The Screengrab : walker texas ranger

DVD Digest for February 19, 2008

Paul Clark — Tue, 19 Feb 2008 15:00:00 GMT

New this week: another Jean-Luc Godard film goes Criterion, and plenty of Oscar-bait (successful and not-so-successful) premieres on DVD.

DVD of the Week: The latest Godard classic to get the deluxe Criterion treatment, Pierrot le Fou is quite possibly the lightest and least didactic of the master's Golden Age output. The film lacks the poetry of earlier films like My Life to Live and Band of Outsiders, as well as the revolutionary fervor of Week End and La Chinoise. In many ways, Pierrot feels like the closest Godard came to making a lark, complete with impromptu musical numbers, gorgeous Cinemascope photography, and Anna Karina at her loveliest. But despite the deliberately minor feel of the film, it's a seminal work, both for the filmmaker and for the period. The two-disc Criterion edition of the film also includes: a new interview with Karina; archival interviews with Godard, Karina, and Jean-Paul Belmondo; the video A "Pierrot" Primer, directed by Godard associate Jean-Pierre Gorin; and a documentary about Godard's personal and professional relationship with Karina.

Also on the Criterion front this week is Alex Cox's Walker, a notorious flop in its day that has become a cult favorite in the intervening years. I haven't had the chance to watch the film yet, so I'll direct you to an appreciation of it by former ScreenGrab editor, and unabashed Walker fan, Bilge Ebiri.

Other new releases on DVD:
American Gangster (Universal, also HD-DVD)
In the Valley of Elah (Warner, also Blu-Ray)
Lust, Caution (Universal)
Margot at the Wedding (Paramount)
Michael Clayton (Warner, also Blu-Ray)
Rendition (New Line)

The new Criterions aside, it's looking like a lean week for classics coming to DVD, although I would be remiss if I didn't mention Sony's Blu-Ray-only release of Tom Tykwer's propulsive arthouse hit Run Lola Run. In addition, Sony is releasing a 1992 documentary about old-school criminals like Lucky Luciano and Bugsy Siegel entitled... The American Gangster. I can't imagine why they'd wait until this week to release it.
Finally, new TV on DVD: Universal's Coach: Season 3; Fox's Newhart: The Complete First Season (note: this is the one where he runs the inn, not the one where he's a shrink); and, as promised, the much-anticipated Walker, Texas Ranger: The Complete Fourth Season. I can't imagine there'll be much overlap between people renting this and those renting the Alex Cox Walker, but you never know.

DVD Digest for February 12, 2008

Paul Clark — Tue, 12 Feb 2008 15:00:00 GMT

This week, one of 2007's best films comes to DVD, and a master's musicals get the box-set treatment.

DVD of the Week: Most of the most beloved films of Ernst Lubitsch's career come from its final years, when the Lubitsch touch had already become well-established. But it's easy to forget that the master had already had a fruitful career long before Ninotchka, The Shop Around the Corner, and To Be or Not to Be. With the films included in this box set, Lubitsch was one of the first filmmakers to integrate song and narrative after the advent of talkies. But this would mean little today if the films themselves didn't hold up, and they do, with all of Lubitsch's trademark charm and Pre-Code sophistication. Eclipse has given their typical treatment (no extras, but lovely transfers) to the films The Love Parade, Monte Carlo, One Hour With You, and The Smiling Lieutenant, which boast some of the era's quintessential stars — Maurice Chevalier, Claudette Colbert, and Jeannette MacDonald. As always, Eclipse and parent company Criterion succeed in filling in another hole in cinema history.

Incidentally, today is my birthday, so if anyone out there is looking for a suitable gift, you could do a whole lot worse than this.

A bumper crop of more recent films being released on DVD this week, including: Ben Affleck's surprisingly great Gone Baby Gone (Buena Vista, also Blu-Ray); James Gray's searing crime drama We Own the Night; Becoming Jane (Buena Vista, also Blu-Ray), the second Austen-themed dramedy in as many weeks; John Cusack in The Martian Child (New Line); No Reservations (Warner, also Blu-Ray), the Catherine Zeta-Jones-starring remake of 2001's Mostly Martha; Tyler Perry's latest hit, Why Did I Get Married? (Lionsgate); the Apollo-mission documentary In the Shadow of the Moon (ThinkFilm); and John Turturro's polarizing star-studded quasi-musical, Romance and Cigarettes (Sony). In addition, this week finally sees the DVD release of Amy Heckerling's long-delayed I Could Never Be Your Woman (Genius Entertainment), starring Michelle Pfeiffer, Paul Rudd, and Atonement Oscar nominee Saoirse Ronan. If nothing else, now we can see what all the fuss was about.

Back to classics, this week also brings Sony's The Stanley Kramer Film Collection, a collection of five films Kramer directed and/or produced. The centerpiece of the set is a new 40th Anniversary Edition of Kramer's once-controversial interracial-marriage drama Guess Who's Coming to Dinner. Also in the set is the Kramer-directed Ship of Fools, as well as The 5,000 Fingers of Dr. T, A Member of the Wedding, and The Wild One, all of which he produced.

