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

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

New DVDs: 'The Furies,' 'Persepolis'

Anthony Mann looks like the man of the year on DVD.

The late director's "El Cid" and "The Fall of the Roman Empire" received the regal treatment from The Weinstein Co. as it debuted its new Miriam DVD collection. Despite some quibbling, these are considered two of the year's best home video titles.

Now comes "The Furies," Mann's emotionally deep and improbably entertaining western from 1950. Coming from the Criterion Collection, Mann again provides us with another of the year's most welcome releases -- especially considering that "The Furies" hasn't been seen all that much in the past half-century.

The movie belongs to Barbara Stanwyck, as usual, but she gets a mighty headwind from Walter Huston, who died shortly after this western premiered. Then there's the offbeat work of Wendell Corey, whose unusual looks and ambiguous characterization further to the movie's great distance from the era's typical westerns.

Criterion's commentator, Jim Kitses, says "The Furies" is "a hybrid genre" film -- part western, part film noir, part romance, part family melodrama. The case may be overstated; to me it's a smart western, clearly ahead of its time, more in tune with Orson Welles than John Ford. YMMV.

T.C. Jeffords (Huston) lords over a gigantic cattle ranch in new Mexico, aptly titled "The Furies." He's getting up there in years, but doesn't mind wading into some deep muck to rescue a calf. T.C. has his enemies, among them a saloon owner (Corey) whose father saw the family land sucked up by the Furies. Then there are the people of the land, the Mexican "squatters," tolerated by T.C. until the bank wants them gone.

T.C.'s dandified son proves a washout, so he sees the ranch's future in his thirtyish daughter Vance (Stanwyck). The beautiful wiseass seems to be sleeping with the enemy, however. Vance loves the saloon owner who hates her father, and has an undefined physical relationship with a squatter hombre with whom she grew up.

Then there's the strange sexual tension between father and daughter, never really resolved but front and center as the film opens. The Shakespearean end game commences when, in a fit of anger, she throws some scissors and cuts open her would-be stepmother.

The Criterion DVD comes with a 267-page paperback of the novel by Niven Busch.

Commentator Kitses brings his own odd vibe to the DVD set, with a stiff talk that's clearly been written out as if for a lecture. Here he is on the "Furies" mashup of styles:

"It's a post-modern blend before its time, one that indulges its mood swings by invoking different genre conventions and settings to fit the moment."

Thing is, once you get used to the lecture-hall tone, Kitses proves a first-rate commentator, one who's clearly burrowed deep into this deep movie and can extend your experience. Well done, sir.

The other extras feel a bit light, at least for Criterion. Director Mann is interviewed by British TV in 1967, a so-so session. A new interview features his daughter, Nina, who's getting a lot of camera time these days. She talks about how, as a kid, she looked to her absentee father's films for clues to how he felt about his children.

A fun short has a barrel-chested Huston interviewed by a newsreel beauty at his Hollywood home, years before this fine movie was made.

* * * * *

The graphic-novel adaptation "Persepolis," another genre-bender, also tops the week's releases.

Writer-co-director Marjane Satrapi says the animated black-and-white film isn't really her biography, but it loosely covers her childhood years in Iran during the Shah's reign, the Islamic revolution and then the harsh new era of the religious fundamentalists.

Doesn't sound like much fun, but our heroine Marjane manages to find some good times -- scoring black market Iron Maiden tapes on a street corner, goofing on the revolutionary guards, flirting from behind her black scarf, hanging out with her cynical but loving grandmother.

As a teen, her spirit proves too dangerous for Tehran, so she's shipped off to Vienna, where her adventures continue, for a while. Alienation and unsupervised freedom send her into a downward spiral and a plane rise back to Iran.

The movie has the spirit and inspirational rush of classic children's animated movies, but also works the darkest parts of its subject matter. "Persepolis" would be confusing and perhaps quite scary for kids under, say, eight. At times, the movie is a real hoot, perfect for "Juno" hipsters.

Sony's Blu-ray of "Persepolis" is further proof that in high def, black-and-white movies benefit every bit as much as those in color. Gorgeous images across a challenging gray scale. The French dialogue and subtitles are clear, and the TrueHD 5.1 audio has sufficient pop for the big surprises.

There is also a made-for-America dubbed track, featuring Iggy Pop, Sean Penn, Gena Rowlands and Catherine Deneuve (who appears as the mom in the original French as well). The movie should be heard in French.

My Samsung Blu-ray player had some issues with this Blu-ray's (also) awkward menu; if you own one of the problem players look for a firmware update ... if we're lucky.

