The Wrap Up ...

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

Yes Man
Bedtime Stories

Is it my imagination, or has Jim Carrey already made the same movie as Yes Man several different times in his career. In each one, the lead character is required to act in ways diametrically opposed to what he considered to be normal just 24 hours earlier. In Liar, Liar, Carrey’s slick and dishonest lawyer, Fletcher Reede, made good on promise made to his young son that he would tell the truth for a full day, no matter the consequences. In Bruce Almighty he was a reporter, who, after blaming God for all his problems, was given powers reserved for the deity.

Here, in Yes Man, Carrey plays an overly cautious loan officer who suddenly agrees to say “yes” to everything proposed to him, no matter how wacky and potentially unprofitable for his employer. That Yes Man didn’t perform nearly as well as Bruce Almighty and Liar, Liar not only suggests that audiences have grown weary of the conceit, but that they’ve also lost patience with $20-million-per-picture stars who turn in dime-a-dozen performances.

Yes Man is familiar right down to much younger woman who encourages him to persevere, when his conviction starts fading. Here, that woman is played by Zooey Deschanel, an actress who could warm the heart of a snowman. Her free-spirited Allison is as positive in her daily life as Carrey’s Carl Allen was negative, before he bought into the principles of a stern self-help guru played by Terence Stamp. Despite the lack of originality, Carrey’s a strong enough actor to keep the minds of most viewers focused on his on-screen antics and not the holes in the script. The bonus features in the Blu-ray package include a gag reel, a pair of featurettes on Carrey’s acting skills, a look at Allison’s avant-garde rock band, music videos and individual pieces on co-stars Danny Masterston, Rhys Darby and the Red Bull energy drink Carrey was born to promote.

Adam Sandler is another actor who created an instantly recognizable comic persona for himself early in his career and, ever since, has asked audiences to believe he can play a far wider range of characters. The great comics of the silent era rarely attempted such leaps, knowing few of their fans would attempt to bridge the same chasm. Sandler and Carrey have been burned enough times to understand the danger that comes with sudden shifts in personality, but it’s difficult for a studio executive to say “no” to a star. Sandler’s willingness to return to his trademark slacker character – the mischievous boy who refuses to cross the border into manhood -- has paid huge dividends to his backers and distributors.

Even though Sandler’s comedic vehicles rarely return less than $100 million at the domestic box office, increasingly larger budgets have reduced profit margins to a fraction of what characterized such early successes as The Waterboy, Happy Gilmore, Billy Madison and Big Daddy. In the PG-rated Bedtime Stories, Sandler plays Skeeter, a maintenance worker in the hotel his father once managed. The new owner had promised to appoint the young man to an executive position, but he didn’t say when or in what job. As a way to vent his frustrations, he tells reality-based fairy tales to his niece and nephew to help them get to sleep. The kids enjoy the stories so much that they begin inserting new characters and storylines into the narrative. Soon, the line between fantasy and reality disappears entirely, with characters and situations repeating themselves in both realms.

Also baby-sitting the kids, while Skeeter’s sister is out of town on a job interview, is the far more straight-laced student, Jill (Keri Russell). Bedtime Stories fits the Disney mold pretty well, especially during the elaborately designed and colorfully drawn dream sequences (which really pop in Blu-ray). Unlike other recent Sandler movies, there’s nothing here that parents should fear sharing their children. Sandler and Russell are joined in both of Skeeter's worlds by Courteney Cox, Jonathan Pryce, Richard Griffiths, Russell Brand, Guy Pearce, Rob Schneider and the pretty blond newcomer, Teresa Palmer. The bonus features add deleted scenes, a blooper role and featurettes on Bugsy, the kids’ bug-eyed guinea pig, and dreamy special effects. The three-disc Blu-ray package adds BDLive options, as well as separate digital and DVD discs. - Gary Dretzka

The Day the Earth Stood Still

Watching the superfluous remake of Robert Wise's classic 1951 sci-fi parable The Day the Earth Stood Still made me wonder what would happen if a giant spacecraft really did land in Central Park. Is it possible that the President, knowing any resistance would be futile, would call up the National Guard, anyway, and order the soldiers to surround the vehicle … guns drawn and ready to fire? Or, would he command Steven Spielberg to hop in his Gulfstream and high-tale to New York, where he could analyze the situation and report his findings to the world? Would people still riot in the streets, if only because that’s what they’ve been taught in movies like Scott Derrickson’s adaptation? Probably … any excuse for a little looting and head-bashing.

