DVD Spin Doctor

New DVDs: 'Darjeeling Limited' a real trip

Wes Anderson seems to have moved to a higher plane of filmmaking with "The Darjeeling Limited." This was one of the underrated movies of last year.

I appreciated Anderson's "The Royal Tenenbaums" (2001) but to me "The Life Aquatic With Steve Zissou" was borderline unwatchable. (How "Life Aquatic" ended up in the Criterion Collection is beyond me.)

With "Darjeeling," Anderson returns to form and to the subject of family, specifically three brothers played by Owen Wilson, Adrien Brody and Jason Schwartzman.

A year after the brothers' dad kills himself, they reunite in India with the intention of going on a spiritual quest. Instead, these intellectual goofballs fall into a series of misadventures: most of them funny ... one not. For much of the movie, it's in the passenger-train genre, too seldom seen these days.

"The Darjeeling Limited" feels like a wiser follow-up to "The Royal Tenenbaums." It's easily Anderson's best work, I'd say.

Fox's single-disc "The Darjeeling Limited" DVD comes with one extra, but it's a good one: The production featurette shows Anderson, co-writer/director Roman Coppola and company at work in India.

The short film "Hotel Chevalier" runs before the film, if you select that option (please do). This gem involves Schwartzman's character from "Darjeeling" in a hotel-room drama with his estranged girlfriend, played sexy-bitchy by Natalie Portman. It's erotic (she gets tastefully nude), funny and sad. In my mind, it'll always be the prologue to "Darjeeling."

I hesitated to watch the making-of while still under the spell of the film, but was delighted to find the little docu is in keeping with the loose spirt of the movie, a bit of dessert. There's no narrator or linear structure. A lot of attention is paid to the crafts work -- notably by Indian artists -- that produced such a visually immersive film.

Fox's DVD looks quite good, capably delivering all those bold primary colors. The audio is good enough, and has no problem delivering clear dialogue or selling the fine quirky soundtrack.

* * *

We've been knee-deep in well-made vampire movies so far this century -- here's another one.

"30 Days of Night" tells of an Alaskan town that goes totally dark for a month each year. Communication to the outside world suddenly goes out, watchdogs are butchered, the only helicopter is sabotaged, and there's a mysterious stranger in town who resembles Tom Waits in "Bram Stoker's Dracula."

Josh Hartnett does an OK job as the sheriff, while Danny Huston slums cheerfully as the vampire pack's leader. It's all predictable, but "30 Days of Night" carries the tradition capably, with a few new twists. The movie is based on a graphic novel of some note.

The movie looks terrific on 30 Days Of Night">Sony's Blu-ray. Audio is powerful and the mix bursts about all six speakers. The extras are what you'd expect. Rent it.

* * *

CBS' "Comanche Moon" attracted and then repelled many fans of "Lonesome Dove," which is fondly remembered as the last of the great TV miniseries.

Larry McMurtry also wrote the source novel and co-wrote the script of this semi-sequel. The novel may be fine -- McMurtry is a great writer most of the time -- but this is just plain bad TV.

I only got through the first 40 minutes or so before invoking "life's too short," so consider this a warning, not a review. Some people do like bad westerns and this is for them.

Sony's DVD looks and sounds as it should.

Also circling the DVD blog's players this week are "Beowulf" in high-def, the "Color Honeymooners Collection 2" and Criterion's "The Last Emperor" (review to follow).

Pick of the week: The Last Emperor
Dog of the week: Comanche Moon

New and notable:
Beowulf Director's Cut (Paramount)
Color Honeymooners Collection 2 (MPI Home Video)
Comanche Moon (Lonesome Dove 2) (Sony)
The Darjeeling Limited (Fox)
Dark Shadows: The Beginning 3 (MPI Home Video)
Day Zero (First Look Studios)
Death at a Funeral (MGM)
The Fugitive: season 1, Vol. 2 (Paramount)
Goya's Ghosts (Sony)
Invisible Man Collection (Dark Sky)
The Last Emperor (The Criterion Collection)
Newhart (Fox)
1968 With Tom Brokaw (A&E Home Video)
Robyn Hitchcock: Sex, Food, Death ... And Insects (A&E)
Rough Diamond (Acorn Media)
Slipstream (Sony)
The Smurfs season 1 (Warner)
30 Days of Night (Sony)

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

Top DVDs: 'American Gangster' gangbusters

"American Gangster" shot up to the No. 1 spot in both sales and rentals during its debut week for Universal Studios.