Extras include a pair of featurettes with Satrapi and her collaborator Vincent Paronnaud. Satrapi talks about how the decision to go with b&w was partially aesthetic and partially financial. Some of the movie has color highlights, though, denoting a time shift.

Also circling the DVD blog's players this week is "Before the Rain," an import from the Balkans, another tale of ethnic and tribal warfare and misery (from Criterion).

New and notable:
Before the Rain (The Criterion Collection)
The Big Easy: The Complete First Season (MPI Home Video)
Charlie Bartlett (MGM/Fox)
Definitely, Maybe (Universal)
Don't Call Me Bugsy (MPI)
The Furies (Criterion)
Futurama: Beast With a Billion Backs (Fox)
The Hammer (The Weinstein Co./Genius Products)
In Bruges (Universal)
My Boys (Sony)
Persepolis (Sony)
The Spiderwick Chronicles (Paramount)
Wide Sargasso Sea (Acorn Media)
The Wig (Genius Products)

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

New DVDs: 'Carmen Miranda Collection'

Carmen Miranda and Busby Berkeley, the noted surrealists, wasted no time in serving notice that their collaboration would be equally strange and special.

A dot struggling against a black screen expands a bit, encircling a disembodied singer's face. Out of the dark, he sings the haunting "Aquarela do Brasil." From the left, a set of geometric lines invades the screen, morphing into the bow of a ship. The camera retreats, a Technicolor day breaks, and we splash onto a bustling Manhattan dock.

The ship's cargo, lowered by net, includes what appears to be a gigantic fruit basket. Berkeley's camera pulls back and the produce is revealed as the mother of all Carmen Miranda hats, with the tiny Brazilian powerhouse herself underneath, grinning. The camera advances to the rear again, and we discover we're in a New York nightclub, watching this colossal floor show. Seven minutes in, the first line of dialogue is spoken.

So begins "The Gang's All Here," a gloriously restored movie that anchors Fox's new "The Carmen Miranda Collection" of five movies. Throughout the 1943 musical, Miranda runs amuck across Berkeley's military-like dance productions, disrupting and humanizing the spectacles like a psychedelicized Engergizer Bunny. Glorious and gaudy.

The movie actually stars Alice Faye, in the way that all of Miranda's films star someone else. Someone who speaks perfect English. Miranda wanders in and out of the action, a broken-English Greek chorus of one chattering away about the hackneyed plot's turns.

Fox chieftain Darryl Zanuck's instructions regarding the handling of Miranda were clear: "Give her words to mispronounce" and never cut away when she's singing and dancing. Audiences loved her and made her rich. Miranda was a house pet, always leashed by the stage and screen systems. A professional foreigner.

The story is told here in the engrossing and moving documentary "Carmen Miranda: The Girl From Rio," which unspools on the DVD of the less-impressive "Something for the Boys." (A brief Berkeley docu comes with "Girls.")

"It was never possible for Carmen Miranda to be the central character of a film," says Miles Kreuger of the Institute of the American Musical. "She is billed as a star, but she could never carry the picture. She was like the spice in the stew. She was everybody's best friend or a confidant.

"She was there so that she could do a musical number and erupt into movement and color." The 5-footer's charms retain their potency today. You don't have to be gay to fall for Carmen Miranda (but maybe it helps).

Miranda's English improved over the years, but her situation didn't. She was unable to escape the accent and the fruit hat. In the U.S., "She was in some ways a creature from outer space." She yearned to make a "real" movie about Brazil, where she was highly respected as a samba artist. Miranda eventually came under fire in Brazil for her cartoon-like image and responded by staying away for more than a decade.

At times, the documentary's interviewees seem curiously mournful over the lot of the girl from the Rio slums who found fame and adoration in the States, but remained confined to the headdress. Viewers seeking real tragedy find it in the docu's final minutes, though, as we learn how Miranda popped pills day and night to keep her frail franchise going.

A sad and bizarre clip shows the tiny Brazilian, older now, suffering a heart attack on Jimmy Durante's TV show. She puts her hand over her heart, looks confused for a beat, and then dances her way offstage, waving goodbye to the audience. Twelve hours later she was dead.

But we're here for the fun, and Miranda delighted in providing it a-plenty. Midway through "The Gang's All Here" comes the second remarkable Miranda-Berkeley collaboration, "The Woman in the Tutti-Fruitti Hat."

Miranda's the centerpiece as an army of beauties frolics with giant bananas, raising and lowering the Freudian fruit with drill-team precision. The spectacular Technicolors and the disorienting suite of movements combine to blow our minds. And of course Carmen Miranda has just the catchy song for the occasion.

