DVD Comment

DVD Review - 30 Rock Season 2

2008-11-18T15:44:00.003-05:00

There are too many highlights to 30 Rock Season 2 to list them all, and the 15 episodes in this set (the season was shortened due to the writers' strike) are more engaging and in many cases, funnier than Season 1. The show won the Emmy Award for Best Comedy Series for its second year, and Tina Fey won the well-deserved Emmy for best actress in a comedy. It's not often that the award winners are really the best in their fields, but in this case, it is so.

Season 2 begins with a guest appearance by Jerry Seinfeld and any struggling comedy show would love the endorsement of the man behind one of television's most enduring and respected shows. But the truth is that 30 Rock is not Seinfeld; its characters may be as wacky and the show may put Liz Lemon in similarly uncomfortable predicaments, but Seinfeld was about four people, and it didn't matter much what their professions were. 30 Rock is about life on a television show and its corporate bosses. Audiences need a sense of what the business roles of the characters are to understand the dynamics of the show.

While it may be slightly more complicated than Seinfeld, 30 Rock may be funnier. Tracy Morgan's character is played as both a self-absorbed celebrity and a deranged lunatic. Both are divorced from reality. When Morgan does a 12-second bit from a music video called "Werewolf Bar Mitzvah," you can see the depth of the writing, putting thought and hilarious detail into the corners of the characters' backstories.

The second season had a lot of guest stars, none of whom dominated the show in the way the guests on a show like Will & Grace did. When Carrie Fisher guested as a former comedy show writer and Liz' hero, her real-life celebrity wasn't the basis for the show; instead, her character was a way for the show to examine the depth of social commentary in television comedy today and 30 years ago. It was about the character, not the star. The same goes for David Schwimmer's guest turn as "Greenzo" (an episode that featured an appearance by Al Gore as well), and Buck Henry and Andy Ritcher as Liz' father and brother. (It helps that the show doesn't have a laugh track, or audience applause when a new guest star emerges.)

Edie Falco's arc as a love interest for Jack (Alec Baldwin) provided some of the highlights of the season. After so many years of seeing Falco as Tony Soprano's long-suffering wife, it was a pleasure to see her as a confident, powerful and funny Congresswoman. Baldwin continues to be the show's steady straight man, providing wonderful delivery of lines like "'Businesswoman? I'm not sure that's even a real word."

With the exception of Jack McBrayer and Jane Krakowski, most of the supporting cast seemed absent in the second season. A show's focus should be on its stars, and 30 Rock does a lot with Fey, Baldwin and Morgan, but with talented supporting players (used to greater effect in season 1) like Scott Adsit, Judah Friedlander, Katrina Bowden, Keith Powell, Lonny Ross, and more, it's hard not to want to see more of them and their eccentric characters. Of course, maybe the shortened season also shortened what we saw of the cast. But it's Fey's show and she commands your attention as Liz Lemon, who seems a sensible character with her own weird traits (she's more in love with food than anything). Fey clearly has a good time writing and playing a comedic version of a comedy show's head writer, and her enjoyment is infectious. Watching 30 Rock, you can't help but love Lemon and Fey.

Three moments to seek out in this group of episodes: Kenneth's party, which is only seen in brief flashbacks ("Greenzo") but is presented as the most insane gathering on screen yet; the cast singing "Midnight Train To Georgia" ("Episode 210") with Gladys Knight looking on; and Dean Winters' reappearance ("Subway Hero") as Liz' old boyfriend Dennis Duffy, who always provides some of the best moments of the season.

The DVD extras are pretty good and include one particularly special item: Video of the cast performing live in New York (during the writers' strike to raise money for their laid off staff workers). This was a very cool undertaking on its own, and for fans to be able to see this stuff demonstrates the dedication to the show's audience. Also, linger on the menu for the bonus material and you will hear the full audio for "Werewolf Bar Mitzvah."

30 Rock is the best and smartest comedy show in many years. If you're not watching it, you're really missing something. Tune in to the show in its third season and play catch up with these season two discs.

More info: 30 Rock - Official NBC Site
The 10 Best Moments From 30 Rock
Mind Grapes: A 30 Rock Fan Site

DVD Review: Battlestar Galactica Season 3

2008-04-07T16:55:00.008-05:00

Ronald D. Moore's Battlestar Galactica is The Sopranos of science fiction.

More than just another well-made genre program, Galactica has changed the landscape for science fiction and given viewers something they've never seen before, and done so in a way that transcends the genre and is as mature - and as brutal - as what David Chase did with The Sopranos.

The original 1978 program was fun, and remains charming in a nostalgic way. But the original was fairly shallow; the characters weren't well-developed and despite the life-and-death premise of the show (a small group of survivors from a holocaust search for salvation), the mood on the show never seemed very dire. Of course, at the time, Galactica was made to cater to the 11-year-old Star Wars fans who were being merchandised to on a scale no one had ever seen before.

Enter Ronald D. Moore, one of the best writers to come out of the many Star Trek series. His work on The Next Generation and Deep Space Nine created a new standard for science fiction television, and even genre feature films often could not match the complexity and depth of the episodes he wrote. (Trek, especially Deep Space Nine, produced a wealth of great writers; DS9 is the best example of the potential of Gene Roddenberry's universe.) Moore took the original Galactica concept by Glen A. Larsen and developed it into a post-9/11 world. It's impossible to look at the show and not consider and re-consider the events of the world in the past several years. Like his hero Roddenberry, Moore has made a science-fiction show that is about now, but crafted in such a way that its stories are universal. Forty years from now, audiences will still be turning to this show for insight.

The third season of Galactica turns modern history on its head. Humans ("the good guys" - or not?) resort to suicide bombings as their land is occupied. They execute their own when they feel betrayed. They steal elections when they feel it's in the best interests of the people. They eliminate civil rights when they feel it's for the greater good. They torture prisoners. And all the while, they live in tough conditions and find themselves drinking too much and having too much sex.

In Edward James Olmos, the cast has its father figure and the show has its anchor. It would be hard to imagine a more world-weary figure than Olmos, whose presence brings the show the same kind of respectability Patrick Stewart brought to The Next Generation. Katee Sackoff plays Starbuck, and brings a rogue element to the show that the original show wanted but was never willing to go far enough to get. James Callis plays the traitor Baltar and brings humor, sadness and brilliance to the part. Among the supporting characters, it is Michael Hogan's Tigh - a throwaway character on the original show - who is the show's most remarkable player. He grips the audience in every scene he is in, and brings several dimensions to the show.

Universal's DVD sets have always left a lot to be desired. The DVDs of the original program were of the double-sided variety, which caused a lot of unplayable discs to arrive in customers' sets. The new show's DVDs have been pretty good. The transfers are nice, the sound is good and the extras are interesting. Even if you are not one to listen to commentaries, give Moore's podcasts a try, and don't forget to watch Executive Producer David Eick's video blogs - always interesting and frequently hilarious stuff. But is it really too much to ask of Universal to include scene selection menus on the discs?

If you're a fan of the show, be assured that the third season won't let you down. The four-part season opener (including the series highpoint Exodus, Parts 1 and 2) is worth the price of admission alone. If you've never seen it, start with the mini-series (included on the Season One DVD set) and go from there. Don't let the term "science fiction" stop you either; there are no bug-eyed aliens or talking muppets. This is serious stuff for an adult audience. Before long, you'll understand why the show is being labeled the best show on television -- a title that not long ago belonged to those guys from New Jersey.

More info: Galactica Sitrep: News, Interviews and Opinions
Ronald D. Moore Blog
SciFi.com: Battlestar Galactica Official Site

The Best Films of 2007

2008-02-19T15:32:00.012-05:00

Once again, it's time for Oscar, and time to examine the best in movies in 2007. We caution again that all critical lists are subjective, so let's not take it too seriously. Our favorite films of the year are either on DVD, or are coming, as noted.

1. Enchanted. A Walt Disney picture that both sends up and celebrates the classic Disney film formula has to be a winner. Amy Adams - who was absolutely robbed of an Oscar nomination - carries this movie and makes it work. No other performance this year - not even Daniel Day-Lewis in There Will Be Blood, which is one of the great movie performances in recent memory - was as essential to a film. And anyone who's ever spent time in Central Park will appreciate the movie's show-stopping "That's How You Know," since you can almost seeing it happening with New Yorkers in a good mood. Any film that lets you see the enchanted village alive in the heart of the Big Apple is deserving of your time. Susan Sarandon plays the wicked queen with glee, and James Marsden lets us see that all those Disney princes are about as exciting as the Flanders kids from The Simpsons. On DVD March 18.

2. Zodiac. David Fincher's best film to date. More than a movie about the notorious Zodiac killer from decades past (about whom numerous movies and movie characters have been based), this captures the late 60s-early 70s era and works as a procedural and a thriller. No other images on the big screen this year were as terrifying or as chilling as the scene with broad-daylight murders at the lake. Great work by Mark Ruffalo, Robert Downey Jr. and Jake Gyllenhall. On DVD now.

3. Michael Clayton. The only Best Picture nominee on our list. The movie develops interesting characters as it tells a larger story about corporate shenanigans. Great performances by George Clooney, Tilda Swinton and Tom Wilkinson highlight a film that seems like a long-lost cousin of the best dramas of the 70s, like Network, Serpico, and All the President's Men. On DVD now.

4. Ratatouille. At this point in time, we can still say that Pixar has yet to make a bad movie. In fact, they've made nothing but great movies. If Brad Bird - director of The Incredibles and The Iron Giant, both classics - can make a concept like this work (a rat makes delicious food), you know there are more great films to come. The animation is brilliant and will look even better when you get it home on those high-def TVs. On DVD now.

5. In the Valley of Elah. Much was written this year about how audiences didn't turn out for war-themed pictures, and this one got lost in the bunch. No box office smash, Elah was the best of them. Tommy Lee Jones - in one of the best performances of his career - plays the father of a murdered Iraq war veteran who decides to uncover what happened to his boy. Charlize Theron continues her streak of choosing great, unconventional parts. The movie's last sequence is the kind of social commentary that has been missing from movies for 30 years. On DVD now.

6. The Simpsons Movie. From the show that premiered nineteen years ago comes a movie that proves dedication to satire and wit can bring longevity. Matt Groening's characters really made the big screen their own, busting out of those tiny boxes in living rooms around the world. The animation is beautiful and way beyond what you're seeing on the small screen. The panoramic views of Alaska are worthy of the best Disney animation, while the satire is worthy of Mel Brooks at his best. On DVD now.

7. American Gangster. Ridley Scott's epic put Denzel Washington and Russell Crowe - arguably the best two actors working today - against each other, with great results. A subtle performance from Crowe, and a broad one from Washington, in a true crime story about one of Harlem's biggest drug dealers of the 1970s. On DVD now.

8. Superbad. The best comedy of the year. The humor was often crude, but the film still managed to pull out a story about friendship and innocence that we never saw in the crude movies of old. This is not a successor to Porky's, but rather is in line with Judd Apatow's great comedies of the past few years, including The 40-Year-Old Virgin and this year's Knocked Up. Michael Cera - also good this year in Juno - and Jonah Hill are the buddies who are trying to - what else? - get beer and meet girls. And if you think that sounds like a movie you've seen a hundred times before, you haven't met McLovin. On DVD now.

9. Blades of Glory. One of Will Ferrell's best efforts, and that's saying a lot. Jon Heder co-stars as Ferrell's ice-skating competitor in a comedy that (finally!) doesn't feel like one more Saturday Night Live skit gone too long. Great dialogue, hilarious stunts, and a wicked turn by Amy Poehler and Will Arnet as a slimy brother-and-sister skating team. On DVD now.

