MCN DVD Reviews: May 15, 2008

*The Wrap Up ...*

Indiana Jones: The Adventure Collection The Adventures of Young Indiana Jones, Volume Three: The Years of Change	Indiana Jones is no stranger to the DVD marketplace. Apart from technical upgrades and additional bonus features, everything in The Adventure Collection has previously been available, individually and packaged, at least twice. By the time Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull arrives in DVD, all of the franchise's iterations may well be available in Blu-ray, as well. Those new to the saga will find everything they could possibly need to get current on Indy's adventures right here. Fans are advised, however, to examine the package carefully to determine if the added extras are worth the investment. Some have noted that the four-disc The Adventures of Indiana Jones, released in 2003, contains more extras than the three-disc The Adventure Collection, which is a mere 13 minutes greater in length. The new package includes a dozen new features, including introductions by Steven Spielberg and George Lucas, The Indy Trilogy: A Crystal Clear Appreciation, The Mystery of the Melting Face, Snakes Alive!, The Well of Souls Storyboards, Creepy Crawlies, Discover Adventure on Location with Indy, Hold Onto Your Hat!: The Mine Cart Chase Storyboards, Indy's Women Reminisce, Indy's Friends and Enemies, The Birth of an Action Hero!: 'The Last Crusade Opening Scene Storyboards, photo galleries and LEGO 'Indiana Jones': The Original Adventures Game Demo. Also new to DVD is The Adventures of Young Indiana Jones, Volume Three: The Years of Change. In the TV series, which ran for three seasons, our hero was played by Sean Patrick Flanery, who, at the time, was five years older than is Shia LeBeouf, who plays Mutt Williams in Crystal Skull. Here, World War I is nearing its end and Indy's entering college. Because Young Indiana Jones was filmed on locations around the world, it still ranks as one of the most expensive television series ever produced, and every dollar showed up on the small screen. -- Gary Dretzka

All You Need Is Love	Way back in the Pleistocene Age, 1967, Leonard Bernstein hosted a special on CBS, Inside Pop: The Rock Revolution, in which the maestro attempted to make rock 'n' roll palatable to an audience of uptight parents and concerned citizens. I can easily recall the almost scholarly tone of Bernstein's presentation, and informed interviews with Brian Wilson, members of Herman's Hermits, the Hollies, Janis Ian and Tim Buckley. Instead of concluding that rock music was significant only in its ability to get high school dropouts and other unemployable youth laid and paid, Bernstein found it often required a surprising amount of intellect, innovation and talent to pull off. I wish I had caught Tony Palmer's occasional series All You Need Is Love, which aired a decade later and ran 16 times longer than the CBS special. While the title suggests All You Need Is Love is primarily a history of rock 'n' roll, with ancillary discussions of how other genres impacted on it, the opposite was true. It took the documentarian and his cadre of producers and historians all of 17 hours to trace the history of popular music in all its disparate incarnations, from the advent of the slave trade to the era of glam-rock and Muzak. Their journey took them from Africa to New Orleans and Europe; from the Mississippi Delta and Memphis to Chicago and Detroit; from Music Hall to Broadway, Tin Pan Alley, Hollywood and Las Vegas; from the gentle hills of England, Scotland, Ireland and Wales, to the hollers and ridgelines of Appalachia and the Ozarks, to Nashville's Grand Ol'Opry and the beerhalls of Austin; from the male impersonators and drag queens of London's West End, to Alice Cooper, David Bowie and Kiss. One genre informed the other, constantly evolving into something new and different. Dozens of noteworthy musicians, young and old, were interviewed and/or captured in performance, as were historians, journalists, producers, music publishers and club owners. Palmer opens several of the episodes by asking artists to offer their opinions on where and how their music originated and what differentiated it from other genres. From there, the conversations went in a dozen different directions, from the scholarly to the abstract. John Hammond is especially eloquent in his recollections of how racism, greed, poverty and substance abuse impacted negatively on the artists without whom there would be no music industry. To this end, Muddy Waters describes matter-of-factly how he and other bluesmen were ripped off by their managers and record labels. In another stirring segment, B.B. King's "The Thrill Is Gone" is juxtaposed against Martin Luther King's I Have a Dream speech; Liberace entertains septuagenarians with a terrific boogie-woogie, 16 to the bar, and helps Palmer trace the roots of his own persona back to British Music Hall and vaudeville; Charles Aznavour recalls Edith Piaf, and Jerry Leiber and Mike Stoller re-create the uneasy birth of.Hound Dog; Pat Boone blithely explains how he allowed himself to become the Great White Hope of white radio programmers in the '50s. No genre is left unexamined, from burlesque and minstrel, to hillbilly and reggae, and on to synthesizer and Muzak. Sadly, far too many of the people we meet and places we visit in All You Need Is Love are long gone and some of their stories will go untold. Palmer's cameras were able to capture Memphis' Beale Street, before it was cleaned up for tourists and conventioneers, and Chicago's famous Maxwell Street flea market before it would swallowed up by commercial development. Because All You Need Is Love was completed just as punk and hip-hop were about explode in England and America, more than a quarter-century of pop history and musical evolution - rave, rap, light jazz, world, grunge -- is, by necessity, missing in the DVD package. It would be interesting to see how the same producers might have filled that very large blank today, even knowing that new opportunities would present themselves as soon as they entered the editing room. -- Gary Dretzka

