DVD Report
New Releases | Tom Russo
Looking at what led to Blair's rise in Britain
Given what a vivid portrait writer Peter Morgan and director Stephen Frears painted with "The Queen," it's surprising that there wasn't an earlier stateside marketing push on their prior collaboration, "The Deal" (2003). A companion piece of sorts (but not technically the "prequel" indicated on the packaging), the made-for-TV film features Michael Sheen as Tony Blair, his first turn in the role he reprised in "The Queen." Here, though, Blair is years away from his election as Britain's prime minister. At the story's outset, Blair is a personable parliamentary newcomer who makes an impression on fellow Labour Party up-and-comer Gordon Brown (David Morrissey, "The Other Boleyn Girl"). By 1994, Margaret Thatcher's departure and subsequent developments create a scenario in which both men have a shot at the PM's seat. And so we come to the much-disputed deal of the title - namely, an agreement that one of them will step aside - and some squirmy, speculative exchanges between Morrissey and Sheen. Brown, the film suggests, was the candidate with greater substance, but Blair was the more marketable one, and a couple of scenes brim terrifically with their assertions and denials of this. The territory doesn't always feel as accessible as in "The Queen," but the performances make clear why the filmmakers went back to this particular well.
Extras: Morgan supplies commentary. Frears sits down for a conversation with an interviewer who, while apparently British, is clearly posing the questions on Americans' minds. You won't find out why we didn't see this movie on disc when "The Queen" was released, or when Brown replaced Blair a year ago. (It aired on pay cable last fall.) But for a refresher on your recent Conservatives-versus-Labour history, start here. You'll also get a teaser for Morgan's planned Blair-and-Clinton script. (
"DOOMSDAY" (2008)
Watching the latest from English schlock auteur Neil Marshall ("The Descent"), we're prompted to ask: Why all the fuss about that "Escape From New York" update Hollywood is eyeing, when Marshall has remade it already? Entertainingly, to boot. Instead of Manhattan as a prison, here we get Scotland permanently walled off because of a deadly viral outbreak. Rhona Mitra ("Boston Legal") slips into Kurt Russell's shoes, or his eye patch, at least, as Eden Sinclair, a military bad girl dispatched to forcibly tap Scottish survivors for their cure after the virus resurfaces outside the quarantine zone. The punk-chic cannibals she encounters defy social logic, but they're fun - even when the action ultimately shifts to scenically desolate highways for an impressive but derivative "Road Warrior" homage.
Extras: Particularly gory unrated version with commentary by Marshall and supporting cast; production featurettes. (Universal, $29.98; Blu-ray, $39.98)
"SHINE A LIGHT" (2008)
The Rolling Stones' stop at Fenway a few summers back was a cool novelty, but even in that ostensibly "intimate" setting, they were as far away as ever, weren't they? This new concert film, shot at New York's Beacon Theatre in 2006, also has a novel hook - Martin Scorsese is the director - but the human-scale venue really makes the Stones click, and in turn, shine. Scorsese's occasional on-camera befuddlement at how to work with guys who live like rock stars (as opposed to movie stars) is a bonus.
Extras: Additional performances include the post-prime "Undercover of the Night," which loses its edge here, but also "Paint It Black," which notably doesn't. Supplemental interview snippets also produce a few gems, such as Keith Richards's note about having attended his mum's 90th birthday party: "I come from good stock, I guess." (Paramount, $19.99; Blu-ray, $29.99)
"WARGAMES: THE DEAD CODE" (2008)
This made-for-DVD riff on Matthew Broderick's 1983 hacker thriller has the right idea: In the homeland security era, pitting a computer geek (Matt Lanter) against a terrorist-attack simulator makes both story sense and business sense. Still, you've seen it all before, literally. Speaking of which, the original gets a 25th anniversary reissue as well.
Extras: Commentary by Lanter and director Stuart Gillard; production featurette. (MGM, $26.98)
Classic DVD | Mark Feeney
A thirst not satisfied by blood
The plot of "Vampyr," such as it is, isn't much. On a fishing holiday, a young man with an interest in the occult stays in a creepy rural inn. An old man gives him a package on which he's written, "To be opened in the event of my death." Arriving at the old man's house just as he's shot, the visitor finds both his daughters are in danger. One of them, in fact, has acquired a mysterious wound on her neck. A sinister doctor announces she desperately needs blood. The package contains a book about (what else?) vampires. You can pretty much guess the rest.
Obviously, plot isn't why "Vampyr," which is based on a Sheridan Le Fanu short story, "Carmilla," ranks with "Nosferatu" and "Dracula" as the greatest of all vampire movies. Neither is decor. There are no gloomy castles or speeding coaches. Carl Theodor Dreyer turns the genre inside out. Sets are simple and overwhelmingly white. Daylight predominates over darkness. Looking almost as if enacted underwater, "Vampyr" seems poised between stiltedness and ritual. The rare violent moments - the old man's murder, a stake driven into an open grave, a villain's asphyxiation in a flour mill - are shown with almost-detached restraint.
