The Wrap Up ...
A Mighty Heart	Wall-to-wall coverage of the war in Afghanistan by a veritable army of reporters gave Americans a front-row seat to history in the making. Watching the locals celebrate their liberation was a heart-warming experience, and, at first glance, an early indication of peace and stability to come. It wouldn't last, of course. Taliban fighters are threatening to retake large chunks of the country, opium-smuggling continues apace and the media haven't been allowed to cover on-going counter-insurgency missions. With Operation Iraqi Freedom, though, President Bush provided them another sideshow attraction. Early in 2002, however, people the world over became transfixed with the kidnapping of Wall Street Journal reporter Daniel Pearl at the hands of a radical Al Qaeda splinter group. Among other things, the terrorists were determined to topple the incumbent government, and its secular leadership. It wasn't much of a secret that Pearl was in Pakistan tracing links to a failed terror event, so he was especially vulnerable to a kidnapping. His captors issued several conditions for his release, none of which were likely to carried out. Each passing day brought intelligence agents and police closer to a possible discovery of the hideout, adding pressure on Ahmed Omar Saeed Sheikh and Khalid Sheikh Mohammed show their hands. The hideously grisly execution was transmitted over the Internet not only as proof of the terrorists' resolve, but also as a recruitment tool. It also served notice that no Jew was safe in a territory crawling with radical Islamists. A year later, in Iraq, beheadings would become standard operating procedure for insurgents, changing the face of war forever. A Mighty Heart was adapted by Michael Winterbottom and John Orloff from Mariane Pearl's memoir of the period. It arrived last June, more than a year after HBO aired The Journalist and the Jihadi, which found parallels in the lives of Pearl and Omar Saeed Sheikh. In A Mighty Heart, Mariane is played by Angelina Jolie, who is looks the part and delivers a tightly performance. Critics accorded the Oscar-winning actress higher marks than usual, but her high-profile lifestyle almost certainly dimmed the public's appetite for her. Neither did the unrealized possibility of watching a man being beheaded serve to attract an audience in full summer mode. Winterbottom is no novice when it comes to making movies about wars and the victims of fanaticism -- their's and our's -- and he employed a documentary style to tell the story of the desperate search for his captors and Mariane's ordeal as a pregnant wife and journalist. A Mighty Heart couldn't help but be an emotion-charged experience, but it wasn't the Brit director's intention to jerk tears, wave our flag or offer an apologia for the terrorists. It is a story about a particularly heinous crime, committed as part of an ideological conflict that continues to stretch the limits of tolerance and human discourse. The extras include Journey of Passion: The Making of 'A Mighty Heart' and a PSA for the Committee to Protect Journalists. -- Gary Dretzka
The Hoax	If conman and author Clifford Irving hadn't existed, it might have taken someone with the same chutzpah as disgraced writer James Frey to invent him. Nearly 35 years before Frey was both toasted and roasted by a publicly duped Oprah Winfrey, Irving was playing fast and loose with 60 Minutes inquisitor Mike Wallace. Unlike Frey, however, the purported transcriber of Howard Hughes' memoirs was sent to prison for scamming his publishers out of a huge advance, not merely forced to do a public mea culpa in front of Oprah's aggrieved book club members. Richard Gere deserves to be considered for an Academy Award nomination, at least, for his untypically understated portrayal of the showboat grifter. It's still difficult to imagine that anyone would attempt to sell a transcribed autobiography of such a powerful man while he was still alive, but such was the reclusive behavior of the billionaire in the early'70s. Irving wagered that the nutty old man would be so reluctant to expose himself to public scrutiny that he would elect not to challenge what was written in his name. More appalling was the publishing industry's willingness to suspend disbelief long enough to buy into the scheme -- however reluctantly -- and begin counting their nest eggs before they were hatched. Indeed, Lasse Hallstrom and William Wheeler's is a treatise on how willing Americans are to believe anything that's likely to profit or amuse them. In effect, Irving was serving the same purpose as Jay Gatsby. He already was a published author, who lived the life of a playboy on Ibiza alongside his beautiful wife and girlfriend (who would emerge with an acting career that included an appearance alongside Gere in America Gigolo). The publishers, who are presented here as greedy philistines, knew that a Hughes autobiography would sell like hotcakes, and it blinded them to the most obvious clue of all. Irving had recently made a splash with a book about Ibiza-based art forger Elmyr de Hory, and logically would have picked up some tricks of his own. (Irving, De Hory and Hughes are centerpiece characters in Orson Welles' F Is for Fake.) Hallstrom's cameras stay mostly in and around New York and Las Vegas, avoiding a needless side trip to the island retreat for the idle rich, well-heeled artists and Euro-trash drawn to the nightclubs and beaches. He focuses, instead, on Irving's hallucination-inducing angst not only over being exposed as a fake, himself, but also for serving as an unwitting dupe in a Hughes' scheme to blackmail President Nixon. Gere gets great support from Hope Davis, Stanley Tucci, Zjelko Ivanek; Marcia Gay Harden, Alfred Molina, Julie Delpy and Eli Wallach. The bonus features offer background on the period and crime, including fresh material on Wallace and his famous interview. -- Gary Dretzka