The Great Debaters	Although it's a self-defeating exercise, one thing I do after watching a particularly engrossing biopic or movie allegedly based on a true story is search the Internet to find the facts behind the true story. In the best DVD packages, at least one of the bonus features will expand on the information relayed in the movie, by introducing the actual people represented by actors and letting them tell their stories. That's the case with the two-disc Great Debaters package. Not surprisingly, perhaps, the true story of the Wiley College debate team is every bit as interesting as the one told in the movie, with invented anecdotes and composite characters. Here, Denzel Washington and Oprah Winfrey collaborated on the mostly factual Great Debaters, which recalled how the 1935 team defeated the reigning champions from a predominantly white university. Did it detract from my enjoyment of Great Debaters to learn that Washington chose Harvard as the location for the precedent-setting showdown, instead of the University of Southern California, home to the actual No. 1 team? Having spent time on both campuses, learning about the ruse disappointed me. Washington and screenwriter Robert Eisele understood the Harvard brand carries far more intellectual cachet than that of USC, and, by taking dramatic license, he could make the consequences of victory or defeat seem even greater than they actually were. Does it bother me that the name of the sole woman competitor was changed - perhaps, so her later accomplishments could be embellished -- or that one on the male students was a composite character? Not really. It was sufficiently gratifying to learn that one of the debaters actually would become a founder of the influential civil-rights organization, C.O.R.E., and that teacher/coach Melvin Tolson was the real deal, a man who would become a prominent labor organizer, American Modernist poet, contemporary of the Harlem Renaissance and poet laureate of Liberia. I was far more unhappy that the filmmaker decided to borrow so many of the formulas and clichés that inform sports biopics and against-all-odds melodramas. Washington's portrayal of Tolson was typically excellent, though, as were the performances of Forest and Denzel Whitaker (James Farmer Sr, and Jr.), Jurnee Smollett and Jermaine Williams. Poor John Heard was assigned the thankless task of playing a stereotypically racist small-town sheriff, and he looked as if he hated every second of it. The background interviews Washington conducted with contemporaries of Tolson and the Farmers are wonderful. -- Gary Dretzka

P.S. I Love You Over Her Dead Body 27 Dresses	Look no further than these three titles for proof of Hollywood's inability to make romantic comedies in which young, single women resemble flesh-and-blood human beings. All of the ones we meet - even the ghost -- are too ditzy by half, damaged in one cornball way or another and desperate for someone to sweep them off their feet. They refuse to the heed the signs that would lead them to Mr. Right and away from Mr. Wrong, preferring to test the laws of attraction whenever possible. Even by the standards used to measure the romcoms of Doris Day and Barbra Streisand, today's pictures require a suspension of disbelief beyond the ability of most moviegoers with a high school diploma or GED. The blame for such critical failures - none broke 48 on the Metacritic scale - can hardly be laid at the pedicured toes of Eva Longoria Parker (Over Her Dead Body), Katherine Heigel (27 Dresses) or Hilary Swank (P.S. I Love You), since the limitations of their characters were dictated by half-baked scripts. The actors seem entirely too young and TV-pretty to be locked in the role of desperate career woman, which is how Day's characters were described back in the day. The men in their lives are even less believable as professionals. They don't even look mature enough to be able to discern the difference between Michelob and Bud Light in a beer commercial. It's never a good sign when ghosts are forced to propel the narrative of a comedy, as they are in Over My Dead Body and, to a less degree, P.S. I Love You. Longoria plays a bride-to-be killed by a falling ice sculpture on her wedding day, while Swank is haunted by letters left behind by her late husband, instructing her how to get over his loss. Longoria won't be satisfied until she's driven away any woman - including the beautiful psychic (Lake Bell) -- who's taken a fancy to her fiancé. Swank's husband requires her to travel to Ireland to get a taste of the ol' sod and possibly find someone exactly like him. In both cases, slapstick and cheap sentiment fill the black hole created by scripts that couldn't carry their own weight. Heigel plays an amateur wedding planner who is always the bridesmaid, never the bride. By sublimating her own desires, Jane's about to lose the closest thing she's has to a legitimate suitor to her avaricious sister. After her unusual hobby - she's stood alongside the bride at 27 weddings - is discovered by a handsome reporter (James Marsden), he writes a story that inadvertently makes her look pathetic. They'd make a natural couple, of course, but Jane refuses to acknowledge the attraction. It's almost inconceivable that 27 Dresses was written by the same woman, Aline Brosh McKenna, responsible for The Devil Wears Prada. Typically, all three of the movies are nearly saved by such standard issue supporting characters as the match-making sister, gay confidante, meddling mom, horny sidekick and flirting bartender. In this group, Heigel is the only woman whose inner brightness shines through the clichés of the genre. Longoria is much better suited to co-starring roles on television, while Swank's gifts are better suited to big-screen dramas. -- Gary Dretzka