The Oscar weekend timing didn't quite work out -- the Ridley Scott-directed movie had only one major nomination, and lost. Nonethless, many critics (and this DVD blog) thought "American Gangster" was among last year's finest films. (Read the "Gangster" DVD/HD DVD review.)

"Michael Clayton," a best picture nominee, won a second-place verdict on both charts. The George Clooney-starrer, released by Warner Home Video, is the only one of the five best picture nominees released on DVD so far.

Ben Affleck's well-regard directorial debut, "Gone Baby Gone," placed third in rentals but disappeared from the DVD sales rankings.

Sales (week ending May 27)
1. American Gangster
2. Michael Clayton
3. Why Did I Get Married?
4. We Own the Night
5. Snow Buddies

Rentals (week ending May 27)
1. American Gangster
2. Michael Clayton
3. Gone Baby Gone
4. We Own the Night
5. Rendition

DVD review: 'No Country for Old Men'

"No Country for Old Men" is "a horror movie," star Tommy Lee Jones proclaims in the DVD extras for the Oscar-winning film. "A lot of killing goes on."

But later on, he figures it this way: "There's a great deal of humor in it, so you could call it a comedy."

That duality won't prove much of a mystery for anyone who's followed "the brothers" -- Joel and Ethan Coen -- through their quarter-century of filmmaking. In fact, Jones' analysis perfectly fits their first movie, "Blood Simple," another tale of cold-blooded murder in rural Texas.

Miramax (Disney) will release the Academy Awards' best picture winner on DVD and Blu-ray on March 11, two weeks after the Oscars.

The "No Country" Blu-ray looks sensational, arid-clear and artful. Images are letterboxed to the theatrical specs of 2.35:1. Audio is front-centered with surprisingly limited use of the rear soundstage. Dialogue is crisp and nicely balanced.

The extras aren't much on this initial DVD release, but provide a decent 40-minute extension of the movie-viewing experience. No commentary. I'd look for a post-Oscars collector's edition in the not-too-distant future.

The main extra, a half-hour making-of featurette, capably covers the basics, from the trio of stars down to the props guys.

Cormac McCarthy's hard-minded novel was "begging to be turned into a movie," Joel Coen says. "It read like a (script) treatment," Jones adds.

The killer played by Javier Bardem (the supporting actor Oscar winner) wasn't fully described in the book, only characterized as lacking a sense of humor. The Coens sought an actor who was "unplaceable ethnically and nationally" and hired the Spaniard Bardem, a major fan of their work. The cipher-like killer "believes in one thing and that is fate," Bardem says.

Jones, who plays the west Texas sheriff of the title, hails from the Lonestar State. Josh Brolin, who plays the cowboy hero, has put in his time wearing the hat and ranching, he says. The actress who plays the cowboy's wife, Kelly Macdonald, hails from Scotland, but has that weird British gift of being able to nail American accents, the Coens note. In the interview segments, she seems to alternate her Scottish lilt and Texas accent.

A second featurette, "Working With the Coens," finds everyone in sight in awe of the brothers, as expected. "They are like the same person with two heads," Bardem says. One craftsperson says of their willingness to collaborate: "They make filmmakers out of all of us."

The final extra, "Diary of a Country Sheriff," shows how Jones' lawman is basically unable to comprehend the brutality of the 1980s drug wars on the Tex-Mex border. "Sheriff Bell pretty much lives up to the (movie's) title," Jones says.

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Academy Awards: fun game of trivial pursuit

Noted with pleasure: movie critic A.O. Scott in today's New York Times. The story was headlined: "Are Oscars Worth All This Fuss?"