Fox Home Entertainment's five-disc set retails for $49.98 with individual titles going for $14.98 each. (They are "The Gang's All Here," "Doll Face," "Greenwich Village," "If I'm Lucky" and "Something For the Boys.") Thirty bucks gets you "Gang" and the "Boys" disc with that feature-length documentary, a reasonable way to go. Be careful with "The Gang's All Here" -- ensure it's the 2008 release, not the botched 2007 version.

Also circling the DVD blog's players this week is "Joy Division," a highly regarded documentary about the Manchester band of the 1970s fronted by Ian Curtis. If that's of interest, check out my earlier review of the feature film "Control" on DVD.

"Be Kind, Rewind," another new title, was a pleasant surprise for me at the movies. Check out the DVD blog's mini-review of the Jack Black-Mos Def film.

New and notable:
Be Kind Rewind (Warner)
Blood +: Vol. 2 (Sony)
Burn Notice season 1 (Fox)
Californication (Paramount)
Carmen Miranda Collection (Fox)
Classe Tous Risques (The Criterion Collection)
Joy Division (Weinstein Co./Genius Products)
The Jungle Book 2: Special Edition (Disney)
The Sword in the Stone (Disney)
Meerkat Manor season 3 (Animal Planet/Genius Products)
Popeye the Sailor 1938-1940 (Warner)
So I Married an Axe Murderer (Sony)
Under The Same Moon (La Misma Luna, Fox)
Welcome Home Roscoe Jenkins (Universal)

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

New DVDs: 'The Other Boleyn Girl'

"The Other Boleyn Girl" didn't deserve the pilloring it suffered from film critics. Some of the nastiest reviews, in fact, read more like blood sport than commentary.

The pairing of stars Natalie Portman and Scarlett Johansson understandably brought high expectations -- and the movie provided an easy target for those weary of these prolific young actresses.

"The Other Boleyn Girl" is no "Becket," but I've seen worse on the BBC (much worse) and on PBS. Some of the bashing might have been inspired by the lightly regarded source material, Philippa Gregory's soapy page-turner about the Boleyn sisters and their mutual lover Henry VIII.

After reading the New York Times' negative review ("more slog than romp"), I decided to pass, but somehow ended up in a cinema, pleasantly surprised. The acting is mostly fine; the production values and attention to period detail are outstanding; and the script comes from the gent known for "The Queen."

I also enjoyed wandering through Sony's single-disc DVD of "The Other Boleyn Girl," which reports on the production's unusual path to the screen and features some decent historical material. Like the movie, the DVD is good enough.

The "Other Boleyn Girl" Blu-ray, however, is extraordinary, with among the best images I've seen in high definition.

The film was shot in high definition, which first-time director Justin Chadwick discusses at length in his commentary. "(HD) absolutely sees everything, so it's all about controling it. ... It just soaks up detail."

Indeed. The opening title sequence could pass for a slow-rolling gallery of oil paintings, starting with Van Gogh and darkening to Caravaggio. Flesh tones and detail on the costumes are precise, lifelike and artful throughout. (Be sure to take a look at the HD skin tones tests in the extras.) The DVD version also looks quite good, especially when upconverted.

The elderly ghost-friendly buildings used as locations feel clammy and dark, like most of the film. Chadwick recalls being thrilled with green algae seeping out of the walls of a convent where he filmed. "We had to be careful not to be seduced by the grandeur of the locations" and instead focus on character, he says.

The director used two cameras, saying he wanted to capture the nuances of his ensemble's performances. David Morrissey, Mark Rylance, Kristin Scott Thomas and Spain's Ana Torrent all are excellent in supporting roles.

Chadwick says Johansson was the "steady heartbeat" of the film, playing Mary Boleyn to Portman's Anne Boleyn. Her performance clearly is superior to Portman's, which is OK but a bit obvious. Chadwick says the famed young women clicked immediately and "worked together as sisters."

The story, a selective edit of the original novel, centers on the sisters' competition for the heart and loins of Henry VIII, played by Eric Bana. The Tudor has his way with Mary, then moves on to the power-tripping Anne, whose subsequent reign as the queen of England is rudely interrupted.

The film (and novel) have been cited for a good many factual errors or inventions, such as making Mary the younger of the sisters and omitting her history as a consort of the king of France before coming to Henry Tudor's court -- billed as a slut. In the movie, Johansson plays Mary as a misty innocent.

Peter Morgan, creator of the original screenplay for "The Queen," wrote "Henry VIII" for British television about five years ago. ("Boleyn Girl" also was a BBC telefilm.) He says he was moved to return to the randy Tudor by Gregory's unusual spin. He said he was mindful of U.S. audiences not knowing much about Henry aside from Anne Boleyn's execution and his fat-crazy final years.

