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August '14 Digital Week I

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Parent Category: Film and the Arts
Category: Reviews
Published on Tuesday, 05 August 2014 13:24
Written by Kevin Filipski
Blu-rays of the Week
Cuban Fury 
(e one)
Whenever Nick Frost's name is attached as writer and/or actor—Hot Fuzz, Shaun of the Dead, Paul—it's always a one-joke movie that provides middling returns as it goes along, as witness this mild comedy with Frost as a former Cuban-dance loving teen who has just disowned it but now, seeing that his adorable boss does it, finds himself drawn back in to its (and her) spell.
 
While Frost himself is on auto-pilot, Rashida Jones is as adorably sexy as advertised, and the hilarious Ian McShane needs far more screen time than he receives. The hi-def transfer is solid; extras are behind the scenes featurettes.
 
Los Angeles Kings—2014 Stanley Cup Champions 
(Cinedigm)
Winning its second Stanley Cup in three years, the Los Angeles Kings might be on their way to becoming that rarest of sports birds: a dynasty. We shall see, but this season's championship  march—winning four straight against San Jose in the first round, fending off Anaheim and Chciago to survive the Western Conference, and bouncing the overmatched New York Rangers in a five-game final—was very impressive.
 
This 2-1/2 hour film highlights all four playoff series, along with the regular season's best moments and interviews with players and coaches; if you're a Kings fan, this is obviously a no-brainer to pick up. The Blu-ray image is sharp; extras include championship parade, top 10 moments, behind the scenes, more celebration footage.
 
 
On My Way 
(Cohen Media)
Poor Catherine Deneuve: when she should be aging gracefully onscreen in movies worthy of her talent and legendary status, instead she gets stuck in movies like Emmanuelle Bercot's trite character study of a lonely grandmother whose unexpected road trip finds her meeting all manner of eccentric people, few of whom are made at all plausible.
 
The only relationship that doesn't come off as shallow is the one with her young grandson, but not enough of it is shown to balance out the silliness of all the rest. The Blu-ray image is first-rate; extras include Deneuve interview and deleted scenes.
 
The Other Woman 
(Fox)
As she has shown before, Cameron Diaz can be a terrific comedienne when a decently funny script appears, but Bad Teacher this is not: instead, this foolish attempt at a revenge comedy about a wife and two mistresses who bring down a cheating hubby claims several casualties, starting with the viewer.
 
Leslie Mann is as obnoxious and annoying as ever, while Kate Upton is perfect eye candy, but neither her curvacousness nor Diaz's comic smarts can save Nick Cassavettes'  deadly non-comedy  The movie looks good on Blu-ray; extras include a gag reel and deleted scenes.
 
 
 
 
Ping Pong Summer 
(Millennium)
For the few people interested, writer-director Michael Tully's amusingly slight comic tale is an unerring recreation of 1985, with the bad pop songs in place along with the teased hair and awful fashion sense; or the rest, any movie hinging on a climactic ping pong match between teenage antagonists (virginal hero and "cool" enemy) is never too far from monumental irrelevence.
 
Still, an appealing cast led by Marcello Conte (virgin) and Emmi Shockley (his—he hopes—girl) smooths over the craters present in the script. The hi-def transfer looks decent; extras include a commentary and a making-of.
 
Rigoletto 
(Deutsche Grammophon)
Three decades ago, tenor Luciano Pavarotti was not only the most popular opera singer in the world but also was at the very top of his game, his ringingly clear and powerful voice shooting through the emotional score of Verdi's tragic opera about a hunchbacked jester whose loving daughter falls in love with his employer, the Duke of Mantua (Pavarotti).
 
This 1983 film, shot on actual Italian locations, also stars Ingvar Wixell as Rigoleto and Edita Gruberova as his daughter Gilda; they sound great but Pavarotti sounds otherworldly. Riccardo Chailly ably conducts the stupendous-sounding Vienna Philharmonic and Chorus; the film's image isn't the sharpest, but the DTS sound is crisp and clear.
 
