DVD Spin Doctor

'The Alamo' under siege -- Harris to the rescue

"The Alamo" is ready to fall again. Fortunately, famed film restorer Robert A. Harris is among its defenders, trying to keep alive what John Ford called "the greatest picture I've ever seen."

In his film restoration column on Digital Bits, Harris details the ghastly condition of the 1960 epic, saying: "The time has come for a complete restoration and overhaul -- a massive undertaking.

"We are attempting to bring this important film back from the brink of extinction."

Rights holder MGM and some vendors have come up with much of the funding for the restoration, but another $1.4 million is needed, Harris says. He's appealing directly to film fans, corporations and arts groups in order to raise the rest.

The result will be two versions of the John Wayne film: a full-length roadshow (192 minutes) and the general release (172 minutes). 

Harris' must-read post discusses why the film was cut in 1960 and gives specifics of the role of "vinegar syndrome" in the roadshow version's gradual destruction.

I remember the roadshow movie from laserdisc. That critical source material (a print miraculously found in the early '90s) has suffered the most damage, Harris reports.

"The Alamo" was among my favorite movies as a boy, but when I viewed it on laser I found the movie a bit long and creaky. I'm eager to see it again, in better shape, on a big screen.

Harris has brought many classic films back to life in the DVD era, most recently restoring "The Godfather" I and 2. His plea for help should be a call to action for movie-lovers everywhere. We owe him big. Hell, if the man asked for funding to restore his home movies, I'd chip in.

Here's a forum thread that keeps up with with news regarding "The Alamo" restoration project.

"Alamo" update: Harris sent along information on how to help fund the restoration.

Write a check to the Jacob Burns Film Center Inc. and in the memo field note "f/b/o Alamo restoration"

Address:

Jacob Burns Film Center

405 Manville Road

Pleasantville, NY 10570

Attn: Dominick Balletta

All contributions are tax deductible.

New DVDs: 'The Films of Budd Boetticher'

Budd Boetticher, the filmmaker and bullfighter, worked best as a one-trick pony.

His great cycle of low-budget westerns starred the leathery, vaguely robotic cowboy star Randolph Scott, in adventures that didn't change all that much movie-to-movie.

The opening shots showed Scott making his way on horseback across hard country, in search of something, often revenge.

The ying-yang plots started simply, and proceed to layer on the complications in careful measures.

Typically, the life-and-death drama played out by a campfire, with the men drinking coffee and a woman rustling up some grub. Death threats came in the language of noir. Sexual terror loomed for the lady, perhaps. Hopalong Cassidy was nowhere in sight.

In westerns, "There's John Ford and there's Howard Hawks and there's Budd Boetticher," says director Taylor Hackford, who rolls out to honor the late filmmaker on Sony's essential new five-DVD set. Along for the ride are Boetticher fans Quentin Tarantino, Clint Eastwood and Martin Scorsese.

"The Films of Budd Boetticher" focuses on the "Ranown" B-movies made in the  late 1950s. (Ranown took its name from star Randolph Scott and producer Harry Joe Brown.) The movies were produced with high-pressure shooting schedules of about two weeks.

Scorsese says, "You can look at them as one long extended movie (presenting) variations of themes and ideas. ... An epic story of this one character (Scott's)."

While most of the six Ranown films are excellent, Scorsese says, "Seen together, they take on another quality. They communicate with each other. ... It was a unique universe that was being created."

Boetticher brought his training as a gringo bullfighter into the films, with both the dramatic and violent standoffs playing out with careful movements and a certain protocol. 

"There are rules of conduct and honor," Scorsese says. "This is a big part (of the Ranown cycle)." The feature-length docu on disc 1 demonstrates there is much of Boetticher's matador aesthetic in Sergio Leone's legendary three-way shootout at the conclusion of "The Good, the Bad and the Ugly." Eastwood says he wishes he'd worked with Boetticher, who died in 2001.

Hackford credits Boetticher with forging the first "sympathetic bad guy" in westerns. Casting was a big part of the Ranown success story; the villains included then-relative unknowns Lee Marvin, Richard Boone, Lee Van Cleef, Pernell Roberts, Claude Akins and James Coburn.

Typically the bad guy aimed to kill Scott, yet admired him as a man and a gunfighter. The showdown had to wait: Indians, the badlands and other threats to survival united the two, at least for two reels.

Scorsese cites the "austerity, amazing frankness and the wonderful relationships between the men," such as the "strange camaraderie" between Scott and Boone in "The Tall T." 