Diving Bell and the Butterfly I'm Not There	It would be difficult to imagine two less promising subjects for biopic treatment than the late magazine editor and stroke victim, Jean-Dominique Bauby, and the notoriously elusive Bob Dylan. Both men are worthy of portraiture, if not outright iconification, but the genre almost demands that its practitioners turn their subjects into saints, victims of fate or characterizations of themselves. The Diving Bell and the Butterfly and I'm Not There have elected not to do any of those things, electing, instead, to let their audiences make up their own minds about Bauby and Dylan's accomplishments and mettle. They tossed away the cook book and rewrote the recipes, replacing linear exposition with unexpected splashes of taste, color and texture. Working from Bauby's own memoir - dictated, letter by letter, through winks of an eye -- director Julian Schnabel told the story of a man who found a way to pick the lock that made him a prisoner in his own body. In his severely reduced physical condition, the editor of the French edition of Elle initially felt death would be more liberating than being forced to live trapped in the diving bell of his body. And, who could blame him for such blasphemy. As a professional arbiter of taste and fashion, Bauby's daily routine required he be surrounded by most every sensual pleasure of life in the fast lane. After being stricken, Bauby was left unable to move any part of his body below his neck. Even though his brain and hearing continued to function marvelously, Bauby remained locked in a body that was nearly useless. It wasn't until a therapist convinced him that he could communicate with the outside world by winking that he sensed his condition might evolve into something other than vegetative. In addition to showing us how Bauby looked before and after the stroke, Schnabel literally put his audience inside the man's head, so we could see the world from the point of view of his one good eye and the memories stored in his cerebral cortex. From here, we're able to hitch a ride on his inner butterfly and shared his recollections of A-list parties, mingling with models, directing photo shoots and being summoned to bed by a beautiful woman. From this vantage point of view, though, we're also required to share some of Bauby's misery, as when a doctor sutures the skin around his bad eye. Instead of becoming unrelievedly claustrophobic, Diving Bell and the Butterfly goes outside the confines of Bauby's hospital room to explain how his condition impacts his doctors and therapists, family members and lovers, loyal friends and business associates. Mercifully, Schnabel (Basquiat, Before Night Falls) and screenwriter Ronald Harwood (The Pianist) demonstrated their respect for Bauby and the audience by refusing to follow the genre blueprint, which requires makers of biopics to give viewers false hope for a last-minute miracle cure (and, thus, maintaining their interest for two hours). Mathieu Amalric (Maudlin, Kings and Queen) is splendid in the largely unforgiving role of Bauby, as are Marie-Josee Croze, Anne Consigny and Emmanuelle Seigner as his therapist, stenographer and ex-wife, respectively. The bonus features, which are mostly of the making-of variety, add much to the enjoyment of the film. Although the Bard of Hibbing would seem, at first glance, to be the perfect subject for a biopic, the singer-songwriter has never stood still long enough for any filmmaker to take a direct shot at him. He remains, as Winston Churchill said about pre-World War II Russia, a riddle, wrapped in a mystery, inside an enigma. Writer-director Todd Haynes knew exactly the kind of artist he was dealing with before embarking on I'm Not There, and decided multiple personas and often contradictory personalities required a half-dozen different Dylans, including the unwashed phenomenon, the original vagabond who broke the heart of Joan Baez and thousands of folk purists at Newport. If Dylan's name goes unspoken throughout the movie, his words and music are everywhere. They not only remind us what brought us to the artist in the first place, but also why so many people have wanted to him to return to their favorite incarnation and stay there. There's nothing quite as disturbing as learning an iconic performer has evolved to a place beyond one's comfort zone. The music comes at you from all directions … from guys sitting on a porch or sharing a bottle, as well as the half-dozen impersonators. Representing various phases in the Mystery Tramp's career are the 11-year-old African-American hobo, Woody (Marcus Carl Franklin); protest-era troubadour, Jack Rollins (Christian Bale); the would-be movie star, errant husband and father, Robbie (Heath Ledger); the arrogant dope-fueled rocker, Jude (Cate Blanchett), in a segment inspired by the documentary Don't Look Back; retired Western outlaw, Billy (Richard Gere); and the born-again Pastor Jack (Bale, again). Every time Dylan turns a corner or changes a stripe, tens of thousands of critics and fans are compelled to dust off their typewriters and find the deeper meaning … as if they actually know what's going inside his head. I'm Not There suggests that Dylan doesn't even know what direction he's going next, let alone what it means. In a 60 Minutes interview, he told Ed Bradley that he had no idea how the streams of poetry and torrents of transcendent imagery came to him in his post-folkie period … they just did … he was just a kid from Minnesota who listened to a lot of music and read a lot of books. Take that, Rolling Stone magazine! At one time, during his motorcycle period, Dylan was as reclusive as J.D. Salinger. The wall between Dylan and his devotees was impenetrable. Soon enough, though, he seemed to be everywhere, making headlines by doing inexplicable things, like converting Christianity and performing in Las Vegas (what happened to, Money doesn't talk, it swears …). Haynes takes all of the Dylans at face value, finding the good and not-so-good in all of them, and never ignoring the context or milieu that shaped his visions. Sometimes his interpretations are spot-on, and, other times, he appears to be as baffled as Mr. Jones. That's to be expected. Boomers, longtime fans and other '60s nostalgists will find I'm Not There to be invigorating, provocative and a barrel of fun. On the other hand, those who know Dylan simply as the father of Jakob - or, the guy who wrote the songs their parents most enjoy butchering in sing-along sessions -- probably will continue to wonder what engendered all the fuss. It really helped to be there, when each new album was analyzed as if it might contain clues to whereabouts of the Holy Grail. The bonus features include deleted and alternate scenes, on-screen song lyrics, audition tapes, commentary by Haynes and making-of material. -- Gary Dretzka