DVDs of the Week
Candide 
(Deutsche Grammophon)
Leonard Bernstein's operetta—based on Voltaire's classic story—contains some of his most beguiling music, especially the finale "Make Our Garden Grow," and this 1989 concert recording with Bernstein himself on the podium (performed less than a year before his death) shows how effervescent his music could be when not being weighed down by pretentiousness.
 
The superior cast includes June Anderson's Conegunde, Jerry Hadley's Candide and Adolph Green's Pangloss, and Bernstein's orchestra performs wonderfully. There are no extras, unless you count Bernstein's little podium lecture before the show starts.
 
Finding Vivian Maier 
(IFC)
In this remarkable artistic—and humane—exhumation, co-director John Maloof recounts how he "discovered" Vivian Maier, a nanny who snapped pictures for decades and is now posthumously being given her due by photographic experts.
 
Maloof and Charlie Siskel piece together Maier's life and art by going through her (literal) trash to tracking down and talking to people who knew her, employed her or were her charges (even Phil Donahoe, for whom she briefly worked in the early '70s). This compelling study shows that you can't judge a book by its cover, or a reclusive nanny merely by her photographs. Extras comprise Maier audio recordings and Super 8 film footage.
 
 
Dream Deceivers
Modern Life 
(First Run)
David Van Taylor's 1991 documentaryDream Deceivers incisively looks at the 1990 trial pitting heavy metal's Judas Priest against two families who blamed the band's songs for leading their sons to attempt suicide, one of whom succeeded; despite the sadness of seeing the survivor with his face half shot off (he died before the trial began), it's difficult to sympathize—after all, millions of people listen to Priest's music without putting guns to their heads. At least the judge got it right.
 
Raymond Depardon's engrossing documentary Modern Life chronicles the lives of several families on rural French farms; the ravishing countryside and elegant Gabriel Faure soundtrack music are obvious visual and aural highlights, but Depardon's expressive portraits present these people in their own milieu, refreshingly with no condescension. Dream extras are director interviews.
 
Nicolas Le Floch 
(MHz International Mystery)
I was looking forward to this costumed mystery series, but despite its being set in 1761—during the reign of Louis XV—this flashy-looking detective drama is pretty much a dramatic dud.
 
Police commissioner Le Floch himself (Jerome Robart) doesn't make much of an impression, and despite the attractive period trappings, the storylines themselves (ranging from disappearances to scandals to suspicious killings) remain disappointingly tame and, after awhile, even more disappointingly similar.

Original Cast Recordings: 'Beautiful,' 'Bullets Over Broadway,' 'If/Then,' 'Here Lies Love'

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Parent Category: Film and the Arts
Category: Reviews
Published on Thursday, 31 July 2014 20:21
Written by Kevin Filipski
More of today’s musicals are going the jukebox route, using existing songs by one or more artists to build a show around. The results range widely, as several current cast recordings demonstrate: from Carole King’s catalog of ‘60s and ‘70s hits in Beautiful to the slew of mainly obscure songs from the ‘20s in Bullets Over Broadway. To be sure, there are still original scores done on and off Broadway, like the Idina Menzel vehicle If/Then and David Byrne and Fatboy Slim’s dance-club show about Philippine First Lady Imelda Marcos, Here Lies Love.
 
But if one is looking for originality in these stage musicals, look elsewhere than these four CDs: neither If/Then nor Here Lies Lovehas memorable songs to go with the semi-clever concept. And one’s tolerance for Beautiful is based on one’s love for Carole King’s songs, while Bullets Over Broadway’s pastiche of 90-plus year-old tunes works better onstage, where it's paired with Susan Stroman’s witty choreography.
 
Beautiful (Ghostlight Records) comes off schizophrenic onstage, unwilling to commit to dramatizing King’s own story: instead of concentrating on King’s solo career, which begins with 1970’s seminal Tapestry, the musical meanders through the ‘60s pop world, giving King and partner-husband Garry Goffin’s friendly rivals, Cynthia Weil and Barry Mann, inordinate stage time, including several of their own tunes. But Beautiful’s assembly-line parade of hits is certainly worthy, and on disc, its desperation to please its baby-boomer audience with recognizable hits rather than create a compelling story musical is less noticeable. 