10. Live Free Or Die Hard. Who would have thought that the granddaddy of the modern action movie still had it? But Bruce Willis brings John McClane back to life after 12 years, and we can see why he's still welcome. Perhaps of the best of the average-guy characters in action films, McClane once again finds himself in situations worse than anyone could imagine. Justin Long is terrific as a geeky sidekick, with one-liners as funny as McClane. Parts of the film strain credibility even for a Die Hard movie, but this is perhaps the only sequel (in a year bursting at the seams with them) that didn't disappoint. On DVD now.

More info: Best Movies of 2007 by Kurt Loder
The Year's 10 Best Films and Other Shenanigans by Roger Ebert
Peter Travers' Best and Worst Movies of 2007

DVD Review: The Man From U.N.C.L.E. - The Complete Series

2008-01-17T16:12:00.000-05:00

One year after dazzling DVD fans with the release of Get Smart: The Complete Series (see review here), Time Life has done it again with another '60s spy series with similar elements of adventure, humor and style: The Man From U.N.C.L.E.

At a time when U.S. aggression has made it very unpopular around the world, U.N.C.L.E. resonates, as its characters aren't trying to make the world safe for just American interests, but rather for those of the world. (The "U.N." in the title is no mistake.) The main characters are an American and a Russian - backgrounds that should have made for bitter enemies during the Cold War of 1964 (when the show premiered), but instead made for great working partners and friendship. The message then, as now, is that if these men can work together, anyone can, and everyone has interests that are greater than those of nationalism.

The United Network Command for Law & Enforcement is the organization that employs Napolean Solo (Robert Vaughn) and Ilya Kuryakin (David McCallum), and sends them to all corners of the globe in matters of espionage and intrigue. Vaughn and McCallum bring a lot to the series, and they were among the first on television to have cult followings. Watching these episodes, it's easy to see why. Both men have a charm and a sophisication that's evident. But their characters aren't flawless: Solo gets tripped up on occasion by emotional attachments, and Kuryakin is sometimes overconfident.

Much has been made of the fact that the show's best episodes were in the first and second seasons, and that the third season descended into camp. While it is true that the third season has weaker moments and made more attempts at humor, it is fun in its own way. The fourth, shortened season does its best to return the show to its roots. Whatever shortfalls it may have had, U.N.C.L.E. can sit proudly among its '60s spy counterparts: The Avengers, Secret Agent/Danger Man, I Spy, Get Smart and The Prisoner.

Time Life's set contains just about everything a fan of the show could ask for: clean, crisp transfers, hours and hours of bonus materials, and a cool - if not very convenient - package that puts all four season sets inside a briefcase. With complete series sets of U.N.C.L.E. and Get Smart under its belt, Time Life is going to have to work extra hard to impress fans with their offering for 2008. (Perhaps the long-missing-on-DVD Batman, with Adam West, could fit the bill; getting it out of rights hell alone would be a heroic feat.)

The Man From U.N.C.L.E.- The Complete Series is highly recommended.

More info: The Fans From U.N.C.L.E.

The Man From U.N.C.L.E. Episode Guide

'60s Spy-Jinks In U.N.C.L.E.

DVD Review: Tom Petty & The Heartbreakers - Runnin' Down A Dream

2007-10-24T01:19:00.000-05:00

There are few rock musicians whose careers have had the vitality of Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers. There are even fewer that have withstood the pitfalls of life in the music business for more than 30 years and stayed on top of it.

In Peter Bogdanovich's new film Runnin' Down a Dream, the story of Petty and the Heartbreakers is laid out over four hours, from very humble beginnings in Gainesville, Florida, in the mid-1970s, to superstardom by the early 1980s, to changing the way the record industry does business, to battles with drugs and alcohol, becoming contemporaries with their heroes, to being one of the last bands standing that still remain true to the mission they set out for themselves all those years ago.

Runnin' Down a Dream is both exhaustive and exhilarating. Unlike many rock and roll stories, much of the drama and changes in Petty's keeps coming up to the present day. Which is not to suggest they ever had it easy - battles with the record company started as soon as the band was hitting it big, and twice Petty held his ground and changed the way business was done. The first time, he was seeking independence for himself and his songwriting, not unlike Bruce Springsteen's fabled battles with his former manager, and the second time, he held ground on increases in record prices. Petty wouldn't allow his label to institute an industry-wide price increase on the back of his band's latest highly anticipated release, a battle he won in 1981.

Petty and his bandmates - most notably Mike Campbell, Benmont Tench and Stan Lynch - are forthcoming in this documentary. While the purpose of the film is to celebrate their achievements, it's no puff piece; all the warts and scars are here in plain view, such as Petty and Lynch's disagreements which led to Lynch being fired from the band, the hurt feelings and bitterness over Petty's solo work, and various members' use of drugs, including the death of longtime bassist Howie Epstein in 2003.

The film contains interviews with music industry pros, such as Rick Rubin and Jimmy Iovine (two of the most important players in the business, both of whom produced records for Petty), and other Hall of Fame artists, like George Harrison, Roger McGuinn, Stevie Nicks and Jackson Browne. The band's growth is seen in their collaborations with legends like Bob Dylan and Johnny Cash. Each time the band goes through a period of working with their heroes, you can see them come out different. The film tracks them going from one phase to the next, throughout their career, and the evolution is evident.

One of the most amazing surprises in the movie is the amount of previously unseen footage, very often in the most unlikely of places. The interrogation room in a German airport where the band is questioned on their first tour of Europe? It's here. In the studio with Stevie Nicks recording "Stop Draggin' My Heart Around"? Yup. Recording with Johnny Cash? Check. Fly-on-the-wall stuff at the famed sessions for the Traveling Wilburys? You got it. There's even footage from a meeting with a pissed-off Petty, McGuinn and the A&R man from his record label, who is trying to get them to record a song Petty thinks is a stinker.

The picture that is presented is one of a band - not a group of musicians who have simply played together for a long time, but rather a unified band. There are several times as their story unfolds that you realize the band wouldn't have made it but for Petty's foresight, Campbell's skill, or Tench's tenacity. Credit also goes to original bassist Ron Blair, who (perhaps unknowingly) prevents the band's undoing after Epstein's death by rejoining after 20 years out of the music business. Throughout it all, the music is a constant, as is the band's dedication to it.

Strangely, the distribution for this film is at odds with its subject matter. How is it that the man who held the line against corporate greed when it wanted to increase his album prices by $1 can have the DVD of this film sold exclusively at Best Buy? That action is plainly inconsistent with what we come away from the film knowing about Petty.

That aside, the film itself is one of the great rock and roll documentaries. It may be in excess of four hours, but you'll find yourself not wanting it to end, just to see Petty and his bandmates triumph over adversity and play those great songs from their legendary songbook.

More info: Mudcrutch Farm

Tom Petty & The Heartbreakers: Official Web Site

Interview With Peter Bogdonavich About The Film

DVD Review: Studio 60 On The Sunset Strip - The Complete Series

2007-10-23T03:11:00.000-05:00

In the opening segment of the pilot for Studio 60 On The Sunset Strip, Judd Hirsch plays a producer of a late-night live comedy sketch show who is arguing with a standards and practices guy (a censor) over a skit; he's ordered to pull a sketch that the censor says might be offensive to some people. Enraged, he bursts on to the set when the show goes live and gives a Network-style diatribe over what's wrong with television in general. "This show used to be cutting edge social and political satire!" he says, and the point is made: Studio 60, from the outset, was to be just that, and wanted to be smart, relevant television - the kind we rarely see anymore.

And it was.

For 22 episodes, Studio 60 was among the very best things on television. No, it wasn't always funny - it wasn't supposed to be. But audience expectations are vital to how the show is perceived, and when viewers saw a show about a late-night comedy sketch show that wasn't a comedy, the fix was in. Nevermind that NBC never gave the show its due: It was burdened with a crappy timeslot from the beginning (Mondays at 10pm, opposite Monday Night Football) and followed a show that - while popular - didn't appeal to the same audience (Heroes). By the time NBC pulled the series and brought it back to burn off the rest of its episodes on Thursdays, the decision had already been made to kill it.

As a result, the smartest show on TV since The West Wing went away, and signaled the rest of the studios that smart TV - that is, TV that doesn't flinch from controversial topics and which keeps social and political satire alive - wasn't viable. Aaron Sorkin, who created both Studio 60 and The West Wing, fought the good battle.

Like NBC's 30 Rock (see below), Studio 60 was an outstanding show that just happened to be about a late-night comedy program. But where 30 Rock brings the audience that satire in 21 minutes of nonstop comedy brillance, Studio 60 presented a complex set of characters through which viewers could see their own culture. Any show about TV producers that can present meaningful commentary about the war in Iraq, the religious right's culture wars and other timely topics is one that can turn any issue on its head and make it fresh.

In what some will see as another sign of the show's doomed-from-the-start bad luck, it starred Matthew Perry, who was excellent in his role as the show's executive producer and head writer, but who brought with him the baggage of Friends. That this show didn't get renewed is sure to bring up the "Friends curse," which is the same as the "Seinfeld curse," referring to stars of former sitcoms starting new projects that fail. But anyone who saw half an episode would know that Perry leaves Chandler in the dust. The guy is capable of so much more than Friends (which was a good sitcom) would ever allow.

The rest of the cast was also great. Bradley Whitford, just off of The West Wing, played Perry's partner and co-executive producer. He also brought a dimension to his character that wasn't present in Josh Lyman, the White House aide he played for seven years. Amanda Peet, Steven Weber, D.L. Hughley, Timothy Busfield and Nathan Corddry all had moments to shine in the series, but it was Sarah Paulson, playing Perry's ex-girlfriend and the show's lone Christian player, who really jumped off the screen and stole every scene she was in. Her character and Perry's fought constantly, were on opposite sides of most issues and had a history of hurt between them, but the actors made their relationship credible and honest.

Back in the 1970s, when his show Star Trek was flourishing in syndication, creator Gene Roddenberry was asked about the competition from another show that was seen as similiar, Space: 1999. Rather than play to the horse race that the press loves to generate, Roddenberry said he thought the fans were lucky, because they got to watch two good shows, if they wanted.

Sadly, fans of 30 Rock and Studio 60 no longer have that option.

More info: Studio 60 Titles and Airdates Guide

Studio 60 Doesn't Take Comedy Seriously

Welcome To Studio 60

DVD Review: 30 Rock - Season One

2007-10-11T16:13:00.000-05:00

Much has been made of the fact that NBC launched two series last year that dealt with fictitious Saturday Night Live-type programs, Aaron Sorkin's Studio 60 On The Sunset Strip, and Tina Fey's 30 Rock. Both were excellent programs that deserved to survive. Sorkin's didn't, but fortunately for audiences, Fey's did and went on to win the Emmy for Best Comedy Series last month.

The first season of 30 Rock recalls the great HBO series The Larry Sanders Show in the way it presents a behind-the-scenes view of a variety program, as well as NBC's sitcom classic Seinfeld in the way it presents a variety of eccentric characters who may work in television but act like normal folks going to work everyday. You'd never know Fey's Liz Lemon was running a live comedy show every week by the way she dresses, the food she eats, the movies she enjoys and the men she dates. Fey is hilariously uncomfortable in her own skin, and her conflict between the creative and corporate aspects of her life are at the heart of the show.

Alec Baldwin, long an SNL host, won a Golden Globe for his portrayal of the corporate executive that has taken a liking to Lemon and her staff but who also wants to mold the show with his corporate vision, which includes GE ovens. Baldwin's character Jack Donaghy is exactly the type to showcase how corporations have seeped into every surface of our lives.

Tracy Morgan, another SNL vet who is memorable even from small parts, such as in Jay and Silent Bob Strike Back, gives his character of Tracy Jordan his raging best. Jordan is certifiably crazy, but Lemon has had him forced onto her show by Jack, in an effort to boost ratings. In one episode, Lemon's white guilt brings her to ask Jordan if he can read. Seeing an opportunity to cut out of work early every day to get "tutoring," Jordan asserts "I can't read, Liz Lemon!" In another episode, he invites his co-workers to a party on board a yacht -- one he doesn't own.

