DVD Spin Doctor

New DVDs: Criterion's 'Thief of Bagdad'

"The Thief of Bagdad" makes schoolboys out of Martin Scorsese and Francis Ford Coppola.

The two great American directors contribute a commentary to the Criterion Collection's double-disc DVD version of the 1940 fantasy classic, an "Arabian Nights"-like tale complete with a genie in the bottle.

Scorsese and Coppola try to stick to their knitting -- breaking down the early Technicolor film's dazzling special effects, the editing and acting and such -- but for the most part they're nostalgia-sodden fans, remembering how it was as boys, letting the "Thief of Bagdad" magic wash over them.

"It's like a family heirloom," says Coppola, who passed his love of the film on to his director daughter and son. A recent gift from the kids to dad was a 35mm version of the film.

Scorsese tries to explain how the film's appeal never faded: "It's childlike but not childish. ... Irony free."

Ray Harryhausen, who went on to revolutionize visual effects with fantasies such as "The 7th Voyage of Sinbad" and "Jason and the Argonauts," seems spellbound by the movie as well.

"Every scene was a masterpiece of composition, of color and particularly the costumes. ... Magic on the screen."

Criterion's long-awaited release includes a beautiful restored version of the film, the audio commentaries with the directors (recorded separately), a second fact-filled talk by film historian Bruce Eder (another lover of the film), and a music and effects track.

On disc 2, the supplements include a talky but solid half-hour docu about the film's special effects innovations, including blue screens; audio tapes of director Michael Powell talking about the project, the effects of war breaking out, and working with top-billed producer Alexander Korda; and a 1976 audio interview with maestro Miklos Rozsa.

The film features high-energy work from boy star Sabu (the thief) and John Justin (the dashing hero), but everyone on the DVD wants to talk about the power of the German actor Conrad Veidt ("Doctor Caligari," "Casablanca").

Veidt played the villain, a hypnotist and magician. "His eyes were extraordinary," Scorsese says.

Director Powell recalled, "I never forgot that I was working with a great star who knew where the camera was -- as well as I did."

Coppola coos over Veidt's performance -- "so mysterious and so passionate" -- adding that he actually paid money for an autographed photo of the man.

Also circling the DVD blog's players this week:

• Cassandra's Dream: Woody Allen continues his explorations of the dark side of life across the pond with a tale of two brothers talked into committing murder for profit. Ewan McGregor and Colin Farrell are splendid as the dumb and dumber duo who do the deed. Like a lower-caste "Match Point," only better.
• Gunsmoke: Second Season, Vol. 2: I have a new appreciation for "Gunsmoke," having reviewed a couple of these box sets from the CBS perennial's early years. Season 1 was the best, I suspect, but here is more action from the same era. Check out Kitty as a hottie and Matt as a death-dealer. Cool.
• The Invaders: The First Season: Appointment TV for 13-year-old me. Can't say if it holds up.

New and notable:

Absolutely Fabulous: Absolutely Everything (BBC Video/Warner)
Cassandra's Dream (The Weinstein Co./Genius Products)
Cleaner (Sony)
The Color Honeymooners Collection 3 (MPI Home Video)
The Dario Argento Box Set (Anchor Bay)
Grace Is Gone (Weinstein/Genius)
Gunsmoke: Second Season, Vol. 2 (Paramount)
Holocaust (miniseries, Paramount)
The Invaders: The First Season (Paramount)
Jackass Presents: Mat Hoffman's Tribute to Evel Knievel (Paramount)
Minutemen (Disney)
Rambo (also Blu-ray, Lionsgate)
Rawhide: Season 3, Vol. 1 (Paramount)
The Take (Sony)
The Thief of Bagdad (The Criterion Collection)
The Three Stooges Collection, Vol. 2 -- 1937-1939 (Sony)
The Walker (ThinkFilm)

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

DVD review: 'The Andromeda Strain'

"The Andromeda Strain" miniseries has been rated toxic waste by most TV reviewers. Tough crowd. Expecting a worthy successor to Robert Wise's 1971 feature film to emerge from regular cable TV seems ... wildly optimistic.

As far as a sci-fi telefilm goes, "Andromeda" proves a decent enough diversion, with all-star TV actors, good production values, some rousing visual effects and an intriguing score. OK, so it helps if you come presold on the title and story -- and you'll want to burst out laughing here and there -- but still I give "Andromeda" a detached thumbs-up.

