MCN DVD Reviews: May 5, 2009

The Wrap Up ...

	..MCN Review: Pride
	..MCN Review: Wilmington
	..MCN Weekend

The Curious Case of Benjamin Button: Blu-ray

Like most one-trick ponies that fall in love with their own cleverness, David Fincher’s 166-minute adaptation of a 25-page F. Scott Fitzgerald short story didn’t know when to take a bow and leave the stage. While it was impossible not to admire the ability of Fincher’s special-effects and makeup team to reverse the aging process, what transpired on Benjamin Button’s curious journey from the cradle to the grave was only as interesting as the characters who crossed his path when he most resembled Brad Pitt. Some were compelling … others, not so much.

As the City That Care Forgot, New Orleans provided a perfect setting for the hoodoo that transpires at both ends of Benjamin Button. Stranger things happen to people there every day – and several times on Fat Tuesday – than what occurred to Button over the course of his lifetime. How many of us wouldn’t agree to age backwards, if we knew that our most lucid and productive years would be spent in the company of Cate Blanchett and Tilda Swinton?

By crafting their characters as a sexy bohemian dancer and seductive marathon swimmer, screenwriter Eric Roth gave Benjamin something warm to embrace as his memory began to fade into the mist of childhood. Robin Wright would serve a similar purpose in Forrest Gump, another movie Roth loosely interpreted from another author’s source material. (Likewise, the dozen or so people who caught Francis Ford Coppola’s Youth Without Youth would have compared Button to Tim Roth’s human lightning rod, Dominic Matei.)

Although Benjamin Button is a movie best savored on the big screen, its admirers will find a lot to enjoy on the DVD and Blu-ray editions. If ever a movie cried out for multiple making-of featurettes, it’s this one. In addition to the four-part, The Curious Birth of Benjamin Button, there’s commentary by Fincher, and explainers on the casting and location decisions, costume design, visual effects, soundtrack and animatronic baby Button.- Gary Dretzka

Enchanted April

Originally shown on British television, Enchanted April was exported to the U.S. as a theatrical feature in 1992, and it worked both as a travelogue and a literary confection. After the ecstatic reaction here to Merchant-Ivory-Jhabvala picturesque drama, A Room With a View, all sorts of high-minded romances were paraded through American art houses.It helped mightily, of course, that the Italianate productions – A Month by the Lake, My House in Umbria and Tea With Mussolini followed – would be shot in postcard-perfect locations and star the cream of England’s acting community. (The Greek islands, Provence and England’s Lake Country also cashed in on the trend).

In Enchanted April, a socially diverse group of English women takes advantage of the lull between the wars to enjoy a respite from their domineering spouses in the sun-drenched countryside near the Italian Rivera. Sharing a swell villa there were Josie Lawrence, Miranda Richardson, Joan Plowright and Polly Walker, women whose intelligence and verve were given the space to blossom by director Mike Newell. By the time Newell felt it appropriate to introduce the male characters -- Jim Broadbent, Alfred Molina, Michael Kitchen – the women were ready to demonstrate their new-found solidarity. The blend of splendid acting, sharp dialogue, detailed period costumes and lush scenery is as potent today, on DVD, as it was at the height of the Merchant/Ivory era. The only extra is the commentary by Newell and producer Ann Scott. - Gary Dretzka

Bride Wars
Last Chance Harvey
The Married Weekend
Smother

Nothing brings out the clichés in a screenwriter more than a wedding. Entire cable channels have been programmed around the ritualized torture that surrounds every bridezilla’s special day. It’s her parade and she’ll damn sure be the only person allowed to rain on it. In movies, the groom’s role is limited to behaving like a Neanderthal at his stag party and forgetting where the ceremony is being held, while in-laws and other family members are there primarily to reveal long-buried secrets and anticipate genetic abnormalities in the couple’s spawn. The bride’s maids are expected to act as if they were in heat and one of the groom’s men, at least, is there to hit on the bride-to-be. There are variations on these prototypes – sometimes the bride and groom will come to their sense and marry someone else – but, generally, all wedding movies begin and end in the same place.