The rest of the cast is outstanding as well. Jane Krakowski's Jenna is vain and clueless. Her attempt to convince her boss she's only 29, and her ploys to get what she wants by using her "sexuality," make for a number of embarrassing - and very funny - moments. Jack McBrayer's Kenneth is an innocent farmboy working in the big city, and through him, we see everyone else's faults. Baldwin's Jack becomes fascinated by Kenneth, someone so pure that it upsets the balance at the top of the corporate ladder.

There have been plenty of great guest-stars as well, adding to the show's fun. (The second season opener featured Jerry Seinfeld.) Isabella Rossellini did a couple of great guest spots in season one, much better (and more substantial) than her appearance on Friends all those years ago.

The show's writing has been as consistent and as funny as the best sitcoms - and you could hardly expect less from Fey, one of SNL's best writers in its 30-year history. It's also a very smart show - listen to the references that are thrown in (Jack tells Liz he's busy one night, attending "Ann Coulter's 60th birthday party").

The show's longevity is not assured however, and this second year will establish it or not. But as the Season One DVD collection demonstrates, this is a show as good as anything that has come before it, and which deserves to finish out in style - say, maybe seven or eight years from now.

More info: 30 Rock: Official Network Site

Variety: 30 Rock Review

30 Rock Lives, and Tina Fey Laughs

DVD Review: The Fugitive - Season 1, Vol. 1

2007-08-22T14:01:00.000-05:00

Decades before Harrison Ford was exciting audiences as Dr. Richard Kimble, The Fugitive was a thoughtful, adventurous and very different dramatic series on television. Starring David Janssen in the title role, the show broke new ground on TV by not presenting a sanitized version of life in America - only The Twilight Zone (with which it shares some music) did the same.

Janssen looked part Sean Connery and part John Kennedy as he moved from town to town, trying to escape the lawman intent on tracking him down (Barry Morse, later of Space: 1999 fame) and trying to find the one-armed man whom he believes killed his wife, a crime for which the innocent Dr. Kimble has been sentenced to die. The show visited different places and characters every week, making it nearly as much of an anthology show as The Twilight Zone.

This first volume of the series covers 15 episodes from the initial 1963-1964 season. Many fans dislike these piecemeal releases of their favorite shows, but with so many shows abandoned by studios due to poor sales, whatever works. And as long as the episodes continue to look as good as they do in this set, fans should be pleased. The Fugitive was filmed in glorious black and white (until its fourth season when it switched to color), and the mood it sets helps the storyline. The images are crisp and clear, especially for a program that is nearly 45 years old.

The show had wonderful guest stars, such as Brian Keith and Vera Miles in the first episode and Robert Duvall and Susan Oliver in the two-part "Never Wave Goodbye." Janssen himself won a Golden Globe for his role in the series, and was nominated three times for an Emmy.

The show, with its JFK-inspired hero, premiered a short time before Kennedy's assassination. It was appropriate, however, that The Fugitive showed us the dark side of America, of a place where innocent, good men were kept away from their families, their callings and from the lives they should have been able to lead. In many ways, America is still running to return to that time. For those that haven't forgotten and who hold the promise of what could have been, The Fugitive is a landmark, and a document of the journey.

More info: Homepage of the Hunted: The Unofficial Website of The Fugitive
The David Janssen Archive

High-Definition War Gets Nasty

2007-08-20T14:39:00.000-05:00

Today's announcement by Paramount and DreamWorks that they will support the HD-DVD format in the high-def wars means a longer wait for fans who want to adopt one format without another in the market. The superiority of Blu-Ray in the marketplace (and in most critics' opinions) didn't stop Microsoft from throwing around $150 million to Paramount and DreamWorks for "promotional considerations" -- which is just doubletalk for a bribe.

Bill Hunt of The Digital Bits has summed up this development better than we can and we encourage everyone to read Bill's piece from today.

A few months ago, a friend asked me what the deal was with the high-def format war. I did my best to tell him and to explain why I thought Blu-Ray was the better of the two, and why market forces seemed to be favoring Blu-Ray, making HD-DVD the next BetaMax. But my friend said something interesting: He said "Which one does Microsoft support? Because whichever one Microsoft supports will win."

I don't think HD-DVD will end up winning, unless Microsoft can afford to buy off every movie studio in the world. Everyone is in this game to make money, but there's doubt that Microsoft is supporting HD-DVD because they believe in that product. Their interest is in the XBox Live download service, so it's logical that they want to keep the high-def market in flux as long as they can.

Tellingly, the announcement today from Paramount and DreamWorks does not include films by Steven Speilberg, whose film Close Encounters of the Third Kind was recently announced as coming to high-definition DVD -- on Blu-Ray. Perhaps Speilberg is just staying out of this ugly mess, or perhaps he doesn't believe in the format Paramount is adopting. It's entirely possible Paramount doesn't believe in it either, but $150 million is a lot of money to pass up when waved under your nose.

The losers in all this are the fans of movies and high-definition technology. As high-def widescreen televisions keep coming down in price, more and more people are able to enjoy them. But for the time being, it looks like they're going to get their high-def content from HD channels. Could this spell the eventual demise of the DVD format - high-def, standard or otherwise? Time will tell, of course, but killing the most popular consumer product ever is going to end up as blood on someone's shoes - and today Microsoft is holding the smoking gun.

More info: Paramount To Drop Blu-Ray
What is Blu-Ray?
HD-DVD

DVD Review: Babylon 5: The Lost Tales

2007-08-17T14:23:00.000-05:00

Babylon 5 is one of the great science-fiction properties ever, right up there with Star Trek, Star Wars, (the new) Battlestar Galactica and others. The five-year run that Babylon 5 had on television is also a singular achievement in TV history - without its 110 episodes of a serialized novel for television, there might be no Lost or other must-tune-in-every-week shows.

A feature film seemed inevitable at some point, and one may yet be in the offing, but now comes what is likely the first in a series of "Lost Tales" DVD releases (in bonus features, reference is made to shooting "these DVDs"; this volume is subtitled "Voices in the Dark"). This one stars Bruce Boxleitner and Tracy Scoggins from the series and Peter Woodward from the spinoff Crusade. It's a mixed bag, really, with the first half of the program being a fairly generic supernatural possession story, and the second half a more satisfying adventure into the character of the show's lead.

Scoggins is back as Lochley, a character we never got to know very well in the show's fifth season, but who acquitted herself well into an already established series. She is thrust into determining a supernatural menace and calling for aid from the Catholic Church, which sends her a priest. Alan Scarfe has some nice moments as a skeptical, realistic man of the cloth. His commanding voice reminds us of appearances he made as a Romulan leader in Star Trek: The Next Generation. But there isn't enough of a personal stake in this part of the story, and Lochley simply shows herself to be the smart leader we already knew she was.

Boxleitner's return as John Sheridan comes off much better. Shown a vision of the future by Woodward's Galen, Sheridan confronts a question that has fascinated men for generations: If you could kill a genocidal maniac before he commits the terrible acts we know he will, would you? Boxleitner appears to relish the role and his time in it. He's the best thing about the entire program.

The show uses a lot of CGI effects, and technology has improved since the days of the show, which makes for some beautiful footage in space. Some of the interior shots fare less well, with the actors appearing to be standing or sitting in empty rooms, but that's a minor quibble and one as much due to a lack of camera movement as anything. But the station and the spacecraft have never looked better.

J. Michael Straczynski, creator of the show, wrote and directed, and his abilities are as strong as ever. Unlike Gene Roddenberry, who had less of a hands-on approach with Star Trek as the years went on, Straczynski has remained the driving force behind the show, and it remains very much his vision.

Hopefully, The Lost Tales will continue, and will explore the other great characters of the show - Londo, Lennier, Garibaldi, Marcus, Ivanova, Delenn and others, including the cast of Crusade, which was cancelled by TNT before it had a chance to develop. If The Lost Tales allows Crusade to wrap up in some fashion, it will make many fans happy. Of course, if a feature film ever happens and Straczynski can take advantage of a bigger budget and tell a more epic story, Babylon 5 may reach an even wider audience.

For now, though, this volume of The Lost Tales is a worthwhile effort, and a welcome visit to one of the great alternative universes of imagination.

More info: Babylon 5: Official Site
The Lurker's Guide To Babylon 5
Crusade: The TNT/JMS Saga

DVD Review: Fantastic Voyage

2007-07-17T15:45:00.000-05:00

Watching science-fiction films that were once state-of-the-art is a great way to assess the technological advances that have been made. In a field that makes leaps and bounds every few years, a movie that's just a few years old can look quaint -- or cheesy, depending on your point of view. Some of the truly great films retain a classic look, such as Forbidden Planet, and the best of the bunch also keep the sense of wonder that they first inspired, such as 2001.

Fantastic Voyage, released in 1966, still has some of that wonder, even if you can see the seams in the photographic effects that were used. The film concerns the trip of a miniaturized exploration vessel through the human body, and unlike 1987's Innerspace, which it inspired, this is not played for laughs. Instead, it's deadly serious, as the man through whom the team is traveling is a Cold War defector whose cooperation is essential to the cause of freedom. In that regard, the film is of its time, when spies and espionage dominated the culture.

One of the five crew members on the mini-ship is a spy, determined that the others will not accomplish their mission of removing a blood clot from a very sensitive spot in the defector's brain. The movie gives you reason to doubt just about everyone in the cast, and you find yourself thinking any one of them could be a saboteur.

Much is made of Raquel Welch's appearance in the film as a scientist's assistant. Some of the sexist comments made at her expense ("A girl has no place on this mission!") underscore the fact that the womens' liberation movement was still gathering steam in 1966. She isn't given much to do, other than move about in tight outfits. To her credit, her character doesn't become the damsel in distress and doesn't scream when confronted with icky challenges.

Donald Pleasance has a nice appearance as one of the scientists on the mission, providing some conflict with the others on how to achieve their mission. Following this film, Pleasance would go on to movie history as Ernst Stavro Blofeld in the 1967 James Bond adventure You Only Live Twice. Stephen Boyd is good as the central hero to the film, and the government agent sent along to make sure things go smoothly. (Boyd would pass away suddenly about ten years after this movie.)

The new DVD special edition of the movie from 20th Century Fox is a nice addition. The film is presented in anamorphic widescreen, although the pictures and colors aren't quite as sharp as one might expect. This is not necessarily a function of age, since many of the films from this period look stunning on DVD, although it could be related to difficulties in transferring the photographic effects, which still look impressive more than 40 years later.

The bonus materials on the disc are worthwhile, including commentaries, a 17-minute documentary, an independent music score by Leonard Rosenman, a photo gallery that includes posters and lobby cards, and trailers and TV spots for the film.

Fantastic Voyage may not have the cultural impact of Planet of the Apes or Star Wars, but the film is a predecessor to them and one of the best science fiction adventure films. It avoids the spectacle and bombast of the modern-day blockbuster, but creates a sense of wonder, excitement and intrigue that make a great viewing experience and a worthy addition to any film library.

More info: Fantastic Voyage: Nanotechnology

Fantastic Voyage Screenplay by Harry Kleiner

Fantastic Voyage Mistakes, Goofs & Bloopers

DVD Review: Bruce Springsteen with The Sessions Band - Live in Dublin

2007-06-14T15:01:00.000-05:00

It's been said there are only two kinds of people in the world: Those who like Bruce Springsteen and those who've never seen him perform live. Springsteen's been one of the greatest of rock and roll performers for nearly 40 years, and has been said to be one of rock's "last true believers." Live in Dublin captures the end of his 2006 tour with The Seeger Sessions Band, with whom he recorded last year's album of folk standards, and while his concerts have always had a strong element of fun in them, his music has never sounded as joyous.

