DVD Report
New Releases | Mark Feeney
Maximizing the returns on a 1960s sitcom
How well will the new "Get Smart" movie work? Steve Carell seems ideal for Maxwell Smart - not since Charles Grodin has someone been as good at playing exalted dopes. Anne Hathaway, as Agent 99 (see story, N9), is even more gorgeous then Barbara Feldon, if nowhere near as icy. Still, how can the shoe-phone gag work in a cellphone age - and what is "Get Smart" without the shoe-phone gag?
There has, in fact, already been a "Get Smart" theatrical release. "The Nude Bomb" (1980) is a Zucker brothers title if ever there was one, though Clive Donner directed. The movie lacks Agent 99 and Ed Platt's epically long-suffering Chief. It even ditches CONTROL, naming the organization Smart works for PITS (Provisional Intelligence Tactical Service). Don Adams stays on as Smart, of course, and the movie retains KAOS, which has developed an explosive device to destroy clothing. This gives a whole new meaning to the term "pushing the button."
Would you believe (to use Adams's most famous tag line) there's also been a remake of the series as a series? It ran on Fox, in 1995. In that "Get Smart," Adams and Feldon reprise their roles. By now, he's head of CONTROL (a truly frightening thought), and she's a congresswoman. The main comedic action comes from their son (Andy Dick), who's followed in his parents' highly classified footsteps. Alas, there's a reason it ran for only seven episodes.
Extras: "Nude Bomb" has none. "Get Smart" has a couple of "webisodes" of other Fox sitcoms. (Universal, $19.98;
"BE KIND REWIND" (2008)
Imagine, if you will, that just as there are novelizations of movies, so there might also be novelizations of songs. Would a hardcover copy of the Beatles's "Paperback Writer" have been a contradiction in terms? A similar paradox comes to mind with the DVD release of writer-director Michel Gondry's feature film ode to VHS. Better to have so sweetly charming a comedy on disc than not at all, but still! Jack Black and Mos Def work in a video store owned by Danny Glover. Black, in that incorrigible Jack Black way of his, manages to erase all the videos in stock. So he and Def set out to tape their own versions to replace them. The term of art for this process is "sweding." The resulting film comes as close to deserving the adjective "Capraesque" (in the best possible sense) as anything to come out of Hollywood in a long time.
Extras: Features on the making of the movie, Fats Waller (whose music figures in the story), and Passaic, N.J., where filming took place; conversation between Gondry and Black; Black and Def improvising some songs. (New Line, $18.99)
"EMILE DE ANTONIO: RADICAL SAINT" (2008)
Long before there was Michael Moore, another documentarian provocateur thrilled the left and annoyed the right. Emile de Antonio, who died in 1989, is best remembered for his first film, "Point of Order," a devastating 1964 compilation of kinescopes from the Army-McCarthy hearings. This four-disc set comprises about half of his subsequent filmography. The Oscar-nominated "In the Year of the Pig" (1968), de Antonio's favorite among his films, takes a highly skeptical look at the roots of US involvement in Vietnam. "Millhouse: A White Comedy" (1971) satirizes Richard Nixon (who, as de Antonio knew perfectly well, spelled his middle name "Milhous"). "Underground" (1976) celebrates the bicentennial by examining the Weathermen radical movement. And "Mr. Hoover and I" (1989) takes on one of de Antonio's favorite bete noires, FBI chief J. Edgar Hoover.
Extras: Nixon's "Checkers" speech; trailer for "Point of Order"; featurette on "The de Antonio Legacy" (Homevision, $59.98)
DVD Box Set | Saul Austerlitz
Under that fruity hat, an untapped talent
Hollywood never knew what to do with Carmen Miranda. Finding her sensuous and distinctly un-American, with charms too alarming for movie audiences accustomed to bashful blondes, Fox made Miranda into a second banana - literally. Her talent for energetic musical performances and enthusiastic malapropisms established Miranda as a sort of Brazilian Chico Marx, intended to loosen the customers up for the real, all-American romance, usually between a bland leading lady and blander leading man.
Five of Miranda's Fox efforts are gathered in "The Carmen Miranda Collection," and seeing these films back-to-back makes it abundantly clear that she was not only misused, but downright abused during her American sojourn. Assigned to mediocre directors like Lewis Seiler (who made "Something for the Boys" and "Doll Face"), Miranda was mostly unable to outrun the mediocrity of her collaborators and the air of condescension that surrounded her every appearance. Miranda is dressed like a walking stage prop, her head covered with fruit decorations, her midriff almost always bared. Her dialogue is equally flamboyant, a mixture of vaguely Portuguese-flavored gibberish and dreadfully mangled English. All of which is primarily intended to take her out of the romantic running; Miranda's aggressive sexuality is more punch-line than genuine force.