Transformers Two-Disc Special Edition	For those of you keeping track at home, the first fart joke in Transformers arrives five minutes into the movie. This is followed almost immediately by the slaughter of an American garrison in some desert hellhole. The inaugural gag about President Bush being a hayseed occurs about 15 minutes later, as does the first really obvious product plug, for Ding Dongs. An obscenity uttered in a not-very-foreign foreign language arrives not long thereafter, as does a self-deprecating racial gag from an African-American. (The requisite parents-son masturbation discussion comes an hour later, as does the second urination sight gag). And, so it goes. Director Michael Bay is a master at covering all demographic bases while working within the parameters of taste dictated by a PG-13 rating. More to the point for those less prudish than I, however, the thunderous CGI-enhanced action sequences are every bit as entertaining as one would expect from a mega-budget Bay production. The balance between carnage and comic relief -- another Bay trademark -- is maintained throughout the film's 144-minute length, perhaps as a sop to older viewers and geeks, as are the dozens of in-jokes, homages, riffs and allusions to classic sci-fi, horror and military movies. The Transformers themselves are the real story here, and they're pretty terrific. They stand head and shoulders above the grounded human characters, who, like the actors who play them, do little more than stand in front of a green screen and feign awe at the robots' ability to shape-shift and destroy things. That said, none of the cast members embarrasses him- or herself, and rising star Shia LaBeouf really is quite appealing. The Special Edition DVD package adds commentary by Bay, two documentaries exploring both the human and robotic elements, a chat with producer/fan Steven Spielberg and other making-of material. The DVD's remarkable sound engineering will provide the ultimate test for the woofers, sub-woofers and tweeters of your new home-theater setup, as well. (An aside: the climactic final battle takes place in a downtown Los Angeles that looks as good as I've ever seen it in a movie, but somehow is devoid of Mexican-Americans. Only in Hollywood.) -- Gary Dretzka
28 Weeks Later	Anyone whose idea of a good time includes watching scores of British zombies being massacred by American soldiers (don't ask) will find lots to like in the grim, if exciting sequel to 28 Days Later. Juan Carlos Fresnadillo took over the reins from Danny Boyle for this franchise-in-the-making about a mad-dog virus that travels at the speed of light and infects good guys and bad guys without distinction. It's more explosive than a video store dedicated to Joel Silver-produced thrillers, and bloodier than an ebola outbreak at Macy's Thanksgiving Day parade. The scariest moments didn't require anything more than plumes of black smoke, rising from the floor of a ruined and abandoned London, and a silent stroll down a dark tunnel in an empty subway. Neither does the thought of being bitten by a toxic family member -- or being driven to infect a child -- offer opportunities for comic relief. It's lots of fun, but only diehard horror fanatics are likely to look beyond the carnage for deeper meaning. -- Gary Dretzka
12:08 East of Bucharest	Anyone who's ever watched more than a few minutes of programming on local-access cable -- or SCTV -- will recognize the characters in this offbeat Romanian export. In his first feature, Corneliu Porumboiu observes how a select few residents of a small town east of Bucharest marked the 16th anniversary of the collapse the Ceasescu regime. Virgil Jderescu, owner of the local television station, conducted a panel discussion in a makeshift studio he shares with a local folk orchestra. His panelists were Emanoil Piscoci, an alcoholic history teacher, and retiree Tiberiu Manescu, known far and wide for dressing up as Santa and passing out toys on Christmas. The first half of the film shows the three men at home, dealing with banal chores and everyday nuisances, the most interesting of which involves a Chinese merchant who lends money and sells firecrackers to kids. Inside the cramped studio, the debate quickly devolved into an argument over whether Piscoci was or wasn't in the town square before the Romanian dictator fled Bucharest in a helicopter, and, if so, was he actively agitating for democracy. Manescu has no clear idea as to why he was asked to be included in the discussion, but admits to being disappointed that Ceasescu was toppled before he could make good on a promise to give his constituents a sizable amount of money to do with as they pleased. Adding to the confusion, Jderescu picked a topic only he completely understands: Was it or wasn't it a revolution in our town? When he opens the phone lines for questions, callers were more interested in attacking Piscoci's memory than parsing the impact of the revolution on the local citizenry. In fact, nothing seems to have changed -- good or bad -- in the lives of simple folk whose well-being never mattered much to policy makers in the capital. In this way, of course, Romanians have much in common with citizens of most of the world's democracies and dictatorships. -- Gary Dretzka
Ten Canoes	No matter what transpires between now and the day Oscar nominations are announced, it's unlikely a more impressive film than Ten Canoes will be released in this country. Sadly, because its story is told in a language other than English and there are no recognizable stars, this remarkable Australian export will go virtually unseen by those who vote on such things. Worse, because Ten Canoes looks like a documentary, but isn't about penguins, few audiences have had an opportunity to see it. At its core, Rolf de Heer's film dramatized the process by which one Aboriginal fable has been passed from one distant generation to a far more contemporary one, while also retaining its relevance and ability to impress. Unlike the parched territory surveyed in De Heer's politically charged The Tracker, the setting for Ten Canoes is the green and swampy Yolngu homeland of Arnhem Land near the continent's northern coast. Narrated in English by a light-hearted griot, Ten Canoes marks the passage of time by regularly shifting between vibrant color and an almost sepia-tinged black-and-white. An elder, identified as Storyteller, is the human conduit through which the fable is passed from