Blu-rays of the Week
Children of Paradise
(Criterion)
Les Visiteurs du Soir
(Criterion)
Marcel Carne's best films
are unique amalgams of visual and verbal poetry that combine
incredible acting with Jacques Prevert's sublime scripts. Children
of Paradise (1945), one of the all-time great films, is an abject
lesson in performance and the last word in cinematic romance. Les
Visiteurs du Soir (1942) is a scarcely less wondrous fantasy
about two envoys sent by Satan to Earth during the Middle Ages to
cause havoc but instead find love. The exquisite-looking B&W
compositions have been restored to a new vitality on these Criterion
discs, even if Children has noticeably soft sections. Both
films include a 2009 making-of documentary; Children also has
two commentaries, Terry Gilliam intro, featurettes, interviews and
its own 2009 making-of doc.
(Miramax)
Darkness/Below
(Miramax)
These double-feature
Blu-rays pair character-driven dramas and routine thrillers. The
first has Robert Benton's Human Stain, which flattens Philip
Roth's haunting novel by having Anthony Hopkins and Nicole Kidman go
through the motions, and Sean Penn's downbeat Crossing Guard,
which features an emotionally constricted Jack Nicholson performance.
The other has Darkness, a haunting thriller with Anna Paquin
and Lena Olin, and Below, set in a submarine, which wastes
Olivia Williams, among others. The movies have decent hi-def
transfers; extras include featurettes and deleted scenes.
(Disney)
Tim Burton's best movie
remains this affectionate 1994 biopic about the world's worst
moviemaker, with Johnny Depp delightfully camping it up as Ed, who
thought he was making art when he was truly the bottom of the barrel.
Sly turns are handed in by Bill Murray, Martin Landau (a perfect Bela
Lagosi), and even Sarah Jessica Parker, who for once is believable as
an inept actress. The exquisite B&W photography looks sumptuous
on Blu-ray; extras include a commentary, deleted scenes and
featurettes.
(Image)
Another eccentric family
does eccentric things, all the while speaking the most clever and
witty rat-a-tat dialogue to one another—I feel like I've seen this
movie 100 times in the past few years, and it's getting really
tiresome. Goats at least has a solid cast led by David
Duchovny, Vera Farmiga and Justin Kirk, although the always appealing
Keri Russell is criminally underused. The movie receives a top-notch
Blu-ray transfer; extras include a making-of, deleted scenes and home
movies.
(Fox)
In the third season of
the most-honored network sitcom of the past few years—winning even
more Emmy awards this weekend—the extended family's misadventures
continue for two dozen more episodes, propped up by the superb comic
portrayals of Emmy winners Julie Bowen and Eric Stonestreet, with the
voluptuous Sofia Vergara on hand to ensure that it's worthwhile
watching the show on Blu-ray. The extras comprise featurettes, deleted scenes and a gag reel.
(Kino)
One of Buster Keaton's
lesser features, this 1924 comic adventure finds him negotiating his
way around a huge steamship as he also tries to negotiate his way
around the young woman stowed away on the boat. There are splendidly
realized scenes of Buster's own brand of inimitable physical comedy,
but the 60-minute movie feels like a short stretched to a feature.
Still, Keaton fans will still love it. The Blu-ray image improves on
the DVD, but print damage is still quite noticeable. Extras include a
featurette and commentary.
(Fox)
This earnest but
hopelessly muddled drama dramatizes a 19-year-old woman's reaction to
the news that her mother not only gave her up at birth but that she
was actually an abortion survivor. You know you're in amateurish
hands when the movie begins with a pop song montage that so many TV
shows end with—and the dull tunes keep popping up throughout as
shorthand for actual conflict. The cast has little to do, although
Rachel Hendrix transforms heroine Hannah into someone who deserves
our sympathy. The Blu-ray image looks fine; extras include a
commentary, deleted scenes, bloopers, music video and interviews.
(Deutsche Grammophon)
In the Metropolitan
Opera's latest staging of Wagner's insanely ambitious Ring
cycle—comprising Das Rheingold, Die Walkure, Siegfried and
Gotterdammerung—Canadian director Robert Lepage uses the
technological wizardry at his disposal to present the fantastic epic
tale of gods and goddesses, Rhine maidens and dragons, and the ring
which binds them all together. If Lepage's concept is mere gimmickry,
there's no quibbling with the musicianship. There's the redoubtable
Met Orchestra and Chorus under the batons of James Levine and, for
the last two operas, Fabio Luisi; and there are world-class singers
like Bryn Terfel (Wotan), Deborah Voigt (Brunnhilde), Jay Hunter
Morris (Siegfried), Eric Owens (Alberich) and Eva-Maria Westbrook
(Sieglinde). The hi-def images are splendidly realized, the music
sounds great in surround sound, and an extra disc includes Wagner's
Dream, Susan Froemke's documentary about this production's
genesis.
