DVD Report
New Releases | Tom Russo
To sleep, perchance to dream obsessively
You've generally got to watch a horror movie to find someone as tortured by their dreams as Martin Freeman is in writer-director Jake Paltrow's wry drama "The Good Night" (2007). In fact, while the low-profile film is prominently billed as "a comedic fantasy," Paltrow - Gwyneth's brother, and an "NYPD Blue" directing alum - very deliberately keeps his lead character suffering throughout, opting for melancholy rather than clichés. Freeman (the BBC's "The Office") is Gary, a musician whose flirtation with rock stardom has slowly eroded into freelance jingle-writing, straining his relationship with his nagging girlfriend, Dora (Jake's famous sister, unrecognizably done up like a non-caricature version of Cameron Diaz in "Being John Malkovich"). It's also tough for him to be around his shallow ex-bandmate turned employer (Simon Pegg, as amusing here as "Shaun of the Dead" fans might hope). Gary finds an escape when he begins having dreams featuring an exotic, full-lipped beauty (Penelope Cruz) who doesn't judge him - half the time, in Dora's subtly, surrealistically overdubbed voice. But the longer Gary's daily drudgery drags on, the more obsessively he longs to hold onto his fantasy, delving into research on lucid dreaming with a scruffy adult-ed guru (Danny DeVito). The latter's well-scripted, hippie-sage advice pretty much sums up the film's mood: "The human default setting is loneliness, man." Given this, Jake Paltrow makes a perfect casting choice with Freeman, who's got a gift for playing sympathetic guys nudging, never raging, against the barriers to happiness. You'll half-wish that toppling them over didn't go against the director's sensibilities.
Extras: Jake Paltrow provides acoustically awful commentary from the apartment in which he wrote the script. (
"SWEENEY TODD: THE DEMON BARBER OF FLEET STREET" (2007)
Compared to "Chicago," the still-reigning razzle-dazzler of contemporary musicals, Tim Burton and Johnny Depp's spin on Stephen Sondheim operates at a disadvantage - inevitably, given its themes and the hugely idiosyncratic nature of Sondheim's work. As stylized pop horror, though, the film offers some ripping good fun. The image of Helena Bonham Carter's Mrs. Lovett whimsically sweeping aside roaches as she makes her meat pies is familiar Burton grotesquery. But when Depp's shock-haired Todd starts casually slashing (then viciously stabbing), all of a sudden we're on morbidly fascinating new ground.
Extras: The set's second disc explores the story's roots and evolution from penny dreadful fiction to Tod Slaughter's melodramatic screen interpretation of the '30s to Sondheim. (DreamWorks, $39.99; single-disc version, $29.99)
"JOHN FROM CINCINNATI" (2007)
"Deadwood" creator David Milch's unlikely collaboration with "surf noir" writer Kem Nunn is everything you've heard: tonally unique, heavy on spirituality, and ultimately a mess. The short-lived cable series focuses on the Yosts, a family of legendary Southern California surf rats headed up by disillusioned patriarch Mitch (Bruce Greenwood) and his wife, Cissy (Rebecca De Mornay). Far from hanging loose, the clan's got issues abounding, from the arrival of the enigmatic title character - Second Coming, or savant? - to the return of a predatory pro surfing promoter (Luke Perry). The meandering story line isn't totally impenetrable, but Milch's "Deadwood"-honed elliptical dialogue is just too much.
Extras: Milch's gravelly commentary isn't exactly on the nose, either: "If we're going to keep from committing genocide, we've got to accept the mercantile premise as the organizing principle of our society," he says. No wonder he signs off with "OK, good luck to ya." (HBO, $59.99)
"THE TOMORROW SHOW WITH TOM SNYDER: JOHN, PAUL, TOM & RINGO" (1975-81)
This Beatles-theme disc doesn't supply the sparks of 2006's flashback to Snyder tangling with Johnny Rotten, but it does include, somberly, John Lennon's last televised interview. Lennon clearly seems to be a man who's found peace, ironically talking about how he's reclaimed his personal space a decade after Beatlemania. (Shout! Factory, $24.99)
Jazz DVD | Mark Feeney
Something to turn on the DVD player for
Lip service is the expense of greatness. Hear the name "Duke Ellington" and the response is reflexive - "greatest American composer," "jazz genius," etc. - before sending him back to his cultural pigeonhole.
"Duke Ellington at the Cote d'Azur With Ella Fitzgerald and Joan Miro/ Duke: The Last Jam Session" provides a welcome reminder of the gloriousness of Ellington's Ellingtonosity. Neither the Ellington Orchestra, nor Fitzgerald (who has three numbers) is in top form in this 1966 concert. The black and white print is poor. And the jam session, from early 1973, with Ray Brown on bass, Joe Pass on guitar, and Louie Bellson on drums, is shot with a single camera, sometimes out of focus. Throughout both discs, though, there is Ellington's quite-staggering personal presence.
There are fine moments. On a visit to the Maeght Foundation, Ellington and the Spanish artist Joan Miro enjoy a charming summit meeting of creativity. The orchestra plays a transfixing extended version of "La Plus Belle Africaine." And Ella sings a beautifully controlled "Something to Live For," a rendition made all the more poignant by the presence of the song's fatally ill composer, Billy Strayhorn.