the mythic past and a more obscure present. All of the on-screen characters speak in their native language, which, we're told, is a first for an Australian feature. Storyteller is played by the great Aboriginal actor David Gulpilil (Walkabout, The Last Wave), who tempted De Heer by showing him a photograph taken in the mid-1930s by anthropologist Donald Thomson. It captured a group of 10 Yolngu men in hand-made canoes, hunting for goose eggs in a crocodile-infested swamp. Ostensibly, these hunters had heard the same story about a long-ago settling of scores when a warrior's wife is abducted by a more predatory tribe. Just as Burden of Dreams and Hearts of Darkness documented just how unpredictable and thrilling filmmaking can be under extreme conditions, the making-of featurettes included with the bonus package reveals how Ten Canoes always seemed to exist on the brink of chaos. More than anything else, the production was a disaster waiting to happen. None of that drama is revealed in the final product, however. My hope would be that Palm Pictures affords itself the kind of awards campaign that will allow academy and guild members sufficient time to dismiss the notion that Ten Canoes is far more substantial than the R-rated National Geographic special it immediately recalls. Few American directors ever will face the conditions experienced by De Heer and his cast and crew, let alone return with a picture that's half as entertaining and of such immense cultural importance. -- Gary Dretzka
Caligula: Three-Disc Imperial Edition Rome: Engineering an Empire	Everything about the making of the 1979 version of Caligula was epic, including the arrogance of Penthouse publisher Bob Guccioni, who, for six minutes of film time, served as co-writer, co-producer, co-director and co-cinematographer. Unfortunately for everyone involved, those six minutes of sex and sadism represented everything that was wrong with the project in the minds of cast, critics and audiences. The better 150 minutes were directed by Italian soft-core stylist Tinto Brass, written by novelist/historian Gore Vidal and acted by such talents as Malcolm McDowell, Peter O'Toole, Helen Mirren and John Gielgud. The story of Emperor Gaius Germanicus Caesar's reign of terror would seem to offer plenty of occasions for perverse and lurid content. Guccioni edited the hard-core material into what already was a R-rated product, without first informing any of the other primary players. None of those six minutes included a recognizable actor, so they could easily be excised. But the damage was done, and buzz from the set was incendiary. Lawsuits followed, credits were deleted and those few viewers who came expecting a 2½-hour porn fest were as disappointed as viewers seeking a sexy historical drama on the order of the BBC mini-series, I Claudius (1976). That it laid an epic egg at the box office probably came as a disappointment to the producers, as well. Because the editing was so ham-handed and obvious, Caligula now can be enjoyed in much the same way as Deep Throat and Russ Meyer and Roger Ebert's Beyond the Valley of the Dolls. The boxed set from Image adds a new interview with Brass; discussions with cast members John Steiner, Lori Wagner and the film's on-set reporter, Ernest Volkman; two versions of Making of Caligula; deleted and alternate scenes; set photographs; trailers; a CD containing the full soundtrack release as well as 40 minutes of alternate and unreleased tracks written for the film; DVD-Rom supplements, including Vidal's original screenplay, an interview with Guccione and three magazine features. Any resemblance between Caligula and the History Channel's Rome: Engineering an Empire is purely a coincidence. While the former emphasizes sex, scandal and deceit, the focus of the former is on urban planning and engineering. Guess which one might be the more fascinating to a normal human being. Things were different, back then. Whenever an emperor woke up in the middle of the night with some cockamamie idea for a palace, villa or temple, it became the duty of his engineers to make the dream a reality. Building permits and long debates in the Senate's planning commission weren't, yet, an obstacle. The remains of some of the finest edifices are still recognizable, while the advances in creating a viable infrastructure remain influential. This DVD explores the ancient city and its architecture through CGI renditions, location footage and interviews. -- Gary Dretzka
Anne of the Thousand Days Mary, Queen of Scots Elizabeth: Spotlight Series	In advance of this week's launch of Elizabeth: The Golden Age, Universal has repackaged a trio of catalogue titles looking back at the roots of current British monarchy. It is a subject that has never fallen out of favor in Hollywood, if only because it allows studio honchos to pretend they remember European History 101 and the acting and costumes can be counted on to impress Oscar voters. The new biopic reunites the creative team responsible for the much-honored 1998 Elizabeth, in which Cate Blanchett played a much younger Virgin Queen. The Spotlight Edition of the new DVD includes a preview of Elizabeth: The Golden Age, in which Blanchett appears to have discovered the fountain of youth. Besides the standard making-of featurette, the DVD adds an interview with director Shekhar Kapur. In Mary Queen of Scots, the same Elizabeth Tudor was portrayed by Glenda Jackson, while Vanessa Redgrave played her Roman Catholic cousin, Mary Stuart. The director and writer had three years earlier collaborated on Anne of the Thousand Days, which chronicled Anne Boleyn's epochal marriage to Henry VIII. In it, Richard Burton played the monarch, opposite wives Geneviève Bujold and Irene Pappas, and tootsie-in-waiting, Jane Seymour. (Look for that other Queen Elizabeth, Elizabeth Taylor, in an uncredited role as a courtesan.) The costumes and sets are every bit as marvelous as one would expect from such Oscar-bait epics, then and now. -- Gary Dretzka
