MCN DVD Reviews: March 3, 2009

The Wrap Up ...

Ashes of Time Redux

	..The MCN Reviews Vault
	..The MCN Critics Roundup

Wong Kar Wai’s adjective-defying martial-arts masterpiece, Ashes of Time Redux, is so exquisite that I wanted to frame parts of it and hang them on my wall. The 93-minute mini-epic – seven minutes tighter than the 1994 original -- was based on stories in the martial arts and chivalry series (a.k.a., wuxia), The Legend of the Condor and Eagle-Shooting Heroes, by the gifted Chinese writer Jin Yong.

The movie focuses on Ouyang Feng (Leslie Cheung), an unhappily retired swordsman who lives alone in the desert and brokers deals between aggrieved citizens and itinerate Song Dynasty mercenaries. Once a year, Feng receives his news of the outside world from Huang Yaoshi, a long-haired fighter with first-hand knowledge of the woman (Maggie Cheung) who long before had broken his heart.

Brigitte Lin plays an androgynous client, Yin and/or Yang, who bears a grudge against Yaoshi. Among other key characters are a skilled swordsman, whose vision fails while in the middle of an attack; a young fighter so accomplished he’s forced to spar with his own reflection; a vengeful woman whose net worth is measured in eggs; and a warrior so conflicted and impoverished, Feng fears that day’s meal might be his last in months. All of these people have what, in several hundred years, would be called relationship issues that cloud their views of reality. To this end, Yaoshi carries with him a bottle of wine -- given to him by a lover -- that blots out memories of events that play out over the course of a lifetime.

The tens of millions of fans of Yong’s historical novels and serializations will have a far better chance of following the complex narrative than those coming to Ashes of Time merely for the promise of stylized martial-arts action. There’s plenty of that, but Wong is in no great hurry to get to it. Instead, the film unfolds like any dream, flower or memory play … layered like onion skin, sensually photographed by Christopher Doyle and intensely beautiful. Like John Ford’s Monument Valley, China’s remote western deserts gave Wong a backdrop at once visually stunning and deeply mysterious. In addition to re-mastering and re-editing, Redux adds music and sound effects by Yo-Yo Ma, re-imagines the color scheme and tweaks the special effects. The DVD’s bonus features are mandatory viewing. They explain the arduous process of filming in such a remote region and how Ashes of Time changed the way Hong Kong actors viewed working on the mainland. - Gary Dretzka

Beverly Hills Chihuahua
Air Bud: Special Edition

The talking-dog days of winter have arrived for Disney, with the release in DVD of Air Bud: Special Edition and what I suspect will be its next franchise title, Beverly Hills Chihuahua, in DVD and Blu-ray. (No, I can’t figure how Disney decides which of its less-than-classic titles will be sent out hi-def and when, either.) The original Air Bud spawned half a dozen sequels, including one in outer space. Here, in addition to a dog tag, the story of the hoops-mad golden retriever comes with a “Dog U Commentary,” by the off-sprung Buddies and original theatrical trailer.

It’s OK to wonder which came first, the idea for Beverly Hills Chihuahua or the Fox series The Simple Life during which Paris Hilton and Nicole Richie dragged their wee pups around the country in the service of reality-based television. No matter, the dog-out-of-water concept eventually would have found a home, anyway.

Here Chloe, a sickeningly pampered Chihuahua, is kidnapped by dogfight organizers who plan to use her as chum for larger combatants. Along with a diverse collection of less spoiled mutts, Chloe (voiced by Drew Barrymore) escapes the fighting pit under the watchful eye of Delgado, a German shepherd (Andy Garcia). While escaping a demon dog (Edward James Olmos) working for the kidnapers, Chloe and Delgado’s path takes them to the Mexican state of Chihuahua. Piper Perabo and Jamie Lee Curtis play the Beverly Hills ditz-oids who treat Chloe as if she were about to get a reality show of her own. It all adds up to a rather silly cinematic exercise, which young children will enjoy and parents will be hard-pressed to endure for more than a half-hour or so. The CGI work that energizes BHC is above par, but, by comparison to the vast majority of talking-critter flicks, Babe still looks like Hamlet. The Blu-ray bonus package is quite generous, adding several deleted scenes with introductions by director Raja Gosnell, a “blooper scooper,” featurettes on the voice acting and dog wrangling, and BD-Live connectivity.