Of the five films, "The Gang's All Here" is the least painful to watch, primarily because of a higher brand of supporting cast (Edward Everett Horton, Benny Goodman and his band) and director Busby Berkeley's acid-trip set décor. Berkeley was no better at integrating Miranda into his film's plot, but he cedes center stage to her for two of the film's biggest production numbers, the opening, "Brazil," and the fruit-themed "Lady in the Tutti-Frutti Hat," which has Miranda decorated with an array of tomatoes and bananas. Like the Marx Brothers, Miranda is always simultaneously performing within and outside the film. With her array of winks, vocal tics, and smiles, she signals her awareness of how much better she is than these films. By the time of the awe-inspiring final number, Miranda has once more given way to the awkward lovers, pulling the curtain down on a lost opportunity; for who better to have made more proper use of the over-the-top Miranda than the equally baroque Berkeley?
Extras: "Carmen Miranda: That Girl from Rio," "Busby Berkeley: A Journey With a Star," theatrical trailers. (20th Century Fox, $49.98)
Foreign DVD | Ty Burr
Affairs of the heart at Beirut beauty shop
The gooey title confection of "Caramel" is used for waxing unwanted female body hair, and with each swatch of follicles, out come the sisterly secrets. Nadine Labaki's film is a Lebanese "Steel Magnolias," and the novel setting makes up for the timeworn plotlines. In a culture where female sexuality is problematic at best, how is a woman supposed to feed both body and heart? Through makeovers, support, and necessary lies, "Caramel" curtly answers.
Labaki, an established director of Arabic music videos making her feature film debut, plays a Beirut beauty shop proprietress who's carrying on a bad-news affair with an unseen married man, one of many dramas unfolding beneath the bell-shaped dryers. Layale's best stylist (Yasmine Elmasri) is worried her fiance will go ballistic when he discovers she's not a virgin. Across the street, late love appears for a dowdy but elegant seamstress (Sihame Haddad), who may have to choose between her dapper client (Dimitri Staneofski) and her sister, the neighborhood crazy lady (Aziza Semaan).
The stories interweave, sometimes predictably and elsewhere with freshly observed detail. Male characters are relegated to the sidelines, as are Mideast current events: The only politics here are gender politics. It all slides down easily and occasionally too easily: The movie's rated PG but you can feel the randy, truth-telling R banging around inside it, aching to kick the doors down. Labaki knows the men of her culture couldn't handle the truth. The fact is, neither could ours.
Extras: trailer, interview with director (Lionsgate, $27.98)
ALSO THIS WEEK
"4 MONTHS 3 WEEKS AND 2 DAYS" (2008)
Cristian Mungiu's drama about two women in Communist Romania arranging an abortion won last year's Palme d'Or at Cannes. It's also earned the consistently best reviews of any movie released here this year - and with good reason.
Extras: making-of featurette, interview with Mungiu, interview with cinematographer Oleg Mutu (IFC, $24.95)
REISSUES
"THE SWORD IN THE STONE" (1963)
As marketing ploys go, celebrating 45th anniversaries isn't exactly the strongest. But as Disney animated features go, neither is this version of T.H. White's Arthur tales. Still, "The Sword in the Stone" 45th Anniversary Edition does boast the port-wine tones of Sebastian Cabot, as Sir Ector; the "Higitus Figitus" number is fun; and it's always a thrill when the young Arthur - here called "Wart" - manages to extract Excalibur.
Extras: movie-theme video game, cartoon shorts with Mickey and Goofy, featurette on songwriters Robert and Richard M. Sherman (Disney, $29.99)
"DIVA" (1981)
Jean-Jacques Beineix's preposterously stylish thriller proved to be a glorious one-of-a-kind, in terms of both Beineix's oddly fizzled career and French film generally. But it's still a deliriously weightless delight nearly 30 years (how can this be?) after its initial release.
Extras: director's commentary (in French), updates on cast and crew (Lionsgate, $26.98, already available)
"FANNY" (1961)
The night before Marius (Horst Buchholz) is to leave for five years at sea, Fanny (Leslie Caron) declares her love for him. Love leads to passion, which leads to a baby boy. The much-older Panisse (Maurice Chevalier) marries Fanny for propriety's sake. And when Marius returns. . .? Based on Marcel Pagnol's celebrated "Marseille" trilogy and shot by the great Jack Cardiff, "Fanny" is very romantic and very French (Hollywood-style, at least).
Extras: trailer (Image, $24.98)
TELEVISION
"INTO ALASKA WITH JEFF CORWIN" (2007)
Animal Planet's favorite goofball naturalist heads north for this series that ran on the Travel Channel. The two-disc package includes all eight episodes, with Corwin roaming from Denali National Park to the Kenai Peninsula, encountering grizzlies, whales, sled dogs, and the occasional bald eagle along the way.
Extras: Isn't Corwin's mugging for the camera enough? If not, you're out of luck. (Discovery Channel, $19.98, already available)
"DYNASTY" SEASON 3, VOL. 1
Carringtons + Colbys = '80s? (Oh, all right, throw in Reagans and Gorbachevs, too.) Even by prime-time soap standards, it's pretty cheesy not to put the whole season in a single box. No extras on the three-disc set, either. (Paramount, $35.98)
Tom Russo is on vacation. Capsules are written by Globe staffer Mark Feeney. Titles are in stores Wednesday unless otherwise specified. 