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June '14 Digital Week I

Details: Parent Category: Film and the Arts; Category: Reviews; Published on Tuesday, 03 June 2014 14:43; Written by Kevin Filipski

Blu-rays of the Week

Alexander—Ultimate Cut
(Warners)

Oliver Stone takes another pass at his 2004 Alexander the Great biopic: this, supposedly last version runs nearly 3-1/2 hours and is certainly wildly ambitious, with many striking sequences, superlative set design and fantastic photography: but Colin Farrell’s so-so leading man is outclassed by Rosario Dawson, Jared Leto, Angelina Jolie and Anthony Hopkins.

It’s not entirely Farrell’s fault, for Stone—who is engagingly forthcoming during his new commentary—failed to capture Alexander’s greatness and complexity even with a longer cut: another hour or more might have helped. The hi-def transfer is sumptuous; one new extra is a half-hour featurette, the rest—featurettes and Stone’s own son’s documentary on the making of the film—are from earlier editions.

Death Spa
(MPI)

This 1989 flick might be the ultimate in cheesy horror movies, as several unsuspecting idiots meet their lethal ends in various icky ways at the title spa.

Although it sometimes humorously winks at its own silliness, the overall effect is that of a low-budget piece of schlock that’s not really as smart as it thinks: even the plentiful nudity—an obvious selling point in certain quarters—doesn’t really help either. The Blu-ray image is adequate; extras include a commentary and making-of featurette.

Parts Per Billion
(Millennium)

In yet another familiar apocalyptic drama attempting to marry intimate character studies with its end of the world scenario, a few couples negotiate emotional and practical minefields that are literally killing off most of the planet.

Director-writer Brian Horiuchi’s utter seriousness stifles any emotional involvement we might feel for such fine actors as Frank Langella, Gena Rowlands and Rosario Dawson, none of whom can do much with the hands they’ve been dealt. The Blu-ray image looks superior.

Robocop
(Fox)

This reboot of a franchise that went downhill after Paul Verhoeven’s enjoyable 1987 original cleverly updates to a stateless, terrorist-laden world at first, then reverts to a routine crime drama/action flick that relies too much on technology and not nearly enough on the humanity at the story’s core.

Director Jose Padilha amusingly uses Focus’s forgotten hit “Hocus Pocus” during one violent sequence, but the movie’s tongue isn’t in its cheek enough: solid performances by an unrecognizable Gary Oldman and perennially underrated Abbie Cornish are the highlights. The hi-def transfer is impeccable; extras include deleted scenes and featurettes.

Super Duper Alice Cooper

(Eagle Rock)

In an immensely entertaining portrait of the former Vincent Furnier, a Detroit pastor’s son who grew up from an asthmatic, lonely child to one of rock’s greatest showmen and elder statesmen, directors Reginald Harkema, Scot McFayden and Sam Dunn smartly utilize archival interviews, TV clips and concert segments as we hear the voices of the principal players.

Alice, his band members, manager, wife and admirers Elton John, Bernie Taupin and Iggy Pop alternately narrate warts-and-all accounts of the debauchery that made a rock’n’roll legend. The Blu-ray image looks OK, considering the substandard state of so much of the vintage material; extras include deleted scenes and rare interview footage.

The Universe—Ancient Mysteries Solved: 7^th Season
(History)

The ancient mysteries that are solved in this, another provocative season include the Star of Bethlehem, the destruction of Sodom and Gomorrah and some possible explanations for both Stonehenge and the Egyptian pyramids.

As always, a group of select talking scientific heads, on-location photography and expansive CGI effects combine to present a tantalizing look at these seemingly inexplicable unknowns of our world; the hi-def images look terrific.

DVDs of the Week

Blue Movie
(Raro)

Italian director Alberto Cavallore’s weirdly hypnotic and hallucinatory 1973 sex movie, shot on 16 mm, has copious amounts of nudity and even some at the time taboo interracial sex.

But it’s the bizarre psychological dislocation and mental games playing that keeps this watchable (in the car crash sense) as it continually threatens to go off the deep end. Extras include a 45-minute retrospective featurette and seven scenes from the uncut version.

