DVD Report

''WALL-E'': The animated tale conveys humor, emotion, and yearning through robotic beeps and other sounds.

New Releases | Tom Russo

You're lookin' swell, 'WALL-E'

As much as "WALL-E" (2008) lives up to Pixar's industry-leading animation standard, what's truly great about it are those opening 40 minutes that dare to dispense with conventional dialogue, instead conveying humor, emotion, and yearning through robotic beeps and the occasional "Hello, Dolly!" number. Writer-director Andrew Stanton ("Finding Nemo") and crew take WALL-E's plight as a gentle mechanical soul who's literally alone in the world and wordlessly make it understandable to viewers of all ages - a neat trick for a group that's always been sure to marry its dazzling visuals to snappy patter. (Almost as striking are the commentaries on societal super-sizing and cellphone culture run amok that distinguish the film's mostly routine second half - vaguely freaky stuff for a family 'toon.) During the "WALL-E" theatrical publicity push, Pixar was quick to note that the studio has taken chances before - putting a rat in the kitchen in "Ratatouille" was a stock for-instance. But there have been plenty of cartoon rodents. If you want risky, try a robot with Chaplin-and-Keaton programming trapped in a trashed world right out of Al Gore's fever dreams.

Extras: The heavily loaded three-disc package includes a well-deserved spotlight on Oscar-winning sound designer Ben Burtt, who famously created the various signature sounds of "Star Wars" before his "WALL-E" audio gig. Burtt hasn't lost his resourcefulness: See him capture the feel of a post-apocalyptic dust storm by dragging a duffel bag on hallway carpet. A new short, "BURN-E," seamlessly inserts a hapless background 'bot into the main story's action. (Disney, $39.99; single-disc version, $29.99; Blu-ray, $35.99-$40.99)

"TROPIC THUNDER" (2008)

One of the funniest things about this Ben Stiller-directed goof on Vietnam movies is that "Thunder" creates a platoon more individually memorable than many of its legit inspirations. Anything goes for this troop of actors unwittingly dropped into real combat, whether it's Method-y Kirk Lazarus (Robert Downey Jr.) doing modern blackface, or smack-jonesing Jeff Portnoy (Jack Black) playing decoy POW in his skivvies. As with other Stiller material, the definition of darkly funny can be tricky. Sometimes you get "The Cable Guy"; here, you get Tom Cruise in a fat suit, playing a pathologically nasty producer with such bite, you won't have to know whom he's satirizing to be left speechlessly amused.

Extras: Unrated footage; commentary by Stiller, Downey, and Black; production documentary (and mockumentary) material. (Paramount, $24.99; single-disc version, $19.99; Blu-ray, $29.99)

"FLASHBACKS OF A FOOL" (2008)

With Daniel Craig back in action as Bond, his most recent dramatic work gets a piggyback release, with some merit. Video director Baillie Walsh casts Craig as Joe Scot, a hard-living Hollywood star suffering from a malaise that goes beyond the painfully depicted way his career is drying up. When Joe's mother phones from England with news that his best friend from adolescence has suddenly died, the film jumps back to those days, with Harry Eden playing Joe as a teen. He's a kid with an easy confidence in his golden boy looks, but also an impressionable streak that leads to life-altering tragedy when he gets involved with a lusty neighbor woman (Jodhi May). The impact is dramatically manipulative, but also unforgettable.

Extras: Cast and crew interviews. (Anchor Bay, $26.97; available now)

"MISTER FOE" (2008)

Jamie Bell plays a Scottish youth with Benjamin Braddock's de-magnetized life-compass and some pronounced Hitchcockian impulses. Grieving over his mother's death, Bell's Hallam has turned voyeur, casting a suspicious eye on his father's new lover, and growing infatuated with a hotel manager who reminds him of mum. The inevitable fallout doesn't quite add up, but you won't be able to take your eyes off of the movie's young lead.

Extras: Production featurette. (Magnolia, $26.98; available now)

Box Set DVD | Saul Austerlitz

The politics of homoerotic classicism

"Less chat, more action; less fiscal reporting, more film; less paralysis, more process; less deference, more dignity; less money, more work; less rules, more examples; less dependence, more love." That's how actress Tilda Swinton sums up the life's work of her longtime collaborator Derek Jarman, the groundbreaking British director who died of AIDS in 1994. The description is apt, although it does not quite do justice to the profound strangeness of Jarman's work, which mingles classicism, homoeroticism, and political activism in roughly equal doses. Kino's four-disc box set (which includes three Jarman films and Isaac Julien's documentary "Derek") runs the gamut, with an emphasis on the classicist Jarman.

Jarman is best remembered today for his erotically charged biopics of Caravaggio and Edward II, but his 1976 film "Sebastiane" (with dialogue in Latin!) is similarly constructed, turning the Roman soldier and future saint into an icon of same-sex desire. Jarman's Sebastiane is caught at the center of a romantic triangle, and picks the beautiful Jesus over his military commander, the blond beast Severus. "Sebastiane" is mostly unconcerned with the religious implications of its story, preferring the sight of nearly nude warriors roughhousing in the surf to abstract theological debate.

By contrast, sex is mostly leached from Jarman's adaptations of Shakespeare's "The Tempest" and Benjamin Britten's "War Requiem," which lack the fire, or the intensity, of the director's more erotically audacious works. "War Requiem" is fine in fits and starts - specific images, like a muddy Swinton lifting a crown of thorns to heaven, are near-indelible - but the film is less a feature film than a video installation.