"I’m only slightly ashamed to admit that I found myself hoping that the strike would shut the Academy Awards down; that for once, in a year of such cinematic bounty and variety, appreciation for the best movies could be liberated from the pomp and tedium of Hollywood spectacle. ...

"Like anyone else I’m glad when my favorites win and dismayed when they fall short. So I am not against the Oscars, any more than I’m dismissive of the Salesman of the Year or the Employee of the Month, or opposed to lavish annual trade association conventions for actuaries or ophthalmologists.

"But I am nonetheless bothered by the disproportionate importance that the Academy Awards have taken on, and by the distorting influence they exercise over the way we make, market and see movies in this country. The Oscars themselves may be harmless fun, but the idea that they matter is as dangerous as it is ridiculous. ...

"A bit of perspective is needed. The wonderful thing about the Academy Awards is that they are fundamentally trivial. To pretend otherwise is to trivialize movies."

This DVD blog's favorite movie of the year was "No Country for Old Men." I hope it wins. Yeah, despite all my crabbing about the Oscars, I'll be watching -- along with everyone else in the universe.

Read Scott's terrific piece about the Oscars.

New DVDs: 'American Gangster,' 'Terror'

Director Ridley Scott says in the DVD extras for "American Gangster" that he was out of his element -- "this is not my kind of film."

Perhaps Sir Ridley feels more comfortable in the distant future or long-ago past, but with "Gangster" he has booted up one of the best crime dramas in decades.

Incredibly, the Oscars didn't find room in the top categories for this movie, its director or the fine work of Denzel Washington and Russell Crowe. At least they nominated the terrific Ruby Dee, probably for all the wrong reasons.

Universal Studios' double-disc release of "American Gangster" contains a stash-house full of extras, including a first-rate feature-length docu about the production and the men who lived the true story: drug lord Frank Lucas (played by Washington) and the honest cop who brought him down (Crowe).

Scott does a feature-length commentary with writer Steve Zaillian (taped separately).

I have Scott down as a hall of fame commentator, but some listeners are driven a bit nuts by his slow-mo talks. In a video extra, we see the director learning how to judge the purity of heroin, pushing for accuracy in a pivotal scene. By the time we get to the commentary, Scott's an expert, going on at length about the drug.

Scott tells how the project had 135 speaking roles, 360 locations and 160 scenes: "I shoehorned them in, somehow."

Another extra visits a production meeting that shows how the real cop, Richie Roberts, had a hand in vetting the script.

Universal has released the film on DVD and HD DVD combo disc; both include the theatrical cut and a branched version with 18 extra minutes.

Unfortunately, on my HD DVD machine, the disc froze repeatedly trying to navigate the extra content. When shifted to a DVD machine, that disc continued to freeze. The standard DVD version had momentary freezes in some of the same places but functioned well otherwise.

The audio and video in both formats are up to major studio standards, with the 1970s funk-and-soul soundtrack getting some solid bottom out of the .1

One troubling aspect of the making-of docu was watching the actors and producer Brian Grazer suck up to Lucas, now an old ex-con. Their movie, to its credit, makes it clear that Lucas was a killer whose drug empire took countless lives because of its high-powered product. Nothing new here. Hollywood and crime figures are old friends, of course. When the cameras roll, all is forgiven.

* * * *

"Terror's Advocate," another must-see DVD release, explores even more perilous moral badlands.

Barbet Schroeder's 2007 documentary examines the career of French/Algerian lawyer Jacques Verges (left), who made a career out of defending terrorists, dictators and assorted slime such as Nazi war criminal Klaus Barbie.

"I was asked if I would defend Hitler," the suave and engaging lawyer says. "I said, 'Of course, I would even defend Bush.' "

During the French trial of Barbie ("the Butcher of Lyon"), Verges somewhat successfully compared the Nazis' brutality to the actions of the French in post-WWII Algeria. As a young man, he defended Muslim bomber Djamila Bouhired, a hero of the Algerian revolution.

