DVD report
New Relases | Tom Russo
Cult favorite sitcom offers laughs big and small
Fans of "Shaun of the Dead" and "Hot Fuzz" know all about geek hero Simon Pegg, director Edgar Wright, and their cinematic flair for spot-on genre tributes. But even fans might be surprised at the tonal richness of the British duo's first signature collaboration, joined by Pegg's costar and writing partner, Jessica Stevenson, on "Spaced": The Complete Series (1999-2001). The cult favorite sitcom mixes broad laughs, inside jokes, and nice bits of Bruce-and-Cybill tension as it chronicles the friendship of 20-something flatmates Tim (Pegg) and Daisy (Stevenson). He's a wannabe comic book artist prone to obsessing over video game zombies and Dana Scully. She's a wannabe journalist who somehow always seems to stumble and fall into the role of sad sack - Elaine Benes crossed with Andy Richter. And they're the cool ones around the building compared to their boozy landlady (Julia Deakin); their tortured-painter neighbor (Mark Heap); and Tim's military-fixated pal (Nick Frost).
The show has fun with the fanboy zeitgeist in a style born of affection, not cynicism. Two other DVD releases this week throw in done-to-death "Jedi mind trick" jokes to shorthand their hipness. In "Spaced," a surprisingly dramatic, episode-closing rift within the gang is scored to the exit music from "The Empire Strikes Back," another tale where the trashed status quo was left hanging. Subtle stuff, for the territory, and uncommonly, entertainingly smart.
Extras: Pegg, Stevenson, and Wright are joined by quite the admiration society for commentary: Quentin Tarantino, Kevin Smith, and "South Park" co-creator Matt Stone, among others. You'll probably share Wright's laugh as he recalls how the show once picked up from its ostensibly like-minded lead-in, "Friends," with the image of Pegg blasting a zombie in the head. And in a feature-length retrospective, the leads imagine what became of their characters. (BBC Video, $59.98)
"TV FUNHOUSE" (2000-01)
Imagine "Pee-wee's Playhouse" made over as a showcase for critters from the same raunchy menagerie as Triumph the Insult Comic Dog, and you've got the concept behind this short-lived Comedy Central curiosity. Triumph creator Robert Smigel taps offscreen buddy Doug Dale to play gee-willikers host to "Anipals" vignettes such as a cat puppet graphically giving birth - to real kittens. There's also a dog's breakfast of the sort of adults-only animation that Smigel has written for "Saturday Night Live," including the sexed-up "Wonderman." Extras: Check out behind-the-scenes footage of Smigel and the crew filming a horse's rear for a look at lowbrow comedy's absurdly serious side. (Paramount, $26.99)
"21" (2008)
MIT and Harvard Medical School get turned into "Risky Business" plot elements in director Robert Luketic's disappointing adaptation of Ben Mezrich's nonfiction book about college brainiacs turned Las Vegas card counters. MIT standout Ben Campbell (Jim Sturgess, "Across the Universe"), ever comporting himself as Johnny Play by the Rules, suddenly discovers he lacks the "life experience" to make an impression on Harvard's scholarship committee. But whaddya know, Ben's statistics professor (Kevin Spacey) floats a secret offer to have him join his little traveling math team and win the tuition at Vegas's blackjack tables. For such a smarty-pants crew, they do some distractingly dopey things as the plot thickens, throwing 180-degree character changes at us. Laurence Fishburne has an interesting but undercooked supporting role as an old-school casino security man about to be outmoded.
Extras: A featurette touches on the production design team's admittedly exaggerated effort to contrast Boston locations and Vegas glitz - but of course doesn't discuss subbing BU for MIT. (
"HEARTBEAT DETECTOR" (2007)
Mathieu Amalric's startling performance in "The Diving Bell and the Butterfly" may compel you to check out his more ambulatory work in director Nicolas Klotz's French import. Amalric plays a human resources shrink investigating his CEO at the behest of German execs with decades-old secrets to hide. For what's billed as a corporate thriller, the thrills are slow in coming. (New Yorker Films, $29.95)
Foreign DVD | Saul Austerlitz
A rarely screened classic is now available
More film geek's rumor than flesh-and-blood film, Bela Tarr's 1994 masterpiece, "Satantango," has been the subject of hushed declarations of awe upon the very few occasions on which it has been screened here. Never released in theaters, unavailable on DVD, "Satantango" belonged in the pantheon of invisible classics, its shadow genius only occasionally broken by a rare screening. After years of promising to do so, Facets has now released the seven-hour "Satantango" in an elegant four-disc set, bookended by Tarr's 1982 Hungarian television version of "Macbeth" and a number of shorts. The wait has been well worth it.
In fact, Facets' release provides a helpful lesson in decoding Tarr's famously daunting, immensely rewarding film. His hour-long "Macbeth" is composed of just two lengthy shots, with the action dictated by camera movement and careful blocking rather than editing. "Satantango" sets a similar tone from its lengthy first shot, which consists of nothing more than cows rooting around a muddy field. A great deal of nothing happens in "Satantango," which is best consumed like a book, in chapters: Endless torrential rainstorms fall, and people wait, argue, and drink copiously.