The Boetticher box set includes four killer films -- "The Tall T" (1957, with Boone and Maureen O'Sullivan); "Decision at Sundown" (1957, with John Carroll), "Ride Lonesome" (1959, Roberts and Lee Van Cleef); and "Comanche Station" (1960, Akins, Nancy Gates). Then there's "Buchanan RIdes Alone" (1958), a lesser work that plays like "Gunsmoke" and works in plenty of laughs.

Writer Burt Kennedy gave life to three of the scripts here and contributed to a fourth. (He also wrote the Boetticher-Scott classic "Seven Men From Now.") Nobody in these movies speaks in paragraphs, but Kennedy's carefully wrought short sentences proved long enough.

Charles Lawton Jr. and Lucien Ballard alternate on the cinematography, starring the wilderness of Lone Pines, Calif.

"The Films of Budd Boetticher" includes the solid documentary "A Man Can Do That" (which also discusses his matador films such as "Bullfighter and the Lady"), as well as feature-length commentaries from film historians and Boetticher pal Hackford. Jeanine Basinger's talk on "The Tall T" is especially good, such as when she discusses Elmore Leonard's tale: "This story has a good bone structure."

Video quality is mostly good but the color appears unstable here and there, with browns and greens wrestling for control in some of the badlands shots. Audio is good and clear.

* * * * *

"What We Do Is Secret" dissects the short punk rock career of one Darby Crash, frontman for the DIY band the Germs.

The movie scopes out the rage and outrageousness of L.A.'s early punk scene, but does so as a surprisingly traditional and sappy backstage drama. The movie plays unevenly and doesn't approach the authority and impact of, say, the recent New Order biopic, "Control."

Still, the movie has its charms, in a grubby guilty-pleasure sort of way. Recommended for punk rock sentimentalists.

 The DVD's extras tell an interesting story about this ultra-low-budget project, shot start-and-stop as the money came and went. That director Roger Grossman was able to produce a coherent feature film under the circumstances is fairly remarkable. In the extras, Grossman recalls his illegal shoots, chronic bad luck and what it was like working with the surviving Germs. Shane West and Bijou Phillips star. 

Having spent many late nights afoot in L.A., I confess a soft spot for any film that goes on location at Oki Dog. 

New and notable DVDs:

The Films of Budd Boetticher (Sony)

Futurama: Bender's Game (Fox*)

The Gregory Peck Film Collection (Universal)

The Howdy Doody Show (Mill Creek Entertainment)

Kung Fu Panda (Paramount*)

Moscow Zero (Sony)

Return to Sleepaway Camp (Magnolia Home Entertainment)

Shrek the Halls (DreamWorks/Paramount)

Spin City (Shout! Factory)

Swing State (Morningstar)

Waterworld: Extended Edition (Universal)

What We Do Is Secret (Peace Arch Entertainment)

The Wild Wild West: The Complete Box Set (Paramount)

* = Blu-ray available

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

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

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

The Western Writers voted like so:

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

(view the top 100 westerns list)

Here is Anne's list:

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

and my list of the best westerns:

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

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

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

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

'How the West Was Won' DVD in big upgrade

"How the West Was Won" looks to finally strike gold in September with a major DVD and Blu-ray release.

Warner Home Video plans two-disc "ultimate," "special" and high-definition editions of the restored epic, which has suffered so far in the DVD format. (Update 6/28: The release has been delayed several weeks, from the original Aug. 26 to Sept. 9.)

Being a child of the '60s, I remember turning out for a screening of "West Was Won" at the trusty Wometco in Fort Lauderdale, Fla. They rolled out two additional (side) screens for the Cinerama presentation, which had everyone buzzing before the film even began, but it all seemed kind of disjointed once the movie started.

Warner has an explanation: "After its initial theatrical engagements in theaters equipped with three synchronized projectors for Cinerama presentation, the film was subsequently presented on traditional theater screens with the three separate Cinerama panels being optically joined to form a standard 35mm 2.35:1 widescreen image, leaving most subsequent viewers puzzled by the annoying 'join lines.' "

The join lines are gone, of course, with the new DVD and Blu-Ray images at 2.89 widescreen.

"How the West Was Won," clocking in at 165 minutes, tells the tale of two families who head west for fortune and adventure in 1839. The saga continues over 50 years. The film won a couple of Oscars but didn't take the best picture nod. The film has its fans but I'm not one of them. It's just OK.