What would happen, though, if we simply treated the visitors as if they were just another group of tourists, arriving by bus from New Jersey or Iowa? Why not let one of their representatives speak to the UN General Assembly, Congress or even a radio talk-show host in Pahrump, Nevada? It might be fun. The amazing thing about Wise’s film was that it was allowed to be distributed at all. At a time when pacifists and ban-the-bomb activists were assumed to be communists – or, worse, French – the promotion of any sort of anti-war or neutralist platform was cause to be blacklisted. Surely, someone at the Hayes Office was asleep at the wheel when “TDTESS” was allowed to slip through. Indeed, the movie still feels subversive.

It would have been impossible for Derrickson to maintain the palpable air of paranoia that informed the original … unless, of course, the spacecraft were full of Mexican and Haitian refugees looking for work. Absent that, the only real reason to revisit “TDTESS” would have been to cast Al Gore as Klaatu or dial up CGI effects, which they did. What remained, then, was just another expensive display of digital destruction. Having Keanu Reeves admonish mankind for not being green isn’t quite the same thing as having Michael Rennie demand we eliminate war as an option to failed diplomacy. But, then, none of the actors were given much to do, besides look helpless and freaked out by what was happening around them. That doesn’t mean the new “TDTESS” can’t be enjoyed as a popcorn movie, because it can. It would be sad if this DVD didn’t inspire viewers to revisit the original, which is just as readily available, as well.

In other intergalactic affairs, the wide acceptance of Blu-ray has prompted distributors to send out such oldies-but-goodies as Ghosts of Mars, a John Carpenter story that borrowed freely from horror, sci-fi and western conventions, and staged the showdowns in a Martian mining town. Universal also has repackaged the three parts of its Riddick franchise -- Chronicles of Riddick, Pitch Black, Dark Fury -- in which Vin Diesel played a interplanetary prisoner with a talent for escaping captivity. In The One, Jet Li is a former police official required to kill off dozens of versions of himself or face the possibility that the universe – or “multiverse,” in this case -- will self-destruct … or something like that. Timecrimes also requires the protagonist to battle himself, but only after a time machine alters his perspective by an hour.

New horror entries include Shuttle, in which a pair of female tourists, returning home from Mexico, made the mistake of hopping on the wrong nearly empty airport bus, late on a rainy night, merely to save a couple of bucks; Wes Craven’s classic The Last House on the Leftrecently returned in an Unrated Collector’s Edition, proving how hard it is to top the original; in the Russian-language 1612, the horror takes place on a battlefield outside Moscow, where the Polish army engages a Russian people’s army; and, in Swamp Devil, the lush vegetation of a Southern bog exacts revenge on nearby residents for some long-ago transgression.- Gary Dretzka

Drancy Avenir
Poil de Carotte

Facets Video has released two rarely seen French films, one a haunting anthology of Holocaust recollections and the other a silent parable about a mischievous boy whose physical differences made him an outcast in his own family. The title of Arnaud des Pallières 1997 quasi-documentary, Drancy Avenir, refers to the subway stop in a Parisian neighborhood that once served as a transit point for Jews destined for the gas chambers at Auschwitz.

In one vignette, a young woman visits the district as part of her research into the concentration camp administered by French police at the bequest of the Gestapo. Today, the site probably is known more for being a crowded housing project, populated mostly by Arab immigrants, than for its stone memorial to the thousands of people who were warehoused there. As she walks through the projects, the voice of a survivor’s daughter describes the ordeal of the many children, who, after being separated from their parents, were brought to Drancy. Nearby, a history teacher reads to his students from the memoirs of a survivor, who, upon his return to Paris, was stunned by the almost universal unwillingness of residents and politicians – even those of the Free French – to seek the truth behind the deportations.