As directed by the once-capable Gary Winnick (13 Going on 30, Tadpole), Bride Warsmore closely resembles an infomercial for Vera Wang and the Plaza Hotel than the offbeat commentary on America’s wedding industry it might have been. Anne Hathaway and Kate Hudson played childhood friends whose lifelong dream it was to be married, within weeks of each other, at New York’s Plaza Hotel. By all outward appearances, their Emma and Liv are highly intelligent women who wouldn’t require a “perfect” anything to validate their femininity or psychological well being. Instead, here, they were so desperate to get married they committed their futures to a pair of guys who wouldn’t stand out at a convention of pygmies.

Worse, upon learning that their wedding planner (Candice Bergen) mistakenly booked their ceremonies on the same June afternoon, Emma and Liv immediately went from best of friends to the worst of enemies. The slapsticky nonsense that followed in the wake of this revelation made the Three Stooges look like Calvin Trillin. That said, however, it’s only fair to point out that Bride Wars didn’t embarrass itself at the box office, despite the universal condemnation of critics. Assuming that no man, straight or gay, voluntarily bought a ticket, it’s safe to say that many women identified with Emma and Liv. So be it.

The DVD’s bonus features include a few deleted scenes and a featurette that might have been written and directed by Wang’s publicist. In a bizarre twist of fate, Bride Wars was released at the same time as Hathaway was being hailed for her withering portrayal of the caustic sister of the bride, in Rachel Getting Married. No two women could have been any more different and exist in the same solar system.

In Last Chance Harvey, Dustin Hoffman plays a jingle writer who’s about to have his career pulled out from under him, as if it were a strategically placed carpet. So afraid is Harvey of losing his job that he budgets only a day of his time to flying to London for the wedding of his long-estranged daughter. No sooner does he arrive at the ceremony than he’s told his former wife’s husband has been asked to escort the bride down the aisle.

As played by James Brolin, the girl’s stepfather is an untypically decent guy. He gave his new wife (Kathy Baker) and stepdaughter (Liane Balaban) the kind of support denied them by Harvey. So, there would be no laughs at Brolin’s expense. While slouching his way through Heathrow Airport, Harvey encounters a frazzled survey taker (Emma Thompson), whom he will meet again later as he makes a hasty, unscheduled retreat from the wedding.

After toasting their mutual bad luck over drinks in an airport lounge, Harvey invites Kate to return with him to the reception, so he can prove he’s not a bad chap, after all. Sadly, what happens next is as boring as it is predictable. Hoffman and Thompson do what they can with the unremarkable material, but they could have phoned in their performances and achieved the same result. If it weren’t for the stars’ presence, I can’t imagine Last Chance Harvey would have been green lit, let along distributed theatrically. Neither is the DVD’s making-of featurette anything more than an excuse for Thompson and Hoffman to say nice things about each other.

The latest movie to borrow from the formula introduced a quarter-century ago in The Big Chill is The Wedding Weekend, which began life as Shut Up and Sing but was re-titled Sing Now or Forever Hold Your Peace to avoid confusion with the Dixie Chicks documentary. By any name, it’s a snooze. Here, a wedding provides the excuse for a reunion of college buddies who performed in the same a cappella group. And, yes, you heard that right. Along with their wives, girlfriends, a baby and a hot nanny, the guys share a large house in the Hamptons. Before long, almost everyone forgets what made them friends 15 years earlier, and things turn nasty. Among the actors recruited by director Bruce Leddy were Molly Shannon, Elizabeth Reaser, Rosemarie DeWitt (Rachel Getting Married) and a bunch of guys who look like extras in a Michelob commercial.

Diane Keaton deserves a lot better roles than the ones she’s been saddled with since Something’s Gotta Give, in 2003, and, before that, Father of the Bride, in 1991. The same goes for Liv Tyler, with whom Keaton shares 92 minutes of screen time in Vince Di Meglio’s highly forgettable screwball comedy, Smother. Keaton plays the mother-in-law who came to stay in the home of the baby-obsessed Tyler and her husband, a newly unemployed therapist (Dax Shepard). Throw in mom’s five dogs and a weirdo screenwriter friend (Mike White) and the home becomes a nuthouse, dominated by Keaton’s overbearing (s)mother. The movie isn’t without some humorous moments, but only fans of the various stars will want to invest much time into waiting for them. – Gary Dretzka

Look

The producers of Look want potential viewers of the DVD to be alarmed by the notion that American citizens are being watched by some 30 million surveillance cameras. It’s a startling number, to be sure, and the misuses of such technology have long been documented. Apart from the perverts who would use lipstick cameras to look up women’s skirts, and security guards with visual access to locker-rooms, though, how many Americans would object to having a camera mounted in the corners where criminals lurk? Not many, I suspect.

