MCN DVD Reviews: May 26, 2009

The Wrap Up ...

Powder Blue

A couple of weeks ago, Jessica Biel blamed leaked footage of her topless scene in Powder Blue for the lack of a theatrical distribution deal. By the time those pictures had hit the Internet, however, the movie already had been given a one-way ticket to the direct-to-DVD equivalent of Palookaville. If nothing else, the free publicity had only served to build the wee bit of buzz in Powder Blue that actually existed, despite a cast that also included Ray Liotta, Forest Whitaker, Kris Kristofferson, Lisa Kudrow and a freakish performance by the ailing Patrick Swayze.

All of their quietly desperate characters work the streets of a neon-noir Los Angeles that is closer to Charles Bukowski’s blueprint than the one used for Short Cuts or Crash, the films Powder Blue was intended to resemble. For the most obvious of reasons, however, the storyline involving Biel’s forlorn stripper and hospitalized child is the one that matters most.

She looks great, is a swell dancer and reads her lines capably. But, the story is hardly worth the effort. If anyone made movies for Biel like the ones that were written for Rita Hayworth, perhaps, the Minnesotan beauty could still become a box-office draw. She delivers a nice comic turn in Stephan Elliott’s Easy Virtue, but American producers aren’t nearly as interested in movies intended for adult consumption – or a Noel Coward soundtrack -- as their Brit counterparts. That said, Powder Blue fits perfectly well within the context of the made-for-DVD/cable marketplace. Timothy Lyn Bui’s drama was shot on film, but looks as if it were intended for Blu-ray. As cliché a setting as the strip club has become, the scenes located there are quite watchable, especially when Biel is center stage. Clearly, she paid attention to her mentors.

- Gary Dretzka

Of Time and the City

If all anyone knows about the British port city of Liverpool is that it spawned the Beatles, Terence Davies’ visual ode to his hometown will lend visual evidence to the Fab Four’s working-class mythology. Beyond that, though, Of Time and the City hardly dwells on the legacy of the Beatles or other purveyors of the Merseybeat. Rock music is Davies’ bag. Without making any attempt to disguise the indignities of life in a city that emerged from World War II in as bad a shape as any on the continent – or to rhapsodize on the virtues of hard work in the face of poverty and deprivation – his film is a testament to the people who survived, despite it all, and may even live long enough see it prosper, once again.

To this end, Davies composed his “poem” from bits and pieces of footage, found and archived; the musings of great writers and philosophers; and an elegiac soundtrack, which literally soars above images of ships, billowing clouds of industrial smoke and sky-scraping steeples. Going into the documentary, his first, Davies felt as if he had already said enough about growing up poor, homosexual and Roman Catholic in Liverpool, via Terence Davies Trilogy, Distant Voices, Still Lives and The Long Day Closes.

When asked to consider creating a film to celebrate Liverpool’s status as European Capital of Culture for 2008, Davies found inspiration in Peggy Lee's The Folks Who Live on the Hill. Upon his return to Liverpool, he found a city that had recovered from the post-war economic disaster, Maggie Thatcher’s anti-labor regime, the opiates dispensed by the royal family and the tourist hordes seeking entry to the Cavern Club. In the place of the brick-row neighborhoods of his youth sprang soulless vertical ghettos; a cathedral’s worth of good and bad memories had been transformed into a watering hole for yuppies.

By the end of Of Time and the City, not only has the audience re-discovered a great city, but a peace also appears to have been brokered between the artist and his demons. In his narration, Davies finally echoes T.S. Eliot’s observation in “Four Quartets,” “We shall not cease from exploration/And the end of our exploring/Will be to arrive where we started/And know the place for the first time.” It’s that kind of movie. Much complementary background material also is provided in the features package.

- Gary Dretzka

Wise Blood: Criterion Collection
The Friends of Eddie Coyle: Criterion Collection

For all the attention paid to Hollywood’s Young Turks of the 1970s, two of the decade’s most enduring entertainments were made the old-fashioned way, by the Brit action-specialist Peter Yates and the salty veteran John Huston. It’s taken a while for The Friends of Eddie Coyle and Wise Blood to make their way to DVD, but the folks at Criterion have made the wait eminently worthwhile. Wise Blood was adapted from Flannery O’Connor’s decidedly Southern Gothic portrait of Hazel Motes (Brad Dourif), the opportunistic founder of the Church Without Christ (“where the blind don't see and the lame don't walk, and what's dead, stays that way").

