MCN DVD Reviews: March 31, 2009

The Wrap Up ...

Slumdog Millionaire:
Blu-Ray

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

Once upon a time, winners of the Oscar for Best Picture would take their good-natured time making their way from the nation's multiplexes to the local video store. The idea was to milk as much money from theater-goers as possible, then build anticipation for the video-cassette release by keeping the movie out of circulation for as many as six months. This system worked to the benefit not only of theater owners, but also the pirates who, we were told, used the extended window to pick the pockets of studio executives. Slumdog Millionaire arrives in DVD and Blu-ray only five weeks after the Academy Awards bonanza helped squeeze another $40 million from the domestic box-office, bringing total grosses to a very respectable $137 million. Indeed, last week, the Mumbai fairy tale was still playing on more than 2,000 screens nationwide. It leads one to wonder if the temptation to exploit the Oscar hype was as strong a reason to release Slumdog on video as the desire to trump the pirates at their own game. While distinctively Indian in flavor, the journey taken by the barefooted children in Slumdog could have begun anywhere. There are only a few countries on Earth absent both mind-numbing poverty and treasure-hunt game shows such as Who Wants to Be a Millionaire. The film literally could have been set in a dozen different locations and been every bit as effective as it was. Mumbai worked best, perhaps, because the teeming Garibnagar colony sat nearly adjacent to the Bollywood dream factory, thus creating a juxtaposition loaded with much metaphorical punch. Danny Boyle may not have known it at the time - Slumdog almost went straight to DVD, after all - but he created that rarest of treasures: a modern classic with universal appeal. It's not to be missed. The sparkling Blu-ray package adds a dozen deleted scenes, a making-of featurette, a music video, an Indian short film, a breakdown of the infamous toilet scene, commentary by Boyle, actor Dev Patel and writer Simon Beaufoy, and a separate digital copy. - Gary Dretzka

Seven Pounds

Audiences have come to depend on Will Smith to deliver the goods, even in movies that almost certainly would have struggled to survive in the hands of a less charismatic actor. Like Tom Hanks, and Jimmy Stewart before them, Smith is a peculiarly American Everyman. We see ourselves in nearly every character he's played, from Will, in The Fresh Prince to Bel-Air, to Ben Thomas, in Seven Pounds. Indeed, it's difficult to imagine anyone but Smith carrying viewers through the excessive 123-minute length of Seven Pounds, a slow-building drama that reveals its secrets only near the the very end. All we know of Thomas throughout most of Seven Pounds is that he's a single man of some financial means who's determined to make good on some terrible misdeed in his past. That redemption requires an IRS computer and a lovely white jellyfish only adds to the film's enigmatic aura. Italian director Gabriele Muccino, who collaborated with Smith on The Pursuit of Happyness, has said that he intended Seven Pounds to be a romance, but not of the traditional cinematic variety. More than anything else, though, Thomas is desperately in search of a path to salvation. It wouldn't fair to reveal what exactly prompted Thomas to involve seven unrelated people in his personal quest. He's an often prickly character, who neither seeks our approval nor expects much in return. Smith is surrounded by an excellent supporting cast that includes Rosario Dawson, Woody Harrelson, Barry Pepper, Michael Ealy, Bill Smitrovich and Joe Nunez. The Blu-ray adds pieces on the dynamics of the ensemble cast, a closer look at the seven individual stories and a backgrounder on the printing press that plays a key role throughout the film. - Gary Dretzka