Collection of 2007 Academy Award Nominated Short Films	Some of the best work being done in the international cinema is represented in the five minutes allotted makers of short films at the annual Oscar-cast. Less than one percent of the viewers who tune in each year to the Academy Awards can say with any assurance that they've seen even one of the nominees, let alone all 10. Primarily, that's because there's almost nowhere that they're shown, and, then, only one or two weeks before the ceremony. Things have gotten significantly better in this regard, thanks to the efforts of Magnolia Pictures, iTunes and Shorts International. This year, for the first time in memory, all of the competing shorts were from countries other than the United States. Together, they could serve as inspiration for aspiring filmmakers, looking for a way into the medium, as well as provide a couple of hours of entertainment. -- Gary Dretzka

Saludos Amigos / Three Caballeros	In the early '40s, most of the countries in Central and South America were as distant and exotic as Malaysia, Myanmar and Goa still seem today. Even if there weren't wars being contested in Europe, Africa and along the Pacific Rim, the majority of destinations would have been far too expensive and exhaustive to consider for leisurely vacations. The State Department had other concerns, including the possibility that Spanish- and Portuguese-speaking countries in the Western Hemisphere might want to leverage their neutrality for special treatment by Axis and Allied nations, alike. It explains why Walt Disney was asked to create material that would warm our amigos to the south to the American way of life and business, without it being perceived as propaganda. Saludos Amigos and Three Caballeros also would provide gringos with an entertaining, easy-on-the eye primer on the customs of several key nations. In Saludos Amigos, we're invited to join a team of Disney artists as they collect material for the cartoons Lake Titicaca, Pedro, El Gaucho Goofy and Aquarela do Brasil, during which Jose Carioca was introduced to the world. The jaunty parrot returned three years later, in Three Caballeros, as one of the aves rara (rare birds) who invited Donald Duck to Brazil, Mexico, Argentina and Antarctica. It's all good nostalgic fun, if not particularly innovative or essential to one's appreciation of the Disney canon. But, then, there was that pesky war to consider. -- Gary Dretzka

Youth Without Youth	This magnificent failure represents Francis Ford Coppola's return to the director's chair after 10 years of making wine, futzing with Apocalypse Now and The Outsiders, lending his name to other people's movies as executive producer and assuming the role of uncrowned king of the Italian diaspora. He should have considered something a bit less adventurous for his comeback project. Youth Without Youth would have been a huge challenge for any director, no matter how fit and active. But, then, no one expects small gestures from Coppola, and, despite its modest budget, Youth Without Youth is anything but unambitious. Adapted from a novella by religious historian Mircea Eliade, Youth Without Youth employs a pair of Twilight Zone conceits -- reversal of time and transmigration of souls - to tell the story of 70-year-old Romanian linguist Dominic Matei (Tim Roth). Sick enough to be considering suicide, Matei is struck by lightning while crossing a street in Bucharest. Instead of being fried to a crisp, the professor actually grows younger, healthier and wiser with each passing day in the hospital. When news of this miracle reaches Berlin, Hitler assigns one of his minions to study Matei's case. He escapes to Switzerland, where he not only is seduced by a Nazi spy, but also witnesses another curative lightning strike, the victim this time being an old flame (pun intended). In Veronica's case, the lightning bolt has triggered an ability to speak in languages that even were considered lost when Jesus Christ was a Little Leaguer. As a linguist, Matei naturally is fascinated by Veronica's ramblings, which lead them both to a place where verbal communication began. Even if that summation makes sense to you, don't expect the mind-boggling narrative to be nearly as coherent on the screen. Even so, there are many admirers of Coppola's work who will appreciate the immensity of the challenge and will seek out the treasures great and small in Youth Without Youth. They're there to find, and the clarity of Blu-ray helps facilitate the search. Despite carrying the Blu-ray logo, the extras included in the package are what you'd expect to find on any DVD. Also arriving on Blu-ray is First Knight: Special Edition, a romantic adventure starring Sean Connery as King Arthur, Richard Gere as Lancelot and Julia Ormond as Guinevere. By the time Jerry Zucker's loose interpretation of the Arthurian legend was released in July 1995, audiences already had had their fill of the swordplay, chivalry and testosterone that shaped English history. Camelot must have had a great barber shop, because the men battling for Guinevere's attention - and property - are extremely well groomed. The special features add commentary, a backgrounder on Arthurian legend, three making-of featurettes and deleted scenes. -- Gary Dretzka