And what hits there are: 7 Number Ones and 5 Top Tens that run the gamut from “The Locomotion” to “It’s Too Late,” with “You’ve Got a Friend” and “I Feel the Earth Move” thrown into the beguiling mix. The singers are reasonable facsimiles with personalities of their own, and Jessie Mueller’s Carole—too often on

the sideline while others hog the spotlight—has a lofty voice that keeps her front and center.

 
Bullets Over Broadway(Masterworks Broadway),based on Woody Allen’s hilarious 1994 comedy film, is crammed with 1920s standards cleverly orchestrated by Greg Kelly, who’s also penned new lyrics that refer to the plot and characters. (The Broadway production is closing on August 24.) Missing Susan Stroman’s original choreography and direction, the score—from rousing curtain-raiser “Tiger Rag” to giddy closer “Yes, We Have No Bananas”—stumbles, and the talented onstage cast is rendered mostly inert when audio-only. 
 
Nick Cordero, who has comic menace as hitman-turned-playwright Cheech, has a tap-dance number, “T’aint Nobody’s Bizness If I Do,” that's a highlight live but not on disc, while old pros Karen Ziemba and Brooks Ashmanskas provide needed daffiness in “There’s a New Day Comin’” and “Let’s Misbehave.” Then there's Marin Mazzie, whose vocal elegance on “I Ain’t Gonna Play No Second Fiddle” quashes nagging memories of Dianne Wiest’s Oscar-winning turn as acting diva Helen Sinclair, while our amiably goofy hero, Zach Braff, battles his way through “I’m Sitting on Top of the World.” Listening toBullets on CD is like closing your eyes while your favorite Woody movie is on. 
 
If/Then (Masterworks Broadway) has a heroine, Elizabeth—a thirty-something back in New York after her divorce—who (depending on the path she takes) is either Liz, glasses-wearing city planner who falls in love with Josh, a soldier just returned from Iraq; or Beth, unemployed activist sans glasses, who begins seeing old college boyfriend Lucas. The musical rotely toggling between Liz and Beth is dragged down by Tom Kitt and Brian Yorkey’s antiseptic—and interchangeable—tunes. 
 
Lackluster music and superficial exploration of Liz/Beth make If/Thencompletely forgettable, except for its leading lady, Idina Menzel, who deserves better original musicals than If/Then, or Rent, or evenWicked. Although saddled with strident, same-sounding songs, Menzel—pro that she is—takes off into the stratosphere with some of them, even turning a limp attempt at a showstopper, “Always Starting Over,” into something resembling an emotional climax. Even on CD, Menzel’s fierce artistry comes through, almost making If/Then sound like a real musical. 
 
Here Lies Love (Nonesuch), a colossally lightweight affair, relies too much on gimmickry for its metaphor of corrupting power finishing off the Marcos regime in the Philippines. Its paltry idea—that, since Imelda enjoyed clubbing as Philippine first lady, so the show inhabits a club atmosphere for its 90-minute length—is reflected in the music. 
 
David Byrne’s and Fatboy Slim’s singleminded songs are remarkably repetitive, with the partial exceptions of the soaring title song, whose chorus apes the “oh oh oh” bridge of “Goodbye Yellow Brick Road,” and “The Fabulous One,” a spirited anthem for Marcos’ political opponent (and anti-Marcos martyr) Benigno Aquino, which has some of the spiky wit and rhythmic vigor of the Talking Heads’Fear of Music peak. But the rest, smothered by Slim’s relentless beats, are shrill and paper-thin, however well sung by the energetic cast.

July '14 Digital Week V

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Parent Category: Film and the Arts
Category: Reviews
Published on Tuesday, 29 July 2014 16:48
Written by Kevin Filipski
Blu-rays of the Week
Aerial America—Southwest Collection
(Smithsonian Channel)
In the latest release from the invaluable series exploring this great land of ours, unforgettable aerial footage of five states (Nevada, Utah, Colorado, Arizona and New Mexico) is the star of this four-hour travelogue. Among their eye-popping scenic vistas and natural wonders, stand-outs are Utah’s Zion and Bryce Canyon, Arizona’s Grand Canyon, Nevada’s Hoover Dam, New Mexico’s Santa Fe and Colorado’s Rocky Mountains.
 