Years later, he married Bouhired -- but grew bored and left their family to hang out with the likes of his school-days buddy Pol Pot in Cambodia. Then it was on to German bombers and the terror icon Carlos the Jackal.

Unfortunately, there are no extras in this Magnolia Entertainment release aside from a detailed historical timeline that fills in many of the gaps in Verges' career.

Whether you come to see Verges as the product of colonial repression or just a terror groupie, there's a case to be made that this guy is one of the most interesting people on the planet.

Also circling the DVD blog's players this week are two from the Criterion Collection:

"Walker," the curious Alex Cox movie about U.S. imperialism in Nicaragua of the 1850s, comes with a documentary about the guerrilla film production that's better than the movie itself.

"Pierrot le Fou" is a Jean-Luc Godard film from 1965 about a bored Parisian (Jean-Paul Belmondo) who runs off with his babysitter (Anna Karina). Gangsters are in hot pursuit of the fun couple and their stolen cash. Viewers will have to make some allowances for the 1960s Zeitgeist, but this remains a cool time capsule filled with beautiful people.

Pick of the week: Terror's Advocate
Dog of the week: Redacted

New and notable:
American Gangster (Universal)
Black Water (Sony)
Cops: 20th Season Anniversary (Fox)
The Final Inquiry (Fox)
Gabriel (Sony)
Gorillas on the Brink (Animal Planet/Genius Products)
In the Valley of Elah (Warner)
It's the Easter Beagle, Charlie Brown (Warner)
Lust, Caution (Universal)
Margot at the Wedding (Paramount)
Michael Clayton (Warner)
Mr. Warmth: The Don Rickles Project (Salient Media)
Pierrot Le Fou (The Criterion Collection)
Walker (The Criterion Collection)
Rendition (New Line)
Walker, Texas Ranger, season 4 (Paramount)

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

Top DVDs: 'Married' with 'Baby'

"Tyler Perry's Why Did I Get Married?" hitched itself to the top spot in DVD sales for the week ending Feb. 17.

The Lionsgate title couldn't crack the top 5 in rentals, however. The Ben Affleck-directed crime pic "Gone Baby Gone" was No. 1 with the waiting-line crowd, while it posted only a No. 5 showing in sales.

Also posting high in the relatively weak week were the cops-and-gangsters film"We Own the Night" (second on both charts) and "No Reservations" (third in sales; fifth in rentals).

"We Own the Night," from Sony, was the top Blu-ray title for the week.

Sales (week ending May 27)
1. Why Did I Get Married?
2. We Own the Night
3. No Reservations
4. Snow Buddies
5. Gone Baby Gone

Rentals (week ending May 27)
1. Gone Baby Gone
2. We Own the Night
3. The Brave One
4. The Game Plan
5. No Reservations

'Juno' DVD due April 15; more Disney treasures

"Juno," this year's "Little Miss Sunshine" of the Oscar race, is coming to DVD on April 15. Fox Home Entertainment's double-disc edition of "Juno" comes with a generous pour of featurettes and deleted scenes.

Update! Read the complete "Juno" DVD review.

Meanwhile, Disney is buying up the tin for a "Wave VIII" of its collector-friendly Treasures collection.

Apple and Starbucks are in on the act: "Juno" rolls out on Blu-ray with Fox's new digital copy format, which should please the film's legions of iPod-toting fans. Starbucks, not surprisingly, will stock the "Juno" DVD in its shops.

The movie, directed by Jason Reitman ("Thank You for Smoking"), stars low-fi It Girl Ellen Page as a pregnant teen, supported in her delicate condition by the usual indie-style group of friendly oddballs. True to my old-frog demo, I was delighted by the performances of J.K. Simmons and Allison Janney as the parental unit but thought the movie was, well, a bit better than OK. My teenagers loved the whole thing and saw it multiple times.

"Juno: is a longshot for three Oscars: best picture, director and original screenplay, and in the running for best actress (Page).

Update: The indie film won for original screenplay.