In the third segment, a disembodied voice reads from Joseph Conrad’s prophetic Heart of Darkness as a boat threads its way through an African jungle. Although we’re not shown a single emaciated body, oven or shower room, the words and images of Drancy Avenir merge into a frightening reminder of the ease with which ordinary humans once turned on their neighbors and how quickly they forgot the horrors that ensued.

Julien Duvivier made two versions of Poil de Carotte, once in 1925 and, again, in 1932, with spoken dialogue. The Facets disc is the first of the two adaptations of the Jules Renard parable, which would serve several other filmmakers, as well. Set high in the French Alps, it is the story of the carrot-topped son – not quite the runt of the litter, but close – in a well-off family of largely dysfunctional individuals. Each of the family members have their own reasons for terrorizing the boy – who bears a passing resemblance to Alfalfa -- but it isn’t until a housekeeper begins to see through the hypocrisy and lies that anyone takes the initiative to rectify the situation. In addition to some breathtaking scenery, the film is distinguished by much expressive acting and its smooth narrative flow. One raucous classroom scene -- in which the boy is reprimanded by his stern teacher for some minor misdeed – reminded me of similar sequences in Jean Vigo’s subsequent Zero de Conduit and Francois Truffaut’s The 400 Blows. The DVD also offers a great deal of background material on the creation of Poil de Carotte and the silent era, as well as several silent shorts. – Gary Dretzka

Don't Look Down
Erotic Diary of a Lumberjack/Truck Stop/My Body Burns

With the possible exception of Nina Hartley’s guides to intimacy, there are few things less erotic than instructional videos on the art of making love. Eliminating the element of spontaneity from romance can never be a good thing, and, when it comes to choreographing the Kama Sutra, more pleasure can be derived from watching sumo wrestlers playing Twister.

Somehow, in Don’t Look Down, 64-year-old Argentine director Eliseo Alberto Subiela discovered a way to merge an overt tutorial on Tantric yoga into a magically realistic narrative, all in the service of a slight, but agreeably romantic confection. The story involves a 19-year-old street performer, Eloy, who begins to wander around the neighborhood during his sleep, as a consequence of the death of his father. One night, after taking the high-line route, Eloy crashes through a window and into the bed of the beautiful Elvira. Instead of calling the police, Elvira and her spiritualist mom sense in Eloy a gift from God. In addition to becoming an accomplished sleepwalker, Eloy is capable of visualizing residents of the local cemetery who line the street and mourn their own loss.

Eloy, then, would be become the perfect vessel for Elvira’s Tantric obsession, which, in addition to the mastering of dozens of positions, required the harnessing energy to prolong the sex act. Once he gets the hang of it, Eloy teaches Elvira how to transmigrate to exotic cities after precisely 81 non-ejaculatory thrusts. Sounds silly, but lead actors Leandro Stivelman and Antonella Costa couldn’t be more disarming or physically attractive. While Don’t Look Down falls short of being pornography – despite what Argentine censors have argued – it should appeal to couples looking for something a bit more erotic than the late-night fare on cable TV.

For lack of a better comparison, model-turned-filmmaker Jean-Marie Pallardy may best be described as the Russ Meyer of France. His films combined copious amounts of T&A, with generous helpings of comically rendered violence and cheeseball dialogue, all in the service of the Gallic grindhouse industry. (Who knew?) In Erotic Diary of a Lumberjack, for example, a professor about to receive the Nobel Prize takes refuge from government agents in a rural community notorious as an open-air bordello. Will the honoree disengage himself from his bosomy playmates long enough to accept the award? No matter. As long as the clothes kept flying off the actors, I couldn’t care less.

Also newly available are Pallardy’s Truck Stop and My Body Burns. The extras add deleted and elongated scenes, erotic trailers, the filmmaker’s journals and photographs from his personal collection. - Gary Dretzka

American High School

Despite the presence of such up-and-coming hotties as Nikki Schieler Ziering, Aubrey O’Day, Jillian Murray and Davida Williams, American High School lacks most of the attributes necessary for a successful horny-teenager picture. In addition to being not terribly funny or risqué, the plot defies even the small measure of logic and plausibility usually required of genre specimens.

