MCN DVD Reviews: March 17, 2009

The Wrap Up ...

Bolt

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Bolt
Pinocchio: 2-Disc 70th Anniversary Platinum Edition
Lilo & Stitch: 2-Disc Big Wave Edition
Escape/Return to Witch Mountain: Special Edition

Watching the new Blu-ray editions of Pinocchio and Boltback-to-back and side-by-side, is the lazy man’s equivalent of taking a undergraduate course in the history of movie animation.

Artistically, Bolt doesn’t really belong in the same sentence as the evergreen Disney classic, but it’s representative of the current state of the art. Released theatrically in both 2-D and 3-D versions, Bolt was the first CGI-animated product from the Disney Animation Studios to be supervised in its entirety by Pixar.

Highly entertaining, if slightly less ambitious than most Pixar-generated features, Bolt tells the story of a top Hollywood stunt dog who’s literally begun to believe the mythology behind his superhero character. After being separated from his human co-star, Penny (voiced by Miley Cyrus), who was kidnapped by the evil Dr. Calico (Malcolm McDowell), the cocky white shepherd (John Travolta) sets off on a cross-country rescue mission. Joining Bolt are an alley cat and ball-enclosed hamster. Their adventures en route, while not particularly extraordinary, are drawn well and consistently enjoyable to watch.

As is the case with most Disney titles, young viewers will find in the precociousness of the animals sufficient reason to hang on for the film’s entire 93-minute length. Parents, too, will be drawn to the breakneck chases and clever characterizations. More than anything else, though, discerning viewers will appreciate to what lengths the creative team went to pay homage to such things as the paintings of Edward Hopper and the cinematography of Vilmos Zsigmond. Trying to catch the many visual puns and references to previous hits is a lot of fun, too. Any pleasure lost by the elimination of the 3-D option – temporarily, at least – is sufficiently compensated for by the Blu-ray audio and visual technology. The top-end Blu-ray package comes complete with a digital copy and DVD version; the cartoon short, Super Rhino, starring Bolt’s rodent sidekick; deleted scenes; featurettes on the animation and voicing processes; the Cyrus and Travolta duet, “I Thought I Lost You”; a interactive game; and BD-Live capability.

It seems to me that the artistic distance covered in the comparatively short nine-year span between the introduction of Mickey Mouse in Plane Crazy, in 1928, and the release of Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs was greater than in any other paradigm-changing period in cinematic history. Plane Crazy was six minutes long, shot in black-and-white and absent the synchronized sound that would inform cartoons made after Steamboat Willie. Snow White was 83-minutes long, shot in Technicolor, benefited from synched music and dialogue, and as entertaining as any live-action feature in the 1930s. (Even Disney’s wife, Lillian, doubted that audiences would stay with any story with so many “dwarf” characters.)

A soundtrack album was released to coincide with the picture’s launch and individual songs became Top-40 hits. Much to his chagrin, Disney wasn’t able to keep expenses under $500,000, thus setting the budgetary bar at $1 million-plus for succeeding animated features. On the plus side, the movie’s success was rewarded with an honorary Oscar and it also prompted Disney to devise a system whereby classic titles would be re-released at six-year intervals, allowing several generations of kids to experience a movie during the same period in their development, and keep the box-office meter ticking for the studio. (The practice has continued with each new delivery platform.) More on Snow White, though when it gets its own upgrade to Blu-ray later in 2009.

While it can be argued that Pinocchio eclipsed Snow White artistically, there’s no doubt both movies benefitted from a narrative template that continues to shape animated features. The new Blu-ray edition of Pinocchio is every bit as wonderful as longtime fans hoped it would be. The sparkling colors amplify every aspect of the puppet’s picaresque journey to boyhood, while the visual clarity and impeccable sound add new depth to the overall presentation. It’s as if Disney’s Nine Old Men were still alive and had sat down yesterday to redraw Pinocchio, borrowing the same tools used by the wizards at Pixar.

The two-disc BD “Platinum Edition” adds commentary by Leonard Maltin, Eric Goldberg and J. B. Kaufman; pop-up facts about the making of the movie; the karaoke-like Disney Song Selection lyric stream; the hour-long No Strings Attached: The Making of Pinocchio; two deleted scenes; an alternate ending; the deleted song, “Honest John”; interactive games; a toy-making featurette; and both a digital copy and standard-DVD disc. A key difference in this year’s re-release derives from the decision to eliminate the annoying black bars associated with letter-boxing, by adding original artwork from animator/artist Toby Bluth to fill up the wider screen.

