Kevin's December Digital Week II

Blu-rays of the Week
The Dwarf/The Broken Jug (Arthaus Musik) – These one-act operas by Alexander Zemlinsky and Victor Ullmann—two composers whose careers were destroyed by the Nazis—have been resurrected thanks to L.A. Opera’s “Recovered Voices,” conductor James Conlon’s initiative. Ullmann’s charming Broken Jug opens the double bill, followed by Zemlinsky’s twisted, dramatic The Dwarf. Both composers’ originality and accessibility shine throughout; on Blu-ray, the productions look ravishing, and the singing and playing are first-rate. That there’s no interview with Conlon, an endlessly articulate advocate for this music, is a missed chance for insightful bonus material (the booklet’s Conlon essay is adequate).

Mademoiselle Chambon (Kino Lorber) – Stephane Brize’s perfectly-pitched drama concerns a married construction worker who slowly falls in love with his young son’s sweetly unassuming schoolteacher. Vincent Lindon and Sandrine Kiberlain not only make a wonderful couple, but they also show the value of understated acting. Writer-director Brize delicately shows the evolution of this unlikely relationship despite the pair’s own misgivings—and there’s well-chosen chamber music on the soundtrack that cannily mirrors their feelings. The Blu-ray image is extremely sharp and well-defined; extras comprise a 30-minute director interview and 10 minutes’ worth of deleted scenes re-edited by Brize into a separate short providing another view of the affair.

DVDs of the Week

Inception (Warners) – Christopher Nolan’s ponderous spectacle takes nearly 2-½ hours of dreams, dreams within dreams, and dreams within dreams within dreams (handled much more adroitly and humorously by Luis Bunuel in The Discreet Charm of the Bourgeoisie) to arrive at one question: has it all been just a dream? However well-filmed and acted, Inception is too clever for its own good: Nolan wants so desperately to eat his cake and have it too that he over-explains everything (so that everybody in the audience—as well as in the movie—gets it), plants well-timed explosions and mind-blowing effects sequences, and smears Hans Zimmer’s one-note, repetitive music over seemingly every frame. Nolan’s an undeniable talent, but he’s working on a very narrow canvas. The lone extra is a multi-part, 11-minute making-of featurette.

LennonNYC (A&E) – Although the subject of John Lennon has been exhaustively covered in books, movies and TV programs, LennonNYC presents material unseen and unheard until now: recording outtakes, vintage photos/film footage and interviews with peripheral players in John’s story. Though there’s not much that’s revelatory, it remains an engrossing tale of a superstar reinventing himself after moving to New York in the early ‘70s as a peace activist, pissing off Nixon’s FBI (which tried to deport him), becoming a contented house husband and father and reemerging in 1980 with a new album before his murder. As always, John speaks and sings uninhibitedly, nakedly, honestly, and even Yoko discusses aspects of John’s life and death we hadn’t heard before. No extras, unfortunately: unused interview and archival footage could have been added.

CDs of the Week

Marx: Lieder (CPO) – Joseph Marx, an Austrian composer whose career spanned the first half of the 20th century, wrote songs reminiscent of fellow countryman Hugo Wolf’s: both contemplative and filled with emotion. And it is those two qualities that the splendid Austrian mezzo Angelika Kirchschlager responds to in her quietly but entirely satisfying recital recording. Accompanied by the sensitive piano-playing of Anthony Spiri, Kirchschlager tackles two dozen of Marx’s best lieder, from brief, impressionistic songs set to poems by Paul Heise to the six-minute-long “Auf der Campagna,” with words by the composer himself. Kirchschlager’s elegant singing throughout makes one realize that Marx has his ideal interpreter.

Shostakovich: Film Music (Delos) – Dmitri Shostakovich’s movie compositions include many forgettable ones but several on par with his best work in other genres. The bombastic side of Shostakovich’s screen music can be heard in the brassy patriotism of The Viborg District and The Man with a Gun. The Wagner-like “Funeral March” from The Great Citizen is the work of a subtler composer, and the music for Sofia Perovskaya, one of his last major works, harks back to his classic opera Lady Macbeth of the Mtsensk District with its sympathetic portrayal of an scheming heroine. This score is varied, dramatic, and above all, stunning—the wordless female chorus in “Village” is starkly beautiful. Walter Mnatsakanov conducts the able Byelorussian Radio and TV Symphony.