Here, Jillian Murray and Talan Torriero play a pair of already-married high school seniors – and, no, they don’t live in a trailer park – who must endure the usual indignities of life lived in a veritable beehive of gossip, rumors, slander and envy. Add to that toxic stew a sadistic principal, a sex-starved art teacher and preparations for a prom unrealistically timed to coincide with the last week of school, and American High School begs credulity from the opening credits to the closing roll of names. Oddly, having watched the movie three weeks ago, I can’t even recall if the lack of a legitimate story was compensated for by lots of nudity. I doubt it. To be fair, though, American High School represents Sean Patrick Cannon’s maiden flight as a writer-director. Perhaps, he could teach aspiring film students how to finance and find distribution for movies that never should have seen the light of day, in the first place. It, too, is an art. - Gary Dretzka

Not Easily Broken

This is the second of the Rev. T.D. Jakes’ novels to be made into a theatrical film. Woman Thou Art Loosed -- also co-produced by T.D. Jakes Ministries -- caused a bit of a stir by combining a woman’s harrowing struggle to overcome various addictions and abuses with the preacher’s inspirational teachings. (Kimberly Elise and Loretta Devine were nominated for Independent Spirit Awards.)

In Not Easily Broken, when a long-married couple hits the rocky shoals of l ove head-on, they find relief in God, Jakes’ lessons and each other. Director Bill Dukes takes their troubles seriously and effectively sidesteps the clichés that can make such faith-based melodramas so tedious. The same could be said for Taraji P. Henson and Morris Chestnut, whose characters’ paths have begun to diverge. She’s drawn as a self-centered and materialistic ball-buster, while he’s portrayed as a man who, after having his lifetime dream of being a baseball player shattered, mostly spins his wheels. His perceived lack of ambition clashes with his wife’s materialistic drive. The DVD also includes deleted scenes and a making-of featurette.- Gary Dretzka

Special

In Special, Michael Rapaport plays a hugely unmotivated meter reader who enrolls in a study for an experimental anti-depressant drug. Les is warned that the treatment may have unexpected side effects, but, even so, they would be more interesting than most of what happens during the course of his normal day. What he couldn’t have anticipated, however, is that one of the side effects would be the development of powers similar to those belonging to comic-book superheroes.

Having convinced himself of his new strengths, Les decides to become a full-time crime fighter, complete with a costume disguise. Trouble is, of course, it’s just as possible that the drug has merely caused him to believe he has those powers, when, in fact, he doesn’t. This confusion prompts him to interject himself into situations that guarantee much bodily harm. Thanks to Rapaport, co-directors Hal Haberman and Jeremy Passmore are able to keep us wondering whether Les is the real deal, or not, far longer than would seem cinematically possible.- Gary Dretzka

Leonard Cohen: Live in London: Blu-ray
Chris Botti in Boston

If there were a Mt. Rushmore for musicians, Leonard Cohen surely would be among the candidates for inclusion on the rocky cliffs. At the ripe old of age of 74, Montreal’s great gift to music and poetry has embarked on his first American tour in 15 years. (And, yes, boys and girls, that makes him older than Mick Jagger, but considerably younger than Chuck Berry.)

When Cohen appears at the Coachella Music Festival later this month, he’ll be revered as a visiting deity by musicians and fans, many of whom still have an original vinyl album of his songs gathering dust on a shelf in the rec room or garage. God bless him. The new Sony Blu-ray and DVD concert film, Live in London, demonstrates that he hasn’t lost much in the way of chops in the last 15 years, even if he is a bit worse for the wear physically. His songs remain as enigmatic, romantic, funny, funky, spiritually informed and hip as the first time we heard them, back when. And, so does he.

On the first leg of his current world tour, 29 of the original dates sold out almost immediately. It was extended in Canada and Great Britain, bring ing the number of cities visited to 84, with 700,000 tickets sold. Those are Grateful Dead numbers, and the American tour has only just begun. The new disc includes 26 songs, all of which are wonderful to witness on stage. The hi-def picture adds a great deal of sparkle to a color palette that is comprised mostly of dark blue, brown and black, while the audio presentation is clear as a bell.