Dreyer's principal interest here isn't horror. As in all his films, it's spirituality. Of course, spirituality can take many forms; and the line that divides the spiritual from the supernatural is wavery, at best. What Dreyer offers - with the help of Rudolph Maté's drained, ectoplasmic cinematography - isn't shock or terror but a free-floating sense of dread. Damnation, after all, holds far more fear than death does. Little is made explicit - or, sometimes, even explicable. Showing without explaining is Dreyer's preferred method here: a scythe-bearing peasant (an inspiration for "The Seventh Seal"?), a peg-legged soldier, a key turning in a lock, a deadly-looking weathervane, a hand moving on a banister, bodiless shadows dancing. These striking images hang together with the natural yet unfathomable visual logic of a dream.
Released in 1932, "Vampyr" retains the purity of silent film while benefiting from the restraint sound brought to the cinema. "Nosferatu" looks overwrought today. "Dracula" is static and stagily cluttered (try imagining it without Bela Lugosi's voice!). "Vampyr" has a spooky otherworldliness all its own. Rarely has understatement been so unsettling.
Extras: Audio commentary, new English subtitles, documentary on Dreyer, visual essay on "Vampyr," scholar's audio commentary, texts of screenplay and "Carmilla" (Criterion, $39.95)
Action DVD | Tom Russo
'Macaroni combat' as Tarantino inspiration
ALSO THIS WEEK "HAROLD & KUMAR ESCAPE FROM
GUANTANAMO BAY" (2008)
There's something weirdly fascinating, as intended, about seeing the stoner heroes (John Cho and Kal Penn) debating caricatured terrorists about who's the real plague to society. But that's just one fleeting moment in a movie that tries way too hard to out-gross-out the likable original.
Extras: Change-the-movie interactive feature; commentary; extensive deleted scenes; more. (New Line; single-disc version, $28.98; unrated two-disc version, $34.99; Blu-ray, $35.99)
"SURFWISE" (2008)
Meet 85-year-old Dorian Paskowitz, a doctor who years ago chucked it all to raise his family of nine kids as perennially camped-out surfers.
Extras: Commentary by the documentary's director, Doug Pray, and Salvador Paskowitz. (Magnolia, $26.98)
"LOST BOYS: THE TRIBE" (2008)
In another straight-to-DVD throwback this week, the '80s teen-vamp flick gets sequelized, with Corey Feldman returning as vampire-hunting Edgar Frog, and Kiefer Sutherland's half-brother Angus on hand to lend fan credibility. Whatever, dudes. Corey Haim cameos despite on-set troubles openly chronicled on reality TV's "The Two Coreys." (Warner, $27.98; Blu-ray, $35.99)
REISSUES
"TYRONE POWER MATINEE IDOL
COLLECTION" (2008)
The '30s and '40s heartthrob is saluted with a five-disc, 10-film set spotlighting his roles as a leprechaun-beset reporter in the comic fantasy "The Luck of the Irish" (1948) and an embittered soldier in the WWII romance "This Above All" (1942).
Extras: Biographical featurettes, including a segment remembering his screen pairings with Loretta Young in "Love Is News" and others. (Fox, $49.98)
"PERMANENT MIDNIGHT" (1998)
Ben Stiller gets intriguingly serious in a biopic of TV writer/heroin addict Jerry Stahl. The role isn't always a comfortable fit, but then, the character is uncomfortable by nature: Stiller plays him as twitchy, gaunt, sympathetically unable to cope, and occasionally downright repellent. He does trip out with an ALF look-alike, though - so there's that. (Lionsgate, $14.98)
TELEVISION
"CENTENNIAL": THE COMPLETE SERIES (1979-80)
James A. Michener's epic novel is adapted in an ambitious 20-hour TV saga tracing a Colorado town's growth from 1795 to modern times - development history revisited in all its ruggedness and ruthlessness. The sprawling cast includes Richard Chamberlain and Lynn Redgrave.
Extras: Retrospective featurettes. (Universal, $59.98)
"ROBIN OF SHERWOOD": THE COMPLETE COLLECTION (1984-86)
The legend of Robin Hood gets an infusion of sorcery and mysticism in this British-produced series. Holds interest partly for the chance to see Ray Winstone ("The Departed," "Indiana Jones") in an early role as Will Scarlet.
Extras: Extensive commentary, behind-the-scenes material, and retrospectives. (Acorn Media, $99.99)
Capsules are written by Tom Russo and titles are in stores Tuesday unless otherwise specified. 