Other older films coming to DVD include: The Joan Crawford Collection Volume 2 (Warner), which includes Sadie McKee, Strange Cargo, A Woman's Face, Flamingo Road, and Torch Song; Fox's Charlie Chan Collection Volume 4; and Kenneth Branagh's 1991 dramedy Peter's Friends (MGM), boasting an enviable cast, including Branagh, then-wife Emma Thompson, Hugh Laurie, Stephen Fry, and Imelda Staunton. For some reason, MGM has seen fit to package the film in a box set alongside the misguided Elmore Leonard/Paul Schrader satire Touch, the 1988 Patrick Dempsey-Jennifer Connelly vehicle Some Girls, and Scott Baio and Willie Aames in Zapped! Strange bedfellows indeed.

Finally, if you're jonesing for TV on DVD, this week sees the release of season 1 of The Equalizer (Universal), as well as the Vern-approved Blade: the Series (New Line). But fear not — only one more week until the release of Walker, Texas Ranger: The Complete Fourth Season, the rare DVD that can be enjoyed by both Chuck Norris fans and Conan O'Brien watchers.

The Top Ten Action Heroes Who Deserve A Comeback, Part 1

Peter Smith — Thu, 17 Jan 2008 22:30:00 GMT

This week's top ten comes to us from guest writer Gabriel Mckee, friend of Nerve and author of The Gospel According to Science Fiction. Read his fantastic blog here.

Recent years may well be remembered for bringing back the over-the-top action hero. New sequels to Rocky, Die Hard, and Rambo have revived long-dead franchises, and the trend is continuing. Indiana Jones 4 has started filming, and a fourth Mad Max film would have wrapped by now had scheduling conflicts not led director George Miller to make Happy Feet instead. Though it's an easy trend to mock, it opens the door for other action heroes to be resurrected — here are some top candidates.

10. Scott McCoy (Chuck Norris), The Delta Force

Before he was a meme, before he was Walker, Texas Ranger, even before he was a Karate Kommando, Chuck Norris was Maj. Scott McCoy of the Delta Force. This elite antiterrorist strike force, led by Lee Marvin, consists of some thirty soldiers who are highly trained in standing around in the back of a cargo plane while Chuck Norris rides around on a motorcycle killing terrorists. Delta Force came out in the pre-Die Hard world, before we expected our action heroes to have pathos, depth or family troubles. There's not much character to this character, but when it comes to straightforward ass-kicking, Norris is the undisputed master. Norris is ripe for a Stallone-style comeback, and in the and in the age of the War on Terror, a new entry in the Delta Force saga is the perfect vehicle for his revival.

9. Axel Foley (Eddie Murphy), Beverly Hills Cop

Remember when Eddie Murphy made movies that people enjoyed? Barring Dreamgirls, his film career has been on a losing streak for over a decade, putting him just below Robin Williams on the list of actors who need to be rescued from their own careers. A return to the role of Axel Foley, the detective/con man of Beverly Hills Cop, might be the best way to ensure that Norbit never happens again.

8. Jack Carter (Michael Caine), Get Carter

Michael Caine has made a major comeback in recent years, but in most of his recent roles — in Batman Begins, Children of Men,and The Prestige, for instance — he's played the Kindly Old British Guy. It's easy to forget that he made his name playing jerks — first a heartless cad in Alfie, then a brutal-but-suave thug in Get Carter. This story of a London gangster who travels to Newcastle (Britain's equivalent of South Jersey) to investigate his brother's murder isn't as flashy as more recent tales of the U.K. underworld. But Guy Ritchie and Jason Statham nevertheless owe everything to Get Carter's blueprint and Caine's cynical performance. A return to the character of Carter would give Caine a chance to recapture both the grim violence and the effortless sexiness of one of his greatest roles.

7. Jimmy "Popeye" Doyle (Gene Hackman), The French Connection

The most successful action film of the '70s didn't star Clint Eastwood, Bruce Lee or any other established veteran of the genre. The French Connection owes much of its success to Gene Hackman's performance as hot-headed bad cop Popeye Doyle (which earned him his first Academy Award). More than just a tough guy, Doyle is a contemptible bully, and instead of an invincible supercop, his temper makes him a bit of a screw-up. Hackman is still more than capable of this kind of complexity (as proven by The Royal Tenenbaums), and it would be thrilling to see what he could do with this character after thirty-five years.

6. Foxy Brown (Pam Grier)

The 1973 film Coffy established Pam Grier as the undisputed queen of '70s blaxploitation. Foxy Brown (originally intended as a sequel entitled Burn, Coffy, Burn!) justified her ascension — whether infiltrating a high-end call-girl ring, shooting her drug-dealing brother in the ear, or hijacking a drug runner's crop duster, Foxy is "a whole lotta woman." At turns smiling and sneering, she violently opposes an oppressive society symbolized by a white-operated heroin syndicate. Grier has had a slightly higher profile since Quentin Tarantino reintroduced audiences to her charms, but it's been far too long since she's kicked ass like she did in Foxy Brown.

Read PART 2.