Sony also has released a concert performance by pop sensation Chris Botti, whose presence has become a fixture of PBS pledge nights. No need to hold that against him, however. The Oregon-born trumpeter and composer studied jazz, but eventually found a crowd-pleasing groove that merged the idiom with classical, pop, stage and fusion influences. On Chris Botti in Boston, along with the local symphony orchestra, he demonstrates the broad spectrum of skills and interests, as well as a willingness to share the spotlight with such kindred artists as Sting, Steven Tyler, John Mayer, Dominic Miller, Yo Yo Ma, Katharine McPhee and Lucia Micarelli.- Gary Dretzka

Road to the Big Leagues

Blue Gold: World Water Wars

Crude Impact

Killer at Large

Hunting Hitler

The Dominican Republic isn’t a big country, but, as far as Major Baseball is concerned, it might as well be Texas. Not only have such huge talents as David Ortiz, Vladimir Guerrero, Albert Pujols, Manny Ramirez and Sammy Sosa graced American diamonds, but one city, San Pedro de Macoris, has donated more than 400 of its young men to the game. Prominent among the things going for the boys who dream of making it to the big leagues is a desire to break the chains of poverty. American kids aspire to the Major Leagues, too, but for much different reasons.

The documentary Road to the Big Leagues demonstrates just how dedicated the Dominican players are to reaching their goal, and, as adults, to help the next generation get a leg up on the competition on the island and in the U.S. It’s no walk in the ballpark, either. Openings are few and aspirants are many. Sadly, too, an injury or bad tryout can turn a hopeful into a has-been overnight. The documentary, which is mostly in subtitled Spanish, provides a perfect companion for the opening of baseball season.

Blue Gold is at least the third documentary I’ve seen lately that warns of impending crises involving access to water and its potability. The less-seen danger to humans is the increasing corporatization and hoarding of the water supply, especially in Third World countries, whose citizens would lack the money to pay for it, and in agricultural regions where the water table is being drained to fill the plastic bottles of yuppies and purity freaks. Unlike oil, water can’t be supplanted by alternative sources of energy, and this is what could make it worth going to war to keep.

Until then, oil will have to suffice for a convenient reason for governments to send their sons and daughters into battle. Crude Impact anticipates the time when it becomes demonstrable that we’ve reached ''world peak oil,'' or the point at which the quantity of petroleum extracted from the earth begins to irreversibly decline. The documentary tells us a lot of things we already know – or assume – about the impending energy crisis. Still, the situation isn’t likely to change radically until someone pokes a dipstick into Mother Earth and it comes back nearly dry. Until then, convenience and profitability will dictate human behavior. I suggest forcing oil companies to play movies like Crude Impact on those screens above the pumps at modern filling stations.

Killer at Large cautions against the effects of obesity both on individuals and society. Bryan Young’s documentary isn’t as entertaining as Morgan Spurlock’s Super Size Me, and it isn’t likely to discourage people who feel it’s their God-given right to gorge themselves from doing so, but it would be a good teaching tool at PTA meetings, public-health seminars or at the check-out lines at supermarkets. The evidence is overwhelming.

A&E’s Hunting Hitler recounts once again how some Nazi officers gathered their courage long enough to attempt the assassination of the Fuhrer in his Wolf’s Lair headquarters. Never, I think, has so much information been disseminated on failed attempts to change the course of history. In addition to presenting historical research, the filmmakers interviewed surviving conspirators and bodyguards. The program also uncovers evidence of a top-secret plot hatched in London to kill Hitler. Guess what, it didn’t work. – Gary Dretzka

Fly Away Home/Winged Migration: Blu-ray
South Pacific: 50th Anniversary Edition: Blu-ray

No Country for Old Men: 2-Disc Collector's Edition + Digital Copy

Although 71-year-old Carroll Ballard has directed only a half-dozen films, almost all of them have been remarkable. In The Black Stallion, Never Cry Wolf, Duma and Fly Away Home, Ballard gave us beautifully wrought family entertainments about the interaction of man and animals in nature. In doing so, they raised the ante on Disney at its own game.