The commentary is from director Reitman and the young writer Diablo Cody. There are 11 deleted scenes, two gag somethings, a "cast and crew jam" and screen tests. The double-disc edition adds featurettes on Cody, Reitman, and the lead characters. The Blu-ray beams up some footage from casting and the premiere.

The new Disney Treasures are two-disc sets due Nov. 11:

• "Destino" started in 1946 as a collaboration between Walt Disney and Salvador Dali, but it was shelved until 2003, when Roy E. Disney rediscovered the material. Comes with a documentary on the two great visual masters of the century's first half.
• "Dr Syn, Alias the Scarecrow” aired as “The Scarecrow of Romney Marsh" on the old Disney TV show. The DVD set includes the three original episodes and the theatrical that was created for England.
• "Chronological Donald, Vol. 4" brings more quackery from the period 1951-61. "All of Donald’s CinemaScope shorts will be presented in their original widescreen aspect ratio for the first time on video."

Disney has made tons of these numbered sets, packaged in cool metal cases, so it's hard to say how collectable they are from an investment standpoint, but as with the Beatles, eventually all Golden Age Disney fare has value. I would pass on a couple of sets from the series, but on the whole it's sensational stuff.

Check out this bit of weirdness from "Destino":

Update: Toshiba kills HD DVD

Update: Toshiba surrendered in the costly high-definition format war Tuesday, officially killing off the HD DVD platform.

Toshiba President Atsutoshi Nishida cited Warner Bros.' decision to go Blu-ray exclusive: "That had tremendous impact," he said. "If we had continued, that would have created problems for consumers, and we simply had no chance to win."

Toshiba vowed to support current HD DVD players.

Nishida said the situation with U.S. film studios backing the format was unresolved, the AP reported early today.

"The emergence of a single high-definition format is cause for consumers, as well as the entire entertainment industry, to celebrate," said Craig Kornblau, president of Universal Studios Home Entertainment. "While Universal values the close partnership we have shared with Toshiba, it is time to turn our focus to releasing new and catalog titles on Blu-ray."

(Background)

The HD DVD format will be laid to rest this week, numerous media outlets are reporting. The Wall Street Journal's web site broke the story.

Format creator Toshiba says no decision has been made to surrender, but spokeswoman Jodi Sally told the Hollywood Reporter that, "Given the market developments in the past month, Toshiba will continue to study the market impact and the value proposition for consumers, particularly in light of our recent price reductions on all HD DVD players."

Toshiba heavily subsidizes the price of HD DVD players, which have long been sold cheaper than Blu-ray machines.

Wal-mart dumped HD DVD on Friday, days after Best Buy and Netflix pulled back on the dying format. The HD DVD collapse began in January, when Warner Bros. decided to go Blu-ray only -- just days before CES.

Bargain hunters may want to keep track of HD DVD player and disc prices in coming months -- there are many fine-looking HD DVD titles out there, some of which may not show up on Blu-ray for years.

Stanley Kramer DVD set -- review, interview

Stanley Kramer described his filmmaking mission simply: "I seek the truth!"

The producer and director, who brought sophistication and popular appeal to the often-leaden genre of socially conscious filmmaking, is celebrated this week with Sony's release of the "Stanley Kramer Film Collection."

His signature film, "Guess Who's Coming to Dinner," returns for a 40th anniversary run, both as part of the Warner set and as a separate (and identical) double-disc release.

The Kramer DVD box set also contains "The Member of the Wedding" (1952), "The Wild One" (1953), "The 5,000 Fingers of Dr. T" (1953) and "Ship of Fools" (1965).

"Stanley Kramer Film Collection" feels like it could use some more heft -- say, with new editions of Kramer's "Judgment at Nuremberg" (1961) or "On the Beach" (1959). The 15-minute profile of Kramer is well done but too short by 45 minutes, at least. Still, the collection is up to Sony standards and comes as a welcome upgrade to the late filmmaker's hit-and-miss DVD catalog.

The Kramer profile comes as an extra on "Guess Who's Coming to Dinner." He's described as "the first indie filmmaker," which would have surprised Charlie Chaplin, but the point is made.