Marley & Me: 3-Disc Bad Dog Edition

I'm not enough of a dog person to understand how anyone could put up with such an unruly puppy - and anarchic adult - as Marley. John Grogan's popular book, from which Marley & Me was adapted, probably revealed a more redeeming side of the Labrador retriever's personality than was apparent here. Instead, we introduced to a dog whose bad behavior remains inexplicable for most of the movie's two-hour-plus length. This Marley isn't overly playful, precocious, intrinsically evil or a slow learner. He's stupid, clumsy, inconsiderate and intractable. We keep waiting for this poor animal to demonstrate why any frustrated owner wouldn't simply leave him at the side of distant road, hoping never to see him again. That point doesn't come until most marginal dog lovers already will have thrown in the towel, I'm afraid. So, what's left? The ever-amiable Owen Wilson and Jennifer Aniston, play John and Jenny Grogan, a pair of south Florida journalists whose lives would otherwise be unremarkable if it weren't for the annoying antics of their pet, who, if nothing else, provides the inspiration for many of John's columns. Of lesser interest are, first, Jenny's struggle to bear children and, second, John's desire to write for an important newspaper further north. In the absence of any mystery about how those goals will be met, the only thing left for viewers is the inevitable tragedy that comes with old age, weighed in both dog and human years. Judging from reader comments in the movie blogs, however, only a few of the many people who've watched Marley & Me left the nation's multiplexes with dry eyes and uncrumpled Kleenex tissues. It was a big hit. The Blu-ray package includes 19 deleted scenes; a look at the many canine actors employed on the movie; a gag reel; trivia game; a piece on pet adoption; and several making-of featurettes. – Gary Dretzka

Tell No One

This terrific French thriller made a splash last year on the arthouse circuit, benefitting exclusively from rave reviews and positive word of mouth. Already a huge hit two years before arriving on these shores, Tell No One was picked up by Chicago's fledgling Music Box Films and given the kind of slow and patient rollout that pays dividends when the stars line up just right … which, sadly, doesn't happen much anymore. In the best tradition of Alfred Hitchcock and Claude Chabrol, this adaptation of Harlan Coben's international best-seller requires an innocent man to re-prove his innocence eight years after being cleared in the murder of his wife. Although we know different, freshly uncovered evidence indicates to police that Dr. Alexandre Beck was guilty of the heinous crime, after all, a theory his hard-ass father-in-law does nothing to dispel. Simultaneous to the renewed police interest, Beck begins receiving mysterious e-mail messages from someone purporting to be his wife and some very real threats from a group of computer-savvy thugs. Beck is forced to rely on the generosity of a few close friends to work the back channels of the French legal system while he follows the crumbs either to a rendezvous with his wife or a well-scripted ambush. What transpires from there is one of the most exciting sustained chase scenes committed to film since 1971, when The French Connection rewrote the book on such things. Writer-director-actor Guillaume Canet deserves a lot of credit for crafting his dream project into something that honors both the author's words and cinematic tradition. DVD extras include deleted scenes, outtakes and a featurette, Tell No One:The B Side. The Blu-ray release adds a making-of short, which amplifies on the suspenseful chase. - Gary Dretzka

Twilight: Blu-ray
Let the Right One In

Just when you think you've seen all the vampire movies any sane person could stomach in a lifetime, something deliciously different bites you square on the neck and convinces you otherwise. At first glance, Twilight and Let the Right One In would appear to have almost nothing in common, besides the fangs. Twilight, as anyone who's been paying attention already knows, is a vampire movie for the Twitter generation. It's so hip, director Catherine Hardwicke (Thirteen, Lords of Dogtown) even was allowed the luxury of setting the story in a constantly cloud-shrouded corner of the Pacific Northwest, where the undead weren't forced to wait until dark to make their nefarious rounds. After spending most of her formative years in the Phoenix sun, Bella Swan (Kristen Stewart) moves to the same town as the Cullen family of vampires, made famous in Stephenie Meyer's best-selling series of horror novels. Naturally, Bella is drawn immediately to her new high school's hot bad boy, Edward Cullen (Robert Pattinson), who always seems to be there at the right time to save the damsel from distress. Trouble mounts when a trio of unassimilated vampires comes to town in pursuit of raw meat and fresh blood, literally. Trouble ensues, but not before the Cullens show off their athletic skills in a supercharged game of baseball and Bella's scent throws the invaders into a feeding frenzy. At its core, Twilight is a story of star-crossed teen lovers, not terribly unlike a production of Romeo & Juliet as conceived by Marilyn Manson.