Universal releases the telefilm "The Andromeda Strain" on DVD next week, in a double-disc edition. The four-hour telefilm debuted Monday on A&E and concludes tonight.

Wise's film held up for decades, until its once-futuristic technologies made the drama look stupid (unlike the eternal "2001: A Space Odyssey," a few years older). Still, I'm always up for a viewing of that exciting and influential film about a deadly virus that wipes out a small western town and threatens the planet. (Universal rereleased "Andromeda" on DVD in 2003.)

The A&E project, executive produced by Ridley and Tony Scott, sort of remakes the Wise film and, of course, points back to the Michael Crichton novel. The telefilm moves things along the real-world timeline in numerous ways -- its hero scientists search for the source of the mysterious virus, "CSI"-style; it politicizes the storyline; adds some modern gore; and brings in a swarm of current-events touch points.

And so we have Homeland Security in a supporting role; a Dick Cheney figure up to no good behind his president's back; run-ins with post-9/11 military law; eco-plotting; and some gumby physics (mind that wormhole).

Good to see the old drunk and the infant who can't be infected still register in the plot, at least in part 1.

Your stars fighting to snuff the pandemic include Benjamin Bratt, Andre Braugher, Christa Miller (pictured), Daniel Dae Kim and Ricky Schroder.

Take note of the nods to "Alien," "Fail Safe," "Dr. Strangelove" and "The Birds," all easy to spot.

The DVD's extra features are OK. There's a making-of docu that tells how the Scott brothers couldn't get the project to fly as a Universal feature, despite a decade of trying. (Ridley Scott. "The Andromeda Strain." This is a bad idea?)

For A&E, resources from Turner's "The Company" rolled over into this project, including director Mikael Salomon. One of the producers calls the project's history "very peculiar," noting the telefilm was made like an independent film once Universal refused to make the feature.

The making-of clips from the original film suggest that movie's rich-red images remain in fine shape.

Another extra on disc 2 advertises a breakdown of some of the visual effects but doesn't deliver much.

The director, producers and editor do a listenable if rah-rah commentary. The making-of should be plenty for most viewers.

The widescreen visuals are first rate, with crisp and clear renderings of the two color schemes -- assorted browns and golds for the outdoors; cold blues and greens for the "Wildfire lab." The DVD audio was unexceptional but OK.

Top DVDs: 'Untraceable' logs on at No. 1

"Untraceable," the FBI procedural that strays into torture-porn territory, cemented the top position in DVD sales for the week ended March 18.

The Sony Pictures Home Entertainment release, starring Diane Lane, yielded the No. 1 ranking in rentals to "Mad Money," the caper comedy from Anchor Bay starring Queen Latifah and Diane Keaton. "Untraceable" also performed well on Blu-ray.

The fine period drama "The Great Debaters," with Denzel Washington as a leftie professor finding plenty to argue about in redneck territory, took second in sales and fourth in rentals. Both versions of the Weinstein/Genius release feature a commentary from Washington, who strayed from his well-worn screen persona with blue-ribbon results.

Sales (week ending May 18)
1. Untraceable
2. The Great Debaters
3. Indiana Jones
4. Mad Money
5. P.S. I Love You

Rentals (week ending May 18)
1. Mad Money
2. Untraceable
3. P.S. I Love You
4. The Great Debaters
5. 27 Dresses

New DVDs: 'A Dirty Carnival' for Korean gangs

"A Dirty Carnival" has drawn comparisons with the American gangster films of Martin Scorsese -- quite a stretch but also a compliment to the makers of this sturdy Korean action film.

"Dirty Carnival" (2006), just released here on DVD by Genius Entertainment, tells of a Seoul hoodlum who faces various crises as he turns 30: his family faces eviction; his mother suffers from a terminal disease, he's under the thumb of a miserly midlevel crime boss; and he's sweet on a goodie-goodie bookstore clerk who hates hoods.

The charming antihero, played by Adam Sandler-esque TV actor Jo In-Seong, sucks up to an elegant crime lord in a bid to find the money for his family's needs. It's a devil's bargain: To rise in the organization he has to murder a crooked prosecutor, a shocking crime even to these lowlifes.

Meanwhile, an old pal turned film director turns up, bent on getting the lowdown on gangster life for his next project. The script follows life too closely, with tragic results. The buddy story is a good one, one of several strong B-stories.

