The DVD Report #55

Though genuine masterpieces from The Grapes of Wrath to Annie Hall to The Silence of the Lambs have been released in the month of January, Hollywood wisdom holds that this is the time to release films with low expectations while audiences are still catching up on the big year-end films. They are generally at best a pleasant time waster.

One such time waster, though I hesitate to call it a pleasant one, is Gregory Hoblit’s Untraceable. As a TV producer/director, Hoblit was responsible for some groundbreaking drama series, most notably L.A. Law, Hill Street Blues and NYPD Blue. As a film director, he hasn’t been quite so lucky, though he has provided us with some intriguing thrillers, including Primal Fear, Frequency and last year’s Fracture. Like those films, Untraceable seems derivative of other films of the genre, in this case most noticeably David Fincher’s Se7en, which was itself derivative of The Silence of the Lambs and other more gruesome modern thrillers.

Diane Lane stars as a widowed FBI investigator assigned to the internet policing unit in Portland, Oregon. Though the film tends to move quickly, you can’t help but stop and pause to notice that her eyebrows do not match her hair in close-ups.

Lane, computer buddy Colin Hanks, and local police officer Billy Burke are on the trail of a killer who devises ingenious death tortures for people and uploads them to the internet. The more people that tune in to watch, the faster his devilish demises play out. Big burly guys are no match for him, but I don’t think it’s giving too much away to say that tiny Diane Lane gets the best of him in the end. On the plus side, there are some nice location shots of Portland.

One of the late holiday releases that was still in theatres when Untraceable opened was The Great Debaters. Produced by Oprah Winfrey, this is the film that she hyped to death on her TV show before the film’s premiere…the one that her legion of TV fans failed to support. A pity, because it’s actually a very good, inspirational film about the debate team from little Wiley College in a backwater Texas town that went on to best all the black colleges and then took on Harvard.

Directed by Denzel Washington, the actor also has the plum role of the professor who puts together and coaches the debate team, but second lead Forest Whitaker, as the conservative dean of the school, has the juicier one. Playing the three main debaters are rising stars Nate Parker, Jurnee Smollett and Denzel Whitaker, who is no relation of either Washington or Whitaker, though he was named after the former.

Oprah’s fans did support the maudlin TV movie For One More Day, which has also been released on DVD.

Officially called Oprah Winfrey Presnts Mitch Albom’s For One More Day, this film is as much of a chore to sit through as it is to contemplate why it has to have such a long possessive title. It got me thinking that Winfrey’s tombstone will have to read “Oprah Winfrey Presents Herself in Her Final Resting Place” in order to be worthy of her. This is not inappropriate as the film is about death, dying and coming back for, yes, one more day.

A suddenly middle aged Michael Imperioli stars as an alcoholic ex-baseball near-great interviewed by a young reporter about the day he attempted suicide but was stopped by a vision of his dead mother, played by Ellen Burstyn. He and his mother reminisce about their younger days (played by other actors). The always-classy Burstyn is a treat to see, but she would be an even bigger treat to see in a more substantial role.

One of the better singer biopics, the Tina Sinatra-produced Sinatra mini-series is a warts-and-all look at her father fascinatingly played by Phillip Casnoff, who lip synchs perfectly to a scores of songs, many of them to Frank’s own voice. The huge supporting cast is led by an excellent Olympia Dukakis as Dolly Sinatra (his mother), Gina Gershon as Nancy Sr. and Marcia Gay Harden as Ava Gardner.

On the classic movie front, Paramount is re-issuing the Indiana Jones trilogy in a new box set with new extras, but the film transfers are the same as those previously released. Buy the new set only if you don’t already own copies of Raiders of the Lost Ark, Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom and Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade.

Universal, on the other hand, has re-mastered six of James Stewart’s classic westerns in honor of his centenary in James Stewart – The Western Collection. Included are Destry Rides Again, Winchester ’73, Bend of the River, The Far Country, Night Passage and The Rare Breed. With a retail price of under $40, the set is available at Amazon.com and elsewhere for under $30. At less than $5 a film, it’s a steal.