With the action so minimal, clues must be sought elsewhere: in repetitions and reversals of familiar sequences, in potent imagery, and in brief moments of heightened activity, which function like flashes of lightning across a darkened, but complete, landscape. A disturbed young girl tortures a cat to death, telling it, "I can do whatever I want to you"; a porcine retired doctor, pickled in spirits, heads out into an epic downpour to get a refill; most of the town picks up and moves to a collective farm, visions of easy living and heavy drinking dancing before their eyes.
Tarr's style is formed out of high-contrast, forbidding landscapes, from which nearly all traces of human life have been scraped free, and close-ups, which take on the appearance of still photographs in ever-so-slight motion. The beauty emerges from the fever-dream intensity of Tarr's images, and the Beckettian, stripped-down language of the film's characters. With so few words spoken, each takes on a faint glow of mystical meaning.
"Satantango's" characters are only marginally more welcoming than its landscapes. Drunkards, boors, jerks, and manipulators, they drown their boredom in booze and belligerence. Tarr sympathizes with all of them, though; his camera's patience is a synecdoche for his own superhuman tolerance for human frailty and ugliness.
Extras: "Macbeth"; Tarr shorts "About the Restoration," "Journey on the Plain," and "
Foreign DVD | Mark Feeney
Kurosawa oversees a kidnapping
Based on an Ed McBain novel, "High and Low" (1963) is best seen as a triptych: a morality play, a policier, and, in between, an indelible suspense sequence.
The moral drama takes place in a mansion overlooking Tokyo. Playing a wealthy shoe manufacturer confronted with a kidnapper's demands, Toshiro Mifune is at his most ragingly magnificent. (There's a twist to the kidnapping that makes his decision truly agonizing.) Akira Kurosawa, that most imperial of filmmakers, uses the wide screen to stunning effect. What might well have felt like a chamber play - a handful of characters, small set, little action - he translates onto an epic scale both emotionally and visually. Grouping his actors sculpturally, Kurosawa once again demonstrates that his true artistic counterpart isn't another filmmaker, but Rodin.
The second segment lasts barely six minutes. It involves Mifune, several policemen, and the kidnapper. It takes place on a bullet train - a very different confined space from that of Mifune's house. Phenomenally dynamic, the sequence is one of the great Kurosawa set pieces.
What keeps "High and Low" from being Kurosawa of the very first rank is the policier conclusion. The investigation is engrossing, and the seemingly insoluble mystery comes together satisfactorily. But it goes on far too long. Did Kurosawa simply like the material too much to give it up? Of course, what's the use of being an emperor if you can't play favorites?
Extras: Trailers, making-of documentary, interviews with Mifune and Tsutomu Yamazaki (the kidnapper), scholarly commentary (Criterion, $39.95)
ALSO THIS WEEK
"THE BOSTON STRANGLER: THE UNTOLD STORY" (2008)
We'll just have to wait and see whether Brian De Palma somehow manages to return to form, finally, with his planned adaptation of Susan Kelly's 1995 book scrutinizing the Albert DeSalvo case. In the meantime, there's the novelty of seeing David Faustino ("Married . . . With Children") step into Tony Curtis's shoes as he portrays DeSalvo in this direct-to-DVD release.
Extras: Commentary by Faustino and filmmaker Michael Feifer. (
"TONY N' TINA'S WEDDING" (2004)
Joey McIntyre, Mila Kunis, and Adrian Grenier ("Entourage") star in director Roger Paradiso's long-shelved screen adaptation of the long-running off-Broadway comedy.
Extras: Behind-the-scenes material. (Emerging Pictures, $24.95; available now)
REISSUES
"KISS OF THE SPIDER WOMAN" (1985)
William Hurt and Raul Julia's vividly characterized ordeal as cellmates in a South American prison makes its DVD debut via an aptly alternative route: as a title offered for purchase or download exclusively on
"BIRD" (1988)
Clint Eastwood gives his well-established love for jazz full voice in directing this somber biopic of troubled jazz legend Charlie Parker (Forest Whitaker, above). Although reviews were mixed, the atmosphere is highly evocative, and Whitaker gives his finest performance next to "The Last King of Scotland."
Extras: Bonus soundtrack sampler disc. (Warner, $20.98)
FOREIGN "ANDRÉ TÉCHINÉ 4-FILM COLLECTOR'S EDITION" (1981-1994)
The Cahiers du Cinema critic-turned-director delivers perhaps his sharpest study of youthful self-discovery with "Wild Reeds," his story of four teens in rural '60s France and their disparate world views. The set also includes "Hotel America," "I Don't Kiss," and "My Favorite Season." (Lionsgate, $34.98)
TELEVISION
"ROBOT CHICKEN: STAR WARS" (2008)
Cartoon Network's hyperactive action-figure sketch show makes its inevitable pilgrimage to the center of the toy tie-in galaxy with this 23-minute special. The material's inspiration level varies, but a skit riffing on Darth Vader's big reveal is a hoot. Vader: "I am your father." Luke: "That's impossible!" Vader: "And the Empire will be defeated by Ewoks." Luke, less emphatically: "That's . . . very unlikely!"
Extras: Crew commentary and behind-the-scenes material running nearly a couple of hours longer than the show itself. (Warner, $14.97)
"I DREAM OF JEANNIE": THE COMPLETE FIFTH SEASON (1969-70)
You make the call as to whether Barbara Eden's sitcom jumped the shark for its final season by having Jeannie finally leave the bottle to marry Larry Hagman's Tony Nelson. (
Capsules are written by Tom Russo and titles are in stores Tuesday unless otherwise specified.