Evan Almighty	Although production costs for Evan Almighty were shared by several worldwide interests, the spending of $175 million on a sequel to a hit family comedy proved to be no laughing matter for anyone involved, especially Universal Pictures. Bruce Almighty was fabulously successful, and the idea of building a franchise against a biblical backdrop didn't seem crazy when revenues from DVD sales were being counted. Because Evan Almighty cost $100 million more to produce than its predecessor, however, the break-even threshold necessarily would take much longer to reach … maybe never. Hey, it's not our money, and who cares if it only returned about a third of the first flick? These sorts of miscalculations occur all the time in Hollywood. After Jim Carrey and Jennifer Aniston turned down the opportunity to reprise their original characters, someone might have raised a red flag and lowered expectations. Instead, the elevation of Steve Carell's Evan Baxter seemed a logical step forward for repeat director Tom Shadyac, as was the inclusion of Lauren Graham and Wanda Sykes as the freshman congressman's wife and assistant, respectively. Morgan Freeman was the only indispensable presence, and, thank God, he agreed to come along for the ride. Freeman materializes not long after Baxter moves to the suburbs of the nation's captial and prayerfully asks the deity to help him change the world, which God translates to mean: build me an ark, and, like Noah, make room in it for a mating pair of every living creature. In biblical times this might not have presented an overwhelming challenge, but, today, it required all manner of green-screen and special-effects sorcery … all of which is explained at great length in a generous bonus package. Making matters worse was a half-baked Capra-esque subplot that seemed to be nothing more than an excuse for some animal site gags and comic wisecracks from Sykes. As it is, Evan Almighty should appeal to family audiences and those for whom Noah's ark is a tale worth revisiting. Anyone expecting a biblical take on The 40-Year-Old Virgin, though, is best advised to take a pass. -- Gary Dretzka
Next	Lee Tamahori first became noticed outside New Zealand for Once Were Warriors, an intense drama about a Maori family's attempts to deal with a life of violence, substance abuse and poverty in Auckland, while clinging to the last vestiges of their traditional rural culture. After a couple of near-misses with Mulholland Falls and The Edge, Tamahori found sporadic work in movies based on the antics of super-villains and loaded with wild chases (including the passable 007 flick, Die Another Day). Critics might prefer small, intelligent indies to overblown thrillers, but Hollywood careers are established by putting butts in seats and producing movies that, at the very least, are capable of faring better in DVD than at the multiplex. Next is in the latter category. In it, Nic Cage plays a cheese-ball Las Vegas magician who uses his ability to see two minutes into the future to surprise Korean tourists, pick up chicks, scam blackjack dealer and prevent the occasional crime. Somehow, a team of federal agents led by Julianne Moore is made aware of the magician's gift of pre-cognition, and hope it can be used to prevent a terrorist group from detonating a nuclear device in Los Angeles. Somehow, too, the terrorists have learned of the feds' strategy, and scheme to kill the magician before he agrees to participate. Blessedly, much of the barely logical skullduggery takes place in and around the unfailingly majestic Grand Canyon and rarely used Hualapai Indian Reservation, on the canyon floor. Cue the chases and rockslides, and you have a movie. Next was very loosely based on Philip K. Dick's The Golden Man, although anyone familiar with the master's work probably wouldn't recognize it. Action fans will enjoy the bonus material, which adds a lot of making-of material and other noisy goodies. Oh, did I mention that Jessica Biel also is in the movie? Good thing, too. -- Gary Dretzka
You Kill Me	Tough to go wrong these days by inventing clever maladies for gangsters to overcome while trying to perform their normal duties. Robert DeNiro's neurotic ganglord Paul Vitti followed Tony Soprano into analysis in 1999, while Bruce Willis' disillusioned hitman Jimmy "The Tulip" Tudeski played against type by moving to the suburbs and making nice with the neighbors. In Matador, Pierce Brosnan played an assassin so burned out he needs to solicit help from a salesman he meets in a Mexico City hotel. You Kill Me raises the ante by requiring a Buffalo-based hitman (Ben Kingsley) to attend AA meetings after he blows an assignment by passing out in his car in a drunken stupor. Frank Falenczyk's journey to sobriety takes him to San Francisco, where, in an ironic twist, he lands a temporary job in a funeral parlor. It takes a while for him to warm to the AA way of life and having a steady gig, but, through it, he finds a kooky young woman who becomes the yin to his yang (or vice versa). While Falenczyk is getting his act back together on the west coast, however, his Polish-American bosses are losing a turf war with a gang of territorially ambitious Irish thugs. After learning that his uncle has been killed, Falenczyk returns to Buffalo to avenge the murder and put his hard-won sobriety to the ultimate test. It's possible to wonder if Kingsley would have been considered for this role -- and that of the Rabbi, in Lucky Number Slevin -- if it weren't for his marvelous turn as a psycho gangster in Sexy Beast. His Don Logan was so wonderfully monstrous, Kingsley's name must automatically pop up whenever similarly deranged criminals are written into a script. You Kill Me isn't nearly as good as Sexy Beast, but it's better than most other similar titles in DVD. -- Gary Dretzka
