DVD Report
New Releases | Tom Russo
Toxic chemistry gives 'The Prestige' its magic
In making his dueling magicians brainteaser "The Prestige" (2006), director Christopher Nolan displays some sleight-of-hand of his own: pulling a vanishing act that somehow still allows him to remain creatively visible.
A couple of years ago, Nolan traded on his "Memento" cachet to take over a big-budget franchise with "Batman Begins." Eager for a respite from the Bat-signal's glare, he rounded up cast members Christian Bale and Michael Caine , recruited Hugh Jackman , and set to this latest, more intimate project. Jackman and Bale are Robert Angier and Alfred Borden , Victorian magicians mentored by the crusty Caine in all sorts of tricks -- except, apparently, how to forgive and forget. When a routine goes tragically awry, Angier blames Borden, touching off a rivalry that spirals out of control. Their creepy, morally unfettered game of one-up manship is what gives this film the edge over the similarly themed "The Illusionist," in which the conflict felt forced .
Bale is making a career of unnerving, clench-jawed hyperintensity, and his casting opposite the showier Jackman, with his Broadway background and stage flair, serves the story well. The film ultimately isn't as twisty as "Memento," so the pair's toxic chemistry counts all the more. Scarlett Johansson strives to be more than a lovely assistant, but it's David Bowie who makes a bigger impression as the intriguing Nikola Tesla , who's got some scientific magic to impart to the misguided showmen.
Extras: Unfortunately, Nolan seems inclined to duck the DVD spotlight, too. A 20-minute collection of production featurettes talks a bit about Tesla, and less interestingly about the costumes and production design. Someone should have nabbed consultant Ricky Jay for a magical mystery tour. (Touchstone, $29.99)
"MUTUAL APPRECIATION" (2006)
Indie filmmaker and local product Andrew Bujalski ("Funny Ha Ha") slides back into the world of young, recently graduated urbanites crashing with friends, mooching drinks, and self-consciously struggling to settle into grown-up lives and relationships. The black-and-white effort sketches a low-key love triangle between aspiring indie rocker Alan (shaggy Nicolas Cage look - alike Alan Rice), bookish Lawrence (Bujalski), and Lawrence's shakily grounded girlfriend, Ellie (Rachel Clift). For every stilted line delivery, there's another where the fumbled sentiments are wryly authentic. "Appreciation" grows on you, like that ambivalently welcomed houseguest you finally get used to having asleep on your floor.
Extras: Bujalski amusingly turns over the commentary to parents of the cast and crew, his own included. One mom (Rice's, we're assuming) laments that her son didn't stay at Berklee; elsewhere, Bujalski's dad notes, "Well, this, as we know, is just solipsistic masturbation." (
"KEEPING MUM" (2006)
Kristin Scott Thomas gives a swift, bad-tempered kick to this little British comedy, almost single-handedly making it worth watching. Maggie Smith co stars as a sweet old housekeeper who arrives to help restore order to Thomas's dysfunctional family. Thomas is cheating on her vicar husband (Rowan Atkinson) with an oily golf pro (Patrick Swayze). Conveniently, Smith has a secret past as a psycho killer, and she's soon tidying up all these little messes in her barmy style. The darker laughs aren't as edgy as director Niall Johnson and co-writer Richard Russo hope, but it's a lot of fun hearing Thomas testily take the Lord's name in vain.
Extras: Deleted scenes offer a further look at Emilia Fox ("The Pianist"), a dead ringer for Smith in flashbacks. (ThinkFilm, $27.98)
"BABEL" (2006)
Well, parts of this culturally insightful exercise from director Alejandro González Iñárritu ("21 Grams") merit the film's Oscar nods, anyway. Somber vacationers Brad Pitt and Cate Blanchett encounter trouble abroad, part of an interpersonal domino effect that traces back to troubled Japanese teen Rinko Kikuchi, and on to Mexican nanny Adriana Barraza.
Extras: None -- but then, González Iñárritu waited three years to deliver extras on "21 Grams." (Paramount, $19.99)
Classic DVD | Mark Feeney
A strange look at Nazis adrift in Canada
"49th Parallel" (1941) is a strange film. It's not unnervingly strange the way Michael Powell's best-known movies are ("Black Narcissus," "The Red Shoes," "Peeping Tom" ). It's strange for mostly predictable reasons, such as the fact Powell and his screenwriter, Emeric Pressburger , couldn't decide if they wanted a propaganda film, war movie, or something more high-minded. When it's good, it's quite good. But when it's mediocre, which it mostly is, it's just confused.
In effect, "49th Parallel" turns inside out Powell's next movie, "One of Our Aircraft Is Missing. " That one's about a bomber crew shot down over occupied Europe trying to get back to England. This one's about six Nazi sailors fleeing across Canada when their U-boat is sunk in Hudson Bay.
It's a very Canadian Canada these Nazis move through: wheat waves, mountains loom, Eskimos kayak. There are also glimpses of Mounties, Indians, and Niagara Falls. The only other World War II movie set in Canada, Raoul Walsh's "Northern Pursuit, " at least has Errol Flynn on board. The two biggest stars in "49th Parallel," Laurence Olivier and Leslie Howard , make cameo appearances -- and, oy, such appearances. Playing a Quebecois fur trapper, Olivier affects a hilariously over-the-top accent that has to be heard to be disbelieved. As for Howard, he's a novelist vacationing in the Canadian Rockies in a teepee whose furnishings include a Picasso and a Matisse. (Maybe "49th Parallel" qualifies as unnervingly strange, after all.)
There are splendid things here, though. Anton Walbrook conveys a sense of remarkable authority, even grandeur, as the head of a Hutterite community. Ralph Vaughan Williams did the score. And, Criterion being Criterion, the transfer does glorious justice to Freddie Young's superb black-and-white cinematography.