Backed by a band even bigger than his fabled E Street Band, Springsteen recasts many of his own tunes in a Cajun folky flavor, and the results are great: "Open All Night" (this is the first live version ever released) swings like you never thought it could; "Further On (Up The Road)," a rocker from his 2002 album The Rising, has a playfulness never even hinted at before; and "Long Time Coming," an acoustic number on 2005's Devils and Dust, gains from the polished ensemble behind him. Springsteen wrote an original on the tour, "American Land," which is among his finest songs of the last 20 years. It's the history of American immigration for the past 100 years, condensed into four minutes and change.

But it's the old standards which are the stand-outs here. Springsteen manages to simultaneously pay homage to his roots (musical, political and personal) while breaking new musical ground -- not a small feat for someone who has been at this since Nixon was president. "O Mary Don't You Weep" showcases the band at its most cohesive and most fun. Damned if you don't find yourself swinging your arms and dancing to a song about Moses parting the Red Sea and Pharaoh's army getting drowned. "Eyes on the Prize" is every bit as soulful as one would expect. "Jacob's Ladder" is a show-stopper and a declaration of purpose for this band and this tour.

Some songs here weren't included on the We Shall Overcome album, and it's good news for us that Springsteen has expanded the repertoire. "This Little Light of Mine" - which many know as a children's song - is a rocking show-closer, every bit as powerful as "Rosalita" ever was. "When the Saints Go Marching In" is recast as a prayer, in a slow, solemn take. Even a more obscure song like "Love of the Common People" will stay with you for days after you hear it.

Don't let the joyous sounds fool you though - this is no light-hearted affair. Springsteen's politics are front and center as always, and the passion he pours into these songs show how serious he is. "Mrs. McGrath" is an age-old protest of war mongering, "Eyes on the Prize" intentionally recalls the Civil Rights movement, "American Land" speaks to how the USA treats its immigrants, and Springsteen's updated version of "How Can a Poor Man Stand Such Times and Live" is an indictment of the Bush administration and its attitude toward the role of government, which caused its failures following Hurricane Katrina.

The show is available as a DVD, a double audio CD, a Blu-Ray disc, and in a CD-DVD combo. The audio quality of the CD is great, but the multi-channel sound on the DVD is the way to go. (Springsteen hasn't yet followed Neil Young's example and put out just one package with everything in it.) The DVD video has less of the annoying quick cuts that plagued his Live in Barcelona release (and which destroyed Paul McCartney's Back in the U.S. film). The video has sufficient close-ups and wider band shots to make you feel you were at the show, from the front row to the back of the theater.

There is also a PBS donation bonus audio CD that is worth tracking down for the Sessions Band's version of "My City of Ruins." It also includes great versions of "The Ghost of Tom Joad," "For You," "Johnny 99," and what surely must be Springsteen's favorite concert song (because he never stops playing it) "Bobby Jean. "

Live in Dublin is a great document of a unique period in Springsteen's career. You won't find audience members pumping their fists or wearing any stupid bandannas, and you won't hear these songs on the ever-increasingly lame rock radio, but you will be moved to your feet by a man and a band that bring out the best in our collective histories.

More info: The Songs of the Seeger Sessions by Matt Orel
Backstreets' Jersey News Turnpike
We Shall Overcome Liner Notes by Dave Marsh

DVD Review: That 70s Show Season 6

2007-05-16T18:46:00.000-05:00

That 70s Show followed the example of the great Richard Linklater film Dazed and Confused the way Happy Days followed American Graffiti. That 70s Show didn't include any of the same actors from the movie, but the setting was very similar: Late high school years of a group of friends who encounter not only life lessons but the amusing trends and events of the late 1970s.

The sixth season of the show, which aired in 2003-2004, begins with the gang just graduated from high school and stepping out into the real world. Eric, the show's central character (played by Topher Grace), has decided to postpone college to help out around the house, where his father Red (Kurtwood Smith) has suffered a heart attack and can't work. It's worth noting that Red's heart attack was brought on by his daughter Laurie (Christina Moore, who replaced Lisa Robin Kelly in the role) marrying foreign exchange student Fes (Wilmer Valderrama) so that he could stay in the country since his student visa was set to expire upon his graduation.

Smith's Red Foreman is a rarity on television sitcoms: A father who's not a bumbling idiot. Red is a strong male figure in the show, presenting an old fashioned sense of masculinity that comes from his days as a former soldier in Korea. Contrast him with Bob (Don Stark), the Foremans' next door neighbor, who exhibits all the softness and silly traits that television fathers usually have. Bob also engages in every 70s trend that comes along, from hair perms to swinging to nudism.

The sixth season is interesting because it lets the characters grow out of their high school years and into young adults. In some cases, we see them move on and mature, as Kelso (Ashton Kutcher) joins the police academy and Hyde and Jackie (Danny Masterson, Mila Kunis) end their immature courting rituals and become a couple. Donna (Laura Prepon) starts college, but finds she can't leave Eric behind.

The DVDs do a nice job of representing the show, with clean transfers, promo spots for each episode and a few extra features. This isn't a lavish treatment, like the one given to a show like The Twilight Zone, but it is far better than what was just done for the second season of Happy Days. The DVD package has been made smaller this time around, with two double-disc slim cases inside a sleeve.

That 70s Show is a great program that mixed sharp, funny writing with good characters and a great premise. The show launched the careers of Grace (recently seen in Spider-Man 3, and so good in In Good Company) and Kutcher (who has had several film hits), and did something uncommon for sitcoms of its time: it broke boundaries. How many other shows would have the nerve to have its main teenage characters having sex and smoking pot as much as possible? While the sixth season may not be the show's peak, it is still very good, and this DVD collection is a nice addition.

More info: That 70s Central

Official That 70s Show Site

Dazed & Confused.net

DVD Review: Happy Days Season 2

2007-05-03T20:36:00.000-05:00

When Happy Days premiered in 1974, viewers might have thought it was going to be the television version of the 1973 hit movie American Graffiti by George Lucas. After all, M*A*S*H came to the small screen in 1972 from the feature film of 1970. Happy Days had the same focus on cars and rock and roll from the 1950s that Graffiti did, and it even starred Ron Howard, who played one of Graffiti's central characters. In many ways, the show was the small-screen Graffiti, despite taking place some six years earlier, during the height of the Eisenhauer administration.

The good news was that Happy Days, for the first few years at least, performed admirably. It presented a view of life in 1950s America that was nostalgic for some, albeit not the snapshot in time that Graffiti was of Lucas' California teenage years. Howard played Richie Cunningham, and served at the audience's focus. As he gathered life experience in the show, viewers saw events through his eyes. With his friends Ralph and Potsie and his family (father Howard, mother Marion and sister Joannie), Richie's life was the center of the universe for the show. As time went on, a minor character named Fonzie gained popularity and became the show's star, but in the first two seasons at least, Fonzie was still a supporting character used to give Richie's life more diversity. Howard's Graffiti co-star Cindy Williams (in photo, above) even guest-starred on the show and went on to be one of the leads in the spin-off Laverne & Shirley.

Season 2 is among the show's finest years. There's still an innocence and a novelty to the show that it would lose in later years (such as the infamous "jumping of the shark" event that has gained a cultural significance all it's own). In the 1974-1975 season (which seems to take place in 1955-1956), Richie finds out what it's like to live on his own, have his first car, participate in the ROTC and work for a presidenital campaign. (Unlike his father - who is a Republican supporting Eisenhauer's re-election - Richie supports Democrat Adlai Stevenson. Appropriately enough, in the little-seen sequel More American Graffiti (1979), Howard's character is involved in a 1960s campus protest. )

With all the good humor, good stories and good performances in it, it's a shame to report that Happy Days Season 2 is a disappointment on DVD, at least in its presentation. First, many of the shows have been edited for music (music rights being the biggest hurdle - and cost - for studios) and second, the transfers lack the clarity and sharpness of the show's contemporaries. It just seems that CBS/Paramount didn't put a whole lot of effort into this release, which is truly a shame since the show is a cultural landmark and this is one of its finest collections of episodes.

The studio has set up a bad situation for fans, which is truly a no-win scenario. If fans don't buy Season 2, the studio will conclude that further releases aren't warranted. If fans do buy it, the studio will conclude that securing music rights and using the best transfers aren't necessary to make a sale, and fans will face future lackluster releases. What does one do if they want to see their favorite show continue on DVD but in better quality? Well, for one thing, they can support the releases of programs that are done right, like HBO's recent release of Get Smart, Image Entertainment's definitive Twilight Zone collections, or Disney's releases for Lost. Beyond that, the choice becomes whether to see the show continue with releases like Season 2 of Happy Days, or choose to remember the show in its glory, not with muddy transfers and music substitutions.

Still, Happy Days Season 2 contains a fun program that was operating at the top of its game. Despite this set's problems, fans of the show could do worse than these 23 episodes and the nostalgic, funny portrait it paints of an important decade in American history.

More info: Happy Days: Welcome To Arnold's

American Graffiti Homepage

100 Greatest Rock & Roll Artists of the 1950s

1950s Hot Rods, Customs and Dream Machines

DVD Review: Justice League Unlimited Season 2

2007-03-30T16:15:00.000-05:00

These aren't the cartoons from your childhood. Those were broadcast on Saturday mornings and featured characters that were flawless, bland and always right. When Justice League Unlimited aired on Cartoon Network, it did so after 10 p.m. on Saturday nights. Its characters, while still heroic, are far from always right, and often find themselves correcting mistakes or resolving self-doubts. They exist in as realistic a world as they can with super-powered aliens and satellites with Star Trek-like technology.

Thirty or forty years ago, superheroes were an extension of law enforcement. They seemed to always operate in daylight and in conjuction with the police or the army. They were simply an extension of the authority figures in the real world, and no doubt were written to reinforce a respect for them. They were the "Super Friends," and with their kid sidekicks, they tracked evil down and vanquished it so the world could be safe in time for a sugar-coated cereal breakfast.

Back around the same time, bland comic book characters were getting a make-over. With Dennis O'Neil and Neal Adams, and later Steve Englehart and Marshall Rogers, reinventing Batman as a fearsome creature of the night, the same superheroes that enforced the letter of the law - mostly in daylight - on Super Friends were often breaking the law in comics to realize their own vision of justice. Those creators and more like them in the 70s and 80s begat the film Batman in 1989, with its dark, serious take on the character, which begat the animated series of the 1990s by Bruce Timm and Paul Dini, which might be the best interpretation of the character in its long history.

Timm and Dini also headed up an animated Superman in the 90s, which was also a great reinterpretation of the character. That led to Justice League, and after two seasons, Justice League Unlimited, which allowed them to explore the entire spectrum of the DC universe and all its characters. Hardly any corner of DC's publishing history went unexplored. By the way, this isn't the Justice League of America; rather, it's an organization represented by several nations and more than one planet. It's the League of Nations on a galactic scale.

There's some heavy stuff going on for a cartoon too. A lengthy subplot through much of the series dealt with the government's concern that a group of super-powered beings had banded together to watch over the planet, with a satellite in orbit that could wipe out any portion of it. The government agency and project to discredit the League and its members made for some of the best dramatic moments of the series, not to mention the best conspiracy plots since the days of The X-Files.

You'd hardly expect adult relationships in the midst of the super-people's colored spandex, but they're there. Green Lantern Jon Stewart (a product of comics' reaction to the black power movement) is torn between two different women - one white, one black. Wonder Woman even flirts with Batman and nearly gets him to crack his icy facade. The result of all this is more well-rounded characters who exhibit traits with which viewers could identify. It adds drama to the storylines and intensity to the action.

The Season 2 DVDs look good, as did Season 1. Strangely, although JLU ran for three 13-episode seasons on Cartoon Network, the first 26 episodes were packaged together and labeled "Season 1," while the remaining 13 episodes are here as "Season 2." Whatever the grouping and classification, they're all here and they're as good as you remember them. You might even think the packaging has super-powers of its own, because if you put the thin-designed set on your shelf, it might seem invisible. (The two-disc set is less than half as thick as a standard DVD case.)