Flannery’s depiction of small-town eccentricity and pious religious hucksters couldn’t have been in better hands, as by this time in his amazing career, Huston was crafting small gems from some very difficult books. In addition to a newly restored hi-def digital transfer, the Criterion edition offers new interviews with Dourif, writer Benedict Fitzgerald and writer-producer Michael Fitzgerald; a recording of author Flannery O’Connor reading her short story, A Good Man Is Hard to Find; Creativity with Bill Moyers, a 1982 television interview with Huston; and an essay by author Francine Prose.

With the possible exception of Elmore Leonard, no one working the crime-fiction dodge has written crisper, more geographically defined dialogue than George V. Higgins. I’ve read his masterpiece, The Friends of Eddie Coyle, several times – it barely takes a day’s effort – and still find new things to admire. The movie rewards repeat viewings, as well, if only as reminders of the great work of Robert Mitchum and Peter Boyle in roles they were born to play. Mitchum plays a small-time Boston gun dealer and wiseguy, hoping to avoid prison by informing on his customers, here a gang of bank-robbing radicals not unlike the SLA. Boyle is his duplicitous bartender buddy, with problems of his own. Anyone who’s enjoyed watching the denizens of the Boston underground, as portrayed in such films as The Departed, Mystic River and Gone Baby Gone, will find a great deal to enjoy in Eddie Coyle.

The DVD also arrives with Yates’ audio commentary, a stills gallery, a new essay by film critic Kent Jones and a 1973 on-set profile of Robert Mitchum from Rolling Stone.

– Gary Dretzka

Forever Strong

It may take leather balls to play rugby, but, in Forever Strong, the players also are required to fall into line behind a coach who requires them to absorb life lessons in things like integrity, honor and sobriety … the latter, an attribute not normally associated with such a brutish pastime.

Sean Faris is a star player whose bad habits landed him in a group home. While there, he met another fallen athlete, who pointed him in the direction of a coach (Gary Cole) who leads by example and inspiration, instead of the yelling and degradation employed by his father. Eventually, the prodigal son meets the hard-ass dad on the field of battle, and at least director Ryan Little resisted the temptation to phone in the ending. The faith-based story also stars perennial bad guy Neal McDonough (Desperate Housewives), cuddly Sean Astin and hottie Penn Badgley (Gossip Girl).

- Gary Dretzka

The Ramen Girl

Somewhere along the way, onetime flavor-of-the-month Brittany Murphy fell out of favor with the gods of Hollywood. Perhaps, all the early hype went to her head and her inflated opinion of herself became a liability. Or, maybe, it was as simple as her 15 minutes having run out on her. No matter. Murphy found success in the voice-over business, so there’s never been a need for a tag day.

The Ramen Girl may be too wee a project to restore her star luster, but, as fish-out-of-water fantasies go, it’s not bad. Murphy plays a young American woman left to fend for herself after being stranded in Tokyo by her caddish boyfriend. Mercifully, The Ramen Girl is no Lost in Translation rip-off, though. Instead, Murphy’s character becomes obsessed with the food prepared at a local noodle shop, and miraculously convinces the chef to be her ramen sensei.

In a different movie, Murphy’s bubbly personality might have been all that was required to crack the chef’s hard crust. In the hands of Robert Allen Ackerman, an accomplished director of made-for-TV movies, her character’s journey isn’t made nearly so easy. For one thing, neither the chef nor the student is conversant in the other’s language and he has no idea what this impetuous woman is trying to prove. Instead of providing them with a translator, Ackerman and freshman screenwriter Becca Topol left them to their own devices. The chef has his own reasons for being a S.O.B., but, after almost too long a while, the wannabe wins him over. A cross-cultural romance also is handled nicely.

I wasn’t prepared to go the distance with The Ramen Girl, whose natural audience is teenage girls, but it somehow managed to hold my interest throughout. The best thing in the bonus package is the series of deleted scenes that reveal a subplot involving an American friend who pays the price for working as a hostess in a notorious men’s club. Its absence is hardly noticed.