Fly Away Home tells the story of a 13-year-old girl (Anna Paquin) and her estranged father (Jeff Daniels), who adopted a docile flock of geese, and, using an ultra-light plane, taught them to behave like, well, geese. As he did on Black Stallion, Caleb Deschanel (yup, Zooey’s dad) captures images that literally are breathtaking. The Blu-ray edition does a fine job replicating the theatrical experience, although it’s OK to wonder how the movie might have looked had it been shot in HD, as well.

The same can be said of Jacques Perrin’s Winged Migration, a non-fiction film that documents the migratory patterns of birds, shot over the course of three years on all seven continents. The Fly Away Home package includes commentary by Ballard and Deschanel; a making-of piece; and the featurettes, Operation Migration: Birds of a Feather and The Ultra Geese. Winged Migration adds director’s commentary, a pair of making-of featurettes, interviews and a photo gallery.

South Pacific may be as old-school as a movie musical could possibly be, but, even given the current state of the art, it could hardly be more entertaining. The new Blu-ray edition fully captures the original splendor of the Todd-AO presentation and location shooting in Ibiza, Kauai and Malaysia. The anniversary edition adds commentary by Rodgers & Hammerstein Organization president Ted Chapin and theater writer Gerard Alessandrini; sing-a-long karaoke subtitles; a songs-only option; the extended “Road Show Version,” with 15 additional minutes of footage; several making-of documentaries; a “60 Minutes” interview with writer James Michener; newsreel clips; excerpts from the original Broadway production, with Mary Martin and Ezio Pinza; and Mitzy Gaynor’s screen test.

Fans of the Coens’ explosive contemporary western, No Country for Old Men– those who resisted the temptation to purchase the first Blu-ray edition, anyway – might or might not be happy to learn of the many new features added to the “Collector’s Edition.” In addition to the inclusion of The Making of No Country for Old Men, Working With the Coens, The Diary of a Country Sheriff – from last year’s model -- and the digital disc, the bonus material generally falls into the category of publicity-tour odds and ends. There are several interviews with TV and Internet reporters, a Q&A with members of the Writers Guild of America, Josh Brolin's “unauthorized” on-set movies and, of all things, an in-store appearance by Brolin and Javier Bardem. – Gary Dretzka

A Rather English Marriage

Hotel Babylon: Season 3

Down and Dirty with Jim Norton

In 1998, Albert Finney and Tom Courtenay combined their estimable talents in the service of the BBC and “Masterpiece Theater” comedy of manners, A Rather English Marriage. In it, they played a retired RAF squadron leader and milkman, who meet when their respective wives die at the same hospital in a country town. When both men demonstrate an inability to survive, absent their spouses, a social worker recommends they forge an odd-couple relationship in the flier’s mansion.

The pot gets stirred when Joanna Lumley (Absolutely Fabulous) enters the picture, hoping to score some easy money for her failing business. It’s worth remembering that Courtenay and Finney have previously performed together in The Dresser and Art, which helps explain the wonderful chemistry they share. The teleplay was based on the novel by Angela Lambert.

One of my favorite guilty pleasures is watching reruns of BBC America’s prime-time soap, Hotel Babylon, whenever the network temporarily runs out of shows about cooking, cars and antiques. I can’t remember Season 3 even being aired last year – Season 4 already is being shown in England -- so I’m glad that it’s now available in a three-disc DVD package. With the departure of Tamzin Outhwaite at the conclusion of the second stanza, Charlie (Max Beesley) has been put in charge of the glam hotel. And, boy, does he have his hands full. I won’t spoil any of the season’s surprises, except to say that they’re substantial and the new characters fit in to the ensemble very well.

Comic Jim Norton hosted the HBO series Down and Dirty, which was designed to serve as a showcase for some of the standup circuit’s more foul-mouthed and verbally aggressive performers. Each of the four half-hour editions featured an opening routine from Norton, who then introduced several less-known comedians and a headliner, such as Artie Lange, Andrew "Dice" Clay, Bill Burr and Patrice O’Neal. The series deejay is pop-culture icon, Lemmy, the singer/bassist for Motörhead. If that description makes Down and Dirty sound like a Caucasian version of HBO’s Def Comedy Jam, well, that’s because it is.

Other new TV-to-DVD packages include, “Dynasty: Season Four, Vol. 1” and “Beverly Hills 90210: Seventh Season.” – Gary Dretzka