New releases | TOM RUSSO
A scathing take on people who need People
When this correspondent isn't engaged in the weekly couch-potato fest integral to this very column, he logs a fair amount of time interviewing entertainment types for publications available in a checkout lane or a dentist's office near you. So Steve Buscemi's inside-showbiz directorial effort "Interview" (2007) showed up with a built-in interest factor. Buscemi stars as Pierre Peders, a boozy, cynical political journalist annoyed at best to be assigned a fluff piece on Katya (Sienna Miller), a star actress with limited dramatic skills but a sex life that's made for fabulous reading.
Trust us, the film takes a hard left into fantasyland when Pierre winds up back at Katya's loft, peeling away layers of her psyche - and grilling her - like an onion. The celebrity interview arena is not a place where deep understandings are reached. The process is very rigidly structured, sometimes heavy on charisma but almost always superficial, and when it's over, you just know they won't call, they won't write. Sort of like speed dating, we'd guess. (For a surprisingly accurate take on how the game is really played, check out - go figure - "Notting Hill," and its extended gag about Hugh Grant bumbling through Julia Roberts's press junket.) All that said, Buscemi and Miller do offer a fine, well-acted study in how people just don't change. As they trade psychological jabs, taking exchanges that could be stagey and making them feel mostly natural, you'll be suckered again and again into believing that she's finally developed some depth, and he's developed some empathy.
Extras: Buscemi supplies commentary; a production featurette is more than just, well, fluff, as it gives plenty of background on the project's roots in the 2003 Dutch-language original of the same title by murdered filmmaker Theo van Gogh. (
"THE BOURNE ULTIMATUM" (2007)
We've always viewed the "Bourne" franchise's premise as its problem: Matt Damon's Jason Bourne is icy cold and intentionally murky, so how much interest can one really take, crackerjack action or no? Well, returning second-installment director Paul Greengrass firmly shuts our mouths with this trilogy capper, in which the chases are smarter and more nerve-jangling than ever, and Bourne pursues the sort of personal resolution that actually makes us care. Joan Allen is again terrifically sleek as Bourne's angel inside the CIA.
Extras: Featurettes on the climactic chase aren't particularly dynamic, but seeing Damon in chatty publicity mode is an amusing contrast to Bourne's monosyllabic intensity. In his commentary, Greengrass likens the sequence to "a pinball machine ride - much less about speed, and much more about obstruction." And how. (Universal, $29.98)
"HARRY POTTER AND THE ORDER OF THE PHOENIX" (2007)
British director David Yates's take on the dark side of the Potter saga doesn't quite match the creepiest bits of "Prisoner of Azkaban," but it does convey this volume's sense of foreboding. And a close-call action scene in the Department of Mysteries is one of the best bits of spheroidal mayhem this side of "Raiders." Imelda Staunton ("Vera Drake") is the most prominent new addition as primly smiling fascist educator Dolores Umbridge. She plays it a little broad, but her story arc takes a final turn that sure isn't kids' stuff.
Extras: Sorry, fans, no Easter egg of Daniel Radcliffe onstage in "Equus," just a production overview of the series, a how-to segment on editing with Yates, and other minor throw-ins. (Warner, $34.99; single-disc version, $28.98)
"TWO-LANE BLACKTOP" (1971)
Director Monte Hellman's cult road movie makes a strong case that the thrum of engines over scenic vistas can carry stories like these more effectively than a couple of hours' worth of yammering dialogue. James Taylor and the Beach Boys' Dennis Wilson are certainly on board with this idea, cruising tight-lipped through their only movie roles as they stake their '55 Chevy in a cross-country race with Warren Oates's GTO.
Extras: The heavily tricked-out two-disc package shows Taylor getting together with Hellman for the first time in 35 years, as well as Hellman taking film students on a road trip. (Criterion, $39.95)
Television DVD | Matthew Gilbert
Sketching out 'the sexual revolution'
In the opening credits of "Love and the Good Deal," a sketch included in "Love American Style - Season 1, Vol. 1," we're told it was "Suggested by a play by Neil Simon." The reference is to "Barefoot in the Park"; in the sketch, a young couple try to find a bed for their minuscule New York apartment. But the phrase could easily serve as an epigraph for almost every sketch in this set of 12 episodes from Season One of the anthology series, which premiered in September 1969.
Like much of Neil Simon's 1960s work, including "Plaza Suite" and "The Last of the Red Hot Lovers," "Love American Style" takes a mild, comic approach to American culture at a moment when sex, birth control, divorce, and women's rights were no longer taboo. Not too many years before "Love American Style," with its signature prop of an iron double bed, TV's married couples had to sleep in twin beds. Many of these sketches find parents who came of age in the 1940s and '50s trying to accept their children's informal approach to love and freedom, the mainstream fallout from "the sexual revolution."
The value of this three-disc set is as a time capsule and, for those missing that era, as nostalgia. Many of the sketches are too long by half - for example, the endless piece about a couple who plan to skydive while getting married but then have to deal with the jitters (along with a stuttering reverend) on the plane. Maybe I've been ruined by contemporary short-attention-span editing, but I wanted them to just jump already, parachutes or no. And the "Laugh-In"-like quickies between the sketches are fangless filler. Like "The Love Boat" and "Fantasy Island," multi-story hours that arrived on its heels, "Love American Style" is not ageless.
