DVD Spin Doctor

New DVDs: 'Cuckoo's Nest' on Blu-ray

Warner did right by "One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest" with its 2002 two-disc special edition, and now sweetens the pot with the Blu-ray version.

The "One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest" Blu-ray ports over the extras from the 2002 release. The only new elements are the high-definition presentation and the colorful digi-book.

The images appear to hail from that edition's restoration, which looked outstanding considering the movie came from the mid-70s, that crappy era for film stock. The Blu-ray images seem smoother with better contrasts, more detail and perhaps less grain, but owners of the previous version could sit tight and not miss too much.

The audio isn't much of an issue -- dialogue is clear and the mix is front-centered.

The extra features are quite good, including eight extra scenes that could well have appeared in the movie. For fans, these are essential viewing. "There was never a bad take," producer Michael Douglas recalls. "It was all a matter of choices."

Unfortunately, star Jack Nicholson doesn't participate in any of the bonus features.

The commentary comes from producers Michael Douglas and Saul Zaentz, as well as director Milos Forman, who broke into the big time with this project. They are recorded separately. The commentary track is on the dry side, more informative than entertaining. The decent making-of docu comes from 1997.

Kirk Douglas bought the rights to Ken Kesey's book in 1961 and played the anti-hero Randall P. McMurphy in a short-lived stage version of the tale about a fairly sane nar-do-well who finds himself in a mental institution. The elder Douglas actually met the young director Forman on a cultural ambassadors trip to Czechoslovakia and promised to send him the script, but it was seized by Polish censors.

A decade later, Douglas' actor son Michael talked his father out of selling the property and went looking for a "cheap director." In a coincidence, Douglas and fellow producer Zaentz approached Forman after seeing one of his early films.

Gene Hackman and Marlon Brando passed on the McMurphy role, so they turned to Nicholson despite reservations that he'd been marked as "the sensitive young man, or the intellectual badass." Douglas was convinced by an early look at Nicholson's work as a tough sailor in "The Last Detail."

The rest of the actors worked cheap, of necessity. The low-budget casting, of course, proved brilliant: the mental patients included Danny DeVito, Christopher Lloyd, Vincent Schiavelli and Brad Dourif.

Louise Fletcher found her work-life's peak with the role of Nurse Rached, for which she quite rightly won an Oscar. (Turning down the part were Geraldine Page, Angela Lansbury and Anne Bankroft.) Fletcher recalls getting weary of playing the tight-ass authoritarian while the free-spirited male cast bounced around the location shoot. "Every day I was so jealous of them." At one point, she tore off her dress and pronounced to her co-workers that "there was a real woman in here." Crazy, man.

The mostly-indoors film was shot at the Oregon State Hospitals, where the administrators gave the filmmakers a wing to themselves. The actors mingled with the patients and engaged in preshoot therapy sessions. The real superintendent ended up playing himself, a great job.

Douglas recalls that Nicholson arrived late to the shoot and found himself having lunch with the cast. No one broke character, freaking out the unflappable star.

The 37-page digi-book comes glued to the case, as they all do, making it tough to view the pages. (After just reading Criterion's outstanding booklet for "Vampyr," I'm tough to please.) The "Cuckoo" booklet reads like a roadshow handout but adds nothing to the literature about this fine American classic.

* * * * *

Another double-disc Blu-ray (and DVD) of the week is "Bank Job," with Jason Statham. Critics hailed it as a return to the golden age of heist movies, but I wasn't buying it. The movie played flat and formulaic. Extras on the Lionsgate discs include a 15-minute look at the real early-'70s bank robbery in London. Disc 2' vault contains a digital copy.

Also circling the DVD blog's players this week are "Robbie Coltrane: Incredible Britain" a roadtrip TV series featuring the "Harry Potter" actor, from Acorn Media; Jacques Tati's "Trafic" from Criterion; and Brazil's "The Year My Parents Went on Vacation."