If you grew up with the Filmation incarnations of these characters in the 60s (some of which are coming to DVD in June) or the Hanna Barbera-produced Super Friends, you will appreciate the mature, sometimes complex, take on these characters and rich animation from Warner Bros. Throw in a sharp writing team and great voice talents, and you've got some of the best animated shows ever made.

More info: The World's Finest Online
The Big Cartoon Database
The Watchtower

DVD Review: Casino Royale

2007-03-14T18:30:00.001-05:00

It seems that every few years, there's a movie marketing campaign that attempts to boldly proclaim "Bond is back!" as if Ian Fleming's James Bond ever really went away. Many times, when there was a poor to mediocre movie to promote, the exclamation seemed hollow - another attempt to convince audiences that a return to glory was at hand, summoning their fond memories of past Bond films and raising expectations that this new experience would be like those.

How odd -- and how fortunate for audiences -- that the "Bond is back!" claim is not only true this time around, but that in nearly every way, the latest Bond film exceeds expectations.

Casino Royale is the best James Bond movie in more than 40 years. (We recently named it the best film of 2006 at DVD Comment.) Since the high points of the early Sean Connery films (From Russia With Love, Goldfinger, and Thunderball), the films have seen good movies (The Spy Who Loved Me, The Living Daylights) and bad (A View To A Kill, Die Another Day), but Casino Royale reinvents the series for the 21st century and provides a freshness that has been missing for a long time. (Comparisons to the 1967 Casino Royale with David Niven, Peter Sellers and Woody Allen are not even an issue; neither are comparisons to the 1954 TV Casino Royale with Barry Nelson and Peter Lorre.)

That freshness is personified by Daniel Craig, who was inexplicably vilified by fans on the Internet before filming even began. But while every actor since Connery has brought something to the role, Craig is the first since Connery to make the role his own. His take is different from Connery's - as the others' were too - but he almost makes you feel you're seeing James Bond for the first time. If Craig stays with the role long enough, and his films live up to the quality of Casino Royale, his could be the best run in the series. Critical to the series' success will be more serious spy capers and an avoidance of the self-parody that plagued the series in the past. (The first rule of sequels should always be: Respect the source material and don't engage in parody.)

The story is very faithful to the Ian Fleming novel, the first film in decades to be so. This was Fleming's first Bond book, so it is fitting that the movie version showcases Bond's beginnings. The Bond films have only had the loosest of continuities over the years, so it is not particularly upsetting for longtime viewers to see Judi Dench still portraying M, after having done so for the Pierce Brosnan films. She's good in the role, and that's all the justification needed. Eva Green is also good as Vesper Lynd, the Bond girl who manages to avoid most of the Bond girl cliches from the past 40 years.

The DVD of film looks good, but is so lacking in extras that another edition is inevitable in the future, especially for the highest grossing Bond film of all time. A few short featurettes are included, along with Bond Girls Are Forever, an AMC production hosted by former Bond girl Maryam D'Abo (The Living Daylights). This was already released on DVD in a bonus disc that came with the last Bond movie. It isn't a particularly enlightening documentary and lacks the substance that the bonus materials of MGM's Bond DVDs have had in the past. In perhaps the greatest omission in terms of extras, there are no trailers or teasers present (except for other films!).

Still, until an updated DVD is issued (look for it in advance of the next film in 2008), this edition of Casino Royale is worth your time, since the feature film is the main attraction here and it has substance to spare. Not only is James Bond back to his former greatness, but a new generation has the promise of more great films in series. It hasn't been this exciting to be a Bond fan since The Beatles were making new records.

More info: MI6: The Home of James Bond

CommanderBond.net

The James Bond International Fan Club

DVD Review: Neil Young Live At Massey Hall 1971

2007-03-14T17:45:00.000-05:00

The second release in Neil Young's Archive Performance Series, Live at Massey Hall 1971 is a pristine recording that sat in the vaults for 36 years. The Archive series, which has long been promised and the first installment of which was only delivered at the end of 2006, was delayed as long as it was because Young was waiting for technology to catch up with his vision for the series. Massey Hall contains the 17-song setlist on one CD and again on a DVD with a video element.

The DVD has a lot of great extras, in addition to video from the concert and superb audio. There are video clips from the Johnny Cash Show and a 1997 video of Young going through material for the Archives. There's radio interviews with Young talking about some of his new songs, and newspaper clippings of reviews from the period. There are many photos and a timeline as well, all of which make a comprehensive snapshot of Young in the early 1970s.

The Massey Hall show was recorded in January 1971, shortly after the release of After The Gold Rush, considered one of Young's very best albums. In fact, this release reveals that Young's producer, David Briggs, wanted Massey Hall to be the follow-up album to Gold Rush, but Young, who had just recorded many of the songs that would make up Harvest, insisted on going ahead with that album instead. What's amazing is that both men were right: Who could argue with releasing Harvest, one of Young's most celebrated albums and the one which gave him his only #1 hit, "Heart of Gold"? But upon hearing Massey Hall - which includes many of the songs from Harvest that made their debut at this show and on the tour from which it came - you can see it being as strong an addition to the Neil Young canon. "On the Way Home," "Tell Me Why," "Journey Through the Past," "There's a World," and "Ohio" are highlights of the set, as is "A Man Needs a Maid/Heart of Gold Suite" which combines two songs from the Harvest album. It's also somewhat refreshing to hear a four-minute version of "Down By The River," which can often reach double that length on live albums.

The video of the concert is a little muddy, as many 36-year-old films are wont to be, but it is no less a gripping visual document of the show. The concert footage is cut with video of the venue and of other locations, such as Young's ranch, which he talks about in reference to "Old Man" and the caretaker the song is about. More intriguing though is the use of the DVD format as a method of archiving. Including those newspaper reviews, pictures, radio interviews and the like shows how encompassing the format can be, and Young is exploring the possibilities. (Indeed, the first box set in the Archive series, set for release in 2007, includes 2 DVDs and 8 CDs, plus a large book.)

Massey Hall remains a great document of a great artist. This is Neil Young at his acoustic best (which is not to dismiss such fine works that followed as Comes A Time, Old Ways, Harvest Moon, Silver and Gold and even the recent Prairie Wind) with the songs that made his solo career get off to such a memorable start. It's historic as part of the artist's past and where he was going at a fertile point in his development, and deserves a place in any Neil Young fan's collection.

More info: Thrasher's Wheat: Neil Young News

Hyperrust.org: The Unofficial Neil Young Pages

Living With War Today

DVD Review: Borat

2007-03-07T13:57:00.000-05:00

High five! Borat: Cultural Learnings of America for Make Benefit Glorious Nation of Kazakhstan is the kind of comedy that movie audiences haven't seen since the high points in Peter Sellers' career. Yes, it's funny as hell; it's also subversive, and more than a little ingenious.

For those that don't know, Sacha Baron Cohen's Borat Sagdiyev is a journalist from Kazakhstan who travels to America to make a documentary film. The clash of his culture and ours is a riot, and it showcases American ignorance, perhaps best exemplified by the racist, sexist college kids that Borat travels with in the film. Or perhaps it's the man in charge of the rodeo, who tells Borat in no uncertain terms what he'd like to see happen to homosexuals if he were in charge. There's any number of examples, really. (Seeing any resemblance to Dr. Strangelove: Or How I Learned To Stop Worrying And Love The Bomb yet?)

Cohen's point doesn't seem to be a mean-spirited one, despite the many lawsuits that have popped up in the film's wake, alleging he duped people into acting stupid. Using satire, he's shining a light on the ugly parts of society and laughing at them at the same time he's pointing them out. Films like Borat usually provoke one of two reactions: either the audience loves it - for the laughs, for the cleverness, for the insight - or they hate it - for pointing out that theirs is not a perfect society. (How many lukewarm reactions can you think of in relation to Dr. Strangelove?) Americans can be notoriously intolerant of people pointing out their foibles, particularly when that someone is from another country (Cohen is British, although many viewers will no doubt confuse him with his character and assume he is from the former Soviet Union).

That the film had an impact is undeniable. How many other movies force the President of the United States to take a meeting with a foreign president trying to manage his country's image? (See link below on Bush's meeting with Kazakhstan President Nursultan Nazarbayev.)

The DVD of the movie offers some worthwhile bonus material, although the limited extras here suggest that another, more expansive edition will be coming at some point. The disc contains 30 minutes of deleted scenes, some of which were cut for good reason (a sequence in a supermarket dairy section goes on too long) and others will make you glad there is a DVD format that contains this sort of thing (Borat's visit to a dog pound is one of those).

The disc's best bits are in the "Propaganda" section, which showcases the promotional tour Cohen took - in character - to promote the film in late 2006. His visit to the White House gate and his statement outside the Kazakhstan embassy are highlights, but it's a shame there isn't more of them. More material than is here was shown on TV (and is on the web) and it adds to the audacity of Cohen's concept and his execution of it.

There's plenty of slapstick in the film, too, if that's your thing, and Cohen plays it as well as the best vaudevillians. The circumstances that Borat finds himself in are often improvised by Cohen, and you have to recognize what a fearless performer he is. He always stays in character and never backs down.

There will no doubt be imitators in the months and years to come, but Borat is the first of this generation's new brand of subversive comedy. It will be shame if those that follow in Cohen's footsteps only produce movies with more gross-out humor and none of his smarts. The lesson that should be learned by comedy writers, performers and studios is that it's the substance behind the film that is its success. Borat shows the mind at work while taking the pratfalls.

More info: Peter Sellers Appreciation Society

Bush to hold talks on Ali G creator after diplomatic row

The Tao Of Borat

DVD Review: The U.S. Vs. John Lennon

2007-02-24T09:13:00.000-05:00

Nearly 20 years ago, the movie documentary Imagine: John Lennon presented a picture of John Lennon's life, from his childhood to his years with The Beatles to his time as a solo artist to his life as a husband and a father. One element in every description of Lennon's life is his outspokenness, which led to political activism when he was in his late 20s and early 30s.

In 1999, Jon Weiner, a professor of history at the University of California - Irvine published Gimme Some Truth: The John Lennon FBI Files. The book chronicled Weiner's attempt since Lennon's death in 1980 to obtain the files that the FBI accumulated on Lennon, mostly when he was a target of the Nixon Administration. The book also reveals that Nixon considered Lennon such a threat to his administration that he was surveilled and an attempt was made at deportation (which arose out of a suggestion from former South Carolina Republican Senator Strom Thurmond).

The new film The U.S. Vs John Lennon chronicles this period in Lennon's life and in American history, but rather than simply being another snapshot of Lennon, this is instead a tale about today and the parallels between the current Bush Administration and its Nixon predecessors. Producers and directors David Leaf and John Scheinfeld have skillfully told the tale of Lennon's activist years with commentary from a variety of knowledgeable sources on the right and the left, and crafted it in such a way that the similarities to the present day are unmistakable. (Indeed, the bonus material for the DVD spends a lot of time explicitly talking about these similarities.) [Leaf, in addition to producing many films about pop culture, is also the author of The Beach Boys and the California Myth, an excellent biography of Lennon's contemporary Brian Wilson.]

The movie tells a compelling story, whether you know of Lennon's fight with the government or not. The paranoia of Nixon and his people has been well-documented over the years, but here - and in Weiner's book - is evidence of all the dirty tricks and underhanded scheming. When Lennon was said to be planning a series of concerts in 1972 to offset the Republican primaries and national convention, Thurmond wrote to Nixon and suggested deportation as a way to prevent political opposition. In the wake of the Vietnam War, the 26th Amendment had been passed, giving the right to vote to all 18-to-21 year-olds, who were thought to be among Lennon's primary audience. Nixon believed Lennon - and by extension, rock and roll music - had real political authority. It's to John Lennon's credit that this was likely very accurate. (As this article about the film in The Nation points out, this idea of activist rock musicians doing an election-related tour sat idle for over 30 years, until the Vote For Change Tour in 2004 by Bruce Springsteen & The E Street Band, R.E.M., The Dixie Chicks, and others who opposed the re-election of George W. Bush.)