The kiddies might also enjoy Paramount’s animated holiday entry, “Alvin and the Chipmunks: The Mystery of the Easter Chipmunk.” In previous episodes, the high-pitched ground, chubby-checked squirrels have found themselves pitted against all manner of villains, including Frankenstein and the Wolfman. This makes them the woodland equivalent of Abbott & Costello. - Gary Dretzka

In the Electric Mist
Lullaby
Lake City

Poor Dave Robicheaux can’t catch a break … not in the movies, anyway. James Lee Burke’s larger-than-life, bayou-bred lawman may have sold a lot of mysteries in his time, but Hollywood hasn’t been satisfied with leaving well enough alone. Readers have adopted a more forgiving attitude toward the tee-totaling ex-New Orleans cop, even as Burke’s novels have gone off the deep end with villains that resemble comic-book fiends.

Phil Joanou’s adaptation of Heaven’s Prisoners (1966), in which Robicheaux was portrayed by Alec Baldwin, was lambasted for exhibiting many of the same over-the-top characteristics Burke’s readers have come to expect and enjoy. Despite cameos by Teri Hatcher’s “real and spectacular” breasts and a strategically placed butterfly tattoo, the movie died a miserable death at the box office. A decade later, the estimable French director, Bertrand Tavernier, would take another stab at interpreting Robicheaux, this time with Tommy Lee Jones in the lead. (Baldwin and Jones would be on any reader’s short list of actors to portray the cop.)

In the Electric Mist, previously known by the more precise title of In the Electric Mist with Confederate Dead, was updated to incorporate Katrina in the plot. Its fury uncovered a body chained to a tree, deep in the bayou around New Iberia. After poking around a bit as to the perpetrators of the crime, Robicheaux discovers that he’s riled up a hornets’ nest worth of bad vibes. Throw into the mix a Hollywood film crew, a couple of over-served actors, several murdered prostitutes, a female FBI agent and a cocky backwoods thug named Julie “Baby Feet” Balboni. It wasn’t enough to keep test audiences from wondering what the hell the ghosts were doing in the swamp, however, in the first place.

By removing “With the Confederate Dead” from the movie’s title, the producers pretty much eliminated the need for the ghosts to show up at all, as it begged the question: Is In the Electric Mist supposed to be a swamp-noir mystery or a supernatural thriller? Rather than waste any more money on the project -- explaining the connection or completely excising it from the finished product – the producers screened it at last month’s Berlinale, where Tavernier’s name would carry weight, and sent an abridged version into the made-for-DVD marketplace here. The shame, of course, is that the distributor decided against including the 15-minute-longer international version in the Blu-ray edition, at least.

Tavernier really captured the mystery and flavor of the bayou country, even if nuances of the Cajun dialect were sacrificed along the way. (That would have required subtitles.) Visually, Bruno de Keyzer’s camerawork fairly sparkles with brightness and clarity, as if it were shot hi-def. Jones is joined on the credit roll by John Goodman, James Gammon, Peter Sarsgaard, Kelly MacDonald and bluesman Buddy Guy. There are no extras of which to speak.

The presence of Melissa Leo, winner of this year’s Spirit Award for her amazing performance in Frozen River, elevates Darrell Roodt’s very decent revenge thriller Lullaby to near must-see status for fans of the sub-genre. Leo plays a hardscrabble Tennessee waitress who’s being shaken down by drug dealers holding her otherwise-worthless son in faraway Johannesburg. Rather than wire the money to the thugs, Leo’s Stephanie goes to South Africa to fetch her drug-addicted child and bring him home. Naturally, the kidnapers have very different plans for the American woman, who initially owes them only a few thousand dollars.

When Stephanie shows up in person, the thugs quickly decide to milk momma for more money. She finds a tentative ally in her son’s girlfriend, a pregnant prostitute, who nearly is in as bad a shape as her son. South African Roodt set the action in Jo’burg’s grimiest urban slum – not to be confused with the shantytowns that border the city -- and hired extras who might have been recruited at a methadone clinic. The thugs are truly frightening, but it’s Leo’s performance that should have convinced an American distributor to take a chance on Lullaby theatrically.