On the first disc, we get Ellington the performer: all glittering surfaces and aristocratic polish. On the second (released for the first time on DVD), there's an almost-breathtaking inwardness and sense of repose. Disc one gives us a man never at a loss for words. The second reveals a man beyond any need for words. The eloquence of Ellington's mandarin gaze speaks volumes.
The second disc was shot, quite informally, during the session that produced Ellington's "Duke Big 4" album. There's no narrative. No one is interviewed. The lack of technical finesse adds to the sense of intimacy. Ellington wears a preposterous piece of headgear that's halfway between a bowler hat and a British bobby's helmet - think of it as an uber-derby - but he makes it appear the height of fashion. Whether performing, listening to playbacks, or simply sipping can after can of Coke, Ellington is a marvel of relaxed, elegant intensity. The sight of him taking apart "Prelude to a Kiss" at the piano over the course of several takes is a compositional master class. Watching his appreciative, eruptive nods after the final one - he's like God on the seventh day approving his handiwork - is worth both discs together.
Extras: Nat Hentoff introduction; photos; interview with Brown. (Eagle Eye Media, $19.95, available)
Documentary | Janice Page
The slippery slope of extreme skiing
Unlike most extreme-skiing documentaries, in which high-speed tricks, spectacular wipeouts, and loud music come flying at you right out of the gate, "Steep" sets itself apart as a softer, deeper meditation on what makes people think they can ride a pair of pointy, slender boards down the world's fiercest mountains.
The film is a serious celebration of pioneer spirit that takes some thought and patience to appreciate.
"Steep" writer-director Mark Obenhaus has loaded his movie with historical background, expert interviews, authoritative narration by "Six Feet Under" alum Peter Krause, and deliberately unhurried examinations of the high-altitude terrain. He has elected to spend at least as much time showing how the trailblazing athletes ascend various peaks as he does showing how they get themselves down in one piece.
Working his way through a chronology of backcountry skiing that includes European legends and real American heroes, Obenhaus uses vintage and contemporary footage to tell the story - from Bill Briggs's groundbreaking run down Wyoming's Grand Teton in 1971 to the extraordinary adventures of Massachusetts native Doug Coombs, who won two world championships and helped found the Alaskan heliskiing industry before he died on a mountain in France in 2006.
As world-class skier Stefano De Benedetti says, "You don't want to die. But to live so close to the possibility of dying, you understand what is really important and what is not."
One man's adrenaline rush is another's brush with immortality. That's "Steep."
ALSO THIS WEEK
"ALVIN AND THE CHIPMUNKS" (2007)
The latest attempt to jumpstart the novelty music franchise is passable for the kids, but contains nothing you'd hope to find, and a fair amount that you wouldn't. Britney-style numbers? Please, how about a few witty lines for Jason Lee's Dave? Only David Cross, as a blithely evil music exec, keeps parents in their seats.
Extras: Featurette material on Chipmunk history. (Fox, $29.98)
REISSUES
"EIGHT MEN OUT" (1988)
Count on DVD distributors to trot out back-catalog baseball movies for a new season (and, in the specific case of Red Sox Nation, to fill our viewing void between the team's Japan visit and routine action back home). John Sayles's portrait of the 1919 Chicago White Sox throwing the World Series remains both deft drama and convincing sports film. This certainly seems like more than just another interesting story to Sayles, who supplies commentary and turns up throughout the 90 minutes of new retrospectives. "The Pride of the Yankees" gets a companion re-release with Curt Schilling weighing in on Lou Gehrig's legacy. (MGM, $14.98 each; available now)
TELEVISION
"FATHER KNOWS BEST": SEASON ONE (1954-55)
Robert Young and family's weekly sitcom predicaments are regarded as such definitively idealized Americana, it's strange to think that CBS actually dumped the series after this initial batch of 26 episodes. (It was rescued by NBC after one of TV's earliest "Save Our Show" viewer campaigns; apparently, a rival network exec knows best, too.)
Extras: New cast interviews; behind-the-scenes footage; "24 Hours in Tyrantland," a government-commissioned curiosity in which the Anderson family - "Pleasantville" alert! - experiences life under a dictatorship. (Shout! Factory, $34.99)
"TERRY JONES' MEDIEVAL LIVES" (2004)
The Monty Python vet humorously blows up stereotypes surrounding various social types of the Middle Ages, from knights to monks to peasants.
Extras: A segment titled "Gladiators: The Brutal Truth." He can say that again. (BBC Video, $29.98)
"LIFE AFTER PEOPLE" (2008)
This entry in cable's "History" series was baldly conceived to piggyback "I Am Legend," but there's inescapable interest in its glimpses of Chernobyl evacuation zones, or speculative sketches of skyscrapers reclaimed by nature as "vertical ecosystems." (A&E, $24.95; available now)
"SUBURBAN SHOOTOUT" (2006)
The U.K.'s answer to "Desperate Housewives" doesn't hide its aspirations, and in some ways benefits from how hard it tries, ratcheting up the deranged wickedness. Homemaker gang wars? Brilliant.
Extras: Cast and crew commentaries; production featurette. (Acorn Media, $24.99; available now)
Capsules are written by Tom Russo and are in stores Tuesday unless otherwise specified. 