The Fall of the Roman Empire: Two-Disc Deluxe Edition The British Empire in Color I wonder if the folks behind the Miriam Collection edition of The Fall of the Roman Empire intended its release on DVD as election-year commentary on the declining fortunes of our great democracy. Although no one responsible for the 1994 sword-and-sorcery epic could have predicted today's gas prices, unemployment rate, trade deficit, over-extended military and crack epidemic, it wouldn't have been the first or last time such comparisons were made. It would be pretty difficult, however, to find many parallels between our current chief executive and the wise Roman Emperor and Stoic Marcus Aurelius. As Anthony Mann's three-hour movie opens, it's approximately 180 AD, and Aurelius (Alec Guinness) has led his troops to a victory against Barbarian hordes in the forests of Germania. Knowing that his death is imminent, the emperor decides it's time to choose a successor. The choice is between his son Commodus (Christopher Plummer), and the great, if fictional warrior Livius (Stephen Boyd). Aurelius is poisoned before he can introduce Livius as the new leader of Rome, so it's widely assumed Commodus would have been the favored one. It is at this point in Hollywood history that the empire's fall officially begins. Someday, one fears, the fall of the American Empire will be traced to theft of the 2000 election by Republican legions, as ordered by Florida Gov. Jeb Bush, son of the former president and brother to the victorious candidate. Of course, Republican scholars could argue the slide began with President Bill Clinton's Oval Office blowjob and interference in his wife's run for office a decade later. Soon after Commodus returns to Rome to claim the crown, he marries off his sister, Lucilla (Sophia Loren), to the King of Armenia, thus stabilizing the nation's eastern flank and further messing with Livius' head and heart. As directed by Mann, also responsible for the Samuel Bronston production of El Cid, TFOTRE holds up pretty well four decades after it was originally released. Bronston's decision to shoot the two films in Spain, on huge sets and with hundreds of extras at his disposal, ensured the films would be legitimately epic in scale and ambition. Even so, the movie stiffed at the box office, primarily because it arrived at the very end of genre's cycle of viability. Fans of Gladiator will recognize many of the same characters, including Aurelius (Richard Harris), Commodus (Joaquin Phoenix) and Lucilla (Connie Nielsen). The Deluxe Edition adds a second disc with all manner of making-of material; commentary with Bronston's son, Bill, and biographer, Mel Martin; wardrobe and makeup tests for Guinness and Plummer; a pair of historical pieces; and Dimitri Tiomkin: Scoring an Empire. The documentary mini-series The British Empire in Color is unique in that the archival material used to describe the conditions under which Britain lost its status as a 20th Century colonial power are presented in color, instead of grainy black-and-white newsreel footage. At first blush, this may sound like a gimmick or novelty, but the history is sound, balanced and extremely well presented. The rarely seen images were taken from major archives and private collections, as were personal correspondence, diary excerpts and other memorabilia from the partition of India, the birth of the state of Israel, the Suez crisis, the rise of Black Nationalism in Africa and the handover of Hong Kong. And, yes, it's now accurate to say that the sun actually does set on the British Empire, and has for many decades. -- Gary Dretzka

Romulus, My Father Immigrants face enough hurdles in life, without also being burdened with an unfaithful wife, a best friend who covets said wife, raising a pubescent son as a single parent, losing a small fortune to a dishonest mail-order bride, carving a living out of an unforgiving terrain and assuming guardianship for the infant child of his estranged wife and his best friend. But it's the price one handsome newcomer to Australia pays for freedom. In Romulus, My Father, Eric Bana (Munich, Hulk) plays a Yugoslavian metal worker who relocates to a flyspeck town in Australia, all the while trying mightily to keep his son (Kodi Smit-McPhee) and errant wife (Franka Potente) from going completely off their rockers …before he does, at least. Normally, this much agony wouldn't provide sufficient reason for me to endorse a movie. It is, however, based on a memoir by Raimond Gaita, the acting is superb and the Australian locations are often very beautiful. Instead of being set in Australia of the early 1960s, it's easy to think Romulus could have taken place on the edges of American frontier in the 1860s. -- Gary Dretzka