Any new re-release of Pinocchio brings to the fore the MPAA’s reluctance to stand by the criteria it generally uses to decide when a children’s title should go out “G” or “PG.” I am of the belief that any parent who employs Pinocchio as a baby-sitter – or, for that matter, Snow White, Fantasia, Bambi and Old Yeller -- ought to have their Blockbuster privileges revoked. While the nose-growing scene may be a useful tool in teaching kids not to lie, how many kids have been scarred by being left alone to experience the kidnapping and caging of Pinocchio; the twisted amusements available on Pleasure Island; boys being turned into donkeys; and being chased by pissed-off whales. By comparison, the PG-rated Bolt is Lassie Come Home.

One wonders how the folks at Disney might have handled the overwhelming success of Pinocchio had it arrived in the 1990s, instead of a half-century earlier. As much a corporate “asset” as a jewel in the crown, Pinocchio probably would have been milked for every cent of synergistic value it possessed. Allowing Pinocchio to be marketed and franchised like The Little Mermaid, Lion King and, say, Lilo & Stitch would be tantamount to renting out Monticello and Mt, Vernon for the production of sitcoms. “L&S,” at least, came ready-made for exploitation.

Released in 2002, the offbeat animated musical was the Disney equivalent of an Elvis Presley movie. In addition to its Elvis-heavy soundtrack, “L&S” could serve as a marketing tool for Hawaii tourism. In it, an island girl adopted as a pet an extra-terrestrial fugitive who assumed the guise of a dog. It has already spawned three sequels, a TV series and video game. The new two-disc Lilo & Stitch package adds deleted scenes, a couple of music videos, an interactive making-of featurette, games, a history of the series and a “DisneyPedia” exploration of the Hawaiian Islands.

Another Disney property whose legs extend back to the 1970s is the series that began with Escape to Witch Mountain, and, three years later, added the sequel, Return to Witch Mountain. The supernatural family adventure featured siblings Tony and Tia Malone, both of whom have psychic powers that evil millionaires want to exploit and local residents consider to be witchcraft. Thirty years later, Race to Witch Mountain resides on top of this week’s box-office tally, with the same basic concept intact. The newly repackaged originals include such fresh attractions as pop-up facts, making-of featurettes, interviews, “studio albums,” special-effects explainers and discount coupons for the 2009 edition. - Gary Dretzka

Elegy
L’Innocente

When a modern woman seduces a much younger man – or allows herself to be romanced -- she’s deemed a MILF or “cougar.” An older gentleman who attempts to rob the same cradle is considered to be a pervert, fool or enviable. Compare the public perception of Demi Moore and Ashton Kutcher’s relationship, with that of Hugh Hefner and his harem of barely legal blonds, and you get the picture.

Isabel Coixet and Nicholas Meyer’s adaptation of Philip Roth’s The Dying Animal explores the December/May relationship between a New York intellectual David Kepesh (Ben Kingsley) – who’s at an age where no one would be surprised if he dropped dead tomorrow – and a stunning graduate student (Penelope Cruz) who, having fallen in love with his mind, is able to ignore the toll age takes on a man’s body. Cruz may be a tad too old and brunette for Hef, but any other warm-blooded man would either accept her challenge or drop dead from shock.

In Elegy, both things happen, but to different men. Kepesh, who’s already engaged in a lusty relationship with a more middle-age beauty (Patricia Clarkson), naturally is flattered by the opportunity to bed such a young and gorgeous woman. That he’s a pompous twit, as well as an old goat, concerns Consuela much less than it does viewers. (How many of us have forgiven Woody Allen for his courtship of his adopted daughter?) Less attractive, though, is Kepesh’s inability to treat Consuela as anything more than a prized possession. Ultimately, his mistrust of Consuela’s declarations of love and fidelity nearly cost him his sanity, as well as any unrestricted pleasures he might otherwise have enjoyed. Neither does it help matters when his friend and squash partner – a poet played well by Dennis Hopper – suffers a debilitating stroke, or that his physician son continues to treat him like a heel for abandoning their family.

None of these developments should come as much of a surprise to people familiar with Roth or the many male intellectuals and professors who’ve harbored dreams of competing for groupies with rock stars, as did Frank Langella’s novelist in Starting Out in the Evening. Mercifully, Coixet manages to alter the path to what, in most movies, would inevitably lead to a train wreck, by throwing in the same cruel surprises that change all of our lives suddenly and without explanation. Viewers with tastes that are more literary than visceral will appreciate the intelligence of the script and the director’s willingness to rely on dialogue to make her points, instead of the throwing of plates and slamming of doors.