New and notable:
The Bank Job (Lionsgate)
Beau Brummell: This Charming Man (Acorn)
Insanitarium (Sony)
Reno 911! season 5 (Paramount)
Robbie Coltrane: Incredible Britain (Acorn)
Shutter (Fox)
Swamp Thing, Vol. 2 (Shout! Factory)
Trafic (The Criterion Collection)
The Year My Parents Went on Vacation (City Lights Home Video)

Complete list of this week's releases on my pal Harley's site, onvideo.org

Turning DVDs into ash trays

California makes some terrific anti-smoking ads. Good thing, because DVD viewers will be seeing a lot of them.

The major Hollywood studios, Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger and the showbiz nannies at the Entertainment Industry Foundation just announced an agreement that will place the state's PSAs on all DVD movies that include scenes of smoking and are rated G, PG, or PG-13.

I just watched the opening of the "21" DVD, which comes out in a week. After a Blu-ray promo, there's a zippy PSA named "Idols," in which a cowboy, rapper and flapper girl strut for tobacco companies, only to be rebutted by a spooky lung cancer patient in a wheelchair. Great spot.

Let's expand the concept. If there's drinking in the movie, surely there's a need to place a warning. Those pirates of the Caribbean love their grog, after all. Young buccaneers just might get the wrong idea. Alcohol serves up far more misery in this world than smoking.

Cartoon villains in "101 Dalmatians" and "Ratatouille" abuse animals. Horrid example for kids. Let's head off that hateful behavior as well.

Plenty of references to drug use can be found in PG-13 movies. Another slick video warning will help.

Why not. The home video industry has lost all shyness about using the opening minutes of a disc as a promotional dumping ground. Lately, every other DVD seems to have a noisy extended pitch for the Blu-ray format. Even if you're watching in Blu-ray.

Most of us recall the obnoxious MTV-like spot about software piracy that opened Fox DVDs for a couple of years. The one with the blaring siren.

Then there are the movie trailers, love them or hate them. (Or both.) DVD labels increasingly disable the advance-to-main-menu command, forcing viewers to chapter-skip trailer by trailer. I hit one the other night where fast-forward was the sole way of escaping the cavalcade of movie ads. There are more trailers than ever.

Now comes a swarm of mandated PSAs. For an entire class of films. For one social ill.

To be fair, the industry was pressured by a coalition of 40-some states to include the spots on DVDs. "We hope that these ads, placed in DVDs and videos, will help deter young people from ever taking up this deadly habit," New York's attorney general said a few years ago. (He was running for governor.)

The group pointed out that "public service announcements already appear on (DVDs) for many worthwhile causes and organizations." How true. Just like late-night TV.

Instead of this screwy policy, studios should make a case-by-case decision to include a PSA (anti-smoking, alcohol, drugs) or a more substantial piece of communication on a problematic title that skews young. No, that doesn't mean every PG-13 movie with characters who smoke.

And the video industry should take a good look at how much unwelcome advertising marches in front of the expensive DVD movies that consumers bring into their homes.

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New DVDs: Ricky Nelson, John Mayer

"The Adventures of Ozzie & Harriet" wasn't much of an adventure for viewers.

The Nelson family -- Ozzie, Harriet, and the boys David and Ricky -- spent their weekly 26 minutes fumbling with some minor domestic crisis or another. A show about next-to-nothing. Viewers were just stopping by for a visit.

No family puzzler proved too easy for Ozzie, whose character helped institutionalize the bumbling sitcom father. "Think I'll go out and polish the car and think this over," he'd say when confronted with the slight and the obvious.

In real life, Ozzie Nelson was a sharp guy who'd parlayed his long-running sitcom radio show into a decade-long TV contract with ABC. "The Adventures of Ozzie & Harriet" ran from 1952-1966, part of the '50s TV trinity that included "Leave It to Beaver" and "Father Knows Best." They were America's families and we loved them.

In 1957, Ricky was a rich kid with the Elvis bug. He recorded Fats Domino's "I'm Walkin' " and performed it, stiffly, on the TV show. The song shot up the charts, selling more than a million units. Ricky Nelson instantly became the franchise player in the family business.

Shout! Factory's follow-up to last year's "The Best of the Adventures of Ozzie and Harriet" brings us the "Best of Ricky and Dave." But there's no mistaking that this is Ricky's show, with each of the four discs offering breakouts of his lip-synched musical performances.