Bana took heat for his stiff and studly performance as the king. Morgan argues that Henry VIII was in fact a skilled athlete and sportsman before a fall from a horse limited activities. (Visitors to the Tower of London can see Henry's armor and sporting gear, an impressive display.)

Morgan and Gregory exchange compliments that seem ... carefully phrased. Morgan sympathizes that the novelist saw her story reduced to a few of her plot lines. Gregory, who cheerfully participates in the extras, says asking her which version of her story she likes best is like asking if she prefers her child or someone else's.

Gregory does most of the talking in the DVD's best featurette, a docu about the lot of women in the 16th century. She calls them "fundamental beasts of burden," essentially servants to their male family members, especially until they come of age.

The movie details the Boleyn family's scheme to land one of their teenage girls in the royal bed (their plot quite possibly a fabrication). Gregory notes that the idea of love and marriage going together is relatively modern. In Tudor England, upperclass girls were wed in "contractual arrangements" designed to secure alliances. "If you are phenomenally lucky, you husband will die" and leave an inheritance, she notes. The only women allowed wealth were widows.

(The plague played hell with this system. I highly recommend the unusual history book "In the Wake of the Plague: The Black Death and the World It Made." Also, Simon Schama's outstanding video series "A History of Britain: The Complete Collection," being rereleased by A&E.)

Gregory also goes over the ugly realities of personal grooming in 15th century England. There were good reasons ladies hid their hair under tight hats, including the grease from rarely bathing and the widespread presence of lice.

The DVD has some lengthy deleted or extended scenes, including a subtly different alternate ending. Movie clips illustrate short bios of the real-life aristocrats. "Translating Henry to the Screen" talks about history, speculation and writing.

Director Chadwick's fairly interesting commentary focuses on the scene at hand. He calls "The Other Boleyn Girl" a "modern classical film" about "youth and how youth is used."

Also circling the DVD blog's players in this slow week are Sony's new collection of the ever-entertaining spoof "Soap" and Paramount's first part of "The Fugitive's" second season.

New and notable:

American Gangster: The Complete Second Season (Paramount)
The Boondocks, season 2 (Sony)
City of Vice (Koch Vision)
Comedy Central's Home Grown: Uncensored (Paramount)
Da Vinci's Inquest, Season 3 (Acorn Media)
Fantastic Four: World's Greatest Heroes (Fox)
4 Months 3 Weeks and 2 Days (IFC/Genius Products)
The Fugitive, season 2, Vol. 1 (Paramount)
Hawaii Five-O, season 4 (Paramount)
Home Improvement, season 8 (Disney)
Icons of Adventure (Sony)
Jumper (Fox)
The Odd Couple, season 4 (Paramount)
The Other Boleyn Girl (Sony)
Soap: The Complete Series (Sony)
Wieners (Sony)

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

New DVDs: 'Control,' 'Boarding Gate,' 'Flawless'

"Control" looks back at the short dark days of Joy Division singer Ian Curtis.

There is no joy in the mix.

Rock photographer-turned-director Anton Corbijn took some of the last shots of a brooding Curtis in the days before committed suicide in 1980, but says he didn't really know the singer or worship him.

"He's a bit of a bastard in the film," Corbijn says in the DVD release's commentary. "But he's still a person."

The first-time director decided he didn't want to make a biopic, a "rock film" or a backstage drama focusing on the Manchester, England, band (which morphed into the more successful New Order).

Instead, Corbijn made a moody, mopey, meditative study of "this one guy who's a poet." The young man is wracked by epilepsy and punished by the drugs used to control his fits. He's point man in a love triangle, which brings guilt and confusion, no pleasure. Nor does his rising star in the post-punk rock world. The result is a couple of bleak rock classics, such as "Love Will Tear Us Apart."

The movie's high-contrast black and white cinematography (think "Lenny") artfully frames the drama and the alienation, in the style of Corbijn's own rock photos. The film was shot in color, flipped to b&w.

"The band's history really is in black and white," the director says. From their clothing to the era's fanzines to the surviving TV footage. No off-stage footage of Curtis could be found.

The documentary extras on the Weinstein Co./Genius Products DVD of "Control" do a solid job of covering the unusual production. (For those wanting more on the band, the companies also have released the well-received docu Joy Divisionas another Miriam Collection title.)

Sam Riley, a 27-year-old actor and singer from Leeds, turned up at an open call for the indie pic, somehow both resembling Curtis and singing like the fallen rocker in a lowdown baritone. Corbijn slipped into "an incredible deja vu."