If you are unfamiliar with any of these films, you shouldn’t be. George Marshall’s Destry Rides Again is the 1939 comedy western classic that resurrected the career of Marlene Dietrich as Frenchie, the saloon singer who falls for good sheriff Stewart. Winchester ’73 is the 1950 classic about the history of the rifle that was the first collaboration between Stewart and director Anthony Mann and the first film for which an actor took a low salary in exchange for a share of the profits. It made Stewart a very rich man.

Made in 1952, Mann’s Bend of the River is one of the best of the Stewart-Mann collaborations, with an outstanding supporting performance by Arthur Kenendy as a nuanced bad guy. The other three, though of lesser reputation, are still worth your time.

MGM, through its distribution deal with Fox, is releasing three 1960s comedies made by United Artists. Does it sound confusing? It’s not, really. Warner Bros owns old MGM movies, MGM owns old United Artists movies, and Fox, when not dipping into its own vast library of old films, gets to dip into MGM’s – that is, United Artists’.

Anyway, of the three, Mel Stuart’s 1969 film If It’s Tuesday, This Must Be Belgium is probably the best known. The title became a catch phrase for European bus tours ever after. Suzanne Pleshette, Ian McShane, Mildred Natwick and Peggy Cass star, and Donovan, Joan Collins, Ben Gazzara and John Cassavetes have cameos.

William Friedkin’s 1968 film The Night They Raided Minsky’s is more interesting for its title than anything that actually happens in the film. With that title, one would expect lots of pretty girls. There are some, but the emphasis here is on second rate comics played by Jason Robards and Norman Wisdom. Genuinely-great comic Bert Lahr has a featured role and the narration is by Rudy Vallee, so it’s not a complete loss.

The funniest of the trio is Blake Edwards’ 1966 film What Did You Do in the War, Daddy? about a platoon of zany American soldiers who take over a town in Italy. James Coburn, Dick Shawn, Harry Morgan, Carroll O’Connor and Aldo Ray are among those taking part in the merriment.

If that’s not enough to keep you busy, try sitting through a season of a classic TV show. My current favorites in that regard are two series I missed in their initial runs.

Although it ran from 2001 to 2007, I was never curious enough to check out a single episode of Crossing Jordan. That was my loss, as it turns out to be a really wonderful whodunit series set in a morgue. Less clinical than CSI, it features great character development as it follows the travails of assistant coroner Jordan Cavanaugh and her Boston colleagues. Jill Hennessey is quite good as Jordan, but the standouts in the cast are Miguel Ferrer as her melancholy boss, Ken Howard as her retired policeman dad and Jerry O’Connell as the goofball detective who melts her heart.

The series starts off tentatively with characters that come and go, but by the end of Crossing Jordan: Season 1, which is now on DVD, the main characters are all in place. I can’t wait for Season 2 to be released.

Both Ironside – The Complete First Season, which includes the 1966 pilot, and Ironside – Season 2, a series that ran from 1967 to 1975, have been released on DVD. Incredibly, I never once checked this series out during its long run. I suppose it’s because I so identified star Raymond Burr with Perry Mason, which ran from 1957 to 1976, that I couldn’t accept him in another role. That was a big mistake on my part, as it turns out that Burr’s detective in a wheelchair is both a complement to, and the antithesis of, the stoic detective he played in the previous decade.

With Perry Mason, we never got to see the home life of the character. Ironside, on the other hand, lives and works out of the same place as a “special consultant” to the San Francisco Police Dept. with two officers and a driver/caretaker assigned to him who also form his surrogate family. Don Galloway, Barbara Anderson and Don Mitchell fill those roles perfectly.

The first season, though it allows for some intriguing cases, relies too heavily on the long-gone flower power of the hippie movement to give it then-contemporary relevance. Nevertheless, the series features some great location scenes and A-list guest stars. The second season takes on heavier issues, including race riots and TV demagogues. It holds up better than the later Streets of San Francisco, which now seems badly dated.

-Peter J. Patrick (May 20, 2008)