The 12 songs include the hits "Hello Mary Lou," "Stood Up" and Fools Rush In." Unfortunately, there is no play-all option, so working through the six numbers on disc 2 is a bit of a chore.

Nelson's early performances show him stone-faced, playing to some guys and gals in the living room. When we get to "Fire Breathing Dragon" from the mid-'60s, Nelson is still plenty stiff -- but his eyes are dancing and he's fronting a hot band. The guitar body announces he's just "Rick."

Shout! Factory's DVDs come licensed from family survivor David (unlike the "public domain" releases out there). The black-and-white images are OK, kind of flat, not too much damage. The audio is pretty good, good enough.

The episodes range from May 1953 to March 1966, so the experience of watching the boys grow up on TV is available in a mere seven hours.

* * * * *

If there's a Ricky Nelson type out there these days, it could be John Mayer, the young romantic with a thing for wrist watches and Jimi Hendrix.

Sony's "Where The Light Is: John Mayer Live In Los Angeles" provides three hours of the camera-pleasing Mayer and band performing at L.A.'s Nokia Theatre.

The "Where the Light Is" Blu-ray is a gorgeous disc, something for showing off the system. The TrueHD audio delivers that silky sound of skin on steel strings, with some LFE punch when called upon. The black-and-blue-dominated images (it's "A Film by Danncy Clinch") are high on the contrasts but the effect is smooth and narcotic.

The three-hour show comes in three parts: acoustic, trio and full band.

Mayer appeals to a dominantly female audience, but guys could do worse than being dragged along to a show. The guitar slinger quotes Hendrix throughout and does two of the rock god's songs: "Wait Until Tomorrow" (a weak Jimi song made weaker) and "Bold As Love" (cool). Mayer also takes on the blues, flirting with white-boy parody. His slow acoustic cover of Tom Petty's "Free Fallin' " emphasizes the narrator's jerkiness, an interesting reading.

The fans' patience is rewarded with Mayer's middle-of-the-road hits such as "Daughters," "Why Georgia" and "Waiting on the World to Change."

The main extra is a post-show analysis by Mayer, who sits atop a Hollywood hill, playing guitar, having satisfied his inner critic, the guy with the "dictionary of music in his brain." (The disc hooks into BD-Live for a bonus song, "Belief.")

Also circling the DVD blog's players this week are two summer-movie tie-ins: Universal's repackaging of the original "The Mummy" and Fox's "The X-Files Revelations."

New and notable:

Complete list of this week's releases on my pal Harley's site, onvideo.org

The Adventures of Ozzie & Harriet: Best of Ricky & Dave (Shout! Factory)
Batman Begins (various configurations, Warner)
Cannon (Paramount)
Fastlane (Warner)
Flakes (Genius Products)
I Dream of Jeannie, season 5 (Paramount)
Jake and the Fatman (Paramount)
Jet Li's Fearless: Director's Cut (Universal)
Mon oncle Antoine (The Criterion Collection)
The Mummy: Special Edition (1932, Universal)
The Mummy: Deluxe Edition (1999, Universal)
The Mummy Returns: Deluxe Edition (Universal)
Punk's Not Dead (MVD)
The Ruins (Blu-ray, Paramount)
Stargate: Atlantis, season 4 (Paramount)
Stop-Loss (Paramount)
The X-Files Revelations (Fox)

New DVDs: 'Point Break,' 'Mad Men'

"Point Break" broke Keanu Reeves as an action star, clearing the path to "Speed" and "The Matrix."

Reeves stumbled into overnight fame a few years before in "Bill and Ted's Excellent Adventure," playing a blissed-out fool. No one saw the guy as a man of action. Except Kathryn Bigelow.

The director of "Blue Steel" pushed for Reeves as the star of her upcoming film about an FBI agent and a band of bank-robbing surfers dubbed the Ex-Presidents. After several of the era's usual suspects turned down the young FBI agent role, Bigelow got her man.

The movie's star was Patrick Swayze, anyway, coming off the blockbuster weeper "Ghost." "He was just a god," writer Rick King says. "He was the man diva." Swayze ruled as the surfer/shaman who leads the gang.