My Best Friend	Only the French seem willing to invest money in light situational comedies of the sort represented by The Valet and My Best Friend, both of which starred 56-year-old Daniel Auteuil as a businessman whose bourgeois lifestyle is threatened by arrogance and ill-conceived schemes. Steve Martin and Robert De Niro come as close as any American actor to approximating the appeal of the more-handsome-than-not Frenchman, but neither would be a perfect fit for the confines of such slight projects. (Auteuil has also done terrific work in the more dramatic Cache and Girl on the Bridge.) Here, he plays a dealer in expensive antiques who is stunned to learn that the people he considers to be his closest friends can't stand him. This could be chalked up to a pre-occupation with his work, but, even in school, fellow students secretly despised him. At a post-auction dinner with fellow dealers, still puffed up after buying an ancient Greek vase, François is challenged to produce someone they would consider to be a best friend. Even though a large sum of money rests in the balance, François considers the wager to be something of a no-brainer. Turns out, it's anything but. After exhausting his list of potential candidates, the increasingly desperate dealer seeks the guidance of relationship experts, whose advice he routinely ignores. Lurking in the background is a Parisian cab driver who always seems to be in the neighborhood when François leaves the office. Bruno is one of those cabbies who treats his passengers to a constant barrage of facts and trivia about landmarks along their route. Bruno dreams of competing on Who Wants to Be a (Euro)Millionaire, but is too emotionally unhinged to go before an audience. The men would appear to make the perfect couple, if it weren't for Francois' inability to see beyond the nose on his face. How both men meet their individual challenges is hardly surprising, but the stops along the way are worth the journey. The making-of featurette is more entertaining than it is enlightening. - Gary Dretzka
Crazy Love Girl 27 Show Business: The Road to Broadway Michael Moore Hates America Dan Klores his enjoyed a long run of success as a public-relations executive, but he now is enjoying a second career making documentaries about interesting people. New Yorkers Burt Pugach and Linda Riss, the central figures in Crazy Love, are interesting in the same way Boris Karloff and Elsa Lanchester were interesting in Bride of Frankenstein. Already rich, successful and married, Pugach's obsession with Riss was matched by her willingness to enjoy the fruits of labors, which included being introduced to celebrities, nightclubbing and flying in his private plane. When the virginal Riss stopped buying her boyfriend's lies about being divorced and began a serious relationship with another man, Pugach hired a thug to throw lye in her face, which caused disfigurement and would lead to total blindness. His scheme was revealed after a few days, and, even though his behavior suggested he was completely off his rocker, was found guilty and sentenced to 30 years in prison (he was in Attica during the riot and massacre). For the next 20 years, Pugach would send Riss letters and beg not only for her forgiveness but also another opportunity to hook up. Riss, now blind, knows that Pugach is a monster, but her poverty and need for a seeing-eye companion forces her to re-consider her options. Her ruined face, hidden from the public by ornate sunglasses, has caused several potential boyfriends to split the scene, and there weren't likely to be very many more suitors in her life. So, what the hell. Now, if this were a fictional noir thriller, Riss wouldn't have realized Pugach was her imprisoned pen-pal, assuming, instead, the man had read about her plight and was looking for someone who couldn't afford to be choosy. Upon the occasion of his parole, the stranger would move in with Riss, prove to be an ideal mate, marry her and accept her virginity as a reward for his patience and undying love. Instead of living happily ever after, Pugach would return to his cheating and lying ways. Knowing he had a warm bed and younger body waiting for him elsewhere, Pugash finally revealed his true identity to his wife, and, after getting her ring thrown in his face, the monster finished the job he started two decades earlier. In fact, the real-life Pugach did everything, except murder his wife. Married, they seem little different than thousands of other couples over retirement age in New York. Being married to the demanding and overbearing Riss is no picnic, though. One friend suggests that he's still being punished for his crime. Yeah, interesting. As much as Crazy Love is about, well, crazy love, Klores' film perfectly captures a time in America when men and women courted, dressed up to go on a date and didn't apologize for being chaste. The attack on Riss was a tabloid staple for weeks, as was coverage of Pugach's trial and their subsequent marriage. The Los Angeles media had a similarly overheated response to reports of a violent incident that occurred at a lavish party staged for MGM's sales team in a remote barn on the Hal Roach Ranch, circa 1937. Among the 120 chorus girls hired to provide entertainment for the party was a 20-year-old dancer, Patricia Douglas, who claimed that she was raped by one of the guests. Instead of going to the head of publicity with her mother to demand hush money, Douglas played against type by suing her attacker and the studio. Anticipating a trial to rival that of Fatty Arbuckle's, the newspapers went into overdrive. Mysteriously, though, just as things were getting interesting, the whole case fell apart. Douglas was targeted by studio mouthpieces for a smear campaign, and the district attorney and law-enforcement personnel caved in to pressure by Louis B. Mayer whose bribes anticipated just such a scandal. Ultimately, Mayer's minions also were able to intimidate Douglas' key witness, her lawyer and mother, who somehow was able to buy a liquor store. And, for 60 years, that was that. Writer David Stenn stumbled onto the story while researching a book on Jean Harlow. It was only after he began dusting off archival material belonging to the police, newspapers and studios that Stenn discovered the full extent of the cover-up and began looking for the relatives of people who were players in the case. Remarkably, he also managed to locate Girl 27 -- as she was known on the call sheet that night -- who was living in self-enforced solitude in a low-rent Las Vegas apartment. It took months of wooing to convince Douglas to relive the worst night in her life, but she did. Her story would be unbelievable in any other city but Los Angeles, whose