Captured with pinpoint clarity by many hi-def cameras, these locations linger in the memory, thanks to the first-rate hi-def transfer.
 
The Angriest Man in Brooklyn
(Lionsgate)
The latest by Phil Alden Robinson (director of Field of Dreams andSneakers) is a compact, intermittently satisfying black comedy about an angry man who, when told he has 90 minutes to live, runs all over Brooklyn hoping to make belated amends with his family.
 
Robinson’s concise direction and pitch-perfect performances by Robin Williams, Mila Kunis, Melissa Leo and Sutton Foster help disguise the fact that this is ultimately 84 shopworn minutes of material from Daniel Taplitz’s script. The Blu-ray looks good; extras are a making-of featurette and gag reel with not enough Williams craziness.
 
 
Ariadne auf Naxos
Don Carlo
(Sony Classical)
Although German tenor Jonas Kaufmann stars in both operas, he is less in his element in Strauss’s Ariadne than in the title role of Verdi’s Don Carlo,where he memorably plays the sympathetic nobleman in the Salzburg Festival’s 2013 staging, which matches the complexities in the libretto and masterly music. 
 
Ariadne is Salzburg’s 2012 staging of the unwieldy original, which Strauss wisely discarded before settling on the justly well-known version. Strauss’s women, as always, are front and center, and Emily Magee and Elena Mosuc come off best in a time-capsule work that has glorious music but bumpy dramaturgy. Hi-def visuals and audio of both operas are exemplary.
 
Fading Gigolo
(Millennium)
Writer-director-star John Turturro bungles his latest, unsure of his material: is it a farce about an elderly bookshop owner (Woody Allen) pimping his employee (Turturro) to the likes of Sharon Stone and Sofia Vergara (who probably don’t need such a service); is it an unlikely romance between Turturro and a lovely Hassidic widow (Vanessa Paradis), or is it a revenge picture about a Hassidic cop (Live Schreiber) preserving the widow’s honor?
 
The tone is inconsistent throughout; and, aside from Allen’s sterling comic presence, the acting is as variable as the film. On Blu-ray, it all pleasantly shimmers; extras are Turturro’s commentary and deleted scenes that include some priceless Woody improvs.
 
 
Love in the City
(Raro)
There was a plethora of omnibus films by notable European directors in the ‘50s and the ‘60s, and this engagingly lightweight 1953 ensemble feature was one of the first: despite comprising shorts by heavy-hitters near the beginning of their careers (Fellini, Antonioni) and other noteworthy filmmakers (Dino Risi, Alberto Lattuada), this is a scattershot film about romances and relationships.
 
Still, anyone interested in these directors—particularly Antonioni and Fellini—will want to at least check out their favorites’ segments. On Blu-ray, the image looks OK if too digitized; extras include commentaries and interviews.
 
The Wind Will Carry Us
(Cohen Media)
Iranian Abbas Kiarostami’s dazzlingly formal 1999 study follows a group of engineers which arrives at a remote village to record the inhabitants’ mourning rituals preceding a 100-year-old woman’s death; when she doesn’t die, the men are forced to appreciate the slow pace of the people’s day-to-day existence.
 
Before he turned into a pretentious purveyor of “reality or illusion” dramas—culminating in the colossally vacuous Certified Copy and Like Someone in Love—Kiarostami directed thought-provoking films with simple but stunning imagery, which come through unvarnished on Blu-ray. Lone extra is Jonathan Rosenbaum’s commentary.
 
DVDs of the Week

The French Minister

(IFC)
Bertrand Tavernier’s unabashed and witty satire of French—and, by extension, international—politics comes very close to becoming the distinguished and intelligent French director’s first foray into farce. But the over-the-top careenings of the characters and the absurd—but expressly realistic—scenarios remain plausible enough to make viewers uncomfortable while laughing out loud.
 
