughly at this point in the film when Ellie is forced to take responsibility for her own well-being, and the dog-park community adopts her as one of their own. It's a simple and heartfelt story, well told, which is more than can be said about the disappointing comic-romance Dog Park (1999) and vastly more expensive, yet equally disastrous, Must Love Dogs (2005). The extras include deleted scenes, which reveal a wisely lost subplot, and several excellent short films by Thelemaque. -- Gary Dretzka
Thr3e	Robby Benson's adaptation of the Ted Dekker thriller, Thr3e, is notable primarily for being the first theatrical release of Fox Faith, a division of 20th Century Fox devoted to presenting Christian friendly movies. Anyone expecting a gospel-spouting message movie, or duel to the death with Satan on the eve of Rapture, will either be sorely disappointed or pleasantly surprised. Thr3e essentially is a contemporary horror movie -- with distinct echoes of Saw and Se7en -- minus the gratuitous violence, graphically rendered gore and T&A. And, yet, it retains enough of the genre conceits to warrant a PG-13 rating. Here, theology student Kevin Parson (Marc Blucas) begins receiving mysterious phone calls from a serial bomber who has a deep understanding of the young PhD candidate's tortured boyhood and delivers riddles in advance of each attack. Parson is fortunate in that his case is assigned to the hottest police detective in town, and a beautiful childhood friend also is on hand to help him recover buried memories. The story is re-energized every time the countdown on a new bomb begins, which is good because the stuff in between the explosions isn't particularly entertaining. The clues revealed by the Riddle Killer's tape recordings do, however, lead Parson back to the family of freaks who shaped his psychological profile. The violence. motivations and recriminations at the heart of Thr3e are motivated by faith-driven issues, not all of which are dissimilar to those of any other boogeyman. It's difficult to imagine this kind of thriller appealing to a family audience, only in that the tick-tock action would be too intense for pre-teens. But, for audiences looking for something a bit tamer than your average gore-fest, Thr3e could represent a step in the right direction. -- Gary Dretzka
Mahogany All That Jazz: Music Edition	Not so coincidentally, Paramount has released Gordy's only directorial credit, Mahogany, which starred Diana Ross as a Chicago fashion designer with ambitions to be a supermodel. The projects-to-penthouse melodrama arrived a couple of years after Ross was nominated for a well-deserved Best Actress Oscar for her portrayal of Billy Holiday in Lady Sings the Blues (1972). Sadly, the disappointing commercial response to Mahogany -- combined with the debacle that was The Wiz (1978) -- delivered a one-two punch to her movie career. Also in the cast were Anthony Perkins, Jean-Pierre Aumont, Nina Foch and Billy Dee Williams, who, at the time, was one of the medium's top leading men. If anyone rejoices over the release of Mahogany it will be the many drag queens who still look to Reeves for inspiration. It's that kind of movie. In 1979, choreographer/dancer/director Bob Fosse created a wildly original and eerily autobiographical movie musical, All That Jazz, that would have re-defined the genre if there were a dozen budding cross-disciplinary geniuses commuting from New York to Hollywood and back. In Cabaret, Lenny and Star 80, the Broadway legend demonstrated a natural affinity for cinema. His vision was fresh and his technique was free of film-school and studio clichés. As prophesized in All That Jazz, Fosse was living on borrowed time, and he knew it. He died eight years later in much the same way as did his alter ego in All That Jazz, Joe Gideon. For those familiar with Fosse's personal life, the film must have looked like a film adaptation of a suicide note. When we are introduced to Gideon, he's struggling to win financing for a sexy new Broadway musical and editing a big-budget movie, which is hopelessly behind schedule. Meanwhile, he's juggling more beautiful women -- including an artistically precocious daughter -- than any one man deserves. Beyond that he's also hooked on cigarettes, booze, Dexedrine, AlkaSeltzer and eye-drop solution. When his excesses catch up to his failing heart, Gideon is treated to an out-of-body experience that's straight out of a Fellini movie. The new Music Edition DVD adds commentary from film editor Alan Heim, the featurettes Portrait of a Choreographer and Perverting the Standards, backgrounders on the numbers On Broadway and Take Off With Us, and a Fosse photo gallery.