"A Dirty Carnival" (Biyeolhan Geori) checks in at something like 2 1/2 hours, but doesn't feel particularly long. Director Yoo Ha, a poet, deftly interweaves and paces his narratives (he's also known here for "Once Upon a Time in High School").

The acting is surprisingly good, with few clunker characters, although the romance flirts with the yucky sentimentality common to Asian gangster films.

The Scorsese comparisons come in reaction to the lowdown action scenes, which bring to mind the brutality of Kinji Fukasaku's seminal "The Yakuza Papers" instead of the bullet-ballets of John Woo. (If I had to desert-island two Asian gangster films, they would be "Yakuza" and "Infernal Affairs."

While star Jo In-Seong spent eight months in martial arts training, there are few high-flying kicks or superhuman moves. Mostly, gangs take to each other with baseball bats until no bones are left unbroken. Some of the fight sequences, such as the muddy river brawl, are truly spectacular in their grubby way.

The Genius DVD includes a breakdown of the fight sequences and eight rough-cut deleted scenes. The fight featurette details the production's real-life injuries brought on by breaking glass and hurling bodies, including a production-halting accident involving the star. Anyone with an interest in action films should get a look at this docu. Unfortunately, a half dozen extra features found on the region 3 DVD aren't included here.

The good-looking film comes in widescreen, with the 16x9 enhancement. The (Korean) 5.1 audio is surprisingly good; don't open the door when someone knocks onscreen.

(Genius has imported quite a few South Korean films.)

Also circling the DVD blog's players this week are the two George Romero zombie films "Diary of the Dead" (2007) and the original "Night of the Living Dead," both from Dimension Extreme. From Criterion comes "The Delirious Fictions of William Klein." MGM swings back to the late '60s with an attractive trio: Blake Edwards' "What Did You Do In The War, Daddy," William Friedkin's "The Night They Raided Minsky's" and the frothy "If It's Tuesday, This Must Be Belgium."

New and notable:
Company (Image Entertainment)
Diary of the Dead (Dimension Extreme)
Night of the Living Dead (Weinstein Co./Genius Products)
A Dirty Carnival (Genius Products)
The Delirious Fictions of William Klein (The Criterion Collection)
Exes & Ohs (Paramount)
The Flock (Weinstein/Genius)
Gomer Pyle U.S.M.C, season 4 (Paramount)
If It's Tuesday, This Must Be Belgium (MGM)
The Night They Raided Minsky's (MGM)
What Did You Do In The War, Daddy (MGM)
Jeff Corwin Experience, season 2 (Animal Planet/Genius Products)
The Muppet Show, season 3 (Disney)
National Treasure 2: Book of Secrets (Disney)
Penn and Teller Bullshit, season 5 (Paramount)
Robot Chicken: Star Wars (Warner)
Strange Wilderness (Paramount)
Tom Selleck Western Collection (Warner)
24 Season One Special Edition (Fox)

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

New DVDs: Duke, Sinatra, Coppola

What was promised in "How the West Was Won" actually had been delivered more than three decades earlier, with Raol Walsh's widescreen talkie "The Big Trail."

The story behind "The Big Trail" (1930) is plenty big as well. Made for what would be a scandalous budget in today's dollars, the movie made glorious use of an early 70mm format dubbed "Fox Grandeur."

The film employed an army of actors, extras and animals, moving across western states, with results that remain jaw-dropping. Many of our contemporary CG epics look kind of lame in comparison. The big-format negatives render beautiful, silvery, slightly surreal images that take in the vistas and all the gritty action below.

John Wayne makes his debut as a lead actor, showing much of the big-hearted swagger that he would employ throughout his long career. He's a scout who counts "the Injuns" among his best friends. Quite a hoot to hear the young Duke's voice in that whiny tone that comes with reproductions of early sound recordings -- in this case from an "all-talking Fox picture."

Fox Home Entertainment has released "The Big Trail" in a double-disc edition that contains the 70mm version of the film (restored to 35mm, widescreen and letterboxed) and the Academy (standard ratio) version that was shot at the same time, for cinemas that couldn't handle the new format. (To further complicate things, parts of the movie were shot over and over, with different international actors taking lead roles for local distribution.)

The 70mm "The Big Trail" is new to video; the 35mm rendition has been available.

The movie tracks a wagon train from the Mississippi River, across lands great and bad, to somewhere Eden-like in the Northwest. What makes the film a singular experience today is that Walsh and Co. actually drove their wagon train partway across the country, with people who knew how it was done back in the day. To them, the wagon caravans were not much farther in the past than the 1960s are to us.