Child’s Pose
(Zeitgeist)

Although Calin Peter Netzer’s extremely well-crafted drama has a grasp of the minutiae of daily existence in its story of an upper-class woman who frenziedly ensures her grown-up son won’t be jailed for running over a teenage boy with his car, its deliberate pace slowly robs it of its cumulative power.

Luminita Gheorghiu’s persuasive performance as the mother and Nataşa Raab’s slyly understated portrayal of her son’s girlfriend, coupled with Netzer’s assured direction, keep one watching in spite of its damaging slowness. Extras include a deleted scene and on-set footage.

Max Linder Collection

(Kino)

Although he had the misfortune of being compared to the—to my mind—much greater Chaplin, Keaton and Lloyd, silent French comedian Max Linder made a series of hilarious silent movies that don’t rely on genuine slapstick.

The four films collected here—The Three Must-Get-Theres, Be My Wife, Seven Years Bad Luck, Max Wants a Divorce—all have their moments, especially my favorite, Divorce, a one-note comic idea taken to its funniest extreme.

Pioneers of Television—Season 4

(PBS)

For the latest season of the PBS series showcasing important performers who made television what it is today, a quartet of episodes—Standup to Sitcom, Doctors and Nurses, Acting Funny and Breaking Barriers—takes the measure of the comic and dramatic actors and actresses of all stripes through interviews with legends ranging from Robin Williams and Bill Cosby to Diahann Carroll and Dick Van Dyke.

There’s also a healthy amount of clips from many of the shows, ranging from St. Elsewhere to Mork and Mindy, which make these nostalgic excursions memorable for any baby boomer who watched TV while growing up (and who didn’t?).

CDs of the Week

Elton John—Goodbye Yellow Brick Road
40^th Anniversary (UMe)

When Elton John released his first double album in late 1973, he was already one of the biggest rock stars on the planet, but Road shot him into the stratosphere: for a few years anyway. The 40th anniversary edition of Elton’s best record (although Tumbleweed Connection and Captain Fantastic nip at its heels) adds some head-scratching extras but it’s the album’s 17 tracks—whose dizzying array of styles and sounds run the gamut from the eerie strains of “Funeral for a Friend” to the insanely catchy closer “Harmony”—that keepRoad sounding fresh and new despite its familiarity.

The 4-CD, 1-DVD set features the original album, two discs of a 1974 concert, a disc of nine contemporary Road covers and bonus tracks like the holiday tunes “Step Into Christmas” and “Ho Ho Ho (Who’d Be a Turkey at Christmas).” But what are 1974’s “Pinball Wizard” and 1975’s “Philadelphia Freedom” doing here? The DVD of director Bryan Forbes’ 1973 documentary, Elton John and Bernie Taupin Say Goodbye Norma Jean and Other Things has been edited down presumably to excise people who are now enemies of the Elton camp.

Overall, the 40th anniversary Road doesn’t improve on the 30th anniversary (which had a revelatory surround sound mix). But for Elton completists—or if you somehow don’t have it yet—it’s a must.

Natalie Merchant

(Nonesuch)

For her first album of original material since 2001’sMotherland, Natalie Merchant once again assembles a cohesive artistic statement of sophisticated and strong pop music. Although the opening track, “Ladybug,” is uncomfortably reminiscent of “San Andreas Fault,” which led off her first solo album Tigerlily (1995), the remainder of the album harks back to her solo and 10000 Maniacs work without slavish imitation.

Standouts are two songs about the effects of war, “Seven Deadly Sins” and the haunting closer, “The End,” which features a most sensitive—and subtle—orchestral arrangement. Merchant’s voice, among the most distinctive in pop/rock/folk, still shimmers, and her lyrics sound effortlessly conversational at the same time that they reach for the metaphoric. This sterling self-produced effort makes one hope that Merchant doesn’t wait as long next time to record and release more of her finely-crafted original songs.