Adam Rifkin’s Look was shot through lenses hidden in ATM machines, on poles overlooking malls and schools, behind mirrors in dressing rooms and through hand-held cell-phones. As such, his various storylines play out from the point of view of dozens of strategically mounted cameras. And, while the technology remains neutral, Rifkin manipulates what is captured to fit his fictional narrative.

Among the characters is a high-school seductress bend on ruining a teacher’s reputation; an office nerd, bullied without remorse by co-workers; a pair of vicious cop-killers; a woman trapped in a car’s trunk; businessmen involved in a clandestine relationship; the horny department-store supervisor who preys on saleswomen; and the mother of a young girl being stalked by a pederast. If Rifkin is attempting to make some sort of point about the dangers of life in a technologically invasive society, he ultimately achieves the opposite effect. Even so, it’s an interesting approach to the subject and he elicits some excellent performances from his actors, who behave very much like civilians.- Gary Dretzka

Incendiary

Michelle Williams is most of the reason to sample the London-based terrorist drama Incendiary on DVD or Blu-ray. In it, she plays a working-class wife and mother, who, while at the peak of some extracurricular sexual activity, suddenly becomes a childless widow. Her cop husband, a member of the bomb squad, had taken their son to a soccer match, which was interrupted by a series of terrible explosions. It is the nightmare scenario of every wife of a man who performs such tasks, and almost explains why Williams’ character engaged in an extended one-nighter with a reporter played by Ewan McGregor … that, and his expensive sports car.

In the wake of the catastrophe, Williams and McGregor independently discovered things about one of the terrorists that led to an unexpected encounter with members of his family. The cover art suggests that what’s inside will be more of an action-thriller than the psychological and emotional drama Incendiary actually is. More distressing, though, is the inordinately large number of coincidences that mount up during the course of director/screenwriter Sharon Maguire’s (Bridget Jones’ Diary) story. The coincidences embedded in the story were no rival, however, to events unrelated to its production. Chris Cleave's novel, which provided the source material, was published on the same day as the terrorist attacks on London's public transit system, and posters for the book were hanging in the stations when the bombs went off. The movie’s Sundance debut would be spoiled, as well, by news that Heath Ledger, the father of Williams’ baby daughter, had died of a drug overdose the same day. - Gary Dretzka

Chandni Chowk to China
Just Another Love Story
The Line
Live and Become

If Bollywood products are going to be exported to the United States, they ought not arrive at lengths approaching three hours and with titles no one outside the Indian-American community would understand. Audiences across the subcontinent expect movies to last as long as Gone With the Wind and incorporate a half-dozen different genre conventions. Audiences here aren’t quite as needy.

The Chandi Chowk referred to in the title Chandni Chowk to China is a section of Old Delhi widely known for its teeming marketplace and restaurants. China is where one of the local food preparers goes when the image of a deity appears on a potato he’s trimming. When news of this culinary miracle spreads from Delhi to China – I wonder if the visage of Virgin Mary on a rutabaga would cause a similar stir – residents of a town besieged by martial artists deputize the peeler, who they believe to be the reincarnation of an ancient warrior god. Got that?

A stroke of good luck convinced the Chinese government to allow the Mumbai-based production company to stage several action scenes on the Great Wall, thus facilitating the inclusion of kung-fu fight scenes. Add that to the trademark music and dancing, slapstick comedy and gorgeous love interest, Deepika Padukone, and you have a production worthy of carrying the Bollywood brand. Warner Bros. distributed Chadni Chowk on these shores, hoping to establish a market for such elaborate entertainments. The jury is still out on the experiment.

Danish director Ole Bornedal’s Just Another Love Story – a psychological thriller that’s anything but ordinary – explains why it might not be a good idea for a man to enter into a relationship with a woman whose blindness and amnesia he helped cause. For one thing, as the woman’s condition improves, she might not want to be reminded of people or events that caused her to be in the wrong place at the wrong time. Just Another Love Story is a nifty neo-noir that reveals the secrets hidden in the numbed memory of an intoxicating beauty – seriously injured when her speeding car collided with the stalled automobile of a police photographer – slowly and measured in ellipses.