A second disc contains a real find, a 45-minute short called "The Volunteer" (1943). Ralph Richardson , who served in the British Navy during the war, plays himself. He keeps encountering Fred (a fictional character), his klutzy pre war dresser, who becomes a hero as an aircraft carrier flight mechanic. More wartime oddity than anything else, it has many arresting images -- including a Hitchcockian shot of Powell as a photographer outside of Buckingham Palace and Olivier briefly pretending to be a fish (that's not a typo).
Extras: A 1981 BBC documentary on the Powell-Pressburger partnership and excerpts from Powell's audio dictation for his autobiography. (Criterion, $39.95)
Documentary | Wesley Morris
How the Dixie Chicks faced the fallout
A week ago, the Dixie Chicks won five Grammy awards. The occasion was "Taking the Long Way," an album they wrote and recorded in the aftermath of a comment lead singer Natalie Maines made in 2003 about President George W. Bush. By now, you might have heard that on the eve of the Iraq war, Maines announced to a crowd that she was ashamed that she and the president were both from Texas. Before any of this, the Dixie Chicks were a top-selling act. After The Comment, they were instantly recast as unpatriotic.
If, like me, you found "Taking the Long Way" a disappointingly mild response to the fallout, listen to it after seeing "Shut Up & Sing" (2006), the superb documentary about the country music trio and the flap that engulfed them. Barbara Kopple and Cecilia Peck's film follows the Chicks from that infamous London concert to the recording, release, and reception of the new disc. We end up so close that the band's songs become emotionally amplified, and the album itself deepens.
Maines and her band mates Emily Robison and Martie Maguire discuss with their British manager how to proceed with damage control. But as Maines readily admits, there was nothing anyone could have done to change what happened. Still, the country world's rejection hurts Maines irrevocably, and the film provides an inkling of what happens when an act doesn't stay on message with Nashville.
Perky as they seemed, the Dixie Chicks had always stood for a kind of single-minded independence. But what happened in 2003 altered their brashness. Suddenly, they were outcasts with a peeved fan base, besieged by fellow entertainers like super-patriot and pickup-truck pitchman Toby Keith. They'd lost their innocence, epitomizing that old Southern saw: What doesn't kill you just makes you stronger. (Weinstein Company, $28.95; no extras)
ALSO THIS WEEK
"FOR YOUR CONSIDERATION" (2006)
Christopher Guest, Eugene Levy, and the rest of the troupe from "Best in Show" and "A Mighty Wind" send up Hollywood with their behind-the-scenes look at dubious awards contender "Home for Purim." Guest mined the same territory to funnier effect in "The Big Picture."
Extras: Commentary by Guest and Levy. (Warner, $27.95)
"A GUIDE TO RECOGNIZING YOUR SAINTS" (2006)
First-time filmmaker and Sundance fave Dito Montiel enlists Shia LaBeouf and Robert Downey Jr. to adapt his memoir of coming to terms with his hardscrabble youth in '80s Queens.
Extras: Montiel commentary and interview; deleted scenes. (First Look Pictures, $26.99)
"FLUSHED AWAY" (2006)
The ever-dependable makers of Wallace & Gromit muddy up "Stuart Little" territory with the tale of a pet mouse accidentally dispatched down the tubes. The voice cast includes Hugh Jackman and Kate Winslet.
Extras: Games; new animated music videos; filmmaker commentary. (DreamWorks, $19.95)
"MAN OF THE YEAR" (2006)
Barry Levinson attempts a return to "Wag the Dog" political satire by imagining a Jon Stewart or Stephen Colbert type actually running for president. Timely premise, but Levinson thoroughly dulls its edge by casting old pal Robin Williams in the title role.
Extras: Williams improv; production featurette. (Universal, $29.98)
REISSUES
"GANDHI" (1982)
Richard Attenborough's epic biopic gets a two-disc re release complete with new interviews with the director and cast members. Commentary by Attenborough and an extensive collection of production featurettes are also included. (
"A MAN FOR ALL SEASONS" (1966)
Paul Scofield wrestles with a historic dilemma in this story of Sir Thomas More and the choices he must make when King Henry VIII moves to break with the Roman Catholic Church.
Extras: A biographical featurette on More -- slim pickings, given the film's multiple-Oscar-winning status. (Sony, $14.94)
"APARTMENT ZERO" (1989)
Reclusive film buff Colin Firth takes in charismatic new boarder Hart Bochner amid a serial killer scare in this moody, effective thriller, reissued for the first time in its uncut theatrical version.
Extras: Filmmaker commentary. (Anchor Bay, $19.98)
FOREIGN
"LUNACY" (2006)
The latest from the legendary Czech animator/filmmaker Jan Svankmajer ("Alice") is a mostly live-action drama, derived from Edgar Allen Poe and the Marquis de Sade, about the adventures of a young naif (Pavel Liska) in a lunatic asylum. Rigorous and unflinchingly pessimistic, it's also predictable and overlong. When in doubt, Svankmajer uncorks his patented parade of stop-motion meat. (Unrated)
Extras: Production featurette; text interview with Svankmajer. (Zeitgeist Films, $29.99)
TY BURR
TELEVISION
"THE JOHNNY CARSON SHOW" (1955-56)
Here's Johnny, in the CBS showcase that preceded his run on "The Tonight Show." Among the guests: James Arness, plugging the premiere of "Gunsmoke."
Extras: Other Carson rarities, including an episode of his quiz show "Who Do You Trust?" (Shout! Factory, $24.98)
Capsules are written by Globe correspondent Tom Russo and titles are in stores Tuesday unless otherwise specified. 