Hits of DOC NYC on Streaming & VOD

Details: Parent Category: Film and the Arts; Category: Reviews; Published on Wednesday, 28 May 2014 16:17; Written by Nora Lee Mandel

A World Not Ours

The extended impact of the fourth annual DOC NYC, held November 14 – 21, is being felt as features are succeeding to wider distribution, in theaters, on PBS, and on such video-on-demand platforms Netflix and iTunes. Here’s recommendations of two memorable international documentaries to catch that are now thoughtfully bringing international issues to more American eyes:

A World Not Ours

Director Mahdi Fleifel is haunted by David Ben Gurion’s claim, as Israel’s first prime minister, about displaced Palestinians (to quote him more accurately than the film does): “They only see one thing: we have come here and stolen their country. Why should they accept that? They may perhaps forget in one or two generations' time." As the third generation who has not forgotten, and marked the 60 years since the Nakba – The Disaster – of 1948 by picking up cameras, he intimately and frankly documents over time the lives of his family and friends in Ein el-Helweh, the largest Palestinian refugee camp in southern Lebanon. For all the media attention on the Palestinians on the West Bank, particularly in films such as seen in the Other Israel Film Festival, this is a significant portrait of the frustrations and isolation in this limbo where they have no political or economic rights.

Delving insightfully into the gaps between memory and reality, he explores his childhood impressions of summer play visiting his grandfather, who has lived there since the expulsion from his home at age 16. By the time youthful soccer games gave way to 2006 World Cup enthusiasm, the square kilometer that the United Nations Relief Agency organized in the same pattern as their original villages, had gotten further subdivided by growing families to teem with over 70,000 people. Now the octogenarian patriarch can’t stand the encroaching noise and crashing balls.

Fleifel is both a sympathetic insider and a clear-eyed outsider, whose identity card expired when he was four, but eventually gets him past checkpoints for annual visits. His father got a job in the Emirates in 1985 and elsewhere as a salesman while for many years filming home movies of their wide travels until they were able to settle in Denmark in 1988 – a place unknown to everyone in the camp. Ironically, his Danish high school class visited Israel so that he is the only family member who witnessed that their original farm in Saffouriehlooks like an archeological ruin.

Selections of archival footage and his narration provide useful context of political events outside the camp, from 1948 through the hopes of peace negotiations, and the fallout in the 1990’s from the Lebanese civil war that took the life of one uncle, hailed as a hero, and shattered the mental health of another left raising pigeons. But the unique heart of the film focuses on the impact of the larger politics on his best friend. Adopting the name Abu Iyad during his intelligence work for Arafat’s Fatah, he is dependent on their reduced subsistence allowance after the clashes with Hamas, fed up with the Palestinian Authority’s corruption, and desperate enough for an opportunity to a better life that even illegal status in economically depressed Greece looks good. Winner of DOC NYC’s Viewpoints Grand Jury Prize, this revealing documentary is getting a theatrical release before premiering on PBS’s P.O.V. series August 18, 2014.

God Loves Uganda

Director Roger Ross Williams reveals the context behind the rising tide of extreme homophobic legislation and homosexual persecution that has roused global condemnation, and taken a terrible, even fatal, toll on individuals in Uganda, as seen in interviews with gay activists here, and in Call Me Kuchu released last year. Resentful mainstream Christian ministers in the U.S. and Africa who have been actively ostracized by the ascendant evangelicals are the narrative guides. But what makes this documentary so eye-opening are the sweet smiles and fervent dedication of the wholesome, earnest Midwestern missionaries who are intimately followed as they are recruited, trained, and sent forth to enthusiastically proselytize from the International House of Prayer, a megachurch in Kansas City, Missouri.

They are inspired by centuries of colonial clichés about the dark continent of pagan souls ripe for the solace of Jesus effectively updated to American culture war priorities for an extensive fundraising operation. (Even more controversially, in Mission Congo, an hour-long film in the festival, directors Lara Zizic and David Turner investigated another religious charity, Pat Robertson’s Operation Blessing, for fraudulent misrepresentation of assistance in Congo.) While the participants here talk extensively about their heartfelt motivations, including how these years of commitment help them overcome what they see as their own failings, it is positively atavistic to see smiling young white folks today still providing only English hymns to African kids in grass shacks with no education, electricity, or modern health care, let alone catastrophic to see the damage from the far more blatant rabble-rousing against gays. PBS’s Independent Lens began showing the documentary in May, and it is now available on iTunes and Netflix.