Lying in the middle of the road, she calls out to someone named Sebastian. Without thinking, the guilt-ridden photographer assumes the identity of her former boyfriend. Because Sebastian was almost certainly a psychopath, this wasn’t a smart decision on the photographer’s part. Fortunately for the audience, though, Bornedal knew what to do with such a juicy opening. The more we learn about Sebastian, and the closer the photographer grows to the woman, the scarier Just Another Love Story becomes.

The Australian cop thriller The Line gives Americans a peek into some of the more sordid precincts of Melbourne, a city not usually associated with thug life. As is the convention in Hollywood cop movies, a younger, by-the-book hotshot is paired with a jaded veteran detective, whose methodology is extremely questionable. They’re teamed to investigate the murder of a prominent Asian gangster, an event that not only threatens to spark more violence but also reveals a nest of corruption in the department.

Live and Become tells the story of a Sudanese boy, who, along with thousands of Ethiopian Jews, was airlifted to Israel in 1984 as part of Operation Moses. The Falashas, as they were known, had fled to Sudanese refugee camps to escape the turmoil in Ethiopia, and Israeli leaders felt it their duty to repatriate the fellow Jews. The boy’s mother, a Christian, demanded that he attempt to mingle among the Falasha, so that he could realize a better life in Israel. A Jewish woman agrees to let the 9-year-old Sudanese boy assume her dead son’s identity and join her on the plane. Once in Israel, he assumed the name Schlomo, and eventually joined the family of a liberal couple. Schlomo’s struggle to assimilate, while also maintaining his false identity, is given near-epic treatment by director Radu Mihaileanu and co-writer Alain-Michel Blanc.. - Gary Dretzka

Ivanhoe
A Little Princess
Florence Nightingale
The Fall and Rise of Reginald Perrin: The Complete Collection
Gigantor

Broadcast by CBS in 1982, Ivanhoe hews closely to the original MGM theatrical feature, which was released in 1952 and starred Elizabeth Taylor, Robert Taylor, Joan Fontaine and George Sanders. Here, Anthony Andrews played the brave and chivalrous knight, who, upon his return from the Third Crusades, was forced to join in the struggle to liberate his own country – and the kidnapped King Richard -- from Prince John and his henchmen. It’s a great story, enhanced by encounters with beautiful maidens, treacherous noblemen and guerrilla fighters, including Robin Hood. At 180 minutes, this version of Ivanhoe retains the epic scale dictated by Sir Walter Scott’s novel, but generally reserved for big-screen adaptations. It also stars Julian Glover, Michael Hordern, Lysette Anthony, Olivia Hussey, James Mason and David Robb.

In the 1986 British television adaptation of Frances Hodgson Burnett’s A Little Princess, Amelia Shankley played Sara Crewe, the daughter of a British Indian Army officer who made sure she enjoyed the best things life could offer. When he died, however, Sara was forced to fend for herself. Her quest for a return to happiness has been retold countless times over the last 90 years, inspiring several generations of daddy’s little princesses to maintain a stiff upper lip.

The offbeat mid-1970s’ BBC comedy series, The Fall and Rise of Reginald Perrin, described what happened when one harried business executive realized that he’d become imprisoned by the demands of middle-class conformity and tried to escape. Leonard Rossiter played Reginald Perrin during its three-year run, which is encapsulated in a new DVD package. It also includes, The Very Best of Leonard Rossiter and Reginald Perrin Christmas Special Sketch.

The first 26 episodes of Gigantor, a 1960s’ cartoon series that helped open the doors to U.S. television for Japanese animators, have been repackaged. While primitive by today’s standards, it’s noteworthy for introducing a robot more interested in serving Earthlings than destroying them with lasers. The DVD adds interviews and commentary by the show’s creator and historians, as well as a companion guide and DVD-ROM with the first six issues of the “Gigantor” comic book.

When it comes to picking out subject matter for made-for-TV movies – disease-of-the-week, romance, biopics, abused women -- few companies know their audiences better than the folks at Lifetime and Hallmark. Sure, they’re formulaic and steadfastly PG in a PG-13 and R-rated world, but they get good ratings and sell lots of DVDs.

The latest crop includes, from Hallmark, The Note II: Taking a Chance on Love, in which the eternally youthful Genie Francis plays an advice columnist who can’t find romance on her own; in Lifetime’s Living Proof, Harry Connick Jr. played Dr. Dennis Slamon, whose perseverance resulted in the development of Herceptin, a weapon in the war against breast cancer; and in Flirting with Forty, Heather Locklear fights the stigma experienced by all cougars, when her 40-year-old divorced mother of two falls in love with a surfing instructor she met on vacation in Hawaii. You go, girl.