Mad Money Callie Khouri's topical comedy, Mad Money, is so reminiscent of Nine to Five and both editions of Fun With Dick and Jane, the only moviegoers unable to predict every single plot twist and laugh cue will be those born after 1975. This wouldn't have been so maddening if Mad Money brought something new to table and didn't pander to the clichés of previous female-buddy and caper films. Here, the ever-adorable Diane Keaton, Queen Latifah and Katie Holmes play employees of a Federal Reserve facility where out-of-circulation currency is destroyed. Like everyone who's ever toured the U.S. Treasury in Washington, D.C., the ladies assumed incorrectly that no one would miss a few bills if they reached down and grabbed them. The scheme is concocted by Keaton's Bridget Cardigan, who joins the work force after her husband (Ted Danson) is made redundant at his high-paying job. Unless Cardigan can earn a pile of money, pronto, she knows she'll have to dial down her post-yuppie suburban lifestyle. Without a whole lot of effort, Cardigan recruits Latifah's cash-starved Nina Brewster and Katie Holmes' ditzy pothead, Jackie Truman. It's easy to guess what transpires in the next 90 minutes, or so. I'm guessing the much-in-demand actors probably have put Mad Money in their rear-view mirror. As for Khouri, the author of Thelma & Louise and Something to Talk About, this couldn't possibly have been a satisfying experience. The extras include her commentary and a by-the-book making-of featurette. -- Gary Dretzka

Walk All Over Me If your idea of a really good time includes having a corseted dominatrix who looks like Leelee Sobieski or Tricia Helfer tickle your spine in thigh-heel pumps, this goofy Canadian import has your name on it. Although she looks like jailbait half the time, and isn't the most expressive of actors, Sobieski is yummy in S&M drag. Here, her ne'er-do-well character escapes from the boonies one step ahead of a good whuppin', and finds refuge in the Vancouver home of her former babysitter, who is in the pay-for-punishment business. The lure of easy money compels Leelee to borrow a modified Nazi outfit from her friend, and enter the game herself. Before too long, she finds herself in the middle of a way-too-complicated extortion scam, which requires the roommates to kick ass in stockings and teddies. Alas, the only nakedness revealed is that of an elderly submissive who clearly enjoys getting the crap kicked out of him. -- Gary Dretzka

The Pied Piper of Hützovina Anyone whose idea of what gypsy music ought to sound like begins with Django Reinhart and ends with the Gypsy Kings might have problems with Pavla Fleischer's musical profile of Eugene Hutz, a member of the New York punk ensemble, Gogol Bordello. More adventurous admirers of Romani culture might, however, find The Pied Piper of Hutzovina to be a blast. It reminded me of If I Should Fall from Grace: The Shane MacGowan Story, a documentary that demonstrated the incredible ability of the Pogues' frontman to drink more booze than would seem humanly possible and still sing and write terrific music. Hutz isn't quite so dissipated, but he probably hasn't turned down any party invitations lately, either. A quarter gypsy, Hutz allows Fleischer to tag along with him while he tries to reconnect with the relatives his parents left behind in the Ukraine, and trace his musical roots back to places as far away as Siberia. Fleischer isn't the most clinical of documentarians and her inability to contain Hutz' more manic moments can be distracting. Even so, we encounter people we'd never meet anywhere else, and witness how cultures and generations can be bridged by the gift of music. It is a wild ride, though. -- Gary Dretzka

Military Intelligence and You! This often very funny mockumentary boasts an all-star cast that includes William Holden, Alan Ladd, Elisha Cook Jr. and Ronald Reagan, who appear alongside a handful of actors old enough to be their great-grandchildren. Writer-director Dale Kutzera accomplished this feat by carefully splicing material from such WWII-era propaganda films as Resisting Enemy Interrogation, and other movies produced by the First Motion Picture Unit of Army Air Forces, onto freshly shot footage. While Military Intelligence and You! works pretty well as a parody of such once-classified training films, the newly added dialogue allows the vintage characters to score direct hits on today's spymasters. In doing so, Kutzera demonstrates the important role military intelligence could have played in Iraq, by distinguishing dangerous enemies from merely annoying foreigners … not that Bush and Cheney would have listened to them. The package includes a real doc on the USAF's First Motion Picture Unit. -- Gary Dretzka

Van Morrison: Under Review: 1964-1974 Celebration of Gospel: Spirit in Song Van the Man has been around nearly as long as the Rolling Stones, but, where the Stones continue to rest on their laurels, Morrison churns out material that is fresh, vital and surprising. In the years 1964-74, the diversity of his repertoire was unmatched by any rocker, British, Irish or American. Astral Weeks, which is no less enchanting today than it was 40 years ago, was decades ahead of its time in its fusing of rock, jazz, folk, poetry and rap. It followed in the wake of such all-time classic bar songs as Brown Eyed Girl and Gloria, and would set the table for Moondance, Domino, Wild Night, Tupelo Honey, Into the Mystic. The period scrutinized in the latest addition to MVD's Under Review series takes Morrison from his relationship with Them, to the release of the introspective Veedon Fleece, an album clearly influenced by the writings of William Blake and Celtic mythology. The only real drawback to the Under Review series is the lack of anything but snippets of songs performed by the artist in question. Licensing costs are prohibitive, and most artists and labels prefer to keep the juicy stuff for themselves. Here, the commentary by critics, musicians and engineers is pretty good. BET's Celebration of Gospel DVD was spun off last year's annual musical praise-fest. Staged at Los Angeles' Orpheum Theater, and featuring a powerhouse band, the lineup included Yolanda Adams, Kirk Franklin, Fred Hampton, Pastor Shirley Caesar, Kelly Price, Tye Tribbett, Fantasia, Caesar and Adams and Loretta Devine. The DVD includes a behind-the-scenes featurette and performances not shown on TV. -- Gary Dretzka