Unlike the 1988 movie Imagine (an excellent film in its own right), this film doesn't focus on Lennon's contemporaries in rock music or popular culture to comment on his life. Instead, we hear from Weiner, Walter Cronkite, Carl Bernstein, G. Gordon Liddy, John Dean, Geraldo Rivera, Mario Cuomo, Ron Kovic, George McGovern, Angela Davis, Bobby Seale, Gore Vidal, and Tariq Ali, among others. All of these folks had some contact with Lennon personally in the years addressed in the film, even the likes of Dean and Liddy, who were on the other side - in the Nixon administration - and were following the story of Lennon at the highest levels of government.

Of course, Yoko Ono is also present in the film as a link to John himself. Perhaps no other figure in popular culture has been as unfairly maligned as Ono, who, in the most emotional segment on the DVD (in bonus footage), reads her letter to the parole board concerning Lennon's killer. Any fan of Lennon or The Beatles will be moved.

The extras on the DVD are limited to additional interviews and footage of Lennon, as well as a print interview by Tariq Ali, done in 1971. (Other bonus footage would seem superfluous, anyway, so there is no "making of-" documentary of the documentary and no commentary on the commentaries in the film.) The extra footage is about an hour long, and it is excellent. The majority of it is must-see stuff, particularly the segments titled "Dissent Vs. Disloyalty" and "Then and Now," which make an explicit case that the excesses of power in the Nixon years have been exceeded by the likes of George Bush and Dick Cheney. Only Liddy and Rivera - both right-wing spokesmen who presently earn their living from conservative propaganda outfits - deny the excesses of the present day. Even Dean, Nixon's White House counsel, concedes; although, to be fair, Dean has written recently of his belief that modern conservatives have been co-opted by authoritarian people and ideas.

It's really a shame that these two segments in the bonus material weren't included in the film. Perhaps the filmmakers didn't want to make their point about modern-day parallels so explicitly. (Ironically, Lennon was not someone to hide behind subtleties; the subject of the whole film is him saying what he believed.) The film - taken as a whole on DVD - is much more poignant when one considers the injustices of Iraq, the Patriot Act, the failure of government to respond to Hurricane Katrina, the erosion of civil liberties and the other excesses of power of the Bush administration, with the realization that John Lennon's could have been a strong voice against them. The movie celebrates his spirit and his influence, which is still speaking out, and still in defiance of authority.

More info: The John Lennon FBI Files Web Site (Updated)

Nixon and Bush: Presidential Parallels?

Tariq Ali & Robin Blackburn: The Lost John Lennon Interview

The Best Films of 2006

2007-02-16T19:40:00.000-05:00

Being a week away from Oscar night, it's a good time to reflect on the best that movies had to offer in 2006. All critics' lists are subjective, as are the Oscars, and inclusion or lack thereof on such a list isn't really indicative of a film's merit. That's in the eye of the beholder. So, without taking it too seriously, here's the best in film for 2006 -- all of which are either on DVD or soon will be.

1. Casino Royale: The best James Bond movie in more than 40 years. Not to dismiss the last forty years of Bond -- there are some great ones in there, including Roger Moore's The Spy Who Loved Me, Timothy Dalton's The Living Daylights, George Lazenby's On Her Majesty's Secret Service, and Pierce Brosnan's Tomorrow Never Dies. But the series was at its peak with the first four Sean Connery movies, and Casino Royale harkens back to those glorious days. Daniel Craig proved his critics wrong as effortlessly as Bond would land his hat on Moneypenny's coat rack. The film's tone is closest to From Russia With Love, the best of the bunch, and is a serious spy drama that is not without it's levity and humor. For resurrecting greatness and for making these types of films relevant to modern audiences -- and for being a hell of a lot of fun in the process -- Casino Royale is the best picture of the year. (On DVD March 13.)

2. The Queen: An engrossing look at the life of Queen Elizabeth II following the death of Princess Diana. The film's strength is in taking an event that we all know very well - Diana's surprising death at age 36 - and showing us the turmoil behind the scenes with the British royal family. Helen Mirren gives the year's best performance, and if she doesn't win the Oscar for best actress, they should just disband the Academy, because it will have become irrelevant. (On DVD April 24.)

3. The Departed: Much has been written about Martin Scorcese and gangster movies, but the way violence can suddenly erupt, seemingly out of nowhere, is never more shocking than in his movies. The great cast has outstanding performances from Leonardo DiCaprio, Matt Damon, Mark Walberg, Martin Sheen and more. Only Jack Nicholson's performance varies from being emotionally intense to being a parody of himself. Nicholson has been playing a variation on himself in too many movies for the last twenty years. (Obviously not including such stand-out performances as About Schmidt.) It is Scorcese's best film since GoodFellas, and is even better than Gangs of New York, which is saying something. (On DVD now.)

4. V For Vendetta: Based on a graphic novel written in the '80s, but never more relevant to our culture, this is as exciting and thought-provoking as movies get these days. Hugo Weaving is charming as "V," a revolutionary to some and a terrorist to others. Natalie Portman displays a maturity beyond her role as Star Wars' Padme, as the innocent whose education and transformation are the center of the film. "People shouldn't be afraid of their governments," the film's tagline read, "Governments should be afraid of their people." It's not many advertising campaigns that paraphrase Thomas Jefferson, and it demonstrates how the movie's head is in the right place. (On DVD now.)

5. An Inconvenient Truth: The most important film of the year. It's easy to dismiss the attention the film has gotten under the guise of politics, since it stars former Vice President Al Gore, but it's essential that we not do that. The film has an urgent message that has been endorsed by every serious scientist in the world (the only studies that deny global warming's impact have been funded by industry, and thus, are not true studies; we touch on this more here), and besides, the film is more frightening than any horror movie and will inspire you to action more than any other film, perhaps ever. (On DVD now.)

6. Superman Returns: In the nearly 30 years since Richard Donner's excellent Superman: The Movie, film hasn't been kind to the Man of Steel. The movie series became parody with installments III and IV and this film languished in production hell for about 15 years, going through more writers and directors than Lois Lane's typewriter ribbons. But Bryan Singer truly made Superman return, to the greatness that is the character's legacy and to the high standards of Donner's film. This is mythology as metaphor and with meaning. As said in our review of the box set, this, finally, is a film worthy of the Superman legend. (On DVD now.)

7. Children of Men: The future may not look very good in this film, but the movie is as great a production as such other futuristic epics as Blade Runner, Planet of the Apes and this year's V For Vendetta (see above). Great work by Clive Owen and Michael Caine will keep you invested in the story, which is ultimately about the fight for hope in a world that hasn't had any in a generation. (On DVD March 27.)

8. Cars: If John Lasseter and the folks at Pixar can make a bad movie, they haven't shown it yet. Cars is their follow-up to The Incredibles, perhaps the best of the Pixar line. The movie invests in old-fashioned style and some would even say old-fashioned values, set in the high speed modern world of auto racing. The character designs are clever, colorful and, in many cases, hilarious. These cars will be taking their place along other children's favorites, such as Buzz and Woody, Simba, and maybe even Donald and Mickey. (On DVD now.)

9. Borat: Some comedies just make you laugh (like Talladega Nights, one of the year's funniest films) and others, like Borat, force you to think a bit too. Sasha Baron Cohen's hilarious trip through America exposes some of its ugly side, and has a ball poking fun at it. The film may end up keeping people on their toes too -- everyone won't necessarily be so quick to yell and scream the next time someone lets a chicken out of their suitcase on the subway, will they? (On DVD March 6.)

10. Hollywoodland: Essentially the same movie as Brian DePalma's The Black Dahlia, as both films take place in post-war Los Angeles and concern a real-life murder (or suicide?) mystery. Only director Allen Coulter (of The Sopranos fame) presents a much more involving story of the death of actor George Reeves than Dahlia's forced and fake noir. Hollywoodland also has the stronger cast, with Adrian Brody, Diane Lane, and (yes) Ben Affleck turning in great performances. As mysteries go, it's also one of the best in years, and doesn't offer a tidy ending, which are mostly unsatisfying anyway. The mystery behind Hollywoodland leaves you with the possibilities, and you have to decide for yourself which you find plausible. (On DVD now.)

More info: Rolling Stone: The 10 Best Movies of 2006

Time Magazine: 10 Best Movies of 2006

Best of Rotten Tomatoes: 2006

High Definition War: Do we have a winner?

2007-02-01T14:06:00.000-05:00

The stakes are always high in format wars. Sony not only had egg on its face after the Betamax-VHS war of 20 years ago, but had to start making VHS players by the millions. Consumers hate format wars, and lots of DVD enthusiasts have been sitting out the current battle between HD-DVD and Blu-Ray.

But the end could be in sight, according to Home Media magazine. In an interview with a research firm, the magazine quotes conclusions by the firm Understanding and Solutions as saying they expect a winner in the format war by the end of the year, and all signs point to Blu-Ray.

Many DVD analysts have expected Blu-Ray to triumph from the beginning. Debate has gone back and forth over the formats' inherent benefits, but the ace up Blu-Ray's sleeve has always been Sony's Playstation 3 system, which functions as a Blu-Ray player. Most of the movie studios issuing the DVDs that will be playing on both of these formats seemed to side with Blu-Ray as well, since every major studio except Universal adopted the format. Some produce titles in both formats, and Warner will start issuing hybrid discs with both formats this year, in an effort to entice buyers who are afraid of having the next Betamax titles in their video cabinets. (We don't recommend Warner's take on the format battle, because it is sure to produce double-sided discs, of which we are not fans. See our earlier piece about the failed DualDisc format.)

There is surely a lot at stake in the outcome of the high-def format war, but curiously, picture quality doesn't seem to be. Both formats have gotten high marks from reviewers and critics for their oustanding picture quality. What's at stake for consumers in this contest is the investment in hardware and high-def titles.

The analysis in the article seems sound, and we hope the format war comes to an end quickly. There's more technological innovation waiting around the bend, just as soon as companies stop fighting over whether their titles will be issued in red or blue packages.

Read the entire Home Media article here.

More info: The Digital Bits: FAQ on HD-DVD and Blu-Ray

Why High Definition Formats Have Already Failed

DVD Review: Forbidden Planet - Ultimate Collector's Edition

2006-12-22T14:19:00.000-05:00

Fans waited for several years for Warner Bros. to reissue the early classic of science fiction, Forbidden Planet. Fortunately, for the movie's 50th anniversary in 2006, the studio put together a whopper of a collection for one of the genre's crowning achievements.

The movie has never looked better, and on DVD, its striking visuals are a feast for the eyes. In particular, the matte paintings that served as the lovely planet scapes contain enough wonder to fire up the imagination. While the sort of rough terrain that is depcited in this movie may have been standard for alien planets in films that followed in the 1960s, films of the last several decades have lost the sense of wonder and awe of Forbidden Planet's vision of what Star Trek would later call the final frontier. The movie's visual effects continue to hold up quite well.

The film is loosely based on Shakespeare's The Tempest, and deals with different sides of human nature fighting against each other. Despite its contemporaries in 1950s science fiction cinema - which are showcased on disc 2's excellent Watch The Skies documentary - this is mature subject matter, and - like 1951's The Day The Earth Stood Still - sets a very high standard for science fiction films. If you look back at the films of the last 50 years, you'll see that many more than not didn't live up to it. Indeed, it was Forbidden Planet's contemporaries and the tiny budgets they had to work with, that gave the genre the reputation as kiddie fare. That's an unfair label for such a thoughtful and challenging part of cinema history, and one look at Forbidden Planet and you will see it is undeserved.