Also new to the TV-to-DVD scene are second-season compilations of Dexter, a Showtime series that keeps getting better; ABC’s October Road, in which an author returned to his hometown to face the people upon whom he based characters; Jake & The Fatman, from the era of the obese P.I.; and the fourth season of Jon and Kate Plus Ei8ht, with the first volume of The Wedding. - Gary Dretzka

Hotel for Dogs
A Plumm Summer
Mickey Mouse Clubhouse: Mickey's Big Splash
Imagination Movers: Warehouse Mouse Edition

In the kid-friendly Hotel for Dogs, mischievous siblings Andi and Bruce (Emma Roberts, Jake T. Austin) are passed from one foster home to another, until they land in one overseen by a pair of aspiring rock musicians (Lisa Kudrow, Kevin Dillon) with no apparent clue as to the proper care and feeding of children.

Although the kids have been forbidden from having pets, they have secretly adopted a Jack Russell terrier, Friday, with an insatiable appetite. When Friday mysteriously disappears, Andi and Bruce discover him hiding in a vacant hotel, along with a few other abandoned dogs. The kids, who immediately identify with the dogs’ plight, set about to design a refuge that caters to the particular needs of stray animals. Bruce devises several contraptions designed to keep the dogs – several of who have been liberated from the local pound – clean, healthy and well fed.

Just as the hotel looks as if it might succeed as a foster home for canines, representatives of the repressive world of adults raid the sanctuary, jeopardizing not only the dogs but also their caregivers. Don Cheadle plays the social worker who comes to their defense. Hotel for Dogs is clever enough to maintain the attention of young viewers and their parents. The PG rating has more to do with Bruce’s invention of a sanitary system for the hotel than any other thematic material. Given that children are born with a natural proclivity to laugh at scatological gags, Hotel for Dogs won’t be teaching them anything they didn’t already know.

As far-fetched as it might sound, the puppet-napping incident central to A Plumm Summer actually was based on something that actually happened to the host of a kiddie TV show in 1968. Apparently, federal agents – those who weren’t spying on anti-war activists, anyway – were called in to investigate the crime. If true, the circumstances lent themselves well to a movie that allows its young and old characters to come of age, bond and achieve redemption in the search and recovery of one Froggie Doo. The strong cast includes William Baldwin, Lisa Guerrero, Henry Winkler, Peter Scolari, Brenda Strong and Jeff Daniels.

Disney’s latest DVD compilations are taken from on-line segments of Playhouse Disney’s Mickey Mouse Clubhouse and Imagination Movers. The former features familiar cartoon characters attempting to cool off in a heat wave, the latter contains songs and videos made popular by the New Orleans-based rock band. In Warehouse Mouse, pre-schoolers learn how to combine music and teamwork to tackle various challenges. Each of the DVDs contain about 90 minutes of entertainment.- Gary Dretzka

A Grin Without a Cat
H2 Worker
Jack Taylor of Beverly Hills/Fashion in Film
Women in the White House
Bird by Bird with Annie: A Film Portrait of Writer Anne Lamott

French documentarian Chris Marker’s A Grin Without a Cat examines the revolts by students and workers of the 1960-70s and their relationship to the greater social and economic movements that dominated the 20th Century, including communism, capitalism and imperialism. At four hours, it is an epochal work, essential both for its exhaustive compilation of largely unseen newsreel footage, but also as reminder that tyranny, greed and hypocrisy aren’t peculiar to any one party or government.

The film is divided roughly in half, the first devoted to explosive events that shaped the news throughout most of ’60s, and the second to the broken promises, repression and lack of follow-through that doomed the left. Contrary to what most Americans still think, the ’60s didn’t begin with the anti-war and free love movements on college campuses from Boston to Berkeley. Neither was Hair a documentary. The global revolt had its roots in the decisions made at Yalta and in the collapse of European colonialism. Anyone who was politically active during those tumultuous years will recognize the players represented here, if not the details of their crusades.