The other Joy Division actors also were musicians. The idea was the lads would be able to play their instruments along with the Joy Division soundtrack, instead of posing with guitars as actors tend to do. The four practiced daily, becoming a band in the process. They successfully lobbied to play and sing the music themselves. Which they did, usually in front of real Joy Division fans filling in as extras.

"You have this real dynamic of four guys in a band," the director says. "They got pretty good pretty quickly." The performances are raw and sometimes amazing.

The making-of documentary indicates the actors were shadowed by the reality that most of the people they played were still alive and sensitive about many elements of the story.

Screenwriter Matt Greenhalgh worked with Ian Curtis' widow, whose book was the basis for "Control." She's played in the film by Samantha Morton. Greenhalgh also spent time with the other woman in the Curtis story, a European journalist still dealing with "raw emotions." (Riley and Alexandra Maria Lara, pictured, the actress who played the rock journalist, became a real-life couple).

None of the Joy Division musicians appear in the film or in the extras.

Director Corbijn is all over the DVD. In addition to the docu, he gets a separate interview piece (worth checking out) and does a commentary (often repetitive and for fans only). There are a trio of full-length performances by the actors band, all quite good (and apparently unsweetened), as well as some music videos with Joy Division and the Killers (who do a soundtrack cover).

The letterboxed images are splendid. The 5.1 audio, however, often produces muffled dialogue, a matter made worse in region 1 by those hard working-class accents. The music, however, comes across with raw power.

* * *

Asia Argento burns up the B-movie "Boarding Gate," a sly tale of sex, murder and betrayal directed by the French director Olivier Assayas ("Clean"). Anyone wondering why she merits all that Euro media attention should pick up this DVD from Magnolia Entertainment.

The movie really belongs to two women -- Argento and the Hong Kong actress Kelly Lin, another screen grabber who seems to be making her English-language debut in "Boarding Gate." Michael Madsen shares top billing, but he's mostly sleepwalking.

The story kicks off in London, where ex-hooker Sandra (Argento) is dealing with a rich and violent ex-lover (Madsen). Sandra works for a shipping outfit, handy for doing drug deals. She's also busy doing the boss, who runs the business with his wife, the Lin character.

Argento finds plenty to time to run around in her black underwear before she's frantically on the run to Hong Kong -- a wanted murderess at the mercy of the woman whose husband she's screwing.

Argento, now in her mid-30s, has 45 or so movies to her credit as an actress. Few of those credits stray from the horror, sex and revenge touchstones, alas. (She did play in Sophia Coppola's "Marie Antoinette.") Here's hoping Argento gets the A-list parts she so clearly deserves. The woman can flat out carry a movie. The two DVD extras both focus on her.

Meanwhile, you can check out Argento in dad's new horror film, "Mother of Tears," and, coming up, in the return of midnight movie legend Alejandro Jodorowsky ("El Topo").

* * *

"Flawless," also out on DVD from Magnolia, picked up some decent reviews during its short theatrical run in the States. The English caper film directed by Michael Radford showcases Michael Caine and Demi Moore, both delivering the goods.

This is the kind of film that London produced back in the first part of the 1960s, in which drab lives are electrified by a heist or espionage of some kind. The kind of movie that starred Michael Caine. "Flawless" name-checks Graham Greene, appropriately.

Caine plays a slow-moving janitor at a diamond company. Moore is the token female executive, sick of being passed over. Together, they devise a way to crack the mother of all safes.

I enjoyed the period setting, the cool plot twists, as well as the acting of the stars and French actor Lambert Wilson. Good show.

It's quibbling but has to be said: Moore's chiseled arms seemed distractingly odd on a middle-aged woman of London. Guess the old boy's club that kept the female exec down was OK with her in the gym.

"Flawless" looks and sounds fine. The extras are skimpy but passable.

"The Andromeda Strain" DVD merited a mixed review from the DVD blog last week. The Universal release came out this Tuesday.

New and notable:

American Crude (Sony)
American Gangster season 2 (Paramount)
The Andromeda Strain (Universal)
The Animation Show Vol. 3 (Paramount)
Boarding Gate (Magnolia Home Entertainment)
Boston Red Sox: Essential Games (A&E Home Video)
City Slickers (MGM)
Control (Weinstein Co./Genius Products)
Dirty Harry Ultimate Collector's Edition (Warner)
Diva (Lionsgate)
Flawless (Magnolia)
Mannix (Paramount)
Meet the Spartans (Fox)
The Onion Movie (Fox)
Rescue Me season 4 (Sony)
Semi-Pro (New Line)
Vince Vaughn's Wild West Comedy Show (New Line)

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

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

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