politicians, cops, media executives all were on one studio or another's payroll. Seeing proof of this miscarriage of justice, and hearing how it impacted the families of Douglas and others, is something else entirely. The documentary's biggest fault, and it's a tough one to ignore, is Stenn's insistence on putting himself at the center of the drama and allowing the praise of participants to avoid the editing process. Saddest of all, perhaps, is the New York Times' refusal to run a simple obituary of Douglas upon her death, even after the facts of the case were revealed in a lengthy Vanity Fair article. Anyone whose trip to New York City wouldn't be complete without taking in one play or musical, at least, will want to see Dori Berinstein's very entertaining, Show Business: The Road to Broadway. Berinstein's cameras were on hand to record key moments in the development of four very different Broadway musicals, Wicked, Taboo, Caroline, or Change and Avenue Q, from casting to the Tonys. As is demonstrated in Show Business, there are few more risky investments than entrusting artists with hard-earned cash. Hope springs eternal in a producer's heart, but a single negative review in the New York Times can crush a dream faster than an alarm clock. Wicked and Avenue Q raised smiles, Caroline, or Change had to settle for several Tony nominations, and Rosie O'Donnell's Taboo tanked. There are quite a few people in this country who continue to equate documentary makers with communists and, worse, liberals. Pulling down the pants of CEOs, corrupt politicians and crooked cops is a sport roughly akin to fishing with dynamite. Uncovering the root causes of poverty, pollution and violence takes digging, but typically it's time well spent. In 2004, conservatives were so bothered by Michael Moore's ability to win friends and influence voters, they decided to fight fire with fire. One prominent example arrived in the form of Michael Moore Hates America. The central conceit of Michael Wilson's film borrows from Roger & Me, in that the filmmaker's stated mission is to get Moore to sit for an interview. Like the head of General Motors, Moore refuses the invitation. This is good for Wilson, because otherwise, like Moore, he wouldn't have had much of a movie. To counter what he sees as sloppiness and lack of patriotism on Moore's part, Wilson nitpicks his movies and interviews citizens whose lives are just dandy. He also benefits from some zippy quotes and observations by such folks as David Horowitz, John Stossel, Penn Jillette and Albert Maysles, all of whom have one ax or another to grind on Moore's head. No problem there, except for the fact that it's already been done. More than a few liberal movie critics and filmmakers have already exhausted the debate on Moore's methodology, and countless other Americans of various political stripes have grown tired of his act and wardrobe. Nevertheless, his films do well because they strike a chord with a broad spectrum of viewers, not just pinkos and flag-burners. Instead of attacking easy targets, it would be nice to see conservative filmmakers tackle issues not already part of Rush Limbaugh's act, like, for instance, why our brave troops were sent into battle by Republicans lacking proper protection and why military and VA hospitals treat wounded soldiers as if they were on welfare. -- Gary Dretzka
Ping Pong America's interest in competitive table tennis peaked shortly after Mao Zedong and Richard Nixon used the game both as a lever to open the doors of Red China to western interests and stem anti-Communist hysteria back home. As amazing as it seems now, images of everyday life in China once were as infrequent as Kodak moments are today in North Korea. When the touring American ping-pong team was invited to the People's Republic, along with journalists covering the world championships in Japan, 22 years of enmity and inflammatory rhetoric seemed to evaporate overnight. (If LBJ or Hubert Humphrey had suggested thawing relations with China, Nixon and his cronies would have had them crucified atop the Capitol dome.) In addition to being introduced to such wondrous things as acupuncture, taichi and the Forbidden City, American TV audiences were stunned by how fast and exciting table tennis could be when executed by the world's best players. Fumihiko Sori's wildly entertaining Ping Pong -- based on a manga by Taiyo Matsumoto -- serves as a reminder of the popularity of the game among young Asians, for whom ping pong qualifies as a religion. In it, a pair of childhood friends and sporting rivals meet in the Japanese equivalent of a Texas death match. The film has its inspirational and moralistic moments, but they're not of the against-all-odds, David-vs.-Goliath variety favored by Hollywood. Through clever editing, imaginative special effects, perceptive screenwriting and realistic characters, Ping Pong retained the zany feel of the comic book, without ignoring the appeal of competition. A second disc adds featurettes on the making of the film, how to play the game and a parody, Ting Tong. The set arrives unrated, but, apart from some mild cussing and excessive cigarette smoking, there's nothing in Ping Pong that would offend children or bore adults. The distance between Ping Pong and HBO's rah-rah Dare to Dream: The Story of the U.S. Women's Soccer Team can be measured in miles. Irony and quirkiness aren't among America's strong suits when it comes to movies and documentaries about sports heroes. Even so, the evolution of women's soccer in this country is well worth recounting. -- Gary Dretzka