Although A Grin Without a Cat ends with the U.S.-aided overthrow of Chile’s democratically elected socialist government, a line can be drawn from there to the current international economic calamity, which could resuscitate the long-dormant left. Marker’s film wasn’t released in the U.S. until 2004, perhaps because its primary audience -- the radicals and activists of the ’60s – were too busy reaping the profits of Reaganomics. Its release on DVD now couldn’t have come at a better time.

Apropos of the release of Marker’s film, Stephanie Black’s little-seen documentary, H-2 Worker, chronicled the exploitation of Caribbean laborers by Florida sugar cane growers, from World War II to 1990. Think your job is tough, watch thousands of “guest” workers as they chop cane for wages below the minimum, while living in barracks that were overcrowded and lacked proper sanitation. Thanks to the good ol’ boys in Florida’s statehouse and Washington – and lacking a charismatic spokesman, such as Cesar Chavez -- the Caribbean workers were left unprotected, unheard and terrified of deportation. Much of what’s seen in H-2 Worker was shot clandestinely in the fields. It’s timely today because of calls for ramping up the guest-worker concept to accommodate the mutual needs of undocumented Mexican workers and growers hungry for cheap labor. The DVD adds an update on the H-2 program, commentary, the short film, More Than Luck and a trailer for Black’s Life and Debt.

Hollywood fashion is the subject of two new documentaries, Jack Taylor of Beverly Hills and Fashion in Film. Working in a shop on Rodeo Drive, Taylor is to the entertainment industry’s alta cokers what Frederick Mellinger was to Hollywood’s figure-conscious starlets and strippers. The DVD promotes Taylor as the man responsible for the Rat Pack’s look, but precious little time is spent on Frank, Dean and Sammy. Better, though, we learn a lot about Taylor and his wife’s relationship to such iconic figures as Cary Grant, Jack Lemmon, Bing Crosby, Jackie Gleason, Elvis Presley, Danny Thomas, Charles Bronson and, yes, Monty Hall, Mike Douglas and Jan Murray. Jason Schwartzman is the next youngest customer, by about 30 years. Taylor’s refusal to compromise on style, quality and taste -- at time when most Hollywood celebs prefer to dress like their kids – is as admirable as it is quaint. Starz’ Fashion in Film takes a breezier look at how couture fashions have influenced how costume designers dressed their characters.

A&E/History’s Women in the White House is comprised of two specials, All the Presidents' Wives, which examines what it means – and takes – to be among the exclusive group of women referred to as First Lady; and First Mothers, which chronicles the life stories Sara Delano Roosevelt, Rose Kennedy, Hannah Milhous Nixon, Nelle Reagan, Virginia Clinton, and Dorothy and Barbara Bush.

Freida Lee Mock’s inspirational biodoc, Bird by Bird with Annie, chronicles a year in the life of Anne Lamott, through interviews, lectures, readings and footage of the writer at work. Lamott borrows examples from her own roller-coaster life to share with aspiring writers and those who simply could benefit from an outlet for their feelings. - Gary Dretzka

One-Eyed Monster

As lame as the Fields brothers’ One-Eyed Monster turned out to be, the concept might actually have worked if it hadn’t been directed by someone so intent on exploiting the presence of Ron Jeremy and Veronica Hart in a R-rated horror comedy … and a soft “R” at that.

Set in the snow-covered mountains around Mammoth Lakes, Ca., One-Eyed Monster imagines what could happen if Jeremy’s erect penis separated from his body and began attacking the cast and crew of a cheapo porn film. Given the enormity of the Hedgehog’s tummy these days, Jeremy might not actually have known his appendage was missing, unless it hadn’t taken flight in mid-thrust during a scene with Hart. The penis took on a life of its own after Jeremy was struck by a comet being guided by some sort of alien force. In any other season, the victims might simply have been able to drive down the mountain, but, as in The Thing and The Fog, the poor weather prevented an escape. (There’s also a visual reference to The Alien.)

There are several very funny puns and one-liners scattered throughout One-Eyed Monster – including the one in the title – but, after about 20 minutes, the gags can’t sustain the weight of the conceit. The killer-genital premise has worked before, most recently in Teeth, and, as a director, Hart employed singing genitals in Misty Beethoven: The Musical, but the three Fields brothers lacked the chops here to pull it off. Ironically, the most interesting part of the DVD is an extended chat between porn legends Hart and Jeremy, who’ve known each other literally and biblically since the period memorialized in Boogie Nights. It’s worth the price of a rental.– Gary Dretzka