The DVD Report #69

The best new movie on DVD is the HBO film Jay Roach’s Recount about the 2000 battle over Florida’s election results between Bush’s thugs and Gore’s wimps. No less than five of its actors are up for Emmys: Kevin Spacey as Gore recount point man Ron Klain; Tom Wilkinson as Republican string-puller James Baker; Bob Balaban as Bush-Cheney mouthpiece Ben Ginsberg; Laura Dern as Florida Secretary of State Katherine Harris; and Denis Leary as Democratic consultant Michael Whouley. Dern is particularly memorable as the ditzy Harris.

A quirky drama about a professor and his off-beat family, very much in the mode of Wonder Boys, Noam Murro’s Smart People stars a deadpan Dennis Quaid as the paterfamilias, Ellen Page as his high school-age daughter, Ashton Holmes as his college-age son, Thomas Haden Church as his long lost adopted brother, and Sarah Jessica Parker as his former student, now the emergency room doctor who treats him after a mild seizure. This very droll and very funny film brings out the best in all of them, especially Quaid who has seldom been better.

Based on a 1938 novel Bharat Nalluri’s Miss Pettigrew Lives for a Day is admirably filmed as though it were made at the time of the film’s setting. Though the pace may be a bit slow for today’s audiences, the film’s charm catches up with you and by film’s end you’ll be joining ladies’ companion Frances McDormand in cheering daffy Amy Adams on to pick piano player Lee Pace over nightclub owner Mark Strong and young stud Tom Payne. You’ll also be hoping millionaire designer Ciaran Hinds will sweep McDormand off her feet. You won’t be disappointed by the outcome.

An internationally acclaimed film, Erin Kolirin’s The Band’s Visit was Israel’s official entry in last year’s Foreign Film Oscar race that was rejected by the Academy for being too much in English – a silly rule. This sweet little movie is about an Egyptian band invited to play in a small Israeli town. The Egyptians speak Arabic, the Israelis speak Hebrew – both speak English, their only way of communicating with each other. So naturally there will be large sections of the film in which English is spoken. Anyway, don’t think about, just see it, you’ll be glad you did.

Finally released on DVD is the director’s cut version of the acclaimed 1982 miniseries, The Executioner’s Song, directed by Lawrence Schiller from Norman Mailer’s adaptation of his book about Gary Gilmore, the violent killer who demanded, and got, his execution by a firing squad. Tommy Lee Jones won a much-deserved Emmy for his performance and Rosanna Arquette received an equally deserved nomination as his long-suffering girlfriend. There are also impressive turns by Christine Lahti, Eli Wallach, Jim Youngs and Grace Zabriskie.

Speaking of TV, with the new season just about upon us, DVD distributers have begun releasing last season’s shows on DVD to whet our appetites for more.

Last season was a strange one as the writers’ strike cut short the number of episodes presented by most series. Still, there were episodes enough to fill the demand for box sets of the most popular shows.

Enjoying huge success in spite of, or maybe because of, its controversial decision to relegate its major supporting players to bit parts while introducing a host of new characters, House – Season 4 continued to showcase two-time Golden Globe winner Hugh Laurie in one of the best written character leads in television history. Robert Sean Leonard co-stars.

For the second time in its five year history, NCIS – Season 5 ends with the brutal death of one of its major characters, and taking a leaf from House – Season 3, ends with the dispersal of the remainder of its supporting players. Not to worry, though, the producers promise they’ll be back before long, just as Mark Harmon’s character was not kept out of the series despite his resignation at the end of Season 3.

One of the great successes of the 2006-2007 season was Heroes. It left so much to live up to that Heroes – Season 2 was bound to be a disappointment. Major criticisms were that the introduction of new characters not connected to original ones and the abandoning of one of the first season’s most beloved characters to a sub-plot stranded for too long in Feudal Japan. The criticisms are justified, but it’s still worth watching at least once.

Perhaps the biggest surprise hit of the 2007-2008 season was Gossip Girl about the spoiled rich kids of a New York Upper East Side private high school. Quick, slick and filled with the gadgets of modern life – primarily cell phones – it’s easy to see why it would be appealing to the younger set, but doesn’t have much to offer older audiences. The teens are played by actors obviously in their mid-twenties.

More satisfying to older audiences is the latest release in the landmark 1950s TV series Perry Mason. Out now is Perry Mason – Season 3, Vol. 1, which, split into volumes might seem like a gyp, but isn’t considering that you get almost a full hour per episode vs. less than 45 minutes per episode, when commercials are excluded, for current one hour shows. Raymond Burr and Barbara Hale star as Mason and his secretary, Della Street.

This was supposed to be the week that Warner Bros. released a restored, vertical line-free print of How the West Was Won on standard DVD and Blu-ray, but that release has been delayed for two weeks. Available now, however, are ten other westerns from the Warner Bros.-MGM libraries of the 1940s through the 1960s.