Torn Apart Barely noticed upon its released in 1990, Torn Apart re-locates the Shakespearean chestnut, Romeo and Juliet, to war-torn Jerusalem in and around the time of the Yom Kippur war. No more information than that is needed to describe what transpires in Jack Fisher's 96-minute tale of star-crossed love in one of the holiest and most hateful cities on Earth. Adrian Pasdar's recurring role on Heros almost certainly prompted the DVD release of Torn Apart, in which he plays an American-raised Jew in the Israeli army. The Juliet role was filled by Cecilia Peck, daughter of Gregory Peck, whose only deficiency here is not looking very Palestinian. Ben and Laila were childhood friends, separated by his parents' decision to move to New York when peaceful co-existence among neighbors no longer was possible. They meet again un-cute at a security checkpoint, where Ben is a soldier assigned to monitor the identities and shopping bags of Palestinians. Before long, they're on the road to a romance that can only add in tragedy. Despite out familiarity with the conceit, the rekindling of their love feels genuine, as does the enmity that separates their families and friends. More than anything else, Torn Apart benefits from having been shot in various locations around Israel and the occupied territories. According to those interviewed on a bonus track, the setting added unscripted tension when the actors were misidentified as actual combatants. -- Gary Dretzka
The Pink Floyd and Syd Barrett Story: Deluxe Edition Under Review: Bruce Springsteen/Nick Drake/Neil Young/ Byrds/Keith Richards D.O.A.: Smash The State Impact! Songs that Changed the World Willie Nelson: Last of the Breed There seems to be no end to mankind's fascination with Pink Floyd, one of those rare rock ensembles that has enjoyed vast multi-generational appeal and whose career arc spans four decades and several very musical personalities. The Grateful Dead, Led Zeppelin, Fleetwood Mac and Rolling Stones are revered as much for their celebrity personas as their music, much of which stopped being interesting 30 years ago. At some point in their long careers, the musicians accepted marketplace demands and reserved a portion of themselves for branding purposes and mass consumption. It wasn't until the mid-'70s, and the release of The Dark Side of the Moon and Wish You Were Here, that Pink Floyd recorded albums that were considered fully accessible and commercial. Even if the band's songs now featured socially relevant lyrics and deeply personal observations, both albums overflowed with material that could be sung out loud -- really loud -- in a car or shower, and reap platinum discs to be hung on the walls of executive offices. The material from those albums is what fans still want to hear on the radio, in concerts and reunions at benefit events. It does not, however, represent the bulk of the lads' work, which was highly experimental, overtly trippy and compatible enough with the visions of such filmmakers as Barbet Schroeder and Michelangelo Antonioni that they were asked to do soundtracks. The latest edition of The Pink Floyd and Syd Barrett Story delves far deeper into the band's musical evolution and how individual members impacted thematic direction. The legend of the recently deceased Syd Barrett is recounted through archival TV footage, home movies and interviews with friends, managers and band members. The three-hour-plus Deluxe Edition also adds full, unedited versions of previously released interviews, acoustic performances of Barrett's songs by Robyn Hitchcock and ex-Blur member Graham Coxon, and other memorabilia. MVD's Under Review series continues apace with learned analysis of music produced by rockers Bruce Springsteen, the late Nick Drake, Neil Young, Keith Richards and the Byrds at crucial turning points in their careers. The Boss, who's currently on tour, is represented by 1978-82: Tales of the Working Man, in which critics, friends and industry mavens discuss such masterpieces as Darkness on the Edge of Town, The River and Nebraska. The examination of the Byrds' works encompasses the period when the group briefly included Gram Parsons and, together, they almost single-handedly injected traditional country music into the rock vocabulary (and paved the way for the Eagles-ization of pop-country). The upcoming Neil Young set focuses on the often tumultuous period from 1976 to 2006. This was when he experimented, not always successfully, with techno, country, synth, punk and R&B, but routinely returned to the hardest of hard rock alongside Crazy Horse. The Drake and Richards discs provide career overviews through archival video and concert footage, rare photographs, critical analysis and interviews. Also from MVD comes D.O.A.: Smash the State, which recounts the glory days of one of punkdom's primary practitioners. The DVD includes material from the band populated by Joe Shithead, Chuck Biscuits, Randy Rampage and Dave Gregg (Gregg, obviously, being an alias), which is considered to be the band's essential incarnation. The analysts demonstrate how D.O.A. influenced Green Day, Red Hot Chili Peppers, Henry Rollins, Rancid, David Grohl, NOFX and Bad Religion, among others. Most of the footage is taken from shows in San Francisco and the East Bay. SRO's continuing series, Impact! Songs that Changed the World, promotes the notion that the success of a single rock or pop 45 could effect a ripple that would grow larger and larger, until it reached icon status. The individual discs dissect the Ramones' I Want to Be Sedated, Chuck Berry's Maybellene, Nirvana's Smells Like Teen Spirit, Madonna's Like a Virgin and the Beatles' I Want to Hold Your Hand. Here, the songs are discussed by such prominent artists as Smokey Robinson, Annie Lennox, Jeff Tweedy, B.B. King, the Edge and Tori Amos. Among the great cultural crimes of the 20th Century was the marginalization of musical icons by record labels and radio conglomerates. Tony Bennett was banished, as was Johnny Cash. If it weren't for satellite and Internet radio, young listeners could easily think the pioneers of country music were extinct. The Last of the Breed represents a reunion of still-vital country giants Willie Nelson, Merle Haggard, and Ray Price. It is built around a 35-song concert, recorded at the Rosemont Theater, just outside Chicago. DVD bonus features include Ray Benson's interview with the boys, and a guided tour of Nelson's tour bus. -- Gary Dretzka