Diggers Nearly every review of Diggers has mentioned its similarity to Diners, which also featured a group of young men who have come to the end of the road that leads from perpetual adolescence to begrudging adulthood. The guys here reside in an area of Long Island whose economy soon no longer will be based primarily on clamming, and where the thirty-something sons and grandsons of diggers no longer can take their futures as clam harvesters for granted. The year is 1976, so the locals look as if they're either heading to the local convenience store for rolling papers or are returning home from a George Thorogood concert. They smoke too much, rarely are seen without a bottle of beer in their hands and look as if they get one haircut a year, whether they need one or not (blessedly, there's not a mullet in sight, however). Their wives and girlfriends had yet to yet to reap the benefits of the women's liberation movement, and the only woman who doesn't look as if she's been sentenced to minimum-security prison is a big-city girl slumming with the locals. If that makes Diggers sound trivial and hopelessly clichéd, know that the shot-in-HD film also is compassionate, closely observed and often very funny. Most of the credit for that goes to an unusually strong and sympathetic cast that includes Paul Rudd, Ken Marino, Sarah Paulson, Ron Eldard, Josh Hamilton, Maura Tierney and Lauren Ambrose. Because the film was produced by HDNet, it was released day-and-date in a handful of theater last week and simulcast on the HDNet cable and satellite network. Four short days later, it found its way into the video market. (Before long, these co-productions will become available for download on opening day, too.) If advertising wasn't such an expensive proposition these days, the distributor probably could have squeezed a few more dollars out of the box office, but, really, why bother when the risk-reward ratio on indies is much too great to rely on only one revenue stream. -- Gary Dretzka
Full Frame Documentary Shorts, Vol. 5 The prestigious Full Frame Documentary Film Festival is held each April in Durham, N.C. Over the course of four days, nearly 100 docs are screened in several downtown theaters. The fifth volume in the series contains six popular titles selected from entries in the 9-year-old festival. One tantalizing short, The Angelmakers, re-visits a nearly forgotten episode in Hungarian history, when a large group of women killed their husbands with arsenic. -- Gary Dretzka
Illegal Aliens Destroy All Monsters If life were fair, the many news directors and reporters who provided viewers with months of hysterical coverage over the travails of Anna Nicole Smith would be duct-taped to wooden chairs and forced to sit through repeated showings of Illegal Aliens. Then, after a few hours, they would be asked to craft an apology, admitting the notorious heiress was neither an actress nor a person worthy of more than passing interest to the media. Moreover, they would agree all the similarities drawn between her death and those of Marilyn Monroe and Jane Mansfield were patently absurd. The women may have shared an appreciation of blond hair and appearances in Playboy, but that's where the similarities ended … and Illegal Aliens proves it. Smith shouldn't have had any trouble playing a blond bimbo from outer space, but she turns out to be the weakest link in the chain, here. As happened in Men in Black, Smith and two slightly less statuesque brunettes assume the guise of the women in the magazine -- a skin rag -- closest to the crashed space ship. Their mission is to save Earth from yet another inter-galactic threat, this one in the form of Joanie Lauer (a.k.a., the non-blond wrestler and, yes, former Playboy model Chyna). The obvious influences for this spoof of cheesy straight-to-video movies also included Charlie's Angels (the McG versions) and Dinosaur Island, in which bikini-clad lesbians save a group of mutinous soldiers from stop-action dinosaurs. Smith, who is thin and apparently in good health here, seems merely to have been asked to do a parody of herself in E!'s horrifying The Anna Nicole Smith Show. Even as parody, though, Illegal Aliens makes Plan 9 from Outer Space look like 2001: A Space Odyssey. If one does insist on renting Illegal Aliens, however, it's highly recommended that he (no woman would waste the time) stock up on beer and blunts and enjoy a double-feature. The residual buzz certainly would add value to Grow Live Monsters: Destroy All Monsters, which re-visits the intensely eccentric vision of the avant-garde rock band Destroy All Monsters. (The name was inspired, no doubt, by the series of goofy sci-fi flicks that escaped from Japan in the late '60s). Grow Live Monsters is comprised of primitive 8 mm, super-8 and 16 mm films from 1971-76, in which free-jazz and Zappa-esque jams are played over snippets of material taken from TV shows, home movies, comic books and psychedelic posters. These exceedingly bizarre films range in quality from mildly amusing to incoherent. The music, which is enhanced with sound effects from early Tarzan movies, could be used by a coroner as evidence in any investigation into what killed the '60s. Both of these videos would make excellent interrogation tools in Guantanamo Bay. -- Gary Dretzka
Who the #$&% Is Jackson Pollock? If this stranger-than-fiction documentary resembles an extended version of a 60 Minutes segment, it's probably because it was written and directed by Harry Moses, a frequent contributor to the newsmagazine, and the father-and-son producing team of Steven and Don Hewitt. The filmmakers tag along with San Bernardino resident Teri Horton as she tries to convince movers and shakers in the art establishment that a painting she purchased for $5 at a thrift shop in fact was an authentic Jackson Pollock canvas worth upwards of $60 million. The curators and academics treat Horton as if she had just stepped off the turnip truck from Arkansas, which, at one time, she actually might have done. But, she's a tough old broad and is perfectly willing to wait as long as is necessary to prove them wrong. Her persistence works very much in the favor of viewers. -- Gary Dretzka