(Warners)
In the seventh season of
this popular prime-time soap opera, brothers Sam and Dean take on
demons of all stripes, from none other than Lucifer down to their own
personal crises; the set comprises 23 episodes over four discs, and
the hi-def images are excellent. Extras include an exclusive Blu-ray
interactive featurette, three commentaries, a gag reel, deleted
scenes and interviews.
(Criterion)
Vittorio de Sica's
masterly portrait of an elderly retiree and his beloved dog trying to
survive in postwar Italy is one of the greatest of all neo-realist
films: and this glorious Blu-ray release is the perfect present for
this classic film's 50th anniversary. Actor Carlo Battisti
and canine Napoleone's naturalistic performances go beyond acting,
and DeSica and co-writer Cesare Zavattini have created a painfully
tragic, heartbreaking and immortal tale. The Blu-ray image is
immaculate; extras include That's Life, a 55-minute doc about
de Sica's career and a 2003 interview with actress Maria Pia Casilio.
(Anchor Bay)
Actor Michael Biehn's
inauspicious writing/directing debut is a sleazy, exploitative flick
about a young woman, escaping a pair of crazy men in the woods, who
runs into a recluse (Biehn) who helps her out. It's a flimsy plot
stretched weakly to feature length: Biehn, who has an impressive
screen presence, isn't much of a writer or director; Jennifer Blanc
is too shrill as the heroine, but Danielle Harris gives an appealing
performance in her too-brief screen time as the victim. The hi-def
image is good; extras are a making-of featurette and Biehn/Blanc
commentary.
Army Wives—Season
6, Part 1
(ABC)
Body of Proof—The
Complete Season 2
(ABC)
The first half of the
sixth season of the emotionally charged drama Army Wives—13
episodes' worth—finds the women (and men) of Fort Marshall
dealing again with matters of both national and personal security.
The 20 episodes of the second season of Body of Proof, which
stars the ageless Dana Delaney (who looks even better than she did on
China beach more than two decades earlier), follow her investigating
team as it solves case after case. Extras on both sets include
deleted scenes, interviews and gag reels.
(PBS)
America and the
Civil War
(PBS)
Death, Ric Burns'
devastating account of how the Civil War changed Americans' view of
death and how the government dealt with military men dying on
battlefields, succinctly summarizes Drew Gilpin Faust's remarkably
researched book The Republic of Suffering. The usual Burnsian
stew of narration, voice-over, historian commentary and vintage
photographs is present and accounted for. America collects
several classic PBS series about the War Between the States:
explorations of Gettysburg, John Brown's Harpers Ferry raid, the
iron-clad Union ship Monitor, the black regiment that inspired the
movie Glory and a two-parter about Reconstruction.
(Sony)
Tanya Wexler's mild
comedy-drama about the invention of the first vibrator has tittering
scenes of women being treated for the title malady in Victorian
London by manual genital manipulation juxtaposed with an unlikely
romance between a young doctor and his mentor's lively, independent
(read “hysteric”) daughter. Maggie Gyllenhall is plucky as said
daughter, but Hugh Dancy is too stolid as the doc. The movie unfolds
decently enough, but Sarah Ruhl's 2009 play In the Next Room
is a more plausible—not to mention funny—take on the same
subject. Extras include a commentary, deleted scenes and making-of
featurette.
(Warners)
In the fourth season
(which comprises 24 episodes), our favorite mentalist—who is played
with elan by Simon Baker—is on the run after killing who he thought
was his nemesis, while his investigative partners (played by Robin
Tunney, Tim Kang, Amanda Righetti and Owain Yeoman) continue to back
him up as the show progresses. The lone extra is a featurette of
real-life “mentalists.”
(Athena)
Women of the
Impressionist Movement
(Arthaus Musik)
In Understanding Art,
art critic Waldemar Janusczak's four-part, four-hour 2011 documentary
made for British TV, the impressionists regain their immediacy and
unique artistic contributions through Janusczak's upbeat presentation
and on-location reporting; extras include full-length profiles of
Edouard Manet and Vincent van Gogh. Women is
Rudij Bergmann's slickly-made 45-minute overview of female
Impressionist painters, including Frenchwoman Berthe Morisot and the
most famous and talented of them all, American Mary Cassatt.
The Master—Original
Soundtrack
(Nonesuch)
Jonny Greenwood's music
for Paul Thomas Anderson's 2007 film There Will Be Blood
channeled the dissonant early works of Krzystof Penderecki so
successfully that Penderecki himself gave Greenwood a thumps-up, most
likely because Penderecki got new fans out of the deal. For
Anderson's new film The Master, Greenwood again provides a
score that has hints of Penderecki, but also touches on other
modernist composers like Berg and Ligeti, and even Stravinsky and
Janacek. For listeners unaware of what it is, they'd likely think
it's a 20th century classical compilation, save for the
scattered period songs like Ella Fitzgerald's “Get Thee Behind Me
Satan.”
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