- Gary Dretzka

The Sky Crawlers: Blu-ray

Mamoru Oshii’s existential anime merges elements of Wings, Top Gun, Gladiator and the original Rollerball, all in the service of a story that ponders how far mankind might go to keep itself entertained.

Known here primarily for his Ghost in the Shell series, Oshii’s adaptation of Hiroshi Mori’s novel looks ahead to a time when boredom becomes the enemy of peace and contentment. To keep the masses amused, a corporation stages dogfights over Europe, in which child pilots battle each other in prop planes that resemble World World II fighters. The pilots, known as Kildren, are bred to fight by Rostock, the company hired to provide such entertainment.

Lacking a collective memory of anything except flight training, and any good reason to look ahead to a decent future, only a very few of the Kildren are equipped to make intellectual sense of what’s happened to them. Yuichi is one of those pilots. Oshii’s no stranger to warfare and violence, and his ability to choreograph dogfights turns Sky Crawlers into an exciting diversion for fans of Japanese animation. Not surprisingly, the anime also looks terrific in Blu-ray. - Gary Dretzka

The Devil’s Tomb

You simply never know where Cuba Gooding Jr. will pop up next … kids’ flicks, gross-out comedies, war dramas, inspirational biopics or horror thrillers. Usually, the Academy Award-winner delivers a far better performance than the material deserves, and, more often than not, the movies wind up debuting on DVD.

But, hey, a guy’s gotta work, and it isn’t as if they’re writing all that many good roles for black actors these days … unless they’re named Denzel. In The Devil’s Tomb, Gooding leads a military rescue team to a top-secret underground archeological lab, from which a scientist (Ron Perlman) had disappeared. What they find will threaten the future of humanity as we know it. You were expecting Bugs Bunny, maybe? Taryn Manning, Ray Winstone, Franky G, Bill Moseley and Henry Rollins lead the cast list. And, yes, director Jason Connery is the son of Sean Connery. - Gary Dretzka

Land of the Lost: Complete Series: Limited Edition Gift Set
The Invisibles: Series 1
Murder Most English
Jeeves & Wooster: The Complete Series

Just in time for the release of the Brad Silberling/Will Ferrell re-imagining of the campy 1970s fantasy series, Land of the Lost, Universal has compiled all three seasons of the original and repackaged them in collector’s editions. The limited set comes encased in a lunchbox, not unlike the one kids carried with them to school at the dawn of the Jurassic Age (or digital era, whatever).

As created by Sid & Marty Krofft – also responsible for H.R. Pufnstuff and The Bugaloos – the series provided much fun and chills for the kiddies, while also amusing grown-ups with more subversive threads. If the movie does as well as the TV show, who would be surprised to see Boomer parents carry the same lunch box to work as their Boomlet children do to school.

In Sexy Beast, Ray Winstone and Cavan Kendall played a pair of Cockney hoodlums, who, along with their molls, invested some of their ill-gotten gains in a retirement haven on Spain’s Costa del Sol (a.k.a., the Costa del Crime). Their blissful existence was disrupted when an old compatriot demanded Winstone return to London to work his magic in an elaborate heist.

It’s likely The Invisibles was informed by those characters, in that the BBC series also involves career criminals who found sanctuary in the Spanish sun. Here, though, the retired crooks – played by Anthony Head and Warren Clarke – have returned to England voluntarily, but to a chillier setting. Despite the intentions of Head’s wife, played by Jenny Agutter, the lads succumb to the temptations laid before them by the local publican. The only question is if 15 years of retirement have dulled their game.

In lieu of an American showcase for The Invisibles, this DVD packs a full season’s worth of entertainment. Murder Most English: A Flaxborough Chronicle is a BBC crime series of a much earlier vintage. Anton Rodgers played the tweedy, pipe-puffing Detective Inspector Purbright, whose investigations shone a light on the seamy underside of life in a “typical” English country town. The 1977 series was based on detective novels by Colin Watson.