Seventeen years later, Reeves rules as a major boxoffice attraction who makes "interesting choices," notably "The Matrix" trilogy. Swayze has long since been off the radar, now battling cancer. And "Point Break" remains a minor action classic, beloved by dudes everywhere. The movie feels a bit thin these days, but not dated. It still administers the adrenaline in large doses.

Fox Home Entertainment released "Point Break" twice on DVD, in 2001 and 2006. The lifeless images disappointed in both cases. Fox finally does right by the movie with this week's release of "Point Break" on Blu-ray.

An A-B comparison of the Blu-ray and 2006 DVD shows not only the upgrade you'd expect from high definition but also what appears to be a restoration of some kind. The flatness and some of the grain that afflicted the DVDs are gone. The HD's high contrasts and inky blacks transform the film. Owners of the latest DVD have reason to be unhappy, as a lot of this could have been addressed upon that release.

The Blu-ray extras are the same as those on the latest DVD. Reeves and Bigelow don't participate -- they're repped by old promo footage -- but Swayze, Gary Busey (great as an FBI agent) and love interest Lori Petty are on hand. John C. McGinley, who plays the annoying FBI station chief, does plenty of talking in the extras and is, um, still annoying.

Petty recalls how director Bigelow was "so in love in action," and tended to rush through the obligatory love scenes. The movie's energy came in part from extensive use of the relatively new Steadicam, best experienced in the extended foot-chase scene.

Bigelow ("Near Dark") wanted her actors doing their own fight scenes. The guy who taught them to movie-rumble recalls how rock singer Anthony Kiedis failed to show for an early-morning fight workout, and so his character was downgraded to being taken out with the first punch. ("He didn't like that.")

Swayze wanted to do it all, including his own skydiving. The completion bond company agreed, on the condition that the film be essentially done before he jumped. (The actor recalls that he almost drowned a couple of times in the surfing scenes, but the insurer didn't care about him doing that.)

Swayze says people ask him all the time how they did the climactic shot with him falling backward out of the plane. "Show me the cut!" he demands of doubters.

* * * * *

HBO and Showtime both passed on Matthew Weiner's "Mad Men," leaving the outstanding TV series about early '60s advertising to AMC, of all places.

"Mad Men" scored the cover of the New York Times magazine a couple of weeks ago, as the series geared up for its second season -- and this week's DVD/Blu-ray release of the first.

"Smoke Gets in Your Eyes," the first episode, could have worked as a feature film. All of the show's elements are on display: the ever-present booze and cigarettes; the unquestioned male supremacy; the women obsessed with finding a husband and leaving the workforce; the buttoned-down corporate culture that's corrupt at the core; and of course the merry serial cheating by all the Dads. The opening titles recall the work of the great Saul Bass.

Billy Wilder would have loved it.

Show creator Weiner was a key writer and producer on "The Sopranos" for several years (he got the gig based on the initial screenplay for "Mad Men"). He's landed first-rate actors and actresses, notably Jon Hamm as one of the big guns at ad agency Sterling Cooper; Elisabeth Moss as the "new girl" in the office; and Robert Morse ("How to Succeed in Business Without Really Trying") as the agency's aging alpha male.

Lionsgate's "Mad Men" Blu-ray looks slick and satisfying. Dialogue is clear and crisp. (My Samsung player flipped out when confronted with the menu, but it has issues with a lot of things. Update: Fixed by firmware update.)

Extras include an interesting look at the 1960s' creative transformations in media.

Also circling the DVD blog's players this week are "City of Men," the sort-of "City of God" sequel; and Criterion's "Mishima: A Life in Four Chapters."

New and notable:

City of Men (Miramax)
The Closer season 3 (Warner)
Drillbit Taylor (Paramount)
Heathers 20th High School Reunion Edition (Anchor Bay)
Heaven (Keaton, Warner)
Mad Men: Season One (Lionsgate)
Mishima: A Life in Four Chapters (The Criterion Collection)
Patriotism (Mishima film, Criterion)
My Blueberry Nights (The Weinstein Co./Genius Products)
Rebus, Set 3 (Acorn Media)
Streets of San Francisco season 2, Vol. 1 (Paramount)
30 Days season 2 (Arts Alliance America)
2007 Newport Music Festival (Acorn)
Vantage Point (Sony)
Yankee Stadium: Baseball's Cathedral (Shout! Factory)

Complete list of this week's releases on my pal Harley's site, onvideo.org

Best westerns list: 'Shane'? What a shame.