The movie was made about the time that Hollywood figured that if one or two stars could sell a movies, how about a dozen or more. And so we have a cast that includes John Wayne, Henry Fonda, James Stewart, Debbie Reynolds, Richard Widmark, Gregory Peck, Lee J. Cobb, Carroll Baker, Robert Preston, Karl Malden, Carolyn Jones, Eli Wallach. ... Some of them just passing through, like the Duke -- and a few, like Reynolds, going the distance.

There were multiple directors as well: Henry Hathaway, John Ford and George Marshall. Hathaway did the heavy lifting.

There are three DVD versions already out there, all of them essentially the same and to be avoided for quality reasons. The latest (2007) is tagged as part of Warner's "John Wayne Collection," oddly.

Warner's brand-new Blu-ray version of the film also contains a "SmileBox" presentation "with a unique curvature that virtually recreates the true Cinerama experience in a home theater." (Good luck with that.) The ultimate set adds printed materials such as a press book and postcards.

Warner lists "How the West Was Won" extras as:

• "Film historian commentary"
• The feature-length documentary "Cinerama Adventure."
• An archival making-of featurette
• The original trailer

A quartet of Errol Flynn westerns also are getting the Warner box set treatment, with vintage newsreels, cartoons and a couple of commentaries:

• "Montana" (1950)
• Rocky Mountain (1950)
• "San Antonio" (1945)
• "Virginia City" (1940)

Warner also said it was debuting six other westerns on DVD, two of them apparently home video premieres*:

• "Escape from Fort Bravo" (1954) with William Holden
• "Many Rivers to Cross" (1955) with Robert Taylor*
• "Cimarron" (1960 remake) with Glenn Ford
• "The Law and Jake Wade" (1958) directed by John Sturges
• "Saddle the Wind" (1958) with Robert Taylor written by Rod Serling*
• "The Stalking Moon" (1968) with Gregory Peck and Eva Marie Saint.

Heston on DVD: 'Major Dundee' stands tall

Charlton Heston's work has been appreciated on this DVD blog recently, with a review of "El Cid" and a nod to "The Omega Man." These are some of my favorite Heston movies, representing two of his most successful onscreen personas: as a historical man of action and as a sci-fi adventurer.

But upon hearing news of the actor's death, I immediately thought of another film.

One of Heston's finest moments came in 1965, when he starred in Sam Peckinpah's "Major Dundee." This was a a mess of a movie that the studio took away from the highly flammable director -- and then hacked it up.

Sony restored and extended "Dundee" a few years back, attempting to return the western to Peckinpah's original vision.

"Dundee" stars Heston in what critics of the time called his best performance (despite the Oscar for 1959's "Ben-Hur"). Heston plays Dundee, a disgraced and disgruntled Union officer running a New Mexico stockade filled with Confederate soldiers and miscellaneous lowlifes.

Heston, known for his love of weaponry, was fed up with Peckinpah's antics as well. On location, the actor went after the infuriating director with a saber. But when Columbia first tried to fire Peckinpah, Heston offered to surrender his salary to pay for overages, a bluff the studio called.

Sony's Major Dundee: The Extended Version remains the only version of the film in market.

Here's my DVD review in full, from September 2005:

The history of Sam Peckinpah's "Major Dundee" remains every bit as messy as the film itself. Sony's "Extended Version" of the renegade director's 1965 cavalry western aims to make things as right as they can be, but it's clear that whatever Peckinpah had in mind will never be seen.

The restored "Dundee" -- which had a brief pre-DVD theatrical run last spring -- delivers no miracle such as the resurrection of Sam Fuller's "The Big Red One." Forget the marketing: This is no "authentic American classic, at last presented as its legendary director intended." Not even the Peckinpah hardcore consider this is a case of a missing masterpiece.

Only 12 minutes have been returned to the movie. The rediscovered footage certainly helps, but can't cure the wheezy plot. We'll never see a director's cut -- it only existed only briefly, if at all, in the version Peckinpah turned in to Columbia. A good half hour of that cut remains at large.

So why watch? "It's a flawed film, but an extraordinary flawed film," says David Weddle, one of three Peckinpah biographers who partner up for the DVD commentary.

Without "Dundee," the commentators say, there would have been no "The Wild Bunch": Peckinpah learned from his many mistakes on his first big Hollywood film and delivered the goods when he returned from industry exile in the late '60s. Plus, they say, the cautionary tale about military adventurism is eerily relevant again with the war in Iraq.