Senior Skip Day: Unrated As unlikely as it might sound with a title like Senior Skip Day, Nick Weiss' debut film emerges as one of the few movies made in the last 20 years that doesn't insult the intelligence, such as it is, of the teenagers for whom it was intended. Although it isn't a direct clone of Ferris Bueller's Day Off or American Pie, their DNA clearly informs Senior Skip Day. Here, the school's Principal Frankfurt Dickwalder (Larry Miller) stumbles across plans for a party to be staged at his own home. After he threatens the students with expulsion - effectively putting the kibosh on their college plans - they conspire to neutralize the principal and have their party, too. The weight of the mission falls on the shoulders of a student the other kids consider to be a suck-up and spy for Duckwalder. Naturally, young Adam also is repressed sexually, and considered the party to be his last best hope to escape prolonged virginity. If all that sounds familiar, it probably is. What distinguishes this straight-to-DVD product from 90 percent of the rest of the crop not only is a smart and unpredictable script, but actors who weren't born into this genre yesterday. Besides Miller, the cast includes Tara Reid, Lea Thompson, Clint Howard, Norm MacDonald, Kayla Ewell and Earl Billings. The extras do their job by acting horny, taking off their clothes on cue and imbibing great quantities of pot and booze. Considering there are no fewer than 25 producers - of all stripes - it's a miracle Senior Skip Day was completed, at all. It has no right to be as good as it is. -- Gary Dretzka

Saawariya Like Hollywood, Bollywood is morem a state of mind than a place that be found on a map. Both sell impossibly exotic dreams to audiences desperately in need of escape from mundane lives and meaningless jobs. Where American studios now rely on overblown CGI effects, pyrotechnics, classic top-40 songs and hot-bodies to sell tickets, Bollywood continues to employ over-the-top music, dance, costumes and, yes, hotties to the same effect. After a while, one movie becomes virtually indistinguishable from those that opened a week before or after it. Saawariya represents a departure from Bollywood tradition in that it depends as much on narrative as song and dance, which, too, are less stylized than usual. (Coincidentally, perhaps, it is the first Bollywood film to be produced and released by a Hollywood production company, Columbia TriStar Pictures.) Fyodor Dostoevsky's White Nights is said to have provided the template for writer Prakash Kapadia, but I wouldn't be at all surprised to learn director Sanjay Leela Bhansali had screened Vincente Minnelli's An American in Paris while preparing to make Saawariya. Both musicals share a sensuous dreamlike milieu and a willingness to experiment with set design and production numbers. Here, an aspiring musician, Raj (Ranbir Kapoor), wanders into a bar in the Red Light District, and catches the eye of a local working girl, Gulabjee ( Rani Mukherjee, who also narrates). Raj, though, has been smitten by the mysterious young beauty, Sakina (Sonam Kapoor) who stands every night on a bridge with a black umbrella, pining for a lost suitor. Upstairs is an older woman, Raj's innkeeper, who's waited much longer for the return of her son. (Tears flow with great regularity in Saawariya.) At 142 minutes, the film could prove to be an excruciatingly long ordeal for uninitiated western audiences. Most Bollywood musicals are much longer, however, so someone decided to have mercy on us. Typically, the actors are very easy on the eye. -- Gary Dretzka