First up chronologically is the Errol Flynn Western Collection featuring 1940’s Virginia City, 1945’s San Antonio, and 1950’s Montana and Rocky Mountain. Next up is a package of Western Classics consisting of 1953’s Escape From Fort Bravo, 1955’s Many Rivers to Cross, 1958’s Saddle the Wind and The Law and Jake Wade,1960’s Cimarron, and 1968’s The Stalking Moon.

A box office smash hit follow up to the Flynn-Michael Curtiz 1939 hit Dodge City, the similarly-named Virginia City is a mixed bag. Though both Flynn as a Union soldier and Randolph Scott as a wagon train boss are perfectly cast, one has to wonder what they were thinking in casting Miriam Hopkins as a Confederate spy masquerading as a saloon singer and a mustached Humphrey Bogart as a Mexican bandito.

Much better is David Butler’ San Antonio co-scripted by Alan LeRay, author of The Searchers. Alexis Smith makes a more convincing saloon singer than Hopkins while Paul Kelly and Victor Francen make effective villains. That wonderful character actor S.Z. Sakall is also around to lend comic support. The gorgeous Technicolor vistas more than compensate for the predictable story line.

Flynn, Smith and Sakall are reunited in Ray Enright’s Montana in which Flynn, a native of Australia who rarely got to play one on screen does so here to good effect as a transplanted Aussie who tries to raise sheep in Montana cattle country. Though the story is predictable, the location and on-screen chemistry between Flynn and Smith make it worth your time.

The only pairing between Flynn and wife Patrice Wymore, Rocky Mountain, is largely notable for that, and for reuniting Flynn with his Adventures of Robin Hood co-director William Keighley (with Michael Curtiz). It’s another Civil War yarn, this one about Yanks and Rebels joining forces to fight off an Indian attack. Featuring Scott Forbes, Slim Pickens and Sheb Woolley, it was Flynn’s last western.

Similar in plot to Rocky Mountain but much better executed, John Sturges’ Escape From Fort Bravo features William Holden as the commandant of an Arizona fort in which Confederate soldier prisoners must help the Yanks fight off the Indians. The top notch cast also includes Eleanor Parker, John Forsythe, Polly Bergen, William Demarest, William Campbell and Richard Anderson.

A curious mix of action and comedy, Roy Rowlands’ Many Rivers to Cross presents Parker and Robert Taylor in coonskin caps, Victor McLaglen and Josephine Hutchinson in newly minted spectacles, and lots of brawling. Decidedly non-politically correct, the main theme seems to be how long it takes to kill an Indian. Russ Tamblyn and Jeff Richards are wasted as two of Parker’s four dumb siblings.

Taylor fares much better as the reformed gunslinger in Robert Parrish’s Saddle the Wind scripted by The Twilight Zone‘s Rod Serling. John Cassavetes comes on a bit strong as Taylor’s trigger happy younger brother, but Julie London as a seen-it-all former saloon singer, Donald Crisp as a benevolent land owner and Royal Dano as a determined sheep rancher are superb in supporting roles.

Taylor had another good role as a reformed bad guy, now much admired town marshal, in John Sturges’ The Law and Jake Wade opposite Richard Widmark as his nasty former partner. Patricia Ownes is Taylor’s newfound love while Robert Middleton and Henry Silva are Widmark’s new partners in crime in this suspense-filled western that is more than just a showcase for its two stars.

A better film than the 1931 Oscar winner of the same name, Anthony Mann’s film of Edna Ferber’s Cimarron has one of the most exciting openings of any film ever made, the mad dash for land during the Oklahoma land rush. After that, it’s more soap opera than horse opera. The sterling cast includes Glenn Ford, Maria Schell, Anne Baxter, Arthur O’Connell, Russ Tamblyn, Mercedes McCambridge and Aline MacMahon.

Gregory Peck is reunited with the producer/director team of Alan J. Pakula and Robert Mulligan, who guided him to his To Kill a Mockingbird Oscar, in The Stalking Moon. It’s a sparse tale of an Indian scout and the freed Indian captive woman he leads to safety with her half-breed son. Eva Marie Saint is the woman, Robert Forster is Peck’s young protégé and the gorgeous cinematography is by veteran Charles Lang.

Finally, Criterion has released a two-disc special edition of Pier Paulo Passolini’s controversial last film Salo. The previous, long-discontinued Criterion release of the film had sold for hundreds of dollars on e-Bay but was as hard to watch with its washed out colors as it was to find. The new, improved version is much easier on the eyes unless, of course, you are put off by the many scenes of degradation and debauchery. For anyone expecting a film along the lines of Passolini’s reverent earlier film, The Gospel According to St. Matthew, this film set in World War II Italy whose full title is Salo, or the 120 days of Sodom, will be quite the eye-opener. Its theme that man has no kind nature is given added irony by Passolini’s own brutal murder shortly after the film was completed.

-Peter J. Patrick (August 26, 2008)