Let the Right One In takes place in a drab, working-class suburb of Stockholm, where the long, dark Scandinavian winter provides the perfect cover for a vampire in desperate need of companionship and a ready supply of blood. Early on, it's made clear by director Tomas Alfredson that the ever-adolescent vampire, Eli, is drawn to the neighbor boy, Oskar, who's neglected by his mother at home and bullied by classmates at school. Left alone to his own devices at night, Oskar uses his mom's cutlery to prepare for the moment he'll be allowed to exact revenge on his tormentors. Eli immediately senses a kindred spirit in Oscar, and their mutual need for love blossoms into the most unlikely of relationships. Like Twilight, Let the Right One In was faithfully adapted from a best-selling novel. Unlike Hardwicke's blockbuster, in which love triumphs over blood lust, Alfredson's story is unrelievedly dark and foreboding, with the probability of carnage ever present. The movies' unique environments are beautifully captured by the cinematographers, both of whom were required to create poetic images within the narrow confines of the genre. Grown-ups aren't as likely to cut Twilight the same amount of slack as they might with Let the Right One In, if only because the latter's sexual subtext is far more challenging and its chilly soundtrack doesn't telegraph every new emotional shift with a pop song. Its ending, too, demands of viewers that they fully consider how the burden of eternal life - as an adolescent, no less - can weigh as heavily on friends and lovers as on the victims themselves. Twilight makes a similar point, but in a more humorous and sequel-ready context. The DVD and Blu-ray extras offer a great deal of insight into the choices made by Hardwicke and Alfredson to remain faithful to the source material, while also playing to significantly different audiences. - Gary Dretzka

Tokyo Zombies
Sinful Dwarf
The Cremator

It would be difficult to imagine two more twisted entertainments than Tokyo Zombies and The Sinful Dwarf arriving within a week of each other on DVD. If Midnight Movies were still in vogue, these depraved imports would hold their own against as El Topo, Eraserhead, Freaks, Pink Flamingos and Reefer Madness. Those are strong words, but these aren't your usual grindhouse goodies. Tokyo Zombies is a hybrid of five distinct genres and sub-genres: martial arts, enviro-horror, ghoul-horror, gladiators and slapstick comedy. Popular Japanese actors Tadanobu Asano and Sho Ikawa play a hapless pair of ju-jitsu artists, who, after killing their doofus boss, deposit his corpse on a mountain of toxic waste known as Black Fuji. The site also is a popular dumping ground for bodies deemed too unwieldy or suspicious to bury in cemeteries. At one fairly arbitrary point in the narrative, the bodies emerge from the black soot as bargain-basement zombies. Shortly after the flesh-eaters begin their descent on the city, an animated sequence is inserted to explain what happened next. When it returns to live-action, the setting has changed to a mini-arena in which human slaves and our ju-jitsu heroes are pitted against captured zombies. Above them, well-dressed Japanese housewives bet money on the outcome of the matches and throw objects into the ring when dissatisfied with the fighters' efforts. Try to imagine what might happen when a fighter trained in hand-to-hand combat is required to pin a creature already coming apart at the seams, and you get the picture. It isn't pretty. The bonus features are plentiful, but no less demented.

Released in the early 1970s, when it was still OK to hire little people to impersonate bowling balls, The Sinful Dwarf imagines a rooming house in which attractive young women are held captive as sex slaves and the landlady regularly revisits her glory days as a vaudeville performer. When her pipsqueak son, Olaf, isn't twisting his wind-up dolls into sexually provocative positions - or peering through peepholes into the bedrooms of their lodgers -- he's wandering the streets of Copenhagen with a toy dog, looking for new victims. The women prisoners, who, of course, have been stripped of their clothing, are kept docile with regular injections of heroin. It isn't until the husband of one of the captives is asked to believe his lovely blond bride has returned home that, without any notice, police agree to investigate what's happening inside the madhouse. As offensive and distasteful as it sounds, however, The Sinful Dwarf will go down in film history as a prime example of dwarvesploitation.