Dennis Hopper says of Kramer, "He was always his own man. Never let the studios control his films." Beau Bridges adds, "He was always lifting up rocks, exposing the ills of our society."

The featurettes include a powerful look at Spencer Tracy's final days on the set of "Guess Who's Coming to Dinner." (Major spoiler alert on these extras -- watch the movie first.)

Katharine Houghton, the niece of star Katharine Hepburn, describes a production that remained tense due to Tracy's fading health. "Everybody was just holding their breath" that the actor would live to finish the movie, as he'd dedicated his last days to doing -- with the help of longtime love Hepburn.

In Tracy's final speech, his character comes to accept his daughter's love for a black man.

"It was not only a brilliant piece of acting, but everybody knew it probably would be his last speech in films," Houghton recalls. "He was ebullient that he'd made it." Two weeks afterwards, the mighty actor was dead.

Through a mutual friend, I got in touch with Kramer's widow Karen, who curated the special features and appears in the extra features. The veteran actress and producer (pictured with Kramer) was kind enough to answer a few questions about the new box set:

Glenn Abel: Why did you ask the studio to delay the release of these DVDs until February?
Karen Kramer: I wanted to wait until Black History Month because I thought it was the most appropriate time to release the 40th Anniversary DVD of "Guess Who's Coming to Dinner." At the time we made this film interracial marriage was against the law in 16 states. This film was a hotbed of controversy in its time but, it was certainly one of the biggest money makers in the history of Columbia Pictures. The Bill to Reform Interracial Marriage was before the Congress. "Guess Who's Coming to Dinner" made its contribution towards changing that law forever.

GA: Was "Guess Who's Coming to Dinner" among the films of which Stanley was most proud? What were a few of the others?
KK: Stanley was never pleased with any of his films. He always felt he had to make too many compromises, but, I know he loved working with Spencer Tracy. "Inherit the Wind," "Judgment at Nuremberg," "It's a Mad Mad Mad Mad World," and of course "Guess Who's Coming to Dinner."

GA: In general, how do you think Stanley's films have fared on DVD in terms of quality of presentation and extras?
KK: Yes, Stanley has had films out on DVDs, but there have been very few with a consolidated collection of quality presentations and extras. And, that's why I believe the "Stanley Kramer Film Collection," which I, of course, have overseen, is the most comprehensive.

GA: Will we see a DVD set big enough to please fans of "It's a Mad Mad Mad Mad World" anytime soon? (Bet you're tired of that question!)
KK: Yes, I am working toward "It's a Mad Mad Mad Mad World" director's cut with added footage, the scenes that have been missing for a number of years, which we have found. This is my goal for 2008.

Kon Ichikawa dies; war films on Criterion

Kon Ichikawa, the Japanese director who died a few days ago, was largely unknown in the West -- at least compared with his contemporaries Akira Kurosawa and Yasujiro Ozu.

Ichikawa was best known here for two works from the 1950s that were released to DVD about a year ago by the Criterion Collection: "The Burmese Harp" (1956) and "Fires on the Plain" (1959). Critics felt that Ichikawa failed to keep up with the evolution of cinema in following decades. In any case, after these masterful films the man had nothing left to prove.

"The Burmese Harp" is an elegaic WWII movie about a Japanese soldier who goes native while on duty in Burma. It has a fine hypnotic quality that props up its simple yet well-told story. It begins as an oddball service musical and ends in mystical territory, somehow making the transition look easy. Many of Japan's antiwar films from the 1950s feel forced or amateurish -- here is a pleasing and intriguing work of art.

Ichikawa discusses the film in the extras, which run about a half hour.

"Fires on the Plain" is Ichikawa’s hard-core look at the war, this time set in the horrific final days of the Philippines conflicts. It has a documentary feel and is regarded as one of the great Japanese war films.

Ichikawa again is interviewed in the extras. The Japanese film expert Donald Richie does a video introduction.

Can't go wrong with either of these first-rate Criterion titles.