The DVD Report #78

Marvel Comics, which also co-produced Iron Man, had a hand in the making ofthe latest incarnation of The Incredible Hulk. The comic strip character achieved its greatest success with the popular TV series that ran from 1978-1982 with Bill Bixby as the scientist exposed to a massive dose of gamma rays and Lou Ferrigno as his enormous alter-ego.

Ferrigno was back in a minor role in Ang Lee’s deadly dull version called simply Hulk five years ago and he’s back again in Louis Letterier’s current film both in a minor role as a security guard and as the voice of the title character when he gets angry.

One would think that if they were going to re-make the 2003 film that they would make it more interesting by exploring character development. They did, but alas, they left it on the cutting room floor as the deleted scenes on both the Blu-ray and standard disc sets attest. What we’re left with is mostly special effects with a little brooding from Edward Norton on the side.

The film’s one genuinely nice gesture: a small screen tribute to original star Bixby in a Portuguese dubbed version of his other hit TV series, The Courtship of Eddie’s Father, from which the hulk in hiding learns enough local language skills to get by while on the lam in Brazil. One wonders, though, how he managed to rent the apartment with no money and order cable TV without speaking the language, but then one mustn’t expect too much logic from a comic book adaptation, must one?

Newly released on Blu-ray in the U.S., Tim Burton’s film of Stephen Sondheim’s Sweeney Todd is one of the few screen musicals available in the new format with which its superior audio one would assume to be a perfect fit for such films. This film, which Sondheim purists find off-putting, is nevertheless a step up for director Burton and his favorite actor, Johnny Depp who, have at least tried to make something of interest to audience members over the age of 12. If you want the unadulterated version, watch either of the two made-for-TV versions previously made available on DVD. If you want to see Burton, Depp and co-star Helena Bonham Carter attempting to stretch their wings without embarrassing themselves too much, give it a try.

Acclaimed director Gus Van Sant alternates between major Hollywood films such as Good Will Hunting and the forthcoming Milk and low-budget documentary-like dramas with non-actors such as Elephant. Paranoid Park, for which he won an award at last year’s Cannes Film Festival, is very much in the latter category. Attractively filmed in and around Portland, Oregon, it’s a modern Crime and Punishment tale in which a young teenager faces a moral dilemma after being involved in an accident that results in a death. Gabe Nevins has a strong presence in the lead but the rest of the cast is excruciatingly painful to watch, especially Dan Liu as a laid back detective and the annoying Dillon Hines as Nevins’ little brother. Taylor Momsen, a professional actress who is now one of the stars of TV’s Gossip Girl, also comes off rather amateurishly. See it for the scenery, and the skateboarding, of which there is quite a bit, or, better yet, read Dostoyevsky.

Ellen Burstyn has always been a superb actress. She can elevate the most mundane material and when she has a role that she can really sink her teeth into, there is no one finer. Such is the case with The Stone Angel in which she plays both an elderly woman whose life is circling the drain and the same character thirty years earlier in flashback.

The film, from the novel by Margaret Laurence, whose A Jest of God was the source material for Rachel, Rachel, is a superb character study about a woman whose life is full of tragedy but who perseveres into ripe old age through sheer willpower. Director Kari Skogland surrounds her with a terrific cast including the always good Dylan Baker as her older son, Kevin Zegers as her younger son, and Ellen Page as the younger son’s girl. The flawless casting extends to Christine Horne who plays Burstyn’s character as a young woman. Horne does a pitch perfect recall of the young Burstyn, getting her voice and facial expressions just right. Equally uncanny is the casting of Cole Hauser as Horne’s husband and his father Wings Hauser who plays opposite Burstyn in the film’s mid-section as the same character in middle age. Not a great film, but a nice slice-of-life drama with a superb actress at her best.

Former child actor Michael Angarano has the lead in David Gordon Green’s similarly titled Snow Angels in which he plays a high school senior whose former babysitter Kate Beckinsale is caught between alcoholic born again ex-husband Sam Rockwell and ineffectual cheating boyfriend Nicky Katt who is married to her best friend, Amy Sedaris. Angarano, Beckinsale and Sedaris all work together in a local Chinese restaurant where he is a busboy and the women are waitresses.

The film opens with a high school band practice interrupted by the firing of shots, then flashes back two weeks before coming full circle to its ominous conclusion. Like Green’s previous works including George Washington and Undertow this is a highly complex drama in which everything is not as it appears on the surface. Angarano, Beckinsale and Rockwell deliver unforgettable performances and the supporting cast is uniformly good, with Jeanetta Arnette and Griffin Dunne as Angarano’s estranged parents, and Tom Noonan as the determined band leader is the best known among them.

An intelligent, if quirky, family comedy-drama that played only at this year’s Sundance Film Festival before being released on DVD, Craig Lucas’ Birds of America features Matthew Perry, Ben Foster and Ginnifer Goodwin as siblings and Lauren Graham as Perry’s long suffering wife all currently living under the same roof. Perry is a college professor who has put his life on hold while waiting for tenure while Foster and Goodwin, the younger brother and sister he raised, both come home at a most inopportune time. Hilary Swank is the passive-aggressive neighbor whose husband is Perry’s boss. Foster is especially good as the most confused of the siblings. See it if you’re looking for something different.

One of the stupidest movies ever made, 1967’s Casino Royale, has been re-issued in a new 40th anniversary edition no doubt to capitalize on the release of the new James Bond film, Quantum of Solace. Technically it’s the film’s 41st anniversary, but who’s counting?

This mess of a movie has five credited directors and four credited writers, though many more worked on it. The rights to Ian Fleming’s first novel had been given to actor/director Gregory Ratoff and were not part of the package sold to the Broccolis who produced the successful series with Sean Connery and his fellow Bond portrayers.

Not able to secure Connery’s services from the Broccolis, Feldman decided to turn the film into a farce with various actors playing James Bond. As it turns out, only David Niven actually plays Bond. The others, including Peter Sellers, Woody Allen, Urusla Andress and Joanna Pettet, are imposters. John Huston is M, Orson Welles is the chief villain, and Deborah Kerr, William Holden, Charles Boyer and Jean-Paul Belmondo are among the big stars who pop in and out. Jacqueline Bisset, in an early role, is one of Bond’s girls. None of them distinguish themselves. Only Burt Bacharach’s Oscar-nominated song, “The Look of Love , which Feldman wanted to cut because it wasn’t funny, survives the madness.

There is commentary by Bond scholars and a making-of documentary in which two of the directors, Joseph McGrath and the late Val Guest (who died in 2006 at the age of 94), and three of the Bond girls, Bisset, Pettet and Daliah Lavi, mostly bash the film and Feldman, who died shortly after the release of the film.

On the television front, CSI: Crime Scene Investigation – The Eighth Season finds the venerable series in tumult. It begins with the inability to cope with the rigors of the job after her abduction and near-death by original series member, Jorja Fox, culminating in her leaving the series in the eighth episode, and ends with the fatal shooting of another of the series’ original members, Gary Dourdan, whose character spends the entire season in very dark places. Other original CSI’s, William Petersen, Marg Helgenberger and George Eads survive, but for how long? Petersen exits the show in the current season.

-Peter J. Patrick (October 28, 2008)