Luchino Visconti's final film, L’Innocente provides yet another example of how self-absorbed males crumble when beautiful women turn the tables (or beds) on them. Set in 19th Century Italy, the richly appointed period drama stars the great Giancarlo Giannini and early-’70s bombshells Laura Antonelli and Jennifer O'Neill. Giannini plays a filthy rich aristocrat and world-class lothario, who turns to his beautiful mistress whenever his wife fails or refuses to satisfy his raging libido. What he mistakes for lack of passion, however, is his wife’s refusal to put up with his cheating any longer. When he discovers that the missus is stepping out on him, however, he pouts like a baby deprived of its teething ring. By the time he cops to his own evil ways, the wheels of fate have already begun turning. L’Innocente is as beautifully staged a production as any Brit mini-series, and is right up there with the Oscar-winning The Duchess. It was based on a novel by Gabrielle d'Annunzio and the DVD adds a pair of featurettes that explain how the book shaped the filmmakers’ vision. - Gary Dretzka

The Three Stooges Collection, Vol. 5: 1946-1948|
Afro Ninja: Destiny
The Life of Lucky Cucumber

The thing that differentiates the new volume of Three Stooges shorts from the previous four is the great sea change that occurred when Curly’s heart ailment prevented him from further acting. Shemp Howard was re-introduced as the third Stooge after Curly suffered a stroke on the final day of filming Half-Wits Holiday. He had been battling poor health for several years, but was refused time to recuperate properly by the famously despotic Columbia studio boss, Harry Cohn. After leaving the group once, in 1932, to pursue more traditional movie roles, Shemp found only limited success. (He was the bartender in the great W.C. Fields’ comedy, The Bank Dick.) Although Curly may have been the most popular and widely imitated Stooge, Shemp demonstrated a natural rapport with Moe and Larry, and ultimately developed a fan base of his own. Curly would appear once more – a cameo part in Hold That Lion!– but it was more of a coincidence of timing than planning.

Afro Ninja extends the conceit behind a silly 18-second You Tube video to 86 long minutes. As drawn by writer-director-star Mark Hicks, Reggie Washington is the scrawny postal worker responsible for the video. His fertile imagination allows him to foresee a future in which he saves his friends and neighbors from thugs and land speculators. His ineptitude is interrupted, however, when he comes into the possession of magical fighting tools, at which points he grows both muscles and an Afro. The movie isn’t horrible, but it would work better as a series of skits on “Mad TV.”

Anyone who thinks comedy is easy either isn’t paying attention or assumes actors like Moe, Curly, Shemp and Larry Fine are just doing what comes naturally. Sam Maccarone’s The Life of Lucky Cucumber -- the faux biography of a dimwitted Missouri cave dweller – demonstrates what can happen when a young filmmakers bites off more than he can chew. As redneck humor, Lucky Cucumber makes Ma and Pa Kettle look like Taylor and Burton. The stereotypical characters are so poorly conceived they wouldn’t be of interest to their mothers, even. Maccarone’s ineptitude is likely informed by his experience with the jackasses in Jackass, but Lucky Cucumber isn’t even that artfully dumb. – Gary Dretzka

Quo Vadis/The Robe: Blu-ray

The weeks before Easter annually produce a new crop of made-for-TV movies and DVD re-issues based not only on egg-bearing bunnies, but also the actual crucifixion of Christ, his resurrection and the struggles of enslaved Jews and early Christians. Even though Mel Gibson breathed new life into biblically based epics, the forces of religious correctness and his own bad behavior made him pay for every dollar of his box-office success. Quo Vadis and The Robe were made in 1951 and 1953 respectively, a period when emperors and pharaohs tended to speak in British accents and slave girls, concubines and queens looked as if hair spray and curlers were invented in time for the parting of the Red Sea. In Quo Vadis, the most quintessential of all snooty Brit actors, Peter Ustinov, was enlisted to play Nero, whose royal domain was being infiltrated by pesky Christians. This was convenient for the promoters of Texas death matches in the Colosseum, but the Good News of Jesus Christ ultimately trumped the swords.

In The Robe, Richard Burton played the Roman tribune sent to Jerusalem to grease the wheels for the crucifixion of Jesus. After winning a garment worn by him in a game of chance, Marcellus undergoes a series of unexplainable mental lapses and hallucinations, which he attributes to the robe. To end the curse, Marcellus concludes he must destroy the garment. To do so, though, he must track down the slave, Demetrius, in whose possession it now was. Demetrius was portrayed by Victor Mature, who, in his day, caught the same kind of roles as would Sylvester Stallone and Arnold Schwarzenegger. Along the way, Marcellus also falls under Christ’s spell. “The Robe” had the distinction of being the first film released in CinemaScope. Although savaged by critics and regretted by the male lead, Burton was nominated for an Oscar as Best Actor. - Gary Dretzka