Sick Nurses Teeth The Backwoods One Missed Call Carver: Unrated Loch Ness Terror Séance I can't think of a better title for a contemporary horror movie than Sick Nurses. Add a pair of porcelain-doll faces and a bloody scalpel to the box cover, and a gory-good time is guaranteed for all. Release for release, no one makes crazier movies than Thai filmmakers. Here, a group of beyond-gorgeous nurses conspire with a doctor to prepare fresh corpses for sale to dealers in body parts. When one of the nurses, Tawan, threatens to expose the doctor who has seduced and abandoned her, she is murdered. According to Thai legend, a spirit will return seven days after its body has died to visit loved ones. This, Tawan does with a vengeance. Her spirit has long black hair and a darkened mask of a face. The entire film is set in one or two brightly lit hospital rooms, so the stage is pre-set for a blood bath. Tawan's spirit reveals a wicked sense of humor by using each of the nurses' personal cosmetic obsessions to kill them. Each new death is more perversely inventive than the one that preceded it. Some Thai movies I've seen have contained explicit sex. This one, however, is oddly chaste. The women shower in bathing suits, and wear lingerie they might have bought from an Eisenhower-era Sears catalog. Like Fatal Attraction, Teeth will go down in history as one of the movies a man would be least likely to rent from Blockbuster or take along on a weekend getaway with a secret lover or old girlfriend. As the absence of dentistry tools and canine incisors in the cover art might suggest, actor-turned-director Mitchell Lichtenstein's cautionary tale involves weaponry of a more ominous sort. The protagonist is a pretty suburban teenager who's begun to doubt her ability to honor the pledge of chastity she made before an audience of her peers. Dawn's sexual awakening is handled with great delicacy and respect on the part of the filmmakers. Although her vow is the object of some derision at school, Dawn has the poise and intelligence to pull it off … at least until she meets and falls for a handsome newcomer who's taken the same pledge. Boys will boys, however, and he finally overplays his hand on a visit to a secluded cave on a pristine river. It's at this point in the film that both of the teenagers - and gore-hungry audiences -- are introduced to the mythical physical anomaly, vagina dentate. Naturally, Dawn is shocked by the ability of her vagina to prevent intruders from stealing her virginity. It's her boyfriend, though, who pays the ultimate price for the lesson in sexual protocol. Neither does her first visit to a gynecologist turn out as planned. Just as Dawn is about to turn herself in to police, other encounters with lustful boys force her to re-consider her feelings of guilt. Ultimately, it's difficult to tell exactly what audience Lichtenstein was attempting to satisfy. Most horror geeks would rather be confronted by a flying saucer full of armed aliens than a sweet teen with vagina dentate. The satirical and darkly comic moments may sail right over the heads of its target audience, as well. Teeth found tentative approval at Sundance, especially for Jess Weixler's breakthrough impressive performance. Very few straight-to-DVD releases can boast an international cast that includes Gary Oldman, Paddy Considine, Aitana Sanchez-Gijon and Virginie Ledoyen. That's the good news. Not mentioned on the cover are the cuts made to Koldo Serra's The Backwoods, which was reduced from 153 to 97 minutes after leaving the festival circuit. The other knock against the strangers-in-a-strange-land thriller - set in Spain's Basque region in 1979 -- is that it too freely borrowed from the nastier moments in Deliverance and Straw Dogs. Here, two couples manage to ruin their vacation by discovering a woman with mutilated hands being held captive in a remote cabin, and electing to play Good Samaritan. That's never a good idea in such genre fare. One Missed Call has a great cover … inside, not so great. Something was lost in the translation from the film's native Japanese screenplay, perhaps to make it conform to the dictates of the MPAA's ratings board, which awarded it a PG-13 (not frightening enough to induce nightmares in teenagers). Here, psych-student Shannyn Sossamon and detective Ed Burns join the race against time to cancel the calling card of the freak making disturbing phone calls to college students, in anticipation of their imminent deaths. In Carver, a group of campers take a local businessman up on his offer to check out some property he has in the nearby mountains. And, guess what … they discover a shed that doubles for a primitive screening room. On the marquee is a homemade horror movie starring real young people, just like themselves. The rest is sheer torture. Even monsters need a change of scenery every once and a while. In Loch Ness Terror, a 60-foot-long plesiosaur travels to scenic Lake Superior -- via a series of subterranean tunnels -- in search of a little R&R. Instead, Nessie runs into a old human nemisis, who likes his chances on the home turf. In the straight-to-DVD Séance, a college student believes her dorm room is haunted by the ghost of a little girl. Her friends are dubious, but agree to spend their Thanksgiving break exorcising the tyke. Instead, all hell breaks loose. -- Gary Dretzka

Bernard and Doris Intelligence Disraeli Romance Classics Collection Bernard and Doris, which described the kooky relationship between tobacco heiress-philanthropist Doris Duke and her butler, is the latest addition to HBO's distinguished line of offbeat biopics. Starring Susan Sarandon and Ralph Fiennes in the title roles, the movie almost certainly will make the short-list of Emmy candidates for this year's ceremony. Duke was a notoriously tough employer, and the fresh-out-of-rehab Bernard Lafferty wasn't given much of chance to stick around, either. Instead, their various idiosyncrasies combined to form an unlikely professional partnership. The package includes a featurette on the real Doris Duke and commentary. A much younger Ian McShane (Deadwood) portrays Benjamin Disraeli, still regarded as one of England's most influential political leaders and a novelist of note, as well. Born to Jewish parents but baptized into the Anglican Church as a boy, the stylish young man already was a prominent writer (Sybill, Vivian Gray) when he began pursuing his political ambitions. His service to the country, Conservative Party and Queen Victoria would span most of the 19th Century and survive several political upheavals. The mini-series originally aired here, in 1978, on Masterpiece Theater. From Canada comes the po lice drama series, Intelligence. In it, good guys and bad guys switch hats with great regularity, so it helps to pay attention. In Season One, the Canadian Security Intelligence Service has its sights set on a successful Vancouver businessman and drug smuggler. The series also offers the requisite number of soap-opera elements, pertaining to personal and professional issues. A&E Home Video has upgraded and repackaged its collection of British literary classics that were given the mini-series treatment on the cable network and BBC. The titles include Pride & Prejudice, Emma, Jane Eyre, Lorna Doone, The Scarlet Pimpernel, Victoria & Albert, Tom Jones and Ivanhoe. The presentations were remarkable for their lush settings and attention to period detail. Also adding a yearly installment in DVD: Roswell: Season 3, Beverly Hills, 90210: The Fourth Season, The 4400: The Complete Fourth Season, Bewitched: The Complete Sixth Season and Cheers: The Complete Ninth Season.-- Gary Dretzka