We see the wagons ford a mighty river, with women, children and cattle desperately trying to keep from being swept away. Later, the wagons are lowered over a cliff, some shattering as the ropes fail. Nothing is prettied up in Walsh's epic; everything is grubby and worn, including most of the pioneers. "The Big Trail" feels like a documentary.

The standard western elements are all here: the lovely widow, the slick gambler, the creepy bad guys -- played by Tyrone Young Sr. and a grandson of Geronimo -- the buffalo stampede, and the Indian attack, which sees the wagon train circle with military precision.

The extras are dated 2008 but most of the interviews clearly are older. The experts make the case that Walsh was every bit the director as John Ford, but didn't get the breaks. There's an examination of the Grandeur format -- simply too far ahead of its time -- a piece on Wayne's big break, and a commentary from Richard Schickel, who does a great job with westerns.

"The Big Trail" discs also are available as part of the new set "John Wayne: The Fox Westerns," which includes "North to Alaska," one of my Duke favorites, as well as "The Comancheros" and "The Undefeated."

Audio is in stereo and mono; for clarity of dialogue, I quickly switched to mono.

Also circling the DVD blog's players this week:

Warner Home Video's ambitious Frank Sinatra movie campaign, with a quartet of themed box sets: the Rat Pack, the Gene Kelly collaborations, the early years and the "golden" years. There are 22 films, 11 of them apparently new to DVD. There are some new and old documentaries (catch the one for "The Man With the Golden Arm"), along with a couple of swinging commentaries from Frank Sinatra Jr.

If you dug Hermann Hesse in college, don't miss Francis Ford Coppola's trippy "Youth Without Youth," which should finally find its audience in their living rooms. Tim Roth plays a Romanian professor who is struck with lightning and regains his youth, the better to explore the mysteries of time and reincarnation. I saw the film on Sony's fine Blu-ray, awash in beautiful and mysterious images. The film is fascinating and frustrating, at worst a good puzzle. Coppola does another of his fine commentaries and there is a decent making-of.

New and notable DVDs:

• The Big Trail: Fox Grandeur Special Edition


• Fox Western Classic Collection


• The Cottage (Sony)


• Die Hard Ultimate Collection (Fox)


• The Fire Within (The Criterion Collection)


• Frank Sinatra Collection: The Rat Pack (Warner)


• Frank Sinatra Collection: The Golden Years


• Frank Sinatra Collection: The Early Years


• Frank Sinatra & Gene Kelly Collection


• Sinatra (telefilm, Warner)


• The Great Debaters (Weinstein Company/Genius Products)


• Indiana Jones and the Raiders of the Lost Ark Special Edition


• Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom Special Edition


• Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade Special Edition


• The Lovers (Louis Malle, Criterion)


• The Magnificent Seven Complete Series (MGM)


• Marvel Heroes Collection (X-Men, etc. Fox)


• Mission Impossible, season 4 (Paramount)


• A Raisin in the Sun (Sony)


• The Rat Patrol Complete Series (MGM)


• Saturday Night Live, season 3 (Universal)


• Twelfth Night (1969 TV, Koch Vision)


• Untraceable (Sony)


• Youth Without Youth (Sony)

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

Review: 'Indiana Jones: Adventure Collection'

"Indiana Jones: The Adventure Collection" won't be much of a thrill ride for owners of Paramount's previous "Raiders" DVD box set.

Audio and video appear identical to the presentations on the highly regarded "The Adventures of Indiana Jones: The Complete DVD Movie Collection." Even the menus are the same.

The attractions here are the new extras, which are decent but don't add a great deal to what was revealed over three-plus hours on the supplemental disc from the 2003 Indiana Jones DVD set.

Still, "Indiana Jones: The Adventure Collection" features new introductions to each film by George Lucas and Steven Spielberg, which should please any fan of the series. And a couple of worthwhile featurettes, notably ones covering the series' head-spinning array of far-off locations and that gnarly melting-face trick.

Basically, the new Indy set works for people who don't have the old set, don't care much about the mother lode of extras from '03 and aren't planning to get into high definition anytime soon. Or those who are obsessive about shelf space, since the new box is less than half that of the old.