American Ballet Theater Opens New Season on a Strong Note

Details: Parent Category: Film and the Arts; Category: Reviews; Published on Tuesday, 27 May 2014 22:01; Written by Jack Angstreich

The new American Ballet Theater season at Lincoln Center began, after an opening night gala performance, with a run of Don Quixote, choreographed by Marius Petipa and Alexander Gorsky, here presented in the 1995 production staged by Kevin McKenzie and Susan Jones. The modern Don Quixote is said by some to be a Soviet bastardization of the classical original and is often derided by cognoscenti; indeed, it does come across as pure fluff, albeit of a highly entertaining kind. The slender and improbable comic narrative is a mere armature upon which the effervescent dances have been embroidered for purposes of maximum display. The Ludwig Minkus score, a tuneful pastiche of Spanish-inflected melodies, has been undervalued — while not on a par with the great Romantic ballet music by Edouard Lalo, Peter Ilyich Tchaikovsky, Alexandr Glazunov, and others, it nonetheless possesses great charm. The scenery and costumes by the talented and ubiquitous Santo Loquasto here are serviceable, if generic.

The final performance, on the evening of Monday, May 19th, featured the fine Cuban ballerina Xiomara Reyes, who was unusually dazzling in the lead role of Kitri, if not quite the match of the scintillating Natalya Osipova or Veronika Part. ( Natalya Osipova did not perform in Don Quixote, this season but Part played the part in the previous week. Xiomara Reyes, although on the whole outshone here, is incidentally a superb and touching Giselle.) In terms of sheer athleticism, the beefcake star, Ivan Vasiliev, is without peer and, for that reason alone, is always an exciting and popular Basilio even if he does not offer the elegant precision of an Alban Lendorf, who performed the role here in the previous week, also partnering Xiomara Reyes. The leads are assisted by an outstanding supporting cast: Misty Copeland as Mercedes and as the Queen of the Dryads, Jared Matthews as Espada, Devon Teuscher and Melanie Hamrick as the Flower Girls, Isadora Loyola and Zhiyao Zhang as the Gypsy Couple, and Yuriko Kajiya as Amour — all splendid! A further grace note of this performance was the corps de ballet which was, gratifyingly, in nearly top form while Ivan Vasiliev and Xiomara Reyes received a deservedly rapturous ovation for their astonishing pyrotechnics in the last act.

As an interlude amongst the full-length story ballets that constitute the main fare at American Ballet Theater, the “Classic Spectacular” program exhibits some other jewels in the company’s repertoire. With the opening work in the program, George Balanchine’s masterpiece, Theme and Variations, an exquisite, abstract exercise in apparent nostalgia for Imperial Russia, originally created for ABT in 1947 and set to music from Tchaikovsky’s orchestral Suite No. 4, we move from what may be mere entertainment to aesthetic enchantment. At the matinee performance, the thrilling leads were the pretty Sarah Lane along with Daniil Simkin, one of the strongest male dancers in the company; the evening performance of the same day featured Isabella Boylston and and New York City Ballet principal, Andrew Veyette, who, although very good, didn’t quite attain Danil Simkin's perfection. The costumes by Zack Brown are marvelous.

George Balanchine’s Duo Concertant, set to music by Igor Stravinksy, is a high-point of the choreographer’s more intimate, modernist works and is a staple at City Ballet where it has notably been recently performed by Robert Fairchild and Tiler Peck amongst others. Paloma Herrera and James Whiteside were solid at the matinee performance but both were surpassed in the evening program by Eric Tamm and, above all, Misty Copeland, who was the most impressive of all the principals.