With impressive performances by Walter Pidgeon, Anne Francis and Leslie Neilson, the film is perhaps best remembered for the introduction of Robby The Robot, perhaps the first robotic movie star and grandfather of R2-D2 and C-3PO. The robot captured audiences' imaginations and even went on to have something of a career of his own, appearing in other movies and various television shows, including "The Thin Man" (that episode is included on the set), "The Man From U.N.C.L.E.," "The Addams Family," "Lost In Space," and two episodes of "The Twilight Zone". Robby even showed up in an episode of Pamela Anderson's sitcom "Stacked" in 2005.

The DVD set includes reproductions of lobby cards for both Forbidden Planet and The Invisible Boy (which, as Robby The Robot's second movie, is also included here), as are several documentaries and fascinating deleted scenes and lost footage from the main feature. The set also includes a 4-inch replica of Robby The Robot, and all comes packaged in a handsome tin that makes use of the film's original poster artwork. And to top it all off, the set comes with a coupon for a free copy of that movie poster.

The importance of this film on the genre can't be overstated. Indeed, it's vision of space exploration and the use of technology had a very obvious and strong impact on the development of Gene Roddenberry's Star Trek, which has been a cornerstone of science fiction for more than 40 years. Historical impact aside, Forbidden Planet is a compelling movie which will spark your curiosity and imagination and make you wonder about the nature of men.

Warner Bros. deserves credit for doing such an impressive job on the DVD document of this movie. If only all our old favorites could fare as well. This is one of the best DVDs of the year.

More info: Science Fiction Filmsite: Forbidden Planet

Robots Of The Silver Screen

DVD Review: The Simpsons - The Complete Ninth Season

2006-12-21T20:19:00.000-05:00

Hard to believe that season sets of The Simpsons started coming out five and a half years ago, and we're just now up to season nine. These are sure coming out slowly. But the good news is they're worth the wait.

Season 9 continues the tradition of great themed packaging and clean transfers of the episodes, not to mention extras that include commentary on every episode, which is a rarity for television DVDs. The theme for this season's DVD set is music, which makes sense since saxophonist Lisa is the featured player on the cover (and the corresponding "head" package).

The fold-out portrait inside is of the Simpsons extended cast paying tribute to the cover of The Beatles' Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band. The set's booklet is an issue of "Rocking Stone" magazine, with details and photos from each episode. The set also includes postcards of The Simpsons' Rolling Stone covers from several years ago, in which the animated characters recreate the covers of The Beatles' Abbey Road, Bruce Springsteen's Born in the USA, and Nirvana's Nevermind. Other postcards recall images of Bob Dylan, Jimi Hendrix and Miles Davis.

The episodes include some great moments in Simpsons history. The premiere is "The City Of New York Vs. Homer Simpson," in which Homer must retreive the family car from where Barney illegally parked it at World Trade Plaza. The show aired four years before 9/11 and promiently features the Twin Towers, among other New York landmarks. The episode was rumored to have been "retired," but it is here as we remember it.

"The Principle And The Pauper" features Martin Sheen as the real Seymour Skinner. Sheen plays a variation of his role as Capt. Williard in Francis Ford Coppolla's Apocalypse Now, and while the episode is not one that sits well with Simpsons fans (it strains credibility that the Principle Skinner we've come to know all these years isn't the real Skinner), the show is a nice parody of Sheen's Apocalypse Now character, although it doesn't really get to be the parody of the movie and the Vietnam film genre that it could have been.

Other highlights from the season include "The Cartridge Family," in which Homer laments the waiting period for buying a gun because "I'm angry now!"; "Miracle on Evergreen Terrace," one of the series' Christmas episodes in which Bart burns down the family tree and presents; "Simpson Tide," in which Homer and friends join the Navy and sing a hilarious version of the famous Village People tune; and the 200th episode, "Trash of the Titans," in which both Steve Martin and U2 guest star -- any show that can get rock and roll superstars like Bono to sing "The Garbage Man Can" to the tune of the "The Candyman Can" deserves some kind of award.

Suffice it to say that the extras are what we expect from the Simpsons DVDs and are what other television shows should produce. Besides the commentaries, there are loads of deleted scenes, an overview of the season from creator Matt Groening, animation, sketch and storyboard features and even a preview of 2007's Simpsons Movie.

With 2007 poised to be a big year for the Simpsons (it will complete its 18th season, begin its 19th, and have its first feature film in the summer), the release of the season set DVDs should increase. Two sets a year just isn't enough for a show that has such a rich history.

Many fans will lament the decline in quality they feel the series suffered as it aged, but in truth, the show has remained remarkably consistent in its 18 years. If anyone tells you the show wasn't worth watching after the fifth or sixth year, you can take out The Complete Ninth Season and prove them wrong.

More info: The Simpsons Channel

The Simpsons.com Episode Guide

That Movie Sucks! What's It Doing In Your Collection?

2006-12-11T21:33:00.000-05:00

Batman & Robin. The Godfather III. The Matrix Revolutions. A View To A Kill. Superman IV: The Quest For Peace. Battle For The Planet Of The Apes. Alien 3. Trail Of The Pink Panther. All of these are virtually unwatchable sequels to movies that captured our imaginations and made us want more. And all of these probably ended up in DVD collections of movie fans who otherwise loathe these films. Why? Blame the box set.

The trend in DVD collections - which is a good idea - is to be as inclusive as possible when making a document of a television or movie series. That's why you see extras like bloopers, making-of documentaries, screen tests, film trailers, TV ads, and so forth. But it also means you include the bad installments with the good. Where a TV show is concerned, that's sort of what you bargain for: you wouldn't expect something labeled "the complete first season" to exclude episodes that failed to meet expectations. But in the case of movie series, it means you will end up with some films in your collection that you never thought would be there.

Take for example, the recent box set Superman: The Ultimate Collection (click here for review), or last year's Batman: The Motion Picture Collection box set. Both contain worthy films, but each contain films that are so poorly thought-out and executed that the series themselves went on long exiles from movie screens while they were creatively re-thought. Batman Forever and Batman & Robin, director Joel Schumacher's attempt to revive the campy spirit of the '60s Batman, were so awful that they're better off forgotten. (The 1966-1969 Adam West series, on the other hand, retains its charm and its cool.) Similarly, Superman III (which teamed the Man of Steel up with comedian Richard Pryor) and Superman IV lacked the epic scope that the series needed to hold its head high. The results were films that belong on the Saturday-morning kiddie circuit.

The real problem is sequelitis. Far too often, sequels become parodies, instead of respecting the source material and the original film. The James Bond films descended into parody on several occassions. The latest Bond film, Casino Royale, is an outstanding installment in the series that resurrects the gripping spy drama of From Russia With Love and On Her Majesty's Secret Service, and rejects the silliness of A View To A Kill, Moonraker and Die Another Day.

The danger in making these sequels comes because the filmmakers want you to have a good time seeing old friends. Who didn't laugh when the characters we'd followed for two great Star Wars films appeared in Return of the Jedi in funny circumstances? Unfortunately, that film struggles to build any dramatic tension because the characters and situations are too often played for laughs. (Look, See-Threepio is mistaken for a god by the teddy-bear people! Oh, and he's embarrassed!) Contrast that with a sequel like Sam Raimi's Spider-Man 2, which builds on the tension from the first movie and becomes a better film in its own right.

Or take the Star Trek films, which go back and forth between worthy and unworthy so much it's like a tennis match. In Generations, we see the beloved character of Data finally get the emotional awareness he'd sought for seven years on The Next Generation. But the payoff isn't at all satisfying - instead, we see Data played for laughs throughout the film, as if the character and the actor had little of substance to offer (which we know isn't the case). Similar problems arose with Star Trek V: The Final Frontier, with Kirk, Spock and the others constantly finding themselves in embarassing situations.

The decision to make the audience laugh, to try to make the film like a reunion party with your old friends is how sequels descend into parody. They don't feel like creative decisions; they feel like marketing choices, and those are the kinds of decisions that result in bad films. (They don't have to, though. For example, Star Trek IV: The Voyage Home is a very funny movie, but it respects the characters and the material that came before it, and as a result, is a successful film. That's the power of good writing. What's the old saying? Dying is easy; comedy is hard.)

Another common problem among sequels is to simply use the title of the movie as a brand name slapped on a generic product. Tom Cruise's Mission: Impossible films are one such exercise, as they have almost nothing in common with the 1960s television show and are simply action films with a familiar title affixed. (Mission: Impossible 2, directed by John Woo, is so full of movie cliches and empty plot devices that it might just be the worst film ever made.)

If there is a silver lining to having bad sequels in your collection it is the documentaries and commentaries that sometimes accompany them. Since no one in their right mind would claim Batman & Robin is a good film, the commentary on the disc has the director admitting as much, taking responsibility and examing what went wrong. Not only does it make for interesting listening, but audiences can hope studios are listening too, and taking notes, so the next film doesn't make those mistakes and put the film franchise into exile for another extended period.

Watch out, though. Because if Joel Schumacher ever gets near the set of The Hobbit, we'll know studios weren't paying attention.

More info: The 25 Worst Sequels Ever Made (Entertainment Weekly)

Commentary Tracks Of The Damned: Batman & Robin

DVD Review: Saturday Night Live - The Complete First Season

2006-12-11T19:07:00.000-05:00

If Lenny Bruce had survived, there's no doubt he would have been one of the hosts of Saturday Night Live when the show was in its early, formative years. That's because Bruce, who broke the rules of conventional comedy and satirical commentary (and who died in 1966), is the spiritual father of the Not-Ready-For-Prime-Time Players and the revolution they won on the television airwaves and in American culture.

As it turns out, the first episode of Saturday Night Live was hosted by another counter-culture hero, George Carlin, whose distrust of authority and willingness to mock all our sacred cows is at the heart of his act and, ultimately, is the basis for SNL's attitude and its winning style that has sustained the show (in high times and low times) for 32 years. As originally carried out, SNL was barrier-breaking comedy, doing and saying things on TV - and in our living rooms - they were once considered unthinkable. It was subversive, and ultimately a cultural shift. SNL became the mainstream, and in the process, launched the careers of some of our most celebrated comedic actors. The show became the place to be seen, and today, even politicians want some face time on SNL.

Universal's Saturday Night Live: The Complete First Season is a great surprise, since it is one of those releases that fans never thought would see the light of day. DVD fans are all too aware of the complexities of securing music rights, and SNL's huge parade of musical guests over the years made season-set releases unlikely at best. Given the lack of SNL DVD releases from the early years (only single-disc best-of releases for John Belushi, Dan Ackroyd and Gilda Radner exist), the first season set fills a very empty void.

The eight discs in this set include 24 episodes, which were each 90 minutes long when aired (subtracting the commercials, the episodes are slightly more than an hour each on DVD). While the discs aren't perfect (strangely, for what is classified a "complete" season, it lacks some minor elements from the shows, like the portrait "bumpers" that were inserted before commercial breaks), let's not quibble. For all intents and purposes, these are the complete shows, and it's SNL at its most creative.

The elements of SNL that are still part of the show were right there in the first season - opening skit, "live from New York..." intro, host monologue, commercial parodies, sketch comedy, Weekend Update, musical guests, and so on. Chevy Chase (in his only season with the show) has a confidence and a comedic smugness that shines above those who have followed in his footsteps. Belushi opens the first sketch of the first show, with his bad-boy misanthropic sneer already present. Ackroyd, Radner, Laraine Newman, Jane Curtain, and Garrett Morris round out the cast, and each one finds their place to shine in the first year. Even Jim Henson's Muppets and the creative team behind The Muppet Show put in some appearances, and you can see the predecessors to such characters as Yoda and Alf.

In addition to Carlin, the choice of hosts honor those who made the SNL brand of comedy possible. Richard Pryor is host to an early show, and this was during his most creative period. Buck Henry (co-creator of Get Smart, see below) hosts the show twice in the first season. Henry, despite his meek appearance and polite tones, was an early master of biting political satire, and was never one avoid sacred cows. Paul Simon, Rob Reiner, Robert Klein, Lily Tomlin, and Elliot Gould also hosted during the first season.