Sissy Spacek is yet another award-winning actor whose recent work has virtually gone straight-to-video. Like Lullaby, Lake City is about a Southern mom – here, a Virginia farmer – who is forced to deliver ransom money to drug dealers in defense of her boneheaded son, Billy (Troy Garity), and his strung-out girlfriend (Drea de Matteo), ironically named Hope. Billy is taking the heat for Hope’s ill-advised decision to rip off some very dangerous wholesalers of cocaine and heroin. Complicating matters even further is Hope’s young son, who Billy has brought along with him to the family farm to keep him out of harm’s way. Like Leo in Lullaby, Spacek delivers a gutsy performance as the mother forced to save her son from the evil influences of the outside world. Musician Dave Matthews adds a convincing portrayal of a murderous thug to his resume. - Gary Dretzka

I've Loved You So Long

With all due respect to Kate Winslet, who deserves every award she’s given, a better run for her Oscar money might have come from a list of nominees that included, among others, Kristin Scott Thomas. Her portrayal of a woman, who moves into the home of much-younger sister and her family after spending 15 years in prison for the murder, would be hard to top in any year. The same could be said, of course, of Melissa Leo, Anne Hathaway and the un-nominated Michelle Williams (Wendy and Lucy), Kate Beckinsale (Snow Angels), Sally Hawkins (Happy-Go-Lucky), Cate Blanchett (Benjamin Button), Lina Leandersson (Let the Right One In) and Summer Bishil (Towelhead).

Glenn Close and Angelina are consistently excellent, but It’s now impossible to tell if they make the final round each year solely based on their work or because Oscar voters simply neglect to watch the under-the-radar titles. As the tortured Juliette, Thomas performs an emotionally wrenching pas de deux with her sister, Lea (the splendid French actor, Elsa Zylberstein). After such a long time apart, they’re required to tiptoe around the facts of their estrangement and Juliette’s ability to blend into her new domestic setting, as well as the larger community. (Roger Ebert suggested that, in this way, I’ve Loved You So Long resembles Rachel Getting Married.)

Then, just as writer-director Philippe Claudel’s choreography convinces us of the direction the sisters will take in their search for peace and harmony, he puts the sisters on another path entirely.- Gary Dretzka

FTA

Anyone who’s wondered why the Bush administration refused to re-instate the draft need only to rent a copy of FTA. Francine Parker’s documentary was filmed at a critical juncture in the Vietnam War, when a beleaguered President Nixon decided he could quell antiwar protests by pulling troops out of the country. To fill the gap, the Pentagon ratcheted up the far deadlier air war. It also had become clear that the chain of command was being eroded by anti-war and anti-Pentagon sentiment among draftees and those who enlisted in the Navy and Air Force to avoid conscription.

The star-studded FTA (Free/Fuck the Army) vaudeville troupe toured cities near bases around the U.S. and along the Pacific Rim, offering support to dissenters and those awaiting deployment to Southeast Asia. On the tour’s Asian swing, the troupe was comprised most notably by actors Jane Fonda and Donald Sutherland; singers Holly Near, Len Chandler and Rita Martinson; and comedian Paul Mooney. Fonda had just won an Oscar for her role as a prostitute in Klute and Sutherland was on his way to becoming a major star after high-profile roles in M*A*S*H, Kelly’s Heroes and Klute.

The actress seemed earnest in her concerns, but she soon would prove to be a political dilettante by allowing the North Vietnamese and Black Panther Party to use her as a tool for propaganda. More of a time capsule than a vehicle for enlightenment or entertainment, FTA rightly focuses as much on the soldiers, sailors and fliers as on the rhetoric and satire. If the tour was seen by its participants as a corrective to the celebrations of patriotism broadcast back to the U.S. by Bob Hope – whose popularity had receded noticeably by then – it also was true that his USO-sponsored shows were far less propagandistic and infinitely more enjoyable.

In the recent interview included in the bonus package, Fonda admits to being surprised by the sense of disappointment she got from those in her audiences who expected to see more of Barbarella and far less of her Emma Goldman impersonation. The Nixon administration felt sufficiently threatened by FTA to demand of Sam Arkoff, the head of American International Pictures, that he pull the film from distribution. It has only resurfaced recently. - Gary Dretzka

Watchmen: The Complete Motion Comic

You will not find me among those standing in line Thursday night to catch the real-early-bird showing of the live-action Watchmen. I’ll wait for the reviews before making the commitment in time and brain cells. I have, however, watched The Complete Motion Comic, which quite literally unfolds as if one were reading all 12 chapters of the original graphic novel. This adaptation was supervised by illustrator Dave Gibbons, which should comfort fans already made leery by co-creator Alan Moore’s dissing of the mega-budget movie. The colors really pop on Blu-ray, which also contains a portable digital copy that conceivably would allow diehards to compare the action on the big screen with that of the novel on their iPod. - Gary Dretzka

Stiletto
Dead in Three Days
Saturday Morning

One of the common elements found at the low end of the straight-to-DVD food chain is the idea that more effort was expended on the cover design than in narrative consistency and other production values. If nothing else, Stiletto delivers on the promise made on the jacket: “Revenge never looked so good.” Dalmatian hottie Stana Katic plays a leggy assassin, Raina, who uses with a switchblade knife – not a stiletto – to dispatch her victims. Although it takes nearly half the movie to figure out why Raina is killing the people she does, we learn it involves avenging the kidnapping of her sister at the hands of a bunch of trigger-happy gangsters. It’s been a long time since I’ve seen a movie this bloody. The bad guys include a C-list of familiar faces, including Tom Berenger, Michael Biehn, William Forsythe, James Russo and Tom Sizemore.