Best westerns of all time? The Western Writers of America group says "Shane" ranks No. 1. Yeech. I'm still waiting for someone to plug that kid.

Anne Thompson opened up the top westerns debate on her blog "Thompson for Hollywood" (Variety). Needless to say, her post and the comments offer some much better films.

The Western Writers voted like so:

1. Shane
2. High Noon
3. The Searchers
4. Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid
5. Dances with Wolves
6. The Wild Bunch
7. Red River
8. Tombstone
9. The Magnificent Seven
10. Open Range

(view the top 100 westerns list)

Here is Anne's list:

1. The Wild Bunch
2. My Darling Clementine
3. Red River
4. Once Upon a Time in the West
5. Unforgiven
6. Bend in the River
7. Stagecoach
8. Ride the High Country
9. The Treasure of the Sierra Madre
10. The Tall T

and my list of the best westerns:

1. The Searchers
2. The Good, the Bad and the Ugly
3. 3:10 to Yuma (1957)
4. The Proposition
5. The Wild Bunch
6. Red River
7. The Furies
8. The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance
9. The Big Trail
10. Yellow Sky

My second 10 would include "Cat Ballou" and "North to Alaska," the last two a vote for fun in westerns. Many comedies were made, but they're scarce on these lists. I'd also go with "The Long Riders," "Open Range," "Once Upon a Time in the West," "Unforgiven," "True Grit," "The Iron Horse," "The Alamo" and "A Fistful of Dollars."

These lists are silly but fun. Never knew I was such a John Wayne fan!

'Godfather: Coppola Restoration' on Sept. 23

"The Godfather" movies' restoration and release in Blu-ray has been confirmed by the home video mob at Paramount. Welcome "The Godfather: The Coppola Restoration Collection."

The revived films -- just released on DVD and Blu-ray in Britain -- return in the States on Sept. 23. "The Godfather" and"The Godfather Part II" were extensively restored. The lightly regarded "The Godather Part III" (1990) remained in excellent condition and so is simply remastered.

"Robert A. Harris of the Film Preserve supervised the restoration under the direction of (Francis Ford) Coppola and cinematographer Gordon Willis," Paramount said. Harris' credits include resurrections of "Rear Window" and "Lawrence of Arabia," both widely praised.

The "Godfather" trilogy Blu-ray set (four discs, $120) includes high definition extra features on the restoration and films' history. They are included on disc 5 of the DVD box set (five discs, $73).

Other extras are ported over from Paramount's so-so 2001 DVD release. There are slight differences between the repurposed extras on the DVD and Blu-ray sets, with the HD box having more content.

Audio is 5.1 Dolby TrueHD. The audio tracks for the first two films, originally in mono, reportedly had deteriorated quite a bit, so it will be interesting to see how much punch the restorations deliver. (In 2001, the "The Godfather" DVD had limited, mostly environmental rear-channel effects and "Part II" wasn't much stronger.)

Paramount lists the new (HD) extra features as:

• Godfather World
• The Masterpiece That Almost Wasn’t
• …when the shooting stopped
• Emulsional Rescue Revealing The Godfather
• The Godfather on the Red Carpet
• Four Short Films on The Godfather
• The Godfather vs. The Godfather, Part II
• Cannoli
• Riffing on the Riffing
• Clemenza

The titles have commentaries from director Francis Ford Coppola, which appear to be the same fine talks from the earlier "Godfather" release (still checking).

That's a good thing: Coppola's "Godfather" commentaries added to the already significant body of knowledge and lore attached to them. His comments are focused and instructive, at times stripping away a good bit of the first film's mystique.

Paramount Home Entertainment released "The Godfather DVD Collection" (review link) to much excitement in 2001. Individual versions of the three "Godfathers" were released in 2004 and 2005, but they offered no upgrades. Before that, there was an ambitious laserdisc set in 1997. Various laserdisc and VHS packages employed the chronological reworking originally used as a hit TV miniseries. The 2001 DVDs are the original theatrical versions.

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