To be fair, let's look at some recent history: January's collapse of the HD DVD format probably took some of the snap out of this promotional campaign, timed of course to the release of the fourth Indiana Jones movie. As HD DVD backer Paramount retools for Blu-ray, we're left with no high definition versions of the original three "Raiders" movies -- which would have come out right about now in the natural order of things. So it's back to DVDs.

Once again, the video and audio get off to a so-so start. "Raiders" (1981) looks OK, but it's a product of its time -- at least there are few visible signs of wear and images are reasonably clear. (The images do respond to upconversion, at least on my Blu-ray.) But it isn't until "Temple of Doom" (1984) that the high quality of these DVDs begins to emerge.

"Doom" is inevitably called "the darkest" Indy film, but from frame 1 it employs a robust color palette in telling its tale of slavery and black magic. The DVD delivers the goods, with rich blood reds and working-in-the-coal-mine blacks.

"Last Crusade" (1989) looks like a new film, with sensational, crystal-clear images.

All three movies are presented in widescreen (2.35:1) with the 16x9 enhancement.

Dialogue and music come across clearly on "Raiders," but its surround effects tend to muddy up and distract from the action. "Doom's" audio works better, with clear and discrete surround. "Crusade" sounds as if it were recorded yesterday. All of the films are in Dolby Digital (5.1).

Audio and video carry the THX endorsement, naturally.

The Lucas-Spielberg introductions run roughly 7 minutes each. The men are filmed separately. This time out, the old friends take a harder line on the disappointing "Temple of Doom," basically admitting it was a dog.

"The reviews were awful," director Spielberg says. "I like (the others) better," Lucas adds.

Kate Capshaw, who took a Yoko Ono-like beating over her "Temple of Doom" work, appears in another extra with the other two "Indy Women," saying her character was "not very appealing" as written. "It was a stereotype, this woman."

On one intro, Spielberg says, "I wanted to make a globe-trotting movie like James Bond." He succeeded wildly, based on the evidence presented in a cool 10-minute short with with producer Robert Watts, a locations specialist. Watts rattles off what was filmed in which exotic place and why, with pop-up text piling on information.

Another ace extra deconstructs "The Melting Face!" from "Raiders." Effects explorer Chris Walas tells how he made the Nazi creep's head ooze down onto his uniform. Meanwhile, on video, movie creature specialists re-create the gag step by step. After the melting face proved to be a gross-out sensation, Walas says, pros repeatedly asked him to explain the process. "Suddenly, everybody wanted to melt a head somewhere."

The rest of the extras are pretty standard, storyboards and more shorts.

The DVD set attends to its promo chores, with the same trailer for "Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull" marching in front of each DVD. "An appreciation" of the "Raiders" movies turns out to be just the "Crystal Skull" gang looking back on the series. A Lego game demo appears on each disc as well.

The DVDs also are available separately.

Criterion Collection sets Blu-ray editions

The Criterion Collection is going Blu-ray.

The big news, long-awaited by high-definition buffs, came in a company bulletin late this afternoon.

Criterion lists these dozen titles as "in the pipeline," with the rollout set to begin in October.

• The Third Man
• Bottle Rocket
• Chungking Express
• The Man Who Fell to Earth
• El Norte
• The 400 Blows
• Gimme Shelter
• The Complete Monterey Pop
• Contempt
• Walkabout
• For All Mankind
• The Wages of Fear

I count three black-and-white titles, which should be interesting. The studios have only released a couple of B&W titles.

"These new editions will feature glorious high-definition picture and sound, all the supplemental content of the DVD releases, and they will be priced to match our standard-def editions," Criterion said.

"The Last Emperor" also is coming in a (cheaper) stand-alone theatrical version on Blu-ray and DVD. "Walkabout" updates an older Criterion title. The Nicholas Roeg film gets new extra features and a new transfer. An updated DVD will be updated at the same time.

Terrific list and a thoughtful mix. I'm especially interested in Blu-rays of "The Man Who Fell to Earth," "The Wages of Fear," "Chungking Express" and "Contempt."

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New DVDs: 'Delirious,' 'First Sunday'

"Delirious" looks under a few rocks and unearths a "contemporary fable" ... a sort of "fairy tale."

The second coming of director Tom DiCillo and star Steve Buscemi concerns the slithery lives of paparazzi in Manhattan. The indie movie, predictably, failed to develop much of anything at the boxoffice, but it's good and contains a few terrific performances. Here's hoping "Delirious" finds its audience on DVD.