The amusement is in the groovy clothes and language, in the unshakable theme song (sung by the Cowsills) and its attendant fireworks, and in the long list of guest stars, including "Batgirl" Yvonne Craig, Jane Wyatt from "Father Knows Best," Robert Reed from "The Brady Bunch," Regis Philbin, Tom Smothers, Flip Wilson, and, oddly, Harrison Ford, who plays a hip kid spouting psychobabble. Unfortunately, there are no extras, no bonus documentaries that give cultural context to the series or catch up with some of the talent.
(Paramount Home Video, $31.99, available now)
Indie DVD | Ty Burr
Radcliffe brings quiet charisma to 'Boys'
"Harry Potter" completists, be forewarned: "December Boys" is a little movie, and Daniel Radcliffe, playing one of four orphans navigating adolescence in late-1960s Australia, doesn't have the biggest role. He acquits himself honorably, though, holding the screen with more quiet charisma than his costars. The film is a problematic memory play set among breathtaking locations on Kangaroo Island, off the coast of South Australia. The kids have been sent there on holiday and Maps (Radcliffe), the oldest at 17, is on the verge of giving up hope he'll ever be adopted. The film's narrator, Misty (Lee Cormie), is the youngest, timid and sensitive, and a bit of a prat. Spit (James Fraser) and Sparks (Christian Byers) are rough-and-tumble 12-year-olds. The members of the tiny beach community offer glimpses of the adult world around the corner, not least of which is the beautiful and very French Teresa (Victoria Hill), who emerges topless from the sea to the boy's astonishment and delight.
There are life lessons to be learned and sludgy symbolic devices like a mysterious black stallion that roams the beach. Worse, the two halves of "December Boys" - the pre-adolescent getting of wisdom and the adolescent getting of action - never mesh. When director Rod Hardy tries to resolve his busy plot strands toward the end, the film slides into melodrama and mild-mannered fantasy, with Misty's yearning to be part of a family rounded off in ways that just don't make sense. It's all very pretty, though, and for Radcliffe a decided holding action.
Extras: Deleted scenes, theatrical trailer (Warner Home Video, $27.98)
ALSO THIS WEEK
"HIGH SCHOOL MUSICAL 2" (2007)
Zac Efron, Vanessa Hudgens, and the gang land summer jobs at the local country club, and happily have enough downtime to squeeze in fully choreographed song-and-dance routines.
Extras: A new number not seen on TV; karaoke function; an option to watch dance rehearsal footage along with the movie. (
"THE BOSTON RED SOX 2007 WORLD SERIES COLLECTOR'S EDITION"
For those who prefer to recall their Sox-Rox Series memories straight up rather than in highlight-reel soft focus, this eight-disc set features uncut broadcasts of each game plus the three comeback games against the Indians in the ALCS.
Extras: A customizable audio option that allows fans to watch while listening to Joe Castiglione's call of the game; replays of the Sox's four consecutive homers against the Yankees, the end of Clay Buchholz's no-hitter, and other regular season high points. (A&E, $79.95)
"THE ROCKET" (2005)
Hockey hero and bona fide French-Canadian cultural icon Maurice "Rocket" Richard is the subject of a biopic that's got a warm patina at some points, and is body-check harsh at others. Starring Roy Dupuis (TV's "La Femme Nikita").
Extras: Biographical featurette; deleted scenes. (Palm Pictures, $24.99)
REISSUES
"ERIK THE VIKING" (1989)
Monty Python vets take to the Nordic track in this farce written and directed by Terry Jones, starring Tim Robbins, and featuring John Cleese. Fans have groused online that this is a substantially edited version.
Extras: Commentary by Jones; retrospective and vintage featurettes. (MGM, $19.98; available now)
"THE LAST MAN ON EARTH" (1964)
Vincent Price stars in an adaptation of the same Richard Matheson sci-fi novel that was later turned into "The Omega Man" and this month's Will Smith vehicle, "I Am Legend." There's a reason Hollywood keeps revisiting this story - but Mr. Price, you, sir, were no Big Willie or Chuck Heston. (MGM, $14.98; available now)
"MGM HOLIDAY COLLECTION" (2007)
The divine-intercession comedy "The Bishop's Wife" (1947), with Cary Grant, Loretta Young, and David Niven, anchors a set that also includes Laurel and Hardy's "March of the Wooden Soldiers" (1934) and Frank Capra's "Pocketful of Miracles" (1961). (MGM, $29.98; available now)
TELEVISION
"LOST": THE COMPLETE THIRD SEASON (2006-07)
New flashbacks are the bonus of choice in a set revisiting the deepening mystery of the Others. Additional extras include a look at 24 hours in the life of cast and crew, and teasers about the show's lit references. (Buena Vista, $59.99)
Capsules are written by Globe correspondent Tom Russo and titles are in stores Tuesday unless otherwise specified.