Walled In
Primal Fear: Blu-ray

Mischa Barton, who demonstrates less range than a sundial, plays a demolition expert assigned to supervise the implosion of a monolithic poured-concrete hotel, which rises eight stories above the prairies of Saskatchewan or some other desolate place on Earth. While comparing the building’s blueprints to her measurements – no, not those measurements – Barton concludes that something terribly fishy is going on within its suspiciously calibrated walls. Viewers will guess before she does that the structure is something of a vertical cemetery, designed by a mad architect. Among the ingredients in this tepid haunted-house horror/thriller are several wacked-out residents, a sexy manager (Deborah Kara Unger), her demonic son and a few captive spirits. If the story isn’t all that exciting or scary, the Malestrazza Building really is quite something. Methinks, it could have been put to greater use by a writer-director with a bit more imagination and skills than Gilles Paquet-Brenner. The movie was adapted from a novel by Serge Brussolo.

By comparison to the vast majority of psychological thrillers being churned into the DVD marketplace, even an undernourished legal thriller like Primal Fear can seem as scary as Psycho. Edward Norton, in his first movie role, could hardly have been more creepy and sinister as an altar boy accused of murdering a well known priest. Certainly, Norton held his own against such high-priced talent as Richard Gere and Laura Linney, ex-lovers who sat on opposite sides of the courtroom, and he also managed not to get lost in a crowded cast that also included John Mahoney, Alfre Woodard, Frances McDormand, Andre Braugher, Steven Bauer, John Seda and Maura Tierney. The Blu-ray package includes lots of commentary, a making-of featurette, a look at Norton’s casting and a discussion of the mental condition that affected the accused killer. - Gary Dretzka

Storm Force
Groom Lake

Although the Belgian import Storm Force looks as if it were spliced together from footage left over from The Guardian -- a high-seas-rescue thriller that starred Kevin Costner and Ashton Kutcher – it actually was spun off theatrically from a popular European TV series. Even after watching the whole thing, I’m still not quite sure what’s eating most off the key characters, but, then, it isn’t the kind of movie whose appeal depends on logical exposition. Personally, I enjoyed watching an entity, other than the U.S. Coast Guard, save people at sea. We’re told that the film’s budget – 4.5 million Euros -- was the most expensive Dutch-language Belgian feature to date. Take that, Steve Spielberg.

The folks at Koch picked up the DVD rights to Groom Lake, a goofy sci-fi/horror cheapee that was written and directed by William Shatner, who also starred in it. The story involves a young couple’s quest to discover what’s going on at Groom Lake, a spooky town near Area 51, a place that generates much interest among UFO theorists. - Gary Dretzka

Head Case: Season 1
Hollywood Residential: Season 1

The broadcast networks haven’t had much luck finding and developing sitcoms that are simultaneously smart, funny and irresistible. The greatest challenge, perhaps, is finding material that is hip enough to attract viewers in the most valued demographic groups, but sufficiently safe to get past the censors at Standards & Practices.

The limits to sexual innuendo have been eased to permit such shows as Two and a Half Men and My Name Is Earl to tease their audiences with material that would have been unthinkable even 10 years ago. Credit the cable networks both for raising the bar and stealing the viewers advertisers most covet. It’s now become commonplace for worthwhile sitcoms to pop up unexpectedly on services ranging from HBO and Showtime, to TNT and A&E.

Head Case and Hollywood Residential represented the Starz channel’s entry into the original-comedy derby. Both dealt with aspects of life in the more expensive precincts of Los Angeles, and, each week, any number of high-profile actors would drop in to boost the shows’ prospects. In Head Case, the highly unconventional Dr. Elizabeth Goode (Alexandra Wentworth) saw to the psychiatric needs of celebrities, but only when they didn’t conflict with plans for her upcoming wedding.

In Hollywood Residential, frequently unemployed actor Adam Paul (Tony King) finds a gig hosting a show about celebrity home makeovers. As a handyman, Paul is only slightly more knowledgeable about the use of tools than his busty sidekick and cost-conscious producers. Both of these sitcoms lampoon the lifestyles and hang-ups of Hollywood stars and big shots. While nowhere near as hilarious and perceptive as Seinfeld or Curb Your Enthusiasm, the shows’ darts hit their targets more often than not.

Also new to TV-to-DVD: Cracker: The Complete Collection, Caroline in the City: The Second Season, Barney Miller: The Complete Third Season, Family Ties: The Fifth Season, JAG: Judge Advocate General: The Eighth Season and South Park: The Complete Twelfth Season. - Gary Dretzka