Having worked in the Hollywood trades for a couple of decades, I got to know a bunch of celebrity photographers -- the guys who hang out on the red carpets, jostling for Jolie. For the most part, they're cool, especially my pal Alex Berliner.

One big step down on the evolutionary scale are the paparazzi, who flood our corner Starbucks when local attraction Britney Spears stops by for her cappuccino. The ambush photographers are surprisingly young, often still learning English. Their flashes go off like a collective lightning storm. Spooky shit when you're caught up in it.

DiCillo, being a borderline celeb, got into a fight with a paparazzo and then decided to write a film about the lifestyle. "They're the lowest rung of the celebrity game," DiCillo says on his DVD commentary between sips of scotch. "Everyone despises them."

Buscemi, who grabbed indie fame in the director's "Living in Oblivion," didn't want the role as a loser photographer, even though it was written for him. "The guy just seemed a little too creepy for me," Buscemi said. (The actor went on to direct himself in "Interview," a far less interesting film about celebrity journalism.)

Buscemi took the "Delirious" part after a rewrite somewhat humanized Les, the "troll" of our fable.

"He's a lot like Don Knotts on acid," the director says of the photographer. Les encounters a homeless young man, Toby (Michael Pitt), kindly letting the handsome kid crash in his closet and work for no pay.

The fable's princess is K'Harma (Alison Lohman), a pop star with some talent and heart. "People used to be famous for actual things," DiCillo muses. "The fixation on fame is ever bigger but the actual (creative) act has become incidental."

Boy meets girl, creep gets pissed, the celebrity mill does its thing. "Delirious" gets a bit wobbly by act 3, but by then it's built up more than enough goodwill to earn a pass.

This is one of Buscemi's best performances, at least that I've seen. Young Pitt, who played one of the "Dreamers" for Bertolucci, is doubly believable as a bum and a star. Nice job. Lohman and Gina Gershon mix class with humanity. Elvis Costello, for purposes of the movie a prime paparazzi target, plays himself. (EC fans will have fun with the inside jokes about his music. Extra credit: Look for the glasses pose.)

Genius Entertainment has released "Delirious" in a surprisingly good-looking DVD. (The movie was made on the cheap, with hand-held cameras working the streets of Manhattan.) Audio is OK with clear dialogue and a thump for the music.

Extras include a cleverly stylized conversation between director and star as they walk the streets, followed by slinky paparazzi. There's a music video with Lohman, great for fans of the leggy and tacky.

* * *

Ice Cube doesn't get enough credit as a comedic actor, nor does he seem to get the parts he deserves out of Hollywood. Regardless, his production company cranks out some good stuff, such as the minor classics "Friday" and "Barbershop." When that Cube Vision logo pops up, guilty pleasures always follow.

First-time film director David E. Talbert, a big name in urban theater, is a big fan of Cube Vision as well. "Between Ice Cube and (producer) Matt Alvarez, they've taken more black directors to the promised land than you can imagine," he says on the DVD commentary for "First Sunday."

The movie, about a church robbery, teams Cube with Tracy Morgan of "SNL" fame. They're a hoot together, with stone-faced Cube anchoring the manic Morgan. "Cube is the quintessential straight man," Talbert says. "The straighter the straight man, the funnier the funny man."

The "First Sunday" story is pure formula, with Cube losing his job and having to come up with 17 large in order to keep his son's mother from moving away with the boy. His hapless partner figures a storefront black church is the place to grab the cash.

There they encounter Katt Williams as a twitchy choir master, who delivers one of the best gospel scenes since James Brown rolled the Blues Brothers. The reluctant criminals take the church regulars hostage, at which point "First Sunday" turns into a play, talkie and ultimately sentimental. The movie sags a bit but gets it together for the feel-good part you know is coming.

Talbert's solo DVD commentary is not to be missed. He's relaxed and spends time on some basic filmmaking problems, tricks and and techniques. Talbert says he was careful about the images he projected of the inner city, including the scenes that emphasized how the Cube character spent time daily with his son.

Other extras include footage of the director's emotional wrap speech, straight from Roscoe's Chicken and Waffles. The deleted and extended scenes are well worth a look for fans of the movie, especially the extended massage scene. Nice briefs, man. There's also a trivia track and a quickie making-of.

Sony's single-disc release of "First Sunday" looks and sounds fine, as you'd expect. The movie also is available on Blu-ray.