Leonide Massine’s rarely seen and unjustly neglected Gaîté Parisienne, set to music by Jacques Offenbach, provided a fabulous conclusion to these performances. Veronika Part and Jared Matthews afforded much pleasure as the leads in the matinee; their counterparts in the evening were the brilliant Hee Seo partnered by Marcelo Gomes. The costumes by Christian Lacroix are appropriately vividly colorful, if not beautiful.

American Ballet Theater

Metropolitan Opera House

Lincoln Center

212 362 6000

May 12 - July 5, 2014

www.abt.org

May '14 Digital Week IV

Details: Parent Category: Film and the Arts; Category: Reviews; Published on Tuesday, 27 May 2014 21:05; Written by Kevin Filipski

Blu-rays of the Week

The Bridges of Madison County

(Warners)

This major miscalculation by director-star Clint Eastwood—whose turgid 135-minute adaptation (from 1995) of the popular Robert James Waller romance novel never escapes its sappy origins—has an opening sequence that may be the worst-acted and tone-deaf bit of one of his pre-Gran Torino movies.

Too bad Eastwood and Meryl Streep’s real rapport can’t overcome the sentimental melodramatics. The Blu-ray image looks decent; extras are an audio commentary, making-of featurette and music video.

Chaplin

(EuroArts)

A ballet about Charlie Chaplin’s life and films sounds promising, but Mario Schroder’s choreographically lazy vision—which contrasts Chaplin’s own music with Wagner, Schnittke, Brahms, Britten and Barber—traps the Little Tramp (a glorious Tyler Galster) by boxing in his signature movements with too much stage busyness.

Some wonderful moments make clear how balletic Chaplin’s physical comedy was, but after awhile the repetition becomes numbing. The Blu-ray image and sound is stellar.

Dan Curtis’ Dracula

(MPI)

Jack Palance takes on the Transylvanian count with a taste for blood and nubile young women in Dan Curtis’ straightforward, mostly uncampy take on Bram Stoker’s classic horror novel, which has a no-nonsense script by the great Richard Matheson.

Palance gives a controlled performance in a role usually hammed up to the nth degree in this skillfully old-fashioned entertainment. On Blu-ray, the movie looks good; extras include outtakes and interviews with Palance and Curtis.

Endless Love

(Universal)

Following Franco Zeffirelli’s 1981 bomb with Brooke Shields—also based on Scott Spencer’s novel—director-co-writer Shana Feste’s romance doesn’t try to be anything other than a watchable soap opera about a very attractive couple.

If the plot and the characters never stray from what’s expected out of this type of movie, the ultra-beautiful leads Gabriella Wilde and Alex Pettyfer (surprisingly, both are British) share a chemistry that goes a long way toward selling this even to those who might resist. The Blu-ray image is first-rate; extras are making-of featurette, extended ending, deleted scenes.

Gang War in Milan

(Raro)

In Umberto Lenzi’s fast-paced 1973 thriller, local pimp Toto stands up to the newest crime lord set on lording it all over his small-time operations in Milan, a city that’s as much a character as the men and their (usually naked) women.

The non-stop action—chases, showdowns and shootouts—keeps coming for 100 minutes, as Toto decides not to go down without a fight. The film’s grain is retained on Blu-ray to great effect; lone extra is an intro by Mike Malloy.

Journey to the West

(Magnet)

Director Robert Chow shows off his talent for incredible action sequences and pacing in this caffeinated adventure about a demon hunter and his ultimate prize: Sun Wukong, the demon of all demons.

Although the story is cartoonish in the extreme, Chow keeps things animated in both senses with game performers, an astonishing eye for detail and computer effects work. The fantastic images look terrific on Blu-ray; extras comprise several making-of featurettes.

Stranger by the Lake

(Strand Releasing)

Despite obvious visual allure, this sun-dappled story about a killer among the clientele at a secluded beach where gay men pick up one another for anonymous sex meanders for nearly two hours; Alain Guiraudie’s crude direction and heavyhanded script and the indifferent acting make the hardcore segments seem like desperate attempts to deflect attention from the rest of the film’s innocuousness.

