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.
(Lionsgate)
The latest by Phil Alden Robinson
(director of Field of Dreams and Sneakers) 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.
(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.
(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.
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.
(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.
(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.
(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. 
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