In Dead in Three Days, a caller warns a bunch of teenagers that they have three days to live. (Isn’t that the plot to all kids-in-danger movies?) What seems at first to be a prank turns out to be tragically real. The slasher movie, which was made in Austria, is subtitled from the German.

Saturday Morning is one of those movies in which attractive young people come together and break up for apparently no reason, other than that it keeps the movie moving in a direction other than backward. Apparently,here, a hapless dweeb played by comedian Joe Piscopo’s son, Joey, finds himself attractive to women only between the hours of 6 and 8 a.m. on Saturday mornings. Costas Mandylor and George Wendt play friends who coach him on how to extend the window of opportunity. Saturday Morning looks very much like a film-school project. - Gary Dretzka

East of Eden
The Return of Man from U.N.C.L.E.
True Confessions of a Hollywood Starlet
The Inauguration of Barack Obama: A Moment in History
Ramsay's Kitchen Nightmares

There are few tougher acts to follow than Elia Kazan’s adaptation of John Steinbeck’s East of Eden. The only logical approach would be to extend the production and offer more of the novel than could fit in the original movie. That’s what ABC did in 1981, at the height of the broadcast networks’ mini-series craze. With an additional six hours worth of time, the production was able to trace the Trask lineage back to Connecticut and the Civil War. The family patriarch, Cyrus, is played by that great character actor Warren Oates, while his male descendants are portrayed by Timothy and Sam Bottoms, Bruce Boxleitner and Hart Bochner. Jane Seymour, Anne Baxter and Karen Allen represent the distaff side of the drama. The DVD package includes an interview with Jane Seymour and a biography of John Steinbeck.

In 1976, Timothy Bottoms also starred in ABC’s Story of David, a bible epic filmed in Israel and Spain. Six years later, Anthony Hopkins played Quasimodo in the CBS mini-series, Hunchback of Notre Dame.

In The Return of Man From U.N.C.L.E, 15 years have passed since Napoleon Solo and Illya Kuryakin were entrusted with the security of the western world. In 1983, Solo was selling computers and Kuryakin was a fashion designer. Their old boss had been replaced by Patrick MacNee (The Avengers), who needed their help in defusing a nuclear timebomb. Also appearing are onetime 007, George Lazenby, Geoffrey Lewis, Anthony Zerbe, Gayle Hunnicutt and Keenan Wynn.

With True Confessions of a Hollywood Starlet, Lifetime appeared to be reaching out to a demographic more attuned to Lindsay Lohan’s addictions than cheating husbands and other midlife crises. Joanna “JoJo” Levesque played a 17-year-old pop star who quite a bit more money than sense. After an embarrassing near-death experience, her mother decides she should continue her recovery in Indiana, where, presumably, she can’t run into trouble. Fat chance.

CBS News beat ABC to the punch with its DVD package on the campaign and inauguration of Barack Obama as the 44th President of the United States. While CBS relied on its vast inventory of clips from the insanely long race, ABC’s set concentrates on the events of the historic turnover of power. The coverage is anchored by Charles Gibson, Diane Sawyer and George Stephanopoulos, and includes Barbara Walters’ post-election interview with the Obamas, his victory speech, Bob Woodruff’s Jan. 19 interview with Michelle Obama and footage from the oaths of office made by presidents from John F. Kennedy to George W. Bush.

On reality television, it seems, everyone loves a bully. To this end, premier chef Gordon Ramsay has demonstrated that he can beat up on his subordinates with the best of ‘em. In Kitchen Nightmares, Ramsey lent his pointed expertise to owners of restaurants on the edge of culinary disaster. The DVD set adds four episodes of Kitchen Nightmares Revisited.

Among the other new TV-to-DVD packages: Nash Bridges: The Second Season, Trial and Retribution: Set 2, Hotel Babylon: Season 3, The Hills: The Complete Fourth Season and 7th Heaven: The Eighth Season. - Gary Dretzka