This exhilarating highwire act comes perilously close to going over the edge into self-parody, but never does: pitch-perfect acting by Thierry Lhermitte, Raphael Personnaz, Anais Demoustier and Julie Gayet grounds their near-caricatures in Tavernier’s superbly rendered ultra-heightened reality. My lone quibble: why is this not on Blu-ray? Extras are brief featurettes.
 
Medical Center—Season 5
(Warner Archive)
For the popular hospital drama’s fifth season—which was televised in 1973-74—Chad Everett and James Daly’s doctors not only deal with their patients’ physical and mental issues, but also with thorny problems which were then plaguing and dividing the country, like homosexuality and the Vietnam War.
 
Alongside the stars, some of the guests passing through the hospital’s doors on the six discs housing this season’s 24 episodes include Stefanie Powers, Stockard Channing, Jill Clayburgh, Julie Harris and even Celeste Holm.
 
 
 
 
Le Week-End
(Music Box)
Jim Broadbent and Lindsay Duncan could scarcely be bettered as a middle-aged English couple trying to rekindle their long-dulled marriage by returning to Paris, scene of their long-ago honeymoon.
 
But despite the deliciously believable relationship they create, director Roger Michel and writer Hanif Kureishi are unable to surround them with an arresting storyline or non-clichéd characters to interact with (typified by Jeff Goldblum’s vulgar caricature as an ugly American). Extras are director-producer commentary, featurettes and cast-crew interviews.
 
CD of the Week
John Mellencamp—Live at Town Hall, July 31, 2003
(Mercury/UMe)

It was a long way from Johnny Cougar warbling “Hurts So Good” to a politically aware John Mellencamp performing the entirety of his then-current album, Trouble No More, a collection of blues and folk tunes that stingingly commented on the state of the nation when the Bush administration began its disastrous Iraq war in a 2003 concert that finally sees the light of day.

Mellencamp’s maturity came in fits and starts in the late ‘80s and early ‘90s, but his scathing Trouble songs—played with controlled power by his terrific live band—are in another realm entirely, led by his re-writing of an old song, “To Washington,” mocking the sins of those in power. Renditions of his ‘80s hits “Small Town,” “Paper in Fire” and “Pink Houses”—in more folk-based arrangements—mark a straight line to the political charged tunes from Trouble No More.    

July '14 Digital Week IV

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Parent Category: Film and the Arts
Category: Reviews
Published on Tuesday, 22 July 2014 19:36
Written by Kevin Filipski
Blu-rays of the Week
Cesar Chavez 
(Lionsgate)
Diego Luna’s unexceptional biopic about the singular labor leader who, against all odds, gained widespread support for his strike actions against all-powerful corporations would be less than memorable if not for the compelling performance of Michael Pena in the title role.
Solid support from Rosario Dawson and America Ferrara lends authenticity to a decent if flattened-out Hollywood version of an inspiring true story. The Blu-ray image looks superb; lone extra is a making-of featurette.
Endeavour—Season 2
(PBS)
In the second season of this entertaining prequel to the popular British series Morse, set in Oxford in the fraught decade of the 1960s, the young detective investigates several cases with the no-nonsense Chief Inspector Thursday (played by the inimitable Roger Allam of The Thick of It).
Shaun Evans himself provides the necessary pluck, humor and intelligence in the title role, and these four 90-minute mysteries unravel grippingly. The hi-def transfer is first-rate.

Michael Palin’s Brazil 
(BBC)
Wherein the former Monty Python member continues his successful second career as a world traveler to remote and remarkable destinations, this four-part series follows Palin to what’s been in the news recently as the controversial home of the recent World Cup.
But as Palin discovers (and shows), it is so much more, with some of the most wide-ranging cultures on the entire planet, from difficult-to-reach rainforest regions to full-to-bursting population centers Rio and Brasilia, where millions live in cramped quarters. It’s a splendid but thoughtful journey, with spectacular vistas rendered beautifully on Blu-ray.
 