The Blu-ray image looks a little overexposed, but that may be Guiraudie’s intent; extras include a Guiraudie interview, two Guiraudie shorts, an alternate ending and deleted scenes.

DVDs of the Week
The First World War—The Complete Series

(e one)

This ten-part series is a comprehensive look at the Great War, which made Europe a bloody battlefield for four years. By using much archival footage and the actual words from many of its participants gives greater, more personal meaning to many of the events, from the assassination in Sarajevo that sparked the conflict to the armistice that ended it.

If you count yourself a true history buff—as I do—then you should watch every minute of its ten hours.

God Loves Uganda

(First Run)

American evangelicals not only make life miserable for Americans, but now that they outsource themselves to the rest of the world—Uganda has become an anti-gay battlefield—other countries are facing their own deadly infection, as Roger Ross Williams’ enraging documentary shows.

Williams smartly allows both sides their say with no editorializing, so when a gay Ugandan activist ends up killed, no amount of commentary is needed to point out who the spiritual culprits are. Extras comprise deleted scenes and short films.

The Great Flood

(Icarus)

A follow-up to his masterly The Miners’ Hymns, director Bill Morrison brilliantly marries archival footage he uncovered to a contemporary score by jazz guitarist Bill Frisell. Morrison’s ingenious editing and Frisell’s music provide stark beauty amid the misery of flooding that inundated the Mississippi delta in 1927.

Although there are dead moments—a Sears Roebuck catalog segment seems an attempt to pad the running time—Morrison illustrates a necessary reminder of man’s relationship to nature’s ravages.

Hitler and the Nazis

(Cinedigm)

This five-part, 4-1/2 hour documentary series—which recounts the horrible and lethal efficiency of Hitler and his henchmen, who caused the deaths of untold millions in European battlefields, concentration camps and ghettos—begins with Hitler’s inauspicious beginnings in rural Austria to his clever political wrangling that led him to become the infamous face of worldwide evil.

Narrated by Chris Andrews, Karl T. Hirsch’s series offers vintage footage and photographs, as well as eyewitness testimony from everyone from filmmaker Leni Riefenstahl to Jesse Owens’s widow and sister to vividly tell the story of the man and his horrific legacy.

The Jewish Cardinal

(Film Movement)

In the “truth is stranger than fiction” department comes this story about a French-Jewish convert to Christianity who, after becoming a Cardinal, finds himself as Pope John Paul II’s right hand man in touchy Church matters relating to the Holocaust. Director Ilan Duran Cohen’s measured tone seems right for a film in which much of the drama is inside a title character (the powerful Laurent Lucas) still anguished about his decades-old conversion.

Cohen also accomplishes the feat of having actor Aurélien Recoing play John Paul with humor and even irreverence without it seeming sacrilegious. The lone extra is an amusing short, Kosher.

Pretty Peaches 2/Pretty Peaches 3

Deep Tango/Young Secretaries

(Vinegar Syndrome)

This quartet comes from porn’s “golden age” (‘70s & ‘80s), when X-rated movies had plots punctuated by—occasionally relevant—sex scenes. Peaches 2 (1987) has curvaceous superstar Tracey Adams, while Peaches 3 (1989) stars the always energetic Keisha.

The mid-‘70s flicks are pretentious (Deep apes Last Tango in Paris down to an opening scream echoing Marlon Brando’s from that film) and frivolous (Secretaries is as original as its title). Vinegar Syndrome keeps churning out vintage porn, an eye-opener to those who only know today’s “gonzo” style that the internet has made ubiquitous.

Weekend of a Champion

(MPI)

In 1971, Roman Polanski followed his pal race car driver Jackie Stewart for three days while he prepared for the Monte Carlo Grand Prix, and we get to see the famous athlete and the famous director in Stewart’s world, both on and off the race track.

Directed by Frank Simon, the film fascinatingly shows the two men together four decades ago and, at the end, today: an older and wiser Polanski and Stewart sit down to reminisce about the earlier footage, which comes off as a DVD bonus that’s become part of the film.

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