The Film Crew: The Giant of Marathon Folks who simply can't get enough of ancient Greek warriors and their heroic actions in battle will want to check out the Film Crew's take on the 1960 sword-and-sandals epic The Giant of Marathon, starring Steve Reeves. For those too young to remember such things, Reeves was the Arnold Schwarzenegger and Lou Ferrigno of his day, but stood out because he had very little competition for parts demanding bronzed muscle men. In The Giant of Marathon, the Montana native was assigned the role of the revered Athenian athlete, Phillipides, who leads the Greeks against the invading Persians. Interestingly enough, the film was directed by Jacques Tourneur (Cat People) and shot by horror-maestro Mario Bava. Although such period actioners looked pretty snazzy in their day, this one gets skewered in Film Crew commentaries supplied by Mike Nelson, Kevin Murphy and Bill Corbett, all of whom are veterans of Mystery Science Theater 3000. Other recently released DVDs include satirical takes on Wild Women of Wongo, Killers From Space and Hollywood After Dark. The package comes with an apology from Nelson and commentary by Walter S. Ferguson. -- Gary Dretzka
Jericho: The First Season Shark: Season One The Sarah Silverman Program: Season One Roots: The Next Generations Creature Comforts America: The Complete Season One I Love New York: The Complete First Season Last year, CBS launched a dramatic series that speculated on what might happen if a giant mushroom cloud -- ostensibly, the result of a terrorist attack -- suddenly appeared on the horizon of a remote Kansas farming community. Like the stranded passengers on the ABC series, Lost, the citizens of Jericho were isolated and freaked out. As the series progressed, issues other than being incinerated by an unknown enemy raised their ugly heads. Long story, short, low ratings prompted CBS to end the show on a cliff-hanging note, and throw other strands of spaghetti against the wall for the 2007-08 season. No sooner did they make that announcement than fans began a grass-roots campaign to save Jericho, using 20 tons of peanuts as their weapon of choice. CBS agreed to bring the show back as a midseason replacement, a decision the network had reached previously with only Cagney and Lacey, Designing Women, The Magnificent Seven and Touched by an Angel. The boxed set is evidence of what all the fuss was about. The Eye network had better luck with Shark, a series built around a clearly fictitious defense lawyer who changed sides after one of the men he represented was acquitted and freed, only to kill again. Such attacks of conscience don't happen in the real world, of course, but it isn't a bad conceit for a TV show. Landing James Woods and Jerri Ryan to head up a team of young, ambitious and suspiciously good-looking prosecutors certainly didn't hurt the show's chance's for survival. Neither did making Woods' character a single father in Beverly Hills. Shark was one of the success stories of 2006-07, and it warrants the kind of viewership a Sunday timeslot guarantees. Lots of comedians are characterized as ribald, irreverent, unpredictable and fearless. Sarah Silverman is all of those things and a bag of barbeque chips. Deceptively warm and fuzzy, Silverman's character on Comedy Central's The Sarah Silverman Show often makes Larry David's on Curb Your Enthusiasm look like Pat Boone. No cow is too sacred to avoid skewering. This includes sex, homosexuality, abortion, race and a horny God. The show has just entered its second stanza, and shows no sign of retreating from its beyond-politically-incorrect stance. The mini-series Roots was so fabulously successful, it became impossible to dissuade its producers and ABC from leaving well enough alone. There was nothing terribly wrong with The Next Generations, apart from the fact that it occasionally felt forced and less than organic. Certainly, it held its own creatively against most of the other mini-series rushed out in the wake of Roots and Rich Man, Poor Man. Fortunately, author Alex Haley came along for the ride, and no expense was spared collecting a cast of 53 established stars and fresh faces. The very good claymation series, Creature Comforts, proved to be too hip by half for CBS viewers who didn't share the same sense of humor with the Brit and cable-TV peers. The animated critters lasted all of three half-hours on the air, but all of the shot episodes are included in the box set from the creators of Wallace & Gromit and Chicken Run. In pursuit of yet another reality-based relationship hit, VH1 extended the life of New York and Sister Patterson, from Flavor of Love by giving them a harem of 20 stud muffins to do with as they pleased. It all takes place in a posh mansion and, apparently, no one got hurt. There are far too many other new TV-to-DVD packages to discuss any one in particular at great length. For those who prefer to consume their television in season-size bites, here are some noteworthy second-season titles: On its arrival, the CBS relationship comedy, How I Met Your Mother, resembled a dozen other Friends knock-offs, but the work of familiar faces Neil Patrick Harris and Alyson Hannigan have made further comparisons unnecessary; simply put, My Name Is Earl is among the funniest and most outrageous sitcoms of the last 20 years; Chris Rock's Everybody Hates Chris has succeeded, despite its Where's Waldo? scheduling; Girlfriends has quietly enjoyed an eight-year run, although the DVD sets are only up to Season 2; ditto, the long-running Family Ties; David Mamet's The Unit effectively combines high-tech slaughter and matrimonial melodrama, all for the greater glory of Uncle Sam; Drawn Together imagines what might happen if eight stereotypical television characters were thrown together in an uncensored Big Brother format; the sketch comedy series, Upright Citizens Brigade, offers lots of anarchic laughs; Criminal Minds is the latest CBS drama series to lose the services of Mandy Patinkin in midstream; second-half sets of the inaugural seasons of The Streets of San Francisco and The Untouchables also are available. After three years, math geeks and those of us who count on our fingers both appear to have found common ground in CBS' brain-twisting, Numbers; CSI: New York just keeps rolling along; un-pixilated episodes from Season Three of the sexy Canadian anthology series, Bliss make for great couples viewing; and Dog the Bounty Hunter: Family Speaks allows the Dogs to give their side of the recent Mexican fiasco. -- Gary Dretzka