Released in 1969 as a smart arthouse spine-tingler, The Cremator is being pitched today as a sui generic horror show. Working from a novel and script by Ladislav Fuks, Juraj Herz demonstrated how easy it would be for non-remarkable people in lowly positions to initiate Holocausts of their own. In this case, it was an employee at a Czech crematorium who comes to believe that he had been anointed by God to serve Him as a purifier. Here, not even members of his own half-Jewish family were spared. - Gary Dretzka

Frank Zappa and the Mothers of Invention: In the 1960's
Iggy Pop: Lust for Life
Bob Dylan Never Ending Tour Diaries: Drummer Winston Watson's Incredible Journey
Metal Machine Music: Nine Inch Nails and The Industrial Uprising

Although most rock fans, no matter the age, are aware of Frank Zappa and his razor-sharp wit through such ditties as Valley Girl and Don't Eat the Yellow Snow, we geezers remember when he was merely one of several Mothers of Invention. The Mothers not only produced some of the most cutting-edge social satire of the '60s, but it also fused rock with jazz, R&B, doo-wop, classical and synth influences. Zappa rightly got most of the credit for the group's success, but he couldn't have done it without such kindred musical spirits as Jimmy Carl Black, Ray Collins, Roy Estrada, Elliot Ingber, Bunk Gardner, Don Presto, Billy Mundi, Motorhead Sherwood, Jim Fielder, Ian Underwood and, of course, Suzie Creamcheese. MVD's musical biography goes a long way toward explaining how the band's sound evolved and the concept-album format emerged as a feasible commercial option. In the '60s contains more than the usual amount of vintage music and video footage, as well as the recollections of producer and scenester Kim Fowley, musicians Black, Gardner, Preston and Art Tripp, and the perspective of various other historians, academics and journalists. The film re-enforces Zappa's iconic status on and off stage, but his fellow band members demonstrate no reluctance in recounting the idiosyncrasies that occasionally bordered on cruelty. The generous DVD package adds expanded interviews and contributor biographies.

Iggy Pop: Lust for Life, on the other hand, suffers from lack of extras, poor production values -- my copy would inexplicably drift into un-subtitled German narration -- and too short a length. This film was made in 1986, while Iggy was touring Europe in support of the album, Blah Blah Blah, and hit single, Real Wild Child. The DVD offers concert footage, as well as interviews with Iggy and former Stooge guitarist Ron Asheton. Lust for Life is for completists, rather than casual fans. Other videos that demonstrate his dynamism on stage are Iggy and the Stooges: Live in Detroit, Iggy Pop: Kiss My Blood (Live in Paris) and Iggy Pop: Live San Fran 1981.

While Bob Dylan remains as enigmatic as ever, several films have been released lately offering glimpses into the world of the maestro's Never Ending Tour. This time around, the point of view belongs to narrator/drummer Winston Watson who's recalling the stops along the road and visits from such luminaries as George Harrison and Neil Young, who appear in his home movies. Until Dylan opens up his own vault of memories, these peripheral glimpses into the man's inner sanctum will have to suffice.

