The DVD Report #26

It’s time to get caught up with new releases again.

The 80th Anniversary Edition of The Jazz Singer is of more historical than entertainment value today. The film itself is a creaky tale of the Jewish cantor’s son who finds success beyond the synagogue to the disdain of his father. It is about 80% silent and 20% talkie, but when it talks, or rather sings, it soars thanks to the still-effective high-energy performance of master entertainer Al Jolson.

The second disc of the three-DVD set is a fascinating documentary on the development of motion picture sound. Thomas Edison, who invented both motion pictures and the phonograph, put the two together in an 1894 short, but attempts at producing sound regularly on film didn’t begin in earnest for another ten years and took yet another twenty to develop to the point where it was commercially viable. Primitive attempts at having actors speak were so bad that the idea of talking pictures itself became an industry joke until the brothers Warner came up the perfect vehicle, after which there was no turning back. The third disc contains early short subjects mostly featuring long-forgotten vaudevillians.

Previous releases of most of Stanley Kubrick’s films on DVD were frustrating because proper aspect ratios were not used to project the entire image on widescreen TVs. This was because it was believed that Kubrick himself preferred to have his films fill the TV screen, but Kubrick who died in March 1999 at the dawn of the DVD revolution, it is now believed would approve of his films being shown in wider aspect ratios that fit widescreen TVs in the way they never could older 4×3 sets. The new Stanley Kubrick – Warner Home Video Directors Series features five of his films in new anamorphic transfers, four of them – 2001: A Space Odyssey, A Clockwork Orange, The Shining and Eyes Wide Shut – in two-disc special editions and the fifth – Full Metal Jacket – in a single-disc deluxe edition. All films are available separately. The set also includes the previously-released documentary – Stanley Kubrick: A Life in Pictures.

Finally available on disc one of Eyes Wide Shut is the unexpurgated European version. Warner Bros. originally intended to provide this and the digitally-altered-for-sensitive-Americans version, but dropped the latter at the last minute. There is, however, very little difference between the two. The original DVD and theatrical release versions strategically covered up body parts for about four seconds during the orgy scene, but the unexpurgated version is the one the director always intended us to see, making it the artistically-preferable one. Disc two features both previously released and new documentaries, including Lost Kubrick: The Unfinished Films of Stanley Kubrick detailing his work on Napoleon among others.

Old and new supplements accompany the other four films in the set as well. A Clockwork Orange features commentary by Malcolm McDowell and the absorbing, almost 90-minute-long documentary on McDowall’s career called O Lucky Malcolm!

O Lucky Malcolm! Is also a supplement to Lindsay Anderson’s long-overdue-on-DVD, O Lucky Man!

A one of a kind movie, 1973’s O Lucky Man! arrives in a two-disc Special Edition that for which we have McDowell to thank. Approached by Warner Bros. to do the commentary on A Clockwork Orange, he said he would if he could also do one on this wonderful film as well. The satirically autobiographical film co-written by McDowell, though officially credited to If… scenarist David Sherwin, chronicles the adventures of a modern-day Candide from naïve young coffee salesman to movie star. The cast includes Rachel Roberts, Ralph Richardson, Arthur Lowe, Mona Washbourne, an impossibly young but beguiling Helen Mirren, and the great Alan Price as himself. Price’s extraordinary music provides on-going commentary on the action and helps to move the story along.

Not new to DVD, but worth seeking out is Nicholas Meyer’s 1979 film, Time After Time, in which McDowell, as H.G. Wells, and David Warner, as Jack the Ripper, are transported from 1890s London to modern day San Francisco where McDowell meets and falls in love with bank officer Mary Steenburgen both on screen and in real life. McDowell and Steenburgen have long since divorced, but their now-grown children have kept them close, and Steenburgen’s eyes still glow in the McDowell bio when talking about one of the film’s great scenes. Filmed at the Top of the Mark, the revolving restaurant on the top of the Mark Hopkins Hotel, Steenburgen reveals that McDowell whispered in her ear just before the cameras rolled that he was in love with her. The result is one of the most unabashedly romantic scenes ever put on celluloid, one of many great ones in this undervalued gem.

The latest additions to the Criterion Collection are Terrence Malick’s breathtakingly beautiful Days of Heaven, John Huston’s superb Under the Volcano and Jean-Luc Godard’s revolutionary Breathless. While Days of Heaven and Breathless were previously available, Under the Volcano was never released on DVD. All three look smashing in their new incarnations.

There are extras galore on all three, including feature-length commentaries. The extras on Under the Volcano and Breathless are so voluminous they require two discs. All three come with written essay booklets as well.