The DVD set looks very classy and gives the show the respect it deserves. Still, it is rather big and bulky (even for eight discs) and the 32-page booklet that accompanies the set could have used some relevant liner notes on the history of the show. But the set is a true achievement, both in that it shows that acquiring music rights need not prevent a DVD document of a cultural landmark, and in the content of SNL's first season, which became the template for sketch comedy, political satire and helped define what we consider "funny."

More info: Saturday Night Live.com

Saturday Night Archives

DVD Review: Superman - The Ultimate Collector's Edition

2006-12-03T14:44:00.000-05:00

Warner Bros. has been at the forefront of great DVD packages for the last several years. Their releases are loaded with content and almost always come in the most striking packages. Their 14-disc mammoth edition of Superman: The Ultimate Collector's Edition is no exception. It is a magnificent grouping of great, mediocre and not-so-good Superman films.

It should also be noted that first pressings of of this edition have two discs that Warner is replacing. Disc 1, which contains the 1978 version of Superman: The Movie, is being replaced because it doesn't have the 2.0 audio that was the film's original soundtrack. Disc 8, containing the film Superman III, is also being replaced because it is supposed to be a deluxe edition (with bonus materials) but only contains the original bare-bones disc. Anyone who bought the set can replace the discs by calling Warner at 800-553-6937. (Thanks to the good folks at TheDigitalBits.com for the information.)

Richard Donner's Superman: The Movie is an American classic. One of the very best films ever made, it is also likely the very best comic-book movie. Donner taps into our shared history and presents the Superman mythology we came to know in as realistic a way as possible. Not only will you believe a man can fly (as the film's tagline told audiences in December 1978), you will believe that great men of destiny walk among us, in the wheat fields of our small towns and in the skyscrapers of our metropolises. As impressive as Christopher Reeve turned out to be as Superman (for some, he eclipsed even the great George Reeves who played the character in the wonderful 1950s TV show), it is his father figures that steal the movie. Marlon Brando creates an indelible mark as Superman's natural father, Jor-El, with such subtly that it is no wonder director Bryan Singer went back and used what he could of Brando for his 2006 Superman Returns film. Equally indelible is Glenn Ford as Superman's adoptive father, Jonathan Kent. Ford shows the wisdom and the strength in the common man, and as a character who tends the land, represents common American ideals and dedication. Indeed, it is Kent's words that resonate with Superman at the end of the film and make him decide to defy Jor-El's decrees and embark on the course of action he chooses.

Perhaps most significant about this set is the inclusion of Donner's version of Superman II. Donner was fired from the production of Superman II in a dispute with the producers, who then hired Richard Lester (no filmmaking slouch -- Lester directed another film classic, A Hard Day's Night, in 1964). But Lester's film lacks the epic scale that Donner used so well in the first film. As a result, Lester's version of II uses comedy more than it should and the film, while entertaining and a good installment in the series, isn't what it could have been. Donner's cut restores as much of his work as possible, and as much of his tone as it could. You'll have to judge which is the better and more satisfying film. There is little doubt, however, that the best parts of II are Donner's.

Lester stayed on with the series to make the bizarre Superman III, which co-starred Richard Pryor. All traces of Donner's epic are gone, and instead this is a very comedic film, and not at all suitable for serious Superman fans. The same goes for Superman IV, which landed in theaters without much of a splash in 1987, and is largely a forgotten part of the series. It's probably better off that way.

Resurrecting the series is Superman Returns, which was released in 2006. Bryan Singer brings back the epic filmmaking, as well as the biblical allegory. Returns is a sequel to the works of Donner, as it pretty much ignores the intervening works, and is all the more satisfying because of it. It was a stroke of inspiration for Singer to use John Williams' incredible score for the first movie as the basis for his film's music. Hearing that grand soundtrack once again takes the audience back to a time in 1978 when the score was first heard in movie theaters, making movie-goers feel that they were seeing something truly spectacular and unlike anything that had come before. Returns is a great film, and a return to form for the series. We can only hope Singer is allowed to continue his vision in the next film (said to be titled The Man Of Steel) without the studio interference that marooned the Donner vision for 25 years.

The extras for the set are impressive. Remastered versions of the Fleisher Brothers' Superman cartoons of the 1940s are included, and although these fell into the public domain many years ago, they have never looked better. The Kevin Burns documentary Look Up In The Sky!: The Amazing Story Of Superman (released individually earlier this year) is included, as is a three-hour documentary on the making of Superman Returns. There are extensive extras for Superman: The Movie, including making of- documentaries, screen tests, deleted scenes and a wonderful music-only track with John Williams' score (which is quite possibly his best ever). It's all put together in a large tin with the classic Superman "S" embossed on it (the great "glass" S from Superman: The Movie), a lenticular slipcover, a color booklet, comic book reproduction and more.

This is a box set worthy of the legend of Superman.

More info: Blue Tights Network

Superman Homepage

DVD Review: Star Trek - The Animated Series

2006-12-01T20:24:00.000-05:00

Paramount's release of Star Trek: The Animated Series has been long-awaited, as it is the last of the Star Trek properties to make it to DVD. Many longtime fans are divided on the show's relevance and its merit. We come down on the side that respects the show and appreciates the talent that went into making this most unusual of Saturday-morning cartoons -- one that actually didn't underestimate the intelligence of the audience.

The DVD captures the show in it's glory: The animation, though limited, is clear and crisp, and the colors are vibrant. The artwork for the show had great style and design, and was actually influential on what would be seen in later Star Trek movies and television series. In fact, there is a special feature in the set that points out which elements from the animated show made their way into the feature films and the later TV spinoffs, and there are more than you would think.

The show also expanded the mythology of the original series by presenting sequels to some of the best known episodes. The Guardian of Forever, Harry Mudd, Spock's parents, Cyrano Jones and the tribbles, the Klingons and more make appearances in these 22 episodes. And while some will quibble that the show's stories are not canon, few dispute the effect that writer D.C. Fontana's episode "Yesteryear" had on the 40-year history of the franchise. Her take on Spock's upbringing and his homeworld's culture, not to mention the conflict the character experienced from his parents' very different heritages, is one of the very best episodes of any Star Trek series. That the show enlisted Mark Lenard to return as the voice of Sarek, Spock's father, illustrated that this was a class operation.

It's usually easy to distinguish between releases that are classics and those that are purely nostalgic. (For example, Warner Bros.' Batman: The Animated Series will stand the test of time as a classic; Hanna Barbera's Super Friends is nostalgia.) But Star Trek: The Animated Series strattles the line between classic and nostalgia. It may never be as adored as its live-action predecessor, but fans who want a fuller experience from the Star Trek saga miss it at their peril.

More info: Star Trek: Animated

Guide To Star Trek: The Animated Series

DualDisc: A Failure Of Format

2006-11-29T22:32:00.000-05:00

Amid the current format war between HD-DVD and Blu-Ray disc, it is worth a moment to stop and consider the fate of another format: DualDisc, a CD/DVD hybrid, which seems ill-considered at best and a cheap gimmick at worst.

The DualDisc format was mostly used by the music industry in the last two years as a way to give their consumers an incentive to buy their products. It was, in short, a sales gimmick. The double-sided disc contained one side which was a CD and the other which was a DVD. The biggest problem with it was that the CD side didn't meet the specifications to carry the official "compact disc" label and wasn't even playable in many CD players! Out of five CD players I tried, the CD side of DualDiscs would not work in three of them. One of the players in which it wouldn't work was the CD player in my computer, meaning I could not import the songs to an iPod.

The DVD portion of the DualDisc usually contained the audio from the CD in multi-channel sound and about a half hour or less of related video (the artist in the studio, a music video, etc.). While it is nice for those with multi-channel stereos to be able to listen in 5.1 surround sound, those kinds of stereo systems are not in the majority of homes, at least, not yet. Most people buying a CD will listen in the car, a boom box, or on the computer, none of which accomodate the intricacies of 5.1 DVD sound. Moreover, niche multi-channel products like SA-CD (Super-Audio CD) and DVD-A (DVD-Audio) failed, in part because of the format war between them and in part because the market didn't exist for higher-ticket items that required higher-ticket systems (and the fragile market that did exist couldn't withstand a format war).

The music industry no doubt felt it needed to provide an incentive for people to buy their CDs, especially with sales falling. The music industry constantly points to file-sharing and digital downloads as the reason for falling sales. It is worth noting, however, that academic studies suggest that not only does file-sharing not hurt sales, it actually helps encourage sales. There is something dishonest about pointing to every file downloaded as a "lost sale," as if every person who ever enjoyed a song on the radio would have gone out and bought the record.

One thing is certain: Selling consumers CD/DVD hybrids that wouldn't actually play in a lot of CD players couldn't have helped sales. Memo to the music industry: Fewer disposable pop stars, more artistry; Fewer gimmicks, more substance.

More info: Wikipedia: DualDisc

Music sharing doesn't kill CD sales

DVD Review: Get Smart - The Complete Series

2006-11-28T18:17:00.000-05:00

Since the earliest days of TV-on-DVD sets, fans have been collecting their favorite shows, often in elaborate box sets filled with extras. The early ones are still the templates - The X-Files, Star Trek: The Next Generation - but one thing that has always irked fans is that once a series was completed on DVD, studios would often release a box set containing the entire series, often in an even more elaborate box or with even more extras. The West Wing and Friends recently saw the entire series collected in beautiful box sets -- which is useless to fans who supported the release of those show's individual seasons. Many fine shows (like Paramount's Taxi) were released in season sets without any extras at all, and many fans have started collecting a favorite program, only to find the DVDs discontinued (The Mary Tyler Moore Show, Happy Days, Mork & Mindy, and many more).

Fortunately, Time Life and HBO Video have turned this trend on its head with the release of Get Smart: The Complete Series. The 1965-1970 series was long-sought-after by DVD fans (indeed, the show was in the top five of most requested shows on TVShowsonDVD.com for years) and it remained a holy grail of sorts for fans looking for their favorite shows on their favorite shiny discs.

Released in late November, Get Smart is perhaps the crowning achievement in TV-on-DVD. Here are all five seasons of the show, on 25 discs in 5 season sets, all collected in a phone-booth package (reminiscent of the show's classic opening). If you're a fan of the show (and who wouldn't be?), you already know this is one of the very best comedies that television had to offer. It began in the mid-60s, just as America was deep in the Cold War and James Bond was all the cultural rage. The show worked on a variety of levels: it had slapstick humor, political satire and adult innuendo. It remains a cultural landmark; a bedrock of comedy and for a generation, a definition of humor.

Technically, the DVDs are among the most advanced yet. They have motion menus, with introductions to every bit of content by Barbara Feldon, the show's "99." The video quality is outstanding. It's amazing that a 40-year old television program can look as crisp and as clear as this one does. Add in the fact that the episodes are uncut (replacing several minutes to each show that have been lost to syndication over the years), and you will feel like you've never seen the show before, even if you have been a fan for decades.

Time Life recruited some of the best DVD talent around for this collection. Paul Brownstein produced the set, and he has also produced DVDs for The Twilight Zone and The Dick Van Dyke Show, both of which are among the best TV-on-DVD sets. Like those, this one is loaded with content, with extras that many fans never knew existed. One charming piece is an NBC fall preview special with Get Smart star Don Adams hosting -- as Maxwell Smart. Time Life also recruited many Get Smart fans for help with the DVD set, and it shows. This is a hardcore fan's dream come true.

The season sets are said to be planned for individual release in the next year or so, but Time Life offers the whole set now, and they have exclusive rights to the sale of the show for a year. No need to wait - this is the best the show is going to get. More broadly, it shows how television shows should be produced for DVD. For these reasons and more, Get Smart: The Complete Series is the DVD box set of the year.

More info: WouldYouBelieve.com

Time Life DVD

DVD Comment

2006-11-28T15:57:00.000-05:00

This blog will be devoted to reviews of current and previous DVD releases. I figured since I have so many of them, I ought to do something creative with them.