The label industrial began to be attached to the rock 'n' roll produced by Nine Inch Nails and similarly ear-splitting acts in the late 1980s. Anyone who's worked in a foundry or steel mill would recognize it as the pounding, pulsating and screechy sound of machinery funneled through a music processor. Cleveland native Trent Reznor is credited with formulating the sub-genre. - Gary Dretzka

A Woman Called Golda
Hannah Montana: Keeping It Real

Real Ghostbusters: Season One
Andy Richter Controls the Universe: The Complete Series
Ricky Gervais: Out of England: The Stand-Up Special
Jim Gaffigan: King Baby
Taggart Set 1

Former Israeli Prime Minister Golda Meir was the kind of world leader - man or woman -- whose life story fit the expansive mini-series format far better than it did the confines of a Hollywood or cable-TV biopic. Born in Russia, Meir moved to Milwaukee with her family in 1906. As an adult, her passion became labor politics and Zionism. In 1921, Meir moved to Palestine with her sister and husband. After raising a great deal of money in the United States for the war that would shape the Jewish state after the partition of Palestine was lifted, Meir moved up the ladder in Israeli party politics, finally being appointed prime minister in 1969. The Yom Kippur War occurred during her tenure, as did the slaughter of Israeli athletes at the Munich Olympics, which caused her to authorize the revenge killings of the Palestinian radicals involved in it. The much-lauded CBS/Paramount mini-series A Woman Called Golda starred Ingrid Bergman as the woman who was alternately known as the Iron Lady (several years before Maggie Thatcher was accorded the honor) and the grandmother of the Jewish people. In the 200-plus-minute production (minus commercials), Meir is portrayed both as an imperfect human being and a major player in 20th Century history. The cast also included Ned Beatty, Judy Davis, Anne Jackson, Robert Loggia and Leonard Nimoy.

Who knows, maybe Miley Cyrus will become President someday and use her voice and cutesy-poo smile to promote world peace … right after she's won an Oscar or Tony, of course, for her interpretation of Ophelia. Until then, however, her many fans will have to satisfy their appetite with material from such DVDs as Hannah Montana: Keeping It Real. The new set includes five episodes from the original Disney Channel series, as the bonus episode, Ready, Set, Don't Drive and Miley's Makeover: Hannah Gets a New Look.

Last fall, Time-Life made its all-encompassing boxed-set of The Real Ghostbusters available exclusively via the Internet and television sales pitches. The 25-disc package was comprised of all 147 episodes of the animated '80s series, plus another 12 hours of bonus material. It included the firehouse collector's box with hologram panels on the front and sides. Fans who didn't have $175 handy will be happy to learn that individual season package have begun to trickle into the marketplace.

After serving as Conan O'Brien's TV sidekick during his talk-show's formative years, the deceptively ordinary-seeming Andy Richter set out to make a name for himself in movies and television. The high point clearly was the inventive Fox sitcom, Andy Richter Controls the Universe, in which he played a corporate drone who wrote short stories that comically distorted his experiences in the real world. The fine cast also included Paget Brewster, Jonathan Slavin, James Patrick Stuart and Irene Molloy. This set adds five unaired episodes to the 14 that were shown.

Earlier this year, the extremely gifted Brit actor Ricky Gervais -- creator of The Office -- was given a standup showcase of his own by HBO. It might take some time for the uninitiated to pick up on the rhythm of his routine and often caustic observations on society, but it's worth the effort. Fans will relish the additional material available on the DVD. The same thing applies to the Jim Gaffigan special, which is debuting in extended form almost simultaneously with its debut on the Comedy Channel.

One way to gauge the success of a television series is its ability to recover from the death of the character in the title role. In the case of the Glasgow-set cop drama, Taggart, the actor who played DCI Jim Taggart (Mark McManus) went to the big roll-call in the sky 12 years into a run that has lasted more than a quarter-century. Despite its longevity, the series' ability to make the jump across the pond was limited by our inability to decipher what the Scotch actors actually were saying. Adventurous Yank viewers will be rewarded mightily for their patience and willingness to cut through the brogue.

Also new to the TV-to-DVD scene: The Riches: Season 2, Fugitve: Season Two, Vol. 2, Midsomer Murders: Set 12, Sesame Street-Follow That Bird-25th Anniversary and Stephen Hawking and the Theory of Everything.