Two decades before Hugh Laurie began his tenure on Fox’s House, he was a fixture on such British series as Al Fresco, Blackadder, The Legends of Treasure Island and the sketch-comedy show, A Bit of Fry & Laurie. Laurie and Stephen Fry also collaborated on Jeeves & Wooster, a wonderful series based on the socially conscious stories of P.G. Wodehouse. Laurie played Bertie Wooster, an aristocratic twit who benefits mightily from the services of his brainy valet, Jeeves.

Also new to the TV-to-DVD world are: The Mod Squad: Season 2, Vol. 2 and Gunsmoke: Season 3 Vol. 2,; from History/A&E, The Universe: The Complete Season Three, Cities of the Underworld: The Complete Season Three and Prehistoric Collection: From Dinosaurs to the Dawn of Man (watch it before seeing Land of the Lost); and the compilation sets, T.V. Sets: Action Packed and T.V. Sets: Forever Funny, with select episodes of popular shows. – Gary Dretzka

Michel Gondry 2: More Videos: Before and After DVD 1
Sun Ra Arkestra: Points on a Space Age
One Love: Words & Powah
Kill the Record Labels
3 Mo' Divas

Michel Gondry is one of the world’s most innovative and widely respected creators of music videos and offbeat films. His features, which practically define the term “enigmatic,” have included Human Nature, Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind , The Science of Sleep and Be Kind Rewind. The list of artists for whom the French filmmaker (and drummer) has toiled includes several current and future hall-of-famers.

Among those represented in his new DVD collection are Paul McCartney, Bjork, Thomas Dolby, Beck, the White Stripes, Donald Fagen, Sinead O’Connor, Radiohead, the Black Crows and Rolling Stones. The generous set adds several making-of videos and such featurettes as a Simpsons parody of his White Stripes video; Gondry “solving” a Rubik’s cube with his feet and nose (and being beaten at the same game by Jack Black), Conan & the Big Head, and How to Blow Up a Helicopter (Ayako's Story). The easiest place to find the DVD is at Gondry's website, www.michelgondry.com.

One of the amazing things about big bands in the world of jazz is their ability to survive years after the deaths of their founders. The repertoire of Duke Ellington, Count Basie, Tommy Dorsey and Charles Mingus continues to be played by kindred musicians, who, in some cases, weren’t even born when the masters died. The surviving members of the Sun Ra Arkestra, an experimental ensemble that effectively merged science fiction and outré philosophy with jazz also have continued to explore their leader’s vision. Points on a Space Age documents his disciples’ activities from the spring of 2006 to the same period a year later. Marshall Allen, a member of the band since to mid 1950s, has guided the Arkestra since Ra’s exchanging of life forms in 1993. The blend of music, religion and philosophy remains unique in the world of jazz.

Reggae, on the other hand, is nothing without its Rastafarian religious foundation. In One Love: Words & Powah, the late Jah Bones interpreted the Rasta lifestyle through the points of view of Jah Shepherd, Ras Anum Iyapo and Cosmo Ben Imhotep. Dilettantes and tourists will learn from the three-part compilation that being a Rasta requires a bit more than dreadlocks and a strong pair of lungs. The reggae music helps the philosophy go down easier, though.

Kill the Record Labels is less an exploration of hip-hop music than an indictment of the record labels that want it both ways. On the one hand, company reps provide new music to deejays, whose mixes promote the artists and their material. On the other, the labels want to keep all the proceeds for themselves. When the labels sensed that the discs were diverting attention from their own efforts, they sicced the RIAA on the deejays, as if they were pirates and not an essential part of the star-making process. That the deejays all tend to start out poor and black – or Hispanic – will surprise no one. Neither will the fact that the major artists, once they hit it big, tend to forget the efforts of the deejays who took them to top.

Like the Three Tenors, and a dozen other copycat acts, 3 Mo’ Divas follows a formula dependent as much on the charisma of the singers as the music, itself. In a concert recorded at the Denver Center for the Performing Arts, sopranos Nova Y. Payton and Jamet Pittman, and mezzo-soprano Laurice Lanier, proved themselves to be as comfortable in the realms of gospel, jazz, blues and show tunes as they were on the classical stage. The DVD adds rehearsal clips, interviews and 29 minutes of performances.

– Gary Dretzka