From the sublime to the ridiculous, the latest travesty heaped upon an uncomprehending public by Michael Bay ( Armageddon, Pearl Harbor) is the ridiculous Transformers. What exactly is this noisy mishmash all about? As best I can tell, it’s about an alien invasion in which good aliens and bad aliens fight for control of Earth. The film stars Shia LaBeouf who plays Harrison Ford’s son in the upcoming Indiana Jones sequel.

Speaking of Indiana Jones, Paramount has found a unique way of repackaging the short-lived series about the character as a young man and its subsequent made-for-TV movies. Intended as the first of three volumes, TThe Adventures of Young Indiana Jones – Volume 1 is an elaborate twelve-disc set with more than three dozen documentaries about the time, place and real life people introduced in the various segments, highly appropriate for the series which placed more of an emphasis on history than derring-do. It’s a great learning tool for kids.

Clifford Irving’s chutzpah allowed him to pull off one of the most daring cons in history as the alleged collaborator of a Howard Hughes autobiography, the story of which is chronicled in Lasse Hallstrom’s The Hoax. Supplementary material featuring the real Irving makes it easy to understand how the writer’s charm made the con work. Not so Richard Gere’s merely serviceable impersonation of him in the film. His nervous energy and tics makes you wonder how he managed to stay ahead of the game for as long as he did. Better is Alfred Molina as Irving’s friend and co-conspirator. Julie Delpy manages to look and sound exactly like Irving’s sometimes-mistress, actress Nina Van Pallandt, though the part is so miniscule it could have been played by almost anyone. Marcia Gay Harden gets more screen time as Irving’s wife, but her unkempt appearance and atrocious German accent are enough to make you want her to give back her Oscar.

Harden looks and sounds better as the mother of a bright high school graduate in The Invisible, but the film, from the producers of The Sixth Sense, is a fairly joyless story about a teenager stuck between the living and the dead. Both TV’s Ghost Whisperer and Medium do this sort of thing better and in about half the time each week.

Another film dealing with the supernatural is 1408 from a Stephen King sort story. It should have stayed a short story. John Cusack mostly mopes around as a non-believer in apparitions until the inevitable happens and Samuel L. Jackson, who shares top billing, has two small scenes unworthy of either his billing or his talent.

William Friedkin’s Bug is a more satisfying horror film, with a creditable screenplay and an astonishing performance by Ashley Judd as the grieving mother of a kidnapped toddler. Michael Shannon is fine as the psychotic stranger she takes into her world. Harry Connick, Jr. is nothing special as Judd’s abusive ex-husband, but Brian F. O’Byrne makes a strong impression as a psychiatrist late in the film.

There are no visible ghosts in Reign Over Me but the film’s main character, played by Adam Sandler in an excellent performance, is haunted nonetheless by memories of the family he lost in one of the planes that crashed into the World Trade Center on 9/11. Don Cheadle, in another excellent performance, is the old friend who tries to bring him out of himself. While the film, directed by Mike Binder (The Upside of Anger), is not entirely successful, it does well at mixing comedy with pathos and features some nice shots of post-9/11 New York at night.

Another film dealing with survival in the face of terrorism is A Mighty Heart, focusing on the search for Daniel Pearl, the Wall Street Journal reporter kidnapped in Pakistan in 2002. The film, directed by Michael Winterbottom (The Road to Guantanamo), is at its best when detailing the procedural workings of the Pakistani police, but the scenes after Pearl’s death are a letdown. Mariane Pearl’s altruistic speech at a lunch she gives the people who worked on the case comes too abruptly, and a totally unnecessary birthing scene seem calculated to provide Angeline Jolie, as Mariane, with two of the film’s three Oscar bait-y scenes, the other is a screaming scene when she is told of Daniel’s death. The ending seems cribbed from last year’s The Painted Veil.
Also newly released are Warner Bros. The Burt Lancaster Signature Collection and The Barbara Stanwyck Signature Collection.The Lancaster collection includes The Flame and the Arrow, a classic medieval adventure film which makes great use of Lancaster’s abilities as well as telling an absorbing story; Jim Thorpe – All American, a no holds barred biography of the Native American Olympian who falls victim to alcohol and scandal; and Executive Action, a scarily-plausible JFK conspiracy film released two decades before Oliver Stone’s JFK. The set also includes two throwaway films, His Majesty O’Keefe and South Sea Woman.

The Stanwyck collection includes the western Annie Oakley; the World War II romance My Reputation;the melodrama East Side, West Side; the race car drama To Please a Lady; the late noir Jeopardy; and the all-star Executive Suite. It’s a good representation of Stanwyck’s career in all its versatility. She is especially memorable in the all-star Executive Suite, in which she is billed below William Holden and June Allyson, but above the other cast members including Fredric March and Walter Pidgeon who have larger roles. In fact she doesn’t appear until near the end of the film and effortlessly takes it over.

Until next time, happy viewing!

Peter J. Patrick (October 30, 2007)