Open Grave 
(Cinedigm)
Pits filled with dead bodies, survivors suffering from amnesia, a plague that has seemingly killed off much of the world’s population—yes, it’s another apocalyptic thriller, although this one is somewhat cleverer than other recent entries.
Director Gonzalo Lopez-Gallego and writers Eddie and Chris Borey keep things moving by keeping shock effects to a minimum, and the result is a watchable entry in this burgeoning genre, especially for those who are fans. On Blu-ray, the movie looks excellent; lone extra: behind-the-scenes featurette.

Pickpocket 
(Criterion)
One of Robert Bresson’s 1950s masterpieces—along with A Man Escaped and Diary of a Country Priest—this 1959 classic leads up to, in Bresson’s usual austere and elliptical style, a young man’s eventual (and surprising) state of grace while working as a low-class criminal.
This is yet another of Bresson’s transcendent explorations of humanity, as usual achieved with an eloquent economy of means. The Criterion Collection’s new hi-def transfer is spellbinding, as the film’s B&W images popping off the screen; extras include a commentary, intro, Bresson interview, and 2003 documentary feature The Models of Pickpocket, which profiles Bresson’s actors.

Transcendence 
(Warners)
It would be nice to report that the latest sci-fi film about artificial intelligence is smart, stylish and superlative entertainment, but no: Transcendence is draggy, laughably inert and trite through and through.
Although from Kate Mara I don’t expect much, talented performers like Johnny Depp, Morgan Freeman, Cillian Murphy and Paul Bettany are hopelessly lost, and even Rebecca Hall, an actress who never strikes a false note, can’t overcome screenwriter Jack Paglen’s flimsy characters and motivation. Cinematographer turned director Wally Pfister creates gorgeous imagery but can’t make the plot transform itself into coherence. The Blu-ray looks terrific; extras are short featurettes.

DVDs of the Week
The Face of Love 
(IFC)
In this intimately-scaled drama about a widow who falls for a man that’s a dead ringer for her long-deceased husband, Annette Bening’s forceful and subtle performance (one of her best) towers over director-cowriter Arie Posen and cowriter Matthew McDuffie’s Twilight Zone knock-off.
The very real chemistry between Bening and an excellent Ed Harris (as husband and new guy) is undermined by desperate melodramatic strategems that lead the movie to a sentimental denouement after spinning its wheels for 90 minutes. Extras include deleted scenes and interviews.


How the West Was Won—Complete 2nd Season
(Warners)
Although it shares its title with the Oscar-winning, 1962 western epic, this 1977-79 drama series is a pale imitation of its big-screen brethren’s visual grandeur, and a top small-screen cast led by James Arness, Eva Marie Saint, Bruce Boxleitner and Lloyd Bridges can’t compensate.
Of the 14 season two episodes housed on six discs, three are 2-1/2 hours long, approaching the length of the original without the Cinerama process that made the movie a true “event.”

Unni Lindell—The Cato Isaksen Mysteries, Sets 1 & 2 
(MHZ International Mystery)
Based on novels by Norwegian author Unni Lindell, these three-DVD sets of feature-length mysteries centers on homicide detective Cato Isakson, whose professionalism and brilliance at solving tough murder cases runs directly counter to his screwed-up home life (he has three kids by two women, for starters).
Acted with conviction by Reidar Sorenson (Cato) and a formidable supporting cast, these two-part films—each running about three hours—are first-rate…and binge-worthy (the ultimate compliment nowadays).


Vicious—Season One 
(PBS)
Pairing Derek Jacobi and Ian McKellen as aging queens who live together as they endlessly bicker comes off as a retrograde and desperate attempt at a sitcom that, sadly, is only in its first season: meaning there will be more of this.
The two legendary actors do what they can with dated (and stupid) material, and their leading lady—the irrepressibly brilliant Frances de la Tour—is even better. But no one can save this. Extras comprise cast and crew interviews.

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  1. July '14 Digital Week III
  2. July '14 Digital Week II
  3. July '14 Digital Week I

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