It falls to Julien's documentary to make the case for Jarman's continued significance. Jarman was not only an unabashedly proud gay man in a time of moral confusion and bodily panic; he was a filmmaker in love with the celluloid image. Along with Michael Powell, Swinton tells us, Jarman was the master manipulator of cardinal red. Unlike anyone but himself, he turned his private obsessions - religious devotion, male eros, and universal Thanatos - into a public cinematic language.

Extras: Jarman shorts "A Journey to Avebury," "Garden of Luxor," and "Art of Mirrors"; interview with the director (Kino, $79.95).

Adventure DVD | Mark Feeney

Soldiers of the king feared his name

The most obvious thing to recommend "Dr. Syn: The Scarecrow of Romney Marsh" is its being a crackling good adventure yarn for the 10-year-old boy in us all. The title character is an 18th-century English reverend (Patrick McGoohan) who disguises himself as a spectral scarecrow at night to right royal wrongs. Imagine an updated Robin Hood with some of the spookier elements of "The Legend of Sleepy Hollow."

Seen in a larger pop-cultural context, there are two other notable aspects to "Dr. Syn." (The name should have been a dead giveaway what the guy was up to. No wonder the Redcoats lost the Revolution.)

First, it came at an uncertain time for Disney, which aired "Dr. Syn" as a TV three-parter in 1964. The company had started with cartoon shorts, expanded into animated features, nature films, Disneyland, and television. "Dr. Syn" was part of an increasing focus on live-action material, for both TV and theaters. Most of the titles were brainless comedies ("Son of Flubber," "Blackbeard's Ghost"), with the occasional curveball, like "Mary Poppins" or "Dr. Syn."

Then there's the strange case of Patrick McGoohan. McGoohan had two series in the '60s that were international hits, "Secret Agent" and "The Prisoner," the latter a true cult classic. Then? A few movie supporting parts (such as a memorably villainous Edward I in "Braveheart,"), TV work, and that's about it. Someone could at least have cast him in the Ray Bolger part in a "Wizard of Oz" remake.

Extras: Making-of featurette, featurette on Disney's British studio, theatrically released British version, Walt Disney's intros to the TV episodes (Disney, $32.99, already available)

ALSO THIS WEEK

"THE SISTERHOOD OF THE TRAVELING

PANTS 2" (2008)

America Ferrera, Blake Lively, Amber Tamblyn, and Alexis Bledel are back sharing life's highs, lows, and most adaptable threads as college gal pals. The less frivolous material, e.g. Tamblyn's sex worries, plays best.

Extras: Lowdown on fan-inspired final sequence. (Warner, $28.98; Blu-ray, $35.99)

"MISTER LONELY" (2008)

Beyond-indie filmmaker Harmony Korine delivers another unapologetically idiosyncratic doodle, featuring a melancholy Michael Jackson impersonator (Diego Luna) ushered into a commune of other false idols by "Marilyn" (Samantha Morton).

Extras: Production featurette; deleted scenes. (Genius Products, $24.95)

"WU: THE STORY OF THE WU-TANG CLAN" (2008)

The nine-man rap attack is profiled in an authorized documentary, one that will help neophytes tell their ODBs from their Cappadonnas, but that might leave fans wanting more depth.

Extras: Behind-the-scenes material; "Protect Ya Neck" video. (Paramount, $22.99)

"ENCOUNTERS AT THE END OF THE WORLD" (2008)

Following his disturbing trip north to Alaska for the wilderness documentary "Grizzly Man," maverick director Werner Herzog makes a polar-opposite trek to Antarctica, interviewing the extremely hardy few who call the icy landscape home.

Extras: Commentary by Herzog; Jonathan Demme conversation with Herzog and other interviews. (Image, $27.98; Blu-ray, $35.98)

REISSUES

"D.W. GRIFFITH MASTERWORKS 2" (2008)

The feature-filmmaking pioneer is remembered with a five-disc set anchored by the newly remastered Victorian melodrama "Way Down East" (1920), and its famed climax of an imperiled Lillian Gish drifting amid river ice floes. Also included are the atypical Griffith comedy "Sally of the Sawdust" (1925), with W.C. Fields; and "Abraham Lincoln" (1930), with Walter Huston, one of Griffith's only sound features. The 2 1/2-hour documentary "D.W. Griffith: Father of Film" rounds out the collection.

Extras: Footage of "Way Down East" source stage play; Griffith intro to "Birth of a Nation." (Kino, $89.95; individual titles available separately, $24.95)

"THE CHRONOLOGICAL DONALD,

VOLUME 4" (1951-61)

In the latest entry from the "Walt Disney Treasures" line, Donald Duck gets atomically peeved in a collection of 31 shorts from throughout the '50s, including a foray into 3-D animation. Annette Funicello is saluted in the companion release "The Mickey Mouse Club Presents: Annette."

Extras: On "Donald," film historian commentary and unproduced storyboards. (Disney, $32.99; available now)

TELEVISION

"NIGHT GALLERY": SEASON TWO

(1971-72)

Rod Serling's less-appreciated encore anthology gets a second look.

Extras: Commentaries by "Pan's Labyrinth" director Guillermo del Toro. (Universal, $59.98)

Capsules are written by Tom Russo and titles are in stores Tuesday unless otherwise specified.