Also circling the DVD blog's players this week are "Hiya, Kids!! A '50s Saturday Morning" collection from Shout! Factory; "I'm Not There" with the dueling Dylans; the "Twister" Blu-ray; and Magnolia's latest fine set of Oscar-nominated shorts.

New and notable:

Bewitched, season 6 (Paramount)
The Bridges of Madison County (Warner)
Dan Paris (Genius Products)
Delirious (Genius)
First Sunday (Sony)
The 4400: Final Season (Paramount)
Hiya, Kids!! A '50s Saturday Morning (Shout! Factory)
I'm Not There (Weinstein Co./Genius)
Macon County Line (Warner)
The Passion of Greg the Bunny: Best of Film Parodies 2 (Shout! Factory)
Saawariya (Sony)
Square Pegs: The Complete Series (Sony)
Teeth! (Weinstein/Genius)
Twister (Warner)
2007 Academy Award Nominated Short Films (Magnolia Home Entertainment)

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

New DVDs: 'Intelligence' from Canada

"Intelligence" is one smart series.

The Canadian production usually is compared with HBO's "The Sopranos" and "The Wire." While we're invoking cool premium cable shows, I'd add "Six Feet Under" and "Weeds" from rival Showtime as matches on the domestic drama side.

The series ran on CBC for two seasons, beginning in 2006. Acorn Media has just released season 1 in a four-disc set, another winner for the TV-on-DVD import specialist.

"Intelligence" tracks the flow of inside information swirling about a web of Vancouver law officers and organized crime figures. The series does not make for relaxed viewing. The cast is fairly large and the plotlines implode and explode real quick like. You don't want to wander off for long without hitting the pause button.

There are two compelling figures at the center of "Intelligence": heroine Mary Spalding (Klea Scott), who runs the city's organized crime unit; and antihero Jimmy Reardon (Ian Tracey), a drug smuggler and money launderer who also fronts a waterway shipping operation. They're good people, mostly, playing out their roles in life.

Both of these characters have believable private lives that eat away at their professional time and energies. Spalding deals with a squirmy cheating husband while Reardon tries to keep his cokehead ex-wife from doing damage to their surprisingly wholesome tween daughter. It's not long before viewers start wondering where the empathy and chemistry between the two might lead.

Work is no bargain, either: our heroes are both betrayed, plotted against and abused by lowlifes on either side of the law. Then there are the Americans, sometimes portrayed as the smirky jerks that many Canadians expect to see slither up from south of the border. Anyone who's spent time in western or eastern Canada will recognize the 'tude.

The series creator is Chris Haddock of "Di Vinci's Inquest"; there is a bit of overlap between the series. "I wanted to make a true, adult series about the city I knew," the Vancouver native has said.

The production budget undoubtedly wasn't on par with the big U.S. network cop shows, so some allowances are called for in the series' look, sound and minor-player acting. Not necessarily a bad thing.

The 2.0 audio is an annoyance on this DVD set, as with some other Acorn Media DVDs I've otherwise enjoyed. Dialogue can be muddy, especially when the bald creepy investigator starts talking. There are no subtitles, but Acorn once advised me to use the closed captioning.

The video is OK if you don't get too close. Extras are routine and include a profile of show creator Haddock.

Also circling the DVD blog's players this week: "The Fall of the Roman Empire" (read the DVD review); the third installment of "Young Indiana Jones"; and the three classy children's releases from Janus/Criterion: "The Red Balloon," "Paddle to the Sea" and "White Mane."

New and notable:
The Adventures of Young Indiana Jones: Volume 3 (Paramount)
Beverly Hills 90212: The Fourth Season (Paramount)
The Big Gay Sketch Show, season 2 (Paramount)
Cheers -- The Complete Ninth Season (Paramount)
The Classic Caballeros Collection (Disney)
Dark Shadows: The Beginning, Vol. 4 (MPI Home Video)
Diamond Dogs (with digital copy, Sony)
Diving Bell and the Butterfly (Miramax)
The Fall of the Roman Empire (The Miriam Collection/Weinstein Co./Genius)
First Knight (Sony)
The Golden Compass (Sony, also Blu-ray)
Hero Wanted (Sony)
How She Move (Paramount)
Intelligence (Acorn Media)
Paddle to the Sea (Janus Films)
The Red Balloon (Janus Films)
White Mane (Janus Films)
27 Dresses (Fox, also BR)
The Waltons, season 7 (Warner)

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